But it is well worthy of all our care in examination, to see whether it is the essence of this idea, and even mode, of worship which is done away, or only its ceremonial and local detail, as established in the Jewish Church and polity; whether—as all sacrifices before Christ were intended to look forward to Him, and His precious, inestimable, expiation, to be once made by blood and suffering upon the altar of the cross—whether, I say, so it has not been His will to continue an altar and a priesthood, and therewith and thereby a sacrifice commemorative—but, though commemorative, nevertheless perfectly real and true—by which the Christian Church may both look back to Him, then dying once for all, and ever plead afresh the merits of His death before the throne of God on high. As Abraham looked forward, and “rejoiced to see His day, and saw it, and was glad;” { 40a} what if, so likewise, the Christian Church is to look back on Him, and to rejoice; not merely to see Him and be glad, but to be allowed also, according to His own will and ordinance,—(aye, brethren, observe, of and by His own very appointment, whereby His very body and blood are truly offered up to God,)—allowed thus to plead, week by week and day by day, the very all-prevailing merits of that same sacrifice upon the cross; yea, and be the means of Himself graciously pleading it for His people ever afresh before the mercy-seat of His Father. O, my brethren, if this be so, who can undervalue this great thing, or disparage it, or attempt to throw it off, or deny it, or trample it under foot, without a sacrilege fearful to think of? But, again, if this be so, how is the Lamb of God, and His precious blood-shedding, made, more than in any other way which we can conceive, the centre towards which the whole world looks, from its earliest to its latest day; from the moment of the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, { 40b} until that awful hour when that same seed of the woman, the Son of Man, shall come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory? I do not say, it is not conceivable that the whole system and machinery (so to call it), of priest, and altar, and sacrifice, might have fulfilled its purpose at the hour of the crucifixion, and nothing remain of it, or like it, in the Christian Church; nothing in the Christian ministry to answer to the previous priesthood; nothing in it, but a set of teachers or expounders of the Christian faith; a faith, however, be it remarked, in that case, a very different thing from that which the Church has ever supposed it to be, or (as I think) the Holy Scripture sets before us. But even if all this be conceivable, I do say, and I think no unprejudiced person should dispute it, that the whole testimony and usage of all previous time in this matter, the whole of what holy men “did continually” in relation to it, not merely with God’s manifest approval, but even with His especial sanction, and by His positive command, raises a very strong _prima facie_ presumption, that all this was not intended to be, and was not, thus abrogated and done away; and that, at the very least, we ought to have shewn us the most express and distinct proofs of its being thus abrogated, before we can accept its abrogation. We have been accustomed to see, rather, that instead of being abrogated, the usage is changed and glorified; changed from the shadow to the image, from wood and stone to silver and gold, from a comparatively dead state to a glorious living one, from the ministration of death to the ministration of life; but, if this be not so, then, indeed, we may surely ask to see this reversal of all which the economy of God’s dealings would seem to lead us to, expressly promulgated and proved by the word of Christ or His Apostles; so plainly set down as to need no explanation further; or else, so explained by those who immediately followed them, and had the best means of understanding their sense and design, as to leave us no ground for reasonable doubt, or we must be excused if we cannot accept the mere assertion of so improbable a thing as true, or believe the unchangeable God to be so like a Man that He should thus repent.