Herrera describes one of these ceremonies of inter-communion with the gods, by means of a blood-moistened representation of a god. “An idol made of all the varieties of the seeds and grain of the country, was made, and moistened with the blood of children and virgins. This idol was broken into small bits, and given by way of communion to men and women to eat; who, to prepare for that festival, bathed, anddressed their heads, and scarce slept all the night. They prayed, and as soon as it was day [they] were all in the temple to receive that communion, with such singular silence and devotion, that though there was an infinite multitude, there seemed to be nobody. If any of the idol was left, the priests ate it.”[367]
So marked, indeed, was the sacramental character of these Peruvian communion feasts, that a Spanish Jesuit missionary to that country, three centuries ago, was disposed to see in them an invention of Satan, rather than a survival of a world-wide primitive custom. He said: “That which is most admirable in the hatred and presumption of Sathan is, that he not only counterfeited in idolatry and sacrifices, but also in certain ceremonies, our sacraments, which Jesus Christ our Lord instituted, and the Holy Church uses; having, especially, pretended to imitate, in some sort, the sacrament of the communion, which is the most high and divine of all others.”[368]
Yet again, a prisoner of war would be selected to represent one of the gods, and so to be partaken of, in inter-communion through his blood. He would receive the name of the god; and for a longer or ashorter time,—“sometimes a year, sometimes six months, and sometimes less,”—he would be ministered to, and would receive honors and reverence as a god. Then he would be offered in sacrifice. His heart would be presented to the god. His blood would be employed reverently—as was the case with all sacrifices—in token of covenanting. His flesh would be eaten by the worshipers of the god whom he represented.[369]This “rite of dressing and worshiping the sacrifices like the deities themselves, is related as being performed at the festivals of many gods and goddesses.”[370]
A remarkable illustration of the unity of the race, and of the universal sweep of these customs in conjunction with the symbolism of the blood-covenant, is found in the similarity of this last named Central American practice, with a practice charged upon the Jews by Apion, as replied to by Josephus. The charge is, that “Antiochus found, upon entering the temple [at Jerusalem], a man lying upon a bed, with a table before him, set out with all the delicacies that either sea or land could afford.” This captive’s story was: “I am a Greek, and wandering up and down in questof the means of subsistence, was taken up by some foreigners, brought to this place, and shut up.... They gave me to understand, that the Jews had a custom among them, once a year, upon a certain day prefixed, to seize upon a Grecian stranger, and when they had kept him fattening one whole year, to take him into a wood, and offer him up for a sacrifice according to their own form,taking a taste of his blood, with a horrid oath to live and die sworn enemies to the Greeks.”[371]Baseless as was this charge against the Jews, its very framing indicates the existence in the East,—possibly among the Phœnicians,—in days prior to the Christian era, as well as in pre-historic times in the West, of the custom of seeking inter-communion with God, or with the gods, by the tasting of the blood of a substitute human victim, offered in sacrifice to God, or to the gods.
At the two extremes of the world, to-day, among the primitive Bed´ween of the Desert of Arabia, and among the primitive Indians of the prairies of North America, there lingers a trace of this world-wide idea, that the body of an offering covenanted to God by its blood, can be a means of inter-communion with God in its eating. Both the Bed´ween and the Indians connect in their minds the fact of sacrificing and of feasting; and they speak of the two things interchangeably.
An Arab, when he makes a feast, speaks of sacrificing the animal which is the main feature of that feast. I saw an Arab wedding at Castle Nakhl, on the Arabian Desert. The bridegroom sacrificed a young dromedary in honor of the occasion, and to furnish, as it were, the sacramental feast. The blood of the victim was poured out unto the Lord, by being buried in the earth—as the Chinese bury the blood of their sacrifices in the Temple of Heaven. Portions of the dromedary were eaten by all the guests, and a portion was sent to the stranger encamping near them. And that is the common method of Arab sacrificing and feasting.
There is much of similarity in the ways of the Arabs and of the Indians. The Indian feasts are largely feasts of inter-communion with the gods. Whether it were the human victim, of former times, whose blood was drunk and whose heart was eaten, as preliminary to the feasting on his entire remains;[372]or, whether it be the preserved hearts and tongues of the buffaloes, which now form the basis of some of the sacred feasts of the Indians;[373]—the idea of divine-human inter-communion was and is inseparable from the idea of the feast. The first portion of the feast is always proffered to the spirits, in order to make it, in a peculiarsense, a sacred feast. Then, each person having a part in the feast is expected to eat the full share assigned to him;[374]unless indeed he be permitted to carry a remainder of it away “as sacred food” for the benefit of the others.[375]
And so the common root-idea shows itself, in lesser or in larger degree, all the world over, and in all the ages. It is practically universal.
One of the many proofs that the idea of a blood-covenanting sacrifice is that of a loving inter-communion between man and God, or the gods, is the fact that the animals offered in sacrifice are always those animals which are suitable for eating, whether their eating is allowed at other times than when sacrificed, or not. “Animals offered in sacrifice [at the Temple of Heaven, in China],” says Dr. Edkins, “must be those in use for human food. There is no trace in China of any distinction between clean and unclean animals, as furnishing a principle in selecting them forsacrifice. That which is good for food is good for sacrifice, is the principle guiding in their selection.”[376]The sameprinciplehas been already noted as prevailing in the sacrifices of India, Assyria, and Egypt; although in these last named countries many animals which are “good for food” are not “in use for human food” except as they are served up at the table of the gods.[377]In the primitive New World it was the same as in the primitive Old World. Referring to the sacrifices in ancient Peru,Révillesays, “It should be noted that they only sacrificed edible animals, which [as he would understand it] is a clear proof that the intention was to feed the gods”;[378]and it certainly seems a clear proof that the intention was to feed the worshipers who shared the sacred food.
That this sharing of the proffered and accepted sacrifice, in divine-human inter-communion, was counted a sharing of the divine nature, by the communicant, seems evident, as widely as the world-wide custom extended. The inter-union was wrought by intermingled blood; the inter-communion gave a common progress to the common nature. The blood gave common life; the flesh gave common nourishment. “Almost everywhere,” saysRéville,[379]“but especiallyamong the Aztecs, we find the notion, that the victim devoted to a deity, and therefore destined to pass into his substance, and to become by assimilation an integral part of him, is already co-substantial with him, has already become part of him; so that the worshiper in his turn, by himself assimilating a part of the victim’s flesh, unites himself in substance with the divine being. And now observe [continues this student in the science of comparative religion] that in all religions the longing, whether grossly or spiritually apprehended, to enter into the closest possible union with the adored being, is fundamental. This longing is inseparable from the religious sentiment itself, and becomes imperious wherever that sentiment is warm; and this consideration is enough to convince us that it is in harmony with the most exalted tendencies of our nature, but may likewise, in times of ignorance, give rise to the most deplorable aberrations.” This observation is the more noteworthy, in that it is made by so pronounced a rationalist asRéville.
It would even seem to be indicated, by all the trend of historic facts, that cannibalism—gross, repulsive, inhuman cannibalism—had its basis in man’s perversion of this outreaching of his nature (whether that outreaching were first directed by revelation, or by divinely given innate promptings) after inter-union andinter-communion with God; after life in God’s life, and after growth through the partaking of God’s food, or of that food which represents God. The studies of many observers in widely different fields have led both the rationalistic and the faith-filled student to conclude, that intheirsphere of observation it was a religious sentiment, and not a mere animal craving,—either through a scarcity of food, or from a spirit of malignity,—that was at the bottom of cannibalistic practices there; even if that field were an exception to the world’s fields generally. And now we have a glimpse of the nature and workings of that religious sentiment which prompted cannibalism wherever it has been practised.
Man longed for oneness of life with God. Oneness of life could come only through oneness of blood. To secure such oneness of life, man would give of his own blood, or of that substitute blood which could best represent himself. Counting himself in oneness of life with God, through the covenant of blood, man has sought for nourishment and growth through partaking of that food which in a sense was life, and which in a larger sense gave life, because it was the food of God, and because it was the food which stood for God. In misdirected pursuance of this thought, men have given the blood of a consecrated human victim to bring themselves into union with God; and then theyhave eaten of the flesh of that victim which had supplied the blood which made them one with God. This seems to be the basis offactin the premises; whatever may be the understoodphilosophyof the facts.Whymen reasoned thus, may indeed be in question.Thatthey reasoned thus, seems evident.
Certain it is, that where cannibalism has been studied in modern times, it has commonly been found to have had originally, a religious basis; and the inference is a fair one, that it must have been the same wherever cannibalism existed in earlier times. Even in some regions where cannibalism has long since been prohibited, there are traditions and traces of its former existence as a purely religious rite. Thus, in India, little images of flour paste or clay, are now made for decapitation, or other mutilation, in the temples,[380]in avowed imitation of human beings, who were once offered and eaten there. Referring to the frequency of human sacrifices in India, in earlier and in later times, and to these emblematic substitutes for them, now employed, theAbbé Duboissays:[381]“In the kingdom of Tanjore there is a village called Tirushankatam Kudi, where a solemn festival is celebrated every year, at which great multitudes of people assemble, each votary bringing with him one of thoselittle images of dough, into the temple, dedicated to Vishnu, and there cutting off the head in honor of that god. This ceremony, which is annually performed with great solemnity, was instituted in commemoration of a famous event which happened in that village.
“Two virtuous persons lived there, Sirutenden and his wife Vanagata-ananga, whose faith and piety Vishnu was desirous to prove. He appeared to them, and demanded no other service of them but that of sacrificing, with their own hands, their only and much beloved son Siralen, andserving up his flesh for a repast. The parents with heroic courage, surmounting the sentiments and chidings of nature, obeyed without hesitation, and submitted to the pleasure of the god. So illustrious an act of devotion is held worthy of this annual commemoration, at which the sacrifice is emblematically renewed. The same barbarous custom is preserved in many parts of India; and the ardor with which the people engage in it leaves room to suspect that they still regret the times when they would have been at liberty to offer up to their sanguinary gods, the reality, instead of the symbol.”
Such a legend as this, taken in conjunction with the custom which perpetuates it, and with all the known history of human sacrifices, in India and elsewhere, furnishes evidence that cannibalism as a religious ritewas known to the ancestors of the present dwellers in India. And as it is in the far East, so it is in the far West; and so, also, in mid-ocean.
Thus, for example, in the latter field, among the degraded Feejee Islanders, where one would be least likely to look for the sway of a religious sentiment in the more barbarous customs of that barbarous people, this truth has been recognized by Christian missionaries, who would view the relics of heathenism with no undue favor. The Rev. Messrs. Williams and Calvert,—the one after thirteen years, and the other after seventeen years of missionary service there,—said on this subject: “Cannibalism is a part of the Fijian religion, and the gods are described as delighting in human flesh.” And again: “Human flesh is still the most valued offering [to the gods], and their ‘drink offerings of blood’ are still the most acceptable [offerings to the gods] in some parts of Fiji.”[382]
It was the same among the several tribes of the North American Indians, according to the most trustworthy testimony. A Dutch clergyman, Dominie Megapolensis, writing two centuries ago from near the present site of Albany, “bears the strongest testimony to the ferocity with which his friends, the Mohawks treated their prisoners, ... and is very explicit as tocannibalism. ‘The common people,’ he says ‘eat the arms, buttocks, and trunk; but the chiefs eat the head and the heart.’ This feast was of a religious character.”[383]Parkman says, of the “hideous scene of feasting [which] followed the torture of a prisoner,” “it was, among the Hurons, partly an act of vengeance, and partly a religious rite.”[384]He cites evidence, also, that there was cannibalism among the Miamis, where “the act had somewhat of a religious character [and], was attended with ceremonial observances.”[385]
Of the religious basis of cannibalism among the primitive peoples of Central and South America, students seem agreed. Dorman who has carefully collated important facts on this subject from varied sources, and has considered them in their scientific bearings, is explicit in his conclusions at this point. Reviewing all the American field, he says: “I have dwelt longer upon the painful subject of cannibalism than might seem desirable, in order to show its religious character and prevalence everywhere. Instead of being confined to savage peoples, as is generally supposed, it prevailed to a greater extent and with more horrible rites among the most civilized. Its religious inception was the cause of this.”[386]Again, he says, of the peoples ofMexico and of the countries south of it: “All the Nahua nations practised this religious cannibalism. That cannibalism as a source of food, unconnected with religious rites, was ever practised, there is little evidence. Sahagun and Las Casas regard the cannibalism of the Nahuas as an abhorrent feature of their religion, and not as an unnatural appetite.”[387]
Réville, treating of the native religions of Mexico and Peru comes to a similar conclusion with Dorman; and he argues that the state of things which was there was the same the world over, so far as it related to cannibalism. “Cannibalism,” he says,[388]“which is now restricted to a few of the savage tribes who have remained closest to the animal life, was once universal to our race. For no one would ever have conceived the idea of offering to the gods a kind of food which excited nothing but disgust and horror.” In this suggestion,Révilleindicates his conviction that the primal idea of an altar was a table of blood-bought communion. “Human sacrifices” however, he goes on to say, “prevailed in many places when cannibalism had completely disappeared from the habits and tastes of the population. Thus the Semites of Western Asia, and the Çivaïte Hindus, the Celts, and some of the populationsof Greece and Italy, long after they had renounced cannibalism, still continued to sacrifice human beings to their deities.” And he might have added, that some savage peoples continued cannibalism when the religious idea of its beginning had been almost swept away entirely by the brutalism of its inhuman nature and tendencies. Referring to the date of the conquest of Mexico, he says: “Cannibalism, in ordinary life, was no longer practised. The city of Mexico underwent all the horrors of famine during the siege conducted by Fernando Cortes. When the Spaniards finally entered the city, they found the streets strewn with corpses, which is a sufficient proof that human flesh was not eaten even in dire extremities. And, nevertheless, the Aztecs not only pushed human sacrifices to a frantic extreme, but they wereritual cannibals, that is to say, there were certain occasions on which they ate the flesh of the human victims they had immolated.”[389]
And as it was in India and in America and in the Islands of the Sea; so it seems to have been wherever the primitive idea of cannibalism as a prevalent custom has been intelligently sought out.[390]
As the primitive and more natural method of commingling bloods, in the blood-covenant, by sucking each other’s veins, or by an inter-transference of blood from the mutually opened veins, was in many regions superseded by the symbolic laving, or sprinkling, or anointing, with blood; and as the blood of the lower animals was often substituted, vicariously, for human blood;—so the blood and wine which were commingled for mutual drinking in the covenant-rite, or which were together poured out in libation, when the covenant was between man and the Deity, came, it would appear, to be represented, in many cases, by the wine alone. First, we find men pledging each other in a sacred covenant, in the inter-drinking of each other’s blood mingled with wine. They called their covenant-draught, “assiratum,” or “vinum assiratum”; “wine, covenant-filled.” By and by, apparently, they came to count simple wine—“the blood of grapes”[391]—as the representative of blood and wine, in many forms of covenanting.
This mutual drinking, as a covenant-pledge, has been continued as an element in the marriage ceremony, the world over, down to the present time. It would evenseem that the gradual changes in the methods of this symbolic rite could be tracked, through its various forms in this ceremony, in different portions of the world. Among the wide-spreading ’Anazeh Bed´ween, the pouring out of a blood libation is still the mode of completing the marriage-covenant. “When the marriage day is fixed,” says Burckhardt,[392]“the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the father of his bride, and then, before witnesses, he cuts its throat. As soon as the blood falls upon the earth, the marriage ceremony is regarded as complete.” Among the Bed´ween of Sinai, as Palmer tells us,[393]the bride is sprinkled with the blood of the lamb, before she is surrendered to the bridegroom. Lane’s mention of the prominence of outpoured blood at the weddings of the Copts in Cairo, has already been cited.[394]Among the Arabs, since the days of Muhammad, wine has been generally abjured, and coffee now commonly takes its place as a drink, in all ordinary conferences for covenanting.
In Borneo, among the Dayaks, the bride and the bridegroom sit side by side, facing the rising sun. Their parents then besprinkle them with the blood of some animal, and also with water. “Each being next presented with a cup of arrack, they mutually pour half into eachother's cup, take a draught, and exchange vessels.”[395]In Burmah, among the Karens, water is poured upon the bride as she enters the bridegroom’s house. When she is received by the bridegroom, “each one then gives the other to drink, and each says to the other, ‘Be faithful to thy covenant.’ This is the proper marriage ceremony, and the parties are now married.”[396]
The blood of an ox, or a cow, is caused to flow at the door of the bride’s house, as a part of the marriage ceremony, in Namaqua Land.[397]A similar custom prevails among the Kafirs of Natal; and an observer has said of this blood-flowing, in the covenanting rite: “This appears to be the fixing point of the ceremony”; this is “the real matrimonial tie.”[398]
Again it is the sharing from the same dish in drinking, as well as in eating, that the bride and the bridegroom covenant in marriage, in the Feejee Islands.[399]The liquor that is made the common draught, as a substitute for the primitive blood-potion, is commonly the spirituous drink of the region; whether that drink be wine, or arrack, or whiskey, or beer. The symbolism is the same in every case.
In the Sanskrit, the wordasrijsignifies both “blood,” and “saffron.”[400]In the Hindoo wedding ceremony, in Malabar, “a dish of a liquid like blood, made of saffron and lime,” is held over the heads of the bride and groom. When the ceremony is concluded, the newly married couple sprinkle the spectators with this blood-like mixture;[401]which seems, indeed, not only here but in many other cases, in India, to have become a substitute for the covenanting blood. Reference has already been made to its use in connection with the covenant of the nose-ring; and the saffron colored cord of the wedding necklace, among the Brahmans, has also been mentioned.[402]
A still more remarkable illustration of this saffron mixture in lieu of blood, in formal covenanting, in India, is found in its use in the rite of “adoption.” In India, as elsewhere throughout the East, the desire of every parent to have a son is very strong. A son is longed for, to inherit the parental name and possessions, to perform the funeral rites and the annual ceremonies in honor of his parents; and, indeed, “it is said in the Dattaka-Mimansa, ‘Heaven awaits not one who is destitute of a son.’” When, therefore, parents have not a son of their own, they often formally adopt one; and, in this ceremony, saffron-water seems totake the place of blood, in the sacred and indissoluble covenant of transfer.[403]So prominent indeed is this element of the saffron-water drinking—as the substitute for blood-drinking—in the covenant of adoption, that the adopted children of parents are commonly spoken of as their “water-of-saffron children.” “Is it good to adopt the child, and give it saffron-water?” is a question that “occurs eight times in the book of fate called Sagā-thevan-sāsteram.” Formal sacrifices precede the ceremony of adoption, and mutual feasting follows it. The natural mother of the child, in his transfer to his new parents by adoption, hands with him a dish of consecrated saffron-water; and both the child and the blood-symbol are received by the adopting father, with his declaration that the son is now to enter into all that belongs to that father. “Then he and his wife, pouring a little saffron water into the hollow of their hands, and dropping a little into that of the adoptive child, pronounce aloud before the assembly: ‘We have acquired this child to our stem, and we incorporate him into it.’ Upon which they drink the saffron-water, and rising up, make a profound obeisance to the assembly; to which the officiating Brahmans reply by the word, ‘Asirvadam.’”[404]
It seems to me in every way probable, that in primitive times the blood of the child adopted, and of the parents adopting him, was partaken of by the three parties (as now throughout the East, in the case of the blood-covenanting of friends), in order that the child and his new parents might be literally of one blood. But, with the prejudice which grew up against blood-drinking, in India, the saffron-water came to be used as a substitute for blood; even as the blood of the grape came to be used instead of human blood, in many other portions of the world.
In China, an important rite in the marriage ceremony is the drinking of “the wedding wine,” from “two singularly shaped goblets, sometimes connected together by a red silk, or red cotton, cord, several feet long.” After their worship of their ancestral tablets, the bride and the bridegroom stand face to face. “One of the female assistants takes the two goblets ... from the table, and having partially filled them with a mixture of wine and honey, she pours some of their contents from one [goblet] into the other, back and forth several times. She then holds one to the mouth of the groom, and the other tothe mouth of the bride; who continue to face each other, and who then sip a little of the wine. She then changes the goblets, and the bride sips out of the one just used by the groom, and the groom sips out of the one just used by the bride, the goblets oftentimes remaining tied together [by the red cord]. Sometimes she uses one goblet [interchanging its use between the two parties] in giving the wine.”[405]The Rev. Chester Holcombe, who has been a missionary in China for a dozen years or more, writes me explicitly: “I have been told that in ancient times blood was actually used instead of the wine now used as a substitute,” in this wedding-cup of covenanting.
Again, Professor Douglas says,[406]that for a thousand years or so, it has been claimed that, at the birth of each two persons who are to be married, the red cord invisibly binds their feet together; which is only another way of saying that their lives are divinely inter-linked, as by the covenant of blood.
In Central America, among the Chibchas, it was a primitive custom for the bridegroom to present himself by night, after preliminary bargainings, at the door of his intended father-in-law’s home, and there let his presence be known. Then the bride would come out to him, bringing a large gourd ofchica, a fermented drink made from the juice of Indian corn;“and coming close to him, she first tasted it herself, and then gave it to him. He drank as much as he could; and thus the marriage was concluded.”[407]Among the Bheels of India, the drinking of the covenant is between the representatives of the bridegroom, and the parents of the bride, at the time of the betrothal; but this is quite consistent with the fact that the bride herself is not supposed to have a primary part in the covenant.[408]It is much the same also among the Laplanders.[409]
Among the Georgians and Circassians,[410]and also among the Russians,[411]the officiating priest, at a marriage ceremony, drinks from a glass of wine, and then the bride and the groom drink three times, each, from the same glass. The Galatians wedded, with apoculum conjugii, “a wedding cup.”[412]In Greece, the marriage ceremony concludes by the bride and the groom “drinking wine out of one cup.”[413]In Switzerland, formerly, the clergymen “took two glasses of wine, mixed their contents, and gave one glass to the bride,and the other to the bridegroom.”[414]Among European Jews in olden time, the officiating rabbi, having blessed a glass of wine, tasted it himself, and then gave it first to the one and then to the other of the parties covenanting in marriage.[415]
This custom of covenanting in the wine-cup, at a wedding, is said to have come into England from the ancient Goths.[416]Its symbolical significance and its exceptional importance, seems to have been generally recognized. Ben Jonson calls the wedding-wine a “knitting cup”[417]—an inter-binding cup. And a later poet asks, forcefully:
“What priest can join two lovers’ hands,But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418]
“What priest can join two lovers’ hands,But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418]
“What priest can join two lovers’ hands,But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418]
“What priest can join two lovers’ hands,
But wine must seal the marriage bands?”[418]
In Ireland, as in Lapland and in India, it was at the betrothal, instead of at the wedding, that the covenanting-cup—or the “agreement bottle” as it was called—was shared; and not unnaturally strongusquebaugh, or “water of life,” was there substituted for wine—as the representative of life-blood.[419]
In Scotland, as in Arabia and in Borneo, the use of blood in conjunction with the use of a wedding-cup has continued down to recent times. The “agreement bottle,” or “the bottling,” as it was sometimes called, preceded the wedding ceremony proper. Atthe wedding, the blood of a cock was shed at the covenanting feast. A reference to this is found in “The Wowing [the Wooing or the Vowing?] of Jok and Jynny,” among the most ancient remains of Scottish minstrelsy:
“Jok tuk Jynny be the hand,And cryd ane feist, and slew ane cok,And maid a brydell up alland;Now haif I gottin your Jynny, quoth Jok.”[420]
“Jok tuk Jynny be the hand,And cryd ane feist, and slew ane cok,And maid a brydell up alland;Now haif I gottin your Jynny, quoth Jok.”[420]
“Jok tuk Jynny be the hand,And cryd ane feist, and slew ane cok,And maid a brydell up alland;Now haif I gottin your Jynny, quoth Jok.”[420]
“Jok tuk Jynny be the hand,
And cryd ane feist, and slew ane cok,
And maid a brydell up alland;
Now haif I gottin your Jynny, quoth Jok.”[420]
Among the ancient Romans, as also among the Greeks, the outpouring of sacrificial blood, and the mutual drinking of wine, were closely linked, in the marriage ceremony. When the substitute victim was ready for slaying, “the soothsayer drank wine out of an earthen, or wooden, chalice, called in Latin,simpulum, orsimpuvium. It was in fashion much like our ewers, when we pour water into the basin. This chalice was afterward carried about to all the people, that they also mightlibare, that is, lightly taste thereof; which rite hath been calledlibation.” The remainder of the wine from the chalice was poured on to the victim, which was then slain; its blood being carefully preserved. And these ceremonies preceded the marriage feast.[421]The wedding wine-drinking is now, however, all that remains of them.
Indeed, it would seem that the common custom of “drinking healths,” or of persons “pledging” each other in a glass of wine, is but a degenerate modification, or a latest vestige, of the primitive rite of covenanting in a sacred friendship, by means of commingled bloods shared in a wine-cup. Certainly this custom prevailed among the old Norsemen, and among the ancient Romans and Greeks. That it originally included an idea of a possible covenant with Deity, and of a spiritual fellowship, is indicated in the fact that “the old Northmen drank the ‘minni’ [the loving friendship] of Thor, Odin, and Freya; and of kings, likewise, at their funerals.” So again there were “such formulas as ‘God’s minnie!’ [and] ‘A bowl to God in heaven!’”[422]
The earlier method of this ceremony of pledging each other in wine, was by all the participants drinking, in turn, out of a common bowl; as Catiline and his fellow-conspirators drank their blood and wine in mutual covenant; and as the Romans drank at a wedding service. In the Norseland, to-day, this custom is continued by the use of a drinking-bowl, marked by pegs for the individual potation; each man as he receives it, on its round, being expected to “drink his peg.” And even among the English and the Americans, as well as among the Germans, the touching oftwo glasses together, in this health-pledging, is a common custom; as if in symbolism of a community in the contents of the two cups. As often, then, as we drink each other’s healths, or as we respond to any call for a common toast-drinking, we do show a vestige of the primeval and the ever sacred mutual covenanting in blood.
And now that we have before us this extended array of related facts, concerning the sacred uses and the popular estimates of blood, in all the ages, it will be well for us to consider what we have learned, in the line of blood-rights and of blood-customs, and in the direction of their religious involvings. Especially is it important for us to see, where and how all this bears on the primitive and the still extant ceremony of covenanting by blood, with which we started in this investigation.
From the beginning, and everywhere, blood seems to have been looked upon as preeminently the representative of life; as, indeed, in a peculiar sense, life itself. The transference of blood from one organism to another, has been counted the transference of life, with all that life includes. The inter-commingling of blood by its inter-transference, has been understood as equivalent to an inter-commingling of natures. Two natures thusinter-commingled, by the inter-commingling of blood, have been considered as forming, thenceforward, one blood, one life, one nature, one soul—in two organisms. The inter-commingling of natures, by the inter-commingling of blood, has been deemed possible between man and a lower organism; and between man and a higher organism,—even between man and Deity, actually or by symbol;—as well as between man and his immediate fellow.
The mode of inter-transference of blood, with all that this carries, has been deemed practicable, alike by way of the lips, and by way of the opened and inter-flowing veins. It has been also represented, by blood-bathing, by blood-anointing, and by blood-sprinkling; or, again, by the inter-drinking of wine—which was formerly commingled with blood itself in the drinking. And the yielding of one’s life by the yielding of one’s blood has often been represented by the yielding of the blood of a chosen and a suitable substitute. Similarly the blood, or the nature, of divinities, has been represented, vicariously, in divine covenanting, by the blood of a devoted and an accepted substitute. Inter-communion between the parties in a blood-covenant, has been a recognized privilege, in conjunction with any and every observance of the rite of blood-covenanting. And the body of the divinely accepted offering, the blood of which is a means of divine-humaninter-union, has been counted a very part of the divinity; and to partake of that body as food has been deemed equivalent to being nourished by the very divinity himself.
Blood, as life, has been looked upon as belonging, in the highest sense, to the Author of all life. The taking of life has been seen to be the prerogative of its Author; and only he who is duly empowered, for a season and for a reason, by that Author, for blood-taking in any case, has been supposed to have the right to the temporary exercise of that prerogative. Even then, the blood, as the life, must be employed under the immediate direction and oversight of its Author. The heart of any living organism, as the blood-source and the blood-fountain, has been recognized as the representative of its owner’s highest personality; and as the diffuser of the issues of his life and nature.
A covenant of blood, a covenant made by the inter-commingling of blood, has been recognized as the closest, the holiest, and the most indissoluble, compact conceivable. Such a covenant clearly involves an absolute surrender of one’s separate self, and an irrevocable merging of one’s individual nature into the dual, or the multiplied, personality included in the compact. Man’s highest and noblest outreachings of soul have, therefore, been for such a union with the divine nature, as is typified in this human covenant of blood.
How it came to pass, that men everywhere were so generally agreed on the main symbols of their religious yearnings and their religious hopes, in this realm of their aspirations, is a question which obviously admits of two possible answers. A common revelation from God, may have been given to primitive man; and all these varying yet related indications of religious strivings and aim, may be but the perverted remains of the lessons of that misused, or slighted, revelation. On the other hand, God may originally have implanted the germs of a common religious thought in the mind of man, and then have adapted his successive revelations to the outworking of those germs. Which ever view of the probable origin of these common symbolisms, all the world over, be adopted by any Christian student, the importance of the symbolisms themselves, in their relation to the truths of revelation, is manifestly the same.
On this point, Kurtz has said, forcefully: “A comparison of the religious symbols of the Old Testament with those of ancient heathendom, shows that the ground and the starting point of those forms of religion which found their appropriate expressions in symbols, was the same in all cases; while the history of civilization proves that on this point, priority cannot be claimed by the Israelites. But when instituting such an inquiry, we shall also find that the symbolswhich were transferred from the religions of nature to that of the spirit, first passed through the fire of divine purification, from which they issued as the distinctive theology of the Jews; the dross of a pantheistic deification of nature having been consumed.”[423]And as to even the grosser errors, and the more pitiable perversions of the right, in the use of these world-wide religious symbolisms, Kurtz says, again: “Every error, however dangerous, is based on some truth misunderstood, and ... every aberration, however grievous, has started from a desire after real good, which had not attained its goal, because the latter was sought neither in the right way, nor by right means.”[424]To recognize these truths concerning the outside religions of the world, gives us an added fitness for the comparison of the symbolisms we have just been considering, with the teachings of the sacred pages of revelation, on the specific truths involved.
Proofs of the existence of this rite of blood-covenanting, have been found among primitive peoples of all quarters of the globe; and its antiquity is carried back to a date long prior to the days of Abraham. All this, outside of any indications of the rite in the text of Bible itself. And now we are in a position to turn intelligently to that text for fuller light on the subject.