And now that we have before us this extended array of related facts,
concerning the sacred uses and the popular estimates of blood, in all
the ages, it will be well for us to consider what we have learned, in
the line of blood-rights and of blood-customs, and in the direction
of their religious involvings. Especially is it important for us to
see, where and how all this bears on the primitive and the still
extant ceremony of covenanting by blood, with which we started in this
investigation.
From the beginning, and everywhere, blood seems to have been looked
upon as preeminently the representative of life; as, indeed, in a
peculiar sense, life itself. The transference of blood from one
organism to another, has been counted the transference of life,
with all that life includes. The inter-commingling of blood by
its inter-transference, has been understood as equivalent to an
inter-commingling of natures. Two natures thus inter-commingled,
by the inter-commingling of blood, have been considered as forming,
thenceforward, one blood, one life, one nature, one soul--in two
organisms. The inter-commingling of natures, by the inter-commingling
of blood, has been deemed possible between man and a lower organism;
and between man and a higher organism,--even between man and Deity,
actually or by symbol;--as well as between man and his immediate fellow.
The mode of inter-transference of blood, with all that this carries,
has been deemed practicable, alike by way of the lips, and by way of
the opened and inter-flowing veins. It has been also represented, by
blood-bathing, by blood-anointing, and by blood-sprinkling; or, again,
by the inter-drinking of wine--which was formerly commingled with blood
itself in the drinking. And the yielding of one’s life by the yielding
of one’s blood has often been represented by the yielding of the blood
of a chosen and a suitable substitute. Similarly the blood, or the
nature, of divinities, has been represented, vicariously, in divine
covenanting, by the blood of a devoted and an accepted substitute.
Inter-communion between the parties in a blood-covenant, has been a
recognized privilege, in conjunction with any and every observance of
the rite of blood-covenanting. And the body of the divinely accepted
offering, the blood of which is a means of divine-human inter-union,
has been counted a very part of the divinity; and to partake of that
body as food has been deemed equivalent to being nourished by the very
divinity himself.
Blood, as life, has been looked upon as belonging, in the highest
sense, to the Author of all life. The taking of life has been seen to
be the prerogative of its Author; and only he who is duly empowered,
for a season and for a reason, by that Author, for blood-taking in any
case, has been supposed to have the right to the temporary exercise of
that prerogative. Even then, the blood, as the life, must be employed
under the immediate direction and oversight of its Author. The heart
of any living organism, as the blood-source and the blood-fountain,
has been recognized as the representative of its owner’s highest
personality; and as the diffuser of the issues of his life and nature.
A covenant of blood, a covenant made by the inter-commingling of
blood, has been recognized as the closest, the holiest, and the most
indissoluble, compact conceivable. Such a covenant clearly involves
an absolute surrender of one’s separate self, and an irrevocable
merging of one’s individual nature into the dual, or the multiplied,
personality included in the compact. Man’s highest and noblest
outreachings of soul have, therefore, been for such a union with the
divine nature, as is typified in this human covenant of blood.
How it came to pass, that men everywhere were so generally agreed on
the main symbols of their religious yearnings and their religious
hopes, in this realm of their aspirations, is a question which
obviously admits of two possible answers. A common revelation from God,
may have been given to primitive man; and all these varying yet related
indications of religious strivings and aim, may be but the perverted
remains of the lessons of that misused, or slighted, revelation. On
the other hand, God may originally have implanted the germs of a
common religious thought in the mind of man, and then have adapted
his successive revelations to the outworking of those germs. Which
ever view of the probable origin of these common symbolisms, all the
world over, be adopted by any Christian student, the importance of the
symbolisms themselves, in their relation to the truths of revelation,
is manifestly the same.
On this point, Kurtz has said, forcefully: “A comparison of the
religious symbols of the Old Testament with those of ancient
heathendom, shows that the ground and the starting point of those forms
of religion which found their appropriate expressions in symbols, was
the same in all cases; while the history of civilization proves that
on this point, priority cannot be claimed by the Israelites. But when
instituting such an inquiry, we shall also find that the symbols
which were transferred from the religions of nature to that of the
spirit, first passed through the fire of divine purification, from
which they issued as the distinctive theology of the Jews; the dross
of a pantheistic deification of nature having been consumed.”[423]
And as to even the grosser errors, and the more pitiable perversions
of the right, in the use of these world-wide religious symbolisms,
Kurtz says, again: “Every error, however dangerous, is based on some
truth misunderstood, and ... every aberration, however grievous, has
started from a desire after real good, which had not attained its goal,
because the latter was sought neither in the right way, nor by right
means.”[424] To recognize these truths concerning the outside religions
of the world, gives us an added fitness for the comparison of the
symbolisms we have just been considering, with the teachings of the
sacred pages of revelation, on the specific truths involved.
Proofs of the existence of this rite of blood-covenanting, have been
found among primitive peoples of all quarters of the globe; and its
antiquity is carried back to a date long prior to the days of Abraham.
All this, outside of any indications of the rite in the text of Bible
itself. And now we are in a position to turn intelligently to that text
for fuller light on the subject.