[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.'