sacrifice

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.

89:5.1Mod­ern ideas of early can­ni­bal­ism are en­tirely wrong; it was a part of the mores of early so­ci­ety. While can­ni­bal­ism is tra­di­tion­ally hor­ri­ble to mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion, it was a part of the so­cial and re­li­gious struc­ture of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety. Group in­ter­ests dic­tated the prac­tice of can­ni­bal­ism. It grew up through the urge of ne­ces­sity and per­sisted be­cause of the slav­ery of su­per­sti­tion and ig­no­rance. It was a so­cial, eco­nomic, re­li­gious, and mil­i­tary cus­tom.

89:5.2Early man was a can­ni­bal; he en­joyed hu­man flesh, and there­fore he of­fered it as a food gift to the spir­its and his prim­i­tive gods. Since ghost spir­its were merely mod­i­fied men, and since food was man’s great­est need, then food must like­wise be a spirit’s great­est need.

89:5.3Can­ni­bal­ism was once well-nigh uni­ver­sal among the evolv­ing races. The San­giks were all can­ni­bal­is­tic, but orig­i­nally the An­don­ites were not, nor were the Nod­ites and Adamites; nei­ther were the And­ites un­til af­ter they had be­come grossly ad­mixed with the evo­lu­tion­ary races.

89:5.4The taste for hu­man flesh grows. Hav­ing been started through hunger, friend­ship, re­venge, or re­li­gious rit­ual, the eat­ing of hu­man flesh goes on to ha­bit­ual can­ni­bal­ism. Man-eat­ing has arisen through food scarcity, though this has sel­dom been the un­der­ly­ing rea­son. The Es­ki­mos and early An­don­ites, how­ever, sel­dom were can­ni­bal­is­tic ex­cept in times of famine. The red men, es­pe­cially in Cen­tral Amer­ica, were can­ni­bals. It was once a gen­eral prac­tice for prim­i­tive moth­ers to kill and eat their own chil­dren in or­der to re­new the strength lost in child­bear­ing, and in Queens­land the first child is still fre­quently thus killed and de­voured. In re­cent times can­ni­bal­ism has been de­lib­er­ately re­sorted to by many African tribes as a war mea­sure, a sort of fright­ful­ness with which to ter­ror­ize their neigh­bors.

89:5.5Some can­ni­bal­ism re­sulted from the de­gen­er­a­tion of once su­pe­rior stocks, but it was mostly preva­lent among the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Man-eat­ing came on at a time when men ex­pe­ri­enced in­tense and bit­ter emo­tions re­gard­ing their en­e­mies. Eat­ing hu­man flesh be­came part of a solemn cer­e­mony of re­venge; it was be­lieved that an en­emy’s ghost could, in this way, be de­stroyed or fused with that of the eater. It was once a wide­spread be­lief that wiz­ards at­tained their pow­ers by eat­ing hu­man flesh.

89:5.6Cer­tain groups of man-eaters would con­sume only mem­bers of their own tribes, a pseu­dospir­i­tual in­breed­ing which was sup­posed to ac­cen­tu­ate tribal sol­i­dar­ity. But they also ate en­e­mies for re­venge with the idea of ap­pro­pri­at­ing their strength. It was con­sid­ered an honor to the soul of a friend or fel­low tribesman if his body were eaten, while it was no more than just pun­ish­ment to an en­emy thus to de­vour him. The sav­age mind made no pre­ten­sions to be­ing con­sis­tent.

89:5.7Among some tribes aged par­ents would seek to be eaten by their chil­dren; among oth­ers it was cus­tom­ary to re­frain from eat­ing near re­la­tions; their bod­ies were sold or ex­changed for those of strangers. There was con­sid­er­able com­merce in women and chil­dren who had been fat­tened for slaugh­ter. When dis­ease or war failed to con­trol pop­u­la­tion, the sur­plus was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously eaten.

89:5.8Can­ni­bal­ism has been grad­u­ally dis­ap­pear­ing be­cause of the fol­low­ing in­flu­ences:

89:5.91. It some­times be­came a com­mu­nal cer­e­mony, the as­sump­tion of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity for in­flict­ing the death penalty upon a fel­low tribesman. The blood guilt ceases to be a crime when par­tic­i­pated in by all, by so­ci­ety. The last of can­ni­bal­ism in Asia was this eat­ing of ex­e­cuted crim­i­nals.

89:5.102. It very early be­came a re­li­gious rit­ual, but the growth of ghost fear did not al­ways op­er­ate to re­duce man-eat­ing.

89:5.113. Even­tu­ally it pro­gressed to the point where only cer­tain parts or or­gans of the body were eaten, those parts sup­posed to con­tain the soul or por­tions of the spirit. Blood drink­ing be­came com­mon, and it was cus­tom­ary to mix the “ed­i­ble” parts of the body with medicines.

89:5.124. It be­came lim­ited to men; women were for­bid­den to eat hu­man flesh.

89:5.135. It was next lim­ited to the chiefs, priests, and shamans.

89:5.146. Then it be­came taboo among the higher tribes. The taboo on man-eat­ing orig­i­nated in Dala­ma­tia and slowly spread over the world. The Nod­ites en­cour­aged cre­ma­tion as a means of com­bat­ing can­ni­bal­ism since it was once a com­mon prac­tice to dig up buried bod­ies and eat them.

89:5.157. Hu­man sac­ri­fice sounded the death knell of can­ni­bal­ism. Hu­man flesh hav­ing be­come the food of su­pe­rior men, the chiefs, it was even­tu­ally re­served for the still more su­pe­rior spir­its; and thus the of­fer­ing of hu­man sac­ri­fices ef­fec­tively put a stop to can­ni­bal­ism, ex­cept among the low­est tribes. When hu­man sac­ri­fice was fully es­tab­lished, man-eat­ing be­came taboo; hu­man flesh was food only for the gods; man could eat only a small cer­e­mo­nial bit, a sacra­ment.

89:5.16Fi­nally an­i­mal sub­sti­tutes came into gen­eral use for sac­ri­fi­cial pur­poses, and even among the more back­ward tribes dog-eat­ing greatly re­duced man-eat­ing. The dog was the first do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mal and was held in high es­teem both as such and as food.

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.

89:7.1Moses at­tempted to end hu­man sac­ri­fices by in­au­gu­rat­ing the ran­som as a sub­sti­tute. He es­tab­lished a sys­tem­atic sched­ule which en­abled his peo­ple to es­cape the worst re­sults of their rash and fool­ish vows. Lands, prop­er­ties, and chil­dren could be re­deemed ac­cord­ing to the es­tab­lished fees, which were payable to the priests. Those groups which ceased to sac­ri­fice their first-born soon pos­sessed great ad­van­tages over less ad­vanced neigh­bors who con­tin­ued these atro­cious acts. Many such back­ward tribes were not only greatly weak­ened by this loss of sons, but even the suc­ces­sion of lead­er­ship was of­ten bro­ken.

89:7.2An out­growth of the pass­ing child sac­ri­fice was the cus­tom of smear­ing blood on the house door­posts for the pro­tec­tion of the first-born. This was of­ten done in con­nec­tion with one of the sa­cred feasts of the year, and this cer­e­mony once ob­tained over most of the world from Mex­ico to Egypt.

89:7.3Even af­ter most groups had ceased the rit­ual killing of chil­dren, it was the cus­tom to put an in­fant away by it­self, off in the wilder­ness or in a lit­tle boat on the wa­ter. If the child sur­vived, it was thought that the gods had in­ter­vened to pre­serve him, as in the tra­di­tions of Sar­gon, Moses, Cyrus, and Ro­mu­lus. Then came the prac­tice of ded­i­cat­ing the first-born sons as sa­cred or sac­ri­fi­cial, al­low­ing them to grow up and then ex­il­ing them in lieu of death; this was the ori­gin of col­o­niza­tion. The Ro­mans ad­hered to this cus­tom in their scheme of col­o­niza­tion.

89:7.4Many of the pe­cu­liar as­so­ci­a­tions of sex lax­ity with prim­i­tive wor­ship had their ori­gin in con­nec­tion with hu­man sac­ri­fice. In olden times, if a woman met head-hunters, she could re­deem her life by sex­ual sur­ren­der. Later, a maiden con­se­crated to the gods as a sac­ri­fice might elect to re­deem her life by ded­i­cat­ing her body for life to the sa­cred sex ser­vice of the tem­ple; in this way she could earn her re­demp­tion money. The an­cients re­garded it as highly el­e­vat­ing to have sex re­la­tions with a woman thus en­gaged in ran­som­ing her life. It was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony to con­sort with these sa­cred maid­ens, and in ad­di­tion, this whole rit­ual af­forded an ac­cept­able ex­cuse for com­mon­place sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. This was a sub­tle species of self-de­cep­tion which both the maid­ens and their con­sorts de­lighted to prac­tice upon them­selves. The mores al­ways drag be­hind in the evo­lu­tion­ary ad­vance of civ­i­liza­tion, thus pro­vid­ing sanc­tion for the ear­lier and more sav­age­like sex prac­tices of the evolv­ing races.

89:7.5Tem­ple har­lotry even­tu­ally spread through­out south­ern Eu­rope and Asia. The money earned by the tem­ple pros­ti­tutes was held sa­cred among all peo­ples—a high gift to pre­sent to the gods. The high­est types of women thronged the tem­ple sex marts and de­voted their earn­ings to all kinds of sa­cred ser­vices and works of pub­lic good. Many of the bet­ter classes of women col­lected their dowries by tem­po­rary sex ser­vice in the tem­ples, and most men pre­ferred to have such women for wives.

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.

89:9.1The hu­man sac­ri­fice, through­out the course of the evo­lu­tion of Uran­tian rit­u­als, has ad­vanced from the bloody busi­ness of man-eat­ing to higher and more sym­bolic lev­els. The early rit­u­als of sac­ri­fice bred the later cer­e­monies of sacra­ment. In more re­cent times the priest alone would par­take of a bit of the can­ni­bal­is­tic sac­ri­fice or a drop of hu­man blood, and then all would par­take of the an­i­mal sub­sti­tute. These early ideas of ran­som, re­demp­tion, and covenants have evolved into the later-day sacra­men­tal ser­vices. And all this cer­e­mo­nial evo­lu­tion has ex­erted a mighty so­cial­iz­ing in­flu­ence.

89:9.2In con­nec­tion with the Mother of God cult, in Mex­ico and else­where, a sacra­ment of cakes and wine was even­tu­ally uti­lized in lieu of the flesh and blood of the older hu­man sac­ri­fices. The He­brews long prac­ticed this rit­ual as a part of their Pass­over cer­e­monies, and it was from this cer­e­mo­nial that the later Chris­tian ver­sion of the sacra­ment took its ori­gin.

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

89:9.4And so, af­ter long ages the cult of the sac­ri­fice has evolved into the cult of the sacra­ment. Thus are the sacra­ments of mod­ern re­li­gions the le­git­i­mate suc­ces­sors of those shock­ing early cer­e­monies of hu­man sac­ri­fice and the still ear­lier can­ni­bal­is­tic rit­u­als. Many still de­pend upon blood for sal­va­tion, but it has at least be­come fig­u­ra­tive, sym­bolic, and mys­tic.

63:6.4Very early the An­donic peo­ples formed the habit of re­frain­ing from eat­ing the flesh of the an­i­mal of tribal ven­er­a­tion. Pres­ently, in or­der more suit­ably to im­press the minds of their youths, they evolved a cer­e­mony of rev­er­ence which was car­ried out about the body of one of these ven­er­ated an­i­mals; and still later on, this prim­i­tive per­for­mance de­vel­oped into the more elab­o­rate sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies of their de­scen­dants. And this is the ori­gin of sac­ri­fices as a part of wor­ship. This idea was elab­o­rated by Moses in the He­brew rit­ual and was pre­served, in prin­ci­ple, by the Apos­tle Paul as the doc­trine of atone­ment for sin by “the shed­ding of blood.”

• Adam substituted offerings of fruit for blood

74:7.21The pub­lic wor­ship hour of Eden was noon; sun­set was the hour of fam­ily wor­ship. Adam did his best to dis­cour­age the use of set prayers, teach­ing that ef­fec­tive prayer must be wholly in­di­vid­ual, that it must be the “de­sire of the soul”; but the Eden­ites con­tin­ued to use the prayers and forms handed down from the times of Dala­ma­tia. Adam also en­deav­ored to sub­sti­tute the of­fer­ings of the fruit of the land for the blood sac­ri­fices in the re­li­gious cer­e­monies but had made lit­tle prog­ress be­fore the dis­rup­tion of the Gar­den.

• Abel sacrificed animals in the second garden

76:2.2Now, in those days it was cus­tom­ary to make of­fer­ings to the priest­hood of the things at hand. Herders would bring of their flocks, farm­ers of the fruits of the fields; and in ac­cor­dance with this cus­tom, Cain and Abel like­wise made pe­ri­odic of­fer­ings to the priests. The two boys had many times ar­gued about the rel­a­tive mer­its of their vo­ca­tions, and Abel was not slow to note that pref­er­ence was shown for his an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. In vain did Cain ap­peal to the tra­di­tions of the first Eden, to the for­mer pref­er­ence for the fruits of the fields. But this Abel would not al­low, and he taunted his older brother in his dis­com­fi­ture.

76:2.3In the days of the first Eden, Adam had in­deed sought to dis­cour­age the of­fer­ing of an­i­mal sac­ri­fice so that Cain had a jus­ti­fi­able prece­dent for his con­tentions. It was, how­ever, dif­fi­cult to or­ga­nize the re­li­gious life of the sec­ond Eden. Adam was bur­dened with a thou­sand and one de­tails as­so­ci­ated with the work of build­ing, de­fense, and agri­cul­ture. Be­ing much de­pressed spir­i­tu­ally, he in­trusted the or­ga­ni­za­tion of wor­ship and ed­u­ca­tion to those of Nod­ite ex­trac­tion who had served in these ca­pac­i­ties in the first gar­den; and in even so short a time the of­fi­ci­at­ing Nod­ite priests were re­vert­ing to the stan­dards and rul­ings of pre-Adamic times.

• held in greater esteem than offerings of agriculture

81:1.4Since slaves were so gen­er­ally em­ployed by the ear­lier agri­cul­tur­ists, the farmer was for­merly looked down on by both the hunter and the herder. For ages it was con­sid­ered me­nial to till the soil; where­fore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the great­est of all bless­ings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sac­ri­fices of the pas­toral life were held in greater es­teem than the of­fer­ings of agri­cul­ture.

• Mithraics ate flesh of animal sacrifices

98:5.4The ad­her­ents of this cult wor­shiped in caves and other se­cret places, chant­ing hymns, mum­bling magic, eat­ing the flesh of the sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals, and drink­ing the blood. Three times a day they wor­shiped, with spe­cial weekly cer­e­mo­ni­als on the day of the sun-god and with the most elab­o­rate ob­ser­vance of all on the an­nual fes­ti­val of Mithras, De­cem­ber twenty-fifth. It was be­lieved that the par­tak­ing of the sacra­ment en­sured eter­nal life, the im­me­di­ate pass­ing, af­ter death, to the bo­som of Mithras, there to tarry in bliss un­til the judg­ment day. On the judg­ment day the Mith­raic keys of heaven would un­lock the gates of Par­a­dise for the re­cep­tion of the faith­ful; where­upon all the un­bap­tized of the liv­ing and the dead would be an­ni­hi­lated upon the re­turn of Mithras to earth. It was taught that, when a man died, he went be­fore Mithras for judg­ment, and that at the end of the world Mithras would sum­mon all the dead from their graves to face the last judg­ment. The wicked would be de­stroyed by fire, and the righ­teous would reign with Mithras for­ever.

• doves and pigeons for the poor

122:10.2Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small sav­ings were rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing. Even at the time of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies at the tem­ple, Joseph deemed him­self suf­fi­ciently poor to war­rant his of­fer­ing for Mary two young pi­geons as Moses had di­rected for the pu­rifi­ca­tion of moth­ers among the poor.

• at Jerusalem temple

125:1.1Ev­ery­where Je­sus went through­out the tem­ple courts, he was shocked and sick­ened by the spirit of ir­rev­er­ence which he ob­served. He deemed the con­duct of the tem­ple throngs to be in­con­sis­tent with their pres­ence in “his Fa­ther’s house.” But he re­ceived the shock of his young life when his fa­ther es­corted him into the court of the gen­tiles with its noisy jar­gon, loud talk­ing and curs­ing, min­gled in­dis­crim­i­nately with the bleat­ing of sheep and the bab­ble of noises which be­trayed the pres­ence of the money-chang­ers and the ven­dors of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry other com­mer­cial com­modi­ties.

• at Jerusalem temple

125:1.4They now passed down to the priests’ court be­neath the rock ledge in front of the tem­ple, where the al­tar stood, to ob­serve the killing of the droves of an­i­mals and the wash­ing away of the blood from the hands of the of­fi­ci­at­ing slaugh­ter priests at the bronze foun­tain. The blood­stained pave­ment, the gory hands of the priests, and the sounds of the dy­ing an­i­mals were more than this na­ture-lov­ing lad could stand. The ter­ri­ble sight sick­ened this boy of Naz­a­reth; he clutched his fa­ther’s arm and begged to be taken away. They walked back through the court of the gen­tiles, and even the coarse laugh­ter and pro­fane jest­ing which he there heard were a re­lief from the sights he had just be­held.

• at Jerusalem temple

125:2.1Five Naz­a­reth fam­i­lies were guests of, or as­so­ciates with, the fam­ily of Si­mon of Beth­any in the cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over, Si­mon hav­ing pur­chased the paschal lamb for the com­pany. It was the slaugh­ter of these lambs in such enor­mous num­bers that had so af­fected Je­sus on his tem­ple visit. It had been the plan to eat the Pass­over with Mary’s rel­a­tives, but Je­sus per­suaded his par­ents to ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion to go to Beth­any.

• at Jerusalem temple
• Jesus opposed

125:2.3Even at this early date, though he said noth­ing about such mat­ters to his par­ents, Je­sus had be­gun to turn over in his mind the pro­pri­ety of cel­e­brat­ing the Pass­over with­out the slaugh­tered lamb. He felt as­sured in his own mind that the Fa­ther in heaven was not pleased with this spec­ta­cle of sac­ri­fi­cial of­fer­ings, and as the years passed, he be­came in­creas­ingly de­ter­mined some­day to es­tab­lish the cel­e­bra­tion of a blood­less Pass­over.

• at Jerusalem temple
• Jesus opposed

125:5.53. If God is a fa­ther who loves his chil­dren, why all this slaugh­ter of an­i­mals to gain di­vine fa­vor—has the teach­ing of Moses been mis­un­der­stood?

• Isaiah opposed

126:4.5“Where­with shall I come be­fore the Lord, to bow my­self be­fore the Lord of all the earth? Shall I come be­fore him with burnt of­fer­ings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou­sands of rams, ten thou­sands of sheep, or with rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No! for the Lord has showed us, O men, what is good. And what does the Lord re­quire of you but to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

• bullocks

162:4.3Sev­enty bul­locks were sac­ri­ficed dur­ing the feast, the sym­bol of the sev­enty na­tions of hea­then­dom. The cer­e­mony of the out­pour­ing of the wa­ter sym­bol­ized the out­pour­ing of the di­vine spirit. This cer­e­mony of the wa­ter fol­lowed the sun­rise pro­ces­sion of the priests and Levites. The wor­shipers passed down the steps lead­ing from the court of Is­rael to the court of the women while suc­ces­sive blasts were blown upon the sil­very trum­pets. And then the faith­ful marched on to­ward the Beau­ti­ful Gate, which opened upon the court of the gen­tiles. Here they turned about to face west­ward, to re­peat their chants, and to con­tinue their march for the sym­bolic wa­ter.

• at Jerusalem temple

173:1.1A huge com­mer­cial traf­fic had grown up in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ser­vices and cer­e­monies of the tem­ple wor­ship. There was the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing suit­able an­i­mals for the var­i­ous sac­ri­fices. Though it was per­mis­si­ble for a wor­shiper to pro­vide his own sac­ri­fice, the fact re­mained that this an­i­mal must be free from all “blem­ish” in the mean­ing of the Levit­i­cal law and as in­ter­preted by of­fi­cial in­spec­tors of the tem­ple. Many a wor­shiper had ex­pe­ri­enced the hu­mil­i­a­tion of hav­ing his sup­pos­edly per­fect an­i­mal re­jected by the tem­ple ex­am­in­ers. It there­fore be­came the more gen­eral prac­tice to pur­chase sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals at the tem­ple, and al­though there were sev­eral sta­tions on near-by Oli­vet where they could be bought, it had be­come the vogue to buy these an­i­mals di­rectly from the tem­ple pens. Grad­u­ally there had grown up this cus­tom of sell­ing all kinds of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals in the tem­ple courts. An ex­ten­sive busi­ness, in which enor­mous prof­its were made, had thus been brought into ex­is­tence. Part of these gains was re­served for the tem­ple trea­sury, but the larger part went in­di­rectly into the hands of the rul­ing high-priestly fam­i­lies.

• doves and pigeons for the poor

173:1.2This sale of an­i­mals in the tem­ple pros­pered be­cause, when the wor­shiper pur­chased such an an­i­mal, al­though the price might be some­what high, no more fees had to be paid, and he could be sure the in­tended sac­ri­fice would not be re­jected on the ground of pos­sess­ing real or tech­ni­cal blem­ishes. At one time or an­other sys­tems of ex­or­bi­tant over­charge were prac­ticed upon the com­mon peo­ple, es­pe­cially dur­ing the great na­tional feasts. At one time the greedy priests went so far as to de­mand the equiv­a­lent of the value of a week’s la­bor for a pair of doves which should have been sold to the poor for a few pen­nies. The “sons of An­nas” had al­ready be­gun to es­tab­lish their bazaars in the tem­ple precincts, those very mer­chan­dise marts which per­sisted to the time of their fi­nal over­throw by a mob three years be­fore the de­struc­tion of the tem­ple it­self.

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

173:1.4These tem­ple money-chang­ers not only con­ducted a reg­u­lar bank­ing busi­ness for profit in the ex­change of more than twenty sorts of money which the vis­it­ing pil­grims would pe­ri­od­i­cally bring to Je­ru­sa­lem, but they also en­gaged in all other kinds of trans­ac­tions per­tain­ing to the bank­ing busi­ness. Both the tem­ple trea­sury and the tem­ple rulers prof­ited tremen­dously from these com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. It was not un­com­mon for the tem­ple trea­sury to hold up­wards of ten mil­lion dol­lars while the com­mon peo­ple lan­guished in pov­erty and con­tin­ued to pay these un­just levies.

173:1.5In the midst of this noisy ag­gre­ga­tion of money-chang­ers, mer­chan­dis­ers, and cat­tle sell­ers, Je­sus, on this Mon­day morn­ing, at­tempted to teach the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. He was not alone in re­sent­ing this pro­fa­na­tion of the tem­ple; the com­mon peo­ple, es­pe­cially the Jew­ish vis­i­tors from for­eign prov­inces, also heart­ily re­sented this prof­i­teer­ing des­e­cra­tion of their na­tional house of wor­ship. At this time the San­hedrin it­self held its reg­u­lar meet­ings in a cham­ber sur­rounded by all this bab­ble and con­fu­sion of trade and barter.

• bullocks

173:1.6As Je­sus was about to be­gin his ad­dress, two things hap­pened to ar­rest his at­ten­tion. At the money ta­ble of a near-by ex­changer a vi­o­lent and heated ar­gu­ment had arisen over the al­leged over­charg­ing of a Jew from Alexan­dria, while at the same mo­ment the air was rent by the bel­low­ing of a drove of some one hun­dred bul­locks which was be­ing driven from one sec­tion of the an­i­mal pens to an­other. As Je­sus paused, silently but thought­fully con­tem­plat­ing this scene of com­merce and con­fu­sion, close by he be­held a sim­ple-minded Galilean, a man he had once talked with in Iron, be­ing ridiculed and jos­tled about by su­per­cil­ious and would-be su­pe­rior Judeans; and all of this com­bined to pro­duce one of those strange and pe­ri­odic up­ris­ings of in­dig­nant emo­tion in the soul of Je­sus.

173:1.7To the amaze­ment of his apos­tles, stand­ing near at hand, who re­frained from par­tic­i­pa­tion in what so soon fol­lowed, Je­sus stepped down from the teach­ing plat­form and, go­ing over to the lad who was driv­ing the cat­tle through the court, took from him his whip of cords and swiftly drove the an­i­mals from the tem­ple. But that was not all; he strode ma­jes­ti­cally be­fore the won­der­ing gaze of the thou­sands as­sem­bled in the tem­ple court to the far­thest cat­tle pen and pro­ceeded to open the gates of ev­ery stall and to drive out the im­pris­oned an­i­mals. By this time the as­sem­bled pil­grims were elec­tri­fied, and with up­roar­i­ous shout­ing they moved to­ward the bazaars and be­gan to over­turn the ta­bles of the money-chang­ers. In less than five min­utes all com­merce had been swept from the tem­ple. By the time the near-by Ro­man guards had ap­peared on the scene, all was quiet, and the crowds had be­come or­derly; Je­sus, re­turn­ing to the speaker’s stand, spoke to the mul­ti­tude: “You have this day wit­nessed that which is writ­ten in the Scrip­tures: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all na­tions, but you have made it a den of rob­bers.’”

173:1.8But be­fore he could ut­ter other words, the great as­sem­bly broke out in hosan­nas of praise, and pres­ently a throng of youths stepped out from the crowd to sing grate­ful hymns of ap­pre­ci­a­tion that the pro­fane and prof­i­teer­ing mer­chan­dis­ers had been ejected from the sa­cred tem­ple. By this time cer­tain of the priests had ar­rived on the scene, and one of them said to Je­sus, “Do you not hear what the chil­dren of the Levites say?” And the Mas­ter replied, “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of babes and suck­lings has praise been per­fected’?” And all the rest of that day while Je­sus taught, guards set by the peo­ple stood watch at ev­ery arch­way, and they would not per­mit any­one to carry even an empty ves­sel across the tem­ple courts.

173:1.9When the chief priests and the scribes heard about these hap­pen­ings, they were dum­founded. All the more they feared the Mas­ter, and all the more they de­ter­mined to de­stroy him. But they were non­plused. They did not know how to ac­com­plish his death, for they greatly feared the mul­ti­tudes, who were now so out­spo­ken in their ap­proval of his over­throw of the pro­fane prof­i­teers. And all this day, a day of quiet and peace in the tem­ple courts, the peo­ple heard Je­sus’ teach­ing and lit­er­ally hung on his words.

173:1.10This sur­pris­ing act of Je­sus was be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion of his apos­tles. They were so taken aback by this sud­den and un­ex­pected move of their Mas­ter that they re­mained through­out the whole episode hud­dled to­gether near the speaker’s stand; they never lifted a hand to fur­ther this cleans­ing of the tem­ple. If this spec­tac­u­lar event had oc­curred the day be­fore, at the time of Je­sus’ tri­umphal ar­rival at the tem­ple at the ter­mi­na­tion of his tu­mul­tuous pro­ces­sion through the gates of the city, all the while loudly ac­claimed by the mul­ti­tude, they would have been ready for it, but com­ing as it did, they were wholly un­pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate.

173:1.11This cleans­ing of the tem­ple dis­closes the Mas­ter’s at­ti­tude to­ward com­mer­cial­iz­ing the prac­tices of re­li­gion as well as his de­tes­ta­tion of all forms of un­fair­ness and prof­i­teer­ing at the ex­pense of the poor and the un­learned. This episode also demon­strates that Je­sus did not look with ap­proval upon the re­fusal to em­ploy force to pro­tect the ma­jor­ity of any given hu­man group against the un­fair and en­slav­ing prac­tices of un­just mi­nori­ties who may be able to en­trench them­selves be­hind po­lit­i­cal, fi­nan­cial, or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal power. Shrewd, wicked, and de­sign­ing men are not to be per­mit­ted to or­ga­nize them­selves for the ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion of those who, be­cause of their ide­al­ism, are not dis­posed to re­sort to force for self-pro­tec­tion or for the fur­ther­ance of their laud­able life projects.

89:0.2The sav­age was early pos­sessed with the no­tion that spir­its de­rive su­preme sat­is­fac­tion from the sight of hu­man mis­ery, suf­fer­ing, and hu­mil­i­a­tion. At first, man was only con­cerned with sins of com­mis­sion, but later he be­came ex­er­cised over sins of omis­sion. And the whole sub­se­quent sac­ri­fi­cial sys­tem grew up around these two ideas. This new rit­ual had to do with the ob­ser­vance of the pro­pi­ti­a­tion cer­e­monies of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that some­thing spe­cial must be done to win the fa­vor of the gods; only ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion rec­og­nizes a con­sis­tently even-tem­pered and benev­o­lent God. Pro­pi­ti­a­tion was in­sur­ance against im­me­di­ate ill luck rather than in­vest­ment in fu­ture bliss. And the rit­u­als of avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion all merge into one an­other.

4:5.4The bar­barous idea of ap­peas­ing an an­gry God, of pro­pi­ti­at­ing an of­fended Lord, of win­ning the fa­vor of De­ity through sac­ri­fices and pen­ance and even by the shed­ding of blood, rep­re­sents a re­li­gion wholly puerile and prim­i­tive, a phi­los­o­phy un­wor­thy of an en­light­ened age of sci­ence and truth. Such be­liefs are ut­terly re­pul­sive to the ce­les­tial be­ings and the di­vine rulers who serve and reign in the uni­verses. It is an af­front to God to be­lieve, hold, or teach that in­no­cent blood must be shed in or­der to win his fa­vor or to di­vert the fic­ti­tious di­vine wrath.

162:4.4On the last day of the feast al­most four hun­dred and fifty priests with a cor­re­spond­ing num­ber of Levites of­fi­ci­ated. At day­break the pil­grims as­sem­bled from all parts of the city, each car­ry­ing in the right hand a sheaf of myr­tle, wil­low, and palm branches, while in the left hand each one car­ried a branch of the par­a­dise ap­ple—the cit­ron, or the “for­bid­den fruit.” These pil­grims di­vided into three groups for this early morn­ing cer­e­mony. One band re­mained at the tem­ple to at­tend the morn­ing sac­ri­fices; an­other group marched down be­low Je­ru­sa­lem to near Maza to cut the wil­low branches for the adorn­ment of the sac­ri­fi­cial al­tar, while the third group formed a pro­ces­sion to march from the tem­ple be­hind the wa­ter priest, who, to the sound of the sil­very trum­pets, bore the golden pitcher which was to con­tain the sym­bolic wa­ter, out through Ophel to near Siloam, where was lo­cated the foun­tain gate. Af­ter the golden pitcher had been filled at the pool of Siloam, the pro­ces­sion marched back to the tem­ple, en­ter­ing by way of the wa­ter gate and go­ing di­rectly to the court of the priests, where the priest bear­ing the wa­ter pitcher was joined by the priest bear­ing the wine for the drink of­fer­ing. These two priests then re­paired to the sil­ver fun­nels lead­ing to the base of the al­tar and poured the con­tents of the pitch­ers therein. The ex­e­cu­tion of this rite of pour­ing the wine and the wa­ter was the sig­nal for the as­sem­bled pil­grims to be­gin the chant­ing of the Psalms from 113 to 118 in­clu­sive, in al­ter­na­tion with the Levites. And as they re­peated these lines, they would wave their sheaves at the al­tar. Then fol­lowed the sac­ri­fices for the day, as­so­ci­ated with the re­peat­ing of the Psalm for the day, the Psalm for the last day of the feast be­ing the eighty-sec­ond, be­gin­ning with the fifth verse.

• Moses forbade

4:5.5The He­brews be­lieved that “with­out the shed­ding of blood there could be no re­mis­sion of sin.” They had not found de­liv­er­ance from the old and pa­gan idea that the Gods could not be ap­peased ex­cept by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a dis­tinct ad­vance when he for­bade hu­man sac­ri­fices and sub­sti­tuted there­for, in the prim­i­tive minds of his child­like Bed­ouin fol­low­ers, the cer­e­mo­nial sac­ri­fice of an­i­mals.

• practiced by all Andonites except Badonans

64:3.1Be­sides the Fox­hall peo­ples in the west, an­other strug­gling cen­ter of cul­ture per­sisted in the east. This group was lo­cated in the foothills of the north­west­ern In­dian high­lands among the tribes of Bado­nan, a great-great-grand­son of An­don. These peo­ple were the only de­scen­dants of An­don who never prac­ticed hu­man sac­ri­fice.

• Neanderthalers practiced
• to appease invisible and unknown forces

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

64:4.13These early Ne­an­derthalers could hardly be called sun wor­shipers. They rather lived in fear of the dark; they had a mor­tal dread of night­fall. As long as the moon shone a lit­tle, they man­aged to get along, but in the dark of the moon they grew pan­icky and be­gan the sac­ri­fice of their best spec­i­mens of man­hood and wom­an­hood in an ef­fort to in­duce the moon again to shine. The sun, they early learned, would reg­u­larly re­turn, but the moon they con­jec­tured only re­turned be­cause they sac­ri­ficed their fel­low tribes­men. As the race ad­vanced, the ob­ject and pur­pose of sac­ri­fice pro­gres­sively changed, but the of­fer­ing of hu­man sac­ri­fice as a part of re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial long per­sisted.

• regular feature of weddings among well-to-do

83:4.4Child­less­ness was greatly dreaded, and since bar­ren­ness was at­tributed to spirit machi­na­tions, ef­forts to in­sure fe­cun­dity also led to the as­so­ci­a­tion of mar­riage with cer­tain mag­i­cal or re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als. And in this ef­fort to in­sure a happy and fer­tile mar­riage, many charms were em­ployed; even the as­trologers were con­sulted to as­cer­tain the birth stars of the con­tract­ing par­ties. At one time the hu­man sac­ri­fice was a reg­u­lar fea­ture of all wed­dings among well-to-do peo­ple.

• practice of sacrificing first-born

93:9.4But Abra­ham was not long to be de­terred in his mis­sion as the suc­ces­sor of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Soon he made con­verts among the Phil­is­tines and of Abim­elech’s peo­ple, made a treaty with them, and, in turn, be­came con­tam­i­nated with many of their su­per­sti­tions, par­tic­u­larly with their prac­tice of sac­ri­fic­ing first-born sons. Thus did Abra­ham again be­come a great leader in Pales­tine. He was held in rev­er­ence by all groups and hon­ored by all kings. He was the spir­i­tual leader of all the sur­round­ing tribes, and his in­flu­ence con­tin­ued for some time af­ter his death. Dur­ing the clos­ing years of his life he once more re­turned to He­bron, the scene of his ear­lier ac­tiv­i­ties and the place where he had worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with Mel­chiz­e­dek. Abra­ham’s last act was to send trusty ser­vants to the city of his brother, Na­hor, on the bor­der of Mes­o­po­ta­mia, to se­cure a woman of his own peo­ple as a wife for his son Isaac. It had long been the cus­tom of Abra­ham’s peo­ple to marry their cousins. And Abra­ham died con­fi­dent in that faith in God which he had learned from Mel­chiz­e­dek in the van­ished schools of Salem.

180:1.6Keep in mind: It is loy­alty, not sac­ri­fice, that Je­sus de­mands. The con­scious­ness of sac­ri­fice im­plies the ab­sence of that whole­hearted af­fec­tion which would have made such a lov­ing ser­vice a su­preme joy. The idea of duty sig­ni­fies that you are ser­vant-minded and hence are miss­ing the mighty thrill of do­ing your ser­vice as a friend and for a friend. The im­pulse of friend­ship tran­scends all con­vic­tions of duty, and the ser­vice of a friend for a friend can never be called a sac­ri­fice. The Mas­ter has taught the apos­tles that they are the sons of God. He has called them breth­ren, and now, be­fore he leaves, he calls them his friends.

• taught forgiveness without s.

138:8.2Je­sus taught them to preach the for­give­ness of sin through faith in God with­out pen­ance or sac­ri­fice, and that the Fa­ther in heaven loves all his chil­dren with the same eter­nal love. He en­joined his apos­tles to re­frain from dis­cussing:

• sought to free apostles from idea of s.

141:4.3Je­sus also sought to free the minds of his apos­tles from the idea of of­fer­ing an­i­mal sac­ri­fices as a re­li­gious duty. But these men, trained in the re­li­gion of the daily sac­ri­fice, were slow to com­pre­hend what he meant. Nev­er­the­less, the Mas­ter did not grow weary in his teach­ing. When he failed to reach the minds of all of the apos­tles by means of one il­lus­tra­tion, he would re­state his mes­sage and em­ploy an­other type of para­ble for pur­poses of il­lu­mi­na­tion.

• did not participate in any religious service of s.

179:0.3The apos­tles knew that Je­sus had cel­e­brated other Passovers with­out the lamb; they knew that he did not per­son­ally par­tic­i­pate in any sac­ri­fi­cial ser­vice of the Jew­ish sys­tem. He had many times par­taken of the paschal lamb as a guest, but al­ways, when he was the host, no lamb was served. It would not have been a great sur­prise to the apos­tles to have seen the lamb omit­ted even on Pass­over night, and since this sup­per was given one day ear­lier, they thought noth­ing of its ab­sence.

• death on cross was not a s.

188:4.3Mor­tal man was never the prop­erty of the archde­ceivers. Je­sus did not die to ran­som man from the clutch of the apos­tate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Fa­ther in heaven never con­ceived of such crass in­jus­tice as damn­ing a mor­tal soul be­cause of the evil-do­ing of his an­ces­tors. Nei­ther was the Mas­ter’s death on the cross a sac­ri­fice which con­sisted in an ef­fort to pay God a debt which the race of man­kind had come to owe him.

93:4.14While no sac­ri­fices were per­mit­ted within the colony, Mel­chiz­e­dek well knew how dif­fi­cult it is to sud­denly up­root long-es­tab­lished cus­toms and ac­cord­ingly had wisely of­fered these peo­ple the sub­sti­tute of a sacra­ment of bread and wine for the older sac­ri­fice of flesh and blood. It is of rec­ord, “Mel­chiz­e­dek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine.” But even this cau­tious in­no­va­tion was not al­to­gether suc­cess­ful; the var­i­ous tribes all main­tained aux­il­iary cen­ters on the out­skirts of Salem where they of­fered sac­ri­fices and burnt of­fer­ings. Even Abra­ham re­sorted to this bar­barous prac­tice af­ter his vic­tory over Ched­or­la­o­mer; he sim­ply did not feel quite at ease un­til he had of­fered a con­ven­tional sac­ri­fice. And Mel­chiz­e­dek never did suc­ceed in fully erad­i­cat­ing this pro­cliv­ity to sac­ri­fice from the re­li­gious prac­tices of his fol­low­ers, even of Abra­ham.

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.

89:10.1An­cient man only at­tained con­scious­ness of fa­vor with God through sac­ri­fice. Mod­ern man must de­velop new tech­niques of achiev­ing the self-con­scious­ness of sal­va­tion. The con­scious­ness of sin per­sists in the mor­tal mind, but the thought pat­terns of sal­va­tion there­from have be­come out­worn and an­ti­quated. The re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual need per­sists, but in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress has de­stroyed the olden ways of se­cur­ing peace and con­so­la­tion for mind and soul.

91:2.4The ap­pear­ance of the sac­ri­fice idea in any re­li­gion un­fail­ingly de­tracts from the higher ef­fi­cacy of true prayer in that men seek to sub­sti­tute the of­fer­ings of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions for the of­fer­ing of their own con­se­crated wills to the do­ing of the will of God.