The firstborn of all animals, of beasts as well as of men, was owed to the gods. The belief was not confined to the Canaanites. We find traces of it in Babylonian literature, and all the denunciations of the prophets before the Exile failed to eradicate it from the mind of the Jew. Up to the closing days of the Jewish monarchy, the valley of the sons of Hinnom was defiled with the smoke of the sacrifices wherein, as it is euphemistically said, the kings and people of Jerusalem made their children to pass through the fire. The belief, indeed, was consecrated by the Mosaic law itself. Human sacrifice, it is true, was forbidden, but the firstborn, nevertheless, had to be redeemed (Exod. xxxiv. 20). Like the firstfruits and the firstborn of beasts, Yahveh had declared that the firstborn of the sons of Israel also belonged to Him (Exod. xxii. 29). He could claim them, and it was of His own freewill that He waived the claim. And along with this assertion of His claim to the firstborn went the doctrine of vicarious punishment. It was not the firstborn only in whose case a substitution was allowed: once a year the sins of the whole people were laid upon the head of the scapegoat, which was then driven like an evil spirit into the wilderness. The idea of vicarious punishment, which lies at the foundation of historical Christianity, had already found expression in the Mosaic law. The sacrifice of the firstborn was thus part of a larger conception behind which there lay a profound truth. The sins of the father were visited upon the child in more senses than one; the child, in fact, could become an expiation for them, and divert to himself the anger of the gods. Experience had shown how often the son must suffer for the deeds of the parent, and the inference was drawn that if that suffering were voluntarily offered to heaven by the parent, he would receive all the benefits that flowed from it. Moreover, the gods had a right to the firstborn, if they chose to exercise it; and in offering the firstborn, accordingly, man was only giving back to them what was strictly their own. The heathenism of the Mosaic age went no further. Israel was the first to learn that the law of the substitution of the firstborn for the sins of the father was subordinate to a higher and more general law—that of vicarious punishment. As the firstborn of men could be substituted for the parent, so, too, could a lower animal, or the price of a lower animal, be substituted for the firstborn of men. It was not the sacrifice which the God of Israel demanded, but the spirit of sacrifice; not the blood of bulls and goats, or even men, but obedience and readiness to give up all that was dearest and best at the command of God.