Moreover, we should remember that sacrifices to all objects of worship formed the basis of all the religious rites of the ancient world, in all periods of its history.  Human sacrifices were offered in India at the very period when Abraham was a wanderer in Palestine; and though human nature ultimately revolted from this cruelty, the sacrifice of substitute-animals continued from generation to generation as oblations to the gods, and is still continued by Brahminical priests.  In China, in Egypt, in Assyria, in Greece, no religious rites were perfected without sacrifices.  Even in the Mosaic ritual, sacrifices by the priests formed no inconsiderable part of worship.  Not until the time of Isaiah was it said that God took no delight in burnt offerings,—­that the real sacrifices which He requires are a broken and a contrite heart.  Nor were the Jews finally emancipated from sacrificial rites until Christ himself made his own body an offering for the sins of the world, and in God’s providence the Romans destroyed their temple and scattered their nation.  In antiquity there was no objective worship of the Deity without sacrificial rites, and when these were omitted or despised there was atheism,—­as in the case of Buddha, who taught morals rather than religion.  Perhaps the oldest and most prevalent religious idea of antiquity was the necessity of propitiatory sacrifice,—­generally of animals, though in remotest ages the offering of the fruits of the earth.[2]

[Footnote 2:  Dr. Trumbull has made a learned and ingenious argument in his “Blood Covenant” to show that sacrifices were not to propitiate the deity, but to bring about a closer Spiritual union between the soul and God; that the blood covenant was a covenant of friendship and love among all primitive peoples.]

The inquiry might here arise, whether in our times anything would justify a man in committing a homicide on an innocent person.  Would he not be called a fanatic?  If so, we may infer that morality—­the proper conduct of men as regards one another in social relations—­is better understood among us than it was among the patriarchs four thousand years ago; and hence, that as nations advance in civilization they have a more enlightened sense of duty, and practically a higher morality.  Men in patriarchal times may have committed what we regard as crimes, while their ordinary lives were more virtuous than ours.  And if so, should we not be lenient to immoralities and crimes committed in darker ages, if the ordinary current of men’s lives was lofty and religious?  On this principle we should be slow to denounce Christian people who formerly held slaves without remorse, when this sin did not shock the age in which they lived, and was not discrepant with prevailing ideas as to right and wrong.  It is clear that in patriarchal times men had, according to universally accepted ideas, the power of life and death over their families, which it would be absurd and wicked to claim in our day,