THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
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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.
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 disci-
pline which attempts to answer such
3. Widely questions by the inductive method, is
Divergent of very recent growth, dating practi-
Theories of cally from the last third of the nine- Comparative teenth century. For many ages it was Religion. 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, 1., 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 Miller, G. Gerland, and C. P. Tiele, are agreed upon so much.
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
4. The importance to the motive of fear. Thus Theory EH. A. Westermarck says (Origin and of Fear. 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 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.
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
5. The the words of Robertson Smith (Rel. of Theory of Sem., p. 55): ‘ From the earliest times Love. __ 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.’ ”’
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 super-
6. Rival natural being or beings is antecedent
Theories of in time to the gift sacrifice. Tylor, on Order of the other hand (Primitive Culture, ii. Develop- ch. xviii., 4th ed., London, 1903), bement. _lieves 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.
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, L.,