In the circumstances of the Levites we have a strong proof that the institutions of Moses date from the conquest of Canaan. At no subsequent period could the Levites have been so separated from the rest. And at no subsequent time could the Pentateuch have been written. Not under the Kings, or it would have put more favorably the merits of a form of government which had rescued Israel from the depths of internal weakness and decay, and given it strength and empire. Not by Samuel, or it would have been more suited to his times. Not under the anarchy of the Judges. For the ideal state contemplated in the Pentateuch, of a people strong in faith, pure in morality, and living under the direct protection of Jehovah, was the very reverse of the reality. R. P. S.

The Levites Taken Instead of First-born.

The “consecration” of the priests is recorded in Lev. 8 (Section 127). The distinction between that ceremony and the less solemn “purification” of the Levites is marked. The Levites are simply sprinkled with water, have to wash their clothes, and to shave their flesh ; and then are offered to God on behalf of the people. There is no “washing” with water, anointing, or sprinkling with the blood of a consecrating sacrifice. Espin.—Although the Levites were not allowed to go into the sanctuary, but were only the priests’ ministers, yet as they carried the tabernacle and the sacred vessels and prepared the sacrifices, God would have them set apart to himself by a solemn rite. Since they were only purified by water and sacrifice and without the addition of anointing, the difference in the external rite reminded them that their degree of honor was not the same as the priests. 20. Thus did Moses. The Levites are now inaugurated for the performance of their duties. Here it deserves note that the sons of Moses and their descendants were placed in this lower rank, and excluded from all expectation of the priesthood. It was then no ordinary act of obedience in Moses to execute what God had appointed respecting the Levites. Calv.

The Levites’ Maintenance from Tithes.

They were not priests. Their exclusion from the mediatorial office was very emphatic. They were particularly charged with caring for the support and maintenance both of the ritual and of the legal administration. Grey.—In the wilderness the office of the Levites was to carry the tabernacle and its utensils and furniture from place to place, after they had been packed up by the priests. But when they entered the land of Canaan, the range of their service was considerably altered. While part attended at the tabernacle, the rest were distributed through the country in the several cities which were allotted to them. In the time of David a third and very important alteration was effected. While the priests were divided into twenty-four courses, that they might attend the temple in rotation weekly, and only officiate about two weeks in the year, the Levites were also divided into twenty-four courses of porters and servitors, and twenty-four of musicians. Besides acting as porters and servants during the day, they were also guards of the Temple. Kit.

De. 18 : 6-8. Only a portion of the Levites were engaged in the service of the sanctuary; the rest lived in their towns throughout the country. It might happen, however, that a Levite, moved by pious feeling, would come to the place of the sanctuary to worship there; and it is prescribed that such a one should fare as his brethren the Levites engaged in the service of the sanctuary fared; he should minister along with them, and share with them in the gifts of the worshippers; and this in addition to any private means he might have from the sale of his patrimony. Where he sojourned. The Levite, though not homeless, was regarded as only a sojourner in the land, inasmuch as the tribe had no inheritance there. W. L. A.

The charge to the priests was that “ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.” It is plain, however, that even if the priests had been faithful to this part of their calling, they were quite inadequate, from their limited number, to be personally in any proper sense the teachers of all Israel. On this account were the Levites associated with the priesthood, and planted at proper distances in certain cities throughout the tribes of Israel. Separated as the Levites were from secular employments, without lands to cultivate, and “wholly given to the service of the Lord,” it was obviously but a small number of them who could be regularly occupied with ministrations about the sanctuary; and as both their abundant leisure and their dispersion through the land gave them many opportunities of acting as the spiritual instructors of the people, it must have been chiefly through their instrumentality that the priests were to keep the people acquainted with the statutes and judgments of the Lord. This is clearly implied in those passages which speak most distinctly of the obligation laid upon the priesthood to diffuse the knowledge of the Law, and which refer equally to the priests and the Levites. Thus their common calling to “teach Jacob God’s judgments, and Israel his Law,” is announced in the blessing of Moses upon the whole tribe (De. 33 : 8-11). P. F.

The tribe of Levi comprehended the learned of all names: the sages and professors of law and jurisprudence; of medicine and physiology; of the physical and mathematical sciences; in short, of all the so-called liberal arts and sciences, the possession and application of which constitute the civilization of a country. It was to be the chief instrument of a continuing and progressive mental, moral, and religious culture of the people. Its business was to produce, preserve, and perfect all the necessary sources and conditions of national civilization; to form and train up the people of the country to be obedient, free, useful citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the State, and prepared to die for its defence. E. C. W.

The first and certainly the most successful legislator of antiquity, who assumed the welfare of the whole community as the end of his constitution, Moses annihilated at once the artificial and tyrannical distinction of castes, and established political equality as the fundamental principle of the State. The whole nation was one great caste, that of husbandmen cultivating their own property. Even the single privileged class, that of Levi, stood on a totally different footing from the sacerdotal aristocracy of Egypt. With a wise originality Moses retained all that was really useful, and indeed, under the circumstances of the age and people, absolutely necessary in a priestly order, and rejected all that might endanger the liberties of the people, through their exorbitant wealth or power. In a constitution founded on a religious basis, sacred functionaries set apart from the mass of the people were indispensable; where the State was governed by a written law, minute and multifarious in its provisions, conservators and occasional expositors of the Law were equally requisite; a people at first engaged in ferocious warfare, afterward engrossed by agricultural labors, without an exempt order which should devote itself to higher and more intellectual studies, would soon have degenerated into ignorance and barbarism. Besides the officiating priesthood, the Levitical class furnished the greater number of the judges, the scribes, the genealogists and registers of the tribes, the keepers of the records, the geometricians, the superintendents of weights and measures; and

Michaelis thinks, from the judgment in cases of leprosy being assigned to them, the physicians. Their influence depended rather on their civil than their ecclesiastical functions. They were bound to read the whole Law once in seven years before the people; but in other respects their priestly duties consisted only in attendance in the tabernacle or the temple in their appointed courses. Milman.

It has been repeatedly charged against the institutes of Moses that they were purposely contrived to draw all the wealth and power of the nation into the hands of the Levites; and that the chief danger to the popular liberty arose out of the constitution of that tribe. Never was so malignant an accusation raised upon so slender a foundation. On the contrary, the organization and disposition of the tribe of Levi was contrived with consummate wisdom, both to impart a vital action to the whole system, and, at the same time, to act as a balance wheel to regulate its motions. It is undeniable that the Levites were the scholars of the nation; and if to this advantage they had united an independent government such as the other tribes enjoyed, and an equal possession of territory, there would have been a continual and dangerous tendency to the accumulation of property and power in their hands. But the Levites were deprived of a united and independent government, and rendered incapable of holding landed property. They were distributed into cities, allotted to them throughout the territories of all the other twelve tribes. By this arrangement both the estates and the persons of the Levites were given into the hands of the remaining tribes, as so many hostages for their good behavior. They were so separated from each other that it was impossible for them to form any dangerous combinations among themselves, or to afford mutual assistance in the execution of any ambitious projects. Hence, whatever influence the constitution conferred upon the Levites to do good, the same constitution took away from them all power to endanger the peace or the liberties of their country. Never did any other constitution preserve the people from the dangers of ill-balanced power, or guard the public liberty with so many and so admirably contrived defences against the projects of factious and restless ambition. Most justly does Lowman take notice how much these provisions of the Hebrew government to prevent the occasions of faction excel all the constitutions of the famed Spartan lawgiver for the same purpose, so much celebrated by Grecian authors. The State had but one master under the constitution of Moses, and that was the Law. To this the sons of Levi were as much bound to submit as the other citizens. “Lex major sacerdotio”—the Law is greater than the priesthood—was the principle of the Hebrew polity. How vast, how radical, heroin, the difference between the priesthood of Egypt and the priesthood of Israel! The former made the laws themselves, changed them at will, and concealed the books in which they were written from all profane eyes. The latter were simply charged with preserving the laws intact, with keeping them constantly exposed to the eyes of the people, and with teaching them all to all exactly. Moses took from the priesthood the power derived from property, from military command, and from illusions. He left them nothing but the power of the Law; a Law which they did not make, which they could not change, and which they were themselves bound to obey. Here, surely, is no foothold for despotism, no germ or aliment of ecclesiastical oppression. E. C. W.

The sacerdotal institute had altogether a benign aspect toward the people. The priests, themselves secured of competency and curtailed of no natural enjoyment, had no motive either for grudging the happiness of others or for trenching upon the common liberties; on the contrary, their own wealth and ease expressed and flowed from the prosperity of the State. The nation did not exist for the priests; nor were the priests the obsequious dependents either of the monarch or the people. The character of the religion intrusted to the sacerdotal order afforded fewer means of sustaining ghostly power than perhaps any other system, ancient or modern. No scheme of belief and worship has drawn so little upon the undefined terrors of the invisible world; none has said less of futurity—an extra-mundane futurity. The views it opens, the motives it urges, the hopes it awakens, the fears it instils, are all terrestrial and temporary. The sacerdotal class possessed no immeasurable superiority of knowledge over the laity: what the priests knew, the people might know, and ought to know from the priest. The one party did not grasp the immortal destinies of the other. The priest might adjudge to death, but not to perdition; and to death only in cases well defined. Further, in the theology of Moses everything was marked out, circumscribed, and fixed; and therefore it was an unfit material of spiritual despotism. Never has there been a religion, ancient or modern, under which a man might on easier terms live piously and happily. No religion has afforded so few excitements to vague despondency. We doubt if ever an instance of religious despair occurred under primitive Judaism. It was only when he entertained the horror-fraught demonology of the Canaanitish tribes that the son of Abraham could become the victim of moody terrors. Judaism then was not the system on which to build spiritual despotism.

Nor did the national temperament favor any such usurpations. In reading the historical books of the Old Testament commencing with the Book of Judges, one gathers from the whole an impression of a people high spirited and impassioned yet sedate and firm; dignified in manners, vigorous in action, steady in purpose, rich in axiomatic good sense, and terse in expression; especially warm and true in domestic sentiment, and keen in every feeling of honor. They took to themselves a monarchical government, but their usages were democratic; they bore the burden of kingly rule till it reached a galling weight, and then the cry was always, “To your tents, O Israe.” The ante-Babylonish Jews were not the plastic stuff an ambitious hierarch would have chosen to work upon.

Again, the priests and Levites were not merely ministers of religion and teachers of the people. Upon them also, or upon them chiefly, devolved the administration and interpretation of civil and criminal law and the business of courts of justice. The priests, too, were the only depositaries of general learning, and the copiers of books. If the exercise of so many functions might appear to place vast power in the hands of a single order, it will be found in the actual working of the social machine that this very multiplicity of labors, and this intimate blending of the priests with the people in all the occasions of common life, operates much more to break down and moderate than to build up and aggravate ghostly tyranny. The common people have never been so thoroughly enslaved by any priests as by those who affected an utter ignorance of all mundane affairs, and who spent or professed to spend their days and nights in seraphic abstraction.

Another circumstance is of so much importance as to demand explicit mention: we mean that counterpoise of Church influence which sprung from the operation of the prophetic function. It is the exclusive possession and the irresponsible control of all kinds of spiritual power which enables a hierarchy to digest its plans of encroachment, and to achieve gradual usurpations. No such exclusive domination was permitted to the Jewish clergy. An unfailing succession of inspired men, sometimes members of the Aaronic house but more often not, stood up as the immediate ministers of Jehovah dealing rebuke, with high intrepidity, on all sides; and assailing the vices or the remissness as well of the priests as of the princes or the sovereign. The high-priest could never call himself the VICAR OF GOD, or the ultimate authority from whose decisions there could be no appeal. Whatever scheme of aggrandizement for his order an ambitious hierarch might meditate, he could never for a moment secure himself against the thundering reproof of some extra-sacerdotal voice, the pealing of which must have shattered his devices. This counterpoise, or rather corrective, forming as it did a permanent provision in the Jewish Church polity, deserves to be especially noticed in its relation to the hereditary tenure of the pontifical dignity. Into what condition, short of an intolerable spiritual despotism, could any community fall, among whom there existed an hereditary pontificate not checked in some very efficacious manner? Or how much power would be left to the civil magistrate who should sway his sceptre under the shade of an inherited prelacy? A pope, the lineal descendant of popes and the progenitor of popes, would be a despot such as the world has never seen. In this sense it was well for Europe that the Romish clergy condemned themselves to celibacy. It is worthy of remark that soon after the prophetic function failed among the Jews, the pontifical dignity ceased to descend from father to son; or even to be held for life.

Lastly, we have to take account of that balance of power, and that reciprocal corrective influence, which subsisted between the priesthood and the monarchy in the Jewish State; each exerting over the other a control beneficial to each and to the community. Beside their proper spiritual authority with the people, which naturally tempered the civil and military power, the priests and Levites had an interest in the institutions of the country of a definite sort, which compelled them to resist innovations and encroachments, whether attempted by the people or the monarch. A privileged order accustomed to meet in convocation becomes inevitably, whatever its particular functions may be, the guardian of the State and the vigilant observer of all changes. Several actual instances are recorded, and others no doubt occurred, in which the constancy and patriotism of the priests saved the State and barred the way of a tyrant. On the other hand, the sacerdotal order itself stood in awe of the monarch; and on many remarkable occasions received from his hand a vigorous treatment, necessary and highly beneficial. The lapse of time never fails to break down the purity and integrity of a sacerdotal body. Secular motives insensibly supplant high principles; the earthly prevails over the heavenly element. But a hierarchy never reforms itself:—no corporation regenerates by spontaneous energy; it must be brought back to duty and virtue by a hand from without. No provision of the Mosaic Law had authorized this sort of reform; yet it had become the salutary usage of the State for strong-minded and pious sovereigns to do for the Church what the Church will not do for herself, and what the people either do not care to attempt or have no means of effecting. A main characteristic of Jewish history is CHURCH REFORM, again and again brought about by the civil power. Except for the piety and zeal of several kingly reformers, the Mosaic institutions, and with them the knowledge and worship of Jehovah, would in an early age have utterly disappeared. Isaac Taylor.

THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM: NECESSITY AND SPIRITUAL IMPORT OF THE SYSTEM; DEFINITION OF “SACRIFICE;” CLASSES OF SACRIFICES; ORDER AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ACTS IN THE BLOOD SACRIFICES. THE ALTAR AN ORACLE OF GRACE, AND HENCE THE PLACE OF WORSHIP. RELATION OF THE LEVITICAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SACRIFICES; TO THE LORD’S SUPPER.

FROM sacred persons we come next to sacred rites, of which animal sacrifice is the first and most essential element of worship. B.—Animal sacrifice was the peculiar main point and essence of all worship both in the Old Covenant religion and in all heathen services. We find that sacrifice was brought out of paradise in the family of Adam. But as Israel became a people only under Moses, the whole service of sacrifice did not receive before his time its full and complete form. Gerl.

There is not a single word, recorded or revealed, about the origin and institution of sacrifices. We see a most solemn and important rite of Divine worship in established use, without having any account of its introduction. The idea of taking away the life of innocent creatures, in typical atonement for man’s sin, could never have originated in the mind of man. And it never could have been accepted of God, or continued in connection with the worship offered to him, if it had been a mere human invention. This argument is conclusive. R. Newton.—The institution of animal sacrifice had continued until the giving of the Law, no other offering but that of an animal being recorded in Scripture down to this period, except in the case of Cain, when the offering was rejected. But when we come to the promulgation of the Law, we find the connection between animal sacrifice and atonement or reconciliation with God clearly and distinctly announced. It is here declared that sacrifices for sin should, on conforming to certain prescribed modes of offering, be accepted as the means of deliverance from the penal consequences of transgression. Magee.

Necessity and Spiritual Import of the Sacrificial System.

If there had been no fall, a ritual of worship would have been unnecessary. The knowledge of God would have remained unclouded. The way of approaching him would have been obvious and familiar. Every word would have been a note in the psalm of life, every deed a step in the path of rectitude, and every thought a link in the never-ending chain of truth; and all together would have been the unbidden presentation of a reverent homage to the Father of all. But with a fallen being all is changed. Guilt is upon his conscience, and doom is before his eyes. Of the mercy of God, or of the mode in which it may be exercised, he can form no anticipation. Only a positive revelation from God can afford any ground of certainty or comfort on these points. The main fact, that there is mercy with God for the returning penitent, had been communicated to the family of man immediately after the fall. And some hints had been given of the mode in which it could alone be conveyed. But now that a peculiar people has been selected to receive the Divine favor, and keep up the knowledge of God and his mercy on the earth, it is full time that a more complete and definite account should be given of the way in which the returning penitent may draw near to God with acceptance. M

The whole sacrificial system of the Hebrew Law was intended for a people already brought into covenant with the living God, and every sacrifice was assumed to have a vital connection with the spirit of the worshipper. A Hebrew sacrifice, like a Christian sacrament, possessed the inward and spiritual grace, as well as the outward and visible sign. The mere empty form was as alien to the mind of an enlightened Israelite who brought his gift to the altar, as it is to the well-instructed Christian who comes to the table of the Lord. This fact will be found not obscurely intimated in the words of the Law itself. But it is most clearly expressed by the sacred writers in later ages, when it became necessary that they should remind their backsliding countrymen of the truth. Clark.—There cannot be produced out of the whole Old Testament a single passage in which the notion that sacrifices of themselves, apart from the state of mind in the offerers, are well-pleasing to God, is referred to except for the purpose of vigorously opposing it. When, for example, in Lev. 26 : 31, it is said in reference to the ungodly, “I will not smell the savor of your sweet odors ;” and when, in Gen. 4 : 4, 5, we find that, along with an outward similarity, the offerings of Cain and Abel met with such a different reception from God, and that this difference is represented as being based on something personal to the individuals, it is all but expressly asserted that sacrifices were regarded only as expressive of the inner sentiment. That the Law, with all its appearance of outwardness, still possessed throughout an internal, spiritual character, is manifest from the fact that the two internal commands of love to God and one’s neighbor are in the Law itself represented as those in which all the rest lie enclosed, the fulfilment of which carried along with it the fulfilment of all individual precepts, and without which no obedience was practicable. If everything in the Law is made to turn upon love, it is self-evident that a dead bodily service could not be what was properly required. Hengs.—To what extent the spiritual import of these rites was actually understood by the Jews themselves, it may not be easy to determine ; but that something vastly more important than the simple act of slaying and offering the animal victim was required by the spirit of the Law, is evident from the fact that the obedience of the chosen people is frequently represented as faulty, notwithstanding their scrupulous observance of the outward rite. Thus Isa. 1 : 11, 12, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the

Lord : I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.” Bush.

Definition of Sacrifice.

According to the usage of the Old Testament, the most general term for sacrifice is korban. This word was employed in the Law to describe the genus of which sacrifices of all kinds were species. It is expressly predicated of the burnt-offering, the peace-offering, the thank-offering and the votive-offering, the sin-offering, the trespass-offering, the passover, the sacrifice of the Nazarite on the expiry or breach of his vow, the whole range of national sacrifices, the first-fruits, and even offerings made to Jehovah of the spoils of battle. Korban is manifestly the generic Hebrew term, equivalent to our English term sacrifice. This Hebrew word is expressly used and translated by an unequivocal Greek word in Mark 7 : 11. “Korban—that is to say, a gift.” Korban, the equivalent of the English word sacrifice, in general, is a gift to God. A sacrifice in the Levitical sense was a gift, or offering, or presentation made to Jehovah.

Classes (or Kinds) of Sacrifices.

Defining sacrifice, in accordance with both usage and etymology, as a gift, a presentation to God, a surrender to God of what has cost the offerer something, and remembering that in the large majority of cases at least these sacrifices were associated with the holy places—the several ordinances of the Mosaic Law in reference thereto will arrange themselves under the following classes. There were the national sacrifices, or those presented in the name of the entire Jewish people by their representatives. There were the official sacrifices, or the specific acts of worship by presentation prescribed for the ecclesiastical and political orders. And there were the personal sacrifices, which were made by individuals.

1. The NATIONAL OFFERINGS consisted of the serial offerings, or those daily, weekly, and monthly sacrifices ordered to be presented in the nation’s behalf ; the festal offerings, or the ceremonial appropriate to the several exceptional days of sacrificial observance ; and some extraordinary offerings instituted in response to a widely felt need for worship or humiliation at extraordinary seasons ; as at the erection of the tabernacle, the consecration of Aaron, etc. The serial offerings : Every day, morning and evening, the priests were bidden to present, in the name of the congregation, the burnt-offering of a lamb of a year old, with its appropriate mealoffering and drink offering. The presentation was made according to the customary ritual for burnt-offering. From the regularity of its succession this daily burnt-offering is also called the “continual” or “continuous” burnt-offering. Every Sabbath the daily burnt-offering was doubled night and morning. On the first day of every month, or on the new moon as it was called, two young bullocks, a ram, and seven lambs, with the prescribed meal and drink offerings were ordered to be offered, in addition to the continuous burnt-offering; a kid was also to be killed for a sin-offering. The festal offerings: Following the order of the Levitical calendar, the several festal or solemn seasons were Passover, the Paschal Feast, and Pentecost, and the Day of Atonement, followed by the Feast of Tabernacles.

2. THE OFFICIAL SACRIFICES. There were sacrificial rites administered by the priests and rulers purely as officials.

3. THE PERSONAL OFFERINGS. These are divisible into the blood and the bloodless sacrifices, the former including the burnt-offerings, the peace-offerings, the sin and the trespass-offerings; and the latter including the meal-offerings, the libations, the offerings of oil and incense, and a variety of oblations, such as the redemption moneys for every Israelite, the tithes, the firstlings, and the vows. The bloodless offerings always consisted of the products of labor, and were presentations simply; they were gifts made to Jehovah upon approach to him in worship; they were this and nothing more. The blood sacrifices were this and something more; they were both presentations and instruments of atonement; in addition to being the gifts of the offerer to Jehovah, they possessed the all-important blood which testified to the substituted life. Cave.

The significant rites of the Mosaic Law may be reduced to two great classes—offerings and purifications. Of these the former is more important, the other being really supplementary to it and dependent on it. The offerings themselves may again be divided into animal and vegetable, or, as some prefer to call them, bloody and bloodless. The latter had no substantive or separate value, but were primarily used as appendages to the other. The elements or materials of the sacrifices were essentially the same in every case. It was their different combinations and the different occasions upon which they were presented that afforded the ground of their classification, under the names of the burnt-offering, the sin-offering, the trespass-offering, and the peace- (or requital) offering, with its subdivisions, thanksgiving, vow, and free-will offerings. In all these the material of the animal sacrifice consisted of the larger and smaller cattle, the latter including sheep and goats, with a substitution, in the case of poverty, of doves or pigeons for the more costly victims otherwise required. The materials of the vegetable-offering were the three great staples of subsistence—corn, wine, and oil. To both may be added, as subsidiary substances, frankincense and salt, which last was an indispensable addition to all animal oblations, while honey and leaven were expressly excluded. J. A. A.

Order and Significance of the Acts Connected with the Blood Sacrifices.

These acts consisted in the presentation, the imposition of the hand, the act of slaughter, the sprinkling of the blood, and sometimes the heaving and waving of the offering. No prescribed act was meaningless, and each had its own message to convey. The first stage in every act of sacrifice was the deliberate presentation of the offerer and his gift at the appropriate altar. The offerer presented himself and his offering solemnly before the priest. The presentation was itself a thoughtful religious act. To come to the altar was to come to the Lord; to come with a willing and obedient mind, fulfilling the conditions of the Law, was to ask for a share in the promises thereto attached.

Next came the imposition of the hand. The victim having been solemnly presented, the offerer forcibly laid his hand upon its head; his hand, whoever he might be, priest or layman, king or elder. This act was a dedication of the victim to the purpose for which it was brought. Cave.—It is impossible to separate in any case the imposition of hands on the head of the victim from the expression and transference of guilt. The specific service the blood had to render in all the sacrifices was to be an atonement for the sinner’s guilt upon the altar; and the imposition of the offerer’s hands was the expression of his desire, through the offering, to find deliverance from his burden of iniquity, and acceptance with God. We learn from Jewish sources that the imposition of hands was always accompanied with confession of sin. And in the only explanation which Moses himself has given of the meaning of the rite—as connected with the services of the day of atonement—it is represented as being accompanied not only with confession of sin, but also with the transference of its guilt to the body of the victim: ‘Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat. P. F.

Then followed the act of slaughter. This was always performed by the offerer (possibly assisted or guided by the Levites), and hence its significance. In offering an animal, he was bringing before God an atonement as well as a presentation. But atonement was by the blood, not by the living animal. In the act of slaughter by his own hand, the offerer obediently brought before God the blood of atonement. There the duties of the offerer ended. A priest then collected the blood of the animal in a basin, and applied it to the altar wholly or partially; afterward he flayed, dismembered, cleansed, and burned the carcase wholly or partially.

The sprinkling of the blood, varied with the sacrifice, was always a bringing of blood in contact with the altar, and thus before Jehovah. The significance of this proceeding is given in the passage so often quoted (Lev. 17 : 11), concerning which interpreters are agreed that it defines the use of blood in the Law. “For the soul of the flesh is in the blood : and I (the Lord) have given it you upon the altar to be an atonement for your souls.” In other words, the blood of the animal legally presented has been appointed by God as a means of atonement for human life because that blood is really the life of the animal sacrificed, or, in other words, the blood or life of an animal has been graciously accepted by Jehovah as a valid substitute for the life or blood of the sinful offerer. As Kahnis puts it, blood is life in compendio. By the blood manipulation one part of the twofold aim of animal sacrifice was completed, and a legal atonement was made for human sin. Cave.—The cardinal act of sacrifice was not that of slaying the animal, nor even that of burning on the altar, but the offering of the blood, the various modes of doing which were not necessarily significant, but all alike expressive of the forfeiture of life. The doctrine taught therefore by this class of sacrificial rites was the necessity of expiation by the offering of life, and more specifically still, by the offering of life for life. The solemn rite of imposition could mean nothing, if it did not mean the transfer of the offerer’s guilt to a substituted victim. The sacrifices, then, continually kept before the minds of the people the necessity of expiation, and the only way in which it could be wrought by the sacrifice of life for life. But they did not necessarily, and by a natural association, suggest to all who saw them who or what was the true victim thus prefigured. This was a New Testament doctrine, and so far as it was intimated at all, it was by special types the existence and meaning of which must be determined by New Testament authority. J. A. A.

The significance of the combustion upon the altar. In the blood manipulation the atoning aspect of animal sacrifices was complete; the two remaining rites were connected with the offerings as gifts to God. There was in every case a burning of the carcase, wholly or in part; this was the first of the remaining acts. The symbolism of this combustion is manifest. It was a sending of the gift to God. After arranging the divided or the selected portions of the carcase in the heaven-born fire, they were burned—that is to say, they were etherealized, and they rose to heaven as “a sweet savor.” The rite bore a similar interpretation when it had reference to any of the bloodless offerings. To burn was to effectually present.

Waving and heaving. Sometimes a peculiar swinging of the offering was appended to the other acts of presentation, called “heaving” and “waving.” This detail was enjoined in the consecration of the Levites and priests, in the vow of the Nazarite, in the offering of jealousy, in the cleansing of the leprous, in the thank-offerings and the tithes. This significant act of the officiator would seem to be a more emphatic presentation. The swinging forward was manifestly a symbolic presentation to God, a declaration by outward sign that the object waved belonged to him; the movement backward was as manifestly a declaration that the Almighty returned as a gift to his priest what actually belonged to himself. The heaving was very similar, taking place upward and downward, as if toward the Divine dwelling-place in the heavens.

The last feature of the general ritual is that of the concluding meal, by the priesthood in the more common cases, or by the offerers, as in the peace-offerings. The restoration of part of the gift to priest or people was the Divine provision in mercy for human rejoicing in the act of worship. This feast was a call to fellowship and friendship. It is Jehovah taking the sinner to His house, preparing him a feast and eating with him at his table. As has well been said: “As the sprinkling blood betokened justification, and combustion sanctification, so the sacrificial meal told its tale of the unio mystica.” Cave.—This feasting upon the flesh of the slain animal is in germ what the Gospel gives us in full development—viz., that the same Lamb of Calvary who “washed us from our sins in his own blood” “gave us his flesh to eat” as “the bread of life.” The memorial supper carries in it the same double symbol—blood and bread—the blood looking toward pardon; the bread toward sustenance for the spiritual life. So the pious, Israelite might on the one hand see the blood of his sacrifice gurgling forth, caught, sprinkled toward the mercy-seat and upon his own person; and on the other hand, might take of the flesh of his slain lamb and sit down, not merely in peace but in joyful thanksgiving that death brings life—that sacrificial blood brings after it the new life of the redeemed, restored sinner, and sustenance therefor from the very animal whose body and blood became symbols of his pardon. H. C.

Had sacrifice not been essentially of God; had it not required the humble and child-like heart of faith to present it aright; had it not carried along with it, when so presented, the blessing of forgiveness and grace from heaven, we cannot understand how such singular importance should have been attached to it. Like the sacrifice of Christ now, it has all the appearance of having then been the great touchstone of an accepted and blessed, or a guilty and rejected condition; not one of many, as it would have been if devised by man, but standing comparatively alone as an all-important ordinance of God. P. F.

Through all the details of Leviticus there runs the emphasis that everything is by God’s ordering, as if he had done it himself. This book becomes an illuminated missal on the freeness and amplitude of God’s grace. There is not a trace of will-worship. Everything is done according to the Divine pattern. The entire ritual was a Divine parable. The blood was not given by man to God, but by God to man; and in this Divine gift upon the altar depended its prophetic and ritual atoning efficacy. And reading the parable in this way, a new and celestial radiance invests the cross, the one altar that shall never crumble. It is not the symbol of wrath-appeased, but of love triumphant. It is the journey ended, by which God has come to man. “It is finished.” The debt paid, but by him to whom we owed it. The tyrant overthrown, but by God’s hand, hiding behind the pierced palms. The penalty endured, but by him who pronounced it. The Law vindicated, but by him whose bosom is its eternal source and seat. Salvation by sacrifice, and sacrifice so great and painful that it awes the angels; but sacrifice as representing what God endures for those whom his love would save!

Of course, where God meets man there man should hasten to meet his God. If the altar is an oracle of grace it will also be the place of worship. But it is the place of true worship only because it is vocal with God’s compassionate thought. God and man meet at the altar; but the sacrifice does not represent man’s part in the great dialogue. . . . What gives to the atonement its value? Is it the offering of man or of God? If of man, paying a debt, or discharging a legal liability, what need of an incarnation? However intimate the union between the Divine and the human in the person of our Lord, it must be the Eternal Son of God by whom properly the atonement was made. It was made in human nature, but not by human nature. It was human in the field of its transaction; it was Divine in its origin, essence, and import. It was human in its form, Divine in its substance. It was human in its utterance, Divine in its logic. The cross, like the altar which it forever displaced, is an oracle of Divine grace, showing at what cost God secures the eternal redemption of man from sin. The descriptive history of redemption, the picture of the cross, remains unaltered. The suffering and shame, the agony and abandonment and death of our Lord, are not toned down, nor explained away. But we read the story from the angle of God’s thought, and that makes it luminous. Long enough have we studied the cross from the human angle, as if its main significance lay in the offering which man’s representative makes to God, as if its design was to make the forgiveness of sin compatible with the claims of justice; let us take the one bold leap, and read it with the eyes of God, whose love is from everlasting, and interpret it as one great offering which he freely makes in Christ for the redemption of all who repent and believe! Its mighty secret is not in the energy which it imparts to man’s prayer and plea for pardon, but in the solemn oath which it affixes to the free proclamation of mercy as witnessed in the redemption accomplished in human nature by the obedience, suffering, death, resurrection, and eternal ascension into glory, of the Eternal Word who became flesh. Bebends.

Satisfaction is made to absolute justice, to the truth of God; and it is made not only by the sufferings, but by the perfect life of Jesus, as the perfect man, in obedience to the Law. Justice—not retaliation—demands that what a man sows, that shall he reap. Man sows sin, and reaps the necessary results—death, the forfeiture of God’s presence. The picture of atonement in the Old Testament is that of a covering of sins, and in the New Testament is reconciliation of man to God. In the English version of the New Testament the word “atonement” occurs once, and translates the word which is elsewhere translated “reconciliation” (kutallaye). The satisfaction on which this covering of sins and reconciliation of man to God is based embraces the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and mediation of the Saviour God-Man. The object in view of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was not one, but manifold. It was to manifest God (“God manifest in the flesh”); to reconcile man’s heart (“You, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight”); to show man that he has a Mediator (“the one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus”); to prove his love (“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”); to enter death that he might show man that he is the victor over it, as the first-fruits from the dead (“If Christ be not raised, then is our hope in vain”); to read a lesson to other spheres (“To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord”). In all this he stood in man’s place to suffer; the “chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed;” “he redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us.” His merits were so perfect that they outweighed all man’s demerits, so that for his sake man can be justified and accepted according to the covenant of grace. But to introduce the spirit of vindictiveness, or retaliation, on the part of the Jehovah of the sacred Scriptures, as thirsting for the blood of the sinner, and demanding the sufferings of Christ from any principle analogous to the human principle of retaliation, is one of the greatest insults ever offered to the Christian religion, which declares that the whole motive power toward salvation was love. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” R. Collins.

Judging solely by the facts presented by the sacrificial conceptions of the two dispensations, they are manifestly connected, and that as the higher and the lower in a prearranged system of development. There is in Christianity an evident growth in reasonableness and freedom. In Christianity the fetters of Judaism are snapped, and its unintelligible features are explained. As Augustine said, “In the epoch of the Old Covenant the New lay latent, as a fruit does in a root,” or, in the language of more modern times, we may say, the New Testament sacrifices are antitypes of those of the Old. In a word, judged by the definition of final cause, Christianity is the final cause of Judaism. Cave.

The Mosaic ritual had at once a shell, and a kernel—its shell, the outward rites and observances it enjoined; its kernel, the spiritual relations which these indicated, and the spiritual truths which they embodied and expressed. Substantially these truths and relations were, and must have been, the same for the Old that they are for the New Testament worshippers, having in each the same wants and necessities to meet, and the same God condescending to meet them. In that fundamental agreement we are to find the bond of union between the symbolical institutions of Judaism and the permanent realities of Messiah’s kingdom. One truth in both—but that truth existing first in a lower, then in a higher stage of development. That the rite of expiatory sacrifice was typically or prophetically symbolical of the death of Christ, is testified with much plainness and frequency in New Testament Scripture. Yet, independently of this connection with Christ’s death, it had a meaning of its own, which it was possible for the ancient worshipper to understand, and, so understanding, to present through it an acceptable service to God, whether he might perceive or not the further respect it bore to a dying Saviour. It was in its own nature a symbolical transaction, embodying a threefold idea: first, that the worshipper, having been guilty of sin, had forfeited his life to God; then, that the life so forfeited must be surrendered to Divine justice; and finally that being surrendered in the way appointed, it was given back to him again by God, or he became re-established as a justified person in the Divine favor and fellowship. The complex capital idea which the transaction so impressively symbolized, finds its only true realization in the work of salvation by Jesus Christ. For in him alone was there a real transference of man’s guilt to one able and willing to bear it; in his death alone, the surrender of a life to God, such as could fitly stand in the room of that forfeited by the sinner; and in faith alone on that death, a full and conscious appropriation of the life of peace and blessing obtained by him for the justified. So that here only it is we perceive the idea of a true, sufficient, and perfect sacrifice converted into a living reality—such as the holy eye of God, and the troubled conscience of man, can alike repose in with unmingled satisfaction. And while there appear precisely the same elements of truth in the ever-recurring sacrifices of the Old Testament, and in the one perfect sacrifice of the New, it is seen, at the same time, that what the one symbolically represented, the other actually possessed; what the one could only exhibit as a kind of acted lesson for the present relief of guilty consciences, the other makes known to us, as a work finally and forever accomplished for all who believe in the propitiation of the cross. P. F.

That these sacrifices were “shadows of good things to come,” pointing more or less distinctly to “the body which is of Christ,” the whole Epistle to the Hebrews is a continued proof. The imposition of hands upon the head of the victim, the shedding of its blood, and the consumption of its members upon the altar, were prefigurative acts setting forth by a kind of dramatic representation the future offering of the “Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world.” The requisite qualities of these sacrificial victims were emblematic of Christ’s immaculate character, and the law of their oblation was a practical hieroglyphic of the great Gospel truth of the atonement. So also were the outward washings and purifications enjoined by the Mosaic Law designed to intimate the necessity of inward purity. If these institutions be severed from their New Testament relations, we have no key to unlock the hidden meaning of the Pentateuch, and the whole ritual contained in it dwindles down to a burdensome round of unmeaning ceremonies. But when regarded in the light now suggested, the whole service, like the veil on the face of Moses, conceals a spiritual radiance under an outward covering, and the wisdom of the various appointments appears at once worthy of its Divine Author. Bush.—Scarcely a page of the New Testament dealing with events coming after the crucifixion fails to set them forth in their sacrificial character and under an array of sacerdotal symbols. The apostles preached it, wrote it, reasoned it, exulted in it, put it into their ascriptions and thanksgivings. It was the fire and ecstasy of their apostleship. Every place and utensil of the old altar service came in to help the redemptive impression. All that long, wonderful, providential Hebrew economy had prepared the moulds of thought and images of speech which are now taken up, spiritualized, and filled out. And the last voices we hear, as the sublime story of Revelation ends, and the apocalyptic visions of ages sweep away before us, are the voices of the mighty multitude, saying, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” F. D. H.

As bearing upon the fact and the nature of the atonement, this bloody ritual has a most vital and impressive significance. No questions of deeper and more vital import can ever arise than such as these: Was the death of Christ expiatory? Was his blood shed for the sins of men? Did he lay down his life, an innocent victim, that the guilty sinners who place their hands upon his sacred head and there confess their sins may live and never die? In a word, was his death foreshadowed and its true significance pre-intimated by the bloody offerings enjoined in this Hebrew system?

Argumentatively, it would seem that these great questions are decided forever by the following considerations: (1) If the bloody sacrifices of this ancient system do not set forth the atoning death of Christ, they mean nothing; this, or nothing at all. (2) The writer to the Hebrew Christians testifies that they mean this. To give the proof of this statement in full would repeat entire the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth chapters of this epistle. (3) All the New Testament writers were Jews; men of Jewish education, men of life-long training in religious ideas based on this Hebrew sacrificial system. They never speak of the purpose or results of Christ’s death save in terms and phrases taken from this system given through Moses. Jesus never speaks of his own death save in these same words and phrases. When he speaks of “giving his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28); when he said, “This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins;” when his great forerunner speaks of him as “the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world;” or Peter as “bearing our sins in his own body on the tree;” or Paul as being “made a sin-offering for us that we might be made the right-cousness of God in him,” it is simply impossible to disprove the reference of these terms and phrases to the Mosaic system—impossible to give them any other sense than that which is illustrated in the bloody death of the sin-offerings and burnt-offerings of that ancient law.

Thus with bands which no sophistry can sever, the Old Testament and the New are bound together, and the atonement prefigured in the former is embodied and made perfect in the latter. The almost ceaseless blood-sheddings and blood-sprinklings of the former culminate in the latter in the one great scene of death-agony and blood on Calvary. The grand idea of expiatory suffering—of the vicarious death of the innocent in place of the guilty, which ages of ceremonial sacrifice had been setting forth and working into the minds of all reverent worshippers, had prepared the way for Christ’s disciples to understand the mystery of his bloody death and to teach the Christian world in the writings of the New Testament how the blood of Jesus “takes away sin.” H. C.

The System of Sacrifice the Analogue to the Lord’s Supper.

The world-sacrifice of Jesus Christ was a self-sacrifice of the highest conceivable import. And that one sacrifice, coupled with the life, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, was in all its bearings the most significant event that ever happened in the history of the human race. Should not, then, the world of all time be educated for that one great central “mystery of godliness,” the reconciliation of the world by ‘God manifest in the flesh,’ the outward circumstance of which was the life-shedding of Jesus on Calvary? But how was the world to be educated in prospect of that sacrifice? The great central fact to be taught was—the shedding of a life the salvation and life of the world. We are taught now to look upon that sacrifice at a meal, because the atoning power must always be connected with the life-giving power. The eating of bread and the drinking of wine are signs distinct enough to keep the world in memory of the fact and character of the death of Christ, the Life of the world. The Lord’s Supper is, moreover, a bridge of history, taking us back by unerring steps to the hour of its institution, and the hour of Christ’s agony. We find under the Mosaic dispensation the great analogue to the Lord’s Supper in the system of sacrifice. Then also the symbol was connected with a meal; or had in every case at least some reference to food. Except in the case of the whole burnt-offering, either the priests and the offerers of the sacrifice, or the priests alone, solemnly ate the offering, and that for the most part, in “the holy place.” Nor was the animal sacrifice the only sacrifice: the “meal-offering” (minchah) was as truly a sacrifice as the lamb, part being also consumed in the holy fire, and part eaten by the priest. Every animal sacrifice was an animal or bird used for food. But to the ritual of the animal sacrificial meal was added a most elaborate ritual as to the previous slaying of the animal itself, and the sprinkling of its blood, the offerer putting his hand on the head of the victim, and being taught to regard the sacrifice as a picture of atonement, the Hebrew idea of which was a covering, or a hiding of sin; and the blood was called the blood of the covenant. Thus, while the lesson of life by food is the same in the Lord’s Supper and the sacrificial feast, the symbol of breaking of bread in token of the death of the Lord’s body is replaced by a much more powerful symbol in the slaying of the animal that supplies the feast, and the solemn sprinkling of its blood. The two ordinances are from the same hand; and while we see the exquisite beauty of the symbolism in the commemorative Supper of the Lord, we cannot fail to see the beauty of power in the parallel symbolism of the shedding of blood in the prospective Old Testament dispensation, the great sacrament of the Old World.

The error that has grown up about the words “sacrifice,” “priest,” and “altar,” is idolatry; that is, making the picture more than a picture. When the Jew believed that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin, he perverted the truth and the ordinance of God; and when the Christian holds that there is in the Lord’s Supper a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead for the remission of sins, he equally abuses the truth of God and the beauty of the ordinance. It is the confounding of the inward spiritual grace in the sacraments with the rite itself that has been at the root of the chief of the religious errors of mankind. The inward spiritual grace is the apprehension and appropriation by the intelligence and the affections of that which the outward observance typifies, and therefore to the faithful the actual reception of its benefit; and the observance itself, when rightly understood, becomes an instrument in arousing that apprehension, as well as a pledge and means, by virtue of its institution, of our receiving that grace. But to make a sacrament an opus operatum, to convert the image into that which it represents, is idolatry. It is this astounding, though truly human, error that plunged the ancient world into heathenism, the Jewish world into Pharisaism, and the Christian world into what is now commonly called Popery. The fall of the intelligence when the floods of superstition are let in upon the soul is great indeed; so that a man can even hold the blasphemous doctrine that the blessed Redeemer can become incarnate in the sacramental elements of bread and wine in the hands of the priest, and that it is necessary for salvation that the body, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ should be digested in the human stomach. This is a fall sorer than any fall on record of the

Jews; however much we may pity their unbelief, we have no evidence that any Jew ever taught that every Passover lamb and every victim brought to the altar was God incarnate; and yet, if it be true of the Christian element of sacrifice, it must have been true of the Jewish. R. Collins.

DETAILS RESPECTING ANIMAL SACRIFICE: ANIMALS OFFERED; UNBLEMISHED; AGE; TO BE VOLUNTARY; PLACE OF OFFERING. THE LIFE BLOOD THE ESSENTIAL FEATURE.