Part 14

Among primitive peoples it was a common thought that the first fruits of life in any sphere belonged of right to God, or the gods. This was true of the fields, of the flocks and herds, and of the family. (See, for example, Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, II., 68–78, 373–384; also W. Robertson Smith’s _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 443–446.) As in Egypt particular gods were supposed to have power over men and beasts in special localities, the first-born belonged to them, and stood as representing their power and protection; yet Jehovah claimed to be Lord over all. And now, at the close of the contest between God and the gods, Jehovah took to himself out of the homes of his enemies the devoted first-born of man and of beast, in evidence of the truth that the gods of Egypt could not protect them.

Footnote 559:

1 Kings 4 : 24, “Tiphsah.”

Footnote 560:

See Gesenius’s _Hebr. und Aram. Handwörterbuch_ (12th ed.), s. v. “Tiphsakh.”

Footnote 561:

Exod. 21 : 2–6.

Footnote 562:

Talmud Babyl., _Qiddusheen_, fol. 22, b.

Footnote 563:

Gen. 15 : 1–21. See pp. 186–188, _supra_.

Footnote 564:

Gen. 19 : 1–25.

Footnote 565:

Compare Josh. 2 : 1–20; 5 : 10–12; 6 : 12–17.

Footnote 566:

Judg. 7 : 1–25.

Footnote 567:

2 Kings 19 : 20–36; 2 Chron. 32 : 1–22.

Footnote 568:

Esther 9 : 12–19.

Footnote 569:

Dan. 5 : 1–30.

Footnote 570:

Edersheim’s _Temple: Its Ministry and Services_, p. 196 f.

Footnote 571:

Edersheim’s _The Temple: Its Ministry and Services_, p. 197; _Home and Synagogue of Modern Jew_, pp. 159–161; Ginsburg’s art. “Passover,” in Kitto’s _Cycl. of Bib. Lit._

Footnote 572:

On the testimony of Rev. Dr. Marcus Jastrow.

Footnote 573:

Exod. 12 : 1, 2; Lev. 23 : 5; 9 : 1, 2.

Footnote 574:

See, for example, Exod. 34 : 12–16; Lev. 17 : 7; 20 : 5–8; Num. 15 : 39, 40; Deut. 31 : 16; Judg. 2 : 17; 8 : 27, 33; 2 Kings 9 : 22, 23; 1 Chron. 5 : 25; 2 Chron. 21 : 11; Psa. 73 : 27; 106 : 38, 39; Isa. 57 : 3; Jer. 3 : 1–15, 20; 13 : 27; Ezek. 6 : 9; 16 : 1–63; 20 : 30; 23 : 1–49; Hos. 1 : 2; 2 : 2; 3 : 1; 4 : 12–19; 5 : 3, 4; 6 : 6, 7, 10.

Footnote 575:

Jer. 31 : 31, 32; also Heb. 8 : 8, 9.

Footnote 576:

Ezek. 16 : 8.

Footnote 577:

Exod. 12 : 22.

Footnote 578:

W. Robertson Smith’s _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 169–176, and Stade’s _Geschichte_, p. 460.

Footnote 579:

Compare Exod. 34 : 12–16; Deut. 7 : 5; 12 : 3; Judg. 3 : 7; 2 Kings 23 : 4; 2 Chron. 33 : 3, etc.

VI. CHRISTIAN PASSOVER.

1. OLD COVENANT AND NEW.

In the New Testament the rites and symbols of the Old Testament find recognition and explanation. This is peculiarly true of the passover service. It was a central fact in the gospel story. The sacrifice, or offering, of Jesus Christ as the Saviour, was made at that season;[580] and it was evident that he himself felt that it was essential that this be so. He held back from Jerusalem until the approach of the passover feast, when he knew that his death was at hand.[581] And his last passover meal was made the basis of the new memorial and symbolic covenant meal with his disciples.[582] The passover sacrifice is as prominent in the New Testament as in the Old.

Paul, familiar with Jewish customs by study and experience, writing to Corinthian Christians of their duty and privileges as members of the household of faith, urges them to make a new beginning in their lives, as the Israelites made a new beginning on the threshold of every year at the passover festival, with its accompanying feast of unleavened bread, when all the lay-over leaven from a former state was put away. “Purge out the old leaven,” he says, “that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.”[583]

2. PROFFERED WELCOME BY THE FATHER.

The primitive passover sacrifice was an offering of blood by the head of the household on the threshold of his home, as a token of his welcome to the guest who would cross over that blood and thereby become one with the family within. It was not an outsider or a stranger who proffered a threshold sacrifice, but it was the house-father who thus extended a welcome to one who was yet outside. The welcoming love was measured by the preciousness of the sacrifice. The richer the offering, the heartier the welcome.[584]

In the Egyptian passover the threshold sacrifice was a proffer of welcome to Jehovah by the collective family in each Hebrew home. In the Christian passover it was the sacrifice of the Son of God on the threshold of the Father’s home, the home of the family of the redeemed, as a proffer of welcome to whoever outside would cross the outpoured blood, and become a member of the family within. Therefore it is written: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”[585] And “for this cause,” says Paul, “I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”[586]

Among primitive peoples, as among the Jews, no indignity could equal the refusal of a proffered guest-welcome, in a rude trampling on the blood of the threshold sacrifice, instead of crossing over it reverently as a mode of its acceptance. Hence the peculiar force of the words of the Jewish-Christian writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, concerning the mistreatment of God’s threshold sacrifice, in the Son of God offered as our passover: “A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath _trodden under foot the Son of God_, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified [separated from the outside world], an unholy [a common] thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?”[587]

3. BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDE.

All through the New Testament, Jesus, the outpouring of whose blood is “our passover” welcome from the Father, is spoken of as the Bridegroom, and his church as the Bride. His coming to earth is referred to as the coming of the Bridegroom–as was the coming of Jehovah to the Virgin of Israel in Egypt. He likened himself to a bridegroom. And his coming again to his church is foretold as the meeting of the Bridegroom and the Bride.

John the Baptist, forerunner of Jesus, speaking of his mission as closing, and that of Jesus as opening out gloriously, says: “Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but, that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”[588]

Jesus, referring to the charge against his disciples, that they did not fast, as did the disciples of John, said: “Can the sons of the bride-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then will they fast.”[589]

Paul repeatedly refers to this relation between Christ and his church: “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”[590] “The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church.... Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it.... He that loveth his own wife loveth himself: for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church; because we are members of his body. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one flesh. This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church.”[591]

In the Apocalypse, the inspired seer looking into the future, at the consummation of the present age, tells of the glorious vision before him, when Christ shall come to claim his own: “I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”[592]

And again he says: “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.... And there came one of the seven angels; ... and he spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and shewed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: ... having a wall great and high; having twelve gates. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof.... And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night there): and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it: and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”[593]

A closing declaration of the seer is, that the church as the Bride, with the representative of the Bridegroom until his coming, waits and calls for his return: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.... Come, Lord Jesus.”[594] And so, from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse, the Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian, recognize and emphasize the primitive Threshold Covenant as the beginning of religious rites, and as symbolic of the spirit of all true covenant worship.

4. SURVIVALS OF THE RITE.

Survivals of the primitive Threshold Covenant are found in various customs among Oriental Christians, and Christians the world over. Thus Easter is still looked at in some regions as the continuance of Passover, and the blood on the threshold is an accompaniment of the feast. Among the modern Greeks, each family, as a rule, buys a lamb, kills it, and eats it on Easter Sunday. “In some country districts the blood [of the lamb] is sometimes smeared on the threshold of the house.”[595] Easter, like the Jewish Passover, is the threshold of the new ecclesiastical year.

At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem, a principal incident in the Easter festivities is the bringing down of fire from heaven at the opening of the new ecclesiastical year.[596] This ceremony seems to be a survival of the primitive custom of seeking new life, in its symbol of fire, at the threshold of the home and of the new year, in the East and in the West.[597]

In the sacredness of the rite of the primitive Threshold Covenant there is added emphasis to the thought which causes both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Church to count marriage itself a sacrament. And thus again to the claim that a virgin who is devoted to a religious life is a “spouse of Christ,” and that her marriage to an earthly husband is adultery.[598] Many another religious custom points in the same direction.

Footnote 580:

Matt. 26 : 1–5; John 13 : 1.

Footnote 581:

Matt. 16 : 21; 26 : 17, 18; John 2 : 13; 7 : 1–9.

Footnote 582:

Matt. 26 : 17–30; Mark 14 : 12–28; Luke 22 : 7–20.

Footnote 583:

1 Cor. 5 : 7, 8.

Footnote 584:

See pp. 3–5, _supra_.

Footnote 585:

John 3 : 16.

Footnote 586:

Eph. 3 : 14, 15.

Footnote 587:

Heb. 10 : 28, 29.

Footnote 588:

John 3 : 28–30.

Footnote 589:

Matt. 9 : 14, 15; Mark 2 : 19, 20; Luke 5 : 34, 35.

Footnote 590:

1 Cor. 11 : 3.

Footnote 591:

Eph. 5 : 23–33.

Footnote 592:

Rev. 19 : 6–9.

Footnote 593:

Rev. 21 : 1, 2–9, 12, 22–27.

Footnote 594:

_Ibid._, 22 : 17, 20.

Footnote 595:

J.G. Frazer in _Folk-Lore Journal_, I., 275.

Footnote 596:

See Maundrell’s _Journey_, pp. 127–131; Hasselquist’s _Voyages and Travels_, pp. 136–138; Thomson’s _Land and Book_, II., 556 f.; Stanley’s _Sinai and Palestine_, pp. 464–469.

Footnote 597:

See pp. 22 f., 39–44, _supra_.

Footnote 598:

See Smith and Cheetham’s _Dict. of Christian Antiq._, art. “Nun.”

VII. OUTGROWTHS AND PERVERSIONS OF THIS RITE.

1. ELEMENTAL BEGINNINGS.

Apart from the mooted question of the origin and development of man as man,–whether it be held that he came into being as an incident in the evolutionary progress of the ages, or that his creation was by a special fiat of the Author of all things,–it is obvious that there was a beginning, when man first appeared as a higher order of being than the lower animals then in existence. The distinguishing attribute of man, as distinct from the lower animals at their best, is the capacity to conceive of spiritual facts and forces. Even at his lowest estate man is never without an apprehension of immaterial and supernatural personalities, intangible yet real and potent. The lower animals at their highest, and under the most effective training, give no indication of the possibility of such a conception on their part.

Both the Bible record and the disclosed facts of science show man at the start in a primitive state, with only elemental beginnings of knowledge or thought or skill. No claim is made for him, by any advocate of his pre-eminence in creation, that he then had skill in the arts, or attainment in civilization, or that he was possessed of a religious theory or ritual of even the simplest character. It is a matter of interest and importance to trace the course of man’s progress from the first to the present time, and to see how the good and the evil showed themselves along the line, from the same germs of thought and conduct rightly used or misused. The primitive rite of the Threshold Covenant, here brought out as initial and germinative, seems to present a reasonable solution of the observed course in religious development and in religious perversions in the history of mankind from the beginning until now.

Before primitive man could have concerned himself seriously with the course of the heavenly bodies, or the changes of the seasons, or the points of compass and the correspondent shifting of the winds, he must have recognized the sacred mystery of life and its transmission. It would seem that a covenant involved in the union of twain made one over outpoured blood, with power from the Author of life for the transmission of life, must have been the primal religious rite that brought man’s personal action into the clear light of a covenant relation with his Creator. Every subsequent development of the religious idea, good and bad, pure and impure, would seem to be traceable as an outgrowth, or as a perversion, of this elemental religious rite.

2. MAIN OUTGROWTHS

It would seem clear that the primal idea of a covenant union between two persons, and between those persons and their God, was found in the initial and primitive rite of marriage, with its outpoured blood, or gift of life, on the threshold of being; and that this rite contained in itself the germs of covenanting and of sacrifice, and the idea of an altar and a sacrament, where, and by which, man and God were brought into loving communion and union. Thus the beginning of religious rites was found in the primal Threshold Covenant as here portrayed.

Out of this beginning came all that is best and holiest in the thought of sacrifice and sacrament and spiritual communion. The very highest development of religious truth, under the guidance of progressive revelation from God, and of man’s growth in thought and knowledge with the passing ages, is directly in the line of this simple and germinal idea. Both the Bible record and the record of outside history tend to confirm this view of religious rites in their beginning and progress.

New life as a consequence of blood, or life, surrendered in holy covenanting, is a natural inference or outgrowth of the truth of the primal Threshold Covenant. Thus the thought of life after death, in the resurrection or in metempsychosis, comes with the recognition of the simple fact of the results of covenant union in the sight, and with the blessing, of the Author of life, in the rite of the Threshold Covenant.[599]

The transference of the altar of threshold covenanting, from the persons of the primary pair in the family to the hearthstone or entrance threshold of the home or family doorway, with the accompaniment of fire as a means of giving and sustaining life to those who sat at the common table or altar, in the covenant meal or sacrament of hospitality, brought about the custom of sacramental communion feasts with guests human and divine. And so, also, there came the rites of worship, with the altar of burnt sacrifice or of incense, and the marriage torch, and the doorway fire, and the threshold or hearthstone covenant at a wedding. Out of this thought there came gradually and naturally the prominence of the altar and the altar fire in private and public worship, as it obtains both in the simpler and in the more gorgeous ecclesiastical rituals.[600]

In conjunction with the place of fire on the family altar in the Threshold Covenant, there came naturally the recognition of fire and warmth and light as gifts of God for the promotion and preservation of life to those who were dependent on him. Thus the sun as the life-giving fire of the universe came to be recognized as a manifestation of God’s power and love. Its agency in bringing new life after death, in the course of the changing seasons, led men to connect the movements of the heavenly bodies with God’s dealings with man in the line of his covenant love. The too common mistake has been of thinking of this view of celestial nature as the origin of man’s religious rites, instead of as an outgrowth of the primal religious rite, which antedated man’s study of, or wonder over, the workings of the elements and the course of the heavenly bodies.

In summing up the results of such a study as this, of primitive customs and their outgrowth, it is necessary only to suggest a few of the more prominent lines of progress from the elemental beginning, leaving it to the student and thinker to follow out these, and to find others, in his more careful and further consideration of the subject in its varied ramifications. It is sufficient now to affirm that the Old Testament and the New point to this primitive rite of the Threshold Covenant as a basis of their common religious ritual; and that gleams of the same germinal idea show themselves in the best features of all the sacred books of the ages. It would be easy, did time and space allow, to follow out in detail the indications that all modes of worship in sacrifice, in oblation, in praise, and prayer, in act and in word, are but natural expressions of desire for covenant union with Deity, and of joy in the thought of its possession, as based on the fact of such covenanting sought and found in the primal religious rite of the human race.

3. CHIEF PERVERSIONS.

With the world as it is, and with man as he is, every possibility of good has a corresponding possibility of evil. Good perverted becomes evil. Truth which, rightly used, proves a savor of life, will, when misused, prove a savor of death.[601] And that which is a symbol of truth becomes a means of misleading when looked at as if it were in itself the truth.

The primitive Threshold Covenant as an elemental religious rite was holy and pure, and had possibilities of outgrowth in the direction of high spiritual attainment and aspiring. But the temptation to uplift the agencies in this rite into objects deemed of themselves worthy of worship resulted in impurity and deterioration, by causing the symbol to hide the truth instead of disclosing it.

Among the earliest forms of a temple as a place of worship was the ziggurat, or stepped pyramid, erected as a mighty altar, with its shrine, or holy of holies, at the summit, wherein a bride of the gods awaited the coming of the deity to solemnize the primal Threshold Covenant in expression of his readiness to enter into loving communion with the children of men.[602] From this custom the practice of Threshold Covenanting at the temple doorways became incumbent on women of all conditions of society at certain times, and under certain circumstances, in certain portions of the world, as a proof of their religious devotion,[603] and thus there grew up all the excesses of sacred prostitution in different portions of the world.[604]

The prominence given to the two factors in the primitive Threshold Covenant as a sacred religious act, led to the perversion of the original idea by making the factors themselves objects of reverence and worship; and separately, or together, they came to be worshiped with impure and degrading accompaniments.

Reverence for the phallus, or for phallic emblems, shows itself in the earliest historic remains of Babylonia, Assyria, India, China, Japan, Persia, Phrygia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Greece, Rome, Germany, Scandinavia, France, Spain, Great Britain, North and South America, and the Islands of the Sea. It were needless to attempt detailed proof of this statement, in view of all that has been written on the subject by historians, archæologists, and students of comparative religions.[605] It is enough to suggest that the mistake has too often been made of supposing that this “phallic worship” was a primitive conception of a religious truth, instead of a perversion of the earlier and purer idea which is at the basis of the highest religious conceptions, from the beginning until now.

Quite as widely extended, in both time and space, as the worship of the phallus as the symbol of masculine potency, is the recognition of the tree of life as the symbol of feminine nature in its fruit-bearing capacity. A single tree, or a grove of trees, or the lotus flower, the fig, or the pomegranate, with the peculiar form of their seed capsules, appear in all the earlier religious symbolisms, over against the phallus in its realistic or its conventional forms, as representative of reproductive life.[606]

In ancient Assyrian sculpture the most familiar representation of spiritual blessing was of a winged deity with a basket and a palm cone, touching with the cone a sacred tree, or again the person of a sovereign, as if imparting thereby some special benefit or power. This representation was long a mystery to the archeologist, but a recent scholar has shown that it is an illustration of a practice common in the East to-day, of carrying a cone of the male palm to a female palm tree, in order to vitalize it by the pollen.[607] The cone is one of the conventional forms of the phallus, worshiped as a symbol in the temples of the goddesses of the East in earlier days and later.[608] Hence this ancient Assyrian representation is an illustration of the truth that the primitive threshold covenant was recognized as the type of divine power, and covenant blessing, imparted to God’s representative, under the figure of the phallus and the tree.

It would seem, indeed, that the pillar and the tree came to be the conventional symbols of the male and female elements erected in front of an altar of worship,[609] and that, in the deterioration of the ages, these symbols themselves were worshiped, and their symbolism was an incentive to varied forms of impurity, instead of to holy covenanting with God and in God’s service. Therefore these symbols were deemed by true worshipers a perversion of an originally sacred rite, and their destruction was a duty with those who would restore God’s worship to its pristine purity.