“In advanced societies the tendency is to modify the horrors of the ritual, either by accepting an effusion of blood without actually slaying the victim—e. g. in the flagellation of the Spartan lads—or by a further extension of the doctrine of substitution: the Romans, for example, substituted puppets for the human sacrifices to Mania, and cast rush dolls into the Tiber, at the yearly atoning sacrifice on the Sublician Bridge. More usually, however, the life of an animal is accepted by the god in place of a human life.... Among the Egyptians the victim was marked with a seal bearing the image of a man bound and kneeling with a sword at his throat. And often we find a ceremonial laying of the sin to be expiated on the head of the victim (Herod, ii. 39; Lev. 4: 4, compared with 14: 21).
“In such piacular rites the god demands only the life of the victim, which is sometimes indicated by a special ritual with the blood (as among the Hebrews the blood of the sin-offering was applied to the horns of the altar or to the mercy-seat within the veil), and there is no sacrificial meal. Thus, among the Greeks the carcase of the victim was buried or cast into the sea [comp, with most important Hebrew sin-offerings and sacrifice of children to Moloch—outside the camp or city].
“When the flesh of the sacrifice is consumed by the priests, as with certain Roman piacula and Hebrew sin-offerings, the sacrificial flesh is seemingly a gift accepted by the deity and assigned by him to the priests, so that the distinction between a honorific and a piacular sacrifice is partly obliterated. But this is not hard to understand; for just as a blood-rite takes the place of blood-revenge in human justice, so an offence against the gods may in certain cases be redeemed by a fine (e. g. Herod, ii. 65) or a sacrificial gift. This seems to have been the origin of the Hebrew trespass-offering (p. 136).
“The most curious developments of piacular sacrifice take place in the worship of deities of the totem type. Here the natural substitute for the death of a criminal of the tribe is an animal of the kind with which the worshippers and their god alike count kindred—an animal, that is, which must not be offered in a sacrificial feast, and which indeed it is impious to kill. Thus, Hecaté was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her piacular sacrifices. And in like manner in Egypt the piacular sacrifice of the cow-goddess Isis-Hathor was a bull, and the sacrifice was accompanied by lamentations as at the funeral of a kinsman.”
Under the head of Mystical or Sacramental Sacrifices—i. e. sacrifices at initiations and in the Mysteries: “According to Julian, the mystical sacrifices of the cities of the Roman empire were... offered once or twice a year, and consisted of such victims as the dog of Hecaté, which might not ordinarily be eaten or used to furnish forth the tables of the gods.... The mystic sacrifices seem always to have had an atoning efficacy; their special feature is that the victim is not simply slain and burned or cast away, but that the worshippers partake of the body and blood of the sacred animal, and that so his life passes, as it were, into their lives and knits them to the deity in living communion.
“In the Old Testament the heathen mysteries seem to appear as ceremonies of initiation by which a man was introduced into a new worship.... But originally the initiation must have been introduction into a particular social community.... From this point of view the sacramental rites of mystical sacrifice are a form of blood-covenant.... In all the forms of blood-covenant, whether a sacrifice is offered or the veins of the parties opened and their own blood used, the idea is the same: the bond created is a bond of kindred, because one blood is now in the veins of all who have shared the ceremony.”
A learned friend writes me: “I doubt whether a real distinction can be made between propitiatory and expiatory sacrifices. Propitiation is by expiation. The basic idea in all sacrifices of that nature appears to be substitution; that is, something taking the place of the offender.... It seems that the basis of all sacrifice is to be found in a relationship, or kinship (through blood), between the deity—who is only the representative of the tribal head regarded as still living in the spirit-world—and the worshipper.
“I may add that the idea of pollution by wrongdoing—i. e. offending the tribal deity—to be got rid of only by the shedding of blood, is not unknown to so-called savages. This applies especially to offences against chastity, as with the Mâlers of Rajmahal, India, and the Dyaks of Borneo. The pig is the animal usually sacrificed—probably because it is the most valuable animal food. The Pâdam Abors of Assam look upon all crimes as public pollutions which require to be washed away by a public sacrifice. Here we have the idea of cleansing by the application of blood, and this appears to be the idea also with the Mâlers, and probably among the aboriginal hill-tribes of India generally.”
Mommsen, the Roman historian, says: “At the very core of the Latin religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the gods, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows, just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. The fearful idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the community were angry, and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (devovere se).”
But it was left for Anselm of Canterbury, late in the eleventh century, to first formulate the doctrine of vicarious atonement. Before this there seemed to be among the theologians the idea that in some way Christ came to restore, at least in part, all that was lost in Adam. During the first four centuries of the Christian era there seems to have been no fixed opinion as to whether there was a ransom-price paid to God or the devil. Under the article “Devil " in the Encyclopœdia Britannica it is said: