There is a Hindoo story related in the Sânkhâyana-sûtras, which, in substance, is as follows: King Hariscandra had no son; he then prayed to Varuna, promising, that if a son were born to him, he would sacritice the child to the god. Then a son was born to him, called Rohita. When Rohita was grown up his father one day told him of the vow he had made to Varuna, and bade him prepare to be sacrificed. The son objected to being killed and ran away from his father's house. For six years he wandered in the forest, and at last met a starving Brahman. Him he persuaded to sell one of his sons named Sunahsepha, for a hundred cows. This boy was bought by Rohita and taken to Hariscandra and about to be sacrificed to Varuna as a substitute for Rohita, when, on praying to the gods with verses from the Veda, he was released by them.' There was an ancient Phenician story, written by Sanchoniathon, who wrote about 1300 years before our era, which is as follows:

"Saturn, whom the Phoenicians call Israel, had by a nymph of the country a male child whom he named Jeoud, that is, one and only. On the breaking out of a war, which brought the country into imminent danger, Saturn erected an altar, brought to it his son, clothed in royal garments, and sacrificed him."

There is also a Grecian fable to the effect that one Agamemnon had a daughter whom he dearly loved, and she was deserving of his affection. He was commanded by God, through the Delphic Oracle, to offer her up as a sacrifice. Her father long resisted the demand, but finally succumbed. Before the fatal blow had been struck, however, the goddess Artemis or Ashtoreth interfered, and carried the maiden away, whilst in her place was substituted a stag.' Another similar Grecian fable relates that:

"When the Greek army was detained at Aulis, by contrary winds, the augurs being consulted, declared that one of the kings had offended Diana, and she demanded the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia. It was like taking the father's life-blood, but he was persuaded that it was his duty to submit for the good of his country. The maiden was brought forth for sacrifice, in spite of her tears and supplications; but just as the priest was about to strike the fatal blow, Iphigenia suddenly disappeared, and a goat of uncommon beauty stood in her place."

There is yet still another, which belongs to the same country,

and is related thus:

"In Sparta, it being declared upon one occasion that the gods demanded a human victim, the choice was made by lot, and fell on a damsel named Helena.

But when all was in readiness, an eagle descended, carried away the priest's knife, and laid it on the head of a heifer, which was sacrificed in her stead."

The story of Abraham and Isaac was written at a time when the Mosaic party in Israel was endeavoring to abolish idolatry among their people. They were offering up human sacrifices to their gods Moloch, Baal, and Chemosh, and the priestly author of this story was trying to make the people think that the Lord had abolished such offerings, as far back as the time of Abraham. The Grecian legends, which he had evidently heard, may have given him the idea."

Human offerings to the gods were at one time almost universal. In the earliest ages the offerings were simple, and such as shepherds and rustics could present. They loaded the altars of the gods with the first fruits of their crops, and the choicest products of the earth. Afterwards they sacrificed animals. When they had once laid it down as a principle that the effusion of the blood of these animals. appeased the anger of the gods, and that their justice turned aside upon the victims those strokes which were destined for men, their great care was for nothing more than to conciliate their favor by so easy a method. It is the nature of violent desires and excessive fear to know no bounds, and therefore, when they would ask for any favor which they ardently wished for, or would deprecate some public calamity which they feared, the blood of animals was not deemed a price sufficient, but they began to shed that of men. It is probable, as we have said, that this barbarous practice was formerly almost universal, and that it is of very remote antiquity. In time of war the captives were chosen for this purpose, but in time of peace they took the slaves. The choice was partly regulated by the opinion. of the bystanders, and partly by lot. But they did not always sacrifice such mean persons. In great calamities, in a pressing famine, for example, if the people thought they had some pretext to impute the cause of it to their king, they even sacrificed him without hesitation, as the highest price with which they could purchase the Divine favor. In this manner, the first King of Vermaland (a province of Sweden) was burnt in honor of Odin, the Supreme God, to put an end to a great dearth; as we read in the history of Norway. The kings, in their turn, did not spare the blood of their subjects; and many of them even shed that of their children. Earl Hakon, of Norway, offered his son in sacrifice, to obtain of Odin the victory over the Jomsburg pirates. Aun, King of Sweden,

1 Ibid.

* See chapter xi.

devoted to Odin the blood of his nine sons, to prevail on that god to prolong his life. Some of the kings of Israel offered up their first-born sons as a sacrifice to the god Baal or Moloch.

The altar of Moloch reeked with blood. Children were sacrificed and burned in the fire to him, while trumpets and flutes drowned their screams, and the mothers looked on, and were bound to restrain their tears.

The Phenicians offered to the gods, in times of war and drought, the fairest of their children. The books of Sanchoniathon and Byblian Philo are full of accounts of such sacrifices. In Byblos boys were immolated to Adonis; and, on the founding of a city or colony, a sacrifice of a vast number of children was solemnized, in the hopes of thereby averting misfortune from the new settlement. The Phenicians, according to Eusebius, yearly sacrificed their dearest, and even their only children, to Saturn. The bones of the victims were preserved in the temple of Moloch, in a golden ark, which was carried by the Phenicians with them to war. Like the Fijians of the present day, those people considered their gods as beings like themselves. They loved and they hated; they were proud and revengeful, they were, in fact, savages like themselves.

If the eldest born of the family of Athamas entered the temple of the Laphystian Jupiter, at Alos, in Achaia, he was sacrificed, crowned with garlands, like an animal victim."

The offering of human sacrifices to the Sun was extensively practiced in Mexico and Peru, before the establishment of Christianity.'

1 Baring-Gould: Orig. Belig. Belief, vol. i. p. 368.

Kenrick's Egypt, vol. i. p. 443.
See Acosta, Hist. Indies, vol. ii,

CHAPTER V.

JACOB'S VISION OF THE LADDER.

IN the 28th chapter of Genesis, we are told that Isaac, after blessing his son Jacob, sent him to Padan-aram, to take a daughter of Laban's (his mother's brother) to wife. Jacob, obeying his father, "went out from Beer-sheba (where he dwelt), and went towards Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of the place, and put them for his pillow, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And he beheld the angels of God ascending and descending on it. Lord stood above it, and said: 'I am the Lord thy father, and the God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.' And Jacob

And, behold, the God of Abraham

awoke out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I know it not.' And he was afraid, and said: 'How dreadful is this place, this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.' And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Beth-el."

The doctrine of Metempsychosis has evidently something to do with this legend. It means, in the theological acceptation of the term, the supposed transition of the soul after death, into another substance or body than that which it occupied before. The belief in such a transition was common to the most civilized, and the most uncivilized, nations of the earth.'

It was believed in, and taught by, the Brahminical Hindoos,' the Buddhists, the natives of Egypt, several philosophers of

1 See Chambers's Encyclo., art. “Transmigration."

2 Chambers's Encyclo., art. " Transmigration," Prichard's Mythology, p. 213, and Prog. Relig. Idcas, vol. i. p. 59.

Ibid. Ernest de Bunsen says: "The first traces of the doctrine of Transmigration of souls is to be found among the Brahmins and Buddhists." (The Angel Messiah, pp. 63, 64.) • Prichard's Mythology, pp. 213, 214.

ancient Greece,' the ancient Druids,' the natives of Madagascar,' several tribes of Africa, and North America," the ancient Mexi cans, and by some Jewish and Christian sects."

"It deserves notice, that in both of these religions (i. e., Jewish and Christian), it found adherents as well in ancient as in modern times. Among the Jews, the doctrine of transmigration-the Gilgul Neshamoth-was taught in the mystical system of the Kabbala."

"All the souls," the spiritual code of this system says, are subject to the trials of transmigration; and men do not know which are the ways of the Most High in their regard." "The principle, in short, of the Kabbala, is the same as that of Brahmanism.”

"On the ground of this doctrine, which was shared in by Rabbis of the highest renown, it was held, for instance, that the soul of Adam migrated into David, and will come in the Messiah; that the soul of Japhet is the same as that of Simeon, and the soul of Terah, migrated into Job."

"Of all these transmigrations, biblical instances are adduced according to their mode of interpretation—in the writings of Rabbi Manasse ben Israel, Rabbi Naphtali, Rabbi Meyer ben Gabbai, Rabbi Ruben, in the Jalkut Khadash, and other works of a similar character."4

The doctrine is thus described by Ovid, in the language of Dryden :

What feels the body when the soul expires,

By time corrupted, or consumed by fires?
Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats
Into other forms, and only changes seats.
Ev'n I, who these mysterious truths declare,
Was once Euphorbus in the Trojan war;
My name and lineage I remember well,

And how in fight by Spartan's King I fell.

In Argive Juno's fane I late beheld

My buckler hung on high, and own'd my former shield

Then death, so called, is but old matter dressed

In some new figure, and a varied vest.

Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies,

And here and there the unbodied spirit flies."

The Jews undoubtedly learned this doctrine after they had been subdued by, and become acquainted with other nations; and the writer of this story, whoever he may have been, was evidently endeavoring to strengthen the belief in this doctrine-he being an advocate of it-by inventing this story, and making Jacob a witness to the truth of it. Jacob would have been looked upon at the time the story was written (i. e., after the Babylonian captivity),

Ibid. See also Bunsen: The Angel-Messiah, pp. 63, 64. Dupuis, p. 357. Josephus : Jewish Antiquities, book xviii. ch. 13. Dun. lap: Son of the Man, p. 94; and Beal: Hist. Buddha.

• Chambers, art. "Transmigration."