In the course of time, it began to be imagined that the gods demanded something more sacred as offerings or atonements for sin. This led to the sacrifice of human beings, principally slaves and those taken in war, then, their own children, even their most beloved "first-born." It came to be an idea that every sin must have its prescribed amount of punishment, and that the gods would accept the life of one person as atonement for the sins of others. This idea prevailed even in Greece and Rome: but there it mainly took the form of heroic self-sacrifice for the public good. Cicero says: "The force of religion was so great among our ancestors, that some of their commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the strongest expressions of sincerity, sacrificed themselves to the immortal gods to save their country."[182:2]
In Egypt, offerings of human sacrifices, for the atonement of sin, became so general that "if the eldest born of the family of Athamas entered the temple of the Laphystian Jupiter at Alos in Achaia, he was sacrificed, crowned with garlands like an animal victim."[182:3]
When the Egyptian priests offered up a sacrifice to the gods, they pronounced the following imprecations on the head of the victim:
"If any evil is about to befall either those who now sacrifice, or Egypt in general, may it be averted on this head."[183:1]
This idea of atonement finally resulted in the belief that the incarnate Christ, the Anointed, the God among us, was to save mankind from a curse by God imposed. Man had sinned, and God could not and did not forgive without a propitiatory sacrifice. The curse of God must be removed from the sinful, and the sinless must bear the load of that curse. It was asserted that divine justice required BLOOD.[183:2]
The belief of redemption from sin by the sufferings of a Divine Incarnation, whether by death on the cross or otherwise, was general and popular among the heathen, centuries before the time of Jesus of Nazareth, and this dogma, no matter how sacred it may have become, or how consoling it may be, must fall along with the rest of the material of which the Christian church is built.
Julius Firmicius, referring to this popular belief among the Pagans, says: "The devil has his Christs."[183:3] This was the general off-hand manner in which the Christian Fathers disposed of such matters. Everything in the religion of the Pagans which corresponded to their religion was of the devil. Most Protestant divines have resorted to the type theory, of which we shall speak anon.
As we have done heretofore in our inquiries, we will first turn to India, where we shall find, in the words of M. l'Abbé Huc, that "the idea of redemption by a divine incarnation," who came into the world for the express purpose of redeeming mankind, was "general and popular."[183:4]
"A sense of original corruption," says Prof. Monier Williams, seems to be felt by all classes of Hindoos, as indicated by the following prayer used after the Gāyatrī by some Vaishnavas: