Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:4.1Sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious de­vo­tions, like many other wor­ship­ful rit­u­als, did not have a sim­ple and sin­gle ori­gin. The ten­dency to bow down be­fore power and to pros­trate one­self in wor­ship­ful ado­ra­tion in the pres­ence of mys­tery is fore­shad­owed in the fawn­ing of the dog be­fore its mas­ter. It is but one step from the im­pulse of wor­ship to the act of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man gauged the value of his sac­ri­fice by the pain which he suf­fered. When the idea of sac­ri­fice first at­tached it­self to re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, no of­fer­ing was con­tem­plated which was not pro­duc­tive of pain. The first sac­ri­fices were such acts as pluck­ing hair, cut­ting the flesh, mu­ti­la­tions, knock­ing out teeth, and cut­ting off fin­gers. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, these crude con­cepts of sac­ri­fice were el­e­vated to the level of the rit­u­als of self-ab­ne­ga­tion, as­ceti­cism, fast­ing, de­pri­va­tion, and the later Chris­tian doc­trine of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion through sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh.

89:4.2Early in the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion there ex­isted two con­cep­tions of the sac­ri­fice: the idea of the gift sac­ri­fice, which con­noted the at­ti­tude of thanks­giv­ing, and the debt sac­ri­fice, which em­braced the idea of re­demp­tion. Later there de­vel­oped the no­tion of sub­sti­tu­tion.

89:4.3Man still later con­ceived that his sac­ri­fice of what­ever na­ture might func­tion as a mes­sage bearer to the gods; it might be as a sweet sa­vor in the nos­trils of de­ity. This brought in­cense and other aes­thetic fea­tures of sac­ri­fi­cial rit­u­als which de­vel­oped into sac­ri­fi­cial feast­ing, in time be­com­ing in­creas­ingly elab­o­rate and or­nate.

89:4.4As re­li­gion evolved, the sac­ri­fi­cial rites of con­cil­i­a­tion and pro­pi­ti­a­tion re­placed the older meth­ods of avoid­ance, pla­ca­tion, and ex­or­cism.

89:4.5The ear­li­est idea of the sac­ri­fice was that of a neu­tral­ity as­sess­ment levied by an­ces­tral spir­its; only later did the idea of atone­ment de­velop. As man got away from the no­tion of the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin of the race, as the tra­di­tions of the days of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the so­journ of Adam fil­tered down through time, the con­cept of sin and of orig­i­nal sin be­came wide­spread, so that sac­ri­fice for ac­ci­den­tal and per­sonal sin evolved into the doc­trine of sac­ri­fice for the atone­ment of racial sin. The atone­ment of the sac­ri­fice was a blan­ket in­sur­ance de­vice which cov­ered even the re­sent­ment and jeal­ousy of an un­known god.

89:4.6Sur­rounded by so many sen­si­tive spir­its and grasp­ing gods, prim­i­tive man was face to face with such a host of cred­i­tor de­i­ties that it re­quired all the priests, rit­ual, and sac­ri­fices through­out an en­tire life­time to get him out of spir­i­tual debt. The doc­trine of orig­i­nal sin, or racial guilt, started ev­ery per­son out in se­ri­ous debt to the spirit pow­ers.

89:4.7Gifts and bribes are given to men; but when ten­dered to the gods, they are de­scribed as be­ing ded­i­cated, made sa­cred, or are called sac­ri­fices. Re­nun­ci­a­tion was the neg­a­tive form of pro­pi­ti­a­tion; sac­ri­fice be­came the pos­i­tive form. The act of pro­pi­ti­a­tion in­cluded praise, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, flat­tery, and even en­ter­tain­ment. And it is the rem­nants of these pos­i­tive prac­tices of the olden pro­pi­ti­a­tion cult that con­sti­tute the mod­ern forms of di­vine wor­ship. Pres­ent-day forms of wor­ship are sim­ply the rit­u­al­iza­tion of these an­cient sac­ri­fi­cial tech­niques of pos­i­tive pro­pi­ti­a­tion.

89:4.8An­i­mal sac­ri­fice meant much more to prim­i­tive man than it could ever mean to mod­ern races. These bar­bar­ians re­garded the an­i­mals as their ac­tual and near kin. As time passed, man be­came shrewd in his sac­ri­fic­ing, ceas­ing to of­fer up his work an­i­mals. At first he sac­ri­ficed the best of ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing his do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals.

89:4.9It was no empty boast that a cer­tain Egyp­tian ruler made when he stated that he had sac­ri­ficed: 113,433 slaves, 493,386 head of cat­tle, 88 boats, 2,756 golden im­ages, 331,702 jars of honey and oil, 228,380 jars of wine, 680,714 geese, 6,744,428 loaves of bread, and 5,740,352 sacks of corn. And in or­der to do this he must needs have sorely taxed his toil­ing sub­jects.

89:4.10Sheer ne­ces­sity even­tu­ally drove these semi­sav­ages to eat the ma­te­rial part of their sac­ri­fices, the gods hav­ing en­joyed the soul thereof. And this cus­tom found jus­ti­fi­ca­tion un­der the pre­tense of the an­cient sa­cred meal, a com­mu­nion ser­vice ac­cord­ing to mod­ern us­age.