ECCLESIASTICAL RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 821 



could rise from his bed, or wash his face, or brush his teeth, or drink a 

 glass of water, without going through a regular system of purifications, 

 salutations and prayers.&quot; 



Similarly with the Eomans. &quot;Religion everywhere met 

 the public life of the Eoman by its festivals, and laid an 

 equal yoke on his private life by its requisition of sacrifices, 

 prayers, and auguries.&quot; And speaking of the existing Hindu, 

 the Eev. M. A. Sherring says 



&quot;He is a religious being of wonderful earnestness and persistency. 

 His love of worship is a passion, is a frenzy, is a consuming fire. It 

 absorbs his thoughts; it influences and sways his mind on every 

 subject.&quot; 



Everywhere we find kindred connexions; be it in the 

 ancient Thracian who with great cruelty of character joined 

 &quot; ecstatic and maddening religious rites/ or in the existing 

 Mahometan with bis repeated daily prayers and ablutions. 

 Even if we compare modern Europeans with Europeans 

 in mediaeval times, when fasts were habitual and penances 

 common, when anchorites were numerous and self- torturing 



O 



frequent, when men made pilgrimages, built shrines, and 

 counted their numerous prayers by beads, we see that with 

 social progress lias gone a marked diminution of religious 

 observances. Evidence furnished by many peoples and times 

 thus shows us that the propitiatory element, which is the 

 primary element, diminishes with the advance of civilization, 

 and becomes qualified by the growing ethical element. 



This ethical element, like all other elements in the reli 

 gion, is propitiatory in origin and imf.iire. It begins with 

 fulfilment of the wishes or commands of the dead parent, 

 or departed chief, or traditional god. There is at first 

 included in the ethical element no other duty than that of 

 obedience. Display of subordination is in this, as in all other 

 religious acts, the primary thing; and the natures of the 

 particular commands obeyed the secondary things: their 

 obligations being regarded not as intrinsic, but as extrinsi- 

 cally derived from their alleged origin. But slowly, experi 

 ence establishes ethical conceptions, round which there 



