I give this interesting historical instance at some length because it is one of the best known, and also one of the most persistent. But everywhere, all the world over, similar evolutions have occurred on a shorter scale. The temple attendants, endowed for the purpose of performing sacred rites for the ghost or god, have grown into priests, who knew the habits of the unseen denizen of the shrine. Bit by bit, prescriptions have arisen; customs and rituals have developed; and the priests have become the depositaries of the divine traditions. They alone know how to approach the god; they alone can read the hidden signs of his pleasure or displeasure. As intermediaries between worshipper and deity, they are themselves half sacred. {090}Without them, no votary can rightly approach the shrine of his patron. Thus at last they rise into-importance far above their origin; priestcraft comes into being; and by magnifying their god, the members of the hierarchy magnify at the same time their own office and function. Yet another contributing cause must be briefly noted. Picture-writing and hieroglyphics take their rise more especially in connexion with tombs and temples. The priests in particular hold as a rule the key to this knowledge. In ancient Egypt, to take a well-known instance, they were the learned class; they became the learned class again under other circumstances in mediaeval Europe. Everywhere we come upon sacred mysteries that the priests alone know; and where hieroglyphics exist, these mysteries, committed to writing, become the peculiar property of the priests in a more special sense. Where writing is further differentiated into hieratic and demotic, the gulf between laity and priesthood grows still wider; the priests possess a special key to knowledge, denied to the commonalty. The recognition of Sacred Books has often the same result; of these, the priests are naturally the guardians and exponents. I need hardly add that side by side with the increase of architectural grandeur in the temple, and the increase of artistic beauty and costliness in the idols or statues and pictures of the gods, goes increase in the stateliness of the priestly robes, the priestly surroundings, the priestly ritual. Finally, we get ceremonies of the most dignified character, adorned with all the accessories of painting and sculpture, of candles and flowers, of incense and music, of rich mitres and jewelled palls,--ceremonies performed in the dim shade of lofty temples, or mosques, or churches, in honour of god or gods of infinite might, power, and majesty, who must yet in the last resort be traced back to some historic or prehistoric Dead Man, or at least to some sacred stone or stake or image, his relic and representative.