XLIIISACRIFICE
ADELE was still sitting at the foot of the tree; some said it was a bo-tree; others did not have knowledge enough to tell what kind of a tree it was. She did not think of this at all, as she sat dreaming upon the magnificent spectacle before her. In her mind she was seeking for an answer to the Doctor’s inquiry; then her eyes, while searching for some object which might be idealized in some degree as an altar, were drawn to the immediate foreground, away from the chancel, to something in her own vicinity, quite near herself.
Upon the same knoll, a short distance from her, boughs of foliage were festooned with cords and ropes upon which hung hundreds of small pieces of bright-colored muslin cut fantastically; also pieces of white textile, the size of a large napkin, covered with printed or crudely stamped characters in the native language. Hanging in garlands from bough to bough, fluttering in the wind among the leaves, they were about as effective as yacht signals strung out for decoration. Signals they were, indeed, but of quite another kind; the fluttering prayer-signals of the poor Lepchas, or Bhootanese, or Thibetans, arranged in a semi-circle around their sacred place. Wafted heavenward by the breeze, such signals were presented as acceptable to the Good Spirits, and were considered to bear upwards the supplications of poor humanity. They were the symbols of prayer used by the same worshipers in whose hut Adele and the Doctor had found a welcome shelter from the storm.
At first sight Adele thought: “How very crude and tawdry!”A second glance told her the decorations symbolized something, and she felt more sympathetic. The bright colors and the printed texts on white were certainly newer, fresher, and cleaner than the garments of the Lepchas themselves; they must have been selected, and they had cost something; only a few annas perhaps, or possibly some widow’s mite.
“Yes, the effect is cheerful; a happy one,” thought Adele. “One doesn’t feel despondent when looking at them.” How could it be otherwise when each praying-signalfluttered a message of thanks, or propitiation?—all of them in remembrance of the Good Spirits. And then she thought she detected among them a familiar arrangement of colors; what!—could it be possible? Yes, an old faded-out, partly-torn specimen of “Old Glory,” hardly recognizable, but yet there, for the sake of its being a new arrangement of colors, probably its true significance utterly unknown. This moved Adele intensely, giving her a curious new emotion, blending her patriotic feeling with the sacred things of others. Finally she concluded that all the signals were really artistic from the Lepcha point of view, for she noticed an expression of much satisfaction pass over the countenances of the natives when they found their sacred prayer-colors were still so bravely fluttering after the storm; still in motion where the Spirit of the Air could easily see and hear. The poor woman with whom Adele had walked up pointed to some as if they were her own private signals, but as Adele did not manifest much outward enthusiasm about them, a sad expression came over the face of the nature-worshiper. She seemed to realize that she ought not to expect these strangers to understand her feelings. Perhaps the strangers would scorn such things—old pieces of muslin picked up in the bazaar; they could afford yards and yards of it if they chose. So the poor woman turned away disappointed, to seek sympathy among her own kindred who could better understand how such things were acceptable to the Good Spirit.
It was profoundly interesting to see those two at this time, so near in body, and yet so far apart in religious interpretations; yet each upon what was to her “holy ground.” Such are the mysterious operations of the Spirit of Religion in Nature.
Adele was just beginning to realize the varied conflicting elements in her surroundings when she and the Doctor heard voices behind them—a weird chant—a primitive monotonous crooning, but wild—the natives’ hymn. Around a thicket the people had gathered, singing this invocation. Adele and the Doctor drew near, and both of them being musical they involuntarily attempted to catch the higher notes and to join in; but it proved to be too much for them in every way, especially to Adele’s cultivated ear. The very simplicity of the strange sounds, all spirit and no art, made it difficult to detect any method, only variations of monotonous notes and cries; sometimes rhythm, but no trace of melody, at least to civilized ears. It was painfully monotonous; aye, there was pain indeed in that native chant of invocation. No grand aria of the art divine, nor “wail of the orchestra” in modern times, had more pain to the spirit in man, than that primitive wail. All that Adele and the Doctor could do was to feel for them, yet not be of them.
The thicket was formed by underbrush which had sprung up around some taller trees. There was an open space inside, with several rocks and stones which had evidently been brought there by the worshipers. One rock larger than the rest stood on one side, the others scattered with apparent lack of method. The entrance was wide, so that all near at hand could witness what was going on within the circle. And while the weird song continued outside, the people drew nearer and nearer; the solemn moment arrived for the Leader and his Helper to enter this thicket—the Lepcha Holy of Holies—and stand before their altar.
As Abraham of old, in mature manhood, Leader of “theChosen People” among races, did enter a thicket and there offer a sacrifice well pleasing to the Lord: so did this poor native at the end of the Nineteenth Century, enter his Holy Place, a thicket in the Creator’s Cathedral of the Himalayas; and there did offer a sacrifice well pleasing to the Good Spirit to whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years.
The first offering was the fowl; and as the dying spasms of the bird scattered blood upon the stones, and upon the primitive priest, and upon others who stood near enough, the wild chant rose above the sound of flapping wings, and with the final throes of death mingled the wails of the worshipers.
To Adele, whose experience in killing of any kind was limited, the sight of life-blood flowing was most painful, even obnoxious. When a little girl in the country during her school-day vacations, she had always avoided seeing the fowls killed; not only because it destroyed her appetite for them afterwards, but because she felt a most positive and acute sympathy for the fowls. In later years, if anyone had called such proceedings “a sacrifice,” she would have been much surprised. On this occasion, face to face with it, her sympathy was strong enough to give her a sympathetic pain in the back of her own neck when the fowl was stabbed, pierced unto death.
When Adele was in the hospital acting as volunteer nurse, her experience had been to assist in curing, not in the surgical department; and if such had been the case, she would not have remained there a day. Now, when she found herself a quasi-participant in these Lepcha proceedings, eye-witness of a bloody wounded fowl flapping about, the situation was positively repulsive; and very difficult to sympathize with, even when she knew the act to be a feature in religious worship. She looked up at the Doctor.
Doctor Wise was absorbed in studying the movements of the priest.
The Lepcha stood over the kid, with his knife drawn ready to take its innocent life.
Adele caught sight of him in that attitude, and gave a shudder. She knew she could not endure to witness the next act. Naught could have induced her to turn spiritually from the poor nature-worshipers at such a moment, yet she could not accept their primitive methods as other than downright cruelty to-day. The sharp glittering knife, the rough stone, the priest’s stolid expression; and above all else, the unsuspecting little kid, so docile, as if among friends. Verily, the trustful eyes of the little animal seemed to speak the very words: “Ye are my friends, while I am yet with you.”
Adele buried her face upon the Doctor’s shoulder, and only heard without seeing the sacrifice which followed.
And behold! one of the most natural yet mysterious of all the phenomena in nature at once followed: Adele, embodying in her own personality the progress made in appreciation of religious ritual upon earth since primitive times, while spared the terror of realism, was more deeply affected than by realism itself; the things done had greater scope and power, the spiritual impression was far more profound and lasting than the effect of any spectacle which had actually been witnessed, and this in the very nature of truth progressive. The mind is greater than the eye, the Spirit of Truth is greater than the mind, the real growth is not in the intellect but in the spirit; aye, “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. Knowledge is power, but the spirit giveth immortality.”
Adele heard the cry of pain, the cry of life departing. It was only that of an animal, an innocent kid, but it and its innocence stood in lieu of many human beings. She heard the chant of the natives calling aloud, heavenward! above the cries of the innocent sacrifice; the people seemed themselves to be suffering. They were, yet they were not; not physically, yet their cries sounded as if the knife might be entering their very vitals. No realism apparent to mortal eyes could havebeen so powerful to affect them spiritually—the noblest, the divine in their personality; not unless nature itself had witnessed by taking part; not unless the veil of the Himalaya Temple had closed again, or “the sun had been darkened over all the earth,” or some such occurrence had transpired to direct attention to an event affecting humanity at large.
Then the strangest part of this primitive ritual followed; enduring in its action, and lasting in memory. An event implying mystery took place, a seeming mystery was suggested, a philosophic truth inculcated. How so by such a primitive uneducated people, yet able to embody what to this day dominates the profoundest concepts of philosophic man?
With the passing of the life by sacrifice, the life from the shed blood as it curdled and sank into the ground, went also the moans and dirges of those for whom the sacrifice had been made. The Lepcha voices changed in quality, manifesting great gain in force of conviction, rose higher and higher, and finally gave vent to cries of exultation, aspiration, exaltation—they chanted a triumph: a victory leading them onwards and upwards towards something beyond in the direction of the Eternal Summits magnificent before their very eyes. It was as if they saw the truth in their faith no longer militant and sacrificing, but triumphant in the Celestial Realm.
Strange, yet a natural consequence of the truth as they saw it: as the life of the kid departed by the blood of sacrifice returning into the earth among the grass of the field from which it had come and upon which it had fed, there arose a new life—a resurrection from the depths of misery and woe; a new song—a triumphal song—a song of the Saved Ones. The native choristers seemed possessed with renewed hope and vitality; and acting under these influences they found the burden of their song changed to suit a new condition which they certainly discerned.
In the case of these Himalaya nature-worshipers, this ordinary killing of a beast for food, as practiced by their ancestorsfrom time immemorial, had been used by the Mind of Nature, the Creator Father, to teach a philosophic truth through the religious sense; the full significance of which was not learned by humanity until millenniums after those primitive ancestors had found it to be a fact in nature.
Truly, this ancient ritual was profound in significance; it had been so from the beginning.
Adele next heard the priest speaking aloud in a clear exulting tone; it sounded as if he were addressing a multitude. She would have given much to have comprehended fully what he said, but it was lost to her; his words passed into the distance over the tree-tops, into space, off towards the Celestial region where the Good Spirit would both hear and understand. Then ensued an interval of suspense; all she heard was the sound of broken twigs and a slight tapping. It was the worshipers attaching some feathers of the fowl and small pieces of raw flesh of the kid to the trees. The feathers were to flutter in the wind as more signals to the Spirits of the Air. The hair of the goat was to be blown by the breeze as more prayers or symbols of propitiation, ever active before the Good Spirits.
After the ceremony was finished, the primitive procession started upon its recessional, wended its way down the hillside, to enter again their huts, and feast upon the burnt offering—cooked.
Adele looked up. The Ancient Service, in vogue from the beginning in the development of religious consciousness in man, and held to-day in the Himalaya Cathedral, was finished. The altar had not been in the chancel, but as of old, in the outer court of the Temple, in the world at large. The daily sacrifice could be made by any man in his own daily life—it was a part of the ritual of day-by-day devotion—the sacrifice of things seen to attain spiritually to things unseen. The altar might be in any man’s hearth or home, in his heart or soul-life.
Adele had been present at a primitive realistic ceremony, but she had not been able to witness it with her bodily eyes, so great was the progress of truth in life “since the days of sacrifice.” She understood now why the Creator had led humanity to abjure and abolish actual burnt sacrifices, substituting the spiritual experience, in remembrance.
Adele and the Doctor entered the thicket where the service had been held. They noticed how the life-blood had already sunk into the ground and been absorbed and become a part of it, “earth to earth.” If they had visited the Lepcha huts, they would have found “ashes to ashes.” They noticed also how the recently added signals, the feathers and the hair of the innocent kid, were fluttering with the other color-signals; these latter new ones in remembrance of the day’s service. And as they looked around they heard the Lepchas still off in the distance, singing. They had plenty of fresh food now, and a joyful spirit within. They sang as man often sings, when at his daily work, at home, in his shop, or in the field.
What more philosophically true in man’s religious development, from before Abraham, from primitive man, from the beginning so far as humanity knows about itself? The Spirit of Truth in ancient man had ever testified to the shedding of innocent life-blood instead of the sacrifice of self, or personal surrender, as the visible sign of propitiation, or of at-one-ment, the atonement. A tangible sign, symbolic, which could not in the very nature of things be understood in fuller significance until mankind was ready for the comprehension of the unseen, the spiritual sacrifice or atonement, until civilizations had sufficiently developed to comprehend spiritually what had always transpired naturally. The revelation culminating in the voluntary sacrifice of Him who said: “I am the Truth, the Life”—the Saviour of mankind.
Verily the Ancient Ritual was worthy of the Cathedral built by the Mind of Nature—our Creator-Father.