During the patriarchal age the father of the family was priest. He offered sacrifice for the family. The grandfather, great grandfather, etc., was high priest over his posterity for all the generations descending from him while he lived. Adam was high priest of the whole race during his life. Then the high priesthood descended to each of his sons for the posterity of each. So Noah was high priest of all the post-diluvian world during his life. Then it descended to each of his sons. Each son was high priest of his branch of the family, in all its generations, during his life. In that age, therefore, as in this, there was a universal priesthood. The priesthood of the Christian dispensation is, in a certain sense, modeled after the patriarchal and in contrast with the Jewish. It is after the order of Melchisedec, and not after that of Aaron. Melchisedec was high priest of that division of the human family to which Abraham belonged, and this distinguished patriarch paid tithes to him. If we do not misinterpret the law of the priesthood of that age, this could have been none other than Shem. Shem was then living, and Noah was dead; and Abraham belonged to Shem's posterity. Hence no one else could be high priest while Shem lived. Many have thought that because it is said he was "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life," that he could not be a man. But they fail to observe that he was without these things _in the Aaronic priesthood_. For it is said that he had a genealogy, but that it was not in the priestly family. "And they indeed of the sons of Levi that receive the priest's office have commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though these have come out of the loins of Abraham; but he whose genealogy is not counted from them hath taken tithes of Abraham." Shem had neither father nor mother, nor beginning of days, nor end of life, in the sense that the Aaronic priests had them; and this is all that is affirmed of Melchisedec.