Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me. The first of thy ripe fruits - This offering was a public acknowledgment of the bounty and goodness of God, who had given them their proper seed time, the first and the latter rain, and the appointed weeks of harvest.
From the practice of the people of God the heathens borrowed a similar one, founded on the same reason. The following passage from Censorinus, De Die Natali, is beautiful, and worthy of the deepest attention: -
Illi enim (majores nostri) qui alimenta, patriam, lucem, se denique ipsos deorum dono habebant, ex omnibus aliquid diis sacrabant, magis adeo, ut se gratos approbarent, quam quod deos arbitrarentur hoc indigere. Itaque cum perceperant fruges, antequam vescerentur, Diis libare instituerunt: et cum agros atque urbes, deorum munera, possiderent, partem quandam templis sacellisque, ubi eos colerent, dicavere.
"Our ancestors, who held their food, their country, the light, and all that they possessed, from the bounty of the gods, consecrated to them a part of all their property, rather as a token of their gratitude, than from a conviction that the gods needed any thing. Therefore as soon as the harvest was got in, before they had tasted of the fruits, they appointed libations to be made to the gods. And as they held their fields and cities as gifts from their gods, they consecrated a certain part for temples and shrines, where they might worship them."
Pliny is express on the same point, who attests that the Romans never tasted either their new corn or wine, till the priests had offered the First-Fruits to the gods. Acts ne degustabant quidem, novas fruges aut vina, antequam sacerdotes Primitias Libassent. Hist. Nat., lib. xviii., c. 2.
Horace bears the same testimony, and shows that his countrymen offered, not only their first-fruits, but the choicest of all their fruits, to the Lares or household gods; and he shows also the wickedness of those who sent these as presents to the rich, before the gods had been thus honored: -
Dulcia poma,
Et quoscumque feret cultus tibi fundus honores,
Ante Larem gustet venerabilior Lare dives.
Sat., lib. ii., s. v., ver. 12.
"What your garden yields,
The choicest honors of your cultured fields,
To him be sacrificed, and let him taste,
Before your gods, the vegetable feast."
Dunkin.
And to the same purpose Tibullus, in one of the most beautiful of his elegies: -
Et quodcumque mihi pomum novus educat annus,
Libatum agricolae ponitur ante deo.
Flava Ceres, tibi sit nostro de rure corona
Spicea, quae templi pendeat ante fores.
Eleg., lib. i., eleg. i. ver. 13.
"My grateful fruits, the earliest of the year,
Before the rural god shall daily wait.
From Ceres' gifts I'll cull each browner ear,
And hang a wheaten wreath before her gate."
Grainger.
The same subject he touches again in the fifth elegy of the same book, where he specifies the different offerings made for the produce of the fields, of the flocks, and of the vine, ver. 27: -
Illa deo sciet agricolae pro vitibus uvam,
Pro segete spicas, pro grege ferre dapem.
"With pious care will load each rural shrine,
For ripen'd crops a golden sheaf assign,
Cates for my fold, rich clusters for my wine.
Id. - See Calmet.
These quotations will naturally recall to our memory the offerings of Cain and Abel, mentioned Genesis 4:3, Genesis 4:4.
The rejoicings at our harvest-home are distorted remains of that gratitude which our ancestors, with all the primitive inhabitants of the earth, expressed to God with appropriate signs and ceremonies. Is it not possible to restore, in some goodly form, a custom so pure, so edifying, and so becoming? There is a laudable custom, observed by some pious people, of dedicating a new house to God by prayer, etc., which cannot be too highly commended.