The Eliminator Part 20

The life or blood of the animal was distinctly said to make "the atonement for the soul." This notion of a _representative_ victim is one that belonged to the whole ancient world, as can be seen by reference to any of the great cyclopaedias. It was _adopted_ by the Jews, not _revealed_ to them by Jehovah. The scape-goat (Lev. 16) and many other cases of seemingly expiatory sacrifices are embodiments of this idea, which was adopted by Christianity directly from Judaism, whose priests had adopted it from other people.

The practice of b.l.o.o.d.y offerings was common to Hindoos, a.s.syrians, Phnicians, Greeks, and Northmen. There is a Hindoo ritual for human as well as for brute animals set forth in _Asiatic Researches_. In _Fragments of Sanchoniathon_, Kronos sacrifices his "only son" to his father Ouranos, his "father in heaven." Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigeneia,

before going to Troy, and Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles to his manes. Repeatedly in the Punic wars children of n.o.ble families were burned alive to aesculapius, G.o.d of medicine.

Burning at the stake and hanging upon a gibbet were sacrifices to appease the divine justice. In short, all b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices were propitiatory, to appease the rage of hunger in a famished G.o.d. Blood was excellent, because its aroma was the vehicle of life, and so afforded support to life.

In Homer's _Odyssey_, Ulysses slays animals before the ghosts of Hades, and these run up to be nourished by the blood. He draws his sword, rushes upon them, and drives them away. Then, selecting one with whom he wishes to talk, he feeds him with the invigorating vapor, and the ghost is then made strong enough to talk.

But none of these sacrifices were strictly vicarious. The old G.o.ds were angry at neglect, but never had the kind of justice that a sheep or goat or cow could not appease. The Jews were not unfamiliar with human sacrifices (Lev. 27:28,29; Judg. 11:30-39), and even the early Christians are said to have offered b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices of human beings.

The deification of Jesus to correspond with the apotheosis of other personages required a divine parentage. This idea was not gotten up until the second Christian century. Justin made Jesus a second G.o.d. But the earlier Fathers did not connect the notion of the vicarious atonement with that of original sin and total depravity. Basilides maintained that penal suffering or suffering for purposes of justice of necessity implies personal criminality in the sufferer, and therefore cannot be endured by an innocent person as a subst.i.tute.

Prof. Robertson Smith, LL.D., in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in his learned article on "Sacrifice," says part: "Where we find a practice of sacrificing honorific gifts to the G.o.ds, we usually find also certain other sacrifices which resemble those already characterized, to be consumed in sacred ceremony, but differ from them, inasmuch as the sacrifice-usually a living victim-is not regarded as a tribute of honor to the G.o.d, but has a special or mystic significance. The most familiar case of this second species of sacrifice is that which the Romans distinguished from the _hostia honoraria_ by the name of _hostia piacularis_. In the former case the deity accepts a gift; in the latter, he demands a life. The former kind of sacrifice is offered by the worshipper on the basis of an established relation of friendly dependence on his divine lord; the latter is directed to appease the divine anger or to conciliate the favor of a deity on whom the worshipper has no right to count" (vol. xxi. p.. 132).

_Piamlar Sacrifices_.-"The idea of subst.i.tution is widespread among all early religions, and is found in honorific as well as piacular rites. In all such cases the idea is that the subst.i.tute shall imitate as closely as is possible or convenient the victim whose place it supplies; and so in piacular ceremonies the G.o.d may indeed accept one life for another, or certain select lives to atone for the guilt of a whole community; but these lives ought to be of the guilty kin, just as in blood-revenge the death of any kinsman of the manslayer satisfies justice. Hence such rites as the Semitic sacrifices of children by their fathers [Moloch], the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and similar cases among the Greeks, inasmuch as something is given up by the worshippers [pg 400]nor the offering up of boys to the G.o.ddess Mania at Rome....

"In advanced societies the tendency is to modify the horrors of the ritual, either by accepting an effusion of blood without actually slaying the victim-e. g. in the flagellation of the Spartan lads-or by a further extension of the doctrine of subst.i.tution: the Romans, for example, subst.i.tuted puppets for the human sacrifices to Mania, and cast rush dolls into the Tiber, at the yearly atoning sacrifice on the Sublician Bridge. More usually, however, the life of an animal is accepted by the G.o.d in place of a human life.... Among the Egyptians the victim was marked with a seal bearing the image of a man bound and kneeling with a sword at his throat. And often we find a ceremonial laying of the sin to be expiated on the head of the victim (Herod, ii.

39; Lev. 4: 4, compared with 14: 21).

"In such piacular rites the G.o.d demands only the life of the victim, which is sometimes indicated by a special ritual with the blood (as among the Hebrews the blood of the sin-offering was applied to the horns of the altar or to the mercy-seat within the veil), and there is no sacrificial meal. Thus, among the Greeks the carcase of the victim was buried or cast into the sea [comp, with most important Hebrew sin-offerings and sacrifice of children to Moloch-outside the camp or city].

"When the flesh of the sacrifice is consumed by the priests, as with certain Roman piacula and Hebrew sin-offerings, the sacrificial flesh is seemingly a gift accepted by the deity and a.s.signed by him to the priests, so that the distinction between a honorific and a piacular sacrifice is partly obliterated. But this is not hard to understand; for just as a blood-rite takes the place of blood-revenge in human justice, so an offence against the G.o.ds may in certain cases be redeemed by a fine (e. g. Herod, ii. 65) or a sacrificial gift. This seems to have been the origin of the Hebrew _trespa.s.s-offering_ (p. 136).

"The most curious developments of piacular sacrifice take place in the worship of deities of the totem type. Here the natural subst.i.tute for the death of a criminal of the tribe is an animal of the kind with which the worshippers and their G.o.d alike count kindred-an animal, that is, which must not be offered in a sacrificial feast, and which indeed it is impious to kill. Thus, Hecate was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her piacular sacrifices. And in like manner in Egypt the piacular sacrifice of the cow-G.o.ddess Isis-Hathor was a bull, and the sacrifice was accompanied by lamentations as at the funeral of a kinsman."

Under the head of _Mystical or Sacramental Sacrifices_-i. e. sacrifices at initiations and in the _Mysteries_: "According to Julian, the mystical sacrifices of the cities of the Roman empire were... offered once or twice a year, and consisted of such victims as the dog of Hecate, which might not ordinarily be eaten or used to furnish forth the tables of the G.o.ds.... The mystic sacrifices seem always to have had an atoning efficacy; their special feature is that the victim is not simply slain and burned or cast away, but that the worshippers partake of the body and blood of the sacred animal, and that so his life pa.s.ses, as it were, into their lives and knits them to the deity in living communion.

"In the Old Testament the heathen mysteries seem to appear as ceremonies of initiation by which a man was introduced into a new worship.... But originally the initiation must have been introduction into a particular social community.... From this point of view the sacramental rites of mystical sacrifice are a form of blood-covenant.... In all the forms of blood-covenant, whether a sacrifice is offered or the veins of the parties opened and their own blood used, the idea is the same: the bond created is a bond of kindred, because one blood is now in the veins of all who have shared the ceremony."

A learned friend writes me: "I doubt whether a real distinction can be made between _propitiatory and expiatory_ sacrifices. Propitiation is by expiation. The basic idea in all sacrifices of that nature appears to be _subst.i.tution_; that is, something taking the place of the offender....

It seems that the basis of all sacrifice is to be found in a relationship, or _kinship_ (through blood), between the deity-who is only the representative of the tribal head regarded as still living in the spirit-world-and the worshipper.

"I may add that the idea of pollution by wrongdoing-i. e. offending the tribal deity-to be got rid of only by the shedding of blood, is not unknown to so-called savages. This applies especially to offences against chast.i.ty, as with the Malers of Rajmahal, India, and the Dyaks of Borneo. The pig is the animal usually sacrificed-probably because it is the most valuable animal food. The Padam Abors of a.s.sam look upon all crimes as public pollutions which require to be washed away by a public sacrifice. Here we have the idea of cleansing by the application of blood, and this appears to be the idea also with the Malers, and probably among the aboriginal hill-tribes of India generally."

Mommsen, the Roman historian, says: "At the very core of the Latin religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the G.o.ds, and to view the former as a crime against the G.o.ds, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows, just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. The fearful idea of subst.i.tution also meets us here: when the G.o.ds of the community were angry, and n.o.body could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (_devovere se_)."

But it was left for Anselm of Canterbury, late in the eleventh century, to first formulate the doctrine of vicarious atonement. Before this there seemed to be among the theologians the idea that in some way Christ came to restore, at least in part, all that was lost in Adam.

During the first four centuries of the Christian era there seems to have been no fixed opinion as to whether there was a ransom-price paid to G.o.d or the devil. Under the article "Devil " in the Encyclopdia Britannica it is said:

"He [the devil] was, according to Cyprian (_De Unitate Ecd_.), the author of all heresies and delusions: he held man by reason of his sin in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of Christ's blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment or satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man's salvation is found both in Irenaeus (Adv. Hcer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen, and may be said to have held its sway in the Church for a thousand years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon."

It would be tedious to note the various views that have prevailed among theologians to the present day. Some hold that the offering was made to G.o.d to satisfy divine justice; others hold that it was a commercial transaction-so much blood for so many souls; and still others regard the whole as a governmental display to impress the world with a sense of the hatefulness of sin. Calvinists seem to think that the atonement was only made for the elect, but that the blood of Christ had sufficient merit to save the whole world. Roman Catholics hold that it is the literal, material blood of Christ that saves the sinner, and hence their extreme belief in the dogma of _transubstantiation_, the real body and blood of Jesus being offered in the sacrifice of the Ma.s.s, and taken by the penitent in the Holy Communion. Protestants generally hold to a sort of consubstantiation-a sort of real presence in the sacrament; while persons of intelligence profess to believe that this whole theory of blood-salvation is only to be accepted in a figurative sense. The fact is, that the whole scheme of vicarious atonement is an ancient superst.i.tion, though taught in the New Testament, and is absurd and unphilosophical, and false in principle and in practice, as we shall hereafter show.

We leave altogether out of view the logical conclusion that if the blood shed by Jesus was the blood of a man, it could have had no more efficacy than the blood of any other human being, and that if the blood shed was the blood of a G.o.d, the very mention of the thought is absurd and blasphemous in the extreme. It is nonsense to say that it was the union of the divine with the human nature that gave the blood of Christ its peculiar efficacy-that the altar sanctifies the gift for if the blood was changed by the man being united with the G.o.d, it was not human blood, but the blood of a divine man.

Now, there is no evidence that the blood of Jesus (supposing that he was crucified) differed in its essential qualities from other human blood.

If a.n.a.lyzed by the chemist, it would have been found to contain only the const.i.tuent particles which belong to human blood. The white and red corpuscles and other chemical properties would have been found in it.

_The dogma of blood-salvation as held by Romanists is cannibalism, pure and simple, and as held by Protestants it is sheer superst.i.tion, without one grain of reason to support it._ It has no a.n.a.logy in nature, nor in the philosophy of legal jurisprudence as held and practised by the most enlightened nations of the world.

It seems to us that the doctrine of vicarious atonement is not only immoral, but demoralizing. It represents G.o.d as punishing the innocent for the guilty to make it possible to forgive the guilty. This is inconsistent with the eternal principles of justice and rightfulness. It must have a demoralizing influence upon the mind and conscience of the sinner, to be told that his sins are already atoned for, and he only need to be cleansed by the blood of Christ; and this is to be obtained by simple faith and trust! Believe that Jesus shed his blood for you, and that he is waiting and anxious to apply it in washing away your guilt, and it is done! Then as often as you sin afterward you need only go through the same process to secure pardon! The easiness with which sins may be blotted out and washed away must have a demoralizing influence upon uneducated minds, though truly intelligent persons may not reason in this way. The low state of morals among those who really believe in this device for the forgiveness of sins may thus be accounted for. The numerous defalcations and downright thefts among the higher cla.s.ses of Christians, and the petty lying and stealing among the great ma.s.s of Catholics and Protestants, are notorious, and can be traced, we think, to the easy methods of getting rid of the consequencees of wrong-doing. Our prison-statistics are truly suggestive, and should be carefully studied. Freethinkers are far in advance of Christians in the matter of practical morality. Many of those whom the courts exclude as witnesses, because they do not accept certain religious dogmas, are pre-eminently truthful, and would sooner die than tell a falsehood. They do not rely upon the blood of Jesus to wash away the vilest sins and make them white as snow.

Our statesmen are beginning to find out that our system of _pardon_ is most pernicious. To relieve from the consequences of wrong-doing through a divine contrivance of the vicarious sufferings of an innocent person, and that human disobedience is made all right as to consequences by this obedience of a divine-human person, does not commend itself to the intelligence of this nineteenth century. The answer of theologians to this charge is familiar and specious enough, but it is not practically accepted by the common people. When a child enters the Sunday-school room, and his eyes rest upon the conspicuous placard, "_Jesus Paid it All_" the natural inference is there is nothing more to pay, nothing to do but to accept the free gift.

Thousands of ignorant persons, Catholics and Protestants, no doubt secretly accept and rely upon this easy device to cover up their numerous shortcomings and misdoings. This doctrine is a welcome one in the murderer's cell and upon the platform of the gallows. In thousands of uncultivated minds the thought is no doubt deeply hidden that about the surest way to get to heaven is to commit a murder and have the "benefit of clergy," and in due time to be "jerked to Jesus" (as described by a Western journal) by the hangman's rope. Why should it not be so? The vicarious atonement has been made, and is being made in the Ma.s.s, and they have only to accept it. Two priests or ministers actually opposed the postponement of the execution of a certain murderer on the ground that he then believed in Jesus, but that if execution was postponed they did not know that he would continue to "believe," and that his soul might thus be lost!

Suppose that our State authorities should proclaim in advance free pardon and a princely palace to all lawbreakers on the simple condition of trusting in the mediatorial interposition and subst.i.tution of another, _already made and accepted_; what would be the effect on public morals? The system of redemption and pardon set forth in the New Testament is infinitely more than this, and must be demoralizing. All public officers know the evil effects of the pardon system, and how even the faintest hope of pardon encourages crime, and how certainly a free pardon is almost sure to be followed by a life of increased criminality.

There should be no such thing as pardon in our State jurisprudence-no "board of pardons" and no "exercise of the executive clemency." If a convict is believed to have been wrongly imprisoned, or by after-discovered evidence is found to be innocent, let no "pardon board"

or "executive" interfere, but let the case go back to the court that convicted him or to one of like jurisdiction, and let the case be judicially reviewed in the light of evidence; and if the accused is found innocent, let him be honorably acquitted, or if guilty remanded to prison.

There is nothing in reason, philosophy, or science that approves the theologie method of dealing with offenders. It violates every principle of justice, and has not one single quality of rightfulness in it. It is a fiction pure and simple, in form and in fact. Macaulay well said of this redemptive scheme, "It resembles nothing so much as a forged bond, with a forged release endorsed upon its back." Gregg pungently put it thus: "It looks very much like an impossible debt paid in inconceivable coin; or a legal fiction purely gratuitous got rid of by what looks like a legal chicanery purely fanciful. It gives unworthy conceptions of G.o.d as one delighting in the blood of human beings, and even suggests the disgusting practices of cannibalism. It is a relic of the ancient barbaric fetichism borrowed from savages by sacerdotalists for purposes of priestcraft, and should be scouted by all honest and intelligent men."

The severely orthodox Rev. Professor Shedd, as well as Dr. Priestley, admits that there was no scientific construction of the doctrine of the atonement in the writings of the apostolic Fathers (_Hist, of Doc._, vol. ii., p. 208). The doctrine was evidently manufactured when the Romish Church was evolved out of the innumerable sects of early Christendom, and was enforced by wholesale excommunication of dissenters and the death penalty. Christianity was planted in Germany, Prussia, and Sweden by military power. The Saxons were "converted" by Charlemagne.

All the secret religions have a G.o.d or demi-G.o.d put to death. Even the Freemasons have Hiram Abiff. The death of Osiris was the central point in the Egyptian system. He was killed by Seth or Typhon, and returned to life as Rat-Amenti, the judge. In Egypt, Christianity moulded its doctrines of the Trinity, atonement, and "mother of G.o.d." The Osirian theology was grafted on the Christian stock, if indeed the Christian system was not an evolution of Osirianism; and of this the monstrous concoction known as _vicarious atonement_ was made, and thrust down men's throats by threats of h.e.l.l and the visits of the executioner.

We might extend our remarks upon this subject indefinitely, but we have not s.p.a.ce. We have seen that _blood-salvation_ did not originate with either Jews or Christians. Dr. Trumbull has proved this over and over again, and Kurtz, an orthodox writer, has admitted this fact. He says: "A comparison of the religious symbols of the Old Testament with those of ancient heathendom shows that the ground and the starting-point of those forms of religion which found their appropriate expressions in symbols was the same in all cases; while the history of civilization proves that on this point priority cannot be claimed by the Israelites.

But when inst.i.tuting such an inquiry we shall also find that the symbols which were transferred from the religions of nature to that of the spirit first pa.s.sed through the fire of divine purification, from which they issued as the distinctive theology of the Jews, the dross of a pantheistic deification of nature having been consumed." All this is very frank, but we should not overlook the fact, so clearly established, that this doctrine of cleansing blood, so constantly taught in the New Testament and proclaimed from every orthodox pulpit in the land, was not a _divine revelation_ specially made to Jews or Christians, but has been adopted and modified from the religions of nature, celebrated in all parts of the world by the most barbarous peoples in the remotest periods of time. Indeed, the more gross and savage the people, the more disgusting has been this doctrine of _blood-salvation_.

Dr. Trumbull could only think of two possible ways of explaining these marvellous things: "How it came to pa.s.s that men everywhere were so generally agreed on the main symbols of their religious yearnings, and their religious hopes in this realm of their aspirations, is a question which obviously admits of two possible answers. A common revelation from G.o.d may have been given to primitive man, and all these varying yet related indications of religious strivings and aim may be but the perverted remains of the lessons of that misused or slighted revelation.

On the other hand, G.o.d may originally have implanted the germs of a common religious thought in the mind of man, and then have adapted his successive revelations to the outworking of those germs. Whichever view of the probable origin of these common symbolisms, all the world over, be adopted by any Christian student, the importance of the symbolisms themselves, in their relation to the truths of revelation, is manifestly the same."... "Because the primitive rite of blood-covenanting was well known in the lands of the Bible at the time of the writing of the Bible, for that very reason we are not to look to the Bible for a specific explanation of the rite itself, even where there are incidental references in the Bible to the rite and its observances; but, on the other hand, we are to find an explanation of the biblical ill.u.s.trations of the primitive rite in the understanding of that rite which we gain from outside sources."

These a.s.sumptions are very flimsy stuff upon which to found the most prominent and mysterious doctrine of the orthodox Christian religion, making it the Alpha and Omega of the whole "_scheme of redemption_" To witness the mummeries of Roman Catholic priests and the manipulations of Protestant ministers in the celebration of the "Eucharistic Feast" or "Holy Communion" is enough to lead a truly intelligent man to wonder why these celebrants do not laugh each other in the face. Even our Universalist and Unitarian ministers sometimes indulge in this heathen diversion, though some of them deeply feel the absurdity of the rite, and the consequent humiliation to which they are subjected.

Nevertheless, some of our most profound statesmen, when about to die, call in a priest, Catholic or Protestant, to administer the heathen ordinance. When will the world open its blind eyes, and learn that all that G.o.d requires of men is to "walk humbly, love mercy, and deal justly"?

There is no difficulty in accepting the words of a G.o.d who is said to have uttered the burning reproof to ritualists and hypocrites as follows: "To what purpose is the mult.i.tude of your sacrifices? I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of a.s.semblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. And when you spread your hands I will hide mine eyes from you, yea, you make many prayers I will not hear, your hands are full of blood. Wash ye, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widows."

This doctrine of _bloodsalvation_ is, in our judgment, most unphilosophical and even absurd. It originated, as we have shown, in the most gross and anthropomorphic conceptions of G.o.d, and its solemn celebration in orthodox churches is inseparable from the most ignorant and superst.i.tious rites of the most savage peoples. Its tendency must be demoralizing.

CHAPTER XVI. THINGS THAT REMAIN

_"That those things which cannot be shaken may remain."-Heb. 12: 27._

IN the preceding chapters we have shown that in our judgment the time has fully come for the fearless proclamation of the whole truth, regardless of temporary consequences.

We think that we have also shown that for many important reasons we cannot expect the whole truth from the professional clergy.

We have shown that the Jews are not the very ancient and numerous people that they have been supposed to have been, and that many of their claims are purely fabulous; and that this is specially true of their Pentateuch, which Moses, supposing such a man to have lived, could not have written.

We have shown how extensively symbolism anciently prevailed in sacred writings, how modern sacerdotalists have accepted as literal history and matters of fact what was at first a romance or an allegory intended to ill.u.s.trate certain principles, and how the introduction of astral keys can only explain many of the Old-Testament stories, which, taken literally, are extremely absurd and foolish.

We think we have shown that the "fall" of the mythical Adam and Eve is an allegory, and not an historical fact, and that it is extremely unfortunate that the whole system of dogmatic theology is made to depend upon a mythus.

We have gone in search of the "second Adam," and have not found him, except in the New Testament, and we have shown how utterly incomplete and unsatisfactory that account is, not rising in any degree to the character of evidence.