or in pits, a custom which naturally grew from their mythological systems, and which corresponded with the practice of touching the ground with the hands while praying to Demeter or Terra, of stretching them forward while imploring the deities of the sea, and of lifting them to the skies while invoking Jupiter.

4. IMPOSITION OF THE HAND (pp).

When the offering had been brought within the precincts of the Sanctuary, and an appointed priest, after a searching examination, had declared it to possess all legal requirements and to be duly qualified for the altar, then only the proper rites of sacrifico commoncod. If it consisted of a quadruped, whether an ox, a sheep, or a goat, the offerer, first of all, laid his hand upon the head of the victim. This act was identical in manner, whether the sacrifice was a holocaust, a eucharistic or an expiatory offering.' It matters little whether the hand was laid slightly upon the head, or as Jowish tradition contends with the full force of the body, though the latter view is supported by the etymology of the term. As a rule, one hand was imposed, probably the right one, since the right hand was considered stronger, more privileged, and more auspicious; on the scape-goat alone, which was properly no sacrifice, but was under peculiar ceremonies sent alive into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement, the High-priest laid both his hands, 10 evidently because the head of the animal was to be marked, in the most signal manner, as laden with the sins of the people. The act was performed, within the precincts of the Sanctuary, by the offerer himself; it could not be transferred or entrusted to any one else, not even a priest, except when the sacrifice was presented in the name or on behalf of the sacordotal order. It was hence confided to the elders of the people, if the sacrifice was presented for the whole community. But on the Day of Atonement, it was, like all the other functions connected with the exceptional service of the day, performed by the High-priest who acted as mediator between God and the nation. From these facts it appears easy to determine its meaning and significance. It was manifestly designed to indicate the personal and intimate relation between the worshipper and the victim. Thus, when Moses consecrated Aaron and his sons as priests, he caused them to lay their hands on the head of the sin- and burnt-offerings, 11 to signify that the victims were killed on their behalf. Those who heard a man blaspheme the name of God, imposed their hands on his head to testify that both as Israelites and witnesses they were closely concerned in

11

Lev. I. 4; III. 2, 8, 13; IV. 5, 15. 10 Lev. XVI. 21. 11 Lev. VIII. 14, 18.

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his fate. When Moses was to appoint Joshua as his successor, and to confer upon him a part of his own spiritual glory, he was commanded to place his hand upon Joshua's head before the eyes of the congregation; and similarly, in the New Testament, imposition of the hand is employed as an emblem of imparting the spirit of holiness.2 The Israelitos imposed their hands on the Levitos, when the latter were initiated to serve in the Sanctuary in their stead," in order to express the closeness and directness of their mutual relation. This was evidently the general character of the ceremony; but its nicer and more exact purport was qualified by the special nature of the sacrifice at which it was performed. In holocausts and thank-offerings it implied the confession of reverential submission and gratitude; while in expiatory offerings it conveyed, besides, the ideas of penitence and atonement. But in all cases it pointed to the vicarious nature of the animal, and its power of mediation between God and the suppliant. More than this it was hardly intended to symbolise. It cannot have been designed to invest the animal with a higher sanctity or power, in which case it would have been performed by the priest, the representative of God, and not by the offerer who himself required or solicited purification. The rite was omitted if the animal sacrifice consisted of a fowl a pigeon or a turtle-dove.

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Rabbinical writers maintain, that it was accompanied by verbal utterances, in harmony with the nature of the sacrifice; namely by a confession of sins at expiatory offerings, by a declaration of offences committed against positive injunctions of the Law at holocausts, and by a recital of the praises of God at thank-offerings. Some oral expression of the feelings and cravings of the offerer is indeed not improbable. Even the patriarchs, after building altars, are generally reported to have "invoked the name of the Lord"; and this is certainly in accordance with the spirit of the ceremony under consideration. Expiatory offerings are repeatedly stated to requiro confession of sins; and the Deuteronomist sets down an elaborate address to bo spoken at the oblation of firstfruits and tithes. In fact, sacrifices are, in a remarkable passage, used as an equivalent for mentioning the name of God: "Au altar of earth shalt thou make to Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings...; in all placos where I shall lot My name be mentioned I will come to thee and bless thee." The Psalmist entroats, "Let my prayer be set forth before 4 See Sect. XVIII.

1 Num. XXVII. 18-20; comp. Deut. XXXIV. 9.

2 Comp. Acts VI. 6; VIII. 17; XIX. 6; 1 Tim. IV. 14; etc.

8 Num. VIII. 10.

5 Lev. V. 5; Num. V. 7; comp. Lev. XVI. 21. Deut. XXVI. 3-10; 13-15. 7 Exod. XX. 21; see 1 Sam. XIII. 12; Prov. XV. 8.

"10

14

Thee as incense!" Jonah promises, "I will sacrifice to Thee with the voice of thanks-giving." The Temple is indifferently called "house of sacrifice" and "house of prayer." The later Isaiah declares, that the sacrifices of both Hebrews and strangers will, in a happier age, be offered in the Temple, because this will then be called "a house of prayer for all nations." 12 In the long address of Solomon, at the consecration of the newly-built Temple, he often and emphatically mentions the prayers, but only once and obscurely hints at the sacrifices of the worshippers, a proof that the former must have constituted a common and ordinary mode of devotion. Strangers even came to pour out their supplications, and entered the sacred precincts, certain of being graciously accepted by God. 15 On some occasions, the sacrifices are distinctly recorded to have been attended with prayers or invocations, 16 on others with songs, music, and psalms of praise. 17 Among the ordinary functions of the Levites is enumorated "standing every morning to praiso and to extol the Lord, and so also in the evening." 19 After the exilo, the Israelites were in the habit of offering up prayers while the fumigations with the sacred incense took place in the Holy; 19 and they performed their daily devotions in the Synagogues at the times fixed for the regular sacrifices in the Temple. Josephus sets it down as a common duty incumbent upon all sacrificers to pray not only for their own, but for the general welfare. However, it is more than probable that prayers were, for many agos, left to the option and impulse of the worshipper. It was certainly very long before they wore fixed in formulas such as have boon handed down by tradition. One of them, assorted to have been uttered by the offerer of an expiatory sacrifice during the act of imposition, runs thus: "O Lord, I have sinned, I have offended, I have transgressed, I have done this and that; but now I return to Thee in repentance, and may this victim be my expiation." Another and similar prayer is attributed to the High-priest on the Day of Atonement, before he sent away the scape-goat, and one before he slaughtered the bullock for the expiation of himself and his house. While

8 Ps. CXLI. 2; comp. XXVI. 6, 7. 9 Jon. II. 9.

10 2 Chron. VII. 12. 11 Isai. LVI. 7.

. 12 Isai. l. c. 13 Comp. 1 Ki. VIII. 28-30, 33, 35, 38, 42, 44, 45, 47-50, 52; see also 2 Chr. VI. 12-42.

14 Comp. 1 Ki. VIII. 31.

15 1 Ki. VIII. 41-43; 2 Chr. VI. 32, 33. 16 1 Sam. VII. 9; Job XLII. 8; Ezra VI. 10; 1 Chr. XXI. 26; XXIX. 10-21;

2 Chr. XXX. 22; I's. LXVI. 13-20; CXVI. 13, 17; CXVIII 1—29 (sce ver. 27); Bar. I. 10, 11.

17 2 Chr. XXIX. 26-30; comp. Judg. XXI. 21; 1 Sam. I. 15; Am. V. 22, 23; Ps. XXVI. 6, 7; XXVII. 6; L. 14, 15; LXIX. 31; C. 4; Sir. L. 17-19.

18 1 Chr. XXIII.30; comp. XVI. 4—6, 8-36.

19 Luke I. 10; comp. Revel. VIII. 3, 4; V. 8; scc p. 85.

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the Israelites killed their paschal lambs in the Temple, the priests are said to have chanted the great praise consisting of Psalms CXIII to CXVIII. But independently of other arguments, the language of those formulas alone suffices to prove their post-Biblical origin. Indeed, supplication formed, up to the time of the exile, no indispensable part of public worship, though, of course, prayors were addressed to God by individuals. both for themselves and others, as necessity or impulse prompted, 2 till they became a regular, if not mechanical practice with fixed hours, generally three times a day, and appointed forms of supplication, pronounced with the face turned towards Jerusalem, and accompanied by prostration, bending of knees, stretching out and uplifting of hands, and were, together with fasting, sometimes extended to the domestic animals, the chief exercise of piety. It seems to have been usual for the officiating priest to pronounce a blessing upon the offerer; but that blessing was no necessary or essential part of tho sacrificial ritual. Similar accompanimonts of sacrifices were usual among most ancient nations. The Scythians offered up a prayor while felling the victim to the ground, the Egyptians either before killing or after flaying it; the latter, at the burning of the body beat themselves, as a mark of humiliation, while the Carian settlers in Egypt went so far as to express their submission by cutting their faces with knives. In Persia, the sacrificer, before the act of immolation, invoked the name of the deity, and prayed both for his welfare and that of the king and the nation; while after the animal 1 Comp. Vitringa, De Syn. Vet. etc.), esp. XXII. 1—26 ; XXXV. 13; LV. pp. 50-52; the opposite assertion of 18; LXIII. 2-12; C. 1-5; CH. 1, 2; Ewald (1. c. p. 48) cannot be sub- CXIX. 58, 164; CXLII. 1-8; CXLIII. stantiated. 1-12; Job XLII. 8; 1 Chr. XXIII. 30; 2 Chr. XX. 6-13; and so among the Greeks and other nations.

2 Comp. Gen. XX. 7, 17; XXIV. 12, 27; XXVIII. 22; XXXII. 10-13 (comprising in a brief compass nearly all the elements of prayer. thanksgiving, contrition, and entreaty); Exod. VIII. 4, 5, 24, 25; IX. 28, 33; X. 17, 18; XV. 1---18; XXXII. 11—13; Lev. XVI. 21; Num. X. 35, 36; XVI. 22; Deut. IX. 26–29; X. 10; XXI. 7,8; Josh. VII. 6—9; Judg. VI. 36—10; XVI. 28; 1 Sam. l. 10, 12, 15; VIII. 6; XII. 19, 23; 2 Sam. VII. 18-29; 1 Ki. VIII. 22-51, esp. vers. 30, 35, 38; XVII. 20; XVIII. 36, 37; 2 Ki. IV. 33; VI. 17, 18, 20; XIII. 4; XIX. 4, 15—19; XX. 2, 3; Isai. I. 15; Jer. XXIX. 7; XXXII. 16-25; Hos. XIV. 3; Jon. II. 2--10; Hab. III. 1—19; many Psalms (as III—X, XII, XIII, XVI–XVIII, etc.

3 See Ezra VIII. 21; IX. 5-15; Neh. I. 4-11; IX. 1—37; XI. 17; Dan. VI. 11 (comp. 1 Ki. VIII. 48; Ps. L.V. 18); IX. 3—21; Esth. IV. 1, 2, 15, 16; 2 Chr. XX. 3, 4; Tob. III. 11-15; XII. 8; Judith IV. 9--13; VIII. 6; XIII. 7; I Mace. IV. 30—33; V. 33; VII. 40—42; XI. 71; 2 Mace. VIII. 29; XV. 26; Acts III. 1; X. 9, 30; XXVII. 35; Matth. VI. 5—13; X. 14;. Luke II. 37; XVIII. 12; 1 Tim. II. 1-8.

4 Comp. 1 Sam. II. 20; 2 Sam. VI. 18; 1 Ki. VIII. 11, 55-61; see also Lev. IX. 22, 23; Num. VI. 23-27; 1 Sam. II. 20; 1 Chr. XVI. 1, 2; 2 Chron. XXX. 27; Sir. L. 17-19.

had been slain and duly laid upon myrtle and laurel bunches, the Magi, holding in their hands a bundle of slender tamarisk rods with which they touched the flesh, chanted long hymns supposed to recount the origin of the gods: indeed the Persians seem to have considered prayer the chief part of the sacrifice, and in itself the most acceptable oblation. The Greeks accompanied their offerings frequently with hymns of praise and with religious and solemn dances round the altar and the sacrificial fire; the invocation was generally pronounced at the killing of the victim; a sacrificial prayer from a work of Menander has been preserved to us: "Now let us pray to the Olympian gods, and now to all the Olympian goddesses, to give us safety, health, and all good things in future and full enjoyment of all present happiness." Pliny observes, with regard to the Romans, "It is a general belief that, without a certain form of prayer, it would be unavailing to immolate a victim, and that without it tho gods would be consulted to no purpose"; nay the omission or improper performance of the prayer was supposed to be most ominous and often portentous. Therefore, in order to prevent hesitation or faultiness in the recital, a priest read from a book the prayer, which the sacrificer repeated after him word by word. And both among the Greeks and Romans, the sacrificial act was occasionally accomplished with the shrill sounds of the Phrygian pipe, partly to add solemnity or cheerfulness to the ceremony, and partly to prevent any irrelevant or inauspicious words being heard during the sacred rites; just as men veiled their hoads during prayers, lest they behold anything unlucky.

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5. KILLING THE ANIMAL.

The offerer, after having signified by imposition of the hand his intimate relation to the victim and his readiness to surrender it to God in his stead, forthwith proved and sealed this readiness by at once killing the animal at the sacred altar. The worshipper was designedly permitted to perform the act of immolation, that the offering might clearly be marked as his own; and it was therefore entrusted to one of the elders of the people, if the sacrifice was presented in the name of the community. This privilege alone was loft to the Israelites to remind them that they were designed to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." It would scarcely have been prudent on the part of the compilers of the Pentateuch wholly to exclude the people from all participation in the sacrificial ceremonies which they had so long performed 5 Lev. IV. 15. At the consecration of Aaron and his sons, Moses killed the victims (Lev. VIII. 15, 19, 23), be

cause he acted throughout that ceremony as the direct instrument of God (see Comm. in loc.).

K