The terror of sacrifice without its blessing.
The ancient sacrifices had much about them that was very repulsive. The slaughtering and dismemberment of the vast herds of animals that were year by year brought to the altar must have involved in it very much that was of a revolting nature. No doubt their sensitiveness to such scenes of blood was far less than ours; but at the best it must have been a most painful spectacle. Hence scoffers have called it the religion of the shambles. But the salvation and blessing that came through the sacrifices divested them of all that was painful or repulsive to the offerer. But there may be all that is terrible about sacrifice—agony, blood, death, carnage—without any corresponding blessing. Such is the meaning here. Slaughter, but no salvation. The same word for "sacrifice" is used as in those which were offered according to the Law on the altar in the temple. And so in the parallel passages in Isaiah 34:6 and Ezekiel 39:17, which should be compared with this, and which are alluded to by St. John in the Revelation. In all these there is the terror of sacrifice, but none of its blessing. And there is that which corresponds to this now. Even Christ's sacrifice may be a terror and not a salvation. It is so to:
1. Those who refuse it.
2. Those who apostatize from it, who count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, trampling underfoot the Son of God (Hebrews 10:1-39.).
3. Those who make it the minister of sin. Who "turn the grace of God into lasciviousness." There is, then a twofold aspect, of the Lord's sacrifice. Either it must be that by it we rise or fall. "This child is set for the fall and rising again." The gospel is "a savour of life unto life, or," etc. Christ is a Rock on which we may build, or which, falling on the impenitent, crushes him to powder. Which for ourselves?—C.