ng of
Christ, when the Hebrew people wished to offer sacrifice to God they took
a lamb or some other animal, which they slew and burned its flesh,
acknowledging by this act that the Lord was the supreme Master of life and
death. The ancients offered to God two kinds of sacrifices, viz., living
creatures, such as bulls, lambs and birds; and inanimate objects, such as
wheat and barley, and, in general, the first fruits of the earth.

All nations--whether Jews, idolaters or Christians, except Mahometans and
modern Protestants--have made sacrifice their principal act of worship. If
you go back to the very dawn of creation, you will find the children of
Adam offering sacrifices to God. Abel offered to the Lord the firstlings
of his flock, and Cain offered of the fruits of the earth.(388)

When Noe and his family are rescued from the deluge which had spread over
the face of the earth his first act on issuing from the ark, when the
waters disappear, is to offer holocausts to the Lord, in thanksgiving for
his preservation.(389) Abraham, the great father of the Jewish race,
offered victims to the Almighty at His express command.(390) We read that
Job was accustomed to offer holocausts to the Lord, to propitiate His
favor in behalf of his children, and to obtain forgiveness for the sins
they might have committed.(391)

When Jehovah delivered to Moses the written law on Mount Sinai He gave His
servant the most minute details with regard to all the ceremonies to be
observed in the sacrifices which were to be offered to Him. He prescribed
the kind of victims to be immolated, the qualifications of the Priests who
were to minister at the altar, and the place and manner in which the
victims were to be offered. Hence, it was the custom of the Jewish Priests
to slay every day two lambs as a sacrifice to God,(392) and in doing this
they were prefiguring the great sacrifice of the New Law, in which we
daily offer up on the altar "the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of
the world."

In a word, in all their public calamities--whenever they were threatened by
their enemies; whenever they were about to engage in war; whenever they
were visited by any plague or pestilence--the Jews had recourse to God by
solemn sacrifices. Like the Catholic Church of the present day, they had
sacrifices not only for the living, but also for the dead; for we read in
Sacred Scripture that Judas Machabeus ordered sacrifice to be offered up
for the souls of