1. _He bore our sins_. To get a correct understanding of this expression, we must turn to the record of the ordinance to which it alludes, which is as follows:—“And when he hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat, and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, in all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and shall send him away, by the hand of a fit man, into the wilderness; and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited; and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.” But this part of the ceremony was preceded by another, of very solemn import. A goat was selected for a sin-offering. He was brought before the Lord, and Aaron put his hands upon him, and devoted him to death. He was slain, and his blood was sprinkled upon the altar and the mercy-seat. Then the sins of the children of Israel were laid upon the head of the other goat, and he was led forth, and sent away into the wilderness, to return no more. Both these goats represented Christ; who, as our Savior, answers to both; at once, suffering for our sins, and bearing them away into the land of forgetfulness. Three things were found continually in the temple; fire, and blood, and sweet incense. The fire denoted the wrath of God against sin; the blood prefigured the sacrificial sufferings of Christ; and the sweet incense typified his intercession at the right hand of the Father, on the ground of his vicarious death upon the cross. The goat of the sin-offering was bound and slain; and then burnt up, with the fat thereof, upon the altar. So Christ was crucified for us without the gates of Jerusalem; and his humanity was consumed by the fire of God’s holy indignation against sin, on the altar of his Divinity; while from that altar ascended a column of the sweetest incense to the heaven of heavens—“Father, forgive them!” In hell also there is fire, where sinners suffer upon the altars of eternal justice. Every sacrifice is salted with fire, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. But the black and sulphurous smoke of the bottomless pit is not a sweet smelling savor unto God, like the fumes of the sacrifice once offered on Calvary—a sacrifice which satisfied the claim of Heaven, and expiated the offence of earth.