With the permission of Cyrus, the Jews returned to Palestine, and the Temple at Jerusalem was rebuilt. The question now arose in what forms the ceremonial of the new sanctuary should be conducted. The time-honored festivals, the solemn and joyful convocations, the sacrifices and purifications of the olden time, were all more or less infected with the taint of paganism. Prophecy would have none of them—prophecy, free child of genius, contemned sacrifice, denounced the priesthood, even the temple and its ritual;[1] proclaimed humbleness and loving-kindness as the true service in which Jehovah takes delight. There was formalism on the one hand, idealism on the other. As is usual in such cases, when the time had arrived for turning theory into practice, it was found necessary to effect a compromise. As Christianity in later days adopted the yule-tree into its system, and lit the lamps of the heathen festival of the 25th of December in honor of the nativity of its founder, so the leaders of the Jews, in the fifth century before our era, adopted the feasts and usages of an ancient Nature-worship, breathed into them a new spirit, informed them with a loftier meaning, and made them tokens, symbols of the eternal God. The old foes were thus reconciled; priesthood and prophecy joined hands, and were thenceforth united. As an offspring of this union, we behold a new code of laws and prescriptions, whose marked and inharmonious features at once betray the dual nature of its progenitors. "A rough preliminary draft, as it were," of this code, is preserved in the book of Ezekiel, composed probably about the middle of the fifth century. In its finished and final shape, it forms the bulk of a still later work—of Leviticus, the third of the books of the Pentateuch: of all the discoveries of criticism, none more noteworthy, none we are bound to consider more assured. What lends additional certainty to the result is the circumstance that it was reached independently by two of the most esteemed scholars of our day, the one a Professor of Theology in the University of Leyden,[2] the other a veteran of thought, whose brow is wreathed by the ripe honors of more than fourscore years.[3] Let us briefly advert to the line of argument by which this astonishing conclusion was reached:
The author of the book of Ezekiel was a priest, and one confessedly loyal to the sanctuary of Jerusalem. Now, had the laws of the Levitical code, which minutely describe the ritual of that sanctuary, existed, or been regarded as authoritative in his day, he could not, would not have disregarded, much less contradicted, their provisions. He does this, and, be it remarked, in points of capital importance. In chapter xlv. of Ezekiel are mentioned the great festivals, with the sacrifices appropriate to each; but the feast of Pentecost, commanded in Leviticus, is entirely omitted; also that of the eighth day of tabernacles. The second of the daily burnt-offerings, upon which the legislator of
