f expiatory power; the view in this case is that a just
deity must punish sin, forgives, however, when the punishment has been
borne.

+1042+. The view that the efficacy of sacrifice is due to the fact that
it brings about a _union between the deity and the worshiper_ has been
construed in several different ways according as the stress is laid on
one or another of the elements of the rite. One theory represents
atonement, the reconciliation of god and man, as effected by the
physical act of sharing the flesh of a sacred animal; another finds it
in the death of an animal made sacred and converted into an intermediary
by a series of ceremonies; a third holds that union with the divine is
secured by whatever is pleasing to the deity.

+1043+. _Reconciliation through a communal meal._ Meals in which the
worshipers partook of the flesh of a sacred animal (in which sometimes
the dead animal itself shared) have probably been celebrated from an
immemorial antiquity. Examples of such customs among savages are given
above.[1881] A familiar instance of a communal meal in civilized society
is the Roman festival in which the shades of the ancestors of the clan
were honored (the _sacra gentilicia_)--a solemn declaration of the unity
of the clan-life.[1882] A more definite act of social communion with a
deity seems to be recognizable in the repasts spread in connection with
the Eleusinian mysteries, which appear, however, to have been merely a
social attachment to the mysteries proper.[1883] In the feasts of the
Mithraic initiates, in which mythological symbolism is prominent, a more
spiritual element becomes visible: the participant absorbs something of
the nature of the god--power to overcome evil, with hope of
immortality.[1884]

+1044+. In the ancient records of these ceremonies there is no theory of
the means by which man comes into friendly relations with the deity. The
meal is an act of friendly intercourse--it doubtless involves the
ancient belief that those who eat together thus absorb a common life and
are bound together by a strong tie. In the earliest and simplest
instances the feeling apparently is that the communion is between the
human participants--the divine animal is honored as a brother; but, even
when, as among the Ainu,[1885] he receives a part of the food, the tie
that binds him to them rests on the fact of original kinship rather than
on the communal eating. Later the view that the god was pleased and
placate