e impending Roman sword. Had the Russians wished to
conciliate our Government and avert war, this could not have been
effected by their selecting for execution some political exile in
Siberia, but only by recalling and degrading such an outstanding person
as General Komaroff. In every case where any one is to be used as a
scapegoat these two qualities must meet--he must be a really, not
fictitiously, representative person, and he must be free from all other
claims upon his life. It is not everyone who can become a scapegoat. The
mere agreement between the parties, that such and such a person be a
scapegoat, is only a hollow fiction which can deceive no one. There must
be underlying qualities which constitute one person, and not another,
representative and fit.

Now John does not expressly say that the deliverance Jesus was to effect
for men generally was to be effected in a similar manner to that which
Caiaphas had in view. He does not expressly say that Jesus was to become
the scapegoat of the race: but impregnated as John's mind was with the
sacrificial ideas in which he had been nurtured, the probability is
that the words of Caiaphas suggested to him the idea that Jesus was to
be the scapegoat of the race. And, certainly, if Jesus was the scapegoat
on whom our sins were laid, and who carried them all away, He had these
qualities which fitted Him for this work: He had a connection with us of
an intimate kind, and He was stainlessly innocent.

This passage then compels us to ask in what sense Christ was our
sacrifice.

With remarkable, because significant, unanimity the consciences of men
very differently situated have prompted them to sacrifice. And the idea
which all ancient nations, and especially the Hebrews, entertained
regarding sacrifice is fairly well ascertained. Both the forms of their
rites and their explicit statements are conclusive on this point,--that
in a certain class of sacrifices they looked on the victim as a
substitute bearing the guilt of the offerer and receiving the punishment
due to him. This seems, after all discussion, to be the most reasonable
interpretation to put upon expiatory sacrifice. Both heathens and Jews
teach that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins;
that the life of the sinner is forfeited, and that in order to the
sparing of his life, another life is rendered instead; and that as the
life is in the blood, the blood must be poured out in sacrifice.
Heath