_“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without
the shedding of blood there is no remission.”—Heb. 9: 22. “The blood of
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”—! John 1: 5._
IT would be tedious to quote even one-tenth of the passages from the New
Testament in which salvation is ascribed to the blood of Jesus. Indeed,
from Genesis to Revelation sacrificial blood seems to be the one
prominent theme. The salvation of Christ is emphatically the salvation
by blood, and this idea runs through the whole system of what is called
evangelical theology. Jeremy Taylor wrote about “lapping with the tongue
the blood from the Saviour’s open wounds,” suggesting the well-known
habit of the bloodthirsty dog. But Mr. Taylor was outdone by the late
Rev. Bishop Jesse T. Peck, when he frantically exclaimed, in the
presence of thousands of people at a religious mass-meeting, “We have
not enough _blood_ in our religion. I want to wade in the blood of
Calvary up to my armpits, and _wallow_ in it,” suggesting the well-known
habits of the filthy sow. But the Rev. T. D. Talmage, D. D., capped the
climax when, in his usual rhapsodical style, he exclaimed in a recent
sermon: “It seems to me as if all Heaven were trying to bid in your
soul. The first bid it makes is the tears of Christ at the tomb of
Lazarus; but that is not a high-enough price. The next bid Heaven makes
is the sweat of Gethsemane; but it is too cheap a price. The next bid
Heaven makes seems to be the whipped back of Pilate’s Hall; but it is
not a high-enough price. Can it be possible that Heaven cannot buy you
in? Heaven tries once more. It says: ‘I bid this time for that man’s
soul the torture of Christ’s martyrdom, the blood on his temple, the
blood on his cheek, the blood on his chin, the blood on his hand, the
blood on his side, the blood on his knee, the blood on his foot—the
blood in drops, the blood in rills, the blood in pools coagulated
beneath the cross; the blood that wet the tips of the soldier’s spear,
the blood that plashed warm in the faces of his enemies.’ Glory to God!
that bid wins it! The highest price that was ever paid for anything was
paid for your soul. Nothing could buy it but blood! The estranged
property is bought back. Take it. You have sold yourselves for naught;
and ye shall be redeemed without money.’ O atoning blood, cleansing
blood, life-giving blood, sanctifying blood, glorifying blood of Jesus!
Why not burst into tears at the thought that for thee he shed it—for
thee the hard-hearted, for thee the lost?”
Henry III. of England was presented with a small portion of the blood of
Jesus, said to have been shed upon the cross, and to have been preserved
in a phial, duly attested by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and other
distinguished functionaries as genuine. It was carried in triumph
through the streets of London with rapturous shoutings by a large
procession, from St. Paul’s to Westminster Abbey, and the historian
testifies that it made all England radiant with glory. Indeed, there has
been enough of the so-called genuine blood that was shed on Calvary
given to the faithful to float the largest ship in the navy of Great
Britain. A sufficient quantity of the real cross upon which Jesus is
said to have been crucified has been preserved to erect the largest
temple the world ever contained. There is no end to the superstition on
this subject, all going to show how deep-seated is the credulity which
exists in the popular belief in regard to this matter.
There are many illustrations which might be given of “blood-evocation”
among ancient pagans who regarded blood as the great arcanum of nature.
But what was the _origin_ of the idea that blood is purifying,
cleansing, purging? There is nothing in the thing itself that suggests
this idea. Take a basinful of newly-drawn blood and set it upon the
table before you. It soon coagulates, and emits an offensive odor, so
that you are forced to hurry it from your presence. It is the very
opposite of _cleansing_. If you get a drop upon your finger, you
immediately wash it off. Indeed, some persons cannot stand the sight of
blood, and shrink from its touch as from a deadly poison. There must be
some reason for the idea that in some way blood is suggestive of
cleansing or purifying. Now, we go to _nature_ in search of knowledge.
There is only one phenomenon in which the shedding of blood is a natural
process, and that is when the young girl arrives at the stage of
_pubescence_, and in this case, and in this case only, does it suggest
the idea of _purification_. Before the period approaches nothing can be
more suggestive of the untidy than the unpubescent girl. She is
generally awkward, slouchy, and unattractive. But let the sanguineous
evidence of approaching womanhood appear, and how changed! Her
complexion becomes then most beautiful and bewitching. Her eyes sparkle
with a fire which cannot be described. Her once ungraceful form becomes
lithe, and her whole person changes in such a manner as to indicate that
some great thing has happened. She has been purified or cleansed. She is
a new creature. Old things have passed away. Each succeeding month she
has a similar experience until the full bloom of womanhood has passed
away.
Indeed, we find among the primitive customs of ancient Africans a
special observance of the commencement of the catamenial period. Before
the arrival of the time of periodicity the young girl is of very little
account, and is not numbered as a member of the tribe. It is not
considered indecent for her to run around in a state of nudity until she
is fourteen years of age or until the evidence of pubescence appears.
Stanley says of certain African girls: “They wait with impatience the
day when they can be married and have a cloth to fold around their
bodies.” There was in use among certain ancient people, now worn by
Catholic priests, an apron known as the _peplum_, which was worn after
puberty.
The tribal mark and totemic name were conferred in the _baptism of
blood_. A covenant was entered into which was written with menstruous
blood, because blood was the announcer of the female period of
pubescence. From time immemorial the Kaffirs have preserved the custom
of celebrating the first appearance of the menstrual flow. All the young
girls in the neighborhood meet together and make merry on the happy
occasion. We are told by Irenæus how the feminine _Logos_ was
represented in the mysteries of Marcus, and the wine was supposed to be
miraculously turned into blood, and Charis, who was superior to all
things, was thought to infuse her own blood into the cup. The cup was
handed to the women, who also consecrated it with an effusion of blood
proceeding from themselves.
It would seem that the blood of Charis preceded the blood of Christ, and
it is doubtful whether there would have been any cleansing by the blood
of Christ if there had been no purification by the blood of Charis. Thus
Nature’s rubrics are written in _red_. The Eucharist is derived by
Clement of Alexandria from the mixture of the water and the Word, and he
identifies the Word with the blood of the grape. We give these delicate
hints for what they are worth.
We have a deep conviction that the conception of the idea of
purification by blood had at first some connection with the natural
issue of blood at the commencement of periodicity in the female. In the
Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated by pagans centuries before the paschal
supper of the Jews or the Lord’s Supper of Christians, the element of
blood was very conspicuously set forth, and Higgins has shown in his
_Anaealypsis_ that the sacrifice of bread and wine in religious
ceremonies was common among many ancient peoples, the wine representing
the blood.
In 1885 a very remarkable book appeared, entitled _The Blood Covenant_,
by Rev. H. Clay Trumbull, D. D., and we have obtained the consent of
this author (whom we have the honor to recognize as an old and very dear
personal friend) “to use anything we please, in any way we please,
without giving any credit.” For this permission we are truly thankful,
though we only avail ourself of a few of the facts bearing upon the
point concerning which we write.
Our author says: “One of these primitive rites, which is deserving of
more attention than it has yet received, as throwing light on many
important phases of Bible-teaching, is the rite of blood-covenanting—a
form of mutual covenanting by which two persons enter into the closest,
the most enduring, and the most sacred of compacts as friends and
brothers, or as more than brothers, through the intercommingling of
their blood by means of its mutual tasting or of its transfusion. This
rite is still observed in the unchanging East; and there are historic
traces of it from time immemorial in every quarter of the globe, yet it
has been strangely overlooked by biblical critics and biblical
commentators generally in these later centuries.
“Although now comparatively rare, in view of its responsibilities and of
its indissolubleness, this covenant is sometimes entered into by
confidential partners in business or by fellow-travelers; again, by
robbers on the road, who would themselves rest fearlessly on its
obligations, and who could be rested on within its limits, however
untrustworthy they or their fellows might be to any other compact. Yet,
again, it is the chosen compact of loving friends—of those who are drawn
to it only by mutual love and trust.
“There are, indeed, various evidences that the the of blood-covenanting
is reckoned in the East even a closer tie than that of natural
descent—that a ‘friend’ by this tie is nearer and is dearer, ‘sticketh
closer’ than a ‘brother’ by birth. We in the West are accustomed to say
that ‘ blood is thicker than water,’ but the Arabs have the idea that
blood is thicker than a mother’s milk. With them, any two children
nourished at the same breast are called ‘milk-brothers’ or ‘sucking
brothers;’ and the tie between such is very strong.
“Lucian, the bright Greek thinker, writing in the middle of the second
century of our era, is explicit as to the nature and method of this
covenant as then practised in the East: ‘And this is the manner of it:
Thereupon, cutting our fingers, all simultaneously, we let the blood
drop into a vessel, and, having dipped the points of our swords into it,
both of us holding them together, we drink it. There is nothing which
can loose us from one another after that.’
“Yet, a little while earlier than Lucian, Tacitus gives record of this
rite of blood-brotherhood as practised in the East. He makes an
explanation: ‘It is the custom of Oriental kings, as often as they come
together to make covenant, to join right hands, to tie the thumbs
together, and to tighten them with a knot. Then, when the blood is thus
pressed to the finger-tips, they draw blood by a light stroke and lick
it in turn. This they regard as a divine covenant, made sacred, as it
were, by mutual blood or blended lives.’
“Sallust, the historian of Catiline’s conspiracy against Rome, says:
‘There were those who said at that time that Catiline at this
conference, when he inducted them into the oath of partnership in crime,
carried round in goblets human blood mixed with wine, and that, after
all had tasted of it with an imprecatory oath, as is men’s wont in
solemn rites, he opened to them his plans.’ Florus, a later Latin
historian, describing this conspiracy, says: ‘There was added the pledge
of the league—human blood—which they drank as it was borne round to them
in goblets.’ And yet later Tertullian suggests that it was their own
blood, mingled with wine, of which the fellow-conspirators drank
together. ‘Concerning the eating of blood and other such tragic dishes,’
he says, ‘you read that blood drawn from the arms and tasted by one
another was the method of making covenant among certain nations.’
“As far back even as the fifth century before Christ we find an explicit
description of this Oriental rite of blood-covenanting. ‘Now, the
Scythians,’ says Herodotus, ‘make covenants in the following manner,
with whomsoever they make them: Having poured out wine into a great
earthen drinking-bowl, they mingle with it the blood of those making
covenant, striking the body with a small knife or cutting it slightly
with a sword. Thereafter they dip into the bowl sword, arrows, axe, and
javelin. But while they are doing this they utter many invokings, and
afterward not only those who make the covenant, but those of their
followers who are of the highest rank, drink off the wine mingled with
blood.’
“Again, Herodotus says of this custom in his day: ‘Now, the Arabians
reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make
these pledges in the following way: When they wish to make pledges to
one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a
sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making
the pledges. After that, plucking some woollen from the garments of each
of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones as the “heap of
witness” which are set in the midst. While he is doing this he invokes
Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he that has made the
pledges introduces the stranger to his friends, or the fellow-citizen to
his fellows if the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.
“Going back, now, to the world’s most ancient records in the monuments
of Egypt, we find evidence of the existence of the covenant of blood in
those early days. So far was this symbolic thought carried that the
ancient Egyptians spoke of the departed spirit as having entered into
the nature, and, indeed, into the very being, of the gods by the rite of
tasting blood from the divine arm.
“‘The Book of the Dead,’ as it is commonly called, is a group, or
series, of ancient Egyptian writings representing the state and the
needs and the progress of the soul after death. A copy of this funereal
ritual, ‘more or less complete according to the fortune of the deceased,
was deposited in the case of eveiy mummy. ‘As the Book of the Dead is
the most ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most important of the sacred
books of the Egyptians;’ it is, in fact, ‘according to Egyptian notions,
essentially an inspired work;’ hence its contents have an exceptional
dogmatic value. In this book there are several obvious references to the
rite of blood-covenanting. Some of these are in a chapter of the ritual
which was found transcribed in a coffin of the eleventh dynasty, thus
carrying it back to a period prior to the days of the patriarchs.
“‘Give me your arm; I am made as ye,’ says the departed soul, speaking
to the gods. Then, in explanation of this statement, the pre-historic
gloss of the ritual goes on to say: ‘The blood is that which proceeds
from the member of the Sun after he goes along cutting himself,’ the
covenant blood which unites the soul and the god is drawn from the flesh
of Ra when he has cut himself in the rite of that covenant. By this
covenant-cutting the deceased becomes one with the covenanting gods.
Again, the departing soul, speaking as Osiris—or as the Osirian, which
every mummy represents—says: ‘I am the soul in his two halves.’ This was
at least two thousand years before the days of the Greek philosopher.
How much earlier it was recognized does not appear.
“Moreover, a ‘red talisman,’ or red amulet, stained with ‘the blood of
Isis,’ and containing a record of the covenant, was placed at the neck
of the mummy as an assurance of safety to his soul. ‘When this book
[this amulet-record] has been made,’ says the ritual, ‘it causes Isis to
protect him.’ ‘If this book is known,’ says Horus, ‘he [the deceased] is
in the service of Osiris.... His name is like that of the gods.’”
Dr. Trumbull properly remarks:
“Thus in ancient Egypt, in ancient Canaan, in ancient Mexico, in modern
Turkey, in modern Russia, in modern India, and in modern Otaheite, in
Africa, in Asia, in America, in Europe, and in Oceanica, blood-giving
was life-giving. Life-giving was love-showing. Love-showing was a
heart-yearning after union in love and in life and in blood and in very
being. That was the primitive thought in the primitive religions of all
the world.
“An ancient Chaldean legend, as recorded by Bero-sus, ascribes a new
creation of mankind to the mixture by the gods of the dust of the earth
with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the god Belus. ‘On
this account it is that men are rational and partake of divine
knowledge,’ says Berosus. The blood of the god gives them the life and
nature of a god. Yet, again, the early Phœnician and the early Greek
theogonies, as recorded by Sanchoniathon and by Hesiod, ascribe the
vivifying of mankind to the outpoured blood of the gods. It was from the
blood of Ouranos, or of Saturn, dripping into the sea and mingling with
its foam, that Venus was formed, to become the mother of her heroic
posterity. ‘The Orphies, which have borrowed so largely from the East,’
says Lenormant, ‘said that the immaterial part of man, his soul, his
life, sprang from the blood of Dionysus Zagreus, whom... Titans had torn
to pieces, partly devouring his members.’
“Homer explicitly recognizes this universal belief in the power of blood
to convey life and to be a means of revivifying the dead.
“Indeed, it is claimed, with a show of reason, that the very word
(_surquinu_) which was used for ‘altar’ in the Assyrian was primarily
the word for ‘table’—that, in fact, what was known as the ‘altar’ to the
gods was originally the table of communion between the gods and their
worshippers.”
From the writings of Livingstone, the African explorer, as well as from
the reports of Stanley, it appears that the custom of blood-covenanting
is kept up in Africa in these modern times.
Describing the ceremony, Livingstone says: “It is accomplished thus: The
hands of the parties are joined (in this case Pitsane and Sambanza were
the parties engaged). Small incisions are made on the clasped hands, on
the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right cheeks and foreheads.
A small quantity of blood is taken from these points, in both parties,
by means of a stalk of grass. The blood from one person is put into a
pot of beer, and that of the second into another; each then drinks the
other’s blood, and they are supposed to become perpetual friends or
relations. During the drinking of the beer some of the party continue
beating the ground with short clubs and utter sentences by way of
ratifying the treaty.”
The primitive character of these customs is the more probable from the
fact that Livingstone first found them existing in a region where, in
his opinion, the dress and household utensils of the people are
identical with those represented on the monuments of ancient Egypt.
Concerning the origin of this rite in this region, Cameron says: “This
custom of making brothers, I believe to be really of Semitic origin.”
Henry M. Stanley, who was sent to rescue Livingstone, gives many
interesting accounts of his experience with the blood-covenanters. In
1871, Stanley encountered the forces of Mirambo, the greatest of African
warriors. They agreed to make “strong friendship” with each other. The
ceremony is thus described:
“Manwa Sera, Stanley’s ‘chief captain,’ was requested to seal our
friendship by performing the ceremony of blood-brotherhood between
Mirambo and myself. Having caused us to sit fronting each other on a
straw carpet, he made an incision in each of our right legs, from which
he extracted blood, and, interchanging it, he exclaimed aloud, ’If
either of you break this brotherhood now established between you, may
the lion devour him, the serpent poison him, bitterness be in his food,
his friends desert him, his gun burst in his hands and wound him, and
everything that is bad do wrong to him until death.’” The same blood now
flowed in the veins of both Stanley and Mirambo. They were friends and
brothers in a sacred covenant—life for life. At the conclusion of the
covenant they exchanged gifts, as the customary ratification or
accompaniment of the compact. They even vied with each other in proofs
of their unselfish fidelity in this new covenant of friendship.
Again and again, before and after this incident, Stanley entered into
the covenant of blood-brotherhood with representative Africans more than
fifty times, in some instances by the opening of his own veins; at other
times by allowing one of his personal escort to bleed for him.
Thus we see that in ancient and modern times, among all people and in
all portions of the earth, this idea of blood-friendship prevailed. In
the primitive East, in the wild West, in the cold North, and in the
torrid South this rite shows itself. “It will be observed,” says Dr.
Trumbull, “that we have already noted proofs of the independent
existence of this rite of blood-brotherhood or blood-friendship among
the three great primitive divisions of the race—the Semitic, the
Hamitic, and the Japhetic; and this in Asia, Africa, Europe, America,
and the islands of the sea; again, among the five modern and more
popular divisions of the human family—Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian,
Malay, and American. This fact in itself would seem to point to a common
origin of its various manifestations in the early Oriental home of the
now scattered peoples of the world.
“The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the
blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for ’red’ sometimes stood for
’blood.’ The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in
red; hence follows our word ‘rubric,’ The Rabbis say that when
persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red
thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the
Lord. It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her
covenant relations with the people of the Lord. The red thread in China
to-day binds the double cup from which the bride and bridegroom drink
their covenant draught of ‘wedding wine,’ as if in symbolism of the
covenant of blood. And it is a red thread which in India to-day is used
to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck. Among the American
Indians scarlet, or red, is the color which stands for sacrifices or for
sacrificial blood in all their picture-painting; and the shrine, or
_tunkan_, which continues to have its devotees, ’is painted red, as a
sign of active or living worship.’ The same is true of the shrines in
India; the color red shows that worship is still living there; red
continues to stand for blood.”
When a Jewish child is circumcised, it is commonly said of him that he
is caused “to enter into the covenant of Abraham and his godfather or
sponsor is called Baal-beerith, master of the covenant.” Moreover, even
down to modern times the rite of circumcision has included a
recognition, however unconscious, of the primitive blood-friendship
rite, by the custom of the a rabbi, God’s representative, receiving
into his mouth the prepuce or foreskin that is cut from the boy, and
thereby made a partaker of the blood mingled with the wine according to
the method described among the Orientals, in the rite of
blood-friendship, from the earliest days of history. We make this
statement on the testimony of Buxtorf, who is a recognized authority in
matters of Jewish customs, though he gives it in Latin, with a view of
limiting a knowledge of the facts.
All that we have stated concerning the blood-covenant brings us nearer
and nearer to the disgusting and beastly habit of cannibalism. Dr.
Trumbull says: “It would even seem to be indicated, by all the trend of
historic facts, that cannibalism—gross, repulsive, inhuman
cannibalism—had its basis in man’s perversion of this outreaching of his
nature (whether that outreach-ing were first directed by revelation or
by divinely-given innate promptings) after inter-union and
intercommunion with God, after life in God’s life, and after growth
through the partaking of God’s food or of that food which represents
God. The studies of many observers in widely-different fields have led
both the rationalistic and the faith-filled student to conclude that in
_their_ sphere of observation it was a religious sentiment, and not a
mere animal craving—either through a scarcity of food or from a spirit
of malignity—that was at the bottom of cannibalistic practices there,
even if that field were an exception to the world’s fields generally.
And now we have a glimpse of the nature and workings of that religious
sentiment which prompted cannibalism wherever it has been practised. In
misdirected pursuance of this thought men have given the blood of a
consecrated human victim to bring themselves into union with God; and
then they have eaten the flesh of that victim which had supplied the
blood which made them one with God. This seems to be the basis of fact
in the premises, whatever may be the understood philosophy of the facts.
Why men reasoned thus may indeed be in question. That they reasoned thus
seems evident. Certain it is, that where cannibalism has been studied in
modern times it has commonly been found to have had originally a
religious basis; and the inference is a fair one that it must have been
the same wherever cannibalism existed in earlier times. Even in some
regions where cannibalism has long since been prohibited there are
traditions and traces of its former existence as a purely religious
rite. Thus, in India little images of flour paste or clay are now made
for decapitation or other mutilation in the temples, in avowed imitation
of human beings who were once offered and eaten there.”
Réville, treating of the native religions of Mexico and Peru, comes to a
similar conclusion with Dorman, and he argues that the state of things
which was there was the same the world over, so for as it related to
cannibalism. “Cannibalism,” he says, “which is now restricted to a few
of the savage tribes who have remained closest to the animal life, was
once universal to our race. For no one would ever have conceived the
idea of offering to the gods a kind of food which excited nothing but
disgust and horror.” In this suggestion Réville indicates his conviction
that the primal idea of an altar was a table of blood-bought communion.
There is something that looks very much like cannibalism in the sixth
chapter of John’s Gospel. The Jews murmured that Jesus spoke of himself
as the bread which came down from heaven, and inquired, “How can this
man give us of his flesh to eat? Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and
drink his blood ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh
and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the
last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He
that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him.
As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he
that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread
which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers did eat, and died; he
that eateth this bread shall live for ever. These things said he in the
synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.”
This was spoken nearly two years before he is said to have instituted
the memorial Supper, and has always been a mystery to commentators,
though they allege that the whole mystery is explained in John 6: 63:
“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” This
seems to be very farfetched indeed—an afterthought. It did not satisfy
some of his disciples, for “from that time many of his disciples went
back, and walked no more with him.”
From this simple idea of securing faithfulness by the transfusion of the
blood of two persons seems to have come the idea of _propitiating_ the
gods by offering them bloody sacrifices. In primitive times, among
barbarous and uncivilized peoples, the conception was universal that the
gods were very much like themselves, and that therefore they would be
pleased with presents. When offended they could be conciliated, and when
some crime had been committed they could be induced to forgive the
transgressor by some valuable offering, such as the first-fruits of the
soil or the most immaculate animals of the flock. This idea of obtaining
favors from the invisible powers was carried to such extremes that for
the honor of humanity we should feel inclined to doubt the monstrous
stories were they not so well attested. The offering of these sacrifices
became so degraded and disgusting by superstition that it ended in the
belief that the deity’s anger could be appeased, his revenge satisfied,
his vanity flattered, and that he could be made generally pleased, by
holocausts of human beings; so that the more costly the sacrifice, the
more certain was the deity to smile upon the donor. The Moloch-worship,
the mother placing the babe in the arms of the monstrous idol and seeing
it burned before her own eyes, seems to exhaust the horrors of human
ingenuity. We have only space to state that these abominations prevailed
over most of the heathen world when the Old-Testament rites and
ceremonies came into use among the Jews. We find the custom of offering
sacrifices in the early pages of Genesis, when it led to the first
murder. Cain’s sacrifice, sacerdotal-ists tell us, was not accepted by
Jehovah because there was no _blood_ in it, as there was in the offering
of Abel. Abraham was about to slay his own son when the blood of a ram
was provided instead; and, in fact, all the Bible patriarchs sacrificed,
and the exodus from Egypt itself was brought about under the pretence
that the people had to go to the desert to offer their accustomed
sacrifice.
The Jews borrowed their idea of sacrifice from the heathen, and
sometimes were more heathenish than the heathens themselves. Thousands
and thousands of innocent animals were cruelly butchered for sacrifice,
as the Jews were full of Egyptian reminiscences on one hand and of
Canaanitish modes of worship on the other. It is said that Jehovah
allowed these abominations because of the ignorance of these people and
their hardness of heart, lest they might despise a naked religion and be
dazzled by the imposing ceremonies by which they were surrounded. The
whole system of bloody sacrifices was based upon anthropomorphic
conceptions of their Jehovah, to whom the “agreeable smell” of the blood
was a sweet satisfaction. The Jews adopted the very worst features of
paganism in regard to these bloody sacrifices, which they offered on all
occasions—so much so that their prophets cried out against them and
Jehovah himself denounced them.
The life or blood of the animal was distinctly said to make “the
atonement for the soul.” This notion of a _representative_ victim is one
that belonged to the whole ancient world, as can be seen by reference to
any of the great cyclopaedias. It was _adopted_ by the Jews, not
_revealed_ to them by Jehovah. The scape-goat (Lev. 16) and many other
cases of seemingly expiatory sacrifices are embodiments of this idea,
which was adopted by Christianity directly from Judaism, whose priests
had adopted it from other people.
The practice of bloody offerings was common to Hindoos, Assyrians,
Phœnicians, Greeks, and Northmen. There is a Hindoo ritual for human as
well as for brute animals set forth in _Asiatic Researches_. In
_Fragments of Sanchoniathon_, Kronos sacrifices his “only son” to his
father Ouranos, his “father in heaven.” Agamemnon sacrificed his
daughter, Iphigeneia,
before going to Troy, and Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was immolated on
the tomb of Achilles to his manes. Repeatedly in the Punic wars children
of noble families were burned alive to Æsculapius, god of medicine.
Burning at the stake and hanging upon a gibbet were sacrifices to
appease the divine justice. In short, all bloody sacrifices were
propitiatory, to appease the rage of hunger in a famished god. Blood was
excellent, because its aroma was the vehicle of life, and so afforded
support to life.
In Homer’s _Odyssey_, Ulysses slays animals before the ghosts of Hades,
and these run up to be nourished by the blood. He draws his sword,
rushes upon them, and drives them away. Then, selecting one with whom he
wishes to talk, he feeds him with the invigorating vapor, and the ghost
is then made strong enough to talk.
But none of these sacrifices were strictly vicarious. The old gods were
angry at neglect, but never had the kind of justice that a sheep or goat
or cow could not appease. The Jews were not unfamiliar with human
sacrifices (Lev. 27:28,29; Judg. 11:30-39), and even the early
Christians are said to have offered bloody sacrifices of human beings.
The deification of Jesus to correspond with the apotheosis of other
personages required a divine parentage. This idea was not gotten up
until the second Christian century. Justin made Jesus a second god. But
the earlier Fathers did not connect the notion of the vicarious
atonement with that of original sin and total depravity. Basilides
maintained that penal suffering or suffering for purposes of justice of
necessity implies personal criminality in the sufferer, and therefore
cannot be endured by an innocent person as a substitute.
Prof. Robertson Smith, LL.D., in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in his
learned article on “Sacrifice," says part: “Where we find a practice of
sacrificing honorific gifts to the gods, we usually find also certain
other sacrifices which resemble those already characterized, to be
consumed in sacred ceremony, but differ from them, inasmuch as the
sacrifice—usually a living victim—is not regarded as a tribute of honor
to the god, but has a special or mystic significance. The most familiar
case of this second species of sacrifice is that which the Romans
distinguished from the _hostia honoraria_ by the name of _hostia
piacularis_. In the former case the deity accepts a gift; in the latter,
he demands a life. The former kind of sacrifice is offered by the
worshipper on the basis of an established relation of friendly
dependence on his divine lord; the latter is directed to appease the
divine anger or to conciliate the favor of a deity on whom the
worshipper has no right to count” (vol. xxi. p.. 132).
_Piamlar Sacrifices_.—“The idea of substitution is widespread among all
early religions, and is found in honorific as well as piacular rites. In
all such cases the idea is that the substitute shall imitate as closely
as is possible or convenient the victim whose place it supplies; and so
in piacular ceremonies the god may indeed accept one life for another,
or certain select lives to atone for the guilt of a whole community; but
these lives ought to be of the guilty kin, just as in blood-revenge the
death of any kinsman of the manslayer satisfies justice. Hence such
rites as the Semitic sacrifices of children by their fathers [Moloch],
the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and similar cases among the Greeks, inasmuch
as something is given up by the worshippers nor the offering up
of boys to the goddess Mania at Rome....
“In advanced societies the tendency is to modify the horrors of the
ritual, either by accepting an effusion of blood without actually
slaying the victim—e. g. in the flagellation of the Spartan lads—or by a
further extension of the doctrine of substitution: the Romans, for
example, substituted puppets for the human sacrifices to Mania, and cast
rush dolls into the Tiber, at the yearly atoning sacrifice on the
Sublician Bridge. More usually, however, the life of an animal is
accepted by the god in place of a human life.... Among the Egyptians the
victim was marked with a seal bearing the image of a man bound and
kneeling with a sword at his throat. And often we find a ceremonial
laying of the sin to be expiated on the head of the victim (Herod, ii.
39; Lev. 4: 4, compared with 14: 21).
“In such piacular rites the god demands only the life of the victim,
which is sometimes indicated by a special ritual with the blood (as
among the Hebrews the blood of the sin-offering was applied to the horns
of the altar or to the mercy-seat within the veil), and there is no
sacrificial meal. Thus, among the Greeks the carcase of the victim was
buried or cast into the sea [comp, with most important Hebrew
sin-offerings and sacrifice of children to Moloch—outside the camp or
city].
“When the flesh of the sacrifice is consumed by the priests, as with
certain Roman piacula and Hebrew sin-offerings, the sacrificial flesh is
seemingly a gift accepted by the deity and assigned by him to the
priests, so that the distinction between a honorific and a piacular
sacrifice is partly obliterated. But this is not hard to understand; for
just as a blood-rite takes the place of blood-revenge in human justice,
so an offence against the gods may in certain cases be redeemed by a
fine (e. g. Herod, ii. 65) or a sacrificial gift. This seems to have
been the origin of the Hebrew _trespass-offering_ (p. 136).
“The most curious developments of piacular sacrifice take place in the
worship of deities of the totem type. Here the natural substitute for
the death of a criminal of the tribe is an animal of the kind with which
the worshippers and their god alike count kindred—an animal, that is,
which must not be offered in a sacrificial feast, and which indeed it is
impious to kill. Thus, Hecaté was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her
piacular sacrifices. And in like manner in Egypt the piacular sacrifice
of the cow-goddess Isis-Hathor was a bull, and the sacrifice was
accompanied by lamentations as at the funeral of a kinsman.”
Under the head of _Mystical or Sacramental Sacrifices_—i. e. sacrifices
at initiations and in the _Mysteries_: “According to Julian, the
mystical sacrifices of the cities of the Roman empire were... offered
once or twice a year, and consisted of such victims as the dog of
Hecaté, which might not ordinarily be eaten or used to furnish forth the
tables of the gods.... The mystic sacrifices seem always to have had an
atoning efficacy; their special feature is that the victim is not simply
slain and burned or cast away, but that the worshippers partake of the
body and blood of the sacred animal, and that so his life passes, as it
were, into their lives and knits them to the deity in living communion.
“In the Old Testament the heathen mysteries seem to appear as ceremonies
of initiation by which a man was introduced into a new worship.... But
originally the initiation must have been introduction into a particular
social community.... From this point of view the sacramental rites of
mystical sacrifice are a form of blood-covenant.... In all the forms of
blood-covenant, whether a sacrifice is offered or the veins of the
parties opened and their own blood used, the idea is the same: the bond
created is a bond of kindred, because one blood is now in the veins of
all who have shared the ceremony.”
A learned friend writes me: “I doubt whether a real distinction can be
made between _propitiatory and expiatory_ sacrifices. Propitiation is by
expiation. The basic idea in all sacrifices of that nature appears to be
_substitution_; that is, something taking the place of the offender....
It seems that the basis of all sacrifice is to be found in a
relationship, or _kinship_ (through blood), between the deity—who is
only the representative of the tribal head regarded as still living in
the spirit-world—and the worshipper.
“I may add that the idea of pollution by wrongdoing—i. e. offending the
tribal deity—to be got rid of only by the shedding of blood, is not
unknown to so-called savages. This applies especially to offences
against chastity, as with the Mâlers of Rajmahal, India, and the Dyaks
of Borneo. The pig is the animal usually sacrificed—probably because it
is the most valuable animal food. The Pâdam Abors of Assam look upon all
crimes as public pollutions which require to be washed away by a public
sacrifice. Here we have the idea of cleansing by the application of
blood, and this appears to be the idea also with the Mâlers, and
probably among the aboriginal hill-tribes of India generally.”
Mommsen, the Roman historian, says: “At the very core of the Latin
religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring
earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the
gods, and to view the former as a crime against the gods, and the latter
as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was
as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the
killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits
of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows, just as the enemy
paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. The
fearful idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the
community were angry, and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely
guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up
(_devovere se_).”
But it was left for Anselm of Canterbury, late in the eleventh century,
to first formulate the doctrine of vicarious atonement. Before this
there seemed to be among the theologians the idea that in some way
Christ came to restore, at least in part, all that was lost in Adam.
During the first four centuries of the Christian era there seems to have
been no fixed opinion as to whether there was a ransom-price paid to God
or the devil. Under the article “Devil " in the Encyclopœdia Britannica
it is said:
“He [the devil] was, according to Cyprian (_De Unitate Ecd_.), the
author of all heresies and delusions: he held man by reason of his sin
in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by
the ransom of Christ’s blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment or
satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man’s
salvation is found both in Irenæus (Adv. Hcer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen,
and may be said to have held its sway in the Church for a thousand
years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the
devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon."
It would be tedious to note the various views that have prevailed among
theologians to the present day. Some hold that the offering was made to
God to satisfy divine justice; others hold that it was a commercial
transaction—so much blood for so many souls; and still others regard the
whole as a governmental display to impress the world with a sense of the
hatefulness of sin. Calvinists seem to think that the atonement was only
made for the elect, but that the blood of Christ had sufficient merit to
save the whole world. Roman Catholics hold that it is the literal,
material blood of Christ that saves the sinner, and hence their extreme
belief in the dogma of _transubstantiation_, the real body and blood of
Jesus being offered in the sacrifice of the Mass, and taken by the
penitent in the Holy Communion. Protestants generally hold to a sort of
consubstantiation—a sort of real presence in the sacrament; while
persons of intelligence profess to believe that this whole theory of
blood-salvation is only to be accepted in a figurative sense. The fact
is, that the whole scheme of vicarious atonement is an ancient
superstition, though taught in the New Testament, and is absurd and
unphilosophical, and false in principle and in practice, as we shall
hereafter show.
We leave altogether out of view the logical conclusion that if the blood
shed by Jesus was the blood of a man, it could have had no more efficacy
than the blood of any other human being, and that if the blood shed was
the blood of a God, the very mention of the thought is absurd and
blasphemous in the extreme. It is nonsense to say that it was the union
of the divine with the human nature that gave the blood of Christ its
peculiar efficacy—that the altar sanctifies the gift for if the blood
was changed by the man being united with the God, it was not human
blood, but the blood of a divine man.
Now, there is no evidence that the blood of Jesus (supposing that he was
crucified) differed in its essential qualities from other human blood.
If analyzed by the chemist, it would have been found to contain only the
constituent particles which belong to human blood. The white and red
corpuscles and other chemical properties would have been found in it.
_The dogma of blood-salvation as held by Romanists is cannibalism, pure
and simple, and as held by Protestants it is sheer superstition, without
one grain of reason to support it._ It has no analogy in nature, nor in
the philosophy of legal jurisprudence as held and practised by the most
enlightened nations of the world.
It seems to us that the doctrine of vicarious atonement is not only
immoral, but demoralizing. It represents God as punishing the innocent
for the guilty to make it possible to forgive the guilty. This is
inconsistent with the eternal principles of justice and rightfulness. It
must have a demoralizing influence upon the mind and conscience of the
sinner, to be told that his sins are already atoned for, and he only
need to be cleansed by the blood of Christ; and this is to be obtained
by simple faith and trust! Believe that Jesus shed his blood for you,
and that he is waiting and anxious to apply it in washing away your
guilt, and it is done! Then as often as you sin afterward you need only
go through the same process to secure pardon! The easiness with which
sins may be blotted out and washed away must have a demoralizing
influence upon uneducated minds, though truly intelligent persons may
not reason in this way. The low state of morals among those who really
believe in this device for the forgiveness of sins may thus be accounted
for. The numerous defalcations and downright thefts among the higher
classes of Christians, and the petty lying and stealing among the great
mass of Catholics and Protestants, are notorious, and can be traced, we
think, to the easy methods of getting rid of the consequencees of
wrong-doing. Our prison-statistics are truly suggestive, and should be
carefully studied. Freethinkers are far in advance of Christians in the
matter of practical morality. Many of those whom the courts exclude as
witnesses, because they do not accept certain religious dogmas, are
pre-eminently truthful, and would sooner die than tell a falsehood. They
do not rely upon the blood of Jesus to wash away the vilest sins and
make them white as snow.
Our statesmen are beginning to find out that our system of _pardon_ is
most pernicious. To relieve from the consequences of wrong-doing through
a divine contrivance of the vicarious sufferings of an innocent person,
and that human disobedience is made all right as to consequences by this
obedience of a divine-human person, does not commend itself to the
intelligence of this nineteenth century. The answer of theologians to
this charge is familiar and specious enough, but it is not practically
accepted by the common people. When a child enters the Sunday-school
room, and his eyes rest upon the conspicuous placard, “_Jesus Paid it
All_” the natural inference is there is nothing more to pay, nothing to
do but to accept the free gift.
Thousands of ignorant persons, Catholics and Protestants, no doubt
secretly accept and rely upon this easy device to cover up their
numerous shortcomings and misdoings. This doctrine is a welcome one in
the murderer’s cell and upon the platform of the gallows. In thousands
of uncultivated minds the thought is no doubt deeply hidden that about
the surest way to get to heaven is to commit a murder and have the
“benefit of clergy,” and in due time to be “jerked to Jesus” (as
described by a Western journal) by the hangman’s rope. Why should it not
be so? The vicarious atonement has been made, and is being made in the
Mass, and they have only to accept it. Two priests or ministers actually
opposed the postponement of the execution of a certain murderer on the
ground that he then believed in Jesus, but that if execution was
postponed they did not know that he would continue to “believe,” and
that his soul might thus be lost!
Suppose that our State authorities should proclaim in advance free
pardon and a princely palace to all lawbreakers on the simple condition
of trusting in the mediatorial interposition and substitution of
another, _already made and accepted_; what would be the effect on public
morals? The system of redemption and pardon set forth in the New
Testament is infinitely more than this, and must be demoralizing. All
public officers know the evil effects of the pardon system, and how even
the faintest hope of pardon encourages crime, and how certainly a free
pardon is almost sure to be followed by a life of increased criminality.
There should be no such thing as pardon in our State jurisprudence—no
“board of pardons” and no “exercise of the executive clemency.” If a
convict is believed to have been wrongly imprisoned, or by
after-discovered evidence is found to be innocent, let no “pardon board”
or “executive” interfere, but let the case go back to the court that
convicted him or to one of like jurisdiction, and let the case be
judicially reviewed in the light of evidence; and if the accused is
found innocent, let him be honorably acquitted, or if guilty remanded to
prison.
There is nothing in reason, philosophy, or science that approves the
theologie method of dealing with offenders. It violates every principle
of justice, and has not one single quality of rightfulness in it. It is
a fiction pure and simple, in form and in fact. Macaulay well said of
this redemptive scheme, “It resembles nothing so much as a forged bond,
with a forged release endorsed upon its back.” Gregg pungently put it
thus: “It looks very much like an impossible debt paid in inconceivable
coin; or a legal fiction purely gratuitous got rid of by what looks like
a legal chicanery purely fanciful. It gives unworthy conceptions of God
as one delighting in the blood of human beings, and even suggests the
disgusting practices of cannibalism. It is a relic of the ancient
barbaric fetichism borrowed from savages by sacerdotalists for purposes
of priestcraft, and should be scouted by all honest and intelligent
men.”
The severely orthodox Rev. Professor Shedd, as well as Dr. Priestley,
admits that there was no scientific construction of the doctrine of the
atonement in the writings of the apostolic Fathers (_Hist, of Doc._,
vol. ii., p. 208). The doctrine was evidently manufactured when the
Romish Church was evolved out of the innumerable sects of early
Christendom, and was enforced by wholesale excommunication of dissenters
and the death penalty. Christianity was planted in Germany, Prussia, and
Sweden by military power. The Saxons were “converted” by Charlemagne.
All the secret religions have a god or demi-god put to death. Even the
Freemasons have Hiram Abiff. The death of Osiris was the central point
in the Egyptian system. He was killed by Seth or Typhon, and returned to
life as Rat-Amenti, the judge. In Egypt, Christianity moulded its
doctrines of the Trinity, atonement, and “mother of God.” The Osirian
theology was grafted on the Christian stock, if indeed the Christian
system was not an evolution of Osirianism; and of this the monstrous
concoction known as _vicarious atonement_ was made, and thrust down
men’s throats by threats of hell and the visits of the executioner.
We might extend our remarks upon this subject indefinitely, but we have
not space. We have seen that _blood-salvation_ did not originate with
either Jews or Christians. Dr. Trumbull has proved this over and over
again, and Kurtz, an orthodox writer, has admitted this fact. He says:
“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.” All this is
very frank, but we should not overlook the fact, so clearly established,
that this doctrine of cleansing blood, so constantly taught in the New
Testament and proclaimed from every orthodox pulpit in the land, was not
a _divine revelation_ specially made to Jews or Christians, but has been
adopted and modified from the religions of nature, celebrated in all
parts of the world by the most barbarous peoples in the remotest periods
of time. Indeed, the more gross and savage the people, the more
disgusting has been this doctrine of _blood-salvation_.
Dr. Trumbull could only think of two possible ways of explaining these
marvellous things: “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. Whichever 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."... “Because the primitive rite of blood-covenanting was well
known in the lands of the Bible at the time of the writing of the Bible,
for that very reason we are not to look to the Bible for a specific
explanation of the rite itself, even where there are incidental
references in the Bible to the rite and its observances; but, on the
other hand, we are to find an explanation of the biblical illustrations
of the primitive rite in the understanding of that rite which we gain
from outside sources."
These assumptions are very flimsy stuff upon which to found the most
prominent and mysterious doctrine of the orthodox Christian religion,
making it the Alpha and Omega of the whole “_scheme of redemption_” To
witness the mummeries of Roman Catholic priests and the manipulations of
Protestant ministers in the celebration of the “Eucharistic Feast” or
“Holy Communion” is enough to lead a truly intelligent man to wonder why
these celebrants do not laugh each other in the face. Even our
Universalist and Unitarian ministers sometimes indulge in this heathen
diversion, though some of them deeply feel the absurdity of the rite,
and the consequent humiliation to which they are subjected.
Nevertheless, some of our most profound statesmen, when about to die,
call in a priest, Catholic or Protestant, to administer the heathen
ordinance. When will the world open its blind eyes, and learn that all
that God requires of men is to “walk humbly, love mercy, and deal
justly”?
There is no difficulty in accepting the words of a God who is said to
have uttered the burning reproof to ritualists and hypocrites as
follows: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? I delight
not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. Bring no more
vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and
sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity
even the solemn meeting. And when you spread your hands I will hide mine
eyes from you, yea, you make many prayers I will not hear, your hands
are full of blood. Wash ye, make you clean, put away the evil of your
doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, seek
judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widows.”
This doctrine of _bloodsalvation_ is, in our judgment, most
unphilosophical and even absurd. It originated, as we have shown, in the
most gross and anthropomorphic conceptions of God, and its solemn
celebration in orthodox churches is inseparable from the most ignorant
and superstitious rites of the most savage peoples. Its tendency must be
demoralizing.