The Eliminator Part 19

IT would be tedious to quote even one-tenth of the pa.s.sages from the New Testament in which salvation is ascribed to the blood of Jesus. Indeed, from Genesis to Revelation sacrificial blood seems to be the one prominent theme. The salvation of Christ is emphatically the salvation by blood, and this idea runs through the whole system of what is called evangelical theology. Jeremy Taylor wrote about "lapping with the tongue the blood from the Saviour's open wounds," suggesting the well-known habit of the bloodthirsty dog. But Mr. Taylor was outdone by the late Rev. Bishop Jesse T. Peck, when he frantically exclaimed, in the presence of thousands of people at a religious ma.s.s-meeting, "We have not enough _blood_ in our religion. I want to wade in the blood of Calvary up to my armpits, and _wallow_ in it," suggesting the well-known habits of the filthy sow. But the Rev. T. D. Talmage, D. D., capped the climax when, in his usual rhapsodical style, he exclaimed in a recent sermon: "It seems to me as if all Heaven were trying to bid in your soul. The first bid it makes is the tears of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus; but that is not a high-enough price. The next bid Heaven makes is the sweat of Gethsemane; but it is too cheap a price. The next bid Heaven makes seems to be the whipped back of Pilate's Hall; but it is not a high-enough price. Can it be possible that Heaven cannot buy you in? Heaven tries once more. It says: 'I bid this time for that man's soul the torture of Christ's martyrdom, the blood on his temple, the blood on his cheek, the blood on his chin, the blood on his hand, the blood on his side, the blood on his knee, the blood on his foot-the blood in drops, the blood in rills, the blood in pools coagulated beneath the cross; the blood that wet the tips of the soldier's spear, the blood that plashed warm in the faces of his enemies.' Glory to G.o.d!

that bid wins it! The highest price that was ever paid for anything was paid for your soul. Nothing could buy it but blood! The estranged property is bought back. Take it. You have sold yourselves for naught; and ye shall be redeemed without money.' O atoning blood, cleansing blood, life-giving blood, sanctifying blood, glorifying blood of Jesus!

Why not burst into tears at the thought that for thee he shed it-for thee the hard-hearted, for thee the lost?"

Henry III. of England was presented with a small portion of the blood of Jesus, said to have been shed upon the cross, and to have been preserved in a phial, duly attested by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and other distinguished functionaries as genuine. It was carried in triumph through the streets of London with rapturous shoutings by a large procession, from St. Paul's to Westminster Abbey, and the historian testifies that it made all England radiant with glory. Indeed, there has been enough of the so-called genuine blood that was shed on Calvary given to the faithful to float the largest ship in the navy of Great Britain. A sufficient quant.i.ty of the real cross upon which Jesus is said to have been crucified has been preserved to erect the largest temple the world ever contained. There is no end to the superst.i.tion on this subject, all going to show how deep-seated is the credulity which exists in the popular belief in regard to this matter.

There are many ill.u.s.trations which might be given of "blood-evocation"

among ancient pagans who regarded blood as the great arcanum of nature.

But what was the _origin_ of the idea that blood is purifying, cleansing, purging? There is nothing in the thing itself that suggests this idea. Take a basinful of newly-drawn blood and set it upon the table before you. It soon coagulates, and emits an offensive odor, so that you are forced to hurry it from your presence. It is the very opposite of _cleansing_. If you get a drop upon your finger, you immediately wash it off. Indeed, some persons cannot stand the sight of blood, and shrink from its touch as from a deadly poison. There must be some reason for the idea that in some way blood is suggestive of cleansing or purifying. Now, we go to _nature_ in search of knowledge.

There is only one phenomenon in which the shedding of blood is a natural process, and that is when the young girl arrives at the stage of _p.u.b.escence_, and in this case, and in this case only, does it suggest the idea of _purification_. Before the period approaches nothing can be more suggestive of the untidy than the unp.u.b.escent girl. She is generally awkward, slouchy, and unattractive. But let the sanguineous evidence of approaching womanhood appear, and how changed! Her complexion becomes then most beautiful and bewitching. Her eyes sparkle with a fire which cannot be described. Her once ungraceful form becomes lithe, and her whole person changes in such a manner as to indicate that some great thing has happened. She has been purified or cleansed. She is a new creature. Old things have pa.s.sed away. Each succeeding month she has a similar experience until the full bloom of womanhood has pa.s.sed away.

Indeed, we find among the primitive customs of ancient Africans a special observance of the commencement of the catamenial period. Before the arrival of the time of periodicity the young girl is of very little account, and is not numbered as a member of the tribe. It is not considered indecent for her to run around in a state of nudity until she is fourteen years of age or until the evidence of p.u.b.escence appears.

Stanley says of certain African girls: "They wait with impatience the day when they can be married and have a cloth to fold around their bodies." There was in use among certain ancient people, now worn by Catholic priests, an ap.r.o.n known as the _peplum_, which was worn after p.u.b.erty.

The tribal mark and totemic name were conferred in the _baptism of blood_. A covenant was entered into which was written with menstruous blood, because blood was the announcer of the female period of p.u.b.escence. From time immemorial the Kaffirs have preserved the custom of celebrating the first appearance of the menstrual flow. All the young girls in the neighborhood meet together and make merry on the happy occasion. We are told by Irenaeus how the feminine _Logos_ was represented in the mysteries of Marcus, and the wine was supposed to be miraculously turned into blood, and Charis, who was superior to all things, was thought to infuse her own blood into the cup. The cup was handed to the women, who also consecrated it with an effusion of blood proceeding from themselves.

It would seem that the blood of Charis preceded the blood of Christ, and it is doubtful whether there would have been any cleansing by the blood of Christ if there had been no purification by the blood of Charis. Thus Nature's rubrics are written in _red_. The Eucharist is derived by Clement of Alexandria from the mixture of the water and the Word, and he identifies the Word with the blood of the grape. We give these delicate hints for what they are worth.

We have a deep conviction that the conception of the idea of purification by blood had at first some connection with the natural issue of blood at the commencement of periodicity in the female. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated by pagans centuries before the paschal supper of the Jews or the Lord's Supper of Christians, the element of blood was very conspicuously set forth, and Higgins has shown in his _Anaealypsis_ that the sacrifice of bread and wine in religious ceremonies was common among many ancient peoples, the wine representing the blood.

In 1885 a very remarkable book appeared, ent.i.tled _The Blood Covenant_, by Rev. H. Clay Trumbull, D. D., and we have obtained the consent of this author (whom we have the honor to recognize as an old and very dear personal friend) "to use anything we please, in any way we please, without giving any credit." For this permission we are truly thankful, though we only avail ourself of a few of the facts bearing upon the point concerning which we write.

Our author says: "One of these primitive rites, which is deserving of more attention than it has yet received, as throwing light on many important phases of Bible-teaching, is the rite of blood-covenanting-a form of mutual covenanting by which two persons enter into the closest, the most enduring, and the most sacred of compacts as friends and brothers, or as more than brothers, through the intercommingling of their blood by means of its mutual tasting or of its transfusion. This rite is still observed in the unchanging East; and there are historic traces of it from time immemorial in every quarter of the globe, yet it has been strangely overlooked by biblical critics and biblical commentators generally in these later centuries.

"Although now comparatively rare, in view of its responsibilities and of its indissolubleness, this covenant is sometimes entered into by confidential partners in business or by fellow-travelers; again, by robbers on the road, who would themselves rest fearlessly on its obligations, and who could be rested on within its limits, however untrustworthy they or their fellows might be to any other compact. Yet, again, it is the chosen compact of loving friends-of those who are drawn to it only by mutual love and trust.

"There are, indeed, various evidences that the the of blood-covenanting is reckoned in the East even a closer tie than that of natural descent-that a 'friend' by this tie is nearer and is dearer, 'sticketh closer' than a 'brother' by birth. We in the West are accustomed to say that ' blood is thicker than water,' but the Arabs have the idea that blood is thicker than a mother's milk. With them, any two children nourished at the same breast are called 'milk-brothers' or 'sucking brothers;' and the tie between such is very strong.

"Lucian, the bright Greek thinker, writing in the middle of the second century of our era, is explicit as to the nature and method of this covenant as then practised in the East: 'And this is the manner of it: Thereupon, cutting our fingers, all simultaneously, we let the blood drop into a vessel, and, having dipped the points of our swords into it, both of us holding them together, we drink it. There is nothing which can loose us from one another after that.'

"Yet, a little while earlier than Lucian, Tacitus gives record of this rite of blood-brotherhood as practised in the East. He makes an explanation: 'It is the custom of Oriental kings, as often as they come together to make covenant, to join right hands, to tie the thumbs together, and to tighten them with a knot. Then, when the blood is thus pressed to the finger-tips, they draw blood by a light stroke and lick it in turn. This they regard as a divine covenant, made sacred, as it were, by mutual blood or blended lives.'

"Sall.u.s.t, the historian of Catiline's conspiracy against Rome, says: 'There were those who said at that time that Catiline at this conference, when he inducted them into the oath of partnership in crime, carried round in goblets human blood mixed with wine, and that, after all had tasted of it with an imprecatory oath, as is men's wont in solemn rites, he opened to them his plans.' Florus, a later Latin historian, describing this conspiracy, says: 'There was added the pledge of the league-human blood-which they drank as it was borne round to them in goblets.' And yet later Tertullian suggests that it was their own blood, mingled with wine, of which the fellow-conspirators drank together. 'Concerning the eating of blood and other such tragic dishes,'

he says, 'you read that blood drawn from the arms and tasted by one another was the method of making covenant among certain nations.'

"As far back even as the fifth century before Christ we find an explicit description of this Oriental rite of blood-covenanting. 'Now, the Scythians,' says Herodotus, 'make covenants in the following manner, with whomsoever they make them: Having poured out wine into a great earthen drinking-bowl, they mingle with it the blood of those making covenant, striking the body with a small knife or cutting it slightly with a sword. Thereafter they dip into the bowl sword, arrows, axe, and javelin. But while they are doing this they utter many invokings, and afterward not only those who make the covenant, but those of their followers who are of the highest rank, drink off the wine mingled with blood.'

"Again, Herodotus says of this custom in his day: 'Now, the Arabians reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make these pledges in the following way: When they wish to make pledges to one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making the pledges. After that, plucking some woollen from the garments of each of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones as the "heap of witness" which are set in the midst. While he is doing this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he that has made the pledges introduces the stranger to his friends, or the fellow-citizen to his fellows if the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.

"Going back, now, to the world's most ancient records in the monuments of Egypt, we find evidence of the existence of the covenant of blood in those early days. So far was this symbolic thought carried that the ancient Egyptians spoke of the departed spirit as having entered into the nature, and, indeed, into the very being, of the G.o.ds by the rite of tasting blood from the divine arm.

"'The Book of the Dead,' as it is commonly called, is a group, or series, of ancient Egyptian writings representing the state and the needs and the progress of the soul after death. A copy of this funereal ritual, 'more or less complete according to the fortune of the deceased, was deposited in the case of eveiy mummy. 'As the Book of the Dead is the most ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most important of the sacred books of the Egyptians;' it is, in fact, 'according to Egyptian notions, essentially an inspired work;' hence its contents have an exceptional dogmatic value. In this book there are several obvious references to the rite of blood-covenanting. Some of these are in a chapter of the ritual which was found transcribed in a coffin of the eleventh dynasty, thus carrying it back to a period prior to the days of the patriarchs.

"'Give me your arm; I am made as ye,' says the departed soul, speaking to the G.o.ds. Then, in explanation of this statement, the pre-historic gloss of the ritual goes on to say: 'The blood is that which proceeds from the member of the Sun after he goes along cutting himself,' the covenant blood which unites the soul and the G.o.d is drawn from the flesh of Ra when he has cut himself in the rite of that covenant. By this covenant-cutting the deceased becomes one with the covenanting G.o.ds.

Again, the departing soul, speaking as Osiris-or as the Osirian, which every mummy represents-says: 'I am the soul in his two halves.' This was at least two thousand years before the days of the Greek philosopher.

How much earlier it was recognized does not appear.

"Moreover, a 'red talisman,' or red amulet, stained with 'the blood of Isis,' and containing a record of the covenant, was placed at the neck of the mummy as an a.s.surance of safety to his soul. 'When this book [this amulet-record] has been made,' says the ritual, 'it causes Isis to protect him.' 'If this book is known,' says Horus, 'he [the deceased] is in the service of Osiris.... His name is like that of the G.o.ds.'"

Dr. Trumbull properly remarks:

"Thus in ancient Egypt, in ancient Canaan, in ancient Mexico, in modern Turkey, in modern Russia, in modern India, and in modern Otaheite, in Africa, in Asia, in America, in Europe, and in Oceanica, blood-giving was life-giving. Life-giving was love-showing. Love-showing was a heart-yearning after union in love and in life and in blood and in very being. That was the primitive thought in the primitive religions of all the world.

"An ancient Chaldean legend, as recorded by Bero-sus, ascribes a new creation of mankind to the mixture by the G.o.ds of the dust of the earth with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the G.o.d Belus. 'On this account it is that men are rational and partake of divine knowledge,' says Berosus. The blood of the G.o.d gives them the life and nature of a G.o.d. Yet, again, the early Phnician and the early Greek theogonies, as recorded by Sanchoniathon and by Hesiod, ascribe the vivifying of mankind to the outpoured blood of the G.o.ds. It was from the blood of Ouranos, or of Saturn, dripping into the sea and mingling with its foam, that Venus was formed, to become the mother of her heroic posterity. 'The Orphies, which have borrowed so largely from the East,'

says Lenormant, 'said that the immaterial part of man, his soul, his life, sprang from the blood of Dionysus Zagreus, whom... t.i.tans had torn to pieces, partly devouring his members.'

"Homer explicitly recognizes this universal belief in the power of blood to convey life and to be a means of revivifying the dead.

"Indeed, it is claimed, with a show of reason, that the very word (_surquinu_) which was used for 'altar' in the a.s.syrian was primarily the word for 'table'-that, in fact, what was known as the 'altar' to the G.o.ds was originally the table of communion between the G.o.ds and their worshippers."

From the writings of Livingstone, the African explorer, as well as from the reports of Stanley, it appears that the custom of blood-covenanting is kept up in Africa in these modern times.

Describing the ceremony, Livingstone says: "It is accomplished thus: The hands of the parties are joined (in this case Pitsane and Sambanza were the parties engaged). Small incisions are made on the clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right cheeks and foreheads.

A small quant.i.ty of blood is taken from these points, in both parties, by means of a stalk of gra.s.s. The blood from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into another; each then drinks the other's blood, and they are supposed to become perpetual friends or relations. During the drinking of the beer some of the party continue beating the ground with short clubs and utter sentences by way of ratifying the treaty."

The primitive character of these customs is the more probable from the fact that Livingstone first found them existing in a region where, in his opinion, the dress and household utensils of the people are identical with those represented on the monuments of ancient Egypt.

Concerning the origin of this rite in this region, Cameron says: "This custom of making brothers, I believe to be really of Semitic origin."

Henry M. Stanley, who was sent to rescue Livingstone, gives many interesting accounts of his experience with the blood-covenanters. In 1871, Stanley encountered the forces of Mirambo, the greatest of African warriors. They agreed to make "strong friendship" with each other. The ceremony is thus described:

"Manwa Sera, Stanley's 'chief captain,' was requested to seal our friendship by performing the ceremony of blood-brotherhood between Mirambo and myself. Having caused us to sit fronting each other on a straw carpet, he made an incision in each of our right legs, from which he extracted blood, and, interchanging it, he exclaimed aloud, 'If either of you break this brotherhood now established between you, may the lion devour him, the serpent poison him, bitterness be in his food, his friends desert him, his gun burst in his hands and wound him, and everything that is bad do wrong to him until death.'" The same blood now flowed in the veins of both Stanley and Mirambo. They were friends and brothers in a sacred covenant-life for life. At the conclusion of the covenant they exchanged gifts, as the customary ratification or accompaniment of the compact. They even vied with each other in proofs of their unselfish fidelity in this new covenant of friendship.

Again and again, before and after this incident, Stanley entered into the covenant of blood-brotherhood with representative Africans more than fifty times, in some instances by the opening of his own veins; at other times by allowing one of his personal escort to bleed for him.

Thus we see that in ancient and modern times, among all people and in all portions of the earth, this idea of blood-friendship prevailed. In the primitive East, in the wild West, in the cold North, and in the torrid South this rite shows itself. "It will be observed," says Dr.

Trumbull, "that we have already noted proofs of the independent existence of this rite of blood-brotherhood or blood-friendship among the three great primitive divisions of the race-the Semitic, the Hamitic, and the j.a.phetic; and this in Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the islands of the sea; again, among the five modern and more popular divisions of the human family-Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, and American. This fact in itself would seem to point to a common origin of its various manifestations in the early Oriental home of the now scattered peoples of the world.

"The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the blood of the G.o.ds. The Egyptian word for 'red' sometimes stood for 'blood.' The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red; hence follows our word 'rubric,' The Rabbis say that when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be subst.i.tuted for this token of the covenant with the Lord. It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord. The red thread in China to-day binds the double cup from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of 'wedding wine,' as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood. And it is a red thread which in India to-day is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck. Among the American Indians scarlet, or red, is the color which stands for sacrifices or for sacrificial blood in all their picture-painting; and the shrine, or _tunkan_, which continues to have its devotees, 'is painted red, as a sign of active or living worship.' The same is true of the shrines in India; the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood."

When a Jewish child is circ.u.mcised, it is commonly said of him that he is caused "to enter into the covenant of Abraham and his G.o.dfather or sponsor is called Baal-beerith, master of the covenant." Moreover, even down to modern times the rite of circ.u.mcision has included a recognition, however unconscious, of the primitive blood-friendship rite, by the custom of the a rabbi, G.o.d's representative, receiving into his mouth the prepuce or foreskin that is cut from the boy, and thereby made a partaker of the blood mingled with the wine according to the method described among the Orientals, in the rite of blood-friendship, from the earliest days of history. We make this statement on the testimony of Buxtorf, who is a recognized authority in matters of Jewish customs, though he gives it in Latin, with a view of limiting a knowledge of the facts.

All that we have stated concerning the blood-covenant brings us nearer and nearer to the disgusting and beastly habit of cannibalism. Dr.

Trumbull says: "It would even seem to be indicated, by all the trend of historic facts, that cannibalism-gross, repulsive, inhuman cannibalism-had its basis in man's perversion of this outreaching of his nature (whether that outreach-ing were first directed by revelation or by divinely-given innate promptings) after inter-union and intercommunion with G.o.d, after life in G.o.d's life, and after growth through the partaking of G.o.d's food or of that food which represents G.o.d. The studies of many observers in widely-different fields have led both the rationalistic and the faith-filled student to conclude that in _their_ sphere of observation it was a religious sentiment, and not a mere animal craving-either through a scarcity of food or from a spirit of malignity-that was at the bottom of cannibalistic practices there, even if that field were an exception to the world's fields generally.

And now we have a glimpse of the nature and workings of that religious sentiment which prompted cannibalism wherever it has been practised. In misdirected pursuance of this thought men have given the blood of a consecrated human victim to bring themselves into union with G.o.d; and then they have eaten the flesh of that victim which had supplied the blood which made them one with G.o.d. This seems to be the basis of fact in the premises, whatever may be the understood philosophy of the facts.

Why men reasoned thus may indeed be in question. That they reasoned thus seems evident. Certain it is, that where cannibalism has been studied in modern times it has commonly been found to have had originally a religious basis; and the inference is a fair one that it must have been the same wherever cannibalism existed in earlier times. Even in some regions where cannibalism has long since been prohibited there are traditions and traces of its former existence as a purely religious rite. Thus, in India little images of flour paste or clay are now made for decapitation or other mutilation in the temples, in avowed imitation of human beings who were once offered and eaten there."

Reville, treating of the native religions of Mexico and Peru, comes to a similar conclusion with Dorman, and he argues that the state of things which was there was the same the world over, so for as it related to cannibalism. "Cannibalism," he says, "which is now restricted to a few of the savage tribes who have remained closest to the animal life, was once universal to our race. For no one would ever have conceived the idea of offering to the G.o.ds a kind of food which excited nothing but disgust and horror." In this suggestion Reville indicates his conviction that the primal idea of an altar was a table of blood-bought communion.

There is something that looks very much like cannibalism in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. The Jews murmured that Jesus spoke of himself as the bread which came down from heaven, and inquired, "How can this man give us of his flesh to eat? Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him.

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers did eat, and died; he that eateth this bread shall live for ever. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum."

This was spoken nearly two years before he is said to have inst.i.tuted the memorial Supper, and has always been a mystery to commentators, though they allege that the whole mystery is explained in John 6: 63:

"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." This seems to be very farfetched indeed-an afterthought. It did not satisfy some of his disciples, for "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him."

From this simple idea of securing faithfulness by the transfusion of the blood of two persons seems to have come the idea of _propitiating_ the G.o.ds by offering them b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices. In primitive times, among barbarous and uncivilized peoples, the conception was universal that the G.o.ds were very much like themselves, and that therefore they would be pleased with presents. When offended they could be conciliated, and when some crime had been committed they could be induced to forgive the transgressor by some valuable offering, such as the first-fruits of the soil or the most immaculate animals of the flock. This idea of obtaining favors from the invisible powers was carried to such extremes that for the honor of humanity we should feel inclined to doubt the monstrous stories were they not so well attested. The offering of these sacrifices became so degraded and disgusting by superst.i.tion that it ended in the belief that the deity's anger could be appeased, his revenge satisfied, his vanity flattered, and that he could be made generally pleased, by holocausts of human beings; so that the more costly the sacrifice, the more certain was the deity to smile upon the donor. The Moloch-worship, the mother placing the babe in the arms of the monstrous idol and seeing it burned before her own eyes, seems to exhaust the horrors of human ingenuity. We have only s.p.a.ce to state that these abominations prevailed over most of the heathen world when the Old-Testament rites and ceremonies came into use among the Jews. We find the custom of offering sacrifices in the early pages of Genesis, when it led to the first murder. Cain's sacrifice, sacerdotal-ists tell us, was not accepted by Jehovah because there was no _blood_ in it, as there was in the offering of Abel. Abraham was about to slay his own son when the blood of a ram was provided instead; and, in fact, all the Bible patriarchs sacrificed, and the exodus from Egypt itself was brought about under the pretence that the people had to go to the desert to offer their accustomed sacrifice.

The Jews borrowed their idea of sacrifice from the heathen, and sometimes were more heathenish than the heathens themselves. Thousands and thousands of innocent animals were cruelly butchered for sacrifice, as the Jews were full of Egyptian reminiscences on one hand and of Canaanitish modes of worship on the other. It is said that Jehovah allowed these abominations because of the ignorance of these people and their hardness of heart, lest they might despise a naked religion and be dazzled by the imposing ceremonies by which they were surrounded. The whole system of b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices was based upon anthropomorphic conceptions of their Jehovah, to whom the "agreeable smell" of the blood was a sweet satisfaction. The Jews adopted the very worst features of paganism in regard to these b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, which they offered on all occasions-so much so that their prophets cried out against them and Jehovah himself denounced them.