332 RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 



represent; and he can compel love by practicing on the heart of the 

 picture of the beloved one." All this he does by his acquaintance 

 and alliance with superhuman powers. Such are the earliest and 

 most crude of the religious agencies, -- earliest, I mean, on the scale 

 of civilization. Among the backward races they are in use to-day 

 in many parts of the world. 



As civilization advances magical arts of a more refined nature are 

 practiced; and we read on the Egyptian papyri and the Babylonian 

 monuments stories of divinations and charms and incantations 

 exercised by those who are supposed to represent the gods. Even 

 in Greece and Rome there are oracles and auguries, a vast machinery 

 of prediction and propitiation. As life becomes more complex 

 religion is more highly elaborated and its rites more refined; great 

 hierarchies arise; the priestly function which, in the early periods, 

 was apt to be combined with political and military functions , is sep- 

 arated and developed along parallel lines; sacerdotal powers are 

 sometimes hereditary; religion becomes a chief prop of the social 

 order and often dominates the state. Temples, churches, altars, 

 shrines, are erected; vestments and sacred vessels are accumulated; 

 rituals and ceremonials are fashioned; great numbers of men are 

 educated and'trained for the performance of religious offices. 



This is a mere glance at the development of the religious agencies 

 now existing throughout the world. All types of them are in use 

 to-day; the rudest natural magic; the animistic cults, divinations, 

 exorcisms and auguries; the Shamanism of Siberian Tunguses, the 

 Lamaism of Tibet, the Hinduism and the Jainism of India, the Bud- 

 dhism and the Taoism of China and Japan, the Mohammedanism 

 of Turkey and Northern Africa, with the great organized ecclesiasti- 

 cisms of Christianity, the Greek, the Roman, the Protestant. Merely 

 to mention the principal types of religious agencies would be tedious; 

 to attempt any sketch or criticism of them would be the task of a 

 lifetime. 



I must content myself with a mere conspectus of the principal 

 religious agencies now in use in our own country. There may be 

 some value in such a resume, which shall bring before us, in a rapid 

 sketch, the various forms of religious activity now existing in the 

 United States of America. 



At the foundation of the monogamous social order is the family, in 

 which religion is domesticated. There was a time when the most and 

 the best of the religious teaching in America was given in the family; 

 it is probable that even to-day no other religious influences are so 

 effective as those of the home. But the family is more than a 

 religious agency; it is the primary social organism; it is the political 

 unit; it is a great economic factor; and it has properly been set apart 

 for separate consideration in another section of this Congress. It is 



