It symbolised worship, and that was
enough. The soul was fled; the shell remained, upon the shaping
out of which every energy was now concentrated. A manifoldness
of rites took the place of individualising occasions; technique
was the main thing, and strict fidelity to rubric.
Once cultus was spontaneous, now it is a thing of statute. The
satisfaction which it affords is, properly speaking, something
which lies outside of itself and consists in the moral satisfaction
arising out of the conscientiousness with which the ritual
precepts, once for all enjoined by God on His people, are
fulfilled. The freewill offering is not indeed forbidden, but
value in the strict sense is attached only to those which have
been prescribed, and which accordingly preponderate everywhere.
And even in the case of the freewill offering, everything must
strictly and accurately comply with the restrictions of the
ordinance; if any one in the fulness of his heart had offered in
a _zebah shelamim_ more pieces of flesh than the ritual enjoined, it
would have been the worse for him.
Of old the sacrifice combined with a meal had established a
special relation between the Deity and a definite society of
guests; the natural sacrificial society was the family or the
clan (1Samuel i.
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