priests were offered by them to the people to be eaten as
the veritable body of their sacrificed lord.

The source whence the doctrine of an atonement--a bloody sacrifice which
lies at the foundation of Christian theology--has proceeded is not at
the present time difficult to determine, for we shall presently see that
it, like all the leading doctrines contained in this later system,
and which are regarded as exclusively Christian, had its origin in the
religion of past ages, a religion which although originally pure, in
course of time degenerated into the grossest phallicism and even into
human sacrifice and cannibalism.

Although among the Mexicans as among the Jews, human sacrifices were
offered to the Deity, no hint of gross and sensual rites practiced in
the temples of the latter is recorded. Hence, as the Mexicans had not
arrived at that stage of religious progress (?) at which sensuality
inculcated as a sacred duty, and at which moral and physical debasement
was encouraged both in public and private life, we may reasonably
conclude that their faith represents a somewhat earlier stage of
development than does that of either Jew or Greek. In point of morality,
as judged by the most ancient standards, or by the more modern, the
Mexicans compare favorably with either of these nationalities. Indeed
when we compare the social, religious, and civil conditions of Mexico
as we find them under Montezuma with those of the Jews under David or
Solomon, or with those of the Greeks under Solon, or even with those
of the Christians during the Spanish Inquisition when thousands upon
thousands, not of captives taken in war, but of the noblest and best of
the land, were yearly slaughtered for "the glory of God," there is quite
as much to meet the approval of an enlightened conscience under the
first named system as under that of any one of the other three.

By priests the fact has long been understood that effects may be
produced through appeals to the religious or emotional nature which
under other circumstances would be impossible; and as, for thousands
of years, it has been the special business of this class to formulate
creeds for the ignorant masses, religious belief and the ceremonies
connected with "sacred" worship, during certain periods of the world's
history, have assumed a grotesqueness in design unsurpassed by the most
fanciful fairy tales which the imagination has ever been able to create,
at the same time that they