er be the source of the
selection of the priestly class, the immense influence which
their functions are regarded as having on the welfare of the
tribe causes them to be particularly revered and often feared
by the lay members of the tribe. In more civilized and
spiritual religions, the priestly or professional ecclesiastical
class is no longer regarded as possessed of magical powers by
which it can coerce divinity. It is the official administrator
of the ceremonies of religion, is especially trained, versed and
certificated in doctrine, is empowered to receive confession,
fix penance, and the like. It is still an intermediary between
man and the divine, although itself not possessing any supernatural
powers.

Where ecclesiastical organization is highly developed and
has become controlling in the life of a people, it may be one of
the most powerful forces in social life. Such, for example,
might be said of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages:

A life in the Church, for the Church, through the Church; a life
which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by
the vesper hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring
stimulus of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying
it by penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects
for contemplation and worship--this was the life which they of the
Middle Ages conceived as the rightful life of Man; it was the actual
life of many, the ideal of all.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bryce: _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 423.]

Churches may also come to acquire political functions.
The history of the Church is for many centuries the leading
factor in the political history of Europe, nor is it only in
Christendom that political institutions have been inextricably
associated with religion.

Religious institutions may, as pointed out in the case of
primitive tribes, acquire educational functions. The initiation
ceremonies in Australian tribes have a markedly religious
character. In the higher and more modern religions educational
functions still persist. The Catholic Church has been
regarded as the educator of Europe. Charlemagne's endowment
and encouragement of education was largely made
effectual through the Church. The grammarians and didactic
writers, the poets, the encyclopaedists, the teachers whom
Charlemagne endowed and gathered about him, the heads of
the schools which he founded, were all churchmen. Until
very recently in the hist