XCII. Besides the three cardinal articles above stated, the observance of which, in their general tendencies at least, is incumbent on all mankind, there are in the sacred code various special prescriptions obligatory only on Israel, as him who first received the revelation, and who is bound to preserve it with particular means, and to testify it for ever, by his acts and by his very existence. Through such prescriptions, the law designed either to keep alive among the people the idea of the high mission entrusted to it, and the memory of signal favours which Providence prodigally conferred upon it in the early times of the institution, or to initiate it into a more scrupulous sanctitude, by interdicting to it some things that are left permissive to others. It is not necessary here to give a complete list of such precepts, as the mere inspection of the sacred text suffices to point them out; and we shall confine ourselves to indicating some of the more important. Pre-eminent among them stands the sabbath, the elevated tendency of which has been already explained in the Sinaitic revelation; next come the three Festivals of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, which, besides being linked to, and combined with, rural events and circumstances, are also designed to commemorate luminous epochs in the national history; the great day of atonement, as a highly important act of reconciliation with God; the circumcision, as an ineffaceable mark of the adoption of Israel; the assiduous study of the Divine law, as the purest source of truth, and repository of the religious idea; the fringes in the garments, the phylacteries or frontlets, the inscriptions on the door-posts, and such like commemorative means; the redemption of the firstborn children; and the offering of the first fruits, as a demonstration of filial dependance on, and gratitude to, the Supreme Cause; the prohibition to feed on certain loathsome animals, and reptiles and insects, in order not to assimilate to the human body substances of a low, imperfect, and possibly deteriorated organization; the interdiction of marriages between certain degrees of relationships, because wanting in the antagonism required in connubial unions;[5] the duty of offering up prayer, one of the noblest offices of piety, and the most effectual medium of communion with God; that of confessing sins, the inevitable consequence of human frailty; the injunctions to reject idolatry, divinations, charms, exorcisms, sortileges, and all manner of superstitions, all of which are obstacles to the development of the religious idea; and several other precepts, which may be found dispersed throughout the sacred code, all having similar tendencies, and coming more or less directly within the scope we have assigned to them.