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» DEC 4 - 1926 
 Co Cy 
 <Xocie41 sew 
 
 
 
 
 Division 
 Section 
 
THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 WEW YORK BOSTON + CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LimItEepD 
 LONDON - BOMBAY + CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lm, 
 TORONTO 
 
THIS 
 BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 A SIMPLE ACCOUNT OF THE 
 GREAT RELIGIONS OF MANKIND 
 
 B 
 LEWIS eae 
 
 Author of 
 ‘*“STRANGER THAN FICTION: A SHORT HISTORY 
 OF THE JEWS" 
 
 WITH MORE THAN SEVENTY 
 ILLUSTRATIONS AND ANIMATED 
 MAPS DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 New York 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1926 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 
 
Copyright, 1926, 
 By LEWIS BROWNE 
 
 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. 
 
 Reprinted September, 1926. 
 October, 1926. November, 1926. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America by 
 THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORE 
 
To 
 HeEGAweELyes 
 
@ fi A 
 ayer 
 1Mq 
 
 aM 
 
 APU i 
 j \ ny 
 
 A 7 MENG fe 
 
 4 ni 0 
 
 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 The author’s gratitude is due to the below-mentioned 
 scholars for their painstaking examination and criticism of 
 the various chapters of thts book dealing with their own 
 fields of spectalized research: 
 
 Professor F. J. Foakes Jackson, author of A History of 
 the Christian Church, Introduction to Church History, etc. 
 
 Professor Robert Ernest Hume, author of The Thirteen 
 Principal Upanishads, The World’s Living Religions, etc. 
 
 Professor Charles P. Fagnani, author of A Primer of He- 
 brew, The Beginnings of History According to the Jews, etc. 
 
 Professor Joshua Bloch, Chief of the Semitics Division, 
 New York Public Library. 
 
 The author ts indebted also to Dr. Leo Mayer of the 
 Palestine Department of Antiquities, to Dr. W. F, Albright, 
 Director of the American School of Oriental Research, 
 and to Dr. Herbert Danby, Canon of St. George’s Cathedral 
 Church in Jerusalem, for much kindly assistance in the 
 gathering of material on the history of the three religions 
 which have shrines in Jerusalem; to Anna W. Anspach, 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 of South Orange, for her careful reading of the proofs and 
 preparation of the index; and especially to the Rev. W. H. 
 Murray, of New York, whose unflagging interest in this 
 book from its inception has been a source of vast encourage- 
 
 ment and help. 
 eas 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PROLOGUE PPR in ee tare ee neg yok Pan eg Avi tit LO 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 1 Reree it ah Cea) pie CNRS A OC a a 
 
 THE BABYLONIANS . . 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 
 
 (see ey Le EO IMIR Comedie VR Sega ROO OF 
 
 1: How the savage tried to explain the evils that befell 
 him—he imaginea all objects were animate—seil -preser- 
 vation and magic. 2: Religion and faith defined— 
 the technique of magic—the dawn of the idea of 
 the ‘‘spirit’’—animism. 3: Man begins to think he 
 can exploit the spirits—shamanism—the charlatan in 
 the early advance of religion. 4: Fetishism. 5: Idol- 
 atry—the beginning of sacrifice—of prayer—of the 
 church, 6: ‘Taboo. 
 
 rat Py i 4 
 
 1: The attempt to coerce the spirits gives way to the 
 attempt to cayole them—but magic woes nol disappear 
 —sacrifices. 2: The seasonal festivals—sex rites— 
 the sacraments. 3: How the great gods were created. 
 4: How the ideas of sin, conscience, and future retri- 
 bution arose—religion saves morality for a high price 
 —prophet vs. priest. 5: How religion made society 
 possible—and desirable—how it gave rise to art—the 
 significance of Primitive Religion. 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 HOW RELIGION DEVELOPED IN 
 THE ANCIENT WORLD 
 
 MEM BPEL TS ho... 0 earn rose ll vente eens GO 
 
 1: The primitive gods—-Druids—the mistletoe cult. 
 2: lhe testivals—ihe great holocausts—beltane— 
 Lugnasad—Samhain—ghost- worship. 
 
 Pcie awe pets hua atts) OD 
 
 1: The Semitic goddesses—how the Babylonian gods arose 
 —trinities. 2: Ishtar and the sex rites—tholy prost.tu- 
 tion—astrology. 3: The priesthood—its vices—and 
 virtues. 4: The defects of the religion—polydemon- 
 ism—a ritualized morality—Shabatum and mythology 
 —contrast with Hebrew versions of same—fear. 
 
 9 
 
Lh 
 
 IV. 
 
 Vis 
 
 — 
 o 
 
 te 
 
 IIT. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ‘THEA EGYPTIANS?) 9 tes es 
 
 1: Original animal-worship—the growth of the gods— 
 the priests. 2: The idea of monotheism emerges. 
 3: tlhe reformation under Ikhnaton—reaction. 4: 
 The religion of the masses—Osiris—the future life— 
 why the pyramids were built. 5: The dead—the 
 Judgment Day—the resort to magic. 
 
 THE GREEKS 
 
 1: The Minoan religion—how the Greek gods arose—the 
 Olympian cult. 2: The Olympian cult fails—the 
 learned take to philosophy. 3: The masses take to 
 magic—and the ‘‘mysteries’—the savior-god idea— 
 how men tried to become divine. 4: The desire for 
 a future life—and how the mysteries satisfied it. 
 
 THE ROMANS . 
 
 1: Original worship of household spirits—the state reli- 
 gion arises—anu is intensiied. 2: Why the state 
 religion failed—the coming of the mysteries—C ybele— 
 Attis—the other foreign cults. 3: Augustus restores 
 the state religion—the god-emperor—the reaction—the 
 Cynics. 4: Why decadent Rome took to the vet-ries 
 —Mithras—its significance. 5: Conclusion—Why these 
 ancient cults cannot be called “‘dead’’—the significance of 
 their other-worldly appeal. 
 
 BOOK ‘THREE 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 
 
 BRAHMANISM 
 
 1: The primitive Aryan gods-—the Vedas. 2: The Aryans 
 move to the Ganges—caste—the brahinins. 5: 1 he 
 Upanishads—the Over-Soul—transmigration—Nirvana 
 —the growth of asceticism. 
 
 JAINISM , 
 
 1: Mahavira—his gospel. 2: How the gospel of Mahavira 
 was corrupted—Jainism today. 
 
 BUDDHISM 
 
 1: The story of Gautama. 2: His gospel—its implica- 
 tions—the Law of Karma. 3: How Gautama spread 
 his gospel. 4: Early history of Buddhism—deification 
 of Buddha—Asoka—the new Buddhism in China— 
 Tibet—Japan—India—Ceylon. 
 
 10 
 
 PAGE 
 75 
 
 89 
 
 100 
 
 119 
 
 129 
 
 134 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 LATIN OTS Michie, We ddd te ee rb aa twit ch amet vate ye ve 1 () 
 
 1: The dominant religion in India today—caste—the 
 trinity—the divisiveness in Hinduism. 2: Vishnu—the 
 avatars—the bhagavad-Gita—hK rishna—theology in 
 Vishnuism. 3: Shiva—his popularity—the Tantra— 
 sex in religion. 4: Hindu philosophy—yoga—the 
 mystic ecstasy. 5: The religion of the lower classes. 
 
 BOOK FOUR 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 
 TRE CONPUCIANISIWc oe are stare ML Ak 169 
 
 1: The primitive religion of China—ancestor-worship— 
 the state cult—tthe popular religion—burial customs— 
 family festivalk—-why did China advance so early? 2: 
 The story of Confucius. 3: The work of Confucius— 
 
 his gospel—his place in history. 4: The deification of 
 Confucius. 
 
 II. ‘“TAOISM ri tiaee 9 Beales tiga! Sa tic ME vel a Seana Ea Ore Be 
 1: The life of Lao-Tze—the Tao-Teh-king—the gospel 
 —was Lao-Tze a religious teacher? 2: The degeneration 
 
 of Taoism—alchemy—gods and priests—the deification 
 of Lao-Tze. 
 
 Pils CDDEIGMio a caniatenla doch areneiia's Vuln ett: 5 LOT 
 1: How it entered China—why it succeeded there—its 
 
 rise and fall. 2: The Land of the “‘Three Truths’’— 
 popular worship. 
 
 BOOK FIVE 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 
 I. ZOROASTRIANISM Sethe, Uhre Pipi ee Med 5: (19.9 
 
 1: The animism of early Iran—did Zoroaster ever live? 
 —the legends concerning his life. 2: The gospel of 
 Zoroaster—Good vs. Evil—the fire-altars—the future 
 life. 3: The ordeal of Zoroaster—his first converts— 
 death. 4: The corruption of the gospel—ritual— 
 burial customs—‘‘defilement’’—the priesthood—Mithra- 
 ism. 5: The influence of Zoroastrianism on Judiasm— 
 on Christianity—on Islam—the Parsees. 
 
 11 
 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK SIX 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 
 PAGE 
 
 Los) SJUDAISM ee ear er) Se ete en hs un ree 
 
 1: The cradle of the Hebrew people—the lure of the 
 Fertile Crescent—Egypt and the Exodus. 2: Moses— 
 the covenant with Yahveh. 3: How the nature of 
 Yahveh changed in Canaan. 4: The political history 
 of the Hebrews. 5: The work of the prophets. 6: 
 Amos—Hosea—Isaiah—-Micah—-Jeremiah—Yahveh be- 
 comes God. 7: The spiritual exaltation of Israel—the 
 Messianic Promise—its influence during the Babylonian 
 Exile—Deutero-Isaiah. 8: The rise of the priests— 
 their influence—the new prophets—the Destruction of 
 Jerusalem—the Messianic Dream again. 9: The rise 
 of the rabbis—the Wall of Law—Judaism today— 
 Zionism—the goy-fearing people—Messianism, the 
 heart of Judaism. 
 
 BOOK SEVEN 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 
 
 Tos JESUS Meee ete re LCN a Sree 
 
 1: Palestine in the first century—the Zealots and saints. 
 2: The childhood of Jesus—youth. 3: John the 
 Baptist—Jesus begins to preach. 4: His heresies—his 
 tone of authority—did Jesus think himself the Messiah? 
 5: Jesus goes to Jerusalem—falls out of favor—is 
 arrested, tried, and crucified. 6: The “‘resurrection’’— 
 the disciples begin to preach. 7: The religion of the 
 Nazarenes—the growing saga about Jesus. 
 
 IT. CHRIST. oes) 5) oO ne 
 
 1: The mysteries in the Roman Empire—the philosophies. 
 2: The story of Saul of Tarsus. 3: The work of 
 Paul. 4: Jesus becomes the Christ—the compromises 
 with paganism—the superiority of Christianity—the 
 writing of the Gospels—persecution by Rome. 5: Con- 
 stantine and the triumph of Christianity. 6: The cost 
 of success—the schisms. 7: The spread of Christianity 
 —the ethical element in Christianity—how it sobered 
 Europe. 8: The development of the Church— 
 Protestantism—-why Christianity has succeeded. 
 
 12 
 

 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK EIGHT 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 
 PAGE 
 
 PAGES MIMEDANISM meen cecllae ici ier ath eebre: cae! B05 
 
 1: The idolatrous religion of primitive Arabia—Mecca 
 and the Kaaba. 2: The story of Mohammed—his 
 gospel. 3: The preaching of the gospel to the Meccans. 
 4: The preaching to the pilgrims. 5: The flight to 
 Medina. 6: The Jews refuse to be converted—conflict 
 with Mecca. 7: ‘The military character of Islam—the 
 Holy War. 8: The character of Mohammed—his com- 
 
 - promises—the pagan elements in Islam. 9: ‘The quali- 
 ties in the religion. 
 
 JEVEES (Stara 2) Saal Pl ei Ran Or TR i 9 
 PEN CET Ce SUN Cy ium MINI AMC A eck pa 
 
 13 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 JERUSALEM SLEEPS .... . tebe a 
 MOUNTAINS THAT ROARED AND nue yee , 
 
 WITH THOSE AMULETS THE SAVAGE Was NOT 
 PER ALL MOM aceite wets einer ule op, 
 
 THIS WAS THE FIRST CHURCH BUILT 
 
 DEAD BODIES WERE TABOO 
 
 AGRICULTURE WAS A MATTER OF RELIGION 
 
 SE Frm) er eR Tee AON death go ee au 
 
 THE GOD IN THE SKY SAW ALL . 
 
 BON EIMENGE is cots cttw vel! Fount he 
 
 RABY ONT AME Bub Te ites ve 5 hues Ye 
 
 THE GREAT MOTHER GopDESsEs 
 
 Pu PENT P Tc Vs tye vie 
 
 PYRAMIDS BY THE NILE . 
 
 ANCIENT GREECE .. . 
 
 ‘MEN FLED TO THE JUNGLES 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA Ary 
 
 BUDDAH WAS SEATED BENEATH A BANYAN ‘TREE 
 
 How BUDDHISM SPREAD 
 
 BIVAMMIOe ay wk es 
 
 IDOLS GROTESQUE BEYOND WORpS 
 
 KING-FU-TZE ae AAS ott Oe 
 
 A CONFUCIAN TEMPLE. Mt we 
 
 A. “PROFESSOR OF TAOISM”’ . .. 
 
 PRGHINESH=DUDDHA ). \.. .s 
 
 REIMESE AL TAR’) so cis dle a Ve hey ek 4 
 
 MORQAS TER SEEKSISALVATION (700) fe ie fel 
 
 THE WANDERINGS OF ZOROASTER ... . 
 15 
 

 
 16 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE TURANIANS WERE BEDOUIN RAIDERS 
 
 THE PROPHET OF IRAN 
 
 THE AHRIMAN DRAGON .... 
 HERE GO THE HEBREWS 
 
 WHEE xXODUS as etree 
 
 WHAT THE HEBREWS BUILT IN EGYPT 
 
 IN THE WILDERNESS .. . 
 
 THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE Bupines 
 
 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM . .:. 
 JEREMIAH? Si) ae Ore aie ene 
 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON . 
 ‘THE MAN FROM GALILEE. . . 
 “THE PATH ‘OR’ JESUS!" Sie 
 ‘HE SAVIOR-GODS © ssi (eee 
 SAULIOF, TARSUS) 0c. ee 
 ‘THE WANDERINGS OF PAUL . 
 CHRISTIANITY IN110 A.D. . 
 CHRISTIANITY AFTER CONSTANTINE 
 A PRIESTESS OF BRIDGET . . . 
 
 MOHAMMED WAS A LOWLY CAMEL Boy 
 
 “PHECDDESERT adem c ins ov cca pine 
 
 MOHAMMED SAT IN THE BAZAARS He fete ysis 
 
 MOHAMMED RETURNS TO MECCA 
 ON: THE *WAY*TO: MECCA 
 "THE SHRINE OF A DESERT SAINT 
 
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 PROLOGUE—JERUSALEM SUEEPS. 57.7. 
 
 17 
 
PROLOGUE 
 
 ROM afar, from over the hills 
 —from another world it 
 would seem—one hears the 
 tinkling of camel bells. Faint- 
 ly one hears the sound, very 
 faintly: a cold, hesitant drip- 
 drip of music falling in the 
 Hien ee oave petot that 
 there is silence, vast silence 
 that fills each alley in the an- 
 
 . cient town, that sinks deep 
 
 into each hole and cranny, that rises high over the very 
 
 top of the city wall. For Jerusalem sleeps. . . . The 
 night is almost spent, and in the east the blue of the 
 heavens has turned to that vivid gray-green presaging 
 the dawn. But still Jerusalem sleeps . . . and there is 
 silence . . . save for that low drip-drip of music from 
 
 distant camel-bells. . . . 
 
 And then of a sudden there is a cry—a strained, eerie, 
 Arab cry. Like a hard-flung dirk its first note comes 
 hurtling through the air, piercing one’s ear-drum and 
 quivering there. From somewhere up above the flat- 
 roofed houses, from the minaret high over some unseen 
 mosque, it comes: a long, dragging, intermittent call let 
 loose from lungs strained to bursting: 
 
 .* 19 
 
 
 
eS 
 
 20 PROLOGUE 
 
 
 
 Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! 
 So it comes, swooping through the heavens: 
 
 ‘Allah is greatest! Allah is greatest! 
 
 I testify there is no God but Allah! 
 
 I testify that Mohammed is the prophet of Allah! 
 Come to prayer! Come to salvation! 
 
 Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better than sleep! 
 Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! 
 
 Allah is greatest! Allah is greatest! 
 
 There is no God but Allah!”’ 
 
 And then it is no more. As suddenly as the cry began 
 it ceases! . . . But Jerusalem sleeps no longer. “The 
 first angry orange streak of day has just spilled over 
 the crest of the Jordan hills; and in the town there be- 
 gins a gathering confusion. Out of holes in the walls, 
 out of the narrow doors of hovels, black and cold as 
 caves, crawl phantom-like men and boys. Disheveled, 
 they emerge from crevices in dark archways, from hidden 
 stairways, from what look like catacombs. And@ slip- 
 slop, slip-slop, their ill-shod feet go shuffling down the 
 cobbled streets. . . . Here goes a man, lean and swart, 
 in tasseled black head-shawl, brown Arab cloak, and 
 sandals of worn camel-hide. There goes one, bearded, 
 pale, and bent, in a broad fur shtretmel, plum velvet 
 kaftan, and boots made for Russian snows. Over there 
 goes a third, fat and crafty-eyed, in a rakish red fez, 
 European suit, and American shoes that are new and 
 squeaky. . . . Here comes a Carmelite monk, all brown 
 and ursine, with a little brown cap over his tonsure; 
 there goes a Greek priest, all black and bovine, his oiled 
 locks tight in a top-knot. A little Anglican missionary, 
 

 
 PROLOGUE 21 
 
 
 
 his back-buttoned collar large enough to swallow his 
 head, stumbles hurriedly down the steps of some hospice, 
 A Yemenite Jew, shrunken, yellow, and still wet from 
 
 “‘nail water,’’ sidles along as though fleeing a ghost. A 
 filthy Arab beggar, his sore eyes already thick with flies, 
 beats with his cane as he drags his naked feet over the 
 stones. . . . And so they go, slip-slop, slip-slop ... 
 more and more of them ... slip-slop, slip-slop ... 
 a mad procession of hurrying phantoms in the half- 
 light of the dawn. . . .. | 
 
 To that muezzin who utters the call to prayer from 
 the high minaret, they would seem like ants—if he 
 could but see them. Like multi-colored ants they would 
 seem as they swarm out of holes and from under arch- 
 ways. But he cannot see them, for he is blind—as be- 
 comes a muezzin. (A seeing man, if he were made 
 muezzin, might see far too much from his lofty minaret: 
 for instance, women in the privacy of their courtyards 
 with their faces unveiled!) Could he but see them from 
 his height, those men would look like so many insects 
 scurrying about amid debris. . . 
 
 _ But one who looks from no such tower, one who 
 walks the earth to regard these creatures, can see that 
 they are not at all insects. For there are lights in their 
 eyes, darting gleams, whereof no insects in all creation 
 could boast. ‘There are lights of hatred in those eyes, 
 lights of hatred or dread or suspicion. It would seem 
 that they feel as enemies to each other, these hundreds 
 of creatures swarming in this ancient town. (Could 
 mere ants feel as much?) .. . That Arab in his robe 
 looks with loathing on the Armenian in his sack suit; 
 and both look with disdain on the Jew in shtreimel and 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 py ie) PROLOGUE 
 
 kaftan. The Carmelite monk looks with anger at the 
 Anglican missionary; and both look with contempt on 
 the Greek priest. Hatred seems to be all around one: 
 almost a noxious vapor that one can see, a veritable reek 
 that one can smell. “These creatures seem unable to bear 
 the very sight of each other. They actually seem ready 
 to kill! 
 
 They have killed in this ancient town, killed until 
 every alley was flooded with blood. Nota wall in all this 
 maze of walls but has rung with the groans of the dying. 
 Skulls beyond counting have been cracked on these 
 flags; throats unnumbered have been slit in these dark 
 doorways. ‘They’ve murdered and pillaged and raped 
 in this old holy town till now it is all but one Golgotha, 
 one bloody Hill of Skulls. . . . And if you would 
 know why, you need only look into the eyes of those 
 hurrying phantoms. Readily they will tell you; ex- 
 plicitly. Men have slaughtered and ravished in Jerusalem 
 because they had—religion. Men have gouged eyes 
 and ripped bellies because they—believed! ... Be- 
 lieved in what? In God? ... Hardly. . . . No, they 
 have believed only in mere vocables—Yahveh, Christ, or 
 Allah: those vocables that are the fingers wherewith men 
 try to point to God. 
 
 Strange potency, this thing we call Religion! It has 
 made men do barbarities quite beyond the reaches of 
 credence. For it men have done foulnesses below the 
 foulness done even by beasts. Yet for it also men 
 have done benevolences such as transcend the benevo- 
 lences of angels. If men have killed and died for religion, 
 men have also lived for it. Not merely lived for it, but 
 by it... . That cowering Yemenite Jew slinking in 
 
PROLOGUE 23 
 
 the shadow of the archways sloughs off his terror and 
 becomes a king when he enters his synagogue. His bent 
 shoulders straighten, his sagging knees become firm, and 
 the blessedness of peace lightens his eyes. . . . That 
 blind Arab beggar, a mere frame of bones hung over 
 with smelling rags, becomes a sultan when he stands at 
 prayer in his mosque. He stands healed there of his 
 ailments; he becomes a changed man with a vision reach- 
 ing through his world to Paradise. . . . That dark- 
 eyed Syrian girl, poor trull whose lips have caressed the 
 flesh of twenty races, becomes clean once more when she 
 kneels at the feet of the virgin. Strength floods into her 
 tortured bones, healing comes to her flesh. Life, so long 
 a hell of lust and lechery, becomes now wondrously 
 clean and worthy. She feels saved—saved! 
 
 Strange potency, this thing we call Religion! It came 
 into man’s world untold centuries ago, and it is still 
 in man’s world today. It is still there, deep and tre- 
 mendous: a mighty draught for a mightier thirst, a vast 
 richness to fill a vaster need. No matter where one turns 
 in time or space, there it is inescapably. Wherever there 
 is a man, there there seems to be also a spirit or a god; 
 wherever there is human life, there there is also 
 Patt Deets 
 
 One wonders about it. What is it, this thing we call 
 Religion? Whence did it come? And why? And 
 how? ... What was it yesterday? What is it to- 
 day?——And what will it become tomorrow? ... 
 
 M’LON LAZARUS, JERUSALEM 
 LAND OF ISRAEL 
 July 2, 1925 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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BOOK ONE 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 
 PoAaViACIC 
 
 1: How the savage tried to explain the evils that befell him— 
 he imagined all objects were animate—self-preservation and 
 magic. 2: Religion and faith defined—the technique of magic 
 —the dawn of the idea of the “‘spirit’—animism. 3: Man 
 begins to think he can exploit the spirits—-shamanism—the 
 charlatan in the early advance-of religion. 4: Fetishism. 
 5: Idolatry—the beginning of sacrifice—of prayer—of the 
 church. 6: Taboo. 
 
 II. RELIGION 
 
 1: The attempt to coerce the spirits gives way to the attempt 
 to cajole them—but magic does not disappear—sacrifices. 2: 
 The seasonal festivals—sex rites—the sacraments. 3: How 
 the great gods were created. 4: How the ideas of sin, con- 
 science, and future retribution arose—religion saves morality for 
 a high price—prophet vs. priest. 5: How religion made society 
 possible—and desirable—how it gave rise to art—the sig- 
 nificance of Primitive Religon. 
 
BOOK ONE: 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 
 I. MAGIC 
 
 N the beginning there was fear; 
 and fear was in the heart of 
 man; and fear controlled man. 
 At every turn it whelmed 
 over him, leaving him no mo- 
 ment of ease. With the wild 
 soughing of the wind it swept 
 through him; with the crash- 
 ing of the thunder and the 
 growling of lurking beasts. 
 
 « All the days of man were gray 
 with fear, because all his universe seemed charged with 
 danger. Earth and sea and sky were set against him; 
 with relentless enmity, with inexplicable hate, they were 
 bent on his destruction. At least, so primitive man 
 
 concluded. . . . It was an inevitable conclusion under 
 the circumstances, for all things seemed to be forever 
 going against man. Boulders toppled and broke his 
 
 bones; diseases ate his flesh; death seemed ever ready to 
 lay him low. And he, poor gibbering half-ape nursing 
 his wound in some draughty cave, could only tremble 
 with fear. He could not give himself stoical courage 
 with the thought that much of the evil that occurred 
 might be accidental. He could not so much as conceive 
 27 
 
 
 

 
 28 THIS BELIEVING WORLD | 
 
 of the accidental. No, so far as his poor dull pate could 
 read the riddle, all things that occurred were full of 
 meaning, were intentional. ‘The boulder that fell and 
 crushed his shoulder had wanted to fall and crush it. Of 
 course! . . . The spear of heaven-fire that had turned 
 his squaw to cinders had consciously tried to do that 
 very thing. Obviously! ... 
 
 To the savage there was nothing absurd in the idea 
 that everything around him bore him malice, for he had 
 not yet discovered that some things were inanimate. In 
 the world he saw about him, all objects were animate: 
 sticks, stones, storms, and all else. He shied at each of 
 them suspiciously, much as a horse shies suspiciously at 
 bits of white paper by the roadside. And not merely 
 were all things animate to the savage, but they were 
 seething with emotions, too. “Things could be angry, 
 and they could feel pleased; they could destroy him if 
 they so willed, or they could let him alone. 
 
 Perhaps, as Professor George Foot Moore slyly re- 
 minds us, even civilized folk instinctively cling to that 
 primitive notion. Children angrily kick the tables 
 against which they bump their heads, as though those 
 tables were human. Grown men mutter oaths at the 
 rugs over which they stumble, for all the world as 
 though those rugs had intentionally tried to trip them. 
 And it may be that young and old still do such irrational 
 things only because even today there still lingers in the 
 mind of man the savage notion that all objects are ani- 
 mate. When caught off his guard, man still is betrayed 
 into trying to punish, either with a blow or with con- 
 signment to hell-fire, the inanimate objects that happen 
 to cause him pain. 
 

 
 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN © 29 
 
 After all, civilized people at bottom are perilously 
 close to the savage. Instinctively he too wanted to 
 thrash whatever seemed to bring him evil. Only he was 
 afraid. From experience he knew that fighting was use- 
 less, that the enemy-objects, the falling boulders that 
 maimed him, and the flooding streams that wrecked his 
 hut, were in some uncanny way proof against his spears 
 and arrows. That was why he was finally forced to 
 resort to more subtle methods of attack. Since blows 
 could not subdue the hostile rocks or streams, our an- 
 cestor tried to subdue them with magic. He thought 
 words might avail: strange syllables uttered in groans, 
 or meaningless shouts accompanied by beating tom-toms. 
 Or he tried wild dances. Or luck charms. If these 
 spells failed, then he invented others; if those in turn 
 failed, then he invented still others. Of one thing he 
 seemed most stubbornly convinced: that some spell 
 would work. Somehow the hostile things around him 
 could be appeased or controlled, he believed: somehow 
 death could be averted. Why he should have been so 
 certain, no one can tell. It must have been his instinc- 
 tive adjustment to the conditions of a world that was 
 too much for him. Self-preservation must have forced 
 him to that certainty, for without it self-preservation 
 would have been impossible. Man had to have faith 
 in himself, or die—and he would not die. 
 
 So he had faith—and developed religion. 
 
 2 
 
 RELIGION is not all of faith, but only a part of it. 
 By the word faith we mean that indispensable—and 
 therefore imperishable—illusion in the heart of man 
 
30 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 
 
 that, though he may seem a mere worm on the earth, 
 he nevertheless can make himself the lord of the uni- 
 verse. By the word religion, however, we mean one 
 specialized technique by which man seeks to realize that 
 illusion. It was by no means the first such technique to 
 be invented by man; and it may not be the last, either. 
 Long before man thought of religion, he tried to con- 
 trol the “‘powers’’ of the universe by magic. When the 
 “dawn man’ became sufficiently awake to be conscious 
 of his life and of the innumerable hazards that 
 threatened it, he did not first pause to examine those 
 hazards; no, instead he first set out to avert them. He 
 saw on every side of him the fell and bewildering 
 “powers, and illogically (but naturally) his first con- 
 cern was not how they worked but how they could be 
 avoided. If he speculated about them at all, he prob- 
 ably decided the very objects he saw had an animus 
 against him—the actual storms and streams and preying 
 beasts. Only later, much later, did he advance suf- 
 ficiently to be able to think of those “‘powers’’ not as 
 the objects themselves, but as invisible spirits inhabiting 
 them. Primitive man was utterly unable to draw fine 
 distinctions between soul and body, between spirit and 
 matter. He merely knew trees that crushed him, caves 
 that smothered him, mountains that roared and belched 
 lava that destroyed him. “That was as far as his puny 
 mind could carry him. 
 
 But at last the day did come when, like the stealthy 
 climb of a slow dawn, that idea of the spirit crept into 
 man’s head. It came to him almost unavoidably. Of 
 a morning he awoke, looked up bewilderedly at the 
 familiar rocks of his cave, and gasped, “Hello, that’s 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN oh 
 
 
 
 MOUNTAINS THAT ROARED AND BELCHED LAVA 
 
 queer!’’—-or sounds to that effect. For there he was, 
 just where he had been when he had stretched out and 
 fallen asleep the night before—and yet he knew he had 
 wandered very far from that place during the interim. 
 He was quite certain of it! Very vividly he remembered 
 fighting huge beasts during the night, or hurtling down 
 ravines, or devouring whole mastodons, or flying. .. . 
 And yet there he was, still lying in his smelly cave, 
 for all the world as though he had never for a moment 
 Je heh 2 eae a aa 
 
 Of course, we civilized folk would explain the mystery 
 by simply saying the fellow had had a dream. (Which 
 is perhaps not so much of an explanation at that.) 
 But he, poor savage, could not-even remotely guess at 
 such an explanation. The idea of a dream was as for- 
 eign to his mind as the idea of a monocle or a wardrobe- 
 trunk. No, the only acceptable explanation he could 
 offer himself was the obvious one that he was dual: 
 that he possessed not merely a body but also a spirit, 
 and that while his body had that night remained decently 
 

 
 
 
 32 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 at home, his spirit had gone a-roaming. . . . Why not? 
 
 ‘There were other experiences which that answer 
 seemed to explain. [There was, for instance, death. 
 Here was a body erect and vibrant one moment, and 
 prostrate, inert, the next. What had happened to it? 
 . . . Obviously the same answer fitted: its soul had fled. 
 
 Just what was the soul and what the body, the 
 savage could not be certain. He rather thought the soul 
 might be the breath, since that always fled at death. 
 (And that is why the Japanese word for soul used to 
 be “‘wind-ball,’’ and the one for death, “‘breath-de- 
 parture.”’ Similarly, that is why the Hindu word for 
 soul it still atman, parent of the German word Ahtem, 
 meaning “‘breath,’”’ and of the English word ‘‘atmos- 
 phere.’’) But the savage had to imagine the soul might 
 _also be something else than the breath, for he saw souls 
 in unbreathing things, too. Indeed, he saw souls in all 
 the things he came across. His whole world thronged 
 with souls. 
 
 Historians nowadays call that stage in the develop- 
 ment of religion the ‘‘animistic,’’ from the Latin anima, 
 meaning ‘‘spirit.’” “There are millions of savages in the 
 world even today who still remain bogged in that 
 animistic stage of religion. “They dwell in India and 
 Africa and other far-away places, clinging there to a 
 primitive faith which once must have been the faith of 
 all human beings. 
 
 3 
 
 EVEN at the dawn of the animistic stage there could 
 have been little in the heart of man save fear—and the 
 hate born of fear. Only two kinds of spirits did the 
 savage then seem to know: those that were neutral, and 
 
HOW IT ALL BEGAN 33 
 
 therefore demanding no attention, and those that were 
 hostile, and therefore to be driven away or circumvented. 
 For instance, almost everywhere the ghosts of the dead 
 were considered hostile. Because such ghosts were 
 thought to hang like wraiths over the bodies they had 
 once occupied, corpses were always put away with the 
 most fearful and painstaking thoroughness. And after 
 the burial the survivors usually tried to disguise or hide 
 themselves so as to escape the ghosts. “They would paint 
 themselves white (if they were black) or black (if they 
 were white) ; and they would bar the doors of their huts 
 or hide in caves. (That is why we still ‘““go into mourn- 
 ing’ when a relative dies, putting on black garments and 
 drawing down the blinds on the windows.) .. . 
 
 Not for a long time, it seems, did man cease to assume 
 that the active ‘““‘powers’’ were all unalterably hostile, and 
 therefore to be driven away. Not until many centuries 
 had passed did it occur to him that some spirits might 
 really be friendly, or that even hostile spirits might in 
 some way be won over and made friendly. But once 
 that change did come, a complete revolution in the prac- 
 tice of religion ensued. Instead of spending all his time 
 inventing ways merely of driving the spirits away, man 
 now began to try to bring some of them near. And 
 therewith a new era opened in the history of the race. 
 The first stirrings of confidence began to warm the 
 blood of man, and slowly his cringing back began to 
 straighten. Fear received its first decisive setback, and 
 the promise of civilization drew its first breath. For 
 then at last man dared to think he could actually 
 exploit the spirits! ... 
 
 Now there were two main ways in which man tried 
 
34 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 to exploit the power of a spirit. One was to conjure 
 it into some individual, a medicine-man, or as he was 
 called in primitive Siberia, a shaman. Originally the 
 shaman was probably an epileptic, a person given to fits 
 which could be explained only on the ground of “‘pos- 
 session.’ [he shaman was esteemed to be “‘possessed’’ 
 by a strange spirit, a formidable and perhaps violent 
 spirit that could do things both foul and fair. So if a 
 man had a fever he went to his tribal shaman, and the 
 latter tried to drive it out by pitting his own “‘familiar 
 spirit’’ against the fever-spirit in the patient. If he 
 failed on the first attempt, he tried again, using a more 
 elaborate ritual the second time. Perhaps he made the 
 patient smear himself with excrement, or do some- 
 thing else equally extraordinary. “Then he, the shaman, 
 would go off into a fit in which he would dance madly, 
 utter ghastly shrieks, beat fiercely on a tom-tom, or 
 shake a horrid-sounding rattle. Perhaps he would 
 carry on in that manner through a whole night, raving, 
 dancing, and making faces, all to drive the bad spirit 
 out of the patient. And the more elaborate he made 
 the performance, the more wonderful and powerful he 
 appeared in the eyes of the patient. Failure seemed 
 altogether impossible after such efforts—and often was. 
 
 But the shaman was not employed solely to drive out 
 the evil spirits. More often, perhaps, he was employed 
 to drive them into people. Because of the spirit that 
 was supposed to be at his beck and call, the shaman was 
 thought to be able to do evil as well as good, to send 
 disease and defeat and death to one’s enemies, as well as 
 bring relief and life to one’s friends. That was why the 
 shaman usually became the tribal leader. The braves 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 35 
 
 
 
 stood in constant need of him, for without his “‘medi- 
 cine,” without his spells and curses, they believed them- 
 selves lost in war as well asin peace. He seemed the one 
 effective instrument with which they could bludgeon the 
 ‘powers’ arrayed against them, the one valid means by 
 which they could master the universe. So they clung 
 to him with all their might and main, fearfully doing 
 homage to him because of the magic power he was sup- 
 posed to possess. 
 
 Of course, the moment the falsity of a particular sha- 
 man’s pretensions was definitely established, the poor 
 fellow was never forgiven. The savages turned on him 
 mercilessly and put him to death, perhaps with the most 
 fantastic tortures. They had no use for medicine-men 
 whose medicine didn’t work. . . . For that reasonit was 
 only the conscious charlatans among the shamans who 
 succeeded most and survived longest. The rest, the inno- 
 cent ones who were fools enough really to believe that 
 they could command the spirits, were easily exposed 
 and soon snuffed out. “They were not shrewd enough 
 to see the essential falsity of their own claims, and there- 
 fore they were totally unable to keep others from seeing 
 it. And, amazing as it may sound, that situation proved 
 to be of vast benefit to mankind. As Sir James G. 
 Frazer remarks in his great work, The Golden Bough, 
 honest fools must have worked far more mischief 
 in primitive society than clever knaves. Only the 
 individual who was sufficiently superior to his fellow- 
 men to be able to think of cheating them, was able 
 at the same time to help them. Without any conscious 
 desire on his part, the good resulting from such an in- 
 dividual’s sagacity almost inevitably outweighed the evil 
 

 
 36 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 accomplished by his guile. The emergence from the 
 slime of primitive stupidity of a class of cunning shamans 
 was therefore of genuine advantage to civilization. It 
 took the direction of tribal affairs out of the hands of 
 the old (whose only distinction was their age) and the 
 strong (whose only distinction was their brawn) and 
 put it in the hands of the shrewd and far-sighted. In- 
 deed, the rise of shamanism was perhaps the most funda- 
 mental factor in the whole development of early govern- 
 Mens. s 
 
 4 
 
 BUT shamanism was only the less common of the two 
 ways by which primitive man tried to exploit the spirits. 
 The other, fetishism, was far more widespread because 
 far more easily handled. “The word ‘‘fetishism’’ comes 
 from the Portuguese feitico, meaning a saint’s medallion 
 or relic worn as a good-luck charm. It is now the tech- 
 nical term for the belief that an active spirit dwells in 
 some particular object, and that the mere possession of 
 the object brings with it the power to control its spirit. 
 The first fetishes were probably pebbles with markings 
 which happened to attract the eye of the savage because 
 of their extraordinary color or shape. (Millions of 
 people in the most civilized lands still believe in such 
 “lucky stones.’’) Later on, however, fetishes were 
 manufactured. Frequently they were little pouches con- 
 taining objects with reputedly magic properties. ‘The 
 hair of a lion was put in to give courage, a bit of human 
 brain for cunning, an eyeball for keen vision, a tiger’s 
 claw for ferocity, and so forth. “The savage gathered 
 a whole collection of such fetishes on a string, and hung 
 

 
 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 37 
 
 them around his neck, or fastened them over the door 
 of his hut. (Some scholars say our wearing of crosses 
 around the neck, or fastening of horseshoes and mezu- 
 zoth to the door, is but a survival of that savage fetish- 
 ism.) With those amulets on his person, the savage 
 
 SS 
 Gy Gabel 
 te 
 
 
 
 WITH THOSE AMULETS THE SAVAGE WAS NOT AFRAID 
 
 was no longer so afraid. He felt himself better able to 
 fight off the hazards of life and imagined himself more 
 of a match for the universe. When in need, he simply 
 called on one of his fetishes for help; and if the help 
 was not soon forthcoming, he angrily upbraided the 
 thing for its laziness. If it still remained obdurate, he 
 simply flung it away and got himself another. 
 
 It took only a little while, of course, for the manu- 
 facture of fetishes to become a sacred profession. Fos 
 
33) THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 one reason and another, certain individuals came to be 
 looked on as the makers of the most potent fetishes. 
 They made them not alone for the individual members, 
 but also for the tribe as a whole. And thus it came to 
 pass that even in lands where shamanism was unknown 
 the professional holy man, the priest, made his advent. 
 He was inescapable. ... 
 
 5 
 
 TRIBAL fetishes, like private ones, were originally 
 natural objects: for instance, boulders of a peculiar color, 
 or trees of a strange shape. “The Kaaba Stone, still 
 worshipped by Moslems in Mecca, was originally just 
 such a tribal fetish.) Later, however, even these tribal 
 fetishes were also manufactured. “The boulder or tree- 
 trunk was carved in some significant manner by the fetish 
 maker, and became—an idol. It is impossible to say 
 just where fetishism ends and where idolatry begins. The 
 one grows into the other as the child grows into the 
 youth. . 
 
 Probably the idol was used in the beginning solely as 
 a sort of scarecrow to drive the evil’spirits away. Later, 
 however, it was so carved that it had a less fearsome 
 appearance, and was used for other purposes. Even more 
 than to scare the evil spirits away, it was used now to 
 bring the good spirits near. The idol was smeared with 
 blood or oil, in the hope that some good spirit might 
 come and lick the redolent bait—and perhaps remain. 
 And then periodically the smearings were renewed in 
 order to hold the good spirit fast. Again and again they 
 were renewed, until in time the practice became a fixed 
 rite. After that, in the place of mere smearings of blood, 
 

 
 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN aia re ao 
 
 whole carcasses were offered to the good spirit lodging in 
 the idol. And thus sacrifice began. 
 
 Food was brought, the rarest and richest obtainable, 
 and the priest ceremoniously offered it to the spirit resi- 
 dent in the idol. As to a dread chieftain, it was offered 
 with many bowings and scrapings and ceremonial songs. 
 And with many words of praise, too, for the spirit was 
 thought to be vain as well as hungry. And thus prayer 
 was born. 
 
 In time a shelter was considered necessary for the idol: 
 a cleft in a rock or a shady tree at first, and later a rude ° 
 hut. And thus the first church was built. . . . 
 
 < 
 
 e 
 
 t ya : 
 Yk 
 F a 3?*\ Ke 
 | 
 4 
 e 
 
 ' 
 ‘ 
 y 
 i 
 Y 
 f. 
 
 
 
 THIS WAS THE FIRST CHURCH BUILT 
 
 It was all a most natural process of development. 
 Once man took it into his head that in order to live he 
 must master his universe, then animism, fetishism, idol- 
 atry, priestcraft, sacrifice, prayer, and the church—all 
 

 
 40 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 these were nigh inevitable. Primitive man, drowning in 
 fear, clutched desperately at the spirits, as a man drown- 
 ing in a stream might clutch at the reeds by the bank. 
 Of course, one after the other the spirits failed him—even » 
 as the reeds break in a drowning man’s hands. But still 
 the savage continued to clutch at the spirits. It was 
 almost instinctive with him. Hecould not helpit.... 
 
 6 
 
 BUT the savage by no means imagined it was safe 
 to clutch at every reed by the side of his tarn of fear. 
 On the contrary, most of them he considered highly 
 dangerous, and he tried with almost panicky care to avoid 
 them. ‘Those harmful spirits were what the savage in 
 the Malay Archipelago still calls taboo, “‘marked.”” A 
 sort of fiendish electricity was supposed to be in them, 
 so that if one touched them they maimed or even killed. 
 
 All sorts of objects and actions were considered taboo: 
 some because they were so holy, and others because they 
 were so demoniac. Usually the name of the god was 
 taboo, and therefore it dared not be uttered save at cer- 
 tain holy moments by officially holy men. (That primi- — 
 tive superstition still has its finger on the lips of man, 
 holding him from speaking God’s name in ordinary 
 conversation.) ‘The flesh of certain holy or of certain 
 particularly unholy animals was considered taboo, and 
 therefore might not be eaten. (That primitive super- 
 stition is responsible for the aversion to pork which 
 marked the ancient Egyptians, and still marks the Jews 
 and Moslems.) Marriage with a close relative, touching 
 a corpse, killing one’s fellow-tribesman, wearing clothes 
 of mixed wool and cotton, stealing a fellow-tribesman’s 
 

 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 41 
 
 
 
 DEAD BODIES WERE TABOO 
 
 wife, kindling a fire on a holy day, cursing one’s own 
 father, uncovering the head before an idol—all these 
 acts and myriads of others, some of them socially crimi- 
 nal, most of them socially meaningless—were in one 
 religion or another considered taboo. Or their very op- 
 posites were occasionally considered taboo. 
 
 Certain taboos were temporary, as for instance the 
 one branding a woman as contaminated for the length 
 of the menstrual period. Others were permanent, as for 
 instance the one outlawing a man guilty of accidentally 
 killing a fellow-tribesman. In some cases, the tribes 
 themselves were required to attend to the punishment 
 of the transgressor; in others, punishment was supposed 
 to be dealt in some magic way by the violated spirits 
 directly. The transgression of certain taboos entailed 
 

 
 42 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 disaster to every member of the tribe to which the trans- 
 gressor belonged; in other instances punishment was con- 
 fined to the transgressor alone. In some cases punish- 
 ment could be evaded by elaborate penance and cleansing 
 on the part of the transgressor; in other cases imme- 
 diate death was inescapable. [he variants were innu- 
 merabledin, 0. 
 
 Even today most people are inhibited by taboos. 
 Superstitiously they dread to do all sorts of meaningless 
 little things. “They refuse to sit thirteen at a table, or 
 walk under a ladder, or light three cigarettes with one 
 match. ‘They are thrown into a panic if a mirror breaks 
 in their house, or a black cat crosses their path; and they 
 dread to tell of their own good health without “knock- 
 ing on wood” or mumbling ‘‘Unbeschrieen.’’ Even 
 people otherwise quite intelligent will sometimes be 
 terrified by one or another of these stupid taboos. No 
 wonder, therefore, if the savage suffered himself to be- 
 come altogether taboo-ridden. Poor child that he was, 
 his whole life settled down into an incessant and frantic 
 struggle to keep away from all that was ‘‘marked.” . . 
 
 II. RELIGION 
 
 YEARS, centuries, millennia passed, and falteringly man 
 and his thinking advanced. The savage changed his 
 mode of life from that of a wild hunter roaming the 
 jungles alone to that of a shepherd belonging to a tribe. 
 And his risks changed accordingly. He had to worry 
 now not simply about himself: in addition he had to 
 think of his fellow-tribesmen, and of the herds off which 
 he and his fellow-tribesmen lived. That meant an in- 
 creasing interest in wells where the herds could be 
 

 
 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 43 
 
 watered, and in the sun, moon, and sky which seemed to 
 control the rain. Thus a process of selection and elimina- 
 tion set in among the spirits he worshipped. Some of 
 them (for instance, the spirits of the sun and sky and 
 desert springs) rose to a place of supreme importance, 
 while others (such as the spirits of the arrow and the 
 jungle tiger) fell into neglect and were in time even 
 forgotten. 
 
 ‘That process was of course greatly accelerated once 
 man made his next great change—from shepherd to 
 farmer. It rendered his dependence on the elements com- 
 plete, and the spirits dwelling in the elements perforce 
 became his supreme deities. As a shepherd he had still 
 been a little independent, for he had been able to move 
 his flocks about to catch the rain. He could hardly do 
 that now, however, for he had fields and not flocks any 
 more. So he had to sit by and patiently wait for the 
 rain to catch him. Or else he had to try to force the rain 
 to catch him. 
 
 In the beginning he did literally try to force the rain 
 to come to him and his fields. With the aid of his sha- 
 man or his fetishes he resorted to all sorts of magic prac- 
 tices. But later, when he got it through his-head that 
 not even with his shaman or fetishes could he unfail- 
 ingly coerce the rain, he tried instead to cajole it into 
 falling. And only when that happened did religion 
 really begin. So long as man was still naive enough to 
 believe that by the possession of some fetish or the utter- 
 ance of some spell he could force the spirits to do his 
 will, man had not yet advanced beyond unqualified faith 
 in magic. Not until the sharp bludgeonings of repeated 
 failure rendered him a meeker and wiser man, did he 
 
mi: THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 begin to put his faith in what may be strictly termed 
 religion. Not until he had grown up sufficiently to 
 suspect that some attempts at coercing the spirits were 
 doomed inevitably to failure, did he begin to try to per- 
 suade them instead. 
 
 Of course, religion never displaced magic entirely. 
 Man could never bring himself to surrender all his faith 
 in the old technique, and to this day no historical religion 
 on earth is without its adulterations of magic. In all 
 of them there survive at least the relics of old coercive 
 rites; and in all of them there exist originally persuasive 
 prayers that have since taken on the character of coercive 
 spells. “he belief, for instance, that the whole substance 
 of a bit of bread and a cup of wine must change into the 
 body and blood of Christ—that belief is quite flagrantly 
 the relic of an old magic rite. Or the belief that any 
 prayer is only efficacious if uttered in a certain place at 
 a certain time in a certain tongue by a certain person, or 
 is particularly efficacious if concluded with the words 
 “We ask it in Jesus’ name’’ or some similar formula— 
 such a belief reveals quite obviously the degeneration of 
 a one-time religious petition into a mere magic spell. 
 
 But though the technique of religion never managed 
 entirely to supersede the technique of magic, it did suc- 
 ceed in making it of secondary importance. As man’s 
 wisdom increased, his over-assurance deserted him, and 
 he resorted more and more to persuasion in his efforts to 
 get the spirits to do as he desired. In time of drought 
 he offered sacrifices of food and psalms of praise to the 
 sun and moon and sky, or to whatever other spirits it 
 seemed to him might exercise control over the water he 
 needed. (In Egypt, for instance, the sacrifices were of- 
 

 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 45 
 
 fered to the spirit of the Nile, for it was altogether on 
 the annual flooding of that river that the people de- 
 pended for the watering of their lands.) But man of- 
 fered them humbly. ‘The naively imperative tone was 
 gone now. Man had grown up and had learnt that he 
 could not get far with magic... . 
 
 On the whole, man seemed to get along fairly well 
 with the help supposed to come as a result of sacrifice. 
 Of course, in unfavorable climates even sacrifices proved 
 of no avail, and there man was of necessity compelled to 
 remain a nomad. But wherever the climate was not too 
 severe, and of fair regularity, sacrifices seemed to be ad- 
 mirably potent. Nowhere, however, was the climate so 
 mild and the soil so generous that man felt able to dis- 
 pense with sacrifices entirely. Droughts occurred occa- 
 sionally and crops failed, even in the most favorable 
 regions. Asa result man never quite lost his dread of 
 the tyrannical spirits, or his conviction that they had 
 to be courted perennially. His confidence in their friend- 
 ship was ever coupled with a lively fear of their fickle- 
 ness. Indeed, his faith in them was no more secure than 
 that of the pickpocket in the policeman he has just 
 bribed. The primitive husbandman made no move 
 without first casting a furtive glance to see if the 
 “powers” were still well disposed toward him. He 
 never quite got to feel that his hard toil alone was 
 enough to make the earth yield its riches. No, he 
 imagined the spirits unfailingly took a hand in the busi- 
 ness, and he made no move to cultivate the soil without 
 pausing first to cultivate them. Agriculture with him 
 was more a matter of religion than of science. . . 
 

 
 dit 
 
 ate ba sive PX l ( wih 
 oe 
 
 * 
 2 
 ag 
 i ey 
 . ~~ 
 
 Se Somiiae 
 
 
 
 AGRICULTURE WAS A MATTER OF RELIGION 
 2 
 
 NOW, it was quite natural for man the farmer to be 
 particularly concerned about the spirits at particular sea- 
 sons in the year. Spring, when the seed was sown; 
 summer, when the first fruits were gathered; and 
 autumn, when the crops were harvested; these were 
 periods of extraordinary religious importance. It was 
 then that the primitive farmer felt he must make his 
 mightiest efforts to persuade the “‘powers’’ to be good 
 to him. And thus arose the seasonal festivals. 
 
 The ritual on these festivals was at first almost un- 
 printably lewd. ‘The savage imagined that the spirits 
 brought forth the crops much as he himself brought 
 forth children. And for fear the spirits might have for- 
 gotten the process of reproduction, or be too bashful to 
 initiate it, he himself went out into the fields and showed 
 the way. Sexual license was therefore religious virtue 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 47 
 
 at most of the seasonal festivals. Either all the men and 
 women went out into the open and lay together under 
 the heavens, or in more advanced communities the priest 
 and one or more virgins went into the temple and lay 
 together before the idols. 
 
 But the ritual on these festivals did not consist solely 
 of sex orgies. Usually it included also sacrificial offer- 
 ings, either human, animal, or cereal. At first these 
 offerings were quite crude and direct. Sacrifices to the 
 water-god were simply thrown into the streams, those 
 to the earth-god were buried in the soil, while those to 
 the sky-god were burned on altars so that the smoke 
 might rise and tickle the nostrils of the heavenly one. 
 But in the course of time, such simple practices were dis- 
 covered to fail occasionally, and to remedy this, compli- 
 cations were invented. ‘This sinew, let us say, was re- 
 moved from the sacrificial carcass, or that organ was ex- 
 posed; the blood was drained off and sprinkled on this 
 or that side of the altar; prayers were recited at this 
 or that stage in the ceremony. . . . So intricate, indeed, 
 grew the etiquette to be used in approaching the gods, 
 that in time it became impossible for the ordinary. man 
 to master it. He had to call on a specialist in the ritual 
 code, a professional sacrificer, to make his offerings for 
 him. Just as men had earlier been forced to employ a 
 shaman or a fetish-maker to perform their magic rites 
 for them, so now they had to employ a priest to fulfill 
 their religious duties. And thus priestcraft came into 
 its fullest power. . . 
 
 Much the same logic that led to seasonal festivals 
 during the year led also to periodic ceremonies during the 
 individual’s lifetime. It was felt that at birth something 
 

 
 
 
 48 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 had to be done to win for the newcomer the favor of 
 the deity, and to that end a sacrifice of one sort or 
 another was usually offered. (It is possible that circum- 
 cision, common in Africa, Australia, Polynesia, as well 
 as in Semitic lands, was originally such a sacrifice.) 
 Then at puberty, when sex proclivities first made them- 
 selves markedly evident, it was felt that something more 
 _ had to be done to ensure the 
 & favor of the spirits. Elabo- 
 y rate initiation ceremonies were 
 t held, and the youths were 
 j usually put through ghastly 
 § ordeals to prove them worthy 
 both of membership in the 
 tribe, and of protection from 
 the tribal gods. (Confirma- 
 f tion among the Christians, 
 ' and Bar Mitzvah among the 
 BE Jews, are really survivals of 
 f those old initiations.) Then 
 at marriage it was thought 
 f well to invoke the blessing of 
 s the spirits. After all, marriage 
 } had for its prime purpose 
 we the bringing forth of children, 
 | and it was believed that, un- 
 less the spirits were properly 
 placated to begin with, that 
 prime purpose might be de- 
 feated. (That is why some 
 people still regard connubial 
 life to be improper unless ritu- 
 
 
 

 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN 49 
 
 
 
 ally consecrated by a minister or priest.) ... And 
 finally at death it was believed dreadfully dangerous to 
 give umbrage to the spirits. In many places burial rites 
 became almost incredibly elaborate, giving rise—for in-. 
 stance, in Egypt and China—to whole religious sys- 
 Lersisey sone. 
 
 And thus originated the sacraments. ... 
 
 3 
 
 FINALLY we come to the creation of the great gods. 
 Just as the tribal chieftain in time became a king, so the 
 tribal fetish in time became a god. It was a natural evo- 
 lution. The wild spirit once thought to dwell in a tree 
 or hill was first conjured into a portable fetish, so that 
 the wandering tribesmen might enjoy its protection 
 wherever they moved. (Readers of the Bible will re- 
 member how the spirit of Jehovah—or more properly, 
 Yahveh—dwelling in Mt. Sinai, was transferred to a 
 portable ‘‘ark’’ which the primitive Hebrews carried 
 with them on their wanderings.) Later on, when such 
 shepherd wanderers settled down and became farmers, 
 their nomad spirit sometimes settled down with them. 
 (The old “‘ark’’ of the bedouin Hebrews was given a 
 resting-place at last in the temple at Jerusalem.) This 
 did not always occur, however, for the mortality rate 
 among deities was exceedingly high during the transi- 
 tion period from pastoral to agricultural life. And even 
 the spirits that did manage to survive, came through 
 completely altered in character. “Their functions thence- 
 forth were new ones, and often their names were new, 
 too. Only telltale little atavisms in the ritual remained 
 to betray their nomadic origin. 
 
50 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 But even the lives of the deities surviving that great 
 transition still remained precarious. Indeed, if any- 
 thing, the mortality rate among them then increased. 
 For now came greater changes than ever before occurred 
 among men, and consequently greater changes had to 
 occur among the gods. ‘Tribes fused. “The task of re- 
 sisting invasion, or of building irrigation dams, com- 
 pelled many clans to merge, and their customs, myths, 
 and gods had to merge, too. Gods appeared on the scene 
 who were obviously composites, with composite names 
 and composite rituals. And as the population increased, 
 and certain villages grew to be towns, city-states, nations, 
 and finally empires, the jurisdiction of these composite 
 gods grew also. [hey began to gobble up the little 
 gods of the tributary lands, and thus in time became the 
 almost undisputed lords of millions of worshippers. 
 
 Many centuries still had to run their course before 
 anyone could imagine a deity who was the One God 
 of the Universe. Men still continued to be polytheists, 
 believing in many gods. They might pay homage only 
 to one, the god of their own particular tribe. They 
 might consider him the mightiest god of all and picture 
 him as did the Hindus in their grotesque idols, as having 
 arms that reached everywhere and eyes that saw all. But 
 they never denied the existence of other gods sustaining 
 similar relations to other tribes. 
 
 Significantly, however, even the mightiest god could 
 not strike so much terror in the heart of civilized man 
 as the rudest idol did in the heart of the savage. Time 
 had dealt hard with fear. Man was still far from able 
 to control his universe, but at least he showed signs of 
 beginning to cope with it. And asa result the ‘‘powers’’ 
 

 
 HOW WT ALL BEGAN ai 
 
 of the universe became less terrifying. Man began to 
 say they were his allies and partners, and if he exalted 
 them extravagantly he did so largely in order to exalt 
 himself. The gods of the nations became simply the 
 divine leaders of the nations, the heavenly kings. ... 
 
 4 
 
 THE idea that the gods were heavenly kings had at 
 least one implication of tremendousimportance. Earthly 
 kings were naturally expected to see to the enforcement 
 of the laws of the nation. It was their task to see to 
 it that crime was detected and that criminals were pun- 
 ished. But always certain crimes occurred that could 
 not be detected, just as ever and again some criminals 
 escaped without punishment. Particularly was this so 
 in the newly swollen cities, where policing in the form 
 of neighborly prying was no longer possible. In those 
 new capitals, with their milling, thronging, turbulent 
 populations, morality seemed to have no chance. ‘The 
 taboos which had been strictly kept in the compact little 
 clan came to be transgressed in the cities almost with 
 impunity. For a while the breakdown of society seemed 
 inevitable. 
 
 But the idea that the gods were heavenly kings saved 
 the day. By the logic of analogy it was reasoned that 
 as earthly kings punished crime that was detectable, so 
 heavenly kings punished that which was undetectable. 
 So there really was no chance of avoiding justice ulti- 
 mately. Neither might nor cunning was of any avail, 
 for even though one escaped the judgment of the earthly 
 king, there was another, the inevitable and inexorable 
 judgment of the god, still to face. The god in the sky 
 
Tesi 
 
 Ky Mion Ay) Py 
 ve ne 
 
 
 
 THE GOD IN THE SKY SAW ALL 
 52 
 

 
 
 
 POW Ie AL BEGAN. 53 
 
 saw all and knew all. Nota taboo or a law existed but 
 he was concerned with its enforcement. (Indeed, he 
 was the actual author of all taboos and laws-—at least, 
 so it was soon said.) So there was no chance for the 
 transgressor—he could never escape. 
 
 And thus was born the idea of sin. Crime, which 
 was really an offense against society, came to be thought 
 of principally as a sin against the god. And _ because 
 often no one could put his finger on the punishment 
 visited upon the offender by the god, the idea of the 
 conscience arose. ‘Ihe god, it came to be believed, pun- 
 ished the wicked in secret ways, sending evil spirits into 
 them to gnaw at their souls and give them no rest. 
 And when it was seen that many of the wicked seemed 
 quite untroubled by evil consciences, quite unperturbed 
 by secret punishments, then the idea of future suffering 
 was advanced. It was claimed that, even though some 
 of the wicked went scot free in this world, in the next 
 they would not be nearly so fortunate. No, indeed! 
 After death they would get even more than their just 
 due, roasting in flames—according to the dwellers in 
 torrid lands—or freezing in ice-floes—according to the 
 inhabitants of arctic regions. 
 
 The actual course of development out of which were 
 evolved these ideas of sin, conscience, and post-mortem 
 retribution, was, to be sure, not nearly so simple as is 
 made out here. For centuries man fumbled about to 
 lay hold of these ideas, blundering off into the most 
 pathetic errors, and beating his way back only with the 
 horridest pain. But finally the great task was accom- 
 plished, and morality, at the cost of being religionized, 
 was preserved. 
 

 
 54 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 It was no small price to pay. Religion proved in 
 time rather too effective a preservative. It sheltered too 
 extensively and indiscriminately, keeping alive not 
 merely the morals necessary to the life of society, but 
 also every scrap of ancient ritual and savage taboo. 
 Religion developed a tendency to hold on to everything 
 with equal tenacity, allowing for no difference between 
 the slightest rite and the gravest law. Or if it did admit 
 any difference, its verdict was usually in favor of the 
 rite. Priestly teachers were inclined to tell the people 
 that ritual, the proper treatment to be accorded the 
 gods, was decidedly more important than ethics, the 
 proper treatment to be accorded to mere men. What 
 was more injurious, they often taught that all offenses, 
 both against rite and right, could be atoned for in but 
 one way: by sacrifice. Justice, they declared, could al- 
 ways be tempered, and the guilty might perhaps even 
 go scot-free, if only enough rams and fatlings were 
 offered the heavenly judge. . . 
 
 That teaching, naturally enough, proved in time a 
 gigantic obstacle in the path of civilization. Indeed, 
 the whole career of religion among civilized folk is in 
 a measure the story of the struggle to remove that ob- 
 stacle. In essence it is the story of prophet warring on 
 priest; of him who would moralize religion wrestling 
 with him who had ritualized morals... . 
 
 5 
 
 BUT though religion may have exacted a high price 
 for its saving of morality, still—it did save it. That 
 is something many people are inclined to forget. They 
 are accustomed to dwell only on the evils, on the 
 

 
 HOW IT ALL BEGAN D1, 
 
 thwartings and frustrations, which certain forms of re- 
 ligion in later days brought upon civilization. But it 
 is well to remember that, had it not been for religion 
 and its underlying faith that the universe and its fell 
 “powers” could be controlled, there would not have 
 been any civilization to frustrate. Civilization is but 
 another name for man’s increasing victory over fear— 
 and the first phases of that victory were attained almost 
 solely through religion. Religion was the boot-strap 
 by which man raised himself out of savagery. Or, to 
 return to a metaphor we have already used, it was the 
 bank of reeds to which man clung as often as the dark 
 waters of fear threatened to flood over him. In a very 
 real sense it was his salvation. . 
 
 It was the salvation of society, too. Not merely did 
 religion make it possible for one man to live by him- 
 self, but even more did it make it possible for two men 
 to live together. Even the beginnings of society would 
 have been rendered impossible by man’s innate fear 
 simply of the dead—let alone of the living—nhad re- 
 ligion not come into high standing in the world. At 
 the sight of death, the natural reaction of the savage 
 was flight. Instinctively he wanted to burn the whole 
 village in which the corpse lay, and run! And at first 
 probably he did follow that instinct, and for centuries 
 no camp ever lasted more than a few weeks or months. 
 . . . But then was born the idea of burial rites to 
 placate the spirits of the dead, religious rites that firmly 
 rooted the survivors to the place where the dead were 
 buried. Religion found a way to rob death of a little 
 of its ghastly frightfulness. Villages were now actually 
 created around graves, instead of being burnt down over 
 

 
 56 HIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 them. Man, once so terrified by the ghosts that he fled 
 at the least suspicion of their presence, now dared to 
 go right up to them and implore their aid. Ancestor- 
 worship arose. Tribes often depended for their 
 solidarity upon the sole bond of supposed descent from 
 a common ancestor. Failing that, the tie that served to 
 hold them together was a common ritual. Ceremonies 
 at birth, puberty, marriage, and death were the things 
 that bound those clansmen into a compact group. ‘The 
 same was true of the annual festivals. And thus, by 
 and with religion, the living together of men was made 
 possiblesyaias 
 
 More than that: by and with religion the living to- 
 gether of men was made not merely possible, but also 
 desirable. Religion clothed and adorned the cold 
 nakedness of primitive existence with shreds and patches 
 of beauty. All that grace and color which transmutes 
 mere existence into Life—in a word, all Art—may truly 
 be said to have arisen out of religion. Sculpture had 
 its origin in idol-making, architecture in temple-build- 
 ing, poetry in prayer-writing, music in psalm-singing, 
 drama in legend-telling, and dancing in the seasonal wor- 
 ship of the gods... . 
 
 It may seem to us incredibly rude, this conglomeration 
 of terrors and hopes, of clutchings and gropings, of 
 stupidities and yearnings, which for want of a better 
 name we call Primitive Religion. But for all that it 
 was holy—for it saved mankind... . 
 
Mo | 
 aC 
 
 . cal 
 
 SAN ANAT 
 i EES @ EES 
 
 en | : 
 
 ACI 
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 MOOT 
 
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 4) 
 
 \ ct 4 / 
 
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 ANY 
 
 
 
Li 
 
 Ms 
 
 LV: 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 HOW RELIGION DEVELOPED IN 
 THE ANCIENT WORLD 
 
 THE CELTS 
 
 1: The primitive gods—Druids—the mistletoe cult. 2: The 
 festivals—the great holocausts—Beltane—Lugnasad—Samhain 
 —ghost worship. 
 
 THE BABYLONIANS 
 
 1: The Semitic goddesses—how the Babylonian gods arose 
 —trinities. 2: Ishtar and the sex rites—holy prostitution— 
 astrology. 3: The priesthood—its vices—and virtues. 4: 
 The defects of the religion—-polydemonism—a ritualized 
 morality—Shabatum and mythology—contrast with Hebrew 
 versions of same—fear. 
 
 THE EGYPTIANS 
 
 1: Original animal-worship—the growth of the gods—the 
 priests. 2: The idea of monotheism emerges. 3: The reforma- 
 tion under Ikhnaton—reaction 4: The religion of the masses— 
 Osiris—the future life—why the pyramids were built. 5: The 
 dead—the Judgment Day—the resort to magic. 
 
 THE GREEKS 
 
 1: The Minoan religion—how the Greek gods arose—the 
 Olympian cult. 2: The Olympian cult fails—the learned take 
 to philosophy. 3: The masses take to magic—and the 
 ““mysteries’’-—the savior-god idea—how men tried to become 
 divine. 4: The desire for a future life—and how the mysteries 
 satisfied it. 
 
 THE ROMANS 
 
 1: Original worship of household spirits—the state religion 
 arises—and is intensified. 2: Why the state religion failed—the 
 coming of the mysteries—Cybele—Attis—the other foreign 
 cults. 3: Augustus restores the state religion—the god- 
 emperor—the re-action—the Cynics. 4: Why decadent Rome 
 took to the mysteries—Mithras—its significance. 5: Conclu- 
 sion—Why these ancient cults cannot be called ‘‘dead’’—the 
 significance of their other-worldly appeal. 
 
 48 
 
BOOK TWO 
 
 HOW RELIGION DEVELOPED IN 
 THE ANCIENT WORLD 
 
 HE story of how religion began 
 has been made unconscionably 
 short and simple in the book 
 just closed. Fundamental ele- 
 ments have been treated in the 
 sketchiest fashion, and many 
 significant elements have hardly 
 been touched on. But in so 
 small a book it was impossible 
 to do otherwise. To have gone 
 into primitive religion with any 
 
 thoroughness, to have given even in outline the myriad 
 variants among the races of each belief and practice, 
 would have required not a score of pages, but a whole 
 shelf of heavy tomes. All that was possible here was 
 an outline of the central plot, a hurried sketch of the 
 main line of march followed by religion as it advanced 
 through prehistoric centuries. 
 
 Unhappily, that outline reads as though given with 
 complete assurance. Despite all the ‘“‘perhapses’’ and 
 “‘probablys’’ scattered throughout the story, it still reads 
 as though the writer knew for certain just what had 
 happened. Actually he knows nothing of the sort. All 
 he knows is what many learned anthropologists, after 
 much painstaking research, have surmised to be the truth. 
 72 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 60 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 Of course they may have surmised quite badly. ‘Their 
 underlying theory may be entirely wrong, and religion, 
 instead of having been originally created to elude or 
 conquer fear, may have arisen quite independently of 
 it. Religion may be an altogether primal instinct in 
 the human race—something just as old and fundamental 
 and innate as fear itself. Who knows? ... 
 
 ‘To go into that question, however, would serve only 
 to add confusion to what is already too confused a story. 
 Many sets of guesses have been made as to how religion 
 began, but in this little book there was room for only 
 one of them—the one that seems (to the writer) the most 
 reasonable. And that having been given, we must 
 QUEEVROTL eer 
 
 Happily for us the development of religion is not 
 nearly so veiled in mists of doubt as is its beginning. 
 Fairly detailed accounts of many ancient cults exist, and 
 from these we can plot out an almost clear line of pro- 
 gression. Beginning with the animism of the barbaric 
 Celts, and continuing clear through to the Mysteries 
 of the last of the Romans, we can follow almost step 
 by step the slow march of early religion. 
 
 1. THEGGEEDS 
 
 THERE is no particular reason for beginning our 
 study of ancient religion with the Celts save that records 
 of their rites and beliefs have come down to us with 
 comparative fullness. Iwo thousand years ago the 
 Celts were but one of a horde of Aryan peoples just 
 come up out of the night of savagery into that fitful 
 fore-dawn which we call barbarism. Their religion, 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 61 
 
 therefore, was still no more than a pathetic gesture that 
 wavered between the brave but foolish clawing of the 
 savage and the meek but hopeful reaching-out of civi- 
 lized man. It was not altogether a dependence on magic 
 rites, for the Celts had already discovered that magic 
 alone was not enough. ‘They were already sufficiently 
 advanced to have learnt that the ‘‘powers’’ controlling 
 the universe, the spirits supposed to dwell in trees and 
 stones and other natural objects, could often be moved 
 far more effectively by petition than coercion. Yet 
 they did not stake all their faith on petition, either. 
 Their priests were still covertly shamans, and their 
 sacrifices were at least implicitly half-coercive spells. 
 Perhaps the word “‘cajolery’’ best describes the technique 
 wherewith the Celts sought to win over their deities. 
 
 They had many deities to win over, for every natural 
 object of any impressiveness seemed to them to contain 
 a spirit to be conjured with. And certain of these spirits 
 had already been sufficiently detached from their physical 
 bodies to be thought of as remote gods and goddesses. 
 Names had been given to them—-Ogmius, Maponus, 
 Bridget, and the like—and whole mythologies had been 
 spun around them. A sacrificial ritual had grown up, 
 and a priestly class had been established. There seem 
 to have been no temple edifices, however, but only un- 
 roofed circles of stone pillars—Stonehenge in England is 
 the ruins of one of these circles—and groves of sacred 
 trees. Within these circles and groves the priests (who 
 were called Druids, ‘‘Wise Ones’’) offered un sacrifices 
 and cast spells at regular times, and the priestesses—of 
 whom there seem to have been not a few—performed 
 rites of decidedly dubious respectability, 
 
62 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ) 
 
 1 
 
 | if i: 
 i 3 af | = 
 
 = 
 
 et A —— a 
 
 He 
 i{ i{ 
 
 
 
 STONEHENGE 
 
 Idolatry had not advanced far among the Celts, and 
 their images of the gods were rudely carved logs or 
 simply weapons of one sort or another. Their chief 
 ceremonial object was the mistletoe, that white-berried 
 creeper which has captured the imagination of primitive 
 peoples all over the world. Sir James G. Frazer, in that 
 most fascinating book in all the literature of compara- 
 tive religions, The Golden Bough, has tried to give the 
 reason for the peculiar veneration attached to this plant. 
 He maintains it is because the mistletoe has no roots in 
 the polluted earth but seems to grow magically between 
 heaven and earth. By that sorry clutching at conclu- 
 sions which is all that primitive man has of logic, this 
 plant, dangling down from the sky, is therefore thought 
 to be endowed with magic properties. Wherever the 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 63 
 Druids discovered it growing on an oak tree, they would 
 approach with great awe and ceremonial pomp and cut 
 it down with a golden sickle. “They would be dread- 
 fully careful to catch it before it fell to the earth, and 
 then they would use it to make a potion for the fer- 
 tilizing of barren women and cattle, and for the cure 
 
 of epilepsy, ulcers, poisoning, and almost every other 
 human ailment. 
 
 ye 
 
 REGULAR festivals were held three times in each year, 
 and with especial elaborateness once in every five years. 
 They were largely fire festivals, and were directly in- 
 tended to make the spirits fertilize the soil. Julius 
 Caesar has bequeathed to us our earliest description of 
 those gruesome quinquennial festivals, when scores of 
 criminals—that is, persons who had transgressed taboos 
 —and prisoners of war and animals would be herded 
 into colossal images of wicker-work, and then cere- 
 moniously burnt to death. It was imagined that the 
 greater the number of victims, the greater would be the 
 fertility of the land, and once all northern Europe 
 reeked with the smell of such holocausts. Originally the 
 ordinary annual festivals were also bloody scenes of 
 human sacrifice; but by historic times they had been 
 rid of that savage factor. But fire still played a large 
 part in the conduct of those festivals, and their obvious 
 purpose was still the magic fructifying of the land. 
 On the eve of the first of May, when the Celts held 
 their festival of Beltane, bonfires of oak-wood were 
 lighted under sacred trees or poles. A ‘“‘king’’ and 
 ‘“‘“gueen’’ were chosen to lead the processions into the 
 

 
 
 
 64 THIS BELIEVING WORLD _ 
 
 fields, and then for hours there was a mad flaring of 
 brands plucked from the bonfires, and a wild swirling 
 and dancing in orgiastic revelry. Men and women lay 
 together in the fields, and behaved as did all] other primi- 
 tive peoples at their religious festivals. Simple barbarians 
 they were, and they did what they did in all good faith 
 that it would suggest to the sun and the other gods 
 what they in turn ought to do: make things grow. Not 
 until the Christian idea of morality was brought to them 
 did the Celts grow conscious of any wickedness in their 
 old rites. And even then they did not give them up at 
 once. Indeed, to this day their descendants have not 
 given them up entirely. “They have merely pruned and 
 refined and Christianized them into the eminently re- 
 spectable—but reminiscently very naughty—Maypole 
 dances of modern times. ... 
 
 The two other Celtic festivals of the year were Lug- 
 nasad held on the first of August, and Samhain held on 
 the last day of October. Both were marked by rites 
 rather like those of Beltane, and both have persisted to 
 our time, the one as Midsummer Night and St. John’s 
 Day and the other as Hallowe'en and All Saints’ Day. 
 Samhain was the more important of the two, for even as 
 in the Christian calendar it was regarded as the day when 
 the souls of the dead foregathered with the living. Food 
 was laid out in the huts of the Celts and cheery fires 
 were lighted on the hearths, so that the shivering hungry 
 shades of the dead might prepare themselves against the 
 wintry months just coming to the world. 
 
 The Celts were inordinately interested in the dead. 
 They knew little about another world save that there 
 was somewhere in the Western Sea a “‘sweet and blessed 
 

 
 RELIGION IN 
 
 
 
 THE ANCIENT WORED 765 
 isle’ reserved for heroes and demigods; but nevertheless 
 they cherished an abiding faith in an afterlife even for 
 the lowliest tribesman. Nervously they imagined the 
 dead to be shades that hovered in the gloaming, in- 
 tangible wraiths that yet could do great hurt or kind- 
 ness. Perhaps their great fire-festivals, those ghastly 
 holocausts of men and beasts, were but desperate efforts 
 to drive away the more malevolent of the shades. For 
 those poor Celts, forever harried by storm and drought 
 and pestilence, had brought themselves to believe that 
 the dead were, in part at least, the doers of all mischief. 
 The dead and the spirits of nature together seemed the 
 ultimate masters of the universe, and all of life for the 
 living seemed to depend on their mysterious favor. That 
 was why religious rites played so large a part in Celtic 
 thought and conduct. “They were primitive rites, crude, 
 blundering, almost absurdly naive—but they had to be 
 kept up. Even as a sick man, though he may reject 
 one medicine after another, never can quite bring him- 
 self to reject physicians entirely, so the ancient Gaul 
 and Briton often forsook one spell for another, but 
 never dared to forsake the Druids. “They were afraid 
 re attald,.:.. 
 
 Il. THE BABYLONIANS 
 
 TO trace the further advance of religion we must 
 now shift the scene to a land far distant from the 
 primeval forests of the Celts. We must go to ancient 
 Mesopotamia, that verdant region between the great 
 rivers of the Near East, where dawn had already broken 
 what-time night still reigned in the West. ‘The religion 
 of Babylonia, even though far more ancient than that 
 

 
 66 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 of the Celts, was in almost every respect far more ad- 
 vanced. From long before the beginning of recorded 
 history, religion seems to have been further advanced 
 in the East than in the West. For reasons which we 
 cannot at all make out, the Orientals, especially the 
 Semites, seem to have had a peculiar genius for religion. 
 They were bedouins, those Semites: a lean, hungry, 
 harried race forever roaming the desert vastnesses of 
 Arabia in search of another place and another time to 
 die. And it was they, most probably, who laid the 
 foundations of Babylonia’s religion. Thousands of 
 years ago, when some of them struggled out of the bar- 
 ren desert and obtained a foothold in the lush meadows 
 of Mesopotamia, they brought with them their old desert 
 religion. It was then little more than a crude animism, 
 
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 BABYLONIA 
 

 
 RELIGION IN GUHE: ANCIENT! WORLD) 67 
 
 with Ishtar, “Self Waterer,’”’ the spirit of the oasis, as 
 the chief deity. Ishtar, who was a goddess, probably 
 had the spirits of the wind and sun and moon as hus- 
 bands: and certainly she had Tammuz, the spirit of the 
 date-palm, as her lover. We cannot be certain, but it 
 seems rather likely that most of the other important 
 deities then were also goddesses. “This must have been 
 because the primitive Semites were still in the matriarchal 
 stage of pre-civilization. Wherever the heads of their 
 families and clans were the mothers, not the fathers, 
 quite naturally the chief spirits were imagined to be 
 goddesses, not gods. 
 
 But once the invaders from the desert came to feel 
 at home in verdant Mesopotamia, and began to mingle 
 more or less freely with the non-Semitic natives, their 
 religion took on a quite altered aspect. “The matriarchal 
 form of society gave way to the patriarchal, and as a 
 natural consequence the goddesses were changed to gods. 
 The chief deities chosen for the newly created cities 
 were usually masculine. Sometimes they still retained 
 the feminine names by which they had been known in 
 earlier days, as is seen in the case of Ningirsu, literally 
 “Lady of Girsu,’’ who was the very masculine god of 
 the city of Lagash. Or if the deities managed to persist 
 in the new social order as females in fact as well as name, 
 they took on altogether new functions. A population 
 no longer living in the desert, for instance, had no longer 
 any reason to worship the spirit of the desert oasis— 
 so a star instead of an oasis was given to Ishtar as a 
 Bomewec.. . 
 
 But the Babylonians by no means contented them- 
 selves with merely remodeling the old gods. They 
 
68 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 manufactured new ones, too—hundreds of them. Even 
 to list the chief of them—Ningirsu, Bel, Shamash, 
 Nabu, Marduk, Anu, Ea, Sin, and the rest—would be 
 quite tiresome. ‘The idea of one great god with uni- 
 versal sway seems hardly to have occurred to the people. 
 Again and again, as one city after another became domi- 
 nant in the empire, one god after another became chief 
 in the pantheon. For instance, so long as Babylon was 
 the capital of the empire, Bel-Marduk, the god of 
 Babylon, was considered the superior deity. But never 
 more than superior: never One alone, and beyond chal- 
 lenge. Occasionally not a single god, but a group of 
 three together was worshipped as superior: Anu (sky), 
 Bel (earth), and Ea (sea); or Shamash (sun), Sin 
 (moon), and Ishtar (the star Venus). . .. Age after 
 age new trinities of that sort arose. 
 
 2 
 
 BUT from beginning to end, one deity remained su- 
 premely popular at least among the plain people of 
 Mesopotamia. That deity was Ishtar, the great mother 
 of the gods, the spirit of sex and fertility, the very prin- 
 ciple of life itself. Many other early peoples worshipped 
 some such mother goddess, for the power of reproduc- 
 tion among plants, beasts, and men, remained unflag- 
 gingly the most vital and engrossing power of all. To 
 be able to control it meant to live; to fail meant to die. 
 Little wonder, therefore, if everywhere in the world, in 
 Mexico and the Congo, in Ireland and the Malay isles, 
 we find the people groveling at the feet of some sex- 
 dealing, life-breeding spirit. 
 
 In Babylonia and throughout the Levant the people 
 

 
 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 69 
 
 
 
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 THE GREAT MOTHER GODDESSES 
 
 seem to have bowed down to it inordinately, and sex 
 rites in honor of Ishtar—or Astarte, Ashtoreth, Isis, 
 Cybele, Venus, and Aphrodite, as the goddess was 
 known in the various lands—were counted of primary 
 importance. In Babylonia itself it was required that 
 every woman, rich or poor, should submit at least once 
 in her life to the embraces of a stranger. She had to 
 wait in the courts of a temple of Ishtar until some man 
 bought her for an hour, and then she had to dedicate to 
 the goddess the wages earned by her harlotry. With- 
 out performing that rite a woman was imagined to 
 be incapable of bearing children, and was therefore un- 
 fitto marry. Asa result, the temple-courts were simply 
 choked with desperate virgins; and the priests of the 
 Ishtar cult, who often were paid to play the part of 
 the welcome stranger, grew enormously rich... . 
 
70 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 The difference between this Babylonian cult of Ishtar 
 and the primitive Celtic cult of Bridget was entirely one 
 of degree, not of kind. Both were inspired by dread of 
 the same evil, sterility; and both sought to attain one 
 end, fecundity. But one, the Babylonian, was far less 
 primitive than the other—far less wildly promiscuous 
 and bestial. —IThe Babylonian rites were conducted within 
 the confines of stone temples, not out in the furroughs 
 of the torch-lit fields; and they were hedged in with 
 a thousand rules and watched over by a myriad of priests. 
 Between those priests and the Celtic Druids there was 
 again a difference only of degree. “The Babylonian holy 
 men were merely shamans of a more advanced type. 
 They still were little more than magicians and medicine- 
 men; but they had evolved a highly intricate technique, 
 and had developed a grotesque psuedo-science to support 
 it. They had somehow hit on the idea that the con- 
 stant changes in the heavens bear some subtle relation 
 to the happenings here on earth. Not merely to the 
 vast geographic happenings on earth (that much would 
 be scientifically quite valid), but even more to the petty 
 fortunes of all the creatures swarming over it. All 
 human souls were believed to be hitched for weal or 
 woe to stars, and the chief concern of the priests was, 
 therefore, star-gazing. That sorry deceit called as- 
 trology, which still lures the feebler-minded among men, 
 had its first development back there in Babylonia almost 
 four thousand years agol 
 
 3 
 
 BUT the Babylonian priesthood did not confine its 
 interests to the stars in the heavens. On the contrary, 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 71 
 
 it also reached out and tried to control the most mundane 
 things on earth. It truckled to the conceits of the rich 
 and preyed on the terrors of the poor. It owned mag- 
 nificent and costly brick temples that rose to the very 
 heavens in ornate terraces—veritable Towers of Babel 
 they were—and regularly sacrificed to the idols that 
 stood in them. “There were many divisions in the priest- 
 hood, each with its own particular function. Certain 
 of the clerics awoke the gods in the morning, washed 
 and dressed them, and offered the elaborate sacrifices; 
 others sang the hymns and chanted the spells; to others 
 was assigned the task of fructifying the barren women 
 who waited in the temple courts; still others read horo- 
 scopes and told fortunes. That many of the priests 
 were fools and more were knaves, is to be taken for 
 granted. “That many gouged the widows and forgot 
 the orphans, is to be expected. After all, religion to the 
 Babylonian was not a matter of noble sentiment, but a 
 sort of complicated insurance business; and its priestly 
 solicitors and agents were, as Americans would say, out 
 to get “‘all there was in it for them.’’ ‘Their extortions, 
 especially for fortune-telling, sometimes grew so flagrant 
 that kings had actually to pass laws to control them. 
 Inscriptions tell us that already before 2800 B. c. King 
 Urkagina had to legislate against priestly profiteer- 
 ingle 4. 
 
 But it must not be imagined for a moment that the 
 great priesthood of Babylonia was unrelievedly lecher- 
 ous and low. One cannot read their ancient hymns 
 without realizing that at least some among their band 
 were men of what we vaguely call “‘spirituality’’ and 
 “religious insight.”” Most of those hymns are mere med- 
 
72 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 leys of magic phrases, but others are poems of amazing 
 beauty. Indeed, certain of them ring with tones that 
 are strikingly reminiscent of the Hebrew Psalms. For 
 instance: 
 
 The sin which I sinned I knew not; 
 
 My God has visited me in wrath. 
 
 I sought help, but none took my hand; 
 
 I wept, but none gave ear. 
 
 To my God, the merciful God, I turn and pray; 
 How long, O Lord! ... 
 
 O God, cast not away thy servant, 
 
 But turn my sin into a blessing. 
 
 May the wind carry away my transgressions. 
 Seven times seven are they— 
 
 Forgive thou them! ... 
 
 Now that is no ordinary bit of primitive liturgy. 
 It reveals a reverence for the deity, a humility in the 
 worshipper, and above all a freedom from magical for- 
 mula that would lead us to think it all a forgery did 
 we not have the very stone on which the Babylonian 
 priests engraved it. Such lines may not be even re- 
 motely typical, but they are authentic. And because 
 they are authentic, and they and other lines of like 
 quality were ever written in Bel-Marduk’s courts, the 
 cult of Babylonia must be seen to mark a distinct ad- 
 vance in the evolution of religion. 
 
 4 
 
 BUT we must not exaggerate the extent of that ad- 
 vance. Babylonia’s cult was distinguished for the in- 
 tricacy of its priestly organization, the ornateness of its 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 73 
 
 
 
 temple ritual, and most especially for the elaborateness 
 of its astrology. In other words, it was distinguished 
 for its legal, aesthetic, and psuedo-scientific features. 
 But in the highest concerns of religion, in theology and 
 ethics, it was still woefully primitive. Somehow it never 
 progressed beyond polytheism; never really far beyond 
 polydemonism. ‘The Babylonians imagined the whole 
 earth to be peopled with demons—with evil genii that 
 stalked and afflicted men with floods and plagues and 
 darkness. “The gods themselves were often regarded by 
 the priests as mere snivelling wretches forever hunger- 
 ing for scraps from the temple altars. (That was but 
 natural, for no god can be a hero to his valet.) In one 
 of the Babylonian scriptures the gods are actually com- 
 pared to the flies that buzz around the sacrificial car- 
 casses. In another place, where the story of the Flood 
 is recounted, they are spoken of as dogs: 
 
 The gods were frightened at the deluge; 
 They fled, they climbed to the highest heaven. 
 The gods crouched like dogs; 
 
 They cringed by the walls! ... 
 
 And ethically the Babylonians were just as primitive. 
 Ritual scrupulousness seemed to them far more im- 
 portant than human rectitude; sacrificial omissions 
 seemed to them far more heinous than moral offenses. 
 Taboos dogged their every step in life, and “‘bad luck’”’ 
 threatened them at every turn. Every seventh day was 
 regarded as somehow “‘evil,’’ and on it special sacrifices 
 were fearfully offered and all manner of special taboos 
 were observed. For instance, the princes were forbidden 
 to go forth on journeys on that day, or to eat meat cooked 
 
74 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 over a fire. Every fourth of those “evil seventh days’’ 
 was particularly dreaded, for it marked the beginning 
 of the waning of the moon’s power. On it desperate 
 efforts were made to placate the demons, and thus 
 avert the unluckiness otherwise certain to come with the 
 day. Significantly enough, the Babylonians called it 
 Shabatum, a name strikingly like that given by the 
 Hebrews, to their holy day, the Sabbath. It is highly 
 probable that the Hebrews actually got their Sabbath 
 _ from the Babylonian Shabatum, for we know they paid 
 little heed to its observance until after they had lived in 
 exile in Babylonia from 586 B. Cc. to 536 B. Cc. But 
 note how differently the Hebrews regarded the day. To 
 them it was holy, not evil. “The Hebrews told them- 
 selves that the Sabbath was a divinely appointed ‘‘day 
 of rest,’’ and though they observed on it many of the old 
 Shabatum taboos, they did so not out of fear of the 
 genii but out of respect for their God. “Their New Moon 
 festival was an ocassion for rejoicing, not for added 
 trembling and dread. 
 
 The contrast is no slight one. It reveals glaringly the 
 inferiority, the essential primitiveness, of which religious 
 thought in Babylonia never quite rid itself. “The Baby- 
 lonians developed a vast mythology, but they graced it 
 with no ethical meaning. “They told many tales about 
 their gods, about the creation of the world, the first man, 
 the great flood, and so forth. But these tales were al- 
 most unrelievedly wild, crude, even foul. When we 
 meet them again in the Old Testament—for those 
 stories, like the Shabatum taboos, seem to have been 
 taken over from the Babylonians by the Hebrew exiles— 
 we find them changed almost beyond recognition. In 
 

 
 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 75 
 
 the Bible they are no longer mere bawdy romancings 
 told for the mere joy of their telling, but passionate ser- 
 mons recited to bring home certain moral ideals. Ethic- 
 ally the Babylonians were little more than grown-up 
 children. Fear still had hold of them and kept them 
 slaves. Even though they were rich and powerful, even 
 though they were the lords of the green earth and 
 thought themselves the masters of the starry skies, still 
 they remained cravens in their hearts. Beneath all their 
 bluster they were timorous and worried. ‘They were 
 Bit Ald weiss, Airaid... 0%) |. 
 
 a 
 - 
 
 III. THE EGYPTIANS 
 
 TO trace the further development of religion we 
 must go now from Babylonia to ancient Egypt. Of 
 course, in very early times the Egyptians, like the rest 
 of the primitive peoples of the earth, were simple ani- 
 mists. All things around them seemed to be animated 
 by certain wilful spirits; and to these spirits the Egyp- 
 tians paid terrified homage. Only a few of the spirits 
 were thought to dwell in natural phenomena such as 
 the sun, the moon, and the great River Nile. The 
 majority were imagined to have their habitation in vari- 
 ous species of animals and birds. Each tribe—there 
 seem to have been forty-two of them in Egypt about 
 seven thousand years ago—worshipped the spirit in- 
 habiting some particular species of living creature, and 
 looked to it for protection. One worshipped the ram, 
 another the bull, a third the lion; others worshipped the 
 serpent, the cat, the goat, the ass, the falcon, the hippo- 
 potamus, the pig, and the vulture. Evidently the earli- 
 est religion of Egypt must have been a totemism rather 
 

 
 76 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 like that of the American Indians, each tribe being named 
 after the animal which it held sacred, and which it may 
 have looked on as its spiritual ancestor. 
 
 But as civilization advanced among the Egyptians, the 
 primitiveness of their totemism began to disappear. The 
 “powers” began to be thought of no longer as mere 
 animals but rather as gods symbolized by animals. The 
 idols, which originally may have been simple images of 
 beasts, were now carved to represent bodies whose heads 
 alone were those of beasts. Or occasionally—as in the 
 case of the sphinx——the body was still that of an animal, 
 but the head was human. And when, after much 
 wandering, the tribes settled down at last in what be- 
 came their fixed provinces, these half-animal gods be- 
 came localized. For instance, Amon, who was symbol- 
 ized by a ram, became the god of the village of Thebes; 
 | Ptah, the bull-god, became the deity of Memphis; Set, 
 the ass-god, became the protector of the village of 
 Ombos. In every town the stone temple of the local 
 god towered over the mud hovels of the people. It 
 was literally the “house of the god,’ and the priests in 
 it were called the god’s servants. Morning, noon, and 
 night they waited on the idol that glowered in the 
 terrifying dimness of the inner sanctuary. They washed 
 and dressed it in the morning, gave it food, and flattered 
 it with hymns. At night they removed its vestments 
 and figuratively put it to bed. Stony and immobile as 
 it was, the idol nevertheless seemed to them the dwelling 
 place of the most dreadfully potent force in the world. 
 Perhaps the more astute of the priests, those who had 
 served longest and profited most by the cult, knew 
 better. But certainly the people did not. The people, 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 77 
 
 the myriads of sweating serfs and starving peasants— 
 they believed. Unalterably they believed that lodged in 
 the idol there was a spirit that could bring them life 
 or death. Probably the majority of the priests believed 
 likewise, for the proverb ‘‘as the people, so the priest’ 
 states a truth that holds for all races, not merely the 
 Hebrews. Rare indeed, therefore—and silent as night 
 —must have been the doubters in those days of un- 
 
 bridled faith: ....°. 
 2 
 
 BUT what happened later in many other lands hap- 
 pened of course in Egypt, too. Though the fear of 
 terrorful spirits never ceased to be a stark and ominous 
 reality, the exact identity of those spirits wavered and 
 continually changed. ‘The fusion of the Egyptian tribes 
 brought with it a fusion of the tribal deities. The 
 temples became the houses not of single gods, but of 
 whole families. Usually the original spirit of the temple 
 was given a neighboring goddess for a wife, and a 
 minor godling for a son. Or sometimes he was given 
 two goddesses as wives. And that tendency, begun on 
 so small a scale, was carried on until at last one god 
 was exalted over all the rest in Egypt. Centuries before 
 the Hebrews came up out of the night of desert savagery, 
 we find the Egyptians already groping their way toward 
 the idea of a monotheism, a One God. It was political 
 rather than philosophical considerations that impelled 
 the Egyptians in such a direction. As soon as some 
 tribal chieftain managed to fight his way to the throne 
 of the land, so soon did he try to set his tribal god on 
 the throne of the heavens. And to give permanence to 
 

 
 
 
 78 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 the arrangement, he naturally was driven to attempt the 
 destruction of all the defeated but still menacing gods. 
 Usually he tried to wipe them out by declaring them 
 to be merely so many vagrant manifestations of his own 
 deity. Or else his priests invented elaborate mythologies 
 to prove that his god had been the very first in the uni- 
 verse, and had actually created all the other deities. 
 Century after century such stratagems were resorted to. 
 Every king cherished the same futile hope of establishing 
 his dynasty forever, and for that reason every king tried 
 
 to prove his god to be the only one worthy of wor- 
 ShIpssa te. 
 
 3 
 
 BUT no one of the attempts ever quite succeeded. 
 Even the valiant attempt of the famous King Ikhnaton 
 came to naught. This Ikhnaton, who reigned in Egypt 
 from about 1375 to 1350 B. c., has not unjustly been 
 called the first individual in human history. With amaz- 
 ing clarity of vision and singleness of purpose he set 
 himself the task of making the religion of Egypt an 
 absolute monotheism. He broke completely with the 
 polytheistic past, denying all the favorite old gods and 
 suppressing their cults. Only Aton, the Sun-God, was 
 recognized, and to Him every human knee was made to 
 bend, and every tongue to give homage. The king gave 
 up the name, Amonhotep, by which he had been known 
 all his life, simply because it contained the name of the 
 old god, Amon. Instead he called himself Ikhnaton, 
 which meant “Spirit of Aton.’’ Because his old capital 
 was the center of Amon worship, the king gave that up, 
 too. He built himself an entirely new city, calling it 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 79 
 
 Akhetaton, meaning “Horizon of Aton.”’ He tried to 
 revolutionize every phase of Egyptian life, spurning all 
 the old conventions and creating by flats even a new 
 art and literature! ... 
 
 Of course, the priests of the fallen gods fought him 
 bitterly, for he had taken the bread—and honey—right 
 out of their mouths. But they could do little, for the 
 power of Ikhnaton was absolute in all his empire. He 
 sent stone masons all through Egypt to erase the names 
 of the old gods from the temples and pyramids. He 
 caused even his own father’s name to be obliterated be- 
 cause it contained the name of Amon! And in his new 
 capital he built a splendid temple to his One God, Aton, 
 adoring him with sumptuous sacrifices and with hymns 
 of surpassing beauty. 
 
 Thy dawning, O Living Aton, is 
 beautiful on the horizon. .. . 
 
 O, Beginning of Life, Thou art all, 
 
 and Thy rays encompass all. 
 
 Manifold are Thy works, One oth Only 
 God, Whose power none other possesseth; 
 the whole earth hast Thou created 
 according to Thine own understanding. 
 When Thou wast alone didst Thou create 
 man and beast, both large and small; 
 
 all that go upon their feet, all that 
 
 fly on wings; yea, and all the foreign 
 lands, even Syria and Kush besides this 
 land of Egypt. Thou settest all in their 
 place, and providest all with their 
 
 needs. . [though] diverse are their 
 tongues, en forms, their skins. 
 
 O how goodly are Thy designs, O Lord: 
 that there is a Nile in the sky for 
 
80 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 strangers and for the cattle of every 
 land. . . . Thou art He who art in my 
 soul; Thou art the life of life; 
 
 through Thee men live! 
 
 - ¢ <n 
 
 C4 AsyDO5™ 
 
 Grave oF 
 i O51R1S) 
 
 USMS BERLE ME 
 SAVAGES } 
 
 ANCIENT EGYPT 
 
 hood waxed fat with might. 
 
 
 
 So did he sing, that 
 great Egyptian heretic, 
 centuries before ever a 
 Hebrew psalmist had 
 appeared on earth! 
 
 But none there was 
 to sing so after him. 
 When Ikhnaton died, 
 Aton also died. The 
 priests of Amon and 
 Re and the other old 
 gods quickly came into 
 their own again, setting 
 up their old altars, and 
 chanting their old 
 spells. “The very son- 
 in-law of the man who 
 so zealously altered his 
 name from Amonhotep 
 to Ikhnaton thought it 
 wise to change his own 
 name from Tutenkha- 
 ton back to Tutenkha- 
 men. Once more 
 Thebes was made the 
 capital, and its priest- 
 Two per cent of the 
 
 entire population (one out of every fifty Egyptians!) 
 

 
 - RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 81 
 
 became actual slaves in the temples; and a seventh of 
 all the arable soil in the realm became temple property. 
 The high-priests grew more powerful year by year, 
 and in the end one of them actually seized the 
 crown! . .. And thus was all the labor of that royal 
 heretic, Ikhnaton, made to come to naught. 
 
 Yet a vestige of that impetuous reform did endure. 
 The idea of a monotheism, of a single God in all the 
 universe, was never quite blotted out from Ikhnaton’s 
 day on. Somehow the idea lingered in the land, per- 
 sistently affecting at least the language if not the life of 
 the priests. More and more the old gods were merged 
 together; even their names were hyphenated. Amon and 
 Re were spoken of as one from then on—Amon-Re. 
 And what was more important, this composite god was 
 now thought of not as a spirit animating merely a golden 
 disc in the heavens, but as a spirit flaming in the hearts 
 of men. Not merely in the hearts of kings, but in the 
 hearts of men—all men! . . . So the impatient heretic, 
 the tyrant reformer, Ikhnaton, though he failed, never- 
 theless succeeded. AQ little, perhaps the veriest trifle, of 
 that which he had preached while he was yet alive re- 
 mained on after his death. But it was an enduring 
 EETLGs Eee ns 
 
 4 
 
 THE leaning toward monotheism was not, however, 
 the chief distinction of old Egypt's religion. One must 
 realize that the tendency in that direction was marked 
 only in the upper levels of religious thinking in Egypt. 
 It arose partly out of philosophical reasoning and largely 
 out of political necessity, and therefore it did not 
 even touch the life of the plain people in the land. So 
 
82 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 far as the Egyptian masses were concerned, no tendency 
 toward monotheisn1 was even existent. “The masses 
 laboring on the banks of the Nile, like the masses every- 
 where else, were not much given to abstract theologizing. 
 Harried and hounded by a myriad terrors, they could do 
 no more than reach out into the blue for help, and then 
 trust to luck that they had clutched for it in the right 
 direction. The masses had neither the time nor the 
 brains to speculate on the nature of the spirits who gave 
 the help, or the manner in which they gave it. Ques- 
 tions of such a nature had to be handed over by them to 
 the priests and learned men to solve. It was not the 
 peasant’s part to reason how; his was but to fear and 
 DOweniean 
 
 From first to last, therefore, the masses of Egypt con- 
 tinued to worship their innumerable half-animal gods, 
 paying heed neither to the fiats of kings nor the dis- 
 quisitions of priests. Of course, the mob had its favorite 
 gods, differing at various times and in various localities; 
 for with the unconscionable fickleness characteristic of 
 mobs, it dropped its favorites about as fast as it took 
 them up. Only one god, Osiris, managed to hold his 
 place in the affections of the people throughout Egypt's 
 long history. Originally this Osiris seems to have been 
 the spirit who made the crops grow, the god of vegeta- 
 tion comparable to Tammuz of the Babylonians. As 
 such he was of great importance almost from the begin- 
 ning, for the Egyptians were an agricultural people who 
 depended on the crops for their very life. As time went 
 on, therefore, Osiris assumed a place of more and more 
 importance in the minds of the people, until at last they 
 came to look on him as the Divine Lord of the Nile 
 
RELIGION FINE ZANGIENT) WORLD 83 
 
 Lands, the God of Justice and Love and nurturing Light. 
 In large part his exaltation to this rank was due to the 
 spread of a significant myth among the people. ‘The 
 story was told how once on a time Osiris, this god of 
 nurturing Light and Good, was treacherously put to 
 death by Set, the god of withering Darkness and Evil. 
 When Isis, the loving wife of Osiris, learnt of the mur- 
 der, she went up and down the land to find the body 
 of her lord, lamenting sorely as she went, and weeping 
 until the Nile actually overflowed its banks. Isis found 
 the body at last and buried it; but not very carefully. 
 As a result, while she was away looking after her father- 
 less son, Horus, the corpse was stolen from its grave. 
 ‘The wicked Set got possession of it, dismembered it thor- 
 oughly, and then hid each fragment in a different place. 
 So then Isis had to traverse the land a second time, 
 seeking out the pieces of the body, and burying them 
 more safely this time in a sealed tomb. And thereupon 
 Osiris came to life again! He was miraculously resur- 
 rected from death and taken up to heaven; and there in 
 heaven, so the myth declared, he lived on eternally! 
 Obviously that myth had its origin in an attempt to 
 explain the annual death and rebirth of vegetation. 
 Every autumn seemed to witness the foul murder of all 
 that was good to man, and every spring seemed to mark 
 its resurrection. And the Egyptians, like most other 
 races, came to look on that recurrent rescue of the earth 
 from bleakness, cold, and famine, as the most wondrous 
 miracle in the universe. Even the dullest serfs could 
 not fail to be bewildered by it; even the most cloddish 
 minds could not but be eager for some story explaining 
 
84 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 it. And having agreed upon such a story, those fellahin 
 felt impelled for some reason to dramatize and enact it 
 year after year. Every spring at Abydos the drama of 
 Osiris was enacted by the Egyptians in a stirring passion 
 play, much as the peasants in Oberammergau enact the 
 drama of Jesus even today. ... 
 
 There is small cause to wonder that in time this folk- 
 drama, rooted as it was in the earth’s greatest mystery, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PYRAMIDS BY THE NILE 
 
 became the very core of Egypt’s religion. Somehow its 
 plot seemed to give the key to the whole riddle of life 
 and death. The Egyptians reasoned that if it was the 
 fate of the god Osiris to be resurrected after death, then 
 a way could be found to make it the fate of man, too. 
 Of course! All one had to do was be buried properly. 
 If only a man’s soul were committed safely into the 
 

 
 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 85 
 hands of Osiris, and his body embalmed and preserved 
 in a tomb, then some day of a surety the two would get 
 together again, and the man would walk the earth as 
 of yore. At least, so it came to be believed in Egypt as 
 long as four thousand years ago. 
 
 In the beginning, however, only the kings were be- 
 lieved to stand a chance of resurrection, for they alone 
 were thought to have souls. “That was why in those 
 days the kings alone were embalmed and mummified. 
 Huge pyramids were built to shelter their royal bodies 
 against the day of their resurrection, enormous structures 
 of brick and stone that still stand today, and no doubt 
 will still be standing centuries hence. 
 
 But finally the day of the despotic pyramid builders 
 came to an end, and a spirit of democracy crept into the 
 land. The bliss of immortality that had formerly been 
 reserved only for kings was then promised to all men. 
 It came to be admitted that every man had a soul that 
 lived on through the winter of death; and for that 
 reason every man’s body had to be preserved in the 
 hope of ultimate resurrection. Even the bodies of those 
 animals that were deemed sacred to the various gods, 
 the bulls and rams and cats and crocodiles, were pre- 
 served in that hope. At Beni Hasan so many mummified 
 cats were laid away that nowadays the cemetery is used 
 as a quarry for fertilizer! 
 
 5 
 
 THE dead were thought to lead a curious double life, 
 one on earth and the other in heaven at the same time. 
 The earthly existence was carried on by the mummy in 
 the tomb, and its conservation demanded that food be 
 

 
 86 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 jaid out for its nourishment at regular intervals. The 
 horridest fear in the heart of the dying Egpytian was 
 that his heirs would neglect to perform that service, and 
 often contracts were made with utter strangers, with 
 professional tomb-tenders or neighboring priests, to 
 keep the mummy’s larder replenished. And for fear 
 that even these solemn contracts might be broken, the 
 tombs were carved with piteous verses begging the 
 passer-by to offer if not a meal at least a little prayer— 
 “‘which costs only the breath of the mouth’’—for the 
 neglected dead. . . . Ihe heavenly existence of the dead 
 was carried on in the realm of Osiris, and it was de- 
 scribed in considerable detail by the Egyptian theolo- 
 gians. It was believed that on death the soul of a man 
 set out at once to reach a Judgment Hall on high. Evil 
 spirits tried to waylay it on the journey, but any soul 
 adequately provided with magic formulae could evade 
 them all. With these spells the evil spirits could be 
 dodged or fought off until finally the soul attained the 
 Judgment Hall and stood before the celestial throne of 
 Osiris, the Judge. There it gave an account of itself 
 to Osiris and his forty-two associate gods. Any soul 
 that could truly say: “I come before ye without sin, and 
 have done that wherewith the gods are satisfied. I have 
 not slain, nor robbed, nor stirred up strife, nor lied, nor 
 lost my temper, nor committed adultery, nor stolen tem- 
 ple food. . . I have given bread to the hungry, clothes 
 to the naked, a ferry to him who had no boat’’—if in 
 sincerity it could say all that, then the soul was straight- 
 way gathered into the fold of Osiris. But if it could not, 
 if it was found wanting when weighed in the heavenly 
 balances, then it was cast into a hell, to be rent to shreds 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 87 
 
 by the ‘‘Devouress.’’ For only the righteous souls, only 
 the guiltless, were thought to be deserving of life ever- 
 ARting ee, 
 
 It was an extraordinary set of beliefs, and reveals a 
 moral insight on the part of the Egyptians that must 
 have been unmatched in the world of four thousand 
 years ago. No other people in that day seems to have 
 been capable of conceiving a Judgment Hall where a life 
 of moral innocence, and not merely of ritual propriety, 
 decided the soul’s fate after death. Of course, certain 
 elements in the conception were distinctly primitive; 
 for instance, the idea that no soul, however righteous, 
 could ever reach the Judgment Hall unless well armed 
 with magic formulae to protect it on the way. Such 
 a flaw could not but leave an opening for the introduc- 
 tion of all sorts of superstitious practices. “To be on 
 the safe side, coffins were literally lined with those magic 
 formulae, or were packed tight with rolls of parchment 
 on which mystic spells were written. “The practice was 
 relentlessly opposed by King Ikhnaton, the heretic, and 
 during his reign it was rarely if ever observed. But once 
 he died, it returned and flourished more rankly than ever 
 before. The ancient Egyptians were not yet so free of 
 primitive fear, or of primitive measures of defense against 
 it, that they dared to rely on their moral guiltlessness 
 alone to win them paradise. ‘They still clung to the no- 
 tion that there were many evil spirits in the universe 
 which could not be fought off by virtue, but only by 
 magic. [hey even entertained the notion that the good 
 spirits, too, could be controlled by magic. Certain of 
 their spells were designed for the express purpose of 
 helping sinful souls to dodge the verdict of the Heavenly 
 

 
 88 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 PE rr a AE RL TS 
 
 
 
 Judges and sneak their way into Paradise despite their 
 ay bt heal an. 
 
 It is not unlikely that the priests winked at these 
 relics of a bygone age, if only because their vogue tended 
 to give them great power. For the priests alone knew 
 how to write the magic formulae, and thus they alone 
 controlled the keys to heaven. At different times they 
 gathered many of those formulae together, and made of 
 them sacred tomes which later came to be known as the — 
 “Book of the Dead,’’ the ‘“‘Book of the Other World,”’ 
 and the “Book of the Gates.’’ In them were set down, 
 not merely magic phrases, but also maps and travel in- 
 structions for the dead. ‘hey were, so to speak, Bae- 
 deckers to the Next World. .. . | 
 
 So this chapter on the religion of Egypt must end 
 much as did the one on Babylonia. Religion advanced 
 in the valley of the Nile to unprecedented heights. There 
 earlier than anywhere else in the world—at least so far 
 as we know—the idea was conceived of One God ruling 
 in all this Universe. “There too was first told the legend 
 of a Lord of Light who died at the hands of Darkness, 
 only to come to life again and go up to Heaven to receive 
 all the righteous there into his embrace. Those were no 
 inconsiderable heights for an ancient people to attain. 
 . . . But the pity of it was that, though those heights 
 were attained, they were not held. Perhaps that decline 
 occurred because the Egyptians sank too completely into 
 thralldom to the priests. (Save for Ikhnaton, Egypt 
 in all her five thousand years of history produced not a 
 single prophetic spirit. And prophetic spirits alone can 
 keep a people on the heights.) But more fundamentally 
 the Egyptians must have failed because they were still 
 

 
 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 89 
 
 
 
 too close to the primitive. Crude fear still had too 
 strong a hold on them. With pathetic earnestness they 
 tried to put their trust solely in the goodness of the 
 spirits; but always they remained a trifle uncertain, tuck- 
 ing away a spell on their person or in their tombs in case 
 of need. ‘They tried hard to believe that virtue alone 
 would win the favor of the gods; but inevitably they 
 added a little incantation, just to be ‘‘on the safe side.’’ 
 They could never quite keep from slipping down into 
 the slough of magic. No matter how hard they tried, 
 they could never for long hold to the heights. For even 
 they were still not at home in the universe—even they 
 RVereEstill airald "", t:altaide) is). | 
 
 IV. THE GREEKS 
 
 AND now we come to Greece, that little land of broken 
 valleys and sea-swept cliffs wherein ancient civilization 
 climbed and climbed until it reached its very zenith. 
 In the beginning its religion was naturally a terrorful 
 worship of the spirits supposed to dwell in stones and 
 trees—just such a worship as obtained everywhere else 
 in savage times. [he inhabitants of the land then were 
 people whom modern scholars call the Minoans, a race 
 whose writing has not yet been deciphered, and whose 
 history and religion are consequently but little known. 
 Judging from remains discovered in Crete and the Aegean 
 Islands, the chief deity of the Minoans seems to have 
 been a goddess who, like Ishtar of the Babylonians, was 
 an impersonation of the principle of fertility, or mother- 
 hood. But the Minoans had numerous other deities be- 
 sides her, some of them gods and most of them goddesses. 
 Only with the coming of the Indo-European Greeks 
 

 
 90 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 does the religion of the peninsula become better known 
 tous. “These invaders were of the same stock as the Hin- 
 dus and the other Aryans, and when they swept south- 
 ward from Central Europe sometime before 1200 B. C., 
 they brought with them their sky-god, Zeus Pater, and 
 all their other old Aryan deities. But once established 
 in their new home, they speedily merged their religion 
 
 4 Se +5 az 
 
 = = S———s 
 
 
 
 Ny \ ait 
 fine 
 
 heap 
 
 ANCIENT GREECE 
 
 with the one already existing in the land. They adopted 
 the deities of the native Minoans, calling them all rela- 
 tions of their own sky-god, Zeus Pater. The great 
 fertility-goddess of the Minoans was named Rhea and 
 called the mother of Zeus; another goddess, Hera, was 
 made his wife; a third, Athena, was called his daughter. 
 Two of the native gods were named Poseidon and Hades, 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 91 
 
 and were given to Zeus for brothers; another, Apollo 
 by name, was declared his son. Even the crude idols of 
 the Minoans, obvious sex symbols sacred to the goddess 
 of fertility, were taken over by the newcomers. And 
 thus a new religion came into being. In part it was a 
 fear-riddled, magic-mongering cult rooted in the half- 
 civilization of the Minoans; and in part it was the 
 shallow, light-hearted, myth-making cult of the barbaric 
 Greeks. 
 
 For many centuries the second element remained domi- 
 nant. When the minstrels of classic Greece sang of the 
 gods, they sang of glorified men: gay, lustful, brawling 
 heroes, who sported about on Mount Olympus without 
 giving the slightest heed to morality or property. And 
 there seems to have been no thought of any compelling 
 tie between the people and the gods. Even centuries 
 later the philosopher Aristotle solemnly wrote, ‘‘to love 
 God would be improper.”’ 
 
 But if the early Greeks did not love their deities, 
 neither did they greatly fear them. ‘The tales that are 
 called Homeric reveal almost no trace of any terror of 
 the gods. “The people seem to have regarded Zeus and 
 his divine family with a measure of fondness, perhaps 
 even with a measure of awe—but nothing more. Per- 
 haps this was because the priesthood never attained any 
 great power in ancient Greece. A well-organized priestly 
 caste inevitably succeeds in hammering the ‘‘fear of the 
 gods’’ deeply—usually too deeply—into the hearts of 
 the people. But no such caste ever existed among the 
 Greeks. The priests in the land were but minor state 
 officials who differed very little from laymen, save on the 
 rare occasions when sacrifices had to be formally offered 
 

 
 v2 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 to the gods. “The images of the gods were carved by 
 artists who thought only of beauty, not by holy men 
 bowed in terror or reverence. [he cult was solemn and 
 dignified, but far from intensely moving. ‘The ornate 
 sacrificial etiquette that marked the religions of Baby- 
 lonia and Egypt was largely unknown in early Greece. 
 
 2 
 
 BUT though that shallow, light-hearted cult man- 
 aged to persist for a while, ultimately it had no alterna- 
 tive but to fade away and be forgotten. or it lacked 
 warmth and fervor. It had too little of that commingled 
 terror and hope, too little of that blasting fear and 
 febrile yearning, which is the stuff whereof enduring 
 faiths are made. Essentially the cult was without point, 
 without much value or helpfulness in the business of 
 keeping alive. It held out neither a comforting hand nor 
 even a threatening fist to man. And therefore it could 
 not possibly keep alive itself. Had it possessed an 
 elaborate ritual and a politically powerful priesthood, no 
 doubt it could have subsisted much longer than it did. 
 (Well-intrenched ecclesiastical systems have protracted 
 the life of many an outworn religion.) But the Olym- 
 pian cult, as we have already seen, had never been able 
 to develop such a preservative for itself. For a while it 
 hung ripe on the bough of Greek thought, and then the 
 people allowed it to fall to the ground and rot there. 
 Both sage and boor, aristocrat and slave, turned from it 
 in despair. None of them found it to be the indis- 
 pensable viand that sustains life and makes it worth 
 while. To none of them could it bring salvation. So 
 
 tidied) ape 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 93 
 
 But it did not die of a sudden. Already by the sixth 
 century B. C. the vanity of the Olympian cult was sensed 
 by the keener minds in Athens and the other city-states 
 of Greece. But not until the fourth century did it really 
 give up the ghost. And during all those years of its 
 slow disintegration, new approaches to salvation were 
 being discovered by the Greeks. “The learned took to 
 philosophy, for they were far advanced in mentality and 
 fully able to extract satisfaction from such a discipline. 
 Had primitive fear swirled higher around them, of 
 course they would never have been capable of being 
 sustained by philosophy. “They would have resorted 
 instead to magic spells for help, and gone clutching be- 
 wilderedly at mythical spirits. But the flood of fear 
 had subsided, and only a slough of despond was left. It 
 was not terror, therefore, so much as disquiet that 
 spurred the learned folk of Hellas to go seeking salva- 
 tion. “The advance of the race out of the hazards of the 
 primeval forest had already made life posstble—but it 
 had not yet made life reasonable. Asa result, the Greek 
 sages were intent not so much on self-preservation as on 
 self-realization. . . . 
 
 And that was why they turned from the childish 
 vanities of the Olympian cult to the rigors of philosophy. 
 Through philosophy, that trying discipline of the mind 
 which indefatigably gropes and claws its way in the 
 hope that at last it can uncover the why of all things— 
 through philosophy the learned of Greece sought to at- 
 tain that sense of security which we call salvation. A 
 whole galaxy of sages deployed their forces in the realm 
 of the spirit, each of them bent on finding a means not 
 of material protection but of spiritual satisfaction. each 
 

 
 oat THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 of them grailing not so much for a way of living as for 
 the way of Life. 
 
 We are tempted to go off here at a tangent, and speak 
 at length of the great philosophers that ancient Greece 
 produced. ‘There was first of all Thales, who lived 
 fully twenty-six hundred years ago; then there were 
 Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Empedocles; 
 there were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Each of them, 
 in his own way and according to his own lights, went 
 groping, searching, after that sense of security without 
 which life is either terror or vanity. For the most part 
 they did not even bother to discuss the old religion and 
 the old gods. They simply shrugged their shoulders at 
 their mention, and passed them by. Occasionally a 
 dramatist, like Euripides, stopped to take a fling at them; 
 but the philosophers, as a general thing, let them alone. 
 They struck off along paths that led to new gods, or 
 rather, to a new idea of god, of the One God, whom 
 their new-found logic told them must be the ultimate 
 source of power in all the universe. Almost without 
 exception the sages seem to have been conscious of some 
 such unifying God. ‘Thales called Him “‘the Intelligence 
 of the world.’ ‘The Stoics described Him as ‘‘the Help- 
 ing of man by man.”’ Plato called Him “‘the Idea of © 
 Good.’’ And so most of the other philosophers. .. . 
 
 3 
 
 BUT the plain people, the masses, could not follow 
 along the steep, narrow paths of hard reason up which 
 the philosophers clambered. Indeed, they sometimes 
 resented the temerity of those philosophers, and violently 
 dragged them down. ‘They exiled Anaxagoras, and 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 95 
 
 Protagoras, and put the great Socrates to death. They 
 could not fathom what those philosophers were after. 
 The plain people of Greece were, after all, still quite 
 primitive. “They were not yet capable of wondering as 
 to the ultimate reason for living; they still wanted to 
 know just how to keep alive. With them the vital 
 problem was not self-realization, but still self-preserva- 
 tion. For they were still not at home in the universe. 
 They were still afraid! ... 
 
 Quite naturally, therefore, the plain people fell back 
 on magic. “The old Minoan element, that dark mum- 
 bling of spells between chattering teeth, came sweeping 
 back over the land in a mounting wave of hysteria. Even 
 in the gay, sunny days of Olympian worship there had 
 always been among the plain people a cowering worship 
 of ghosts. “There had always persisted a rooted belief 
 in the power of certain evil spirits to maim, sicken, and 
 kill; and always there had been the desire to placate those 
 spirits with sacrifices, or drive them away with spells or 
 a good beating. But now that primitive demon-wor- 
 ship no longer lurked in haggard woods or slum alley- 
 ways. It crawled out and began to flaunt itself in 
 the open. And there was none left in all Hellas to drive 
 it back. Like some loathsome nocturnal beast out of 
 the jungle it bared its fangs and went ravishing through 
 PrresiaiGdaee ss: 
 
 And side by side with this demon-worship there came 
 a second monster of faith: an ecstatic, drunken savior- 
 worship. In origin it seems to have been foreign to 
 Greece, an exotic thing from the hinterland and the 
 orient; but for all that it did not want for prey. The 
 cuck and scum of a bundred foreign populations had been 
 
96 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 dragged in chains to Athens and the other Greek cities. 
 Hordes of serfs and slaves festered in crowded slums, or 
 slaved in mines and fields and forests. And eagerly, 
 frenziedly those hordes threw themselves in the path of 
 this strange beast. Secret cults of mystic salvation arose 
 in every corner of the land, little sodalities preaching a 
 religion of ecstatic hope and orgiastic practice. “They 
 were called ‘‘Mysteries,’’ and almost without exception 
 they circled around the idea of a god who died and was 
 resurrected. As we have already seen, that idea was 
 obviously inspired by the sight of the annual death and 
 rebirth of the crops. [he idea was known and gave 
 rise to cults not alone in Egypt, but in almost all the 
 other Mediterranean lands. Indeed, throughout the 
 world one discovers signs of its quondam prevalence. 
 And that scattered dissemination was hardly due to wide- 
 spread borrowing from a single source; rather it was the 
 result of a widespread clutching in a single direction. 
 No matter how far the races of man may be scattered 
 across the face of the earth, they are all hounded by 
 similar dangers and cursed with similar fears. Asa con- 
 sequence they have all been forced to hit on more or less 
 similar means of defense. Mankind everywhere, in 
 Mexico and Iceland, in Zululand and China, makes 
 more or less the same wild guesses in its convulsive effort 
 to solve the riddle of existence. And that is why we 
 find this complex idea of a slain and resurrected god 
 common in many parts of the world. It was one of 
 those guesses. one of those blindly hopeful snatches after 
 security, which a race drowning in insecurity instinc- 
 tively felt forced to make, no matter where it dwelt. 
 
 In very early times that idea flourished not alone 
 
REEIGIONTING THEVANGCIENT WORLD. 97 
 
 among the Babylonians and Egyptians, but also among 
 the barbaric tribes in and around Greece. Among the 
 latter it gave rise to a whole farrago of myths telling how 
 some god—Dionysus, Zagreus, Zabazius, or Orpheus— 
 had once upon a time gone madly careering through 
 the woods, had been torn to pieces and destroyed, 
 and then had been magically restored to life again. 
 And as a corollary of those myths there had arisen 
 the companion belief that by imitative magic every 
 human being could repeat that divine experience. Every 
 mortal could take on immortality simply by doing 
 as the god had done. A man had only to eat the 
 flesh and guzzle the blood of the animal sacred to 
 his savior-god, whirl around in orgiastic passion, 
 hack at his own flesh in madness, and shout, scream, 
 howl to the skies, and then in a moment of frenzy—an 
 “enthusiasm’’ it was called in Greek—he was of a sudden 
 overwhelmed by the conviction that he actually was the 
 god! He had to experience a mystical orgasm that sent 
 silver, sensory storms sweeping through his flesh, that set 
 a diapason of nerves quivering in his rigid body, that 
 lifted him up, up, up, till with a sob of unendurable 
 ecstasy he felt all the evil literally gush out of his being 
 
 . and then he knew himself at last to be— 
 cavinelt 24... 
 
 4 
 
 SUCH was the wild flame that burnt in most of the 
 mysteries; and one cannot wonder that myriads in 
 Greece went flocking to it once the sun of Olympian 
 worship could no longer warm their blood. It gave 
 them hope and cheer; it won them Paradise. It gave 
 
98 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 them life—life in some other and better world—tife im- 
 mortal and ever-blessed. And that was, after all, the 
 ultimate want of the submerged masses in Greece. “hey 
 had given up this world as hopeless, as utterly barren 
 of all chance of joy for them. ‘Those wretched helots, 
 ground in the dust beneath the heel of the upper classes, 
 could not possibly see any remaining hope of peace for 
 them in this vale of tears. But being still human, still 
 charged with that insensate Will to Live which is life’s 
 primal spark in man, they could not sit supinely by and 
 let death overtake them. No, they had still to want 
 for life, for restful, blessed, enduring life. Only they 
 had perforce to want it in some other world... . 
 Now the old Olympian worship had done nothing to 
 satisfy that want. Only the half-divine heroes—and not 
 all even of them—vwere assured a life in the Elysian 
 Fields when death took them from this earth. Ordinary 
 men, no matter how righteous and worthy, were all 
 consigned to Hades after death. “There in dank subter- 
 ranean realms their spectral forms, bereft of bones and 
 sinews, swept ‘‘shadow-like around,” and chattered tone- 
 lessly like so many bats. They knew no bliss, no rest, 
 no peace—only unbroken gloom and misery. No won- 
 der Achilles cried: ‘‘Nay, speak not comfortingly to me 
 of death, O great Odysseus. Far rather would I live 
 on earth the hireling of another, with a landless man who 
 is himself destitute, than bear sway over all the dead 
 that be departed!’ . . . But the new worship, these 
 mysteries come down from Thrace or across the sea 
 from Egypt and Asia Minor, told a far different tale. 
 They declared that for every man, no matter how poor 
 or vicious, there was a place in heaven. All one had to 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 99 
 
 do was to be “‘initiated’’ into the secrets of the cult, puri- 
 fying oneself by baptism in blood or water, dancing 
 the sacred dances, partaking of the sacred offering, and 
 finally gazing on certain very sacred and mysterious 
 cult objects. Once a man performed those rites, then 
 salvation was assured him, and no excess of vice and 
 moral turpitude could close the gates of paradise in his 
 face. He was saved forevermore! ... | 
 
 Perhaps as early as 1000 B. c. the Greeks were already 
 practicing what were called the Eleusinian mysteries; 
 but these were of a relatively sober and formal character. 
 Not until the sixth century B.C. do we hear of more 
 violent and primitive mysteries in Greece, and then they 
 are associated with the name of Orpheus. They were 
 imported largely from Thrace, where they had long been 
 indulged in by barbaric tribes; and the faith-hungry 
 Greeks took to them with avidity. For one thing, there 
 was the element of dread secrecy about these strange 
 mysteries—and secrecy has always been enormously at- 
 tractive to inferior minds. Only those who were sol- 
 emnly initiated into the cult could have any knowledge 
 of its secrets, or enjoy the immortal bliss which that 
 knowledge was supposed to confer. All others were 
 condemned to writhe forever in a foul, loathsome 
 Brel ipa. 
 
 These Orphic mysteries therefore flourished luxuri- 
 antly, as did the many other mysteries that later invaded 
 Greece. When the cults of the Egyptian Osiris and of 
 the Phrygian Attis were introduced, they too won ini- 
 tiates by the thousand. It was inevitable that they 
 should do so, for the lure they held out was irresistible 
 to the people. Before the eyes of a mob of low-caste 
 
100 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 peasants and slum-dwelling slaves they dangled a high 
 promise, a glittering hope. “They offered divinity, im- 
 mortality, paradise, and all at the price of orgies which 
 seemed in themselves a delirious delight. How then 
 could they possibly be resisted? .. . 
 
 And the vogue of those irresistible mysteries brought 
 the ancient religion of ancient Greece to an end. Only 
 the mysteries survived, increasing in complexity genera- 
 tion after generation, and spreading throughout all the 
 lands bordering the Mediterranean. Even after Chris- 
 tianity came they still flourished. Indeed they almost 
 made Christianity itself another mystery. 
 
 But that is another story. ... 
 
 V. THE ROMANS 
 
 THE religious history of Rome was in many respects 
 strikingly like that of Greece. It began, of course, in 
 the universal primitive belief that all objects are animated 
 by resident or roving spirits. But the chief of these 
 spirits were of a peculiar type in Rome, being not tribal 
 but family deities. “That was because the early Romans 
 ‘were a farming folk divided not into large units like 
 tribes, but into small families. Naturally enough, the 
 primal aim of the religion was the perpetuation of these 
 small families; and the principal spirits, therefore, were 
 those which guarded the home. Each man was believed 
 to have what was called a Genius, a spirit personifying 
 his virility; and each woman had what was called 
 a Juno, a spirit personifying her power to conceive. 
 (The early Romans, like most other primitive peoples, 
 were driven by their constant struggle against extinction 
 to consider the power of reproduction a miraculous and 
 
RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 101 
 
 highly divine thing.) The threshold of every house had 
 its guardian spirit called Janus, just as the hearth had its 
 Vesta, the storeroom had its Penates, and the farm had 
 its Lares. 
 
 The favor of these spirits was courted with simple 
 ceremonies on fixed holy days, each family having its 
 own altar on its own land, and its own priest in the 
 person of the pater familias, the father of the family. 
 Some of the spirits were also worshipped with minor 
 rites observed in everyday life. or instance, after every 
 midday meal a sort of ‘grace’ was offered to Vesta by 
 throwing a salt cake into the hearth-fire. 
 
 But this simple family cult had to give way in time 
 to a less primitive form of religion. Harried by con- 
 tinual attacks of enemy tribes, the little family groups 
 were forced to consolidate into the city-state of Rome; 
 and then a state religion arose. It centered chiefly around 
 a god of war who was called Mars (it was just like the 
 Romans to make a god of war their chief deity), and 
 included the worship also of other gods, especially a 
 sky-god, Jupiter, the Roman version of the Greek 
 Zeus-pater. The king of the city-state was the high- 
 priest of this newer Roman religion, and numerous minor 
 priests aided him at the state altars. But there was no 
 great fervor in the cult, for it was far more a political 
 than a religious institution. It was a formal, civic affair, 
 and though many festivals were listed in its elaborate 
 calendar, no demands were made on the people to take 
 a passionate partin them. Most of those festivals must 
 have antedated the state religion, for they were marked 
 by magic rites of evident primitiveness. There was, 
 for instance, the Lupercalia, a festival at which the wor- 
 

 
 102 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 shippers smeared themselves with sacrificial blood from 
 a dog or goat, sponged themselves with milk-soaked 
 wads of wool, clad themselves in goat-skins, and then 
 danced through the streets of the city, striking the women 
 they met with bits of skin to make them fertile... . 
 ‘Then there was the Saturnalia, celebrated on the 25th of 
 December, the signal for more wild dancing, and espe- 
 cially for giving gifts and lighting many candles. . 
 
 But the old family religion still persisted, despite the 
 institution of this state cult. The worship of the hearth 
 spirits still went on, and still a great concern was felt 
 about evil ghosts and demons. For protection, fire- 
 brands used to be tied to the tails of foxes, who were 
 then let loose in the fields to frighten away the crop- 
 devouring demons. For further protection, men and 
 cattle were passed through fire so that they might be 
 magically purified. “Taboos of a thousand varieties to 
 ward off as many sorts of danger were scrupulously ob- 
 served in every house in the growing town. The 
 religion of the city-state of Rome was only supposed to 
 be the new state cult; actually the people still clung to 
 the family cult of earlier days. . . . 
 
 A distinct change did occur, however, about the sixth 
 century B. C. It came as an after-effect of the invasion 
 of the Etruscans, a race with apparently higher capacities 
 for civilization than the original Romans. They took 
 over the state religion and made it a thing of far greater 
 importance than ever it had been before. New gods were 
 introduced: Minerva, Diana, and others. A college of 
 priests was founded, and the priesthood was organized 
 under a chief who was called Pontifex Maximus. For 
 the first time in the history of Rome temples were built, 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 103 
 
 and images of the gods were placed in them and wor- 
 shipped. 
 
 But even then the state religion remained in large part 
 a formal affair. It had too little emotional drive, too 
 slight a relation to fear and hope, ever to be able ta 
 enter deep into the life of the people. The priests were 
 more or less civic officials who were left to attend toa 
 the gods much as in constitutional monarchies the 
 chamberlains are left to attend to the kings. The gods 
 demanded that the vows the people made to them should 
 be most scrupulously observed; but they insisted on very 
 little else. “They were not immoral or venal, like the 
 gods of the Olympian religion, but neither were they 
 puritanically moral or tyrannically strict, like, for in- 
 stance, the God of the Hebrews. They seemed to be 
 quite content with purely formal obeisance. . . . 
 
 ys 
 
 OF course, such a religion, clean but not very ex- 
 citing, proper but not very compelling, could not persist 
 for long. Between 500 and 200 B. C. it deteriorated 
 and sank into almost complete bankruptcy. The whole 
 structure rotted away from corruption, and finally 
 toppled to the ground. And with it toppled the family 
 religion. Rome by that time had become a vast empire: 
 rich, mighty, and not a little dissolute. Roman citizens 
 had gone forth as soldiers or traders to the farthest ends 
 of the known world, and had come back spoiled. The 
 old Roman family, which had been so important a fac- 
 tor of social health in the early life of the people, fell 
 into decay; and with it the old family gods went into 
 the limbo. The priests became grafting politicians, and 
 
104 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 their training colleges mere political clubs. And then 
 the old order ended. 
 
 But as fast as the old gods fell away, new gods arose. 
 For the most part they were the savior-gods of the 
 Orient, those lusty relics of the savage past which were 
 immortal in more than myth. “The Roman legions had 
 gone out to conquer all the world, only to come back 
 conquered by all its gods. “he mysteries that had spread 
 like a plague throughout Greece in the days of its decay 
 now found similar soil in which to-flourish in Rome. 
 As early as 200 B. C. the cult of Cybele, “‘the Great 
 Mother of the Gods,’’ was brought to the city. Imported 
 from Asia Minor, where it may have developed out of 
 the old Babylonian worship of Ishtar, this mystery 
 found its chief sanctuary on the Vatican Hill—almost 
 on the precise spot where the basilica of St. Peters now 
 stands. “There, and wherever else in the empire the cult 
 had a following, spring festivals of almost incredible 
 bestiality were held. “[he people gathered around altars 
 erected under sacred trees, and amid the thundering of 
 drums, the screeching of flutes, and the clashing of 
 cymbals, they wildly sought salvation of their goddess. 
 First the lower priests, excited by the barbaric music, 
 would begin to whirl themselves around convulsively. 
 With mad eyes and streaming hair they would whirl 
 themselves around until, rapt in a frenzy and insensible 
 to pain, they would begin to hack at their own flesh— 
 hack and slash at their own bodies until both altar and 
 tree were red with their spurting blood. And then the 
 spectators, caught up and swept out of their minds by 
 the tumult, would suddenly join in the dance. A mad 
 light would leap into their eyes at the sight of the blood 
 

 
 ——E 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 105 
 
 and the sound of the throbbing music; jaws would open 
 wide in their waggling heads, and limbs would swing 
 out flail-like to the beat-beat of drums and cymbals. 
 And then first one, then another, would suddenly tear 
 off all his clothes, and with a manic shout would seize 
 a sword from the heap ready at hand. Howling with 
 ecstasy he would hack at himself until, exhausted at last, 
 he fell and lay bleeding in a ditch. 
 
 Of course, such self-mutilation was not the ordinary 
 act of devotion in the cult of Cybele. Only those of the 
 extremest faith, those who desired to become actual 
 priests of the goddess, ever went to such excesses. But 
 even the common followers, the ordinary first-degree 
 initiates, went through rites which were more than ade- 
 quately grucsome. ‘There was, for example, the rite 
 called the Tauroboleum. ‘The candidate was placed ina 
 pit and then washed in the blood of a bull slaughtered 
 over his head. He had to lave himself in the warm blood 
 as it came dripping through the crevices between the 
 planks covering the pit; he had to crane up avidly and 
 receive it on his face, in his ears, his eyes, even his mouth. 
 And thus he was initiated into the mystery. . . . Mad- 
 ness? No, merely logic gone wild because based on a wild 
 hypothesis. The first axiom of primitive magic held 
 that any quality could be acquired merely by consuming 
 the proper part of a creature already possessing that 
 quality. For instance, a man could take on his enemy’s 
 strength merely by eating his enemy’s liver; he could 
 acquire his father’s cunning simply by consuming his 
 father’s eyes. So to acquire his god’s immortality it 
 seemed only necessary to quaff that god’s blood—a feat 
 not at all impossible because the god was usually 
 

 
 106 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 imagined to be incarnate in some sacred human being or 
 animal. Such was the logic, false but plausible, which 
 led to blood-guzzlings like those in the cult of Cybele. 
 Such was the reasoning, cracked but intensely human, 
 which led men in Rome to seek salvation through the 
 Tauroboleum. 
 
 Closely associated with this orgiastic worship of 
 Cybele there was also the worship of her lover, Attis. 
 This god Attis was believed to have been conceived 
 immaculately in the womb of a virgin, and was said to 
 have died of self-immolation at the base of a tree. 
 Attis was of course but another version of Tammuz, 
 Adonis, Dionysus, Orpheus, and Osiris, a god of vegeta- 
 tion who died and was reborn every year. His ‘‘passion”’ 
 was enacted every spring in Rome, much as the “‘passion”’ 
 of Osiris was enacted annually in Egypt. The festival 
 began with a “‘day of blood’’—the pagan Black Friday 
 —commemorating the death of the young god; and 
 after three days it reached a climax in the “‘day of joy,” 
 commemorating the god’s resurrection. . . . But Attis 
 was by no means the only one of the savior-gods to be 
 imported into Rome. The Greek Dionysus, renamed 
 Bacchus by the Latins, also had his myriads of followers, 
 as did the Egyptian Osiris. Nor was Cybele the only 
 mother-goddess, for many of the Romans preferred to 
 worship Isis, or Ma, or Bellona, or some other of those 
 whoring fertility-spirits common in all of the Orient. 
 Indeed, it is quite impossible to give a definitive account 
 of all the mystery gods and goddesses whose cults were 
 permitted to flourish in imperial Rome. 
 

 
 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 107 
 
 3 
 
 OF course, none of these mysteries could make any 
 great appeal to the learned among the Romans. ‘The 
 higher classes in the republic were forced to drift along 
 without any faith whatsoever. ‘he old state religion 
 had long lost its power to hold them, and they looked 
 on the ancient gods of Rome as either patent frauds or 
 mere figures of speech. Among the higher classes even 
 as much as among the lower, the old state religion seemed 
 as dead as a carcass three days old. . . . But it was not. 
 A spark of life still lingered in it, and in time there 
 came a man with the will and power to breathe it into 
 flame again. “That man was Augustus, one of the out- 
 standing figures in Roman history. In the year 31 B.C. 
 he took hold of a republic in a state of advanced corrup- 
 tion, and by intrigue and shrewdness converted it into 
 a sound and flourishing empire. It was solely in order 
 to make that empire firm that he set himself the task 
 of reviving the old religion. He could not possibly 
 use the alien mysteries to attain that end, for those mys- 
 teries were in their very nature a divisive and not a 
 cohesive force. They addressed themselves primarily 
 to the individual, not to the group; they promised in- 
 dividual, not social, salvation. Besides, they had little 
 concern with this world and its upstart empires. They 
 were concerned only with the other world and its eternal 
 joys. So Augustus saw no reason to favor the mysteries. 
 On the contrary, he sought to drive them out of exist- 
 ence by lending all his power and prestige to the mori- 
 bund state religion. He built great temples everywhere, 
 equipping them with beautiful idols of the old gods. 
 
108 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 He thoroughly reorganized the priesthood, making 
 himself its head. “Then he went further—a long, long 
 way further. He realized that, though there were 
 already many gods, each with his own following in 
 the empire, there was no imperial God to whom all 
 might pay homage. So to supply the need he nominated 
 himself! By a decree of his own as Emperor, he made 
 himself the Deity Supreme! He commanded that the 
 guardian spirit of his own person, his ‘‘Genius,’’ be wor- 
 shipped in every city throughout the empire; and poets 
 and writers were hired to invent legends telling how he, 
 Augustus, had been originally fashioned in heaven and 
 miraculously brought to the world to save it. And 
 as long as he lived, this religion he built around himself 
 flourished everywhere in the empire—everywhere save, 
 of course, in Palestine, where dwelt the Jews. 
 
 But even the revival under Augustus could not stay 
 the debacle of the old religion. On the contrary, it may 
 perhaps have hastened it. It but opened the way for 
 one more corroding element: the human gods. Suc- 
 ceeding emperors emulated Augustus, deifying them- 
 selves, and sometimes also their wives, their mistresses, 
 even their lewd boy-companions. In time there were 
 almost forty names on the roster of these monstrous 
 gods! . . . And meanwhile more and more of the gods 
 of the East came pouring into the imperial city. ... 
 
 There seemed to be but one sane element left, the 
 Cynics. “The word cynic—with a small ‘‘c’’—now con- 
 notes a disillusioned, sneering, hopeless individual: but 
 in the days when its initial letter was capitalized the 
 word connoted an altogether different sort of man. The 
 Cynics of that time were preaching philosophers, exalted 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 109 
 
 souls who felt themselves called upon to drag the people 
 out of the sinkholes of superstition in which they 
 floundered. ‘These Cynics stood on the corners of the 
 market-place, or on temple steps, and harangued the 
 people to abjure the wild existences they were leading 
 and go back to the simple, natural life. “They assured 
 them there was but one way of Salvation: common 
 sense. [hey summoned the people to be brave and 
 wise; to be virtuous; above all, to be calm and exercise 
 good horse sense! ... 
 
 4 
 
 BUT, despite all their devotion and eagerness, it was 
 impossible for those Cynics to work any profound 
 change in their fellow-men. The people could not be 
 satisfied with the little joys afforded by common sense. 
 They were tired, exhausted. Their forbears had wan- 
 dered off to all the ends of the earth, traversing seas and 
 mountains and deserts and swamps, invading, besieging, 
 despoiling, and laying waste. For centuries on end they 
 had been running to and fro across the face of the globe. 
 And now the stock was run out. Their decadent off- 
 spring were in no mood for calm common sense; they 
 had no appetite for staid virtue. “They wanted passion, 
 excitement! . . . And so now even more than before 
 they took to the mysteries. It is true that the cults of 
 Cybele, Isis, and Bacchus began to wane a little in their 
 popularity; but that was only because a new cult had 
 come to take their places. It was the cult of Mithras, 
 imported from Persia, where it had arisen out of those 
 primitive elements which the prophet Zoroaster had 
 failed to stamp out. It had spread since from one land 
 to another, from Persia to Babylonia, from Babylonia 
 
A 
 
 110 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 to the Ionian Isles, and from the Ionian Isles finally to 
 Rome. It entered there about the first century B.C., 
 and so ready were the Romans to receive it that soon it 
 was almost dominant in the empire. 
 
 The root of the mystery was an ancient Persian 
 legend which told of a divine hero named Mithras 
 whose miraculous birth had been witnessed only by a 
 few shepherds come from afar with gifts to adore the 
 wonder-child. Mithras grew up to be the most strenu- 
 ous champion of the sun-god in his war against the god 
 of darkness, and the climax of his career was a life-and- 
 death struggle with a mythical sacred bull. By finally 
 slaying this bull and letting its blood flood the earth, 
 Mithras gave life to the soil, and earned immortality for 
 himself. Straightway he was exalted to the abode of the 
 Immortals, and there he dwelt as the divine protector of 
 all:the faithfultonseartha aimee 
 -- Long before the advent of Christianity we find a 
 significant religion and an elaborate ritual crystallizing 
 , around that legend of Mithras. To this day there exist 
 _ along the Danube and in Northern Africa certain sub- 
 terranean caves in which are statues and carvings de- 
 picting scenes in the tale. Those caves were the secret 
 churches of the Mithraists, and in them all manner of 
 magic rites were once performed. Three times a day, 
 with especial elaborateness on the Sun-day and the 
 twenty-fifth of December, the Mithras priests offered 
 services in the caves. Libations were poured, bells were 
 rung, hymns were chanted, and many candles were 
 burnt. Above all, holy sacraments were administered 
 to the initiated. The flesh of a sacrificial animal was 
 eaten, and its blood was drunk, and thus the celebrants 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 111 
 
 
 
 were thought to take on the divinity and immortality 
 of their blessed lord, Mithras. By a primitive process 
 of reasoning which we have already described in con- 
 nection with the Cybele cult, the Mithraists galloped to 
 the comforting conclusion that the mere consumption 
 of the supposed flesh and blood of the god assured them 
 of life everlasting. When they died on this earth they 
 expected to ascend to Heaven through seven gates, un- 
 locked by seven keys which the Mithras priests pos- 
 sessed, and in Heaven they hoped to dwell with Mithras 
 until the final Judgment Day. All the unbaptized, both 
 living and dead, were to be totally annihilated on that 
 Judgment Day. Only the redeemed were to be saved, 
 and Mithras, come to earth a second and final time, 
 would administer to each of them a last sacrament, and 
 then cause them to inherit the world in peace and blessed- 
 ness forevermore. . . 
 
 Such in brief was the theology and ritual of Mith- 
 raism. It was in all respects a purer mystery than those 
 that had proceeded it. It had a distinct ethical content, 
 and showed little tendency to encourage riotous and 
 orgiastic practices. As a result it showed promise of 
 persisting far longer than the other cults. Though 
 
 equally fervent, it was less hysterical than its rivals; 
 _ though just as certain of its validity, it was far less given 
 to emotional excess. By the first century A. D. it loomed 
 up as the foremost religion in the Empire; by the second 
 century it seemed destined to become the lasting religion 
 of all the Western world. And perhaps it would have 
 actually fulfilled that destiny—had it not been for Chris- 
 tranity... 
 
 But again. that is another story... . 
 
112 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 5 
 
 AND with Mithraism in Rome we close this book of 
 the religions of the ancient world. “There were other 
 religions that had their beginnings in that ancient world: 
 but we shall have to tell of them later, for unlike the 
 ones already described, they lived on. Neither the 
 decay of civilizations nor debacle of empires could de- 
 stroy those other religions. Again and again they were 
 rent and broken; again and again they were well-nigh 
 wiped out. Century after century they were changed 
 almost beyond recognition. But nevertheless they lived 
 on. And that is why we have to leave their stories to 
 be told separately and at greater length... . 
 
 As for these religions whereof we have already 
 spoken—they died. “They did not entirely disappear, 
 of course. No, fragments of them survived. Isolated 
 rites, festive days, theological notions, even some of 
 their god-names, persisted. “They took up their abode 
 —albeit furtively, clandestinely—in the religions that 
 endured. And there they persist to this day. . . . For 
 that reason one cannot well refer to those cults of Baby- 
 lon, Egypt, and the rest as the ‘‘dead religions.”’ Actu- 
 ally they are not dead at all, for the echo of their 
 ancient thunder is still to be heard reverberating in 
 almost every form of faith existing today. They are 
 dead only in name... . 
 
 But that is not their only, nor their most urgent, 
 claim on our attention. Those ancient cults would 
 deserve to be studied even if not one of their rites or 
 myths still survived in the world. For the development 
 of those cults marked the development of an entirely 
 novel idea in religion. Until the advent of the Osirian 
 
RELIGION IN THE. ANCIENT WORLD. 113 
 
 and the other mysteries, the whole aim of religion was 
 the wresting of terrestrial favors from the gods. Primi- 
 tive man uttered spells and offered oblations solely be- 
 cause he desired to make his life here on earth less fear- 
 ful and insecure. But when man advanced beyond the 
 _ primitive, and for the first time paused to consider just 
 what chances he really had of satisfying his desire, he 
 slowly began to realize how naive and foolish he had 
 been. And then despair overwhelmed him. Like a 
 day-dreaming boy suddenly brought face to face with 
 the harsh, sharp, exigent realities of life, his heart sank 
 and he.stood ready to give up the fight. It was hopeless, 
 he told himself. “This world was irredeemable and this 
 life utterly vain. “There was no chance, not the slightest, 
 of ever attaining peace and security here on earth. All 
 the spells and prayers and sacrifices imaginable could be 
 of no worth in this vale of tears... . 
 
 But still he could not surrender utterly. The hunger 
 for self-preservation was still mighty in the bones of 
 man, and he could not possibly lie down and let himself 
 be annihilated. No, instead he was forced to fly back 
 to his old illusions, assuring himself that despite all 
 realities he still could attain peace and joy. Only now 
 man began to look for those blessings not in this life 
 but in some other. Bowing to what seemed the in- 
 superable tyrannies governing the natural world, he 
 now comforted himself with the tale that his triumph 
 must come in a super-natural world. With that in- 
 evasible life-lust which is at once the sorriest vice and the 
 mightiest virtue of mankind, our ancestor incontinently 
 transferred all his hopes from a tangible earth to a hypo- 
 thetical heaven! ... 
 
114 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 The social effect of that great religious change can 
 hardly be overestimated. For one thing, it made it 
 possible for the few to exploit the many with unprece- 
 dented ease and impunity. So long as the credulous 
 masses were content to look to some other world for 
 their triumph, the crafty few were safe to enjoy their 
 triumph in this one. So long as the meek were con- 
 cerned only over their treasures in heaven, the strong 
 were left free to steal all the treasures of the earth. And 
 to such an egregious degree has this other-world hope 
 fattened the crafty at the expense of the simple during 
 these last two thousand years, that nowadays there are 
 some who maintain it was from the very first simply a 
 stratagem devised by the crafty to attain that very end. 
 Of course, such a theory cannot be taken seriously. It 
 is obviously pure romance to imagine so human a hope 
 to have been deliberately foisted on humanity by a 
 handful of greedy priests or princes. Undoubtedly such 
 men did take all possible advantage of the hope—once 
 it had come into being. But that was all. They no 
 more created that belief in another world than they 
 created the belief in ghosts or gods. The poor man’s 
 dream of heaven was but one more of those wild clutches 
 after security which make up the whole spiritual his- 
 tory of the race. And it was as unpremeditated, as 
 thoroughly natural and inevitable, as the _ thirsty 
 bedouin’s sight of a mirage... . 
 
 But all that is a matter of secondary importance. Our 
 main concern is the nature, not the origin or even the 
 effect, of this other-world hope. Quite clearly it differed 
 in kind, not merely in degree, from the more primitive 
 hope confined to this world. Perhaps it was even due 
 

 
 RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 115 
 
 to a different impulse. The Celt was driven to religion 
 by fear; but the “‘civilized’’ Greek and Roman was 
 moved rather by despair. The former wanted to know 
 merely how to keep alive on earth; but the latter desired 
 rather to know the answer to the question why. Even 
 the exploited pleb sweating in the slums of Rome was 
 advanced enough to wonder what it was all about. Why 
 was he here on earth? Where was he going? What did 
 it all mean anyway? . . 
 
 And therein lies the one truly fundamental advance 
 marking the development of religion in the ancient 
 world. The whole impulse to believe took on a changed 
 character. Men were no longer driven to the gods by 
 the common animal hunger for self-preservation; they 
 were moved rather by the high human yearning for self- 
 pacification. 
 
 And that was no slight advance. . . . 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 BOOK THREE 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 
 
 BRAHMANISM 
 
 1: The primitive Aryan gods—the Vedas. 2: The Aryans 
 move to the Ganges—caste—the brahmins. 3: The Upanishads 
 Sten Over-Soul—transmigration—Nirvana—the growth of 
 asceticism. 
 
 JAINISM 
 
 1: Mahavira—his gospel. 2: How the gospel of Mahavira was 
 corrupted—Jainism today. 
 
 BUDDHISM 
 
 1: The story of Gautama. 2: His gospel—its implications— 
 the Law of Karma. 3: How Gautama spread his gospel. 4: 
 Early history of Buddhism—deification of Buddha—Asoka— 
 the new Buddhism in China—Tibet—Japan—India-—Ceylon. 
 
 HINDUISM 
 
 1: The dominant religion in India today—caste—the trinity— 
 the divisiveness in Hinduism. 2: Vishnu—the avatars—the 
 Bhagavad-Gita—Krishna—theology in Vishnuism. 3: Shiva— 
 his popularity—the Tantra—sex in religion. 4: Hindu philos- 
 ophy—yoga—the mystic ecstasy. 5: The religion of the 
 lower classes. 
 
 118 
 
BOOK THREE 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 
 I. BRAHMANISM 
 
 fa ,O ONE can say for certain, but it 
 f seems probable that before the 
 first white man entered India, the 
 land was populated entirely by a 
 snub-nosed, black-skinned peo- 
 ple. By what means those black 
 savages tried to cope with the 
 universe, by what illusions they 
 tried to make their life livable, 
 no one knows. Nor does anyone 
 know, save very vaguely, the na- 
 ture of India’s religion even during the first centuries 
 after the coming of the white man. ‘The first white 
 invaders of India belonged to what is loosely termed 
 the Aryan race: the stock that also produced the 
 Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, and most 
 of the other peoples of Europe. About four or five 
 thousand years ago they broke through the passes of the 
 Hindu Kush Mountains, and then settled down in the 
 fertile valley of the Indus. They were warriors and 
 shepherds, a crude, simple folk who seemed to be only 
 slightly less uncivilized than were the black men whom 
 they drove before them. Their religion was a low fear 
 of many spirits, among them being ‘“‘three and thirty 
 119 
 
 
 

 
 120 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 gods’’ who were worshipped with oblations of beer— 
 soma it was called—on a spread of straw. It was, 
 therefore, an advanced form of animism, a nature-wor- 
 ship in which the more important spirits were no longer 
 thought to animate mere sticks or stones but rather vast 
 phenomena such as the sun and the sky. 
 
 The most important of these spirits was one called 
 Indra, usually pictured as a_ boasting, gluttonous, 
 drunken brawler controlling the wind and the rain. 
 Besides him there were several other deities who had 
 most seriously to be reckoned with: Dyaush Pitar (re- 
 lated to Zeus Pater and Jupiter), who was the sky-god; 
 Asura, the “Wise Spirit of Heaven’; Agni, the god of 
 fire (the Sanskrit name is related to our English word 
 “agnite’); Mithra, a sun-god (the remote ancestor, of 
 course, of the Roman mystery-god Mithras); Soma, 
 the principle of intoxication become a god; and various 
 others. 
 
 Certain of these gods the Aryan invaders must have 
 brought with them from the unknown cradle-land 
 whence they had come; others quite clearly must have 
 been developed in the new home. Most of them, how- 
 ever, must have been worshipped only by single tribes, 
 for so soon as the tribes began to merge, many of those 
 gods disappeared. From early times there seems to 
 have been a steady drift in Aryan India toward a syn- 
 thesis, an amalgamation of the gods. 
 
 In the beginning the means by which the Aryans 
 courted the favor of these gods was exceedingly simple. 
 ‘The father of each family was the priest, and the mother 
 was the priestess. There were no temples, and indeed 
 no permanent holy places of any kind. . . . But what 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 121 
 
 happened in the rest of the world soon happened also 
 in India. In the hope of cajoling the gods more effec- 
 tively, the ritual was gradually elaborated. “Then pro- 
 fessional sacrificers arose—priests whose services at the 
 altar were imagined to be somehow more efficacious 
 than the services of ordinary men. And by these priests 
 the ritual was elaborated and complicated still further. 
 They created a vast literature of psalms and magic spells 
 to recite at the altars in order to get a firmer hold on 
 the gods—a literature still preserved in what are called 
 the Vedas. “The word veda is related to the English 
 word “‘wit,’’ and the German word “‘wissen.’’ Broadly 
 interpreted it means ‘“‘knowledge,”’ but refers specifically 
 to that sort of knowledge which will aid a man to win 
 the protection of the gods. ‘There are more than a 
 hundred books in existence which are called Vedas, but 
 many of them are little known even to the most erudite 
 scholars today. Of them all the oldest and most impor- 
 tant is called the Rig Veda, a collection of over a thou- 
 sand hymns which date back perhaps as far as 2000 B. c. 
 
 2 
 
 THIS Vedic literature—or much of it, at least—was 
 developed while the Aryan population was still con- 
 fined to the valley of the Indus. Many years passed in 
 that fertile region before overcrowding forced the white 
 men to penetrate further into the land; but then a heavy 
 migration began southward toward the valley of the 
 Ganges. ‘There it halted for a while, and there a new 
 civilization arose. ‘The life of the Aryan took on an 
 entirely new character in this changed environment. 
 For one thing the distinctions between the various classes 
 
1Z2 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 of human beings had to be emphasized as never before. 
 The white invaders grew terrified lest in time the identity 
 of their stock might be lost in the welter of the far larger 
 black population. It was the ancient hunger for self- 
 preservation manifesting itself once more, the old, old 
 hunger for continued life for the race as well as the indi- 
 vidual. And to satisfy that hunger the Aryans resorted 
 to the most desperate expedient imaginable. They raised 
 up a towering religious and social barrier of caste to pro- 
 tect themselves from the blacks. (In Sanskrit the one 
 word varnu means both caste and color.) And across 
 that barrier they forbade not merely intermarriage, but 
 also every form of social and religious intercourse. 
 White was white and black was black, and ne’er the 
 twain were supposed to meet. . 
 
 Of course, the expedient failed to accomplish its pur- 
 pose, as we can see from the fact that all Hindus today, 
 high-caste as well as low, are black. But though it 
 failed utterly in that direction, it proved all too success- 
 fulin another. ‘hough it could not keep whites physi- 
 cally separated from blacks, it was soon all too effective 
 in keeping whites socially separated from each other. 
 For once the idea of caste took root in the land, it began 
 to spread like a veritable plague. Soon it began to dis- 
 tinguish not merely between whites and blacks, but also 
 between white priests and white chieftains, and then be- 
 tween white chieftains and white farmers, and finally 
 between white farmers and white serfs. It was natural. 
 of course, for the priests—the brahmins they were called 
 —to emerge at the very top of this monstrous social 
 system. As long as they alone were deemed able to 
 placate and cajole the gods, so long were they alone able 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 123 
 
 to command the highest respect of men. Even the 
 rajahs, the princes, had to rank below them... . 
 
 With great power there came as a matter of course 
 the opportunity of acquiring great wealth. Riches liter- 
 ally flooded into the coffers of the brahmins. From 
 every sacrifice to the gods the priests were permitted to 
 take no mean portion for themselves; and besides they 
 did not scruple to accompany even their most poetic 
 prayers and loftiest adorations with open bids for extra 
 ““‘bakhsheesh.” . . . And with great wealth came the 
 opportunity of acquiring still greater power. In time 
 the priests, not content with their supremacy over men, 
 began to covet supremacy over the very gods. And 
 they actually managed to achieve it, too! They began 
 by exalting the importance of the ritual, saying: ‘“The 
 whole world was created by the sacrificial rite; from the 
 sacrificial rite the very gods are sprung. . . . Assuredly 
 the sun would not rise if the priest did not make sacri- 
 fice.’” And from that they went to exalting themselves, 
 saying: *“The whole universe is subject to the gods, the 
 gods to the spells, and the spells to the brahmins; there- 
 fore the brahmins are our gods!’’ “They came to look 
 upon the gods almost with disdain, and treated them 
 like so many hungry tramps. “As the ox bellows for 
 the rain,’’ they presumptuously declared in their holy 
 Wiitwe soe yearns Indra’ for soma.’ . ... It wasa 
 development which had mounted so outrageously high 
 that it had toppled over into absurdity. 
 
 Of course, such a religion could not hold sway forever. 
 The masses, finding the protection afforded by the brah- 
 min gods to be prohibitively costly, began to bargain 
 instead for the much cheaper protection of unorthodox 
 
wae, THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 demons. Out of the depths of their ancient savage 
 heritage, or from the slime of the black native animism 
 around them, they dragged up scores of fell spirits to 
 dread or cling to. . . . And in time the priests, too, 
 began to question the sincerity of their over-ritualized 
 religion. In the same Brahmanas, the ‘‘Priestlies,’’ in 
 which the clerics dared to assert their claims as the lords 
 of the religion, they also had to betray their lurking 
 doubts as to the validity of the whole religion itself. Of 
 course, they did not dare confess those doubts openly, 
 for that would have cut the ground from beneath their 
 own feet. It would have put an end to their inordinate 
 power by destroying the whole system which gave it to 
 them. So, as always happens when men no longer be- 
 lieve but cannot afford openly to disbelieve, the brahmins 
 tried to ease their consciences by developing an apolo- 
 getic theology. With suspicious anxiety they tried to 
 strip the ritual ceremonies of their obvious absurdity 
 by interpreting them as beautiful symbols and allegories. 
 Theology very frequently is no more than an effort to 
 prolong the life of moribund ideas by reinterpreting 
 words which no longer mean what they used to say— 
 and when theology is that, it is invariably a confession 
 of secret distrust and skepticism. Quite obviously 
 whole sections of the Brahmanas were intended to be 
 stout ropes of ingenious rationalism by which the priests 
 might save themselves from drowning in doubt. 
 
 But despite the stoutness of those ropes, and the craft 
 with which they were plaited, they nevertheless failed 
 to be of much avail. The priests went down. Down, 
 down they went in the dark and muddy waters of doubt 
 and dismay. With frozen fingers they still held on to 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 125 
 
 the ropes, tugging at them again and again in vain effort 
 to stay their sinking. But down they went neverthe- 
 less, down, down until at last their feet touched bottom 
 in the ooze of blackest pessimism. . 
 
 3 
 
 PERHAPS the physical conditions of life at the time 
 had a share in this drowning of Vedic hopefulness. 
 Things had profoundly changed since the old days in 
 the valley of the Indus when the Vedas had been 
 created. “The Aryans by now had become Hindus. 
 Despite all the thickness of the wall of caste, the black 
 blood of the aborigines had seeped into the veins of the 
 white men. And synchronously with this coloring of 
 the skin, the evil climate of the Ganges Valley had in- 
 duced a darkening of the soul. A new spirit, a sepul- 
 chral spirit of hopelessness, took possession of the erst- 
 while white men. It found its expression in a new 
 literature, a vast collection of philosophic tractates 
 called the Upanishads, the ‘‘Seances.’’ It is difficult to 
 say just when the Upanishads were written, but accord- 
 ing to the best authorities it was probably during the 
 two centuries stretching from about 800 B. C. to about 
 600 B. c. Their burden was an entirely new under- 
 standing of man’s chance of ever attaining rest in the 
 universe. In the first place, they threw all the old gods 
 and the old rites overboard, frankly confessing that they 
 were quite without essential reality. Only one thing, 
 they insisted, was real: the Brahma, the “‘Self,’’ the One 
 Absolute, Infinite, Impersonal, Indescribable “‘It.’”’ And 
 all deeds and words, all creatures, even all gods, were 
 but fleeting manifestations of this “‘It.’’ As a logical 
 

 
 
 
 126 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 consequence, therefore, there existed but one way by 
 which man could ever attain ultimate peace. Obviously 
 he had to lose himself in the “‘It.’”’ He had to cease 
 being just a mere manifestation, and become at last an 
 integral part of Brahma. 
 
 Now all that was by no means unique. Many peoples 
 other than the Hindus have at one time or another taken 
 refuge in the thought that this world is but an illusion, 
 and that salvation can be obtained only on some other 
 plane of existence. But no other people ever carried that 
 thought to so rigorous a length as did the Hindus. 
 Most other folk halted with the hope that death would 
 immediately open the door to salvation. They told 
 themselves that, though life in this world was unutter- 
 ably vain, death was approaching, and with it the assur- 
 ance of real life in some other and more glorious world. 
 But the Hindus could not cherish so easy a hope. Death 
 seemed to them anything but a way out. In the dread 
 valley of the Ganges, where existence meant perpetual 
 struggle beneath a sun that seared one’s flesh and in an 
 air that strangled one’s courage, even death did not hold 
 out any immediate promise of peace. The fell idea of 
 transmigration, of a weary round of endless life, had 
 taken hold of the Hindus. Death seemed to them but 
 the beginning of more of this same old torment which is 
 earthly life. The souls of the dead might escape for a 
 little while to the moon; but just as soon as the influence 
 of their good deeds was exhausted, back they sank to the 
 earth like so many spent balloons. And then they were 
 reborn as persons or animals or even plants. If their 
 preceding life had been extraordinarily good, on their 
 return they became perhaps as much as princes or even 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA i27 
 
 brahmins; but if they had done evil, then they returned 
 to live as dogs or pigs or even slimy weeds at the edge 
 of swamps. 
 
 ‘There seemed to be but one effectual way of escape 
 from that terrible cycle of unending life, and that was by 
 absorption into the “‘It.”’ If only.a man could annihi- 
 late his individual self, could utterly destroy his little 
 “it,” then at last could he be free of life and attain the 
 release called Nirvana. Nirvana was not a place but a 
 state of mind, and therefore it could be attained only by 
 means of the mind. Mere acts, good or bad, could not 
 help in the least; nor could even the very gods be of 
 assistance. As the Upanishads explicitly declare: 
 “Whoever thus knows ‘I am the Brahma!’ becomes the 
 Brahma. Even the gods have no power to hold such a 
 man from becoming thus, for he becomes their very 
 Soul.”’ Therefore mere striving after moral perfection 
 or even after ritual propriety could never win for man 
 the blessedness of Nirvana; no, only the total abolition 
 of striving itself could do it. For striving, desiring— 
 that was the very source of all illusory life. To desire, 
 to want, to cherish even the least flicker of a petty wish— 
 that was the vicious stuff whereof the ever-reincarnating 
 self was made. Without desire the individual “it” 
 would be lost, and only the Brahma, the Over-Soul, the 
 One Universal “‘It’’ would be left. So logically there 
 was but one sane purpose left in life: to cease de- 
 Sieinigdty, y) 
 
 One wonders if this nihilistic philosophy of the Upan- 
 ishads greatly influenced the life of the masses in India 
 twenty-six hundred years ago. Probably it did not, for 
 it must have been far beyond the comprehension of those 
 
en; 
 
 ee SAW BH “tee aes 
 
 Pak 
 
 , AO SE trade 
 Wifte>>* wo A 
 “ip Rey 
 
 Ss 
 
 
 
 MEN FLED TO THE JUNGLES 
 128 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA je 
 
 
 
 masses. But that it profoundly affected the learned is 
 quite beyond doubt. The desire to end desire simply 
 ravished the higher classes in that day. Asceticism, the 
 voluntary slaying of appetite in all its forms, became 
 rife in every temple and princely court. Men fled away 
 into the mountains and far into the jungles, there to live 
 as anchorites and strangle every last vestige of normal 
 desire. In incredible misery they dragged out their days, 
 hungry but for one thing—the extinction of hunger. 
 And then came the heresies. . . . 
 
 II. JAINISM 
 
 IT was inevitable that heresies should arise, once as- 
 ceticism began to spread in old India. It may be laid 
 down as an axiom that a man who does not live the 
 life of the mob will not think its thoughts either. He 
 cannot but become unorthodox in spirit as well as con- 
 duct, looking out on life from an angle of his own, and 
 drawing his own conclusions. [Therefore it was but 
 natural for the advent of asceticism in India to be ac- 
 companied by the advent of heterodoxy. In the sixth 
 century B. C., India literally swarmed with heresies. 
 Sects arose in a night and perished in a night; prophets 
 were hailed and forgotten between the phases of a moon. 
 Indeed, only two of all the movements initiated in that 
 century endured long enough even for their names to be 
 remembered. But those two endured well—passing 
 Welly dy": 
 
 The less important of those two was the sect now 
 known as Jainism. Its founder was a young prince 
 named Mahavira, a man who lived until the age of 
 thirty the riotous life of an Indian rajah, and then of a 
 
130 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 sudden turned ascetic. “I shall for twelve years neglect 
 my body,” he vowed; and, casting off his fine clothes, 
 plucking out his hair in five handfuls, he went off into 
 the jungles. And after those twelve years of self-denial 
 had passed, he reached Nirvana. From then on he was 
 called the Jina, the ‘“‘Conqueror,’’ for of all men he 
 seemed the most thoroughly to have conquered every 
 last form of human desire. And abandoning his soli- 
 tude thenceforth, he began to go up and down the 
 Ganges Valley to tell his fellow-men just how he had 
 attained salvation. 
 
 Now Mahavira was certain that he had become the 
 Jina, the ‘‘Conqueror,’’ without the help either of the 
 gods or the brahmins. He did not believe in the gods, 
 and he scoffed at the very idea of prayer. ‘‘Man! Thou 
 art thine own friend!”’ he cried. “‘Why shouldst thou 
 crave a friend beyond thyself?’’ He derided the Vedas 
 and decried the entire caste system. All he believed in 
 was the willful annihilation of the self, the rigorous and 
 unsparing destruction of every desire save the desire for 
 no-desire. He demanded of his disciples that they do 
 injury to no living thing, that they remain ever poor 
 and ever meek. ‘‘Dish-water, barley-pap, cold sour 
 gruel, water in which barley has been washed: such 
 loathsome food the mendicants should never despise.”’ 
 He forbade his followers to hate, and he also forbade 
 them to love, for Mahavira considered the one as earth- 
 binding as the other. And especially did he warn them 
 against showing any favor to women. It is a pity we 
 know so little that is authentic concerning the life of 
 Mahavira, or we might be able to discover just what it 
 was that made him so bitter a misogynist. Lust must 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 131 
 
 naturally have been a frightful thorn in his spoiled 
 princely flesh, and perhaps that was why he so unjustly 
 branded woman as the cause of all sinful acts. He com- 
 manded the true follower not to ‘‘speak of women, nor 
 look at them, nor converse with them, nor claim them 
 as his own, nor do their work.”’ 
 
 But above all he forbade his monks to kill. ‘““This,”’ 
 said Mahavira, “‘is the quintessence of wisdom: not to 
 kill anything!’’ And of all the prohibitions, this was 
 the one most scrupulously observed. Solicitude against 
 destroying life—and life was thought to be not merely 
 in man but also in animals, plants, even grains of dust— 
 drove the followers of Mahavira to the most grotesque 
 of excesses. Some of them sat immobile for years, re- 
 fusing to stir a limb or even breathe deeply, lest thereby 
 they destroy aught of those small insects with which 
 the air of India swarms. ‘They refused to wash their 
 teeth, or cleanse their clothes, or scratch their bodies 
 when the vermin nipped them. ‘To this day they main- 
 tain hospitals for animals, caring even for sick snakes 
 and rats and even lice! . . . Only one form of destruc- 
 tion was permitted: self-destruction. As death ap- 
 proached, the holy Jain might make his one last effort 
 to sunder the chain of transmigration by bravely crush- 
 ing all desire for sustenance and starving himself to 
 death! ‘Then at last he was free... . 
 
 iz 
 
 MAHAVIRA, the founder of Jainism, was born in 599 
 B. Cc. and died in 529. According to tradition he 
 preached untiringly during all the last thirty years of 
 his life, and when he died he left many disciples to carry 
 
132 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 on his work. But those disciples were smaller men than 
 the Jina, and at their hands his gospel came in for pro- 
 found and sorry perversion. In the first place the per- 
 sonality of the Jina was exalted until he was made out 
 to be almost a god. Legends sprang up around his 
 name, fantastic stories recounting the miracles attendant 
 on his birth and death. And before many generations 
 had passed he actually was declared to be a veritable 
 god! ‘That gentle, quiet anchorite who had given more 
 than half his life to preaching the worthlessness of gods 
 and the futility of prayers was himself deified and prayed 
 to. By the year 400 the Jains were already setting up 
 idols of Mahavira, and building beautiful temples in 
 which they burnt regular offerings of flowers and in- 
 cense. Then, not satisfied with one god, the Jains 
 created twenty-four other Jinas to adore. They said 
 that Mahavira was only the last and greatest of a long 
 line of divine ‘‘Conquerors,’’ and they surrounded his 
 image with images of all the twenty-four others. Even 
 then they were not satisfied, for later they added many 
 female divinities to the pantheon. Century after century 
 the people took up new gods and spirits to worship and 
 cling to, until finally Jainism became almost as crudely 
 polytheistic as the old Vedic religion it had once set out 
 to reform. ‘The brave atheistic spirit in which Jainism 
 had been conceived seeped out of it entirely, and the 
 highest heresy preached by Mahavira was the one most 
 flagrantly betrayed. 
 
 Of course, that was all but inevitable. Once Jain- 
 ism began to spread among the plain people, its first 
 principles simply had no chance of surviving. Mahavira 
 had preached a gospel utterly beyond the comprehen- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 133 
 sion of ordinary men. He himself had been one of those 
 mighty souls for whom the consciousness merely of 
 living the right life was enough. He had not needed 
 gods to cling to. Right Faith, Right Knowledge, and 
 Right Living—called by him the ‘““Three Jewels’’—had 
 by themselves been enough to win him salvation. ... 
 But those who came after him were weaker men. In 
 their blind eyes the Three Jewels seemed worthless with- 
 out a setting in a tinsel plate of theology. ‘Those fol- 
 lowers were not courageous enough to stake all on their 
 own strength of will. They simply had to have gods 
 foraidu thems) 4isc: 
 
 But that was not the only issue in Mahavira’s gospel 
 which his followers surrendered. Mahavira had revolted 
 against the whole caste system, declaring that all men, 
 low-caste as well as high, were equals once they entered 
 the Sangha, the “‘Congregation.’’ But as soon as he 
 died, that heresy died too, and before long even the 
 very gods were divided into distinct social classes. Only 
 the commandment against killing was not openly be- 
 trayed; but as we have already seen its observance was 
 carried to the absurdest extremes. Save for that, Jain- 
 ism became hardly distinguishable from orthodox 
 Hinduism. The religion took unto itself gods, idols, 
 temples, priests, sacrifices—every one of the old means 
 of salvation which Mahavira had most scornfully re- 
 jected. . . . But what else was to be expected? After 
 all, the common folk in India—like the common folk 
 everywhere else in the world—-were (and are) still too 
 weak to look to their own selves for salvation. “They 
 needed reeds to cling to, gods to believe in. For they 
 mreremcandsare) vatraid 1). iiafraidsd)). 
 
134 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 III. BUDDHISM 
 
 BUT Jainism was only the less important of the two 
 great heretical religions that arose in India in the sixth 
 century B. Cc. When Mahavira was already almost forty 
 years of age, there was born in India a male child 
 destined to found the far greater religion of Buddhism. 
 The name of this child was Siddharta Gautama, and 
 his father was a wealthy rajah in the valley of the 
 Ganges. Gautama in his birth was therefore strikingly 
 like the man who founded the earlier heresy; and, as 
 we shall see, in his life he was even more like him. At 
 an early age Gautama too was married off to a beautiful 
 princess; and until he was almost thirty he, too, reveled 
 unrestrained in princely luxury. 
 
 But then of a sudden something came over him. 
 Exactly as had happened to Mahavira, a revulsion 
 against pleasure took hold of this young prince so that 
 he no longer could abide the lusts of the flesh. His eyes 
 were suddenly opened to the unutterable misery of all 
 life, and the sight so burnt its way into his soul that he 
 nevermore could be at ease in his palace. One night 
 he arose and, tiptoeing into the room where lay his 
 sleeping wife with their new-born child in her arms, 
 he took one last fond look at them both, and fled. Off 
 into the night he sped, with his trusted charioteer by 
 his side. Very far he rode, not halting until the rising 
 of the sun had shown that he had already got far beyond 
 the lands of his clan. “Then he dismounted, cut off his 
 flowing locks, tore the jewels and ornaments from his 
 clothes, and giving them together with his horse and 
 sword to the charioteer, commanded that they be 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 135 
 
 returned to his wife. Gautama himself did not go back, 
 but turning his face toward the hills, he went off alone 
 on foot. But even then he did not feel free. Not until 
 he had exchanged clotkes with a beggar he met on the 
 road did he feel himself loosed at last from all attach- 
 
 
 
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 136 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ments to the world of vanity. Not until he stood there 
 on that dusty road a ragged vagrant without a possession 
 on earth did he feel himself able at last to go forth undis- 
 tracted in search of salvation. 
 
 Southward Gautama took his way into a range of 
 hills where dwelt certain hermits in caves. He had 
 long known of these hermits, for their fame had spread 
 throughout the countryside. They were not ordinary 
 ascetics frantically starving their bodies, but rather 
 devoted philosophers trying to enrich their minds. Most 
 of their time was spent in the pursuit of knowledge— 
 not knowledge about the facts of life, however, but 
 about the destinies of the soul. “They did not poke about 
 in laboratories as do our modern investigators; rather 
 they sat under trees and talked. Long and earnestly they 
 conversed about those metaphysical things our material 
 world does not know. ‘Their great concern was how to 
 lose themselves in the Brahma, in the universal Over- 
 Soul which was the only reality they knew. They 
 were sick of this futile, finite, tortured existence called 
 life. “Chey wanted to cut away from it, cut clear away 
 from the individual self and attain a sense of finality 
 and security through absorption into the universal All. 
 They craved release from the vicious round of trans- 
 migrating life; they craved everlasting extinction. Eye- 
 lids are heavy in the sweltering tropics, where the wet 
 jungle heat breeds life too rankly; and these unhappy 
 hermits wanted to sleep—to sleep forever. And because 
 Gautama, too, wanted to sleep forever, he joined him- 
 self to their company. And Gautama came and took 
 part in their conversation. 
 
 But the wandering prince did not tarry with them 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 137 
 
 long. His mind was keen, and it took little time for 
 him to discover how empty was the ratiocination of 
 those talky hermits. They tried to drag their petty souls 
 to Brahma by strings of words—but Brahma Itself, he 
 discovered, was also a mere thing of words. He saw 
 through all the arguments, no matter how smoothly 
 and plausibly they were put, and he realized that 
 Brahma, the great “‘It,’’ was essentially no more real 
 than man, the little “‘it.’”’ So, taking five of the hermits 
 with him, he went off into the jungles to try another 
 road to salvation. With all his being he now gave him- 
 self up to years of self-mortification, striving, as had 
 Mahavira before him, to reach Nirvana through pain. 
 For six years—at least, so we are told—-he practiced 
 austerities the like of which had never before been seen 
 in the land, living on a grain of rice a day, or on a single 
 sesamum seed. But, unlike Mahavira, no success at- 
 tended his efforts. Despite all Gautama’s austerities, 
 those six years were “‘like time spent striving to tie the 
 air into knots.’’ So finally he gave up the vain struggle. 
 He had to confess to himself at last that senseless and 
 irrational self-affliction was not enough. In despair he 
 had to admit that the dismal path of mere denial could 
 never be for him the way to peace. 
 
 And so once more Gautama set off alone, far unhap- 
 pier now than ever before. He had tried the ordinary 
 life of the prince, and it had left a taste as of ashes in 
 his mouth. He had tried the life of the philosopher, and 
 that too had brought him no peace. And then he had 
 tried the life of the ascetic, only to find that even in that 
 there could be no release. So now he was lost, utterly 
 at sea on a night that seemed to hold no faintest gleam 
 of light, no slightest promise of dawn. 
 

 
 138 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 And then of a sudden light broke on him. He was 
 seated one day beneath a banyan tree, his spirit at its 
 lowest ebb, when all without warning salvation came 
 to him. In an instant his spirit leaped up in ecstasy; his 
 whole being became suffused with joy. He felt himself 
 released at last, released from life and the fear of life. 
 He felt himself free at last, free and safe and secure. 
 
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 BUDDHA WAS SEATED BENEATH A BANYAN TREE 
 
 . . . For a day and a night, so tradition declares, he 
 continued beneath that tree, sitting there and pondering 
 on the wondrous thing that had happened to him. Then 
 he arose to his feet, and went off to tell men what he 
 
 had learnt. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA No he, 
 2 
 
 IN essence what Gautama had learnt was the folly | 
 of all excess. It had come to him in that moment of | 
 illumination that it was just as stupid to go mad with 
 pain as it was to get drunk with pleasure. He had 
 suddenly come to see that asceticism inevitably overshot 
 its mark, that it missed the very thing it was after be- 
 cause it went after it too wildly. He had discovered 
 that the frantic excess with which the ascetics strove to 
 curb desire meant only that they were letting desire 
 run away with them. . . . So Gautama came forward 
 with a new gospel which he called the Four Truths. 
 They were these: First, both birth and death bring 
 grief, and life is utterly vain. ‘““IThe waters of the four 
 great oceans,’ he declared, “‘are naught compared with 
 the tears of men as they tread the path of life.’’ Sec- 
 ondly, the vanity of life is caused altogether by the 
 indulgence of desire. “Therefore, thirdly, the vanity can 
 end only with the ending of all desire. But fourthly— 
 and herein lay the whole originality of the gospel—all 
 desire can be ended not by excessive asceticism but by 
 sane and intelligent. decency! The road to salvation, 
 according to Gautama, was therefore not the tortuous 
 trail of bodily self-destruction, but rather the ‘‘Middle 
 Path” of spiritual self-control. It was the Eightfold 
 Noble Path of “Right Belief, Right Resolve, Right 
 Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, 
 Right Thought, and Right Meditation.’’ Nirvana was, 
 after all, not a physical condition but a state of mind, 
 and therefore it could be reached not through physical 
 torment but mental discipline. The blessedness of 
 

 
 ical, THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 freedom, of everlasting passionless peace, of Nirvana, 
 could be attained only by destroying the three cardinal 
 sins: sensuality, ill will, and stupidity. 
 
 Now the implications of such a gospel were grave 
 and revolutionary beyond words. In the first place, 
 they left no room whatsoever for gods, priests, or 
 prayers. ‘“‘Who is there that has ever seen Brahma face 
 to face?’’ cried Gautama scornfully. Or with regard 
 to prayer: ‘“‘Could the farther bank of the river 
 Akirvati come over to this side no matter how much a 
 man prayed it to do so?”’ Thus it scouted the whole 
 sacrificial system of the brahmins. It condemned out- 
 right that shameless ritualization of morality which the 
 priests had introduced with their Brahmanas. Indeed, it 
 condemned not alone zitual but religion itself—that is, 
 in its narrower connotation. Gautama’s gospel coun- 
 tenanced none of those common instruments—gods, 
 sacrifices, priests, or prayers—wherewith the religious 
 technique is always practiced. . . . But in the broader 
 connotation of the term, the gospel was itself a reli- 
 gion. It tried desperately to find a way of escape from 
 the insecurities of life, and to that extent it was most 
 generously a religion. It tried earnestly to rid man of 
 fear, to make him feel at home in the universe—and 
 for that reason it deserves its chapter in the story of 
 this believing world. ... 
 
 But opposition to the gods was not the only radical 
 implication of Gautama’s gospel. A second and perhaps 
 just as radical implication was its opposition to all caste 
 divisions. According to Gautama there were no valid 
 distinctions between high-born and low-born, for men 
 could be judged only according to their deeds. Very 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA he 
 
 explicitly he declared: “‘A man does not become a 
 brahmin by his family or by birth. In whom there is 
 truth and righteousness—he is blessed, he is a brahmin. 
 O fool, if within thee there is ravening, how can’st 
 thou make the outside pure?’’ Gautama, who had be- 
 longed to the princely caste, realized all too well how 
 empty were all distinctions of birth. “Though born and 
 reared in a palace, life for him had been no whit less 
 futile and troubled than the life of the lowest serf in his 
 wattle-and-daub hut. So how could he respect the 
 trumpery social distinctions of the brahmins? 
 
 But the revolt against the gods and the revolt against 
 the castes were neither of them unique to Gautama’s 
 gospel. Mahavira had urged them just as emphatically 
 when Gautama was still a child in arms. What alone 
 was original in the younger heresy was the emphasis 
 Gautama laid on social ethics. Mahavira had insisted 
 that each man could attain salvation for himself by going 
 off alone and afflicting his own body. But the younger 
 prophet declared that all individualism was sinful, and 
 that one’s own salvation could be found only in the 
 effort to bring salvation to every one else. ‘Go ye 
 now, he commanded his followers, ‘‘out of compassion 
 for the world and the welfare of gods and men... 
 and preach the doctrine which is glorious.’’ And thus 
 he cut at the very root of selfishness. One’s own peace, 
 he declared, could be found only in seeking peace for all 
 Hioanitys) <6. 
 
 Now Gautama arrived at that conclusion from a 
 rather startling and original premise. Unlike all other 
 Hindu thinkers of his day, he did not believe in the 
 individual soul. Just as some modern psychologists 
 
142 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 claim the soul to be no more than the name for a certain 
 class of subtle muscular reactions, so Gautama claimed 
 it to be no more than a name for the totality of human 
 desires. As he himself put it: the chariot is made up 
 of wheels, shaft, axle, carriage and banner-staff, and 
 has no real existence when these are removed; and just 
 so the soul is made up of desires and psychic tendencies, 
 and disappears the moment. these are taken away. 
 Therefore, argued Gautama, all this pother about the 
 transmigration of souls was sheer folly. Only the 
 deeds, not the doers, lived on from generation to gen- 
 eration. So no matter how anxiously a man looked 
 after what he called his soul, no whit of good could 
 possibly result from it. Only if a man diligently 
 watched his deeds could he possibly attain salvation. 
 For there was an inexorable Law of Karma, an inescap- 
 able ‘‘law of the deed,’ in the universe. The effects 
 of all actions lived on perpetually, good breeding good, 
 and evil breeding evil. And these effects could never be 
 eluded. ‘‘Not in the sky, nor in the midst of the sea, 
 not in the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot 
 where a man can be freed from an evil act.’’ So every 
 man’s fate depended not on what he was but what he 
 did. Only if he did that which was righteous in the 
 eyes of men, only then could he throw off the ball and 
 chain of evil consequence and attain the blessed release of 
 Witvanes swe 
 
 3 
 
 SUCH in brief was Gautama’s gospel after the revela- 
 tion came to him beneath the banyan tree. He sought 
 to communicate it first to the five disciples whom he had 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 143 
 
 left behind when he forsook asceticism. But these men 
 looked on him as an apostate, and would not even 
 receive him on his return. Only after much persistence 
 could Gautama get them to give ear to his doctrine, 
 and then he had to argue with them five days long. But 
 in the end he won them over. With one accord those 
 five men then hailed him as the Buddha, the ‘‘Enlight- 
 ened One,’”’ for they had become convinced that he could 
 not but be another of those chosen souls, the Buddhas 
 (in Jainism they were called the Jinas), who from 
 time to time were supposed to descend into the world 
 to speak celestial truth. And then a little holy brother- 
 hood was created around the person of this new 
 Buddha. 
 
 India was then swarming with restless souls in search 
 of a faith that might comfort them; many of these 
 came and found it in the words of Gautama. They 
 gathered in the Deer Forest near Benares, and built 
 themselves little huts around the dwelling-place of the 
 Buddha. And when they were as many as sixty in 
 number, their master commanded them to go forth dur- 
 ing the dry months of the year and carry his comforting 
 message to the people. He told them to carry abroad 
 the good tidings that salvation was free, and that all 
 men, high and low, learned and ignorant, could surely 
 attain it if only they practiced justice and righteousness. 
 
 Buddha himself went out into the country with that 
 evangel. For twenty years he wandered far and wide, 
 winning disciples wherever he moved. Early in his 
 ministry he went back to his own home, and there 
 converted his long-deserted wife and son to the 
 new faith. (His son even became one of his preaching 
 

 
 144 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 monks, and his wife joined an order of Buddhist nuns 
 Which was soon organized.) And thus, the center of 
 an ever-growing movement, Siddharta Gautama, the 
 Buddha, lived out his days on earth. To the end he 
 continued to instruct the disciples that gathered during 
 every rainy season in the Deer Forest near Benares. 
 Indeed, the very last words he uttered were addressed 
 to them. ‘“‘Work out your own salvation!’’ he told 
 them with his last breath. And then he died. ... 
 
 More than twenty-four hundred years have passed 
 since Siddharta Gautama passed away, and it is not 
 easy for us to appreciate how revolutionary his doctrine 
 must have been when first he uttered it. Never before 
 had it been said in India that salvation was obtainable 
 in any wise save through scrupulous sacrificing, or pro- 
 found philosophizing, or extravagant asceticism. In 
 other words, never before had it been asserted that those 
 who were too poor to offer sacrifices, too dull-witted to 
 indulge in philosophy, or too human to set up as an- 
 chorites, could possibly be saved. Only when Gautama 
 the Buddha took the field was that assertion made. 
 Until then salvation, and even the hunger for salvation, 
 had been deemed privileges open only to the few. But 
 with the coming of Gautama they were held out to 
 the many—to all. According to him even the lowliest 
 in the land could attain Nirvana, if only they followed 
 the Noble Eightfold Path. . . . And though that gos- 
 pel was afterward distorted and corrupted and changed 
 out of all likeness to what it had been when it came 
 fresh from the lips of the Buddha, nevertheless it did 
 endure and spread until its light was known over all 
 the East. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 145 
 
 4 
 
 BUT his gospel did not spread at once. For years 
 Buddhism remained an obscure and unimportant sect, 
 probably just one of many heretical movements fer- 
 menting away in the troubled India of those centuries. 
 For a while it was no more than a mere ascetic order 
 similar to Jainism. ‘The very selfishness which Gautama 
 had most bitterly attacked, took hold of his professed 
 followers, and they became far more concerned about 
 the peace of their own little souls than the peace of all 
 mankind. But about the third century B.C. there 
 came a revival of Buddha’s world-saving spirit, and 
 monks once more went out to preach a gospel in his 
 name. 
 
 Only now it was no longer the simple ethical gospel 
 of Gautama. ‘Theology had crept in, and it became a 
 religion in the very narrowest sense of that word. ‘Time 
 had dealt hard with the memory of Gautama, and by 
 the third century he was no longer imagined to have 
 been a man but a god. A new school of Buddhist 
 thought called the Mahayana, the “Greater Vehicle,”’ 
 arose, and according to its teaching Buddha had been 
 from the beginning a divine being. ‘The earlier school, 
 the Hinayana or “Lesser Vehicle,’’ had been content 
 to picture Gautama as altogether a human creature. It 
 had frankly told in its writings how the master had 
 occasionally suffered from wind on the stomach, and 
 how once when he ate a meal prepared by a blacksmith 
 he was attacked by dysentery and almost died. But the 
 new school was totally incapable of such realism. It 
 told instead how the Blessed One had been conceived 
 supernaturally and had been born without pain. It 
 
146 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 described him as a sinless being who had been sent from 
 heaven as the savior of gods and men. It further de- 
 clared that his divine spirit continued regularly to re- 
 turn to the earth, incarnating itself generation after 
 generation in certain exceptionally holy men called 
 Bodhisattvas, “‘Living Buddhas.’’ And thus it opened 
 a way for the incursion of a whole troop of extra gods. 
 And finally it allowed idols of Buddha to be set up in 
 splendid temples, and even encouraged the offering of 
 sacrifices of flowers to those idols. Just the very ele- 
 ments in the old Brahmanic religion against which 
 Buddha had most directly rebelled came sidling over 
 to the protestant faith, and through the Mahayana took 
 possession of it. 
 
 And now, bedizened with idols and made colorful 
 with myths, Buddhism began to spread at last. Power 
 and riches began to flow to the sect, and before long 
 the tiny huts in which the preachers had been wont to 
 shelter themselves during the rainy season were replaced 
 by imposing and costly monasteries. The rajahs of 
 India were just then struggling to wrest supremacy for 
 themselves from the hands of the long-dominant priestly 
 caste; and these rajahs began to see the value to their 
 cause of this virile caste-destroying movement. Espe- 
 cially did one of them, a certain low-caste adventurer 
 named Chandraguptra, see its usefulness. By war and 
 intrigue he had managed to carve out for himself a vast 
 empire in northern India, and because the anti-caste 
 doctrine of Buddhism promised to help him retain his 
 power, he endowed its monasteries with vast estates and 
 enormous riches. And his grandson, the famous King 
 Asoka who became emperor of India in 264 B. c., 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 147 
 
 devoted a great share of his energy during all his reign to 
 the spreading of the Buddhist religion. 
 
 Asoka is esteemed by many scholars to have been 
 the noblest monarch in history; and if the criterion is 
 the number of souls that still revere his memory, then 
 certainly he was a far greater figure than any other in 
 the whole world’s catalogue of kings. By acquiring 
 one state after another he built up an empire that in- 
 cluded a large part of the East; and every inch of it he 
 won by faith and not by the sword. Asoka sent out 
 Buddhist missionaries to Ceylon, to Kashmir, and to 
 the uttermost ends of the earth known to him. Eight 
 and twenty years he carried on his far-flung missionary 
 work, and before he died he had managed to make 
 Buddhism the dominant religion in his half of the world. 
 
 But of course it was not the simple ethical gospel 
 of Gautama that was carried to these strange lands. 
 Rather it was an intricate theological dogma that trans- 
 lated Buddha into a God. Gautama had preached a 
 religion of morality; but these successful missionaries 
 rather preached a religion that made a morality of 
 ritual. Mere obeisance to the god Buddha was deemed 
 enough to save one’s soul. Nirvana, which to Gautama 
 had been entirely a state of spiritual peace attained by 
 following the Noble Eightfold Path, was now inter- 
 preted to be a physical post-mortem heaven won by 
 much kissing of an ikon’s toe. And these corruptions 
 were marked not merely in the Mahayana school of 
 Buddhism which spread to China and Japan, but later 
 also in the Hinayana school which throve especially in 
 Ceylon. The farther Buddhism traveled, the more it 
 changed. On the northwestern frontier of India, where 
 
148 THIS BELIEVING WORLD | 
 
 the Hellenic and Hindu worlds touched, the Buddhist 
 idols came to look exactly like the idols of the West. 
 Hariti, a pestilence-goddess whom Buddha was sup- 
 posed to have converted, was carved to look very much 
 like Isis, the mother-goddess of Egypt. She was even 
 pictured as holding the infant Buddha to her breast, 
 exactly as Isis held the infant Horus and—much later— 
 Mary held the Christ Child. 
 
 In China Buddhism took on much of the character 
 of ‘Taoism, and in Japan it was greatly influenced by 
 the national religion called Shinto. “Then contact with 
 Christianity began to have its effect, first through the 
 efforts of the early Nestorian preachers, and much later 
 through the activities of Protestant missionaries. 
 Buddhism in Thibet very early took on a distinct Chris- 
 tian coloring, accepting into its ritual such Christian 
 symbols and instruments as the cross, the miter, the 
 dalmatica, censer, chaplet, and holy-water font. The 
 Buddhist religion in Thibet has developed a most elab- 
 orate hierarchical system, with a pope, the Dalai Lama, 
 ruling the whole land from his palace at Lhassa, assisted 
 by bishops and priests officiating in vast cathedrals clut- 
 tered with images and pictures, and by myriads of monks 
 busily spinning prayer-wheels in high-walled monas- 
 teries. And also in Japan Buddhism has more recently 
 taken on Christian coloring, though here of a Protestant 
 shade. Modern Japanese Buddhists are reported to have 
 congregational worship and hymn-singing, Sunday 
 Schools for their children, a Young Men’s Buddhist © 
 Association for their men, and Buddhist temperance 
 societies for their women! ... 
 
 In India itself, Buddhism simply withered and died 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA LA9 
 
 out. A thousand years after the death of Gautama, it 
 had become very largely Brahmanized. ‘The plain 
 people fearfully cried to the idols for help, and the 
 leaders earnestly wrangled about the proper size and 
 
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 BunpoHiSm TODAY . 
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 HOW BUDDHISM SPREAD 
 
 cut of their ceremonial robes. When therefore a new 
 religion, Islam, invaded the land, it swept all before it. 
 Although there are perhaps a hundred and fifty million 
 Buddhists in Asia, no more than two thousand of them 
 now remain in all of India. 
 
 Buddhism is still the religion of Burmah, Siam, and 
 Ceylon, but in those lands it has fallen back almost to 
 sheer animism. Everywhere in Ceylon one can hear the 
 bellman at sundown calling the naked brown folk with 
 glossy black hair to the service in the temple. ‘They 
 
150 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 bring candles—if they can afford them—and flowers 
 to the yellow-clad priest; and the latter solemnly offers 
 them to some fetish, perhaps a putative tooth of 
 Buddha, nestling in an innermost shrine. “Then there 
 is much praying—praying to gods, devils, angels, de- 
 mons, saints, and all manner of other spirits. . . . And 
 all the while there stands within that land a mighty 
 tree whose seed came from the very banyan under which 
 Gautama received the revelation. ‘There in Ceylon it 
 still stands, the oldest tree known to history. During 
 nearly twenty-two hundred years it has been tenderly 
 watched and watered; its branches have been stoutly 
 braced, and its soil has been terraced to give room for 
 the gigantic roots to grow. And there it thrives still 
 today, a pitilessly ironic monument to the pitiful stu- 
 pidity of man. For that tree, a mere thing in nature, 
 has been most carefully preserved and nurtured, while 
 the faith which alone gave it meaning, long, long ago 
 was allowed to perish. .. . 
 
 IV. HINDUISM 
 
 BUT despite the rising of Jainism and Buddhism in 
 India, the old priestly religion rooted in the Vedas was 
 never completely ousted. Even though for a while it 
 lost the favor of the rulers, never for a moment did it 
 lose its attractiveness to the ruled. Of course, inwardly 
 it changed from century to century, taking on new gods 
 and forgetting old ones, acquiring strange rites and 
 neglecting native ones; but at least in its caste structure 
 and priestly character the old religion of the Hindus 
 never wavered from first to last. At the present time 
 well over two hundred million souls in India—more 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA Jai 
 
 than the number of Protestant Christians in all the 
 world—still call themselves Hinduists! 
 
 To define Hinduism is very nearly impossible. 
 Actually it is not so much a religion (in the narrower 
 sense of the word) as a religio-social system. Although 
 Hinduism contains a whole farrago of theologies, phi- 
 losophies, and sacrificial systems, nevertheless its one 
 dominant note is that of caste. An elaborate tissue of 
 ancient religio-social laws has hardened until by now 
 it seems altogether indestructible. ‘“[hat tissue was first 
 built up by a series of law codes, most prominently the 
 Code of Manu, which were compiled about the time the 
 Buddhist heresy was at its height. “These codes set out 
 to do for Hinduism what the Talmud in a later day 
 did for Judaism. They tried to build a wall of law 
 around the faith so that none could stray from it. Of 
 course, the stoutest buttresses of the Hindu wall were 
 naturally the caste distinctions, and these therefore re- 
 ceived the most careful attention of the law-makers. 
 ‘The superiority of the brahmins and the inferiority of 
 the laborers were declared to be ordered in heaven ac- 
 cording to a divine plan “‘for the prosperity of the 
 world.’’ A man’s caste, like his breath, was with him 
 incessantly from birth to death; indeed, unlike his 
 breath, it was even supposed to follow him into the 
 grave. 
 
 But save for these laws regulating caste there is no 
 other unifying element in all Hinduism. There are 
 two major sects in the religion, and at least fifty-seven 
 sub-sects, each seeking to attain salvation with the aid 
 of its own gods and ceremonies. Christianity, which 
 is even more intensively divided, is at least united by its 
 
Lie, THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 unanimous recognition of the uniqueness of Jesus. Hin- 
 duism has no such common doctrine. It is true that 
 about 300 A.D. an attempt was made to create such a 
 doctrine by combining the three main Hindu gods into 
 a universally acceptable trinity; but the attempt failed 
 dismally. Brahma, the chief god in that trinity, never 
 became popular save with the priests and philosophers. 
 He was not nearly concrete enough a deity for the plain 
 folk to grasp and believe in, and there are now only two 
 temples in all India that are devoted to his worship. 
 And Vishnu and Shiva, the two other gods in the 
 trinity, always remained distinct and separate, continu- 
 ing to attract distinct and separate followings. ... 
 But though Hinduism has never been united on any 
 creed or rite, its divisiveness has rarely if ever led to 
 bloodshed. Unlike the Christians, who again and again 
 have resorted even to wholesale slaughter in order to ex- 
 tirpate all heresy, the Hindus have rarely persecuted 
 divergence of faith. They have been wise enough to 
 see that each man has a right to worship as he himself 
 sees fit, and that no man is justified in seeking to force 
 his doctrine on his neighbor. “Therefore the worshippers 
 of Vishnu and those of Shiva have dwelt side by side for 
 centuries without bitterness, and countless sub-sects have 
 arisen and disappeared in India with very little violence 
 or acrimony. No matter how many evils may be debited 
 against Hinduism, at least this one virtue must be listed 
 to its! credit:7it 18 tolerantiy.s< 
 
 2 
 
 ONE of the two most popular gods in India today is 
 Vishnu. Originally a minor Yedic sun-god, he has 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 153 
 
 since risen to superlative importance largely because he 
 has been credited with the power of incarnating himself 
 occasionally in human form. One can easily understand 
 why that propensity should have made Vishnu attrac- 
 tive to the people. “Through those periodic incarna- 
 tions—those “‘avatars’” as they are called—-Vishnu be- 
 came real, tangible, almost human to all sorts of Hindu 
 people. The trouble with a god like Brahma, for 
 instance, was that he was no more than a cold, 
 impersonal, philosophical deduction—a blank. But 
 there was no such chill impersonality about Vishnu. On 
 the contrary, he was believed to share in every joy and 
 sorrow of his followers, and their distress and sin were 
 supposed to be his incessant concerns. It was said, in- 
 deed, that whenever the people became wayward Vishnu 
 was so solicitous that he actually came down to earth 
 in human form and himself led the way to reforma- 
 tion. Many epics were written to tell how the god 
 had thus incarnated himself as a man and worked great 
 wonders. Indeed, two of those epics, the Mahabharata 
 and the Ramayana, form the final and most popular 
 chapter in all of Hindu sacred literature. | 
 
 The Mahabharata tells the adventures of Vishnu in- 
 carnated in the body of a great hero named Krishna, 
 and in it is to be found that famous tractate called the 
 Bhagavad-Gita, the ‘‘Song of the Adorable.’’ This 
 little tractate, which has often been called the New Tes- 
 tament of Hinduism, has been translated and distributed 
 by societies with just the same missionary zeal where- 
 with tract associations distribute the Bible. Actually 
 the Bhagavad-Gita is an exceedingly confused and repe- 
 titious little work, and one greatly marred by bewilder- 
 
154 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ing inconsistencies. Perhaps that 1s why it has been 
 so popular, for in its frequent stretches of vagueness 
 and confusion one can find confirmation of almost any 
 belief on earth. One can say of it as the Rabbis said 
 of the Bible: ‘““Turn it over and over, for in it is every- 
 thing.’’ But, despite all that, the Bhagavad-Gita is a 
 work of rare grandeur. In spiritual tone and exalted 
 ethical import it is hardly inferior to any other scripture © 
 in the world. Nowhere is a nobler note struck than 
 this one which rings out in the “‘Song of the Adorable’’: 
 “He who does all his work for my (Vishnu’s) sake, 
 who is wholly devoted to me, who loves me, who is 
 free from attachment to earthly things, and without 
 hate to any being, he enters into me.’ .. . 
 
 Krishna, the god-man, whose adventures are celebrated 
 in the Mahabharata and whose wisdom is set down 
 in the Bhagavad-Gita, is considered the most important 
 of Vishnu’s avatars. Indeed, in the hearts of millions 
 of Hindus today he has actually come to occupy the 
 place of Vishnu himself. Just as many Christians turn 
 to Christ much more frequently than to God, so do 
 many Hindus bow to Krishna rather than Vishnu. And 
 it has been suggested that Krishna—whose name in 
 some of the northern dialects is pronounced Krishto— 
 may bear some significant relationship to Christ. That 
 theory, however, cannot be substantiated by facts. In 
 all probability Krishna and Christ are akin only to the 
 extent that both arose out of a similar passion of the 
 human race: the passion that sublimates its hero until 
 it has made him more than mortal and has exalted him 
 to the skies. It may be that originally Krishna was a 
 beloved tribal chieftain and religious reformer who dur- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 155 
 
 ing his lifetime taught his people to worship a god 
 called Bhagavata, ‘“‘Adorable.’’ So wondrous a char- 
 acter may he have been that after he died his followers 
 were not able to resist thinking he had actually been 
 the god himself. “Therewith arose the cult of Krishna, 
 the man-god; and as soon as it grew powerful the 
 priests of the old order shrewdly threw a cloak of Brah- 
 man orthodoxy over it by saying Krishna was none 
 other than an incarnation of their old god Vishnu. . . . 
 
 That, however, is mere speculation. All we know 
 for certain is that somehow the people did begin to 
 believe that the god Vishnu from time to time came to 
 earth in the form of avatars. Krishna was only one 
 of these. Rama, whose exploits are detailed in the epic 
 called the Ramayana, was almost as great; and innu- 
 merable chieftains, milk-men, even elephants and tigers, 
 are included in the long list of lesser avatars. And 
 because the people thus humanized Vishnu, they could 
 believe in him with great intensity. “They could look 
 upon him as a spirit enshrined in their own human 
 hearts, one that guided their own souls and ultimately 
 snatched them out of the cycle of life in order to carry 
 them up to heaven. At least, so could and did the people 
 consider Vishnu—before the theologians appeared. 
 Once the latter came on the scene, however,: the nude 
 innocence of the popular doctrine was immediately hid- 
 den beneath thick folds of words. “Terms were defined 
 and redefined, and at once schisms resulted. Acute con- 
 troversies were started over the very idlest questions. 
 To this day all followers of Vishnu are divided into two 
 denominations because of a dispute as to whether man 
 is saved by Vishnu as a new-born kitten or a new- 
 
156 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 born monkey is saved by its mother. “The new-born 
 kitten acts helpless and its mother has to grasp it by the 
 nape of its neck to carry it off to safety; but the new- 
 born monkey lends a hand in its own rescue, clinging 
 to its mother with all the strength of its little arms. (In 
 essence we have here those old antagonists, Predestina- 
 tion and Free-Will.) Even now that theological con- 
 flict rages, dividing the Vishnuites into two camps: 
 those who believe in the “‘cat-hold’’ theory, and those 
 who are strong for the “monkey-grip” belief! ... 
 
 3 
 
 BUT Vishnu, even with the aid of all his avatars, 
 never managed to attract so vast a following as did 
 the third god of the trinity: Shiva. Originally this 
 Shiva may have been one of those gruesome demons that 
 had been conjured up in the fear-fevered heads of the 
 black aborigines, and that were still worshipped even 
 after the coming of the Aryans. He was (and some- 
 times still is) conceived to be a wild, morose deity, 
 malevolent and destructive, causing pestilence, storms, 
 and all manner of other horrors; and he is commonly 
 depicted as a monster bearing a trident and rosary. 
 (Christians did not learn of the rosary until they ob- 
 served its use during the Crusades among the Moslems; 
 but the Moslems themselves had only a little earlier first 
 taken to it as a sacred symbol in imitation of the fol- 
 lowers of this god Shiva.) In the trinity by which 
 the theologians tried to unite the Hindu sects, Brahma 
 stood for the principle of Creation, Vishnu for that of 
 Preservation, and Shiva for that of Destruction. Of the 
 three, Shiva became and remained the most popular. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA Lb7, 
 
 The masses loved him because he was very much their 
 own kind: passionate, violent, and licentious. And 
 with him they loved his sluttish wife, Parvata the Ter- 
 rible. To her glory the Thugs, a secret sect of pious 
 murderers, used to commit unspeakable outrages; and 
 in her name the Tantrists, a secret sect of pious perverts, 
 still indulge in indescribable sex orgies. 
 
 There is hardly a vil- 
 lage in all of India today 
 where there is not at 
 least one shrine shelter- 
 ing the emblem of Shiva: 
 an upright cylindrical 
 block usually resting on 
 a circular slab with a hole 
 in its center. Curiously, 
 the people do not seem 
 to realize the crude sym- 
 bolism of that emblem, 
 and do not even remotely 
 associate it with sex. 
 Many of them even wear 
 it as an emblem around 
 their necks for good luck, 
 or as a sign of their reli- 
 gious devotion. Of 
 course, sex does play a very real part in the worship 
 of Shiva and his female counterparts. One denomina- 
 tion called Tantra is built around the alluring theory 
 that only by riotous indulgence in passion can man 
 ever cross the region of darkness which keeps him 
 from utter union with Shiva. Passion, it is admitted, 
 
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 158 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 is poison; but the only antidote for this poison is more 
 poison. ‘Therefore it is reasoned that only indulgence 
 in the five vices that poison the soul of man—wine, meat, 
 fish, mystical gesticulation with the fingers, and sex 
 looseness—only veritable orgies of those five vices, can 
 drive their poison out of the system and really purify 
 the’soul!:. . . 
 
 Now, scholars are not lacking who maintain that all 
 religion is merely a form of sex expression; and they 
 have not a little plausible argument to sustain their 
 theory. It would be strange indeed if religion, which 
 reaches down to the very depths of human consciousness, 
 should not be greatly influenced by so pervading an im- 
 pulse as sex. Indeed, it must be freely admitted that even 
 the most advanced and civilized of religious practices 
 are colored by sex. (But for that matter, so also are 
 the most advanced and civilized of art forms and social 
 systems. ) 
 
 The religious practices of India, however, are, for 
 the most part, far from being advanced and civilized, 
 and it is therefore the more natural that sex should 
 obtrude itself in them. Indulgence in erotic practices 
 is part of the worship not alone of Shiva, but also of 
 Vishnu. It is said that many of the minor sects adoring 
 Krishna really adore his wife or mistress, or draw their 
 inspiration from the wild tales that the Mahabharata 
 tells of Krishna’s dissipated youth. One must remember 
 that the average worshipper of Vishnu, like his fellow 
 in the Shivaite sect, is still a relatively primitive man. 
 He is still hungry for those animalic delights which 
 alone seem to make his wretched life livable. . . . 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 159 
 
 4 
 
 BUT though Hinduism among the low-caste folk has 
 remained revoltingly primitive, among the high-caste 
 philosophers it has advanced until certain of its teachings 
 are almost beyond comprehension. “The Hindus as a 
 people seem to be equipped with a deep and definite 
 tendency to think rather than to act. Perhaps because 
 of the enervating climate in their land they are much 
 more given to hard labor in contemplation and medita- 
 tion than to hard labor in conquering and creating with 
 tools and machines. As a result their highest achieve- 
 ments have been in the realm of ideas rather than of 
 concrete things. And the Western world, weary now 
 of things and the frantic struggle to get them, has in 
 recent decades come to take an inordinate interest in 
 those mental achievements of the Hindus. Many 
 Western souls too weak or too fine to stand the grind 
 of our machine civilization have flung themselves with 
 great—and often uncritical—enthusiasm into the pur- 
 suit of various systems of Indian metaphysics. They 
 have joined New Thought churches, Theosophical So- 
 cieties, Leagues for the Contemplation of the Over-Soul;: 
 or at least they have sat in fashionable drawing-rooms 
 and listened entranced to the praise of one and another 
 method of contemplation by turbaned yogi, swami, 
 and other Hindu lecturers. 
 
 But for all that, it is hardly possible that Indian 
 thought will ever be able to take deep root in the West- 
 ern world. At its heart there is a hunger quite incom- 
 prehensible to the Western mind, the hunger for final 
 death, for extinction, for utter release from the dread 
 cycle of transmigrating life. To the Hindu thinker the 
 

 
 
 
 160 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 bitterest woe in this woe-begotten life has always been 
 the dread that there is no way out of life. Practically 
 all of Hindu philosophy has been one protracted at- 
 tempt to prove that there is indeed a way out. Accord- 
 ing to Mahavira the Jina, the way out is through 
 physical self-denial; according to Gautama the Buddha, 
 it is through spiritual temperance and moral rectitude. 
 But according to the orthodox Hindu philosophers, the 
 way out is rather through various physical and psychic 
 exercises. 
 
 Most of these philosophers belong to the school 
 known as “Yoga.”’ The Sanskrit word yoga is said to 
 be related to the Latin jugum, and the English ‘‘yoke’’; 
 and it means “‘union.’”’ Yoga aims to unite the indi- 
 vidual soul with Brahma, the Universal Over-Soul, by 
 the persistent suppression of all disturbing sense-activity. 
 Various exercises which it provides enable a man to re- 
 strain even the slightest unnecessary action of his body, 
 leaving him immobile, transfixed, almost breathless. 
 There he is to sit like a stone image, no tremor in his 
 flesh, no lustre in his eyes, with his mind riveted in 
 concentration on the Over-Soul. And then of a sudden 
 the mystic marriage is consummated. ‘The little soul 
 of the individual becomes suddenly at one with the 
 great Over-Soul of the Universe. An ineffable bliss 
 suffuses the devotee, a peace and rest such as he knew 
 only in the womb of his mother. He feels himself 
 somehow exquisitely exalted, deliciously carried out of 
 himself, divinely disembodied. He becomes for a mo- 
 ment entirely a spirit, an ethereal floating part of the 
 All, a yogi. . . . And then the trance snaps. With a 
 sickening horror in his slow-beating heart, the devotee 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 161 
 
 comes sinking down to earth again. And there he 
 awakes to find himself earth-bound once more—but 
 with a memory he cannot obliterate. From then on he 
 is a changed man, for having once tasted of Nirvana 
 his one consuming passion is to taste again. From then 
 on he is lost completely to the world, caring neither 
 for its virtues nor its vices. From then on he goes 
 wandering lonely as a cloud, not worrying whether he 
 does good or evil, not thinking whether he builds or 
 destroys. For he is no longer an ordinary man—he is 
 a yogi! 
 
 This is not the place for a detailed discussion of mys- 
 ticism. No one can say with indisputable certainty 
 just what it is, or whence it comes. “Theologians and 
 most of the older psychologists insist that the mystic 
 ecstasy experienced by the yogi or the saint is a veritable 
 glimpse into eternity, and that it is a gift from God; 
 the newer psychologists are inclined to believe it is no 
 more than a sublimation of sex desire. But though we 
 may not know what the mystic esctasy is or whence it 
 comes, no one can deny that it is a valid and genuine 
 phenomenon. ‘The fact that ninety-nine out of every 
 hundred people who read this paragraph may never 
 have experienced such an ecstasy does not in the least 
 militate against its reality. Evidently there do exist 
 in the world, especially in India, certain persons whose 
 minds are peculiarly sensitive to what is loosely termed 
 the spiritual. And when such persons heighten their 
 sensitiveness by means of exercises like that of Yoga, 
 it is no real cause for wonder if they experience the 
 transcendent ecstasies whereof they tell. We ordinary 
 mortals have hardly more right to challenge their testi- 
 
162 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 mony than we have right to challenge the testimony of 
 astronomers who, with the increased sight afforded them 
 by their telescopes, tell us of stars which our naked 
 eyes have never seen. 
 
 Besides, even if the mystic experience be indeed a 
 delusion and a lie, all that matters is that to the mystic 
 it seems the only indubitable truth. All of life’s earthly 
 phenomena seem to him entirely illusory and unreal; 
 only those fleeting moments of unearthly ecstasy seem 
 to him to be valid and genuine. And in that faith he 
 lives. Firm in the conviction that all the torments and 
 hazards of earthly life are mere lies and fantasies, he can 
 go through the world without fear. He can have no 
 dread of this material universe because he tells himself 
 it simply isn’t there—and means it. Matter does not 
 exist for him. Only Brahma, the Over-Soul, the “‘It,” 
 the Infinite Spirit—only that exists. His only concern 
 is how to break jail out of this illusory world, and his — 
 whole religion is directed toward that release. In es- 
 sence the mystic’s religion is the technique by which 
 he strives to rise to union with Brahma. It is, of course, 
 in no wise like the ordinary religious technique. It lays 
 no emphasis on prayer or sacrifice, for the Over-Soul 
 is purely impersonal and cannot be moved by cajolery 
 or petition. Nor does it lay any emphasis on morality, 
 for since the Over-Soul is not concerned with this illu- 
 sory material world, necessarily it cannot be interested 
 in the goodness or badness of the illusory deeds per- 
 formed in it. No, the religion, the technique of salva- 
 tion, practiced by the Hindu mystic, lays emphasis only 
 on certain psychic exercises. It demands only concen- 
 tration, suppression of all sense activity, breathless medi- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 163 
 
 tation—and then it guarantees Nirvana. It demands 
 that all action be put to death, and then promises ever- 
 lasting inaction. And millions of souls in India have 
 been ‘‘saved’’ by that belief. ... 
 
 5 
 
 BUT though many Hindus may have found comfort 
 in Yoga and the other philosophical systems, the vast 
 majority of the people have always taken refuge in less 
 abstruse beliefs. “To this day the religion of the Hindu 
 serfs and peasants, especially in the south, is still almost 
 the primitive animism of the aboriginal blacks. It is 
 said that four-fifths of the people of India still worship 
 local spirits, usually female demons, with the most re- 
 volting of animal sacrifices. “The orthodox Hinduism 
 of the brahmins is opposed to animal slaughter, and es- 
 pecially reveres the cow. But the naked masses out in 
 the jungles pay little heed to that taboo, and on occa- 
 sion they even manage to engage fallen brahmins to 
 officiate at their animal sacrifices. “Those wretched half- 
 starved peasants worship godlings, demons, and ghosts, 
 and carry on in the jungles much as did their black an- 
 cestors thousands of years ago. For they are still afraid. 
 They are not tired of life, as are so many of the higher- 
 caste Hindus. Actually those serfs have never really 
 lived enough even to know life, let alone be tired of 
 it. They've merely existed; they've been growing, 
 spawning, and dying, generation after generation, like 
 so many jungle rodents. And therefore they’ve never 
 been able to understand the philosopher’s world-weary 
 appetite for annihilation. Those masses still hunger 
 
164 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 for life—but life enriched and made brahminically 
 luxuriant. 
 
 ‘That is why ake peasants flock to the temples with 
 offerings of meat or flowers, and pray fearfully to the 
 idols of wood and stone. “They imagine that thus they 
 can win for themselves an easier life in a higher caste 
 when they are born again. Or if they dream at all of 
 escape from the cycle of reincarnating life, it is never 
 of escape into passivity and nothingness. Nirvana to 
 them is not a mental state of utter imperturbability in 
 this world, but a physical riot of joy in some other 
 world. And the attainment of that lusty Nirvana is 
 of course their highest hope. ‘To win it they will go 
 
 3 wen ae ces «6tQ 6hCalmost incredible ex- 
 cesses of piety. Millions 
 of them when old and 
 decrepit will crawl on 
 their bellies to the River 
 Ganges simply because the 
 belief prevails that for 
 drawing the last breath by 
 the side of the Ganges, a 
 dying man’s soul receives 
 certain and immediate 
 transportation to Shiva’s 
 heaven. Benares, on the 
 banks of the Ganges, con- 
 IDOLS GROTESQUE BEYOND tains over two thousand 
 
 WORDS 
 temples and uncounted 
 lesser shrines, all of them supported by such credulous 
 Hindu pilgrims. 
 Benares, however, is not the only holy city in the 
 
 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN INDIA 165 
 
 
 
 land, nor the Ganges the only holy river. Every corner 
 of India has its own temples and shrines. Idols gro- 
 tesque beyond description are to be found everywhere: 
 elephant-headed bodies, three-eyed gargoyles, monsters 
 with many heads, and all manner of other such fear- 
 inspiring creations. And to these idols, which increase 
 yearly in number and monstrosity, the millions of India 
 give adoration. ‘The priests, who are supposed to wake 
 and wash and feed the idols, are still the aristocrats. 
 Many a serf in India today refuses to break his fast in 
 the morning save with water in which the toe of a brah- 
 min has been dipped. Caste still has hold of the 
 people with an iron grip. Its original four divisions 
 have multiplied many fold, and the population is now 
 broken up into hundreds of little sub-castes. And there 
 are said to be fifty million men and women in the land 
 who are considered too low to belong even to the lowest 
 sub-caste. “hey are the outcasts, the ‘“Untouchables,”’ 
 whose very crossing of the shadow of a brahmin is sup- 
 posed to render him ritually unclean! 
 
 One wonders what will come of it all. Fear, organized 
 and intensified by. priestcraft, has led poor India into a 
 quicksand whence there seems no escape. Century after 
 century brave attempts have been made to reform the 
 religion; but invariably they have met with failure. 
 No matter how many prophets come to the masses to 
 tell them to destroy their idols and cast out their priests, 
 those masses will not obey. “They simply must have 
 their reeds to cling to, their spirits to believe in. For 
 Ebevrare still afraid... . afraid..°.) .. 
 
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BOOK FOUR 
 WHA HAPPENED IN CHINA 
 
 I. CONFUCIANISM 
 
 1: The primitive religion of \China—ancestor-worship—the 
 state cult—the popular religion—burial customs—family 
 festivalk—why did China advance so early? 2: The story of 
 Confucius. 3: The work of Confucius—his gospel—his place 
 in history. 4: The deification of Confucius. 
 
 II. TAOISM 
 1: The life of Lao-Tze—the Tao-Teh-king—the gospel—was 
 
 Lao-Tze a religious teacher? 2: The degeneration of Taoism 
 —alchemy—-gods and priests—the deification of Lao-Tze. 
 
 III. BUDDHISM 
 
 1: How it entered China—why it succeeded there—its rise and 
 fall. 2: The Land of the ‘“Three Truths’’—popular worship. 
 
 a 
 
BOOK FOUR 
 “WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 
 
 I, CONFUCIANISM 
 
 religion of China, no one seems 
 to know for certain. Some 
 scholars maintain it was al- 
 most or quite a monotheism, 
 for from earliest times the 
 Chinese seem to have wor- 
 shipped a Supreme Ruler usu- 
 ally identified with MHeaven. 
 3 me [his theory of an early mon- 
 
 ern “a otheism can hardly be accepted, 
 however, for side by side with the worship of the 
 Supreme Ruler, the Spirit of Heaven, there went on also 
 the worship of numerous spirits of the earth. As far 
 back as we can go, the Chinese seem to have reached out 
 for help to the spirits which they supposed animated 
 all natural phenomena, and especially to the ghosts of 
 the dead. It is therefore safer to describe the earliest 
 religion of China as an advanced animism rather than a 
 monotheism—a peculiar animism rooted in the wor- 
 ship of the spirits of nature and the worship of the spirits 
 of the dead. Perhaps originally those two elements, 
 nature- and ancestor-worship were rivals for the allegi- 
 169 
 
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 Ss 
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1700) THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ance of the people; but later they were fused together by 
 the belief that Heaven, the chief of the nature spirits, was 
 the first forefather of the emperor, and therefore the chief 
 also of the ancestor spirits. 
 
 Devotion to the dead was the outstanding charac- 
 teristic of the Chinese religion from the very beginning. 
 It was incumbent upon all men, high as well as low, to 
 worship the spirits of their individual forefathers. The 
 emperor worshipped the spirit of Heaven as his ancestor, 
 and the regular sacrifices which he offered to it were the 
 occasion of tremendous ritual display. In a wide deserted ~ 
 reach of sand just south of Peking there still stands the 
 magnificent altar of pure white marble upon which the 
 emperor, clad in robes as azure as the sky, kow- 
 towed and made offerings once each year. It was 
 believed that if the emperor should make the slightest 
 error in those annual rites, lo, the whole world would 
 straightway go to chaos! And for any other man in 
 the land to presume to sacrifice to the spirit associated 
 with Heaven was tantamount to a declaration of rebel- 
 lion. The emperor was the religious head of the nation, 
 and because the greater spirits were supposed to be his 
 exclusive ancestors, their worship was deemed his exclu- 
 sive privilege. Annually he made offerings to the spirit 
 of the Earth, from which he also claimed descent. He 
 made them in a:second sandy, pine-dotted plain outside 
 Peking, and with much the same pomp as was employed 
 by him in worshipping Heaven. He also worshipped 
 the spirits of the soil and the crops and the rivers, and 
 if they did not respond properly, he deposed them much 
 as he might depose a disobedient prince. Being ‘‘Son of 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 171 
 
 Heaven and Earth,”’ he had the right to reduce or in- 
 crease the number of spirits at will! 
 
 All this, however, was only the state religion. The 
 ordinary people could no more approach the god called 
 Heaven than they could approach the emperor, and they 
 could no more share in the worship of Heaven than they 
 could have a hand in the government. Necessarily, 
 therefore, they cherished a separate religion of their own. 
 Harried by the dangers and frustrations of life, they 
 
 turned for help to the spirits of their own forefathers. “ 
 
 Funerals were the occasion of the most elaborate rites 
 and offerings. Clothes and food were put into the 
 graves. Even retainers and relatives were sometimes 
 slaughtered and buried with the corpse of a man of 
 rank. ‘The same thing, of course, was done in Egypt 
 when a king died. “The pyramids are stocked full with 
 sumptuous furniture and other possessions. In early 
 Greece, too, that practice was once observed, and there 
 it was carried to such excess that the statesman, Solon, 
 felt compelled to legislate against it. But in China, 
 where the custom must also have threatened to become a 
 serious menace to economic stability, it was curbed 
 in another way. It was not suppressed there but alleg- 
 orized. What was called the ‘“‘make-see’’ device was in- 
 troduced, and thenceforth the slaves buried with the 
 corpse were merely wooden dolls, and the clothes were 
 of paper! Mere pictures of food and furniture were 
 considered real enough to be sacrificed and buried with 
 the dead! 
 
 Perhaps that subterfuge was possible in China and not 
 in other lands because the Chinese took a peculiar atti- 
 
172 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 tude toward those who had departed this life. In Egypt, 
 Greece, and wherever else possessions were buried with 
 the dead, it was frankly conceded that the practice was 
 observed in order that the departed souls might be well 
 taken care of in the next world. “The Chinese, however, 
 refused to make that admission. “They knew nothing 
 about any other world than this, and seemed not to have 
 been interested enough even to speculate about it. There 
 was a distinct belief in China that the dead did survive 
 somewhere—but just where, no one troubled to ask. 
 All that the Chinese were concerned about was that the 
 ghosts of the dead should come back and help the living. 
 To that end they offered regular sacrifices to the ghosts, 
 worshipping them through the medium of living “‘per- 
 sonators’’ who sat stock-still throughout the ceremony, 
 and then ate a share of the offerings. In later days simple 
 memorial tablets of stone were made to serve as substi- 
 tutes for these “‘personators.’’ ‘The higher classes built 
 temples in which to keep their ancestral tablets; the 
 lower kept them in the main (usually the only) room in 
 their huts. 
 
 The sacrifices to the spirits of the dead were really 
 family feasts. All the art and mystery of Chinese cook- 
 ing went into the preparation of the sauces, relishes, 
 little cakes, and condiments that were used. Divers 
 drinks made from millet were set out with those dishes of 
 food; and then the ceremony began. With the most 
 scrupulous care each minute detail of the ritual was en- 
 acted, while drums boomed, flutes screeched, and huge 
 stringed instruments let out their persistent ping-ping. 
 Both men and women sang songs and danced panto- 
 mimic dances that were imagined to be entertaining to 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 173 
 
 the ghosts in the room. For hours the ceremony went 
 on, sometimes outlasting the day. And then finally the 
 ““prayer officer’’ would declare that the ghosts were satis- 
 fied. Gravely he would bless the celebrant, saying: 
 “Fragrant hath been thy filial sacrifice, and the spirits 
 have delighted in the liquors and viands. “They shower 
 on thee a hundred blessings, each as it is desired and as 
 certain as law. [hou hast been exact and earnest, and 
 thou wilt surely be blessed with favors in the myriads 
 and tens of myriads.’”’ Whereupon bells and drums 
 would raise a mighty din, and the spirits of the dead 
 would politely leave. Having sat in ghostly invisibil- 
 ity throughout the ceremony, having hearkened to the 
 noise, smelled the punk, eaten of the food, and drunk 
 till they were presumed to be full, the spirits would 
 “tranquilly withdraw” to that unknown bourne where | 
 they had their permanent residence. And the celebrants, 
 exhausted but happy, would then arise and wearily set 
 to clearing away the dishes... . 
 
 In no other part of the world did a religion of so 
 bland a character develop. “The element of fear was 
 either nonexistent in it, or kept effectively buried beneath 
 a thick skin of courage and confidence. There was no 
 such thing as prayer for the benefit of the dead, for no 
 Chinese dared to insult his ancestors by imagining them 
 to be in any need of help. Prayers were offered to the 
 dead, and only in order to bring them near and secure 
 their aid. Of course, it must not be imagined that the 
 Chinese peasants three thousand years ago knew no 
 demons to fear or taboos to dread. But it is safe to say 
 that, of all ancient peoples, the Chinese were the least 
 intimidated by such things. Perhaps that is why of all 
 
174 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 ancient peoples the Chinese were the first to dare push 
 forward along that adventurous path which we cal! 
 civilization. Perhaps it was because the Chinese lived - 
 largely without terror and altogether without priests, 
 and that in an age when Athens was still a village and 
 Rome was not yet built, when Britain was still outside 
 the world and Gaul was but a wilderness roamed by © 
 savages, China was already a civilized land where people 
 rode around in carriages, lived in well-built houses, 
 dressed in silk, wore leather shoes, sat on chairs, used 
 tables, ate food from plates, measured time by a sundial, 
 and carried umbrellas! .. . 
 
 u 
 
 BUT if one dares to claim that the fearless, priestless 
 religion of China was responsible for her early advance 
 in civilization, one must admit it was responsible also 
 for her early arrest. “Today China is one of the most 
 backward lands on earth, and it seems evident that her 
 backward-looking ancestor-worship is in large part to: 
 blame for that condition. For ancestor-worship has 
 remained the orthodox religion of China. Until the 
 revolution occurred in 1912, it was still possible to see 
 the emperor with his vast retinue go out to the great 
 aitars south and north of Peking, and sacrifice there to 
 Heaven and Earth almost exactly as did his predecessors 
 three thousand years earlier. And although the coming 
 of a republic to China has brought an end to that 
 imperial worship of Heaven, the old family worship of 
 the ghosts of the ancestors still persists. It may be far 
 less naive and crude today than it was when the night of 
 barbarism had barely lifted in China; but of all the 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 175 
 
 religions in the world it has suffered least alteration at 
 the hands of time. 
 
 It is customary in the West to speak of the orthodox 
 ancestor-worship of China as Confucianism. It must 
 not be imagined, however, that the figure of Confucius 
 is related to this religion as, for instance, Buddha is re- 
 lated to Buddhism, or Mohammed is related to Moham- 
 medanism. Confucius was not at all the founder of the: 
 religion, or even its reformer. Rather he was its con- 
 server, taking hold of it twenty-five hundred years ago, 
 when it was just beginning to decay, and revivifying it 
 so that it could remain the dominant force in the life of 
 the Chinese from then on. He said of himself that he 
 was ‘“‘not a maker but a transmitter, believing in and 
 loving the ancients’’—and in hardly a word or act did 
 he belie that description. 
 
 Confucius, whose Chinese name was Kung-fu-tze, 
 lived in that amazing century, the sixth B. C., which pro- 
 duced Mahavira and Buddha in India, Zoroaster (per- 
 haps) in Persia, and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Second 
 [saiah in Israel. He was born in 551 B.C., and of his 
 early life we know practically nothing. All we are told 
 with any credibility is that at twenty-two he was already 
 a teacher, and an extraordinarily popular one. But his 
 following seems to have been quite unlike the following 
 of most other young teachers who have left their mark 
 on civilization. [hose who sat at the feet of Confucius 
 were not zealous rebels but pious students. For Con- 
 fucius himself was in no sense a rebel. He was an anti- 
 quarian, a man who loved the ancients and devoted 
 himself whole-souled to the study of their wisdom and 
 their ways. Very early he acauired the standing of an 
 

 
 176 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 expert in the ancient ritual customs, and he counted as 
 one of the great experiences of his life the opportunity 
 which once came to him to visit Peking and inspect the 
 places where the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth 
 were offered. 
 
 For many years Confucius spent all his time collect- 
 ing and editing the old writings of his people, and he 
 was not called upon to apply himself to practical affairs | 
 until he was fifty years of age. In 501 he received the 
 appointment of chief magistrate to a city named Chung- 
 tu: and tradition declares that within a twelvemonth he 
 had rid that city of every vestige of crime. He accom- 
 plished this miracle by subjecting all life to an elaborate 
 etiquette. Even the food which different classes might 
 eat was regulated. All living beings were regimented, 
 and even the corpses were laid away in coffins of a pre- 
 scribed thickness and buried in graves of a prescribed 
 shape! | 
 
 Whereupon, so goes the story, the duke of the prov- 
 ince elevated Confucius to ever higher offices, finally 
 making him the Minister of Justice. And as Minister of 
 Justice, Confucius haltered the population so effectively 
 with rules and regulations, that in a very little while 
 the whole province became a model state, and all the 
 laws against crime fell into disuse. ‘‘Dishonesty and 
 dissoluteness were ashamed. Loyalty and good faith 
 marked every man, and chastity and submissiveness 
 graced every woman. Strangers in vast multitudes 
 came flocking from other cities, and the fame of Kung- 
 fu-tze, the idol of the people, flew in song from every 
 mouth’’—at least, so declare the not altogether unpreju- 
 diced biographers of the sage... . 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 177 
 
 But matters went too well to last for long. Neigh- 
 boring princes, jealous of the prosperity and peace in the 
 reformed province, seduced the mind of the duke with 
 presents of fast horses and faster dancing girls. The 
 wonder-working minister, suddenly finding himself out 
 of favor, sadly—and very slowly, for to the last he 
 hoped the duke might repent—shook the dust of the 
 ungrateful prOViNCC papper 
 from his feet. He began 
 to make the rounds of 
 China, going from one 
 court to another and 
 freely offering his serv- 
 ices to every prince and 
 minister he met. With 
 naive assurance he told 
 them, “In a twelve- 
 month I could effect 
 great changes, and in 
 three years I could per- 
 fect everything!’’ But 
 there was none in the 
 land to take advantage 
 of his offer. He wan- 
 dered about for thirteen ETE 
 long years without find- KING-FU-TZE 
 ing a single ruler willing to give him employment. 
 Evidently he was looked on with suspicion by princes 
 and people, and at least once he was attacked by a mob 
 and almost assassinated. Many a day he was forced to 
 go without food, and many a night he was left without 
 shelter. Yet during all those years his heart did not fail 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Ui 
 
 il] 
 il 
 
 HEAT ILHTTE 
 
 
 

 
 178 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 him. Stubbornly he remained confident that Heaven 
 would protect him in his mission of truth, and despite 
 every discouragement he continued to hope for a chance 
 to save the world. 
 
 But at last there came the day when he could wan- 
 der no longer. Life began to ebb from his old bones, 
 and in sorrow he returned to his native province to spend 
 his last days in the study of his beloved ancient scrolls. 
 His body shrivelled into a dry yellow sack, and his 
 courage withered and faded quite away. Perhaps he 
 grew querulous toward the end; certainly he became 
 plaintive and helplessly resentful. ‘The great mountain 
 totters,’’ he mumbled to himself as death came over him: 
 “aye, the stout beam breaks, and the wise man wilteth 
 like a plant! ‘There is not one in the empire that will 
 make me his teacher! Verily, my time has come to die!”’ 
 . . . And thus ended the life of Kung-fu-tze. . , 
 
 3 
 
 NOW it is obvious that this man, one of the greatest 
 in all history, hardly deserves to be described as a re- 
 ligious prophet. Prophets almost invariably are rebels, 
 holy heretics forever breaking with the past. But this 
 man, Confucius, sought not to break with the past, but 
 rather to heal the breach that had already been made. 
 And he did heal it. By his diligent labor in editing the 
 old sacred writings of China and establishing their 
 paramount authority, he laid a yoke on his people that 
 to this day they have been unable to throw off... . 
 This is not the place to go into a discussion of the books, 
 the five king, and the four shu, which he or his imme- 
 diate disciples under him are supposed to have written. 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA Lig 
 
 
 
 For the most part they are made up of collections of 
 ancient ritual hymns, ceremonial laws, magic “‘permuta- 
 tions,’ historical chronicles, and proverbs. “Their im- 
 portance to us rests not upon their own merit, but solely 
 upon the very real though nigh incredible fact that 
 almost to this day they have dominated the life and 
 thought of all learned China. Upon that fact, too, rests 
 the importance of Confucius. He was in no sense an in- 
 novator. He did not contribute a single new idea or 
 practice or experience to the inherited religion of his 
 country. But he was most effectively a conserver. He 
 took hold of an already ancient and decadent religion, 
 and by dint of organizing its scattered traditions, man- 
 aged to infuse imperishable life into it. It is question- 
 able whether any other man in all history has had 
 more lasting influence on a people than that old sage 
 of Shantung who in his life could not even get a 
 HOD Elon as « 
 
 But though Confucius organized and virtually es- 
 tablished a great religion, he himself in the narrower 
 sense was not a religious man. He knew very little about 
 the gods, and seems to have cared less. When a disciple 
 asked about the service of the spirits, he is reported 
 to have answered: ‘‘So long as thou art not able to 
 serve men, how canst thou serve the spirits?’’ Nor 
 had he a word to say about the next world. ‘So long 
 as thou dost not know life,’’ he declared, ““‘how canst 
 thou know death?’’ He saw no reason for prayer, and - 
 scorned all interest in the supernatural. ‘To give one- 
 self earnestly to the service of men, and while respecting 
 the spirits, to make no great to-do about them—that 
 is wisdom,”’ he said. . . . Quite clearly, therefore, Con- 
 
180 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 fucius had little of that fear and none of that humility 
 which drive men to implore the help of gods. He saw 
 little need for gods, for he believed in himself, in his 
 own might as a righteous man. ‘“‘What a superior man 
 seeks,’ he declared, “‘is in himself!” . .. It seemed 
 to Confucius that if only a man conducted himself with 
 propriety, then frustration and despair were impossible. 
 He believed in the moral power of deeds quite as much 
 as his savage ancestor might have believed in the efficacy 
 of magic spells. Indeed, it is reported that once he 
 declared the very stars were held in their courses solely 
 by the moral propriety of man. Not unjustly, there- 
 fore, Confucius may be described as a shaman who 
 relied on moral prescriptions rather than magic rites 
 as the means wherewith to control the universe. His 
 highest contribution was in the field of ethics, and his > 
 proverbs are quoted—-and in the breach, at least, ob- 
 served—still today. There is no extravagant idealism 
 to be found in them, no exaggerated turn-the-other- 
 cheekiness. “There are proverbs for the guidance of all- 
 too-human humanity, and other-worldiness has no place 
 in them. “It is folly to withdraw from the world,”’ 
 Confucius declared, ‘‘and make fellowship with birds 
 and beasts that are not our fellows. With whom should 
 I make fellowship save with suffering mankind? .. .” 
 
 But it is important that we resist the temptation to 
 exaggerate the majesty of Confucius even as an ethical 
 teacher. “Ihe common tendency to class him with the 
 great sages who came markedly to the front in Greece 
 a century or two later is hardly warranted. It is true 
 that they also were quite willing to bend the knee to 
 any and every god so long as they were left to bend 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 181 
 
 their thoughts as they alone willed. But they differed 
 from Confucius in that they bent their thoughts to the 
 new, not the old. “They dared to venture out into 
 virgin lands of the spirit, blazing trails through wilder- 
 nesses no human minds had yet traversed. But Confu- 
 cius? He deployed the forces of his reason only into 
 the decayed and rutted moors of the past. He may 
 have doubted the existence of the ancient gods, but 
 never did he doubt the validity of the ancient rites paid 
 to them. He held it incumbent upon all men to wor- 
 ship with the most scrupulous care, not so much for 
 the gracious benefit of the spirits who were worshipped 
 as for disciplinary benefit to the men who did the wor- 
 shipping. Propriety, regularity, exact and punctilious 
 observance of the “‘three hundred points of ceremony 
 and three thousand points of behavior’’—these were the 
 ultimate ends and aims of life. Confucius himself, we 
 are told, carried this ritual of regularity in his life to 
 quite fantastic extremes. Even his posture while asleep 
 in bed was in accordance with a fixed ruling! ... 
 Everything had to be ordered, for ‘Order is Heaven’s 
 only law.’’ All change was injurious, and salvation 
 could be obtained only if none tried to disturb the re- 
 ligious, social, and political order that already was estab- 
 lished. Of course, one had to go for the ultimate au- 
 thority for the details of that order to the golden past. 
 Whatever was of the fathers seemed to Confucius to be 
 for the sons. Filial piety, respect for the ancestors, was 
 in his eyes the highest of all virtues. 
 And exalting that virtue, he died. 
 

 
 182 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 4 
 
 BUT then Confucius began to live anew. Devoted 
 disciples set down his words in huge collections which 
 are called the ‘“‘Analects."’ “The memory of the great 
 sage began to grow in might, especially in the following 
 century, when a new disciple, Mencius, arose to spread - 
 his doctrines. In the third century a successful usurper 
 of the throne tried his best 
 to uproot the whole 
 growth, for its uncom- 
 promising condemnation 
 of all nonconformity and 
 change made his rebellious 
 life indescribably hard. 
 This emperor put forth 
 systematic effort to de- 
 stroy all the Confucian 
 books, and to slay all 
 those who knew them by 
 -¥ heart. But he failed, and 
 oie when a member of an old- 
 #1 time dynasty regained the 
 imperial throne, Con- 
 fucianism began _ to 
 
 A CONFUCIAN TEMPLE flourish as never before. 
 Confucius himself was ex- 
 
 alted until he became a veritable god. In the year 1 A. D., * 
 the old antiquarian was canonized. ‘“‘Duke Ni, the All- 
 Complete and All-Illustrious,’’ he was officially named. 
 ... In 57 A.D., it was ordered that sacrifices be offered 
 to him at all the colleges. . . . In the year 89 he was 
 
 7 Ea en e 
 GE 
 a 
 
 Eds 
 
 | 
 ‘ 
 
 ( 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 1383 
 
 raised to the higher imperial rank of ‘‘Earl,’”’ and in 267 
 it was decreed that more elaborate animal sacrifices be 
 offered to him four times a year. . . . In 492 even more 
 honor was done him, and he was officially canonized 
 “the Venerable Ni, the Accomplished Sage.” ... In 
 555 separate temples for the worship of Confucius were 
 ordered at the capitals of all prefectures in China, and in 
 740 his image was moved from the side to the center of 
 the Imperial College, to stand with the historic Kings of 
 China. . . . In 1068 he was raised to the full rank of 
 Emperor. ... And finally in 1907 the Empress 
 Dowager raised him to the first grade of worship, rank- 
 ing him with the deities Heaven and Earth! 
 
 And thus it has come about that he who in life was 
 beaten and hounded is now a god for all China. He 
 who had no sheltering place now has over fifteen hun- 
 dred temples to house his tablets; he who was starved 
 now has over sixty-two thousand animals offered to his 
 ghost every year. Worse still, he who saw no untoward 
 need for prayer has himself been made the object of 
 prayer, and he who had little use for gods has himself 
 been made co-equal with Heaven. . . . Irony! 
 
 II. TAOISM 
 
 CONFUCIUS, the practical man, the organizer, the 
 high-priest of the meticulous, is frequently pointed to 
 as the personification of the entire Chinese character. 
 But that is not just. In the maze which is the Chinese 
 mind—as in the maze which is every other mind— 
 there are many paths shadowed by wild hedges of 
 mysticism. If China has made a god of the practical 
 
184 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Confucius, she has done no less by the mystical Lao- 
 WUZeS eae 
 
 Unhappily we have almost no reliable data concern- 
 ing the life of Lao-Tze. His case is not like that of 
 most of the other great men of the past—like the case, 
 for instance, of Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, or 
 Mohammed. Concerning each of these men we have 
 legends and traditions that offer at least a few nails not 
 too loose to sustain the threadbare tapestries of 
 ““critical’’ biography. But concerning Lao-Tze we have 
 not even a half-dependable fact. Our main source of 
 information is a short sketch of two hundred and forty- 
 eight Chinese words which were set down at least five 
 centuries after the philosopher’s death. 
 
 Lao-Tze, whose name may be translated the “Old 
 Scholar,’’ or perhaps the “‘Old Boy,”’ is said to have been 
 born in the year 604 B. C., and is supposed to have been 
 the librarian at the court of the province of Chou. There 
 is an anecdote told of how Confucius, while staying once 
 at this court, tried to learn from the then very aged 
 librarian some obscure details concerning the outworn 
 customs of the province. But all he got for his pains 
 was a severe drubbing, and he left the court saying Lao- 
 ‘Tze was as inexplicable and terrible as a dragon. Con- 
 fucius was completely bewildered by the old man, for 
 in him he was confronted with a mind more unlike his 
 own than seemed possible. Lao-Tze was possessed of 
 one of those tremendously inquisitive, speculative, 
 adventurous intellects. He was forever asking why? 
 Unlike Confucius, Lao-Tze could not blandly take the 
 world for granted, but had to know first who was 
 granting it, and how, and why. And he was old, and 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 185 
 
 very tired, and very wise. ‘The lust after earthly con- 
 quest had long seeped out of his brittle bones, and only 
 the vanity of all life and striving filled his bleared little 
 almond eyes. No wonder, then, if he had slight patience 
 with the eager, hopeful, bustling young world-saver 
 who came to consult him on the forgotten ways of the 
 past. 
 
 The story is told of how in his very last days, Lao- 
 Tze tried to flee from the province of Chou because of 
 the anarchy into which the state had fallen. Like Con- 
 fucius, the older man sorely lamented the “‘poverty of 
 the people’ and the “‘great disorder’ and chicanery in 
 the land; but, unlike Confucius, he did not feel himself 
 called upon to try to remedy these evils. He told him- 
 self that “‘to withdraw into obscurity is the way of 
 Heaven,” and forthwith tried to clear out. But at the 
 frontier the captain of the garrison halted the old man, 
 and asked him to write out his philosophy of life be- 
 fore going into exile. And so there, in a little frontier 
 garrison in ancient China, Lao-Tze wrote the book 
 which is the Bible of the whole Taoist religion. The 
 ‘““Tao- Teh-king’’ the book is called, and although many 
 scholars claim it was never written by Lao-Tze him- 
 self, it is reasonably certain that it contains many of 
 the ideas which the old sage himself thought out. It is 
 a very brief book, barely five thousand words in length, 
 and could be set down here verbatim in less than 
 twenty pages. No doubt its very conciseness, its 
 severely ungenerous brevity, was responsible for the 
 little understanding it received in later generations. 
 
 The book consists of two sections: the first, the Tao, 
 sets out to tell the why of the universe, and the second, 
 
186 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 the Teh, endeavors to tell the how of life. The word 
 Tao is almost untranslatable. A remote approximation 
 to it is the word ‘Nature’ or perhaps ““Way.” ‘Tao 
 is that which is behind all other things, the fundamental 
 reality, the “Way of the Universe.’’ As Lao-Tze him- 
 self said: ‘““There is a Something undifferentiated and 
 yet perfect, which existed before heaven and earth ever 
 came into being. I know not its name, and if I must 
 designate it, I can call it only Tao.”’ The outstanding 
 characteristic of this Tao is that it does everything 
 without giving any sign of doing anything. It is a~ 
 great, inchoate, incorporeal, intangible Something that 
 never exerts itself, and never gets excited. It simply 
 Ret reli 
 And in that very passivity, said Lao-Tze, the Tao’ 
 sets the standard for the proper life of man. ‘There is 
 but one Teh, one ‘“‘Virtue,’’ for man, and that is to 
 emulate the poise and inaction of Tao. It is vain beyond 
 words for any individual to try to accomplish anything 
 in a fever. Fussy meddling with the world, breathless 
 striving to reform or debauch it, are so much sheer folly. 
 ‘There are but ‘““Three Jewels’’ of character, and choicest 
 of them is wu wet, “inactivity.” The true disciple is 
 everlastingly silent, even about Tao. He rejects all 
 learning and scoffs at all hunger for learning. He is a 
 thoroughgoing nihilist, refusing to trouble himself 
 sufficiently to believe anything or do anything. Even 
 to defend himself from injury is too much of a bother. 
 Confucius taught that reciprocity is one of the main 
 laws of ethics. “The good should be requited with good 
 and the evil with evil. But Lao-Tze taught far dif- 
 ferently. He declared: ‘To them that are good I am ~ 
 

 
 RS — 
 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 187 
 
 good, and to them that are not good J am also good; 
 thus all get to be good. ‘Yo them that are sincere J am 
 sincere, and to them that are not sincere I am also 
 sincere; thus all get to be sincere.” . .. Weakness 
 seemed to him the greatest strength. ‘There is nothing 
 in the world more soft and weak than water,’’ he said; 
 “yet for attacking things that are firm and strong 
 nothing surpasses it.’’ An extraordinary spectacle, this: 
 a decrepit old yellow-skinned sage sitting there in a wild 
 frontier camp in China five hundred years before Jesus 
 ever walked on earth, and calmly telling the world to 
 return good for evil! ... 
 
 Next to inactivity, the most precious “Jewel” of 
 character is humility. ‘“When merit hath been achieved, 
 take it not unto thyself,” said Lao-Tze. ‘“‘If thou dost 
 not take it unto thyself, behold, it can never be taken 
 from thee!’’ Or again: ‘‘Keep behind, and thou shalt 
 inevitably be kept in front.’”’ ‘““The wise man is he 
 alone who rests satisfied with what he has.’’ ‘There is 
 no greater guilt than to sanction ambition; neither is 
 there any greater calamity than to be discontented with 
 Goeemotwe., . And next to humility . the most 
 - precious “‘jewel’’ is frugality. Just as out of weakness 
 comes strength and out of humility comes prominence, 
 so out of frugality comes liberality. As Lao-Tze put 
 it; ““Ihe wise man doth not accumulate. The more 
 he expends for others, the more doth he possess of his 
 own; the more he giveth to others, the more hath he 
 for himself.’’ 
 
 Of religion in the narrow sense of the word, Lao- 
 Tze said nothing. He did not believe in the gods, and 
 he was unalterably opposed to all forms of worship. 
 
188 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 He thought sacrifice and prayer both vain and imperti- 
 nent, for they endeavored to bring nature into harmony 
 with man, when properly it was man’s duty to let him- 
 self passively sink into harmony with nature. Only 
 once in the ‘“Tao-Teh-king’’ is the Supreme god, 
 Shang-ti, mentioned, and then only to make known 
 that he is inferior to the ineffable Tao. In the narrower 
 sense of the word, therefore, Lao-Tze was distinctly 
 not a religious man. 
 
 But in the broader sense of the word, Lao-Tze was 
 superlatively a man of faith. For all the eerie mor- 
 bidness of his nihilistic doctrine, Lao-T’ze was pro- 
 foundly a spiritual being. He saw with blinding clarity 
 what Confucius never even remotely suspected—that 
 all life is but an ark of bulrushes drowning in a swamp 
 of vanity. Desperately was he conscious of the need for 
 security, of the need for something infinite in time and 
 space to which finite little man might cling. And that 
 was why he was so attached to the idea of Tao, and 
 taught that the one road to salvation for every man was 
 utter union with that Tao. In all the mystic literature 
 of the world, it would be hard to find a warmer or 
 richer glow than that in the ‘““T’ao-Teh-king.”’ 
 
 2 
 
 OF course a teaching so aloof and unpractical could 
 not remain undefiled and stand any chance of entering 
 the hearts of ordinary men. Tradition declares that 
 when Lao-Tze had made an end to his writing, and 
 was free to take up his journey once more, he went off 
 into the world beyond, and was never again seen by 
 man. He died, and perhaps he was buried—though 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 189 
 
 no man knows how or where. But his book lived, and 
 soon many philosophers were to be found in the hills 
 or far in the forests of China, striving there to live 
 according to the teachings of that book. In caves and 
 the hollowed trunks of trees they sat and labored to 
 practice kenosis—the seeing, doing, and thinking of 
 nothing. 
 
 And the plain people were, of course, tremendously 
 impressed when rumors of the strange doctrines of the 
 *“Tao-Teh-king’’ reached them. And they were even 
 more impressed by the extraordinary men who actually 
 tried to live up to those doctrines. “They imagined 
 such men must be not merely saints, but also magicians. 
 Whereupon not a few of those men, either out of 
 knavery or self-delusion, did set up as magicians. “The 
 “’Tao-Teh-king’’ degenerated in their hands from a 
 source of spiritual wisdom into a textbook of magic 
 formulae. ‘They harried and fretted it to shreds in a 
 mad hunt for the secrets it might contain. Emperors 
 were fooled into spending fortunes on the hare-brained 
 researches of so-called ‘‘professors of Taoism.’ In the 
 third century A. D. one emperor actually sent out two 
 huge expeditions to discover certain magic islands 
 wherein, according to the “‘professors,’’ the elixir of 
 life might be found that would make all men immortal, 
 and the philosopher’s stone that could turn all metals 
 to gold. In the middle ages another emperor actually 
 died of drinking too much of an elixir of life! .. 
 Men of all classes spent their substance in a frantic hunt 
 for those vain things, life and wealth, which the little 
 old mystic, Lao-Tze, had scorned most bitterly. 
 
 A whole religion of Taoism arose. Under the in- 
 
190 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 A “PROFESSOR OF TAOISM” 
 
 fluence of Buddhism, the Taoist hermits began: to 
 organize themselves into orders. All their lives they 
 did everything imaginable just to acquire great 
 monasteries in which to do nothing! . .. Temples 
 arose, and in them priests—Wu they were called— 
 offered sacrifices to idols! Even a high-priesthood 
 arose, and to this day there lives on top of a mountain 
 in the province of Kiang-si a pope of the Taoist Church 
 who calls himself T’ien-shi, the “‘Heaven Master!’’ 
 
 And thus has time played scurvily with the work 
 of Lao-Tze. He who declared that the wise man never 
 accumulates has been made the prophet of a cult that 
 seeks naught save accumulation. He who declared that 
 life is the sorriest of vanities has been hailed the dis- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 191 
 
 coverer of magic potions to make life everlasting. Above 
 all, he who laughed at the gods and scoffed at their 
 worship has himself been made a god. ... What 
 irony! For two thousand and eighty-one years now, 
 ever since 156 B.C., that little old nihilist, Lao-Tze, 
 has been worshipped with sacrifices throughout the land 
 of China! ... | 
 
 II. BUDDHISM 
 
 BUT the religion of China today is neither Confu- 
 cianism alone, nor Taoism—nor even a combination of 
 the two. A third element long ago entered into the 
 amalgam: Buddhism. Sometime in the second century 
 B. C., after having made its way through Afghanistan 
 and Turkestan, Buddhism finally entered China. It 
 did not spread at once, however. Buddhism then was 
 not yet sufficiently bedizened with easy doctrines and 
 lovable idols for it to have any great proselyting power. 
 But. by the second century A.D. it had become an 
 entirely new religion, very generously salvationistic and 
 frankly compromising; and then it spread with great 
 rapidity. 
 
 The new Buddhism seems to have had an irresistible 
 lure for the people of China. It had comforts to offer 
 that their own old religions knew nothing about. For 
 one thing, it offered them a very personal and personable 
 god, an idolized Buddha whose serenely placid face and 
 gracefully rotund body could be seen and kissed and 
 kow-towed to in every temple. Confucianism allowed 
 neither idols nor temples. Sacrifices were offered only 
 to tablets, and on altars under the open sky. But this 
 new religion from India brought with it a whole galaxy 
 

 
 A CHINESE BUDDHA 
 
 192 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 193 
 
 of attractive idols, and a whole art of temple architecture. 
 
 Then, too, Buddhism had a great deal of information 
 
 to impart concerning life after death. Confucianism, 
 for all its eagerness to obtain aid from the dead, had 
 nothing at all to say concerning their abode. But Budd- 
 hism had a very wonderful heaven and a very terrible 
 hell of which to tell, and made prayer for the dead a 
 desperately important 
 matter. After the com- 
 ing of Buddhism the 
 Chinese in their worship 
 of the ancestors began to 
 pray for the souls of the 
 dead, as well as to them. wt. 
 At present, even in Chi- tarens borg 
 nese homes where Budd- 
 hism is not accepted, it 
 is usual for masses to be 
 recited for the peace of 
 the dead. 
 
 But the new Budd- 
 hism’s greatest attraction 
 lay in the fact that it 
 was so thoroughly a reli- 
 gion of salvation. To 
 poor blind people grop- 
 ing about in the darkness of life, it offered light. It told 
 them that they had merely to believe in the Buddha, in 
 him who was called the “Enlightened One,’’ and 
 straightway all would become as day for them. Neither 
 Confucianism nor Taoism had a tithe as much to offer. 
 Confucianism, indeed, had nothing to say concerning 
 
 
 
 A CHINESE ALTAR 
 

 
 Meds THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 salvation. It was so busy telling men how to live that 
 it forgot even to ask—let alone to answer—the question 
 why they should live. And ‘Taoism, fallen till it was a 
 mere slut in the laboratories of alchemists, was no better. 
 Even though it did ask why men should live, it offered 
 an answer thit the masses could not possibly fathom. It 
 assured the coolie in the rice-swamp that he lived to 
 make it possitle for the emperor and his magicians to 
 go hunting thi elixir of life—and that was far from 
 an adequate explanation for him. 
 
 So Buddhism-—or more exactly, the religion that was 
 called Buddhism seven hundred years after Buddha died 
 —had no very great difficulty in winning adherents in 
 China. From the third century on it flourished openly. 
 Temples and monasteries sprang up throughout the 
 land, and Chinese by the myriad were converted. The 
 governing class, it is true, did not always favor the 
 new faith. It was something new, and from their 
 Confucian point of view it was therefore bad... . In 
 the fifth century dreadful persecutions of the Buddhists 
 took place. Monasteries and pagodas were pillaged and 
 burnt, and unnumbered monks and nuns were deported 
 or put to death. But in a little while came a reaction, 
 and at the beginning of the sixth century the very em- 
 peror himself abdicated his throne in order to become 
 a Buddhist monk! In the following centuries the faith 
 continued to fluctuate in public favor. Again and again 
 the mandarins protested against it, claiming it was 
 altogether incompatible with the authentic old Chinese 
 spirit. They accused it also of fostering lewdness, 
 especially in its nunneries. In 884 A. D. violent persecu- 
 tions broke out again, and Buddhism then suffered a 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN CHINA 195 
 
 blow from which it never fully recovered. All the 
 forty thousand Buddhist monasteries, temples, and 
 pagodas in the land were ordered to be razed to the 
 ground. Their bronze images, bells, and metal plates 
 were melted down and coined into money, and their iron 
 statues were recast into ploughshares and shovels. As 
 for the monks and nuns—who numbered well over a 
 quarter of a million—they were all summarily com- 
 manded to return to secular life or leave the country. 
 And though in later years Buddhism managed to rebuild 
 some of those monasteries and fill them with new throngs 
 of monastics, never did it regain its pristine importance. 
 
 Js 
 
 SO China today is the land of the “Three Truths’’: 
 Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Confucianism 
 is largely the religion of the learned classes, and all can- 
 didates for civil service appointments are expected to 
 pass an examination in its nine holy books. “Taoism 
 and Buddhism are the faiths to which the masses alone 
 render allegiance; but both are little more than a dark 
 cloaca, swarming with spirits, devils, ghosts, vampires, 
 werewolves, and green-eyed dragons. The mind of 
 the Chinese peasant today is simply cluttered up with 
 crowds of jostling demons. “Throughout the land one 
 finds the Wu, the demon-chasing priests, eking out a 
 living by uttering spells over the diseased and the 
 maimed. A great dread prevails everywhere of unlucky 
 days and unlucky places. Months, even years, are spent 
 in a terrified hunt to find a lucky plot for the burial of 
 the family dead. (In the days of anti-Buddhist agita- 
 tion, many a Buddhist monastery was spared by the 
 
196 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 rulers of the locality solely because its presence was sup- 
 posed to make the surrounding soil lucky for use as a 
 graveyard.) There is a rooted conviction throughout 
 the land that each place on earth has its own feng-Shut, 
 its own ‘‘spirit climate.’’ No house, no grave, no shop 
 can be built without first consulting the Feng-Shui ma- 
 gician as to whether its proposed site is lucky... . 
 
 And to such a sorry faith has a great old Chinese race 
 descended. Fear is to blame for it, of course. It was 
 fear that picked out China’s eyes, and made her blind. 
 And it is fear that now flaps its ghastly wings about her, 
 and makes her clutch at every spirit. Fear si 
 Lear sts 
 

 
BOOK FIVE 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 
 
 I. ZOROASTRIANISM 
 
 1: The animism of early Iran—did Zoroaster ever live?—the 
 legends concerning his life 2: The gospel of Zoroaster—-Good 
 vs. Evil—the fire altars—the future life. 3: The ordeal of 
 Zoroaster—his first converts—death. 4: The corruption of the 
 gospel—ritual—burial customs—‘‘defilement’’—the priesthood 
 —Mithraism. 5: The influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism 
 —on Christianity—on Islam—the Parsees. 
 
 198 
 
BOOK FIVE 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 
 
 I, ZOROASTRIANISM 
 
 aafitiE scene of our story shifts west- 
 a ward, leaving the walled cities 
 maj and rice-swamps of China and 
 =i going up to the wild plateau of 
 Iran in western Asia. The first 
 white men in Iran, the region 
 now called Persia, were of the 
 Aryan stock; and their religion 
 | was closely akin to that of the 
 Aryans who invaded India and 
 Greece. It was an animism cen- 
 tering in the worship of Ashura, Anahita, Mithra, 
 Haoma, and many other spirits supposed to dwell 
 in natural objects. Just how or where that animism 
 had its origin, no one knows; for no one knows whence 
 the Aryans came. Nor do we know exactly when that 
 animism came to an end, for no authentic records exist 
 as to the history of Iran before the seventh century B. C. 
 All that is known is that a primitive animism arose, 
 flourished and then disappeared—and that for its dis- 
 appearance a certain man named Zarathustra—or more 
 popularly, Zoroaster—was responsible. 
 But even that much is not known with indisputable 
 certainty. Some scholars today are convinced that there 
 never was a Zoroaster on earth. “They maintain he is 
 
 199 
 
 
 

 
 rn et 
 
 200 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 but another of those mythical personages conjured up 
 by a later generation to explain some vast religious or 
 political change in its past. Moses, Mahavira, Buddha, 
 Lao-Tze, Krishna, and Jesus, are similarly classed by 
 them as figures devoid of genuine historicity, as mere 
 fictional heroes created to dramatize and personify 
 slowly matured and impersonal movements. And it 
 must be admitted that there is no unchallengeable evi- 
 dence to prove the existence of any one of those colossal 
 figures, no carvings in enduring stone, or contemporary 
 records set down on still-existing scrolls. All that re- 
 mains concerning them are webs of legend and gospel 
 spun by generation after generation of zealous but 
 imaginative disciples. Most of those legends were on 
 the loose tongues of men for ages before they were first 
 set down in writing. And even after that, they no doubt 
 still came in for great change at the hands of nodding or 
 overconfident scribes. It is far from easy to base a 
 critical faith on their florid and purely traditional 
 testimony. 
 
 Yet most reputable scholars, even of the most critical 
 school, incline to agree that those webs of tradition con- 
 tain at least a few threads of truth. They do so on the 
 score that the acceptance of the historicity of Moses, 
 Buddha, or Jesus puts less strain on our reason than 
 the alternative of rejection. After all, wherever a new 
 and heretical religion was founded, there must have 
 been some outstanding individual to take the lead in 
 founding it. It is naturally less difficult to believe that 
 effects have adequate causes than to believe that they 
 Havemotans iu, 
 
 But it is only on such a basis that one can accept 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA _201 
 
 the historicity of Zoroaster. It seems less incredible that 
 he did exist than that he did not, for some striking 
 personality must have been at least in part responsible 
 for the tremendous religious transformation that came 
 over the ancient people of Iran. Proof less negative 
 is not at hand. ‘The Persian scriptures, the Avesta, con- 
 tain a group of hymns called the Gathas which may 
 have been the work of Zoroaster; but just how old 
 they are, no one knows, ‘Tradition gives 660 B.C. as 
 the date of the prophet’s birth; but actually it may 
 even have been as early as 1000 B.c. And tradition 
 gives the northwest of Iran as his birthplace, a place 
 somewhere in the neighborhood of the present Armenian 
 frontier; but actually it may have been at the very 
 other end of the land. ‘Tradition further declares his 
 birth to have been the outcome of an immaculate con- 
 ception. (It is appalling, how little pride men have 
 in their own species. Rarely can they bring themselves 
 to believe that supreme greatness can spring from their 
 own loins. No, always they must ascribe its paternity 
 to the gods.) An incomprehensible trinity made up 
 of the “Glory,” the “Guardian Spirit,’’ and the ‘‘Ma- 
 terial Body,’’ is reputed to have been responsible for the 
 appearance of Zoroaster on earth. Innumerable miracles 
 occurred while he still lay in the womb of his mother 
 to save him from destruction. Demons sought to hold 
 off the birth, going even to the extreme of trying to 
 choke the child at the very moment of its delivery. But 
 in vain. [he prodigy was born, and with its very first 
 breath it uttered a mighty laugh of triumph that was 
 heard around all the earth. 
 
202 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Zoroaster was indeed 
 a wonderful child—ac- 
 cording to the legends. 
 At a very early age he 
 engaged the priests of 
 the old religion in a bit- 
 ter debate, and routed © 
 them. And when grown 
 to the age of youth, he 
 took staff in hand and 
 went off into the world 
 in a quest for righteous- 
 ness. Sore troubled by 
 the sight of the evil in 
 ZOROASTER SEEKS SALVATION the world, young Zoro- 
 aster could find no peace 
 amid the comforts of his home. So he fled. For three 
 years he tramped the desert trails in search of salvation, of 
 a reason for life. And failing to find it, a great gloom 
 came over him. For seven years then he remained 
 silent, morose and silent, while he brooded over the im- 
 penetrable blackness which life had become for him. 
 . . . And then of a sudden, light came. Of a sudden 
 day dawned in his long-benighted soul, and once more 
 he took up his staff and began to wander. But now he 
 was no longer a wanderer seeking for light. No, now 
 he was instead a bearer of light to all others who still 
 sought for it. He went about preaching the salvation 
 that had come to him, and telling how others, too, 
 could attain it. Across the length and breadth of Iran 
 he beat his way, hawking everywhere the gospel that 
 had brought him peace. 
 
 
 
 
 
- WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 203 
 
 2 
 
 THE gospel of Zoroaster was as thoroughly native to 
 Iran as its frowning mountains and desert winds. It 
 was stern, rigorous, demanding. “There was in it neither 
 the florid confidence revealed in the Vedas, nor the livid 
 despair shown in the Upanishads. Rather there was 
 in it a steel-gray valor that could know life for what it 
 really was, and yet could continue to hope. Religions 
 are so varied largely because the earth contains such 
 varied lands and climates. Religion, as we have 
 already seen, is the technique wherewith man seeks to 
 conquer his environment; and therefore it must neces- 
 sarily vary according to the locale in which it is em- 
 ployed. ‘The religion of the overabundant valley of 
 the Indus could not very well be anything but one of 
 ease. In the intolerable furnace of the Ganges Valley, 
 the religion could hardly be anything else than one of 
 hopelessness. And on the stern plateau of Iran, it 
 could not but be one of fierce courage and struggle. 
 For Iran was a land of perpetual struggle, of perpetual 
 warfare against wind and ice and wilderness. Over- 
 whelming contrasts faced its inhabitants: a great salt 
 desert prostrate with heat at the base of encircling snow- 
 peaked mountains. And the religion there conceived 
 and proclaimed by Zoroaster was likewise one of con- 
 trasts. According to it, all the universe was one great 
 Wattle-ground on which Good and Bad struggled for 
 mastery. On the one side was Ahura Mazda, the Wise 
 Spirit, supported by his six vassals: Good Thought, 
 Right Law, Noble Government, Holy Character, Health, 
 and Immortality. Pitted against him was Angra 
 

 
 204 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Mainyu, the Lie Demon, supported by most of the old 
 gods of the popular faith, And midway between the 
 two contending armies stood man. It was absolutely 
 incumbent upon man to choose on which side he would 
 battle: on the side of Good, Purity, and Light, or of 
 Evil, Filth, and Darkness. There could be no slightest 
 compromise or evasion. One had to enlist on one side 
 or the other, just as the beasts, the winds, the very 
 plants were enlisted. 
 
 And once each man had chosen his side, then his 
 every word and deed had its effect on the fortunes of 
 the war. It was not prayer but work that was demanded 
 of the worshippers of Ahura Mazda. Their noblest 
 act of devotion was the performance of a task like the 
 irrigating of a desert patch or the bridging of a tor- 
 rential stream. Ahura Mazda was in essence the spirit 
 of civilization, and the only worship acceptable to him 
 was the spreading of order and stability. He who de- 
 clared himself on the side of Ahura Mazda was in duty 
 bound to devote all his days to fighting the battle for 
 Light. No mercy was to be shown by him to the enemy, 
 be that enemy some weed or beast or savage from the 
 ‘Turanian wilds. Ahura Mazda was the god of justice, 
 not of mercy, and in his warfare he neither gave nor 
 received quarter. In his service there was no room for 
 sentimentality; one had to be hard and unbending. The 
 one great law of ethics was to give aid to those—and 
 only those—who were also on the side of Good, and 
 never to do them the slightest injury. Even beneficent 
 animals such as those that destroyed rodents, snakes, 
 and other evil creatures, were considered holy and de- 
 serving of aid. The penalty for killing a hedgehog was 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 205 
 
 
 
 nine lives spent in hell; for killing an otter it was— 
 well, to begin with—ten thousand lashes with a horse- 
 whip. An inviolable sanctity was attached to the life 
 of all domestic animals, especially cows, dogs, and sheep. 
 To care for them and help multiply their number was 
 the devoutest act of faith ... 
 
 It was an extraordinary religion, this of the ancient 
 prophet of Iran. It preached a technique of coping 
 with the evils of the universe that was totally at vari- 
 ance with anything ever before conceived by man. 
 Zoroaster had no patience with the old gods, Mithra, 
 Anahita, Haoma, and the rest, and denounced them 
 all as demons. The very word deva, which had aiways 
 meant “‘gods,’” he made to connote ‘“‘devils.’”’ (Both 
 connotations somehow found their way into the stream 
 of European languages, and that is why there is still 
 today so close a likeness in sound between “‘deviltry”’ 
 and ‘“‘divinity.””) ... Only one heathen rite did 
 Zoroaster take over, and that was the veneration of fire. 
 (Some say he came of a family of ancient fire-priests. ) 
 But according to the prophet, fire was not a god to be 
 worshipped as it may have been worshipped by the 
 earliest Iranians. No, it was a mere symbol of Ahura 
 Mazda. Fire-altars were to be erected solely as a testi- 
 monial to the veneration in which the “Wise Spirit’’ 
 was held. Zoroaster may himself have gone about the 
 land erecting such altars and reciting the hymns called 
 the Gathas what time he attended the holy flames. 
 But he made it clear that the erecting or serving of a 
 fire altar was not the sole or even the chief approach to 
 
 the ‘‘Wise Spirit.” The chief approach to him was, 
 
 through daily toil. ‘“‘He who sows corn, sows religion.” 
 
 f 
 
206 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Laziness was a thing of the Devil. Every morning 
 the demon of laziness whispers in the ear of man: 
 “Sleep on, poor man. It is not time yet.’’ But he 
 alone who arises the first, declared Zoroaster, would be 
 the first to enter Paradise. 
 
 No one was left in doubt that there was indeed a 
 Paradise. And there was also a Hell. ‘The true serv- 
 ants of Ahura Mazda would as surely enter the one, 
 it was believed, as the slaves of Angra Mainyu would 
 be hurled into the other. And ultimately the two realms 
 would meet to engage in a terrible climacteric struggle. 
 The long protracted war between Good and Evil would 
 come to a close in “The Affair.”” Then for a season 
 thick darkness would cover the face of the earth, and 
 the whole universe would quake with the shock of the 
 encounter. Fire and death would swirl over all, and 
 there would be gnashing of teeth and dreadful wailing. 
 The terror in the world would be “‘like the terror of the 
 lamb when it is devoured by the wolf.’ ... But at 
 last the fury would abate, and slowly, wearily, almost 
 ready to perish because of the severity of the ordeal, 
 Ahura Mazda would emerge—the victor. Then all 
 the hills and mountains would melt and pour down 
 over the earth, and ali men would have to pass through 
 the boiling lava. “To the just and righteous, however, 
 that lava would be as warm milk; only to the wicked 
 would it be scalding and fatal. “The just and righteous 
 would wade through it with laughter on their lips, re- 
 joicing over a victory so well won. And the earth 
 thereafter would be an everlasting Paradise wherein 
 there would be no more mountains or deserts or wild 
 beasts or savages. [he Kingdom of Ahura Mazda 
 
 
 

 
 Witt ben eb PIN ROSIN I RERSIA 207 
 
 would have reached its consummation, and all would 
 be well thenceforth forever and aye... . 
 
 3 
 
 SUCH, as best the scholars can make it out, was the 
 religion which Zoroaster sought to bring to his fellow 
 Iranians. Perhaps it was not so free of heathenisms, 
 not merely so exalted and superbly spiritual, as the 
 scholars have pictured it. Save on the basis of the 
 miraculous, one finds it nigh impossible to explain the 
 sprouting of so altogether fair a religion before the night 
 of barbarism had yet quite lifted in Iran. But however 
 much less noble it may have been than it is now pic- 
 
 ARABIAN 
 
 
 
 ye aie = 
 
 THE WANDERINGS OF ZOROASTER 
 
208 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 tured, still it was far too noble for its time. Tradition 
 declares that for ten harrowing years the appeal of 
 Zoroaster was like a voice in the wilderness. None 
 would give ear to the man, or, giving ear, could make 
 him out. Solitary and misunderstood he went about, 
 harried by the heathen priests, imprisoned by heathen 
 princes. More than once he cried out desperately to 
 his God: 
 
 To what land shall I turn, 
 
 Or whither shall I go? 
 
 Far am I from kinsmen, 
 
 Distant from friends; 
 
 Foully am I dealt with by peasants and kings. 
 Unto Thee I cry, O Wise Spirit, 
 
 Unto Thee I cry, Give me Help! 
 
 He needed help, did poor Zoroaster, for his was no 
 light task. It was a day when the conversion of a 
 people could come only as a result of converting their 
 prince—and princes were not willing to be converted. 
 After ten long years of struggle, the outcome seemed 
 altogether hopeless. When one winter's night he was 
 refused shelter even for his “‘two steeds shivering with 
 cold,’” a great temptation to surrender almost tore him 
 from his faith. “The Lie Demon—so goes the legend— 
 took hold of Zoroaster and tried to shake him from his 
 devotion. ‘“‘Hold!’’ cried the Lie Demon. ‘“‘Dare not 
 to destroy my handiwork! Remember, thou art the 
 son of thy mother, and thy mother worshipped me. 
 Renounce the right religion of Mazda, and obtain at 
 last the favor of kings.’’ Fierce then waxed the struggle 
 in the soul of the tired prophet; but in the end the truth 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 209 
 
 was victor. ‘‘No!’’ the prophet cried back to the Lie 
 Demon. ‘I shall not renounce the right religion of 
 Mazda—not though life and limb and soul be torn 
 SSUNCCEL Wh tetis- 
 
 And soon thereafter Zoroaster made his first convert. 
 He was not a prince, however—merely one of his own 
 cousins. Still, it was a start—enough of a start to keep 
 the prophet at his task for two years more. And then 
 at last a real prince was converted, a mighty ruler 
 named Vishtasp who became the Constantine of the 
 new faith. A church militant was formed, and holy 
 warts were waged against the Turanian savages on the 
 north. “Those Turanians were wild bedouin raiders 
 
 
 
 THE TURANIANS WERE BEDOUIN RAIDERS 
 

 
 210 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 who made the life of the Iranian farmers a nightmare, 
 and they seemed to Zoroaster the personification of all 
 Ahura Mazda hated. The prophet waged war with- 
 out mercy against them. “I am he that tortureth the 
 sinners,’ he declared, ‘“‘and he that avengeth the right- 
 eous. [hough I bring bitter woe, still must I do that 
 which Ahura Mazda declareth right.’’ Yet for all his 
 unsparing zeal, Zoroaster seems not to have been narrow. 
 “If even among the Turanians there arise those who 
 help the settlements of Piety,’’ he declared, “‘behold 
 even with them shall the Lord have his habitation.’’ 
 According to tradition, one of Zoroaster’s most 
 loyal and trusted followers was a Turanian named 
 Prvanai view 
 
 Such was the gospel by which Zoroaster lived—and 
 for which he died. For it may be that he did die in its 
 ministry. Legend has it that Zoroaster was struck down 
 while he stood ministering at an altar of fire, brought to 
 book by one of those heathen priests whose worship he 
 bad srouteds i. 0 
 
 4 
 
 WE may not be quite certain as to just what was the 
 teaching of Zoroaster himself; but there can be no doubt 
 as to what it became at the hands of his successors. It 
 degenerated. “The faith voiced in those prophetic hymns 
 called the Gathas was too nobly exacting, too exaltedly 
 strenuous to last in its original purity. It was too bright 
 for the weak eyes of ordinary men to gaze on steadily, 
 too vast for their little hands to grasp. So very soon 
 its brightness was dulled by the streaming breath 
 of sedentary theologians, while its vastness was eater 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 211 
 
 away by the attrition of greedy priests. In the begin- 
 ning, Ahura Mazda may have been but a spirit, a dream, 
 an ideal. He may have been little more than the name 
 that stood for all that was good in the world, a convic- 
 tion around which to build one’s life. But a later genera- 
 tion made Ahura Mazda the name of a person, a super- 
 human being with not a few crudely human attributes. 
 Ormuzd, he was called. . . . And Angra Mainyu, the 
 Lie Demon, the name that stood for all that was evil in 
 the world, also became 
 the name of a person. 
 Ahriman, this person 
 was later called, and he 
 was then thought to be 
 not merely the Agent of 
 Evil, but its original 
 creator. e. 2) Phen six 
 spirits, Good Thought, 
 Right Law, and the 
 others, which Zoroaster 
 had thought of as quali- 
 ties serving Ahura 
 Mazda, became very per- 
 sonal angels, and were 
 increased in number 
 tromunsix to. S1X ty, 
 seventy, a thousand, ten 
 thousand! And opposed 
 to them were set up 
 many thousands of 
 devils. ... All the Bagge | 
 winning simplicity of THE PROPHET OF IRAN 
 
 
 
alte THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Zoroaster’s vague ideas was bit by bit destroyed by be- 
 dizening theologians. 
 
 But this elaboration of Zoroaster’s stark doctrine was 
 not nearly so tragic as the perversion that ensued. “The 
 poetry and truth of Zoroaster became prose and error 
 at the hands of those who came after him. If he said 
 ‘be pure,’’ meaning clean with righteousness, straight- 
 way they imagined with their literal minds that he meant 
 be ritually pure. Currency was given to the most ex- 
 travagant notions of taboo and “‘defilement,’’ and to the 
 absurdest rules for their removal. Certain things were 
 declared to be “holy’’ and certain other things “‘un- 
 holy’’; and ne’er the twain dared be brought together. 
 That led of course, to all manner of complications. For 
 instance, among the things considered “‘holy’”’ were fire, 
 water, and earth; while a corpse was thought to be 
 dreadfully “unholy.’’ ‘The disposal of the dead there- 
 fore became a serious problem. Since the corpse might 
 not be buried or burnt, or drowned, there was nothing 
 left but to expose it on a high ‘““Tower of Silence,’’ 
 where it could be devoured by the vultures. Elaborate 
 precautions had to be taken lest a drop of rain touch the 
 dead body, and funerals were permitted only on dry 
 days. Professional bearers, who took the most scrupu- 
 lous care to guard themselves against ‘‘defilement,’’ car- 
 ried the corpse to the top of this tower. There it was 
 left until the carrion birds had made an end of their 
 ghoulish feast, and only after three days of exposure 
 were the bleached bones cast into a pit. To this day the 
 Parsees, the descendants of the old Zoroastrians, stil 
 dispose of their dead in that way. . . 
 
 Not merely corpses, but all manner of other things 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA 213 
 
 were considered taboo and “‘unclean.’’ So many indeed 
 were they, and so difficult to think of, that success in 
 the task of avoiding all ‘‘defilement’”’ became practically 
 hopeless. ‘Therefore, in order to be on the safe side, 
 it was forbidden that any religious task be essayed unless 
 the celebrant first ‘“‘purified’’ himself as though from an 
 actual and definitely remembered ‘‘defilement.’’ Cow’s 
 urine was considered the most potent ‘‘purifier’’ and 
 those who desired to cleanse themselves ritually had to 
 swab themselves with the stuff six times a day every 
 third day, for nine days. They had to rub down one 
 member after another with it, until finally the demon 
 of ‘‘defilement’’ was driven all the way from the head to 
 the feet. The point of exit for the demon was always 
 the big toe of the left foot, and when ejected thence, it 
 went off with a shriek to the north where all the demons 
 —and once all the Turanians—dwelled. Every time a 
 man touched a corpse, or a menstrual woman, or any 
 other tabooed thing, he had to go through that revolting 
 process of ritual purification all over again. ‘That is 
 still the law among orthodox Parsees. . . . 
 
 Now the growth of such a ritual law was almost 
 as natural and inevitable as the growth of lichens on 
 a rock. Only the great souls, the sages and prophets, 
 have ever been able to find salvation in a religion naked 
 of ceremonial adornment. Ordinary men even today 
 are incapable of comprehending abstract ideas. Before 
 a thought can become real to them it must be concretized 
 and made obvious through symbols or symbolic action. 
 That is why the career of every prophetically founded 
 religion on earth has been a career of more or less pro- 
 gressive frustration. What happened in Jainism, 
 

 
 214 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Buddhism, and Taoism happened also in Zoroastrian- 
 ism. “The prophet was succeeded by priests, by ordinary 
 men of more than ordinary talent who attempted to 
 “organize” the truth their master had uttered. And 
 tragedy was then inevitable. In the first place, those 
 priests were incapable of really comprehending their 
 master’s truth. ‘Ichey were men of talent, not of genius; 
 and talent is not enough for the full understanding of 
 a great gospel. In the second place, even had they been 
 ! Bila able to grasp the 
 prophet’s truth, they 
 could not possibly have 
 organized it. For truth, © 
 by its very nature, is in- 
 
 capable of being organ- 
 ized. It belongs gene- 
 tically to the realm of 
 the ideal, and it can no 
 more be regimented than 
 the rainbow can be hung 
 with clothes. Conse- 
 quently there was no 
 avoiding frustration. 
 The priests reached out 
 to lay hold of Zoro- 
 aster’s truth, but their 
 blunt fingers could close 
 only on falsehood. Eagerly they strained to light their 
 brands at the brave little flame which he held up against 
 the dark swirling immensities of fear; but they succeeded 
 
 only in getting their brands to smoke and crackle in | 
 shamed impotence. 
 
 
 
 THE AHRIMAN DRAGON 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA aie 
 
 
 
 But though the priests failed to preserve Zoroaster’s 
 gospel they succeeded all too well in preserving them- 
 selves. Indeed, the more they failed with the one, the 
 more they succeeded with the other. For the more they 
 made salvation a prize that could be won only by strict 
 observance of the ritual, the more they made themselves 
 the donors of salvation. No doubt that was why the 
 ritualization of the religion was carried to such inordi- 
 nate lengths by the priests. It paid. It gave those 
 priests enormous power over the populace, and enabled 
 them to establish themselves as a permanent caste in 
 Iran. They organized themselves into an hereditary 
 order, and at one juncture even instituted a papacy in 
 the land. They were called the Magi, and their fame 
 as necromancers later spread through the world.? Their 
 chief function was to officiate at the regular temple and 
 household services. Masked with thick veils to keep 
 their breath from polluting the holy flames, they served 
 at the fire-altars five times each day. With like punctilio 
 they served also at the haoma-altars which Zoroaster 
 in his day had tried most strenuously to destroy. 
 Haoma (called Soma in India), an intoxicating vege- 
 table extract, was considered highly sacred among the 
 primitive Aryans, and was used in the earliest religious 
 rites. Evidently its hold on the masses was so firm 
 that despite Zoroaster’s reform it was able to continue 
 as a sacramental property. In the priestly law-books 
 we find detailed accounts of just how the haoma rites 
 were performed after the prophet died. “I'wigs of the 
 sacred plant were pounded in a mortar; the heady juice 
 
 
 
 1JIt is from their name, Magi (pronounced with the “‘g’’ soft and the 
 “7’’ long, as in ‘‘gibe’’), that we get our words magic and magician. 
 
216 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 was mixed with milk and holy water; it was strained; 
 and then it was swallowed by the priests. (A potent 
 cocktail it must have made!) At one time it took eight 
 priests to perform the rite, one to recite the Gathas, 
 one to pound the haoma, one to mix the juice with the 
 milk, four others to stand by and help, and one to watch 
 over all! 
 
 But the haoma rites were not the only relics of the 
 old heathenism that returned after Zoroaster’s death. 
 Many of the old fallen gods, too, were dragged back into 
 fashion—Mithra and Anahita and others. ‘The very 
 Gathas of Zoroaster were corrupted by interpolation, or 
 at least misinterpretation, so that they might give the 
 impression that the prophet himself had commanded 
 the worship of those gods. . . . Mithra especially be- 
 came popular; and as we have already seen, his cult 
 later spread beyond the borders of Persia into Babylonia, 
 Greece, and finally into Rome itself. For at least two 
 centuries that cult struggled with Christianity for the 
 dominance of the Roman Empire. And when in the 
 end it was vanquished, its place was taken almost im- 
 mediately by Manichaeism, a religion founded in the 
 third century by the Persian prophet, Mani, who was 
 crucified by the Magian priests as a heretic. . . . 
 
 5 
 
 BUT the importance of Zoroastrianism has always 
 been qualitative rather than quantitative. Its highest 
 significance lies in the influence it has exercised on the 
 development of at least three other great religions. 
 First, it made contributions to Judaism, for between 
 538 B.C. (when the Persians under Cyrus captured 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA ___217 
 
 Babylonia and set free the Jews exiled in that land) and 
 330 B. Cc. (when the Persian Empire was destroyed by 
 Alexander) the Jews were directly under the suzerainty 
 of the Zoroastrians. And it was from these suzerains 
 that the Jews first learnt to believe in an Ahriman, a 
 personal devil, whom they called in Hebrew, Satan. 
 Possibly from them, too, the Jews first learnt to believe 
 in a heaven and hell, and in a Judgment Day for each 
 individual. 
 
 Zoroastrianism had developed quite fantastic ideas 
 about the Judgment Day which the prophet had declared 
 to be the consummation of all things. In the first place, 
 his professed followers had grown a little tired of wait- 
 ing for this universal “‘Affair’’ that Zoroaster had 
 prophesied. “They had begun to take more stock in an 
 “affair’’ for each individual, a dread day of trial that was 
 due immediately after death. [he soul of each dead 
 person, it came to be believed, was convoyed up to a fate- 
 ful bridge and then commanded to march forward. If 
 it was the soul of a righteous man, then the bridge 
 opened up into a broad thoroughfare over which the 
 soul marched straight on to the Heaven of Ormuzd. But 
 if it was the soul of a wicked man, lo, the bridge con- 
 tracted till it was as narrow as the edge of a sharp scimi- 
 tar, and the guilty soul was sent hurtling down into the 
 foul Hell of Ahriman. . . . And that naive idea was 
 taken over into Judaism, which until then had known 
 of nothing more than a vague “‘pit’’ called sheol, into 
 which all souls at death were cast indiscriminately. 
 
 And the Zoroastrian picture of the ultimate “‘Affair’’ 
 for all the universe also left its impress on Jewish think- 
 ing. Scholars today are fairly agreed that most of the 
 

 
 218 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Biblical and Apocryphal accounts of what would hap- 
 pen in ‘‘the end of days,’”’ all the wild apocalypses from 
 Daniel through and beyond Revelation, were inspired at 
 least in part by Persian eschatology. 
 
 Through Judaism, the religion of Persia left its mark 
 also on Christianity; and not merely through Judaism, 
 but also through Mithraism. When we come to tell 
 the story of the rise of Christianity we shall have to refer 
 at some length to the many compromises with Mithraism 
 which seem to have been made by the victorious faith. 
 
 Very directly, also, Zoroastrianism influenced the re- 
 ligion preached by Mohammed. Many ideas set down 
 in the Koran reveal that influence; and even more of the 
 ideas set down in later Moslem writings. . . . 
 
 And in our very own day we find a modernized form 
 of Zoroaster’s faith being preached by Mr. H. G. 
 Wells! .. 
 
 Only by virtue of this pervading influence of its 
 ideas can Zoroastrianism be called a world religion to- 
 day. Its nominal confessors are few, very few, in num- 
 ber. ‘They were mercilessly persecuted and almost ex- 
 terminated when the Mohammedans swept into Persia 
 in the eighth century; and they have been persistently 
 oppressed from that day on. Only about nine thou- 
 sand of their posterity are left now in all the land! 
 
 But there is a significant colony of them in India, in 
 all about ninety thousand Zoroastrians who dwell in 
 and around Bombay. There they seem to be a veritable 
 leaven in the whole population, and their importance is 
 far out of proportion to their numbers. They are 
 known there as the Parsees (really, the Persians), and 
 their culture, honesty, and benevolence are bywords in 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN PERSIA Zig 
 
 all India. Even their present multitudinous rules of 
 ritual ‘“‘purity’’ have failed to smother the fires of faith 
 which Zoroaster lighted unnumbered centuries ago. The 
 Parsees are still in their way servants of Ahura Mazda, 
 warriors for Right in the battle which is life. A tiny 
 minority, forever harassed and scorned, nevertheless they 
 are today among the very noblest of mankind... . 
 
 By worldly standards, Zoroastrianism failed. It was 
 so overwhelmed by Christianity and Mohammedanism 
 that today it is the size of a forgotten denomination. 
 But by truer standards, Zoroastrianism triumphed. It 
 triumphed as have few other faiths on earth, for its fire, 
 though often on the altars of strange gods, still illumines 
 much of the world... . 
 

 
GOOK SIX 
 
 GRRT NRPPENED 
 IN (SRREL 
 
 a — 
 se == 
 SSS 
 
 — 
 
 -__ 
 
 Ce 
 nr eee 
 
 
 
Tr 
 
 BOOK SIX 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 1: The cradle of the Hebrew people—the lure of the Fertile 
 Crescent—Egypt and the Exodus. 2: Moses—the covenant 
 with Yahveh. 3: How the nature of Yahveh changed in Canaan. 
 4: The political history of the Hebrews. >» ih w: of 
 the prophets. 6: Amos—-Hosea—TIsaiah—-Micah—Jeremiah— 
 Yahveh becomes God. 7: The spiritual exaltation of Israel— 
 the Messianic Promise—its influence during the Babylonian 
 Exile—Deutero-Isaiah. 8: The rise of the priests—their in- 
 fluence—the new prophets—the Destruction of Jerusalem—the 
 Messianic Dream again. 9: The rise of the rabbis—the Wall 
 of Law—Judaism today—Zionism—the goy-fearing people— 
 Messianism, the heart of Judaism. 
 
 222 
 
BOOK SIX 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 
 
 I. JUDAISM 
 
 m: N EGYPT thirty-five hundred 
 mi years ago there was already a 
 i great civilization, and magnifi- 
 cent temples were being built 
 there to the glory of the animal- 
 headed gods. In Babylonia there 
 was already a knowledge of writ- 
 ing, and in India the Rig-Veda 
 was already old. The Chinese by 
 w———i that time had so long been estab- 
 
 —— ieee lished in their land that they 
 imagined they had always lived in it; and _ the 
 Minoans had already profited by a full thousand years 
 of peace. But the Hebrews, that little people destined 
 to play so large a part in the drama of world civiliza- 
 tion—they were still half-savages homeless in the 
 desert. 
 
 Like the Babylonians and Phoenicians, the Hebrews 
 were Semites, for their cradle-land was that vast wil- 
 derness we call the Arabian Desert. Thirty-five hundred 
 years ago the Hebrews were but half-savage tribesmen 
 who lived off the bedraggled flocks and herds which 
 they drove from one oasis to another. And their 
 religion, like the religion of all other primitive peoples, 
 was a barbaric animism. “They imagined that all objects 
 
 223 
 
 
 
Lo THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 around them were possessed of terrible spirits, and their 
 worship was no more than a dark magic-mongering. 
 Fear was very mighty in the bones of those first Hebrews, 
 for life for them was brief and brutally hard. By day 
 their world quivered with the heat of the sun, and by 
 night it shivered because of the cold of the wind. Per- 
 petually their world, the desert, was parched, wind- 
 stormy, and terrifying beyond words... . 
 
 There seemed but one way of escape from the evil 
 which was their life, and that was through migration 
 from the desert. Far to the north there was a great 
 half-circle ef verdant soil made up of the valleys of the 
 Tigris and Euphrates, and the coast of the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea. Modern historians call it the ‘‘Fertile 
 Crescent,’’ and it was the Eden of the desert nomads, 
 the Paradise, the Promised Land. Generation after 
 generation those nomads struggled their way up to its 
 borders, and then by brute force beat their way in. The 
 Fertile Crescent seems never to have been without in- 
 habitants ready to fight off all newcomers. Before the 
 dawn of history it was populated in large part by non- 
 Semitic peoples called the Sumerians and the Hittites. 
 But later it became a region belonging almost exclusively 
 to Semites. Certain tribes out of the desert inundated 
 the eastern tip of the Crescent and became the Babylon- 
 ians. Others smashed their way into the middle of the 
 Crescent, and became the Arameans. Still others con- 
 quered the coastal plain, and became the Phoenicians 
 and Canaanites. 
 
 There is reason to believe that the Hebrews, when 
 their turn came to invade the Crescent, tried first to use 
 the eastern tip as the gate of entrance. Only later did 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 22,5 
 
 they try their fortune in Canaan in the west. (The 
 tradition that Abraham—evidently a tribal sheikh who 
 led one of the first sorties into Canaan—came from 
 “Ur of the Chaldees,’’ may have that much basis in 
 fact.) Perhaps for many centuries the Hebrews roamed 
 about on the borders of the verdant region, awaiting 
 their chance to breakin. ‘Time after time they may have 
 made desperate lunges, 
 murdering and pillaging 
 until they were well in- 
 side the Crescent, and 
 then recoiling beneath 
 the blows of the re- 
 covered natives. They 
 seem to have gone 
 through such experi- 
 ences first in Babylonia, 
 then in Haran, later in 
 Canaan, and finally in 
 Egypt. But out of 
 Egypt they were never 
 ejected; they fled! For 
 when they broke their 
 way into Egypt, they 
 got more than they bargained for. They had entered the 
 land in search for food—but instead they got slavery. 
 From loose-footed bedouins they had been violently 
 changed there into sweating laborers who in chain gangs 
 were forced to build pyramids for the mummified bodies 
 of dead emperors. It was only by taking advantage of a 
 moment when Egypt was desperately trying to fight off 
 hordes of savage invaders from Libya and pirates from 
 
 RRANIAI y — 
 mins k 
 
 Wt 
 biz 
 qa 
 Woe 
 ts 
 
 
 
 + fs 
 Co ip A ee ed i a a ee ES 
 
 HERE GO THE HEBREWS 
 
 
 

 
 226 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 the Aegean Islands, that the Hebrews managed to 
 escape. ‘They fled into the wilderness, roamed there as 
 in olden days, and finally made still another lunge at the 
 Fertile Crescent. And that time they managed not 
 merely to squeeze into the coveted region, but also to 
 stay on in it. 
 
 2 
 
 IT was out of crisis of the flight from Egypt that the 
 beginnings of a distinctive Hebrew religion arose. Be- 
 fore that time the faith of the Hebrews must have been 
 quite like that of most other Semite bedouins prowling 
 in the desert. It must have been a vague and inconstant 
 animism in which the spirits of various mountains and 
 heavenly bodies and oases were placated with sacrifices 
 and spells. Not until the Exodus did it become a defi- 
 nite and differentiated cult. 
 
 The leader in that Exodus was a man named Moses, 
 one of the most fascinating and bewildering of the great 
 men of antiquity. Tradition has woven so many 
 threadbare legends around his name that many scholars 
 today are moved to doubt his very existence. But, as 
 in the case of Zoroaster and Jesus and the other ancient 
 prophets, it seems sounder to accept the historicity of 
 Moses than to reject it. Not the historicity of the rock- 
 splitting, Pentateuch-writing, priest-loving Moses of 
 tradition, of course. “That is quite obviously a piece of 
 propagandist fiction concocted by the priesthood of a 
 far later day. No, the historicity only of some daring 
 primitive Hebrew who managed to prod his brethren 
 into rebellion against the Egyptians, to appoint himself 
 their chieftain, to weld them into a unit by giving them 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL ZLA 
 
 a god, and finally to get them ready for another 
 desperate effort to enter the Fertile Crescent. Whether 
 he was ever found amid bulrushes by an Egyptian 
 princess, or saw bushes burn unconsumed, or actually 
 turned rods into serpents, rivers to blood, dust to lice, 
 
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 ARABIAN 
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 THE EXODUS 
 
 and seas to dry lands—all that is irrelevant. What 
 alone is relevant is the elemental task which Moses 
 accomplished: the giving to the Hebrews of a god. For 
 thereby he founded what was destined to become one 
 of the most exalted and influential of the religions of 
 ali mankind. Over eight hundred millions of people— 
 
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 ve 
 
 ee | 
 
 ! 
 
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 $ : * — ~ - : 
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 WHAT THE HEBREWS BUILT IN EGYPT 
 
 228 
 
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 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 229 
 
 
 
 full half the population of this believing world—claim 
 to cherish a religion that in definite respects grew out of 
 the religion proclaimed by Moses! 
 
 It was far from a perfect faith—this cult instituted 
 by Moses. One must remember that it was founded 
 over thirty-two hundred years ago, by the chieftain of 
 a horde of marauding desperadoes just come up out of 
 bondage. It was just as crude and savage as were the 
 Hebrews themselves. At its root lay the idea that there 
 was but one god—for the Hebrews. For other tribes 
 there might be other gods, but for the Hebrews there 
 was only Yahveh. This Yahveh (or Jehovah, as his 
 name is usually mispronounced) was probably the 
 spirit dwelling in a certain desert volcano called Sinai 
 or Horeb; and from time immemorial he had been wor- 
 shipped by a bedouin tribe called the Kenites. Now 
 Moses, according to tradition, had once dwelt among 
 the Kenites, and had married the daughter of their chief 
 priest. When it became necessary for his band of run- 
 away Hebrews to be provided with a god, it was there- 
 fore only natural for Moses to choose Yahveh. He 
 took his forlorn followers to the very foot of the Holy 
 Mountain of Yahveh located somewhere in the desert, 
 and solemnly committed them there to this god. A 
 covenant was entered into; a holy contract binding the 
 Hebrews to worship Yahveh, and Yahveh to favor the 
 Hebrews. Ten commandments were given as the basis 
 of the worship of the deity; and it was understood that 
 so long as they were observed, the Hebrews could be 
 assured of his divine protection. An “‘ark’’ was built 
 as a haven for the roving spirit of Yahveh—it probably 
 was a sort of tribal fetish—and the Hebrews carried it 
 
230 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 at. the head of their columns in every sortie. It cleaved 
 the fear that walled their way, and opened wide a path 
 to triumph. With this ‘‘ark’’ bearing the spirit of 
 
 
 
 IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Yahveh in their van, the Hebrews beat their way back 
 into the Crescent. When at last they managed to cross 
 the Jordan and wrest from the Canaanites the little 
 land ‘“‘flowing with milk and honey,’ Yahveh, the 
 spirit of a desert volcano, was still their chief deity. 
 
 3 
 
 BUT in Canaan the nature of Yahveh was subjected 
 to a great change—for a great change came over his 
 followers. “The nomad Hebrews became farmers; from 
 tending sheep they turned to ploughing fields. And 
 since a god is worshipped only because he helps make 
 life less troublous and insecure, because with his aid men 
 believe they can more successfully fight off fear and 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL Zork 
 
 death, therefore he must change with every change in 
 their life and needs. Yahveh, who had been chosen 
 originally because he seemed able to help men wrestle 
 with the terrors of the desert, was forced to reveal new 
 abilities once his followers settled in a fertile land. He 
 had to do that, or die. | 
 
 Almost he did die. Throughout the books of Judges, 
 Samuel, and Kings, we see signs of the fierce war of the 
 gods that ensued. Hebrew conquered Canaanite far 
 more easily than Yahveh conquered Baal. Indeed, 
 though Yahveh did triumph in the end, still he never 
 quite crushed his old enemy. ‘The Bible declares: 
 “And they served idols whereof Yahveh had said to 
 them: ‘Ye shall not do this thing.’ ’’ Long centuries 
 after the first settlement in Palestine, we still find 
 Hebrew peasants worshipping the Baalim on the “‘high 
 places,” and Hebrew kings passing their children 
 “through the fire’ to Moloch. The licentious festivals 
 of the Canaanitish cults were made part and parcel 
 of the cult of Yahveh, and these agricultural rites 
 became dominant in what had once been altogether a 
 bedouin religion. 
 
 It is now well established that the so-called ‘‘Five 
 Books of Moses’’ are a compilation of different docu- 
 ments belonging to many different centuries. When 
 these various documents are separated and chronologi- 
 cally rearranged, we can see in them quite clearly how 
 gradual and tortuous was the development of Israel’s 
 religion. The final idea of Yahveh accepted by the 
 Hebrews was not the product of a sudden revelation 
 but of a gradual evolution. Moses did no more (but 
 it was enough!) than preach one great basic doctrine: 
 
25D THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 that Israel belonged to Yahveh. His Yahveh was, of 
 
 course, far from a gentle, loving, merciful deity. Had 
 he been that sort, he would have been utterly useless to 
 the straggling band of fugitives and desperadoes whom 
 Moses was leading through the wilderness. Yahveh 
 had to be bloody, hard, vindictive in character—even 
 as was the life of his worshippers. He had to be a Lord 
 of Hosts, a god of battle, or else he could be of no value 
 to the embattled hosts of Israel. Only later was Yah- 
 veh thought of as a god of mercy and love. Only 
 through the preaching of a long line of mighty prophets 
 did this Thunderer out of the desert, this ruthless Yah- 
 veh of a nation of ruthless marauders, become God. . . . 
 
 4 
 
 IT is not easy to tell in measured and dispassionate 
 terms of the transformation wrought by those prophets. 
 Above the ruck of fussy priests and slavish worshippers 
 those pioneers of ethical thought stand out so majestic, 
 so tremendous, that it is hard to speak of them save in 
 hyperbole. Had it not been for those few prophets, 
 Israel would today be no more a name than Idumea or 
 Philistia. Had it not been for their insight and courag- 
 eous labor, Yahveh would have been no more to civili- 
 zation than Baal-Melkart or Dagon. Sons in blood to 
 Moses, brethren in spirit to Ikhnaton, Zoroaster, 
 Buddha, and Lao-Tze, they loom up in the story of re- 
 ligion as veritable supermen. 
 
 The history of Israel as a political unit was like the 
 history of most of the other little peoples of antiquity. 
 In brief it was this: Under the leadership of tribal 
 priests and sheikhs—‘‘judges’’ they are called in the 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 233 
 
 Bible—the Hebrews first clawed their way into Canaan, 
 and then settled there. The exigencies of defense 
 against their enemies compelled the tribes to unite under 
 a king. For a while they were highly successful to- 
 gether in warfare, and under David they actually carved 
 out what was almost an empire. But the waste and 
 extravagance of Solomon, who seemed bent on imitating 
 the ostentatious despots of Egypt and Babylonia, 
 brought swift ruin. <A revolution ensued, and its close 
 saw the land divided into two kingdoms: Israel and 
 Judah. Israel was situated in the north, and Judah 
 in the south—and in the years that followed, these two 
 tiny kingdoms simply bled themselves to death in in- 
 cessant warfare. Canaan, their land, lay on the high- 
 road between the empires of the East and West, and 
 invasions by world-conquerors and trading kings were 
 a never-ending source of misfortune. “The Hebrews, 
 thus harassed from without as well as within, could not 
 hold out for long. First the northern kingdom, Israel, 
 went down to defeat, and its population was taken 
 captive and deported to Assyria and Media. (That 
 was in 722 B. C., the year from which we date the “‘loss’’ 
 of the Ten Tribes.) Then, in 586 B.C., it was the 
 turn of the Kingdom of Judah; its population, too, was 
 taken captive and scattered to the far ends of the Orient. 
 And with that debacle the whole story of the Hebrews 
 came to an end—almost. 
 
 5 
 
 BUT then something happened, something extraor- 
 dinary, almost miraculous. The surrender and an- 
 nihilation of little kingdoms was a common incident 
 
234. THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ASIA fusor 
 
 
 
 THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE EMPIRES 
 
 in the ancient world. “The Philistines and the Phoeni- 
 cians and the rest of Judah’s small neighbors were all 
 of them sooner or later drowned in that vortex which 
 was—and is—the Orient. But miraculously, Judah 
 cheated that fate. It was harried and butchered, con- 
 quered and deported—but of all ancient peoples it alone 
 was never destroyed. Even though one can explain 
 that phenomenon, it still remains a miracle, for the 
 explanation itself can hardly be explained. Even though 
 one can glibly say that Judah’s survival was due entirely 
 to the might of her faith, and that the might of her 
 faith was due entirely to her prophets, yet how is one 
 to account for her prophets? .. . 
 
 The religion of Israel, as we have already said, was 
 a result not of a sudden revelation, but of a gradual 
 evolution. In the beginning it was crude and simple, 
 a mere cajoling of a desert spirit with sacrifices of blood 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 230 
 
 and flesh. “There was as yet no established sanctuary 
 and no professional priesthood. Only after Israel came 
 under the influence of the long-‘‘civilized’’ Canaanites 
 and Babylonians, did an elaborate ritual arise and 
 along with it a powerful hierarchy. And that foreign 
 influence did not reach its ascendency until after the 
 Babylonian Exile. So that the saving power of the re- 
 ligion—that power which made it at all possible for the 
 Jews to survive the Exile—could not have proceeded 
 from its priestly side. No, the sacrificial cult in Israel 
 was not the cause, but rather one inevitable accom- 
 paniment of Israel’s survival. “The real cause was the 
 prophetic spirit that had been breathed into the people. 
 
 Of the earliest Palestinian prophets, of Samuel, 
 Nathan, Adonijah, Elijah, and the rest, we have little 
 record left save legends. “They seem to have been wild 
 evangelists who went up and down the land exhorting 
 the people to remain true to Yahveh. (The Hebrew 
 word nevi-im, “‘prophets,’” may originally have meant 
 “shouters.”’) They were the ‘‘troublers in Israel’’ who 
 were forever denouncing the kings for their wickedness, 
 the priests for their venality, and the people for their 
 transgression of the ancient covenant with Yahveh. 
 Again and again they were imprisoned and put to death; 
 but nevertheless they kept right on. In the trying days 
 when the Hebrews were being made over from shep- 
 herds into farmers, from tent-dwellers into town-folk, 
 it was those prophets alone who kept the people from 
 being utterly demoralized in the process. We have 
 already referred to the devastating effect of agricultural 
 “civilization’’ when it first is taken up by erstwhile 
 nomads. If that effect worked extraordinarily small 
 

 
 
 
 236 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 havoc among the Hebrews, it was solely because of the 
 vigilance and zeal of their early nevi-im. Those 
 prophets were the old desert conscience incarnate. “They 
 stood unfalteringly against the Canaanite goddesses 
 with their obscenities and lustful rites; they showed no 
 tolerance to the similar cults of Phoenicia, Assyria, 
 and Babylonia. They were Yahveh’s invincible 
 champions in his hard fight to hold the Hebrews from 
 worshipping Baal, Moloch, Ashtoreth, and all the 
 other gods and goddesses of Asia Minor. 
 
 6 
 
 BUT although the prophets labored so intensely to 
 keep the old Yahveh on his throne, they did more to 
 destroy him than even the priests of the rival deities. 
 When they were done keeping him on the throne, he 
 was no longer the same Yahveh at all. Although the 
 prophets set out only to revive the ancient faith, 
 actually they did not revive it so much as totally reform 
 it. “hey reformed Yahvism from end to end, so that 
 when they were done it was no longer Yahvism at all— 
 it was Judaism! ‘They transformed a jealous demon 
 who roared and belched fire from the crater of a vol- 
 cano, into a transcendant spirit of Love. They took 
 a bloody and remorseless protector of a desert people, 
 and without realizing it, changed him into the merci- 
 ful Father of all mankind. In fine, they destroyed Yah- 
 veh and created God! | 
 
 Read intelligently—that is, critically—the Bible 
 makes that course of evolution strikingly clear. The 
 Hebrews settled in Canaan in about the twelfth century 
 B.C. By the eighth century the simple nomadic re- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 
 
 Dat 
 
 ligion they had brought with them had been almost 
 
 entirely superseded by an agricultural cult. 
 
 Especially 
 
 was this true in the northern kingdom, Israel, where 
 “civilization’’ was further advanced. ‘There morality 
 had been completely ritualized by the priests, and it 
 had come to be firmly believed that animal sacrifices to 
 
 the deity could atone for 
 the most heinous crimes 
 against man. What had 
 happened in Egypt, 
 Babylonia, India, and al- 
 most everywhere else, 
 had happened also in 
 Israel; the deep-seated 
 tendency of human na- 
 ture to rely on religious 
 rites as the source of 
 safety and security had 
 led once more to the tri- 
 umph of the priest. 
 Corruption was regnant, 
 and tyranny seemed to 
 be right beyond chal- 
 lenge. 
 
 And in a land where 
 such a religion went un- 
 questioned,. there sud- 
 
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 THE DIVIDED KINGDOM 
 
 denly appeared a strange man named Amos. He was an 
 unknown sheep-herder from the hills in the south, and 
 at one autumn festival he arose in a temple where the 
 nobles and priests of Israel were revelling in sacred 
 
 license, and cried: 
 

 
 
 
 238 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Hear this, you who trample upon the needy, 
 and oppress the poor of the earth. . . . The 
 Lord Yahveh hath sworn by his holiness: 
 ‘Behold, days are coming upon you when 
 you shall be dragged away with hooks, even 
 the last of you with fish-hooks!’ 3 
 
 He cried out much more in that same strain. He 
 whipped the drunken worshippers with his scorn, and 
 terrified them out of their sordid smugness with his 
 prophecies of an inevitable doom. What they did to 
 him for his daring, no one knows. Perhaps they put 
 him to death; or perhaps they let him preach on, think- 
 ing him but a noisy dervish. For so soon as the passion 
 that went into their utterance was spent, those words 
 must have seemed to the Israelites no more than the 
 ravings of sheer lunacy. No one until then had ever 
 dared to declare that Yahveh himself might punish his 
 own folk. ‘The belief was rooted that, so long as 
 Yahveh was fed with enough sacrifices, there was no 
 possible chance of his failing to protect his people. He 
 would fight their battles for them, water their lands, 
 fecundate their cattle, and prosper their deals. The 
 novel idea that the god was revolted by such things as 
 social crimes, by the perverting of justice or the exploit- 
 ing of the poor, or by wine-bibbing or harlot-chasing 
 must have been totally incomprehensible to the gentle 
 folk of Israel twenty-eight hundred years ago! 
 
 Yet that was just the idea that Amos, a simple peasant 
 from the hills of Judah, dared to cry out in the temple 
 at Beth-El. He declared it was all wrong to believe that 
 Yahveh was a mere tribal possession, a monoply of 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL Zog 
 
 Israel. If Yahveh had brought the Hebrews up out of 
 Egypt, behold he had also brought the Philistines from 
 Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir. Indeed, the 
 Hebrews, Amos declared, had no more chance of curry- 
 ing undue favor with Yahveh than the black-skinned 
 Ethiopians! . . . So all hope for special indulgence 
 was vain. Yahveh was remorselessly a god of Justice, 
 and if Israel continued to rely on ritual rather than 
 righteousness, then he would destroy the nation root 
 andsbranch for its:sin!..,2°% 
 
 And thus was attained the first rung in the ladder 
 which brought Yahveh up to the Throne of God. 
 Yahveh was now no more a mere glutton for sacrifices; 
 he was the inflexible Commander of Justice. . 
 
 The ascension of the second rung must be credited 
 to another prophet, Hosea. He appeared shortly after 
 Amos, and in that same northern kingdom. He, too, 
 was well acquainted with the wickedness that prevailed 
 in Israel, and he, too, was convinced of the impending 
 doom. But he, unlike Amos, saw a chance, a belated 
 yet nevertheless certain chance, for Israel to be saved. 
 For Yahveh, who to Amos had been wholly an inexor- 
 able Commander of Justice, was to Hosea also a Father 
 of Love. Yahveh was merciful as well as just, and knew 
 how to forgive. ‘Therefore, said Hosea, if only Israel 
 would repent, of a surety Yahveh would spare the 
 Lancopeiys., 
 
 But Israel did not repent, and within a generation 
 the kingdom met its end. The doom came, and the ten 
 tribes of the North were hounded out of the land of 
 their fathers into the oblivion of endless exile. After 
 722 B. C. only Judah was left, and the rest of the ascent 
 

 
 
 
 240 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 of Yahveh to the altitude of God over all the earth was 
 achieved in and around the city of Jerusalem. Quick 
 and dramatic became that ascent, as prophet swiftly 
 followed prophet. First Isaiah appeared, and through 
 his preaching the majesty and omnipotence of Yahveh 
 became established. ‘The natural tendency of the priests 
 to make their rites superior to the gods was by him 
 effectively frustrated in Judah. In India, Babylonia, 
 Egypt, and wherever else the power of the priests was 
 allowed to grow unchecked, the gods were almost unfail- 
 ingly debased and made as slaves. But in Judah that 
 evil was averted through the labor of prophets like 
 Isaiah. They made it glaringly plain to the people that 
 not all the sacrifices on earth, nor all the magic spells, 
 could exercise the slightest coercive power over Yahveh. 
 As Micah, another prophet, put it tersely: 
 
 What doth Yahveh require of thee? 
 Save to do justice, to love mercy, 
 And to walk humbly with thy God.? 
 
 But the process did not end even there. “There was 
 yet to come a prophet greater than all who had gone be- 
 fore him. In the most trying years of Judah’s history, 
 when the little land was making its last mad and futile 
 stand against Babylonia, there came that mighty prophet 
 named Jeremiah. And he dared to exhort his people 
 to put down their arms and submit. Vain was it for 
 them to resist, he declared, for Yahveh was not on their 
 
 
 
 1 That oft-quoted verse from Micah is profoundly significant. It 
 epitomizes the contributions of Amos, the prophet of justice, and Hosea, 
 the prophet of mercy, and Isaiah, the prophet of heavenly majesty. In 
 a score of simple words it tells the whole story of the exaltation of 
 Yahveh and the moralizing of Yahvism. : 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 241 
 
 side. On the contrary, He was on the side of the enemy, 
 and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia was but His instru- 
 ment. For Yahveh was not the mere godling of the 
 Hebrews; He was God of all the earth! He could do 
 as He willed not merely with one nation, but with all. 
 Indeed, He was the Founder of all nations, the Creator 
 of all the earth! . . . Amos had not been able to get 
 nearly so far as that; neither had Hosea nor even Isaiah. 
 Only with Jeremiah was 
 the claim clearly made 
 that there were no other 
 gods save God. ‘There 
 was no Asshur for the 
 Assyrians, Dagon for the 
 Philistines, Bel for the 
 Babylonians, or Osiris 
 for the Egyptians; there 
 
 Hay , J re A Vif elu My 
 could not possibly be [emai Nc Weare ns aK 
 ape - Wy ey, Z } i ii 
 any local deities with fe Zz, XO ie or nee y 
 
 fortunes inextricably ppd 
 
 bound up with the for- 
 tunes of their own na- 
 tions. ‘There was only JEREMIAH 
 —God! 
 
 And thus at last, toward the end of the seventh cen- 
 tury B.C., Israel’s religion became truly a monotheism. 
 Thus at last Yahveh really became God! ... 
 
 7 
 BUT side by side with this exaltation of Yahveh came 
 also the self-exaltation of Israel. It was inevitable. 
 Having declared their Yahveh to be the Supreme Ruler 
 in heaven, it was logically necessary for the Israelites to 
 
 
 

 
 242 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 declare themselves to be the chief nation on earth. And 
 they did just that. Despite recurrent defeat and hu- 
 miliation and exile, the Jews persisted in thinking them- 
 selves the Chosen of God. Of course, the prophets, 
 every one of them, encouraged that thought. Even 
 though they denounced their fellow Hebrews and heaped 
 scorn on them for imagining they could curry favor 
 with Yahveh, those prophets themselves never ceased 
 to declare that the Hebrews were still the Chosen of 
 Yahveh. Only they insisted that the Hebrews were 
 chosen not for special indulgence but solely for the task 
 of bringing the knowledge of this Yahveh to all the 
 world. ‘They promised that if the people would but ac- 
 complish that task, then lo, they would indeed be the 
 first nation on earth! Their truth would conquer all 
 mankind, and the whole earth would be a Paradise in 
 which their own Messiah, their ‘Anointed One,’”’ would 
 reign: ase wn rincerOl, beacause tk 
 
 It proved an astoundingly potent force, that promise. 
 It became the very heart of Israel’s religion, giving it 
 color and warmth and life. It accomplished the one 
 fundamental purpose at the root of every great religion, 
 for it offered its followers a reason for remaining alive. 
 The Jews believed in that Messianic promise implicitly 
 and unhesitatingly; and believing in it, they were saved 
 by it. In the dread days of exile, when they sat by 
 the waters of Babylon and wept, that promise was the 
 one thing that kept them alive. For its sake they braced 
 up and preserved themselves as a people, cherishing the 
 memories of their past, and incessantly planning for 
 their future. All during those slow bitter days in Baby- 
 lon their leaders seem to have busied themselves with 
 
i 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 245 
 
 § 
 
 
 
 BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON 
 
 preparations for the great triumph to come. They made 
 
 collections of the legends recounting the exploits of their 
 
 ancient patriarchs and prophets and kings, writing 
 
 been handed down by word of mouth for twenty gen- 
 
 erations or more. They also Satie cider all their 
 
 old laws, and elaborated praca 
 ey 
 
 fit new needs. Modern ENES Pole 5\! 
 
 scholars are convinced ial : RAR . 
 
 that much of the mate- § 
 
 of Moses’ was written, 
 
 and all of it was first 
 
 edited, not before, but 
 
 after, the Babylonian 
 
 Exile. No doubt that is 
 
 why we find in the Pen- 
 
 and taboos and priestly 
 
 laws that strikingly re- 
 
 semble those of the 
 
 have been impossible for 
 
 the Jews to resist the in- 
 
 fluence of their environment. Seeing priestliness ram- 
 
 naturally breathed a measure of it into the books they 
 
 were preparing for their own soon-to-be-prosperous 
 
 Zion. 
 
 down on scrolls the countless glowing tales that had 
 them so that they might a 
 , a] a 
 rial in the “Five Books adits ae tea 
 during and immediately 
 tateuch so many myths 
 Babylonians. It must 
 pant on every side in prosperous Babylonia, the exiles 
 But this law-code, despite its dominantly priestly 
 
er THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 character, depended for its conception and birth on the 
 prophetic urge. (That was why, for all its similarity, 
 it yet managed to differ so fundamentally from the 
 Babylonian code from which it had been derived.) 
 This Jewish law-code was prepared solely in anticipa-_ 
 tion of the day when the old Messianic promise would 
 be fulfilled. No one seemed to know just when that 
 day would come; but all expected it in the near, the 
 very near, future. And the greatest prophet of the 
 exile, that unnamed genius whom we call Deutero (the 
 Second) Isaiah, pictured the glory of that day in words 
 that the Jews never forgot. He brought the self-exalta- 
 tion of Israel to its climax, investing the future of the 
 people with a dignity and a significance such as no earlier 
 prophet had dreamed of. According to this unnamed 
 prophet, the whole people of Israel was the Messiah, 
 the “‘Anointed One.’’ All Israel was the ‘Suffering 
 Servant of the Lord,’ the “‘light unto the Gentiles, that 
 the Lord’s salvation may be unto the end of the 
 earth.” “uate 
 
 In this character Israel was destined to be utterly 
 triumphant, promised the prophet. What other na- 
 tions without number had tried and failed to accomplish 
 with the sword, Israel would succeed in doing merely 
 with the Word of God. And thus the Jews would ulti- 
 mately be victorious over all the earth: their spirit, their 
 ideals, their God, would reign supreme. Jerusalem in 
 that perfect day would be the center of the world, and 
 its Temple would become a house of prayer for all na- 
 tions. They, the despised Jews, now scattered and 
 broken and regarded with contempt—they in the end 
 would be the mightiest conquerors of all! ... 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 245 
 
 Such was the gospel of that unnamed Jew whose 
 words are recorded in Chapters 40 to 55 of the Book 
 of Isaiah. By contrast that gospel appears almost in- 
 credibly high and hopeful. In that same century, six 
 thousand miles away in China, Confucius was plodding 
 from village to village in futile search for a prince who 
 would bring back the past. All that was glorious seemed 
 to him to have already been, and all that was right 
 seemed to belong only to yesterday. . .. In India, 
 almost three thousand miles away, Mahavira the Jina, 
 and Gautama the Buddha, were groping in jungle 
 fastnesses, seeking not a prince to bring back the past, 
 but a principle of circumvention that might aid them 
 to elude the future. All the past seemed to them to have 
 been as bad as the present, and the future looked to 
 be no whit better than the past. [he whole cycle of 
 life seemed one long-drawn-out weariness to the flesh, 
 an abomination to be destroyed at any price. . . . But 
 there in Babylonia stood this homeless Jew, he who 
 had every right to mourn for the past and tremble for 
 the future, he who should have been the most dejected 
 and despondent of souls—there he stood, happy, ex- 
 ultant! “There was no trace of despair in his soul. On 
 the contrary, he was full of hope, of mad, ecstatic hope 
 for the Great Release to come. Not release from life, 
 but for life; release for life nobler, richer, more abun- 
 dant than it had ever been before. ‘“‘Comfort ye, com- 
 fort ye, my people!” he cried. ‘“‘Fear not, thou worm 
 Jacob. I shall help thee, saith the Lord. Behold, thou 
 shalt yet thresh the mountains, and beat them small; 
 yea, thou shalt make the very hills as chaff!’’ 
 
 So cried this Unknown Prophet of the Exile. ... 
 

 
 246 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 8 
 
 AND then, almost immediately, came the release— 
 or at least its beginning. In 538 B.C. Cyrus of Persia 
 conquered Babylonia and set the exiles free. The Jews 
 were free then to conquer the world—with the word of 
 the Lord. 
 
 But the glorious conquest began most ingloriously. 
 When the Jews returned to their own little land, they 
 took back with them the law-code which their scribes 
 had prepared for them in exile. And, as we have already 
 said, it was in effect a priestly code. From then on, 
 therefore, the voice of the prophets grew fainter and 
 fainter, and the chanting of the priests grew ever more 
 strident. What happened in India, China, Persia, and 
 every other “‘civilized’’ land, happened also in Judea. 
 Instead of seeking to win God’s favor and save them- 
 selves by doing justice and loving mercy, the Jews tried 
 to accomplish those ends by offering sacrifices and mum- 
 bling prayers. (It was much less difficult a technique 
 to try.) And thus the priests were brought into power. 
 The priests were the chief sponsors for the easier tech- 
 nique, and therefore they were vastly enriched by its 
 popularity. The more the people sought to bribe their 
 way to God by means of priestly ritual, the more the 
 priests rose in might. “There was no escaping that sorry 
 development, for the masses were not yet ready to follow 
 the high commands of the prophets. They were ready 
 only for the little laws of the priests, for the petty rules 
 made by those men of petty spirit who imagined they 
 could organize morality. 
 
 It is quite possible that in the beginning those priests 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL Dy, 
 
 
 
 were most sincere in their labors. Perhaps they believed 
 they were being utterly true to the prophets when they 
 sought to organize prophetic truth. But in a little while 
 they became so involved in the process of organiza- 
 tion that they began to lose all sight of the truth. The 
 means became more important than the end; the how 
 overwhelmed the why. ‘The labor of the prophets, 
 that fury of preaching that had somehow dragged the 
 cult of a marauding desert-folk up hill until it became 
 the superlative ethical faith of the ancient world, was 
 now bit by bit undone. For almost six hundred years 
 after the return from Babylonia, the priests let the re- 
 ligion of Israel degenerate into an ever more ritualized 
 morality. Indeed, if during those six hundred years 
 the religion did not degenerate entirely, it could have 
 been only because prophetic protest, though intermit- 
 tently choked, was still never quite strangled. Ever and 
 again isolated prophets arose to decry the sacerdotalism 
 and corruption of the priests and people. Some of them 
 were beheaded, like John the Baptist; and some were 
 crucified, like Jesus of Nazareth. But they came never- 
 theless, an unbroken succession of heroic and godly 
 protestants. It was the old promise of the Messiah 
 that spurred them on. Despite all the agonies and hu- 
 miliations they endured in those years, despite all the 
 outrages visited by Persian, Greek, Syrian, and Roman 
 overlords, some Jews still believed that they must be 
 triumphant in the end. Always a remnant of the tiny 
 folk looked forward to the immediate coming of the 
 “Anointed One,” to the speedy coming of the Kingdom 
 of God. Indeed, the more dreadful and crushing their 
 plight, the more frenziedly this saving remnant looked 
 

 
 248 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 forward to that advent. “Throughout the land there 
 went strange men as its spokesmen, crying to the people: 
 “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” 
 
 But though it seemed ever at hand, it never came. 
 Darker and darker grew the world of the Jews as the 
 vast black wings of Rome closed down over it. Israel 
 writhed in the bloody talons of the Empire for more 
 than acentury. And then, goaded almost into insanity, 
 Israel rebelled. “Tired of waiting for the Messiah, the 
 Jews tried to force the day of His coming. The whole 
 country flared up in rebellion, and Israel made its cli- 
 macteric effort to preserve itself as a nation. “Two of 
 Rome’s greatest generals were sent down to quell the 
 uprising, and for four years every wady in the land ran 
 red with the blood of the slain. For many months the 
 holy city of Jerusalem was besieged; and when finally 
 in the summer of 70 A. D. it was captured and destroyed, 
 the Jewish nation was destroyed too. The dread 
 Diaspora, the ‘Scattering,’ began in earnest then. The 
 Jews either fled or were hounded to the uttermost ends 
 of the earth, and the glory which was Zion was ended, 
 it seemed, forever. 
 
 But it was not ended. Not at all. On the contrary, 
 it but began then anew. ‘Though the Temple was de- 
 stroyed, and the whole sacrificial cult had become a 
 thing of the past, Israel still continued to live. For the 
 one great promise of the prophets was still effective, even 
 though the little laws of the priests were now null and 
 void. Even after the Dispersion the Jews continued to 
 cherish their dream of the Messiah. It may have been 
 an irrational dream, ridiculous, altogether mad—but it 
 persisted. And so long as it persisted, the Jews per- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL oo 
 
 sisted. Even to this day it persists. It has been de- 
 nounced and betrayed, attacked and violated—but it 
 has never been quite forgotten. 
 
 9 
 
 THIS is not the place for a detailed account of the 
 history of the Jews during the last nineteen centuries. 
 One wishes it were, for that history is like none other 
 in all the saga of religion. ‘The story of the Parsees, 
 those exiled descendants of the ancient Zoroastrians, 
 comes perhaps closest to it; for that people, too, persisted 
 because it cherished a hope. But save for the little group 
 of Persians still awaiting the triumph of Ormuzd, none 
 other is to be likened to the Jews. “The Jews stand 
 out among the races of the world, a strange, an inex- 
 plicable folk, with a history far stranger than fiction. 
 
 But at least a hint as to that history must be given 
 here. When the Temple was destroyed and the old 
 priestly cult was ended, the whole technique of the re- 
 ligion had to be radically altered. “The priestly organi- 
 zation was no more, and a new organization had to be 
 created. So the rabbinical cult resulted. A gigantic 
 legal literature called the Talmud was developed in the 
 first five centuries after the Destruction, and later an 
 even more gigantic literature of Talmudic commentaries 
 and super-commentaries. It is not difficult to explain 
 why the development took such a form. The prophets 
 had for all time answered the why of life for the Jew. 
 They had said that for a while he must live and suffer 
 so that ultimately he might triumph, so that ultimately 
 he might bring on the Kingdom of God. But those 
 prophets had been far from explicit as to the more im- 
 

 
 250 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 mediate matter of the how. Granted there was a pur- 
 pose in life, yet how could the Jew keep alive long 
 enough to realize it? He saw himself to be quite help- 
 less in that whirlpool of races and creeds which is the 
 world. He had no home, no might, no prestige— 
 nothing save an ineluctable belief in his own importance 
 to mankind. And that by itself was far from enough 
 to keep him afloat in the whirlpool. So he began to 
 tremble for his very existence. Fear took hold of him 
 almost as acutely as once it had taken hold of his savage 
 ancestor in the wilderness. But whereas fear drove the 
 savage to have recourse to fetishes, it impelled this 
 remote descendant to take to laws. The savage had 
 tried to save himself from drowning in fear by conjur- 
 ing up reeds of magic to which he could cling. For 
 exactly the same reason the Jew built up a dyke of law 
 behind which he could hide. 
 
 It was that Wall of Law that saved the Jew from 
 destruction after his own home was destroyed. It kept 
 him apart from the Gentiles, regulating his prayer, his 
 food, his very raiment, so that he could never for a mo- 
 ment forget his identity. “The dream of the prophets 
 made life reasonable for the Jew, but only the law- 
 code of the rabbis made it possible. And so long as the 
 Gentile world kept fear palpitating in the heart of the 
 Jew, so long that wall stood firm and unbroken. If it 
 is crumbling visibly in our day, it is largely because the 
 world is growing less intolerant, and the fear in the 
 heart of the Jew is being dispelled. If the old Orthodox 
 Judaism is disintegrating in our day, and ‘‘Reform”’ or 
 “Liberal’’ Judaism is growing, it is because the wind of 
 emancipation is sweeping the soul of Israel free of dread. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL Zon 
 
 
 
 But there is no certain assurance that that process is 
 going on with any rapidity. Of the sixteen or seven- 
 teen million Jews in the world today it is doubtful 
 whether even two million of them are unhindered by 
 orthodox taboos and scruples. Intense fear of the goy, 
 the Gentile, still lingers in the soul of the Jew, be he a 
 dweller in Washington or in Warsaw. A terror pounded 
 into him incessantly for twenty or thirty centuries can 
 hardly be dispelled in a generation. No, fear is still 
 tormenting the Jew, and as fast as the Law is crumbling, 
 he is building a new wall—or rebuilding an old one—of 
 nationalism. In spirit, if not often in body, he is now 
 returning to old Palestine. At least, his young men 
 and maidens are returning there, to tread once more the 
 soil of Amos and Jeremiah. And thus through a re- 
 created nationalism is the contemporary Jew seeking to 
 save himself from extinction. 
 
 So it is on the now familiar motif of fear that we 
 must close this book, too. The Jew clings to his ritual 
 law largely because he senses subconsiously that other- 
 wise he will lose his identity among the non-Jews. Jn 
 other words, he is God-fearing largely because he is Goy- 
 fearing. But it should be noticed that this fear at the 
 heart of Judaism is generically different from the kind 
 that nourishes most other religions. It is fear not for 
 the destinies of the individual, but of the group. Until 
 the Jews were brought into contact with the Zoroas- 
 trians, they seem to have had no notion of individual 
 immortality. Until then, the hunger of the Jews seems 
 to have been only for national immortality. And even 
 though the idea of a personal after-life has since struck 
 deep root in Judaism, the earlier idea still remains the 
 
Zo2 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 more important. The Jews still seem far more con- 
 cerned about their future as a group than as individuals. 
 No doubt that is why they have been so willing all these 
 centuries to suffer persecution and death rather than 
 forswear their faith. ‘Their religion has taught them 
 that as individuals they do not count; that only as 
 members of the Jewish group do they possess any dig- 
 nity or significance. And accepting that teaching im- 
 plicitly, the Jews have managed to survive twenty cen- 
 turies of the bitterest oppression ever visited on any folk 
 on earth. Not merely have they survived; in a measure 
 they have even flourished. ‘hey have so grown in num- 
 bers and advanced in power that they are to be found 
 in conspicuous positions almost everywhere in the world. 
 And wherever they dwell they are as a leaven in society, 
 stimulating an incessant ferment of prophetic protest 
 and rebelliousness. Oppression, far from weakening 
 them, has only tempered their spirit. Like a sword the 
 Jew has been stretched out on the anvil of history and 
 with every blow has grown only more resilient and 
 durable. 
 
 And it is the Jew’s religion, his certainty of an ulti- 
 mate deliverance from the Gentiles, his faith in a Mes- 
 sianic future for his people, that has made the miracle of 
 his survival possible. “Che Jew seems almost organically 
 incapable of forgetting that high-born promise made to 
 him by his prophets twenty-five centuries ago. He still 
 believes, albeit unconsciously, that it is his duty to keep 
 alive because he has a mission to fulfil. His Bible, his 
 daily prayers, even his folk-songs and fairy-tales, all 
 beat into his soul one obsessive belief: that he is pre- 
 eminently the sword of the spirit that shall yet clear 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ISRAEL 253 
 
 the way for the coming of the Kingdom of God! ‘That 
 may very well be a foolish, an irrational, a presumptu- 
 ous belief—but so is every other in all this believing 
 world of ours. All religions are built on one utterly 
 undemonstrable and apparently irrational dogma: that 
 somehow and somewhere some human beings may yet 
 be able to cope with the universe. Therefore Judaism 
 cannot be said to be more presumptuous than any other 
 religion in its basic conviction. It can only be said that 
 the Jews seem more closely bound and more firmly sus- 
 tained by their conviction than the adherents of most 
 other religions. But that, far from revealing a defect in 
 the Jew’s religion, proclaims what is probably its chiefest 
 virtue: Judaism works. ... 
 

 
 
 
 s 
 
 
 
book seven: ff 
 what happened 
 Ww. —— 
 
 A) 
 i qi 4 
 
 
 
BCOK SEVEN 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 
 
 I. JESUS 
 
 1: Palestine in the first century—the Zealots and saints. 2: 
 The childhood of Jesus—youth. 3: John the Baptist—Jesus 
 begins to preach. 4: His heresies—his tone of authority—did 
 Jesus think himself the Messiah? 5: Jesus goes to Jerusalem— 
 falls out of favor—is arrested, tried, and crucified. 6: The 
 *‘resurrection’’—the disciples begin to preach. 7: The religion 
 of the Nazarenes—the growing saga about Jesus. 
 
 II. CHRIST 
 
 1: The mysteries in the Roman Empire—the philosophies. 2: 
 The story of Saul of Tarsus. 3: The work of Paul. 4: Jesus 
 becomes the Christ—the compromises with paganism—the 
 superiority of Christianity—the writing of the Gospels—per- 
 secution by Rome. 5: Constantine and the triumph of 
 Christianity. 6: The cost of success—the schisms. 7: The 
 spread of Christianity—the ethical element in Christianity— 
 how it sobered Europe. 8: The development of the Church— 
 Protestantism——why Christianity has succeeded, 
 
 296 
 
BOOK SEVEN 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 
 I. JESUS 
 
 ma ORE was the travail in Israel be- 
 ™ cause of the oppression of the 
 Romans. Armies thundered up 
 and down the _ countryside, 
 ploughing a bloody furrow 
 wherever they went; and spies 
 mmm stunk about in the alley-ways 
 of the towns, carrying slander 
 and dealing death as they moved. 
 Rome, the mighty power that 
 could conquer whole continents, 
 could not possibly keep tiny Palestine in check. Rome 
 could not fathom the Jews, could not understand their 
 maddening obstinacy and rebelliousness. She could not 
 understand why the Jews went mad at the thought of 
 worshipping the images of emperors, or why they deaf- 
 ened the world with lamentations when their Temple 
 money was used for building aqueducts. And naturally, 
 therefore, Rome lost all patience. At the least remon- 
 strance she hacked at the Jews mercilessly, not reckoning 
 what whirlwind might rise from the enforced order she 
 sowed) ?.. + 
 
 And the Jews, racked with pain beyond bearing, 
 weak from loss of blood, went almost mad. They had 
 257 
 
 
 
258 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 come to an impasse in which they knew not what to 
 do. They dared not surrender, for they still cherished 
 their ancient Messianic hope. Despite all the terror 
 that had been their lot almost from the day of their 
 creation, the Jews still believed that their Anointed 
 One, their Messiah, would come, and that with Him 
 would be ushered in the Kingdom of God on earth. On 
 this score there seems to have been no division among 
 the Jews. Only as to the means of bringing on the 
 Great Day, was there any division. As to that, some 
 of the Jews counseled war, and others counseled 
 prayer. They who were strong of body and fiery of 
 temper could look forward to no salvation save one 
 wrested by the sword. ‘These were called Zealots, and 
 they went up and down the land attacking lone Roman 
 garrisons, murdering Roman sympathizers, plotting, 
 protesting, fighting, dying, all to bring on by brute 
 force the Reign of Peace. . . . And what they brought 
 on in the end was only a bloody debacle, a final con- 
 flict that simply wiped out the Jewish nation and 
 scattered its hapless survivors to the four corners of the 
 Saree et. 
 
 But those who were strong of soul rather than body 
 sought to win salvation by quite other means. To them 
 it seemed that the Reign of Peace would be brought on 
 only by ways of peace, and they therefore cried to the 
 people to rebel against their own doings rather than 
 the doings of Rome. ‘They begged the people to purge 
 their own souls of sin, to crush their own lust for power 
 and vengeance, to be humble and meek of spirit, to be 
 loving and forgiving, to return good for evil, and thus 
 quietly, prayerfully, to await the wondrous day of 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE dae, 
 
 reward to come. . . . And in the end those preachers 
 of peace somehow helped give rise to a new religion, 
 a great faith which, though it never brought release to 
 Israel, did bring salvation to half the rest of the 
 MOTI lire, 
 
 2 
 
 THE prologue of the story of that new religion opens 
 in Galilee. Almost two thousand years ago there was 
 born in the Galilean village of Nazareth, a Jewish child 
 to whom was given the name of Joshua, or Jesus. We 
 do not know for certain how the early years of this 
 child were spent. “The Gospels recount many legends 
 concerning his conception, birth, and youth, but they 
 are no more to be relied on than the suspiciously similar 
 legends told many centuries earlier about Zoroaster. In 
 his youth Jesus seems to have followed the calling of 
 his father, and was a carpenter. His schooling had 
 probably been slight, for his people were humble 
 villagers, and in all Galilee there was notoriously little 
 learning in those days. He cherished many of the 
 primitive notions of the simple folk to whom he be- 
 longed, believing that disease and sometimes even death 
 were caused by the presence of foul demons, and could 
 be removed by prayer. He knew little if any Greek, 
 and could never have even heard of Greek science or 
 philosophy. All he knew was the Bible, and probably 
 the text of that had been taught him only by rote. Like 
 every other Jewish lad, he had been made to memorize 
 the ancient prophecies in the Bible, and to keep the 
 Biblical and Rabbinical laws of his time. Above all he 
 must have been taught to prize as dearer than life the 
 
260 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 old obsession of his people that some day they would 
 be miraculously freed by the Messiah. Indeed, so well 
 was that last drilled into him that, as he matured, the 
 hunger for the realization of the hope became his all- 
 consuming passion. It seems to have given him no rest 
 in that sheltered little village where he plied his craft. 
 He could not sit by and 
 patiently wait. He had 
 to take staff in hand, and 
 go out and do what he 
 could to hasten the com- 
 ing of the Great Day! 
 ‘There was nothing 
 extraordinary in such 
 conduct. As we have 
 already seen, Palestine 
 then swarmed with 
 young Jews bent on a 
 similar mission. Most 
 of them, of course, 
 joined the Zealots, and 
 went around fomenting 
 war against Rome. 
 Z ‘There were others, how- 
 THE MAN FROM GALILER ¢Vet, who counselled 
 
 only peace with God, 
 and it was to them that the simple Galilean carpenter 
 
 joined himself. It must have been a queer company that 
 he fell into. Most of those preachers of peace were burn- 
 ing evangelists who, in imitation of the ancient prophets, 
 had clad themselves in camel hair and leather girdles. 
 Some were obviously mad: wild-eyed, tousle-haired, 
 
 ay 
 
 } 
 | 
 
 Oy 
 owt 
 
 ont 
 
 PEK: Bi 
 
 
 
 ees (OM 
 FRM 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 261 
 
 frothy-lipped epileptics who rushed about screaming 
 meaningless chatter in the ears of all who would listen. 
 Others, however, were just as obviously of that type 
 which throughout history has given us our prophets and 
 geniuses: that madly sane type whose members so often 
 are stoned while alive and enthroned when dead... . 
 But insane and sane alike, they were all in a white heat 
 to get the people prepared for the swift coming of the 
 Messiah. Up and down the land they went, crying: 
 “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”’ 
 And they stood on the banks of the Jordan and im- 
 mersed the repentant in its holy waters. It was terribly 
 important, according to these evangelists, that one 
 should be thus baptized in the Jordan, for thus alone 
 could one be proved worthy of inheriting the Kingdom 
 of God on earth. ‘They declared that all who were 
 caught unbaptized—that is, uncleansed of evil spirits— 
 when the Messiah came, could never, never know the 
 joys of the Millennium. .. . 
 
 3 
 
 NOW at this time there was in the land an evangelist 
 so successful in drawing the people to the Jordan that 
 he had come to be called John the Baptizer. He was 
 a rough, ascetic person who lived on locusts and wild 
 honey, and who clothed himself in animal skins: a 
 veritable re-creation of the ancient prophet Elijah. To 
 him it seemed that yet another day, another hour, and 
 behold, the Kingdom of Heaven would be here! . . 
 
 It was to this John the Baptizer that Jesus came when 
 he left his home in Nazareth. For a time he was a 
 follower of John, one of a multitude of young Jews 
 

 
 262 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 and Jewesses who believed in the mission of the wild 
 prophet and tried to aid him in his work of saving souls. 
 But when a little while thereafter John was imprisoned 
 for his denunciation of the reigning tetrarch, Herod 
 Antipas, Jesus went back to Galilee and began to preach 
 by himself. His gospel was much like that of his 
 teacher. ‘“The time is fulfilled,’ he cried, “‘and the 
 Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye!’’ So did he 
 cry wherever he could find ears to hearken. He went to 
 the beach of the Sea of Galilee, where the fishermen could 
 be found at their labor; he went into the synagogues in 
 the villages, where the pious and the proper folk could 
 be found at their worship; he even went into the houses 
 of shame, where he could reach the publicans and sin- 
 ners. And wherever he went, few could resist his 
 eloquence. There must have been some quality in his 
 bearing, something in the intensity of his spirit and 
 the earnestness of his preaching, that simply compelled 
 the harried Galileans to give ear. And giving ear, drink- 
 ing in the words of comfort which he uttered, they could 
 not help but believe. And believing, accepting whole- 
 heartedly the promise which he made, they could not 
 help but feel saved. 
 
 When the stories of that young preacher's wander- 
 ings were gathered together in later years and set down 
 in writing, it was said that he performed all manner of 
 miracles as he went about the land. Perhaps there is a 
 fragment of truth in that tradition, for if people will 
 only believe with sufficient faith, miracles become not at 
 all impossible. “The blind—if their eyes have not been 
 taken right out—will be able to see, and the halt—if 
 their limbs have not been torn away—will be able to 
 
WiA HAPPENED AIN  RUROPE 263 
 
 walk. The working of such wonders has been ascribed 
 to almost every great prophet and saint in history, and 
 even allowing for the inevitable exaggeration brought 
 on by enthusiasm and time, there is still left a core of 
 truth that cannot be discounted. Implicit faith, which 
 on ten thousand and one occasions has made even a 
 medicine-man’s dance effective as a medium of cure, 
 could not but make effective a prophet’s hand... . 
 
 And Jesus could quite command implicit faith. He 
 himself believed; with all his heart and soul he believed 
 that soon would come the Great Release. So the poor 
 Jews and Jewesses of Galilee, the simple fishermen and 
 farmers wives, the blear-eyed publicans and low women 
 of shame, were compelled to believe with him. “They 
 could not possibly resist. For this young man brought 
 them in their distress their only ray of hope. Without 
 that promise which he held out, their life was left one 
 hellish gloom. ‘There they were, starved, sweated, dis- 
 eased, and full of fear. Wretched peasants and slum- 
 dwellers that they were, they had nothing whatsoever 
 to live for, nothing—save that promise which Jesus 
 proclaimed. 
 
 So they hearkened and believed and were saved. By 
 the score, by the hundred, they flocked to hear him, 
 plodding many a weary mile through the dust of the 
 hilly roads to stand at last before him and hear his 
 words. He spoke without the slightest flourish, using 
 plain words and homely parables. He indulged in no 
 philosophy or theology, for, after all, he was an un- 
 tutored toiler who knew nothing of such vanities. Nor, 
 seemingly, did he preach any inordinate heresies. Un- 
 like Buddha, to whom he is often compared, he did not 
 

 
 264 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 preach a radically new gospel. ‘“Think not that I am 
 come to destroy the law or the prophets,’’ he declared. 
 “I am not come to destroy but to fulfil.” His prayers 
 were made up of verses which the Pharisee rabbis were 
 wont to recite in the synagogues, and which are to be 
 found even today in the orthodox Jewish book of 
 prayer. His garb, even to the wearing of the fringed 
 hem, was the garb of an observant Jew. He actually 
 went out of his way to pay the Temple tax to the 
 priests, and saw no absolute wrong in offering sacrifices. 
 No, he was not a heretic in the sense that Ikhnaton or 
 Zoroaster or Buddha were heretics. Outwardly he was 
 distinctly a conforming Jew. 
 
 4 
 
 YET for all his conformity in these and other re- — 
 spects, Jesus was definitely a rebel. Like most of the 
 great prophets who had preceded him in Israel, he 
 scorned the rich and the proud, the priests in the Temple 
 and the rabbis in the synagogues. His heart went out 
 only to the downtrodden, to those sorry wretches who 
 could win their way to God neither with costly sacri- 
 fices nor erudite learning. His whole gospel was in- 
 tended but to comfort the disinherited, for it declared 
 that no matter how unlettered they might be they could 
 nevertheless be taken into the Kingdom of God when 
 it came. For it was repentance alone, according to Jesus, 
 that could make one eligible for entrance into that King- 
 dom. Indeed, wealth and pedantic learning, he declared, 
 were hindrances; only purity of heart was of any worth. 
 
 Now such a gospel was literally saturated with heresy. 
 Because it denounced the rich and commanded them to 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 265 
 
 divest themselves of all their possessions, it attacked the 
 whole sacrificial cult. For that cult, with its priests and 
 levites, its elaborate Temple and costly parade, depended 
 entirely upon wealth for its existence. A people with- 
 out possessions could never possibly afford fat bullocks 
 to burn or skins of oil to pour away. Besides, if purity 
 of heart was the sole credential of any avail, what sense 
 was there in offering any sacrifices? . . . Moreover, 
 because this gospel minimized the importance of learn- 
 ing, and commanded men to keep merely the spirit of 
 the law, it attacked the whole Rabbinical cult. For that 
 cult, created by the Scribes and Pharisees, depended on 
 scholarly knowledge of the letter of the law for its 
 importance. The “Wall of Law’ of the rabbis had 
 been built out of the involved interpretations and re- 
 interpretations of every word in the Pentateuch; indeed, 
 of every letter and of every illumination around each 
 letter in it. And it seemed to many of the rabbis that 
 only one who knew that Pentateuch word for word, 
 and all the innumerable interpretations thereof, could 
 possibly be a righteous soul. Many of those rabbis 
 despised the “‘man of the earth,”’ the peasant, saying 
 that his ignorance of the minutiz of the law was a mill- 
 stone that dragged him down to the level of the heathen. 
 Obviously, therefore, this gospel of Jesus declaring that 
 the “‘man of the earth’ could be the very salt of the 
 earth, was charged with quite devastating heresy. 
 
 But the heresies of Jesus were not at all without prece- 
 dent in Israel. Innumerable prophets had arisen before 
 his time to attack the greedy priests; and the very rabbis 
 themselves reviled in their Talmud the hypocritical and 
 bigoted in their midst, calling them ‘‘the Pharisaic 
 
266 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 plague.’”” What really marked Jesus as one unlike any 
 preacher that had come before him was not so much 
 what he said, as the authority on which he said it. His 
 tone was altogether novel in Jewish experience. Every’ 
 other prophet had uttered his heresies in the name of 
 God. ‘Thus saith the Lord,’’ had preceded their every 
 declaration. But this carpenter from Nazareth, for all 
 his meekness and humility, spoke only in his own name. 
 “Take my yoke upon ye,” he said. . . . ‘““Whosoever 
 shall lose his life for my sake,’”’ ... “ye have heard 
 that. it was said of old time... but J say unto 
 you...’ So did he speak, not as the mouthpiece of 
 God, but as one vested with an almost divine authority 
 of his own. 
 
 It was that tone which in the end cost Jesus his life. 
 The priests and scholars must have been incensed by it 
 beyond bearing. Such a tone would have sounded 
 blasphemous to them even in a prince or a learned man. 
 In an untutored laborer, in a peasant from benighted 
 Galilee, it must have seemed the most outrageous impu- 
 dence. . . . But it was that tone, after all, that en- 
 dowed Jesus with his striking magnetism. It created 
 and sustained the impression that he was a transcendent 
 person, and bestowed on him the power to take cringing 
 serfs and make them over into towering men. Only be- 
 cause he believed in himself so firmly, only because he 
 was so superbly confident, could he make others accept 
 his words. His tone was not that of a mere prophet, but 
 almost that of God Himself. And that was why men 
 began to say he was more than a man, that he was the 
 Messiah! It was not merely that he could perform what 
 were thought to be miracles, casting out demons and 
 

 
 With Aree NE ane EUROPE 267 
 
 raising the dead—though such reputed powers must 
 have furnished the most convincing proof to the ma- 
 jority of his peasant followers. It was more that he 
 could carry himself with the divine assurance of an 
 “Anointed One,’’ casting out fear and inspiring the 
 living. 
 
 Whether Jesus himself was convinced he was the 
 Messiah is a problem still unsolved. His refusal to make 
 the claim in public, the almost too astute way in which 
 he avoided a direct answer whenever the question was 
 put to him, presents to this day a dilemma to the faith- 
 ful. But it is certain that many of those who followed 
 Jesus believed him to be the Messiah. ‘The sight of that 
 ragged young Jew hurrying beneath the hot sun of 
 Galilee, poor, unlearned, yet able to breathe a perfect 
 frenzy of hope and cheer into vast throngs of forlorn 
 derelicts, must have seemed proof indisputable that he 
 was indeed the ‘“‘Anointed One.’’ ‘There was a won- 
 drous love in his preaching and, coupled with it, an air 
 of certainty, of authority. For five hundred years some 
 Messiah had been awaited, and more than once it had 
 been men of the basest stuff that had been mistaken for 
 Him. Charlatans and madmen, arrant knaves and 
 driveling fools, had time and again been hailed by the 
 hysterical mob as the Awaited One. Is it any wonder, 
 therefore, that an exalted person like this young car- 
 penter, Jesus, should have been hailed likewise? ... 
 
 5 
 
 THAT Jesus was indeed an exalted person is hardly to 
 be doubted. Even when one has discounted all the 
 

 
 268 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 legends, all the stupid and silly and gross extravagances, 
 all the pious embellishments and patent falsehoods that 
 clog and confuse the Gospel accounts, one still is left 
 with an extraordinary personality to explain. It must 
 be remembered that Jesus was not the only preacher of 
 kindness or worker of mircles that ever had been known 
 among the Jews. Many such men had preceded him; 
 many there were in his own day; and many more came 
 after him. But none other succeeded in so impressing 
 his character on his followers. It took only a little 
 while for his fame to spread throughout Galilee, and 
 soon great crowds came out to see and hear him wherever 
 he went. He was often heckled by the elders in the 
 synagogues, and more than once he was slandered and 
 persecuted. But that only increased his following. We 
 are told that once when he began to preach by the 
 Sea of Galilee, the surging throng on the beach became 
 so heavy that he had to get into a boat and speak from 
 the water... 
 
 But it was only in Galilee that he was then famous, 
 and Galilee was simply a remote and unimportant sec- 
 tion of the country. It is probable that in Jerusalem, 
 the capital, not even a rumor of his appearance was yet 
 known. So there came at last the day when Jesus de- 
 termined to go out from Galilee, and carry his gospel 
 to the rest of his people. He determined to go even 
 as far as Jerusalem and attempt to utter his word in the 
 very stronghold of the priests and rabbis. The time 
 chosen was just before the Passover, for Jesus knew the 
 capital would then be thronged with Jews come from 
 every corner of the land to celebrate the feast in the 
 Temple. So with his twelve chief followers, his dis- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 269 
 
 ciples, and a little group of women devotees, he courage- 
 ously set out southward. ... 
 
 But then came swift tragedy. By the time Jesus 
 reached the capital, his fame had already preceded him. 
 A great mob rushed out to meet him, wildly throwing 
 their cloaks to the ground beneath the feet of the colt on > 
 which he rode. “They 
 hailed him as their Mes- (7 
 siah, as the long-awaited 
 Son of David who 
 would deliver them 
 from their travail. 
 “Hosanna,” they cried 
 ecstatically. ‘“‘Blessed be 
 he that cometh in the 
 Meadnenol) the ‘Lord! 
 mlosanitiaie a) hr. ss) One 
 wonders whether those 
 poor wretches out of the 
 alleyways and dunghills 
 of old Jerusalem under- 
 stood who the man 
 Jesus really was. (One 
 wonders whether even 
 his own disciples under- 
 stood—or whether even 
 his most pious devotees today understand.) To that 
 frantic mob, at least, he was simply an arch-Zealot, a 
 martial hero who had come to lead them in bloody re- 
 bellion against Rome. And when, after three days of 
 teaching in the Temple courts, they discovered that he 
 was nothing of the sort, when they began to see that he 
 
 Mh 
 ((« 
 \\ 
 
 
 
 THE PATH OF JESUS 
 

 
 270 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 wanted them to make peace with God, not war against 
 Rome, they deserted him as quickly as they had flocked 
 to his support. Poor desperate wretches, they were in 
 no mood to seek peace or return good for evil, or turn 
 the other cheek. They did not want to render unto 
 Caesar that which was Caesar's. “They wanted to kill. 
 ‘They wanted to make a holocaust of the whole Roman 
 army, and to become once more a free and prideful 
 Nation! ys) sen. 
 
 And the moment the populace turned against him, 
 Jesus had no chance. ‘The priests at once began plotting 
 decisive measures against him, for they hated him no 
 less than men of similar kidney had hated every other 
 prophet in Israel. He had scorned them and attacked 
 the whole basis of their cult. Besides, he had publicly 
 flaunted them, storming into the Temple courts one day, 
 and hurling their money-changers out into the street. 
 ‘They dared not let him go on. . . . And although the 
 rabbis despised the priests no less than did Jesus, yet they 
 could not rally to his defense. He had scorned them, 
 too, flaying them for their love of the letter and neglect 
 of the spirit of the Holy Law. He had dared call them 
 hypocrites and whited sepulchres. And, above all, he 
 had outraged them with his unwonted tone of authority. 
 So they, too, were against him. 
 
 At the last moment Jesus seems to have realized how 
 reckless he had been in daring to come to Jerusalem. 
 His disciples had warned him against it when they were 
 still safe in Galilee; but young Jesus, in his ardor, had 
 paid no attention. And now he knew himself lost. 
 Belatedly he tried to escape with them, but he was 
 pursued, betrayed, and taken prisoner in a wooded place 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE Dal 
 
 outside the city walls. He was hurriedly tried by a 
 Jewish court which seems to have been made up largely 
 of priests. Then summarily he was adjudged guilty. 
 From the haste with which the whole trial was con- 
 ducted, one can judge how terrified were the priests. 
 They seem not to have cared in the least what it was 
 they condemned him for. They were afraid of Jesus, 
 afraid not merely because his heresies endangered their 
 own position, but even more because the excitement 
 which he had aroused among the masses might endanger 
 the peace of the whole land. Rome, the overlord, was 
 wont to put down every sort of public turmoil with 
 scant mercy or patience. So ina panic the elders of the 
 Jews took this young preacher and turned him over to 
 the Roman governor. 
 
 And by that governor he was sentenced to die. 
 
 There was no justice in it all. How could one ex- 
 pect justice in times so tense and a land so mad? ‘The 
 governor, Pontius Pilate, could have had no understand- 
 ing of what that young carpenter had done or had 
 dreamed of doing. ‘This Pilate probably thought him 
 but another mad young Zealot, a rebel against Rome, a 
 pretender to the throne of Judea. 
 
 And the very next day the life of that young Galilean 
 was snuffe out. “The Roman soldiers took him to the 
 top of a hill nearby, scourged him with rods, crowned 
 him in derision with a wreath of thorns, and nailed him 
 to a cross. [hey nailed him to a cross between two 
 thieves, and over his head they carved the mocking 
 words, “King of the Jews.’” And there in mortal an- 
 guish he hung for hours. Had he been stronger of body, 
 perhaps life would have lingered in him for days. But 
 

 
 272 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 had he been stronger in body, no doubt he would never 
 have joined the school of John the Baptist and become a 
 saver of souls. Instead, he would have joined the 
 Zealots, fighting with the sword against Rome, and 
 coming to his end not on a cross but behind some blood- 
 soaked rampart. No, from the beginning his strength 
 must have been not the strength of body but of soul; 
 and toward the end even that strength must have ebbed 
 low in him. For as he hung there on the cross of shame, 
 he was alone, deserted. Gone were the huzzahing 
 crowds; gone even were his own trusted disciples. Only 
 a little knot of desolated women stood by to watch 
 him breathe his last. In the city he was already forgot- 
 ten. “The members of that mob which had so ecstatically 
 received him a few days earlier were now busily prepar- 
 ing for the Passover feast. And his disciples were hid- 
 ing in the fields, too terrified to confess that they had 
 even known the martyr. So deserted he hung there on 
 that lone hill. 
 
 The sun began to set, and the wild violet glow in 
 the west crept up till it lost itself in the blue of the 
 evening sky. The prophet Jesus, his poor body sagging 
 from the bloody spikes that tore his hands and feet, 
 could endure the pangs no longer. He began to moan. 
 Brokenly he moaned as the throes of death came over 
 him. ‘“‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
 me?’’ he begged. 
 
 And then he died. 
 
 6 
 
 BUT he died only to come to life again, to come to a 
 life more enduring, more wondrously potent than had 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 273 
 
 ever been vouchsafed to him in the days before his 
 shameful death. Indeed, he literally came to life again 
 —according to those who had most earnestly followed 
 him. For ere a week had passed, a revulsion had come 
 over those terrified disciples. In the dread hour of the 
 trial they had fled from their Master; and now their 
 mortification knew no bounds. “They trembled at the 
 thought of returning home to Galilee to face the bitter 
 contempt, or worse still, the deathly dejection of their 
 comrades there. Even more, they trembled at the 
 thought of living out the rest of their lives without their 
 Jesus to believe in. That young preacher, with his 
 supernal magnetism, had come to mean too much to 
 them. Without their faith in him and his Messiahship, 
 their own lives became empty, meaningless. Skulking 
 there amid the rock-strewn hills outside Jerusalem, they 
 realized as never before that they still had to believe in 
 him—or die. . . . And, because believing in a corpse 
 was too difficult, they began to believe that Jesus was 
 still alive. “They began to say that three days after his 
 burial he had miraculously arisen from the dead. They 
 even declared they had actually seen him in the act of 
 rising from the sepulcher, had seen him as he was taken 
 up to Heaven, right up to the throne of glory. They 
 began to tell how his spirit had actually walked and 
 talked with them, had even broken bread with them! 
 . It was not a desire to deceive that impelled those 
 disciples to tell such stories. “They sincerely believed the 
 stories themselves. “They were overwhelmingly con- 
 vinced that Jesus had really come to life again, and was 
 now in Heaven waiting to return once more. 
 And with this new conviction grown strong in their 
 
2/4 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 hearts, the eleven disciples emerged from their hiding- 
 places and began to preach again. It was not at all a 
 new religion thit they began to preach, however. They 
 were still Jews, and they continued to be faithful to the 
 established synagogue and Temple worship. They dif- 
 fered from their fellow Jews only in that they believed 
 that the Messiah had already come, and that He had 
 come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. They were for 
 that reason called Nazarenes, and probably they formed 
 but one more of many such Messianic sects already in 
 existence. There were the Johannites, who believed 
 John the Baptist had been the Messiah, and who per- 
 sisted in the belief for yet many generations. There 
 were also the Theudasians, who believed a certain mad 
 preacher named Theudas was the Awaited One, and 
 who clung to the belief until the Romans cut off Theu- 
 das’s head. The whole land swarmed with such little 
 sects, for the hunger for salvation in Israel was then as 
 agonizing, and as unsatisfied by the established religion, 
 as it had been, for instance, in India in the day of Buddha 
 and Mahavira. 
 vf 
 
 OF the life of the first Nazarenes we know exceed- 
 ingly little. It would seem that they dwelt together in 
 little communist colonies, loving each other and sharing 
 each other’s joys and sorrows. They ate at a common 
 table and had no private property. With te noblest 
 ardor they set out to live as their Master had commanded 
 them. . . . And continually, unflaggingly, they sought 
 new members. They went throughout the land, even 
 
 as far as Damascus, trying to win converts to their little 
 movement, 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE PES, 
 
 But it must have been slow and discouraging labor, 
 for the Messiahship of Jesus was far from easy to prove. 
 Even when the shamefulness of his death could be ex- 
 plained away by a miraculous resurrection, there was 
 still the obscurity of his life to be justified. “The Jews 
 had been taught to expect that the Anointed One would 
 be no less than a scion of the royal dynasty of David, 
 an heroic and magnificent prince who would destroy all 
 Israel’s enemies with a mere wave of the hand, and 
 would ascend a throne of gold and ivory and precious 
 stones, to rule then over all the world as the Prince of 
 Peace. It was just the sort of grand and gaudy dream 
 one might expect of a people with a tremendous will- 
 to-live cramped in a frail and tortured body. Anda 
 village carpenter from half-heathen Galilee, an obscure 
 evangelist who had tramped through the dust to Jeru- 
 salem with a tiny following of ragged peasants and 
 reformed sinners, only to be summarily snuffed out by 
 Rome—such a sorry figure hardly measured up to the 
 requirements set down for the hero in that dream. The 
 contrast between the actual Jesus and the imagined Mes- 
 siah had not been so patent when the preacher had 
 still been alive. “The magnitude of his spirit and the 
 fervor of his preaching had been so absorbing as to 
 make men forget altogether whence he had come and 
 how raggedly he was clad. “They had been swept away 
 by his simple stirring eloquence, and men had then been 
 quite ready to hail him as the Son of David. . . . But 
 now that Jesus was no longer physically present on 
 earth, all this was changed. “To those Jews who had 
 not known him, who had never heard him preach or 
 seen him cast demons out of the mad and the palsied, 
 

 
 276 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 it was enormously difficult to prove that he had really 
 been the Promised One. 
 
 No doubt that was why the disciples began to piece 
 together the genealogies we find in the Gospels. No 
 doubt that, too, was why those extravagant legends con- 
 cerning the conception, birth, childhood, and ministry 
 of Jesus began to be devised. Uncharitable critics may 
 say the disciples resorted to fraud in these matters—but 
 it was all intensely pious and well-intentioned fraud. 
 Before the ordinary Jew could be made to accept Jesus 
 as the Messiah, Jesus simply had to be proved a descen- 
 dant of David, whose whole life had been a literal ful- 
 filment of the ancient prophecies. The disciples may 
 not have been even remotely conscious that they were 
 departing from the truth when they solemnly repeated 
 those genealogies and stories. Overzealous disciples 
 never are.). , > 
 
 But even with all those new proofs and appealing 
 legends to convince them, the Jewish people as a whole 
 still refused to accept the Messiahship of Jesus. “They 
 obstinately kept on awaiting the first coming of the 
 Anointed One, praying for his advent day and night. 
 And the Nazarenes remained obscure, and few in 
 number. 
 
 II. CHRIST 
 
 AND then something happened. Of a sudden—at 
 least, so it seemed to those who had not marked the 
 mounting of its steady ground swell—that little Naza- 
 rene sect, so long but an eddy unfelt even in tiny Judea, 
 became a high sea that broke and rolled across the whole 
 Roman Empire. A veritable tidal wave it became, 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE Lid. 
 
 sweeping over one land after another until finally it 
 had inundated the whole face of the West and half the 
 face of the East. To explain how that could have 
 happened, one must remember what was going on just 
 then in the Roman Empire. A great hunger was gnaw- 
 ing at its vitals, a desperate hunger for salvation. The 
 whole Roman world seemed to be writhing in the throes 
 of death, and fear of that death drove it to a frantic and 
 panicky clutching after any and every chance of life. As 
 a result, the mysteries, those secret cults which whipped 
 men into mad orgies of hopefulness, flourished every- 
 where. 
 
 We have already dealt at some length in this volume 
 with those mysteries of Greece and Rome. In origin 
 they were largely Oriental, and in essence they grew out 
 of the belief that by certain magic rites a man could take 
 on the nature of an immortal god. In most instances 
 that god was portrayed as a young hero who had been 
 murdered treacherously and then miraculously brought 
 to life again. “That same legend was told—with varia- 
 tions, of course—concerning Dionysus, Osiris, Orpheus, 
 Attis, Adonis, and heaven knows how many other such 
 gods. Arising out of the common desire for an explana- 
 tion of the annual death and rebirth of vegetation, that 
 legend was common to many parts of the world, and 
 was believed during unnumbered centuries. It became 
 the basis of a dozen different religions, providing all 
 of them with the rcot-dogma that by means of sacrifices, 
 spells, prayers, trances, or other such devices, mortal 
 man could become immortal. By the first century of 
 this era, the legead had spread to every civilized prov- 
 ince in the Roman Empire—save, of course, that stub- 
 

 
 278 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 TTIS 
 
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 Ss = See 
 
 
 
 THE SAVIOR-GODS 
 
 bornly resisting little province of Judea—and had 
 everywhere made the people drunk with the heady liquor 
 of its mystery salvation. 
 
 And side by side with these religious cults flourishing 
 among the lower elements in the population of the Em- 
 pire, different schools of philosophic thought flourished 
 among the more learned folk. One of these was the 
 philosophy developed in the city of Alexandria by an 
 Egyptian Jew named Philo. According to this philoso- 
 phy, God, the Father of All, was too vast to have direct 
 contact with the earth, and therefore manifested him- 
 self only through an intermediary called the Logos, the 
 “Word.” This Logos, which was sometimes called 
 the ‘Son of God’’ or the ‘‘Holy Ghost,’ had created the 
 earth, and was the sole mediator between it and heaven. 
 Man’s only approach to the Father, therefore, was 
 
WAAR RENEDGIN EUROPE Ds) 
 
 through this Logos, this “‘Son’’; man’s only chance of 
 entering heaven was by letting the ‘‘Spirit’’ flood his 
 soul. Man could find a way out for himself, only by 
 losing himself in the ‘‘Holy Ghost.”” . . 
 
 2 
 
 THE cults and the philosophies we have just described 
 were not the only elements in the religious life and 
 thought of the Empire. Not even remotely. But they 
 were among the dominant elements, and they could not 
 but have influenced every educated citizen of the Empire. 
 That excluded, of course, the humble Nazarenes in far- 
 off Palestine. They were neither educated, nor citizens 
 of the Empire. They were merely Palestinian Jews, 
 poor artisans and peasants most of whom knew no 
 tongue save the Aramaic dialect used in their homes and 
 synagogues. And if in later years the Nazarene faith 
 began to take on the color and shape of those heathen 
 cults and strange philosophies, these Palestinian Naz- 
 arenes were not in the least responsible. It was one from 
 outside the original brotherhood, a Jew from beyond 
 the borders of Palestine, who was responsible. It was 
 Saul of Tarsus who brought on that change. 
 
 Saul was both a Jew and a citizen of the Empire. He 
 was born in Tarsus in Asia Minor, a city of some con- 
 sequence as a trading center and a seat of learning; 
 and while still a boy he seems to have distinguished him- 
 self as a student. A Pharisee, and the descendant of 
 Pharisees, his chief training was in Rabbinic law; but 
 he also knew Greek, and must have had rather more than 
 a passing acquaintance with Greek and Alexandrian 
 philosophy. Most important of all, he must very early 
 

 
 280 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 have learnt from slaves in the household, or from Gentile 
 playmates, of the mystery cults which were prevalent in 
 his native city, and of the savior-gods in whom the 
 masses put their impassioned trust. . . . Despite these 
 early heathen influences, however, Saul remained a Jew. 
 When grown to young manhood he even went down 
 from ‘Tarsus to Jeru- 
 salem so that he might 
 complete his religious 
 studies under the great 
 Rabbi Gamaliel there. 
 (It seems not to have 
 been uncommon for the 
 sons of wealthy Jews 
 living outside the home- 
 land to come to Jeru- 
 salem to finish their edu- 
 cation.) And there in 
 Jerusalem Saul for the 
 first time came in con- 
 tact with the Nazarenes. 
 . . «. Now Saul was a 
 person of very violent 
 likes and dislikes, and 
 when he heard what 
 those Nazarenes were 
 preaching, he was convulsed with anger. He is said to 
 have been an epileptic, and certainly he was a man of 
 strange temperament. Whatever he did, he did with an 
 intensity and an extravagance that were distinctly ab- 
 normal. So that when he took his initial dislike to the 
 Nazarenes, he could not merely shrug his shoulders in 
 
 
 
 SAUL OF TARSUS 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 281 
 
 disapproval and let them be. He had to persecute them. 
 Nor was he content with persecuting them merely in 
 Jerusalem. On hearing that their movement was grow- 
 ing virulently in Damascus, he actually dropped his 
 studies and set out to run them down there as well. 
 
 But on the way to Damascus a queer thing happened 
 to him. He was suddenly overcome by a seizure of 
 some sort, and in a trance a vision came to him of the 
 resurrected Jesus. A “‘light from heaven” shone round 
 about him, and a voice cried out: ‘‘Saul, Saul, why 
 dost thou persecute me?’’ And when, trembling and 
 astonished, Saul came to himself, behold he was a 
 changed man! 
 
 When he got to Damascus he arose in the synagogue, 
 and instead of persecuting the Nazarenes, he began 
 actually to praise them. He had become a complete 
 convert to their cause, believing in the Messiahship of 
 Jesus and in his resurrection with an _ unshakable 
 conviction. 
 
 Saul had never seen Jesus in the flesh or come under 
 the spell of his loving gospel. But that made no differ- 
 ence to him. Actually he was but little interested in the 
 gospel of the man Jesus; he was interested only in the 
 death and rebirth of the savior-god, Christ. Cnrristos 
 is the Greek word for “Anointed One,’’ and Saui, whose 
 mother tongue was Greek, built his whole personal faith 
 around that word. He became the great preacher of 
 “Christ crucified,’’ journeying about all over the Em- 
 pire, to Cilicia, Galatia, Macedonia, the islands of the 
 Mediterranean, and even Rome, in a great passion to 
 have the world share with him his belief. . . . 
 

 
 282 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ° 
 
 AND thus at last Christianity as a world religion was 
 really founded. Jesus had not founded what the world 
 calls Christianity, for Jesus had lived and died a Jew 
 within the fold of Judaism. Jesus had lived and labored 
 merely to guide his fellow Jews to those elements in 
 their own Jewish religion which might make their sorry 
 
 
 
 THE WANDERINGS OF PAUL 
 
 lives glorious. He had tried but to lead them to salva- 
 tion through distinctly Jewish channels, and he had on 
 occasion even turned away heathens who had come to 
 him for help. He was not the founder of Christianity, 
 butts founding ese 
 
 Nor had his immediate disciples created the new faith. 
 They had remained conforming Jews, and the Messiah 
 put forward by them had all along been the Jewish 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 283 
 
 Messiah. The Kingdom of Heaven they had dreamed 
 of inheriting was a kingdom reserved primarily for 
 Jews. 
 
 Nor was it Saul, the studious young Pharisee, who 
 founded the new faith, but his other self, Paul, the citi- 
 zen of Rome. (He changed his name sometime after 
 the conversion.) There are two hostile selves, the Saul 
 and the Paul, in almost every sensitive Jew who has ever 
 lived in the Gentile world. The one tries to hold him 
 fast within the small and limiting circle of his own 
 people; the other tries to draw him out into the wide, 
 free circle of the world. And because in this instance 
 the man was of so intense a nature, the conflict was all 
 the more marked. What-time the Saul in him was tri- 
 umphant, this man was ready actually to murder every 
 Jew in whom the Paul so much as lifted its head. And 
 when the Paul in him got the upper hand, he was all 
 for putting an end to the Sauls. He openly proclaimed 
 that all the laws which kept Jew apart from Gentile 
 were now no longer of any worth. With the coming of 
 the Christ there had come a new dispensation, he be- 
 lieved. Circumcized and uncircumcized were now alike, 
 and he that ate ‘‘defilement’’ was no less in the sight of 
 Christ than he that scrupulously kept all the Mosaic 
 laws. For the Christ was not the Messiah merely of 
 the Jews: he was the Savior of all mankind. The shed- 
 ding of his blood had washed away the sin of all men, 
 and now one need but believe in him to be saved. No 
 more than that was demanded: believe in Christ, and 
 one was redeemed! 
 
 And it was due to this breaking down of the ‘Wall 
 of Law”’ that the Nazarene faith, so long obscure and 
 

 
 284 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 unnoticed in tiny Judea, flooded out and inundated the 
 world. 
 
 It is unfair to compare Paul to Jesus, for the two be- 
 longed spiritually and intellectually to entirely different 
 orders of men. “The one was‘a prophet and a dreamer 
 of dreams; the other was an organizer and a builder of 
 churches. In his own class Paul was one of the stupen- 
 dously great men of the earth. If at moments he could 
 be violent and ungracious, he was nevertheless a superb 
 statesman. And he was possessed of an energy, a 
 courage, and an indomitable will, the like of which have 
 rarely been known in all the history of great men. 
 Again and again he was scourged and imprisoned by 
 the outraged elders of the synagogues in which he tried 
 to preach. (Paul usually tried to obtain a hearing in 
 the local synagogue whenever he arrived in a strange 
 city.) Mobs were set on him; more than once he had 
 to flee for his life. “The orthodox Jews looked on him 
 as an apostate, and some even of his own fellow Naz- 
 arenes fought to depose him from leadership. All the 
 years of his ministry he was plagued by Jews who hated 
 him, Nazarenes who distrusted him, and Gentiles who 
 could hardly make out what he was talking about. And 
 yet he persisted, never resting from his grueling labor 
 of carrying his Christ to the Gentiles, incessantly run- 
 ning to and fro, incessantly preaching, writing, arguing, 
 and comforting, until at last, a tired and broken man, he 
 died a martyr’s death in the city of Rome... . 
 
 4 
 
 IT was in the year 67, according to tradition, that 
 Paul was beheaded by the Romans. He had spent per- 
 
WEA oie: OU ROPE 285 
 
 haps thirty years in the labor of spreading the idea of 
 Christ, and by the time of his death that idea had already 
 struck root far and wide in the Empire. It had divorced 
 itself from Judaism, taking over the Sunday of the 
 Mithraists in place of the Jewish Sabbath, and substitut- 
 ing Mithraist ritual for Temple sacrifice. In most of 
 the cities there were already thriving Christian brother- 
 hoods, little secret societies much like those of the mys- 
 teries, but with greater proselyting passion. While the 
 leaders were still for the most part converted Jews, the 
 membership was largely of pagan origin. And as, with 
 the passing of the years, the pagan element grew ever 
 more preponderant, pagan ideas came more and more to 
 dominate the religion. ‘The life-story of Jesus was em- 
 bellished with a whole new array of marvels and mira- 
 cles, and the man himself was made over into a veritable 
 mystery savior-god. His character and nature fell into 
 the maw of an alien philosophy, and then came drooling 
 out in sodden and swollen distortion. He became the 
 Lamb whose blood washed away all sin... He became 
 the Son of God supernaturally conceived by the Virgin 
 Mary when the Holy Ghost of God the Father entered 
 into her womb. He became the Logos and the Avatar 
 and the Savior. And throughout the Empire little 
 churches were to be found in which his pictures (extra- 
 
 
 
 1 Those who remember the description of the pagan Tauroboleum 
 given in the chapter on Rome will find this good Christian hymn pro. 
 foundly suggestive: 
 
 “There is a fountain filled with blood 
 Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; 
 
 And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
 Lose all their guilty stains.’’ 
 

 
 286 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 ordinarily like those of Horus) were worshipped, and 
 in which his ‘‘flesh and blood’’ (amazingly like the 
 symbols used in the magical rites of Mithras) were taken 
 in communion. 
 
 That is why this section is entitled ‘““What Happened 
 in Europe.’’ Although the religion of Jesus and of 
 the first disciples was distinctly Oriental, although the 
 whole Messiah idea was markedly a thing out of the 
 East, the religion about a Savior Christ was largely Eu- 
 ropean. And it was no less far a cry from the one to 
 the other than was the distance from Nazareth to Rome. 
 Indeed, one gravely doubts whether Jesus, the simple 
 peasant teacher in hilly Galilee, would have known who 
 in the world that Savior Christ was! .. . 
 
 But it was inevitable for that change to come about. » 
 Christianity in those years was gaining too many con- 
 verts too rapidly. It would not have been so bad had 
 they been converts from a world of ignorance—that is. 
 converts who had naught to forget when they came over 
 to the new faith. But they were converts instead from 
 a world of what we would call stupidity. Their minds 
 were crowded with fears and superstitions and magic 
 rites and extravagant dogmas which they were supposed 
 to forget when they became Christians—but they never 
 succeeded in forgetting them. So it was inevitable, we 
 repeat, that this new faith, oversuccessful as it was in 
 hurriedly displacing the old, should in the end become 
 very like unto the old. 
 
 But for all that growing likeness, a significant element 
 of disparity always remained. There was a zeal, a 
 missionary ardor, in the early church that was largely 
 unknown in the older cults. There was a constant run- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 287 
 
 Nyy \ aN 
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 CHRIS TIANITX IN: b10°A," D. 
 
 ning to and fro of prophets and deacons from one center 
 to another, and a diligent spreading of tracts and epistles 
 among all who could read. ‘There were, for instance, 
 the letters of Paul giving advice on matters of ad- 
 ministration, and explaining matters of doctrine to 
 various of the little churches he had founded. And later 
 there were the Gospels. “The Gospels, as we now have 
 them, could not have been written by the disciples whose 
 names they bear, for they are written in Greek, and 
 the native language of most of those disciples was 
 Aramaic. Nor do they seem to have been direct transla- 
 tions from Aramaic accounts. Scholars today are agreed 
 that the earliest of them is the one entitled ‘“The Gospel 
 according to Mark,”’ and they date it about the year 65 
 —that is, thirty-five years after the crucifixion. The 
 latest of the Gospels, that of John, with its unconscious 
 

 
 288 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 effort to make Jesus fit the Logos, could not have been 
 written (according to many of the scholars) until well 
 after the year 100. Such writings must have been circu- 
 lated freely by the missionaries wherever they ventured, 
 and it is evident that they were distinctly effective. No 
 such testaments could be offered by the priests of Mith- 
 ras, Cybele, or Attis, for their deities were after all 
 mythical. Only the Christians had a real man to wor- 
 ship: a unique and divine man, it is true, but never- 
 theless a person who had known human woe and pain, 
 who had suffered, and who had for at least three days 
 been dead. ‘That element of naturalism, of closeness to 
 human reality, must have made Christianity a faith of 
 extraordinary attractiveness. 
 
 And being so attractive, it rapidly began to eat into 
 the ranks of the other mysteries. It won away their 
 followers at such a rate that it began at last to present 
 a distinct menace to the Roman governors. Spread 
 everywhere, from the Thames to the Euphrates, its half- 
 secret brotherhoods formed what amounted to an empire 
 within the Empire. Its initiates fanatically refused to 
 conduct themselves like Roman gentlemen. They op- 
 posed the basic institutions of the Roman social system, 
 and they hated the theater and the gladiatorial shows, 
 the chief amusements of the time. Worse still, they 
 refused absolutely to worship the Emperor as god, thus 
 openly inviting the suspicion of disloyalty to Rome. So 
 attempts at suppression were in the nature of things 
 almost unavoidable. 
 
 At first the Christians were persecuted only to gratify 
 the lusts of the Roman mob; but later more systematic 
 efforts had to be made. After the year 303 the imperial 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 289 
 
 
 
 government realized that its very existence was in dan- 
 ger so long as Christianity was allowed to flourish, and 
 it therefore made one supreme attempt utterly to annihi- 
 late the revolutionary cult. “The churches were burnt 
 down, all copies of the Gospels and Epistles were de- 
 stroyed, and the Christians themselves were martyred 
 by the score. The government seemed determined to 
 stamp out Christianity, as modern governments seek to 
 stamp out Communism or Pacifism or Anarchism. 
 (Early Christianity, according to Prof. Gilbert Murray, 
 might indeed have seemed to the Romans what “‘a 
 blend of pacifist international socialist with some mys- 
 tical Indian sect, drawing its supporters mainly from an 
 oppressed and ill-liked foreign proletariat, such as the 
 ‘hunkey’ population of some big American towns, full 
 of the noblest moral professions but at the same time 
 aliens,’’ would seem to modern men of affairs.) “There 
 were tortures and executions beyond number, and the 
 jails were filled with Christian devotees. 
 
 But nevertheless the movement grew. There was a 
 wondrous comfort in that religion, a mighty zeal that 
 made it possible for the martyrs to go to their death 
 actually with a smile on their lips. It took vile slaves 
 out of the slums where they rotted, and somehow 
 breathed supernal heroism into them. It told them that 
 sacrifice was at the very core of righteousness, that death 
 for the truth could mean only life everlasting. Had not 
 the Savior himself died for the truth? Of a surety, 
 therefore, he would not desert those who died likewise. 
 He would take up their tortured souls in his comforting 
 arms, and heal them in Heaven where he reigned. Death 
 could have no sting for them, nor the grave any victory, 
 

 
 
 
 290 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 for the Crucified Christ would be with them and bring 
 them through to blessedness eternal! .. . 
 
 So no matter how madly Rome hounded the Chris- 
 tians, Christianity could not be crushed. 
 
 5 
 
 AND then came Constantine and, in the year 313, an 
 end to the persecutions. Constantine was born out in 
 
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 CHRISTIANITY AFTER CONSTANTINE 
 
 
 
 Servia, and is reported to have been the illegitimate son 
 of a Roman general and a village barmaid. He was in- 
 ordinately ambitious, and by dint of much energy, 
 intrigue, and not a little use of murder, he managed to 
 raise himself actually to the imperial throne. But his 
 position was challenged by a rival emperor, and in his 
 dire need of help from any and every quarter, Con- 
 stantine suddenly turned to the Christians. With char- 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 291 
 
 acteristic shrewdness he realized that those fanatical 
 Christ-worshippers were a power to be reckoned with. 
 Here they were, established everywhere, and possessed 
 of an insuperable will-to-live. Constantine probably 
 had no clear idea as to what it was they really believed. 
 He may have thought them Mithraists who for some 
 queer reason, best known to themselves, worshipped a 
 cross. But he did know that they were becoming politi- 
 cally of superlative importance. So he began officially 
 to favor them, showering their churches with wealth. 
 He had the intelligence to see that they were the sole 
 unifying force left in the disrupted empire. They 
 formed one vast and powerful brotherhood that rami- 
 fied everywhere. And Constantine, whose chief concern 
 was the finding of some way of bolstering up the tot- 
 tering empire, felt forced to resort to them for help. 
 
 And thus it came about that a fervent hope in the 
 heart of an obscure little Levantine race, and a sweet doc- 
 trine of love and peace preached by a simple young 
 Levantine peasant, became three hundred years later the 
 official religion of the greatest empire the world had 
 ever known! ... 
 
 6 
 
 BUT it was a costly triumph for Christianity, as every 
 other such triumph has been in all history. What hap- 
 pened to Buddhism when it set out to conquer the Far 
 East, now happened also to Christianity in the West. 
 It became an official and successful institution—and so 
 degenerated. A faith cannot be institutionalized, for it 
 is a thing of the spirit. Even dogmas or rites, which 
 are things almost of the flesh, cannot be organized 
 

 
 PO, THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 beyond certain bounds. So that even after Christianity 
 became primarily a thing of dogmas and rites, it never- 
 theless began to crack and crumble. All sorts of schisms 
 occurred. In the process of organizing the idea of the 
 Christ, a myriad differences arose. Paul had used his 
 theological terms rather loosely, and had spoken of God, 
 the Son of God, and the Spirit of God. Now, were these 
 three the names of one Person or three? Was the Son 
 of God actually God Himself, or merely similar to God? 
 Was the Spirit of God a part of or separate from 
 God? . . . Paul had spoken of a Divine Christ and 
 a human Jesus. Well, then, were these two beings one, 
 or really two? And if they were one, when had they 
 coalesced? Had Jesus never been a human being, but 
 the Christ from the very beginning of creation? Or had 
 he become united with the Christ at the moment of his 
 conception or birth? Or had the Christ descended upon 
 him when at the age of thirty he was baptized by John? 
 . . . Paul had spoken of Jesus as a Savior. He had 
 said that God, the loving Father, had sacrificed His only- 
 begotten Son to redeem the world. But why should 
 God have found it necessary to make any such sacrifice? 
 To whom could He, the All-powerful, be beholden? 
 For that matter, if He was indeed the God of forgive- 
 ness, why had He not forgiven without ever bringing 
 the agony of the crucifixion to His beloved Son? Could 
 it be that there were really two Gods: the unforgiving 
 God of the Old Testament, and the forgiving God of 
 the New? ... } 
 
 Scores of such questions arose to perplex and divide 
 the organizers of the religion. Jesus had not been con- 
 scious of even the most ponderous of such questions 
 
 a ~ 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 293 
 
 That dear, fervent young preacher, who had lived and 
 died in the sublimity of a simple faith, could never 
 possibly have been conscious of them. Had he heard 
 them posed, he would probably have shaken his head in 
 mute bewilderment. . . . But in Europe three centuries 
 later, such abstruse metaphysical enigmas were consid- 
 ered the very bone and sinew of the religion. The early 
 church fathers disputed over them with a heat and rancor 
 that sometimes did not stop even at murder. When 
 one puts beside the Gospel accounts of the preachings 
 of Jesus, the official records of the wranglings and bicker- 
 ings of those church fathers, one feels that here is to be 
 found the most tragic and sordid epic of frustration that 
 the whole history of mankind can tell... . 
 
 7 
 
 BUT the rest of the chapters of that epic cannot be 
 told here. In all fairness no more may be done here 
 for Christianity than has been done for the other great 
 religions of the world, and having told of the founding 
 of the church, and of its original faith, room remains 
 for no more than a broad hint as to its later development. 
 
 More than sixteen hundred years have passed since 
 Christianity was made the state religion in the decadent 
 Roman Empire. Throughout all those years it has 
 been extending its borders, winning new converts in 
 every pagan land on earth. It is estimated that at the 
 present time about one-third of the entire population 
 of the world is Christian—approximately five hundred 
 and sixty-five million souls. ‘There is hardly a region 
 on earth where there is not a church bearing its name 
 or, in default of that, some zealous missionary trying 
 

 
 294 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 his utmost to erect a church. And of course, it is to 
 the spirit of Paul regnant in Christendom that one must 
 credit that enormous expansion. It is because countless 
 monks and healers and warriors and saints have felt 
 Paul’s call to go out and win the heathen to Christ, 
 that today more souls are turned to Christ than to any 
 other deity on earth. 
 
 But as we have already pointed out, these wholesale 
 increases in numbers were not made save at a high price. 
 Grave compromises had to be made everywhere with 
 the defeated cults. Just as Buddha had to be idolized 
 before he could conquer the East, so Jesus had to be 
 idolized to gain his victory over the West. His mother 
 had to be idolized, too, for pagan Europe loved its 
 goddesses too intensely to consent to forswear them en- 
 tirely. Indeed, during the medieval centuries Mary 
 seems to have been revered, in practice if not in dogma, 
 even more than her son. Much of the old love for 
 Isis, and especially for Cybele, the great Mother of the 
 Gods, was taken over into the church and translated 
 into the worship of Mary, the Mother of Christ. . 
 Similarly the worship of the old local deities was made 
 a part of Christianity. The pagan gods and goddesses 
 were discreetly made over into Christian saints, as is 
 instanced by the case of St. Bridget. Their ‘“‘relics’’ 
 were sold far and wide in Christendom as fetishes guar- 
 anteed to ward off evil; and their ancient festive days 
 were made part of the Christian calendar. The Roman 
 Parilia in April became the Festival of St. George, and 
 the pagan midsummer orgy in June was converted into 
 the Festival of St. John; the holy day of Diana in Au- 
 gust became the Festival of the Assumption of The 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 295 
 
 C ZB 
 
 
 
 A PRIESTESS OF BRIDGET 
 
 Virgin; and the Celtic feast of the dead in November was 
 changed into the Festival of All Souls. The twenty- 
 fifth of December—the winter solstice according to an- 
 cient reckoning—celebrated as the birthday of the sun- 
 god of Mithraism, was accepted as the birthday of 
 Christ, and the spring rites in connection with the death 
 and rebirth of the mystery gods were converted into the 
 Easter rites of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. .. . 
 
 Yet despite all these compromises, the new religion 
 remained always heavens above the old. By assimilat- 
 ing pagan rites and myths and even god-names, Chris- 
 tianity became at last almost completely pagan in sem- 
 blance; but it never became quite pagan in character. 
 The Old Testament puritanism which had so marked 
 the life of Jesus was never routed. It remained like a 
 
296 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 moral emetic in the faith, forcing it to throw up the lust 
 and license in the pagan rites it assimilated. If the spirit 
 of Paul insisted that Cybele be taken over as the Mother 
 of Christ, the spirit of Jesus insisted that her wild 
 Corybantes with their lustful rites, and her holy eunuchs 
 with their revolting perversions, be left severely behind. 
 If the spirit of Paul demanded that the wild Celtic 
 goddess named Bridget be accepted into Christianity, the 
 spirit of Jesus demanded that first she be made lily-white 
 and a saint. For the spirit of Jesus was innately Jewish 
 and puritanical. It set its face hard against sacred pros- 
 titution and against all those other loosenesses and ob- 
 scenities which arose out of the pagan’s free attitude to- 
 ward sex. It hated license and beast passion in any 
 form, whether it showed itself in feast, tourney, or 
 battle. Inexorably it insisted on moral decency and 
 restraint. 
 
 For that reason Christianity never became quite pagan 
 in spirit. It remained too profoundly concerned with 
 ethics. “The old mysteries had been largely devoid of ~ 
 any distinct ethical emphasis. Most of them had prom- 
 ised immortality to their initiates as a reward for the 
 mere mechanical performance of certain prescribed rites. 
 Few of them had pried into the private life of an initiate 
 to discover whether he was good or bad in his daily 
 conduct. Few of them had been in the least interested 
 in daily conduct. Morality had become completely re- 
 ligionized with most of them. They had maintained 
 that to be saved one need be merely ritually proper, not 
 ethically clean. 
 
 That was just where Christianity differed most radi- 
 cally from even the highest of the old mystery cults. 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 297 
 
 The spirit of Jesus flickering in Christianity made it at 
 least nominally a religion of ethics. For Jesus, one 
 must remember, had not been in the least concerned with 
 ritual. Like every other great Jewish prophet, he had 
 preached only ethics. And despite all the compromises 
 of the world-conquering Pauls, that ethical emphasis 
 in the teaching of Jesus persisted as a mighty leaven in 
 the church. It gave to the early Christians that gentle 
 nobility which history tells us graced their lives, and 
 that hercic stubbornness which certainly marked their 
 faith. It took hold of wild berserker races and somehow 
 frowned them to order. It took hold of a savage 
 Europe and somehow subdued it, civilized it. Not alto- 
 gether, cf course. The history of Europe, with all its 
 wars and recurrent brutalities, can hardly be called the 
 history of a civilized continent. Even the church itself, 
 with its foul record of crusades and inquisitions and 
 pogroms, cannot be said to have ever been really civi- 
 lized. But that admission does not at all discredit the 
 potency of the spirit of Jesus. It merely reveals how 
 tremendous were the odds against it, how brutal was the 
 world it sought to make divine. ‘True, there were 
 indeed Dark Ages in Europe when the power of the 
 Church was at its height. But who knows how far 
 darker they might have been, and how much longer they 
 might have endured, had the Church not existed? True, 
 there were indeed religious wars early and late in Chris- 
 tendom, but who knows how much bitterer and more 
 devastating they might have been had they been tribal 
 or racial wars. For wars were inevitable. A world 
 with too little food and too much spleen simply had to 
 
298 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 fight. If religious differences had not been at hand, 
 other excuses would have been found for warring. And 
 because those other excuses would have been deeper. 
 rooted and more primitive, they would no doubt have 
 brought on infinitely more dreadful desolations. Wars 
 for Christ, after all, could never be fought with a blood- 
 lust utterly free and untrammeled. Their virulence was 
 always partially sapped by the innate irony of their pre- 
 tensions. ‘The insistent pacifism of him in whose name 
 those wars were fought could not but have had some 
 tempering influence. None can doubt that the adoration 
 of a Prince of Peace, the worship of a Good Shepherd, 
 even though drugged almost dead with ritual, must have 
 had a profound effect on the people. None can doubt 
 that the veneration of a gentle, loving, helpless youth as 
 the very incarnation of perfection must have been as 
 ice to the hot blood of the race. . 
 
 One must remember that Christianity came into a 
 world that was sinking—sinking momentarily into an 
 abyss of savagery. And it was almost the only force 
 that sought to stay that debacle. It alone sought to 
 keep civilization going. It failed. It could not keep 
 from failing. But be it said to its glory that at least 
 iho tried sas were 
 
 8 
 
 HOWEVER, the glory of trying to save the world from 
 bestiality belongs primarily to but one element alone 
 in Christianity: the original Nazarene element. And 
 that element, one must remember, was never dominant 
 in the faith save during those years before it was really 
 Christian. Once Paul came on the scene, the light of 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 299 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the religion of Jesus began to fade, and the glare of the 
 religion about Christ blazed over all. Yet though the 
 light from Galilee faded, though for a while it died 
 down into no more than a mere lingering spark, it never 
 Was quite snuffed out. For long centuries it smouldered 
 there, barely living, barely keeping aglow. The com- 
 promising, theologizing, church-organizing religion 
 about Christ blazed away unchallenged. In the West 
 it gave rise to the Holy Roman Empire, that pathetic 
 travesty which was never holy or Roman or imperial. 
 In the East it created a farrago of sects arising from 
 fatuous differences as to the metaphysical nature of 
 Christ. . . . And then slowly that forgotten spark 
 began to brighten once more. A devastating incursion 
 of Huns and Saracens blew the spark to a flame. As 
 never before in full six hundred years, the Christians 
 began to think again of their suffering Savior. And like 
 a mad fire the hope spread over Europe that the year 
 1000 would see the return of the Redeemer. 
 
 The year 1000 passed and no Redeemer came—but 
 Europe was a little redeemed nevertheless. Its spirit was 
 sobered and its life deepened. “The hunger for salvation 
 became too strong and acute to be allayed with mere 
 ritual any longer. Men turned from what the Church of 
 Christ insisted on offering them, and instead began to 
 grope after the gospel of Jesus for themselves. “They 
 took to reading the Scriptures in their original tongues, 
 and reading them they began to see at last how far the 
 Church had wandered from the pristine truth. They 
 discovered at last how shamelessly the priests had sub- 
 stituted rite for right, how flagrantly they had ritualized 
 all morality. Heretical sects arose everywhere, and the 
 

 
 300 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 clerical authorities took alarm. Despotically they issued 
 proclamations prohibiting the laity from even glancing 
 at the Bible, and the priesthood from interpreting it save 
 in accordance with the tradition of the Church. “Then 
 they instituted the Inquisition to see that the prohibition 
 was observed. | 
 
 But the Bible was read nevertheless. Inquisitions and 
 crusades and massacres proved of no avail. ‘The flame 
 of heresy burned on, and not even a sea of blood was 
 enough to quench it. In the fourteenth century, Wy- 
 cliffe did godly mischief in England; in the fifteenth, 
 John Huss carried on in Bohemia; in the sixteenth, 
 Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin led the protestant revolt 
 throughout northern Europe. And thenceforth the 
 Catholic Church ceased to be catholic any more even in 
 the West. Land after land went over to the heretics, 
 and European Christianity was cleft in two. 
 
 But one must not imagine that Protestantism was 
 ever purely Nazarene in spirit—any more than Catholi- 
 cism was ever unrelievedly Pauline. (Bishop Laud in 
 the seventeenth century was a Protestant, while St. 
 Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century was a Catho- 
 lic. . . .) Protestantism includes every type of reli- 
 gious thought and organization from “high church’ 
 Anglicanism to high-principled Quakerism, from ecsta- 
 tic Methodism to relentlessly intellectual Unitarianism. 
 Only slowly, and with many pangs, is even Protes- 
 tantism shaking off the religion about Christ. Only 
 slowly, very slowly, is it beating its way back to the 
 religion of Jesus. . . 
 
 And with that word we must leave the tale of what 
 happened in Europe. The story of Christianity is long 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN EUROPE 301 
 
 and bewildering, for it stretches through twenty cen- 
 turies and is written in a hundred tongues. In part 
 it is a story of almost incredible rapacity and bitterness, 
 of incessant war and intrigue, and low, greedy self- 
 seeking. But in far larger part it is a story of wondrous 
 kindness and saving grace. [hough the Church of 
 Christ may stand guilty of untold and untellable evil, 
 the religion of Jesus, which is the little light glimmering 
 behind that ecclesiastical bushel, has accomplished good 
 sufficient to outweigh that evil tenfold. For it has 
 made life livable for countless millions of harried souls. 
 It has taken rich and poor, learned and ignorant, white, 
 red, yellow, and black—it has taken them all and tried 
 to show them a way to salvation. To all in pain it 
 has held out a balm; to all in distress it has offered peace. 
 To every man without distinction it has said: Jesus 
 died for you! ‘To every human creature on earth it has 
 said: You too can be saved! And therein lies Chris- 
 tianity’s highest virtue. It has helped make the weak 
 strong and the dejected happy. It has stilled the fear 
 that howls in man’s breast, and crushed the unrest that 
 gnaws at his soul. In a word, it has worked—in a 
 measure. . . 
 
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BOOK EIGHT 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARRABIA 
 I. MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 1: The idolatrous religion of primitive Arabia—Mecca and the 
 Kaaba. 2: The story of Mohammed—his gospel. 3: The 
 preaching of the gospel to the Meccans. 4: The preaching to 
 the pilgrims. 5. The flight to Medina. 6: The Jews retuse to 
 be converted—conflict with Mecca. 7: The militarv character 
 of Islam—the Holy War. 8: The character of Mohammed— 
 his compromises—the pagan elements in Islam. 9: The quali- 
 ties in the religion. 
 
BOOK EIGHT 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 
 I. MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 Wsg)ND now we are come to the 
 === founding of the latest—perhaps 
 the last—of the great world re- 
 | ligions: Islam. For the third 
 4 time the Arabian Desert plays 
 a major part in the history of 
 our believing world. In that 
 region's giant womb there had 
 already been conceived the Ba- 
 bylonian worship of Ishtar and 
 . the Hebrew worship of Yahveh. 
 Now, more than two rien years after the birth of 
 that second child, the desert conceived and brought forth 
 yet a third: the Mohammedan worship of Allah. 
 
 The religion of the Arabian Desert in the sixth century 
 A. D. was much what it had been a thousand or even two 
 thousand years earlier. Changes come rarely in the 
 desert, for rarely are its denizens able to remain in any 
 one place long enough to advance or even decay. There- 
 fore, long centuries after the East had gone Buddhist 
 and the West had gone Christian, Arabia, that vast 
 wasteland pinched between East and West, still remained 
 crudely animist. Each bedouin tribe worshipped its own 
 tribal fetishes, rocks and trees and stars; and the only ap- 
 proximation to a national cult among them was a gen- 
 305 
 
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 306 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 eral awe of a particular fetish resting in the city of Mecca. 
 This fetish, a black rock enshrined in a small square 
 temple called the Kaaba, was thought to be possessed 
 of dreadful potency. An energetic priesthood arose in 
 Mecca, and perhaps it was largely responsible for the 
 national reputation enjoyed by that fetish. Perhaps, 
 too, that priesthood was largely responsible for the na- 
 tional custom of making pilgrimages to Mecca. From 
 every end of the desert the tribesmen were wont to 
 straggle down to Mecca during one season of the year, 
 in order to prostrate themselves before the Kaaba. And 
 just as the merchants of a modern city arrange for mini- 
 mum exactions by the railway men for all those coming 
 to a convention in their midst, so the priests of ancient 
 Mecca arranged for minimum hazards from highway- 
 men for all those on pilgrimage to the Kaaba. Some- 
 how they forced the whole land to recognize and respect 
 a solemn taboo against waylaying pilgrims. During 
 four months in the year the open desert, where every 
 shepherd clan was also a robber band, became as safe 
 as a walled city to all who were on their way to Mecca. 
 And as a result, Mecca became not merely the religious 
 center, but also the great market-place of Arabia. In 
 a land where wealth was almost nonexistent, and 
 authority seemed scattered beyond hope of concentration, 
 Mecca somehow managed to become rich and unchal- 
 lengeably powerful. 
 
 2 
 
 NOW in about the year 570 A.D. there was born in 
 this city a child to whom was given the name Ubu'I- 
 Kassim. In later years he came to be called Mohammed, 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 307 
 
 the “‘Praised One,”’ just as Gautama came to be called 
 Buddha, the “Enlightened One,’”’ and Jesus came to be 
 called Christ, the ““Anointed One.”’ But to Ubu'- 
 Kassim in his early years was accorded very little praise. 
 Although he was of the priestly caste, he belonged—like 
 Jeremiah in Israel, and perhaps Zoroaster in Iran—to a 
 branch of the caste that had been crowded and elbowed 
 out of power. (Cynical historians find in that cir- 
 cumstance the major reason why Jeremiah and Zoro- 
 aster and Mohammed ever attacked the ruling priest- 
 hoods in their lands.) The lad was orphaned while 
 still young, and because his immediate relatives were for 
 the most part poor, he soon had to shift for himself. He 
 became a camel-driver, and went off with trading cara- 
 vans as far as Syria and perhaps even to Egypt. He was 
 grossly untutored, of course, and probably could neither 
 read nor write. But he was quick-witted and had an 
 insatiably inquisitive mind. Unlike the ofher Arab 
 camel-boys, his eyes were wide open to the wonders of 
 the strange lands he visited, and his ears were pricked 
 up to catch all that was being said in the foreign market- 
 places. Especially was he inquisitive on the subject of 
 the religions in those far away places, for he seems to 
 have been innately of a religious temperament. We are 
 told he was given to spells of melancholy and to occa- 
 sional fits of what may have been epilepsy. (So many 
 of the greatest religious leaders in history are said to 
 have been epileptics or otherwise neurotic, that psycholo- 
 gists are inclined to believe religious genius is somehow 
 a result of a disease of the mind. But that is no reflec- 
 tion on religion, for every other form of genius seems 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 308 THIS BELIEVING WORLD _ 
 
 
 
 MOHAMMED WAS A LOWLY CAMEL BOY 
 
 also a product of a disease of the mind—as the pearl is 
 a product of a disease in the oyster. . . .) 
 
 We have no undisputable data concerning the early 
 life of Mohammed. All we know with any certainty is 
 that, after years of travel with the caravans, he managed 
 to better his lot by finding favor in the eyes of his em- 
 ployer. She was a rich widow named Khadija, and 
 the good-looking young man with the large head and 
 beautiful black beard so attracted her that finally she 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 309 
 
 decided to marry him. She was already forty, and he 
 only twenty-five; but he appears to have acquiesced with 
 alacrity. Khadija was a woman of high character and 
 understanding, and quite probably Mohammed loved 
 her. (He remained true to her until the day of her 
 death.) And certainly he must have been grateful to 
 her, for in a day she lifted him from the low station of 
 
 a camel-boy to high place as a rich and Saparat ?. 
 
 Meccan trader. 
 
 Relieved of the necessity of earning his livelihood, 
 Mohammed now began to indulge his contemplative 
 nature. We are told that he went off into the desert 
 again and again to commune there with his soul. The 
 humdrum life of a rich fruit-and-produce merchant 
 did not satisfy him. It was comfortable and yet not 
 comforting; it could keep him occupied, but not satisfied. 
 Like every other great soul, he was not content with the 
 knowledge merely of how to keep alive: he wanted to 
 know why. And seeking that higher knowledge, grop- 
 ing in a great fury and pain for that ultimate blessedness 
 which is called salvation, he finally fought his way 
 
 through to the idea of Islam. It came to him with over-\ 
 whelming conviction that there could be but one way | 
 
 out of the confusion which was life: through submission 
 to God. Not to any little venomous god pent up in a 
 rock or a tree; not to any one of those low djinns or 
 spirits which his fear-harried brethren tried to bribe with 
 blood and frenzied praise. No, to the One Great God 
 who must be in and over all the earth! 
 
 The patron deity of his own particular tribe was 
 known as Allah, and, for want of a better name, Mo- 
 hammed instinctively gave that one to his new God of 
 

 
 310 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 the Universe. But he was not blind to the fact that 
 other peoples knew Him by other names. He realized 
 that this Allah whom he had just come to know had 
 been known to the rest of the world for centuries. Great 
 prophets as ancient as Abraham and as recent as Jesus 
 had proclaimed this God to the peoples beyond the 
 desert. Indeed, every great city had had its prophet of 
 this One God—every great city save Mecca. Mecca alone 
 was still foul with idol-worship; Mecca alone knew not 
 the One Allah. And as Mohammed wandered there in 
 the loneliness of the desert, brooding over that evil, it 
 seemed to him that at last it must come even Mecca's 
 turn to be saved. Even more: the conviction took hold 
 of him that he must be its savior. He, Ubu’l-Kassim 
 of the tribe of Koreish, he who had risen from squalor 
 to be spouse of the wealthiest woman in Mecca, he must 
 be Allah’s Apostle to Mecca. Many prophets had come 
 before him, and right nobly had they sought to bring 
 a measure of the knowledge of Allah to the world. But 
 only with him could there come to mankind the final 
 knowledge of the One God. For he, Ubu’l-Kassim, 
 was none other than the “‘seal of the prophets!”’ 
 
 Such was the conviction that somehow began to take 
 hold of that queer and moody fruit-and-produce mer- 
 chant of Mecca. When he came to tell of it in later 
 years, he declared the conviction had come to him in 
 a sudden revelation. He insisted that it had come to 
 him miraculously in a vision. Perhaps that was true. 
 Being one of that strange band of great religionists— 
 the band that includes Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, and 
 almost every other great prophet of history—-he was 
 subject to those psychic storms that do yield ‘‘visions.” 
 
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 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 
 
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 But one cannot doubt that the sudden revelation came to 
 
 him, as it did to every one of the others, only after a 
 
 long evolution of inward disturbance and uncertainty. 
 
 One can see quite clearly in Mohammed’s conviction the 
 

 
 abe THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 result of much pondering on the religious notions of the 
 Jews and Christians and Zoroastrians he had met in the 
 market-places of Syria. In the hidden recesses of Mo- 
 hammed’s being, the idea of Allah, the One God, must 
 have been welling up for years before at last it flooded 
 over the threshold and so imperiously revealed itself to 
 his conscious mind. 
 
 b 
 
 BUT from that day forth, Ubu’l-Kassim, the indolent, 
 dreamy husband of the rich Khadija, showed himself to 
 all the world a changed man. No longer did he seem 
 melancholy and lost. He had found himself. He had 
 a purpose now: to win idolatrous Mecca to the worship 
 of the Omnipotent Allah. 
 
 But he was no reckless fool. He realized that to an- 
 nounce himself at once to the whole city as its savior 
 would bring him only jeers or worse. So he confided 
 his secret first to his wife, and she, perhaps to his amaze- 
 ment, neither laughed nor scolded. On the contrary, she 
 firmly believed him when he said he had been visited 
 by Allah in a splendid vision and had been appointed 
 the Prophet of Mecca. And fortified by her confidence, 
 he then whispered his tale to others. He still acted dis- 
 creetly, however, and approached only his closest friends 
 and relatives. And somehow they, too, were impressed. 
 They accepted his amazing tale as true, and secretly con- 
 vinced others of it, who in turn convinced still others. 
 And thus the movement began to spread throughout the 
 town. Everything was done with the greatest secrecy, 
 for it was realized that if the rulers of the city discovered 
 what was on foot, little mercy would be shown to 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 53). 
 
 Mohammed. He would be regarded as the ringleader in 
 a political conspiracy, as one who sought to overthrow 
 the priests of the Kaaba and rule in their stead; and he 
 would be treated accordingly. So the process of winning 
 converts had at first to be carried on with the sharpest 
 caution. 
 
 But a day came at last when Mohammed's following 
 seemed strong enough for him to dare take his life in 
 his hands and announce himself. Immediately there 
 ensued a tumult in the city, and a great fury of debating 
 and strife. [he ruling oligarchy was thrown almost 
 into a panic, for when at last Mohammed announced 
 himself as the prophet, his following was already too 
 large to be crushed out summarily. Diplomatic over- 
 tures were made to the pretender (for so he was consid- 
 ered by the rulers) ; but he refused to bargain. And then 
 less conciliatory means were resorted to. 
 
 Unhappily for the rulers, they could not resort to the 
 assassination of Mohammed as a means of putting a 
 swift end to the insurrection. Mecca was a holy city, 
 and there was a dread taboo against the shedding of any 
 blood within its precincts. The person of Mohammed 
 could therefore not be touched, and the only possible 
 way left of stamping out his rebel movement seemed 
 to be by a systematic boycott of his followers. This 
 was soon begun, and it brought bitter suffering to the 
 poorer of Mohammed's supporteis. But it utterly failed 
 to check the movement. It only aroused an enthusiasm 
 and a fervor in those devotees of Mohammed that seemed 
 able to withstand any privations, Finally, therefore, 
 the frustrated rulers were driven to a declaration of 
 open war. [hey drove Mohammed and his abettors 
 
Bib4 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 into one quarter of the city and blockaded them there. 
 (The taboo against shedding blood did not prohibit the 
 slaughter of people by starvation.) For months the 
 Mohammedans were held prisoners in their houses, until 
 finally, starved to despair, they surrendered. Moham- 
 med, who throughout the siege had been having new 
 revelations from Allah, now suddenly announced that 
 the One God had assured him it was no sin to worship 
 the Meccan djinns and spirits. And with that capitula- 
 tion to the idolatry fostered by the priestly oligarchy, 
 the blockade was raised and the erstwhile rebels were 
 allowed to go free. 
 
 But almost immediately Mohammed repented. Re- 
 morse overcame him at his cowardly defection, and he 
 cried out that he had sinned. He declared a new revela- 
 tion had come to him and made it plain that the previous 
 one had been a whisper from the devil. (Mohammed 
 had taken over as part of his religion the Persian belief 
 in a wicked Ahriman.) ‘There was, after all, to be no 
 worship of the Meccan goddesses and spirits, for Allah 
 forbade it. In the camp of His true followers there was 
 room for the worship only of Allah! ... 
 
 And then persecution began anew. 
 
 4 
 
 BUT this time Mohammed did not remain in the city 
 and try to hold out against his enemies. He knew he 
 was not equal to it. His first and dearest believer, his 
 wife Khadija, had just died; and he was left a dejected 
 and broken man. He could not possibly continue facing 
 the unrelenting persecution by his enemies—so he fled. 
 He stole off to the neighboring oasis of Taif, and tried 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 315 
 
 to gather new converts there. But he failed dismally, 
 and finally he was reduced to entering a plea for permis- 
 sion to come back to Mecca. ‘The rulers were willing to 
 grant it, but on condition that Mohammed altogether 
 refrain from ever again stirring up dissension among 
 the Meccans. And only on his acceptance of that hu- 
 miliating condition was the hapless prophet allowed tc 
 drag his way back to Mecca. 
 
 But though fallen so low, the prophet soon began 
 to try to rise again. Almost from the moment he re- 
 turned, Mohammed began once more to preach his 
 iconoclastic doctrine. He was careful, however, to keep 
 the letter of the agreement which bound him scrupu- 
 lously to avoid preaching to the Meccans themselves. 
 Only the strangers in the city, the traders and pilgrims 
 and bedouins encamped for the night, did Mohammed 
 approach with his gospel. And not infrequently these 
 strangers would hearken to him eagerly, for many were 
 the Arabs who were ready for his ideas. For centuries 
 there had been many tribes of Jews living in the desert. 
 For centuries, too, there had been strings of Christian 
 traders wandering along all the caravan routes. And 
 from these Jews and Christians the whole land of Arabia 
 had heard tell of the One God. So when Mohammed 
 sat there cross-legged in the bazaars of Mecca, and 
 held forth to the strangers gathered in a silent circle 
 about him, he uttered religious sentiments for which 
 they were already well prepared. 
 
 One pictures him there, that good-looking Arab 
 prophet, amid all the traffic and din and stench of that 
 Oriental market-place, seated in the half-light of a 
 shadowed court and talking, talking, talking of his 
 
 a 
 
316 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Allah. He talked well; his speech was rich with that 
 glowing imagery so dear to the heart of the Oriental. 
 He told many tales which he said had been revealed to 
 him by Allah, but which actually were only garbled ver- 
 sions of the Biblical stories he had heard from the lips 
 of Jews and Christians in his youth. He told of Ibra- 
 him, the first of the prophets, and of Ishmael his son, the 
 founder of Mecca. He discoursed also on Suleiman, the 
 
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 MOHAMMED SAT IN THE BAZAARS AND PREACHED 
 
 great king, and on Jesus, who had been born in a 
 manger. And the eyes of his auditors twinkled with 
 delight in the dimness of the courtyard. ... Or he 
 told of the paradise which all true believers would in- 
 herit, and the eyes of the listeners gleamed with eager- 
 ness; or of the devil’s hell, and their eyes fairly popped 
 Wit etoh tii, ene 
 
 ~ At death, said this prophet, the soul of the believer 
 
a se nn A TTT rey 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 317 
 
 was lifted gently out of the body, and was convoyed up 
 above by ‘“‘a driver and a witness.”” “To it was shown a 
 ledger of reckoning wherein two angels had set down all 
 its deeds on earth. Even though the fate of each man 
 hung around his neck from the beginning, still was each 
 man’s soul held to a reckoning after death. He who 
 had been pious on earth was translated to a garden of 
 bliss after death; and there, clad in robes of shimmering 
 green silk, he lolled forever on green-cushioned divans, 
 (How like a desert Arab, to paint paradise a place that 
 is green!) Fruit and forgiveness did the pious man en- 
 joy in Paradise, gorging himself on ripe bananas that 
 ne'er caused aching belly, and quaffing whole flagons of 
 wine that ne’er caused aching head. Maidens of sur- 
 passing beauty, large-eyed and well-rounded of hip— 
 but modest withal, and “‘restraining their looks’’— 
 served him there and brought him comfort. And thus 
 did the pious man delight in his reward, living in Para- 
 dise without labor or care, without want or fear of J 
 want, throughout all the endless ages! . . . a 
 
 But he who was a sinner, he who “‘believed not in 
 Ailah nor fed the poor’’—he fared far otherwise. On 
 his death his soul was torn violently from his body. 
 Down into Hell that soul was hurled, there to wear a 
 cloak of fire and drink scalding water and pus. With 
 maces was the sinner beaten in Hell, until he begged 
 piteously for release. But there was no release for him. 
 No mercy could be shown him, nor could his torture 
 cease, until at last the final Judgment Day arrived. But 
 when that day did come, lo, he would be annihilated 
 utterly! Not even his soul would remain existent. And 
 the pious in Paradise would then be brought back to 
 

 
 318 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 earth, and on a paradisiac earth they would revel in 
 bliss forevermore! . . 
 
 Thus would the prophet talk on with solemn mien 
 to those who sat about him. And when one of them, 
 shaking off the spell of the speaker's words, would ask 
 in a scoffing tone: ‘Huh! Shall I, though reduced to 
 dry bones, become alive ‘again?’’—then would the 
 prophet give answer with a grim smile: “If thou dost 
 doubt it, wait till the Judgment Day comes, and then 
 thou wilt find out!”’ 
 
 So would Mohammed labor with the strangers from 
 far away places. And when those strangers went back 
 to their homes, glowing reports of the strange prophet 
 would go back with them. ‘The fame of Ubu’l-Kassim 
 spread. “Throughout the length and breadth of the des- 
 ert, people began to talk wonderingly of the Prophet 
 of Allah who dwelt in Mecca. 
 
 5 
 
 NOW on the main caravan route north from Mecca 
 there was a settlement called Yathrib which from of old 
 had been a rival of the capital. And the elders of 
 Yathrib, hearing of Mohammed and of his persecution 
 at the hands of the elders of Mecca, sent secret emissaries 
 to him, entreating him to take refuge in their midst. 
 They even offered to make him the ruling sheikh of 
 their city if he would come. And Mohammed did not 
 reject their overtures. Perhaps he had begun to despair 
 of ever attaining his end by “‘boring from within’”’ the 
 city of Mecca. He may have begun to wonder whether 
 he could not accomplish more by “kicking from with- 
 out.”” So he sent his own emissaries back to Yathrib 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA Spf 
 
 with word that he would come—on condition, however, 
 that the men of Yathrib were willing to join him in a 
 holy war to make Allah the god of all Arabia. 
 
 But before the negotiations could be finally concluded, 
 a rumor of what was on foot reached the ears of the 
 rulers of Mecca. ‘They saw immediately that it would 
 not do to temporize any longer. Mohammed was too 
 dangerous a man to allow around, and, taboo or no 
 taboo, he had to be destroyed. But, in orde: to dis- 
 tribute the guilt, the ruling clans agreed to share equally 
 in the crime. Each appointed one of its members to 
 serve On an assassination committee, and on the night of 
 the sixteenth of July, in the year 622, the committee 
 broke into Mohammed's sleeping chamber to strike him 
 dead. But when they rushed at the couch, behold, 
 Mohammed was not there! His cousin Ali was lying 
 in his place, and the prophet was nowhere in sight. 
 Apprised of the plot, he had already escaped from the 
 city long hours before the assassins set out for his house. 
 And although the Meccans sent their fleetest camel-men 
 to pursue after him on the road to Yathrib, they could 
 not overtake him. Mohammed had guessed they would 
 pursue him on the road north, and had gone south in- 
 stead. With only Abu Bekr, his most trusted disciple, 
 he stole away and hid in a cave far south in the desert. 
 And there he lurked in trepidation many days. Abu 
 Bekr was frankly terrified. ‘‘Behold, we are but two 
 against a whole multitude,’’ he complained. But 
 straightway Mahomet answered, ‘‘Nay, not two, but 
 three—for Allah is with us!”’ 
 
 But for all that he was so sure that Allah was with 
 him, Mohammed took no chances. Only after weeks 
 
320 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 of hiding did he and his friend venture out into the open 
 and begin to make their way north. For weeks they 
 crawled furtively through the desert, until finally on 
 Friday, the twentieth of September, they reached their 
 goal. At last they were safe in Yathrib. 
 
 6 
 
 WITH that flight, the hejira as it is called in Arabic, 
 the Mohammedan era begins. (To this day the Mos- 
 lems date all records from the time of that Hejira, as 
 all Christians date them from the supposed time of the 
 birth of Jesus—and all chroniclers of the village of 
 Hamlin date them from the supposed time of the com- 
 ing of the Pied Piper.) Once in Yathrib, the prophet 
 immediately set out to convert all who were in sight; 
 and to a degree he was successful. But there was one 
 element in the population that stubbornly refused to 
 be won over. ‘There were in Yathrib several tribes of 
 Jews that had lived in that region almost from the time 
 when the Romans drove them out of their own home in 
 Judea. They were by now hard to distinguish from the 
 Arab tribes, differing from them, indeed, only in re- 
 ligion. Despite more than five centuries of life in pagan 
 Arabia, these Jews still worshipped their One God and 
 prayed for their Messiah to come. When rumor first 
 reached them of a prophet who was being hounded out 
 of Mecca for preaching the idea of a One God, they of 
 course were interested. In a moment of wild hopeful- 
 ness they even wondered if that prophet might not 
 really be their long-awaited Messiah. And when Mo- 
 hammed arrived in Yathrib he made every effort to en- 
 courage that impression. Revelations of a pro-Jewish 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA BZA 
 
 nature now came to him thick and fast. He commanded 
 his followers to turn as did the Jews toward Jerusalem 
 when they prayed. He forbade them to eat pork or the 
 meat of any animal that had not been ritually slaugh- 
 tered; and he appointed the Jewish Day of Atonement 
 the great holy day of the year. He even changed the 
 name of his One God from Allah to Rachman—the 
 “Merciful.”’ Out of all his following he chose a Jew 
 to be his scribe to set down his revelations in the book 
 that later came to be called the Koran. . . . But despite 
 all these concessions, the Jews as a body refused to come 
 over into his camp. [he moment they discovered his 
 ignorance of the Holy Law and the Prophets, and his 
 by now notorious weakness for women, they began to 
 scoff at his pretensions, “Their poets wrote satirical bal- 
 lads against him, and their elders refused to take him 
 seriously. 
 
 And thereupon Mohammed made a complete about- 
 face. Realizing with chagrin that there was nothing to 
 be hoped for from the Jews, he brought all his proselyt- 
 ing energies once more to bear on his own people. Fresh 
 revelations now came to him reversing the earlier ones, 
 and declaring that the true direction of the worshipper 
 in prayer was toward Mecca, not Jerusalem, and that — 
 the great annual holy season was the old Arab Festival 
 of Ramadhan, not the Jewish Day of Atonement. And 
 with such concessions to the ancient paganism, the win- 
 ning of converts from among the Arabs in and around 
 Yathrib increased rapidly. 
 
 But material problems began to trouble the prophet. 
 His property in Mecca had been confiscated after his 
 flight, and what wealth he had brought with him had 
 

 
 322 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 _dwindled away in Yathrib because of bad investments. 
 To add to his difficulties, scores of believers who had 
 fled after him from Mecca were now wandering about 
 in Yathrib without employment. It was clear, there- 
 fore, that some means of providing for himself and his 
 followers had to be found, and found immediately. So 
 Mohammed gathered his followers together and sent 
 them out to waylay caravans from Mecca. For almost 
 a year he sent them out on such expeditions, until finally 
 he saw that even highway robbery, when practiced ac- 
 cording to the rules, was unprofitable. He was then 
 forced, therefore, to practice the profession with no 
 respect for the rules. “The Meccan caravans were too 
 well armed during most of the year to be held up suc- 
 cessfully. Only during the pilgrim season, when they 
 were protected by that ancient inviolate taboo, did the 
 caravans dare to sally forth unarmed. So now, in des- 
 peration, Mohammed actually decided to stage attacks 
 on them during that season. 
 
 Such tactics amounted to an almost unprecedented 
 outrage, and only by a stratagem could the prophet man- 
 age to inveigle his followers into committing the first 
 treacherous holdup. But once the deed was done, and 
 the reward seemed to be not death but enormous booty, 
 his followers—and most of the other Yathribites too— 
 were quite willing to repeat the outrage. The Meccans 
 leapt to arms immediately, however, for they realized 
 that this thing put into jeopardy their whole future as 
 the masters of Arabia’s commerce. ‘They sent out a 
 whole army, and fierce battle was joined with the 
 Yathribites. Mohammed did not fight in person in the 
 battle. He seems to have been physically a rather weak 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 325 
 
 man; even the sight of blood made him sick. “Tradition 
 declares that he hid afar off, and kept his swiftest camels 
 in readiness lest his men be defeated and flight become 
 necessary. Even then he fainted soon after the battle 
 began. . . . But when the battle was over, and the 
 Yathribites emerged the victors, Mohammed came riding 
 back into the city like a conquering hero. Substantially 
 he was indeed the hero, for it was because of his astute- 
 ness as a tactician in planning the battle that his 
 army won. 
 
 Mohammed was now the unchallenged master of the 
 town, and its name was changed appropriately enough 
 from Yathrib to Medina, ““The City (of the Prophet) .”’ 
 He no longer troubled to try to win the unconverted by 
 suasion. Instead he ruthlessly put them to the sword. 
 Gone was the gentleness that had marked his preaching 
 in the former days. Gone was his old confidence in 
 the power of abstract truth. In Mecca he had declared, 
 “We hurl the truth against the falsehood, and truth 
 crashes into it so that falsehood vanishes.’’ But now he 
 hurled armies instead. “When ye meet those who mis- 
 believe,’ he now declared, ‘“‘strike off their heads or / 
 hold them for ransom!” . . / 
 
 7 
 
 THE war with Mecca continued to rage, but in the 
 end the Meccans were compelled to cry quits. Moham- 
 med obtained consent to return as the virtual dictator 
 of the city where but a few years earlier he had been 
 a hunted criminal. And then he entered on a great 
 holy war to win all Arabia to his cause. Armies were 
 
24 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 
 
 MOHAMMED RETURNS TO MECCA 
 
 sent north and others south to convert or slay in the 
 name of Allah. And because the Byzantines and the 
 Persians owned vast tracts of the desert in the north, 
 Mohammed finally felt compelled to pit himself against 
 them too. Nor did his ventures turn out unsuccessful 
 even against such hosts. Somehow he could whip his 
 followers into a frenzy of courage and recklessness. The 
 Arabs had always loved violence, and he made violence 
 holy for them. Mohammed assured them that to die 
 fighting for Allah meant certain and immediate transla- 
 tion to Allah’s Paradise. “There was but one way to 
 prove complete faithfulness, he declared, and that was 
 by complete resignation to the will of Allah. Islam, 
 which may be translated ‘“‘submission,’’ he made the 
 watchword and the name of his faith. 
 
 Mohammed’s whole movement thus took on _ the 
 character of a religious militarism. Islam was the army 
 

 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 325 
 
 of Allah, and prayer was made a discipline quite like 
 drill-duty in a modern army. ‘To this day a bystander 
 thinks of a sentry sounding the alarm when he hears 
 the muezzin uttering the call to prayer from his lofty 
 minaret. An observer thinks of soldiers ‘‘forming fours’ 
 and ‘‘presenting arms,’ when he sees the Moslems drawn 
 up in ranks in their mosques and praying and prostrating 
 themselves with almost mechanical precision. Actually 
 the Moslems do form a religious army to this day. Mo- 
 hammed welded them into such a body almost twelve 
 hundred years ago. “If you help Allah, lo, Allah will | 
 surely help you!’’ he cried to his followers. And be- 
 cause the help Allah seemed to exact was just the sort 
 the warlike Arabs had ever loved to give, they helped 
 with irrepressible zest. In the name of Allah and His 
 ' Prophet, the army of Islam began to wage a Holy War 
 that almost conquered the world! .. 
 
 Mohammed only lived to see that war begin. In the 
 year 632, just ten years after the Hejira, the prophet 
 died. But he had lived long enough to set a movement 
 on foot that has not halted to this day. Within twenty- 
 five years after his death, his followers had already be- 
 come masters not alone of Arabia, but also of Egypt, 
 Palestine, Syria, Babylonia, and Persia. Within sev- 
 enty-five years they had conquered all the northern 
 coast of Africa and almost all of Spain. Another 
 decade, and they were marching up into the interior of 
 France. And today, twelve hundred years afterward, 
 Islam, the religion founded by that amazing fruit-and- — 
 produce merchant who saw visions in Mecca, stands next 
 to Christianity as the most flourishing religion in the 
 world. In twenty years, and without royal patronage, 
 

 
 326 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 there was created in the heart of darkest Arabia a religion 
 which today numbers well over two hundred million 
 adherents! 5., 
 
 8 
 
 TO follow the Arabs on their great invasions and 
 trace the tremendous influence exerted by them in Eu- 
 rope, Asia, and Africa, would lead us far from the main 
 purpose of this book. Europe owed to those invasions 
 its awakening from that stupor which was the Dark 
 Ages; and even Persia and India, along with Africa, 
 were vitalized and advanced by them, too. It was 
 the last (or was it only the latest?) plunge of the desert- 
 folk out into the Fertile Crescent; and though it 
 drowned the Crescent and half the rest of the world in 
 blood, it also brought forth a blossoming of civilization 
 almost unprecedented in history. 
 
 Islam, one must remember, is a great and wondrous 
 religion. Even in Mohammed's day it was, relatively 
 at least, a high and noble faith. Few non-Moslems seem 
 to realize this. “They remember only the petty vices and 
 crimes of the prophet of Mecca, and forget entirely his 
 indubitable religious genius. “They remember only the 
 flagrant compromises, the arrant opportunism, the al- 
 most blatant charlatanry, that marked his career after 
 the Hejira. And, especially if they are Christians, they 
 love to mull over reports of the inordinate interest Mo- 
 hammed evinced in women in his later years. Chris- 
 tianity has always looked on sex as in some way indecent 
 and sinful; and for that reason most Christians cannot 
 possibly associate a truly religious nature with an un- 
 suppressed libido. But that is no more than a prejudice. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA GMAT 
 
 Mohammed, despite his fondness for his harem, might 
 have remained to his dying day a man of the noblest 
 prophetic character. 
 
 He did not remain that, of course. It cannot be gain- 
 said that, after the Hejira and his first taste of triumph, 
 the exalted prophet in Mohammed gave way to the 
 greedy, ambitious, unscrupulous priest. “The “‘organ- 
 izer’ in him triumphed. From then on he was no 
 longer the daring iconoclast, the receiver of ‘‘revelations’’ 
 which, even if not miraculously inspired, seemed at least 
 spontaneous and sincere. After the Hejira the ‘‘reve- 
 lations’ are quite blatantly premeditated forgeries. 
 They are long editorials circulated in the name of Allah 
 to save the seamy face of the prophet. In the days 
 when Mohammed was suffered to talk only to strangers 
 as he wandered about in the bazaars of Mecca his doc- 
 trine had been superbly ethical in character. ‘“‘Blessed 
 are they,” he then declared, ‘‘who are blameless as re- 
 spects women, who are charitable, who talk not vainly, 
 who are humble, who observe their pledges and cove- 
 nants, and who guard their prayers; for they shall in- 
 herit Paradise.’”’ “The liquor of triumph had not yet 
 gone to his head; it had not yet even touched his lips. 
 And he had been still a kindly, earnest teacher of love. 
 ‘Paradise,’ he had then declared, “‘is prepared for those 
 who expend in alms, who repress their rage, and pardon 
 men. For Allah loves the kind.’’ ‘To endure and 
 to pardon is the wisdom of life.’’ Or again: ‘Let no 
 man treat his neighbor as he himself would dislike to be 
 treated.”” Or still again: ‘‘Let us be like trees that 
 yield their fruit to those who throw stones at them.”’ 
 
 Nor was there aught of the ritualist in Mohammed 
 
328 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 then. When a man came and said to the prophet: 
 “Behold, my mother has died; what shall I do for the 
 good of her soul?’’—-Mohammed answered: “Dig a 
 well, that the thirsty may have water to drink! . 
 The exigencies of empire-building had not yet arisen to 
 demand a vast army bound by a rigid discipline of 
 prayer and alms-giving. ‘“‘One hour of justice,’’ he had 
 then said, “‘is worth more than seventy years of prayer.” 
 -And: “Every good act is charity: bringing water to 
 the thirsty, removing stones and thorns from the road, 
 even smiling in thy brother’s face.” 
 
 Nor, finally, had there been anything of the doc- 
 trinaire in him then. When confronted by those who 
 told him to his face that they did not believe his words, 
 his only response had been the challenge: ‘‘Bring ye 
 then a better revelation, and I shall follow it.” 
 
 But once success began to come to him, the worst in 
 his nature revealed itself. His personal life became sor- 
 did, and his spiritual integrity was sapped. His craving 
 for increase of dominion led him to reduce his standards 
 until the mere recital of a formula—La illah il’allah, 
 Muhammad rasoul allahi, ‘“There is no God but Allah, 
 and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah’’— that and the 
 paying of a tax, were enough to make one a convert. 
 Later even the formula was overlooked, and only the 
 tax was insisted upon. On occasion Mohammed even 
 resorted to buying converts! 
 
 As a result, the very paganism which Islam hae set 
 out to destroy began to destroy Islam. The idolatrous 
 practice of the hayjj, the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, was 
 made one of the dominant elements in the religion. To 
 this day it is counted of major importance. Even now 
 
eer ee ar aN 
 Ze aed 
 
 é ae } , A 
 
 ee 
 
 v7 
 bask 
 
 ON THE WAY TO MECCA 
 
 an OCI a ree OT * 
 — ‘ 
 
 pene 
 
 >. 5 5 QO, 
 e bap oo. are: MEAS i fet Rea 
 tN : . aT Ar aa ¥ 
 . Fe eily , og «: : 
 . in aa ee TT : 3 
 : . ~<a < 
 t wey 
 as x no a r 
 Nwet . if i <a 
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 ~~, 
 
 _ 
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 i aah 5 : dy 
 5 oo ya WA a aN 
 acren See a 
 
 
 
 329 
 
330 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 the Moslem pilgrims from every end of the earth can 
 be seen dragging their way on foot or by camel to 
 Mecca. Two hundred thousand of them brave the 
 dangers of the desert each year in order to come to the 
 holy city. At five miles distance from it they halt, wash, 
 pray, put on clean seamless gowns, and then proceed 
 bare-headed and barefoot to the holy shrine. They 
 reverently kiss the black stone, solemnly go around the 
 Kaaba three times running and four times walking, run 
 to a neighboring holy hill seven times, run to a second 
 holy hill, and then stop to catch their breath while they 
 listen toa sermon. Finally they spend the night on the 
 holy Mount Muzdalifa nearby, and after throwing 
 missiles at three unholy rocks in the valley below, they 
 go back to their homes in far Tunis or Bombay or per- 
 haps Samarkand, and are at peace. ‘They have per- 
 formed the hayj, the pilgrimage, the holy act that earns 
 them the right to wear verdant sashes around their 
 fezzes, in token of the verdant Paradise they will surely 
 inherit when they die... . 
 
 But the old idolatry against which Mohammed in- 
 veighed in his early ministry has returned in more than 
 the hajj. Just as Mohammed himself accepted the 
 Kaaba, so his followers accepted the lesser idolatrous 
 shrines scattered throughout the desert. Of course the 
 surrender was not made openly. Exactly as in Catholic 
 Christendom, the local djinns and goddesses were made 
 over into Mohammedan saints. ‘To this day throughout 
 the Moslem lands those little shrines can be seen nestling 
 amid the hills or in the oases. Nominally they are 
 memorials to old holy men; but actually they are often 
 memorials to far older djinns. 
 

 
 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 531 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE SHRINE OF A DESERT SAINT 
 
 The inundation of Islam by these returning tides of 
 paganism began long before Mohammed died, and the 
 further Islam’s shores extended, the more sweeping be- 
 came that flood. In India the Moslem faith took over 
 many of the characteristics of Hinduism. It became mys- 
 tical and ascetic, inducing thousands of souls to retire 
 and seek communion with Allah in the depths of the 
 Indian jungles. It also took over many of the Hindu 
 superstitions. The rosary, for instance, which was an 
 emblem of the Indian god, Shiva, was made a ceremonial 
 object in Islam. Ninety-nine beads were strung on a, 
 
wb Ws THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 cord, and each bead was made to represent one of the 
 ninety-nine names of Allah. (It was not long before 
 the Moslem theologians had succeeded in inventing 
 ninety-nine names for the Unnamable.) To this day 
 the pious Moslem tells his beads each day, ‘‘keeping his 
 tongue moist’’—and his fingers nimble—in the remem- 
 brance of Allah. | 
 
 Islam, like every other healthy religion, has been in 
 a state of incessant flux. Long centuries ago it grew to 
 be as unlike the simple and homogeneous creed of Mo- 
 hammed as Christianity became unlike the creed of Paul. 
 In many lands it contrived to advance, became richer in 
 emotion, deeper in intelligence, and nobler in spirit. In 
 certain other lands it decayed and degenerated, becom- 
 ing crude and animistic. Like Christianity, Islam was 
 from the first an elastic faith, accommodating itself gen- 
 erously to the culture of each land which it sought to 
 conquer. Necessarily, therefore, it was many times rent 
 by schisms, and today there are some seventy-two sects 
 init. “The largest of the unorthodox groups, the Shiite 
 sect in Persia, broke away in defense of the issue that 
 Mohammed's son-in-law, Ali, was a veritable Imam, or 
 divine incarnation almost like the Prophet himself. Out 
 of the Shiite came in turn the Sufi sect, which main- 
 tained that Ali was only the first of a long line of such 
 Imams, and that even ordinary men could become almost 
 divine by a process of asceticism and mysticism. But 
 most of the other sects are small and obscure, and arose 
 out of piddling metaphysical or political differences. 
 And between many of these sects there has been a rivalry 
 and an animosity almost—but never quite—as bitter as 
 that between the sects in Christianity. 
 
WHAT HAPPENED IN ARABIA 333 
 
 9 
 
 YET, for all the paganism and bigotry that still loom 
 large in the religion of Islam, it remains nevertheless a 
 great and wondrous faith. It has been one of the most 
 effective civilizing forces in the history of Africa and 
 Asia, and in a measure also in that of Europe. In Arabia 
 itself it accomplished a social revolution. It condemned 
 the common practice of infanticide in the case of girls, 
 restricted the dealing in slaves, opposed gambling and 
 drunkenness, and almost put an end to the devastating 
 tribal feuds. And, incredible as it may sound, it also 
 brought about a marked improvement in the condition 
 of the desert women. Limitless polygamy had been the 
 unquestioned law in Arabia from the time the pre- 
 historic and perhaps mythical matriarchate came to an | 
 end. Not until Mohammed came was that practice re- 
 stricted so that a man might have no more than four 
 wives at a time... . 
 
 But these social ameliorations were after all the lesser 
 gifts of Islam. “They were precious to those who\ 
 profited by them, but hardly of any considerable world- 
 significance. “The supreme gift of Islam was the ideal 
 of unity which it somehow drilled into the heads of a 
 hundred races—not merely the unity of God, but even 
 more the unity of mankind. And preaching that ideal, 
 commanding submission to the Oneness of the Universe 
 as the highest of all virtues, it revolutionized life for 
 millions of fearful souls. It robbed them of the terror 
 which aloneness had previously brought to them. It 
 gave them strength and a feeling of security, telling 
 them they were each a part of a vast and invincible 
 
334 THIS BELIEVING WORLD 
 
 Whole. Every true believer was a soldier in an army, 
 an international—and some day, pray Allah, universal 
 —army that could not possibly fail to be victorious in 
 the end. So what was there to fear? Life? It was 
 fixed and settled for the true believer. All he had to 
 do was live according to that manual-at-arms which is 
 the Koran. He had merely, to pray punctiliously, eat 
 ritually, provide alms regularly, and give himself to the 
 spreading of the name of Allah—and his reward was 
 certain. “[he way of life for him was fixed, and its 
 reason and justification, too. He had but to submit 
 and accept his kismet, his fate, lashing his body and soul 
 to that Rock of Ages which is Allah—and Paradise was 
 COrCAt ona eibe 
 
 Every other great religion taught more or less the 
 same doctrine, but none with such fierceness and unre- 
 straint. Islam excluded no man from the army of 
 Allah, magnifying the requirements until they could 
 attract even the most advanced of civilized men, and 
 minifying them so that they could appeal even to the 
 most degraded of savages. And that is why to this day 
 Islam can still win converts with twice the ease of any 
 other religion. “That is why to this day Islam is one of 
 the mightiest institutions on earth for the ordering and 
 beautifying of life in at least the ‘‘backward”’ lands. .. . 
 
 
 
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS 
 
 Encyclopedias and Source-Books 
 Canney, M. A., An Encyclopedia of Religions. lv. (N. Y., 
 1921). 
 
 Hastings, J., editor, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. 
 VZV (Ne Ya LOTS 21902) < 
 
 Miller, Max, editor, Sacred Books of the East. 50 v. 
 (Oxford, 1879-1910). 
 
 Textbooks 
 Barton, G. A., The Religions of the World. (Chicago, 
 1919). 
 
 Hopkins, E. W., The History of Religions. (N. Y., 1918). 
 Hume, R. E., The World’s Living Religions. (N. Y., 1925). 
 Jastrow, Morris, Jr., The Study of Religion. (N. Y., 1901). 
 Jevons, F. B., Comparative Religion. (Cambridge, 1913). 
 
 Martin, A. W., Great Religious Teachers of the East. (N. Y.., 
 1911); The World’s Great Semitic Religions. (N. 
 Naren) ) ; 
 
 Montgomery, J. A., editor, Religions Past and Present. 
 (Phila., 1918). 
 
 Moore, G. F., History of Religions. DAN aI ANG Ns ck oe bode 
 1920) 
 
 PRIMITIVE RELIGION 
 
 Frazer so Phe, Golden* Bough... <b.v,, (CN; Y.; 1922); 
 Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. (N. Y., 1914); Totemism 
 and Exogamy. (London, 1910). 
 
 Jevons, F, B., Introduction of History of Religion, (Lon- 
 don, 1896). 
 
 Keel 
 
336 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Lang, Andrew, The Making of Religion. (N. Y., 1900). 
 Marett, R. R., The Threshold of Religion. (London, 1914). 
 Moore, G. F., Birth and Growth of Religion. (N. Y., 1923). 
 
 THE CELTS 
 
 Anwyl, Edward, Celtic Religion in Prehistoric Times. (Lon- 
 don, 1906). 
 
 MacCulloch, J. A., Religion of the Ancient Celts. (London, 
 NR 
 
 Rhys, J., Celtic Heathendom. (London, 1888). 
 
 THE BABYLONIANS 
 
 Jastrow, Morris, Jr., Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. 
 (N. Y., 1898); Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions. 
 (Nay el GUS )G 
 
 King, L. W., Babylonian Religion and Mythology. (Lon- 
 don, 1899). 
 
 Rogers, R. W., The Religion of the Babylonians and As- 
 syrians. (N. Y., 1908). 
 
 ‘THE EGYPTIANS 
 Breasted, J. H., Development of Religion and Thought in 
 Ancient Egypt. (N. Y., 1905). 
 
 Erman, A., Handbook of Egyptian Religion. (London, 
 1907). 
 
 Mackenzie, D. A., The Myths of Egypt. (London, 1914). 
 
 Petrie, W. M. Flinders, Religion and Conscience in Ancient 
 Egypt. (N. Y., 1898). 
 
 THE GREEKS 
 
 Fairbanks, A., Handbook of Greek Religion. (N. Y., 1910). 
 Farnell, L. R., The Cults of the Greek States. 5 v. (Oxford, 
 1896-1909). 
 
 Harrison, Jane E., Themis, a Study of the Social Origins of 
 Greek Religion. (Cambridge, 1912). 
 

 
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY byl 
 Murray, Gilbert, Four Stages of Greek Religion. (N. Y., 
 1912). 
 
 THE ROMANS 
 
 Carter, Jesse B., The Religious Life of Ancient Rome. 
 (Boston, 1911). 
 
 Cumont, F., The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. 
 (Chicago, 1911); The Mysteries of Mithra. (Chicago, 
 1903). 
 
 Fowler, W. W., Roman Ideas of Deity in Last Century be- 
 fore Christian Era. (London, 1914). 
 
 Glover, T. R., The Conflict of Religions in the Early 
 Roman Empire. (London, 1909). 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 
 
 Brahmanism and Hinduism 
 
 Barnet, L. D., Antiquities of India. (London, 1914). 
 Bloomfield, M., The Religion of the Veda. (N. Y., 1908). 
 Farquhar, J. N., A Primer of Hinduism. (Oxford, 1912). 
 Hopkins, E. W., The Religions of India. (N. Y., 1898). 
 Pratt, J. B., India and Its Faiths. (Boston, 1915). 
 
 Jainism 
 Jaini, J., Outlines of Jainism. (Cambridge, 1916). 
 
 Stevenson, Mrs. S., The Heart of Jainism. (Oxford, 1915); 
 Notes on Modern Jainism. (Oxford, 1910). 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Carpenter, J. E., Buddhism and Christianity. (N. Y., 1923). 
 
 Davids, T. W. Rhys, Buddhism. (London, 1914). 
 
 Davids, Mrs. T. W. Rhys, Buddhism. (Home University 
 Library). 
 
 Saunders, K. J., Story of Buddhism. (Oxford 1916); 
 one and Buddhists of Southern Asia. (N. Y., 
 
338 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 
 
 Douglass, R. K., Confucianism and Taoism. (London, 
 1900). 
 
 Giles, H. A., Confucianism and its Rivals. (N. Y., 1915): 
 China and the Chinese. (N. Y., 1902). 
 
 Legge, James, The Religions of China. (N. Y., 1881); 
 The Chinese Classics. 8v. (Oxford, 1861-85). 
 
 Soothill, W. E., Three Religions of China. (London, 1913). 
 
 ZOROASTRIANISM 
 Jackson, A. V. W., Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran. 
 CN SY Sao Ob): 
 
 Moulton, J. H., Early Zoroastrianism. (London, 1913); 
 The Treasure of the Magi, a study of Modern Zoro- 
 astrianism. (Oxford, 1918). 
 
 JUDAISM 
 Abrahams, I., Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. (Phila., 
 1906). 
 
 Bailey and Kent, History of the Hebrew Commonwealth. 
 CNY te 20) 
 
 Barton, G. A., Religion of Israel. (N. Y., 1918). 
 
 Browne, Lewis, Stranger Than Fiction: a Short History of 
 the Jews. (N. Y., 1925). 
 
 Graetz, H., History of the Jews. 6v. (Phila., 1891). 
 Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 v. (N. Y., 1905). 
 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 Outline of Christianity. 5 v. (N. Y., 1926). 
 Case, S. J., The Evolution of Christianity. (Chicago, 1914). 
 
 Clemen, Carl, Primitive Christianity and its Non-Jewish 
 Sources. (Edin., 1912). 
 
 Hartt, R. L., The Man Himself. (N. Y., 1923). 
 
 Jackson, F. J. F., Introduction to Church History, Life of 
 StePanlintins x... 920) 
 
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 
 
 Klausner, J., Jesus of Nazareth. (N. Y., 1926). 
 Montefiore, C. J., Judaism and Saint Paul. (London, 1900). 
 Renan, Ernest, Life of Jesus. 
 
 Smith, G. B., editor, A Guide to the Study of Christian 
 Religion. (Chicago, 1916). 
 
 + ISLAM 
 
 Ameer, Ali, The Spirit of Islam. (London, 1922). 
 Goldziher, I., Mohammed and Islam. (New Haven, 1917). 
 
 Houtsma, N. T., editor, Encyclopedia of Islam. 25 parts. 
 London, 1923). 
 
 Hughes, T. P., Dictionary of Islam. (London, 1885). 
 
 Margoliouth, D. S., Mohammedanism. (Home University 
 Library). 
 
 Muir, Sir William, Mahomet and Islam. (London, 1895). 
 

 
INDEX 
 
 A Arabian Desert, 223, 305 
 
 AP cea in Rio 
 Abydos, 84 ; 
 
 Achilles, 98 Aristotle, 91, 94 
 
 Ark, 49, 
 Adonijah, 235 Bile ahd 
 
 Armenian, 201 
 Adonis, 106, 277 Aryan, 60, 90, 119, 199 
 Aegean, 89 
 
 A , ’ 
 Aegean Islands, 226 shtoreth, 69, 236 
 
 Ashura, 19 
 Afghanistan, 191 ia ee 
 aan Asshur, 241 
 
 Agriculture, 43 
 Abriman, 211, 217, 314 
 Ahura Mazda, 203 
 
 Assumption of the Virgin, 294 
 Assyria, 233 
 
 A ; 
 Akhetaton, 79 Lautan 
 ; Astrology, 70 
 Akirvati, 140 Pee oy 
 Allah, 20, 305, 309 ; 
 Athena, 90 
 Alexander, 217 
 : Athens, 174 
 Ali, 332 
 ieee De 64 Atman, 32 
 aints ay, Aton, 78 
 
 All Souls, Festival of, 295 
 American Indians, 76 
 Amon, 76, 78 
 
 Amos, 237, 240 
 
 pmianite, .1L99,°205,,216 
 Anarchism, 288 B 
 Anaxagoras, 94 
 
 Ancestor worship in China, 169 Baaie2) 17230 
 
 Attis, 99, 106, 277 
 Augustus, 107 
 Avatar, 153, 285 
 Avesta, 201 
 
 Anglicanism, 300 Babel, Tower of, 71 
 Angra Mainyu, 203 Babylonia, 325 
 
 Animism, 32 Babylonian Exile, 235 
 Anu, 68 Babylonians, 65, 223, 235 
 Aphrodite, 69 Bacchus, 106 
 
 Apollo, 91 Banyan Tree, 138 
 
 Arabia, 305 Baptism, 99 
 
 341 
 

 
 342 
 
 INDEX 
 
 
 
 Bel, 68, 241 
 
 Bellona, 106 
 
 Bel-Marduk, 68 
 
 Beltane, 63 
 
 Benares, 143, 164 
 
 Beni Hasan, 85 
 
 Beth El, 238 
 
 Bhagavad-Gita, 153 
 
 Bible, 154 
 
 Black Friday, 106 
 
 Bodhisattvas, 146 
 
 Bohemia, 300 
 
 Bombay, 218 
 
 Book of the Dead, 88 
 
 Brahma;}125.115360::152,) 153 5106; 
 160 
 
 Brahmanas, 124 
 
 Brahmanism, 119 
 
 Brahmins, 122 
 
 Bridget, 61, 70, 294, 296 
 
 Buddha, 134, 143, 160, 175, 184, 
 191, 193, 200, 232, 245, 264 
 
 Buddhism, 134, 190, 191 
 
 Burmah, 149 
 
 C 
 
 Caesar, Julius, 63 
 
 Calvin, 300 
 
 Canaan? 25 
 
 Canaanites, 224, 235 
 
 Caste, 122, 140, 150 
 
 Catholicism, 293, 300 
 
 Celts, 60 
 
 Ceylon, 147, 149 
 
 Chandraguptra, 146 
 
 China, 148 
 
 Chinese, 223 
 
 Chou, 184 
 
 Christ, 148, 154, 276, 281 (see 
 Jesus) 
 
 Christianity, 110, 218, 257, 290 
 
 Christians, 156 
 Christmas, 295 
 Chungtu, 176 
 Church, 39 
 Cilicia, 281 
 Circumcision, 48 
 Communism, 288 
 
 Confucianism, 169, 193 
 
 Confucius, 175, 184, 188, 245 
 Constantine, 290 
 
 Corybantes, 296 
 
 Crete, 89 
 
 Crosses, 37 
 
 Crusades, 156 
 
 Cybele, 69, 104, 294, 296 
 Cynics, 108 
 
 Cyrus, 216, 246 
 
 D 
 
 Dagon, 232, 241 
 
 Dalai Lama, 148 
 Damascus, 274, 281 
 Daniel, 218 
 
 Dark Ages, 326 
 
 David, 233 
 
 Day of Atonement, 321 
 Dead, Book of, 88 
 Deutero-Isaiah, 244 
 Deva, 205 
 
 Deviltry, 205 
 
 Diana, 102 
 
 Diaspora, 248 
 Dionysus, 97, 106, 277 
 Divinity, 205 
 
 Druids, 61, 70 
 
 Dyansh Pitar, 120 
 
 E 
 
 Ea, 68 
 Eden, 224 
 Egypt, 44, 171, 225, 325 
 

 
 INDEX ahh, 
 
 Egyptians, 75 George, St., Festival of, 294 
 Eightfold Noble Path, 139 Golden Bough, 35, 62 
 Eleusinian mysteries, 99 Gospels, 259, 276, 288 
 Elijah, 235 Greece, 171 
 Elysian Fields, 98 Greeks, 89 
 Empedocles, 94 
 England, 300 Hi 
 Epilepsy, 307 Hades, 90, 98 
 Epistles, 288 Hajj, 328, 330 
 Ethiopians, 239 Hallowe’en, 64 
 Etruscans, 102 Hamlin, 320 
 Euphrates, 224 Haoma, 199, 205, 215 
 Euripides, 94 Haram, 225 
 Exodus, 226 Hariti, 148 
 Ezekiel, 175 Heaven, 169 
 Hebrews, 49, 103, 230 
 
 F Hera, 90 
 Feng-Shui, 196 Heraclitus, 94 
 Fertile Crescent, 224, 326 Himayana, 145, 147 
 Festivals, 46 Hinduism, 150, 331 
 Fetishism, 36 Hittites, 224 
 Fire-altars, 205 Holy Ghost, 278 
 Five Books of Moses, 231, 243 Holy Roman Empire, 299 
 Flood, 73 Horeb, 229 
 Four Truths, 139 Horseshoes, 37 
 Francis, St., of Assisi, 300 Horus, 83, 148, 286 
 Fraser, James G., 35, 62 Hosea, 239 
 Free-Will, 156 Huns, 299 
 Fryana, 210 Huss, John, 300 
 
 G I 
 Galatia, 281 Ibrahim, 316 
 Galilee, 259 Idol, 38 
 Ganges, 121, 134, 164 Ikhnaton, 78, 87, 88, 232, 264 
 Ganges Valley, 130 India, 331 
 Gathas, 201, 210 Indian Metaphysics, 159 
 Gaul, 174 Inquisition, 300 
 Gautama, 245 Indra, 120 
 Gautama, Siddharta, 134 Indus, 121 
 Genius, 100, 108 Iran, 199 
 
 Gentiles, 250 Isaiah, 240 
 

 
 okey INDEX 
 
 Ishtar, 67, 68, 89, 104, 305 Krishna, 153, 158, 200 
 Isis, 69, 83, 106, 148, 294 Krishto, 154 
 Islam, 149, 324 Kung-fu-tze (see Confucius), 175 
 Ishmael, 316 
 Israel, 233 " 
 
 J Lagash, 67 
 
 Lao-Tze, 184, 200, 232 
 Jainism, 129 Lares, 101 
 Janus, 101 Laud, Bishop, 300 
 Japan, 148 Lhassa, 148 
 Jehovah, (see Yahveh) 49, 229 Libya, 225 
 Jeremiah, 175, 241, 307 Logos, 278, 285 
 Jerusalem, 19, 321, 240 Lucky Stones, 36 
 Jesus, 84, 184, 200, 226, 247, lLugnasad, 64 
 2D AM20 fers LOS. Gos 2.0 Lupercalia, 101 
 Jews, 315, 320 Luther, 300 
 Jina, 130 
 John, 287 M 
 John the Baptizer, 261, 247, 274 
 John, St., Festival of, 294 Ma, 106 
 Judah, 233 Macedonia, 281 
 Judaism, 151, 216, 223 Magi, 215 
 Judaism, Orthodox, 250 Mahabharta, 153, 158 
 Judaism, Reform, 250 Mahavira, 129, 137, 141, 160, 
 Judges, 232 175, 200, 245 
 Juno, 100 Mahayana, 145, 147 
 Jupiter, 101, 120 Malay Archipelago, 40 
 Mani, 216 
 
 Manichaeism, 216 
 
 “ Manu, Code of, 151 
 Kaaba, 306, 330 Maponus, 61 
 Kaaba Stone, 38 Marduk, 68 
 Karma, Law of, 142 Mark, 287 
 Kashmir, 147 Marriage, 48 
 Kenites, 229 Mars, 101 
 Kenosis, 189 Mary, 148, 285, 294 
 Khadija, 309 Mayday, 63 
 Kiang-si, 190 Maypole Dances, 64 
 King, 178 Mecca, 38, 306 
 Kismet, 334 Medicine-Man, 34, 224, 233, 318, 
 
 Koran, 218, 321 323 
 

 
 INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 
 
 Memphis, 76 
 
 Mencius, 182 
 
 Mesopotamia, 65 
 
 Messiah, 242, 258, 320 
 
 Methodism, 300 
 
 Mezuzoth, 37 
 
 Micah, 240 
 
 Middle Path, 139 
 
 Midsummer Night, 64 
 
 Minerva, 102 
 
 Minoans, 89 
 
 Mithraism, 218, 285 
 
 Mithraists, 291 
 
 Mithras, 109, 120, 199, 205, 216 
 
 Mohammed, 184, 218, 306, 314, 
 321 
 
 Moslems, 156 
 
 Moloch, 231, 236 
 
 Moore, George Foot, 28 
 
 Moses, 184, 200, 226, 229, 232 
 
 Mother of the Gods, Great (see 
 Cybele), 104 
 
 Mt. Sinai, 49 
 
 Murray, Prof. Gilbert, 288 
 
 Muzdalifa, Mount, 330 
 
 Mysteries, 96, 104, 277 
 
 Mysticism, 161 
 
 N 
 
 Nabu, 68 
 
 Nathan, 235 
 
 Nazarenes, 274 
 Nazareth, 259 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 241 
 Nestorians, 148 
 Nevi-im, 235 
 
 New Thought, 159 
 
 Ni, 182 
 
 Ningirsu, 67, 68 
 Nirvana, 127, 139, 164 
 Noble Eightfold Path, 144 
 
 O 
 
 Oberammergau, 84 
 
 Odysseus, 98 
 
 Ogmius, 61 
 
 Olympus, 91 
 
 Ombus, 76 
 
 Ormuzd, 211, 249 
 
 Orpheus, 97, 106, 277 
 Orphic Mysteries, 99 
 
 Osiris, 82, 99, 106, 241, 277 
 
 y 
 
 Pacifism, 288 
 
 Palestine, 325 
 
 Parilia, 294 
 
 Parsees, 218, 249 
 
 Parvata the Terrible, 157 
 
 Passover, 272 
 
 Pater-familias, 101 
 
 Paul (see Saul of Tarsus) 283, 
 294, 298 
 
 Peking, 170, 176 
 
 Penates, 101 
 
 Pentateuch, 265 
 
 Persia, 325, 332 
 
 Peter’s, St., 104 
 
 Pharisaic Plague, 265 
 
 Philo, 278 
 
 Philistines, 234 
 
 Phoenicians, 223, 224, 234 
 
 Pied Piper, 320 
 
 Pilate, 271 
 
 Plato, 94 
 
 Polygamy, 333 
 
 Pontifex, Maximus, 102 
 
 Pork, 40 
 
 Poseidon, 90 
 
 Prayer, 39 
 
 Predestination, 156 
 
 Promised Land, 224 
 

 
 346 
 
 Prostitution, holy, 69 
 Protagoras, 95 
 Protestants, 148, 151 
 Protestantism, 300 
 Ptah, 76 
 
 Pyramids, 85, 171, 225 
 Pythagoras, 94 
 
 Q 
 Quakerism, 300 
 
 R 
 
 Rabbis, 265 
 Rachman, 321 
 Rama, 155 
 Ramadhan, 321 
 Ramayana, 153, 155 
 Re, 80 
 
 Resurrection, 273 
 Revelation, 218 
 Rhea, 90 
 
 Rig Veda, 121 
 Ritual, 54 
 
 Romans, 100 
 
 Rome, 174, 248, 257 
 Rosary, 156, 331 
 
 S 
 Sabbath, 74, 285 
 
 Sacraments, 47 
 Sacrifices, 39, 54 
 Samhain, 64 
 Samuel, 235 
 Sangha, 133 
 Saracens, 299 
 Satans, 217 
 Saturnalia, 102 
 Saul of Tarsus, 279, 281, 283 
 Semites, 66, 223 
 Servia, 290 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Set, 76, 83 
 
 Sex, 46 
 
 Sex in Hinduism, 157 
 Sex in Mysticism, 161 
 Shabatum, 74 
 Shaman, 34 
 Shamanism, 36 
 
 Shamash, 68 
 
 Sheol, 217 
 Shiite sect, 332 
 Shinto, 148 
 Shiva, 152, 156, 331 
 Shu, 178 
 
 Siam, 149 
 
 Sin, 53, 68 
 Sinai, 229 
 Socrates, 94, 95 
 Solomon, 233 
 Solon, 171 
 Soman 204205 
 Sphinx, 76 
 
 St. John’s Day, 64 
 Stoics, 94 
 Stonehenge, 61 
 Sufi sect, 332 
 Suleiman, 316 
 Sumerians, 224 
 Sun Day, 110 
 Sunday, 285 
 Swami, 159 
 Syria, 325 
 
 1% 
 
 Taboo, 40 
 
 Taif, 314 
 
 Talmud, 151, 249 
 Tammuz, 67, 106 
 sLantray 57 
 
 Tao, 186 
 
 Taoism, 148, 183, 193 
 Tao-Teh-king, 185 
 

 
 Tauroboleum, 105 
 Teh, 186 
 
 Ten Commandments, 229 ; 
 
 Ten Tribes, 233 - 
 Thales, 94 
 
 Thebes, 76 
 Theosophical Societies, 159 
 Theudas, 274 
 
 Thibet, 148 
 
 Three Jewels, 133, 186 
 Three Truths, 195 
 Thugs, 157 
 
 Tigris, 224 
 
 Tower of Silence, 212 
 Transmigration, 126 
 T’ueb-shi, 190 
 Turanians, 204, 209 
 Turkestan, 191 
 Tutenkhamen, 80 
 
 U 
 
 Ubu'l-Kassim, 306 
 Unitarianism, 300 
 Untouchables, 165 
 Upanishads, 125, 203 
 Ur of the Chaldees, 225 
 Urkagina, King, 71 
 
 Vv 
 
 Varnu, 122 
 
 Vatican Hill, 104 
 
 Vedas, 121, 130, 150, 203 
 Venus, 68, 69 
 
 INDEX 347 
 
 Vesta, 101 
 Vishnu, 152, 156 
 
 W 
 
 Wall of Law, 265 
 Wells, H. G., 5, 218 
 Wind-ball, 32 
 
 Wu, 190 
 
 Wu Wei, 186 
 Wycliffe, 300 
 
 Xx 
 Xenophanes, 94 
 
 Y 
 
 Yahveh, 229, 239, 305 
 
 Yathrib (see Medina), 318 
 
 Yogi, 159, 160 
 
 Young Men’s Buddhist Association, 
 148 
 
 Z 
 
 Zabazins, 97 
 
 Zagreus, 97 
 
 Zarathustra, 199 
 
 Zealots, 258, 260 
 
 Zeus Pater, 90, 101, 120 
 
 Zionism, 251 
 
 Zoroaster, 109, 175, 199, 205 
 220252.324..20432307 
 
 Zoroastrianism, 199, 216, 218 
 
 Zoroastrians, 249, 251 
 
 Zwingli, 300 
 

 
 
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 80 .B88 
 
 This believing world : a simple account 
 
 
 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary—Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00107 1598