66 makes a certain day, or place, or number, holier than another. And we have a right to be suspicious of a religion that thinks more, for example, of the number 3, or 7, or 40, or of the first or seventh day of the week than of other days or numbers. One of the motives which, according to the bible, actuated the building of a temple for Jehovah was to observe more solemnly "the Sabbaths and the new moons of the Lord."* The new moons! Why is a new moon more virtuous or talismanic than a full moon? What has righteousness to do with "new moons or full moons? Why do we have to spend millions of dollars every year to send missionaries abroad to teach them the observance of "Sabbaths and new moons"? I am aware that the missionaries omit the "new moons,' but is it not also in the Word of God? And what right has the missionary to drop anything from the Word of God? Has he forgotten the awful warning of the closing words of the bible? And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life," etc. But there is not a sect that has not both taken from, and added to, the Word of God. We tremble to think what will happen to them. "God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book." what could be worse than the plagues mentioned in the bible?§ * II Chronicles ii, 4. + Revelation xxii, 19. Revelation xxii, 18. 66 And 8 One of the rather mild plagues is described in Leviticus xxvi, 22-29: "I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters." Twenty million copies a year of this book are sold! As a day of rest and recreation, of intellectual, moral and æsthetic culture and pleasure, Sunday will always be one of the dearest institutions of civilization. But as already explained, humanitarian or ethical motives had no share at all in the making of the JewishChristian Sabbath. Would the clergy, for instance, consent to have any other day than Sunday observed as "holy"? Would they have the courage to call Tuesday or Thursday the Sabbath of the Lord, sanctified and set apart from all eternity? If not, the inference is inevitable that what they are principally interested in is the day – - the taboo - and not the rest and profit which may be derived from quitting work on a given day of the week. Among the primitive races a thing was taboo either because it was supposed to be "unholy" or because it was supposed to be "holy." A Catholic must not touch the sacraments because they are "holy," and the Jew must not touch swine's flesh because it is "unholy.' In the one case, as in the other, it is a “thou shalt not." Why the touch of the fingers should defile the sacraments but not the touch of the palate or the lips; or why swine's flesh should mar one's character or standing before the community, is not explained because it can not be explained. Theology is a collection of enigmas. The less the people understand their religion the more they believe in it. A taboo is not meant to be understood; it is only meant to be obeyed. The Babylonians, from whom the Hebrews got their Sabbath, refrained from work on that day because they considered it an evil day; we refrain from work on that day because we think the day too sacred for work. It is not at all strange that the reason for a given taboo, being no more than a whim, should in the course of time change. The "thou shalt not" remains; the why does not matter much, because the why belongs to reason, and religion is a matter of faith. Th The Totem O show further how the unholy becomes, in time, the holy, or vice versa, let us glance at another barbaric institution of the past, that of the totem. The word taboo, as already explained, is Polynesian in origin; the word totem has come to us from the American Indian. Totem is a more difficult word to translate into modern thought. The most popular definition I could give to it would be to say that a totem is a "mascot." And yet, it is very much more. To savage tribes a totem was an object, more frequently an animal, which was sacred to the particular tribe that had identified itself with it. The thing, or the plant, or the beast thus selected, became an emblem, badge or bond of union. It served also as a sort of password by which the members of the tribe were recognized, and a center around which the clan grouped itself. To the totem they looked for preservation against famine, war and annihilation as a tribe. The totem was the soul of the tribe the tribe in essence. The goldenrod is the national flower of America, the lily is upon the shield of France, the shamrock is Irish, the world over; in some such sense, only meaning very much more, was the totem to our savage ancestors. Now we are in a position to guess at least why the bible forbids swine's flesh. Solomon Reinach, a dis tinguished Jewish scholar, and member of the French Academy, says that the boar was the totem of the Jew long before Moses appeared on the scene.* The totem was protected by a taboo, and, therefore, to eat it was a national crime. To destroy one's totem was a sacrilege and a blasphemy, punishable by death. They looked upon the man who ate his totem with more abhorrence than we would feel toward a fellow countryman who insulted his flag. Here, then, we have two counter currents; the Sabbath, beginning as an evil day, becomes "holy," while the hog, once a totem, an object of reverence, a god, degenerates into an unclean beast. Yet the one, as much as the other, is as taboo as ever. The "thou shalt not labor on the Sabbath day," and the "thou shalt not eat swine's flesh," remain the same, though the why is shifted from the "because it is unholy" to a "because it is holy," in the case of the Sabbath; and from the "because it is holy" to a “because it is unholy," in the case of the hog. In the meantime, it remains as true as ever that there is nothing either "holy" or "unholy" about a hog or a day. Why was the seventh day cursed or blest? Why, of all the animals, was the hog selected, first to be adored and then to be abhorred? While many interesting reasons could be suggested, the truth is that, like the majority of religious rites and dogmas, both taboo and totem are impenetrable mysteries. When, in the Merchant of Venice, Shylock is asked why he covets a * Orpheus, Solomon Reinach, page 27: "Les Juifs pieux s'abstiennent de manger du porc, parce que leurs lointains ancestres, cinq on six mille ans avant notre ere, avaient pour totem le sanglier." pound of that merchant's flesh, "nearest his heart," with a toss of his head, and his eyes afire, he replies: "It is my humor."* And if we were to ask Jehovah why swine's flesh is taboo, or why the seventh day is "holy," or why the priest under penalty of death must carry a golden bell and a pomegranate upon the hem of his robet, or why the man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised shall be cut off from his people, or why "Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die,"§ or why it is a deadly crime to peep into a wooden box, or yoke an ass with an ox, the answer would be the same: is my humor." 66 'It Nothing could be more convincing that humor and not reason dictated the commandments in the bible, than the large number of taboos, the neglect of which was invariably visited with death. If a man kindled a fire in his kitchen on the Sabbath, or picked up sticks, he "shall surely be put to death"; if he forgot to observe the feast of the passover, or ate leavened bread during the passover, or ate the fat, or the blood of the animals he slaughtered for food, he "shall surely be put to death"; if a man made a holy ointment, or perfumery, or if he offered sacrifices without the help of a priest, or killed his cattle without giving a part of it to the priest, he "shall surely be put to death." If a man entered the house of the dying, or touched a pig or a dead animal, and did not pay the priest to absolve him from his guilt, he "shall surely be put to death." *Act iv, Scene I. + Exodus xxviii, 34-43. Genesis xvii, 14. Numbers xvii, 13. |