THE ORIGINS OF PROTESTANTISM 



dawn of history, ancestor- worship had begun. 

 The ghosts of dead chieftains, in this primitive 

 philosophy, survived as the tutelar deities of the 

 tribe, ready now, as of old in their life-time, to 

 punish misdemeanours, but clothed with a power 

 all the more vast and awful, as its nature and 

 limits were but vaguely and incoherently im- 

 agined. To offend in any particular against the 

 ethical and ceremonial code established from 

 time immemorial under the pressure of tribal 

 necessities would be to invite the vengeance of 

 the tutelar deities. The offender must be cur- 

 tailed of his liberty, or maimed, or killed, or 

 else by an easy inference the fellow-tribesmen 

 would be liable to be held as participators in 

 the offence, and dire calamity might thus befall 

 the whole tribe. Tempest or famine or pesti- 

 lence or defeat in battle might be expected by 

 the tribe which should fail to punish an offence 

 on the part of one of its members against the 

 tutelar deities. This feeling of corporate respon- 

 sibility is always to be found among tribally 

 organized barbarians ; it existed among our own 

 barbaric ancestors ; examples of it are numerous 

 in Graeco-Roman antiquity ; and there can be 

 no doubt that in primitive society the feeling 

 was universally prevalent and ferociously intense 

 withal, since no other human passion is so cruel 

 as fear, and no other kind of fear is so cruel as 

 the vague dread of the supernatural. And obvi- 

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