IT would be tedious to quote even one-tenth of the passages from the New Testament in which salvation is ascribed to the blood of Jesus. Indeed, from Genesis to Revelation sacrificial blood seems to be the one prominent theme. The salvation of Christ is emphatically the salvation by blood, and this idea runs through the whole system of what is called evangelical theology. Jeremy Taylor wrote about “lapping with the tongue the blood from the Saviour’s open wounds,” suggesting the well-known habit of the bloodthirsty dog. But Mr. Taylor was outdone by the late Rev. Bishop Jesse T. Peck, when he frantically exclaimed, in the presence of thousands of people at a religious mass-meeting, “We have not enough blood in our religion. I want to wade in the blood of Calvary up to my armpits, and wallow in it,” suggesting the well-known habits of the filthy sow. But the Rev. T. D. Talmage, D. D., capped the climax when, in his usual rhapsodical style, he exclaimed in a recent sermon: “It seems to me as if all Heaven were trying to bid in your soul. The first bid it makes is the tears of Christ at the tomb of Lazarus; but that is not a high-enough price. The next bid Heaven makes is the sweat of Gethsemane; but it is too cheap a price. The next bid Heaven makes seems to be the whipped back of Pilate’s Hall; but it is not a high-enough price. Can it be possible that Heaven cannot buy you in? Heaven tries once more. It says: ‘I bid this time for that man’s soul the torture of Christ’s martyrdom, the blood on his temple, the blood on his cheek, the blood on his chin, the blood on his hand, the blood on his side, the blood on his knee, the blood on his foot—the blood in drops, the blood in rills, the blood in pools coagulated beneath the cross; the blood that wet the tips of the soldier’s spear, the blood that plashed warm in the faces of his enemies.’ Glory to God! that bid wins it! The highest price that was ever paid for anything was paid for your soul. Nothing could buy it but blood! The estranged property is bought back. Take it. You have sold yourselves for naught; and ye shall be redeemed without money.’ O atoning blood, cleansing blood, life-giving blood, sanctifying blood, glorifying blood of Jesus! Why not burst into tears at the thought that for thee he shed it—for thee the hard-hearted, for thee the lost?”
Henry III. of England was presented with a small portion of the blood of Jesus, said to have been shed upon the cross, and to have been preserved in a phial, duly attested by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and other distinguished functionaries as genuine. It was carried in triumph through the streets of London with rapturous shoutings by a large procession, from St. Paul’s to Westminster Abbey, and the historian testifies that it made all England radiant with glory. Indeed, there has been enough of the so-called genuine blood that was shed on Calvary given to the faithful to float the largest ship in the navy of Great Britain. A sufficient quantity of the real cross upon which Jesus is said to have been crucified has been preserved to erect the largest temple the world ever contained. There is no end to the superstition on this subject, all going to show how deep-seated is the credulity which exists in the popular belief in regard to this matter.
There are many illustrations which might be given of “blood-evocation” among ancient pagans who regarded blood as the great arcanum of nature.
But what was the origin of the idea that blood is purifying, cleansing, purging? There is nothing in the thing itself that suggests this idea. Take a basinful of newly-drawn blood and set it upon the table before you. It soon coagulates, and emits an offensive odor, so that you are forced to hurry it from your presence. It is the very opposite of cleansing. If you get a drop upon your finger, you immediately wash it off. Indeed, some persons cannot stand the sight of blood, and shrink from its touch as from a deadly poison. There must be some reason for the idea that in some way blood is suggestive of cleansing or purifying. Now, we go to nature in search of knowledge. There is only one phenomenon in which the shedding of blood is a natural process, and that is when the young girl arrives at the stage of pubescence, and in this case, and in this case only, does it suggest the idea of purification. Before the period approaches nothing can be more suggestive of the untidy than the unpubescent girl. She is generally awkward, slouchy, and unattractive. But let the sanguineous evidence of approaching womanhood appear, and how changed! Her complexion becomes then most beautiful and bewitching. Her eyes sparkle with a fire which cannot be described. Her once ungraceful form becomes lithe, and her whole person changes in such a manner as to indicate that some great thing has happened. She has been purified or cleansed. She is a new creature. Old things have passed away. Each succeeding month she has a similar experience until the full bloom of womanhood has passed away.
Indeed, we find among the primitive customs of ancient Africans a special observance of the commencement of the catamenial period. Before the arrival of the time of periodicity the young girl is of very little account, and is not numbered as a member of the tribe. It is not considered indecent for her to run around in a state of nudity until she is fourteen years of age or until the evidence of pubescence appears. Stanley says of certain African girls: “They wait with impatience the day when they can be married and have a cloth to fold around their bodies.” There was in use among certain ancient people, now worn by Catholic priests, an apron known as the peplum, which was worn after puberty.
The tribal mark and totemic name were conferred in the baptism of blood. A covenant was entered into which was written with menstruous blood, because blood was the announcer of the female period of pubescence. From time immemorial the Kaffirs have preserved the custom of celebrating the first appearance of the menstrual flow. All the young girls in the neighborhood meet together and make merry on the happy occasion. We are told by Irenæus how the feminine Logos was represented in the mysteries of Marcus, and the wine was supposed to be miraculously turned into blood, and Charis, who was superior to all things, was thought to infuse her own blood into the cup. The cup was handed to the women, who also consecrated it with an effusion of blood proceeding from themselves.
It would seem that the blood of Charis preceded the blood of Christ, and it is doubtful whether there would have been any cleansing by the blood of Christ if there had been no purification by the blood of Charis. Thus Nature's rubrics are written in red. The Eucharist is derived by Clement of Alexandria from the mixture of the water and the Word, and he identifies the Word with the blood of the grape. We give these delicate hints for what they are worth.
We have a deep conviction that the conception of the idea of purification by blood had at first some connection with the natural issue of blood at the commencement of periodicity in the female. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated by pagans centuries before the paschal supper of the Jews or the Lord’s Supper of Christians, the element of blood was very conspicuously set forth, and Higgins has shown in his Anaealypsis that the sacrifice of bread and wine in religious ceremonies was common among many ancient peoples, the wine representing the blood.
In 1885 a very remarkable book appeared, entitled The Blood Covenant, by Rev. H. Clay Trumbull, D. D., and we have obtained the consent of this author (whom we have the honor to recognize as an old and very dear personal friend) “to use anything we please, in any way we please, without giving any credit.” For this permission we are truly thankful, though we only avail ourself of a few of the facts bearing upon the point concerning which we write.
Our author says: “One of these primitive rites, which is deserving of more attention than it has yet received, as throwing light on many important phases of Bible-teaching, is the rite of blood-covenanting—a form of mutual covenanting by which two persons enter into the closest, the most enduring, and the most sacred of compacts as friends and brothers, or as more than brothers, through the intercommingling of their blood by means of its mutual tasting or of its transfusion. This rite is still observed in the unchanging East; and there are historic traces of it from time immemorial in every quarter of the globe, yet it has been strangely overlooked by biblical critics and biblical commentators generally in these later centuries.