In Grecian mythology there was a very distinct recognition of the power of conscience, and a reference of its authority to the Divinity, together with the idea of retribution. Nemesis was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraidings of conscience, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in the human heart after the commission of sin. And as the feeling of remorse may be considered as the consequence of the displeasure and vengeance of an offended God, Nemesis came to be regarded as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable woe and ruin. The Erinyes or Eumenides are the deities whose business it is to punish, in hades, the crimes committed upon earth. When an aggravated crime has excited their displeasure they manifest their greatest power in the disquietude of conscience.
Along with this deep consciousness of guilt, and this fear of retribution which haunts the guilty mind, there has also rested upon the heart of universal humanity a deep and abiding conviction that something must be done to expiate the guilt of sin--some restitution must be made, some suffering must be endured, [135] some sacrifice offered to atone for past misdeeds. Hence it is that men in all ages have had recourse to penances and prayers, to self-inflicted tortures and costly sacrifices to appease a righteous anger which their sins had excited, and avert an impending punishment. That sacrifice to atone for sin has prevailed universally--that it has been practised "sem-per, ubique, et ab omnibus," always, in all places, and by all men--will not be denied by the candid and competent inquirer. The evidence which has been collected from ancient history by Grotius and Magee, and the additional evidence from contemporaneous history, which is being now furnished by the researches of ethnologists and Christian missionaries, is conclusive. No intelligent man can doubt the fact. Sacrificial offerings have prevailed in every nation and in every age. "Almost the entire worship of the pagan nations consisted in rites of deprecation. Fear of the Divine displeasure seems to have been the leading feature of their religious impressions; and in the diversity, the costliness, the cruelty of their sacrifices they sought to appease gods to whose wrath they felt themselves exposed, from a consciousness of sin, unrelieved by any information as to the means of escaping its effects." [136]
[Footnote 135: ][ (return) ] Punishment is the penalty due to sin; or, to use the favorite expression of Homer, not unusual in the Scriptures also, it is the payment of a debt incurred by sin. When he is punished, the criminal is said to pay off or pay back (άποτίνειν) his crimes; in other words, to expiate or atone for them (Iliad, iv. 161,162),
σύν τε µεγάλω ἀπέτισαν
σίν σφῇσιν κεφαλῇσι γυναιξί τε καὶ τεκέεσσιν,
that is, they shall pay off, pay back, atone, etc., for their treachery with a great price, with their lives, and their wives and children.--Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," p. 194.
[Footnote 136: ][ (return) ] Magee, "On the Atonement," No. V. p. 30.
It must be known to every one at all acquainted with Greek mythology that the idea of expiation--atonement--was a fundamental idea of their religion. Independent of any historical research, a very slight glance at the Greek and Roman classics, especially the poets, who were the theologians of that age, can leave little doubt upon this head. [137] Their language everywhere announces the notion of propitiation, and, particularly the Latin, furnishes the terms which are still employed in theology. We need only mention the words ἱλασµός, ἱλάσκοµαι, λύτρον, περίψηµα, as examples from the Greek, and placare, propitiare, expiare, piaculum, from the Latin. All these indicate that the notion of expiation was interwoven into the very modes of thought and framework of the language of the ancient Greeks.
[Footnote 137: ][ (return) ] In Homer the doctrine is expressly taught that the gods may, and sometimes do, remit the penalty, when duly propitiated by prayers and sacrifices accompanied by suitable reparations ("Iliad," ix. 497 sqq.). "We have a practical illustration of this doctrine in the first book of the Iliad, where Apollo averts the pestilence from the army, when the daughter of his priest is returned without ransom, and a sacrifice (ἑλατόµßη) is sent to the altar of the god at sacred Chrysa.... Apollo hearkens to the intercession of his priest, accepts the sacred hecatomb, is delighted with the accompanying songs and libations, and sends back the embassy with a favoring breeze, and a favorable answer to the army, who meanwhile had been purifying (ἀπελυµαίνοντο) themselves, and offering unblemished hecatombs of bulls and goats on the shore of the sea which washes the place of their encampment."
"The object of the propitiatory embassy to Apollo is thus stated by Ulysses: Agamemnon, king of men, has sent me to bring back thy daughter Chryses, and to offer a sacred hecatomb for (ὑπέρ) the Greeks, that we may propitiate (ιλασόµεσθα) the king, who now sends woes and many groans upon the Argives" (442 sqq.).--Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," pp. 196, 197.
We do not deem it needful to discuss at length the question which has been so earnestly debated among theologians, as to whether the idea of expiation be a primitive and necessary idea of the human mind, or whether the practice of piacular sacrifices came into the post-diluvian world with Noah, as a positive institution of a primitive religion then first directly instituted by God. On either hypothesis the practice of expiatory rites derives its authority from God; in the latter case, by an outward and verbal revelation, in the former by an inward and intuitive revelation.
This much, however, must be conceded on all hands, that there are certain fundamental intuitions, universal and necessary, which underlie the almost universal practice of expiatory sacrifice, namely, the universal consciousness of guilt, and the universal conviction that something must be done to expiate guilt, to compensate for wrong, and to atone for past misdeeds. But how that expiation can be effected, how that atonement can be made, is a question which reason does not seem competent to answer. That personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own sins are not transferable either in their guilt or punishment, is so obviously just that we feel it must have been as clear to the mind of the Greek who brought his victim to be offered to Zeus, as it is to the philosophic mind of to-day. [138] The knowledge that the Divine displeasure can be averted by sacrifice is not, by Plato, grounded upon any intuition of reason, as is the existence of God, the idea of the true, the just, and good, but on "tradition," [139] and the "interpretations" of Apollo. "To the Delphian Apollo there remains the greatest, noblest, and most important of legal institutions--the erection of temples, sacrifices, and other services to the gods,... and what other services should be gone through with a view to their propitiation. Such things as these, indeed, we neither know ourselves, nor in founding the State would we intrust them to others, if we be wise;... the god of the country is the natural interpreter to all men about such matters." [140]
[Footnote 138: ][ (return) ] "He that hath done the deed, to suffer for it--thus cries a proverb thrice hallowed by age."--Æschylus, "Choëph," 311.
[Footnote 139: ][ (return) ] "Laws," book vi. ch. xv.