8. All the primitive religions, in accordance with the character of the peoples among whom they took their rise, have made to themselves warrior-gods whom they supposed to fight for them at the head of their armies. The Jehovah of the Hebrews furnished the “chosen people,” on innumerable occasions, with the means of exterminating their enemies; Jehovah rewarded them by giving them victories and punished them by allowing them to undergo defeat. Conformably with their idea of God, the primitive nations imagined that such a God was to be honored and appeased by the blood of animals or of human beings; hence the sanguinary sacrifices that have played so prominent a part in so many of the religions of antiquity. The Jews had abolished human sacrifices; the Christians, notwithstanding the teachings of Christ, believed, for many centuries, that they honored the Creator by giving up thousands, of those whom they styled heretics to tortures and to the stake, thus continuing, under another form, the traditions of human sacrifices, for such were really the atrocities in question, since, according to the received formula, they were perpetrated “for the greater glory of God,” and with an accompaniment of solemn religious ceremony. Even at the present day, nations that call themselves “Christian” invoke “the God of Armies” before the battles and glorify this God after their victories; and they do this even when the purpose of their fighting is as unjust and as antichristian as possible.
