Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:6.1Hu­man sac­ri­fice was an in­di­rect re­sult of can­ni­bal­ism as well as its cure. Pro­vid­ing spirit es­corts to the spirit world also led to the less­en­ing of man-eat­ing as it was never the cus­tom to eat these death sac­ri­fices. No race has been en­tirely free from the prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice in some form and at some time, even though the An­don­ites, Nod­ites, and Adamites were the least ad­dicted to can­ni­bal­ism.

89:6.2Hu­man sac­ri­fice has been vir­tu­ally uni­ver­sal; it per­sisted in the re­li­gious cus­toms of the Chi­nese, Hin­dus, Egyp­tians, He­brews, Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, Greeks, Ro­mans, and many other peo­ples, even on to re­cent times among the back­ward African and Aus­tralian tribes. The later Amer­i­can In­di­ans had a civ­i­liza­tion emerg­ing from can­ni­bal­ism and, there­fore, steeped in hu­man sac­ri­fice, es­pe­cially in Cen­tral and South Amer­ica. The Chaldeans were among the first to aban­don the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans for or­di­nary oc­ca­sions, sub­sti­tut­ing there­for an­i­mals. About two thou­sand years ago a ten­der­hearted Japanese em­peror in­tro­duced clay im­ages to take the place of hu­man sac­ri­fices, but it was less than a thou­sand years ago that these sac­ri­fices died out in north­ern Eu­rope. Among cer­tain back­ward tribes, hu­man sac­ri­fice is still car­ried on by vol­un­teers, a sort of re­li­gious or rit­ual sui­cide. A shaman once or­dered the sac­ri­fice of a much re­spected old man of a cer­tain tribe. The peo­ple re­volted; they re­fused to obey. Where­upon the old man had his own son dis­patch him; the an­cients re­ally be­lieved in this cus­tom.

89:6.3There is no more tragic and pa­thetic ex­pe­ri­ence on rec­ord, il­lus­tra­tive of the heart-tear­ing con­tentions be­tween an­cient and time-hon­ored re­li­gious cus­toms and the con­trary de­mands of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, than the He­brew nar­ra­tive of Jeph­thah and his only daugh­ter. As was com­mon cus­tom, this well-mean­ing man had made a fool­ish vow, had bar­gained with the “god of bat­tles,” agree­ing to pay a cer­tain price for vic­tory over his en­e­mies. And this price was to make a sac­ri­fice of that which first came out of his house to meet him when he re­turned to his home. Jeph­thah thought that one of his trusty slaves would thus be on hand to greet him, but it turned out that his daugh­ter and only child came out to wel­come him home. And so, even at that late date and among a sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized peo­ple, this beau­ti­ful maiden, af­ter two months to mourn her fate, was ac­tu­ally of­fered as a hu­man sac­ri­fice by her fa­ther, and with the ap­proval of his fel­low tribes­men. And all this was done in the face of Moses’ strin­gent rul­ings against the of­fer­ing of hu­man sac­ri­fice. But men and women are ad­dicted to mak­ing fool­ish and need­less vows, and the men of old held all such pledges to be highly sa­cred.

89:6.4In olden times, when a new build­ing of any im­por­tance was started, it was cus­tom­ary to slay a hu­man be­ing as a “foun­da­tion sac­ri­fice.” This pro­vided a ghost spirit to watch over and pro­tect the struc­ture. When the Chi­nese made ready to cast a bell, cus­tom de­creed the sac­ri­fice of at least one maiden for the pur­pose of im­prov­ing the tone of the bell; the girl cho­sen was thrown alive into the molten metal.

89:6.5It was long the prac­tice of many groups to build slaves alive into im­por­tant walls. In later times the north­ern Eu­ro­pean tribes sub­sti­tuted the walling in of the shadow of a passerby for this cus­tom of en­tomb­ing liv­ing per­sons in the walls of new build­ings. The Chi­nese buried in a wall those work­men who died while con­struct­ing it.

89:6.6A petty king in Pales­tine, in build­ing the walls of Jeri­cho, “laid the foun­da­tion thereof in Abi­ram, his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his young­est son, Segub.” At that late date, not only did this fa­ther put two of his sons alive in the foun­da­tion holes of the city’s gates, but his ac­tion is also re­corded as be­ing “ac­cord­ing to the word of the Lord.” Moses had for­bid­den these foun­da­tion sac­ri­fices, but the Is­raelites re­verted to them soon af­ter his death. The twen­ti­eth-cen­tury cer­e­mony of de­posit­ing trin­kets and keep­sakes in the cor­ner­stone of a new build­ing is rem­i­nis­cent of the prim­i­tive foun­da­tion sac­ri­fices.

89:6.7It was long the cus­tom of many peo­ples to ded­i­cate the first fruits to the spir­its. And these ob­ser­vances, now more or less sym­bolic, are all sur­vivals of the early cer­e­monies in­volv­ing hu­man sac­ri­fice. The idea of of­fer­ing the first-born as a sac­ri­fice was wide­spread among the an­cients, es­pe­cially among the Phoeni­cians, who were the last to give it up. It used to be said upon sac­ri­fic­ing, “life for life.” Now you say at death, “dust to dust.”

89:6.8The spec­ta­cle of Abra­ham con­strained to sac­ri­fice his son Isaac, while shock­ing to civ­i­lized sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ties, was not a new or strange idea to the men of those days. It was long a preva­lent prac­tice for fa­thers, at times of great emo­tional stress, to sac­ri­fice their first-born sons. Many peo­ples have a tra­di­tion anal­o­gous to this story, for there once ex­isted a world-wide and pro­found be­lief that it was nec­es­sary to of­fer a hu­man sac­ri­fice when any­thing ex­traor­di­nary or un­usual hap­pened.