THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
the beginning of an enterprise of whatever sort, the thank-offerings for the like when successfully accomplished, the periodical i)recative offerings at seed-time and the thank-offerings of liarvest.
That piacular sacrifice in its earliest phases involved no more than that the deity was temporarily estranged is the conclusion of W R. Smith and most anthropologists. But the seriousness of the estrangement grew in the mind and came to dominate the whole conception of sacrifice.
3. Piacular It became necessary for community Sacrifice, and individual to take note of actual
and putative transgression which required purgation at stated intervals, that the relationship of god and people might be reestablished. While honorific sacrifice continued and the old feast-sacrifice tried to hold its own, the type which expressed atonement came to be regarded as sacrifice proper. The idea of an angry god to be propitiated became regnant in theology, the atoning sacrifice, devoted to tlie deity, became dominant in cult.
The question of human sacrifice is difficult. That it was primeval is improbable, that it was primitive is certain. The cases of foundation sacrifice, of human victims offered to rivers, and particularly the redemption of the first-born are decisive. That after savagery was left behind it was an extreme measure appears from II Kings iii. 27. In times of famine the German tribes offered sacrifices of increasing worth, the last and noblest the life of the chief, if the gods did not take pity.
4. Human Yet that at an earlier period the sac- Sacrifice, rifice of a guilty tribesman was required is proved not only by such
narratives as Josh. vii. 25, but by the primitive law of blood-revenge, a life for a life. Substitution came in time in both spheres, divine and human; but the redemption of the first-born, man and beast, common to many nations, speaks for the absolute surrender of that first-born in the primitive age. Substitution in divine affairs is anthropopathic. An offended clan with a blood-feud would compound for a lesser victim or a money consideration, so would the deity. This was carried so far that among some peoples, as in Mexico, the mimicry of sacrifice of the human was performed upon a puppet of dough, or, as in Egypt, the maiden sacrificed to Father Nile was an image of mud formed on the bank of the river. But this!
'] mimicry is no less decisive of the former fact of , human sacrifice than is the play of the rape of the
' virgin of the earlier marriage by capture.
2. In National and Universal Religions.— a. Dependence on Tribal Religion : It is but asserting the evolution of religion to declare that the verdict of historical investigation is that the great religions developed out of preexisting religion. This is true both of the " personal " religions which owed their origin in each case to a great teacher and of those faiths which can be traced to no single founder. The indebtedness of Zoroaster to the Indo-Persian " Urreligion " is made out; the rise of Brahmanism out of Vedism and the evidences of animistic and fetishistic belief in the hymns of the Rik carry the ancestry of the great religions of In-
dia back to its roots in primitive faith and practise; recent study in the rehgions of Greece and Rome (Hari-ison's Prolegomena and Granger's TT'orship of the Roiiians) is leading to similar animistic paternity in tlie faiths of Homer and Vergil; Moses built on old Semitic foundations and Jesus on Mosaism; Mohammed combined elements from Judaism, Christianity, and the eariier Arabic religion. In the Chinese Book of Rites there is embedded evidence of the old magical regime against the repeated assertion of an original monotheism against which every detail of history cries out. An element of proof in this direction consists of survivals or " superstitions." This last word etymologically explains itself and the argument. It tells of something superstans, " remaining over " (from a former condition of things). And it is tlae discovery by modern investigators of the fact of survivals in religion and of the other fact tliat psychological law is constant in the mass wliich has brought the roots of religion to light. The one example of the " harvest-maiden " may be adduced, a practise still followed in many parts of Europe which leads in direct recession back to the worship of Core or the earth-maiden, and thence to the corn-spirit of each plot of land, and thence into sheer animism (Frazer, Golden Bough).
b. Common Features: The great religions all show two conflicting methods in their psychological operations. One is the enunciation of crystallized dogma, the formulation of regulations which, once expressed, are expected to govern permanently the life of man. This mode of thought defines God, man, the relations of each I. Psycho- to the other and to the universe, and logical, endeavors so to express duty that that expression shall wholly ensphere man's entire life of thought and act. It creates an orthodoxy to repudiate which involves the charge of heterodoxy, not seldom of atheism. The other method notes the freedom of thought, the elusiveness of the idea of the supernatural, the indefinableness of the spiritual, and claims the right of the individual soul to achieve in its own way right relationship with God, man, and the universe. These two roads to right relationship, the dogmatic and the mystic, opposed in the main though they are, show often a curious effort to come together. The dogmatician loses himself in metaphysical vagueness, while the mystic, turning aside to lonely contemplation, finds himself at the head of a community and formulates rules of guidance for his followers.
A second psychological tendency is that which envelops as with a halo the founder of the religion, if a founder there be, and conceives him as in a special sense divine. Even Mohammed, who disclaimed miracle, was by his own generation reported to have performed miraculous deeds. The habit of forming legend concerning a religious leader is the operation in the religious sphere of that which works in all spheres. jEsculapius became a god, Lycurgus was thought impeccable, Frederick the Great and Washington might have been as religiously sinless as they are politically, had their activities been in the religious sphere.