the families may be explained upon other hypotheses. On the other hand, the majority of philologists, with various degrees of confidence, favor the doctrine of organic relationship. A few of them assign but little importance to the comparison of roots, but claim that the problem may be solved on the evidence of grammatical analogies. The majority, however, prefer to examine the vocabularies, being persuaded that they can detect traces of a kindred origin in the faded features of many venerable forms. All agree that the parent language has passed away (having found a grave in some part of Central Asia); but some, with confidence, identify the Sanskrit as the oldest sister, remaining near the old homestead, while the rest have roamed over the whole world, vagrants, but not aliens. Others claim, that through the mediation of the ancient Egyptian all family differences might be adjusted. Others still, are more cautious, though none the less deeply interested, and think that nothing will be lost in the end by a close scrutiny of every claimant to ancient kinship, and hesitate long before admitting any.

In the remaining portion of this Essay we shall endeavor to present as clearly as possible what seems to be the true view of the problem, and of the conditions of its investigation. And, in deference to the eminent authorities who will not accept any theory of internal relationship between the two families of speech, we shall need to show the probability of such affinity, as well as to inquire into its closeness and extent.

ARTICLE VI.

ON THE QUESTION OF THE DIVINE INSTITUTION OF SACRIFICE.

BY REV. CALVIN E. PARK, WEST BOXFORD, MASS.

[A series of Articles on the subject of sacrifice was commenced in the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1859. The first Article gives the theories contained in the somewhat celebrated work of William Outram, which was written originally in Latin, and was printed at Amsterdam in 1688. This Article contains a brief discussion of the origin of sacrifices in general, and favors the theory that they were derived not from an express divine command, but from the operations of our own moral instincts. In regard to the origin of Jewish sacrifices in particular, Outram takes the ground that God instituted them with the design of foreshadowing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Article then gives Outram's account of the various kinds of sacrifices which were used and their accompanying rites, of the places in which they were to be offered, and of the priesthood to which was specially assigned the duty of presenting them. The idea is then dwelt upon at considerable length, that Mosaic sacrifices were typical of Christ's death, that they had exclusive reference, to God; were not designed merely to express the feelings of the worshipper, but to affect the mind of Jehovah - were, indeed, of the nature of vicarious punishments, and intended to accomplish the same purposes that real punishments have in view. Christ's death was a real sacrifice, and was efficacious as a condition of pardon because it was a vicarious punishment. The second Article appeared in October, 1870. 'It states the views of Bähr in his Symbolik. It first gives an account of the matter of sacrifices, the object which was offered, and of the attendant rites. This is followed by a statement of the purposes which sacrifices were intended to accomplish.

According to Bähr they had as their intended results, the creation, or rather the restoration, of a fellowship between God and man. The blood of the offered animal is its life, and it is offered on the altar in the place of the life of the worshipper. The animal-life of the worshipper, Bähr represents as the root of selfishness, the principle of sin. By sacrificing this, sin is removed and fellowship with God is restored.

The third Article was published in the number for January, 1871. It gives an exposition of the theory advocated by Dr. John Spencer. Sacrifices are not to be traced, he maintains, to a divine command, nor are they to be regarded as positively approved by Jehovah. The origin of them is to be ascribed, rather, to the gross modes of thinking which have always been common among pagan nations. Sacrifices were permitted to be incorporated into the Jewish ritual simply as an act of indulgence on the part of God to the superstitious tendency of the Jewish mind. The third Article gives also an account of Bähr's anthropopathic theory of sacrifice. This theory is in many respects similar to that of Spencer. In discussing the vicarious theory of sacrifice, Bähr attempts to prove that the efficacy of sacrifice is to be traced not to the death of the victim, as if its life was a substitute for the life of the transgressor, but rather to the sprinkling of the blood.

The fourth Article was printed in October, 1874, and contains Bähr's description of the sacrificial usages of various pagan nations, such as the ancient Persians and Egyptians, the Hindoos and Chinese, with a view to the development of the fundamental idea of sacrifice, of the relation of the blood to the efficacy of the sacrifice, of the relation of the sacrifice. to the divinity and to the sacrificer himself; and finally, of certain contrasts between pagan and Mosaic sacrifices. The materials for this Article are derived from Bähr's Symbolik.

The fifth Article appeared in January, 1875, and exhibits the theory of Dr. Sykes as to the significance of sacrifices. According to this theory, they are to be viewed merely as federal rites, representing either the beginning or the restora

tion of friendship with God. What has been denominated the gift-theory, as advocated by Portall and the author of the apology of Ben Mordecai is next brought under consideration. The views set forth by Rev. F. D. Maurice are then given, and their unsatisfactory nature attempted to be proved.

The following Article is the sixth in the series, and gives an account of the reasoning of Warburton and Davison and Fales on the question of the divine institution of sacrifices. With this Article, the series is concluded.]

WRITERS on the subject of sacrifice have always been divided on the question whether or not the observance of this rite is to be ascribed to an express divine command. Even those whose views as to the significance of sacrifice we are bound to regard as on the whole correct have by no means been of one mind as to this point. Our particular object in this Article is to give some account of the reasoning of several English writers on this subject.

We shall advert, in the first place, to the method adopted by the once celebrated Warburton to account for the general prevalence of sacrifices, instead of ascribing them to an express divine command. In a manner which would scarcely have suggested itself to a mind differently constituted from his, this author found occasion, in his work on the Divine Legation of Moses, to propound a peculiar theory of the origin of sacrifices. He rejects summarily the idea of any divine command enjoining their observance, on the ground that such a command was wholly unnecessary.

The theory of Warburton as to the origin of sacrifices is founded upon his somewhat peculiar views of language. Language, as he maintains, was in the earliest periods very rude in its structure, narrow in its range, and equivocal in its significance. There would, therefore, as he thinks, be no little embarrassment whenever men attempted to make known to each other any new thought, whenever any unusual event rendered necessary a different form of expression from that which they had been in the habit of using. In

these earlier periods, the various methods to which men at present have recourse in order to enlarge their vocabularies so as to make them correspond to new necessities were wholly unknown. In these circumstances, it would become a matter of unavoidable necessity to supply the deficiencies of spoken language by "apt and significant signs." There would

therefore come into use what Warburton chooses to denominate the language of significative action. We are to reject, then, we may remark in passing, what has been with many quite a favorite notion, that significant language - hieroglyphics, picture-language- was invented for the purpose of enabling priests or the learned class to conceal their doctrines from the mass of the people. It was invented for a reason of exactly the opposite character, that the learned class might be able by the employment of this species of language to set forth their doctrines in a more impressive and effective manner. The invention was an expedient of necessity, not of choice. Illustrations of this kind of language are frequently to be met with in the Bible. The pushing with horns by the false prophets, as mentioned in the first Book of Kings, in order to represent the utter defeat of the Syrian armies, the hiding of the linen girdle in a hole of a rock near the river Euphrates, are examples of this mode of communicating thought by means of significant action.

It is an altogether natural supposition that recourse to this form of language would be had most frequently in attempts to give utterance to the religious sentiment. Nowhere would the poverty of language be likely to be felt sooner than here. Those who have undertaken to translate the scriptures into any of the less cultivated languages of the world have had occasion to feel the truth of this remark. Religious ideas are so widely removed from the range of thought by which the minds of savages and barbarous tribes are wont to be occupied, that the ordinary forms of language are soon found to be an altogether inadequate medium of communication; so that what Warburton styles "the language of significative signs" would as a matter of course have to be employed.