ht
be able to do what was wanted of him. In the Vedic hymns this motive
undeniably is to be met with. The notion is by no means unknown in
early thought, that not only does man need God, but that God is also
dependent on man, and capable of being aided and encouraged. In rites
which are not strictly sacrifices, we notice men seeking to
sympathise with their gods in what the gods are doing, and to take a
share in it by doing similar things themselves. The Christmas and
Easter fires in pagan times connected with the worship of the sun,
are examples of this, and many other instances might be cited.

This, however, is not the principal motive of early sacrifice. All
the incidents of it suggest that it is not merely a thing offered to
the deity, but a thing in which man takes part; if it is a meal, it
is one of which the god and the worshippers partake in common. In
China the ancestors are invited to the family feast; their place is
set for them; their share in the feast is placed before them. In the
_Iliad_,[2] we have an account of a solemn religious act: after
prayers the victims were slaughtered, choice slices were cut from
them and cooked at the fire by the worshippers, who then ate and
drank their fill; after this "all day long they worshipped the god
with music, singing the beautiful paean to Apollo, and his heart was
glad to hear." In the Bible we know that the blood is poured out for
the Deity, and in various sacrifices the parts He is to have are
specified, while the rest is to be eaten by the priests. In the
earlier sacrifices of the Hebrews there are no priests; those who
present the sacrifice consume it after the act of presentation, and
the occasion is one of mirth and jollity, as at a banquet (1 Sam. ix.
12, 13, and the following description; see also Exod. xxxii. 5, 6).
In fact it is a banquet. This is specially plain in the sacrifices of
the Semites, as Mr. Robertson Smith has shown. Early Semitic usage
exhibits clearly how sacrifice was an act of communion, in which the
god and his human family proclaimed and renewed their unity with each
other. The details may differ in other races, but in general it may
be said that early sacrifice was an act done not by an individual,
though plenty of individual sacrifices are also to be met with, but
by a tribe, in which all the partakers of the blood of the tribe took
part before the god who was their common ancestor, and who, as it
were, presided over and shared in t