346 
38. Indeed, fire seems to have been inseparable from the worship 
of Jehovah, an appearance He himself assumed in his first com- 
munication with Moses. The first acceptable sacrifice was a 
burnt-offering brought with all devotion, not, I think, as an 
experiment but with a knowledge (by communication)* of its 
acceptability ; and neither from the minds of pure worshippers, 
or the opposite side, could this fact have been eradicated, as it 
was indelibly impressed on all future people by its accompani- 
ment; viz., the first human sacrifice to that god in man’s breast 
—self-esteem, whose attributes are jealousy and revenge. It 
is probable then that fire was the first agent used in the external 
rites instituted by Jehovah himself ; hence the readiness with 
which the secessionists would have adopted its actual worship 
in lieu of the Deity, with a false clinging to the persuasion that 
their rites were still acceptable to Him through this means ; 
nay, in the first instance might have been sincerely and sorrow- 
fully adopted from the expression, “ My punishment is greater 
than I can bear ; ” “ From Thy face shall I be hid,” an 
acknowledgment that the Deity who was being deserted was 
benign and kind, and that that Deity could not have been the 
sun, from whose light no escape was possible, and which could 
by no stretch of imagination have been represented as pleading 
and striving with individuals by separate acts. How indelibly 
the events of the first operation of sacrifice by the sons of men 
was impressed on the minds of subsequent generations all over 
the globe, is seen from the amalgamation in their rites of all 
the events that formed that first great drama, by their substi- 
tuting their nearest relatives , instead of a lamb, for the burnt - 
offering, for the purpose of appeasing an offended deity. 
39. Moreover, the two ceremonies of human and brute sacrifice 
carry conviction with them of their institutors; thus not only 
was a mere animal a simple offering, as a creature the life of 
which was reasonably taken, but we find that it was under certain 
circumstances not even wasted, as in the peace-offerings, but 
after a sufficient ceremonial, to prove its dedication, was to be 
used as food by the giver and the officiater; wheieas, apait fiom 
the homicide, the destruction of the nobler creature, especially 
of the purest and most innocent, as of children, was one of 
unmeaning cruelty and objectless annihilation. I purposely 
abstain in a paper of this description from introducing the more 
silver serpent, to which they burn incense twice a day, and throw a little 
flower (?) before it, and sing, accompanied with a small tom-tom.” (J. 
Wilson.) _ . , . 
* One object of which, it appears to me, may have been to impress on 
man a custom, which, in the matter of food, was to divide him from the 
brutes ; viz., that to eat raw flesh was an act of unsanctity. 
