Part II., chap. 31; Tylor’s _Prim. Cult._, II., 278 ff.; Dorman’s

_Orig. of Prim. Supers._, p. 150; Andersson’s _Lake Ngami_, p. 220.

[361] Bancroft’s _Native Races_, V., 547 f.

[362] Monier Williams’s _Hinduism_, p. 60.

[363] Bancroft’s _Native Races_, V., 548.

[364] Bancroft’s _Native Races_, II., 710.

[365] Mendieta’s _Hist. Eccles. Ind._, p. 108 f.; cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II., 20.

[366] Acosta’s _Hist. Nat. Mor. Ind._, Bk. V., chap. 27, cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II., 26.

[367] Herrera’s _Gen. Hist. of America_, II., 379; cited in Dorman’s _Orig. of Prim. Supers._, p. 152 f.

[368] Acosta’s _Hist. Nat. Mor. Ind._, Bk. V., chap. 23; cited in Prescott’s _Conquest of Peru_, I., 108, note.

[369] Herrera’s _Gen. Hist._, III., 207 f.; cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II., 20.

[370] Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II., 20. See also Southey’s _Hist. of Brazil_, II., 370.

[371] _Contra Apionem_, II., 7.

[372] See pages 105 f., 132, _supra_.

[373] See Clark’s _Indian Sign Language_, s. v., “Feast.”

[374] “Should he fail [to eat his portion], the host would be outraged, the community shocked, and the spirits roused to vengeance. Disaster would befall the nation--death, perhaps, the individual.” “A feaster unable to do his full part, might, if he could, hire another to aid him; otherwise he must remain in his place till the work was done.” (Parkman’s _Jesuits in No. Am._, p. xxxviii.)

[375] “At some feasts guests are permitted to take home some small portions for their children as sacred food, especially good for them because it came from a feast.” (Clark’s _Ind. Sign Lang._, p. 168.)

[376] Edkins’s _Relig. in China_, p. 22, note.

[377] See pages 159, 168, 172, _supra_.

[378] Réville’s _Native Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, p. 183.

[379] _Ibid._, p. 76.

[380] See page 176 f., _supra_.

[381] _Des. of Man. and Cust. of India_, Part III., chap. 7.

[382] See William and Calvert’s _Fiji and the Fijians_, pp. 35 f., 161-166, 181 f.

[383] Cited in Parkman’s _Jesuits in No. Am._, p. 228, note.

[384] _Ibid._, p. xxxix.

[385] _Ibid._, p. xl., note.

[386] _Origin of Prim. Supers._, p. 151 f.

[387] _Origin of Prim. Supers._, p. 150.

[388] _Native Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, p. 75 f.

[389] _Native Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, p. 76.

[390] See references to cannibalism as a religious rite among the Khonds of Orissa, the people of Sumatra, etc., in Adams’s _Curiosities of Superstition_.

[391] Gen. 49 : 11; Deut. 32 : 14; Ecclesiasticus 39 : 26; 50 : 15; 1 Macc. 6 : 34.

[392] In _Beduinen und Wahaby_, p. 86 f.

[393] _Desert of the Exodus_, I., 90.

[394] See page 72, _supra_.

[395] Wood’s _Wedding Day_, p. 144.

[396] Mason, in _Journ. of Asiat. Soc. of Bengal_, Vol. XXXV., Part II., p. 17; cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, V., 9.

[397] Andersson’s _Lake Ngami_, p. 220 f.

[398] Shooter’s _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 77.

[399] Williams and Calvert’s _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 134.

[400] See Monier Williams’s _Sanskrit Dictionary_, s. v.

[401] See Pike’s _Sub-Tropical Rambles_, p. 198.

[402] See pages 77, 165, _supra_.

[403] This Oriental custom gives an added meaning to the suggestion, that Christ was sent to bring us to his Father, “that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4 : 5).

[404] The citations above made are from Roberts’s _Oriental Illustrations of the Scriptures_, p. 574, and from Dubois’s _Des. of Man. and Cust. of India_, Part II., chap. 22; the latter being from the Directory or Ritual of the Purohitas.

[405] Doolittle’s _Social Life of the Chinese_, I., 85-87.

[406] _China_, p. 72 f.

[407] Piedrahita’s _Hist. New Granada_, Bk. I., chap. 6; cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, II., 34.

[408] Malcolm, in _Trans. Royal Asiat. Soc._, I., 83; cited in Spencer’s _Des. Soc._, V., 8.

[409] Wood’s _Wedding Day_, p. 142.

[410] _Ibid._, p. 66 f.

[411] _Ibid._, p. 124 f.

[412] Rous and Bogan’s _Archæologiæ Atticæ_, p. 167.

[413] Wood’s _Wedding Day_, pp. 36, 39.

[414] Wood’s _Wedding Day_, p. 151.

[415] _Ibid._, pp. 22, 23.

[416] _Ibid._, p. 247.

[417] _Ibid._, p. 247.

[418] _Ibid._, p. 248.

[419] _Ibid._, p. 173.

[420] Ross’s _The Book of Scottish Poems_, I., 218.

[421] Godwyn’s _Rom. Historiæ_, p. 66 f.

[422] Tylor’s _Prim. Cult._, I., 85-97.

[423] Kurtz’s _History of the Old Covenant_, I., 235.

[424] _Ibid._, I., 268.

LECTURE III.

INDICATIONS OF THE RITE IN THE BIBLE.

III.

INDICATIONS OF THE RITE IN THE BIBLE.

1. LIMITATIONS OF INQUIRY.

And now, before entering upon an examination of the Bible text, in the light of these disclosures of primitive and universal customs, it may be well for me to say, that I purpose no attempt to include or to explain all the philosophy of sacrifice, and of the involved atonement. All my thought is, to ascertain what new meaning, if any, is found in the Bible teachings concerning the uses and the symbolism of blood, through our better understanding of the prevailing idea, among the peoples of the ancient world, that blood represents life; that the giving of blood represents the giving of life; that the receiving of blood represents the receiving of life; that the inter-commingling of blood represents the inter-commingling of natures; and that a divine-human inter-union through blood is the basis of a divine-human inter-communion, in the sharing of the flesh of the sacrificial offering as sacred food. Whatever other Bible teachings there are, beyond these, as to the meanings of sacrifice, or as to the nature of the atonement, it is not my purpose, in this investigation, to consider.

In the days of Moses, when the Pentateuch is supposed to have been prepared, there were--as we have already found--certain well-defined views, the world over, concerning the sacredness of blood, and concerning the methods, the involvings, and the symbolisms, of the covenant of blood. This being so, we are not to look to the Bible record, as it stands, for the original institution of every rite and ceremony connected with blood-shedding, blood-guarding, and blood-using; but we may fairly look at every Bible reference to blood, in the light of the primitive customs known to have prevailed in the days of the Bible writing.

2. PRIMITIVE TEACHINGS OF BLOOD.

The earliest implied reference to blood in the Bible text, is the record of Abel’s sacrifice. “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.”[425] An inspired comment on this incident is: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of [or, over] his gifts: and through it he [Abel] being dead yet speaketh.”[426]

Now, on the face of it, in the light of all that we know of primitive customs in this matter of the blood-covenant, and apart from any added teachings in the Bible concerning the nature and meanings of different sacrifices, this narrative shows Abel, lovingly and trustfully reaching out toward God with substitute blood, in order to be in covenant oneness with God; while Cain merely proffers a gift from his earthly possessions. Abel so trusts God, that he gives _himself_ to him. Cain defers to God sufficiently to make a _present_ to him. The one shows unbounded faith; the other shows a measure of affectionate reverence. It is the same practical difference as that which distinguished Ruth from Orpah, when the testing time of their love for their mother-in-law, Naomi, had come to them alike. “And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her.”[427] No wonder that God counted Abel’s unstinted proffer of himself, in faith, an acceptable sacrifice, and received it, as in inter-communion on the basis of inter-union; while Cain’s paltry gift, without any proffer of himself, won no approval from the Lord.

Then there followed the unhallowed shedding of Abel’s blood by Cain, and the crying out, as it were, of the spilled life of Abel unto its Divine Author.[428] “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground,” said the Lord, to the guilty spiller of blood. “And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.” Here, as elsewhere, the blood is preeminently the life; and even when poured out on the earth, the blood does not lose its vitality. It still has its intelligent relations to its Author and Guardian;[429] as the world has been accustomed to count a possibility, down to modern times.[430]

After the destruction of mankind by the deluge, when God would begin anew, as it were, by the revivifying of the world, through the vestige of blood--of life--preserved in the ark,[431] he laid new emphasis on the sacredness of blood, as the representative of that life which is the essence of God himself. Noah’s first act, on coming out from the ark, was to proffer himself and all living flesh, in a fresh blood-covenant with the Lord. “And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.”[432] From all that we know of the method of the burnt-offering, either from the Bible-text or from outside sources, it has, from the beginning, included the preliminary offering of the blood--as the life--to Deity, by its outpouring, around, or upon, the altar, with or without the accompaniment of libations of wine; or, again, by its sprinkling upon the altar.[433]

It was then, when the spirit of Noah, in this covenant-seeking by blood, was recognized approvingly by the Lord, that the Lord smelled the sweet savor of the proffered offering,--“the savor of satisfaction, or delectation,”[434] to him, was in it,--and he established a new covenant with Noah, giving commandment anew concerning the never-failing sacredness of blood: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; as [freely as] the green herb, have I given you all [flesh]. But flesh with the _life_ thereof, which is the _blood_ thereof [flesh with the blood in it], shall ye not eat. And surely your blood, the blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it: and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”[435] Here, the blood of even those animals whose flesh might be eaten by man, is forbidden for food: because it is life itself, and therefore sacred to the Author of life.[436] And the blood of man must not be shed by man,--except where man is made God’s minister of justice,--because man is formed in the image of God, and only God has a right to take away--directly or by his minister--the life, from one bearing God’s likeness.

And this injunction, together with this covenant, preceded the ceremonial law of Moses; and it survived that law, as well. When the question came up in the apostolic conference at Jerusalem, on the occasion of the visit of Paul and Barnabas, concerning the duty of Gentile Christians to the Mosaic ceremonial law, the decision was explicit, that while nothing which was of that ritual alone should be imposed as obligatory on the new believers, those essential elements of religious observance which were prior to Moses, and which were not done away with in Christ, should be emphasized in all the extending domain of Christianity. Spirituality in worship, personal purity, and the holding sacred to God, all blood--or life--as the gift of God, and as the means of communion with God, must never be ignored in the realm of Christian duty. “Write unto them, that they abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from what is strangled, and from blood,”[437] said the Apostle James, in announcing the decision of this conference; and the circular letter to the Gentile churches was framed accordingly. Nor does this commandment seem ever to have been abrogated, in letter or in spirit. However poorly observed by Christians, it stands to-day as it stood in the days of Paul, and in the days of Noah, a perpetual obligation, with all its manifold teachings of the blessed benefits of the covenant of blood.[438]

3. THE BLOOD COVENANT IN CIRCUMCISION.

Again the Lord made a new beginning for the race, in his start with Abraham, as the father of a chosen and peculiar people in the world. And again the covenant of blood, or the covenant of strong-friendship as it is still called in the East, was the prominent feature in this beginning. The Apostle James says, that “Abraham ... was called the friend of God.”[439] God himself, speaking through Isaiah, refers to Abraham, as “Abraham my friend”;[440] and Jehoshaphat, in his extremity, calling upon God for help, speaks of “Abraham, thy friend.”[441] And this application of the term “friend” to any human being, in his relations to God, is absolutely unique in the case of Abraham, in all the Old Testament record. Abraham, and only Abraham, was called “the friend of God.”[442] Yet the immediate narrative of Abraham’s relations to God, makes no specific mention of this unique term “friend,” as being then applied to Abraham. It is only as we recognize the primitive rite of blood-friendship in the incidents of that narrative, that we perceive clearly why and how God’s covenant with Abraham was preeminently a covenant of friendship.

“I will make[443] my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly,” said the Lord to Abraham.[444] And again, “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee; and to thy seed after thee.... And as for thee, thou shalt keep my covenant, thou, and thy seed after thee throughout their generations.”[445] And then there came the explanation, how Abraham was to enter into the covenant of blood-friendship with the Lord; so that he might be called “the friend of God.” “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee; every male among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of a covenant betwixt me and you.”[446] The blood-covenant of friendship shall be consummated by your giving to me of your personal blood at the very source of paternity--“under your girdle”;[447] thereby pledging yourself to me, and pledging, also, to me, those who shall come after you in the line of natural descent. “And my covenant [this covenant of blood-friendship] shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.”[448]

So, “in the selfsame day was Abraham circumcised,” and thenceforward he bore in his flesh the evidence that he had entered into the blood-covenant of friendship with the Lord.[449] To this day, indeed, Abraham is designated in all the East, as distinctively, “Khaleel-Allah,” “the Friend of God,” or “Ibrâheem el-Khaleel,” “Abraham the Friend”[450]--the one Friend, of God.

When a Jewish child is circumcised, it is commonly said of him, that he is caused “to enter into the covenant of Abraham”; and, his god-father, or sponsor, is called _Baal-bereeth_,[451] “Master of the covenant.”[452] Moreover, even down to modern times, the rite of circumcision has included a recognition, however unconscious, of the primitive blood-friendship rite, by the custom of the ecclesiastical operator, as God’s representative, receiving into his mouth, and thereby being made a partaker of, the blood mingled with wine, according to the method described among the Orientals, in the rite of blood-friendship, from the earliest days of history.[453]

It is a peculiarity of the primitive compact of blood-friendship, that he who would enter into it must be ready to make a complete surrender of himself, in loving trust, to him with whom he covenants. He must, in fact, so love and trust, as to be willing to merge his separate individuality, in the dual personality of which he becomes an integral part. Only he who believes in another unreservedly and fearlessly, can take such a step intelligently. The record concerning Abraham stands: “He believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness.”[454] The Hebrew word, _heëmeen_ (הֶאֱמִין) here translated “believed in,” carries the idea of an unqualified committal of self to another. It is from the root _aman_ (אָמַן) with the two-fold idea of “to be faithful” and “to trust.”[455] Its correspondent in the Arabic, (_amana_, امن) carries the same double idea, of a confident and an entire committal of self to another, in trust and in trustworthiness.[456] Lane’s definition[457] of the substantive from this root is: “The becoming true to the trust, with respect to which God has confided in one, by a firm believing of the heart.”[458] Abraham so trusted the Lord, that he was ready to commit himself to the Lord, as in the rite of blood-friendship. Therefore the Lord counted Abraham’s spirit of loving and longing trust, as the equivalent of a spiritual likeness with himself; and the Lord received Abraham, by his circumcision, into the covenant of blood-friendship.[459] Or, as the Apostle James states it: “Abraham believed [in] God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.”[460] Here is the doctrine of “imputation,” with real life in it; in lieu of a hard commercial transaction, as some have viewed it.

The recognition of the covenant of blood in the rite of circumcision, throws light on an obscure passage in the life of Moses, as recorded in Exodus 4 : 20-26. Moses, himself a child of the covenant, had neglected the circumcision of his own first-born; and so he had been unfaithful to the covenant of Abraham. While on his way from the Wilderness of Sinai to Egypt, with a message from God to Pharaoh, concerning the un-covenanted first-born of the Egyptians,[461] Moses was met by a startling providence, and came face to face with death--possibly with a bloody death of some sort. “The Lord met him, and sought to kill him,” it is said. It seems to have been perceived, both by Moses and his wife, that they were being cut off from a farther share in God’s covenant-plans for the descendants of Abraham, because of their failure to conform to their obligations in the covenant of Abraham.

“Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at [made it touch] his [Moses’] feet; and she said, Surely a bridegroom of blood [one newly bound through blood], art thou to me. So He [the Lord] let him [Moses] alone [He spared him, as one newly true to the covenant of Abraham, and newly safe within its bounds]. Then she [Zipporah] said [again], A bridegroom of blood art thou, because of the circumcision;” or, as the margin renders it: “A bridegroom of blood [art thou] in regard of the circumcision.”[462]

The Hebrew word, _khathan_ (חָתָן), here translated “bridegroom,” has, as its root idea, the binding through severing, the covenanting by blood;[463] an idea that is in the marriage-rite, as the Orientals view it,[464] and that is in the rite of circumcision, also. Indeed, in the Arabic, the corresponding term (_khatan_, ختن), is applied interchangeably to one who is a relation by the way of one’s wife, and to one who is circumcised.[465] Hence, the words of Zipporah would imply that, by this rite of circumcision, she and her child were brought into blood-covenant relations with the descendants of Abraham, and her husband also was now saved to that covenant; whereas before they were in danger of being covenanted with a bloody death. It is this idea which seems to be in the Targum of Onkelos, where it renders Zipporah’s first word: “By the blood of this circumcision, a _khathna_ [a blood-won relation] is given to us;” and her second speech: “If the blood of this circumcision had not been given [to us; then we had had] a _khathna_ [a blood-won relation] of slaughter [of death].” It is as though Zipporah had said: “We are now newly covenanted to each other, and to God, by blood; whereas, but for this, we should have been covenanted to slaughter [or death] by blood.”

4. THE BLOOD COVENANT TESTED.

After the formal covenant of blood had been made between Abraham and Jehovah, there was a specific testing of Abraham’s fidelity to that covenant, as if in evidence of the fact that it was no empty ceremony on his part, whereby he pledged his blood,--his very life, in its successive generations,--to Jehovah, in the rite of circumcision. The declaration of his “faith,” and the promise of his faithfulness, were to be justified, in their manifest sincerity, by his explicit “works” in their direction.

All the world over, men who were in the covenant of blood-friendship were ready,--or were supposed to be ready,--to give not only their lives for each other, but even to give, for each other, that which was dearer to them than life itself. And, all the world over, men who pledged their devotedness to their gods were ready to surrender to their gods that which they held as dearest and most precious--even to the extent of their life, and of that which was dearer than life. Would Abraham do as much for his Divine Friend, as men would do for their human friends? Would Abraham surrender to his God all that the worshipers of other gods were willing to surrender in proof of their devotedness? These were questions yet to be answered before the world.

“And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham [did put him to the test, or the proof, of his friendship], and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee unto the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”[466] And Abraham rose up instantly to respond to the call of his Divine Friend.

Just here it is important to consider two or three points at which the Western mind has commonly failed to recognize the Oriental thought, in connection with such a transaction as this.

An Oriental father prizes an only son’s life far more than he prizes his own. He recognizes it, to be sure, as at his own disposal; but he would rather surrender any other possession than that. For an Oriental to die without a son, is a terrible thought.[467] His life is a failure. His future is blank. But with a son to take his place, an Oriental is, in a sense, ready to die. When therefore an Oriental has one son, if the choice must be between the cutting short of the father’s life, or of the son’s, the former would be the lesser surrender; the latter would be far greater. Preeminently did this truth have force in the case of Abraham, whose pilgrim-life had been wholly with reference to the future; and whose earthly-joy and earthly-hopes centered in Isaac, the son of his old age. For Abraham to have surrendered his own toil-worn life, now that a son of promise was born to him, would have been a minor matter, at the call of God. But for Abraham to surrender that son, and so to become again a childless, hopeless old man, was a very different matter. Only a faith that would neither question nor reason, only a love that would neither fail nor waver, could meet an issue like that. The surrender of an only son by an Oriental, was not, therefore, as it is often deemed in the Western mind, a father’s selfish yielding of a lesser substitute for himself;[468] but it was the giving of the one thing which he had power to surrender, which was more precious to him than himself. The difference here is as great as that between the enforced sending, by an able-bodied citizen, of a “substitute” defender of the sender’s country in a war-time draft, and the willing sending to the front, by an aged father, of his loved and only son, at the first signal of his country’s danger. The one case has in it more than a suggestion of cowardly shirking; the other shows only a loyal and self-forgetful love of country.

Again, we are liable to think of the surrender of a life, as the dooming to death; and of a sacrificial outpouring of blood, as necessarily an expiatory offering. In the case of the only son sent into battle by his patriotic father, death may be an incident to the transaction; but the gift of the son is the gift of his _life_, whether he shall live or die. And although the war itself be caused by sin, and be a result, and so a punishment, of sin, the son is sent into it, not in order that he may bear punishment, but that he may avert its disastrous consequences, even at the cost of his life--with the necessity of his death.

This idea of the surrender of an only son, not in expiation of guilt, but in proof of unselfish and limitless affection, runs down through the ages, apart from any apparent trace of connection with the tradition of Abraham and Isaac. It is seen:--in India, in the story of the sacrifice of Siralen, the only son of Sirutunden and Vanagata-ananga, as a simple proof of their loving devotedness to Vishnoo;[469] in Arabia, in the story of the proffered slaying of the two only children of a king, in order to restore to life by their blood, his dearly loved friend and servant, who had been turned to stone;[470] in the Norseland, in the similar story of the king and his friend and servant “Faithful John;”[471] in Great Britain, in the story of Amys and Amylion, the one of these friends sacrificing his two only children for the purpose of curing the other friend of the leprosy;[472] and so in many another guise.[473] Whatever other value attaches to these legends, they show most clearly, that the conception of such a surrender as that to which Abraham was called in the sacrifice of Isaac, was not a mere outgrowth of the customs of human sacrifices to malignant divinities, in Phoenicia and Moab and the adjoining countries, in the days of Abraham and earlier.[474] There was a sentiment involved, which is everywhere recognized as the noblest and purest of which humanity is capable.

If, indeed, there were any reluctance to accept this simple explanation of an obvious view of the test of friendship to which God subjected Abraham, because of its possible bearing on the recognized symbolism of the transaction, then it would be sufficient to remember, that one view of such a transaction is not necessarily its only view. Whatever other view be taken of the fact and the symbolism of God’s call on Abraham, to surrender to him his only son, it is obvious that, as a fact, God did test, or prove, Abraham his friend, by asking of him the very evidence of his loving and unselfish devotedness to him, which has been, everywhere and always, reckoned the highest and surest evidence possible of the truest and holiest friendship. And this may well be looked at, also, as a symbol of God’s purpose of surrendering _his_ only Son, in proof of his fidelity to his blood-covenant of friendship with Abraham and Abraham’s true seed forever.

“Greater love [in friendship] hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;”[475] and no man, as the Oriental mind views it, can so utterly lay down his life, as when he lays down the larger life of his only son. Abraham showed himself capable of even such friendship as this, in his blood-covenant with Jehovah; and when he had manifested his spirit of devotedness, he was told to stay his hand and spare his son: the will was accepted for the deed. “Yea, he that had gladly received the promises, was offering up his only begotten son; even he of whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God is able to raise up even from the dead; from whence he did also in a parable receive him back.”[476] Then it was, that “the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, By myself have I sworn [by my life], saith the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed: because thou hast [even to this extent] obeyed my voice.”[477] The blood-covenant of friendship between Jehovah and Abraham had more meaning in it than ever, through its testing and its triumph, in this transaction.

And it is on this record, and apparently in this view of the record, that the Apostle James says: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect [consummated]; and the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God.”[478]

5. THE BLOOD COVENANT AND ITS TOKENS IN THE PASSOVER.

There came, again, a time when the Lord would give fresh evidence of _his_ fidelity to his covenant of blood-friendship with Abraham. Again, a new start was to be made in the history of redemption. The seed of Abraham was in Egypt, and the Lord would bring thence that seed, for its promised inheritance in Canaan. The Egyptians refused to let Israel go, at the call of the Lord. The Lord sent a series of strokes, or “plagues” upon the Egyptians, to enforce their obedience to his summons. And first, he turned the waters of Egypt into blood; so that there was nothing for the Egyptians to drink save that which, as the representative of life, was sacred to their gods, and must not be tasted.[479] So on, from “plague” to “plague”--from stroke to stroke; until the Lord’s sentence went forth against all the uncovenanted first-born of Egypt. Then it was, that the Lord gave another illustration of the binding force of the unfailing covenant of blood.

In the original covenant of blood-friendship, between Abraham and the Lord, it was Abraham who gave of his blood in token of the covenant. Now, the Lord was to give of his blood, by substitution, in re-affirmation of that covenant, with the seed of Abraham his friend. So the Lord commanded the choice of a lamb, “without blemish, a male of the first year”;[480] typical in its qualities, and representative in its selection. The blood of that lamb was to be put “on the two side posts and on the lintel” of every house of a descendant of Abraham; above and along side of every passer through the doorway.[481] “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are,” said the Lord to this people: “and when I see the blood [the token of my blood-covenant with Abraham], I will pass over you, and there shall no plague be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”[482]

The flesh of the chosen lamb was to be eaten by the Israelites, reverently, as an indication of that inter-communion which the blood-friendship rite secures; and in accordance with a common custom of the primitive blood-covenant rite, everywhere.

To this day, as I can testify from personal observation, the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim (where alone in all the world the passover-blood is now shed, year by year), bring to mind the blood-covenant aspects of this rite, by their uses of that sacred blood. The spurting life-blood of the consecrated lambs is caught in basins, as it flows from their cut throats; and not only are all the tents promptly marked with the blood as a covenant-token, but every child of the covenant receives also a blood-mark, on his forehead, between his eyes,[483] in evidence of his relation to God in the covenant of blood-friendship.

It will be remembered that in the primitive rite of blood-friendship a blood-stained record of the covenant is preserved in a small leathern case, to be worn as an amulet upon the arm, or about the neck, by him who has won a friend forever in this sacred rite.[484] It would even seem that this was the custom in ancient Egypt, where the red amulet, which represented the blood of Isis, was worn by those who claimed a blood-friendship with the gods.[485] It is a noteworthy fact, that it was in conjunction with the institution of this passover rite of the Lord’s blood-friendship with Israel, as a permanent ceremonial, that the Lord declared of this rite and its token: “It shall be for a sign upon thine hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes.”[486] And it is on the strength of this injunction, that the Jews have, to this day, been accustomed to wear upon their foreheads, and again upon their arm--as a crown and as an armlet--a small leathern case, as a sacred amulet, or as a “phylactery”; containing a record of the passover-covenant between the Lord and the seed of Abraham his friend. Not the law itself, but the substance of the covenant between the Lawgiver and his people, was the text of this amulet record. It included Exodus 13 : 3-10, 11-16, with its reference to God’s deliverance of his people from bondage, to the institution of the passover feast, and to the consecration of the redeemed first-born; also Deuteronomy 6 : 4-9, 13-22, with its injunction to entire and unswerving fidelity, in the covenant thus memorialized.

The incalculable importance of the symbolism of the phylacteries, in the estimation of the Lord’s people, has been recognized, as a fact, by both Jewish and Christian scholars, even after their primary meaning has been lost sight of--through a strange dropping out of sight of the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, so familiar in the land of Egypt and in the earlier and later homes of the Hebrews. The Rabbis even held that God himself, as the other party in this blood-covenant, wore the phylacteries, as its token and memorial.[487] Among other passages in support of this, they cited Isaiah 49 : 16: “Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands”; and Isaiah 62 : 8: “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.” Farrar, referring to this claim of the Rabbis, says, “it may have had some mystic meaning”;[488] and certainly the claim corresponds singularly with the thought and with the customs of the rite of blood-covenanting. To this day many of the Syrian Arabs swear, as a final and a most sacred oath, by their own blood--as their own life;[489] and in making the covenant of blood-friendship they draw the blood from the upper arm, because, as they explain it, the arm is their strength.[490] The cry of the Egyptian soul to his god, in his resting on the covenant of blood, was, “Give me your arm; I am made as ye.”[491] It is not strange, therefore, that those who had the combined traditions of Egypt and of Syria, should see a suggestion of the covenant of blood-friendship in the inspired assurance: “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength.” It is by no means improbable, indeed, that the universal custom of lifting up the arm to God in a solemn oath[492] was a suggestion of swearing by one’s blood, by proffering it in its strength, as in the inviolable covenant of sacred friendship with God. So, again, in the “striking hands” as a form of sacred covenanting[493]; the clasping of hands, in blood.

The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for “red,” sometimes stood for “blood.”[494] The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red;[495] hence, follows our word “rubrics.” The Rabbis say, that when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the Lord.[496] It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord.[497] The red thread, in China, to-day, as has been already shown, binds the double cup, from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of “wedding wine”; as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood.[498] And it is a red thread which in India, to-day, is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck.[499] Among the American Indians, “scarlet, or red,” is the color which stands for sacrifices, or for sacrificial blood, in all their picture painting; and the shrine, or _tunkan_, which continues to have its devotees, “is painted red, as a sign of active [or living] worship.”[500] The same is true of the shrines in India;[501] the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood.

The two covenant tokens of blood-friendship with God--circumcision and the phylacteries--are, by the Rabbis, closely linked in their relative importance. “Not every Israelite is a Jew,” they say, “except he has two witnesses--the sign of circumcision and phylacteries”;[502] the sign given to Abraham, and the sign given to Moses.

In the narration of King Saul’s death, as given in 2 Samuel 1 : 1-16, the young Amalekite, who reports Saul’s death to David, says: “I took the crown that was upon his head, and the bracelet that was on his arm [the emblems of his royalty], and have brought them hither unto my lord.” The Rabbis, in their paraphrasing of this passage,[503] claim that it was the phylactery, “the frontlet” (_totephta_) rather than a “bracelet,” which was on the arm of King Saul; as if the king of the covenant-people of Jehovah would not fail to be without the token of Jehovah’s covenant with that people.

So firmly fixed was the idea of the appropriateness and the binding force of these tokens of the covenant, that their use, in one form or another, was continued by Christians, until the custom was denounced by representative theologians and by a Church Council. In the Catacombs of Rome, there have been found “small caskets of gold, or other metal, for containing a portion of the Gospels, generally part of the first chapter of John [with its covenant promises to all who believe on the true Paschal Lamb], which were worn on the neck,” as in imitation of the Jewish phylacteries. These covenant tokens were condemned by Irenæus, Augustine, Chrysostom, and by the Council of Laodicea, as a relic of heathenism.[504]

6. THE BLOOD COVENANT AT SINAI.

When rescued Israel had reached Mount Sinai, and a new era for the descendants of Abraham was entered upon, by the issue of the divinely given charter of a separate nationality, the covenant of blood-friendship between the Lord and the seed of the Lord’s friend, was once more recognized and celebrated. “And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning [or, ‘prepared for a new start’ as that phrase means],[505] and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord;” not sin-offerings are named, but burnt-offerings, of consecration, and peace-offerings, of communion. And now observe the celebration of the symbolic rite of the blood-covenant between the Lord and the Lord’s people, with the substitute blood accepted on both sides, and with the covenant record agreed upon. “And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book [the record] of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people [half of it he sprinkled on the Lord’s altar, and half of it he sprinkled on the Lord’s people. The writer of Hebrews[506] says that Moses sprinkled blood on the book, also; thus blood-staining the record of the covenant, according to the custom in the East, to-day], and [Moses] said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words [or, as the margin renders it, ‘upon all these conditions,’ in the written compact]. Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel.... And they beheld God, and did eat and drink”;[507] as in the social inter-communion, which commonly accompanies the rite of blood-friendship.

When Abraham was brought into the covenant of blood-friendship with Jehovah, it was his own blood which Abraham devoted to Jehovah. When Jehovah recognized anew this covenant of blood-friendship in behalf of the seed of his friend, Jehovah provided the substitute blood, for its symbolizing in the passover. When united Israel was to be inducted into the privileges of this covenant of blood-friendship at Mount Sinai, half of the blood came from the one party, and half of the blood came from the other party, to the sacred compact; both portions being supplied from a common and a mutually accepted symbolic substitute.

7. THE BLOOD COVENANT IN THE MOSAIC RITUAL.

With the establishment of the Mosaic law, there was an added emphasis laid on the sacredness of blood, which had been insisted on in the Noachic covenant; and many new illustrations were divinely given of the possibilities of an ultimate union with God through inter-flowing blood, and of present communion with God through the sharing of the substitute flesh of a sacrificial victim.

“Ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or beast, in any of your dwellings. Whosoever it be that eateth any blood, that soul shall be cut off from his people.”[508] “Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eateth any manner of blood; I will set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life [the soul] of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life [by reason of its being the life]. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that is among you eat blood.”[509] “For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof; therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.”[510]

Because of sin, death has passed upon man. Man can have new life only from the Author of life. A transfusion of life is, as it were, a transfusion of blood; for, “of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof.” If, indeed, the death-possessed man could enter into a blood-covenant with the Author of life,--could share the life of him who is Life,--then the dead might have new life in a new nature; and the far separated sinner might be brought into oneness with God; finding atonement in the cleansing flow of the new blood thus applied. So it pleased God to appoint substitute blood upon the altar of witness between the sinner and Himself, as a symbol of that atonement whereby the sinner might, through faith, become a partaker of the divine nature. “The wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life”[511]--in that foreshadowed divine blood, which the blood of beasts, offered on the altar, can, for a time, typify. Blood--even the blood of beasts--thus made sacred, as a holy symbol, must never be counted as a common thing; but it must be held, ever reverently, as a token of that life which is the sinner’s need; and which is God’s grandest gift and God’s highest prerogative.

In the line of this teaching, the command went forth: “What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat in the camp, or that killeth it without the camp, and hath not brought it unto the door of the tent of meeting, to offer it [with its blood] as an oblation unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord: blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood [improperly]; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, unto the door of the tent of meeting, unto the priest, and sacrifice them for sacrifices of peace-offering unto the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tent of meeting; and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord.”[512] The children of Israel were, at all times and everywhere, to reach out after communion and union with God, through the surrender of their personal selves in the surrender of their substitute blood--with its divinely appointed symbolism of communion and union with God “in the blood of the eternal covenant” of divine friendship.[513]

And again: “Whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, which taketh in hunting any beast or fowl that may be eaten; he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with the dust.”[514] If he be at a distance from the tabernacle, so that he cannot bring the blood for an oblation at the altar, he must, at all events, reverently pour out the blood as unto God, and cover it as he would a human body in a grave. And to this day this custom prevails widely throughout the East; not among Jews alone, but among Christians and Muhammadans, as also among those of other religions.[515]

Under the Mosaic ritual, the forms and the symbolisms of sacrifice were various. But through them all, where blood was an element,--in the sin-offering, in the trespass-offering, in the burnt-offering, in the peace-offering,--blood always represented life, never death. Death was essential to its securing; but, when secured, blood was life. Death, as the inevitable wages of sin, had already passed unto all men; and “death reigned from Adam to Moses”; but, with the full disclosure of the law, in Moses, which made sin apparent, there came, also, a disclosure of an atonement for sin, and of a cure for its consequences. Death was already here; now came the assurance of an attainable life. The sinner, in the very article of death, was shown that he might turn, in self-surrender and in loving trust, with a proffer of his own life, by substitute blood, to God; and that he might reach out hopefully after inter-union with God, by the sharing of the divine-nature in the unfailing covenant of divine-human blood-friendship. Thus “not as the trespass [with its mere justice of punishment; but] so also [and ‘much more,’ of grace alone,] is the free gift [of life to the justly dead].”[516]

All the detailed requirements of the Mosaic ritual, and all the specific teachings of the Rabbis, as well, go to show the preeminence of the _blood_ in the sacrificial offerings; go to show, that it is the _life_ (which the blood is), and not the _death_ (which is merely necessary to the securing of the blood), of the victim, that is the means of atonement; that gives the hope of a sinner’s new inter-union with God.

In a commentary on a Talmudic tract, on The Day of Atonement, Rabbi Obadiah of Barttenora, notes the fact,[517] that in the choice by lot, of the priests who were to have a part in the daily sacrifice, the priest _first_ selected “obtained the right [of priority], and sprinkled the blood upon the altar, after he had received it in the vessel for the purpose; for he who sprinkled the blood [is the one who had] received the blood. The _next_ priest to him killed the sacrifice, and this notwithstanding [the fact] that the slaying preceded the receiving of the blood; because _the office of sprinkling was higher than that of slaying_; for the slaying was lawful if done by a stranger; which was not the case with the sprinkling.” The death of the victim was a minor matter: it was the victim’s life,--its blood which was its life,--that had chief value and sacredness.

On this same point Dr. Edersheim says:[518] “The Talmud declares the offering of birds, so as to secure the blood [so as to secure that which was preeminently precious] to have been the most difficult part of a priest’s work. For the _death_ of the [victim of the] sacrifice was only a means towards an end; that end being the shedding and sprinkling of the _blood_, by which the atonement was really made. The Rabbis mention a variety of rules observed by the priest who caught up the blood--all designed to make the best provision for its proper sprinkling. Thus, the priest was to catch up the blood in a silver vessel pointed at the bottom, so that it could not be put down; and to keep it constantly stirred, to preserve the fluidity of the blood. In the sacrifice of the red heifer, however, the priest caught the blood directly in his left hand, and sprinkled it with his right towards the Holy Place: while in that of the leper, one of the two priests received the blood in the vessel; the other [received it] in his hand, from which he anointed the purified leper.”

Recognizing the truth that in the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, “consecration by blood is consecration in a living union with Jehovah,” Professor W. Robertson Smith observes,[519] that, “in the ordinary atoning sacrifices, the blood is not applied to the people [it is merely poured out Godward, as if in sign of life surrender]; but in the higher forms, as in the sacrifice for the whole congregation (Lev. 4 : 13 _seq._), the priest at least dips his hand in it, and so puts the bond of blood between himself, as the people’s representative, and the altar, as the point of contact with God.”[520] And so, on the basis of the root-idea of the primitive rite of the covenant of blood, an inter-union is symbolized between the returning sinner and his God.

The aim of all the Mosaic sacrifices was, a restored communion with God; and the hope which runs through them all is of a divine-human inter-union through blood. “The one purpose which is given after every sacrifice in the first chapters of Leviticus,”[521] says Stanley,[522] “is, that it ‘shall make a sweet savour unto the Lord’.” And Edersheim says,[523] of all the various sacrifices of the ritual: “These, were, then, either sacrifices of communion with God, or else [were] intended to restore that communion when it had been disturbed or dimmed through sin and trespass: sacrifices _in_ communion, or [sacrifices] _for_ communion, with God. To the former class belong the burnt and the peace-offerings; to the latter, the sin and the trespass offerings.”[524]

The sin-offering, of that ritual, was, in a sense, the basis of the whole system of sacrifices. The chief feature of that offering, was the out-flowing of its blood Godward. The offering itself was a substitute-offering, for an individual or for the entire people. Its blood was sprinkled upon the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, or poured out at the base of that altar,[525]--the altar of personal consecration; or, it was sprinkled within the Holy Place toward the Most Holy Place,[526]--the symbolic dwelling-place of Jehovah: and again it was made to touch the horns of the altar of incense, which sent up its sweet savor to God: in every case, it was the outreaching of the sinner toward inter-union with God, in a covenant of blood.

The whole burnt-offering, of the Mosaic ritual, symbolised the entire surrender to God, of the individual or of the congregation, in covenant faithfulness; the giving of one’s self in unreserved trust to Him with whom the offerer desired to be in loving oneness. It was an indication of a readiness to enter fully into that inter-union, which the blood-covenant brought about between two who had been separated, but who were henceforth to be as one. This offering also must be made with blood; for it is blood--which is the life--that gives the possibility of inter-union. All the outpoured blood of this offering, however, went directly to the altar upon which the offering itself was laid;[527] not toward the Most Holy Place, of the Lord’s symbolic presence. This offering was not, indeed, understood as in itself compassing inter-union; it indicated rather a desire and a readiness for inter-union--anew or renewed: so, both the substitute-body and the substitute-blood were offered at the altar of typical surrender and consecration. When other sacrifices were brought, the burnt-offering followed the sin-offering, but preceded the peace-offering;[528] again, it might be offered by itself. He who was of the blood-covenant stock of Abraham, thereby sought restoration to the full privileges of that covenant, to which he had not been wholly true; and even he who was not of that stock might in this way show his desire to share in its privileges; “for the burnt offering was the only sacrifice which non-Israelites were permitted to bring”[529] to the altar of Jehovah.

Following the communion-seeking, or the union-seeking, sin-offering (with its connected, or related, trespass-offering, or guilt-offering), and the self-surrendering burnt-offering, there came the joyous communion-symbolizing peace-offering, with its type of completed union,[530] in the sharing, by the sinner and his God, of the flesh of the sacrificial victim at a common feast. And this banquet-sacrifice[531] corresponds with the feast of inter-communion which commonly follows the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, and which marks the completion of the inter-union thereby sought after.

All the other sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual follow in the line of these three classes. Even those which are in themselves offered without blood, presuppose the individual’s share in the blood-covenant, by the rite of circumcision, and through the high priest’s sin-offering for the entire congregation. “The Rabbis attach ten comparative degrees of sanctity to sacrifices; and it is interesting to mark, that of these the first belonged to the blood of the sin-offering; the second to the burnt-offering; the third to the sin-offering itself; and the fourth to the trespass-offering.”[532] The blood which is to secure the covenant-union--anew or renewed--is of preeminent importance. Then comes the symbol of self-surrendering devotedness. First, the possibility of inter-union; next, the expression of readiness and desire for it. After this, the other sacrifices range themselves according to their signification, until the culmination of the series is reached in the joyous inter-communion feast of the peace-offering.

But, with all the suggestions of the rite of blood-covenanting, in the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual, there were limitations in the correspondences of that rite in those sacrifices, which mark the incompleteness of their symbolism, and which point to better things to come. In the primitive blood-covenant rite itself, both parties receive, and partake of, the blood which becomes common to the two. In all the outside religions of the world, where men reach out after a divine-human inter-union through substitute-blood, the offerer drinks of the sacrificial blood, or of something which stands for it; and so he is supposed to share the nature of the God with whom he thus covenants and inter-unites. In the Mosaic ritual, however, all drink-offerings of blood were forbidden to him who would enter into covenant with God; he might not taste of the blood. He might, it is true, look forward, by faith, to an ultimate sharing of the divine nature; and in anticipation of that inter-union, he could enjoy a symbolic inter-communion with God, by partaking of the peace-offerings at the table of his Lord; but as yet the sacrificial offering which could supply to his death-smitten nature the vivifying blood of an everlasting covenant, was not disclosed to him.[533]

Even the substitute blood which he presented at the altar, as he came with his outreaching after a blood-covenant union with the Lord, did not secure to him direct personal access to the symbolic earthly dwelling-place of the Lord. That blood could be poured out at the base of the altar of consecration, or it could be sprinkled upon its horns. That blood could, on occasions be sprinkled before the veil of the Most Holy Place; or could touch the horns of the altar of sweet incense. But that blood could never pass that veil which guarded the place of the Lord’s symbolic presence, save once in a year when the high-priest, all by himself, and that not without a show of his own unfitness for the mission, went in thither, to sprinkle the substitute blood before the mercy-seat; “the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the Holy Place hath not yet been manifest[534]”; that the substitute “blood of bulls and of goats”[535] cannot be a means of man’s inter-union with God.

Lest, indeed, the Israelite should believe that a blood-covenant union was really secured with God, rather than typified, through these prescribed symbolic sacrifices and their sharing, he was repeatedly warned against that fatal error, and was taught that his true covenanting must be by a faith-filled recognition of the symbolism of these substitute agencies; and by the implicit surrender of himself, in loving trust, to Him who had ordained them as symbols. Thus in the Psalms:

“Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify unto thee: I am God, even thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; And thy burnt-offerings are continually before me.... Will I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving; And pay thy vows unto the Most High: And call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

“But unto the wicked, God saith: What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, And that thou hast taken my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, And castest my words behind thee.”[536]

Again, in the prophecy of Isaiah:

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? Saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; Incense is an abomination unto me.... Wash you, make you clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; Cease to do evil: Learn to do well; Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed; Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.”[537]

And with this very warning against a false reliance on the symbols themselves, the same prophet gives assurance of better things in store for all those who are in true blood-covenant with God; even though they be not of the peculiar people of Abraham’s natural descent. Foretelling the future, when the types of the sacrifice shall be realized, he says:

“And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all peoples A feast of fat things, A feast of wine on the lees; Of fat things full of marrow, Of wines on the lees well refined.”[538]

The feast of inter-communion shall be sure, when the blood-covenant of inter-union is complete.

Again, by Jeremiah:

“Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Add your burnt-offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye flesh.

[But remember that that is not the completion of a covenant with me].

For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them, In the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, Concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.

[As if burnt offerings and sacrifices were the all important thing];

But this thing I commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice, And I will be your God, And ye shall be my people; And walk ye in all the way that I command you, That it may be well with you.”[539]

Once more, by Hosea:

“O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness is as a morning cloud, And as the dew that goeth early away.... For I desire mercy and not sacrifice; And the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings. But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant:

[or, as the Revisers’ “margin” would render it,

“But they are as men that have transgressed a covenant”:] There have they dealt treacherously against me”[540]

[Therein have they proved unfaithful to the requirements of the blood-covenant on which they assumed to be resting, in their sacrifices].

And so, all the way along through the prophets, in repeated emphasis of the incompleteness of the blood-covenanting symbols in the ritual sacrifices.

Concerning the very rite of circumcision, which was the token of Abraham’s covenant of blood-friendship with the Lord, the Israelites were taught that its spiritual value was not in the formal surrender of a bit of flesh, and a few drops of blood, in ceremonial devotedness to God, but in its symbolism of the implicit surrender of the whole life and being, in hearty covenant with God. “Behold, unto the Lord thy God belongeth the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples as at this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked.”[541] “And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessings and the curse which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.... And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.”[542] And when this has come to pass, the true seed of Abraham,[543] circumcised in heart,[544] shall be in the covenant of blood-friendship with God.

So, also, with the phylacteries, as the record of the blood-covenant of the passover, they had a value only as they represented a heart-remembrance of that covenant, by their wearers. Says Solomon, in the guise of Wisdom.

“My son, forget not my law; But let thine heart keep my commandments.... Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: Bind them about thy neck; Write them upon the table of thy heart; So shalt thou find favor and good understanding In the sight of God and man.”[545]

“Keep my commandments and live; And my law as the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers; Write them upon the table of thine heart.”[546]

And the prophet Jeremiah foretells the recognition of this truth in the coming day of better things:

“Behold the days come, saith the Lord, That I will make a new covenant With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand, To bring them out of the land of Egypt;

[That covenant was the blood-covenant of the passover; of which the phylacteries were a token.]

Which my covenant they brake, Although I was an husband unto them [a lord over them] saith the Lord; But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, After those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, And in their heart will I write it:

[Instead of its being written as now, outside of them, on their hand and on their forehead.]

And I will be their God, And they shall be my people.... For I will forgive their iniquity, And their sin will I remember no more.”[547]

The blood-covenant symbols of the Mosaic law, all pointed to the possibility of a union of man’s spiritual nature with God; but they did not in themselves either assure or indicate that union as already accomplished; nor did they point the way to it, as yet made clear. They were only “a shadow of the things to come.”[548]

Another gleam of the primitive truth, that blood is life and not death, and that the transference of blood is the transference of life, is found in the various Mosaic references to the _goel_ (גֹּאֵל), the person who is authorized to obtain blood for blood as an act of justice, in the East. And another proof of the prevailing error in the Western mind, through confounding blood with death, and justice with punishment, is the common rendering of the term _goel_, as “avenger,”[549] or “revenger,”[550] in our English Bible, wherever that term applies to the balancing of a blood account; although the same Hebrew word is in other connections commonly translated “redeemer,”[551] or “ransomer.”[552]

Lexicographers are confused over the original import of the word _goel_;[553] all the more, because of this confusion in their minds over the import of blood, in its relation to death and to justice. But it is agreed on all hands, that, as a term, the word was, in the East, applied to that kinsman whose duty it was to secure justice to the injured, and to restore, as it were, a normal balance to the disturbed family relations. Oehler well defines the goel, as “that particular relative whose special duty it was to restore the violated family integrity, who had to redeem not only landed property that had been alienated from the family (Lev. 25 : 25 ff.), or a member of the family that [who] had fallen into slavery (Lev. 25 : 47 ff.), but also the blood that had been taken away from the family by murder.”[554] Hence, in the event of a depletion of the family by the loss of blood--the loss of a life--the goel had a responsibility of securing to the family an equivalent of that loss, by other blood, or by an agreed payment for its value. His mission was not vengeance, but equity. He was not an avenger, but a redeemer, a restorer, a balancer. And in that light, and in that light alone, are all the Oriental customs in connection with blood-cancelling seen to be consistent.

All through the East, there are regularly fixed tariffs for blood-cancelling; as if in recognition of the relative loss to a family, of one or another of its supporting members.[555] This idea, of the differences in ransoming-value between different members of the family, is recognized, in the Mosaic standards of ritual-ransom;[556] although the accepting of a ransom for the blood of a blood-spiller was specifically forbidden in the Mosaic law.[557] This prohibition, in itself, however, seems to be a limitation of the privileges of the goel, as before understood in the East. The Qurân, on the other hand, formally authorizes the settlement of manslaughter damages by proper payments.[558]

Throughout Arabia, and Syria, and in various parts of Africa,[559] the first question to be considered in any case of unlawful blood-shedding is, whether the loss life shall be restored--or balanced--by blood, or by some equivalent of blood. Von Wrede, says of the custom of the Arabs, in concluding a peace, after tribal hostilities: “If one party has more slain than the other, the shaykh on whose side the advantage lies, says [to the other shaykh]: ‘Choose between blood and milk’ [between life, and the means of sustaining life]; which is as much as to say, that he may [either] avenge the fallen [take life for life]; or accept blood-money.”[560] Mrs. Finn says, similarly, of the close of a combat in Palestine: “A computation is generally made of the losses on either side by death, wounds, etc., and the balance is paid to the victors.”[561] Burton describes similarly the custom in Arabia.[562]

It is the same in individual cases, as in tribal conflicts. An accepted payment for blood fully restores the balance between the aggrieved parties and the slayer. As Pierotti says: “This charm will teach the Arab to grasp readily the hands of the slayer of his father or his son, saying, ‘Such an one has killed my father, but he has paid me the price of his blood.’”[563] This in itself shows, that it is not revenge, but restitution, that is sought after by the goel; that he is not the blood-avenger, but the blood-balancer.

It is true that, still, in some instances, all money payment for blood is refused; but the avowed motive in such a case is the holding of life as above price--the very idea which the Mosaic law emphasized. Thus Burton tells of the excited Bed´ween mother who dashes the proffered blood-money to the ground, swearing “by Allah, that she will not eat her son’s blood.”[564] And even where the blood of the slayer is insisted on, there are often found indications that the purpose of this choice rests on the primitive belief that the lost life is made good to the depleted family by the newly received blood.[565] Thus, in the region of Abyssinia, the blood of the slayer is drunk by the relatives of the one first slain;[566] and, in Palestine, when the goel has shed the blood of an unlawful slayer, those who were the losers of blood by that slayer dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, and so obtain their portion of his life.[567]

In short, apart from the specific guards thrown around the mission of the goel, in the interests of justice, by the requirements of the Mosaic law, it is evident, that the primal idea of the goel’s mission was to restore life for life, or to secure the adjusted equivalent of a lost life; not to wreak vengeance, nor yet to mete out punishment. The calling of the goel, in our English Bible, a “revenger” of blood, is a result of the wide-spread and deep-rooted error concerning the primitive and Oriental idea of blood and its value; and that unfortunate translation tends to the perpetuation of this error.

8. THE PRIMITIVE RITE ILLUSTRATED.

Because the primitive rite of blood-covenanting was well known in the Lands of the Bible, at the time of the writing of the Bible, for that very reason, we are not to look to the Bible for a specific explanation of the rite itself, even where there are incidental references in the Bible to the rite and its observances; but, on the other hand, we are to find an explanation of the biblical illustrations of the primitive rite, in the understanding of that rite which we gain from outside sources. In this way, we are enabled to see in the Bible much that otherwise would be lost sight of.

The word for “covenant,” in the Hebrew, _bereeth_ (בְּרִית), is commonly so employed, in the sacred text, as to have the apparent meaning of a thing “cut,” as apart from, or as in addition to, its primary meaning of a thing “eaten.”[568] This fact has been a source of confusion to lexicographers.[569] But, when we consider that the primitive rite of blood-covenanting was by cutting into the flesh in order to the tasting of the blood, and that a feast was always an accompaniment of the rite, if, indeed, it were not an integral portion of it, the two-fold meaning of “cutting” and “eating” attaches obviously to the term “covenant”; as the terms “carving,” and “giving to eat,” are often used interchangeably, with reference to dining; or as we speak of a “cut of beef” as the portion for a table.

The earliest Bible reference to a specific covenant between individuals, is in the mention, at Genesis 14 : 13, of Mamre, Eshcol, and Aner, the Amorites, who were in covenant with--literally, were “masters of the covenant of”--“Abram the Hebrew.” After this, comes the record of a covenant between Abraham and Abimelech, at the wells of Beer-sheba. Abimelech sought that covenant; he sought it because of his faith in Abraham’s God. “God is with thee in all that thou doest,” he said: “Now, therefore, swear unto me here by God, that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son’s son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear.”[570] Then came the giving of gifts by Abraham, according to the practice which seems universal in connection with this rite, in our own day.[571] “And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech.” And they two “made a covenant,”--or, as the Hebrew is, “they two cut a covenant.” This covenant, thus cut between Abraham and Abimelech--patriarchs and sovereigns as they were--was for themselves and for their posterity. As to the manner of its making, we have a right to infer, from all that we know of the manner of such covenant-making among the people of their part of the world, in the earliest days of recorded history.

Herodotus, who goes back more than two-thirds of the way to Abraham, says, that when the Arabians would covenant together, a third man, standing between the two, cuts, with a sharp stone, the inside of the hands of both, and lets the blood therefrom drop on seven stones which are between the two parties.[572] Phicol, the captain of Abimelech’s host, was present, as a third man, when the covenant was cut between Abimelech and Abraham; at Beer-sheba--the Well of the Seven, or the Well of the Oath.[573] Instead of seven stones as a “heap of witness”[574] between the two in this covenanting, “seven ewe lambs” were set apart by Abraham, that they might “be a witness”[575]--a symbolic witness to this transaction.

In the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, as it is practised in some parts of the East, to the present time, in addition to other symbolic witnesses of the rite, a _tree_ is planted by the covenanting parties, “which remains and grows as a witness of their contract.”[576] So it was, in the days of Abraham. “And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned [was a sojourner] in the land of the Philistines many days”[577]--while that tree, doubtless, remained and grew as a witness of his blood-covenant compact with Abimelech the ruler of the Philistines.[578] Abimelech was, as it were, the first-fruits of the “nations”[579] who were to have a blessing through the covenanted friend of God.

It is a noteworthy fact, that when Herodotus describes the Scythians’ mode of drinking each other’s mingled blood, in their covenanting, he tells of their “cutting covenant” by “striking the body” of the covenanting party. In this case, he employs the words _tamnomenon_ (ταμνομένων) “cutting,” and _tupsantes_ (τύψαντες) “striking,” which are the correspondents, on the one hand of the Hebrew _karath_ (כָּרַת) “to cut,” and on the other hand of the Latin _ferire_, “to strike;” as applied to covenant making.[580] And this would seem to make a tri-lingual “Rosetta Stone” of this statement by Herodotus, as showing that the Hebrew “cutting” of the covenant, and the Latin “striking” of the covenant, is the Greek, the Arabian, the Scythian, and the universal primitive, method of covenanting, by cutting into, or by striking, the flesh of a person covenanting; in order that another may become a possessor of his blood, and a partaker of his life.

Yet later, at the same Well of the Seven, another Abimelech came down from Gerar, with “Ahuzzath his friend, and Phicol the captain of his host,” and, prompted by faith, sought a renewal of the covenant with the house of Abraham.[581] It is not specifically declared that Abimelech and Isaac _cut_ a covenant together; but it is said that “they did eat and drink” in token of their covenant relations, and that they “sware one to another.”[582] Apparently they either cut a new covenant, or they confirmed one which their fathers had cut.

When Jacob and Laban covenanted together, in “the mountain [the hill-country] of Gilead,” before their final separation, they had their stone-heap of witness between them; such as Herodotus says the Arabs were accustomed to anoint with their own blood, in their covenanting by blood, in his day;[583] for Jacob, perhaps, had more tolerance than Abraham, for perverted religious symbols.[584] “And now let us cut a covenant, I and thou,” said Laban; “and let it be for a witness between me and thee. And Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar [a pillar instead of a tree]. And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones, and made an heap: and they did eat there on the heap [the Revisers have translated this, _by_ the heap].[585] And Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Gilead. And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and thee this day.... God is witness betwixt me and thee.... The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us. And Jacob sware by the Fear of his father Isaac. And Jacob offered a sacrifice in the mountain, and called his brethren to eat bread: and they did eat bread.”[586] Here again, the cutting of the covenant, and the sharing of a feast in connection with the rite,--the “cutting” and the “eating”--are in accordance with all that we know of the primitive rite, of blood-covenanting in the East, in earlier and in later times.

Yet more explicit is the description of the blood-covenanting which brought into loving unity, David and Jonathan. It was when the faith-filled heroism of the stripling shepherd-boy was thrilling all Israel with grateful admiration, that David was brought into the royal presence of Saul, and of Saul’s more than royal hero-son, Jonathan, to receive the thanks of the king for the rescue of the tarnished honor of the Israelitish host. Modestly, David gave answer to the question of the king. “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” “Then Jonathan and David cut a covenant, because he [Jonathan] loved him [David] as his own soul [as his own life, his own blood].”[587] Then followed that gift of raiment and of arms which was a frequent accompaniment of blood-covenanting.[588] “And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his apparel, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.”[589] From that hour the hearts of David and Jonathan were as one. Jonathan could turn away from father and mother, and could repress all personal ambition, and all purely selfish longings, in proof of his loving fidelity to him who was dear to him as his own blood.[590] His love for David was “wonderful, passing the love of women.”[591]

Nor was this loving compact between Jonathan and David for themselves alone. It was for their posterity as well.[592] “The Lord be with thee, as he hath been with my father,” said Jonathan. “And thou shalt not only while yet I live shew me the kindness of the Lord, that I die not: but also thou shalt not cut off thy kindness from my house for ever: no, not [even] when the Lord hath cut off the enemies of David every one from the face of the earth. So Jonathan cut a covenant with the house of David, saying [as in the imprecations of a blood-covenant], And the Lord shall require it [fidelity to this covenant] at the hand of David’s enemies. And Jonathan caused David to swear again, for the love he had to him: for he loved him as he loved his own soul [his own life, his own blood].”[593] And years afterward, when the Lord had given David rest from all his enemies around about him, the memory of that blood-covenant pledge came back to him; “and David said, Is there yet any that is left of the house of Saul, that I may shew him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”[594] The seating of lame Mephibosheth at David’s royal table,[595] was an illustration of the unfailing obligation of the primitive covenant of blood; which had bound together David and Jonathan, for themselves and for theirs forever.

9. THE BLOOD COVENANT IN THE GOSPELS.

And now from David, to David’s greater Son; from type to anti-type; from symbol and prophecy, to reality and fruition.

Death had passed upon all men. Yet in the hearts of the death-smitten there was still a longing for life. Sin-leprous souls yearned for that in-flow of new being, which could come only through inter-union with the divine nature, in oneness of life with the Author and Source of all life. Revelation and prophecy had assured the possibility and the hope of such inter-union. Rite and ceremony and symbol, the wide-world over, signified man’s desire, and man’s expectation, of covenanted access to God, through personal surrender, and through life-giving, life-representing blood.

But, where men yielded up unauthorized offerings, even of their own blood, or of the very lives of their first-born, they confessed themselves unsatisfied with their attitude God-ward; and, where men followed a divinely prescribed ritual, they were taught by that very ritual itself, that the outpoured blood and the partaken flesh of the sacrifices were, at the best, but mere shadows of good things to come.[596] The whole creation was groaning and travailing in pain together, until the birth of the world’s promised redemption.[597]

The symbolic covenant of blood-friendship was between God and Abraham’s seed; and in that seed were all the nations of the earth to have a blessing. God had called on Abraham to surrender to him his only son, in proof of his unfailing love; and, when Abraham had stood that test of his faith, God had spared to him the proffered offering. It now remained for God to transcend Abraham’s proof of friendship, and to spare not his own and only Son,[598] but to make him a sacrificial offering, by means of which the covenant of blood-friendship, between God and the true seed of Abraham, might become a reality instead of a symbol. Abraham had given to God of his own blood, by the rite of circumcision, in token of his desire for inter-union with God. God was now to give of his blood, in the blood of his Son, for the re-vivifying of the sons of Abraham in “the blood of the eternal covenant.”[599]

Then, in the fullness of time, there came down into this world He who from the beginning was one with God, and who now became one with man. Becoming a sharer of the nature of those who were subject to death, and who longed for life, Jesus Christ was here among men as the fulfillment of type and prophecy; to meet and to satisfy the holiest and the uttermost yearnings of the human soul after eternal life, in communion and union with God. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, ... full of grace and truth.” “In him was life [life that death could not destroy; life that could destroy death], and the life [which was in him] was the light [the guide and the hope] of men.” “He came unto his own, and they that were [called] his own received him not. But as many as received him [whether, before, they had been called his own, or not] to them gave he the right to become children of God [by becoming partakers of his life], even to them that believe on his name: which were [through faith] begotten, not of bloods [not by ordinary generation], nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”[600] Having in his own blood, the life of God and the life of man, Jesus Christ could make men sharers of the divine nature, by making them sharers of his own nature; and this was the truth of truths which he declared to those whom he instructed.

In the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, men drank of each other’s blood, in order that they might have a common life; and they ate together of a mutually prepared feast, in order that they might evidence and nourish that common life. In the outreaching of men Godward, for the privileges of a divine-human inter-union, they poured out the substitute blood of a chosen victim in sacrifice, and they partook of the flesh of that sacrificial victim, in symbolism of sharing the life and the nourishment of Deity. This symbolism was made a reality in Jesus Christ. He was the Seed of Abraham; the fulfillment of the promise, “In Isaac shall thy Seed be called.”[601] He was the true Paschal Lamb; the “Lamb without blemish and without spot”;[602] “the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world.”[603] The blood which he yielded, was Life itself. The body which he laid on the altar was the Peace Offering of Completion.[604]

“Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith:

Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, But a body didst thou prepare for me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure: Then said I, Lo, I am come (In the roll of the book it is written of me) To do thy will, O God.

Saying above, [He here says,] Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein [as if in themselves sufficient] (the which are offered according to the Law); then [also] hath he said, Lo I am come to do thy will. He taketh away the first [the symbolic], that he may establish the second [the real].”[605]

He was here, in the body of his blood and flesh, for the yielding of his blood and the sharing of his flesh, in order to make partakers of his nature, whosoever would seek a divine-human inter-union and a divine-human inter-communion, through the sacrifice made by him, “once for all.”

“Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed [is true meat], and my blood [my life] is drink indeed [is true drink]. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him [Herein is communion through union]. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven: not as the fathers did eat, and died: he that eateth this bread shall live forever.”[606]

“These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum”--toward the close of the second year of his public ministry. The fact that he did speak thus, so long before he had instituted the Memorial Supper, has been a puzzle to many commentators who were unfamiliar with the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, and with the world-wide series of substitute sacrifices and substitute forms of communion, which had grown out of the suggestions, and out of the perversions, of the root symbolisms of that rite. But, in the light of all these customs, the words of Jesus have a clearer meaning. It was as though he had said: “Men everywhere long for life. They seek a share in the life of God. They give of their own blood, or of substitute blood, and they taste of substitute blood, or they receive its touch, in evidence of their desire for oneness of nature with God. They crave communion with God, and they eat of the flesh of their sacrifices accordingly. All that they thus reach out after, I supply. In me is life. If they will become partakers of my life, of my nature, they shall be sharers of the life of God.” Then, he added, in assurance of the fact, that it was a profound spiritual truth which he was enunciating: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.”[607] The divine-human inter-union and the divine-human inter-communion are spiritual, and they are spiritually wrought; or they are nothing.

The words of Jesus on this subject, were not understood by those who heard him. “The Jews therefore strove one with another, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”[608] But this was not because the Jews had never heard of eating the flesh of a sacrificial victim, and of drinking blood in a sacred covenant: it was, rather, because they did not realize that Jesus was to be the crowning sacrifice for the human race; nor did they comprehend his right and power to make those who were one with him through faith, thereby one with God in spiritual nature. “Many,” even “of his disciples, when they heard” these words of his, “said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it?”[609] Nor are questioners at this point, lacking among his disciples to-day.

Before Jesus Christ was formally made an offering in sacrifice, as a means of man’s inter-union and inter-communion with God, there were two illustrations of his mission, in the giving of his blood for the bringing of man into right relations with God. These were, his circumcision, and his agony in Gethsemane.

By his circumcision, Jesus brought his humanity into the blood-covenant which was between God and the seed of God’s friend, Abraham, of whose nature, according to the flesh, Jesus had become a partaker;[610] Jesus thereby pledged his own blood in fidelity to that covenant; so that all who should thereafter become his by their faith, might, through him, be heirs of faithful Abraham.[611] The sweet singer of the Christian Year,[612] seems to find this thought, in this incident in the life of the Holy Child:

“Like sacrificial wine Poured on a victim’s head, Are those few precious drops of thine, Now first to offering led.

“They are the pledge and seal Of Christ’s unswerving faith, Given to his Sire, our souls to heal, Although it cost his death.

“They, to his Church of old, To each true Jewish heart, In gospel graces manifold, Communion blest impart.”

In Gethsemane, the sins and the needs of humanity so pressed upon the burdened soul of Jesus, that his very life was forced out, as it were, from his aching, breaking heart, in his boundless sympathy with his loved ones, and in his infinite longings for their union with God, through their union with himself, in the covenant of blood he was consummating in their behalf.[613] “And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”[614]

Because of his God-ward purpose of bringing men into a loving covenant with God, Jesus gave of his blood in the covenant-rite of circumcision. Because of his man-ward sympathy with the needs and the trials of those whom he had come to save, and because of the crushing burden of their death-bringing sins, Jesus gave of his blood in an agony of intercessory suffering. Therefore it is, that the Litany cry of the ages goes up to him in fulness of meaning: “By the mystery of thy holy incarnation; by thy holy nativity and circumcision; ... by thine agony and bloody sweat, ... Good Lord, deliver us.”

In process of time, the hour drew nigh that the true covenant of blood between God and man should be consummated finally, in its perfectness. The period chosen was the passover-feast--the feast observed by the Jews in commemoration of that blood-covenanting occasion in Egypt, when God evidenced anew his fidelity to his promises to the seed of Abraham, his blood-covenanted friend. “Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knowing that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”[615] “And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.”[616] Whether he actually partook of the passover meal at that time, or not is a point still in dispute;[617] but as to that which follows, there is no question.

“As they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it; and he gave to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.”[618] “This do in remembrance of me. And the cup in like manner after supper;”[619] “and when he had given thanks, he gave [it] to them,”[620] “saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the covenant,”[621] or, as another Evangelist records, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood,”[622] “which is shed for many unto remission of sins”[623] [unto the putting away of sins]. “This do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.”[624] “And they all drank of it.”[625]

Here was the covenant of blood; here was the communion feast, in partaking of the flesh of the fitting and accepted sacrifice;--toward which all rite and symbol, and all heart yearning and inspired prophecy, had pointed, in all the ages. Here was the realization of promise and hope and longing, in man’s possibility of inter-union with God through a common life--which is oneness of blood; and in man’s inter-communion with God, through participation in the blessings of a common table. He who could speak for God, here proffered of his own blood, to make those whom he loved, of the same nature with himself, and so of the same nature with his God; to bring them into blood-friendship with their God; and he proffered of his own body, to supply them with soul nourishment, in that Bread which came down from God.

Then it was, while they were there together in that upper room, for the consummating of that blood-covenant of friendship, that Jesus said to his disciples: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you. No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends [friends in the covenant of blood-friendship now]; for all things that I heard from my Father, I have made known unto you.”[626] A common life, through oneness of blood, secures an absolute unreserve of intimacy; so that neither friend has aught to conceal from his other self. “Abide in me, and I in you; ... for apart from me ye can do nothing,” was the injunction of Jesus to his blood-covenant friends, at this hour of his covenant pledging. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”[627]

Then it was, also, that the prayer of Jesus for his new blood-covenant friends went up: “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee: even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever [whomsoever] thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life [in an eternal covenant of blood]. And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send [as the means of life], even Jesus Christ.... Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are.... Neither for these [here present] only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me.”[628] Here was declared the scope of this blood-covenant, and here was unfolded its doctrine.

It was not an utterly new symbolism that Jesus was introducing into the religious thought of the world: it was rather a new meaning that he was introducing into, or that he was disclosing in, an already widely recognized symbolism. The world was familiar with the shadow of truth; Jesus now made clear to the world, the truth’s substance. Man’s longing to be a partaker of the divine nature, had manifested itself, through all the ages and everywhere. Jesus now showed how that longing of death-smitten man could be realized. “The appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ ... abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”[629] of his blood-covenant.

But a covenant of blood, a covenant to give one’s blood, one’s life, for the saving of another, cannot be consummated without the death of the covenanter. “For where [such] a covenant is, there must of necessity be [be brought] the death of him that made it. For [such] a covenant is of force [becomes a reality] where there hath been death [or, over the dead]: for doth it [such a covenant] ever avail [can it be efficient] while he that made it liveth?”[630] Jesus had said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”[631] Of his readiness to show this measure of love for those who were as the sheep of his fold, he had declared: “I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.... I lay down my life for the sheep.... Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself.”[632] And again: “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: yea, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”[633] “For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.”[634] Such a covenant as this, could be of force only through the death of him who pledges it.

The promise of the covenanting-cup, at the covenanting-feast, was made good on Calvary.[635] The pierced hands and feet of the Divine Friend yielded their life-giving streams. Then, with the final cry, “It is finished,” the very heart of the self-surrendered sacrificial victim was broken,[636] and the life of the Son of God and of the Seed of Abraham, was poured out unto death,[637] in order that all who would, might become sharers in its re-vivifying and saving power. He who was without sin, had received the wages of sin; because, that, only through dying was it possible for him to supply that life which would redeem from the penalty of sin those who had earned death, as sin’s wages.[638] He who, in himself, had life, had laid down his life, so that those who were without life might become its partakers, through faith, in the bonds and blessings of an everlasting covenant. So, the long symbolized covenant of blood was made a reality. “And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.”[639]

10. THE BLOOD COVENANT APPLIED.

Under the symbolic sacrifices of the Old Covenant, it was the _blood_ which made atonement for the soul. It was not the death of the victim, nor yet its broken body, but it was the blood, the life, the soul, that was made the means of a soul’s ransom, of its rescue, of its redemption. “The life [the soul] of the flesh is in the blood,” said the Lord: “and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement [to be a cover, to be a propitiation] for your souls [for your lives]: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason [of its being] the life [the soul].”[640] “For as to the life [the soul] of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life [the soul] thereof.”[641] And so, all through the record of the Old Covenant.

It is the same in the New Covenant, as it was in the Old. Atonement, salvation, rescue, redemption, is by the blood, the life, of Christ; not by his death as such; not by his broken body in itself; but by that blood which was given at the inevitable cost of his broken body and of his death. The figure of leprosy and its attempted cure by blood, may tend to make this truth the clearer. In the leper, the very blood itself--the life--was death smitten. The only hope of a cure was by purging out the old blood, by means of an inflowing current of new blood, which was new life.[642] To give this blood, the giver himself must die; but it was his blood, his life, not his death, which was to be the means of cure. So, also, with the sin-leprous nature. His old life must be purged out, by the incoming of a new life; of such a life as only the Son of God can supply. In order to supply that blood, its Giver must himself die, and so be a sharer of the punishment of sin, although he was himself without sin. Thus was the new life made a possibility to all, by faith.

So it is, that “we have redemption [rescue from death] through [by means of] his blood”;[643] and that “the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth us [by its purging inflow] from all sin.”[644] So it is, that he “loosed us [freed us] from our sins by his [cleansing, his re-vivifying] blood.”[645] So it is, that “if any man is in Christ [is one in nature with Christ, through sharing, by faith, the blood of Christ], he is a new creature [Of course he is]: the old things are passed away; behold they are become new.”[646] So it is, also, that it can be said of those whose old lives were purged away by the inflowing redeeming life of Christ: “Ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”[647] And “this is the true God and eternal life.”[648]

“These things have I written unto you,” says the best loved of the disciples of Jesus, “that ye may know that ye have eternal life; even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God”;[649] “that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye may have life in his name.”[650] For “God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us [while we were separated from God by sin, God yielded his only Son, to give his blood, at the cost of his death, as a means of our inter-union with God]. Much more then, being now justified by [or, in] his blood [being brought into inter-union with God by that blood], shall we be saved from the wrath of God [against sin] through him [in whom we have life]. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God [restored to union with God] through the [blood-giving] death of his Son, much more, being [thus] reconciled, shall we be saved by [or, in] his life.”[651]

All who will, may, now, “be partakers of the divine nature,”[652] through becoming one with Christ, by sharing his blood, and by being nourished with his body. Entering into the divine-human covenant of blood-friendship, which Christ’s death has made possible, the believer can be so incorporated with Christ, by faith, as to identify himself with the experience and the hopes of the world’s Redeemer; and even to say, in all confidence: “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith which is in [which centres in] the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”[653] “For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself.”[654] And “it was the good pleasure of the Father that in him [the Son] should all the fulness dwell; and through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace [having completed union] through the blood of his cross”[655]--in the bonds of an everlasting covenant--between those who before were separated by sin.

“Remember, that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that [people] which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands,--that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both [Jew and Gentile] one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through them we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.”[656] “For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the head of all principality and power: in whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ.”[657] “For ye all are one man in Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise”[658]--inheritors of the blood-covenant promises of God to Abraham his friend.

No longer is there a barrier between the yearning, loving, trusting heart, and the mercy-seat of reconciliation in the very presence of God. We who share the body and the blood of Christ, by faith, are one with him in all the privileges of his Sonship. “For by one offering he hath perfected [hath completed in their right to be sharers with him] for ever, them that are sanctified [that are devoted, that are consecrated, to him]. And the Holy Ghost also beareth witness to us: for after he hath said,

This is the covenant that I will make with them After those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws on their heart, And upon their mind also will I write them;

then saith he,

And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

Now where remission of these [of sins and iniquities] is, there is no more offering [no more need of offering] for sin. Having, therefore, brethren, boldness [the right of boldness] to enter into the Holy Place [the Holy of Holies] by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say his flesh; and having a Great Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our body washed, with pure water [there being no longer need of blood-sprinkling or blood-laving, to those who are sharers of the divine nature--the divine blood].”[659]

No more an altar of sacrifice, but a table of communion,[660] is where we share the presence of Him in whom we have life, by the blood of the everlasting covenant. To question the sufficiency of the “one sacrifice” which Christ made, “once for all,”[661] of his body and his blood, as a means of the believer’s inter-union with God, is to count the blood of the covenant an unholy, or a common, thing, and is to do despite unto the Spirit of grace.[662] “Wherefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?[663] Seeing that we [believers together in Christ], who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.”[664]

“Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep with [or, by; or, by means of] the blood of the eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect [complete] to do his will, working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.”[665]

FOOTNOTES:

[425] Gen. 4 : 2-5.

[426] Heb. 11 : 4.

[427] Ruth 1 : 14.

[428] Gen. 4 : 10, 11.

[429] “For it must be observed, that by the outpouring of the blood, the life which was in it was not destroyed, though it was separated from the organism which before it had quickened: Gen. 4 : 10; comp. Heb. 12 : 24 (παρὰ τὸν Ἅβελ); Apoc. 6 : 10” (Westcott’s _Epistles of St. John_, p. 34).

[430] See pages 143-147, _supra_.

[431] See pages 110-113, _supra_.

[432] Gen. 8 : 20.

[433] Exod. 24 : 5, 6; 29 : 15-25; Lev. 1 : 1-6, 10-12, 14, 15; 8 : 18, 19, etc. See also pages 102, 106-109, _supra_.

[434] See _Speaker’s Commentary_, in loco.

[435] Gen. 9 : 3-6.

[436] “A man might not use another’s life for the support of his physical life” (Westcott’s _Epistles of St. John_, p. 34).

[437] See Acts 15 : 2-29; also 21 : 18-25.

[438] Those, indeed, who would put the dictum of the Church of Rome above the explicit commands of the Bible, can claim that that Church has affirmed the mere temporary nature of this obligation, which the Bible makes perpetual. But apart from this, there seems to be no show of justification for the abrogation, or the suspension, of the command.

[439] James 2 : 23.

[440] Isaiah 41 : 8.

[441] 2 Chron. 20 : 7.

[442] The only instance in which it might _seem_ that there was an exception to this statement, is Exodus 33 : 11, where it is said, “The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” But here the Hebrew word is _re’a_ (רֵעַ) with the idea of “a companion,” or “a neighbor”; while the word applied to Abraham is _ohebh_ (אֹהֵב), “a loving one.”

[443] See Appendix, _infra_, p. 322.

[444] Gen. 17 : 2.

[445] Gen. 17 : 7-9.

[446] Gen. 17 : 10, 11.

[447] See page 174 f., _supra_.

[448] Gen. 17 : 13.

[449] Bearing in the flesh the marks of one’s devotedness to a divinity, is a widely observed custom in the East. Burton tells of the habit, in Mekkeh, of cutting three parallel gashes down the fleshy cheek of every male child; and of the claim by some that these gashes “were signs that the scarred [one] was the servant of Allah’s house” (_Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medinah_, third ed., p. 456). In India, there are various methods of receiving such flesh-marks of devotedness. “One of the most common consists in stamping upon the shoulders, chest, and other parts of the body, with a red-hot iron, certain marks, to represent the armor [or livery] of their gods; the impressions of which are never effaced, but are accounted sacred, and are ostentatiously displayed as marks of distinctions” (Dubois’s _Des. of Man. and Cust. in India_, Part III., chap. 3). “From henceforth let no man trouble me,” says Paul: “for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal. 6 : 17).

[450] See Price’s _Hist. of Arabia_, p. 56.

[451] It is certainly noteworthy, that the Canaanitish god “Baal-bereeth” (see Judges 8 : 33; 9 : 4) seems to have had its centre of worship at, or near, Shechem; and there was where the Canaanites were induced to seek, by circumcision, a part with the house of Jacob in the blood-covenant of Abraham (see Gen. 34 : 1-31).

[452] See Godwyn’s _Moses and Aaron_, p. 216 f.

[453] Buxtorf, who is a recognized authority, in the knowledge of Rabbinical literature and of Jewish customs, says, on this point: “Cum deinde compater infantulum in sinu habet jacentem, tum Mohel sive circumcisor eum è fasciis evolvit, pudendum ejus apprehendit, ejusque anteriorem partem per cuticulam præputii comprehendit, granulumque pudendi ejus retrorsum premit; quo facto cuticulam præputii fricat, ut illa per id emortua infantulus cæsuram tanto minus sentiscat. Deinde cultellum circumcisorium è pueri astantis manu capit, claraque voce, Benedictus (inquit) esto tu Deus, Domine noster, Rex mundi, qui nos mandatis tuis sanctificasti, nobisque pactum circumcisionis dedisti. Interim dum ille loquitur sic, particulam præputii anteriorem usque eo abscindit, ut capitellum pudendi nudum conspici queat, illamque festinanter in patellam arena ista plenam conjicit; puero quoque isti, à quo acceperat, cultellum reddit circumcisorium; ab alio vero poculum vino rubro (ceu dictum fuit) impletum, capit; haurit ex eo quantum ore continere potest, quod mox super infantulum expuit, eoque sanguinem ejus abluit: in faciem quoque infantuli vini aliquid expuit, si eum viribus defici conspexerit. Mox pudendum puelli ore comprehendit, et sanguinis ex eodem quantumcunque potest, exugit, ut sanguis idem tanto citius se sistat; sanguinem exuctum in alterum poculorum vino rubro refertorum, vel in patellam arena abundantem, expuit.” (_Synagoga Judaica_, Cap. II.)

[454] Gen. 15 : 6; Rom. 4 : 3; Gal. 3 : 6; James 2 : 23.

[455] See Fuerst’s _Heb. Chald. Lex._, s. v.

[456] See Freytag’s _Lex. Arab. Lat._, s. v.

[457] See Lane’s _Arab.-Eng. Lex._, s. v.

[458] In the Chinese language, likewise, “the word for faithfulness means both to be trustworthy, and also to trust to, and refers chiefly to friendship.” (Edkins’s _Relig. in China_, p. 118.)

[459] The Rabbis give a preeminent place to circumcision as the rite by which Abraham became the Friend of God. They say (see citations from the Talmud, in _Nethivoth Olam_, p. 367): “Abraham was not called perfect before he was circumcised; and because of the merit of circumcision was the covenant made with him concerning the inheritance of the Land. It [circumcision] also saves from the punishment of hell; for our sages have said, that Abraham sits at the gates of hell and suffers no one to enter in there who is circumcised.”

[460] James 2 : 23.

[461] Exod. 4 : 21-23.

[462] Exod. 4 : 25, 26.

[463] See Fuerst’s _Heb. Chald. Lex._, s. v.

[464] See Deut. 22 : 13-21. To this day, in the East, an exhibit of blood-stains, as the indubitable proof of a consummated covenant of marriage, is common. See Niebuhr’s _Beschreibung von Arabien_, pp. 35-39; Burckhardt’s _Arabic Proverbs_, p. 140; Lane’s _Mod. Egypt._, I., 221, note.

[465] See Lane, and Freytag, s. vv., _Khatan_, _Khatana_.

[466] Gen. 22 : 1, 2.

[467] “Heaven awaits not one who is destitute of a son,” say the Brahmans (See page 194, _supra_). See, also, e. g., Thomson’s _Land and Book_, I., 177; Roberts’s _Orient. Ill._, p. 53 f., Ginsburg’s “Illustrations,” in _Bible Educator_, I., 30; Lane’s _Mod. Egypt._, I., 68. Livingstone’s _Trav. and Res. in So. Af._, p. 140; Pierotti’s _Cust. and Trad. of Pal._, pp. 177 f., 190 f.

[468] See illustrations of this error in Tylor’s _Prim. Cult._, II., 403.

[469] See page 185 f., _supra_.

[470] See page 119 f., _supra_.

[471] See page 120, _supra_.

[472] See page 117, _supra_.

[473] See page 118 f., 120 f., _supra_.

[474] See discussions of this point, by Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Oehler, Ewald, Kuenen, Lange, Keil and Delitzsch, Stanley, Mozeley, etc.

[475] John 15 : 13.

[476] Heb. 11 : 17-19.

[477] Gen. 22 : 15-18.

[478] James 2 : 21-23.

[479] See Exod. 4 : 9; 7 : 17-21.

[480] See Exod. 12 : 1-6.

[481] See a reference to a similar custom in China, at page 153, _supra_.

[482] Exod. 12 : 7-13.

[483] See, again, at pages 154, _supra_.

[484] See page 7 f., _supra_.

[485] See page 81 f., _supra_. It is, indeed, by no means improbable, that the Hebrew word tôtaphôth (טוֹטָפוֹת), translated “frontlets,” as applied to the phylacteries was an Egyptian word. Its etymology has been a puzzle to the critics.

[486] See Exod. 13 : 11-16.

[487] See references to _Zohar_, Pt. II., Fol. 2, by Farrar, in Smith-Hackett’s _Bible Dictionary_, Art. “Frontlets.”

[488] Smith-Hackett’s _Bib. Dict._, Art. “Frontlets.”

[489] On this point I have the emphatic testimony of intelligent native Syrians. “As I live, saith the Lord”--or more literally, “I, living, saith the Lord.” “For when God made promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself”--by his life. (Comp. Isa. 49: 18; Jer. 22 : 24; Ezek. 5 : 11; Heb. 6 : 13.)

[490] This also I am assured of, by native Syrians. One who had resided in both Syria and Upper Egypt told me, that in Syria, in the rite of blood-friendship, the blood is taken from the _arm_ as the symbol of strength; while in portions of Africa where the legs are counted stronger than the arms, through the training of the people as runners rather than as burden-bearers, the _leg_ supplies the blood for this rite (See reference to Stanley and Mirambo’s celebration of this rite at pages 18-20, _supra_).

[491] See page 79, _supra_.

[492] See e. g. Gen. 14 : 22; Dan. 12 : 7. “It is an interesting fact, that many of the images of the gods of the heathen have the right hand lifted up.” (Roberts’s _Orient. Ill. of Scrip._, p. 20.)

[493] See Prov. 6 : 1; 11 : 15 (margin); 22 : 24-26.

[494] See page 47, _supra_.

[495] See Lepsius’s exemplar of the _Todtenbuch_; also Birch, in Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place_, V., 125.

[496] See Farrar’s article on “Frontlets,” in Smith-Hackett’s _Bib. Dic._

[497] Joshua 2 : 18-20.

[498] See pages 93 f., _supra_.

[499] See Roberts’s _Orient. Ill. of Scrip._, p. 20.

[500] Lynd’s _Hist. of Dakotas_, p. 81.

[501] Bayard Taylor’s _India, China, and Japan_, p. 52.

[502] See _Home and Syn. of Mod. Jew_, p. 5.

[503] See Targum, in Buxtorf’s _Biblia Rabbinica_, in loco.

[504] See Jones’s _Credulities Past and Present_, p. 188.

[505] See _Kadesh Barnea_, p. 382, note.

[506] Heb. 9 : 19.

[507] See Exod. 24 : 1-11.

[508] Lev. 7 : 26.

[509] Lev. 17 : 10-12.

[510] Lev. 17 : 14.

[511] Rom. 6 : 23.

[512] Lev. 17 : 3-6.

[513] Comp. Heb. 13 : 20.

[514] Lev. 17 : 13.

[515] A traveler in Mauritius, describing a Hindoo sacrifice there, of a he-goat, in fulfilment of a vow, says: “It was killed on soft ground, where the blood would sink into the earth, and leave no trace” (Pike’s _Sub-Tropical Rambles_, p. 223). See also page 109, _supra_.

[516] Rom. 5 : 12-21.

[517] See _Quarterly Statement_, of Pales. Expl. Fund, for July 1885, pp. 197-207.

[518] _The Temple, Its Ministry and Services_, p. 88, f.

[519] _The Old Test. in the Jewish Church_, Notes on Lect. XII.

[520] See pages 11, 12, _supra_.

[521] Lev. 1 : 13, 17; 2 : 2, 12; 3 : 8, 26.

[522] _Christian Institutions_, Chap. 4.

[523] _The Temple, Its Min. and Serv._, p. 82.

[524] _The Temple, Its Min. and Serv._, p. 82.

[525] Lev. 4 : 7, 18, 25, 30, 34.

[526] Lev. 4 : 6, 7, 17; 16 : 14, 15.

[527] Lev. 1 : 5, 11, 15.

[528] Lev. 8 : 14-22; 9 : 8-22; 14 : 19, 20; 16 : 3-25.

[529] Edersheim’s _The Temple, Its Min. and Serv._, p. 100.

[530] “From its derivation it might also be rendered, the offering of completion” (Edersheim’s _The Temple, Its Min. and Serv._, p. 106).

[531] See page 149, _supra_.

[532] Edersheim’s _The Temple, Its Min. and Serv._, p. 86.

[533] Psa. 16 : 4, 5.

[534] Heb. 9 : 8.

[535] Heb. 10 : 4.

[536] Psa. 50 : 7-17.

[537] Isaiah 1 : 11-17.

[538] Isa. 25 : 6.

[539] Jer. 7 : 21-23.

[540] Hosea 6 : 4-7.

[541] Deut. 10 : 14-16.

[542] Deut. 30 : 1-6.

[543] Gal. 3 : 7-9; Rom. 4 : 11, 12.

[544] Rom. 2 : 26-29; Phil. 3 : 3.

[545] Prov. 3 : 1-4.

[546] Prov. 7 : 2, 3.

[547] Jer. 31 : 31-34.

[548] Col. 2 : 17.

[549] Num. 35 : 12; Deut. 19 : 6, 12; Josh. 20 : 3, 5, 9.

[550] Num. 35 : 19, 21, 24, 25, 27; 2 Sam. 14 : 11.

[551] Job 19 : 25; Psa. 19 : 14; 78 : 35; Prov. 23 : 11; Isa. 41 : 14; 43 : 14; 44 : 6, 24; 47 : 4; 48 : 17; 49 : 7, 26; 54 : 5, 8; 59 : 20; 60 : 16; 63 : 16; Jer. 50 : 34.

[552] Comp. Isa. 51 : 10; Jer. 31 : 11.

[553] “A term of which the original import is uncertain. The very obscurity of its etymology testifies to the antiquity of the office which it denotes.” (_Speaker’s Com._ at Num. 35 : 12.)

[554] Cited from Herzog’s B. Cycl., in Keil and Delitzsch’s _Bib. Com. on the Pent._, at Num. 35 : 9-34.

[555] See Niebuhr’s _Beschreibung von Arabien_, p. 32 f.; Burckhardt’s _Beduinen und Wahaby_, pp. 119-127; Lane’s _Thousand and One Nights_, I., 431, note; Pierotti’s _Customs and Traditions of Palestine_, pp. 220-227; Mrs. Finn’s “The Fellaheen of Palestine,” in _Surv. of West Pal._, “Special Papers,” pp. 342-346.

[556] Comp. Exod. 21 : 18-27; 22 : 14-17; Lev. 27 : 1-8.

[557] Num. 36 : 30-34.

[558] Sooras, 2 and 17.

[559] Livingstone and Stanley on several occasions, made payments, or had them made, to avoid a conflict on a question of blood. See, e. g. _Trav. and Res. in So. Africa_, pp. 390, 368-370, 482 f., _The Congo_, I., 520-527.

[560] _Reise in Hadhramaut_, p. 199.

[561] _Surv. of West. Pal._, “Special Papers,” p. 342.

[562] _A Pilgrimage to Mec. and Med._, 357.

[563] _Cust. and Trad. of Pal._, p. 221.

[564] _A Pilgrimage_, p. 367.

[565] See pages 126-133, _supra_.

[566] See page 132 f., _supra_.

[567] Pierotti’s _Cust. and Trad. of Pal._, p. 216.

[568] Comp. Gen. 15 : 18; Jer. 34 : 18; 2 Sam. 12 : 17.

[569] See Gesenius, Fuerst, Cocceius, s. v.

[570] Gen. 21 : 22-24.

[571] See pages 14, 16, 20, 22, 25, 27, etc., _supra_.

[572] See page 47, _supra_.

[573] Gen. 21 : 31.

[574] Comp. Gen. 31 : 44-47.

[575] Gen. 21 : 30.

[576] See page 53, _supra_.

[577] Gen. 21 : 33.

[578] See references to the blood-stained covenant-tree, in Appendix, _infra_.

[579] Gen. 22 : 18.

[580] See page 61 f., _supra_.

[581] Gen. 26 : 25-29.

[582] Gen. 26 : 30, 31.

[583] See page 62, _supra_.

[584] Comp. Gen. 12 : 6-8; 28 : 18-22; 31 : 19-36.

[585] Mr. Forbes tells of a custom, in Sumatra, of taking a binding oath, above the grave of the original patriarch of the Passumah. An animal is sacrificed, cut into small pieces, and cooked in a pot. “Then he who is to take the oath, holding his hand, or a long kriss of the finest sort, over the grave-stone, and over the cooked animal, says: ‘If such and such be not the case, may I be afflicted with the worst evils.’ The whole of the company then partake of the food” (_A Naturalist’s Wanderings_, p. 198 f.). This seems to be a vestige of the primitive custom of eating on the witness-heap of an oath.

[586] Gen. 31 : 44-54.

[587] 1 Sam. 18 : 1-3.

[588] See pages 14, 24, 28, 35 f., 62, _supra_.

[589] 1 Sam. 18 : 4; 20 : 1-13.

[590] 1 Sam. 19 : 1-7.

[591] 2 Sam. 1 : 26.

[592] See pages 10, 53, _supra_.

[593] 1 Sam. 20 : 13-17.

[594] 2 Sam. 7 : 1; 9 : 1.

[595] 2 Sam. 9 : 2-13.

[596] Heb. 10 : 1-4.

[597] Rom. 8 : 22.

[598] Rom. 8 : 32.

[599] Heb. 13 : 20.

[600] Comp. John 1 : 1-14; Heb. 1 : 1-3; 2 : 14-16.

[601] Gen. 21 : 12; Heb. 11 : 18.

[602] 1 Pet. 1 : 20.

[603] Rev. 13 : 8.

[604] See page 250, _supra_, note (footnote 530).

[605] Heb. 10 : 5-9.

[606] John 6 : 53-58.

[607] John 6 : 63.

[608] John 6 : 60.

[609] John 6 : 60.

[610] Heb. 1 : 14-16.

[611] Gal. 3 : 6-9, 16, 29.

[612] Keble.

[613] “In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ endured mental agony so intense that, had it not been limited by divine interposition, it would probably have destroyed his life without the aid of any other sufferings; but having been thus mitigated, its effects were confined to violent palpitation of the heart accompanied with bloody sweat.... Dr. Millingen’s explanation of bloody sweat ... is judicious. ‘It is probable,’ says he, ‘that this strange disorder arises from a violent commotion of the nervous system, turning the streams of blood out of their natural course, and forcing the red particles into the cutaneous excretories.’” (Stroud’s _Physical Cause of the Death of Christ_, pp. 74, 380).

[614] Luke 22 : 44.

[615] John 13 : 1.

[616] Luke 22 : 14, 15.

[617] As to the points in this dispute, see Andrews’s _Life of our Lord_, pp. 425-460, and Farrar’s _Life of Christ_, Excursus X., Appendix.

[618] Matt. 26 : 26.

[619] Luke 22 : 19, 20.

[620] Mark 14 : 23.

[621] Matt. 26 : 27, 28.

[622] Luke 22 : 20.

[623] Matt. 26 : 28.

[624] 1 Cor. 11 : 25.

[625] Mark 14 : 23.

[626] John 15 : 13-15.

[627] John 15 : 4-7.

[628] John 17 : 1-24.

[629] 2 Tim. 1 : 10.

[630] Heb. 9 : 16, 17.

[631] John 15 : 13.

[632] John 10 : 10, 18.

[633] John 6 : 51.

[634] John 6 : 55.

[635] See Matt. 27 : 33-54; Mark 15 : 22-39; Luke 23 : 33-47; John 19 : 17-37.

[636] “He was ultimately ‘slain,’ not by the effects of the anguish of his corporeal frame, but by the effects of the mightier anguish of his mind; the fleshy walls of his heart--like the veil, as it were, in the temple of his human body--becoming rent and riven, as, for us, ‘he poured out his soul unto death.’” (Sir James Y. Simpson, cited in Appendix to Stroud’s _Physical Cause of Death of Christ_.)

[637] Isa. 53 : 12.

[638] Comp. Rom. 6 : 23; 1 Pet. 3 : 18; Isa. 53 : 4-6.

[639] 1 John 5 : 11, 12.

[640] Lev. 17 : 11.

[641] Lev. 17 : 14.

[642] See pages 116-125.

[643] Eph. 1 : 7.

[644] 1 John 1 : 7.

[645] Rev. 1 : 5.

[646] 2 Cor. 5 : 17.

[647] Col. 3 : 3.

[648] 1 John 5 : 20.

[649] 1 John 5 : 13.

[650] John 20 : 31.

[651] Rom. 5 : 8-12.

[652] 2 Pet. 1 : 4.

[653] Gal. 2 : 20.

[654] John 5 : 26.

[655] Col. 1 : 19, 20.

[656] Eph. 2 : 11-16.

[657] Col. 2 : 9-11.

[658] Gal. 3 : 28, 29.

[659] Heb. 10 : 14-22.

[660] See page 167 ff., _supra_.

[661] Comp. Heb. 9 : 24-28; 10 : 10.

[662] Heb. 10 : 28, 29.

[663] The Covenant of Bread and the Covenant of Blood are two distinct covenants, in Oriental practice as well as in biblical teaching; although this difference has been strangely overlooked by biblical students in the realm of Orientalisms. The Covenant of Bread is temporary; the Covenant of Blood is permanent. The one secures a truce; the other secures a vital union. Symbolically, the one gives nourishment; the other gives life. The Covenant of Bread is an exhibit and a pledge of hospitality, and it brings one into family or tribal relations with those proffering it. The Covenant of Blood is immediately personal and individual. There seems to be an unconscious trace of this distinction in the refusal of the Romish Church to include the laity in the symbolizing of the Covenant of Blood, at the Lord’s table.

[664] 1 Cor. 10 : 14-17.

[665] Heb. 13 : 20, 21.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

IMPORTANCE OF THIS RITE STRANGELY UNDERVALUED.

It seems strange that a primitive rite like the blood-covenant, with its world-wide sweep, and its manifold applications to the history of sacrifice, should have received so little attention from students of the latter theme. Nor has it been entirely ignored by them; although its illustrations have, in this connection, been drawn almost entirely from the field of the classic writers, where its religious aspects have a minor prominence; and, as a result, the suggestion of any real importance in the religious symbolism of this rite has been, generally, brushed aside without its receiving due consideration.

Thus, in The Speaker’s Commentary,--which is one of the more recent, and more valuable, scholarly and sensible compends of sound and thorough biblical criticism,--there are references to the rite of human blood-covenanting in its possible bearing on the blood-covenanting of God with Israel before Mount Sinai,[666] after this sort: “The instances from classical antiquity, adduced, as parallels to this sacrifice of Moses, by Bähr, Knobel, and Kalisch, in which animals were slaughtered on the making of covenants, are either, those in which the animal was slain to signify the punishment due to the party that might break the covenant (Hom. _Il._, III., 298; XIX., 252; Liv. _Hist._, I., 24; XXI., 45); those in which confederates dipped their hands, or their weapons, in the same blood (Æsch. _Sept. c. Theb._, 43; Xenoph. _Anab._, II., 2, § 9); or those in which the contracting parties tasted each other’s blood (Herodot. [_Hist._] I., 74; IV., 74; Tac. _Annal._, XII., 47). All these usages are based upon ideas which are but very superficially related to the subject; they have indeed no true connection whatever with the idea of sacrifice as the seal of a covenant between God and man.”[667]

When the entire history of man’s outreaching after an inter-union of natures with his fellow-man and with his God, is fairly studied, in the light thrown on it by the teachings of the divine-human Being, who gave of his own blood for the consummation of the longed-for divine-human inter-union, it will be more clearly seen, whether it were the relation of the primitive rite itself to the idea of sacrifice, or the study of that relation, which was “very superficial,” as a cause of its popular overlooking.

The closest and most sacred form of covenant ever known in the primitive world, was that whereby two persons covenanted to become one, through being partakers of the same blood. At Sinai, when Jehovah would covenant with Israel, a common supply of substitute blood--proffered by Israel and accepted by Jehovah--was taken; and one-half of it was cast upon the altar, Godward, while the other half of it was cast Israelward, upon the people.[668] The declaration of Moses to Israel, then, was: “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you;” or, as that declaration is repeated, in Hebrews: “This is the blood of the covenant which God covenanted to you-ward.”[669] And from that time forward, the most sacred possession of Israel,--above which hovered the visible sign of the presence of Jehovah,--was the casket which contained the record of that blood-made covenant; and it was toward the mercy-seat cover of that Covenant Casket, that House of the Covenant, that the symbolic blood of atonement through new life was sprinkled, in the supreme renewals of that covenant by Israel’s representative year by year.

Even the Speaker’s Commentary says, of this mutual blood-sharing by Israel and Jehovah at Sinai: “The blood thus divided between the two parties to the covenant signified the sacramental union between the Lord and his people.”[670] Of the blood which was to be poured out on Calvary, Jesus said: “This is my blood of the [new] covenant, which is shed for many.”[671] And of the sacramental union which could be secured, between his trustful disciples and himself, by tasting his blood, and by being nourished on his flesh, he said: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.”[672] It really looks as if there were more than a superficial relation between the fact of an absolute inter-union of two natures through an inter-flow of a common life, in the rite of blood-covenanting, and the sacramental union between the Lord and his people, which was typified in the blood-covenant at Sinai, and which was consummated in the blood-covenant at Calvary.

Herbert Spencer, indeed, seems to have a clearer conception than the Speaker’s Commentary, of the relation of human blood-covenanting, to the inter-union of those in the flesh, with spiritual beings. He perceives that the primitive offerings of blood over the dead, from the living person, are, in some cases, “explicable as arising from the practice of establishing a sacred bond between living persons by partaking of each other’s blood: the derived conception being, that those who give some of their blood to the ghost of a man just dead and lingering near [and of course, the principle is the same when the offering of blood is to the gods, thereby] effect with it a union, which on the one side implies submission, and on the other side friendliness.”[673] This admission by Mr. Spencer covers the essential point in the argument of this entire volume.

LIFE IN THE BLOOD, IN THE HEART, IN THE LIVER.

Among all primitive peoples, the blood has been deemed the representative of life. The giving of blood has been counted the giving of life. The receiving of blood has been counted the receiving of life. The sharing of blood has been counted the sharing of life. Hence, the blood has always been counted the chief thing in any sacrificial victim proffered to the gods; and whatever was sought through sacrifice, was to be obtained by means of the blood of the offering. Even though no specific reference to the blood be found in the preserved descriptions of one of the earlier sacrifices,--as, for example, the Akkadian sacrifice of the first-born (page 166, _supra_), the very fact that the offering made was of a _life_, and that _blood_ was recognized as life, is in itself the proof that it was the blood which gave the offering its value.

Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, who was thoroughly familiar with both Egyptian and biblical antiquities, was impressed by the “striking resemblance” of many of the religious rites of the Jews to those of Egypt, “particularly the manner in which the sacrifices were performed;”[674] and he points out the Egyptian method of so slaying the sacrificial ox, that its blood should be fully discharged from the body; a point which was deemed of such importance in the Jewish ritual.[675] Of the illustration of this ceremony given by Wilkinson from an ancient Egyptian painting,[676] the Speaker’s Commentary says: “There is no reason to doubt that this picture accurately represents the mode pursued in the court of the [Jewish] Tabernacle.”[677]

Almost as universal as the recognition of the life in the blood, has been the identification of the heart as the blood-centre and the blood-fountain, and so as the epitome of the life itself. Says Pierret,[678] the French Egyptologist, concerning the preeminence given to the heart, by the ancient Egyptians: “The heart was embalmed separately in a vase placed under the guardianship of the genius Duaoumautew [rather, Tuau-mut-ef, or, Reverencer of his Mother. ‘My heart was my mother.’ See page 99, _supra_] without doubt because this organ, indispensable to the resurrection, could not be replaced in the body of a man, until it had been weighed in the scale of the balance of the Osirian judgment (_Todtenbuch_, cxxv.); where representing the acts of the dead, it ought to make equilibrium with the statue of the goddess Truth [Maat]. (See the framed papyri in the funereal hall of the Museum of the Louvre.) Indeed the favorable sentence is thus formulated: ‘It is permitted that his heart be in its place.’ It is said to Setee I., in the temple of Abydos: ‘I bring thee thy heart to thy breast; I put it in its place.’ The heart, principle of existence and of regeneration, was symbolized by the scarabæus: it is for this reason that the texts relative to the heart were inscribed upon the funereal scarabæuses, which at a certain epoch were introduced into the body of the mummy itself, to replace the absent organ.”

The idea that the heart is in itself life, and that it can even live apart from the body, is found all the world over. References to it in ancient Egypt, in India, and in primitive America, have already been pointed out (pages 100-110, _supra_). It shows itself, likewise, in the folk-lore of the Arctic regions, and of South Africa, as well as of the Norseland. In a Samoyed tale, “seven brothers are in the habit of taking out their hearts and sleeping without them. A captive damsel, whose mother they have killed, receives the extracted hearts, and hangs them on the tent-pole, where they remain till the following morning. One night her brother contrives to get the hearts into his possession. Next morning, he takes them into the tent, where he finds the brothers at the point of death. In vain do they beg for their hearts, which he flings on the floor. ‘And as he flings down the hearts, the brothers die.’”[679] According to a Hottentot story, “the heart of a girl, whom a lion has killed and eaten, is extracted from the lion, and placed in a calabash filled with milk [the ‘heart’ and ‘milk’; or blood and bread, life and its nourishment (See pages 10-12, 261 f., _supra_)]. ‘The calabash increased in size; and, in proportion to this, the girl grew again inside [of] it.’”[680] “In a Norse story, a giant’s heart lies in an egg, inside a duck, which swims in a well, in a church, on an island;”[681] and this story is found in variations in other lands.[682] So, again, in a “Russian story, a prince is grievously tormented by a witch who has got hold of his heart, and keeps it perpetually seething in a magic cauldron.”[683]

This same idea is found in the nomenclature of the Bible, and in the every day speech of the civilized world of the present age. In more than nine hundred instances, in our common English Bible, the Hebrew or the Greek word for “heart,” as a physical organ, is applied to man’s personality; as if it were, in a sense, synonymous with his life, his self, his soul, his nature. In every phase of man’s character, of man’s needs, or of man’s experiences, “heart” is employed by us as significant of his innermost and realest self. He is “hard-hearted,” “tender-hearted,” “warm-hearted,” “cold-hearted,” “hearty,” or “heartless.” His words and his conduct are “heart-touching,” “heart-cheering,” “heart-searching,” “heart-piercing,” “heart-thrilling,” “heart-soothing,” or “heart-rending;” and they are a cause, in others, of “heart-burning,” “heart-aching,” “heart-easing,” or “heart-expanding.” At times, his “heart is set upon” an object of longing, or again “his heart is in his mouth” because of his excited anxiety. It may be, that he shows that “his heart is in the right place,” or that “his heart is at rest” at all times. The truest union of two young lives, is where “the heart goes with the hand” in the marriage covenant.

And so, all the world over, from the beginning, primitive man, in the lowest state of savagery and in the highest stage of civilization, has been accustomed to recognize the truth, and to employ the symbolisms of speech, which are in accordance with the latest advances of physiological and psychological science, and with the highest spiritual conceptions of biblical truth, in our nineteenth Christian century, concerning the mental, the moral, and the religious needs and possibilities of the human race. Man as he is needs a “new heart,” a new nature, a new life; and that need can be supplied by the Author of life, through that regeneration which is indicated, and which, in a sense, is realized in new blood which is pure at the start, and which purifies by its purging inflow. The recognition of this truth, and the outreaching of man in its direction, are at the basis of all forms of sacrifice in all the ages. And this wonderful attainment of primitive man everywhere, we are asked to accept as man’s mere natural inheritance from the sensory quiverings of his ancestral tadpole!

“The knowledge of the ancients on the subject [of blood as the synonym of life] may, indeed, have been based on the mere observation that an animal loses its life when it loses its blood,” says the Speaker’s Commentary. But it does seem a little strange, that none of the ancients ever observed that man is very liable to lose his life when he loses his _brains_, and that few animals are actively efficient for practical service without a _head_; whereas both men and the lower animals do lose _blood_ freely without death resulting.

It is true that in many parts of the world the _liver_ was made prominent as seemingly a synonym of life; but this was obviously because of the popular belief that the liver was itself a mass of coagulated blood. The idea seems to have been that as the heart was the blood-fountain, the liver was the blood-cistern; and that, as the source of life (or of blood, which life is,) was at the heart; so, the great receptacle of life, or of blood, was the liver. Thus, in the classic myth of Prometheus, the avenging eagle of Jupiter is not permitted to gnaw upon the life-giving heart itself of the tortured victim, but upon the compacted body of life in the captive’s liver; the fountain of life is not to be destroyed, but the cistern of life is to be emptied daily of all that it had received from the out-flowing heart during the preceding night. And in the symbolism of these two organs, the ancients seem to have been agreed, that “The heart is the seat of the soul [thumos (θυμός) the nobler passions]; the liver [is the seat] of desire;”[684] or, as again it is phrased, “The seat of the soul is unquestionably the heart, even as the liver is the seat of emotion.”[685]

Burton has called attention to the fact that among the Arabs, “the liver and the spleen are both supposed to be ‘congealed blood,’” and that the Bed´ween of the Hejaz justify their eating of locusts, which belong to an “unclean” class of animals, and of liver which represents forbidden blood, by this couplet:

“We are allowed two carrions, and two bloods, The fish and locust, the liver and the spleen.”[686]

He has also noted that the American Indian partakes of the liver, as well as of the heart of a fallen enemy, in order to the assimilating of the enemy’s life;[687] and he finds many correspondences between the desert dwellers of America and of Arabia. “The [American] ‘brave,’” he says, “stamps a red hand upon his mouth to show that he has drunk the blood of a foe. Of the Utaybah ‘Harami,’ it is similarly related, that after mortal combat, he tastes the dead man’s gore.”[688]

Even in modern English, the word “liver” has been thought by many to represent “life” or “blood.” Thus, in one of our dictionaries we are told that the word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian verb “to live,” “because [the liver is] of so great importance to _life_, or animal vitality.”[689] In another, its derivation is ascribed to _lopper_, and _lapper_, “to coagulate,” “from its resemblance to a mass of clotted blood.”[690]

Among the aborigines of America the prominence given to the blood and to the heart was as great, and as distinctly marked, as among the peoples of ancient Egypt, or any other portion of the far East. This truth has been brought out most fully by the valuable personal researches of Mr. Frank H. Cushing, of the Smithsonian Institution, into the mythology and sociology of the Zuñis of New Mexico. From his reports it would appear that, according to the priests of that people, “all true fetiches [or, material symbols of spiritual existences] are either actual petrifactions of the animals they represent, or were such originally”--according as the present form of the fetish is natural, or is mechanically fashioned. These rude stone images of the animals of prey, “which are of course mere concretions or strangely eroded rock forms,” are supposed to be the shriveled and distorted remains of beings which were long ago turned to stone. Within these fetishes the _heart_ of the original animal still exists; (“his heart still lives, even though his person be changed to stone”;) and it needs for its sustenance the blood, or the “life fluid,” of the game which was, from the beginning, the ordinary prey of that animal. Hence each fetish is pleased to hear the prayers and to give success to the hunting of its present possessor, in order to the obtaining of the life fluid which is essential to its nourishing.

These prey fetishes of the Zuñis belong to the Prey-God Brotherhood, and when not in use they are guarded by the “Keeper of the Medicine of the Deer.” Before they are employed in a hunt, there is an assembly for their worship; and, after ceremonial prayer to them for their assistance, they are taken out for service by members of the Brotherhood to which they belong. “The fetich is then placed in a little crescent-shaped bag of buckskin which the hunter wears suspended over the left breast (or, heart) by a buckskin thong, which is tied above the right shoulder.” When the trail of the animal hunted is discovered by the hunter, he finds a place where the animal has lain down, and there he makes an oblation by depositing his offering “in exactly the spot over which the heart of the animal is supposed to have rested.” Then he brings out his fetish and with certain ceremonies and invocations he puts it on the track of the prey.

“As soon as the animal is dead, he [the hunter] lays open its viscera, cuts through the diaphragm, and makes an incision in the aorta, or in the sac which incloses the heart. He then takes out [of its bag] the prey fetich, breathes on it, and addresses it thus: ... ‘Si! My father, this day of the blood [literally of the ‘life fluid’] of a game-being, thou shalt drink, ([shalt] water thyself). With it thou shalt enlarge (add unto) thy heart.’ He then dips the fetich into the blood which the sac still contains, continuing meanwhile the prayer, as follows: ... ‘Likewise, I, a “done” being [a living human being], with the blood [the “life-fluid,” which is] the flesh of a raw being (game animal), shall enlarge (add unto) my heart.’ Which [prayer] finished, he scoops up, with his hand, some of the blood and sips it; then tearing forth the _liver_, ravenously devours a part of it [as the blood-flesh, or, the blood which is the flesh], and exclaims, ‘_É-lah-kwá!_’ (Thanks).” After all this, he deposits a portion of the clot of blood from within the heart, commingled with various articles, in a grave digged on the spot where the animal has died; repeating, as he does this, a prayer which seems to show his belief that the slain animal still lives in this buried heart-blood. Again, when the game is at the hunter’s home, the women “lay on either side of its body, next to the heart, an ear of corn (significant of renewed life), and say prayers” over it. Finally “the fetich is returned to the Keeper of the Deer Medicine, with thanksgiving and a prayer, not unlike that uttered on taking it forth.”[691]

In these ceremonies, it is evident that the Zuñis, like the Orientals, recognize the blood as the life, the heart as the epitome of life, the liver as a congealed mass of blood, and the transference of blood as the transference of life. Moreover, there is here a trace of that idea of the revivifying, by blood-bathing, of a being that had turned into stone; which is found in the legends of Arabia, and of the Norseland (See page 119 f., _supra_). Is there not, indeed, a reference to this world-wide figure of the living stone, in the Apostle’s suggestion, that those who were counted as worthless stones by an ignorant world are vivified by the renewing blood of Christ, and so are shown to be a holy people? “As new born babes [renewed by the blood of Christ], long for the spiritual milk [the means of sacred nourishment] which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious [if, indeed, ye have been made alive by the touch of his blood]: unto whom coming, [unto Him who is] a Living Stone rejected indeed of men, but with God [who knows the possibilities of that Stone], precious,--ye also, as living stones [as new blood-vivified petrifactions], are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up holy sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”[692]

There is another gleam of this idea of the stones vivified by blood, in a custom reported from among the Indians of British Columbia, in a private letter written by a careful observer of Indian habits and ceremonies. When the Indian girls arrived at the years of womanhood they were accustomed, there as in many other parts of the world, to pass through a formal initiation into a new stage of existence. Going apart by themselves, at some distance from their settlements, they would lacerate their bodies, in order that blood might flow freely; and, laying a series of stones in a row, they would walk over them, allowing their blood to fall upon them. The young woman who could cover the largest number of stones with her blood, had the fairest prospect in life, in the line of a woman’s peculiar mission. This certainly would be a not unnatural thought as an outgrowth of the belief that stones anointed with freely surrendered blood, can be made to have life in themselves.

It is much the same in war as in the hunt, among the Zuñis. “As with the hunter, so with the warrior; the fetich is fed on the life-blood of the slain.”[693] And here, again, is a link of connection between cannibalism and religious worship. Another illustration of the preeminence given to the heart, as the epitome of the very being itself, is the fact that the animals pictured on the pottery of these people, and of neighboring peoples, commonly had the rude conventional figure of a heart represented in its place on each animal; as if to show that the animal was living, and that it had a living soul.[694]

At the other side of the world, as it were, in Borneo, there is given similar preeminence, as among the Zuñis, to the blood as the life, to the liver as a representative of blood, and to the heart as the epitome of the life. “The principal sacrifice of the Sakarang Dayaks,” says Mr. St. John, “is killing a pig and examining its _heart_, which is supposed to foretell events with the utmost certainty.” This custom seems to have grown out of the idea that the heart of any God devoted organism, as the embodiment of its life is closely linked with the Author of all life; who is the Disposer of all events. A human heart is naturally deemed preferable to a pig’s; but the latter is the common substitute for the former. Yet, “not many years ago,” one of the Sakarang chiefs put to death a lad “of his own race,” remarking, as he did so: “It has been our custom heretofore to examine the heart of a pig, but now we will examine a human one.”[695] The Kayans, again, examine “the _heart_ and _liver_,” as preliminary to covenant-making.[696] Among the Dayaks, the blood of a fowl sacrificed by one who is supposed to be in favor with the gods, has peculiar potency when sprinkled upon “the lintels of the doors.”[697] And a house will be deserted by its Dayak inhabitants, “if a drop of blood be seen sprinkled on the floor, unless they can prove whence it came.”[698]

An incidental connection of this recognition of the blood as the life, with the primitive rite of blood covenanting, is seen in one form of the marriage rite among the Dayaks.[699]--In the rite of blood-covenanting itself, as consummated between Mr. St. John and Siñgauding, a cigarette stained with the blood of the covenanting parties was smoked by them mutually (See page 51, _supra_). In the marriage covenant, a cigar and betel leaf prepared with the areca nut are put first into the mouth of the bride by the bridegroom, and then into the mouth of the bridegroom by the bride; while two fowls are waved over their heads by a priest, and then killed; their blood being “caught in two cups” for examination, instead of for drinking.[700]

So, whether it be the heart as the primal fountain of blood, or the liver as the great receptacle of blood, or the blood itself in its supposed outflowing from the heart through the liver, that is made prominent in the rites and teachings of primitive peoples, the root-idea is still the same,--that “as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof;”[701] and that as a man is in his blood, so he is in his nature; that his “good blood” or “his bad blood,” his “hot blood” or his “cold blood,” will be evidenced in his daily walk; for that which shows out in his outer life is “in the blood” which is his inner life; and that in order to a change of his nature there must in some way be a change of his blood. Hence, the universal outreaching of the race after new blood which is new life. Hence, the provisions of God for new life through that blood which is the Life.

TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.

A belief in the transmigration of souls, from man to the lower animals, and _vice versâ_, has been found among various peoples, in all the historic ages. The origin of this belief has been a puzzling question to rationalistic myth-students. Starting out, as do most of these students, with the rigid theory that man worked himself slowly upward from the lowest savagery, without any external revelation, they are confronted with primitive customs on every side which go to show a popular belief in soul-transmigration, and which they must try to account for within the limits of their unproven theory. The result is, that they first presuppose some conception in the primitive man’s mind of spiritual things, and then they conveniently refer all confusing facts to that presupposed conception. “Animism” is one of the pet names for this resolvent of grave difficulties. And when “Animism” is supplemented by “Fetishism,” “Zoolatry,” and “Totemism,” the requisite number of changes is secured for the meeting of any number of perplexing facts in the religious belief of primitive man everywhere.

As a matter of simple fact, man’s conception of spiritual existences is not accounted for by the “scientists.” And the claim that such a conception was innate in primitive man, or that it was a natural growth in man’s unaided progress, is at the best but an unproved theory. In the early part of this century, there were thousands of deaf-mutes in the United States, who had never been educated by the system which is now so effective for that class in the community. This gave a rare opportunity of learning the normal spiritual attainments of unsophisticated man; of man uninfluenced by external revelation or traditions. Nor was this opportunity unimproved for a good purpose. When the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet (himself a philosophical scientist) introduced the system of deaf-mute instruction into this country, he made a careful examination into the intelligence of all the deaf mutes brought under his care, on this point of spiritual conceptions. His declaration was, that he never found a person who, prior to specific instruction, had any conception of the nature or the existence of God. A single illustration of Mr. Gallaudet’s experiences in this line will suffice for the entire series of them. A young girl of sixteen years of age, or so, who proved to be of far more than ordinary intelligence and mental capacity, had been brought up in a New England Christian home. She had been accustomed to bow her head when grace was said at the daily meals, to kneel in family prayer, and to attend church regularly, from early childhood; yet she had no idea of God, no thought of spiritual existences of any sort whatsoever, until she was instructed in those things, in the line of her new education.[702] A writer on this subject, who differed with Mr. Gallaudet in his conclusions from these facts, added: “This testimony is confirmed by that of all the teachers of the deaf and dumb, and the fact must be admitted.”[703] Until some human being can be found with a conception of spiritual existences, without his having received instruction on that point from those who went before him, the claim--in the face of such facts as these--that primitive man ever obtained his spiritual knowledge or his spiritual conceptions from within himself alone, or without an external revelation to him, is an unscientific assumption, in the investigation of the origin of religions in the world.

But, with man’s conception of spiritual things, already existing[704] (however he came by it), and with the existing belief that the blood is the life, or the soul, or the nature, of an organism, the idea of the transmigration of souls as identical with the transference of blood, is a very natural corollary. The blood being the life, or the soul, of man and of beast, if the blood of man passes into the body of a beast, or the blood of a beast passes into the body of a man, why should it not be inferred that the soul of the man, or of the beast, transmigrated accordingly? If the Hindoo, believing that the blood of man is the soul of man, sees the blood of a man drunk up by a tiger, is it strange that he should look upon that tiger as having within him the soul of the Hindoo, which has been thus appropriated? If the South African supposes that, by his drinking the blood or eating the heart of a lion, he appropriates the lion’s courage,[705] is it to be wondered at that when he sees a lion licking the blood and eating the heart of a South African, he should infer that the lion is thereby the possessor of whatever was distinctive in the Zulu, or the Hottentot, personality?

Indeed, as has been already stated, in the body of this work, there is still a question among physiologists, how far the transference of _blood_ from one organism to another carries a transmigration of _soul_ (of the _psyche_, not of the _pneuma_).[706] However this may be, the popular belief in such transmigration is fully accounted for, by the recognized conviction that the blood is the soul.

In this view of the case, there is an added force in the Mosaic prohibition--repeated as it is in the Apostolic Encyclical--of the eating, or drinking, of the blood of the lower animals; with the possibility of thereby being made a partaker of the lower animal nature. And what fresh potency is given to Elijah’s prophecy against Ahab and Jezebel, by this conception of the transference of nature by the transference of blood! “Thus saith the Lord [to Ahab] Hast thou killed [Hast thou taken the blood of Naboth?], and also taken possession [of Naboth’s vineyard]?... Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.... And of Jezebel also spake the Lord, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the ramparts of Jezreel.” The blood, the life, the soul of royalty, shall become a portion of the very life of the prowling scavenger dogs of the royal city. And it came to pass accordingly, to both Ahab and Jezebel.[707]

THE BLOOD-RITE IN BURMAH.

Mention is made, in the text of this volume,[708] of the fact that the primitive rite of blood-covenanting is in practice all along the Chinese border of the Burman Empire. In illustration of this truth, the following description of the rite and its linkings, is given by the Rev. R. M. Luther, of Philadelphia, formerly a missionary among the Karens, in Burmah. This interesting sketch was received, in its present form, at too late a date for insertion in its place in the text; hence its appearance here.

“The blood-covenant is well known, and commonly practised among the Karens of Burmah. There are three methods of making brotherhood, or truce, between members of one tribe and those of another.

“The first is the common method of eating together. This, however, is of but little binding force, being a mere agreement to refrain from hostilities for a limited time, and the truce thus made is liable to be broken at the briefest notice.

“The second method is that of planting a tree. The parties to this covenant select a young and vigorous sapling, plant it with certain ceremonies, and covenant with each other to keep peace so long as the tree lives. A covenant thus made is regarded as of greater force than that effected or sealed by the first method.

“The third method is that of the blood-covenant, properly so-called. In this covenant the chief stands as the representative of the tribe, if it be a tribal agreement; or, the father as the representative of the family, if it be a more limited covenant. The ceremonies are public and solemn. The most important act is, of course, the mingling of the blood. Blood is drawn from the thigh of each of the covenanting parties, and mingled together. Then each dips his finger into the blood and applies it to his lips. In some cases, it is said that the blood is actually drunk; but the more common method is that of touching the lips with the blood-stained finger.[709]

“This covenant is of the utmost force. It covers not merely an agreement of peace, or truce, but also a promise of mutual assistance in peace and in war. It also conveys to the covenanting parties mutual tribal rites. If they are chiefs, the covenant embraces their entire tribes. If one is a private individual, his immediate family and direct descendants are included in the agreement.

“I never heard of the blood-covenant being broken. I do not remember to have inquired particularly on this point, because the way in which the blood-covenant was spoken of, always implied that its rupture was an unheard-of thing. It is regarded as a perfectly valid excuse for any amount of reckless devotion, or of unreasoning sacrifice on behalf of another, for a Karen to say: ‘_Thui p’aw th’coh li_;’ literally, ‘The blood,--we have drunk it together.’ An appeal for help on the basis of the blood-covenant is never disregarded.

“A few of our missionaries have entered into the blood-covenant with Karen tribes; though most have been deterred, either from never having visited the ‘debatable land’ where the strong arm of British rule does not reach, or else, as in most instances, from a repugnance to the act by which the covenant is sealed. In one instance, at least, where a missionary did enter into covenant with one of these tribes, the agreement has been interpreted as covering not only his children, but one who was so happy as to marry his daughter. In an enforced absence of fifteen years from the scene of his early missionary labors nothing has been at once so touching and so painful to the writer, as the frequent messages and letters asking ‘When will you come back to _your people_?’ Yet, mine is only the inherited right above mentioned.

“The blood-covenant gives even a foreigner every right which he would have, if born a member of the tribe. As an instance, the writer once shot a hawk in a Karen village, just as it was swooping down upon a chicken. He was surprised to find, an half-hour afterward, that his personal attendant, a straightforward Mountain Karen, had gone through the village and ‘collected’ a fat hen from each house. When remonstrated with, the mountaineer replied, ‘Why, Teacher, it is your right,--that is our custom,--you are one of us. These people wouldn’t understand it if I did not ask for a chicken from each house, when you killed the hawk.’

“In the wilder Karen regions, it is almost impossible to travel unless one is in blood-covenant with the chiefs, while on the other hand one is perfectly safe, if in that covenant. The disregard of this fact has cost valuable lives. When a stranger enters Karen territory, the chiefs order the paths closed. This is done by tying the long elephant grass across the paths. On reaching such a signal, the usual inquiry in the traveling party is, ‘Who is in blood-covenant with this tribe?’ If one is found, even among the lowest servants, his covenant covers the party, on the way, as far as to the principal village or hill fortress. The party goes into camp, and sends this man on as an ambassador. Usually, guides are sent back to conduct the party at once to the chief’s house. If no one is in covenant with the tribe, and the wisp of grass is broken and the party passes on, the lives of the trespassers are forfeited. A sudden attack in some defile, or a night surprise, scatters the party and drives the survivors back the way they came. It is said by the Karens that Mr. Cooper, the famous English explorer of China and Thibet, was killed ‘because he had broken the grass.’ A day’s delay for the blood-covenant would have saved his life, and given him time to complete his most important labors. The men who killed him would have been his devoted body-guard, ready and willing to give their lives in defence of his. If the Karen account of his death is true, it is most unfortunate that he entered the Karen country from China (where the blood-covenant does not now prevail), and so was ignorant of the fact that by so slight a concession to Karen custom he could obtain a guarantee of safe conduct for at least a thousand miles.”

Another account of the blood-covenant rite in Burmah is kindly furnished to me, by the Rev. Dr. M. H. Bixby, of Providence, Rhode Island; who was also for some years a missionary among the Karens. He says:

“In my first journey over the mountains of Burmah, into Shanland, toward Western China, I passed through several tribes of wild Karens among whom the practice of ‘covenanting by blood’ prevailed.

“‘If you mean what you say,’ said the old chief of the Gecho tribe to me, referring to my professions of friendship, ‘You will drink truth with me.’ ‘Well, what is drinking truth?’ I said. In reply, he said: ‘This is our custom. Each chief pierces his arm--draws blood--mingles it in a vessel with whisky, and drinks of it; both promising to be true and faithful to each other, down to the seventh generation.’

“After the chiefs had drunk of the mingled blood and whisky, each one of their followers drunk of it also, and were thereby included in the covenant of friendship.

“A company of Shans laid a plot to kill me and my company in Shanland, for the purpose of plunder. They entered into covenant with each other by drinking the blood of their leader mingled with whisky, or a kind of beer made from rice.

“Those wild mountain tribes have strange traditions which indicate that they once had the Old Testament Scriptures, although now they have no written language. Some of the Karen tribes have a written language, given them by the missionaries.

“The covenant, also, exists in modified forms, in which the blood is omitted.”

BLOOD-STAINED TREE OF THE COVENANT.

In various parts of the East, a _tree_ is given prominence in the rite of blood-covenanting. In Burmah, as above shown, one mode of covenanting is by the mutual planting of a tree.[710] In Timor, a newly planted fig-tree is made to bear a portion of the blood of the covenant, and to remain as a witness to the sacred rite itself.[711] In one portion of Central Africa, a forked palm branch is held by the two parties, at their entering into blood-friendship;[712] and, in another region, the ashes of a burned tree and the blood of the covenanting brothers are brought into combination, in the use of a knotted palm branch which the brothers together hold.[713] And, again, in Canaan, in the days of Abraham, the planting of a tree was an element in covenant making; as shown in the narrative of the covenant which Abraham cut with Abimelech, at Beer-sheba.[714]

It may, indeed, be fair to suppose that the trees at Hebron, which marked the dwelling-place of Abraham were covenant-trees, witnessing the covenant between Abraham and the three Amorite chiefs; and that therefore they have prominence in the sacred story. “Now he [Abram] dwelt by [or, in: Hebrew, _beëlonay_ (בְּאֵלֹנֵי)] the [four] oaks [or, terebinths], of Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner; and these [three it was who] were confederate [literally, were masters of the covenant] with [the fourth one] Abram.”[715] This rendering certainly gives a reason for the prominent mention of the trees at Hebron, in conjunction with Abram’s covenant with Amorite chieftains; and it accords with Oriental customs of former days, and until to-day. So, also, it would seem that the tree which witnessed[716] the confirmation, or the recognition, of the covenant between another Abimelech, and the men of Shechem and the men of Beth-millo, by the pillar (the symbol of Baal-bereeth)[717] in Shechem,[718] was a covenant-tree, after the Oriental custom in sacred covenanting.

There is apparently a trace of the blood-covenanting and tree-planting rite of primitive times, in the blood-stained “Fiery Cross” of the Scottish Highlands, with its correspondent Arabian symbol of tribal covenant-duties in the hour of battle. Von Wrede, describing his travels in the south-eastern part of Arabia, tells of the use of this symbol as he saw it employed, as preliminary to a tribal warfare. A war-council had decided on conflict. Then, “the fire which had burned in the midst of the circle was newly kindled with a great heap of wood, and the up-leaping flames were greeted with loud rejoicing. The green branch of a nŭbk tree [sometimes called the ‘lote-tree,’ and again known as the ‘dôm,’ although it is not the dôm palm][719] was then brought, and also a sheep, whose feet were at once tied by the oldest shaykh. After these preparations, the latter seized the branch, spoke a prayer over it, and committed it to the flames. As soon as every trace of green had disappeared, he snatched it from the fire, again said a short prayer, and cut with his _jembeeyeh_ [his short sword] the throat of the sheep, with whose blood the yet burning branch was quenched. He then tore a number of little twigs from the burnt branch, and gave them to as many Bed´ween, who hastened off with them in various directions. The black bloody branch was then planted in the earth.... The little twigs, which the shaykh cut off and gave to the Bed´ween, serve as alarm signals, with which the messengers hasten from valley to valley, calling the sons of the tribe to the impending war [by this blood-stained symbol of the sacred covenant which binds them in brotherhood]. None dare remain behind, without loss of honor, when the chosen [covenant] sign appears at his encampment, and the voice of its bearer calls to the war.... At the conclusion of the war [thus inaugurated], the shaykhs of the propitiated tribe return the branches to the fire, and let them burn to ashes.”[720]

How strikingly this parallels the use and the symbolism of the Fiery Cross, in the Scottish Highlands, as portrayed in The Lady of the Lake. Sir Roderick Dhu would summon Clan Alpine against the King.

“A heap of withered boughs was piled, Of juniper and rowan wild, Mingled with shivers from the oak, Rent by the lightning’s recent stroke. Brian the Hermit by it stood, Barefooted, in his frock and coat. . . . . . . . . . . . ’Twas all prepared;--and from the rock A goat, the patriarch of the flock, Before the kindling fire was laid, And pierced by Roderick’s ready blade. Patient the sickening victim eyed The life-blood ebb in crimson tide Down his clogged beard and shaggy limb, Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, A slender crosslet framed with care, A cubit’s length in measure due; The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach wave Their shadows o’er Clan Alpine’s grave.”

Lifting up this fragment of the tree from the grave of the patriarch of the Clan,[721] the old priest sounded anathemas against those who should be untrue to their covenant obligations as clansmen, when they recognized this symbol of their common brotherhood.

“Burst with loud roar their answer hoarse, ‘Woe to the traitor, woe!’ Ben-an’s gray scalps the accents knew, The joyous wolf from covert drew, The exulting eagle screamed afar,-- They knew the voice of Alpine’s war.

“The shout was hushed on lake and fell, The monk resumed his muttered spell: Dismal and low its accents came, The while he scathed the cross with flame. . . . . . . . . . . . . . The crosslet’s points of sparkling wood He quenched among the bubbling blood, And, as again the sign he reared, Hollow and hoarse his voice was heard: ‘When flits this cross from man to man, Vich-Alpine’s summons to his clan, Burst be the ear that fails to heed! Palsied the foot that shuns to speed! . . . . . . . . . . . . . Then Roderick with impatient look From Brian’s hand the symbol took: ‘Speed, Malise, speed!’ he said, and gave The crosslet to his henchman brave. ‘The muster-place be Lanrick mead-- Instant the time--Speed, Malise, speed!’”[722]

“At sight of the Fiery Cross,” says Scott, “every man, from sixteen years old to sixty, capable of bearing arms, was obliged instantly to repair, in his best arms and accoutrements, to the place of rendezvous.... During the civil war of 1745-6, the Fiery Cross often made its circuit; and upon one occasion it passed through the whole district of Breadalbane, a tract of thirty-two miles, in three hours.”[723]

BLOOD-DRINKING.

Another item of evidence that the blood-covenant in its primitive form was a well-known rite in primitive Europe, is a citation by Athenæus from Poseidonios to this effect: “Concerning the Germans, Poseidonios says, that they, embracing each other in their banquets, open the veins upon their foreheads,[724] and mixing the flowing blood with their drink, they present it to each other; esteeming it the farthest attainment of friendship, to taste each other’s blood.”[725] As Poseidonios was earlier than our Christian era, this testimony shows that the custom with our ancestors was in no sense an outgrowth, nor yet a perversion, of Christian practices.

In Moore’s Lalla Rookh, the young maiden, Zelica, being induced by Mokanna, the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, to accompany him to the charnel-house, pledged herself to him, body and soul, in a draught of blood.

“There in that awful place, when each had quaffed And pledged in silence such a fearful draught, Such--oh! the look and taste of that red bowl Will haunt her till she dies--he bound her soul By a dark oath, in hell’s own language fram’d.”

It was after this, that he reminded her of the binding force of this blood-covenant:

“That cup--thou shudderest, Lady--was it sweet? That cup we pledg’d, the charnel’s choicest wine, Hath bound thee--aye--body and soul all mine.”

And her bitter memory of that covenant-scene, in the presence of the “bloodless ghosts,” was:

“The dead stood round us, while I spoke that vow, Their blue lips echo’d it. I hear them now! Their eyes glared on me, while I pledged that bowl, ’Twas burning blood--I feel it in my soul!”

Although this is Western poetry, it had a basis of careful Oriental study in its preparation; and the blood-draught of the covenant is known to Persian story and tradition.

One of the indications of the world-wide belief in the custom of covenanting, and again of life seeking, by blood-drinking, is the fact that both Jews and Christians have often been falsely charged with drinking the blood of little children, at their religious feasts. This was one of the frequent accusations against the early Christians (See Justin Martyr’s _Apol._, I., 26; Tertullian’s _Apol._, VIII., IX.) And it has been repeated against the Jews, from the days of Apion down to the present decade. Such a baseless charge could not have gained credence, but for the traditional understanding that men were wont to pledge each other to a close covenant by mutual blood-drinking.

COVENANT-CUTTING.

It is worthy of note that when the Lord enters into covenant with Abraham by means of a prescribed sacrifice (Gen. 15 : 7-18), it is said that the Lord “cut a covenant with Abram”; but when the Lord calls on Abraham to cut a covenant of blood-friendship, by the rite of circumcision (Gen. 17 : 1-12), the Lord says, for himself, “I will make [or I will fix] my covenant between me and thee.” In the one case, the Hebrew word is _karath_ (כָּרַת) “to cut”; in the other, it is _nathan_ (נָתַן) “to give,” or “to fix.” This change goes to show that the idea of cutting a covenant includes the act of a cutting--of a cutting of one’s person or the cutting of the substitute victim--as an integral part of the covenant itself; that a covenant may be made, or fixed, without a cutting, but that the term “cutting” involves the act of cutting.

Thus, again, in Jeremiah 34 : 18, there is a two-fold reference to covenant-cutting; where the Lord reproaches his people for their faithlessness to their covenant. “And I will give [to destruction] the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they made [literally, ‘cut’] before me [in my sight] when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof.” In this instance, there is in the Hebrew, a pun, as it were, to give added force to the accusation and reproach. The same word _’abhar_ (עָבַר) means both “to transgress” and “to pass over” [or, “between”], so that, freely rendered, the charge here made, is, that they went through the covenant when they had gone through the calf; which is another way of saying that they cut their duty when they claimed to cut a covenant.

The correspondence of cutting the victim of sacrifice, and of cutting into the flesh of the covenanting parties, in the ceremony of making blood-brotherhood, or blood-friendship, is well-illustrated in the interchanging of these methods in the primitive customs of Borneo.[726] The pig is the more commonly prized victim of sacrifice in Borneo. It seems, indeed, to be there valued only next after a human victim. In some cases, blood-brotherhood is made, in Borneo, by “imbibing each other’s blood.” In other cases, “a pig is brought and placed between the two [friends] who are to be joined in brotherhood. A chief addresses an invocation to the gods, and marks with a lighted brand[727] the pig’s shoulder. The beast is then killed, and after an exchange of jackets,[728] a sword is thrust into the wound, and the two [friends] are marked with the blood of the pig.” On one occasion, when two hostile tribes came together to make a formal covenant of brotherhood, “the ceremony of killing a pig for each tribe” was the central feature of the compact; as in the case of two Kayans becoming one by interchanging their own blood, actually or by a substitute pig. And it is said of the tribal act of cutting the covenant by cutting the pig, that “it is thought more fortunate if the animal be severed in two by one stroke of the parang (half sword, half chopper).” In another instance, where two tribes entered into a covenant, “a pig was placed between the representatives of [the] two tribes; who, after calling down the vengeance of the spirits on those who broke the treaty, plunged their spears into the animal [‘cutting a covenant’ in that way], and then exchanged weapons.[729] Drawing their krises, they each bit the blade of the other [as if ‘drinking the covenant’],[730] and so completed the affair.” So, again, “if two men who have been at deadly feud, meet in a house [where the obligations of hospitality restrain them], they refuse to cast their eyes upon each other till a fowl has been killed, and the blood sprinkled over them.”

In every case, it is the _blood_ that seals the mutual covenant, and the “cutting of the covenant” is that cutting which secures the covenanting, or the inter-uniting, blood. The cutting may be in the flesh of the covenanting parties; or, again it may be in the flesh of the substitute victim which is sacrificed.

BLOOD-BATHING.

In the Midrash Rabboth (_Shemoth_, Beth, 92, col. 2.) there is this comment by the Rabbis, on Exodus 2 : 23: “‘And the king of Egypt died.’ He was smitten with leprosy.... ‘And the children of Israel sighed.’ Wherefore did they sigh? Because the magicians of Egypt said: ‘There is no healing for thee save by the slaying of the little children of the Israelites. Slay them in the morning, and slay them in the evening; and bathe in their blood twice a day.’ As soon as the children of Israel heard the cruel decree, they poured forth great sighings and wailings.” That comment gives a new point, in the rabbinical mind, to the first plague, whereby the waters of the Nile, in which royalty bathed (Exod. 2 : 5), were turned into blood, because of the bondage of the children of Israel.

A survival of the blood-baths of ancient Egypt, as a means of re-vivifying the death-smitten, would seem to exist in the medical practices of the Bechuana tribes of Africa; as so many of the customs of ancient Egypt still survive among the African races (See page 15, _supra_). Thus, Moffat reports (_Missionary Labours_, p. 277) a method employed by native physicians, of killing a goat “over the sick person, allowing the blood to run down the body.”

BLOOD-RANSOMING.

Among other Bible indications that the custom of balancing, or canceling, a blood account by a payment in money, was well known in ancient Palestine, appears the record of David’s conference with the Gibeonites, concerning their claim for blood against the house of Saul, in 2 Samuel 21 : 1-9. When it was found that the famine in Israel was because of Saul’s having taken blood--or life--unjustly from the Gibeonites, David essayed to balance that unsettled account. “And the Gibeonites said unto him, It is no matter of silver or gold between us and Saul, or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel;” which was equivalent to saying: “Money for blood we will not take. Blood for blood we have no power to obtain.” Then said David, “What ye shall say, that will I do for you.” At this, the Gibeonites demanded, and obtained, the lives of the seven sons of Saul. The blood account must be balanced. In this case, as by the Mosaic law, it could only be by life for life.

In some parts of Arabia, if a Muhammadan slays a person of another religion, the relatives of the latter are not allowed to insist on blood for blood, but must accept an equivalent in money. The claim for the spilled blood is recognized, but a Muhammadan’s blood is too precious for its payment. (See Wellsted’s _Travels in Arabia_, I., 19.)

It is much the same in the far West as in the far East, as to this canceling of a blood-debt by blood or by other gifts. Parkman (_Jesuits in No. Am._, pp. lxi.-lxiii.; 354-360) says of the custom among the Hurons and the Iroquois, that in case of bloodshed the chief effort of all concerned was to effect a settlement by contributions to the amount of the regular tariff rates of a human life.

Another indication that the mission of the goel was to cancel the loss of a life rather than to avenge it, is found in the primitive customs of the New World. “Even in so rude a tribe as the Brazilian Topanazes,” the Farrer (citing Eschwege, in _Prim. Man. and Cust._, p. 164), “a murderer of a fellow tribesman would be conducted by his relations to those of the deceased, to be by them forthwith strangled and buried [with his forfeited blood in him], in satisfaction of their rights; the two families eating together for several days after the event as though for the purpose of [or, as in evidence of] reconciliation,”--not of satisfied revenge.

Yet more convincing than all, in the line of such proofs that it is restitution, and not vengeance, that is sought by the pursuit of blood in the mission of the goel, is the fact that in various countries, when a man has died a natural death, it is the custom to seek blood, or life, from those immediately about him; as if to restore, or to equalize, the family loss. Thus, in New South Wales, “when any one of the tribe dies a natural death, it is usual to avenge [not to avenge, but to meet] the loss of the deceased by taking blood from one or other of his friends,” and it is said that death sometimes results from this endeavor (Angas’s _Sav. Life_, II., 227). In this fact, there is added light on the almost universal custom of blood-giving to, or over, the dead. (See, _e. g._ Ellis’s _Land of Fetish_, pp. 59, 64; Stanley’s _The Congo_, II., 180-182; Angas’s _Sav. Life_, I., 98, 331; II., 84, 89 f.; Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, I., 527-529; Dodge’s _Our Wild Indians_, p. 172 f.; _First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethn._, pp. 109, 112, 159 f., 164, 183, 190.)

THE COVENANT-REMINDER.

It has already been shown, that the blood-stained record of the covenant of blood, shielded in a leathern case, is proudly worn as an armlet or as a necklace, by the Oriental who has been fortunate enough to become a sharer in such a covenant; and that there is reason for believing that there are traces of this custom, in the necklaces, the armlets, the rings, and the frontlets, which have been worn as the tokens of a sacred covenant, in well-nigh all lands, from the earliest days of Chaldea and Egypt down to the present time. There is a confirmation of this idea in the primitive customs of the North American Indians, which ought not to be overlooked.

The distinctive method by which these Indians were accustomed to confirm and signalize a formal covenant, or a treaty, was the exchange of belts of wampum; and that these wampum belts were not merely conventional gifts, but were actual records, tokens, and reminders, of the covenant itself, there is abundant evidence. In a careful paper on the “Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans,” in one of the reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, of the Smithsonian Institution, the writer[731] says: “One of the most remarkable customs practiced by the Americans is found in the mnemonic use of wampum.... It does not seem probable ... that a custom so unique and so widespread could have grown up within the historic period, nor is it probable that a practice foreign to the genius of tradition-loving races could have become so well established and so dear to their hearts in a few generations.... The mnemonic use of wampum is one, which, I imagine, might readily develop from the practice of gift giving and the exchange of tokens of friendship, such mementoes being preserved for future reference as reminders of promises of assistance or protection.... The wampum records of the Iroquois [and the same is found to be true in many other tribes] were generally in the form of belts [as an encircling and binding token of a covenant], the beads being strung or woven into patterns formed by the use of different colors.” Illustrations, by the score, of this mnemonic use of the covenant-confirming belts, or “necklaces,”[732] as they are sometimes called, are given, or are referred to, in this interesting article.

In the narrative of a council held by the “Five Nations,” at Onondaga, nearly two hundred years ago, a Seneca sachem is said to have presented a proposed treaty between the Wagunhas and the Senecas, with the words: “We come to join the two bodies into one”; and he evidenced his good faith in this endeavor, by the presentation of the mnemonic belts of wampum. “The belts were accepted by the Five Nations, and their acceptance was a ratification of the treaty.”[733] Lafitau, writing of the Canadian Indians, in the early years of the eighteenth century, says: “They do not believe that any transaction can be concluded without these belts;” and he mentions, that according to Indian custom these belts were to be exchanged in covenant making; “that is to say, for one belt [received] one must give another [belt].”[734] And a historian of the Moravian Missions says: “Everything of moment transacted at solemn councils, either between the Indians themselves, or with Europeans, is ratified and made valid by strings and belts of wampum.”[735] “The strings,” according to Lafitau, “are used for affairs of little consequence, or as a preparation for other more considerable presents”; but the binding “belts” were as the bond of the covenant itself.

These covenant belts often bore, interwoven with different colored wampum beads, symbolic figures, such as two hands clasped in friendship, or two figures with hands joined. As the belts commonly signalized tribal covenants, they were not worn by a single individual; but were sacredly guarded in some tribal depository; yet their form and their designation indicate the origin of their idea.

There is still preserved, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the wampum belt which is supposed to have sealed the treaty of peace and friendship between William Penn and the Indians. It contains two figures, wrought in dark colored beads, representing “an Indian grasping with the hand of friendship the hand of a man evidently intended to be represented in the European costume, wearing a hat.”[736]

Still more explicit in its symbolism, is the royal belt of the primitive kings of Tahiti. Throughout Polynesia, red feathers, which had been inclosed in a hollow image of a god, were considered not only as emblematic of the deities, but as actually representing them in their personality (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, I., 79, 211, 314, 316; II., 204; _Tour thro’ Hawaii_, p. 121). “The inauguration ceremony [of the Tahitian king], answering to coronation among other nations, consisted in girding the king with the _maro ura_, or sacred girdle of red feathers; which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but _identified him with their gods_ [as by oneness of blood]. The _maro_, or girdle, was made with the beaten fibres of the ava; with these a number of _ura_, red feathers, taken from the images of their deities [where they had, seemingly, represented the blood, or the life, of the image], were interwoven; ... the feathers [as the blood] being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.” In lieu of the king’s own blood, in this symbolic ceremony of inter-union, a human victim was sacrificed, for the “fastening on of the sacred maro.” “Sometimes a human victim was offered for every fresh piece added to the girdle [blood for blood, between the king and the god]; ... and the girdle was considered as consecrated by the blood of those victims.” The chief priest of the god Oro formally invested the king with this “sacred girdle, which, the [blood-representing] feathers from the idol being interwoven in it, was supposed to impart to the king a power equal to that possessed by Oro.” After this, the king was supposed to be a sharer of the divine nature of Oro, with whom he had entered into a covenant of blood-union (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, II., 354-360).

Thus it seems that a band, as a bond, of a sacred covenant is treasured reverently in the New World; as a similar token, of one kind, or another, was treasured, for the same reason, in the Old World. Yet, in the face of such facts as these, one of the notable rationalistic theological writers on Old Testament manners and customs, in the latest edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, coolly ascribes the idea of the Jewish phylacteries to the superstitious idea of a pagan “amulet.” He might indeed, with good reason, have ascribed the idea of the pagan amulet itself to a perversion of that common primitive idea of the binding bond of a sacred covenant, which shows itself in the blood-friendship record of Syria, in the red covenant-cord of China and India, in the divine-human covenant token of ancient Egypt, in the red-feather belt of divine-royal union, in the Pacific Islands, in the wampum belt of America, and in the evolved wedding-covenant ring, or amulet, of a large portion of the civilized world. But that would hardly have been in accordance with the fashionable method of the modern rationalistic theologian; which is, to fix on some later heathenish perversion of a primitive sacred rite, and then to ascribe the origin of all the normal uses of that primitive rite, to its own later perversions.

Yet another indication that the binding circlet of the covenant-token stands, among primitive peoples, as also among cultivated ones, as the representative, or proof, of this very covenant itself, is found in a method of divorce prevailing among the Balau Dayaks, of Borneo. It has already been shown (page 73, _supra_) that a ring of blood is a binding symbol in the marriage covenant in some parts of Borneo. It seems, also, that when a divorce has been agreed on by a Balau couple, “it is necessary for the offended husband to send a ring to his wife, before the marriage can be considered as finally dissolved; without which, should they marry again, they would be liable to be punished for infidelity.”[737] This practice seems to have grown out of the old custom already referred to (page 73 f.), of the bride giving to the bridegroom a blood-representing ring in the marriage cup. Until that symbolic ring is returned to her by the bridegroom, it remains as the proof of her covenant with him.

This connection of the encircling ring with the heart’s blood, is of very ancient origin, and of general, if not of universal, application. Wilkinson (_Anc. Egypt._, III., 420) cites Macrobius as saying, that “those Egyptian priests who were called prophets, when engaged in the temple near the altars of the gods, moistened [anointed] the ring-finger of the left hand (which was that next to the smallest) with various sweet ointments, in the belief that a certain nerve communicated with it from the heart.” He also says, that among the Egyptian women, many finger rings were worn, and that “the left was considered the hand peculiarly privileged to wear these ornaments; and it is remarkable that its third finger [next to the little finger] was considered by them, as by us, _par excellence_ the ring finger; though there is no evidence [to his knowledge] of its having been so honored at the marriage ceremony.” Birch adds (_Ibid._, II., 340), that “it is very difficult to distinguish between the ring worn for mere ornament, and the signet [standing for the wearer’s very life] employed to seal [and to sign] epistles and other things.” The evidence is, in fact, ample, that the ring, in ancient Egypt, as elsewhere, was not a mere ornament, nor yet a superstitious amulet, but represented one’s heart, or one’s life, as a symbol and pledge of personal fidelity.

In South Australia, the rite of circumcision is one of the steps by which a lad enters into the sphere of manhood. This involves his covenanting with his new god-father, and with his new fellows in the sphere of his entering. In this ceremony, the very ring of flesh itself is placed “on the third finger of the boy’s left hand” (Angas’s _Sav. Life_, I., 99). What stronger proof than this could be given, that the finger-ring is a vestige of the primitive blood-covenant token?

An instance of the use of a large ring, or bracelet, encircling the two hands of persons joining in the marriage covenant, is reported to me from the North of Ireland, in the present century. It was in the county Donegal. The Roman Catholic priest was a French exile. In marrying the people of the poorer class, who could not afford to purchase a ring, he “would take the large ring from his old-fashioned double-cased watch, and hold it on the hands, or the thumbs, of the contracting parties, while he blessed their union.”

Yet another illustration of the universal symbolism of the ring, as a token of sacred covenant, is its common use as a pledge of friendship, even unto death. The ring given by Queen Elizabeth to the unfortunate Earl of Essex, is an instance in point. Had that covenant-token reached her, her covenant promises would have been redeemed.

There is an old Scottish ballad, “Hynd Horn,”--perhaps having a common origin with the Bohemian lay on which Scott based The Noble Moringer,[738]--which brings out the idea of a covenant-ring having the power to indicate to its wearer the fidelity of its giver; corresponding with the popular belief to that effect, suggested by Bacon.[739] Hynd Horn has won the heart of the king’s daughter, and the king sends him over the sea, as a means of breaking up the match. As he sets out Hynd Horn carries with him a symbol of his lady-love’s troth.

“O his love gave him a gay gold ring, With a hey lillelu, and a how lo lan; With three shining diamonds set therein, And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie.

“As long as these diamonds keep their hue, With a hey lillelu, and a how lo lan, Ye’ll know that I’m a lover true, And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie.

“But when your ring turns pale and wan, With a hey lillelu, and a how lo lan, Then I’m in love with another man, And the birk and the broom blooms bonnie.”[740]

Seven years went by, and then the ring-gems grew “pale and wan.” Hynd Horn hastened back, entered the wedding-hall disguised as a beggar, sent the covenant-ring to the bride in a glass of wine; and the sequel was the same as in The Noble Moringer.

At a Brahman wedding, in India, described by Miss H. G. Brittan (in “The Missionary Link,” for October, 1864; cited in _Women of the Orient_, pp. 176-179) a silver dish, filled with water, (probably with water colored with saffron, or with turmeric, according to the common custom in India,) “also containing a very handsome ruby ring, and a thin iron bracelet,” was set before the father of the bride, during the marriage ceremony. At the covenanting of the young couple, “the ring was given to the groom; the bracelet to the bride; then some of the [blood-colored?] water was sprinkled on them (See page 194, _supra_), and some flowers [were] thrown at them.” Here seem to be combined, the symbolisms of the ring, the bracelet, and the blood, in a sacred covenanting.

HINTS OF BLOOD-UNION.

From the very fact that so little attention has been given to the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, in the studies of modern scholars, there is reason for supposing that the rite itself has very often been unnoticed by travelers and missionaries in regions where it was practiced almost under their eyes. Indeed, there is proof of this to be obtained, by comparing the facts recorded in this volume with the writings of visitors to the lands here reported from. Hence, it is fair to infer, that more or less of the brotherhoods or friendships noted among primitive peoples, without any description of the methods of their consummating, are either directly based on the rite of blood-covenanting, or are outgrowths and variations of that rite; as, for example, in Borneo, blood-tasting is sometimes deemed essential to the rite, and again it is omitted. It may be well, therefore, to look at some of the hints of blood-union among primitive peoples, in relationships and in customs where not all the facts and processes involved, are known to us.

Peculiarly is it true, that wherever we find the idea of an absolute merging of two natures into one, or of an inter-union or an inter-changing of two personalities in loving relation, there is reason for suspecting a connection with the primitive rite of inter-union through a common blood flow. And there are illustrations of this idea in the Old World and in the New, all along the ages.

It has already been mentioned (page 109, _supra_) that, in India, the possibility of an inter-union of two natures, and of their inter-merging into one, is recognized in the statement that “the heart of Vishnu is Sivâ, and the heart of Sivâ is Vishnu”; and it is a well-known philosophical fact that man must have an actual basis of human experience for the symbolic language with which he illustrates the nature and characteristics of Deity.

In the most ancient portion of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead,[741] there is a description of the inter-union of Osiris and Rā, not unlike that above quoted concerning Sivâ and Vishnoo. It says, that “Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found the soul of Rā there; each embraced the other, and become as one soul in two souls”[742]--as one life in two lives; or, as it would be phrased concerning two human beings united in blood-friendship, “one soul in two bodies”; a common life in two personalities. Again it is said in an Egyptian sacred text, “Rā is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris is the soul of Rā.”[743]

An exchange of names, as if in exchange of personalities, in connection with a covenant of friendship, is a custom in widely diverse countries; and this custom seems to have grown out of the idea of an inter-union of natures by an inter-union of blood; even if it be not actually an accompaniment of that rite in every instance. It is common in the Society Islands,[744] as an element in the adoption of a “tayo,” or a personal friend and companion (See page 56, _supra_). It is to be found in various South Sea islands, and on the American continent.

Among the Araucanians, of South America, the custom of making brothers, or brother-friends, is called _Lacu_. It includes the killing of a lamb and dividing it--“cutting” it--between the two covenanting parties; and each party must eat his half of the lamb--either by himself or by such assistance as he chooses to call in. None of it must be left uneaten. Gifts also pass between the parties; and the two friends exchange names. “The giving [the exchanging] of a name [with this people] establishes between the namesakes a species of relationship which is considered almost as sacred as that of blood, and obliges them to render to each other certain services, and that consideration which naturally belongs to relatives.”[745]

It is related of Tolo, a chief of the Shastika Indians, on the Pacific coast, that when he made a treaty with Col. McKee, an American soldier, in 1852, for the cession of certain tribal rights, he was anxious for some ceremony of brotherhood, that should give binding sacredness to the mutual covenant. After some parleying, he proposed the formal exchange of names, and this was agreed to. Thenceforward he desired to be known as “McKee.” The American colonel was now “Tolo.” But after a while the Indian found that, as in too many other instances, the terms of the treaty were not adhered to by the authorities making it. Then he discarded his new name, “McKee,” and refused to resume his former name, “Tolo.” He would not answer to either, and to the day of his death he insisted that his name, his identity, was “lost.”[746]--There is a profound sentiment underneath such a course, and such a custom, as that.

So fully is the identity of one’s name and one’s life recognized by primitive peoples, that to call on the name of a dead person is generally supposed to summon the spirit of that person to the caller’s service. Hence, among the American Indians, if one calls the dead by name, he must answer to the dead man’s goel. He must surrender his own blood, or pay blood-money, in restitution of the life--of the dead--taken by him. (_First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol._, p. 200.)

Even Herbert Spencer sees the correspondence of the blood-covenant and the exchange of names. He says: “By absorbing each other’s blood, men are supposed to establish actual community of nature. Similarly with the ceremony of exchanging names.... This, which is a widely-diffused practice, arises from the belief that the name is vitally connected with its owner.... To exchange names, therefore, is to establish some participation in one another’s being.”[747] Hence, as we may suppose, came the well-nigh universal Oriental practice of inter-weaving the name of one’s Deity with one’s name, as a symbolic evidence of one’s covenant-union with the Deity. The blood-covenant, or the blood-union, idea is at the bottom of this.

Another custom, having a peculiar bearing upon this thought of a new name, or a new identity, through new blood, is the rite of initiation into manhood, by the native Australians. During childhood the Australian boys are under the care of their mothers, and they bear names which designate the place and circumstances of their birth. But when the time comes for them to put away childish things,[748] they are subjected to a series of severe and painful tests, to prove their powers of physical and mental endurance, preparatory to their reception of a new name, as indicative of a new life. A rite resembling circumcision is one step in their progress. During these ceremonies, there is selected for each lad a sponsor (or godfather) who is a representative of that higher life into which the lad seeks an entrance. One of the latest steps in the long series of ceremonies, is the choosing and conferring, by the sponsor, of the lad’s new name, which he is to retain thenceforward during his life. With a stone-knife, the sponsor opens a vein in his own arm, and causes the lad to drink his warm-flowing blood. After this, the lad drops forward on his hands and knees, and the sponsor’s blood is permitted to form a pool on his back, and to coagulate there. Then the sponsor cuts, with his stone-knife, broad gashes in the lad’s back, and pulls open the gaping wounds with the fingers. The scars of these gashes remain as permanent signs of the covenant ceremony.[749] And encircling tokens of the covenant[750] are bound around the neck, each arm, and the waist, of the young man; who is now reckoned a new creature[751] in the life represented by that godfather, who has given him his new name, and has imparted to him of his blood.[752]

That the transfusion of blood in this ceremony is the making of a covenant between the youth and his sponsor, and not the giving him blood in vivification, is indicated in another form of the same rite of manhood-initiation, as practised in New South Wales. There, the youth is seated upon the shoulders of his sponsor; while one of his teeth is knocked out. The blood that flows from the boy’s lacerated gum in this ceremony is not wiped away, but is suffered to run down upon his breast, and thence upon the head of his sponsor, whose name he takes. This blood, which secures, by its absorption, a common life between the two, who have now a common name, is permitted to dry upon the head of the man and upon the breast of the boy, and to remain there untouched for several days.

In this New South Wales ceremonial, there is another feature, which seems to suggest that remarkable connection of life with a stone, which has been already referred to (page 307, _supra_); and yet again to suggest the giving of a new name as the token of a new life. A white stone, or a quartz crystal, called _mundie_, is given to each novitiate in manhood, at the time he receives his new name. This stone is counted a gift from deity, and is held peculiarly sacred. A test of the young man’s moral stamina is made by the old men’s trying, by all sorts of persuasion, to induce him to surrender this possession, when first he has received it. This accompaniment of a new name “is worn concealed in the hair, tied up in a packet, and is never shown to the women, who are forbidden to look at it under pain of death.” The youths receiving and retaining these white stones, with their new names, are termed “_Kebarrah_, from _keba_, a rock, or stone.” (Angas’s _Savage Life_, II., 221.) That the idea of a sacred covenant, a covenant of brotherhood and friendship, is underneath these ceremonies, is indicated by the fact, that when the rites of Kebarrah are celebrated, even “hostile tribes meet in peace; all animosity between them being laid aside during the performance of these ceremonies.” “To him that overcometh, [saith the Spirit,] ... I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it” (Rev. 2 : 17). The Rabbis recommend the giving secretly of a new name, as a means of new life, to him who is in danger of dying. (See _Seph. Hakhkhay._, p. 37 f. and note.)

Again, in a form of marriage ceremony in Tahiti, there is a hint of this universal idea of inter-union by blood. An observer of this ceremony, in describing it says: “The female relatives cut their faces and brows[753] with the instrument set with shark’s teeth,[754] received the flowing blood on a piece of native cloth, and deposited the cloth, sprinkled with the mingled blood of _the mothers_ of the married pair, at the feet of the bride. By the latter parts of the ceremony, any inferiority of rank that might have existed was removed, and they were [now] considered as equal. The two families, also, to which they respectively belonged, were ever afterwards regarded as one [through this new blood-union].”[755] Had these mothers mingled and interchanged their own blood before the births of their children, the children--as children of a common blood--would have been debarred from marriage; but now that the two children were covenanting to be one, their mothers might interchange their blood, that the young couple might have an absolute equality of family nature.

There are frequent references by travelers to the rite of brotherhood, or of close friendship, in one part of the world or another, with or without a description of its methods. Thus of one of the tribes in Central Africa it is said: “The Wanyamuezi have a way of making brotherhood, similar to that which has already been described, except that instead of drinking each other’s blood, the newly made brothers mix it [their blood] with butter on a leaf, and exchange leaves. The butter is then rubbed into the incisions, so that it acts as a healing ointment at the same time that blood is exchanged.[756] The ceremony is concluded by tearing the leaves to pieces and showering the fragments on the heads of the brothers.”[757] The Australians, again, are said to have “the custom of making ‘_Kotaiga_,’ or brotherhood, with strangers. When Europeans visit their districts, and behave as they ought to do, the natives generally unite themselves in bonds of fellowship with the strangers; each selecting one of them as his Kotaiga. The new relations are then considered as having mutual responsibilities, each being bound to forward the welfare of the other.”[758] Once more, in Feejee, two warriors sometimes bind themselves to each other by a formal ceremony, and although its details are not described, a missionary writer says of it: “The manner in which they do this is singular, and wears the appearance of a marriage contract; and the two men entering into it are spoken of as man and wife, to indicate the closeness of their military union. By this mutual bond, the two men pledge themselves to oneness of purpose and effort, to stand by each other in every danger, defending each other to the death, and if needful to die together.”[759]

With the American Indians, there are various traces of the blood-brotherhood idea. Says Captain Clark, in his work on the Indian Sign Language: “Among many tribes there are brothers by adoption, and the tie seems to be held about as sacredly as though created by nature.”[760] Stephen Powell, writing of the Pacific Coast Indians, gives this tie of brotherhood-adoption yet more prominence, than does Clark. He says: “There is an interesting institution found among the Wyandots, as among some other of our North American tribes, namely, that of fellowship. Two young men agree to be perpetual friends to each other, or _more than brothers_. Each reveals to the other the secrets of his life, and counsels with him on matters of importance, and defends him from wrong and violence, and at his death is chief mourner.”[761] This certainly suggests the relation of blood-brotherhood; whether blood be intermingled in the consummation of the rite, or not.

Colonel Dodge tells of a ceremony of Indian-brotherhood, which includes a bloody rite, worthy of notice in this connection. He says: “A strong flavor of religious superstition attaches to a scalp, and many solemn contracts and binding obligations can only be made over or by means of a scalp;” for is it not the representative of a life? In illustration of this, he gives an incident which followed an Indian battle, in which the Pawnees had borne a part with the whites against the Northern Cheyennes. Colonel Dodge was sitting in his tent, when “the acting head-chief of the Pawnees stalked in gravely, and without a word.” The Colonel continues: “We had long been friends, and had on several occasions been in tight places together. He sat down on the side of my bed, looked at me kindly, but solemnly, and began in a low tone to mutter in his own language, half chant, half recitative. Knowing that he was making ‘medicine’ [that he was engaged in a religious exercise] of some kind, I looked on without comment. After some moments, he stood erect, and stretched out his hand to me. I gave him my hand. He pulled me into a standing position, embraced me, passed his hands lightly over my head, face, arms, body, and legs to my feet, muttering all the while; embraced me again, then turned his back upon me, and with his face toward heaven, appeared to make adoration. He then turned to embrace and manipulate me again. After some five minutes of this performance, he drew from his wallet a package, and unrolling it, disclosed a freshly taken [and therefore still bloody] scalp of an Indian. Touching me with this [blood-vehicle] in various places and ways, he finally drew out his knife, [and ‘cutting the covenant’ in this way, he] divided the scalp carefully along the part [the seam] of the hair, and handing me one half, embraced me again, kissing me on the forehead. ‘Now,’ said he in English, ‘you are my brother.’ He subsequently informed me that this ceremony could not have been performed without this scalp.”[762]

Here seems to be an illustration of cutting the covenant of blood-brotherhood, by sharing the life of a substitute human victim. It is much the same in the wild West as in the primitive East.

So simple a matter as the clasping of hands in token of covenant fidelity, is explicable, in its universality, only as a vestige of the primitive custom of joining pierced hands in the covenant of blood-friendship. Hand-clasping is not, by any means, a universal, nor is it even the commonest, mode of friendly and fraternal salutation among primitive peoples. Prostrations, embracings, kissings, nose-rubbings, slappings of one’s own body, jumpings up and down, the snappings of one’s fingers, the blowing of one’s breath, and even the rolling upon one’s back, are all among the many methods of primitive man’s salutations and obeisances (See, e. g., Spencer’s _Principles of Sociology_, II., 16-19). But, even where hand clasping is unknown in salutation, it is recognized as a symbol of the closest friendship. Thus, for example, among tribes of North American Indians where nose-rubbing is the mode of salutation, there is, in their widely diffused sign language, the sign of clasped, or inter-locked, hands, as indicative of friendship and union. (_First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol._, pp. 385 f., 521, 534 f.) So again, similarly, in Australia (_Ibid._, citation from Smith’s _Aborigines of Victoria_, II., 308). In the Society Islands, the clasping of hands marks the marriage union, and marks a loving union between two brothers in arms; although it has no place in ordinary greetings (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, II., 11, 492, 569). And so, again, in other primitive lands.

There seems, indeed, to be a gleam of this thought in Job 17 : 3:

“Give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself; Who is there that will strike hands with me?”

The Hebrew word _taq’a_[763] (תָּקַע) here translated “strike,” has also the meaning “to pierce” (Judg. 4 : 21) and “to blow through,” or “to drive through” (Num. 10 : 3); and Job’s question might be freely rendered; Who is there that will pierce [or that will clasp pierced] hands with me, in blood-friendship? Thus, suretyship grew out of blood-covenanting.

Again, in Zechariah 13 : 6, where the prophet foretells the moral reformation of Judah, there is a seeming reference to the pierced hands of blood-friendship. When one is suspected of being a professional prophet, by certain marks of cuttings between his hands, he declares that these are marks of his blood-covenant with his friends. “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds [these cuttings] between thine hands? Then he shall answer, [They are] these [cuttings] with which I was wounded [or stricken, or pierced] in the house of my friends [in the covenant of friendship].” If, indeed, the translation of the Revisers, “between thine arms,” were justified, the cuttings would still seem to be the cuttings of the blood-covenant (See pages 13, 45, _supra_).

It is a noteworthy fact, that among the Jews in Tunis, near the old Phœnician settlement of Carthage, the sign of a bleeding hand is still an honored and a sacred symbol, as if in recognition of the covenant-bond of their brotherhood and friendship. “What struck me most in all the houses,” says a traveler (Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg) among these Jews, “was the impression of an open bleeding hand, on every wall of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive [yet suggestive] sign was to be seen everywhere.”

How many times, in the New Testament epistles, does the idea show itself, of an inter-union of lives, between Christ and his disciples, and between these disciples and each other. “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another” (Rom. 12 : 5). “We are members of his body” (Eph. 5 : 30). “We are members one of another” (Eph. 4 : 25). “Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor. 6 : 15). “Ye are the body of Christ, and severally [are] members thereof” (1 Cor. 12 : 27).

It is in this truth of truths, concerning the possibility of an inter-union of the human life with the divine, through a common inter-bloodflow, that there is found a satisfying of the noblest heart yearnings of primitive man everywhere, and of the uttermost spiritual longings of the most advanced Christian believer, in the highest grade of intellectual and moral enlightenment. No attainment of evolution, or of development, has brought man’s latest soul-cry beyond the intimations of his earliest soul-outreaching.

“Take, dearest Lord, this crushed and bleeding heart, And lay it in thine hand, thy piercèd hand; That thine atoning blood may mix with mine, _Till I and my Beloved are all one_.”

FOOTNOTES:

[666] See pages 238-240, _supra_.

[667] _Speaker’s Comm._, at Exod. 24 : 8.

[668] Exod. 24 : 3-8.

[669] Heb. 9 : 20.

[670] _Speaker’s Com._, at Exod. 24 : 8.

[671] Mark 14 : 24.

[672] John 6 : 53, 54.

[673] _Principles of Sociology_, II., § 364.

[674] _Anc. Egypt._, III., 411.

[675] See pages 245 f., _supra_.

[676] _Anc. Egypt._, II., 32.

[677] Note on Lev. chap. 17.

[678] _Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne_, s. v. “Cœur.”

[679] In substance from Castren’s _Ethnologische Vorlesungen über die Altaischen Völker_, p. 174, as cited in Ralston’s _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 122.

[680] From Bleek’s _Reynard the Fox in South Africa_, p. 55; as cited _Ibid._, p. 123, note.

[681] From _Asbjornsen and Moe_, No. 36, Dasent, No. 9, p. 71, as cited _Ibid._, p. 120.

[682] See references to Köhler’s _Orient und Occident_, II., 99-103, _Ibid._, p. 123, note.

[683] From Khudyakof, No. 110, as cited _Ibid._, p. 124.

[684] Timæus of Locri, cited in Liddell and Scott’s _Greek Eng. Lex._, s. v., “Hepar.” See also page 108 f., _supra_.

[685] Pollux’s _Onomasticon_, II., 4, 226.

[686] _Pilgrim. to Mec. and Med._, p. 376.

[687] See page 128, _supra_.

[688] _Pilgrim. to Mec. and Med._, p. 378. See also page 129 f., _supra_.

[689] Richardson’s _Eng. Dict._, s. v., “Liver.”

[690] Annandale’s Ogilvie’s _Imperial Dict._, s. v., “Liver.”

[691] See Cushing’s paper on “Zuñi Fetiches,” in _Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, pp. 3-43.

[692] 1 Peter 2 : 2-5.

[693] Cushing’s “Zuñi Fetiches,” p. 43.

[694] See “Illustrated Catalogue of Collections from Indians of New Mexico and Arizona,” 1879, in _Second Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, Figures 361-387; 421-430.

[695] St. John’s _Life in Far East_, I., 74 f.

[696] _Ibid._, I., 115 f.

[697] St. John’s _Life in Far East_, I., 160.

[698] _Ibid._, I., 187.

[699] This is a different form from that reported at page 192 f., _supra_.

[700] St. John’s _Life in Far East_, I., 61.

[701] Lev. 17 : 14.

[702] As to this specific instance, I can bear personal testimony, from my frequent communications on the subject, with the person whose experience is here recited.

[703] _Am. Annals of Deaf and Dumb_, Vol. VI., p. 134.

[704] Paul’s claim, in Romans 1 : 18-23, is not that man knows God intuitively; but that, having the knowledge of God, which he does have by tradition, man ought not to liken God to “four-footed beasts and creeping things.”

[705] See page 136, _supra_.

[706] See page 133 f., _supra_.

[707] 1 Kings 21 : 17-23; 22 : 35-38; 2 Kings 9 : 30-37.

[708] At page 44, _supra_.

[709] See page 154, _supra_.

[710] See page 313, _supra_.

[711] See page 53, _supra_.

[712] See page 35, _supra_.

[713] See page 37, _supra_.

[714] Gen. 21 : 33.

[715] See Gen. 13 : 18; 14 : 13; 18 : 1.

[716] The covenant was “with” [Hebrew, עִם _’im_, not “with” as an instrument, but “with” as in the presence of, as accompanied by] the tree at Shechem.

[717] See page 218, _supra_, note.

[718] Judges 9 : 1-6.

[719] Robinson’s _Biblical Researches_, II., 210 f., note.

[720] Von Wrede’s _Reise in Hadhramaut_, p. 197 f.

[721] See reference (in footnote 585 at page 268 f. _supra_) to the custom in Sumatra, of taking an oath over the “grave of the original patriarch of the Passumah.”

[722] _Lady of the Lake_, Canto III.

[723] _Ibid._, note.

[724] See pages 13, 86 f., _supra_.

[725] Athenæus’s _Deipnosophistæ_, II., 24 (45).

[726] St. John’s _Life in Far East_, Comp. I., 38, 46, 56, 74-76, 115, 117, 185.

[727] A trace of the burnt branch of the covenant-tree.

[728] See page 270, _supra_.

[729] See page 270, _supra_.

[730] See pages 9, 154, _supra_.

[731] W. H. Holmes, in _Second Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnol._, pp. 240-254.

[732] W. H. Holmes, in _Second Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnol._, p. 243.

[733] _Events in Indian History_, p. 143: cited _Ibid._, p. 242 f.

[734] _Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriq._, tom. II., pp. 502-507; cited _Ibid._, p. 243 ff.

[735] Loskiel’s _Missions of the United Brethren_, Trans. by La Trobe, Bk. I., p. 26; cited in _Ibid._, p. 245 f.

[736] _Ibid._, p. 253 f.

[737] St. John’s _Life in the Far East_, I., 67.

[738] See page 73, _supra_.

[739] See page 75, _supra_.

[740] Allingham’s _Ballad Book_, p. 6 f.

[741] _Todtenbuch_, xvii., 42, 43.

[742] Renouf’s _The Relig. of Anc. Egypt_, p. 107.

[743] Renouf’s _The Relig. of Anc. Egypt_, p. 107.

[744] _Miss. Voyage to So. Pacif. Ocean_, p. 65.

[745] See E. R. Smith’s _The Araucanians_, p. 262.

[746] Power’s “Tribes of California,” in _Contrib. to No. Am. Ethnol._, III., 247.

[747] _Principles of Sociology_, II., 21.

[748] 1 Cor. 13 : 11.

[749] See note at page 218, _supra_.

[750] See pages 65-77, _supra_.

[751] 2 Cor. 5 : 17; Eph. 4 : 24; Col. 3 : 9, 10.

[752] Angas’s _Savage Life_, I., 114-116.

[753] See references to drawing blood from the forehead, at page 86 ff., _supra_.

[754] See pages 85-88, _supra_.

[755] Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, II., 569 f.

[756] See Prov. 27 : 9.

[757] Cited from Capt. Grant’s description; in Wood’s _Unciv. Races_, I., 440.

[758] _Ibid._, II., 81.

[759] Williams and Calvert’s _Fiji and Fijians_, p. 35.

[760] _Indian Sign Language_, s. v. “Brother.”

[761] _Contributions to No. Am. Ethnology_, Vol. III., p. 68.

[762] Dodge’s _Our Wild Indians_, page 514 f.

[763] Is there any correspondence between this word, _taq’a_, and the Hindoo word _tika_ (the blood-mark on the Rajput chief), referred to at page 137, _supra_?

INDEXES.

TOPICAL INDEX.

Abel, his blood-giving, 210 ff.

Abimelech, his covenant: with Abraham, 265; with Isaac, 267 f.

Abraham: The friend of God, 215-221; his blood-giving, 217-221; his faith-testing, 224-230; his covenant with Abimelech, 265 f.

Adoption, blood used in, 195 f.

Ahab’s fate, significance of, 312.

Altar, a table of communion, 167, 292 f.

Amulet: house of the, 7, 65, 298; of the covenant, 81 f., 83, 232-238. See Phylactery: Token of covenant.

Anointing with blood: in Central America, 90 f.; in Arabia, 120; in the Arthurian romance, 120 f.; among the Bheels, 136 f.; among the Caribs, 137 f.; among the Central Africans, 138; among the Chinese, 154; among the North American Indians, 306 f.; among the Australians, 336 f.

Antiquity of the blood-covenant, 6, 58 ff., 77 ff., 206, 320.

Ark, the, covering record of blood covenant, 298. See Amulet, house of the.

Assiratum, its meaning, 63 ff.

Avenger of blood. See Goel.

Baal-bereeth: god-father in circumcision, 218; god of the covenant, 218, 317.

Banquet, connection of, with sacrifice: in China, 148 ff.; in India, 159 ff.; in Babylonia and Assyria, 167; among the Bed´ween, 179 f.; among American Indians, 179 f.

Bed´ween Brotherhoods, 9 f. See also Blood-covenant.

Belt: royal, of Tahiti, 328; wampum of American Indian, a covenant record, 326 ff.

Blood: thicker than milk, 10; not eaten. See Prohibition of blood. Vivifying power of, 110 ff.; belongs to God, 204; symbolism of, in universal speech, 309 f.; life-giving, in: Mexican legend, 111 f.; Egyptian legend, 111 f.; Chaldean legend, 112; Phœnician legend, 112; Greek legend, 112; modern science, 115 f.; sacredness of, in: Egypt, 99 ff.; America, 105 ff.; India, 109, 158 ff.; China, 109. See Offerings of blood.

Blood-baths: in Egypt, 116 f., 324; in mediæval Europe, 117 ff.; in Scandinavia, 121 f.; in India, 122 f.; in Bechuana-land, 324.

Blood-covenant: defined, 4 f.; a primitive rite, 4, 6, 8; its sacredness, 6 f.; influence of, 15; refused, 21; recognized, 26 f.; in Syria, 5 ff.; in Africa, 12-38; in Europe, 39-43; in China, 43 f.; in Burmah, 44, 313 f.; in Madagascar, 44 f., 44-49; in Borneo, 49-52; in Timor, 53 f.; in Yucatan, 54 f.; in Brazil, 55; in Scythia, 58 f., 61 f.; in South America, 334; in Egypt, 77-84; traces of, in China, 153; full symbolism of, 202 f.; Noah’s, 213; at Sinai, 238-240, 298; importance commonly undervalued, 297; a safeguard in Burmah, 315.

Blood-lickers, 11, 59. See Drinking of Blood.

Blood-money: in the East, 260 ff.; refused by Gibeonites, 324 f.; accepted: by Arabs, 325; by North American Indians, 325. See Goel.

Blood-sucking, 8, 30, 43, 92, 114 f. See Drinking of blood.

Blood-transference. See Blood-covenant; Transfusion of blood.

Book of the Dead, 78-83.

Bracelet, as symbol, 65-76.

Bread: of Rā, 173; covenant of, 293, 313.

Breaking the grass, 315.

Brébeuf, heart of, 127.

Brotherhoods, blood. See Blood-covenant.

Bruce, heart of, 107 f.

Burial in brotherhood, 41.

Cain, his blood withholding, 210 ff.

Cameron, Commander, making blood-friendship, 15 ff.

Cannibalism: religious origin of, 183 f., 184; in India, 185 f.; in Feejee, 187; in North America, 187 f., 308; in Central and South America, 180 f.; in Europe, 189 f.

Caste-distinctions lost in communion, 161 ff.

Cataline’s blood-covenant, 60 f. (See stamp on outside cover)

Christ, his blood, fulfillment of human desire, 271-286.

Christians, charges of cannabalism against, 321.

Circumcision, a mode of blood-covenanting, 215-223, 237; its modern methods, 218 f.

Clasped hands: a relic of the covenant, 328, 340. See Hands.

Classics, references to blood-covenant in, 58-65, 267, 297, 312.

Communion: through blood, 147 ff.; in China, 148 ff.; in Assyria, 168 f.; divine-human, in Egypt, 172. See Altar; Banquet; Union. In Christ, foretold, 275-278; instituted, 280-284; realized, 285 f.

Covenant, between those of different religions, 7. See Blood-covenant.

Covenant of Bread, its symbolism, 293, 313.

Cry of blood from the ground, 212.

Cutting covenant: meaning of term, 267 f., 322; between Jacob and Laban, 269; in one’s own body, 322; in substitute victim, 322; both methods in Borneo.

Cuttings in flesh, 218; in friendship, in Zechariah, 341.

David and Jonathan, covenanting, 269 ff.

Dead, blood-covenant with, 299.

Discerning the communion-body, 172.

Drinking of blood: in North America, 127; in Syria, 6; in Central Africa, 13, 28 ff.; in Europe, 41, 60 f.; in Madagascar, 44, 48; in Borneo, 49 f., 52; in Timor, 53; in Scythia, 59, 62, 126; in Egypt, 83; in India, 92 f.; in China, 123 f.; in France, 124; in Italy, 124 f.; in language of Fellaheen, 130; among the Germans, 320; in Persia, 321; in Australia, 336; charge of, against Jews, 179, 321; charge of, against Christians, 321.

Drinking the covenant: 9, 17 f., 60, 191 f.; in Borneo, 102; in Feejee, 193; in China, 196; in Central America, 197; in Europe, 198 ff.

Eating together, in covenant, 268 f.

Exchange: of gifts, 14, 16, 20 f., 22, 25 f., 27 f., 32; of garments, 14, 270; of arms, 270.

Evolution, or deterioration, 4.

Feathers, red, their significance, 328 f. See Red, as a symbol.

Feeding on the god: 176 f. See Communion; Union.

Fiery cross: its significance in Arabia, 317 f.; in Scotland, 319 ff.

Fire, a gift of the gods, 174.

Firstborn, blood of the, 156.

---- sacrifice of: in China, 150 f.; in pre-Semitic times, 166.

Food restrictions removed in communion: in India, 161 ff.; in Assyria, 168.

Friend, closer than brother, 7 f., 10.

Friendship, blood. See Blood-covenant.

Girdle. See Belts.

Ghouls seeking life in blood, 114 f.

Giving blood: in proof of love, 85-92; in worship, 89-93, 96.

_Goel_, pursuer, not avenger, of blood, 259-263; in Brazil, 325; in Australia, 325 f.

Golden legend, Blood transference in, 118 ff.

Hand, bleeding, in Tunis, 342.

Hands: joined in blood, 12, 41 f., 235 f.; clasped, token of, 328, 340 ff.

Healths, drinking of, relic of blood-drinking, 201 f.

Heart: sacredness of, in Egypt, 99 ff., 300 ff.; as life, outside of the body, 103 ff., 301 f.; sacredness of, in Greece and Rome, 108 f.; epitome of man, 107; the symbol of personality, 204; new, is new life, 303; the seat of the soul, 304; living, in petrifactions, 305; source of life, 99 ff.; of strength, 135; of manhood, 135; of courage, 136.

Heart-eating: among American Indians, 128; in British Guiana, 128; in Australia, 129; in Africa, 129; in Borneo, 129.

Heathen communions and the Christian sacrament, 177.

Human sacrifices. See Sacrifices, human.

Idols, anointed with blood, 176 f., 306 f.

Illustrations of blood-covenant, in Bible, 264-271.

Imprecatory oaths, 6, 9, 16, 20, 31, 45 ff., 51, 53, 60 f., 62.

Imputation, doctrine of, 221.

Incest, in marriage of blood-friends, 10, 55 f.

Influence of blood-covenant, 15, 48.

Inspiration through blood: in Homer, 113 ff.; in Norseland legends, 119 f.; on Pacific coast, 140 f.; in India, 141 f.

Isaac: his blood proffered, 225-230; his covenant with Abimelech, 267 f.

Isis, blood of, 81 f., 233.

Jacob, his covenant with Laban, 268 f.

Jagan-natha, communion of, 163 f.

Jews, charged with human sacrifices, 178 f., 321.

Jezebel’s fate, significance of, 312 f.

Jonathan and David, covenanting, 269 ff.

Kali, human sacrifices to, 158 f.

_Khatan_, one bound through bleeding, 222 f.

Krishna, communion of, 163 f.

Leprosy: blood baths, for cure of, in Syria, 116; in Egypt, 117, 324; in mediæval Europe, 117.

Life: blood is, 38, 57, 79 ff., 88 f., 99, 211-215, 241-263, 299 ff., 306.

---- from divine blood: in Egypt, 111 f.; in Mexico, 111 f.; in Chaldea, 112; in Phœnicia, 112; in Greece, 112.

Life-transference in blood-transference, 126 ff. See Soul transference; Transfusion of blood.

Liver: a symbol of life, 303 f.; proposed derivations of the word, 304 f.; symbolism of: as a blood-cistern, 303 f.; as seat of emotion, 304; as congealed blood, 304 f.; eaten, like the heart, 306.

Livingstone, Dr., making blood-friendship, 13 ff.

Mandrakes, symbolism of, 111.

Marriage, blood-drinking in, 191 ff., 332. See Symbolic substitutes for blood; Wedding, ceremonies of.

Marriage-covenant, blood in, 192 f.

Milk-brothers, 11 f.

Moses: his child’s circumcision, 221 ff.; his blood-covenant at Sinai, 238 ff.

Name: a lost, 334; the new, 337 f.; restitution for calling, of the dead, 335.

---- represents the life, 334 f.; in the Society Islands, 334; among Indians, 334 f.; among Australians, 335 f.

Names, exchange of, 334 ff.

Nature, transference of, by blood transference: 126 ff.; among the Caribs, 137 f.; among the Kaffirs, 138; among the Yarubas, 138 f.

Necklace, symbolism of, 76 f.

New covenant, Christ’s body and blood in, 299.

Noah’s blood-giving, 212 ff.

Norseland legends, 41 ff., 88 f.

Odin and Lôké, in covenant, 39 ff.

Offerings of blood: in Egypt, 102 f.; in America, 106 f.; in Greece and Rome, 108 f.; in Phœnicia, 109: in India, 109; in China, 109; in Arabia, 180.

One soul in two bodies, 38, 80, 92 f., 334.

Ordeal of touch: in the Nibelungen Lied, 143 f.; in Denmark, 144 f.; in Scotland, 145; in England, 146 f.; in America, 147.

Otaheite. See Tahiti, under Union.

Passover, substitute blood of, 231 f.

Phœnicia, blood-giving in, 89 f.

Phylacteries, the token of blood-covenant, 233-236; and amulet, 329.

Preserving blood, as life, 88 f., 337 f. See Life, blood is.

Prohibition of blood-drinking: 214 f.; in the Mosaic law, 240 f.; reason for, 312.

Prophecy, Blood as a means of, 113 ff.

Quiché god, Tohil, his terms of covenant, 174.

Rā, communion with, in Amenti, 172, 333 f.

Ransoming by blood, 324 ff. See Goel.

Record of the divine blood-covenant, 298; of the covenant: among American Indians, 326 ff.

Red, as a symbol of blood: in Egypt, 102 f., 173; in China, 196; the colour, its symbolism, 236 f. See also, Feathers, red.

Revenger of blood. See Goel.

Ring: symbolism of, 65-76, 330 ff.; in Dayak divorce, 330; of flesh, 331.

Rosetta-stone of the covenant, 267.

Russia: customs in, 73; blood giving in, 96.

Sacrament, Christian: its relation to heathen communions, 177; foreshadowed in the Old Testament, 274 f.; instituted by Jesus, 281 ff.; not a sacrifice, 292; a two-fold covenant, 293.

---- of the Holy Food, 164.

Sacredness of blood: in Egypt, 99 ff.; in America, 105 ff.; in India, 155. See Offerings of blood.

Sacrifice: as communion, in China, 149 ff.; not necessarily expiatory, 166; of Isaac, 224-230.

Sacrifices; Egyptian and Jewish, their resemblance, 300.

---- human: among the Nahuas, 105 f.; among the Mayas, 106 f.; in India, 157 ff., 227; in Assyria, 166 f.; of children: in Guatemala, 174; in Arabia, 227; in the Norseland, 227; in Great Britain, 227 f.

---- human and animal, succession of: in China, 152; in India, 155 f.; in the Brahmanical books, 157 f.

“Sacrificial part,” blood the, 157 f.

Saffron, symbolism of, 77, 165.

---- water: in wedding, 332; a substitute for blood, 195 f.

Saul, his phylacteries, 237 f.

Scarabæus, a symbol of heart, 100, 300.

Signing with blood, 93 ff.

Smoking, in inter-union, 51, 309.

Society Islands, brotherhoods in, 56 f.

Soul-transference by blood-transference, 312 f. See Life-transference; Transfusion of blood.

Spiritual conceptions not innate, 311.

Stanley, Henry M., making blood-friendship, 18-38.

Stone, white, and new name, 337.

Stones, living, 119 f., 307 f.

Striking: a covenant, 59, 62; hands, in covenant, 236, 341 f.

Substitute-blood offered: in Borneo, 52, 73; in Egypt, 72; in China, 148; in South America, 177; in Bible times, 211, 213; at Sinai, 239-258. See Symbolic substitutes.

Sucking-brothers, 11 f.

Symbolic substitutes for blood, 191 ff.; the assiratum, 63 ff.; arrack, 192; coffee, 192; any ordinary spirituous liquor, 193; saffron, 194, 332; wine and honey, 196; chica, 197; wine, 198 ff.; whisky, 316.

Symbols, scriptural and ethnic, their relationship, 206.

Table-Altar: in Assyria, 167; in the Old Testament, 167 f.; in the New Testament, 292 f.

Thumbs bound, in covenant, 59, 71, 331.

Token of passover covenant, 232. See Phylacteries, the token of blood-covenant.

Touch, life by, of blood, 134 ff.

Transfusion of blood: 38 f.; modern scientific, 115 f.; among Egyptians, 116 f.; among Hebrews, 116; among Syrians, 116; in Tasmania, 126; a cure for insanity, 133 f.

Transmigration of souls, origin of belief in, 310.

Tree: branch of, in the covenant, 35 ff.; of the covenant, 53; the fiery cross in Scotland, 317 ff.; the war-signal in Arabia, 318. See Tree-planting.

Tree-planting in blood-covenant: in Borneo, 53; in India, 165; in Burmah, 313; in Israel, 316; traces of, 316 f.

Trial by blood: in the Nibelungen Lied, 143 f.; in Denmark, 144 f.; in Scotland, 145; in England, 146 f.; in America, 147.

Turkey, blood-giving in, 85.

Types, insufficiency of, 252-258.

Uarda, citation from, 84.

Union, (divine) through blood: in Egypt, 333 f.; in the Norseland, 40 f.

---- (divine-human) through blood: in Phœnicia, 89; in Armenia, 90; in India, 92, 156 ff.; in Central America, 90 f., 175 f.; in Russia, 95; in China, 148 f.; in Assyria, 167 f.; in Persia, 169 f.; in Egypt, 170 f.; in Guatemala, 174; in the Mosaic ritual, 242-248; Abel’s outreaching for it, 210 ff.; Noah’s outreaching for it, 213 ff.; Abraham’s outreaching for it, 217-221; universal longing for it, 272; realised, through Christ, 273-293, 342.

---- (human) through blood: in Syria, 5-12; in Africa, 12-38; in the Norseland, 41 ff.; in Madagascar, 44-49; in Borneo, 49-52, 73; in Timor, 52-54; in Yucatan, 54 f.; in Brazil, 55; in North America, 55 f., 339 f.; in the South Sea Islands, 56 f.; in Scythia, 59 f., 61 f.; in Armenia, 59 f.; in Arabia, 62 f.; in Egypt, 72, 77-84; in India, 156; in Tahiti, 338; in Central Africa, 338; in Burmah, 314 f.

---- (Satanic-human) through blood: among witches, 93 ff.; among wonder-workers, 95.

Unity of the human race, 57, 96, 178 f.

Vampires: seeking life in blood, 114 f.; in the Old World and the New, 115.

Vicarious blood-absorption: 131 f.; among the Araucanians, 131; among the Abyssinians, 132; among the Australians, 133.

Victim, representing a deity, 177 f., 183 f.

Vivifying power of blood. See Blood, life-giving.

Wampum-belts, a covenant record, 326.

Water-of-saffron children, 195.

Wedding, ceremonies of, 69-74.

Wine, symbolism of, 63 ff., 73.

Witchcraft, blood in, 93 ff.

Witness-heap, 62, 266.

Xolotl, rescues a lost race, 112.

Yajna, great sacrifice of, 161 ff.

Zipporah, her act of blood-giving, 222 f.

Zoroastrians, their communion, 169 f.

SCRIPTURAL INDEX.

GENESIS. TEXT PAGE 4 : 2-5 211 4 : 10, 11 212 8 : 20 213 9 : 3-6 214 12 : 6-8 268 13 : 18 317 14 : 13 264, 317 14 : 22 235 15 : 6 220 15 : 7-18 322 15 : 18 264 17 : 1-12 322 17 : 2, 7-9, 10, 11, 13 217 18 : 1 317 21 : 12 275 21 : 22-24 265 21 : 30, 31, 33 266 21 : 33 317 22 : 1, 2 225 22 : 15, 18 230 22 : 18 267 26 : 25-29 268 26 : 30, 31 268 28 : 18-22 268 30 : 14-17 111 31 : 19-36 268 31 : 44-47 266 31 : 44-54 269 34 : 1-31 218 41 : 41, 42 70 49 : 11 191

EXODUS. 2 : 5 324 4 : 9 231 4 : 20-26 221, 222 7 : 17-21 231 12 : 1-6 231 12 : 7-10 153 12 : 7-13 232 13 : 3-10, 11-16 233 21 : 18-27 261 22 : 14-17 261 24 : 1-11 240 24 : 3-8 298 24 : 8 299 24 : 5, 6 213 29 : 15-25 213 33 : 11 216

LEVITICUS. 1 : 1-6 213 1 : 5, 11, 15 249 1 : 10-12 213 1 : 13, 17 247 1 : 14, 15 213 2 : 2, 12 247 3 : 8, 26 247 4 : 6, 7, 17, 18, 25, 30, 34 248 4 : 13, 14 247 7 : 26 241 8 : 14-22 249 8 : 18, 19 213 9 : 8-22 249 14 : 19, 20 249 16 : 3-25 249 16 : 14, 15 248 17 : 3-6 243 17 : 10-12 241 17 : 11-14 287 17 : 13 243 17 : 14 241, 309 25 : 25 ff. 260 25 : 47 ff. 260 27 : 1-8 261

NUMBERS. 35 : 12 259 35 : 19, 21, 24, 25, 27 259 35 : 9-34 260 36 : 30-34 261

DEUTERONOMY. 6 : 4-9, 13-22 234 8 : 3 173 10 : 14-16 256 12 : 23 64 19 : 6, 12 259 22 : 13-21 223 27 : 9-26 47 28 : 1-68 47 30 : 1-6 257 32 : 14 191

JOSHUA. 2 : 18-20 236 20 : 3, 5, 9 259

JUDGES. 8 : 33 218 9 : 4 218 9 : 1-6 317

RUTH. 1 : 14 211

1 SAMUEL. 18 : 1-3 270 18 : 4 270 19 : 1-7 270 20 : 1-13 270 20 : 13-17 271

2 SAMUEL. 1 : 1-16 237 1 : 10 75 1 : 26 270 7 : 1 271 9 : 1-13 271 12 : 17 264 14 : 11 259 21 : 1-9 324

1 KINGS. 18 : 26-28 90 21 : 17-23 313 22 : 35-38 313

2 KINGS. 5 : 1-14 116 9 : 30-37 313 19 : 37 168

2 CHRONICLES. 20 : 7 216

EZRA. 4 : 2 168

ESTHER. 3 : 10-12 70 8 : 2 70

JOB. 3 : 2-9 46 19 : 25 259 23 : 12 173

PSALMS. 16 : 4 63 16 : 4, 5 252 19 : 14 259 50 : 7-17 253 56 : 8 81 78 : 35 259

PROVERBS. 3 : 1-4 257 4 : 18 78 4 : 23 101 6 : 1 236 7 : 2, 3 257 11 : 15 margin 236 18 : 24 7 22 : 24-26 236 23 : 11 259 27 : 9 338

ECCLESIASTES. 4 : 9, 10 8

ISAIAH. 1 : 11-17 254 25 : 6 254 37 : 38 168 41 : 8 216 41 : 14 259 43 : 14 259 44 : 6, 24 259 47 : 4 259 48 : 17 259 49 : 7, 26 259 49 : 16 234 49 : 18 235 51 : 10 259 53 : 4-6, 12 286 54 : 5, 8 259 59 : 20 259 60 : 16 259 62 : 8 234 63 : 16 259 65 : 11 167

JEREMIAH. 7 : 21-23 255 22 : 24 235 31 : 11 259 31 : 31-34 258 34 : 18 264, 322 50 : 34 259

EZEKIEL. 5 : 11 235

DANIEL. 12 : 7 235

HOSEA. 6 : 4-7 255

MALACHI. 1 : 6, 7 167

ECCLESIASTICUS. 39 : 26 191 50 : 15 191

1 MACCABEES. 6 : 34 191

MATTHEW. 4 : 4 173 6 : 31, 32 47 13 : 12 47 25 : 29 47 26 : 26-28 281 27 : 33-54 285

MARK. 14 : 23 281 14 : 24 299 15 : 22-39 285

LUKE. 15 : 22 70 22 : 44 280 22 : 14, 15, 19, 20 281 23 : 33-47 285

JOHN. 1 : 1-14 274 4 : 34 173 5 : 26 290 6 : 51, 55 285 6 : 53, 54 299 6 : 53-58 276 6 : 60, 63 277 6 : 60 278 8 : 31, 32 173 10 : 10, 18 285 13 : 1 280 15 : 4-7 283 15 : 13 7, 229, 285 15 : 13-15 282 16 : 13 173 17 : 1-24 284 17 : 19 173 19 : 17-37 285 20 : 31 288

ACTS. 15 : 2-29 215 21 : 18-25 215

ROMANS. 1 : 18-23 311 2 : 26-29 257 4 : 3 220 4 : 11, 12 257 5 : 8-12 289 5 : 12-21 245 6 : 4-6 42 6 : 23 242, 286 8 : 22 272 8 : 32 273 12 : 5 342

1 CORINTHIANS. 6 : 15 342 10 : 14-17 293 10 : 21 168 11 : 29 164 11 : 25 281 12 : 27 342 13 : 11 336

2 CORINTHIANS. 5 : 17 288, 336

GALATIANS. 2 : 20 289 3 : 6 220 3 : 6-9, 16, 29 278 3 : 7-9 257 3 : 28, 29 291 4 : 5 195 6 : 17 218

EPHESIANS. 1 : 7 288 2 : 11-16 290 4 : 24 336 5 : 30 342

PHILIPPIANS. 3 : 3 257

COLOSSIANS. 1 : 19, 20 290 2 : 9-11 291 2 : 12 42 2 : 17 258 3 : 3 288 3 : 9, 10 336

2 TIMOTHY. 1 : 10 284

HEBREWS. 1 : 1-3 274 1 : 14-16 278 2 : 14-16 274 6 : 13 235 9 : 8 252 9 : 16, 17 284 9 : 19 239 9 : 20 298 9 : 24-28 292 10 : 1-4 272 10 : 4 252 10 : 5-9 275 10 : 10, 14-22, 28, 29 292 11 : 4 211 11 : 17-19 229 11 : 18 275 12 : 24 212 13 : 20 243, 273 13 : 20, 21 293

JAMES. 2 : 21-23 230 2 : 23 216, 220, 221

1 PETER. 1 : 20 275 2 : 2-5 307 2 : 17 45 3 : 18 286

2 PETER. 1 : 4 289

1 JOHN. 1 : 7 288 5 : 11, 12 286 5 : 13, 20 288

REVELATION. 1 : 5 288 6 : 10 212 7 : 3 154 9 : 4 154 13 : 8 275 13 : 16 154 14 : 1 154 20 : 4 154 22 : 4 154

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

_KADESH-BARNEA_;

ITS IMPORTANCE AND PROBABLE SITE, WITH THE STORY OF A HUNT FOR IT; INCLUDING STUDIES OF THE ROUTE OF THE EXODUS, AND THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY OF THE HOLY LAND.

_One volume, 8vo., 478 pages, with two maps and four full page illustrations, $5.00._

CRITICAL NOTICES.

FROM _The Athenæum_ (LONDON).

“This book contains a great deal of new information on the topography of the Holy Land, derived from the latest hieroglyphic documents, as well as from the accounts of recent travelers.... The wilderness of Shur (a word meaning a wall) was beyond the Great Wall of Egypt, and was also, according to the happy conjecture of our author, the wilderness of Etham. This is an important identification, which will be a new starting-point for the history of the exodus.”

FROM _The Academy_ (LONDON).

“This is a truly noteworthy book, and will at once command the attention of all biblical scholars.”

FROM THE _London Quarterly Review_.

“This is one of the noblest historical monographs that we have, and in some respects surpasses all other books of the kind.... The reader will find this work of our American divine deeply engrossing; combining, in fact, many kinds of interest not often meeting in one volume. We have a fine historical insight running through all the ages; a keen appreciation of the difficulties of the exodus, an intelligent attempt to settle them; an intense enthusiasm for the biblical history as such, and the dramatic skill of a modern traveler.... It is a book which our young Hebraists and students of the Old Testament should read over and over again.”

FROM PROFESSOR A. H. SAYCE, OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY.

“It is one of the most ‘thorough’ books I have ever come across. Among other points proved by you, your identification of the desert of Shur is perhaps the neatest and most important.”

FROM PROFESSOR DR. FRANZ DELITZSCH, OF LEIPZIG UNIVERSITY.

“As an apple of Tantalus, your splendid work concerning Kadesh-Barnea sways above me. I am not yet filled with it; ... but it is unbearable that I should longer refrain from thanking you.... It is a great service that you, following the lead of the sainted Palmer, have made Ên Kudeîs the object of your investigation.... My commentary on Genesis is out of print.... Would that I could yet once more work over this commentary.... Then I would have an opportunity to show my thankful appreciation of your work.”

FROM DR. HERMANN GUTHE (SECRETARY OF THE GERMAN PALESTINE SOCIETY) IN THE _Theologische Literatur-Zeitung_, OF LEIPZIG.

“Trumbull appears to me to be specially felicitous in his determination of the three roads leading out from Egypt to the East, which are of great importance for the general history of the further East.... The happy result of his journey is very gratifying, and we have to thank his diligent studies for a valuable contribution to biblical geography.”

FROM PROFESSOR C. A. BRIGGS (OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY) IN _The Presbyterian Review_.

“This is the most important work upon the geography of the Holy Land produced in America since the Biblical Researches of Edward Robinson.... Dr. Trumbull ... has established the site of Kadesh-Barnea so thoroughly, and so fortified his conclusions on every hand, that we believe no one will hereafter think of questioning them.... The book is written in an interesting and fervent style. The author grapples with his reader. His enthusiasm is contagious. The critic has to take care and stand firm lest he be swept off his feet. We thank Dr. Trumbull for his labor of love and enthusiasm. He has done honor to American pluck and indefatigable research. We are proud of the book and the man.”

⁂ _For sale by all booksellers, or sent post-paid upon receipt of price, by_

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Nos. 743 and 745 Broadway, New York.

Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes have been renumbered and repositioned. Where the author has cross-referenced a footnote, the footnote number in this text has been added to the original reference.

Two page numbers in the Contents, and one in the Index, have been amended.

Hieroglyphs and one Syriac word in the original book are represented by [Illustration].

Quotations from other sources, and transliterated materials, have been transcribed as they appear in the original book.

Spelling, grammar, and variation in hyphenation and word usage have been retained.

Punctuation has been changed occasionally where a clear predominance of usage could be ascertained.

Typographical changes have been made as follows:

p. 31: the slighest breach changed to the slightest breach

p. 57: _Miss. Vogage to So. Pacif. Ocean_ changed to _Miss. Voyage to So. Pacif. Ocean_ (footnote 95)

p. 77: Dubois _Des. of Man. and Cust. of India_ changed to Dubois’s _Des. of Man. and Cust. of India_ (footnote 151)

p. 90: Montolinia’s _Hist. Ind. de Nueva España_ changed to Motolinia’s _Hist. Ind. de Nueva España_ (footnote 181)

p. 111: M. Edouard Naville, the eminent Swiss Egyptologist changed to M. Édouard Naville, the eminent Swiss Egyptologist (footnote 222)

p. 125: Bruy’s _Histoire des Papes_ changed to Bruys’s _Histoire des Papes_ (footnote 251)

p. 156: Taittirīya-brahmana changed to Taittirīya-brāhmana

p. 174: Anderson’s _Lake Ngami_ changed to Andersson’s _Lake Ngami_ (footnote 360)

p. 185: the Abbe Dubois changed to the Abbé Dubois

p. 189: _Native Relig. in Mex. and Peru_ changed to _Native Relig. of Mex. and Peru_ (footnote 388)

p. 235 and 236: Robert’s _Orient. Ill. of Scrip._ changed to Roberts’s _Orient. Ill. of Scrip._ (footnotes 492 and 499)

p. 200: Godwyn’s _Rom. Historiae_ changed to Godwyn’s _Rom. Historiæ_ (footnote 421)

p. 234: in the covenant thus memoralized changed to in the covenant thus memorialized

p. 300: _Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne_, s. v. “Coeur.” changed to _Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne_, s. v. “Cœur.” (footnote 678)

p. 312: and also taken possesion changed to and also taken possession

p. 317: Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eschol changed to Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eshcol

p. 332: colored with saffron, or with tumeric changed to colored with saffron, or with turmeric

p. 346: _Goel_, pursuer, not avenger, of blood, 259-563; changed to _Goel_, pursuer, not avenger, of blood, 259-263;

p. 347: Otaheite, See Tahiti. changed to Otaheite. See Tahiti, under Union.

p. 347: See Covenant, token of the. changed to See Phylacteries, the token of blood-covenant.

p. 348: in the Mosaic ritual, 242-2 8; changed to in the Mosaic ritual, 242-248;

These were not changed:

p. 261: whether the loss life shall be restored might read whether the lost life shall be restored

p. 325: “Even in so rude a tribe as the Brazilian Topanazes,” the Farrer might read “Even in so rude a tribe as the Brazilian Topanazes,” says Farrer