ece
and Rome: but there it mainly took the form of heroic self-sacrifice for
the public good. Cicero says: "The force of religion was so great among
our ancestors, that some of their commanders have, with their faces
veiled, and with the strongest expressions of sincerity, _sacrificed
themselves to the immortal gods to save their country_."[182:2]

In Egypt, offerings of human sacrifices, for the atonement of sin,
became so general that "if the eldest born of the family of Athamas
entered the temple of the Laphystan Jupiter at Alos in Achaia, he was
sacrificed, crowned with garlands like an animal victim."[182:3]

When the Egyptian priests offered up a sacrifice to the gods, they
pronounced the following imprecations on the head of the victim:

"If any evil is about to befall either those who now
sacrifice, or Egypt in general, _may it be averted on this
head_."[183:1]

This idea of atonement finally resulted in the belief that the incarnate
_Christ_, the _Anointed_, the _God among us_, was to _save_ mankind from
a curse by God imposed. Man had sinned, and God could not and did not
forgive without a propitiatory _sacrifice_. The curse of God must be
removed from the _sinful_, and the _sinless_ must bear the load of that
curse. It was asserted that _divine justice_ required BLOOD.[183:2]

The belief of redemption from sin by the sufferings of a _Divine
Incarnation_, whether by death on the cross or otherwise, was general
and popular among the heathen, centuries before the time of Jesus of
Nazareth, and this dogma, no matter how sacred it may have become, or
how _consoling_ it may be, must fall along with the rest of the material
of which the Christian church is built.

Julius Firmicius, referring to this popular belief among the _Pagans_,
says: "The _devil_ has _his Christs_."[183:3] This was the general
off-hand manner in which the Christian Fathers disposed of such matters.
Everything in the religion of the Pagans which corresponded to their
religion was of the devil. Most Protestant divines have resorted to the
_type_ theory, of which we shall speak anon.

As we have done heretofore in our inquiries, we will first turn to
_India_, where we shall find, in the words of M. l'Abbe Huc, that "_the
idea of redemption by a divine incarnation_," who came into the world
for the express purpose of redeeming mankind, was "general and
popular."[183:4]

"A sense of _original corruption_," says Prof. Monier