Destroyer, yet the Regenerator, of life.
Of the Zoroastrian home, or sacred tree, which by the Persians
was worshipped for thousands of years, Layard remarks: "The plant
or its product was called the mystical body of God, the living
water or food of eternal life, when duly consecrated and
administered according to Zoroastrian rites." It has been
suggested, and not without reason, that to this idea of the
ancients, respecting the sacred character of the properties of
the home juice, may be traced the "origin of the celebration of
Jewish holy or paschal suppers and other eucharistic rites."
Although by the ancients water was sometimes regarded as the
original principle, later, wine, or the intoxicating quality
within it, came to constitute the god-idea. It was spirit, while
water was matter; hence, in the sacraments, water and wine were
commingled, wine representing the essence or blood of God; water,
at the same time, standing for the people. Cyprian, the bishop
martyr, while contending for the use of wine in the Sacrament of
the Lord's Supper, makes use of the following argument:
"The Holy Spirit also is not silent in the Psalms on the
sacrament of this thing, when He makes mention of the Lord's Cup,
and says 'Thy intoxicating cup how excellent it is!' Now the cup
which intoxicates is assuredly mingled with wine, for water
cannot intoxicate anybody. And the Cup of the Lord in such wise
inebriates, as Noe also was intoxicated drinking wine in Genesis.
. . . For because Christ bore us all, in that he also bore our
sins, we see that in the water is understood the people, but in
the wine is showed the blood of Christ. . . . Thus,
therefore, in consecrating the Cup of the Lord, water alone
cannot be offered, even as wine alone cannot be offered. For if
anyone offer wine only, the blood of Christ is dissociated from
us; but if the water be alone, the people are dissociated from
Christ."[10]
[10] Epistles of Cyprian, vol. i., pp. 215-217.
The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, at which wine is mysteriously
converted into the essence of Deity, or into the blood of Christ,
is without doubt a relic of the idea once entertained regarding
the homa tree. Certain writers entertain the opinion that from
the use of the sacred homa juice have arisen various religious
practices and rites, such for instance as offering oblations to
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