which was closely connected with passion or
procreative energy. This quality was their Bacchus, Dionysos, or
god-idea--the creator not alone of physical existence, but of good and
evil as well. It was the Destroyer, yet the Regenerator, of life.

Of the Zoroastrian home, or sacred tree, which by the Persians was
worshipped for thousands of years, Layard remarks: "The plant or its
product was called the mystical body of God, the living water or food
of eternal life, when duly consecrated and administered according to
Zoroastrian rites." It has been suggested, and not without reason, that
to this idea of the ancients, respecting the sacred character of
the properties of the home juice, may be traced the "origin of the
celebration of Jewish holy or paschal suppers and other eucharistic
rites."

Although by the ancients water was sometimes regarded as the original
principle, later, wine, or the intoxicating quality within it, came to
constitute the god-idea. It was spirit, while water was matter; hence,
in the sacraments, water and wine were commingled, wine representing
the essence or blood of God; water, at the same time, standing for the
people. Cyprian, the bishop martyr, while contending for the use of
wine in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, makes use of the following
argument:

"The Holy Spirit also is not silent in the Psalms on the sacrament
of this thing, when He makes mention of the Lord's Cup, and says 'Thy
intoxicating cup how excellent it is!' Now the cup which intoxicates is
assuredly mingled with wine, for water cannot intoxicate anybody. And
the Cup of the Lord in such wise inebriates, as Noe also was intoxicated
drinking wine in Genesis. ... For because Christ bore us all, in that he
also bore our sins, we see that in the water is understood the people,
but in the wine is showed the blood of Christ.... Thus, therefore, in
consecrating the Cup of the Lord, water alone cannot be offered, even as
wine alone cannot be offered. For if anyone offer wine only, the blood
of Christ is dissociated from us; but if the water be alone, the people
are dissociated from Christ."(10)

10) Epistles of Cyprian, vol. i., pp. 215-217.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, at which wine is mysteriously
converted into the essence of Deity, or into the blood of Christ, is
without doubt a relic of the idea once entertained regarding the homa
tree. Certain writers entertain the opinion that from the use of the
sac