THE FIRESIDE COMPANION. NO. XVIII. Explanation of the Calendar. No. VI.-JUNE. ROMULUS assigned to this month thirty days, though in the old Latin calendar it consisted of twenty-six only. Numa deprived it of one day, which was restored by Julius Cæsar; since which it has remained undisturbed. JUNE 1. St. Nicomede.-Nicomede, or Nicomedes, whose memory is preserved in our calendar, was a scholar of St. Peter, and one of the most zealous and amiable of the first converts. 5. Boniface, Bishop of Mentz, and Martyr.-This eminent missionary was born in England, of illustrious parents; and erected a great many Christian Churches. He was Archbishop of Mentz, and Primate of Germany. He was murdered in Friesland, in 755, with fifty other Ecclesiastics. obtained the appellation of the Apostle of the Germans. He has 10. Whitsunday.-On this day is celebrated the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, in the visible appearance of fiery cloven tongues, and in those miraculous powers which were then conferred upon them. Whitsuntide is seven weeks after Easter. 11. St. Barnabas the Apostle.-St. Barnabas was a Jew of the tribe of Levi, and a native of Cyprus. When the converts to the Christian faith formed the pious and justly-extolled public fund, for the support of their indigent associates, St. Barnabas was the first who disposed of his estate, and appropriated the whole of its produce, for that generous and benevolent purpose. St. Barnabas, accompanied by St. Paul,-who took with them John surnamed Mark, the nephew of the former,-travelled through the greatest part of Asia Minor, where they widely disseminated the Gospel. When St. Paul, about the year 50, visited the Churches of Syria and Cilicia, St. Barnabas, with "John Mark," went to Cyprus, the place of his nativity, where he continued expounding the Scriptures to his own countrymen, until about the year 73, when he was attacked while preaching in the synagogue at Salamis, by some Jews who had recently arrived from Syria, and after being cruelly beaten with staves, was stoned to death. 17. Trinity Sunday.-Trinity Sunday is a festival observed by the Latin and Protestant Churches, on the Sunday next following Pentecost or Whitsuntide, of which originally it was merely an octave; and it was instituted as a separate feast, the more directly to afford an opportunity for testifying a devout and reverential adoration of the union of the three divine spirits, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in one God. 17. Saint Alban.-This Saint, called the British ProtoMartyr, and the British St. Stephen, from the circumstance of his having been the first who was martyred for Christianity in Britain, was born about the middle of the third century, at Verulam, an ancient city, which stood near where the town of St. Alban's, in Hertfordshire, has since been erected. The particulars of the life of St. Alban are but little known. His martyrdom took place on the 23d of June, A.D.303. In the year 795, Offa, king of the Mercians, built a monastery to the honour of Alban, on the place where he had suffered, then called by the AngloSaxons Holmhurst, but since, in compliment to the martyr, named St. Alban's. The Town built near the Abbey still retains the latter appellation; and the Abbey-Church is even yet in existence. 24. Saint John the Baptist.-The Reformed Church hold a Festival on this day, in commemoration of the wonderful circumstances that attended the " Nativity of St. John the Baptist,' the Precursor of the Messiah; and in her service celebrates also his death, by appropriate passages from the Scriptures, recording the most remarkable facts connected with his life and sufferings. 29. St. Peter the Apostle.-The Feast of St. Peter was instituted in the year 813, perhaps to celebrate the martyrdom of the Apostle, who suffered at Rome about 64.-St. Peter was the senior of the Apostles, from which cause he is given the precedency. From St. Peter, as Bishop of Rome, many extravagant claims of the papal power are deduced. EDITOR--K. ON HUMAN SACRIFICES. FEW people can read the accounts of human sacrifices without feeling thankful to God that the light of the Gospel has shone upon us, and dispersed the clouds of ignorance which formerly overshadowed the world. But while we learn from these narratives the necessity of Revelation, we are often forgetful that they strongly prove the universal impression that mankind are in a fallen state. We see barbarous nations catching at everything to save themselves from perishing feeling their weakness, they fly to that refuge which their ignorance suggests, and their false notions render congenial to their perverted ideas. Reason cannot teach them that repentance will be accepted: the man who by indulgence has brought on disease, cannot by sorrow remove it; nor can he redeem his character by acknowledging his fault. Tradition leads them to seek for some sacrifice, and their strong feeling of guilt makes them offer that which is most valuable in their own eyes ;-the life of a fellow-creature, the fruit of their loins. If any one should object to this argument as inconclusive, let him assign any satisfactory reason why all nations have sought to appease the Deity by cruel and sanguinary ceremonies. It will hardly be necessary to trace the fact through all the ages of ancient history, but it will be sufficient to state that it was universally prevalent. Not only uncivilized nations, whose barbarity we might plead as an excuse for such an act, but Egyptians and Persians, the more refined states of Greece, and the Romans, in the more advanced periods of their history, all endeavoured to pacify the Deity by these bloody ceremonies. It may not, however, be uninteresting to make some observations on the early inhabitants of our own, and the neighbouring countries of France and Germany. The religion of these countries was nearly the same; at least as far as regards the sacrifice of human victims. "Here barbarous priests some dreadful pow'r adore, But shun their gods and kneel with distant fear."* "The whole nation of Gaul," says an eye-witness, "is grossly addicted to superstition; and from this cause they who are exposed to sickness or danger sacrifice men in the place of victims; or, making their vows for the performance of such sacrifices, adopt the intervention of the Druids for the performance of 1 * Lucan's Pharsalia, Book iii. : them; for they suppose that the Deity of the immortal Gods cannot be appeased unless the life of one man is paid as the price of the life of another sacrifices of this nature are ́established by public authority. Others make images of an immense size, and fill their limbs, which are formed of wicker, with living men; the figure is set on fire, and the men within are burnt. They conceive that men, guilty of theft, robbery, or any great sin, are the most acceptable victims; but when there is a deficiency of these, they have recourse to the immolation of the innocent."* Had these sacrifices originated from a desire of revenge, or been adopted as the punishment of the guilty, the innocent would not have been put to death, and they would not have been considered as religious ceremonies. The sacrifice was intended to appease the wrath of an offended Deity. But we need not rest our argument on what is passed; we may see the same in our own time. In every barbarous and uncivilized nation we find the same fears and the same methods of reconciliation. About the year 1497 the passage round the Cape of Good Hope was discovered; and our knowledge of the East Indies, which had previously been very contracted, was greatly increased: here again we find the same fears, the same prevailing opinion that man was in a state of alienation from his Maker. Some have been inclined to think that the custom that prevails among the inhabitants, of burning the wife on the funeral pile of her husband, is a trace of human sacrifice; but as it may be intended as a mark of affection to the deceased, or as an honour to their own families, it cannot be ranked among sacrifices offered either as an atonement for past sin, or deprecatory of the wrath of a malicious Deity. The wife, however, does not always devote herself voluntarily to death; she is often forcibly pushed into the flames. It is true," says Bernier, " that I have seen some of them, at the sight of the funeral pile, appear fearful; and that perhaps they would have gone back, but the Bramins, the Hindoo priests, who are present with long sticks, encourage them, frighten them, and thrust them in. I saw a very handsome young woman burnt; she appeared more dead than alive when she came to the funeral pile; she shook and wept bitterly: meanwhile, three or four of these executioners, the Bramins, together with an old hag that held her under the arm, thrust her on, and made her sit down on the wood; and, lest she should run away, tied her legs and hands, and so they burnt her alive." Omitting then this ceremony, as giving no certain proof that they feel themselves fallen from the favour of God, we shall not be at a loss to trace it in other rites of their religion and in the first place, by their self-devo tion to death under the wheels of the chariot of Jaggernaut. The Temple at this place is resorted to by pilgrims from every quarter of India. At the annual festival an immense chariot, on sixteen wheels on either side, of great height and proportionate weight, is driven about; while it is going along the city the people lie on the ground, that the chariot wheels may go over them and crush them to death; by this means they expect to merit heaven. It is the custom likewise, at the island of Sangor, for mothers to sacrifice their children by throwing them into the sea; and it is stated in the prelude to a law enacted at Bengal in 1802, for preventing the sacrifice of children, that this practice had arisen from superstitious vows. In both these instances we have examples of the deep-rooted principle, that man is in a fallen state, and that the Deity must be appeased to obtain his favour. Whence otherwise these bloody ceremonies to obtain his favour? But perhaps the strongest proof that this country will afford of the prevalence of this opinion, is to be derived from the variety of penance which their religious men inflict on themselves. They are far too numerous and absurd to demand particular attention; a few, however, will serve to illustrate the fact. "Of all the phenomena of human nature, none appears more extraordinary than the self-inflicted torments of the saints of Hindoostan. Some of them keep their hands closed till they are pierced through by the growth of the nails: others hold them above their heads until the power of the arms is extinguished. They make vows to remain in a standing posture for years. Three men were seen by Fryer, who had undertaken to remain standing for fifteen years; one of them had completed his dreadful penance of the rest, one had passed five years in torment; the other three, their legs were prodigiously swelled and deeply ulcerated, and became at last too weak to support their bodies, when they leaned on a pillow suspended from a tree. Others, turning their heads to gaze at the heaven over their shoulder, remain fixed in that posture till the head can no longer be restored to its natural position, and no aliment, except in a liquid state, can pass down their throats. Others place themselves between four large fires, at the same time sustaining the heat of an Indian sun. Others bury themselves up to the neck in the ground, or even below it, leaving only a little hole through which they may breathe. They tear themselves with whips; they repose on beds of spikes; they chain themselves for life to the foot of a tree: the wild imagination of the race seems to have been racked to supply a sufficient variety of fantastic modes of tormenting themselves." And whence could they have derived this idea that *Mills' History of British India, vol. i. p. 352. |