294 The Faith of Our Fathers arts and sciences of civilized life; but you will never find a city without Priests and altars, or which has not sacrifices offered to the gods." The Indians of our own country were accustomed to offer sacrifice to the Great Spirit, as Father Jogues and other pioneer missionaries inform us. But all those ancient sacrifices were only the types and figures of the great Sacrifice of the New Law, from which they derived all their efficacy, just as the Old Law itself was the type of the New Law of grace. Since the ancient sacrifices were but figures and shadows, they were imperfect and insufficient; for "it is impossible," says St. Paul, "that by the blood of oxen and of goats sins should be taken away. Wherefore, when He (Jesus) cometh into the world, He saith: Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not, but a body Thou hast fitted to me. Holocausts for sin did not please Thee. Then said I: Behold, I come."394 As if He should say: The blood of oxen and of goats is not sufficient to appease Thy vengeance, and to cleanse Thy people from their sins; therefore I come, that I may offer Myself an acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the world. The Prophet Isaiah declared that the Jewish sacrifices had become displeasing to God and would be abolished. "To what [310] purpose," says the Lord by His prophet, "do you offer Me the multitude of your victims?... I desire not holocausts of rams, ... and blood of calves and lambs and buck-goats ... Offer sacrifice no more in vain."395 But did God, in rejecting the Jewish oblations, intend to abolish sacrifices altogether? By no means. On the contrary, He clearly predicts, by the mouth of the Prophet Malachias, that the immolations of the Jews would be succeeded by a clean victim, which would be offered up not on a single altar, as was the case in Jerusalem, but in every part of the known world. Listen to the significant words addressed to the Jews by this prophet: "I 394 Heb. x. 4, 7. 395 Isaiah i. 11-13.