In the gestures denoting _sacerdotal benediction_ we have probably an old form of averting the evil eye; in the act of _breathing_ on a bishop at the service of consecration there was the survival of belief in transference of spiritual qualities, the soul being, as language evidences, well-nigh universally identified with breath. The modern spiritualist who describes apparitions as having the "consistency of cigar-smoke," is one with the Congo negroes who leave the house of the dead unswept for a time lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost. The inhaling of the last breath of the dying Roman by his nearest kinsman has parallel in the breathing of the risen Jesus on his disciples that they might receive the Holy Ghost (John xx, 22). In the offering of _prayers for the dead_; in the _canonization_ and _intercession_ of _saints_; in the _prayers_ and _offerings_ at the _shrines of the Virgin_ and _saints_, and at the _graves of martyrs_; there are the manifold forms of that great cult of the departed which is found throughout the world. To this may be linked the _belief in angels_, whether good or bad, or guardian, because the element common to the whole is animistic, the peopling of the heavens above, as well as the earth beneath, with an innumerable company of spiritual beings influencing the destinies of men. Well might Jews and Moslems reproach the Christians, as they did down to the eighth century, with having filled the world with more gods than they had overthrown in the pagan temples; while we have Erasmus, in his Encomium Moriae, when reciting the names and functions of saints, adding that "as many things as we wish, so many gods have we made." Closely related to this group of beliefs is the _adoration of relics_, the vitality of which has springs too deep in human nature to be wholly abolished, whether we carry about us a lock from the hair of some dead loved one, or read of the fragments of saints or martyrs which lie beneath every Catholic altar, or of the skull-bones of his ancestor which the savage carries about with him as a charm. Then there is the long list of _church festivals_, the reference of which to pagan prototypes is but one step toward their ultimate explanation in nature-worship; there are the _processions_ which are the successors of Corybantic frenzies, and, more remotely, of savage dances and other forms of excitation; there is that now somewhat casual belief in the _Second Advent_ which is a member of the widespread group wherein human hopes fix eyes on the return of long-sleeping heroes; of Arthur and Olger Dansk, of Väinämöinen and Quetzalcoatl, of Charlemagne and Barbarossa, of the lost Marko of Servia and the lost King Sebastian. We speak of it as "casual," because among the two hundred and eighty-odd sects scheduled in Whitaker's Almanack the curious in such inquiries will note only three distinctive bodies of Adventists.