It is a remarkable fact that from the very earliest periods of human history the idea of sacrifice has played a large part in every religion, even the most primitive. The fundamental reason for this is not difficult to see, as it seems highly probable that one of the earliest impulses of the human mind, groping in the dark for something to guide it through its inexplicable surroundings, would be to placate the unseen forces which apparently either blessed or ruined its means of subsistence, that is, its crops and its herds.
While this seems to have been true of all humanity, the most reliable information on the subject is to be gained by a study of the history of one portion of it in the Old Testament. In those ancient records we find a wonderful account of the spirituality which inevitable followed the adherence to the idea of one God, supreme and all-powerful; and this idea is there shown to be irresistible in its power to lift human thought out of materiality into a more Christlike understanding of man's relation to God.
As far back as the days of Samuel we learn from his rebuke to Saul that "to obey is better than sacrifice." Elijah's experience in the cave shows that he recognized that God was not approached through, nor His presence indicated by, material convulsions or physical phenomena, but through the inward voice of spiritual intuition. Isaiah, again, assures the people that God is not a Being to be appeased by the blood of animal sacrifice, but that He is to be worshiped through the cleansing of the conscience from all animality and hate. This idea can be followed all through the Old Testament; and yet, so persistent is the human mind in its materiality that even in the time of Jesus a period of spiritual sterility had apparently darkened priests and people. We can learn from his words in regard to the widow's offering of two mites, "all the living that she had," what he wished his disciples to understand sacrifice really to be.
