The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1915-09-16
Human Sacrifice

certain sacred days upon which they would build
an altar where they performed that most solemn
and terrible of mystic rites the sacrifice of human
beings.
The idea of human sacrifice is abhorrent to
moderns What a dreadful superstition must have
obsessed those ancients. We count it an evidence
of progress that such things are no longer prac-
ticed among US.
But as a matter of fact, human sacrifice is
practiced right now, and we practice it upon
greater scale and with much more sordidness than
the ancients did.
The ancients performed these sacrifices only
occasionally, and even their victims were most Of
ten enemies taken in war. They did not know any
BETTER and in spite of the superstition and horror
of it there was something downright sincere about
this heather rite.
Human sacrifice was the symbol of the mystic
al significance of the inevitabes of pain and DEATH
1t gave those people momentary communion with
the half tragic, half ecstatic secret of existence,
and who can say how much courage and strength
this dread rite may have inspired in those who wit
nessedit
But there is little that is inspiring in the whole
sale modern practice of human sacrifice.
We offer up in war millions of our finest youth
plus emotion. In Europe they are dying for the
sake of map.
When did the world ever witness such USE
less, mad, worldwide human sacrifice as this which
is now going on in Europe?
And we moderns know better We do this
clearly realizing that it kills off those who are most
fit to live; and we do it stupidity and hypocritcay
with the Sermon on the Mount on our lips, and
o.rb4
previous age.
We also sacrifice daily countless number of
victims to the god of greed and superstition of COM
merical prosperity. We starve and infect them in
city slums and crush out their lives in factory and
mine, and nobody, not the few benefciaries of
our stupid industrial SYSTEM can find happiness
which compensates for this waste of life.
Again we sacrifice vast numbers to our mob
ideas of honor and virtue. Many of the great pop
ular movements for making the world better are
subconciously hardly more than demand for a
victim to sacrifice to some popular idol. In order
to create great wave of moral enthusiasm it is al
ways necessary to stir up public sentiment against
some One
And then there are the countless victims sac
rfced annuallyto employ romantic ideas, like those
we have inherited from Victorian England, and to
that modern idol called society many of whose
conventions, all intelligent people know, exist only
for appearance sake.
| have not mentioned the thousands of convicts
whom instead of educatingto wholesome citizenship
we lock up in ails and penitentiaries until VIZ make
them ten times more villanous than they were at
first, all sacrificed to our idol of vindictve justice
Indeed, taking it all in ALL have suspicion that
the good people, forgetting the sweet charity taught
by religion, and inspired by mistaken idea that
duty requires them to offer up their erring and sin
full neighbors as victims to their own outraged
ideals and increasing hundred fold the suferngs
which nature exacts of those who sin against her,
have probably caused more pain and sorrow in the
world than was ever caused by the bad people.
Everett d. Martin, In The Summary.
"In Their Death They Were Not Divided"
After the BATTLE thick upon the plain,
The bodies of the heroes slain were lying,
GoI IN lo;,