(3) See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.
Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite abundantly that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated the same and (as the other cults did) gave it a special color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would have been far better and more generally known, had not the Christian Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on the subject. There is much to show that the early Church took this line with regard to pre-Christian saviours; (1) and in later times the same policy is remarkably illustrated by the treatment in the sixteenth century of the writings of Sahagun the Spanish missionary—to whose work I have already referred. Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and fine man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities of the Aztec religion, was truthful enough to point out redeeming traits in the manners and customs of the people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the newly formed Mexican Church. They purloined the manuscripts of Sahagun’s Historia and scattered and hid them about the country, and it was only after infinite labor and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them together again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated them into Spanish (from the original Mexican) he sent them in two big volumes home to Spain for safety; but there almost immediately THEY DISAPPEARED, and could not be found! It was only after TWO CENTURIES that they ultimately turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in Navarre. Lord Kingsborough published them in England in 1830.
(1) See Tertullian’s Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.
I have thus dwelt upon several of the main doctrines of Christianity—namely, those of Sin and Sacrifice, the Eucharist, the Saviour, the Second Birth, and Transfiguration—as showing that they are by no means unique in our religion, but were common to nearly all the religions of the ancient world. The list might be much further extended, but there is no need to delay over a subject which is now very generally understood. I will, however, devote a page or two to one instance, which I think is very remarkable, and full of deep suggestion.
There is no doctrine in Christianity which is more reverenced by the adherents of that religion, or held in higher estimation, than that God sacrificed his only Son for the salvation of the world; also that since the Son was not only of like nature but of the SAME nature with the Father, and equal to him as being the second Person of the Divine Trinity, the sacrifice amounted to an immolation of Himself for the good of mankind. The doctrine is so mystical, so remote, and in a sense so absurd and impossible, that it has been a favorite mark through the centuries for the ridicule of the scoffers and enemies of the Church; and here, it might easily be thought, is a belief which—whether it be considered glorious or whether contemptible—is at any rate unique, and peculiar to that Church.
And yet the extraordinary fact is that a similar belief ranges all through the ancient religions, and can be traced back to the earliest times. The word host which is used in the Catholic Mass for the bread and wine on the Altar, supposed to be the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ, is from the Latin Hostia which the dictionary interprets as “an animal slain in sacrifice, a sin-offering.” It takes us far far back to the Totem stage of folk-life, when the tribe, as I have already explained, crowned a victim-bull or bear or other animal with flowers, and honoring it with every offering of food and worship, sacrificed the victim to the Totem spirit of the tribe, and consumed it in an Eucharistic feast—the medicine-man or priest who conducted the ritual wearing a skin of the same beast as a sign that he represented the Totem-divinity, taking part in the sacrifice of ‘himself to himself.’ It reminds us of the Khonds of Bengal sacrificing their meriahs crowned and decorated as gods and goddesses; of the Aztecs doing the same; of Quetzalcoatl pricking his elbows and fingers so as to draw blood, which he offered on his own altar; or of Odin hanging by his own desire upon a tree. “I know I was hanged upon a tree shaken by the winds for nine long nights. I was transfixed by a spear; I was moved to Odin, myself to myself.” And so on. The instances are endless. “I am the oblation,” says the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, (1) “I am the sacrifice, I the ancestral offering.” “In the truly orthodox conception of sacrifice,” says Elie Reclus, (2) “the consecrated offering, be it man, woman or virgin, lamb or heifer, cock or dove, represents THE DEITY HIMSELF.... Brahma is the ‘imperishable sacrifice’; Indra, Soma, Hari and the other gods, became incarnate in animals to the sole end that they might be immolated. Perusha, the Universal Being, caused himself to be slain by the Immortals, and from his substance were born the birds of the air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of butter and curds. The world, declared the Rishis, is a series of sacrifices disclosing other sacrifices. To stop them would be to suspend the life of Nature. The god Siva, to whom the Tipperahs of Bengal are supposed to have sacrificed as many as a thousand human victims a year, said to the Brahamins: ‘It is I that am the actual offering; it is I that you butcher upon my altars.’”
(1) Ch. ix, v. 16.
(2) Primitive Folk, ch. vi.
It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson, paraphrasing the Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse of his:—
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I take, and pass, and turn again.