there appear mysterious references
to a divine and vicarious sacrifice in the early Vedas of India. In the
Parusha Sukta of the Rig Veda occurs this passage: "From him called
Parusha was born Viraj, and from Viraj was Parusha produced, whom gods
made their oblation. With Parusha as a victim they performed a
sacrifice." Manu says that Parusha, "the first man," was called Brahma,
and was produced by emanation from the "self-existent spirit." Brahma
thus emanating, was "the first male," or, as elsewhere called, "the born
lord." By him the world was made. The idea is brought out still more
strikingly in one of the Brahmanas where the sacrifice is represented as
voluntary and all availing. "Surely," says Sir Monier Williams, "in
these mysterious allusions to the sacrifice of a representative man we
may perceive traces of the original institution of sacrifice as a
divinely appointed ordinance, typical of the one great offering of the
Son of God for the sins of the world." The late Professor Banergea, of
Calcutta, reaching the same conclusion, says: "It is not easy to account
for the genesis of these ideas in the Veda, of 'one born in the
beginning Lord of creatures,' offering himself a sacrifice for the
benefit of deified mortals, except on the assumption that it is based
upon the tradition of the 'Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world.'"

No doubt modern scepticism might be slow to acknowledge any such
inference as this; but as Professor Banergea was a high-caste Hindu of
great learning, and was well acquainted with the subtleties of Hindu
thought, his opinion should have great weight. And when we remember how
easily scientific scepticism is satisfied with the faintest traces of
whatever strengthens its theories--how thin are some of the
generalizations of Herbert Spencer--how very slight and fanciful are the
resemblances of words which philologists often accept as indisputable
proofs--how far-fetched are the inferences sometimes drawn from the
appearance of half-decayed fossils as proofs and even demonstrations of
the law of evolution--we need not be over-modest in setting forth these
traces of an original divine element in the institution of typical
sacrifices among men.

It is never safe to assume positively this or that meaning for a
mysterious passage found in the sacred books of non-Christian systems,
but there are many things which seem at least to illustrate important
precepts of the Christian faith. Thus th