Contra-Currents.— Where the tide is strong and mutant in one direction there are apt to be contra-currents. This is true of the ever-constant tide of ritualistic change. Within the Protestant bodies there has ever existed a contra-current in favor of the preservation of the essentials of the rituals of the earlier Christian Church. Luther himself, though pro claiming doctrines destined ultimately to shake the throne of ritualism throughout the Christian world, was himself at heart a ritualist. The Anglican Church though the most determined of opponents of home in the days of its early struggle, has clung tenaciously to much of the Roman ritual; while a certain section of the Anglicans still stand for elaborate ritualism and symbolism in formulas and service of the church. The Hindu religion has had the same experience, in a more pronounced manner, for numerous sects within the ecclesiastical body stand to-day for the maintenance or extension of ancient ritual. In Egypt, when the symbol ism of the state church had become complex, extensive and elaborate, there were constant undercurrents, which on two, if not more, occasions succeeded, for a time, in getting the upper hand. In Mexico, under the Aztecs, in the later days of the Montezumas, there was a strong double reaction in favor of a return to the earlier ritual of the tribal nature worship. The headquarters of this reaction was in Tex coco, the old Chichimeca capital. So strong was this reaction, in the days preceding the Comuest, that it seemed in a fair way ulti mately to overthrow the state religion of the Aztec, Empire, which had alrearbr been so strongly affected by the efforts of the followers of the ancient Toltec faith that the statue of the chief .Toltec divinity, Quetzakoat god of
the winds, had been set up in the great temple of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) by the side of the chief of the national and state deities, and in many other temples throughout the Aztec Empire. In the history of the evolution or dis appearance' of ritual these contra-currents are constantly in evidence, working a change of direction, often in the main stream.
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