Sacrifice

“ The historical sacrifice was a burning-glass which focused the diffused rays of the Sun of righteousness and made them effective in the melting of human hearts. The sufferings of Christ take deepest hold upon us only when we see in them the two contrasted but complementary truths: that holiness must make penalty to follow sin, and that love must share that penalty with the transgressor. ”

“ My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice—the blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous, that they cry to heaven. ”

“ "Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice." ”

“ On whom my grace descends, those who are marked
As vessels to the honour of their God,
May credit this strange sacrifice, and save
Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave.
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:
These, in a gulph of anguish and of flame,
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,
My honour, and the justice of their doom. ”

“ But oh ! grant me thy love and thy grace, through the merits of this adorable sacrifice, that all I do and suffer may be united to thy sacred merits, without which my deeds and all my endeavours would be of no avail. ”

“ O God, thou wilt not despise—Psalm li. 16, 17.
I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.—Psalm cxvi. 17.
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice, and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared me.—Hebrews, x. 4, 5.
See where man’s voluntary sacrifice
Bows His meek head, the God eternal dies!
Fixed to the Cross His bleeding arms are bound,
While copious Mercy streams from every wound. ”

“ Deliver me from blood, O God, Thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall extol Thy justice.
O Lord, Thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare Thy praise.
For if Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings Thou wilt not be delighted.
A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humble heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.
Deal favourably, O Lord, in Thy good will with Sion: that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up. ”

“ The sacrifice that the Christian makes to get his Father's will, his Master's mission, accomplished in the world which so sorely needs it, is like the sacrifice a mother makes for her sick and suffering child,—the dearest and sweetest experience of life. ”

“ This food glows for thee as of old at sacrifice, wherein they made thee chooser of the place, for thou choosest the place of sacrifice. Speak thou and make it known to us: they see within with beams of light. ”

“ He was unequal to the perpetually-renewing sacrifice which lies at the bottom of all great achievements in art, literature, or science; the sacrifice, not of one temptation, not of one advantage, but of constant temptations. ”

“ There comes One with outstretched, wounded hands, and says, 'Cast all thy burden upon Me, and I will free thee from it all.' 'Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows!' Trust in Him, in His great sacrifice, and you will find that His 'innocent blood' has a power that will liberate your conscience from its torpor, its vain excuses, its agony and despair. ”

“ Because it is sacred, and death for it is akin to the sacrifice on Calvary, following far off but constant to that divine example, in every generation our best and bravest have died. Sometimes in our grief we cry out foolish and unthinking words: "the sacrifice is too great." ”

“ They who may think that God doth never need So great, so sad a sacrifice as this, While they take glory in their easier creed, Will feel and own the sacrifice it is. All is prepared--the sisters in the choir-- The mitred abbot on his crimson throne-- The waxen tapers, with their pallid fire Poured o'er the sacred cup and altar-stone-- The upturned eyes, glistening with pious tears-- The censer's fragrant vapour floating o'er ”

“ The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. ”

“ I do not bring the sacrifice of blood, nor yet burnt offerings for sin.
15. The sacrifices I would bring to thee, O God, are purity in life, a contrite heart, a spirit full of faith and love, and these thou wilt receive.
16. And when he had thus read, he gave the book back to the keeper of the books, and then he said,
17. Upon these ends of earth these messages of God have come.
18. Our people have exalted sacrificial rites and have neglected mercy, justice and the rights of men.
19. You Pharisees, you priests, you scribes, your God surfeited with blood; God does not heed your prayers ”

“ For that is the true sacrifice, as “the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit.” This is the salutary offering, these are pure drink offerings, that is the “sacrifice of righteousness,” the “sacrifice of praise,” these are true and fat victims, “holocausts full of marrow,” which are offered by contrite and humble hearts, and which those who practise this control and fervour of spirit, of which we have spoken, with effectual power can sing: “Let my prayer be set forth in Thy sight as the incense: let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.” ”

“ If these sacrifices, so insignificant, so valueless, and to the eye of man so powerless, were effective for their purpose,—shall not that most marvellous wonder in the whole history of the Godhead, the sacrifice of the Son of God, be effective for His? ”

“ Vicarious sacrifice, the result of which was merely imputed, would leave the sinner just where he was before. It is an empty fiction. But the spectacle of suffering freely undertaken for our sakes discovers the treasures of the divine image in man. ”

“ All history, it has been said, shows man living under an irritated God, and seeking to appease him by sacrifice of blood; the essence of all religion, it has been added, lies in that of which sacrifice is the symbol—namely, in the offering up of self, in the rendering up of our will to the will of God. ”

“ He in whose heart the law was, and who alone of all mankind was content to do it, His sacrifice alone can be the sacrifice all-sufficient in the Father's sight as the proper sacrifice of humanity; He who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, He alone can give the Spirit which enables us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. ”

“ All work, for the Christian, is raised to the level, to the dignity of sacrifice. Once and for all we must rid ourselves of that idea which has wrought so much mischief, that sacrifice necessarily connotes pain, loss, death. Essentially our sacrifice is what essentially Christ’s sacrifice was, the joyous dedication of the will to God, the Source and Light of all our being. ”

“ It is by virtue of this sacrifice that the divinely-emancipated soul comes to dwell among men, clothed with a body of flesh, content to dwell among the lowliest and least, and to be esteemed the servant of all mankind. ”

“ When one was drowned or died of cold, a feast was called, and the soft parts of the corpse were cut from the bones and burned to conciliate the personal god, while the women danced and chanted a melancholy strain. Here one sacrifice was to curry favor with the gods, another to soothe their anger, and the third was a rite, not a sacrifice, but done for a religious end, whose merit was specific performance. ”

“ And on the ordinarily accepted view of the origin of sacrifice—which regards it as a gift to propitiate a superior being—this can be easily understood as the avoidance of the worshipper of taking what belongs especially to the god, the essence of the victim’s life, the blood. ”

“ I declare the sacrifice to the Protector, the Peace-maker, who maketh the fire to burn, who preserveth the wealth of the earth; the whole earth and the wisdom thereof, the seas and the waters, the land and all growing things, I invite to the sacrifice. ”

“ Life and love and treasure offered up to please and placate Deity; and the crowning sacrifice of Deity himself in the person of his son to satisfy his own wrath and save a sinning but well-beloved and eternally damned people! It is doubtless this sacrificial atonement of the ancient churches which has passed into the metaphysical concept of self-sacrifice as a laudable and beautiful thing, a holy and righteous thing, a kind of sublimated duty. ”

“ Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. [385] And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice [386] meant to indicate. ”

“ The central idea of this sacrifice, then, as gathered from its name and confirmed by its manner, is that of the yielding of the whole being in self-surrender, and borne up by the flame of intense consecration to God. Very beautiful is the variety of material which was permitted. The poor man's pair of pigeons went up with as sweet an odour as the rich man's young bull. ”

“ Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice should be eternally supercilious.
Weep not for me but for thy children. ”

“ Here we shall find it necessary to consider the origin and meaning of sacrifice in general, as it is self-evident that the notion of sacrifice is previous to the selection of the subjects for it, that of human beings differing only in degree of worth or excellence from those of any other kind. What then could induce mankind universally to imagine, that sacrifices of animals could be agreeable to those beings whom they judged superior to themselves, and the proper objects of religious adoration? ”

“ And every sacrifice His religion calls us to make is designed to secure that enlargement and fulness of spiritual individuality in the exercise of which we shall truly serve God and our fellows. Does God require sacrifice? Yes, unquestionably—the sacrifice which every reasonable being must make in order that the mind, the soul may be strong and free, sacrifice of the lower for the higher, sacrifice of pleasure for truth, of comfort for duty, of the life that is earthly and temporal for the life that is heavenly and eternal. ”

“ If you consider this Lamb of God slain in all these sacrifices, from the beginning of the world, then you present a sweet smelling savour to God,—then you offer the true propitiation for the sins of the world,—then he will delight more in that sacrifice than all other personal obedience. ”

“ Of course, the central idea of sacrifice is surrender to God; and, of course, the place where that surrender is made is the inmost self. The will is the man, and when the will bows, dethroning self and enthroning God, submitting to His appointments, and delighting to execute His commandments, then the sacrifice is begun. ”

“ But let not any one who hath a quarrel with his companion join with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be polluted, for it is that which is spoken of by the Lord. In every place and time offer unto me a pure sacrifice, for I am a great King, saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the Gentiles. ”

“ Well, in like manner we, although sinners, plead for pardon from the King of heaven and earth for our banished friends, and with much surer hopes of success, for the gift we offer is not an earthly crown, but is the body and blood of His own well-beloved Son, Who has bled for the sins of the whole world.” The holy sacrifice is, I again repeat, the most effectual and the most powerful means we have for assisting the suffering souls in purgatory. ”

“ The sacrifice and the sacrificer come between gods and men. On the man's side is faith, munificence, a compelling force of prayer and of intentness of will. The sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will of the sacrificer; it is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven as well as on earth—the gods are always sacrificing. ”

“ According to p. 106this text, it is a living sacrifice that we are called to offer; it is the continued life that we are to surrender. We are not now called to die for Him, as martyrs and many of our missionaries have done, but to live for Him in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us. The sweet savour that is to rise from our sacrifice is to be the sweet savour of Christian holiness, the holy fragrance of Christian character. ”

“ In this ceremonial the central thought is not consecration through sacrifice, as in the burnt-offering; nor expiation of guilt through sacrifice, as in the sin-offering; nor yet satisfaction for trespass committed, as in the guilt-offering. It is sacrifice as procuring for the man for whom it is offered purity and life, which is the main thought. ”

“ "First, I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His Blessed Spirit imprints in me now of the Salvation of the one, and the Resurrection of the other; ”

“ The scriptural idea, then, of a sacrifice is the offering to God of one life in behalf of another that has been forfeited by sin—the life of the innocent beast instead of the life of the guilty offerer. ”