nough.

But where, as in most Semitic, Celtic and various other religions, the
chief gods frowned or smiled as they were propitiated or neglected, and
when a certain amount of pain was the propitiation they demanded, the
necessity of rendering this threw a dark shadow on life. What is the
condition of man, that only through sorrow he can reach joy? He must be
under a curse.

Physical and mental processes aided by analogy this gloomy deduction. It
is only through pain that we are stimulated to the pursuit of pleasure,
and the latter is a phantom we never catch. The laws of correct
reasoning are those which alone should guide us; but the natural laws of
the association of ideas do not at all correspond with the one
association which reason accepts. Truth is what we are born for, error
is what is given us.

Instead of viewing this state of things as one inseparable to the
relative as another than the universal, and, instead of seeing the means
of correcting it in the mental element of attention, continuance or
volition, guided by experience and the growing clearness of the purposes
of the laws of thought, the problem was given up as hopeless, and man
was placed under a ban from which a god alone could set him free; he was
sunk in original sin, chained to death.

To reach this result it is evident that a considerable effort at
reasoning, a peculiar view of the nature of the gods, and a temperament
not the most common, must be combined. Hence it was adopted as a
religious dogma by but a few nations. The Chinese know nothing of the
"sense of sin," nor did the Greeks and Romans. The Parsees do not
acknowledge it, nor do the American tribes. "To sin," in their
languages, does not mean to offend the deity, but to make a mistake, to
miss the mark, to loose one's way as in a wood, and the missionaries
have exceeding difficulty in making them understand the theological
signification of the word.

The second class of rites are memorial in character. As the former were
addressed to the gods, so these are chiefly for the benefit of the
people. They are didactic, to preserve the myth, or institutionary, to
keep alive the discipline and forms of the church.

Of this class of rites it may broadly be said they are the myth
dramatized. Indeed, the drama owes its origin to the mimicry by
worshippers of the supposed doings of the gods. The most ancient
festivals have reference to the recurrence of the seasons, and the
ceremonies whic