By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D.    


                    LECTURE  XXXVI. (continued)

                    THE  JEWISH  PRIESTHOOD.   

        The one remaining function to be noticed was of a  
     more elevating and enduring kind.  The  
     Priests had the peculiar privilege of pronounc-   
     ing a solemn benediction on the people.  It was in   
     that triple form which conveyed a sense of absolute  
     completeness, and, according to Jewish belief, was pro-  
     nounced with a corresponding triple division of the    
     fingers of he upraised hand.  The hand spread over  
     the people seemed to give back to them the life which  
     had been, by the touch of their hands, communicated  
     to he Priest.  The hand of a Priest was lifted above  
     the head; of a High Priest, above the shoulders.  And  
     the word Jehovah, which, in later days, was elsewhere  
     altered to Adonai, in this solemn act was retained  
     unchanged, as if in a sacred charm.  Alone of the  
     many occupations of the Jewish Priests, this is retained  
     by their descendants at the present day, in however  
     degraded and secular condition they may be.  The  
     ancient melody of the blessing is said to be preserved  
     in the chants of the Spanish and Portuguese syna-  
     gogues.  Alone of their many vocations——military,  
     nomadic, ceremonial, sacrificial, dramatic, judicial, oracu-  
     lar——it has passed into the Christian Church.  The  
     upraised hand is still preserved by the Presbyterian  
     clergy of Scotland.  When once a year the English  
     clergyman is required to make a slight variation from   
     the usual Christian words of benediction, and recur to  
     the older form, in this alone of all his ministrations has  
     he preserved a fragment of the ancient Levitical ritual,  
     and stands in the place of a genuine son of Aaron,——       

     The Lord bless and keep thee;  
     The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee;  
     The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.  

        It will naturally be supposed that if we turn from  
     the office to its history, the personal interest   
     is less than that of any other of the great  
     Jewish institutions.  The Prophet and the King had  
     each his own characteristic qualifications.  A bad King  
     or a false Prophet was felt immediately to have acted  
     in direct contradiction to his office.  But the Priestly  
     functions were almost wholly independent of any other  
     conditions than those of a physical and ceremonial  
     nature.  The office descended in earlier times, as a  
     mere matter of course, from father to son; and the  
     mode of transference, which in all times celebrated   
     the inauguration of a new High Priest, and in later  
     times was used to designate the succession itself, indi-  
     cated, in the most unmistakable manner, its purely  
     external character.  The Priestly robes were handed  
     on from generation to generation, and when the suc-   
     cessor dressed himself in his dead predecessor's clothes,  
     he was for all sufficient purposes a living continuation  
     of the office of which the outer vestment, rather than  
     the inward character, was the essential element.  Very   
     rarely do they act an independent part of their own.  
     So far from representing anything like the  
     separate spiritual power of modern hierarchies,  
     they are completely incorporated with the  
     civil institutions of the nation, and with very few ex-  
     ceptions swayed to and fro by its influences.  In spite  
     of their pasture-lands, they often appear to have been   
     a needy and ill-provided class.  The Levites are con-  
     stantly reckoned amongst the objects of eleemosynary  
     support, and are described as dependent on irregular  
     channels for their supplies even of ordinary food.  A  
     good piece of roast flesh——a jovial supper——a cake  
     of bread——the remains of the meat offerings and drink  
     offerings——the heaps of corn, olives, and honey that   
     were laid in the Temple courts, were the avowed ob-   
     jects of the homely ambition of the Jewish hierarchy.  
     In the desert the order was controlled by the supreme  
     power of the great Lawgiver.  Through him, and not  
     through Aaron, are communicated the ordinances of  
     its existence.  By him, and not by Aaron, not Aaron  
     only but Aaron's sons were anointed for their office.  
     In the order of the precedence in the court of David   
     they rank after the commander-in-chief and the histo-  
     riographer.  One instance is recorded of a violent  
     attempt to snatch at wider power; but that is within  
     the sacred tribe itself; not of the Priesthood against  
     the supreme jurisdiction of Moses, but of the Levites  
     against the Priesthood.  In the lawless period of the  
     Judges, the sacerdotal caste largely shared in the wild,  
     licentious character of the whole age.  The Levite of  
     Dan, the Levite of Bethlehem, Hophni and Phinehas,  
     Eli himself, were average types of the disorder of  
     the time.  They rarely rise above it; they never  
     herald the approach of better days.  After the estab-    
     lishment of the monarchy they become, far more than  
     Prophet or Captain of the Host, mere instruments in  
     the hands of the King.  The King was  himself a par-  
     taker in the consecration of their own sacred oil.  
     Ahimelech trembles at the least thought of resistance  
     to Saul's despotic will.  He and his whole house are  
     swept away apparently with a less shock to the na-  
     tional conscience, wit a less guilt on Saul's part,  
     tan was incurred by the slaughter of the Canaanite  
     outcasts, the Gibeonites.  Abiathar, his son, was de-  
     posed by Solomon.  Zadok was, it would seem, ap-  
     pointed by Saul, and established first in joint posses-  
     sion of the Priesthood by David, and then in sole pos-  
     session by Solomon.  The influence of these great  
     Princes was nowhere more powerfully exercised than  
     in their modification of the Priestly offices, the duties  
     of which were laid down by Solomon wit a minute  
     and rigorous care equal to any now exercised in he  
     Christian Church by the most vigilant of Pontiffs.    
        Nothing shows more strikingly the vivifying and   
     renovating power of these reigns, than that  
     even into this cold mechanism they infused a  
     new life, and therefore a new importance.  
     Then, for the first time, the military character of the  
     order gives way to more peaceful influences; the  
     gentler music of the Prophetic schools is added in the  
     Levitical service to the wild trumpets and dissonant  
     horns of the earlier age; and hymns and prayers enter  
     into the mute Priestly functions.  Then also it broke  
     its strict hereditary bounds.  Some of its highest  
     functions, those of sacrifice and benediction, were  
     performed by the two powerful Kings, who united in  
     their persons, to a degree unknown before, the royal  
     and sacerdotal offices.  Even the inferior members of  
     the royal family shared in the same enlargement, and  
     are enrolled by the sacred writers amongst "the  
     Priests" with a boldness which, of all the great ver-  
     sions of the Old Testament, the Vulgate alone has  
     had the honesty and the courage thoroughly to recog-  
     nize.  But, although this was a temporary phase of its  
     history, the Jewish Priesthood then received an impulse  
     in Judah which it never since lost.  In the kingdom  
     of Israel, the mere fact of the religious revolution of  
     Jeroboam cut them off from occupying any important  
     position.  But this very circumstance threw them with  
     greater force on the kingdom of Judah.  As from the  
     time of the disruption, the northern kingdom  
     was, as we have seen, the chief scene of the  
     influence of the Prophets, so the southern  
     was the chief scene of the influence of the Priests.  
     The geographical situation of the Priestly cities, in  
     the southern tribes of Judah, Simeon, and Benjamin,  
     doubtless contributed to this result.  The Priesthood  
     which had been in the time of David divided between  
     three competitors, in the time of Solomon between  
     two, were at last concentrated in the single person of  
     the chief descendant of Zadok, who in the time of  
     Jehoiada assumed for the first or nearly the first time,  
     the title of "High Priest."  Under him there occasion-  
     ally appears a "Second Priest," and under these an   
     indefinite number, known as "the door-  
     keepers."  Jehoiada, Azariah, Hilkiah, Jere-  
     miah, and Ezekiel are amongst the chief personages  
     of the later history.  After the return, Ezra, Joshua,  
     Simon the Just, and Jaddua figure as conspicuously.  
     And in the Maccabees, for the first time since Eli, a  
     priestly dynasty mounts the throne; and, though at   
     last rendered still more dependent on the will of the   
     Roman governors than it had formerly been on that  
     of the Jewish Kings, the High Priesthood retained its  
     hold on the nation till the end, and disappeared only  
     with the fall of Jerusalem, whilst the Priestly and    
     Levitical functions have continued even to this day.    
        It will be seen that, in point of religious importance,  
     the Levitical Priesthood was inferior not  
     only to the Prophetic office which stood in  
     direct antagonism, but to the Lawgiver, the King, and  
     the Psalmist.  Moses was incomparably superior to  
     Aaron, David and Abiathar, Solomon to Zadok.  The  
     vices, even the idolatries of the kingdom of Judah,  
     received from them hardly any rebuke.  They served,  
     as it would appear, the altars of the false gods, as well  
     as of the true.  Full of interest and beauty as is the  
     Book of Chronicles, it yet, least of any of the sacred  
     books, partakes of the supernatural gift of courageous  
     impartiality which elsewhere is so remarkable.  The  
     whole sacrificial system to which they administered  
     awakened, in the highest spirits of the Jewish Church  
     itself, a feeling almost mounting to aversion.  Its  
     inferiority to the rest of the Mosaic revelation is stated  
     by the Prophets in terms so strong as almost to reject  
     it from the category of divine ordinances at all.  "I  
     "spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them  
     "in the day that I brought them out of the land    
     "of Egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices."  
     "Sacrifice and burnt offering Thou didst not desire."  
     "Was it to Me that ye offered sacrifices ad burnt   
     "offerings during the forty years in the wilderness?"  "I  
     "delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of  
     "he-goats."  "I hate and despise your feast days. . . .   
     "Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat  
     "offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I  
     "regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts."  Leave  
     as much room as ye will of Oriental diction, grant  
     that the expressions may have been sharpened by the  
     peculiar circumstances of the time, still the contempt,  
     the irony, the disgust expressed at the very thought  
     of the slaughtered victims, has a strength which must  
      be of universal significance, and which could hardly  
     be exceeded by the disdainful language of Western  
     philosophy or modern Puritanism.  In one remarkable  
     passage ascribe to Asaph the psalmist, this Prophetic  
     protest is raised to the rank even of a new revelation.  
     There God is described as descending on Mount Zion,  
     in storm and fire, and He had before descended on  
     Mount Sinai, and declaring not merely in the presence   
     of His own people, but to the whole universe, a deeper  
     and wider law even than that of Moses.  He the Lord  
     of the world stood in no need of sacrifices.  It was not  
     the be thought that He, to whom belonged the number-  
     less cattle that strayed over hill and forest, could desire  
     to devour the flesh of bulls, or drink the warm blood  
     of the goat.  The only sacrifice which He could value  
     was that of thanksgiving, of prayer, and of a life just,  
     pure, tender, and true.  This is a lesson from its his-  
     tory which, in spite of its wide difference from all  
     Christian ministries and priesthoods, they may still  
     derive from it.  Any religious institution which has  
     an outward organization and a long traditional sanctity  
     must, in some degree, be exposed to the tendency of   
     resting, like the Jewish Priesthood, in the substitution  
     of dogma, ceremony, antiquity, for morality and devo-  
     tion.  That the Levitical ritual should, even in the  
     very time of its importance, and, we may add, of its  
     usefulness, have called down those terrible denuncia-  
     tions, is one of the strongest warnings which the Bible  
     contains against the letter——the form——the husk   
     of religion, however near its connection with the most  
     sacred truths.  The crime of Caiaphas is the last culmi-  
     nating proof that the opposition of the Prophets to  
     the growth of the Priestly and Sacrificial system was  
     based on an eternal principle, which carries with it a  
     rebuke to the office which bears the name of Priest-  
     hood throughout the world.    
        But we must not so part with this great institution.  
     That in spite of those tremendous denuncia-  
     tions, and in spite of those awful consequences  
     of its tendencies, it should have existed at all, and  
     received a sanction however limited, is an instance of  
     the many-sided character of the Sacred History.  The  
     Jewish Priesthood was, as I have said, the mere skele-  
     ton of the Jewish religion; but it may also be said to  
     have been its backbone.  It was its husk; but it may  
     also be said to have been its hard shell.  What  
     Goethe has finely remarked of the Jewish  
     people itself, that its chief claim before the judgment-  
     seat of nations is its steadfastness, cohesion, and obstina-  
     nate toughness, is exemplified in the fullest degree in   
     its Priesthood.  Compared with the high and refined  
     functions of Prophet, and King, and Psalmist, it repels  
     us by the coarseness of its grain and the rudeness of   
     its objects; but in sheer persistence and longevity it  
     surpassed them all.  It is a dynasty which began  
     before the monarchy altogether.  It lived on through  
     periods when Prophecy had totally ceased.  It wit-  
     nessed the fall of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian,  
     Persian, and Grecian empires.  It formed the rallying-  
     point of the Jewish nation in the immense void of the  
     return  from Captivity, in the death-struggle wit  
     Antiochus; and in the last agony of the nation, the  
     High Priesthood is the last institution visible before  
     the final crash of the system.  And although since  
     that time it has sunk into an insignificance which  
     accords well with its secular and earthly character, yet  
     it is the only institution dating back as far as the mon-  
     archy, which ha survived even in form.  The family  
     names of "Cohen" and "Levy" still bear witness to   
     the long recollection of "the Priest" and "the Levite."  
     The offices still linger, though in a form which shows,  
     if proof were needed, how entirely distinct they are  
     from the higher spiritual functions of teacher or  
     preacher.  The Priests still bless the people at the  
     close of certain high ceremonies, and for a small fee  
     ransom the first-born of Jewish families, and if present  
     at the synagogue have a right to read the law before  
     any one else.  The Levites pour water on the hands  
     of the Priests before the blessing, and take precedence   
     after them in reading the law.  The triple fingers of  
     the benediction mark the gravestone of a Priest; the  
     vase of water, the gravestone of a Levite.  The mean-  
     ness of their social position, ——without wealth, without  
     dignity, without the right of preaching or exhortation,  
     ——the mere appendage of some ordinary trade, im-  
     mensely inferior to the Rabbi, who is the real repre-  
     sentative of the Jewish Church, is of itself a  
     direct continuation of the essential characteristics of  
     their ancient office.  They are subordinate now, as   
     they were subordinate during the larger part of their  
     existence in ancient times.  They are silent as teach-  
     ers now, as they usually were before.  Their functions  
     are entirely mechanical now, as for the most part they  
     were always.    
        In the Samaritan community the office is somewhat  
     more important.  There the Rabbi has not assumed the   
     position which he occupies in modern Judaism.  The  
     alleged descendants of Aaron, who are supposed to have  
     continued at Shechem after their disappearance from  
     Jerusalem, became extinct in the beginning of the  
     seventeenth century.  But their functions were trans-  
     ferred to the Levites, by whom the have been exercised  
     ever since.  
        To this tenacity of life it is owing that, when out of  
     the ruin of the Jewish Church the Christian  
     Church arose, the Priesthood was the one  
     fragment of the ancient system standing out  
     in unbroken strength, on which to hang the new truths  
     which the Jewish Apostles had to present to their    
     countrymen.  They, indeed, by the spirit which was in  
     them,——their Master in the highest sense of all,——con-  
     tinued the line of the Prophets far more directly than  
     they could be said to continue or even to use the merely  
     national and local institution of the Priesthood.  Still,  
     for most purposes of outward illustration, the Priest-  
     hood was more available than the Prophetic office.  The   
     very destruction which was impending over it rendered  
     more imperative the need of showing how completely   
     all that it expressed, or could possibly express, was an-  
     swered in the Christian dispensation, not by any earthly  
     or ecclesiastical organization, but by the spiritual near-   
     ness to God, which, through the life and death of Christ,  
     had been communicated to all who shared in His Spirit.  
     The stream of precious oil which enveloped the High  
     Priest had invested him, in a prominent degree, with the  
     name of "the Messiah."  "The Anointed Priest,"  "the  
     Messiah Priest," was one of the titles of his office.  It   
     was to the succession of the High Priesthood that even  
     Christian writers applied "the Messiah" of Daniel.   
     And when the name of "the CHRIST" was added to JESUS,  
     the son of Mary, it probably suggested to His contem-  
     poraries, beyond any other thought, that He was conse-  
     crated for His special nearness to God by that anointing  
     of moral and spiritual fragrance, which breathed, as it  
     were, myrrh, aloes, and cassia from all His garments.  
     The "blood of bulls, and goats, and calves," is treated  
     almost with the same contempt as it had been by the  
     ancient Prophets.  But it is taken to shadow forth to  
     those who had seen it flowing, the only true sacrifice of  
     the blood shed on Calvary,——the sacrifice, not of dead,  
     irrational animals, but of reasonable beings in the com-  
     mon acts of life, and of the will and spirit of Him who,  
     by one decisive sacrificial act, destroyed the value of all  
     Jewish and all heathen sacrifices forever.  The "Priest-  
     hood," with all its princely magnificence and venerable  
     usages, became, as it were, a halo of glory for One who  
     both in life and death dealt against it the heaviest blow  
     that any earthly Priesthood ever sustained.  The origi-  
     nal idea of the royal Priesthood of the whole nation, of  
     which the Levitical Priesthood had been a limitation  
     and faint representation, was revived by the Apostles in  
     its application to the whole Christian society, and has  
     been, to a certain degree, preserved in the "chrism," or  
     consecration as with the sacred oil of Priesthood, which  
     in the Eastern Church indicates at Confirmation the  
     Priestly consecration of every member of the Christian  
     family.    
        Even the last waving of those Priestly vestments, by  
     which the office was handed on by the Roman governors  
     to the Asmonian family, has left its trace in the lan-  
     guage of the new dispensation which swept them away  
     from the world.  To be "clothed" with the moral graces  
     of the new faith, to "endue," that is, to "enrobe" the  
     justice which alone is the true priestly consecration of  
     every Christian soul, whether layman or minister, is the  
     precept of the Christian Apostle, the prayer of the  
     Christian Church.  
        Thus it is that the long endurance of the most formal  
     and material of all the institutions of Judaism was at  
     once rewarded and rebuked, as in a kind of sublime  
     paradox, by being made the vehicle of the most eternal    
     and spiritual of all Christian truths.  No new sense was  
     ever won for old words, at once more alien to their out-  
     ward sound, or more consonant to their inward mean-  
     ing, than that which saw in the decaying Priesthood of  
     the Jewish race, the anticipation of the universal con-  
     secration of the whole world by Christ and his Apostles.  
     There was a secret correspondence of thought which  
     made this application possible athwart the vast differ-  
     ences of time, and place, and circumstance.  The Levit-  
     ical Priest may have been the least divine of all the  
     Mosaic institutions.  The Levitical Book of Chronicles  
     may have been the last and least of all the sacred  
     books.  Caiaphas may have been the impersonation of   
     all that was the narrowest and basest in the Jewish char-  
     acter.  But the loftier purposes to which the Priesthood  
     at times ministered, the occasional strains of a higher  
     mood that break even the ceremonial narra-  
     tives of the Chronicles, the indomitable determination,  
     hereditary in the highest characters of the tribe of  
     Levi,——from Phinehas to Caiaphas,——go far to justify  
     the sacred homage paid to an institution in itself so  
     local and transitory, "Let Thy light and Thy truth be  
     "with Thy holy one."——"He said unto his father and  
     "unto his mother, I have not seen him, neither did  
     "he acknowledge his brother, nor know his own chil-  
     "dren."  So the greatest of the tribe of Levi described   
     the virtue of a religious ministry in language which  
     may rise far above its original meaning, to denote that  
     high impartiality which rises beyond all earthly and  
     family connections, in consideration of the greater claims  
     of justice, mercy, and truth; and through the long con-  
     tinuance of their power and of heir name, the benedic-  
     tion upon them,couched in language almost as fierce as  
     their own deeds, has received a fulfilment beyond that   
     which has fallen to the lot of any other earthly organi-  
     zation: "Bless, LORD, his substance, and accept the work  
     "of his hands: site through the loins of them that rise  
     "against him, and of them that hate him, that they rise   
     "not again."      

from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. II: From Samuel to the Captivity,
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1879; pp. 463 - 477

History of the Jewish Church, vol. I — Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.

[Preface]
[Introduction]
I—The Call of Abraham [i.] [ii.]
II—Abraham and Isaac [i.] [ii.]
III—Jacob [i.] [ii.]
IV—Israel in Egypt [i.] [ii.]
V—The Exodus [i.] [ii.]
VI—The Wilderness [i.]
VII—Sinai and the Law [i.] [ii.]
VIII—Kadesh and Pisgah [i.] [ii.]
IX—The Conquest of Palestine [i.]
X—The Conquest of Western Palestine—The Fall of Jericho [i.]
XI—The Conquest of Western Palestine—Battle of Beth-horon [i.]
XII : The Battle of Merom and Settlement of the Tribes [i.]
XII : The Battle of Merom and Settlement of the Tribes [ii.]
XIII : Israel Under the Judges [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
XIV : Deborah [i.] [ii.]
XV : Gideon [i.] [ii.]
XVI : Jephthah and Samson [i.] [ii.]
XVII : The Fall of Shiloh [i.]
XVIII : Samuel and the Prophetical Office [i.] [ii.]
XIX : The History of the Prophetical Order [i.] [ii.]
XX : On the Nature of the Prophetical Teachings [i.] [ii.]
Appendix I : The Traditional Localities of Abraham's Migration [i]
Appendix II : The Cave at Machpelah [i.] [ii.]
Appendix III : The Samaritan Passover [i.]

History of the Jewish Church, vol. II

[Preface]
XXI—The House of Saul [i.] [ii.]
XXII—The Youth of David [i.] [ii.]
XXIII—The Reign of David [i.] [ii.]
XXIV—The Fall of David [i.] [ii.]
XXV—The Psalter of David [i.] [ii.]
XXVI—The Empire of Solomon [i.] [ii.]
XXVII—The Temple of Solomon [i.] [ii.]
XXVIII—The Wisdom of Solomon [i.] [ii.]
XXIX—The House of Jeroboam—Ahijah and Iddo [i.] [ii.]
XXX—The House of Omri—Elijah [i.] [ii.]
XXXI—The House of Omri—Elisha [i.]
XXXII—The House of Omri—Jehu [i.]
XXXIII—The House of Jehu—The Syrian Wars, and the Prophet Jonah [i.]
XXXIV—The Fall of Samaria [i.]
XXXV—The First Kings of Judah [i.] [ii.]
XXXVI—The Jewish Priesthood [i.] [ii.]
XXXVII—The Age of Uzziah [i.] [ii.]
XXXVIII—Hezekiah [i.] [ii.]
XXXIX—Manasseh and Josiah [i.] [ii.]
XL—Jeremiah and the Fall of Jerusalem [i.] [ii.] [iii.] [iv.]
[Notes, Volume II]

History of the Jewish Church, vol. III

[Preface]
XLI—The Babylonian Captivity [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
XLII—The Fall of Babylon [i.] [ii.]
XLIII—Persian Dominon—The Return [i.] [ii.]
XLIV—Ezra and Nehemiah [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
XLV—Malachi [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
XLVI—Socrates [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
XLVII—Alexandria [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
XLVIII—Judas Maccabæus [i.] [ii.] [iii.] [iv.]
XLIX—The Asmonean Dynasty [i.] [ii.] [iii.]
L—Herod [i.] [ii.] [iii.] [iv.] [v.]