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as of natural right; such immoderate ambition would probably have provoked a dangerous reaction, which not even the growing power of the tribe of Levi would have been able to resist. The Law is therefore in harmony with the Talmudical canon that the duties of the priests commenced with the act of receiving the victim's blood; and that, therefore, the killing might be lawfully performed by any one.' With this rule corresponded, in bloodless offerings, the law that the sacerdotal functions began with the act of taking off a handful to be burnt on the altar as a memorial, while the Israelite poured over and mixed the oil himself. However, priests were permitted to slaughter the animals for the offering Israelites; they did so rogularly with respect to the purification-offering of the loper, or when the victims were presented in the name of the whole people, whether on Sabbaths and festivals or on other occasions; and they invariably killed the pigeons and turtledovos by wringing or wringing off their head; sovoral reasons seem to have suggested this last oxcoption; first becauso in such casos tho ritual was so simple that it could scarcely bo divided between the worshipper and the priest; especially as the blood of those birds is so scanty that it could not well be sprinkled or pressed out on the altar, unless so disposed of at once by the person who killed them, without being previously received in a vessel; and then because it was deemed desirable to enhance the value of the small sacrifice of fowls, often presented by poor people as a substitute for more expensive animals, by confiding its performance exclusively to the holy ministers of God.

5

How far the act of slaying tho victim represented the life and death of the offerer will be pointed out in another place; it hore concerus us to observe that even the mode of killing had, in many instances, undoubtedly a symbolical significance. So if the Greeks or Romans offered a victim to an Olympian god, the head was turned upward and cut with the sacrificial knife from above downward; while the head of animals dedicated to the lower gods, to horocs, or to the dead, was turned downward to the ground, and cut from bolow upward; in the latter case, the blood was poured into a pit dug for the purpose. The Greeks generally stunned and felled the victim to the ground by striking its temples with an oak club; but this was distinct from the proper slaughtering, which was usually performed by cutting the sinews of the neck with a sharp axe, and which formed the essential

1 Lev. I. 5; III. 2; IV. 24, 29, 33; see also VIII. 15.

2 Comp. 2 Chron. XXX. 15-17; XXXV. 10, 11.

3 Lev. XIV. 13, 25.

4 Comp. also 2 Chron. XXIX. 22-24; Ezra VI. 20.

5 Lev. I. 15; V. 8; see Sect. XIII. 3; XV. See Lev. I. 14-17, and notes in loc.

7 See Sect. XVIII.

part of the ceremony, for by that slaughtering only which made the blood gush forth, the soul or the life of the victim was surrondored. And similarly among the Romans, an inferior official or assistant first struck the victim with a hammer, after which the priest slaughtered it with a knife. Some tribes scom to have abstained from tho use of iron instruments in killing sacrificial animals, apparently for the same reasons which induced others to avoid them in the construction of altars. Plato in his mythical description of primoval customs mentions that the animals intended for victims on solemn occasions were caught "without iron, with staves and cords", though they were apparently slaughtered in the usual way. The Magi in Cappadocia called pyraethi or fire-kindlers, "did not perform the sacrifice with a knife, but beat the victim to death with a log of wood as with a mallet." The Scythians and Indians strangled or suffocated the animal, "that nothing mutilated, but only that which is entire, might be offered to the deity." The Syrians in Hierapolis throw the wreathed victim over the terrace in the court of the temple, and killed it by the fall; while on some occasions, as on the "Festival of Torches", it was suspended on trees within the precincts of the temple and burnt alivo. Similarly at Patrao in Achaia, on the festival of Artemis Laphria, pigs, stags and roes, wolves and bears, young and old, and every kind of eatable birds were cast alivo into the flames. Tho Trojans sacrificed horses to Poseidon by throwing thom alivo into the waves; and tho old Rhodians did tho liko in honour of Holios.

It is uncertain whether the Ilobrows adoptod any peculiar rito or observed fixed rules in slaughtering the victim; but the regulations laid down in the Talmud are unquestionably of later growth; they all aim at causing the death of the animal in the most natural and least painful or violent manner, so that it might not oven remotely fall under the category of a "torn animal"; and they strictly kept this object in view that all the blood should completely stream out of the body, and that none of it should be lost; for it was forbidden as food, but indispensable for atonement. Guided by similar views, the old Teutons struck the heart of the victims, whether these were men or animals, because the heart is the fountain of the blood, and the blood of the heart was pre-eminently regarded as the blood of sacrifice.

6. RECEIVING OF THE BLOOD.

When the blood streamed out of the dying victim, the utmost care was taken by the officiating priest, clad in his holy vestments, to receive it, at the same side of the altar whore the slaughtering had been

performed, in a vessel of rather large dimensions, which he held in his right hand and was specially appropriated to the purpose. It was deemed so all-important that no part of the blood which is the life and soul of the animal, should be lost or wasted, that the Law deviated from a fundamental principle at the offering of birds, by directing the killing to be performed by the priest instead of the offerer. But the act of receiving the blood was on no account permitted to the Israelite; it was by tradition, and no doubt in accordance with the spirit of the Law, strictly regulated; it was illegal, if performed by a non-Levite or an uncircumcised person, or by the priest or High-priest without a full array of priestly garments, or in a state of total or partial uncleannoss, or by a common priest who, on that day, had been thrown into mourning; for it was the direct preliminary to that ritual, in which the whole sacrificial ceremonial centred, namely

7. THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD.

This was the oxclusive privilege of "the priests, the sons of Aaron." It was invalid if attempted by any one not belonging to that elected family. Only when Moses initiated his brother with his sons into their sacred functions, he himself, the Levite, sprinkled the blood, because on that exceptional occasion he officiated as chief priest.' Indeed if an intercessor between God and the Israelite was at all deemed desirable, he was properly employed for that special act. For it not only formed the weightiest of the rituals without which the sacrifice was not considered accomplished, but it involved the chief means of atonement, and was, therefore, justly termed "the kernel of the offering." It was rigorously and carefully performed in all animal sacrifices of whatever class. Its eminent significance is manifest: in burnt- and expiatory offerings it typified contrition and atonement; in thank-offerings, humility and submission. For the blood represented the life and oxistence of the animal which man offorod to God either as a substitute for his own life forfeited by sin, or as an oblation of gratitude and praise for benefits received. Hence it was sprinkled either on the brazen, or the golden altar, or the mercy-seat, that is, on the most important and most characteristic implements of the three chief divisions of the Sanctuary, the Court, the Holy, and the Holy of Holies; it was, in fact, put upon those parts which symbolized, though in different degrees, the revelation and holiness of God, and which, 2 Lev. VIII. 15, 19, 23.

Lev. I. 5, 11; III. 2, 8, 13; IV. 16-18, 25, 30, 34; VII. 14; V. 9; IX. 9, 12, 18; XVII. 6; comp. 2 Ki. XVI. 13; etc.

3 See Sect. IX. 7, pp. 87—92, and the references there quoted.

therefore, if covered with the emblem of the offerer's soul, were best calculated to point to his purification and his restored union with the Deity. And while the preceding ceremonies were uniform in all classes of offerings, this chief rito varied in mode and manner according to the nature of the different sacrifices. The blood of thank-offerings and holocausts consisting of quadrupeds, was sprinkled round about upon the brazen altar; while the blood of holocausts consisting of fowls was pressed out on its side,' evidently because it would not have sufficod for so complete an aspersion of the altar as to bo overywhore visible. If the High-priost presonted a sin-offering for himself, or if the elders of the people presented one for the whole community, the Highpriest dipped his finger into the blood, and sprinkled of it "seven times before the Lord against the vail of the Sanctuary." By the peculiar force of the number seven which indicated the sacred covenant between God and Israel, and by the approach to the vail through which lay the passage from the Holy to the Holy of Holies, the ceremony was invested with the character of aspiration for purity and for harmony. with God. To impress these ideas still more markedly, the High-priest put a part of the blood on the horns of the altar of incense within the Holy; for the horns, the most prominent as well as the most important part of the structure, pointed strikingly to the presence of God; while the rest of the blood was poured out at the bottom of the altar of burntoffering. If the sin-offering was presented by a chief or a common Israelito, the inforior dogrco of authority and distinction was donoted in a twofold manner: the blood was sprinkled by a common priest, and a part of it was put, not on the horns of the goldon, but of the brazen altar in the Court. For both the High-priest and the community were identified with the Hebrew theocracy, the former as its chief reprosentative, the latter as its actual embodiment; both stood, therefore, towards God in a relation of supreme holiness; but any individual Israelite, were he even a chief, was allied to the Deity only in proportion to his personal merit.

7

But it is necessary to observe, in this respect, the following chronological distinction. In holocausts, or the oldest kind of sacrifice, and in thank-offerings, the class next to them in antiquity, the blood was sprinkled "round about upon the altar." Thoro aro traces to provo that the same method was for a long time also followed with regard to the latest class, or the expiatory offerings; for in reference to

4 Lev. I. 15.

5 Lev. IV. 6.

7 Lev. IV. 25, 30, 34.

• Lov. IV. 7, 18, 25, 30, 34; comp. IX. 9.

8 Lev. I. 5, 11; III. 2, 8, 13.

trespass-offerings it is expressly commanded, that the blood should be sprinkled "round about upon the altar"; and the same section adds, "as the sin-offering is, so is the trespass-offering; there is one law for them."2 Later, however, when the sin-offerings, developed by Levitical legislators with ardent partiality, were appointed as the most effectual and most sacred moans of theocratic worship, it was found appropriate to distinguish them by a peculiar proceeding with respect to the blood; and it was then determined that, on ordinary occasions, a part of it should be put on the horns of the brazon altar, but in cases of special moment, not only on the horns of the golden altar, but also on still holier parts of the sacred edifice. Some such distinction was already introduced or contemplated at the time whon birds also were admitted for animal offerings; for while the blood of pigeons or turtle-doves offered as holocausts was simply pressed out on the side of the brazen altar, it was, if these birds were presented as sin-offerings, partly sprinkled on the side of the altar, and partly pressed out at its baso; though the chango had not advanced so far as to direct some of the blood to bo put upon the horns of the altar.

7

5

The most solemn sacrifices in the whole course of the religious year were doubtless those performed by the High-priest on the Day of Atonement for the expiation of himself and the people; and they were, among other characteristics, distinguished by a remarkable mode in the disposal of the blood. The High-priest sprinkled some of it "upon the mercy-seat eastward, and before the mercy-seat seven times", that is, in the Holy of Holies, on that part of the Ark of the Covenant which boro the mysterious figures of the chorubim, the omblems of the Divine presence. Moreover, he put a part of the blood round the horns of the altar of incense and sprinkled upon its sides seven times, and he thereby "cleansed it and hallowed it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel." No symbols could possibly be devised more strongly expressive of tho craving for union and reconciliation with God.

So essential was the act in sin-offerings, that it took place even in connection with the red cow, which was no proper sacrifice, and was slain and burnt without the camp: the blood was sprinkled seven times in the direction of the Tabernacle, 10 to indicate that though that animal had not been killed at the altar, it bore an intimate relation to the Sanctuary and the religious blessings which it se cures.