4. FRANK-INCENSE.

The frank-incense was no doubt originally chosen for sacrifices on account of its fragrance, which was supposed to be pleasing to the gods. It was, therefore, employed among most of the ancient nations. whenever they were able to procure it; and in some religions of middle and western Asia, it rose lavishly on the altars, and formed the chief offering (p. 66). It was burnt either as an independent oblation or as an accompaniment of other gifts; and it was deemed especially desirable in conjunction with animal sacrifices, to counteract the illodour inseparable from the total or partial burning of the victims. In their earliest stages, the Israelites naturally shared these anthropomorphic views, of which a trace is left in the Hebrew phrase "a sweet odour to the Lord." However, as in all other instances, they gradually modified the primitive and pagan notions, in accordance with their purer conceptions of the nature of the Deity. They understood the terms in a spiritual sense. Frank-incense was regarded as a symbol of the devotion of the soul to God, and of its approach to His holiness. It became a imetaphor for forvent and contrite prayer. It was, thereforo, burnt entire; no part of it, as was the case with the oil, bolonged to the priest, because the prayer was addressed to God exclusively, to none else. It was put alone, with the exclusion of wine and oil, on the shew-bread, which symbolised the daily worship and supplication of the holy community. It became customary for the poople to pray in the Court while the fumigation was performed in the Holy; and the fragrance of the incense and the prayers of the pious were boliovod to ascend simultaneously to the throne of God. It was, therefore, invosted with the power of atonoment. It thus had, in vegetable offerings, the force attributed to the blood in animal sacrifices. Its fragrance might even represent the Divine spirit and godlike sanctity.

But frank-incense was, like oil, interdicted at the sin-offering and the offering of jealousy; for the latter also was an oblation "that brings iniquity to remembrance." Both were presented in a condition very different from the qualities symbolised by oil and frank-incense. They reflected neither peace nor devotional prayer; the former had, or might have been, forfeited by guilt; and the lattor is accepted from a pure mind only.

The thoughtful symbolism of the sacrificial rites will, therefore, be evident from the following survey. Both oil and frank-incense were employed at the independent vegetable oblations; oil alone at the offering of the High-priest on the day of his 'initiation; incense alone with the show-bread; but neither oil nor incenso at the sin-offerings

and the offering of jealousy. Both were naturally also excluded from the two firstfruit-loaves of Pentecost, because these loaves were leavened, and could therefore not be burnt on the altar, either wholly or partially.

But while plain frank-incense accompanied the sacrifices, the daily fumigations in the Sanctuary consisted of four ingredients specified in the Law. For incense was primitively and universally employed with offerings; it was a simple and natural means of external worship; it was, therefore, retained in the Pentatouch from early usage. But the preparation from the four ingredients is of later introduction; it is specifically Lovitical; it is ordained in harmony with the complicated and more splendid ritual of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Hence incense was prescribed for all private worshippers, but the compound was reserved for the priests; the one was burnt mostly in the Court, the other in the Holy only.

5. 6. WHEAT AND BARLEY.

Wheat was naturally regarded as the choicest, barley as an inferior grain. The former was, therefore, employed for all ordinary oblations, the latter in some exceptional cases, where its use may readily be accounted for. As wheat is compact and nutritious, and as it is heavy in weight and has little bran, the term "fat of wheat" occurs as a usual mothaphor, and lator writers declared it oven as "the only food worthy of man, the creature endowed with speech and Divine reason."

But barley was considorod poor and common; it bore the epithet vile; it was deemed fit ospecially for beasts; it had in Palestino about half the value of wheat; and it was extensively and perhaps ordinarily employed for bread by the poorer, though occasionally also by the wealthier classes. Barley-meal was, therefore, used for the offering of jealousy: from a reason similar to that which suggested the exclusion of oil and frankincense, the costlier whoaten flour was eschewed in an oblation stern and sad in its character, and presented when the dearest relations of domestic life and affection were disturbed or imperilled.

But the presentation of a barley-sheaf on Passover was prompted by considerations entirely external; for barley ripens earlier; it was, therefore, more appropriate for a firstfruit-offering, which marked the beginning of the corn-harvest, and which gratitude demanded not to delay beyond necessity. All symbolical explanations of the command are, therefore, inevitably artificial.

1 Exod. XXX. 31—–38; see Commentary on Exodus pp. 430, 431.

7. BLOOD.

The blood of victims is, in the Pentateuch, invested with a meaning which cannot be mistaken. Probably starting from the simple observations that a considerable loss of blood causes death, and that the healthful action of the nerves and muscles depends on its free and normal circulation, the Hebrews held that the blood is "the soul" of the animal, that is, the principle of its existence. It was a fundamental axiom, "The life of the flesh is in the blood", or "The blood is the soul"; soul and blood woro correlative notions; honco dying was expressed by "pouring out the soul"; to "shod blood" meant "to destroy life"; the blood and the soul of the murdered were said alike to cry to heaven for vengeance; "pure blood" became synonymous with "a pure soul"; and even the combination "the soul of pure blood" was formed to denote a guiltless person. "The blood is the libation of life", was a well-understood maxim; for "the law-givor esteemed it to contain the soul and the spirit"; or "the broath is the essence of the soul, which has no place independently of the blood, but resembles it and is blended with it." Blood was, therefore, considered most sacred; it seemed connected, by a mysterious bond, with the continuance of that breath, which God infuses in producing a living crealure. The Bible is so consistent in this conception that it indeed identifies blood with the principle of life or "the soul", but never with the power of reason, or with mind, intellect, and "spirit"; the former is ropresonted as animating the outward sonsos, the lattor as a part of the Divine spirit itself. Honco, as animals also were looked upon as endowed with "a soul", they were, in the period of man's innoconce, not designed to be killed for human food; and though, after the flood, their flesh was allowed, their blood was interdicted by a command meant to be binding for all times and in every clime, and enforced under the most fearful penaltios, "Whatever man there is of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eats any manner of blood; I will set My face against that soul that oats blood, and will cut him off from among his people"; which almost vehement severity, directed alike against the native and the foreigner, seems to have been suggested by the opposite and deeprooted practice of the Hebrews and the surrounding nations.2 The same prohibition was, with singular unanimity, upheld by Jewish tradition; it was by an apostolic decree enjoined upon the early Christians

1 Lev. XVII. 10; comp. ver. 14; Gen. IX. 4; Lev. III. 17; VII. 26, 27; XIX. 26; Deut. XII. 16, 23—25; XV. 23.

1

2 Comp. 1 Sam. XIV. 32, 33; Ezek. XXXIII. 25.

1

as a most solemn moral obligation; and it was enforced in the Koran among the fundamental laws of Mohammed's creed. The custom of abstaining from blood seems to go back to very primitive times, and was probably suggested by some simple or cosmic reasons. It has been conjectured, that the Israelites shunned blood as being dangerous to gentleness of tempor, and fostering animal propensities and the sanguinary nature of beasts; or as injuring health, and if copiously taken, even causing death, as is especially the case with ox-blood; or because it was, in Asia, commonly drunk at the sacrifices of heathens, and particularly for the confirmation of oaths or compacts, from which customs the Hebrows were to be weaned. It may be a matter of dispute whether such considerations influenced them in the earliest periods, as they perhaps guided other nations; but they certainly find no echo in the Bible; this regards the blood as the seat of life, and forbids it for that reason exclusively.

And from this point of view alone can the significance of the blood in the Hebrow sacrifices be correctly estimated. As the victim gives up its life for him who offers it, and thereby restores his harmony of mind or secures his atonement, the blood which represents that life is of paramount moment in the economy of the sacrificial ritual; it forms, in a certain respect, its very centre; and not unjustly has it been described as "the kernel of the offering." So intimately was, in the course of time, the prohibition of blood connected with the system of sacrifice, that it was indeed extended to all quadrupeds and birds, but not applied to fishes, because the latter were never offered on the altar. The old Jewish canon "There is no atonement except by blood", accords with the spirit of the Law; the few exceptions judiciously admitted in the Pentateuch, so far from disproving the supreme importance of the blood in sacrifices, help to confirm the general rule. Henco that blood only was efficacious for propitiation, which was shed in killing the animal, not that which flowed from a wound or any unhealthy organ. The blood was not a mere symbol; it was not regarded, “in the hand of God and by His will, as the means of atonement", a view that has been prompted by aversion to the doctrine of vicariousness: it was supposed actually to conciliate the deity as no other agency could have done, because it responds to the demand of "life for life." Nor was it employed in the public ceremonials because it was deemed the seat of desire, passion, and sin, and was, therefore, to be removed; if so, how could it be put on the most sacred parts of the Tabernacle

1 Acts XV. 20, 29; XXI. 25, see Commentary on Genesis p. 117; and so the fathers of the Church.

and Temple, on the altars of the Court and of the Holy, the vail of the Holy of Holics, and the Mercy-seat with the Cherubim? Will it be seriously urged that "the misdeed itself which is engendered by the blood, is purified and ennobled in the presence of God"? Indeed the blood was by no means esteemed impure; it was not considered to have become so because the guilt of the sinner was transferred to the victim; for the latter did not take upon itself the guilt, but the punishment of the offender. On the contrary, the blood had the power of purifying and sanctifying the dedicated implements on which it was sprinkled, as the brazen and the golden altar, or the persons and garments of the High-priest and the common priests at their consecration, the leper after his recovery, and the contracting parties at the conclusion of treaties; in certain cases, it hallowed even those objects which it touched by chance; and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews could declare in general terms, "almost all things are by the Law purged with blood." Had it been impure and not holy, it would not have been put by the Hebrews on the door-posts and lintels of their houses, on the night of the exodus, as a distinctive badge of safety and rescue. It was, like the fat, "the food of God"; and the Law propounded the principle that a sin-offering of which any of the blood was brought into the Holy for atonement, was not to be eaten but entirely burnt; whereas the flesh of the other expiatory sacrificos was consumed by the priests.

However, it would be erroneous to declare the blood as the principle and foundation to which overy sacrificial law or rite is traceable; such inference can at least not be derived from a passage prominent and notable indeed, but surely not so comprehensive in import, namely "The life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul" (Lev. XVII. 11). These words explain merely the signification of the sacrificial blood; they do not disclose the nature and meaning of the sacrifices themselves. If so, they would exclude all bloodless offerings. The sprinkling of blood formed indeed a part in all animal sacrifices, but it was not the principal act in all alike; it had this paramount significance in expiatory offerings, but it was, in holocausts and in thank-offerings, subordinated to other and more characteristic rites. All classes of animal sacrifice considered together, not the blood itself was most essential, but the shedding of the blood, or the killing of the victim, or its death.

The eating of blood was properly interdicted because it was considered to be or to enclose the soul; but on this prohibition also tho