f twenty, and what right, by any human
standard, had Abraham to take his life? It is true that by patriarchal
customs and laws Isaac belonged to Abraham as much as if he were a slave
or an animal. He had the Oriental right to do with his son as he
pleased. The head of a family had not only absolute control over wife
and children, but the power of life and death. And this absolute power
was not exercised alone by Semitic races, but also by the Aryan in their
original settlements, in Greece and Italy, as well as in Northern India.
All the early institutions of society recognized this paternal right.
Hence the moral sense of Abraham was not apparently shocked at the
command of God, since his son was his absolute property. Even Isaac
made no resistance, since he knew that Abraham had a right to his life.

Moreover, we should remember that sacrifices to all objects of worship
formed the basis of all the religious rites of the ancient world, in all
periods of its history. Human sacrifices were offered in India at the
very period when Abraham was a wanderer in Palestine; and though human
nature ultimately revolted from this cruelty, the sacrifice of
substitute-animals continued from generation to generation as oblations
to the gods, and is still continued by Brahminical priests. In China, in
Egypt, in Assyria, in Greece, no religious rites were perfected without
sacrifices. Even in the Mosaic ritual, sacrifices by the priests formed
no inconsiderable part of worship. Not until the time of Isaiah was it
said that God took no delight in burnt offerings,--that the real
sacrifices which He requires are a broken and a contrite heart. Nor were
the Jews finally emancipated from sacrificial rites until Christ himself
made his own body an offering for the sins of the world, and in God's
providence the Romans destroyed their temple and scattered their nation.
In antiquity there was no objective worship of the Deity without
sacrificial rites, and when these were omitted or despised there was
atheism,--as in the case of Buddha, who taught morals rather than
religion. Perhaps the oldest and most prevalent religious idea of
antiquity was the necessity of propitiatory sacrifice,--generally of
animals, though in remotest ages the offering of the fruits of
the earth.[2]

[Footnote 2: Dr. Trumbull has made a learned and ingenious argument in
his "Blood Covenant" to show that sacrifices were not to propitiate the
deity, but to bring about a clo