EVIDENCES OF FORGIVENESS. 133 pollution and shame of sin is frequently so termed,) should be covered with the skins of their sacrifices; for in the true sacrifice there is somewhat answerable thereto : the righteousness of Himwhose sacrifice takes away the guilt of our sin, is called our clothing, that hides our pollution and shame. 3. After the giving of the law, the most noble and solemnpart of the worship of God consisted in sacrifices. And this kind of worship continued, with the approba- tion of God, from the entrance of sin until the death of the Messiah, the true sacrifice, which put an end to all that was typical. These things being premised, we may consider what was the mind and aim of God in the institution of this worship. One instance will answer this inquiry, Lev. 16 : 20, 22-32. "He shall bring the live goat, and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness, and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited." Let us see to what end is all this solemnity, and what is declared thereby. Wherefore should God ap- point poor sinful men to come together, to take a goat or a lamb, and to confess over his head all their sins and transgressions, and to devote him to destruction under that confession ? Had men invented this them- selves, it had been a matter of no moment. But it was an institution of God, which he bound his church to observe, onpenalty of hishighest displeasure. Certainly this was a solemn declaration, that there is forgiveness with him. Would that God, who is infinitely good, and so will not, who is infinitely true, holy and faithful, and so cannot deceive, call out men whom he loved to a
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