SACRIFICE

Generally any offering made to the Deity; but more jiroperly that of a victim upon an altar, accompanied by customary ceremonies and forms of prayer, with the idea of gratifying God and averting his displeasure. In the scriptures we meet with offerings, both of fruits and of animals, antecedent to any command or institution of God; such as those of Cain and Abel, of Noah and the Patriarchs: many of which, neverthele , are described as acceptable to him. In the Levitical Law, however, sacrifices are ordained by divine appointment; and a question arises as to the probability of a similar command having been in fact given to our first parents. The universality of the practice undoubtedly requires either the supposition of an original revelation, or the discovery of a common principle impelling all men alike to the adoption of what at first sight seems to militate against our ideas of reason, and the absurdity of which has, we know, been represented in the strongest light by the sages of all nations at a certain period of the intellectual development of each. Those divines who consider the appointment to have emanated directly from God conceive it to have been, from the first, typical of the last and greatest sacrifice,— that of our Saviour on the cro . It may fairly be asked of those who look for logical reasons for all divine appointments, whether, upon human principles, it seems the more probable that the sacrifice of Christ being predetermined, the notion should be familiarized to mankind by ordaining a previous practice; or that, the practice existing and having a meaning of its own in all minds, the new revelation should be accommodated to our notions by adopting that very practice for its foundation? If, on the other hand, we follow the general current of modern opinion upon this subject, and inquire for some general principle of our nature to account for the universal reception of the ideas, we may discover it perhaps in the perpetual sense of obligation with which the enjoyment of prosperity is properly accompanied, and which in some minds takes the form of grateful acknowledgment, and the devotion to the giver of some portion of the gifts by which we are ourselves gratified; and in others becomes an uneasy scruple, and suggests the voluntary surrender of a part with a view to the more secure enjoyment of the remainder, SVCRILEGE, (Lat. sacrilegium,) The profanation of any thing or place consecrated to the service of God. [s. 1086]