nd Edomites,
and other kindred and neighbouring nations. They differed from these not
in matter or form, but in the loftier moral and spiritual tone which
formed the peculiar and distinguishing mark of the Hebrew religion, and
in which we to-day can clearly trace the actions in the minds of men of
the Spirit of God.

It follows that it is hopeless to attempt to understand the sacrificial
teaching of the Old Testament without some grasp of the meaning of
sacrifice in the ancient world. Failure to attain this has led to the
idea that the sacrifice of Christ must mean the appeasing of an offended
Deity by blood and death. But this view of sacrifice is not merely a
heathen, but a late and debased heathen conception. "Shall I give my
first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of the
soul?" was the cry of the King of Moab, and it marks the lowest depth
into which the pagan idea of sacrifice had sunk. It is a genuine
instance of deterioration in ethnic religion. The primitive view was far
loftier and more spiritual than this.

Recent researches, dependent on the comparative method, into the earliest
forms of religion have brought to light two principles which underlay the
conception of sacrifice, and which to a great extent can be discerned
more clearly in the most ancient period than in later times. Now these
two principles which, taken together, constitute the primitive theory of
sacrifice, which make up the fundamental idea of it, however little
prehistoric man may have been capable of giving distinct and logical
expression to them, were these:

1. Death is necessary to the attainment of the fulness of life.

2. Man is, by his very nature, capable of sharing in, becoming a
partaker of, the Divine life.

The earliest known form of sacrifice is the killing of the sacred animal
of the tribe, the animal which was held to be the representative of the
tribal god, followed by the sacred tribal meal upon the victim. There,
in this earliest _totem_ rite, we have already implicit the two great
ideas of sacrifice, the communion of man with God by actual participation
in the Divine life (the feast on the sacrifice), and that this communion
is rendered possible by the death of the sacred victim.

These ideas were very largely obscured in ancient times by the conception
of sacrifice as a gift, a tribute, or a propitiation. But these ideas,
though they bulk largely in modern minds unacquainted with