Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/707

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 6gi

death, are held to be penalties inflicted by deities whose com- mands have been rejected or neglected. From these evils men must be saved by propitiating the deity concerned. In the empiric period the disobeyed commands were the customs and ceremonies ; the means of propitiation were the animal and food sacrifices which the offended deity could enjoy. Here we discover the first material basis of religion, the sacrifices. He who alone could make the sacrifices acceptable to deity, whose word and touch could alone make them sacred, must needs, through them as a material basis, gain control over the believers. Add to this the power over fetiches and medicines which he pos- sessed, and we have the material products whose production by the sacred labor of the priest and whose private ownership by him furnish the basis for the growth of a hierarchy with coercive con- trol over the community. If it should ever come that popular faith in these material products thus monopolized by the priest- hood should fail, then they would lose their value for want of demand, and the entire structure of coercive control would fall. This was the work of Jesus. For animal sacrifice he substituted his own death. Here no priest was needed, for no material sacrifice was demanded. The believer laid hold on forgiveness of sin and salvation from evil, solely by faith in Christ. He became his own "high priest." Had this been the only inference and practice which could have been drawn from the teachings of Jesus, it is difficult to see how there could have followed the organized church with its masterly discipline and subordination. Each believer would have come directly to God without inter- vention of priest or material sacrifice.

But Christ had left with his disciples certain observances which, under later beliefs, came to be looked upon as sacraments, and therefore as under the control of priests. These were especially the supper, the baptism, and the laying on of hands." Initiation into the body of believers was celebrated by the former two, and the transmission of the sacred offices and healing of diseases by the latter. There were originally no priests, because no sacrifices. The presbyter was the presiding member of the

'LiPPERT, Vol. II, p. 643. -