entification of the god with the interests of his
subjects is so close that the latter are troubled with no doubts as
to whether or not their god is with them. If they observe the
customary rules for cultivating his friendship, he must be with them;
they never imagine that he can be estranged from them. It is the
habitual attitude of early religion to take it for granted that the
god goes with his people (he generally has no other people to go
with) and helps them against their adversaries. To doubt this and to
resort to sacrifices of atonement to bring him back from his
estrangement is a later stage of religion. But if religion is in this
way a public matter, a matter of the tribe and its concerns, what
place is there in it for the individual? Individual cares and needs
may form the subject of prayers and vows, but religion on the whole
has to do with the tribe, not with the individual, or with the
individual only as a member of the tribe. It is the duty of every one
to take his part in the public approaches to the god; he must either
do so or be cut off from his tribe. For his own griefs there is
little comfort in the tribal worship; indeed, personal sorrows and
perplexities meet with but little consideration in early religion. As
the tribe is in no doubt of the goodwill of its god, and regards him
as a firm ally not easily turned away, old religion has a confident
and joyous air, strongly contrasting with the doubts and the
contrition of modern faith. The acts of worship are feasts at which
the members of the tribe rejoice and make merry before their god. To
the delights of feasting those of dance and song are added ("The
people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play"), and
frequently the merrymaking goes to the pitch of frenzy; the
worshippers dance themselves into an ecstasy; they feel the god
taking possession of them, and are hurried along by the sacred
inspiration to behaviour they would not dream of at any other time.

Early Religion and Morality.--How did this early religion bear upon
morality? In how far was it a power for righteousness? There are two
sides to this question. In the first place, the religion of the
infant world was a strong influence for the restraint of individual
excess. The god being the parent of the tribe, its customs had his
sanction, he had no higher interest than its welfare, he was
identified with all its enterprises, its battles were his battles
also. The worship of the god