shred of flesh for his fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down." Khonds in distress often sold their children as Meriahs, "considering the beatification of their souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible." Their children were representatives of the Deity. With advancing civilisation we have the substitution of an animal in place of the human representative of the God. In some cases the worshippers tore the living animal to pieces with their teeth. The rending and devouring of live bulls, calves, and goats seems to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites, the participators in the orgy fancying that they were devouring the actual body and blood of the god. With the further advance of civilisation (or, according to the latest Christian theory, with the further advance of God's revelation), as in the Mediterranean region, the bodies of the gods of agriculture were eaten by their votaries in the shape of cakes of bread, or other food stuffs, and their blood was drunk in the form of wine. [120] If Dr. Frazer be right as to the priority of the idea of a vegetation-god in cults commonly associated with the Sun, then Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus or Bacchus, Adonis, Attis, and other Saviours whose deaths and resurrections were annually celebrated at the spring equinox (our Easter), may have been primarily vegetation-victims, the abstract ideas which identified the death and resurrection of the god with the annual winter sleep and spring revival being finally fathered upon the worship. Whatever explanation may be the correct one for the phenomenon of a common mythos over the greater portion of the globe, it is certainly not that of a Progressive Revelation. Such an explanation has never been mooted by anyone but the Christian apologist. "Among early men and savages every act of life has a sacred significance, and agriculture especially is everywhere and always invested with a special sanctity. To us it would seem natural that the act of sowing seed should be regarded as purely practical and physiological; that the seed should be looked upon merely as the part of the plant intended for reproduction, and that its germination should be accepted as a natural and normal process. Savages and early men, however, had no such conceptions. To them the whole thing is a piece of natural magic." [121] Are we, then, to regard this working of primitive thought as the working of the Holy Spirit? Surely we may dismiss such a preposterous theory? It will serve the Church no good purpose; for, while thinking men will be further than ever estranged, it will furnish the militant agnostic with a fresh weapon for his attacks upon her. WHY MEN EAT THEIR GOD.