tithesis? May it not be that the real strength and freeing
power of ethical monotheism is due to the reason which created it and
speaks through it?

Upon one set of myths of extreme importance for religion we have,
however, scarcely touched. Yet the study of this group and its
explanation has been a signal triumph for the science of comparative
religion. It is a great pity that the general public knows, as yet, so
little about the researches made by scholars into the wide-spread
ritual of communion and purification, by means of which the participant
becomes one with his deity and is even assured of salvation and
immortality. The interesting fact is, that, here again, we find ideas
which are essentially primitive and magical given a new setting. What
was once social, and largely a ritual concerned with the re-birth of
vegetation in the Spring, becomes personal, and a symbol of the
resurrection of a {20} believer in another world. In its first form
and motivation, this set of ideas turns around the tribe's material
needs. Only with the growth of self-consciousness is it applied to the
individual.

Why did this type of ritual arise? And why was it celebrated with such
fervor? These questions lead us into the very heart of early religion.
Religion was the expression of man's very real need, in the light of
his view of the world as the seat of spiritual agencies. "The
extraordinary security of our modern life in times of peace makes it
hard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imagination,
the constant precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that was
usual in these weak ancient communities. They were in fear of wild
beasts; they were helpless against floods, helpless against
pestilences. Their food depended on the crops of one tiny plot of
ground; and if the Savior was not reborn with the spring, they slowly
and miserably died. And all the while they knew almost nothing of the
real causes that made crops succeed or fail. They only felt sure it
was somehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defilement. It is
this state of things that explains the curious cruelty of early
agricultural works, the human sacrifices, the scapegoats, the tearing
in pieces of living animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping of
the fields in blood." To men at this stage, religion is the most
natural of attitudes. It is the child of animism, of magic, of
ignorance and of need. But to explain the