Ritual and Writing: -- Naturally all primi tive religions have shown a fondness for caba listic signs, and some of the more developed of modern religions still exhibit strong traces of this primitive influence. As religious rites and ceremonies became more complicated and com plex, signs known only to the medicine men or priests were made use of as an aid to the mem ory in the memorizing of the ritual and attend ant myths. Often signs of this kind were painted on the wigwams, altars or temples; and on account of this connection they assumed a sacred character. These signs naturally became more numerous and complicated with the ex tension of the primitive ceremonies and rites. When these first hieroglyphic signs grew into formal hieroglyphic writing they still •remained the property of the priesthood, and as such retained their sacred character. The knowledge of writing was looked upon by the masses of the people as nothing less than very powerful• magic, or in other words, a series of cabalistic charms or ritual. Hence the great culture gods of the races throughout all the ages of barba rism are represented as revealing to the human race the magic of the Written word in which great power was believed to reside. Thus the Biblical expression: the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God? is literally the attitude of the people of an earlier age toward the supposed miraculous attributes of the written word, rep resentative of the divine rituals, incantations, charms, hymns and songs, all of which were, in themselves, but so many different forms of primitive rituals. Thoth, the great culture god of the Egyptians, was the revealer of writing to the human race. The books of Thoth, which seem to have consisted of religious rituals and a compilation of the scientific knowledge of the age, were looked upon as not only extremely sacred but as miraculously powerful; and strangely modern Egyptian romances recount the adventures of those who either tried to secure possession of Thoth's secret book or actually did obtain it and the terrible mishaps that befell them. In these stories the belief in the divine nature of writing is strongly in evi dence.
Ritual, Charms and Incantations are es sentially the same in origin. The efficacy of the charm or incantation depended upon its being recited in a certain prescribed form. The greater part of the worship of primitive races has always consisted of charms and incantations accompanied by offerings and sacrifices, which are but another form of offerings. The charms and incantations were made use of with a view to opposing powerful known magic to the great magic of the superior being addressed, while the offerings were made with a view to pleasing or propitiating him. In the course of time the ritual connected with these charms, incantations and their accompanying ceremonies became ex tensive and more or less obligatory in form. Gradually the dramatic picturesque ceremony superseded the charm element in the imagina tion of the participants in the ceremonies; and the ceremonial rites assumed a form of worship in which the being addressed continued, as time went on, to play a larger and more important role. But the idea of magic and charm was eliminated very slowly from the minds of the masses of the people. The formal ritual of the blessing of the water was believed to give it miraculous power; the rite of baptism was a more or less sure protection from the evil one. Marriage, from being one of the loosest and most irregular and non-formative unions, be came, as the rite connected therewith assumed a complex and mystical form, one of the most sacred of religious and divine institutions en joined by heaven and revealed by the deity.
By the rite of anointment and inauguration the sovereign became a semi-divine character, the anointed of the Lord, the representative of heaven upon earth. Out of the rites,•ceremo nies and traditions rose the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which seems to have been at one time more or less universally subscribed to among- civilized and semi-civilized forms of Baptism, as a rite, became, among Christians, of such importance that it was be lieved that without it no one could enter the kingdom of heaven. Auricular confession, too, assumed the form of a rite of the Church, though perhaps not originally specifically classed as such.
What has taken place in the Christian Church had already taken place in the great religions of Greece, Rome, Carthage, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria and India; and the same tendency was noticeable in the Jewish faith.
Everywhere a sacredness was ascribed to the religious ritual to which was also attributed a mysterious virtue of power strongly similar to the ancient charms and incantations about which most of the ritual was built. Every ceremony of a religious nature, among these races, had its accompanying ritual, rigid, unchangeable, obligatory in form and generally believed to be of wonderful efficacy. Some of these cere monies with their accompanying rites were of such a complex nature and so extensive that the performance of them occupied a week or more each year and called forth the unrestrained energies of a people. Every important event in life has its corrEsponding cere mony and rite. This seems to have been an almost universal tendency of man in a cer tain stage of racial development. Among most of the races of North and Central America and the west and north of South America there were ceremonies and rites connected with birth, puberty, marriage, death, war, peace, spring time, harvest, the undertaking of a journey or the beginning of some important enterprise. The people of these regions possessed elaborate rites to which the germination, ing and gathering of the crops were celebrated. Every trade, guild or occupation had its patron deity, its holy day and a special ceremony and ritual connected therewith. With such a multi plicity of deities, naturally there was consider able similarity among the hundreds of rituals; and yet there were also some striking and spectacular differences.
Secret Rites.— In ancient religious and semi-religious societies the secret rites were frequently more elaborate and of far greater importance than the public rites. This is ex plained by the fact that the former were pro prietary and, as such, naturally inspired greater personal interest and called for more detailed attention and elaboration. Where the secret rites existed, and they existed extensively in more primitive society, they were the really sig nificant rites of the celebration, pregnant with meaning and associations for those privileged to take part in them, while the public rites were in general the drama or play, of a commemora five and informative nature presented for the general use and interest of the people. Many of the ancient Egyptian, European and Asiatic secret rites were widely spread and exercised profound influence upon the stational life. Some of them, as the Elensinian mysteries, possessed. fine temples, elaborate rituals and thousands of devotees who performed all their important rites behind closed doors; and took into partner ship with them in the performance of these rites certain of the deities. The secret part of these rites was looked upon as very sacred. The public rite soon became little more than a dra matic performance for the edification and en tertainment of uninitiated masses; and as such it continued to degenerate.