WORSHIP.
- Definition (§ 1).
- Necessity of Study of Primitive. Religions (§ 2).
- Widely Divergent Theories of Comparative Religion (§ 3).
- The Theory of Fear (§ 4).
- The Theory of Love (§ 5).
- Rival Theories of Order of Development (§ 6).
- Caution Requisite in Constructing Theories (§ 7).
- Probable Origin of Worship (§8 ).
- The Earliest Forms of Worship (§ 9).
- Worship and the Kingship (§ 10).
- Relation of Fetishism to Worship (§ 11).
- Ancestor Worship (§ 12).
- Worship of Trees and Plants (§ 13).
- Worship of Life-Giving Forces (§ 14).
- Communal Worship (§ 15).
- Associational Cults (§ 16).
- Joyous Character of Primitive Worship (§ 17).
- Propitiatory and Apotropaic Worship (§ 18).
- The Greek Mysteries (§ 19).
- Influence of subjectivity on Worship <§ 20).
- Justification of Christian Analogies with Judaea-Ethnic Cults (§ 21).
- Eucharistic Worship; Latria and Dulls (§ 22).
- The Ethical Aspect of Worship (§ 23).
1. Definition.
Worship may be defined as the acknowledgment by some formal act of mind or body, or both, of God's supreme dominion, or (among pagans) of the exalted power of some divine or semi-divine being. In older English the word was used in a less limited sense, denoting honor or reverence in general. Traces of this usage are seen in the formula of the marriage-service in the English Prayer-book, where the bride-groom says to the bride, "With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," as well as in the current application of the title "his Worship" and the epithet "worshipful" to the mayors of English towns; while to this day, among Roman Catholics, it would be possible to hear the expression "the worship of the saints" used without offense, although, as will be seen, nothing is clearer to them than the distinction between the supreme honor due to God alone and the subordinate or relative honor paid to even the highest and holiest of his creatures.
2. Necessity of Study of Primitive Religions.
The conception instinctively suggested to Christian people by the word in its narrower sense is inevitably stamped by the definition of the Founder of their religion, "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John iv. 24); but an encyclopedic treatment of the subject must go beak for many centuries beyond the christian era, and patiently seek to penetrate the obscurity which veils the mental processes of primitive and uncivilized man. The modern study of comparative religion, also, has brought to light the profound significance of many rites of savage tribes which until recent years were contemptuously dismissed as mere barbarism or child's play, unworthy of the attention of serious thinkers. In them is often found the answer to many questions, which would otherwise have seemed insoluble, as to the manner in which primitive man regarded the supernatural and his relation to it. "It is ritual," says L. R. Farnell (Cults of the Greek States, i. 9, Oxford, 1896), "that is chiefly the conservative part of religion. And in ritual the older and cruder ideas are often held as in petrifaction, so that the study of it is often as it were the study of unconscious matter, in so far as it deals with facts of worship of which the worshiper does not know the meaning, and which frequently are out of accord with the highest
religious consciousness of the community." So important is worship that one eminent German scholar (Otto Gruppe, quoted by Otto Schrader) has declared ritual to be the source of religion; but if this is going too far and putting the cart before the horse, at least the study of its development is one of the most interesting and instructive chapters in the history of the human mind.
3. Widely Divergent Theories of Comparative Religion.
When approach is made to what is logically the first step in the consideration of the subject-the origin to be assigned, according to the best results of comparative religion and anthropological science, to what is understood by worship, a wide divergence of views comes to light. This is not to be wondered at, if the fact is taken into consideration that Comparative Religion (q.v.) itself, the discipline which attempts to answer such questions by the inductive method, is of very recent growth, dating practically from the last third of the nineteenth century. For many ages it was considered that these methods were wholly inapplicable to the study of a question whose solution seemed to be already included within the province of revelation. Even so independent a thinker as Hobbes expressly excluded "the doctrine of God's worship" from philosophy, "as being not to be known by natural reason, but by the authority of the Church; and as being the object of faith and not of knowledge" (Elements of Philosophy, I., viii., London, 1656). The first stimulus came from the discovery and study of the sacred books of the East, followed by the deciphering of the Assyro-Babylonian and Egyptian texts; but the past forty years have been so fruitful of results for the scientific study of religion that a large body of data bearing on the subject of this article is now accessible, even though the conclusions to be drawn from them are not as yet by any means matters of general agreement. Working along these lines, one must start with some knowledge of the manner in which the idea of God may be supposed, apart from any case of an immediate revelation, to have grown up in the mind of primitive and utterly uncivilized man. It may be taken for granted that some more or less definite idea of the existence of a supernatural being or beings is to be found in all branches of the human race; writers who approach the question from such diverse points of view, as E. B. Tylor, T. Waitz, J. L. A. de Quatrefages, Max Müller, G. Gerland, and C. P. Tiele, are agreed upon so much.
4. The Theory of Fear.
One principal ground of controversy seems to be whether fear or veneration is the predominant sentiment in the attempt to enter into communion with these superhuman beings. Some observers are inclined to attach by far the greater importance to the motive of fear. Thus E. A. Westermarck says (Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, ii. 612, London, 1908): "In early religion the most common motive [for sacrifice] is undoubtedly a desire to avert evils; and we have reason to believe that such a desire was the first source of religious worship." And even in modern times Sir M. Monier Williams (Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 230, 4th ed., London, 1891) asserts that "no one who has ever been brought into contact with the Hindus in their own country can doubt that the worship of at least 90 per cent of the people of India in the present day is a worship of fear." This view has been stated in various forms, the most often quoted of
the earlier ones being the saying of Statius in the first century, Primus in orbe timor fecit deos- "First in the world fear created gods," which, says Hobbes in the seventeenth, "spoken of the gods (that is to say, of the many gods of the Gentiles) is very true"; and Renan in the nineteenth was equally convinced that religion began by endeavors to propitiate the hostile powers by which man found himself surrounded.
5. The Theory of Love.
Tiele, on the other hand, in his sober and thoughtful Gifford Lectures (Elements of the Science of Religion, Edinburgh, 1897-99), says deliberately that prolonged research and reflection have more and more convinced him of the inaccuracy of this view, and that he would far rather indorse the words of Robertson Smith (Rel. of Sem., p. 55) : "From the earliest times religion, as distinct from magic and sorcery, addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be angry with their people for a time, but are always placable except to the enemies of their worshipers or to renegade members of the community. It is not with a vague fear of unknown powers, but with a loving reverence for known gods who are knit to their worshipers by strong bonds of kinship, that religion in the only true sense of the word begins." His distinction between religion in the proper sense and magic is one which deserves attention; but even those who, with F. B. Jevons, maintain that "it is in love and not in fear that religion in any true sense of the word has its origin" (Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 109, 4th ed., London, 1908) admit that "it is none the less true that fear-not of irrational dangers, but of deserved punishment-is essential to the moral and religious education of man; it is 'the fear of the Lord' that is 'the beginning of wisdom.'"
6. Rival Theories of Order of Development.
"Another much-controverted point is the order in which the various aspects of worship emerged. Many hold, following Robertson Smith, that the idea of communion with the supernatural being or beings is antecedent in time to the gift sacrifice. Tylor, on the other hand (Primitive Culture, ii. ch. xviii., 4th ed., London, 1903), believes that the gift sacrifice is the most primitive form, basing this conclusion on the analogy of man's dealings with his fellow men, and assuming that he treated his god as he would a chief (according to the usual ancient custom, illustrated in Gen. xxxii. 20; xliii. 11). He thus places as the stages in the development first the gift, second the idea of homage, and third that of abnegation or expiation.
7. Caution Requesite in Constructing Theories
The fact is that, in this as in all other questions which concern the history of worship, it is necessary to base a judgment upon a wide and patient investigation of data from different ages and different parts of the world. There has been too frequent a tendency to lay down a priori conclusions as certain, with the same finality as Hobbes (Leviathan, I.,
xii.): "For the worship which naturally men exhibit to powers invisible, it can be no other but such expressions of their reverence as they would use toward men; gifts, petitions, in thanks, submission of body, considerate addresses, sober behavior, premeditated words, swearing (that is, assuring one another of their promises) by invoking them. Beyond that reason suggesteth nothing; but leaves them either to rest there, or for further ceremonies to rely on those they believe
to be wiser than themselves." Too often, again, a whole theory has been constructed upon observations relating to a single group of phenomena, and then boldly given forth as accounting for the origin and significance of worship in general, if not of religion itself. Thus, those who maintain that the origin of primitive religious worship was fear may be supposed to have neglected such records as the answer made to the early Spanish missionaries in America, questioning the Indians on their belief as to the origin of their gods; the usual reply was that they had come from the air or heaven, to dwell among them and do them good. Other investigators of aboriginal beliefs in the same continent have dwelt, and even with astonishment, on the prevalence of the worship of malicious spirits rather than good, led to their conclusion by the somewhat serious failure to take into account the totem-god in a land where totemism flourished to a degree unequaled elsewhere except in Australia. Again, among the Aryan races, which to this day are the most thoroughly known, the simple household worship, in no sense public, did not attract the attention of the poets, whose verses are filled with the more picturesque marvels of mythological legend. Very little testimony concerning this system of worship has made its way into literature; what is known about it has been largely recovered by a patient piecing together of information recovered from an illuminating interpretation of a sentence here and a paragraph there.
8. Probable Origin of Worship.
It is not, however, a rash speculation to see in the history of primitive man first a recognition of the existence of superhuman powers controlling his destinies, or at least intervening in them at times; then a tendency to see in these powers a personal will analogous to that of which he was conscious in himself; and finally a casting about for means of entering into relations with them to his own advantage. His sentiment of a certain kinship with the supernatural powers, combined with his conviction of entire dependence upon them, impelled him to seek communion with them, and to reestablish such communion when he thought it had been broken off through his own fault. From this impulse, according to Tiele, spring all those religious observances which are usually embraced in the term worship.
9. The Earliest Forms of Worship.
The content of this term, however, was very much smaller in prehistoric times. Holding strongly to the idea of blood-kinship; extending it beyond the visible family to include the deceased members with whom communion is still desired; then seeking, under totemism, for alliance with another tribe, some mysterious supernatural clan–a prehistoric race develops but slowly a definite idea of worship offered "to" some one. According to Jevons, worship in its rudimentary stage meant the sprinkling upon the altar of the blood of the totem-animal, with the sole purpose of renewing the blood-covenant and procuring the presence and aid of the totem-god. On this theory, the idea of offering a sacrifice "to" a god could be developed only in a later stage of totemism, when the stone had come to be identified with the god, and the god was no longer in the animal. The idea of worship, further, implies the existence, for the worshiper, not merely of a supernatural being as such, but of a supernatural being who "has stated relations with a community" (Robertson Smith, ut sup., p. 119).
10. Worship and the Kingship.
In the nature-religions–those which have grown up by a gradual process of evolution, not derived from the authority of a conscious and definite founder–the organization of the worship continues to coincide with that of social life, this social life being, according to the stage of development, that of the clan, the family, or the nation. In the head of the family are combined the temporal rule and the religious leadership; and the same prerogatives are conceded to the heads of a larger family, the early kings. In Egypt the king and his sons held as of right the highest sacerdotal dignities, while the other priests were merely their deputies in religious as well as in civil and even military affairs. The same thing is found in the Babylonian and Assyrian systems; the kings attached great importance to their sacerdotal titles, and they conducted all religious observances without the assistance of any other priests. Long after historical memory of this state of things had faded in Greece and Rome, its record was preserved in the attribution of the title
archon basileus (king) to the official who conducted the public worship, and that of
rex to the patrician who, in the Roman republic, presided over the ancient
sacra. Then and later the title of
pontifex maximus, or high-priest, still borne by the pope, was conferred upon the head of the state; nor may it be unduly fanciful to see a reminiscence of this early feeling in the concession to the later heads of the Holy Roman Empire of the right to assist as subdeacons, wearing the dalmatic, in the solemn mass celebrated by the pope–although it would more probably be consciously referred to the analogy in Jewish history of the similar anointing of prophets, priests, and kings. There is, then, much evidence to show that in the older forms of society the two offices were one, and only gradually became differentiated, owing in great measure to the practical difficulties arising from the strict taboo which surrounded these sacred personages. The evolution, however, of a separate priestly class, and the way in which its rights and duties developed, belongs less to this place than to the article
PRIEST (q.v.)
11. Relation of Fetishism to Worship.
Among strictly communal rites of worship, a time comes when disasters and distresses impress the tribe with the idea that they have offended their
divine protector, and they seek to propitiate him by what are called piacular sacrifices. The development of this sentiment on a large scale may more fitly be treated later, when the discussion comes to the gradual loosening of the bonds of the predominantly tribal or national
cult. The mention of it here will afford an opportunity to speak of what is somewhat loosely known as Fetishism (q.v.). The term calls up all the associations which are vaguely present to the minds of average people when they sing the words "The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone"; and indeed the objects supposed to be endued with supernatural power are often, to our minds, of a very inadequate and even ridiculous nature. But, as far as the mind of the African savage, for example, can be studied, it seems tolerably clear that the original source of these strange proceedings is nothing more than the desire to secure the countenance or protection of some mighty spirit, possibly one not already preoccupied with the tribal affairs, who chooses to take up his abode in or render himself accessible through some such object as a prominent rock or a curiously carved piece of wood. There is no longer likelihood of falling into the error, once so prevalent, of supposing that the African savage worships an inanimate object, knowing it to be inanimate. As Pfleiderer puts the matter generally, "what is really worshiped in the object anywhere is not itself but a transcendental x within and beyond it." Fetishism, in the sense of the worship which finds its way, frequently from the individual, to dimly conceived supernatural beings by and through such means of approach, leads to the next branch of the subject.
12. Ancestor Worship.
As the clan dissolved, or else increased so that its members were at too great a distance from the official seat of worship, guardian spirits or family gods were chosen for the smaller groups or for individuals, the rites of their worship being modeled on those already familiar to the race. Among the Semites, the Teraphim (q.v.) were family gods, as the lares were among the Romans; while the Greeks had their theoi patrõioi. The tendency here indicated connected itself very easily and naturally with the respect paid to deceased members of the family; and the ceremonies at first usual as mere signs of grief developed, as they grew conventional, into rites of worship. It was the danger of this development which caused a special prohibition of them to the Hebrews (Lev. xix. 28). It comes up first in the period of settled agricultural life, when the family begins to be an institution. "The worship of ancestors," says E. Clodd (Myths and Dreams, p. 113, 2d ed., London, 1891), "is not primal. The comparatively late recognition of kinship by savages, among whom some rude form of religion existed, tells against it as the earliest mode of worship." Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen attempted to account for the origin of religion by the worship of ghosts; but there are countless phenomena which can not be traced back to it–and it can be proved that wherever ancestor worship exists, as in China, it exists side by side with the public worship of the community. The two have their sources in the same feeling, quite as the Latin word pietas was applied indifferently to reverence for the gods and to filial obedience; and, just as sacrifice survived the materialistic ideas often attached to it in the early stages and became a symbol of humility and reverence, so, according to the belief of many races, the disembodied spirits, like the gods, desire to be worshiped not only because they depend on human care for their sustenance or comfort, but because it is an act of homage. The one never develops into the other.
13. Worship of Trees and Plants.
Tree-worship, and more especially plant-worship, belong again to the agricultural stage. In the animistic philosophy of the savage, in his blind search through the universe for manifestations of the supernatural, he came to believe, and in many widely separated lands, that trees and plants possessed supernatural powers; and, in accordance with the earlier totem-principle, he attempted to establish relations with any species which he believed to be of especial importance for his own life. Jevons dwells at some length on the history of plant-worship, attributing to it great importance for the history not only of religion but also of civilization, "for it was through plant-worship that cereals and food-plants came to be cultivated, and it was in consequence of their cultivation that the act of worship received a remarkable extension" (ut
sup., p. 210).
14. Worship of Life-giving Forces.
So far from the religious impulse having originated, as Grant Allen contends, in "the worship of death," it would be far truer, if either must be said, to find its source in the thought of the potency and the preciousness of life. This feeling expressed itself in a great variety of different forms. One, to which too much importance has apparently been attached by some modern investigators, is the symbolic worship known as phallicism. Phallic worship, as a separate and organized cult, is extremely rare, in spite of the temptation to use it as a cloak for unbridled excesses. It is found, to be sure, as a phase of some other cult, among many savage tribes in America and Asia (and, as has been recently pointed out, in Japan); but where it attained its greatest development, among the Semitic and Dravidian races, in Greece under Semitic influences, or connected among the Aztecs with the higher forms of nature-worship, it put on sooner or later a symbolic meaning as typifying the mysterious force which renews the earth in spring and provides for the continuance of the wonderful thing which is called life. All over the world, with rites bearing at least a superficial similarity, the deities or spirits of vegetation, on whom man was thought to depend for the food which sustained his life, were worshiped with ceremonies of which there are curious survivals, no longer understood, in the spring and harvest customs of European countries. Likewise, in the pastoral and agricultural stage, men were impressed with the need of winning the favor of the great forces of nature–streams and fountains, clouds, the sky, the sun and moon. Communion was sought, where possible, by placing the offerings of the worshiper in contact with the divine
power, as by throwing them into water; in the case of the sun, the old principle of classification suggested fire as akin to his substance.
15. Communal Worship.
Certainly the most wide-spread, as well as the most important, of primitive religious rites are those which set forth the public worship of the tribe or clan. Robertson Smith is inclined to regard communal worship as the only worship in very early times. "In antiquity," he says, "all religion was the affair of the community rather than of the individual" (op. cit., p. 236). Here, however, Daniel G. Brinton strongly disagrees with him, attributing to his special remunal searches among the Semitic peoples the general theory, which "is contradicted by nearly every primitive religion known to me "; and of course it is obvious that in so far as one's notions are unconsciously colored by records such as those of the Greek poets one will lean toward the former view–little definite record is likely to be left of the worship of the individual or of the small private group of the family in the earliest stages of its growth. Again, there is
often an unconscious tendency to depend on official explanations, which are, in many cases, far later than the primitive rites for which they undertake to account, and are the work of men who were ashamed of some feature of the rite, or who were unwilling to confess themselves unable to give an authentic explanation of it. It is necessary to bear in mind that often they may give only a partial or factitious view of their subject, while quite another may be the true one, or may have been held at the same time by large numbers of people. Thus, for example, the animal-worship of Egypt was explained in several different ways. The official or priestly interpretation varied. It was said that the gods had concealed themselves in the forms of beasts during the revolutionary wars of Set against Horus; or that the adoration was directed not to the animal but to the qualities which it personified; or that the beastgods were memorials of badges (representing animals) borne by the various tribal companies in the forces of Osiris. Apollonius of Tyana is quoted as holding that the beasts were symbols of deity, not deities; and Porphyry (De abstinentia, iv. 9) asserts definitely that "under the semblance of animals the Egyptians worship the universal power which the gods have revealed in the various forms of living
nature." But these are theories constructed by learned men long after the origin of the rites; and it is obvious that there is a grave disadvantage in having no record of what the simple peasantry thought of customs in which recent scholars have been inclined to see "a consecration and elaborate survival of totemism." In view of the natural inclination to concentrate the attention on public acts, it is not surprising that Pfleiderer defines religious cult as "an utterance or manifestation of the religious consciousness by means of the representative observances of the community, whereby its aspiration for communion with the divine attains actual consummation." Yet, however true the second part of his definition may be, it must not be forgotten that the religious rites practised by the individual in perfect solitude and by the father in the midst of his immediate family are to be included in
any comprehensive definition.
16. Associational Cults.
Also, in a period as a rule far later than the primitive (speaking generally, about the sixth century B.C.), the historian of worship is obliged to take into account the gradual formation of small associations which aimed at supplementing the public worship, or at superseding it. This tendency is found even in religious which are swayed by animism. Thus among the North American Indians it led to the formation of small bands to which no one was admitted without having first undergone severe tests of self-control and perseverance; their members were regarded as elevated above the rest of the tribe and in closer relation with the spirits. Among the Hebrews, at the time of the Captivity, when the old national religion seemed to have broken down, we find in the strange sacrifices of "unclean creatures"–swine, dogs, mice, and other vermin–what may be considered as the recrudescence of a cult of the most primitive totem type; though it is distinguished from the old in that it is practised now by men who desert the religion of their bins, as a means of initiation into a new brotherhood. These obscure rites, says Robertson Smith, "have a vastly greater importance than has been commonly recognized; they mark the first appearance in Semitic history of the tendency to found religious societies on voluntary association and mystic initiation, instead of natural kinship and nationality " (ut sup., p. 339). Sects of this kind are found growing out of other higher religions, such as those of China, India, and Persia; and in a similar class may be placed the Hanifites of Arabia, the Eleusinian mysteries, the Pythagoreans, Orphics, and Neoplatonists (see NEOPLATONISM) in Greece, and the Essenes (q.v.) in Israel, with their partly Persian and partly Greek affinities; while not a few of the heretical associations of the Middle Ages–Cathari (see NEW MANICHEANS, II.), Fraticelli, Friends of God (qq.v.), and the like–stand in exactly the same relation to the accepted cult. In the older stages of civilization, too, there is a special incentive to the formation of such voluntary associations in the fact that as a general rule women as well as children were not admitted to the tribal worship, and would thus be likely to welcome anything in which they would have more latitude (see, further, TRIBAL AND CULTIC MYSTERIES).
17. Joyous Character of Primitive Worship.
But the tendency which in ancient times led people to draw together in such societies has its roots far deeper in human psychology than in a mere wish to have the distinction of belonging to something not open to the great body of the community and of possessing secrets unknown to them. As a general rule, the official or tribal worship was of a cheerful nature. "Worship the gods with a joyous worship," says Cicero; and this precept was widely obeyed. A superficial survey of Greek religion would give the impression that by far the larger part of it was like that which Robertson Smith describes as the type of worship prevalent among the earlier Hebrews, and characteristic of their Semitic neighbors in general: "universal
hilarity prevailed, men ate, drank, and were merry together, rejoicing before their god." The same attitude of mind was seen among the Germanic tribes; Grimm says (Teutonic Mythology, Eng. transl., i. 42, London, 1879) that the religious rites of the ancient Germans were, as a rule, cheerful, and those which were of this nature were the earliest and the commonest. This, of course, was natural if the first of public rites was one of joyousness, an invitation to the god to be present and partake of a repast spread for him by his worshipers. Purely religious banquets, festal commemorations, and thanksgivings would thus make up a large part of early rites among those religions in which "the habitual temper of the worshipers is one of joyous confidence in their god, untroubled by any habitual sense of human guilt, and resting on the firm conviction that they and the deity they adore are good friends, who understand each other perfectly and are united by bonds not easily broken." This temper of mind may be put down to the ease with which in the childhood of the race, as in that of the individual, troublesome thoughts are cast off; but it could never have spread as widely or lasted as long if it had not been for the view that religion was in large measure the affair of the community, and the conviction that the benefits expected from the gods were of a public character. In widely separated regions, the mourner was " unclean," excluded from the worship of the tribe; as Robertson Smith puts it, " the very occasions of life in which spiritual things are nearest to the Christian, and the comfort of religion is most fervently sought, were in the ancient world the times when a man was forbidden to approach the seat of God's presence."
18. Propitiatory and Apotropatic Worship.
It is not, then, surprising to find in a large number of the later cults of the private or non-official kind, whose history, precisely because they were non-official and more or less secret, has filled far less space than the other in literary records, an effort to propitiate or to drive away supernatural beings conceived, not as the friends of the worshipers, but as hostile, or in some way dangerous. Skilled and scientific investigation of these cults is even more recent than study of the general subject; but such thorough and painstaking work as that done for one group of them by Miss Jane Harrison in her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (2d ed., Cambridge, 1908), and the amount of new light thrown by it on a subject
which was supposed to be pretty thoroughly known fifty years ago, show conclusively the need of much more research along these lines. In her opening chapter she admits that one factor, and a prominent one, in the Greek religion of the fifth century B.C. was the idea of service (therapeia), in which there was no element of fear; if man did his part in the friendly transaction, the gods would do theirs. But the whole tenor of her book, with its wealth of piled-up instances and its acute analysis, goes to show that side by side with the worship of the kindly Olympian deities there existed a whole mass of cult-forms which expressed awe and reverence of spirits or beings of the under-world. Plutarch protests eloquently against the religion of fear; but Miss Harrison has supplied sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that what he regards as superstition (deisidaimonia, in its later and unfavorable sense) was, in the sixth and even in the fifth century B.C., the real religion of the great mass of the Greek people. The formula of this religion is not, like the other, do ut des ("I give that you may give"), but do ut abeas ("I give that you may go, and keep, away"). The evidence consists not only in direct statements such as that of the orator Isocrates (436-338 B.C.), which is worth quoting for its direct completeness: "Those of the gods who are the source to us of good things have the title of Olympians, those whose department is that of calamities and punishments have harsher titles; to the first class both private persons and states erect altars and temples, the second is not worshiped either with prayers or burnt-sacrifices, but in their case we perform ceremonies of riddance" (Oratio, v. 117). His contemporary Plato, in the Laws (717 A), arranges the objects of divine worship in a regular sequence; first, the Olympian gods, together with "those who keep the city"; second, the underworld gods, whose share are things of unlucky omen; third, the dæmons, whose worship is characterized as "orgiastic"; fourth, the heroes; and fifth, the ancestral gods-concluding the list with living parents, to whom much honor should be offered. The classification evidenced by ritual is, however, much less minute; the only recognized distinction is that burnt-offerings are the meed of the Olympians, while "devoted" offerings (enagismoi) belong to the chthonic or underworld gods.
19. The Greek Mysteries.
In Greece there was, moreover, a long series of ritual acts intended to propitiate or avert the presence of these latter-the Anthesteria, or spring festival of the revocation and aversion of ghosts; the Thargelia, an early summer festival of first-fruits(singularly cognate with the Australian intichiuma for the removal of taboo on the harvest-store); the women's festivals-Thesmophoria, Arrhephoria, Skirophoria, Stenia, and Haloa-leading up to the Eleusinian mysteries, which have acquired a greater fame (owing to their adoption by Athens and their later affiliation to the mysteries of Dionysus), but which originally may have been nothing more than the Haloa, or harvest-festival, of Eleusis. Their development, as shown by Jevons, acquires its significance first from the fact that, by an exception wholly alien to the spirit of the antique religions and strictly confined to an exceptional case, the State threw open to all Greeks, men and women, bond and free, the national worship of a national god, and adopted initiation by purification (my&etilde;sis) as the qualification for admission to a cult hitherto
confined to citizens. The opening of the Eleusinian sanctuary to the Athenians coincided with a wave of religious revivalism, which (spreading from Semitic territory in the sixth century B.C.) infused into men's minds the idea of a definite possibility of happiness in a future life, conditioned on a closer communion with the gods than was attainable on the gift-theory of sacrifice. Purification is the keynote of the worship in the mysteries; by the word mystery is meant a rite in which certain very sacred
things are exhibited, which can not be safely seen by the worshiper until he has passed through the prescribed purifications. There followed the introduction to these mysteries of the cult of Iacchus, and his identification with Dionysus; the dramatic performances held in his honor (the fact of the close association between the genesis of the drama, both in Greece and in western Europe-to say nothing of the curious parallel in the recently gained knowledge of Australian tribes-and religious worship can only be alluded to in passing); the spread of
the idea, so pregnant with results as a preparation for Christianity, that this communion, with its hopes of future bliss, was open to all who chose to avail themselves of the grace offered; and the conception of a religious community bound together, not by physical or political ties, but by spiritual fellowship and participation in a common worship.
20. Influence of Subjectivity on Worship.
Edward Caird, treating rather in the abstract the evolution of religion, without much detail, reaches the same point in the development by a somewhat different road. Tracing the growth of the human mind from the almost purely objective view of phenomena which it takes in its most ignorant form, he says that "in so far as God is conceived as merely an object, the worshiper must feel toward him as a slave, who obeys without any consciousness of anything that lifts him into unity with the power to which he submits"; while later he remarks that the gradual growth of self-consciousness, subjectiveness (which of course is an indispensable, preliminary to a sense
of guilt and need of purification), changes all this. "The later Judaism breaks away in the prophets and psalmists from the forms of national worship, and becomes an inner religion of the individual heart-thus preparing the way for the universalism of Christianity" (Evolution of Religion, i. 190-193, London, 1893).
21. Justification of Christian Analogies with Judæo-Ethnic Cults.
There is no need to give here an extended treatment of Christian worship, which is abundantly illustrated in all its details in other articles (see especially LITURGY; MASS; etc.); nor is there any need to explain, still less to apologize for, the reappearance in it of many principles familiar to students of the earlier history of the religious ideas of the race, although to some unreflecting minds the conclusions of advanced modern anthropology have seemed upsetting. There is really nothing to wonder at in the adoption and consecration of cult-principles familiar to earlier generations; the wonder would have been if Christianity, intended to take root in a soil impregnated with the germs of old beliefs, had utterly ignored the centuries of preparation, and had brought a message in no wise recalling what had so long been sacred to the world. In dealing with what primitive Christian worship borrowed from the Jewish rites, it is important to distinguish between the Temple service, which had little direct influence, and that of the synagogue, which in its four main features-reading of the Scriptures, chants, homilies, and
prayers-was continued in morphological completeness by the first Christian congregations. In regard to the principal rite which was not taken over from the synagogue, the Lord's Supper, it is hardly necessary to dwell on the radical divergence between the modern Protestant and Roman Catholic views of its purpose and nature- the former holding it to be a mere symbolic commemoration of a past historic. event, while the latter regards it as not merely the representation in figure but the re-presentation in actual reality of the sacrifice of Christ, and the feeding of priest and worshipers with the body and blood of their God (see, for the contrasting views, LORD'S SUPPER, IV., §§ 1-3; MASS). It falls within the scope of the present treatment to point out that from the whole pagan world-although some of the Jews, unmindful of the primitive traditions of their forefathers, said skeptically, "how can this man give us his flesh to eat?"-the doctrine of John vi. in its literal sense would have evoked a responsive memory of their most ancient religious traditions. In like manner baptism, as
the means of initiation into a voluntary and extra-national religious brotherhood, was a ceremony familiar to the adherents of the mysteries among the Mediterranean peoples. Some of them had already regarded their lustrations as not merely a washing away of old sins, but as a spiritual regeneration; and in the rites of Isis baptism with water was supposed to raise the mortal to participation in the divine nature. (For various parallels among savage tribes, showing the prevalence in primitive societies of the idea of death and rebirth at initiation, see J. G. Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. 424-446, London, 1900; E. Crawley, The Tree of Life, p. 57, ib., 1905.)
22. Eucharistic Worship; Latria and Dulia.
Worship, reaching its culmination in the Eucharist, became from the first a recognized part of Christian duty. The celebration of the Lord's Day was from the first in universal custom, as it has long been by strict and positive law throughout the Catholic Church, marked by participation in this rite, including, besides the central mystic offering, the presentation of bread and wine by the congregation (a reminder of primitive cereal oblations, preserved in the Roman rite as late as the ninth century), and, tacitly at least, the self-oblation of the worshipers as "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God," their "reasonable service" (Rom. xii. 1/ScripRef>). An interesting feature of the liturgical researches of Ducheane (Christian Worship, p. 161, Eng. transl., 2d ed., London, 1904) is the distinction in the early Ordines Roynani between the "stational," or public, and the less solemn, or private, masses. To the great liturgical assemblies known under the former title, all the clergy and people of the entire local church were convoked; and whether in one of the great basilicas or in a simple presbyteral church, whether the pope or an ordinary priest was the celebrant, the ceremonies were of an elaborate type; and the entire function was thus a reproduction in essence of the ancient communal sacrifices offered by and in presence of the whole tribe. In this place it may be well to speak of the distinction (alluded to at the beginning of this article) between various forms
of veneration understood in Roman Catholic theology. It is emphatically laid down that worship in the stricter sense of the word, or what is called technically latria, is and can be offered to none, under any circumstances, but to God alone; and the supreme and perfect form of such worship, the only adequate worship, is the eucharistic sacrifice, in which Christ is conceived to be both priest and victim. The derived or lower reverence paid to the
saints is known as Dulia (q.v.), with hyperdulia, attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as its highest possible form.
23. The Ethical Aspect of Worship.
In closing, it may be well to say a few words on the ethical aspect of worship, and its results upon the man who offers it. It has been pointed out by Caird that religions of the objective type are not wholly without ethical influence upon their followers. "Even in a very primitive form of such religion, the gods are regarded as the forefathers of the race of their worshipers; and their worship is therefore bound up with the natural piety which unites the individual to his kinsmen. So also in Greece and Rome civic patriotism was consecrated by a religion which combined the worship of the gods with the service of the state. And it may fairly be said that, throughout all the ancient world, the principle of nationality and the worship of a national god were bound up together." This, however, is very far from being all that follows from it as the subjective consciousness develops. Rites of purification were at first conceived in a half-conscious and non-moral spirit; but they did not remain on this low ground. As the religious consciousness broadened and deepened, men saw more and more clearly what must be in their hearts as they brought their gifts to the altar. Among the Chinese, worship was regarded as one aspect of an exercise in good manners and in human dignity through offerings and through observance of rules and respectful conduct toward the great forefathers and divinities; and this moral conception was a special feature of Chinese worship. Prayer, a very prominent and well-nigh universal element in primitive religions, whether it appears as thanksgiving by praise, or as
petition for assistance and protection, or, again, as penitence for neglect of, duty, can not be sincerely offered without affecting him who makes it. It has been justly remarked by L. W. E. Rauwenhoff that all worship is of a twofold character. Man approaches his God, and God approaches man. This reciprocal relation is suggested to Augustine by the Latin word for worship; cultus designates not only the adoration of the Deity, but the tilling of a field or the care of the body (Serm., ccxiii. 9). The transition is abrupt to a sage of a very different temper from the African bishop; but Emerson teaches the same lesson of result: "The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship."; The student of the history of worship must journey far, through obscure and perplexing paths; but at least he sees that worship, in its origin and essence, is "a striving after union with God, and the worshiper's periodical escape from the turmoil of everyday life, with its petty cares and great sorrows, its strife and discord, its complete immersion in the material, in order that he may for a while breathe a higher and purer atmosphere."
A. I. DU P. COLEMAN.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
On worship in non-Christian religions consult:
Lord Avebury, Origin of Civilization, London, 1870;
C. F. Keary, Outlines of Primitive Beliefs among the Indo-European Races, New York, 1882;
A. Kuenen, Natural Religions and Universal Religions, London, 1882;
A. Réville, Religions des peuples non-civilisés, 2 vols., Paris, 1883;
C. P. Tiele, Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte, Gotha, 1886;
idem, Elements of the Science of Religion, 2 vols., London, 1897-99;
O. Speeman, Die gottesdienstlichen Gebräuche der Griechen und Römer, Leipsic, 1888;
E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams, 2d ed., London, 1891;
C. Caird. The Evolution of Religion, ib. 1893;
Smith, Rel. of Sem., 2d ed., Edinburgh, 1894;
F. Granger, The Worship of the Romans, London, 1895;
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols., Oxford, 1896 sqq.;
A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New York, 1897;
D. G. Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, ib. 1899;
A. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2 vols., 2d ed., London, 1899;
idem, Magic and Religion, ib. 1901;
B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Western Australia, ib. 1899;
idem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, ib. 1904;
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3d ed., ib., 1906 sqq.;
P. Gardner, An Historic View of the New Testament, ib. 1901;
E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2 vols., 4th ed., ib. 1903;
P. Le Page Renouf, The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, new ed., ib. 1904;
W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus der Germanen, new ed., Berlin, 1904;
idem, Wald- und Feldkulte, 2d ed., ib. 1905;
R. H. Nassau, Fetishism in West Africa, New York, 1904;
E. Crawley, The Tree of Life, London, 1905;
P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, 3d ed., Tübingen, 1905;
W. Karsten, Origin of Worship, Wasa, 1905;
R. E. Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man's Mind, London, 1906;
Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2d ed., Cambridge, 1908;
F. B. Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, 4th ed., London, 1908;
E. Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 2 vols., ib. 1908;
S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions, 3 vols., 2d ed., Paris, 1908;
idem, Orpheus, a General Hist. of Religions, New York, 1909;
A. Le Roy, La Religion des primitifs, Paris, 1909;
R. R. Marett, The Threshold of Religion, London, 1909;
F. Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Chicago, 1911;
M. Jastrow, Jr., Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 1911.
For Christian worship use:
Bingham, Origines (above all usable for the details and history);
E. Martène, De antiquis ecclesiæ ritibus, 2d ed., 4 vols., Antwerp, 1736-1738;
M. A. Nickel, Die heiligen Zeiten und Feste der katholischen Kirche, 6 vols., Mainz, 1836;
H. Alt, Der christlichen Cultus nach seinen verschiedenen Entwickelungsformen und seinen einzelnen Theilen historisch dargestellt, Berlin, 1843, 2d ed., 2 vols., 1851-60;
J. G. Müller, Geschichte der christlichen Feste, Berlin, 1843;
K. L. Weitzel, Die christlichen Passafeier der drei ersten Jahrhunderten, Pforzheim, 1848;
G. Huyasen, Die Feste der christlichen Kirche, 2 vols., Iserlohn, 1850-59;
H. Abeken, Der Gottesdienst der alten Kirche, Berlin, 1853;
T. Harnack, Der christliche Gemeindegottesdienst im apostolischen und altkatholischen Zeitalter, Erlangen, 1854;
F. Probst, Lehre und Gebet in den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten, Tübingen, 1871;
H. Otte, Glockenkunde, 2d ed., Leipsic, 1884;
H. A. Köstlin, Geschichte des christlichen Gottesdienates, Freiburg, 1887;
O. Gisler, Gottesdienst der katholischen Kirche, Einsiedeln, 1888;
P. Kleinert, Zur christlichen Kultus-und Kulturgeschichte, Berlin, 1889;
E. Doumergue, Essai sur l'histoire du culte réformé principalement au XVI. et XIX. siècle, Paris, 1890;
M. A. Goldstein, Gebet und Glaube Beitrag zur Erklärung des Gottesdienstes, Budapest, 1890;
K. Moser, Der Gottesdienat in Kirche, Schule, und Haus, 4th ed., Innsbruck, 1891;
E. Meuss, Die Gottesdienstlichen Handlungen in der evangelischen Kirche, Gotha, 1892;
D. Sokolow, Darslellung des Gottesdienstes der orthodox-katholischen Kirche des Morgenlandes,Berlin, 1893;
G. R. Crooks and J. F. Hurst, Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology, pp. 527-547, new ed., New York, 1894;
C. C. Hall and others, Christian Worship, New York, 1897;
F. Lemme, Wegweiser in den evangeliachen Gottesdienal, 3 parts, Breslau, 1897;
J. Keating, The Agape and the Eucharist in the Early
Church, London, 1901;
H. Kellner, Heortologie oder das Kirchenjahr und die heiligen Feste in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung, Freiburg, 1901;
L. Ruland, Geschichte der kirchlichen Leichenfeier, Regensburg, 1901;
O. J. Mehl, Die schönen Gottesdienste, Hamburg, 1902;
P. Drews, Studien zur Geschichte des Gottesdienstes, 4 parts, Tfibingen, 1902-10;
A. J. Maclean, Recent Discoveries Illustrating Early Christian Life and Worship, London, 1904;
W. H. Dolbeer, The Benediction, Philadelphia, 1908;
G. A. J. Ross, The Value of Worship, New York, 1909;
L. Duchesne, Christian Worship: its Origin and Evolution, 3d Eng. ed., London, 1910;
the literature under COMMON PRAYER, BOOK OF; FEASTS AND FESTIVALS; LITURGICS; PRACTICAL THEOLOGY; SUNDAY; also under the articles on the ethnic religions much will be found apart from those works specifically noted above.
