has peace of conscience. The possibility of a pardoned sinner still
fearing and doubting does not seem to have occurred to the Apostle. One
difference apparently between the saints under the Old Testament and
believers under the New is the joyful assurance of pardon which the
latter receive, whereas the former were all their lifetime subject to
bondage from fear of death, and that although in the one case the
sacrifice was offered by the worshipper himself through the priest, but
in the latter case by Another, even Christ, on his behalf. And we must
not ask the Apostle such questions as these: Are we not in danger of
deceiving ourselves? How is the assurance created and kept alive? Does
it spring spontaneously in the heart, or is it the acceptance of the
authoritative absolution of God's ministers? Such problems were not
thought of when the Epistle to the Hebrews was written. They belong to
a later and more subjective state of mind. To men who cannot leave off
introspection and forget themselves in the joy of a new faith, the
Apostle's argument will have little force and perhaps less meaning.

If the sacrifices were unreal, why, we naturally inquire, were they
continually repeated? The answer is that there were two sides to the
sacrificial rites of the old covenant. On the one hand, they were, like
the heathen gods, "nothings;" on the other, their empty shadowiness
itself fitted them to be a Divinely appointed means to call sins to
remembrance. They represented on the one side the invincible, though
always baffled, effort of natural conscience. For conscience was
endeavouring to purify itself from a sense of guilt. But God also had a
purpose in awakening and disciplining conscience. The worshipper sought
to appease conscience through sacrifice, and God, by the same sacrifice,
proclaimed that reconciliation had not been effected. The Apostle's
judgment on the subject[196] is not different from St. Paul's answer to
the question, What then is the Law? "It was added because of
transgressions.... The Scripture hath shut up all things under sin....
We were kept in ward under the Law.... We were held in bondage under
the rudiments of the world."[197] In allusion to this idea, that the
sacrifices were instituted by God in order to renew the remembrance of
sins every year, Christ said, "Do this in remembrance of _Me_,"--of Him
Who hath put away sins by the sacrifice of Himself.

Such then was the shadow, at once unreal and dark.