He touched the masks and unfolded the grim story that lay behind their
mockery. It led back to the common custom in antiquity of sacrificing
prisoners of war or condemned criminals or innocent victims in forest
worship and of hanging their heads on the branches: we know this to
have been the practice among Gallic and Teuton tribes. In the course
of time, when such barbarity could be tolerated no longer, the mock
countenance replaced the real.
He touched the dolls and revealed their sad story. Like the others,
its long path led to antiquity and to the custom of sacrificing
children in forest worship. How common this custom was the early
literature of the human race too abundantly testifies. We encounter
the trace of it in Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac--arrested by the
command of Jehovah. But Abraham would never have thought of slaying
his son to propitiate his God, had not the custom been well
established. In the case of Jephthah's daughter the sacrifice was
actually allowed. We come upon the same custom in the fate of
Iphigenia--at a critical turning point in the world's mercy; in her
stead the life of a lesser animal, as in Isaac's case, was
accepted. When the protective charity of mankind turned against the
inhumanity of the old faiths, then the substitution of the mock for
the real sacrifice became complete.
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