intercessor, no mediator between his God and him. He shewed no sign of looking to a Saviour to make atonement, atonement by blood: he looked to no “Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world” in general, and his own sins in particular. He ignored, then, the whole promise which was the sole hope of man. He may have said, “God, I thank Thee,” but he shewed himself to be wholly without the feeling “God be merciful to me a sinner.” But, on the other hand, Abel brought of the sheep or goats which were of his flock. He offered up not an unbloody sacrifice. He laid the victim on the altar, and believing God, as well as feeling his need of a Saviour, he looked forward with the eye of faith to an expiation greater than that of kids, or lambs, or bulls, or goats, to take away sin. Nay more, he shewed his sense of the need of an atonement out of and beyond himself; for the blood of the victim offered described at once the sense of his own blood being required as a penalty, if justice only held its course and no expiatory sacrifice were found, and represented also, in true type and figure, that better sacrifice, that more precious blood, which should be shed in the fulness of the time to make such an expiation, even that of “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” Now I have gone through this history with what I think is its probable and satisfactory explanation, because not merely does it serve to shew what the Apostle means when he tells us it was by faith that Abel pleased God, and that God testified of his gifts, but also because the very same remarks seem to apply to the whole history and intention of sacrifice, as either commanded or accepted, or both, by Almighty God from the beginning. Take such to be the origin of propitiary sacrifice, and I think nothing can more fully agree with, or illustrate, or be illustrated by, the further progress both of the fact and doctrine as we find them, first in the Holy Scripture, and, secondly, in the world at large, even though by the world’s wickedness so fearfully perverted. In perfect accordance with such beginning of acceptable sacrifice we have the same used and practised, and with the like acceptance, by Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, and Jacob, {33a} and, indeed, by all the patriarchs until the institution was embodied in the law of Moses. As we know, also, it was practised by all the heathen nations of antiquity of whom we have any record, though with them its true meaning and intention were fearfully lost and perverted. Nor does the difference in the instance of Abraham on one occasion, as to his being ready to offer a human sacrifice in the person of his son (which was of course a wholly exceptional case as regards the sacrifices of those knowing the true God), make any difference as to the witness of the acceptableness of sacrifice by blood, or the consuming the victim upon the altar. It has, indeed, been