ABSTRACT
If the ritual makes no difference physically, what does i t do? Ask the people. The Omaha tells us that a boy who prays and fasts is seeking "happy life, good health, success in hunting; in war he desires to secure spoils and to escape the enemy". The geheral purpose is not peculiar to initiation: all rituals have as their end Life (with a capital L) and all that conduces to it. Thus the Omaha consecrate their little children "to walk long upon the earth", to obtain "light of many days". The general purpose of the childhood rite and the puberty fasting is the same. One sacrament differs from another merely in the scope and degree of life and power which it confers. As usual, we need not have gone outside our own country to learn that; any theological treatise will give us the sacramental ladder and the exact kind of grace each step confers. "Grace" is a supernatural gift by means of which eternal "life" is conferred.
