ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the spirit of modern criticism and scientific knowledge, not be well to ask whether the formal statement of some of the doctrines which one have inherited from mediaeval and still earlier times. The fall of man and the redemption by blood in a measure go together, and may be said to constitute the backbone of Evangelical Christianity; which in some of its crude and revivalistic forms used to lay great stress upon blood and its potent redeeming efficacy. A curious relic of primitive superstition and cruelty remains embedded in Orphism-a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the sacrifice of Dionysus, and the purification of man by his blood. The Orphic congregations in their most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood of a bull, by a mystery, the blood of Dionysus Zagreus himself, the 'Bull of God', slain in sacrifice for the purification of man.
