offerer laid upon the victim's head denoted, according to the unvarying use of the Old Testament, the representative character of the animal offered, and thus the victim was, so to speak, laden with the guilt of him who sought for pardon and reconciliation. The victim was then slain by the offerer himself, and the death thus became an acknowledgment of the justice of God's punishments for sin: it was as if the offerer declared, 'This representative of my guilt I here, by my own act, doom to death, in satisfaction of the righteous law of vengeance against sin, for "the soul that sinneth it shall die."' It was not, therefore, till the sense of personal guilt had been expressed by the act which constituted the victim a representative of the offerer, and by the slaying which typified the need of expiation by suffering for sin, that the sacrifice was fit to be presented before God by the mediation of the priest, and the blood, 'the life which had willingly passed through death[219],' could be sprinkled as a token of restored life in God. A careful study of the Mosaic sacrifices will shew the twofold character impressed upon them. Both aspects are necessary, they may even be described as two sides of the same fact. Before God can be approached by a sinner he must expiate his sin by suffering, must perfectly satisfy the demands of the law, must atone for the past which has loaded him with guilt: and then, as part of the same series of acts, the life so sacrificed, so purified by the expiatory death, is accepted by God, and being restored from Him, becomes the symbol and the means of union with Him. Forgiveness for the past, cleansing in the present, hope for the future, are thus united in one great symbolic ceremony.