Note 25.1 — Chapter I · Inaugural Lecture.

Now, an interesting theory concerning sacrifice was expounded and brought into prominent discussion by Professor Robertson Smith in his Religion of the Semites, and in an earlier article in the Encyclopædia Britannica—namely, that a certain type of ancient sacrifice was a mystic sacramental communion, the worshipper partaking of some sacred food or drink in which the spirit of the deity was temporarily lodged. This mystic act, of which there is no clear trace in the Old Testament, is reported from Egypt,25.1 and it appears to have been part of the Attis ritual of Phrygia. We find doubtful traces of it in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries; also a glimpse of it here and there in the public religion of Hellas. But it is best attested as a potent force in the Dionysiac worship, especially in a certain savage ritual that we may call Thracian, but also in the refined and Hellenised service as well.