Introduction to the History of Religions / Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV

by Crawford Howell Toy

CHAPTER X

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION

[1014]. Religion is social because man is a social animal. This does not exclude individual religion—in fact religion must have begun with individuals, as is the case with all social movements. Morality, indeed, understood as a system of conduct among human beings, could not exist except in a society which included at least two persons; but if we could imagine a quite isolated rational being, he might be religious if, as is perfectly possible, he conceived himself as standing in relation with some supernatural being or beings. This question, however, is not a practical one—there is no evidence of such isolation, and no probability that there ever has been a time when man was not social.

[1015]. It is generally agreed that men lived at first in small detached groups, gradually forming tribes and nations, and finally effecting a social fusion of nations. Religious worship has followed these changes. Religion is simply one line of social growth existing along with others, science, philosophy, art; all these, as is remarked above,[1830] go on together, each influencing and influenced by the others. Human life has always been unitary—no one part can be severed from the others; it is a serious error, impairing the accuracy of the conception of religion, to regard it as something apart from the rest of human life.

[1016]. The external history of religion, then, is the history of social growth in the line of religious organization; that is, it has been determined by religious outward needs in accordance with the growth of ideas. In the consideration of this history we have to note a growth in ritual, in devotional practices, and in the organization of religious usages, first in tribal or national communities and then in religious communities transcending national and racial boundaries.

External Worship

[1017]. We assume a human society recognizing some supernatural or extrahuman object or force that is regarded as powerful and as standing in some sort of effective relation with human life. It is possible that societies exist that do not recognize any such object or force or, recognizing them, do not employ any means of entering into relation with them. Such cases, if they exist (and their existence has not been fully established), we may pass by with the remark that the absence of worship need be taken to show only that ritual has been a slow growth.

Our information regarding the least-developed communities indicates that with them religion, when it exists, is an affair of custom, of tradition and usage, handed down during a period the history of which we have no means of knowing. Worship as it first appears consists of ceremonies, generally, perhaps always, regarded as having objective effectiveness.[1831] The ritual act itself, in the earliest systems, is powerful, in a sort magical, but tends to lose this character and take on the forms of ordinary human intercourse.

[1018]. The precise ways in which extrahuman Powers were first approached by men it is not possible now to determine—these procedures lie far back in a dim prehistoric time. Coming down to our first knowledge of religious man it may be assumed that the superhuman Powers recognized by him were of varying sorts: a quasi-impersonal energy which, however, must probably be ascribed ultimately to a personal being; animals; ghosts; spirits resident in objects; anthropomorphic beings. With all these it was necessary to establish relations, and while the methods employed varied slightly according to the nature of the object of worship, the fundamental cultic principle appears to have been the same for all. Several different methods of approaching the Powers appear in the material known to us, and these may be mentioned without attempting exact chronological arrangement.

[1019]. One of the earliest methods of establishing a relation with the Powers is by certain processes—acts or words. The most definite example of a mere process is that found among the Central Australians, the nature of which, however, is not yet well understood. They perform ceremonies intended to procure a supply of food. It is not quite clear whether these ceremonies are merely imitations of animals and other things involved, or whether they contain some recognition of a superhuman Power. In the former case they are magical, not religious in the full sense of the term. But if they involve a belief in some force or power with which man may enter into relation, however dim and undefined this conception may be, then they must be regarded as belonging definitely in the sphere of religion. A certain direct effect is in many cases supposed to issue from ritualistic acts, a belief that is doubtless a survival of the old conception of mana.[1832]

[1020]. In many cases efficacy is attached by savages to singing—the word "sing" is used as equivalent to "exert power in a superhuman way." It is not the musical part of this procedure that is effective—the singing is simply the natural tendency of early man—the power lies in the words which may be regarded as charms. A charm is primarily a form of words which has power to produce certain results with or without the intervention of the gods.[1833] In the form of an invocation of a deity the charm belongs to a comparatively late stage of religion; but where its power lies wholly in its words, it involves merely some dim sense of relation, not necessarily religious. Obviously the idea of law underlies all such procedures, but the law may be a sort of natural law and the charm will then not be religious. Religious charms are to be sharply distinguished from prayers; a prayer is a simple request, a charm is an instrument of force.[1834] The history of the growth of savage charms it is impossible for us to recover; it can only be supposed that they have grown up through a vast period of time and have been constructed out of various signs and experiences of all sorts that appeared to connect certain words with certain results. There is no evidence that they came originally or usually from prayers that had lost their petitionary character, petrified prayers, so to speak, of which there remained only the supposition that they could gain their ends, though bits of prayers, taken merely as words, are sometimes supposed to have such potency. Charms and prayers are found side by side in early stages of religion; the former tend to decrease, the latter to increase. Charms are allied to amulets, exorcism, and to magic in general.[1835]

[1021]. Certain processes and words are supposed to have power to summon the dead and to gain from them a knowledge of the future. This is a case of coercion by magical means. Nonmagical coercion belongs to a relatively late period in religious history and may be passed over at this point. It is not in itself incompatible with religion; a god is subject to caprice and ill humor, and may have to be controlled, and we know that coercion of the gods has been practiced by many peoples, with the full sanction of the religious authorities.[1836] But coercive procedures do not accord with the general line of social development. The natural tendency is to make friends with the gods, and coercive methods have died out with the growth of society.

[1022]. The methods of establishing friendly relations with the supernatural Powers are the same as those which are employed to approach human rulers, namely, by gifts and by messengers or intermediaries.

Gifts. The custom of offering gifts to the dead is universal.[1837] Among low tribes and in highly civilized peoples (the Egyptians and others) things are placed by the grave which it is supposed the spirits of the dead will need. Food and drink are supplied, and animals and human beings are slain and left to serve as ministers to the ghosts in the other world. Possibly these provisions for the dead are sometimes suggested by sentiments of affection, but more commonly the object in making the provision appears to be to secure the favor of the deceased: ghosts were powerful for good or for evil—they were numerous, always hovering round the living, and the main point was to gain their good will. For a similar reason such gifts were made to spirits and to gods. It was a common custom to leave useful articles by sacred trees and stones, or to cast them into rivers or into the sea. The food and drink provided was always that in ordinary use among the worshipers: grain, salt, oil, wine, to which were often added cooking and other utensils. It was common also to offer the flesh of animals, as, for example, among the Eskimo, the American Indians (the Pawnees and others), the Bantu, the Limbus, and the Todas of Southern India.[1838] It was supposed that the god, when he was in need of food, sometimes used means to stimulate his worshipers on earth to make him an offering.

[1023]. Since it was obvious that the food set forth for the spirit or deity remained untouched, it was held that the gods consumed only the soul of the food. This conception, which is found in very early times, was natural to those who held that every object, even pots and pans, had its soul. The ascending smoke carried with it the essence of the food to spirits and deities—they smelled the fragrance and were satisfied.[1839] The visible material part of the offering, thus left untouched by the god, was often divided among his worshipers, and generally it furnished a welcome meal. These communal feasts are found in various parts of the world, among the Ainu of the Japan Archipelago, the American Indians, and others.[1840] They were social and economical functions. It was desirable that the good food not consumed by the deity should be utilized for the benefit of his worshipers. There was also the natural desire and custom of eating with friends. To this was added the belief that the bodies of such animals possessed powers which the worshiper might acquire by eating. The powers and qualities of the animal were both natural and sacred, or divine. The devotion of the dog, the courage and physical power of the bear, the cleverness of the fox—all such natural powers might be assimilated by the worshiper; and since the animal was itself sacred, its body, taken into the human body, communicated a certain special capacity. Thus the virtue of the communal feast was twofold: it placated the supernatural Power, and it procured for the worshiper a satisfactory meal and probably also an infusion of superhuman power. The favor of the deity was gained simply by the presents offered him; in these early times there is no indication of the belief that there was a recognized sacramental sharing of sacred food by the gods and their worshipers.

[1024]. Messengers. The supernatural Power was sometimes approached by a messenger who was instructed to ask a favor. The messenger was an animal regarded as sacred, akin to men and to gods, and therefore fitted to be an intermediary. Examples of such a method of approaching a deity are found among the Ainu, in Borneo, and among the North American Indians. The Ainu, before slaying the bear who is to serve as messenger, deliver to him an elaborate address in which he is implored to represent to his divine kinsfolk above how well he has been treated on earth and thus gain their favor; he is also invited to return to earth that he may be again captured and slain. His flesh is eaten by the worshipers, and his head is set up as an object of worship. Thus, he is after death a divine Power and a portion of his own flesh is offered to his head, but this is simply to gain his good will, and there is no suggestion of a joint feast of gods and men.[1841] Somewhat like this is the procedure in Borneo, where on special occasions when some particular favor is desired, a pig is dispatched with a special message to the gods.[1842] In America the sacred turtle, regarded as a brother to the tribe and affectionately reverenced by his human brethren, is dispatched with tears to the other world to join his kinsmen there and be an ambassador and friend.[1843] A similar conception is to be found perhaps in the great Vedic animal sacrifice in which the victim was likewise made ready by ceremonies to go to the heavenly court and there stand as the friend of the worshipers.[1844]

[1025]. In all these cases there was a certain identification of the victim with men on the one side and gods on the other. This is simply a part of the general belief in the kinship existing between all forms of being. Early men in choosing animal gifts for the gods, or an animal as messenger to them, could not go astray, for all animals were sacred. The effective means of procuring the favor of the supernatural Powers is always a friendly gift or a friendly messenger. When animals lost their religious prestige, their ambassadorial function gave way to the mediatorial function of gods and men.

Incense, tobacco, and other such things that were burned before the deity are also to be regarded as food, though in the course of time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia and nectar, but these also were finally given up.

[1026]. Food was conveyed to the gods either by simply laying it down at some sacred place (where it was devoured by beasts, but more generally taken by official ministers of the god), or by burning it.[1845] In the body of the victim the blood came to play the most important part as an expiatory force. Early observation, as is pointed out above,[1846] showed that the life was in the blood, and so a principle of economy naturally suggested that it would be sufficient to offer the blood to the deity, though this was generally supplemented by some choice portion of the flesh. Thus, the opinion arose that blood had a special expiatory power, and this conception remained to a late period.[1847] But the expiatory power rested finally on the fact that the blood was a gift of food to the gods. The gift was most effective, apparently, when the whole of the animal was burned, since thus the greatest honor was shown the deity and the most ample satisfaction of his bodily needs was furnished. The holocaust proper appears in religious history at a comparatively late stage, but the essence of it is found in all early procedures in which the whole of any object is given to the deity.

[1027]. Human sacrifice. That taste for human flesh on the part of men is not unnatural is shown by the prevalence of cannibal customs in many parts of the world. When such customs existed, it was natural that the flesh of human beings should be offered to the supernatural Powers.

The slaying of human beings at the graves of deceased clansmen or friends has prevailed extensively, though apparently not among the lowest tribes; it represents a certain degree of reflection or intensity; it is found in the midway period when religious customs were fairly well organized and when manners were not yet refined. Not every slaughter at a grave, however, is an act of religious offering to the dead. It is sometimes prompted by the spirit of revenge, to ease the mind of the slayer, or perhaps by desire to do honor to the deceased—doubtless there was a sentiment of piety toward the dead.

[1028]. The slaughter of slaves and wives to be the attendants of the deceased in the other world is of the nature of an offering—it is intended to procure the good will of the ghost. The self-immolation of widows and other dependents was in some cases a selfish act. It was supposed that the persons thus offering themselves up would procure certain advantages in the other world, while at the same time they would there minister to the manes of their husbands or lords.

As there was no practical difference between ghosts and spirits or gods in respect of power and influence in human life, the offering of human beings to these last came as a matter of course. Their bodily appetites were the same as those of men—they were fond of human flesh. Wherever it was necessary to invoke their special aid this sort of offering was presented: for the success of crops; to insure the stability of houses and bridges[1848]; to avert or remove calamities, such as pestilence and defeat in battle.

[1029]. While in the simpler societies human sacrifice was simply an offering of food to the Powers, in later times it came to be conceived of as the devotion of an object to the deity, and thus as a sign of obedience and dependence. The offering of first-born children was a recognition of the fact that the god was the giver of children as of crops. The sacrifice of the dearest object, it was supposed, would soften the heart of the deity. In some cases the person who was supposed to be the occasion or source of misfortune was offered up. In general, human sacrifice followed the lines of all other sacrifices and disappeared when it became repugnant to humane and refined feelings.

[1030]. The testimonies to its existence are so numerous that we may suppose it to have been universal among men.[1849] There is a trace of its early existence in Egypt.[1850] In the Semitic region it is known to have been practiced by the Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Moabites, Hebrews, Arameans, and some Arabs.[1851] There is no evidence of the practice in Babylonia; an indication of its existence in Assyria is possibly found in an Old Testament passage.[1852] Its existence in early times in India is held to be implied in the Rig-Veda.[1853] It appears in the Brahmanic period also: a man (who had to be a Brahman or a Warrior) was bought, allowed liberty and the satisfaction of all his desires (except that sexual intercourse was forbidden) for one year, and then ceremonially slain.[1854] It is only recently that the sacrifice of children in the New Year festival at the mouth of the Ganges has been abolished; and it is doubtful whether, in spite of the efforts of the British Government, it has been completely put down among the wild tribes, as the Gonds and the Khonds.[1855] The records of China, from the eighth century B.C. onward are said to prove the existence of human sacrifice.[1856] Among the ancient Scandinavians and Germans it was frequent.[1857] In more recent times the practice is known either to exist or to have existed in Polynesia (Fiji, Samoa), Melanesia (Florida Islands), Borneo (formerly),[1858] and North America (the Iroquois, the Natchez, the Florida peninsula, and the Southwest coast).[1859] Nowhere does it appear on so large a scale as in Mexico; and it existed also in Peru.[1860] In Africa it was practiced to a frightful extent in Ashantiland and Dahomiland and more guardedly in Yoruba.[1861]

[1031]. Its gradual disappearance (a result of increasing refinement of feeling) was marked by the substitution of other things for human victims or of aliens for tribesmen. In early times indeed it seems to have been slaves and captives taken in war that were commonly sacrificed. In more civilized times the blood of a tribesman, as more precious than other blood, was regarded as being more acceptable to the deity, and it was then a sign of advance when aliens were substituted for tribesmen. Lower animals were sacrificed in place of men: in India, where the recently sown fields had been fertilized with human blood, it became the practice to kill a chicken instead of a human being; and so in the story of Abraham (Gen. xxii) a ram is substituted for the human being.[1862] Elsewhere paste images are offered to the deity as representing men; an interesting development is found in Yoruba, where the proposed victim, instead of being sacrificed, becomes the protector of the sacrificer; that is, he is regarded as substantially divine, as he would have been had he been sacrificed.[1863]

[1032]. Along with gifts, which formed perhaps the earliest method of conciliating divine beings, we find in very early times a number of procedures in honor of the deity, and intended in a general way to procure divine favor. Among these procedures dances and processions are prominent. The dance, as is observed above,[1864] is simply the transference to religious rites of a common social act. It is, however, often supposed to have been communicated supernaturally, and in some cases it attains a high religious significance by its association with stories of divine persons. This organized symbolic dance has been developed to the greatest extent among certain North American Indian tribes.[1865] Here every actor and every act represents a personage or procedure in a myth, and thus the dance embodies religious conceptions. This sort of symbolism has been adopted also in some sections of the Christian church, where it is no doubt effective in many cases as an element of external worship.

[1033]. While human sacrifice continued to a comparatively late period, it was the ordinary sort of sacrifice that constituted the main part of the ancient religious bond of society.[1866] In the course of time the apparatus of sacrifice was elaborated—altars, temples, priests came into existence, and an immense organization was built up. Sacrifices played a part in all the affairs of life, took on various special shapes, and received different names. They were all placatory—in every case the object was to bring men into friendly relations with the god. They were expiatory when they were designed to secure forgiveness for offenses, whether by bloody or by unbloody offerings, or by anything that it was supposed would secure the favor of the deity. They were performed when it was desired to procure some special benefit, for on such occasions it was necessary that the deity should be well disposed toward the supplicant; such supplicatory or impetratory sacrifices have been among the most common—they touch the ordinary interests of life, the main function of religious exercises in ancient times being to procure blessings for the worshiper. These blessings secured, it was necessary to give thanks for them—eucharistic sacrifices formed a part of the regular worship among all civilized peoples. When the crops came in, it was felt to be proper to offer a portion, the first fruits, to the deity, as among the Hebrews and many others, and, this custom once established, the feeling naturally arose that to partake of the fruits of the earth before the deity had received his part would be an impious proceeding likely to call down on the clan or tribe the wrath of the god. When a gift was made to a temple, since it was desirable that the deity should accept it in a friendly spirit, a sacrifice was proper. In the numerous cases in which some person or some object was to be consecrated to the deity a sacrifice was necessary in order to secure his good will; the ordination of temple-ministers, or the initiation of the young into the tribe, demanded some consecrative sacrifice. And, on the other hand, there was equal necessity for a sacrifice, a deconsecrative or liberative ceremony, when the relation of consecration was to be terminated (as in the case of the Hebrew Nazirite) or when a person was to be relieved from a taboo—in this latter case the ceremony of cleansing and of sacrificing was intended to secure the approval of the deity in whose name and in whose interest the taboo had been imposed.

[1034]. Sacrifices might be individual or communal, occasional or periodical. The early organization of society into clans made the communal sacrifice the more prominent[1867]—the clan was the social unit, the interests of the individual were identical with those of the clan, and there was rarely occasion for a man to make a special demand on the deity for his individual benefit. Such occasions did, however, arise, and there was no difficulty in an individual's making a request of the tribal god provided it was not contrary to the interests of the tribe. If the petitioner went to some god or supernatural Power other than the tribal god, this was an offense against tribal life.

[1035]. The great communal sacrifices were periodical. They were determined by great turning-points in the seasons or by agricultural interests. Sowing time; when the crops became ripe; harvest time; midsummer and midwinter—such events were naturally occasions for the common approach of the members of the tribe to the tribal deity. The same thing is true of military expeditions, which were held to be of high importance for the life of the tribe. War was, as W. R. Smith calls it, a "holy function,"[1868] and its success was supposed (and is now often supposed) to depend on the supernatural aid of the deity. The particular method of conducting the ceremonies in such cases varied with the place and time, but the purpose of the worshiper and the general methods of proceeding are the same among all peoples and at all times. Occasions connected with the individual, such as birth, initiation, marriage, death, and burial, are also affairs of the family or clan, and the same rule applies to sacrifices on such occasions as to the great communal periodical offerings.

[1036]. It was inevitable that the ritual, that is, the specific mode of procedure, should receive a great development in the course of history. As colleges of priests were established, ceremonial elaborateness would become natural, and precise methods of proceeding would be handed down from generation to generation. Thus in many cases the worshiper had to be prepared by purificatory and other ceremonies, and the priest had to submit to certain rules before he could undertake the sacrifice. The victim was selected according to certain prescriptions: it had to be of a certain age or sex, of a certain color, generally free from impurities and defects, and sometimes it was necessary that it should show itself willing to be sacrificed.[1869] These details do not at all affect the essence of the sacrifice. They are all the result of the ordinary human tendency to organization, to precise determination of particulars, and while certain general features are easily understood (those, for example, relating to the perfectness of the victim) others are the result of considerations which are unknown to us. It would be a mistake to seek for the origin of sacrifice in such ritualistic details.

Theories of the Origin of Sacrifice

[1037]. Up to a very recent time the institution of sacrifice was generally accepted either as a natural human custom, due to reverence for the gods, or as of divine prescription. In very early documents, as, for example, in the Iliad and in certain parts of the Old Testament, it is assumed that the material of sacrifice is the food of the gods—a fact of interest in the discussion of the origin of sacrifice, never, however, in ancient times formulated as a theory. In the Græco-Roman and later Jewish periods sacrifices seem to have been conceived of in a general way as a mark of respect to the deity and fell more and more into disuse as the ethical feeling became distincter. In the New Testament there is a trace of the view that the victim is a substitute for the offerer: in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said that the blood of bulls and goats could never effect the remission of sin—a nobler victim was necessary.[1870] A similar conception is found in the later Greek and Roman literature, but there is still no distinct theory. In the third century of our era Porphyry, who was greatly interested in religious matters and, doubtless, represents a considerable body of thoughtful current opinion, says simply that sacrifices are offered to do honor to a deity or to give thanks or to procure favors.[1871] The early Christian writers make no attempt to explain the origin of the custom, nor do we find any such attempt in the European philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was not until the spirit of historical inquiry had entered the sphere of religious investigation that the question as to the historical beginning and the significance of sacrifice was fairly put.

[1038]. In discussions of this question a distinction is sometimes made between bloody and unbloody offerings—they are supposed to differ in placatory or expiatory virtue, and one or the other of them is held to precede in order of time. The facts seem, however, not to warrant this distinction. Everywhere the two sorts of offering have equal power to please and placate the deity; the special prominence that may be given to the one or the other is due to peculiar social conditions that do not affect the essential nature of the rite.[1872] As to precedence of one or the other in time the available data offer nothing definite beyond the fact that choice between them is determined by the circumstances of a community—the material of an offering is whatever (food or other thing) seems natural and appropriate in a particular place and at a particular time, and this may vary, of course, in the same community at different stages of culture.

[1039]. Current theories of the origin and significance of sacrifice divide themselves into two general groups, the one laying stress on the idea of gift, the other on the idea of union with the deity. Both go back ultimately to the same conception, the conviction, namely, that man's best good can be secured only by the help of the supernatural Powers; but they approach the subject from different points of view and differ in their treatment of the rationale of the ritual.

[1040]. The conception of an offering as a gift to a deity is found in very early times and is common in low tribes. In Greece the word for "gift," as offering, occurs from Homer on, and in Latin is frequent, and such a term is employed in Sanscrit. The common Hebrew term for sacrifice (minḫa) has the same sense; it is used for both bloody and unbloody offerings, though from the time of Ezekiel (sixth century B.C.) onward it became a technical term for cereal offerings.[1873] The details of savage custom are given by Tylor,[1874] who proposes as the scheme of chronological development "gift, homage, abnegation." This order, which is doubtless real, embodies and depends on growth in social organization and in the consequent growth in depth and refinement of religious feeling. The object of a gift is to procure favor and protection; homage involves the recognition of the deity as overlord, and, in the higher stages of thought, as worthy of reverence—always, however, with the sense of dependence and the desire for benefits; abnegation is the devotion of one's possessions and, ultimately, of one's self; this idea sometimes assumes a low form, as if the deity were pleased with human loss and suffering, or as if human enjoyment were antireligious,[1875] sometimes approaches the conception of the unity of the worshiper with the object of worship.[1876]

[1041]. A special form of the gift-theory, with a peculiar coloring, is that which holds that some object is substituted for the worshiper who has fallen under the displeasure of the deity and is in danger of punishment. This conception, however, is found only in the most advanced religions. The cases in which an animal is substituted for a human victim[1877] are of a different character—they are humane reinterpretations of old customs. In early popular religion the only examples of a deity's deliberately inflicting on innocent persons the punishment of another's wrongdoing are connected with the old conception of tribal and national solidarity—Œdipus, Achan, David, and others, by their crimes, bring misfortune on their peoples; when the guilty have received their punishment the innocent are relieved. A real vicarious suffering is not found in these cases or in any ancient sacrificial ritual—the victim is not supposed to bear the sin of the sacrificant.[1878] It is only in comparatively late theological constructions that vicarious atonement occurs. Some Jewish thinkers were driven to such a theory by the problem of national misfortune. The pious and faithful part of the nation, the "Servant of Yahweh," had shared in its grievous sufferings, and, as the faithful did not deserve this punishment, the conclusion was drawn that they suffered for the iniquities of the body of the people;[1879] their suffering, however, was to end in victory and prosperity. In this conception the theory of solidarity is obvious, but it differs from the old tribal theory in that the suffering of the innocent brings salvation to the whole mass. In the prophetic picture there is no explanation of how this result was to be brought about—there is no mention of a moral influence of the few on the many—only there is the implication that the nation, taught by suffering, would in future be faithful to the worship of the national deity. It does not appear wherein the ethical and religious significance of the unmerited suffering of the pious consisted; apparently the object of the writer is merely to account for this suffering and to encourage his countrymen. In another passage,[1880] suffering is represented as having in itself expiatory power; the view in this case is that a just deity must punish sin, forgives, however, when the punishment has been borne.

[1042]. The view that the efficacy of sacrifice is due to the fact that it brings about a union between the deity and the worshiper has been construed in several different ways according as the stress is laid on one or another of the elements of the rite. One theory represents atonement, the reconciliation of god and man, as effected by the physical act of sharing the flesh of a sacred animal; another finds it in the death of an animal made sacred and converted into an intermediary by a series of ceremonies; a third holds that union with the divine is secured by whatever is pleasing to the deity.

[1043]. Reconciliation through a communal meal. Meals in which the worshipers partook of the flesh of a sacred animal (in which sometimes the dead animal itself shared) have probably been celebrated from an immemorial antiquity. Examples of such customs among savages are given above.[1881] A familiar instance of a communal meal in civilized society is the Roman festival in which the shades of the ancestors of the clan were honored (the sacra gentilicia)—a solemn declaration of the unity of the clan-life.[1882] A more definite act of social communion with a deity seems to be recognizable in the repasts spread in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, which appear, however, to have been merely a social attachment to the mysteries proper.[1883] In the feasts of the Mithraic initiates, in which mythological symbolism is prominent, a more spiritual element becomes visible: the participant absorbs something of the nature of the god—power to overcome evil, with hope of immortality.[1884]

[1044]. In the ancient records of these ceremonies there is no theory of the means by which man comes into friendly relations with the deity. The meal is an act of friendly intercourse—it doubtless involves the ancient belief that those who eat together thus absorb a common life and are bound together by a strong tie. In the earliest and simplest instances the feeling apparently is that the communion is between the human participants—the divine animal is honored as a brother; but, even when, as among the Ainu,[1885] he receives a part of the food, the tie that binds him to them rests on the fact of original kinship rather than on the communal eating. Later the view that the god was pleased and placated by the nourishment offered him assumed more definite form;[1886] but it is doubtful whether on such occasions man was regarded as the guest of the deity.[1887]

[1045]. However this may be, it is the effect of the food on the god that has been made by W. Robertson Smith the basis of an elaborate theory of sacrifice;[1888] his view is that the assimilation of the flesh and blood of the kindred divine animal strengthens the deity's sense of kinship with his worshipers, and thus, promoting a kindly feeling in him, leads him to pardon men's offenses and grant them his protection. Smith's argument is mainly devoted to illustrating the ancient conception of blood-kinship between gods, men, and beasts. He assumes that sacrifice is the offering of food to the deity (the blood of the animal, as the seat of life, coming naturally to be the most important part of the offering), the sacredness of the victim, and the idea of communion, and further that the victim is a totem—the existence of totemism in the Semitic area, he holds, though not susceptible of rigid proof, is made practically certain by the wide diffusion of the totemic conception elsewhere.[1889] As evidence that the effective thing in sacrifice is the sharing of sacred flesh and blood, he adduces a great number of offerings (such as the shedding one's own blood and the offering of one's hair) in which there is no death of a victim, and no idea of penal satisfaction of the deity. In the Israelite ritual he lays special stress on the common clan-sacrifice (the zebaḥ) in which a part of the victim is given to the god and a part is consumed by the worshiper; this he contrasts with offerings that are given wholly to the god, and, leaving aside piacula and holocausts, this distinction he makes correspond to that between animal and vegetable offerings, the latter, he holds, being originally not conciliatory. Thus, he concludes, the expiatory power lies in the sharing of animal flesh. Here the theory is confronted by the holocaust and the piaculum, expiatory sacrifices in which there is no communal eating. Smith meets this difficulty by suggesting that these two sorts of sacrifice belong to a relatively late period, when, in the progress of society, the original conception had become dim. As time went on, he says, the belief in kinship with animals grew fainter. Sacrificial meals became merely occasions of feasting, and at the same time the establishment of kingly government familiarized men with the idea of tribute—so sacrifice came to be regarded as a gift and the victim was wholly burnt (holocaust); the same result was reached when the feeling arose that the victim was too sacred to be eaten—it must be otherwise disposed of (piaculum). The piacula he refers to times of special distress, when recourse was had to the sacrifice of ancient sacred animals, old totems (Hebrew: "unclean" animals), supposed to have special potency.[1890] It is true that in the course of time certain old conceptions grew dim, but this does not set aside the fact that expiatory power was supposed to attach to animal sacrifices in which there was no communal eating; though some of these were late, they doubtless retained the old idea of the nature of the efficacy of sacrifice.

[1046]. In Smith's theory there is confusion between the two ideas of communion and expiation or placation. All the facts adduced by him go to show only that the earliest form of animal sacrifice took the form of communal eating; and in such repasts, as in the savage feasts on the bodies of warriors and others, the prominent consideration seems to have been the assimilation of the qualities of the thing consumed—in this case a divine animal. There is not a word of proof of the view that the placation of the deity was due to his assimilation of kindred flesh and blood. Such a view is not expressed in any ancient document or tradition, and, on the other hand, placation by gifts of food (animal or vegetable) and other things appears in all accounts of early ritual. Even in the sacramental meals of later times, Eleusinian, Christian, and Mithraic, there is no trace of the theory under consideration. In the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (ix f.) the conception of the eucharistic meal is simply symbolical. The origin of the Australian custom[1891] (in which the food brought in by a clan is not eaten till the old men have first tasted it) is obscure; but there is no hint that the food was supposed to be shared by a supernatural being.[1892] Piacula arose under the influence of a deep sense of individual relation to the deity, and sometimes in connection with voluntary associations in which a special sanctity was held to accrue to the initiates through the medium of a cult in which special sacrifices were prominent It was natural that peculiarly solemn or dreadful offerings should be made to the deity in times of great distress; the placating efficacy in such cases seems to have been due to the pleasure taken by the deity in the proof of devotion given by the worshipers. In general, the communal meal lost its early significance as time went on, and came at last to be celebrated merely as a traditional mark of respect to the deity, or as a social function; the belief in its efficacy, however (and sometimes belief in its magical power), survived into a relatively late period.

[1047]. In one point, the death of the god, J. G. Frazer, while accepting Smith's theory in general, diverges from his view. Smith regards the death of the god as having been originally the sacrificial death of the divine totem animal, with which later the god was identified. Frazer[1893] (here following Mannhardt[1894]) finds its origin in the death of the vegetation-spirit (the decay of vegetation), which was and is celebrated in many places in Europe, and furnishes an explanation of the myths of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter and Proserpine, and Lityerses. This explanation is adopted and expanded by Hubert and Mauss.[1895] So far as the mere fact of the sacrifice of a divine being is concerned it might be accounted for by either of these theories; but the numerous points of connection between the deities in question and the ancient ideas concerning the death of vegetation make the view of Mannhardt and Frazer the more probable. The kernel of the original custom is not expiation but celebration or worship; the myths are dramatic developments of the simple old idea. Frazer suggests that the spirit or god, supposed to be enfeebled by age, was slain by the worshipers in order that a more vigorous successor might infuse new life into the world—an explanation that is possible but cannot be considered as established or as probable.[1896] However this may be, it was at a relatively late period that the conception of communion was introduced into ceremonies connected with the death of a deity. Originally the grain, identified with the god, was eaten in order to acquire his strength;[1897] such seems to be the purpose in the Mexican ceremonies in which paste images of the deity were eaten by all the people. With the growth of moral and spiritual conceptions of worship such communal eating came naturally to be connected with a sense of union of soul with the deity, as we find in the higher religions, but still without the feeling that reconciliation and unity were effected through the absorption, by god and man, of the same sacred food.

[1048]. In some forms of Christianity the sacramental eating is brought into connection with the atoning death of a divine person, but this latter conception came independently by a different line of thought. Its basis is the idea of redemption, which is an element in all sacrifice proper. And, as the death of the divine victim is held to rescue the worshiper from punishment for ill doing, the conclusion is natural that the former stands in the place of the latter. In the higher forms of thought such substitution could only be voluntary on the part of the victim. Traces of the self-sacrifice of a god have been sought in such myths as the stories of the self-immolation of Dido and Odin; but the form and origin of these myths are obscure[1898]—all that can be said of them in this connection is that they seem not to contain expiatory conceptions.[1899] The higher conception of a divine self-sacrifice is a late historical development under the influence of convictions of the moral majesty of God and the sinfulness of sin.

[1049]. Union with the divine through a sanctified victim. The conception of sacrifice as bringing about a union of the divine and the human is reached in a different way from that of Smith by MM. Hubert and Mauss, and receives in their hands a peculiar coloring.[1900] They hold that the numerous forms of sacrifice cannot be reduced to "the unity of a single arbitrarily chosen principle"; and in view of the paucity of accurate accounts of early ritual (in which they include the Greek and the Roman) they reject the "genealogical" (that is, the evolutionary) method, and devote themselves to an analysis of the two ancient rituals, the Hindu and the Hebrew, that are known in detail and with exactness. They thus arrive at the formula: "Sacrifice is a religious act which, by the consecration of a victim, modifies the state of the moral person who performs it, or of certain objects in which this person is interested." The procedure in sacrifice, they say, consists in establishing a communication between the sacred world and the profane world by the intermediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that is destroyed in the course of the ceremony; it thus serves a variety of purposes, and is dealt with in many ways: the flesh is offered to hostile spirits or to friendly deities, and is eaten in part by worshipers or by priests; the ceremony is employed in imprecations, divination, vows, and is redemptive by the substitution of the victim for the offender; the soul of the beast is sent to join its kin in heaven and maintain the perpetuity of its race; all sacrifices produce either sacralization or desacralization—both offerer and victim must be prepared (for the victim is not, as Smith holds, sacred by nature, but is made sacred by the sacrifice), and, the ceremony over, the person must be freed from his sanctity (as in the removal of a taboo); all sacrifice is an act of abnegation, but the abnegation is useful and egoistic, except in the case of the sacrifice of a god.

[1050]. The essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss is rather a description of the mode of procedure in Hindu sacrifice than an explanation of the source of its power. A victim, it is said, sanctified by the act of sacrifice, effects communication between the two worlds, but we are not told wherein consists this sanctifying and harmonizing efficacy. The rituals chosen for analysis are the product of many centuries of development and embody the conceptions of theological reflection; it does not appear why they should be preferred, as sources of information concerning the essential nature of sacrifice, to the simple rites of undeveloped communities. The authors of the essay, though they deny the possibility of finding a single explicative principle chosen arbitrarily, themselves announce a principle, which, however, amounts simply to the statement that sacrifice is placatory. In thus ascribing the virtue of the ceremony to the act itself it is possible that they may have been influenced by the Brahmanic conception that sacrifice had power in itself to control the gods and to secure all blessings for men; it was credited by them with magical efficacy, and the efficacy depended on performing the act with minutest accuracy in details—the slightest error in a word might vitiate the whole proceeding.[1901] The developed Hindu system thus embodied in learned form the magical idea that is found in many early procedures, and in some other cults of civilized communities. So far as regards the variety of functions assigned by MM. Hubert and Mauss to sacrifice, they may all be explained as efforts to propitiate supernatural Powers; and the obligation on priests and worshipers to purify themselves by ablutions and otherwise arises from a sense of the sacredness of the sacrificial act, which is itself derived from the feeling that the sacredness of supernatural beings communicates itself to whatever is connected with them. The view that the victim is not in itself sacred is contradicted by all the phenomena of early religion. Though the essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss formulates no definition of the ultimate efficient cause in sacrifice, passing remarks appear to indicate that they look on the offering as a gift to superhuman Powers, and that their object is to show under what conditions and circumstances it is to be presented.

[1051]. Sacrifice as the expression of desire for union with the Infinite. Professor C. P. Tiele, dissatisfied with existing theories of the significance of sacrifice, contents himself with a general statement.[1902] After pointing out that the material of sacrifice in any community is derived from the food of the community, he passes in review briefly the theories of Tylor (gifts to deities), Spencer (veneration of deceased ancestors), and Robertson Smith; all these, though he thinks it would be presumptuous to condemn them hastily, he finds insufficient, most of them, he says, confining themselves to a single kind of offering, whereas every kind should be taken into account, gifts presented, objects and persons consecrated, victims slain with or without repasts, possessions and pleasures renounced, acts of fasting and abstinence, every kind of religious self-denial or self-sacrifice. The question being whether one and the same religious need is to be recognized in all the varieties, he finds the root of sacrificial observances in the yearning of the believer for abiding communion with the supernatural Power to which he feels himself akin, the longing of finite man to become one with the Infinity above him.

[1052]. Tiele here has in mind the highest form of the religious consciousness, which he carries back to the beginnings of religious thought. He is justified in so doing in so far as all later developments must be supposed to exist in germinal form at the outset of rational life; but such a conception tells us nothing of the historical origin of customs. The idea of the relation between the finite and the infinite is not recognizable in early thought; to trace the history of such an institution as sacrifice we desire to know in what sort of feeling it originated, and we may then follow its progress to its highest definition. All the details mentioned by Tiele are included under the head of gift except acts of abstinence and self-sacrifice, and these last belong properly not to what is technically known as "sacrifice," but to man's endeavor to bring himself into ethical harmony with an ethical deity. With equal right prayer and all moral conduct might here be included; Tiele thinks of "sacrifice" as embracing the whole religious life. In the earliest known cults the "yearning for union with the Infinite" takes the form of desire to enter into friendly relations with superhuman Powers by gifts, in order to derive benefit from them; when old forms have been outgrown the conviction arises that what is well-pleasing to God is the presentation of the whole self, as a "living sacrifice," in service in accordance with reason (Rom. xii, 1).

[1053]. The various theories of the origin and efficacy of sacrifice (omitting the ambassadorial conception) are thus reducible to three types: it is regarded as a gift, as a substitution, or as an act securing union (physical or spiritual) with the divine. These have all maintained themselves, in one form or another, up to the present day. The old ritual slaughter of an animal and the presentation of vegetables and other things have, indeed, vanished. The movement of thought against animal sacrifice began in the Western world (among the Greeks and the Hebrews) probably as early as the fourth century B.C.[1903] In Greece the formulation of philosophic thought and the rise of individualism in religion (embodied, for example, in the great Mysteries) brought larger and more spiritual ideas into prominence. Rational law and inward impulse took the place, in the higher circles, of ritual offerings. The object of law, says Plato, is the encouragement of virtue of all kinds and the securing of the highest happiness; but, he holds, there is something higher than law: the good Athenian is above other men, for he is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by inspiration of nature, and is not manufactured by law.[1904] The Mysteries assumed that every man, with suitable inward preparation, was fitted to enter into a spiritual union with the deity. The later Jews showed equal devotion to their law, held to be divinely given, laying the stress on the moral side;[1905] jurists became more important than priests, and the synagogue (representing individual worship) more influential than the temple-ritual. In certain psalms[1906] sacrifice is flatly declared not to be acceptable to God; this attitude had been taken by the earlier prophets,[1907] but is emphasized in the psalms in the face of the later opinion that the sacrificial ritual was of divine ordination (so in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers). In the Gospels the sacrificial ritual is practically ignored. In India the Brahmanic and Buddhistic movements toward rational conceptions of religion showed themselves as early as the sixth century B.C. Thus, over a great part of the civilized world intellectual and moral progress took the form of protest against the old idea of sacrifice.

[1054]. Yet old customs are long-lived, and the ancient theories, as is remarked above, still have a certain power. The crudest of them—that the deity may be propitiated by gifts—shows itself in the belief that ill-doing may be atoned for by the support of charitable and religious institutions—by the building of churches and hospitals, by the maintenance of religious worship, and by aid to the poor. Society has benefited largely by this belief, especially in medieval Europe and to some extent in Buddhistic and Moslem communities; it has formed a transition to higher conceptions, by which it has now been in great measure replaced. The same thing is true of ascetic observances. The idea of sacrificial substitution, which has been prominent in organized Christianity from an early period (though it has no support in the teaching of Jesus), might seem to be prejudicial to religion for the reason that it tends to depress the sense of individual responsibility by relegating the reconciliation with the deity to an external agency—and such has often been its effect; but this unhappy result has been more and more modified, partly by the natural human instinct of moral responsibility and the ethical standard of the Christian Scriptures, partly by the feeling of gratitude and devotion that has been called forth by the recognition of unmerited blessing. The third theory of sacrifice, according to which its essence is union with the divine, has passed gradually from the sphere of ritual to that of moral culture. In mystical systems, Christian and Moslem, it has lent itself sometimes to immorality, sometimes to a stagnant, egoistic, and antisocial quietism; but in the main it has tended to avoid or abandon mechanical and mystical features, and confine itself to the conception of sympathetic and intelligent coöperation with what may be regarded as the divine activities of the world.

[1055]. Further external apparatus of religion. Along with the growth of sacrifice there has been a natural development of everything that was necessary to give permanent form to public worship—ritual, priests, temples, idols, and whatever was connected with the later church organizations.

Ritual

Apart from magical procedures the earliest known public religious worship consisted simply in the offering of an animal, a vegetable, a fluid, or other object to a superhuman being, the offering being performed by any prominent person and without elaborate ceremonies. Inevitably, however, as the social organization grew more complex and the conception of sanctity more definite, the ceremonial procedure became more elaborate. The selection and the handling of the victim came to be objects of anxious care, and the details increased in importance as they increased in number. It was believed that minute accuracy in every ritual act was necessary for the success of the offering. Various elements doubtless entered into this belief: often a magical power was attributed to the act of sacrifice; and there was a feeling, it may be surmised, that the deity was exacting in the matter of ceremonies—these were marks of respect, such as was paid to human potentates, and well-defined court rituals (on which the religious ritual was probably based) appear in early forms of society. Thus ritual tended to become the predominant element in worship, serving first the interests of unity and order in religion, and later always in danger of becoming a mechanical and religiously degrading influence.

[1056]. In most savage and half-civilized communities sacrifice is a simple affair, and the details of the ceremonies of worship are rarely reported by travelers and other observers.[1908] An exception exists in the case of the Todas of Southern India, who have elaborate ceremonies connected with the milking of buffaloes.[1909] The ordinary buffaloes of a village are cared for by some prominent man (never by a woman), who is sometimes a sacred person and while carrying on his operations performs devotional acts (prayer and so forth), but without a fixed ritual. A higher degree of sanctity attaches to the institution called ti, which comprises a herd of buffaloes belonging to a clan and provided with dairies and grazing-grounds; each dairy has appropriate buildings, and the ti is presided over by a sort of priest called a palol. The migration of the buffaloes from one grazing-ground to another is conducted as a sacred function. In the case of an ordinary herd the procession of animals is accompanied by a religious official who carries the dairy implements; on reaching the destination the new dairy is purified, the sun is saluted, and prayer is offered. In a ti migration the procedure is more elaborate: the milking of the buffaloes is accompanied by prayers for the older and the younger members of the herd, and every act of the palol is regulated by law. The same thing is true of the animal sacrifices: the slaughter of the victim and the disposal of the various parts are accomplished in accordance with definite rules that are handed down orally from one generation to another. The Todas are a non-Aryan people, hardly to be called half-civilized: if the buffalo-ritual is native with them, the natural inference will be that the custom is ancient. Rivers adduces a considerable number of similarities between Toda institutions and those of the Malabar coast (such as polyandry and other marriage institutions), and this agreement, as far as it goes, may point to a common culture throughout a part of Southern India;[1910] the early history of these tribes is, however, obscure. It is possible that the Todas have borrowed some customs from the Hindus. They have certainly adopted some Hindu gods, and Rivers suspects Hindu influence in their recognition of omens and lucky and unlucky days, in certain of their magical procedures, and in their use of pigments and ashes in some sacred ceremonies. There seems, however, to be no proof that the buffalo-ritual has been borrowed from the Hindus. On this question, which is of importance as bearing on the early history of ritual, it is to be hoped that further information will be got.

[1057]. Various nonsacrificial rituals (dances and so forth) are referred to above.[1911] Magical processes should be here included so far as they involve a recognition of superhuman agents; they are then to be regarded as religious. Definite magical ritual is found in many of the lower tribes, and there are ceremonies in which a shaman is the conductor—these are governed by fixed customs as to dress, posture, acts, and words.[1912] They differ from magical processes in that they are assemblies of the people, religious because there is communication with spirits. In the Californian tribes and others they become occasions of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be regarded with probability as universal.

[1058]. For the ancient national religions we have the fullest details in the case of the Hindus and the Hebrews. The Hindu sacrificial ritual is described by MM. Hubert and Mauss;[1913] the Hebrew procedure is given in the later sections of the Pentateuch.[1914] The Egyptian ritual also appears to have been elaborate, including much music.[1915] These show methods similar to those described above, and probably the same general modes of procedure were followed in Babylonia and Persia, though of the ritual in these countries only slight notices have been handed down.[1916] The great Chinese Imperial sacrifices are described by H. Blodget.[1917]

[1059]. These national systems exhibit a gradual quiet enlargement of the ritual resulting from increasing specialization in the conception of sin and forgiveness and in the functions of religious officials. A different sort of development appears in the rites of the cults that sprang up on the ruins of the old faiths—Greek Mysteries, Mithraism, Isisism, Christianity. These were all redemptive religions, highly individualistic and intense, efforts to infuse into old forms the ideas concerning moral purity, union with the deity, immortality, and future salvation that had arisen in the Græco-Roman world by the natural growth of thought and the intermingling of the various existing schemes of religious life. They are all marked by a tendency toward elaborate organization, a sharp differentiation from the national cults, and purificatory and other ceremonies of initiation. The differentiation was most definite in Christianity, the ritual was most highly developed in the other movements. In the Greek public Mysteries[1918] and in those of Mithra[1919] there were (besides ablutions) the old communal meals, processions, striking dramatic performances, and brilliant effects of light and music, and in Mithraism trials of courage for the neophyte after the manner of the old savage initiations. The ceremonies in the Isis cult were less sensational, more quiet and dignified.[1920] In all these cults there was symbolism, and the moral teaching was of a lofty character.

[1060]. Christian ritual was at first simple,[1921] but rapidly grew in elaborateness. The liturgy and the eucharistic ceremonies were expanded into great proportions, and came to be the essence of worship. This movement went on throughout Christendom (with variations here and there) up to the rise of Protestantism, and after that time continued in the Greek and Roman Churches. Protestantism, in its recoil from certain doctrines of the Church of Rome, threw off much of its ceremonial, which in the minds of the people was associated with the rejected dogmas. Since the separation, however, especially in the last hundred years, the violent antagonism having largely quieted down, there has been in some Protestant bodies a slow but steady movement in the direction of ritualistic expansion; procedures that three centuries ago would have called forth earnest protest are now accepted and interpreted in accordance with Protestant ideas. Doubtless the temperament of a people has something to do with the amount of ceremonial it favors in religious service.

[1061]. The history of ritual thus shows that it tends to grow in elaborateness and importance as social forms become more elaborate and important—the mode of approaching the deity imitates the mode of approaching human dignitaries, postures are borrowed from current etiquette.[1922] Form was especially sought after under the old monarchies, Egyptian and Assyrian.[1923] The exaggerated Oriental court etiquette, introduced into Roman life as early as the time of Diocletian, was maintained and developed under the Byzantine emperors.[1924] These usages may have affected the growth of the Greek and Roman Church liturgies.[1925] In modern China, under the imperial government, divine worship was substantially identical in form with the worship of the emperor. In some cases it may be doubtful in which direction the borrowing has been.

The expansion of liturgical forms has often been accompanied by the effort to interpret them symbolically. Intelligent reflection has led to the conviction that forms without religious meaning are valueless, and it has been easy, after ceremonies were established, to attach spiritual definitions to their details. This relieves their materialism, and gives a certain realness and force to religious feeling.

Priests[1926]

[1062]. A priest is a person commissioned by the community or its head to conduct the sacrificial service and related services connected with shrines. Such a person differs in two respects from the religious official of the simplest times, the magician (shaman, or medicine man): the latter acts in his own name and by his own authority, and the methods he employs are magical—they are based on the belief that the supernatural Powers are subject to law and may be controlled by one who knows this law; the priest acts in the name and by the authority of the community, and his methods are dictated by the friendly social relation existing between the community and the Powers. He differs, further, from those religious ministrants (chiefs of clans, fathers of families, and other prominent men) who acted by virtue of their social or political positions in that his functions are solely religious and are in that regard distinct from his civil position. He represents a differentiation of functions in an orderly nonmagical religious society. Such an office can arise only under a tolerably well-organized civil government and a fairly well-defined sacrificial ritual. It is doubtless a slow growth, and there may be, in a community, a period of transition from one grade of religious ministers to another when the distinction between the priest and the magician or between the priest and the headman is hardly recognizable; the distinction comes, however, to be well marked, and then indicates an important turning-point in religious history. It may be, also, that at certain times under certain circumstances the civil ruler may have priestly functions or the priest may exercise civil authority; but these exceptional cases do not affect the specific character of the sacerdotal office.

[1063]. The priest is a sacred person, and is affected by all the conditions pertaining to the conception of "sacred." In early times he has to be guarded against contamination by impure or common (profane) things, and care has to be taken that his quality of sacredness be not injuriously communicated to other persons or to any object.[1927] The parts of his person, such as hair and nail-parings, must not be touched by common folk. The dress worn by him when performing his sacred duties must be changed when he comes out to mix with the people. He must keep his body clean, and the food that he may or may not eat is determined by custom or by law. His sexual relations are defined—sometimes he is forbidden to marry or to approach a woman, sometimes the prohibition extends only to marriage with a certain sort of woman (a foreigner, a widow, or a harlot). In some cases he is forbidden to engage in warfare or to shed human blood;[1928] the ground of this prohibition was physical, not moral.[1929]

[1064]. Similar rules in regard to food, marriage, chastity applied to priestesses.[1930] Women were often, in ancient times, the ministrants in the shrines of female deities—there was a certain propriety in this arrangement; they were, however, in some cases attached to the service of male deities.[1931] Their duties were in general of a secondary character: they rarely, if ever, offered sacrifice;[1932] they were often in charge of the temple-music; the function of soothsaying or of the interpretation of oracular sayings was sometimes assigned them. On the other hand, female ministrants in temples, who were closely connected with temple duties, were sometimes considered as wives of the god, and in some cases had sexual relations with priests and worshipers, and became public prostitutes.[1933] This custom does not exist among the lowest tribes, and it attained its largest development in some of the great civilized cults. It seems not to have existed in Egypt.[1934] The consecrated maidens described in the Code of Hammurabi appear to have been chaste and respected;[1935] the relation between these and the harlots of the early Ishtar cult is not clear. A distinction may be made between priestesses proper and maidens (hierodules) consecrated to such a deity as Aphrodite Pandemos; Solon's erection of a temple to this goddess, which he supplied with women, may have been an attempt to control the cult of the hetæræ. The thousand hierodules at Corinth[1936] were probably not priestesses, and the same thing may be surmised to be true of the women devoted to the Semitic prototype of Aphrodite, the Syrian Ashtart (Astarte), and to the Babylonian Ishtar.[1937]

[1065]. The origin of temple prostitution is not clear. In many cases (in Greece, Rome, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere) the consecrated women were required to be virgins and to remain chaste—this higher conception is obviously the natural one in a civilized community in which the purity of wives and daughters is strictly guarded. The old idea that sexual union was defiling may have originated or strengthened the demand for chastity. The institution of the lower class of women does not seem to have originated in a society in which this regard for purity is lacking, for the hierodulic class is rarely if ever found in existing societies of this sort. The origin of the class is not to be sought in a low valuation of woman, nor, on the other hand, is it to be found in a desire to secure fruitfulness; fruitfulness is generally secured by offerings to the gods, and though the belief has doubtless existed that it could be secured by commerce with a supernatural being,[1938] there is no trace of this belief in the accounts of the lives of the hierodules; the benefit would be restricted also to a small number of women. Probably the custom was developed gradually and, like other such customs, had its ground in simple needs. Women were required for the menial work of shrines.[1939] Once established in service, they would acquire a certain sanctity and power by their relation to sacred things, and at the same time would, as unattached, be sought by men. Their privileges and license would grow with time—they would become an organized body, and would seek to increase their power. In the course of time current religious ideas, low or high, would attach to them. They would be supposed to be in the confidence of the deity, able to interpret his will, and endowed with the power of cursing or blessing.[1940] With the growth of refinement they would be thought of as servants of the deity, belonging to him and to no other, and might be described, as in fact they are sometimes described, as his wives. The title "wife" would be compatible with purity in the higher religious systems, but in the lower systems would be connected with license.

[1066]. Theories of the origin of religious prostitution. The license just referred to is a part of a widespread custom of the prostitution of sacred persons, of which various explanations have been offered.[1941] The existence of the custom is attested for the larger part of the ancient civilized and half-civilized world, and for many more recent peoples. In old Babylonia, Canaan, Syria, Phœnicia, Asia Minor, Armenia, Greece, and now in West Africa and India, we find officially appointed "sacred" women a part of whose religious duty it was or is to offer themselves to men.[1942] The service in ancient times was not regarded as degrading; on the contrary, maidens of the noblest families were sometimes so dedicated, and the rôle of devotee might be continued in a family for generations.[1943] Such service was sometimes a necessary preliminary to marriage. This seems to be the case in the custom reported by Herodotus[1944] that every native Babylonian woman had, once in her life, to sit in the temple of Mylitta (Ishtar) and wait till a piece of money was thrown into her lap by a stranger, to whom she must then submit herself—this duty to the goddess accomplished, she lived chastely. In Byblos a woman who refused to sacrifice her hair to Ashtart on a certain festival day had to yield herself to a stranger.[1945]

Official male prostitutes also there were in some ancient cults; but information about such persons is scanty, and they seem not to have been numerous.[1946] The most definitely named case is that of the Hebrew official class called kedeshim, that is, persons devoted to the service of the deity and therefore sacred[1947] (as it is said in Zech. xiv, 20 ff., that bells on horses and temple-vessels shall be sacred to Yahweh). These, together with the female devotees, kedeshot ("prostitutes"), are denounced as abhorrent to Yahweh; both were features in the ritual of the Jerusalem temple of the seventh century B.C. and apparently earlier.[1948] The female devotee is called a "harlot" and the male a "dog" (kalb). The original religious sense of the latter term is uncertain. In the Old Testament it occurs, in this sense, only in the passage cited above. In a Phœnician inscription of Larnaca (in Cyprus)[1949] the plural of the word designates a class of attendants in a temple of Ashtart, and there are proper names in which the term is an element (and therefore an honorable title). It is not improbable that it meant originally simply a devotee or minister of a god in a temple,[1950] the bad sense having been attached to it in the Old Testament from the license sometimes practiced by such ministers.

The sentiment of chastity is a product of the highest civilization. In many savage and half-civilized tribes the obligation on a woman to keep herself pure is not fully recognized, and in the case of married women the opposition to unfaithfulness sometimes springs from the view that it is a violation of the husband's right of property in the wife. In some ancient civilized communities a god's right to a woman seems to have been taken for granted.[1951] Ordinary prostitution seems to have existed in the world, in all grades of civilization, from the earliest times. This attitude toward the custom being so widespread, it is not strange that it has established itself in religious organizations.

Two types of organized religious prostitution have to be considered:[1952] there is the Babylonian (Mylitta) type, in which every woman must thus yield herself before marriage; and there is the attachment of a company of official public women to a temple permanently or for a considerable time. The explanations that have been offered of these institutions fall into two classes, one tracing their origin to some nonreligious custom, the other regarding them as originally religious (these classes are, however, not necessarily mutually exclusive).

Secular explanations. It has been held that all such customs go back to a period of sexual promiscuity,[1953] which has been modified in the course of ages. It is doubtful whether such a period ever existed,[1954] but it is certain that prenuptial license has been common, and this laxity may have prepared the way for organized prostitution. More particularly, reference is made to puberty defloration ceremonies, when the girl is handed over to certain men no one of whom can, by tribal rule, be her husband—that is, before marriage she becomes sexually the property of the tribe through its regularly appointed representatives, and is thus prepared for membership; then, it is added, at a later period, when religious service has been established, the girl is given over or devoted not to the tribe but to the tribal god, in whose shrine she must submit to defloration, in accordance with rules fixed from time to time. The act thus becomes religious—it is a recognition of the sovereignty of the deity, and procures divine favor. Such may be a possible explanation of the procedure in the temple of Mylitta and at Byblos.[1955] But the meaning of the condition imposed at these places, namely, that the man to whom the woman yields herself must be a stranger, is not clear. It is hardly probable that an outsider was called on to perform what was regarded as a dangerous duty—a stranger would not be likely to undertake what a tribesman feared to do.[1956] Nor is the power of a stranger to confer benefits so well established that we can regard his presence as intended to bring a blessing to the girl.[1957] More to the point, in one respect, is the conjecture that we have here an attenuated survival of the exogamic rule—the girl must marry out of her social group;[1958] the old social organization having disappeared, the "stranger" takes the place of the original functionary, and the deity the place of the clan. This explanation has much in its favor; but, as it is hardly possible to establish an historical connection between the older and the later custom, it cannot be said to be certain, and the origin of the "stranger-feature" remains obscure.

Religious explanation. Sacred prostitution is supposed by many writers to have sprung from the cult of the goddess who represented the productive power of the earth[1959] (Mother Earth, the Great Mother). While such a figure is found in many of the lower tribes, it is only among civilized peoples, and particularly in Western Asia, that the cult acquired great importance. By the side of the female figure there sometimes stands a male representative of fertility (Tammuz by the side of Ishtar, Attis by the side of Kybele) who is regarded as the husband or the lover of the goddess, but occupies a subordinate position. In early times the goddess is represented as choosing her consorts at will, but this is merely an attribution to her of a common custom of the period. All deities, male and female, might be and were appealed to for increase of crops and children, but a Mother goddess would naturally be looked on as especially potent in this regard. Prayer would be addressed to her, and that, with offerings, would be sufficient to secure her aid; simply as patroness of fertility she would not demand prostitution of her female worshipers—some special ground must be assumed for this custom, and it is held that, as fertility was produced by the union of the goddess with her consort or her lovers, this union must be imitated by the women who sought a blessing from her.[1960] The probability of such a ground for sacred prostitution is not obvious. There are communities of temple-courtesans (in West Africa and India) where such an idea does not exist. If the license was in imitation of the goddess, this feature of her character requires explanation, and the natural explanation is that such a figure is a product of a time of license. In the ancient world it was only in Asia Minor and the adjacent Semitic territory that religious orgies and debauchery existed—they seem to have been an inheritance from a savage age. Or, if the prostitution is explained as a magical means of obtaining children,[1961] this also would go back to a religiously crude period. Magical rites, many and of various sorts, have been performed by women desiring offspring—imitations and simulations.[1962] But the giving up of the body is not imitation or simulation—it is the procreative act itself.

Organized official sacred prostitution must be regarded as the outcome of a long period of development. License, starting at a time when sexual passion was strong and continence was not recognized as a duty or as desirable, found entrance into various social and religious customs and institutions, accommodating itself in different places and periods to current ideas of propriety. Appropriated by organized religion, it discarded here and there its more bestial features, adopted more refined religious conceptions, its scope was gradually reduced, and finally it vanished from religious usage. The objections urged to such a process of growth are not conclusive.[1963] Explanations of communities of temple-courtesans and male prostitutes and of customs affecting individual women are suggested above.[1964] Many influences, doubtless, contributed to the final shaping of the institution, and we can hardly hope to account satisfactorily for all details; but the known facts point to an emergence from savage conditions and a gradual modification under the influence of ideas of morality and refinement.

[1067]. Organization and influence of the priesthood. In accordance with the law of natural human growth the priests in most of the greater religions came to form an organized body, hierarchical grades were established, many privileges were granted them, and they exercised great influence over the people and in the government. In Egypt they were exempt from taxes and had a public allowance of food; the temples at the capitals, Memphis and Thebes, became enormously wealthy; the priests exercised judicial functions (but under the control of the king); they cultivated astronomy and arithmetic, and controlled the general religious life of the people; as early as the thirteenth century B.C. they had attained a political power with which the kings had to reckon, and still earlier (ca. 1400 B.C.) the Theban priests were able to overthrow the religious reformation introduced by Amenhotep IV; the departments of sacerdotal functions were multiplied, and the high priest of the Theban Amon, whose office became hereditary, controlled the religious organization of the whole land, set himself up as a rival of the Pharaoh in dignity, and finally became the head of a sacerdotal theocracy.[1965]

[1068]. While the Babylonian and Assyrian priesthoods were not so highly organized as the Egyptian, and never attained great political power, they were nevertheless very influential. Astronomy and astrology, the interpretation of omens and portents, the science of magic and exorcisms, the direction of the religious life of kings and people were in the hands of the priests; the great temples were rich, there were various classes of temple-ministers, all well cared for, and the chief priest of an important shrine was a person of great dignity and power. The interpretation of sacrificial phenomena was made into a science by the priests, and, passing from them to Greece and Italy, exerted a definite influence on the religious life of the whole Western world.[1966]

[1069]. The process of organizing the Hebrew priesthood began under David and Solomon, at first, under Solomon (who favored the Zadok family), affecting only the Jerusalem temple. In the Northern kingdom (established about 930 B.C.) there seems to have been a similar arrangement. As long as the old royal governments lasted (the Northern kingdom fell in the year 722 B.C., the Southern in 586) the priests were controlled by the kings. On the building of the Second Temple (516) and the reorganization of the Judean community they became, under Persian rule, independent of the civil government and finally, in the persons of the high-priests, the civil heads of the Palestinian Jews. The Maccabean uprising resulted in the establishment of the Asmonean priest-dynasty, in which the offices of civil ruler and religious leader were united. After the fall of this dynasty (37 B.C.) the priestly party (the Sadducees, that is, the Zadokites), forming an aristocracy, conservative of ritual and other older religious customs and ideas, was engaged in a constant struggle with the democratic party (the Pharisees), which was hospitable to the new religious ideas (resurrection, immortality, legalism). The latter party was favored by the people, and with the destruction of the temple (70 A.D.) the priests disappeared from history. From the beginning they appear to have been not only religious ministrants and guides but also civil judges; their great work was the formulation of the religious law, as it appears in the Pentateuch, and it is probable that the shrines (especially that of Jerusalem) were centers of general literary activity. The national development turned, however, from sacerdotalism to legalism—the later religious leaders were not priests but doctors of law (Scribes and Pharisees).

[1070]. In India the priests formed the highest caste, were the authors of the sacred books (which they alone had the right to expound), conducted the most elaborate sacrificial ceremonies that man has invented, and by ascetic observances, as was believed, sometimes became more powerful than the gods.[1967] Ritual propriety was a dominant idea in India, and the influence of the priesthood on the religious life of the people was correspondingly great. Priests did not attempt to interfere in the civil government, but their religious instruction may sometimes have affected the policy of civil rulers. On the other hand, the Hindu priesthood, by its poetical productions and its metaphysical constructions, has become a permanent influence in the world.

[1071]. The early (pre-Zoroastrian) history of the Mazdean priesthood is obscure. In the Avestan system, however, a great rôle is assigned the priests, as is evident from the vast number of regulations concerning ceremonial purity, of which they had charge.[1968] It does not appear that the early sacerdotal organization was elaborate or strict. There were various classes of ministrants at every shrine, but they differed apparently rather in the nature of their functions than in rank.

[1072]. The Greek priestly class had the democratic tone of the Greek people.[1969] There was little general organization: every priest was attached to a particular deity except the Athenian King Archon, who had charge of certain public religious ceremonies. The mutual independence of the Greek States made the creation of a Hellenic sacerdotal head impossible. In Sparta the priestly prerogatives of the king were long maintained; usually, however, there was a separation of civil and religious functions. Generally in Greece priests were chosen by lot, or were elected by the priestly bodies or by the people, or were appointed by kings or generals. They were usually taken from good families, were held in honor, and were housed and fed at the public expense (their food came largely from sacrificial offerings). It was required that they should be citizens of the place where they officiated, and should be pure in body and of good conduct. They seem to have been simply citizens set apart to conduct religious ceremonies, and their influence on the general life was probably less than that of civil officers, poets, and philosophers. Greek educated thought moved at a relatively early period from the conventional religious forms toward philosophical conceptions of the relation between the divine and the human.[1970]

[1073]. The minute details of the Roman ritual might seem to give great importance to priests;[1971] and the flamens (the ministers of particular deities) were of course indispensable in certain sacrifices. But the organization of Roman society was not favorable to the development of specifically sacerdotal influence. Religion was a department of State and family government. For the manifold events of family life there were appropriate deities whose worship was conducted by the father of the family. The title rex (like the Greek basileus), in some cases given to priests, was a survival from the time when kings performed priestly functions. Later the consul was sometimes the conductor of public religious ceremonies. There was hardly a religious office, except that of the flamen, that might not be filled by a civilian. In the Augustan revival membership in the College of the Arval Brothers was sought by distinguished citizens. It was thought desirable that the Pontifex Maximus, the most influential of the priests, should be a jurist; and the office was held by such men as Julius Cæsar and Augustus. The increase of temples and priests by Augustus did not materially change the religious condition. The adoption of foreign cults was accompanied by ideas that did not belong to the Roman religion proper. In general, if we except the augurs, who represent the lowest form of the sacerdotal office, the priest was relatively uninfluential in Rome.[1972]

[1074]. The minimum of priestly influence is found in the national religion of China, in which there is no priestly class proper.[1973] In the worship of ancestors, which satisfies the daily religious needs of the people, every householder and every civil official is a ministrant. The great annual sacrifices to the heavenly bodies have been conducted till recently by the emperor in person.[1974] Public religion is, in the strictest sense, a function of the State. Society, according to the Chinese view, is competent to manage relations with the supernatural Powers—it needs no special class of intermediaries. This thoroughgoing conception of civic autonomy in religion connects itself with the supreme stress laid on conduct in the Confucian system, which represents the final Chinese ideal of life:[1975] man constructs his own moral life, and extrahuman Powers, while they may grant physical goods, are chiefly valued as incidents in the good social life. The great speculative systems of thought, Confucianism and Taoism, gradually gave rise to definite sacerdotal cults; but the priests of the Confucian temples serve mainly to keep before the people the teaching of the Master, and the Taoist priests have become largely practicers of magic and charlatans. Chinese religious practice remains essentially nonsacerdotal.

[1075]. The Peruvian cult presents a remarkable example of a finely organized hierarchy closely related to the civil government.[1976] The priests were chosen from the leading families; the highpriest was second in dignity to the Inca only. The functions of the priests were strictly religious; and as the masses of the people were devoted to the worship of local deities and natural objects, it seems probable that the sacerdotal influence was merely that which belonged to their supervision of the State religion. Details on this point are lacking.

Priests played a more prominent part in Mexico, entering, as they did, more into the life of the people.[1977] On the one hand, the numerous human sacrifices, of which the priests had complete control, kept the terrible aspect of religion constantly before the mind of the public; and, on the other hand, the milder side of the cult (for the Mexican religion was composite) brought the priests into intimate relations with adults and children. As the priests, apart from their monstrous sacrificial functions, appear to have been intelligent and humane, it is not unlikely that their general moral influence was good.

[1076]. The influence of the priesthood on religion (and on civilization so far as religion has been an element of civilization) has been of a mixed character. On the one hand, while not the sole representative of the idea of the divine government of the world (for soothsayers and prophets equally represented this idea), it has stood for friendly everyday intercourse between man and the deity, and has so far tended to bring about an equable and natural development of the ordinary religious life; it was involved in the sacerdotal functions that the deity might be placated by proper ceremonies, whence it followed that the priest, who knew the nature of these ceremonies, was a benefactor, and, more generally, that man had his salvation in his own hands. The business of the priest was to maintain the outward forms of religion, to order and elaborate the ritual, to organize the whole cultus.[1978] This was a work that required time and the coöperation of many minds. Priests were, in fact, naturally drawn together by a common aim and common interests—with rare exceptions they lived in groups, formed societies and colleges, had their traditions of policy, gathered wealth.[1979] For this reason they were in general opposed to social changes—they were a conservative element in society, and in this regard were the friends of peace.

[1077]. On another side they did good work; they were to some extent the guardians of morals. In ancient popular life ethics was not separated from religion—religion adopted in general the best moral ideas of its time and place and undertook to enforce obedience to the moral law by divine sanctions. Priests announced, interpreted, and administered the law, which was at once religious and ethical; they were teachers and judges, and this function of theirs was of prime importance, particularly where good systems of popular education did not exist. Further, as a leisured class they often turned to literary occupations; examples of their literary work are found in India (poetry and philosophy), Babylonia (the history of Berossus), Palestine (Old Testament Psalter, the works of Josephus). They offered a place of rest in the midst of the continual warfare of ancient times.

[1078]. On the other hand, the priesthood has been generally conservative of the bad as well as of the good. It has maintained customs and ideas that had ceased to be effective and true, and in order to preserve them it has resorted to forced interpretations and has invented accounts of their origin. It has thus in many cases been obscurantive and mendacious. It has tended to make the essence of religion consist in outward observances, and has not infrequently degraded the placation of the deity to a matter of bargaining—it has sold salvation for money. Priests have not always escaped the danger that threatens all such corporations—that of sacrificing public interests to the interests of the order. They have drifted naturally toward tyranny—the enormous power put into their hands of regulating men's relations with the deity has led to the attempt to regulate men's general thought, though in most of the great religions their power in this regard has been partly controlled by the civil authority and by the general intelligence of the community. When they have not been controlled, they have often succumbed to the temptations that beset wealth; they have fallen into habits of luxury and debauchery.

[1079]. In a word the history of the priesthood has been like that of all bodies of men invested with more or less arbitrary power. Its rôle has varied greatly in different places and at different times. It has numbered in its ranks good men and bad, and has favored sometimes righteous, sometimes unrighteous, causes. It is not possible to define its influence on religion further than to say that it has been a natural element of the organization of religion, taking its form and coloring from the various communities in which it has existed, embodying current ideas and thus acting as a uniting and guiding force at a time when higher forces were lacking. It has formed a transitional stage in the advance of religious thought toward better conceptions of the relation of man to the deity.

[1080]. Islam has no priesthood, as it has no provision for atonement for sin except by the righteous conduct of the individual; its cultic officials are preachers or leaders of prayer (imams) in the mosque worship, and jurists or scholars (ulamas) who interpret the Koran. Judaism has had no priests since the destruction of the Second Temple (70 A.D.); its synagogue services are conducted by men trained in the study of the Bible or the Talmud (rabbis). In Christianity the conception of a sacrificial ministrant has been retained in those churches (the Greek and the Roman) which regard the eucharistic ceremony as a sacrifice. In the West the "presbyter" (such is the New Testament term), the head of the congregation, took over the function of the old priest as conductor of religious worship, and the word assumed the form "priest" in the Latin and Teutonic languages. Among Protestants it is employed only in the Church of England, in which, however, for the most part it has not the signification of 'sacrificer.'

Worship

[1081]. Places of worship. The simplest form of early worship is the presentation of an offering to the dead or to some extrahuman object of reverence. Such objects were held to exist in all the world, in the sky, in rocks, streams, woods, caves, hills and mountains, and beneath the surface of the earth; but it was chiefly in places of human resort that their presence was expected. On some natural object or at some spot regarded as sacred, particularly where, it was believed, a spirit or deity had manifested himself (in some remarkable natural phenomenon, or in some piece of good fortune or ill fortune), the worshiper would place his offering. Sometimes it was left to be disposed of by the deity or spirit or dead person at his pleasure. When the offering was an animal, the blood, as food, was often applied to the grave or to the stone or other object connected with a superhuman Power. In the course of time, it may be supposed, it would be found convenient to erect a table or some other structure on which an animal could be slain. Such a structure would be an altar. At first simple, a heap of stones, a pile of dirt, a rough slab, it was gradually enlarged and ornamented,[1980] and itself, by association, became sacred.

[1082]. Places where the presence of the divine was recognized were sacred. In them worship was paid to the deity, and in the course of time they were marked off and guarded against profane use. At first, however, they were merely spots on hills or in groves, by streams or in the open country, needing no marks or watches, for they were known to all and were protected by the reverence of the people.[1981] When the land came to be more thickly populated and religion was better organized, such places were inclosed and committed to the care of official persons. Well-known examples are the Greek temenos and the Arabian haram.[1982] Taboos and privileges attached themselves to such inclosures. Precautions had to be taken on entering them; the shoes, for example, were removed, lest they should absorb the odor of sanctity and thus become unfit for everyday use. The spaces thus set apart were sometimes of considerable extent (as was and is the case at Mecca); within them no war could be waged and no fugitive seized. Sometimes they owed their sacredness to the buildings to which they were attached.

[1083]. The necessity for a house of worship arose very early.[1983] Where there was an image or a symbol of a god, or where the apparatus of sacrifice or of other ritual practice was considerable, buildings were required for the protection of these objects and perhaps for the convenience of the ministrants. The development of buildings followed the course of all such arrangements—at first rude, they became gradually elaborate and costly. In many savage tribes and in the earliest period of civilized peoples (Egyptians, Hebrews, al.) a hut, constructed like those of the people and therefore of a very simple character, houses the image or other representative of the god. With the progress of artistic feeling and skill abodes of men grow into palaces and abodes of deities into temples. It is on the temples that the greatest labor has been expended, partly because they are the work of the whole community, partly because it has been believed that the favor of the deity would be gained by making his dwelling-place magnificent.[1984] The essential fact in a temple—its definition—is (in the lower cults) and was (in the great ancient cults) that it is or was the home of a god, the specific place of approach to him, with the possibility of face-to-face intercourse and a greater probability of gaining the blessings desired. This local conception of the deity continued after larger ideas had arisen,[1985] and is to be found at the present day in some Christian circles.

[1084]. Temples have tended to grow not only in beauty and magnificence but also in elaborateness of interior arrangements and of connected structures. Anciently they were specifically places of sacrifice—the abodes of gods to whom sacrifice was offered—and this function generally determined their interior form. Sometimes they contained a single room in which stood an image and an altar; this was the simplest architectural embodiment of the idea of divine sacredness. But the progress of ritual forms was accompanied by the notion of grades of sanctity, and a special sanctity was indicated by a special room, an adytum, an inner or most holy shrine;[1986] where, as was often the case, gradations in priestly rank existed, only the highest priest could enter the adytum. For the implements of service and for the priests there were buildings attached to the temple. The people gathered in courts adjoining the sacred structure; where ritual exactness was carried very far (as in Ezekiel's plan and in Herod's temple), there were gradations in the courts also.[1987] Usually an altar stood in one of the courts. The sacredness of the sanctuary communicated itself to the vessels and other implements of the sacrificial service.

[1085]. Temples, like sacred inclosures and altars, were often asylums, and doubtless in many cases served to protect innocent persons. The privilege, however, was often abused, and it became necessary in Greece and Rome to restrain it.[1988]

[1086]. As a factor in the development of art the temple has been important. It has called forth the best architectural skill of man, and the statues that often adorned sacred buildings have stimulated sculpture. It does not appear that symbolism entered into the idea of ancient temples.[1989] The Babylonian and Assyrian zikkurat (or ziggurat) was a staged structure (resembling in this regard the Egyptian pyramid), supposed by many scholars to be an imitation of the mountains whence the predecessors of the Semites in Babylonia came, and on which they worshiped;[1990] if this be so, there is no attempt at pointing upward to the abode of the gods. Nor is there any trace elsewhere in the ancient world of a symbolic significance attached to temples beyond the distinction of place, referred to above, between the sacred and the profane and between different degrees of sacredness. The form of temples appears to have been determined by imitation of early nonreligious usage or by considerations of convenience;[1991] the ziggurat may have been suggested by a high place, the adytum by a cave, but most temples were probably copies of ordinary human dwellings or civic buildings (as in late Latin, basilica is used in the sense of 'cathedral').

As abodes of priests temples were the centers of all priestly activities in the development of ritual and literature. Being strong and well guarded they were often used by kings as treasure-houses; but they were stripped of their wealth by native kings in times of need, and were freely plundered by conquerors.

[1087]. Forms of worship. The ancient forms of divine worship, as is remarked above,[1992] follow in a general way the modes of approaching human potentates. Ceremonies of worship reached a high degree of elaboration in the great religions, Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindu, Greek, Roman.[1993] The central fact was the presentation of the offering, and with this came to be connected prayers and hymns, ceremonies of purification, vows, imprecations, exorcisms, oracles; the festivals also were religious functions. Prayer is spoken of below.[1994] Hymns sometimes consisted of or contained petitions, more generally were laudations of the power and benefactions of a deity. For poetical charm the first place is to be assigned to the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Hindu hymns. The religious ideas expressed in such compositions varied with time and place, but they show a general tendency toward a monolatrous or henotheistic point of view and toward higher ethical and spiritual feeling. Many of the Egyptian hymns seem to be substantially monotheistic, and the same thing is true of the Babylonian, the Assyrian, and the Vedic. The Babylonian hymns so far recovered (belonging in their present form mostly to the seventh century B.C.) are chiefly penitential[1995] and show a close resemblance to some Hebrew psalms. In the Veda traces of philosophical thought, pantheistic and other, are not lacking. The poems of the Old Testament Psalter vary greatly in breadth and elevation of thought—some, dealing generally with national affairs (occasionally with individual experiences), are narrow and ethically low; others show exalted conceptions of the deity and fine moral feeling. The Avestan ritual is concerned largely with physical details, but is not lacking in a good ethical standard; the Gathas, particularly, though not free from national coloring, give a noteworthy picture of the government of the world according to moral law. Of Greek ritual hymns we have few remains, and these are of no great interest.

[1088]. Everywhere the temple-hymns, as is natural, deal chiefly with the desires and hopes of the worshiper, and often do not rise above mere egoism. Their object is to secure blessing, and the blessing is often, perhaps generally, of a nonmoral character—wealth, children, triumph over enemies. Desire for moral purity appears in some Hebrew hymns, and perhaps in some Babylonian. Of the modes of presenting liturgical poems to the deity we have few details. In the Second Temple at Jerusalem there were choruses of ministrants (Levites), and some of the titles of the psalms contain what seem to be names of musical instruments and melodies; but of this temple-music nothing further is known than that it was sometimes sung antiphonally, but without harmony.[1996] In some parts of Greece boys were trained to render hymns musically in the daily service and on special occasions. The general character of old Greek music is indicated in the Delphian hymn to Apollo discovered in 1893;[1997] the melody is simple but impressive—there is no harmony.

[1089]. The temple-music doubtless tended to heighten devotional feeling among the worshipers, and possibly a similar popular effect was produced by the festivals that were common in the ancient world. Here the whole population took part, there were religious ceremonies, and the consciousness of the presence of the deity was made more distinct not only by visible and tangible representations, but often also by the fact that these occasions were connected in current myths and legends with histories of gods and ancient national experiences. Processions and pilgrimages brought the people to sacred places to which stories were attached, and the religious life became a series of object lessons. The Greek and Roman calendars contain a great number of feast days, each assigned to some god.[1998] The Hebrews at a comparatively early date (eighth or ninth century B.C.) connected their great festivals with remote national events;[1999] examples of festivals attached to recent historical events are Purim,[2000] the Feast of Dedication established in commemoration of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabæus (December, 165 B.C.) after the Syrian profanation,[2001] and the "Day of Nicanor" commemorating the victory of Judas over that general (March, 161 B.C.).[2002] In the Hindu festivals (New Year's Day and during the spring months) stories of gods formed a prominent feature.[2003] The Greek Genesia, the season of mourning for the dead, came to be connected with the victory of Marathon.[2004]

All such celebrations tend to become seasons of merrymaking, and the religious element in them then receives less and less attention.[2005] This remark holds of the festivals that Christianity took over from the old religions, adapting them to the new conditions.[2006] Such occasions lose their distinctive religious significance in proportion as the events they commemorate recede into the past and become less and less distinct. It is in very early times, when they are thought of as representing realities, that they are religiously effective; in later times they give way to more reflective forms of devotion.

[1090]. Vows, blessings, and curses may be considered to belong to worship in the regard that they contain petitions to the deity; the curse or the blessing, however, sometimes rested on a baldly objective conception of the power of words, sometimes was held to be magical: once uttered, the word, beneficent or maleficent, went to its object, person or thing, did its work, and could not be recalled; its effect could be set aside only by an utterance in the opposite direction.[2007] A magician, by the power resident in him, could fix a curse or a blessing on man or thing. An exorcism, also, might be effected by magic or by invoking the aid of a deity; an evil spirit is a supernatural Power and has to be considered—one does not worship such a being, but one may employ religious means to circumvent him. Bad magic may be overcome by good magic, and a deity, hostile and maleficent under certain circumstances, may be placated by offerings. It is not always easy to draw the line between worship proper and modes of defense against injurious Powers. But in general true worship implies friendly relations between human and superhuman persons.

[1091]. Idols. From an early time men have desired to have visible representatives of the supernatural. So long as natural objects, trees, stones, mountains, were regarded as themselves divine or as the abodes of spirits, so long as a loose social organization and the absence of definite family life led men to spend their lives in the open air, there was no need of artificial forms of the Powers. Such a need arose inevitably, however, under more advanced social conditions. Exactly at what stage men began to make images it is hardly possible to say,—the process was begun at different stages in different regions,—but it appears that in general it was synchronous with some fairly good form of social organization. Yet, where such forms exist, there are differences in the use of images. These are found—to take the lower peoples—in Melanesia and the Northern Pacific Ocean, in the northern part of South America, in North America apparently only among the Eastern Redmen (as the Lenâpé or Delawares),[2008] and on the western coast of Africa (Ashanti, Dahomi, Yoruba). Where the cult of beasts (whether totemic or not) is a living one, idolatry does not find a place; it is only when communities have begun to be agricultural that they have artificial forms of gods; that is, idolatry comes in with the stage of culture connected with the agricultural life.[2009]

The development in the form of images is familiar. The rude and, to modern eyes, grotesque idols of the lower peoples gradually pass into the more finished forms of the civilized nations.[2010] Really artistic forms, however, were produced only by some Semites (Babylonians and Assyrians) and in the Hellenic and Græco-Roman worlds. In Central America, Mexico, and Peru images are anthropomorphic but lacking in symmetry and grace. Hindu idols are often composite and grotesque, sometimes (especially images of Buddha) highly impressive.

[1092]. The Hebrews appear to have had no anthropomorphic images of their national deity. Down to a late period there was a cult of household gods,[2011] and of these, probably, there were images in private houses and in shrines, whether anthropomorphic or not is uncertain. In Solomon's temple (and in Ezekiel's proposed plan) figures of cherubs (originally divine beings) stood on the walls of the main room and guarded the ark in the adytum; they were winged creatures, the forms derived immediately from Phœnicia, ultimately from Babylonia; they appear only in the great public cult, probably did not enter into the religious life of the people at large, and there is no evidence that they ever received divine worship.[2012] The Hebrews had no plastic art of their own, seem to have had small disposition in their earlier history to make images, and later such forms were excluded by the antagonism of the prophets to foreign cults and by refined ideas of the deity.[2013] The absence of images in the Zoroastrian cult may be accounted for in a similar way—from early lack of artistic impulse and later elevated conceptions. In China there are images in household worship, but none in the great imperial religious ceremonies.[2014] Though the Koran does not expressly forbid the cult of images, yet, as the old Arabian cults denounced by the prophet were all idolatrous, images were identified with false religion (polytheism) and have been avoided by the Moslems, whose strict monotheism left no place for them.

[1093]. Images were credited in half-civilized times with a certain personality, were flogged or destroyed when they failed to do what was expected of them, or were bound in order to prevent their going away.[2015] In such cases the conception of the power of these objects was probably a confused one; though they were known to be inanimate pieces of wood or stone or other material, it was believed that they were inhabited by spirits or deities, and it was held that in some undefined way the power of the divine agent was transferred to its physical incasement—the two were practically identified. This sort of conception soon passed away and was succeeded by a symbolical interpretation. Whatever the ultimate origin of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hindu divine and semidivine forms (which are sometimes monstrous),[2016] it is probable that for the more thoughtful worshipers they represented divine powers and functions. Uncouth shapes may be softened or transformed by familiarity, and by association with higher ideas—things in themselves repulsive may become vehicles of devotion.[2017] In all religious worship objects associated with pious acts acquire sanctity and beauty.

[1094]. That idolatry in ancient times was not a wholly bad feature of worship is shown by the excellence of the great religions in which it was practiced. Its general function was to make the deity more real to the worshiper, to make the latter more sharply conscious of the divine presence, to fix the attention, and so far to further a real communion. On the other hand, it tended to produce a low physical conception of the divine person, and to distract the mind of the worshiper from the ethical side of worship. Its moral effect was dependent on the man's character and thought. When the image was regarded as the symbol of an ethically good Power, it was a reënforcement of pure religious feeling; when it was regarded as in itself a source of physical benefit, it was a degrading influence. This difference of effect exists in those Christian bodies that include images and pictures of the deity and of saints in their apparatus of worship.

Churches

[1095]. The history of the social organization of religion is the history of the growth of churches—voluntary associations for worship; it is toward the Church that society has hitherto moved.[2018] Every ancient community may be said to be an incipient church in the sense that it contains the germs of the later ecclesiastical development. But this later form exists in such communities only in germ—the most ancient worship was communal, an affair of clan, tribe, or State. Men were born into their religious faith and could no more change it, or think of changing it, than they could change, or think of changing, their language or any other inheritance. It was inevitable, however, that there should be a growth of individualism—instinct impelled men to think for themselves in religion as in all other things. Religion was a part of the general social movement, affected by all other parts of that movement. Independence of thought led to social aggregations, the members of which were drawn together by similarity of ideas and aspirations. This is the familiar history of social movements, and that in religion such movements have been continuous will be evident from a brief statement of the historical facts.

[1096]. Savage secret societies. These societies are referred to above;[2019] here we have only to notice their germinal ecclesiastical character. They represent a partial break-up of tribal communal worship by assigning special duties and granting special privileges to certain initiated persons. Totemic groups are sometimes (as in Central Australia) charged with specific functions in the tribal life; but membership in such groups is a matter of birth, and they everywhere tend to give way to secret societies. These latter often have charge of certain religious rites, and from their secret proceedings and from a knowledge of their secret lore the rest of the tribe are excluded.

The extent to which religious organization and influence have been carried is illustrated by the history of the Polynesian Areoi, the most remarkable of such fraternities.[2020] The Areoi created 'mysteries,' with an elaborate ritual whose effectiveness was dependent on absolute accuracy in words; its members were chosen without regard to tribal position and entered of their own free will; it was a voluntary association and made its own religious laws. It was restricted (as all such associations are) by the necessity of paying regard to existing customs, but within such limits it was independent of the tribe, and its members were held to be entitled to special honors and enjoyments in this life and the next (a crude conception of salvation). It was essentially a church, and other societies, in Polynesia, Africa, and North America, approached this position more or less nearly. They all tended to become tyrannical—their social influence enabled them to impose their authority on the tribe, and they did not hesitate to employ violence in asserting their rights.[2021] To foreign influence they were naturally hostile, since this generally diminished their power. Founded as they are on savage ideas they have disappeared, or are disappearing, before foreign civilizations. In their best form they doubtless gave a certain unity to communities and were thus an element of order.

[1097]. Greek mysteries. In Greece dissatisfaction with the current cults expressed itself in various ways, largely through poets and philosophers, who asserted themselves, indeed, individually, but showed no power of organization. The task of organizing religious opinion fell to that new direction of thought (vaguely called "Orphic"[2022]) which, while it gave prominence to spiritual ideas and moral ideals, introduced a lively emotional element into worship. In the Eleusinian and other mysteries this element was both external (dramatic representations, songs, processions, ceremonies of initiation) and internal (the hope of salvation). Without breaking with the popular religious forms the mysteries constructed their own forms, chose their members, and created a religious imperium in imperio. They were voluntary associations for worship, ignored distinctions of social rank, had great ideas and impressive rituals—apparently all the elements necessary to the establishment of churches or of a national church. Yet they faded gradually away, and perished finally without leaving any definite impression, as it seemed, on Greece or the world without.[2023]

[1098]. The reasons of their failure are not far to seek. They did not reach the Hellenic mind for the reason that they were of foreign origin and much in them was opposed to the genius of the Hellenic religion. Even the Pythagorean reform movement of Southern Italy, with its strenuous moral culture of the individual, seems to have had a foreign (Asiatic) coloring. It was, indeed, at one with the better Greek thought of the time (sixth century B.C. and later) in its elevated conception of the deity and of worship, but with this it combined ascetic observances and, apparently, mystical ideas; it established what may be called a church, which had a great vogue in Southern Italy for several centuries but did not, as an organization, penetrate into Greece. It attracted some thoughtful men, but was too calm and restrained for the masses.[2024]

[1099]. It was different with the Dionysiac cult, whose wildness made it popular; of foreign origin, it was in time partly Hellenized and in Athens took its place in the regular national worship; some of its foreign features were taken up in the mysteries. These latter, with their enthusiasm and their half-barbaric ceremonies, excited the contempt of most of the educated class.[2025] These cults were Asiatic—not Semitic—but probably a product of a non-Hellenic population of Asia Minor (Phrygia and other regions), developed during a period the history of which is obscure.

[1100]. The Semites seem to have produced no mysteries—there is no record of such cults in Babylonia, Syria, Phœnicia, the Hebrew territory, or Arabia; Semitic religion was objective, simple, nonmystical.[2026] The Syrian cult of Tammuz (Adonis), which was adopted by Hebrews in the sixth century B.C. (Ezek. viii, 14), was an old folk-ceremony, not a mystery; it is allied to the Attis ceremonies of Asia Minor and to the mourning ceremony mentioned in Judges xi, 40 (mourning for a dead deity, but there referred to Jephthah's daughter).

[1101]. The Greek mysteries, then, derived their orgiastic side partly from Thrace, partly from Asia Minor. They chiefly attracted the lower classes and particularly slaves, for they offered individual independence in religion, freedom from the sense of social inferiority, and hope for the life to come. Thus they did not appeal to the Hellenic spirit, and did not, as organizations, survive the political decadence of the Greek States. But it is probable that their effects survived in the recognition of the possibility of religious worship apart from the traditional cults, and, more generally, in contributing to the establishment of the principle of individualism in religion. An historical connection between the Greek mysteries and the later individualistic cults is, indeed, not probable. Cumont believes that Mithraism did not imitate the organization of the Greek secret societies.[2027] The New Testament use of the term 'mystery' in the sense of 'esoteric doctrine'[2028] may have come from the Asian cult; the Mithraic worship was practiced in Tarsus, the native city of the Apostle Paul, in the first century of our era. However this may be, it seems probable that the conception of a church existed in the Græco-Roman world before the beginning of our era, and that its existence was due in part to the Greek mysteries, whose members were scattered throughout the empire of Alexander.

[1102]. The philosophical systems that arose in Asia and Europe concurrently with the Greek mysteries did not found ecclesiastical organizations. The disciples of philosophers formed schools, and the adherents of each school constituted a group the members of which were united one with another by the bond of a common intellectual aim and a common conception of life and of the world; and there was also a scientific union between the various groups, the fundamental methods of investigation and lines of thought being the same everywhere. But the object of thought was the discovery of truth by human reason, not the quest of salvation by worship of the divine. The emotional element essential to the formation of a church was wanting, and where philosophical systems adopted devotional forms these were not the creation of philosophy but were borrowed from current cults. They sought happiness, but not through religious ritual. They did not always formally discard or condemn existing cults, but they ignored them as means of salvation; they sometimes recognized traditional gods and forms of worship, but interpreted them in accordance with their own ideas.

[1103]. In India the Upanishads practically abolished the national pantheon and the old Brahmanic ritual—knowledge, they taught, was the key to bliss, and the knowledge was not that of the Veda, it came by reflection; emancipation from earthly bonds, absorption into the Infinite, was the goal of effort, but the effort was individualistic and led to no devotional organization. Ascetic observances, as a means of attaining perfection, were an inheritance from popular Brahmanism.[2029] In China Taoism, originally a system of thought (based on the conception of all-controlling order) that appealed only to a certain class of philosophic minds, became a religion by borrowing crude ideas and sensational methods from a debased form of Buddhism and other sources.[2030] Confucius steadily declined to teach anything about divine worship; Confucianism remained merely an ethical system, dealing only with the present life, until its founder, with disregard of his teaching, was divinized.

[1104]. Many of the Greek philosophers, from Socrates and Plato on, were definitely (some of them warmly) religious, but their religion was chiefly valued as an aid to ethical life, and it did not respond to the demand for communal worship. The Platonic and Stoic conceptions of the deity were pure, but they remained individualistic—salvation was the creation of the man himself. The noble hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus[2031] and the fine religious morality of Marcus Aurelius led to no church organization. The attempted combination of Platonism and Judaism by Philo was equally resultless. Neo-Platonism also, though it had enthusiasm and some sense of brotherhood, showed itself unable to produce a church. Plotinus, indeed, proposed to the Emperor Gallienus the establishment in Campania of a city of philosophers, a Platonopolis, in which the ideal life should be lived, but the proposal came to nothing.[2032] The Neo-Platonic union with the deity was too vague a conception to bring about communal worship, and the deity had no definite rôle in securing the salvation of men.

[1105]. Thus, in the period beginning about the sixth century B.C. and extending into the Christian era, all over the civilized world attempts were being made to reconstruct life by ethical and philosophical systems, by ascetic observances, and by mysteries. These attempts bear witness to the prevailing sense of the insufficiency of current schemes of life. They differ according to differences of place and time, but agree in the search after something better; this better thing was always ethical and in most cases religious. Their failure to construct effective organizations was due to the deficiencies pointed out above.

[1106]. Buddhism and Jainism. The first churches produced by civilized men arose in India in the sixth century B.C. out of the bosom of Brahmanism, whose failure to establish a church was due in part to its dependence on philosophical speculation. Of the protests against the Brahmanic orthodoxy the most important were Buddhism and Jainism.[2033] Buddhism discarded philosophy and asceticism, and came forward with a plan of salvation that was intelligible to all.[2034] Disciples gathered about the Master and he became the object of enthusiastic devotion. All complete churches have owed their origin each to a single founder; this is due to the fact that the insight and constructive genius of the founder have chosen out of the mass of the existing thought those broad principles that the times demanded and have presented them in incisive form and with freshness and enthusiasm.[2035] Buddha's followers quickly formed themselves into associations, the entrance into which was by free choice. As his doctrine of salvation was nontheistic, so his church was nontheistic, but not therefore nonreligious. The ecclesiastical organization was simple, but effective. The original Buddhism has been degraded, especially in Tibet, China, and Korea, but the church form remains everywhere more or less recognizable.[2036]

[1107]. Jainism, while differing from its contemporary, Buddhism, in its metaphysical dualism and its asceticism, agreed with it practically in its method of salvation from the ills of life. It established a nontheistic church which has had experiences (polytheistic and other) like those of Buddhism. Historically it is less important than the latter; it still has a considerable following, but it has never passed out of India. Apparently its local features, metaphysical and ascetic, have impeded its progress—it lacks the simplicity of Buddhism.

[1108]. Judaism. Judaism stands on the border line—it was a cult that approached the position of a church, yet failed to reach it. Its line of movement differed in toto from those described above. It had no philosophy, no asceticism, no secret societies, and it did not rely on its ethical code. It was essentially religious, in theory a theocracy, in form a national cult. The steps by which the old polytheistic Israelite nation passed into the monotheistic Judaism can be traced historically, but the impulse to the movement was a part of the genius of the people and cannot be further explained. The leaders of the small body of people that gathered at Jerusalem in the sixth century, after the break-up of the year 586, were animated by a patriotic devotion to the national deity; without political autonomy, merely a province of the Persian empire, the sole interests possible for the people were racial and religious, and these isolated them from the neighboring peoples. Those who remained in Babylonia (where they were prosperous and comfortable) were similarly isolated, devoted themselves to their own development, and their religious attitude was the same as that of the Palestinian community. Distance from the temple led to gatherings in various places for worship (synagogues).

The Jews thus became a nation organized under religious law, with an institution devoted to voluntary communal worship, and offering salvation, at first for this life only, but later (from the second century B.C. onward) for the future life also—these were elements of a church. But in two points this cult fell short of the complete church idea: the business of a church is wholly and solely religious, and the Jewish nation was organized not only for religion, but also for commerce, politics, and war;[2037] and the synagogue and the temple-service were not free to all the world—only Jews and proselytes[2038] might take part in them. Any religious body, it is true, may properly define the conditions of entrance into it; but here the restriction was national—the synagogal cult, individualistic and simply devotional as it purported to be, was a part of the national system, and its membership depended almost exclusively on the accident of birth. Proselytes, indeed, formed an exception—they came in of their own choice—but they were numerically not important and did not affect the general character of the cult.[2039] The Jews came as near the ideal of a voluntary religious association as was then possible under the hampering conditions of a racial organization and peculiar national customs. Their genius for the organization of public religion appears in the fact that the form of communal worship devised by them was adopted by Christianity and Islam, and in its general outline still exists in the Christian and Moslem worlds.

[1109]. Zoroastrianism resembled Judaism in its later practical monotheism and its elaborate ritual, but was more isolated and less advanced in the formation of assemblies for voluntary worship. Its pre-Sassanian period produced no church, only a national cult, which was adopted by the Parthians and others in debased form, but otherwise did not attract outsiders. On a sect that arose in Persia in Sassanian times see below.[2040]

[1110]. Christianity. The teaching of Jesus was directed toward a purification of the existing cult, the elimination of mechanical views, and the emphasizing of spiritual and ethical ideals.[2041] There is no indication that he purposed founding a separate organization.[2042] But, after his death, his disciples were drawn together by their relation to him, particularly when the new congregation became predominantly Græco-Roman. For its administration the synagogue was the model—from it were taken the titles and functions of some of its officers and the method of conducting public service.[2043] But the new ekklesia, the church, followed its own lines and speedily created a new cult. Its fundamental conception was salvation in the future through Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. In the beginning it was thoroughly individualistic and voluntary. It had no connection with the State, was not a religio licita; its adherents joined it solely out of preference for its doctrines; its activity was wholly religious. But this ideal constitution of a church was not long maintained. The introduction of infant baptism (toward the end of the second century) and the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the State by Constantine went far to make membership in the Church an accident of birth or of political position; in this regard Imperial and Medieval Christianity did not differ from the old national religions—it was a religion but not a church. At the present day in the greater part of Christendom one's ecclesiastical position is inherited precisely as the ancient clansman inherited his special cult.[2044] The word "church" has largely lost its early signification of voluntary religious association, and has come to mean any Christian organization, or, by further extension, any religious body.

[1111]. The secularization of the Church, the failure to discriminate between its function and that of the State, is an inheritance from Roman Imperialism, which in its turn was derived from the primitive clan constitution of society in which the individual had no standing apart from the community. From the Roman Empire it passed to Medieval Europe, and it has survived in the Christian world by force of inertia. It is, however, not universal in Christendom (there are religious bodies in which individual freedom of choice is fully recognized), and in some cases where it exists formally or theoretically it is practically ignored. Notwithstanding departures from the ideal the services of the Church often represent voluntary worship; such worship, however, has been the rule in all religions from the earliest times to the present day and does not in itself distinguish Christianity from any other religion.

[1112]. The word "church" meant at first a local Christian congregation, but was enlarged so as to designate the whole body of Christians. In this body various tendencies of thought showed themselves from time to time, and new organizations were formed that constituted new churches in the sense that they had their own theological dogmas, ritual, and conditions of membership. Most of them had brief careers and offer nothing of interest for the history of the development of the church-idea. Gnosticism was a serious and noteworthy attempt to bridge over the gap between a good supreme God and an evil world, and was in form a church, but its philosophical and mystical sides had so much that was fanciful and grotesque or ethically dangerous that it did not commend itself to the mass, and soon ceased to exist as a separate organization, though its echoes long continued to be heard in certain Christian groups.[2045]

[1113]. Cults of Mithra and Isis. The Mithraic communities were wholly voluntary associations, without distinctions of birth or social position, were recognized by the State, but received no pecuniary aid from it and had no official connection with it. Perhaps this independence helped to nourish the enthusiasm that carried Mithraism from one end of the Roman Empire to the other; a church appears to flourish most on the religious side when it confines itself to religion. A more important fact was that Mithraism was a religion of redemption. It does not appear that there was any general organization of the Mithraic associations; each of these was local, probably small, had its own set of officers, and managed its own affairs.[2046] It was thus free from some of the perils that beset Christianity. It is not improbable that some of its liturgical forms were adopted by the Christian Church, but it seems itself not to have borrowed from the latter. Its weakness was its semibarbarous ritual and its polytheism; it yielded of necessity to the simpler and loftier forms of Christianity.

[1114]. The cult of Isis, in spite of its ethically high character and its impressive ceremonies of initiation (as described by Apuleius[2047]), did not give rise to associations like the Mithraic. It belongs to the mysteries, but had not their organization of meetings and ritual, had no brotherhoods (except those whose bond of union was devotion to this cult) and no general organization embracing the Empire. The reason for its failure in this regard appears to lie in its lack of definiteness in certain important points: it was in a sense monotheistic, since the goddess was called the supreme controller of the world of external nature and of men, but its monotheism was clouded by its connection with the old national cults and by current theological speculations—for Apuleius, it would seem, Isis was rather a name for a vague Power in nature than for a well-defined divine person, and particularly it offered no clear picture of the future and no clear hope of moral redemption, two things that were then necessary to the success of any system that aspired to supplant the popular faiths.[2048] Such lacks as these appear in the cult of Sarapis also, which never developed the characteristics of a church.

[1115]. Manichæism. Of the religious movements that sprang from the contact of Christianity with the East Manichæism was the most important on account of its great vitality. It possessed all the elements of a church, voluntary membership, independence of the State (it was always persecuted by the State), and the claim to a divine revelation of salvation. Like Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity, it owed its origin to a single founder. Its plan of organization and its ethical standards were good. Like Mithraism its basis was Persian (its rise was synchronous with the Sassanian revival of Mazdaism), but the two went different ways: the former laid stress on mystical ceremonies, the latter on moral and theological conceptions. The vogue that Manichæism enjoyed was due, apparently, to its eclectic character: adopting the Persian dualism, it modified and expounded this by a Gnostic doctrine of æons, which was intended to harmonize the goodness of God and the existence of evil, and it added the figure of the highest æon, Christ, the savior of men. On the other hand, its involved and fantastic machinery led to its downfall.

[1116]. Two theocratic bodies that failed to reach the full church form are Islam and the Peruvian cult of the sun. The Islamic constitution is based on a sacred book, its theology and its form of public worship are borrowed from Christianity and Judaism, its private worship is individualistic, and it offers paradise to the faithful. But Islam is in essence a State religion rather than a church. Its populations belong to it by descent; its head is the Calif (now the Sultan of Turkey). Its diffusion, though due in certain cases to the superiority of its ideas and the simplicity of its customs,[2049] has yet come largely (as in Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Persia, and North Africa) from social and political pressure—in some cases it has been adopted by whole nations at a blow; Mohammed forced all the people of Arabia to accept it. Individual choice recedes into the background, except (as in Judaism) in the case of proselytes. Its conception of sin and salvation are largely external. It bears a great resemblance to the Judaism of the Hasmonean dynasty, a national cult with a priest-sovereign at its head.

Within Islam there have arisen organizations that imitate the form of a church in certain respects; such were the Morabits (Almoravides) and the Mohads (Almohades),[2050] whose bond of union was in part theological, and such are the great fraternities in Africa and Asia, which are devoted, among other things, to religious work, and have elaborate organizations and ceremonies of reception.[2051] But these are all largely political and military. The Ismalic movement (from ca. 900 A.D. on), the central doctrine of which was the incarnation of God in certain men and finally in the Mahdi, was not Islamic and not Semitic; with a nominal acceptance of the Koran, it was in fact a mixture of Persian and Buddhistic ideas; from it came the Fatimide califate of Egypt, and from this (ca. 1000 A.D.) the Druse sect, which began as a church, but has become merely a local religion.[2052]

[1117]. It was in Peru that the most thoroughgoing identification of religion with the State was effected.[2053] In the old national religions the individual followed the custom of his country; in Peru the State, in the person of the Inca, determined every person's religious position and duties. If Islam resembles Maccabean Judaism, the Peruvian organization resembled some forms of Medieval Christianity. The Inca was a Pope, only with more power than the Christian Pope, since he acted on every individual. The general ethical standard was good, in spite of some survivals of savagery, but there was a complete negation of individual freedom in religion.[2054]

[1118]. Modern Hindu sects. The vast multiplication of sects in India is an indication of activity of religious thought;[2055] the movement has been in general toward the formation of voluntary associations, though with many variations and modifications. The reform sects, while they may be considered as developments out of the old systems, Vedic, Çivaic, Vishnuic (Krishnaic), have been affected by foreign influence, Mohammedan or Christian. Of the organizations influenced by Islam (followers of Kabir and Dadu) several have produced societies that for a time had the form of a church, with voluntary membership and a plan of salvation; but it has been hard for them to overcome the national tendencies to idolatry and to deification of founder or teacher. The Sikhs, beginning (in the fifteenth century) as a purely religious body, became, by the eighteenth century, a powerful political and military organization. Along with theological reform these sects have been constantly in danger of reverting more or less closely to the old national type, and their church form has been only feebly effective.

[1119]. The case has been different with the movements induced by contact with Christian forms of belief. The organizations founded or carried on by Rammohun Roy[2056] (early part of the eighteenth century) and later by Chunder Sen,[2057] Mozoomdar, and others are churches in the full sense of the word, and, notwithstanding occasional individual lapses into old Hindu ideas, have so far maintained this character; but they are not wholly native creations, and it remains to be seen what their outcome will be.[2058]

[1120]. Babism and Bahaism,[2059] the transformation of Babism effected by Baháu'llah, is a church in all essential points, though its organization consists merely in the devotion of its adherents to the teaching and the person of its founder; it has no clergy, no religious ceremonial, no public prayers, no connection with any civil government, but its dogma is well-defined and it offers eternal salvation to its adherents. Its chief source of inspiration is the belief that its founder was an incarnation of God, the Manifestation of God announced by his forerunner, the Bab (the "Gate" to God and truth). That its lack of official ministers and public communal religious services is no bar to its effectiveness is shown by the favor it has met with not only in Persia and other parts of Asia but also in Europe and America. Possibly its success is due in part to its eclectic character and its claim to universality (it seeks to embrace and unite Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity) as well as to the simplicity of its dogma (theism and immortality) and its admirable humanitarian spirit.[2060]

Monachism

[1121]. An effective outgrowth from the church is the monastic system, which is an ecclesia in ecclesia, emphasizing and extending certain features of the parent organization.[2061] It sprang from a dualistic conception, the assumption of a relation of incompatibility or antagonism between God and the world—a feeling whose germ appears in savage life (in taboos and other forms). It has assumed definite shape only in the higher religions and not in all of these—it is foreign to Semitic, Persian, Chinese, and Greek[2062] peoples. Austerity there has been and abstention from certain things but not with the aim of ministering to spiritual life.[2063]

[1122]. The birthplace of monachism proper was India. In the Brahmanic scheme the highest sanctity and the most brilliant prospects attached to the man who forsook the life of men and devoted himself to solitary meditation in the forest.[2064] The seclusion was individual—the man was an eremite. The organization into communities was made by Buddha[2065] and, apparently contemporaneously, by Mahavira, the founder of Jainism. It is this organization that has made the institution a power in religious history. Buddha's associations were open to all, without distinction of social position or sex. From India monachism passed into all the lands that were occupied by Buddhism.

[1123]. In Egypt under the Ptolemies there arose a sort of monastic life: after the cult of Sarapis was established men wishing to devote themselves to religious meditation would go to the Sarapeum and shut themselves up in cells.[2066] It is, however, not clear that there was an organization or any sort of communal life in connection with these gatherings. There is no evidence of foreign influence beyond a possible suggestion from the fact that Sarapis was a foreign deity and his cult may have imported foreign ideas into Egypt; but he was completely domiciled in his new abode, was identified by the Greeks with their Zeus and by the Egyptians (by a popular etymology) with their Osir-Apis; there was nothing foreign in his cult, and the claim, sometimes made, for Buddhistic influence (through embassies sent by Asoka to Greek kings) has no definite historical foundation.[2067] Possibly Greek (Pythagorean) influence is to be recognized,[2068] but it cannot be considered strange that a practice of this sort should arise independently in Egypt at a time when a practical monolatry with a good ethical conception of the deity might dispose some men to solitary reflection.

[1124]. The Egyptian Therapeutae, the "Servants" of God, described by Philo,[2069] resemble these Sarapis monks in certain respects, particularly in their habit of contemplation. Their kernel, however, was Jewish—they had the Jewish Scriptures and observed the seventh day of the week. On this Jewish substratum was imposed Greek thought; they adopted the Alexandrian allegorizing interpretation of the Scriptures, and Philo includes them in that group of persons who found it desirable to withdraw from the common life of men in order to cultivate philosophical and ethical thought. Six days they lived each by himself; on the seventh day they came together for a religious service. Women as well as men were admitted into the association, but the place of general meeting had two divisions, one for men, the other for women. The date of the rise of the sect is uncertain, but it must probably be put in the Ptolemaic period. Their monastic organization must be referred to some current practice, Greek or Egyptian, or to a blending of various lines; the details of their history are too sparse to build on with definiteness.

[1125]. The similar sect of the Essenes, or Essaei, which was confined to Palestine, is better known.[2070] The Jewish features in their system are: acceptance of the Jewish Scriptures, observance of the Sabbath, recognition of the temple by sending unbloody offerings, regard for ceremonial purity. Non-Jewish features are: rejection of marriage, trade and (according to Philo) animal sacrifice, turning to the sun in prayer (or, according to Josephus, praying to the sun), the teaching that the soul, when set free from the body, passes, if good, to a delightful region across the ocean, and, if bad, to a dark den of ceaseless punishment. Foreign influence in these latter practices and beliefs is obvious, but its precise source is uncertain. There are suggestions of Pythagoreanism and possibly of Zoroastrianism;[2071] it can only be said that various ideas were in the air of Palestine, and that the Essene formulation was effected under conditions and at a time not known to us.[2072] The monastic constitution was clearly of foreign (non-Jewish) origin. Essenism seems not to have affected the Jewish religious ideas of the time. Jesus, though he may have taken from it the prohibition of swearing and possibly one or two other points, was in the main and on all important points (except ethical teaching, which was largely common property) the reverse of what Essenism stood for.

[1126]. Christian monachism, which appeared first in eremitic form (second century) and later in organized communal form, may have been an independent creation of Christian piety; but it is also possible that it was suggested by the traditions of its birthplace, Egypt;[2073] definite data on this point are lacking. Whatever its origin, it speedily overran the Christian world, in which it has maintained itself up to the present day.[2074]

[1127]. Monachism has rendered valuable aid to Buddhism and Christianity by training men and women, laity and clergy, who were devoted to the forms of religion represented by these organizations. It has done a higher service by establishing communities that have often been beacon lights, representing, particularly in times of popular ignorance, ideals of conduct. Such communities have often been homes of beneficence and learning. They have, on the other hand, injured religion by severing it from ordinary life. By assuming that the secluded life was holier than that of the world they have tended to put a stigma of unholiness on the latter. Buddhism taught that only the monk could attain the highest sanctity and receive the highest reward, and such has generally been the teaching in those forms of Christianity in which monachism exists. Monasteries and convents, further, have in many cases become rich in this world's goods—a favorite form of devotion has been to build and endow or aid such communities (often with the belief that this atoned for sin); with wealth has come worldlymindedness and corruption of morals. Numerous examples of such decadence occur in Buddhistic and Christian history. There are, however, many examples of holy monastic living. It is true in general of these institutions, as of all others, that when moral supervision of them is exercised by society the possibilities of moral decline are greatly diminished; in an enlightened age they may be assumed to be generally exemplary. Their specifically useful rôle in the development of religion, as refuges in times of turbulence and centers of charity and thought, belongs to an imperfectly organized form of society; with the growth of enlightenment they tend to disappear.

Sacred Books

[1128]. All churches and all bodies approaching nearly the church-form have writings that embody their beliefs and are regarded as sacred. Such sacred Scriptures necessarily grow up with the organizations to which they belong, since these latter originate in literary periods and claim divine authorship. Great religious communities naturally produce a large number of such books, and at some time it becomes necessary (from the growth of heresies or rivals) to sift the whole mass and decide which works are to be considered to have permanent divine authority; the process of sifting is performed in each case by its community under the guidance of leading men, and the result is a canon of sacred Scriptures. Such canons are found in Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam, and in minor bodies like the Essenes, Mormons, and others, but not among the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans; Brahmanism occupies a middle ground—it regards the Veda and the accessory books as entitled to great reverence, but has never drawn the line between sacred and nonsacred writings so sharply as has been done in the group named above.

[1129]. While the general method of fixing the canons has been the same everywhere, the details of the process have differed in different lands. In India the canon of Southern Buddhism (acknowledged formerly in India and now in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam) was settled in a series of councils coming down to the middle of the third century B.C. or later (several centuries after the death of Buddha), the object being to define the faith against heresies; probably the reports of the Master's discourses (he left no writings) were examined, and those declared authentic were brought together, but the date of the final settlement of the canon is not certain, and the sacred books were not reduced to writing till the first century B.C. The canon of Northern Buddhism (accepted in Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Japan) is less definite and was fixed later.[2075]

[1130]. The development of the Jewish canon extended over a long period, and its history in outline is well known. While the discourses of the prophets were regarded with respect as giving divine revelations, there is no record of the recognition of an authoritative book before the fifth century B.C., when a sacred law was proclaimed by Nehemiah and Ezra.[2076] Even then there seems to have been no definite collection of writings. The Law was the national religious constitution, and in process of time prophetic books and others came to be regarded with reverence. The translator of Ben-Sira (Ecclesiasticus) into Greek (132 B.C.) mentions three groups of national books (the law, the prophets, and "other writings"), but does not speak of them as divinely inspired. But the intimate contact with the Greek world, and especially the Maccabean struggle, deepened the Palestinian Jewish reverence for the national literature. A process of sifting and defining, at first unofficial, began, and this work naturally passed, with the growth of legal learning, into the hands of leading doctors of law. Early in the first century of our era public opinion in Palestine had taken shape; the standard established was a local national one—books illustrating the national history and teachings, and written in Hebrew, were accepted (so, for example, the book of Esther, which is nonreligious but national), others (as the Wisdom of Solomon) were rejected. For various reasons certain books (Ezekiel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs) remained doubtful. After the destruction of Jerusalem the increasing literary feeling, the establishment of rabbinical schools, and the necessity of defining the Jewish position against growing Christianity and other heresies led to definite action[2077]—in the Synod of Jamnia (about 100 A.D.) the Palestinian canon, after hot debates, was finally settled in the form in which the Hebrew Old Testament now appears. Alexandrian Judaism had a different standard and accepted, in addition to the Palestinian collection, a group of books (the Apocrypha) that the Palestinians rejected. Certain other books (as the various Enoch apocalypses) were not accepted by either Jewish body, though they were highly esteemed. Both canons were slow growths of national feeling—books were chosen that accorded with prevailing ideas; but it is now impossible to recover all the critical views that determined the results.[2078]

[1131]. Young Christianity, at first a Jewish body, naturally adopted the Jewish canons, but in the course of a century produced a considerable normative literature of its own. The Christian canon was settled much in the same way as the Jewish. There was doubt about certain books, there were differences of opinion in different quarters, the growth of heresies called for the establishment of a definite standard, and a final decision was reached in the West and announced toward the end of the fifth century by Pope Gelasius; in the East the action was less definite, but the conclusion was about the same. The books of the Alexandrian canon that were rejected by the Palestinians were largely used by early Christian writers, by whom some of them are constantly cited as sacred Scripture, for they were found in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), which was the Old Testament text used by Christians. So great was their popularity that Jerome was led, against his judgment, to include them in his translation (the Latin Vulgate), and by the Council of Trent (1546) they were indorsed as deuterocanonical, and are still so regarded in the Roman Church. In the Greek Church they were accepted as canonical in the beginning and up to the early part of the nineteenth century, but are now, it would seem, looked on only as useful for the instruction of catechumens.[2079] By Protestants their canonical authority is generally denied, though up to the early part of the nineteenth century they were commonly printed in editions of the Bible; the Articles of the Church of England characterize them as instructive but not of authority for doctrine, and lessons from them now appear in the Lectionary of the Church.[2080]

[1132]. The history of the collection of the Zoroastrian sacred books is involved in obscurity. A late tradition was that many such writings were destroyed by Alexander. This points to a belief that the existing writings were later than the fall of the old Persian empire. When a beginning was made of committing Zoroastrian material to writing is uncertain. In the first century of our era Pliny had heard of verses ascribed to Zoroaster,[2081] and, as Mazdean books were in existence at the rise of the Sassanian dynasty, the probability seems to be that the reduction to writing had then been going on for a considerable time—how long it is impossible to say. The material grew with the development of the people and was ascribed to Zoroaster[2082] (as the Jews ascribed their legal material to Moses). An official collection of sacred writings was made in the fourth century of our era—the exact extent of this collection and the principle that governed its formation are not clear. It may be surmised that the appearance of strange teachings, such as that of Mani, and the spread of Christianity eastward, forced on the leaders the task of defining the orthodox faith.[2083] In making their collection they would naturally take only such writings as were in accord with the spirit of the religion of their time. Thus they established (in the fourth century) a body of sacred writings; it does not follow that no additions were later made to the canon—how far it is represented in the present Avesta it may be difficult to say.

[1133]. The history of the Islamic canon is simple. The Koran enjoys the distinction of being the only sacred canon produced by one man. There never was any question of its sacredness, and there has been hardly any question of its content. Mohammed's discourses were taken down by his followers in his lifetime, were put into shape just after his death, the collection was revised a few years later (under the Calif Othman), has since been universally accepted in the Moslem world as the authoritative divinely given standard of religious truth, and there is no reason to doubt that it contains substantially all the teaching of the Prophet and only his teaching. The scribe Zayd, who acted as editor, may have altered or inserted a word here and there, but he would not have dared to change the thought. The traditions of extra-Koranic sayings ascribed to Mohammed (the hadith), so far as they may be supposed to be genuine utterances of his (most of them are spurious), do not add anything to his doctrine.[2084]

[1134]. As to the influence of sacred books on religion, it is obvious, in the first place, that they are always formulations of the ideas of the places and times in which they originate, and that they vary in tone and in importance accordingly. It is true, however, that the canonical collections of the great religions, having arisen in enlightened circles, all have, along with local (social, mythological, eschatological) features, generally high ethical and spiritually religious standards. For this reason they have always been, as religious and ethical guides and sources of inspiration, important factors in the development of civilization as well as in the life of the churches. Their teachings, generally representing the ideas of gifted men formulated under the pressure of great religious enthusiasm, have perpetuated high standards, holding them up in times of decadence and corruption and clouded moral vision.

[1135]. A specially noteworthy point in their influence is their rôle of household monitors and comforters. As religious manuals, invested with divine authority, they have found their way into families and other small and intimate circles, have been children's textbooks and parents' guides, and thus have entered in an extraordinary way into individual life. They have reached wider circles through expositions and discourses held in connection with stated religious services. They have been used as textbooks in schools, and in general have been the most widely read books in the world. They have thus been unifying forces, each in its special community.

Their influence, further, has not been confined to purely religious life. Being regarded as containing the final truth, they have been objects of study and occasions of the development of learning. The necessity of explaining their use of words and grammatical constructions, their historical and geographical statements and views, their pictures and theories of social life, their psychology and philosophy, their theistic and eschatological ideas, have led to investigations of all these subjects. Early Moslem science sprang from the study of the Koran, and the later Moslem discussions of free-will, immortality and other points were called forth by Koranic statements. The philosophical writings of Maimonides, produced under Greek influence (through Moslem translations of Aristotle), were directed to the elucidation of Old Testament ideas. The contributions of modern Christians, Jews, Moslems, and Parsis to knowledge, sacred books being the occasions, are numerous and important.

[1136]. Along with these beneficent influences there have been others less praiseworthy. As any sacred book belongs to a particular age, it inevitably, in the course of time, falls into disaccord with later ideas on certain points. When this happens there are always some persons who, failing to discriminate between the local and transitory and the permanent, unjustly reject the book in toto; others, making a distinction, take it as a literary product, accept what they think valuable, and treat the rest as an imperfect product of the past. Those who accept the book as divinely inspired and therefore, as they think, infallible either maintain literally all its statements (cosmological, historical, eschatological, and other) or else undertake to interpret certain of them in accordance with current views. When such interpretation is forced, it becomes intellectually and morally an evil—it accustoms the religious public to logical distortions, and it nourishes a disingenuousness that easily becomes immoral. The belief that a sacred book is final authority often results in limitation of freedom of thought—certain things are excluded from discussion. The instinctive demand for freedom asserts itself, however, in various ways: sometimes, as described above, a desired sense is obtained by violence; sometimes a religious body that is regarded by its adherents as authoritative interpreter changes its decision, in accord with the spirit of a new age, and grants liberty where it had previously refused it The treatment of sacred books follows the phases of general culture.

The dogmatic statements of these books are condensed into creeds, which become organic law.[2085] They express each the interpretation put by a given church on the words of its sacred Scriptures. The interpretations are the outcome of historical processes, the final result of which is a formulation of the ideas of its time; where the same sacred book is accepted by several churches, there may be several different creeds based on the one book—that is, churches and creeds alike are subject to the variations of human opinion that result from differences of temperament, social surroundings, and general culture. Creeds are convenient and effective manuals. They may be made to change their meaning by processes of interpretation; elasticity in a creed is favorable to permanence—it is thereby able to adapt itself to changing conditions—and the degree of elasticity depends largely on the persons who are its authorized expounders, that is, on the area of public opinion that these persons represent.

[1137]. General influence of churches. All organized religion has been a potent factor in human life. In savage and half-civilized communities it enters into every detail of life, since, in the absence of knowledge of natural law, everything that happens is ascribed to supernatural agency. In the old national cults, in which other departments of thought (art, commerce, science, philosophy) became prominent, religion was somewhat isolated—it received a particular representation in sacrifices, festivals, and other observances; but such ceremonies were so numerous, and so many ancient customs survived, that it still played a conspicuous part in daily life.[2086] In the period in which churches arose there was a still greater specialization of the activities of life, and this specialization has become more pronounced in modern times, in which from various causes the tendency is to mass religious observances in certain days and seasons and leave the rest of the time free. This apparent banishment of religion from everyday affairs does not, however, signify diminution of interest in religion itself—partly it is an economic arrangement, the assignment of a definite time to every particular duty, but mainly it is the result of a better conception of what religion means, the feeling that, being an inward experience, it is less dependent on external occasions.

[1138]. Churches, as is remarked above, differ from the old national religions mainly in the emphasis they lay on individualism and on the idea of redemption. They represent a profounder conception of the ethical relation between man and God, or, as in Buddhism, between man and the ideal of perfection in the universe. They foster religion by holding public services and by the production of devotional works; they advance learning by supplying men of leisure; socially they are in general a conservative force, with the good and bad effects of conservatism. But their special function is to treat man as a spiritual being having immediate personal relations with the deity. Charitable and educational work (ethical and other) and social gatherings they share with other organizations, and they are incompetent in themselves to deal with economic and other scientific questions. That wherein they stand apart from other organizations is the emotional element they introduce into man's attitude toward the universe. According to this point of view man regards himself not merely as a part of the world but as bound to its author by ties of gratitude and affection. This sentiment may be independent of all scientific theories, may be shared by the learned and the unlearned; it is thus a great unifying force, and gives to life the glow of enthusiasm with the repose of trust.

[1139]. The temptations to which churches are exposed are those that are touched on above, and they may be briefly summed up here. There is the tendency to an excessive elaboration of the externals of religion, ritual, and dogma. Something of these is doubtless necessary in churches as in all human organizations, but they may easily be carried so far as to obscure the essential things. The history of all churches exhibits this tendency. There are protests from time to time, revolts against formalities and speculations, and then frequently in the new organizations the old movement is resumed. For our own times a distinction may perhaps be made: while there seems to be a steady general increase of ritual, there is in many quarters a disposition to minimize or curtail dogma.

[1140]. However this may be, a more important tendency in churches is toward the claim to absolute authority in religious matters. This tendency is universal in bodies that hold to the infallibility of certain sacred books. It is obvious that absolute authority in an organized body and individual freedom are mutually incompatible,[2087] and that all that makes for freedom makes against the church influence in this direction. Finally, when churches enter into administrative alliance with the civil authorities, or assume civil and political power, they to that extent abdicate their spiritual rights and abandon their true function.

Universal Religions

[1141]. So far only particular religions, belonging to particular peoples or regions, have been considered. In recent years the question has been much discussed whether any of these may be called universal. A universal religion may be defined either as one that has been accepted by all peoples, or as one whose doctrines are such that it may be so accepted. The term is frequently used loosely to describe a religion that has passed definitely beyond its birthplace and has been adopted by different nations or districts. Obviously, if we take the stricter definition, the question at issue can be decided only by an appeal to facts. Whether or not a given religion has actually been universally accepted can be determined from statistics, and the question whether it is fitted to be generally adopted must be answered by a similar appeal. It may be held, and is held, of various religions that their standards are so high and their schemes of worship and conceptions of salvation so obviously suited to human nature that they cannot fail to be adopted when they are known; but such are the diversities of human thought that this consideration cannot be regarded as decisive—a religious system that seems to one set of men to be perfect may appear to others to be unsatisfactory,[2088] and it is only by trial that it can be determined how far it is capable of conquering new territory. The test of actual diffusion, then, must be applied to those religions for which the claim to universality has been made—these are Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam.[2089]

[1142]. Buddhism has had a history full of vicissitudes.[2090] Beginning in Northern India as an Aryan faith, in the course of a few centuries it overran a great part of the peninsula, then began to decline, gradually lost its hold on the people, partly, it is said, by reason of the corruption of its morals, chiefly, doubtless, because it was not suited to the character of the Hindu people, and finally, in the twelfth century of our era, left its native land, to which it has never returned. Meantime it had established itself firmly in Ceylon and later in Burma and Siam and had been carried to China (not long after the beginning of our era), whence it passed to Korea, Central Asia, Japan, and adjacent islands, and as early as the sixth century gained a footing in Tibet. It has maintained its conquests outside of India to the present day, except that it has been driven out of a considerable part of Central Asia by Mohammedanism; in China and Japan it exists alongside of the native cults, its relations with which are friendly. It presents the curious spectacle of a religion, originally Hindu Aryan, that now finds a home exclusively (with one exception, Ceylon) among non-Aryan peoples; but among these peoples it has generally been degraded by the infusion of low native elements, and has discarded its original essence. By reason of its negative attitude toward life it has found no favor as a system with Western Indo-Europeans, Persians, and Semites, except that it gave a coloring to certain Persian sects (the Ismailic) and has perhaps influenced Bahaism.[2091] As far as present appearances go there is no probability of its gaining general acceptance.

[1143]. Judaism is too much encumbered with peculiar national usages to commend itself to non-Jews. There was a time just before and just after the beginning of our era when a considerable number of persons resorted to it for escape from the confusion of current religious systems, and since that time there have been conversions here and there; but these have been too few to affect the general character of religion in any community. Even to Reform Judaism, which has discarded Talmudic usages and does not differ doctrinally from certain forms of Christianity, there clings a racial tone that tends to isolate it, and it does not seem that this isolation is likely to cease soon.

[1144]. Christianity, beginning as a Jewish movement, speedily became Græco-Roman, and in this form took possession of the whole of Western Asia (except Jewish districts and parts of Arabia), Greece, Italy, Egypt, and the northern coast of Africa, and was adopted, under Byzantine and Roman influence, by the Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic tribes. Most of its Asiatic and all of its African territory except Abessinia was taken from it by Mohammedanism in the seventh century, but small bodies of Christians remained in Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. With this exception it has since been the religion only of the Western Indo-Europeans and of a few half-civilized peoples who have been Christianized either by missionaries (the Karens of Burma, a part of the Telugus of Southeastern India and others) or by contact with Westerners (Philippine Islands, tribes of North America and South America) or by both these agencies (the Hawaiian Islands). Local peculiarities have been largely banished from its usages but not from its dogma. It is, apparently, its dogma (in the orthodox form) that has prevented its acceptance by most Semites, by the peoples of Central and Eastern Asia, and by many undeveloped tribes of Africa and Oceania.

[1145]. Zoroastrianism has never advanced to any important extent beyond the boundaries of its native land. It has never recovered from the crushing blow dealt it by Mohammedanism in the seventh century, and is now professed by hardly more than 100,000 persons (mostly in Bombay).

[1146]. Islam is now the religion of the Turkish empire (except the Christian groups in Europe, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Armenia), Persia, Egypt (except the Copts), and the North African coast, and has a large following in Central Asia, China, India, the Malay peninsula, the Malay Archipelago, the Sudan, and a considerable representation on the east and west coasts of Africa. Its spread, as is remarked above, has been effected sometimes by force, but oftener by social pressure and through traders and missionaries. Decadent Christianity in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt readily yielded to it; Persian Zoroastrianism made some effort to maintain itself but succumbed to the combination of military pressure and the prospect of civil advancement and peace; after the fall of Constantinople conversions of Christians in Europe were numerous, and the Moslem conquests in India were followed by a considerable accession of Hindus to the Islamic faith. At the present time it appears to be advancing only among the half-civilized tribes of Central Africa, but it maintains its position against Buddhism and Christianity.[2092]

[1147]. There is, thus, now no religion that, so far as extent of diffusion is concerned, can be called universal. Omitting the Jewish and Parsi groups, the Brahmanic and other religions of India, and the Chinese Confucian cult, three great religions have divided the world among them, Buddhism taking Eastern Asia, Islam Western Asia and Northern Africa, and Christianity Europe and America. It is sometimes suggested that the religion of the leaders of civilization, the Christian nations, must become the faith of the world. But, even if we may look forward to a time when social fusion, under the control of the present Christian nations, shall have brought about substantial unity of religious thought in the world, it is impossible now to predict what the nature of that thought will be, since Christianity has undergone and is now undergoing change, and may in the far future assume a different form from that of to-day; fundamentals may remain, but opinions differ even now as to what are fundamentals.

[1148]. Classification of religions. A word may be added on proposed classifications of religions.[2093] Certain resemblances and differences between religions are obvious, and groups may be made, geographical, ritualistic, theologic, or soteriological, but it is difficult to find a principle of classification that shall bring out the essential characteristic or characteristics of every religion and yet distinctly mark every one off from all others. All have much in common, and the elements in all are so mixed that divisions necessarily cross one another. Every religion is the product of some one community and represents its peculiar view of human life in its relation to the supernatural; there may be borrowings and fusions, but the final outcome is shaped by the thought of the people to whom the religion specifically belongs.[2094] The differences between various religions are the differences of thought between the communities involved, and the differences and the resemblances are often curious and sometimes defy explanation.

[1149]. Leaving aside ritual, which, so far as it is a merely external form of approach to the deity, does not touch the essence of religion, the following points may be said to be common to all religions: (1) The sense of a supernatural control of life, and the conviction that the supernatural Power must be placated or obeyed.[2095] (2) The belief that religion deals with and controls the whole of life; this belief is pronounced among savages, who know nothing of natural law, and is regarded as essential in more advanced communities, in which, from the religious point of view, law, physical or mental, is taken to be an expression of the will of the deity. (3) The creation of divine personalities[2096] (representing popular ideals), and movements toward a unitary view of the divine control of the world. (4) An ethical element in the conception of the character of the supernatural Power and the modes of pleasing this Power. The ethical side of religion corresponds to the general ethical standard of the people—in savages it is low, but it exists. (5) The conception of salvation as the goal of religious faith and service; the salvation looked for is at first physical, is gradually moralized, and ultimately takes the form of spiritual union with the deity. These are the essential elements of religion; they all exist in crude form in the lowest strata of society, and are purified in the course of social growth.

[1150]. A classification naturally suggested by this enumeration of fundamentals would be one based on grades of general culture, savage, half-civilized, and civilized; but such a classification would not take account of the differences of character in the members of the higher grades. These differ from one another in the conception of the ultimate Power of the world and of the nature of salvation and the mode of attaining it, and in other less important points. They are so highly composite in structure that their interrelations are complicated, and those that are brought together by one critical canon may be separated by another. Buddhism is allied on one side (the ignoring of deity) to Confucianism and Epicureanism, on another side (the hope of moral salvation) to Christianity. Zoroastrianism touches the Veda in its theistic construction, and is remarkably like Judaism in its organization. Christianity is Jewish on one side and Græco-Roman on another. Islam has Christian and Jewish conceptions attached to the old-Semitic view of life.

[1151]. A distinction of importance is that between national religions and those founded each by a single man (Buddhism, Christianity, Islam).[2097] This distinction may be pressed too far—all religions have great men who have given new directions to thought, and no religion can be said to be wholly the creation of an individual man, since all, as is pointed out above, are outcomes of the ideas of communities.[2098] The distinction in question is not a satisfactory basis for a general classification since it fails to note the theological differences between the various religions. Nevertheless, it embodies a significant fact: in the course of the history of the world the three religions above-named have come to divide the civilized world among them, that is, they have been selected as best responding to the religious needs of men. No one of them is universal, but the three together practically include the civilized world.[2099] They are modified in various ways by their adherents, but they have not been superseded. They have grown beyond the ideas of their founders, but these latter nevertheless occupy a unique position. Moses and Zoroaster are dim figures whose work it is impossible to define, but the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, though they left no writings, are known with substantial accuracy, and Mohammed has expressed himself in a book. The persons of the three founders are the objects of a devotion not given to other leaders. These things justify us in putting Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism in a class by themselves, of which the distinguishing note is the discarding of local national ideas and usages. These last are not wholly given up, but they are less prominent than in Judaism and Zoroastrianism. It is to the insight of the individual founders that this relative freedom from local features is due. This characteristic does not necessarily carry with it superiority in ethical and general religious conceptions.

A different line of cleavage is indicated by the designation "religions of redemption." In one sense all religions come under this head,[2100] for all have for their object the freeing man from the ills of life. In a higher sense the term 'redemption' means deliverance from the power of sin and from its punishment, particularly in the world to come. This meaning appears in definite form in Buddhism and Christianity, and somewhat less distinctly in Mithraism and the later Judaism; in the Old Testament religion and Islam it is not clearly stated. As it appears in germinal form in the lower cults, its development may be traced up to its culmination in the systems in which man is freed from moral taint through the agency of an individual savior or in accordance with a cosmic ethical law.

[1152]. Unity exists among the lowest and among the highest religious systems. Among savage and half-civilized cults there are no important differences—they all have the same ideas respecting the nature and functions of supernatural Powers and the ways of approaching them.[2101] In the higher cults a process of differentiation goes on for a certain time while each is developing its special characteristics, and then a counter-movement sets in—they all tend to come together by suppressing local features and emphasizing general ideas.[2102] Thus at the present day there are groups of Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and Moslems that, without abandoning their several faiths, find themselves in substantial accord on some essential points. The unity of savages is the uniformity of undeveloped thought; the later unity rests on discrimination between fundamentals and accessories.

[1153]. Tabulated classifications of religions, it would seem, must be arbitrary and misleading—they give undue prominence to some one religious fact, they maim the individuality of cults, and they obscure the relations between certain cults by putting these into different divisions. The true relations between the various religious systems may be brought out by comparisons. In this way individuality and unitary character may be preserved in every case, while the agreements and disagreements may be made clear by referring them to general principles of religious development.

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