Such are the chief points in connexion with the Paschal rite, at once a sacrifice and a feast. The original directions not being sufficiently minute to meet all the practical difficulties which might hinder the correct performance of the rite, a vast number of directions are given by the Rabbinical writers. In order, for example, to guard against the destruction of any part of the animal by careless cooking over a fire, or the possible fracture of a bone by a sudden jet of flame, the Paschal lamb was rather baked than roasted, being placed in an earthen oven from which the ashes had been removed. In order to prevent it from being burned or blackened against the sides of the oven, (in which case it would be cooked with earthenware and not with fire), it was transfixed with a wooden stake, made from the pomegranate-tree, and a transverse spit was thrust through the shoulders. These spits were made of wood, because a metal spit would become heated in the oven, and would cause all the flesh which it touched to be roasted with metal, and not with fire; and the wood of the pomegranate was chosen, because that wood was supposed not to emit any sap when heated. If a drop of water had fallen on the flesh, the law would have been broken, as that part of the flesh would be considered as boiled, and not roasted. As to the eating of unleavened bread and bitter herbs with the lamb, the custom does not bear on the present subject. In shape the oven seems to have resembled a straw beehive, having an opening at the side by which the fuel could be removed and the lamb inserted. The ceremony of the Passover has been described by several persons, such as the late Consul Rogers and the Dean of Westminster, the latter of whom has given, a most striking and vivid account of the rite in his "Lectures on the Jewish Church."