CHAPTER I.

CONSECRATED ACTIONS.

Adoration, or worship, is a direct result of one of the most universal of human instincts. After the instincts which impel us to provide for the necessities of the body, and to satisfy the passion of love, there is perhaps none more potent or more general. Men are driven to pray by an irresistible impulse. Differing widely as to the object of worship; differing not less widely as to its mode; differing in a minor degree as to the blessings it secures; they are agreed as to the fundamental ideas which it involves. In the first place it presupposes a power superior to, or at any rate different from, the power of man; in the second place it assumes a belief that this superhuman or non-human power can be approached by his worshipers; can be induced to listen to their desires, and to grant their petitions.

Of the first of the two elements thus implied in prayer, this is not the appropriate place to speak at length. In a very early and primitive stage of man's existence, he begins to feel his dependence upon powers invisible to his mortal eyes, whose mode of action he can but imperfectly comprehend. His way of conceiving these beings will depend upon his mental elevation, upon historical influences, upon local conditions, and other causes. Among very rude nations, the commonest and apparently most unimpressive objects will serve as fetishes, or incarnations of the mysterious force. Pieces of wood, stones, ornaments worn on the person, or almost anything, may under some circumstances do duty in this capacity. It is a further stage of progress when the more conspicuous objects of nature, lofty mountains, rivers, trees, fountains, and so forth, are deified, to the exclusion of more insignificant things. Still higher is the adoration of bodies which do not belong to this earth at all, and whose nature is, therefore, more mysterious—the sun, the moon, the planets or the stars, the clouds and tempests, the winds, and similar imposing phenomena. And this stage passes naturally into one where the gods, at first merely forces of nature personified, lose their character of forces, and become exclusively persons. They are then conceived as beings in human form, but endowed with much more than human faculties. Actual persons, especially the ancestors of the living generation, are also the frequent recipients of religious adoration. By other races, or by the same races at a later period, the numerous gods of polytheism are merged in one supreme god, to whom the others are subordinated as agents of his will, or before whose grandeur they disappear altogether; while this worship of powers conceived as beneficent is very frequently accompanied, more or less avowedly, by a parallel worship of powers conceived as malevolent, and whom, by reason of that very malevolence, it is occasionally deemed the more needful to conciliate.

The second element—the conviction that these deities are accessible to human requests—is shown both by the fact of worship being offered and by the mode in which it is conducted. In the first place, it is plain that prayer would not be offered at all but for the belief that it exercises some influence on the beings prayed to. But the theory does not require that they should be equally amenable to it at all times, from all persons, or in whatever way it is uttered. On the contrary, accessibility to prayer implies in these who receive it an inclination to listen with attention to the language in which they are addressed, and to be more or less moved by it according to its nature.

Reasoning from the authorities of earth whom he knows, to those of heaven whom he does not know, the primitive man concludes that the best way of obtaining the satisfaction of his wishes from the latter will be to address them in a tone of humble supplication, intermingled with such laudatory epithets as he deems most suitable to the deity invoked, or most likely to be agreeable to his ear. Hence we have the two devotional acts of prayer and praise, which in all religions constantly accompany one another, and constitute the simplest, most natural, and most ancient expression on the part of human beings of their consciousness of an overruling power, and of their desire to enter into relations with that dreaded and venerated agency.

Prayer in its original form is simply a request for some personal advantage addressed by the worshipers to their god. Whatever loftier associations it may afterwards acquire, its intention at the outset is unquestionably this, as may be proved by reference to innumerable instances, quoted by travelers or scholars, of savage prayer, where the benefit expected from the deity is demanded in the most barefaced manner. But even after men have long ceased to be savages, the primary object of prayer may easily be discerned; sometimes plainly avowed by the persons praying, sometimes cloaked under complimentary phrases or devotional utterances. However disguised, the fact remains, that prayer was originally designed, and to a large extent is designed still, to obtain certain advantages for ourselves, either as individuals, or as a community. Private prayer, partaking to some extent of the character of a meditation, may, and no doubt often does, form an exception to this rule; but even this very frequently falls under it, and of the prayer offered by tribes or nations it always holds good.

Two excellent specimens of primitive prayer are given by Brinton in his "Myths of the New World." According to that writer, the Nootka Indian, on preparing for war, thus expresses his wishes:—"Great Quahootzee, let me live, not be sick, find the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and kill a great many of him."

The next instance, quoted by him from Father Breboeuf, is equally apposite. It is the prayer of a Huron:—"Oki, thou who livest in this spot, I offer thee tobacco. Help us, save us from shipwreck, defend us from our enemies, give us a good trade, and bring us back safe and sound to our villages" (M. N. W., p. 297).

The Kafirs, according to Shooter, address the "spirits" whom they worship in the following style: "Take care of me, take care of my children, take care of my wives, take care of all my people. Remove the sickness, and let my child recover. Give me plenty of children—many boys and a few girls. Give me abundance of food and cattle. Make right all my people" (K. N., p. 163).

Of the negroes on the Caribbean Islands, Oldendorp says, "Their concerns which they lay before God in their prayers, even on their knees, have reference only to the body, to health, fine weather, a good harvest, victory over their enemies, and so forth" (G. d. M., p. 325).

The Samoans, on taking their evening "cup of ava," would thus express their petitions to the gods: "Here is ava for you, O gods! Look kindly towards this family: let it prosper and increase; and let us all be kept in health. Let our plantations be productive, let fruit grow, and may there be abundance of food for us, your creatures. Here is ava for you, our war-gods! Let there be a strong and numerous people for you in this land. Here is ava for you, O sailing gods! Do not come on shore at this place; but be pleased to depart along the ocean to some other land" (N. Y., p. 200).

Mr. Turner, to whom I am indebted for the above prayer, remarks that in Tanna, another of the Polynesian islands, the chief of a village repeats a short prayer at the evening meal, "asking health, long life, good crops, and success in battle" (Ibid., p. 85).

The authors of the Vedic hymns, though standing on a far higher level of civilization, do not differ essentially from these rude people in the character of the objects for which they pray. The several deities are continually invoked to grant health, wealth, prosperity, posterity, and other temporal blessings. Thus (to quote one instance among many) in Mandala 1, Sûkta 64, translated by Max Müller, the Maruts are requested to grant "strength, glorious, invincible in battle, brilliant, wealth-conferring, praiseworthy, known to all men;" and again, "wealth, durable, rich in men, defying all onslaughts; wealth a hundred and a thousandfold, always increasing" (R. V. S., i. 64, 14, 15,—Vol. i. p. 93). The liturgies of the Zend-Avesta, while sometimes assuming a loftier strain, frequently move upon the same level. The same tone is to be observed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Solomon's prayer, for instance, at the dedication of the temple, may be taken as an enumeration of the objects commonly prayed for among the ancient Hebrews. It specifies among the objects to be obtained at the hands of Jehovah, the prevention of famine, of pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust or caterpillar, plague or sickness (1 Kings viii. 37). Christian liturgies contain the same universal elements, though intermingled with many others, and not in general put forward with the same crudity of language.

Besides these general objects, there are others of an ephemeral and special kind which are generally drawn within the sphere of prayer. Rain is a common object of prayer, and other changes of weather are equally prayed for if they are held to be important. Callaway, for example, was informed by a "very old man" in South Africa that "if it does not rain, the heads of villages and petty chiefs assemble and go to a black chief; they converse and pray for rain" (R. S. A., vol. i. p. 59). Another native described the mode of supplication more particularly. A certain chieftain named Utshaka "came and made his prayers greater than those who preceded him." When he desired rain, he sang the following song, which "consists of musical sounds merely, without any meaning:"—

"_One Part_—I ya wu; a wu; o ye i ye."

"_Second Part or Response_—I ya wo."

And this prayer, so touching in its simplicity, was as successful as the most elaborate composition of Jewish prophet or Christian bishop; for the narrator states that Utshaka "Sang a song and prayed to the Lord of heaven; and asked his forefathers to pray for rain to the Lord of heaven. _And it rained_" (R. S. A., vol. i. p. 92). The efficacy of prayer is plainly independent of the creed of him who offers it.

The Mexicans held an important annual festival in the month of May, of which the main purpose was to entreat for water from the sky, this being the season at which there was the greatest need of rain (H. I., b. v. ch. 28). They used to address an elaborate prayer to a god named Tlaloc, the king of the terrestrial paradise, to obtain deliverance from drought. They entreated him not to visit the offenses they had committed with such severity as to continue the privation under which they were laboring.[1] The Tannese, when put to much inconvenience by the dust falling from a certain volcano, "were in the habit of praying to their gods for a change of wind" (N. Y., p. 75). Certain other South Sea Islanders used to pray to their gods to avert the supposed calamity of a lunar eclipse. "As the eclipse passes off, they think it is all owing to their prayers," a mode of reasoning which presents an exact parallel to that employed by many Christians.

Sir John Davis gives a very interesting specimen of a prayer for rain employed by Taou-Kuâng, the Emperor of China, in 1832, on the occasion of a long drought in that country (Chinese, vol. ii. p. 75). As may be expected from so civilized a people, this prayer rises far above the outspoken begging of savage petitions, yet it has in substance precisely the same end. The emperor describes himself as "scorched with grief," and pathetically inquires whether he has been remiss in sacrifice, has been proud or prodigal, irreverent, unjust, or wanting in discretion in the exercise of patronage. Here we see the intrusion of the theological idea that calamities are sent as punishments for sin, which plays no small part in Christian theology; but this only serves to veil, without effacing, the essential character of the prayer. The very same notion, that sin is visited by unfavorable weather, is found in the prayer of Solomon, whose mind upon this question seems to have been in the same stage of thought as that attained by the Chinese emperor. "When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee" (1 Kings viii. 35), is the language of Solomon: "My sins are so numerous that it is hopeless to escape their consequences," so runs the penitent confession of Taou-Kuâng. But whatever may be the cause to which the drought is attributed, the prayer, whether uttered by Chinaman, Jew, or Christian, is still simply the petition to the Amazulu, the South Sea Islander, or the native American—a request that God will so influence the phenomena of the skies as to suit our convenience. The notion that this object may sometimes be attained by our prayers is not extinct even among ourselves.

Other special occasions are sometimes held to call for prayer. Such are national calamities; as a pestilence among men or cattle, the illness of some eminent person, and other similar misfortunes. A good harvest is very generally prayed for; so is victory in time of war. The ancient Aryans, who composed the Vedic hymns one thousand years or more before Christ, continually prayed for this last blessing; and we ourselves, when engaged in warfare, piously continue the same custom.

Very frequently the notion of a bargain between the god and his worshiper appears in prayer. The worshiper claims to have rendered some service for which the god ought in equity to reward him; or he holds out the discontinuance of his former devotion as a motive to induce the concession of his desires. The constant conjunction of praise with prayer is explicable on this principle of a reciprocity of benefits. If the worshiper gains much from the god, yet the god gains something from him, being addressed in a strain of unbounded eulogy. His power, his greatness, his goodness, his excellences of all kinds are vaunted in glowing terms, no doubt sincerely used by the worshiper, but repeated and accumulated to satiety from an impression that they are pleasing to their object, and may dispose him to beneficence. Titles thus bestowed upon their deities are aptly described by the Amazulus as "laud-giving names" (R. S. A., vol. i. p. 72, and vol. ii. p. 149). In the Vedic hymns and in the Psalms, the deities spoken of are constantly addressed by such complimentary epithets. One of the hymns to the Maruts begins by announcing the poet's intention to praise "their ancient greatness." And at the conclusion, after he has done so, he says, "May this praise, O Maruts, ... approach you (asking) for offspring to our body, together with food. May we find food, and a camp with running water" (R. V. S., vol. i. pp. 197, 201). The Psalmists were never weary of exalting the extraordinary might and majesty of Jehovah, mingling petitions with panegyric; and a large portion of the worship of Christians consists in expressions of pious admiration at the extraordinary goodness of their God, especially for his redemption of the world which he had himself condemned. All these extravagant eulogies betray a latent impression that the Deity is, after all, a very arbitrary personage, and may be moved to more merciful conduct than he would otherwise pursue by large doses of flattery.

Still more clearly does the idea of a commercial relationship with the gods make its appearance in a poet who stands on a higher intellectual and moral level than the writers of the Hebrew Psalms, namely Aischylos. In the Seven against Thebes, Eteokles implores Zeus, the Earth, and the tutelar deities of the city to protect Thebes; and subjoins as a motive for compliance, "And I trust that what I say is our common interest; for a prosperous city honors the gods" (Aisch. Sept. c. Th. 76, 77—Dindorf). And there is a similar appeal to the divine selfishness further on in the same play, where the chorus inquires of the gods what better plain they can expect to obtain in exchange for this one, if they shall suffer it to pass into the enemy's hands (Aisch., Sept. c. Th. 304).

In the Choephoræ, Zeus is distinctly asked in the prayer of Agamemnon's children whence he can expect to obtain the sacrifice and honors which have been paid him by Orestes and Electra if he should suffer them to perish (Aisch., Choeph., 255). While in the Electra of Sophocles the converse motive of gratitude is appealed to: the god Apollon being desired to remember not what he may get, but what he already has got, from the piety of his supplicant (Soph. El., 1376—Schneidewin). And Jacob, who was a good hand at a bargain, makes his terms with Jehovah in a thoroughly business-like spirit. "_If_ God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; _then_ shall the Lord be my God: and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee." The adoption of Jehovah as Jacob's God being thus entirely dependent on the performance by that Deity of his share in the contract (Gen. xxviii. 20-22).

Sometimes it is quaintly suggested that were the worshiper in the place of the god, _he_ would not neglect the interests of his devotee. Thus, the author of a hymn in the Rig-Veda-Sanhitâ, addressing the Gods of Tempest, exclaims: "If you, sons of Prisni, were mortals, and your worshiper an immortal, then never should your praiser be unwelcome, like a deer in pasture grass, nor should he go on the path of Yama" (R. V. S., vol. i. p. 65). Another unsophisticated poet gives the following hint to the god Indra, the Hindu Jupiter: "Were I, Indra, like thee, the sole lord of wealth, the singer of my praises should be rich in cattle" (S. V., i. 2. i. 3. p. 218). And the same god is asked elsewhere in the Veda: "When wilt thou make us happy? for it is just this that is desired" (S. V., i. 5. i. 3. p. 233). With equal plainness is the expectation of a _quid pro quo_ enunciated in one of the most ancient hymns, contained in the sacred books of the Parsees:—"Every adoration, O True One, consists in actions whereby one may obtain good possessions, full of security, and happiness round about" (F. G. vol. ii. p. 54.—Yama 51. i).

More emphatically still is this conception of a reciprocity of benefits expressed in another consecrated action, that of Sacrifice. Sacrifice holds a most important place in all religions. It originates in a stage of the human mind which, if not quite as primitive as that which gives rise to prayer, is nevertheless so early as to be practicably inseparable from it. Wherever we find prayer, we find sacrifice; but as the latter is generally found organized under definite forms, and confined to certain specified objects, we may conclude that in the state in which we recognize it, it implies a certain degree of regulation and forethought on the part of religious authorities which we do not meet with in the simplest types of prayer. Prayer is often the mere natural outpouring of our wants before a power which is considered capable of fulfilling them: sacrifice, though doubtless in the first instance an equally artless offering of gifts to beings who are regarded with veneration and gratitude, is soon converted into a formal presentation of acknowledged dues, performed under ecclesiastical supervision. No doubt prayer also tends to assume this formal character; but we have hitherto considered it in its uncorrupted aspect; its treatment in its later developments belongs to another portion of this chapter.

The idea which presides over sacrifice is obvious. The sacrificer argues that if he can make acceptable presents to the gods, they will smile upon him and be disposed to promote his ends; whereas if he keeps the whole of his possessions for worldly purposes, they will regard him with indignation, and refuse him their assistance when he may happen to stand in need of it. There is also involved in sacrifice a sense of gratitude: the gods having given us the fruits of the earth, behooves us to make some acknowledgment of their bounty.

Such notions, once propounded, were certain to be fertile. Every motive of piety and of interest would combine to support them. The piety of the worshipers, coupled with their hopes of advantage, would be stimulated by the self-interest of the priests, who generally share in the sacrifices offered. If any piece of good fortune occurred to one who was devout and liberal in sacrificing, it would be attributed to the satisfaction felt by the gods at his exemplary conduct. If ill fortune befell those who had neglected to sacrifice, this would be an equally manifest indication of their high displeasure. As soon, therefore, as the step was taken—and it was one of the earliest in the religious history of man—of instituting sacrifices to idols or to deities, the worshipers vied with one another in the liberality of their offerings. Adopted as a mode of propitiating the celestial beings by spontaneous gifts, it became, among all nations whose religious belief had arrived at a state of flexity and consolidation, a positive duty; much as monarchs have frequently exacted large and burdensome contributions under the guise of voluntary presents.

Illustrations of this conception, that sacrifice is a sort of payment for services rendered or to be rendered, might be found abundantly in many quarters. Perhaps it is seldom more quaintly expressed than by the Amazulus, who, when going to battle, sacrifice to the Amatongo, or manes of their ancestors, in order that these, in their own language, "may have no cause of complaint, because they have made amends to them, and made them bright." On reaching the enemy, they say, "Can it be, since we have made amends to the Amadhlozi, that they will say we have wronged them by anything?" And when it comes to fighting, they are filled with valor, observing that "the Amatongo will turn their backs on us without cause" (R. S. A., vol. ii. p. 133).

The objects of sacrifice are very various, but it is noticeable that they are almost invariably things held in esteem among men, and either possessing a considerable value as commodities, or capable by their properties of ministering to their pleasure. All sacrifices of meat and corn or other edibles belong to the former class; those of flowers to the latter, for these, though of little value in the market yet give great pleasure, and are much esteemed. An exception is indeed presented by the wild hordes in Kamtschatka, who, according to Steller, offer nothing to their gods but what is valueless to themselves (Kamtschatka, p. 265). If this statement does not originate in a misunderstanding of the traveler, the fact must be due to the singularly low religiosity of those people, who seem to have little reverence for the very objects of their worship.

The most valuable sacrifice that can possibly be made—that of human beings—has always been common among savage or uncivilized nations. Thus, in some of the South Sea Islands, human sacrifices were "fearfully common" (N. M. E., p. 547). They prevailed among some of the negro tribes known to the missionary Oldendorp (G. d. M., p. 329).

In Mexico, where the natives had arrived at a far higher condition, human sacrifices still prevailed, though the original brutality of the rite was modified by the fact of the victims being enemies. Indeed, Montezuma, when at the height of his power, expressly refused to conquer a certain province which he might easily have added to his dominions; assigning as his first reason, that he desired to keep the Mexican youth in practice; as his second and principal one, that he might reserve a province for the supply of victims to sacrifice to the gods (H. I., b. v. ch. 20).

At the great Mexican festival of the Jubilee, however, it was not an enemy, but a slave, who was offered. This slave had represented the idol during the period of a year, and had received the greatest honor during his term of office, at the end of which his head was severed from his body by the priest, who then held it as high as he could, and showed it to the Sun and to the idol (H. I., b. v. ch. 28).

Next in value to the human race are cattle, and these too are frequently immolated in honor of the gods. Thus among the Kafirs, "the animals offered are exclusively cattle and goats. The largest ox in a herd is specially reserved for sacrifices on important occasions; it is called the Ox of the Spirits, and is never sold except in cases of extreme necessity" (Kafirs, p. 165). Here we find it expressly stated that it is the best ox, in other words, the most valuable portion of the sacrificer's property, which is devoted to the gods. And the principle which leads in Natal to this reservation of the best will be found predominating over sacrifice throughout the world. The Soosoos, a people inhabiting the west coast of Africa, are so careful to propitiate their deity, that they "never undertake any affair of importance until they have sacrificed to him a bullock" (N. A., vol. i. p. 230).

Other domestic and edible animals, being of great importance to mankind, are held worthy of the honor of sacrifice. The same writer to whom I owe the last quotation tells us of the Western Africans, that "before they begin to sow their plantations, they sacrifice a sheep, goat, fowl, or fish to the ay-min, to beg that their crop may abound; for were this neglected, they are persuaded that nothing would grow there" (Ibid., vol. i. p. 223). Oldendorp, who was particularly familiar with the Caribbean Islands, describes the sacrifices of the negroes as consisting of "oxen, cows, sheep, goats, hens, palm-oil, brandy, yams, &c." (G. d. M., p. 329).

Besides porcelain collars, tobacco, maize, and skins, the American Indians used to offer "entire animals, especially dogs, on the borders of difficult or dangerous roads or rocks, or by the side of rapids." These offerings were made to the spirits who presided in these places. The great value attached by the natives of America to the dog is well known, and it is deserving of remark that the dog was the commonest victim, and that at the war-festival, which was a sort of sacrifice, it was always dogs that were offered.

In China, the animals slain are "bullocks, heifers, sheep, and pigs," which are duly purified for a certain period beforehand (C. O., vol. ii. p. 192). Among the Jews, pigs, whose flesh was regarded as impure, were not offered; bullocks, goats, and sheep were the chief sacrificial animals; and extreme care was taken in their law that they should be entirely without blemish; that is, that, like the ox of the Kafirs, they should be the best obtainable (Lev. xxii. 17-25). This is a remarkable illustration of the tendency to offer only articles of value in human estimation to God; for here that which would be good enough for men is treated as unfit for Jehovah. Animals of lesser magnitude are sometimes offered; as, for instance, the quails which the Mexicans used to sacrifice (H. I., b. v. ch. 18). Birds are not unfrequently chosen as fitting objects to present to the gods. Among the Ibos, a negro tribe, it is the custom for women, six weeks after childbirth, to present a pair of hens as an offering, which, however, are not killed, but liberated after certain ceremonies. In like manner the Hebrew woman after her delivery was enjoined to bring a lamb and a pigeon or turtle-dove; or, if she were unable to bring the lamb, two young pigeons or two turtle-doves (Lev. xii. 6-8). In addition to animals, a considerable variety of objects is sacrificed, generally the fruits of the earth or flowers. There is, however, no limit to the number of things which may be held suitable for presentation to the gods. Thus, in Samoa (in Polynesia), the offerings were "principally cooked food" (N. Y. p. 241). In other Islands "the first fruits are presented to the gods" (Ibid., p. 327), a practice which corresponds, as the missionary who records it justly remarks, to that of the ancient Israelites. The Red Indians used to offer to their spirits "petun, tobacco, or birds." In honor of the Sun, and even of subordinate spirits, they would throw into the fire everything they were in the habit of using, and which they acknowledged as received from them (N. F., vol. iii. pp. 347, 348). Acosta divides the sacrifices of the Mexicans and Peruvians into three classes: the first, of inanimate objects; the second, of animals; the third, of men. In the first class are included cocoa, maize, colored feathers, seashells, gold and silver, and fine linen (H. I., b. v. ch. 18). Among the sacrifices offered by the Incas to the sun, the most esteemed, according to Garcilasso de la Vega, were lambs, then sheep, then barren ewes. Besides these, they sacrificed tame rabbits, all _edible_ birds (remark the limitation), and fat of beasts, as well as all the grains and vegetables up to cocoa, and the finest linen (observe again the care that it should be fine) (C. R., b. ii. ch. 8). At a certain Hindu festival described by Wilson, a goddess named Varadá Chaturthi "is worshipped with offerings of flowers, of incense, or of lights, with platters of sugar and ginger, or milk or salt, with scarlet or saffron-tinted strings and golden bracelets" (W. W., vol. ii. pp. 184, 185). Among the Parsees the sacrifices consist of little loaves of bread, and of Haoma, the sacred plant. The Indian Parsees send from time to time to Kirman to obtain Haoma-branches from this holy territory (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 535). The Parsees also offer flowers, fruits, rice, odoriferous grains, perfumes, milk, roots of certain trees, and meat. The Jews, like them, offered the productions of the soil in sacrifice.

Beauty, and even utility, when not accompanied by considerable value in exchange, do not suffice to constitute fitness for religious sacrifice. Common plants and shrubs, branches of trees, wild birds or insects, are some of them among the most beautiful productions of nature; yet they are not sacrificed. Stones and wood are both useful, but they are obtained, as a rule, at little cost; and they are not sacrificed. Flowers, which certainly have no high value, were sometimes offered to idols in the form of wreaths and garlands: they scarcely constitute an exception to the rule, for they are prized as ornaments by men, and the process of plucking and weaving them into appropriate shapes imposes trouble—the equivalent of cost—on the devotee. It is plainly not owing to any accidental circumstance that highly valuable objects have been selected by all the nations of the earth as alone appropriate for religious sacrifice. Two reasons may be assigned for this selection. In the first place, the general assimilation of deities to mankind goes far to account for it. Everywhere, and at all times—as we shall have occasion frequently to observe in this work—men have reasoned as to the divine nature from their knowledge of their own. A noteworthy instance of this is to be seen in Malachi, who does not scruple to tell the Jews that their God feels the same kind of offense at the poverty of their offerings as a human governor would do. "And if," says that prophet, "ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? _offer it now unto thy governor_; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the Lord of hosts." A few verses later he recurs to the sorrow felt by Jehovah at such insults. "And ye bring that which is robbed, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye bring an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrificeth unto the Lord a bad female." It would be difficult to find the theory of God's resemblance to man expressed in a cruder form. Even as a governor will show the greatest favor to those who approach him with the costliest gifts, so the mouthpiece of the Hebrew deity declares in his name that he must have the pick of his servant's flocks—the males, not the females, the sound and the perfect, not the sickly or the maimed. In a precisely similar spirit, it is enjoined in one of the sacred books of the Buddhists that no spoilt victuals or drinks may be used in sacrifice (Wassiljew, p. 211).

Men's notion of their god was often derived, like Malachi's, not only from human nature, but from those who were by no means the best specimens of human nature,—the rulers. The religious emotion, imbued with this conception of its deities, shrank through a sense of piety from the irreverent, and, as it seemed, sacrilegious act of presenting them with anything but the best. But there was another reason which, doubtless, had its weight. Not only must the offering be of a kind acceptable to the god to whom it was given; it must also impose some cost upon the worshiper. Religious sentiment imperatively required that there should be an actual sacrifice of something which the owner valued, and the surrender of which imposed a burden upon him. This seemed to be involved in the very notion of sacrifice. Its sense and purpose was, that the devotee, coming to his god, and desiring to obtain some favor from him, should show the high importance he attached to it by parting with some portion of his possessions. And plainly this portion must be such as to indicate by its character the esteem and reverence felt by the worshiper for the being whom he worshiped. To indicate this, it must be something which he would unwillingly resign but for his religious feelings. Hence a special part of the fruits of the soil would be an appropriate offering. It would involve a real diminution in the wealth of the worshiper, a real surrender of something useful and valuable to mankind. To these two reasons may be added a third, which, no doubt, must have had its weight. In many cases, a portion of the sacrifices was the property of the priests. As will be more fully shown hereafter, the priesthood frequently contrived to transfer to themselves the piety which was felt towards the gods. Hence the sacrifices, originally given to the divine beings, were in part appropriated by their ministers; and it was obviously of importance to them that the thing sacrificed should be such as they could profit by and enjoy.

It sometimes happens that the sacrifice, or a portion of it, is consumed either by the worshipers in general, or by their priests. A case of the former kind is mentioned by Oldendorp. When the young men among the Tembus (negroes) are going to battle, the old men offer sheep and hens to their god Zioo for their success; the blood and bowels they bestow upon Zioo, and the flesh they eat themselves (G. d. M., p. 330). Sometimes the thing sacrificed is itself regarded as an idol or god, and is eaten religiously, under a belief that it is a food of peculiar efficacy. Such is the case with the Christian sacrament; and such was the case, too, with the remarkable custom observed among the Mexicans at the feast of Vitziliputzli, where an idol composed of corn and honey used to be solemnly consecrated, and afterwards distributed to be eaten by the people, who received it with extreme reverence, awe, and tears, as the flesh and bones of the god himself (H. I., b. v. ch. 24). It is an exception, however, when the laity partake in the consumption of the sacrifices; they are generally reserved for the priests. Among the Jews, it was the privilege of the priests to eat certain portions of the animals brought for sacrifice; and in like manner the Parsee priest, or Zaota, eats the bread and drinks the Haoma (Av., vol. ii. p. lxxii). And it deserves especial mention, that the Haoma, a plant of which the juice is thus drunk in certain rites both in the Indian and the Parsee religions, is in both considered a god as well as a plant; just as the wine of the Christian sacrament is both the juice of the grape and the blood of the Redeemer (Av., vol. i. p. 8).

In the above cases, food consecrated to the gods is eaten by men. The converse practice, that of bestowing a portion of the ordinary food of men upon the gods, is also common. The habit of the ancients of making libations is well known. But the same practice has prevailed, or prevails still, in many distinct parts of the world. A traveler who visited Tartary in the thirteenth century states that it was the custom of the Tartar chiefs of one thousand or one hundred men, before they ate or drank anything, to offer some of it to an idol which they always kept in the middle of their dwelling place (Bergeron, Voyage de Carpin, art. iii., p. 30). In Samoa, when a family feast was held in honor of the household gods, "a cup of their intoxicating ava draught was poured out as a drink-offering" (N. Y., p. 239). Among the Soosoos, on the west coast of Africa, a custom prevails "which resembles the ancient practice of pouring out a libation: they seldom or never drink spirits, wine, etc., without spilling a little of it upon the ground, and wetting the gree-gree or fetish hung round the neck: at the same time they mutter a kind of short prayer" (N. A., p. 123). Again, in Sierra Leone, "when they want to render their devil propitious to any undertaking, they generally provide liquor: a very small libation is made to him, and the rest they drink before his altar" (S. L., p. 66). While in Thibet, "the execution by a Lama is not required for the usual libations to the personal genii, nor to those of the house, the country, etc., in whose honor it is the custom to pour out upon the ground some drink or food, and to fill one of the offering vessels ranged before their images before eating or drinking one's self" (B. T., p. 247).

Great importance is in all religions attached to sacrifice. It is universally supposed to conciliate, to soften, or to appease the deity in whose honor it is offered. Sometimes it is even conceived to have an actual material power of its own, the spirits deriving a positive benefit from the food presented to them. Spiegel states that the subordinate genii in the Parsee hierarchy of angels derive from the sacrifices strength and vigor to fulfil their duties (Av., vol. ii. p. lxiii). Generally, however, the conception of the influence of sacrifice is less materialistic. The Amazulus naively express the general sentiment by saying, that, in prospect of a battle, they sacrifice to their ancestors in order that they "may have no cause of complaint." Much more mystical were the views entertained on this point by the ancient Hindus, among whom the theory of sacrifice was probably more highly elaborated than in any other nation. Of a certain sacrificial ceremony it is stated, that the gods, after having performed it, "gained the celestial world. Likewise a sacrificer, after having done the same, gains the celestial world" (A. B., vol. ii. p. 22). And it is added, that the sacrificer who performs this rite "succeeds in both worlds, and obtains a firm footing in both worlds" (A. B., vol. ii. p. 25). While to another rite the following promise is attached: "He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is born (anew) from the womb of Agni and the offerings, and participates in the nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Sâman, the Veda (sacred knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element), and immortality, and is absorbed in the deity" (A. B., vol. ii. p. 51). Often it is the forgiveness of some offense that is sought to be obtained by pacifying the indignant deity with a gift. In the Jewish law a large portion of the sacrifices enjoined have this object. They are termed sin-offerings or trespass-offerings.

The general idea which leads to sacrifice is in all religions the same. Respect is intended to be shown to the deity in whose honor the sacrifice is made by depriving ourselves of some valuable possession, and bestowing it on him. The pleasure supposed to be felt by God on receiving such presents is somewhat coarsely but emphatically expressed in the Hebrew Bible by the statement that when Aaron had made a sacrifice in the wilderness there came a fire from the Lord and consumed the meat which had been laid upon the altar (Lev. ix. 24).

Christianity offers only an apparent exception to the rule of the universal predominance of this idea. We do not, indeed, find among Christians the periodical and stated offerings, either of animals or of the products of the soil, which exist elsewhere. Nevertheless, the idea of sacrifice subsists among them in all its force. Indeed, it is the fundamental conception of the Christian religion itself, in which the sacrifice of the founder upon the cross embodies all those notions which are held to legitimate the custom of sacrificing among heathen nations. We have first the notion of an angry and exacting deity, who can only be rendered placable towards mankind by the surrender to him of some valuable thing; we have, consequently, the sacrifice of the most valuable thing that can possibly be offered, namely, the life of a human being; we have, lastly, the belief that this sacrifice was accepted, and that promises of mercy were in consequence held out to the human race. By a peculiar exaltation of the idea, the life thus given up is declared to be that of his own son—a conception by which the value of the sacrifice, and consequently the advantages it is capable of procuring, are indefinitely heightened.

Thus the idea of sacrifice is carried to its extreme limits in the religion of Christendom. Had it not been for the absolute necessity of some sacrifice being offered to God, there would—according to the theory of the Christian faith—have been absolutely no reason for the execution of Christ. He might have taught every doctrine associated with his name, performed every miracle related in the Gospels, have drawn to himself every disciple named in them, and yet have died, like the Buddha, in the calm of a venerated and untroubled old age. He was obliged to undergo this painful and melancholy death, if we accept the general belief of Christendom, solely because God required a sacrifice, and because without that sacrifice he could not forgive the offenses of mankind.

Simple prayer and sacrifice are, then, the most primitive and most general methods by which man approaches those whom his nature impels him to worship. But as these acts are repeated from time to time, and as their frequent repetition is supposed to be highly agreeable to their objects, it naturally happens that some particular mode of performing them comes to be preferred to others. By and by, the mode of worship usually adopted will become habitual; and a habit once formed will be strengthened by every repetition of the acts in question. Not only will certain forms of prayer, certain ways of sacrificing, certain postures, certain gestures, and a certain order of proceeding become established as usual and regular, but they will be regarded as the only appropriate and respectful forms, every attempt to depart from them being treated as a sacrilegious innovation. The form will be deemed no less essential than the substance.

Hence Ritual, which we do not find in the most primitive religions, but which is discovered in all of those that have advanced to a higher type. Even in the earliest Vedic hymns—those of the Rig-Veda-Sanhitâ—we perceive clear traces of an established ritual from the manner in which the sacrifices are spoken of as having been duly offered. In the Zend-Avesta, elaborate ritualistic directions are given for certain specified purposes, especially for that of purification after any defilement. The oldest books of the Jewish Bible are in like manner full of instructions for the due observance of ritual. Both the Buddhists, who broke off from Brahminism, and the Christians, who made a schism from Judaism, established a ritual of their own; and this ritual was soon regarded as no less sacred than that which they had abandoned. Everywhere, when religion has passed out of its first unsettled condition, we find a fixed ritual, and its fixity is one of its most striking features. Dogmas, in spite of the efforts of sacerdotal orders, inevitably change. If the words in which they are expressed remain unaltered, yet the meaning attached to them continually varies. But ritual does not change, or changes only when some great convulsion uproots the settled institutions of the country. From age to age the same forms and the same prayers remain, sometimes long after their original meaning has been forgotten.

Thus prayer, ceasing to be spontaneous and irregular, becomes formal, ceremonial, and regular. And as there are many occasions besides sacrifice on which men desire to pray, so there will be many besides this on which the craving for order, and the readiness to believe that God is better pleased with one form of devotion than another, will lead to the establishment of ritual.

Rites may be performed daily, weekly, or at any other interval. Sometimes, indeed, they are still more frequent, haunting the every-day life of the devotee, and intruding upon his commonest actions. Thus the Parsees are required to repeat certain prayers on rising, before and after eating, on going to bed, on cutting their nails or their hair, and on several other natural occasions, besides praying to the sun three times a day (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 564-567). The Jews are encompassed with obligations which, if less minute, are of a like burdensome character. A devout Jew has to repeat a certain prayer on rising; he has to wear garments of a particular kind, and to wash and dress in a particular order (Rel. of Jews, p. 1-8). Mussulmans are commanded to pray five times a day, turning their faces towards Mecca (Sale, prel. discourse, pp. 76, 77).

Ritual, however, is not always of this purely personal nature, but is generally performed by a congregation to whose needs it refers, or by priests on their behalf. And in this case, again, a longer or shorter interval may elapse between the recurrence of the rites. In the Mexican temples, for instance, the ministering priests were in the habit of performing a service before their idols four times a day (H. I., b. v. ch. p. 14). "The perpetual exercise of the priests," says Acosta, speaking of these temples, "is to offer incense to the idols." The ritual of the Catholic Church, like that of the ancient Mexicans, is repeated every day. The morning and evening services of the Church of England were framed with the same intention; and the Ritualistic clergy, rightly conceiving the teaching of their Church, have introduced the practice of so employing them. Weekly or bi-monthly observances prevail among Hindus, Singhalese, Jews, and Christians. With the Hindus, the seventh lunar day, both during the fortnight of the moon's waxing and during that of her waning, is a festival, the first seventh day in the month being peculiarly holy, and observed with very special rites. More than this, the weekly period is known to them; for, according to Wilson, "a sort of sanctity is, or was, attached even to Sunday, and fasting on it was considered obligatory or meritorious" (W. W., vol. ii. p. 199). In Ceylon the people attend divine service twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays; besides which, there are in each month four days devoted to religious acts—the 8th, 15th, 23d, and 30th (A. I. C., pp. 222, 223; H. R. C., p. 76). The Jewish ritual differs on the Sabbath-day from that used on week-days; and such is the solemnity attached to this festival, that a quasi-personality is attributed to the day itself, which is exalted in the service for Friday evening as the bride of God, and which the congregation is invited to go in quest of, and to meet (Rel. of Jews, p. 128). A similar sanctity is considered by many Christians to pertain to the Sunday, while all of them observe it as an important festival, and mark it by peculiar rites. Friday, too, is regarded by the majority of Christians as a day to be observed with distinctive rites, of which fasting is the principal.

When the interval observed between the performance of certain rites exceeds some very short period—as a day or week—it is generally a year. In this case, the time, whether it be a month, a week, a few days, or any other period, set apart for their performance assumes the character of a Festival. Under the general term Festival I include any annually recurrent season, whether it be one of mourning or rejoicing, of fasting or feasting, which is consecrated by the observance of special ceremonies of a religious order. In all religions above the lowest stage such festivals occur. The time of their occurrence is generally marked out by the seasons of the year. Mid-winter, or the season of sowing; spring, or the time when the seed is in the ground or beginning to spring up; and autumn, when the harvest has been gathered in,—are the most natural seasons for festivals; and it is at these that they usually take place. For instance, Oldendorp states that nearly all the Guinea nations have an annual harvest-festival, at which solemn thank-offerings are presented to the Gods (G. d. M., p. 332). In China, this reference to the seasons is obvious. "At every new moon, and the change of the season, there are festivals." Of these, "the most imposing" is "the emperor's plowing the sacred field. This takes place when the sun enters the fifteenth degree of Aquarius." But the precise day is determined by astrologers. This is the winter festival, or that of sowing. The "Leih-chun, at the commencement of the spring, continues for ten days." And in autumn the feast of harvest is celebrated with great merriment (C. O., vol. ii. p. 195-199). The Parsees have numerous festivals, which it would be tedious to enumerate in detail (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 574-581.). After the Gahanbars, which refer to creation, the two principal ones are the No rouz and the Meherdjan, and of these Anquetil du Perron expressly states that the first originally corresponded to spring, and the second to Autumn (Ibid., vol. ii. p. 603). Of the Hindu festivals described by Wilson, by far the greatest are the Pongol, at the beginning of the year, and the Holi, in the middle of March (W. W., vol. ii. p. 151). Compared with these, the rest are insignificant; and these plainly refer to the processes of nature. That the great festivals of the Jews had the same reference, needs no proof; for the passover took place in spring, and the feast of Pentecost, as well as the feast of tabernacles, after harvest. Our Christmas and Easter correspond to the Pongol and Holi of the Hindus in point of time; and even the observances usual at Christmas have, as Wilson has pointed out, much resemblance to those of the Pongol.

There are in Ceylon five annual festivals, of which one, occurring at the commencement of the year (in April), is marked by the singular circumstance that "before New Year's day every individual procures from an astrologer a writing, fixing the fortunate hours of the approaching year on which to commence duties or ceremonies." Of the five festivals the most important was the Paraherra, which lasted from the new moon to the full moon in July, and consisted mainly in a series of religious processions, concluding with one in which the casket containing the Dalada, or tooth of Buddha, was borne upon an elephant. The fifth festival, called that of "New Rice," was held at the commencement of the great harvest, and was the occasion of offerings made with a view to good crops (E. Y., vol. i. p. 314-318).

The consecrated actions by which men seek to recommend themselves to their gods at these special seasons are very various. It would be useless to attempt to enumerate them at length. Of the manner in which New Year's day is observed among the Chinese (C. O., vol. ii. pp. 194, 195), the commencement of the year among Hindus (W. W., vol. ii. p. 158 ff.), and Christmas among ourselves, it will be unnecessary to speak at all, for there is little of a religious character in these festivals. Indeed, New Year's day in China seems to be a merely secular festival; while the Christmas season in European countries, though varnished over with a religious gloss, is in reality palpably one of popular rejoicing, handed down from our pagan ancestors, and placed in a legendary relation to the birth of Christ. The religious rites which may accompany this festival have therefore a secondary importance. Those observed at other times bear reference either to the frame of mind induced by the season, or to the particular legend commemorated; or they may be purely arbitrary and enjoined by ecclesiastical authority. An example of the first kind is the Jewish feast of tabernacles, when the harvest had been gathered in, and the Jews were enjoined to carry boughs of trees and rejoice seven days (Lev. xxiii. 40). Examples of the second class are common. Legends are frequently related in order to account for festivals, while sometimes festivals may be instituted in consequence of a legend. Thus, the extraordinary story of the manifestation of Siva as an interminable Linga, is told by the Hindus to account for their worship of that organ on the twenty-seventh of February (W. W., vol. ii. p. 211). In this case, the rites have reference to the legend; the setting up a Linga in their houses, consecrating, and offering to it, are ceremonies which refer to the event present in the minds of the worshipers; but it is more natural to suppose that the existence of the rites led to the invention of the legend, than that the legend induced the establishment of the rites. "The three essential observances," says Wilson, "are fasting during the whole Tithi, or lunar day, and holding a vigil and worshiping the Linga during the night; but the ritual is loaded with a vast number of directions, not only for the presentation of offerings of various kinds to the Linga, but for gesticulations to be employed, and prayers to be addressed to various subordinate divinities connected with Siva, and to Siva himself in a variety of forms" (Ibid., vol. ii. p. 212). At another of the Hindu festivals, the effigy of Kama is burnt, to commemorate the fact of that god having been reduced to ashes by flames from Siva, and having been subsequently restored to life at the intercession of Siva's bride (W. W., vol. ii. p. 231). In like manner the jesting of the Greek woman at the Thesmophoria was explained by reference to the laughter of Demeter (Bib., i. 5. 1.). The Jewish passover was eaten with rites which were symbolical of the state of the nation just before its escape from Egypt, the time to which their tradition assigned the original passover; and the ritual in use among Christians at Easter bears reference to the story of Christ's resurrection, which in this case no doubt preceded the institution of the festival. The third class of rites—those which are purely arbitrary or have a merely theological significance—are the most usual of all. These, as will be obvious at once, may vary indefinitely. Fasting is one of the most usual of such observances. It is practiced by the Hindus at many of their festivals, by Mussulmans during the month of Ramadan, and by Christians in Lent. Bathing is also a common religious practice of the Hindus at their festivals. The use of holy water by Catholics on entering their churches is a ceremony of a similar kind, and no doubt having the same intention, that of purification. The Jews were to sacrifice at all their festivals, and on one of them to afflict their souls (Lev. xxiii. 27). Christians, among whom there are very numerous festivals, vary their ritual according to the character of the day.

One or two specimens of the rites observed on festival days will suffice as an illustration. The Peruvians, in their pagan days, used to have festivals every month: the greatest of these was that of the Trinity, celebrated in December. "In this feast," says Acosta, "they sacrificed a great number of sheep and lambs, and they burnt them with worked and odoriferous wood; and some sheep carried gold and silver, and they placed on them the three statues of the Sun, and the three of Thunder; father, brother, and son, whom they said that the Sun and Thunder had. In this feast they dedicated the Inca children, and placed the Guacas, or ensigns on them, and the old men whipped them with slings, and anointed their faces with blood, all in token that they should be loyal knights of the Inca. No stranger might remain during this month and feast at Cuzco, and at the end all those from without entered; and they gave them those pieces of maize with the blood of the sacrifice, which they eat, in token of confederation with the Inca" (H. I., b. 5. ch. 27). Equally curious are the rites prescribed by the Catholic Church for Holy Saturday. They are much too long to be described in full, but the following extract will convey a notion of their character: "At a proper hour the altars are covered over, and the hours are said, the candles being extinguished on the altar until the beginning of mass. In the meanwhile, fire is struck from a stone at the church-door, and coals kindled with it. The none being said, the priest, putting on his amice, alb, girdle, stole, and violet pluvial, or without his capsula, the attendants standing by him with the cross, with the blessed water and incense, before the gate of the church, if convenient, or in the porch of the church, he blesses the new fire, saying, The Lord be with you; and the attendants reply, And with thy spirit." Prayers follow. "Then he blesses five grains of incense to be placed on the wax, saying his prayer." After the prayer, incense is put in the censer, and sprinkled with water. "Meanwhile, all the lights of the church are extinguished, that they may be afterwards kindled from the blessed fire." The candles are lighted with many ceremonies. The incense having been previously blessed, "the deacon fixes five grains of the blessed incense on the wax in the form of a cross." This wax is then lighted. When "the blessing of the wax taper" is finished, the prophets are read, and the catechumens during the reading are prepared for baptism.[2] These proceedings, in which the notion of the sanctity of fire—a notion shared by Roman Catholics with Parsees and others—is apparent, are particularly interesting, as showing the community of sentiment and of rites between the Church of Rome and her pagan predecessors.

In the instances hitherto given, the consecrated actions have been performed by the whole body of believers for the benefit of all. They are means by which their religious union among each other is strengthened, as well as their relation to the deity they worship solemnly expressed. But there is another class of consecrated actions which benefit, not the congregation or sect at large, but a particular individual for whose advantage they are performed. There are certain moments in the life of the individual at which he seems peculiarly to need the protection of God. Were these moments suffered to pass unobserved in a single case, it would appear as if he whose life had been thus untouched by religion stood outside the pale of the common faith, unhallowed and unblessed. And a total neglect of all these periods, even among savages, is, if not altogether unknown, at least so rare as to demand no special notice in a general analysis of religious systems. With extraordinary unanimity, those systems have pitched upon four epochs as demanding consecration by the observance of special rites. Two of them are thus consecrated wherever a definite religion exists at all. The other two are generally consecrated, though in their case exceptions more frequently occur. The four moments, or periods of life to which I refer, are

1. Birth. 2. Puberty. 3. Matrimony. 4. Death.

Of these, the first and fourth are never suffered to pass without religious observances, or at least, observances which, by their solemnity and indispensable obligation, approach to a religious character. The second is usually marked by some kind of rite in the case of males; in that of females it is often suffered to pass unobserved. The third is always placed under a religious sanction, except among savages of a very low order.

Let us proceed to illustrate these propositions in the case of birth. The ceremonies attendant upon this event need not take place immediately after it; they may be deferred some days, weeks, or months; they will still fall under the same category, as designed to mark the child's entry into the world. Their form will naturally vary according to the state of civilization of the nation observing them; but notwithstanding this there is a strange similarity among them. In Samoa, for instance, "if the little stranger was a boy, the umbilicus was cut on a club, that he might grow up to be brave in war. If of the other sex, it was done on the board on which they beat out the bark of which they make their native cloth. Cloth-making is the work of women; and their wish was, that the little girl should grow up and prove useful to the family in her proper occupation" (N. Y., p. 175). I have added Mr. Turner's observation to render the nature of this ceremony plainer. It appears hardly religious; yet when we consider the symbolical means by which the end is sought to be attained, and that among savages so rude as those of Polynesia religion would have no higher practical aims than to make the boys good warriors, and the women industrious cloth-makers, we may admit that even this elementary rite has in it something of a religious consecration. When secular objects are attained by mystical ceremonials, which have no direct tendency to produce the desired result, we may generally conclude that religious belief is at the bottom of them. In the present instance this conclusion is still further strengthened by the description given by the same author of a similar ceremony in another island of the Polynesian group. There, when a boy is born, "a priest cuts the umbilicus on a particular stone from Lifu, that the youth may be _stone_-hearted in battle. The priest, too, at the moment of the operation, must have a vessel of water before him, dyed black as ink, that the boy when he grows up, may be courageous to go anywhere to battle on a pitch-dark night, and thus, from his very birth, the little fellow is consecrated to war" (N. Y., pp. 423, 424). Here the religious nature of the operation is explicitly proved by the presence of the priest, the inevitable agent in such communications between God and man. Another missionary to the same race—the Polynesian islanders—informs us that among these people mothers dedicated their offspring to various deities, but principally to Hiro, the god of thieves, and Oro, the god of war. "Most parents, however, were anxious that their children should become brave and renowned warriors," and with this end they dedicated them, by means of ceremonies beginning before parturition, and ending after it, to the god Oro. The principal ceremony after birth consisted in the priest catching the spirit of the god, by a peculiar process, and imparting it to the child. Here again the presence of the priest, and the formal dedication to a god—even though he be a god of questionable morality—render the religious element in the natal ceremonies of these very primitive savages abundantly plain (N. M. E., p. 543).

Baptism, or washing at birth, is a common process, and is found in countries the most widely separated on the face of the earth, and the most unconnected in religious genealogy. Asia, America, and Europe alike present us with examples of this rite. It seems to be a rude form of it which prevails in Fantee in Africa, where the father, on the eighth day after birth, after thanking the gods for the birth of his child, squirts some ardent spirits upon him from his mouth, and then pronounces his name, at the same time praying for his future welfare, and "that he may live to be old, and become a stay and support to his family," and if his namesake be living, that he may prove worthy of the name he has received (Asha, p. 226). A rite of baptism at birth, says Brinton, "was of immemorial antiquity among the Cherokees, Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians," and this rite was "connected with the imposing of a name, done avowedly for the purpose of freeing from inherent sin, believed to produce a spiritual regeneration, nay, in more than one instance, called by an indigenous word signifying 'to be born again'" (M. N. W., p. 128). Mexico possessed elaborate rites to consecrate nativity. When the Mexican infant was four days old it was carried naked by the midwife into the court of the mother's house. Here it was bathed in a vessel prepared for the purpose, and three boys, who were engaged in eating a special food, were desired by the midwife to pronounce its name aloud, this name being prescribed to them by her. The infant, if a boy, carried with it the symbol of its father's profession; if a girl, a spinning-wheel and distaff, with a small basket and a handful of brooms, to indicate its future occupation. The umbilical cord was then offered with the symbols; and in case of a male infant, these objects were buried in the place where war was likely to occur; in case of a female infant, beneath the stone where meal was ground.[3] The above statements rest on the authority of Mendoza's collection. A still more complete narrative of these baptismal ceremonies is given by Bernardino de Sahagun, who records the terms of the prayers habitually employed by the officiating midwife. Their extreme interest to the study of comparative religion will justify me in extracting some of them, the more so as they have never (so far as I am aware) been published in English.[4]

Suppose that the infant to be baptized was a boy. After the symbolical military apparatus had been prepared, and all the relatives assembled in the court of the parents' house, the midwife placed it with the head to the East, and prayed for a blessing from the god Quetzalcoatl and the goddess of the water, Chalchivitlycue. She then gave it water to taste by moistening the fingers, and spoke as follows: "Take, receive; thou seest here that with which thou hast to live on earth, that thou mayest grow and flourish: this it is to which we owe the necessaries of life, that we may live on earth: receive it." Hereupon, having touched its breast with the fingers dipped in water, she continued: "Omictomx! O my child! receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, and by which our body grows and flourishes: it is to wash and to purify; may this sky-blue and light-blue water enter thy body and there live. May it destroy and separate from thee all the evil that was beginning in thee before the beginning of the world, since all of us men are subject to its power, for our mother is Chalchivitlycue." After this she washed the child's whole body with water, and proceeded to request all things that might injure him to depart from him, "that now he may live again, and be born again: now a second time he is purified and cleansed, and a second time our mother Chalchivitlycue forms and begets him." Then lifting the child in both hands towards the sky, she said: "O Lord, thou seest here thy child whom thou hast sent to this world of pain, affliction, and penitence: give him, O Lord, thy gifts and thy inspiration, for thou art the great God, and great is the goddess also." After this she deposited the infant on the ground, and then raising it a second time towards the sky, implored the "mother of heaven" to endow it with her virtue. Next, having again laid it down, and a third time lifted it up, she offered this prayer: "O Lords, the gods of heaven! here is this child; be pleased to inspire him with your grace and your spirit, that he may live on earth." After a final depositing she raised him a fourth time towards the sky, and in a prayer, addressed to the sun, solemnly placed him under the protection of that deity. Taking the weapons she proceeded further to implore the sun on his behalf for military virtues: "Grant him the gift that thou art wont to give thy soldiers, that he may go full of joy to thy house, where valiant soldiers who die in war rest and are happy." While all this was going on, a large torch of candlewood was kept burning; and on conclusion of the prayers the midwife gave the infant some ancestral name. Let it be Yautl (which means _valiant man_): then she addressed him thus: "Yautl! take thou the shield! take the dart! for those are thy recreation, and the joys of the sun." The completion of the religious office was signalized by the youths of the village coming in a body to the house and seizing the food prepared for them, which they called "the child's umbilicus." As they went along with this food they shouted out a sort of military exhortation to the new-born boy, and called upon the soldiers to come and eat the (so-called) umbilicus. All being over, the infant was carried back to the house, preceded by the blazing torch. Much the same was the process of baptizing a girl, except that the clothes and implements were suited to her sex. In her case, certain formularies were muttered by the midwife during the washing, in a low, inaudible tone, to the several parts of her body: thus she charged the hands not to steal, the secret parts not to be carnal, and so forth with each member as she washed it. Moreover, a prayer to the cradle, which seems in a manner to personify the universal mother earth, was introduced in the baptism of females (C. N. E. b. 6, chs. 37, 38).

If from heathen America we turn to Asia, we find that in the vast domain of the Buddhist faith the birth of children is regularly the occasion of a ceremony at which the priest is present (R. B. vol. i. p. 584,) and that in Mongolia and Thibet this ceremony assumes the special form of baptism. Candles burn, and incense is offered on the domestic altar; the priest reads the prescribed prayers, dips the child three times, and imposes on it a name (R. B. vol. ii. p. 320). A species of baptism prevails also among the Parsees, and was even enjoined by the Parsee Leviticus, the Vendidad. This very ancient code required that the child's hands should be washed first, and then its whole body (Av. vol. ii. p. xix—Vendidad, xvi. 18-20). The modern practice goes further. Before putting it to the breast, the Parsee mother sends to a Mobed (or priest), to obtain some Haoma juice; she steeps some cotton in it, and presses this into the child's mouth. After this, it must be washed three times in cow's urine, and once in water, the reason assigned being that it is impure. If the washing be omitted, it is the parents, not the child, who bear the sin (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 551).

Slightly different in form, but altogether similar in essence, is the rite administered by the Christian Church to its new-born members. Like those which have been just described, it consists in baptism; but it offers a more remarkable instance than any of them of the tenacity with which the human mind, under the influence of religious belief, insists upon the performance of some kind of ceremony immediately after, or, at the most, at no great interval after birth. Christian baptism was not originally intended to be administered to unconscious infants, but to persons in full possession of their faculties, and responsible for their actions. Moreover, it was performed, as is well known, not by merely sprinkling the forehead, but by causing the candidate to descend naked into the water, the priest joining him there, and pouring the water over his head. The catechumen could not receive baptism until after he understood something of the nature of the faith he was embracing, and was prepared to assume its obligations. A rite more totally unfitted for administration to infants could hardly have been found. Yet such was the need that was felt for a solemn recognition by religion of the entrance of the child into the world, that this rite, in course of time, completely lost its original nature. Infancy took the place of maturity; sprinkling of immersion. But while the age and manner of baptism were altered, the ritual remained under the influence of the primitive idea with which it had been instituted. The obligations could no longer be undertaken by the persons baptized; hence they must be undertaken for them. Thus was the Christian Church landed in the absurdity—unparalleled, I believe, in any other natal ceremony—of requiring the most solemn promises to be made, not by those who were thereafter to fulfil them, but by others in their name; these others having no power to enforce their fulfillment, and neither those actually assuming the engagement, nor those on whose behalf it was assumed, being morally responsible in case it should be broken. Yet this strange incongruity was forced upon the Church by an imperious want of human nature itself; and the insignificant sects who have adopted the baptism of adults have failed, in their zeal for historical consistency, to recognize a sentiment whose roots lie far deeper than the chronological foundation of Christian rites, and stretch far wider than the geographical boundaries of the Christian faith.

The intention of all these forms of baptism—that of Ashantee perhaps excepted—is identical. Water, as the natural means of physical cleansing, is the universal symbol of spiritual purification. Hence immersion, or washing, or sprinkling, implies the deliverance of the infant from the stain of original sin. The Mexican and Christian rituals are perfectly clear on this head. In both, the avowed intention is to wash away the sinful nature common to humanity; in both the infant is declared to be born again by the agency of water.

Another ceremony very frequently practised at the birth of children is circumcision. The wide-spread existence of this rite is one of the most remarkable facts in comparative religious history. We know from Herodotus, that it was practised by the Colchians, Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Phœnicians (Herod., ii. 104). It has been found in modern times, not only in many parts of Africa—to which it may have come from Egypt—but in the South Sea Islands and on the American continent. Thus, according to Beecham, there are "some people," among the Gold Coast Africans, who circumcise their children (Asha, p. 225), though what proportion these circumcisers bear to the rest of the population, he does not inform us. Another traveler describes the mode of circumcising infants in the Negro kingdom of Fida or Juda, a country to which he believes that Islamism has not penetrated (V. G. vol. ii. p. 159). The operation is very simple, and appears to be done without any religious ceremony; but the natives, when pressed as to the reason of the custom, can only reply that their ancestors observed it—an answer which would properly apply to a rite of religious origin whose meaning has been forgotten. Acosta, in his account of Mexican baptism, adds that a ceremony which in some sort imitated the circumcision of the Jews, was occasionally performed by the Mexicans in their baptism, principally on the children of kings and noblemen. It consisted in cutting the ears and private members of male infants (H. I., b. 5, ch. 26 No. 2). That the Jews circumcise their male children on the eighth day I need not state. The rite is performed with much solemnity, and is connected, as is common in these ceremonies, with the bestowal of a name on the child, the name being given by the father after the operation is over. Although circumcision is a ceremony which usually applies only to boys, and although it sometimes happens that the birth of girls is not marked like that of boys by any religious rite, yet the Jews do not omit to consecrate their female children as well as those of the stronger sex, though with less solemnity. "The first Saturday after the end of the month" of the mother's lying-in, she goes to the synagogue with her friends, where "the father of the girl is called up to the law on the altar, and there after a chapter hath been read to him as usual on the Sabbath morning, he orders the reader to say a Mee-Shabeyrach," or a prayer for a blessing (Rel. of Jews, p. 27 1st part).

It is unnecessary, after these instances, to describe the various modes of consecrating the commencement of life which are in use in other countries. Enough has been said to show how general, if not how universal, such consecrating usages are; how religion, supported by the sentiment of mankind, seizes upon the life of the individual from the first moments of his existence; and demands, as one of the very earliest actions to be performed on his behalf, a solemn recognition of the fact that he stands under the influence, and needs the protection, of an invisible and superhuman power.

After birth, the next marked epoch in life is the arrival at manhood or at womanhood. The transition from infancy to maturity, from dependence on others to self-dependence, from an unsexual to a sexual physical and mental condition, has, like the actual entrance upon life and departure from it, been appropriated by religion with a view to its consecration by fitting rites. Since there is no precise time at which the boy can be said to become a youth, or the girl a maiden, the age at which the ceremonies attending puberty are performed varies very considerably in different countries. The range of variation is from eight to sixteen, though there are exceptional cases both of earlier and later initiation into the new stage of existence. Generally speaking, however, these ages are the limits within which the religious solemnities of puberty are confined.

More clearly, perhaps, than any of those occurring at the other crises of our lives, these solemnities are pervaded by common characteristics. Primitive man in Australia, in America, and in Africa, marks the advent of puberty in a manner which is essentially the same. When we rise to the higher class of religions, we find ceremonies of a different kind from which the ruder symbolism of the savage creeds is absent. But from the uniformity of the types of initiation into manhood among uncivilized people, it is highly probable that the progenitors of the Aryan and Semitic races also, at some period of their history, employed similar methods of rendering this epoch in life impressive and remarkable. Two distinguishing features characterize the rites of puberty—cruelty and mystery. There is always some painful ordeal to be undergone by the young men or boys who have attained the requisite age; and this ordeal is to be passed through in extreme secrecy as regards the opposite sex, and with a ceremonial of an unknown character, which is hidden from all but the initiated performers. Sometimes the puberty of women is also sanctified by religious ceremonies, and these follow the same rules, except that the female sex are not required to undergo such severe suffering as is often inflicted upon men. While, however, the cruelty is less, the mystery is the same. Men are not admitted to witness the performances gone through, and these are conducted in secluded places to which no access is allowed.

The meaning of these two features of the rites of puberty is not difficult to divine. Young men enter at that age on a period of their lives in which they are expected to display courage in danger and firmness under pain. Hence the infliction of some kind of suffering is an appropriate symbolical preparation for their future careers. Moreover, the manner in which they endure their agony serves as a test of their fortitude, and may influence the position to be assigned to them in the warlike expeditions of the tribe. But the primary motive, no doubt, is the apparent fitness of the infliction of pain at an age when the necessary pains of manhood are about to begin.

The explanation of the secrecy observed is equally simple. A mysterious change takes place in the physical condition at puberty, the generative functions, which are to play so large a part in the life of the individual, making their appearance then. It is this natural process to which the religious process bears reference. Without doubt the rites performed stand in symbolical relation to the new class of actions of which their subject is, or will be, capable. It is this allusion to the sexual instinct—a subject always tending to be shrouded in mystery—which is the origin of the jealous exclusion of women from the rites undergone by men, and of men from those undergone by women. The members of each sex are, so to speak, prepared alone for the pleasures they are afterwards to enjoy together. Religion, ever ready to seize on the more solemn moments of our existence, seeks to consecrate the time at which the two sexes are ready to enter towards one another on a new and deeply important relationship.

Bearing these characteristics in mind, we may proceed to notice a few of the ceremonies performed at puberty. Let us begin with the most barbarous of all, those witnessed by Mr. Catlin among the Mandans, a tribe of North American Indians now happily extinct. The usual secrecy was observed about the "O-kee-pa," as this great Mandan ceremony is termed, and it was only by a favor, never before accorded to a stranger, that Mr. Catlin was enabled to be present in the "Medicine Lodge," where the operations were conducted. In the first place a mysterious personage, supposed to represent a white man, appeared from the west and opened the lodge. At his approach all women and children were ordered to retire within their wigwams. Next day the young men who had arrived at maturity during the last year were summoned to come forth, the rest of the villagers remaining shut up. After committing the conduct of the ceremonies to a "medicine man," this personage returned to the west with the same mystery with which he had come. The young men were now kept without food, drink, or sleep, for four days and four nights. In the middle of the fourth day two men began to operate upon them, the one making incisions with a knife in their flesh, and the other passing splints through the wounds, from which the blood trickled over their naked, but painted bodies. The parts through which the knife was passed were on each arm, above and below the elbow; on each leg, above and below the knee; on each breast, and each shoulder. The young men not only did not wince, but smiled at their civilized observer during this process. "When these incisions were all made, and the splints passed through, a cord of raw hide was lowered down through the top of the wigwam, and fastened to the splints on the breasts or shoulders, by which the young man was to be raised up and suspended, by men placed on the top of the lodge for the purpose. These cords having been attached to the splints on the breast or the shoulders, each one had his shield hung to some one of the splints: his _medicine bag_ was held in his left hand, and a dried buffalo skull was attached to the splint of each lower leg and each lower arm, that its weight might prevent him from struggling." At a signal, the men were drawn up three or four feet above the ground, and turned round with gradually increasing velocity, by a man with a pole, until they fainted. Although they had never groaned before, they uttered a heart-rending cry, a sort of prayer to the Great Spirit, during the turning. Having ceased to cry, they were let down apparently dead. Left entirely to themselves, they in time were able "_partly_ to rise," and no sooner could they do thus much than they moved to another part of the lodge, where the little finger of the left hand was cut off with a hatchet. But their tortures were not over. The rest of them took place in public, and were perhaps more frightful than any. The victims were taken out of the lodge, and, being each placed between two athletic men, were dragged along, the men holding them with thongs and running with them as fast as they could, until all the buffalo skulls and weights hanging to the splints were left behind. These weights must be dragged out through the flesh, the candidates having the option of running in the race described, or of wandering about the prairies without food until suppuration took place, and the weights came off by decay of the flesh. These horrors concluded, the young men were left alone to recover as best they might. Mr. Catlin could only hear of one who had died "in the extreme part of this ceremony," and his fate was considered rather a happy one: "the Great Spirit had so willed it for some especial purpose, and no doubt for the young man's benefit" (O-kee-pa, p. 9-32).

Nor were the Mandans alone on the American continent in marking the entrance upon manhood by distinctive observances. On the contrary, a writer of the highest authority on Red Indian subjects, states that no young man among the native tribes was considered fit to begin the career of life until he had accomplished his great fast. Seven days were considered the maximum time during which a young man could fast, and the success of the devotee was inferred from the length of his abstinence. These fasts, says Mr. Schoolcraft, "are awaited with interest, prepared for with solemnity, and endured with a self-devotion bordering on the heroic.... It is at this period that the young men and young women 'see visions and dream dreams,' and fortune or misfortune is predicted from the guardian spirit chosen during this, to them, religious ordeal. The hallucinations of the mind are taken for divine inspiration. The effect is deeply felt and strongly impressed on the mind; too deeply, indeed, ever to be obliterated in after life." It appears that they always in after life trust to, and meditate on, the guardian spirit whom they have chosen at this critical moment; but that "the _name_ is never uttered, and every circumstance connected with its selection, and the devotion paid to it, are most studiously and professedly concealed, even from their nearest friends" (A. R., vol. i. pp. 149, 150). Mystery is certainly pushed to its highest point, when the name of the spirit chosen at puberty, and the very circumstances of the choice, are preserved as an inviolable secret within the breast of the devotee.

New South Wales is distinguished by a ceremony which, though far less severe than that of the Mandans, is nevertheless sufficiently painful. "Between the ages of eight and sixteen the males and females undergo the operation which they term Gnanoong; viz., that of having the septum of the nose bored to receive a bone or reed.... Between the same years, also, the males receive the qualifications which are given to them by losing one front tooth." The loss of a tooth is not in itself a very serious matter, but the intention of the extraction being religious, the natives contrive to get rid of it in the most barbarous mode. The final event is led up to by a series of performances of a more or less emblematic nature. One of them, for instance, is supposed to give power over the dog; another refers to the hunting of the kangaroo. There is the usual mystery about some part of the proceedings. When the boys were being arranged for the removal of the tooth "the author [Collins] was not permitted to witness this part of the business, about which they appeared to observe a greater degree of mystery and preparation than he had noticed in either of the preceding ceremonies." After this, some of the performers in the rite went through a number of extraordinary motions, and made strange noises. "A particular name, _boo-roo-moo-roong_, was given to this scene; but of its import very little could be learned. To the inquiries made respecting it no answer could be obtained, but that it was very good; that the boys would now become brave men; that they would see well and fight well." When the tooth was to be taken out, the gum was first prepared by a sharply-pointed bone; and a throwing-stick, cut for the purpose with "much ceremony," was then applied to the tooth, and knocked against it by means of a stone in the hand of the operator. The tooth was thus struck out of the gum, the operation taking ten minutes in the case of the first boy on whom the author witnessed this process being performed. After the tooth was gone, "the gum was closed by his friends, who now equipped him in the style that he was to appear in for some days. A girdle was tied round his waist, in which was stuck a wooden sword; a ligature was bound round his head, in which were stuck slips of the grass-gum tree." The boy "was on no account to speak, and for that day he was not to eat." The sufferers in this ceremonial did not long remain quiescent. In the evening they had fresh duties to discharge. "Suddenly, on a signal being given, they all started up, and rushed into the town, driving before them men, women, and children, who were glad to get out of their way. They were now received into the class of men; were privileged to wield the sword and the club, and to oppose their persons in combat; and might now seize such females as they chose for wives." The sexual import of the ceremony is clearly brought into view by the last words of the writer. He adds that, having expressed a wish to possess some of the teeth, they were given him by two men with extreme secrecy, and injunctions not to betray them (N. S. W., p. 364-374).

Another observer has described the same rite as performed in a somewhat different manner, "by the tribes of the Macquarrie district" farther north. When these tribes assemble "to celebrate the mysteries of Kebarrah," as it is termed, all hostility which may exist at the time is laid aside for the nonce. "When the cooi or cowack sounds the note of preparation, the women and children in haste make their way towards the ravines and gulleys, and there remain concealed." The dentistry of these tribes is less scientific than that of New South Wales. The tooth is knocked out "by boring a hole in a tree, and inserting into it a small hard twig; the tooth is then brought into contact with the end, and one individual holds the candidate's head in a firm position against it, whilst another, exerting all his strength, pushes the boy's head forwards; the concussion causes the tooth, with frequently a portion of the gum adhering to it, to fall out." But this is not all the poor boy has to endure, for while "some men stand over him, brandishing their waddies, menacing him with instant death if he utters any complaint," others cut his back in stripes, and make incisions on his shoulders with flints. It is an interesting part of these ceremonies, that the least groan or indication of pain is summarily punished by the utterance, on the part of the operators, of three yells to proclaim the fact, and by the transfer of the boy to the care of the women, who are summoned to receive him. If he does not shrink, "he is admitted to the rank of a huntsman and a warrior" (S. L. A., vol. ii. p. 216-224).

In other parts of Australia, different ceremonies prevail. Thus, in one of the districts visited by Mr. Angas, when boys arrive at the age of fourteen or sixteen, they are "selected and caught by stealth," and the hairs of their body are plucked out, and green gum-bushes are placed "under the arm-pits and over the _os pubis_." Among the privileges conferred on those who have undergone this treatment, is that of wearing "two kangaroo teeth, and a bunch of emu feathers in their hair." More significant still is the permission to "possess themselves of wives," which the young men now obtain. The "scrub-natives" vary the initiation again. Among them the boy, brought by an old man, is laid upon his back in the midst of five fires which are lighted around him. An instrument, called a _wittoo wittoo_, is whirled round over the fires, with the intention of keeping off evil spirits. Lastly, "with a sharp flint, the old man cuts off the foreskin, and places it on the third finger of the boy's left hand, who then gets up, and with another native, selected for the purpose, goes away into the hills to avoid the sight of women for some time. No women are allowed to be present at this rite" (S. L. A., vol. i. pp. 98, 99).

Elsewhere on the same continent, there are three stages to be passed on the road from boyhood to manhood. At the age of twelve or fifteen the boys are removed to a place apart from the women, whom they are not permitted to see, and then blindfolded. Among some other ceremonies their faces are blackened, and they are told to whisper, an injunction peculiarly characteristic of the mysteriousness which is so constant a feature of the rites of puberty. For several months this whispering continues, and it is noteworthy, as a sign of the sexual nature of these proceedings, that the place where the whispers have been "is carefully avoided by the women and children." In the second ceremony, which occurs two or three years later, "the _glans penis_ is slit open underneath, from the extremity to the scrotum, and circumcision is also performed." After this second stage, the _Partnapas_, as the youths are now styled, "are permitted to take a wife." In the third ceremony each man has a sponsor, by whom he is tatooed with a sharp quartz. These sponsors, moreover, bestow on each lad a new name, which he retains during the remainder of his life. Certain other performances are gone through, such as putting an instrument termed a _witarna_ round the lads' necks, and then "the ceremony concludes by the men all clustering round the initiated ones, enjoining them again to whisper for some months, and bestowing upon them their advice as regards hunting, fighting, and contempt of pain. All these ceremonies are carefully kept from the sight of the women and the children; who, when they hear the sound of the _witarna_, hide their heads and exhibit every outward sign of terror" (S. L. A., vol. i. p. 113-116).

Leaving Australia, let us pass to Africa, and call Mr. Reade as a witness to some of the rites of puberty existing among the savages of that continent. The following extract is doubly interesting, as furnishing some account of the application to girls of the general principles involved in these rites, and also as supplying, in the author's opinion, that they are of a Phallic nature, a confirmation of the conclusions we had reached from a survey of the evidence as a whole:

"Before they are permitted to wear clothes, marry, and rank in society as men and women, the young have to be initiated into certain mysteries. I received some information upon this head from Mongilomba, after he had made me promise that I would not put it into a book: a promise which I am compelled to break by the stern duties of my vocation. He told me that he was taken into a fetich-house, stripped, severely flogged, and plastered with goat-dung; this ceremony, like those of Masonry, being conducted to the sound of music. Afterwards there came from behind a kind of screen or shrine uncouth and terrible sounds such as he had never heard before. These, he was told, emanated from a spirit called _Ukuk_. He afterwards brought to me the instrument with which the fetich-man makes this noise. It is a kind of whistle made of hollowed mangrove wood, about two inches in length, and covered at one end with a scrap of bat's wing. For a period of five days after initiation the novice wears an apron of dry palm leaves, which I have frequently seen.

"The initiation of the girls is performed by elderly females who call themselves _Ngembi_. They go into the forest, clear a place, sweep the ground carefully, come back to the town, and build a sacred hut which no male may enter. They return to the clearing in the forest, taking with them the _Igonji_, or novice. It is necessary that she should have never been to that place before, and that she fast during the whole of the ceremony, which lasts three days. All this time a fire is kept burning in the wood. From morning to night, and from night to morning, a _Ngembi_ sits beside it and feeds it, singing, with a cracked voice, _The fire will never die out!_ The third night is passed in the sacred hut; the _Igonji_ is rubbed with black, red, and white paints, and as the men beat drums outside, she cries, _Okanda, yo! yo! yo!_ which reminds one of the _Evohe!_ of the ancient Bacchantes. The ceremonies which are performed in the hut and in the wood are kept secret from the men, and I can say but little of them. Mongilomba had evidently been playing the spy, but was very reserved upon the subject. Should it be known, he said, that he had told me what he had missing, the women would drag him into a fetich-house, and would flog him, perhaps till he was dead.

"It is pretty certain, however, that these rites, like those of the Bona Dea, are essentially of a Phallic nature; for Mongilomba once confessed, that having peeped through the chinks of the hut, he saw a ceremony like that which is described in Petronius Arbiter....

"During the novitiate which succeeds initiation, the girls are taught religious dances—the men are instructed in science of fetich" (S. A., p. 245-247).

The Suzees and the Mandingoes, tribes of Western Africa, are distinguished by a rite which, so far as I know, is peculiar—the circumcision of women. Both sexes, indeed, are circumcised on reaching puberty, and in the case of the girls it is done "by cutting off the exterior part of the clitoris." With a view to this ceremony, "the girls of each town who are judged marriageable are collected together, and in the night preceding the day on which the ceremony takes place, are conducted by the women of the village into the inmost recesses of a wood." Surrounded by charms to guard every approach to the "consecrated spot," they are kept here in entire seclusion for a month and a day, visited only by the old woman who performs the operation. During this close confinement they are instructed in the religion of their country, which hitherto they have not been thought fit to learn. A most singular scene is enacted at its close. They return to their homes by night, "where they are received by all the women of the village, young and old, quite naked." In this condition they go about till morning, with music playing; and should any man be indiscreet enough to imitate Peeping Tom, he is punished by death or the forfeiture of a slave. After another month of parading and marching in procession (no longer nude) the women are given to their destined husbands;—another plain indication of the nature of these rites. In such veneration is this ceremony held among the women of the country, that those who have come from other parts, and are already in years, frequently submit to it to avoid the reproaches to which uncircumcision exposes them. Indeed, "the most vilifying term they can possibly use" is applied by the circumcised female population to those who do not enjoy their religious privileges (S. L., p. 70-83).

Puberty is recognized in much the same way among the South Sea Islanders. Thus, in Tanna "circumcision is regularly practised about the seventh year" (N. Y., p. 87). In Samoa "a modified form of circumcision prevailed," which boys of their own accord, would get performed upon themselves about the eighth or tenth year (Ib., p. 177). It may be a faint beginning of the religious ceremonies of this period of life that, in the same island, when girls are entering into womanhood, their parents invite all the unmarried women of the settlement to a feast, at which presents are distributed among them. At least it is worthy of remark that "none but females are present" on these occasions (Ib., p. 184).

When we rise higher in the scale of culture, we no longer find the painful rites by which savage nations mark the appearance of the sexual instinct. The sacred ceremony of investiture with the thread, which distinguished the twice-born classes among the Hindus, was performed at this age. The code of Manu is explicit on the subject. "In the eighth year from the conception of a Brahman, in the eleventh from that of Kshatriya, and in the twelfth from that of a Vaisya, let the father invest the child with the mark of his class." In the case of children who desire to advance more rapidly than usual in their vocation, "the investiture may be made in the fifth, sixth, or eighth years respectively. The ceremony of investiture hallowed by the gayatri must not be delayed, in the case of a priest, beyond the sixteenth year; nor in that of a soldier beyond the twenty-second; nor in that of a merchant beyond the twenty-fourth." Further postponement would render those who were guilty of it outcasts, impure, and unfit to associate with Brahmans (Manu, ii. 36-40).

Members of the kindred Parsee religion become responsible human beings after they have been girt with the kosti, or sacred girdle. The age at which this took place was formerly fifteen; and after they had once put them on, the Parsees might not remove their girdles, except in bed, without incurring serious guilt. This regulation applied equally to both sexes. Modern usage has advanced the investiture with the kosti to a much earlier period. It takes place in India at seven, and in Kirman at nine. In India, the child is held responsible in the eighth or tenth year for one half of its sins, the parents bearing the burden of the other half (Av., vol. i. p. 9; vol. ii. pp. 21, 22).

The young Jew "is looked upon as a man" at the age of thirteen, and is then bound "to observe all the commandments of the law." At this age he becomes "Bar-mizva," or a son of the law; that is, he enters on his spiritual majority (Picard, vol. i. ch. x. p. 82). Christian nations signalize the advent of the corresponding epoch by admitting those who attain it to the Sacrament of the Lord's supper, and to confirmation. At puberty they are considered, like the young Parsees, responsible for the sins which at their birth their sponsors took upon themselves, and at puberty they are admitted, like the Jews, to the full privileges of their faith, by being allowed to partake in the mystic benefits conferred by the celebration of the death of Christ in the Holy Communion.

After puberty the two sexes enter on a new relation towards one another; and though the instinct by which this relation is established is extremely apt to break loose from the control of religion, yet the latter always attempts more or less energetically to bring it within its grasp. This it does by confining the irregular indulgences to which the sexual passion is prone within the legalized forms of matrimony. To matrimony, and matrimony alone, it gives its sanction; and accordingly it confers a peculiar sacredness upon this form of cohabitation, by the performance of ceremonies at its outset. Such ceremonies are not indeed equally universal with those of birth and puberty. Among savage and slightly civilized communities we do not find them. But in all the great religions of the world they are firmly established.

Little of a distinctively religious character is perceptible in Major Forbes's account of marriage rites in the island of Ceylon. Yet it is plain that Singhalese marriages do stand under a religious sanction, for in the first place an astrologer must examine the horoscopes of the two parties, to discover whether they correspond, and then the same functionary is called upon to name an auspicious time for the wedding. On the day of its occurrence a feast is given at the bride's house, and "on the astrologer notifying that the appointed moment is approaching, a half-ripe cocoa-nut, previously placed near the board with some mystical ceremonies, is cloven in two at one blow" (E. Y., vol. i. p. 326-332).

Turning from southern to northern Buddhism, we find Köppen asserting that in Thibet and the surrounding countries, marriage consists solely in the private contract, yet adding that none the less the lamaist clergy find business to do in regard to engagements and weddings. The priests alone know whether the nativity of the bride stands in a favorable relation to that of the bridegroom, and if not, by what ceremonies and sacrifices misfortune may be averted; they alone know the day that is most suitable and propitious for the wedding; they give the bond its consecration and its blessing by burning incense and by prayer (R. B., vol. ii. p. 321).

The Code of Manu is not very clear as to the sort of marriages sanctioned by religion; some irregular connections apparently receiving a formal recognition, though regarded with moral disapprobation. The system of caste, moreover, introduces a confusing element, since the nuptial rites are permitted, by some authorities, to become less and less solemn as the grade of the contracting parties becomes lower. This opinion having been mentioned, however, the legislator adds, that "in this Code, three of the five last [forms of marriage] are held legal, and two illegal: the ceremonies of Pisachas and Asuras must never be performed." Of the two prohibited forms, the first is merely an embrace when the damsel is asleep, drunk, or of disordered intellect; the second is when the bride's family, and the bride herself, have been enriched by large gifts on the part of the bridegroom. Strangely enough, this regulation does not exclude the marriage called Gandharva, which is "the reciprocal connection of a youth and a damsel, with mutual desire," and is "contracted for the purpose of amorous embraces, and proceeding from sexual inclination." Nor does it forbid forcible capture. But a little further on, the code encourages the more regular modes of marrying by promising intelligent, beautiful, and virtuous sons to those who observe them; and threatening those who do not with bad and cruel sons. It is then stated that "the ceremony of joining hands is appointed for those who marry women of their own class, but with women of a different class" certain ceremonies, enumerated in the Code, are to be performed (Manu, iii. i. 44). It is probable that this Code was never actually the law of any part of India; but it is none the less interesting to see the legislator striving to bring the lawless passions with which he is dealing under the supervision of religion.

An elaborate blessing and exhortation, beginning with the words "In the name of God," is appointed in the Zend-Avesta for the nuptial ceremonial. While marriages among Jews and Christians are, as is well known, inaugurated by solemn religious rites, and all unions not thus consecrated are, at least by the formal judgment of their respective creeds, pronounced unholy, sinful, and impure.

Death, like marriage, is held among all religions but the lowest to call for the performance of befitting rites. In these it is usually noticeable that much regard is paid to the manner in which the deceased is placed in the grave, this circumstance indicating as a general rule some form of the belief in his continued existence. Thus, Lieut.-Colonel Collins, describing the burial of a boy in New South Wales, observes that "on laying the body in the grave, great care was taken so to place it that the sun might look at it as it passed, the natives cutting down for that purpose every shrub that could obstruct the view. He was placed on his right side, with his head to the N. W." (N. S. W., p. 387-390).

If there is little trace among the rude population of this colony of a religious ceremony at the interment, we find the position of religion distinctly recognized by the natives of some parts of Africa. Oldendorp tells us of the tribes with which he was acquainted, that the funeral rites are performed by the priests, who are richly rewarded for the service. Not only are animals sacrificed at the graves, but in the case of men of rank their wives and servants are (as is well known) slaughtered to attend them (G. d. M., p. 313-317). In Sierra Leone, where "every town or village, which has been long inhabited, has a common burial-place," there is the usual attention to position in the grave. "The head of the corpse, if a man, lies either east or west; if a woman, it is turned either to the north or south. An occasional prayer is pronounced over the grave, importing a wish that God may receive the deceased, and that no harm may happen to him." Moreover, there is a ceremony which appears to be a sort of sacrifice to the manes. "A fowl is fastened by the leg upon the grave, and a little rice placed near it; if it refuse to eat the rice, it is not killed; but if it eat, the head is cut off, and the blood sprinkled upon the grave; after which it is cooked, and a part placed on the grave, the remainder being eaten by the attendants." A tribe called the Soosoos "bury their dead with their faces to the west" (S. L., vol. i. pp. 238, 239).

Sometimes we meet with the opinion that the entire removal of the deceased from his accustomed place of abode on earth depends upon due attention to the rites of interment. A primitive form of this wide-spread belief—which lingers as a survival even in Christendom—is observable in Polynesia. In Samoa, "in order to secure the admission of a departed spirit to future joys, the corpse was dressed in the best attire the relatives could provide, the head was wreathed with flowers, and other decorations were added. A pig was then baked whole, and placed upon the body of the deceased, surrounded by a pile of vegetable food." The corpse is then addressed by a near relation, who desires it with the property thus bestowed to make its way into "the palace of Tiki," and not to return to alarm the survivors. If nothing happened within a few days, the deceased was supposed to have got in; but a cricket being heard on the premises was taken as an ill omen, and led to the repetition of the offering.

Elsewhere in the same group of islands "more costly sacrifices" were presented to the gods of the celestial regions. At least at the interment of a chief it was customary for his wives to sit down severally near his body, to be strangled, and then buried along with him. "The reasons assigned for this are, that the spirit of the chief may not be lonely in its passage to the invisible world, and that by such an offering its happiness may be at once secured" (N. M. E., pp. 145, 146).

Funeral ceremonies in Mexico were performed by priests and monks, and varied in splendor according to the rank of the deceased. Offices were chanted at the graves, and at the burial of persons of quality slaves were killed to serve them in the next world. Moreover, so sensible were the Mexicans to the importance of religion in all states of being, that even the domestic chaplain was not omitted; a priest being slaughtered to accompany his lord in that capacity (H. I., b. v. ch. viii).

In Ceylon, a dying relative is taken to a detached apartment, where he is placed with his head towards the East. After death the body is turned with the head towards the West, and in the grave this position is preserved. Bodies of priests, and persons of the highest rank, are burned, and during the process of cremation the officiating priest "repeats certain forms of prayer." The same functionary returns to deliver "some moral admonitions" after seven days, when the friends revisit the pyre to collect the ashes (E. Y., pp. 334, 335).

Notwithstanding the fact that in countries professing the lamaistic form of Buddhism dead bodies are unceremoniously exposed to the open air, and left as a prey to birds or dogs, the mortality of the laity "forms, with their sicknesses, the richest source of income for the priests." A great deal, says the author from whom we draw this information, depends on the separation of soul and body taking place according to rule; and it is important that the spirit should not injure those who are left, and should meet with a happy re-birth. The Lama therefore attends the death-bed, takes care to place the deceased in the correct position, and observes the hour of departure. An operation is then performed on the skin of the head, which is supposed to liberate the soul. What rites are now to be performed, how the body is to be disposed of, towards what quarter it is to be turned, and various other details, depend on astrological combinations known only to the clergy. But their most important and profitable business is the repetition of masses, for the dead, which are designed to pacify the avenging deities, and to help the soul towards as favorable a career as is possible for it. The length of time during which these masses are said varies with the wealth of the survivors; poor people obtaining them for a few days only; the richer classes for seven weeks; and princes being able to assist the spirits of their relations for a whole year (R. B., vol. ii. p. 323-325).

Among the Parsees the cemeteries consist of desolate, open places, on which the corpses are deposited and left exposed to the air. These places are called Dakhmas, and are carefully consecrated by the priests with an elaborate ceremonial. The position of the dead in the Dakhmas is fixed by the religious law. Their dying moments and those that succeed upon death are watched over by the Parsee faith, which has determined the prayers to be repeated during the last hour of life; before the body is placed upon the bier; when it is carried out; on the way to the Dakhma, and at the Dakhma itself. The ceremonies required on these occasions must be performed by the Maubads, or priests. But the due disposal of the body by no means concludes the duties of relations towards the dead. The welfare of the soul also demands numerous prayers. Being supposed to linger for three days in the immediate neighborhood of the corpse, it is the object during that time of especial attention, and the rites then performed may be of use to it in the judgment which takes place on the fourth day. Prayers are to be recited, and offerings made on the 30th and 31st day after death, and even then the ceremonies attending the close of mortal existence are not concluded, for it is necessary after the lapse of a year again to celebrate the memory of the departed. Moreover, the 26th chapter of the Yasna, a hymn of praise and blessing, is to be said every day during the year before eating (Av. vol. ii. p. xxxii-xlii).

Masses for the dead are no less common in Christian countries (save where the Protestant faith is professed), than among Buddhists and Parsees. Their object also is precisely the same; namely, the welfare of the soul which has quitted its earthly home to enter on a new form of being. And although no such prayers are repeated in Protestant communities, yet there can be no doubt that interment in due form, and with due solemnity, is held by the people, even in England, to benefit the soul in some undefined way. Nor is any portion of the ritual of the English Church more impressive than that passage in the Burial Service where the officiating priest consigns "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ."

But it is not only the due performance of these last rites which popular opinion associates with the prospect of salvation in the world to come. As in other religions, so in that of our own country, the position of the body in the tomb is deemed to be of vast importance. The head must be westward and the feet eastward, the nominal reason being that the dead person should rise from his temporary abode with his face to the east, whence Christ will come; the real reason being in all probability the survival of a much older custom, in which that venerable divinity, the Sun, stood in the place of the Savior of mankind.