It would seem clear that the primal idea of a covenant union between two
persons, and between those persons and their God, was found in the
initial and primitive rite of marriage, with its outpoured blood, or
gift of life, on the threshold of being; and that this rite contained in
itself the germs of covenanting and of sacrifice, and the idea of an
altar and a sacrament, where, and by which, man and God were brought
into loving communion and union. Thus the beginning of religious rites
was found in the primal Threshold Covenant as here portrayed.
Out of this beginning came all that is best and holiest in the thought
of sacrifice and sacrament and spiritual communion. The very highest
development of religious truth, under the guidance of progressive
revelation from God, and of man’s growth in thought and knowledge with
the passing ages, is directly in the line of this simple and germinal
idea. Both the Bible record and the record of outside history tend to
confirm this view of religious rites in their beginning and progress.
New life as a consequence of blood, or life, surrendered in holy
covenanting, is a natural inference or outgrowth of the truth of the
primal Threshold Covenant. Thus the thought of life after death, in the
resurrection or in metempsychosis, comes with the recognition of the
simple fact of the results of covenant union in the sight, and with the
blessing, of the Author of life, in the rite of the Threshold
Covenant.[599]
The transference of the altar of threshold covenanting, from the persons
of the primary pair in the family to the hearthstone or entrance
threshold of the home or family doorway, with the accompaniment of fire
as a means of giving and sustaining life to those who sat at the common
table or altar, in the covenant meal or sacrament of hospitality,
brought about the custom of sacramental communion feasts with guests
human and divine. And so, also, there came the rites of worship, with
the altar of burnt sacrifice or of incense, and the marriage torch, and
the doorway fire, and the threshold or hearthstone covenant at a
wedding. Out of this thought there came gradually and naturally the
prominence of the altar and the altar fire in private and public
worship, as it obtains both in the simpler and in the more gorgeous
ecclesiastical rituals.[600]
In conjunction with the place of fire on the family altar in the
Threshold Covenant, there came naturally the recognition of fire and
warmth and light as gifts of God for the promotion and preservation of
life to those who were dependent on him. Thus the sun as the life-giving
fire of the universe came to be recognized as a manifestation of God’s
power and love. Its agency in bringing new life after death, in the
course of the changing seasons, led men to connect the movements of the
heavenly bodies with God’s dealings with man in the line of his covenant
love. The too common mistake has been of thinking of this view of
celestial nature as the origin of man’s religious rites, instead of as
an outgrowth of the primal religious rite, which antedated man’s study
of, or wonder over, the workings of the elements and the course of the
heavenly bodies.
In summing up the results of such a study as this, of primitive customs
and their outgrowth, it is necessary only to suggest a few of the more
prominent lines of progress from the elemental beginning, leaving it to
the student and thinker to follow out these, and to find others, in his
more careful and further consideration of the subject in its varied
ramifications. It is sufficient now to affirm that the Old Testament and
the New point to this primitive rite of the Threshold Covenant as a
basis of their common religious ritual; and that gleams of the same
germinal idea show themselves in the best features of all the sacred
books of the ages. It would be easy, did time and space allow, to follow
out in detail the indications that all modes of worship in sacrifice, in
oblation, in praise, and prayer, in act and in word, are but natural
expressions of desire for covenant union with Deity, and of joy in the
thought of its possession, as based on the fact of such covenanting
sought and found in the primal religious rite of the human race.