he received back from Him a part of the dedicated gift, and thus experienced anew the same gracious beneficence which had enabled him to appear with his wealth before the altar; he therefore consumed that portion with feelings of humility and thankfulness; but he was bidden at once practically to manifest those blissful sentiments by sharing the meat not only with his household, which thereby was reminded of the Divine protection and mercy, but also with his needy fellow-beings, whether laymen or servants of the Temple. Thus these beautiful repasts were stamped both with religious emotion and human virtuo. The relation of friendship between God and the offeror which the sacrifice exhibited, was expressed and sealed by the feast which intensified that relation into one of an actual covenant; the momentary harmony was extended to a permanent union; and these notions could not be expressed more intelligibly, at least to an eastern people, than by a common meal, which to them is the familiar image of friendship and communion, of cheerfulness and joy: thus when Isaac and Abimelech made a league, the former "gave a feast, and they ate and drank";' and when Jacob concluded a treaty with Laban, they made a pile of stones, "and they ate there upon the pile." 10 Thus the eucharistic repasts were the emblems of that community into which the sacrificer entered with the Deity; a conception found among other nations also. Some critics have expressed an opposite view, contending that the offerer was not considered as the guest of God, but, on the contrary, God as the guest of the offeror: but this is against tho clear expressions of the Law; the sacrificor surrendered the whole victim to the Deity, and confirmed his intention by burning on the altar the fat parts, which represented the entiro animal; he could not well invite as his guests at once God and his household together with strangers; and the apostle Paul says distincly, "are not they who eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar" or "of the Lord's table?" 12 Philo observes, therefore, aptly: "the sacrifice, when once placed on the altar, is no longer the property of the person who offered it, but belongs to Him to whom the victim is sacrificed, who, being a beneficient and bounteous God, makes the whole company of those who offer the sacrifice, partakers at the altar and messmates, only admonishing them not to look upon it as their own feast, for they are but stowards of the foast, and not the entertainers." 1 9 Gen. XXVI. 28, 30. 10 Gen. XXXI. 46; comp. Josh. IX. 14, 15; Ps. XXIII. 5; Matth. XXII. 4; Luke XIV. 15. 11 Comp. Lev. III. 1, 6, 7, 12; VIII. 12, 29; see also XXI. 22. 12 1 Cor. X. 18, 21; comp. Mal. I. 12 (the table of the Lord is polluted). J The matter being so understood by the Hobrows, a participation in the meals of idolatrous sacrifices was deemed a fatal offence;' for it was almost tantamount to the acknowledgment and worship of heathen gods; the Israelites who shared the feasts of Baal-Peor in the time of Moses, were represented as having been directly devoted to the service of that idol; the Moabites "called the people to the sacrifices of their gods; and the people ate and bowed down to their gods; and Israel joined himself to Baal-peor"; for which aberration they had to atone by a fearful pestilence. The pious, therefore, scrupulously avoided the repasts of heathen sacrificers; nay, as a matter of precaution, they shunned all convivial intercourse with idolaters, from fear that any of the viands or of the wine had been dedicated to some heathen deity," since meat of sacrificial animals was frequently offered for public sale. But the early pagan converts to Christianity could not so easily disengage themselves from a habit so deeply ingrained in their lives and minds; they often joined their heathon friends at the meals hold in the temples of their idols; and they more commonly attended their sacrificial feasts in their own houses. The apostles struggled perseveringly to eradicate the dangerous propensity; they emphatically enjoined all their followers "to abstain from meats offered to idols", which they also called "pollutions of idols." Nevertheless, more distant congregations remained in uncertainty or disagreement on the matter; and the Corinthians, agitated by serious disputes, invoked the advice and decision of St. Paul; for some maintained that as the idols are "nonentities" or "nothings" and imaginary phantoms, with which a covenant or communion is an impossibility, the sacrifices offered to them can have no reality or force, and they might, therefore, without danger be shared by believers; while others were not disposed to take this view of the nature of the heathen deities. Now St. Paul indeed permitted the Christians to buy and to eat all meat that was offered to them even by heathens, "without asking questions for conscience sake"; 10 but if they were informed or convinced that it was meat of victims presented to idols, they were rigidly to abstain from it, for, he said, "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils, you cannot be partakors of the Lord's table and of the table of devils"; it is true that "an idol is nothing in the world", since "there is no other God but one"; 12 but there are many persons weak enough to consider the idols 1 Exod. XXXIV. 14, 15. 2 Num. XXV. 1-3; comp. Ps. CVI. 28, 29. 6 1 Cor. VIII. 10. 1 71 Cor. X. 21, 27, 28. 8 Acts XV. 29; XXI. 25. Dan. I. 12; elc, 9 Acts XV. 20. 11 1 Cor. X. 21. 10 1 Cor. X. 25, 27. 3 Num. XXV. 9; Ps. CVI. 29, 30. 4 Tob.I.10-12. 12 VIII. 4; X. 19. ་ as real beings, and who, therefore, by eating meat sacrificed in their honour "defile their conscience"; 13 therefore the intelligent also should eschew such meals, because their presence at them might mislead the feeble and become to them a stumbling-block; 14 moreover, though the idols are nothing, yet "the gentiles offer the things which they sacrifice to devils", with whom the Christians ought to have no fellowship whatever. 15 Yet in spite of this thoughtful and decided opinion of the apostle, the objectionable habit lingered for centuries in many congregations. From those remarks alone it will be sufficiently obvious how common and far-spread sacrificial repasts were among heathen nations. 10 They formed indeed an essential element in pagan religions. In Greece and Rome, it was customary, whether the offerer held the feast within the precincts of the temple, or, as was more frequently the case, at his own house, to send a portion of the meal to friends as a prosent; and it was considered an act of mean and niggardly shamelessness to forget the acquaintances on such occasions. The old Teutons, eager to feast in honour of the gods and to offer food for their statues to whom they not only attributed human reason and speech, but also human wants and desires, peculiarly extended and developed the sacrificial repasts, at which they indulged in wild and noisy mirthfulness, in music, dance, and varied games; which they frequently employed for conciliating the fouds of onemies; and which woro commonly hold on the frosh gravos of the dopartod, as the notorious funeral solemnities of the Suedes and Danos repoated overy nine years and disgraced by human sacrifices. The German converts to Christianity clung long and tenaciously to their ancestral habits; they rendered necessary rigorous edicts of the popes, and the imposition of heavy penalties by Christian princes; yet the former found it expedient to permit believers, if compelled by force, to eat of heathen offerings provided that in doing so they made the sign of the cross; or they judiciously transformed the public feasts of sacrifice, which were principally celebrated to mark the chief phases in the course of the sun, or the seasons with their produce, into Christian festivals or days of penitence, as for instance the splendid repasts in the middle of the winter into Christmas, the vernal banquet of the Norwegians into Easter, and that of midsummer into Pentecost. Thus sacrificial festivities were, far into the middle ages, celebrated in honour of Christ, of the virgin Mary, and especially of the saints, whose birthdays and anniversaries were 18 VIII. 7. 14 VIII. 9-13; X. 23, 24. 15 X. 20. 10 Comp. Exod. XXXIV. 15; Num. XXV. 2; 1 Cor. VIII. 10. commonly transferred to such days on which heathen foasts had previously been held; and a remnant of the grand sacrificial revelries kept by the old Norwegians in mid-summer, has been preserved to this day on the island of Bornholm, where it is annually solemnised, on the 24th day of June, in a grove and enclosure in the parish of Rutha. XI. THE BLOODLESS OFFERING. 1. ITS GENERAL CHARACTER. VEGETABLE offerings presented to the Deity from early ages, were at least co-eval with animal sacrifices. 1 But in the course of time, the latter class was regarded as peculiarly acceptable, not only because of its superior value, implying a higher degree of self-abnegation, but also on account of the power of atonement specially attributed to the blood. Therefore vegetable oblations were predominantly presented by people of humbler means, and probably formed but a subordinate gift even of agriculturists. Gradually, however, the notion evidently prevailed that, as human repasts do not consist of meat alone, but require the addition of vogotablo or cereal food and of wine, all sacrifices offered to the Deity ought to be composed of the same leading elements. Hence the Greeks and Romans invariably accompanied animal sacrifices with salted grits; and the Levitical law ordained that all usual holocausts and thank-offerings, whether presented on ordinary days or on sabbaths and festivals, whether in consequence of vows or as voluntary gifts, whether by Israelites or strangers, should be supplemented by vegetable and drink-offerings; it nover omitted to repeat that injunction with rospect to the regular and public burntofferings, those killed every morning and evening, on every sabbath and day of the new-moon, on the three great agricultural festivals," on the "Day of Memorial", the first of the seventh month, and the Day of Atonement; and it extended the regulation to a variety of special sacrifices, as those presented after recovery from leprosy, or at the end of the Nazarite's time of seclusion. 10 The cereal oblation was, with regard to the quantity of the materials, nicely varied according to the species of animals which composed the bloody sacrifice, and increased in proportion to their numbers, that it might strikingly retain its cha 9 1 Comp. Gen. IV. 3; see Seet. II. 2 Comp. Num. XV. 3. 3 Num. XV. 3-9, 14-16; comp. Lev. VII. 12, 13. 4 Exod. XXIX. 40, 41. 5 Num. XXVIII. 9. 6 Num. XXVIII. 12-14. 4 3 8 7 Num. XXVIII. 20, 21, 28, 29; Lev. XXIII. 13, 18. 8 Num. XXIX. 3. Num. XXIX. 9, 10. 10 Comp. Lev. XIV. 10, 20, 21, 31; Num. VI. 15, 17; comp. Exod. XXIX. 2, 23; Lev. VIII. 26. racter as a subordinate accessory. For the Law prescribed that each lamb or goat was to be accompanied by a minchah of ono tenth of an ephah of flour, mingled with one fourth of a hin of oil; each ram by two omers of flour, mingled with one third of a hin of oil; and each bullock by three omers of flour, mingled with half a hin of oil: if more than one animal was sacrificed, the minchah was to be multiplied accordingly. It is evident that these arangements were based on customs dating from very remoto opochs, when the idea of sacrifice was still associated with the rude and gross conception of food offered to the deity; 12 though this viow is neither sanctioned in the Pentatouch, nor attributable to the Levitical logislators. 13 Bloodless offerings were, however, ordered only with quadrupeds; they do not seem to have been ordinarily coupled with birds, probably because the latter were, as a rulo, prosented by poorer persons, to whom an additional oblation would have been burdensome; although in exceptional cases the rule was departed from. 14 Nor is it difficult to account for their omission with the paschal lamb, or with the firstlings and tithes of animals; for the former, peculiar in various points and almost sui generis, was in itself and exclusively characteristic of the occasion, and the latter were gifts rather than sacrifices, and therefore required no complements. But it is certainly remarkable that they were also suppressed in connection with sin-offerings, the latest class of sacrifice, which may be said to have been proporly regulated in the Pontatouch only; this exception may indeed havo boon partially suggostod by the circumstance that the sin-offorings woro pro-eminently tho expiating, that is, symbolically, the bloody sacrifices, but partially also by the legislator's desire of divesting those most solemn offerings from all accessories that have no bearing upon their innermost nature and import, and of absolutely depriving them of the charactor of social cheerfulness. 15 However, he preserved the custom of the minchah in conjunction with holocausts and thank-offerings; he could apprehend no abuse of it, because its meaning was unmistakably disclosed by the whole spirit of his code; he might reasonably expect that its earliest origin would gradually be effaced and forgotten, and that it would be understood in harmony with the Levitical system, which commanded the Hebrews to offer to the Deity the chief objects of their wealth and their food, of their cattle and cereal productions. And he himself made an important step towards maintaining the spiritual character of tho 11 Sec Num. XV. 4-12; comp. XXVIII. 5, 9, 12, 14, 20, 21, 28. 29; XXIX. 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15; Lev. XIV. 21, 12 Comp. Judg. VI. 19, 20. 13 See p. 6. |