priests by a plate of gold bearing the inscription, "Holy is Jehovah;" he might not even uncover his head.[379] The mode of worship was regulated by the law in a systematic manner. Beside the Sabbath, on keeping which the law laid special stress, and regarded it as a symbol of the relation of Israel to Jehovah, the Israelites celebrated feasts at the new moon and the full moon,[380] and held three great national festivals in the year. These festivals marked in the first instance certain divisions of the natural year. Yet the first, the festival of spring, had from ancient times a peculiar religious significance. It has been remarked above that at the spring festival not only were the firstlings of the harvest, the first ears of corn, offered to the tribal God, but that also, as at the beginning of a new season of fertility, a sin offering, the vicarious sacrifice of a lamb, was made for the first-born which were not offered. The spring festival was also the festival of the sparing of the first-born, the Passah or passover of Jehovah (I. 414). The priestly ordinance, which sought to give a definite historical cause for the customs of the festival, and to mark the favours which Jehovah had granted to his people, connects the old usages of this festival with the exodus from Egypt, and we have already seen how from this point of view old ceremonies of this festival were transformed, and new ones were added (I. 445). As the spring festival was kept in the first month of the Hebrew year, Nisan (March-April) (it began on the evening of the day after the new moon, at the rise of the full moon, when the sun is in the Ram), the exodus from Egypt was supposed to have taken place on the morning which followed this night. The Passah continued for seven days, in which, from the morning of the second day to the evening of the seventh, only unleavened bread could be eaten, i.e. the firstlings of the corn in their original form, and no business could be carried on. On each of the seven days of the feast, according to the law, two young bulls, a ram and seven yearling lambs were offered as a burnt offering for Israel in the temple, and besides these a goat, as a sin offering. The neglect of the festival, the eating of leavened bread on any of the days, was threatened by the law with extirpation from the community.[381] As the greater number of the tribes attained to a settled life and agriculture, the feast of the ripe fruits or harvest naturally rose to importance beside this festival of the earliest fruits. Seven full weeks after the commencement of the Passah, or six weeks after the end of it, the feast of new bread was celebrated. The sheaves were brought, the corn trodden out, the first new meal prepared. According to the law, each house in Israel, _i.e._, no doubt, each which possessed land and flocks, had to bring two leavened firstling loaves of new wheaten meal and two yearling lambs as a thank offering.