Ritual offering

“ Thus, as in other sacrifices, it was foreshadowed that the great Burnt-offering of the future would be the one Man without blemish, the absolutely perfect Exemplar of what manhood should be, but is not.
And this brings us now to the ritual of the offering. In the ritual of the various bloody offerings we find [39] six parts. These are: (1) the Presentation; (2) the Laying on of the Hand; (3) the Killing of the Victim; in which three the ritual was the same for all kinds of offerings. The remaining three are: (4) the Sprinkling of Blood; (5) the Burning; (6) the Sacrificial Meal. ”

“ The rest of the flesh (viscera) was divided as a sacred meal between the celebrant and his friends—or in [93] a state-offering among the priests, and probably the magistrate. We cannot refrain from remarking here the extreme precision of ritual, the scrupulous care with which the human side of the contract was fulfilled and the—almost legal—division of the victim between gods and men. But though the ritual was so exact, one must not be led away by modern analogies to suppose that there was ever anything like a rigid constraint on the private citizen for the observance of festivals. ”

“ Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy and beauty!" Remember that all acts of love and pleasure are rituals, must be rituals. "There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times. A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride! A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law. A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet—secret, O Prophet! A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods. A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death! ”

“ Yet through it ran the old familiar sense of ritual, due to the practice of so many years, that cleansing of mind and body for a big Ascent⁠—like initiatory rites that once had been as important to him as those of some priest who approached the worship of his deity in the temples of ancient time. He performed the ceremony with the same care as though no ghost of vanished faith still watched him, beckoning from the air as formerly.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ The ritual alone which accompanied divination practices and incantation formulae and was a chief factor in the celebration of festival days and of days set aside for one reason or the other to the worship of some god or goddess or group of deities, is free from traces of the astral theology. The more or less elaborate ceremonies prescribed for the occasions when the gods were approached are directly connected with the popular elements of the religion. ”

“ A church or a religious ceremony, nay, every additional ounce of gilding or grain of incense, or day or hour, bestowed on sanctuary and ritual, are not useful only to the selfish devotee who employs them for obtaining celestial favours; they are more useful and necessary even to the pure-minded worshipper, because they enable him to express the longing and the awe with which his heart is overflowing. For every oblation faithfully brought means so much added moral strength; and love requires gifts to give as much as hunger needs food and vanity needs ornament and wealth. ”

“ PRIESTS AND RITUALS The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its performance; among savages it must be practiced with exact precision. It is only when the ritual has been correctly carried out that the ceremony possesses compelling power over the spirits. If the ritual is faulty, it only arouses the anger and resentment of the gods. ”

“ Then, if we turn to the grand imagery of the Book of the Revelation, where we find the heavenly temple opened up to our reverent gaze, we read that the elders, the representatives of redeemed humanity, have 'golden bowls full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints.' So there is no fancifulness in interpreting the incense of the ancient ritual as meaning simply the prayers of devout hearts. ”

“ One may wonder why a magical ritual should be preferred and trusted rather than genuinely devotional worship; since it must, in fact, just as often result in disappointment. But, first, as to the priesthood, an elaborate ritual, difficult to carry out, is favourable to their power, because only professionals can execute it ”

“ Thus prayer, ceasing to be spontaneous and irregular, becomes formal, ceremonial, and regular. And as there are many occasions besides sacrifice on which men desire to pray, so there will be many besides this on which the craving for order, and the readiness to believe that God is better pleased with one form of devotion than another, will lead to the establishment of ritual.
Rites may be performed daily, weekly, or at any other interval. Sometimes, indeed, they are still more frequent, haunting the every-day life of the devotee, and intruding upon his commonest actions. ”

“ And what therefore I would earnestly desire that the Church of God in this land might draw forth from the present excitement and anxiety about ritual is, a faithful comparison of herself, in point of doctrine and practice, with the Apostolic and Primitive model. There are greater things than these; "The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment." ”

“ Of all these sources of evidence, none is more valuable than the testimony of ritual. A moment's reflection will show that ritual, among any people, wild or civilised, is not a thing easily altered. If we take the savage, his ritual consists mainly of the magical rites by which he hopes to constrain his gods to answer his prayers, though he may also "reveal" to the neophyte "Our Father". ”

“ That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. ”

“ It has been felt not only right but necessary, in all ages and places, to accompany the inward feeling of devotion with some outward manifestation of it. In other words, all religious actions are from their nature symbolical and figurative. But if the most obvious corporeal accompaniments to spiritual worship show this clearly, how much more evidently must all ritual systems appear to be symbolical? A system of worship, whether heathen, Christian, or heretical, is only the development and methodising of the simplest figurative acts of devotion ”

“ It consists of plain things like bread and wine and fire, and men falling on their faces. But the ritual which is really complex, and many coloured, and elaborate, and needlessly formal, is the ritual which people enact without knowing it. ”

“ The conflict is keen at first; the Church authorities fight tooth and nail against these relics of heathenism, these devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive paganism is insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual, though losing much of their meaning, and the Church, weary of denouncing, comes to wink at them, while the pagan joy in earthly life begins to colour her own festival. ”

“ Behind the form you feel the person loved. The process is an evocation, pure and simple. An arduous ceremonial, involving worship and devotional preparation, is the means. It is a difficult ritual—the only one acknowledged by the world as still effectual. Ritual is the passage way of the soul into the Infinite. ”

“ The householder or the priest speaks to the spirits as if they were sitting around him. Thus he may say, “O ye great spirits, fathers in the spirit world, mothers in the spirit world, and all ye others, bless us now. Here is the food, and here is the offering, call ye all of you each other.” Then after summoning the dead by their names he may go on: “Come all of you and partake of this offering. Ye great spirits, all things of this earth were known to you while yet ye were here. Take care of this your family, and of all these your children. May we ever go in our ways in prosperity. ”

“ Most of the ritual prescriptions that accompany vows arc intended to guard inviolate the sanctity or taboo, the atmosphere of holiness or ritual purity, which envelops the persons or objects vowed or reserved to the god, and thereby separated from ordinary secular use. ”

“ That God prescribed a ritual at all, was due, no doubt, to the exigencies of the occasion, for man's material and social nature would never have been content with worshipping the Deity in spirit alone, but would have irresistibly impelled him to the building up of a code of ceremonies as unworthy of their high purpose as were the rites of Paganism. ”

“ He was to offer a lamb every morning and evening, and a double number on the Sabbath, the burnt-offerings ordered at the beginning of months, and the same on the feast of Unleavened Bread, and on the day of the First Fruits; to receive the meat-offering of the offerer, bring it to the altar, take of it a memorial, and burn it upon the altar; to sprinkle the blood of the peace-offerings upon the altar around about, and then to offer of it a burnt-offering; to offer the sin-offering for the sins of a ruler or any of the common people; to eat the sin-offering at the holy place ”

“ The gradual elaboration of the sacrificial ceremonial, as the all-sufficient expression of religious devotion, and a constantly growing tendency towards theosophic and mystic speculation on the significance of every detail of the ritual, could not fail to create a demand for explanatory treatises of this kind, which, to enhance their practical utility, would naturally deal with the special texts and rites assigned in the ceremonial to the several classes of officiating priests. ”

“ The man who attends a ritual of prayer which he does not honestly believe in, merely for the sake of social custom and observance, is openly deriding his Maker and the priests who gain their living out of such ritual are trading on the Divine. ”

“ Let those who would substitute their own crude impulses for the sublime rites of our liturgy, making ill digested forms the supplanter of a ritual carefully and devoutly prepared, listen to one of their own semi-conversational addresses to the Almighty over a grave, and then hearken to these venerable rites, and learn humility. ”

“ On the whole, then, to conclude this part of my subject, there ought to be no real difficulty among [86] us as to what is fairly permissible, and answers to the mind of the English Church—taking a wide and liberal view of that mind—in the matter of ritual. Two leading conceptions, NOBLENESS with SIMPLICITY, sum up her general desires on this subject. In the due observance of these, it is her deliberate judgment, (as represented by her wisest sons,—as Ridley, Andrewes, Overall, Cosin) , will be found the best security for worthy worship on the one hand, and for devout worship on the other. ”

“ It remains to say a few words to those whom at the outset I called “hurriers along;” to those who have gone with the movement without considering whither it was carrying them, or what would be the effect on others who are being left behind; to those who in their conformity to “high-ritual” are rather indulging their taste, than exercising their judgment, or are regarding as the soul of worship, that which is but the accessory, the expression, the body and clothing of worship. As I have warned you before, there are great and peculiar dangers inherent in “high-ritual;” ”

“ Ritualism.—By ritual is meant the ceremonial part of Religion; the name is also applied to the book in which the Rites and Ceremonies are set forth. By ritualism is meant the system of ritual or prescribed form of religious worship. Therefore, these words meaning what they do are to be lifted up out of all party spirit and are to be regarded as expressive of the Church's real system of worship. Loyalty to the Prayer-book demands obedience to the rubrics on the part of both minister and people. ”

“ With deliberate intent and elaborate ritual they develop the mediumistic gift, and learn how to attain conditions of frenzy and of trance during which period the body is controlled by a spiritualistic force. ”

“ And the modern European has still his Lent, and his Ember Days and Fridays throughout the year. Such abstinence is the laying down and submission of the orenda to those of mightier beings. On the other hand, gift, prayer, cajolery are, properly speaking, an active exercise of orenda. The relation of spell and incantation to prayer has already been alluded to. They are often indistinguishable: they shade into one another by the finest gradations. Gifts are not mere self-deprivation. ”

“ Other things may be added to enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They are the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are right, took its rise. ”

“ Around these nameless beings, a ritual, simple in its origin, but luxuriant in its growth, has developed, overshadowing and obscuring them from our view, so that we, and perhaps the worshippers, cannot see the god for the ritual. ”

“ The priests have always sought to impress and awe the common people by conducting the religious ritual in an ancient tongue and by sundry magical passes so to mystify the worshipers as to enhance their own piety and authority. The great danger in all this is that the ritual tends to become a substitute for religion. ”