Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

Il6 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMXenophanes and Heracleitus, Anaxagoras and Demo-critus, Socrates and the schools which sprung from hisdisciples, arose, had been from time immemorial possessedof a certain belief and worship. This may besaid to have comprehended in its completeness fourgreat parts, which are prayer, sacrifice, Coracles, andmysteries. Let us look at these in the idea whichlay at the bottom of each. Prayer is founded uponthe belief of man's continual dependence on a higherand invisible power, supporting human life, a powerwhich has sympathy with man, and will answer hissupplication with protection. Sacrifice, viewed as aninstitution, is the expression of man's belief that heneeds an expiation in the sight of this higher invisiblepower. It was the general belief of the ancient worldthat the freely-offered life of the innocent had powerto save the forfeited life of the guilty. The bloodysacrifice of animals, with all its accompanying rites, sowonderfully significant of the victim's supposed freewillas to his own offering, and of the transference ofguilt to him, accomplished in the shedding of hisblood, wherein lay his life, rested on the basis of thisbelief. And these acts of sacrifice, accompanied withprayer, encompassed the whole daily domestic as wellas political life of the people. Thirdly, the recurrenceto the knowledge of this superior invisible power inthe frequenting of oracles testified in respect to thedarkened knowledge of man the same sense of dependenceand need of aid which sacrifice testified in respectto moral guilt.2 If men fell into trouble, public orprivate, if they were perplexed as to how they shouldact, they came to ask the higher power, and their1 See Lasaulx, Die Siihnopfer dcr Qriechen und Homer, p. 277.2 Stiefelhagen, Thedogie des Hcidcnthums, p. 134.