In the sacredness of the rite of the primitive Threshold Covenant there is added emphasis to the thought which causes both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Church to count marriage itself a sacrament. And thus again to the claim that a virgin who is devoted to a religious life is a “spouse of Christ,” and that her marriage to an earthly husband is adultery.[598] Many another religious custom points in the same direction.
Matt. 16 : 21; 26 : 17, 18; John 2 : 13; 7 : 1–9.
Matt. 26 : 17–30; Mark 14 : 12–28; Luke 22 : 7–20.
Matt. 9 : 14, 15; Mark 2 : 19, 20; Luke 5 : 34, 35.
J.G. Frazer in _Folk-Lore Journal_, I., 275.
See Maundrell’s _Journey_, pp. 127–131; Hasselquist’s _Voyages and Travels_, pp. 136–138; Thomson’s _Land and Book_, II., 556 f.; Stanley’s _Sinai and Palestine_, pp. 464–469.
See Smith and Cheetham’s _Dict. of Christian Antiq._, art. “Nun.”
VII. OUTGROWTHS AND PERVERSIONS OF THIS RITE.
Apart from the mooted question of the origin and development of man as man,–whether it be held that he came into being as an incident in the evolutionary progress of the ages, or that his creation was by a special fiat of the Author of all things,–it is obvious that there was a beginning, when man first appeared as a higher order of being than the lower animals then in existence. The distinguishing attribute of man, as distinct from the lower animals at their best, is the capacity to conceive of spiritual facts and forces. Even at his lowest estate man is never without an apprehension of immaterial and supernatural personalities, intangible yet real and potent. The lower animals at their highest, and under the most effective training, give no indication of the possibility of such a conception on their part.
Both the Bible record and the disclosed facts of science show man at the start in a primitive state, with only elemental beginnings of knowledge or thought or skill. No claim is made for him, by any advocate of his pre-eminence in creation, that he then had skill in the arts, or attainment in civilization, or that he was possessed of a religious theory or ritual of even the simplest character. It is a matter of interest and importance to trace the course of man’s progress from the first to the present time, and to see how the good and the evil showed themselves along the line, from the same germs of thought and conduct rightly used or misused. The primitive rite of the Threshold Covenant, here brought out as initial and germinative, seems to present a reasonable solution of the observed course in religious development and in religious perversions in the history of mankind from the beginning until now.