The priests were poor; they were very often entirely unlettered; they seem to have had for many centuries but little influence on the moral and spiritual life of the people. Hardly any good is recorded of them as a body throughout the four hundred and ten years during which the first Temple stood, as very little good had been recorded of them in the earlier ages, and not much in the ages which were to follow. We read of scarcely a single moral protest or spiritual awakenment which had its origin in the priestly body. Their temptation was to be absorbed in their elaborate ceremonials. As these differed but little from the ritual functions of surrounding heathendom they seem to have relapsed into apostasy with shameful readiness, and to have submitted without opposition to the idolatrous aberrations of king after king, even to the extent of admitting the most monstrous idols and the most abhorrent pollutions into the sacred precincts of the Temple, which it was their work to guard. When a prophet arose out of their own supine and torpid ranks he invariably counted his brethren amongst his deadliest antagonists. They ridiculed him as they ridiculed Isaiah; they smote him on the cheek as they smote Jeremiah. The only thing which roused them was the spirit of revolt against their vapid ceremonialism, and their abject obedience to kings. The Presbyterate could have no worse ideal, and could follow no more pernicious example, than that of the Jewish priesthood. The days of their most rigid ritualism were the days also of their most desperate moral blindness. The crimes of their order culminated when they combined, as one man, under their high priest Caiaphas and their sagan Annas[328] to reject Christ for Barabbas, and to hand over to the Gentiles for crucifixion the Messiah of their nation, the Lord of Life. FOOTNOTES: [315] "Sacrificia symbolicæ preces" (Outram, _De Sacrif._, p. 108). [316] _Yoma_, f. 21, _a_. [317] On vast ancient holocausts, see Athen., _Deipnos._, i. 5; Diod. Sic., xi. 72; Porph., _De abstin._, ii. 60; Suet., _Calig._, 14; Sen., _De Benef._, iii. 27; Ammian. Marcel., xxii. 4, xxv. 4; and other passages collected by the diligence of commentators. See, too, Josephus (_B. J._, VI. ix. 3) who reckons that at a passover in Nero's time 256,000 sacrifices were offered. [318] Amos vi. 5; 1 Chron. xxiii. 5. [319] Edersheim, _The Temple and its Services_, p. 54. [320] The chronicler says that there were 38,000 Levites, of which 24,000 were "to oversee the work of the house of the Lord; and 6000 were officers and judges, and 4000 door-keepers; and 4000 praised the Lord with the instruments which I made," _said David_, "to praise therewith."