The Open court . ry being that died or was slain survived, and couldat will put on another transfigured body, closely resembling hisown. We might call it the dream-body, which was the figure inwhich he appeared to the survivors in dreams. This was supposedto move about as freely as we ourselves, and visit places at the mostremote distances with unheard-of swiftness, and was not boundby the usual laws of gravity, or the rules of time and space. Aperson, whether infant or adult, that was sacrificed for some re-ligious purpose was not supposed to be slain. He continued to live,and lived a kind of
The Open court . ry being that died or was slain survived, and couldat will put on another transfigured body, closely resembling hisown. We might call it the dream-body, which was the figure inwhich he appeared to the survivors in dreams. This was supposedto move about as freely as we ourselves, and visit places at the mostremote distances with unheard-of swiftness, and was not boundby the usual laws of gravity, or the rules of time and space. Aperson, whether infant or adult, that was sacrificed for some re-ligious purpose was not supposed to be slain. He continued to live,and lived a kind of superior life, the life of a demi-god. He wastransfigured into a spiritual presence that received divine honors,and so his condition was really envied. We may as well assume thatoriginally the honor of being sacrificed was courted by many people,and the ghastly idea of the honor of such a death was absolutelypresent. But with the change of mans religious notions the prac- FOUNDATIONS LAID IN HUMAN SACRIFICE. 495. 5 «? ^.1 -- ^ HUMAN SACRIFICES UNDER THE FOUNDATION STONES OF GEZER. (Reproduced from the quarterly statements of the Palestine ExplorationFund, 1904, page 17.) 496 THE OPEN COURT. tice became more and more horrible and outrageous. People con-tinued it because they considered it necessary. Their ancestors haddone it to give stability to a building, and so the ceremony hadto be done whatever might be the cost, and the further man grewaway from his primitive barbarous ideas the more the victim shrankfrom it until finally he was forced to this unnatural death against hiswill. Traces of burial alive have been found among all the nationsof the earth without any exception, which indicates that the customis as old as the art of architecture, and so under the most ancientbuildings which date back to pre-Christian ages, we find some humanskeleton embedded under the foundation stones. It seems that inthe progress of civilization these horrible sacrifices were more andmore disc
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade188, booksubjectreligion, bookyear1887
