doctrine may be nameless and dark on one side, but it is bright upon the other.

Have you ever looked intently upon the moon when it has not been full? Have you seen a part shining brightly whilst the rest was shrouded and almost quite dark, and between the two there was a sharp line of demarcation, and the moon was bright where it caught the reflection of the sun but dark on the other side?

So it is with many spiritual truths which are perplexing and difficult. So it is with this great doctrine of sacrifice, simple or vicarious sacrifice, voluntary or involuntary. I say one side is dark-miserably dark, we can hardly realise at times how dark; but the other side is full of glory, light, warmth, and heat-all that we want, all that we agonise for, all that the practical life aspires to as its consummation.

Let us begin with the dark side and work up towards the bright side of the Doctrine of Sacrifice. Let us try and master it all round.

Very dreadful is it to think of this suffering which has always been in the world; this constant death and sacrifice in a thousand shapes. Look back, for instance, long before the advent of man to this earth; look back and see those mighty lizards tearing each other to pieces in the slimy mud and primeval marshes of the early world. We know that they did so because we find these creatures inside each other's skeletons; we know that they must have lived upon each other, must have destroyed and devoured each other. We dig up their remains every day. There they are in the fossil state;

you can see them any day at the British Museum. Dreadful witnesses to this fearful and dark law of sacrifice-vicarious sacrifice; one creature sacrificed to keep another alive. And around us at this hour the same spectacle is going on; we see the poor feeble animal falling a prey to the stronger one. Insects devour each other; the mouse is pounced upon by the hawk; the stronger or the more wily fishes, birds, reptiles, devour the others cannot live without them; the lion devours the antelope; the tiger leaps upon the ox; the vulture swoops down upon the lamb; and man?-why man feeds upon animals. In this last high stage of organ

isation there is still sacrifice in its lowest form, its most cruel and mysterious form. Nothing but the constant habit of eating creatures, nothing but the common habit of seeing them dead and slain for our food could reconcile us to what is in itself so strange and purely savage as this taking the life of beasts for food, this constant infliction of involuntary suffering and sacrifice. Yet it must be so; the slaughter is strictly in every sense an act of self-preservation.

But not only does man prey upon the lower animals, but he preys upon his fellow-men. I am not alluding to cannibalism now, although there are savage tribes who even thus prey upon each other; but I am speaking in a larger sense of the way in which human beings are not only sacrificed to the lies, and cowardice, and graspingness, and deceitfulness, and lust of others, but to the wants and necessities of others. You and I every day unconsciously have a share in this.

We cannot help it ;

the law of sacrifice is so intimately interwoven with our civilisation, with all civilisation. We are so constituted in the body politic that we cannot help other people suffering for us, and dying for us.

Look at this great city of London, look at Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, everywhere you see this dark law working. We habitually draw a veil over it; we do not like to look misery in the face. But sometimes we must get glimpses of it. It may not be amiss to glance behind the veil. Observe then, my brethren, how many unwholesome trades there are. Men go into them knowing that they will fall victims to their trade, yet they are obliged to do it-they are pushed to it by the requirements of their fellow-creatures, or by the burden that is laid upon them to get their living in some way or other. The acrobat is constantly sacrificed to the pleasure of thoughtless multitudes. The glass-blower

knows that his days are numbered. Whilst civilisation endures we shall probably live by his suffering and death; and there are some musical wind instruments which demand a certain use of the lungs, which invariably tends to consumption. There are thousands in this great city who are sitting making garments, embroidering and sewing with a double thread 'at once a shroud and a shirt :' we reap the benefit of it; it is work done for the community; work that is undersold and underlet, undersold at the price of the life-breath-cheap life-breath-of suffering human beings. There are lacemakers who, to make their lace, are obliged to work almost in darkness, and who always go blind. There

are men who spend their lives underground on their backs in the depths of coal-mines, cutting out the coal, and covered, always covered, with filth and surrounded with pestilent vapours. We cannot wholly prevent all this. It seems part of a sort of law that works darkly. We may mitigate or stop it here and there; we may step in between the sufferer and his suffering and alleviate it here and there, and as civilisation goes on we are able to do this more and more; but at the same time we do not get rid of the law of sacrifice, which is one woven into the fabric of our pursuits, our pleasures, our progress, and our civilisation.

145. Well, that is dark enough. All these people are involuntarily sufferers by what looks like a blind, pitiless law which they cannot control, which they do not acquiesce in, from which they merely suffer. But suddenly the scene shifts; there is voluntary sacrifice as well as involuntary sacrifice. And the instant sacrifice becomes voluntary, light begins to dawn; the dark law becomes irradiated; we may not even then see very far, but we see a little way. Tell me, you who think that the doctrine of vicarious suffering is a doctrine without sense and without reason, without moral dignity or rightness, what do you make of all that high impulse which is in the world, which is in your own hearts, all that great willingness to suffer and to sacrifice yourselves for others? Tell me, brethren, how it is that human society holds together at all? Is it not because the good are willing to suffer for the bad? Because they

bear in their bodies, for the sake of the unthankful and the evil, the marks of the Lord Jesus; because every high, and pure, and regenerating influence which is now upon earth, or ever has been in the world, has been under the law of vicarious suffering and sacrifice, by which the good come and stand between the bad, and prevent them from bearing the full punishment or consequences of their sins.1

146. Look once more at this city. What do you mean by all these social, charitable, philanthropical institutions -workhouses, schools, reformatories. What do you mean by these hospitals? Who keeps them up? Who pays for them? The vicious, the spendthrift, the licentious, the selfish? No; these are set up by the good and the wise for the benefit of the evil and the ignorant. They represent the sufferings of the rich for the poor, and of the virtuous for the vicious. So the good man pays for the bad man, for the taxgatherer of the community is the vice of the community;' and if you could sweep away the vices of the land, you would get rid of half the taxes. You would not want half so many hospitals, you would not want the police, you would not want the prisons, you would not want the workhouses or reformatories, and, if other countries were likeminded, you would not want a large standing army and navy. The good are now employed in mending the mischief, and trying to prevent more; but if all were good, new ranges of progress would be immediately opened up; the energies

I Ward Beecher.