of entire self-consecration to God. It would give outward expression to the spirit of perfect devotion, conscious of the infinite gulf that separates the sinful creature from the All-holy. In this connexion it is significant that the principal act of public worship in the days of the second temple was the daily or continual burnt-offering, which consisted in the oblation of a spotless lamb every morning and evening. Around this as a centre were grouped the prayers and the praises of Israel; it formed as it were the foundation of the whole sacrificial system. Probably the offering of incense was kindled in the holy place simultaneously with the burnt-offering, while the assembled congregation stood praying without in the court. Together with the burnt-offering, as a kind of supplement were presented the Minchah or meal-offering (a portion of which, called the 'memorial 3,' was burned upon the altar), and the drink-offering consisting of wine. This feature was one common to the Hebrew sacrifices and to those of classic paganism. The name Minchah indicates that the notion of the meal-offering was that of a tribute paid by the worshipper to God and wholly given over to Him, whereas in the case of animal sacrifice there was originally at least a communion feast in which God and the offerer shared. The accessories of the burnt-offering are among those many details which are of the nature of survivals in the Mosaic religion. Certainly when sacrifice had become an act of national homage to Jehovah, maintained at the public cost, the daily burnt-offering acquired unique importance and dignity. We may judge of the importance of the Tamid or continual' burntoffering by the fact that its cessation was thought

1 Riehm, A TI. Theologie, p. 119: 'Wie die Erhabenheit der Gottheit über die irdische Welt in allen semitischen Religionen stark betont wird, und im Mosaismus in der Idee der Heiligkeit Jahves mit besonderem Nachdruck sich geltend macht, so nimmt auch das Brandopfer im Kultus Israels die Hauptstelle ein.'

2 Ex. xxix. 42; Num. xxviii. 3.

3 77018 (LXX. μvnμóovvov) Lev. ii. 2.

R

practically to involve the abolition of public worship. Its maintenance came to be regarded as the absolutely necessary condition of covenant-union between Jehovah and His people, and in daily life the devout Jew followed with an inward longing and spiritual sympathy the national homage which continually ascended on behalf of himself and all the people of God in the stated ritual of the Temple 2.'

The levitical system of sacrifice is completed by the peace-offering, which is of peculiar interest as reproducing in a higher and more spiritual form the main features of primaeval sacrifice. Originally, when the slaying of animals for food was a comparatively rare event, all slaughter was regarded as a sacrificial act; and, conversely, a sacrifice was habitually connected with a communion feast. Accordingly the Zebachim represent the original type of sacrifice out of which all other forms were developed. In early ages sacrifice was a family or tribal action, the object of which was to re-establish the bond of communion or fellowship between the tribe and its god through joint participation in a sacred victim. Such sacrifices followed by feasts were characteristic of a period when religious ideas were of a physical cast, it being the fundamental conception of ancient religion that the gods and their worshippers formed one community united by the tie of kinship. The evidence of the earlier Old Testament books shows that the primitive religion of Israel so far resembled in its general character that of the other Semites, that a meal was almost always connected with a sacrifice. In ancient Israel,' says Cornill,

1 See Dan. viii. 11 foll., xi. 31; cp. xii. 11. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p 79, says: 'According to 2 Kings xvi. 15, an by in the morning and a

in the evening were daily offered in the temple of Jerusalem, in the time of Ahaz... . In the Priestly Code the evening Minchah has risen to the dignity of a second 'Olah; but at the same time survives the daily Minchah of the high-priest, and is now offered in the morning also (Lev. vi. 12-16).'

2 Robertson Smith, O. T. in J. C. p. 252.

See Religion of the Semites, p. 33.

* Cp. Wellhausen, Prolegomena, p. 71; Cornill, Der Israelitische Pro

the worship of Jehovah had always a blithe and joyous character. . . . It consisted in making merry before God. In the sacrifice, of which God received a definite portion, while the worshipper himself consumed the rest, a man entered into table-fellowship with Deity; he was the guest of his God, and thereby became doubly assured of union with Him.' When, however, the Deuteronomic law of one sanctuary and one altar came into force, the eating of flesh inevitably ceased to be a purely religious act. It is deeply interesting, however, to observe that the crowning sacrifice of the levitical system consecrates, as it were, the very oldest forms of Hebrew worship, and reproduces in an age of heightened spiritual aspiration the mystical idea which underlay the ancient sacrificial meal, viz. that man's highest life consists in living fellowship with God, which is most appropriately typified by a sacred meal1.

There were some peculiar features in the ritual of the peace-offering. A larger latitude was allowed in the choice of a victim, and there were certain ceremonies of presentation-'heaving' and 'waving 2'-of which the explanation is somewhat doubtful; but the most prominent feature of the sacrifice was the subsequent meal, in which God, the officiating priest, and the offerer, together with his friends and such poor as he might invite, alike participated. The inner fat portions-those in which the sacred life was believed specially to reside—were burned upon the altar as the

phetismus, pp. 38 foll.; Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel (ed. 1), PP. 98, 99; and Religion of the Semites, pp. 236 foll.

1 Conversely, the sin of eating upon the mountains' (Ezek. xviii. 6 foll.) consisted in the fact that it involved holding communion with false gods: the meal was a token of fellowship as a guest with the idol. Cp. the argument of 1 Cor. x. 20.

.תנופה and תרומה .Heb 2

The ceremony probably implied simple presentation to God, the 'waving' being a movement to and fro, the 'heaving' a movement up and down. Rabbinic writers, however, explain it as a recognition of the divine omnipresence. See Oehler, 133 (vol. ii. pp. 6 foll.); and some interesting details mentioned in Willis, Worship, &c., pp. 175 foll.

portion appropriated to the deity; the wave-breast was the perquisite of the whole body of priests, the heave-shoulder of the officiating minister. All that remained was eaten by the offerer and his friends on the day of sacrifice, those who took part in the meal being obliged to be ceremonially clean1. The broad conception of the whole ceremony was that God received the offerer at His table, the part returned to the worshipper being made the occasion of a blessing in which others might share. Such was the main characteristic of the peace-offering in all its forms; the special species of such offerings, whether votive, freewill, or eucharistic, it is unnecessary for present purposes to describe in detail.

IV.

Our object in these lectures is to indicate the principles which should guide a Christian student in his use of the Old Testament. Having therefore briefly described the two principal institutions in which the covenant-relationship that subsisted between Jehovah and His chosen people found expression, it remains to consider the symbolic significance of the sanctuary as illustrated by the express teaching of the New Testament, and the spiritual ideas which the sacrificial system was intended to embody.

And here we must proceed with caution. What is called typical interpretation consists in the application of things and incidents described in the Old Testament to those which are recorded in the New 2. And the question may fairly be asked, How are we to determine in any given instance whether a thing is typical or not?

1 Lev. vii. 19.

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"Typus historiae est sensus Scripturae mysticus, quo res gestae vel facta Vet. Testamenti praefigurant et adumbrant res in Novo Testamento gestas.' Glassius ap. Waterland, pref. to Scripture Vindicated (Works, vol. vi. p. 12). Glassius distinguishes between types historical and prophetical. The ceremonial law is an instance of the first, Jeremiah making yokes and bonds (Jer. xxvii. 2) of the second.

The answer has been given, that since the warrant for typical interpretation is supplied by Holy Scripture itself, we are not justified in going beyond the limits which it expressly sanctions in various instances. In spite of its habitual reserve on such points, there are certain cases in which the New Testament itself indicates that two objects or incidents 'were so connected that the one was designed to prefigure the other'; that both were in fact fore-ordained as constituent parts of the same general scheme of providence 1.' Others, while recognizing the necessity of safeguards against abuse of the method in question, plead for a certain liberty of interpretation, 'beyond the precedent, but according to the spirit of Scripture. In the case, however, of the Jewish sanctuary and ritual we are not left destitute of a key which unlocks the spiritual sense of the passages describing them. Moreover, the belief that the ordinances of Hebrew religion were intended to foreshadow the mysteries of the new dispensation may legitimately be inferred from the very notion of inspiration. For inspiration implies a special action of the one Spirit of Him to whom all his works are known from the beginning of the world, an operation whereby He ever guided and controlled the course of redemptive history, and continuously informed the minds of those who from time to time assisted in organizing the polity, the law, or the ceremonial worship of Israel. At the same time revelation has been progressive, accommodating itself to the actual condition of mankind, through material things and rudimentary institutions indicating its spiritual purpose and goal. Thus it is that the New Testament writers discern in the Law at once a temporary discipline and a prophecy of good things to come *. Their general

1 See Marsh, Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible, PP. 375, 376.

2 Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, ch. i. § 3.

3 Acts xv. 18.

Iren. Haer. iv. 15. 1: 'Lex et disciplina erat illis et prophetia futurorum.' Cp. Heb. x. 1. A historical sketch of the patristic view of the