(_c_) So far we have considered the sacrifice of Christ in its aspect Godwards: we have tried to find an answer to the question, How did the death of Christ propitiate the wrath of God? There remains the further question, How was it a sacrifice for us? It was, we can see, a perfect offering acceptable to God: but how has it availed 'for us men'? The mind shrinks from a purely external Atonement, and part of the imperfection of the Mosaic sacrifices consisted in the merely artificial relation between the offender and the victim. In the perfect sacrifice this relation must be real; and we are thus led to the truth, so often overlooked, but impressed on every page of the New Testament, that He who died for our sins was our true representative in that He was truly man. Without for the present going into the more mystical doctrine of Christ as the second Adam, the spiritual head of our race, what is here emphasized is the reality and perfection of His human nature, which gave Him the right to offer a representative sacrifice[228]. 'For verily not of angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.' Being thus 'taken from among men,' He was 'appointed for--or, on behalf of--men' and the justification of His Priesthood is the complete reality of His humanity, which, if we may so speak, overlay and hid His Divinity, so that 'though He was a Son,' unchangeably 'in the form of God,' 'yet learnt He obedience by the things which He suffered,' and thus became for us a perfect Priest. The sinless perfection of Christ, far from removing Him out of the sphere of our sinful lives, made Him perfectly representative; for He not only possessed in their greatest perfection all the powers and capacities which are the instruments of sin, but in the strength of His sinlessness and of His love He could feel for all men and accept them as His brethren, though they were sinners. Our High Priest 'hath been in all points like as we are, yet without sin.' The holiest man has some part of his nature stunted and repressed by sin, and is so far incomplete, unrepresentative: but He, unweakened and unmarred in any point by sin, can without holding anything back represent human nature in its perfection and entirety.