This was at that period the sole actual panegyris. [national festivall The feasts at the beginning of summer may indeed also have been observed at this early period (Isa ix. 2), but in smaller local circles.  This distinction is still discernible in Deuteronomy, for although in that book the feast of tabernacles is not theoretically higher than the others, in point of fact it alone is observed from beginning to end at the central sanctuary, while Easter, on the other hand, is for the most part kept at home, being only during the first day observed at Jerusalem; moreover, the smaller demand is much more emphatically insisted on than the larger, so that the first seems to have been an innovation, the latter to have had the sanction of older custom.  Amos and Hosea, presupposing as they do a splendid cultus and great sanctuaries, doubtless also knew of a variety of festivals, but they have no occasion to mention any one by name.  More definite notices occur in Isaiah.  The threatening that within a year’s time the Assyrians will be in the land is thus (xxix. 1) given:  “Add ye year to year, let the feasts come round, yet I will distress Jerusalem,” and at the close of the same discourse the prophet expresses himself as follows (xxxii. 9 seq.):  “Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech.  Days upon a year shall ye be troubled, ye careless women; for the vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come.  Ye shall smite upon the breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.”  When the two passages are taken together we gather that Isaiah, following the universal custom of the prophets in coming forward at great popular gatherings, is here speaking at the time of the autumn festival, in which the women also took an active part (Judges xxi. 19 seq.).  But this autumn festival, the joyous and natural character of which is unmistakably revealed, takes place with him at the change of the year, as may be inferred from a comparison between the YNQPW of xxix.  I, and the TQPT of Exodus xxxiv. 22, 1Samuel i. 20, and closes a cycle of festivals here for the first time indicated.

2.  The preceding survey, it must be admitted, scarcely seems fully to establish the alleged agreement between the Jehovistic law and the older praxis.  Names are nowhere to be found, and in point of fact it is only the autumn festival that is well attested, and this, it would appear, as the only festival, as THE feast.  And doubtless it was also the oldest and most important of the harvest festivals, as it never ceased to be the concluding solemnity of the year.  What has been prosperously brought to close is what people celebrate most rightly; the conclusion of the ingathering, both of the threshing and of the vintage, is the most appropriate of all occasions for a great joint festival,—­for this additional reason, that the term is fixed, not, as in the case of the joy of reaping, by nature alone, but is in