The holiness of Israel centres in the sanctuary, and round the sanctuary stand the priests, who alone can approach the most holy things without profanation, and who are the guardians of Israel's sanctity, partly by protecting the one meeting-place of God and man from profane contact, and partly as the mediators of the continual atoning rites by which breaches of holiness are expiated.
That the Jews in the time of Christ believed in a suffering and atoning Messiah is, to say the least, unproved and highly improbable.
Towards man, the death of Christ has atoning efficacy because it delivers from sin, bestows the divine gift of life and conveys the assurance of pardon.
In 1847 he was made tutor of his college, and in 1853 he delivered the Bampton lectures, his subject being "The Atoning Work of Christ viewed in Relation to some Ancient Theories."
During the course of the 19th century in Scottish Presbyterianism the affirmation of Christ's atoning death for all men, the denial of eternal punishment, the modification of the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures by acceptance of the results of the Higher Criticism, were all censured as perilous errors.
