The origin and development of the moral ideas

This idea is well illustrated by the funeral ceremonies of the Tahitians. “When the house for the dead had been erected, and the corpse placed upon the platform or bier, the priest ordered a hole to be dug in the earth or floor near the foot of the platform. Over this he prayed to the god by whom it was supposed the spirit of the deceased had been required. The purport of his prayer was that all the dead man’s sins, and especially that for which his soul had been called to the po, might be deposited there, that they might not attach in any degree to the survivors, and that the anger of the god might be appeased.” All who were employed in embalming the dead were also, during the process, carefully avoided by every person, as the guilt of the crime for which the deceased had died was believed to contaminate such as came in contact with the corpse; and as soon as the ceremony of depositing the sins in the hole was over, all who had touched the body or the garments of the deceased, which were buried or destroyed, fled precipitately into the sea to cleanse themselves from the pollution.167 In one part of New Zealand “a service was performed over an individual, by which all the sins of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him, a fern stalk was previously tied to his person, with which he jumped into the river and there unbinding, allowed it to float away to the sea, bearing their sins with it.”168 The Iroquois White Dog Feast, which was held every year in January, February, or early in March,169 implied, according to most authorities, a ceremony of sin-transference.170

The following description of it is given by Mrs. Jemison, a white woman who was captured by the Indians in the year 1755:—Two white dogs, without spot or blemish, are strangled and hung near the door of the council-house. On the fourth or fifth day the “committee,” consisting of from ten to twenty active men who have been appointed to superintend the festivities, “collect the evil spirit, or drive it off entirely, for the present, and also concentrate within themselves all the sins of their tribe, however numerous or heinous. On the eighth or ninth day, the committee having received all the sin, as before observed, into their own bodies, they take down the dogs, and after having transfused the whole of it into one of their own number, he, by a peculiar sleight of hand, or kind of magic, works it all out of himself into the dogs. The dogs, thus loaded with all the sins of the people, are placed upon a pile of wood that is directly set on fire. Here they are burnt, together with the sins with which they were loaded.”171 Among the Badágas of India, at a burial, “an elder, standing by the corpse, offers up a prayer that the dead may not go to hell, that the sins committed on earth may be forgiven, and that the sins may be borne by a calf, which is let loose in the jungle and used thenceforth for no manner of work.”172 At Utch-Kurgan, in Turkestan, Mr.

Schuyler saw an old man, constantly engaged in prayer, who was said to be an iskatchi, that is, “a person who gets his living by taking on himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting his life to prayer for their souls.”173

In ancient Peru, an Inca, after confession of guilt, bathed in a neighbouring river, and repeated this formula:—“O thou River, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the Sun, carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear.”174 According to Vedic beliefs, sin is a contamination which may be inherited, or contracted in various ways,175 and of which the sinner tries to rid himself by transferring it to some enemy,176 or by invoking the gods of water or fire.177 It is washed out by Varuna, in his capacity of a water-god,178 and by Trita, another water-god,179 and even by “the Waters” in general, as appears from the prayer addressed to them:—“O Waters, carry off whatever sin is in me and untruth.”180 For a similar reason, as it seems, water became in the later, Brahmanic age, the “essence (sap) of immortality”181 and the belief in its purifying power still survives in modern India.

No sin is too heinous to be removed, no character too black to be washed clean, by the waters of Ganges.182 At sacred places of pilgrimage on the banks of rivers, the Hindus perform special religious shavings for the purpose of purifying soul and body from pollution; and persons who have committed great crimes or are troubled by uneasy consciences, travel hundreds of miles to such holy places where “they may be released from every sin by first being relieved of every hair and then plunging into the sacred stream.”183 So, also, according to Hindu beliefs, contact with cows purifies, and, as in the Parsi ritual, the dung and urine of cows have the power of preventing or cleansing away not only material, but moral defilements.184 In post-Homeric Greece, individuals and a whole people were cleansed from their sins by water or some other material means of purification.185 Plutarch, after observing that “there are other properties that have connection and communication, and that transfer themselves from one thing to another with incredible quickness and over immense distances,” asks whether it is “more wonderful that Athens should have been smitten with a plague which started in Arabia, than that, when the Delphians and Sybarites became wicked, vengeance should have fallen on their descendants.”186 The Hebrews annually laid the sins of the people upon the head of a goat, and sent it away into the wilderness;187 and they cleansed every impurity with consecrated water or the sprinkling of blood.188 To this day, the Jews in Morocco, on their New-Year’s day, go to the sea-shore, or

to some spring, and remove their sins by throwing stones into the water. The words of the Psalmist, “wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin,”189 were not altogether a figure of speech; nor is Christian baptism originally a mere symbol. Its result is forgiveness of sins;190 by the water, as a medium of the Holy Ghost, “the stains of sin are washed away.”191 That sin is contagious has been expressly stated by Christian writers. Novatian says that “the one is defiled by the sin of the other, and the idolatry of the transgressor passes over to him who does not transgress.”192