The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

Whatever may have been the ultimate origin of the idea of God, and of the belief in His expiatory death and subsequent resurrection, the origin of the custom of eating Him sacramentally permits of a very simple explanation. “Du Chaillu notes that some of his West African followers, when going on an expedition, brought out the skulls of their ancestors (which they religiously preserved) and scraped off small portions of the bone, which they mixed with the water and drank, giving as a reason for this conduct that their ancestors were brave, and that by drinking a portion of them they too became brave and fearless. Here we have a simple and early case of that habit of ‘eating the god’ to whose universality and importance Dr. Frazer has called attention.”35 It is a common early belief, which may still be met with, that by eating a certain animal the consumer will become possessed of its qualities. It is notorious, for instance, that the Miris of Northern India prize tiger’s flesh for men, because it gives them strength and courage. And apparently the same belief exists also in Southern India, for I remember our Madrassi ayah—a Christian by the bye—begging for the hind leg of a panther (shot by my wife), and explaining that she wanted to eat it in order to make her muzbut (strong). I may mention also that certain religious rites still in vogue among the Hindoos—disgusting as they are, not only to our ideas, but in fact—arise from a similar notion.

Herbert Spencer discusses this primitive idea in his Principles of Sociology. He explains how “attributes or properties, as we understand them, are not recognisable by the savage—are abstractions which neither his faculties can grasp nor his language express. Hence certain beliefs, everywhere conspicuous among the uncivilised. A special potency which some object or part of an object displays belongs to it in such a wise that it may be acquired by consuming or possessing this object or part. The powers of a conquered antagonist are supposed to be gained by devouring him. The Dakotah eats the heart of a slain foe to increase his own courage; the New Zealander swallows his dead enemy’s eyes that he may see further; the Abipone consumes tiger’s flesh thinking so to gain the tiger’s strength and ferocity—cases which recall the legend about Zeus devouring Metis that he might become possessed of her wisdom. Clearly the implied mode of thought, shown even in the medical prescriptions of past ages, is a mode of thought necessarily persisting until analysis has disclosed the complexities of causal relations.”36 “The belief that the qualities of any individual are appropriated by eating him is illustrated by the statement of Stanbridge, that when Australians kill an infant they feed an older child with it, believing ‘that by its eating as much as possible of the roasted infant it will possess the strength of both.’ Elsewhere dead relations are consumed in pursuance of an allied belief.

It is easy, then, to understand why a savage should desire to partake of the flesh of an animal or man whom he regards as divine. By eating the body of the god he shares in the god’s attributes and powers. “And when,” as Dr. Frazer points out,38 “the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of the god.” If the apologist, nothing daunted, maintains that there is a religious germ in these primitive superstitions, it is practically tantamount to saying that every superstition contains such a germ; that superstition and religion are, in fact, often synonymous terms. I thought it was only the sceptic who said that. Before committing himself any further to a supernatural theory which is so obviously untenable, I do entreat the average apologist to read carefully the works of great thinkers who have made primitive man their especial study. Let him read, for instance, Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, where he will find a natural and mind-satisfying explanation of primitive ideas concerning supernatural agents, ghosts, spirits, demons, gods, resurrection, another life, inspiration, divination, sacrifices, fasting, propitiation, and prayer. He will learn, also, much that he ought to know concerning ancestor-worship, idol-worship, fetish-worship, animal-worship, plant-worship, nature-worship, and the heathen deities generally. He should also read Frazer’s Golden Bough, J. M.

Robertson’s Pagan Christs and Christianity and Mythology, and other scholarly and informing works of this description, instead of confining his studies to works of an apologetic character, where everything incompatible with existing Christian theories is carefully omitted, or coloured out of all recognition.