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 Sahagun 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 eat 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.