tano, Pent. II. 69; comp. Origen. In Levit. Homil. VIII. pp. 316, 317 ed. Lomm.): they point to no ideas so totally foreign to the conceptions and the character of the Old Testament (see p. 196). They are clearly laws of purity, and their spiritual character is manifest from the religious rites prescribed in connection with them.

It

After a certain number of days, when the mother might well be restored to perfect health and to her normal state, she was ordered to present a burnt- and a sin-offering. By the one she was to acknowledge the sovereignty and power of God, as the Lord of nature and mankind, to whose will and grace she owes her off spring; and by the other she was to express her unworthiness, from her moral frailty and failings, of receiving so precious a blessing, and of overcoming pain, anxiety, and peril. The impurity itself, inseparable from childbirth, required no atonement whatever, because it is ordained by God as natural and inevitable. was held physically defiling, but pointed to no moral trespass; it imposed, therefore, necessary restrictions in the mother's intercourse with men, and in her relations to holy things and places; but it called forth no mournful thoughts of selfreproach and abasement. The days of purification at the birth of a girl were double of those observed at the birth of a boy, simply because in the former case the physical derangement of the system was supposed to last longer (see infra), and not because, "viewed in reference to the origin of things, the woman is and remains the seducing and the seduced sinner, who is affected by greater impurity, till she is hallowed by the

birth of the pure seed” (Baumgarten, 1. c.); nor because the female sex "stands a step lower than the male sex", is "more imperfect, weaker, and in a certain respect even more unclean" (Bühr, Symb. II. 490); no such difference is traceable in the Hebrew law; for the sacrifices of lustration were identical in both cases, irrespective of the sex of the child. They were in no manner intended to remind the woman of "the corruption of her whole nature, and to impress upon her the depravity of her desires" (Baumg. 1. c.; Keil, Comm. p. 87): the occasion was far too joyful to be dimmed by reflections so gloomy and so unavailing; it was indeed calculated to call forth the feelings of dependence and humility, but no less those of gratitude and exultation; if the former alone were conveyed by the prescribed offerings, it is because they predominated in the solemn hour when the mother, long secluded from the privileges of the Sanctuary, was restored to her full rights as a Hebrew woman, and to the unrestricted communion with her God; yet the ideas of transgression and guilt were decidedly subordinate to those of awe and submission; for the sinoffering consisted of the smallest animal sacrifice lawfully permitted, namely, a single pigeon or turtle-dove; while the holocaust was ordinarily a lamb. Origen (1. c.) indeed strives to prove that only sinners, like Pharaoh and Herod, rejoice at their birth-day (Gen. XL. 20; Mark VI. 21), while "to pious and holy men it is an object of execration"; but this startling assertion, which might be expected from a Plinyora Lucretius, rather than a Father of Church, and which Origen supports by the well-known ut

3. And on the

terances of Job (III. 3—9) and Jeremiah (XX. 14-18), is absolutely contradicted by the Hebrew and Eastern spirit, nay by the very words of those sufferers (comp. Comm. on Gen. p. 134). Nor was the burnt-offering ordained merely because the mother might, in the agony of her pains, have allowed reproachful thoughts to rise in her mind, and the sin-offering, because she might have given expression to them (Ebn Ezra, a. o.): the sacrifices were not meant to apply to individual conditions or to special times, but were founded upon the totalityof life and the innermost character of human nature. But it is certain that the expiation was performed, not for the new-born child, but for the mother; for though the Psalmist declares, "I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (LI. 7); though the Pentateuch pronounces "the imagination of man's heart evil from his youth" (Gen. VIII. 21); and Job exclaims, "How can a clean being come from an unclean one! not one" (XIV. 4): sacrifices of atonement were only offered by and for those who understood and felt their significance, and never for children (comp. Augustin. Quaest. XL ad Levit.). The new-born boy had indeed to undergo the rite of circumcision, but not as a means of penitence, but of sanctification; it was not intended to atone for innate depravity, but to serve as the sign of a holy covenant; if indeed, in a certain sense, it was a sacrifice, because it involved the feelings of human dependence and submission, it was a holocaust rather than a sin-offering (see infra; comp. Comm. on Gen. p. 390); and no initiatory ceremonial whatever was required for new-born girls.

Analogous laws or customs in connection with childbirth existed and still exist among other nations; but they are far more rigid and more capricious than those of the Hebrews. Among the Hindoos, "all the kindred” of a new-born child are impure; the father, who, according to the Hebrew law, is in no way levitically affected, has to undergo lustration by bathing; the mother is unclean till the tenth day, when the child receives its name, and in cases of miscarriage she remains in a state of impurity as many nights as months have elapsed since conception; the house itself, in which the birth takes place, is unclean, and must be sprinkled with hallowed water (Manu, V. 58, 61, 62, 66). – Curious are the ceremonies of the Parsees. While in ancient times the newborn child was simply washed with water (Vendid. XVI. 18, 19), in later periods it became customary to pour into the mouth of the child a few drops of the purifying juice parahaoma, and to wash the body three times with cow-urine and once with water; three years afterwards the father is bound to present an offering to Mithra; for the child is supposed to be fed, in the mother's womb, by the impurities which ordinarily pass away with her menses, and it is, therefore, at its birth believed to be intensely polluted. The mother herself, as soon as her labours begin, is placed on an iron bed, as no wooden one would finally be capable of purification; immediately after the birth of the child, she washes herself, but remains unclean for fortyone days, during which time she takes the same food as in the period of menstruation. Then she makes thirty ablutions with cow-urine and