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 cooeperation 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 Graeco-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 hetaerae. 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, Phoenicia, 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 role 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 Phoenician 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 role 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 Caesar 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 cooeperation 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 role 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 Maccabaeus (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 Lenape 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 Graeco-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 Phoenicia, 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 semi-divine 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 reenforcement 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, Phoenicia, 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 Graeco-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 role 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 Graeco-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.