TOHU-VA-VOHU 15 place. I think it is Kant who somewhere remarks that the reductio ad absurdum is about the most un- satisfactory mode of argumentation: that 1s, as I understand it, a negative does not prove a positive. I may be a fool for saying that it is Monday, but that does not yet prove that it is Tuesday. It is a common mistake to suppose that the mercy- seat over the ark was sprinkled with blood. On the Day of Atonement the blood was sprinkled towards the mercy-seat and the ark (that is, upwards and down- wards), but never on the mercy-seat. The mercy- seat itself was an emblem of Christ; and the blood- sprinkling towards the ark, of the restoration alike of the covenant (sprinkling down towards the ark) and of covenant-mercy (sprinkling up towards the mercy-seat); or, of the renewal of the covenant and of covenant-mercy by the same means by which they had at first been established, viz. sacrificial blood. Christianity is a constant negation. Its teaching is a negation of what naturally occurs to the mind ; its practice a negation of what naturally presents itself to the imagination and the heart.