THE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S . the Pascal Lamb, and this piece of shank hone hears witness against them that they reject Christ our Passover sacrificed for us. In the observance of the Pass- over, the Jews bear unconscious testi mony to the fact that they have the shadow and lack the substance, “For with out the shedding of blood there is no re mission of sin”. But the veil of Moses is over their eyes and they are haunted by the shadow and do not see the substance. The religion of the Jew today is as far removed from the Old Testament insti tution, as Mohammedanism is from Chris tianity. When the Temple was destroyed, the Rabbis found that the center of Israel’s religion had gone. Christianity was active in showing that all things had been fulfilled in Him Whom their lead-’ ers had rejected. The hostility of the Rabbis was raised to a higher pitch, and they sat down to make a new religion for the Jew. The chief expression of the Jewish re ligion has always been in their feasts, and the feasts were types, as we shall see; but the observance of them is as different today from their Mosaic institution, as the moon is from the sun. The modern Jew keeps the Day of Atonement but not according to God’s command. Yet he does not deny that he needs an atonement. In his daily prayers, he repeats .all the ancient daily sacrifices, their institutions, and all the particular rites connected with each one of them, and then supplicates the Al mighty to accept his words as if he had actually offered them at the present mo ment. His yearning for an atonement is seen in the attempted sacrifice on the Eve of the Day of Atonement. On that Eve each male in every Jewish family takes a cock, and each female takes a hen. If the family is large and poor, one cock or hen has to do duty for sev eral members of the family. Then the head of the family says the following words: “ The children of men who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of
891 death, and break their bonds astinder. Fools, because of their iniquities, are afflicted; their soul abhorreth all man ner of meat, and they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble that He save them out of their distress. He sends His word and heals them, and drives them from their destruction. Then they praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His marvelous work among the children of men. If there be an angel with Him, an intercessor, one among a thousand, to show unto men His righteousness, then He is gracious unto him, and saith, ‘Let him go, that he may not go down to the pit; I have found an atonement.” Then the head of the house swings his sacrifice round his head three times, and all the members of the family do the same with theirs, saying: “ This is my substitute; this is in exchange for me; this is my atonement. This cock or hen goeth unto death, but may I enter into a long and happy life and peace.” This prayer with the same per formance is repeated three times, and the hands are laid on the sacrifice to be slain. These fowls are eaten on the night of the Day of Atonement, if not given to the poor. This offering of a bird not sanctioned by the law of God bears witness* to Israel’s dark and dreary night of ignor ance and unbelief. In this we hear the Jew cry out, “ Let one innocent come and make atonement for •the guilty” . But this sacrifice reminds us also of that other terrible night, when the three-fold crowing of the cock awakened Peter to the fact of his denial of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. To these new and strange shad ows that haunt the Jew today we have only one answer: “ Such an High Priest became us, Who is Holy, harmless, un defiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.” The Jew is like a runner for a prize, who having missed his way to the goal,
Made with FlippingBook HTML5