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f expiatory power; the view in this case is that a just deity must punish sin, forgives, however, when the punishment has been borne. +1042+. The view that the efficacy of sacrifice is due to the fact that it brings about a _union between the deity and the worshiper_ has been construed in several different ways according as the stress is laid on one or another of the elements of the rite. One theory represents atonement, the reconciliation of god and man, as effected by the physical act of sharing the flesh of a sacred animal; another finds it in the death of an animal made sacred and converted into an intermediary by a series of ceremonies; a third holds that union with the divine is secured by whatever is pleasing to the deity. +1043+. _Reconciliation through a communal meal._ Meals in which the worshipers partook of the flesh of a sacred animal (in which sometimes the dead animal itself shared) have probably been celebrated from an immemorial antiquity. Examples of such customs among savages are given above.[1881] A familiar instance of a communal meal in civilized society is the Roman festival in which the shades of the ancestors of the clan were honored (the _sacra gentilicia_)--a solemn declaration of the unity of the clan-life.[1882] A more definite act of social communion with a deity seems to be recognizable in the repasts spread in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, which appear, however, to have been merely a social attachment to the mysteries proper.[1883] In the feasts of the Mithraic initiates, in which mythological symbolism is prominent, a more spiritual element becomes visible: the participant absorbs something of the nature of the god--power to overcome evil, with hope of immortality.[1884] +1044+. In the ancient records of these ceremonies there is no theory of the means by which man comes into friendly relations with the deity. The meal is an act of friendly intercourse--it doubtless involves the ancient belief that those who eat together thus absorb a common life and are bound together by a strong tie. In the earliest and simplest instances the feeling apparently is that the communion is between the human participants--the divine animal is honored as a brother; but, even when, as among the Ainu,[1885] he receives a part of the food, the tie that binds him to them rests on the fact of original kinship rather than on the communal eating. Later the view that the god was pleased and placate
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