This history of the origin and meaning of sacrifice has an obvious affinity with the gift-theory of sacrifice. Both in the gift-theory and the covenant-theory, the terms of the transaction are that so much blessing shall be forthcoming for so much service, or so much sacrifice for so much blessing. The point of view is commercial; the obligation is legal; if the terms are strictly kept on the one part, then they are strictly binding on the other. The covenant-theory, like the gift-theory, is eventually discovered by spiritual experience, if pushed far enough, to be a false interpretation of the relations existing between god and man. Being an interpretation, it is an outcome of reflection--of reflection upon the fact that, in the time of trouble, man turns to his gods, and that, in returning to them, he escapes from his trouble. On that fact all systems of worship are based, from that fact all systems of worship start. If, as is the case, they start in different directions and diverge from one another, it is because men, in the process of reflecting upon that fact, come to put different interpretations upon it. And so far as they eventually come to feel that any interpretation is a misinterpretation, they do so because they find that it is not, as they had been taught to believe, a correct interpretation but a misinterpretation of the fact: there is found in the experience of returning to God, something with which the misinterpretation is irreconcilable; and, when the misinterpretation is dispersed, like a vapour, the vision of God, the idea of God, shines forth the more brightly. One such misinterpretation is the reflection that the favour of the gods can be bought by gifts. Another is the reflection that the gods sell their favours, on the terms of a covenant agreed upon between them and man. Another is that that which is offered is sacred, and that that which is sacred is divine--that the god is himself the offering which is made to him.