Moses placed the sacrificial altar at the door of the tabernacle of worship. This position emphasized to the people that the first step toward communion with God was the sacrificial atonement for sin. However, the Israelites believed to some degree that atonement could be vicarious. In their immature sense of the right approach to God, they believed that the slaughter of calves, bulls, or goats was sufficient proof of repentance for sin and that these burnt offerings absolved them from sin and its penalties.
Rightly considered, sacrifice furnishes proof of individual worthiness to approach God, Life, Truth, Love. It testifies to the sincerity, the honesty, of the worshiper. It gives evidence of deep, heartfelt repentance and of the desire so to conform to holiness that the temptations of self and sin will be resisted and overcome.
The word "sacrifice" may mean: "anything consecrated and offered to God or to a divinity," or "destruction or surrender of some desirable thing in behalf of a higher object." Self-offering—the surrender of the false sense of selfhood, with its personal opinions, desires, theories, and so on—is the highest and holiest sacrifice that can be made. Such surrender must inevitably precede the attainment of the spiritual understanding of God as the only Ego and the spotless selfhood which the real man possesses as God's reflection.
