advantage of. Any Israelite felt himself entitled to offer sacrifice before the Lord. Gideon, Manoah the father of Samson, King Saul, David, Solomon, every person, where duty prompted, offered sacrifice to the Lord. It was the privilege of Israelites.

This privilege of individuals, however, did not interfere with a public and national worship, any more than this later superseded it. The covenant was made with the people, which was a unity. And the worship of this unity was carried on in a central sanctuary. Further, it is evident that it had to be carried on by a representative body called priests, for the whole nation could not at all times assemble within the central sanctuary. It had to be carried on by a smaller body for other reasons also, chiefly in order to indicate what the conditions of such service were, and in what state of sanctity those must be who approached to worship Jehovah. The parallel may be drawn between the condition of things in Israel and that in the Christian Church. Worship and mutual edification are the objects had in view by the Christian people, and for these ends they meet in public worship. But it is manifest that the general body must, so to speak, resolve or condense itself into a smaller body of persons who become in a manner its representatives, if these great ends are to be well carried out. It was the same in Israel. The priestly body were the representatives of the people. But the existence of the priestly class as representatives of the people did not supersede or absorb the priestly privileges of the individual, any more than the ministry of the Church supersedes the ministry in prayer and exhortation of the father and the individual.

The selection of a priestly class to minister before the Lord was necessary from the nature of the circumstances in which the people were placed; but, besides being necessary, it was very suitable for the purpose of impressing upon men's minds what the true requirements of serving the Lord were. Those who draw near in service to Him must be like Him in character and mind. This necessity, if it

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could not be actually realised, could at least be symbolised in so graphic a way as to teach it. The imperfect holiness. of the holy nation made the priesthood necessary. As Ewald says: "In the sacred community of Jahveh the original purity which, strictly speaking, ought always to be maintained there, is constantly receiving various stains, noticed or unnoticed, expiated or unatoned for . . . and the whole community, while it felt the necessity for strictest purity, felt also that Jahveh's sanctuary dwelt in the midst of the countless impurities of the people, and was never free from their defilement. Between the sanctity of Jahveh and the perpetually sin-stained condition of the people there is therefore a chasm which seems infinite. All the offerings and gifts which the members of the community bring are only like a partial expiation and payment of a debt which is never entirely wiped out. To wipe out all these stains, to bear the guilt of the nation, and constantly to restore the Divine grace, is the final office of the priest. How hard a one duly to fulfil!" (Antiq., Solly's trans., p. 271).

If a sacerdotal caste is to maintain for Israel the relations with Jehovah which Israel ought as a whole to maintain, this caste must possess in a greater degree than Israel the qualities of sanctity and purity essential to fellowship with Jehovah. In order to secure this, an elaborate system of selection and purification was carried on. First, the basis of the priestly caste was made very wide. The sanctuary and presence of Jehovah was surrounded by a deep mass of specially consecrated persons, the outer circle of which stood far away from it, although nearer it than the ordinary Israelite. There took place within the class of priestly servants a process of exclusion and narrowing, reducing the number and elevating the sanctity, as the approach was made to the presence of the Lord. First a special tribe was set apart, that of Levi, which alone was privileged to perform any act of service connected with the tabernacle. Then, second, within this wider circle was the narrower one of the priests, or sons of

Aaron, who alone could minister directly before God, although they were only admitted to the mediate nearness represented by the holy place. And, finally, gathering up all the virtue and sanctity of the class into himself, there was the high priest, who alone could enter the holiest of all, although even he could enter only once a year.

The other line of sanctification consisted not in diminishing the number of the caste, but in the symbolical acts of purification. Had it been possible to secure really greater godliness in the priest, it would have been demanded. But what could not be secured in reality was expressed in symbol. The priest must be bodily free from all deformity. Then he went through numerous lustrations and purifications by many kinds of sacrifices. Then to exhibit the purity needful for his office he was clothed in linen clean and white.

Notwithstanding these distinctions between the priesthood and the people, the strictly representative character of the priests, particularly of the high priest, is the important point in the institution. In the services of the priesthood Israel was itself serving the Lord. The priesthood was an idealised and purified Israel performing the service before Jehovah. In the priesthood Israel offered its sacrifices to the Lord, and in the priesthood it carried away the blessing, righteousness from the God of salvation.

The meaning of the sacrificial system is of importance here. The great primary fact to start from is that of the state of covenant relation between God and the worshipping people. Though in covenant, the people were not thought of as sinless. They might fall into errors, and they were compassed with infirmities. For these sins of infirmity, or ignorance as they were called, an atonement was provided in the sacrificial system. This is the meaning of the system. It is an institution provided of God for sins. committed within the covenant. For some sins there was no atonement; sins done with a high hand cut a man off from the covenant people. But for all sins of error, which included not only sins done ignorantly, but sins of infirmity

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though committed consciously, the sacrificial system provided an expiation. The effect of them was to restore those who offered them to their place in the covenant which they had forfeited.

There are two passages regarding the priest in Zechariah. In one (vi. 11) the priest is crowned. He does not seem, however, to be identified with the Messiah, the man the Branch. Rather the future is modelled upon the condition of things then existing. There were two heads to the State, symbolised by the two olive trees, the civil head and the hierarchical. These two are not conceived as united in one person; but the counsel of peace is between them both. Both sit on a throne, and they act in concord.

In the other passage (iii. 1–5) the high priest Joshua represents the people. His filthy garments are removed, and he is clothed with rich apparel; in token that the sins of the people whom he represents are taken away, and they are clothed with holiness before the Lord.

2. Sacrifice.

We have to notice here, however, two questions which have been raised regarding sacrifice. These are, first, the question as to how it originated; and, second, the question as to the primitive idea connected with it, or expressed by it. There is much difference of opinion in regard to both these questions. On the first question there are two views which may be noticed here. There is, first, the view that sacrifice was ordained and suggested to men directly by God. This is the idea that it is part of a primitive revelation. To this theory there are two objections: (1) The Old Testament gives no countenance to it. The reference to sacrifice in the story of Cain and Abel seems to regard their offerings rather as spontaneous, the instinctive expression of their feeling of dependence on God and thankfulness to Him. The Priests' Code, it is true, regards sacrifice in Israel as due directly to God's commands to Moses. Hence this writing recognises no

offering of sacrifice prior to Moses, maintaining perfect silence regarding such sacrifices as that of Noah after the Flood, those of Abraham and the patriarchs, and all preceding the Exodus. But the author's silence can hardly be treated as any evidence of his view of the origin of sacrifice in general, but only of the sacrifices operating in Israel. This work is a history of Israel's sacred institutions institutions which, at the time when the book was written, had attained their full development, and were in that sense God's final revelation to His people as to how He desired to be served. And (2) the universal prevalence of sacrifice among the heathen nations seems to imply that sacrifice was in some way a natural expression of man's sense of his relation to God. The hypothesis of a primitive revelation, the remains of which lingered among all the peoples of the world, and which expressed itself through sacrifice, is precarious. It certainly cannot be proved; and to explain sacrifice by it must leave the origin of that institution involved in the same precarious and hypothetical condition.

But this leads to the other question, What was the primitive idea underlying sacrifice? The answers have mainly run on two lines, the ethical, and what might be called the physical. It has been supposed that man's sense of evil, of his own inadequate service to God, and of God's holiness, made him feel that reparation was due to God, and that he deserved death. Hence, to express this feeling, he brought living creatures to God as his own substitutes, inflicting on them the penalty of death deserved by himself. Sacrifice was thus from the first piacular and propitiatory. The objection to this idea is, that it seems to assume ideas present in the mind of primitive man as the subject of his own sin, and of death as the deserved penalty of it, which rather belong to an advanced period of ethical reflection. And the same objection applies, though in less degree, to a variety of the above view, which regards sacrifice as the expression of homage and dependence; in other words, a sort of acted prayer.

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