To turn now to a consideration of the work of the Priests. We must doubtless concede to the workers a very lofty motive: it was nothing less than an endeavour to include the whole of the nation's life under the conception that God was dwelling among His people, and that the nation must be holy because He is holy. But in the working out of this purpose the ideal is neither secured nor maintained. The holiness of God is insisted on with much reiteration, but it is conceived of as a physical rather than a moral attribute. It is really only a conception of the unapproachability of God unless certain purely ritual and physical conditions are observed. For the enforcement of this idea the old custom of sacrifice was elaborated and strictly defined, but strangely enough, without explicit teaching as to its meaning. This is peculiar, and it seems to have remained largely unnoticed, for many Biblical expositors have adopted without inquiry the idea that the sacrifices were substitutionary, piacular, and typical of the sacrifice of Christ. The piacular meaning suggests itself at so many points that it is startling to find that it cannot be borne out by careful examination. The sacrifices are in most instances only efficacious for the forgiveness of unintentional sins, or for the atonement of ritualistic mistakes made in ignorance or through inadvertence. The ceremony of laying the hands of the offerer on the head of the intended victim, suggests that a symbolical transference of guilt is taking place, and yet only in one case is this accompanied by a confession of sins, and there the victim is not slain, but led away for Azazel. The sin-offering involved the death of the animal, but an animal was not absolutely necessary for the purpose, and flour might be substituted; and even where we have the slain animal, the idea that the animal has taken the place of the sinner seems to be excluded by the fact that its flesh is regarded as "most holy." The offerings are said to make atonement, but we are not told how this is affected unless in the passage that states that "it is the blood that maketh atonement, by reason of the life." The word translated "atonement" means simply "a covering," and of course may mean that the blood, which is symbolical of the offered life, either covers the eyes of God from beholding the sin, or covers the sinner. We are left then, either with the deduction that the exact significance of the sacrifices was not mentioned because everyone knew what it was, or that it has not been told because it was too mysterious, or that there was no definite meaning attached to them. Originally sacrifice did not bear a piacular significance, but it would be unsafe to argue from this that no substitutionary value was attached to the Levitical sacrifices by these priestly lawyers; indeed the only safe conclusion seems to be that the priests adopted these sacrifices, which were time-honoured, as the proper ritual for the