Part 5 (1/2)
To understand this fundamental rite of communion, or, indeed, the essence of any other part of the Christian religion, we e ideas out of which it has evolved It is easy to account for savage superstitions in connection with blood The life of the savage being largely spent in warfare, either with animals or his fellow ly impressed upon his mind He sees, moreover, the child formed from the mother, the flohose blood is arrested Hence the children of one mother are termed ”of the same blood” In a state of continual warfare the only safe alliances ith those who recognised the family bond Those ould be friends must be sharers in the sae world rites of blood-covenanting, of drinking together fro coether, it was a sign of communion and the substitution of bread and wine for flesh and blood is a sun-worshi+pping refinement upon more primitive and cannibalistic communion
Dr Truivencovenants and ”blood brotherhood” The idea of substitution is widespread in all early religions One of the most curious was the sacrament of the natives of Central America, thus noticed by Dr Trumbull:
”Cakes of the irdle,' during the religions worshi+p, were 'distributed and eaten as blessed bread' Moreover an ie of their God, made with certain seeds froum, and with the blood of human sacrifices, were partaken of by them reverently, under the name, 'Food of our Soul'”
Here we have, no doubt, a link between the rude cannibal theory of sacrifice and the Christian doctrine of coton, in his _Testimony of the Heathen_, cites as illustration of Exodus xxii 8, the ard to the Lydians and Arabians confir alliances in this fashi+ons The well-known case of Cataline and his fellow conspirators who drank frootten, but Dr
True in Plutarch's ”Life of Publicola,” in which he narrates that ”the conspirators (against Brutus) agreed to take a great and horrible oath, by drinking together of the blood, and tasting the entrails of a man sacrificed for that purpose” Mr Wake also in his _Evolution of Morality_, has drawn attention to the subject, and, what is more, to its important place in the history of the evolution of society Herbert Spencer points out in his ”Ceres over the deadin so a sacred bond between living persons by partaking of each other's blood: the derived conception being that those who give soering near, effect with it a union which on the one side implies submission, and on the other side, friendliness”
The widespread custo illustrates reat principle of old-world e, but only to his own kin; so that to entitle a stranger to kindness and good faith he must become a kinsman by blood” That any sane man seated at a table ever said, ”Take eat, this is my body,” and ”Drink, this is my blood,” is ridiculous The bread and wine are the fruits of the the Sun Justin Martyr, one of the earliest of the Christian fathers, informs us that this eucharist was partaken in theof the blood of Christ is aof the rites of sun-worshi+ppers with the early savage cerein of the e rite of initiation by baptism with arms outstretched in a cruciform pool of blood See Nimrod, vol
ii
SCAPEGOATS
In the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus is found a description of the rites ordained for the most solemn Day of Atoneoats ”And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat”--(Heb _Azazel_) The goat on who, but all the iniquities of the children of Israel were put on the head of Azazel's goat, and it was sent into the wilderness The parallelism makes it clear that Azazel was a separate evil spirit or demon, opposed to Jahveh, and supposed to dwell in the wilderness The purification necessary after touching the goat upon whose head the sins of Israel were put corroborates this Yet how often has Azazel been instanced as a type of the blessed Savior! And indeed the chief purpose to which Jesus is put by orthodox Christians at the present day is that of being their scapegoat, the substitute for their sins
Azazel appears to oat, like so the Jews (See Ex xxiii 19, Lev ix 3-15, x 16, xvii
17, Jud vi 19, xiii 15, 1 Sam xix 18-16, 2 Chron xi 15)
The doctrine of the transference of sin was by no means peculiar to the Jews Both Herodotus and Plutarch tells us how the Egyptians cursed the head of the sacrifice and then threw it into the river It seems likely that the expression ”Your blood be on your own head” refers to this belief (See Lev xx 9-11, Psal of a leper and of a house suspected of being tainted with leprosy, the Jews had a peculiar ceremony Two birds were taken, one killed in an earthern vessel over running water, and the living bird after being dipped in the blood of the killed bird let loose into the open air (Lev xiv 7 and 53) The idea evidently was that the bird by syue The Battas of Su the curse to fly away” When a woman is childless a sacrifice is offered and a s set free, with a prayer that the curse may fall on the bird and fly aith it The doctrine of substitution found aic It arises, as Mr Frazer says, from an obvious confusion between the physical and the mental Because a load of stones e fancies it equally possible to transfer the burden of his pains and sorrows to another ill suffer then in his stead Many instances could be given froh is to shave the patient's head and hang the hair on a bush When the birds carry the hair to the nests, they will carry the cough with it A Northamptonshi+re and Devonshi+re cure is to put a hair of the patient's head between two slices of buttered bread and give it to a dog The dog will get the cough and the patient will lose it”
Mr Frazer, after showing that the custo the God had been practised by peoples in the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages of society, says (vol ii, p 148): ”One aspect of the custom still remains to be noticed The accumulated misfortunes and sins of the whole people are so God, who is supposed to bear theivesaway diseases in boats, and of the annual expulsion of evils, of which, I conjecture, our ringing-out of the old year oat, he says:
”If we ask why a dying God should be selected to take upon himself and carry away the sins and sorrow of the people, itthe divinity as a scapegoat, we have a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and independent On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to kill the human or ani weakened by the inroads of age On the other hand we have seen that it has been custoeneral expulsion of evils and sins once a year Now, if it occurred to people to combine these two custo God as scapegoat He was killed not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life froe; but, since he had to be killed at any rate, people ht as well seize the opportunity to lay upon his and sins, in order that he rave”
Golden Bough, vol ii, p 206
The early Christians believed that diseases were the work of devils, and that cures could be effected by casting out the devils by the spell of a name (see Mark ix 25-38, etc) They believed in the transference of devils to swine We need not wonder, then, that they explained the death of their hero as the satisfaction for their own sins The doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, like that of the divinity of Christ, appears to have been an after-growth of Christianity, the foundations of both being laid in pre-Christian Paganisery
A BIBLE BARBARITY
The fifth chapter of the Book of Nuross a specimen of superstition as can be culled froes The divine ”law of jealousy,” to which I allude, provides that a man who is jealous of his wifethe slightest evidence against her, bring her before the priest, who shall take ”holy water,” and charge her by an oath of cursing to declare if she has been unfaithful to her husband The priest writes out the curse and blots it into the water, which he then administers to the woman The description of the effects of the water is es of the holy Bible than to those of a modern book Sufficient to say, if faithful, the holy water has only a beneficial effect on the lady, but if unfaithful, its operation is such as to dispense with the necessity of her husband writing out a bill of divorcement
The absurdity and atrocity of this divine law only finds its parallel in the customs of the worst barbarians, and in the ecclesiastical laws of the Dark Ages, that is of the days when Christianity was predoislation
A curious approach to the Jewish custoes at Cape Breton At a ht to the bride and bridegroom, and the priest addressed himself to the bride thus:
”Thou that art upon the point of entering theto take forebodes the greatest cala any ill design against thy husband or against thy nation; should thou ever be led astray by the caresses of a stranger; or shouldst thou betray thy husband or thy country, the victuals in this vessel will have the effect of a slow poison, hich thou wilt be tainted from this very instant If, on the other hand, thou art faithful to thy husband and thy country, thou wilt find the nourishreeable and wholeso to the Isle of Cape Breton By T Pichon 1760