We may go further and say that by the cultus-legislation the cultus is estranged from its own nature, and overthrown in its own sphere.  That is most unmistakably the case with regard to the festivals.  They have lost their reference to harvest and cattle, and have become historical commemorations:  they deny their birth from nature, and celebrate the institution of supernatural religion and the gracious acts of Jehovah therewith connected.  The broadly human, the indigenous element falls away, they receive a statutory character and a significance limited to Israel.  They no longer draw down the Deity into human life on all important occasions, to take part in its joys and its necessities:  they are not HUMAN ATTEMPTS with such naive means as are at command to please the Deity and render Him favourable.  They are removed from the natural sphere, and made DIVINE MEANS OF GRACE, which Jehovah has instituted in Israel as sacraments of the theocracy.  The worshipper no longer thinks that in his gift he is doing God a pleasure, providing Him with an enjoyment:  what pleases Him and is effectual is only the strict observance of the rite.  The sacrifices must be offered exactly according to prescription:  at the right place, at the right time, by the right individuals, in the right way.  They are not based on the inner value of what is done, on the impulse arising out of fresh occasions, but on the positive command of a will outside the worshipper, which is not explained, and which prescribes every particular.  The bond between cultus and sensuality is severed:  no danger can arise of an admixture of impure immoral elements, a danger which was always present in Hebrew antiquity.  Worship no longer springs from an inner impulse, it has come to be an exercise of religiosity.  It has no natural significance; its significance is transcendental, incomparable, not to be defined; the chief effect of it, which is always produced with certainty, is atonement.  For after the exile the consciousness of sin, called forth by the rejection of the people from the face of Jehovah, was to a certain extent permanent:  even when the hard service of Israel was accomplished and the wrath really blown over, it would not disappear.

If then the value of the sacred offerings lay not in themselves but in obedience to the commandments of God, the centre of gravity of the cultus was removed from that exercise itself and transferred to another field, that of morality.  The consequence was that sacrifices and gifts gave way to ascetic exerctses, which were more strictly and more simply connected with morality.  Precepts given originally in reference to the consecration of the priests for their religious functions were extended to the laity:  the observance of these laws of physical cleanliness was of much more radical importance in Judaism than the great public cultus, and led by the straightest road towards the theocratic ideal of holiness and of universal priesthood.  The whole of life was compressed into a certain holy path; there was always a divine command to be fulfilled, and by thinking of it a man kept himself from following after the desires and lusts of his own heart.  On the other hand this private cultus, which constantly required attention, kept alive and active the individual sense of sin.