his men who were slain in battle.(393)

We find sacrifices existing not only among the Jews, who worshiped the
true God, but also among Pagan and idolatrous nations. No matter how
confused, imperfect or erroneous was their knowledge of the Deity, the
Pagan nations retained sufficient vestiges of primitive tradition to
admonish them of their obligation of appeasing the anger and invoking the
blessings of the Divinity by victims and sacrifices. Plutarch, an ancient
writer of the second century, says of these heathen people: "You may find
cities without walls, without literature and without the arts and sciences
of civilized life; but you will never find a city without Priests and
altars, or which has not sacrifices offered to the gods."

The Indians of our own country were accustomed to offer sacrifice to the
Great Spirit, as Father Jogues and other pioneer missionaries inform us.
But all those ancient sacrifices were only the types and figures of the
great Sacrifice of the New Law, from which they derived all their
efficacy, just as the Old Law itself was the type of the New Law of grace.
Since the ancient sacrifices were but figures and shadows, they were
imperfect and insufficient; for "it is impossible," says St. Paul, "that
by the blood of oxen and of goats sins should be taken away. Wherefore,
when He (Jesus) cometh into the world, He saith: Sacrifice and oblation
Thou wouldst not, but a body Thou hast fitted to me. Holocausts for sin
did not please Thee. Then said I: Behold, I come."(394) As if He should
say: The blood of oxen and of goats is not sufficient to appease Thy
vengeance, and to cleanse Thy people from their sins; therefore I come,
that I may offer Myself an acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the world.

The Prophet Isaiah declared that the Jewish sacrifices had become
displeasing to God and would be abolished. "To what purpose," says the
Lord by His prophet, "do you offer Me the multitude of your victims?... I
desire not holocausts of rams, ... and blood of calves and lambs and
buck-goats ... Offer sacrifice no more in vain."(395)

But did God, in rejecting the Jewish oblations, intend to abolish
sacrifices altogether? By no means. On the contrary, He clearly predicts,
by the mouth of the Prophet Malachias, that the immolations of the Jews
would be succeeded by a clean victim, which would be offered up not on a
single altar, as was the case in Jerusalem, but in every part of the known
world. Listen