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religious mood as the possession of a subjective state. But the disposition to mysticism is an individual
charisma. Hence, it is no accident that the great mystical prophecies of salvation, like the Hindu and
others in the Orient, have tended to fall into pure ritualism as they have become routinized. What is of
primary concern to us is that by ritualism the inner habit which is ultimately striven for leads directly
away from rational action. Virtually all mystery cults have this effect.
(G.3.c) Sacrament
Their typical meaning is the dispensation of "sacramental grace": salvation from guilt is achieved by the
sacredness of the manipulation as such. Like every magic, this process has a tendency to become
diverted from everyday life, thereby failing to exert any influence upon it.
But a sacrament might have a very different effect if its dispensation were linked to the presupposition
that the sacrament could bring salvation only to those who have become ethically purified in the sight of
god, and might indeed bring ruin to all others. Even up to the threshold of the present time, large groups
of people have felt a terrifying fear of the Lord's Supper (the sacrament of the Eucharist) because of the
teaching that "whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks condemnation to oneself." [102] Such
factors could exert a strong influence upon everyday behavior wherever, as in ascetic Protestantism, the
provision of "absolution" is lacked and where further participation in the sacramental communion
occurred frequently, providing a very important mark of piety.
(G.3.d) Confessional
In all Christian denominations, participation in sacrament is connected with a prescription of
confessional as the precondition to partaking of the Lord's Supper. But the confessional becomes
decisive only where religious constitution is prescribed and the sacrament may be taken for the need of
the participants. Only ritual purity was required for this purpose by the majority of non-Christian ancient
mystery cults, though under certain circumstances the devotee was disqualified by grave blood guilt or
other specific sins. Thus, most of these mysteries know no confession. But wherever the requirement of
ritual purity became rationalized in the direction of spiritual purity from sin, the particular forms of
control and, where it existed, of the confessional became important for the type and degree of their
possible influence upon daily life.
(G.3.e) Puritan Rites
From the pragmatic point of view, ritual as such was in every case only an instrument for influencing the
all-important extra-ritual behavior. So much is this the case that wherever the sacrament was most
completely stripped of its magical character, and where further no control by means of the confessional
existed, for example, in Puritanism, the sacrament nevertheless exerted an ethical effect precisely
because of the absence of magical and confessional means.
(G.3.f) Jewish Ritualism
A ritualistic religion may exert an ethical effect in another and indirect way, by requiring that
participants be specially schooled. This happened where, as in ancient Judaism, the fulfillment of ritual
commandments required of the laity some active ritual behavior or some ritual avoidance, and where the
formalistic side of the ritual had become so systematized into a comprehensive body of law that
adequate understanding of it required special schooling. Philo emphasized already in ancient times that
the Jews, in contrast to all other peoples, were trained from their earliest youth (along the lines of our
public school system) and received a continuous intellectual training in systematic casuistry. Indeed, the
literary character of Jewish law is responsible for the fact that even in modern times many Jews, for
example, those in Eastern Europe, have been the only people in their society to engage systematic
popular education. Even in Antiquity, pious Jews had been led to regard persons unschooled in the law
as the godless. Such casuistic schooling of the intellect naturally exerts an effect on everyday life,
especially when it involves not only ritual and cultic obligations, as those of Hindu law, but also a
systematic regulation of the everyday ethic as well.
(G.4) Salvation By Good Works
Salvation by one's effort, then widely different from cultic performances, may be achieved by social
performance. Salvation by social achievements may have very different characters. For example, gods of
war invite into their paradise only those who have fallen in battle, or primary them. In the Brahmin ethic
the king was explicitly sought death in battle once he had beheld his grandson. On the other hand, the
social achievements may be works of "love for one's neighbors."
(G.4.a) Account for Every Action
But in either case systematization may develop, and as we have already seen, it is generally the power of
prophecy to accomplish this systematization. The systematization of an ethic of "good works" may take
either of two very different characters.
In the first type of systematization, every action, whether virtuous or wicked action, can be evaluated
singly and credited to the individual's account positively or negatively for the requirement of salvation.
Each individual as the carrier of one's own action possesses ethical standards only tenuously; s/he may
turn out to be a weaker or a stronger creature in the face of temptation, according to the internal or
external situation. Yet it is held that one's religious destiny depends upon one's actual achievements, in
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