I confess that when I climb the hill and see the dead Christs upon their crosses shining white against the olive gardens, when I see His agony depicted in the churches, when I see the people gaze upon Him sacrificed, my memory is taken back to other scenes. There is a scene that I can remember in a village far away against the frontier in our farthest East. It was a little village that was once a city, but decayed; it was walled with huge walls of brick, but they are fallen into mounds; it had gateways, but they are now but gaps; and a few huts are huddled in a corner where once a palace stood. It is the custom in this village that every year at a certain season white cocks are to be sacrificed at the gates. There is as may be some legend to explain the custom, but it is forgotten. And yet are the cocks sacrificed each year. There is the memory, too, of the goat I saw killed in India years ago as I have described. And there are other memories--memories of what I have seen, of what I have read. For this ceremony of sacrifice is the very oldest of all the beginnings of religion. It is akin to prayer, it is at the root of all faiths; we can go no further back than sacrifice. Where it began religion had commenced. Far older than any creed, arising from the dumb instincts of human kind, it is one of the roots of faiths. Therefore, when I see this image of God, the Son sacrificed to God the Father, I seem to behold the highest development of this long story. Sacrifice, it has always been sacrifice. It has been small animals--goats and fowls and pigeons; it has been greater and more valuable beasts--cattle and horses. It has been man. How often indeed has it been man: Abraham leading Isaac to the sacrifice, the Aztecs sacrificing in Mexico, the Druids in Britain, the followers of Odin, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the early Hindus, can you find a faith that has not sacrificed? Sometimes it has been single victims, sometimes hecatombs of slaughtered slaves. It has been sacrifice by priests, it has been self-sacrifice, as Curtius or as those who threw themselves before the car of Juggernauth. Everywhere there has been sacrifice; it is one of the roots of faiths, it arouses the emotion that has helped to make all religions. And in Christianity it has reached its zenith, for it is no longer an animal, no longer even a man--it is a God, the Son of God who is self-sacrificed to God. In what manner this awakens the emotions of man the following extract will show. It is from "The Gospel of the Atonement," by the Venerable J. Wilson.