No one can doubt that in thus assigning a high and often the highest place in the religious mysteries to woman, many primitive religions surrounded her with a sacredness which was constantly recognised, and thus aided in the improvement of her social relations. The value of virtue and purity was increased, mere animal desires were subjected to religious restraint, and the relations of sex came increasingly to be regarded as instituted by divine wisdom for special purposes.
3. Although the specifications of the ceremonial law were often capricious and absurd, and sometimes positively hurtful, yet it developed the habit of obedience and the respect for authority. In this manner it potently aided the evolution of jurisprudence—that is, of those rules of conduct which grow out of the habit of men living together and which are necessary to preserve amicable relations. These had their origin in other than religious considerations, but when once consciously recognised as beneficial, the religion of the tribe generally adopted them, claimed their creation, and threw around them the garb of its own protective power. Religion then actively aided in the fulfilment of purely social duties, as these were understood by the tribe.
In primitive conditions, all laws are God’s laws. As we would say, there is no separation of the civil and criminal from the canon law. To the Mohammedan, the Koran is the source of all jurisprudence. This is a survival from early thought.
From this it followed that the punishment of crime and the decisions between litigants were, properly, judgments of God. This universal opinion is reflected in a number of traits in jurisprudence, some of which are still in vogue in civilised lands. The most noteworthy are the ordeal, trial by battle, oaths, and the privilege of sanctuary.
Ordeals were universal. They all rested on the belief that the gods would rescue the innocent man from danger. He might be required to hold red-hot iron in his hands; he might be plunged long under water; swallow poison; or in any other way expose himself to pain or death; if he were unjustly accused, the invisible powers would protect him.[276]
The trial by battle involved the same opinion. “If the Lord is on my side, why should I fear?” is the confident belief at the basis of every such test of skill and strength.[277]
These forms of decision have disappeared, but the oath remains as vigorous as ever in our law courts. It is, however, as has been pointed out by the able ethnologist and lawyer, Dr. Post, originally and in spirit nothing else than an ordeal. The false witness, the perjurer, is believed to expose himself to the wrath of God and to suffer the consequences in this or another life.[278]
The rite of sanctuary was distinctly religious. The criminal among the Hebrews, who could escape to the temple and cling to the horns of the altar, must not be seized by the officers of justice. The Cherokee Indians, like the Israelites, had “cities of refuge,” which they called “white towns.” With the Acagchemem, a Californian tribe, the temples were so purifying that the evil-doer, were he guilty even of murder, who could reach them before he was caught, was cleansed of his sin and absolved ever after from any punishment for it.[279]
In these vital relations we see how religion entered deeply into civil life, and became a guide and director of its most essential procedures. Its development grew with its responsibilities and with the intimacy it cultivated with practical affairs.