Apart from the mooted question of the origin and development of man as
man,–whether it be held that he came into being as an incident in the
evolutionary progress of the ages, or that his creation was by a special
fiat of the Author of all things,–it is obvious that there was a
beginning, when man first appeared as a higher order of being than the
lower animals then in existence. The distinguishing attribute of man, as
distinct from the lower animals at their best, is the capacity to
conceive of spiritual facts and forces. Even at his lowest estate man is
never without an apprehension of immaterial and supernatural
personalities, intangible yet real and potent. The lower animals at
their highest, and under the most effective training, give no indication
of the possibility of such a conception on their part.
Both the Bible record and the disclosed facts of science show man at the
start in a primitive state, with only elemental beginnings of knowledge
or thought or skill. No claim is made for him, by any advocate of his
pre-eminence in creation, that he then had skill in the arts, or
attainment in civilization, or that he was possessed of a religious
theory or ritual of even the simplest character. It is a matter of
interest and importance to trace the course of man’s progress from the
first to the present time, and to see how the good and the evil showed
themselves along the line, from the same germs of thought and conduct
rightly used or misused. The primitive rite of the Threshold Covenant,
here brought out as initial and germinative, seems to present a
reasonable solution of the observed course in religious development and
in religious perversions in the history of mankind from the beginning
until now.
Before primitive man could have concerned himself seriously with the
course of the heavenly bodies, or the changes of the seasons, or the
points of compass and the correspondent shifting of the winds, he must
have recognized the sacred mystery of life and its transmission. It
would seem that a covenant involved in the union of twain made one over
outpoured blood, with power from the Author of life for the transmission
of life, must have been the primal religious rite that brought man’s
personal action into the clear light of a covenant relation with his
Creator. Every subsequent development of the religious idea, good and
bad, pure and impure, would seem to be traceable as an outgrowth, or as
a perversion, of this elemental religious rite.