Mr. Henry C. Lea, in his erudite work on Superstition and Force, has multiplied illustrations of the ordeal of touch, or of "bier-right," all along the later centuries.' He recalls that "Shakspeare introduces it, in King Richard III., where Gloster interrupts the funeral of Henry VI., and Lady Anne exclaims: 'O gentlemen see, see! dead Henry's wounds Open their congealed mouths, and bleed afresh.'" He refers to the fact that it was an old-time Jewish custom to ask pardon of a corpse for any offences. committed against the living man, laying hold of the great toe of the corpse while thus asking; and if the asker had really inflicted any grievous injury on the deceased, the body was supposed to signify that fact by a copious hemorrhage from the nose. "This, it will be observed," he adds, "is almost identical with the well-known story which relates that, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion hastened to the funeral of his father, Henry II., and met the procession at Fontevraud, the blood poured from the nostrils of the dead king, whose end he had hastened by his disobedience and rebellion." Mr. Lea shows that in some instances the bones of a murdered man are said to have given out 1 2 Cited from Gamal. ben Pedahzur's Book of Jewish Ceremonies, P. II. INTER-COMMUNION THROUGH BLOOD. 147 fresh blood when handled by a murderer as long as twenty years, or even fifty, after the murder; and he gives ample evidence that a belief in this power of blood to speak for itself against the violator of God's law, still exists among the English-speaking people, and that it has manifested itself as a means of justiceseeking, in the United States, within a few years past. 6. INTER-COMMUNION THROUGH BLOOD. Beyond the idea of inspiration through an interflow of God-representing blood, there has been in primitive man's mind (however it came there) the thought of a possible inter-communion with God through an interunion with God by blood. God is life. All life is from God, and belongs to God. Blood is life. Blood, therefore, as life, may be a means of man's inter-union with God. As the closest and most sacred of covenants between man and man; as, indeed, an absolute merging of two human natures into one,-is a possibility through an inter-flowing of a common blood; so the closest and most sacred of covenants between man and God; so the inter-union of the human nature with the divine,-has been looked upon as a possibility, through the proffer and acceptance of a common life in a common blood-flow. Whatever has been man's view of sin and its punishment, and of his separation from God because of unforgiven sin (I speak now of man as he is found, without the specific teachings of the Bible on this subject), he has counted blood-his own blood, in actuality or by substitute-a means of inter-union with God, or with the gods. Blood is not death, but life. The shedding of blood, Godward, is not the taking of life, but the giving of life. The outflowing of blood toward God is an act of gratitude or of affection, a proof of loving confidence, a means of inter-union. This seems to have been the universal primitive conception of the race. And an evidence of man's trust in the accomplished fact of his inter-union with God, or with the gods, by blood, has been the also universal practice of man's inter-communion with God, or with the gods, by his sharing, in food-partaking, of the body of the sacrificial offering, whose blood is the means of the divine-human inter-union. Perhaps the most ancient existing form of religious worship, as also the simplest and most primitive form, is to be found in China, in the state religion, represented by the Emperor's worship at the Temple of Heaven, in Peking. And in that worship, the idea of the worshiper's inter-communion with God, through the body and blood of the sacrificial offering, is disclosed, even if not always recognized, by all the representative Western authorities on the religions of China. "The Chinese idea of a sacrifice to the supreme A BANQUET-SACRIFICE. 149 spirit of Heaven and of Earth is that of a banquet. There is no trace of any other idea," says Dr. Edkins.' Dr. Legge, citing this statement, expands its signifi. cance by saying: "The notion of the whole service [at the Temple of Heaven] might be that of a banquet; but a sacrifice and a banquet are incompatible ideas." He then shows that the Chinese character tsê, signifying " sacrifice," "covers a much wider space of meaning than our term sacrifice [as he seems to view our use of that term]." Morrison gives as one of the meanings of tsi, "That which is the medium between, or brings together, men and Gods"; and Hsü Shan "says, that tsi is made up of two ideograms; one the primitive for spiritual beings, and the other representing a right hand and a piece of flesh." Legge adds: “The most general idea symbolized by it is an offering whereby communication and communion with spiritual beings [God, or the gods] is effected."4 Dr. S. Wells Williams says, that "no religious system has been found among the Chinese which taught 1 Religion in China, pp. 23, 32. The Religions of China, p. 55. 3 Dr. Legge here seems to use the word "sacrifice" in the light of a single meaning which attaches to it. There is surely no incompatibility in the terms "banquet" and " sacrifice," as we find their two-fold idea in the banquet-sacrifice of the Mosaic peace-offering (see Lev. 7: 11-15). The Relig. of China, Notes to Lect. I., p. 66. the doctrine of the atonement by the shedding of blood"; and this he counts "an argument in favor of their [the Chinese] antiquity"; adding that "the state religion has maintained its main features during the past three thousand years."1 Williams here, evidently, refers to an expiatory atonement for sin; and Legge has a similar view of the facts. The idea of an approach to God through blood-blood as a means of favor, even if not blood as a canceling of guilt-is obvious, in the outpouring of blood by the Emperor when he approaches God for his worship in the Temple of Heaven. The symbolic sacrifice in that worship, which precedes the communion, is of a whole "burnt offering, of a bullock, entire and without blemish "; and the blood of that offering is reverently poured out into the earth, to be buried there, according to the thought of man and the teachings of God in all the ages. It is even claimed that as early as 2697 B. C., it was the blood of the first-born which must be poured out toward God—as a means of favor -in the Emperor's approach for communion with The Mid. King., II., 194. See also Martin's The Chinese, p. 258. Relig. in China, p. 22. The same is true in sacrifices to Confucius (Gray's China, I., 87). |