Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/68

 of the month" of the mother's lying-in, she goes to the synagogue with her friends, where "the father of the girl is called up to the law on the altar, and there after a chapter hath been read to him as usual on the Sabbath morning, he orders the reader to say a Mee-Shabeyrach," or a prayer for a blessing (Rel. of Jews, p. 27 1st part).

It is unnecessary, after these instances, to describe the various modes of consecrating the commencement of life which are in use in other countries. Enough has been said to show how general, if not how universal, such consecrating usages are; how religion, supported by the sentiment of mankind, siezes upon the life of the individual from the first moments of his existence; and demands, as one of the very earliest actions to be performed on his behalf, a solemn recognition of the fact that he stands under the influence, and needs the protection, of an invisible and superhuman power.

After birth, the next marked epoch in life is the arrival at manhood or at womanhood. The transition from infancy to maturity, from dependence on others to self-dependence, from an unsexual to a sexual physical and mental condition, has, like the actual entrance upon life and departure from it, been appropriated by religion with a view to its consecration by fitting rites. Since there is no precise time at which the boy can be said to become a youth, or the girl a maiden, the age at which the ceremonies attending puberty are performed varies very considerably in different countries. The range of variation is from eight to sixteen, though there are exceptional cases both of earlier and later initiation into the new stage of existence. Generally speaking, however, these ages are the limits within which the religious solemnities of puberty are confined.

More clearly, perhaps, than any of those occurring at the other crises of our lives, these solemnities are pervaded by common characteristics. Primitive man in Australia, in America, and in Africa, marks the advent of puberty in a manner which is essentially the same. When we rise to the higher class of religions, we find ceremonies of a different kind from which the ruder symbolism of the savage creeds is absent. But from the uniformity of the types of initiation into manhood among uncivilized people, it is highly probable that the progen