Theological Essays and Other Papers, vol 1 | Page 7

It was exactly what you daily read in morning papers,
viz.:--that, in order to appear effectually before that Olympus in
London, which rains rarities upon us poor abject creatures in the
provinces, you must enclose 'an order on the Post-Office or a
reference.' It is true that a man did not always register his votum, (the
particular offering which he vowed on the condition of receiving what
he asked,) at the moment of asking. Ajax, for instance, prays for light
in the 'Iliad,' and he does not then and there give either an order or a
reference. But you are much mistaken, if you fancy that even light was
to be had gratis. It would be 'carried to account.' Ajax would be
'debited' with that 'advance.'
Yet, when it occurs to a man that, in this Do ut des, the general Do was
either a temple or a sacrifice, naturally it occurs to ask what was a
sacrifice? I am afraid that the dark murderous nature of the pagan gods
is here made apparent. Modern readers, who have had no particular
reason for reflecting on the nature and management of a sacrifice,
totally misconceive it. They have a vague notion that the slaughtered
animal was roasted, served up on the altars as a banquet to the gods;
that these gods by some representative ceremony 'made believe' to eat it;
and that finally, (as dishes that had now become hallowed to divine use,)

the several joints were disposed of in some mysterious manner: burned,
suppose, or buried under the altars, or committed to the secret keeping
of rivers. Nothing of the sort: when a man made a sacrifice, the
meaning was, that he gave a dinner. And not only was every sacrifice a
dinner party, but every dinner party was a sacrifice. This was strictly so
in the good old ferocious times of paganism, as may be seen in the Iliad:
it was not said, 'Agamemnon has a dinner party to-day,' but
'Agamemnon sacrifices to Apollo.' Even in Rome, to the last days of
paganism, it is probable that some slight memorial continued to
connect the dinner party [_cœna_] with a divine sacrifice; and thence
partly arose the sanctity of the hospitable board; but to the east of the
Mediterranean the full ritual of a sacrifice must have been preserved in
all banquets, long after it had faded to a form in the less superstitious
West. This we may learn from that point of casuistry treated by St.
Paul,--whether a Christian might lawfully eat of things offered to idols.
The question was most urgent; because a Christian could not accept an
invitation to dine with a Grecian fellow-citizen who still adhered to
paganism, without eating things offered to idols;--the whole banquet
was dedicated to an idol. If he would not take that, he must continue
impransus. Consequently, the question virtually amounted to this: Were
the Christians to separate themselves altogether from those whose
interests were in so many ways entangled with their own, on the single
consideration that these persons were heathens? To refuse their
hospitalities, was to separate, and with a hostile expression of feeling.
That would be to throw hindrances in the way of Christianity: the
religion could not spread rapidly under such repulsive prejudices; and
dangers, that it became un-Christian to provoke, would thus multiply
against the infant faith. This being so, and as the gods were really the
only parties invited who got nothing at all of the banquet, it becomes a
question of some interest,--what did they get? They were merely
mocked, if they had no compensatory interest in the dinner! For surely
it was an inconceivable mode of honoring Jupiter, that you and I should
eat a piece of roast beef, leaving to the god's share only the mockery of
a Barmecide invitation, assigning him a chair which every body knew
that he would never fill, and a plate which might as well have been
filled with warm water? Jupiter got something, be assured; and what
was it? This it was,--the luxury of inhaling the groans, the fleeting

breath, the palpitations, the agonies, of the dying victim. This was the
dark interest which the wretches of Olympus had in human invitations
to dinner: and it is too certain, upon comparing facts and dates, that,
when left to their own choice, the gods had a preference for man as the
victim. All things concur to show, that precisely as you ascend above
civilization, which continually increased the limitations upon the gods
of Olympus, precisely as you go back to that gloomy state in which
their true propensities had power to reveal themselves, was man the
genuine victim for them, and the dying anguish of man the best 'nidor'
that ascended from earthly banquets to their nostrils. Their stern