The Passover is the most important and impressive festival of the Jews, instituted, it is said, by God himself, and a type of the sacrifice of his only son. Its observance was most rigorously enjoined under penalty of death, and although the circumstances of the Jews have prevented their carrying out the sacrificial details, they still, in the custom of each head of the family assuming pro tem, the rÔle of high priest, preserve the most primitive type of priesthood known.

The Bible account of the institution of the Passover is utterly incredible. After afflicting the Egyptians with nine plagues, God still hardens Pharaoh's heart (Exodus x. 27), and tells Moses that "about midnight" he will go into the midst of Egypt and slay all the firstborn. But in order that he shall make no mistake in carrying out his atrocious design, he orders that each family of the children of Israel shall take a lamb and kill it in the evening, and smear the doorposts of the house with blood, "and when I see the blood I will pass over you." The omniscient needed this sign, that he might not make a mistake and slay the very people he meant to deliver. One cannot help wondering what would have been the result if some Egyptian, like Morgiana in "The Forty Thieves," had wiped off the blood from the Israelite doorposts and sprinkled the doorposts of the Egyptians. Moses received this command on the very day at the close of which the paschal lambs were to be killed. This was very short notice for communicating with the head of each family about to start on a hurried flight. As the people were two million in number and the lambs had to be all males, without blemish, of one year old, this supposes, on the most moderate computation, a flock of sheep as numerous as the people. Who can credit this monstrous libel on the character of God and on the intelligence of those to whom such a story is proffered?

What, then, is the correct version of the origin of the Passover? Dr. Hardwicke, in his Popular Faith Unveiled, following Sir Wm. Drummond and Godfrey Higgins, says it meant "nothing more or less than the pass-over of the sun across the equator, into the constellation Aries, when the astronomical lamb was consequently obliterated or sacrificed by the superior effulgence of the sun." It is noticeable that the principal festivals of the Jews, as of other nations, were in spring and autumn, at the time of lambing and sowing and when the harvest ripened. But while allowing that this may have determined the time of the festival, I cannot think it covers the ground of its significance. The story relates that when Moses first asked Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, it was that they might celebrate a feast in the wilderness which was accompanied by a sacrifice (see Exodus v. i. and iii. 19). This may be taken as indicating that there was known to be a festival at this season prior to the days of Pharaoh. And at the festival of the spring increase of flocks the god must of course have his share.

Epiphanius declares that the Egyptians marked their sheep with red, because of the general conflagration which once raged at the time when the sun passed over into the sign of Aries, thereby to symbolise the fiery death of those animals who were not actually offered up. Von Bohlen says the ancient Peruvians marked with blood the doors of the temples, royal residences, and private dwellings, to symbolise the triumph of the sun over the winter.

The suggestion that owing to peculiarities of diet or of constitution some pestilence afflicted the Egyptians which passed over and spared the Jews, is a very plausible one, and deserves more attention than it has yet received, since it would account for many features in the institution. But there remains another signification, which seems indicated in the thirteenth chapter of Exodus in connection with the institution of the Passover. There we read the order, "Thou shalt set apart [the margin more properly reads "cause to pass over"] unto the Lord, all that openeth the matrix" (verse 12). "And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou will not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem."* Professor Huxley asks upon this passage: "Is it possible to avoid the conclusion that immolation of their firstborn sons would have been incumbent on the worshippers of Jahveh, had they not been thus specially excused?"** In one of the oldest portions of the Pentateuch (Exodus xxii. 29) the command stands simply, "the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me." In Exodus xii. 27, xxiii. 18, xxxiv. 25; and Numbers ix. 13, the Passover is spoken of as particularly the Lord's own sacrifice.

The law proceeds to enjoin that the father shall tell his son as the reason for the festival, how the Lord "slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beasts: therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth the matrix being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem." Evidently here is the notion of a substitutionary offering, although the reason given is not the true reason. In Exodus xxxiv. 18-20, the festival is brought into the same connection with immediate reference to the redemption of the firstborn. In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have the same idea. God commands the patriarch to offer up his only son as a burnt sacrifice (Gen. xxii. 2), an order which he receives without astonishment, and proceeds to execute as if it were the most ordinary business imaginable, without the slightest sign of reluctance. A messenger from Jahveh, however, intervenes and a ram is substituted.* I do not doubt that this story, like similar ones found in Hindu and Greek mythology, indicates an era when animal sacrifices were substituted for human ones.**

The legend is of course far older than the record of it which reaches us. In a notable passage in Ezekiel xx. 25, 26, the Lord declares that he had given his people "statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live." And he continues, "I polluted them in their own gifts in that they cause to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the Lord." The fact that the very same words are used in Ezekiel which are found in Exodus xiii. 12, at once suggests that originally the passover was a human sacrifice, and that of the most abominable kind—the offering of the firstborn—and that the story of the Lord slaying the firstborn of Egypt was an invention to account for the relics of the custom. We know that such sacrifices did remain as part of the Jewish religion. Ezekiel himself says that when they had slain their children to their idols, they came the same day in the sanctuary to profane it (xxiii. 39). Micah argues against the barbarous practice: "Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (vi. 6). Two kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manasseh, are recorded to have offered up their children as burnt offerings (2 Chron. xxviii. 3, xxxiii. 6), as upon one occasion did the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 27). 2 Chron. xxx., in relating how Hezekiah commanded all Israel to keep the Passover, says that "they had not done it of a long time in such sort as it was written," and relates how the Levites were ashamed and many yet did eat the Passover otherwise than it was written. And in the account of how Josiah broke down the altars which had been set up by Ahaz and Manasseh one reads "surely there was not held such a Passover from the days of the judges." In other words, it had never been kept in the same fashion within human memory. The keeping of the Passover had been different before this reformation, just as until the age of Hezekiah the Jews worshipped a brazen serpent, which they afterwards accounted for by ascribing it to Moses, the law-giver who had prohibited all idolatry. On the eve of the Passover, to the present day, the firstborn son among the Jews, who is of full age—i.e., thirteen—fasts. This we take to be a rudimentary survival.

If then we interpret the offering of the paschal lamb as being substituted for a human sacrifice, we shall understand how it is at once a thank-offering and yet eaten with "the bread of affliction," the motzahs, or unleavened cakes, and bitter herbs, which are the remaining features of the festival, and this may help to explain the accusation which in all ages has been brought against the Jews, viz., that once in seven years at least they required their Passover to be celebrated with human blood. It is true the accusation has been often brought without evidence, but the Jews themselves profess astonishment at the unanimity with which their opponents have fixed upon this charge. Further, we shall see that in adopting the paschal lamb as the type of Christ, the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins, the Christians were simply reverting to the early savage notion that deities are only to be appeased with blood, and to this degraded belief they have added the absurdity that Christ himself was God, thus making God sacrifice himself in order to appease himself!