Ancient Faiths And Modern. Thomas Inman
get pardon "for good and aye." It was also held that sacerdotal absolution was equivalent to magisterial punishment. The formula of absolution contained this, amongst other things, "O merciful Lord, Thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let Thy forgiveness and favour descend, like the pure waters of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor man has sinned, not from his own free will, but from the influence of the sign under which he was born." This idea may well be compared with the current doctrine of the phrenologists, many of whom assert that a man acts according to the configuration of his brain and cranium, and is, therefore, only partially culpable for the commission of certain crimes. After a copious exhortation to the penitent, in which he was enjoined to undergo a variety of mortifications, and to perform minute ceremonies, by way of penance, he was particularly urged to procure, with the smallest possible delay, a slave, who was to be utilized in sacrifice to the Deity; the priest then concluded with inculcating charity to the poor—"Clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee, for remember their flesh is like thine."
The necessity of sacrifice, as an atonement for sin, forms an essential, though bloody, part of both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths, and history has long taught us that the slaughter of a man, woman, or child, formed, in the estimation of the Ancient Greeks, and other nations, one of the most acceptable of the forms of homage paid by a human being to the Creator. This idea is at the very basis of the Christian theology. It has been held, from the time of the apostle Paul to the present day, that Jehovah would not look favourably upon mankind until He had been propitiated, not by the sacrifice of an ordinary individual, but by the murder, in the crudest of modes, of a being whom He personally begat, for the purpose of killing him when arrived at maturity. In Hebrews x. 12, we find this doctrine very distinctly enunciated, in the words, "this man, after he had offered one sacrifice of sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God," and subsequently, v. 14, "by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Again, in Heb. ix. 26, "once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself;" and in Heb. x. 10, "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" and in ix. 28, "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." The philosopher may doubt whether the God whom the Christians have made for their own adoration, is in any way different to that of King Mesha, who offered up his own son in sacrifice, or to the Mexican one, who was contented with the blood of a slave.*
* It is doubtful whether any Christian has ever paid real
attention to the doctrines which are familiar to his ear, or
to the hymns which an most frequently on his tongue. In the
usual fashion which is prevalent amongst ministers and
hearers, everything which is told by missionaries of heathen
deities is taken as true. Thus it has become the general
belief that the Mexican theology, which required an annual
sacrifice of human beings, whose hearts were cut out, and
offered warm, palpitating and full of blood, to a God who
was supposed to be present in a sacred stone statue, was
beyond measure atrocious. But in what consists the horror,
unless in the fact that the sacrifice was seen by the
worshippers? In Christendom people are never called upon to
see a man killed by nailing him to a cross. If they were
condemned to this penance, very little would any of them
talk of blood. As it is, the minds of the majority are
lulled to sleep by the substitution of words for facts, and
texts of Scripture for ideas; and those who are unable to
look upon a cut finger without fainting, and would not for
worlds go to see a man decapitated, talk in the serenest
manner on most sanguinary topics. A reference to a few hymns
which are general favourites will illustrate what I mean. In
"Rock of Ages," for example, we have the lines—
"Let the water and the blood
From thy riven side that flowed,
Cleanse from sin and make me pure."
Another equally popular hymn begins
"From Calv'ry's cross a fountain flows
Of water and of blood,
More healing than Bethesda's pool,
Redeeming Lord, thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power … " and again—
"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuels veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains."
No congregation of Christian, or any other men, would
tolerate for a moment the introduction into divine worship
of a bath of blood, into which all those should plunge who
desired salvation. Not one would endeavour to wash his sins
away in a sanguine stream, drawn from any source whatever.
The horror which would be produced by the doctrine that such
things are necessary to appease our God, would make every
thinking being detest it. Yet, when we only play with the
idea, we can talk of such matters with holy complacency. If
any Christian wants to test his faith, let me advise him to
get a basinful of blood and place it in his bed-room, and
say twice a day, when looking on it, that's the stuff which
propitiates my God! It would not be long ere he saw the
absurdity of his theological tenets, and the coarseness of
the hierarchy which invented so frightful an idea of the
Omnipotent.
For the education of the youth of Mexico a part of the temples was allotted, where the boys and girls of the middle and higher classes were placed at an early period—the girls to be taught by the priestesses, the boys by priests; and from a note in Prescott's corrected edition, 1866, p. 22, we learn that the former were even more generally pure in life than, we have reason to believe, the Egyptian priestesses and Christian nuns proved themselves to be, Father Acosto saying, "In truth, it is very strange to see that this false opinion of religion hath so great force amongst these young men and maidens of Mexico, that they will serve the Devil with so great vigour and austerity, which many of us do not in the service of the most high God, the which is a great shame and confusion." It is curious to notice how the Christian priest considers that chastity may be a snare of the Devil, as well as an ordinance of Jehovah. The boys, in these scholastic parts of the sacred temples, were taught the routine of monastic discipline—to decorate the shrines of the gods with flowers, to feed the sacred fires, and to chant in worship and at festivals. The Abbé Hue, in an account of his travels in Thibet and Tartary, has told us repeatedly of the similarity between the rites, practices, and ceremonies of the Romish Church and those in use amongst the followers of the Great Lama. It is equally marvellous to discover that the Mexican ritual resembles both. The Papalist endeavours to explain this, by the monstrous assumption that both Tartary and Mexico were evangelized by two different Christian Apostles. But it seems to us more probable that the Romanists, who are known to have adopted almost every ancient ceremony, symbol, doctrine, and the like, have unknowingly copied from travelled Orientals, than that the cult of the people of Thibet has travelled into America, as well as into Europe. Into the identity of the Tartars with the Red Indians it is not my intention to enter. The higher Mexicans were taught traditionary lore, the mysteries of hieroglyphics, the principles of government, and such astronomical and scientific knowledge as the