As the gift was valued at what it cost the giver, and was supposed to be efficacious in this same ratio, self-denial soon passed into self-torture, prolonged fasts, scourging and lacerations, thus becoming legitimate exhibitions of religious fervor. As mental pain is as keen as bodily pain, the suffering of Jephthah was quite as severe as that of the Flagellants, and was expected to find favor in the eyes of the gods.
A significant corrollary from such a theory follows: that which is the efficacious part of the sacrifice is the suffering; given a certain degree of this, the desired effect will follow. As to what or who suffers, or in what manner he or it suffers, these are secondary considerations, even unimportant ones, so far as the end to be obtained is concerned. This is the germ of vicarious sacrifice, a plan frequently observed in even immature religions. What seems the diabolical cruelty of some superstitious rites, those of the Carthaginians and Celts, for example, is thoroughly consistent with the abstract theory of sacrifice, and did not spring from capricious malice. The Death of Christ, regarded as a general vicarious atonement, has had its efficiency explained directly by the theory that the pain he suffered partook of the infinity of his divine nature; as thus it was excruciating beyond measure, so it was infinitely effectual toward appeasing divinity.
It is well known that this doctrine was no innovation on the religious sentiment of the age when it was preached by the Greek fathers. For centuries the Egyptian priests had taught the incarnation and sufferings of Osiris, and his death for the salvation of his people. Similar myths were common throughout the Orient, all drawn from the reasoning I have mentioned.[222-1]
They have been variously criticized. Apart from the equivocal traits this theory of atonement attributes to the supernatural powers—a feature counterbalanced, in modern religion, by subduing its harshest features—it is rooted essentially in the material view of religion. The religious value of an act is to be appraised by the extent to which it follows recognition of duty. To acknowledge an error is unpleasant; to renounce it still more so, for it breaks a habit; to see our own errors in their magnitude, sullying our whole nature and reaching far ahead to generations yet unborn, is consummately bitter, and in proportion as it is bitter, will keep us from erring.[223-1] This is the “sacrifice of a contrite heart,” which alone is not despicable; and this no one can do for us. We may be sure that neither the physical pain of victims burning in a slow fire, nor the mental pain of yielding up whatever we hold dearest upon earth, will make our views of duty a particle clearer or our notion of divinity a jot nobler; and whatever does neither of these is not of true religion.
The theory of sacrifice is intimately related with the idea of sin. In the quotation I have made from Father Brebeuf we see that the Hurons recognized a distinct form of rite as appropriate to appease a god when angered. It is a matter of national temperament which of these forms takes the lead. Joutel tells of a tribe in Texas who paid attention only to the gods who worked them harm, saying that the good gods were good anyhow. By parity of reasoning, one sect of Mohammedans worship the devil only. It is well to make friends with your enemy, and then he will not hurt you; and if a man is shielded from his enemies, he is safe enough.
But where, as in most Semitic, Celtic and various other religions, the chief gods frowned or smiled as they were propitiated or neglected, and when a certain amount of pain was the propitiation they demanded, the necessity of rendering this threw a dark shadow on life. What is the condition of man, that only through sorrow he can reach joy? He must be under a curse.
Physical and mental processes aided by analogy this gloomy deduction. It is only through pain that we are stimulated to the pursuit of pleasure, and the latter is a phantom we never catch. The laws of correct reasoning are those which alone should guide us; but the natural laws of the association of ideas do not at all correspond with the one association which reason accepts. Truth is what we are born for, error is what is given us.
Instead of viewing this state of things as one inseparable to the relative as another than the universal, and, instead of seeing the means of correcting it in the mental element of attention, continuance or volition, guided by experience and the growing clearness of the purposes of the laws of thought, the problem was given up as hopeless, and man was placed under a ban from which a god alone could set him free; he was sunk in original sin, chained to death.
To reach this result it is evident that a considerable effort at reasoning, a peculiar view of the nature of the gods, and a temperament not the most common, must be combined. Hence it was adopted as a religious dogma by but a few nations. The Chinese know nothing of the “sense of sin,” nor did the Greeks and Romans. The Parsees do not acknowledge it, nor do the American tribes. “To sin,” in their languages, does not mean to offend the deity, but to make a mistake, to miss the mark, to loose one’s way as in a wood, and the missionaries have exceeding difficulty in making them understand the theological signification of the word.
The second class of rites are memorial in character. As the former were addressed to the gods, so these are chiefly for the benefit of the people. They are didactic, to preserve the myth, or institutionary, to keep alive the discipline and forms of the church.