resses
itself in the acts performed; and the mere performance of the acts
tends of itself to relieve the desire. That is why the covenant-theory
of sacrifice gains acceptance: it represents--it is an official
representation--that performance of the sacrificial ceremony is all
that is required, by the terms of the agreement, to obtain
reconciliation and to effect atonement. But the representation is
found to be a misrepresentation: the desire for reconciliation and
atonement is not to be satisfied by outward ceremonies, but by
hearkening and obedience. 'To obey is better than sacrifice and to
hearken than the fat of rams.' Sacrifice remains the outward rite, but
it is pronounced to have value only so far as it is an expression of
the spirit of obedience. Oblations are vain unless the person who
offers them is changed in heart, unless there is an inward, spiritual
process, of which the external ceremony is an expression. Though this
was an interpretation of the meaning of the sacrificial rite which was
incompatible with the covenant-theory and which was eventually fatal
to it, it was at once a return to the original object of the rite and
a disclosure of its meaning. Some such internal, spiritual process is
implied by sacrifice from the beginning, for it is a plain
impossibility to suppose that in the beginning it consisted of mere
external actions which had absolutely no meaning whatever, for those
who performed them; and it is equally impossible to maintain that such
meaning as they had was not a religious meaning. The history of
religion is the history of the process by which the import of that
meaning rises to the surface of clear consciousness, and is gradually
revealed. Beneath the ceremony and the outward rite there was always a
moral and religious process--moral because it was the community of
fellow-worshippers who offered the sacrifice, on occasions of a breach
of the custom, that is of the customary morality, of the tribe;
religious because it was to their god that they offered it. The very
purpose with which the community offered it was to purge itself of the
offence committed by one of its members. The condition precedent, on
which alone sacrifice could be offered, was that the offence was
repented of. From the beginning sacrifice implied repentance and was
impossible without it. But it sufficed if the community repented and
punished the transgressor: his repentance however was not
necessary--all that was nec