Not only religious beliefs, but many religious rites, ceremonies and practices may be shown to be connected with the ideas, feelings and tendencies which centre round the family. We have already seen how the rite of baptism (besides of course its significance as a purification or washing away of sin)[189] is linked on to the ideas of re-birth and initiation, with all that these imply (_cp._ above Chs. VIII and IX). Still more intimately connected with the idea of initiation, and corresponding to the initiation ceremonies that are performed at the time of adolescence in so many parts of the world, is the Christian sacrament of Confirmation; which can, appropriately enough, only be conducted by a senior member of the Church (father representative). [Sidenote: The Communion] Of particular interest in this connection is the central rite of the Christian Church--the sacrament of the Communion[190], which has connections with the practices and beliefs of Totemism, with the widespread religious rite of sacrifice and with the relations between father and son to which we have just had occasion to refer. [Sidenote: Totemic and sacrificial elements in the Communion] [Sidenote: Their psychological significance] Although Totemism is by many authorities supposed to have been foreign to the culture and religions of those peoples from whom western civilisation has chiefly sprung, Robertson Smith has brought much evidence to show that many of the religious and social practices of the Semitic races bear traces of totemic origin[191]. Among these not the least important are those connected with sacrifice--animal and human. In animal sacrifice the slaughtered animal was originally regarded as a kinsman[192]; it was also at the same time related to or identified with the god who protected the animal and in whose honour the animal was slain[193]; it was also in many cases regarded with mingled feelings of reverence and horror very similar to those with which the totem animal is often looked upon[194], the Semitic concept of Uncleanness corresponding closely to the Polynesian notion of Taboo. In these respects we have a striking resemblance to Totemism as practised in more primitive communities. Now we have seen that the totem animal is, in one of its most important aspects, a father surrogate. The slaying of the totem animal, therefore, ultimately represents the murder of the father; at the same time the slaughtered animal represents a sacrifice in honour of the father and a gift to him. We have here an example of the ambivalent attitude towards the totem-father; the father, as the God to whom the sacrifice is offered, is honoured and regarded with affection; the father, as the animal, is cruelly killed. At the same time the victim would appear in another aspect to stand as a substitute for the son who, as we have seen, may be slain instead of the father, atoning by his own death for the intended or wished-for murder of the father.