o the
destruction of Jerusalem may be studied in Exodus and Leviticus. We
read of orders and companies of priests who offer daily and other
sacrifices according to a rule in which the smallest details are
carefully arranged, sacrifices in which little of the old cheerful
common meal now lingers, but which are mostly of a purificatory or
piacular character. The ritual of sacrifice would not appear to an
outward observer to differ very much from that in use among the
Greeks or Romans; the Jews certainly conducted it on a larger scale.
What end precisely was aimed at in it, the Jew would have found it
perhaps hard to say. It was done, he would say, because the law so
ordered it, and the law must be obeyed even if one did not quite
understand what was enjoined. The daily sacrifice removed the
impurity of the temple staff, and enabled the people to be sure that
the favour of the deity continued with them. Many sacrifices aimed at
the removal of particular sins; thankfulness also was expressed in
them, and other feelings may also have ascended with the smoke from
the altar. To Jews living at a distance the sacrifice, which could be
offered nowhere but at Jerusalem, was the chief symbol, the great
mystery, of their faith.

4. The notion of holiness is closely connected with worship. Things
and persons are holy which belong to Jehovah, and are withdrawn from
common use. These it is dangerous to touch unwarily. Jehovah is an
unapproachable being; the high priest may come into the innermost
part of the temple, but only once a year, and no one else may come
there; the priests may enter the Holy Place, but not the people. To
speak lightly of the temple was a crime the Jews could not forgive.
The Sabbath was the Lord's day; man must not attend on it to his own
worldly concerns. The deity is surrounded with dread to an
unparalleled extent; all that belongs to him is to be regarded with
awe. Connected with the notion of holiness is that of purity. In the
later Persian religion the distinction has always to be anxiously
remembered by the believer between what belongs to the good spirit
and what has fallen under the power of the evil spirit. The Jew,
also, who is called to be holy and separate from other men, lives in
constant dread lest he should touch something unclean, and so forfeit
his own purity. There are clean animals, and unclean ones which he
must not eat; various washings of the hands and of domestic utensils
are needed in