very likely this was the case. The truth at the back of this conception is
the feeling that there is a higher power upon which man is dependent; and
the error is in supposing that this power is limited by an individuality
which can be enriched by selling its good offices, or which blackmails you
by threats. In either case it wants to get something out of you, and from
this it follows that its own power of supplying its own wants must be
limited, otherwise it would not require to be kept in good temper by gifts.
In very undeveloped minds such a conception results in the idea of numerous
gods, each having, so to say, his own particular line of business; and the
furthest advance this mode of thought is capable of is the reduction of
these various deities to two antagonistic powers of Good and of Evil. But
the result in either case is the same, so long as we start with the
hypothesis that the Good will do us more good and the Evil do us less harm
by reason of our sacrifices, for then it logically follows that the more
valuable your sacrifices and the oftener they are presented the better
chance you have of good luck. Doubtless some such conception as this was
held by the mass of the Hebrew people under the sacrificial system of the
Levitical Law, and perhaps this was one reason why they were so prone to
fall into idolatry--for in this view their fundamental notion was
practically identical in its nature with that of the heathen around them.
Of course this was not the fundamental idea embodied in the Levitical
system itself. The root of that system was the symbolizing of a supreme
ideal of reconciliation hereafter to be manifested in action. Now a symbol
is not the thing symbolized. The purpose of a symbol is twofold, to put us
upon enquiry as to the reality which it indicates, and to bring that
reality to our minds by suggestion when we look at the symbol; but if it
does not do this, and we rest only in the symbol, nothing will come of it,
and we are left just where we were. That the symbolic nature of the
Levitical sacrifice was clearly perceived by the deeper thinkers among the
Hebrews is attested by many passages in the Bible--"Sacrifice and burnt