The same people had a forty-days' fast, in honour of a god who was tempted forty days upon a mountain, and thus resembled the Prophet of Nazareth. He was called the morning star, and thus is to be identified with Lucifer as well as Jesus (Isa. xiv. 12, Rev. xxii. 16), and carried a reed for an emblem (see Eev. xxi. 15). The Mexicans honoured a cross, and the god of air was represented sometimes as nailed to one, and even occasionally between two other individuals.*
* As we cannot imagine that the Mexicans were aware of the
manner in which modern Christians depict Jesus on the cross,
we most, I think, seek for some idea which was common to
both the East and West. In Payne Knight's work, so often
referred to by us, there is a picture which represents a
cock with a lingam instead of a head and beak; on its
pediment there is in Greek the words, soteer kosmou, "the
saviour of the world." This is also an epithet of Siva, and
he is sometimes represented as a phallus. In this he is the
Asher or Bel of the Assyrian triad, erected higher than the
other two. In Christian history the outsiders are said to be
thieves, but it was not so in Mexico. The three crosses
are simply emblems of the "trinity."
A virgin and child were also adored, as they were in Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, and Hindostan, and as they are in a great part of Europe at the present time. The people believed in vast cycles of years, at the end of each of which there was to be a general destruction of life, and a perfect regeneration, an idea which Higgins has shown to have existed amongst Persians, Romans, and Jews alike. The Mexicans still further believed in a threefold future state—a heaven for the brave, and those who were sacrificed, there being, so far as I can discover, no abstract idea of what we call "virtue"; a hell for the wicked; and a sort of quiet limbo for those who were in no way distinguished. Heaven was located in the sun, and the blessed were permitted to revel amongst lovely clouds and singing birds, enjoying, unharmed, all the charms of nature: a conception which is to the full as poetical, and, probably, quite as near the truth, as that given in "Revelation." When a man died he was burned, and, if rich, his slaves were sacrificed with him, the Mexicans, in this respect, resembling the ancient Scythians, with whom they had much in common. When the ceremony of giving a name to children was gone through, their lips and bosom were sprinkled with water, and the Lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that was given to the child before the foundation of the world, so that the infant might be born anew, or, in modern terms, regenerated (Prescott, ch. 3). Amongst their prayers, or invocations, were the formulas, "Wilt Thou blot us out, O Lord, for ever? Is this punishment intended, not for our reformation, but for our destruction?" again, "Impart to us, out of Thy great mercy, Thy gifts which we are not worthy to receive through our own merits;" "Keep peace with all;" "Bear injuries with humility, God who sees will avenge you;" "He who looks too curiously on a woman commits adultery with eyes." These Mexican maxims so closely resemble those to be found in the Bible, that it is difficult to believe that the Spaniards really told the truth respecting them. The sacerdotal order amongst the Mexicans was a numerous one, well arranged and powerful. The priests used musical choirs in their worship, arranged the calendar, and appointed the time for festivals. They superintended the education of youth, and wrote up the traditions, like the "recorders" of the Jews, Persians, other Orientals, and Christian monks, and looked to the conservancy of the hieroglyphic paintings. There were two high priests, who alone had to undertake the duty of offering human sacrifices, and these were elected by the king and nobles, quite irrespective of previous rank, and, when elected, they were inferior only to the sovereign. When reading this, anyone who is familiar with biblical history will bethink him of Luke iii. 3, "Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests," the plural, not the singular, number being used, and of the dictum of Caiaphas, John xi. 50, "It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not." We may put what construction we please upon these facts, but, whatever interpretation we may adopt, we must acknowledge that the Hebrews, at the time when our era commences, had two high priests who were concerned in human sacrifice.
The priests, in general, were devoted to the service of some particular deity, and, during the time of their attendance, lived in the temple, celibate; but, when not on duty, they resided with their wives and families. Thrice during the day, and once at some period of the night, they were called to prayer, much like all the varieties of Christian monks and nuns. They were frequent in their ablutions, in which habit they may be contrasted with those saintly hermits, who regarded dirt as a divine ordinance, and never washed; and they mortified the flesh by long vigils, fasting, and cruel penance, drawing blood from their bodies by flagellation, or by piercing them with the thorns of the aloe. The resemblance of the Mexican sacerdotalism with Jewish and Christian customs is thus shown to be wonderful and striking, so much so, that the Spaniards started the idea that they had been taught by some stray apostle of Jesus. The great cities of Mexico were divided into districts, each of which was placed under the charge of a sort of parochial clergy, who regulated every act of religion within their precincts, and who administered the rites of confession and absolution. The secrets of the confessional were held inviolable, and penances were imposed, of much the same kind as those enjoined by the Roman Catholic Church upon her votaries.
It was a tenet of Mexican faith, that a sin once atoned for, was, if repeated, inexpiable a second time; consequently, confession was only once resorted to, and that late in life; a good plan, upon the whole, for it enabled a man whose days were numbered to get pardon "for good and aye." It was also held that sacerdotal absolution was equivalent to magisterial punishment. The formula of absolution contained this, amongst other things, "O merciful Lord, Thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let Thy forgiveness and favour descend, like the pure waters of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor man has sinned, not from his own free will, but from the influence of the sign under which he was born." This idea may well be compared with the current doctrine of the phrenologists, many of whom assert that a man acts according to the configuration of his brain and cranium, and is, therefore, only partially culpable for the commission of certain crimes. After a copious exhortation to the penitent, in which he was enjoined to undergo a variety of mortifications, and to perform minute ceremonies, by way of penance, he was particularly urged to procure, with the smallest possible delay, a slave, who was to be utilized in sacrifice to the Deity; the priest then concluded with inculcating charity to the poor—"Clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee, for remember their flesh is like thine."
The necessity of sacrifice, as an atonement for sin, forms an essential, though bloody, part of both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths, and history has long taught us that the slaughter of a man, woman, or child, formed, in the estimation of the Ancient Greeks, and other nations, one of the most acceptable of the forms of homage paid by a human being to the Creator. This idea is at the very basis of the Christian theology. It has been held, from the time of the apostle Paul to the present day, that Jehovah would not look favourably upon mankind until He had been propitiated, not by the sacrifice of an ordinary individual, but by the murder, in the crudest of modes, of a being whom He personally begat, for the purpose of killing him when arrived at maturity. In Hebrews x. 12, we find this doctrine very distinctly enunciated, in the words, "this man, after he had offered one sacrifice of sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God," and subsequently, v. 14, "by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Again, in Heb. ix. 26, "once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself;" and in Heb. x. 10, "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" and in ix. 28, "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." The philosopher may doubt whether the God whom the Christians have made for their own adoration, is in any way different to that of King Mesha, who offered up his own son in sacrifice, or to the Mexican one, who was contented with the blood of a slave.*
* It is doubtful whether any Christian has ever paid real
attention to the doctrines which are familiar to his ear, or
to the hymns which an most frequently on his tongue. In the
usual fashion which is prevalent amongst ministers and
hearers, everything which is told by missionaries of heathen
deities is taken as true. Thus it has become the general
belief that the Mexican theology, which required an annual
sacrifice of human beings, whose hearts were cut out, and
offered warm, palpitating and full of blood, to a God who
was supposed to be present in a sacred stone statue, was
beyond measure atrocious. But in what consists the horror,
unless in the fact that the sacrifice was seen by the
worshippers? In Christendom people are never called upon to
see a man killed by nailing him to a cross. If they were
condemned to this penance, very little would any of them
talk of blood. As it is, the minds of the majority are
lulled to sleep by the substitution of words for facts, and
texts of Scripture for ideas; and those who are unable to
look upon a cut finger without fainting, and would not for
worlds go to see a man decapitated, talk in the serenest
manner on most sanguinary topics. A reference to a few hymns
which are general favourites will illustrate what I mean. In
"Rock of Ages," for example, we have the lines—
"Let the water and the blood
From thy riven side that flowed,
Cleanse from sin and make me pure."
Another equally popular hymn begins
"From Calv'ry's cross a fountain flows
Of water and of blood,
More healing than Bethesda's pool,
Redeeming Lord, thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power..." and again—
"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuels veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains."
No congregation of Christian, or any other men, would
tolerate for a moment the introduction into divine worship
of a bath of blood, into which all those should plunge who
desired salvation. Not one would endeavour to wash his sins
away in a sanguine stream, drawn from any source whatever.
The horror which would be produced by the doctrine that such
things are necessary to appease our God, would make every
thinking being detest it. Yet, when we only play with the
idea, we can talk of such matters with holy complacency. If
any Christian wants to test his faith, let me advise him to
get a basinful of blood and place it in his bed-room, and
say twice a day, when looking on it, that's the stuff which
propitiates my God! It would not be long ere he saw the
absurdity of his theological tenets, and the coarseness of
the hierarchy which invented so frightful an idea of the
Omnipotent.
For the education of the youth of Mexico a part of the temples was allotted, where the boys and girls of the middle and higher classes were placed at an early period—the girls to be taught by the priestesses, the boys by priests; and from a note in Prescott's corrected edition, 1866, p. 22, we learn that the former were even more generally pure in life than, we have reason to believe, the Egyptian priestesses and Christian nuns proved themselves to be, Father Acosto saying, "In truth, it is very strange to see that this false opinion of religion hath so great force amongst these young men and maidens of Mexico, that they will serve the Devil with so great vigour and austerity, which many of us do not in the service of the most high God, the which is a great shame and confusion." It is curious to notice how the Christian priest considers that chastity may be a snare of the Devil, as well as an ordinance of Jehovah. The boys, in these scholastic parts of the sacred temples, were taught the routine of monastic discipline—to decorate the shrines of the gods with flowers, to feed the sacred fires, and to chant in worship and at festivals. The Abbé Hue, in an account of his travels in Thibet and Tartary, has told us repeatedly of the similarity between the rites, practices, and ceremonies of the Romish Church and those in use amongst the followers of the Great Lama. It is equally marvellous to discover that the Mexican ritual resembles both. The Papalist endeavours to explain this, by the monstrous assumption that both Tartary and Mexico were evangelized by two different Christian Apostles. But it seems to us more probable that the Romanists, who are known to have adopted almost every ancient ceremony, symbol, doctrine, and the like, have unknowingly copied from travelled Orientals, than that the cult of the people of Thibet has travelled into America, as well as into Europe. Into the identity of the Tartars with the Red Indians it is not my intention to enter. The higher Mexicans were taught traditionary lore, the mysteries of hieroglyphics, the principles of government, and such astronomical and scientific knowledge as the priests would, or, probably, could, impart. The girls learned to weave and embroider coverings for the altars of the gods. Great attention was paid to morality, and offences were punished with extreme rigour, even with death itself. Youths were taught to eschew, vice and cleave to virtue, to abstain from wrath, to offer violence or do wrong to no man, and to do good where possible.
When of an age to marry, the pupils were dismissed from the convent, and the recommendation of the principal thereof often introduced those whom he regarded as the most competent of the students, to responsible situations in public life. Such was the policy of the Mexican priests, who were thus enabled to mould the mind of the young, and to train it early to the necessity of giving reverence to religion, and especially to its ministers—a reverence which maintained its hold on the warrior long after every other vestige of education had been effaced. In this matter America showed an astuteness equal to that exhibited by Papal hierarchs in Rome.
To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed, for the maintenance of the priests, and these glebes were augmented by successive princes, until, under Montezuma, they were of enormous extent, and covered every district of the* empire. The priests took the management of their property into their own hands, and treated their tenants with liberality and indulgence. In addition to this source of income, they had "first fruits," and other offerings, dictated by piety or superstition. The surplus was distributed in alms amongst the poor, a duty strenuously prescribed by their moral code. Thus we find, adds Prescott, whom we are closely, and almost verbatim, following, the same religion inculcating lessons of pure philanthropy and of merciless extermination—an inconsistency not incredible to those familiar with the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the early ages of the Inquisition.