CHAPTER III

SACRIFICES

1. The abandonment of sacrifices by the Jews so soon after Jesus Christ finished his earthly career, as set forth in the record, furnishes strong corroborative evidence of the fact that Christ came, as alleged, and that he was the Messiah.

In all controversies the burden of proof rests upon the one who seeks to maintain the affirmative of the issue. He must go forward with his evidence at least to the extent of making out a prima facie case. By a prima facie case is meant such a state of proved or admitted facts as will, nothing else appearing, entitle the one bearing the burden of proof to a verdict in his favor.

The question as to which party has the affirmative of the issue, and, therefore, the burden of proof, is settled in legal procedure in this way.

Suppose neither party should offer any evidence. Which one would be entitled to a verdict or judgment in his favor?

Tested by these rules, it is clearly seen that those who maintain that Jesus Christ was a divine Being

have resting upon them the burden of proof. Have they met that burden?

One way in which they claim to have done so is by producing evidence that sacrifices were once offered by God's people, the Jews; and then they say that it was predicted that these sacrifices should cease when Christ came and that they did cease about two thousand years ago and in consequence of the fact that Jesus Christ gave his life as a final sacrifice.

On approaching a discussion of the question as to whether sacrifices ceased to be offered on account of the fact that Jesus Christ died as a final sacrifice for sin, it is important to review the field and see how much of the question is conclusively proved or admitted. In the first place, I assume that the following facts are so conclusively shown by history that they will not be seriously disputed.

(1) That the Jews practiced a system of worship by offering sacrifices.

Josephus, the great Jewish historian, tells us that when Cestius issued an order to count the lambs sacrificed at one feast of the Passover it was ascertained that the number was two hundred and fiftysix thousand.

While there is no proof that Jesus ever actually

engaged in sacrificial worship, it would not have been inconsistent for him to have done so prior to his crucifixion—that is, prior to the time when his friends claim that he was offered as a final sacrifice. We know that he gave countenance to the practice, if we are to believe the record. He seems to have assumed that his hearers offered sacrifices and to have commended the custom, provided the gift was offered in a spirit of brotherly love.

"Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." (Matt. v. 23, 24.)

He commanded the leper whom he healed to go and offer his gift according to the law of Moses in the case of lepers.

"And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man; but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." (Matt. viii. 4.)

(2) That this system of worship through sacrifices was abandoned by the Jews.

(3) That the Jews ceased to offer sacrifices about two thousand years ago. The exact date was the

year A.D. 70, when the temple at Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus.

(4) That sacrifices continued to be offered by all pagan nations long after such a system of worship was abandoned by the Jews.

2. The system of worship through sacrifices was prescribed for the Jews by God himself.

There is one other important fact that I assume will be admitted by all who believe in Deity, and that is that the system of worship through sacrifices as practiced by the Jews was prescribed by God.

The most minute details as to the structure of the tabernacle and the altars are given in Exodus, Leviticus, and other books of the Old Testament; and the system of worship is minutely prescribed; and all these directions are preceded by the declaration that God spoke them to Moses.

Josephus declares that this system of worship was so beautiful and grand in its appointments that it proclaimed God as its Author:

Now, here one may wonder at the ill will which men bear to us and which they profess to be on account of our despising that Deity which they pretend to honor; for if any one do but consider the fabric of the tabernacle and take a view of the garments of the high priests and of the vessels which we make use of in our sacred ministration, he will find that our legis

lator was a divine Man. ("Antiquities of the Jews," Book III., Chapter VII.)

3. Man first inaugurated sacrificial worship, and God condescended to adopt the system.

It appears from the record (and I speak of the Bible as the record) that the ancient system of worshiping God through sacrifices was not designed by that divine Legislator of whom Josephus speaks at the time when man was first created, but that this method of worship was first voluntarily practiced by man, without any direction from any one, and that the system of which Josephus speaks was not prescribed and enjoined until many centuries after men first voluntarily offered sacrifices. This may or may not be true, but it is correct so far as the record discloses.

Cain was the first worshiper of Divinity, so far as the record shows, and he inaugurated the worship of God by offering a sacrifice.

What prompted him to do this is not disclosed; but the offer must have had in it some element of love, and Cain must have been actuated by both the desire and the expectation of securing by his sacrifice the approbation of God, because the same record teaches us that afterwards, when he discovered in some undisclosed way that God preferred