Pagan and Christian Creeds [50]
with the subject of salvation through rebirth or regeneration. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." . . . "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Our Baptismal Service begins by saying that "forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin; and that our Saviour Christ saith, None can enter into the kingdom of God except he be regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost"; therefore it is desirable that this child should be baptized, "received into Christ's Holy Church, and be made a lively member of the same." That, is to say, there is one birth, after the flesh, but a second birth is necessary, a birth after the Spirit and into the Church of Christ. Our Confirmation Service is simply a service repeating and confirming these views, at an age (fourteen to sixteen or so) when the boy or girl is capable of understanding what is being done.
But our Baptismal and Confirmation ceremonies combined are clearly the exact correspondence and parallel of the old pagan ceremonies of Initiation, which are or have been observed in almost every primitive tribe over the world. "The rite of the second birth," says Jane Harrison,[1] "is widespread, universal, over half the savage world. With the savage to be twice-born is the rule. By his first birth he comes into the world; by his second he is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the warriors of his tribe." . . . "These rites are very various, but they all point to one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the new-born man has entered upon a new life. Simplest of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by the Kikuyu tribe of British East Africa, who require that every boy, just before circumcision, must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed."[2]
[1] Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 104.
[2] See also Themis, p. 21.
Let us pause for a moment. An Initiate is of course one who "enters in." He enters into the Tribe; he enters into the revelation of certain Mysteries; he becomes an associate of a certain Totem, a certain God; a member of a new Society, or Church--a church of Mithra, or Dionysus or Christ. To do any of these things he must be born again; be must die to the old life; he must pass through ceremonials which symbolize the change. One of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe is washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and as by primitive man (and not without reason) BLOOD was considered the most vital and regenerative of fluids, the very elixir of life, so in earliest times it was common to wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be born anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first die. So, not unfrequently, he was wounded, or scourged, and baptized with his own blood, or, in cases, one of the candidates was really killed and his blood used as a substitute for the blood of the others. No doubt HUMAN sacrifice attended the earliest initiations. But later it was sufficient to be half-drowned in the blood of a Bull as in the Mithra cult,[1] or 'washed in the blood of the Lamb' as in the Christian phraseology. Finally, with a growing sense of decency and aesthetic perception among the various peoples, washing with pure water came in the initiation-ceremonies to take the place of blood; and our baptismal service has reduced the ceremony to a mere sprinkling with water.[2]
[1] See ch. iii.
[2] For the virtue supposed to reside in blood see Westermarck's Moral Ideas, Ch. 46.
To continue the quotation from Miss Harrison: "More often the new birth is stimulated, or imagined, as a death and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east Australia, when the boys are assembled
But our Baptismal and Confirmation ceremonies combined are clearly the exact correspondence and parallel of the old pagan ceremonies of Initiation, which are or have been observed in almost every primitive tribe over the world. "The rite of the second birth," says Jane Harrison,[1] "is widespread, universal, over half the savage world. With the savage to be twice-born is the rule. By his first birth he comes into the world; by his second he is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the warriors of his tribe." . . . "These rites are very various, but they all point to one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the new-born man has entered upon a new life. Simplest of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by the Kikuyu tribe of British East Africa, who require that every boy, just before circumcision, must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed."[2]
[1] Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 104.
[2] See also Themis, p. 21.
Let us pause for a moment. An Initiate is of course one who "enters in." He enters into the Tribe; he enters into the revelation of certain Mysteries; he becomes an associate of a certain Totem, a certain God; a member of a new Society, or Church--a church of Mithra, or Dionysus or Christ. To do any of these things he must be born again; be must die to the old life; he must pass through ceremonials which symbolize the change. One of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe is washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and as by primitive man (and not without reason) BLOOD was considered the most vital and regenerative of fluids, the very elixir of life, so in earliest times it was common to wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be born anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first die. So, not unfrequently, he was wounded, or scourged, and baptized with his own blood, or, in cases, one of the candidates was really killed and his blood used as a substitute for the blood of the others. No doubt HUMAN sacrifice attended the earliest initiations. But later it was sufficient to be half-drowned in the blood of a Bull as in the Mithra cult,[1] or 'washed in the blood of the Lamb' as in the Christian phraseology. Finally, with a growing sense of decency and aesthetic perception among the various peoples, washing with pure water came in the initiation-ceremonies to take the place of blood; and our baptismal service has reduced the ceremony to a mere sprinkling with water.[2]
[1] See ch. iii.
[2] For the virtue supposed to reside in blood see Westermarck's Moral Ideas, Ch. 46.
To continue the quotation from Miss Harrison: "More often the new birth is stimulated, or imagined, as a death and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east Australia, when the boys are assembled