In the customs of worship, and in all customs to which there is attached a definite religious significance, we find analogies in the heathen religions which show that they must have had a common origin. Chief among these must be classed the custom of sacrifice. It is natural, therefore, to find that sacrifice, which has such an undoubtedly natural explanation in heathen religions as either the food of the god or a means of propitiation, is nowhere in the Old Testament explicitly defined as to its intent and meaning. The root idea is, however, clearly seen in such customs as that of the setting forth of the Shewbread, however much the meaning may have become spiritualised by a purer idea of the nature of Jehovah, while in Ezek. xliv. 7, 15, this seems to be quite explicitly stated. As the conception of Deity was spiritualised, the idea of material food would doubtless grow too repugnant to be retained in the bare offering of flesh, and so we get the burnt-offering, the smoke of which Jehovah can smell. The blood especially, forms the correct offering, since being the seat of life, it belongs altogether to God. On the idea of the sacrifice being used as a propitiation to the Deity, it follows naturally that the more costly the victim the more acceptable it will be, and of all sacrifices the most efficacious will be that of a human being. The story of Abram and Isaac in Gen. xxii. is made to serve as a condemnation of human sacrifices, but the origin of the story may very well have pointed the other way, as indeed the first part of the story does; and that the practice was common may be seen from 2 Kings xvi. 3; xxi. 6; Jer. vii. 31; xix. 5 (Delete the last words of Jer. xix. 5, as an evident gloss from vii. 31). True, in these passages human sacrifice is said to be in express contravention of the will of Jehovah, but no such comment is added to the story of Jephthah (Judges xi. 30 ff.), while in Micah vi. 7, the sacrifice of the firstborn is simply classed among other sacrifices as part of the common idea. A remnant of this horrible practice is probably to be found in the consecration of the firstborn to Jehovah, while the legality of human sacrifice is determinative in the common practice of the "ban," by which all captives were devoted to Jehovah, and any violation visited by the direst vengeance; as in the case of Saul and Agag. Another use of the sacrifice was that of ratifying a covenant by cutting a victim in parts, between which the contracting parties passed (Gen. xv. 9-17; Jer. xxxiv. 18).