Thus steeled to pain in his own person, he knew no limit to its infliction on others. The tortures of captives or of slaves dedicated to the gods, common in American religions, formed part of the religious value of the ceremony. Not merely captives and slaves, but those of his own household and blood, his nearest and his dearest, must the true worshipper be prepared to surrender, were it his first-born son or the wife of his bosom. It was not heartlessness or cruelty which prompted him, but obedience to that law of the supernatural, which ever claims for itself supremacy over all laws and all passions of the natural man. Traces of human sacrifice are discovered in the early history of even the noblest religions, and the rite extended so widely that scarce a cult can be named in which it did not exist. What rendered them the more general was the underlying belief that, let the sacrifice be sufficiently exalted, the gods _could not_ resist it. They were constrained by its magical power, and whatever was desired could be extorted from them, with or without their volition. So to this day teach the Hindu priests, and so believed the ancient Romans and various primitive nations. _4. The Communion with God._—The idea of atonement in the piacular sacrifice is in reality that of being _one with the god_, that of entering into union or communion with him. This, indeed, lies largely at the base of all the forms of ritualistic worship. Its purpose, more or less clearly avowed, is to bring into spiritual unison the worshipper and the worshipped. A few examples from American rites will illustrate this. The natives of Nicaragua at the time of maize gathering were accustomed to sacrifice a man to the gods of the harvest. Around the altar were strewn grains of corn. Over these the worshippers stood and with flint knives let blood from the most sensitive parts of their bodies, the drops falling on the grains. These were then eaten as holy food, part of the sacrifice.[230] Something very similar obtained in Peru. At the time of the vernal equinox, all strangers were bidden to leave the sacred city of Cuzco, where the Inca resided. A human victim was immolated, and the spotless “Virgins of the Sun” were deputed to mingle his blood with meal and bake it into small cakes. These were distributed among the people and eaten, and one was sent to every holy shrine and temple in the kingdom.[231] Precisely such a rite prevailed among the ancient Germans. At the harvest supper the spirit of the corn, represented latterly under the form of an animal but in earlier days as a child, was slain and eaten by those who had aided in the harvest. It was the literal and corporeal union of man and the god.[232]