that religion
is thus interpreted and practised. If we go back to the period in the
history of a race when commerce is as yet unknown, we reach a state of
things when the possibility of thus commercialising worship was, as
yet, undeveloped. At that early period, as in all periods, of the
history of religion, the desire of the worshippers was to be pleasing,
and to do that which was pleasing, to him whom they worshipped; and
the offerings they took with them when they approached his presence
were intended to be the outward and visible sign of their desire. But
in some, or even in many, cases, they came eventually to rely on the
sign or symbol rather than on the desire which it signified; and that
is a danger which constantly dogs all ritual. Attention is
concentrated rather on the rite than on the spiritual process, which
underlies it, and of which the rite is but the expression; and then it
becomes possible to give a false interpretation to the meaning of the
rite.

In the case of the offerings, which are made in the earliest stages of
the history of religion, the false interpretation, which comes in some
cases to be put upon them by those who make the offerings, has been
adopted by some students of the history of religion, as the true
explanation, the real meaning and the original purpose of offerings
and sacrifice. This theory--the Gift-theory of sacrifice--requires us
to believe that religion could be commercialised before commerce was
known; that religion consists, or originally consisted, not in doing
that which is pleasing in the sight of God, but in bribing the gods;
that the relatively late misinterpretation is the original and true
meaning of the rite; in a word, that there was no religion in the
earliest manifestation of religion. But it is precisely this last
contention which is fatal to the Gift-theory. Not only is it a
self-contradiction in terms, but it denies the very possibility of
religious evolution. Evolution is a process and a continuous process:
there is an unbroken continuity between the earliest and the latest of
its stages. If there was no religion whatever in the earliest stages,
neither can there be any in the latest. And that is why those who hold
religion to be an absurdity are apt to adopt the Gift-theory: the
Gift-theory implies a degrading absurdity from the beginning to the
end of the evolutionary process--an unbroken continuity of absurdity.
On the other hand, we may hold by the plain t