heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength; and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices."*

* Mark xii. 32, 33.

Z

338

CHAPTER XII.

The Aaronical Priesthood.

THE priestly office is inseparable from the institution of propitiatory worship; but the selection and appropriation of a particular person or order of persons to conduct that service, is not a necessary consequence of it, neither could such a regulation exist in the earliest ages. The circumstances in which mankind were then placed, obliged him who brought the victim to officiate as the priest for its sacrifice. What had been imposed upon Adam by necessity, became familiar and correct in the eyes of his descendants, and hence we find Cain and Abel ministering at their respective offerings.

As the human race increased, it seems most probable that this duty would generally devolve on the parent or head of each family. The members would feel disposed to leave the ministration of their sacred services in the hands of him by whom they were accustomed to see them conducted, and from whose lips they had received their religious instruction. Job offi

ciated as the priest of his family; the patriarchs did the same. Melchizedec, the king of Salem, was also the priest of the Most High God; as father of his people, he offered their sacrifices, and conducted their religious solemnities.

The same practice evidently prevailed at the commencement of Moses's public ministry. The celebration of their sacred rites appears to have been considered as part of his public duty, as their leader and commander; and that he had a right to select whom he pleased to assist him in the exercise of this part of his functions. "And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt-offerings, and sacrificed peaceofferings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar."* These young men were probably sons of the princes or chief men in Israel; but the selection was evidently his, and the appointment by his official authority.

After the slaughter of the first-born in Egypt, God appointed the first-born of Israel to be sanctified to his service, as a memorial of the * Exod. xxiv. 4-6.

last act of his vengeance upon their enemies, the immediate result of which was their deliverance from bondage. Thus separated from their brethren, and particularly devoted to the service of him who had redeemed them, they became the type of the real church of God, set apart from the professing one, to obey and serve him in holiness and righteousness of life, and our Saviour as their head, is called the first-born among many brethren. Afterwards, the tribe of Levi was substituted instead of these: "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near, and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may minister unto him. And they shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole congregation, before the tabernacle of the congregation, to do the service of the tabernacle. And thou shalt appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall wait on their priest's office; and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death. And I, behold I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel, instead of all the first-born that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel; therefore the Levites are mine. Because, all the first-born are mine, for on the day that I smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, I hallowed unto me all the first-born in Israel; both man

and beast, mine shall they be; I am the Lord."

From this period, we date the establishment of a distinct order of men to conduct the public worship of God, and which was continued until the completion of these typical institutions. The higher duties of this service were thenceforth confined to the individuals of a certain family, as their inheritance to all generations; and though no direct pledge was given of the continuance of this family, yet no other was named, in case of its extinction, to succeed to this exalted dignity, which formed an essential part of the enlarged typical system now established, and which could not suffer any alteration or infringement, till annulled by its completion; a fact, which conveyed an assurance of an uninterrupted succession of the perpetuity and oneness of this priesthood; a symbolical promise of the eternal ministration of the real High Priest.

Many reasons may be suggested why this period was selected for the first appointment of a distinct order for the service of the altar. In the primitive ages, the simplest form of worship was circumstantially necessary; and the knowledge so conveyed, if only enough to lead the sinner by repentance to faith in an all-sufficient * Numb. iii. 5, 7, 10, 12, 13.