The Origins of Worship

85:4.1Man­kind has wor­shiped earth, air, wa­ter, and fire. The prim­i­tive races ven­er­ated springs and wor­shiped rivers. Even now in Mon­go­lia there flour­ishes an in­flu­en­tial river cult. Bap­tism be­came a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial in Baby­lon, and the Greeks prac­ticed the an­nual rit­ual bath. It was easy for the an­cients to imag­ine that the spir­its dwelt in the bub­bling springs, gush­ing foun­tains, flow­ing rivers, and rag­ing tor­rents. Mov­ing wa­ters vividly im­pressed these sim­ple minds with be­liefs of spirit an­i­ma­tion and super­nat­u­ral power. Some­times a drown­ing man would be re­fused suc­cor for fear of of­fend­ing some river god.

85:4.2Many things and nu­mer­ous events have func­tioned as re­li­gious stim­uli to dif­fer­ent peo­ples in dif­fer­ent ages. A rain­bow is yet wor­shiped by many of the hill tribes of In­dia. In both In­dia and Africa the rain­bow is thought to be a gi­gan­tic ce­les­tial snake; He­brews and Chris­tians re­gard it as “the bow of prom­ise.” Like­wise, in­flu­ences re­garded as benef­i­cent in one part of the world may be looked upon as ma­lig­nant in other re­gions. The east wind is a god in South Amer­ica, for it brings rain; in In­dia it is a devil be­cause it brings dust and causes drought. The an­cient Bed­ou­ins be­lieved that a na­ture spirit pro­duced the sand whirls, and even in the times of Moses be­lief in na­ture spir­its was strong enough to in­sure their per­pet­u­a­tion in He­brew the­ol­ogy as an­gels of fire, wa­ter, and air.

85:4.3Clouds, rain, and hail have all been feared and wor­shiped by nu­mer­ous prim­i­tive tribes and by many of the early na­ture cults. Wind­storms with thun­der and light­ning over­awed early man. He was so im­pressed with these el­e­men­tal dis­tur­bances that thun­der was re­garded as the voice of an an­gry god. The wor­ship of fire and the fear of light­ning were linked to­gether and were wide­spread among many early groups.

85:4.4Fire was mixed up with magic in the minds of prim­i­tive fear-rid­den mor­tals. A devo­tee of magic will vividly re­mem­ber one pos­i­tive chance re­sult in the prac­tice of his magic for­mu­las, while he non­cha­lantly for­gets a score of neg­a­tive re­sults, out-and-out fail­ures. Fire rev­er­ence reached its height in Per­sia, where it long per­sisted. Some tribes wor­shiped fire as a de­ity it­self; oth­ers revered it as the flam­ing sym­bol of the pu­ri­fy­ing and purg­ing spirit of their ven­er­ated de­i­ties. Vestal vir­gins were charged with the duty of watch­ing sa­cred fires, and in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury can­dles still burn as a part of the rit­ual of many re­li­gious ser­vices.