or Wisdom was written. In this book may be observed the fact
that the slaughter of animals is forbidden. It is thought that with
Crishna, Hercules, and the worshippers of the sun in Aries, the
sacrifice of human beings and animals began. In the second book of
Genesis, which is said to be a Brahmin work, animals are first used
for sacrifice, and in the third book, or the book of Generations or
Re-generations of the race of man or the Adam, which was written
after the pure doctrines connected with the worship of Wisdom had been
corrupted, they are first allowed to be eaten as food.

It is supposed that the practice of sacrificing human beings and animals
took its rise in the western parts of the world after the sun entered
Aries, and that it subsequently extended even to the followers of the
Tauric worship, among whom it was carried to a frightful extent. It is
also thought that the history of Cain and Abel is an allegory of the
followers of Crishna to justify their sacrifice of the yajna or lamb "in
opposition to the Buddhist offering of bread and wine, or water, made by
Cain and practiced by Melchizedek."(163)

163) Anacalypsis, vol. i., p. 101.

It is now positively known that all over the world, during a certain
stage of religious belief, either human beings or animals were, at
stated seasons, sacrificed to the Deity. Of the universality of this
practice Faber says:

"Throughout the whole world we find a notion prevalent that the gods
could be appeased only by bloody sacrifices. Now this idea is so
thoroughly arbitrary, there being no obvious and necessary connection,
in the way of cause and effect, between slaughtering a man or a beast,
and recovering of the divine favor by the slaughterers, that its very
universality involves the necessity of concluding that all nations have
borrowed it from some common source."(164)

164) The Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. i., book 2, p. 465.

Dr. Shuckford is constrained to admit that the sacrifices and ceremonies
of purification practiced by Abraham and his descendants and those of
surrounding peoples, were identical, with only "such trifling changes as
distance of countries and length of time might be expected to produce."
The substitution of a lamb in the place of Isaac would seem to indicate
a change from child-slaughter to that of animals.

Sacrifices were offerings to the god of pro-creation. Certain
representatives of the life which he had bestowed