GOD THE SACRIFICE.
It is Sunday to-day in the little Italian town, and they have been
holding a procession. I do not know quite what was the reason of the
procession; it is the feast day of the patron of the Church, and it is
connected in some way with him, but quite how no one could tell me. It
was the custom, and that sufficed. It was not a very grand procession,
for the town is small, but there was the town band playing at the head,
and there were girls in twos singing and priests, also in pairs,
singing, and there were banners and a crucifix. This last was just like
any other crucifix you may see; there was the pale body of Christ upon
the cross, with His wounds red with blood, there was the tinsel crown
over the head, there was upon the face the look of suffering. It was
like any other crucifix in a Catholic country, not a work of art at all.
It was gruesome, and to the unbeliever repulsive and unpleasant. But all
the people uncovered as it passed, and many looked to it with reverence
and worship.
But indeed Catholic countries are full of such crucifixes. They are upon
the hills, they are beside the roadsides, they are in all the churches,
they are in every Catholic household, there is very often one worn upon
the person.
Throughout Italy, throughout all Catholic countries, there are only two
representations of Christ--as a babe with the Virgin Mary and crucified
upon the cross. It was in Italy that Western Christianity arose and
grew, it was in Italy that it became a living power, it was in Italy
that it acquired consistency, that it was bound together by dogmas and
crystallised in creeds. And still, after nineteen hundred years, it is
Italy that remains the centre of the Christian world. There is no
Christian church so great, so venerable, so imposing as the Church of
Rome. It lasts unchanged amid the cataclasms of worlds. And this people
whose genius made Christianity, whose genius still rules the greater
part of it, what are their conceptions of Christ? What part of His life
is it that has caught their reverence and adoration, what side is it of
His character that appeals to them, what is the emotion that the name of
Christ awakens in these believers?
Of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ I have written in another
chapter. It is of the crucifix I wish to write here. Why is it that of
the life of Christ this end of His is considered the most worthy to be
in continual remembrance?
I confess that when I climb the hill and see the dead Christs upon their
crosses shining white against the olive gardens, when I see His agony
depicted in the churches, when I see the people gaze upon Him
sacrificed, my memory is taken back to other scenes.
There is a scene that I can remember in a village far away against the
frontier in our farthest East. It was a little village that was once a
city, but decayed; it was walled with huge walls of brick, but they are
fallen into mounds; it had gateways, but they are now but gaps; and a
few huts are huddled in a corner where once a palace stood.
It is the custom in this village that every year at a certain season
white cocks are to be sacrificed at the gates. There is as may be some
legend to explain the custom, but it is forgotten. And yet are the cocks
sacrificed each year.
There is the memory, too, of the goat I saw killed in India years ago as
I have described. And there are other memories--memories of what I have
seen, of what I have read. For this ceremony of sacrifice is the very
oldest of all the beginnings of religion. It is akin to prayer, it is at
the root of all faiths; we can go no further back than sacrifice. Where
it began religion had commenced. Far older than any creed, arising from
the dumb instincts of human kind, it is one of the roots of faiths.
Therefore, when I see this image of God, the Son sacrificed to God the
Father, I seem to behold the highest development of this long story.
Sacrifice, it has always been sacrifice. It has been small
animals--goats and fowls and pigeons; it has been greater and more
valuable beasts--cattle and horses. It has been man. How often indeed
has it been man: Abraham leading Isaac to the sacrifice, the Aztecs
sacrificing in Mexico, the Druids in Britain, the followers of Odin, the
Greeks, the Egyptians, the early Hindus, can you find a faith that has
not sacrificed? Sometimes it has been single victims, sometimes
hecatombs of slaughtered slaves. It has been sacrifice by priests, it
has been self-sacrifice, as Curtius or as those who threw themselves
before the car of Juggernauth. Everywhere there has been sacrifice; it
is one of the roots of faiths, it arouses the emotion that has helped to
make all religions. And in Christianity it has reached its zenith, for
it is no longer an animal, no longer even a man--it is a God, the Son of
God who is self-sacrificed to God. In what manner this awakens the
emotions of man the following extract will show. It is from "The Gospel
of the Atonement," by the Venerable J. Wilson.
"The law that suffering is divine, [Greek: to kalon pathein], is
verified in the experience of the soul. Now Christ's death is the
supreme instance of that law. The power of Gethsemane and Calvary, in
the light of such a law, needs no explanation. They open the heart as
nothing else ever did. We know that whatever reservations we make for
ourselves, whatever our own shrinking from utter self-sacrifice, Christ,
living in perfect accordance with the laws of spiritual health and
perfection, could not do other than die. Thus without any thought of
payment or expiation, with no vestige of separation of the Son from the
Father, we see that the death on the Cross demonstrated that the human
and divine know but one and the same law of life and being. Thus it is
that the death of Christ, the shedding of His blood, has been, and ever
will be, regarded by theologians, as well as by the simple believers, as
the way of the atonement. Via crucis via salutis."
The scientific theologians tell me when I ask that this parade of the
sacrifice of Christ is to recall to men how much they should love
Christ. That He so loved them that He gave Himself a victim for their
salvation. The crucifix, the incessant preaching of the death of Christ,
the sacrament of the Communion, is to cause us to love Him as to do what
He taught us. That it does have some such effect no one can doubt--on
Latin people. But on others?
To some it seems that if you try to reason at all about it, the emotion
awakened might be, nay should be, otherwise. In those not instinct with
one emotion the first impression awakened is disgust at the parade of
death and blood; the second, horror at the God who could demand such a
sacrifice, who could not be pacified but by the execution in
circumstances of shame of His own Son. They shrink from it. It is no
matter of reason. Do you think one who felt so could be argued out of
his horror or a Christian out of his devotion? They are instinctive
feelings which nothing will change. And yet in a very small way even the
Buddhist has the instinct of sacrifice. For I remember that when the
fowls were killed inside the city gate and their blood ran upon the
ground the people looked just as these Italian people looked. The
emotion was the same in kind, and it was not either love for the fowls
or wonder at the demand of the spirits that moved them. And so when the
slaves were sacrificed beneath the oaks, was it gratitude to the slaves
that was evoked? And in the self-sacrifice at the car of Juggernauth?
It may be sometimes that gratitude may be added, but this is not
the root emotion. The instinct of sacrifice has its roots much
deeper than this, quite apart from this; and, with perhaps only one
exception--Buddhism--all religions have practised it. Christianity
performs no more sacrifices now, but all its churches, in all their
varieties weekly at the great sacrament of the Communion,
commemorate--nay, it is claimed in a measure recreate--this sacrifice of
the Son to the Father. Sacrifice is of the very root of this religion.
It is far older than any creed. The Jews knew of sacrifice two thousand
years before the day of Christ, the Celts sacrificed slaves ages before
that.
But it may be said these crosses, these crucifixes, are peculiar to
Catholic countries. You do not see them in North Germany, in England, in
America. Teutonic nations do not parade this sacrifice. No, they do not,
for it does not appeal to them so much as to the nations of Southern
Europe. Sacrifice was not unknown to the Teutons and the Northern
people, but it never reached the height it did further South. It has
been the Latin peoples who in this as in other matters went to extremes.
It was the Greeks who sacrificed Iphigenia, who had the festival of the
Thargalia; it was Rome which produced Curtius and others who sacrificed
themselves. It was the Romans who sacrificed thousands in the Coliseum.
It is in the tumuli of Celtic peoples where we find the cloven skulls of
slaves.
Sacrifice has appealed always more to the Latin then and now; and
therefore you see the crucifix in Latin countries, but not with us.
Still, we are not free from the emotion. We have the sacrament of
Communion; the Atonement appeals to us also. The passions that are
strong in the Latin peoples are weak with us, yet they exist. The
instincts are the same. When executions were public our people thronged
to see them. Death has always a peculiar attraction, quite apart from
any idea connected with it. It is such a wonderful thing the taking of
life, so awe-inspiring, that it has appealed always to men; especially
in the west.
In the East that has accepted Buddhism, especially in Burma, it is much
less so. They have, it is true, the usual pleasure and curiosity in
seeing blood and death. And occasionally you come across some petty
sacrifice like that of the fowls mentioned above; but the instinct is
comparatively weak. It has never, even before they were Buddhists, been
general, and never extended even to cattle. The sacrifice of a man
(remember, I say sacrifice, not execution), would be absolutely
abhorrent to them, how much more so that of a God? They have not the
instinctive recognition of any beauty in it. Therefore, for this amongst
other reasons, the Burmese reject Christianity.
But to the Western instinct this sacrifice and this atonement is
wonderful and beautiful. It appeals to us. The old instinct is
satisfied.
* * * * *
Therefore, amongst other reasons, Christians cling to the Atonement, and
to make that sacrifice the greatest possible it must be the sacrifice of
God, and as God can only be sacrificed to God the Christian God must be
a multiple one. To postulate as the Mahommedan does, God is God, would
destroy the depth of the Atonement. Hence arises the creed, the attempt
to reconcile two opposed instincts. There is one God--that is an
instinct, arising from our generalising power; there must be at least
two Gods to explain the Atonement, and so we have the Father and the
Son.
For of the three Godheads only these two are real to most people. There
is God the Ruler, the Maker of the world, and there is Christ. These are
both very real to all Christians. They are prayed to individually, they
are worshipped separately, they are clear conceptions. But is there any
clear conception of the Holy Ghost as a distinct personality? Is He ever
cited separately from the others? Has He any special characteristics?
There are, for instance, many pictures of God, and many more of
Christ--are there any of the Holy Ghost? This Third Person of the
Trinity appeals to no instinct, and is only an abstraction in popular
thought. When the Creed was framed it was necessary to include the Holy
Ghost because He is mentioned in the New Testament. He has remained an
abstraction only. But the other two Godheads are realities, because they
appeal to feelings that are innate. They are the explanation of these
feelings.
* * * * *
Thus do creeds arise out of instincts. It is never the reverse.
Postulate God the Father as All-Powerful, All-Merciful, and see if by
any possibility you can work out the Atonement or see any beauty in it.
Can anyone see aught but horror in this Almighty demanding the sacrifice
of His Son? You cannot. But granted that Atonement and sacrifice have
to you an innate beauty of their own, and the dogma of a multiple
Godhead easily follows. There are creeds built on ceremonies, and
ceremonies upon instincts: ceremonies are never deduced from creeds.