The Mystery of Life and Other Papers (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SACRIFICE. The literal meaning of the word sacrifice, as a verb, is to make sacred; as a substantive, it means a thing made sacred. It was made sacred by being offered to the Lord. Hence, the primary and essential idea of sacrifice is to offer to the Lord. There are three grounds upon which a sacrifice may be offered. First; as an expression of gratitude and love. Second; as an offering to the Lord of a part, ? as of the first fruits, or the product of the flock or herd, ? by way of acknowledgment that all the fruits of the field and all the flocks and herds are His, and are given by Him to man. Third; to propitiate Him, and win His favor or avert His anger. Of these three, the first two are right and good. The third is wrong and bad; and is the result of the corruption of mankind, and the falsities thence arising. So far as we know, sacrifice is as universal asreligion. In the literal sense of the Word, the two eldest children of the first man are represented as offering sacrifice; and in all history sacrifice of some kind seems to have belonged to all forms of religion. Always, except in the earliest ages of mankind, and in the primitive ages of Christianity, the prevailing idea has been the third of those above stated. Men offered sacrifices to excite the kindness of an indifferent God, or to appease an offended and hostile God. For this purpose men offered to Him their most precious things, in the belief that the more valuable it was the more acceptable it would be to God, and therefore the more likely to effect its purpose of propitiation. As this falsity became intensified, the value of the offering increased, until men offered in sacrifice their brother men; and at length it led the worshippers of the heathen Gods to offer up their own children, not...