parties. Where the sacrifice is a meal, intercourse is sought for; a certain sympathy exists between worshipper and worshipped; they stand to each other not only in the relation of briber and bribed, buyer and seller, but in that of patron and client, or of father and son. [Footnote 1: Mr. Tylor (_Prim. Cult._ vol. ii. p. 397) states that "sacrifices to deities, from the lowest to the highest levels of culture, consist, to the extent of nine-tenths or more, of gifts of food and sacred banquets."] But granting that early sacrifice was for the most part a meal, an observance, with a social element in it, between the god and the worshipper, what was the object of this meal, what was the motive for holding it? In some cases it looks as if the intention had been to strengthen the god, and to make him more vigorous, so that he might be able to do what was wanted of him. In the Vedic hymns this motive undeniably is to be met with. The notion is by no means unknown in early thought, that not only does man need God, but that God is also dependent on man, and capable of being aided and encouraged. In rites which are not strictly sacrifices, we notice men seeking to sympathise with their gods in what the gods are doing, and to take a share in it by doing similar things themselves. The Christmas and Easter fires in pagan times connected with the worship of the sun, are examples of this, and many other instances might be cited. This, however, is not the principal motive of early sacrifice. All the incidents of it suggest that it is not merely a thing offered to the deity, but a thing in which man takes part; if it is a meal, it is one of which the god and the worshippers partake in common. In China the ancestors are invited to the family feast; their place is set for them; their share in the feast is placed before them. In the _Iliad_,[2] we have an account of a solemn religious act: after prayers the victims were slaughtered, choice slices were cut from them and cooked at the fire by the worshippers, who then ate and drank their fill; after this "all day long they worshipped the god with music, singing the beautiful paean to Apollo, and his heart was glad to hear." In the Bible we know that the blood is poured out for the Deity, and in various sacrifices the parts He is to have are specified, while the rest is to be eaten by the priests. In the earlier sacrifices of the Hebrews there are no priests; those who present the sacrifice consume it after the act of presentation, and the occasion is one of mirth and jollity, as at a banquet (1 Sam. ix. 12, 13, and the following description; see also Exod. xxxii. 5, 6). In fact it is a banquet. This is specially plain in the sacrifices of the Semites, as Mr. Robertson Smith has shown. Early Semitic usage exhibits clearly how sacrifice was an act of communion, in which the god and his human family proclaimed and renewed their unity with each other. The details may differ in other races, but in general it may