Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:8.1Sac­ri­fi­cial re­demp­tion and tem­ple pros­ti­tu­tion were in re­al­ity mod­i­fi­ca­tions of hu­man sac­ri­fice. Next came the mock sac­ri­fice of daugh­ters. This cer­e­mony con­sisted in blood­let­ting, with ded­i­ca­tion to life­long vir­gin­ity, and was a moral re­ac­tion to the older tem­ple har­lotry. In more re­cent times vir­gins ded­i­cated them­selves to the ser­vice of tend­ing the sa­cred tem­ple fires.

89:8.2Men even­tu­ally con­ceived the idea that the of­fer­ing of some part of the body could take the place of the older and com­plete hu­man sac­ri­fice. Phys­i­cal mu­ti­la­tion was also con­sid­ered to be an ac­cept­able sub­sti­tute. Hair, nails, blood, and even fin­gers and toes were sac­ri­ficed. The later and well-nigh uni­ver­sal an­cient rite of cir­cum­ci­sion was an out­growth of the cult of par­tial sac­ri­fice; it was purely sac­ri­fi­cial, no thought of hy­giene be­ing at­tached thereto. Men were cir­cum­cised; women had their ears pierced.

89:8.3Sub­se­quently it be­came the cus­tom to bind fin­gers to­gether in­stead of cut­ting them off. Shav­ing the head and cut­ting the hair were like­wise forms of re­li­gious de­vo­tion. The mak­ing of eu­nuchs was at first a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the idea of hu­man sac­ri­fice. Nose and lip pierc­ing is still prac­ticed in Africa, and tat­too­ing is an artis­tic evo­lu­tion of the ear­lier crude scar­ring of the body.

89:8.4The cus­tom of sac­ri­fice even­tu­ally be­came as­so­ci­ated, as a re­sult of ad­vanc­ing teach­ings, with the idea of the covenant. At last, the gods were con­ceived of as en­ter­ing into real agree­ments with man; and this was a ma­jor step in the sta­bi­liza­tion of re­li­gion. Law, a covenant, takes the place of luck, fear, and su­per­sti­tion.

89:8.5Man could never even dream of en­ter­ing into a con­tract with De­ity un­til his con­cept of God had ad­vanced to the level whereon the uni­verse con­trol­lers were en­vi­sioned as de­pend­able. And man’s early idea of God was so an­thro­po­mor­phic that he was un­able to con­ceive of a de­pend­able De­ity un­til he him­self be­came rel­a­tively de­pend­able, moral, and eth­i­cal.

89:8.6But the idea of mak­ing a covenant with the gods did fi­nally ar­rive. Evo­lu­tion­ary man even­tu­ally ac­quired such moral dig­nity that he dared to bar­gain with his gods. And so the busi­ness of of­fer­ing sac­ri­fices grad­u­ally de­vel­oped into the game of man’s philo­sophic bar­gain­ing with God. And all this rep­re­sented a new de­vice for in­sur­ing against bad luck or, rather, an en­hanced tech­nique for the more def­i­nite pur­chase of pros­per­ity. Do not en­ter­tain the mis­taken idea that these early sac­ri­fices were a free gift to the gods, a spon­ta­neous of­fer­ing of grat­i­tude or thanks­giv­ing; they were not ex­pres­sions of true wor­ship.

89:8.7Prim­i­tive forms of prayer were noth­ing more nor less than bar­gain­ing with the spir­its, an ar­gu­ment with the gods. It was a kind of bar­ter­ing in which plead­ing and per­sua­sion were sub­sti­tuted for some­thing more tan­gi­ble and costly. The de­vel­op­ing com­merce of the races had in­cul­cated the spirit of trade and had de­vel­oped the shrewd­ness of barter; and now these traits be­gan to ap­pear in man’s wor­ship meth­ods. And as some men were bet­ter traders than oth­ers, so some were re­garded as bet­ter prayers than oth­ers. The prayer of a just man was held in high es­teem. A just man was one who had paid all ac­counts to the spir­its, had fully dis­charged ev­ery rit­ual obli­ga­tion to the gods.

89:8.8Early prayer was hardly wor­ship; it was a bar­gain­ing pe­ti­tion for health, wealth, and life. And in many re­spects prayers have not much changed with the pass­ing of the ages. They are still read out of books, re­cited for­mally, and writ­ten out for em­place­ment on wheels and for hang­ing on trees, where the blow­ing of the winds will save man the trou­ble of ex­pend­ing his own breath.