Excerpt from Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series, the Fundamental Institutions Testament and of all Christian theology turns on the ideas of sacrifice and priesthood. In'what they have to say on these heads the New Testament writers presuppose, as the basis of their argument, the notion of sacrifice and priest hood. Current among the Jews and embodied in the ordinances of the Temple. But, again, the ritual of the Temple was not in its origin an entirely novel thing; the precepts of the Pentateuch did not create a priesthood and a sacrificial service on an altogether independent basis, but only reshaped and remodelled, in accordance with a more Spiritual doctrine, institutions of an older type, which in many particulars were common to the Hebrews with their heathen neighbours. Every one who reads the Old Testa ment with attention is struck with the fact that the origin and rationale of sacrifice are nowhere fully explained; that sacrifice is an essential part of religion is taken for granted, as something which is not a doctrine peculiar to Israel but is universally admitted and acted on without as well as within the limits of the chosen people. Thus when we wish thoroughly to study the New Testament doctrine of sacrifice, we are carried back step by step-tillflgv'e reach a point where we have to ask what sacrifice meant, not to the old Hebrews alone, but to the whole circle of nations of which they formed a part. By considerations of this sort we are led to the conclusion that no one of the religions of Semitic origin which still exercise so great an influence on the lives of millions of mankind can be studied completely and exhaustively without a subsidiary enquiry into the Older traditional religion of the Semitic race. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.