attempts failed to produce a faith capable of satisfying the religious consciousness, the first fact that strikes us is that they were premature. While the continuance theory was still so strong in its hold upon the minds of men that they could conceive no future life except as an exact reproduction of the conditions and activities of this life, the retribution theory was fused with it, so that the rewards and punishments were pictured in the grossest and most materialistic fashion. On the other hand, before the belief that man must undergo a posthumous transformation had been dissociated from the idea of transformation into animal or plant form, it was infused with the retribution theory, so that the soul could not escape from a material body on this view, any more than from its material occupations and delights on the other. A further reason why these attempts failed to satisfy the religious consciousness, is that they did not proceed from it: they were in their origin the speculations of primitive philosophy. They were indeed adopted into religion, but, in the case both of India and Egypt, they were fatal to it. The after-death communion with God which they offered was either purely formal and external, as must be the case when there are many gods for the soul to meet; or absolute absorption and extinction. That communion during life was at once a condition and an anticipation of what was to be hereafter, was a conception which could not arise where sacrifice had degraded into the giving of something in order to get more. In other words, no religious synthesis of the elements of belief in a future state could be effected as long as, on the one hand, that belief was out of relation to the central act of worship, the sacrificial meal; or as long, on the other hand, as the sacramental character of that act was obscured. We have therefore to consider in the next chapter how far these two conditions were fulfilled by the religious movements amongst the Greeks and Jews from the sixth century B.C. onwards.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MYSTERIES

THE sixth century B.C. shows a hitherto unheard-of and inconceivable innovation in religion. Hitherto the only circle of worshippers conceivable had been one the members of which were united by blood; the only religious community to which a man could belong was that into which he had been born. In the nomad stage of society the tribal god was worshipped by the members of the tribe and by them alone: the same hostility to all other tribes which made "strangers synonymous with "enemies" made it impossible for any but the tribe to approach the tribal god. The tribe, and therefore the worshippers of the god, consisted only of those born into the tribe. Even when circumstances compelled the tribe to abandon its nomad habits, to settle finally in one local habitation, and to form a permanent fusion, social, political, and religious, with its neighbours, the new and enlarged community thus formed consisted exclusively of the members of the amalgamating tribes and their blooddescendants: citizenship-membership of the new political community-was an inherited privilege; and the only gods whose cults were open to a man were those of the state to which he belonged by birth. On the one hand, the local cults were jealously closed to all but citizens of the place. On the other, the citizen was not free to choose his religion: the only gods to whom he had access were those of the community into which he was born.

But in the sixth century B.C. we find in the ancient world new rites and cults arising which differ from all previous ones, first in that they were open to all men, and next in that membership was voluntary and spontaneous. They

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, cannot 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.1 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