ated.

The consciousness then of Sin (or of alienation from the life of the
whole), and of restoration or redemption through Sacrifice, seems to
have disclosed itself in the human race in very far-back times, and
to have symbolized itself in some most ancient rituals; and if we are
shocked sometimes at the barbarities which accompanied those rituals,
yet we must allow that these barbarities show how intensely the early
people felt the solemnity and importance of the whole matter; and we
must allow too that the barbarities did sear and burn themselves into
rude and ignorant minds with the sense of the NEED of Sacrifice, and
with a result perhaps which could not have been compassed in any other
way.

For after all we see now that sacrifice is of the very essence of social
life. "It is expedient that ONE man should die for the people"; and not
only that one man should actually die, but (what is far more important)
that each man should be ready and WILLING to die in that cause, when
the occasion and the need arises. Taken in its larger meanings and
implications Sacrifice, as conceived in the ancient world, was a
perfectly reasonable thing. It SHOULD pervade modern life more than it
does. All we have or enjoy flows from, or is implicated with, pain
and suffering in others, and--if there is any justice in Nature or
Humanity--it demands an equivalent readiness to suffer on our part. If
Christianity has any real essence, that essence is perhaps expressed
in some such ritual or practice of Sacrifice, and we see that the dim
beginnings of this idea date from the far-back customs of savages coming
down from a time anterior to all recorded history.

VIII. PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH

We have suggested in the last chapter how the conceptions of Sin and
Sacrifice coming down to us from an extremely remote past, and
embodied among the various peoples of the world sometimes in crude and
bloodthirsty rites, sometimes in symbols and rituals of a gentler and
more gracious character, descended at last into Christianity and became
a part of its creed and of the creed of the modern world. On the whole
perhaps we may trace a slow amelioration in this process and may flatter
ourselves that the Christian centuries exhibit a more philosophical
understanding of what Sin is, and a more humane conception of what
Sacrifice SHOULD be, than the centuries preceding. But I fear that any
very decided statement or sweeping generalizat