were not always or necessarily new religions, for in them the old gods of the nation might still be worshipped, though with new rites. They can scarcely be called sects even, for their members were not required to give up the ordinary hereditary worship of the state to which they belonged. But the idea was now for the first time expressed in action that a man could belong to a religious community which was distinct from the state. The possibility of choice between the worship to which he was born and another was now before him. Freedom of choice entails personal responsibility for the choice made, and makes it necessary that the man should decide between competing claims in the tribunal of his own heart and conscience. Such reflection and judgment in matters religious eventually deprive a traditional and hereditary religion of much of the advantage which, in its competition with newer forms, it derives from the fact that it is hereditary and traditional; and the habit of reflection, even if it finds none of the newer forms acceptable, carnot fail to reveal some of the weak points in the older. Thus the innovations of the sixth century in course of time contributed their share to the disintegration of the antique religions and to the preparation of the soil for the reception. of Christianity; and no one who reflects how great is the strength of custom and tradition, and how slow is the growth of the critical faculty, will consider the time too long for the effect. Rather the marvel is, first that a new form of religious communion should ever have arisen, and next that it should have been allowed by the dominant religions to exist for so long. These, then, are the two points that we

must begin with.

The new movement had its origin in the Semitic area of the ancient civilised world, and in the national calamities which befell the Northern Semites in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. The strength of the national religions of antiquity lay largely in the fact that they were national. But in that fact there also lurked the possibility of danger. As long as the nation prospered, the relations between the national gods and their worshippers were taken to be satisfactory; but when political disaster overtook the state, 1 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 357 ff.

the inference was that the national gods were unwilling or unable to protect their worshippers. The worshipper might therefore seek to avert the divine wrath or he might seek to flee it; but either course was bound to introduce modifications into the national religion and to mark a new departure, for in either case the worshipper sought for closer communion, whether with the national or other and more powerful gods. The consequences of the closer attention thus concentrated on the facts of the religious consciousness and the inner revelation thereby gained were twofold. First, in the place of the gloomy anticipations of a dismal abode after death in Sheol, a confidence and hopefulness with regard to the future life began to manifest themselves, which find their highest expression, "with extraordinary splendour,"1 in the Psalms. The second consequence was one which affected in various ways and degrees the conception and performance of the central rite of religion, the act of sacrifice.

Amongst the Hebrews, the effect produced upon the more spiritual minds took the form of the conviction that animal sacrifice was valueless and meaningless. The gift theory of sacrifice, the idea that the worshipper presented offerings in return for which he was entitled to receive. blessings, already stood condemned. Now it became clear that communion with God was not to be effected by the blood of bulls and rams, or by any physical, mechanical means; and the necessity of the sacrifice of a broken and contrite spirit was inculcated. This, however, did not satisfy the yearnings of those whose faith required for its support the performance of some outward and visible act of worship. They felt, as men always have felt, that sacrifice, to be real, to be perfect and complete, must be in some sense external to themselves. They were warned by their national calamities, the tokens of divine wrath, that the sacrifices which they had customarily offered were not an adequate means of communion. But the Northern Semites were incapable of rising to the height of the more spiritual minds amongst the Hebrews, and of casting aside animal sacrifice; and they followed a via media. The customary sacrifices they abandoned, and they sought for other forms of sacrifice, 1 Mr. Gladstone in the North American Review for March 1896.

unusual, extraordinary, and therefore presumably more potent. Such sacrifices, owing to the uneven rate at which religion progresses in different districts, were forthcoming. Even where religion generally had advanced far beyond the stage of animal-worship, survivals of such worship were to be found here and there in out-of-the-way and backward places. Generally, all that was left of the religious respect paid to the original animal god was a vague feeling that the creature was not to be touched by man—was "unclean." But at some obscure sanctuaries and in some unprogressive rituals the animal still continued to be offered in sacrifice; and though the fact that the animal had once been a god might have disappeared from memory, the sacrifice of an animal almost universally held to be unclean would be deemed mysterious by all and by some even offensive. It was therefore to such "abominations" as the sacrifice of dogs, swine, mice, and horses that the Northern Semites resorted in order to avert the divine wrath. In some cases this revival of ancient modes of religion was carried still further; and a direct reversion to the primitive conception of sacrifice produced a new form of religious community. Where the bond of blood-relationship is the only tie which holds a community together, such expressions as that the tribesmen are of one blood or one flesh are understood literally, in the most concrete, physical sense; and it is to the joint meals of the clansmen as much as to their common origin that this physical unity of the kin is ascribed. To the Arab the life of the stranger who partakes of his meal is, for a time at anyrate, sacred, because for the time he becomes of one blood with him. The same view as to the effect of commensality is at the bottom of the Roman confarreatio, and is implied in the Greek worship of Zeus Xenios. In the case of the sacrificial meal the bond created between the participants was one of peculiar force and sanctity, because all became partakers in the divine life of the sacred animal. This conception had indeed, as a rule, been obliterated in course of time by the growth of the gift theory of sacrifice and the degradation of the animal from its original sanctity to the level of a mere chattel. But the spread of the gift theory had not been so uniform or so complete as entirely

and everywhere to destroy the original sacramental character of the sacrificial meal, and accordingly it becomes a prominent and indeed in its consequences the most important feature of the religious revivalism of the sixth century B.C. Hitherto the only religious organisation to which a man could belong had been the kin or community into which he was born ; and now that the political disasters which threatened the very existence of the political community testified to the permanent estrangement of the gods of the community from their worshippers, men's minds were roused to look about for some other religious community in which to find shelter from the divine wrath. No such organisation was in existence, or rather those which existed were not available, for strange gods had each his own circle of worshippers closed to all outside it and open only to those born into it. But though no open circle was in existence, the unifying efficacy of the sacrificial meal made it possible to form one; and in it we have the principle of voluntary religious associations, which were (unlike that of the community) open to all, and membership in which did not depend upon birth, but was constituted by partaking in the divine life and blood of the sacred animal.

Thus in the Semitic area the characteristic features of the new movement of the sixth century B.C. were, first, a tendency to discard the gift theory of sacrifice and seek a closer communion with God; next, a more hopeful view of the life after death. The gift theory might be discarded in favour either of the sacrifice of a contrite heart, or of the mystic sacrifice of a divine animal, or of religious association constituted by the participation in the divine life of the sacred animal; but in any case the effort to draw nearer to God was accompanied and marked by the greater confidence with which man looked forward to the next world. word, a religious basis was henceforth provided for that belief in immortality which in its original shape had rather belonged to primitive philosophy. In that respect the new movement rose superior to the eschatology of the Egyptian and Indian religions, for the eschatology of both was not generated by the religious spirit, but was due to the incorporation of early philosophical speculations into those religions-an incorpora

In a

tion which eventually in Egypt led to the denial of individual immortality, and in India to the Buddha's denial of the existence of the soul at all. But though hopefulness as to the future world was now associated with and conditional on spiritual communion in this life, the attempt to bring the religious belief in the future life into relation with the central rite of religion, sacrifice, was either not made or was made prematurely. Where animal sacrifice was discarded, no external sacrificial rite was left with which the belief I could be connected. Where mystic sacrifices were revived, the belief was indeed associated with the rite, but the association was premature, because the rite itself had no permanent vitality: the reversion to mystic sacrifices merely escaped from the error of the gift theory to fall into a recrudescence of barbarous ritual acts, such as those of dismembering the divine animal and drinking its blood.

1

The wave of religious revivalism which had its centre of diffusion in the Semitic area, was speedily propagated over the Greek cities of Asia Minor, over Hellas itself, and finally over Italy. The widespread conviction amongst the Northern Semites that divine wrath could be averted by extraordinary, piacular sacrifices, was one easily communicated and readily picked up and conveyed to Greece by individuals. And it was probably in the form of purificatory ceremonies and sacrifices that the new movement first travelled to Greece. Thus it was from Crete that the Athenians, for instance, in B.C. 596 summoned Epimenides to purify their city, when they wished to cleanse themselves from the pollution caused by the murder of Cylon's followers at the altars of the gods. He ordered sheep, black and white, to be driven in all directions from the Acropolis; and when they had wandered as far as they would, they were to be sacrificed wherever they lay down; and the altars on which they were to be immolated were not to be dedicated to any known god by name, but simply to the proper deity.2 Hence, long after, altars might be found in various places in Attica which bore no dedication, and were therefore popularly known as the nameless altars or as altars of the unknown gods.

1 Aristotle, 'Αθ. πολ. c. 1.

2 Т πроσýкоνт, Diog. Lært. i. 110 and 112.