ht, though in most of the great religions their power in
this regard has been partly controlled by the civil authority and by the
general intelligence of the community. When they have not been
controlled, they have often succumbed to the temptations that beset
wealth; they have fallen into habits of luxury and debauchery.

+1079+. In a word the history of the priesthood has been like that of
all bodies of men invested with more or less arbitrary power. Its role
has varied greatly in different places and at different times. It has
numbered in its ranks good men and bad, and has favored sometimes
righteous, sometimes unrighteous, causes. It is not possible to define
its influence on religion further than to say that it has been a
natural element of the organization of religion, taking its form and
coloring from the various communities in which it has existed, embodying
current ideas and thus acting as a uniting and guiding force at a time
when higher forces were lacking. It has formed a transitional stage in
the advance of religious thought toward better conceptions of the
relation of man to the deity.

+1080+. Islam has no priesthood, as it has no provision for atonement
for sin except by the righteous conduct of the individual; its cultic
officials are preachers or leaders of prayer (imams) in the mosque
worship, and jurists or scholars (ulamas) who interpret the Koran.
Judaism has had no priests since the destruction of the Second Temple
(70 A.D.); its synagogue services are conducted by men trained in the
study of the Bible or the Talmud (rabbis). In Christianity the
conception of a sacrificial ministrant has been retained in those
churches (the Greek and the Roman) which regard the eucharistic ceremony
as a sacrifice. In the West the "presbyter" (such is the New Testament
term), the head of the congregation, took over the function of the old
priest as conductor of religious worship, and the word assumed the form
"priest" in the Latin and Teutonic languages. Among Protestants it is
employed only in the Church of England, in which, however, for the most
part it has not the signification of 'sacrificer.'

WORSHIP

+1081+. _Places of worship._ The simplest form of early worship is the
presentation of an offering to the dead or to some extrahuman object of
reverence. Such objects were held to exist in all the world, in the sky,
in rocks, streams, woods, caves, hills and mountains, and beneath the
surface of the eart