form. The catechumen was placed with face toward the west, and then commanded to renounce Satan with gestures of abhorrence, stretching out his hands against him, or smiting them together, and blowing or spitting against him thrice. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his 'Mystagogic Catechism,' thus depicts the scene: 'Ye first came into the ante-room of the baptistery, and standing toward the west (πpòs τàs Svoμás) ye were commanded to put away Satan, stretching out your hands as though he were present. . . . . And why did ye stand toward the west? It was needful, for sunset is the type of darkness, and he is darkness and has his strength in darkness; therefore symbolically looking toward the west ye renounce that dark and gloomy ruler.' Then turning round to the east, the catechumen took up his allegiance to his new master, Christ. The ceremony and its significance are clearly set forth by Jerome, thus: 'In the mysteries [meaning baptism] we first renounce him who is in the west, and dies to us with our sins; and so, turning to the east, we make a covenant with the Sun of righteousness, promising to be his servants.'1 This perfect double rite of east and west, retained in the baptismal ceremony of the Greek Church, may be seen in Russia to this day. The orientation of churches and the practice of turning to the east as an act of worship, are common to both Greek and Latin ritual. In our own country they declined from the Reformation, till at the beginning of the 19th century they seemed falling out of use; since then, however, they have been restored to a certain prominence by the revived mediavalism of our own day. To the student of history, it is a striking example of the connexion of thought and ceremony through the religions of the lower and higher culture, to see surviving in our midst, with meaning dwindled into 1 Augustin. de Serm. Dom. in Monte, ii. 5. Tertullian. Contra Valentin. iii.; Apolog. xvi. Constitutiones Apostolicæ, ii. 57. Cyril. Catech. Mystag. i. 2. Hieronym. in Amos. vi. 14; Bingham, Antiquities of Chr. Church,' book viii. ch. 3, book xi. ch. 7, book xiii. ch. 8. J. M. Neale, 'Eastern Church,' part i. p. 956; Romanoff, 'Greco-Russian Church,' p. 67. symbolism, this ancient solar rite. The influence of the divine Sun upon his rude and ancient worshippers still subsists before our eyes as a mechanical force, acting diamagnetically to adjust the axis of the church and turn the body of the worshipper. The last group of rites whose course through religious history is to be outlined here, takes in the varied dramatic acts of ceremonial purification or Lustration. With all the obscurity and intricacy due to age-long modification, the primitive thought which underlies these ceremonies is still open to view. It is the transition from practical to symbolic cleansing, from removal of bodily impurity to deliverance from invisible, spiritual, and at last moral evil. Our language follows this ideal movement to its utmost stretch, where such words as cleansing and purification have passed from their first material meaning, to signify removal of ceremonial contamination, legal guilt, and moral sin. What we thus express in metaphor, the men of the lower culture began early to act in ceremony, purifying persons and objects by various prescribed rites, especially by dipping them in and sprinkling them with water, or fumigating them with and passing them through fire. It is the plainest proof of the original practicality of proceedings now passed into formalism, to point out how far the ceremonial lustrations still keep their connexion with times of life when real purification is necessary, how far they still consist in formal cleansing of the new-born child and the mother, of the manslayer who has shed blood, or the mourner who has touched a corpse. In studying the distribution of the forms of lustration among the races of the world, while allowing for the large effect of their transmission from religion to religion, and from nation to nation, we may judge that their diversity of detail and purpose scarcely favours a theory of their being all historically derived from one or even several special religions of the ancient world. They seem more largely to exemplify independent working out, in different directions, of an idea common to mankind at large. This view may be justified by surveying lustration through a series of typical instances, which show its appearance and character in savage and barbaric culture, as being an act belonging to certain well-marked events of human life. The purification of the new-born child appears among the lower races in various forms, but perhaps in some particular instances borrowed from the higher. It should be noticed that though the naming of the child is often associated with its ceremonial cleansing, there is no real connexion between the two rites, beyond their coming due at the same early time of life. To those who look for the matter-of-fact origin of such ceremonies, one of the most suggestive of the accounts available is a simple mention of the two necessary acts of washing and name-giving, as done together in mere practical purpose, but not as yet passed into formal ceremony-the Kichtak Islanders, it is remarked, at birth wash the child, and give it a name.1 Among the Yumanas of Brazil, as soon as the child can sit up, it is sprinkled with a decoction of certain herbs, and receives a name which has belonged to an ancestor.2 Among some Jakun tribes of the Malay Peninsula, as soon as the child is born it is carried to the nearest stream and washed; it is then brought back to the house, the fire is kindled, and fragrant wood thrown on, over which it is passed several times.3 The New Zealanders' infant baptism is no new practice, and is considered by them an old traditional rite, but nothing very similar is observed among other branches of the Polynesian race. Whether independently invented or not, it was thoroughly worked into the native religious scheme. The baptism was performed on the eighth day or earlier, at the side of a stream or elsewhere, by a native priest who sprinkled water on the child with a branch or twig; sometimes the child was immersed. With this lustration it received its name, the priest repeating a list of 1 Billings, N. Russia,' p. 175. 2 Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 485. ancestral names till the child chose one for itself by sneezing at it. The ceremony was of the nature of a dedication, and was accompanied by rhythmical formulas of exhortation. The future warrior was bidden to flame with anger, to leap nimbly and ward off the spears, to be angry and bold and industrious, to work before the dew is off the ground; the future housewife was bidden to get food and go for firewood and weave garments with panting of breath. In after years, a second sacred sprinkling was performed to admit a lad into the rank of warriors. It has to be noticed with reference to the reason of this ceremonial washing, that a newborn child is in the highest degree tapu, and may only be touched by a few special persons till the restriction is removed.1 In Madagascar, a fire is kept up in the room for several days, then the child in its best clothes is in due form carried out of the house and back to its mother, both times being carefully lifted over the fire, which is made near the door.2 In Africa, some of the most noticeable ceremonies of the class are these. The people of Sarac wash the child three days after birth with holy water.3 When a Mandingo child was about a week old its hair was cut, and the priest, invoking blessings, took it in his arms, whispered in its ear, spat thrice in its face, and pronounced its name aloud before the assembled company. In Guinea, when a child is born, the event is publicly proclaimed, the new-born babe is brought into the streets, and the headman of the town or family sprinkles it with water from a basin, giving it a name and invoking blessings of health and wealth upon it; other friends follow the example, till the child is thoroughly drenched.5 In these various examples 1 Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 184; Yate, p. 82; Polack, vol. i. p. 51; A. S. Thomson, vol. i. p. 118; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iv. p. 304. See Schirren, 'Wandersagen der Neuseeländer,' pp. 58, 183; Shortland, p. 145. 2 Ellis, Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 152. 3 Munzinger, Ost-Afrika,' p. 387. 4 Park, 'Travels,' ch. vi. 5 J. L. Wilson, Western Africa,' p. 399. See also Bastian, 'Mensch,' of lustration of infants, the purifications by fire have especial importance ethnologically, not because this proceeding is more natural to the savage mind than that of bathing or sprinkling with water, but because this latter ceremony may sometimes have been imitated from Christian baptism. The fact of savage and barbaric lustration of infants being in several cases associated with the belief in re-birth of ancestral souls seems to mark the rite as belonging to remote pre-Christian ages.1 The purification of women at childbirth, &c., is ceremonially practised by the lower races under circumstances which do not suggest adoption from more civilized nations. The seclusion and lustration among North American Indian tribes have been compared with those of the Levitical law, but the resemblance is not remarkably close, and belongs rather to a stage of civilization than to the ordinance of a particular nation. It is a good case of independent development in such customs, that the rite of putting out the fires and kindling‘new fire' on the woman's return is common to the Iroquois and Sioux in North America,2 and the Basutos in South Africa. These latter have a well-marked rite of lustration by sprinkling, performed on girls at womanhood. The Hottentots considered mother and child unclean till they had been washed and smeared after the uncleanly native fashion.4 Lustrations with water were usual in West Africa. Tatar tribes in Mongolia used bathing, while in Siberia the custom of leaping over a fire answered the purpose of purification. The Mantras of the Malay Peninsula have made the bathing of the mother after vol. ii. p. 279 (Watje); Anthropological Review,' Nov. 1864, p. 243 (Mpongwe); Barker-Webb and Berthelot, vol. ii. p. 163 (Tenerife). 1 See pp. 5, 437. ་ 2 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 261; part iii. p. 243, &c. Charlevoix, Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 425. Wilson in Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iv. p. 294. 3 Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 267. 4 Kolben, vol. i. pp. 273, 283. 5 Bosman, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 423, 527; Meiners, vol. ii. pp. 107, 463. • Pallas, 'Mongolische Völkerschaften,' vol. i. p. 166, &c.; Strahlenberg, 'Siberia,' p. 97. |