SACRAMENTS. Robertson Smith (R.S.) contends that the sacramental meal stands out as the very essence of the ritual of Semitic sacrifice. In course of time the primitive crudity of the ceremonial was modified, but originally in the shedding of the blood of a victim upon the altar and the eating of the flesh by worshippers there were two significant features : " the conveyance of the living blood to the godhead, and the absorption of the living flesh and blood into the flesh and blood of the worshippers." The fundamental idea of sacrifice throughout the Semitic field " is not that of a sacred tribute, but of communion between the god and his wor shippers." In the field of Egyptian religion, Dr. A. M. Blackman has shown how great a part is played by rites of a sacramental character. In the religion of the Greeks, Dr. L. R. Farnell Religion) points out that " in the earlier period at least, and frequently also in the later, the offering of the animal at the altar was felt to be something more than a bribe to the deity. The holy spirit of the altar passed into the animal that was consecrated and brought into contact with it; and those who afterwards partook of it might be conscious of eating holy flesh and thus enjoying temporary communion with the spirit of the divinity." He thinks that in other details of the Homeric sacrifice and in ritual records of the later period we can discover clear traces of sacra mental communion. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, again, the means of grace seem to have included " a form of sacrament, the drinking of the sacred cup into which the personality of the goddess might be infused by transub stantiation." In the mysteries of the Orphic brother hoods the means of grace " were a ritual of purification more elaborate than the Eleusinia and fixed as a per petual rule of life, and at times a mystic sacrament, in which the initiated drank the blood or devoured the body of his god. The form was savage, but the act was
pregnant of religious consequences." The term sacra ments is applied by Tertuilian (c. 200 A.D.) to the Mithraic ceremonies of initiation, " which comprised baptism, purification by honey, the use of consecrated water, bread and wine; they were regulated by the priests called fathers ' of whom the father of fathers ' was the chief " (S. Reinach, 0.). In the Christian Church there was for centuries great vagueness as to the number of sacraments owing to the fact that the word sacranicntum was used in the Old Latin and Vulgate versions as the equivalent of the Greek must4rion. Pro testants now recognize only two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's 'Supper. The Roman Catholics recognize seven : Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. " The Protestant view is grounded on the fact that baptism and the Supper are the only two ritual observances which spring directly out of the historical •revelation of Jesus Christ as given in the New Testament, which rest clearly upon His personal appointment, and are bound up with His own word " (Prot. Diet.). It should be added that in the light of more recent researches, Robertson Smith's theory of sacrifice requires to be modified. The sacri ficial meal came in course of time to be interpreted in the way in which he has interpreted it, but its original signifi cance does not seem to have been such as he imagined (see Emile Durkheim).