ceremonies

144:6.7But the most se­ri­ous of all their prob­lems was the ques­tion of bap­tism. Their dif­fi­cul­ties were all the more ag­gra­vated be­cause Je­sus had re­fused to make any pro­nounce­ment upon the sub­ject. They fi­nally agreed: As long as John lived, or un­til they might jointly mod­ify this de­ci­sion, only the apos­tles of John would bap­tize be­liev­ers, and only the apos­tles of Je­sus would fi­nally in­struct the new dis­ci­ples. Ac­cord­ingly, from that time un­til af­ter the death of John, two of the apos­tles of John ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus and his apos­tles to bap­tize be­liev­ers, for the joint coun­cil had unan­i­mously voted that bap­tism was to be­come the ini­tial step in the out­ward al­liance with the af­fairs of the king­dom.

144:6.8It was next agreed, in case of the death of John, that the apos­tles of John would pre­sent them­selves to Je­sus and be­come sub­ject to his di­rec­tion, and that they would bap­tize no more un­less au­tho­rized by Je­sus or his apos­tles.

144:6.9And then was it voted that, in case of John’s death, the apos­tles of Je­sus would be­gin to bap­tize with wa­ter as the em­blem of the bap­tism of the di­vine Spirit. As to whether or not re­pen­tance should be at­tached to the preach­ing of bap­tism was left op­tional; no de­ci­sion was made bind­ing upon the group. John’s apos­tles preached, “Re­pent and be bap­tized.” Je­sus’ apos­tles pro­claimed, “Be­lieve and be bap­tized.”

144:8.5Many who heard Je­sus that day sub­mit­ted them­selves to John’s bap­tism, thereby pub­licly pro­fess­ing en­trance into the king­dom. And the apos­tles of John were firmly knit to Je­sus from that day for­ward. This oc­cur­rence marked the real union of John’s and Je­sus’ fol­low­ers.

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.

164:3.142. As the blind man had not asked for heal­ing, and since the faith he had was slight, these ma­te­rial acts were sug­gested for the pur­pose of en­cour­ag­ing him. He did be­lieve in the su­per­sti­tion of the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisa­cred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been nec­es­sary to wash away the clay of his anoint­ing. There was just enough cer­e­mony about the trans­ac­tion to in­duce him to act.

91:5.6Prayer is the tech­nique whereby, sooner or later, ev­ery re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. And in time prayer be­comes as­so­ci­ated with nu­mer­ous sec­ondary agen­cies, some help­ful, oth­ers de­cid­edly dele­te­ri­ous, such as priests, holy books, wor­ship rit­u­als, and cer­e­mo­ni­als.

147:5.8“This trans­formed woman whom some of you saw at Si­mon’s house to­day is, at this mo­ment, liv­ing on a level which is vastly be­low that of Si­mon and his well-mean­ing as­so­ciates; but while these Phar­isees are oc­cu­pied with the false prog­ress of the il­lu­sion of travers­ing de­cep­tive cir­cles of mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­nial ser­vices, this woman has, in dead earnest, started out on the long and event­ful search for God, and her path to­ward heaven is not blocked by spir­i­tual pride and moral self-sat­is­fac­tion. The woman is, hu­manly speak­ing, much far­ther away from God than Si­mon, but her soul is in pro­gres­sive mo­tion; she is on the way to­ward an eter­nal goal. There are pres­ent in this woman tremen­dous spir­i­tual pos­si­bil­i­ties for the fu­ture. Some of you may not stand high in ac­tual lev­els of soul and spirit, but you are mak­ing daily prog­ress on the liv­ing way opened up, through faith, to God. There are tremen­dous pos­si­bil­i­ties in each of you for the fu­ture. Bet­ter by far to have a small but liv­ing and grow­ing faith than to be pos­sessed of a great in­tel­lect with its dead stores of worldly wis­dom and spir­i­tual un­be­lief.”

87:3.4Most tribes in­sti­tuted an all-souls’ feast at least once a year. The Ro­mans had twelve ghost feasts and ac­com­pa­ny­ing cer­e­monies each year. Half the days of the year were ded­i­cated to some sort of cer­e­mony as­so­ci­ated with these an­cient cults. One Ro­man em­peror tried to re­form these prac­tices by re­duc­ing the num­ber of feast days to 135 a year.

• abrogated all c. not reflective of intimate family relationship

103:4.4Je­sus swept away all of the cer­e­mo­ni­als of sac­ri­fice and atone­ment. He de­stroyed the ba­sis of all this fic­ti­tious guilt and sense of iso­la­tion in the uni­verse by declar­ing that man is a child of God; the crea­ture-Cre­ator re­la­tion­ship was placed on a child-par­ent ba­sis. God be­comes a lov­ing Fa­ther to his mor­tal sons and daugh­ters. All cer­e­mo­ni­als not a le­git­i­mate part of such an in­ti­mate fam­ily re­la­tion­ship are for­ever ab­ro­gated.

• resented those misrepresentative of Father

127:6.6On this visit oc­curred one of those pe­ri­odic out­breaks of re­bel­lion against tra­di­tion—the ex­pres­sion of re­sent­ment for those cer­e­mo­nial prac­tices which Je­sus deemed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of his Fa­ther in heaven. Not know­ing Je­sus was com­ing, Laz­a­rus had ar­ranged to cel­e­brate the Pass­over with friends in an ad­join­ing vil­lage down the Jeri­cho road. Je­sus now pro­posed that they cel­e­brate the feast where they were, at Laz­a­rus’s house. “But,” said Laz­a­rus, “we have no paschal lamb.” And then Je­sus en­tered upon a pro­longed and con­vinc­ing dis­ser­ta­tion to the ef­fect that the Fa­ther in heaven was not truly con­cerned with such child­like and mean­ing­less rit­u­als. Af­ter solemn and fer­vent prayer they rose, and Je­sus said: “Let the child­like and dark­ened minds of my peo­ple serve their God as Moses di­rected; it is bet­ter that they do, but let us who have seen the light of life no longer ap­proach our Fa­ther by the dark­ness of death. Let us be free in the knowl­edge of the truth of our Fa­ther’s eter­nal love.”

• baptism

136:2.3Or­di­nar­ily, when a mor­tal of the realm at­tains such high lev­els of per­son­al­ity per­fec­tion, there oc­cur those pre­lim­i­nary phe­nom­ena of spir­i­tual el­e­va­tion which ter­mi­nate in even­tual fu­sion of the ma­tured soul of the mor­tal with its as­so­ci­ated di­vine Ad­juster. And such a change was ap­par­ently due to take place in the per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth on that very day when he went down into the Jor­dan with his two broth­ers to be bap­tized by John. This cer­e­mony was the fi­nal act of his purely hu­man life on Uran­tia, and many super­hu­man ob­servers ex­pected to wit­ness the fu­sion of the Ad­juster with its in­dwelt mind, but they were all des­tined to suf­fer dis­ap­point­ment. Some­thing new and even greater oc­curred. As John laid his hands upon Je­sus to bap­tize him, the in­dwelling Ad­juster took fi­nal leave of the per­fected hu­man soul of Joshua ben Joseph. And in a few mo­ments this di­vine en­tity re­turned from Di­vin­ing­ton as a Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster and chief of his kind through­out the en­tire lo­cal uni­verse of Neb­a­don. Thus did Je­sus ob­serve his own for­mer di­vine spirit de­scend­ing on its re­turn to him in per­son­al­ized form. And he heard this same spirit of Par­a­dise ori­gin now speak, say­ing, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” And John, with Je­sus’ two broth­ers, also heard these words. John’s dis­ci­ples, stand­ing by the wa­ter’s edge, did not hear these words, nei­ther did they see the ap­pari­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster. Only the eyes of Je­sus be­held the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

140:9.1The next Sab­bath day Je­sus de­voted to his apos­tles, jour­ney­ing back to the high­land where he had or­dained them; and there, af­ter a long and beau­ti­fully touch­ing per­sonal mes­sage of en­cour­age­ment, he en­gaged in the solemn act of the con­se­cra­tion of the twelve. This Sab­bath af­ter­noon Je­sus as­sem­bled the apos­tles around him on the hill­side and gave them into the hands of his heav­enly Fa­ther in prepa­ra­tion for the day when he would be com­pelled to leave them alone in the world. There was no new teach­ing on this oc­ca­sion, just vis­it­ing and com­mu­nion.

140:9.2Je­sus re­viewed many fea­tures of the or­di­na­tion ser­mon, de­liv­ered on this same spot, and then, call­ing them be­fore him one by one, he com­mis­sioned them to go forth in the world as his rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Mas­ter’s con­se­cra­tion charge was: “Go into all the world and preach the glad tid­ings of the king­dom. Lib­er­ate spir­i­tual cap­tives, com­fort the op­pressed, and min­is­ter to the af­flicted. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give.”

140:9.3Je­sus ad­vised them to take nei­ther money nor ex­tra cloth­ing, say­ing, “The la­borer is wor­thy of his hire.” And fi­nally he said: “Be­hold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be you there­fore as wise as ser­pents and as harm­less as doves. But take heed, for your en­e­mies will bring you up be­fore their coun­cils, while in their syn­a­gogues they will cas­ti­gate you. Be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers you will be brought be­cause you be­lieve this gospel, and your very tes­ti­mony shall be a wit­ness for me to them. And when they lead you to judg­ment, be not anx­ious about what you shall say, for the spirit of my Fa­ther in­dwells you and will at such a time speak through you. Some of you will be put to death, and be­fore you es­tab­lish the king­dom on earth, you will be hated by many peo­ples be­cause of this gospel; but fear not; I will be with you, and my spirit shall go be­fore you into all the world. And my Fa­ther’s pres­ence will abide with you while you go first to the Jews, then to the gen­tiles.”

140:9.4And when they came down from the moun­tain, they jour­neyed back to their home in Zeb­e­dee’s house.

• usually gave thanks before eating

143:3.4The next day Je­sus as­signed to each of the twelve a topic for dis­cus­sion. The whole day was de­voted to rem­i­nis­cences and to talk­ing over mat­ters not re­lated to their re­li­gious work. They were mo­men­tar­ily shocked when Je­sus even ne­glected to give thanks—ver­bally—when he broke bread for their noon­tide lunch. This was the first time they had ever ob­served him to ne­glect such for­mal­i­ties.

• antagonism with Jewish c. always positive

147:6.6Je­sus’ an­tag­o­nism to the Jew­ish tra­di­tions and slav­ish cer­e­mo­ni­als was al­ways pos­i­tive. It con­sisted in what he did and in what he af­firmed. The Mas­ter spent lit­tle time in neg­a­tive de­nun­ci­a­tions. He taught that those who know God can en­joy the lib­erty of liv­ing with­out de­ceiv­ing them­selves by the li­censes of sin­ning. Said Je­sus to the apos­tles: “Men, if you are en­light­ened by the truth and re­ally know what you are do­ing, you are blessed; but if you know not the di­vine way, you are un­for­tu­nate and al­ready break­ers of the law.”

• abrogated all c. not reflective of intimate family relationship
• washed hands only for cleanliness

166:1.2By the time Je­sus ar­rived at this break­fast, most of the Phar­isees, with two or three lawyers, were al­ready there and seated at the ta­ble. The Mas­ter im­me­di­ately took his seat at the left of Na­than­iel with­out go­ing to the wa­ter basins to wash his hands. Many of the Phar­isees, es­pe­cially those fa­vor­able to Je­sus’ teach­ings, knew that he washed his hands only for pur­poses of clean­li­ness, that he ab­horred these purely cer­e­mo­nial per­for­mances; so they were not sur­prised at his com­ing di­rectly to the ta­ble with­out hav­ing twice washed his hands. But Na­than­iel was shocked by this fail­ure of the Mas­ter to com­ply with the strict re­quire­ments of Phar­i­saic prac­tice. Nei­ther did Je­sus wash his hands, as did the Phar­isees, af­ter each course of food nor at the end of the meal.

• washed hands only for cleanliness

167:1.3Soon they were all seated and en­joy­ing the vis­it­ing among them­selves since the ma­jor­ity of those pres­ent were dis­ci­ples of Je­sus or else were friendly to the gospel. Only his en­e­mies took no­tice of the fact that he did not ob­serve the cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of his hands be­fore he sat down to eat. Ab­ner washed his hands at the be­gin­ning of the meal but not dur­ing the serv­ing.

• did not participate in sacrificial c.

179:0.3The apos­tles knew that Je­sus had cel­e­brated other Passovers with­out the lamb; they knew that he did not per­son­ally par­tic­i­pate in any sac­ri­fi­cial ser­vice of the Jew­ish sys­tem. He had many times par­taken of the paschal lamb as a guest, but al­ways, when he was the host, no lamb was served. It would not have been a great sur­prise to the apos­tles to have seen the lamb omit­ted even on Pass­over night, and since this sup­per was given one day ear­lier, they thought noth­ing of its ab­sence.

• washed hands only for cleanliness

179:3.1Af­ter drink­ing the first cup of the Pass­over, it was the Jew­ish cus­tom for the host to arise from the ta­ble and wash his hands. Later on in the meal and af­ter the sec­ond cup, all of the guests like­wise rose up and washed their hands. Since the apos­tles knew that their Mas­ter never ob­served these rites of cer­e­mo­nial hand wash­ing, they were very cu­ri­ous to know what he in­tended to do when, af­ter they had par­taken of this first cup, he arose from the ta­ble and silently made his way over to near the door, where the wa­ter pitch­ers, basins, and tow­els had been placed. And their cu­rios­ity grew into as­ton­ish­ment as they saw the Mas­ter re­move his outer gar­ment, gird him­self with a towel, and be­gin to pour wa­ter into one of the foot basins. Imag­ine the amaze­ment of these twelve men, who had so re­cently re­fused to wash one an­other’s feet, and who had en­gaged in such un­seemly dis­putes about po­si­tions of honor at the ta­ble, when they saw him make his way around the un­oc­cu­pied end of the ta­ble to the low­est seat of the feast, where Si­mon Pe­ter re­clined, and, kneel­ing down in the at­ti­tude of a ser­vant, make ready to wash Si­mon’s feet. As the Mas­ter knelt, all twelve arose as one man to their feet; even the traitorous Ju­das so far for­got his in­famy for a mo­ment as to arise with his fel­low apos­tles in this ex­pres­sion of sur­prise, re­spect, and ut­ter amaze­ment.

• Remembrance Supper only c. Jesus established

179:5.4In in­sti­tut­ing this re­mem­brance sup­per, the Mas­ter, as was al­ways his habit, re­sorted to para­bles and sym­bols. He em­ployed sym­bols be­cause he wanted to teach cer­tain great spir­i­tual truths in such a man­ner as to make it dif­fi­cult for his suc­ces­sors to at­tach pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and def­i­nite mean­ings to his words. In this way he sought to pre­vent suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions from crys­tal­liz­ing his teach­ing and bind­ing down his spir­i­tual mean­ings by the dead chains of tra­di­tion and dogma. In the es­tab­lish­ment of the only cer­e­mony or sacra­ment as­so­ci­ated with his whole life mis­sion, Je­sus took great pains to sug­gest his mean­ings rather than to com­mit him­self to pre­cise def­i­ni­tions. He did not wish to de­stroy the in­di­vid­ual’s con­cept of di­vine com­mu­nion by es­tab­lish­ing a pre­cise form; nei­ther did he de­sire to limit the be­liever’s spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion by for­mally cramp­ing it. He rather sought to set man’s re­born soul free upon the joy­ous wings of a new and liv­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty.

179:5.5Not­with­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s ef­fort thus to es­tab­lish this new sacra­ment of the re­mem­brance, those who fol­lowed af­ter him in the in­ter­ven­ing cen­turies saw to it that his ex­press de­sire was ef­fec­tively thwarted in that his sim­ple spir­i­tual sym­bol­ism of that last night in the flesh has been re­duced to pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and sub­jected to the al­most math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion of a set for­mula. Of all Je­sus’ teach­ings none have be­come more tra­di­tion-stan­dard­ized.

• abrogated all c. not reflective of intimate family relationship

190:2.4When James per­ceived that Je­sus was ad­dress­ing him, he started to fall to his knees, ex­claim­ing, “My fa­ther and my brother,” but Je­sus bade him stand while he spoke with him. And they walked through the gar­den and talked for al­most three min­utes; talked over ex­pe­ri­ences of for­mer days and fore­cast the events of the near fu­ture. As they neared the house, Je­sus said, “Farewell, James, un­til I greet you all to­gether.”

155:6.5While the re­li­gion of au­thor­ity may im­part a pres­ent feel­ing of set­tled se­cu­rity, you pay for such a tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion the price of the loss of your spir­i­tual free­dom and re­li­gious lib­erty. My Fa­ther does not re­quire of you as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom of heaven that you should force your­self to sub­scribe to a be­lief in things which are spir­i­tu­ally re­pug­nant, un­holy, and un­truth­ful. It is not re­quired of you that your own sense of mercy, jus­tice, and truth should be out­raged by sub­mis­sion to an out­worn sys­tem of re­li­gious forms and cer­e­monies. The re­li­gion of the spirit leaves you for­ever free to fol­low the truth wher­ever the lead­ings of the spirit may take you. And who can judge—per­haps this spirit may have some­thing to im­part to this gen­er­a­tion which other gen­er­a­tions have re­fused to hear?

155:6.6Shame on those false re­li­gious teach­ers who would drag hun­gry souls back into the dim and dis­tant past and there leave them! And so are these un­for­tu­nate per­sons doomed to be­come fright­ened by ev­ery new dis­cov­ery, while they are dis­com­fited by ev­ery new rev­e­la­tion of truth. The prophet who said, “He will be kept in per­fect peace whose mind is stayed on God,” was not a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­liever in au­thor­i­ta­tive the­ol­ogy. This truth-know­ing hu­man had dis­cov­ered God; he was not merely talk­ing about God.

155:6.7I ad­mon­ish you to give up the prac­tice of al­ways quot­ing the proph­ets of old and prais­ing the heroes of Is­rael, and in­stead as­pire to be­come liv­ing proph­ets of the Most High and spir­i­tual heroes of the com­ing king­dom. To honor the God-know­ing lead­ers of the past may in­deed be worth while, but why, in so do­ing, should you sac­ri­fice the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man ex­is­tence: find­ing God for your­selves and know­ing him in your own souls?

90:3.1Since an­cient man re­garded him­self and his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing di­rectly re­spon­sive to the whims of the ghosts and the fan­cies of the spir­its, it is not strange that his re­li­gion should have been so ex­clu­sively con­cerned with ma­te­rial af­fairs. Mod­ern man at­tacks his ma­te­rial prob­lems di­rectly; he rec­og­nizes that mat­ter is re­spon­sive to the in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of mind. Prim­i­tive man like­wise de­sired to mod­ify and even to con­trol the life and en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal do­mains; and since his lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of the cos­mos led him to the be­lief that ghosts, spir­its, and gods were per­son­ally and im­me­di­ately con­cerned with the de­tailed con­trol of life and mat­ter, he log­i­cally di­rected his ef­forts to win­ning the fa­vor and sup­port of these super­hu­man agen­cies.

90:3.2Viewed in this light, much of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble and ir­ra­tional in the an­cient cults is un­der­stand­able. The cer­e­monies of the cult were prim­i­tive man’s at­tempt to con­trol the ma­te­rial world in which he found him­self. And many of his ef­forts were di­rected to the end of pro­long­ing life and in­sur­ing health. Since all dis­eases and death it­self were orig­i­nally re­garded as spirit phe­nom­ena, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that the shamans, while func­tion­ing as med­i­cine men and priests, should also have la­bored as doc­tors and sur­geons.

• Prince’s staff included water cleansing as part of

66:5.21Be­fore the Prince’s ar­rival, bathing had been an ex­clu­sively re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial. It was in­deed dif­fi­cult to per­suade prim­i­tive men to wash their bod­ies as a health prac­tice. Lut fi­nally in­duced the re­li­gious teach­ers to in­clude cleans­ing with wa­ter as a part of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies to be prac­ticed in con­nec­tion with the noon­time de­vo­tions, once a week, in the wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all.

• after childbirth

84:4.6Child­bear­ing was once gen­er­ally looked upon as ren­der­ing a woman dan­ger­ous and un­clean. And many tribal mores de­creed that a mother must un­dergo ex­ten­sive pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies sub­se­quent to the birth of a child. Ex­cept among those groups where the hus­band par­tic­i­pated in the ly­ing-in, the ex­pec­tant mother was shunned, left alone. The an­cients even avoided hav­ing a child born in the house. Fi­nally, the old women were per­mit­ted to at­tend the mother dur­ing la­bor, and this prac­tice gave ori­gin to the pro­fes­sion of mid­wifery. Dur­ing la­bor, scores of fool­ish things were said and done in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate de­liv­ery. It was the cus­tom to sprin­kle the new­born with holy wa­ter to pre­vent ghost in­ter­fer­ence.

• after contact with the dead

87:1.4The sav­ages sat up all night and talked when a mem­ber of the clan died; they feared they too would die if they fell asleep in the vicin­ity of a corpse. Con­ta­gion from the corpse sub­stan­ti­ated the fear of the dead, and all peo­ples, at one time or an­other, have em­ployed elab­o­rate pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies de­signed to cleanse an in­di­vid­ual af­ter con­tact with the dead. The an­cients be­lieved that light must be pro­vided for a corpse; a dead body was never per­mit­ted to re­main in the dark. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, can­dles are still burned in death cham­bers, and men still sit up with the dead. So-called civ­i­lized man has hardly yet com­pletely elim­i­nated the fear of dead bod­ies from his phi­los­o­phy of life.

• rites for remission of sin

89:2.5The idea of con­fes­sion and for­give­ness early ap­peared in prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Men would ask for­give­ness at a pub­lic meet­ing for sins they in­tended to com­mit the fol­low­ing week. Con­fes­sion was merely a rite of re­mis­sion, also a pub­lic no­ti­fi­ca­tion of de­file­ment, a rit­ual of cry­ing “un­clean, un­clean!” Then fol­lowed all the rit­u­al­is­tic schemes of pu­rifi­ca­tion. All an­cient peo­ples prac­ticed these mean­ing­less cer­e­monies. Many ap­par­ently hy­gienic cus­toms of the early tribes were largely cer­e­mo­nial.

• evolution of

90:5.3Words be­come a part of rit­ual, such as the use of terms like amen and se­lah. The habit of swear­ing, pro­fan­ity, rep­re­sents a pros­ti­tu­tion of for­mer rit­u­al­is­tic rep­e­ti­tion of holy names. The mak­ing of pil­grim­ages to sa­cred shrines is a very an­cient rit­ual. The rit­ual next grew into elab­o­rate cer­e­monies of pu­rifi­ca­tion, cleans­ing, and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. The ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­monies of the prim­i­tive tribal se­cret so­ci­eties were in re­al­ity a crude re­li­gious rite. The wor­ship tech­nique of the olden mys­tery cults was just one long per­for­mance of ac­cu­mu­lated re­li­gious rit­ual. Rit­ual fi­nally de­vel­oped into the mod­ern types of so­cial cer­e­mo­ni­als and re­li­gious wor­ship, ser­vices em­brac­ing prayer, song, re­spon­sive read­ing, and other in­di­vid­ual and group spir­i­tual de­vo­tions.

• evolution of

92:3.2Re­li­gion has al­ways been largely a mat­ter of rites, rit­u­als, ob­ser­vances, cer­e­monies, and dog­mas. It has usu­ally be­come tainted with that per­sis­tently mis­chief-mak­ing er­ror, the cho­sen-peo­ple delu­sion. The car­di­nal re­li­gious ideas of in­can­ta­tion, in­spi­ra­tion, rev­e­la­tion, pro­pi­ti­a­tion, re­pen­tance, atone­ment, in­ter­ces­sion, sac­ri­fice, prayer, con­fes­sion, wor­ship, sur­vival af­ter death, sacra­ment, rit­ual, ran­som, sal­va­tion, re­demp­tion, covenant, un­clean­ness, pu­rifi­ca­tion, prophecy, orig­i­nal sin—they all go back to the early times of pri­mor­dial ghost fear.

• after childbirth

122:9.1Moses had taught the Jews that ev­ery first-born son be­longed to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sac­ri­fice as was the cus­tom among the hea­then na­tions, such a son might live pro­vided his par­ents would re­deem him by the pay­ment of five shekels to any au­tho­rized priest. There was also a Mo­saic or­di­nance which di­rected that a mother, af­ter the pass­ing of a cer­tain pe­riod of time, should pre­sent her­self (or have some­one make the proper sac­ri­fice for her) at the tem­ple for pu­rifi­ca­tion. It was cus­tom­ary to per­form both of these cer­e­monies at the same time. Ac­cord­ingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem in per­son to pre­sent Je­sus to the priests and ef­fect his re­demp­tion and also to make the proper sac­ri­fice to in­sure Mary’s cer­e­mo­nial pu­rifi­ca­tion from the al­leged un­clean­ness of child­birth.

• after childbirth

122:10.2Joseph was afraid to seek work, and their small sav­ings were rapidly dis­ap­pear­ing. Even at the time of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies at the tem­ple, Joseph deemed him­self suf­fi­ciently poor to war­rant his of­fer­ing for Mary two young pi­geons as Moses had di­rected for the pu­rifi­ca­tion of moth­ers among the poor.

• at weddings

137:4.11Near at hand stood six wa­ter­pots of stone, filled with wa­ter, hold­ing about twenty gal­lons apiece. This wa­ter was in­tended for sub­se­quent use in the fi­nal pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies of the wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion. The com­mo­tion of the ser­vants about these huge stone ves­sels, un­der the busy di­rec­tion of his mother, at­tracted Je­sus’ at­ten­tion, and go­ing over, he ob­served that they were draw­ing wine out of them by the pitcher­ful.

• Pharisees scrupulously observed

166:1.7There were just three things to which the Phar­isees paid par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion:

166:1.81. The prac­tice of strict tithing.

166:1.92. Scrupu­lous ob­ser­vance of the laws of pu­rifi­ca­tion.

166:1.103. Avoid­ance of as­so­ci­a­tion with all non-Phar­isees.

• after healing from leprosy

166:2.4Je­sus, go­ing near the lep­ers, said: “If you would be made whole, go forth­with and show your­selves to the priests as re­quired by the law of Moses.” And as they went, they were made whole. But when the Samar­i­tan saw that he was be­ing healed, he turned back and, go­ing in quest of Je­sus, be­gan to glo­rify God with a loud voice. And when he had found the Mas­ter, he fell on his knees at his feet and gave thanks for his cleans­ing. The nine oth­ers, the Jews, had also dis­cov­ered their heal­ing, and while they also were grate­ful for their cleans­ing, they con­tin­ued on their way to show them­selves to the priests.

• if Jew entered gentile building before Passover

185:0.3Though Pi­late con­ducted much of Je­sus’ ex­am­i­na­tion within the prae­to­rium halls, the pub­lic trial was held out­side on the steps lead­ing up to the main en­trance. This was a con­ces­sion to the Jews, who re­fused to en­ter any gen­tile build­ing where leaven might be used on this day of prepa­ra­tion for the Pass­over. Such con­duct would not only ren­der them cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean and thereby de­bar them from par­tak­ing of the af­ter­noon feast of thanks­giv­ing but would also ne­ces­si­tate their sub­jec­tion to pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies af­ter sun­down, be­fore they would be el­i­gi­ble to par­take of the Pass­over sup­per.

185:0.4Al­though these Jews were not at all both­ered in con­science as they in­trigued to ef­fect the ju­di­cial mur­der of Je­sus, they were nonethe­less scrupu­lous re­gard­ing all these mat­ters of cer­e­mo­nial clean­ness and tra­di­tional reg­u­lar­ity. And these Jews have not been the only ones to fail in the rec­og­ni­tion of high and holy obli­ga­tions of a di­vine na­ture while giv­ing metic­u­lous at­ten­tion to things of tri­fling im­por­tance to hu­man wel­fare in both time and eter­nity.

68:2.10If van­ity be en­larged to cover pride, am­bi­tion, and honor, then we may dis­cern not only how these propen­si­ties con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions, but how they also hold men to­gether, since such emo­tions are fu­tile with­out an au­di­ence to pa­rade be­fore. Soon van­ity as­so­ci­ated with it­self other emo­tions and im­pulses which re­quired a so­cial arena wherein they might ex­hibit and grat­ify them­selves. This group of emo­tions gave ori­gin to the early be­gin­nings of all art, cer­e­mo­nial, and all forms of sportive games and con­tests.

83:4.2Magic, rit­ual, and cer­e­mony sur­rounded the en­tire life of the an­cients, and mar­riage was no ex­cep­tion. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced, as mar­riage be­came more se­ri­ously re­garded, the wed­ding cer­e­mony be­came in­creas­ingly pre­ten­tious. Early mar­riage was a fac­tor in prop­erty in­ter­ests, even as it is to­day, and there­fore re­quired a le­gal cer­e­mony, while the so­cial sta­tus of sub­se­quent chil­dren de­manded the widest pos­si­ble pub­lic­ity. Prim­i­tive man had no rec­ords; there­fore must the mar­riage cer­e­mony be wit­nessed by many per­sons.

• magic practiced with ritual

88:6.1Magic was prac­ticed through the use of wands, “med­i­cine” rit­ual, and in­can­ta­tions, and it was cus­tom­ary for the prac­ti­tioner to work un­clothed. Women out­num­bered the men among prim­i­tive ma­gi­cians. In magic, “med­i­cine” means mys­tery, not treat­ment. The sav­age never doc­tored him­self; he never used medicines ex­cept on the ad­vice of the spe­cial­ists in magic. And the voodoo doc­tors of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury are typ­i­cal of the ma­gi­cians of old.

• gesture, older than speech, is more holy, magical

88:6.4Ges­ture, be­ing older than speech, was the more holy and mag­i­cal, and mimicry was be­lieved to have strong mag­i­cal power. The red men of­ten staged a buf­falo dance in which one of their num­ber would play the part of a buf­falo and, in be­ing caught, would in­sure the suc­cess of the im­pend­ing hunt. The sex fes­tiv­i­ties of May Day were sim­ply im­i­ta­tive magic, a sug­ges­tive ap­peal to the sex pas­sions of the plant world. The doll was first em­ployed as a magic tal­is­man by the bar­ren wife.

• present-day forms based on ancient propitiation

89:4.7Gifts and bribes are given to men; but when ten­dered to the gods, they are de­scribed as be­ing ded­i­cated, made sa­cred, or are called sac­ri­fices. Re­nun­ci­a­tion was the neg­a­tive form of pro­pi­ti­a­tion; sac­ri­fice be­came the pos­i­tive form. The act of pro­pi­ti­a­tion in­cluded praise, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, flat­tery, and even en­ter­tain­ment. And it is the rem­nants of these pos­i­tive prac­tices of the olden pro­pi­ti­a­tion cult that con­sti­tute the mod­ern forms of di­vine wor­ship. Pres­ent-day forms of wor­ship are sim­ply the rit­u­al­iza­tion of these an­cient sac­ri­fi­cial tech­niques of pos­i­tive pro­pi­ti­a­tion.

• common people awed by ritual in ancient tongue

90:5.6The priests have al­ways sought to im­press and awe the com­mon peo­ple by con­duct­ing the re­li­gious rit­ual in an an­cient tongue and by sundry mag­i­cal passes so to mys­tify the wor­shipers as to en­hance their own piety and au­thor­ity. The great dan­ger in all this is that the rit­ual tends to be­come a sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

92:2.2Re­li­gion clings to the mores; that which was is an­cient and sup­pos­edly sa­cred. For this rea­son and no other, stone im­ple­ments per­sisted long into the age of bronze and iron. This state­ment is of rec­ord: “And if you will make me an al­tar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in mak­ing it, you have pol­luted it.” Even to­day, the Hin­dus kin­dle their al­tar fires by us­ing a prim­i­tive fire drill. In the course of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, nov­elty has al­ways been re­garded as sac­ri­lege. The sacra­ment must con­sist, not of new and man­u­fac­tured food, but of the most prim­i­tive of viands: “The flesh roasted with fire and un­leav­ened bread served with bit­ter herbs.” All types of so­cial us­age and even le­gal pro­ce­dures cling to the old forms.