eremonial and on the spectacular accessories
of worship; and in the churches in which an upper-class membership
predominates, there is at the same time a tendency to accentuate the
ritualistic, at the cost of the intellectual features in the service and
in the apparatus of the devout observances. This holds true even where
the church in question belongs to a denomination with a relatively
slight general development of ritual and paraphernalia. This peculiar
development of the ritualistic element is no doubt due in part to a
predilection for conspicuously wasteful spectacles, but it probably
also in part indicates something of the devotional attitude of the
worshippers. So far as the latter is true, it indicates a relatively
archaic form of the devotional habit. The predominance of spectacular
effects in devout observances is noticeable in all devout communities at
a relatively primitive stage of culture and with a slight intellectual
development. It is especially characteristic of the barbarian culture.
Here there is pretty uniformly present in the devout observances a
direct appeal to the emotions through all the avenues of sense. And
a tendency to return to this naive, sensational method of appeal is
unmistakable in the upper-class churches of today. It is perceptible
in a less degree in the cults which claim the allegiance of the lower
leisure class and of the middle classes. There is a reversion to the
use of colored lights and brilliant spectacles, a freer use of symbols,
orchestral music and incense, and one may even detect in "processionals"
and "recessionals" and in richly varied genuflexional evolutions, an
incipient reversion to so antique an accessory of worship as the sacred
dance. This reversion to spectacular observances is not confined to the
upper-class cults, although it finds its best exemplification and its
highest accentuation in the higher pecuniary and social altitudes. The
cults of the lower-class devout portion of the community, such as the
Southern Negroes and the backward foreign elements of the population,
of course also show a strong inclination to ritual, symbolism, and
spectacular effects; as might be expected from the antecedents and the
cultural level of those classes. With these classes the prevalence of
ritual and anthropomorphism are not so much a matter of reversion as of
continued development out of the past. But the use of ritual and related
features of devotion are also spreading in