matter. For are not the gods, too, in eternal travail after their ideal,
and is not man a part of the world, and his art a portion of the divine
wisdom? If the incarnation was a virtual redemption, the truest
incarnation was the laborious creation itself.

[Sidenote: The sacrifice of a contrite heart.]

If sacrifice, in its more amiable aspect, can become thanksgiving and an
expression of profitable dependence, it can suffer an even nobler
transformation while retaining all its austerity. Renunciation is the
corner-stone of wisdom, the condition of all genuine achievement. The
gods, in asking for a sacrifice, may invite us to give up not a part of
our food or of our liberty but the foolish and inordinate part of our
wills. The sacrifice may be dictated to us not by a jealous enemy
needing to be pacified but by a far-seeing friend, wishing we may not be
deceived. If what we are commanded to surrender is only what is doing us
harm, the god demanding the sacrifice is our own ideal. He has no
interests in the case other than our own; he is no part of the
environment; he is the goal that determines for us how we should proceed
in order to realise as far as possible our inmost aspirations. When
religion reaches this phase it has become thoroughly moral. It has
ceased to represent or misrepresent material conditions, and has learned
to embody spiritual goods.

Sacrifice is a rite, and rites can seldom be made to embody ideas
exclusively moral. Something dramatic or mystical will cling to the
performance, and, even when the effect of it is to purify, it will bring
about an emotional catharsis rather than a moral improvement. The mass
is a ritual sacrifice, and the communion is a part of it, having the
closest resemblance to what sacrifices have always been. Among the
devout these ceremonies, and the lyric emotions they awaken, have a
quite visible influence; but the spell is mystic, the god soon recedes,
and it would be purely fanciful to maintain that any permanent moral
effect comes from such an exercise. The Church has felt as much and
introduced the confession, where a man may really be asked to consider
what sacrifices he should make for his part, and in what practical
direction he should imagine himself to be drawn by the vague Dionysiac
influences to which the ritual subjects him.

[Sidenote: Prayer is not utilitarian in essence.]

As sacrifice expresses fear, prayer expresses need. Common-sense thinks
of language