In the Book of Leviticus (ch. iv.) an elaborate ritual is prescribed in expiation of sins committed through ignorance. A calf is to be offered and the ancients of the people are to lay their hands upon its head, and the priest is to carry some of its blood into the tabernacle of the testimony, to sprinkle it seven time before the veil and to pour forth the blood at the foot of the altar. All this is in expiation for sins committed by those who at the time knew not that they were sins! What a proof of God's hatred of sin, even though he who did the act was not, at the time, aware that it was a sin!

Yet such ignorance is rarely altogether without some fault. Sometimes there is at least some faint suspicion that the deed done is displeasing to God, sometimes the ignorance is itself the result of sin blinding the soul and dulling the perceptions, sometimes it is the consequence of obstinacy and self-will. I may have committed many sins through ignorance; were they altogether without fault?

Those sins had to be atoned for with blood, and that blood was a type of the Blood of Jesus. He, therefore, shed His Precious Blood for my sins of ignorance, as well as sins of malice, and whatever guilt was in them added to His sacred sufferings. I must then compassionate Him for all that He suffered for the countless sins that men have committed against God through ignorance, and especially for my own countless sins.