GOD THE SACRIFICE.
It is Sunday to-day in the little Italian town, and they have been holding a procession. I do not know quite what was the reason of the procession; it is the feast day of the patron of the Church, and it is connected in some way with him, but quite how no one could tell me. It was the custom, and that sufficed. It was not a very grand procession, for the town is small, but there was the town band playing at the head, and there were girls in twos singing and priests, also in pairs, singing, and there were banners and a crucifix. This last was just like any other crucifix you may see; there was the pale body of Christ upon the cross, with His wounds red with blood, there was the tinsel crown over the head, there was upon the face the look of suffering. It was like any other crucifix in a Catholic country, not a work of art at all. It was gruesome, and to the unbeliever repulsive and unpleasant. But all the people uncovered as it passed, and many looked to it with reverence and worship.
But indeed Catholic countries are full of such crucifixes. They are upon the hills, they are beside the roadsides, they are in all the churches, they are in every Catholic household, there is very often one worn upon the person.
Throughout Italy, throughout all Catholic countries, there are only two representations of Christ—as a babe with the Virgin Mary and crucified upon the cross. It was in Italy that Western Christianity arose and grew, it was in Italy that it became a living power, it was in Italy that it acquired consistency, that it was bound together by dogmas and crystallised in creeds. And still, after nineteen hundred years, it is Italy that remains the centre of the Christian world. There is no Christian church so great, so venerable, so imposing as the Church of Rome. It lasts unchanged amid the cataclasms of worlds. And this people whose genius made Christianity, whose genius still rules the greater part of it, what are their conceptions of Christ? What part of His life is it that has caught their reverence and adoration, what side is it of His character that appeals to them, what is the emotion that the name of Christ awakens in these believers?
Of the Virgin Mary and the infant Christ I have written in another chapter. It is of the crucifix I wish to write here. Why is it that of the life of Christ this end of His is considered the most worthy to be in continual remembrance?
I confess that when I climb the hill and see the dead Christs upon their crosses shining white against the olive gardens, when I see His agony depicted in the churches, when I see the people gaze upon Him sacrificed, my memory is taken back to other scenes.
There is a scene that I can remember in a village far away against the frontier in our farthest East. It was a little village that was once a city, but decayed; it was walled with huge walls of brick, but they are fallen into mounds; it had gateways, but they are now but gaps; and a few huts are huddled in a corner where once a palace stood.
It is the custom in this village that every year at a certain season white cocks are to be sacrificed at the gates. There is as may be some legend to explain the custom, but it is forgotten. And yet are the cocks sacrificed each year.
There is the memory, too, of the goat I saw killed in India years ago as I have described. And there are other memories—memories of what I have seen, of what I have read. For this ceremony of sacrifice is the very oldest of all the beginnings of religion. It is akin to prayer, it is at the root of all faiths; we can go no further back than sacrifice. Where it began religion had commenced. Far older than any creed, arising from the dumb instincts of human kind, it is one of the roots of faiths.
Therefore, when I see this image of God, the Son sacrificed to God the Father, I seem to behold the highest development of this long story. Sacrifice, it has always been sacrifice. It has been small animals—goats and fowls and pigeons; it has been greater and more valuable beasts—cattle and horses. It has been man. How often indeed has it been man: Abraham leading Isaac to the sacrifice, the Aztecs sacrificing in Mexico, the Druids in Britain, the followers of Odin, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the early Hindus, can you find a faith that has not sacrificed? Sometimes it has been single victims, sometimes hecatombs of slaughtered slaves. It has been sacrifice by priests, it has been self-sacrifice, as Curtius or as those who threw themselves before the car of Juggernauth. Everywhere there has been sacrifice; it is one of the roots of faiths, it arouses the emotion that has helped to make all religions. And in Christianity it has reached its zenith, for it is no longer an animal, no longer even a man—it is a God, the Son of God who is self-sacrificed to God. In what manner this awakens the emotions of man the following extract will show. It is from "The Gospel of the Atonement," by the Venerable J. Wilson.