And all this we see consolidated and confirmed, as well as more fully expanded and defined, under the Law. And especially there, a certain new element in its administration is introduced, in the appointment of a particular order for the performance of the service. In all the earlier usage, it would seem that the head of the family or tribe acted as the ministering priest. And there is no disproof of this, as far as I see, in the account of even the first sacrifice of all. For there is nothing in the narrative in the Book of Genesis to shew that Cain and Abel were themselves the acting priests (if we may so term it) in the sacrifice. They may each, for aught that appears to the contrary, have brought their offering to Adam, and it may have been by his hand that the different oblations were placed before God, and presented or devoted to Him. Such as the office and privilege of the head or chief, would seem to have been the recognised right and duty of such persons throughout the patriarchal age; but as the rule of patriarchs in secular matters merged in that of kings, as nations grew out of families, so the office of chiefs as priests, however thus exercised by Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, or Job, seems to have been afterwards restricted to a tribe, or family, or other persons, set apart for the special service, and denominated priests, ἱερεῖς, or _sacerdotes_; names implying their dedication to holy things, and their exclusive rights in many particulars to deal with them. And this theory of worship, if we may so call it, was not merely reduced to a system by God’s law among the Jews, but also prevailed universally among the heathen world from the very earliest times of which any records are preserved. Hesiod, Homer, Herodotus, bear witness to it, and the universal practice of all nations substantiates it, whether in the barbarian forms of the ancient Druidical or other worship in the ruder peoples of the world, or in the more refined practice of Greece and Rome, or in the grotesque or cruel rites of the eastern countries, or absolutely barbarian tribes. They all have their altars, their priests, and their sacrifices, and in most, if not in all, the notion of propitiation by the blood of the victim has prevailed.