The prohibition of fat was to secure the rights of Jehovah from invasion. The fat was a gift sanctified to God. The prohibition of the blood was to keep up the idea of atonement, the blood being regarded as the soul of the animal which God had appointed as the medium of atonement for the soul of man. Here is -

I. THE SUPREMACY OF THE DIVINE CLAIMS.

1. The recognition by the conscience in doctrine, in the place religion holds in the life.

2. The social state should be regulated on this principle. Man must not invade God's rights if he would retain God's blessing. Observance of the sabbath. The law of nations rests on the Law of God.

3. The individual believer will take care that he robs God of nothing. His service demands the fat, the choicest faculties, the deepest feelings, the largest gifts.

II. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF MAN. Life for life. The blood sanctified, the blood saved. On the foundation of a perfect reconciliation alone can a true humanity be preserved and developed. Mistake of the ancient Greeks in worshipping humanity unredeemed, leading to animalism, and eventually to the substitution of mere art for morality, therefore the degradation of humanity. The elevation of the soul is the elevation of the whole man; "Im ganzen, guten, schoenen resolut zu leben," is a motto only to be adopted in the Christian sense. "He that sayeth his life shall lose it;" he that offers it up to God shall redeem it. - R.

The gospel is a holy feast. It cannot be shared in by those who continue in their impurities. He that would enjoy it must be careful to depart from iniquity. Only "the meek shall eat and be satisfied"; that is, such as humbly surrender themselves to God's requirements, and are really determined to forsake all known sin. There is a morality in religion, as well as faith and ecstasy. Grace does not make void the law. And faith without works is a dead and useless faith. Though we are redeemed by blood and justified gratuitously by believing in Christ, yet that redemption obligates us just as much, and still more, to a life of virtue and moral uprightness than the law itself. "We are not under law," as those are under it for whom Christ's mediation does not avail; but still we "are under law to Christ," and bound through Him to a practical holiness, the pattern of which He has given in His own person and life. If His blood has purged us, it is that we might "serve the living God." If "we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus," it is "unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." A pure life must needs go along with a good hope. "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." "A good tree cannot produce evil fruit." And for a man to believe himself an accepted guest at the gospel feast while living in wilful, deliberate, and known sin, is a miserable antinomian delusion. The plain gospel truth upon this subject is, that, although we cannot be saved by our works alone, we certainly dare not hope to be saved without them, or without being heartily and effectually made up to do our best. Wherever grace is effective, a well-ordered morality must necessarily follow.

(J. A. Seiss, D. D.)