was disposed of, and the priests who were forbidden to drink any strong beverage when they entered the holy precincts, received no part of it.' (Ibid. p. 230.)

Burnt-offering.-Holocausts belong to the most important forms of offering; for they involve most perfectly the idea of sacrifice, and express the absolute submission to the power of the Deity. They were the foundation and the principal characteristic of the public worship of the Hebrews. Killed at the central Sanctuary, they were designed by the Law to keep alive the feeling of humble dependence on Jehovah, and were used as a chief acknowledgment of His theocratic rule. They marked the habitual tone of the religious life of the nation, for which reason the fire was to be permanently maintained on the brazen altar, both by day and night.' They were presented in the name of the people, throughout the year, every morning and every evening, on every Sabbath and day of the new-moon, on the three great agricultural festivals, when the people assembled to appear before the Lord, on the Day of Memorial celebrated on the first day of the seventh month, and on the Day of Atonement. They were also prescribed for people recovering from various kinds of illness, and for the Nazarite when he had been defiled by contact with a corpse. They were a part of the ceremonials of consecration, when the Tabernacle or Temple was dedicated; when Aaron and his sons were ordained as priests; and when the Levites were appointed as their ministers: on such occasions they were to denote the supremacy of God, to whom all men were subjected and to whom the priests owed their power as delegates and instruments. But apart from the compulsory offering of holocausts ordained by the Law, they had a supreme importance as voluntary sacrifices. They were left in a great measure to the option of the pious, when on any particular occasion of joy, sorrow, or deliverance from

peril and illness, they were anxious to testify their rever ential submission, or their trust in God's power and mercy. In these cases, they frequently partook of the character of expiatory offerings, conveying a general expression of human weakness and sinfulness. Thus when the whole congregation unwittingly sinned or transgressed a Divine commandment, they were ordered to offer for their expiation both a bullock as a burnt-offering and a goat as a sin-offering. Indeed, holocausts were considered as an atonement when offered in a proper spirit.—The holocaust has, therefore, not unjustly been called the best and highest, the choicest and most exquisite kind of sacrifice; it was always to consist of an unblemished male animal, whether bullock, ram, or goat, because the male animals were considered the superior species; and although the Law permitted or prescribed also holocausts of pigeons and turtledoves of either sex, so as to render them accessible to poorer persons, the larger quadrupeds were selected in preference, and often slain in vast numbers. Thus we are told that Solomon, when his succession was secured, offered 1,000 animals; when he was anointed, 1,000 bullocks, 1,000 rams, and 1,000 lambs; and when he consecrated the Temple, 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.

But we hear of burnt-offerings long before the days of king Solomon. They appear indeed in the very earliest records of the Bible. Abel, the shepherd, sacrificed the firstlings of his flocks; Noah presented a burnt-offering after leaving the Ark; and Abraham offered the ram he had seen in a thicket when his son Isaac was restored to him. Thus from the first patriarchs of old, the Hebrews testified, by means of holocausts, their self-denial, submission, and religious awe.

Thank-offerings were intended as an acknowledgment of some temporal boon, and were naturally associated with

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feelings of a joyful and domestic character. God, the Master and Judge, was merged in God, the Benefactor and Rescuer. The victims, whether of the herd or the flock, were not required to be males; female animals were equally acceptable. The bloodless oblation added to the thank-offering, consisted, in some cases, not only of unleavened cakes and wafers, but also of leavened bread, to remind the Israelite of his ordinary life and subsistence. Not the whole animal was burnt, but some special parts only were delivered up to the Deity as an offering made by fire, a sweet odour to the Lord.' Two portions, the breast and the right shoulder, were reserved for the priests, who ate them with their wives, their children, and their servants, within the precincts of the Sanctuary, while the rest was consumed in convivial feasts, in any part of the sacred town, by the offerer himself, with his family and household, with the Levite, the poor, and the stranger, his invited guests. All the fat, together with the members and organs to which it is chiefly attached, as the kidneys and the fat tail of certain kinds of sheep, was burnt to God on the altar; and the cereal oblation which belonged to the thank-offering, was richly prepared with oil; for not only were the cakes and wafers mingled and anointed, but the flour itself of which they were made, was sometimes saturated with it: therefore fatness, typical of abundance and prosperity, of joy and gratitude, appears to have been the leading characteristic of thankofferings.

Expiatory Sacrifices.-These offerings grew, as has been observed, from a feeling of human weakness-a feeling which the Scriptures express in a thousand varied forms; a feeling which no trials, no miracles, no success, and no failure could change; which made itself heard in all ages, from the wanderings in the desert to the days of the exile.

But, as a rule, the expiatory offerings were only permitted in cases of inadvertent or unintentional transgression; they were not accepted for deeds of wanton impiety or reckless violence. The knowledge that "the cogitation of man's heart is evil from his youth," was to afford no pretext for leniency to premeditated malice, but was, on the contrary, to stimulate to vigilance and self-control. Divine forgiveness should be granted to the imperfection, but not to the perversion of human nature. The precepts of the Law, being the emanation of Divine wisdom, bore the stamp of holiness; they could not, without offence to their all-wise Author, be violated under any circumstances, or in any manner whatever; they required, therefore, atonement, even if transgressed unconsciously: their absolute sanctity marked every trespass as a deplorable guilt to be expiated by a sacrifice of self-humiliation.' (Ibid. p. 253.)

Hence the sin-offering, if an animal, was neither accompanied by a cereal offering nor by a libation of wine; if a cereal offering, it was presented without oil and frankincense in the former case, it was to lose the character of social and domestic enjoyment, since it was no food of the Lord' and in the latter, it was not to recall the ideas of cheerfulness and festivity, of abundance and ornament; wherefore it was not designated a sweet odour to the Lord.' The flesh of those sin-offerings the blood of which did not come into the Holy, was indeed eaten by the male Aaronites, but the repast was serious and severe, devoid of genial conviviality, and forming a part of the ritual of expiation. Therefore the sin-offerings were naturally placed in the class of most holy' sacrifices. If any of their blood had fallen upon a garment, the latter was to be washed in the holy place, in the Court of the Sanctuary. Their flesh could be touched by holy persons or priests only; it was burnt entirely whenever

the blood had been sprinkled on the vail and put upon the horns of the altar of incense in the Holy; it was eaten, with the exception of the fat and the fat parts, by the male Aaronites in the holy place, whenever the blood had been put upon the horns, and poured out at the bottom of the altar of burnt-offering in the Court.

The Law was so anxious to secure the expiation of sin under all circumstances, that it permitted poor persons to present as a sin-offering a cereal oblation, simply consisting of the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour, of which the priest took off a handful as a memorial, and burnt it on the brazen altar, while the rest belonged to the priest, and then the poor man's sin was atoned for and he was forgiven.'

The Pentateuch mentions two kinds of expiatory sacrifices-the Sin-offerings and the Trespass-offerings. The former were presented, in the name of the whole people, on all the great festivals and days of solemn convocation, on Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles, on the Day of Memorial or the first day of the seventh month, and on the Day of Atonement. They also accompanied the inauguration of any great public functionary, as the consecration of Aaron and his sons, and seven days later, the commencement of their new duties; they preceded the initiation of the Levites and the dedication of a new Sanctuary. Moreover, they were connected with deliverance from serious perils and diseases, every illness being considered the consequence of some transgression, or the result of man's general imperfection.

The animals killed for trespass-offerings were males in all cases; most commonly a ram seems to have been chosen, probably because sheep, and especially rams, were the primitive medium of currency, chiefly for paying fines, and were, therefore, peculiarly appropriate, since trespass-offerings were originally presented as penalties for fraud.