Granting then this instinctive movement of human nature, we should expect to find that in Christianity God would Himself satisfy the craving He had first Himself created. Huge gatherings of people intermittently all the year round venerate Kapilavastu where Gaukama Buddha began his life, Benares where he opened his sacred mission, Kasinagara where he died and Mecca and Medina have become almost bywords in English as the goals of long aspirations, so famous are they for their connection with the prophet of Islam. Hence Buddhism and Mohammedanism are especially famous in inculcating this method of devotion. But it is evident that the religions which centerd round a single character, be he god or prophet, would be the most famous for their pilgrimages, not for any reason of tribal returns to a central district where alone the deity has power, but rather owing to the perfectly natural wish to visit spots made holy by the birth, life, or death of the god or prophet. The Egyptians journeyed to Sekket’s shrine at Bubastis or to Ammon‘s oracle at Thebes the Greeks sought for counsel from Apollo at Delphi and for cures from Asclepius at Epidaurus the Mexicans gathered at the huge temple of Quetzal the Peruvians massed in sun-worship at Cuzco and the Bolivians in Titicaca. The Incarnation was bound inevitably to draw men across Europe to visit the Holy Places, for the custom itself arises spontaneously from the heart. Once theophanies are localized, pilgrimages necessarily follow. For pilgrimages properly so called are made to the places where the gods or heroes were born or wrought some great action or died, or to the shrines where the deity had already signified it to be his pleasure to work wonders. semit., VIII, Paris, 1905, 295, 301), we may adhere to a less arbitrary solution by seeking its cause in the instinctive motion of the human heart. Without denying the force of this argument as suggesting or extending the custom, for it has been admitted as plausible by distinguished Catholics (cf. It is therefore the broken tribesmen who originate pilgrimages. Hence, when some man belonging to a mountain tribe found himself in the plain and was in need of divine help, he made a pilgrimage back again to the hills to petition it from his gods. Similarly there were gods of the hills and gods of the plains who could only work out their designs, could only favor or destroy men within their own locality (III Kings, xx, 23). Thus the river gods had no power over those who kept away from the river, nor could the wood deities exercise any influence over those who lived in deserts or clearings or on the bare mountainside. Encyc.”, New York, 1910, XVI, 20, etc.) to the primitive notion of local deities, that is, that the divine beings who controlled the movements of men and nature could exercise that control only over certain definite forces or within set boundaries. The idea of a pilgrimage has been traced back by some (Littledale in “Encyc. peregrinum, supposed origin, per and ager-with idea of wandering over a distance) may be defined as journeys made to some place with the purpose of venerating it, or in order to ask there for supernatural aid, or to discharge some religious obligation.
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