During recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the study of the historical and religious values of the Old Testament. Christians everywhere seem to have become obsessed with an inherent thirst for a better understanding of this great book and the faith it teaches. This renewed desire to probe into the rich background of Semitic culture that is the very historical foundation of Christianity seems to have been brought about by two distinct and quite general conditions. The first and most obvious condition is the age in which we are living--the age of science. Today, this age is probing everywhere to discover and verify with facts the true meaning of the ever increasing amount of archeological evidence that is constantly being uncovered in the field of Old Testament research. Scientific research has far outdistanced the ability of the average man to assimilate even the wealth of knowledge that has already been uncovered. At this point, we are experiencing a cultural lag which in time should be overcome. A second motivating factor that has caused man to turn once again to a more critical study of the Old Testament has been his honest endeavor to bridge this cultural lag and also erase from posterity a blot of religious illiteracy concerning the great religious truths of this book. Many of these truths have never been brought into the full light of scientific discrimination and understanding until very recent years. One of the ideas of the Old Testament about which very little is generally known is the nature of the sacrificial system of the ancient Israelites. It is from this sacrificial system that the worship service of Christianity found the seeds of its early development. It is the purpose of this thesis to trace a view of the origin, purposes, and development of this sacrificial system from its most humble beginnings down to its completion in Jesus Christ. The fundamental aim of the thesis is to convey to the reader the idea that eternal truths were enshrined in the crude forms of early sacrificial worship and that, ultimately, these truths had their fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ.