CHAP. VIII] VIVISECTION CONDEMNED 135 cruelty which, to our disgrace, they protect. This is vivisection. Vivisection is the cutting up of living animals, and it is allowed by the law, under some restrictions which are merely nominal, and are constantly evaded at the demand of certain persons who say that it is for the sake of science and to gain knowledge useful for humanity. This is a false use of the word. Science means accurate knowledge, but to cut up, or poison, a lower animal in order to watch the nature of its organs, or the effect of suffering upon them, gives us no accurate knowledge of the effect of such operations on human beings, because the organs of man and of other animals are so essentially different that the effect of injury to the one is no guide to the effect of like injury to the other. The pretence of advancing science by such means, therefore, utterly fails, and this is established by the testimony of some of the very highest authorities in surgery, past and present. But even if knowledge were gained, could it be right to gain it at the cost of such pain? Can we conceive an all-merciful God bidding us acquire knowledge of His work by torturing His creatures? The idea is utterly repugnant, not only to Christianity, but to common sense. It is scarcely possible to imagine that anyone who admits such a proposition has any true belief in God at all. Is it imaginable that Jesus Christ could so teach men ? The three purposes, then, of Christ's coming on earth work together and illustrate and promote each other. The showing forth in visible form of the transcendent Love Divine, the evidence that man on earth might respond to it by the example of One perfect human life, and the inculcating of holiness in every thought, word, and deed, were all combined in the Advent of the Son of God, and in His life and death as Son of Man. CHAPTER IX SACRIFICE THE resplendent simplicity of the Gospel, or Message of God brought by Jesus Christ to men, has not proved sufficient to satisfy the imagination or reason of some among them. Accordingly the plain statement of immediate forgiveness granted to the penitent sinner has been expounded and added to by commentators and churches and creeds till it has assumed a form of doctrine for which no authority can be found in the words of Christ. It is important therefore to consider not only what is taught us by Him, but what has not been taught by Him, and is the mere invention of human ingenuity. It must be remembered that even the apostles may have erred through the influence of preconceived ideas. They were Jews, most of them unlearned, but all accustomed to the Jewish ritual and observances. St. Paul, however, was highly educated, a Pharisee, as he says himself, a son of a Pharisee, and brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, a distinguished teacher of the law. Now the Jewish law was pre-eminently one of elaborate symbolical ritual. In ordaining its observance we may well believe that God sought by this method at once to fence off His people from the worship of the idols of surrounding nations, and to satisfy the craving which we know to be inherent in the human mind for solemnity and splendour in visible worship, a craving of which so many churches have since known how to avail themselves. There was the magnificent temple on the hill of Zion, adorned with all manner of precious stones, with its various courts up to the inner Holy of Holies; there was the priesthood, the descendants of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, specially set apart to perform the most sacred offices, and clad in vestments of royal magnificence; there were the numerous feast days, all commemorating some special mercy or deliverance; and, above all, there were the frequent sacrifices, expressly enjoined as significant of the mysteries of the faith, and regulated in the Mosaic code with peculiar application to obtain the Almighty favour or pardon. For the idea of sacrifice is common to all mankind, whatever CHAP. IX] JEWISH RITES 139 religion they profess. Abel and Cain both offered sacrifices to God, so did Noah and Abraham, and there is scarcely a tribe or nation in which the institution is not found. The root idea is twofold, either a sense of gratitude to the Divinity, shown by offering to Him some portion of His gifts or some object of value; or a sense of dread, inducing the giving up of something to appease His anger. Both types were found in the Jewish ritual. Besides the great institution of the passover, sanctity attached to every first-born male that opened the womb,' while burnt offerings and sin offerings were sacrificed as an expiation for every sort of offence.2 Thank offerings, consisting of flour baked in a special way,3 were also among the gifts; then there were peace offerings, and trespass offerings for minor offences, and offerings of consecration for an atonement. On special occasions two goats were to be taken; one killed as a sacrifice, while the priest was to take the other and confess the sins of the people over it, laying his hands on its head, and then send it by a fit man into the wilderness and let it go, so typifying the bearing away all the iniquities of the people. And every year, on the tenth day of the 3 Ibid. ii. 1 Ex. xiii. 2. 4 Ibid. viii. 34. 2 Lev. i. |