Note 50.1 — The Evolution of Religion

In considering the history of the hierarchy in Christendom, we are often obliged to turn our eyes back upon the pre-Christian period. For instance, the insistence on the apostolic succession in the various churches, a primary article of faith with many at the present time, is entirely in keeping with a very old Mediterranean tradition: for we find it not infrequently maintained in Hellenic paganism that the priest should descend directly from the god whom he serves, or from the first apostle who instituted the particular cult or mystery;50.1 we hear of the priest being qualified “by descent and by divine appointment.”50.2 But in the earlier religious period the succession or descent was regarded in the linear and physical sense: this has become refined into the idea of a spiritual succession, maintained however by a continuity of physical though mystic contact. Here, as so often in the comparative study of religion, we have to note the physical and material ideas of the more primitive period maintaining themselves in the later but translated into a spiritual significance.