the praise of God
kill animals for their own eating, and render thanks to the Giver of all
for their abundance; so that while some outward joys are retained for
them, they may more readily respond to inward joys. For from obdurate
minds it is undoubtedly impossible to cut off everything at once, because
he who strives to ascend to the highest place rises by degrees or steps
and not by leaps."{46}

We see here very plainly the mind of the ecclesiastical compromiser.
Direct sacrifice to heathen gods the Church of course could not dream of
tolerating; it had been the very centre of her attack since the days of
St. Paul, and refusal to take part in it had cost the martyrs their
lives. Yet the festivity and merrymaking to which it gave occasion were
to be left to the |180| people, for a time at all events. The policy
had its advantages, it made the Church festivals popular; but it had also
its dangers, it encouraged the intrusion of a pagan fleshly element into
their austere and chastened joys. A certain orgiastic licence crept in,
an unbridling of the physical appetites, which has ever been a source of
sorrow and anger to the most earnest Christians and even led the Puritans
of the seventeenth century to condemn all festivals as diabolical.

Before we leave the subject of sacrificial survivals, it must be added
that certain Christmas customs may come, little as those who practise
them suspect it, from that darkest of religious rites, human sacrifice.
Reference has already been made to Dr. Frazer's view of the Saturnalian
king and his awful origin. We shall meet with various similar figures
during the Christmas season--the "King of the Bean," for instance, and
the "Bishop of Fools." If the theories about human sacrifice set forth in
"The Golden Bough" be accepted, we may regard these personages as having
once been mock kings chosen to suffer instead of the real kings, who had
at first to perish by a violent death in order to preserve from the decay
of age the divine life incarnate in them. Such mock monarchs, according
to Dr. Frazer, were exalted for a brief season to the glory and luxury of
kingship ere their doom fell upon them;{47} in the Christmas "kings" the
splendour alone has survived, the dark side is forgotten.

II. THE CULT OF THE DEAD AND THE FAMILY HEARTH.

Round the winter festival cluster certain customs apparently connected
with distinctively domestic religion, rather than with such public and
communal cu