e or near the object which
represented him. There was no compulsion, however, to believe the
story if a man did the acts or took part in them. As to his private
beliefs no one inquired; if he took part in the proper acts of
worship he counted as a religious man, unless he went so far as
openly to flout the current opinions of his time.

Nor were the acts which went to make up religion of an elaborate or
difficult nature. No minute ritual regulated in early times the
approaches to the deity; they were a matter of common knowledge, and
were fixed not by law, which did not yet exist in any form, but by
public custom and public opinion. The manner in which a god is to be
served is known of course to his own people who dwell around him;
others do not know it. The immigrants from Assyria had to send for a
Hebrew to teach them the ritual of the God of Palestine, as they were
on his ground and did not know the right way to worship Him (2 Kings
xvii. 24 _sqq._). It is later that the rite becomes a mystery, known
only to the professional guardian of the shrine or to the initiated
few.

Sacrifice is an invariable feature of early religion. Wherever gods
are worshipped, gifts and offerings are made to them of one kind or
another. It is in this way that, in antiquity at least, the relation
with the deity was renewed, if it had been slackened or broken, or
strengthened and made sure. Sacrifice and worship are in the ancient
world identical terms. The nature of the offering and the mode of
presenting it are infinitely various, but there is always sacrifice
in one form or another. Different deities of course receive different
gifts; the tree has its roots watered, or trophies of battle or of
the chase are hung upon its branches; horses are thrown into the sea.
But of primitive sacrifice generally we may affirm that it consists
of such food and drink as men themselves partake of. Whether it be
the fruit of the field or the firstling of the flock that is offered
at the sacred stone, whether the offering is burnt before the god or
set down and left near him, or whether he is summoned to come down
from the sky or to travel from the far country to which he may have
gone, it is of the materials of a meal that the sacrifice consists.
In some cases it appears to be thought that the god consumes the
offering, as when Fire is worshipped with offerings which he burns
up, or when a fissure in the earth closes upon a victim; but in most
cases it