VII. RITES OF EXPIATION AND REDEMPTION

There is a passage in Richard Jefferies' imperishably

beautiful book The Story of my Heart--a passage well known

to all lovers of that prose-poet--in which he figures

himself standing "in front of the Royal Exchange

where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory,"

and pondering on the vast crowd and the mystery

of life. "Is there any theory, philosophy, or creed," he says,

"is there any system of culture, any formulated method, able

to meet and satisfy each separate item of this agitated pool

of human life? By which they may be guided, by which

they may hope, by which look forward? Not a mere

illusion of the craving heart--something real, as real as

the solid walls of fact against which, like seaweed, they

are dashed; something to give each separate personality

sunshine and a flower in its own existence now; something

to shape this million-handed labor to an end and

outcome that will leave more sunshine and more flowers

to those who must succeed? Something real now, and

not in the spirit-land; in this hour now, as I stand and

the sun burns. . . . Full well aware that all has failed, yet,

side by side with the sadness of that knowledge, there

lives on in me an unquenchable belief, thought burning

like the sun, that there is yet something to be

found.... It must be dragged forth by the might of thought

from the immense forces of the universe."

In answer to this passage we may say "No,--a thousand

times No! there is no theory, philosophy, creed, system or

formulated method which will meet or ever satisfy the

demand of each separate item of the human whirlpool."

And happy are we to know there is no such thing!

How terrible if one of these bloodless 'systems' which strew

the history of religion and philosophy and the political

and social paths of human endeavor HAD been found

absolutely correct and universally applicable--so that every

human being would be compelled to pass through its

machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under

its Juggernath wheels! No, thank Heaven! there is no

theory or creed or system; and yet there is something--

as Jefferies prophetically felt and with a great

longing desired--that CAN satisfy; and that, the root of

all religion, has been hinted at in the last chapter. It

is the CONSCIOUSNESS of the world-life burning, blazing, deep

down within us: it is the Soul's intuition of its roots in

Omnipresence and Eternity.

The gods and the creeds of the past, as shown in the

last chapter--whatever they may have been, animistic

or anthropomorphic or transcendental, whether grossly

brutish or serenely ideal and abstract--are essentially

projections of the human mind; and no doubt those who are

anxious to discredit the religious impulse generally will

catch at this, saying "Yes, they are mere forms and

phantoms of the mind, ephemeral dreams, projected on

the background of Nature, and having no real substance or

solid value. The history of Religion (they will say) is a

history of delusion and illusion; why waste time over

it? These divine grizzly Bears or Aesculapian Snakes, these

cat-faced Pashts, this Isis, queen of heaven, and Astarte

and Baal and Indra and Agni and Kali and Demeter

and the Virgin Mary and Apollo and Jesus Christ and

Satan and the Holy Ghost, are only shadows cast outwards

onto a screen; the constitution of the human mind makes

them all tend to be anthropomorphic; but that is all; they

each and all inevitably pass away. Why waste time over

them?"

And this is in a sense a perfectly fair way of looking at

the matter. These gods and creeds ARE only projections

of the human mind. But all the same it misses, does this

view, the essential fact. It misses the fact that there

is no shadow without a fire, that the very existence of

a shadow argues a light somewhere (though we may not

directly see it) as well as the existence of a solid form which

intercepts that light. Deep, deep in the human mind there is

that burning blazing light of the world-consciousness--

so deep indeed that the vast majority of individuals are

hardly aware of its existence. Their gaze turned outwards is

held and riveted by the gigantic figures and processions

passing across their sky; they are unaware that the

latter are only shadows--silhouettes of the forms inhabiting

their own minds.[1] The vast majority of people have

never observed their own minds; their own mental forms.

They have only observed the reflections cast by these.

Thus it may be said, in this matter, that there are three

degrees of reality. There are the mere shadows--the

least real and most evanescent; there are the actual

mental outlines of humanity (and of the individual), much

more real, but themselves also of course slowly changing;

and most real of all, and permanent, there is the light "which

lighteth every man that cometh into the world"--the

glorious light of the world-consciousness. Of this last it

may be said that it never changes. Every thing is

known to it--even the very IMPEDIMENTS to its shining.

But as it is from the impediments to the shining of a light

that shadows are cast, so we now may understand that

the things of this world and of humanity, though real in

their degree, have chiefly a kind of negative value; they

are opaquenesses, clouds, materialisms, ignorances, and the

inner light falling upon them gradually reveals their negative

character and gradually dissolves them away till they

are lost in the extreme and eternal Splendor. I think

Jefferies, when he asked that question with which I have

begun this chapter, was in some sense subconsciously,

if not quite consciously, aware of the answer. His frequent

references to the burning blazing sun throughout

The Story of the Heart seem to be an indication of his real

deep-down attitude of mind.

[1] See, in the same connection, Plato's allegory of the Cave,

Republic,Book vii.

The shadow-figures of the creeds and theogonies pass away

truly like ephemeral dreams; but to say that time spent

in their study is wasted, is a mistake, for they have

value as being indications of things much more real than

themselves, namely, of the stages of evolution of the human

mind. The fact that a certain god-figure, however grotesque

and queer, or a certain creed, however childish, cruel,

and illogical, held sway for a considerable time over

the hearts of men in any corner or continent of the world

is good evidence that it represented a real formative urge at

the time in the hearts of those good people, and a definite

stage in their evolution and the evolution of humanity. Certainly

it was destined to pass away, but it was a step, and

a necessary step in the great process; and certainly it

was opaque and brutish, but it is through the opaque

things of the world, and not through the transparent,

that we become aware of the light.

It may be worth while to give instances of how some early

rituals and creeds, in themselves apparently barbarous

or preposterous, were really the indications of important

moral and social conceptions evolving in the heart of

man. Let us take, first, the religious customs connected

with the ideas of Sacrifice and of Sin, of which such

innumerable examples are now to be found in the modern

books on Anthropology. If we assume, as I have done

more than once, that the earliest state of Man was one

in which he did not consciously separate himself from

the world, animate and inanimate, which surrounded him,

then (as I have also said) it was perfectly natural for

him to take some animal which bulked large on his horizon--

some food-animal for instance--and to pay respect to

it as the benefactor of his tribe, its far-back ancestor

and totem-symbol; or, seeing the boundless blessing of

the cornfields, to believe in some kind of spirit of the

corn (not exactly a god but rather a magical ghost) which,

reincarnated every year, sprang up to save mankind

from famine. But then no sooner had he done this than

he was bound to perceive that in cutting down the

corn or in eating his totem-bear or kangaroo he was slaying

his own best self and benefactor. In that instant the

consciousness of DISUNITY, the sense of sin in some undefined

yet no less disturbing and alarming form would come in.

If, before, his ritual magic had been concentrated on the

simple purpose of multiplying the animal or, vegetable

forms of his food, now in addition his magical endeavor

would be turned to averting the just wrath of the spirits

who animated these forms--just indeed, for the rudest savage

would perceive the wrong done and the probability of

its retribution. Clearly the wrong done could only be expiated

by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind on the part of

the man, or the tribe--that is by the offering to the totem-

animal or to the corn-spirit of some victim whom these

nature powers in their turn could feed upon and assimilate.

In this way the nature-powers would be appeased,

the sense of unity would be restored, and the first At-one-ment

effected.

It is hardly necessary to recite in any detail the cruel and

hideous sacrifices which have been perpetrated in this

sense all over the world, sometimes in appeasement of

a wrong committed or supposed to have been committed by the tribe

or some member of it, sometimes in placation

or for the averting of death, or defeat, or plague,

sometimes merely in fulfilment of some long-standing

custom of forgotten origin--the flayings and floggings and

burnings and crucifixions of victims without end, carried

out in all deliberation and solemnity of established ritual.

I have mentioned some cases connected with the sowing

of the corn. The Bible is full of such things, from

the intended sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham,

to the actual crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. The first-

born sons were claimed by a god who called himself

"jealous" and were only to be redeemed by a substitute.[1]

Of the Canaanites it was said that "even their daughters

they have BURNT in the fire to their gods";[2] and of the

King of Moab, that when he saw his army in danger of

defeat, "he took his eldest son that should have reigned

in his stead and offered him for a burnt-offering on the

wall!"[3] Dr. Frazer[4] mentions the similar case of the

Carthaginians (about B.C. 300) sacrificing two hundred children

of good family as a propitiation to Baal and to

save their beloved city from the assaults of the Sicilian

tyrant Agathocles. And even so we hear that on that

occasion three hundred more young folk VOLUNTEERED to

die for the fatherland.

[1] Exodus xxxiv. 20.

[2] Deut. xii. 31.

[3] 2 Kings iii. 27.

[4] The Golden Bough, vol. "The Dying God," p. 167.

The awful sacrifices made by the Aztecs in Mexico to

their gods Huitzilopochtli, Texcatlipoca, and others are

described in much detail by Sahagun, the Spanish missionary

of the sixteenth century. The victims were mostly

prisoners of war or young children; they were numbered

by thousands. In one case Sahagun describes the huge Idol

or figure of the god as largely plated with gold and

holding his hands palm upward and in a downward

sloping position over a cauldron or furnace placed below. The

children, who had previously been borne in triumphal state

on litters over the crowd and decorated with every ornamental

device of feathers and flowers and wings, were

placed one by one on the vast hands and ROLLED DOWN into

the flames--as if the god were himself offering them.[1] As

the procession approached the temple, the members of

it wept and danced and sang, and here again the abundance

of tears was taken for a good augury of rain.[2]

[1] It is curious to find that exactly the same story (of the

sloping hands and the children rolled down into the flames) is

related concerning the above-mentioned Baal image at Carthage

(see Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14; also Baring Gould's Religious

Belief, vol. i, p. 375).

[2] "A los ninos que mataban, componianlos en muchos atavios para

llevarlos al sacrificio, y llevabos en unas literas sobre los

hombros, estas literas iban adornadas con plumages y con flores:

iban tanendo, cantando y bailando delante de ellos . . . Cuando

Ileviban los ninos a matar, si llevaban y echaban muchos

lagrimas, alegrabansi los que los llevaban porque tomaban

pronostico de que habian de tener muchas aguas en aquel ano."

Sahagun, Historia Nueva Espana, Bk. II, ch. i.

Bernal Diaz describes how he saw one of these monstrous

figures--that of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, all inlaid

with gold and precious stones; and beside it were "braziers,

wherein burned the hearts of three Indians, torn

from their bodies that very day, and the smoke of them and

the savor of incense were the sacrifice."

Sahagun again (in Book II, ch. 5) gives a long account

of the sacrifice of a perfect youth at Easter-time--which

date Sabagun connects with the Christian festival of the

Resurrection. For a whole year the youth had been held

in honor and adored by the people as the very image of the

god (Tetzcatlipoca) to whom he was to be sacrificed. Every

luxury and fulfilment of his last wish (including such four

courtesans as he desired) had been granted him. At the last

and on the fatal day, leaving his companions and his worshipers

behind, be slowly ascended the Temple staircase; stripping

on each step the ornaments from his body; and breaking

and casting away his flutes and other musical

instruments; till, reaching the summit, he was stretched,

curved on his back, and belly upwards, over the altar

stone, while the priest with obsidian knife cut his breast

open and, snatching the heart out, held it up, yet beating,

as an offering to the Sun. In the meantime, and

while the heart still lived, his successor for the next year

was chosen.

In Book II, ch. 7 of the same work Sahagun describes the

similar offering of a woman to a goddess. In both cases

(he explains) of young man or young woman, the victims

were richly adorned in the guise of the god or

goddess to whom they were offered, and at the same time

great largesse of food was distributed to all who needed.

[Here we see the connection in the general mind between

the gift of food (by the gods) and the sacrifice of precious

blood (by the people).] More than once Sahagun mentions

that the victims in these Mexican ceremonials not infrequently

offered THEMSELVES as a voluntary sacrifice; and Prescott

says[1] that the offering of one's life to the gods was

"sometimes voluntarily embraced, as a most glorious death opening

a sure passage into Paradise."

[1] Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.

Dr. Frazer describes[1] the far-back Babylonian festival

of the Sacaea in which "a prisoner, condemned to death, was

dressed in the king's robes, seated on the king's throne,

allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink

and enjoy himself, and even to lie with the king's concubines."

But at the end of the five days he was stripped

of his royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. It

is certainly astonishing to find customs so similar prevailing

among peoples so far removed in space and time

as the Aztecs of the sixteenth century A.D. and the Babylonians

perhaps of the sixteenth century B.C. But we know

that this subject of the yearly sacrifice of a victim

attired as a king or god is one that Dr. Frazer has especially

made his own, and for further information on it his classic

work should be consulted.

[1] Golden Bough, "The Dying God," p. 114. See also S. Reinach,

Cults, Myths and Religion, p. 94) on the martyrdom of St. Dasius.

Andrew Lang also, with regard to the Aztecs, quotes

largely from Sahagun, and summarizes his conclusions in

the following passage: "The general theory of worship was

the adoration of a deity, first by innumerable human

sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a MAN for the male

gods, of a WOMAN for each goddess.[1] The latter victims

were regarded as the living images or incarnations of the

divinities in, each case; for no system of worship carried

farther the identification of the god with the sacrifice

[? victim], and of both with the officiating priest. The

connection was emphasized by the priests wearing the

newly-flayed skins of the victims--just as in Greece, Egypt

and Assyria, the fawn-skin or bull-hide or goat-skin or fish-

skin of the victims is worn by the celebrants. Finally, an

image of the god was made out of paste, and this was divided

into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those

who communicated."[2]

[1] Compare the festival of Thargelia at Athens, originally

connected with the ripening of the crops. A procession was formed

and the first fruits of the year offered to Apollo, Artemis and

the Horae. It was an expiatory feast, to purify the State from

all guilt and avert the wrath of the god [the Sun]. A man and a

woman, as representing the male and female population, were led

about with a garland of figs [fertility] round their necks, to

the sound of flutes and singing. They were then scourged,

sacrificed, and their bodies burned by the seashore. (Nettleship

and Sandys.)

[2] A Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii, p. 97.

Revolting as this whole picture is, it represents as we know

a mere thumbnail sketch of the awful practices of human

sacrifice all over the world. We hold up our hands

in horror at the thought of Huitzilopochtli dropping children

from his fingers into the flames, but we have to remember

that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content

to describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about

the floor of Hell! What sort of god, we may ask, did

Augustine worship? The Being who could condemn children

to such a fate was certainly no better than the Mexican Idol.

And yet Augustine was a great and noble man, with some

by no means unworthy conceptions of the greatness of

his God. In the same way the Aztecs were in many

respects a refined and artistic people, and their religion was

not all superstition and bloodshed. Prescott says of

them[1] that they believed in a supreme Creator and Lord

"omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving all gifts, without

whom Man is as nothing--invisible, incorporeal, one God,

of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we

find repose and a sure defence." How can we reconcile

St. Augustine with his own devilish creed, or the

religious belief of the Aztecs with their unspeakable cruelties?

Perhaps we can only reconcile them by remembering

out of what deeps of barbarism and what nightmares

of haunting Fear, man has slowly emerged--and

is even now only slowly emerging; by remembering also

that the ancient ceremonies and rituals of Magic and

Fear remained on and were cultivated by the multitude in

each nation long after the bolder and nobler spirits had

attained to breathe a purer air; by remembering that

even to the present day in each individual the Old and the

New are for a long period thus intricately intertangled. It

is hard to believe that the practice of human and animal

sacrifice (with whatever revolting details) should have been

cultivated by nine-tenths of the human race over the globe

out of sheer perversity and without some reason which at

any rate to the perpetrators themselves appeared commanding

and convincing. To-day [1918] we are witnessing

in the Great European War a carnival of human slaughter

which in magnitude and barbarity eclipses in one stroke

all the accumulated ceremonial sacrifices of historical

ages; and when we ask the why and wherefore of this

horrid spectacle we are told, apparently in all sincerity, and

by both the parties engaged, of the noble objects and commanding

moralities which inspire and compel it. We can hardly,

in this last case, disbelieve altogether in the genuineness

of the plea, so why should we do so in the former

case? In both cases we perceive that underneath the

surface pretexts and moralities Fear is and was the

great urging and commanding force.

[1] Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.

The truth is that Sin and Sacrifice represent--if you

once allow for the overwhelming sway of fear--perfectly

reasonable views of human conduct, adopted instinctively

by mankind since the earliest times. If in a moment of

danger or an access of selfish greed you deserted your

brother tribesman or took a mean advantage of him, you

'sinned' against him; and naturally you expiated the

sin by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind made to the

one you had wronged. Such an idea and such a practice

were the very foundation of social life and human morality,

and must have sprung up as soon as ever, in the course

of evolution, man became CAPABLE of differentiating himself

from his fellows and regarding his own conduct as that of

a 'separate self.' It was in the very conception of a

separate self that 'sin' and disunity first began; and it

was by 'sacrifice' that unity and harmony were restored,

appeasement and atonement effected.

But in those earliest times, as I have already indicated

more than once, man felt himself intimately related not

only to his brother tribesman, but to the animals and to

general Nature. It was not so much that he THOUGHT thus

as that he never thought OTHERWISE! He FELT subconsciously

that he was a part of all this outer world. And so he

adopted for his totems or presiding spirits every possible

animal, as we have seen, and all sorts of nature-phenomena,

such as rain and fire and water and clouds, and sun, moon and

stars--which WE consider quite senseless and inanimate.

Towards these apparently senseless things therefore he

felt the same compunction as I have described him feeling

towards his brother tribesmen. He could sin against

them too. He could sin against his totem-animal by

eating it; he could sin against his 'brother the ox' by consuming

its strength in the labor of the plough; he could

sin against the corn by cutting it down and grinding

it into flour, or against the precious and beautiful pine-

tree by laying his axe to its roots and converting it into

mere timber for his house. Further still, no doubt he

could sin against elemental nature. This might be more

difficult to be certain of, but when the signs of elemental

displeasure were not to be mistaken--when the rain withheld

itself for months, or the storms and lightning dealt death

and destruction, when the crops failed or evil plagues afflicted

mankind--then there could be little uncertainty that he had

sinned; and Fear, which had haunted him like a demon from

the first day when he became conscious of his separation

from his fellows and from Nature, stood over him and urged

to dreadful propitiations.

In all these cases some sacrifice in reparation was the obvious

thing. We have seen that to atone for the cutting-down

of the corn a human victim would often be

slaughtered. The corn-spirit clearly approved of this, for

wherever the blood and remains of the victim were

strewn the corn always sprang up more plentifully. The

tribe or human group made reparation thus to the corn; the

corn-spirit signified approval. The 'sin' was expiated and

harmony restored. Sometimes the sacrifice was voluntarily

offered by a tribesman; sometimes it was enforced, by lot

or otherwise; sometimes the victim was a slave, or a

captive enemy; sometimes even an animal. All that

did not so much matter. The main thing was that the

formal expiation had been carried out, and the wrath

of the spirits averted.

It is known that tribes whose chief food-animal was the

bear felt it necessary to kill and cat a bear occasionally;

but they could not do this without a sense of guilt, and some

fear of vengeance from the great Bear-spirit. So they

ate the slain bear at a communal feast in which the

tribesmen shared the guilt and celebrated their community

with their totem and with each other. And since they could

not make any reparation directly to the slain animal itself

AFTER its death, they made their reparation BEFORE, bringing

all sorts of presents and food to it for a long anterior period,

and paying every kind of worship and respect to it. The

same with the bull and the ox. At the festival of the Bouphonia,

in some of the cities of Greece as I have already

mentioned, the actual bull sacrificed was the handsomest

and most carefully nurtured that could be obtained; it

was crowned with flowers and led in procession with

every mark of reverence and worship. And when--as I

have already pointed out--at the great Spring festival, instead

of a bull or a goat or a ram, a HUMAN victim was immolated,

it was a custom (which can be traced very widely over the

world) to feed and indulge and honor the victim to

the last degree for a WHOLE YEAR before the final ceremony,

arraying him often as a king and placing a crown

upon his head, by way of acknowledgment of the noble

and necessary work he was doing for the general

good.

What a touching and beautiful ceremony was that--belonging

especially to the North of Syria, and lands where

the pine is so beneficent and beloved a tree--the mourning

ceremony of the death and burial of Attis! when a

pine-tree, felled by the axe, was hollowed out, and in the hollow

an image (often itself carved out of pinewood) of the

young Attis was placed. Could any symbolism express more

tenderly the idea that the glorious youth--who represented

Spring, too soon slain by the rude tusk of Winter--

was himself the very human soul of the pine-tree?[1] At

some earlier period, no doubt, a real youth had been sacrificed

and his body bound within the pine; but now it was

deemed sufficient for the maidens to sing their wild songs

of lamentation; and for the priests and male enthusiasts

to cut and gash themselves with knives, or to sacrifice

(as they did) to the Earth-mother the precious blood offering

of their virile organs--symbols of fertility in return

for the promised and expected renewal of Nature and

the crops in the coming Spring. For the ceremony, as

we have already seen, did not end with death and lamentation,

but led on, perfectly naturally, after a day or

two to a festival of resurrection, when it was discovered--

just as in the case of Osiris--that the pine-tree coffin

was empty, and the immortal life had flown. How strange

the similarity and parallelism of all these things to the

story of Jesus in the Gospels--the sacrifice of a life

made in order to bring salvation to men and expiation of

sins, the crowning of the victim, and arraying in royal

attire, the scourging and the mockery, the binding or nailing to

a tree, the tears of Mary, and the resurrection and the empty

coffin!--or how not at all strange when we consider in what

numerous forms and among how many peoples, this same

parable and ritual had as a matter of fact been celebrated,

and how it had ultimately come down to bring

its message of redemption into a somewhat obscure Syrian

city, in the special shape with which we are familiar.

[1] See Julius Firmicus, who says (De Errore, c. 28): "in sacris

Phrygiis, quae Matris deum dicunt, per annos singulos arbor pinea

caeditur, et in media arbore simulacrum uvenis subligatur. In

Isiacis sacris de pinea arbore caeditur truncus; hujus trunci

media pars subtiliter excavatur, illis de segminibus factum

idolum Osiridis sepelitur. In Prosperpinae sacris caesa arbor in

effigiem virginis formaraque componitur, et cum intra civitatem

fuerit illata, quadraginta noctibus pIangitur, quadragesima vero

nocte comburitur."

Though the parable or legend in its special Christian form

bears with it the consciousness of the presence of beings

whom we may call gods, it is important to remember that in many

or most of its earlier forms, though it dealt in 'spirits'--the

spirit of the corn, or the spirit of the Spring,

or the spirits of the rain and the thunder, or the spirits

of totem-animals--it had not yet quite risen to the idea

of gods. It had not risen to the conception of eternal

deities sitting apart and governing the world in solemn

conclave--as from the slopes of Olympus or the recesses

of the Christian Heaven. It belonged, in fact, in its

inception, to the age of Magic. The creed of Sin and

Sacrifice, or of Guilt and Expiation--whatever we like to call

it--was evolved perfectly naturally out of the human mind

when brought face to face with Life and Nature) at

some early stage of its self-consciousness. It was essentially

the result of man's deep, original and instinctive

sense of solidarity with Nature, now denied and belied

and to some degree broken up by the growth and conscious

insistence of the self-regarding impulses. It was

the consciousness of disharmony and disunity, causing

men to feel all the more poignantly the desire and the

need of reconciliation. It was a realization of union

made clear by its very loss. It assumed of course,

in a subconscious way as I have already indicated, that the

external world was the HABITAT of a mind or minds similar

to man's own; but THAT being granted, it is evident

that the particular theories current in this or that place about

the nature of the world--the theories, as we should say,

of science or theology--did not alter the general outlines

of the creed; they only colored its details and gave

its ritual different dramatic settings. The mental attitudes,

for instance, of Abraham sacrificing the ram, or of the

Siberian angakout slaughtering a totem-bear, or of a modern

and pious Christian contemplating the Saviour on the Cross

are really almost exactly the same. I mention this because

in tracing the origins or the evolution of religions it is

important to distinguish clearly what is essential and

universal from that which is merely local and temporary.

Some people, no doubt, would be shocked at the comparisons

just made; but surely it is much more inspiriting and

encouraging to think that whatever progress HAS been

made in the religious outlook of the world has come about

through the gradual mental growth and consent of the peoples,

rather than through some unique and miraculous event

of a rather arbitrary and unexplained character--which

indeed might never be repeated, and concerning which

it would perhaps be impious to suggest that it SHOULD

be repeated.

The consciousness then of Sin (or of alienation from

the life of the whole), and of restoration or redemption

through Sacrifice, seems to have disclosed itself in the human

race in very far-back times, and to have symbolized itself

in some most ancient rituals; and if we are shocked

sometimes at the barbarities which accompanied those

rituals, yet we must allow that these barbarities show

how intensely the early people felt the solemnity and

importance of the whole matter; and we must allow too

that the barbarities did sear and burn themselves into

rude and ignorant minds with the sense of the NEED of

Sacrifice, and with a result perhaps which could not have

been compassed in any other way.

For after all we see now that sacrifice is of the very

essence of social life. "It is expedient that ONE man

should die for the people"; and not only that one man

should actually die, but (what is far more important) that

each man should be ready and WILLING to die in that

cause, when the occasion and the need arises. Taken

in its larger meanings and implications Sacrifice, as conceived

in the ancient world, was a perfectly reasonable

thing. It SHOULD pervade modern life more than it does.

All we have or enjoy flows from, or is implicated with, pain

and suffering in others, and--if there is any justice in

Nature or Humanity--it demands an equivalent readiness

to suffer on our part. If Christianity has any real

essence, that essence is perhaps expressed in some such

ritual or practice of Sacrifice, and we see that the dim

beginnings of this idea date from the far-back customs

of savages coming down from a time anterior to all recorded

history.