62 tHE COMING OF MAN 



It returned triumphant through sheer power of unlimited vi- 

 tahty and adaptability. Plato draws his finest illustrations 

 from its mysteries, out of which, also, the Greek drama arose. 

 Paul quotes from them or from a similar stratum of belief. 



Some of the many sources of its vitality are obvious. It 

 was rooted in the firm conviction of the existence of a spirit- 

 ual world toward and into which its every rootlet was forcing 

 its way and from which it drew nourishment and power. We 

 might better change the illustration and say that it was 

 slowly developing a spiritual eye which peered into a higher 

 world and developed in keenness and clearness of vision in 

 response to the higher pulsations. By patient experiment 

 and experience, which produced a hope that could not make 

 ashamed and a faith in which hope and experiment combined, 

 it was feeling its way into spiritual knowledge. It knew 

 nothing of practical science or of material cause and effect. 

 But its world pulsated with the universal life. It recognized 

 the law of forbidden things and the sure penalty of law- 

 breaking. It had a tribal conscience and recognized the need 

 of purification. It had the promise, at least, of individual con- 

 science and consciousness of sin. 



Its symbol was the mystery which lifted only a corner 

 of the veil and left an abundant opportunity for wonder, im- 

 agination, thought, and mysticism, which was entirely lacking 

 in the perfect statue and the finished creed. It made man, 

 through its sympathetic magic, a coworker with his divinities 

 or demons in gaining the answer to an intense desire or 

 prayer acted by all the members of the community with all 

 their united might, the utterance of his whole being and life, 

 instead of expressed merely in words. Such a system or chaos 

 overflows with sublime possibilities. 



The introduction of agriculture had produced another most 

 important change in religious views and ritual. In tillage 

 the earth brought forth and gave birth to the crops which 

 furnished their chief food supply, and probably, in their view, 

 to animals and men also; just as the human mother gives 

 birth to the child. Hence there was a wide-spread belief in 



