Agni the divine Fire, mouth of the gods, messenger of the All-knowing, to whom is chanted the Vedic strophe, "Agni! the sacrifice which thou encompassest whole, it goes unto the gods!" The Homeric poems show the plain meaning of the hecatombs of old barbaric Greece, where the savour of the burnt offering went up in wreathing smoke to heaven, “ Κρίσση δ' οὐρανὸν ἵκεν ἑλισσομένη περὶ καπνῷ.” Passed into a far other stage of history, men's minds had not lost sight. of the archaic thought even in Porphyry's time, for he knows how the demons who desire to be gods rejoice in the libations and fumes of sacrifice, whereby their spiritual and bodily substance fattens, for this lives on the steam and vapours and is strengthened by the fumes of the blood and flesh.3

The view of commentators that sacrifice, as a religious rite of remote antiquity and world-wide prevalence, was adopted, regulated, and sanctioned in the Jewish law, is in agreement with the general ethnography of the subject. Here sacrifice appears not with the lower conception of a gift acceptable and even beneficial to deity, but with the higher significance of devout homage or expiation for sin. As is so usual in the history of religion, the offering consisted in general of food, and the consummation of the sacrifice was by fire. To the ceremonial details of the sacrificial rites of Israel, whether prescribing the burning of the carcases of oxen and sheep or of the bloodless gifts of flour mingled with oil, there is appended again and again the explanation of the intent of the rite; it is "an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord." The copious records of sacrifice in the Old Testament enable us to follow its expansion from the simple patriarchal forms of a pastoral tribe, to the huge and complex system organized to carry on the ancient service in a now populous and settled kingdom. Among writers on the Jewish religion,

Dean Stanley has vividly pourtrayed the aspect of the Temple, with the flocks of sheep and droves of cattle crowding its courts, the vast apparatus of slaughter, the huge altar of burnt-offering towering above the people, where the carcases were laid, the drain beneath to carry off the streams of blood. To this historian, in sympathy rather with the spirit of the prophet than the ceremony of the priest, it is a congenial task to dwell upon the great movement in later Judaism to maintain the place of ethical above ceremonial religion. In these times of Hebrew history, the prophets turned with stern rebuke on those who ranked ceremonial ordinance above weightier matters of the law. "I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." "I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats... Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well."

Continuing the enquiry into the physical operation ascribed to sacrifice, we turn to a different conception. It is an idea well vouched for in the lower culture, that the deity, while leaving apparently untouched the offering set out before him, may nevertheless partake of or abstract what in a loose way may be described as its essence. The Zulus leave the flesh of the sacrificed bullock all night, and the divine ancestral spirits come and eat, yet next morning everything remains just as it was. Describing this practice, a native Zulu thus naively comments on it: "But when we ask, 'What do the Amadhlozi eat? for in the morning we still see all the meat,' the old men say, 'The Amatongo lick it.' And we are unable to contradict them, but are silent, for they are older than we, and tell us all things and we listen; for we are told all things, and assent without seeing clearly whether they are true or not."2 Such imagination

See Kalisch on Leviti

1 Stanley, 'Jewish Church,' 2d Ser. pp. 410, 424. cus; Barry in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible,' art. 'sacrifice.'

2 Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' p. 11 (amadhlozi or amatongo=ancestral spirits).

was familiar to the native religion of the West Indian islands. In Columbus' time, and with particular reference to Hispaniola, Roman Pane describes the native mode of sacrifice. Upon any solemn day, when they provide much to eat, whether fish, flesh, or any other thing, they put it all into the house of the cemis, that the idol may feed on it. The next day they carry all home, after the cemi has eaten. And God so help them (says the friar), as the cemi eats of that or anything else, they being inanimate stocks or stones. A century and a half later, a similar notion still prevailed in these islands. Nothing could show it more neatly than the fancy of the Caribs that they could hear the spirits in the night moving the vessels and champing the food set out for them, yet next morning there was nothing touched; it was held that the viands thus partaken of by the spirits had become holy, so that only the old men and considerable people might taste them, and even these required a certain bodily purity. Islanders of Pulo Aur, though admitting that their banished disease-spirits did not actually consume the grains of rice set out for them, nevertheless believed them to appropriate its essence.2 In India, among the indigenes of the Garo hills, we hear of the head and blood of the sacrificed animal being placed with some rice under a bamboo arch covered with a white cloth; the god comes and takes what he wants, and after a time this special offering is dressed for the company with the rest of the animal.3 The Khond deities live on the flavours and essences drawn from the offerings of their votaries, or from animals or grain which they cause to die or disappear. When the Buraets of Siberia have sacrificed a sheep and boiled the mutton, they set it up on a scaffold for the gods while the shaman is

Roman Pane, ch. xvi. in 'Life of Colon,' in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 86. Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 418; see Meiners, vol. ii. p. 516; J. G. Müller, P. 212.

2 Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iv. p. 194.

Eliot in 'As. Res.' vol. iii. p. 30. 4 Macpherson, India,' pp. 88, 100.

chanting his song, and then themselves fall to.1 And thus, in the folklore of medieval Europe, Domina Abundia would come with her dames into the houses at night, and eat and drink from the vessels left uncovered for their increasegiving visit, yet nothing was consumed.2

3

The extreme animistic view of sacrifice is that the soul of the offered animal or thing is abstracted by or transmitted to the deity. This notion of spirits taking souls is in a somewhat different way exemplified among the Binua of Johore, who hold that the evil River-spirits inflict diseases on man by feeding on the 'semangat,' or unsubstantial body (in ordinary parlance the spirit) in which his life resides, while the Karen demon devours not the body but the "la," spirit or vital principle; thus when it eats a man's eyes, their material part remains, but they are blind.* Now an idea similar to this furnished the Polynesians with a theory of sacrifice. The priest might send commissions by the sacrificed human victim; spirits of the dead are eaten by the gods or demons; the spiritual part of the sacrifices is eaten by the spirit of the idol (i. e., the deity dwelling or embodied in the idol) before whom it is presented. Of the Fijians it is observed that of the great offerings of food native belief apportions merely the soul to the gods, who are described as being enormous eaters; the substance is consumed by the worshippers. As in various other districts of the world, human sacrifice is here in fact a meat-offering; cannibalism is a part of the Fijian religion, and the gods are described as delighting in human flesh." Such ideas are explicit among Indian tribes of the American lakes, who consider that offerings, whether abandoned or consumed by the worshippers, go in a spiritual form to the

1 Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 114.

2 Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 264.

3 Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 27.

5 Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 407. Ellis, Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 358. Taylor, New Zealand,' pp. 104, 220.

6 Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 231.

spirit they are devoted to. Native legends afford the clearest illustrations. The following is a passage from an Ottawa tale which recounts the adventures of Wassamo, he who was conveyed by the spirit-maiden to the lodge of her father, the Spirit of the Sand Downs, down below the waters of Lake Superior. "Son-in-law," said the Old

Spirit, "I am in want of tobacco. You shall return to visit your parents, and can make known my wishes. For it is very seldom that those few who pass these Sand Hills, offer a piece of tobacco. When they do it, it immediately comes to me. Just so," he added, putting his hand out of the side of the lodge, and drawing in several pieces of tobacco, which some one at that moment happened to offer to the Spirit, for a smooth lake and prosperous voyage. "You see," he said, "every thing offered me on earth, comes immediately to the side of my lodge." Wassamo saw the women also putting their hands to the side of the lodge, and then handing round something, of which all partook. This he found to be offerings of food made by mortals on earth. The distinctly spiritual nature of this transmission is shown immediately after, for Wassamo cannot eat such mere spirit-food, wherefore his spirit-wife puts out her hand from the lodge and takes in a material fish out of the lake to cook for him.' Another Ottawa legend, the already cited nature-myth of the Sun and Moon, is of much interest not only for its display of this special thought, but as showing clearly the motives with which savage animists offer sacrifices to their deities, and consider these deities to accept them. Onowuttokwutto, the Ojibwa youth who has followed the Moon up to the lovely heaven-prairies to be her husband, is taken one day by her brother the Sun to see how he gets his dinner. The two look down together through the hole in the sky upon the earth below, the Sun points out a group of children playing beside a lodge, at the same time throwing a tiny stone to hit a beautiful boy. The child falls, they see him carried into the lodge, they

1 Schoolcraft, Algie Researches,' vol. ii. p. 140; see 190.