More closely related still to primitive cannibalism is the curious ritual of the Sin-Eater, so well elaborated by Mr. Sidney Hartland. In Upper Bavaria, what is called a corpse-cake is kneaded from flour, and placed on the breast of a dead person, in order to absorb the virtues of the departed. This cake is then eaten by the nearest relation. In the Balkan peninsula, a small image of the dead person was made in bread and eaten by the survivors of the family. These are intermediate stages between cannibalism and the well-known practice of sin-eating. I hope I have now made clear the general affiliation which I am seeking to suggest, if not to establish. My idea is that in the beginning certain races devoured their own parents, or parts of them, so as to absorb the divine souls of their forebears into their own bodies. Later, when artificial god-making became a frequent usage, especially in connexion with agriculture, men eat the god, or part of him, for a similar reason. But they likewise eat him as the corn or yam or rice, sacramentally. When thean-thropic victims were substituted for the man-god, they eat the theanthropic victim in like manner. Also they made images in paste of both man and beast, and, treating these as compounded of the god, similarly sacrificed and eat them. {346}And they drank his blood, in the south as wine, in the north as beer, in India as soma. If this line of reconstruction be approximately correct, then sacraments as a whole are in the last resort based upon survival from the cannibal god-feast. _It is a significant fact that in many cases, as at the Potraj festival, the officiating priest drinks the blood of the divine victim, while the laity are only permitted to eat of its body_. CHAPTER XVI.--THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. |ONE {347}more element of some importance yet remains in the complex conception of the human or animal victim, or slain god, which we must briefly examine before we can proceed with advantage to the evolution of Christianity; I mean the doctrine of piacular sacrifice--or, in other words, of the atonement. “_Without shedding of blood,” says the author of one of the earliest Christian tractates, “there is no remission of sin_.” This is a common theory in all advanced religions; the sacrifice is regarded, not merely as the self-immolation of a willing divine victim or incarnate god, but also as an expiation for crimes committed. “_Behold the Lamb of God,” says the Baptist in the legend, “which taketh away the sins of the world_.”