A question that forces itself on the mind, in connection with the study
of a world-wide primitive rite like this of the Threshold Covenant, is,
What was its origin? How came it to pass, that primitive peoples, in all
parts of the world, were brought to attach such exceptionally sacred
significance to the threshold of a hut, or tent, or cave, or house; of a
palace or temple; of a domain, local or national; and to count its
crossing by blood a form of holy covenanting between the parties engaged
in it, and the deity invoked in the ceremony? This question goes back to
the origin of religious rites among human beings, and its answer must,
in order to commend itself to all, be in accordance with the natural
outgrowths and the abnormal perversions of religious rites, in the main
line of human development all the world over.
However simple and elemental were man’s earliest religious ideas, they
must have been from the beginning pure and uplifting, or they would not
have been religious. Nothing impure or debasing in itself would have
raised man’s thoughts Godward, even though man might subsequently come
to degrade his best conceptions of God and his worship. Hence the answer
to this question must include only such facts as were capable of being
viewed reverently by primitive man, as worthy of God’s creatures in the
loving service and worship of God.