The evolution of religious observances progressed from placation, avoidance, exorcism, coercion, conciliation, and propitiation to sacrifice, atonement, and redemption. [1]
Prayer is the technique whereby, sooner or later, every religion becomes institutionalized. And in time prayer becomes associated with deleterious agencies as ceremonials. [2]
Religion clings to the mores; that which was is ancient and supposedly sacred. [3]
The priests have always sought to impress and awe the common people by conducting the religious ritual in an ancient tongue and by sundry magical passes. [4] Gesture, being older than speech, was the more holy and magical, and mimicry was believed to have strong magical power. [5] Vanity associated with itself other emotions which required a social arena wherein they might exhibit themselves and they gave birth to ceremonials. [6] Magic was practiced through the use of wands, “medicine” ritual, and incantations, and it was customary for the practitioner to work unclothed. [7] Magic, ritual, and ceremony surrounded the entire life of the ancients. [8] The ceremonies of the cult were primitive man’s attempt to control the material world in which he found himself. [9] Present-day forms of worship are simply the ritualization of these ancient sacrificial techniques of positive propitiation. [10]
The Romans had twelve ghost feasts and accompanying ceremonies each year. Half the days of the year were dedicated to some sort of ceremony. That was half the year wasted on ceremonies. [11]
Childbearing was once looked upon as rendering a woman unclean. Mothers must undergo extensive purification ceremonies subsequent to the birth of a child. [12] All peoples have employed elaborate purification ceremonies designed to cleanse an individual after contact with the dead. [13] The law of Moses required that after being healed of leprosy those cured should go to the priests to confirm their cure. [14] At weddings abundant water was used in the final purification ceremonies of the wedding celebration. [15]
Words become a part of ritual. The ritual next grew into elaborate ceremonies of purification, cleansing, and sanctification. Ritual finally developed into the modern types of social ceremonials and religious worship. [16]
If a Jew entered a gentile building before Passover that would render him ceremonially unclean, debarring from partaking of the feast and requiring a purification ceremony. [17] Pharisees scrupulously observed the laws of purification. [18] Prince’s staff included water cleansing as part of purification ceremonies. [19] Rites for remission of sin were originally purification rituals. [20]
Baptism was public profession for entering kingdom. [21] Jesus had to introduce into his miracle a certain ceremony to induce blind Josiah to act, because his faith was slight. [22] The Pharisees were occupied with the false progress of the illusion of traversing deceptive circles of meaningless ceremonial services. [23]
Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and atonement. He abrogated all ceremonies not reflective of intimate family relationship between God and his sons. [24] Jesus’ antagonism to the Jewish traditions and slavish ceremonials was always positive. [25] Jesus’ baptism was the ceremony of the final act of his purely human life. [26]
The apostles knew that Jesus had celebrated other Passovers without the lamb; they knew that he did not personally participate in any sacrificial service of the Jewish system. [27]
The ordination ceremony, which Jesus performed twice, with the apostles and the seventy, consisted of laying hands on the head while those ordained kneeled in a circle around him. [28]
The remembrance supper was the only ceremony or sacrament that Jesus established and instituted, but without claiming to establish a precise form but rather to suggest meanings. [29] Jesus sometimes rebelled against tradition, resented for those ceremonial practices which he deemed misrepresentative of his Father in heaven. [30] Usually gave thanks before eating but without obsession, he could forget about it. [31] Jesus’ washed his hands only for purposes of cleanliness, he abhorred the purely ceremonial performances. [32]
Jesus proclaimed that to enter the kingdom of heaven there is no obligation to outrage our sense of justice by accepting an outworn system of ceremonies. [33]