SACRIFICE, one of the most important elements of divine worship, common to all nations of antiquity, and therefore traced by some to a primeval revelation. The powers of nature, palpable in their effects for good and evil, could not but inspire man, even in his rudest stage, with gratitude or fear toward the unseen being or beings by whom he conceived them to be actuated. The next and most natural step was the outward mani festation of these feelings by a token which bespoke either thankfulness or the wish of concill2tion on the part of the donor. The supreme numina being conceived merely as superior men with exaggerated human wants, the means taken to gratify them were adapted to this conception. The best and first fruits of the soil, the finest and most immaculate animals of the flock, were offered to the gods, that they might either par take of them bodily or at least enjoy the sweet smell arising from the altar on which they were burned in their honor; and the deity was supposed emphatically to express its readiness to accept the offering by sending down the fire that was to consume the animal prepared. The more the divine favor was sought for some special purpose, the costlier and more precious became the gift; and nothing short of the most startling proofs of self-abnegation seemed, at times, to satisfy the devotion of man in his uncul tivated state. From the simple and child-like notion of establishing a certain kindly and nermanent relation between the invisible powers and man, by the yielding up on the part of the latter a certain more or less precious portion of what the former had given him, there grew up such horrible monstrosities that, in honor of humanity, we should feel inclined to doubt them were they not so well attested, and did they not, to a certain extent, still prevail in our own clays. Method and system took in hand that undeveloped child-like instinct which touchingly offered the deity a flower, a blooming bough, a golden fruit, and degraded it into mysticism and superstition, ending at last in the theory that the divine revenge was to be gratified, the divine vanity flattered, and the deity made as generally pleased as could be by holocausts of human beings, friends or foes—nay, the dearer the being to the offerer the more the self-abnegation must become patent, and the more the god must smile upon the donor. The Moloch worship
—the mother placing her babe in the arms of the monstrous idol, and seeing it slowly lr:rned before her own eyes—seems well nigh to exhaust all the horrors of human ingenuity.
Turning first of all to those most ancient and hallowed records of humanity con tained in the Old Testament, we find the custom of sacrifice almost on its first pages, and spoken of as a rite already established. Sacrifice is the cause of the first murder on record. Abraham is prevented by a voice from heaven from carrying out the slaughter of Isaac, into which he had been " tempted" by Jehovah; all the patriarchs, in fact, sacrifice, either independently or in ratification of a covenant; and the exodus itself was brought to pass under the pretense of the people having to offer up their wonted sacrifice in the desert.
According to the highest ancient authorities, both -Jewish and Christian—of whom we will only mention Maimonides and Ephraem Syrus—the Mosaic sacrifices were neither more nor less than a kind of divine concession to the sensual nature of an uncultivated people, full of Egyptian reminiscences on the one hand, and surrounded by Canaanitisli modes of worship on the other. It was, as Ephraem Syrtis says, only at a very late period that Moses, by the command of God, in whose eyes the rites of priests and sacrifices have but little value, prescribed these observances to his people. on account of their weakness and hardness of heart—lest they might despise a "naked" religion, and attach themselves to false gods, whose magnificent and dazzling cultus surrounded them on all sides. In corroboration of this view, the prophets are appealed to, who never cease to inveigh against sacrifice as such, when, according to their view-, the people were educated enough to do without this symbol and to worship God in truth and in spirit. (Compare Jeremiah vii. 22; I. Samuel xv. 22; Psalms 1. 8-10; 11. 18, 19; Isaiah i. 11, etc.) But the institution being deemed necessary for the time, legislation had to circumscribe it rigorously, so as to make it as little hurtful as possible. Cere monies contrary to morals and decency, such as were practiced in the temples of Canaan, the abominations of phallic rites, the sacrifices of virginity, and, finally, the offering up of human beings, were punished with instant death by the Mosaic law.