even in the pre-exilian period, but alongside of it at that time, the freewill private offerings had a much more important place, and bulked much more largely.  In the law the tamid is in point of fact the fundamental element of the worship, for even the sacrifices of Sabbaths and feast days consist only of its numerical increase (compare Numbers xxviii., xxix.).  Still later, when it is said in the Book of Daniel that the tamid was done away, this is equivalent to saying that the worship was abolished (viii. 11-13, xi. 31, xii. 11).  But now the dominant position of the daily, Sabbath day, and festival tamid means that the sacrificial worship had assumed a perfectly firm shape, which was independent of every special motive and of all spontaneity; and further (what is closely connected with this), that it took place for the sake of the congregation,—­the “congregation” in the technical sense attached to that word in the Law.  Hence the necessity for the general temple-tax, the prototype of which is found in the poll-tax of half a shekel for the service of the tabernacle in Exodus xxx. 11 seq.  Prior to the exile, the regular sacrifice was paid for by the Kings of Judah, and in Ezekiel the monarch still continues to defray the expenses not only of the Sabbath day and festival sacrifices (xiv. 17 seq.), but also of the tamid (xlvi. 13-15). 1

************************************* 1.  Compare LXX*.  The Massoretic text has corrected the third person (referring to the princes) into the second, making it an address to the priests, which, however, is quite impossible in Ezekiel. *************************************

It is also a mark of the date that, according to Exodus xxx., the expenses of the temple worship are met directly out of the poll-tax levied from the community, which can only be explained by the fact that at that time there had ceased to be any sovereign.  So completely was the sacrifice the affair of the community in Judaism that the voluntary qorban of the individual became metamorphosed into a money payment as a contribution to the cost of the public worship (Mark vii., xii. 42 seq; Matthew xxvii. 6).

The second point is this:  Just as the special purposes and occasions of sacrifice fall out of sight, there comes into increasing prominence the one uniform and universal occasion—­that of sin; and one uniform and universal purpose—­that of propitiation.  In the Priestly Code the peculiar mystery in the case of all animal sacrifices is atonement by blood; this appears in its purest development in the case of the sin and trespass offerings, which are offered as well for individuals as for the congregation and for its head.  In a certain sense the great day of atonement is the culmination of the whole religious and sacrificial service, to which, amid all diversities of ritual, continuously underlying reference to sin is common throughout.  Of this feature the ancient