Far more remarkable than anything yet discussed is the change effected in two other holy days since Bible times. The genius of Judaism is nowhere more conspicuous than in the fuller meanings which have been infused into the New Year's Day and the Day of Atonement. The New Year is the first day of the seventh month (Tishri), when the ecclesiastical year began. In the Bible the festival is only known as a 'day of blowing the shofar' (ram's horn). In the Synagogue this rite was retained after the destruction of the Temple, and it still is universally observed. But the day was transformed into a Day of Judgment, the opening of a ten days' period of Penitence which closed with the Day of Atonement. Here, too, the change effected in a biblical rite transformed its character. 'It needed a long upward development before a day, originally instituted on priestly ideas of national sin and collective atonement, could be transformed into the purely spiritual festival which we celebrate to-day' (Montefiore, _op. cit._, p. 160). But the day is none the less associated with a strict rite, the fast. It is one of the few ascetic ceremonies in the Jewish Calendar as known to most Jews. There is a strain of asceticism in some forms of Judaism, and on this a few words will be said later. But, on the whole, there is in modern Judaism a tendency to underrate somewhat the value of asceticism in religion. Hence the fast has a distinct importance in and for itself, and it is regrettable that the laudable desire to spiritualise the day is leading to a depreciation of the fast as such. But the real change is due to the cessation of sacrifices. In the Levitical Code, sacrifice had a primary importance in the scheme of atonement. But with the loss of the Temple, the idea of sacrifice entirely vanished, and atonement became a matter for the personal conscience. It was henceforth an inward sense of sin translating itself into the better life. 'To purify desire, to ennoble the will--this is the essential condition of atonement. Nay, it is atonement' (Joseph, _Judaism as Creed and Life_, p. 267; cf. _supra_, p. 45). This, in the opinion of Christian theologians, is a shallow view of atonement. But it is at all events an attempt to apply theology to life. And its justification lies in its success.