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 THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022993830 
 
THE 
 
 FAITHS OF THE WORLD 
 
 A CONCISE HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GREAT RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXII 
 
 a 
 

PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The Lectures contained in this volume were 
 delivered in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, 
 and in the Cathedral, Glasgow, on Sundays 
 during the winter of 1881-82. They are 
 studies in comparative theology, and are now 
 published in the belief that many who heard 
 them desire to possess them in a permanent 
 form, and in the hope that, from the subject 
 of which they treat, they may prove interesting 
 to a wider circle than those who listened to 
 them. Each lecturer is only responsible for 
 the views expressed by himself 
 
 St Giles', Edinburgit, 
 May 1882. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECT.. PACE 
 
 I. Religions of India: Vedic Period — 
 
 BUAHMANISM. 
 By the Very Rev. John Caird, D.D., Principal of 
 
 the University of Glasgow, . . . i 
 
 II. Religions of India : Buddhism. 
 
 By the Same, ... -37 
 
 III. Religion of China : Confucianism. 
 
 By the Rev. George Matheson, D.D., Minister 
 
 of the Parish of Innellan, . . -73 
 
 IV. Religion of Persia : Zoroaster and the 
 
 Zend Avesta. 
 By the Rev. John Milne, M. A., Minister of Green- 
 side Parish, Edinburgh, . . . ,109 
 
 V. Religion of Ancient Egypt. 
 
 By the Rev. James Dodds, D.D., Minister of the 
 
 Parish of Corstorphine, .... 145 
 
 VI. Religion of Ancient Greece. 
 
 By the Rev. William Milligan, D.D., Professor 
 of Biblical Criticism in the University of Aber- 
 deen, . ... 181 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 VII. Religion of Ancient Rome. 
 
 By the Rev. James MacGregor, D. D., Senior 
 
 Minister of St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh, . 217 
 
 VIII. Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 
 
 By the Rev. George Stewart Burns, D.D., 
 
 Minister of the Cathedral, Glasgow, . . 253 
 
 IX. Ancient Religions of Central America. 
 
 By the Rev. John Marshall Lang, D.D., Minis- 
 ter of the Barony Parish, Glasgow, . 289 
 
 X. Judaism. 
 
 By the Rev. Malcolm Campbell Taylor, D.D., 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, .... 325 
 
 XI. Mahommedanism. 
 
 By the Rev. James Cameron Lees, D.D., Minister 
 of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh ; and one of 
 her Majesty's Chaplains, . . . .361 
 
 XII. Christianitv in Relation to other Reli- 
 gions. 
 By the Rev, Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh, 397 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 RELIGIONS OF INDIA: 
 
 VEDIC PERIOD— BRAHMANISM. 
 
 By the Very Rev. John Caird, D.D., Principal of the University 
 of Glasgow. 
 
 THE study of the pre-Christian religions possesses 
 both a practical and a speculative interest for 
 the Christian mind. As he who would teach a child 
 must himself, in a sense, become a child — throw him- 
 self back into the childish attitude of mind, and adapt 
 his instructions to its immature conceptions, and even 
 to its vagaries and illusions ; so there is a sense in 
 which it may be said that he who seeks to convert a 
 heathen must himself become a heathen — must, by 
 a kind of intellectual self-abnegation, endeavour to 
 throw himself into the point of view of the minds he 
 
 A 
 
^ The Faiths of the World. 
 
 would elevate, and attain to some measure of sym- 
 pathy with them. Catholic missionaries have, justly 
 or unjustly, been sometimes accused of gaining a too 
 easy victory for Christianity by assimilating its doc- 
 trines to heathen superstitions. But whilst that is 
 only a nominal conversion which reclaims from hea- 
 thenism to a Christianity which has itself become 
 heathenish, it may yet be averred that a true conver- 
 sion can be achieved only by a process of which this 
 is the travesty — not, that is, by tampering with Chris- 
 tian truth, but by discerning and exhibiting its affin- 
 ities to the unconscious longings and aspirations of 
 the human spirit at all stages of its development. 
 
 But the study of the earlier and imperfect forms of 
 faith has another than practical interest for the Chris- 
 tian mind. The maxim of Christian wisdom to which 
 I have referred rests on the principle that there is an 
 essential relation between Christianity and the pre- 
 Christian religions. Even those who shrink from any 
 such notion as that the religious history of the world 
 is the expression of a natural process of development, 
 are not thereby precluded from recognising in the 
 earlier stages of that history a preparation and pro- 
 paedeutic for the more advanced. It is possible to 
 hold that Christianity is no mere combined result of 
 Jewish and heathen elements, and yet to discern in 
 the characteristic ideas of the pre-Christian religions 
 the germs at least of conceptions of God and of His 
 relations to the world, which find at once their unity 
 and their explanation in our Christian faith. What 
 the great monotheistic and pantheistic faiths of the 
 
Religions of India. 3 
 
 ancient world were feeling after they failed to reach, 
 for this, apart from "other reasons, that their solu- 
 tion of the problem of religion was, in each case, a 
 one-sided and fragmentary one, — that the element 
 of truth which each contained was rendered false 
 because held in isolation from that which is its nec- 
 essary complement. On the one hand, in a religion 
 which conceives of God simply as the creator and 
 ruler of the world, absolutely exalted above it, un- 
 affected by its limits, incapable of being implicated 
 in its imperfections, the moral sublimity of the con- 
 ception easily passes into a false elevation if it lacks, 
 as. the necessary complement of a power and will 
 transcending the world, the idea of an infinite thought 
 and love which reveals itself in it. On the other hand, 
 a religion which sees God in all things — the reality 
 beneath all appearances, th6 substance of all change- 
 ful forms, the all-pervading yet incomprehensible life 
 in which all finite existences live and move and have 
 their being, — such a religion, if its conception of the 
 immanence of God in the world leaves no place for 
 the equally essential idea of His transcendence over 
 the world, speedily discloses its weakness in the ob- 
 literation of moral distinctions, and the swamping of 
 finite individuality and freedom. In briefer terms, 
 monotheistic religions are imperfect because they 
 exclude the pantheistic element, pantheistic religions 
 because they lack the monotheistic element. It lends 
 a new force to our appreciation of the nature and 
 spiritual value of the Christian faith if we can discern 
 in it that which at once comprehends and transcends 
 
4 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 these earlier religions, embracing what is true, and 
 supplying the complement of what is imperfect, and 
 the corrective of what is false, in both. Whilst, there- 
 fore, we may hold that Christianity is neither a repro- 
 duction nor a natural development of the imperfect 
 notions of God in which the religious aspirations of 
 the old world embodied themselves, it is possible at 
 the same time to maintain that the study of the old 
 religions sheds new light on the Christian religion, 
 and gives to us a new and deeper sense of its spiritual 
 significance and power. 
 
 The religions of which in this and the following 
 lecture we are to treat, belong to one of the two kinds 
 or groups of religions under which, as above indicated 
 in a very rough and general classification, the reli- 
 gions of the pre-Christian world may be embraced. 
 Brahmanism and Buddhism, in other words, are pan- 
 theistic religions. What that designation means we 
 shall understand better by tracing the origin and 
 historical development of these religions than by any 
 formal or philosophical definition of the term. 
 
 I. A Christian apostle, addressing a heathen audi- 
 ence, tells them that God " hath made of one blood 
 all nations of men, to dwell on the face of the earth ; 
 . . . that they should seek the Lord, if haply they 
 might feel after and find Him, though He be not far 
 from every one of us : for in Him we live, and move, 
 and have our being." If we ask what we mean by 
 the word "religion," or why amongst the manifold 
 elements of human experience, we characterise one 
 
Religions of India. 5 
 
 particular kind of experience as " religious," per- 
 haps no better answer could be given than in these 
 words of St Paul. Religion is that attitude of the 
 human spirit, and its outward manifestations and 
 expressions, in which, in all races and climes, we see 
 it "feeling after God, if haply it may find Him." 
 We are " the offspring of God." In the very essence 
 of man's nature as a spiritual being there is that 
 which renders it impossible for him to rest in the 
 things that are seen and temporal, which forces 
 him to rise above the world of finite and transitory 
 experience, of ever-changing forms and appearances, 
 and to seek after an infinite reality which underlies 
 and transcends them. Within the rudest and most 
 undeveloped nature made in the image of God, there 
 is a latent capacity of transcending the finite, an 
 inalienable affinity to what is universal and infinite ; 
 and it is this which constitutes the secret impulse to 
 the search after God, and the key to the outward 
 phenomena of the history of religion. It is not of 
 course meant that in all religions men have been 
 consciously seeking after that Being whom we call 
 God, or that already from the beginning the human 
 spirit was in possession of the idea of Him of whom 
 it was in quest. There is a sense in which the ideal 
 element which constitutes the impulse to many of 
 our human activities is present in the mind of the 
 agent from the very outset of his endeavours to 
 apprehend it. All art is the endeavour to realise in 
 material forms and colours an idea of beauty latent 
 in the human spirit from the beginning. All science 
 
6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 may be viewed as, in one sense, only the gradual 
 appropriation by the mind of its own latent wealth, 
 the realisation of a belief in the systematic unity and 
 continuity of nature, presupposed in, and constituting 
 at once the impelling motive and the measure of each 
 successive discovery ; and all knowledge in general, 
 even the most elementary, presumes in the knowing 
 mind an idea of what is knowable, a standard or 
 criterion of truth which is the measure of all par- 
 ticular opinions and acquirements, and which itself 
 cannot be questioned without self-contradiction. In 
 like manner the reason why we isolate certain facts 
 of human history as belonging to that province which 
 we designate "religion," is, that these facts are the 
 witness to an essential relation of the human spirit to 
 the infinite — the attempts, more or less imperfect, to 
 give expression and realisation to that latent con- 
 sciousness of an infinite Being and Life which is 
 bound up with man's very nature as a rational and 
 spiritual being. 
 
 Now, if we ask in what way this hidden element, 
 this implicit consciousness of God, begins to manifest 
 or realise itself— what, in other words, is the earliest 
 form of religon, or of anything that truly deserves the 
 name, in the history of the race — the answer, I think, 
 is supplied to us by the early religions of India. I 
 have said that these religions belong to the class 
 which we designate pantheistic religions. But at 
 first sight, the religion which is represented by the 
 sacred hymns of the Veda seems to be simply a 
 polytheistic nature-worship, — the worship, that is, of 
 
Religions of India. 7 
 
 a number of distinct divinities identified with different 
 natural objects and appearances — such as the sun, 
 the dawn, the daily and nightly firmament, the fertile 
 earth, the winds and storms. The Rig- Veda, which 
 embodies the early religious conceptions of the Indo- 
 Aryan race, and which carries us back to a period 
 of from 1000 to at least 1500 B.C., is a collection 
 of hymns, invocations, prayers, songs of praise, ad- 
 dressed to various individual devas or divinities — 
 Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Ushas, Agni, &c. — who seem 
 at first sight to be personifications or deifications of 
 the phenomena and forces of nature. It would seem, 
 therefore, that in so far as this form of religion repre- 
 sents the dawn of man's religious life, th g orisfin of 
 l^.giSIL.i5— tQ~be_found, not in pantheism, but in a 
 polytheistic nature- worship — the worship of many 
 individual divinities representing, or implicated with, 
 particular objects, powers, and processes of the mate- 
 rial world. 
 
 But when we look a little more closely into the 
 matter, I think we shall find reason to regard the 
 polytheism of the Veda as only the superficial aspect 
 or veil of another and different conception of God — a 
 conception which gradually revealed its real signifi- 
 cance as it dropped more and more the polytheistic 
 form, and developed into the undisguised pantheism 
 of Brahmanism and Buddhism. Those who have 
 carefully studied the Vedic hymns, find in them many 
 indications that the multiform character of the objects 
 of worship is only apparent ; that the various divini- 
 ties are marked by no hard and fast line of distinction 
 
8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 from each other ; and that they are in reality only 
 different names for one indivisible whole, of which 
 the particular divinity invoked at any one time is 
 regarded as the type or representative. In the 
 minds of the writers of these hymns we can detect 
 the latent recognition of a unity beneath all this 
 multiplicity of the objects of adoration — an invisible 
 reality which is neither the heavens nor the earth, 
 nor the sunshine nor the storm, which cannot be 
 fully represented by any one material object or 
 aspect of nature, though each for the moment may 
 serve as its passing symbol or exponent. What we 
 have here is not, as in Greek and Roman mythology, 
 a number of anthropomorphic personalities invested 
 each with a life and character of his own, and having 
 an individual existence and history as distinct from 
 the rest as that of a human king or hero. On the 
 contrary, in the Vedic divinities, not only is the per- 
 sonal, anthropomorphic element of the faintest, so 
 that the personality ascribed to Dyaus, or Varuna, or 
 Indra, or Agni, is scarcely more real than in the thinly 
 veiled metaphors in which modern poetic language 
 speaks of the smiling heavens, or the whispering 
 breeze, or the sullen, moaning, restless sea ; but the 
 language in which these various divinities are ad- 
 dressed shows that they flow into each other, and 
 that they are only varied expressions, from different 
 points of view, for the grander and wider presence of 
 mighty nature — a presence which clothes itself in in- 
 numerable guises, but which, however varied, whether 
 soft and gentle, or wild and wrathful, whether it de- 
 
Religions of India. g 
 
 light or overawe or terrify, is still one and the same. 
 Nay, we find, especially towards the close of the Vedic 
 period, this instinctive sense of a unity that lies behind 
 and comprehends all individual diversities, finding 
 direct expression in various passages of the Veda. 
 " There is but one," says one of the writers, " though 
 the poets call him by many names." " They call him 
 Indra, Nitra, Varuna, Agni ; then he is the beautiful 
 winged Garutmut. That which is, and is one — the 
 wise name in diverse manners" (Rig- Veda, i. 164, 
 quoted by Max Miiller, Hibbert Lect, 311). Lastly, 
 there is one divinity in the Vedic pantheon into which 
 many of the other divinities which are invoked re- 
 solve themselves, as only different aspects of the 
 same object of worship — the divinity which is identi- 
 fied with that part of nature from which, as compara- 
 tive philology has shown, all Aryan languages derive 
 their name for the supreme object of worship — the 
 bright, all-embracing heavens. 
 
 And here let us pause for a moment to ask. What 
 is the inward spiritual significance of this Vedic 
 phase of Indian religion ? What is the explanation 
 of that attitude of the religious mind which we have 
 just described ? Perhaps we shall best understand 
 it by reflecting that that which is probably the first 
 thing to awaken in the human spirit the latent re- 
 ligious consciousness is the sense of the mutability, 
 the evanescence, the unreality, which is the universal 
 characteristic of earthly and finite things. It is only 
 at a later stage of thought that we attempt to rise, 
 after the manner of the modern natural-theology argu- 
 
10 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ment, from the existence of the world to the notion of 
 a First Cause, or of an all-wise and powerful Creator. 
 It is not what the world is, but what it is not, that 
 first stimulates the mind to "feel after" a reality 
 above and beyond it. " The world passeth away, 
 and the lust thereof ; " " the things that are seen 
 are temporal ; " " our life is but a vapour that ap- 
 peareth for a little and then vanishes away " — such 
 words as these express a feeling old as the history 
 of man, which is called up by the fleeting, shifting 
 character of the scene on which we look, the transi- 
 ency of life, the inadequacy of its satisfactions, the 
 insecurity of its possessions, the lack of any fixed 
 stay, any enduring object on which our thoughts and 
 desires can rest — the feeling, in briefer terms, which 
 the unsubstantiality of the world and the things of 
 the world awakens in the mind, and which irresistibly 
 impels it to seek after some deeper and more endur- 
 ing reality, some abiding rock on which, amidst the 
 stream that bears all things away, we may plant our 
 feet. 
 
 Now it is this sense of the vanity and unreality of 
 the world and of all finite things, which constitutes 
 the elementary form of religious feeling, and the 
 root out of which a pantheistic conception of God 
 gradually develops itself Indeed it may be said to 
 be in itself the implicit presence of such a conception. 
 For the consciousness of the world's transitoriness 
 and unreality is a negative that involves a positive. 
 We could not be aware of that transitoriness and 
 unreality save by a latent comparison with something 
 
Religions of India. ii 
 
 that is real and permanent. As the knowledge of 
 error is possible only by reference to at least an 
 implicit standard of truth, so the sense of the nothing- 
 ness of the finite is due to an implicit consciousness 
 of the Infinite that is rising within the spirit. It is 
 already beginning to say to itself, There is a sub- 
 stance beneath these shadows, a something that is, 
 and abides, underlying all these fleeting, phantasmal 
 forms that only seem to be. But this essentially 
 pantheistic attitude of mind does not at first formu- 
 late itself in a positive and fully developed religious 
 belief such as that in which we shall presently find 
 it embodied. The consciousness of weakness and 
 evanescence, and the aspiration after some higher 
 and abiding rest for the spirit, betrays itself at the 
 outset in the ruder and more elementary form of a 
 nature-worship such as that which we are now con- 
 templating. The mind indicates that which it is 
 groping after by the deification of whatever objects 
 in the outward world can become to it the types of 
 stability and power. It fastens instinctively on any- 
 thing in its outward surroundings by which it can 
 represent to itself that reality of which it is in quest 
 The sun that shines on in majestic strength and 
 calmness far above the capricious, changeful pheno- 
 mena of the lower world, undimmed and undecaying 
 through the revolving years and ages ; the silent 
 stars, that pursue their mystic course, never hasting, 
 never resting, shedding their pure light on the graves 
 of a hundred generations ; the solid and stable earth, 
 the everlasting hills, the great rivers that flow on in 
 
1 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 seemingly exhaustless continuity while one genera- 
 tion after another comes and goes ; above all, that in 
 nature which has for the simple observer the aspect 
 of at least a relative infinitude — that all-embracing 
 heavens which, go where he may, is ever above and 
 around him, expanding as he advances, impenetrable 
 in its liquid depths, and, amidst the instability and 
 evanescence of human life, retaining the aspect of 
 ever-during permanence, and pouring down with no 
 sign of impoverishment its wealth of bounty on the 
 world ; — in the half- conscious deification of these 
 forms and aspects of material nature the obscure 
 and indeterminate longing expresses itself, for some 
 infinite and enduring object of trust — 
 
 " Some Life continuous, Being unimpaired, 
 That hath been, is, and where it was and is 
 There shall endure, — existence unexposed 
 To the blind walk of mortal accident ; 
 From diminution safe and weakening age, 
 While man grows old and dwindles and decays, 
 And countless generations of mankind 
 Depart, and leave no vestige where they trod. " 
 
 II. What has now been said as to the spiritual 
 significance of the Vedic phase of Indian religion 
 will become clearer to us when we pass on to con- 
 template its natural development in Brahmanism. 
 The pantheistic element, which was only implicit in 
 the period of the Vedic hymns, becomes explicit in 
 the Uphanishads, in the so-called Indian systems of 
 philosophy, and in the great Indian epic poems. 
 The Upanishads constitute the last portion of the 
 
Religions of India. 13 
 
 Veda, and consist of compositions in prose and verse 
 (the more ancient of which reach back as far as the 
 sixth century B.C.), which profess to unfold the mys- 
 tical or secret doctrine of the Veda, and treat of such 
 problems as the nature of God and of the human 
 soul, the origin of the universe, and the connection of 
 matter and spirit. In these treatises, however, we 
 find, mixed up with and almost lost in a mass of 
 mystical notions and absurd and puerile conceits, 
 only the germs of those ideas which receive their 
 fullest development in the philosophical systems. 
 These last do not belong to that part of Sanskrit 
 literature which is regarded as having the character 
 of a divine revelation, though growing out of it and 
 based upon it. They attempt to examine in a more 
 systematic way the great metaphysical problems 
 above named ; and though the six philosophical 
 schools differ in many important and even funda- 
 mental points from each other, not only are there 
 many particular doctrines in which they coincide, 
 but the religious and philosophical point of view from 
 which they start, and which moulds and dominates 
 their teaching, is common to them all. Let us 
 endeavour to see what this fundamental point of view 
 is, and to trace some of its results in the religious 
 and ethical doctrines of Brahmanism. 
 
 We have seen that, on closer inspection, the re- 
 ligion of the Veda loses the aspect of a polytheistic 
 nature- worship, that the individuality of the separate 
 nature-divinities fades away, and that each becomes 
 the symbol or representative of that invisible reality 
 
14 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 after which the mind is groping, and which any one 
 of these divinities may represent as well as another. 
 But the same inward movement of the religious 
 spirit which led it to break down the limits which 
 isolated eaeh of the particular divinities from the 
 rest, and so virtually to make nature as a whole, the 
 visible universe in its unbroken completeness, the 
 symbol of the Divinity it sought — this same tendency 
 impelled it by -and -by to a still further advance. 
 The religious consciousness, dissatisfied with the 
 effort to reach God by the mediation either of the 
 grander objects of nature, or of nature in its totality, 
 attempts to pass beyond nature, and to grasp in an 
 immediate way the idea of an invisible essence or 
 reality lying behind, and transcending all finite and 
 sensible things. " I seem to myself," we can conceive 
 the Hindu seeker after God to reflect, " to be dimly 
 conscious of a reality which is neither the heavens 
 nor the earth, nor anything which the whole complex 
 of nature, the whole sensible world in its most over- 
 whelming aspects of power and grandeur, can reveal 
 to me. When the eye has wearied itself with seeing, 
 and the ear with hearing, and the imagination with 
 the effort to gather up into one all the scattered 
 glories of the visible world, I feel, I know, that that 
 after which I am seeking is something ineffably 
 greater." It is this attitude of mind which is ex- 
 pressed by Brahmanic thought in such utterances as 
 these : " Not by words can we attain unto it, not by 
 the heart, not by the eye. He alone attains to it 
 who exclaims. It is, it is. Thus may it be perceived 
 
Religions of India. \ 5 
 
 and apprehended in its essence." "A wise man must 
 annihilate all objects of sense, and contemplate con- 
 tinually only the One Existence which is like space. 
 Brahma is without dimensions, quality, character, or 
 distinction." 
 
 The conception of God which is expressed in the 
 words I have just quoted is that which dominates 
 the whole course of Brahmanic thought, and out of 
 which grew the institutions and customs, the moral 
 ideas, and, in one sense, the whole social life, of the 
 Hindus. There is indeed much in Brahmanism, as 
 in other religions, which is not logically connected 
 with its fundamental doctrine, and which must be 
 ascribed to accident or external conditions ; but 
 neither the religion nor the ethics of Brahmanism can 
 be intelligently studied without a distinct apprehen- 
 sion of that doctrine — that is, of the pantheistic idea 
 of God, which from a very early period rooted itself 
 deeply in Hindu thought. Before proceeding further, 
 therefore, let us endeavour to understand what this 
 idea of God is. Pantheism is one of those terms to 
 which, though of familiar use, the vaguest and most 
 contradictory meanings are attached. Perhaps, in 
 the popular or semi-popular intelligence, what it 
 generally stands for is the notion or doctrine which 
 identifies the world with God. All things and 
 beings, material and spiritual, organic and inorganic, 
 rational and irrational — stones, rocks, streams, plants, 
 animals, and man himself, with all his bodily and 
 mental powers and capacities — " all thinking things, 
 all objects of all thought"— are God ; all of them, in 
 
1 6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 \ their immediate being, are parts of the divine nature. 
 : But this, so far from being the pantheism of the 
 Indian religions, is a notion destitute of any historic 
 i foundation, and indeed of any rational meaning. No 
 , religion, no philosophy which the world has ever 
 I known, did or could entertain it. It is of the very 
 essence of religion, even in its most elementary form, 
 that it involves an elevation above the world, above 
 the immediate objects of sense, to something higher. 
 Even the stock or stone before which the most igno- 
 rant idolater bows is to him something more than a 
 stock or stone. There would arise in his breast no 
 feeling of fear, or awe, or absolute dependence, if he 
 saw nothing more in it than the piece of matter he 
 can touch and handle, if it did not awaken in him 
 some confused conception, at least, of a something 
 which the eye cannot see or the hand grasp — of an 
 immaterial presence or power of which the material 
 object is only the sign or exponent. Moreover, to 
 make pantheism mean that the finite world is God, 
 is, when we reflect on it, nothing less than a contra- 
 diction in terms. We may say that the finite repre- 
 sents, or is the sign or symbol of, the Infinite ; but 
 how can we say that the finite world is, or that finite 
 things, as such, are the Infinite ? When we exam- 
 ine into the real meaning of pantheism, as well as 
 the historic significance of the word, we find that 
 it is not only something different from, but the very 
 opposite of, the deification of the finite world. It im- 
 plies, not the divinity, but rather the nothingness, of 
 the world of sense and sight. It has its genesis, as 
 
Religions of India. 17 
 
 we have seen, in the feeUng of the fleeting unsub- 
 stantial character of the world and the things of the 
 world, and in the demand which arises in the mind 
 for a real and abiding object of trust. It is the 
 attitude of a mind that has penetrated beneath the 
 surface shows of things, detected the illusion of the 
 senses, and to which the outward world has become 
 as unreal as the stuff that dreams are made of, as the 
 vapour that appeareth for a little and then vanisheth 
 away. The formula which expresses it is not, " the 
 world is divine," or, " all things are God ; " but, " the 
 world is nothing, and God is all in all " — or, as it is 
 put in the comprehensive phrase in which the Indian 
 philosophies sum up their doctrine of the universe, 
 " there is but One Being — no second." 
 
 Now, if we try to reduce to philosophic form this 
 doctrine that God is the only being or reality in the 
 universe, and that all else only seems to be and has 
 no real existence, we shall perhaps find that it is 
 simply the attempt which, at a certain stage of 
 thought, the mind makes to give unity and coherence 
 to its ideas by the aid of the logical notion or cate- 
 gory of Substance. When we speak of the continu- 
 ous existence of any individual object — a plant, an 
 animal, a human being — which has many different 
 aspects or qualities, or which is undergoing perpetual 
 phenomenal changes, what is it that we think of as 
 constituting its permanent reality ? This flower or 
 tree has a real existence, it is one individual thing, 
 though the qualities of form, colour, fragrance, &c., 
 by which I perceive it, are many and various. It was 
 
 B 
 
1 8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the same plant yesterday as to-day, as it will be to- 
 morrow and all its life long, though outwardly the 
 matter that composes it, and the appearances it 
 assumes, are never two days or hours precisely the 
 same. When I say, it exists, it is one individual 
 thing, it is the same plant which I saw a month ago, 
 what is the " it " of which we speak ? Not, certainly, 
 what the senses perceive, for that is not one and the 
 same, but many and various ; not the outward mate- 
 rial form, for that is perpetually changing, is not the 
 same " it " for two days, hours — nay, for two succes- 
 sive moments of time. And the answer to which, at 
 an early stage, thought, groping after the solution of 
 the problem of the one in many, betakes itself, is that 
 beneath and behind all the various and ever-changing 
 qualities, forms, aspects of the plant, there is an 
 unknown, invisible substance — a something which re- 
 mains constant amidst all varieties, changes, vanish- 
 ing appearances, and which entitles us to call the 
 thing one and the same. Now this is precisely the 
 conception in which Brahmanic thought seemed to 
 itself to have found the key to the riddle of the 
 universe. What our supposed observer does when 
 he looks on the changeful appearances of the plant, 
 and says, " Beneath all these there is an invisible 
 substance that is ever one and the same," the Indian 
 thinker did when, in the contemplation of the end- 
 lessly diversified, ever-shifting forms and aspects of 
 the world to the eye of sense, he said, " These are but 
 the surface appearances, the unsubstantial transitory 
 accidents ; beneath them all there is one, and only 
 
Religions of India. 1 9 
 
 one, reality — one Being that is and never changes — 
 one permanent substance of all things, — and that is 
 Brahma. I cannot tell what Brahma is ; I can only- 
 say that he is. He who would know Brahma must 
 turn away from all that the senses perceive, and 
 think only of an existence that is like pure, void 
 space, without division or distinction, quality or 
 dimension." These ancient thinkers, indeed, did not 
 formally reason after the manner of the modern 
 metaphysician. They were at the stage when 
 thought can only reason in metaphors, and even in 
 their so-called philosophical systems their deepest 
 reflections are embodied in sensuous figures and 
 images. But when they represent the supreme God 
 as declaring, " I am the light in the sun and moon ; I 
 am the brilliancy in flame, the radiance in all shining 
 things, the light in all lights, the sound in air, the 
 fragrance in earth, the eternal seed of all things that 
 exist, the life in all ; I am the goodness of the good ; 
 I am the beginning, middle, end, the eternal in time, 
 the birth and death of all," — when they represent 
 the visible material world, and the life and actions of 
 man, as the illusory phantoms and appearances which 
 a conjuror or magician calls up and the gaping 
 crowd mistake for realities, or as the personages, 
 scenes, events of a troubled dream, — when they say 
 that " our life is as a drop that trembles on the lotus- 
 leaf, fleeting and quickly gone," and that such, so 
 evanescent and unsubstantial, are the things that 
 seem to us most real, "the eight great mountains, 
 the seven seas, the sun, the very gods who are said 
 
20 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 to rule over them, thou too, and I, the whole universe 
 which all-conquering time shall dispel ; " — in these 
 and many other modes of expression, Indian thought 
 is only ringing the changes on the one fundamental 
 doctrine of its creed, that God is the substance of all 
 things, the only Being who really is — and that the 
 independent reality we ascribe to other beings is due 
 only to illusion. 
 
 And now let us ask. What practical results follow 
 from such a doctrine ? what is the moral and re- 
 ligious life which it tends to produce, and which, in 
 the historical development of Brahmanism, it actually 
 did produce ? At first sight the logical outcome of a 
 pantheistic creed would seem to be purely negative. 
 It appears naturally to lead to an ascetic morality, 
 and a religion whose highest aim is union with 
 Deity by abstraction from the world. The finite 
 world being nothing but illusion and deception, the 
 only way in which we can rise above the illusion, 
 emancipate ourselves from the dominion of vanity 
 and falsehood, is by withdrawment from the world 
 and all finite objects and interests, by stifling all 
 natural desires and affections ; and, on the other 
 hand, God being conceived of simply as abstract 
 substance, the unknown reality behind the finite, 
 beyond all we can see and think and name, union 
 with Him is possible only in one way — by the 
 cessation of all positive thought, even of all personal 
 consciousness, and by identifying ourselves in a kind 
 of ecstatic vacuity of mind, with that emptiness in 
 which the divine fulness is supposed to dwell. And 
 
Religions of India. 21 
 
 this, as we shall see in the next lecture, was one 
 direction in which the religious and moral life of 
 India did actually develop itself. But there is 
 another line which, especially in what may be called 
 the popular exoteric religion and morality, it took, 
 and which might seem to be altogether inconsistent 
 with its pantheistic basis. At first view, it is difficult 
 to see anything but contradiction between pantheism 
 and polytheism, between the doctrine that God is the 
 one only reality, and the monstrous mythology, the 
 complicated system of polytheistic doctrines and 
 observances, which in India grew up side by side 
 with it. If the finite world be nothing but illusion 
 arid vanity, and God the Being who altogether 
 transcends it, how shall we account for a religious 
 system which consists of the arbitrary deification of 
 all sorts of objects in the finite world — the heavenly 
 orbs, the material elements, plants, animals, moun- 
 tains, rivers, the Indus, the Ganges, the lotus-flower, 
 — how shall we explain the unbridled licence of a 
 sensuous idolatry, which, not content with actual 
 existences, invents as objects of reverence a thousand 
 monstrosities, incongruous combinations, offensive 
 shapes and symbols ? And again, if asceticism, a 
 life of abstraction from the world and the gratifica- 
 tions of sense, be the logical result of a pantheistic 
 creed, how could such a creed lead, as it actually did, 
 to a social life in which the grossest sensual excesses 
 are not only permitted, but perpetrated under the 
 sanction of religion ? 
 
 The answer is, that a pantheistic idea of God, if in 
 
2 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 one point of view it is opposed to idolatry and im- 
 morality, in another point of view may be said logi- 
 cally to lead to them. The unity which pantheism 
 ascribes to God is not a unity which is hostile to 
 polytheism. A belief in the unity of God, as we 
 understand that doctrine, is indeed incompatible with 
 a belief in a multiplicity of gods. A man cannot be 
 a worshipper of the one living and true God, and at 
 the same time a worshipper of the gods many and 
 lords many of paganism. But that is simply be- 
 cause in Christianity the unity of God is not a pan- 
 theistic unity. In pantheism, God, conceived of as 
 the substance of the world, if He lies behind all 
 finite beings and objects, stands at least in precisely 
 the same relation to all. As the substance of a plant 
 is as much in the unsightly root or the rugged stem 
 as in the flower and fruit, so a Being who is thought 
 of as the substance of all finite things, is equally 
 related to all — to things mean as to things lofty, to 
 gross matter as to intelligent thinking spirit, to the 
 vilest and impurest as to the noblest and most 
 exalted natures, and their functions and actions. 
 But in Christianity it is different. It is true that, to 
 Christian thought also, the world is full of Deity. 
 Christianity sees God in all things ; and there is no 
 object, however insignificant, no evanescent aspect of 
 nature, no meanest weed or wayside flower, no pass- 
 ing wind or falling shower, which is not the revelation 
 of a divine presence and instinct with a divine signifi- 
 cance. Nay, to Christianity we owe that deeper in- 
 sight which can discern a soul of goodness even in 
 
Religions of India. 23 
 
 things evil, a divine purpose and plan beneath the 
 discord of human passions and the strife and sin of 
 the world. But the Christian deification of the world 
 is not a deification of it, so to speak, in the rough — an 
 apotheosis of all things and beings alike and without 
 distinction. The God it sees in all things is a God of 
 thought, of wisdom, order, goodness — a God who is 
 Spirit or Mind ; and therefore it can see Him in all 
 things without seeing Him in all things alike. It can 
 see more of God, a richer revelation of the infinite 
 mind, in organisation and life than in brute matter, in 
 human thought and affection than in animal instinct 
 and appetite, in a spirit surrendered to exalted and 
 unselfish ends than in one that is the slave of its own 
 impulses and passions. And if, even in what we call 
 evil, in pain, and sorrow, and sin, there is a sense in 
 which God's presence is revealed, it is not in these 
 things as seen only in their outward, isolated aspect, 
 but contemplated from a universal point of view, as 
 the discords that contribute to, but vanish away in, 
 the eternal harmony. 
 
 On the other hand, a religion which regards God 
 as the unknown incomprehensible substance of the 
 finite can take no account of distinctions in the finite. 
 If to it, in one point of view, the objects of the finite 
 world are nothing, in another they are all alike con- 
 secrated by the presence of God. And whilst the 
 philosopher or Brahmanic sage might attempt, by a 
 process of abstraction, by the silencing or abnegation 
 of all definite thought and feeling, to grasp that in- 
 determinate essence behind the world which he takes 
 
24 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 for God, the popular mind, which can never reach or 
 rest in abstractions, would, by an irresistible necessity, 
 take the other direction, and instead of deifying 
 nothing, would deify everything indiscriminately. 
 It would fasten, in other words, on that side of its 
 religious belief according to which no one thing or 
 being is nearer to God, no one more remote from 
 Him, than another. He is the Being or Substance 
 who manifests Himself alike in the mean and the 
 great, the vile, obscene, and deformed, and the 
 noble and beautiful and pure. Reptiles, beasts of 
 prey, even the lowest forms of organic life, can 
 be made objects of religious reverence as much as 
 the human form divine ; nay, there would be a kind 
 of paradoxical logic, a legitimate capriciousness, in 
 the preference of things monstrous and vile as the 
 symbols of Deity : for the very arbitrariness of the 
 selection would prove that it was not the particular 
 qualities of the things themselves, but the one uni- 
 versal essence common to them' all, which was the 
 real object of worship — the light that shone through 
 all, unaffected by the meanness, uncontaminated by 
 the foulness, of the medium that conveyed it. It is 
 this view of the subject that accounts for that indis- 
 criminate consecration of the finite world in the im- 
 mediate multiplicity of its existences and forms of 
 being, which is the characteristic of the popular Hindu 
 mythology. 
 
 And it is this view which accounts also for its 
 defective morality. The hidden logic of pantheism 
 leads not merely to an ascetic morality, but also, 
 
Religions of India. 25 
 
 and by an equally natural sequence, to a fatalistic 
 morality — a morality which tolerates or sanctions 
 the vices that spring from the natural desires. For 
 moral distinctions disappear in a religion which con- 
 ceives of God as no nearer to the pure heart than 
 to that which is the haunt of selfish and sensual 
 lusts. The lowest appetites and the loftiest moral 
 aspirations, the grossest impurities and the most 
 heroic virtues, are alike consecrated by the pres- 
 ence of God. Nay, there is a sense in which the 
 baser side of man's nature receives here a readier 
 consecration than the higher. For while all true 
 morality implies a struggle with nature, an ideal aim 
 which forbids acquiescence in that which by nature 
 we are, it is of the very essence of a Pantheistic reli- 
 gion to discountenance any such struggle, and to 
 foster a fatalistic contentment with things as they 
 are. In a religion which finds God in all things — in 
 which whatever is, simply because it is, is right — all 
 natural passions, simply as natural, carry with them 
 their own sanction. In yielding to nature we are 
 yielding to God. Immersion in the natural is ab- 
 sorption in the Divine. 
 
 And it is on the same principle, finally, that we 
 account for the immoral character and results of that 
 which forms so important an element of Indian social 
 life — the system of Caste. For that system is simply 
 the fixation and hardening of social inequalities and 
 arbitrary distinctions by a fatalistic religion. Such a 
 religion tends to confer the sacredness of divine right 
 on the accomplished fact, however unjust and inhuman. 
 
26 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 When it began to dominate the popular mind in India, 
 it found society divided by certain class distinctions, 
 the origin of which it is not difficult to trace. The 
 Aryan conquerors were divided by difference of blood 
 and by the pride of race — the contempt of the supe- 
 rior breed for one inferior in physical and intellectual 
 endowments — from the conquered aborigines. The 
 former, again, were divided among themselves by 
 various class distinctions, such as those which in 
 modern society spring up between the aristocratic, 
 the middle, and the lower ranks, or between the pro- 
 fessional and the trading or working classes. Thus 
 the warrior or fighting class was distinguished as the 
 more noble from the agricultural and industrial class, 
 whilst both alike were divided by a wider gulf from 
 those who belonged to the inferior or conquered race. 
 Finally, amongst a people such as the Hindus, of a 
 devout and credulous temperament, it was natural 
 that the priesthood should form themselves into a 
 separate sacred order, with special privileges and 
 prerogatives, and by playing on their superstitious 
 fears and hopes, should secure for themselves an 
 acknowledged supremacy over all the other classes. 
 Now, on a society so constituted it is easy to see how 
 a pantheistic creed would operate. A religion which 
 finds God in all things and beings alike, might at first 
 sight be expected to be an equalising religion ; its 
 tendency would seem to be to break down artificial 
 barriers, and to soften class divisions and antipathies. 
 But on the other hand, seeing that, in such a religion, 
 that which is, by the very fact that it is, is divine, it 
 
Religions of India. 27 
 
 has a tendency to consecrate existing facts, to harden 
 accidental differences and inequalities into permanent 
 and inviolable divisions, and to extend over the whole 
 organisation of society the iron yoke of caste. In 
 Brahmanism the latter proved the far more potent 
 tendency ; and as it is one, the pernicious influence 
 of which on the moral and social life of India is to 
 be discerned in its whole subsequent history, I shall 
 devote the remainder of this lecture to a brief exam- 
 ination of the institution of Caste, and of the injurious 
 influences with which it was fraught. 
 
 In the organisation of society, distinctions of classes 
 and individuals are as inevitable and as necessary to 
 its welfare as is the differentiation of members and 
 functions in the physical organisation. Socialistic 
 theorists, starting from the notion of abstract equity, 
 have often advocated an impossible equality of civil 
 conditions and occupations. But every attempt to 
 realise such theories fights against nature. The_ 
 essential distinctions of individual talents, tastes, ten- 
 (Jencies, attainments, never fail to assert themselves ; 
 and though arbitrary force or mistaken enthusiasm 
 may for the moment suppress them_, ij: can only be at 
 tHe expense of social progress, and with the ultimate 
 result of the fresh outbreak of those inherent diver- 
 sities which all spiritual life involves. 
 
 But if nature fs at war with stereotyped sameness, 
 it is equally at war with stereotyped distinctions ; and 
 any attempt to maintain such distinctions must prove 
 not less fatal to the true welfare and progress of 
 society. Now the Indian system of caste is simply a 
 
28 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 vast and prolonged attempt to substitute artificial for 
 natural distinctions, to create and perpetuate hard 
 and fast lines of separation between the various orders 
 of society, and the occupations, privileges, dignities, 
 pertaining to them. It caught society at the point 
 where, as above said, historical causes had led to certain 
 social divisions of rank and occupation, and it petri- 
 fied these divisions for all coming time. Thenceforth 
 the place and vocation of each individual, the posi- 
 tion above which he could not rise, below which he 
 could not fall, were determined by birth. The son of 
 the Brahman was born to all the honour and sacred- 
 ness of the Brahmanical caste, and that sacredness 
 became indelible ; the vocations of war and govern- 
 ment, and again of agriculture and industry, were in 
 like manner irrevocably determined by the accident 
 of birth ; and finally, he whose hereditary position 
 was that of the servile class, was bound to it for life 
 by a destiny which quelled aspiration and made 
 social ambition impossible. 
 
 Now, if we look for a moment to the results, social, 
 moral, religious, with which such a system is fraught, 
 it will be obvious that, had it not appealed to a prin- 
 ciple deep rooted in the spirit and genius of the 
 people — to an authority sufficient to quell the sense 
 of the intolerable evils inseparable from it — no human 
 ingenuity could have originated, or force of custom 
 prolonged, its existence. The social objections to 
 such an institution as caste scarcely need formal 
 statement. The welfare of society depends in a great 
 measure on the free action of that natural selection 
 
Religions of India. 29 
 
 by which the place and work of its individual mem- 
 bers are determined. Whatever influence we allow 
 for hereditary and transmitted tendencies, wrong is 
 done both to society and to the individual when room 
 is not left for the free play and development of natural 
 capacity and genius, and when men are not allowed 
 to find their level according to their powers and 
 attainments and the use they make of them. But 
 here we have an organisation which is altogether 
 defiant of natural distinctions, and in which all mani- 
 festations of special ability and tendency are checked 
 and suppressed from the beginning. The healthy 
 stimulus which arises from the possibility of rising 
 and falling is withdrawn, and an artificial protection 
 against failure or disgrace is interposed. The evil 
 influence of the system is perhaps more observable in 
 the case of the Brahmanical than of any of the other 
 classes. The position and privileges of the Brahman 
 class are rigidly determined, and indeed constitute, as 
 has been said, the hinge on which the whole system 
 turns. In the laws of Manu, perhaps the oldest 
 of post-Vedic Sanskrit works, elaborate rules are laid 
 down for the maintenance of their arbitrary superi- 
 ority. By birth and origin the Brahman is invested 
 with an almost divine dignity ; he is lord of all the 
 other classes, and separated from them by an in- 
 superable barrier. To him exclusively belongs the 
 right to read, repeat, and expound the sacred books, 
 and to perform- sacrificial and other rites ; and any 
 interference with his sacred vocation is prohibited 
 under the severest penalties. But from the very 
 
30 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 nature of the thing, a conventionally sacred class, a 
 priestly order determined by artificial and not by 
 natural selection, is a self-contradictory notion, and 
 every attempt to create it must prove a failure. De- 
 scent or arbitrary consecration can no more assure us 
 of a man being a true priest than of his being a poet 
 or artist, a philosopher or a mathematician. The 
 call of a man to be a poet or philosopher is that the 
 light of genius or the power of insight and originative 
 thought dwells within his soul, and it is obviously 
 impossible to limit this vocation to any hereditary 
 line or by any arbitrary designation. And in like 
 manner, the call or commission to speak or act in 
 God's name is simply that the light of divine wisdom 
 illumines his mind, and that love to God and man glows 
 within his heart. To substitute for this inward and 
 spiritual vocation that which comes by the accident 
 of birth or by external designation, is to rob ,the 
 world of its true priests, and to transfer to official and 
 spurious sanctity the reverence and submission due 
 to wisdom and goodness. 
 
 But it is with the moral and spiritual results of the 
 system of caste that we are here specially concerned ; 
 and in this point of view the unwholesome influence 
 of such a system may be traced in various directions. 
 For one thing, caste and ceremonialism are closely 
 connected. A sanctity based on the accident of birth 
 is not only unspiritual in itself, but it naturally tends 
 to the substitution of a ceremonial for a spiritual wor- 
 ship. Where the agency by which spiritual effects 
 are supposed to be produced is arbitrarily determined, 
 
Religions of India. 31 
 
 there is no reason why the means employed by that 
 agency should not be arbitrary too ; and in the case of 
 a religious caste who cannot appeal to any spiritual 
 pre-eminence as the ground of their authority, there 
 is the strongest temptation to prop up that authority 
 by sacerdotal and other devices. Suppose it were the 
 prevalent belief that bodily diseases could be cured, 
 not by men endowed with superior medical know- 
 ledge and skill, but by a hereditary race or order of 
 doctors; inasmuch as there is here no rational connec- 
 tion between the endowments of the agents and the 
 cures ascribed to them, so neither need there be any 
 rational connection between these cures and the 
 remedies employed to effect them. Charms, spells, 
 incantations, would, in the supposed case, be as likely 
 means for the restoration of diseased organisms as 
 the most careful scientific treatment ; and there would 
 be .every temptation on the part of the pretended 
 order or succession of doctors to make this magic 
 apparatus as imposing and elaborate as possible. In 
 like manner a priestly caste, whose authority de- 
 pends, not on superior wisdom and piety, but on 
 hereditary or other purely arbitrary ground, almost 
 inevitably has recourse to a religion of outward rites 
 and observances. The arbitrary commission of the 
 agents leads to an equally arbitrary character in the 
 means employed by them. As their elevation to the 
 privileged order, and the respect and reverence they 
 demand from the community, have no relation to any 
 special enlightenment or saintliness of character, it is 
 neither necessary nor possible that their influence 
 
32 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 over others should be the natural influence of spiritual 
 insight and persuasive power over the minds and 
 hearts they instruct and inspire. Destitute of such 
 salutary means of influence, they inevitably have 
 recourse to the illegitimate and unwholesome influ- 
 ence of magical observances, imposing sensuous rites, 
 and the ascription of mysterious virtues to arbitrary 
 signs and ceremonies. Thus in India, as elsewhere, 
 we find an elaborate and debasing ceremonialism 
 taking the place of a spiritual religion, and the whole 
 relation of man to God degenerating among the mass 
 of the people into superstition and unreality. The 
 rise of the Brahmanical authority coincides with the 
 development of a complicated system of ceremonial 
 rites. The simple ritual of the Vedic period — its 
 natural child -like devotion, its prayers and hymns, 
 its offerings of food and libations of water, and of the 
 juice of the Soma-plant — was gradually overlaid by 
 an elaborate sacrificial worship conducted by the 
 Brahmans according to minute arbitrary rules. " The 
 number of sacrificers and sacrifices of all kinds," we 
 are told, gradually increased in India " in the post- 
 Vedic period ; and the greater the number of the 
 sacrifices, and the more elaborate the ritual, the 
 greater became the need for a complete organisation 
 of priests." — (Monier Williams's 'Hinduism,' p. 41.) 
 
 But the most baneful result of such an institution 
 as that of caste is, that it turns religion, which is the 
 deepest and most comprehensive principle of union 
 between man and man, into a principle of division 
 and discordancy. If the divisions and inequahties 
 
Religions of India. 33 
 
 which it stereotyped had pertained merely to the out- 
 ward hfe, the cruelties and wrongs to which it gave 
 rise would at least have admitted of one all-import- 
 ant mitigation. The inflated pride of the Brahman, 
 the helplessness of the pariah, the fatalistic indiffer- 
 ence of all classes alike, would have been modified by 
 the fact that there was a limit beyond which social 
 inequalities could never penetrate. States of society 
 there have been, such as medieval feudalism, as has 
 been remarked, so far analogous to caste, that in them 
 the social position and calling of individuals were 
 practically determined by birth, and escape from a 
 lowly or degrading occupation or station in life was 
 almost impossible. But in these cases religion has 
 formed the supreme corrective of social inequalities. 
 In the instance just specified, there was, indeed, an 
 order or caste of ecclesiastics separated Trom the 
 laity, but the separation was not absolute. Even as 
 respects outward rank and dignity, religion constituted 
 a principle of equalisation, inasmuch as admission to 
 holy orders was possible to all, and the highest dignities 
 of the spiritual order were attainable by the son of 
 the peasant alike with the son of the peer. But the 
 power of religion to modify outward inequalities goes 
 far deeper than this. The idea of the moral dignity 
 of man — the idea that to each human being, as pos- 
 sessor of a spiritual nature, there belongs an inviol- 
 able freedom with which no other may tamper, that 
 each has a spiritual life to live, involving rights and 
 duties with which no earthly power can interfere, — 
 this idea, which has received in Christianity its high- 
 
 C 
 
34 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 est expression, is obviously one which opposes an in- 
 superable obstacle to the ingression of class distinc- 
 tions and inequalities into the sphere of religion. It 
 becomes in the minds that are penetrated by it a 
 principle which preserves self-respect under the most 
 degrading outward conditions, and arrests the ten- 
 dency to fatalistic apathy under the most cruel social 
 injustice and wrong. Moreover, by making union 
 with God, and participation in a divine nature, pos- 
 sible to all, Christianity raises the meanest human 
 being to an elevation which dwarfs all earthly great- 
 ness, stamps insignificance on all finite distinctions, 
 and opens up to us a destiny in the contemplation of 
 which the dignities and degradations of time alike 
 disappear. Finally, in Christianity religion becomes 
 the solvent of class distinctions by its doctrine of the 
 organic %nity of the Church or household of faith. 
 The ideal which it sets before us is that of a common 
 or corporate life in which individual or class fexclu- 
 siveness vanishes — a community in which the loftiest 
 cannot say to the lowliest, I have no need of thee — 
 from which pride and envy, scorn and hatred, all 
 forms of human selfishness, are eliminated, and where- 
 in the hfe and happiness of the whole becomes dearer 
 to each individual than his own. To crown all, Chris- 
 tianity finds the highest finite manifestation of God 
 in the person of one who was neither sacred nor great 
 by birth or caste, who linked infinite greatness to the 
 lowest earthly humiliation, — the Son of God and the 
 carpenter's son, the incarnation of Deity and the 
 
Religions of India. 35 
 
 companion of the pariah and the outcast, the friend 
 of publicans and sinners. 
 
 But, as we have seen, Brahmanism, by its institu- 
 tion of caste, is a religious system in all respects the 
 opposite of this. In it arbitrary distinctions enter 
 into the inmost sphere of the religious life, and, 
 instead of being modified or annulled by religion, 
 constitute its very essence. Instead of breaking 
 down artificial barriers, waging war with false sepa- 
 rations, softening divisions and undermining class 
 hatreds and antipathies, religion becomes itself the 
 very consecration of them. The Brahman is by 
 birth nearer to God than other men, standing in 
 a special relation to Him which is independent of 
 character and moral worth, and to which no other 
 mortal can aspire. No others can be his brethren. 
 There are those among them whose very touch is 
 contamination. To associate with them, eat with 
 them, help them in danger, visit them in sickness, 
 come even into accidental contact with them, is to 
 him a pollution to be atoned for by the severest 
 penalties. Nay, there are those whom it is no sin 
 but a duty to treat with contempt and inhumanity, 
 who are doomed by birth to a lot of infamy and 
 isolation from their fellow-men, and worse than all, 
 on whom religion inflicts a wrong more cruel than 
 slavery by making them slaves who regard their 
 fate as no wrong. Instead of teaching them to 
 look on their dark and hopeless lot as a thing for 
 which they can seek higher consolation, an injustice 
 
36 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 against which it is right to struggle, religion only 
 gathers over it a more terrible darkness by making 
 that lot itself an unchangeable ordinance ■ of God. 
 
 In these and other ways, we can perceive how the 
 system of caste involves the worst of all wrongs to 
 humanity — that of hallowing evil by the authority 
 and sanction of religion. We cannot wonder, there- 
 fore, to find a reaction gradually arising in the con- 
 sciousness of the people against a religion which 
 so outraged the deepest instincts of man's spiritual 
 nature. How that reaction found expression under 
 the guidance of a great religious reformer, what were 
 the particular form it took and the results to which 
 it led, it will be our endeavour in the next lecture 
 to show. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 RELIGIONS OF INDIA: 
 
 BUDDHISM. 
 
 By the Very Rev. John Caird, D.D., Principal of the University 
 of Glasgow. 
 
 BUDDHISM is, in one point of view, a reaction 
 against Brahmanism ; but in another and deepei 
 point of view, it is a new step in that progressive 
 movement of religious thought which we have en- 
 deavoured to trace in the religions of India. In the 
 former aspect, it is simply the recoil of the aggrieved 
 moral instincts from the immoral and anti-social re- 
 sults of the earlier religion, and a protest against 
 its idolatrous rites and observances. Neither in its 
 religious nor in its moral teaching was Brahmanism 
 true to its fundamental principle. Pantheism , as / 
 
38 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 we have seen, may, viewed from opposite sides, be 
 regarded either as a religion in which everything 
 vanishes in God, or as a religion in which everything 
 is consecrated by the presence of God. But though 
 both forms of religion start from a common panthe- 
 istic origin, only one of them may be said to be 
 strictly and logically true to it. Brahmanism may 
 be described as the false or illegitimate consecration 
 of the finite ; Buddhism as the recall of the religious 
 consciousness to that elevation above the finite from 
 which, in its indiscriminate deification of material 
 and sensuous things, the former religion had fallen 
 away. When you have begun by saying that the 
 world and the things of the world are unreal and 
 illusory, and that, in the whole compass of being, 
 God is the only reality, you cannot legitimately 
 return to rehabilitate that world which you have 
 already denied and renounced. So far from pantheism 
 lending its sanction to the deification of human and 
 animal forms, or of every material object on which 
 the superstitious imagination may fasten, its teaching 
 would seem to be, that only by abstraction from the 
 finite, by the mental annulling of the forms and 
 phenomena of a world which is nothing but illusion, 
 can we get near to God. So far, again, from finding 
 in pantheism the basis of a morality which consecrates 
 existing facts, and practically asserts that whatever is, 
 is right — it would be nearer the truth to say that its 
 ethical result is, logically, that whatever is, is wrong ; 
 and that only by emancipating ourselves from the 
 thraldom of custom, by the obliteration of illusory 
 
Religions of India. 39 
 
 social distinctions and inequalities, can we rise into 
 union with the Divine. It would seem, therefore, 
 from this point of view, that Buddhism must be re- 
 garded as a reaction against Brahmanism, — a return 
 to a religion of abstraction and a morality of renuncia- 
 tion which are the legitimate outcome of a panthe- 
 istic conception of God. 
 
 Yet though, no doubt, there is some truth in this 
 view of the matter, Buddhism cannot be regarded 
 simply as the return of Brahmanism to its funda- 
 mental principles. Like other religious reforms, it is 
 at once a return and an advance. It reproduces in 
 their simplicity and purity the ideas of the past, but 
 it reproduces them with the deeper meaning which 
 history and experience have infused into them. It 
 reasserts the negative element involved in pantheism, 
 and, as we shall see, exaggerates it till not only 
 every finite and anthropomorphic ingredient, but 
 every vestige of positive thought, vanishes from the 
 idea of God, and we seem to be left in the absolute 
 negation of atheism. But when we have examined 
 the history and results of this singular religious 
 revolution, we shall perhaps be able to discern in it 
 something more than negation ; we shall find that the 
 emptiness to which it seems to lead is one in which 
 a richer fulness begins to dwell, and that, at once in 
 what it denies and in what it asserts, it constitutes a 
 necessary step in that process of development which 
 is to be traced in the religious history of the world. 
 
 At first sight no event in the religious history of 
 mankind seems more unaccountable than the rapid, 
 
40 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 widely extended, and enduring success of the religion 
 which owes its origin to Buddha. Promulgated at 
 first by a solitary teacher in a country in which Brah- 
 manism had for more than a thousand years domin- 
 ated the thoughts and lives of men, it succeeded in a 
 short time in overthrowing the ancient faith and in 
 transforming the social life of India ; and in less than 
 two hundred years from the death of its founder, 
 Buddhism became recognised as what, in modern 
 phraseology, would be called the State religion. But 
 more than that — inspired by a proselytising enthusi- 
 asm unparalleled in any other heathen religion, its 
 missionaries went forth spreading its doctrines far 
 beyond the countiy of its birth, amongst Asiatic 
 races both savage and civilised. It penetrated, in the 
 south, to Ceylon, which became, and has continued 
 to our own day, the stronghold of Buddhism; in 
 the north and east, to Kashmir, to the Himalayan 
 countries, to Tibet, to the Chinese empire (where, 
 early in the Christian era, it could claim an equal 
 place with the religions of Confucius and Lao-tse as 
 one of the three State religions); and finally, to the 
 shores of the Japanese islands. In India, indeed, 
 though for many centuries it constituted the prevail- 
 ing religion. Buddhism gave way at length to a re- 
 vived and modified Brahmanism ; but its successes 
 in other lands more than compensated for its extru- 
 sion from its original home. Its conquests have been 
 greater, more extended, and more lasting than those 
 of any other religion, Christianity not excepted ; and 
 even now, wellnigh twenty-four centuries from the 
 
• Religions of India. 41 
 
 birth of its founder. Buddhism is, nominally at least, 
 the religion of five hundred millions of the human 
 race. It is thus a religion which not only carries us 
 back through the ages to a period earlier than the 
 origin of almost all other existing faiths, but which is 
 still strong with the vitality of youth, and constitutes 
 at this very moment the sole source of spiritual faith 
 and hope to a population larger than the whole popu- 
 lation of Europe, and more than half that of Asia. 
 
 Yet if we inquire into the nature of the religion 
 which has achieved a success so marvellous, the 
 answer seems to be, that it is a religion destitute of 
 every idea that has lent, or that can be conceived to 
 lend, to any system of belief, its power over the human 
 spirit. It is a religion which seems to deny the very 
 being of God, and which refuses to man the hope of 
 immortality. It teaches, as one of its cardinal doc- 
 trines, that existence is wretchedness, and the love of 
 it a feeling to be suppressed and exterminated — that 
 the highest happiness attainable on earth is in the 
 extinction of all natural desires and affections, and 
 the only heaven beyond it utter and final annihila- 
 tion. Than such a creed as this, none could well be 
 conceived more cheerless and unattractive, more des- 
 titute of either real or spurious conditions of success. 
 Pessimism may sometimes have an attraction for ex- 
 ceptive minds, or, when presented in a philosophic 
 form, may, like any other thesis on which speculative 
 genius wastes its subtilty, achieve, as recent experi- 
 ence proves, a temporary popularity. But the limited 
 success of the modern philosophy of despair affords 
 
42 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 obviously no parallel to the wide and enduring pre- 
 valence of Buddhism. The success of false reli- 
 gions, again, has sometimes been traced to the 
 adaptation of their doctrines to the passions and 
 prejudices of men — to the proffer of worldly tri- 
 umph and glory, or the promises of future bliss, 
 which they presented to their votaries. But to no 
 such appeal to human selfishness can the preva- 
 lence of Buddhism be ascribed. Instead of adapting 
 itself to the spirit of the age and the prejudices of 
 society, it seemed purposely contrived to revolt the 
 class antipathies and jealousies which had rooted 
 themselves for ages in the Hindu mind, and to arouse 
 the hostility at once of the civil and ecclesiastical 
 powers whose authority it assailed, and of the people 
 to whom that authority had become nothing less than 
 sacred. Instead of pandering to the selfish instincts 
 by the proffer of a cheap relief from the stings of con- 
 science, of temporal advantages, or of a futurity of 
 sensuous bliss, it demanded, as the condition of sal- 
 vation, the renunciation of the only pleasures which 
 most men care for; and as the reward of austere 
 self-mortification, it held forth the prospect, — to the 
 majority, of a long series of future penitential ex- 
 istences in human and other forms — to the few, of 
 immediate entrance on that Nirvana which is the 
 Buddhist climax of blessedness, and which means 
 the complete and final extinction of conscious being. 
 To what, then, in the absence of the ordinary causes 
 of success, are we to ascribe the rapid and permanent 
 triumphs of Buddhism "i What was there in a religion 
 
Religions of India. 43 
 
 which appealed neither to what is lofty nor to what is 
 base, neither to the deeper spiritual instincts nor to 
 the lower selfish impulses of the human heart, that 
 could secure for it a success which not even the most 
 notable religions that have tried either way — which 
 neither Christianity nor Mohammedanism — have at- 
 tained ? 
 
 I shall endeavour to answer this question by sub- 
 mitting to you a sketch of the leading doctrines of 
 Buddhism in their relation to the development of reli- 
 gious thought. It is impossible, however, to under- 
 stand the origin and the characteristic ideas of Bud- 
 dhism without some reference to the life and character 
 of its founder. Nor can it be doubted that amongst 
 the causes to which, at any rate, its early successes 
 were due, not the least was the singular personality 
 and career of Buddha. As to these, our means of 
 information are, it must be acknowledged, by no 
 means either abundant or very authentic. The can- 
 onical Buddhist works from which our knowledge is 
 derived belong to a period at least 200 years after the 
 events to which they relate ; and though those of the 
 northern Buddhists contain an elaborate biography of 
 Buddha under the title ' Lalita Vistara,' yet in this 
 work so large an element of the marvellous and 
 legendary has been interwoven with the story, that it 
 is difScult to disentangle from it what may have been 
 the original element of fact. It would be a waste of 
 time, especially within the limited compass of a single 
 lecture, to repeat the narrative which passes with 
 various modern writers for the life of Buddha ; but 
 
44 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 some of its leading incidents are corroborated by the 
 somewhat earlier books of the southern Buddhists, 
 and in its general tenor it represents an ideal too ex- 
 alted to have been the mere invention of the age and 
 country from which it sprang. It is at any rate an ideal 
 which profoundly impressed itself on the Indian mind 
 in a very early age, and which has exerted a deep and 
 lasting influence on the religious history of mankind. 
 
 I. Omitting details, then, which are probably the 
 mere embellishments of popular tradition, the out- 
 line of the story is somewhat as follows. In the 
 course of the sixth century B.C., Gautama (who after- 
 wards came to be known by the designation " Bud- 
 dha," the Enlightened), the son of a rajah or chief of 
 the Sakyas, an Aryan tribe of central India, aban- 
 doned in early life his position and prospects as heir 
 to his father's throne, and passed the rest of his life 
 as a wandering religious mendicant. Various inci- 
 dents, related with dramatic detail, are said to have 
 led to this act of renunciation. But if we reflect on 
 the influence which the conditions of the time — an 
 age of gross and degrading superstition, and of in- 
 tense social corruption — would exert on a mind of 
 great intellectual originality, and of deep moral and 
 religious susceptibilities, the step is one not difficult 
 to account for. Buddha's seems to have been one 
 of those natures, reflective, introvertive, restless, for 
 which the problems of the spiritual life have an im- 
 portance transcending all outward interests, and which 
 are impelled to seek the solution of these problems 
 
Religions of India. 45 
 
 by an imperious inward necessity. In whatever form 
 the object of spiritual inquiry presents itself — whether 
 as the search for truth, or for the meaning and end of 
 human life, or for the explanation of its moral con- 
 tradictions and anomalies, or for salvation from sin 
 and sorrow and death — for such natures there is no 
 rest till the inward perplexity and anxiety are re- 
 moved. Passive acceptance of circumstances is for 
 them impossible ; and if the outward conditions of 
 life seem to conflict with the profounder needs of the 
 spirit, we can understand how such minds, jealous 
 of their influence, in some access of spiritual anxiety 
 and impatience, may at one stroke shake off the 
 bondage of outward position, and set themselves free 
 for what they deem the great task of life — the work 
 of spiritual thought and inquiry. 
 
 The subsequent career of Buddha is in keeping 
 with the view I have now suggested. It is the history 
 of a soul in search of spiritual rest, of the various ex- 
 periments by which he vainly sought to find it, of the 
 success which at last crowned his efforts, and finally, 
 of his life-long endeavour to communicate to others 
 the blessing he seemed to himself to have attained. 
 Of his abortive endeavours, two are specially recorded 
 — the search after spiritual satisfaction, first, by phil- 
 osophic thought, and secondly, by ascetic austerities. 
 He had recourse, in the first place, to some of the 
 most famous Brahmanical teachers of the time, en- 
 rolling himself amongst their disciples, and listening 
 patiently to their expositions of the great questions 
 of ontology and ethics. But though in the doctrines 
 
46 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 he subsequently taught we find traces of this sort of 
 culture, and of his familiarity with the ideas of the 
 so-called schools of Hindu philosophy, his studies, 
 we are told, failed to bring him the mental peace he 
 sought. His was not a nature which could find rest 
 in speculative investigations or subtle dialectics. The 
 relation of such inquiries to the exigencies of human 
 life is too indirect to give them a permanent hold on 
 a mind the practical side of which was so strongly 
 developed. His moral and religious sympathies were 
 too intense, his interest in humanity and its struggles 
 and sorrows was too keen, to admit of his resting 
 content with any satisfaction which abstract thought 
 can bring. His next attempt to find what philosophy 
 had failed to bestow was by a discipline of bodily 
 austerities. He retired, says the story, along with 
 five faithful friends, to a wild and solitary spot in "the 
 jungles of Uruvela," and there gave himself up to fast- 
 ing and other bodily mortifications of the most rigid 
 kind. This discipline the youthful ascetic continued 
 with unflagging courage for a period of six years. 
 But perhaps it is one among the many proofs of that 
 strength and balance of character which, through the 
 dim light of tradition, we can discern in this great 
 religious reformer, that the mystic visions and hys- 
 teric ecstasies which ascetics have often mistaken for 
 supernatural revelations, found no access to his mind, 
 and that at last he became convinced that in seek- 
 ing spiritual peace by any outward regimen he was 
 a second time on thp wrong track. Giving up, then, 
 his vigils and penances, and forsaken by his compan- 
 
Religions of India. 47 
 
 ions, to whose superficial natures this change seemed 
 a grievous relapse, he betook himself thenceforth, it 
 is said, simply to meditation and prayer. Translated 
 into modern language, the attitude of his mind at 
 this point may be said to be that of one who has 
 renounced the idea of salvation by works, by meri- 
 torious self-denials and outward observances. Was 
 there, then, no other pathway to peace } The answer 
 came when he least looked for it. Wandering, says 
 the story, from place to place, and ministered to by 
 some humble women who had been touched by his 
 piety and gentleness — still waiting, longing, aspiring 
 after the secret of spiritual rest — at length, after a 
 more than usually protracted period of meditation, 
 while resting under a tree at a place which pious 
 reverence named afterwards " Bodhimanda," the seat 
 of intelligence, a new light seemed to break upon his 
 mind, his doubts and difficulties vanished, and the 
 secret at once of his own spiritual freedom and'of the 
 world's regeneration was within his grasp. This is 
 the great moment when, according to the belief of 
 his disciples, he became entitled to the designation 
 by which, for thousands of years, he has been known 
 — that of " Buddha," th e Enlightened , the possessor 
 of spiritual intelligence. 
 
 What the new doctrine was, we shall see more fully 
 in the sequel. If we said that this wondrous revela- 
 tion, this idea so precious as to seem cheaply pur- 
 chased by all the sacrifices and sorrows of past years, 
 was no more than this — salvation, not by outward 
 penances and sacrifices, but by inward renunciation 
 
4-8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 and self-devotion, — the great discovery would sound 
 to modern ears but a trite and commonplace ethical 
 maxim. It is, however, in all lines of investigation, 
 a false complacency which, in the pride of modern 
 enlightenment, looks down on the discoveries of the 
 past, and measures the value of advances in knowledge, 
 not by the imperfect light which preceded them, and 
 the struggles it cost to gain them, but by the wider 
 knowledge which in our day is the possession of all. 
 But even if Buddha's discovery meant no more than 
 this, that salvation, happiness, blessedness — the good, 
 call it what you will, which is the end or goal of human 
 life — consists, not in outward condition, but in inward 
 character, and is to be sought, not in a future heaven 
 which is the arbitrary reward of piety, but, here or 
 hereafter, in superiority to all selfish desires and pas- 
 sions, in the inward heaven of the spiritual mind, — 
 even, I say, if this were all he taught, it is a doctrine 
 not so universally accepted and acted on in our own 
 day, two thousand years after the Indian teacher first 
 proclaimed it, that we can afford to contemn it as 
 trite or commonplace. 
 
 From this time forward, the life of Buddha is that 
 of the preacher or prophet of the new doctrine. 
 Filled with a boundless compassion for the igno- 
 rance and wretchedness of his fellow-men, and be- 
 lieving himself to be possessed of the only truth 
 which could save them, he went forth with enthusi- 
 astic zeal on his mission of love. He proclaimed 
 his doctrine first in Varanaci, the modern Benares, 
 then in other cities and villages in the valley of 
 
Religions of India. 49 
 
 the Ganges. Gradually the fame of the new teacher 
 and his doctrine began to spread far and wide. 
 His zeal, his rigid self-renunciation, combined with 
 serene gentleness and benignity, his wisdom and 
 eloquence, and even, it is said, his personal dig- 
 nity and beauty, gave strange force to the stern 
 doctrines he taught, and won men's hearts wherever 
 he went. Crowds flocked to his teaching, and thou- 
 sands of all ranks enrolled themselves among his 
 adherents. The schools of the Brahmans began to 
 be deserted ; some of the most notable Brahmanical 
 teachers became themselves his converts. The terri- 
 ble bondage of caste became incapable of resisting 
 the power of the newly awakened spirit of human 
 brotherhood, and a moral reformation of the most 
 undoubted character witnessed to the salutary influ- 
 ence of his teaching. In the fulness of his fame and 
 influence he revisited, twelve years after he had left 
 it in loneliness and uncertainty, his father's court ; 
 and soon, it is recorded, his father, his wife, his son, 
 his foster-mother, and other members of his family, 
 were numbered among his disciples. It is impos- 
 sible, however, to pronounce what credit is due to 
 this and to many other incidents with which tradi- 
 tion has filled up the outline of the latter part of his 
 career. He is said to have lived to the great age of 
 fourscore years, and to have found for many years 
 an asylum in the dominions of a rajah or prince who 
 had become one of his earliest converts. The ruins 
 of a spacious building, erected for him by the piety 
 of this prince, were pointed out to a Chinese pilgrim 
 
50 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 in the seventh century of our era ; and the tradition 
 still ran that here were delivered many of those dis- 
 courses which are preserved as the words of their 
 master in the sacred books of the Buddhists. 
 
 However difficult it may be to separate the historic 
 from the legendary and fictitious element in the story 
 of Buddha's life, if the foregoing narrative can be re- 
 garded as even an approximately accurate represen- 
 tation of the facts, something at least of the won- 
 derful success of Buddhism must be ascribed to the 
 personal character of its founder. It brings before 
 us the picture of a very rare and lofty nature. We 
 seem to see in him a mind not only deeply reflective, 
 but of great practical sagacity and insight, capable 
 of profound and comprehensive views of life, able to 
 discern the hidden causes of the evils under which 
 society laboured, and to devise and apply the proper 
 remedies. The impression, moreover, left on the 
 mind by his whole career, is that of a man who com- 
 bined with intellectual originality other and not less 
 essential elements of greatness — such as magnan- 
 imity and moral elevation of nature, superiority to 
 vulgar passions, an absorption of mind with larger 
 objects, such as rendered him absolutely insensible 
 to personal ambition ; also, self-reliance and strength 
 of will — the confidence that comes from conscious- 
 ne.ss of power and resource — the quiet, patient, un- 
 flinching resolution which wavers not from its pur- 
 pose in the face of dangers and difficulties that baffle 
 or wear out men of meaner mould. Along with 
 these, we must ascribe to him other qualities not 
 
Religions of India. 51 
 
 always or often combined with them, such as sweet- 
 ness, gentleness, quickness and width of sympathy. 
 On the whole, whilst there is in the system of doc- 
 trine ascribed to him much which, to the modern 
 mind, seems erroneous and repulsive, I do not think 
 we shall err in conceiving of the character of Buddha 
 as embracing that rare combination of qualities which 
 lends to certain exceptive personalities a strange 
 power over all who come within the range of their 
 influence, calls forth the love and d-evotion of human 
 hearts, welds together under a common impulse the 
 diversified activities of multitudes, and constitutes its 
 possessors the chosen leaders of mankind. 
 
 II. Amongst what may be called the secondary 
 causes of the success of Buddhism, an important 
 place is undoubtedly due to the morality which was 
 not only embodied in the life of Buddha, but consti- 
 tuted a great part, if not the main substance, of his 
 teaching. The tendency of the pre-existing religious 
 system had been to dissociate morality from religion 
 by transforming the latter either into a thing of 
 speculation and school-learning, or into a thing of 
 outward ceremonial. For the few who were capable 
 of philosophic culture, spiritual perfection was identi 
 fied with a kind of esoteric wisdom, attainable only 
 by meditation and mental abstraction. For the great 
 mass of the people, the moral and religious instincts 
 were misdirected into the channel of an elaborate 
 ceremonial — of prayers, penances, purifications, mi- 
 nute authoritative precepts and prohibitions appli- 
 
52 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 cable to almost every relation and action of daily 
 life. Now it is the singular merit of Buddhism, 
 whatever view we take of the ultimate end to which 
 it pointed as constituting the salvation of man, that 
 the way by which it taught men to reach that end 
 was simply that of inward purification and moral 
 goodness. Outside of Christianity, no religion which 
 the world has ever seen has so sharply accentuated 
 morality and duty as entering into the very essence 
 of religion, or as inseparably connected with it. If 
 it made knowledge a condition of salvation, it was 
 not a knowledge of theological dogmas or esoteric 
 mysteries, possible only to acute or speculative minds, 
 but a knowledge of which morality is the indispens- 
 able presupposition, and which is to be attained by 
 clearing the soul from the darkening influence of 
 impulse and passion. " The highest insight," is the 
 declaration ascribed to Buddha, " is not that which 
 can be measured by an intellectual standard ; but it 
 is of little use only to know that : what is of supreme 
 importance is a change of the heart and spirit." If, 
 again, the founder of Buddhism did not provoke the 
 hostility of the priests or offend the prejudices of the 
 multitude by declaring open war against the whole 
 ceremonial system of Brahmanism, we find him con- 
 stantly endeavouring to infuse into it a rational and 
 moral meaning. "Anger," he says, "drunkenness, 
 deception, envy — these constitute uncleanness ; not 
 the eating of flesh." " Neither abstinence, nor going 
 naked, nor shaving the head, nor a rough garment ; 
 neither offerings to priests, nor sacrifices to the gods, 
 
Religions of India. 53 
 
 , . . will cleanse a man not free from delusions," — 
 i.e., from the deluding influence of sensual pleasure, 
 spiritual ignorance, and the selfish lust of life. In 
 short, the large and important place which practical 
 morality occupies in the Buddhist system, and the 
 fact that, so far, it rests its claim, not on arbitrary 
 dogmas and sacerdotal observances, but on an appeal 
 to the conscience and the spiritual nature of man, 
 constitutes one great secret of its strength. 
 
 It would unduly protract this lecture to illustrate 
 at any length what has now been said, by citations 
 from the ethical part of the Buddhist sacred writings. 
 In one of Buddha's discourses, he is saidlto have 
 summed up his whole system in the following com- 
 prehensive formula : " To cease from all sin, to get 
 virtue, to cleanse one's own heart — this is the doctrine 
 of Buddha." Besides the severer rules laid down for 
 those who entered on the technically .religious life — 
 that is, the life of the orders of religious mendicants 
 — there is in the sacred books a systematic digest of 
 duties, negative and positive, which Buddha is said to 
 have inculcated on the laity. Amongst the former 
 are included the five cardinal prohibitions — of mur- 
 der, of theft, of unchastity, of lying, of drunkenness. 
 The positive virtues are summed up in "love of 
 being " — i.e., benevolence to all living beings — a pre- 
 cept extending not only to all human beings, includ- 
 ing the lowest castes and the vilest outcasts, but also 
 to the lower animals. From the " Dhamma-pada," 
 or Scripture verses, a collection common to both 
 schools of Buddhists, the following extracts have 
 
 F 
 
54 The Faiths of the World, 
 
 been given by a recent writer (Rhys Davids's ' Bud- 
 dhism,' p. 128 fif.) : " Never in this world does hatred 
 cease by hatred — hatred ceases by love ; this is 
 always its nature." " One may conquer a thousand 
 men in battle, but he who conquers himself is the 
 greatest victor." " As the rain breaks in on an ill- 
 thatched hut, so passion breaks in on the untrained 
 mind." " Let no man think lightly of sin, saying in 
 his heart, It cannot overtake me." "As long as sin 
 bears no fruit, the fool thinks it honey ; but when the 
 sin ripens, then indeed he goes down in sorrow." 
 " Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us." 
 "Let a man overcome anger by kindness, evil by 
 good, . . . the stingy by a gift, the liar by truth." 
 "Let a man speak the truth; let him not yield to 
 anger; let him give when asked, even from the little 
 he has. By these three things he will enter the pres- 
 ence of the gods." " Not by birth, but by his actions 
 alone, does one become low caste or a Brahman."^ 
 
 ' The following translation of a poem, embodying moral precepts 
 ascribed to Buddha, is quoted by the above-named writer under the 
 title " Buddhist Beatitudes : "— 
 
 A deva speaks — 
 
 " Many angels and men 
 Have held various things blessings, 
 When they were yearning for happiness. 
 Do thou declare to us the chief good." 
 
 Buddha answers — 
 
 " Not to serve the foolish. 
 But to serve the wise ; 
 To honour those worthy of honour ; 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
Religions of India. 55 
 
 There is not a little in some of these sentences to 
 remind us, in their spirit, and even in their form, of 
 the lessons of a greater teacher. Yet, much as has 
 
 Much insight and education. 
 Self-control and pleasant speech, 
 And whatever word is well-spoken : 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 To support father and mother, 
 To cherish wife and child. 
 To follow a peaceful calling : 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 To bestow alms and live righteously, 
 To give help to kindred, 
 Deeds which cannot be blamed : 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 To abhor and cease from sin. 
 Abstinence from strong drink, 
 Not to be weary in well-doing ! 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 Reverence and lowliness. 
 Contentment and gratitude. 
 The hearing of the Law at due seasons : 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 To be long-suffering and meek. 
 To associate with the tranquil, 
 Religious talk at due seasons : 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 Beneath the stroke of life's changes 
 The mind that shaketh not. 
 Without grief or passion, and secure t 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 On every side are invincible 
 They who do acts like these. 
 On every side they walk in safety. 
 And this is the greatest blessing." 
 
56 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 been made of the apparent coincidences between the 
 Buddhist and the Christian morality, it will appear, 
 I think, on closer examination, that the similarity is 
 in some respects only a superficial one. The main 
 defect of the former — arising, as we shall see, out of 
 the fundamental principle of Buddhism — is, that it is a 
 morality of negation or renunciation. It lays almost 
 exclusive 'emphasis on the passive virtues of submis- 
 sion, resignation, indifference to the allurements of 
 sense and passion, deadness to the world and the 
 things of the world ; and if it seems to find any place 
 for active benevolence and kindred virtues, it does so 
 only in name, or by a kind of noble inconsistency. 
 Its precept of universal love is only to the ear identi- 
 cal with the virtue of Christian charity. The latter 
 is essentially based on the idea of the value and 
 dignity of man's spiritual nature as made in the 
 Divine image and capable of an infinite destiny; 
 but the universal love of the Buddhist has in it no 
 element of respect for man as man, and can rise no 
 higher than compassion towards a being whose very 
 existence is vanity and illusion, and whose highest 
 destiny is to pass away into nothingness. With all 
 its imperfections, however, there can be no question 
 that the comparatively pure and elevated morality 
 which Buddha taught and exemplified is one of the 
 causes to which we must ascribe the marvellous suc- 
 cess he achieved in his own day, and the deep hold 
 which his system has taken of the religious conscious- 
 ness of the East through succeeding ages. 
 
Religions of India. 57 
 
 III. Yet moral teaching could never of itself have 
 sufficed to create a religious revolution. A prac- 
 tical morality that is not based on universal prin- 
 ciples — in other words, that has not its source in 
 religious ideas — cannot take any deep or permanent 
 hold of the spirit of man. Moreover, so far as we 
 can learn, Buddha's was one of those deeply reflec- 
 tive natures in which the speculative instinct, the 
 tendency to examine into the ultimate principles of 
 things, is never wanting; and this tendency could 
 not fail to be stimulated and developed by his long 
 training in the schools of the Brahmans. We might 
 naturally expect, therefore, to find in Buddhism 
 something more and deeper than a system of practical 
 ethics. And this is actually the case. Of the three 
 " Pitaka " which constitute the canonical books of 
 the Buddhists, and which, 170 years after the death 
 of Buddha, are said to have received the sanction 
 of his disciples as embodying the teaching of their 
 master, one is devoted to the statement of doctrines 
 and the exposition of metaphysical principles. Yet, 
 when we proceed to examine into their contents, 
 the difficulty with which we started recurs. For the 
 strange fact meets us, that we have here what pur- 
 ports to be a system of religious doctrines in which 
 the very idea of God is left out ; and though we find 
 in it the doctrine of a future state of retribution, it is 
 only under the fantastic form of the transmigration 
 of the soul after death into the bodies of men and of 
 the lower animals, and even into plants and inorganic 
 
58 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 substances. Though, again, there is in this singular 
 creed a doctrine of final blessedness — or, in modern 
 language, of " the salvation of the soul " — ^yet that in 
 which this blessedness consists is what is termed 
 "Nirvana," which, according to the generally ac- 
 cepted interpretation, means simply annihilation, — 
 absolute and final extinction of conscious being. 
 How, it may well be asked, could the personal in- 
 fluence of any individuality however noble, or the 
 practical power of any system of morality however 
 pure and exalted, lend currency to a system of 
 doctrines apparently so incredible and revolting? 
 How was it possible for a religion that seems to be 
 the negation of the very essence of religion — a re- 
 ligion without God, without immortality, without 
 heaven — to gain a single sane convert, not to say to 
 become the religion of more than one-third of the 
 whole human race ? 
 
 In order to answer this question, it will be neces- 
 sary to examine a little more closely into the nature 
 of the Buddhist doctrines, and the reasonings on 
 which they were based. As, however, within our 
 limits, a detailed examination of them is impossible, 
 I shall, in what remains of this lecture, confine my 
 remarks to an explanation and criticism of that 
 doctrine of Nirvana which may be said to consti- 
 tute the key-stone of the whole system. The word 
 Nirvana is that which Buddha employs to denote 
 the consummation of his own spiritual struggles and 
 aspirations, and the blessedness in which he invited 
 
Religions of India. 59 
 
 all men to share. It was in his eyes the highest 
 reward of goodness — the state into which only those 
 who, it might be after ages of penitential discipline, 
 were purified from all taint of evil, could be per- 
 mitted to enter. What then, precisely, in the view 
 of Buddha, did Nirvana mean } 
 
 Now on this point there has been great discussion 
 and division, turning mainly on the question whether 
 Nirvana is an absolutely negative idea, or admits 
 of any positive element such as in other religions 
 enters into the conception of a future state ; whether, 
 in other words, it means simply annihilation, or only 
 an escape from pain and sorrow — the cessation of 
 existence, or merely the cessation of the evils of 
 existence, and the transition into a state of perpetual 
 rest and blessedness. In deciding between these two 
 interpretations of the word, etymology does not help 
 us : for, according to different authorities, it may be 
 translated either " blowing out,'' the act of extinguish- 
 ing a light ; or " without blowing," a state, of calm 
 which no breath of wind disturbs. Understood in 
 the former sense, it would mean the complete extinc- 
 tion of being ; in the latter, the passing away of the 
 spirit into a region where the perturbations of life can 
 follow it no more. By some Sanskrit scholars it is 
 maintained that " two opposite sets of expressions in 
 the Buddhist texts, with reference to Nirvana, repre- 
 sent two phases of the doctrine — the one ancient, 
 the other modern. The original doctrine taught by 
 Buddha is that of the entrance of the soul into rest. 
 
6o The Faiths of the World. 
 
 while the dogma of annihilation is a perversion in- 
 troduced by metaphysicians in later times." This 
 theory has been shown by a recent investigator, Mr 
 Childefs, author of a dictionary of Pali, the sacred 
 language of the Cinghalese Buddhists, to be unten- 
 able ; and he himself propounds the theory that " the 
 word Nirvana is used to designate two different 
 things — the state of blissful sanctification called Ar- 
 hatship, and also the annihilation of existence in 
 which it ends." " Arhatship," he maintains, " cannot 
 be the ultimate goal of the Buddhist, for Arhats 
 die like other men. But Nirvana, whatever it is, is 
 an eternal state in which Arhatship necessarily ter- 
 minates ; and, therefore, expressions properly appli- 
 cable to the former, might, in a secondary senSe, be 
 used of the latter." These various theories as to the 
 meaning of Nirvana are not, it seems to me, incapable 
 of reconciliation. The word may be employed to 
 denote either the ultimate end to which the Buddhist 
 aspires, or the means by which it is to be attained. 
 In the second sense, it is unquestionably frequently 
 applied in the Buddhist scriptures to the completion 
 of that process of renunciation by which the aspirant 
 after perfection seeks to kill out the love of life, and 
 all those desires and impulses which make men cling 
 to life. In this sense it is a state or attitude of the 
 human spirit attainable during the present life. The 
 Buddhist conceives it possible, by self-discipline, to 
 extinguish in his breast not only all selfish desires 
 and passions, but the very consciousness of self in 
 
Religions of India. 6 1 
 
 which they centre. The four " Sublime Verities/' as 
 they are called, which are represented as constituting 
 the sum and substance of Buddha's teaching, are 
 these : (i.) Existence is only pain or sorrow ; (2.) The 
 cause of pain or sorrow is desire ; (3.) In Nirvana all 
 pain and sorrow cease ; (4.) The way to attain Nir- 
 vana is by what is called the " noble path," which 
 means virtuous self-discipline, ending in ecstatic obli- 
 vion of self-consciousness. When this last point is 
 reached, everything that constitutes our separate in- 
 dividuality — feeling, thought, the very consciousness 
 of personal existence — is annihilated ; the oil that fed 
 the lamp of life is drained off, and the flame goes out 
 of itself. It is true that the man who has reached 
 this blank mental nothingness still exists, but all 
 that is left of his personality is the mere bodily form. 
 When death has dissolved that, there is nothing left 
 to constitute the basis of a new existence of trouble 
 and sorrow, nothing to light up the lamp of life anew ; 
 and Nirvana, already virtually attained, reaches its 
 actual consummation in death. 
 
 But whilst, in this point of view, it is possible 
 to regard Nirvana as a state of perfection attain- 
 able in the present life, if we consider what it is 
 in which that perfection consists, and the way in 
 which it is supposed to be attained, I think we 
 cannot hesitate to pronounce that this heaven of 
 the Buddhist contains in it, at least explicitly, no 
 positive element such as we express by the words 
 " moral and spiritual perfection," but is neither 
 
62 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 more nor less than absolute annihilation. This 
 conclusion will, I think, be made still more obvi- 
 ous, if, without dwelling on particular passages in 
 the Buddhist canon in which Nirvana is referred to, 
 we trace briefly the process of deduction which led 
 Buddha to regard it as the summum bonum, the 
 goal, of all human aspiration and effort. His train 
 of reasoning, if so we can term it, is in substance 
 this : There is no possibility of escape from the 
 vanity and wretchedness that embitter human exist- 
 ence but by escape from existence itself. If we 
 examine into man's nature closely, we shall be forced 
 to conclude that vanity and misery are not accidents 
 of his being, but enter into the very constitution and 
 essence of it, and therefore, that we can only cease 
 to be wretched by ceasing to be. Take any of the 
 elements of man's nature, and you will find it to be 
 so. Our senses subject us all through life to the 
 most miserable delusions. They fool us into belief in 
 a world which has no reality. The things that please 
 the eye and gratify the senses, are not as we seem to 
 see them. The world is only a world of appearances 
 that exist for the moment in us, and not in things that 
 have any permanent reality without us. In regarding 
 them as real existences, we are only the fools of our 
 own fancy. Our desires and affections, again, subject 
 us to a still more deplorable deception. They are 
 not only directed to objects that have no real but 
 only a phantasmal existence, but they perpetually 
 cheat us with promises that are never fulfilled. The 
 
Religions of India. 63 
 
 joys of sense soon sate us. The palled appetite 
 turns with disgust from the object that proffered it 
 only delight, and sensuous pleasure long pursued 
 dries up the very capacity of enjoyment, and leaves 
 in the soul a weariness and vacuity more intolerable 
 than the sharpest positive pain. The raptures of 
 love, the joy of gratified ambition, the pleasures of 
 gain, honour, worldly distinction and success, never 
 are what in anticipation we fondly imagined them to 
 be. A thousand drawbacks mar the sense of enjoy- 
 ment ; sickness and the fear of death poison it ; pos- 
 session soon deprives it of its zest. It is just the 
 man who has tasted most deeply of life's joys, whose 
 experience of life and its pleasures has been the 
 widest, who will be the readiest to acknowledge what 
 a mockery it all is. It is true that he who does so 
 discern the unsatisfactoriness of life's pleasures is not 
 necessarily delivered from their fascination. Moral- 
 ising to-day on their hollowness, to-morrow he may 
 be lured anew by the bait he despised. But this 
 very fact only deepens the painful sense of unreality 
 and deception. That we have seen through it, that 
 we know it, and yet that open-eyed we let ourselves 
 be deceived by it — this only adds to disappointment 
 the shame of conscious weakness, the humiliation and 
 remorse of self-detected folly. Nor is there anything 
 inconsistent with this conviction of the vanity and 
 misery of human life in the fact that the man who 
 has thus learned to despise life should still dread to 
 quit it — that there should be an instinctive clinging 
 
64 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 to life even in the heart that has ceased to hope for 
 anything from it. But this, again, only serves to 
 deepen the conviction of the ineradicable falsehood 
 and deceptiveness of human existence, and to add 
 to the conception of it a new touch of ridicule and 
 absurdity."' 
 
 It is something like this which seems to have been 
 the train of thought which led the deeply meditative 
 spirit of Buddha to that conclusion which the word 
 Nirvana expresses. Human life is only vanity, de- 
 lusion, wretchedness. What is the remedy for all 
 its ills, what the only salvation from a misery so 
 inextricably intertwined with our whole conscious 
 experience .' Is it to be found in death ? Does 
 Buddha think of the grave as the place where the 
 wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at 
 rest, or anticipate the tone of modern sentimentalism 
 which thinks of "our little life as rounded with a 
 sleep," of death as the dreamless slumber in which 
 " after life's fitful fever we sleep well " \ The answer 
 is — No, death is not Buddha's cure for life's ills : for 
 the source of these he perceived to be an inward and 
 spiritual one — in the mind, and not in man's outward 
 condition and circumstances ; and death, though it 
 may change the latter, leaves the former, the true root 
 of evil, unextirpated. Though not in the Christian 
 form of the doctrine, Buddha, as we have seen, taught 
 a kind of future retribution. To the soul which 
 reaches the close of life unemancipated from its de- 
 sires and passions, death is only the transition into 
 
Religions of India. 65 
 
 a new earthly existence, at once retributive and pro- 
 bationary; and that again, when it has run its course, 
 if the cause at once of existence and its sorrows be 
 yet uneradicated, is succeeded by another, and so on 
 interminably. If, then, not even in death can we find 
 it, is there no other way of escape, no other refuge 
 from evil ? Yes, Buddha answers, there is one and 
 only one haven of rest from the storms of life, one way 
 of salvation from all its ills. The disease is spiritual, 
 and so, too, must be the cure. It is not life, but the 
 desires that make us cling to life, in which the secret 
 of our wretchedness lies. If these remain, no con- 
 ceivable change of circumstances will avail us. Kill 
 desire, extinguish feeling, quell every throb of emo- 
 tion and passion within the breast, cease to care or 
 wish for happiness, let not one pulsation of selfish 
 feeling remain to ruffle the moveless calm of the 
 spirit, and then Nirvana will be yours. Even here 
 on earth you will be numbered among the enlight- 
 ened and the free. The shadows which men mistake 
 for realities will no longer befool you. The degrad- 
 ing bonds that enslave them will bind you no more. 
 All that constituted the fatal gift of individual exist- 
 ence will have vanished away. And death, when it 
 comes, instead of being only the entrance on a new 
 cycle of sorrows, will be but the final rush of dark- 
 ness on a spirit that has for ever ceased to be. 
 
 Such, then, is the strange doctrine which forms the 
 fundamental principle of the Buddhist faith. Yet, 
 state it as you will, have we here any solution of the 
 
66 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 problem of the wide and lasting success of Bud- 
 dhism ? Can we conceive any human being attract- 
 ed to a religion which preaches annihilation as the 
 supreme good, the highest blessedness in store for 
 humanity ? Exceptive cases there may be, in which 
 minds unhinged by misfortune or distracted by re- 
 morse have found it possible to prefer death to life, 
 non-existence to an existence which has become one 
 prolonged agony. "Wherefore is light given to him 
 that is in misery," are the plaintive words of one 
 from whose life all joy had vanished, — "wherefore is 
 light given to him that is in misery, and life unto 
 the bitter in soul ; which long for death, but it cometh 
 not ; and dig for it more than for hid treasures ; which 
 rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find 
 the grave?" And the same sentiment is expressed 
 in the well-known words of a modern writer — 
 
 " Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
 Count o'er thy days from anguish free ; 
 And know, whatever thou hast been, 
 'Tis something better — not to be." 
 
 The analogy, however, which these cases present 
 to the Buddhist longing for Nirvana, is a very im- 
 perfect one. That in a few rare and exceptive cases 
 remorse, satiety, intolerable pain or shame, and the 
 like motives, should overcome the love of life, helps 
 but little to explain how millions of human beings 
 should be attracted to a creed which makes anni- 
 hilation the supreme good of man. Moreover, does 
 there not seem to be a strange inconsistency between 
 
Religions of India. 67 
 
 this doctrine and the moral teaching and unwearied 
 personal philanthropy of its author? Why try, by 
 softening its hardships, to make life less intolerable 
 or more sweet to those whose highest virtue is to 
 cease to care for it ? Or again, why be anxious for 
 the moral culture of a nature not merely destined to 
 speedy extinction, but whose highest hope and as- 
 piration is to be extinguished ? Why be at pains 
 in adorning, purifying, and ennobling that which at 
 the end of the process, and as the result of it, is to 
 cease to exist ? 
 
 The explanation of these difficulties is to be found, 
 I think, in this — that here, as elsewhere, the real attrac- 
 tion of a doctrine or system of doctrines is in some- 
 thing deeper than its form, and that men belfeving 
 ostensibly in Nirvana, really believed in the deeper 
 truth which unconsciously they discerned beneath it. 
 The long struggle of thought with the mystery of the 
 world and human life, which we have traced in the 
 Indian religions, seems to have issued only in the dis- 
 covery that God is a negation, and blank annihilation 
 the final destiny of man. But when we examine the 
 genesis of the doctrine, we are led to the conclusion 
 that the Nirvana of Buddhism is, at least implicitly, 
 something more than the mere negation it seems to 
 be, and that what gav e it its real power jwas,. the 
 positive e lement, it virtually contained. The worship 
 of a negation, it may be conceded, is an impossibility, 
 and an atheistic religion a contradiction in terms. 
 But Buddhism, though apparently, is not really, an 
 
68 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 atheistic system. It starts from the basis common, 
 as we have seen, to all pantheistic religions — that of 
 the unreality, the evanescence, the unsubstantiality 
 of the world and all finite things — and it presses this 
 notion to a point of exaggeration at which it seems 
 to pass into a deification of nothingness — an attitude 
 of mind which it seems impossible to distinguish from 
 absolute atheism. It sweeps away even that caput 
 mortuum of a deity, the abstract substance in union 
 with which Brahmanism found its heaven, and its 
 only heaven is identification with the blank negation 
 which is all the deity that is left to it. But those 
 who thus identify Buddhism with atheism overlook 
 two all-important considerations : first, that the nega- 
 tion of Buddhism could not exist without a virtual 
 affirmation ; and secondly, that all religion, and the 
 Christian religion most of all, contains a negative 
 element — or that negation is a necessary step in the 
 process by which the human spirit rises into com- 
 munion with God. As to the former of these points, 
 it needs little reflection to see that that very recogni- 
 tion of the nothingness of the world and of all finite 
 objects of desire, which in Buddhism reaches its cli- 
 max, is a virtual appeal to a positive standard of real- 
 ity by which we measure the world and pronounce 
 this verdict upon it. He who avers that we are such 
 stuff as dreams are made of, could not be conscious 
 of that fact save by his knowledge of a real existence 
 that is outside of the shadowy world of dreams ; and 
 even the slumberer who only dreams that he dreams, 
 
Religions of India. 69 
 
 is not far from waking. Absolutely unconscious 
 ignorance and error — the ignorance and error of a 
 mind that is content with its aberrations and illusions 
 because it does not know them to be such — imply- 
 no conception of anything better ; but to perceive my 
 thoughts to be vagaries, my notions and reasonings 
 futilities — this implies that I have virtually got be- 
 yond them, that I have in my mind a criterion by 
 which I appraise and detect them ; and I am at least 
 half-way to a truth which I can already unconsciously 
 employ as a criterion of error. In like manner, a 
 religion whose cardinal doctrine is the negation of 
 the finite, bears unconscious evidence to the fact 
 that it has already transcended the finite. Before 
 the mind that has become profoundly convinced that 
 the things that are seen are temporal, there at least 
 floats some vision of the things unseen and eternal; 
 and if the vision be as yet shadowy and uncertain, 
 that it can be even unconsciously apprehended as an 
 ideal is the silent prophecy of a future when it shall 
 be grasped as a reality. Have we not here, therefore, 
 a principle which enables us to discern in Buddhism 
 something more than the impossible worship of a 
 blank negation ? In the fact that its negation was 
 one which felt and knew itself to be a negation, in 
 those strange dogmas which make its teaching seem 
 but one long scornful wail over the vanity and misery 
 of the world and human life, may we not read the 
 longing for, and latent belief in, a higher truth, in the 
 light of which it saw and rose above the negation ? 
 
 F 
 
70 The Faiths of the Wortd. 
 
 Was it not the eternal and divine, though it could 
 only as yet be defined as the negative or contradiction 
 of the transient and human, which gave their reli- 
 gion its secret hold over men's hearts ? Whilst they 
 seemed to themselves only to seek after escape from 
 a world that was unreal and a life that was nothing 
 but vanity, what they really though unconsciously 
 sought after was participation in that infinite life 
 which is and abideth for ever. 
 
 Moreover, as I have said, though religion cannot 
 be a merely negative thing, all religious thought and 
 feeling contain in them a negative element It is not 
 the language of paradox which the Christian believer 
 employs when he speaks of " dying in order to live ; " 
 of "losing his life in order to find it;" of "bearing 
 about in the body the death of Christ, that the life 
 also of Christ may be manifest in us ; " of " becoming 
 dead to the world, that we may live unto God." That 
 self-surrender to God in which the essence of religion 
 lies, involves, as a necessary element of it, the abnega- 
 tion of self, the renunciation of any life that belongs 
 to me merely as this particular individuality — of any 
 life apart from God. As it is the primary condition 
 of the intellectual life that the thinker effaces him- 
 self, gives up all merely individual opinions, preju- 
 dices, preconceptions — all ideas that pertain to him 
 merely as this particular self — and lets his mind 
 beconie the pure medium of the universal life of truth 
 and reason, — so it is the essential characteristic of the 
 spiritual life that the individual lives no longer to him- 
 
Religions of India. 7 1 
 
 self. The initial act by which he enters on that life 
 implies the renouncing of every wish and desire, every 
 movement of inclination and will, that belong to his 
 own private, exclusive self, or that point merely to 
 his own interests and pleasures ; and its whole sub- 
 sequent course may be described as the more and 
 more complete extinction of the narrow, isolated life 
 that centres in self, the nearer and nearer approach 
 to that state in which every movement of our mind 
 and every pulsation of our spiritual being shall be in 
 absolute harmony with the infinite mind and will, 
 and apart from the life of God we shall have no life 
 we can call our own. 
 
 The error, therefore, of Buddhism is, not that in 
 it religion contained a negative element, but that it 
 stopped short there. In the Christian conception of 
 self-renunciation, to live no longer to ourselves is, at 
 the same time, to enter into an infinite life that is 
 dearer to us than our own ; it is a death to self which 
 rises to live again in the universal life of love to God 
 and charity to all mankind. Yet even in that strange, 
 morbid suppression of all human desire and passion, 
 that impossible extinction of every natural impulse, 
 which Buddhism inculcated, we may discern the un- 
 conscious groping of the spirit of man after something 
 higher. To be in love with annihilation, to kindle 
 human hearts by the fascination of nothingness, is 
 indeed an impossible aim. And if we are confronted 
 by the moral paradox of a religion of negation which 
 drew to itself the faith and devotion of countless 
 
72 The Faiths of the World, 
 
 multitudes, we may be sure that the attraction was 
 not in the negation it seemed to preach, but in the 
 positive truth in which that negation finds its com- 
 plement and its explanation. Its last word was of 
 the triumph of death over all human hope and love ; 
 but there was here at least some dim anticipation of 
 another and yet unspoken word which it was given 
 only to a far-oflf age to hear — "When this corrup- 
 tible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal 
 shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought 
 to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed 
 up in victory." 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE in. 
 
 RELIGION OF CHINA: 
 
 CONFUCIANISM. 
 
 By the Rev. George Matheson, D.D., Minister of the 
 Parish of Innellan. 
 
 THE subject which has been allotted to us in 
 this course of lectures is that phase of Chinese 
 worship which constitutes the state religion, in the 
 special form which it assumed five centuries before 
 the Christian era. It is well that our field has been 
 thus narrowed, for the subject of Chinese worship is 
 in itself a vast one, and its attractiveness to the specu- 
 lative mind is by no means proportionate to its vast- 
 ness. As we pass from the lofty aspirations of the 
 Brahmin, and from the mystic earnestness of the 
 Buddhist, into the religious atmosphere of China, we 
 
 G 
 
74 ' The Faiths of the World. 
 
 feel instinctively that we are descending from the 
 mountain into the plain. We are made aware that 
 the bounds of our horizon are being curtailed, that 
 we are exchanging the table-land for the valley, and 
 that the era of poetry is giving place to the age 
 of prose. Indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, the 
 most interesting feature of Chinese worship is to us 
 its want of interest, for it is this fact which, above 
 all others, opens up the problem to be solved. We 
 want to know why it is that a creed so cold, so pas- 
 sionless, so dead, is at this hour the dominating in- 
 fluence over 400,000,000 souls. We want to. know 
 why it is that a faith which, in intellectual vigour, in 
 pietistic fervour, in poetic beauty, sinks so immeas- 
 urably beneath the creed of the Brahmin and of the 
 Buddhist, should yet have maintained its empire 
 where the Brahmin and the Buddhist have been com- 
 pelled to yield their ground. Above all, we want 
 to know why it is that this prosaic belief, dignified 
 with the name of a religion, has manifested in the 
 history of China a persistency, a fixedness, a superi- 
 ority to change or vicissitude, which is perhaps un- 
 paralleled in the religious life of man. 
 
 For it must be remembered that, in approaching 
 the religion of China, we are approaching the incar- 
 nation of the spirit of conservatism. The faiths of 
 the East are stagnant in comparison with those of 
 the West ; but in comparison with the religion of 
 China, the faiths of the East are progressive. Brah- 
 minism is the worship of a universe whose life, though 
 repeating itself in circles, is yet within each circle in 
 
Religion of China. 75 
 
 a state of perpetual movement — creating, preserving, 
 and destroying to create anew. Buddhism is the 
 worship of death, and therefore the adoration of that 
 which changes all human things. Parsism is the 
 recognition of a world whose very essence is restless 
 movement and struggle — a battle between light and 
 darkness, in which the balance is ever wavering. 
 Even Judaism, though pervaded by a strong con- 
 servative instinct, is seen ever pressing onward to a 
 future goal. It places its Messianic glory, not in 
 anything which it has won, but in the advent of some 
 golden hour which is yet to be. But in China we are 
 confronted by a spectacle in every respect the reverse 
 of these. We see a religion whose root is in the past, 
 and whose essence is the fact that it has resisted the 
 influence of progress. Nor is this an accident or a 
 peculiarity of the Chinese mind ; its religious concep- 
 tion is but the shadow of its national life. It has 
 worked out in history that image of changelessness 
 which it has conceived in faith. In every department 
 of life it exhibits the appearance of petrifaction. In 
 arts, in manners, in the physical features of its in- 
 habitants, in mental and moral portraitiwe, in lan- 
 guage, and in religion, China has been of all lands 
 the most untouched by time. It has resisted alike 
 the inroads of matter and of mind. Like other 
 countries, it has been subjected to the incursions 
 and the conquests of barbarians ; but in a manner 
 unknown to other countries, it has assimilated its 
 conquerors to its own civilisation. It has been sub- 
 jected to spiritual invasions; foreign religions, like 
 
76 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 foreign tribes, have tried to settle on its soil. But 
 here, too, the result has been the same ; the old 
 Confucian faith has not forbidden the advent of the 
 new, but it has gradually succeeded in drawing it 
 nearer to itself The system of Lao-tse is the result 
 of foreign influence, and the creed called Chinese 
 Buddhism is the product of the Indian missionary. 
 Yet the system of Lao-tse has lost its hold on the 
 community, and the adherents of Chinese Buddhism 
 are hardly distinguishable from the followers of Con- 
 fucius. A civilisation which has thus been able not 
 only to resist new temporal influences, but eventually 
 to appropriate these influences to itself, most cer- 
 tainly presents a spectacle of conservatism which is 
 unique in the history of the world. 
 
 Nor in estimating the force of this tendency should 
 we overlook the vast antiquity of the Chinese em- 
 pire. Without giving any credence to its own claims 
 on this subject, there remains abundant evidence to 
 show that the civilisation thus stereotyped has been 
 stereotyped for ages. We regard the civilisations of 
 Athens, of Sparta, and of Rome, as representing the 
 culture of an ancient world ; but compared to the 
 culture of China, the institutions of Athens, of Sparta, 
 and of Rome are but of yesterday. ■ Before Alex- 
 ander had set forth on his career of conquest — before 
 Plato had conceived the idea of his divine republic — 
 before Buddha had proclaimed the existence of his 
 heavenly Nirvana — before the mythical Romulus had 
 founded the walls of the future Western empire — 
 before the kingdom of Solomon had partially realised 
 
Religion of China. 77 
 
 the temporal hopes of the Jewish nation, — there ex- 
 isted an empire corresponding in many respects to the 
 medievalism of Christian Europe, and already pos- 
 sessed of institutions which could only have been the 
 result of a long course of development. It had its 
 books of cosmology, its books of history, its books of 
 poetry, and its books of ritual. It had its astronomy 
 and its music. It had its arts and amenities of social 
 life, its feasts and its dancing. It had its commerce 
 and its products of industry ; its porcelain cups have 
 been found in the tombs of Egypt. It had a fully 
 developed and organised feudalism, containing the 
 gradations corresponding to duke, marquis, earl, 
 count, and baron. It had an emperor who at the 
 same tinie was pope, and who officially could do no 
 wrong — who was the focus of a universal power, and 
 was therefore the symbol and representative of the 
 life divine. Indeed it is not too much to say, that 
 if a scholastic of the thirteenth Christian century could 
 have fallen asleep, and been transported back over 
 two thousand years, he would have been startled by 
 the resemblance which the institutions of that early 
 age would have presented to his own, and would 
 probably have been forced to admit that in many 
 important respects the pre-eminence of civilisation 
 lay on the side of the old Chinese empire. 
 
 It may be said, What has all this to do with the 
 subject .' We answer. It is the subject itself. That 
 which seems an irrelevant introduction is here no 
 introduction at all. For it so happens that this 
 Chinese empire, with its feudal ranks and its conser- 
 
78 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 vative institutions, is itself the object of Cliinese wor- 
 ship. The belief in millenarianism — that is to say, 
 the expectation of a kingdom of heaven upon earth — 
 has in all ages of the world found some place in the 
 religious instinct. The vision of such a kingdom has 
 never been wholly absent from the lives of men. It 
 glittered before the eyes of the Parsee, it shone in 
 the imaginaPdon of Plato, it dominated the mind of 
 the Jew, it sustained the heart of the early Christian. 
 China, too, had her kingdom of heaven on earth, but 
 with a difference. To the Parsee, to the Platonist, to 
 the Jew, and to the Christian, the heavenly kingdom 
 was something still to come ; to the Chinaman it was 
 something which had already come. The Chinese 
 empire reveals to him the spectacle of a completed 
 millenarianism — of a kingdom which exists no longer 
 in a vision of the future, but in the actual experience 
 of the passing hour. He believes that the social 
 system in which he lives and moves is pervaded by 
 a mysterious divine life, which, after diffusing itself 
 through the different ranks and gradations of the 
 constitution, finds its consummation and its climax 
 in the life and reign of the emperor. 
 
 We come now to the all-important question, How 
 is this object of worship to be served .' in other words, 
 what is required of a man in order to constitute him 
 a citizen of this kingdom of heaven on earth .' The 
 answer to this question is the rise of that great 
 teacher who has bequeathed his name to the whole 
 state religion of China. In the earlier part of the 
 sixth century before the Christian era, Confucius 
 
Religion of China. 79 
 
 stood forth as the exponent of Chinese doctrine — 
 stood forth especially as the exponent of the prac- 
 tical problem, "What must we do to be saved?" 
 Mr Carlyle has remarked that "great men have 
 short biographies," and the adage in the case of 
 Confucius is abundantly fulfilled. History has left 
 us no distinct portraiture of the man : his Hfe as 
 we have it is but a collection of fragmentary inci- 
 dents, unmarked by philosophical development, and 
 unilluminated by historic interest. That he was 
 born in the state of Lu, in the reign of the Chow 
 dynasty; that at six years of age he played at 
 ceremonies and sacrifices ; that at fifteen his mind 
 was set on learning ; that at nineteen he was mar- 
 ried ; that at twenty-three he began to teach ; that 
 he was very much impressed by the death of his 
 mother, and very much unimpressed by the death 
 of his wife ; that his life was spent in wandering from 
 court to court in the hope of obtaining converts to his 
 ideal plans of government, and that in these missions 
 he was oftener unsuccessful than victorious, — this is 
 about the sum and substance of what tradition has 
 told us of the man whose influence has become iden- 
 tified with the religious life of the Chinese nation. 
 
 But the interest in Confucius consists to us in the 
 fact that he oflfered to his age an exposition of the 
 Chinese religion which has been accepted by future 
 ages. He professed to answer the question by what 
 means a man was quahfied to become a citizen of 
 that heavenly kingdom which had been established 
 in the Chinese empire. When he came upon the 
 
8o The Faiths of the World. 
 
 scene, he found his countrymen already engaged in 
 endeavouring to solve that problem. He found them 
 inquiring into the nature of that mysterious life which 
 they believed to be diffused throughout the empire. 
 Some held it to be the manifestation of a personal 
 God,^ some looked upon it as the emanation of an 
 impersonal force of nature, and some saw in it a 
 stream of beneficent life poured down by the im- 
 mortal spirits of their ancestors. Accordingly, there 
 was everywhere observed a form of religious worship. 
 There were public sacrifices ; there were private 
 prayers addressed either to the Supreme Being or 
 to the ancestral dead ; there were rituals and rules 
 for their performance. Confucius stood forth in the 
 midst of this old world and cried, " I show you a 
 more excellent way ! " He did not, indeed, tell his 
 countrymen that theirs was a bad way ; he was far 
 too wise and politic for that. He did not tell them 
 that their worship of a supramundane God was a 
 delusion, their belief in immortality a dream, and 
 their observance of sacrifice a waste of time.^ What 
 he did say was this : " There are things above the 
 power of human comprehension, beyond the grasp 
 of human intelligence ; follow those things which are 
 within the reach of that intelligence. You cannot 
 figure to yourself the nature of God, you cannot 
 certainly know that there is any point of contact 
 between His nature and yours; and in the absence of 
 
 1 According to Dr Legge, the monotheistic belief preceded all the 
 others. — Religions of China, p. i6. 
 ' He made no innovation on the existing ritual. 
 
Religion of China. 8 1 
 
 such knowledge the efficacy of your prayers and of 
 your sacrifices must ever be an open question. But 
 there is a region lying at the door which he who will 
 may enter, and which is itself the entrance into the 
 heavenly kingdom — a region within the reach of the 
 most humble intellectual powers, and capable of be- 
 ing trodden by the simplest minds. That region is 
 the world of duty ; this is the door by which a man 
 must enter the kingdom of heaven. What you have 
 called in the past the observance of religion, is in 
 reality but an exercise of imagination : it may rep- 
 resent a truth, or it may not — we cannot tell. But 
 morality, the doing of that which is right, the per- 
 formance of the plain and practical duties of the day 
 and hour, — this is a road which is open to every man, 
 and which will lead every man that follows it to the 
 highest goal." 
 
 Such, in brief compass, was the creed of Confucius 
 — the substitution of a morality for a theology.^ It 
 will be seen how near it approaches to the agnosti- 
 cism and the positivism of the nineteenth century. It 
 does not deny the facts of theology; it denies that 
 they are susceptible either of affirmation or of nega- 
 tion. It regards them as beyond the reach of human 
 experience, and therefore as no fit subject for the 
 contemplation of man ; and it proposes to put in their 
 room those rules for the conduct of life which are the 
 peculiar province of the moral sphere. What, then, 
 was the nature of that morality which Confucius pro- 
 
 • We have here followed the common view in preference to that of 
 Dr Legge. 
 
82 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 claimed as the substitute for theology ? As we ex- 
 amine his system, there is one thing which strikes us 
 pre-eminently ; it is essentially a morality for this 
 world. It is built upon the notion that the existing 
 framework of Chinese society is destined to be a per- 
 manent thing : if that framework were shattered, the 
 morality would disappear. This moral code is really 
 a system of political economy which regulates the 
 mutual moral duties of employer and employed, and 
 prescribes who are to reign and who are to serve. It 
 is an instrument for regulating the governmental re- 
 lations of society. These relations, according to Con- 
 fucius, are four — ruler and servant, father and son, 
 husband and wife, elder brother and younger. The 
 ruler, the father, the husband, and the elder brother 
 represent the class of the employers ; the servant, the 
 son, the wife, and the younger brother represent the 
 order of the employed : the duty of the former is to 
 reign, the office of the latter is to obey. Yet Con- 
 fucius would demand from each something more than 
 power on the one hand, and obedience on the other : 
 he would ask from the former, benevolence ; and from 
 the latter, sincerity. He felt that in order to con- 
 secrate the right of sovereignty in the state, and of 
 parental authority in the household, it was necessary 
 that sovereigns and parents should themselves be good 
 men. Authority, to be made permanent, must be sanc- 
 tified by the virtue with which it was exercised ; obedi- 
 ence, to be made noble, must be hallowed by the free- 
 dom with which it was accepted, and the loyalty of 
 that devotion with which it was habitually maintained. 
 
Religion of China. 83 
 
 In addition, however, to these governmental rela- 
 tions of ruler, father, husband, and elder brother, there 
 was recognised by Confucius another relation which 
 was not governmental, but social — that of the friend. 
 It is when it touches this sphere that the morality of 
 Confucius seems for a moment to burst its national 
 boundaries and transcend its natural limitations ; the 
 element of subordination appears to melt away, 
 and the sage of China seems to catch a momentary 
 glimpse of an eternal and absolute morality which is 
 designed not simply for employer and employed, but 
 for man in his intercourse with man. For it is when 
 Confucius comes to deal with the relation between 
 friend and friend that he strikes out that remarka- 
 ble principle which our Gospels have made familiar 
 to every Christian, and which has come down to 
 us by the name of the golden rule, " Whatsoever 
 ye would not that others should do unto you, do 
 not ye unto them." That Confucius is the author 
 of this precept is undisputed, and therefore it is 
 indisputable that Christianity has incorporated an 
 article of Chinese morality. It has appeared to 
 some as if this were to the disparagement of Chris- 
 tianity — as if the originality of its Divine Founder 
 were impaired by consenting to borrow a precept from 
 a heathen source. But in what sense does Chris- 
 tianity set up the claim to moral originality 1 When 
 we speak of the religion of Christ as having introduced 
 into the world a purer life and a surer guide to con- 
 duct, what do we mean .' Do we intend to suggest 
 that Christianity has for the first time revealed to 
 
84 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the world the existence of a set of self-sacrificing 
 precepts — that here for the first time man has learned 
 that he ought to be meek, merciful, humble, forgiv- 
 ing, sorrowful for sin, peaceable, and pure in heart ? 
 The proof of such a statement would destroy Chris- 
 tianity itself, for an absolutely original code of pre- 
 cepts would be equivalent to a foreign language. 
 The glory of Christian morality is that it is not 
 original — that its words appeal to something which 
 already exists within the human heart, and on that 
 account have a meaning to the human ear : no new 
 revelation can be made except through the medium 
 of an old one. When we attribute originality to the 
 ethics of the Gospel, we do so on the ground, not 
 that it has given new precepts, but that it has given 
 us a new impulse to obey the moral instincts of the 
 soul. Christianity itself claims on the field of morals 
 this originality and this alone — " A new command- 
 ment give I unto you, that ye love one another." It 
 claims to have set up in the world an ideal of moral 
 beauty which is fitted so to captivate the eyes and 
 the hearts of men as to make it no longer necessary 
 to lay down moral rules for the conduct of life ; love 
 has taken the place of law, and that which in the old 
 dispensation was at best but a golden rule, has be- 
 come, through the power of love, a golden necessity. 
 Now the Chinaman has no moral ideal. His 
 morality is not actuated by admiration for any 
 human type of moral excellence. He has not even 
 that ideal admiration of womanhood which tended 
 so powerfully to inspire to a life of sacrifice the best 
 
Religion of China. 85 
 
 minds of medieval Europe. Accordingly, as he is 
 unable to point to an ideal, the Chinaman is forced 
 to legislate ; he must teach morality by rule. It is 
 quite possible that by rule he may teach a man 
 to perform those very precepts which Christianity 
 reaches by love. It is quite possible, for example, 
 that one who has no music in his soul may perform a 
 piece of music with the. most rigid exactness ; he has 
 only to learn mechanically the order and the value of 
 the different notes, stops, and intervals which, when 
 completed, constitute the harmony. But if we could 
 imagine a perfectly tuned ear — an ear susceptible of 
 the most subtle musical influences — we should reach 
 a conception precisely the opposite of this. Such an 
 ear would not need to learn the notes at all : it could 
 improvise them ; could pour them forth spontane- 
 ously and extemporaneously ; could conceive in a 
 few moments that completed whole which the un- 
 musical man has reached only after the labour of 
 many days. Now this is precisely the position which 
 Christianity claims in the moral world. It professes 
 to teach morality, not by telling men to strike par- 
 ticular notes of duty, but by giving them an ear for 
 moral harmony which will enable them to choose 
 their own notes. It lays down no code of detailed 
 precepts ; it rather seeks to impregnate the mind of 
 its disciples with one great principle of love, which, if 
 fully and clearly apprehended, must embrace in itself 
 all precepts. It abolishes the law of ordinances con- 
 tained in commandments ; but it only abolishes them 
 as the one blaze of sunshine abolishes the many 
 
86 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 lights of the solar planets — it takes up the separate , 
 rules into the one law of love. | 
 
 It will be seen at once, that to such a view as this 
 the moral system of Confucius presents the greatest 
 of possible contrasts — a contrast which would remain 
 equally great even though every precept of his mor- 
 aUty had been identical with that of the Christian 
 founder, For it is plain that even that golden rule, 
 in which he seems most closely to touch Christianity, 
 has with him a totally different significance, and for 
 this reason, that it is a rule. It does not seem to us 
 that in uttering this precept Confucius really rose 
 above his usual governmental theory — really meant 
 to suggest more than a law for the wellbeing of the 
 state. The thought in his mind was probably this : 
 If you do evil to others, you may be sure they will 
 retaliate on yourself the same form of evil ; for, re- 
 venge in kind of injury is an instinct of humanity. 
 Such retaliations can end in nothing but political 
 anarchy ; avoid them for the sake of good govern- 
 ment, and in order to avoid them, shun that which 
 may cause them. If at any time you are tempted 
 to inflict injury upon your neighbour, remember that 
 he will retaliate with the like injury upon yourself 
 Respect the peace of society — respect the balance 
 of power — respect that system of social equilibrium 
 which has made the preservation of one man's in- 
 terests depend on the preservation of the rights of 
 another. 
 
 Reverting now to the general characteristic of Con- 
 fucianism — its attempt to substitute a morality for a 
 
Religion of China. 87 
 
 theology — we have to ask the question proposed at 
 the beginning of this lecture, What has been the 
 cause of its success ? We may first inquire nega- 
 tively, What has not been the cause ? For one thing, 
 it is plain that the system of Confucius derived no 
 aid from the sympathy of contemporaneous history. 
 The spirit of China in the days of Confucius was not 
 the spirit of the world in general. Side by side with 
 him on the canvas of religious history there stand 
 out two other prominent figures, both leaders of the 
 thoughts of men : the one contemporaneous in time — 
 the other nearly so ; the one representing the dawn- 
 ing West — the other symbolising the fading East ; 
 the one Pythagoras — the other Buddha. Yet neither 
 of these figures has any affinity with Confucius. 
 Pythagoras has certain speculations which present 
 analogies to the older books of China, but to the 
 Chinese sage himself he presents a contrast. Pythag- 
 oras was a philosopher ; Confucius was a moralist, 
 Pythagoras was a mystic ; Confucius was a realist. 
 Pythagoras was an ascetic ; Confucius was a man of 
 the world. Pythagoras would have admitted women 
 to the higher education ; Confucius made no eflTort to 
 lift woman from her Eastern abasement. 
 
 Between Confucius and Buddha the outward fea- 
 tures of dissimilarity are less marked ; there are ex- 
 ternal points in which they agree. Both were of 
 high origin, yet both in their actual circumstances 
 were poor. Both were born into the Eastern world 
 at a time when the Eastern world was in process of 
 decay. Both attempted the salvation of their age by 
 
88 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the promulgation of a code of morals ; but here the 
 similarity ended. Their ideas of human salvation 
 were not only different, but opposite. Buddha held 
 this earthly existence to be so bad, that the only 
 happiness for man was the hope of death, and he 
 therefore taught a morality that would prepare for 
 death ; ^ Confucius held the present world, as repre- 
 sented in the Chinese empire, to be the best possible 
 world — the very kingdom of heaven — and therefore 
 he taught a morality which might tend to strengthen 
 and perpetuate the things that are seen and temporal. 
 It will thus appear that Confucius was not indebted 
 for his success to the spirit of contemporaneous his- 
 tory ; his great religious contemporaries moved on 
 different lines from him, and in the elaboration of his 
 plan of divine government he had to work out the 
 problem alone. 
 
 Nor yet can it be said that the mind of China was 
 attracted to the moral system of Confucius by any 
 marvellous power exerted by his own personality. 
 Most religions have taken their rise in the breast of 
 some individual man ; very few religions have had an 
 individual man for their object. Of these few Con- 
 fucianism is not one. We have already seen that the 
 life of the founder, in so far at least as it has come 
 down to us, is dry and uninteresting; and we know, 
 as a matter of fact, that within its own limits it was 
 a failure. Confucius achieved little while he lived; 
 his hand seemed to be against every man, and every 
 man's hand against him. It was when he had passed 
 
 ' It consisted in the crucifixion of individual or sensuous desires. 
 
Religion of China. 89 
 
 away, and when he lay at rest by the banks of the 
 Soo river, that his countrymen began to awake to 
 the perception that there was something in his teach- 
 ing worth cultivating and worth perpetuating. Even 
 then, however, it was the teaching, and not the 
 teacher, that was their goal. Christianity is the 
 worship of Christ, but Confucianism is not the wor- 
 ship of Confucius. The Chinese sage is reverenced 
 on account of the message which he brought ; it was 
 the message alone that gave value to the messenger. 
 The personal greatness of the teacher cannot explain 
 the reception of his teaching, for it is only by reason 
 of his teaching that he is reckoned personally great. 
 
 If, then, neither the spirit of contemporaneous his- 
 tory nor the private character of Confucius himself 
 can explain the wonderful success of his mission, 
 there is only one remaining direction to which we 
 can look for such an explanation ; it must lie in some 
 truth of the doctrine. No form of faith could exist 
 for half an hour except by reason of the truth which 
 is in it ; much less, in the absence of such conditions, 
 could it persist for upwards of two thousand years. 
 The wide and long prevalence of the system of Con- 
 fucius is alone a guarantee for the fact that to the 
 world which it addressed it bore some healing balm. 
 We have said that the system of Confucius was not 
 in harmony with the spirit of contemporaneous his- 
 tory. We shall find, it seems to us, that the points in 
 which it was a reaction were precisely the points in 
 which it brought healing; and in the discovery of 
 these we shall put our hand upon the causes which 
 
 H 
 
go The Faiths of the World. 
 
 have made this prosaic creed so permanent and so 
 powerful. 
 
 These points of reaction, we think, were two. Let 
 us first consider the fact that when Confucius ap- 
 peared in the Eastern world he addressed a world 
 which had abandoned itself to speculative dreams. 
 Not only the Brahmin, the Buddhist, and the Parsee, 
 but even the Chinese mind itself had become im- 
 mersed in speculation : men were forgetting the light 
 of common day in the search for that transcendental 
 light which never shone on sea or land. On such a 
 world the message of Confucius fell like a thunder- 
 bolt, but it was a thunderbolt fraught with sanitary 
 influences. To an age immersed in transcendental- 
 ism there was health in the message, "Do the will, 
 and ye shall know of the doctrine.'' There was 
 health in the recall to the practical duties of life 
 of men who had forgotten that life had any duties or 
 that practice had any sphere. With singular felicity 
 is this illustrated by the answer which Confucius him- 
 self gave to those desirous to hear his testimony on 
 the subject of immortality. When he was asked 
 whether he thought there was any efficacy in the 
 practice of offering up sacrifices to the spirits of the 
 ancestral dead, his reply was to this effect, If you 
 have not yet recognised your relationship to the 
 souls of the living, how can you discover your rela- 
 tionship to the spirits of the departed .' One almost 
 seems to hear an anticipative echo of the Christian 
 sentiment, " He that loveth not his brother whom he 
 hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not 
 
Religion of China. 9 1 
 
 seen ? " We cannot doubt that to men whose studies 
 on the subject of immortality had been limited to 
 speculations on the abstract nature of the soul, the 
 words of Confucius must have come with a message 
 of power. For is it not true that, whether he meant 
 it or not, he really pointed out to his day and genera- 
 tion the only road for reaching a rational conviction 
 of immortality ? The mind which speculates on the 
 character of its own essence will inevitably wander 
 in the mazes of uncertainty, but in the world of 
 moral action it will probably regain its trust. The 
 best evidence for the soul's immortality is a percep- 
 tion of the soul's beauty, and the highest perception 
 of the soul's beauty is that which arises from the 
 experience of a noble life. The man who lives for 
 his brother man, who recognises that he has a re- 
 lationship to every soul whose duties he must fulfil, 
 is finding himself in the very act of losing himself, 
 and is reaching the evidence of his immortality 
 through the very process of sacrificial death. That 
 Confucius saw the full force of this principle we do 
 not believe, but his teaching was on the lines of a 
 morality which was bound to issue in its revelation. 
 He pointed his countrymen to a moral instead of 
 an intellectual pathway for reaching the knowledge 
 of transcendental things. Viewed in this aspect he 
 was to his own age very much what Mr Carlyle was 
 to the generation which first beheld him ; indeed we 
 have always been impressed with a strong parallel 
 between them. Both had a reverence for the mani- 
 festation of force or power. Both sought to recog. 
 
92 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 nise that power in union with virtue and moral aspir- 
 ation. Both proclaimed the highest province of man 
 — nay, the only available province for man — to be the 
 pursuit of that virtue and the exhibition of that moral 
 aspiration. Both in some sense were impelled to 
 utter their call to duty by the contrary spirit of the 
 times in which they lived. Carlyle appeared in an 
 age in which speculation had taken the place of 
 practice — in which the search for the absolute and 
 the transcendental had obscured the vision of life 
 and its moral claims. Confucius appeared in an age 
 when men were impressed with the nothingness of 
 finite things, and were struggling to fix their gaze 
 upon that which resembled nothing in the heavens 
 or the earth, or the waters under the earth. Both, 
 therefore, in some meJfeure, derived their force from 
 their reactionary character. Their call to duty was 
 a fresh sound to a world that had been listening 
 only to monotonous strains of speculation which had 
 issued in no end. They reminded man that there 
 was a side of his nature which he was neglecting, and 
 precisely that side of his nature which was likely to 
 lead him to the highest goal. They told him that if 
 ever he should attain to any sense of the infinite and 
 absolute, it would not be through the limitations of 
 the human intellect, but through the practice of that 
 eternal and immutable morality which gives to the 
 soul the highest image of its own eternity and its 
 own immutability. 
 
 But there was a second point in which the system 
 of Confucius was a reaction against the spirit of his 
 
Religion of China. 93 
 
 age, and in which, therefore, it brought health to his 
 age. The world in which Confucius lived was not 
 only a world of speculation; it was a scene of pessim- 
 ism — ^that is to say, of despair. As a general rule, 
 the men of his day believed that in the present sys- 
 tem of things everything was as bad as it could be. 
 The Brahmin looked upon life as an illusion ; the 
 Buddhist viewed it as a curse ; the Parsee contem- 
 plated it as a bitter and painful struggle. If men 
 cherished hopes of a hereafter, it was a hereafter from 
 which were to be eliminated all those elements which 
 constituted the here. The effect of such a creed was 
 manifest: it could only result in the neglect of the 
 present hour ; it led to the same disregard of practice 
 which we have seen produced by the tendency to 
 speculation. If the present Tvorld and the institu- 
 tions to which it had given birth were in their nature 
 evil — if the system of earthly things was incapable of 
 being remedied by time and culture — if the only hope 
 for humanity was the prospect of entering at death 
 into a different order of being, from which would be 
 excluded every thought of time and every vestige of 
 human culture, — the inference suggested to the mind 
 was the hopelessness of all action. It became the 
 paramount duty of man to insist on doing nothing. 
 Everything done for this world was but a link in the 
 propagation of evil ; the true attitude of an earnest 
 soul was to fold the hands in prayer and wait for 
 death, the great emancipator, to dissolve the old 
 fabric and reconstruct the new. 
 
 Into this world of pessimism the creed of Con- 
 
94 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 fucius fell with crushing power. It proclaimed a 
 doctrine comparatively new to Eastern minds. It 
 told them that the chief end of man was not merely, 
 or even mainly, to prepare for a future world — that 
 the immediate task allotted to him was the beautify- 
 ing and the glorifying of the life which now is. It 
 told them that the life which now is admits of being 
 beautified and glorified — that the present system of 
 things, so far from being radically bad, contains in its 
 root the germs of all perfection and the sources of 
 infinite development. And let it be remembered 
 that, in proclaiming this doctrine, China has made a 
 real contribution to the science of religious thought. 
 It has often appeared as if she had no place in the 
 science of religion ; her name is generally associated 
 with the profession of atheism. That she has rarely 
 raised her eyes to a God above the world — that she 
 has seldom striven to contemplate the essential nature 
 of the divine life — that she has studiously refrained 
 from considering the possibility of any order of being 
 beyond the range of human experience and human 
 faculties, — all this is true. But we must not forget 
 that there is an order in the world as well as beyond 
 it, and that the tracing of this order is itself a mode 
 of tracing the life of God. This was precisely the 
 point which the religions of the East did forget. No 
 man would apply to Brahminism the epithet athe- 
 istic ; we should more naturally attach to it the 
 term, God-intoxicated. Yet it cannot be denied that, 
 with 9,11 its richness of religious life, Brahminism is 
 weak in the very point in which Confucianism is 
 
Religion of China. 95 
 
 strong. Brahminism sees an order in the nature of 
 the divine life, but her' eye is riveted on the divine 
 life above the world : she has no real sympathy with 
 its manifestations in time — for time, and space, and 
 matter are to her but illusions of a dream. Buddhism 
 sees a kingdom of rest ; but it is a kingdom outside 
 the world, and is only reached by destruction of the 
 human powers in death. Parsism worships a king- 
 dom of light, and therefore recognises in the divine 
 life a source both of order and of joy; but even here 
 the order and the joy are things above the world. The 
 kingdom of light exists in the heavens ; but it is not 
 yet established on the earth, for its reign on earth is 
 disputed by another empire — the kingdom of disorder 
 and of darkness. Thus all along the line of Eastern 
 faiths we are confronted by the tendency to look for 
 divine harmony in things beyond the world, and to 
 see the life of God in regions which transcend the 
 seen and temporal. But China comes forward with 
 a fresh and a reactionary contribution ; it proclaims 
 the thought that there is a moral order in the world. 
 It declares that it is needless to look so far away for 
 an exhibition of divine harmony — that this earth is 
 itself a harmony. It tells the Indian that in all his 
 search for divine order he has failed to seek it in the 
 one spot where it must be found — the commonplace 
 morality of daily life. It says that, by pursuing the 
 plain and practical duties of the hour, man can actu- 
 ally make this world itself the kingdom of God — that 
 the harmony of the universe is to be found, not in 
 some transcendental, timeless sphere, but in the com- 
 
96 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 pleted result of those seemingly trivial acts which 
 make up the moral history of the individual human 
 soul. In uttering that voice, China called men out 
 of despair, and pointed them to action. It told them 
 that there was hope in action ; that the world which 
 they deemed an illusion was in truth a great reality, 
 and that it was capable of being perfected by the 
 efforts of that very finite life which had seemed to 
 them the enemy of all perfection. Can it surprise us 
 that in proclaiming this creed of hope for the present 
 world, the doctrine of Confucius should have been 
 acceptable to the world — should have been welcomed 
 even by the faiths of pessimism 1 Men who take a 
 gloomy view of life would at any time rather be found 
 wrong than right in their calculations. Their wish 
 invariably points in an opposite direction to their 
 thought, and they are ready to accept any system 
 that promises to reveal what they despairingly de- 
 sire to see. Accordingly, the doctrine of Confucius 
 has been powerful beyond its natural boundaries ; it 
 has influenced not only China, but India. It has 
 come into contact with Buddhism, and it has affected 
 Buddhism with its own spirit — has induced it to 
 exchange its timeless paradise of Nirvana for the 
 hope of a material heaven, beautified with earthly 
 forms and glorified with earthly prospects. The 
 Buddhist on the soil of China is willing to see life 
 perpetuated in eternity, because he has received from 
 his contact with Confucianism the hope which has 
 made life an object of desire. 
 
 We arrive, then, at this conclusion. The doctrine 
 
Religion of China. 97 
 
 of Confucius owes its success to the fact that it 
 has made a real contribution to the science of nat- 
 ural religion. It gave to the faiths of the East an 
 element which was distinctive and new. Each had 
 been contributing its quota. The Brahmin recog- 
 nised the presence of a divine life above the world. 
 The Buddhist was impressed with the conviction 
 of human nothingness and human impotence. The 
 Parsee felt the power of the moral disorder in the 
 soul, and emphasised that sense of sin which lies at 
 the root of the highest religious feeling. But it was 
 the province of China, without denying these aspects, 
 to present a neglected side of the picture — a portrait- 
 ure of man's potential greatness. It held up the 
 vision of an infinite in the finite — the establishment 
 of a kingdom of heaven on earth, the existence of a 
 perfected society, the organisation of a divine order 
 out of the elements of time. It pointed to the pros- 
 pect of a paradise below — to the advent of a pure 
 civil government — to the possibility of a reign whose 
 law would be universal blessing; and in the sugges- 
 tion of that hope it supplied the one feature which 
 was lacking to give the religions of the East a power 
 over the present life. 
 
 There is, however, one thought which must forcibly 
 impress the modern mind looking back upon the 
 creed of Confucius through the vista of two millen- 
 niums : it is the fact that the Chinese empire herself 
 has not realised her own vision of optimism. That 
 empire, which professed to be the very source of 
 human development, has been left far behind by the 
 
98 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 stream of human civilisation. Is there any hope that 
 part of her vision may yet be realised — that she her- 
 self may become sharer in the culture of the West ? 
 Were we treating of any other religion, a question so 
 secular would be irrelevant ; but in this religion the 
 secular is the sacred, and the question becomes per- 
 tinent. Mr Draper, in his ' Intellectual Development 
 of Europe,' has given it a negative answer. He holds 
 that the East has reached its period of old age, 
 and is sinking into inevitable death. It seems to us, 
 however, that in the case of the Chinese empire there 
 are grounds at least for suspending such a judgment. 
 That she has remained stagnant for centuries is true; 
 but it is also true that the stagnancy has in large 
 measure been the result of an external cause. For 
 long centuries she shut her gates against the ingress 
 of Western civilisation, lest the influx of modern 
 views should corrupt her ancient institutions. The 
 question is, Was her fear well founded .' Had she 
 opened her gates to the West, would she indeed 
 have been influenced by the breath of the new atmo- 
 sphere .' Now that she is beginning to open them, is 
 there a hope that she shall be influenced .' We have 
 seen that this nation, with all her conservatism, has 
 been suprisingly assimilative. We have seen how, in 
 ancient times, she appropriated to herself every for- 
 eign influence that touched her shores; and we can 
 point in comparatively modern times to a manifesta- 
 tion of the same plastic power. In that great out- 
 burst of missionary zeal which in the Catholic Church 
 followed the age of the Reformation, nowhere did 
 
Religion of China. 99 
 
 the Jesuits experience such success as in the Chinese 
 empire. The reason of their success was the real or 
 fancied parallel which that empire perceived between 
 their teaching and the statements of her own sacred 
 writings. The success indeed was short-lived, and the 
 movement faded ; but it is not difficult to discover 
 the cause of its failure. The Jesuits contented them- 
 selves with trying to reach a theological parallel ; in 
 other words, they strove to establish a European con- 
 tact with that which, on any view of the question, is 
 the least distinctive feature of the Chinese religion. 
 In the sacred books of China there are passages 
 which favour monotheism ; there are passages which 
 favour polytheism ; and there are passages which 
 favour nature-worship : there, as everywhere else, in- 
 dividual men have speculated in different ways. But 
 since the days of Confucius the speculative element ' 
 has declined, and the Chinese mind has sought truth 
 almost exclusively by the path of morals. If, then, 
 modern Europe would influence this ancient empire, 
 it must seek to do so through its own distinctive 
 sphere^the sphere of morality. And unquestion- 
 ably modern Europe has here a stronghold of which 
 medieval Europe was oblivious. It may be ques- 
 tioned, notwithstanding Dr Legge's high authority,^ 
 whether there is any real parallel between the God of 
 Chinese speculation and the God proclaimed in the 
 Bible ; but it cannot be denied that there is a strong 
 possibility of contact between the morality of Con- 
 fucius and the morality of the Christian religioa 
 1 Religions of China, pp. 144-148. 
 
loo The Faiths of the World. 
 
 The relation of the Christian code to the Chinese 
 morality is the relation of the picture to its frame. 
 China has the frame of morals, but it has no picture 
 to place within it ; it wants an ideal to give beauty 
 to its own conception. Christianity can supply that 
 ideal. It reveals the precepts of all virtue concen- 
 trated in a single life. It unveils the vision of a 
 kingdom of heaven, having all the order and disci- 
 pline contemplated by the Chinese Utopia ; but un- 
 like that Utopia, capable of being realised not merely 
 in the life of the collective race, but within the limits 
 of each individual soul. In union with such a prin- 
 ciple, the empire of China would assuredly revive. 
 The units would emerge from the mass, and become 
 the centres of new power. The sacrificial virtues 
 of life would take the place of purely utilitarian mo- 
 tives. Woman would rise into her position of right- 
 ful dignity, and with her would arise the elements 
 of a true social system, which would fill with the 
 arts of peace the places now held by the forms of 
 lethargy. 
 
 For it is worth while to ask, at this stage, What is 
 the great practical difference between the kingdom of 
 heaven in the system of China, and the kingdom of 
 heaven in the system of Christianity .■• Both are pro- 
 fessed attempts to establish a divine kingdom in the 
 world — to perfect the life and practice of a visible, 
 human society. China professes to have accom- 
 plished her aim ; Christianity only claims to be on 
 the road to its accomplishment. Yet it is manifest, 
 even to the most superficial observation, that the 
 
Religion of China. i o i 
 
 religion which claims to have realised the least, has 
 been incomparably the greater power. Leaving out 
 of view all theological distinctions, and keeping our 
 eye merely on the sober facts of history, no man can 
 fail to perceive that the Christian kingdom has been 
 strong in the very point where the Confucian king- 
 dom has proved weak. That point is human indi- 
 vidualism. The history of Christianity is essentially 
 the history of great men — the revelation of powerful 
 spiritual personalities, which by their own individual 
 force have moulded the destinies of their respective 
 ages. The history of China, on the other hand, is the 
 life of a collective nation. Everything moves on a 
 prodigious scale. We are confronted by vast periods 
 of time ; we are met by the rise and fall of powerful 
 and protracted dynasties ; but we miss the originative 
 force of single individual lives. The man is absorbed 
 in the state ; the separate personality is lost in the 
 collective whole. One naturally asks. Why } Is it 
 that the system of Confucius has omitted to lay stress 
 on the necessity for individual development ? On 
 the contrary, the leading peculiarity of that system is 
 its intense and absorbing effort to stimulate the indi- 
 vidual man with a sense of his potential greatness. 
 The precepts of Confucius, from beginning to end, 
 are pervaded by this spirit. Take the few following 
 as illustrations of the whole : — 
 
 " What the superior man seeks is in himself; what 
 the small man seeks is in others.'' 
 
 " The superior man is dignified, but does not 
 wrangle ; social, but not a partisan. He does not 
 
Z02 , The Faiths of the World. 
 
 promote a man simply because of his words, nor does 
 he put good words aside because of the man." 
 
 " A poor man who does not flatter, and a rich man 
 who is not proud, are passable characters ; but they 
 are not equal to the poor who yet are cheerful, and- 
 the rich who love the rules of propriety." 
 
 "Extravagance leads to insubordination, and par- 
 simony to meanness. It is better to be mean than 
 insubordinate." 
 
 " A man can enlarge his principles ; principles do 
 not enlarge the man." 
 
 " The cautious seldom err." ^ 
 
 Throughout these precepts there runs one thought 
 — the paramount importance of self - contemplation. 
 The problem pervading them is this. How shall the 
 individual render himself superior to other individuals .' 
 Each man's motive is himself; his stimulus is the 
 contemplation of himself. The goal which glitters 
 before him is the prospect of his own superiority ; the 
 vision which lures him on is the sight of his own 
 shadow. He has mapped out for himself many pre- 
 cepts, whose observance must exalt a man ; but the 
 motive underlying all is the hope of exaltation. 
 
 Now when we turn to Christianity we find that this 
 principle of self-contemplation is conspicuous by its 
 absence. We are confronted by a religion whose 
 very starting-point and basis is the idea of self-for- 
 getfulness, and which demands of its votaries before 
 all things the voluntary surrender of their wills. As 
 we look deeper, we are met by a paradox more start- 
 ' Encyc. Britann., gth ed., vol. vi. p. 264. 
 
Religion of China. 103' 
 
 ling still. We see that just in proportion as the 
 self-forgetfulness grows, the power of the individual 
 increases ; that just as a man loses the thought of 
 himself does he become a centre of influence to other 
 men. The history of the Christian life as it is ex- 
 hibited in the world's annals is essentially the history 
 of strength in weakness, of personal force evoked by 
 forgetfulness of personality. The men who come to 
 the "front in these annals are precisely the men who 
 have their own interest in the background. We see 
 enthusiasts kindling their contemporaries into inspira- 
 tion simply because they have lost the remembrance 
 of themselves in devotion to the interest of others. 
 ■We see martyrs becoming the seed of the Church by 
 the very force of that love which has compelled them 
 to be martyrs, finding their life by the act of losing 
 it. We see a kingdom which, by the admission of all 
 history, has dominated every empire of the civilised 
 world and modified every department of its civilisa- 
 tion, but which has attained this eminence, not by the 
 search for but by the sacrifice of empire — which has 
 conquered by stooping, grown rich by impoverish- 
 ment, and reached the summit of dominion by min- 
 istration to the wants of the humblest human soul. 
 The least has become the greatest through its con- 
 sciousness of being little ; the servant has become the 
 ruler through his enthusiasm for the life of service ; the 
 crown has been won by the struggle for the cross. 
 
 Here,-then, we are brought to the very gates of the 
 solution, and the problem of the two empires finds its 
 explanation. The solution, indeed, is given by Chris- 
 
I04 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 tianity itself. Christianity has revealed to the world 
 that the principle of all success is self-forgetfulness, 
 and that the only road to individual greatness is the 
 banishment of the individual from his own thoughts. 
 It has taught mankind that to make self the aim of 
 life is to prevent the development of self, to dwarf its 
 stature and to thwart its joy ; and that if men would 
 really attain to the full stature and joy of personal 
 being, they must do so by looking out from them- 
 selves. In the light of that principle we begin to see 
 why the religion of Confucius has fallen short of 
 triumph. The Chinese kingdom of heaven has failed 
 to win the suffrages of humanity because the members 
 of that kingdom are individually weak ; and its mem- 
 bers are individually weak just because they are indi- 
 vidually self-conscious. The paradise of China is not 
 of the earth, earthy, but it is assuredly of the East, 
 Eastern ; it is based upon the pillars of power. Its 
 morality is a means, not an end; its honesty is a 
 policy, not an impulse. Its goal is everywhere the 
 physical, the establishment and perpetuation of place, 
 rank, authority. The virtues required for such a goal 
 are essentially the active and masculine — prudence, 
 calculation, foresight, concentrated energy, keenness 
 of judgment, power to balance consequences. There 
 is little room for the sacrificial or feminine type — the 
 mercy that is long-suffering, the charity that thinketh 
 no evil, the love that endureth. The Chinaman's 
 heart is not hardened but his intellectual standard is 
 mistaken. He has mapped out for himself an Eastern 
 estimate of greatness, and he has ordered his life to 
 
Religion of China. 105 
 
 suit that estimate. He has started from the principle 
 of the survival of the strongest, and he has selected for 
 his empire the qualities which he believes to be the 
 strongest, but he has made a mistake in his selection. 
 He has preferred the virtues of active enterprise to the 
 virtues of passive endurance, and therefore he has 
 driven out the feminine to make room for the mascu- 
 line type. But in so doing he has rejected the most 
 abiding of all forces, the most indomitable of all 
 influences. He has left it to be taken up by a 
 religion which, through its exercise, has become 
 supreme, and which is raising through its power 
 that heavenly kingdom which China failed to build : 
 the rejected stone of China has become in Christi- 
 anity the head of the corner. If China is ever to 
 retrieve herself, it must be by going back to incor- 
 porate this neglected element. If she is ever to 
 realise any part of her ancient dream, it must be in 
 union with that sacrificial principle which Christianity 
 has made her own ; for any spiritual empire other 
 foundation can no man lay. It is in this direction 
 alone that China can be radically influenced by the 
 culture of the West No mere transplanting of in- 
 stitutions, no simple adoption of European customs, 
 no bare transition from an old to a modern rSgime of 
 education, can permanently effect the cure. It is a 
 spirit that China wants, an enthusiasm of humanity 
 which is born of the love of man. In Christianity 
 alone has that spirit been realised, and in contact 
 with Christianity alone can China hope to find it. 
 If a kingdom should await her in the future, if her 
 
 I 
 
it)6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 vision of a crown should be fulfilled, it must be a 
 kingdom which has been built on the service of 
 humanity, and a crown which has been conquered 
 through the power of sacrifice. 
 
 Here, however, we are warned by our limits that 
 we must bring this subject to a close. In deference 
 to these limits we have studied throughout to avoid 
 all minutiae. We have passed by everything of the 
 nature of detail. Our main endeavour has been to 
 grasp and to exhibit the essence of the religion of Con- 
 fucius. We have sought to put our hand upon those 
 distinctive features which have constituted this re- 
 ligion a separate faith, and have left untouched those 
 extraneous elements which it holds in common with 
 other faiths. Perhaps at the close of this study the 
 thought most powerfully borne in upon our minds 
 will be an impression of the modern in the ancient. 
 Perhaps nowhere has the Asiatic intellect presented 
 so many points of contact to the European mind as 
 in this most exclusive, most conservative, most pro- 
 saic of Eastern religions. Nowhere has the East 
 caught so much of the spirit of Western sanguine- 
 ness. Nowhere has Eastern religion come so near 
 to the European standpoint of bringing secular in- 
 stitutions into harmony with religious convictions. 
 Nowhere has the oriental spirit made an effort so 
 thoroughly modern to embody the worship of the 
 heart in the acts and duties of the common day. In 
 a world which habitually and systematically divorced 
 the human from the divine, in an age which regard- 
 ed with despair all manifestations of the seen and 
 
Religion of China. 107 
 
 temporal, in a community which looked upon man's 
 chief end as a life of asceticism and contemplation, 
 the religion of the Chinese empire struck out a path 
 of novelty which modern life has made a path of 
 permanence. It pointed to the fact that there is a 
 divine order in mean things, in little things, in pro- 
 saic things ; that the drudgery of daily toil has some- 
 thing to do with the interests of universal govern- 
 ment, and that in union with these interests the daily 
 toil may hope for its reward. It has bequeathed to 
 Europe the inheritance of a thought which alone 
 would make Europe its perpetual debtor — the belief 
 that religion has a share in the establishment of 
 human civilisation, and that the goal of a perfect 
 civilisation is the foundation of a kingdom of God. 
 China, the most seemingly irreverent of all nations, 
 has here joined hands with Judea, that nation which 
 of all others has been most impressed with the per- 
 sonality of God. Approaching the subject from dif- 
 ferent angles, and looking at the problem with a 
 contrary bias, they have arrived in one respect at the 
 same goal. They have reached that thought to 
 which the continent of Asia has been otherwise a 
 stranger, that there is a sacred element underlying all 
 secular phenomena, that the sphere of religion em- 
 braces the things which are present as well as the 
 things which are to come, and that the recognised 
 thrones and dominions of this world are as much the 
 agencies of God as the unknown principalities and 
 powers of the heavenly places. They have trans- 
 mitted that thought to Christian Europe, and Chris- 
 
io8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 tian Europe has intensified it by its Christianity. It 
 has not nullified the labours of the Chinaman and 
 of the Jew, — it has prosecuted these labours by a 
 shorter and an easier method ; and if ever that time 
 should come when it shall impart its new strength to 
 their ancient fabric, it shall only put into their hands 
 the talisman by which their national mission shall be 
 crowned and perfected. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 RELIGION OF PERSIA: 
 
 ZOROASTER AND THE ZEND AVESTA. 
 
 By the Rev. John Milne, M.A., Minister of Greenside Parish, 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 THE ancient Persian religion, which I am to 
 describe, is a natural growth from the primi- 
 tive religion of our Aryan fathers, who dwelt in Iran, 
 the region rudely bounded on the south by the Per- 
 sian Gulf, on the west by the Tigris, on the east by 
 the Indus, and which extended northwards as far as 
 the Scythians allowed. They adored one supreme 
 god ; him they saw visibly revealed in the sky, 
 which, as the grandest known existence, they endowed 
 with the highest known qualities — life and person- 
 ality ; and to him they gave such names as Varana, 
 
no The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Ouranos, the enclosing one ; or Dyaus, Deus, Zeus, 
 the shining one. From Iran westwards streamed 
 those peoples which, as Celts, Romans, Greeks, Teu- 
 tons, Slavs, overspread Europe, carrying with them 
 the primitive faith. Lastly, eastwards into India 
 flowed the Hindus, who, in the Rig-Veda, have given 
 us the correctest picture of that faith. The supreme 
 was not the only god ; closely allied to Varana, the 
 Sky, was he whom the Hindus in India and the Per- 
 sians remaining in Persia, or rather, let us call them 
 by the wider and more correct name, the Iranians re- 
 maining in Iran, called Mithra, the Friend, the kindly 
 light of heaven. Six others stood around the supreme, 
 and under them all the powers of nature, — gods with- 
 out number. But a settled society under centralised 
 government could not leave the gods in nomadic dis- 
 order and independence. Among the Iranians the 
 idea of heaven developed into monarchy : Varana 
 became sole god with the name Ahura, Lord ; the 
 other gods lost independence, became the works of 
 Ahura's hands and his instruments in producing his 
 other works, — being named Amesha-Spentas, Boun- 
 tiful Immortals. 
 
 But while gods became mere dependent arch- 
 angels and angels, demons refused to own the 
 lordship of Ahura ; therefore we call the Persian 
 religion Dualism. This view of the universe, as 
 divided into two opposing camps, is inherited from 
 the old Aryan mother religion, in which we find 
 it as a crude, unclaimed, almost unconscious pos- 
 session. Its origin is easily accounted for. Every- 
 
Religion of Persia. 
 
 Ill 
 
 where we see that action and reaction, doing and 
 undoing, balance or oppose each other. Heaven 
 is alternately in the power of day and night, of 
 cloud and sunshine. On earth activities are found 
 equally opposed : one plant is for food, another is 
 poison ; one beast is a possession, another is a nat- 
 ural enemy. Growth, life, and welfare are produced 
 or prevented by the state of the sky, its light or 
 darkness, its drought or moisture, its heat or cold. 
 Day is for labour ; night protects the thief, she quells 
 us with sleep, and invites all ravenous beasts to creep 
 forth; day returns and hunts them back to their dens. 
 Nowhere do the variance and opposition which are 
 everywhere visible show themselves more vividly than 
 in the storm. The storm not only struck the Aryan's 
 imagination by its grandeur, but it enlisted his self- 
 interest by taking away and bringing back the light 
 and the rain, two of the blessings he valued most 
 highly. If the Aryan husbandman languished for 
 rain, he said, speaking in poetry what he did not 
 know how to express in the plain, straightforward 
 prose of science, that the robber had carried off the 
 cows : a god rushed to the rescue ; the lightning 
 was the flashing weapons ; the thunder was the crash 
 of battle or the shout of the champions ; the rain 
 following was the milk of the rescued herd. If he 
 pined for bright, warm sunshine, the serpent Ahi 
 had darkened it in his folds, or the ravisher had 
 carried off the lovely woman ; the deliverer was her 
 lover or husband. The tale, with the addition of 
 caves, forests, mountains, and of all images under 
 
112 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 which fancy may hide clouds and lightning, is end- 
 lessly varied. 
 
 But the gods had other aids than the lightning. 
 One is the Soma. The juice of this plant, being 
 found able to raise the spirits and to give unusual 
 powers, was by our simple Aryan fathers declared 
 divine. The heavenly Soma was what Greeks called 
 Ambrosia, and gave immortality to gods and men. 
 Stimulated by the earthly Soma offered to them 
 in sacrifice, the gods overcame their foes. Helpful 
 to them was also every word of worship coming from 
 the mouths of the faithful. The gods were irresistible 
 when to the Soma was added the holy hymn. 
 
 From this vague naturalistic dualism of the Aryans, 
 progress was possible in two directions. The Aryan 
 in India with pantheistic tolerance declared gods and 
 demons, both sides of the conflict, to be merely differ- 
 ent powers or manifestations of the great indifferent 
 One. On the other hand, Iran took her demons 
 quite seriously. Nor need it surprise ourselves, — 
 among whom has prevailed, and is still common, the 
 belief that animal death, which was a law of nature 
 for untold ages before man was made, is a result of 
 man's sin, — to find Iran ascribing death and other 
 harm wrought by the powers of nature to the 
 wickedness of the living beings, the devas, by whom 
 those powers were wielded. Lest iniquity should be 
 ascribed to Ahura Mazda (the omniscient lord), a line 
 of demarcation was drawn between good gods and bad 
 demons. And just as the gods were gradually sub- 
 ordinated under Ahura Mazda, their monarch and 
 
Religion of Persia. 1 1 3 
 
 maker, so for the demons a ruler and maker was 
 found, Ahriman (wicked spirit) by name. For this 
 result the civilised world has to thank or blame the 
 ancient Persian religion. Let us say, then, that if 
 Ahriman was born in Iranian times, he had been al- 
 ready conceived in the Indo-Iranian, while Persians 
 and Indians were still one people. 
 
 In Iran and India, the names of gods and demons 
 have shifted ground in a way which much history 
 and nearly the whole biography of Zoroaster have 
 been invented to explain. In the primitive Aryan 
 religion, as we find in the Greek and Roman off- 
 shoots from it, no sharp distinction had been drawn 
 between gods and demons. Hindus, when settled in 
 India, and Iranians remaining in Iran, gave for a 
 time the names Asura (lord), and Deva (shining one), 
 indifferently to all the powers, the helpful and the 
 hurtful ; but when the moral sense discovered, or the 
 fancy invented, a difference between good powers 
 and evil, each name, formerly indifferent, had to take 
 a side. In India, Asura (lord) cleaved to the evil, 
 Deva to the good. In Iran, Deva adhered to the 
 evil, while Ahura (lord) became the name of the 
 one god. The different fortunes of the two names 
 in India and Iran mark no conflict between the two 
 religions ; the variance was not in the creed, but in 
 the dictionary. 
 
 At what dates Iranian dualism reached its succes- 
 sive degrees of elaboration until the wicked spirit, 
 Ahriman by name, stood forth from the darkness, 
 personal, clearly characterised, independent lord and 
 
1 14 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 maker of a large part of the universe, it is now im- 
 possible to say. Mazdeism, so we call the Persian 
 religion, from its supreme god, Ahura Mazda, was not 
 the growth of a day, nor the work of one man. In 
 Cyrus's day Mazdean doctrine was probably complete, 
 but how long before we cannot tell. Nowhere in the 
 Avesta, the Persian scriptures, is dualism more clearly 
 expressed than in the Gathas, the very oldest part. 
 Hear the most ancient Persian psalmist : " I pro- 
 claim the two original spirits of the world — the one 
 bountiful, the other wicked ; . . . two twins, each 
 having his own qualities — the one good, the other 
 bad, in thought, word, and action. . . . The wicked 
 spirit's law is evil ; Asha is the law of the bountiful 
 spirit, whose garment is the solid stone of the sky. 
 At the end the infernal world shall be the abode of 
 the wicked. The good man who follows the Asha, he, 
 G Ahura Mazda, shall be thy blessed companion !" 
 
 The Mazdean history of the world consists of 
 Ahriman's invasion ; the contest between him and 
 Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), in the midst of which 
 Zoroaster the lawgiver is born ; the expulsion of 
 Ahriman, and the regeneration of all things. In 
 sketching this history, we shall have to depict it in 
 scenes which reproduce the alternating storm and 
 calm. Ormuzd has to be painted in colours which 
 betray the original god of the shining sky; this 
 remains still the visible parable of his qualities. 
 Ahriman is the storm - serpent Ahi with another 
 name, and endued with immoral attributes ; and he 
 is not whatever Ahura Mazda is. 
 
Religion of Persia. 115 
 
 - First, let us treat Ahriman's invasion. 
 
 Ahura Mazda knew, for he knows evetything, that 
 Ahriman existed, and that he would scheme malice 
 until the end. Ahriman, ignorant and dwelling in 
 darkness, rose from the abyss, discovered the eternal 
 light, and prepared for violence. Then Ormuzd pro- 
 posed to him peace, bidding him help the good crea- 
 tion, and offer praise that his creatures might be 
 immortal and undecaying. Ahriman refused, misun- 
 derstanding the divine mercy to proceed from lack 
 of power. " I will not join thee in doing good ; I will 
 seduce thy creatures to myself." Then Ormuzd pro- 
 posed a conflict of 9000 years ; Ahriman accepted. 
 Thereafter Ormuzd created the six Amesha-Spentas, 
 and first of these Vohu-mano, good thought. Some- 
 thing of the real history of these six is already known 
 to us. Then Ormuzd made the sky, then the waters, 
 then the earth, then plants, then animals, and finally 
 man. That he created them out of nothing nowhere 
 appears. Whence came matter .' is a question neither 
 put nor answered in the Avesta. 
 
 Now Ahriman, the symmetrical opposite of Ahura, 
 began a creation exactly opposed to his. In the 
 dark world he made six demons, opposites of the 
 six Bountiful Immortals, first of them being Akem- 
 mano, evil thought. At length he marched against 
 Ormuzd and the light. He eyed Ahura Mazda, 
 he, the serpent, with that glance which in heaven 
 is lightning and on earth is called the evil eye. 
 With his glance he produced 99,999 diseases; then, 
 like a serpent, he darted down to earth, and covered 
 
ii6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 it with serpents, scorpions, and all kinds of vermin. 
 He attacked the plants and withered them ; the fire, 
 and mingled It with smoke. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, we find that in explaining 
 the world the Iranian learned a parable from the 
 storm. One of the storm contests which float vaguely 
 in time and space, or are renewed again and again, 
 is the theme of the picture; the scene is enlarged, 
 the names are changed, the figures are multiplied, 
 and the action is put at the beginning of the world. 
 This time it is called the introduction of evil. 
 
 Ahriman attacked the stars; the planets joined 
 him. In the older and simpler times all the heavenly 
 bodies were Ahura's work ; but symmetry assigned 
 the fixed stars to Ahura, while the wandering, un- 
 steady planets, those corsairs of the sky, took part 
 with Ahriman. But when Ahura had cast his ene- 
 mies down from heaven, he built a bulwark round 
 the sky, and the Fravashis, lance in hand, and like 
 hairs on the head, kept watch. 
 
 In the oldest Iranian times these Fravashis were 
 departed spirits, ghosts, manes. In old Iranian tinie 
 the spirits of the good went about for the last ten 
 days of the year asking, "Who will sing to us, sac- 
 rifice to us, satisfy us with food and clothing .' " 
 and they were feasted in every house. When the 
 rain rose from the bosom of the Vouru -kasha, 
 the waters above the firmament, then each grateful 
 Fravashi ran to carry a share to his village or his 
 region, saying, " I will make my native land re- 
 joice." This worship of ancestors was an article of 
 
Religion of Persia. 117 
 
 Aryan piety, as it is of Chinese, and it streamed 
 down into the oldest Iranian and Indian times. 
 Then, mortal man, taking part by prayer and sac- 
 rifice in the heavenly conflicts, differed from the 
 gods merely by living on earth. Removed to heaven 
 he was every way like the gods, and received wor- 
 ship from his posterity, for whom he with the gods 
 had won, and still continued to win, the rain and 
 the light, and, as the Vedas say, created the world. 
 Forgotten as ancestors, the Fravashis were remem- 
 bered as guardian angels. Every person had his Fra- 
 vashi, his second self, the vehicle of all divine grace, 
 unless by unpardonable sin he had driven him away. 
 With the Fravashis of persons were joined the old 
 Aryan smaller gods, who had erewhile animated na- 
 ture's smaller works ; therefore, in all parts of the 
 universe these Fravashis lived, fighting against the 
 evil powers, keeping the fire, the water, the trees, the 
 flocks, and maintaining the universe for Ahura Mazda. 
 One problem solved to the Iranian mind by Ahri- 
 man's invasion was the existence of mountains and 
 seas. The cloud-mountains, with which primitive 
 poets had seen the storm-demon pile the horizon, 
 and to which the robber had driven the cows, and in 
 which the light had been hid, were translated in later 
 prose into merely earthly mountains, the work of 
 Ahriman. First of them, called Hara berezaiti, or 
 Berez haraiti, the mountain - sea, or sea - mountain, 
 which surrounds the whole world, was localised in the 
 Alburz Mountains, near the south end of the Caspian 
 Sea. 
 
ii8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Defeated in his attempt on the sky, Ahriman as- 
 sailed the water. Tistar, in the forms of a man, a 
 horse, a bull, met him, and poured a fearful flood for 
 thirty days and nights upon the earth, drowning 
 Ahriman's creatures. Then the wind gathered the 
 waters into the great sky-ocean Vouru-kasha. This 
 Persian myth of the flood is merely the old story of 
 the storm : it puts at the beginning of the world the 
 ordinary strife of Tistar, the Dog-star or Rain-god, 
 who fights and prevails against the parching demon. 
 
 Ahriman's invasion produced also disease and 
 death. He attacked the sole created bull. At the 
 moment of death the bull's soul cried to Ormuzd with 
 a voice like that of ten thousand men : " While evil 
 wastes the earth, and the plants have no water, where 
 is the man whom thou wast to create to pronounce 
 the helpful word?" Ormuzd showed him the Fra- 
 vashi of Zoroaster, and the bull was satisfied. Out of 
 his dead body rose grain and medicinal plants, from 
 his blood the vine. His germ was carried up to the 
 ox-horned moon, and there purified ; out of it were 
 made a bull and a cow, and then a male and a female 
 of the other kinds of animals. Here the dualistic or 
 storm picture of the universe haunting the Iranian 
 fancy, and diff"erently named as one or another prob- 
 lem preoccupied the gazer's interest, shows the whole 
 creation groaning and travailing, waiting for the mani- 
 festation of the man of God. 
 
 The tale told of the bull is told of Gayomard, the 
 first man. Gayomard was made by Ormuzd, who 
 took sweat, whereof he formed a body as of a young 
 
Religion of Persia. i ig 
 
 man fifteen years old. Gayomard saw the world 
 black as night, and all nature in conflict. Ahriman 
 assailed him with Az, root and essence of our old 
 enemy Azi the serpent, and with the wicked Bush- 
 yasta. But Gayomard lived thirty years. His germ 
 was purified in the sun, and forty years afterwards 
 there grew from it out of the earth the first human 
 couple, man and woman, in a rivas plant. The rain, 
 which the Rig- Veda calls the sweat of the airy god, 
 is the material of which Gayomard was made. His 
 shining eyes, the darkness, the conflict attending his 
 birth, need no explanation, nor his enduring for a 
 time ere he yields to the light-destroying power, nor 
 the fruitfulness of his death, so like that of the 
 dying cloud - bull, nor the molten brass, common 
 figure for lightning, made from his body. The second 
 half of his name, Gayomaratan, identifies him with the 
 -Maruts, who in the Vedas ride on the storm and hurl 
 the lightning, as they probably had done in Indo- 
 Iranian times. But Ahriman's other agent against 
 man, the wicked female Bushyasta, provokes farther 
 remark. 
 
 The glorious creature, light or woman, was in the 
 cloud-myths the prey of the spoiler or the reward of 
 the hero. With woman there entered into the sky- 
 myths opportunities of love and mischief — of all human 
 passions. Woman was sometimes not sinned against 
 but sinning, not unfortunate but faithless, not stolen 
 but self-surrendered to the enemy. Often the Iranian 
 Delilah, seduced by Ahriman's gifts, betrays her Sam- 
 son, and sometimes in his sleep. Bushyasta is one of 
 
I20 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the Pairikas, a brood of such female demons, who 
 fly in the sea, Vouru-kasha, under heaven, and fend 
 the wholesome waters from the earth. But while 
 demoniac they retain the female charm, beauty, 
 like that of the Greek Medusa, irresistible, fatal. An- 
 cient Persian poets ascribe to the fair and false the 
 face of a Peri, the heart of a Deva. The humane and 
 manly spirit of the Iranians and of us Teutons has 
 relented towards the Pairikas. The Persian poet 
 Firdusi, and the Mohammedans of the tenth century, 
 loved the good gentle Peris as Europe has learned to 
 love them from Thomas Moore and Victor Hugo. 
 
 II. In the Mazdean history of the world, the conflict 
 with Ahriman is the second stage ; it reveals what we 
 may call the Heroic Age, and extends to the present 
 time. 
 
 Let us pursue the history of mankind whose first 
 parents we left growing entwined together in a rivas 
 plant. Here the symmetry of dualism fails, for 
 Ahriman produces no counter-creation to man, the 
 creature of Ahura. The human soul is rather the field 
 where the rival powers meet in battle. Born of the 
 same parents, one child is a servant of Mazda, another 
 serves Ahriman. Man is free ; evil grows in him 
 from his own will. Of sin's entry into the soul 
 we are told what follows. Ahura breathed souls 
 already formed into the two bodies, and said to 
 Mashya and Mashyoi, "Ye are the parents of the 
 world ; think good thoughts, speak good words, do 
 good actions, and worship no demons." Their first 
 
Religion of Persia. 121 
 
 thought was love for each other. Their first word 
 was, "Ahura Mazda made all good." Afterwards the 
 demons corrupted their minds, and they said, "All 
 these things are the evil spirit's work." Thus they 
 became wicked, and therefore they are in hell. The 
 demons gained such power over them that they 
 quarrelled and fought, and the demons cried to them, 
 "Worship the demons, that your malice may rest." 
 Then Mashya milked a cow and poured the milk 
 towards the north, where the demons dwell. When 
 they were fifty years old a pair of children were born 
 to them ; afterwards seven pairs were born to them, 
 and each pair became a married couple ; from them 
 arose the generations of the whole world. One 
 notable difference between the Persian genesis and 
 the Hebrew is, that there the woman is neither born 
 man's inferior nor becomes his tempter. 
 
 Greatest of heroes was Zoroaster. If at the heart 
 of that vast mass of mythical clothing called Zoro- 
 aster there was a real man too great for ordinary 
 men to understand, and who taught the system 
 as commentators think it ought to have been, its 
 actual blemishes being chargeable on other persons, 
 his human nature has been overlaid and hidden 
 with divine attributes. The newest and oldest 
 authorities place his birth at any time between the 
 six - hundredth year before Christ and the five- 
 thousandth year before the Trojan war. He was 
 born, but his birth was miraculous ; he fought life's 
 battle with miraculous weapons ; he had sons, each 
 of whom was a prodigy, and one is not yet born ; he 
 
122 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 died as none but heavenly heroes die. The conflict 
 of Zoroaster with evil differs from the conflicts we 
 have already beheld, by being more spiritual ; it is 
 evidently a much more modern conception than the 
 others. Ahriman is the sole enemy, not Azi the 
 serpent. If the picture is constructed of the old 
 imagery, the meaning was put into it after the idea 
 of Ahriman had been fully matured. Zoroaster's birth 
 is beset with conflict ; for before he was born, the 
 fiends, bellowing, threw themselves on his mother 
 and tried to tear him from her. But they fell off like 
 autumn leaves, and, alone of all mankind, Zoroas- 
 ter was born laughing, with that inextinguishable 
 laughter, I doubt not, which Homer heard among 
 the Olympian gods; inextinguishable, not because, 
 like the noisy laughter of fools, it never ceases, but 
 because it is lightning. Not alone of all gods is he 
 thus born ; for the Maruts of the Vedas are born in 
 the laughter of the lightning, laughing, like Shelley's 
 cloud, as they pass in thunder. The ewes come 
 from the mountain to suckle him till sunrise, as the 
 cow suckles the Indian fire-god Agni. His eye is 
 piercing. At his birth the waters and the plants 
 rejoice. He is first of priests, first of warriors, first 
 of husbandmen. A man of light or fire born of the 
 cloud, in fact, differing from Gayomard in being 
 priestly. Demons attack him again as soon as he is 
 born ; he goes against them swinging stones as large 
 as a house, and quarried evidently where the Indian 
 storm-gods find the stones they so often launch 
 against the demons. " I will smite," he cries, " the 
 
Religion of Persia. 123 
 
 creation of the Deva till the fiend-smiter, the Saviour, 
 arise from the region of the dawn." " Do not smite 
 my creatures, renounce the good law of Mazda, and 
 thou shalt gain dominion over the world for a thousand 
 years." Then Zoroaster invoked all the powers of 
 the holy world. He repeated the Ahuna-vairya: " The 
 will of the lord is the law of holiness ; the riches of 
 Vohu-mano shall be given to him who works in this 
 world for Mazda, and wields, according to the will of 
 Ahura, the power he gave him to relieve the poor." 
 Hearing this spell, now worn meaningless as a Rom- 
 ish paternoster by centuries of incessant and irrele- 
 vant use, the demons fled, casting the evil eye : " Let 
 us gather at the head of Arezura," the mountain at 
 hell's gate, " for the holy Zoroaster is just born, the 
 counter-fiend." 
 
 Victorious for a while, Zoroaster, like all the 
 heroes of light, must die. The Clementine Homilies 
 in the third century ascribe his death to lightning 
 hurled at him by the fiend. But if all heroes of light 
 die — for darkness, storm, evil, return continually — 
 they also revive ; for good and evil, darkness and light, 
 alternate in this world. A son or friend avenges the 
 hero, or he awakes from sleep and avenges himself. 
 Of this latter kind is Keresaspa, slayer of the 
 dragon Srvara, on whose back Keresaspa happened 
 one day to cook his victuals, till the supposed green 
 knoll started up, overturned the kettle, and scat- 
 tered the water. To this hero the fire, with the 
 complaisance of Thor's hammer — which, in fact, is 
 the same thing — the lightning, came and went as he 
 
J 24 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 pleased, kindled immediately the wood under the 
 kettle, and, when the cookery was finished, withdrew. 
 Keresaspa is, after Zoroaster, the most valiant of 
 men. Similar is his other victory in bringing down 
 with his arrows, after seven days' shooting, and 
 notwithstanding the devil's wind, the bird Kamak, 
 who with his wings overshadowed all mortals, hid the 
 sun and caught the rain on his back, whence along 
 his tail it slipped useless into the barren sea. The 
 demoness Bushyasta put Keresaspa to sleep; but 
 asleep he lives guarded by 99,999 Fravashis. As 
 medieval Germany looked for Barbarossa ; as the 
 ancient Britons looked for Arthur, resting in Avalon, 
 to rise when his wound should be healed ; as the 
 Bretons looked for the awakening of Morvan, Lez 
 Breiz, ancient Persia waited for the awaking of Kere- 
 saspa. We shall meet him again. 
 
 Of those who die and are avenged, it is needful to 
 remember Yima, known in India as Yama, another 
 first man and first of the dead, over whom the Indian 
 Yama reigns as king. In Iran, bending to that 
 law of symmetry which rules all parts of the Maz- 
 dean creed, he leaves the lawgiving to Zoroaster, 
 and priority of manhood to Gayomard. Ceasing to 
 be first of men, he has in Iran to abdicate the throne 
 of the dead, and becomes the mere founder of the 
 Iranian power. The Var or paradise into which he 
 received men and women, and where they lived a 
 blissful life after the world's destruction by a horrible 
 winter, becomes, instead of the future heaven, a mere 
 earthly one, similar in use to Noah's ark, and whose 
 
Religion of Persia. 1 2 5 
 
 use we shall presently see. After a glorious reign, he 
 is overcome by Zohak, our old enemy Azi dahaka, the 
 fiend-serpent' He is revenged by Feridun, who, in 
 legend, finds an invaluable ally in a blacksmith Gao, 
 at the sight of whose leather apron brandished on a 
 lance, Iran leaps into revolt. Zohak is seized, and, for- 
 asmuch as evil cannot be abolished out of this world, 
 he is not killed, but merely bound to the crater of 
 Mount Demavend, where we shall find him hereafter. 
 Under the two rival spirits the Mazdean religion 
 embattled all things. Each kind fought under its 
 own ratu or chief The vegetable kingdom had its 
 ratu in the white, the heavenly haoma ; man had his 
 in Zoroaster. A ratu was found for clothes in the 
 sacred girdle which every Mazdean wore, and which, 
 except- at night, he might not without sin and severe 
 punishment put off. Tistar, the dog-star Sirius, in 
 the battle against Ahriman is ratu of the starry 
 host. Things on earth are arrayed under the com- 
 mand-in-chief of the six Amesha-Spentas : Khshathra 
 Vairya, Divine Sovereignty, whose emblem was the 
 lightning, poetically styled molten brass, is lord of 
 metals ; Asha Vahista, Best Order, whose instrument 
 on earth is the flame of sacrifice, is lord of fire ; Vohu- 
 mano. Good Thought, becomes lord of animals ; Ar- 
 maiti, Piety or Prayer, wedding earth to heaven, is 
 the genius of earth. To Haurvatat, Health, and 
 Ameretat, whose name is almost English, Immortal- 
 ity, is given sovereignty over plants and waters. Not 
 arbitrarily ; for in the oldest Persian scriptures we 
 find the old Aryan faith in the power of the waters 
 
 L 
 
126 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 to destroy disease and death. " Come, O clouds ; 
 with your waters bring new cures. To him who 
 brings sacrifices to you, O waters, daughters of 
 Ahura, bring health and strength of body, and long, 
 long life." The giver of immortality was the white 
 haoma which grew in the sky sea, while round it grew 
 the 10,000 plants made by Ahura for resisting pain 
 and death. That fine plane-tree which Xerxes, on 
 his way to invade Greece, found near Sardis, and 
 adorned with a golden offering, was an instrument 
 or symbol of Ameretat; the pious king fitly intrusted 
 it to the care of one of that band of 10,000 called the 
 Immortals, whom we may name the Ameretat. legion. 
 At this day, more than 1200 years after the establish- 
 ment in Persia of Islam, a religion so hostile to the 
 worship of any creature, many an "excellent tree" 
 or thorn-bush on the bleak granite sides of the Alburz 
 Mountains, or in the very paradise of Persia, is com- 
 pared in poetry to a ragged beggar, so hung with 
 shreds by visitors or wayfarers, who thus crave relief 
 from disease, or follow blindly a custom older than • 
 history. 
 
 But among animals, some are good, or creatures of 
 Ahura ; others, called bad, are creatures of Ahriman. 
 The test of an animal was supposed to be the good 
 or ill it does to man, but was often merely its use in 
 some primitive myth as a symbol or disguise for god 
 or demon. Naturalists are not aware that serpents 
 are killed by white falcons, wild boars, goats, gazelles, 
 wild asses ; but the great old serpent is killed in 
 many a Persian and Indian storm-myth by gods, or 
 
Religion of Persia. 127 
 
 heroes disguised in such forms ; such animals were 
 therefore clean. The harmless frog is the victim of a 
 religious myth ; for in the waters of the Vouru-kasha 
 grows the Homa tree of life, against which Ahriman 
 created a frog who seeks to reach it through the 
 water, while ten fishes swim round it guarding the 
 approach. The ant and the tortoise are mercilessly- 
 treated for similarly lending their names to disguise 
 the devil or his works. The dog's high rank among 
 Ahura's creatures rests on his merits. Notwithstand- 
 ing deep demerits, the hawk, whose fell swoop is the 
 common and natural picture of the divine lightning, 
 ranks on the same side. The peacock belonged in 
 Persia, as in India, to the wrong side, having lent his 
 Argus eyes for a bad use ; but Ahriman assigned 
 another reason — " If I do no good I will show that it 
 is not because I cannot, but because I will not." 
 
 The practical immoral results of these arbitrary 
 distinctions between clean and unclean animals were 
 startling. To murder one of Mazda's creatures 
 was sacrilege, because it was to kill deity itself; 
 while to kill Ahriman's creatures was an atonement 
 for sin, because it weakened the devil, or destroyed 
 his allies. Manslaughter was punished with 90 stripes ; 
 but to give bad food to a shepherd's dog brought 
 200 ; killing a house dog, 700 ; killing a shepherd's 
 dog, 800. The murderer of the hedgehog " with the 
 spiny back," fighting against Ahriman's creatures 
 "in the dark till dawn," an image of the victorious 
 sun, deserved 1000 lashes in this life, and perdition 
 in the next. The slayer of the beaver, the creature 
 
128 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 who destroys the water- demons, must kill 10,000 
 land-frogs, 10,000 water-frogs, 10,000 ants, 10,000 
 snakes, 10,000 head of each of several kinds of ver- 
 min, and, besides several other heavy penalties, must 
 equip a priest, a warrior, and a husbandman, and 
 receive 10,000 stripes. The Mazdeans had been 
 almost brought to the worship of dogs, hedgehogs, 
 and beavers, by their scribes and Pharisees. 
 
 In the conflict with Ahriman, laws of purity were 
 deemed necessary which must have made Mazdean 
 life a burden. One had to keep not merely himself 
 clean, but all Ahura's creation besides. Fire, earth, 
 and water were holy. Take, as an illustration, the 
 laws connected with death. Ahriman's creatures, 
 whether beasts or men, ceased from troubling when 
 dead, and therefore were then clean; Mazda's crea- 
 tures immediately after death were seized and pos- 
 sessed by the nasu or corpse-fiend, so becoming un- 
 clean ; and the higher the religious rank of the living 
 creature the more powerful was the victorious nasu. 
 From the corpse of a priest he defiled ten men close 
 to it and to each other ; from a warrior's corpse, nine 
 men ; from a husbandman's, eight ; and from the 
 corpse of a shepherd's dog, seven. When a believer 
 died, a four-eyed dog, or one having a spot above 
 each eye, was brought to look at the body that he 
 might terrify and weaken the fiend ; for do not our 
 dogs see spirits, which to other eyes are invisible .' 
 The body was then removed from the house through 
 a breach in the wall. He who singly carried a corpse 
 was thought to have received into himself the entire 
 
Religion of Persia. 1 29 
 
 nasu, and thus to have become a nasu incarnate ; he 
 was therefore beheaded, and his soul went to hell. 
 Wherever the fiend had to be encountered, two per- 
 sons were required — in funerals, religious ceremonies, 
 or elsewhere. The bearers — at least two in number 
 that the nasu's power might be divided — carried the 
 body on a bier, protecting their hands with old clouts. 
 He who covered the legs of a corpse with clothing 
 received 600 lashes ; covering the whole dead body 
 deserved 1000 — so stern, sometimes, were the Mazdean 
 laws of thrift The bearers proceeded, but not in 
 rain — for the water must not be defiled by touching 
 a dead body — to some high summit, where the body 
 was laid on a carpet which protected the holy earth, 
 and tied down, lest animals should carry morsels to 
 the earth, the water, or the trees. If the faithful were 
 able, they had to erect a Dakhma — a building, open 
 above, now called Tower of Silence — for the reception 
 of corpses. The present custom leaves the naked body 
 there, facing the sun, and exposed to the expectant 
 birds of prey. The holy rain which washes the picked 
 bones is carefully drained off. The bearers sat down 
 three paces from the Dakhma, and washed their bodies 
 with gomez. The way whereby the funeral had come 
 was impassable for persons, or fire, or cattle, until the 
 four-eyed dog had crossed it thrice ; thereafter a priest 
 reopened the way, chanting the Ahuna-vairya and 
 other fiend-smiting and most healing words. After 
 a year the nasu's power ceased. He who desecrated 
 fire by burning a body was put to death, and he also 
 who buried a body in the eartL 
 
130 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Whatever was once part of a body and had become 
 separated from it, was esteemed dead and unclean. 
 Therefore to blow a fire with the breath, or to let a 
 hair fall on the earth, was sinful. The parings of the 
 nails had to be carefully buried in a hole ten fingers 
 deep, the points being turned to the north against the 
 nasu's breast ; three furrows were drawn round the 
 spot with a knife, and prayers were recited. Hair 
 had to be buried at least ten fingers deep, twenty 
 paces from fire, thirty paces from water, and three 
 furrows had to be drawn round the spot to imprison 
 the nasu. Sickness, being partial death, was treated 
 like other uncleanness as possession by a demon ; 
 therefore the most effective medicine was thought to 
 be spells and religious ritual, specially the baresh- 
 num of nine nights, which I will describe as a speci- 
 men of religious purifying among real believers in a 
 devil. 
 
 At least thirty paces from water, trees, and all 
 that is holy, three holes are dug, two fingers deep, in 
 a row, from north to south, and a foot apart. Parallel 
 to these, and a foot from them, are dug three other 
 holes. Nine feet from the latter row are dug three 
 more. The last three holes are filled with water, the 
 six others are filled with gomes. Then with a metal 
 knife, from north to south, three furrows, at the dis- 
 tance of nine feet, are drawn around the six holes, 
 three around the three holes, and then six around 
 the nine holes. Meanwhile prayers and religious 
 formulas are repeated. Thus the druj, the un- 
 clean demon, is shut up within the furrows, and can 
 
Religion of Persia. 131 
 
 be driven step by step from the person of the un- 
 clean, who takes his stand at the first hole. The 
 purifier stands outside the furrows, and with a metal 
 spoon, fixed to a very long handle, takes gomez from 
 the first hole and puts it three times on the unclean 
 hands. Next it is applied to the front of the skull, 
 then between the brows, then to the back of the 
 head, then to the jaws. Thus downwards, from right 
 to left, the druj is gradually driven, — from the right 
 ear, then from the left ; from the right shoulder, then 
 from the left ; from the right armpit, and the left ; the 
 chest, the back, the right breast, and the left ; the right 
 and left sides ; the right hip, and the left ; then from 
 the right knee, and the left ; from the right leg, and the 
 left ; the right ankle, and the left ; the right instep, and 
 the left; the right sole, and the left ; then from the right 
 toes, and finally from the left toes, whence he flies to 
 the infernal North. The voice works with the hand, 
 and is never unoccupied with fiend-smiting and most 
 healing words. The unclean feet must not touch the 
 earth, but rest on stones, or potsherds, or something 
 hard. Now the four-eyed dog is brought before the 
 man, to scare fiends from him by his look. Stepping 
 to the second hole, the unclean submits to the rite a 
 second time. After it is performed at each of the six 
 holes, the unclean sits down between the six holes 
 and the three, washes his body fifteen times with dust, 
 and waits until every hair of his body is dry. Then 
 at the first of the three holes he washes himself with 
 water, at the second hole twice, and at the third hole 
 three times. He must now perfume his body, put on 
 
132 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 his clothes, and go home. There he sits till the end 
 of three nights in the place of infirmity, a house pro- 
 vided in every neighbourhood for the unclean. Then 
 he shall wash his clothes and his body, and remain 
 till the end of other three nights. Again he must 
 wash his clothes and his body. At the end of the 
 ninth night he is clean, and may go near the fire, the 
 water, the earth, the cow, the trees, the faithful man 
 or woman. Thus used to be purified all who had 
 been defiled by a corpse on which the glance of the 
 four-eyed dog or the shadow of the devouring bird 
 had not fallen. In later times the ceremony was 
 undergone by devout persons once a-year ; could not, 
 indeed, be taken too often ; specially was it incum- 
 bent on the young man and woman when at fifteen 
 years the Sacred girdle was girt on, and the youth 
 was admitted as a member of the Mazdean com- 
 munity. The bareshnum was the baptism for wash- 
 ing off the impurities cleaving to man from before 
 his birth. The unlawful purifier was beheaded : if he 
 confessed penitently, his soul was saved ; if he did 
 not, his soul remained in hell till the resurrection. 
 
 To such ritualism, grotesque and horrid, did ancient 
 poetic symbolism, misunderstood, bring the Mazdeans. 
 Proof for centuries against all allurements to idolatry, 
 to representing the spiritual God by graven or molten 
 images, they were seduced into breach of the com- 
 mandment by a more plausible, and therefore more 
 dangerous, form of the same temptation, and turned 
 spiritual truth into visible ceremony. Ancient poets 
 thirsting for the healthful, fruitful rain, knowing well 
 
Religion of Persia. 133 
 
 what they meant, had taught men to pray for the 
 waters of the cow against the hurtful demons. Poetry, 
 parable, became myth, and was literally believed ; 
 then the heavenly myth was literally embodied in 
 most gross earthly ceremonies. This speaking by 
 action was found useful, probably, even to many 
 spiritually-minded persons, who found it more ex- 
 pressive and more impressive than any words ; an 
 aid to thought and to feeling. But the curse due 
 to the materialising of what is spiritual came, as it 
 has come in the Christian and in every other religion; 
 for helpless literalism soon changed religion's visible 
 part into little else than an attempt to purge the 
 devil out of the universe with gortiez. 
 
 III. The conflict with Ahriman ends in his expul- 
 sion. Let us now see how Persian faith awaited the 
 end of life and of the present dispensation. 
 
 While Celts, Greeks; Teutons, Slavs, Iranians, and 
 Indians were still one Aryan people, they guessed at 
 a future life. The scripture tells that on the third 
 morning after death comes the fiend Vezaresha and 
 carries off the wicked soul. At the head of the Chinvat 
 bridge over hell into paradise all souls await judg- 
 ment. The " Brig o' dread," known to the Yorkshire 
 peasant, was known to his fathers in Aryan times ; 
 Mohammed's bridge, El Sirat, is in conception and 
 execution entirely Persian. To the waiting soul comes 
 a maid of divine beauty or fiendish ugliness ; she is 
 his own conscience ; the dogs who guard the bridge 
 are at her side. The wicked, unguarded by the dogs 
 
134 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 from the howling pursuit, fall from the bridge into 
 hell. But_ the lovely maid leads the righteous soul 
 above the Hara - berezaiti ; Vohu - mano rises from 
 his golden seat at heaven's gate and welcomes him 
 into the undecaying world. 
 
 Like the storm the reign of Ahriman began, and 
 the idea of its end is a storm followed by a calm. 
 The reign of Ahura is everlasting. Dualism is 
 merely the philosophy of the present. The mighty 
 dawn or morrow, as the Mazdeans called the latter 
 glory, shall know no following night. A destruction 
 and renewal of the world in the past or in the future 
 was part of. the primitive Aryan creed ; but the 
 Iranian development is notable as embracing not 
 merely a regeneration of the world, but a personal 
 resurrection. A winter shall destroy all that lives on 
 earth ; whereafter the men and women and animals 
 shall come forth from Yima's paradise and replenish 
 the earth. For no reason but that another old myth 
 was waiting to be utilised, evil again usurps the 
 power. The old serpent Azi is unchained from Mount 
 Demavend. Ormuzd calls for Keresaspa ; the hero 
 awakes from his sleep and destroys the old enemy. 
 A virgin bathing in the Kasava Lake conceives and 
 brings forth Saoshyant, the Saviour, the yet unborn 
 son of Zoroaster, and the resurrection begins. First 
 rises Gayomard, then Mashya and Mashyoi ; and in 
 fifty-seven years, for so long the first pairs took to 
 be born, all shall arise. All shall know each other. 
 Then shall all be gathered together, and a wicked 
 man shall become as notable as a white sheep among 
 
Religion of Persia. 135 
 
 black. The wicked shall upbraid their good friends, 
 saying, " Why did you not make me know the good 
 part which you yourself chose ? " and if one has not 
 done so, he shall sit in heaven ashamed. Then there 
 is parting, and every one's tears run down to his legs ; 
 for parent, child, husband, wife, friend, brother, are 
 torn asunder ; the good weep for others, the wicked 
 for themselves. A fiery star strikes the world, which 
 trembles under its power as a lamb in the grasp of 
 a wolf. Then the mountains are levelled ; the ele- 
 ments melt ; the molten brass finds its way to the 
 abyss of hell ; Ahriman perishes, all demons perish. 
 Three days men are bathed in the molten brass, but 
 for the good it is as warm milk. Then all come 
 together again, son, brother, friend ; all drink from 
 Saoshyant's hand heavenly homa juice mingled with 
 the milk of the heavenly cow, and he awards to 
 everybody according to his greater or less desert. 
 
 Not the rehgion of Moses himself keeps this world 
 more steadily in view than the Mazdean. Few books 
 are less poetic, more prosaic, than the Avesta ; few 
 religions are less sentimental, more practical. The 
 Mazdean's idea of the resurrection glorified man's 
 body as his eternal companion ; and his view of 
 heaven, presenting a continuance of his present life, 
 reflected honour on his earthly lot, and made it his 
 first object to lead well the life he had. 
 
 Ere Buddhism spread into Iran, Mazdeism had no 
 temples, though some enclosure there must have been 
 wherein to maintain the everlasting Bahram fire. In 
 
136 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 early morning the congregation would gather under 
 open sky, round the altar or hearth on which a fire 
 was burning. The priest sits facing the fire on his seat, 
 raised on a stone platform, reached by three steps. 
 To protect the fire from his breath, he and his assist- 
 ants wear a veil reaching from below the eyes to the 
 chin. Rising, he begins : " I invite to this offering, and 
 I prepare it for Ahura Mazda " and the other chief 
 heavenly beings, whom he names. Then from his 
 assistants he receives the baresma, the holy bunch of 
 pomegranate, or other thornless twigs, and sprinkles 
 it with holy water. With this baresma in his hand he 
 repeats the invocation. Now he receives food, flesh, 
 milk, butter, homa twigs, homa juice, squeezed out a 
 day or two before, homa water — that is, water poured 
 upon chopped homa twigs — pomegranate to mix with 
 the homa twigs, and well-smelhng wood for the fire. 
 Prayer, and the reading of a scripture lesson follow, 
 and he announces to the heavenly powers that all is 
 ready. All is now presented to these, and the whole 
 congregation communicate in the sacrificial feast, 
 which concludes with prayers for the sovereignty of 
 Ahura Mazda. The homa off"ering begins. The priest 
 chants the homa yesht, and solemnly elevating the 
 cup of homa juice presents it to the fire, drinks a 
 few drops, and repeats the creed. Again he receives 
 sacrificial materials like the previous, and with them 
 mortars of stone or metal. Having invited the Fra- 
 vashis to witness, he dedicates the materials to them, 
 recites the Ahuna-vairya, and, while chanting Gathas 
 and other scriptures, he pounds the hf ma, whose juice 
 
Religion of Persia. 137 
 
 he afterwards pours out. More praises follow, and 
 prayers, specially for all in authority — for without 
 prayer for the king no public worship is celebrated. 
 So the solemnity concludes. 
 
 Let us observe the morality in which this religion 
 issued. Closely connected with the principle that the 
 elements fire, earth, and water are holy, is the sacred 
 duty of agriculture. He who tills the ground is as 
 good a servant of religion as he who presents a thou- 
 sand holy offerings or ten thousand prayers. Arare 
 est orare. "Who is the fourth that rejoices the earth 
 with greatest joy.' It is he who cultivates most 
 corq, grass, and fruit. What is the stomach of the 
 law? It is sowing corn again and again.. When 
 barley is sprouting, the devas start ; when corn grows 
 rank, the devas faint ; when corn is ground, the devas 
 groan ; when wheat is brought forth, the devas die." 
 
 What we can gather of ancient Mazdean morality 
 proves it rather active than contemplative, such as 
 became Persians, the most warlike of all the Iranian 
 peoples. The struggle between good and evil raging 
 through the whole visible universe, raged also in the 
 spirit and life of man, and in this conflict man was 
 free and active, not passive. Mazdeism quickens the 
 personality, is a system of doing, not dreaming ; dis- 
 sipates the dream of annihilation or absorption, which 
 has so seduced the oriental mind ; protests against 
 throwing one's self as a drop into the stream of ten- 
 dency and ceasing there ; ' gives life a meaning by 
 presenting it as a combat, and the natural state of 
 man as a state of war ; and gives it an object by lead- 
 
138 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ing to victory, not over existence, but over evil. 
 While the Hindu, taught by his pantheistic religion 
 to stand in awe of all things, feeling the meanness of 
 man in the creation, fixed in his niche by the barriers 
 of caste, timid as a slave, becomes the prey of con- 
 querors, the Persian, a soldier by the very principle of 
 his religion, struggles and prevails against Tourania, 
 Assyria, Egypt ; worsted in his strife with Greece, he 
 rallies ; comes forth with distinguished honour from 
 his contest with Rome ; and is still a power in the 
 world. 
 
 Notwithstanding some appearances, Mazdeism is 
 not a cruel religion. The only savage statutes are 
 those which decree vengeance on such as injure 
 divine beings or enhance the power of demons ; for 
 both these and those had it in their power to plague 
 entire populations. It considerably relieves our mind 
 to know that lashes, the ordinary punishment for sin, 
 were commutable into money. Fasting and self-tor- 
 ture were forbidden. Marriage was enjoined on all 
 who could afford it. The widow's portion of an in- 
 heritance was assigned her before even the priest 
 could be remunerated. Impure love was severely 
 punished. Mazdean sacrifices were rarely bloody. 
 One of the sins severely visited in the next life was 
 to refuse one's cast-off clothing to the poor. The 
 Ahuna-vairya tells us that Mazda has established 
 government, and committed to it his power for the 
 protection of the poor. 
 
 But no Persian virtue is more praised by the an- 
 cients, perhaps none more astonished the cunning 
 
Religion of Persia. 1 39 
 
 Greeks, than Persian truthfulness, which wins at this 
 day the high respect of Indians dealing with Parsees. 
 The most shameful thing in Persian eyes was lying. 
 Debt and other faults were specially detested for 
 the lies required to conceal them. Children were 
 taught truth-telling as they were taught science. 
 Ahriman is the liar of liars. The religious law 
 reckoned severely with the breaker of an engage- 
 ment. Persians were very slow to take an oath ; but 
 the pledge of a Persian's hand was like the Olympian 
 oath by the Styx. 
 
 The Mazdean priesthood was and still is heredi- 
 tary. The sons of the priestly caste are not com- 
 pelled, but no others are permitted, to be priests. 
 Their official name was Athravan, Fireman. Natu- 
 rally they never call themselves Magi in their own 
 scriptures, for Magi was merely the name of the 
 Median tribe to which the priesthood belonged. 
 The age of Cyrus, so decisive in the history of re- 
 ligion and of the world, saw Mazdeism make a long 
 step forward. Within one lifetime Cyrus conquered 
 Media, till then head of all Iran ; became lord of 
 Iran, of Babylon, and of much besides ; he intro- 
 duced the Magi into Persia, he permitted the Jews 
 to return from their Babylonish exile to their own 
 land, and Buddha and Confucius were alive. The 
 Medians were a more polished people then than the 
 Persians ; and we may infer from Cyrus's policy that 
 the Magi were more cultivated, more expert, than 
 the Persian priests, and possessed a more precise 
 ritual and a better liturgy than theirs. While 
 
140 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 his son and successor, Cambyses, was absent on his 
 Egyptian campaign, the Magus Gaumata raised the 
 standard of rebellion, pretending to be Cambyses' 
 brother Smerdis, whom the king had secretly mur- 
 dered before his departure. After Cambyses had 
 ended his own life on hearing the news, Darius and 
 his Persians quenched the rebellion, the more bloodily 
 because the Magian blood was foreign. Thus Darius 
 Hystaspis became king by the grace of Mazda. 
 The Persian invasion of Greece by Xerxes, instead 
 of making Mazda supreme over kindred Aryan 
 nations in the West, corrupted his worship ; for an 
 image of Diana taken among the spoil became a 
 model, and such images were reared in several chief 
 cities. In the year 331 before Christ, the sun of 
 ancient Persia set at Arbela, and for a time the sky 
 of Mazdean spirituality was clouded by the grosser 
 charms of Greek idolatry. After eighty years of 
 Alexander and his successors, Askh unfurled the 
 blacksmith's apron, and became the first of the 
 Parthian kings, who governed Iran until, in the 
 year 220 after Christ, the blacksmith's apron was once 
 more thrown to the breeze, and led a third rebellion 
 to victory. The Persian and Mazdean family of 
 Sasan ascended the Persian throne in the person of 
 Ardeshir or Artaxerxes, and, to cement the empire, 
 the national religion was revived. Persia had never 
 been better governed than it was by the Sasanians. 
 The Magian observances, formerly confined in their 
 entirety to the priesthood, now became law. But the 
 literalism which put to death a prime minister for 
 
Religion of Persia. 141 
 
 burying a corpse, and which would not allow Jews 
 to perform their religious ablutions because these 
 desecrated the water, and which, for the same reason, 
 deposed a king, who, in the simple faith that water 
 was made for man and not man for water, had 
 erected a bath, was too much for laity. Among men 
 and women who, having their work to do, had no 
 time to guard against dropping a hair upon the 
 ground, and to hold funeral services over the par- 
 ings of their nails, Mazdeism stood self-condemned 
 when made compulsory. Mazdean ritual was fatal 
 to Mazdean doctrine. Buddhism, and Christianity, 
 and Manichean heresy, made alarming progress. In 
 the year 642 the Mohammedans conquered the Per- 
 sian empire, and Islam became the established reli- 
 gion. In a century its truth, its simplicity, and its 
 likeness to the best features of Mazdeism, gained a 
 large majority of the Persians. In our day a very 
 ignorant few in Iran still burn the Bahram fire and 
 offer the homa ; but Bombay and Surat contain nearly 
 all, about 100,000 in number. There they refuse to 
 admit into the body any one not of pure Parsee blood. 
 Leaving religious formality very much to the priests, 
 they distinguish themselves by very good morality, 
 believing that there is one God and no devil, but 
 that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. They are 
 diligent in business and very successful therein : try- 
 ing in the spirit of their prophet to make life happy 
 for themselves and for their brethren, with one result 
 that no Parsee is a beggar.^ 
 
 I Although what I have described was the ordinary faith — the 
 M 
 
142 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 The Parsee scripture is the Avesta. In the year 
 325 of our era, while the Roman Emperor Constan- 
 tine the Great and the Christian bishops in council 
 assembled at Nice were laying down the creed of 
 Christendom, the Shah of Persia, Shahpur II., fixed 
 by decree the authorised text of the Avesta or Law, 
 which we now have, differing little, probably, so far as 
 it goes, from the scriptures known to Darius. It is 
 only a fragment, however, a small book, written not 
 in ancient Persian, but apparently in a dialect of 
 Media, the native land of the Magi. When it was 
 discovered to the learned of Europe in the middle of 
 last century, its uncommon stupidity led half of its 
 critics to pronounce it a very recent forgery. Its 
 oldest morsels are the most spiritual ; the newer parts 
 view religion through the eyes of priests, scribes, and 
 Pharisees. No great ancient religion has left so poor 
 a record. 
 
 effective religion of the Mazdeans — we cannot suppose that Mazdeans, 
 more than Christians or the professors of any other religion, were 
 entirely at one in their thoughts upon what eye hath not seen and ear 
 hath not heard. We have knowledge from early times of some who 
 shrank from leaving the universe at the mercy of two contending rivals, 
 and who sought a higher unity. This they found in boundless Time. 
 His visible embodiment was the sky, whose movements, superior to 
 both Ormuzd and Ahriman, bring day and night, summer and winter, 
 growth and decay, life and death, joy and sorrow. This regard to 
 time or fate, a return to the now lifeless original Aryan Asura of the 
 shining sky, became the orthodox creed of Iran two centuries before 
 the Mohammedan conquest. Still it smuggles a disguised existence 
 among Persian Moslems, who in thought and speech, in prose and 
 verse, relieve their Islam, or quiet submission to the will of the living 
 personal God, by cursing Time, that beldame decrepit with age but 
 undying ; and the sky, the vault, the revolving wheel, which, after 
 flinging its creatures alive upon this world, crushes them to death. 
 
Religion of Persia. 143 
 
 Among Aryans the Parsees are what the Jews are 
 among Shemites, exiles from their own land, yet 
 clinging firmly to the faith of their fathers. Some, 
 however, are trying to open their religion to all the 
 life and breath and light which are stirring the world ; 
 to bring back religion to first principles, not insisting 
 on explaining in hard and fast terms or doctrines the 
 divine, which they recognise as infinite, nor upon 
 embodying our aspirations — that is, oUr worship — in 
 fixed material forms ; but guiding man, merely as 
 man, in his efforts after the ideal and perfect, and in 
 his duty of living not for self, but for all. 
 
 It cannot have escaped you that in form, and also 
 in spirit, Mazdeism is closely allied to the Jewish 
 religion. For this agreement we were prepared by 
 knowing that around the sources of the Euphrates, 
 ere Abraham crossed the river and became a Hebrew, 
 his kindred and the Aryans lived side by side. Many 
 centuries afterwards, when, in altered circumstances, 
 Jews in Babylon met Persians, and regarded them as 
 their masters and best friends, this renewed contact 
 made Judaism conscious of the outer world and con- 
 scious of herself: aware of what others had, and of 
 what she herself possessed, but had not well used. 
 Judaism was quickened and enriched. Not formerly 
 devoted to the worship of one God, — sent, say the 
 prophets, into banishment for worshipping many gods, 
 — the Jews returning from Babylon acknowledged, 
 like the Persians, only one. Loftier views of Jeho- 
 vah's greatness brought more into play angels and 
 archangels. His messengers — and guardian angels. 
 
144 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 His continual instruments. The Talmud tells us 
 that the names of the archangels came from Babylon, 
 whence the names of some devils also have come. 
 The Asmodeus who, in the book of Tobit, strangles 
 Sara's seven husbands, is Ashma deva — that is, Ahri- 
 man under one of his older names. The grotesque 
 humiliation under which he has laboured ever since 
 Le Sage wrote his famous romance, illustrates a 
 tendency of these latter days. Purer views of God's 
 righteousness separated farther, in the Jewish mind, 
 between God and Satan, until this accusing angel 
 came to wear the form and features of Ahriman. A 
 coming Messiah, a personal resurrection, the restor- 
 ation of all things, were henceforth popular articles 
 in the'Jewish creed. 
 
 Mohammed, whose very name for religion is a 
 Persian word. El Din, underlies a heavy debt to Jew, 
 Christian, and Parsee. 
 
 Mazdeism, small and perishing in body, is every- 
 where present in spirit. If at death she has little to 
 bequeath, it is because she gave her wealth gener- 
 ously around her while she was alive. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 
 
 By the Rev. James Dodds, D.D., Minister of the Parish of 
 Corstorphine. 
 
 WITH the exception of Palestine there is no 
 country in the world which men regard 
 with so much interest as Egypt, and even Palestine, 
 to be understood, must be studied in the light of 
 Egyptian history. It would hardly be too much to 
 say that there is not a branch of human knowledge 
 which can be fully mastered by any one who does 
 not first turn his looks towards the Nile. The cradle 
 of all civilisations, the birthplace of all history, this 
 singular country has exercised a marked and often 
 dominant influence over the ages. Within its limited 
 boundaries many of the arts originated and flour- 
 
 N 
 
146 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ished, and here, too, science and philosophy found 
 a primeval home. As we gaze at the ponderous 
 pyramids and temples its ancient inhabitants raised 
 upon its soil, and marvel at the skill which contrived 
 and the mechanical ingenuity which constructed them, 
 we see memorials of a people who as far surpassed 
 others in civilisation and discovery, as their buildings 
 overshadowed, by their vastness, the greatest archi- 
 tectural achievements of men in other lands. 
 
 It is to the religion of the ancient inhabitants of 
 this country that our attention is to-day directed. 
 The subject is one of engrossing interest; and, thanks 
 to the industry and research of many distinguished 
 men who have made the study of Egyptian archae- 
 ology the work of their lives, we have at hand an 
 abundant and constantly increasing store of materials 
 available for the investigation. Their discoveries 
 bring vividly before us details of domestic, social, 
 and religious life in Egypt at periods in the remote 
 past, of which history in other countries has preserved 
 no traces. Nations whose memorials go back to the 
 highest antiquity have no chronologies that vie with 
 the dates inscribed in the records of the Memphian 
 kings. A statue of Crephren, an Egyptian king, that 
 was exhibited a few years ago at an international 
 exhibition in Paris, was hewn thirty-eight centuries 
 before our era. At the time when first appear the 
 fabulous heroes and earliest legislators of the ancient 
 societies of the extreme East, Egypt already numbers 
 several dynasties, her civilisation has endured for cen- 
 turies, and her annals constitute authentic history. 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 147 
 
 The religion of ancient Egypt can be traced back, 
 through various authentic sources, for more than three 
 thousand years, the last centuries of which coincide 
 with the first centuries of the Christian religion, before 
 whose progress it gradually disappeared. Not that 
 even these long cycles bring us face to face with the 
 first beginnings of religious faith in Egypt ; old as 
 are the memorials in which its character and features 
 are enshrined, these testify to us of a religion already 
 established and developed. Religion in Egypt is 
 older far than the monuments. Like some of those 
 African rivers which baffle the efforts of travellers to 
 discover their sources, Egyptian religion cannot be 
 traced to its fountain-head. Far back as we can 
 penetrate we find a full -flowing stream, destined 
 indeed to receive many tributary waters as it passes 
 on through the ages, but receiving them always 
 as a river of magnitude and strength. The first 
 contemporary records we possess of Egyptian his- 
 tory carry us back to the days of Senopheru, a 
 monarch of the third dynasty, who carved his 
 name and exploits, not only in his own land, but 
 on the rocks and in the caverns of Sinai. He sub- 
 jugated the Arabs of that peninsula, and worked its 
 mines, not less than eleven hundred years before 
 the birth of Abraham, two thousand two hundred 
 years before the siege of Troy, and two thousand 
 six hundred years before Rome was founded. In 
 giving us the first morning greeting from this re- 
 mote age, he indicates his religious faith ; for pre- 
 fixed to his title, there is a sign which denotes the 
 
148 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 god, " the Sun Horus,'' who dispenses light and lifC; 
 blessing and prosperity ; and among the hieroglyphics 
 which he traced appears one consisting of four little 
 vases joined so as to form a single vessel. These 
 compound vases were used only for libations to the 
 gods, and the contrivance for pouring out all the four 
 simultaneously, was to secure that no deity should 
 have precedence of, and thus excite the jealousy of, 
 the others. One vessel was probably poured out in 
 honour of the supreme god, and the other three for 
 the triad of subordinate deities. 
 
 The sources of information regarding ancient 
 Egypt are mainly monumental inscriptions and pa- 
 pyri, partly also the fragments of Manetho, and the 
 accounts of Greeks who visited Egypt before the 
 Christian era. To the narratives of Herodotus, Dio- 
 dorus, and other Greeks who have written works that 
 bear upon the history of the country, we are indebted 
 for much important information ; but living, as they 
 did, in periods remote from the ages of which they 
 wrote, and dependent upon tradition for their state- 
 ments, they give us facts imbedded in much that is 
 legendary and fictitious, and their chronology is not 
 reconcilable with contemporary inscriptions. Man- 
 etho had better opportunities than these Greek writers, 
 and his fragments possess greater value. He was a 
 priest, conversant with the literature of ancient Egypt, 
 and had access to the monuments, which give the 
 most accurate statements of events and dynasties. It 
 is a misfortune that his work has perished, and that 
 he is known to us only through quotations extant in 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 149 
 
 Josephus, and in the writings of certain Greek his- 
 torians. No doubt his lists of gods and sovereigns, 
 and his historical statements, have suffered through 
 the ignorance or carelessness of transcribers, and 
 some of them are inaccurate or misleading. But 
 the monuments which enable us to correct certain 
 portions of his narrative abundantly confirm many- 
 others. The most important source of our know- 
 ledge regarding the religion of Egypt is found in the 
 old documents and inscriptions which exist in almost 
 every place to which the sway of the people extended. 
 From the remotest ages they employed hieroglyphic 
 writing, and took pleasure in inscribing on stone, or 
 on the more fragile papyrus, the names of gods and 
 heroes, the exploits of warriors, the records of work 
 done or undertaken, of natural phenomena, of daily 
 life. Their scribes must have been among the busi- 
 est members of the nation ; and the dry climate, and 
 the veneration of the people for written records, kept 
 what they wrote from perishing. The modern tra- 
 veller in Egypt is brought face to face with monu- 
 ments that seem as fresh and legible as when they 
 were traced by hands that ceased from labour thou- 
 sands of years ago. For ages these inscriptions 
 baffled the research and ingenuity of scholars, for 
 the characters in which they were engraven had lost 
 their meaning to modern eyes ; the key seemed irre- 
 coverably gone. But thanks to the Rosetta stone, 
 whose story records one of the most interesting and 
 eventful incidents of recent times, that key has been 
 recovered, and the old world inscriptions are no 
 
150 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 longer veiled mysteries. We are not now depen- 
 dent upon Greek travellers or Manetho's fragments 
 for our knowledge of ancient Egypt, but can extend 
 and correct their statements by our own investiga- 
 tions. Every day is adding to our stores of know- 
 ledge. The pyramids and papyri, the tombs and 
 temples, are gradually supplying the materials for a 
 full history of Egypt. Only a few months ago, and 
 just before his lamented death, the Arabs working 
 under Mariette Bey discovered the entrances to 
 several pyramids at Boulak, the port of Cairo, and 
 found rooms and passages within them covered over 
 with hieroglyphic inscriptions cut in stone, preserving 
 the names and titles of the kings by whom they were 
 built, as well as numerous religious texts which are 
 said to throw great light on the theological tenets of 
 the early Egyptians. The inscriptions show clearly 
 that five thousand years ago these pyramid-builders 
 had no small measure of astronomical knowledge. A 
 still more recent discovery near Thebes has brought 
 to light the mummies of nearly thirty of the most 
 illustrious of the Egyptian Pharaohs, and with them 
 documents which, when they shall have been de- 
 ciphered and interpreted, are expected to fill not a 
 few historical gaps, and to supply interesting facts 
 bearing on Bible times. The eras of the dynasties 
 to which these kings belonged, comprehend the period 
 in which the famous exodus of Israel from Egypt 
 took place. The inscriptions, it is not unlikely, may 
 refer to that event, and may even serve to identify 
 the Pharaoh who so often hardened his heart against 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 151 
 
 Jehovah and Moses, as well as throw light on other 
 Bible incidents. Indeed, leading Egyptologists have 
 already substantial reasons for the belief that, in one 
 of these mummies, they have the remains of the king 
 that "knew not Joseph." The exodus of the Israel- 
 ites is now generally held to have taken place in 
 the nineteenth dynasty, and the third king of this 
 dynasty — who caused his titles to be inscribed on the 
 pillar known as Cleopatra's Needle, which now stands 
 on the Thames Embankment, — Rameses II., — is, on 
 good grounds, believed to have been the oppressor of 
 the Hebrews — the king for whom the children of Israel 
 built " the treasure cities Pithom and Raamses." His 
 mummy is among those recently discovered, and is 
 now on the shelves of the museum at Boulak. 
 
 From whatever source we gather our information 
 regarding ancient Egypt, there is perfect agreement 
 as to the prominent place which religion occupied in 
 the life and manners of the people. A distinguished 
 French scholar scarcely exaggerates the truth when 
 he affirms that everything in Egypt bears the imprint 
 of religion. In the middle of the fifth century before 
 our era, Herodotus visited Egypt, and that which 
 impressed him most throughout his travels in the 
 country was the intense devotion of the people. "The 
 Egyptians," he says, " are religious to excess, far be- 
 yond any other race of men." So much did this fact 
 impress him, that, besides repeated references to the 
 subject elsewhere, he devotes no fewer than forty-one 
 consecutive chapters of his second book to a descrip- 
 tion of the priests, the temples, and the religious 
 
152 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ceremonies of Egypt. He tells us, though modern 
 investigations scarcely go to establish the statement, 
 that the first Egyptian edifice of any pretension was 
 a temple. In the early architecture, at least, of 
 Egypt, the tomb rather than the temple held the 
 foremost place; but the tomb, equally with the temple, 
 was meant to express the religious ideas of the people. 
 The ancient writers ascribe the building of temples to 
 more than one of the early kings, and in later periods 
 the temples vied with the tombs in their architectural 
 magnitude and magnificence, that of Karnak being 
 the work of at least seven distinct monarchs, whose 
 reigns extend over five hundred years, each of them 
 contributing the best art to its extension and adorn- 
 ment that his age could produce. In all the cities of 
 Egypt, and wherever men were gathered, capacious 
 edifices lifted up their heads and invited the people 
 to worship. The services held within them in honour 
 of the gods were no bald uninteresting formalities, but 
 were maintained with all the aids that art could furnish 
 to make them attractive and inviting to the multitude. 
 The temple walls and chambers were adorned with 
 the choicest specimens of the painter's and sculptor's 
 skill. A numerous and honoured priesthood main- 
 tained a costly and perpetual ceremonial. Clothed in 
 robes of the richest materials an'd rarest workmanship 
 — robes of which the modern ecclesiastical vestments 
 of the Greek and Roman churches are the imitation 
 and the relics — the priests passed in procession 
 through sunlit aisles or shady recesses ; through 
 avenues of sphinxes, or through crowds of worship- 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 153 
 
 pers ; now chanting in full chorus the praises of the 
 gods ; now, in humility or adoration, bending before 
 their altars and invoking their favour and protection. 
 The great temple of each city was the centre of its 
 life. Not for worship only, but for recreation and 
 enjoyment its courts were frequented. There the 
 eye was filled with beautiful forms, and the ear with 
 harmonious sounds. As incense floated into the air, 
 and music resounded through the corridors, and all 
 that was bright and costly regaled the senses, a con- 
 tinual crowd of worshippers or spectators resorted to 
 the attractive scene, so that the temple became, not 
 only the centre of city life, but the bond of civic fel- 
 lowship, and the pride and joy of the inhabitants. 
 Cities vied with each other in furnishing a complete 
 and costly ceremonial. Religion permeated the 
 whole being of the people. The priests were the 
 practical rulers of the nation, and the representatives 
 of its intellectual activity. All inventions, arts, and 
 sciences, bore a priestly character, as, for instance, the 
 picture-writing of hieroglyphics, the sciences of medi- 
 cine, mechanics, chemistry, and philosophy, as well 
 as astrology, alchemy, and the art of soothsaying. 
 Priests and warriors constituted an ecclesiastical and 
 lay nobility, and possessed a monopoly of political 
 power. The king was the nominal head of the State, 
 saluted with the title of god, but even over him the 
 priests exercised large influence. A college of priests 
 constituted his Privy Council ; the supreme court of 
 justice was composed of the representatives of the 
 three great divisions of the priesthood ; his whole 
 
154 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 life was regulated, down to its minutest detail, by 
 sacerdotal precepts ; his servants had to be the sons 
 of priests, who exercised constant surveillance over 
 him in the interests of their order. At the public 
 sacrifices the priests made prayer for him, and, while 
 enumerating his virtues, had opportunity for effective 
 censure of what they disapproved. His character was 
 in their hands, for they alone transmitted history. 
 Only a few kings of more than ordinary courage ever 
 dared to assert independence of their control. The 
 majority bowed meekly to their dictation, and in 
 return for their submission obtained, through the 
 influence of the priesthood, their reward of praise, 
 the admiration and esteem of their people, and 
 posthumous glory. This influence, so dominant in 
 the palace, extended through all ranks. The priest's 
 hand was everywhere. Literature, art, science, had 
 hardly any other home than the temple. No profes- 
 sion could be entered, no art or industry pursued, 
 save through the patronage and permission of the 
 priests. The regulations which they established gov- 
 erned the ploughman as he turned the furrow, the 
 mechanic as he plied his tool, the soldier as he went 
 forth to war. Loyalty to priestly precept was the 
 path to prosperity ; rebellion was the sure precursor of 
 poverty and ruin. It follows, therefore, that Egyptian 
 life and character can be understood only in propor- 
 tion as the religion of the nation is comprehended. 
 
 In the paintings and sculptures preserved in Egyp- 
 tian temples and tombs we possess a source of infor- 
 mation, in regard to the ceremonial religion of the 
 
Religion of A ncient Egypt. 155 
 
 people, fuller and more detailed than in the case of 
 any other nation of antiquity. But difficulties meet 
 us when we seek to penetrate into the inner shrine 
 of the beliefs which this splendid ritual expressed. 
 Creeds and confessions are of comparatively recent 
 date. The ministers of the ancient faiths did not 
 cast into precise dogmatic moulds their theological 
 tenets, but were satisfied to regulate, as custom or 
 expediency dictated, the names by which the deities 
 were to be invoked, the prayers to be addressed, and 
 the sacrifices to be offered to them. Numerous as 
 are the manuscripts that have come down to us, no 
 writing has been discovered in which an Egyptian 
 priest or theologian has set forth the religious system 
 of his countrymen. Manetho was indeed a priest, 
 but we know his theological writings only partially 
 and at second hand. Herodotus has preserved infor- 
 mation bearing on Egyptian ritual, and a few tradi- 
 tions gathered from the priests of the temples which 
 he visited ; but if he discovered more than he records 
 regarding the articles of their belief, he has carefully 
 suppressed his knowledge. Diodorus gives in his 
 first book an account of the religion of the Egyptians, 
 but his expositions are coloured by his desire to 
 prove that the Greeks owed their religious faith to 
 Egypt. His object was not so much to explain the 
 theology of Egypt, as to discover such analogies be- 
 tween it and the mythology of Greece as would serve 
 to strengthen his position. The later Platonists 
 dealt with Egyptian theology after their own philo- 
 sophy had largely borrowed from Egyptian or ori- 
 
156 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ental speculations. This scantiness of information 
 furnished from sources contemporary with the times 
 when it was a living system, has always rendered the 
 study of the theology of Egypt difficult and complex. 
 Notwithstanding the additional light that recent dis- 
 coveries have cast upon the subject, there is still con- 
 siderable discrepancy between the views of the most 
 competent authorities. Still there are certain features 
 which are very generally acknowledged to have char- 
 acterised it. It is admitted by many authorities that, 
 in common with most of the religions of antiquity, it 
 had two phases or aspects ; one of these being that 
 which it presented to the priestly and philosophic 
 mind — the other, that in which it was viewed by the 
 great mass of the people. It may be taken for 
 granted that the body of the Egyptian nation knew 
 little regarding the origin or import of their own 
 theology, and that the initiated classes did not care 
 to enlighten them, satisfied when outward obedience 
 to religious laws was rendered. The vast multitude 
 of deities figured in the Pantheon, to which the crowd 
 paid homage, did not necessarily imply that belief 
 in their separate existence and divinity was enter- 
 tained by the learned. Some eminent scholars main- 
 tain that the Egyptian religion, while to the many 
 characterised by polytheism and gross observances, 
 was to the few a system that combined belief in one 
 self-existent God with a speculative philosophy that 
 concerned itself with the nature of God and the 
 destiny of man. The priests, according to this view, 
 rose to the conception of one only God ; immortal. 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 157 
 
 uncreated, invisible, and concealed from human 
 scrutiny in the inaccessible depths of his being. 
 They worshipped him as the creator of heaven and 
 earth, who made all things, and without whom no- 
 thing has been made. It is contended that, on any 
 other supposition than belief in the existence of this 
 unseen and supreme being, it is not possible to ex- 
 plain many expressions in their rehgious books and 
 hymns. " The first characteristic of the religion," s,ays 
 M. de Rouge, " is the unity of God, most energetically 
 expressed." In proof of this statement he quotes such 
 sentences as these : " God — one, sole, and only ; no 
 others with him." " He is the only being, living in 
 truth." " Thou art one, and millions of beings proceed 
 from thee." " He has made everything, and he alone 
 has not been made.'' On a staircase of the British 
 Museum may be seen a papyrus, which speaks of 
 " The great God, Lord of heaven and of earth, who 
 made all things which are ; " and Renouf asks, 
 "Where shall we find such a prayer in heathen 
 Greek, or Roman times, as this : ' O my God and 
 Lord, who hast made me and formed me, give me an 
 eye to see and an ear to hear thy glories '.? " "Hail 
 to thee," says a tablet in the British Museum, " Lord 
 of Hermopolis, self-existent, without birth, sole God, 
 who regulatest the nether world, and givest laws to 
 those who are in the Amenti, and to those who are 
 in the service of Ra." In a papyrus at Turin, the 
 following words are put into the mouth of "the 
 Almighty God, the self-existent, who made heaven 
 and earth, the waters, the breath of life, fire, the gods, 
 
158 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 men, animals, cattle, reptiles, birds, fishes, kings." 
 " I am the maker of heaven and of the earth. I raise 
 its mountains, and the creatures which are upon it ; 
 I make the waters, and the Mehura comes into being. 
 . . . I am the maker of heaven and of the mys- 
 steries of the twofold horizon. . . . When I open 
 my eyes, there is light ; when I close them, there is 
 darkness. I make the hours, and the hours come 
 into existence." Another text says, " I am yester- 
 day, I am to-day, I am to-morrow." " O God, archi- 
 tect of the world, thou art without a father, begotten 
 by thine own becoming ; thou art without a mother, 
 being born by repetition of thyself . . . Thou 
 sustainest the substances which thou hast made. It 
 is by thine own strength that thou movest. . . . 
 The roaring of thy voice is in the cloud, thy breath 
 is in the mountain-tops. . . . Heaven and earth 
 obey the commands which thou hast given : they 
 travel by the road which thou hast laid down for 
 them ; they transgress not the path which thou hast 
 prescribed to them, and which thou hast opened to 
 them. . . . Thou restest, and it is night ; when 
 thine eyes shine forth we are illuminated. . . . 
 O let us give glory to the God who hath raised up 
 the sky, and who causeth his disc to float over the 
 bosom of Nut; who hath made the gods, and men, 
 and all their generations ; who hath made all lands 
 and countries, and the great sea, in the name of ' Let 
 the earth be.' " 
 
 While these and similar expressions seem to 
 point to the conclusion that it was the one God, 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 1 59 
 
 Creator of heaven and earth, whom the Egyptian 
 authors of such hymns and invocations ignorantly 
 worshipped, we are not warranted in affirming that 
 even the greatest minds in ancient Egypt grasped 
 the great doctrine of the unity of God. Side by side 
 with these lofty conceptions we find, especially in 
 later times, gross polytheistic beliefs abundantly 
 prevailing. Different explanations have been given 
 of the apparent inconsistency between the seemingly 
 monotheistic beliefs of the learned, and the multi- 
 tudinous existence of deities, whose worship they 
 sanctioned and inculcated. The gods of the popular 
 mythology were, it is said, regarded by the initiated 
 as either personified attributes of the supreme deity, 
 or parts of the nature which he had created, consid- 
 ered as informed and inspired by him. The deity 
 had agents, who were his own attributes personified, 
 and who became so many gods under different names 
 and forms ; inferior divinities, limited in their parts, 
 although participating in all his characteristic pro- 
 perties. "Thus," says Jamblichus, "the Egyptian 
 god, when considered as that secret force which brings 
 all things to light, is called Ammon ; when he is the 
 intelligent spirit which comprises all intelligence, he 
 is Emeth ; when it is he who accomplishes everything 
 with art and truth, he is called Phthah ; and when he 
 is the good and beneficent god, they name him 
 Osiris." This view is adopted by Professor Rawlin- 
 son, who says, — " No educated Egyptian priest cer- 
 tainly, probably no educated layman, conceived of 
 the popular gods as really separate or distinct beings. 
 
i6o The Faiths of the World. 
 
 All knew that there was but one God, and understood 
 that when worship was offered to Khem, or Kneph, 
 or Phthah, or Maut, or Thoth, or Amnion, the one God 
 was worshipped under some one of his forms, or in 
 some one of his aspects. Ra was not a sun-deity 
 with a distinct and separate existence, but the 
 supreme god acting in the sun, making his light to 
 shine on the earth, warming and cheering and bless- 
 ing it ; and so Ra might be worshipped with all the 
 highest titles of honour." 
 
 Another explanation is given of the multiplicity of 
 deities worshipped by the Egyptians which makes 
 the number of separate gods more apparent than 
 real. The Pantheon was gradually formed by a 
 combination of the deities worshipped at separate 
 local centres. The natural configuration of Egypt 
 tended to produce separation, and, as a matter of 
 fact, the country was at various periods divided into 
 several distinct kingdoms. Each of its forty -two 
 nomes or provinces had its chief town and its' local 
 worship. These provinces were disturbed by local 
 jealousies, disliked each other's worship, and hunted 
 down and killed each other's sacred animals. The 
 hostile feelings of rival districts sometimes broke into 
 actual conflicts, and it required the whole armed 
 power of the king to extinguish the torch of war 
 kindled by domineering chiefs or ambitious priests. 
 Sometimes even the dynasty was changed through 
 the success of some rebellious provincial leader who 
 passed through victory to the throne. When a strong 
 central authority overawed the provinces, there was 
 
Religion of A ncient Egypt. 1 6 1 
 
 apparent unity in the State, but only partial agree- 
 ment in the worship. Hence at each provincial 
 capital a god, bearing a distinctive name, was re- 
 garded as supreme. No doubt a certain unity of 
 religious conception characterised the national wor- 
 ship everywhere, but it was unity in diversity rather 
 than the definite recognition of one divinity. The 
 chief districts, at least, had their separate, and to 
 some extent conflicting, systems, while yet the ruling 
 god of each province, although bearing a distinctive 
 name and localised by his worshippers, was practically 
 the same deity that was honoured as supreme at all 
 the other centres. From a union of these deities, 
 each supreme at his own centre of population, the 
 Egyptian Pantheon grew. The gods are thus not so 
 many or so diverse as at first sight they seem. In 
 their visible symbols, and in their names, they differ 
 widely ; but as they are studied it is found that each 
 occasionally assumes the attributes of the others, 
 and that a permanent line of demarcation cannot be 
 drawn around any. At length we observe a general 
 worship of some few divinities, especially of Ra, and 
 of Osiris, with his consort Isis. For a time after the 
 centralisation of the national worship the people of 
 each nome would still regard their own local god as 
 supreme, and accord him highest honour in their 
 adoration. Thus in one inscription we find the 
 chief place assigned to one deity, and in others to a 
 second or a third respectively. The inhabitant of 
 the Thebais would attribute to his Ammon, the 
 citizen of Memphis to his Phthah, the dweller at Sais 
 
 o 
 
1 62 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 to his Neith, the supreme power and dominion. But 
 as time went on, and the local worship merged in the 
 central, Ra, as the sun -god, drew to himself the 
 pre-eminence ; and in the litany of Ra, which first 
 appears in the tombs of the kings of the nineteenth 
 dynasty, all other divinities vanish in the brightness 
 of his supremacy. He is the king of the universe ; 
 the father of gods and men. 
 
 There does not seem, however, to be sufficient evi- 
 dence for the view strongly held by many, that the 
 various gods of Egypt were but symbols and per- 
 sonifications of the attributes of a supreme being, 
 whom the priests, if not the people, regarded as the 
 one living and true God. This is not the natural 
 impression produced by a study of the monuments. 
 Everywhere there are traces of innumerable deities 
 whose existence seems inconsistent with the recog- 
 nition of any one supreme creator and governor of 
 the universe. It may be possible by classification 
 to reduce the number of distinct divinities, but after 
 the process of grouping and assimilating has been 
 carried to the utmost limits, we still encounter a host 
 of gods and goddesses who cannot be resolved into 
 attributes or emanations of one, without violence to 
 reason and sound criticism. 
 
 This difficulty is felt by those who affirm most 
 strongly that the Egyptian priesthood held the doc- 
 trine of monotheism, and they meet it by admitting 
 that it subsisted side by side with a polytheistic re- 
 ligion. Thus Mr Poole, while maintaining this view, 
 does so with the explanation that the notions of 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 163 
 
 monotheism and polytheism are found constantly- 
 existing together in the same bodies. "Few be- 
 liefs," he says, "which are true to unity, but have 
 admitted at times, and in individuals, ideas of plu- 
 rality ; scarcely any which are founded on the idea of 
 the Many but have been perpetually enlightened 
 by a glimpse of the One." Renouf writes: "The 
 polytheistic and the so-called monotheistic doctrines 
 constantly appear together in one context ; not only 
 in the sacred writings handed down by tradition, and 
 subjected to interpolations and corruptions of every 
 kind, but even more frequently in literary composi- 
 tions of a private nature, where no one would dream 
 of suspecting interpolation." " Throughout the whole 
 range of Egyptian literature," he adds, "no facts 
 appear to be more certainly proved than these : (i) 
 that the doctrine of one god, and that of many gods, 
 were taught by the same men ; and (2) that no incon- 
 sistency between the two doctrines was thought of" 
 The fact that a few in every religious system have risen 
 above the polytheistic notions of the many, may be 
 admitted without accepting the conclusion that the 
 religions themselves contained a monotheistic ele- 
 ment. We must judge the religion of Egypt, not 
 by beliefs which are supposed to have had a place in 
 the minds of the sacred and the learned few, but by 
 the doctrines and precepts which its accredited ex- 
 positors delivered, and the effects which these pro- 
 duced upon the multitudes who accepted and acted 
 upon their instructions. 
 
 To describe or even to enumerate the Egyptian 
 
164 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 deities would occupy more time than is at our dis- 
 posal. The statement of Herodotus that the Egyp- 
 tians had a threefold division of their gods into eight, 
 twelve, and an indefinite number, though corroborated 
 by Manetho, and accepted by Bunsen, who believed 
 he had succeeded in restoring the old classification, 
 has not been supported by recent investigations. The 
 relative importance of the deities varied from time to 
 time, as dynasties changed or cities identified with 
 their worship rose or fell in influence or importance. 
 The artificial arrangement was doubtless an invention 
 of the priests at a time when the Egyptians were 
 united into one kingdom. It is not now accepted, 
 because it has been found that the eight principal 
 deities of one part of the country were not those who 
 received highest honours elsewhere. At Memphis, at 
 Thebes, at Heliopolis, and at other religious centres, 
 very different divinities received the chief worship, 
 and even if the first class could be identified, the 
 difficulty would remain, for the other groups present 
 the same obstacles to identification. But while such 
 general classification of the deities cannot be main- 
 tained, there is a peculiarity in their distribution 
 throughout the country which is very remarkable. 
 In almost every town three deities constituted ~a 
 trinity which received the chief worship of the in- 
 habitants. Sometimes, though only in rare cases, a 
 fourth was added, but always one greatly inferior to 
 the three. The triad consisted generally of a prin- 
 cipal god, a female deity his consort, and their off- 
 spring — almost invariably a male. Thus at Thebes 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 165 
 
 the triad consisted of Ammon, Nut, and Chonsu ; 
 at Abydos, of Osiris, Isis, and Horus ; at Heliopolis, 
 of Ra, Nebkept, and Horus. Bunsen, Renouf, and 
 others contend that there is nothing in the monu- 
 ments to show that three was a sacred or a speci- 
 ally significant number. While accepting the wider 
 national division of the gods into orders, Bunsen ob- 
 jects to the word triad, and thinks the grouping into 
 threes unimportant. But it is certainly singular that 
 these groups occur so regularly in the local centres ; 
 that the funeral triad, composed of Osiris, Isis, and 
 Nephthys, is found in all the tombs throughout the 
 country ; and that many other triads variously com- 
 bined continually occur. Sometimes, as a compliment 
 to a reigning sovereign, a triad was composed, con- 
 sisting of two deities and the king, — as at Thebes, 
 where Rameses III. is placed between Osiris and 
 Phthah — or at Aboukeshayd, where Rameses the 
 Great is set between Ra and Atmu. 
 
 The worship rendered to the gods was public or 
 private, the public being that which was offered in 
 the temples, while the private was associated with 
 the tombs. The temples, however, were not places 
 of worship in our sense of the expression. To 
 perform the temple service was the special func- 
 tion of the priesthood, who carried on in small 
 inner chambers, to which only a chosen few were ad- 
 mitted, the mysteries of their office, reserving for the 
 multitudes who resorted to the outer courts, those 
 gorgeous ceremonies and processions which at once 
 evoked enthusiasm and gratified the prevalent love of 
 
1 66 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 spectacular display. The temples that remain were, 
 without exception, royal offerings to the divinity of 
 the locality ; and while the image of the god and 
 those of the deities associated with him were brought 
 out in solemn processions, in which the whole popu- 
 lation took their places, none but the initiated were 
 admitted within the sacred inner precincts. Such 
 processions were a conspicuous part of the Egyptian 
 ritual. Sometimes the sacred animals were led by their 
 respective attendants, and received adoration from 
 the people as they passed through the streets. Some- 
 times the images of the gods were set upright on plat- 
 forms, and were borne by a number of priests upon their 
 shoulders, while other priests, marshalled according to 
 their ranks and orders, went before or followed the 
 figures of the deities, their conspicuous head-dresses 
 and magnificent robes, official staves and fluttering 
 banners, adding to the grandeur of the display, as 
 their full-voiced choirs chanted the praises of the 
 gods. Sometimes the images were placed in boats — 
 bearing at prow and stern richly carved symbols of the 
 deities — which, set on low sledges, were drawn along 
 the streets, or carried on men's shoulders, or were 
 launched upon the Nile, and impelled by priestly 
 rowers on its sacred waters. Sometimes, as the 
 monuments show, the king, his counsellors, ministers, 
 and nobles, helped to swell the procession, which for 
 the time interrupted all business and suspended all 
 labour. Festivals, commemorating the loss and 
 recovery of Osiris, drew great crowds to celebrate 
 them. On these occasions a cow, emblematic of 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 167 
 
 Isis, was draped in black and led about for four 
 successive days ; while in memory of the disappear- 
 ance of Osiris and his sister's search for him, the 
 company of men and women beat their breasts ; and 
 in memory of his recovery the same crowds went to the 
 sea-shore, the priests carrying a sacred ark in which 
 they placed an image of Osiris, formed of earth and 
 water, and as they did so the shout was raised, 
 " Osiris is found ! Osiris is found ! " when the plain- 
 tive cries gave place to joyous congratulations and 
 festivity. The Egyptians were the first to institute 
 a sacred calendar, in which every day — almost every 
 hour — had its special religious ceremony. The 
 priests constantly ministered in the temples, and 
 received and offered the victims or oblations brought 
 by the people. The sacrifices with which in Egypt, 
 as elsewhere, the favour of the deities was invoked, 
 consisted of animals . and vegetables, presented to 
 the gods with libations of wine and the burning of 
 incense. Whenever a victim was offered, a prayer 
 was repeated on its head, " that if any calamity were 
 about to befall either the sacrificers or the land of 
 Egypt, it might be averted on this head." The head 
 on which impending evil was imprecated, after being 
 cut off from the body, was not eaten by the Egyp- 
 tians, but was either sold to foreigners or cast into 
 the Nile. Thus sacrifice was offered continually, and 
 the voice of prayer, however imperfect or misdirected, 
 was never silent. 
 
 The worship of the tombs was as widely prevalent 
 as that of the temples. The tomb occupied a large 
 
1 68 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 f place in the thoughts and labour of the people. Ac- 
 cepting the doctrines of the soul's immortality and of 
 man's moral responsibility, they believed, as the Book 
 
 • of the Dead clearly shows, that life in the future state 
 was determined by men's actions in this world. The 
 soul's trials did not end at death, and therefore it 
 was necessary to care for and follow with rites and 
 prayers those whose earthly life was over. From the 
 king to the peasant, every man spent a portion of his 
 means in making ready his sepulchre. The famous 
 pyramids of Gizeh, which raise their giant forms like 
 crystallised mountains from the mother soil of rock, 
 while around them stretches the desert's boundless 
 sea of yellow sand, are but tombs, though for ages 
 they have been the admiration and wonder of the 
 world as unparalleled works of power. The Egyp- 
 tian set to the construction of his sepulchre as soon 
 as he came into possession of his estate. " The Egyp- 
 tians," we are told by Diodorus, " call their houses 
 hostelries, on account of the short time during which 
 they inhabit them ; but the tombs they call eternal 
 dwelling-places." This last statement is borne out by 
 numerous inscriptions. Words signifying " eternal 
 dwelling-place" occur in the earliest inscriptions de- 
 
 (scriptive of the. tomb. The departed are spoken of 
 as "the living," — as enjoying "everlasting life." The 
 places of burial, which might be prepared by the owner 
 himself, or purchased, ready made, from the priests, 
 J consisted of upper and lower chambers, and were often 
 ' cut out of the solid rock. The Egyptians had a strong 
 ! belief that life in the other world was somehow or 
 
Religion of A ncient Egypt. 169 
 
 other closely connected with the condition of the 
 body after death. Hence they embalmed the bodies 
 of the dead, so as to preserve them from decay ; and 
 by placing them in rock-hewn chambers, and setting 
 over them immense masses of stone, sought to secure 
 them against assault. The leading idea in connec- 
 tion with the tombs was durability ; and in the formu- 
 laries of prayer, Ra or Osiris was invoked " to preserve 
 the body, lasting for thousands of years, and never 
 corrupting." The god Anubis was the presiding ge- 
 nius of the mummified body, and in the inscriptions 
 he addresses the dead — "I come, I bring thee thy 
 members." The possession of a body into which the 
 soul, when it pleased, might pass, appears to have been 
 one of the greatest benefits that pertained to those 
 who were approved in the judgment. An inscription 
 says : " Thy head belongs to thee, thou livest by it ; 
 thine eye is thine, thou seest by it ; thine ears belong 
 to thee, thou hearest through them ; thy nose is 
 thine, thou breathest through it." The view they 
 entertained of the soul was, that it did not consist of 
 pure spirit, but was a corporeal substance of finer 
 texture than the body, which, in the life beyond, 
 passes through many migrations till, purified, it soars 
 upward to the full contemplation of the divine sun- 
 light. Numberless transformations of the soul are 
 delineated on the tombs. The happiness of the eter- 
 nal life they connected not with quiet contempla- 
 tions or with indulgence and ease, such as the Greeks 
 associated with the islands of the blessed. The occu- 
 pations of this life are continued in the other, — men 
 
1 70 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 plough, and sow, and reap, and thresh in the celestial 
 as in the earthly habitations. The Book of the Dead 
 says, " He is in the midst of these things as he was 
 on earth." In accordance with this future, the walls 
 of the tomb chapel, or chapels — for sometimes there 
 were two or more — were inscribed or painted with 
 scenes illustrating home-life : agricultural work, hunt- 
 ing, fishing, stock-taking ; artificers of all kinds are 
 seen plying their crafts ; and representations of such 
 employments as had occupied the owner of the 
 tomb during his earthly history are very numerous. 
 On the mummy -cases were painted the weapons 
 and the articles of dress which the deceased had 
 worn in life. Small chests were placed in the 
 chambers for storing the images of the gods or the 
 ancestors of the dead ; chairs and tables, vases, 
 fans, insignia of office, were set .beside the mummy, 
 that the dead man might be surrounded by the 
 objects that had been familiar to him during life. 
 Something approaching to worship was paid by the 
 living to the dead. From time to time the relatives 
 and friends of the deceased met within the sepulchral 
 chamber to sacrifice to their ancestors, and perform 
 various acts of homage in their honour. The mummy- 
 cases were then reverently carried from the recesses 
 which they usually occupied, set upright near an altar, 
 and adorned with wreaths of flowers. On the altar, 
 offerings of fruits, vegetables, cakes, wines, sometime^ 
 joints of meat, fowls, vases of oil, and costly delica- 
 cies, were laid ; while prayers were addressed to or 
 for the dead, and libations of oil and wine were poured 
 
Religion of A ncient Egypt. 1 7 1 
 
 over the cases in which the bodies lay. The friends 
 prostrated themselves before the altar, or, tearing their 
 hair and showing other signs of sorrow, embraced the 
 mummies. 
 
 Such scenes are often depicted on the monuments, 
 and the inscriptions show very prominently the close 
 connection which was supposed to exist between the 
 souls and the bodies of the dead. These set forth a 
 belief that the bond which links the dead to their 
 bodies is indissoluble. They show, that in the highest 
 conceptions the people formed of the soul's felicity, it 
 was not regarded as emancipated from thraldom to 
 the body. ' They declare, indeed, that to see Ra in i 
 his splendour ; to be admitted into his boat, and to ' 
 share the society and friendship of the gods who steer \ 
 it through the firmament, — is the lot of the justified. 
 But this participation in the glory of the sun-god 
 alternates with visits to the tomb. Sometimes the 
 soul sojourns in the mummy and the mural chamber; 
 sometimes with Amenti in the starry heavens. The 
 peculiarity of the Egyptian religion is the distinctness 
 with which it taught in its earliest records the great 
 doctrine of immortality, perhaps even of resurrection ; 
 not, indeed, in its Christian fulness, but far more 
 clearly than any other ancient system. It associated 
 with this doctrine that of personal responsibility, and 
 affirmed that in the future life man must undergo a 
 searching ordeal of judgment. It was the belief of 
 every member of the nation that immediately after 
 death he must descend into the lower world, "the 
 region of life," "the hidden country," where Osiris 
 
172 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 exercised sovereignty and pronounced irreversible 
 judgment In the " Hall of Truth," or "Justice" — the 
 same Egyptian word embraces both conceptions — 
 this ruler of the nether world held his court of assize, 
 assisted by three other gods : Anubis, his son, " the 
 director of the weight," who produced a pair of 
 scales, placing in one a figure of Truth, and in the 
 other a heart-shaped vase containing the good deeds 
 of the deceased ; Horus, who regulated the index of 
 the balance ; and Thoth, who stood by with a tablet 
 in his hand to write down the result. Osiris had forty- 
 two assessors — accidentally or by design correspond- 
 ing in number with the nomes of Egypt — before whom 
 the deceased was called to justify himself, and make 
 clear that he had not committed any of the forty-two 
 principal sins. The tombs contain many scenes which 
 illustrate this ordeal of judgment. Near the ruined 
 city of Ibreem is one which brings the trial vividly 
 before the spectator, in colours as bright as when 
 first set forth by the artist three thousand years ago. 
 "Anubis sits beneath a great balance : in one of the 
 scales is an effigy of the goddess of justice, wearing 
 her ostrich-feather ; in the other scale is the heart of 
 the deceased. On the right stands Thoth, with tablet 
 in hand, the roll of the great book, ready to inscribe 
 the name of the deceased as among the justified or 
 the condemned. On the left stands Set, the incarna- 
 tion of evil, in the form of a hideous beast, looking 
 up wistfully at the beam, and hoping that the soul of 
 the departed may be found wanting on being weighed, 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 1 73 
 
 and may become his prey."^ In the ritual of the 
 dead, prayer is addressed to Thoth, imploring him to 
 do justice to the dead, to suffer truth to come to the 
 body, and keep falsehood at a distance from it. Osiris 
 pronounces sentence in strict accordance with the 
 verdict of the scales. If a man's good deeds out- 
 weighed the scale in which the figure of Justice or 
 Truth was set, his soul passed into the bark of the 
 sun, and he was borne by good spirits to Ashlu, 
 the pools of peace, and the dwelling-place of Osiris. 
 But if, on the other hand, the soul was found un- 
 worthy to enter the abodes of the blessed, it was 
 sentenced by Osiris to a round of transmigrations, 
 more or less repulsive and prolonged, according to the 
 measure of its shortcomings, in the bodies of unclean 
 animals. For a period of three thousand years these 
 penal transmigrations and sufferings were to be en- 
 dured ; and then once more the soul entered, accord- 
 ing to some, its old, or, according to others, a new 
 human body, and began another term of opportunity 
 and probation. In connection with this ordeal of 
 judgment, we find no trace of any appeal for mercy 
 on the part of those who are subjected to it ; and 
 there is also to be noted the utter absence of any 
 acknowledgment of guilt. In the later stages of the 
 Egyptian religion, the verdict of Amenti was antici- 
 pated by a judgment pronounced upon the dead 
 by the priests. When the body arrived at the shore 
 of the lake over which it was to be borne for inter- 
 1 VilUers Stuart : ' Nile Gleanings,' p. 193. 
 
174 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ment, intimation was made that any one whom the 
 deceased was thought to have injured, or who was 
 acquainted with crimes of which he had been guilty, 
 would have an opportunity of establishing the charges 
 before forty -two judges convened for the purpose. 
 If in the opinion of the judges the accusations were 
 substantiated, interment was refused ; the body had 
 to be carried back by the friends, and the mummy 
 was kept within the house until satisfaction or atone- 
 ment had been made to the injured. But if the 
 accusers failed to establish their charges, or if no one 
 appeared to complain, the signs of mourning were 
 laid aside, the good qualities of the dead man were 
 rehearsed, prayers were offered by his relatives and 
 friends' for his happiness in the future state, and his 
 body was borne across the lake to the place of sepul- 
 ture. Traces of this ancient custom are found in 
 Egypt to this day. Before a body is carried to the 
 tomb, those assembled to render this last office are 
 formally asked to pronounce judgment on the dead 
 man's character. 
 
 From the defence made by the dead in the presence 
 of Osiris as they rehearsed their good deeds, we gather 
 interesting information as to the code of morality 
 recognised by the ancient Egyptians. This is of a 
 remarkable character, bearing a very striking resem- 
 blance to the requirements of the Mosaic law, and 
 even to the higher precepts of the Christian religion. 
 There is, indeed, abundant evidence in the tombs 
 and temples that the knowledge and the life of the 
 people were not always in harmony ; but it is start- 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt, 175 
 
 ling to discover how closely the written ethics of 
 ancient Egypt correspond to our highest notions of 
 morality. " None of the Christian virtues," says M. 
 Chabas, " is forgotten in the Egyptian code : piety, 
 charity, gentleness, self-command in word and action, 
 chastity, the protection of the weak, benevolence 
 towards the humble, deference to superiors, respect 
 for property in its minutest details, ... all is 
 expressed there, and in extremely good language." 
 The following are specimens of the manner in which 
 the dead justify themselves before Osiris : " Not a 
 little child did I injure. Not a widow did I oppress. 
 Not a herdsman did I ill-treat. There was no beggar 
 in my days. No one starved in my time. And when 
 the years of famine came, I ploughed all the lands 
 of the province, feeding its inhabitants and providing 
 their food. There was no starving person in it, and 
 I made the widow to be as though she possessed a 
 husband." Another claims to have been " the pro- 
 tector of the humble, the palm of abundance to the 
 destitute, food to the hungry and the poor." Another 
 says : " I have taken pleasure in speaking the truth. 
 Though great, I have acted as if I had been a little 
 one." Another : " I was bread to the hungry, water 
 to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, a refuge to him 
 that was in want ; that which I did to him the great 
 God hath done to me." 
 
 The same moral code which is recognised in the 
 tomb-inscriptions is found pervading the different 
 writings that have come down to us. The " wisdom 
 of the Egyptians" was summarised in various com- 
 
1 76 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 pends of proverbial philosophy. One of these — 
 written centuries before the time of Moses — is termed 
 by M. Chabas " the most ancient book of the world." 
 In common with other papyri of a similar character, 
 it inculcates the study of wisdom, the duty of hon- 
 ouring parents and superiors, of respecting property, 
 of being charitable, peaceable, contented, humble, 
 chaste, sober, truthful, and just. It shows, on the 
 other hand, that disobedience, strife, arrogance and 
 pride, slothfulness, intemperance, impurity, and other 
 vices, are wicked and foolish. Unhappily, this theo- 
 retic morality was combined with great imperfection 
 and laxity of life. Both men and women were im- 
 modest and licentious in their behaviour. They 
 were vindictive, treacherous, and avaricious, servile 
 towards superiors, and cruel in their treatment of 
 dependants. While the future life was the founda- 
 tion upon which all moral and religious duties were 
 avowedly based, its influence was counteracted by 
 the prevalent belief in the power of magical rites 
 and formal routine-worship to secure all that could 
 be obtained by adherence to the laws of morality. 
 The priests claimed, and were supposed by the people 
 to possess, the power of propitiating the gods and 
 averting the pains of Amenti ; so that superstition 
 neutralised the effect which the doctrine, rightly 
 apprehended, might have produced. 
 
 In the strict sense of the term, caste did not 
 exist in Egypt As in every nation possessing 
 claims to civilisation, classes were formed on the 
 basis of property or occupation. The fact that a son 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 177 
 
 succeeds his father in a profession or business, naturally 
 leads to heredity and exclusiveness, and there seems 
 to have been much of this in Egyptian society ; but 
 no class had its limits so distinctly defined that others 
 could not pass into it. The belief prevalent in India 
 that the classification of society is ordained by the 
 gods, and so protected by their sanction that viola- 
 tion of this institution is not only a political crime 
 but an act of heresy, was . never held. The rise of 
 Joseph from a prison to be the king's chief minister 
 and the son-in-law of the priest of Heliopolis, is not 
 without many parallels in Egyptian history. On the 
 monuments are found not a few records of men who 
 rose from indigence to nobility and high offices at 
 court, which close with the statement, " His ancestors 
 were unknown people." Education was open to all 
 ranks. In the schools the poor man's son sat on the 
 same bench as the heir of the wealthy ; and there the 
 master sought to fire the lagging scholar's ambition 
 by telling him of the rich rewards which awaited 
 all who gained a name for erudition. No barrier of 
 birth or poverty could successfully oppose a man's 
 progress to distinction and wealth if he proved him- 
 self an eminent student of science or philosophy. 
 
 A remarkable feature of Egyptian social life was 
 the honourable position accorded to woman. This 
 was higher than in Palestine or in any heathen na- 
 tion. She was regarded as man's friend and com- 
 panion, and had equal rights of property with him. 
 The tombs represent husband and wife seated on the 
 same chair, or mingling on equal terms in the same 
 
 P 
 
1 78 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 society. Women sat upon the Egyptian throne. 
 They officiated in the temples, and offered sacrifices 
 to the gods. Nowhere except in Christian lands has 
 woman ever possessed so much freedom or exercised 
 so strong an influence in domestic and national life as 
 in ancient Egypt. 
 
 I have not touched upon the place which animal- 
 worship held in the national religion, because the sub- 
 ject is so large that a satisfactory treatment of it 
 would require more time than is available. The state- 
 ment that every animal in Egypt was held sacred and 
 worshipped by the people, is perhaps exaggerated ; 
 but the veneration with which most living creatures 
 were regarded, gave point to the taunt that on the 
 banks of the Nile it was easier to find a god than a 
 man. This singular idolatry which set cats and croco- 
 diles and jackals in the innermost shrines of magnifi- 
 cent temples ; which raised bulls and apes above the 
 kings, and gave them homes that rivalled palaces 
 in costliness and splendour ; which furnished retinues 
 of priests and slaves to watch and wait upon the 
 movements of an ibis or the contortions of a serpent ; 
 which filled the land with tombs whose occupants 
 are the mummies, not of men, but of beasts, — has 
 caused much speculation, in ancient and modern 
 times, as to its origin and meaning. Philo regarded 
 the animals as symbols through which the gods were 
 worshipped. Some maintained that the priests in- 
 vested useful animals with a sacred character, in order 
 to secure their continuance and increase. Others held 
 that a crafty king introduced the worship of animals 
 
Religion of Ancient Egypt. 179 
 
 with the view of promoting discord in the nomes, and 
 so the more easily governing his people. In modern 
 times the pantheistic character of the Egyptian re- 
 ligion has been thought by many a sufficient ex- 
 planation of the worship. Regarding all nature as 
 divine, men easily attribute to living creatures quali- 
 ties and powers of supernatural magnitude. Others, 
 on plausible grounds, having in view the Negritian 
 connections of the Egyptian race, believe that the 
 beasts which, under the influences of a more advanced 
 religion, received homage as incarnations of a higher 
 being, were originally worshipped as fetiches, and that 
 fetichism, too, originated the fantastic custom which 
 struck the early Christian apologists, of placing in 
 the innermost sanctuary of a temple some hideous 
 dead or living animal, — " a beast rolling on a purple 
 couch." In the time of Moses this animal-worship 
 was universally prevalent, and the plagues which he 
 was commissioned to bring to bear upon the obdu- 
 rate king who oppressed his countrymen, were meant 
 to discredit the gods of Egypt, and emphatically con- 
 demn the idolatry which deified four-footed beasts and 
 creeping things. 
 
 But with all its defects and idolatries, the reli- 
 gion of Egypt gave forth more scintillations of what 
 we have been taught by revelation to regard as 
 truth than any other of the ancient faiths. Its teach- 
 ings as to the formation of man ; its affirmations 
 concerning death and judgment ; its anticipation of 
 what Christianity has made clear regarding the unity 
 of man's complex nature and the sanctity of his body; 
 
1 8o The Faiths of the World. 
 
 its glimmering light thrown on immortality and resur- 
 rection, — raise it above other ancient historic religions, 
 and go far to warrant a belief that it originated in a 
 primeval revelation. There is much in the legend of 
 the death and resurrection of Osiris which seems a 
 faint foreshadowing of truth taught by Him who is 
 the Life and the Light of men — much that hints at 
 the possibility that it was based on some old prophecy 
 which the Egyptians brought with them from the com- 
 mon cradle of the human race. Nowhere could the 
 great Jewish lawgiver have found so suitable an edu- 
 cation for his hard task as at the Court of Pharaoh ; 
 and if before he entered upon his work he was with- 
 drawn from the idolatries and superstitions of Egypt, 
 that in the solitudes of Horeb he might receive his 
 commission from the one living God, that retirement 
 was but the complement of preparation which had 
 made him " learned in all the wisdom of the Egyp- 
 tians, and mighty in word and deed." The best fea- 
 tures of the Egyptian faith reappear in the Books of 
 Moses. There are golden grains of divine truth to be 
 gathered still from the mummies and monuments of 
 Egypt. The more we study this ancient faith, the 
 more clearly we come to see that God never left 
 Himself without a witness to man ; and that, in some 
 measure at least, the religion of the Egyptians, like 
 the law given by Moses, was a shadow of things to 
 come. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE. 
 
 By the Rev. William Milligan, D.D., Professor of Biblical Criticism 
 in the University of Aberdeen. 
 
 FROM the religions of the East, at one time so 
 dark and oppressive, at another so mystical 
 and vague, I have to invite you to enter with me 
 to-day upon another and a totally different scene. 
 From boundless plains and huge mountain-masses, 
 in the presence of which the spirit of man is over- 
 whelmed ; from faiths and civilisations, the begin- 
 nings of which are lost in impenetrable obscurity ; 
 from immobility so long continued and so crushing 
 that the mind sinks in the contemplation of it, — we 
 have to turn to a country in many respects similar 
 to our own, and to a people of a life, an energy, and 
 
 Q 
 
i82 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 a movement which have enabled them to exercise an 
 almost unparalleled influence upon the highest races 
 of mankind. We have to pass from darkness into 
 light. Instead of mental stagnation, we come in 
 contact with freedom, inquiry, science, philosophy, 
 and progress. Across the long lapse of ages, we 
 clasp a people by the hand whose literature and art 
 have supplied the finest models for the historians, 
 poets, and artists of all succeeding times ; whose 
 political spirit has in no small degree nourished our 
 own imperishable love of liberty ; and whose philo- 
 sophic thought has even penetrated Christianity itself, 
 and helped to mould it into the forms that have 
 secured its victories. We are in many respects 
 strangers to the nations of the East : with the 
 Greeks we feel that we are one. 
 
 It is impossible to think of Greece without a 
 wonder and admiration which are only the more 
 deepened the more we endeavour to trace in every 
 direction the obligations under which we lie to it. 
 The land was small, only covering — apart from its 
 colonies — an area equal to one-third of that of Eng- 
 land and Wales. Its population was insignificant in 
 point of numbers, the free citizens of its several states 
 not amounting to the population of Scotland at the 
 present day ; while Athens, the centre of its most 
 powerful and lasting influence, possessed, with the 
 exception of its slaves, not more than 21,000 citizens 
 above the age of twenty. What a land and what a 
 city to have effected what they did ! The part played 
 by Greece in the history of the world justifies the 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 183 
 
 enthusiasm always felt for what she was in ancient 
 times ; and not less the eager hopes of her friends 
 now, that she may yet again prove herself worthy of 
 her past. For the sake of Greece, the religion of 
 Greece cannot fail to interest us. 
 
 But there is another important ground upon which 
 the religion of Greece has a peculiar claim on our 
 regard. History repeats itself; and it is not without 
 reason that many dread a revival of paganism in our 
 midst — not indeed in the details of its religious faith, 
 but in its conception of the tone, the rule, and the 
 aim of life. Should such a revival take place, it will 
 be in the form of Greek rather than of Eastern or 
 of Roman paganism. The paganism of Greece is 
 by far the mightiest of the three. Eastern ideas of 
 life have grown up in a soil so different from that 
 of the West, that they can never take root beyond 
 the great continent to which they naturally belong. 
 From Rome's fundamental idea of universal con- 
 quest we are becoming every day further removed. 
 The dominion of Rome over the spirit, too, is not for 
 a moment to be compared with that of Greece. The 
 Romans themselves, in the height of their power, 
 when Greece lay prostrate at their feet, confessed 
 that the conquered had given laws to the conquerors ; 
 and although it may be true that we have received 
 many valuable elements of our civilisation through 
 Rome, they have for the most part really come to us 
 from Greece. In the most refined and spiritual ele- 
 ments which classical antiquity has transmitted to 
 modern times, we are the heirs of Greek, not Roman, 
 
1 84 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 thought. The literature, the art, the rhetoric, the 
 philosophy, the politics which we cultivate, are Greek, 
 not Roman, in their origin ; and if any paganism is 
 ever to regain a footing in the midst of us, it will be 
 that of Greece. 
 
 Not only, therefore, for the sake of Greece, but for 
 our own sake, we have the deepest interest in con- 
 sidering what the Greek religion was, and what the 
 substitute for Christianity to which many in our day 
 would, more or less consciously, lead us. 
 
 It is of httle practical importance to inquire into 
 the extent to which Greek religion was influenced at 
 its start by the religions of other lands, especially of 
 Egypt and the East. That it was thus influenced 
 we know. The Greeks gained their knowledge of 
 letters from the Phoenicians ; and there is ample 
 evidence to confirm the supposition, that they must 
 have derived from that remarkable people other 
 things besides an acquaintance with the alphabet 
 and the power of writing. The names of their divini- 
 ties, such as that of Zeus, are sufficient to show 
 their dependence upon ideas embodied in the Rig- 
 Veda; while Herodotus, even though he may at 
 times have listened too credulously to the priests of 
 Egypt, who impressed him with such awe in that 
 land of ancient wonders, has probably some founda- 
 tion for his statement that Egypt had communicated 
 many parts of its mythology to his native country. 
 Few things, in fact, are more certain than that the 
 religious development of Greece was all along power- 
 fully affected by its contact with the East, and that 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 185 
 
 to this contact it owed the power of that creative im- 
 pulse by which it was so eminently marked. Had 
 Greece not lain upon the very boundary-line which 
 separates the Eastern from the Western hemisphere ; 
 had it not sent its colonies to the East, itself receiv- 
 ing immigrants in return ; had it not, in short, en- 
 joyed opportunities in a greater than common degree, 
 of being introduced to those new thoughts and ideas 
 which stirred so powerfully the quick and sensitive 
 nature of its people, — Hellenic religion might have 
 been as stagnant as that of Rome. The greatest 
 modern historian of the Latin people has given it 
 as his opinion that no nation upon earth was great 
 enough, by its own efforts, to create the marvel of 
 Hellenic culture. Only where the ideas of Aramaic 
 religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil has 
 history produced such brilliant results.^ Yet, be this 
 as it may, it is not less certain that, by the richness 
 of their imagination and the plastic power of their 
 genius, the Greeks so transformed every foreign ele- 
 ment of religion which they received as to make it 
 their own independent possession. It is not neces- 
 sary, therefore, to think of these other religions now. 
 For the same reason, it is equally unnecessary to go 
 back to the old Pelasgic faith, although it is certain 
 that much of it was adopted by the Greeks when 
 they came to occupy the countries in which it pre- 
 vailed. Enough for us that, in the midst of the 
 circumstances by which they were surrounded, and 
 under native impulses, the Greeks unfolded their own 
 1 Mommsen's 'Rome,' translated by Dickson, i. i86. 
 
1 86 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 religious views. We need not ask how much of these 
 was originally due to Phoenicia, or Egypt, or the East, 
 or the primitive inhabitants of the Hellenic soil. 
 
 Greece, then, developed her own religion ; and. if we 
 transport ourselves as far as possible into the earliest 
 period of her history, we shall find the kernel of 
 that development in the relation in which the Greek 
 stood to nature. This was in many respects differ- 
 ent from what it was elsewhere, especially in those 
 parts of the world that have been spoken of in the 
 previous lectures of this course. There we see the 
 mind overwhelmed by the tremendous forces that 
 are at work around it, unable to unfold itself in their 
 presence, and bowed, as if by irresistible necessity, 
 into abject submission to their yoke. In Greece 
 nature presents herself to man upon a scale smaller, 
 more diversified, and infinitely more attractive. There 
 are hills and valleys, woods and grottos, streams and 
 fountains of waters. The sea with its joyous waves 
 runs up into innumerable creeks and bays ; while it 
 washes, as it flows on, the shores of islands of every 
 variety of size and form. Clouds come and go in 
 the sky. The sun is felt in his brightness rather 
 than his scorching power; the grass is enamelled 
 with flowers, and the song of birds fills the air. 
 Here, accordingly, we see man able, for a time at 
 least, to preserve his own individuality, to unfold his 
 own nature, to find in the phenomena amid which 
 he moves a response to the stirrings of his own heart, 
 and even to behold in them a portion of the spirit by 
 which he himself is animated. In the older myth- 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 187 
 
 ologies of the East nature had mastered man. In 
 Greece man had a new beginning granted to him ; 
 the mastery of nature was broken, and he was free. 
 Not indeed that he was as yet superior to nature, or 
 that he could realise the mighty difference between 
 himself and her. The time was not come for the 
 great victory bestowed only in Him who says to His 
 people, "All things are yours." But man was to 
 some extent equal to nature. He moved amidst the 
 objects that she presented to him, like a child or 
 a young animal to which everything with which it 
 comes in contact is as full of life as itself He 
 listened to, and endeavoured to interpret, her meaning, 
 as he would have listened to, or interpreted, a com- 
 panion at play. He saw her act, he heard her speak, 
 in every one of her departments. There was a rip- 
 pling sound in the stream : it did not proceed from 
 drops of water only ; it came from a living spirit in 
 the stream, fair and sweet, singing with the waters 
 as they tripped along.' There was a rustling or a 
 hollow sound in the wood : it was not simply pro- 
 duced by the movement of leaves or of branches; 
 it came from living spirits inhabiting the wood, 
 who the one moment played in the breeze, the 
 next moment sighed as the breeze freshened, or 
 groaned as it deepened, into a gale. A rainbow 
 glistened in the sky : it was not there by chance 
 or inexorable law; it was 
 
 " A midway station given 
 For happy spirits to alight 
 Betwixt the earth and heaven.'' 
 
1 88 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Nay, it was itself the bearer of a message from a 
 bright region where there was no more storm. The 
 sea lapped the shore, and the little wavelets chased 
 each other in the gay sunshine : it was because 
 they had life in them that they thus leaped and 
 played. And so with everything else that the Greek 
 beheld. His peculiar gift was to translate the nat- 
 ural into the spiritual. Richly endowed as he was 
 with fancy and imagination, and responsive to every 
 impression made upon the senses, he could not rest 
 in the cold realities of things as they appear to 
 the scientific eye. He penetrated to something 
 which he believed to be beneath them, and he 
 imagined that they lived as he lived himself Nor 
 in all this was there any fear of nature. The Greek 
 was not oppressed by the life which filled the land 
 and the sea, the hills, the groves, and the fountains. 
 He moved freely and joyously in the midst of it. 
 Little of his worship sprang from dread of the more 
 terrible forces, the thought of which is suggested by 
 the whirlwind, the earthquake, the interminable wil- 
 derness, or the mountain that -has never been scaled 
 by human foot. The thought of these things may oc- 
 casionally have awed or terrified him, but they were 
 too rare or too remote to exercise an abiding influence 
 upon the temper of his soul. He communed with 
 nature as one who was at ease, and who heard her 
 multitudinous voices with pleasure rather than alarm. 
 But then these voices were multitudinous. They were 
 all separate and distinct. Nature did not speak to 
 him as a whole. He had no idea that she had been 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 189 
 
 fashioned by one great Being whose perfections all 
 her parts expressed, and of whose garments they 
 were the skirt. Christianity alone has reached this 
 perception of what nature is, and Christian poets 
 alone have sent us to her that we may be healed, 
 when we are incapable of listening to still higher 
 voices : — 
 
 " With other ministrations thou, O Nature, 
 Healest thy wandering and distempered child. 
 Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, 
 Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets. 
 Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters ; 
 Till he relent, and can no more endure 
 To be a jarring and a dissonant thing 
 Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ; 
 But, bursting into tears, wins back his way. 
 His angty spirit healed and harmonised, 
 By the benignant touch of love and beauty." 
 
 But this was not the spirit of the Greek. To him 
 every part of nature, even every distinct aspect of the 
 same part, had a spirit peculiarly its own. That 
 spirit might be merry or sad, but it was limited by 
 the limitations of the object with which he was deal- 
 ing at the time. It was no manifestation which led 
 upward to the thought of an illimitable and eternal 
 Being, in whom the most various phenomena find 
 their unity. 
 
 Thus it was that, listening to a multitude of voices 
 around him, the Greek immediately personified them. 
 Yet there was no deliberate reflection in the process. 
 We err if we imagine that, in the earlier stages of the 
 Hellenic faith, the records of these personal deities 
 
igo The Faiths of the World. 
 
 were allegories designed to give poetic expression to 
 views which were entertained of the agencies and 
 powers of nature. Such an interpretation was indeed 
 afterwards resorted to by the Greeks themselves, in 
 order to explain away the senseless follies and the 
 disgraceful acts with which the legends of the gods 
 abounded. But in the first instance, explanations of 
 this kind are useless. Nor, on the other hand, can 
 it be pleaded that these legends were the creations 
 of the poets, such as Homer and Hesiod, who thus 
 gave a mythology to Greece at a time when it had 
 none. We shall immediately see how important 
 a part these poets did play in the development 
 of Greek religion ; but they did not create it. The 
 structure of their poems, as well as the influence 
 that they exercised, shows that the writers were not 
 so much the makers as the reflectors of the popular 
 theology, and that they embodied sentiments already 
 existing in the minds of those for whom they sang. 
 Nothing can be simpler, more natural, or more objec- 
 tive than the whole Homeric Epos. The poet is 
 hitnself almost as much a child as those for whom he 
 writes. He sings out of the depths of genuine un- 
 questioning belief, undisturbed by the contradictions, 
 unmoved by the absurdities, unappalled by the mon- 
 strosities of the faith which his song expresses. The 
 whole Hellenic Pantheon, in short, had its root in the 
 simple personification of Nature which marked the 
 earliest period of Hellenic history ; and, at a stage of 
 human progress when the mind can hardly conceive 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 191 
 
 of abstract essences, such personification was, in the 
 absence of higher teaching, altogether unavoidable. 
 
 Yet it is remarkable to observe how far this per- 
 sonification was carried. I may allude to it for a 
 moment — taking in, at the same time, the later de- 
 velopments of the personifying process ; for the rich- 
 ness of the result helps to show that it could have 
 sprung from nothing but the boundless stores of the 
 popular imagination. Not only, then, was the spirit 
 which was supposed to reside in every natural object 
 personified, but new matter for personification was 
 supplied by every aspect which the object assumed. 
 Look, e.g., at the sea. When thought of in the com- 
 bination of all its qualities, and as ruling all the 
 living creatures that inhabited its boundless wastes, 
 Poseidon was its king. When beheld as the actual 
 mother of everything that swam in it, it was personi- 
 fied in Amphitrite. When it issued, as it was sup- 
 posed to do, like a river from its fountain-head, Thetis 
 represented it ; when it flowed softly, Nereus ; and 
 when it was roused into fury, Phorcys. Leucothoe 
 was its presiding divinity when it slept peacefully 
 under the moonlight, and .^Egeon when it swept along 
 with the irresistible volume of its waters. Every 
 aspect of its countenance that never rested, every 
 change of its heaving frame that was never still, every 
 phase of its relation to man whether as his friend or 
 foe, was separately marked, and every one was per- 
 sonified. The same thing might be illustrated by the 
 case of the sun, who appeared as a different divinity 
 
1 9 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 in each part of the daily task performed by him, or 
 in each of his attitudes towards man. 
 
 Even at this point, however, the Greek did not 
 rest. He had personified the spirit which breathed 
 in each object of the nature that surrounded him. 
 He next humanised it. The step to this was neither 
 less easy nor less natural than those by which it had 
 been immediately preceded. There must be some- 
 thing akin to our own nature in the nature of those 
 with whom we are to hold constant and familiar in- 
 tercourse ; and it was in the thought of such inter- 
 course, and with no feeling of overwhelming dread, 
 that the wanderer by the shores or in the groves of 
 Greece had listened to the voices which told him that 
 all nature was alive. Besides this, the Greek had an 
 inborn sense at once of the greatness and the beauty 
 of man. During the earlier stages of his history he 
 had been nursed amidst the active politics of the 
 little State to which he belonged, and which main- 
 tained a proud independence of every other. At a 
 later stage, when the different States of the same 
 Hellenic blood felt the necessity of union, he culti- 
 vated the feeling of a common brotherhood at the 
 Olympic or the Isthmian games, which were the very 
 apotheosis of muscular strength and physical energy. 
 A happy climate and a fruitful soil had developed 
 into its most perfect form the frame which is often 
 relaxed beneath the heat of a Southern, or cramped 
 by the cold of a Northern, clime. The noblest pro- 
 ductions, too, of the merely human intellect, had 
 appeared in Greece ; and it would be absurd to sup- 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 193 
 
 pose that those whose poetry and art have delighted 
 all other ages of the world, should themselves have 
 failed to perceive their sublimity and their graceful- 
 ness. Man, in short, considered simply as a being of 
 this world, was to the Greek the expression of all 
 that was best and brightest in his thoughts. What 
 could he do but humanise his gods .' This, accord- 
 ingly, was what he did. 
 
 Nor is it to be imagined that in this process it was 
 the coarser and more vicious aspects of humanity that 
 were first transferred to them. The conception of 
 Zeus, in his greatness, his solemn dignity, his interest 
 in the affairs of man, and his concern for the right 
 government of the world, would alone condemn such a 
 view. All that lower side of the inhabitants of Olym- 
 pus in which we recognise the foulness and the shame 
 of the Greek religion, belongs to later stages of its his- 
 tory. It was, indeed, the necessary development of 
 its principles, but it did not come first. If the Greek 
 made his gods like ordinary mortals, he tried, at the 
 same time, to make them stronger, wiser, and more 
 beautiful. No doubt, even from the very earliest age, 
 the gods of Greece were marked by many sins, by 
 deceit and violence, by falsehood and lust. But 
 we must remember that the sense of sin was as 
 yet very imperfectly developed in the Greek mind, 
 and. there is a deep truth in the apostle's words, that 
 " where there is no law, neither is there transgres- 
 sion." We must not suppose, therefore, that the 
 toleration of certain sins is always and necessarily 
 inconsistent with much that is otherwise lovable or 
 
194 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 praiseworthy in character. The gods of Greece, even 
 in the earliest stage of Greek history, fell far below 
 the standard of natural as well as Christian truth. 
 But the people were not then so deeply sunk by this 
 as they were in later times, or as we should be. 
 
 Down to the point now reached by us, the religion 
 of Greece already contained within it all the prin- 
 ciples of its future development, although it had not 
 had the opportunity of fully displaying its weakness 
 and unsuitableness to the wants of man. Looked 
 at in this stage of its history, it may seem a reli- 
 gion to be spoken of in less severe terms than we 
 generally employ. There was about it a lightness 
 and a sunniness of spirit, as well as a freedom from 
 harsh and gloomy thoughts, that are pleasing to the 
 mind. It connected men with a world higher than 
 the present. It introduced them to communion with 
 beings who, though cast in human mould, and ani- 
 mated by most of the ordinary feelings of humanity, 
 enlarged the range of their vision, and taught them 
 that there was a spiritual and invisible, as well as 
 a material and visible, region of existence. But in 
 all this there was hardly anything that can be called 
 thought, hardly even the consciousness of a distinc- 
 tion between man and nature. It was as a child that 
 the early Greek cherished his religious convictions 
 and performed his religious rites. He was simply 
 one part of a great whole. Each separate object of 
 nature had a voice for him. Fancy and imagination 
 were his only interpreters of the phenomena of the 
 external world. He felt that he himself lived ; and he 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 195 
 
 saw everywhere the expression of a life similar to his 
 own, as free, as active, as personal, and as human. 
 
 Such was the religion of Greece at a time anterior 
 to the historic period, when all the various Hellenic 
 races had been unconsciously contributing to it; when 
 it had been assimilating elements of Assyrian, Phoe- 
 nician, Egyptian, and Phrygian faith ; and when it 
 may be said to have been in a fluid state. 
 
 A great change took place in the ninth and eighth 
 centuries before the Christian era, under the influence 
 of the poets, more especially under that of Homer 
 and Hesiod. These two poets, indeed, did not so 
 much create as reflect the religious consciousness of 
 Greece ; but, in reflecting it, they gave it such a co- 
 hesion and fixity that, from their time onward until 
 it was swept away by the advancing power of Chris- 
 tianity, it remained essentially unchanged. To Ho- 
 mer in particular, and to his immortal poems the 
 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey,' this result is to be ascribed. 
 By the marvellous power of these productions Homer 
 became, so far as religion was concerned, the prophet 
 of the whole Hellenic race, wherever it had found a 
 settlement. His poems were the source of universal 
 delight and admiration. They were read in private. 
 They were recited in public assemblies by minstrels 
 who devoted themselves to the task, just as at the 
 present day the ' Arabian Nights ' are read to eager 
 listeners in Alexandria and Cairo. They were taught 
 to the young as religious catechisms are taught in 
 our families and schools. They were in tlie mouth 
 of every Greek during the whole period of Hellenic 
 
196 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 history. The consequence was, that the Homeric 
 poems fixed the religion of Greece for 1200 or 1400 
 years. That religion saw all the changes going on 
 around it which took place in one of the most event- 
 ful periods of the history of man — a period including 
 the dawning of the Christian age ; but it was itself 
 changed in no essential respect. It had laid such 
 hold of the mind of Greece, that the later develop- 
 ments of Greek thought and speculation never took 
 religion along with them. They rather, at last, ended 
 in so completely separating it from all progress that 
 it could not be saved. 
 
 We must, then, look at the change which was 
 brought about under the influence of the great 
 poets whom I have named. I cannot enter into 
 details as to the individual gods and goddesses of 
 the time now before us ; and I must content myself 
 with marking the main characteristic of the change, 
 and its effect. 
 
 That characteristic consisted in this, that the whole 
 system of divinities higher than man ceased to be the 
 mere utterance, in personification and humanisation, 
 of the impressions made upon the mind and heart 
 by nature. There can be little doubt that it had 
 originally been so. The very names of the more 
 ancient and less popular gods, it has been observed, 
 betray this ; for, the more ancient they are, the more 
 do they retain the names, — such as Ouranos, De- 
 meter {•fy M'^p), and Kronos, — of elemental things. 
 But this did not continue. The old gods now became 
 real individualities, acting an independent part in a 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 197 
 
 world of their own — not coming and going with the 
 changing moods of the minds that had imagined 
 them, but possessing an existence quite separate 
 from that of man. Thus the history of Kronos 
 passed from being the mere expression of an idea 
 into a historical reality. Kronos signifies time. 
 He is the son of Ouranos, or Heaven, because the 
 motions of the heavenly bodies give us our idea of 
 time. He is married to Rhea, a word which signi- 
 fies a flowing, because time flows ; and he devours his 
 own children, because time destroys whatever it brings 
 into existence. Now, so long as this was the uncon- 
 scious expression of a fact in nature, it might do little 
 harm : men might live in the thought of it as in a 
 poetic vision. But gradually the idea of the nature- 
 fact was lost. Kronos became a free individual per- 
 sonality, and the most corrupting influences could not 
 fail to proceed from his story when it was regarded 
 as that of a personal deity to be worshipped. So 
 also with the legend of the desolate Demeter and 
 her search for her daughter Proserpine, who had 
 been carried ofif by Hades, and who, when found 
 after a long absence in the lower regions of the 
 earth, was permitted to revisit her mother only for a 
 portion of the year, before she was compelled to re- 
 turn to her ravisher. The legend was one by which, 
 in a primitive time, men expressed the effect of the 
 revolution of the seasons, when the earth is at one 
 moment desolate and bare, at another is covered 
 with the green braird and flowers of spring. In the 
 former case, Demeter, or the Earth, mourns ; in the 
 
 R 
 
1 98 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 latter, she covers herself with beauty, and makes the 
 air resound with the transports of her joy. But again 
 the, nature-fact was gradually lost sight of, and the 
 legend became one of the personal adventures of the 
 gods. It is doubtful whether a similar explanation 
 is not to be applied to those who are commonly 
 regarded simply as deified heroes. The story of 
 Hercules, e.g., seems to have been originally a myth 
 representing the difficulty of obtaining Olympus ex- 
 cept through toil and self-sacrifice. But the moral 
 significance of the story was lost, and it became that 
 of an individual personality struggling through the 
 twelve labours, the thought of which had been at first 
 suggested by the twelve signs of the zodiac. 
 
 These instances are sufficient to show the manner 
 in which what had been originally symbolical passed, 
 in the hands of the poets, into fables, in which the 
 symbolical meaning disappeared before a supposed 
 reality. Nor is it necessary to inquire whether this 
 result was aimed at by the poets, or whether it was 
 their purpose to enclose, in forms familiar to the time, 
 a body of secret and mystical instruction. Opinions 
 are divided upon the point ; but, whatever the con- 
 clusion come to, it does not affect the practical con- 
 sequences with which we have to deal. These in 
 either case were the same. The severe gravity and 
 respect, if not even the reverence, of the older ideas 
 vanished. Behind the stories of the gods the mind 
 no longer beheld natural phenomena by which it was 
 interested or awed, but frivolous incidents in the life 
 of real divinities fitted only to bring down the actors 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 199 
 
 in them to the level of a low humanity, or even to 
 make them objects of contempt. 
 
 It was thus, however, that the whole Olympic 
 system sprang into being : and what a system it 
 was ! It may have been full of inconsistencies and 
 contradictions. In one part of Hellenic territory 
 many of its details may have been different from 
 what they were in another. It may have been modi- 
 fied in one place by special tradition, in another by 
 foreign influences which were limited in their range, 
 in a third by local predilection for some particular 
 divinity. But in its great outlines it was everywhere 
 the same. The divine world became the counter- 
 part of the human. Olympus was a royal palace, 
 and Zeus the' king surrounded by his attendants, 
 among whom were found all the rivalries, jealousies, 
 and intrigues that mark the aspirants to the favour 
 of an earthly monarch. No doubt the gods were 
 stronger or more beautiful than the inhabitants of 
 earth, a finer blood coursed in their veins, and they 
 were nourished by more heavenly food : but they ate 
 and drank and made merry like revellers of earth 
 upon their mountain-top ; and when they descended 
 from it to the world below, they were often mistaken 
 for mortal men. Besides this, they were greatly mul- 
 tiplied in number, so that the polytheism which fol- 
 lowed the Homeric age became even more marked 
 than before. There were deities of every city, and 
 mountain, and grove, and river. There were deities 
 who presided over every stage of human life from its 
 beginning to its close ; over every event, whether of 
 
200 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 joy or sorrow, by which our mortal lot is checkered ; 
 over every endowment of the mind and every affec- 
 tion of the heart. And this multiplication of deities 
 went on until, in that city which was the capital of 
 Greece, the centre of her civilisation and learning 
 and art, it was said that it was easier to find a god 
 than a man ; and an altar was even erected — that seen 
 by St Paul when he visited the city — To the unknown 
 God. In this deifying process, too, not only were 
 the higher attributes of humanity transferred to the 
 Greek Pantheon ; its meanest, most sordid, most de- 
 based, and most sensual characteristics were equally 
 represented. To this period belongs the great im- 
 morality of the gods. They had been much purer 
 at the first ; but as the morals of Greece became 
 loosened, its looser morals were transferred to them, 
 until they lived, and laughed, and quarrelled, and 
 strove, and sinned in the Olympian commonwealth 
 as if they had belonged to the agora, or to the pur- 
 lieus of a Greek city. Yet all of them were presented 
 as beings of that higher sphere in which man was to 
 find the objects of his worship, and lessons for his 
 conduct. 
 
 It may, indeed, be alleged, that through this whole 
 motley assemblage of divinities there ran higher 
 views, and that those who occupied the topmost 
 places in the descending scale were conceived of 
 by the poets in a lofty, often in a noble, vein. The 
 character of Zeus, in particular, has been dwelt upon 
 in this point of view; and his image in marble, by 
 the great sculptor Pheidias; has been appealed to as 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 201 
 
 a proof that a high tone of religious thought lay 
 under the mass of idle and corrupting legends with 
 which the Greek mythology was stored. It may be 
 so. But whatever traces of monotheism men may 
 suppose that they discover in incidental expressions 
 of the Greek poets, there can be no doubt that poly- 
 theism in its most degrading forms was the religion 
 of the people, and that down to the very close of their \ 
 history it was never otherwise. Poetry and art may / 
 to some extent have refined the popular conception 
 of the gods, but they left it unchanged in its essential 
 features. Philosophy, too, failed to impress upon it 
 its own better thoughts. It continued to be for cen- 
 turies what it had become after the days of Homer 
 and Hesiod ; and only then, when its foundations 
 had been completely undermined, did it collapse and 
 perish. 
 
 It is impossible, however, to pause at the point 
 that we have reached. This very collapse of the 
 religion of ancient Greece has to be more fully 
 accounted for; and several distinct considerations 
 must be kept in view if we would understand either 
 that religion in itself, or the lessons afforded to all 
 other ages by its history. I remark, therefore — 
 
 I. That the Greek religion had no proper idea of 
 God. Not only was the unity of the Divine Being 
 wholly strange to the Greek mind, it was equally 
 devoid of all worthy conceptions of the Divine attri- 
 butes. Its gods were for the most part local and 
 limited, bound to a particular district or city or 
 
202 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 family. Even when the same name meets us, it 
 would be a mistake to imagine that it always repre- 
 sents the same divinity. The Pallas who protected 
 the Greeks during the Trojan war was not the same 
 Pallas who watched over their enemies. The Ar- 
 temis of Greece was an altogether different divin- 
 ity from the Artemis of the Ephesians. There 
 was one Athene at Athens, and another at Sparta. 
 Even Zeus himself, whose name was more widely 
 known and revered than that of any other god, 
 varied in almost every city that paid him honour. 
 There was no conception of a universal ruler, to 
 whom the whole human family was a care. If the 
 Greek passed from one city to another as a friend, 
 he was introduced to new guardians of men whose 
 concern did not extend beyond the narrow limits of 
 the city's rule. If he appeared before it as a foe, he 
 felt that there was no means of warfare so likely to 
 be successful as to bribe by gifts, or to carry off by 
 stealth, the deities of his enemies. But the human 
 mind craves for unity. To reach a unity lying at the 
 bottom of all existence was its problem for ages. To 
 see how the unity perceived by it unfolds itself in 
 all existence is its problem now. No religion which 
 does not satisfy it in this respect can retain its power. 
 In his conception of the attributes of God, the Greek 
 was equally at fault. The mind which craves for 
 unity craves not less for holiness in the object of its 
 adoration. Sinful as man is, he can never be satis- 
 fied with the worship of the sinful. Sin is not his 
 true nature, and he knows it. He knows that he is 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 203 
 
 false to himself when he pays it homage. The simple 
 fact that he can conceive the good, tells him that he 
 may reach it; the fact that it is the highest con- 
 ception he can form, tells him that he ought to reach 
 it. How could the religion of Greece survive when 
 its gods were destitute of every moral excellence.' 
 when they were little more than deified men, with all 
 the passions of men raging in their bosoms, and pro- 
 ducing, in proportion to their superior strength, re- 
 sults more disastrous than are produced on earth by 
 human sin ) Let us speak as we will of the bright 
 and sunny side of the Greek religion, it contained 
 within it, even in this respect alone, the seeds of 
 death. 
 
 II. The Greek religion supplied no well-grounded 
 hope of immortality. From the earliest ages, indeed, 
 it exhibited vague and uncertain traces of a belief 
 that the existence of man did not terminate at death, 
 but too vague and uncertain to exert any real influ- 
 ence upon human hopes or fears. For centuries after 
 the heroic age, these traces become feebler rather than 
 stronger, and nothing can be more dreary than the 
 aspect of the future world set before us in the Homeric 
 poems. Achilles even remarks on one occasion, in 
 the well-known words, that it were better to serve a 
 needy master upon earth than to be lord over all the 
 dead ; and such is the spirit of the poems as a whole. 
 The future world was shadowy, indistinct, unsatisfac- 
 tory, involved in many inconsistencies and contradic- 
 tions. Nor even at its best had it any connection 
 
204 1^^^ Faiths of the World. 
 
 with religion, or with the fate of man as man. 
 Heroes might at times be exalted to the skies, but 
 for the common herd there was absolutely no hope. 
 They had to look upon this world as their all. Re- 
 ward or punishment belonged to a present life alone. 
 Even the rites of sepulture were observed, not so 
 much for the satisfaction -of the living as for the 
 repose of souls which had gone to their final resting- 
 place, and which, so long as they were unburied, had 
 no home. The grave was their only home ; and men 
 were but as the leaves of the trees, green in spring, but 
 soon scattered by the winds of autumn. Nor was it 
 ever otherwise in Greece, taken as a whole. In the 
 earlier epitaphs there may be occasional reference to 
 a future life, but in the later such references disappear, 
 or give way to the language of scepticism or scorn. 
 To the outward eye the Greek world may often seem 
 cheerful, but within it was " full of melancholy." In 
 the midst of its revels it trembled at the thought of 
 the doom that was awaiting it ; despair was at its 
 heart. 
 
 It may be alleged that the "Mysteries" supplied the 
 want of which we have been speaking ; and there is 
 reason to believe that the Eleusinian, or more par- 
 ticularly the Orphic, mysteries did contain an ex- 
 pression, found nowhere else in Greece, of the hope 
 of immortality. The initiated, while celebrating these 
 rites, seem to have anticipated a happy life to come, 
 and to have learned both to live and die more cheer- 
 fully than other men. But the very fact that they 
 were mysteries, and that initiation into them was 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 205 
 
 limited to a few, is a sufficient proof that they exer- 
 cised little influence on the popular religion. How 
 could they do so when the man who revealed their 
 secrets was punished with banishment or death ? 
 
 Nor is there more foundation for the idea that 
 philosophy gradually brought in a better state of 
 things. Even allowing that it accomplished more 
 for the revelation of immortality than it actually did, 
 it was not religion, and it never aimed at taking the 
 place of religion in the popular mind. Practically, 
 the Greek religion did nothing to satisfy the longings 
 of the soul after a better world than the present ; and 
 it could not but perish in a grave, the darkness of 
 which it was unable to dispel. 
 
 III. The religion of Greece was a mere consecra- 
 tion of nature, and of man viewed as a being of this 
 world. In this respect, indeed, it effected much that 
 lends to it a grace and charm unequalled by any 
 other heathen religion. The eye rests with pleasure 
 on the Greek as he traces everywhere around him 
 those well-ordered arrangements, his sense of which 
 expressed itself so powerfully in the very term, kos- 
 mos, by which he named the world. Nor is it less 
 pleasing to mark in him that estimate of the dignity 
 of man, which, though confined to his own people 
 and leading him to think of all others as " barbarians," 
 stirred him up to the manly part he acted alike in 
 the assembly of the demos and in foreign war. But 
 in both cases he looked no further than to the present, 
 the visible, and the sensible. He never rose to the 
 
2o6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 thought of a spirit in man, constituting the deepest 
 element of man's nature, and longing to be set free 
 from limitation, imperfection, and sin. Of sin indeed, 
 in any proper acceptation of the word, he had no 
 sense at all. Everything both in man and nature was 
 divine ; everything both within and without the heart 
 was in itself good — it became bad only by excess. 
 Hence, in humanising his divinities, he did not so 
 much elevate the idea of humanity as debase the idea 
 of divinity. The higher world was brought down 
 to the level of the lower ; and human nature being 
 honoured on its earthward as well as on its heaven- 
 ward side, he could hardly think that what did not 
 dishonour the man dishonoured the god. 
 
 The effect which may be anticipated followed. If 
 men are to take nature as the only guide of life ; if 
 they are to disown the fact, however mysterious, of 
 sin ; if all that is natural is lawful, provided only we 
 keep within such bounds as experience suggests, — it 
 is not difficult to foresee that the obligations of a 
 high morality will soon be cast aside. Never had the 
 thought of the natural dignity of man and of the 
 sacredness of all human feelings a fairer opportunity 
 of showing what they can do for humanity than they 
 had in Greece. The result was disastrous, humiliat- 
 ing, and melancholy failure. A corruption was nour- 
 ished in the Greek world which gradually sapped 
 the foundations of its life. 
 
 Nor was art able to correct the evil. There can be 
 little doubt that the perfection of art in Greece is to 
 be largely traced to those conceptions of the digni- 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 207 
 
 fied and beautiful in man with which the Greek mind 
 was filled. But whether it be so or not, no one will 
 deny that whatever art can do for the refinement 
 and culture of a people, it did there. Probably every 
 one of the 21,000 free inhabitants of Athens was him- 
 self, if not an actual artist, an intelligent admirer, a 
 skilled critic, an enthusiastic devotee, of art. He did 
 not stand before a painting or a statue, gazing at it 
 with the empty stare of most visitors of a modern 
 gallery. Art was his life, his discipline, his joy. I 
 cannot help thinking that the words of the Acts of 
 the Apostles, which tell us that "all the Athenians 
 and the strangers sojourning there spent their time 
 in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new 
 thing," ^ have no reference to ordinary gossip, but to 
 the last important event, the last debate, the last 
 book, the last work of art. Men did not only ap- 
 plaud, they reverenced and worshipped, him who 
 embodied in words, in colour, or in stone, those ideas 
 of the perfectly beautiful in which they floated like 
 birds in the sunlight All that art can do — more 
 perhaps than it will ever do elsewhere — it did in 
 Greece. 
 
 But what did it do ? Art is not religion ; and an 
 admiration of the beautiful is no security for the love 
 of the pure, the virtuous, and the true. On the con- 
 trary, experience teaches that, although the beautiful 
 in spirit always elevates, the merely beautiful in form 
 may, and apart from the spirit does inevitably, tend 
 to degrade and sensualise. Beautiful scenery has 
 ^ Acts xvii. 21. 
 
2o8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 never by itself refined those wlio dwell in the midst 
 of it. Beautiful sights or sounds, when they appeal 
 only to the eye or to the ear, are equally powerless ; 
 nay, they often only strengthen the sensuous tend- 
 encies of our nature. It may be difficult to say why 
 it should be so, but so it is. Probably it is because 
 the art which lives upon material or even intellectual 
 beauty, does not and cannot include within it a full 
 expression of the spiritual, the Divine, in man. Only 
 a Divine power can adequately express the Divine ; 
 and in struggling to give artistic expression to divin- 
 ity, art must to a certain extent lower it. What we 
 need to elevate us must be able to appeal to our 
 deepest or our highest nature. It must therefore 
 be something that cannot be comprehended either in 
 space or time — that cannot be exhausted by the lofti- 
 est effort of the human imagination. It must be some- 
 thing able to come out in ever new strength, in ever 
 fresh forms, as the world goes on or we go on, so that 
 it shall not be a mere well, but " a springing fountain 
 of water, unto eternal life." Thus we need more 
 than art. We need the unlimited, the spiritual, the 
 everlasting. In other words, it is only when, in addi- 
 tion to an art above the world, there is a mind above 
 the world to interpret it, that art can educate us for 
 that kingdom of God which is above the world. Even 
 Christian art in its most spiritual forms will fail to do 
 so, unless we are ourselves able to impart to it. the 
 power by which it may react on us. Thus, because 
 in Greece there was no spiritual religion to elevate 
 art, art limited religion and the spiritual along with 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 209 
 
 it ; and religion, which can live only in the spiritual, 
 languished and expired. 
 
 IV. The religion of ancient Greece made no proper 
 provision for the problems of life and of the world. 
 Had human life been always a holiday — could men 
 have continued to be always children, as they were 
 in the earliest period of Greek history, with no dark 
 problems to solve, and no trials to disturb their peace 
 — all might have been well. But this could not be. 
 Men could not long be children ; life could not long 
 be a holiday. From the first, problems must have 
 presented themselves which required solution ; there 
 must have been difficulties, and, trials, and sorrows to 
 deepen thought, to make men pause, and to lead 
 them to ask the meaning of those darker experiences 
 by which they were constantly overtaken. If this 
 must have been, the case even in the heroic age, 
 much more must it have been the case in the more 
 trying times that followed. In point of fact we 
 know that it was so. Five centuries before Christ 
 there came the great convulsion of the Persian war, 
 — a contest even greater in its results than that of 
 the Maccabees in Judea, or of the Waldenses amidst 
 the hills and valleys of Piedmont, or of the Cove- 
 nanters in the glens and on the moors of Scotland. 
 If the men who fought the battles and achieved the 
 victories of that memorable time, the men who were 
 fired by the recollections of Marathon and Salamis,. 
 had been children before, they could be no longer 
 children. From that hour Greek feeling deepened, 
 
2IO The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Greek life became more real and earnest, and the 
 short space of half a century witnessed an outburst 
 of mental vigour in almost every department of 
 human thought, which made that period not only 
 the most blooming in Grecian history, but one with- 
 out a parallel in the history of the world. How, 
 then, did Greek religion stand the change ? The 
 only answer is, that it utterly and miserably failed. 
 Its want of all traces of a true theology, its puer- 
 ilities, its inability to throw light upon the prob- 
 lems of life, its mocking silence when questioned by 
 the serious mind, not only showed its impotence, 
 but created a gulf between it and the deepest 
 thoughts of man which told that its day was passing. 
 The drama arose, — that splendid drama which, in its 
 three greatest representatives — .iEschylus, Sophocles, 
 and Euripides — taught lessons that, for expressive 
 and tragic power, for penetration into the strange 
 perplexities of human destiny, and for the intensity 
 of its aim to "harmonise the sadness of the universe," 
 remains, and will probably always remain, an un- 
 equalled monument of human genius. We have not, 
 however, to deal here with the drama in itself The 
 inquiry that concerns us is its relation to religion. 
 Now we are not to imagine that the dramatists re- 
 jected the popular theology. They used the ancient 
 legends of the gods, and they could not have accom- 
 plished their work if they had not. No doubt they 
 modified them under the influence of a stronger 
 ethical feeling than had pervaded the old epic, and 
 ./Eschylus was even charged by Plato with impiety 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 2 1 1 
 
 for the extent to which he did so ; yet in the main 
 they preserved the existing mythology. No doubt 
 also the dramatists, so far from being intentionally 
 irreligious, were the reverse. They exhibited a stern 
 morality, a noble pathos in contrasting the wretched- 
 ness of man upon the one hand with his dignity 
 upon the other ; and they traced the Nemesis of Pro- 
 vidence in words that must have burned into the 
 heart. But even with this religious spirit in Greek 
 tragedy, that tragedy did not strengthen the founda- 
 tions of the popular faith. It rather weakened them. 
 It was a proclamation that religion, such as it then 
 was, had not accomplished its mission — that it had 
 not the sterner teaching needed amidst the perplex- 
 ing scenes of life, and that another teaching was 
 required. Apart, therefore, altogether from the fact 
 that the drama treated the legends of the gods as a 
 vehicle for its lessons rather than as actual facts, and 
 that it thus tended to promote the sceptical spirit at 
 last exhibited in Euripides, it was never in Greece 
 the handmaid of the popular religion. It became 
 rather a substitute for religion ; and when those who 
 had entered into its spirit turned from it to the popu- 
 lar mythology, they could not fail to look upon the 
 latter as an empty trifling with great subjects. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said that all this was of no 
 moment if the drama came to take the place of reli- 
 gion, or even proved itself better than religion. But 
 it could do neither. It could not take the place of 
 religion ; for the Greek people felt, as men have every- 
 where felt, that they needed a religion standing in 
 
212 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 its own strength, and independent of all else. They 
 clung, therefore, to the religion handed down to them 
 by their poets, and associated with the glories of their 
 heroic age. Nor' could the drama prove itself better 
 than their religion, for it recognised that religion as 
 its basis. It did not deal with human fate only, but 
 with Divine providence. It connected itself closely 
 with the beings of another world, and made no claim 
 to be a philosophy of life drawn from earthly con- 
 siderations alone, and designed to expel religious con- 
 victions altogether. Its real effect was, therefore, to 
 lead to the breaking up of religion, and to hasten that 
 educative process by which men were to be taught 
 that they needed a higher revelation as to the being 
 and the will of God. 
 
 V. The Greek religion was unable to reconcile it- 
 self with the progress of philosophy. We have seen 
 that the drama, in turning to the serious problems 
 of human life, became a powerful factor in breaking 
 up the ancient religion of Greece. A similar effect 
 was produced by the progress of thought upon those 
 questions of our relations to God and to the world 
 which have always occupied, and must always occupy, 
 the first place in human speculation. Men cannot 
 confine themselves to the things immediately around 
 them. They cannot rest without at least endeavour- 
 ing to pierce the veil which hangs between the visible 
 and the invisible, between this world and a world 
 lying beyond and above it. They instinctively feel 
 that the position of Agnosticism is the refuge of 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 213 
 
 despair, and they cannot willingly abdicate the high- 
 est functions of their nature. It was so in Greece. 
 As society advanced, it was inevitable that thought 
 should be directed both to the deepest questions of 
 the soul, and to the ability of the popular religion to 
 accept the answers of reverent inquiry. But that 
 religion had in it no element of growth. It had 
 become fixed by poetry and art. Its priests and 
 teachers had no share in the best culture of the day, 
 no interest in the progress of investigation, no spirit 
 of allegiance to that great principle of truth which, 
 even under Christianity itself, is always in advance 
 of the forms that express it and the applications that 
 we make of it. They were mere representatives of 
 the- people ; placed where they were by the popular 
 vote ; with no higher duty than to gratify the popular 
 inclination, to defend the popular ritual, and to guard 
 the popular inheritance. 
 
 In the midst of such a system of things thought 
 began to stir. No inquiring mind could rest in the 
 puerile, and not unfrequently revolting, legends of the 
 gods. Doubt necessarily sprang up, to be immedi- 
 ately followed by disbelief From the very first, 
 accordingly, philosophy took up an attitude antago- 
 nistic to religion. It did so even when the philoso- 
 pher simply pursued his own investigations without 
 directly attacking the popular faith, — as when, e.g., 
 Thales of Miletum, the founder of the Ionic school, 
 and the oldest speculator of whom we know any- 
 thing, in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., stripped 
 the Homeric Oceanus of his personality, and repre- 
 
 S 
 
214 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 sented water as simply the element out of which 
 all things were produced ; or as when Heraclitus of 
 Ephesus, at the close of the sixth century B.C., repre- 
 sented Zeus as the all-pervading reason of the world. 
 But it was still more the case when, with the advance 
 of knowledge, the deities of Greece became them- 
 selves the subject of philosophical analysis, and when 
 the myths were criticised in the light of purer and 
 more elevated ideas. Philosophy could then do 
 nothing else but treat with scorn and indignation the 
 mythology which it summoned to the bar of reason. 
 Both Pythagoras and Heraclitus, it is said, declared 
 that Homer ought to be publicly thrust from the 
 assembly and scourged. Xenophanes of Colophon, 
 born 522 B.C., condemned anthropomorphism and 
 polytheism, and charged Homer and Hesiod with 
 ascribing to the gods conduct by which men would 
 be disgraced. Plato would have banished both 
 these poets from his model State, because of the 
 corrupting influence which they exercised upon the 
 minds of the young. Even the honest inquiries of 
 most of the philosophers themselves had no reli- 
 gious interest : their aims were purely scientific ; 
 and it was inevitable that, as science advanced, 
 religion, which could find no room for it, should 
 decline. 
 
 The whole tendency of Greek philosophy was thus 
 to undermine the popular religion ; and the breach 
 between the two continually widened. The former 
 might, indeed, at times encourage the latter ; and it 
 
Religion of Ancient Greece. 215 
 
 was even a saying of Pythagoras that man was at his 
 best when he visited the temples of the gods. But 
 its speculative system was deeper and more power- 
 ful than its tokens of outward respect ; and with it 
 reverence for the gods, or even belief in their exist- 
 ence as they were delineated by poetry and art, was 
 wholly incompatible. The people, on their part, met 
 the attitude of philosophy with hatred and persecu- 
 tion. Anaxagoras and Diogenes had to flee for their 
 lives. Protagoras was banished, and his books were 
 burned. Prodicus was put to death. Aristotle had 
 to become a fugitive from Athens, and the fate of 
 Socrates remains an eternal stain upon the memory 
 alike of the populace and of the judges of that city. 
 Yet philosophy could not fail to make progress even 
 at the expense of religion. When a religion cannot [ 
 embrace scientific truth and ethical ideas in all their \ 
 developments, its doom is certain. Progress in these i 
 departments cannot long be confined to a few. It 
 must gradually penetrate the mass, and that, too, with 
 a power as irresistible as is the light of the sun when 
 he mounts up into the sky, or the breath of spring 
 when it comes with the revolving year. The darkness 
 of night, the snows of winter, must flee before them. 
 Philosophy acted on Greek religion like the drama, 
 and tended to destroy, not to save it. 
 
 It has been said by an eloquent writer of the day,^ 
 
 that what concerns us at the present time is to learn 
 
 how to face the problems of the world with Greek 
 
 serenity. If we have nothing more to face them with, 
 
 1 Symonds, 'The Greek Poets,' 2d series, p. 381. 
 
2i6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 we shall sink before them as Greece did. The great 
 question is, Where is that Divine life to be found 
 which faces all problems without sinking ? Is it to 
 be found in nature or in Christ ? Greece answers 
 that question. She sought it and found it in nature ; 
 and she perished. The search for the Divine in 
 nature alone led to self-abasement ; and 
 
 " Self-abasement paved the way 
 To villain bonds and despot sway. '' 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME. 
 
 By the Rev. James MacGregok, D.D., Senior Minister of 
 St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh. 
 
 IN dealing with so very large a subject as the Re- 
 ligion of Ancient Rome, I shall probably best 
 use the short space at my disposal if, with as little 
 comment as possible, I endeavour to set before you 
 what the Romans believed and how they worshipped. 
 It was the deliberate opinion of their own greatest 
 intellects, that they were the most religious people of 
 their time, and that of all the forces which contrib- 
 uted to their greatness, and which helped them to the 
 mastery of the world, religion was the first. History 
 so far confirms their verdict, and adds, that when 
 they ceased to be religious they ceased to be great. 
 
 T 
 
2i8- The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Twenty-six centuries ago the foundations of Rome 
 were laid with religious ceremonies and by religious 
 men. It is an evidence of the strength of the adoring 
 principle in human nature, that to the influence which 
 it still exerts as the headquarters of the most perfect 
 of all religious organisations, it mainly owes its un- 
 rivalled position among the cities of the world. We 
 never utter the word religion, which by common I 
 consent is universally employed as most accurately I 
 descriptive of the relations which bind man to God, ! 
 without bearing unconscious evidence to the power- 
 ful influence which their religion exerted, not only on 
 the ancient Romans, but on all after-times. 
 
 The Roman religion was to a great extent a pro- 
 duct of native Italian growth, and was coloured by 
 the modes of life and thought which prevailed among 
 the people whose spiritual conceptions it expressed. 
 From the beginning they seem to have been a staid, 
 sober, practical people, not much given to speculation, 
 or to minute inquiry into the nature of their gods, 
 whom all through their history they approached in 
 set forms of worship, and for practical and definite 
 ends. They had little or no creative power. There 
 is hardly a trace among them of that legendary lore 
 in which the other great branches of the Aryan family 
 were so rich : the Greeks, for instance, and our own 
 Celtic and Saxon forefathers. It was a high com- 
 pensation that their religion was more spiritual than 
 that of the Greeks, whose love for form, and for em- 
 bodying their conceptions in form, inevitably led 
 them to humanise their deities, and to regard them 
 
Religion of A ncient Rome. 2 1 g 
 
 as merely colossal and not very exemplary men. 
 The gods of the Romans seem all through to have 
 floated in a finer ether, and to have breathed a purer 
 air. Their relations to men were of a more spirit- 
 ual kind. They seldom came to earth in person, or 
 deigned to enter into personal converse with men. 
 Their voice was heard in the winds and the waters, 
 in the roll of the thunder, and in the roar of tem- 
 pestuous nights. They spoke to man by signs and 
 wonders ; in the entrails of animals and in the flight 
 of birds ; in earthquake, lightning, and eclipse j in the 
 mysterious moan of the windy forest ; and in the hol- 
 low echo of the vaulted cave, — but rarely face to face 
 as a man speaketh with his friend. 
 
 At the very foundation of their religion there lay 
 two profound ideas rooted dee p in every sound- 
 hearted nature — that the spirit of man is in close and 
 conscious relationship with the Spirit of God, and 
 that underneath all phenomena there lies a super- 
 natural element. The deeply reverent nature of the 
 Roman, seeing God first in himself, came to see God 
 in everything. The whole external universe was to 
 him but the manifestation of the divine. While an 
 immense Pantheon of Roman gods opens up to our 
 view, the religion at the bottom was not improbably 
 monotheistic. But as the thought of one all-govern- 
 ing mind, taking cognisance of every thought and 
 action, was too fine and spiritual a conception for his 
 orderly and practical nature, he who knew so well the 
 value of organisation introduced that principle into 
 the domain of the gods ; and, instead of placing all 
 
2 20 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the vast and varied departments of nature and of 
 human affairs under the superintendence of the One 
 Supreme, he felt it more business-like to assign separ- 
 ate departments to separate attributes, or aspects of 
 the Deity; and thus applied to heaven that principle 
 of the division of labour which he found so useful and 
 necessary on earth. He therefore arranged the domain 
 of -the spiritual and unseen as he arranged his domes- 
 tic and State affairs, assigning the higher departments 
 to the greater gods, and the less important to those 
 of lower rank, until every portion of the vast realm 
 of nature — sun and moon and stars, rivers and hills, 
 trees and flowers, birds and beasts ; every department 
 of human labour — buying and selling, sowing and 
 reaping ; every stage of human life — birth, marriage, 
 death, — each and all had their own presiding deities. 
 In the same way, the varying conditions of the human 
 body, and the different affections of the human mind 
 — health and sickness, joy and sorrow, faith and love, 
 hope and fear, virtue and vice — were elevated into 
 so many distinct objects of worship. There was a 
 god of thieves ; there was a god of drains and of evil 
 smells. When we read of deities who had one spe- 
 cial function to perform, and who are never heard 
 of in any other relation — such as the god Vatican- 
 us, who impelled the child to its first cry, and the 
 god Fabulinus, who taught it to lisp its first word — 
 we can hardly doubt that these were regarded not 
 as separate and distinct personalities, but simply as 
 the various attitudes or relations which the Deity 
 bears to the creatures he has made. We can quite 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 221 
 
 understand how, with such views, the Roman had no 
 more difficulty in effecting changes in his Pantheon 
 than in his home or State arrangements, displacing 
 one god for another more in favour or in fashion at 
 the time, or admitting new deities from other lands 
 with the same ease with which he admitted their 
 merchandise to his markets. While he certainly 
 seems to have endowed each separate individual of 
 his multitudinous deities with a sort of vague person- 
 ality, it is in the highest degree probable that they 
 were to him no more than attributes, or, at the 
 highest, representatives or vicegerents of that one 
 supreme and absolute Being who was to him the un- 
 known and the unknowable One. There are many 
 indications that such was the case. One is the com- 
 mon use of the word numen, to describe not so much 
 any distinct or personal being as Divinity in the 
 abstract. Another is the strange and significant 
 formula with which, on great occasions, the officiating 
 priest addressed the Deity : " Sive mas, sive femina, 
 si deus, si dea : quisquis es ; sive quo alio nomine 
 fas est appellare." " Be thou god or goddess, man 
 or woman : whoever thou art ; or by whatever name 
 it is right to call thee." At the foot of the Palatfne 
 there stands an altar of travertine, dedicated to the 
 unknown God, on which this ancient inscription can 
 still be read — " Sei deo sei deivse sacrum." 
 
 It was prophetic of the social qualities and of the 
 sober virtues which were to characterise the greatest 
 people of the ancient world — of that reverence for the 
 domestic relationship and for the purity of domestic 
 
222 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 life on which, as its one solid basis, national greatness 
 must ever rest — that the earliest, the most persistent 
 and lasting of all the forms of their religion, was 
 the worship of the spirits of their dead, and that the 
 oldest of their deities^ the mother-god of Rom.e, was 
 the goddess of the hearth. What was it, and how 
 did it arise ? Of the earliest peopling of Italy we 
 have no knowledge whatever. As far back as trust- 
 worthy information goes, we find the Italian branch of 
 the great Aryan family already inhabiting the middle 
 part of the beautiful peninsula, and isolated by sea 
 and mountain from the rest of the world. Language 
 would seem to indicate, that before the Grseco-Italian 
 stock broke off from the parent stem, they were so 
 far acquainted with the cultivation of the soil, and had 
 united the agricultural to the pastoral life. The mov- 
 able tent of the wandering shepherd had already given 
 place to the fixed hearth — the sacred shrine of the 
 husbandman. If we could enter one of those ancient 
 Roman dwellings we should see a rude central cham- 
 ber called the atrium, which served as the family 
 kitchen and dining-room. In this chamber was the 
 focus or hearth, and by the hearth, or forming part of 
 it, an altar, on which burned night and day the sacred 
 fire. The last duty at night was to cover it up, the 
 first duty in the morning to feed its holy flame. It 
 was extinguished only once a-year, on the ist of 
 March, and immediately rekindled by rubbing pieces 
 of dry wood together, or by concentrating the rays 
 of the sun. That sacred fire, with the ideas which 
 gathered round it, lay at the root of the political 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 223 
 
 institutions and the moral greatness and strength of 
 Rome. If we look a little way beyond the house, but 
 as near as sanitary considerations will permit, we 
 see another noticeable object which may help us to 
 understand what that fire signified. It is the family 
 tomb, in which the members of the household were 
 successively laid, and where at stated seasons the liv- 
 ing gathered not only to honour, but to entertain and 
 to feast, the dead. Among the primitive Romans, 
 as through every branch of that great Aryan family 
 from whom they and we have sprung, we find a 
 firm and settled belief in an existence after death. 
 The thought of extinction was with them not only 
 an abhorrence, it was an impossibility. When they 
 contemplated that last and greatest of all earthly 
 mysteries, the awful and everlasting mystery of 
 death, they had the same unconquerable difficulty 
 which we have in believing that their beloved dead 
 were dead for evermore. In their simple way they 
 fancied that, along with the dead body, the living 
 soul was laid in the grave, and that the abode of the 
 one was the home of the other. Hence the dead 
 were conceived to be in need of nourishment ; a belief 
 which prevails among the Red Indians of to-day, 
 one of whose most sacred duties is to visit at least 
 once a-year the burial-place of the dead, and place 
 food and drink within their reach. In the depth 
 of the severest winter an Indian will travel hun- 
 dreds of miles to perform this office of filial piety. 
 Hence also arose the need of the rites of sepulture, 
 the neglect of which, as entailing eternal restlessness, 
 
2 24 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 was the greatest calamity which the living could in- 
 flict upon the dead. From the conviction that the 
 departed were living, it was a short and easy step for 
 a primitive people to believe that they were in a sense 
 divine ; and thus, as the laws of Manou declare, the 
 first gods whom'the Aryans worshipped were the spirits 
 of the dead, and their first altar and temple were the 
 grave. The forefathers of the Greek and Roman 
 people carried that faith with them in all their wander- 
 ings, till it took root in the beautiful lands where they 
 permanently settled and lived on through all their 
 social and political changes, till paganism was swept 
 away. " Let the rights of the deities of the dead," said 
 Cicero, " be considered sacred ; let those who pass 
 into the world of souls be considered as deified." It 
 was these Manes, or spirits of the dead, who had' 
 been duly set free from bondage by religious cere- 
 monies, and who, like the elves of our own land, 
 hovered round the homes which they had once 
 inhabited, whom the ancient Romans worshipped 
 under the emblem of the sacred and ever-living fire. 
 There was an important class of beings peculiar to 
 their religion, the Lares and Penates, who were 
 probably these Manes under a later name. They 
 were the doinestic deitieSj the tutelary guardians of 
 private and domestic life. They expressed the inborn 
 reverence of the Roman for the sanctities of marriage, 
 of the nuptial bed, of the birth of children, and of 
 all domestic relationships. Each household had its 
 own Lares, each man his own guardian angel, who, 
 as the genitis tiatalis, was worshipped by him on his 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 225 
 
 natal day as the fruitful author of life and all its joys. 
 Our English word "genial" has wandered only a lit- 
 tle way from its original meaning of exuberant and 
 generous fertility. So closely connected were these 
 deities with the sacred fire, that in later times their 
 names became interchangeable. It was essentially a 
 domestic worship, at which no stranger was allowed 
 to be present. As the gods of the household were its 
 own departed members, they could be the gods of no 
 other family. The house was the only temple, the 
 hearth the only altar, the family the only worshippers, 
 and, throughout the whole period of Roman history, 
 in the highest sense of the term, the father the only 
 priest. It was this ancient principle that the father 
 was the priest of the family, with whose rights to 
 prescribe and to practise the worship of the house- 
 hold no one could interfere, which inseparably asso- 
 ciated in the later Roman mind the idea of the Caesar 
 as at once Pontifex Maximus and Imperator, the 
 high priest and the father of the State. It was this 
 same principle which lent such vast importance to 
 the conversion of Constantine, and made it so power- 
 ful a factor in completing the victory of Christianity. 
 Around that family altar the ancient Romans gath- 
 ered for morning and evening worship : there incense 
 and sacrifice were offered ; there libations were made; 
 there prayers were said before and after every meal, 
 a part of which was duly burned as the allotted por- 
 tion of the Deity. He and they, so to speak, took 
 their meals together, and every repast became an act 
 of worship. This simple faith seems thus to have 
 
2 26 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 sanctified every stage of human existence, every act 
 and event of domestic life. It consecrated the mys- 
 tery of birth as introducing the little child into a 
 living and everlasting connection with his father's 
 gods. It made marriage the most solemn of all re- 
 ligious rites, by withdrawing the woman from the 
 worship and protection of the gods of the family 
 of her father, and placing her under the guardian- 
 ship of the gods of the family of her husband. The 
 oldest and the most solemn of the Roman marriage- 
 rites was that known as the confarreatio. When the 
 young bride, crowned and veiled, was led to the house 
 of her . husband, the marriage-rite was performed by 
 the contracting ps^rties, in the presence of witnesses, 
 and before the father as priest, offering far or grain 
 at the family hearth, and eating together a cake of 
 flour. Not only did his people become her people, 
 but his gods her gods, and his hearth henceforth her 
 only shrine. It was this profoundly religious element, 
 underlying the whole domestic system, which gave to 
 marriage that sanctity which it preserved for ages 
 among the Romans, and which formed one of the 
 principal factors of their national strength. It made 
 the conjugal tie the strongest, the holiest, and the 
 most permanent of all earthly unions. It dignified 
 the domestic virtues with the character and the name 
 of piety. It made second marriages unpopular, adul- 
 tery rare, divorce difficult, and polygamy impossible. 
 It was a system, too, which bound by the closest tie 
 the living and the dead, the human and the divine. 
 Thus over all the relations of life — over birth and 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 227 
 
 death, over all the activities and sufferings which lay 
 between, as well as all the hopes which lay beyond — 
 there was thrown, from time immemorial, the mantle 
 of religion, the sanctity of the presiding family gods. 
 Out of this strong, ancient, and far-spreading root 
 of domestic piety, the powerful physique and the 
 healthy mental and moral nature of the Roman 
 grew : out of it his religious, civil, and political insti- 
 tutions took their rise, their shape and form. The 
 family was the basis of the city, and the city the 
 basis of the State, which, in its fundamental concep- 
 tion, was merely one large family or aggregation of 
 families. It naturally' followed that the State, too, 
 should have its tutelary deities, its Lares prcestites, 
 and its Penates publici, its sacred hearth and fire, 
 identified in the goddess Vesta or 'Eo-Tta. No visitor 
 to Rome will forget those three columns in the 
 Forum, of Parian marble and of exquisite proportion, 
 which are all that now remain of the temple of 
 Castor and Pollux, who are supposed to have been 
 ^'t Penates populi Romani. Close by these columns 
 is the spot which beheld the first beginnings of his- 
 toric Rome. When dim tradition gives place to 
 something like authentic history, when the Latin 
 people of the Palatine and the Sabine people of the 
 Quirinal, united into one, have formed the Roman 
 State, we find standing there a circular temple. or 
 rotunda with its sacred grove climbing up the slopes 
 of the Palatine. There too, and forming part of it, 
 was the Regia, the dwelling, first of the king as the 
 high priest, and afterwards' of the sovereign Pontifif 
 
228 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 and the Vestal virgins. It was the most sacred spot 
 of the city, the common heart and hearth of Rome. 
 There burned the sacred everlasting fire, the symbol 
 of the life, the purity, and the strength of the nation, 
 whose extinction, from whatever cause, was regarded 
 as a great national calamity. To keep that pure 
 flame burning night and day, and the shrine around 
 it spotlessly clean; to offer the necessary sacrifices 
 to the mother-god; to guard the sacred relics which 
 were preserved within the temple, especially that most 
 precious possession of the Roman people, the pledge 
 of their permanent supremacy, the fatale pignus im- 
 perii, the Palladium of Troy, — there was established 
 a pecuhar priesthood, which, for purity, dignity, and 
 sacredness, held the first place among the religious 
 orders of Rome. It was that of the Vestal vir- 
 gins, six in number, chosen by the sovereign Pontiff 
 from maidens of the highest patrician rank between 
 the ages of six and ten, perfectly sound in body and 
 in mind, born of free parents who were then alive, 
 whose dwelling was in Italy, and who had been 
 married according to the most ancient rite of confar- 
 reatio. After taking the vow of chastity and consecra- 
 tion, they were solemnly conducted by the Pontiff to 
 the temple. Their period of service was for not less 
 than thirty years, ten of which were spent in learning 
 the duties of their office, ten in performing them, and 
 ten in teaching them to others. Clad in simple attire, 
 with short-cut hair, scrupulously modest in their 
 deportment and chaste in their life, they spent these 
 thirty consecrated and laborious years within the 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 229 
 
 precincts of the temple. Though they were then free 
 to return to the duties of civil life, and even to marry, 
 such was the reverence of the people for their chas- 
 tity, that such marriages were strongly condemned 
 by public opinion, and were rarely contracted. So 
 exalted, indeed, was the popular conception of their 
 purity, that while they pitilessly punished the viola- 
 tion of the vow of chastity by scourging the man to 
 death and burying the Vestal alive, as a compensation 
 for this righteous severity they attached to the office 
 the highest possible honour and distinction. The 
 Vestals took a prominent part in all high religious 
 festivals : magistrates of the highest rank made way 
 for them on the street : if they chanced to pass a 
 criminal on his way to execution, he was instantly 
 released : in the public games they occupied the seat 
 of honour next to the emperor : within the sacred pre- 
 cincts of their dwelling no foot could enter but that 
 of the sovereign Pontiff. That Vestal worship of 
 the sacred fire, the emblem and the guardian of the 
 purity of the home and the piety of the nation — 
 which had its origin, as we have seen, in the deifica- 
 tion of the spirits of the dead — continued through a 
 thousand years as the most distinctly national form 
 of Roman worship, and was the last to yield to the 
 triumphant progress of Christianity. Even then it 
 was not destroyed, but only transformed, passing 
 from the Lares and Penates of the pagan to the 
 tutelary saints and guardian angels of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 Along with this primitive and specially character- 
 
230 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 istic form of religion, which had its origin in the con- 
 templation of the mystery of his own being, there 
 was another common to the Roman and to the race 
 from which he sprang, which had its origin in the 
 contemplation of the mystery of the world in which 
 he found himself. From the thought of a spirit within 
 himself, he early rose to the higher conception of a 
 universal spirit in nature. As that part of nature 
 which ever has been and ever will be most impressive 
 to the imagination of man for beauty, grandeur, and 
 stability, is the great vault of heaven, the race-course 
 of the clouds, the battle-ground of storm and thunder, 
 the source of light and darkness, the home of the life- 
 giving sunshine and rain, it came early to be regarded 
 not merely as the abode of the great Spirit, but as the 
 great Spirit himself, the celestial father, Divus or 
 Diovis pater, Diespiter, Jupi ter, the king of heaven. 
 Although in course of time his functions, attributes, 
 and names came, by a process of dissection, to be in- 
 dividualised and elevated into so many independent 
 divinities, still all through, as optimus maximus^ the 
 highest and the best, he was to the Romans the one 
 living and true God. While in point of fact there 
 came to be a multitude of Jupiters, who, to all intents 
 and purposes, were separate gods, he was in reality, as 
 Augustine believed, simply the supreme being in his 
 highest functions and attributes, the great author of 
 light and life, the ruler of gods and men. Along 
 with him were associated other divinities who were 
 generally classified according to the departments of 
 nature over which they ruled. They were known. 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 
 
 2\\ 
 
 e.g., as the superi et inferi; as the celestial, the ter- 
 restrial, and the infernal ; as certi, incerti, et selecti, &c. 
 Of these the principal were the twelve Dii majorum 
 gentium, thus summed up by Ennius : — 
 
 Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, 
 Mercurius, Jovis, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo. 
 
 They also took the name of Dii consentes, as forming 
 the supreme council of state for universe affairs. It 
 will be seen that, as in all religions founded on natur- 
 alism, the principle of sex obtains, and that these 
 highest gods are equally divided between male and 
 female. If the all-embracing and kindly heavens were 
 deified in Jupiter, their most splendid and beneficent 
 occupant the sun, was deified in a god peculiar to 
 Italy. This was the double-faced Janus (Dianus, 
 the masculine of Jana = Diana or the moon goddess), 
 looking eastward and westward, the opener and the 
 closer of the day, the beginning and the end of all 
 created things. He was worshipped every morning 
 as Matutinus Pater, the father of the Dawn : the first 
 QX opening month of the year was_sacred to him, and 
 still bears his nam£. The gates of his temple, ever 
 open during war as the refuge and sanctuary of the 
 struggling people, were, when universal peace pre- 
 vailed, shut to retain the blessing. There were no 
 gods older or more essentially Italian than Janus and 
 Vesta : as Vesta closed so Janus opened every cata- 
 logue and list of the gods. The one was usually in- 
 voked at the beginning and the other at the end of 
 acts of worship and of sacrifice. As Jupiter was the 
 king, so Juno or Jovino (the feminine of Jovis) was 
 
232 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the queen of heaven, the supreme being on the 
 female side, the goddess of woman, her protector 
 through every stage of life, and especially as Pro- 
 nuba, the patroness of marriage, and the jealous 
 guardian of its purity. The month of June, which 
 bears her name, is still the favourite marrying month. 
 In her great annual festival, the Matronalia, which 
 took place on the ist of March, the original Roman 
 New- Year's Day, no woman of blemished character 
 was allowed to take any part. 
 
 Another purely Italian god of high antiquity, and 
 ranking next in honour to great Jove himself, was 
 Father Mars, Mavors, or Marspiter, the divine pro- 
 genitor of the Roman people, and the personification 
 of their warlike propensities. Originally the god of 
 agriculture and the spring-time, with its new and 
 exuberant life, he gave the name which it still retains 
 to March, the first month of the ancient Roman year. 
 War, which, next to agriculture, became their principal 
 occupation, came early under his protection ; and as 
 Gradivus, whose step they heard before them in the 
 battle-field, and whose shield and lance were preserved 
 within the Regia, he led them on to a thousand 
 victories. It was his name that was invoked before 
 resolving on a campaign : it was to his shrine that 
 the commander-in-chief repaired, and cried, " Mars, 
 vigila ! " — Mars, awake ! — it was to him that sacrifices 
 were offered and prayers were made, amid the dead 
 and the dying, when the bloody field was won. If 
 the spdia opima went to Jupiter, the spoils next in 
 importance went to Mars. 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 233 
 
 Minerva, whose name is supposed to bear some 
 relation to mens (mind), was a virgin goddess of 
 Italian origin, the personification of intelligence, and, 
 as such, the perpetual President of the Senate, 
 the patroness of the useful and ornamental arts, 
 and of science and scholarship in general. She 
 must have been especially dear to schoolboys, as 
 during her festival of five days in March all schools 
 were closed, and books laid aside. Bearing a strong 
 resemblance to the IlaAAas 'A^jjvij of the Greeks, she 
 gradually assumed her attributes and became con- 
 founded with that deity. Along with Juno she be- 
 came the inseparable companion of Jupiter Optimus 
 Maximus, in the great temple erected on the Capitol, 
 B.C. 507. These three deities, the personification of 
 power, wisdom, and purity, continued to be the great 
 triad of the Capitol, the supreme guardians of the 
 Roman State, until, in its pagan form, it ceased to 
 be. Those now mentioned may be considered as 
 the most prominent and most permanent occupants 
 of the Roman Pantheon. Peculiar to the Romans, 
 though corresponding somewhat to the Greek heroes, 
 were a set of demigods known as Semones (semiho- 
 mines, half men) and Dii indigetes, who were simply 
 men indigenous to the soil, and who, as a mark of 
 their eminent services, were raised to the rank of 
 deities. Their notions of the under world were vague 
 in the extreme. Its arrangements and government 
 belonged to Orcus or Dispater : Nsenia was the god 
 of the death-wail : Viduus separated the body from 
 the soul: Orcus gave the dying the fatal stroke, and 
 
 U 
 
234 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 conducted the soul to the shades below. The rich 
 mythology which Greece gathered around the dark 
 realm v/as, until later times, quite unknown to 
 Rome. 
 
 In its earlier and purer days its gods were com- 
 paratively few in number, and, with vague and ill- 
 defined attributes, were little better than abstractions. 
 But as time wore on, and national life expanded, and 
 intercourse with other nations increased, this early 
 simplicity died away. It was contact with Greece, 
 with its sharper and more anthropomorphic concep- 
 tions, which exerted the most fatal influence on the 
 original purity of Roman faith. The legends and 
 fables of an ample mythology, the influences of a 
 rich literature and drama, and of a profound philoso- 
 phy, made silent but steady progress among a people 
 who had no legends, nor literature, nor philosophy of 
 their own. The attributes of the Greek gods were 
 easily transferred to those of Rome, until their orig- 
 inal character entirely disappeared. Although it 
 was long before his worship took firm root, Apollo 
 the healer and saviour became a thoroughly Roman 
 deity. Venus and her voluptuousness ; Diana in her 
 triple personality as Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, 
 and Proserpina or Hecate in hell ; Ceres, the goddess 
 of corn, who came from Sicily, and attained to very 
 high importance ; Dionysus and Persephone, under 
 the names of Liber and Libera ; Neptunus, the ruler 
 of the sea, — all these were deities whose character and 
 functions were transported from Greece, and engrafted 
 upon original Latin stems. Towards the end of the 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 235 
 
 Republic, another and greater change for the worse 
 came over the Roman reh'gion. There is abundant 
 evidence that the old faith had begun to lose its hold 
 alike upon the higher intellects and upon the popular 
 mind. Scepticism and indifference must have deeply 
 permeated all classes of society, before the ancient 
 gods could have been safely laughed at on the stage. 
 But the surest index of decay was the introduction on 
 a vast scale of the strange gods of the East. It could 
 not be laid to the charge of the old gods that they 
 had not done their duty by the State. For it was 
 when the world was at its feet that the great republic 
 fell, and fell because ancient patriotism had gone with 
 ancient piety, burying in its ruins the last remains of 
 both. In the weariness of spirit, in the sickness of 
 heart begotten of that bloody time, men sought relief 
 in a blank atheism on the one hand, and in a feverish 
 quest of strange gods and strange rites on the other. 
 Nor could it be said that there was not enough of 
 gods already, for it was a common saying that there 
 were more gods in Rome than men, and more idols 
 than worshippers. Rooted in polytheism lies the 
 tendency to an indefinite multiplication of deities. 
 In man-made religions, fashion changes as it does in 
 other things. During any great public calamity, such 
 as pestilence or civil war, which their own gods seemed 
 unable or unwilling to avert, it was natural that men 
 should try the effect of an application to strange gods, 
 who, in addition to having denied them fewer requests, 
 had all the charm which attaches to the new and the 
 strange. As early as 1 86 B.C., the foul abominations 
 
236 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 in connection with Bacchanalianism had spread to 
 such an extent, that more than 7000 persons, and 
 among them ladies of the highest rank, were found 
 to have taken part in them, the half of whom had to 
 be put to death before the system was suppressed. 
 But the evil grew apace. The people, tired of their 
 own gods, transferred their affections to those of 
 Egypt and of Asia. The Phrygian Cybele had been 
 followed by the Egyptian Isis, whose mysterious 
 rites seem to have had an irresistible charm ; and • 
 later on by the dog-headed Anubis, and the great 
 sun-god Serapis. Belus came from Babylon, and 
 Mithras from Persia. The East poured in its mon- 
 grel deities in such hordes, that the poet represents 
 Mercury as at his wits' end to know where to place 
 them. As early as the reign of Augustus even 
 Jehovah found a place in the Roman Pantheon, and 
 Jewish rites were practised side by side with the 
 abominations of obscene deities. The lifelong at- 
 tempt of Augustus to restore the ancient faith to 
 something like its pristine purity, arrested for a while 
 the process of decay. But when the highest gods of 
 the State came to be the departed spirits of monsters 
 like Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, it was evident that 
 the end was not very far away. 
 
 From the faith let us pass to the worship and its 
 ministers. To an extent almost incredible, and which 
 was certainly not exceeded by any ancient people 
 that we know of, with the exception of the Jews, 
 worship entered into every act of a Roman's life^' 
 private, domestic, social, and public, In the case of 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 237 
 
 both peoples the sacred and the civil were inseparably 
 combined : religion and politics went hand in hand : 
 the Church and the State were one. To an extent 
 which Judaism did not surpass, it was a worship of 
 burdensome rites and ceremonies, — a worship of the 
 letter, and not of the spirit. It was essentially a 
 formal official act due at once to God and to the 
 State, whose object was to secure some substantial 
 public or private benefit, and whose virtue lay in its 
 strict performance according to appointed rule, and 
 not in any inward emotion or discipline or disposi- 
 tion of soul. What he believed and how he felt- was 
 with the Roman a matter of small concern compared 
 with how he worshipped. It was the ceremony itself, 
 and not the spirit which prompted it, which he con- 
 ceived to have power with God. The thought of 
 communion between the human spirit and thedivine 
 is a Christian conception, vvliich probably never en- 
 tered the Roman mind. In all acts of worship 
 prayer held a prominent place ; without it no re- 
 ligious observance whatever could be of any avail. 
 Yet it seems rarely, if ever, to have taken the form 
 of supplication for spiritual or moral blessing. That 
 vast sphere of Christian petition was quite a blank. 
 It was customary for the person engaged in prayer 
 to cover his ears, and when offering sacrifice to cover 
 his whole head with his robe, not so much to express 
 reverence or to prevent distraction, as to insure that 
 no word or sight of evil omen could possibly reach 
 him. He expressed his adoration, as the word testi- 
 fies, by raising his right hand to his mouth and kiss- 
 
238 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ing it. — (Job xxxi. 27.) After turning once com- 
 pletely round to the right, in imitation of the re- 
 volving world, he stood with his face to the east, 
 raising his hands up if his prayer was to the gods 
 above ; if to the gods below, he knelt down and 
 touched the earth with his hands. But the one 
 essential thing in prayer was the correct repetition, in 
 a clear and distinct voice, of the prescribed formula as 
 it was preserved from ancient times in the books of 
 ritual, known as the Index-books or Indigitamenta, in 
 which were contained the lists of the gods, with their 
 appropriate titles. Each god had his own mode of 
 worship definitely fixed, and his own formula of 
 prayer hallowed by the use of ages. The change of 
 a single syllable, the omission or wrong pronuncia- 
 tion of a single word, was a dishonour to the deity, 
 and rendered the service worse than worthless. This 
 rigid adherence to ancient and traditional forms was 
 characteristic of the orderly and law-abiding Romans, 
 and was one of the many legacies which they left to 
 their Christian successors : the value attached to 
 frequent repetitions of the same prayer was another. 
 So important was this accuracy in the use of words, 
 that it was usual on solemn occasions for a functionary 
 to stand by with an open book, and watch that no 
 word was omitted or misplaced, in which case the 
 service must be resumed from the beginning. An 
 invocation to the gods generally, or taken in the 
 lump, " Deos confuse" or "generaliter invocare" viz.s 
 the usual ending of prayer. 
 
 It was due more to religious purity than to want 
 
Religion of A ncient Rome. 2 39 
 
 of artistic power that in the earlier Roman worship 
 God was adored under no outward form or semblance 
 whatever ; and, instead of temples made with hands, 
 in His own great natural shrines, amid the mysterious 
 gloom of mighty forests, on the smoky mountain-tops, 
 in the cave on the hillside where the full-bodied 
 stream was born, or by the fountain in the hollow 
 bubbling up among the flowers. Even as late as 
 Numa the Roman disdained the use of any material 
 structures or architectural display in the worship of 
 God: with the open air for his canopy, and a rude 
 turf bench for his altar, he offered his simple sacri- 
 fice. Though this simplicity soon passed away, and 
 temples were reared and images employed, they 
 came not from within but from without, as part of 
 that Hellenic influence which began under the Tar- 
 quins, and of which Cicero spoke as pouring into 
 Rome not in a tiny rivulet, but in a broad and over- 
 powering -stream. 
 
 Sacrifice, bloody and unbloody, formed an im- 
 portant element of worship. On all great public 
 occasions, such as the taking of the census or the 
 commencement of a campaign, and on important 
 private occasions, such as marriage, it was of the 
 former kind. The regulations for its due perform- 
 ance, whether as an act of thanksgiving or of pro- 
 pitiation and expiation, or as a mode of ascertain- 
 ing the divine will, were so numerous and minute, 
 that to acquire a knowledge of them formed no in- 
 considerable part of the education of a priest. Each 
 god had his own animal as the victima or hostia, the 
 
240 The Faiths 0/ the World. 
 
 goddesses usually preferring females — those offered 
 to the celestial gods being generally white, and sacri- 
 ficed by day, while those offered to the infernal gods 
 were very properly black, and were sacrificed by 
 night. In selecting the proper animal, which must 
 be free from spot or blemish, the points were as 
 numerous and as carefully considered as in the 
 selection of a bull for a Spanish bull-fight, or of the 
 prize ox at a modern cattle -show. There were 
 special breeds as famous for the Roman as for the 
 Spanish purpose. One animal, as a rule, sufficed ; 
 but not infrequently the number far exceeded that — 
 a common sacrifice, known by the comprehensive 
 name of suovetaurilia, being a sow, a sheep, and a 
 bull, which, before being slaughtered, were led three 
 times round the persons or objects for which expia- 
 tion was made. The persons sacrificing, along with 
 the priest and his assistants, after bathing in running 
 water, appeared, as a symbol of purity, in clean white 
 garments before the altar, which always stood in the 
 open air in front of the principal entrance to the 
 temple, and so near that the image of the god whose 
 nostrils were to be regaled by the smell was black- 
 ened by the smoke. The behaviour of the animal, 
 as, gaily adorned with ribbons, it was led to or stood 
 before the altar, where it was at once unbound, was 
 eagerly watched, as affording good or evil omens. 
 Flour mixed with salt, called mola salsa, was sprin- 
 kled over the altar, the knife, and the forehead of 
 the victim, from which a bunch of hair was cut, 
 and, along with wine and incense, cast into the 
 
Religion of A ncient Rome. 241 
 
 fire. After prayer by the person sacrificing, the ani- 
 mal, at a sign from the priest, was struck down by 
 the victimarius, who then cut or pierced its throat 
 upwards if to the gods above, and downwards if to 
 the gods below. The blood having been sprinkled 
 on the altar, the most momentous part of the pro- 
 ceedings began. This was the minute examination 
 of the entrails by the Haruspex, of whom Cato 
 remarked, probably with justice, that no two of them 
 could look at each other without laughing. If the 
 state of the entrails declared that the omens were 
 favourable, and that the god was appeased, they 
 were sprinkled with wine and incense, and burned 
 upon the altar. If the result were unfavourable, the 
 sacrifice must be renewed, until the god declared 
 himself satisfied. 
 
 While Roman religion recognised no priestly caste 
 as a mediator between God arid man, and ordained 
 that the father, the magistrate, or the general should 
 offer the prayer and the sacrifice, it wks manifestly 
 necessary that for the due observance of so cumber- 
 some a worship, and of so minute and intricate a 
 ritual, there should be a specially educated order 
 of men. In the ancient and admirable institutions 
 ascribed to Numa, the Moses of Roman law and 
 religion, we find various religious bodies or corpora- 
 tions holding a prominent place. Of these the ear- 
 liest, the most eminent, and lasting — for it not only 
 lingered on till the .latest days of paganism, but, 
 under certain modifications, it still survives as the 
 most illustrious corporation on earth — was the Col- 
 
242 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 lege of Pontiffs. As originally composed, it consisted 
 of four persons, all of the patrician order, and mem- 
 bers for life, with the right of electing to all vacancies. 
 To these, in 300 B.C., four plebeians were added, the 
 number being increased under Sylla, in B.C. 81, to 
 fifteen, at or near which it continued till the end. Of 
 this college the Pontifex Maximus, elected at first 
 by and from among its members, and afterwards by 
 the sovereign voice of the people, was the perpetual 
 president, and as such invested with supreme power 
 over the entire religion, worship, and priesthood of 
 the State. The college had no relation whatever to 
 any one deity or set of deities, or to any one religi- 
 ous rite. The marvellous power of the Romans in 
 organisation can nowhere be better seen than in the 
 appointment of this irresponsible, supreme, and cen- 
 tral court, with absolute jurisdiction and control over 
 the whole vast domain of the spiritual ; " rerum quas 
 ad sacra et religiones pertinent judices et vindices." 
 In all matters pertaining to the administration of 
 religious rites, forms of worship, sacrifice, sacred days, 
 and festivals, the admission of foreign gods with 
 their cultus, the ceremonies at birth, marriage, and 
 burial, the conduct of the priesthood, &c., — their 
 power was supreme, and their decision final. All 
 official documents relating to religion were in their 
 hands ; and of all laws relating to it, whether written 
 or unwritten, they were the guardians and interpret- 
 ers, and had the sole power of legislation in all such 
 matters. Clad in the toga prcetexta, a purple-bor- 
 dered robe, and wearing a conical woollen cap, they 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 243 
 
 were present at all great public ceremonies, and pre- 
 sided and read prayers at the opening of the comitia 
 and other important civil assemblies. The Pontifex 
 Maximus had his official residence in the Regia, as 
 his successor lives in the Vatican. Like the high 
 priest of the Jews, whom he resembled in so many- 
 respects, his person and office were surrounded with 
 the utmost sanctity ; and the reverence which the 
 people showed for the emperors was due to the fact 
 that they all, from Augustus to Theodosius, were 
 sovereign Pontiffs. 
 
 We owe to the Romans not only the arrangements 
 of the civil but the idea of the sacred year. Each 
 season was ushered in and welcomed with its appro- 
 priate religious festival, the arrangements of which 
 fell naturally into the hands of the Pontifical College, 
 and, as a source at once of profit and of power, was 
 jealously guarded by them from all external inter- 
 ference for a period of 400 years. Our Saxon fore- 
 fathers gave us the names of four of the days of the 
 week; the other three, with the names of all the 
 months, came from the Romans. Every time we use 
 the words September, &c., we have on our lips the 
 evidence of that practical and prosaic nature which 
 led them to call the months by numbers, not by 
 names ; and the still existing proof that there was a 
 time when the year, which was originally lunar, and 
 composed of menses, moons, or months, began not in 
 January, but in March. When on that month the 
 thin disc of the crescent moon first showed itself in 
 a faint line to the watcher on the Capitol, as to the 
 
244 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Jewish priest on the hills of Palestine, a sacrifice 
 was duly offered, and the people called to worship 
 {calata plehe, whence calends and calendar), when 
 they sang an ancient hymn, beginning "Jana no- 
 vella," and public announcement was made of the 
 number of days which intervened before the nojtes, 
 when festivals were to be held ; what days were 
 fasti or lawful, and what nefasti or unlawful. 
 As the lunar year does not correspond with the 
 solar, it lay with them to determine what and how 
 many should be the intercalary days required to 
 bring the one into some correspondence with the 
 other. The whole civil and religious arrangements 
 of the year affecting public worship on the one 
 hand, and business transactions on the other, were 
 thus absolutely in their hands, and were annually 
 recorded in an official register, called the Calendar, 
 or the Sacri Fasti, in which, as in our modern 
 almanac, which it closely resembled, important pub- 
 lic events were noted down. In the course of time 
 the calendar fell into such hopeless confusion — one 
 year having actually extended to 445 days — that 
 Julius Caesar, as Pontifex Maximus, took the matter 
 in hand, and put it very much on the scientific basis 
 on which it now stands, — the eminent service which 
 he thus rendered his country and the world receiving 
 everlasting commemoration in the name of the month 
 July . That the year did not begin, as it ought to 
 have done, at the winter solstice, the happy turning- 
 point from gathering gloom to gathering light, when 
 the sun begins his march of blessing to the northern 
 
RHigion of Ancient Rome. 245 
 
 nations, was due to the fact that the religious feelings 
 of the people were stronger than the iron will of the 
 dictator. As in B.C. 46 the new moon, which marked 
 to them and to their fathers the beginning of their 
 months and years, appeared at Rome eight days after 
 the 24th of December — in the Julian reckoning the 
 shortest day — it became the ist of Jan uary of B.C. 
 45, and as it will always continue to be, New- YeaTs" 
 
 Next in importance to the Pontifex Maximus, and 
 at one time even superior in rank, was the Rex sac- 
 rorum, an office held for life, and only by patricians, 
 whose title, duties, and dignities came from the time 
 when the king, as high priest of his people, performed 
 with his own hand important religious functions. 
 His wife, who had also important public duties, was 
 called Regina. If we were to select the third highest 
 personage in the hierarchy, we should have to pass 
 from those whose duties were general, to those who 
 were attached to special deities. The greatest of 
 these was the priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, 
 who, with those of Mars and Quirinus, constituted 
 the order of the Flamines majores. He was a very 
 stately and imposing personage, and so was his wife, 
 the Flaminica, the priestess of Juno. The person 
 and the office of both were specially sacred : they 
 could not be divorced, nor could he marry a second 
 time. If she died, he must resign. He could not 
 mount a horse, nor touch a dead body, nor attend 
 a funeral, nor wear a ring, nor take an oath even 
 in the witness-box, nor sleep three nights running 
 
2^6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 out of his own bed. He was rewarded for all these 
 restrictions by a seat in the senate, and the proud 
 distinction which he shared with consuls, praetors, and 
 ediles, of the curule chair. 
 
 As the College of Pontiffs, with the Flamens, were 
 the executors, so the College of Augurs were the 
 interpreters, of the divine will. This body, which 
 grew in number as the city grew, from three at first 
 to fifteen, ranked high in importance among the 
 collegiate institutions of Rome. Dating back to the 
 very earliest times of the city, it lived on till the 
 reign of Theodosius, preserving through more than a 
 thousand years the rude superstitions of a primitive 
 people ; and its influence lives still in many of the 
 superstitious customs of Europe, and in the omens, 
 portents, auspicious events, and inaugurations of our 
 own English speech. The au gurs or aus gices [avispex, 
 bird inspector) were trained diviners, whose duty it 
 was to ascertain the will of God, and to foretell future 
 events by the study of signs and omens. It was one 
 of the very highest offices which a citizen could hold ; 
 and once an augur, always an augur, — even heinous 
 crime entailing no deprivation. As the field of these 
 operations was almost coextensive with nature, their 
 science became a very complicated and confused one. 
 Their special field of investigation, as their name 
 implies, was the general behaviour, and particularly 
 the cry and the flight of birds. No important 
 event, such as the declaration of war — and no public 
 ceremony, such as the consecration of a temple — 
 could take place without them. Before entering 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 247 
 
 upon any important office, such as the priesthood 
 or the magistracy, the auspices had to be consulted, 
 and if favourable, the persons were said to be in- 
 a ugurated — inaugurari. As the comitia could not 
 be held without them, and might be dismissed at 
 any moment by the simple declaration that the 
 auspices were unfavourable, the augurs held in their 
 hand a convenient and powerful weapon to strengthen 
 the despotism of an oligarchy by dismissing an un- 
 ruly or troublesome assembly, and preventing the 
 passing of obnoxious laws. When, before a great 
 national undertaking, on some night of perfect still- 
 ness, we see the stately augur, clad from head to feet 
 in the flowing folds of the toga prcetexta, long before 
 the first flush of dawn breaks upon the hills, pro- 
 ceeding to the open summit of the Palatine or the 
 Capitol, across which no faintest breath of wind i§ 
 moving, and there, after having duly offered up sacri- 
 fice, and uttered in a clear and distinct voice the fixed 
 formula of prayer, sitting down with his face to the 
 east, and, with the conical cap of the Pontiffs on his 
 head, slowly and solemnly waving the lituus or hooked 
 staff like a crosier, which he holds in his right hand, 
 and marking out certain lines or divisions in the 
 heavens, with corresponding spaces on the earth, and 
 then eagerly scanning earth and sky to note what bird 
 or beast shall cross his line of vision, knowing that the 
 passage of a hawk to the right or to the left or the 
 croak of some unconscious crow will insure or defer 
 the commencement of some great national enterprise ; 
 — when we see all this, we seem to be present at the 
 
248 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 wild incantation of some fatuous Meg Merrilies, and 
 not at the most solemn ceremonial of an ancient faith. 
 That a strong-minded and practical people like the 
 Romans should for many ages have found one of 
 their very highest sources of information regarding 
 the will of God in the conduct of chickens at feeding- 
 time, is surely a sad comment on the spiritual help- 
 lessness of man. 
 
 To these two great colleges of the Pontiffs and 
 Augurs there were added that of the quindecimviri 
 sacris faciundis, who had charge of the books of the 
 Cumaean Sibyl, and (B.C. 196) that of the Epulones, 
 the attendants of the banquets of the gods. To these 
 splendid feasts, after a formal invitation, a little image 
 of the deity used to be carried reclining on a cushion 
 or lectus, the ceremony thence taking the name of the 
 lectisternium. There were others, such as the twelve 
 Fratres Arvales, the arable brotherhood ; the Luperci, 
 or wolf-repellers ; the Salii, or leapers ; and the Feti- 
 ales, who had charge of the religious ceremonies con- 
 nected with the declaration of war, and the conclusion 
 of treaties of alliance or peace. All these corporations, 
 originating at a very remote period, may be said to 
 have lasted as long as paganism. 
 
 Such in brief outline was the religion of the ancient 
 Romans. Even at its best, as we have seen it, the 
 contrast between it and the divine religion which, 
 after a fierce struggle lasting through more than two 
 centuries, finally supplanted it, is as the contrast be- 
 tween night and day. The space at my disposal pre- 
 cludes me from dwelling on the lamentable decay of 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 249 
 
 faith and morals which marked the close of the Repub- 
 lic, and from even touching on the change which, under 
 the emperors, came over religion in common with the 
 State. That faith had all but died away from the minds 
 of educated men in the age immediately preceding the 
 birth of Christ, three notable witnesses may be sum- 
 moned, and are sufficient to prove. In his great poem, 
 ' De rerum natura,' Lucretius employed all the powers 
 of his splendid intellect in the deliberate effort to rid 
 the world of a religion which he regarded as a night- 
 mare oppressing mankind, and taught in strains of lofty 
 poetry that the gods take no concern whatever with 
 human affairs, and that death — mors immor talis — 
 puts an end alike to pleasure and to pain. At the age 
 of forty-four (B.C. 51) he attested at once the sincerity 
 of his convictions and the blankness of his creed by 
 committing suicide. On a memorable occasion in the 
 senate (B.C. 63), when the punishment of Catiline for 
 conspiracy was under debate, Caesar, sovereign Pon- 
 tiff though he was, without awakening so much as a 
 word of opposition, or a sentiment of surprise, openly 
 based his argument on the conviction that death was 
 annihilation ; and it seems clear that Cato, who fol- 
 lowed him, shared the same views. No man of the 
 old world wrote so much or so well about religion 
 as Cicero ; and yet it is most difficult to know what 
 he believed and what he did not believe. As a states- 
 man and a member of the College of Augurs, he re- 
 garded religion as necessary to the welfare of the 
 State, and bowed before the gods of his country; as a 
 philosopher and a man of letters, their existence was 
 
 X 
 
250 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 for him and his class an open question, which, " the 
 longer he thought about it, appeared the more ob- 
 scure." It is possible to gather from his voluminous 
 writings the most contradictory views with regard to 
 the two closely related doctrines of natural religion, the 
 existence of God and a future state. What is certain 
 is, that such belief as he had in the one or the other, 
 was not conceived by him as having any practical 
 relation to human conduct. His principles of morals 
 were based on quite another ground. Future retribu- 
 tion he distinctly denied. No one ever gave higher 
 expression to the aspirations of the human heart 
 after immortality, or to the need of the knowledge of 
 God : and yet in all his vast correspondence, so full 
 and minute, we find no indication that in the many 
 troubles of his own checkered life, at the death of his 
 daughter TuUia, whose loss he acutely felt, or in the 
 deluge of horrors which was sweeping over his country, 
 he ever once had recourse to his religion as a strength 
 for duty or a consolation in trial. He could calmly 
 speak of death as the malum sempiternum, and say 
 that if there was no good in it, there was at least no 
 evil : and in view of his own end he sought for com- 
 fort in a stoical indifference, and not in a hope full of 
 immortality. Of the other great writers of the time, — 
 men like Virgil, Horace, Ovid, — the views could not be 
 more accurately expressed than in the words which 
 Francis Newman employs of himself: "Using my 
 reason as well as I am able, I deliberately think that 
 the continuance of the existence of noble souls, and 
 
Religion of Ancient Rome. 251 
 
 not least when cruelly marred, best harmonises with 
 the divine perfections." 
 
 With crumbling temples and a dying faith morality 
 also took its leave, and a horrible corruption fell upon 
 society. It would be. difficult to find a parallel in 
 history to the whirl, the strife, the cruelty, the blood- 
 shed, the misery, the delirium of licentiousness and de- 
 bauchery, which preceded and accompanied the fall of 
 the great Republic. Of the notable men of the time, 
 " hardly one or two died on their beds ... or fairly 
 fighting in battle." Assassination and suicide were 
 the recognised and applauded methods of dismissing 
 from the world men who were a trouble to themselves 
 or others. Caesar and Cicero were murdered ; Antony, 
 Cato, Scipio, Brutus, and Cassius put an end to them- 
 selves. Marriage lost its ancient sanctity, and became 
 an object of dislike and dread ; and to such an extent 
 did celibacy, with its attendant evils, prevail, that 
 under Augustus there were more unmarried than 
 married citizens of Rome. Divorce, which had been 
 unknown for hundreds of years, became the fashion, 
 and was resorted to even by men like Cato and Cicero, 
 the two purest Romans of their time, both of whom 
 twice divorced their wives for the most frivolous and 
 selfish reasons. Unutterable crimes were shamelessly 
 committed by the highest and the best. It was the 
 surest sign of a decaying state that the corruption 
 which had spread among men played still more 
 fatal havoc among women, and that married ladies of 
 the highest rank publicly announced themselves as 
 
252 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 common prostitutes. Abortion and child - murder 
 were common both to the upper and lower ranks ; 
 and to so alarming an extent did sterility prevail, 
 that an able writer has assigned it as one of the prin- 
 cipal causes of the ruin of Rome. It had come to 
 this at last. All the civilising influences which can 
 elevate humanity had for many generations been 
 working at their highest pressure on this great and 
 wonderful people — and this was the result. The 
 hideous corruption of Roman society, on the day 
 that Christ was born, is an everlasting lesson to 
 mankind that the world cannot get on without a 
 divine Revelation and a divine Redeemer. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE VITT. 
 
 TEUTONIC AND SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 
 
 By the Rev. George Stewart Burns, D.D., Minister 
 of the Cathedral, Glasgow. 
 
 TO US the religion we are now to consider has a 
 special interest. It was the religion of our fore- 
 fathers, and has, no doubt, to some extent influenced 
 the character of their descendants. Not improbably 
 on the very spot where this old church stands, Odin 
 and Thor have been worshipped, for the early Chris- 
 tian missionaries were fond of building churches on 
 the sites of pagan temples. Nor do we require to go 
 to a very remote past to find the religion existing as 
 the faith and cultus of the people. Christianity was 
 some time in reaching Germany and Scandinavia, 
 and when introduced, its progress was comparatively 
 
 Y 
 
254 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 slow. It came from a foreign country, and was 
 "escorted by a foreign language." It was utterly 
 opposed to the tastes, feelings, modes of thought, and 
 worship of the inhabitants ; subversive of many of 
 their institutions and most cherished customs ; denied 
 any honour to their greatest achievements, and taught 
 that the memories and traditions of which they were 
 proudest, were only matters for regret and shame. 
 So the new religion was unpopular, and the old long 
 held its own against it. The first Teutonic peopl e 
 who embra ced Christianity were the Goths, and 
 their conversion dates only from the fourtJTcentury. 
 Though introduced at an early period into^Britain, 
 the new faith did not gain a firm footing before the 
 seventh century, when it was also accepted by the 
 Franks. The Saxons were not brought within the 
 pale of the Christian Church before the ninth century, 
 the Danes before the tenth, the Norwegians and Ice- 
 landers before the eleventh. In Sweden idolatry 
 was not completely eradicated till the middle of the 
 twelfth century, whilst the Finns were pagans till 
 the thirteenth, and the Lithuanians even up to the 
 beginning of the fifteenth. Early Teutonic and 
 Scandinavian religion, therefore, as a living power, 
 though now happily a thing of the past, does not 
 belong to such a remote antiquity as the religion of 
 ancient Egypt, or even of ancient Greece and Rome, 
 and possesses at least as deep an interest as any 
 other part of European history. 
 
 That one religion was common to Scandinavia and 
 Germany, and the other Teutonic countries, cannot, 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 255 
 
 I think, be doubted. The following grounds for the 
 belief, given by Jacob Grimm, seem quite conclusive : 
 " I. The undisputed and very close affinity of speech 
 between the tv^o races, and the identity of form in 
 their oldest poetry. 2. The joint possession by all 
 Teutonic tongues of many terms relating to reli- 
 gious worship. 3. The identity of mythic notions 
 and nomenclature, which ever and anon breaks out. 
 4. The precisely similar way in which the religious 
 my thus tacks itself on to the heroic legend. 5. The 
 mingling of the mythic element with names of plants 
 and constellations, and the undeniable admixture of 
 the old religious doctrine with the systems of law." 
 On these grounds I think we may regard the iden- 
 tity of the Teutonic and Scandinavian religions as 
 established. 
 
 It would almost appear as if the earliest form of 
 the religion had been monotheistic. From Tacitus 
 we learn that "a Being, master of the universe, to 
 whom all things were submissive and obedient, was 
 the Supreme God of the Germans ; " and from other 
 sources we gather that, in all Teutonic tongues, this 
 Being was called by the general name of God. The 
 object of the most ancient Norse worship is described 
 as the " author of everything that existeth, the eter- 
 nal, the ancient, the living and awful Being, the 
 searcher into concealed things, the Being that never 
 changeth." He was believed to possess infinite 
 power, boundless knowledge, and inflexible justice. 
 He was not to be worshipped in temples reared by 
 human hands, but in consecrated groves, and in the 
 
256 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 solitudes of the forest. It was forbidden to repre- 
 sent him by any image. He was the great invisible 
 Spirit who pervaded the universe, too awful even to 
 be named, who was to be served with sacrifices and 
 prayers, and who delighted in seeing men leading 
 pure and brave lives. But monotheism could not long 
 satisfy a rude and fierce people, many of them living 
 in countries remarkable for wild grandeur of scenery, 
 and subject to sudden and extreme climatic changes, 
 involving great and striking elemental disturbances ; 
 most of them in a state of almost perpetual war. 
 Nature by her changeful moods suggested the pres- 
 ence of more gods than one ; their own experience, 
 sometimes as victors, sometimes as vanquished, did 
 the same. Rude minds never discover the unity of 
 nature, and are quite unable to trace the endless 
 variety of phenomena which meets them to the action 
 of never-varying law. In the physical world they 
 discover everywhere the presence of great unseen 
 powers, causing themselves to be felt in many very 
 startling and mysterious ways, — sometimes working 
 for good, and making earth fair and fertile, and man 
 happy ; sometimes working for ill, and making earth 
 bleak and barren, and man miserable ; now smiling 
 in the sunshine, then raging in the storm ; at one time 
 leading in the summer, at another letting loose the 
 winter's frost and cold, — and these powers rude and 
 simple men deify. This we find most forcibly ex- 
 emplified in what became the Teutonic and Scandi- 
 navian religion. 
 
 And we are fortunate in possessing sufficient in- 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 257 
 
 formation concerning that religion, with its strange 
 mythology, at once beautiful and grotesque, though 
 it comes from a somewhat unlikely quarter. In Ger- 
 many the early Christian missionaries exerted them- 
 selves to the utmost to obliterate every trace of the 
 old paganism, and with a large measure of success. 
 They razed the temples, cut down the consecrated 
 groves and the sacred trees, broke every altar and 
 image they could find, taught the people that their 
 deities were not gods to be worshipped, but devils to 
 be feared and abhorred, and in many other ways did 
 their best to banish everything associated with the 
 ancient cultus from the face of the country and the 
 minds of the people. Germany, therefore, has compar- 
 atively little to say about its old paganism. It is from 
 Iceland that our knowledge comes. In that curious 
 island, with its "mud-volcanoes, and steam-clouded 
 valleys, and lava-covered plains," its roaring geysers 
 and sulphurous springs, peopled by brave and hardy 
 Norwegian refugees, the story of northern mythology 
 was written down. This story is contained in what 
 are called the two Eddas, the elder and the younger : 
 the former a collection of ancient poems, made some 
 time during the eleventh century by an early Chris- 
 tian priest called Saemund ; the latter a sort of prose 
 commentary on the elder, with some fragments of 
 mythic verse appended, written about a century after 
 by one Snorri Sturleson, an Icelandic gentleman. 
 The Eddas contain an account of the Norse cos- 
 mogony, the Odinic mythology, the lives and doings 
 of gods, demi-gods, and heroes ; of the mysterious 
 
258 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Ygdrasil or tree of existence ; of the twilight of the 
 gods, the awful Ragnarock, when Odin and most of the 
 other deities perish in the great conflagration in which 
 all things are consumed ; the happy regeneration, 
 when new heavens and a new earth appear. The elder 
 Edda opens with the Voluspa or Vala's prophecy — 
 the very oldest specimen of the poetry of the North 
 — and it contains some passages which remind us of 
 some of the grandest passages in the Bible ; and 
 others, which Professor Max Miiller says, "are not 
 unworthy of the hand of iEschylus, who loved, like 
 the Scandinavian bards, to muse over the fallen for- 
 tunes of obsolete and overthrown divinities, and to 
 set up a gloomy and inexorable destiny as the Lord 
 both of gods and men." In the song of Odin in the 
 Edda, many noble principles are inculcated, such as 
 courage, faith, truthfulness, temperance, independence, 
 love of liberty, — principles out of which unquestion- 
 ably the republic of Iceland was evolved, and which 
 may have helped England to gain her Magna Charta, 
 and in some measure inspired those brave struggles 
 against heavy odds, which have made our own little 
 country what it is. The younger Edda may be said 
 to be a synopsis of the whole of northern mythology. 
 For the interpretation of this mythology different 
 methods have been proposed. Some would have us 
 believe that Odin and the other gods are only deified 
 heroes. They profess even to give us Odin's history, 
 telling us that he was an adventurer from a country 
 situated between the Pontus Euxinus and the Cas- 
 pian, the chief town of which was Asgard, who, when 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 259 
 
 serving with Mithridates, having been defeated by 
 Pompey, fled to the forests of Scythia, where he col- 
 lected a band of young desperadoes, and with them 
 pushed north and west into Europe, subduing the dif- 
 ferent nations through whose territories he passed, and 
 setting his sons over them as kings, till he reached 
 Sweden, where he died, and afterwards received divine 
 honours. This about B.C. 40. Others, moving along- 
 the same lines, inform us that the worship of Odin 
 originated in the immigration of a sacerdotal caste ; 
 that the priest's agency was by the people themselves 
 confounded with that of the god whose minister he 
 was ; that his undertakings and exertions for the 
 civilisation of the people, the evidence of his superior 
 penetration and higher knowledge, were, after his 
 death, clad in a mythic garb ; and that thereby, part- 
 ly through learning and partly from events, a series 
 of myths was framed, the elements of which would 
 hardly admit of being separated from each other. 
 Others again say (and this was the prevalent opinion 
 during the Christian middle ages) that Odin and the 
 other gods were magicians and wizards, who by their 
 arts imposed upon the people, and, for the sake of 
 their own worldly advantage, claimed the possiession 
 of divine power, and by mere priestly imposture, with 
 the assistance of the devil, came to be worshipped. 
 This method of interpretation — called the historical 
 — ris quite inadequate ; for it can only be applied to 
 the gods themselves, and does not in the least explain 
 the other myths. 
 
 Passing over the ethical method, which represents 
 
26o The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the gods as the personifications of man's virtues and 
 vices, let us consider that method which represents 
 the divinities as the personified powers and phenomena 
 of nature, and which appears to me to furnish the 
 only key to northern mythology. " All beings in the 
 northern mythology," says Mone, " may be regarded 
 as personified ideas ; or, in other words, it contains 
 •philosophic views of nature and of life." What the 
 Northman saw was a material world, in which a con- 
 tinual struggle seemed to be going on ; what he felt, 
 was a struggle something like it repeated in his own 
 life. Around him good and evil powers appeared to 
 be contending : he had^to meet and battle with the 
 forces of nature, with wild beasts, and human foes, in 
 his daily efforts to obtain the bare means of support ; 
 he was conscious sometimes of a contest waged within 
 himself between appetites of the body and principles 
 which had their seat in his soul. The good powers he 
 called gods, the evil giants. The world was born out 
 of a conflict between these ; its orderly arrangements 
 were preserved, because the evil were held in check , 
 by the good ; it will be destroyed when for a time 
 the evil prevail. And to the Northman every cause 
 in nature was a divinity. He heard some god in 
 almost every sound, he saw one in almost every 
 change. The thunder was the rattle of Thor's chariot, 
 the lightning the flash of his hammer, swiftly hurled 
 from his strong hand ; the wind was Sleipner, the fleet 
 steed of Odin ; the dew, foam from the bit of th6 
 horse of night. When the hard winter-crust of earth 
 began to thaw, it was Rind yielding to the rough 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 261 
 
 wooing of her persistent lover; when in spiring the 
 early flowers bloomed, and the first braird was seen, 
 it was Gerd cajoled by Skirnia to listen to the ad- 
 dresses of Frey. As the yearly wave of verdure 
 washed up the hillside, and the herdsman drove his 
 cattle from the lowland meadows to the green up- 
 lands, Sif was beside him with her yellow hair; as the 
 farmer looked at his fields covered with rich grain, he 
 blessed the nuptials of Odin and Frigg. The fisher- 
 man, rowing his boat through the dancing waves, saw 
 in each of them a daughter of Oeger; listening on 
 shore to the loud tumult of the angry sea, he heard 
 the wrathful clamour of these fickle maidens. The 
 huntsman was haunted by a divine presence in the 
 silent deeps of the forest ; the child, as he looked upon 
 the rainbow, was told by his mother that that was the 
 trembling bridge by which the gods crossed from 
 heaven to earth. When the long days of summer 
 were over, and winter with its darkness and cold had 
 come, the sad tale of the death of the bright and 
 good E aldu r was doubtless told at many a fireside, 
 and many a tear shed over the unhappy fate of that 
 best beloved of all the gods. The whole world was 
 divine to the old Northman. Nature was to him, 
 "what to the thinker and prophet it for ever is, 
 preternatural." Nor, as the personification of the 
 forces of nature, does this mythology stand alone. 
 It has resemblances in those of India and Persia. 
 They all belong to the same stock, and have the 
 likeness belonging to a common origin. It is in their 
 spirit that they chiefly differ. The Oriental is con- 
 
262 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 templative, the Northern active. The dreamy gods 
 of the East could not live in a Teutonic or Scandi- 
 navian climate, nor with the fierce restless men of 
 the north. The northern deities must be always 
 active, riding on the tempest, hurling themselves on 
 icebergs and rocks, busy now. with the ploughshare 
 and then with the sword, delighting in the crash of 
 battle, and gathering the fallen heroes into bright 
 Valhalla, there to reward them for their courage with 
 copious and never-failing goblets of mead, and the 
 wild joys of an unending fight. 
 
 But let us now inquire somewhat more minutely 
 into the details of this mythology. At the very out- 
 set we are met with the northern theogony and cos- 
 mogony. It is given in the younger Edda, and may 
 thus be summarised. Before the world came into ex- 
 istence in its present form there was a great void 
 called Ginnungagap, on the north side of which there 
 was a cold and dark region called Niflheim, and on 
 the south side a warm luminous region called Mus- 
 pellheim. Between the two was a region of snow and . 
 ice, the moisture from which, meeting the heat of the 
 southern region, fell in drops into the void ; and these 
 formed a giant, called Ymir, out of whom sprang 
 other three. The giant was nourished by a cow, 
 called Audhumla, who licked with her tongue the 
 great blocks of ice, which produced in three days 
 the entire figure of a man, large, beautiful, and 
 strong. He was called Buri, and had a son, Bor, who 
 married Bestla, the daughter of giant Bolthorn, who 
 bore to him three sons, Odin, Vili, Ve. These three 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 263 
 
 slew giant Ymir, who was of such a size that so much 
 blood ran from him as to drown the whole race of 
 frost-giants save one, who, with his wife, escaped in 
 an ark. Out of Ymir's blood the three brothers made 
 sea and water ; out of his flesh, the earth ; out of his 
 hair, the trees ; out of his bones, the hills ; out of his 
 teeth, j^ws, and splinters of bones, rocks and cliffs ; 
 out of his eyebrows they made a wall round the earth, 
 to keep out the giants. They made the vault of 
 heaven of his skull, and scattered his brains about 
 for air and clouds. " They then took the sparks that 
 were cast out of Muspellheim and set them in heaven, 
 to illumine heaven and earth. They also assigned 
 places for the lightning and fiery meteors. Thus 
 Bar's sons raised up the heavenly discs, and the sun 
 shone on the cold stones, so that the earth was decked 
 with green herbs. The sun from the south followed 
 the moon, and cast her right arm round the heavenly 
 horses' door (the East) ; but she knew not where her 
 dwelling lay, the moon knew not his power, nor did 
 the stars know where they had a station. Then the 
 holy gods consulted together, and gave to every light 
 its place, and a name to the new moon and to the 
 waning moon, and gave names to the morning, and 
 the mid-day, and the evening, that the children of 
 men, sons of time, might reckon the years there- 
 after." 
 
 In this myth it will be at once perceived that there is 
 no conception of a creation from nothing. The basis of 
 all created things existed from all eternity. Niflheim, 
 Muspellheim, cold and heat, were before gods and 
 
264 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 men. Through the union of frost and fire, chaotic 
 matter was produced, and represented under the form 
 of giant Ymir — an utterly bad, useless, unmanageable 
 being. The creative power operated on this unorgan- 
 ised mass, and matter grew, and icebergs and moun- 
 tains were formed. Then came life, animal, vegetable, 
 intellectual. This life developed through its own in- 
 herent energies. The higher acted on the lower, and 
 the ^sir, the good gods, enemies of all monsters and 
 wicked giants, were evolved. Odin, Vili, Ve, — spirit, 
 will, holiness — that strange trinity, mentioned only 
 this once in the mythology, — made an end of chaos, 
 and tried to establish for ever universal beauty and 
 order. But it was not to be. A giant family escaped 
 in an ark, and fled to remote places beyond the sea. 
 Wild and unorganised forces of nature were left, and 
 with these gods and men must strive till the very 
 end. A strange theory of evolution ; but most credit- 
 able, I think, to the ingenuity of those rude men of 
 the old heathen North. 
 
 With regard to the creation of man we have not 
 very much information. All we know is, that three 
 beneficent deities, having left the assembly of the 
 gods in Asgard, and gone on an excursion to earth, 
 when walking by the sea-shore found two trees, an 
 ash and an elm, and out of these created the first 
 human pair, and called the man Ask and the woman 
 Embla. Odin gave them life and spirit; Hoenir, 
 reason and the power of motion ; Lodur, blood, hear- 
 ing, vision, and a fair complexion. No theory is ad- 
 vanced to account for the first appearance of evil in 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 265 
 
 the world. It seems to have been taken for granted 
 that it existed from the very beginning — was, in fact, 
 an essential property of that chaotic matter out of 
 which gods and men were evolved. 
 
 Outside the world was the great ash-tree Ygdrasil, 
 whose branches spread over the heavens, whilst the 
 roots went down to the region beneath the earth. It 
 is supposed to be an emblem of the whole world, so 
 far as it is under divine influence. The myth, which 
 is said to be Indian and Lamaic, is not easy of inter- 
 pretation, though Mr Carlyle finds in it a beautiful 
 meaning. " It is the tree of existence. At the foot 
 of it, in the death-kingdom, sit three Norns, Fates, , 
 — the Past, Present, Future,^watering its roots from 
 the sacred well. Its boughs, with their buddings 
 and disleafings, — events, things suffered, things done, 
 catastrophes, — stretch through all lands and times. 
 Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there 
 an act or word 1 Its boughs are histories of nations. 
 The rustle of it is the noise of human existence, 
 onwards from of old. 
 
 So much for the story of creation ; let us now turn 
 to the consideration of the gods. There were twelve 
 great .^sir, who lived in Asgard, the chief city of 
 Asenheim, which contained many palaces of gold and 
 precious stones for their accommodation. The cen- 
 tral part of the city was called Gladsheim, and in it 
 was JZa lhalla , the home of heroes. Odin's palace was 
 called Valaskialf, and there was his throne. The god- 
 desses dwelt in a hall called Vingolf, and had equal 
 power with the gods. Besides the principal M&\x, 
 
266 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 there were many minor deities, and the world was 
 alive with elves and dwarfs. 
 
 The chief god among Teutonic and Scandinavian 
 peoples was Odin , known by the Germans as Wodan 
 or Wuotan . though a few rendered higher honours 
 to Thor. Abundant proofs exist that he was wor- 
 shipped by Norse, Saxons, Thuringians, Alamanns, 
 Langobards, Franks, Goths, and others. In our own 
 country, vestiges of Odinic worship still remain, in 
 the names of places, of a day in the week (Wednes- 
 day), and in certain expressions, sometimes not in 
 the least understood by those who use them. We 
 are told that in Asgard the god had twelve names, 
 and in the younger Edda forty-nine are given, with 
 the reason that his name had to be translated into the 
 various tongues of the nations by whom he was ac- 
 knowledged, before he could be worshipped. Odin 
 has been described by Grimm as " the all-pervading, 
 creative, and formative power, who bestows shape and 
 beauty on man and all things, from whom proceeds 
 the gift of song, and the management of war and 
 victory — on whom at the same time depends the fer- 
 tility of the soil, and all higher gifts and blessings." 
 To him man must look for the highest and best 
 things, and in this respect he resembles the Mercury 
 of the Greeks rather than Zeus. As father of the 
 gods, he is called AUfather; and Valfather, because he 
 takes as his sons the heroes who fall in battle. He is 
 represented as a tall, one-eyed old man, with a long 
 beard ; a broad-brimmed hat, which is supposed to 
 represent the ample vault of heaven ; a striped cloak, 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 267 
 
 emblem of changes in the aspects of the sky ; a spear 
 in his hand, to signify his conquering power. On his 
 arm he wears a ring, from which every ninth night 
 a ring as heavy itself is said to drop, and so is 
 regarded as the symbol of fertility ; on his shoulders 
 perch two ravens — Hunin (reflection) and Munin 
 (memory) — which daily fly over the world. Two 
 wolves crouch at his feet, to which he flings the meat 
 placed on his table, for Odin never eats, but lives on 
 wine. Like Zeus on Ida, he sits on a lofty throne, 
 high in the heavens, from which he can survey the 
 whole world, and even hear all that goes on among 
 men. He is the all-powerful, all-pervading spirit of 
 the universe, which produces life of every kind, and 
 permeates and sustains all animate and inanimate 
 things. He possesses in himself the attributes of all 
 the other gods, who are mere emanations from him, 
 or " renovations or rejuvenescences " of him. He is 
 the " Creator of the world," the " Father of time," the 
 " Lord of gods and men," the " God of heaven," 
 the "King of the year," the "God of war and 
 Giver of victory." The other deities are generated 
 through his relations to external things. Out of 
 earth proceeds Jiis son Thor : the unsubdued giant 
 powers ; rugged mountains, and regions of everlasting 
 ice, produce to him Vidar, the imperishable : as King 
 of the year, Baldur, the bright summer^ time, is his 
 son ; and so are Hod, the dark winter, who slays 
 Baldur, and Vali, the returning spring, who avenges 
 his brother's death : as God of war, he is father of Her- 
 mod, the messenger, and Tyr, the god of valour : as 
 
268 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the God of "all intellectual life, of Bragi, the god of 
 eloqaence and poetry, and of Saga, a divine daughter; 
 no unworthy sister for the Muses, daughters of Zeus. 
 The Teutonic and Scandinavian conception of Odin 
 was really a very lofty one. He was the supreme 
 being in whom all power resided, who was the origin 
 and spring of every good influence, material or spirit- 
 ual, throughout the world. He pervaded the benign 
 energies of nature, and inspired the highest thoughts 
 of mind ; he presided, in peace, over the affairs of 
 nations and individuals, and controlled the tide of 
 battle in times of war; he was the author of all know- 
 ledge, and the fountain of every virtue — the punisher 
 of all sin, and the avenger of every wrong. Nor need 
 it surprise us that by the old Northmen Odin should 
 have been chiefly worshipped as the god of war. 
 War was really the main business of their life, and 
 the occupation held in most repute. Strength and 
 courage were the qualities they admired the most ; 
 victory their highest glory and delight, a passage 
 from the battle-field to Valhallla their last and dearest 
 hope. So we need not wonder that they honoured 
 Odin most as the god of war, who watched over the 
 birth of the hero ; superintended his growth and 
 training in the use of arms ; provided him with weap- 
 ons ; went with him to the battle ; inspired him with 
 valour; shielded him from danger ; or if overtaken by 
 death, bore him to those shining halls where only 
 heroes dwell. But the god was also believed to have 
 an interest in other things besides, and to favour men 
 in other ways. In the elder Edda, men are advised 
 to pray Odin — 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 269 
 
 Into our minds to enter. Victory to his sons he gives, 
 
 He gives and grants But to some riches. 
 
 Gold to the deserving. Eloquence to the great, 
 
 He gave Hermod And to men wit. 
 
 A helm and corselet, Fair wind he gives to traders, 
 
 And from him Sigmund But visions to skalds. 
 
 A sword received. Valour he gives 
 
 To many a warrior. 
 
 From a Teutonic and Scandinavian point of view, 
 in Odin all things may be said " to have lived, and 
 moved, and had their being," and from him came down 
 everything that seemed a " good and perfect gift." It 
 is said of him in the Edda : " He liveth and governeth 
 during the ages ; he directeth everything which is 
 high and everything which is low, whatever is great 
 and whatever is small ; he hath made the heaven, the 
 air, and man, who is to live for ever ; and before the 
 heaven and the earth existed, this god lived already 
 with the giants." 
 
 It is impossible in a single lecture to recount the 
 many myths setting forth the deeds and journeys of 
 Odin ; for, being the all-pervading principle, he was 
 a great traveller. I shall only mention the one con- 
 cerning the origin of his horse Sleipner, because it is 
 illustrative of the correctness of the physical method 
 of interpreting mythology. About the beginning of 
 time there came a great builder from Jotunheim to 
 Asgard, who offered to erect such a rampart round 
 the home of the gods that no giant should ever be 
 able to pass it, on condition that he should receive 
 the beautiful Freyia, with the sun and moon. His 
 offer was accepted, but he was bound to finish his 
 
 z 
 
270 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 work in a single winter : should he fail, the bargain 
 was to be void. The builder begged to be allowed 
 to have the use of a horse of his called Svadilfori, 
 and this request the gods granted at once. On the 
 first day of winter he began his work, and progressed 
 with most amazing rapidity, his horse dragging for 
 him the enormous stones he needed during the night 
 The gods got greatly alarmed ; for when they were 
 just three days from summer, nothing remained to be 
 finished but the gateway. Calling a hasty council, 
 they discovered that I^oki, the mischief-maker, was 
 at the bottom of the bargain ; so they ordered him, 
 on pain of instant death, to find a way out of it. 
 That same evening, when the builder went for stones, 
 a mare suddenly appeared ; and after her the horse, 
 breaking the reins, ran, and was lost in a wood, 
 though the builder chased him with all his might. 
 Seeing that he was now unable to finish his work in 
 the given time, he resumed his giant form, but only to 
 have his skull smashed by Thor's hammer. " But," as 
 the younger Edda quaintly puts it, " Loki had such 
 a race with SvadilfSri, that he some time after bore 
 a foal. It was grey, and had eight feet, and this is 
 the best horse among gods and men." This seems 
 a very foolish, childish myth, but it has both mean- 
 ing and beauty. The architect is winter ; his horse is 
 the intense cold ; the rampart a wall of ice, which, if 
 completed, would destroy all the life and fairness of 
 nature. Heat and cold combined produce the wind, 
 which soon melts the ice, and grows into a power 
 strong enough and swift enough to be the steed of 
 Odin, god of the year. The wind became Odin's 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 271 
 
 horse ; and simple pfeople in some places, long ago, 
 would not weed their flax on Wednesdays lest Sleip- 
 ner should trample it down ; and when harvest was 
 over, they used to leave some stalks of corn stand- 
 ing in the field for Sleipner, in case he might be 
 hungry when passing that way. Christian farmers, 
 of course, leave no stalks for Sleipner ; but I am told 
 that, in this country at least, even in good times, they 
 spare but few for any benevolent agency. 
 
 The god next in importance to Odin amongst 
 most Teutonic and Scandinavian people was Thor, 
 known in certain parts of Teutondom as Donar and 
 Thunar. He was the son of Odin by Jord, the un- 
 inhabited, uncultivated earth, and is therefore in- 
 dicated by his birth as a great, burly, physical 
 power. He is the god of thunder, and rules over 
 clouds and rain. His home is in Thrudheim, the 
 region of cloudy gloom, where stands his palace, 
 Bilskirnir, a vast shining mansion, said to have had 
 540 floors, and from it he sends forth his lightnings. 
 His chariot is drawn by two goats, whose hoofs and 
 teeth flash fire — most fitting steeds for a car which 
 has so often to rattle over the mountain-tops. He 
 is girded with a wonderful belt, which doubles his 
 strength. In his hand he carries the terrible ham^ 
 mer, Miolner, masterpiece of dwarfish skill, which he 
 hurls against his foes, and which, after dealing the 
 fatal blow, returns to him again. His deadly ene- 
 mies are the Frost and Mountain giants, with whom 
 he is continually at war. His name and his attri- 
 butes have reference to the thunderstorm ; and his 
 two followers may be regarded as its attendants — 
 
272 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the rushing shower and the wind. He is represented 
 as a young man with a red beard ; and when it 
 thundered, in some places people used to say, " Thor 
 is blowing through his beard." He corresponds to 
 Jupiter ; for though the thundering god, he is also 
 a fatherly and kind one. 
 
 The idea underlying the conception of Thor seems 
 to be, mighty physical force exerted for the good of 
 man and the world. It is embodied in the thunder- 
 storm, because it, above all other natural phenomena, 
 appears to proceed directly from God, and, as a 
 rule, exerts a most benign influence on nature, clear- 
 ing the air and bringing refreshing rain. The in- 
 habitant of the north in olden times was painfully 
 conscious of the presence of forces in the material 
 world opposed to him. His agriculture, for instance, 
 was very difficult to carry on. The soil was often 
 hard, and thin, and inhospitable ; much of it had to 
 be reclaimed from forest or swamp before it would 
 carry grain at all, or even produce wild grasses for 
 the cattle ; and it was only incessant culture that 
 kept it from falling back into its primitive state. 
 The seasons, too, were frequently unfavourable — cold 
 springs, and wet summers, and late autumns, and 
 winters so severe as almost to threaten the destruc- 
 tion of vegetable life. Then from time to time ter- 
 rible hurricanes swept over him, and ruined his flax 
 and corn ; torrents swollen into rivers rushed down 
 from the mountains and flooded his homesteads and 
 fields. But the Northman had a firm belief that phys- 
 ical evil — the destroying powers in nature — would not 
 be allowed to prevail so long as Odin and the other 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 273 
 
 gods reigned, but would be held in check by other 
 and friendly powers, and these he centred in Thor. 
 Thor's hammer broke the skull of a frost-giant, and 
 freed earth from the bondage of winter; ground rocks 
 and stones into powder, and turned them into fruit- 
 ful earth. He drove past in his chariot and sent the 
 pleasant showers which refreshed the parched field, 
 and made the grass green far up the hillside. 
 
 But the pagan Northman felt that the greatest 
 material powers which he knew, or of which he could 
 conceive, were not supreme. There were things ex- 
 isting which they could scarcely affect, and in no 
 appreciable measure change : there were laws of hu- 
 man life which they were powerless to resist ; they 
 were utterly unable to cope with spiritual agents ; 
 there were even subtile forces in nature, quite intangi- 
 ble, with which no known physical power could con- 
 tend. The existence of this belief is very evident 
 in one of the myths connected with Thor. An un- 
 bidden guest, he had, with three followers, entered the 
 castle of a great king. There it was the custom for 
 all visitors to exhibit some feats of strength or skill, 
 and none were tolerated unless they did so. When 
 asked what he and his companions could do, one of 
 them said he thought he could distinguish himself by 
 eating faster than most. A trough was at once filled 
 with food, and he and a member of the royal house- 
 hold set to work ; but when they met in the middle, 
 it was found that, though Thor's friend had done 
 well, and picked the meat clean from the bones, his 
 rival had done better, for he had eaten up meat, and 
 bones, and trough. That rival was Fire. Thialfi, 
 
2 74 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 another of Thor's followers, confident in his speed, 
 offered to run a race with any of the king's people, 
 and one called Huge entered the lists with him. 
 Twice they ran, and both times Thialfi was badly 
 beaten ; and no wonder, for he was contending with 
 Thought. Thor himself then came forward, and 
 knowing his capacity for mead, felt sure that no one 
 there could match him in drinking. The royal cup- 
 bearer brought him a horn, but, drink as he would, 
 the liquor remained nearly up to the brim. He was 
 trying to drain the Sea. On this the king playfully 
 asked him to lift his grey cat. This Thor thought 
 would be very easy ; but, do his best, he could only 
 bend its back, and move one of its feet from the floor. 
 He had got hold of the Midgard serpent, that mys- 
 terious creature of evil, which had coiled itself round 
 the world. Another trial of strength he adventured. 
 He felt sure he could wrestle, and said so. A tooth- 
 less old woman came forward, and with her Thor 
 proceeded to grapple ; but, in spite of all his efforts, 
 he could not move her, and at last was brought down 
 on his knees. He was wrestling with Old Age. 
 Now I think this myth clearly shows that, in the 
 view of the old Northman, there were certain agen- 
 cies, material and spiritual, with which no conceiva- 
 ble embodiment of physical power was able to con- 
 tend ; certain things, too vast for it to control. Fire, 
 the sea, the solid earth itself, Thor could not com- 
 mand ; thought, feeling, even physical decay, were 
 far mightier than he : only so far as the great mys- 
 tery of evil affected material things, could it, in the 
 smallest measure, be reached by him. 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 275 
 
 But, though not omnipotent, Thor was regarded as 
 a very beneficent god. He did not remain much 
 with the ^sir, being generally abroad on some ex- 
 pedition against the giants, Mountain or Frost — 
 always ready to return to Asgard, however, when 
 there was any fighting to be done. Sometimes he 
 showed his power by raising turmoil among the 
 elements ; as when he dashed the foaming sea against 
 the cliffs, breaking, as the myth has it, the drinking- 
 cup of Hymir against the giant's forehead. But 
 generally his agency was beneficent. He cleft the 
 summit of the mountain, and sent the rain to wash 
 down the earth from its sides, to form the soil of the 
 valley — which was represented as his battle with 
 giant Hrungner. He split the rocks, and laid open 
 the seams of ore ; and doing so, it was said, he paid a 
 visit to the metal king Geirrod. In the goats which 
 he and his companions devoured at night, only to 
 find alive and fat in the morning, we have the symbol 
 of the Northman's belief in the reproductiveness of 
 nature, under the protection of Thor ; and in the 
 god's scorn of giant Thrym, impotently groaning in 
 his desire for the goddess of fruitfulness, we have the 
 expression of a settled belief, that, so long as the 
 present system of things lasted, earth would never 
 become a desert, nor seed-time and harvest fail. In 
 his strife with the hostile power of nature, Thor was 
 man's firm friend ; and when, with the poor serfs, the 
 god's best allies in the contest, the strife was over, 
 he took them to himself. They could not " fare to 
 Odin," but they fared to Thor. Grimm tells us that 
 the newly converted Germans had, under the name of 
 
276 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Christ, the lord of thunder and the giver of rain in 
 view, and confounded the sign of the cross with the 
 sign of the hammer. It was not an unnatural mistake 
 for the men who worshipped Thor to make. 
 
 The worship of the beneficent powers of nature so 
 pervades Teutonic and Scandinavian religion, that it 
 may almost be said to constitute that religion ; and in 
 proof of the statement, let me instance one or two 
 more of the Odinic divinities. Frigg, one of Odin's 
 wives, and the chief goddess, is the cultivated, grain- 
 bearing earth. Her dwelling is Fensalir, moist 
 loamy plains, where there is rich deep soil, with pos- 
 sibilities of luxuriant harvests ; not the bare mountain- 
 sides, which can grow nothing but grass, and where 
 Sif, Thor's daughter, reigns. Her attendants are 
 Fulla, a maiden with yellow hair flowing over her 
 shoulders, representing the golden fields of autumn; 
 Hlin, the mild fostering warmth of long summer 
 days and dewy nights ; and Gna, with her swift 
 courser, the breeze sent to bring good weather, or to 
 bear the produce of the soil to every land. But as 
 cultivation implies inhabitants, Frigg is also rep- 
 resented as administering oaths, registering lovers' 
 vows, presiding over marriages, and knowing the 
 fate of man. Remnants of the worship of this god- 
 dess long remained in parts of the north of England, 
 where in autumn the peasants had a procession and 
 a dance, in which the chief performers were called 
 Woden and his wife Frigga. 
 
 Closely allied with Frigg is the god Frey, — known 
 by the Germans as Fro, and, with his sister Freyia, 
 resembling in many points the Nerthus mentioned by 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 277 
 
 Tacitus. The sphere of his worship was very wide. 
 He was the chief god of the Swedes. His godhead, 
 Grimm tells us, " seems to hold a middle place between 
 the notion of the supreme lord and that of a being who 
 brings about love and fruitfulness. He has Wuotan's 
 creative faculty, but performs no deeds of war : horse 
 and sword he gives away when consumed with long- 
 ing for the fair Gerd." Rain and sunshine are his 
 gifts ; and men also invoked him for a fertile soil and 
 for peace. He represents the fructifying principle, 
 which produces germination, and which was supposed 
 to reside in the air. This is beautifully brought out 
 in one of the Eddaic myths. Gerd, daughter of giant 
 Gymir — a beautiful girl with bright shining arms — is 
 loved by Frey, but does not return his love. Skirnir, 
 Frey's messenger, is sent to Gymir's court to press his 
 suit ; but in spite of promises and threats, the maiden 
 will not yield, and is only brought to reason when 
 threatened with the frost-giant, Hrimnir, as a husband. 
 Gerd is the earth with the seed just sown in it; Skir- 
 nir is the spring-wind that dries the sodden soil ; the 
 marriage of Gerd and Frey is the germinating prin- 
 ciple making itself felt in the sown corn, and forcing 
 it to grow, — a principle which, if uncommunicated, 
 would have left the sown field a barren waste. The 
 god has two attendants, Beyggvir and hi§ wife Beyla; 
 the one, in Professor Patersen's opinion, represent- 
 ing the refuse of the mill, chaff — the other, the man- 
 ure which enriches the soil into which the seed is put. 
 It was the custom on Yule-eve to sacrifice a boar to 
 Frey, — the atonement-boar, as it was called. When 
 the animal was led out, those present placed their 
 
278 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 hands on it, and made a solemn vow. It was then 
 killed, and cooked and eaten, and a horn drained to 
 Niord and Frey. Traces of this rite we find long after 
 paganism was extinct. We are told that on good 
 King Arthur's table there stood " a boar's head, gar- 
 nished with bayes and rosemarye." It used to be the 
 custom at Oxford, and perhaps still is, on Christmas- 
 day, to carry round a boar's head, singing, "Caput 
 apri defero. Reddens laudes Domino ; " and at that 
 season, to this day, in Sweden, cakes are baked in the 
 shape of a boar. 
 
 It would have been very strange if the old Vikings 
 had been without a god whose special province it was 
 to rule the sea. Accordingly, we find two deities for 
 the sailor — CEger and Niord ; the one presiding over 
 the open ocean, the other reigning near the coast : the 
 former, the fierce wind born of icebergs and snow ; 
 the latter, the mild sea-breeze. When, bent on war, 
 the Norseman went on board his galley, and steered 
 for other shores, he commended himself to the care 
 of CEger, whose hall he thought he saw, blazing with 
 burnished gold, fathoms beneath his keel, as he sailed 
 across the phosphorescent sea ; when, as a fisherman, 
 he launched his boat into gulf or bay, or, as a trader, 
 crept along the shore, always within sight of land, he 
 sought the protection of Niord. And if, through mis- 
 adventure in peace or war, any of these bold sea- 
 rovers found a watery grave, their friends comforted 
 themselves with the thought that they were safe and 
 happy with the wife of CEger, the friend of all drowned 
 sailors, the goddess Ran. 
 
 Every great and beneficent power in nature, as I 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 279 
 
 have said, was, to the pagan Teuton and Scandinavian, 
 a god ; and not only so, he filled earth and air with 
 unseen but most active agents — with dwarfs , busy 
 in the bowels of the mountains among metals and 
 stones ; with elves, watching and pervading the life 
 of plants and trees, and beasts and men. War- 
 maidens — the Valkyries — went with Odin to battle, 
 and chose the combatants who were to fall, and 
 waited on the slain heroes in bright Valhalla. Ful-- 
 giur and Hamingiur, a sort of guardian angels, ac- 
 companied every man from the cradle to the grave. 
 The fate of all was in the hands of the Norns, who, 
 spinning the threads of destiny, determined every- 
 thing that should be. A French writer has well re- 
 marked, " Perhaps no religion ever attributed so much 
 to the Divine Providence as that of the northern na- 
 tions. This doctrine served them for a key, as com- 
 modious as it was universal, to unlock all the pheno- 
 mena of nature without exception. The intelligence 
 united to different bodies penetrated and moved them, 
 and men needed not to look any further than to them 
 to find the cause of everything they observed in them.'' 
 We are not, however, to suppose that the Norse con- 
 ception of divinity was without its application to 
 man's intellectual and moral nature. The connection 
 was most intimate : Odin was king of mind as well as 
 of matter. The god Heimdall, whose symbol is the 
 rainbow and who stood as the sentinel of heaven, also 
 assured man that he was under the divine care. Thor 
 was not only thunder: he was divine strength put 
 forth in man's behalf as well. The terrible Tyr — a 
 northern war-god, fiercer even than Mars — who was 
 
28o The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ever found on the battle-field, was also the embodi- 
 ment of heroic self-sacrifice, undaunted courage, and 
 glory. The bright Baldur was worshipped equally 
 as divine goodness and piety, and the god of sum- 
 nier. Freyia was recognised as the goddess of love, 
 as well as the giver of fruitfulness. This twofold 
 aspect of its gods runs through the whole of the 
 religion. 
 
 And though, on the whole, there is much bright- 
 ness about that religion, it is not without its darker 
 shades, deepening sometimes into gloomy grandeur or 
 touching sadness, but never darkening into the black- 
 ness of despair. The Northman believed that the 
 present system of things was transitory. He saw no 
 chance of the powers which ruled the world being 
 able to withstand the terrible forces opposed to them, 
 when these were let loose in all their strength. The 
 gods themselves had in them the germ of death. So 
 the world and the gods must perish. But that was 
 not the end of all things. Before the earth was 
 created there were higher powers, and these would 
 remain when it was destroyed ; matter was indestruc- 
 tible ; there was an everlasting summer-time in store 
 for the world. This belief is shadowed in the myth 
 of Baldur, one of the most beautiful of the Eddaic 
 myths, and is clearly stated in the Eddaic descrip- 
 tion of Ragnarock (the twilight of the gods) and the 
 Regeneration. This myth I shall briefly sketch. 
 Baldur, son of Odin, was the favourite of the gods. 
 His mother, Frigg, having a great love for him, and 
 being anxious to save him from all harm, exacted an 
 oath from everything in the world she thought capa- 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 281 
 
 ble of hurting him not to do so. One little shrub 
 that grew on the east of Valhal — the misletoe — she 
 neglected to swear, which omission was discovered 
 by Loki, the spirit of evil. Knowing the arrange- 
 ment which had been made by Frigg, it was the 
 custom of the gods to amuse themselves by throwing 
 all sorts of things at Baldur, who, of course, was 
 never hurt. One day Loki cut a branch of misletoe, 
 and gave it to the blind god Hodur, telling him to 
 throw it. He did so, and Baldur fell. There was 
 great lamentation among the gods ; and Hermod, 
 as their messenger, was sent to Hel, the goddess of 
 death, to plead with her to restore Baldur to them, 
 which she promised to do, if every created thing 
 would weep for him. The condition known, was at 
 once complied with by all things living and dead, 
 except by a giantess called Thok, supposed to have 
 been Loki himself; who naturally had no wish to see 
 Baldur restored. So Baldur had to remain with Hel; 
 but his death was to be avenged by a brother Vali, 
 soon to be born, and by whom Hodur was to be 
 slain. Such in outline is the myth, which may be 
 very simply explained. Baldur is the summer, or 
 rather the sun, which makes the summer ; Loki is 
 fire, which does not need the sun ; Hodur is dark- 
 ness and winter, which seem to destroy the sun ; by 
 the return of spring his death seems to be avenged. 
 The myth represents the death of the day at sunset, 
 when the sky is red, as if stained with blood ; and the 
 departure of summer, when winter comes with its 
 fogs, and clouds, and long dark nights. Gradually, 
 however, the myth was lifted into the very centre of 
 
282 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the Odinic religion, and taken to signify the destruc- 
 tion and regeneration of the world. 
 
 The belief shadowed in this myth, is very boldly 
 expressed in the weird picture of Ragnardck, given us 
 in the younger Edda. Some time during the history 
 of the present system of things, the gods are repre- 
 sented as having succeeded in binding certain terrible 
 hostile powers. Loki, emblem at once of material 
 fire and of moral evil, had, like Prometheus, been 
 chained to a rock, and tortured by a serpent drop- 
 ping venom, placed over his head. The Fenrir-wolf, 
 symbol of sheer destructiveness, and offspring of 
 Loki, his last bad act the biting off of the brave 
 Tyr's hand, had also been securely fastened up. The 
 Midgard serpent, another of Loki's horrid brood, and 
 type of the evil which surrounds the world, had been 
 thrust out of Asgard, and cast into the sea, where it 
 lay firmly coiled around the earth. These at Rag- 
 narock are let loose, and, aided by Surt from Muspel, 
 make an end of the gods and the world. The Eddaic 
 description of the final catastrophe is so very graphic 
 that I give it in a condensed form. There will come 
 a winter of bitterest cold and fiercest storm, with 
 blinding snow, and no sun. Three such winters will 
 follow without a summer, when there will be war and 
 discord over the earth — brothers slaying brothers, 
 and parents their children. Then will there be awful 
 portents. The sun and moon shall disappear ; the 
 stars be hurled from the sky ; the earth be so shaken 
 that trees will be torn from their roots, and moun- 
 tains totter to their fall. Then the Fenrir - wolf 
 breaks loose ; the sea rushes over the earth, and the 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion, 283 
 
 Midgard serpent gains the land ; and the two ad- 
 vance, flashing fire and raining venom. Now the 
 heavens are rent, and the bright sons of Muspel ride 
 forth, at their head Surt, whose sword outshines the 
 sun. These go, but wide apart, with Loki, now un- 
 bound, and his dreadful children, and all the Frost- 
 giants, to Vigrid, the great battle - field of time. 
 Meanwhile Heimdall winds his horn, and arouses the 
 gods, who, with the heroes of Valhal, quickly arm 
 and take the field, led by Odin, with his golden 
 helmet, and shining byrnie, and much-dreaded spear. 
 It is a terrible hour : the sacred ash quivers, and 
 everything in heaven and earth quakes. Odin meets 
 the wolf, and is crushed by his awful jaws. Thor 
 encounters the serpent, which he slays, but only to 
 fall dead himself, suffocated by the venom it vomits 
 in its dying agony. Frey and Surt struggle ; but 
 Frey, having given away his sword, is overcome. 
 The brave Tyr attacks the monster Garm ; but it is 
 the god's last battle. Loki and Heimdall fight, and 
 both die. Vidar only is victorious, rushing on the 
 wolf, and rending his jaws asunder, and avenging 
 Odin. " Surt flings fire and flame over the world ; 
 smoke wreathes up around the all-nourishing tree ; 
 the high flames play against the heavens ; and earth 
 consumed, sinks down beneath the sea." 
 
 But after destruction comes regeneration. The 
 pagan Northman looked for new heavens and a new 
 earth. In the younger Edda it is said : " The earth 
 rises again from the sea, and is green and fair. The 
 fields unsown produce their harvests. Vidar and 
 Vali live, dwelling on the plains of Ida, where As- 
 
284 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 gard was before. Thither come also the sons of 
 Thor ; and they have Miolner. Then come Baldur 
 and Hodur from Hel." The heads of a new human 
 race appear, who feed on the morning dew. We have 
 still here the worship of force. In the solemn and 
 mysterious depths of the impenetrable forests, hidden 
 away from the sunlight and the free sweep of the air, 
 dwelt Vidar, the Silent. He represented the inde- 
 structibility of matter, — a quality wholly impercep- 
 tible, only believed to be. Vidar, therefore, appears 
 again. Throughout all the years of the world's his- 
 tory a miracle had been wrought in nature every 
 spring ; for then a life-giving power passed through 
 the earth, and revived dead things. That power was 
 Vali, an imperishable force ; and he, too, survives. 
 When man was first formed, one of the creative trin- 
 ity gave him reason and the sensitive faculty ; and 
 though Freyia, with all that is sensual, must perish, 
 if man is to exist, these can never die : so Hoenir re- 
 appears. The Thunder-god is not needed in Para- 
 dise, but strength and courage must pervade all its 
 inhabitants ; so Thor's two sons are there. And as 
 without light there could be no joy, we meet the 
 bright and beautiful Baldur once more, bringing 
 everywhere, and for ever, the bright summer-time, 
 which had been looked for so long. Such was the 
 Northman's view of the destruction and regeneration 
 of all things, — one of the most important doctrines in 
 his creed. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to add that he believed in 
 the immortality of the soul. That among northern 
 nations was a deep-rootgd belief; and they also 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 285 
 
 looked for a state of retribution beyond the grave. 
 They regarded the future state as, to a largfe extent, 
 a continuation of the present ; and so the dead were 
 supplied with some of their property, and coins were 
 put under their tongues to defray the first expenses 
 of their journey to the other world. It would almost 
 seem, also, as if a belief in an intermediate state had 
 been entertained. For the brave and virtuous there 
 were two abodes, Valhalla and Gimli ; and two for the 
 vicious, Hel's home in Niflheim, and Nastrond — the 
 former to be tenanted till Ragnarock, the latter after 
 that, for ever. Very few, save those who fell in battle, 
 were received by Odin into Valhalla, which was a 
 heaven such as only a warlike peopre* could have con- 
 ceived. It was a hall shining with pure gold ; its ceil- 
 ing was formed of spears, its roof of shields, its benches 
 glittered with coats of mail. It was a great place, with 
 540 gates, through each of which 800 men could go 
 abreast. There the Einheriar, the heroes slain in 
 battle, dwelt, — arming themselves every day, and rid- 
 ing out into the spacious court to the fight, which 
 they enjoyed with all its fierce delights, even to 
 slaughter ; and then returning unhurt, to drink mead 
 with the gods, and be waited on by the Valkyries. 
 Hel's dwelling is thus described : " Her palace was 
 Anguish; her table Famine; her knife Starvation; 
 her waiters Slowness and Delay ; her door a Preci- 
 pice ; her bed Care ; its curtains Splendid Misery." 
 Of Gimli and Nastrond we know nothing save what 
 the younger Edda tells us. "There are many good 
 and many bad abodes. Best is it to be in Gimli, in 
 
 2 A 
 
286 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 heaven. Plenty is there of good drink for those who 
 deem this a joy in the hall called Brimer. There is 
 also an excellent hall which stands on the Nida 
 mountains. It is built of red gold, and is called 
 Sindre. In this hall good and well-minded men shall 
 dwell. Nastrond is a large and terrible hall, and its 
 doors open to the north. It is built of serpents 
 wattled together ; and all the heads of the serpents 
 turn into the hall, and vomit forth venom that flows 
 in streams along the hall ; and in these streams wade 
 perjurers and murderers." The souls of bondsmen 
 went to Thor ; those of persons drowned at sea to 
 Ran ; those of pious women to Freyia. 
 
 That seems to have been the Teutonic and Scandi- 
 navian opinion in reference to a future state. It was 
 the reflection of the people's minds — of their hopes 
 and fears. Their heaven was the condition they most 
 loved and prized, their hell the state they most hated 
 and dreaded. Military glory being their highest hap- 
 piness, they had Valhalla ; perfidy, unchastity, cow- 
 ardice being, as they thought, deserving of severest 
 punishment, they had Hel and Nastrond. And poor 
 and sensuous though the conception appears to us, it 
 had a marvellous power over these simple pagans. 
 It made them pious and virtuous ; for blasphemy and 
 baseness excluded even the slain hero from Valhalla, 
 whilst conspicuous virtue could gain for man an en- 
 trance there, though death by arms had not released 
 his soul. It inspired them with a courage which 
 even yet wins the admiration of their descendants — 
 nerved them to sweep the rough northern seas in their 
 
Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion. 287 
 
 little war-ships, to be valiant in battle, and to defy 
 the most cruel deaths. An old Norse king, Ragnar 
 Lodbrok, when about to die, shows us the power of 
 this doctrine. He exhibited no fear, and uttered no 
 complaint, but said : " We are cut to pieces with 
 swords ; but this fills me with joy, when I think of 
 the feast that is preparing for me in Odin's palace. 
 Quickly, quickly, seated in the splendid habitation of 
 the gods, we shall drink beer out of curved horns. A 
 brave man fears not to die. I shall utter no timorous 
 words as I enter the hall of Odin." But amid all the 
 pictured joys of Valhalla on which he feasted, I doubt 
 not there came to the old Northman a dim suspicion 
 that perhaps they might pall. Even the greatest war- 
 rior would at times be weary, and his life might be 
 darkened by some great sorrow, which the hurry of 
 battle and the clash of arms could not dispel, and he 
 would long then for rest, and peace, and cloudless joy. 
 So he thought of the bright Gimli-, where the gracious 
 Baldur reigned, and where there was neither Odin 
 nor Tyr, and therefore neither strife nor tears. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to present a brief outline 
 of the Teutonic and Scandinavian religion — one of 
 the great faiths of the world — to indicate what most 
 of the inhabitants of Northern Europe, our own an- 
 cestors among them, believed in pagan times, in refer- 
 ence to God and His relations to man and the world, 
 and what their hope was for a future state. That 
 religion, with all its beautiful myths, has passed 
 away, having in the Divine Providence served its end. 
 Doubtless it was a power operating for good in its 
 
288 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 time, and gave men what spiritual life they had, and 
 made them the hardy, adventurous, brave men they 
 were, and shed all the light they saw lying on tl^e 
 world beyond the grave. They were, in their own 
 acceptation of the term, a religious people, and freely 
 sacrificed their best and dearest in what they believed 
 to be the way most acceptable to their gods : may 
 we not hope that OUR God was pleased with the 
 offerings of their gratitude, and listened to the cry of 
 their penitence ? To us Odin and Thor are mere 
 names ; to them they represented the governing and 
 defending powers of the universe. They had no in- 
 terpreters of the world and human life but their own 
 experience and fancy ; we have a sure key to both in 
 God's Word. 
 
 " Earth outgrows the mythic fancies 
 Sung beside her in her youth ; 
 And those debonair romances 
 
 Sound but dull beside the truth. 
 Phcebus' chariot-course is run : 
 Look up, poets, to the sun ! 
 
 Pan, Pan is dead. 
 
 Christ hath sent us down the angels, 
 
 And the whole earth and the skies 
 Are illumed by altar-candles 
 
 Lit for blessed mysteries ; 
 And a Priest's hand through creation 
 Waveth calm and consecration : 
 And Pan is dead. " 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES—THB FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA. 
 
 By the Rev. John Marshall Lang, D.D., Minister of 
 the Barony Parish, Glasgow. 
 
 THE pioneers of the famous "ocean chivalry" of 
 Spain inflamed the curiosity and the cupidity 
 of their countrymen by reports of fertile regions be- 
 yond the newly discovered Cuba. These reports were 
 more than confirmed by the adventurous band 
 headed in 1518 by Grijalva. Landing in Yucatan, 
 they beheld houses with sloping roofs built of stone 
 and lime. The fields were cultivated. The natives 
 were carefully dressed. What most amazed them, 
 and evoked such enthusiasm that on beholding them 
 they named the shores New Spain, was the occurrence, 
 at various places, of large stone crosses. They came 
 
 2 B 
 
290 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 on fragments of masonry exhibiting the artist's skill ; 
 nay, says an old chronicler, " a city was seen which 
 for hugenesse they called Cayrus, where were found 
 turretted houses, stately temples, well -paved ways 
 and roads, where markets and fairs for merchandize 
 are held." But the monuments of extinct social 
 life, in which the archaeologists of recent times have 
 found an exhaustless study, were unobserved. Buried 
 in dense forests, the eye of the invader never reached 
 them. Cortes, six years after the time of Grijalva's 
 expedition, accomplished a dreadful march to Hon- 
 duras. Along the line of march the people burned 
 their villages and abandoned the country. For traces 
 of human habitations he and his warriors intensely 
 longed ; and yet, although passing within a short 
 distance of the most famous of the ancient cities 
 of America, no reference whatever is made to it. 
 Palenque was even then, we may conclude, "a heap 
 of mouldering ruins buried in a wilderness of veg- 
 etation." 
 
 Such mouldering ruins are found in spots far re- 
 moved from the din and bustle of men, between the 
 Isthmus of Darien and the northern limit of Anahuac. 
 Undoubtedly the most remarkable are in the southern 
 division of our territory — in Honduras, and Yucatan, 
 and Chiapas. 
 
 Honduras has its Copan, the oldest of American 
 cities, — uninhabited when Cortes and his soldiers 
 marched through the land. Monuments extending 
 for more than two miles indicate how large and 
 magnificent the city once was. The part which 
 
A ncient Religions of Central A merica. 291 
 
 preserves most its integrity is that which has been 
 named the Temple. In it altars and idols are of 
 single blocks of stone, often elaborately carved, with 
 tablets of hieroglyphics, and figures, and death-heads, 
 and designs some of which, in the judgment of 
 Stephens, are equal to the finest Egyptian sculp- 
 ture. Besides these, there are still to be seen 
 fragments of mounds on which, at a period indef- 
 initely remote, imposing wooden temples had been 
 reared. Yucatan has its Uxmal and its Chichen- 
 Itza. The one, the capital of the old theocratic 
 kingdom of the Totul-Xius in the ninth century. 
 The explorer, attempting a description of its re- 
 mains, observes, — " So vast a work rises up before 
 me, that I am at a loss where to begin." Notable 
 are piles of gigantic buildings, pyramidal structures 
 whose stones are each " part of an allegory or 
 fable," subterranean reservoirs, fagades, corridors, 
 terraces, walls covered with ornaments " strange and 
 incomprehensible in design, sometimes grotesque, 
 but often singularly simple, tasteful, and beautiful." 
 The other city, Chichen-Itza, is praised as "the gem 
 for the riches of its sculptures ; " and one of its crum- 
 bling edifices is declared to be "the most strange 
 and incomprehensible pile of architecture ever be- 
 held — elaborate, elegant, stupendous." Chiapas is 
 famous for the Palenque already referred to, — if not 
 the most ancient, at least the most extensive, of all 
 the ruined places. Here, signs of an astonishing 
 artistic genius, are the remains of pyramids whose 
 summits were formerly crowned by palace and fane. 
 
292 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Here are tablets perfect in beauty, "surviving the 
 wreck of elements, their figures and characters as 
 distinct as when the people went to pay their adora- 
 tions before them." Here — but the time fails to tell 
 of the temples of the sun, and the moon, and the 
 three tables, the bas-reliefs, the doorways, the chain- 
 bers, the monuments of a city once teeming with 
 life, but for long centuries silent and deserted. 
 
 These are the most outstanding of the witnesses 
 of antiquity. The imagination is fascinated by the 
 loneliness of their situation; the great idol -stones 
 and sculptures standing erect on solitary plain or in 
 the midst of dense and tangled jungle ; and around 
 and around, portions of stupendous masonry, their 
 tracery and hieroglyphs telling the story of nations 
 whose names cannot be recalled : the scenes of this 
 vanished glory now shunned by the Indian ; the bat, 
 and the owl, and the monkey left sole tenants of. 
 places once brilliant with all that distinguishes power, 
 and impressive with all that is gorgeous in the ritual 
 of paganism. 
 
 The architecture of these partly buried cities con- 
 trasts most markedly with that of Mexico. They are 
 unquestionably the more ancient, " to be measured, 
 not by hundreds, but by thousands of years." The 
 designs traced on the buildings are different from 
 those in the north. The hieroglyphs, too, are differ- 
 ent. The key to decipher them has been lost. But 
 they speak of peoples milder in manner and gentler 
 in spirit than those of Anahuac. There is an entire 
 absence of the figures of warriors or the circumstances 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 293 
 
 of battle. And with this agrees the character of the 
 remains. They exhibit no signs of fortifications. In 
 the variety of sculpture, there is none which can dis- 
 tinctly be identified as a weapon of war. Idols are 
 there, but they are neither so numerous nor are they 
 so grim as in the country of the Aztecs. At Uxmal 
 there are no idols. Where idols are found, altars, 
 circular and square, stand before or near them, and 
 stones which resemble the dread sacrificial stone. 
 But the stones may belong to a time more recent 
 than the most characteristic of the ruins. In these 
 ruins we recognise the evidence of tribes which loved 
 the arts, and possessed a considerable share of the 
 refinements, of peaceful life. Their worship, on the 
 whole, was not sanguinary. There was no god of 
 war. There was no god of helL 
 
 All this corresponds to the tradition that the 
 nations in the Southern States belonged to the great 
 family of Indians called the Maya, whose historical 
 head is the half-mythical Votan, — probably the leader 
 of some great migration, the founder of a priestly 
 empire which, towards the beginning of the historic 
 ages, spread far and wide. When it was broken up, 
 we know not. Whither the Mayas dispersed, or 
 what combinations the dispersion formed, we know 
 not. But remnants of the empire settled, apparently, 
 in Yucatan, carrying with them their worship and 
 their arts. Probably in the course of time these 
 remnants were mixed by other elements — the Toltecs 
 from Mexico, and those Quiches, whencesoever they 
 came, who found a home in Guatemala. And the 
 
294 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 result of this occupation of the fertile Pacific plains 
 was the civilisation of which no other records exist 
 than those of stone and stucco — records, however, 
 sufficient to prove that there were kingdoms, aris- 
 tocracies, legislative councils, systems of numera- 
 tion, calendars, phonetic writing, language not only 
 oral but written. Slavery existed in milder forms 
 than in other latitudes. The education of youth 
 was attended to. The legal code was strict, yet not 
 unjust. The priest is the great figure in the social 
 life. The first Maya kings, it would seem, were the 
 supreme pontiffs also. In later times the high priest 
 of Yucatan had his papal city and his States of the 
 Church. Rite and festival interpenetrated all family 
 and personal ordering. There were feasts for fishers, 
 hunters, apiarists ; a strange compound, we can infer, 
 of the beautiful and the grotesque, of thought essay- 
 ing to rise towards the Everlasting, and superstition 
 the most abject. Omens, dreams, witches, wizards, 
 had their place. On the other hand, there are 
 signs of a sweeter and loftier culture. One of the 
 most curious of beliefs was that of a baptismal re- 
 generation. The rite of ablution was held to be 
 necessary. By this ablution it was supposed that a 
 purer nature was received. None might marry who 
 had not been baptised : an unbaptised person was 
 held to be incapable of leading a good life. The 
 banquet at baptism was called the Descent of God, 
 and the baptised were spoken of as "born again." 
 
 In Anahuac, we are introduced to histories, social 
 conditions, worships, at many points contrasting with 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 295 
 
 the States nearer the Isthmus. All English readers 
 are familiar with the conquest of Mexico, and with 
 those aspects of civilisation which met the gaze of 
 the conqueror. There is no chapter in historic annals 
 more striking, it might be said more pathetic, than 
 that which records the struggle closed by the down- 
 fall, of Montezuma's dynasty. The empire which this 
 dynasty headed was one of barbaric magnificence, but 
 one also with compact institutions, with an elaborate 
 political and religious organisation. It must be re- 
 membered that the Aztecs, in possession at the con- 
 quest, were only the third of the peoples which had 
 won their right to the soil. It does not fall within 
 the scope of my subject to trace the course — the 
 coming and going — of the races which, previously to 
 the Aztec, occupied the fertile valley of Mexico. Let 
 it suffice to mention the Toltecs, that shadowy race 
 whose domination extended from the sixth to the 
 eleventh Christian century, and which then mysteri- 
 ously disappeared — not, as we are at liberty to sup- 
 pose, without influencing the religious life and the 
 architectural genius of the race which followed. This 
 race was the Chichemecs, along with the Acolhuans 
 and their lake-engirt capital of Tezcuco. After a 
 lapse of not two centuries, the Aztecs seized the 
 supreme authority. Toltec, Chichemec, and Aztec, 
 belong to the family of the Nahua — the division 
 in which it has been found convenient to include all 
 peoples not belonging to the Maya nations. 
 
 The Mexican cities tell no tale of the forgotten 
 dead. There are no monuments in the modern cap- 
 
296 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ital. Temples, to be numbered by hundreds in the 
 sixteenth century, and palaces, have disappeared. 
 Old Mexico lies buried beneath the new. Only 
 three relics have been unearthed — a sacrificial stone, 
 a calendar - stone, and the idol of that goddess 
 of death who conducts the warrior to the House 
 of the Sun. Elsewhere fragments of masonry and 
 pottery are visible. The ruins of the great pyramid 
 of Xochicalco, covered with bas-reliefs and figures 
 and idols, and of the celebrated city of Mitla, still 
 exhibiting the remains of great priestly palaces, are 
 the completest extant tokens of ancient Aztec, if 
 not more ancient Toltec, genius. The vanquisher 
 hid from the view of the vanquished the memorials 
 of the past. His policy was to make a new Spain 
 out of the old America. 
 
 Fortunately the chronicler of traditions and the 
 decipherer of ancient tablets followed in the train 
 of Hernando Cortes. We are provided with ample 
 material for analysing the elements of the Aztec reli- 
 gion, and even, in some measure, of the older Nahua 
 cults, which, as Prescott observes, were, in respect to 
 the Aztec, " a generous graft on a vicious stock." 
 
 Looking backward, then, from the latter part of 
 the sixteenth century — the time when their records 
 were disclosed to Spanish warriors and ecclesiastics 
 — what were the faiths which served to the, primitive 
 races of Central America as " the substance of things 
 hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"? In 
 dealing with this question, we are confronted by a 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 297 
 
 mythology altogether unique, so different from that 
 embodied in the literature of other countries that 
 there" can be no doubt of its genuineness. We are 
 confronted also by systems of worship remarkable for 
 their elaboration, and the extent to which they cov- 
 ered the life of their devotees. It may be well, first, 
 to regard the myths apart from the system. If, in 
 our survey, we find that they abound in things puer- 
 ile and whimsical, let us remember that the stand- 
 point of primitive peoples was not ours ; that "their 
 thoughts were not only different from our thoughts, 
 but different also from what we think their thoughts 
 ought to have been." 
 
 Man's religious life is mainly concerned with a 
 threefold problem — Being, Origin, and Destiny. The 
 first finds its ultimate landing-place in the thought 
 of God, of an unseen power encompassing the path. 
 The second leads into the maze of speculation as 
 to beginnings, genesis, evolution, the never-ending 
 mystery, whence. The third would carry the gaze 
 beyond the veil, would look through the great. secret 
 of the future to the everlasting. Let us regard the 
 mythology which gathers around the second part of 
 the problem : as to the first and third parts, it is less 
 easy to detach the myth from the forms of ancient 
 belief and worship. 
 
 To the untutored children of nature, very wonder- 
 ful is the origin of race, of the heavens and the earth. 
 The mind, for the most part, is incapable of investi- 
 gation, incapable even of lengthened sequences and 
 processes of thought. The most ready resource is 
 
298 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the idea of migration, of movement. We discern this 
 idea in the traditions of nearly all the Pacific States. 
 They have come over the sea; come from the far 
 East : great oceans have been crossed ; long journey- 
 ings have been performed. The Toltecs wandered — 
 so their sages taught — for a thousand years. The 
 Guatemalan Quiches asserted that they had come 
 from a land where no graven image was worshipped, 
 where they saluted only the rising sun. An exodus 
 from some Asiatic centre may be the fact signified 
 by these immigration legends. There are likenesses 
 to the Genesis-narrative of the Bible which engage 
 the attention. Accounts of a deluge have sometimes 
 a colouring so Biblical, that the suspicion of ecclesias- 
 tical interpolation may be raised ; as in the Mexican 
 myth of the boat floating over the water-waste, with 
 the old man Coxcox and his wife, who, when they 
 find themselves, after the abatement of the water, rest- 
 ing on Colhuacan, send first a vulture, which never 
 returns, and then the humming-bird, which does 
 return bearing a green leaf But almost all tribes 
 preserved the story of a flood, and a great destruc- 
 tion and repeopling of the earth. There were many 
 legends, too, reminding us of the Scriptural Babel- 
 tower, of huge pyramids which threatened to reach 
 the clouds, until the gods hurled thunderbolts and 
 fire on the builders. As in the Bible, the differ- 
 ences of dialects are accounted for by interposi- 
 tions of Deity causing confusion of tongues. Thus, 
 and otherwise, the mind stumbled for some explana- 
 tion of phenomena — in simple piety connecting what 
 
Ancient Religions of Central AmeHca. 299 
 
 is seen with the guiding and overruling of powers 
 unseen. 
 
 As to the genesis of man and the universe; the 
 less cultured tribes claimed to be an ascent from 
 birds, fishes, snakes. A royal dynasty boasted of 
 having sprung from two tall trees — therein recalling 
 Scandinavian legends. The old Californians as- 
 serted their development from the prairie wolf or 
 coyote. Some Anahuac tribes believed in nine 
 primitive forms, the tobacco - plant being one of 
 the nine, from which men proceeded. Probably in 
 such accounts we trace the working of the thought 
 that man is indeed the microcosm — that in him meet 
 the essences of existence, animate and inanimate. 
 But, in the higher civilisations, we have other and 
 worthier apprehensions. Often, in forms to our 
 view grotesque, the feeling that there is a Divine 
 element in humanity is foreshadowed. Such a fore- 
 shadowing was the Aztec myth of the flint-knife, — 
 the flint-knife born of the goddess, which fell from 
 heaven, and from which there sprang the sixteen 
 hundred gods, who, from the bone received from the 
 Lord of Hades — its fragments mixed with blood 
 drawn from their own persons — made man. Such a 
 foreshadowing, too, was the curious Thlinket tradi- 
 tion of the Great Spirit, whose earthly home was on 
 Mount Shasta, and whose daughter, driven from it 
 by the fierce wind to the abode of the great bears, 
 was the mother of men. And perhaps the most 
 beautiful and interesting of all such foreshadowings 
 was that embodied in the Popol-Vuh, the Bible of 
 
300 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the Quiches. It is a strange combination of mono- 
 theism with polytheistic elements. It sets before 
 us one Creator of whom are all things. But with 
 him are associated subordinate deities, and their 
 association constitutes the divine Pleroma. The 
 Pleroma is called the Feathered Serpent. It says 
 "Earth," and the earth is formed. And as, in the 
 Book of Job, the sons of God shout for joy when 
 the foundation of the earth is laid, so the Pleroma 
 turns to the Creator and sings, "Blessed be thy 
 coming, O Heart of Heaven." The Pleroma deter- 
 mines to make man. But the gods cannot create 
 a being worthy of the love of the Supreme. They 
 form a person of clay, but he has no intelligence. 
 They form two persons of wood, but they have 
 neither feeling nor intelligence. At length the Heart 
 of Heaven interposes, and by the direct exercise 
 of his wisdom and might, makes four perfect men 
 — noble, " god - like erect," their eyes sweeping over 
 immensity. He contracts their vision so that they 
 may not see as the gods see. Other peoples are 
 assumed as existent ; but in these four the Divine 
 humanity is realised. They sleep, and on awaking 
 they find four women given them by the gods as 
 their helpmates and the mothers of futurity. And 
 all set forth in search of the sun, and it is a weary 
 and cruel way which they must take. Not until 
 long years have passed do they reach the mountain- 
 slope whence the sun rises on their gladdened gaze. 
 Now they live in peace. They worship the Unseen. 
 They resolve on one thing — human sacrifice. When 
 
Ancient Religions of Central ATnerica. 301 
 
 the ages have passed, they die, calmly disappearing 
 whilst they speak to their children, and leaving 
 behind them a great bundle never unfolded, called 
 " The Majesty Enveloped." I have called this legend 
 beautiful. Can we fail to see in it the poetic vest- 
 ure of some elements of experience and aspiration ? 
 Surely it interprets the conviction that in man there 
 is something not of the earth, earthy. Is not the 
 journey in quest of the sun the symbol of the craving 
 for light .' Is not the toilsomeness of the way the 
 sign of the burden which weighs on the soul even 
 in its fullest blessedness .' And does not the bundle 
 left behind, never to be opened, witness for the mys- 
 tery, the solemn awful glory, which enwraps life and 
 destiny — " a majesty enveloped" .' 
 
 The Aztec cosmogony has been recognised by his- 
 torians as interesting. It sets before us four great 
 ages or cycles, each measuring thousands of years, 
 each ended by the action of the elements. The first 
 age — the sun of the waters — was ended by a tremen- 
 dous flood, in which all, except one man and woman, 
 perished. The second age — the sun of the earth — 
 was closed with earthquakes. The third age — the 
 sun of the air — was closed by tempests and hurri- 
 canes so disastrous that only few of mortals were left, 
 and these few, losing their reason, became monkeys. 
 The fourth age — that now passing — to which belongs 
 the birth of the existing mankind, — the sun of fire, 
 — is to be terminated by a universal conflagration. 
 Who is the creator and controller of all these periods 
 and spheres ? Strange shapes, enigmatical birds, 
 
302 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 dogs, coyotes, with which the genesis of the earth 
 is associated, appear in ancient tablet and record. 
 In one group of the Pacific tribes, there is a mysteri- 
 ous Presence called Yehl, transformed betimes into a 
 crow, and betimes into a coyote, by whom the blessings 
 of light, and fire, and water are secured to men. Truly 
 'there are lords many and gods many in the old-world 
 tales which we regard ; and odd the freaks and powers 
 ascribed to them. But in these tales we can at least re- 
 spect the efforts of poor floundering humanity to find 
 some standing in the far past, some light for the thick 
 darkness which encompassed. Day by day there 
 was the marvel of the sun and light, night by night 
 the marvel of the moon and stars ; the silence of the 
 wood, the reverberations of the sea, the song of the 
 bird,. the ripple of the stream, the lava poured forth 
 from volcano, the rent which spoke of earthquake, 
 the great facts of life and death, of pain and sorrow, 
 the alternations of joy and grief; — these things were 
 ever with him. What did they mean .? Whence this 
 boundlessness of being } Whence the mighty yet 
 mean thing. Himself .' So the heart asked in Yuca- 
 tan and Mexico — so it has ever asked ; and essaying 
 to answer — at least feeling for an answer — some- 
 times it drew near to the Father and Lord of all. 
 
 The systems of theology and worship to which the 
 Central American myths adhere, constitute a field for 
 research neither barren nor unfruitful. 
 
 Perhaps the rudest form of the idea of the Super- 
 natural is that in which the unseen is merely dreaded 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 303 
 
 for the possibilities of power stored in it. There is 
 no exercise of mind as to the divine. The moral 
 sense is not sufficiently awakened to admit of the 
 thought of retribution. All that is felt is a fear of 
 some occult influence, some tormenting spirit. In 
 this stage there is no religion ; there is only the 
 slavery of superstition. The dead haunt the mind ; 
 visions and dreams terrify; omens are regarded. 
 The Shaman, or medicine-man, is a sorcerer. He 
 seeks to cure disease by incantations ; he keeps away 
 the harmful spirit by song and gesture. The Hyper- 
 boreans, and some Californian tribes, were illustra- 
 tions of this debasing " fear which hath torment." 
 
 The next stage is Fetichism. In it there is reli- 
 gion. The sense of something else than what is 
 visible informs the consciousness. Every object is 
 more than what it seems to be. The phenomena 
 gazed on are so many gods ; at least they have an 
 individuality ; they are invested with the attributes 
 of personal being. This may seem strange to us ; 
 but to the savage, nature is a companion. He 
 talks with it as with a person. It is but a step for 
 him to regard its facts as persons, and transfer to 
 them the worship of which he is capable. Such 
 Fetichism prevailed amongst the wild nomadic 
 Indians who hung on the outskirts of the Spanish 
 army. It left its mark even on the more settled 
 nations. 
 
 Beyond this is the worship, not of gods in things, 
 but of the forces behind things — the great powers 
 that are manifest in nature. Man observes that there 
 
304 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 are potencies which it seems impossible to measure, 
 and that he is beset behind and before by them. 
 He becomes a worshipper of Force ; force in motion 
 is really to him the deity. The sun and the moon 
 and the stars seem the visibilities of the force-god. 
 The air, the water, the fire — that is God. He lifts 
 his hand, he bows his head ; he seeks to express his 
 feeling by raising some stone and carving a figure on 
 it. What was at first only the sign, becomes gradu- 
 ally confounded with the thing signified. The idol 
 is the god. - 
 
 But the powers are arbitrary. The sun scorches ; 
 or, more terrible still, in the eclipse, he withdraws, and 
 light seems about to be quenched. The fire burns 
 the prairie ; its lightning flashes forth in awful ma- 
 jesty, with pealing thunders and deluging rain. The 
 storm bursts and the sea rages. What can the poor 
 son of man do but crouch before the awful gods of 
 force .' Nay, he can perhaps propitiate them. There 
 may be reasons for the anger, which he can remove 
 or appease. He will give a present. He will offer 
 that which most represents him ; he will offer the 
 human life. Thus sacrifices are made ; and for 
 sacrifices priesthoods must be founded ; and with 
 sacrifices and priesthoods, houses of worship and 
 altars ; — in a word, all that is involved in the organ- 
 isation which Cortes contemplated with wonder. 
 
 To complete the picture of the American faiths; 
 the adoration of force includes the expressions of 
 force, not only in the material universe, but also in 
 man. The great man, the ruler, the chieftain, whose 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 305 
 
 prowess is the theme of song, whose influence is felt 
 by all the tribes, — why should not he, too, have a 
 place in the Pantheon ? The concrete is always 
 more attractive than the abstract: the man-god, 
 associated with the force-god, gradually wins the 
 heart — becomes the divinity with whom the com- 
 munications of men are held, and is clothed with the 
 attributes of the great forces. Thus, as we shall see, 
 the hero, in the Aztec system, is transformed into the 
 god of the air ; in the Maya systems, Culculcan and 
 Votan are worshipped as gods. 
 
 Considering the Nahua and Maya cults in the light 
 of the positions now indicated, we obtain a clue 
 through what seems otherwise a hopeless labyrinth. 
 They are by no means the simple faiths which we are 
 in the habit of associating with primitive races. The 
 Maya, as representing older types, and as having 
 never attained the solidarity of the Mexican myths, 
 are the least complex and confused. In them we 
 have many evidences of the force-worship alluded to. 
 In the Popol-Vuh, the two most ancient gods are the 
 Creator and Protector of the sun and moon; and 
 beside them is the god. He who begets. The Quiche 
 Trinity — Tohil, Avilix, and Gagavitz — denote thun- 
 der, lightning, and the thunderbolt : and the deity 
 only next to them, Harakan, seems to have been 
 identical with the rain or storm god of Mexico. The 
 architectural remains at Copan leave no doubt as 
 to the solar element in the religion of the peoples of 
 Chiapas and Yucatan. The same element can be 
 traced in the more elaborate Aztec theism. 
 
 2C 
 
3o6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 It is difficult to analyse that theism — so vast, so 
 numerous, ig the hierarchy of heaven. The Hebrew 
 prophet complained that, according to the number of 
 Israel's cities, were its gods. But in Mexico, not 
 each city only, but every street, home, family, had its 
 tutelary deities. The grossest polytheism was ram- 
 pant. The country was filled with idols, temples, 
 priests : more truly than Athens of old, it was " wholly 
 given to idolatry." Scarcely a day passed without 
 its religious festival ; the observances and rituals 
 imposed were a burden heavier than could be borne. 
 How can we gather up, how can we estimate, the 
 significance of worship so widespread and compli- 
 cated ? 
 
 We can only trace some lines of thought. The 
 Aztec cult, more narrowly regarded, is "a com- 
 pany of two armies." The signs of an older faith — 
 milder, more a simple prostration before the great 
 powers of the universe — may be traced along with, 
 although they become more and more overlaid by, 
 the fiercer conceptions of the more strictly Aztec 
 faith. Teotl, the name for the supreme, invisible, 
 absolute deity, belongs to the older cult; the san- 
 guinary Huitzilo-pochtli, the god of war, is' the Aztec 
 supreme — the patron of the State, in honour of whom 
 the chief sacrifices are offered. Quetzalcoatl, the god 
 of the wind or the air — in spirit gentle, and averse to 
 war, the god of merchandise — is the symbol of the 
 older ; the Tezcatlipoca, who persecutes him, be- 
 longs to the later — the Aztec. The older form 
 embodies most the adoration of the divinities of 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 307 
 
 nature. Teotl is the conception, in the rough, as it 
 were, of a Father of lights : and one of the touches 
 which relieve the darker colours imposed by the 
 Aztecs is the office assigned to the wife of the god of 
 war — the conveyance of the departed warrior-spirit 
 to the house of Teotl, the home of the sun. For 
 this sun-worship, along with its symbol, the fire, is 
 the basis of the most ancient conceptions of homage 
 to the divine. It may be said that at the root of 
 polytheism there is the idea of the One. That root- 
 idea is exemplified in the highest strivings of the 
 Aztec towards the Father of lights. The Franciscan 
 monk, De Sagahun, by his industry and research, 
 secured some interesting fragments shedding light on 
 the purer type of Anahuac devotion. These frag- 
 ments consist of prayers used at various times and 
 for various purposes. Words cannot be more touch- 
 ing than those frequently to be found in them. The 
 upward glances are most tender and spiritual; the 
 adoration most profound ; the petition most fervent. 
 For example, one of the most striking parts of the 
 religious discipline of Mexico is the prescribed con- 
 fessional. The sinner confessed only once in his life- 
 time — only once could he obtain the pledge of re- 
 mission. But in the pleading of the priest with " the 
 Lord most compassionate,'' there is a pathos which 
 reminds us of the Penitential Psalms of Holy Scrip- 
 ture ; and in the priest's address to the penitent, al- 
 though mixed with darker counsels, there are presented 
 most searching exposures of the exceeding sinfulness 
 of sin — a sinfulness from which there can be deliver- 
 
3o8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ance only through the mercy of " God most clement," 
 but from which there is deliverance when the soul is 
 penitent and forsakes the evil of its way. " Of thine 
 own will and volition "^-thus the priest is described 
 as saying — "thou hast defiled and stained thyself. 
 But thou hast come to the fountain of mercy. Thou 
 hast snatched thyself from Hades, and hast returned 
 again to come to life in this world as one that comes 
 from another. Now thou hast been born anew ; thou 
 hast begun to live anew, and our Lord God gives 
 thee light and a new sun. See that thou live with 
 much circumspection. Weep ; be sad ; walk humbly, 
 with submission, with the head low and bowed down, 
 praying to God. Look that pride find no place in 
 thee, otherwise thou wilt displease our Lord, who sees 
 the hearts and thoughts of all mortals." 
 
 The purest reflection of the more spiritual side of 
 the Aztec faith is found in the character and career 
 of the greatest of Aztec kings, Nezahualcoyotl of 
 Tezcuco. His biography is almost a counterpart to 
 that of David, king of Israel. As David was hunted 
 by Saul, like a partridge on the mountains of Israel, so, 
 when a youth, the Tezcucan prince was the victim of 
 the jealousy of the occupant of the throne ; and his 
 adventures and escapes read like those recorded in the 
 Book of Samuel. Like David, a man of war and 
 prosperous in his campaigns, he raised his king- 
 dom to the proudest of positions. Like David, his 
 later life was overshadowed by one crime — the same, 
 and involving the same treachery, as that of the royal 
 Hebrew. Like David, he was "the sweet Psalmist" 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 309 
 
 of his people ; his poems are elevated, pensive, and 
 devout in tone. Like David, in oldest age, he be- 
 queathed his crown to the only son of his favourite 
 queen, and in presence of the assembled nobles, 
 charged that son to seek after the one, the living and 
 ' true God. This great monarch recoiled from idolatry 
 and from sacrifices of blood. Once he was induced 
 to lay the human victim on the altar which, for years, 
 had not been reddened by gore. He protested that 
 such an act would never be repeated. "He believed 
 in one God only, the Creator of heaven and earth, by 
 whom we have our being, who never revealed Himself 
 to us in human form, or in any other; with whom the 
 souls of the virtuous are to dwell after death, while 
 the wicked will suffer pain unspeakable. He invoked 
 the Most High, as " Him by whom we live, and who 
 has all things in Himself." 
 
 But although, in its highest efforts, Aztec belief 
 approached the region of spiritual religion, this was 
 only through the special illumination of elect souls by 
 the Spirit of truth. Good men are good in spite 
 of bad creeds ; for, in the beautiful phrase of the 
 Popol-Vuh, their fellowship is with the Heart of 
 Heaven. Even in such strivings as those referred 
 to, there are many traces of the action of inferior 
 modes of thought. The penitent, so touchingly ex- 
 horted to repent, is exhorted also to procure a 
 slave and offer the slave to God. The wise and 
 reverent monarch proclaims that the sun is his 
 "father" and the earth his "mother." Aztec wor- 
 ship was the adoration of force.' The highest niche 
 
3IO The Faiths of the World. 
 
 in its Pantheon was devoted to the god of war. 1 n 
 war the nation lived. Thus only could it provide 
 itself with slaves for sacrifices. This force Avas infi- 
 nitely distributed. Each aspect of it, each concep- 
 tion of it, had its personation in a god. There were 
 chief deities; minor deities innumerable; gods of 
 providence, rain, air, the maize, thunder, — in short, 
 every conceivable sign of force had its appropriate 
 idol. To these gods the temples were reared, and 
 the prayers of the people offered ; there were no tem- 
 ples, no prayers, no priests in honour of Teotl. And, 
 summarising all this idol-worship, the old chronicler 
 Acosta concludes : " The devil hath used the same 
 manner to deceive the Indians as that wherewith he 
 hath deceived the Greeks and Romans, and other 
 gentiles, giving them to understand that these not- 
 able creatures, the sun, moon, stars, and elements, 
 have power and authority to do good or harm to 
 men." 
 
 The hideous feature of the Aztec religion was the 
 human sacrifice, with, it must be said, the addition, 
 occasionally, of cannibal practices. Such sacrifice 
 was foreign to the old Maya cults. It was import- 
 ed into them when the Mexican empire became su- 
 preme in the Southern States ; but it never assumed 
 the hideous prominence which it attained among the 
 Aztecs. Hideous indeed ! On huge stone altars 
 the Aztec priests set the images of the gods of war 
 and death. And before these altars stood the sacri- 
 ficial stone, elevated three feet above the ground, and 
 so constructed that, the body of the victim being in- 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 3 1 1 
 
 clined upwards, the heart might be the more easily 
 extracted and offered to the idol. The festivals ap- 
 pointed at certain seasons were stained by the most 
 revolting cruelties. There were banquet and riot, song 
 and dance, whilst the slaves were borne in procession, 
 and, one by one, were bound to the stone. Now and 
 again even the obdurated feeling of the people was 
 touched ; sobs were heard, and tears were observed to 
 fall, when, at the celebration in honour of the gods of 
 rain and water, little children were carried on litters 
 profusely decorated, to be offered on high mountains, 
 or cast into boiling whirlpools. Perhaps the climax 
 of rite both puerile and ghastly was reached at the 
 feast of the elder brother of the god of war — the 
 deity that persecuted the gentle Quetzalcoatl. A year 
 before that feast, the noblest-looking of those who 
 had been captured in war was selected as the repre- 
 sentative of the god. He was instructed in every 
 accomplishment of the aristocracy. He was indulged 
 in the choicest dainties. He was surrounded by a 
 royal retinue, and arrayed in regal garments. All — 
 prince, noble, peasant — worshipped him, as, in stately 
 equipage, he moved through the streets of the capital. 
 Twenty days before the beginning of the festivities 
 he was wedded to four of the fairest of women, and 
 all kinds of entertainment and revelry were lavished 
 on him. Thus until the fatal day. Then he was 
 conducted, not to the great temple, but to one small 
 and plain, about a mile from the city, and, guided up 
 its steps, against each of which a flute was broken, 
 to its summit, he was slain, and his head held up 
 
3 1 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 by the priest to the sun. The chronicler avers that 
 the tragedy was designed to be an acted sermon, 
 whose moral was the unsatisfactoriness of "pomp 
 and pride and circumstance," of mere luxury and 
 worldly fulness. 
 
 An expensive sermon ! " The heart was har- 
 dened, the manners were made ferocious, the feeble 
 light of civilisation transmitted from a milder race 
 was growing fainter and fainter as thousands on 
 thousands of miserable victims were yearly fattened 
 in its cages, sacrificed on its altars, dressed and served 
 at its banquets. The whole land was converted into 
 a vast human shambles. The empire of the Aztecs 
 did not fall before its time." 
 
 In both the Nahua and the Maya religions we find 
 gods, with whom a human history is connected, but 
 who are the accepted symbols of nature-forces. Are 
 these gods deified men, — heroes whom imagination 
 has crowned with divine glory and honour } or are 
 they nature-shapes humanised .' " In savage peoples," 
 it has been said, " the nature deity becomes gradu- 
 ally transformed into a national god, then into a na- 
 tional king, high priest, founder of religion, and at 
 last ends in being considered a human being." Be 
 this as it may, there is an explicitness, even in the 
 confusions of the American traditions, which compels 
 us to believe that, either at their base, or as matter 
 which has been woven into them, there is a series of 
 distinct historical facts. For example, the Nahua 
 deity, Quetzalcoatl. As we have already seen, he was 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 3 1 3 
 
 worshipped as the god-of the air. He was presented 
 sometimes in the form of a bird, sometimes in the 
 form of a flint, sometimes in the form of a snake. 
 He was the Mexican iEsculapius as well, to whom, 
 as the healing god, prayers were directed. His 
 temple was round, with no corners. In the earlier 
 period, no other sacrifice than the presentation of 
 fruit and flowers was enjoined in his honour. The 
 sanguinary character of Aztec worship, at a later 
 time, left its impression on the festivals dedicated to 
 him. But the human sacrifice never bulked so largely 
 as in the celebrations sacred to the patron god of 
 Mexico : by way of compensation, there were gashes 
 made, and blood drawn from the bodies of the priests 
 of his temples. Now the story as to the human 
 career of Quetzalcoatl is this. He was the religious 
 head and ruler of the Toltecs. His residences were 
 their chief cities, Tulla and Cholula. In the latter 
 city he lived for twenty years. His favourite retreat 
 was the neighbourhood of a lofty volcano ; and 
 from it, with sound so clear that it could -be heard 
 for three hundred miles, his laws were proclaimed. 
 He taught the duties of religion ; but he taught 
 also the arts of agriculture and mechanics. In 
 appearance he was unlike the race to which he 
 belonged. He was white in complexion, wore a long 
 white beard, and dressed in a long white robe. His 
 life was singularly chaste. He abhorred strife and 
 denounced war. Outward thriving and prosperity 
 followed the acceptance of his rule, until the god 
 
314 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Tezcatlipoca became jealous and persecuted him, 
 now under one form and now under another. Then, 
 taking four men with him, the gentle teacher left 
 the region of the Toltecs. He travelled towards 
 the east, and when he came to the sea he bade 
 his companions farewell, promising that at some 
 time unknown he would return ; and instructing 
 them to say to their countrymen that, by the way 
 of the sea, white and bearded men likewise would 
 come one day and deliver them from bondage. 
 Surely this myth cannot throughout be a mere inven- 
 tion. Sir Arthur Helps reminds us that there are 
 analogies to it in narratives of other teachers in vari- 
 ous parts of the American continent. The Toltec 
 priest has his Maya counterparts in Votan and Culcul- 
 can ; and these, in their turn, give place to the figure 
 of a Reformer, whom the Spaniards identified with 
 the apostle Thomas, who came from the West, was 
 wont to spend nights in prayer, and, himself austere, 
 denounced the vanities of the world. In all such 
 legends we may trace the recollection of some Ameri- 
 can Buddha, some good shepherd who practised and 
 taught a life of self-renunciation and virtue, under 
 whose guidance tribe or country flourished ; so that, 
 in the words of the tradition, " the very birds in the 
 trees sang such songs as had never since been heard ;'' 
 and whose fame, transmitted from generation to gen- 
 eration, received continual embellishments until the 
 impression of the man was transferred to the concep- 
 tion of the nature-god. 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 3 1 5 
 
 Our sketch of the American religions would be 
 incomplete without a brief exposition of their teach- 
 ing as to the future of man. They cannot evade the 
 question which has its seat in the instincts and crav- 
 ings of our nature. Is this life, so brief at its longest, 
 " in the presence of the Eternal but as a little smoke 
 and fog," the be-all and end-all of humanity .' Sad, 
 often tinged with a feeling of despair, is the view of 
 existence taken in the prayers and offices of the 
 priesthood, referred to in a previous part of this 
 lecture. The flickering of a hope beyond " the uni- 
 versal house of Hades" is dim; not so much, to 
 quote a touching sentence of a prayer, " as a fire-fly 
 gives out when going forth at night." Yet vague as 
 the belief is, it is interesting to observe its alliances 
 with other heathen modes of thought, and its occa- 
 sional approximation to Christian doctrine. Occa- 
 sional only, for the vision of the future was that of 
 a life, not only of the earth of the present time, but 
 even more earthy. 
 
 In the case of some tribes, indeed, it would seem 
 that there was no vision at all. The Nirvana of 
 Buddhism — a rest in the silence of not - being, a 
 purification and perfection through the merging of 
 the particular personality in the all of the universe — 
 is a conception too speculative and refined for their 
 rudely sensuous nature. The mind, as to all beyond 
 the veil, was simply a blank : the sole witness for the 
 feeling that there might be an unknown something 
 being the appeal to the Shaman or sorcerer, and the 
 
2,1 6 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 cry of fear. But this holds good of only the most bar- 
 barous and the least of the American families. There 
 is a faith as to a world to come in the case of all 
 whose civilisation had in some measure developed. 
 Yet the stamp of materialism is on it. It has room 
 for the Scandinavian Valhalla, with its gross and 
 disgusting gluttony, for the happy hunting-ground 
 of the Indian, as well as for conceptions which, in 
 purity of thought, far transcend the Elysium of which 
 Homer and Virgil sang. 
 
 One point is prominent : there is no clear percep- 
 tion of an indivisible and immortal soul. The soul 
 is held to be distributed over the body — nay, each 
 part of the body is sometimes conceived of as having 
 a soul. Hence the assurance of a physical resurrec- 
 tion. " The bones were the seeds which, planted in 
 the earth, or preserved in safe places, would, in time, 
 put on once again a garb of flesh, and germinate 
 into living human beings." 
 
 It is doubtful whether the idea of a future retribu- 
 tion was explicitly enforced in Quichd teaching.' But 
 it is so enforced in the majority of Nahua and Maya 
 cults. In them we meet the old Latin and Greek 
 poetry as to the river of death, and the shadowy 
 ferryman, and the place of spirits. A river is de- 
 scribed as flowing with swift, noiseless current. On 
 its waters floats a stone canoe, and in this canoe 
 the warrior- spirit is borne towards a blessed isle. 
 While he is borne the actions of the past are ex- 
 amined : if the review establishes that the good has 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 3 1 7 
 
 preponderated over the evil, he is landed on the isle ; 
 if otherwise, the canoe is sunk, and the shade is left 
 to see the isle, but never enjoy its bliss. In Ana- 
 huac, the thought of distinctions in the future state 
 is outlined ; and, having regard to the character of 
 Aztec worship, outlined in forms singularly mild and 
 graceful. 
 
 For the wicked there is the everlasting darkness; 
 but there are no horrors of punishment, no physical 
 tortures : there is only the absence of blessedness, the 
 terrible isolation of a guilty and selfish soul. For 
 the virtuous, three conditions of heavenly felicity are 
 sketched. The highest is the portion of the brave 
 warrior — in Mexican eyes the noblest type of man- 
 hood. As the ancient Egyptians believed that the 
 good are absorbed into Osiris and float in the vessel 
 of the sun, so the warrior, dying in battle, is con- 
 ducted by the queen of the god of war into the great 
 sun-house. Each morning, for a period, he marches 
 before the sun ; in the evening he rests in shady 
 groves. After years have passed, his soul passes 
 into the form of a bird of beautiful plumage, luxuri- 
 ating in the bowers of paradise, " rejoicing with and 
 praising the Lord, the sun ; glad and eternally rich 
 through him, sucking the sweetness of all flowers 
 delectable and pleasant to the taste." The second 
 condition of blessedness is that reserved for those 
 who have died from disease or have been killed. 
 Their city is Tlacolan — the source of the rivers and 
 of all that nourishes the earth — where all is lovely 
 
3i8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 and all endures. There play, in never - ending 
 youth, and never-clouded joy, the children who were 
 offered in sacrifice to the gods, and who, once a-year, 
 are permitted to revisit the earth. It is the scene of 
 everlasting song and gladness. Finally, for the re- 
 mainder of the virtuous, there is Mictlan, the shady 
 place. It is doubtful whether, in the popular view, 
 there are not ways of passage between this last and 
 the second condition. But in Mictlan there are nine 
 grades through which the spirit passes in its progress 
 from a state of merely negative, towards that of 
 positive happiness. 
 
 Thus the dead were regarded as, somewhere and 
 somehow, living to God. The metempsychosis of 
 the oriental is ever present to the imagination of 
 the Indian tribes. In their thought the soul returns, 
 after intervals longer or shorter, to live again an 
 earthly existence : the higher in virtue or rank to 
 inform the higher creatures, and the lower the lower. 
 Through all vagaries, the feeling is evidenced, that 
 those who pass out of sight are not lost ; that the indi- 
 vidual life is too sacred to be annihilated, to perish 
 for ever. For the rest, when reading the pages in 
 which historian and chronicler set before us what 
 they have been able to discover of the dreams through, 
 which, in the remote past, " lame hands of faith " were 
 stretched, it is as if the palpitating heart of human- 
 ity were beating against our own. There is the 
 sensation of the cold shudder caused by the resigna- 
 tion of the pleasing, anxious being to dumb forget- 
 
A ncient Religions of Central America. 319 
 
 fulness. The great yawning chasm of which they 
 conceived as separating the beyond from the pres- 
 ent, the valley of gloom through which the spirit 
 must pass, the long journey in darkness and pain 
 which those who have died in peace must take : these 
 things are the witness for the instinctive shrinking 
 of the soul from death. It was customary to bury 
 sword or implements with the departed : possibly 
 as a tribute of affection, probably as a preparation 
 for the future into which it was supposed he had 
 passed. Anyhow, we can imagine the saddened coun- 
 tenance, the tear-stained cheeks, of those who per- 
 formed the wonted rites. In our ears there seem to 
 sound the cries of the slaves who were sacrificed that 
 there might be service for the lordly Aztec in the 
 blissful Tlacolan. Recognising the elements of the 
 tragic and pathetic, we can follow, with a genuine 
 emotion, the confusions through which, as the river 
 forms for itself a way through beds of muddy sand, 
 the hope of an immortal future found a channel and 
 an utterance. And from such confusions we lift our 
 eyes, praising and magnifying Him who has shown 
 us the path of life, " in whose presence is fulness of 
 joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for ever- 
 more." 
 
 I have endeavoured, so far as this can be done 
 in a single lecture, to indicate the salient features 
 of the ancient mythologies and worships of Central 
 America. It remains only that I refer, in conclu- 
 
320 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 sion, to the influence which these faiths exercised, 
 to their historical value, and to their religious sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 Probably no beliefs ever more completely ruled 
 the people who adhered to them. When Cortes told 
 Montezuma that his idols were not gods, but evil 
 things called idols, the Mexican monarch indignantly 
 replied, " We hold them for very good gods, and it is 
 our business to adore them and to sacrifice to them." 
 Therein the king interpreted the feeling of his sub- 
 jects. The adoration of the gods was their business. 
 Unlike Egyptian temples, which were surrounded by 
 high walls, their teocallis or god-houses were open 
 to view. They were built on high places ; and each 
 day might be seen processions of priests ascending 
 the spiral stairs, and the thin curling smoke of the 
 hearts which were burned before the idols. It 
 would be unjust to say that there was no relief to 
 the gloom of bloody idolatries. There were light 
 and cheerful ceremonials. Dance and song had 
 their place. Children joined in beautiful acts of 
 worship. Nor were the duties of benevolence omit- 
 ted. The priest, whilst enjoining the penitent to 
 procure a slave for sacrifice, further instructed him 
 "to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, what- 
 ever privations it might cost, and remember that 
 their flesh is like his own, and that they are men like 
 him." The hospital for sickness and disease had its 
 anticipation in Mexican cities; and the surplus of 
 priestly revenues, beyond the provision for worship. 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 321 
 
 was by statute devoted to the support of the infirm 
 and the poor. But, allowing for this play of human 
 kindness, there can be no doubt that the effect of the 
 national cults on morals and manners was hurtful in 
 the extreme. It corrupted the sources of feeling. It 
 cramped the energy on every side. It necessarily 
 depressed the mind. An Aztec declared to a Span- 
 iard that many were wearied by the hard things 
 which were imposed on them, and longed to fly to 
 some other creed. Religion was little else than a 
 cruel and awful tyranny. 
 
 Systems which swayed for so long so many mill- 
 ions of the human family cannot be dismissed as 
 of little account in the history of the world. They 
 must have contributed, and that in no small measure, 
 to the education of humanity. If we believe that a 
 purpose runs through all the ages, we have the assur- 
 ance that no moral discipline passes away until its 
 share in the fulfilment of that purpose has been real- 
 ised. When it perishes, it is taken up into something 
 more lofty and enduring. And it is worthy of notice 
 that, in connection with the religions under review, 
 there are features of special interest to all who would 
 investigate the conditions of religious and social devel- 
 opment. For example, the Spanish conquerors of 
 Mexico were confounded by the resemblances in some 
 of the pagan rites and ordinances to the rites and 
 sacraments of the Catholic Church. In these resem- 
 blances they saw imitations propagated by the wiles 
 of the devil. How shall the sober-minded historian 
 
 2 D 
 
32 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 account for them ? Is it probable that, in some way 
 not yet known, there was a connection between 
 Christianity and the tribe or race which preceded 
 the Aztecs in Anahuac? The mixture of at least 
 two shades of thought, — the one softer and purer, 
 and the other more fierce and corrupt, — in the 
 heathenism of Central America, has previously been 
 indicated. Was the one the faint reflection of a 
 higher faith which had become mixed with grosser 
 elements by the migration of some Aryans from the 
 cradle-lands of monotheism? Or, shall we say that 
 the explanation of the problem is to be found in 
 mental and spiritual laws, with whose sphere of 
 operation we are imperfectly acquainted ? " The 
 whole subject," as it has justly been remarked, 
 " well merits the largest and profoundest inquiry ; 
 and the laws of thought, which create and modify 
 natural religion, might perhaps be more easily dis- 
 covered from a consideration of all that was noticed 
 in the discovery of the New World, than from any 
 other body of evidence which exists on that sub- 
 ject, gathered from the religions of the rest of the 
 world." 
 
 To us who rejoice in the light of the glory of 
 Christ, the study of modes of apprehension and forms 
 of worship, albeit heathen, and now among the things 
 that were, is neither profitless nor uninteresting. It 
 sets before us the tokens of a fellowship of the Eter- 
 nal with men, which transcends the limits of covenant 
 and revelation, and to which the soul responds by 
 
Ancient Religions of Central America. 323 
 
 seeking if haply it may feel after Him, and find Him 
 who is not far from every one of us. We have seen 
 that, through all the darkness, notwithstanding even 
 the horrid cruelties beneath which the Indians of 
 Mexico and Honduras groaned, there were still the 
 glimmerings of a spiritual truth and harmony, re- 
 minding all who have the ear to hear that — 
 
 " Where the spirit of man has gone 
 A-groping after the Spirit divine, 
 Somewhere or other it touches the Throne, 
 And sees a light that is seen by none 
 But who seek Him that is sitting thereon.'' 
 
 And yet, how ample is the verification of the judgment 
 on heathendom contained in Holy Scripture! — viz, 
 that men who discover in things made the invisible 
 things of the Maker, when unenlightened by rev- 
 elation, become " vain in their reasonings, and their 
 senseless heart is darkened." Surely the tendency 
 of natural religions to degenerate, their failure to in- 
 terpret the needs of the soul, the baneful effects of 
 the idolatry into which they change the glory of the 
 incorruptible God, constitute a presumption, whose 
 force it is scarcely possible to evade, in favour of an 
 authoritative expression of the mind and will of God. 
 Surely the study in which we have engaged sheds 
 an increase of meaning on the words of St Paul as to 
 the ■' riches of the grace which God has made to 
 abound towards us in all wisdom and prudence." 
 And, recognising in the gospel of this grace the 
 
324 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 fulfilment of the desire of all the nations, we can 
 enter the more sympathetically into the apostle's 
 feeling ; we can the more vividly understand his 
 ideal of the mission of Christianity ; when referring 
 to the altar with an inscription, "To the unknown 
 God," he addressed the philosophers of Athens in 
 the memorable sentence, " Whom ye ignorantly wor- 
 ship, Him declare I unto you." 
 
 The authorities quoted from, or specially referred to in the 
 Lecture, are — 
 
 Bancroft : ' The Native Races of the Pacific Tribes.' 
 
 Charnay : ' Citds et Ruines Amdricaines." 
 
 Cox : ' Mythology of Aryan Nations.' 
 
 Helps : ' History of the Spanish Conquest.' 
 
 Kingsborough (Lord) : ' Antiquities of Mexico.' 
 
 Miiller : ' Chips from a German Workshop.' 
 
 Norman : ' Rambles in Yucatan.' 
 
 Prescott : 'History of the Conquest of Mexico.' 
 
 Sagahun : ' Historia General,' &c. (in Bancroft's and Lord 
 
 Kingsborough's 'Antiquities'). 
 Stephens : ' Incidents of Travel in Central America.' 
 Tyler ; ' Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans.' 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 JUDAISM. 
 
 By the Rev. Malcolm Campbell Taylor, D.D., Professor of 
 Ecclesiastical History in the University of Edinburgh. 
 
 JUDAISM, as the religion of ancient Israel, and 
 not in the more restricted and technical sense 
 of the term, is the subject of lecture. It natur- 
 ally falls under two periods : the Mosaic or creative 
 period, and the prophetic or progressive ; but a 
 chronological division can only underly, without 
 strictly regulating, the treatment in short compass 
 of so large a subject. 
 
 I. The fundamental principle of the religion of 
 Israel is its monotheism — a principle which distin- 
 guishes it by a practical line of demarcation from 
 
 2 E 
 
326 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the other religions of antiquity. Several of these 
 may be reduced by speculative processes to a mono- 
 theistic basis. The Egyptian priest and Greek phil- 
 osopher undoubtedly rose to the conception of a 
 Supreme Deity, whom or whose attributes the many 
 occupants of the Pantheon represented ; but the proof 
 that the esoteric beliefs of the initiated, and the specu- 
 lations of philosophers, were not religions, is the fact 
 that the ancient religions decayed and died in the 
 presence of science and philosophy. In the religion 
 of Israel, on the other hand, the central fact, the living 
 germ of faith and morals, was the realisation of the 
 thought of one God, — in comparison with which, no 
 single conception transmitted by the ancient world 
 has fructified into such vast results. 
 
 Palestine and Greece have frequently been cited to 
 prove that the small nations have in reality been the 
 great. As for Israel, it was so small a people, and 
 dwelt in a territory so meagre, as barely to possess 
 the elements of a rich and varied culture out of 
 which might happily be evolved a more exalted con- 
 ception of Deity than among other peoples. Ex- 
 cept that, on the north-western border, the Phoenic- 
 ians,, with their commerce, wealth, art, and letters, 
 touched the slow-moving life of Israel, there was in 
 the geographical situation an absence of those ele- 
 ments of advantage that stimulate a nation's thought 
 and quicken the pulse of its religious progress. 
 
 The Semitic instinct has sometimes been credited 
 with the peculiar function of germinating and elabo- 
 rating the monotheistic idea. No doubt, even in 
 
Judaism. 327 
 
 so high a matter, influences of race, climate, and 
 historical experience must have their place. But 
 here a unique racial instinct hardly comes within 
 view. Semitic peoples, purer and as pure in blood, 
 were idolaters. The old tradition was, that Israel's 
 own ancestor, Terah, of the race of Heber and .Ar- 
 phaxad, was an idolater. The tribes themselves were 
 not, all of them, of pure Semitic extraction. There 
 were all along two centres of gravity in Israel — the 
 southern and northern, in Judah and Ephraim-Man- 
 asseh respectively. Ephraim and Manasseh were 
 sons of Joseph by an Egyptian mother, and were 
 therefore partly of Hamitic blood, — a remark that 
 may apply to several of the remaining tribes. It is 
 certain that a mixed multitude accompanied the tribes 
 from Egypt ; that Judah strengthened itself by incor- 
 porating certain native septs ; and that Israel, as a 
 whole, gradually absorbed and did not extirpate the 
 original inhabitants. Besides, like other notable con- 
 querors, they adopted the civilisation of the van- 
 quished races, and thus, in turn, became subject to 
 Canaanite or Hamitic influence. It is very doubt- 
 ful if Edom, Moab, and Ammon, Israel's neighbours 
 and blood-relations, were a more mixed population ; 
 and yet they did not permanently resist the attrac- 
 tions of polytheism. 
 
 The fact that monotheism was coeval with the 
 history of Israel, and that the history begins with 
 the Exodus, has suggested Egypt as its source — the 
 Egyptian education of Moses forming the intermedi- 
 ate link. But, in the present state of our information, 
 
328 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 it is a large assumption that the reh"gion of Egypt 
 was monotheistic. Most Egyptologists argue, either 
 that the popular gods were mere attributes of the 
 Supreme One, or that they were independent divin- 
 ities, whose existence was not inconsistent with the 
 idea of a Supreme Unity. But the former supposi- 
 tion has the look of an after-thought, like similar 
 philosophical explanations applied to the Christian 
 doctrine of the Trinity. These philosophical reflec- 
 tions rarely form part of the original, living entity; 
 they are of the nature of comments, and are later 
 than the thing which they try to explain. The latter 
 view may be accepted as historically true, but the 
 admission which it makes is fatal to the claim to 
 monotheism. The stage in religious perception at 
 which the Sun-god, Amen-Ra, was believed to preside 
 over the Egyptian Pantheon, corresponds to the 
 stage at which Jupiter was believed to be the father 
 of gods and men. In both cases the conception 
 implied a partnership in divine power, or authority 
 legitimately distributed among a supreme god and 
 many lower gods. But belief simply in a supreme 
 god is not monotheism, any more than belief in two 
 supreme gods ; least of all is it the monotheism of 
 the jealous God of Israel. There is the further diffi- 
 culty of understanding how an Egyptian deity was 
 imposed on Israel. The gods of Egypt, deified sov-< 
 ereigns included, were the powers which had oppressed 
 them, and not benign and friendly deities, one of 
 whom might well be chosen as an omnipotent 
 champion and adored. At the same time, Egyptian 
 
yudaism. 329 
 
 influence may have favoured the preservation or 
 the growth of monotheism, but for an opposite 
 reason. Whatever the earlier form of Egyptian 
 worship, and however simple the creed, these at the 
 date of the Exodus were obtrusively polytheistic. 
 While it may be replied with truth to those who 
 trace the religion of Egypt to fetichism, that the 
 monuments refute the theory, proving as they do 
 that animal-worship is almost unknown to the earli- 
 est, and is well known in the latest inscriptions ; yet, 
 in the 19th dynasty, in which the Exodus is sup- 
 posed to have taken place, animal-worship was fully 
 developed. By that time every important town had 
 at least its triad of divinities, and the sacred animals 
 received all the outward marks of worship. If Moses 
 aimed at imparting to Israel the philosophical ab- 
 straction merely into which Egyptian polytheism 
 might be sublimed, antipathy to the actual religion 
 of the oppressor might certainly have assisted him. 
 The natural and intelligible law on which to explain 
 the relations between Israel and Egypt in religion, is 
 the law of repulsion and not of attraction, — of con- 
 trast rather than similarity. 
 
 There is, in point of fact, a remarkable series 
 of antitheses between them. The point under con- 
 sideration must itself be set down as one, for the rude 
 but genuine monotheistic faith of the Israel of the 
 Exodus is really not in the same category with the 
 high-flown and shifty tributes paid to the Egyptian 
 god of gods. Apart from this — one of the most 
 characteristic of Egyptian doctrines was that of the 
 
330 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 immortality of the soul. That was not a recondite 
 speculation, but a popular belief. It must have been 
 as familiar to Moses, and indeed to every Israelite, as 
 to the Egyptians themselves ; yet it finds but a faint 
 echo in the religion of Israel, and none at all during 
 the Mosaic period. The omission from the Mosaic 
 records of the important doctrine of immortality, 
 with its power of adjusting the mysterious inequal- 
 ities and of righting the wrongs of this world by the 
 rewards and punishments of another, has always 
 excited surprise. It was used long after in the 
 quarrel between Pharisee and Sadducee in support 
 of an oral tradition supplementary to the written 
 law. Moses, it was argued, could not have been 
 wholly silent on so grave a doctrine, and must there- 
 fore have communicated it orally to the elders. 
 The Sadducee replied, however, by appealing to 
 the written testimony, and denied both immortality 
 and the resurrection.. On the ground of the same 
 omission, Bishop Warburton founded, in last cen- 
 tury, his elaborate argument for a " Divine Lega- 
 tion of Moses " — the omission being, in his view, so 
 extraordinary as necessarily to infer design, a divine 
 purpose and particular providence. It may be ac- 
 counted for otherwise. The reason may have been, 
 that a practical belief in immortality could not be 
 developed by positive enactment, and that it could 
 only be an energising factor in morals when the fruit 
 of sustained and living fellowship with the Eternal. 
 But the fact of the omission remains, and is in glaring 
 contradiction to the obtrusiveness with which a be- 
 
Judaism. 331 
 
 lief in immortality was present in the religion of Egypt. 
 Nor is there anything to correspond to the judgment 
 after death in Amenti, under the direction of Osiris. 
 There is no metempsychosis or transmigration of 
 souls from the body of one animal to another in ex- 
 piation of crimes, although Josephus attributes to the 
 Pharisees a somewhat similar belief that the souls of 
 the just reanimated the bodies of men, not in punish- 
 ment, but reward. That the Egyptians believed in 
 a resurrection of the body is a fair inference from 
 the pains taken to preserve it. But as the in- 
 ference is disputed, all that can be said is that, while 
 probably an Egyptian belief, it was unknown in 
 Israel, and was probably developed by Egyptian in- 
 tercourse in those later times when alliance with 
 Egypt was cultivated. On the other hand, there 
 is no provision in the Egyptian system, as in Israel, 
 for eliciting a true and profound sense of sin, — a fact 
 that points to a radical difference in their conception 
 of the moral character of God, and of the entire rela- 
 tion between man and God as his Maker and Judge. 
 To these antitheses — which might be multiplied, for 
 the first four commandments of the decalogue plainly 
 affirm each of them an Egyptian negation, or deny 
 an Egyptian affirmative — additional significance is 
 lent by the absolute identification of the Exodus 
 with Jehovah's power and work. His is no neutral 
 position towards Egypt or its gods. He has con- 
 quered them, and delivered His people from them. 
 His name in Israel sounds defiance to Egypt, and 
 has the ring of a battle-cry. 
 
332 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 It may be doubted whether the task assigned to 
 Moses was to instil a philosophical abstraction into 
 the mind of Israel, as if Israel had had no tribal 
 religion prior to the settlement in Goshen, or lost 
 it during the period of subjugation. The tradi- 
 tion in Israel went back through a series of great 
 personalities from Moses to Abraham, and, as pre- 
 served, is credible in itself, and consistent with 
 whatever testimony is to be derived from other 
 sources. It represents a tribal religion as in exist- 
 ence, but as being now reformed — a new and en- 
 larged conception of God as being introduced, but as 
 one which could be grafted on to the old without 
 violence. El-Shaddai, El the Almighty, to signalise 
 and commemorate the national birth, adapts His 
 name in Israel to the great features of the event, and 
 records it as Jehov ah ( Jahw eh') — I am — He that is, or 
 He that causes to be. The former title was indica- 
 tive of power which might or might not imply a par- 
 ticular providence, whereas the latter revealed the 
 eternal, ever-present, covenant-keeping God, brought 
 within the range of all that concerned His people in 
 person and estate. There is thus, on the face of the 
 records, a distinct contribution by Moses to the mono- 
 theistic idea, but a suggestion of Kenite or Midian 
 influence rather than Egyptian. Whatever link of 
 connection there may be between the religions of 
 Egypt and Israel, must be found in the personality 
 of Moses himself. His traditional, Semitic faith 
 and Egyptian education were a vantage - ground 
 from which to contemplate law, religion, and legis- 
 
ytidaism. 333 
 
 lation in the Nile valley. The combination may 
 well have been a providential training that qualified 
 him to be prophet, legislator, and leader ; but there 
 was, besides, an essential relation between the higher 
 truth which he communicated, and the popular faith 
 which he reformed. That he sought to impart an 
 esoteric doctrine or a philosophical abstraction which 
 had no prior, living root in Israel, is a pure assump- 
 tion. No people has ever voluntarily placed itself 
 under the protection of such a god, fought under the 
 standards consecrated to his service, or made him the 
 last refuge from despair in disaster and death. 
 
 By being thus referred to certain great personal- 
 ities for the origin and growth of Judaism, we are 
 brought nearer to a solution of the problem of its 
 origin, but not enabled to solve it. The historical 
 treatment rightly looks for and requires sequence in 
 the character and inner life of a religion, and not only 
 in its forms, achievements, or experience. But the 
 demand for an exhibition of cause and effect, or his- 
 torical continuity, may be pushed to an extreme and 
 even an absurd length. The attempt exhaustively to 
 resolve a great personality or life into its antece- 
 dents and circumstances, is not true to life or nature. 
 Every life born into the world is, to some extent, a 
 fresh starting-point for humanity. If it is the repre- 
 sentative of the old, it is also something new. If only 
 because the elements of life coexist in a new com- 
 bination, the humblest of lives is more or less origi- 
 nal. It is more apparent still that the demand cannot 
 be satisfied in born leaders of men. Absolute intel- 
 
334 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 lectual sequence from their progenitors or predeces- 
 sors cannot be discovered in a Shakespeare or a 
 Burns. The old was reproduced in them ; they are 
 seen to have been dependent on the past, to have 
 been in some degree its products ; but there is in each 
 the new that never was till he himself appeared. No 
 analysis can pulverise them into antecedent atoms. 
 In their essential characteristics all men may be 
 alike, yet each is partially a new creation. It has 
 also to be kept in view that in these investiga- 
 tions there are limits that baffle all attempts to get 
 beyond them. The finite may know but cannot com- 
 prehend the infinite. There is no history of God. 
 We are entitled to infer that divine intelligence, or 
 will, or purpose, is manifest in the history of religion, 
 war, politics, just as we are entitled to make a similar 
 inference from the course of nature. But the point at 
 which the inference is made, at which the divine is 
 supposed to be manifest, is also the point at which 
 the revealing fact, combination, or result vanishes in 
 the invisible and spiritual factor. The point of im- 
 pact where divine power acts on the human consci- 
 ousness is only partially within the sphere of inves- 
 tigation. 
 
 Still, the historical development can be traced, for 
 the Mosaic period was the creative period as well for 
 the religion as for the nationality of Israel. But our 
 Christian conceptions of the nature and character of 
 God must not be read into the records, as if the 
 shepherds of Goshen and nomads of the desert, the 
 warrior settlers of Canaan, thought the thoughts of 
 
yudaism. 335 
 
 the Christian era. Moses and his contemporaries 
 stood at the beginning of a history and revelation 
 vaguely apprehended by their highest thought. The 
 notion of an election of Israel for great world-pur- 
 poses was no part of the beliefs which were then cur- 
 rent. The idea of God corresponded to the actual 
 condition and wants of the people, and was absolutely 
 for this world and not for another. He who was be- 
 lieved to have broken their bonds was believed also 
 to have further substantial rewards to bestow. The 
 relation was thus one which the rudest settler could 
 appreciate. Health, happiness, prosperity, — all the 
 joy and light of life, — were Jehovah's rewards. 
 ' Above all, He was their own, and they were His, a 
 relation clearly indicated by many passages, the lan- 
 guage of which, far from being metaphorical, breathes 
 an intense realism and expresses the absolute convic- 
 tion that a union, exclusive and indissoluble, existed 
 between Jehovah and His people. 
 
 When the settlement in Canaan had been com- 
 pleted, there existed alongside of the national or 
 prescribed religion an idolatrous cult affected by the 
 great body of the people, as the complaints of the pro- 
 phets and successive attempts at reformation prove. 
 The ways of the old inhabitants of the land, a more 
 polished people, naturally influenced their masters on 
 settling down to citizenship and agricultural pursuits, 
 while the plea for images was doubtless as plausible 
 as in more recent times. The sun and star gods of 
 the Canaanites, their Baalim or spiritual lords, — Baal, 
 Astarte, Moloch, and others, — were adopted by Israel, 
 
336 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 and had their shrines and symbols, while even 
 Jehovah was represented by an image. The Book 
 of Judges leads us to conclude that the actual reli- 
 gion of the period was a syncretism or union between 
 Jehovah and Baal or Baalim, in which their attributes 
 were either interchangeable or drawn into a strangely 
 close alliance. During the monarchy, kings like Ahab 
 in Israel, and Ahaz and Manasseh in Judah, were 
 devoted Canaanites in religion ; and up to the time 
 of the captivity of Judah " the land was full of idols." 
 The prevailing worship corresponded, and was un- 
 spiritual. The old sanctuaries, such as Bethel and 
 Gilgal, marked by the sacred stone, maqqeba (and per- 
 haps by the sacred pole, ashera, although this is doubt- 
 ful), continued long after to localise the worship of 
 Jehovah. They were sacred spots associated with 
 traditional divine manifestations, and free to all. Yet 
 they are not to be thought of as only securing greater 
 freedom of access to Jehovah, but also as imperilling 
 the simplicity and purity of His worship by localising 
 it yet more, and identifying it with local superstition. 
 At all these centres offerings and sacrifices were made, 
 and the divine Will consulted — divihation by teraphim 
 and ephod existing alongside of the more legitimate 
 method of decision by lot or Urim and Thummim. 
 When afterwards they were abolished, there was both 
 loss and gain in the concentration of worship at one 
 national shrine — the loss of the old freer access, and 
 the gain of an increase of dignity in the conception 
 of worship itself, and of a certain security against 
 individual caprice. 
 
yudaism. 2 37 
 
 Yet this Baal-religion was at no time universal in 
 practice, as even Elijah had imagined, or national in 
 character. The higher thought of the religion insti- 
 tuted by Moses overshadowed and impregnated these 
 lower, sensuous forms of religious life. Honestly em- 
 braced, although by simple and rugged natures, it 
 was a religion that struck its roots down into every 
 thought, action, and concern of life. As a national 
 religion it was narrow and unspiritual ; but because 
 its roots were living roots, with a firm hold on the 
 realities of life, all the possibilities of future develop- 
 ment were secured. It was limited, but within its 
 limits true. Preserved from degradation to the level 
 of idolatry in Canaan, it retained its specific character 
 and refused to become dualistic in Babylon, where 
 it undoubtedly learnt much. Traces exist of a power 
 or principle of evil in the earliest portions of the 
 Bible ; but it is only by reading into these sections 
 comparatively modern ideas, that the devil of current 
 popular belief is discoverable. The conception of 
 the Serpent's part in the narrative of the Fall is 
 unique in the Old Testament. Nothing leads up to 
 it, nor is anything added in explanation that brings 
 it fairly into the general system. It is too feeble an 
 embodiment of evil to be Zoroastrian, and is pro- 
 bably a traditional belief brought from Shinar, where 
 Japhet, Ham, and Shem commingled in the course of 
 their migration westwards. It may thus be Accad- 
 ian in origin (Gen. x. 10), and have a common source 
 with the storm-serpent of the Iranians. We may refer 
 to an equally primitive source the traces that are to 
 
338 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 be found elsewhere of similar ideas (i Kings xxii. 21); 
 whereas the Satan of the Book of Job, the Chroni- 
 cler, Zechariah, and later Judaism, may be attributed 
 to Zoroastrian influence. There is nothing, however, 
 in the Old Testament that corresponds to Ahriman, 
 serpent-devil, yet co-ordinate ruler of the universe 
 with the omniscient and beneficent Ormuzd. There 
 is nothing to suggest the lurid splendours of Milton's 
 conception of him, whom 
 
 " the Almighty Power 
 Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 
 With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
 To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
 In adamantine chains and penal fire 
 Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms." 
 
 As a personification of injured pride, disdain, re- 
 venge, and all but omnipotence of intellect and 
 will, Milton's Satan has the Persian Ahriman for his 
 remote ancestor. Truer far to the Semitic original is 
 the great Teuton's betrayer-tempter, Mephistoph eles — 
 bad at heart, through and through, without reverence 
 for innocence, sympathy with goodness, or regard for 
 truth. But even he is far more elaborately fiend-like 
 and subtle than the mysterious emissary of the Old 
 Testament Books, who executes his errands within 
 the strict limits of divine permission. David's census, 
 ascribed to Satan by the Chronicler, is directly at- 
 tributed to God in 2d Samuel. It is he who sends a 
 lying spirit into the prophets to lure Ahab to his 
 doom, who gives Egypt to the Babylonian conquerors 
 of Tyre for wages, and who snares the nations as a 
 
yudaism. 339 
 
 fowler takes birds : his are the famine, the sword, and 
 the pestilence. According to the Mosaic view, no 
 rival shook Jehovah's throne "in dubious battle on 
 the plains of heaven." Nature was not the field of 
 conflict between powers of darkness and light, storm 
 and calm. Nothing countenanced the distinction 
 between a secular and spiritual world, or the belief 
 that this world is not sacred. On the contrary, Jeho- 
 vah was the energising force in all human affairs, and 
 His festivals were seasons of mirth and high festivity. 
 Not even Confucianism made this world more the 
 expression of a divine order; and among no other 
 people had love of home and country, of children, 
 and the joys of life, a stronger hold, for the full 
 sanction of Jehovah crowned and completed the bliss 
 of living and doing, of loving and being loved. 
 
 Judaism did feel the influence of Persian dualism, and 
 worked out from its own point of view and principles 
 the thoughts assimilated in the contact. Yet, at the 
 birth of Christ, it was, with many developments, not 
 only strictly monotheistic in principle, but absolutely 
 monotheistic as the actual religion of the people. 
 There was then, as one of the early Fathers could 
 record, " no maker of images among their citizens, nor 
 sculptor in their state." 
 
 The connection between monotheism and morality 
 is so apparent, that a monotheism based on a prin- 
 ciple of evil is almost inconceivable. Panthei sm, on 
 the other hand, dissolves moral distinctions either by 
 denying all morality, or affirming that everything is 
 moral. Its underlying principle is the nothingness 
 
340 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 of the phenomenal world, God being all in all. Hence 
 the divine essence or all-inspiring and sustaining 
 substance is drawn into a relation with nature so 
 close, that all matter and thought, every impulse, 
 action, object, is divine, and equally divine — or that 
 each and all are nothing, on which latter alternative 
 there is neither foul nor false. A polytheistic religion, 
 again, might conceivably preserve moral distinctions, 
 were its gods strictly subordinated to the One 
 Supreme ; but no polytheistic religion has had a 
 stable existence in that form. The worship of divine 
 attributes, or of material forces as self-existing gods, 
 has invariably resulted in divided and partially in- 
 dependent authority, which can only mean many 
 and independent centres of morality with conflicting 
 moral principles. While one god is the guardian of 
 virtue, another is the indulgent patron of vice, and 
 every lust may have its sacred fane. Even Persian 
 dualism, which ranged all its disciples on the side of 
 Ormuzd and righteousness, held out the temptation 
 to propitiate his malignant counterpart. Monothe- 
 ism, which thinks of God as in the world, but above 
 it and independent of it, alone promulgates a univer- 
 sal moral law, can alone pronounce the categorical 
 imperative to which every conscience must concede 
 the right of exacting obedience. It alone harmon- 
 iously unites in thought all the powers of nature, sub- 
 jects them to universal law, one will or inteUigence, 
 and thus brings nature round to be on the side of 
 righteousness and the just man. From the mono- 
 theistic point of view, the order of nature supports 
 
Judaism. 341 
 
 morality and sustains the conscience in the exercise 
 of its functions. 
 
 In the religion of Israel it is possible to witness in 
 a concrete form the growth of the conception of a 
 divine righteousness and holiness. He who brought 
 Israel out of Egypt was their living lord, helper, 
 guide, and judge, under all circumstances. If Moses 
 was the visible leader and lawgiver, yet behind Moses 
 in all that he did was Jehovah. Moses began by 
 deciding all causes in person, but was persuaded to 
 devolve on others, head-men of thousands, hundreds, 
 fifties, and tens, all but the hard cases, which he re- 
 served for himself. These last might be decided on 
 his own knowledge, or referred to Jehovah directly for 
 decision, probably by lot. Jehovah thus became iden- 
 tified with law and justice, not excepting consuetu- 
 dinary law, which decided all minor cases, for it also 
 was administered with his sanction — a thought which 
 retained its vitality. Singly and collectively, these 
 decisions were known as Torah , divine instruction or 
 revelation ; and when they afterwards issued in a code 
 or written record, that also was Torah, the name 
 by which ultimately the divine revelation as a whole 
 was designated. Evidently two kinds of Torah grew 
 up side by side ; the decisions of the ordinary judges, 
 which were supposed to be informed not only by tra- 
 dition, but also by the precedents that issued from the 
 supreme court of Moses or Jehovah — and these pre- 
 cedents themselves. There were thus two parallel 
 courses of legislative development, a lower and a 
 higher, of which the spirit of the lower was tradition 
 
 2 F 
 
342 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 mainly, whereas the spirit of the higher was revela- 
 tion, — a distinction represented afterwards in the main 
 by the priests and the prophets. It was in favour of 
 these decisions that they were not originally commit- 
 ted to writing, — that they were living utterances that 
 carried Jehovah's sanction — not even a book standing 
 between Him and the hearts and conduct of His people. 
 Nor did the thought of law as an abstraction intervene. 
 Among patriarchal communities law has ever been an 
 actual consuetudinary force equivalent to a binding 
 public opinion, or the decrees of individuals to whom 
 the community defers. Thus Jehovah .was ever kept 
 before the thoughts of His people, while they in their 
 turn were taught by all their more serious affairs 
 to think of Him as the God of justice and truth, 
 the fountain-head of righteousness, and guardian of 
 morality. In this instance, also, it was not by im- 
 posing an abstraction, but by the slow growth of 
 actual experience, that the idea of the righteousness 
 of God was firmly rooted in the national life. 
 
 It resulted that there were in Israel the living 
 presence and rule of Jehovah, without a formal the- 
 ocracy. A formal organisation of the state as a 
 theocracy was not contemplated, nor did the civil 
 authority formally profess to be theocratic. The old 
 patriarchal government continued. The chiefs of 
 clans and heads of houses, individually and in coun- 
 cil, exercised the old rights according to consuetu- 
 dinary law. The natural positions of men as articu- 
 lated into the tribe or sept by descent, possessions, 
 personal prowess, or reputation for wisdom, supplied 
 
yudaism. 343 
 
 the ordinary machinery of a civil government. One 
 peril of tribal federations has always been the possibly 
 loose cohesion of the tribes — a cohesion which, in 
 Israel's case, the settlement in Canaan necessarily 
 endangered. Here, however, their religion came in 
 aid, by so interpenetrating the whole business of life 
 as to be the main element of cohesion and bond of 
 unity. Not by kinship, nor yet by consuetudinary 
 law, were these old clans held together, but by 
 religion. The basis of Israel's nationality, or rather 
 the matrix where it came into being, was Israel's 
 religion. 
 
 II. The importance of the fact now stated lay in this 
 — that the nation itself became a factor in the devel- 
 opment of religion during the prophetic or progres- 
 sive period. In this development the prophet, and 
 not the priest, had the chief share. The priest, as 
 such, had no new message from God to man. He 
 represented man rather before God. Correct ritual 
 was therefore, to the priest, the great essential ; where- 
 as to the prophet, who bore as it were words of fire in 
 his breast, external forms of any kind were com- 
 paratively valueless. The priest's calling tended to 
 make him a mere mechanical performer of rites, and 
 to rest his vocation itself on a merely legal and purely 
 rationalistic view of righteousness and of man's rela- 
 tion to God. The priest of the heathen world could 
 make atonement, and he who under his guidance ap- 
 proached the altar could fulfil all righteousness — for 
 righteousness itself was thought of as a legal arrange- 
 
344 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ment But it was not so with the priesthood and 
 sacrificial system in Israel. They rested on the 
 thought that the deliverance and national birth of 
 Israel were an act of sovereign favour. Israel was 
 debtor, to begin with, and in all things. Not because 
 it had had anything to commend it, but absolutely 
 for His own name's sake, as an act of independent 
 grace, in furtherance of His own purpose, had Jehovah 
 made Israel His own. Thus, the heathen priest 
 simply represented the guilty fear and cry of nature. 
 The Levite, on the other hand, represented in addi- 
 tion the consciousness of Jehovah's electing and for- 
 giving love, and could thus pass on to his spiritual 
 descendants the idea of self-sacrificing love even in 
 God. There is thus a true connection between the 
 sacrificial system of the Old Testament and the 
 whole conception of atonement in the New. But 
 the thought was apt to be forgotten by the priest, 
 except as he was reminded by the prophet. The 
 first idea to be connected with prophecy is, that 
 the prophet is spokesman for another, and emphati- 
 cally for God. In the highest sense of the term, the 
 prophet was essentially different from the diviner, 
 soothsayer, or seer ; and different, also, from the pro- 
 fessional prophet. Diviners had always abounded 
 under various names, and are mentioned with respect 
 along with warriors, judges, priests, and prophets — i.e., 
 professional prophets. These, like the members of 
 other professions, readily mistook their principles, 
 maxims, and routine methods, for a higher illum- 
 ination. Yet it is a mistake to regard these pro- 
 
Judaism. 345 
 
 fessional prophets as mere professors of a superstitious 
 art Together with the priests, they were rather the 
 ordinary spiritual guides who went by tradition or the 
 illumination of the past, which cannot fully meet the 
 wants of an ever-changing present and future. They 
 were the rank and file of the preachers, who nourished 
 according to their lights the intellectual and moral 
 life of the people. Their services, no doubt, were 
 often worthless and mercenary ; but they themselves 
 occasionally stood in honourable relation to the pro- 
 phets, emphatically so called. There was nothing in 
 the fact that one belonged to the professional class 
 that pre-eminently fitted or entitled him to receive a 
 divine revelation, so as to mark him out as one of the 
 higher order. At the same time, there was nothing 
 in it to prevent him ; and Habakkuk and Haggai 
 appear to have been prophets by profession, while 
 Ezekiel was a priest 
 
 The idea of prophecy was thus necessarily somewhat 
 shifting, if only for the reason that a prophet had to 
 prove his claim to the higher gift — or rather, that the 
 higher gift had to prove itself, for there were tests of 
 prophecy. If of the nature of prediction, or involving 
 prediction, fulfilment would verify it ; if rather of the 
 nature of moral and spiritual truth, its self-evidencing 
 power would ultimately prevail. Of course the popular 
 verdict was frequently at fault — electing to stand by 
 the traditionalists rather than by those who really 
 had a new truth or fresh information, wisdom, or 
 counsel from Jehovah to give. It reverenced the old 
 truth that had been proved or accepted, but regarded 
 
346 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 with aversion the truth that was on its trial. Prob- 
 ably no fixed line was drawn in popular estimation 
 between the various classes of prophets, seers, and 
 soothsayers. As happened to Samuel, the functions 
 of the seer and prophet were not strictly distin- 
 guished. But the prophet, properly so called, was 
 more than his professional brother or than the seer. 
 He was a seer, so to speak, with the power of see- 
 ing into the heart, into the secrets of life, and of 
 divine Providence, as well as to some far-off point 
 of time ; for while the latter was not excluded, the 
 former was essential. Jehovah's true prophets were 
 they who were in His secret counsels, who were in 
 sympathy with His thoughts and methods, whose 
 whole inner life lay open to His spiritual influence, 
 and whose consciousness was toward Him rather than 
 toward the phenomenal world. His action and com- 
 munication neither impaired nor destroyed their in- 
 telligence and personality. 
 
 The conception at the bottom of mantic or heathen 
 prophetism was radically different. According to it, 
 the prophet's personality was the central point of 
 resistance to the afflatus of the gods. His person- 
 ality had therefore to be destroyed or overborne in 
 order to his being fully possessed. Hence fatuous 
 persons, and others to whom nature had denied a 
 true human consciousness and personality, were sup- 
 posed to be peculiarly susceptible of the prophetic 
 influence. From this general position there was ai 
 natural descent, till even divination by inspection o\ 
 the entrails of .sacrificial beasts or birds was logically , 
 
Judaism. 347 
 
 reached — the latest visceral pulsations presenting an 
 opportunity where absolute passivity and supernat- 
 ural action might most happily be combined. This 
 view, although not at all the normal Old Testament 
 conception of prophecy, has occasionally prevailed in 
 the Christian Church. The early apologists illustrated 
 the action of the Holy Spirit on the prophets by refer- 
 ence to such figures as the flute-player and his flute, 
 or the plectrum and the lyre ; but the view was an 
 import from Alexandrian Hellenism. It has even 
 been carried to excess since the Reformation, in the 
 course of one of the most miserable and fruitless of 
 controversies, the so-called Syncretistic, which origin- 
 ated in foolish attempts to draw all Churches closer 
 together, and ended in an incredible increase of 
 mutual animosity. But the mantic or ecstatic con- 
 ception of prophecy has long ago been judged, con- 
 demned, and driven out as a Montanist heresy. The 
 Old Testament does know something in rare cases of 
 an ecstatic exaltation, but the difference between it 
 and the mantic or heathen view was well expressed 
 by Augustine : the latter was alienation from one's 
 own mind ; the former meant only that the mind was 
 freed from the ordinary trammels of the senses. 
 
 Monotheism is as essential to the true conception 
 of prophecy as it is to morals. An intelligent view of 
 the course of nature and human affairs must assume 
 that they are subject to law, and not simply to diverse 
 and discordant or conflicting forces. History, to be 
 intelligible, must be interpreted on harmonious prin- 
 ciples, if not also on the assumption that its phenom- 
 
348 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ena are referable to a central intelligence. Nature may 
 here be left out of view, for the scientific investigation 
 of nature was unknown. Now, men accustomed to 
 regard events as the manifestation of divine purpose 
 were thereby prepared to be in sympathy with the 
 purpose itself. They were trained to consider the 
 tendencies of things in relation to an inner harmony 
 and causation. Hence they sought to discover things, 
 the issue of a campaign, or the fate of an empire, not 
 by chance sights and sounds, flight of birds and the 
 rest, but by weighing probabilities and estimating 
 moral and physical causes — especially moral causes. 
 They looked deeper for the secret of success or failure, 
 and the reasons for national stability or decay. They 
 sought to stand in Jehovah's secret counsel, to them 
 the only centre from which contemporary events 
 could be explained and life be made to disclose its 
 full significance; the one point of view, also, from 
 which there might be discernment of the future. 
 Plainly it was a mental attitude, a habit of observa- 
 tion and reflection, favourable to the reception of 
 revelation. In it the Supreme Intelligence could find 
 the point of contact and a worthier vehicle of its com- 
 munications, unless we suppose that the prophecies of 
 an Isaiah might have been given to the world with an 
 equal fitness of things by one of the Magi in the train 
 of an Eastern satrap, or by one of the courtiers of 
 Augustus. It was also a habit of mind which made 
 it possible for a continuous line of prophets to build on 
 the same foundations without destroying each other's 
 work. This, moreover, was not the mental attitude of 
 
yudaism. 349 
 
 solitary individuals, but that to which prophets in suc- 
 cession strove to bring the whole nation, with, it is true, 
 only partial success. Still it was diffused throughout 
 the nation, one here and another there catching the 
 spirit of the prophet. Thus the groundwork of the pro- 
 phetic institution lay partially in the national life itself, 
 in its common memories, ideas of things, and hopes. 
 But for the action and reaction of spiritual influences 
 throughout the whole people, a succession of prophets 
 is almost inconceivable. There would have been no 
 provision by which men might be fitted to receive 
 revelation, and to become prophets. 
 
 Hence prophecy was not cosmopolitan but national, 
 or from the national point of view. Hence, also, the 
 fortunes of the nation in turn reacted on prophecy. 
 Jehovah's purpose in and with Israel came to be clearly 
 reflected in Israel's actual experience. The religious 
 consciousness of Israel added to its contents as that 
 experience ripened. By means and occasion of a 
 remarkable and instructive history, the conception 
 of Jehovah's relation to Israel was itself modified ; 
 and doctrines hitherto obscurely apprehended were 
 taken up into the national faith. 
 
 Unlike other nations that had their golden age in 
 the past, Israel placed it significantly in the future. No 
 doubt the period of unique prosperity and military 
 prowess, which culminated in the reigns of David and 
 Solomon, was afterwards looked back to with peculiar 
 fondness. The monarchy had united the tribes under 
 a firm administration, and had given strength to the 
 little kingdom hemmed in by sea, mountain, and 
 
350 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 desert. It had increased its wealth and territory, and 
 given it a place among the nations from which it looked 
 abroad — dreaming of conquests, and forming projects 
 of the loftiest ambition. But if Israel looked back to 
 this period as others might to a golden age, it was 
 because it saw in it the type of a glorious era which 
 was yet to come. That old time was a realisation of 
 greatness which never after faded from memory, and 
 the retrospect became in the depths of their misery 
 the suggestion of a future. It is no doubt possible to 
 trace the germ of^the Messianic hope further back ; 
 but it is undeniable that it was developed, realised, 
 and formulated in times subsequent to David's reign 
 and under the pressure of their calamities. The 
 reigns of Ahab and Manasseh were the miserable 
 and appropriate preparation for exile and captivity ; 
 and these last brought Israel face to face with 
 the problem identified with the nation itself — its pur- 
 pose in the world. Had Jehovah brought it with a 
 strong hand out of Egypt, and chosen it for Him- 
 self, and had He now abandoned it ? That could 
 not be, for He was the covenant - keeping God. 
 Or could it be that He was not God of gods and 
 Lord of lords .' Either thought was impossible. 
 Still, the conquering world-kingdoms aiming at uni- 
 versal empire had come within cognisance. The pres- 
 sure of Syria, Assyria, Egypt, and Chaldsea, had been 
 felt. The larger knowledge of the world was full 
 of doubt and forebodings of evil. Disunion and dis- 
 persion, captivity and exile, and at last a broken 
 people living on sufferance, seemed all to indicate that 
 
yudaism. 35 1 
 
 Israel had no mission and no divine protector. Yet 
 through these human agencies the faith of Israel was 
 driven into the true line of expectation. If Jehovah 
 was God, there must be hope for His down-trodden 
 people, and another Moses, or rather another David, 
 must arise. A glorious age must still be in the future. 
 The nature of Jehovah's covenant, the very fact that 
 its sanctions were not spiritual but temporal, re- 
 quired this. The conclusion was an absolute neces- 
 sity for faith : faith boldly drew it, and clung to it 
 with invincible tenacity. The prophetic literature 
 from Amos downwards, and even the late apocryphal, 
 implicitly rests on this conclusion, or broadly enun- 
 ciates it Held though it was in a thoroughly mate- 
 rial form, and looking for a great world-kingdom, it 
 preserved faith in Israel till the expectation itself was 
 transfigured in the life and by the power of Him who 
 is the author and perfecter of the faith. During the 
 captivity in Babylon, Judaism was taught additional 
 lessons. It was compelled to worship without a 
 temple and with maimed rites of sacrifice. It could 
 lean no longer on the old organisations of the na- 
 tional life. It was driven inwardly on itself on what 
 was spiritual and eternal. It came in contact with 
 Zoroastrianism, from which it would not necessarily 
 recoil at its first impact ; and Zoroastrianism, with its 
 sharp distinction between good and evil, carried inex- 
 orably through every sphere of thought and life to 
 the extreme of Dualism, its firm faith in immortality, 
 and its clear conception of a spiritual world far more 
 richly dowered with life than this, and filled with the 
 
352 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 activity of angelic hosts, had in this crisis wherewith 
 to profit Judaism ; and without consciously borrowing, 
 Judaism assimilated what of truth was kindred to 
 itself. To this period may be traced the place and 
 importance ever after given to prayer, the belief in 
 immortality and a spiritual world," angels and arch- 
 angel, and perhaps, also, the resurrection. In this 
 expansion of its thoughts, Judaism gave proof of its 
 vitality and of its essential truth ; acting as Chris- 
 tianity now acts when, informed of science or of its 
 own history and experience, it modifies its views and 
 works out its ethics in successive pariiaments or ec- 
 clesiastical councils and assemblies. 
 
 Henceforth Israel's faith was occupied with thoughts 
 of a future in this world for the nation, and of a life 
 after death. The former, the natural or native and 
 prophetic development of Israel's faith, and the latter, 
 assimilated from foreign sources, coalesced in the 
 national creed, and appear in the later Judaism with 
 which the Gospels have made us familiar. The 
 widening of the area of faith went hand in hand with 
 the more firmly rooted expectation of secular empire. 
 
 But the same national discipline which drew 
 Israel's faith into the line of a Messianic expectation 
 did more ; it prepared the way for a spiritual and 
 universal religion. Severe and protracted, this discip- 
 line was in the face of covenant promise, and of the 
 national faith itself. What was its cause ? Why was 
 the promise broken or delayed, and the hope of Israel 
 deferred ? For the pious Israelite who laid to heart 
 the monitions of prophecy there was only one answer. 
 
Judaism. 353 
 
 The cause was Israel's sin, — a doctrinal position or be- 
 lief in which his monotheistic faith more readily acqui- 
 esced. Had he become a convert to Persian dualism, 
 the national misfortunes might otherwise be explained 
 as an episode in the everlasting conflict between good 
 and evil. It was a belief that could not have been 
 suggested and firmly fixed in the mind during the 
 happier circumstances of the old and prosperous 
 times, arid it was excluded by the earlier belief that the 
 covenant was with Israel as a whole. But now there 
 was plainly a sinful Israel in Israel, or all Israel was 
 sinful, and, for the time at least, rejected. This latter 
 and more awful alternative the prophets declared to 
 be true. The universal declension had incensed 
 Jehovah's wrath. The intenser realisation thus ob- 
 tained of Jehovah's character as Holy accentuated the 
 necessity for personal holiness in His people. In 
 reality no new condition was imported into the coven- 
 ant relation, for Israel had all along been bound to 
 keep Jehovah's statutes. Yet, at the same time, a new 
 turn was given to the spirit of observance by this in- 
 sistance by the prophets on personal holiness. Men 
 believed, indeed, that they were fulfilling all the cove- 
 nant conditions, and in one sense they actually were 
 more religious than ever. The sacrificial ritual had be- 
 come more elaborate ; priestly dues were thereby in- 
 creased ; and yet, religious burdens heavier than ever 
 were willingly borne. The prophets' complaint was, 
 that the people were in this sense too religious, and that 
 there was too much of a righteousness that had nothing 
 in it. What was required was, according to the pro- 
 
354 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 phets, tliat a man should do justly, love mercy, and 
 walk humbly with his God. Personal holiness, in the 
 sense of a spiritual morality, and as opposed to a 
 legal morality, was what was now taught by the pro- 
 phets as the condition of Jehovah's favour,— a truth 
 confirmed and illustrated, as they maintained, by 
 Israel's actual experience. 
 
 The effect was to change the very basis of the 
 covenant relation itself. It was now with faithful 
 Israel, with the Israelite in heart, with a spiritual 
 people and not a privileged race, that the promise- 
 held. The covenant relation was made to rest on an 
 inward, subjective, and spiritual foundation. On that 
 ground all Israel might be rejected ; but to rise in 
 thought to the possible rejection of Israel was to 
 admit the thought of the possible reception of others, 
 if only they might fulfil the spiritual condition. As 
 soon as room was made for this thought, that it was 
 no longer Israel after the flesh, but Israel after the 
 spirit, that was intended, the basis was laid for a 
 spiritual and universal religion, in which nationality 
 should in itself confer no privilege, and Jehovah be 
 the covenant-keeping God of a people drawn from 
 any race, and nurtured in any clime. This actually 
 is the thought that inspires and sheds its light over 
 the entire prophecy of the later Isaiah. £ven he 
 still localises the presence and glory of the Lord in 
 the temple, although His glory also fills the whole 
 earth. Zion is still the centre from which the glory 
 of the Lord shines forth, but the centre' to which all 
 nations look. And from time to time the thought 
 
Judaism. 355 
 
 overflows its usual bounds ; the temple becomes the 
 house of prayer for all people ; mercy and forgiving 
 love are extended to all ; heaven only is Jehovah's 
 throne; the whole earth is His footstool; and no 
 house, however sacred or magnificent, is the place of 
 His rest. 
 
 This conception of a spiritual religion can hardly 
 be said to have risen higher, or to have remained at 
 that high level. No thought more slowly penetrated 
 the Jewish mind. The narrower views lived on, that 
 the rest of mankind, with their philosophy, political 
 science, and art, must by rite or obligation become 
 Judaic; that the one religious portal, through which all 
 must pass to be saved, was Judaism. Provision had 
 always been made for the reception of converts or 
 proselytes, the " strangers " of the Pentateuch. The 
 fame acquired by Israel during the earlier monarchy 
 probably attracted many. After the captivity, men of 
 many nations occasionally passed over to Judaism on 
 account of its worship of one God, and its comparative 
 purity of life. Even the legionaries of Rome, when 
 stationed in Palestine, at times cast in their lot in 
 religion with the Jews. Prior to that, the desire 
 to make proselytes had been strengthened by the 
 persecutions endured under Antiochus Epiphanes 
 (B.C. 176-165), and the struggle for independence 
 under the Maccabees, till the desire became fanati- 
 cal. Frequently the worst motives so combined in 
 these conversions, both on the side of convert and 
 proselytiser, that the convert when secured be- 
 came "twofold more the child of hell" than his 
 
35^ The Faiths of the World. 
 
 teachers. But under every form, proselytism assumed 
 that Israel, as such, was still a privileged race, or, 
 practically, that the salvation of God ran in the life- 
 blood of one small heterogeneous people. It is well, 
 however, to remember that a similar difficulty reap- 
 peared in Christianity, and still lingers there, if only 
 in the difficulty experienced by many of believing 
 that God's providence has extended to the origin and 
 growth of the religions of all nations, and that they 
 are not wholly of Satanic origin. It would appear 
 that under the most favourable circumstances men 
 slowly and reluctantly admit the thought that the 
 one living and true God rules supreme in every 
 department of nature and life. The whole field of 
 nature has at last been won for that view; but a 
 synthesis in which the divine purpo.se shall clearly 
 emerge from the history of all religions seems to be, 
 as yet, but timidly entertained. Judaism alone, of all 
 the ancient religions, went at least so far as to lay 
 the basis of a spiritual or universal religion. 
 
 A monotheistic religion is not necessarily perfect 
 or complete. Monotheism is not everything in reli- 
 gion — for the reason that two parties, God and man, 
 are concerned. True views are, therefore, also neces- 
 sary of the nature of man, of the wants, and even of 
 the rights, that attach to his humanity, if the grave 
 perils of a one-sided, fanatical religion are to be 
 escaped. Where the divine element in religion is 
 the all-absorbing consideration, feelings divinely im- 
 planted, sacred and tender, may wither in the pres- 
 ence and light of the awful Majesty, exclusively 
 
yudaism. 357 
 
 adored ; and at His supposed behest all considerations 
 may be swept aside, although founded on truth and 
 justice. Nor is it open to question that Judaism was 
 almost continuously marked by fanaticism and intol- 
 erance, and at times, in the persons of its highest 
 representatives, by ferocious cruelty. Its hard, un- 
 bending, and exclusive spirit may, indeed, have been 
 an absolute necessity of its existence and continu- 
 ance. It may have been exclusive in order, at the 
 proper time, to become comprehensive ; but the fact 
 itself cannot be denied. But for the impossibility, it 
 would undoubtedly have propagated itself, like Mo- 
 hammedanism, by the sword. John Hyrcanus, son and 
 successor of Simon Maccabaeus (B.C. 136-106), anti- 
 cipated in this the Arabian prophet. It was, accord- 
 ingly, weakest where Hellenism was strongest. The 
 Hebrew prophets were the prophets of Jehovah, at- 
 tempting to see, understand, and explain all things 
 from the divine or universal centre — the centre of the 
 supreme rule and purpose of Jehovah Himself The 
 Greek, on the other hand, sought to understand and 
 harmonise everything from a particular centre — the 
 point of view of his own manhood. His centre of 
 thought and vision was humanity, his purest and 
 loftiest religion was philosophy, and rightly and 
 naturally he became the chief prophet of humanity. 
 His mastery of form and sympathy with the beau- 
 tiful, his love of liberty and passion for art, were 
 simply the expression of the truer and fuller concep- 
 tions which he, in turn, had realised of the nature of 
 man. With him man was everything, and had virtues 
 
 2 G 
 
358 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 and rights over against the gods. Hellenic art and 
 philosophy were and remain an unconscious plea for 
 humanity in its own right. Hellenism also was one- 
 sided ; yet because it had the insight to discern and 
 the vigour to preserve a substantial and indispensable 
 truth, it is justly acknowledged to be a more genial, 
 and in many respects truer, exponent of humanity 
 than Judaism. There have been notable occasions 
 when the revival and diffusion of the thought and 
 spirit of Hellenism alone gave voice and effect to the 
 just claims of humanity against a one-sided theo- 
 logical development. Without the ideas and life that 
 flow from it, Christianity could not have directed the 
 spiritual conceptions of Judaism into the service of a 
 universal religion. At the same time, it is none the 
 less true that the theistic is the higher centre of 
 thought, and therefore the one absolutely essential 
 basis of a spiritual religion ; for any lower stand-point, 
 humanity itself, is part of the system of things to be 
 explained. If, again, there have been times that 
 called for and justified the protest of Hellenismj 
 history reveals occasions when the influence of the 
 Judaism, and even of the Mohammedanism, that 
 coexisted alongside of Christianity, restrained its 
 progress towards idolatry, or the deification of 
 humanity, and so checked its further degradation. 
 
 These, then, are some of the contents which it 
 handed over to Christianity, and that still live in it : 
 a monotheism in which the sole, supreme Ruler of the 
 universe is holy and just, yet merciful and ■ gracious, 
 
jfudaism. 359 
 
 the God of truth ; prophecy, the spirit of which is 
 still full of insight, because it draws its life from 
 enduring principles, and helps all on whom it rests to 
 discern the divine purpose amid the shifting scenes 
 of life ; an intricate symbolism of oblation and sacri- 
 fice, that illustrates the manifold relations in which 
 men acknowledged that they stood towards God, 
 dependent, grateful, joyously confident, conscience- 
 stricken and deserving of death ; and a literature 
 which, if it were nothing more, contains the oldest 
 religious traditions of mankind, but is, besides, 
 poetry, history, and practical wisdom, that continu- 
 ously reveal the divine purpose, and, with incompar- 
 able truthfulness, the desires of the soul in its sorrow 
 and shame, its strong yearning for deliverance from 
 the bonds of sin, and for the favour and fellowship 
 of God. Taking note of these, of the positive and 
 negative elements which it has contributed to reli- 
 gion, the thought arises, nay, is forcibly borne in on 
 the mind, that in the work which it actually did it 
 was itself caught up and held of God — that in the 
 higher thoughts and purer aspirations in which it 
 rises so far above its ordinary self, and above othei 
 peoples, it was inspired by the eternal wisdom and 
 kept alive by the power of God. How its national 
 life throughout its history was an educational factor 
 for Israel itself; how in its unity of blood-relation- 
 ship, positive institutions, and social life, it became 
 the sole representative of distinct tendencies of 
 thought, till, in itself an instrument infinitely com- 
 
360 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 plex and delicate, it effected the most definite, sub- 
 stantial, and permanent results ; how it became the 
 prophet nation of antiquity and of the world, — can 
 never fail to bespeak and awaken serious reflection. 
 If it be true that nations have each of them its 
 mission, and along with it its diversity of gifts ; if 
 nations, and not individuals only, are the forces that 
 ate moved against each other for the solution of the 
 far-reaching, stern, and awful problems of life, — it is 
 only a special application of that view to maintain, 
 what the long course of its history corroborates, that 
 under God Israel's mission was essentially the reli- 
 gious education of mankind, and that its main pur- 
 pose in the world was the revelation of divine truth. 
 No other nation has borne so sustained and trust- 
 worthy a testimony to the supernatural and spiritual. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 
 MAHOMMEDANISM. 
 
 By the Rev. James Cameron Lees, D. D. , Minister of St Giles' Cathedral, 
 Edinburgh ; and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains. 
 
 THERE are few who have passed from Christen- 
 dom into a Mahommedan country for the first 
 time who will readily forget the sensations they ex- 
 perienced. Whether they crossed the Straits of Gib- 
 raltar, or sailed through the Iron Gates of the Dan- 
 ube, or entered Egypt by the Port of Alexandria, it 
 was their introduction into a new world, marked not 
 only by the change in the natural scenery and the 
 dress and manners of the inhabitants, but by the 
 signs of an all-prevailing religion different from any 
 form of faith that they have ever before known. 
 Instead of the familiar steeple or tower, there rises 
 the slender tapering minaret ; the glittering crescent 
 
 2 11 
 
362 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 flashes high in air in the place of the cross ; and the 
 gaily painted mosque stands with its court and foun- 
 tain, where the traveller has been accustomed to see 
 the Christian church. Five times a -day he hears 
 floating over the city the weird cry of the muezzin 
 calling the inhabitants to their devotions. He sees 
 men, in the midst of their occupations, prostrate 
 themselves in prayer in obedience to the summons ; 
 or, if he obtains admission to the mosque, he finds a 
 worship unlike any he has ever seen. There is no 
 priest, no altar, no sacrifice, picture, image, ritual; 
 and though there may.be a thousand people before 
 him, they are all buried in profound silence, all 
 gazing in the same direction — all apparently absorbed 
 in their devotions, to the exclusion of everything 
 around them. This is entirely new to the Chris- 
 tian traveller, and it is long before the feeling of 
 novelty wears away. Nor is it the novelty of the 
 religion alone that awakens his interest. It has a 
 great history, in which one episode after another 
 rises before him : the great human deluge which sub- 
 merged early Christendom ; the struggles of the cru- 
 saders for the Holy Sepulchre ; the gleam of intel- 
 lectual progress that shone on Spain ; the glories of 
 the Alhambra, and the schools of Cordova and Se- 
 ville ; the expulsion of the Moors ; the salvation of 
 European civilisation by Charles Martel on the 
 plains of France, and by Sobieski beneath the 
 walls of Vienna. Mahommedanism ^ has carved its 
 
 1 1 use in this lecture the popular name for this religion, though 
 Islam is the more correct designation. 
 
Mahommedamsm. 363 
 
 name deep on the history of the world ; nor can we 
 feel sure it has played its part. It is here with us 
 still — a powerful faith, commanding the bigoted al- 
 legiance of 175,000,000 souls, 40,000,000 of whom 
 are our own fellow- subjects, — presenting on its po- 
 litical side in Turkey, India, Africa, problems most 
 difficult of solution; a religion adding to its adher- 
 ents by an unceasing proselytism ; a religion utterly 
 unlike any other the world has seen — unlike Chris- 
 tianity, with which it has been in perpetual conflict — 
 unlike Buddhism, for it owns a personal God — unlike 
 Hinduism, for it denounces idolatrj' — unlike Judaism, 
 for it acknowledges the Messiah. "There are two 
 objects of curiosity," said Dr Johnson — " the Christian 
 world and the Mahommedan world ; all the rest may 
 be considered as barbarous." In view of what we have 
 learned regarding other religions, we may look upon 
 that statement as too sweeping ; but for thinking 
 men, Mahommedanism, in its past history, its creed, 
 its possible future, must ever be a subject of surpass- 
 ing interest. 
 
 It is impossible to form any true conception of this 
 religion without some study, however slight, of the 
 life and character of its founder; for the whole system 
 as it exists to-day is just as it left his hand, and bears 
 upon every feature the impress of his powerful mind. 
 Mahommed was born in the year 570, in the Arabian 
 city of Mecca. He spent his youth as a shepherd 
 near that city ; in after life he was especially fond of 
 referring to his early occupation. " Pick me," he said 
 to his followers on one occasion, " the blackest of 
 
364 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 those berries, they are such as I used to gather when 
 I fed the flocks at Mecca. Verily no prophet has 
 been raised up who has not performed the worlc of a 
 shepherd." When still a young man he entered the 
 service of a wealthy widow called Hadigah, who was 
 a merchant, and who employed him in the manage- 
 ment of her caravans. He made on her behalf one 
 special journey to Damascus, which was attended 
 with such success that the widow, delighted with 
 his business qualifications and his other attractions, 
 became interested in him, and finally married him. 
 He was a man of upright character, courteous in 
 his demeanour, and so much esteemed for his honesty 
 that he bore the name of El Amin, the Trusty. He 
 was thoughtful, fond of solitary contemplation, of 
 an extremely sensitive and nervous temperament, 
 and had from his youth suffered from a disease 
 which tradition calls epilepsy, but " the symptoms 
 of which more closely resemble certain hysterical 
 phenomena well known and diagnosed in the pre- 
 sent time, and which are almost always accom- 
 panied with hallucinations, abnormal exercise of 
 the mental functions, and not unfrequently with a 
 certain amount of deception, both voluntary and 
 otherwise." ^ While such was the peculiar nature of 
 the man, it was one calculated to be deeply affected 
 by his religious surroundings. These were of a very 
 special character. The religion of the Arabs was 
 idolatrous : originally Sabean, or the worship of the 
 heavenly bodies, it had degenerated into a gross 
 ' Palmer, The QurSn, p. xx. 
 
Mahommedanism. 365 
 
 fetishism. In the temple of Mecca, which procured 
 for that town the distinction of the Holy City, there 
 was a collection of three hundred and sixty-five 
 idols, the chief of them bearing the name of Allih ta 
 ilah — the God most High ; and in the wall of the 
 temple then, as now, was the celebrated black stone 
 believed to be one of the stones of Paradise, said to 
 have been originally white, but blackened by the 
 kisses of its sinful worshippers. Of this temple, or 
 Kaaba, as it was called, the grandfather and the uncle 
 of Mahommed were successively the guardians. He 
 was familiar with its ceremonies, and was brought into 
 daily contact with its pagan rites. The surroundings 
 of Mahommed were, however, by no means exclusively 
 heathen. There were communities of Jews who had 
 found their way into the country, seeking a refuge from 
 Roman persecution ; and there is reason to believe 
 that Mahommed was familiar with their peculiar 
 rites, and the strange traditions of their Talmud. 
 Christians also were to be found largely interspersed 
 among the Arab tribes. There were anchorites liv- 
 ing in the wildest parts of the Arabian desert, in the 
 clefts of Mount Serbal and Sinai ; and there were 
 Christian communities and monasteries planted here 
 and there on the outskirts of Syria, with whom 
 Mahommed came in contact in his wanderings as a 
 trader. It was a debased and corrupt form of Chris- 
 tianity, full of extravagances, that they represented ; 
 but, such as it was, he was familiar with it. Indeed 
 there were tribes of Arabs who nominally professed 
 the Christian religion as their creed. The contact, or 
 
366 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 perhaps rather the clashing together, of these various 
 faiths, produced a spirit of inquiry. There were those 
 at Mecca whom neither Paganism, Judaism, nor Chris- 
 tianity, taken alone, could satisfy, and who were 
 anxiously searching for some kind of truth that 
 might commend itself to them. These were called 
 " Hanifs." Some of these searchers were led by their 
 investigations to embrace Christianity; others seem 
 to have taken their stand on what they deemed the 
 faith of their father Abraham, the unity of God, and 
 to have proclaimed it as the only worthy ground of 
 belief; others found no answer at all to their quest. 
 A story has been handed down, how four men of the 
 tribe of the Koreish sat in secret conclave, and dis- 
 cussed the religious state of their people. "Our 
 fellow-countrymen," they said, " are in a wrong path ; 
 they are far astray from the religion of Abraham. 
 What is this pretended divinity to which they offer 
 victims, and around which they make solemn pro- 
 cessions .' — a dumb and senseless block of stone, in- 
 capable of good and evil. It is all a mistake ; seek 
 we the truth, seek we the pure religion of our father 
 Abraham. To find it let us quit our country if need 
 be, and traverse foreign lands." Three of them in 
 their travels became Christians ; but the fourth, unable 
 to find a religion to satisfy him, might be seen daily 
 standing with his back to the Kaaba uttering plain- 
 tively the touching prayer : " Lord, if I knew in what 
 way thou didst will to be adored and served, I would 
 obey thy will ; but I know it not." This story illus- 
 trates the sceptical and inquiring spirit of the time, 
 
Mahommedanism, 367 
 
 and the longing for light entertained by the more 
 thoughtful. Among these HanJfs were some of 
 Mahommed's near relations. 
 
 Such was the environment of this pensive, sensitive, 
 nervously organised man. Such were the influences 
 which were daily telling upon him. The result was 
 the evolution of a new and powerful religion. When 
 he was approaching his fortieth year his doubts 
 pressed heavily upon him ; and he was wont to retire 
 for meditation to a cave in the neighbourhood of 
 Mecca, spending there sometimes whole days and 
 nights together, in fasting and watching. It is 
 in a wild and rugged spot, about three miles from 
 the city, in a situation lonely in the extreme. Dur- 
 ing one of his visits to this solitary place, an angel 
 appeared to him and bade him read. Mahommed 
 replied, in great terror, that he was no reader. The 
 angel shook him violently three times, and again bade 
 him read, when the angel repeated these words : — 
 
 " Read ! in the Name of the Lord who did create ; 
 Who did create man in congealed blood. 
 Read ! for thy Lord is the most generous, 
 Who has taught the use of the pen, — 
 Has taught man what he did not know. " 
 
 The effect of this apparition upon Mahommed was 
 overwhelming. He deemed himself possessed ; he 
 contemplated suicide ; in his misery he felt life to 
 be intolerable. After a time the angel appeared to 
 him again, and subsequently revelations came rapidly 
 ^visions, some of them weird and terrible, presented 
 themselves to his mind. Tradition says he roared 
 
368 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 like a camel ; the sound as of bells wellnigh rent his 
 heart in pieces ; on the coldest day the perspiration, 
 like beads of silver, would roll down his face, and the 
 glorious brightness of his countenance give place to a 
 ghastly hue ; his face was covered with foam ; his 
 eyes were closed. The result of these revelations 
 was a conviction impressed upon him of the unity 
 of God, and also that he was divinely commissioned 
 to preach it to the world. It does not fall within the 
 scope of this lecture to enter upon the questions that 
 have been very earnestly debated as to the reality 
 and character of these revelations — Whether Mahom- 
 med was an enthusiast, a fanatic, an impostor, a man 
 specially inspired by the devil, or an epileptic sub- 
 ject to hysterical hallucinations. Our business is 
 with the religion as we find it. There can, we think, 
 be little doubt that the man himself was convinced 
 of the reality of these visions and revelations : espe- 
 cially, in the early part of his career, his personal sin- 
 cerity is apparent. The enthusiasm also that he en- 
 kindled in others, and the way in which some of the 
 noblest of his countrymen rallied round him, show 
 him to have been no conscious impostor ; and if some 
 of his later revelations seem to have come when they 
 were wanted to vindicate his conduct, and to stamp 
 very questionable actions with divine authority — such 
 as his marriage with the divorced wife of his adopted 
 son — we must remember the readiness with which 
 men believe to be true what they wish should be true, 
 and how he had been long accustomed to regard 
 all his impulses as express commands from God. 
 
Mahommedanism. 369 
 
 His progress as a teacher was slow. He suffered 
 persecution from the mass of his fellow-countrymen. 
 His wife Hadtgah, his freedman ZHid, and a few 
 others, accepted his testimony, but the rest of his 
 people regarded his visions as vain tales. Five years 
 passed, and he had made no more than forty or fifty 
 converts. Some of these were compelled to seek safety 
 in flight to Abyssinia His own life was only safe 
 through the protection of his powerful relatives, 
 especially that of his uncle Abu Tilib, the guardian 
 of the Kaaba. " My nephew," said this aged man to 
 him, " what is the new faith I see thee following ? " 
 " Oh, my uncle," replied he, " this is the religion of 
 God and of His angels and of His prophets — the 
 religion of Abraham. The Lord hath sent me an 
 apostle unto His servants ; and thou, my uncle, art 
 most worthy of all I should address an invitation 
 unto, and the most worthy to assist the prophet of 
 the Lord." Abu Tilib replied : " I am not able, my 
 nephew, to separate from the religion and customs of 
 my forefathers, but I swear that so long as I live, no 
 one shall dare to trouble thee." Notwithstanding the 
 intervention of his uncle in his behalf, he and his 
 followers continued to suffer much from the hostility 
 of the people, who were deeply attached to the na- 
 tional cult. Other troubles pressed heavily upon 
 him. He lost his wife, Hadtgah, to whom he was 
 deeply attached ; and soon after his uncle, who had 
 protected him so long, died. He was stoned by the 
 inhabitants of a village which he had visited, and was 
 left by the roadside wounded and almost dead. These 
 
370 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 were heavy troubles, but with almost unfaltering stead- 
 fastness he held on his way, proclaiming the unity of 
 God, and his own divine mission. Once he was tempted 
 to enter on a compromise with idolatry, but his lapse 
 was but momentary. " By Allah," said the determined 
 man, " if they placed the sun on my right hand and the 
 moon on my left to persuade me, yet, while God bids 
 me, I shall not renounce my purpose." He was en- 
 couraged by a vision, in which he believed himself 
 carried by Gabriel on a winged steed to Jerusalem, 
 to meet all the prophets of God, who welcomed him, 
 and afterwards to the presence of God Himself in the 
 seventh heaven. His prospects were at the darkest, 
 when aid came to him from an unexpected quarter. 
 Two tribes who held the city of Medinah, and who 
 regarded the Meccans with animosity, received his reli- 
 gion, and afforded a refuge to his disciples, and finally 
 to himself" He stole away, at the risk of his life, 
 from Mecca, and reached Medinah. On his journey 
 he lay three days and three nights concealed in a cave 
 from the pursuit of his enemies. His sole companion, 
 Abu Bekr, looking upwards to a crevice through 
 which streamed the morning light, and thinking of 
 his enemies, whispered, "What if one of them were to 
 look beneath him, he might see us under his very feet ! 
 " Think not thus," replied the prophet ; " we are two. 
 but God is in the midst a third." This flight of the pro- 
 phet — or the Hegira, as it is called — took place in 622. 
 It is well looked upon as the beginning of the Mahom- 
 medan era. It was certainly the crisis of the prophet's 
 history: thenceforth his star was in the ascendant 
 
Mahommedanism. 371 
 
 For the first six months of his residence in Medinah 
 he was busied in organising his converts. He built 
 a mosque for their worship, from the roof of which 
 was proclaimed the call to prayer, that has never 
 since ceased to be sounded. Here also he made a 
 new and a great departure from his previous line of 
 action. Hitherto his only weapon was persuasion — 
 now it became force. The sword was henceforth to 
 be the pioneer of the faith. "Fight against them 
 until there be no opposition in favour of idolatry, and 
 the religion be wholly God's," became a maxim, as it 
 still is, with all true Moslems. If the prophet had a 
 high -ideal before, as there is reason to believe he 
 had, he now fell sadly away from it. The peaceful 
 preacher of righteousness spent the last ten years of 
 his life in training an army of fanatical warriors. His 
 character became brutalised, his life sensual. He 
 appealed to divine sanction for his licentiousness. 
 The early purity of his soul vanished. He changed 
 into a man of cunning and of blood. But his out- 
 ward success was great. With an army of ten thou- 
 sand men he advanced against Mecca. The city was 
 conquered, the Kaaba swept of its idols, and made 
 the sacred place of the new religion. One by one 
 the Arab tribes submitted to the conqueror, and paid 
 him tribute. In 632 the prophet died, when about to 
 mccLSure his strength with the power of Rome, but the 
 work he had inaugurated went on. The Arab tribes 
 in myriads poured forth from their desert to the con- 
 quest of the world. Like a fire driven over a sun- 
 scorched prairie, they swept on to victory. Within 
 
372 Th^ Faiths of the World. 
 
 little more than a century they had conquered an 
 empire extending from India to the shores of the At- 
 lantic, and the same call to prayer was heard from the 
 temple area at Jerusalem, and the mosque of Cordova 
 in Spain. Mahommedanism has found a home in lands 
 far away from the Arab city where it took its rise, 
 but it bears deeply impressed upon it, wherever it is 
 found, traces of its early home. In the ritual of the 
 Meccan pilgrimage, in the worshipper praying to- 
 wards the Kaaba, in the old pagan feast of Ramazan, 
 in the language of its sacred literature — the language 
 of the Bedaween of the desert, — in the Talmudic 
 legends, and the stories from the Christian Apoc- 
 rypha, gathered together by the prophet and incor- 
 porated in his revelations, — we have reminiscences of 
 the circumstances in which this religion was cradled, 
 and the influences which presided at its birth. 
 
 Such is the genesis of this religion. We have now 
 to consider its leading and fundamental principles as 
 we find them to-day. I shall confine myself to those 
 beliefs common to all Moslems, having no space to 
 notice the various sects into which they are divided 
 upon points of belief and practice, apart from their com- 
 mon doctrinal basis. The creed (Kalima) of Mahomme- 
 danism is a short one. It is contained in the words 
 which are familiar to every one who has been in the 
 East — which have been the battle-cry of armies, and 
 the simple assent to which secures admission into 
 Paradise. " There is no deity but God, and Mahom- 
 med is the apostle of God." The two propositions 
 of the creed are co-ordinate, of equal authority, and 
 
Mahommedanism. 2)Th 
 
 equally binding upon believers. They express both 
 the power and the feebleness of the religion. The 
 proclamation of the unity of God is where the 
 power of Mahommedanism has lain from the very- 
 first. It came as a new revelation to Eastern idol- 
 aters of a very grovelling description — to Eastern 
 Christians, who were little better than idolaters, who 
 were given up to image-worship, and had lost all sense 
 of the unity of God while they were disputing about 
 it most loudly, and waging angry controversies regard- 
 ing it — to Jews who had forgotten the simple creed of 
 Abraham and the sublime revelation of Sinai, and 
 were wholly taken up with vain and silly traditions. 
 It told all these of the one behind the many. It 
 swept away images, philosophical subtleties, theolo- 
 gical speculations, like so many cobwebs. There is 
 but one God, it said, and man must be resigned to 
 His will, and if he refuses he must be compelled to be 
 so. " The Jews," cried the prophet, " say Ezra is the 
 Son of God, and the Christians say Messiah is the 
 Son of God. They take their doctors and monks for 
 lords. God fight them, how they lie ! But they are 
 bidden to worship but one God : there is no God but 
 He." It was this revelation of the one God which had 
 power. " It seized on these Arab hearts like an inspira- 
 tion ; it roused them by its breath out of death to a 
 vigorous national existence ; it made Cosmos in their 
 chaotic world ; and wherever they bore it, it kindled 
 a fierce enthusiasm. The Moslem rang it out like the 
 blast of a war-trumpet, and everywhere it stirred, per- 
 suaded, quickened, and organised the peoples prepared 
 
374 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 for its message. The way in which it was caught from 
 lip to lip, and was repeated, re-echoed, age after ag'e 
 through the Moslem world, shows how deeply it has 
 stirred the hearts and imagination of a vast section of 
 the human race. It is the one master-key to the his- 
 tory of the Moslem conquest, and to the elevating, puri- 
 fying, stimulating influence which, while the doctrine 
 was young, Mahommedanism exerted on the nations 
 which composed its empire, and through them, on the 
 whole world." ^ But while the proclamation of the 
 unity of God has been its strength, the other branch 
 of its fundamental creed — the divine commission of 
 the prophet — has been the source of its weakness. 
 It has made men receive as of divine origin what are 
 seen to be only utter and transparent absurdities. It 
 has put the stamp of finality on practices which, in 
 the light of advancing civilisation, are felt to be detri- 
 mental to the highest interests of humanity; and it has 
 raised barriers to progress in all spheres — political, 
 social, intellectual, and moral — which cannot be al- 
 lowed to stand. 
 
 The creed of this religion is terse and pointed, 
 but its theological system is very extensive, compli- 
 cated, and dogmatic. It comprises that divine revela- 
 tion said to have been given first to Adam, then at 
 successive periods to Noah, Abraham, Moses, and 
 Christ, and in its last and perfect form to Mahommed. 
 " We believe," said he, " in God, and in what hath 
 been sent down to Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, 
 and Jacob, and the tribes, and in what was given to 
 1 British Quarterly Review, No. LXV. 
 
Mahommedanism. 375 
 
 Moses and Jesus, and the prophets of the Lord." 
 Mahommedanism thus professes to be the final 
 chapter in a long series of revelations. Accord- 
 ing to the orthodox Moslem theologians, there are 
 four foundations upon which the faith rests — the 
 Qurdn, the Hadis, the Ijm^, and Quias. The Qur&n 
 is the written word of God ; the Hadis comprises the 
 traditional sayings and acts of the prophet ; the Ijmd 
 4s what corresponds to the " consent of the fathers" — 
 the concurrent opinion of the highest authorities upon 
 points concerning which neither the Qurdn nor the 
 Hadis is explicit ; Quias is the analogical reason- 
 ing of the learned with regard to the teaching of the 
 Qurin, the Hadis, and the Ijmd. These are the 
 pillars of Moslem theology and law ; but of the four, 
 the Qurin is the chief. Its authority is absolute, 
 not only in all matters of religion, but in the sphere 
 of politics, ethics, and science; and from it alone 
 we can form an idea of the genius of the system, the 
 principles underlying its action, and its influence on 
 faith and practice. 
 
 The Quran is the inspired word of God sent down 
 to the lowest heaven in a complete form, and then 
 revealed in portions to the prophet by the angel 
 Gabriel. It is a book apparently without order or 
 arrangement, the different parts of which seem pro- 
 miscuously thrown together. It is divided into 
 chapters, which are called Suras — the word Sura 
 meaning a row of bricks in a wall. Some of these 
 Suras evidently belong to the early part of Mahom- 
 med's career — others bear the marks of later com- 
 
376 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 position ; and it has been found possible, by careful 
 analysis, to reduce the heterogeneous mass to some- 
 thing like chronological order, and to point out the 
 precise period in the prophet's history to which the 
 different parts belong. The confused character of 
 the materials is accounted for by the manner in 
 which they were brought together. At the death of 
 the prophet, scattered fragments of the revelation were 
 in the possession of various of his followers ; some in 
 the hands of one of his widows ; others remained only 
 in the memory of believers. In one of the battles which 
 took place soon after the death of Mahommed, some 
 of the most famous reciters of the Suras were slain; 
 and lest they should all die and the revelations be 
 lost, Zaid, a native of Medinah, was employed to 
 collect all of them that could be found. These he 
 gathered from fragments written on palm - leaves, 
 scraps of parchment, shoulder - blades of mutton, 
 stones, and other materials, and " from the hearts of 
 men." His finished work probably differed but little 
 from the Qurdn as we now possess it. So carefully 
 has it been preserved and transmitted from genera- 
 tion to generation, that there is but the one version 
 in use throughout the Mahommedan world, and differ- 
 ent readings are unknown. " The Turanian and the 
 Aryan, the Arab and the Negro, alike learn its sonor- 
 ous sentences, day by day repeat its opening clauses, 
 and pray in its words as their fathers prayed before 
 them." It is held in the utmost reverence. It is 
 regarded as the great miracle of the faith. Its style 
 and composition are deemed unsurpassable — more 
 
Mahommedanism. 377 
 
 miraculous than raising the dead. It is never touched 
 by the Moslem without ablution of the person. Sen- 
 tences from it are the only ornaments which adorn 
 the walls of his mosques ; verses from it are inscribed 
 upon his banners. It is his code of laws, his theology, 
 his book of prayer. No matter what his race, he 
 must learn in Arabic and repeat by rote portions of 
 the Quran in every act of worship. To the European 
 reader who makes its acquaintance through the me- 
 dium of a translation, it seems a chaotic production 
 — a mass of childish stories — a farrago of disconnect- 
 ed rhapsodies — largely sprinkled with legends from 
 the Talmud and the Christian apocryphal books, 
 among which he recognises familiar Bible stories 
 sadly mutilated and travestied. To the Oriental it 
 represents the most perfect form of speech, and the 
 loftiest poetic inspiration attained to by man. But 
 even the European reader cannot fail to discern 
 occasional passages worthy of admiration for the 
 grandeur of their descriptions, and the sublime mor- 
 ality they inculcate. Very fine, for instance, is this 
 description of true religion from the second Sura : — 
 " There is no piety in turning your faces towards 
 the East or the West, but he is pious who believeth in 
 God, and the last day, and the angels, and the Scrip- 
 tures, and the Prophets ; who for the love of God 
 dispenseth his wealth to his kindred, and to the 
 orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and those 
 who ask, and for ransoming ; who observeth prayer 
 and payeth the legal alms, and who is of those who 
 are faithful to their engagements when they have 
 
 2 I 
 
378 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 engaged in them, and patient under ills and hard- 
 ships, and in time of trouble. These are just, and 
 those who fear the Lord." 
 
 Even in an English translation, we can catch the 
 poetic rhythm, and discern somewhat of the majesty 
 of this vision of the Judgment-day taken from the 
 Sura entitled "The Folding-Up :— " 
 
 ' ' When the sun shall be folded up, 
 
 And when the stars shall fall, 
 
 And when the mountains shall be set in motion, 
 
 And when the she- camels with young shall be neglected, 
 
 And when the wild beasts shall be huddled together. 
 
 And when the seas shall boil. 
 
 And when souls shall be joined again to their bodies, 
 
 And when the female child that had been buried alive shall ask for 
 
 what cause she was put to death. 
 And when the leaves of the Book shall be unrolled. 
 And when the Heavens shall be stripped away like a skin. 
 And when Hell shall be made to blaze, 
 And when Paradise shall be brought near. 
 Every Soul shall know what it has done. " 
 
 As another instance of the lofty poetic expression 
 often taken by the Qurin, we may give the famous 
 contrast between believers and unbelievers, from the 
 " Chapter of Light." Arabic scholars tell us that in the 
 original it is unsurpassed for the dignity and expres- 
 siveness of its language and the singular beauty of 
 the images employed. " God is the light of the hea- 
 vens and the earth : His light is as a niche in which 
 is a lamp, and the lamp is in a glass; the glass is 
 as though it were a glittering star ; it is lit from a 
 blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the 
 west, the oil of which would wellnigh give light 
 
Mahommedanism. 379 
 
 though no hre touched it — ^light upon light I God 
 guides to His light whom He pleases, and God strikes 
 out parables for men, and God doth all things 
 know. . . . 
 
 " But those who misbelieve their works are like the 
 mirage in a plain : the thirsty counts it water till when 
 he comes to it he finds nothing ; but he finds that 
 God is with him, and He will pay him his account, 
 for God is quick to take account. 
 
 " Or like darkness on a deep sea, there covers it a 
 wave which is above a wave, above which is a cloud 
 — darknesses one above the other. When one puts 
 out his hand he can scarcely see it, for he to whom 
 God has given no light, he has no light." 
 
 These are some of the more beautiful passages in 
 the Qurin. They are chosen from long chapters, the 
 greater part of which seem often to us silly, and are 
 frequently unintelligible from our not knowing pre- 
 cisely the incidents in the prophet's career which 
 called them forth. Some of the Old Testament 
 stories which are given in the Qurin, are frequently 
 so strangely told as to seem ridiculous. 
 
 As might be expected, the leading article of faith, 
 "The Unity of God," is the prominent doctrinal 
 feature of the Qurin. The short Sura called " Unity" 
 is said to be equal to two-thirds of the book. The 
 attributes of God are expressed in ninety-nine names 
 which are deemed especially sacred, and are often 
 repeated as an act of devotion.. Every chapter of the 
 Qurin opens with the formula, "In the name of the 
 merciful and compassionate God." The following 
 
380 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 words describing His majesty are esteemed most 
 precious by the devout believers; they frequently 
 carry them about their persons, engraved on agate 
 or other precious stones, and they are constantly seen 
 inscribed on the walls of mosques. They form the 
 passage in the second Sura called the "Verse of the 
 Throne:"— 
 
 " God, there is no God but He, the living, the self- 
 subsistent. Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His 
 is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. 
 Who is it that intercedes with Him save by His per- 
 mission ? He knows what is before them and what 
 behind them, and they comprehend not aught of 
 His knowledge but of what He pleases. His throne 
 extends over the heavens and the earth, and it tires 
 Him ftot to guard them both, for He is high and 
 grand." 
 
 Passages similar to this celebrated one abound in 
 the Qur&n, describing, if not in language equally grand, 
 yet in terms striking and forcible, the majesty and 
 greatness of the Most High God, "whom those who 
 are in the heavens and the earth adore voluntarily 
 or involuntarily, their shadows also morn and eve 
 — Allah ! the Eternal, the Living One, who never 
 dieth, the first and the last." 
 
 These expressions, it must be felt, resemble some- 
 what those of Scripture, but the view of God given 
 in the Quran is peculiarly its own. It is different 
 from that of the Jews, which combined with the idea 
 of will that of righteousness, and there is an aspect 
 of the character of God not found in Mahommedan 
 
Mahommedanism. 38 1 
 
 theology, which is the glory and mainspring of Chris- 
 tianity. We may read the book carefully through, 
 yet never come upon such passages as these, "The 
 Lord is not willing that any should perish," or " who 
 will have all men to be saved." The name " Father," \ 
 which expresses so much to the Christian heart, has | 
 no place among the ninety-nine holy names of the 
 Qurin. Nor have the ideas it suggests anything 
 corresponding to them in Moslem theology. The 
 God of the Arabian prophet is not a God of love 
 who desires that His children should become one 
 with Him, and should yield Him their affection. 
 He is a God of will and power, withdrawn from the 
 human world, the highest relation to whom attain- 
 able by men is expressed in the well-known name 
 the religion bears: Islam — that is,' resignation" — the 
 state of unconditional passiveness. This conception 
 of God, certainly bound to lead in practice to a 
 fatalism paralysing the activities of life, has been 
 well termed the " Pantheism of Force." ^ " God is one 
 in the totality of omnipotent and omnipresent action 
 which acknowledges no rule, standard, or limits, save 
 one sole and absolute will. He Himself, sterile in 
 His inaccessible height, neither loving nor enjoying 
 aught save His own and self-measured decree, with- 
 out son, companion, or councillor, is no less barren 
 for Himself than for His creatures ; and his own 
 barrenness and lone egoism in Himself is the cause 
 and rule of His indifferent and unregarding despot- 
 ism around."^ 
 
 1 Palgrave's Arabia, vol. i. p. 369. ' Ibid. 
 
382 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 "One God the Arabian prophet preached to man ; 
 One God the Crescent still 
 Adores through many a realm of mighty span, — 
 A God of power and wiU. 
 
 A God that, shrouded in His lonely light. 
 
 Rests utterly apart 
 From all the vast creations of His might. 
 
 From nature, man, and art. 
 
 A power that at His pleasure doth create. 
 
 To save or to destroy ; 
 And to eternal pain predestinate, 
 
 As to eternal joy." 
 
 That is not the God of the Christian. 
 
 Grouped around this central conception of God, 
 there are certain dogmas occupying a prominent 
 position in the Qurin, and to which great import- 
 ance is attached in Moslem theology. The angel- 
 ology of the Qurin is very definite in character. It 
 is a reflection of Persian ideas, largely coloured from 
 Talmudic sources. Angels are beings of a pure and 
 aerial nature, who neither eat nor drink, who minister 
 at the throne of God, watch the conduct of men, and 
 record their actions for judgment. Four angels are 
 specially held in veneration : Gabriel, the Holy Spirit, 
 God's special messenger ; Michael, the protector of 
 the Jews ; Azrael, the angel of death ; and Israfeel, the 
 angel of the resurrection, by whom the last trumpet 
 shall be sounded. A race of beings called ginn or 
 genii also exist. They were created from fire before 
 Adam ; they are less pure than the angels, and they 
 shall be judged like men. Iblis is the devil, cast out 
 of Paradise, because he refused to do homage to 
 
Mahommedanism. 383 
 
 Adam. Munkar and Naku are two angels who 
 visit every man in his grave, make him sit up, and 
 examine him as to his belief. If he confess that 
 there is but one God, and that Mahommed is his 
 prophet, he is allowed to rest in peace ; otherwise he 
 is struck with an iron hammer, so that he roars out, 
 and all animals near his grave, except ginns and men, 
 hear him. The earth is then pressed down upon the 
 corpse, and it is left to be torn by dragons and ser- 
 pents till the day of resurrection. 
 
 The eschatology of the Qurdn and of the faithful, 
 like that of many other religions, is the projection 
 into the future of what is deemed painful or pleas- 
 ant in the present. Much has been said as to the 
 sensual character of the Mahommedan Paradise, but 
 the heaven of the Moslem is just such a place as an 
 Arab of the desert would naturally desire — " shade, 
 water, fruit, rest, companionship, and service ; " and 
 hell is the opposite to all this. Heaven consists of 
 eight divisions. The physical delights of which are 
 particularly described : The garden of eternity, the 
 abode of peace, the abode of rest, the garden of 
 Eden, the garden of refuge, the garden of delight, 
 the garden of the Most High, and the garden of 
 Paradise. Hell is said to have seven divisions also : 
 Gehenum, for Mahommedans — for all Moslems 
 must pass through hell ; Laswa, a blazing fire for 
 Christians ; Hutama, a blazing fire for Jews ; S'ahir, 
 a flaming fire for Sabians ; Saqar, a scorching fire 
 for Magians ; Gahim, a fierce fire for idolaters ; and 
 Hawia, a bottomless pit for hypocrites. Here is an 
 
384 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 extract from the QurAn, illustrative of its view of 
 a future life : " Verily those who misbelieve in our 
 signs we will broil with fire ; whenever their skins are 
 well done, then we will change them for other skins, 
 that they may taste the torment. Verily God is glo- 
 rious and wise. But those who believe and do aright, 
 we will make them enter gardens beneath which 
 rivers flow, and they shall dwell therein for aye and 
 aye ; for them therein are pure wives, and we will 
 make them enter into a shady state." 
 
 Between heaven and hell there is a partition-wall 
 called El-Aaraf, on which are placed those who are not 
 good enough for the one and too good for the other. 
 " They will know the inhabitants of Paradise by their 
 whiteness, and the people of hell by the blackness of 
 their faces. They shall cry out to the fellows of 
 Paradise, " Peace be upon you ! " but they cannot 
 enter it, though they so desire. But when their sight 
 is turned towards the fellows of the fire, they say : 
 "O our Lord, place us not with the unjust people." 
 The day of resurrection and of judgment is preceded 
 by special signs, twenty-five in number, some of them 
 of a very singular character : The sun rising in the 
 west ; the appearance of a remarkable beast which 
 shall rise out of the earth in the temple of Mecca ; 
 the coming of Jesus Christ, who shall descend upon 
 one of the minarets of the mosque at Damascus ; a 
 mighty wind which shall sweep away the souls of all 
 who have but a grain of faith in their hearts. When 
 these and other signs minutely given shall have taken , 
 place, the day of judgment shall come, when all men 
 
Mahommedanism. 385 
 
 shall be judged by God in equity, from the book in 
 which are written their good and evil actions. They 
 " shall read it, and they shall not be wronged by a 
 thread." Some shall enter into paradise ; some shall 
 go to hell. There is a bridge, Sirat, which all must 
 pass over on the day of judgment. It is fixed in the 
 midst of hell. It is sharper than the edge of a sword, 
 and finer than a hair. In passing over it the feet of 
 the infidel will slip, and he will fall into hell-fire, 
 where his feet will be shod with shoes of fire, the 
 fever of which will make his skull boil like a cal- 
 dron, but the feet of the Moslem will be firm, and 
 will carry him safely to paradise, where palaces of 
 marble, full of delights, amid groves and gardens, 
 await his coming. 
 
 The religious duties of the present life are equally 
 clearly defined with the pleasures and pains of the life 
 to come. The five pillars or foundations of practice 
 are the saying of the creed, the five stated periods 
 of prayer, the thirty days' fast of Ramazan, the legal 
 alms, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Qurdn 
 attaches much importance to prayer, a fact which 
 is somewhat anomalous in a system of religion so 
 essentially fatalistic. " Glorify God," says the Quran, 
 "when the evening overtaketh you, and when you rise 
 in the morning, and unto Him be praise in heaven and 
 in earth, and at sunset, and when you rest at noon." 
 Prayer is said to be "the pillar of religion," and the 
 " key of paradise." Five times in the course of every 
 day, in the morning before sunrise, directly after mid- 
 day, immediately before sunset, after sunset, and at 
 
386 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 nightfall, the criers from the minarets of the mosques 
 proclaim in these words that the hour of prayer has 
 arrived : " God is great ! God is great ! God is great ! 
 God is great ! I bear witness that there is no god 
 but God! I bear witness that there is no god but 
 God ! I bear witness that Mahommed is the apostle 
 of God ! I bear witness that Mahommed is the 
 apostle of God ! Come to prayers 1 Come to sal- 
 vation ! God is great ! There is no other god but 
 God ! " and in the early morning the crier adds, 
 " Prayers are better than sleep." AH- prayers must 
 be preceded by ablution with water, and when that is 
 not available, with sand, as travellers in the desert 
 must often have observed. The form of prayer con- 
 sists chiefly in the repetition of certain small Suras, 
 the creed, the salutation of Mahommed and the 
 angels, as given in the Qurin. It may be said any- 
 where, though services in a mosque are most merito- 
 rious. During the month of Ramazan, fasting is im- 
 perative. This month is chosen as sacred because 
 during it the Qurin began to be revealed, and on a 
 certain night in it, "the night of power," the Qurin 
 came down in one volume to the lowest heaven. " The 
 gates of heaven are then open, the gates of hell shut, 
 and the devils are chained by the leg." Fasting is 
 rigorously observed during this period, no one being 
 allowed to eat, drink, or smoke from sunset to sunrise, 
 though exceptions are made in favour of the sick and 
 others similarly situated. The legal alms is the fourth 
 of the five foundations of practice. " Prayer," say the 
 theologians, " carries us half-way to God, fasting brings 
 
Mahommedanism. 387 
 
 us to the door of His palace, and alms procure an 
 admission." A rate is regularly levied upon certain 
 kinds of property belonging to believers, and its 
 results dispensed in ways of charity and benevolence, 
 and specially for the support of the poor. The fifth ' 
 practical obligation is the pilgrimage to Mecca, a 
 duty which is binding upon all believers, and the 
 ritual and ceremonies of which, some of them of 
 very extraordinary character,^ are very minutely laid 
 down. In 1880 93,250 pilgrims visited Mecca ; and 
 a graphic writer — Mr Blunt — who saw the mighty 
 gathering at Jeddah, passing on to the holy city, has^ 
 given us his impressions of its cosmopolite character. 
 Every race and language were represented, and every 
 sect : " Indians, Persians, Moors were there ; Negroes 
 from the Niger, Malays from Java, Tartars from the 
 Khanates, Arabs from the French Sahara, from Oman 
 and Zansibar, even ; in Chinese dress, and undistin- 
 guishable from other natives of the Celestial Empire, 
 Mussulmans from the interior of China," all pressing 
 to the holy shrine, to say their prayers in the Kaaba, 
 and to kiss the black stone, as the Arabs did probably 
 for centuries before Mahommed was born. 
 
 There is yet another aspect of this faith which 
 needs to be noticed, and without which any survey 
 of its religious principles would be incomplete. It is 
 not only a rule of faith and practice ; it is also a code 
 of law — a system not only of theology and ethics, 
 but also of jurisprudence. With the Moslem, Church 
 
 1 A full description of these will be found in that fascinating book of 
 travel. Burton's Pilgrimage to Mecca, vol. iii. ch. 26. 
 
388 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 and State are one. The clergy are the lawyers, the 
 Khalif is both emperor and pope, and the chief ecclesi- 
 astical functionary of Constantinople is the chief legal 
 officer. According to the Arab proverb, "Religion 
 and country are twins." Many of the political insti- 
 tutions are simply the customs of the Arab tribes, 
 which, being adopted by the prophet, have become 
 the fixed law for all ages. Some of the peculiar 
 features of Mahommedan jurisprudence are specially 
 worthy of notice. There is no tolerance to be shown 
 to unbelievers, and war against them is a sacred duty. 
 " When ye encounter the unbelievers of the Qurin 
 strike off their heads, until ye have made a great 
 slaughter amongst them, and bind them in bonds." 
 This is the written law; and though, from circum- 
 stances, it may be in abeyance, it is still binding on 
 the faithful. It inspires a suppressed spirit of hatred 
 which may, should a fitting opportunity at any time 
 arise, take shape in outbursts of fanatical zeal and 
 cruel slaughter. Slavery is a legalised institution. 
 Mahommed did much to ameliorate the condition of 
 the slave, giving directions that all slaves should be 
 kindly treated : "And your slaves," he said, " see that 
 ye feed them with such food as ye eat yourselves, 
 and clothe them with the stuff ye wear ; and if they 
 commit a fault ye are not inclined to forgive, then sell 
 them, for they are the servants of the Lord and are not 
 to be tormented." These instructions of the prophet 
 are in the direction of mercy, but slavery being tol- 
 erated by him, and mentioned in the Qur&n, becomes 
 for ever legalised ; and so long as the religion survives, 
 
Mahommedanism. 389 
 
 this curse of humanity must survive also. Polygamy 
 is also a fixed religious institution. It is allowed by 
 the teaching of the Qurin and the example of the pro- 
 phet, and can never be abolished. With all the evils 
 connected with the practice, it is an ordinance for all 
 time. It is under certain restrictions, but it cannot 
 be abrogated. The position of woman in society is 
 equally defined. She belongs to an inferior grade of 
 beings, incapable of self-control, — the slave, not the 
 companion, of man. The law of divorce is also very 
 specific. By it woman is recognised as the property 
 of her husband, having no rights of her own, and en- 
 tirely at his caprice and will. These institutions are 
 outstanding ; but there are other features of the Mos- 
 lem code which are also' singular, — such as the law of 
 evidence, the embargo on usury, the interdict on all 
 games of chance, and the express laws against use 
 of intoxicating liquors, though the latter have been 
 so refined by Moslem lawyers that their force is 
 almost lost. The legislative provisions of Mahom- 
 medanism are in a great measure unique, and they 
 specially differ from those of Christendom in the 
 foundation on which they rest: they form part of 
 religion itself; they are of its essence, bound up with 
 its very existence ; and must be binding so long as 
 it endures. 
 
 There are two points still remaining, on which a 
 few words must be said, — the relation of this religion 
 to Christianity, and to the progress and civilisation 
 of the world. Mahommedanism has very direct 
 relations with Christianity. Though it was more 
 
390 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 indebted to Judaism, still, so much of Christian 
 doctrine has been incorporated in its theological 
 system, that it has been called a kind of Christian- 
 ity ; ^ and regarded by some writers, rather as a her- 
 esy than an anti-Christian creed. One of the ablest 
 Christian missionaries among the Indian Moslems,^ 
 pleads earnestly that the elements of Christianity 
 in their creed should be freely recognised and hon- 
 oured by those labouring among them, and used 
 "as a foundation whereon to base higher and more 
 glorious truths." And a late Mahdmmedan writer ' 
 attempts to show that Christ Himself foretold the 
 coming of His prophet, and his work upon earth. 
 Jesus, according to the Qurin, was the "Word of 
 God," the Messiah and the greatest of the prophets — 
 though in no sense divine. " They misbelieve who 
 say, 'Verily God is the Messiah the son of Mary.' 
 Say who has any hold on God, if he wished to des- 
 troy the Messiah the son of Mary and His mother, 
 and those who are on the earth altogether." The allu- 
 sions to Christ in the Qurin are equally numerous and 
 strange. Many of the incidents mentioned in connec- 
 tion with His life are from the Arabic " Gospel of the 
 Infancy," and the account of Christ's supposed death 
 is substantially that of the " Gospel of St Barnabas." 
 Christ did not die at all, but another was crucified 
 in His stead. Judas, according to this apocryphal 
 Gospel, was transformed into the form of his Master, 
 delivered to Pilate, and crucified. The second ad- 
 
 1 'Hero Worship'— T, Carlyle. " Rev. T. P. Hughes, B.D. 
 ' Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador. 
 
Mahommedanism. 39 1 
 
 vent of Christ is acknowledged in the Quran as " a 
 sign of the approach of the last hour." Christianity 
 as it appeared to Mahommed was a form of tritheism, 
 and as such he denounces it again and again in the 
 Quran. The doctrine of the Trinity, as he knew it, he 
 held in the utmost abhorrence. "They misbelieve 
 who say, ' Verily God is th« third of this,' for there is 
 no god but one ; and if they do not desist from what 
 they say, there shall touch those who misbelieve 
 amongst them grieyous woe." " The Messiah, Jesus 
 the son of Mary, is but the apostle of God, and His 
 word, which He cast into Mary and a spirit from Him ; 
 believe then in God and His apostles, and say not 
 'Three.' Have done! it were better for you. God 
 is only one God." Such notices of Christianity as it 
 presented itself to Mahommed are very frequent. Had 
 he known the religion of Christ in a purer form, how 
 different might have been the result! Apart also 
 from these semi-Christian references, there is a cer- 
 tain similarity in the two faiths themselves. Each 
 proclaims itself the only true and universal religion ; 
 each is in its nature aggressive, and maintains an 
 active propaganda ; and each coming to life in a 
 small circle of believers in the East, has overspread 
 a large portion of the globe. The contrast, however, 
 between the two religions, is more marked than any 
 similarity which may exist between them can ever 
 be. Not only is their fundamental conception of 
 God, as we have seen, different ; but the religion of 
 Christ " contains whole fields of morality, and whole 
 realms of thought, which are all but outside the re- 
 
392 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ligion of Mahommed. It opens humility, purity of 
 heart, forgiveness of injuries, sacrifice of self, to man's 
 moral nature, — it gives scope for toleration, develop- 
 ment, boundless progress to his mind, — its motive 
 power is stronger, even as a friend is better than a 
 king, and love higher than obedience. Its realised 
 ideals in the various paths of human greatness have 
 been more commanding, more many-sided, more 
 holy."^ Above all, in the life of our Lord and of 
 Mahommed the contrast is complete. The one lived a 
 life of self-sacrifice, the other of self-gratification, — the 
 one relied on the power of the sword, the other on the 
 power of the truth and the attraction of a mighty love. 
 As the thought of the spotless purity, the incompar- 
 able benignity, the royal beauty of Christ's character, 
 rises to our mind, we bow insensibly before it, and 
 from our heart involuntary comes the tribute, " Truly 
 this was the Son of God ; " — but no such tribute can 
 ever come from us, as we think of the Arabian pro- 
 phet and his life, great and commanding though in 
 many respects they were. Between the two religions 
 there is a deep fundamental difference, in whatever 
 aspect we regard them ; whether we look at their 
 origin, their historical development, their position in 
 the world at the present hour. Perhaps in this last 
 particular the contrast is as marked as any. "The 
 Bible," as Dean Stanley has truly said," demands for 
 its full effect the institutions, the teaching, the art, 
 the society, of Christendom." Christianity is a liv- 
 ing spiritual religion, adapting itself to all forms of 
 1 'Mahommed and Mahommedans ' — R. Bosworth Smith. 
 
Mahommedanisnt. 393 
 
 human life, and thought, and action. In Mahom- 
 medanism there is no regenerative power ; it is " of 
 the letter, which killeth," — unelastic, sterile, barren. 
 And the words of Lord Houghton contain a deep 
 religious and philosophical truth, as well as a beauti- 
 ful poetic sentiment : — 
 
 " Mahommed's truth lay in a holy book, 
 Christ's in a sacred life. 
 
 So, while the world rolls on from change to change, 
 
 And realms of thought expand. 
 The letter stands without expanse or range, 
 
 Stiff as a dead man's hand. 
 
 While, as the life-blood fills the growing form, 
 
 The spirit Christ has shed 
 Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm, 
 
 More felt than heard or read. " 
 
 These lines, while they contrast strikingly the genius 
 of the two religions, indicate also the relation of the 
 faith we are considering to the progress of the world. 
 To that progress it must prove an obstacle from its 
 very character. It is " stiff as a dead man's hand." It 
 has no power of adaptation, expansion, development 
 All its customs, even those which are felt to be detri- 
 mental to the highest interests of humanity, stand 
 upon the same divine authority. The social habits 
 are so intertwined with the religion, that to separate 
 them must mean the destruction of both. No race 
 swayed by Mahommedanism can ever advance, except 
 by renouncing their religion. There can be no per- 
 manent modus Vivendi between such a race and the 
 progressive nations of the world. When one of the 
 
 2 K 
 
394 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Turkish Sultans issued a manifesto against European 
 interference, in which he said that the " affairs of his 
 empire are conducted upon the principles of sacred 
 legislation, and all the regulations of which are 
 strictly connected with the principles of religion," it 
 was not merely the statement of a truth ; it was with 
 him and his subjects a sufficient reason for the affairs 
 of his empire remaining for ever as they were. When, 
 a few years ago, reforms were proposed which would 
 put the Sultan in the position of a constitutional sov- 
 ereign, they were at once vetoed by the council of the 
 Ulamd, on the religious ground that religion does not 
 authorise its Khalif, or visible head, to place beside 
 him a power superior to his own. " The Khalif ought 
 to reign alone and govern as master. The Vakils (min- 
 isters) should never possess any authority beyond that 
 of representatives, always dependent and submissive. 
 It would consequently be a transgression of the un- 
 alterable principles of the Sheri (the written code of 
 jurisprudence from. the Qur^n), which should be the 
 guide of all the actions of the Khalif, to transfer the 
 supreme power of the Khalif to one Vakil." * For 
 similar reasons most of the reforms forced upon Tur- 
 key by the European Powers have failed to obtain 
 religious sanction, and have been carried out, if at all, 
 but feebly and ineffectively. Every traveller in Tur- 
 key or Syria must have noticed wherever there is a 
 Christian community, however corrupted its form of 
 Christianity may be, there are signs of prosperity and 
 advancement, presenting a singular contrast to the 
 death-like state of things which prevails in the im- 
 
Mahommedanism. 395 
 
 mediate neighbourhood. That must ever be where 
 a religion like this exists, which regards innovation 
 as a sin. Doubtless in its origin it was a reform 
 upon the terribly degraded state in which it found 
 the idolatrous Arab tribes ; and when it comes still 
 to savage races who are low down in the scale, it may 
 be regarded, in the first instance, as an improvement 
 on their condition, ameliorating as it does certain fea- 
 tures of their social and religious life ; but in amel- 
 iorating these evils it makes no provision for their 
 ultimate abolition, it rather makes them binding for 
 ever, and it effectually prevents the people who em- 
 brace it from rising any higher. If it bestows upon 
 them, in the first instance, some slight benefit — and 
 even this is questioned by those who ought to know 
 best — it certainly is almost an insuperable barrier to 
 their receiving a greater benefit in all time to come. 
 
 The future of this religion has been often forecast. 
 There are those who entertain hopes of a reformation 
 which will bring it into harmony with the thought 
 and life of the present day, and of a successor of the 
 famous four Imdms who followed Mahommed, who 
 shall possess, like them, the Saut el Hai — a living 
 voice of authority to make deductions from the Qurin, 
 and so adapt the religion to the requirements of 
 modern life.^ I confess I can see no ground for their 
 hopes : not only is it part of an orthodox belief that 
 the four Imams can have no successor, and that their 
 written law is unchangeable, but the essential charac- 
 
 1 See "The Future of Islam," by Wilfred S. Blunt, in the Tort- 
 nightly Review,' 1881. 
 
396 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 ter of the religion itself is unprogressive ; there are in 
 it no principles capable of development, no germs 
 from which higher things can be evolved. "It is 
 sterile like its God, lifeless like its first principle, in all 
 that constitutes life." The golden age of this faith, 
 if it ever had one, is in the past. With its centre at 
 Mecca or Medinah, or some Asiatic or African city, it 
 may still exert in the future a power over oriental 
 nations, but its day in civilised Europe is fast draw- 
 ing to a close — 
 
 " The moon of Mahomet 
 Arose, and it shall set, 
 
 While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon 
 The Cross leads generations on. " 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This lecture is based upon personal observation and recollections of 
 Eastern travel. I desire to express my special indebtedness to the 
 following works ; ' The QurSn, ' edited by' E. H. Palmer ; two 
 admirable articles in the ' British Quarterly Review,' Nos. 55 and 6$ ; 
 and in particular to 'The Faith of Islam,' by the Rev. E. Sell, and 
 'Notes on Muhammadanism,' by the Rev. T. P. Hughes. The two 
 latter works — studies by men who have lived long in the East — are well 
 worthy of perusal. 
 
ST GILES" LECTURES. 
 
 SECOND SERIES— THE FAITHS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO OTHER 
 RELIGIONS. 
 
 By the Rer. Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Edinburgh, 
 
 MY subject — Christianity in relation to other re- 
 ligions — is obviously far too extensive to be 
 satisfactorily dealt with in a single lecture. I am 
 entitled, however, to assume that my hearers do not 
 need to be informed either what Christianity is, or 
 what the chief other religions of the world are or 
 have been. Your acquaintance with Christianity be- 
 gan from infancy, and has been constantly increas- 
 ing. You know the facts on which it is founded, — 
 the authoritative sources of information regarding it, 
 — the general course of its eventful history, — the 
 
 2 L 
 
39^ The Faiths of the World. 
 
 general character of the doctrinal systems to which 
 it has given rise, — the ordinary objections which have 
 been urged against it, — the chief evidences appealed 
 to on its behalf, &c. As to other religions, eleven 
 of them, comprising the most remarkable and most 
 developed faiths of the world, have been described to 
 you, in careful and comprehensive sketches, and in a 
 fair and thoughtful spirit, by the lecturers who have 
 preceded me. I may therefore confine myself en- 
 tirely to a consideration of the relationship between 
 Christianity and other religions, on the assumption 
 that the things related do not need to be expounded 
 or explained; This is what I mean to do, 
 
 Christianity is the only religion from which, and in 
 relation to which, all other religions may be viewed 
 in an impartial and truthful manner. It alone raises 
 us to a height from which all the religions of the 
 earth may be seen as they really are. Towering 
 above them all, it is easy to perceive from it how 
 far they fall short of it in elevation, magnitude, and 
 beauty, while yet from no other point can their actual 
 grandeur be so clearly seen, their relations to one 
 another so distinctly traced, and the significance of each 
 of them as a revelation of God and of men so readily 
 and fully understood. No other positive religion thus 
 affords us a point of view from which all other re- 
 ligions may be surveyed, and from which their bad 
 and their good features, their defects and their merits, 
 are equally visible. The point of view of a rational 
 theism — of what is called Natural Religion — is, doubt- 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 399 
 
 less, next to that of Christianity, the most advan- 
 tageous position from which to judge of the various 
 " Faiths of the World," but it is certainly far below 
 it, — one from which a large portion of their contents 
 must appear without meaning, — one from which the 
 estimate formed of them can be neither so compre- 
 hensive nor so profound, neither so just nor so genial. 
 Christianity alone occupies the lofty and central van- 
 tage-ground from which every phase and phenomenon 
 of religion can be appreciated with all the exactness 
 of human science and all the fulness of human sym- 
 pathy. This is a ren;arkable fact; and as it takes us 
 straight to the very heart of our subject, let us en- 
 deavour to apprehend the meaning of it. 
 
 Now it certainly means much more than merely 
 that Christianity is the centre of religious history. 
 It is true, indeed, that various religions, directly or 
 indirectly, prepared the way for Christianity, and 
 contributed more or less to its contents. It is true, 
 also, that other religions have come into contact with 
 it, and given place to it, at various stages of its course. 
 But it is quite possible to represent the actual his- 
 torical connection between Christianity and other 
 religions as having been far closer than the facts 
 warrant us to maintain. The religions of mankind 
 are not to be conceived of as so many stages or 
 phases of faith all leading up to Christianity and 
 passing on to it the truths which had been succes- 
 sively but separately embodied in each. This view 
 overlooks one of the most important distinctions 
 between the Eastern and Western, the Asiatic and 
 
400 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the European worlds. It is only in the latter, and 
 there largely because of the influence of Christianity 
 itself, that a common life and a common develop- 
 ment of culture through a series of stages, — that the 
 rise and progress of a truly human history, compre- 
 hending many nations united in the bonds of spiritual 
 brotherhood, — can be traced. The Eastern or Asiatic 
 world, in which Christianity and so many other reli- 
 gions appeared, was essentially a complex or aggre- 
 gate of coexistent peoples, with separate histories 
 but no general history, each of these peoples being 
 isolated or in little more than external contact 
 with one another, each acting on principles or im- 
 pulses peculiar to itself, and each proceeding on 
 a different course from its neighbours. The creed 
 of Confucius, so wonderfully correct as regards its 
 moral precepts, was already old when taught by " the 
 Master Kung" in the sixth century B.C., and it still 
 rules the minds of about four hundred millions of 
 human beings ; but Christianity has certainly not 
 borrowed from it a single thought or maxim. Brah- 
 manism and Buddhism far surpass in profundity and 
 wealth of spiritual and speculative thought all other 
 heathen systems ; but it is only in modern times 
 that they have come into contact with Christianity, 
 and only in quite recent times, and in connection 
 with the pantheism and pessimism of Germany, that 
 they can be held to have affected even in the slight- 
 est degree the estimates formed of Christianity by 
 any European thinkers. Israel may have derived 
 from Egypt some of her external rites and minor 
 
Christianity and other Religions!' 401 
 
 laws; but it seems clear that she did not derive 
 thence anything of importance in the faith which she 
 transmitted to Christianity. To the ancient Persian 
 religion, the Jewish religion was much more closely 
 akin in spirit than to the Egyptian, and Judaism was 
 manifestly quickened and strengthened by its con- 
 tact with Mazdeism during the Babylonian captivitj-, 
 and may even, perhaps, have been enriched with 
 certain secondary beliefs, which afterwards received, 
 in modified forms, divine sanction ; it only assim- 
 ilated, however, what was consistent with its own 
 principles, and returned from exile essentially unal- 
 tered, although with a larger faith and fuller hope in 
 the coming of that kingdom which the Christ was to 
 establish. 
 
 Christianity, in fact, so far from being the result 
 or synthesis of all previous religions, or of many 
 previous religions, was in immediate and intimate 
 historical connection with only two religious develop- 
 ments of thought — one Semitic and the other Aryan 
 — the Hebrew and the Hellenistic, the Jewish and 
 the Grecian. Its primary and fundamental relation- 
 ship was with the former. It assumed the religion 
 of Israel as its basis. It professed to be the fulfil- 
 ment of the law and the prophets, to have done 
 away with whatever was imperfect in them, to have 
 retained whatever they included of permanent value, 
 and to be the full corn in the ear of every seed of 
 truth sown, and of every blade of promise developed, 
 in them. The more thoroughly we investigate this 
 claim the more we shall become impressed with its 
 
402 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 justice. There is not a prominent doctrine of the 
 Bible of which such propositions as these may not be 
 laid down, — namely, that it was evolved from simple 
 facts or statements of a rudimentary or germinal 
 kind ; that the course of its development was gradual, 
 closely associated with the history of events, and , 
 through a succession of stages, in each of which the 
 doctrine was extended and enriched ; that this course 
 was throughout one of progress, constantly unfolding 
 into greater clearness and comprehensiveness ; that 
 the evolution was imperfect before the New Testa- 
 ment era ; and that the New Testament fulfilment 
 actually gave to the doctrine developed the self-con- 
 sistency of completeness, so that it thereafter only 
 required to be apprehended and applied. These 
 affirmations may almost be regarded as laws of the 
 important science of Biblical theology, because they 
 hold true of all Biblical doctrines. Judaism and 
 Christianity are connected by all the truths of both, 
 and by all the threads or strands of the history of 
 these truths. Judaism brought nothing to maturity ; 
 but the whole religion of Israel was a prophecy of 
 Christianity. This can only be fully established and 
 exhibited by the entire science of Biblical theology. 
 But the most cursory survey of the authoritative rec- 
 ords of the Jewish and Christian religions is suffi- 
 cient to show us that the connection of Judaism and 
 Christianity was very peculiar and very wonderful. 
 
 The latest portions of the Old Testament appeared 
 generations before the birth of Christ, — its earliest 
 portions belong to an unknown antiquity, — its inter- 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 403 
 
 vening portions were written at intervals, through 
 many centuries, by a multitude of authors, of every 
 condition in life from prince to peasant, in every form 
 of composition, and on a vast variety of subjects ; 
 yet the collective result is a system of marvellous 
 unity, self-consistency, and comprehensiveness. It is 
 at the same time a system which is not self-centred 
 and self-contained, but one of which all the parts 
 contribute, each in its place, to raise, sustain, and 
 guide faith in the coming of a mysterious and mighty 
 Saviour, — a perfect prophet, perfect priest, and per- 
 fect king, such as Christ alone of all men can be 
 supposed to have been. This broad general fact — 
 this vast and strange correlation or correspondence — 
 cannot be in the least affected by any questions of 
 " the higher criticism " as to the authorship, time of 
 origination, and mode of composition, of the various 
 books of the Old Testament : by the questions, for 
 example, which have been raised as to whether 
 Moses wrote the Pentateuch ; whether its first book 
 has been made up of a number of older documents ; 
 whether its legislation consists of various deposits or 
 strata ; whether the book of Deuteronomy is the 
 work of Jeremiah ; whether there was an earlier and 
 a later Isaiah ; whether the book of Zechariah is the 
 work of several writers ; whether Daniel was com- 
 posed by the prophet whose name it bears or by a 
 later author. Answer all these questions in the way 
 which the boldest and most rationalistic criticism 
 of Germany or Holland ventures to suggest, — accept 
 on every properly critical question the conclusions of 
 
404 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 the most advanced critical schools, — and what will 
 follow ? Merely this, that those who do so will have, 
 in various respects, to alter their views as to the 
 manner and method in which the ideal of the 
 Messiah's person, work, and kingdom was, point by 
 point, line by line, evolved and elaborated. There 
 will not, however, be a single Messianic word or 
 sentence, not a single Messianic line or feature, the 
 fewer in the Old Testament Scriptures. The whole 
 religion of Israel will just as much as before be per- 
 vaded by a Messianic ideal ; and that Messianic 
 ideal, however differently it may be supposed to have 
 been developed, will be absolutely the same as be- 
 fore, — an ideal which can only be pretended to have 
 been realised in Christ, and which may reasonably be 
 maintained to have been completely fulfilled, and far 
 more than fulfilled, in Him. 
 
 Such is the connection between Judaism and Chris- 
 tianity. It is a relationship which is not only re- 
 markable, but unique. Comparative theology can- 
 not show a second instance of it in the religious 
 history of humanity. Brahmanism was, indeed, a 
 development of the Vedic religion; but no person 
 has ever regarded it as a fulfilment of the Vedic 
 religion. Buddhism was an offshoot of Brahmanism ; 
 but instead of being the completion of Brahmanism, 
 it was an essentially antagonistic religion. The re- 
 ligion of Israel and " the Christian religion are the 
 only two faiths in the world which have been his- 
 torically related as prophecy to fulfilment, hope to 
 substance. 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 405 
 
 The wisdom of the classical world — a wisdom 
 primarily and chiefly Greek, but considerably modi- 
 fied by the Roman mind, as well as by Eastern 
 thought — must also be admitted to have had his- 
 torically an influence on the rise of Christianity, 
 although a feebler influence than that which it 
 exerted for many subsequent generations on the 
 development of Christian theology. The popular 
 religions of Greece and Rome were too poor and 
 fanciful, indeed, to contribute anything directly to 
 the treasury of Christian truth ; but, unlike some 
 greater religions, such as Brahmanism and Bud- 
 dhism, which overpowered and enslaved the soul, 
 they allowed, and even signally favoured, a free, 
 simple, and natural growth of the human mind. 
 The consequence was the Greek and the Roman man, 
 — the Greek an artist and philosopher, the Roman 
 a conqueror and legislator, — but Greek and Roman 
 alike fully conscious of superiority to the world, and 
 in some large measure conscious of the divine in 
 humanity. Hence the culture of the classical world 
 was far superior to that of the oriental world, and a 
 magnificent preparation for the Christian faith, and 
 for the world which rests upon it. The Greco- 
 Roman intellect achieved marvellous successes in 
 every sphere of activity, and not least in the highest 
 spheres of thought. The tragedians of Greece had 
 presentiments of truth so divine, expressed so clearly 
 a sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and of the 
 need of expiation, and breathed forth so patheti- 
 cally the longing for reconciliation, that they have 
 
4o6 Tlie faiths of the World. 
 
 not inaptly been called " the pagan prophets of 
 Christianity." The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle 
 is not only a deeper and truer, but one might almost 
 say a more Christian exposition of moral duties, than 
 the generality of modern manuals of moral philos- 
 ophy. When Plato taught that the Idea of the Good " 
 is the source of all existence and intelligence, and 
 that the Absolute Good is God, he was not far from 
 the thought of Christ, " None is good save one, that 
 is God," nor from the thought of St John, " God is 
 love;" and although "Platonic love" was but joy 
 in beauty, order, excellence, still the inculcation even 
 of that was a notable approximation to the doctrine, 
 " Love is of God, and every one that dwelleth in love 
 is born of God and knoweth God." The thinkers of 
 Greece, in discovering and developing all the argu- 
 ments which reason can yet urge for the existence 
 of God, are entitled to the credit of having first 
 explicitly proved rational the truths assumed in the 
 Scriptures as the very foundations both of Judaism 
 and of Christianity; and in labouring to show that 
 the whole heavens and earth depend on the Eternal 
 Reason, they reached conclusions as to the self- 
 revelation of that reason, which the Jewish thinkers 
 of Alexandria could easily combine with the inti- 
 mations of the Old Testament as to the "Word of 
 the Lord " and the " Wisdom of God," and which 
 were fitted to -lead up alike to what St Paul taught 
 of Christ as " the image of the invisible God, the first- 
 born of every creature, by whom all things were 
 created, and by whom all things consist," and to 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 407 
 
 what St John taught of Him as " the Worchmade flesh, 
 who tabernacled among men, so that they beheld in 
 Him the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." 
 This Greco -Roman wisdom spread into Palestine 
 and the adjacent countries, — spread far as Roman 
 conquest extended and Greek speech penetrated, — 
 so that the atmosphere of thought and feeling which 
 Christ and the apostles breathed was much less purely 
 Jewish, much less purely native, than that in which 
 Moses, and the psalmists, and the prophets of ancient 
 Israel lived. The spiritual change is reflected in the 
 general difierence of tone and character between the 
 Old and the New Testament Scriptures, It is not, 
 however, traceable in the form of definite thoughts, or 
 sentiments, or expressions directly derived by the 
 New Testament writers from classical authors. There 
 was no borrowing of this kind. It was not thus that 
 classical thought acted on Christianity in its con- 
 ception. Christ and the apostles are certainly not 
 to be regarded as the students or disciples of Greek 
 philosophers. They were providentially so circum- 
 stanced that no one can reasonably suppose their 
 teaching to have been based on Greek speculation, 
 or reasonably deny that, while proceeding from a 
 Jewish past, they displayed in setting forth a new 
 religion the most marked originality. Greek wisdom 
 influenced them only in the same general way in 
 which German idealism or French positivism may 
 affect the thoughts of an intelligent Scottish peasant, 
 although he has never read a line, or even heard the 
 names, of Hegel or Comte. But its influence is not 
 
4o8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 to be inferred to have been unreal or inconsider- 
 able, because it was vague and general. It exerted 
 an indubitable historical influence, however difficult 
 it may be precisely to determine what its particular 
 effects were. At the same time, most superficial and 
 erroneous is the notion that Christianity was only a 
 product or compound of Jewish and Grecian forces 
 and elements. Christianity is the religion which has 
 the deepest and broadest historical foundation, and yet 
 it is also the most original of religions, for it is essen- 
 tially the manifestation and work of the most original 
 of personalities. Christianity centres in Christ, and 
 Christ's character had no pattern in actual history 
 either heathen or Jewish, nor His mission any paral- 
 lel in its grandeur and comprehensiveness. It is vain 
 to attempt to explain them from any resources or 
 by any peculiarities of the age in which He appeared. 
 
 Let us now come back, however, to the point from 
 which we started — namely, the fact that Christianity 
 has relations to all religions, and often most intimate 
 and special relations to religions with which it has had 
 little or no historical connection. How happens it 
 that the religions of India and of China, of the Teu- 
 ton and Scandinavian of Northern Europe, and of 
 the Toltec and Aztec of Central America, can just 
 as well be judged of from a Christian stand-point and 
 in relation to the Christian faith, as the religions of 
 Greece and of Rome 1 It can only be because Chris- 
 tianity is in a higher and broader than merely historical 
 manner the centre of the system of the world's reli- 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 409 
 
 gions. All judgments and comparisons of the kind 
 referred to would otherwise be arbitrary and unjust. 
 Christianity is, however, the ideal or spiritual centre 
 of all religions in two ways, which only need to be 
 indicated in order to explain why all religions look 
 towards it, and can be most clearly seen and most 
 fully comprehended in the light of it. 
 
 First,, then, Christianity is the Absolute Religion, 
 in the sense of the perfect realisation of the idea 
 which underlies and gives significance to all religions. 
 Religion is the communion between a worshipping 
 subject and a worshipped object, — the communion 
 of man with what he believes to be a god. It is 
 a relationship which supposes both distinction and 
 unity. Were there no distinction between the sub- 
 ject and the object, there could be no religion, whether 
 the self-identical unity were named God or named 
 man. Neither a relation of God to Himself nor of 
 man to himself can be regarded as religion. On the 
 other hand, were there only distinction between God 
 and man, were they absolutely separate from and in- 
 different to each other, religion must be in this case 
 also impossible. Religion supposes two factors, which 
 are different yet related, so far distinct and so far 
 akin, a Divine Being and a human being, the wor- 
 shipper and the worshipped ; and as a state of mind 
 and life, it is the man's, the worshipper's, sense of 
 relationship to, and dependence on, the Being whom 
 he believes and feels himself bound to adore, to pro- 
 pitiate, and to serve. This is the generic notion of 
 religion, — the idea of religion which applies to all 
 
4IO The Faiths of the World. 
 
 religions, however rude and degrading, or however 
 spiritual and ennobling. It applies to all heathen 
 religions, for they all, without exception, contain some 
 sort of honest belief in a power or powers regarded 
 with awe and reverence. It applies to natural re- 
 ligion, which is the communion of man with God so 
 far as God is discovered by man through the natural 
 exercise of his faculties and from natural objects and 
 events. It applies to revealed religion, which is the 
 communion of man with God, as made known to 
 him, immediately or mediately, through special su- 
 pernatural manifestation. The rank and worth of a 
 religion depend on the measure in which it approxi- 
 mates to the complete realisation of this idea. Chris- 
 tianity alone completely realises it. It alone shows 
 us the whole grandeur and wealth of the idea. But 
 for it our consciousness and thoughts of religion must 
 have necessarily been comparatively poor and meagre, 
 one-sided and perverted. In and through it alone 
 we see what religion really means ; what, in order 
 to answer fully to its own nature, it implies as to 
 God and man, and the relationship between God and 
 man. Because it thus alone presents religion to us 
 at once as a reality and in its ideal perfection, — with- 
 out error or one-sidedness, with pure and comprehen- 
 sive truthfulness, — it is the absolute religion, the 
 religion in the light of which and in relation to which 
 all other religions must be viewed, if they are to be 
 rightly and thoroughly understood. 
 
 Christianity, alone of religions, gives a clear, self- 
 consistent, adequate view of God. It presents Him 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 411 
 
 as the one God, eternal, infinite, omnipotent, omnis- 
 cient ; as perfect in wisdom, in righteousness, in holi- 
 ness ; and yet as merciful, gracious, full of goodness 
 and love ; a true Father in His feelings and actings 
 towards men ; the God and Father of Jesus Christ, 
 in whose character and sacrifice His moral glory has 
 found the highest revelation of its purity and beauty, 
 its attractiveness and tenderness. It, alone of re- 
 ligions, addresses itself to man as he really is, and in 
 the whole extent of his being, overlooking no weak- 
 ness, cloaking no sin, making no false concessions, 
 yet denying no legitimate supports, and appeahng in 
 due order and degree to faith, reason, affection, and 
 will. It, alone of religions, discloses and promises to 
 man a complete communion with God. It shows the 
 perfect union of the divine and human in the per- 
 son and life of its founder. It offers, on the basis 
 and surety of a divinely accomplished and divinely 
 accepted atonement, full reconciliation with God to 
 every one who will repent and turn from his sins. It 
 demands that the whole soul and strength of man be 
 devoted to God ; and to render possible compliance 
 with the demand, it enriches him with such internal 
 gifts as the abiding presence of Christ within and the 
 regenerating and sanctifying operations of the Holy 
 Spirit, and with such external aids as the Scriptures, 
 the Church, and sacraments. Christian communion 
 with God should be inclusive of the whole receptive 
 life of man, filling him with the peace, and love, and 
 joy of God ; yet equally inclusive of his whole active 
 life, requiring conformity to every precept of the 
 
4 1 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 divine will and the exercise of every energy in the 
 advancement of the divine kingdom. 
 
 The idea of religion which Christianity thus com- 
 pletely realises is present in every religion, and the 
 more any religion embodies and expresses it, the 
 higher and the better is that religion. No religion, 
 however, but the Christian, nearly approaches to the 
 complete eriibodiment and expression of it. Most 
 of them are sadly defective as regards every element 
 of the idea. All of them, but the one strange excep- 
 tion, err grievously as to some constituent or aspect 
 of it. Those of them which excel most in one respect 
 often fail worst in others. Yet none of them are 
 wholly false or " without some soul of goodness," and 
 in so far as any religion is true and good, it is akin to 
 the religion in which the fulness of truth and goodness 
 implied in the idea of religion has been realised, the 
 absolute religion, founded by Him who, in the spirit 
 not of narrow exclusiveness but of broadest inclusive- 
 ness, claimed to be "the way, the truth, and the life." 
 
 A brief glance over the world of religions will illus- 
 trate what has been asserted. At the bottom of the 
 religious scale a crowd of religions are to be observed, 
 which have not been dealt with in this course of 
 lectures, but which have had much attention drawn 
 to them by the works of Lubbock, Spencer, Tylor, 
 Waitz, and others. They are the religions of the 
 type known as fetishistic or animistic. In these re- 
 ligions nothing is too mean to be worshipped, nothing 
 more grotesque than the worship, and no end so ca- 
 pricious or selfish but that it may be sought to be 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 4 1 3 
 
 attained through worship. It is always easy to see 
 how wretchedly the divine is conceived of in them ; 
 how little conscious of his own true wants and of the 
 worth of human nature is the poor worshipper ; and 
 how dark and gross, how uncomforting and unelevat- 
 ing, are his attempts to gain the aid or avert the 
 anger of the agents on whom he feels himself de- 
 pendent. It is often difficult to bring one's self to 
 acknowledge that there is any religion at all in these 
 so-called religions. Yet religion there is, and not 
 unfrequently much religion, unless we have greatly 
 erred as to the notion of religion. There is a sense 
 of nature being pervaded and of life being influenced 
 by mysterious powers ; a conviction that in all things 
 and events' there is more than can be seen and 
 touched ; a practical faith in mind above and around 
 man answering to the mind within him. Now, as he 
 to whom "a primrose by the river's brim a yellow 
 primrose is and nothing more " can have no poetry in 
 his nature, so he who believes that in wood and stone 
 there is nothing more than what his eyes perceive 
 and his hands grasp, or nothing more even than all 
 that the chemist and mineralogist or botanist can tell 
 him about them, has little piety in his soul ; and if, as 
 Christianity teaches, " in God we live,- and move, and 
 have our being," and " by Christ all things consist," 
 the animist possesses truth .which such a man ignores, 
 and stands, in consequence, in closer relationship. than 
 he to the Christian faith. The vague, feeble, way- 
 ward gropings of the fetishist after communion with 
 divine powers are not to be denied to be religious, 
 
 2 M 
 
414 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 nor denied to have affinity with what is deepest in 
 religion. Many professed Christians, perhaps, if they 
 had eyes to see and hearts to understand, might learn 
 not a little from the fetishist. And certain it is that 
 Christianity, although the highest of all religions, or 
 rather just because the highest of all religions, can 
 convince and convert the devotees of the very lowest 
 religions, and thus speak peace and yield satisfaction 
 even to the heart of the fetishist. As in art and 
 literature the utmost perfection may be combined 
 with the utmost simplicity, so is it in religion. The 
 higher heathen religions, like the Egyptian religion, 
 Brahmanism, and Buddhism, are essentially abstruse, 
 and only capable of being intelligently apprehended 
 by speculative intellects. But the absolute religion 
 is so simple, clear, and plain, so adapted to the mind 
 and heart of universal humanity, that the most de- 
 graded peoples can discern the force of its claims, 
 and recognise in it the true response to what they 
 were blindly feeling after in their fetishistic state. 
 
 Passing by, because of the limited time at our dis- 
 posal, intermediate phases of polytheism, religions of 
 a fully developed anthropomorphic type, like those 
 of Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, present them- 
 selves. In these religions the gods have become 
 completely human forms — magnified men and women. 
 Hence the communion of the worshipper with the 
 worshipped is here, on the whole, cordial and fa- 
 miliar. It is a 'communion, however, which is weak- 
 ened and divided because there are many competi- 
 tors for homage ; one in which reason has little share. 
 
, Christianity and other Religions. 41 5 
 
 and which the growth of reason tends to destroy ; 
 one which largely rests also on the sense of ain being 
 imperfectly developed, so that the growth of con- 
 science is as fatal to it as the growth of thought ; 
 one which cannot satisfy the more spiritual affections of 
 the soul, and is very far from including a true ideal 
 or law for practical life. Religions of this kind can 
 rule the mind only in its youthful immaturity. But 
 through eliciting' and stimulating the free and ener- 
 getic exercise of men's faculties they may do more 
 for the progress of humanity than religions of a far 
 more profound and serious character. The culture of 
 Greece is the best vindication of the scheme of provi- 
 dence which included the religion of Greece. With- 
 out the gods of Greece the works of Phidias and 
 Apelles, of .zEschylus and Sophocles, would either 
 not have been, or been very inferior to what they 
 were. The Roman gods helped mightily to make 
 those Roman men who conquered the world, and 
 who still " from their urns " so largely rule the world 
 through Roman law. The followers of Thor and 
 Odin were stern and ruthless, but they were also 
 free, fearless, enterprising — fit instruments for the 
 destruction of the Roman world when it deserved 
 to fall, and strong materials with which to build up 
 the edifice of another and weightier world. Chris- 
 tianity has made Christendom, but it has made it 
 because it could, without inconsistency, appropriate 
 and utilise the culture of the Greek, the political in- 
 telligence of the Roman, the Saxon's love of liberty, 
 the Norseman's enterprise and valour. It has de- 
 
4i6 77/1? Faiths of the World. 
 
 throned alike the gods of Olympus and of Valhalla, 
 but it has rejected nothing of good which grew up 
 under their sway. Every germ of truth in these 
 ancient pagan faiths may find a place, and every 
 energy which gave worth to the lives of ancient pagan 
 men may find scope, within the sphere of Christian 
 thought or work. 
 
 In the Mazdean or Zoroastrian religion we have the 
 best example of a dualistic faith. It conceived of 
 morality as essentially a struggle in favour of Ormuzd, 
 and consequently in favour of light, purity, and truth ; 
 and against Ahriman, and consequently against dark- 
 ness, impurity, and falsehood. It represented the 
 struggle as hopeful, because not a struggle against 
 existence itself but simply against evil existence, and 
 because Ahriman and his hosts were doomed to de- 
 feat. It afforded scope for a vigorous and manly 
 virtue, man being supposed to have been created by 
 the good God, and to have been placed, endowed 
 with complete personal freedom, in the midst of the 
 moral antagonism of the world, in order to combat 
 the evil god and all his works. Its good points were 
 its-recognition of the reverence due to the holy will 
 of the good God, its belief in a kingdom of God, and 
 its hope in the triumph of good over evil. And 
 Christianity has all these merits. It erred chiefly 
 in confounding moral and physical good, moral and 
 physical evil, in unduly extending the boundaries of 
 evil, and in exaggerating the power of the Evil One. 
 And Christianity is free from all these faults. Zoroas- 
 trianism was, moreover, a meagre, rudimentary, unde- 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 4 1 7 
 
 veloped system ; whereas in Christianity there is the 
 fulness of truth and of grace. 
 
 The best example of a pantheistic religion is 
 Brahmanism. It is as rich in thought as Zoroas- 
 trianism is poor. It has sprung from the most pro- 
 found and earnest meditations on the nature of 
 existence, on the absolute spirit, on the relation of 
 the infinite and the finite, on reality and appearance, 
 on life and death, on suffering and retribution. It 
 has given rise to a vast and peculiar civilisation, to 
 various systems of theology and philosophy, and to 
 an abundant and remarkable literature. It is only 
 of late that Christian scholars have applied them- 
 selves to a close study of its principles and doctrines. 
 It may well be that they will find it to have much 
 to teach them and more to suggest to them. It may 
 well be that Hindu thoughts will yet modify consid- 
 erably European views of religion, and even modify 
 them for the better. But it is clear that however 
 much truth there may be in Brahmanism, it is 
 truth which must be consonant with the spirit of 
 Christianity, and which that spirit can assimilate ; 
 whereas Brahmanism has so conspicuously failed to 
 realise the idea of religion — or, in other words, to meet 
 the requirements of a religion — that it is mere folly to 
 think of it as a rival to Christianity. It conceives of 
 God as so absolutely the One Being, that all finite 
 objects, finite minds, and finite interests are deemed 
 illusions, and that not even moral distinctions are 
 supposed to exist in Him or before Him. It denies 
 to Him the intelligence, the freedom, the holiness, the 
 
41 8 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 love, which can only be found in a person ; indeed it 
 denies to Him all definite attributes, and so leaves to 
 be worshipped merely an empty abstraction, an in- 
 finite blank. It regards the worshipper's own con- 
 sciousness of freedom and sense of responsibility as 
 deceptive. It represents the loss of finite being, the 
 absorption of the finite in the infinite, as the perfec- 
 tion and ultimate goal of communion with God. 
 Such being the general idea of religion on which 
 Brahmanism proceeds, it has necessarily fallen into 
 the wildest speculative errors and led to the most 
 deplorable practical consequences. 
 
 There are three religions to which it may suffice 
 merely to refer, as showing that great success in cer- 
 tain respects does not preclude great failure in others. 
 Buddhism, by its inculcation of charity, self-sacrifice, 
 justice, purity, and all the passive and gentler virtues, 
 and by the moral ideal which it presents as having 
 been exemplified in the character and life of Buddha, 
 far surpasses, on one most important side of the 
 religious idea, all other heathen religions, and might 
 be maintained to have left in that particular direction 
 little or nothing in Christianity unanticipated. Yet 
 it is Buddhism which represents God' as a negation, 
 all existence as irrational and vain, and the chief 
 good as eternal nothingness. In a somewhat differ- 
 ent manner, Confucianism, which reflects and im- 
 presses so truthfully the mind of China, was also 
 strong on its practical side. This ancient, singular, 
 isolated nation has from the earliest time shown a 
 most remarkable genius for accurate moral discern- 
 
Christianity and otiier Religions. 4 1 9 
 
 ment. No nation in the world has displayed the 
 same ability to perceive what was individually and 
 socially, morally and politically, right. Its plain, 
 precise, common-sense mind has shown itself to sin- 
 gular advantage in the ethical sphere. There is pro- 
 bably not a single moral precept in the Christian 
 Scriptures which is not substantially also in the 
 Chinese classics. There is certainly not an impor- 
 tant principle in Bishop Butler's ethical teachings 
 which had not been explicitly set forth by Mencius 
 in the fourth century B.C. The Chinese thinker of 
 that date had anticipated the entire moral theory of 
 man's constitution expounded so long afterwards by 
 the most famous of English moral philosophers. But 
 while China has in Confucianism a correct and de- 
 tailed moral code, she has nothing to supply her 
 great want, — the want of a worthy view of God. On 
 the spiritual side this religion is defective in the 
 extreme. Its god is almost a void, without depth or 
 content, without will or affection. And hence, not- 
 withstanding its admirable common-sense and equally 
 admirable moral sense, China remains almost dead 
 and immobile, with its heart and hopes buried in the 
 past, not only not progressing, but not even dream- 
 ing of progress ; a vast monument of the insufficiency 
 of earth without heaven, of moral precepts without 
 spiritual faith, of man without God ; an instructive and 
 impressive warning to Europe as to what any gospel 
 of positivism may be expected to do for her. As 
 the Chinaman turns to the past, the ancient Egyp- 
 tian turned with all his love and interest to the 
 
420 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 future. The present life he comparatively little 
 esteemed — not, indeed, that he regarded it, like the 
 Hindu, as illusory and vain, but because he con- 
 trasted it with a higher, and better, and fuller life, 
 only to be realised in the next world. The Egyp- 
 tians had a strong and steady sense of a divine and 
 righteous government of the world, and a wonderfully 
 firm and operative conviction of a future life depend- 
 ent in character on personal conduct in the present. 
 To have expressed this sense, to have maintained 
 this faith, was the glory of the old Egyptian religion. 
 But what a dark and dishonouring blot on the sys- 
 tem which had such a merit was its debasing animal- 
 worship! And what injustice was done to all the 
 truths it contained by that abstruse and excessive 
 symbolism which makes it of all religions the most 
 enigmatic and impenetrable ! 
 
 It is unnecessary to compare Christianity with the 
 only two religions which agree with it in being man- 
 ifestly and consistently monotheistic, Judaism and 
 Mahommedanism ; for the former was essentially 
 and in all respects imperfect in itself and a prepara- 
 tion for Christianity, while the latter must be pro- 
 nounced to have, on the whole, alike as regards its 
 views of God and of man, of worship and of conduct, 
 very seriously degenerated or retrograded even from 
 Judaism. 
 
 Enough has now been said, perhaps, to indicate 
 what is meant when we maintain that Christianity is 
 the Absolute Religion, or has alone completely and 
 harmoniously realised the idea of religion, present, 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 421 
 
 indeed, in all other religions, yet always merely in 
 some inadequate', undeveloped, deformed, or debased 
 shape. All heathen religions contain some erroneous 
 and evil principles among their essential tenets, and 
 in so far as such is the case Christianity must be 
 hostile to them. All heathen religions are defective 
 and disproportionate, and therefore ought to give 
 way before Christianity, which is complete and har- 
 monious. All heathen religions comprise elements 
 of truth, features of goodness, disclosures of God, 
 means of spiritual life ; and in so far they lead up to 
 the absolute religion, the full orbed faith, in which 
 all rays of light are concentrated, and on which there 
 is no darkness at all. Christianity as thus the abso- 
 lute religion, is a religion sui generis, a religion most 
 unlike all other religions, and at the same time 
 related and akin to all other religions, the religion 
 around which all other religions in their better as- 
 pects group themselves to do it homage, "saying 
 with a great voice, like the angels round about the 
 throne and the living creatures and the elders. 
 Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive 
 the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and 
 honour, and glory, and blessing." 
 
 Secondly, the peculiar position of Christianity 
 among other religions arises from its being the only 
 religion which rests on a complete revelation. This 
 is implied in its being the absolute religion. Absol- 
 ute religion cannot rest on a partial or fragmentary 
 revelation. Wherever there is religion there is revela- 
 
42 2 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 tion. Man does not know God by immediate vision, 
 nor does God act on man by His absolute essence. 
 God manifests Himself to the faculties of man through 
 certain media. These constitute revelation, in that 
 broad sense of the term in which it is the condition and 
 correlative of religion. Thus understood, revelation is 
 either general or special, for both general and special 
 revelation come under the one idea of divine self- 
 manifestation. Both imply that there is a God who 
 makes known to His rational creatures His pres- 
 ence, character, and will. God Himself is the agent 
 and object of both ; He makes known what would 
 otherwise be unknown, and what He makes known 
 is Himself. 
 
 General revelation comprises all objects which 
 present themselves to the eyes, ears, and other senses ; 
 all minds, and those faculties of volition, intelligence, 
 moral discernment, and affection, which make them 
 images of God and enable them to reflect the features 
 of God wherever displayed ; and all the events of 
 history, which is the manifestation of God in time, as 
 the material creation is His manifestation in space. 
 This vast book of general revelation lies open within 
 the reach and in the presence of men in all lands 
 and ages. It is an inexhaustible treasury of truth, 
 and individuals and generations may always find in 
 it what is new. Great stores of spiritual truth have 
 already been drawn from it. Probably it is the source 
 whence all the truth in heathen religions has gradually 
 been derived. Evidence is wanting that these reli- 
 gions have been enriched through special revelation, 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 423 
 
 although special spiritual influence may have opened 
 the eyes of many wise and good men among the 
 heathen to behold the wonders of God's law in crea- 
 tion and providence. The book, however, in which 
 general revelation has been recorded, is a difficult book 
 to decipher and interpret. Material objects, mental 
 experiences, and historical events, have religious 
 meanings, but not meanings which can be appre- 
 hended with much clearness or correctness by savage 
 or barbarous men, by uneducated or unthoughtful 
 men, or by any man whose heart jg darkened and 
 perverted by evil passions, and whose mind is not 
 already largely possessed and enlightened by spiritual 
 truth. The easiest volume of this book to read is 
 that of physical nature; it is the volume from which 
 the lower religions, the nature-worships, have been 
 almost entirely drawn ; and yet, although a volume 
 undoubtedly full of wisdom and instruction, its char- 
 acters are practically in an unknown tongue to the 
 great majority of men. There may be " sermons in 
 stones, and books in running streams," yet to all but 
 one in a thousand a stone is just a stone, and no ser- 
 mon, — a running stream simply a running stream, and 
 no book. 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach us more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can ; " 
 
 but only if we are ourselves sages, — otherwise it will 
 probably teach us nothing. 
 
 It is not in the least wonderful that all the heathen 
 
424 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 religions should have often not only failed to read, 
 but grievously misread, the book of general revelation, 
 or that not one of them should have found the key to 
 its interpretation as a whole, or the right point of view 
 from which to regard it. It is very wonderful that 
 there should be a religion of which this cannot be 
 said. And of Christianity it cannot be said. 
 
 As regards the physical world, obviously in even 
 the highest forms of polytheism the divine is rather 
 viewed as a revelation of nature than nature as a 
 revelation of the divine. The gods have grown out 
 of religious representations of the powers of nature, 
 and are still considered as subordinate to and limited 
 by nature. They are the revealers and not the re- 
 vealed. The natural world is first ; the divine world 
 is second. Nor can nature be consistently and rightly 
 accepted as a revelation of the divine by pantheistic 
 faiths, for pantheism either identifies nature with the 
 divine, or so confounds the natural and the divine 
 that the divine is thought of as physical, and thereby 
 degraded, or the world is absorbed or dissolved into 
 the divine, and represented as an illusion. In all 
 these cases nature is conceived of both as more and 
 as less than a revelation, but not truly as a revelation. 
 Christianity, however, takes its stand firmly and de- 
 cidedly, as a fully developed monotheistic faith, which 
 has appropriated the truth of Judaism, on the position 
 that the universe is a creation of God's word, a mani- 
 festation of His mind, a disclosure of His eternal power 
 and Godhead. It unreservedly accepts it as such, 
 and thus makes nature's religious teaching also its 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 425 
 
 own, and puts itself into a right relation to all physi- 
 cal science. 
 
 Then, as to the mental and moral constitution 
 of man. There is little recognition in the lower forms 
 of religion of there being any divine revelation in 
 this volume. In Brahmanism man began to seek 
 for God in thought; Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Con- 
 fucianism, discerned the divine chiefly in conscience, 
 and hence have sometimes been classed as ethical 
 religions ; in Mahommedanism God was above all 
 conceived of as absolute will, and in Judaism as a 
 righteous will. Christianity fully recognises the whole 
 revelation of God in man, and represents the comple- 
 tion of the revelation of God as made through a per- 
 fect man. The religion of Greece tended to form 
 artists, and that of Scandinavia warriors ; Brahmanism 
 is the religion of priests, and Buddhism of ascetics ; 
 but Christianity aims at the production of men, true 
 and complete men, sons of God perfect as their Father 
 in heaven is perfect. It cannot aim at less, for, amidst 
 all the sinfulness of men, it discerns also all the divine 
 features and possibilities which are in him. 
 
 History is the volume of general revelation which the 
 ethnic religions have most neglected. The two great- 
 est of them — Brahmanism and Buddhism — do worse 
 than ignore it ; they take up a decidedly hostile atti- 
 tude towards it, regarding salvation only as the escape 
 of the individual from temporal limits and social ties. 
 Mazdeism, in spite of its dualism, and its narrowness 
 and meagreness of conception, was probably in this 
 respect the least defective heathen faith. Judaism 
 
426 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 had its general doctrine of providence and its distinc- 
 tive Messianic hope. But Christianity came to pro- 
 claim and found "the kingdom of God," as the 
 realisation of the 'purpose which had been running 
 through the ages, as the fulfilment of the law and the 
 prophets, and as destined to overspread and transform 
 the whole earth. It came not merely to save men, 
 but to regenerate and sanctify humanity. It identified 
 the goal which it set before itself with the chief end 
 of man and the final cause of history, viewing in the 
 same light the fates of the mightiest nations and the 
 events which befell the humblest individuals. It 
 taught men to look in all past history for the evi- 
 dences of God's sovereignty, wisdom, justice, and 
 goodness, and to believe that from the time of Christ's 
 incarnation, divine truth and grace would be trace- 
 able, working ever more mightily until all falsehood 
 should be exposed, all evil expelled, the triumph of 
 holiness and love complete, and the entire world laid 
 as a trophy at the feet of Him who once wore a crown 
 of thorns. 
 
 Christianity, let it be repeated, is the religion which 
 alone has known to place itself in a perfectly right 
 relationship to the whole general revelation of God. 
 It does not keep aloof from it, and still less does it 
 oppose it. It is willing to conform to it, and to be 
 judged by it, so far as general revelation extends. It 
 cordially accepts it in all its length and breadth, con- 
 fident that physical discovery, mental science, and 
 historical research can find only what will prove an 
 addition to its own wealth. 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 427 
 
 While Christianity, however, accepts the general 
 revelation of God, it does not confine itself to it ; on 
 the contrary, it professes to be a special revelation, 
 and consequently assumes the possibility, needful- 
 ness, and reality of special revelation. It is the 
 task of the Christian apologist to exhibit fully what 
 grounds there are for this assumption. Here it may 
 be enough to say, first, that the fact that all the reli- 
 gions of heathendom have so seriously misunderstood 
 general revelation, as they undoubtedly have done, of 
 itself seems to show that a special revelation cannot 
 reasonably be deemed unnecessary; and, secondly, 
 that if any one, with awakened conscience, duly con- 
 siders man's condition as a sinner — observes how 
 little nature has to tell as to the way in which God 
 will deal with sinners — realises how impossible it is 
 to love God with any real, earnest, steady love, so 
 long as we are conscious of being in revolt against 
 Him — and marks how signally, how terribly, the 
 heathen religions have erred in regard to the nature 
 and means of salvation, — he will probably be little 
 disposed to dispute the necessity of a special revela- 
 tion, and he will certainly be in the only proper frame 
 of mind to judge of the evidence which can be ad- 
 duced for the reality of such revelation. 
 , Special revelation may appear in two forms. The 
 lower form comes first God may manifest Himself 
 by particular interventions amidst fixed laws, by 
 visions and voices, by the inspired utterances of law- 
 givers, psalmists, and seers ; and the memory of His 
 disclosures may be perpetuated in social ordinances, 
 
428 . The Faiths of the World. 
 
 religious rites, or literary compositions. A revelation 
 of this kind through words and institutions was what 
 the Jewish economy claimed to be. Christianity ad- 
 mitted its claim. It abolished, indeed, the law so far 
 as it was external, temporary, and superficial, substi- 
 tuting for it one which is spiritual, eternal, and suffi- 
 cient ; but it transferred to itself all that was of per- 
 manent value in the Old Testament ; educed out of 
 its particular practices and statements the universal 
 principles implied in them ; provided in the work of 
 Jesus Christ satisfaction for the religious wants ex- 
 pressed in its rites, symbols, and sacrifices ; and shed 
 a light over every page of the Hebrew Scriptures 
 which should make them far more instructive and 
 profitable to the Christian than they ever could be to 
 the Jew. While the Gospel frees us from bondage to 
 the letter of the older dispensation, it at the same 
 time enables us to discover, with greatly increased 
 clearness, the true significance of the revelation on 
 which that dispensation rested. 
 
 What Christianity claims, however, as its own great 
 distinction, is another and much higher form of special 
 revelation. God's general revelation of Himself is by 
 fixed laws of order which know no pity, which show 
 no forgiveness, which are indifferent to the interests 
 of individuals, which conceal the divine character in 
 some respects while they reveal it in others. God's 
 . special revelation of Himself by intervening among 
 these laws in miraculous acts and inspired words 
 brings Him nearer to individual hearts, and yet it 
 leaves Him far away; for after all but signs and 
 
Christianity and other Religions, 429 
 
 sounds have been given, not Himself; He is Him- 
 self still shrouded in darkness, still hidden where no 
 man can approach Him. Can He come yet nearer 
 man that man may draw closer to Him ? Chris- 
 tianity answers, and its answer is Christ, — the person, 
 the character, and the work of Christ. The highest 
 form of special revelation — the revelation which rests 
 on all other revelation, and in which all other revela- 
 tion is completed^-the revelation which is the con- 
 summation of the whole process of the divine self- 
 manifestation, and which brings with it the realisa- 
 tion of all that religion implies, — is, according to 
 Christianity, revelation through a human person pos- 
 sessed of all human graces and virtues, and exhibit- 
 ing in human conditions, in human action, and in 
 human suffering, the divine love and sympathy. 
 The perfect union of the divine and human in 
 Christ — the fulness of the Godhead disclosed in per- 
 fect manhood, — to the end that, through the putting 
 away of sin and the work of the Holy Spirit, men 
 may be not merely servants but sons of God, enjoy- 
 ing free and entire communion with Him, and living 
 in a righteous and loving relationship to one another, 
 — this Christianity puts forward as its central idea, 
 and at the same time as historical fact. It is im- 
 possible even to imagine how in the domain of reli- 
 gion there can be anything higher or more perfect. 
 It completes revelation. It founds the absolute 
 religion. Henceforth there may still be unlimited 
 spiritual progress, but it must be within the outlines 
 of this revelation and on the basis of this religion. 
 
 2 N 
 
430 The Faiths of the World. 
 
 Other foundation can no man lay than that which 
 is laid. 
 
 The claim which Christianity makes for Christ is 
 one which no other religion makes for its founder. 
 Confucius is represented merely as a sage, Zoroaster 
 and Mahommed only as prophets. Buddha alone 
 can be set over against Christ as one deemed by his 
 followers both God and man. But what a contrast ! 
 Do not these two great solitary figures rise up before 
 us, as if to show how vast is the distance between the 
 wisdom of God and the wisdom of man .' Christ — the 
 God-man — God in infinite love and condescension 
 taking upon Him human nature and becoming a 
 human brother: Buddha — the man-God — with his 
 vain and presumptuous boast of having raised him- 
 self to Godhead by his own power and knowledge. 
 Christ revealing the Father : Buddha proclaiming 
 that there is no Father, and that all existence is evil 
 and vanity. Christ bringing life and immortality to 
 light : Buddha setting forth only nothingness. 
 
 I must conclude, not at the close, but at the com- 
 mencement of my subject I have sought merely to 
 introduce you into it; but I have sought to do so 
 through what seems to me the main entrance, where 
 a view is to be had of that general relationship be- 
 tween Christianity and other religions whence all 
 their special relationships diverge. To follow up 
 these latter — to attempt to explore the subject as 
 a whole — is not work for a lecture, or for a series 
 of lectures, but the appropriate task of a science, 
 the great science of Comparative Theology. It is 
 
Christianity and other Religions. 43 1 
 
 a science which is unfortunately cultivated by many 
 who endeavour to make it yield anti-Christian and 
 even atheistical inferences, but that is assuredly not 
 due to the real character of the study itself, but simply 
 to the mental perversity of these individuals. The 
 study itself is a magnificent demonstration, not only 
 that man was made for religion, but of what religion 
 he was made for. The more accurately the nature of 
 religion is determined, the more thoroughly its vari- 
 ous forms are studied, and the more closely they are 
 compared, the more conclusively will it appear that 
 Christianity alone is the ideal of all religion, and alone 
 satisfies the spiritual wants of humanity ; that Christ 
 is "the desire of all nations," and the appointed 
 Saviour of the world, in whom all perplexities of the 
 soul are reconciled, and in whom alone the restless 
 hearts of men can find peace. If it be true, on the 
 one hand, that the ethnic religions can only be under- 
 stood when viewed in relation to Christianity, it is 
 also true, on the other hand, that Christianity cannot 
 be fully understood unless viewed in relation to these 
 religions. We must know what questions the human 
 soul has been putting to itself in various ages, lands, 
 and circumstances, and what are the answers which 
 it has been giving to them, before we can appreciate 
 aright the comprehensiveness and aptness of the 
 response contained in the Gospel. Not one of the 
 features or doctrines of Christianity will fail to appear 
 in a brighter light, and with a diviner beauty, after 
 they have been compared and contrasted with the 
 correlative features and doctrines of other religions. 
 
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.