Another thing most remarkable among those who worshiped by sacrifice in the early times, is that they believed firmly in the reversibility of merit, that is, that the innocent could atone for the wicked.  Somehow, they acquired the notion that stainless victims were more agreeable to God than others.  God sanctioned this belief among the Jews, and most strikingly on the hill of Calvary.

This being the case, man being guilty and not having the right to inflict the supreme penalty upon himself, the natural thing to do was to substitute a victim for himself, to put the flesh of another in the place of his own and to visit upon it the punishment that was due to himself.  And he offered to God this vicarious atonement.  His action spoke in this wise:  “My God, I am a sinner and deserve Thy wrath.  But look upon this victim as though it were myself.  My sins and offenses I lay upon its shoulders, this knife shall be the bolt of Thy vengeance, and it shall make atonement in blood.”  This is the language of sacrifice.  As we have said, it supposes the necessity of atonement and belief in the reversibility of merit.

Now, if we find in history, as we certainly do find,—­that all peoples offered sacrifice of this kind, we do not think we would be far from the truth if we deduced therefrom a law of nature; and if it is a law of nature, it is a law of God.  If there is no religion of antiquity that did not offer sacrifice, then it would seem that the Almighty had traced a path along which man naturally trod and which his natural instinct showed him.

We believe in the axiom of St. Augustine:  “securus judicet orbis terrarum, a universally accepted judgment can be safely followed.”  Especially do we feel secure with the history of the chosen people of God before us arid its sacrifice ordained by the law; with the sanction of Christ’s sacrifice in our mind, and the practice of the divinely inspired Church which makes sacrifice the soul of her worship.

The victim we have is Jesus Christ Himself, and none other than He.  He gave us His flesh and blood to consume, with the command to consume.  Our sacrifice, therefore, consists in the offering up of this Victim to God and the consuming of it.  Upon the Victim of the altar, as upon the Victim of the Cross, we lay our sins and offenses, and, in one case as in the other, the sacred blood, in God’s eyes, washes our iniquity away.

Of course, it requires faith to believe, but religion is nothing if it is not whole and entire a matter of faith.  The less faith you have, the more you try to simplify matters.  Waning faith began by eliminating authority and sacrifice and the unwritten word.  Now the written word is going the same way.  Pretty soon we shall hear of the Decalogue’s being subjected to this same eliminating process.  After all, when one gets started in that direction, what reason is there that he should ever stop!

CHAPTER LII.  WORSHIP OF REST.