strictly tribal and strictly local. It is for his brethren of the
tribe, for those in whose veins the blood of the same divine ancestor
runs, that a man's enthusiasm is kindled in acts of worship; it is
his duty to his clan that he then realises, the prosperity of his
clan that he desires. To those of other stems no religious bond
unites him, they are men of another blood, of another worship. His
religious duty is to love his neighbour, or fellow-tribesman, to hate
his enemy, the man of another tribe. And on the other hand, as
religion consists in approaches to a particular spot and the
performance of certain rites, it is left behind when these rites are
accomplished, and the man is away from his god. The sanctuary is
regarded with extreme veneration, often with shrinking and terror,
but distance makes a change, the religion alters with travel, and is
left behind. This religion was on the whole a more exciting and
intense thing than that of the great nature powers; and was far more
interwoven with social life; but it also presented the greatest
obstacles to progress, limiting men's affections to their own kin and
their own land, and confining them in an inveterate conservatism.

[Footnote 5: As illustrating this circle of ideas, compare the
following passages in the Bible: Genesis xxviii.; Ruth i. 16; 1 Sam.
xxvi. 19; 2 Kings v. 17; and of a later period, Psalm xlii.]

[Footnote 6: See on this whole subject Mr. Robertson Smith's
_Religion of the Semites_.]

3. The State after Death.--The belief that the human spirit was not
extinguished at the death of the body, but entered on an existence
without the body somewhere else, opened the door to a wide range of
speculation; and the ideas arrived at by early man as to the place of
spirits and the life beyond, are a principal part of that antique
religion of which the great systems are the heirs. The funeral
practices of prehistoric times, when various articles were placed in
the tomb along with the body of the departed hero or father, and
various sacrifices made to him at his burial or cremation and at
anniversary festivals afterwards, show that the spirits of the dead
were conceived as carrying on the same kind of existence as they had
led here, though an existence unsubstantial and of little power;
"strengthless heads" Homer calls them. Food and drink were of use to
them; for the finer part of it was supposed to reach them. The taste
of blood revived them; and various