were transferred to the head of this second goat; he takes them away into the unknown desolate wilderness, never to return. Symbolically, the sins are gone forever!――――The prophet Micah (7: 19) gives a turn to the same thought only slightly different――“Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” Jeremiah also (31: 34)――“I will remember their sins no more.” No symbol could give more precisely, more unequivocally, more forcibly, the great idea of _taking away sins_. You see them transferred to this second goat by means of hands imposed and formal declaration, “_putting them_ [the sins] _upon the head of the goat_”; and then he is driven away, bearing his burden into an unknown, desolate land, never to be heard from again!――――The sacrifice of the first goat for a sin-offering and the sprinkling of his blood before the sacred Presence of Jehovah had the usual significance of an innocent animal substituted for the guilty sinner――the former dying that the latter might not die――thus showing _how_ God could safely forgive sin. These two goats therefore represent respectively the two great ideas which make up the atonement――the first signifying _by what means_ God can testify duly against sin while yet he forgives the sinner; and the second certifying that――the innocent victim having been substituted for the sinner and slain in his stead――God does truly _take sins forever away_. In briefest phrase these coupled ideas stand out before us in the New Testament: “Behold the Lamb of God who _taketh away_ the sin of the world” (John 1: 29). III. _Sacred Edifices and Apparatus._