PRINCETON, N. J. ^/4^//^. Division ....©... irr: . .W. . .W Section .....[yl..G.9..... Number ^..ollodorusf the old myths are neatly recorded and arranged. The first of all things are Heaven and Earth. To Heaven, as the father, Earth, as the mother, bore the hundred- handed, the Cyclopse, and the Titans. Of the Titans the youngest was Time, who married his sister Rhea, and became ruler instead of his father. His youngest * Theogony, line 116 etc. f Book I. first seven cliapters. III. CREATION AND ORIGIN OF EVIL. 13 son, Zeus, by aid of Wisdom, daughter of Ocean, be- came ruler of the universe by the exclusion of his father, and so continued king over the third generation of gods. One of the Titans, the more powerful class of the second generation of gods, was lapetus, a son of Heaven and Earth. He married Asia, a daughter of Ocean, and had, among other children, Prometheus. And Prometheus, by mixing water and earth, created men. He then, beholding the uncomfortable condi- tion of the creatures he had made, procured for them fire, which he brought down from heaven, without consent of Zeus. Prometheus is, according to this myth, both the Creator of the human race, and their Savior from suffering and wretchedness. It also rep- resents fire as the element indispensable to the arts, and to the profitable exercise of skill and wisdom. For that benefaction to man Prometheus is punished by the- most cruel tortures, being fastened to a lofty rock, while a vulture preys upon his vitals. Other myths represent certain families of mankind as descended from the youngest generation of gods and mortal women. The Greek was thus taught that men were made of earth by the hand of a son of a god, and also that cer- tain families of men were descended from some of the younger generation of gods. It would not be fair dealing with canonical books, now dead and gone, to impute to them all the nonsense of their later reporters ; especially as, in some cases, only fragments of even the latter have reached us, and 14 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. tliat through hands which may not have done them justice ; but we are constrained to say that, from all we have of the other books of ancient scripture, there is not an account of creation which, for sobriety and scientific form, as well as for majesty, is to be parallel- ed with that of Genesis. " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." So far as to tlie primitive condition of matter, and the operation of an intelligent ruler in unrecorded changes. " And God said, Let there be light : and there was light." " And God said. Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters ; and let it divide the waters from the waters," " And God called the firmament Heaven." So far in regard to the stellar universe. "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so." " And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, wiiose seed is in itself, upon the earth : and it was so." " And God said, Let there be lights in the 'firma- ment of the heaven to divide the day from the night." "And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and the night, and to divide the light from the dark- III. CREATION AND OF.IGIX OF EVIL. 15 ness." Here we have earlier aiid later geological periods, with the relations of the stellar universe to the earth. " God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, after his kind ; and it was so." " And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness." " So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him ; male and female created he them." ^' And the Lord God form- ed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." " And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." God gave him to eat freely of all the trees of the garden except one. " Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Only one man was made immediately of the dust of the ground. TToman was made from a rib taken out of Adam's side. Thus man was not evolved out of something else, but, with all his proper powers, called into being by the iiat of God. His Maker makes him in his own image, and treats him at once as a reasonable being. He is desio;ned for work in cultivatino; the earth and ruling over the creatures. The Hebrew scriptures have an adv^antage above all others in this : thev beo-in with an intellio-ent and 16 COMPARATIVE EELIGIOX. adequate cause. The Greek begins, like the Egyptian, Phenician and Babylonian, with an effect without a cause. The former begins by saying that God crea- ted ; then adds that the materials called into being were, in the first instance, in a state of confusion and darkness. The Greek begins with confusion and darkness. The Hebrew says that out of that confu- sion and darkness God made the sun, moon and stars with the earth and all that is in it. The Greek says that Earth, Erebus and Love grew out of the confusion and darkness without any cause ; and that from them all other things, even the gods, proceeded by genera- tion. In the Hebrew view all things have an intelli- 2:ent cause ; in the Greek the orio-inal elements have no cause ; and the first which arise are non-intelligent, namely matter and appetite. Earth in marriage with Erebus united by Love, should Love be taken, as in this myth it must needs be, for the attractive principle through whose agency matter unites and moves in masses, it is a non-intelligent cause. In the Hebrew, God creates matter; in the Greek, matter generates the gods. The Hebrew asserts the prior eternity of God ; the Greek, the eternity of matter in confusion. AYhatever may be said of the historical value of either, it is very clear that tlie logical advantage is on the side of the Hebrew. One can believe the Hebrew ; the Greek is inconceivable. Viewed in the light of theories, the former is admissible ; the latter absurd. If they are both allegories, their comparative value is not altered. If tlie Hebrew is defended as historical, there is nothing in the order of cause and efi'ect to SUMMARY. 17 controvert it. The canse is fully adequate to the effect ; and the effect is worthy of the canse. That the Greek should be historical is impossible. We can believe that an eternal and almighty mind shaped, or created all things according to a purpose ; we cannot believe that matter gave spontaneous birth to mind. We have no independent knowledge of either one or the other; but the former falls in with our thinking capa- city ; the latter does not. It has to be taken in some other than its apparent meaning to be consistent with its acceptance by an intelligent people. SUIMMAKY. 1. Most is said about creation in the ancient books, and fragments of ancient books, of which the origjn is referred to Babylonia and Syria. 2. The subject is touched, but more mythically, in those produced at a distance from that region of coun- try, as in Persia, or Bactria and India, on one side, -and in Greece, on the other. At the distance of China tradition about it is very childish, while the old his- toric classic makes no mention of it at all. 3. Clearest, simplest, and most reasonable is the account contained in Genesis. 4. The various books and fragments agree in teach- ing, first, that before the formation of existing things, there was a period of indefinite length, in which mat- ter existed in a state of chaos ; second, that certain classes of animals came into being before man ; third, that man was made by a special act of a Maker ; fourth, 18 COMPAEATIYE EELIGION. that he was made by uniting something of Deity with the dust of the eartli ; fifth, that he is one of the lat- est works of creation ; and sixth, that although made holy, he soon became sinful. Traditions of the same general purport, or of the purport of some of these heads, are to be found in some more widely dispersed branches of mankind. " In the cosmogony of Peru the first man created by the Divine power was called Alpa Camasca, animated earth." The Mandans of jSTorth America believed that the Great Spirit formed two figures of clay, which He dried and animated by the breath of his month, the one received the name of the 'first man,' the other that of ' companion.' A similar belief was found ex- isting among the aborigines of Tahiti and the Dyacks of Borneo." ly. ANTIQUITY OF MAN. As to the number of years, which have elapsed since the creation, opinions vary ; and to expect exact- itude and certainty seems hardly reasonable. Dates are given in the book of Genesis, but no chronology of the whole period it covers. 'No definition is given of what is meant by a year, nor in the genealogies by '' begat,'' whether it refers to the relation between father and son, or between an ancestor and a more distant descendant, which latter is demonstrably its meaning in some Biblical genealogies, according to a * Lenormant, Ancient Hist, of tlie East, i., 9. IV. ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 19 custom preserved among the Arabs, whereby direct affiliation is established " by enumeration of the most remarkable personages, omitting many intermediate steps;" nor, thirdly, are we certain that in all cases the true numbers have been preserved, as the diiference between the Hebrew and Samaritan texts is, in re- spect to some of them, very considerable. IsTor is the Septuagint, although a version, to be summarily set aside with all the weight of ^N^ew Testament sanction upon it. In short, Genesis does not pretend to a scien- tific chronology, but simply to give the order of events, and succession of great patriarchs, with their respective 3^ears, in the history of its single theme, the divine promise. Egyptian monumental chronology does not really begin until the end of the eleventh dynasty of kings, and is not only defective, but disconnected. That of China is connected from its beginning down to the present; but it begins with 2356 or 2145 years before Christ. 'No other heathen nation gives a veri- table date of higher antiquity. India has no ancient chronology. But the broader date in terms of geolo- gical periods need occasion little difficulty. Man cer- tainty did not live until the earth was in a state fit for him to live upon it. If when compared with the life- time of its individual members, the human race may seem to be very old, the fewness of its recorded steps in general progress, and its obviously expanding pow- ers declare it still young. History knows of only three periods of progressive civilization, rounded re- spectively by a general maturity and decline, and is now in the progress of a fourth. And although the 20 COMPAEATIVE RELIGION. area of civilization has become wider in each succes- sive period, it does not jet cover one-fifth of earth's habitable surface, nor extend to a greater proportion ot its population. Civilization, hitherto confined to a few favored lands, and colored bj their peculiarities, has only within the present generation begun to grap- ple with the larger divisions of the globe, and rise to- wards universality. In the time when universal do- minion has become too hopeless for ambition, the pro- gress of the race first aims at universal refinement. Particular nations have become superannuated, and have passed away, as roses drop from the still produc- tive stem, but the race has yet given no signs of decay. Everything pertaining to it speaks a young and grow- ing vitality. Its dominion in nature is now greater, its knowledge broader, and its hopes more buoyant than at any previous time. Traditional interpretation of the Hebrew scripture on creation takes the meaning to be that Adam was the first of human beings, and that from him all the rest are descended. Some interpreters have argued that other races of mankind were in existence jl^e^ore Adam, and adduce, as probably pre- Adamite, the 'Ne- gro and Mongolian. Adam they think was created to be the father of a new race, more highly gifted than any of the preceding, and designed to be the ruler and civilizer of the rest, and teacher of the true doctrine of God. Others urge, on what they think scientific ground, that the various nations, or ethnic groups, have had their origin in separate creations. Until science demonstrates some such theory as a V. ^THE FALL. 21 fact, it cannot be accepted as an element in history. All the phenomena of the human race can be accounted for by one creation. And ethnology in its progress, ex- hibits every new stage of certified attainment as a step towards proving the unity of human origin. THE FALL. According to the narrative of Hebrew scripture, when earth was prepared for their habitation, God created one pair of human beings, and placed them on a part of it most completely matured, and adapted to subserve the wants of their nature. They were created of the dust of the ground, but also made living spirits, moulded after the image of God, and honored with dominion over the earth, and its creatures. Morally they were constituted capable of enjoying the pleasures of the true and good, and of the power of dominion, or of sinking to the degradation and deformity of vice. From this original state, which was not one of barbar- ity, but of simple delicacy, educating industry, and communion with God, it was at their option to rise or sink. They might rise above that beginning by infin- ite progression in skill, in dominion, in glory and in blessedness ; or they might fall unspeakably beneath it. That they remained holy and enjoyed the correspond- ing blessedness for a time, is the belief expressed in most of the ancient sacred books. A time when men lived on friendly terms with gods, and freely held con- 22 COMPAKATIVE KELTGIOX. verse with them occupies a place among the incon- gruities of Greek tradition. The same thing appears in the Roman mjth of the golden reign of Saturn ; and in the clearest and fullest proportions in the Aves- tan scripture touching the blessed region of Airvana- vaeja, under the reign of Yima. All these assign to the period a long duration ; but a belief of the contrary is indicated also. For when Prometheus had stolen fire from heaven, Zeus in revenge, ordered woman to be made out of the earth, and endowed witli beauty and subtilty to work the ruin of man. Pandora, the first woman, was the first agent of evil upon earth. And that Greek myth sounds like a confused echo of the more definite statement in Genesis of the creation of Eve and of " The fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe," and like that, recognizes the period of man's natural holiness as very brief. Although the fact of that spiritual fall is not re- corded in sacred literature or traditions of all nations, its effects are. And subsequently to it, all man's efforts for good, if made at all, were to be commenced from a lower level. According to the Hebrew narra- tive, the original sinners were expelled from the Paradise, in which they were created, and driven abroad upon ruder lands, to earn their bread by toil, which was now to be painful. Their lives and those of their earliest descendants were extended to V. THE FALL. 23 great leDgtli. At the age of nine hundred years the first pair saw themselves surrounded by a large population. Men increasing^in vice, in proportion to that dura- tion of life, became, in the course of a few generations, so corrupt that God is said to have repented that he had made them. In that first period of their history, men followed recklessly the dictates of their passions. The force of life was strong within them, and its long du- ration gave large range to their propensities, and upon the whole, though some rose to righteousness, the prev- alent and final result was hopeless depravity. Much was done towards growth in knowledge and external polish, much that retains its place among the accumulated treasures of civilization ; but as touching the true end of human life, and the mass of the population, we are informed of that period that it failed ignominiously. Yet some enjoyed the Divine favor. Abel ofier- ed a worship, which seems to have expressed his faith in atonement by the shedding of blood : and to him and his oflTering God had respect. After the death of Abel, Cain and his descendants were the only, or prin- cipal inhabitants of the earth, until the family of Seth became numerous enough to divide the dominion with them. A godless race, the Cainites retained of the religious instruction of Adam's household perhaps only enough for the purposes of civilization, among a few who are put on record as inventors of some of the arts. The next mention of religion is made in connec- tion with Seth, succeeding antediluvian history is only a genealogy in his family, including a brief record of the singular piety of Enoch, and terminating in ISToah. 24 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. From Seth the whole existing race of mankind is descended, and only from that branch of it which found grace in the eyes of the Lord. All the other children of Adam went down under the judgment of God extinguished in the waters of the flood. And the inheritance of sinfulness continues even in the family which is saved. Iniquity unchecked in its prevalence in that long period of perhaps not less than two thousand years, must have been productive of great misery. The ten- dency of sin being downwards into subserviency to brute forces, the great mass of population must have become mere savages. The language of Hebrew script- ure about it is that the earth was corrupt before God, and filled with violence. So deeply was the writer of the original record impressed with the degree and extent of human degradation, that he repeats more than once the strong statement that " the earth was filled with violence," and adds that " all flesh had cor- rupted his way upon the earth." In the Avesta, the work of Anra-mainyus, follow- ing the good work of Ahura-Mazda, is everywhere productive of wretchedness : and the Eden of the good creation becomes, under his blasting influence, a cold wintry place of poverty and woe. The God-given warmth of the original clime had ultimately to be sup- plied by the disco veiy of ruddy fire. Prometheus created man in happiness, but after Pandora introduced sin, all kinds of sufferings flew abroad over the world. And Prometheus was dis- tressed to behold his creatures sunk in poverty and VI. LIFE AND DEATH, THE PENALTY AND KEWAKD. 25 disease and all the woes of savagism. And fire, and with it art, is introduced to remedy the ills. Ancient tradition in every direction, as surely as it speaks of the primal golden age, bears its vague but persistent testimony to the succeeding declension into sin and misery. Science, which of course could not possibly discover embalmed in the soil or rocks, any remains of a brief and simple horticultural paradise, finds abundant wit- nesses to the long protracted state of degeneracy, when man, having lost the power of holiness, had not yet attained to that of art, and when his native dominion over the lower animals having ceased, he had to main- tain the brutal struggle with them by the rudest material means. On this point there is a perfect con- currence of testimony among all the scriptures and traditions which touch the subject and the discoveries of science relating to the life of primitive man. YI. LIFE AND DEATH, THE PENALTY AND KEWAKD. The origin of sin in all mankind is thus referred to abused freedom of action in the first man. The test of obedience in the newly created pair was one address- ed at once, to their sensuous, intellectual and spiritual nature. And their fall was not the beginning of evil, which is presumed to have been pre-existent ; but the result of compliance with a tempter. On this last point, the Greek, Avestan, and Hebrew authorities 26 COMPAKATIYE RELIGION. But in the Hebrew scriptures the issue of the temptation is a matter of much higher import than in any of the rest. It gives the key-note to all the suc- ceeding history. In that remarkable series of books, * mankind is viewed as an organic whole, and the fall of the original progenitor as extending its effects to all his descendants. The first man was in his primitive state the moral and religions representative of the race, a doctrine rather implied than declared at the begin- ning, but unfolded in the course of the subsequent books, and brought out conspicuously in the Christian part of the series. As in Adam's persistent holiness, it is presumed, all would have partaken, so in his fall all suffered, as he himself, something called death. Life eludes our analysis, but demonstrates itself as an activity in a peculiar, and unmistakable way. No intelligent observer confounds it with the activity of waters, winds or chemical forces. The necessary ac- tivities of life are those whereby nourishment is select- ed and taken in, assimilation effected, and the ends of self-perpetuation, growth and fruit are produced. Without those three there can be no life in creatures. Animal life manifests itself in an organism which se- lects and takes in nourishment from the materials of earth and air, and which digests and assimilates those materials, and in the building up and maintaining of the bodily frame and constitution. The separate vi- tality of intellect appears in observation and learning, in reflection and appropriation, and in producing the fruits of thinking, as they appear in feeling, purpose of mind and otherwise. And if we carry observation VI. LIFE AND DEATH, THE PENALTY AND KEWARD. 27 into spiritual experience, we shall there also discover similar appearances of vital action. For that experi- ence testifies to drawing aliment from communion with God, and the provisions of his grace; to the ap- propriating of these provisions; and the world be- holds the fruits of growth in holiness and consistent actinn, thc3 fruit of holy living. The same series repeats itself in the diiferent sys- tems of which the body is composed, and in the various faculties of the mind, being the same in the minute details as in the gross. In all functions of the body, its nervous system, its circulating system, and diges- tive system, it is the same animal life ; and in all pow- ers of the mind, the rational, moral, aesthetic, it is the same mental life. The co-operation of both constitute the one peculiar life of the natural man ; and the He- brew and Christian scriptures, true to the analogy, rep- resent holy men as enjoying a separable spiritual life. Death accordingly is not dissolution, which is only a consequence of it, but simply the stopping of vital action. When, in their appropriate conditions, all the vital functions cease to act, the particular life to which they pertain, is done. When sinful man is said in scripture to be dead in sin, there is great force in the expression. He is really dead, as respects that life which sin primarily affects. He does not seek the communications of divine favor, nor care to retain God in his knowledge ; that is, he does not take in the ali- ment of holy life ; he does not appropriate to himself that whereby a soul grows in godliness, and he does not produce the actions of holy living. He presents 28 COMPAEATIYE RELIGION. none of the signs of life in the region of spiritual things. Both positively and negatively the language of scripture is abundantly justified by the analogy. Not now to be found in any man by birth or heredi- tary descent, those spiritual activities are still neces- sary to the complete man ; and their lack leaves a de- fect in human nature, which is felt as such by the moral and intellectual being, a defect wdiich men in general feel needs to be made up, in order that a man's character be all that it should be. And every one in whom that lack is sujDplied, in however feeble degree the new activity is experienced, is constrained by his consciousness to refer it not to a native growth in him- self, but to the interposition of a higher power. Each of those vital series acts through, or cooper- ates w4th its inferior; the mental actions through those of the body ; and the spiritual through the natural powers of the mind ; each higher grade of life retain- ing the service of that which is beneath it. The first parents of mankind, we are informed in Hebrew scripture, were condemned to die on the very day in which they committed their first sin. That was a practical reality, the most melancholy of all historical facts. Something occurred in man's nature at that time which can be properly called death, and which manifested itself in the functions of his spiritual life ceasing to act. And the evil descended and could not but descend to ail his posterity. For he could not transmit to them what he no longer had in himself. Any kind of life can propagate only itself. The vege- table contains no higher life than that of the vegetable. VI. LIFE AND DEATH, THE PENALTY AND REWARD. 29 The animal life cannot propagate the mental ; nor can either of them give birth to the spiritual. A tig tree cannot bear olive berries, nor a vine Hgs. By natural generation men cannot be other than discordant within themselves. They inherit a nature of which holiness is demanded by its original constitution, but in which the functions producing holy action have ceased to act. However accounted for, it is undeniable that there is found in man that defect which his nature does not seem to have originally been designed to present, but which by natural generation belongs to all the race, and which society and legislation everywhere recog- nize. In Hebrew scripture alone is there a full account given of its origin : and that presenting man as created holy, and with power to remain holy, but as having fallen, is a reasonable account. Anything short of what that scripture makes it will not meet all the con- ditions of the case. The action of the mental and bodily life, are also distorted by this stupendous defect, and many of the feelings and aims and aspirations of the intellectual life, belonging to its original connection with the spir- itual, are unintelligible to itself, or misdirected, or utterly unemployed. And such are the faculties through which iniquity works its positive effects ; and such, in their sense of want, are those upon which the mercy of God can take hold. At the same time the moral and spiritual law un- der which perfect man was created, is not changed by his falling from it. Belonging to the nature of God, it cannot change. That law still demands holy 30 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. living of all moral beings. Nor does it follow that a man thus degenerate will be ignorant of God, or insen- sible that he is under duty to God. For these are matters belonging to intellectual and moral perception and positive instruction. But certainly a frequently recurring sense of condemnation, and of inability to be what he ought to be, must belong to the hereditary condition of man. In fact, the universal judgment of mankind upon themselves is that, by some su]3erin- duced disability, they never have, of their own effort, attained to that moral position which their nature demands; and that they need something to save them from some awful fate due to wrong-doing and wrong- being : — a most singular position among creatures. The unity of the race i5 evinced in the fact that all nations have this defect, as well as the same essential features of mental and bodily nature, and that a sense of the defect pervades all national religion and legisla- tion. It runs through all history, sacred and profane, creating the shadows which darken the page in all generations. Moral history, from the first, bears one testimony. Knowledge of right is not so deficient as is the ability to conform to it. Barbarism is a degeneracy of knowl- edge, as well as of heart and practice; but even the barbarian knows that he ought to be better than he is. The knowledge of moral principle among ancient civilized heathen had a closer corresj)ondence to the revealed standard .than the forms of their religion had ; and yet the practices of daily life among them were exceedingly vile, and many ceremonies of their religion VI. LIFE AND DEATH, THE PENALTY AND REWARD. 31 partook of the pollution. Is or is there much improve- ment, in respect of purity, in christian countries, among those who are not christian, except in as far as the force of christian society may constrain to greater decency. Although the fundamental principles of morals have been known all down the history of the civilized world, and additions have been made to the stores of moral instruction from time to time, there has really b^en no advance in practical morals, except as affected by the spirit of God npon the hearts of believers in revelation, to the renewal of them in the spiritual life. If holiness was ever to be restored to human na- ture it must be by a new gift of the Creator. But a new act of creation extended to the whole race and entering into natural generation, would have been the extinction of the race as it was. The Divine plan retains the race as fallen, and provides a means of engrafting the new life into such individual souls .as accept the gracious gift. Spiritual life in man, ever since the fall, has been an engrafted life, which draws its vital currents from the heart of a Saviour. Such is the doctrine which gives its peculiar fea- tures to the Hebrao-Christian religion. The Hebrew scriptures present it as a scheme, working towards completeness, the vision and hope of prophecy ; the Christian, as one completed. A religion holding to such a fundamental princi- ple, though it may for a time, by external circum- stances, be confined to a nation or family, has no peculiar affinities to any one nation or branch of man- 82 COMPARATIVE KELIGIOJS'. kind. It addresses the universal want of all men, and will take effect upon any who believe in it. And the society of those who believe in it, wherever any number of them are congregated, constitute a commu- nity separated thereby from all the populations among whom they reside. It is a religion competent to exist in any nation, as connected with the national govern- ment, or separate from it. Firmly self-balanced, it stands by itself anywhere. The fundamental distinc- tion which it establishes among men is that between the righteous and the wicked ; the former being those who truly and spiritually belong to the society. This dis- tinction between the righteous and the wicked, the divine call of the one and rejection of the other, is the grand theme of Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and is more strongly and broadly drawn as the history goes on. Heathen scriptures also recognize sin, and man as guilty and liable to punishment. They contain much that coincides with Hebrew scripture in moral and re- ligious observance, and the duty under which man is to live holily. But the point whereon they differ essentially is the doctrine of a savior. Hebrew scripture is throughout characterized by that promise of divine mercy, which has a view to the restoration of fallen man to the state of holiness. According to heathen scriptures, every man will be treated by God, or the gods, on his own merits. Sacrifice and ceremonies ac- curately performed, it is thought, will propitiate God. But a man must take care that he does all in the right way, and if not well enough informed for that, he VI. LIFE AND DEATH, THE PENALTY AND REWARD. 33 must get some better informed person to do it for him ; but the merit of the service belongs to himself, whether he does it or pays for its being done. The transaction is entirely between himself and the god whom he wor- ships. The service may be called a mediation, but the priest who ministers in it is not a mediator. In all the oldest scriptures, the head of the family is also the minister of w^orship for himself and his household. And for him and them everything depends on how the god accepts their offering. A savior or the prom- ise of a savior does not belong to their creed. In Hebrew scripture everything turns on that promise. It is the principal object set before the mind of the believer, as it was first announced, with the oc- casion which led to it, its progressive enlargement, and increasing explicitness, the forms given to it, the types and ceremonies whereby it was kept before the people, and impressed upon their attention, the occasional neglect which it suffered, the miracles w^rought to sus- tain it, the evils, w^hich fell upon its enemies, the bless- ings upon those who trusted in and defended it, and its final fulfilment. In the Christian scriptures, the chief object is the present Saviour, as revealed in the flesh, his words, his works, his sufferings, the apostles whom he sent out, and the instructions he gave them to communicate to the world, and the powers with which he endowed them. In the sequel of that history, the great object has been the Gospel of the Saviour, in itself, in its achievements, adversities, conflicts, tem- porary checks, obstructions and victories, its advocates and enemies ; what has been said to defend, and what 2* 34: COMPAKATIYE RELIGION.- to malign it, the opinions whicli have been formed about it, and the effect it has wrought upon the face of soci- ety, and in the hearts of men. The characteristic of religious life in man was ac- cordingly under the Hebrew scriptures, faith in the promise of the Saviour to be revealed ; under the chris- tian, first, faith in the Saviour as revealed in the flesh, and after his removal from earth, faith in the Saviour as revealed in the Gospel ; together, in all cases, with obedience to the form of work required by tlie exist- ing dispensation. The subject is marked by perfect unity and also by onward progress in successive stages, and its attitude towards the sin that is in the world has at all times been that of antagonism. Its history from age to age is marked by its own positions in the warfare ; at one time, as a single family moving with circumspection in the midst of a world fast sinking into corruption, at another, as a brave and victorious people, raising the banner of the Lord of Hosts before idolatrous and profligate nations; again as a multitude of far and widely dispersed captives, testifying before the heathen by much long-suffering and practical piety their faith in the God of Promise, and then, as a continually in- creasing army of confessors, contending for the faith in a Saviour revealed, it has all along been one, but progressive in fullness, in clearness, and in the extent of its influence over men. Yet that difference between the Hebrew and other ancient religions is but little apparent in their earlier stages. VII. THE DELUGE. 35 YIL THE DELUGE. In the Hebrew scriptures a large place is occupied with the account of a general Deluge, in which all mankind are destroyed, except one family. They are destroyed for their wickedness. Koah with his three sons are saved for their piety towards God. And the means whereby they are saved is an ark prepared by Koah, at God's command. By the same means, the breeds of land animals and of birds were also preserv- ed. The flood rose above all the hills, and lasted one year and ten days, from its beginning until the earth was dried sufficiently for the imprisoned family to leave the ark. A similar catastrophe is mentioned in some other ancient records, but not in all the oldest scriptures. Kext to the Hebrew narrative, the fullest under this head is the Babylonian, as it appears in the fragments of Berosus, now enlarged by the discoveries of recent antiquarian research. The reigns of the first ten kings of the Chaldeans collectively amounted to an hundred and twenty sari, or four hundred and thirty-two thousand years. The tenth, called Xisthrus, or Sisithrus, reigned eighteen sari."" ''In his time happened a great deluge; the history of which is thus described. The Deity Cronus appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Daesius there would be * A Sarus is tliree tliousand six hundred years. 36 COMPAEATIVE EELIGION. a flocnil, by which mankind wonld be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write a history of the begin- ning, procedure, and conchision of all things ; and to bnry it in the city of the sun at Sippara ; and to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having askqd whither he was to sail, he was answered "To the gods;" upon which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. Then not failing in obedience, he built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth. Into this he put every- thing he had prepared ; and last of all conveyed into it his wife, his children, and his friends. After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisthrus sent out birds from the vessel ; which not finding any food, nor any place whereon to rest, returned to him again. After an interval of some days, he sent them forth a second time; and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial a third time with the birds ; but they returned to him no more; whence he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain ; upon which he immediately quit- ted it with his wife, his daughter and the pilot. Xis- thrus then paid his adoration to the earth ; and hav- ing constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, VII. THE DELUGE. 37 and, with those who had come out of the vessel with him, disappeared. Thej who remained within, finding that their companions did not return, quitted the vessel with many lamentations, and called continually on the name of Xisthrus. Him they saw no more ; but they could distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due regard to religion ; and likewise inform them that it was on account of his piety that he was translated to live with the gods ; that his wife and daugliter and the pilot had obtained the same honor. To this he added that they should return to Babylonia ; and, as it was ordained, search for the writings at Sippara, which they were to make known to all mankind : moreover, that the place wherein they then were, w^as the land of Armenia. The rest having heard these words, offered sacrifices to the gods ; and taking a circuit, journeyed towards Eabylonia. The vessel being thus stranded in Armenia, some part of it yet remains in the Corcyraean mountains of Armenia ; and the people scrape oft' the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and make use of it by way of an alexipharmic and amulet. And when they had returned to Babylon, and had found the writ- ings at Sippara, they built cities and erected temples ; and Babylon was thus inhabited again. ^ Another version of the story is given by Abydenus, and quoted also by Syncellus and Eusebius. In both * Syncel. Chron. 28. Euseb. Chron. 5. 8. — Cory's Ancient Frag- ments, 29. 38 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. copies it IS obviously colored by contact with Greek ideas and mythology. Nor is it certain how much of its substance is due to the knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures on the part of Berosus himself, or of the sources from which he drew, or what it may have re- ceived from the Christian authors among whose quota- tions we find it. In Greece the story of Deucalion presents some of the same features. When Zeus had resolved to destroy the degenerate race of men who inhabited the earth, Deucalion, on the advice of his father, Prometheus, built a ship, and carried into it stores of provisions ; and when Zeus poured rain from heaven, and '' sent a flood all over Hellas, which destroyed all its inhabi- tants, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha alone were saved. After their ship had been floating about for nine days, it landed, according to the common tradition, on Mount Parnassus.'' Other versions refer the scene of the land- ing -to other mountains, and by a reckless inconsistency represent some people as saved by climbing various mountains. " When the waters had subsided, Deuca- lion ofl'ered up a sacriflce to Zeus, the helper of fugi- tives." Through Deucalion and Pyrrha the human race was restored, not in a natural but supernatural way, by throwing stones behind them. That last part of the story is nothing but a pla}^ upon the Greek word laas, a stone, in its resemblance to laos, people, the fancy of an ignorant etymology. The substantial story is ancient, part of it being cited by Pindar."^ It ^ Olympics ix. 64. etc. VII. THE DELUGE. 39 is meutioned more fully by Apollodorns,* and the Scholiast on Pindar. And its resemblance to the flood of ]N^oah is obvious. Its inconsistencies mark it as having existed in several local traditions. The story of the deluge with several of its pecu- liar features was found among the aboriginal Mexicans and Peruvians, though varying somewhat as told by their different nations. The tradition of the Mechoa- caneses, a Mexican people, was that in the termination of the first age of the world by a universal deluge, " Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel, w4th his wife, his children, and many animals, and such seeds as were necessary for the subsistence of mankind. When the Great Spirit ordered tlie waters to subside, Tezpi sent out of the ark a vulture. That bird, which lived on dead bodies, did not come back, on account of the great number of corpses scattered on the recently dried earth. Tezpi sent other birds, among whom the hum- ming bird alone returned, holding in its mouth a branch with leaves. Then Tezpi seeing that the soil w^as beginning to be covered with new verdure, came out of his ship, on- the mountain Colhuacan." f Similar traditions, though less definite and complete, are to be found among Celtic and Sclavonian antiqui- ties, among Phrygians and Kalmucks, and w^ere even met with by early visitors to this country among some of the barbarous aborigines. In Egypt and other countries of Africa the case is * Lib. i. 7. f Humboldt Monuments of tlie indigenous people of America, vol. ii. p. 77. as quoted by Lenormant. 40 COMPAEATIVE EELTGION. different. Egypt, in her own monuments and in tlie royal lists of Manetho, gives no intimation that she knew of any flood, save that of her annual blessing from the Nile. In the Chinese historic classic there is much recorded about floods, destructive and far spreading ; but they are due merely to the swelling of the great rivers, and are checked by the efforts of skihYil and laborious engineering. Kecords, or traditions of a universal deluge, are not retained in all nations, but are so widely spread among those lying near the original homestead of the race, and even by some of the furthest removed, and pre- sent, in so many places, the same peculiar features, that, whatever difficulties may exist in the case, the only reasonable explanation of them is that they all take their rise from one and the same great fact. As to explanation of the flood, by what means it was brought about, how far it extended, how it rose, and what changes it wrought upon the upper strata of the earth, it belongs to physical geography. There are various classes of opinion about it. First are the theories wdiich identify it with some geological revolution, such as the immense irruption of waters, with icebergs and boulders, from the north, which closed the tertiary period. Second, the opinion that it was a local catastrophe, limited to the part of the earth which was then the residence- of the human race ; but extending to all that. Third, the opinion that it consisted of different lo- cal floods occurring in different countries at different periods, and in some countries not at all. VII. — THE DELUGE. 41 Fourth, those who hold to the existence of pre- Adamite races argue that the flood extended to only the settlements of the Adamite. Because the \Yriter of that part of Genesis, speaking of the people who were "swallowed up by the deluge, calls them Haad- am, Adamite mankind." The Ish was the earlier cre- ated physical man. The Adamite was created a nobler race to govern and civilize, and be as a god upon the earth. When it sunk into sin, it did not answer the purpose of its being, and was destroyed, to give place to the better part of it alone, which should be a ruler, but on a lower level. The Adam, not the Ish, suffered in the flood. And fifth, is the traditional interpretation of He- brew scripture, that the flood covered the whole earth, and involved in its calamity all the inhabitants of the dry land with exception of only those saved in tlie ark. CHAPTEE 11. I. RELIGION AMONG THE NEW POPULATION. When the family of l^oah descended from the ark, it was to find the earth changed in appearance, ploughed and furrowed by the action of the flood, and in many places still saturated with its slowly receding waters. Although the surface of the ground, as it met the eye from the resting-place of the ark, was comparatively dry, numerous lakes still glistened in the bosom of the valleys, and on the concavities of the plains, and the low country, to a large extent, was deep and uninhab- itable marsh. Only upon the slopes of the uplands was the soil yet prepared for the comfortable and healthful residence of man. Providence had accordingly assigned as the land- ing place, not the summit of an inaccessible and snow- covered peak, as asserted in a most absurd tradition, but some part of a mountainous country, upon the de- clivities of which the soil was fast taking its covering of green and tender herbage for the long-imprisoned cattle, and was already fitted for culture at the hands of man. That country is in the primitive record call- ed Ararat. But the boundaries of Ararat, as under- stood when the eighth chapter of Genesis was written, I. EELIG-ION AMOXG THE NEW POPULATION. 43 are not stated. I^o passage of scripture goes further than the eightli chapter of Genesis to determine its locality. The Septuagint version leaves the name un- changed ; the Chaldee and Syriac render it Kardu, and the Latin Yulgate, Armenia. In the renderings, most weight is to be attached to the Clialdee. It is plain that in the Hebrew, the name Ararat was applied to the mountainous country lying on, and to the east of the Tigris, and constituting, in that quarter, the -west- ern frontiers of the great plateau- of Iran. It was as they journeyed " from the east,'' that the new popula- tion subsequently came to the plain of Shinar; a statement which stands in conflict with no other pas- sage of the sacred record, and can create difficulty only to the advocates of a fable. The tradition that the ark rested upon the. summit of Mount Massis in Armenia is not difficult to account for, were it not so absurd in itself. . In that mountain land to some part of which the scripture narrative un- doubtedly refers, Armenia contains the highest moun- tains, and of these the most elevated peak is the Mas- sis. Now as the flood Avas over all the earth, and the highest mountains were covered, it was assumed that the place for the ark to land must be the part which was*lirst dry, — the top of the highest mountain in the then known world. But those who framed the tradi- tion overlooked some serious objections, among others the difficulty of descending that particular mountain, especially for some of the animals, as horses, cows, elephants, hogs, and others not very sure-footed on steep and slippery places. Mount Massis is more than 44 COMPARATIVE KELTGIOK. seventeen thousand feet high, — two thousand feet higher than Mont Blanc, — covered with perpetual ice, and snow, for three miles from the summit down- ward by the least arduous steep, and so difficult to traverse, that until 1829, when it was ascended by Prof. Parrot, the top had never been reached within the memory of man. At that altitude, the cold would have been fatal to many of the animals contained in the ark, and without abundant fuel, every liquid would have been frozen solid. But the ark, according to the story, remained with all its cargo in that position about half a year. One would think that Noah must have regretted the departure of the flood. His easiest way of getting down would have been on the bosom of its subsiding waters. Scripture makes no mention of a mountain called Ararat, nor of any other mountain, on which- the ark rested. Ararat is always in scripture the name of a country, over the mountains of which the ark first came to rest, or on some one of which it finally landed. Neither is the Massis called Ararat by the people of the country where it stands. That name is given it only by believers in the tradition. Prof. Parrot tak- ing it to be scripture, admits that '' an Armenian, though from the holy mountain himself, if asked a^out Ararat, would appear as ignorant as a European inter- rogated respecting Massis." * All traditions of the flood mention the landing of the ark on a mountain, some of them reasonably, and some of them unreason- ably high ; but this which has been palmed upon * Parrot's Journey to Ararat, Chapter vii. I. RELIGION AMONG THE NEW POPULATION. 45 Armenia, and founded upon a blunder in the reading of scripture, transcends to a degree which is hidicrous. Xoah, upon descending from the ark, built an altar, and oifered a burnt offering thereon : and the Lord accepted it as worship ; another feature which the traditions have retained. So much, and doubtless more, was brought from tlie antediluvian world. It implied the fundamental elements of all religion ; namely, confession of sin, and trust for salvation in the meaning of sacrifice, and approach to God in prayer thereby. But in addition thereto, and on that basis, God now entered into a new covenant with man, the terms of which comprehended grants, commands and promises. I. The first head pertained to man's use of the earth and inferior creatures. First the grant of domin- ion in the earth was renewed ; but was henceforth to be exercised over animals by inspiring them with fear ; second, permission was given to use animal food, but not with the blood. II. The commands pertained to the preservation of the human race. First, the command to multiply and replenish the earth was renewed. Second, a special declaration was issued that every man should be held under obligation to care for the life of his neighbor, and defend it against violence. Third, sentence was pronounced against the shedder of human blood, that by man should his blood be shed. III. The promises were such as to give confidence in the order of nature. 4:6 COMPARATIVE EELIGIOX. First, God promised not to curse the ground any more for man's sake : Second, not to smite again all living creatures, as had been done in the flood : and Third, that the order of the seasons should con- tinue undisturbed. lY. And finally, God pointed to the rainbow as a pledge, declaring that as sure as that inevitable sign appeared in the cloud, so sure was the promise tliat a flood of water should not again destroy all the inhabi- tants of earth. God made known his will by revealing himself to the patriarch, who thereby became the depositary of di- vine truth, and its prophet. In offering sacrifice IS^'oah performed duties which were acceptable to God. He was therefore also its legitimate priest. And being the head of the race descended from him, as to its civil government, the patriarch united in himself all the three offices of religion, instruction and government, at once priest, prophet and king. The covenant was one in which the long suffering of God was more fully manifested as added to the promise made to Adam after the fall ; and for man it introduced a state of larger toleration and privilege ; and it was made with Noah for all the world of its day. The circumstances, in which the new history opens, are more favorable for another reason, that the abandoned race of Cain exist no more. Mankind re- commenced with one pious family brought up in the knowledge of the Lord God of heaven and earth. There was no plurality of gods, nor diversity of creed II. THE DISPEKSION. 47 or of worship in tlie family of Xoah. The curse pro- nounced npon Canaan was not for any dissent from the faith of his (grandfather recorded ao^ainst him, thouo^h why upon him rather than upon liis father or any oth- er of his fatlier's children is not mentioned. The occa- sion which led to it was a moral not a religious fault. As appears from the language of the ancient rec- ord, the first residence of man, after the flood was to the eastward more or less directly, of Babylon, and in a mountainous country. And it would seem that they had remained there for a considerable time. For upon the migration into Shinar, they are mentioned in terms which imply a large population. Inhabitants of the dry countries had no motive to tempt the unhealthy marshes until their numbers became inconveniently great. Scripture states explicitly that the settlers of Shinar, that is of the two rivers in Babylonia, and who were both Hamitic and Semitic, came there from the east. And otherwise it is determined that the Japhetic settlements set off from the same quarter, namely, the highlands, or tableland of Iran. In this respect, the Hebrew narrative is entirely consistent with itself, with primitive traditions of other countries and with ethnological science. II. THE DISPEESION". From the words applied to the journeyings of the family of ]N"oah, it appears that the state of society, in the period which intervened between their 48 COMPAEATIVE RELIGION. descending from the ark and their settling in Shinar, was nomadic. Upon the pastures of the uplands they had pursued that kind of life, which is almost unavoidable there. But when in the course of their removals, they came upon the broad and fertile plains of the lower Euphrates and Tigris, they determined to migrate no more. Still, in such a low country, the fear of another deluge rose before them, and in building their city they conceived also the design of erecting a mountainous tower, whose top should reach to heaven, and by which they should also make themselves a name. The original bond of society had not yet been broken ; they were still one family of one language and one dialect. Nor was that original unity dissolved, that original tongue divided, until the opening of the fourth or fifth generation, if not later. Most of the colonies, by which that unity was broken up, either took the names of the patriarchs who respectively headed them, or at a later time reflected their own names back upon their founders. In some cases the names thus given, remain with little change to the present. Asshur is still known in history as Assyria ; the country chosen by Canaan and his follow- ers long retained his name, or that which he derived from it, and the founder of Egypt was remem- bered only by that under which his country rose to fame. The dispersion was occasioned as well as attended by a growing diversity of languages. Unity of pur- pose was thereby broken up, and people grouped them- selves into parties, according as they imderstood one n. THE DISPERSIOIT. 4:9 another most readily. In the first embarrassment and alarm created by diverging languages, men could not conceive of the devices, which since have been adopted for obviating the difficulty. They could see in it only the purpose of an angry God to separate them and break up their common designs. Under the impulse of that mysterious dread, most of them withdrew from the place marked by divine wrath, and that in differ- ent directions, grouping themselves according to their dialects. Some, in pursuit of arable lands, followed the rivers into northern Assyria, Mesopotamia and Ar- menia ; others, seeking pasture for their cattle, spread more extensively over the country eastward and west- ward, into Persia and Media, and central Asia on one hand, and into Syria and Arabia, on the other, while vift-ious groups pursued the coasts of the adjoining seas. As to the three great branches of mankind and the line of their dispersion, the meaning of the sacred writer is put beyond doubt by some of the names. That the Ham- itic went chiefly to the south, south-east, and south-west, appears from the names Cush (Ethiopia) Canaan, and Mizraim (Egypt), being classed among the countries settled by sons of Ham. And that the writer refers the Japhetic to the east, north and north-west is equally plain from names of subsequent historical nations, Madai, Gomer, (Kumr, otherwise, Kimber), Meshech, (Mosc) and Javan, (Ion) ; that is, the people among whom the Modes were anciently the most conspicuous, the group, namely on the plateau of Iran, the Celtic ra- ces, among whom the Kimbri were anciently eponymous, the people who gave their name to Moscovia, and Mos-. 3 50 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. COW, and the lonians, by which name the Greeks were known in the east. The two larger divisions of the race were those of Ham and Japhet. The former retained possession of Babylonia, occupied Syria and Egypt, with the inter- vening deserts of Arabia, and pushed on towards Ethiopia and the interior of Africa. The latter held the broad original homestead of Iran, and extended gradually northward and eastward, on one hand to- wards India and China, and on the other, by way of the northwest into Europe. Comparatively small, the Semitic branch of the race had its abode chiefly within the settlements of Ham and regions lying between those of Ham and Japhet. But for at least a thousand years, the Shemites were of little note among the powers of the time. It w^as by the sons of Ham that the earliest civilization of the post-diluvian world, — that which had its origin in the religion of ^N'oah — was conducted."^ The family of Japhet wandered far away, lost many of the features of civilized life, and remained unrecorded for long succeeding centuries. Many subdivisions of the race are lost to the eye of his- tory entirely ; others re-appear at a great distance of time ; but whenever an historical view of the world, or of any part of it, is obtained, its ethnological charac- ter and traditions of migration correspond in the main to the record of dispersion in the tenth chapter of * When the tenth chapter of Genesis was written, they were the most important branch of mankind. The author of that treatise gives as much room to his account of their settlements as to those of all the rest of mankind. II. — THE DISPERSION. 61 Genesis, the most valuable ethnological treatise of ancient times. Such, in brief, is the Hebrew outline of primitive patriarchal history. iS"one of the other sacred books brings a narrative down from so early a date. Of ancient testimonies, next after the Hebrew, the historic classic of China is the clearest. It does not extend to an antiquity equal to the tenth chapter of Genesis ; but there is about it, as well as in it, some- thing which challenges comparison at this point. According to the Hebrew, the dispersion of man- kind took place immediately after the diversity in lan- guages began. Those groups which remained on the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, and those which removed to the west and southwest, formed their new languages on a triliteral basis. The colonies which went to the east, and afterwards branched off in va- rious directions to the northeast and northwest, are fouud in the use of lano^ua^es constructed of mono- syllables. Many of them became polysyllabic to a high degree, and differed among themselves in that some combined their syllables more organically than others, but whatever the structure, loose or compact, it is built up entirely with monosyllables, which in the meanings they retain bear more or less distinct traces of having once been in use as separate words. It would appear, accordingly, that the languages of that class have at one time been entirely monosyllabic, or that they have grown out of a more ancient mono- syllabic tongue. The Chinese retained, at the date of its earliest books, as it still retains, a monosyllabic vo- 52 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. cabulary and grammar, such, as must have belonged also to the rest of the eastward lying nations, until after the process of confusion had made some progress among them. If soon after the confusion of languages, the Chi- nese emigration had moved off on their long march through central Asia, they would have carried with them a language certainly nearer the purely monosyl- labic than many of their eastern neighbors afterwards constructed, in fact, a language just such as they have always had and have to this day. Secondly, from the oldest parts of the historic classic it appears that the Chinese people entered the land they occupy by coming from the northwest, and descending the valley of the Whang-ITo ; on the north side of which their strength still rested until a date later than that of the first events recounted in the clas- sic. If they did come from that original home of na- tions speaking languages on the monosyllabic basis, namely the hill country of Western Persia, by succes- sive removals through the great gateway of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and thence across the central plateau of Asia, their entrance into China would have been by the route on which they actually first appear in that land. There the Chinese people, to whom the clas- sics belong, found a race of earlier settlers whose lan- guage, if not the same, was of the same structure. For that people subsequently blended with the Chi- nese, without in the least degree altering the monosyl- labic structure of their lanoruaore. Thirdly, the patriarchal government and style of II. THE DISPERSION. 63 worship are as like those recorded in the eleventh and some of the succeeding chapters of Genesis, as if they had both sprung from a common origin, at a' very near remove. The ancient religion of China, as it appears in the earlier parts of the Shoo-King, was of the same type with that observed among the descendants of Noah on the banks of the Euphrates ; but has no trace of acquaintance with the call of Abraham, nor of the type of language which by that latter date had arisen in Western Asia. There is reasonable probability that the Chinese were among the earliest to set out from the original community of the whole, carrying with them the Noachic style of worship, of govern- ment, and of instruction, and a language very near to the original type of human speech among the eastward emio^ratino^ tribes. Of the Aryan race in the earlier time, when they all lived on the plateau of Iran, we have no history, no literature, but in the languages spoken by their de- scendants there have been discovered monuments more enduring and more reliable than those inscribed upon granite. Among many other things touchiug their way of life, arts and occupations, we learn that '' they worshipped the heaven and the earth, the sun, fire, water, wind ; but there are also plain traces of an earlier monotheism, from which this nature-wor- yhip proceeded.'' If the comparative tables in Bunsen's fifth volume of Egypt's place in general history are correct, and one third of the old Egyptian words in Coptic literature are Semitic, and a tenth part Indo-European, that is 54 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. Aryan, there is a probability that the Egyptian people who were Hamites, had continued to be members of the one community in which the Semitic, Hamitic and Aryan still lived in each other's neighborhood, for some time after the division of lana^uac^es beoran. We have no knowledge of Greece at so early a date. But her language is Aryan, and her religion, when it does appear, consists of elements both Aryan and Egyptian. III. NOACniC TYPE OF WORSHIP. "With a full knowledge of the foregoing religion did the sons of l^oah begin the new history of the world. So much was implied in the terms of the covenant then made. In as far as they were pious men, they shunned the vices, to the sight or knowledge of which they had been accustomed ; but all the elements of social culture, with which they began the new world they of course brought with them from the old. In terms of the Hebrew scriptures the period which falls under the covenant with Noah was marked by certain features belonging to all nations from China to Egypt, as far as we know about them. Its religious services were sacrifice and prayer, observed in the ut- most simplicity. The duty of conducting the religious exercises rested with the head of the family, the chief of the tribe, or the king of the nation ; and the same person received the expression of the divine will and III. NOACHIC TYPE OF WOKSHIP. 55 made it known to others. He was at once the priest, the prophet and the ruler of his people. On the basis of monotheism it presents everywhere a more or less advanced belief that God exists in many persons. It had some variation of meaning, no doubt, to different minds, but in all its principal elements the same wor- ship was observed in the same way, addressed to the same object, and mediately to some of the same divine persons, and by men of the same rank in society, among the Chinese while yet on the upper Whang- Ho ; among the Aryan race before they had separated or sent out their European or Indian colonies, among the herdsmen of Mesopotamia and Canaan, among the farmers of Shinar and Egypt, and among the trades- men and merchants of Sidon. It is the patriarchal style of religion and culture as it is presented by the Hebrew scriptures in the family of Xoah. The subsequent course of ancient religious history divides itself into three periods : first, that of which we are now speaking, under the covenant with Koah, marked everywhere by such features as in Genesis are assigned to the Noachic society and religion. In Hebrew history this period is subdivided by the call of Abraham, with whom a new and special covenant is made, forming the starting point of Hebrew history proper. The second period is characterized by the develop- ment of the patriarchal worship into a legal ritual, and more definitely marked by the uprising in certain quarters of reformers whose aim was to reclaim religion from its increasino^ errors and brino- men back to more &6 COMPAEATITE RELIGION. intimate communion with God. "Without being able to assign a precise date to that reformation, it may be enough to say that it occurred somewhere about fifteen hundred years before Christ. The third period commenced in Western Asia in the downfall of the Hamitic and Semitic monarchies and the rise of the Japhetic, and in China and India with great religious revolutions not less momentous. As far as patriarchal history is the history of the human race, the Hebrew narrative pursues it no fur- ther than the dispersion. Its proper subject being the history of the promise, and the progi'essive unfold- ing of the promise, it abandons everything w^hich be- comes disconnected with that line of progress. Main- taining its own connection by a genealogical list, it passes rapidly over a long series of ages, to dwell fully upon the family to which the next revelation of prom- ise is made. Hebrew history furnishes in the main the best guide to universal history and chronology, but only incidentally. In its genealogies, not chronol ogy, but connection of family descent is the object in view : and when events in the history of the prom- ise do not require it, nothing is said of the state of the world. During those periods when error reigned to such an extent as to almost extinguish purity of wor- ship, Hebrew narrative is silent, and satisfies its own conditions in simply keeping up the connection by a list of the more important names in the ancestry of him in whom the next stage of its progress 0|>ens. Thus, from Seth to Xoah, the first great declension ; from the dispersion to Abraham, the declension under the ni. XOACHIC TYPE OF WOESHIP. 57 Noachic covenant ; from Joseph to Moses, that under the Abrahamic, and from Malachi to Christ, the depth of declension under the Mosaic, are all gaps in the his- tory-, bridged over by their respective genealogical lists ; the lists regularly standing at the head of the succeed- ing epoch of revelation and revival of promise. Every people which alienated itself from the interests of that promise was dropped from the record. The family of Cain, after Lamech, the descendants of Ishmael, and of Abraham's sons by Keturah, the ten tribes when they had become irretrievably corrupt, and the cap- tives of Judah, who preferred a heathen prosperity to a restoration of their nationality and the hope of its promise, all disappear from the narrative, which fol- lows faithfully and safely the footsteps of its own inva- riable theme. I^atural knowledge Hebrew scripture leaves to be acquired by natural means. Addressing itself to the common understanding of men in the common diction of men, it never turns aside from its subject into either antiquarian or scientific digression. 3* CHAPTER III. INNOVATION. I. POWER OF EXTERNAL NATURE OVER MAN. The first dispensation of Divine mercj, after the flood, was committed to all mankind. In the order of nature, one can see no reason why it should not have been preserved in its integrity among the Aryan na- tions and the Chinese, as well as among the people of Palestine. As matter of fact, we have testimony that it did maintain its identity, in all those quarters, up to the verge of the earliest heathen scriptures. That testimony is the scriptures themselves. The truth of the Hebrew statement is abundantly sustained by the type of religion, which those ancient books present by the more or less advanced innovations upon it, and in the nature of these changes. Innovation made its way among all, but among some with greater rapidity, and to greater length than among others. About the time of Abraham, all na- tions of whom we read had, without altering the type of religion, introduced more or less variation upon it, not in the way of diminishing ceremonial, but of add- ing. At the nearest remove were the nations of Canaan and the Chinese ; further off were the Aryans, I. POWER OF EXTERNAL NATURE OVER MAN. 59 especially the Hindus ; and most advanced were the Egyptians and Babylonians. Debasement of the primitive idea of God was first brought about by the disposition of man to yield to the influences of nature upon him, and to pay extravagant honors to the memory of the great and powerful of his own kind. The most generally pervading, and con- tinually present was the former ; the latter gradually increased in process of time. Before man had become sensible of his own control over much of the material world, its effect upon his imagination, and consequently u]3on his style of life, must have added largely to the bounds of its necessary dominion over him. Everything, as it still is to child- hood, was wonderful, the working of the presence of a hidden intelligence. Life and death, vegetation and decay, day and night, mountains, rivers, groves, and the vast and ever restless sea, the moon, the stars, and above all, the great and glorious sun, rising every morning from beneath the earth like the conflagration of a world, and spreading day around him, in his career through the sky, until he went down in the blaze of a splendor like that in which he rose, inspiring life by his presence and seeming half to withdraw it at his de- parture, aff'ected the early ages of mankind with amaze- ment and admiration. And flre, in its miraculous springing into intense and resplendent existence and destructive activity from apparent nothing, and its equally wonderful vanishing, when its food was de- voured, appeared to them like a visitor from an unseen world. It impressed them with gratitude by the com- 60 COMPARATIVE KELIGION, fort it conferred; in the absence of the sun, bv its pow- er to soften the hardest metal, and become their ser- vant in the arts ; and \Yith terror, bj its desolating and maniac fury, when transcending their control, it avenged itself of the servitude. So natural must it have been for unscientific man to fall into tlie worship of such objects, that nothing but the actual theophany of a spiritual Creator, to w^hom all belonged, as the workmanship of his own hands, would seem to have been able to lift the adoration of man above the won- ders of the world in which he was placed. And if we find, as we do, that many centuries after the flood some still worshipped the Creator in truth, we may in- fer that primitive revelation had been very deeply im- pressed upon their faith, and that they had been quite as tenacious of it as later generations proved to be of the Gospel of Jesus. But notwithstanding every pre- caution, it necessarily occurred that the language in which man spoke of God w^as largely drawn from im- agery of the natural world. And, from the very lack of other words, such figures retained their place as ex- pressing simple ideas in his speech. II. INCIPIENT MYTHOLOGY. Of all natural objects, the earliest to be accepted, and the most extensively used to express the concep- tion of Divine glory was the Sun. Into that practice all the ancient historical nations of the Orient seem to II. INCIPIENT MYTHOLOGY. 61 have fallen, earlier or later, for a longer or a shorter time. ■ So prevalent was the practice in the second millennium before Christ that all the education and national institutions of the Jews, expressly designed to counteract it, were only partially successful. Such a figurative representation of God once adopted, the course of degeneracy was inevitable, when men were left to follow their natural bent. The sym- bol, in the course of time, took the place of the thing signified and became God in the belief of the common worshipper. That last step when firmly taken, rendered inevi- table in the progress of thought, the conception of a duality of eternal powers, or a plurality of subordi- nate deities. The sun is not always in the heavens. He divides the time with darkness. And the associa- tion of darkness with evil, is as natural to the mind of man as that of light with good. Thus the doctrine of a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness, be- ing respectively also those of good and evil, took its place in the theology of some countries. ■ Others went further and to the sun added the moon and stars, or some of the stars, as inferior gods, ruling the heaven during his absence, and conceiving of the moon as feminine. Thus the ancient Syrians had their king and queen of heaven and the Greeks their Helius and Selene. It was entirely in accordance with this turn of mind to add also certain objects upon earth, as repre- senting the Deity there. Of all things upon earth the most wonderful, most like the work of a present crea- 62 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. tor were fire, generation, and vegetable growth : and symbols were chosen accordingly. As to hero worship, it does not appear that men were, in the days of ancient simplicity, deilied during their life-time. Only when great benefits were thought to have accrued from their labors or their wisdom, and a long lapse of years had removed their weaknesses and errors from view, could men be so ele- vated in the opinions of their fellow-men. The ser- vile adulation, which in long subsequent ages could confer apotheosis npon a living monarch, belongs to an entirely different category. The proto-patriarchs, heads of the great branches of the race, were the first to enjoy that questionable honor, whereby their his- torical identity was merged in mythological fable. For many ages honored as the founders of their re- spective ethnic groups, as their actual place in tradition became less clearly nnderstood, and the ideas of Deity more mixed with those of its created representatives, they were gradually assigned to a place among objects of worship. Thus Ham, Phut, Japhet and Asshur, in after times, were almost entirely lost sight of in the array of divine attributes ascribed to them by their respective descendants. Deification of men was not a large element of ancient polytheism, and the belief that it was such belongs to a date when^ mythology was much degraded. In the Oriental world the great- est of the gods were throughout the whole of what we have defined as the ancient period, taken from the great objects of nature ; but latterly disguised by com- bination with meaner things. II. INCIPIENT MYTHOLOGY. 63 In some cases hero worship inerged in nature wor- ship. While the name of the hero was retained, the symbols were natural objects, and his attributes were drawn from nature. Asshur the proto-patriarch of Assyria, was regarded in that country with the highest religious veneration, but his common symbol was the circle, or sign of the sun. In this process, the earlier part of the transition from pure monotheism is marked by bold figurative language touching objects of nature ; much of it not more than a vivid poetic imagination might indulge in without blame, but also sometimes carrying the per- fionitication so far as to amount to idolatry ; the two being often so combined in the same production, that it is difficult to say which was uppermost in the poet's thought. To this first stage many of the early hymns of the Yeda belong. Others present the features of a more matured mythology. The latter stage is that which appears on the monuments of Nineveh, with the addition of an array of subordinate mythological be- ings. The oldest monuments of Egypt testify to a still further progress in the same march of idolatry. And the ancient Chinese classic identifies the one only God, whom it recognizes, with the heaven in which he was thought to dwell. Civilization has its effect upon the degree of faith in a creed, but is no security for truth in its doctrines, or for purity in its practice. The noblest religion has been found in a nomadic family, and the basest super- stition established bv law in the seats of fashionable 64 COMPAKATIYE RELIGION. culture. Herdsmen of Mesopotamia and of Iran wor- ship the unseen God with sacrifice and song and praj^or, the learned Chaldeans seek him through im- ages and multiplication of rites, while the boasted wisdom of Egypt sinks the lowest into a degrading polytheism. And yet the history of religion is bound up in the heart of the best society. The history of the best religion is the history of the highest and truest civilization. The settlers on the Nile, those in Syria, on the Euphrates and Tigris, and in China, the herdsmen of Arabia and of Iran, all alike at one time, adored one God, whom they believed to be resident in heaven, and thence to exercise his sovereignty over all. But the Aryan branch contemplated him as manifesting himself in nature, and described natural objects as present Deity ; the Chinese thought of him as a pater- nal power in heaven, and associated his worship with the duty of veneration for parents; while the nations of western civilization conceived of deity as embodied in human nature, and through human nature as ex- tending to the rest of the animate and to the inani- mate creation. The original error of the Aryan was almost pure nature worship ; of the Chinese, an idol- atrous veneration tending to worship of ancestors, not without some elements of nature worship ; while in the west of Asia it was the tendency to pay divine honors to the proto-patriarchs, and to ascribe to them as gods, all the various operations of nature. The Aryan finding God everywhere in the natural world, imperceptibly merged into a pantheism which in its II. INCIPIENT MYTHOLOGY. 65 early history is hardly distinguishable from the doc- trine of divine omnipresence, and is the fountain of much fascinating poetry ; the Chinese sank into a prosaic worship of their deceased parents, and the identification of God with the visible heaven, while the Egyptian instituted a process of religious thought which, from blending the divine with the human, and holding to the community of human souls with the brute, led down not only to polytheism, but also di- rectly to the basest idolatry. In the history of Greek religion there are several stages. The earliest on record was a pure nature wor- ship, in which the divine beings were all symbolical of things in nature; and their actions were simple al- legory. Thus, Chaos and I^iglit were half personifica- tions of the confusion and darkness, in which it was believed that the materials of the universe lay before the earth came into shape. Such also were Heaven, Earth, Erebus, Love, JEther, Day, Sky, Mountains, Sea, Ocean, Helius (the Sun), Selene (the Moon), Aurora (the dawn), and their offspring, streams, woods, sea- sons and various products of the soil. In that stage, the mythology of Greece was of the same class with that of the Hindu, in the Kig-Yeda. Its gods were the same, and some of the names were identical. Duiing their long migration from the home of their Aryan forefathers, the Hellenic people had retained at least the substance of their Aryan religion. Some- thing had been added, and something had been lost, before they settled on the shores of the ^gean ; but the system was still the same, and tradition, as late as 66 COMPARATIVE KELTGION. the time of Hesiod, retained the true Yedic pantheon, with little change, except in some of the names. Yaruna and Onranus are identical, so Eos and Ushas differ little in sound, and nothing in meaning, the su- preme name Djaus is one with Zeus, and the compound Dyaus-Pitar with Zeus-pater, the Latin Jupiter. And in both systems alike it is clear that powers of nature are regarded as manifestations of divine attributes ; that in or behind all natural things resides the efficiency of godhead. III. EITUALISM. The figurative language used of God and the sym- bols of his attributes, in process of time, took the place of their pro])er meaning in the minds of worshippers. Sacrifice became a ceremonial effectual in itself, and prayer and praise, acts of piety, esteemed as good works, acceptable with God, and making the offerer acceptable, if rightly performed. Accordingly, the ut- most importance came to attach to rightly composed prayer, and to the right pronunciation of every word of the prayers, which had been accepted as the best for each occasion, to the right attitudes of body, the right kind of offering, and the right juncture of time, until everything became fixed in a sacred and immov- able formula, in regard to which the slightest mistake might be fatal to the whole service. The regularly ordained formalities of the liturgical m. RITUALISM. 67 Yedas, compared witli the simpler family sacrifices of some of the ancient hymns, will mark a step in that pro- gress : and still more fully the informal sacrifices in the open air observed by Abraham and by Jacob, as com- pared with the elaborately prescribed ceremonial of a later period, in both Canaanite and Hebrew history. The same kind of progress will be perceived upon comparing the religious services, mentioned in the early part of the Shoo-king, with the subsequent state ceremonial ; or the simple out-door service of an an- cient Greek chief with the sacerdotal ceremonies after- wards indispensable at a Greek temple. Ritual precision multiplied the duties of worship by conferring vital importance upon every particular. Such carefully composed prayer, and adoration, whether committed to writing or to memory, laid the founda- tion of a sacred literature. The worshipper who felt himself unequal to the task of making his prayers, and performing the ceremonies of worship, as the ritual de- manded, was constrained to employ the services of one better instructed than himself. And such were really the circumstances in which many of the Eig-Yeda hymns were composed, and which gave rise to the fact that, in most cases, the oldest scriptures of a nation, were prayer-hymns. A person eminently gifted in prepar- ing such, had many applications. In some cases that gift was continued from father to son, or to grandson ; thus giving rise to the idea of a prophetic class of persons peculiarly near to God, and enjoying access to his favor, and to a knowledge of his will. In course of the same progress, a sacerdotal class 68 COMPARATIVE RELIGION . became necessary, a body of men who were accurately versed in every punctilio of the service, and could perform every ceremony in its proper place and way, and recite the words aright. Accordingly as all the older scriptures are simply devotional, or historical so the next oldest are ceremonial. Thus the Yajur- Yeda and Sama-A^eda as compared with the Rig-Yeda ; the Yasna and Yispered as compared with the Gathas ; the Shoo-king as compared with the Le-Ke, the book of Genesis, as compared with Leviticus. And with the growth of a sacrificial liturgy, a sacerdotal class became indispensable. In the more remote antiquity there were no tem- ples. Men, who believed in God, believed in his pres- ence everywhere, offered their worship at their own residences, and created their altars on the open ground, or on a journey, wherever they happened to spend the night. An increasing sense of being under the wrath of God, and of distance from God, an impression that earth and time, as connected with man, are unholy, in course of time, wrought the belief that God will not come near to listen to the solicitations of man, except in times set apart as holy, and upon consecrated ground. An area designated by some consecrating ceremonies, constituted the first temple. It was merely a sacred spot in the field, and in the air about it. To surround that spot with a cord, or some other visible boundary, then to erect a tent within its limits for convenience of the person conducting the worship, were historical steps in the history. Thus the Hebrew patriarchs built altars at various places, but we nowhere read of III. ^RITUALISM. 69 them consecrating temples of any kind. Temples first come before the eje of history in heathen not Hebrew records, among the monuments of Egypt and Assyria. Men who walked with God everywhere as did Abra- ham, and received manifestations of his presence by ministry of angels, and visions of the night, w^ere not likely to be the first to conceive of that compromise with a distant Deity, which is the idea of the temple. The same feeling which led to the multiplication of gods from the symbols of divine attributes, suggest- ed the propriety of sacrificing difierent animals to those diflferent gods, according to their respective characters ; and, in the next place, to look upon the victims them- selves as sacred, and entitled to share in the divine honors. The bull and the horse were in several coun- tries held sacred to the sun ; the sacrifice of the latter was the highest of all solemnities ; but that of the former was the most commonly ofiered. As the sun- god was the chief object of worship, so the ox became in all countries, from China to Ethiopia, the most sacred of animals in himself, a symbol of Deity, and in some places an object of adoration. CHAPTEE TV. FUETHEE PROGRESS OF ETHNIC RELIGIONS. I. IN CHINA. When the black-haired people first wended their wa}^ down the valley of the Whang-Ho, they brought with them a religion and customs remarkably similar to those presented in the book of Genesis. That religion, as it appears in their own most ancient litera- ture, taught belief in the God of heaven, whose wor- ship, in prayer and sacrifice, was elevating and puri- fying to the afiections. And those who observed it best were the wisest and the best of men. It was higher than mere morality, but comprehended good morals, as holiness comprehends righteousness. Ques- tion may be raised about the coloring or details of the earliest parts of the historic classic, which treat of the reigns of Yaou and Shun, but not of the principal facts ; to which head the type of their religion belongs. The identity of that religion, in its obvious features, with that of the Hebrew patriarchs, goes far to estab- lish the correspondent antiquity of both. Eeligious history in China from that period down to Confucius exhibits fewer chano;es than the corre- spending history in western Asia, within the same I. EELIGIOUS PROGRESS IN CHINA. 71 time ; and jet the changes which are recorded mani- fest the same general tendency of mind. The decline which occurred in and under the Hea dynasty, who were the successors of King Yu, about 2180 B. C, was in practical morals and neglect of religion, rather than in perversion of doctrine or observance. And yet such iniquity in high places, and so long continued through several reigns, at different periods, during the more than four hundred years of that dynasty which succeeded its second King, could not fail to work an injurious effect upon the people. And reli- gion must have suffered in the corruption of morals. Such is the evil distinctly implied in the Song of the Five Sons, already in the first of those wicked reigns. " There was the prince of T'aou and T'ang, Who possessed this country of K'e, Now we have fallen from his ways. And thrown into confusion his rules and laws." Again in the same song of lamentation : " Brightly intelligent was our ancestor. Sovereign of the myriad states. He had canons, he had rules. Which he transmitted to his posterity. The standard stone, and the equalizing quarter Were in the imperial treasuries. Wildly have we dropt the clue he gave us, Overturning our family and extinguishing our sacrifices." The same thing is implied in Chung-hwuy's an- nouncement to the reformer T'ang by whom the de- generated dynasty was overthrown, when he says that *' Heaven gives birth to the people with such desires 72 CX)MPARATIVE RELIGION. that without a ruler thej must fall into all disorders," and that " the sovereign of Hea had his virtue all-ob- scuredj and the people were as if thej were fallen amid mire and charcoal," And 3^et it appears that part of the people disap23roved of the disorders proceeding from the example of their monarch. In the Hebrew narrative most mention is made of the effect of error upon the state oi religious observances ; in the Chi- nese upon practical morals. But the two are always in their very nature connected. Throughout the Chinese historical classic the observances of worship occupy small space, as compared with moral rectitude. Keli- gion is generally adduced as it shows itself in the con- duct of men. " He who would take care for his end, must be attentive to his beginning. There is estab- lishment for the observers of propriety, and overthrow for the blinded, and wantonly indifferent. To revere and honor the way of Heaven is the way ever to pre- serve the favoring regard of Heaven." Nevertheless, the work of the reforming monarch, T'ang, who overthrew the corrupt Hea dynasty, and set in operation the means of rectifying the many abuses it had introduced, was one that concerned re- ligion as well as moral conduct and wise government. The sacrifices of the national religion had been neg- lected, and disregard of the will of God had entered largely into the conduct of men. There is no sign that the style of the national religion was altered, but the observation of it was neglected. There was an ancient Chinese mytholog}^ but it existed subordinate to their monotheistic faith, as the I. ^RELIGIOUS PROGRESS IN CHINA. 73 Hebrew belief in angels might have co-existed with the worship of Jehovah, had sacrifice to them been practiced. It occupies but small place in the historic classic. The worship of ancestors is of more common occurrence, belonged from the earliest date to the na- tional religion, and was the style of error into which it was most prone to decline. The emblematic figures of the ancients, the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the dragon, and the flowery fowl, which are depicted on the upper garment, the temple-cup, the aquatic grass, the flames, the grains of rice, the hatchet, and the symbol of dis- tinction, which are embroidered on the lower garment, which with the five colors, were painted or embroider- ed on the sacrificial robes of the emperor, had no doubt symbolical meanings in relation to religion ; but they were also signs of rank, and were not used as ob- jects to be worshipped. The directions concerning music, given in the fourth of the books of Yu, had probably something to do with temple service, but they are mentioned in re- lation to the civil government. The disorder, into which these observances fell, belongs probably to the common head of neglected religion, with which the later kings of the Hea dynasty are charged. Whatever may have been the nature and extent of religious declension in that time, the work of the re- former T'ang was as much a religious as a political re- formation. It consisted first of all in restoring the spir- itual and moral service of the one God ; secondly, in setting the example of supreme and humble regard 4 74 COMPARATIVE KELIGIOX. to his will in all things ; and thirdly in punishing the evil-doers. Outside of that revealed promise which brought its believers peculiarly near to God, I find no more spiritually-minded man than the emperor T'ang. The thoroughness of his reformation he signified by calling it a new life, as expressed in the Announce- ment, "Throughout all the states that enter on a new life under me, do not, ye princes, follow lawless ways ; make no approach to insolent dissoluteness ; let every one observe to keep his statutes : — that so we may re- ceive the favor of Heaven." The expression ''new life,'* has not of course, its christian meaning, but it does imply that under the rule of T'ang the states were to begin anew, on a higher and purer principle of conduct. He speaks of the people as in their dis- tress, under previous bad government, appealing to the spirits of heaven and earth ; but he reverences only one God, and makes no mention of any other. It appears, however, that the worship of ancestors and of the spirits had been continued under him, and with greater regularity than before. For it is men- tioned by the wisest and best man of the time, who set up and sustained his successor on the throne that he " kept his eye contiuually upon the bright require- ments of Heaven, and served and obeyed the spirits of heaven and earth, of the land and the grain, and of the ancestral temple — all with reverent veneration." The reign of T'ang fell between the years 1Y65 and 1752 B. C. by the common Chinese chronology, or between 1557 and 1514 B. C. by the shorter canon. II. KELIGIOUS PROGRESS IN EGYPT. 76 II. PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN EGYPT. In Egypt, the religion which covered and controlled all things, bore clear marks of the early ]N'oachic reve- lation, possessing all the great features of it without its purity. By the time of Abraham it had been expanded by the multiplication of symbols and ceremo- nies into a complicated system of idolatry, which still contained within its bosom the original elements of the patriarchal system. '^ To the common mind their religion seems to have become entirely material and sensual. Rigid conser- vatism never retains anything but forms, unless accom- panied by careful instruction, and some freedom of discussion ; and the more severely its rules are enforced, the more shallow it becomes. Spiritual meaning evap- orates insensibly from the best definitions of a creed, unless their discussion is ever renewed, and their exposition insisted on. Much more are rites and cere- monies, formal and sensible things, prone to separate from the meaning which they were designed to em- body. "When men attempt to retain all by mere force of repetition, they will soon be left with nothing but a body from which the soul has departed. A vague but oppressive sense of spiritual domination pervad- ing the whole life of society appears to have been the only apprehension retained by the Egyptian people of the unseen God. The order of their government was to them like that of nature, mysterious, sacred, 76 COMPAIiATIVE RELIGION. and unchangeable in itself. Its autliori tj, whoever might be the reigning king, was recognized as divine. Their religion was a dark and awful mjsterj ; but all that was addressed by it to their understanding were myths, and rites and ceremonies, and material sym- bols, and temples of oppressive gloom; and their notions of the future existence of the soul were con- founded with preservation of the body, and their ideas of a place of blessedness with sepulture in a securely protected tomb. But in these very ritual observances which could not have been introduced without a consistent meaning, we perceive that their religion had at one time taught, and to the better instructed perhaps still taught, the doctrine of one everywhere present and Almighty God, with some conception of revelation by theophany, and of a Providence overruling all things, defending the faithful worshipper, and inflicting punishment upon the wicked. It had taught the immortality of the human soul, and the resurrection of the body ; that there is a future judgment with rewards and punish- ments beyond the grave ; that an atonement is needed for the sinner, and intercession with God by a supe- rior being or beings. Their worship consisted of ofler- ings upon an altar, of fruit, flowers, bread, animals slain, libations of oil, wine, or some other liquid, of incense burning, of prayer, and ascriptions of praise and of adoration. Those services were connected with solemn processions, and music, and the persons who ministered in them were robed in a peculiar manner, and the king, the head of the whole system, II. RELIGIOUS PKOGRESS IN EGYPT. 77 when in his place at the altar, appeared also clothed in the sacerdotal vestments. In the time of the twelfth dynasty of their kings, more than two thousand years before Christ, and be- fore the days of Abraham, the unity of God was still i\ot so far obscured but that each district or great city of Egypt had only its one great object of worship. The union of all the districts into one kingdom con- stituted the primitive polytheism of Egypt. Thus Phtah was God as worshipped in Memphis, Ka, in the holy city of On ; Khem in Khenmiis in the Thebaid, and Amun in the city of Thebes. Phtah was re- garded as the creator of the world ; Khem as the father of men ; Pa was the God of light, represented by the sun, and Amun, as the almighty and inscruta- ble power of Deity. The commonest symbol of God in all parts of Egypt was the sun. It seems to have been conceived of as a sign of the governing power of God. The kings of Egypt always bore an image of the sun's disk upon their seal ; and 'the name of the sun-god, Pa, entered as an element into their royal title, and they were all sons of Pa. Amun was at first the name of God as worshipped in Thebes ; but after the Theban dynasty secured the throne of Egypt, he was accepted over the whole land, in addition to the local deities. For the smaller cities had also their respective gods, who did not so much give place to those of the capital cities and of a more general veneration, as partake with them, or become subjoined to them, under the idea of unity in plurality. Among the gods of inferior rank the most gener- T8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. ally worshipped were Hes and Hesiri, rendered into Greek and Latin as Isis and Osiris. All these were variously combined in later Egyptian mythology, and many additions were made to their number. But they had all assumed their distinctive features befoi-e the time of Abraham. Amun appears in the simpli- city of his name upon the royal seals of the twelfth dynasty. The obelisk of On, a work of the twelfth dynasty, is sacred to Ka ; the original Khem appears ' upon some of the oldest monuments in Egypt ; and Phtah, as the god of Memphis, the old capital, neces- sarily enjoyed the suj^erior honor at an earlier date than Amun. Perhaps enough has now been said to serve the end in view, namely, to show that there was a pro- gress in the multiplication of gods and accumulation of rites in Egypt, and that Egypt, as early as two thousand years before Christ, and in the prime of her civilization, although retaining the fundamental ele- ments of an earlier and better religion, had already sunk them deeply in the corruptions of idolatry. The testimony is depicted by men of that day upon monuments erected by themselves to their own honor. ^ m. A MONOTHEISTIC REVIVAL. It was at that stage of innovation that the earliest recorded testimony against idolatry and polytheism was borne. ISTot a revolution, in the first instance, but in. A MONOTHEISTIC REVIVAL. 79 simply the truthful return of one man, with his family, to the original creed and observances, with an earnest obedience to wliat he learned of the will of God, it was quiet, unostentatious, and entirely void of proselyt- ism. Abraham recommended his faith to tlie world only by good works, by the generous courtesy which attracted the respect of his neighbors, and by the cor- responding spirit which prevailed in his numerous household. At this point the Hebrew narrative is possessed of a special importance in relation not more to the subse- quent history of the Hebrews themselves than to that of the powerful nations, whose religion is inherited from them. In giving the narrative of the Plebrew scriptures substantially as they stand, I assume nothing for them which I do not for the other script- ures, my purpose in botli being to take their own account of themselves and of their religion. The narrative of Genesis which, after the record of dispersion, had contracted to the dimensions of a genealogical list, now expands into a broader channel, not of general history, as before, but of biography. A new dispensation was opening. Both the two pre- .ceding had been addressed to all mankind. This was on a new plan. It was not made with all men, nor committed equally to all ; but with one man and his chosen descendants, for himself and his posterity, with a view to all of the race, who therein should repose their hopes of reconciliation with God. Moreover, it was not made with one of the Hamitic race. They had already enjoyed every facility. The best of the 80 COMPAEATIYE KELTGION. world, and the best means of maintaining and defend- ing the religion of the world in its purity, had be^n committed to their hands, and they were proving un- faithful to the trust. It was made with one man in the descent from Shera, who was called away from the connection of kindred, and set apart to be the father of a new nation. And from the rest of his descend- ants that future nation was to be separated by the singular birth of its founder. It was to spring from that son alone who was given according to promise — born out of the course of nature — tliat the hand of God might not fail to be seen in it. This new covenant was a renovation of the patri- archal, as it was to operate upon a patriarchal state of society. But it contained some new elements of reve- lation ; chiefly the prominence given to faith in the promise to Abraham ; and the greater definiteness of that promise, in proffering special divine favor to the line of his descendants through Isaac, and ultimately through them great blessedness to all the families of the earth. In the first instance the example of Abra- ham and his household appears as a reformation ad- dressed to the then existing world, before society and religion had become so corrupt as to render a peaceful reformation hopeless. It proposed no revolution in society, government, or worship ; only the recognition of the one God in purity, as still known to the patriarchal princes then living, and as now made known in clear- er revelation to Abraham. It testified against poly- theism and idolatry, while true monotheism still had some hold upon the convictions of the better and wiser m. A MONOTHEISTIC REVIVAL. 81 of men. It stood alone in its time. IS'otliing of a like nature occurred elsewhere. Melchizedek, the king of righteousness, is mention- ed at this time as a priest-king under the Noachic re- ligion, who observed it in its purity. He was king of Salem, or of peace, and priest of the Most High God, and evinced his character as a prophet in recognizing tlie Hebrew patriarch as the special servant of the Most High God. His meeting with Abraham is the most interesting fact of that epoch, as touching the juncture of the two economies. Melchizedek is a true representative of that which had existed from the time of Koah; Abraham was the first under one just opening. Abraham pays tithes to a legitimate priest of the time. Melchizedek blesses with prophetic fore- sight the proto-patriarch of a new economy. Melchiz- edek was a priest not by descent in a sacerdotal tribe ; but because, according to existing institutions, univer- sal in the world of his time, he discharged those duties as a prince. ]^o mention is made of his parentage to show his right to exercise the office of priest. His right was declared in the mention of his rank as king. But he was distinguished above others of his day and neighborhood in being priest not of a polytheism nor of an idolatry, nor of a local or inferior deity, but of the Most High God. So far then he is a testimony that among the nations of Canaan some still maintained the knowl- edge of the Most High God in its grand simplicity. The economy thus introduced received more light as it advanced, and before its close we might record the features of its Abrahamic type as follows ; 4* 82 COMPAKATITE RELIGION. First, as in the foregoing and co-existing dispensa- tion, the mode of revelation is by theophanj. The divine will was manifested in the method of calling Abraham and his descendants to their office ; divine knowledge in the revelations committed to them, and divine power by miraculous intervention according to promise. Though prophecies were sometimes uttered, miracles were not wrought by men, but by the imme- diate power of God. Second, the patriarchs believed God to be one, all powerful, holy and just, that all things w^ere crea- ted by him and subject to him. Third, that man created holy, had fallen, was sinful, and under condemnation ; and that they who should obey God, by faith in his promise, should enjoy his favor. Fourth, it does not appear in Genesis what the patri- archs knew, if they knew anything, about the person- ality of a Saviour, as in anyway different from that of the God w^hom they worshipped. Christ said that Abraham saw his day and w^as glad ; but in that we cannot with certainty understand more than that Abraham had foresight of the time when the promised one should actually appear ; nor is it clear that they knew of different personalities in the godhead whom they worshipped ; nor of the resurrection- of the body, of the doctrine of eternal life, or of a state of blessed- ness beyond the grave. Fifth, their worship consisted in prayer and sacri- fice. It is probable that they kept the Sabbath as a day of rest ; but it does not appear that they had any religious exercises set apart for that day. ni. A MONOTHEISTIC KEYIVAL. 83 Sixth, Xow, for the first time, we meet with cir- cumcision, as a sacrament initiatory. Such could not belong to the foregoing economy, because in that all persons were members by right of birth. The only sacrament then was sacrifice. When the condition of faith in a promise to a particular people was establish- ed, then came the second sacrament, standing at the gate of the new economy. Seventh, the head and priest of the family or tribe was to be, not as formerly, the first born son of his father, but the heir of the promise : Isaac, not Ish- mael ; Jacob, not Esau. Eighth, In the families of the Hebrew patriarchs, the civilization proper to nomadic life existed in its highest excellence ; and yet they regarded themselves as only in a transition state, and always looked for- ward to ultimate settlement of their posterity in the promised land. Civilization, even in the midst of growing heathen- ism, retained enough of its divine origin to render valuable service to the new economy. The father of the faithful was saved from contamination of increas- ing errors, by residence in a country where they were comparatively few, and by repeated revelations and promises. So his family until they were fully indoctrinated in their proper mission ; but before they became a nation, they were removed into Egypt, to learn all that existing civilization had to teach, which was needful for their new state of existence. In its initiatory stage, the new economy took that form which coincided with the civil order and struct- 84 COMPAKATIYE RELIGIOX. ure of society in that time. Accordingly, although that part of scripture which treats of it becomes bio- graphical, it falls in with the advancing current of general history. SEMITIC MIGRATIONS. While Egypt was yet in the prime of her early success, under the princes of the twelfth dynasty, and ere the nations of Canaan had reached their matu- rity, a movement of the Shemites of Mesopotamia and of Elam began to set in tow^ards the West. It was an impulse of migration simultaneously actuating all those branches of mankind destined to become the principal leaders of the world. While the best colo- nies of Semitic kindred were successively advancing into Syria and Palestine, the ruling branches of the Aryan stock were taking possession of the islands and peninsulas of Greece, and crossing the Punjab into India ; and the Chinese, after a longer series of migra- tions, commenced at a much earlier date, were ^estab- lishing a regular government on the Eastward sloping plains of Asia. All were taking up their residence where they were destinied to grow into power and do their respective work, about the same period, namely, from two thousand to two thousand and three hundred years before Christ. Meanwhile the Hamites of Baby- lon and Egypt were steadily educating themselves in that culture which ultimately was to carry its lessons out after the pioneer colonies, and become, wherever n'. SEMITIC MIGRATIONS. 85 accepted, the spirit of progressive civilization. Earlier migrations had proceeded in all those directions, as well as in others, but this period is marked by the earliest recorded movements of the great historical races of China, India, Syria, Arabia, and Greece into the countries they were afterwards to rule. The king of Elam carried his conquests as far as Arabia Peti-^ea and the plain of Jordan. Some emigmnt companies penetrated to Mount Sinai and to Egypt, some in the capacity of merchants and artists, but more as herdsmen. From the hill country to the north or northeast, the Chaldees descended upon the plains of Babylon, and by some means secured to themselves the possession of that primitive scat of empire. Among the first Semitic migrations was that of Abraham and Lot, from Ur of the Chaldees into the country of southern Palestine. But Terah, the lather of Abraham, was also on his way westward with all his family, and had got as tar as Ilaran, when he died. The patriarchs seem to have attracted but little atten- tion at the time. Only wealthy herdsmen, their pres- ence in Canaan created neither animosity nor fear. And yet the result proved that they constituted by far the most important branch of the Semitic migration. The earliest seat of power belonging to that race, was Elam. But of its history little is known save what is mentioned of its monarch Chedorlaomer in the book of Genesis. It was originally a small territory lying east of the Persian gulf and lower Euphrates. But its king had at an early day made those of Shinar and some other neighboring countries dependent upon 86 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. liim, or so allied with him as to use their forces for the execution of his designs. With their aid he car- ried his conquests over Northern Arabia to the val- leys of Mount Seir, Moab, and the plain of Jordan. Other branches of the race, by immigration and rapid increase of numbers, prevailed over the inhabitants of Arabia, and reduced the Hamitic states on the bor- ders of Canaan. Their immigration into Egypt, in which they were probably associated with some tribes of Hamitic blood, belonged to the same ethnic move- ment, and was made, like most of the rest of it, at that period, not with violence but by the gradual progress of a nomadic people in pursuit of broader lands, and richer pastures, combined, in some instances, with the enterprise of commerce. The earlier of these Semitic migraJ;ions westward fell in with the later Hamitic, which had been successively pursuing that direction for centuries. Upon a monument of the twelfth Egyptian dy- nasty, a small colony of such Oriental immigrants is presented to Pharaoh, with their humble petition to be allowed to reside in the country. Succeeding colo- nies from the same quarter, and perhaps in the same peaceful spirit, continued to pour into Egypt, age after age, until in the end of the fourteenth dynasty, they had increased to such a degree, and secured such wealth and influence, as to raise one of their number to the throne. That power they held, for several generations, over all Egypt, and at least in the lower country, through three successive dynasties, covering a period of more than five hundred years. IV. SEMITIC MIGRATIONS. 87 In the days when those Shepherd kings were at the summit of their power, Abraham came down into Egypt from Canaan, where he had bnt recently arrived from Mesopotamia. His visit was confined to the eastern border, near Zoan (Tanis) the capital of the Shepherd kings. After a short residence there, he returned to Canaan, where he resided until his death, about one hundred years later. His descendants pro- ceeding from Ishmael and the sons of Keturah spread themselves abroad to the eastward and southward, entering upon the possession of Arabia, while their kinsmen, descended of Lot, seized upon the hill coun- try immediately to the east of the lower valley of the Jordan. His son Isaac continued to reside in Canaan. Soon after Abraham's return from-Egypt^ he and Lot separated, Lot choosing residence in Sodom. Then followed the invasion of Chedorlaomer, the capture of Lot, and his rescue by Abraham and his Canaanitish neighbors ; an enterprise which gave the elder pa- triarch great favor with the native population. Fif- teen or sixteen years later followed the catastrophe which overthrew the cities of the plain. About two hundred years after Abraham's visit to Egypt, Joseph his great grandson was carried thither as a slave, to rise ultimately by a singular series of events to the mightiest place at the same court of Zoan. He was soon followed by his father and breth- ren. And for all the time that the Hebrews were merely a kindred of tribes, that is four hundred and thirty years, they were residents of the land of Egypt. CHAPTEE Y. GROWTH OF LEGALISM UNTIL THE SECOND MONOTHEISTIC KEFOKMATION. The history of Israel was a discipline of faith. In the Patriarchs that grace was implanted, strengthened, and directed by special revelation, and successive prom- ises of things, the gift of which was long delayed. That discipline appears in the call of Abraham, who was to go out from his father's house, not knowing whither he went, to a land that God would show him, with the promise of great favor to himself and his posterity, then in delaying the fulfilment of the promise of pos- terity until by the course of nature, it could no longer be expected ; in the promise to Abraham that his pos- terity should possess the land of Canaan, but not until the lapse of many centuries, during which they should be oppressed, in a land which was not theirs, four hun- dred years ; in the command to sacrifice the heir of the promise, upon whom all the hopes of the elder pa- triarch rested ; in the fewness of the promised race for two hundred years, and in the long , residence, and lat- terly bondage, in Egypt. In the progressive unfolding of the plan of redemp- tion, each new act sets some point of the subject in a new light, fulfilling something in the past, and pre- GROWTH OF LEGALISM. 89 senting a new feature for the exercise of faith, while niakino- clearer somethino^ relatinu' to the one 2:reat ob- ject of faith, the promise to Abraham. There is a comprehensive sjmmetrj in Hebrew history. Abraham is the paternal head of the econo- my through him introduced. As Adam was the head of all mankind by natural generation, and their representative, and as Noah stood to the new world after the flood, so Abraham stands to all who by like faith, shall be saved through the revelation made to him and his seed, to the end of time. Spiritually he is the father of the faithful ; that is, of all who through faith in the promised seed of Abraham shall be bless- ed. In this, which is the full meaning of the promise, the descendants of* Abraham are practically innumera- ble. For the progress of that faith is still distinctly tending towards the fulfilment of the prophecy that the blessing in him shall extend to all nations of the earth. Accordingly, in that quarter, however delayed, there is a progress and a hope of something better to come. In the other great religions of the time, we find no cheering hope, no line of promise, for progress to follow. In a world where polytheism and the rites of idolatrous worship were increasing and gradually solidifying into systems, the Hebrew family alone pre- sents an example of pure family worship of the one God of heaven and earth, without division of divine honors with any other being. 90 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. II. HEBREWS m EGYPT. The residence of the Hebrews in Egypt was chiefly if not solely, in the lower country : and the cities in which they beheld the regal splendor were Zoan, Memphis and On. Some of them continued to follow their pastoral occupations, as long as they enjoyed free- dom of choice, and as the district in which they dwelt bordered upon the desert, they could freely extend the pasturing of their herds as far in that direction as any of them might be disposed to tempt the danger. In- stances are mentioned of some of the Ephraimites com- ing into conflict with the Philistines of Gath, during the lifetime of their father Ephraim. The land which the Egyptians, those most favored sons of Ham, had chosen for their residence, and which was so long and so intimately associated with the history of the Abrahamic people, is a beautiful, well- watered plain, stretching through the desert at the en- trance of Africa, just beyond the isthmus which unites that continent to Asia. Lying along the Nile, it ex- tended from the sea, on the south, as far north as navigation was unimpeded. The rapids of Syene were certainly not reached by the early settlers ; but when settlement did reach that point, it was as- sumed as the southern limit of Egypt. In other directions the boundaries of the country are assigned by nature, and its arable surface is still more narrowly confined to the limits of irrigation by the Nile. For II. HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 91 that land is truly, in the words of its earliest Greek historian, the gift of the river. Lying under a burn- ing sun, in most of its length rarely visited by a show- er, it is rendered habitable only by the regular recur- rence of the overflowing waters. It was called Mizraim by the Hebrews, who ap- plied the same name to a son of Ham, by whom the settlement was made ; but the Egyptians themselves preferred the name of their more ancient forefather, and called their country Khemi, or the land of Ham. Mizraim is a dual form, apparently referring to the twofold division of Egypt, and made from a singular, Miser, which is actually the Arabic name for that country. Khem has also a local etymology, but is determined as a. person by the figures, which represent him on the monuments. Another primitive colony had crossed the Nile valley to its western side, before the sons of Mizraim arrived, who perhaps drove them to the western side, and held them under government. An at- tempt at revolt on their part was reduced by the first king of the third Egyptian dynasty. On that side of the Nile, at the oldest seat of royalty, arose the wor- ship of a god, whose name in Egyptian spelling, which omits short medial vowels, is written P. h. t. The Greeks in adopting it, consistently with their habits of pronunciation, wrote Phta, and translated by He- phaistos. Phta was the first king and first god of Egypt, and while he reigned as king was the only god. He preceded the sun as the object of worship, and then became identified with him. To Phta was 92 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. ascribed the honor of being the creator, and the god of fire, and the sun-god of Memphis. AUhough pro- nounced Phtah by tlie Greeks, it is probable that tlie three letters P. h. t. were originally Phut in the mouths of the founders of Egypt. If the sons of Phut were the first to enter Egypt by the Isthmus of Suez, and were soon afterwards constrained to cross to the western side of the Nile by the succeeding migration of Mizraim, and there building their city and temple, they were afterwards followed by the stronger colony, and consented for a long time to live on the west of the river together with them, and as subject to their kings, but finally in the beginning of the third dynas- ty, attempted to recover their independence, and were reduced more completely than before, so that while some of the Phutim thereupon retired further west- ward into the Oases and north coast of Africa, a great number, perhaps the greater number, of the inhabit- ants of Memphis consented to the government of Miz- raite kings, and were allowed to remain in the enjo}^- ment of their religion, and that in course of time they and their religion were comprehended in the common mass of Egypt, the history would have given true occasion to all that we know of the case. On the list of those gods whom the Egyptians called their first kings, Phta (or Phut) is always first. It is not unlikely that the legend is true which pre- sents certain gods as the first kings of Egypt. In other words, their patriarchs, according to the custom of the time, ruled over the settlements of those de- scended from them, both as kings and priests. Their II. HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 93 really long lives laid a foundation for the extravagant chronology subsequently assigned to them, and later veneration paid them divine honors. Accordingly not only is their common country named from Ham, the protopatriarch of their race, but Ham is also one of the great gods of their pantheon, whose chief attribute is that of father of mankind. Early Egyptian history is arranged, after the man- ner adopted by its historian Manetho, according to its royal dynasties. His list of the dynasties is extant but without the history to which it belonged. Other royal lists are partially extant. In all alike the earliest kings are gods and demigods, who all terminate their reign by death. Of human dynasties Manetho counts thirtj^-one until the Macedonian conquest. In the course of these thirty-one dynasties, there are four periods of eminent distinction, well defined and largely illustrated by their own monuments respectively. Of the first three, little is known except what appears upon the lists. The first period, which stands forth boldly in a record of its own, is that of the fourth dy- nasty including also one king of the third and one or two of the fifth. It was then that the great pyramids arose, and that the oldest cavern tombs were construct- ed in the cemetery of Memphis. Inscriptions on those tombs delineate very extensively the manners, cus* toms and occupations of their times. But no dated are given ; and the length of the period they cover can therefore be judged of only approximately by gen- ealogies, which can be traced on them to some length, and by comparison with the numbers on the lists of 94 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. Manetlio. It could not be a brief period which ex- ecuted so many monuments of such magnitude, and all that they bear witness to. Those works are execu- ted in the perfection of Egj^tian art. They bear no record of war, but in all res^^ects testify to a state of primal prosperity and paace. After the earlier kings of the fifth dynasty, the monumental testimony is comparatively obscure until the end of the eleventh. It seems that the country was divided among several rival dynasties, in different capitals, at war with one another, and sometimes one and sometimes another being superior. In the end, the royal house of Thebes, in upper Egypt, prevailed, and is counted the eleventh dynasty. Their success- ors, who formed the twelfth, established and held do- minion over the whole country ; and Thebes assumed that place, which had previously belonged to Mem- phis. The first king of the twelfth dynasty was Sesorto- sen I., whose name appears upon the oldest part of the temple of Karnak. Five kings succeeded him, a second Amunemah, two other Sesortosens, and a third and fourth Amunemah, after whom the dynasty de- clined. The Sesortosens were its principal heroes, and Egypt's first great military leaders. On the walls of the temple of Amun, now called by the name of Kar- nak, they inscribed the records of their exploits. 'Nor had they neglected the arts of peace. The tomb of an officer of high rank under Sesortosen 11. , still re- mains at Beni Hassan, to bear testimony to the state of national prosperity, and the standard of art in that II. HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 95 reign. Upon it and adjoining tombs are delineated almost all the occupations of ordinary life. Other monuments belonging to the same dynasty are quite numerous, and in various parts of Egypt, from the Delta to the Southern border, as well as in Ethiopia and the desert of Sinai. Dates are given, and events distinctly assigned to the year of the king's reign in which they took place. Upon the decline of the twelfth dynasty and the feeble rule of the thirteenth and fourteenth, immigrants from the east, of Semitic descent, accumulated to such a number that, in course of time, they took to themselves the government of the country, and set up their own kings in Zoan. Of that period the monuments are scanty. In the end of a usurpation, prolonged for several hundred years, a new branch of the Theban royal family obtained the ascendancy, and held it through two dynasties, counted the eighteenth and nineteenth, which together constitute the third great period of Egyptian history, illustrated chiefly by the exploits in war and peace of the kings bearing the names of Thothmes, in the eighteenth, and of Kameses in the nineteenth dynasties. Another period of decline ran through the twenti- eth and twenty-first dynasties, from which the founder of the twenty-second revived the monarchy. That founder was the Shishak of Hebrew scripture, who was on the throne at the accession of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, to the throne of Judah, in or about the year 975 before Christ. Here we obtain the earliest positive synchronism with Hebrew History. For Shi- ye COMPAKATIVE RELIGION. sliak is the first Pharaoli mentioned in the Hebrew books by his own name. And the identification is confirmed by the fact that his invasion of Judea re- corded in the first book of Kings, he also recorded upon the great hall in tlie temple of Karnak, accom- panied by his own name. By counting back from that date, with the imper- fect data we possess, we shall find that the nineteenth dynasty must have begun in the latter part of the fourteenth century before Christ, and the eighteenth at least two hundred years earlier. Then allowing five hundred years for the period of divided rule and Semitic occupation, and then taking in the twelfth dynasty to its beginning, we shall find ourselves twenty-two hundred years or more before the birth of Christ. In ascending further, we have a long period of scanty records to pass ere reaching the era of the great Pyramid-builders. During that interval, and beyond it no monumental dates aid the steps of re- search ; genealogical facts are furnished in the fourth dynasty ; but beyond the last king of the third dy- nasty, there are no contemporaneous records, and except the brief and unreliable hints in the lists, really no data at all. Although far from able to assign exact dates to all these epochs, it seems most probable that the nine- teenth, twentieth and twenty-first dynasties fell in the time of the Judges and united Kingdom of Israel, that the wandering in the desert fell in the early part of the nineteenth, that the Hebrews went out of Egypt in the eighteenth, and that their residence there com- n. HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 97 menced in the seventeenth dynasty, and that Abra- ham's visit was in the earlier part of the Shepherd rule. Consequently, the part of Egyptian history which preceded the call of Abraham, and fell under the time which scripture passes over in a genealogical list, was from the fifteenth or early part of the sixteenth dynasty back to the earliest settlement of the country. Within that period, although the chronology is very defective, the degree of attainment whicli had been made in the arts of civilized life, is vouched for abun- dantly by a great variety of contemporaneous testimo- nies. From whicli it appears that although manufac- tures and commerce flourished among those early Egyptians, the foundation of their national wealth was the produce of the farm. Their civilization was of the kind which grows up naturally upon a rich soil and by a navigable river. In their government the civil and religious ele- ments were completely blended. The source of au- thority over the Egyptian mind was one. The king centred all in himself. He was not a priest in the sense of being set apart specially to that office ; but in his capacity as king he exercised sacerdotal functions, as the chief pontiff of his people. " A chief, surround- ed by a numerous priesthood, governed each city in Egypt,'' as magistrates subordinate to the king, who in a similar manner governed the whole country. ^' They all alike held their rank by hereditary descent, and their power by the force of opinion founded on religion." Divine right transmitted through consecra- ted descent was the recognized claim to the throne. 5 98 COMPAKATIVE RELIGION. Popular sovereignty was an idea foreign to all the thoughts of an Egyptian, perhaps never occurred, as an original conception, to any descendant of Ham. Alike in Babel, in Canaan, in Ethiopia, in Arabia and in Egypt, whenever we obtain a glimpse of their gov- ernment, it is found to be a monarchy — a sacerdotal monarchy, the true development of the patriarchal system. In Egypt, where most fully exhibited, it was at once sustained and regulated by a sacerdotal aristoc- racy, itself regulated by pre-existing institutions re- garded with the profoundest veneration. And it is a matter worthy of far more consideration than is com- monly given to it, that even in the time of the Hebrew patriarchs, when degeneracy of religion had already far progressed, a genuine fear of the true God still ex- isted in some of those priest-kings, as shown in the case of Abimelech of Gerar, Melchizedek, and the Pha- raoh of Abraham's visit to the south. It was in Egypt that this, as well as most other elements of primitive civilization, reached its fullest development. In the religion of the Egyptians, the genuineness of its original basis, the careful instruction of the priesthood therein, and the unfeigned faith of the people in what their mysteries revealed to them, se- cured the permanence of all institutions founded there- upon. In one sense, all Egypt was a sacerdotal sys- tem, inasmuch as all its institutions proceeded from and were controlled by the sacred statutes, which it was impious to violate. Most probably to this cause was owing the long duration of the same form of government, notwithstanding the changes of the seat II. HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 99 of power, and the conflicts of rival dynasties. The disposition of the hierarchy was necessarily conserva- tive of interests so largely if not completely its own. The military class may be included under the same head. For it was, in a very practical sense, only a priesthood consecrated to defence of the country in war. Under the same sacerdotal principle, and falling in with the habits natural to the land on which they lived, the whole population was grouped into orders for the effecting of given ends. And thereby those ends were achieved with a completeness and power which has seldom been paralleled. Hundreds of thou- sands laboring all their lives, and for long successive generations, upon the same work, and all submitting to the same authority, and following the same sacred models, produced external results of a magnitude and uniformity otherwise unattainable. Such in Egypt was the complete organization of the patriarchal style of government. I^ations to whom such order and subordination of ranks is unknown look upon the works effected thereby with wonder. At the same time, original enterprise was practi- cally discouraged, and the steps of improvement con- fined within such narrow limits that their advance can scarcely be perceived in the course of centuries. Con- servatism was the spirit of the nation, and manifested itself in all institutions, as if everything had been re- vealed directly from on high, or established by some primeval authority, which it would have been sacrilege to disobey. Art, as well as the occupations of Indus- 100 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. try, belonged to hereditary orders. Possessing many features of a vast socialistic phalanx, Egypt aimed at maintaining the well-being of all her people by repress- ing the individuality of each, and merging it in that of a caste, or rank. As compared with itself in the fourth dynasty, and later in the twelfth, Egyptian religion, in the eiglit- eenth dynasty, has clearly made a progress. It is a progress from the worship of a few gods to that of a greatly increased number of gods ; from a simpler cer- emonial to a more complex, and from gods with simple names to gods with compound names, while the un- seen Grod has also become the unknown. The Pha- raoh of the time of Abraham's visit reverently recog- nizes the God whom the Patriarch worships ; the Pharaoh of the exode insolently asks, " Who is Jehovah that I should obey him ? " In the land of Egypt the sons of Israel never forgot that they were a separate people. We have no account of any one of them being so affected by the favor which they experienced at first, as to transfer his nationality. Awaiting the time when God should command their return, they retained their own tribal government, whereby they were gradually prepared to assume the form of a nation, their own manners and customs, and the use among themselves of the dialect of Canaan ; and the embalmed body of Joseph, kept by his own order, to be carried up with them when they should return to the promised land, was a constant admonition, as no doubt it was intended to be, of that expected event. II. — HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 101 As the families of Israel increased in numbers, they expanded into tribes, and out of the increase of the ■tribes grew a subdivision into clans (mishpahoth), and out of these the still smaller division into houses, (battim), or houses of fathers, and the next was that of individual men with their wives and children. Each tribe had its proper patriarchal head, called the Prince of the tribe. To the chiefs of the inferior divisions the common title of Head of the House of Fathers was given. The same title was sometimes applied to the chief of a tribe, as that of House of Fathers was sometimes used to signify a tribe. All those officers together con- stituted the elders of Israel, the patriarchal rulers, and representatives of their respective divisions of the peo- ple. The smaller sections of the tribes, especially of the more populous, must have ramified into a great number. Those offices in the tribes, and subdivisions of tribes were held by persons to whom they descended by right of birth, consistently with the patriarchal state of so- ciety out of which they grew. In so long a residence among an idolatrous people, the Israelites did not escape corruption of the faith re- ceived from their fathers. JSTor were they altogether unprepared to accept the use of images as a help in worship. Rachel's gods, stolen from her father, seem to have been preserved among some of her descendants, down to the days of Joshua. In course of time, they lost the true conception of the G-od of Israel, and learn- ed to believe that he was acceptably worshipped in ob- jects and with services which they saw in Egypt. In 102 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. a religious point of view, that period was one of great darkness — a medieval degeneracy, issuing, as far as per- tained to the Israelites, in the termination of the patri- archal economy. In all the great seats of human culture, religious progress had resulted in the worship of many gods, with rites and ceremonies minutely prescribed and legally enforced, while the patriarchal ministry had either developed into a national hierarchy with a priest-king at its head, or given place to a powerful sacerdotal caste. And the distinctest testimony to that fact is contained in the revolutions against it. Law was the outgrowth of religion, regulating in the first instance the duties of worship and extending, as these multiplied, further into the common life of man. In this way grew up the laws of Manu in In- dia, the exceedingly minute and punctillious legal sys- tem of China, and the gloomier and more oppressive sacerdotalism of Egypt. Religion ceased to be spon- taneous, and became entirely legal and obligatory, in- terwoven with the state, and subject to the very laws which had proceeded from itself. Issuing from the national religion, law appeared, in those times, as divine revelation, as coming out from God and vested with all the authority of divine com- mand. A sacerdotal class growing up simultaneously with such venerated law became, in the course of hu- man nature, as absolute and domineering as the sanc- tion under which they acted was held to be irresist- ible. In China that bondage was lightest, among the Aryans it constituted the fetters of a polytheistic n. HEBREWS IN EGYPT. 103 ritual becoming progressively more and more idola- trous ; but not yet seriously, interfering witli tlie prac- tical business of life and enterprise ; in Egypt it was already crusliing out the life of individual sponta- neity ; but in all alike it was, or was becoming, an im- perative mould in which the lives of men were to be shaped and confined. V- '^' ■ CHAPTEK YL EPOCH OF THE SECOND MONOTHEISTIC REFORMATION. When primitive religion had thus been obscured by similar progress of change in all directions, earnest and intelligent men, aware of the truth, from which the people and priesthood alike had departed, began an effort to roll back the tide, and return to what they thought to be the original belief, to revive the simpler forms of worship, and to put once more the idea of one spiritual God into the minds of worshippers. To that movement belong Moses, Zoroaster (Zarathustra), the fourth Amun-hotep of Egypt, perhaps, and the Chinese reformer T'ang, all probably not far from the same date, and all pertaining to similar stages in the history of their respective nations ; far from equal in importance, but all alike concerned in efforts to restore the worship of one God. That was a true religious revolution, not based upon human reason, but upon traditionary faith in divine instructions, revived and enlarged by new revelations or manifestations of Deity. If the Chinese monarch does not claim to have immediate revelation from God, he trusts to immediate direction from God, as to what he ought to do. The Egyptian reform failed ; such was its defective nature, apparently, that THE SECOND MOXOTIIEISTIC IlEFOEMATION. 105 it had no right to succeed, but its purpose to restore the sole worship of the oue ancient god of Egypt, as represented by the sun, is as plain as the hieroglyph- ics can make it. And yet it is not by the name Ra that the Deity is expressed, but by Aten^ which seems to be rightly identified with the Semitic Adon (He- brew Adonai). His own name the king changed from Amun-\\otQ^ to Cliw-Qn-Aten, and otherwise removed from about him all trace of the religion which he re- jected. In carrying out his purpose, he did not refrain from violence. The temples of other gods were closed, and their images, as well as names, effaced from the monuments, especially the name and image of Amun, '' the supreme god of Thebes.'' He also aban- doned Thebes, and " built another capital in upper Egypt, in a place now called Tel-el- Amarna. The ruins of this city, abandoned after his death, have pre- served for us many monuments of his reign, displaying very advanced art, and where we see him presiding over the ceremonies of his new worship." Some in- teresting resemblances have been noticed between the external forms of Israelitish worship in the desert, and those revealed by the monuments of Tel-el-Amar- na. Some of the sacred furniture, such as the ' Table of Shew Bread,' described in the book of Exodus, as belonging to the Tabernacle, is seen in the representa- tions of the worship oi Aten. Without the ceremo- nial of .idolatry, Amun-hotep lY. worships the god, whom he represents by the sun, alone, as the immor- tal life-giving and protecting Deity, who orders all thin2:s according to his will. And the name by which 5* 106 COMPAKATIVE RELIGION. he addressed his god is ahnost, if not altogether, iden- tical with that which the Israelites reverently substi- tuted in reading for the name Jehovah. 'Not much is known about the life of this remark- able King. For succeeding princes defaced many of his monuments. But his appearance upon those which remain, evinces intense earnestness, if not fanaticism. He was of the eighteenth dynasty, the fourth in suc- cession from Thothmes III. and lived somewhat less than fifteen hundred years before Christ. Touching the date of the great Bactrian teacher, Zarathustra, various opinions have been entertained, but of those who have examined the subject with the most careful attention, and with the aid of the most recent research, the greater number agree in that he lived about thirteen hundred years before Christ. Such is the conclusion reached by Dollinger, by Duncker and by Rapp ; and Haug does not perhaps greatly dif- fer from them in referring the production of the Ga- thas to about the time of Moses. The Chinese royal reform belongs to an earlier date and was not a revo- lution. Less change was needed in order to return to the ancient standard which the reformer regarded as his model. In no case does it appear that the movement intro- duced a new god, although in most cases a new name of God. The pious Chinese king simply restores the state of things as it had been under his predecessors of some five hundred years earlier, with great reverence not presuming to go back beyond their example. But Amun-hotep, while he devotes himself to the worship THE SECOND MONOTHEISTIC KEFOEMATION. 107 of God as represented by the sun, and in that in- troduces nothing new ; only makes sole, what had from time immemorial been chief, in Egypt, but which had latterly been mixed up and obscured with the worship of Amun and other gods ; yet for that an- cient god of Egypt he uses a new name. Zarathus- tra professedly opposes error, and rescues religion from. it ; but the name of god, which he uses, appears to be different from any of those belonging to the religion out of which he comes. And Moses explicitly gives a newly revealed name of the same God, who under another name was known to the earlier patriarchs. In the latter alone is the authority and reason assigned for the change. It is that the idea of God may be completely separated once more from all association with the idolatry and mythology which had grown up around it. Moses declares unto his countrymen the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ; but the name of God is not el Shaddai nor merely Elohim, but I AM ; the God, whom the patri- archs worshipped without images is now, under a name suggestive of no image, and of only original existence, to be conspicuously distinguished from all the gods of Egypt. All these leaders were men of exalted religious purpose, having a single aim to the defence or restora- tion of an earlier monotheism, and to propagate the knowledge of it among their people. It was a move- ment full of God. The honor and service of God, and nearness to God, and receiving of communications from God, as a man from his teacher, constitute the 108 " COMPAEATIVE EELIGION. principal feature of all its literary remain's. To Mo- ses God reveals himself both orally and by visible signs. The pious monarch, T'ang, has no other way of knowing God's will but that of prayer, of the im- pression spiritually made upon his mind, and of the providential ordering of events ; but to these he ap- plies with earnest desire to know what God would have him do, as well as for the sanction of what he has done ; and he consults with the wisest in his kingdom, to guard as far as he can, against mistake in interpreting the meaning of events. But he was re- garded by his own and subsequent generations as es- pecially favored by God ; and long after the downfall of his dynasty, and the successful establishment of another, T'ang was worshipjDed with more than com- mon ancestral honors. In the odes and sacrifice of Shang, in the fourth part of the She-King his name is repeatedly mentioned with the highest veneration. ** The favor of God did not leave (Shang), And in T'ang was found the subject for its display," " Brilliant was the influence of his character for long, And God appointed him to be a model to the nine Zarathustra, in opposition to polytheism, teaches that there is but one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that he alone is the proper object of adoration. Like Moses he holds that they who would worship God aright must worship him according to his own instructions, and in perfect purity, and distinctly expresses his be- THE SECOND MONOTHEISTIC REFORMATION. 109 lief that men need revelation from God himself in or- der to find that end. It was a peculiar feature of the xlvestan reforma- tion, that it rejected ceremonial observances to the ex- tent of abolishing sacrifice, in its ordinary sense, and confining the duties of worship to prayer and praise, the study and recitation of the sacred hymns, and pu- rity of life. The Mosaic system, on the other hand, recognized the existing methods of worship as having a powerful hold upon the public mind ; and accepting that as the actual condition, took it as the basis of in- struction, and did not at once make a clean sweep away of all forms and ceremonies ; but adopting such as were capable of conversion into means of instruc- tion for the time being, filled them with a new and spiritual meaning in relation to Jehovah, and prophet- ic _of better things to come. The Mosaic ritual was also accompanied throughout with a spiritual and in- tellectual instruction, fixing attention upon the spirit- ual meaning thus imparted to the forms, and nrging that the forms, without their spiritual meaning, were worse than useless ; and preparing the people for the better time, when all the forms and ceremonial laws, their typical import being fulfilled, should be no longer needed, and the people of Jehovah should be able to apprehend him as a spirit to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. A ritual, at first very simple, subsequently expanded around the Avestan religion, constituting its outward form. But that was contrary to the purpose of its founder, and opened the gate by which corruption 110 COMPAEATITE EELTGION. entered. Accepted bj the Persian nation, it separated them the more from their Aryan kinsmen of India, who meanwhile held on to the further unfolding of the Brahmanical ceremonial, constructing it into a legal system. The Mosaic economy, in a similar way, set the He- brew people apart from the progressive corruptions of Egypt and the nations of western Asia. The grand point on which those ancient reforma- tions agreed was that of taking up from the past the spiritual worship of the One God, the Creator of heav- en and earth, and presenting it as being originally taught by revelation. On this point, the Mosaic, al- though establishing a ceremonial and a sacerdotal order, w-as the most stringent of all. " Thou shalt have no other God beside me," was its first commandment. And it as sweepingly, in its second commandment, ex- cluded idolatry of every kind. Although aiming to restore the simple elements of primitive worship, the reformers could not restore its primitive simplicity. They could restore only by pre- scribing it and its observances, enforcing them by law, and enacting special prohibition of anything to the contrary. In all cases, that reformation was of neces- sity legal, and the authority of its law was the same One God of heaven and earth, whose worship it en- joined. It attempted to revive pure monotheism by authority of divine law. It was in the progress of the legal tendency of the original religions that the great monotheistic restoration arose. That its leaders had knowledge of n. HEBREW EXODE. Ill each other, we cannot assert ; that any two of them were contemporaneous we do not know ; but that they all lived at corresponding stages of religions progress in their respective nations, and not far from the same period in general history, there is sufficient evidence. And the identity of the doctrine they advocated, evinc- ing a widely extended religious interest of the purest and loftiest character, is the most remarkable fact in the history of the world in those centuries. But inter- esting as any one of them is, the Hebrew in its pecu- liar features, and in the vastness of its influence over the most progressive civilization, and the most widely ruling nations of the modern world, merits a more particular attention. PI. HEBREW EXODE. ' Under the Theban kings of the new royal house, who knew not or chose not to recognize the services of Jo- seph, the Hebrew residents in Egypt were grievously oppressed. " The Egyptians made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick and in all man- ner of service in the field ; all their service wherewith they made them serve was with rigor." As illustra- tive of the work to which they were constrained in the royal brickyards, may be adduced a monument from the tomb of E-ek-sha-re, architect of some of the great struc- tures of Thothmes III., in which the process of brick- making is delineated. The workmen, employed in vari- 112 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. Oils parts of the drudgery, are foreigners of Semitic fea- tures, and comparatively fair complexion, and the task- masters, standing, or seated beside them with each his rod in his hand,, are Egyptians, as determined by their features, and the characteristic brick-red color of tlie skin. We cannot assert that the workmen there depict- ed are Hebrews ; but the scene is precisely such as that described in Exodus of the Hebrew brickmakers, and belongs to a date at wdiich it is probable that the He- brews were suffering in such service. Under that hard bondage, they were constrained to agricultural habits, and to the practice of all the arts necessary to agricultural life : and others of them, as well as Moses, became more or less learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians; as appears in the fact tiiat among them, within less than a year after the exode, were found artists to execute all the designs for the tabernacle, its furniture, utensils, and embellishment ; and the legis- lation revealed to them at Sinai presupposes the people already formed to agricultural pursuits. Their subse- quent nomadic life in the desert, was not of their choice, and was felt by the most of them to be an afflic- tion. In their *'murmurings against Moses," their re- grets are always turned to the humble comforts of agricultural life in Egypt. As a nation they had com- pletely abandoned the nomadic tastes of their fore- fathers. ; After a residence in Egypt of four hundred and thirty years, and most probably after the middle of the eighteenth dynasty of Egyptian kings, the descend- ants of Jacob were delivered from their servitude by II. HEBREW EXODE. 113 extraordinary interposition of Divine power. To the preparation of Moses by natural means, for the duties of that great revolution, miracles were added to sustain his authority and to overwhelm the power of opposition. The Egyptian king had seen the religion of his na- tion sustained by the wonderful feats of its priesthood, and held that miracles were the way for a god to evince his presence in. It had been foretold that he would challenge Moses and Aaron to substantiate the claims of their God in that way. And so it seems he did. Egypt was eminently the land of such preten- sions. The worship of its idol gods was full of mys- tery and miracle, and great was their hold upon the convictions of the world in general. It belonged to the work of emancipating Israel to expose the nothing- ness of the gods of Egypt, and to defeat their priests in their proudest pretensions. The wonders wrought to that end increased in inipressiveness as they suc- ceeded each other. Beginning from the favorite feats with serpents practiced by the priests to produce be- lief in their supernatural power — from the level of their enchantments, and belittling them in the use of their own artifices, they swelled into the command of all the elements of nature. From the mere signs, which were sufiicient to evince the real presence of Divine power, as distinguished from the juggling tricks of magicians, they successively rose to such magnitude and comprehensiveness, as no magician could imitate. They became plagues over the whole country, alarming, terrific, awfully sublime in their supernatural horrors, until the series was crowned by 114 COMPAEATIVE KELIGION. that dreadful night of doom, when Jehovah went out into the midst of Egypt, and smote all the first born, both of man and beast, and executed judgment against all the gods of the Egyptians. That nation which had long been beguiled by false miracles, was made to feel the real hand of the wonder-working Jehovah. In that presence the enchantments of magicians were but the play of children, imitations which could add but little to the evil, and were helpless to counteract or allay it. These works were wrought on behalf of the Israelites, but were addressed to the Egyptians, as an aro^ument for them to abandon their errors, and return to the worship of the one God whom their fathers knew. IS'or is it improbable that some Egyp- tians may have been so affected by them. All the ten plagues were inflicted in rapid succes- sion, occupying not much more than two months from about the beginning of February. Whatever else may be said of them, any attempt to identify them with natural events in the seasons, or physical features of the country, or changes of the river, is inconsistent with the facts of the narrative. There are no natural occurrences which correspond to the conditions. The last plague was a direct blow at the patriarchal sys- tem, in the monstrous development of which the Egyptians had constructed their elaborate idolatry. It carried off all the highest of their priests; and among the animals which were found dead that awful night were many of the most venerated objects of their mythology. Judgment had been executed against the gods of Egypt, and the people that served them. n. HEBREW EXODE. 11 5 From that judgment the Israelites were saved. But they could be saved only by an atonement. A new sacrificial observance was enacted for the occasion. The people were to evince their faith and obedience by selecting, four days previously, a lamb or a kid, which was to be kept up until the evening of the four- teenth day of the month, which was to be henceforward the first month of their ecclesiastical year. Of the blood, some was to be sprinkled on the lintels and posts of their doors, the sign of atonement, by which the lives of the inmates were to be saved. It was another lesson on the doctrine that without shedding of blood there was no remission of sin ; and embodied in a new form that promise which lay at the foundation of the Hebrew faith. In each household the lamb slain for it was to be eaten entirely by it ; and persons were instructed to unite themselves into households of such number as to be convenient for that purpose, and if any part re- mained uneaten, it was to be burned. They were to prepare it by roasting, and to put it on the table whole. ]^ot a bone was to be broken. And they were to eat it with bitter herbs and with unleavened bread, and equipped with their loins girt, with their shoes on their feet and staves in their hands, as ready for a jour- ney. And from the evening when the lamb was slain, the fourteenth of the month, until the evening of the twenty-first, they were to use none but unleavened bread. The first and the last days of that interval of time, were to be days of public worship, in which no servile work was to be done. The observance was to 116 COMPARATIVE KELIGION. be repeated aniiiiallj ; and regulations were subse- quently laid down in regard to it, when they should be settled in the promised land. Another institution was enacted at that time, in the consecration of the first born, being a male, of every mother ; not to the priesthood, as in the case of the first born of the father, under the patriarchal system, but as an offering to God. The command included, in the same terms, the first born of man and of domestic animals. But it was provided that the first born of an ass should be redeemed with a lamb, and that all the first born of man should be redeemed. The substitution was soon after provided for more regnlarly by setting apart the Levites instead of the maternal first born of all Israel, with their cattle instead of the maternal first born of cattle. The Levites were not all priests, but they were thus consecrated as an offering to God, the offering of all Israel, and consequently no longer counted as a tribe. They were an offering representative of the several offerings human and animal of all the tribes. And out of them consistently the priests were taken. Snch was the impression of that awful night, that Pharaoh immediately sent for Moses and Aaron, and commanded them, with their people and all that they had, to get forth from his country. The Egyptians also were urgent, and freely gave them whatever they asked to accelerate their departure. The Israelites accordingly left Rameses, a city which they had built, or fortified for Pharaoh, on the morning after the first passover, while their oppressors were confounded by the judgment which had just fallen upon them, and n. HEBKEW EXODE. 117 the fifteenth day of that month which was hencefor- ward to be to them the first month of the year. Had it been the intention of their leader to take them to Canaan as they then were, the way lay open directly to the northeast. Instead of that he conducted them towards the southeast. A great work had to be performed for that people before they could be prepar- ed either to encounter the warlike Canaanites, or to enter upon the duties of their national existence. Al- ready they were possessed of a tribal government ; but that, while answering the purposes of local order, was more powerful to divide than to unite the different tribes. A constitution was needed of a nature to bind them together in common bonds as one nation ; and they needed instruction in the particular duties to be demanded of them under the new economy of their re- ligion. For the execution of that work, w^iicli must take many months, if not years, no better place could have been chosen than the mountains in the peninsula of Sinai. When, with that intention, Moses was lead- ing the people round the northern extremity of the Hed Sea, he announced to them that he had received an order from God, who now manifested himself as their leader, in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, that they should march down the western coast. In complying with that order, they soon found them- selves shut in between the sea and the mountains on the Egyptian side. Pharaoh at the head of his army was now in pursuit. The Israelites, fully sensible of their danger, loudly censured the bad generalship of Moses, as leading them where they could not fail to be 118 COMPARATIVE KELIGION. destroyed. Moses told them to stand still and see the salvation of Jehovah. Soon he received another com- mand to lift his rod over the sea and for the people to go forward. The pillar of clond removed from be- fore them and passed over between them and the Egyptians, being a dark cloud over the latter ; but on the side towards Israel a light shining upon the path by which they had to go. And as the multitude ad- vanced, a strong east wind caused the waters to go back, leaving the channel bare for tiieir passage. All night they marched on over the wet sands to the oppo- site shore, and when the last of them had reached it in the morning watch, Jehovah brought the sea again to its place, and the Egyptians, w^ho were pursuing, were overwhelmed in the returning waters. Now was the deliverance of Israel complete. ]N"ot only was the Red Sea put between them and their enemies, which could have been done by going round the head of the sea, but the great army which otherwise would have pursued them into the desert, and which thej were not in a condition to encounter, was destroyed. In the majestic psalm composed by Moses, and in the performance of which he w^as joined by the chorus of the emancipated people, the entire praise of victory is ascribed to Jehovah. In that incomparable triumphal hymn the name, or agency, of a human victor is not once alluded to. It is Jehovah who has triumphed gloriously. The course now pursued was nearly parallel to the shore of the Red Sea, southward, until they came op- posite to the Sinaitic Mountains, when they turned n. HEBREW EXODE. 119 eastward into some of the valleys leading to the centre of the gronp. While on that part of their march they fought their first battle. It was with the Amalekites : and they were taught that their \ictory was won only by the power of Jehovah, and in accordance with the prayers and uplifted hands of Moses. Miracles had been wrought for them ; the bitter well of Marah had been sweetened for their use, and when the provisions brought with them from Egypt were exhausted, that supply of manna began, which never failed them af- terwards during all their residence in the desert. Quails were brought them from the sea, and water was mi- raculously supplied them in the rocky waste of Rephi- dim. About six weeks after their departure from Raam- ses, the host of Israel arrived at the foot of Mount Si- nai, where they remained a year, all but ten days. Dates are given with precision. The existence of Israel as a nation begins with the first Passov^er. Until that time they had been only a family of tribes, under the com- mon government of a foreign power. Then they be- come a nation, liberated and under a leader of their own. But it was at Sinai that they received the con- stitution and laws which shaped their national char- acter. The desert, in which they were now to wander so long, is part of that great belt of barren country which extends in greater or less desolation, and with little in- terruption, *from the plains of India, increasing in breadth and sterility towards the west until its burning sands are quenched in the waters of the Atlantic ocean. 120 COMPAEATIVE EELIGION. The principal interruptions are in its eastern part, the country on the Indus, the country of the Iranian plateau where well watered, the Persian Gulf, the Ked Sea, and the Nile, and wherever springs of water are protected from the overflowing sands, by mountains or otherwise. That part of it where Israel took refuge is protected by both the sea and lofty mountains. Most of the desert consists of flat, or undulating table- lands. But in the peninsula of Sinai, a great deal of it rises into lofty mountains, interspersed with valleys containing springs of water and abundant vegetation : and the climate is mild and healthful. Towards the south, where it lies between the two extreme bays of the Red Sea, the mountains attain their greatest eleva- tion, in a vast group of which Sinai on the south and Horeb on the north are the most historical. A third summit, now called Mount St. Catherine, is the highest, rising to about eight thousand feet from the level of the sea. The height of Sinai is 7497 feet. Thence the mountains run at various elevations in a chain parallel with the eastern bay, and northward constituting the western boundary of the Wady Arabah, until they merge in the table-land of Palestine. Nearly opposite the northern end of the eastern gulf, a chain of moun- tains, called in modern Arabic Jebel et Tih, strikes out toward the west, but bending first to the southwest, then to the northwest, and terminates near the head of the western bay, like a cord suspended between those two points. South of that chain lie the higher sum- mits, and the consecrated scenery of the peninsula. North of it, and westward from the eastern ridges, n. HEBREW EXODE. 121 spreads out an elevated table-land, with a general slope towards the west, until it sinks into a plain terminat- ing in the Mediterranean Sea and the borders of Egypt. Israel, for the most part, avoided it, and in their wan- derings clung to their refuge among the mountains. Only in making the indispensable crossing from Sinai to Palestine, do we read of their marching through the eastern part of it, and of their return, after failure of the first attempt. In the end of their desert sojourn the same had to be repeated. That expedition, in the first instance, was connected in their history with wo- ful disaster. It was afterwards referred to by Moses as their journey through that '' great and terrible wil- derness.'' I^orthward its boundaries were the Medi- terranean sea, the borders of the Philistines and the mountains of the Amorites. In that region were the singular people of Israel formed into a nation. In many particulars, the people who followed Moses were difierent from the family which went down to Egypt at the invitation of Pharaoh. They were no longer migratory herdsmen, but had taken upon them much of the manner of the land where they had resided so long, had been constrained into those habits of settled life, and agricultural industry so hard for Pomades to learn, and yet indispensable for those who were to be the occupants of an agricultu- ral country, and the depositories of a sacred learning. They had now seen and learned, and become familiar with the practice of the arts of Egypt, and contracted a dislike for the wandering pastoral life of their 6 122 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. fathers. But the coinpulsion necessary to eifect that change had broken their energy of spirit, and bent them to weakness and servility, while long intercourse with idol worshippers had deeply corrupted their hereditary faith. It consequently became necessary to renew their knowledge of God, and to expand their religious instruction in accordance with the wider range of duties about to be exacted of them, as well as to raise up a new generation, under circumstances, and with education of a nature to elicit energy, courage and entire faith in the God of Abraham. Accordingly, they were early made witnesses of sensible signs of Jehovah's presence, and thoroughly impressed with the blessedness of his favor, and the terrors of his vengeance. At Sinai they dwelt in sight of the clouds and thunder and lightning and tempest, which declared the power of God, employed in, or witnesses of the work connected with the revelation of the law, and erection of the tabernacle under God's command. And forty years the mysterious pillar of cloud or of fire was continually before their eyes, and daily the miraculous supply of manna fell around their camp ; and sometimes they beheld the proof of the divine justice in signal punishment of the disobe- dient. In the desert they were separated from all contamination or contact with the heathen, and formed to the institutions provided for them, as if they had been taken out of the world. "With exception of the temporary regulations for their desert life, the laws revealed at Sinai were pro- vided for their government when settled in the land II. HEBREW EXODE. 123 of Canaan. Alread}^ they possessed the organization growing out of their division by tribes, and subdivis- ions of tribes, and groups of families near of kin. And their government according to the principles of common justice, by their patriarchal oflBcers, was in full operation before their departure from Egypt. That structure was not now abolished. But adopting it, and comprehending it, there was now revealed a national system much more complete. The patriarchal element was retained in the ancient nation of Israel to the last, but as incorporated with, and subordinated to, the constitution given at Sinai. The elders of the people became their local rulers, and their representa- tives in all general assemblies of the nation. How deeply familiarity with Egyptian idolatrous practices had corrupted the Hebrew people, appeared in the fact that on one occasion during the absence of Moses, they made to themselves a golden image of a calf, after the manner ol the Apis worship of Egypt, and paid adoration to it, as the representative of Jeho- vah, the god who had delivered them from bondage: and Aaron, the elder brother of Moses, instead of re- sisting, was led away by the error, and suffered him- self to become the leader in it. Clearly, they were at that time as ready to become thoroughgoing idolaters as any of their neighbors. That they did not was due to nothing ethnic in them. 124 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. III. LEGISLATION AT SINAI. In the code given at Sinai we find, first of all, a moral law, containing tlie fnndamental principles of right action for man, in all his relations to God and his fellow-men: secondly, a ceremonial law specially addressed to the religious observances of tlie theocratic nation ; and thirdly, a system of civil laws, for the di- rection of the various ministers of the government, and to guide in the administration of justice. These three, although in themselves distinct, were, owing to the theocratic and sacerdotal character of the government, and the circumstances of their delivery, intermingled in the order of institution. The course of time so com- pletely separated them, that while the civil element ceased to be in force with the independence of the na- tion, and the ceremonial ceased to be practicable with the destruction of the temple and the expulsion of the peo- ple from Palestine, the moral element remains un- changed, having taken its place as the moral code of all christian lands. The foundation of this new polity was religion, a religion which differed importantly from that of Egypt, or that of any other nation then upon the earth. It revived the old doctrines of one spiritual personal God, ruler of heaven and earth, and of peace with him through sacrificial atonement ; in the former, present- ing what had lain at the foundation of primitive reli- gion, and constituted the strength of every genuine in. — LEGISLATION AT SINAI. 125 reformation, that doctrine which, bringing man near to his Maker, gives him dignity, truth and energy ; and in the latter the central truth of all that is called redemption among Jews and Christians. Its moral system is the most remarkable work of its kind, containing within tlie compass of ten brief pre- cepts a summary of morals which, for justness, com- prehensiveness, and universality of application, with sufficient discrimination for practice, is without an equal. All its subordinate precepts are of the same spirit, of a nature to enforce justice, truth, purity of life, and of worship, and brotherly kindness among the sons of Israel, with reverence for the spiritual presence of Jehovah. Its ecclesiastical system differed in some important respects from that of the foregoing time. The reli- gious society of the patriarchs had been a family, that of the growing tribes must have been of the same type divided among a great many families : the new reli- gious society was to be a nation, and the religious ob- servances a legal system. That first principle of patriarchal government, whereby the offices of sovereignty, priesthood and in- struction, or prophecy, were united in the head of the family, was now set aside. God is himself presented as the sovereign, and the official duties are assigned to different persons among the people. Israel is to stand as a priest before the one invisible God, and in relation to the rest of mankind. We have no evidence that any other nation looked upon the Israelites in that light, nor thought of their religion as other than one 126 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. among the many, the worship as some at least thought, of a very powerful god. But in whatever way they thought of it, there was the open fact of a national testimony to the doctrine of the one invisible personal God held up before the world. The very existence and national constitution of that people was a constant proclamation of their monotheistic faith, and of the promise which its worship implied. In reaching its fullest development under circum- stances most favorable to civilization, the patriarchal system had becom.e exaggerated into absolute mon- archy, and monopoly of priesthood and instruction in the hands of an hereditary few. In the house of Is- rael the patriarchal was suffered to develop only to a cer- tain length, when its further growth was stayed and it was taken up and woven into a new economy more suitable for a nation. What saved Israel from going the way of all the rest of the world was the act which checked development of the patriarchal at the point where it w^as about to run into monstrosity, and in- troduced a new set of causes. The principal features of that new economy were, first, a consecrated nation under God as their King; second, sensible and permanent symbols of Jehovah's presence ; third, an organized and hereditary priest- hood ; fourth, a system of observances typical of things belonging to a future dispensation ; and fifth, approach to God through those appointed means. All the spir- itual elements of the foregoing economy were retained, but taught more fully, and in the language of a typical ceremonial greatly extended and legally enforced. m. — LEGISLATION AT SINAI. 127 As the whole people of Israel were to hold them- selves specially near to Jehovah, in one sense, a priest nation, so ceremonies of purification were appointed to impress upon them the idea of purity of habits and holiness of spirit. To the sons of Levi, who were especially set apart to religious and literary duties, additional rites of purification were assigned. And of that house the family of Aaron were appointed to be priests with more ceremonial cleansing, and finally the most elaborate purification was prescribed for the high priest, who moreover could not make his annual en- trance into the Holy of Holies without specific purifi- cation and blood of sacrifice. The truth that God is holy and cannot dwell with iniquity was inculcated by the lesson of such observances, accumulated and strin- gent, in proportion to the nearness of approach to the signs of his presence. To this there is a striking similarity in the Avesta, where the constantly urged spiritual purity of the Gathas becomes the laborious and legally enforced ceremonial of the later scriptures. Every error then prevalent in the world, which that new Hebrew economy touched, it provided with a remedy. Among things condemned, polytheism and idolatry are prohibited with particular severity and in detail ; and that not only among things specifically religious, but also at the head of the moral law. As to polytheism, Jehovah says I am the Lord ; and thou shalt have no other God beside me. And of idolatry the prohibition is the most sweeping conceivable, ex- tending to the making of any figure whatsoever, and to 128 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. the bowing down or serving in any w^ay whatever any object but Jehovah. I^o distinction is recognized between lyroskynesis and latreia. They are both alike put under the same uncjualiiied condemnation.* In all cases the prohibition is addressed to the radical elements of the evil. In thus assailino^ the structures of iniquity by applying means to crumble their mate- rials, Jehovah's lessons to the Hebrews became perpet- ual instructions for all mankind. In as far as the legislation at Sinai revealed a civil code, it had a view to the establishment of the He- brew people in the promised land. That land they were to take possession of, and hold as tlie gift of God, and every family was to receive an estate in it, ina- lienable, as long as they rendered the required service to the Giver. But only on condition of maintaining the true worship of God was their '^nheritance given and secured to them. Upon turning aside to any other religion, they forfeited all. Levites alone were not assigned to any separate territory. They were dedicated to the service of religion and of public in- struction ; and accordingly, were distributed in sepa- rate towns over the whole country, and the tenths and first fruits were to be paid yearly by all the other tribes for their supj)ort. Such were the constitutional checks upon the sacerdotal class that it could never be- come a sacerdotal aristocracy. The form of the government was determined on the same principle as their religion. God w^as to be their king. But they were to be his free subjects ; and * Septuagint in Exod. xx : 5. III. — LEGISLATION AT SINAI. 129 were called upon to make their election of him, and to swear allegiance to him, which thej repeatedly did. In this respect the Hebrew, especially during the time of the Judges, differed from all other fonns of government. It was not a republic, although without a human mon- arch, not an aristocracy, although executed by judges and heads of houses ; but a theocracy. Those who ad- ministered it did so as the ministers of King Jehovah. If any credit is to be given to the voice of primeval fa- ble, even when uniform, such was the original govern- ment for all mankind ; and the same apostasy which multiplied gods, multiplied also kings, which men as- sumed to be as claiming descent from God. If so, then the Hebrew poHty, in this, as in some other re- spects, was a revival, on behalf of a chosen nation, placed in more guarded circumstances, of what had primarily been instituted for the whole race. And if so then the establishment of the kingdom of the Messiah over all the earth, will be the restoration of that divine government, which was the earliest of all, in which man was originally constituted to live in the capacity of minister to God as his immediate king. If not so, then it was a peculiar relation, in w^hich the ruler of aU chose to stand to the Hebrew people, as a priest na- tion. For it is the only instance of the kind recorded within the period of history. Consistently, the constitution and laws of the nation were not framed by the people, nor by their princes and elders, nor presented to them as the work of their leader, but issued as the revelation of their invisible king. 130 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By a condescension to the crude notions and feeble apprehension of the people, who were to be elevated and purified, certain sensible objects were adopted to signify the divine presence. In the main such things were chosen as were venerable in their eyes. Only nothing was employed as a likeness of God. The people were to be educated to the worship of the one invisible Jehovah, but the beginning had to be made from habits of thought contracted in the land of their late residence. Accordingly a tabernacle was erected, in its great outlines similar to the temple structures of Egypt and combining the character of a temple and a palace. In it was a throne, which was also the ark of the covenant, a table whereon were set twelve loaves of bread, and renewed every Sabbath day ; and near was the altar of incense, and a superb candela- brum all made of or overlaid with the purest gold. The structure, on account of the migratory life which the people led in the wilderness, was composed of movable materials; but all of the finest quality, acacia wood overlaid with gold, and when set up, the whole was hung with rich drapery. The interior consisted of two apartments, the holy place, and the most holy place ; the former being twenty cubits long by ten wide and ten high, the latter ten cubits in all its dimensions. It was inclosed in a quadrangular court, one hundred cubits long by fifty broad. A brazen altar for sacrifice, and a vast basin of the same metal for ablutions of the priests, stood within the sacred inclosure, and in front of the tabernacle. In the tabernacle the most sacred object was an ni. LEGISLATION AT SINAI. 131 ark or chest, within which were deposited the tables of the moral law, and by its side a golden vase con- taining a quantity of manna, Aaron's rod, aod, after the last instructions of Moses, a copy of the book of the law. "Within the court, the people, with the ministry of the priests, presented themselves, and conducted those parts of the worship which belonged to them. It was the court of their king. To the sanctuary Tvere ad- mitted only his ministers, and into the holiest place the high priest only once a year with blood of sacrifice. All the divisions of the tabernacle, in the order de- scribed, and almost the proportions, are to be found in the ground plans, and existing ruins of ancient Egyp- tian structures ; the great court or temeiios, the altar, the holy place, and in the rear of that the smaller apartment, deemed the holiest of all. And the same parts and proportions are repeated in the Greek. The style of architecture is different in each from the rest, but they are all on the same general plan. In like manner, some of the furniture of the Hebrew taberna- cle corresponded to what the Hebrew people were al- ready accustomed to regard as sacred to religious uses. But in one respect the difference was great. In the holiest place of the tabernacle the object of ad- oration was not an idol. The mercy seat, or throne, was unoccupied by any material form, Faith was re- quired to rest upon an invisible Grod. And as to all the materials employed, they were to be filled with a meaning drawn from that central truth. It is also mentioned that on the completion of that 132 COMPAKATIVE RELIGION. edifice, the pillar of cloud, wliicli had gone before them frora the morning when the people began their march from Egypt, removed and stood over it, and remained "upon it thronghout all their journeys in the wilderness. The tabernacle was the prime object of attention at all times in the camp of Israel. When that structure was complete, Aaron and his sons were solemnly consecrated to the highest offices of the priesthood. The ceremonies of consecration were performed for the ordinary priests now once for all. Their sons and descendants were held to be born in consecration, and w^hen they came of a proper age, entered upon the duties of office without any ceremony. But the high priest was always specially ordained, and inducted into his office by repetition of the anointing with oil, and robing wdth the vestments of Aaron. In readino^ of the eleo^ance of the sacerdotal vest- ments and symbolical decorations, as well as of the richness and style of the tabernacle and its furniture, we are forcibly impressed with the great excellence which the Hebrew workmen had attained. All the materials and much of the w^orkmanship were furnished by the free-will offerings of the people. In the main the style of those vestments was new, although some of the articles are found among the official deco- rations of the priests in Egy^^t. "What figures consti- tuted the Urim and Thummim we are not informed, but they are first mentioned in Scripture as already known to the Israelites : and both in name and use they corresponded to certain symbols of Egyptian worship. III. LEGISLATION AT SINAI. 133 "When the tabernacle was complete and the priests installed, the series of sacrifices began by the issuing of a supernatural fire from before the Lord, which con- sumed the offering upon the altar. Thereafter daily morning and evening was the smoke of burned offer- ing to rise before the holy place. A slain lamb every morning and evening laid upon the altar was to be the daily service of the nation, continually. There were also various occasional sacrifices appointed, some as expiatory and others as expressive of thanksgiving. Of the latter class were the peace offerings, and of the former were burnt offerings, sin offerings and tres- pass offerings. The details of their performance were minutely prescribed, both as to what was to be done in each kind of cases, and what kind of person was to do it as well as the kind of victim and all that was to be done with it. Some of those services were pre- scribed for particular sins ; others were voluntary, dic- tated by the feelings of the person who brought the victim. But in all, the ceremonial is described with equal minuteness. Special observances were now appointed for the Sabbath. That day was to be set apart entirely to the service of God. It wa;s to be a day of rest from all bodily work ; and was to be celebrated by offering double the number of dailj^ sacrifices, by putting twelve fresh loaves of shewbread, and the incense be- longing thereto, on the table in the holy place of the temple, and by the assembling of the people for the public exercises of their religion. And on that day the division of priests destined for the weekly service 134 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. commenced their duties. It was to be a day of reli- gions enjoyment. But it was also to be enforced by the severest penalties. Whoever proceeded with his ordinary work on that day was to be put to death. The whole plan and operation of the tabernacle ser- vice as well as the tabernacle itself, and everything con- nected with it, combined religion and civil government. His religion was to the Hebrew the foundation of his whole civil structure. To apostatize from the faith of his nation was also to be guilty of high treason. Union of regal with priestly office had prevailed under the Hamitic system, from earliest recorded times; but the king of the Hebrews was not a priest. He was God, — the only God. Their constitution embodied much which had been wrought out by the experience of their predecessors ; but a higher and purer spirit imbued it all, proceeding from the central principle of their dedication to the service of Jehovah as deposi- taries of his revelation. God had hitherto been revealed to the Hebrews as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and by the same name under which he was known to their Ca- naanitish neighbors ; but now the glorious nature of his existence is more fully set forth in the proclamation of him as Jehovah, by whicli he was reverenced as the king of Israel. But the king of the priest nation of the world was also declared the sovereign of all nations and as subjecting all to the same principles of legisla- tion. He was the over-all king, head over all the sev- eral kings of all the earth, — the King of kings, the Lord of lords. in. LEGISLATION AT SINAI. 135 The people were also taught that God was jealous of the worship which he required, and would not suf- fer it with impunity to be divided with another. And over and above the demand of strict justice from man to man, they were instructed in the most practical manner, that every man had a duty to all the nation of Israel, and the whole nation to the individual ; and that the eye of the invisible monarch was equally upon the whole nation and upon the humblest person in it, discriminating between the obedient and disobedient ; and yet, that in the case of national sins, the external punishment would fall upon the multitude, including many who had no particular positive agency in in- curring the guilt. CHAPTER YII. SUBSEQUENT PROGKESS OF LEGALISM. Religion as it appears in the earliest scriptures was now almost extinct. And with it had disappeared the earlier morality. The shocking cruelty and prof- ligacy of Egypt and Western Asia needed more than natural means of reform. Less information comes to us from other quarters, but it is of the same nature. In the very existence of the great reformations there stands forth the best witness to the fact. While those reformations in their subsequent history, continued to maintain their ground, with changes for the better or the worse, the idolatrous religions from which they dissented having, by natural process, .developed into legal systems, held on their course of multiplying errors and sinking deeper into debasing practices, until Egypt, Canaan, India and Assyria, at the head of their respective style of culture, were completely prostrated under sacerdotal despotism. China did not sink into such a degree of polytheism and of idolatry ; but her national patriarchal religion became a system of hollow ordinances, and her only real religion a worship of forefathers. The degeneracy of the patriarchal s^^stem in China became a worship of patriarchs. Thus in I. SUBSEQUENT PKOGRESS OF LEGALISM. 137 their respective careers of development or permanence those nations continued for ages. In the legalism which had received new definite- ness and force from the measures of reforming mono- theists, error had found a new argument. More authoritatively than ever were the rites of religious service represented as good works with God, making the worshipper acceptable, if rightly performed accord- ing to law. Importance was legally attached to the proper pronunciation of every word of the pra3^ers and hymms prescribed for each occasion, the right attitudes of body, the right junctures of time, and so on, every- thing was fixed in a sacred formula, in which the slightest mistake might vitiate the whole service. Such became the state of religion everywhere, but especially in Egypt and India, where its ritual was the most complex and its law the most imperative. A legal religion and fixed ritual worship determined the principal elements of the later scriptures in all the great nations. In China, the Le-ke, with its rites and ceremonies, follows at some distance the Shoo- king ; in Persia, the liturgy of the Yasna follows its sacred hymns ; the Yispered is appended to the Yasna ; and the legal institutions of the Yendidad follow the liturgy. So the liturgical Yedas follow the Rig-veda, the commentaries on them determine details, and the laws of Manu give recognized sanction to all. And in Hebrew, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy suc- ceed the histories of Genesis and Exodus. A ceremonial thus established, and a legal litera- ture connected with it, the authority of the priest 138 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. class was put upon a firm footing above dependence on the mere good will of the masses. Its members established in a positive authority, acquired an almost supernatural power over the less educated, by whom they were viewed as especially holy, and as having the salvation of other men in their hands. And where the ritual was most elaborate, and the sacred books most exacting of minute compliance, the importance of the priesthood became the greatest. A complicated s.ystem of ceremonies, recurring frequentl}^ and regularly, in pnblic and private, with a liturgy of prayers and liymns, demanded the whole attention of the men set apart to the duty of conducting it. I^ot only was it no longer practicable for every man to perform for himself all the duties thus multiplied, but it was no longer allowable to attempt it. By presuming to offer his own sacrifices after the manner of his forefathers, man would now incur a severe penalty. And this added to the fear of invalidating the service, by failing to comply with every minute particular aright, intensi- fied the importance of the sacerdotal profession. Like every other means of power, in such a state of the world, the priesthood became hereditary, and a sacer- dotal nobility was formed, with special privileges, next to royalty, and in some cases, with the King at its head. Such was the form into which the original patri- •archal cult of the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyp- tians developed. That of India reached the most com- plete sacerdotalism ; but with the king of a different caste. In Israel, priestly office was hereditary, but was II. PKOGEESS OF REFORMED LEGALISM. 139 SO constituted that it conld not become the basis of sacerdotal aristocracy. The sons of Levi were denied territorial possession with the other tribes, and were confined to forty-eight cities, far apart and small, with but a trifle over three hundred acres attached to each, and to the perquisites of their ofhce. So efi'ectually were those precautions establislied, that the Levites never rose to any superiority of power, as a tribe, were not even counted as a tribe at all, aftei they had been set apart to their literary and sacerdotal duties. Only a few families of them were priests. The rest were distributed throughout the nation, in literary and pro- fessional avocations, and in subordinate offices assigned them under the general government, and in which lat- ter they were under check of the local tribal gov- ernments, to which they were also a check in being a bond of union for the whole. The priesthood was so constituted that it never could subordinate the nation, while occupying a place in religion, and government securing for it the national respect. II. SUBSEQUENT PROGRESS OF REFORMED LEGALISM. All the religions of the monotheistic revival also degenerated in course of time. They went down into a superficial and superstitious ritualism, if not into polytheism and positive idolatry. The Hebrew, which was essentially ritual, had a long struggle with the ten- dency of the people to carry it into superstitious sym- 140 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. holism and from that to step into the idolatrous prac- tices of their neighbors. Ultimately in the end of their commonwealth, under that heathenish proclivity their whole system broke down, and the peculiar observances of their religion were neglected so long as to be almost forgotten ; and they were on the verge of having their features as a separate people obliterated. Only through the persevering firmness of one man in the prophetical office were they saved from that catastro- phe. Samuel barely saved them ; but he transferred the work which he had done to one who carried it to completion. And thereby while the Iranian and Chi- nese monotheistic interests continued to drag on their degenerating history, that of the Hebrews was revived to a new activity and with some new features by King David. It was in the days of the Judges that the peculiar features of the Mosaic polity were most consistently exhibited. And the government of that period was designed to be perpetual among them, had they re- mained faithful to its conditions. But that they did not, except by intervals. And at length about three hundred and fifty years after the conquest of Canaan, they sank into a state of civil and ecclesiastical disorder and helplessness. Under the reign of David the wor- ship of Jehovah, as instituted at Sinai, was rescued from the ruin into which it had fallen, and the confu- sion of heathenism with which it had been mingled, and elevated to a new period of purity and prosperity. It also received a fuller development of some of its ele- ments, viz., fuller organization of the serving priest- n. PROGRESS OF REFORMED LEGALISM. 141 hood ; second, great expansion of the musical part of the service ; third, the regular establishment of the service in psalms ; fourth, the tenderer attributes of Godhead are more fully unfolded ; and fifthly, farther expansion and greater definiteness of the promise, and fuller and clearer declaration of the character of the Messiah and of his reign. All the attributes of God- head set forth in the Psalms are taught or implied in the writings of Moses, but in the Psalms they are brought out more fully, dwelt upon and commended. The mercy of God is revealed in Moses, but then it was especially important to urge the terrors of his law. For the institution of the law was the work of Moses. That law is the theme to which David continually re- curs ; it is his meditation all the day, and God s severity against the violators of his law is abundantly declared ; but it is on the mercy of God that he expands more largely than his predecessor. In general, the severer aspects of Deity are prominent in Moses ; the tenderer in David, although all are presented by both. Put in David there is a great advance in bringing out the re- lations of God to the believer as a friend and protec- tor : and some things appear in his writings touching the Messiah for the first time : — His Sonship in God- head, his Kingship in Israel, and thence to the utter- most parts of the earth, and his descent according to the fiesh in the line of David. There is more light and joy also in the religion of the Psalms than in that of the law, and less dependence upon the ceremonial. Solomon adorned that religion with the splendors of art ; but he also darkened it with the questions of 142 COMPAEATIVE RELIGION. pliilosopliY, and in his later years led it far on the career of degeneracy, which the division of the king- dom, npon his death, accelerated. The history of Hebrew religion under the divided monarchy is a nar- rative of decline alternating with partial reformations, until in the ^Northern kingdom its characteristics dis- appear, and the nation is scattered among the heathen, and in the southern kingdom the observation of it in purity is confined to a few ; and they are saved from utter submersion by being carried into captivity by a monarch who becomes their protector. There, in a foreign land, they listen more thoughtfully to their law, to the songs of their temple service, and the lessons of their prophets, and learn better to appre- hend the superior excellence of the religion of their fathers, and the baseness of the folly through which the nation had lost all the blessings it was designed to secure. Appointed there to learn a lesson of the fruits of polytheism and idolatry in unmitigated ma- turity, which they never again forgot, they became more consistent monotheists than their nation had ever been in the days of its prosperity. The steps of decline from the religion delivered at Sinai were : I. In keeping up in some families, perhaps many, the worship of the idols of Laban. Joshua 24 : 2, 14, 15. That was connected, it would seem, with the worship in some quarters, of the brazen serpent made by Moses. These errors the last counsels of Joshua had some effect in checking. II. But the next generation took a step fur- ther in worshipping different gods under the name n. PROGRESS OF REFORMED LEGALISM. 143 of Baal, that is, Lord, and Ashtoreth, gods of their Canaanitish neighbors, of tlie people whom they had not driven out, and with whom, on the contrary, many of them intermarried. That connection was a constant temptation, and acted upon the people more or less through all their national history. Mosaisra was ritual. It needed only to change its object to become idolatrous. To sanctify a grove to Jehovah was naturally thought to be a good work. To set up an image in it was only to help devotion. But when the eye. was familiar with that sight, it was easy to sub- stitute the image of another god, to whose worship a wife, or some pious friend, from among the Canaanites was devoted. And reforming kings seldom went the length of removing the heretical places of worship in the groves. There was always that starting-point for error. III. And finally, when kings, priests and prophets failed to abstain from the same error, the whole nation went headlong into heathenism ; and only a remnant was saved. Meanwhile among the few who were faithful to the worship of Jehovah, another, and an inverse pro- cess had been going forward. Accompanying the strictness of Mosaism there was from the first a sys- tem of literary instruction appointed for the whole people. In that, they were instructed in what was necessary to the ritual observance of their religion, but also in the meaning of it, upon the whole, and that such offering and ceremonies signified repentance, others signified devotion, others, thankfulness, others 144 COMPAKATIVE EELIGION. atonement, and so on, and all was to be performed in view of a spiritual acceptance bj a spiritual God. This spiritual and intellectual element was that which the heretics always neglected. But it was that to which the progress of the Hebrew religion belonged. In the time of Samuel it grew into the societies or schools of the prophets, whose whole work was con- cerned with the literary and spiritual elements of religion. A perfect symmetry of these two existed under David, both being developed to a degree beyond anj previous example. But the tendency among heretical Jews always was to give preponderance to the formal and material. The prophets who came after expressed their message chiefly in opposing that tendency. In course of time they urge the superior importance of the spiritual to the degree of vilifying the ritual, and expressing the condemnation of God upon it when separate from its spiritual import. It was to the party which followed the prophets that the faithful remnant in Babylon belonged. And prophets continued to be their instructors until after the restoration. Accordingly it was that part of the Hebrew people which held to the unfolding spirituality of their reli- gion which alone was saved out of the general wreck. That some of their descendants fell into another style of error does not concern us at this point. The heret- ical party sank out of notice of Hebrew scriptures for a reason obvious upon the face of things ; namely, n. PROGRESS OF REFORMED LEGALISM. 145 that they were the neglecters of intellectual and spirit- ual instruction ; but they also ceased to be of impor- tance in the history of Hebrew religion ; and blend- ing with heathen, lost their Hebrew identity. Subse- quent history of their religion is only in the line of those who followed its spiritual development. 7 CHAPTER YIII. PROGRESS OF AVESTAN LEGALISM. In the history of the Avestan religion certain stages of progress are marked by the succession of its sacred books, which is determined not by their arrange- ment in the canon, but by the state of the language in which they are respectively written, and by their in- trinsic relations to each other. First in order are the Gathas; because theirs is the most archaic diction ; and because they were neces- sary to the very existence of the other books. Their bearing upon the principal topics of religion has been already stated, — their doctrine of one solo personal God, eternal, invisible, infinite, the Creator and Kuler of all ; of subordinate angelic beings ; of the origin of evil in the perversion of the moral faculties first on the part of a higher intelligence, and then through his cor- rupting influence, extended to man ; its worship, con- sisting of prayer, in song, consecrated oflTerings, and the observation of purity in thought, purity in words, and purity in life. The Gathas were themselves the prayers, the adorations, and supplications provided for the utterance of devotion, — the earliest that we know of Avestanism. n. — LITURGICAL SCKIPTUEE8. 147 II. LITUKGICAL SCRIPTURES. The next stage is that which presents the matured forms of a liturgy, founded upon the Gathas, enjoining and directing the use of them in worship. Of that service the Vispered and Yasna contain the whole form and substance. The older and principal part is the Yasna, in which the Gathas are bound up. The Yis- pered is a smaller liturgical book of later production. Avestanisni had no sacrifice, in the Hebrew sense of that observance, much less in the Hindu sense of it, as food and drink of the god to whom it was offered ; but only a consecrated festival, in which the victim was presented before the sacred fire, and then eaten wholly by the worshipper, with his friends and the priests. The Yasna, in its liturgical parts, is prose ; in its other parts, the more spiritually devotional, it is verse, consisting chiefly of the Gathas. All these parts of the canon now mentioned were recited, for the most part, by the priests alone, during the performance of certain religious ceremonies, to which the liturgy referred. Those ceremonies were, first, consecration of the holy water; second, consecra- tion of the Baresma, a bundle of twigs taken from the date, tamarisk or pomegranate ; third, the preparation and consecration of the Haoma, or inspiring liquor — the Soma of the Hindus ; and fourth, offering of the Draones, or sacred cakes, with pieces of cooked meat 148 COMPAEATIVE KELIGION, on them, which, after certain prayers, were eaten by the priests. Accordingly, the most important duty of priests was recitation of the sacred books in the order, not of their chronoloirv, but of their lituro^ical arrans^ement in the Yendidad-Sades. Worship commenced with in- vocations to Ahura-mazda, and all good spirits. Then followed the preparation of the holy water, Baresma, Haoma, etc., then the offering of these things to the spirits, the eating of the Draunes, and drinking of the Haoma by the priests, during which more prayers were recited, praises of Haoma, etc. The Gathas were re- cited alternately with passages of the Yendidad. After the Gathas followed other prayers with doxologies. This ritual in its primary elements most probably commenced with the practice of Zarathnstra himself; but in its completeness could not have come into exist- ence imtil after the canon of their scripture was full. For it was the duty of the priests to recite tlie whole of the sacred writings every twenty-four hours, the greater part of them in the night. They had also other duties, such as to watch and tend the sacred lire, kept continually burning. The Yendidad or book of law, is chiefly concerned with rules of ceremonial purity. It commences with a chapter on creation, followed by one on the happy reign of Yima, both of which, as well as the twenty- first chapter, — a relic of old Persian star worship, are thought to be disconnected fragments of some more ancient book now lost. They are not legal. Yima declined being a lawgiver, and preferred to be a bless- II. LITURGICAL SCRIPTURES. 149 ing, with less formality. The third Fargard, or chap- ter, enters on the subject of ceremonial purity, with a statement of the five things most pleasing, and the five most displeasing to earth. The former have reference to where a holy man walks ; that a holy man should build himself a habitation, have a wife and children, good flocks, fire and all that is necessa- ry for life, water for dry land, and draining for land too moist. The five things most displeasing are the con- ception of the Arezura, when the Daevas, with the Drujas come to it, out of hell, and the rest are cases of defilement by dead bodies of men and dogs, and the holes of the beasts created by Anra-mainyus. Raising of cattle and cultivation of the soil are recommended with religious sanction. "He Avho cultivates the fruits of the field, culti- vates purity."" The country inhabited by the ancient Aryan peo- ple must have been cold ; fire is mentioned as one of the most valued possessions. Then follow several chapters of ceremonial legal enactments, defining faults and assigning punish- ments ; touching un cleanness, occasioned by contact with dead bodies, and the means of removiug it ; a scale of prices to be paid to the priest, who has ofiicia- ted in the ceremonies ; and punishment for those who have officiated without proper authority ; the purify- ing of dwellings, of fire, of water, of earth, and even of the sun, moon and stars. The thirteenth Fargard contains laws for the pro- * Vendidad iii. 99. 160 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. tection of dogs, the most serviceable animal to a pas- toral people, and teaches the future existence of the spirits of dogs. In several succeeding chapters the subject is continued, and followed by laws for the proper treatment of women. Eules are laid down for cutting of hair, paring of nails, and kindred details of personal cleanliness. The nineteenth Fargard recounts the rebellion of the evil spirits against Zarathustra. They seek to kill him. He defeats them. Anra- mainyus tempts him to curse the Mazdean law. He resists ; and learns how to protect men and women from the Spirits of evil, by praising the divine law. and the heavenly powers. The twentieth Fargard is an account of Thrita, the iirst physician ; and the twenty- second, which is the last, is of sickness and healing. Thus the Yendidad is a book of ceremonial law. Its most minute details, like the other Avestan books, are ostensibly revealed by Ahura-mazda, in responso to the inquiries of Zarathustra. As these old scriptures were to be recited princi- pally by the priests, so the Khorda-Avesta was intend- ed for the laity, and all their daily prayers are con- tained in it. Of those the greater number are in the language of the other liturgical books, not unfrequently consisting of extracts from different chapters of the Yasna ; but several including Patets, that is, confes- sional prayers, are written in Parsee, and belong, in their present shape, at least, to a comparatively mod- ern period. They bear internal marks also of a later . date. For example, the name of God, as it appears in II. LITURGICAL SCRIPTURES. 151 them, is not Ahura-mazda, but tlie much later abbre- viated Ormazd ; and their adoration of Mithra, Sra- osha, and some other mythical beings, approaches to polytheism. Those great angels are not put on an equality with Ormazd, yet attributes of deity are ascribed to them. In all the ancient scriptures, Zarathustra is the prophet, the person to whom the revelations are made; but in some of the earlier he speaks of himself, and in the later is mentioned in the third person. The in- feriority of all that second class of passages in point of spirituality cannot escape the notice of any reader. In the Yasna adorations are oifered to Sraosha, some parts o£ which are quoted in the Khorda-Avesta ; and so in regard to the Fravashis ; but all these praises are more extended, and more of the nature of god- worship in the later book. Invocations and adoration are also addressed to water, to wisdom, to Haoma, to the Manthra, that is to the inspired hymn, to kingly Majesty, to the Ma- jesty of the Aryan regions ; and the Gathas one by one, are almost personified as objects of praise. In the Khorda-Avesta there are also private pray- ers for special occasions, for certain classes of persons, prayers before and after eating, and confessions of faith. "I confess myself a Mazdayasnian, a disciple of Zarathustra, an opponent of the Daevas, a worship- per of Ahura," is the substantial part of the Avestan confession, to whatever divine being the adoration is offered. Thus to the latest of their sacred scriptures, al- 152 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. though a process of mythologizing was going on, and their worship was stiftening into forms, and losing in spirituality, the followers of Zarathustra were in reality still monotheists, the adoration they pay to inferior divine beings never goes to the length of detracting from Ahura-mazda, whose incomparable superiority is always asserted as often as he is named. Anra-mainyus, in the ancient hymns, appears as the name of a moral principle ; in the liturgical books his personality is fully determined. A similar change in the same interval has passed upon some other moral abstractions, both good and bad. A number of evil spirits are conceived of as the followers of Anra-main- yus, and seldom called by distinct names, but classed as Daevas. Anra-mainyus appears also as a creator, but only of means to the end of marring, perverting or destroying the good creatures of Ahura-mazda. He is served by a retinue of demons, of his own crea- ting, as Ahura-mazda by good angels. Avestanism, in the first instance, did not teach the co-existence of sovereign powers of good and evil, — a dualism of moral authorities ; but after the elevation of Anra-mainyus to be the prince of evil, over against the holy creator, it gradually assumed that type ; while the monotheistic idea asserted itself in maintaining the superiority and final victory of Ahura-mazda, and sometimes in a dark hint of a greater Deity, who created them both. Idolatry never made much progress among the followers of Zarathustra. Although they may be said to have gone the length of idolizing their rites and II. — LITUEGICAL SCEIPTURES. 153 ceremonies, and their mental personifications; no images were ever used of Ahnra-mazda, or of Anra- mainjns, or of the angels. But the emblem of Ahura- mazda was pure flame, immortal Yohumano, the good mind.* In these books we also find the doctrine of immor- tality of the human soul, and the existence of guardian angels (Fravashis) over every individual life. They also teach that immediately after death the souls of men, both good and bad, proceed together, by an ap- pointed path, to the Bridge between earth and heaven, along which the pious alone could pass with safety, while the wicked fell from it into the gulf below, w4iere they found themselves in the place of punish- ment. The Avestan religion began its history at the point where the people among w^hom it arose, were changing from the pastoral to the agricultural style of liv- ing, which change it as decidedly advanced as did the Mosaic the same change among the Hebrew people. Armaiti, the guardian angel of earth, promoted the culture of the soil, her favor was anxiously solicited to bless the labors of the husbandman, and to convert to that occupation those who otherwise were disposed to the nomadic habits of their forefathers. And Yayu, the spirit of the power of the air, was addressed with corresponding honors. Agni, (fire) and Soma, (intoxication) deities in the * For all this section see Bleeck's translation of Spiegel's Avesta, with prefaces and notes. Also Eichhoflf, in the French Bibliotheque Orientale, vol. ii. Preface. 154 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. Yedic religion, were as such rejected from the Aves- tan. Fire was held sacred, as a symbol of God, and before it were their so-called sacrifices presented, but only as a material agent, not as a divine power, not as an object of worsliip. The Soma worship, w^hich formed a main element of the old Aryan religion, and was retained in Brahmanism, was at first altogether reject- ed by the author of the Avestan creed.* A ceremony which implied that intoxication was an acceptable ele- ment of worship, seems to have been revolting to him. But he failed wholly to wean his followers from the favorite Soma festival, and could only put a restraint upon it, consistently with his exalted idea of God. Un- der the Zeud form Haoma, it continued to be an element in Avestan worsliip. Indra a Yedic god was retained in the Avesta, as second in the government of evil, the powerful demon of storms, of the thunderbolt, and of war. And in general, the objects of Yedic worship as far as retained in the Avesta, are retained as evil spirits. In the changes to which it had submitted, the Avestan religion maintained a consistent opposition to the Brahmanical. III. MAOISM. "When Aryans migrated towards the west, and ex- tended their settlements into the countries south and west of the Caspian Sea, they came into contact with a Scythian people, whose religion, importantly diflfer- *Compare the Gathas. III. MAGISM. 155 ent from their own, resembled it, on some points, far enough to establish an affinity with it, and in course of time a corrupting influence over it. That Scythian religion was purely sacerdotal. Xo man had a right to put his hand to its observances save the Magi, who were its hereditary priests, and who used all their arts to propagate and establish its practices. Its wor- ship was paid to the elements of nature, not as symbol- ical of a higher Being, nor as manifestations of his at- tributes, but in themselves. Earth, air, water and fire were the immediate and ultimate objects of adoration. But a special veneration was paid to fire, for the wor- ship of which altars were erected on high places all over the country. On these altars the sacred fire, originally kindled by miraculous agency, was kept always burning. 'No temple enclosed tlie w^orship, which was conducted in the open air. The holy air was the temple. Sacrifice was offered to the fire. But not more than a small portion of the fat of the victim was burned. Pertaining to that ceremony were many minute observances which none but the Mas^i could perform. Sacrifices were also offered to rivers, lakes and springs. The victim was slain beside the divine object and offered to it, but no drop of tlie blood was permitted to defile the holy element. Earth and air, being also holy, imposed many in- conveniences upon consistent Magians. Especially in the disposal of the bodies of their dead, they felt con- strained by their religion to do violence to natural hu- man feeling. A dead body was held to be unclean. 156 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. It sliould not be buried. For that would defile the earth. It must not be sunk in water. For that would desecrate another holy element. And it must not be burned. For that would offend the holiest of all. Round towers of great elevation, without doors or windows, were constructed with iron bars crossing them at the top. Ascending on the outside by ladders, the Magians deposited theij* dead upon those iron bars. Birds of prey immediately descended upon the corpses, and when they had devoured the flesh, the bones fell through the tars to the bottom of the tower. This revolting and inhuman practice, many of the Aryans, who otherwise fell in with the Magian religion, rejected. Instead of it they preferred to envelope the bodies of their dead in wax and deposit them in the earth. The coating of wax it was presumed would de- fend the earth from pollution. And tlie Magian priests, not to be too severe with their valuable converts, al- lowed the plea. When the Zoroastrians first came among the Scyth- ians of Media, they found the Magi, as a priest-class, already fully organized and in authority. Their con- trol over the ordinances of religion was absolute. 'No person could acceptably conduct any part of worship but through their ministration. They were the priests and mediators between men and God. It was by them that victims for sacrifice were prepared and slain, the proper rites were observed, and the hymns and prayers and incantations were recited. They were also the prophets who ascertained and made known the will of God. They explained omens, and inter- III. — MAOISM. 157 preted dreams. In their hands the Barsom (Baresma,) was a mystic instrument of incantation and prophecy, and indispensable in every sacrificial ceremony. Some- times the rods of which it consisted were used singly, but a mysterious power was thought to reside in the whole when bound up in a bundle. It was used in the Avestan religion ; but without such superstitious pow- ers being attributed to it. Another sacred implement of the Aryans, subsequently adopted by the Magi, was that for the killing of bad animals. The sacerdotal style and vestments of the Magi were imposing. Arrayed in white robes, and wearing tall felt hats, with lappets at the sides, which concealed the jaw and lower part of the face with the lips, " each with his Barsom in his hand, they marched in pro- cession " to their fire-altars, and standing around them performed the magical incantations. The ignorant populace looked on w^th superstitious awe, and kings and princes recognized their supernatural claims, and consulted them as oracles. In this religion there was much to remind the A\^estan believers of their own, enough to propitiate their favor for the adoption of a system essentially different from their original belief. Their pure Aves- tan creed abhorred polytheism and idolatry. But its development, as appears in its own later Scriptures, was into formalism, and thence into idolatry of forms, and through multiplication of divine beings, in the direction of polytheism. And when, spreading west- ward, some of them came into contact with the Magian religion, they were prepared to fall in with it in 158 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. whole or in part. The result seems to have been a fu- sion — an adoption into Avestanism of all the chief points of the Magian belief, and all the more impor- tant of the Magian usages. This absorption appears to have taken place in Media. It was there that the Ar- yan tribes first associated with themselves, and form- ally adopted into their body the priest caste of the Magi ; and it is there that Magi are first found acting in the capacity of Aryan priests. According to all the accounts which have come down to us, they soon acquired a predominating influence, which they no doubt used to impress their own religious doctrines more and more upon the nation at large, and to thrust into the background, so far as they dared, the peculiar features of the old Avestan belief Magian usages — elemental worship, divination with the sacred rods, dream-expounding, incantations at the fire-altars, sac- rifices wliereat a Magus officiated — seem to have pre- vailed ; the new predominated over the old, backed by the power of an organized hierarchy. The spiritual and moral religion of Zarathustra was gradually over- laid by a nature worship, which propitiated its favor through resembling it in some of its outward forms. Eawlinson, from whom the above passage is sub- stantially taken,* regards Magism as in its origin com- pletely distinct from Zoroastrianism, and as the chief cause of its corruption, and of the remarkable differ- ence between the earlier and the later Zendic books. Similar is the view presented by Westergaard, in his preface to the Zenda vesta. '' The faith ascribed by * The Five Great Monarcliies, vol. ii. 333-354. III. MAGISM. 159 Herodotus to the Persians is not the lore of Zoroaster, nor were the Magi, in the time of Darius, the priests of Orniazd. Tlieir name, Magn, occurs only twice in all the extant Zend texts, and there in a general sense, while Darius opposes his creed to that of the Magi, whom he treated most unmercifully." The Bundehesh, although a book of much later production, and containing doctrines not found in the ancient hymns, may be presumed to state correctly the belief which grew up under the influence of Magism, and maintained itself in the best days of Persian prosperity. One of these was the conception of Deity, sole, and far removed from the activities and conflicts of life, to whom both Ormazd and Ahriman owe thei/ existence. Indications of this be- lief, undeveloped, appear in the Yendidad. This absolute Deity, Zerana-akerana, created Or- mazd and Ahriman, both holy, princes of" light ; but the latter proved unfaithful, and became the malig- nant prince of darkness. To correct the evil thus introduced, Zerana-akerana created the visible world by Ormazd. It is to last twelve thousand years, and be the means whereby Ahriman is to manifest him- self and w^ork out his own defeat. That period is divided into four parts of three thousand years each — the difierent acts of the great drama of the Universe, wherein a theatre is furnished for sin to carry out its malignant passions, to its own ruin. In that creation and process, all things in heaven, in earth and hell, take their place s intelligent beings, in the hosts of Ormazd, or of Ahriman. It is the 160 COMPARATIVE KELIGION. conflict of good and evil; always strenuous, and occa- sionally breaking out into open war. Only the Infi- nite Zerana-akerana remains serene and undisturbed by the contest. In his omniscient mind all was already ordained how it should come to pass. The prince of evil will be defeated by the issue of his own devices. After a long and terrible war he will destroy the earth by a conflagration ; but will himself be purified in the fire ; all sin will be purged away, and a new creation will arise in spotless beauty, and evil shall be found no more.* In one sense, this is a religion of nature. For it makes everything a spiritual agency in the cause of religion ; for or against. But it is not nature worship. For, although various holy beings are venerated, supreme worship is paid only to Ormazd, the leader of the hosts of good. On some points this is not the doctrine of the Gathas ; but it is a sublime moral con- ception. The gross nature-worship of the Magi, the empty pomp of their formalities and incantations, must have been oflfensive to every true believer in the pure moral religion of Zarathustra. * Freeman Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 194, 201. CHAPTER IX. PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN CHINA. The Chinese sacred book of poetry is a collection of three hundred and five pieces, brief and lyrical. It was edited by Confucius, who also perhaps improved the arrangement in some respects ; but, in the estimate of Dr. Legge, his editorial work upon it must have been slight. For there is abundant evidence that it existed before his time, in all essentials, as it is now. In the attempt of the Tsin dynasty to destroy the sacred books, this was more fortunate than the rest, in that it was retained completely in memory by a great number of literary men; and was easily restored with little or no damage. Although very ancient, it is not the oldest of the sacred books ; but the remnant of various collections made during the early reigns of the Chow dynasty, with perhaps some subsequent additions. All of these additions, if any, must be older than the time of Confucius. For the number of pieces edited by Confucius is the number of the collection now. It consists not merely of hymns, but also of popular secular songs, gathered by the early Chow princes from different provinces, as a means of ascertaining the tone of moral sentiment among the people. The odes of the kingdom are chiefly religious, 162 COMPARATIVE KELIGION. those of the temple entirely, and together these two parts form about half the whole collection. From tliose poems, as compared with the historic classic, may be gathered important facts touching the histori- cal development of the national religion. Chinese History begins with King Yaou (2356 B. c.) who was succeeded by Shun. Their two reigns cover one hundred and fifty years. Then followed the Hea dynasty, lasting four hundred and thirty-nine years. After that came the dynasty of Shang which continued six hundred and forty -four years ; followed by that of Chow, which was still on the throne in the time of Confucius. " According to the received accounts, the three dy- nasties of Hea, Shang and Chow were established, one after another, by princes of great virtue and force of character, aided in each case by a minister of consum- mate ability and loyal devotion. At the head of the Hea dynasty was Yu, educated in the religious doc- trines and practices of the pious Yaou and Shun. But his line degenerated, and with it, the nation, in gov- ernment, religion and morality. A thorough and godly reformation was introduced by the emperor T'ang, founder of the Shang dynasty. But after a few reigns his successors also failed in virtue or energy. From time to time a prince arose who partially repaired the state of government, and thereby prolonged the exist- ence of that imperial house, until it finally gave way before the gifted and more virtuous prince of Chow. But the history of that dynasty, founded by Woo, pur- sued a similar career, until in the days of Confucius, PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN CHINA. 163 government, religion and morals alike had fallen into a state of great irregularity. In the historical classic '* the termination of the dy- nasties of Hea and Shang is attributed to the wicked- ness of their last emperors. After a long array of fee- ble princes," there appear on the throne men of physi- cal strength, and extravagant ''debaucheries, having neither piety nor truth ; and in contrast with them are princes, whose fathers have for several generations been attracting general notice by their righteousness and benevolence. When Heaven and men can no longer bear the iniquity of the tyrants, the standard of revolt is raised, and the empire speedily comes un- der a new rule.'' ^ The accounts touching the causes of revolution in both cases may be exaggerated, we do not know that they are ; the main facts there is no reason to doubt. It w^as under the revival of national religion and of good government in the beginning of the Chow dy- nasty, in the twelfth, or eleventh century before Christ, that the Book of poetry comes into notice. "The Shoo,'' that is the historical classic, " mentions that Shun every fifth year made a tour of inspection through his empire ; but there were no odes for him to examine, as to him, and his minister, Kaou-Yaou is attributed the first rudimentary attempt at the po- etic art. Of the progresses of the Hea and Yin dynas- ties we have no information, those of the kings of Chow " were made once in twelve years." " From the ' Official Book of Chow ' '' it appears that '' in the * Legge Sacred Classics, vol. iii. Pt. 1. Prolegomena, p. 198-9. 164: COMPARATIVE RELIGION. Chow dynasty there was a collection of poems," " which it was the business of the grand music-master to teach the musicians and tlie eleves of the royal school. It may be granted then, that the duke of Chow, in legis- lating for his dynasty, enacted that the poems pro- duced in the different feudal states should be collected on the occasions of the royal progresses, and lodged thereafter among the archives of the bureau of music at the royal court. The same thing we may presume a fortiori, would be done with those produced within the royal domain itself.'' " But the feudal states were modelled after the pattern of the royal state. They also had their music- masters, their musicians, and their histriographers. The kings in their progresses did not visit each par- ticular state, so that their music-masters could have an opportunity to collect the odes in it for themselves. They met at well-known points, the marquises, earls, barons, etc., of the different quarters of the kingdom ; these gave them audience ; adjudicated upon their merits ; and issued to them their orders. We are obliged to suppose that the princes would be attended to the places of rendezvous by their music-masters, carry- ing with them the poetical compositions collected in their several regions, to present them to their superior of the royal court. By such arrangement the poems deemed the most deserving of preservation were col- lected and classified *' among the archives of the capi- tal." Thence, as having received the sanction of the highest authorit}^, they were copied and carried abroad to be sung in all the states of the empire. The small- PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN CHINA. 165 ness of the collection may be satisfactorily accounted for by the reduplicated and careful criticism to which all such productions were subjected before any of them could be admitted to the imperial archives during the period to which those progresses belong, as well as to the utter neglect of the whole subject, in '' the disorder and confusion into which the kingdom fell after the lapse of a few reigns from King Woo. Royal progresses ceased when royal government fell into decay, and then the odes were no longer collected." The collec- tion was made in the interest ^' of good government and virtuous morals.'' And when these declined at headquarters, the people were left without a guide in religious and popular song, to follow their own fancy.* " The book of poetry abundantly confirms the con- clusions already drawn from the Shoo-King " touching the knowledge of God possessed by the ancient Chi- nese ;. as well as their behef in subordinate spirits, or angels. But it also contains evidence of a progress in development of the latter, proceeding by the path of personification of natural agencies, and by multiplying and exalting of spiritual beings, towards a polytheism, and' especially to deification of ancestors. 'No idolatry appears in the worship of Yaou and Shun, nor in the revival of that under T'ang ; nor does it appear that images of God were employed as helps in his service. But in succeeding times, it came into practice in the religious veneration paid to ancestors, and from that extended to the national re- ligion. Thus, as it was through an intermediate * Legge, vol. iv. part 1. pp. 24, 25, 26. 166 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. idolatry that the Semitic nations arrived at polytheism, and through a poetic personification of divine attributes and powers of nature that the Aryan nations were be- guiled into the idea of many gods, so the Chinese were misled into a multiplicity of objects of worship by their exaggerated veneration of ancestors. The national worship of God, the unseen Supreme Huler, degenerated into a mere ritual observed twice if not four times a year, as the spirit of a national festi- val presided over by the emperor. In the midst of the Patriarchal idolatry of the masses, and the shallow ritualism of the national observances, educated and in- telligent men began to doubt the truth of all religion, and of the existence of a future life, and that long be- fore the time of Confucius. Meanwhile, every tribe and family having its own particular object of faith and adoration, the ceremonial of popular worship was greatly increased ; while the national had become more pompous : and among the people the fundamental ideas of a supreme Ruler in Heaven, and of a state of rewards for the righteous be- yond the grave held their place in a vague and general way. Future punishment was early lost sight of in the tendency of every family to regard their own de- parted forefathers as objects of worship. This polytheism of ancestors was further augment- ed by the exaltation of the spirits, presiding over differ- ent spheres of nature, to such worship as was proper to God alone. There were also sacrifices in the royal temple of ancestors in the first months of the four seasons of the PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN CHDJA. 167 year. In the time when the poetry of the She-King "was collected that ceremonial was an object of more interest than the worship of God.* It is mentioned often in the odes, which make no mention of the wor- ship of God, except incidentally. Those ceremonies were preceded by fasting and various purifications on the part of the king and the parties who were to as- sist in the performance of them. There was a great concourse of the feudal princes, and much importance was attached to the presence among them of the repre- sentatives of the former dynasties ; but the duties of the occasion devolved mainly on the princes of the same surname as the royal house. Libations of fra- grant spirits were made to attract the Spirits, and their presence was evoked by a functionary who took his place inside the principal gate.. The principal vic- tim, a red bull, was killed by the king himself, using for the purpose a knife to the handle of which were attached small bells. With this he laid bare the hair, to show that the animal was of the required color, in- flicted the wound of death, and cut away the fat, which was burned along with southern wood, to increase the incense and fragrance. Other victims were numerous. The fifth ode of the sixth Book, in part second, de- scribes the offerings, the preparations, the " flaying the carcasses, boiling the flesh, roasting it, broiling it, ar- ranging it on trays and stands, and setting it forth." Ladies are present, '' presiding and assisting, music peals, the cup goes round." The description is as much that of a feast as of a sacrifice, and in fact, those great * Legge, vol. iv. Protegomena, p. 132-135. 168 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. seasonal occasions were what we might call grand fam- ily re-nnions, where the dead and the living met, eat- ing and drinking together, where the liv^ing worship- ped the dead, and the dead blessed the living. This characteristic of these ceremonies appeared most strikingly in the custom which required that the departed ancestors should be represented by living individuals of the same surname, chosen according to certain rules which the odes do not mention. They took for the time the place of the dead, received the honors which were due to them, and were supposed to be possessed by their spirits. They ate and drank as those whom they personated would have done; ac- cepted for them the homage rendered by their descend- ants; communicated their will to the principal in the sacrifice or feast, and pronounced on him and his line their benediction, being assisted in this point by a mediating priest, as we must call him, for want of a better term. On the next day, after a summary repe- tition of the ceremonies of the sacrifice, these persona- tors of the dead were specially feasted, and so, as it is expressed, " their happiness and dignity were made complete." '' This custom probably originated under the Chow dynasty — one of the regulations made by the duke of Chow ; and subsequently to it, it fell into disuse. " When the sacrifice to ancestors was finished, the king feasted his uncles and younger brothers or cousins, that is, all the princes and nobles of the same surname with himself, in another apartment. " The musicians, vocal and instrumental, who had performed in the PEOGEESS OF LEGALISM IN CHINA. 169 preceding ceremonies, " followed the convivial party, to give their soothing aid at the second blessing." Yiands, which had been provided in great abun- dance, ** were brought in from the temple, and set forth anew. The guests ate to the full and drank to the full ; and at the conclusion they all bowed their heads, while one of them declared the satisfaction of the spirits with the services rendered to them, and assured the king of .their favor to him and his posterity, so long as they did not neglect these observances." *' During the feast the king showed particular respect to those among his relatives who were aged, filled their cups again and again, and desired that their old age might be blessed, and their bright happiness ever increased." The above sketch of the seasonal sacrifices to an- cestors shows that they were mainly designed to main- tain the unity of the family connection, and intimately related to the duty of filial piety. Yet by means of them the ancestors of the kings were raised to the posi- tion of the Tutelary spirits of the dynasty ; and the an- cestors of each family became its Tutelary spirits." Other services were also performed in the temple of ancestors ; but less frequently, such as those on the occasion of setting np the spirit-tablet of a deceased monarch twenty-five months after his death, and the celebration, once in five years, when sacrifice was ofier- ed to all the ancestors of the royal house, " beginning with the mythical emperor Kuh, to whom their lineage was traced." The existence of God was not lost sight of, nor his 170 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. worship entirely neglected, in the course of the Chow dynasty ; but both were reduced to a secondary im- portance in the midst of an accumulating idolatry of half-deified ancestors. In the religious odes the praises of God are often sung, but only as connected with those of ancestral heroes, one of whom is always the principal theme. With the still existing recognition of one God, the worship of the nation was actually paid to thousands of divine beings. The solemnity of worship was lost in the multitude of its ceremonies. And the imperfect observance of the minutest particular was deemed ominous. Although entirely at variance with a radical principle of Chinese religion, even human victims were sometimes offered in sacrifice to the deified spirits of men. And in the funeral of a prince men were sometimes buried alive along with him. In the odes these things are con- demned as contrary to the practice of the ancients. The Muh of Ts'in is censured because " In his death he threw away the lives of his people. When the an- cient kings left the world, they yet left behind them a good example ; — would they ever have snatched away from it its good men ? The words of the Ode * Men there are not, And the empire must go to ruin And misery ' have reference to the want of good men." * The his- torical classic, which treats of the two hundred years immediately preceding Confucius, is the baldest and * Legge V. p. 244. PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN CHINA. 171 scantiest of records, and deliberately omits what the author deemed discreditable to his people, bat yet with aid of the ancient commentary upon it, bears abundant testimony to an equally degenerate tone of morals. In spite of all devices to ignore and cover up the evil, without committing positive falsehood, it appears that dishonesty, unfaithfulness to trust, licentiousness and murder were of frequent occurrence in the highest places of rank and office, while insubordination and disorder prevailed in the provinces.* An original veneration for parents, having assumed a religious character, had developed into a semi-polytheism, and a complete idol- atry, which so fully occupied the public mind as to re- move from it the idea of the supreme Being to a great distance. The moral effect of a real belief in the presence of God had given place to that which must attend upon faith in the guardianship of an indulgent an- cestor, who can sympathize with the wishes of his children, and easily tolerate their weaknesses and errors. In the order of ceremony God took precedence, as a superior but fir distant monarch. f " In spring and Autumn, without delay. He presents his offerings without error To the great and sovereign God, And to his great ancestor How-Tseih." That honor of precedence is assigned to God by the Chinese extreme regard for the proprieties of order and deportment, which were prescribed to the minutest particular by the rules of society. * tSee the Ch'un Ts'ew, with the Tso-chuen, passim. fLegge V. 1, page 234 and She-King iv. ii. song iv. 3. 172 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. The early fragments of history which constitute the greater part of the Shoo-King and pertain to the second millennium before Christ are imbued with an elevated spiritual religion ; the odes, collected during the first reigns of the Chow dynasty from 800 to 1100 years before Christ present a religion more ancestral and less godly, and the Ch'un Ts'ew has no more religious spirit than a calendar. It is from the commentary on it, Tso-chuen, that any view is obtained of the state of religion between the end of the eighth century b. c. and the tnne of Confucius. At that later epoch the degeneracy extended to all classes, to intellectual cul- ture as well as to religion. It was told to Min-tse-ma that the Lord of Yuen did not like learning. " There will soon be disorder in Chow,'' he replied. " Tliere must be many there who talk in that way, before such iin idea reaches the great men. The great men are troubled at errors [of some who have learned,] and be- come deluded [on the subject,] till they say, ' Learn- ing may be done without. The want of learning does no harm.' But it is an accidental circumstance when the want of learning does no harm. From such a con- dition inferiors will be usurping and superiors will be set aside ; — is it possible that disorders should not ensue ? Learning is like cultivation ; if people do not learn, there will be decadence and decay. We may judge that the family of Yuen will come to ruin." * Next after the Shoo-King, the Book of poetry is the most interesting of the Chinese sacred scriptures. It is possessed of more real poetry than might be an- * Legge V. p. 671. PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN CHINA. 173 ticipated from the prosaic character of the Chinese peo- ple. But it illuminates only a brief period of their history, and that far from the earliest ; and is less de- votional than similarly ancient poetry elsewhere. The Ch'uii Ts'ew is a very bald and scanty calendar of the province, or state, of Loo, extending from the first year of Duke Yin in 721 b. c. until the fourteenth of Duke Gae in 480 b. c. ^ In the province of Loo and in the twenty-second year of Duke Seang, namely 549 b. c, Confucius was born, at a time of great degeneracy ot the national religion and morals. * Legge V. Prolegom. p. 103, etc. CHAPTEK X. PROGRESS OF LEGALISM IN THE IJNREFORMED POLYTHEISMS. "While these changes were taking place upon the religions of the monotheistic reformation, the old prim- itive beliefs continued the career of degeneracy which had provoked the dissent. Egypt and the nations of Syria never learned to look upon the religion of the Hebrews as different from their own, otherwise than as the worship of another god. In their estimate Jehovah was only another name added to the pantheon, and as he was the god of an intrusive people, regarded perhaps with apprehension and dislike. Nor does it appear that any of them adopted from his worship an improvement of their Own, nor that the natural devel- opment of their religious views was in any way ob- structed by the influence of Mosaism in their neigh- borhood. The sentiment of patriarchal authority pervaded all nations primitively. But its development was various according to the elements with which it was combined. Its outgrowth for the state in all quarters was mon- archy, and, for the most part, a sacerdotal monarchy, in which the king was the chief priest or head of the national religion. This took place in Egypt, in As- LEGALISM IN THE UNREFORMED POLYTHEISMS. 175 Syria and in China ; and in Yedic times, also in India. To such degree also were the Homeric heroes sacer- dotal princes, that with the aid of professional priests, they presided over the sacrifices they made, and offered prayers for themselves and their people. The increas- ing importance attached to the accuracy in details of the service gave increasing importance to the profes- sional minister, who had nothing else to occupy his mind. In course of time the Aryan priesthood be- came separated from the royal office and assigned to a different class or caste. In Assyria the patriarchal idea blossomed into the absolute authority of the mon- arch in both civil and religious matters. It was the king of Mneveh who ordained the repentance and acts of humiliation before God, at the preaching of Jonah, and Nebuchadnezzar ordered all the great religious ob- servances mentioned as conducted in Babylon under his reign. Such was the position of the king of Egypt in relation to the religion of his people, as long as a native dynasty held the throne. Another outgrowth of the same sentiment was the deification of some of the proto-patriarchs of each of those great ethnic branches. Ham (Khem) was the Father-god in Egypt, and Asshur in Assyria. Among the Aryans that line of thought was not pursued. Their forefathers became heroes but not gods. In China, it reached the most complete development, entering into the fundamental idea of the civil gov- ernment, and grasping within its arms the whole of the national religion and system of society. Such importance as we attached to the Hebrew in the 176 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. foregoing connection, is hardly less due to the Hindu, in this. Nowhere else has a primitive religion been fortified by such a legal structure, so complete, so per- vasive and so long maintained. LATER HINDU SCRIPTURES. Hindu scriptures, subsequent to the ancient hymns, are liturgical, expository, legal, and theological. First; there is worship in which hymns are used. Next comes the formal work of collecting and arranging the hymns, and second to that, the appending of directions for the use of them, with expository remarks about them ; thirdly, the construction of separate books for liturgi- cal purposes, and fourthly, the extending of exposition into theological teaching. The first falls under what Prof Max Miiller dis- tinguishes as the Chhandas period, and the second, under that which he designates of the Mantras. To the third head belong parts, perhaps the rudi- mentary parts, of the Brahmanas, then the two litur- gical Yedas ; the continued extension of the Brahmanas, as attached to all three Yedas ; and finally, into those theological treatises called Aranyakas and Upanishads. Of these elements consists the Hindu canon of Scrip- ture, as far as it is thought to be revealed. A second portion derives its authority, not imme- diately from revelation, but from tradition, or from the eminent learning, wisdom and piety of its authors. I. LATER HINDU SCEIPTCRES. 177 To this head belong the Sutras, which, although regard- eel as sacred scripture, are not on a footing of equality with the Brahmanas; and also the laws of Man u, and some other works. There was a time when only the hymns were accepted as revealed. The claiming a divine origin for the Brahmanas was related to a serious dissent in the Hindu religion, but for that, the Sutras might, in course of time, have also been added to the class of revealed. The nature of that growth will appear more dis- tinctly in the following explanations, collected from Prof. Wilson's Lectures, Miiller's History, and Small's Handbook of Sanskrit Literature, Ward on the Hindus and Ballantyne's " Christianity contrasted with Hindu Philosophy." 1. '' The Sutra, Brahmana and Mantra periods of Yedic literature ail point to some earlier age, which gave birth to the poetry of the early Pishis. There was a time, doubtless, when the songs, which w^ere collected with such careful zeal in the Mantra period, and examined and analyzed with such minute exact- ness during the Sutra period, lived and were under- stood without any effort by a simple and pious race. There was a time wdien the sacrifices, which after- wards became so bew^ildering a system of ceremonies, were dictated by the free impulse of the human heart, by a yearning to render thanks to some Unknown Being, and to repay, in words and deeds, a debt of gratitude, accumulated from the first breath of life — a time when the poet was the leader, the king and priest of his family or tribe ; listened to and looked up to as 8* 178 COMPAKATIVE RELIGION. better, nobler and wiser than the rest, and as being nearer to the gods in proportion as he was raised above the common level of mankind." '' Such men were at once teachers, lawgivers, poets and priests. Their teaching, poetry and religion, simple and crude as they are, possess a peculiar charm, as spontaneous, original and truthful.'' The greater portion of what we now possess of Yedic poetry must be ascribed to the Mantra (or Becondary) period ; but there still remains enough to give us an idea of an earlier race of Yedic poets. Even those earliest specimens of Yedic composition, however, belong clearly, as Bunsen remarks, to the modern historj^ of the human race. Ages must have passed before the grammatical texture of the Yedic Sanskrit could have assumed the consistency and reg- ularity which it shows throughout. The same applies' to the religion of the Yeda. The earliest periods of its historic growth must have passed away long be- fore the Rishis of India could have worshipped their Devas, or ' bright beings,' with hymns and invocations. But we should look in vain in the literature of Greece or Kome, or of any other Aryan nation, for documents from which to study that interesting chapter in the histor}^ of mankind — the transition from a natural into an artificial religion — so full and valuable as we pos- sess them in the Yeda." 2. Mantra period. " The only document we have in which we can study the characters of the times previous to the Brahmana period is the Rig-veda Sanhitd. The other two Sanhitds (viz. of the Yajur-veda and the Sama- I. LATER HINDU SCRIPTURES. 179 veda) were in truth, what they have been called, 'the attendants of the Kig-veda.* The Brahmanas presup- pose the Trayi- Yidya the ' threefold knowledge,' or the threefold Yeda, but that again presupposes one Yeda, and that the Rig-veda. It belongs to a period previous to the complete ascendancy of the Brahmanas, and before the threefold ceremonial had been worked out in all its details. And yet there is some system, some priestly influence clearly distinguishable in that collection also. The ten books of the Rioc-veda stand before us as separate collections, each belonging to one of the ancient families of India, but there are traces in them of one superintending spirit. Eight out of the ten Mcmdalas begin with hymns addressed to Agni, and these with one exception, are invariably followed by hymns addressed to Indra. This cannot be the result of mere accident, but must have been from previous agreement, and it leads us to conclude that the Mandalas were not made independently by different families, but were collections carried out simultaneously in diiferent localities under the super- vision of one central authority." It may be remarked, in passing, that what Prof. Miiller infers as the way in which the Indian collec- tion of hymns was made, corresponds to what is histor- ically demonstrable of the Chinese. His chronology, the shortest that can be reasonably supposed, puts the Mantra period between 800 and 1000 b. c. An earlier date is more probable. And between 1100 and 900 B. c. the main body of the Hebrew psalms must have been composed. About that date the great work 180 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. of religion over the world was the composition and collecting of hymns and sacred songs. ]^ot much if any later, Greece produced her hymns to the gods. 'No other period in the world's history presents such a universal and systematic care in collecting and classi- fying the productions of religious poetry. That zeal was probably stimulated by the presence of the best hymn- writers, and having completed its work the gift of poetic production became less common and finally disappeared ; or what was subsequently composed failed to meet the same zealous appreciation. The period to which the great colloctions of psalms and hymns belong is that lying between 1100 and 800 years before Christ. Then were the She-King of China, the Rig-veda Sanhita of India, the mass of the Hebrew psalms, and of the Greek hymns to the gods, each in their respective ethnic connections, compiled. 3. " It is difficult to give an exhaustive definition of what a Brahmana is. * They were Brahmanic {i. e. theological) tracts, comprising the knowledge most val- ued by the Brahmans, bearing partly on their sacred hymns, partly on the traditions and customs of the peo- ple. They profess to teach the performance of the sacrifice, but for the greater part are occupied with ad- ditional matter, chiefly connected with the Hindu faith and ceremonials." They are included under the name of Yeda, but are of a '' more peculiarly sacrificial char- acter'' than the Mantras, and are not composed in metre. Different portions of them are referred to under various names, and some of those divisions must have been written at far distant periods of time ; as in- I. LATER HINDU SCRIPTURES. 181 deed " is proved not only by the testimony of Panini, but also by quotations in the Brahmanas themselves." They represent snccessive stages in the Hindu religion, and in that respect are of much value ; but according to a competent authority *' judged by themselves as literary productions, they cannot be matched anywhere for pe- dantry and downright absurdity. Their general char- acter is marked by shallow and insipid grandiloquence, by priestly conceit and antiquarian pedantry.'' 4. " The Aranyakas, or ' Treatises of the Forests,' were so called, as Sayana, ' an Indian critic, informs us, because they were to be read in the forest.' It seems as if they had been intended for persons '' who after having performed all the duties of a student and a householder, retire from the world to the forest to end their days in the contemplation of the Deity. In several instances the Aranyakas form part of the Brah- manas, and they are thus made to share the authority of Srtiti, or revelation. The most important Upan- ishads, which are full of philosophy and theology, form part of the Aranyakas, and (particularly in later times) the Aranyaka was considered the quintessence of the Yedas." " The Aranyakas presuppose the existence of the Brahmanas, and may be considered as enlargements upon them. The philosophical chapters, known by the name of Upanishads, are almost the only portion of Yedic literature which is extensively read to this day. They are supposed to contain the highest authority on which the various systems of philosophy in India rest. The founders of the various systems, if they have any 182 COMPARATIVE EELTGION-. pretensions to orthodox j, invariably appeal to some passage in the Upanishads, in order to substantiate their own reasonings. However, when none of the ancient Upanishads could be found to suit their pur- pose (liberal and conflicting as they often are), the founders of new sects had no scruple, and no difiiculty in composing 7iew Upanishads of their own. This accounts for the large and ever increasing number of these treatises, the most modern of which seem now to enjo}" the same authority as the really ancient and genuine. The original Upanishads had their places in the Brahmanas and Aranyakas, but chiefly in the latter." It is in these productions that the great philosophic system, which attempts to harmonize the conflicting ingredients of Hindu religion had its be- ginning. 5. " The word Sutra literally means a string ; and all the works written in this stylo, on subjects the most various, are nothing but one uninterrupted string of short sentences, twisted together into the most concise form. Shortness is the great object of this style of composition, and it is a proverbial saying among the Pandits, that ' an author rejoiceth in the economizing of half a short vowel as much as in the birth of a son.' Every doctrine thus propounded, whether grammar, metre, law, or philosophy, is reduced to a mere skele- ton. All the important points and joints of a system are laid open with the greatest precision and clearness, but there is nothing in these works like connection or development of ideas. ' Even the apparent simplicity of the design,' as Colebrooke remarks, ' vanishes in the I. LATER HINDU SCRIPTURES. 183 perplexity of the structure. The endless pursuit of exceptions and limitations so disjoints the general pre- cepts, that the reader cannot keep in view their intended connection and mutual relation. He wanders in an intricate maze, and the clue of the labyrinth is contin- ually slipping from his hands.' There is no life or meaning in these Sutras, except what either a teacher or running commentary, by which these works are usually accompanied, may impart to them." In the Sutras are compacted the substance of '^ all the knowledge which the Brahmans had accumulated during many centuries of study and meditation : '' and their form, like the rules in a school book, is a conveni- ence for committing to memory, most likely the result of a long continued system of traditional teaching. The Sutras are sacred writ, but not revelation, " In the dogmatic language of orthodox Hindus, the works which contain the sruti have not been composed, but have only been seen or perceived by men, i. e., they have been revealed to them. The Sutras, on the con- trary, although based on the Sruti,'' " are yet avowedly composed by human authors. "Whenever they appear to be in contradiction with the Sruti, their authority is at once overruled." " This distinction has ever been the stronghold of the hierarchical pretensions of the Brahmans. "We can easily understand how a nation might be led to ascribe a superhuman origin to their ancient national poetry, particularly if consisting chiefly of prayers and hymns addressed to their gods. But the reason why the prose compositions of the Brahmanas, which are 184: COMPARATIVE RELIGION. evidently so much more modern tlian the Mantras, were allowed to participate in the name of Sruti, could only have been because it was from these the- ological compositions, and not from the simple old poetry of the hymns, that a supposed divine authority could be derived for the greater number of the ambi- tious claims of the Brahmans. We can find no reason why the Sutras should not also have been ranked as Sruti, except the lateness of their date, if compared with the Brahmanas, and still more with the Mantras." " The distinction between Sruti (revelation) and Smriti (tradition) had been established by the Brah- mans previously to the rise of Buddhism," and their claim of a divine origin for the Brahmanas had much to do with the schism and success of Buddha. 6. Law or Regulations. Another class of sacred scriptures consists ot those supplementary to the Yedas and called the Dharma Sastras. '* These belong part- ly to the Brahmana and partly to the Sutra periods of Sanskrit literature, and consist of 1. The Yedanta (end or scope of the Yeda), under which name there is an ancient work in Sanskrit, said to have been composed about two thousand years ago, and to contain an abstract or quintessence, of all the Yedas united. It is also " known as the Piirva Mimansa, that is, the first, or most an- cient inquiry, in opposition to the Uttara, or Brahma Mimansa, one of the philosophical systems." 2. The four supplementary Yedas (Upa-vedas) are the Ayus w^hich treats of diseases and medicine, with practical methods of treating bodily disorders ; I. LATER HINDU SCRIPTURES. 185 second the Gandharva, a treatise on music, third, the Dhanus, on the making and use of arms and imple- ments employed by theKshatrja caste ; and the fourth, a collection of various treatises on sixty-four mechani- cal arts, for the improvement of such as exercise them.'' 3. The Yedangas, (members of the Yeda) "are considered as in some sense a subordinate part of the Yedas. Six sciences are treated of in them ; 1. Siksha, or the science of pronunciation and articulation; 2. Cliliandas, prosody ; 3. Yyakarana^ grammar ; 4. I^i- riilcta, the explanation of difficult or obscure words and phrases that occur in the Yedas ; 5. Kctlpa, an account of religious ceremonies; Jyotisha, on astronomy or astrology. The first two are considered as necessary for reading the Yeda ; the next two for understanding it, and the last two for employing it at sacrifices. The Pixitisakhyas treat of the metre, accent and pronunciation of the ancient sacred hymns, and lay down the rules and exceptions systematically. And the whole subject of Yedic grammar was presented in its utmost completeness by Panini. 4. The Upangas, or additional limbs, are four in number, viz., \\iq Purdna^ or history; the Nyaya, oi logic ; the Mimansa^ or moral philosophy ; and the Dharma Sastra, or jurisprudence. 5. The Parisishtas are a class of works intimately connected with the Sutra period, although of a later date than the sutras, and of secondary importance. They have, however, a character of their own, and represent a distinct period of Hindu literature, which, though it shows clear traces of intellectual and literary 186 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. degeneracy, is not to be altogether overlooked." " Some of the Parisishtas profess to be composed by authors whose names doubtless belong to the sutra period.'' Such are Saunaka and Katyayana. The style of these compositions is less concise than that of the Sutras. They are in metre : and there is a collection of Parisishtas for each Yeda, eighteen being attributed to the Yajur Yeda. The Rig and Sama-Yedas seem not to have had so many, but their number is uncertain. They are said to have been written in the form of dia- logues, in a style similar to that of the Puranas." Though unknown to the ancient grammarian, Panini, it appears that they belong to the Yedic age ; but may be considered as the very last outskirts of Yedic lit- erature. Later Sanskrit books are concerned with philosophy, law, criticism, poetry, and mythology. From the beginning of the work of classifying the hymns, all through this process of Yedic literature, the controlling sentiment is that of law, as inherent in that of religion. It is the legal element of religion which finds the fullest exposition, in order, in definition, in precept, in formula, in ceremonies, and prescribed duties. That tendency ripens in the production of Dharma Sas- tras, or law-books, and finally, in the great Manava- Dharma-Sastra ; or as it is commonly called the " Laws of Manu.'' As to the date at which that maturity wao reached, authors differ from 800, to 1280 b. c. The work alludes to earlier codes which ha\e now no existence save in as far as incorporated with itself. Under that control of law, the subsequent development of the Brahmanical system and sacred literature grew n. — RELIGIOUS CLASSES AND CASTES. 187 up ; and subject to it was the expansion of Hindu mythology and philosophy. 11. EELIGIOUS CLASSES AND CASTES. In course of the same process the Hindu people manifested an analogous tendency to array themselves into classes, and to create and accept class regulations. According to their pursuits, all were distributed into a few, as Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Yaisyas, and Sudras, great classes which subsequently divided themselves into many. The regulations proper to each became increasingly numerous and stringent. Brahmans be- come the priest class. But the priests are of different orders appropriated to different offices, as Hotri, Ud- gatri, and Adhvaryu-priests. In study of the sacred books, sects arose which perpetuated themselves and their prescribed topics and methods, for long periods of time. Certain Sanhitas, Brahmanas and Sutras were made the specialties of as many different Charanas, or sects, which so identified themselves with their work that it is often called Cliarana. These Charanas were all of the priest class. The bond of unity in an}^ one of them was their community of sacred texts. But high rank Hindus were also classified by families under the name of Gotra, or Kula, which were held together by real or imaginary ties of blood, and by special fam- ily regulations touching the duties and privileges of religion. Gotras, or eminent families, existed among 188 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. Kshatrija^ and Yaisyas as well as among Brahmans. But the most eminent were those of the Brahmanic families who keep the sacred fire, who are supposed to be descended from the so called seven but really eiglit Rishis, or saints. " The eight Gotras thus descended are subdivided into forty-nine Gotras, and these forty- nine branch off into a still greater number of families.'' "A Brahman, who keeps the sacrificial fire, is obliged by law to know to which of the forty-nine Gotras his own family belongs, and in consecrating his own fire he must invoke the ancestors who founded the Gotra of his family. Each of the Gotras claims one, two, three or five ancestors, and the names of these ancestors constitute the distinctive character of each Gotra. A list of these forms part of most of the Kal- pa-sutras.'' These lists, accordingly, had a practical bearing on two most important acts of ancient Brah- manic society, viz., the consecrating of the sacrificial fire and marriage. " Persons belonging to the same Gotra, or tribe, were not allowed to intermarry. Yio- lation of that law, in all but a very few Gotras, '*' was considered incest, and visited with severe penance." Such a method of severe distinctions and classifica- tion, of the people extending from the highest to the lowest, and interesting every upper class in its per- manence, from a view to class privileges, gradually while ostensibly conferring honor, fastened down and riveted the fetters of a legal bondage upon all. m. — BRAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 189 III. BRAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. Another development of Hindu religion was due to the philosophical tendencies of the Hindu mind. Ancient philosophy early shaped itself according to the views of six different schools, which were not so much adverse philosophic systems, as progressive stages in the teaching of the same system. And the professed design of all was to teach the method by which eter- nal blessedness might be secured either before death or after it. The path which the soul is to arrive at this supreme felicity is science, or knowledge. " The discovery and the setting forth of the means by which this knowledge may be obtained, is the object of the various treatises and commentaries which Hindu phi- losophy has produced.'' The six schools, Darsanas, " or stages of that philos- ophy are the l^yaya, Yaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Ye- danta, and Mimansa Darasna." But ^' the Yaiseshika being in some sort supplementary to the Kyaya, the two are familiarly spoken of as one collective system under the name of N'yaya ; and as the case is some- what similar with the two other pairs, it is customary to speak of Hindu philosophy as being divisible into the Nyaya the Sankhya, and the Yedanta schools. These three systems, if we follow the commentators, differ more in appearance than in reality, and hence they are, each in its degree, viewed with a certain amount of favor by orthodox Hindus. Their common 190 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. bond of union is their implicit acceptance of the Ye- das, which however they explain differently. In this respect, and on this ground, they unite in opposing Buddliism, which denies the authority of the Yedas. These three systems differ from one another in the several points of view from which they regard tlie Uni- verse, — or things in general — as standing in relation severally to sensation, emotion, and intellection." *' The Naiyayika^ founding on the fact that we have various sensations, inquires what and how many are the channels through which such varied knowledge flows in ? Finding there arc five very different chan- nels, he imagines five different externals adapted to these. Hence his theory of the five elements — the ag- gregate of what the Nyaya regards as the causes of affliction. "The Sankhya, sti-uck with the fact that we have emotions — with an eye to the question whence our im- pressions cwne — inquires their quality. Are they pleasing, displeasing, or indifferent f These three qualities constitute, for him, the external, and to their aggregate he gives the name of Is^ature. AVith the Kaiyayika he agrees in wishing that we were well rid of all three, holding that things pleasing and things indifferent, are not less incompatible with man's chief end than things positively displeasing. " Thus, while tlie Nydya allows to the external a substantial existence, the Sanlchya admits its existence only as an aggregate of qualities ; while both allow that it really (eternally and necessarily) exists. " The Vedantiny rising above the question as to III. BRAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 191 what is pleasing, displeasing, or indifferent, asks simply what is and what is not. The categories are here re- duced to two — the real and unreal. The categories of the Nyaya and the Sankhja were merely scafiblding for reaching this pinnacle of philosophy. The implied foundation was in all respects the same, viz., the Yeda." " Thus the Nyaya is conveniently introductory to the Sankhya, and the Sankhya to the Yedanta. And it is in this order that in Hindu schools, where all three are taught, the learner usually takes them up. The IS'yaya is the exoteric doctrine, the Sankhya, a step nearer what is held as truth, and the Yedanta the eso- teric doctrine, or the naked truth." In making this distinction, it is not to be under- stood that the " Nyaya confines itself to sensation, ex- cluding emotion and intellection ; nor that the other systems ignore the fact of sensation ; but that the ar- rangement of this system has a more pointed regard to the fact of the five senses than the others have, and treats the external more frankly as a solid reality." It is a system which undertakes to teach the ** proper method of arriving at that knowledge of the truth, the fruit of which, it promises, is the chief end of man." '' When knowledge of the truth is attained to, false notions depart ; on their departure, the 'fault ' of concerning one's self about any external object ceases; thereupon the enlightened sage ceases to act j then, there being no actions that call for either reward or punishment, there is no occasion, after his death, for his being horn again to receive reward or punishment ; 192 COMPAEATIYE RELIGION. then not being born again, so as to be liable to pain, there is no room for ^ jpain^ and the absence of pain is the lN"yava conception of the Suimnmn BonumP Between sonl and body the distinction made by this philosophy is that of different entity, and the re- duction of the latter is the improvement of the former by emancipating it from an injurious bondage. Anoth- er source of evil is activity, defined "as that which originates the [utterance of] the voice, the [cognitions of] the understanding, and the [gestures of] the body, and is regarded as the cause of birth, which is the cause of pain, which it is the suimnum honum to get permanently rid of." " It is through our own ' fault ' that we are active,'' and " our faults have this charac- teristic, that they cause activity." These faults are classed under the heads of affection, aversion, and sto- lidity, or dehision,'' each of which " leads to ac- tions, the recompense of which, whether good or evil, must be received in some birth, or state of mundane existence, to the postponement of the great end of en- tire emancipation.'' The greatest of all evils from which it is desirable to be emancipated is transmigra- tion. To escape from being born again is indispensa- ble to the highest good, and is to be obtained by " ab- negation of all action, good or bad." The Yeseshika is more mystical and metaphysical. Heligion it defines as " Those ceremonies by the prac- tice of which the knowledge of the divine nature is ob- tained, and that by which all evil is forever removed.'' Of God it teaches that He is " essentially possessed of wisdom ; that He is the ever blessed and supremely m. — BKAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 193 happy ; and that in all His works and His will, He is irresistible and omnipotent." The universe it distinguishes from God and ar- ranges under its component parts. And matter is so far an evil, that separation from it is indispensable to "complete deliverance from sorrow, and the enjoyment of final bliss." It also teaches the necessity of a firm belief in reli- gion ; and assumes as its basis, not human, but divine, testimony as contained in the sacred scriptures of the Yeda. Keligion is not conceived of as purely spiritual, but as a ritual, to the existence of which certain instru- ments are indispensable. '' By the knowledge of the excellent fruits of good actions (as those are connected with sacrifices, ablutions, gifts, etc.), w^hen perform.ed with a fixed and ardent mind, men are drawn to practice the duties of religion ; and by a knowledge of the future evil consequences of certain actions (such as visiting forbidden places, committing injuries, eating forbidden fruit, etc.), men. are deterred from those actions." In treating of cause and effect, proofs are adduced of the existence of God, and of spirit in man distinct from the corporeal frame. In opposition to the doc- trine that " the body is a collection of atoms, which contain a living principle, and that this living princi- ple is not something separate fi'om the body, but inherent in atoms, and therefore difi'used through the whole body," it is objected that thereby "you deny the existence of inanimate matter. For if atoms be animate and this be an atom-formed world, 9 194 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. then all matter must be life ; for this is a settled max- im, that the nature of the cause is always seen in the effect. Why then do we not see matter possessed of life ? " 'Next, from the ''existence of anxiety arising from desire and avei-sion " is argued " the existence of a spirit separate from body or matter, since these emo- tions are excited by a perception of the good or evil arising from certain things, so that good is sought and evil is avoided. But this perception of the good and bad results of different actions, and the anxiety, occa- sioned by this perception, to embrace that which pro- duces good and avoid that which produces evil, are attributes of spirit. And as we find these perceptions and this anxiety existing in ourselves, we infer that they must exist in others, since they possess with us a common nature, and from thence we ascend up to a first cause distinct from Matter." " The mode of matter and spirit becoming united is next discussed. ' When an animal soul, through having the consequences of good and evil actions attach- ed to it, is about to assume human birth, it is united to a single atom, and to this others are added, till a regular body is formed. All material things are composed of atoms, which singly are invisible.' Atoms are un- created, and are of four kinds, from which arise earth, water, light, and air." *' Some Hindu philosophers plead for the existence of innumerable minds in one individual. Others endeavor to establish the doctrine of five minds to agree with the senses. Kanada founder of the Yais- III. BRAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 195 eshika system, contends for one reasoning faculty in each individual." Mind he teaches is •* a single power, but is possessed of five faculties corresponding with the senses, by which its faculties are multiplied.'' Sin is ascribed to the effect of actions in a former state of existence. Habits generated in some previous stage of transmigration transmit to the human being its bias to wrong. As respecting religious duties, the system teaches that in the *' pursuit of secular concerns a person is not to expect the benefits peculiar to a future state. Nor in the duties connected with the invisible world are visible fruits to be sought. Invisible benefits refer to the pleasures of heaven, and absorption in Brahama. The duties that procure invisible benefits are such as bathing at holy places, fasting on holy days, the study of the Yeda in the house of a divine teacher, offering appointed sacrifices, and in general the practice of asceticism. " Actions are religious or otherwise, according to the motives which inspire the performers." The chief aim of religion is to obtain liberation from transmigratory births. Yaiseshika teaches that it is to be effected by listening to the description of spirit contained in the Sastra, by meditation, by the acquisition of the knowledge of Yoga (asceticism), by perfect fixedness of mind and correct posture during the performance of Yoga, by restraining the breath, by retaining in subjection the powers of the body and mind, and by the vision of spirit in the animal soul. Hence, future birth is wholly prevented, and 196 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. all sorrow annihilated ; and this is what is called liber- ation. So far, Hindu theology issues in self-righteousness effected by asceticism as the only way of salvation from sinful desires and aversions. From that funda- mental doctrine the Sankhya system has no dissent. It makes, however, " a step in advance of the I^yaya by reducing the external from the category of sub- stance to that of quality. Souls alone are, in the Sankhya, regarded as substances ; whatever affects the soul being arranged under the head of a quality — 1. pleasing; 2. displeasing; or 3. indifferent. This mode of viewing the Universe may be designated the emotional view of things." The word Sankhya means ' numeral^ rational, or discriminative. The system promises beatitudes as the reward of that discrimination which rightly dis- tinguishes between soul and nature." Like the l^yaya, the Sankhya is presented in a set of aphorisms. It begins by defining the chief aim of human life as being *' the complete cessation of pain." Pain is of " three kinds, 1. diseases, griefs etc., which are intrinsic, or inherent in the sufferer ; 2. injuries from ordinary external things; and 3. injuries from things supernatural or meteorological." Kapila, author of the Sankhya system, declares " that the bondage un- der which the soul, or individual man groans, is due to its conjunction with nature, and this bondage is merely seeming, because soul is ever essentially a pure and free intelligence." The distinction being made be- tween tlie soul and the mind, and bondage residing in III. BKAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 197 the mind, that of the soul is merely a reflection. Lib- eration of the soul from this ensnaring contact is, ac- cordingly, to be effected by the '^ discrimination" ''of soul as contradistinguished from nature." The plural- ity of souls is asserted ; and the doctrine of annihila- tion explicitly repudiated. Yoga, or asceticism, not introduced but systematical- ly taught by the sage Patanjali, taught '' that the Divine Spirit and the soul of man are distinct : that the for- mer is free from passion, but not the latter: that God is possessed of form, and capable of being seen by the true Yogi, (i. e., practicer of the Yoga rites and du- ties :) that He is placable, glorious, the creator, the preserver and the regenerator of all things : that the Universe first arose from His will, or command, and that He infused into the system a power of perpetual progression ; that the truth of things was discoverable by the senses, by experience, comparison and revela- tion : that some material things are unchanged and others changeable, and that the latter pass through six changes, as birth, increase, etc., that everything originates in the five elements, fire, water, etc., that knowledge is of five sorts, certain, uncertain, etc. ; that there are ^yq kinds of men, viz., those who are governed by their passions, the wrathful, the be- nevolent, the pious, and those who are freed from wordly attachments, " and finally that emancipation is to be obtained by the practice of Yoga, or perfect ab- straction of mind." Yoga is further explained by ancient commenta- 198 COMPARATIVE EELTGIOX. tors as " the restraining of the mind, and confining it to internal meditations." "When the mind is then confined within, it be- comes assimilated to the Being whom it seeks to know ;" and the object of Yoga is by certain ascetic practices to detain the mind npon God, and thereby prevent the evils of natural life. The directions for those practices are numerous and particular. They include seclusion, silence, inactivity, and as far as possible suppression of breathing. The Yogi must " endeavor to fix the understanding by some act of the senses, e. g., he must place his sight and thoughts on the tip of his nose, by which he will perceive smell ; then bring his mind to the tip of his tongue, when taste will be realized ; and afterwards fix his thoughts on the root of his tongue, by which sound will be suggested." Thus it was expected that the spirit would be gradually abstracted from all the agi- tation of desires and aversions wherein consists sin. He will be tranquil, impassive. '^ His mind will be fixed whose intercourse with secular objects is like that of a person in a deep sleep, who, without the active union of the senses, partakes of perfect happi- ness. He who meditates on God, placing his mind on the sun, moon, fire, or any other luminous body, or within his heart, or at the bottom of his throat, or in the centre of his skull, will by afterwards ascending from those gross images of the Deity to the glorious original, secure fixedness of mind.'' *' He thus be- comes identified with the Deity ; that is, visible objects, the operations of the understanding, and III. — BEAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 199 personal identity, become absorbed in the Being con- templated, in the same manner as the crystal receives the image of whatever is reflected upon it." The blessedness of Yoga is to be secured by " relinquish- ment of all happiness in secular things, and by that meditation which identifies every religious formula, every sacred utensil, and every offering with the ob- ject of worship. This object is the supreme Being, represented as being free from the fruit of works, i. e., exempt from birth among any of the forms of matter, from increase or decrease of life, and from enjoyment or suffering as the consequence of actions. To his ■will all creatures owe their preservation. He is omni- potent, eternal, the omniscient fountain of knowledge, who presides over all events. This Being the Yogi must intensely and continu- ously meditate on, while repeating constantly his sacred name. Thus he gradually loses his worldly attachment, the quality of goodness obtains a clearer manifestation in him, and he is brought to resemble God, and thus he obtains also deliverance from the effects of birth, and final emancipation." " That he may not fall from the elevation he has attained, the Yogi still seeks God by meditation on his names, or on the import of those names, or on his existence, after which he loses all remembrance of the names of the Deity, and of their import, and God is realized in the mind as pure light, and to this succeeds a state of mind similar to self-annihilation." Such perfection is not to be expected of all men. It is the attainment of the saint; the mature victory 200 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. of the Hindu monk. Other des^rees of blessedness are marked out for secular persons, and which are to be reached bj the practice of similar austerities, " the repetition of the names of God, or of incantations without the desire of benefit, referring all to the will of God." They are to seek victory over pain and its causes, which are of five kinds, viz., illusion, conscious- ness of self-existence, passion, religious disgust, and love of life. The last mentioned is to be overcome by turning the thoughts inward, which will infallibly secure meditation upon God. The other causes of pain are to be overcome by fixing the mind on God, and by cultivating benevolent feelings towards men in every condition of life." This is not so high a degree of blessedness as that of the saint. But then it is also taught that to ''secu- lar persons the consequences of illusion do not pro- duce sorrow as they do to the Yogi. The former are likened to those members of the body which remain at ease, while the visual faculty, from some accident sufiers excruciating pain ; the Yogi is the eye of the body,'' But in the secular as in the saint the ulti- mate blessedness kept in view — the sum of salvation, is deliverance from the necessity of being born again, in the appalling cycle of transmigrations. The Yedanta system " taught that the best idea we can form of God is that he is hght or glory. At the same time it maintained that God is a spirit, with- out passions, separate from matter ; that he is pure wisdom and happiness; one without a second, ever- lasting, incomprehensible, and unchangeable ; and that, III. BRAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 201 after describing all modes of existence, lie is that which, is none of these.'' The universe, it taught, was formed by the five elements, viz., air, fire, water, earth, and aether (or vacuum :) that the world, being destitute of life, was liable to dissolution ; that God himself was the sole possessor of life, and that one divine spirit pervaded the whole animated creation." It taught creation of atoms, and that thence " the Creator caused the first forms of things to arise." Salvation for men was deliverance from matter and re-absorption in the Divine Spirit ; and that was to be obtained in the following manner : — First, the devotee must read through the Yedas. He must suffer no desire of advantage to mix with his religious services ; must renounce everything forbidden in the Sastras ; must render himself pure by the performance of daily devotions, duties for the good of others, atonements, and divine contemplation ; must acquaint himself with the unprofitableness of that which is fleeting and transitory, and the value of that which is unchangeable and eternal ; must renounce all hope of present or future rewards, gain the complete mastery over all his sensual organs, and meditate on God in all the forms and media by which he is made known to his creatures. By the power of these meditations and austerities the soul will leave the body through the basilar suture, and ascend to the heaven of Agni (the god of fire), from thence, in succession, to various other Heavens, till, having obtained in the heaven of Varuna, an aerial body, the devotee will ascend to the heaven 9* 202 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. of Brahma, and after the expiration of one hundred years of Brahma and that God's absorption into the divine spirit, the devotee likewise will obtain the same state of felicity.'' Such was gradual emancipation. Immediate eman- cipation was to be secured only by divine wisdom. But in order that divine wisdom should exist in the mind, all consciousness of outward things must be ex- pelled by meditation on the one supreme Spirit. "When that attainment was made the soul would enjoy emancipation even in a bodily state. The radical idea of the Yedanta system is the es- sential identity of all being. To believe the opposite is the supposed root of evil. When the dictum " that art thou," i.e., Thou — whosoev^er thou art — art the one,'' has been rightly understood and accepted, the accepter of it changing the ' Thou' to the first person, reflects thus — ' I am the one.' This is so far well ; but he must finally get rid of the habit of making even himself an object of thought. There must be no ob- ject. What was previously the subject must now re- main alone — an entity, a thought, a joy ; but these three being one only — "the existent joy thought." Such an increasingly abstract philosophy operating within the field of rebVion and beins^ at the same time of the nature of sacerdotal law, went to build up the importance of monasticism and the rule of the sacerdo- tal orders ; and to establish that rule over body and soul of all who believed in it, for time and eternity. In the Mimansa system it was taught that '' God is to be worshipped only through the incantations of the III. BEAHMANICAL PHILOSOPHY. 203 Yedas ; that the Yedas were uncreated, and contained in themselves the proofs of their own divinity, the very words of which are unchangeable. Its reason- ings on the nature of material things were similar to those *' of the Nyaya philosophy, insisting that truth is capable of the clearest demonstration, without the pos- sibility of mistake. Creation, preservation and destruc- tion are represented as regulated by the merit and de- merit of works," while the " doctrine of the Universe" is rejected. It is maintained that the images of the gods were not real representations of those beings, but only given to assist the mind of the worshipper ; that the mere forms of worship had neither merit nor demerit in them ; and that the promises of the Sastra to per- sons who presented so many offerings, so many pray- ers, etc., were only given as allurements to duty." The person who sought final emancipation, was di- rected " to cherish a firm belief in the Yedas, as well as persuasion of the benefits of religion, and the desire of being engaged in the service of the gods ; and then by entering upon the duties of religion, and by degrees ascending through the states of a student, a secular, and a hermit, he would be sure to obtain final absorption in Brahama." Eeligion is described as " That which secures happiness." It is incumbent upon man to " attend to the duties of religion, not only on this account, but in obedience to the commands of God." Forms of praise, motives to duty, and religious observances are aux- iliaries to the divine law, and have therefore a rela- tive sanctity and obligation." 204: COMPARATIVE RELIGION. " Those actions from wliicli future happiness will arise are called religions, or good, because productive of haj)piness ; and those which tend to future misery are called evil on account of their evil fruits." Hence, according to this system, " actions of themselves have in them neither good nor evil. Their nature can only be inferred from the declarations of the Yeda respect- ing them, or from future consequences. The Hindus appear to have no just idea of moral evilJ^ With perhaps the exception of the Ramayana, the other great works of Hindu literature are the pro- ductions of later dates, subsequent to the rise of Bud- dhism. lY. PROGRESS OF W^ORSHIP IN INDIA. The testimonies now adduced sufficiently declare the nature and tendency of development in the his- tory of Hindu religion. Though checked for a time by Buddhism, its later progress followed the same direction, by its own inner cyclic movement, to the last extreme. 1. The primitive central point of theism, belief in one Supreme Being, is neA^er abandoned. But 2. The idea that his works in nature are mani- festations of himself leads to the belief that he divides himself into various gods, yet retaining his identity in all. From these points two different lines of develop- ment proceeded. IV. PROGEESS OF WOESHIP IN INDIA. 205 1. Personifications of divine powers hardened into separate and real personalities, before the common mind. The figurativeness of the divine names was, in course of time, popularly lost sight of, and the names used purely as designating different gods, pre- siding in dilierent kingdoms of nature. And these multiplied to correspond to the multiplicity of prov- inces in nature, and otherwise, filled creation with spiritual personages. By a similar process, the diff'erent gods were as- signed their respective symbols, and these embodied in images to which worship was paid as to the god him- self. Polytheism is not necessarily idolatry, though it tends naturally in that direction. Hindus of Yedic times were to some extent polytheists ; but not idola- ters. 'No images were used by them of the gods they adored. In later times, the symbol came to be deemed the likeness of the god, animated by him, and thence to be the real embodiment of him, who was worshipped in it. 2. On the other hand, the originally sole supreme Being is progressively further removed from the life of man. His manifestations take his place. The Yedic gods, Yaruna and Indra, appear with all the sovereignty of godhead. But as divine persons in- crease in number, and cease to appear as supreme, so they are conceived of as further separated from the Supreme Being, until there grows up a hierarchy of deities of different ranks, with the One Great God over all, essentially in all, but not personally anywhere. Of this hierarchy the humbler are the nearest to 206 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. human life, and take most interest in it ; while the supreme God is so far away, so exalted above the cares of men that men cannot, or dare not, hope that any appeal to him will receive the least attention. He exists in a state of inactive blessedness from and to all eternity, and is in and comprehends all things, with- out being moved to an interest in anything. Thus the originally paternal God — God whom men called Father — is erroneously exalted into a vis- ionary existence, and imaginary beings are endued with reality, and put into his place, and this progres- sively more and more until he is actually removed from all the love and veneration of men, and ceases to be an object of worship altogether. Parallel with this theological development, philoso- phy speculating upon existing belief, at its different stages, rendered each successive step plausible to the reason. It appears that philosophy did not form the national religion, but in course of time, introduced itself into interpretation of the sacred books ; and sub- sequently took its place as the sole expounder of all the elements of religion as they grew. It was the light by which the Priesthood reconciled their religion to their reason. The growth of polytheism and idolatry is from and among the populace, slowly and impercep- tibly ; and no doubt in those early ages among that re- ligious people they grew only as fast as they were earn- estly believed ; the faith of the priesthood expanded the range of philoso2:)hy to reconcile all with a rational system of thinking. But an everlasting, infinite and all-pervading God, IV. PROGRESS OF WORSHIP IN INDIA. 207 wlien divested uf aifections and of personality, other- wise than as manifested in the ten thousand myriad phases of created existence, becomes merely the essen- tial substance and spirit of being. Tens of thousands of deities as different manifestations of one, when those manifestations represent all known kingdoms and prov- inces of nature, lead, by a process of reasoning, to the conclusion that all things are God, and that God and the universe are identical. Of all systems of Pantheism, the most consistent and unforced, the most rational in its growth and conclusions was that of the Hindu. It lurked, though unperceived, in tlie very incipiency of their mythology. The figurative designation of divine beings from powers of nature contained occultly a principle, which a consistent philosophy could scarce- ly fail to unfold as a pantheistic unity. In China that tendency was checked and counterbalanced by a myth- ology of ancestors ; in Egypt by a pantheon of local deities, each sole for his proper city or district ; while the one common god over all was not a mere generali- zation of all pervading law, but the monarch of the universe, as imaged in the sun, whose type upon earth was Pharaoh. Pantheism was far from unknown among the priesthood of Egypt; it appears distinct- ly in a hymn to the Deity, recently published from a large Hieratic writing * of the twentieth dynasty and bearing the name of Kameses IX. ; but it was not in the basis of the national faith. In India, it was the natural fruit of religious thinking about Deity, from the first, conceived of as operating in and through *Publislied with a translation by Paul Pierret, Paris, 1873. 208 COMPARATIYE KELIGIOI^'. nature, and expressing Himself in the operations of nature. Accordingly Yaruna, the ancient god, who used to come down and reside with potent and paternal be- nevolence among men, is forgotten. Altars no longer smoke in his service. Ko longer is prayer or adoration offered to him. Brahma is generalized into the neuter Brahm, and relegated by Philosophy to an infinite dis- tance, and a vast duration of inactivity ; while as Brahma lie merely retains his place as a traditional, but unworshipped member of the Triad. Deity, as far as concerned in human affairs, and approachable by human worship, now centred in the great Triad of the Pantheistic cycle, Brahma, Yishnu, and Siva, from the last of whom spring two others, Durga and Kali, for- ever controlling the activities of being in creation, preservation, destruction and regeneration. And Deity was accepted as coming down to the passions, as well as the interests of men in the incarnations of Yishnu, and the manifold characters assumed by them. To these gods were added their corresponding energies ; and thus new elements were added to the multiplica- tion of gods. And the rites and ceremonies of worship were varied or increased according to the character of him to whom it was offered. Before the rise of Buddhism, the Hindu religion had become practically polytheistic and idolatrous ; and theoretically, to the few, a system of pantheism. The doctrine of life was, to all classes, that of ema- nation from impersonal Deity into a vast and dreary circle of transmigrations. Yice was punished by a IV. — PEOGRESS OF WORSHIP IN INDIA. 209 transfer to a lower grade of existence ; virtue, by eleva- tion to one of a higher degree ; and the blessedness to be expected vras re-absorption into Deity impersonal and unconscious. Practical virtue was not overlooked, but the princi- pal demands of religion consisted in rites, ceremonies, and acts of asceticism, many of which were imposed by law ; and others might be voluntarily observed with corresponding increase of merit. By these means, more than by common virtue, were the rewards of a future life to be earned. A universally prevailing belief in transmigration of souls made the present life, with its utmost sufferings, appear of little moment except in its relation to the stao:es of existence which were to follow. In its brevitv, it was as nothing in the eyes of the Hindu, compared with the stupendous cycle of hundreds and thousands of years, in which he might have to pass through one birth after another into as many different states of be- ing. The earnest believer contemplated such a future with the gloomiest apprehensions, and was willing to submit to any amount and degree of austerities, that thereby he might step through death immediately in- to the bosom of Brahm, where he should neither en- joy nor suffer any more, and never be born again. The naturally religious spirit of the Hindu was crushed into bondage under the Brahmanical priesthood wielding the power of such convictions. And the priest- hood itself was as completely controlled by them as were the people. For their faith was no fiction to either. Hence Hindus, even more than Egyptians, lived in 210 COMPARATIVE EELIGTON. their religion, and with a view to its promises of a fu- ture state. All present things, to them, were illusory, mere seem.ing and deceiving. The only reality was all-pervading Deity. Transient forms, mere appearan- ces, why should they be recorded ? History was noth- ing ; and the unseen world was all. y PROGRESS OF EGYPTIAN ST3IB0L1SM. "Whatever immediate effect the exode of Israel may have had upon the Egyptian people, it was not one of permanent change in their religious convictions. If alarmed for a time by the wonderful concomitants of that event, they soon returned to their former prac- tices and belief. The primary element of Egyptian polytheism, con- sisting in each of the great cities having its own sin- gle impersonation of Deity, besides giving the whole country, when united, many gods, unfolded itself also into triads, each consisting of a father, a mother and a son. ''Each triad was w^orshipped in the sanctuary of one of the capital cities of the nomes, and no two cities worshipped the same triad, ^ow the rank held by the triad enshrined in the sanctuary in the scale of the divine emanations, was in direct relation with the political and administrative importance of the city. We can scarcely find even two or three exceptions to the rule, that when cities of great importance in very ancient times, and where a worship had been officially V. PROGRESS OF EGYPTIAN SYMBOLISM. 211 constituted, lost their old importance, the gods, who were there worshipped, lost their rank in the divine hierarchy. The supreme triad was that of Thebes, composed of Amen-ra (Amen the sun), who had become officially the greatest god of Egypt, from the time that the twelfth dynasty established its native city as the capi- tal of the country ; Maut, the divine mother far ex- cellence; and Chons, son of Amen, who was also a form of Amen himself; for in these groups of divini- ties the son is always identified with his father. Amen is, however, the most elevated, the most spiritual form of the deity presented by the Egyptian priests for the adoration of the crowds in the temples. He is the in- visible and incomprehensible god ; his name means ' the hidden ;' he is in fact the mysterious power who cre- ated, preserved and governed the world. An invalua- ble passage in the Ritual distinctly represents him as the original and only first principle, the other divine personages being merely his attributes or emanations. ' Amen-Ra' it is there said (chap xvii), ' is the creator of his members ; they become the other gods who are associated with him.' The parent god in the triad of Memphis was Phtah, the second demiurgus, the personification of creative energy (but inferior in the scale of emanations to Chnuphis), lord of justice, and regulator of the worlds, believed as the author of the visible universe ; his at- tributes, however, show entire confusion between the creator and the created, between the author of order in the world and chaos. His wife was Pasht, the great 212 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. goddess of Bubastis, sometimes with a lion's and some- times a cat's head, considered to he the avenger of crimes, and also one of the forms of Mant. The sun was considered her son in the sanctuary of the old cap- ital of the primitive dynasties. Month, with the hawk's head, was the terrible and hostile form of the sun, when his rays strike like ar- rows and are sometimes fatal. He was specially wor- shipped at Hermonthis, with the goddess Ritho, his wife, and their son Harphre (Horns the sun), another example of the identity of the divine father and son. But of all these triads, the most closely related to humanity in external form and worship, although the conception was one of the most exalted, was that of Osiris, Isis and Horus, who were the objects of uni- versal worship in all parts of Egypt. They were said to be the issue of the god Set, the pers.onilication of the earth, and of the goddess Xut, the vault of heaven. Osiris, said the tradition, had manifested himself to men and had reigned in Egypt. The whole of the legend of his death, from the violence of Set, of his resurrec- tion, and of the vengeance taken by his son Horus on his enemies, was said to have taken place on earth; and every city on the banks of the Nile professed to have been the scene of one of the episodes of this great drama. Symbolism was the very essence of the genius of the Egyptian nation, and of their religion. The abuse of that tendency produced the grossest and most mon- strous perversion of the external and popular worship in the land of Mizraim. To symbolize the attributes, V. PEOGEESS OF EGYPTIAN SYMBOLISM. 213 the qualities and nature of the various deities of their pantheon, the Egyptian priests had recourse to animals. The bull, the cow, the ram, the cat, the ape, crocodile, hippopotamus, hawk, ibis, scarabseus, and others, were each emblems of a divine personage." The god was represented under the figure of that animal, or by the head of the animal with the human body. But the inhabitants of the banks of the Nile preferred to pay their worship to living representatives of their gods rather than to images of stone or metal, " and they found these representatives in the animals chosen as emblems of the idea expressed by the conception of each god. *' Hence arose that worship of sacred animals which appeared so strange and ridiculous to the Greeks and Komans. Each of these animals was carefully tended during its life in the temple of the god to whom it was sacred, and after death its body was embalmed." *' For those who understood the basis of their reli- gion, those sacred animals were only the living repre- sentatives of the deities, but the popular superstition made them into real gods ; and the worship of those animals was, perhaps, that part of their religion to which the people were most invincibly attached." Of those sacred animals three were more celebrated than any others, which from very early time were con- sidered '^ not merely as representatives, but as incarna- tions of the deity." These were the bull Mnevis, wor- shipped at On, Heliopolis ; the goat of Mendes, the in carnation of the god Khem, or Min ; and the bull Apis, the incarnation of Phtah. A.pis was presumed to be 214 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. born of a cow impregnated by llglitning from heaven, and had on him some very uncommon marks, which however, the priests contrived to find in some calf when an Apis w^as needed for the succession in the temple. On such an occasion the people dressed in their best attire and gave themselves up to rejoicing. The divine bull was not suffered to live more than a limited number of years, '* at the end of that time, if he did not die a natural death, he was killed ; still, however, they mourned for him." But not only animals, certain vegetables were also used as signs of divine attributes, and i*egarded with a degree of superstitious regard. There was more reason for such homage being paid to their great and fertilizing river. ''Such then was in reality the worship of the Egyptian people, a strange and almost inextricably confused mixture of sublime truths with metaphysical or cosmological ideas, often confused, always grand- iose, a refined morality, an abject form of worship, and popular superstitions, coarse to the last degree."* YI. LEGALISM IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. To the Hindu, the misleading idea was that of God manifesting himself in nature ; to the Egyptian, it was the use of natural objects as symbols of God, or of his * Lenormant, vol. 1. pp. 334-27. VI. LEGALISM IN BABYLONIA AND SYRIA. 215 attributes ; so, to the people of Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia, it was the idea of the Divine monarch rul- ing in and through the agency of the heavenly bodies. From the original Ilu, God sole and unrepresented by form, the process of innovation was through astronomy. Egyptians were especially struck by the daily and yearly course of the sun ; the Babylonians and Assyr- ians, by the astral heavens, and most of all by the movements of the planets. And the difference be- tween the Babylonian and Assyrian was due chiefly to the degrees of consistency with which that idea was carried out. In Chaldea it does not appear that any temple was ever dedicated to Ilu. ''The idea of him was too comprehensive, too vast, to have any determined external form." " But at Nineveh, and generally throughout Assyria, he received the peculiar national name of Asshur," apparently related to the Aryan word Asura, wdiich by a characteristic substitution of h for s, became in Zend, Ahura, the Avestan name for God. The image, or symbol of Asshur was according- ly, in later times, accepted perhaps with good reason by the Persians to represent Ahura-mazda. That image consisted of a circle or wheel pictured as soaring in heaven with the wings and tail of an eagle. The circle sometimes contains the bust of a human figure, and sometimes is empt}^ " Below Ilu, the universal and mysterious source of all, was placed a triad," consisting of Ann, the Cannes of the Greek writers on this subject ; " Bel, the demiurgus, the organizer of the world ; Ao, called 216 COMPAKATIVE RELIGION. also Bin — tliat is, the divine ' son ' — the divine light, the intelligence penetrating, directing and vivifying the universe." These three divine personifications, equal in power, were regarded as having issued successively one from the other ; Ao from Anu, and Bel from Ao. Ann, '' the lord of the lower world, the lord of dark- ness, was represented on the monuments under the strange figure of a man with an eagle's tail and for his head-dress a fish, whose open mouth rises over his head, while the body covers his shoulders. It is under this form that Berosus tells us, according to Babylonian traditions, he floated on the surface of the waters of Chaos. Bel, ' the father of the gods,' was usually rep- resented under an entirely human form, attired as a king, wearing a tiara with bulls' horns, the symbol of power. But this god took many other secondary forms, the most important being Be]-Dagon,a human bust springing from the body of a fish. We do not know exactly the typical figure of Ao, or Bin, ' the intelligent guide, the lord of the visible world, the lord of knowledge, glory and life ; ' the serpent seems to have been his principal symbol." Each god of this triad had a corresponding female deity, to use the expression of many of the inscriptions, * his reflection.' Anat, the Anaitis of the Greek writers, accompanied Anu ; Bilit, rendered by the Greeks Mylitta, the mother of the gods, belonged to Bel ; and Taauth to Ao. The triad is symbolical. It is God, the first cause originating all things ; the intelligent designer and author of life, to the universe, and the creator of all existing forms. VI. LEGALISM IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 217 A secondary triad was constituted of the Sun, Sha- mash, the Moon, Sin, and an inferior manifestation of Ao, representing the atmosphere, or Mrmament. And third in the divine hierarchy were the gods of the five planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Yenus and Mercury, represented respectively by Adar, Merodach, Nergal, Ishtar, and N"ebo. Throughout the list of these inferior, though still august personages, it is the first triad of attributes personified which energizes in various ways. The planet-god of Saturn seems a further expression of the nature of Ann, and Kebo, of Ao ; and Merodach, though of primary importance at Babylon, and called " the ancient one of the gods, the supreme judge, the master of the horoscope,'' was but an agency of Bel. Ishtar corresj^onded to the female members of the triad, Anat and Bilit. For Ishtar was twofold, ^' that worshipped at Arbela, and that at Xineveh.'' '^ The plural name of the double Ishtar, Ishtaroth, was the or- igin of the Phenician Ashtaroth.'' JSTergal was the god of war, the " master of battles,'' and " god of the chase." In Babylonia, the Chaldeans, from their study of astronomy, were early led to the belief that the stars exercised a divine agency over the birth and life of men, and determined the destiny of nations. It was believed that they, especially the planets, were interpreters of the almighty decrees, to those who observed and under- stood the meaning of their movements. Accordingly the mythology of Babylon was more strictly astronom- ical, or astrological than that of Kineveh. To the two triads, and the deities of the five planets, the Babylon- ians added '* twelve councillors of the gods, each of lO 218 COMPARATIVK KELIGIO^^. whom presided over one month of the year, and over one of the signs of the zodiac." And to these chief deities were also attached other powers, distributed in both a scientific and rehgious order, forming essential elements in Chaldean worship. The system inevitably grew under the scientific hands which framed it, into a sidereal pantheism, in which the stars were the agen- cies of the one all-pervading deity. Its influence ex- tended to Syria and other neighboring nations, entering into union with the native faith. It reached the kingdom of Judah. Amons: the reforms of kino^ Josiah was that of putting a stop to the burning of incense to the sun and moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord. He also burned the chariots of the sun with fire.^ Such were the great gods, according to the belief of those who could give an account of their faith. But popular superstition conceived of them more grossly, and added largely to their number. And the primary elements of worship, few and the same every- where, were overlaid with a multitude of accessories, some of them absurd and immoral. Even one or two of the great gods of the stellar system were worship- ped with rites which were scandalous. J^ot the less were they, as observances of religion, prescribed by inflexible law. One feature of the national worship was the " lo- calization of the service of each divine personage in * 2 Kings, xxiii. 5, 11. VII. PHENICIAN AND SYRIAN LEGALISM. 219 some particular cit-y, where he was regarded as the first and greatest of the gods, w^iatever might be the place he filled elsewhere" in the Babylonian panthe- on.* In form this was like the Egyptian system, had a resemblance to some efiects of the Hindu, and in spirit was identical with polytheistic pantheism ev^ery- wliere; but the method of operation was different. In Egypt, polytheism was primarily constituted by the union of several monotheisms ; in Babylonia, the local gods were all the offspring of a dividing mon- otheism which was originally spiritual ; while in India, localization of deities, where it did exist, pro- ceeded out of a system of pure nature-worship, and was due to the variety of forms in which God con- ceived of in that way, appears, whereby every locality might have its special reasons for worshipping the all-god in a character proper to itself. YII. PHENICIAN AND SYRIAN LEGALISM. El, the originally sole god of the Syrians and Sidoni- ans, identical with the Ilu of the Assyrians, also, in the progress of innovation, receded into the distance, as too solemn and exalted to be approached by man. The less awful name substituted by superstitious rev- erence, was Baal, the master, or lord. Sometimes Jaoh was used ; but that was hardly less solemn than El. The lord was a reverent name, not too awful for human lips to pronounce. * Lenormant, vol. 1. 452-456. 220 COMPARATIVE RELIGION. The relations in which God stood to his creation ■were felt to be manifold, and the evidencing of his power, different in different creatures and different places. The sun was the chief power in the universe, the blessing and glorj of God to all the nations ; but different nations and cities were indebted to him for many special gifts. So Baal is represented to all the states of Syria and Phenicia by the sun, at the same time that he is worshipped under different names, and with somewhat different rites in the several states. Eaalim, that is, Baals, became as numerous as the cit- ies in which that god was worshipped. By the time that the Israelites returned from Egypt, this stage of the Baal mythology was fully constituted. Thus we read of Baal-Zephon, a place named from some relation to Baal, Baal-Peor, that is Baal as worshipped at Peor, Baal-Meon, Baal-Tamar, Baal-Hermon, and Baal-Gad, all mentioned in the early history of the Israelitish na- tion, and attached to places scattered from the frontiers of Egypt, to the heart of Lebanon, vouching for the already wide diffusion of Baal-worship among the na- tions of Canaan and Syria. It continued to Increase daring the time of the Hebrew judges ; and maintained itself with unabated power through the best part of the monarchy. The growth of polytheism in Syria and Phenicia was largely due to local and political causes. Baal worshipped in Tyre became the Tyrian Baal, and fur- ther appropriated by Tyrians as " king of the city," in their own language Melek Kiryath, was, in the course of time constituted a separate deity as Melkarth. VII. PHENICIAN AND SYRIAN LEGALISM. 221 Thus Baalim were multiplied over the land without system, and by accidental circumstances ; and yet as constituted in any one city that religion became impli- cated with the state, enforced by authority of govern- ment, and determined in its observances by the regula- tions of law. At the same time, the local variations of Baal were variously combined with those which grew out of the belief that he manifested himself, or at least his will, in the objects and operations of nature. In that light he was conceived of as fourfold, in creating, destroying, reviving, and in that process of decompo- sition whereby the decaying materials of life are re- combined into new forms of vitality. Thus was another inferior class of gods formed, as Baal-Tham- muz, otherwise, Adon, the lord of productive nature, Baal-Chon, the preserver, Baal-Moloch, the destroyer, and Baal-Zebub. There were also astronomical Baalim. Under the solar god, Baal-Samim, ''lord of the heavens," were the seven planet gods, worshipped under the generic name of Cabirim, " the powerful ones," to whom were added Esmun, the invisible and highest minister of the primordial Baal. "He personified the whole sidereal system, and was supposed to preside over the laws and harmony of the universe." A fourth class proceeded from the same common source in accordance with a " more general physical conception. The element of fire was considered, in its most extended acceptation, as the principle of life, the source of all activity, of all renewal, and of all 222 COMPARATIVE KELIGIOX. destruction. 'The solar or sidereal gods are essen- tiall}' fire-gods. This clearly appears in Baal-Moloch, and his worship, in which lire plajed so great a part." To the same order "belonged Baal-Hamon, burning Baal; the national god of Carthage," Resheph, 'the thunderbolt,' the celestial tire," and Adar, the fire- god adopted from Ass3'ria. With the personages of these different classes were connected corresponding female deities. To each Baal, a Baalath who represented the same attributes under another aspect. By these various processes, out of the belief in one almighty Being, the polytheism of Syria ramified indefinitely. Worship, in a corresponding w^ay, multiplied and diversified its observances. In many places it became notoriously immoral, both in voluptuousness and cruelty. Children were barned alive in sacrifice to the fire-god Baal-Moloch. In the ceremonies of Tham- muz, great mourning was followed by monstrous orgies, and others rivalled the debauchery which be- longed to rites of Mylitta at Babylon. " The Canaan- ites were remarkable for the atrocious cruelty that stamped all the ceremonies of their worship, and the precepts of their religion. No other people ever rivalled them in the mixture of bloodshed and de- bauchery, with which they thought to honor the deity."* This religion was early carried abroad along the shores of the Mediterranean, by the merchant ships and * Lenormant, vol. 11. 219--224. vn. — PHENICIAN AND SYRIAN LEGALISM. 223 colonies of Tyre and Sidon : and in Cyprus and Crete and on the coasts of Asia Minor, in several islands of the ^gean, and elsewhere, some of its characteristic features long remained. In the Tyrian colonies on the coast of northern Africa, and of Spain, it was estab- lished in full. Where it came in contact with the Greek populations, its more offensive elements were mollified, or abolished, by the finer taste and feeling of that eminently humane people. Among the Hebrews, symbolic images of God were often used, and by many of the people ; but they were chiefly borrowed from their neighbors ; as the golden calf, at Sinai, the calves set up by Jereboam at Bethel and Dan, and the Terephim of Micah, mentioned in the book of Judges, all copied from the national reli- gion of Egypt ; and the groves, images and high places of Syrian worship. The Israelites were constantly subject to be approached by the aggressive and persist- ing proselytism of the servants of Baal, who, of one sect or another, ^vere all around them. The common- est error was to worship Jehovah with an imitation of a foreign ritual. But from that heretical way of wor- shipping the true God by the methods of a foreign re- ligion, the transition was easy to the adoption of the foreign religion itself. But the orthodox idea of Jeho- vah was never degraded. He was a God never put by the sacred books of the nation in the light of a mere abstraction ; never removed to an impracticable dis- tance, to give place to subordinate gods ; never brought down to an irreverent familiarity. Such as he was presented to Abraham and to Moses, he is also 224: COMPARATIVE RELIGION. declared to David and the later prophets. The people did use, out of reverence, a less solemn name for that of Jehovah ; but it was never taken to mean another god. There is progressive fullness in the presentation of Jehovah's attributes, but no alteration of his nature, no dividing of it into various gods, no degrading of it to the level of human weaknesses or vices, no evapo- rating of it into philosophical abstraction. It is never exalted to the almighty nonentity of Brahm, or of Ra, to the mere formal existence of Shangti, or reduced to the mixed human imperfection of Jupiter. In the latest Hebrew Scriptures as in the earliest, the character of Jehovah is the same personal, spiritual, holy, just, almighty and merciful God. If corruption attaches to his worship and the thoughts of men about him, it in- variably comes from abroad ; never in the development of the sacred literature. JS'or does that sacred litera- ture in any respect, at any time, justify the changes which some of the people favor. It never bends to take up and embody a prevailing popular practice. The Hebrew people became as a whole idolatrous and im- moral, most of them quite as much so as their neigh- bors ; the moral and religious character of their sacred scriptures continues to be of the same elevated standard from beginning to end. To some extent this may be explained by the fact that error was generally brought in from abroad and was naturally opposed by the native priesthood. But on the other hand, it was not the priesthood but the prophets who formed the firmest barrier to error, nor VII. PHENICIAN AND SYRIAN LEGALISM. 225 does it appear that the priests had much to do with the production of holy scripture. In all other known cases, the later scriptures, in their progressive production, keep pace with the pop- ular changes, take up the notions and practices which have grown into popular authority, and work them into a system sacerdotal, legal, or philosophical, — in the latter case, harmonizing them, as well as may be, with the earlier scriptures, which they frequently con- tradict. The Hebrew people turned aside from their national religion into all sorts of foreign errors to which they were exposed. But the Hebrew religion in itself re- mained unchanged, and the new sacred books were successively written in the same spirit as the ancient, and never stooped to take up the heretical notions pre- vailing among the people. Hindu scriptures of the legal period followed, if they did not to some extent lead in the path of depart- ure from the earlier standards. Avestanism faithfully retained its monotheistic creed ; but its later script- ures were entirely ritual and ceremonial, and the sacerdotalism of the Magi made large aggressions upon the simplicity of its priesthood and worship. On all sides, legalism had developed, with a strik- ing uniformity, into a burdensome system of hollow observances, idolatrous of images or of forms, or of both ; and practically exclusive of a spiritual God, personally present and powerful to save; and into a priestly despotism all pervading and oppressive. lO' CHAPTEK XI. THE GREAT REVOLUTION OF REASON. Such was the state of progress, fully reached, and already for a long time felt to be a bondage intolerably oppressive upon the nations, when, about six hundred years before Christ, a great movement of reform arose simultaneously in all the principal seats of civilization. In this instance, there was put forth no claim of inspired authority for the foundation of a new faith. A general uprising of human reason, as opposed to an idolatrous priestcraft and stupid abuses under the name of law, it attempted to supply their place witli a reasonable religion, or with sound moral or legal cul- ture. It was the epoch of Confucius, in China, of Buddha, in India, of Darius Hystaspes, the great re- forming monarch of Persia, of Zerubabel and Ezra, and the final abandonment of idolatry by the Jews, of the rightly called sages in Greece, of Servius Tullius in Rome, and of the establishment of the monotheistic Persians in dominion over Western Asia and Egypt. I. CONFUCIUS; The most moderate of reformers was Confucius, and yet none have been by succeeding generations more ex- THE GEEAT REVOLUTION OF REASON. 227 travagantlj lionored. In liis time the teaching and re corded example of the sages of Chinese antiquity were falling into neglect. The books, in which their honored labors were recorded, already had suffered loss. Confu- cius saw the prevailing and increasing degeneracy, and the danger that the sacred books would soon perish en- tirely, and that the national religion and practical mor- als would fall into irremediable corruption. Without pretending to any superior gifts, or to any instructions of a supernatural kind, while 3^et in early manhood he began to devote his attention to collecting all that remained of the ancient scriptures, and to editing them with care and urging the attention of others to the study of them, and to follow the precepts and ex- amples which they contained. He was a statesman, and aimed especially at the establishment of good gov- ernment. Religion he viewed chiefly in its relations to morals, and the peaceful order of the empire. While holding high public oflfices, he had a number of disciples, who diligently waited upon him at all times when he was free to see them, for the profit to be de- rived from his conversation. It was to him a matter of regret that none of the princes were to be found in that number. His estimate of himself was sober, even humble. He had no communications from God ; he was only a man of respectable learning, anxious to re- vive the religion and virtues of the earlier times, and the stndy of the sacred books, and doing the best he could by example to enforce his teaching. All that he can be justly said to have taught, as of his own judg- ment, was good, sound rational morality. Yet his fol- 228 COMPAKATIYE EELIGION. lowers soon began to speak of him in the most extrava- gant way, as more than mortal, and before many gen- erations had elapsed, he was exalted to be an object of worship. Fortunately for his reputation, his writings remain, as well as the greater part of the sacred books on which he expended his editorial care ; whether for- tunately for China, in the long run, may be doubted. For the influence of his rationalistic style of thinking is to this day controlling among the learned classes, and is the greatest obstacle encountered by Christian missionaries in that land. Confucius was born in the year five hundred and fifty-one before Christ, and died in four hundred and eighty-eight. He was followed by a numerous list of disciples, who carried his doctrines, and the reverence of his name, to the utmost bounds of China. They have asserted their dominion over the minds of a vast multitude of men, perhaps more than ever submitted in equal degree to the teaching of any other moral philosopher ; but the remarks which have been recent- ly made about him as superior to Socrates are too hasty. He was a wise man among his people, a sober-minded, Benjamin-Franklin-kind of a man, in a vastly populous branch of mankind where that kind of merit is highly appreciated ; but Confucius was no Socrates. That intuition into the nature of human thinking, that pow- er of discerning and expounding causes, of discriminat- ing, and constructing arguments whereby to ascend to causes, which have constituted Socrates the father of all true science, are far above the level of Confucius. Fewer minds come into immediate contact with THE GREAT REVOLUTION OF REASON. 229 Socrates, but they are the minds which govern, and must govern, the world ; and the more that they come into collision with the followers of Confucius, the more will their superiority appear. II. BUDDHISM. Six hundred years before Christ the religion of Brahmanism had matured into an absolute domination over India. The simple patriarchal worship of the early Yedic hymns, already corrupted within the Yedic period, had become a sacerdotal system, con- structed and managed by a sacerdotal caste. Founded in the most solemn convictions of the people, it had extended its ramifications of despotism over the whole country, and from the highest to the lowest grades of society. It held every individual, from birth to the grave, in bonds which he could not escape for a mo- ment, and which were the more awfully oppressive, since they were riveted in the soul. It was then that an intellectual champion appeared, who undertook to rescue India from the bondage of her creed, and from the natural ills which her creed had aggravated. Qouddhodana was king in Kapilavastu, capital of the country of the same name, in central India, at the foot of the mountains of ]N"epal. He was of the family of Sakya, a branch of the powerful tribe of Gotama, and of the Kshatrya, or warrior caste. His queen, Maya Devi, was daughter of a neighboring 230 COMPARATIVE EELIGIOX. monarch, and equally distinguished by her beauty, intelligence, and piety. Such were the father and mother of the liberator. Kesistance to Brahmanieal oppression did not spring from the ranks of the op- pressed, but from the tender and generous heart of one who came down from the loftiest rank of society to deliver them. Siddhartha, the first son of Qouddhodana and Maya Devi, and heir apparent of the throne, was born towards the end of the seventh or beginning of the sixth century before Christ. From childhood he evinced a meditative disposition. The plays of other children had no attraction for him, while he excelled in every branch of learning, as presented to his years. Prolonged solitary meditations were not deemed suit- able to the education of a king, and various methods were devised to interest him in the business and amusements proper to his rank, and the office to ■which his birth assigned him. Mildly, but firmly, he persisted in his way. The sight of poverty, sickness, old age and death, filled him with sadness for the suf- ferings of mankind. Was there any way of salvation to be found ? Brahmanism, as far as he could see, furnished none, but, on the contrary, aggravated all the ills of human life, and gratuitously increased their number. Resolved to probe the canker to its depths, h.3 made several attempts to seclude himself for medi- tation on this momentous subject. Finally, at the age of twenty-nine years, he stole away from his father's court, by night, leaving behind his young and much beloved wife, and all the pleasures designed to occupy THE GREAT REVOLUTION OF REASON. 231 his affections, and eluding the guards appointed to detain him, he succeeded in getting beyond the bounds of his father's dominions before pursuit could overtake him. Divesting himself of every badge of rank, he assumed the garb of an ascetic, and entered one of the highest of the great Brahmanical schools. Among the more than three hundred pupils of the illustrious Arata Kalama of Yaigali, Siddhartha soon took his place as the first, and was solicited by his mas- ter to take part with him in teaching. But he replied, " The doctrine of Arata is not truly liberating ; to practice it is not a true liberation, nor a complete draining out of misery.'' Then added in his own heart, " By carrying to perfection that doctrine which consists in poverty and restraint of the senses, I shall arrive at true deliverance; but for that, I need yet to tnake more profound researches." In Kajagriha, ■ the capital of Magadha, lived the Brahmanical doctor, Roudraka, the son of Rama, more celebrated still than Arata Kalama. To him did Sidd- hartha modestly present himself with the petition to be enrolled as one of his disciples. Roudraka soon accepted him as an equal. '' You and I," said he, " will teach our doctrine to this multitude." The number of scholars was about seven hundred. But, as at Yai^ali, so here the earnest inquirer soon became dissatisfied with the sum of all the master had to teach. *' My friend," said he, " this way leads not to indifier- ence to the things of the world, leads not to emanci- pation from passion, leads not to arrest of the changes of existence, leads not to tranquillity, leads not to com- 232 COMPAEATIVE KELIGION. plete intelligence, leads not to the state of Qi^amana, leads not to Nirvana." And then, in the presence of all the disciples of Eoudraka, he withdrew. Five of them followed him. Thus accompanied, he betook himself to entire seclusion, first on Mount Gaya, and then to the village of Ouruvilva, on the banks of the Kairanjana, where he devoted six years to study and ascetic exercises, before obtaining any satisfactory light on the great question of his life. Before the end of that time he became convinced that extreme asceticism was not the way to perfect intelligence, and began to relax his severity, yet with- out indulging to greater length in food or drink than was necessary to efficiency in study. His five disci- ples disapproved of the change, deserted him and went to Benares. Left alone, Siddhartha continued his medi- tations with the more effect, that he had relaxed hi% austerities. Then it was that he completely wrought out the principles of his system, and the rules of disci- pline which he designed to propose to his adherents. In commencing his ascetic life he had exchanged his royal attire for the garb of a hunter. That had now, in the end of six years' wear, fallen to pieces. He resulted himself by opening a recently made grave, and plundering the body of its shroud, which he cut, sewed and fitted to himself with his own hands. Sub- sequently he made it a law for his monastic followers, that their clothing should consist of rags gathered by themselves from the streets and the cemeteries. Siddhartha had now learned all that the Brahman- ical schools had to teach ; he had thoroughly mastered THE GREAT REVOLUTION OF REASON. 233 it, and gone beyond it. He knew his future adver- saries, and knew himself, where they were weak, and where his position was strong. But his aim being not distinction nor superiority, but the salvation of men, he still examined himself as to whether he had obtained a definitive and unalterable view of the truth which he was to communicate to the world. " By all that I have acquired," said he to himself, " I have greatly transcended the law of man, but have not yet reached to a clear discrimination of the venerable wis- dom. This is not yet the way of understanding. This way is not able to abolish forever the evils of old age, of sickness or of death.'' After all the dreams and noble aspirations of his boyhood, and all the stud- ies and austerities of his manhood so far, was he ever to be the savior of mankind ? He was reaching the crisis of his life, and it was one of intense anxiety. In one of his frequently recurring ecstasies, and after a meditation which appeared to have lasted almost with- out interruption for a week, he believed that at last he had obtained the desired power ; and in all sin- cerity answered his own question affirmatively. " Yes,'' said he, " I have at last discovered the firm way of the great man ; the way of the sacrifice of the senses ; the way without error and without dejection ; the way of blessing and of virtue ; the way without stain, without envy, without ignorance and without passion ; the way which leads to the high road of sal- vation, and which causes the force of the demon to be no force : the wav which renders the reerions of transmigration no regions ; the way which excels Qakra, 234 COMPARATIVE EELIGION. Brahma, Mahe§vara and the guardians of the world ; the way which leads to the possession of universal knowledge; the way of memory and of judgment ; a way which removes the bitterness from old age and death ; a way tranquil and without trouble, exempt from fears of the demon, and which conducts to the city of ISTirvana." In that moment he felt assured that he had at last become Buddha, the enlightened, the sage in all his purity, his greatness and power more than human, more than divine, master of himself, the savior of the universe, or of all in the universe who can be saved. Bodhimanda, the place of intelligence, where the liberator obtained that first vision of supreme truth, is one the of holiest places to the Buddhist pilgrim. In the last days of his protracted, and latterly almost despair- ing meditations, he made himself a mat of grass, and taking his seat upon it in a secluded place, under the shadow of a tree, he finally determined to wait the ad- vent of that supreme intelligence, of which he had long dimly conceived the possibility, and if disappoint- ed, to perish in waiting. " Here," said he, as he took his seat, '' let my body wither, let my skin, my flesh and my bones decay, if before having attained to the supreme intelligence, I rise from the sod on which I sit." There he remained immovable all day and all night, waiting to find it. It was in the last watch, and just as the dawn arose, that he felt himself endowed with the long desired intelligence, vested with the quality of Buddha, elevated to a perfect knowledge of the THE GEEAT EEYOLUTION OF REASON. 235 three-fold science. ** Yes," he exclaimed, " thus will I put an end to the suiFerings of the world." And striking the earth with his hand, he added, " Let this earth be my witness : she is the abode of all creatures ; she comprehends all that is movable and immovable ; she is impartial ; she will witness that I lie not." From that moment he never hesitated as to the doctrine to be preached, the method of salvation for himself and his fellow- men. It was one, and could only be one. But still he doubted how it would be accepted. He had the divine light. Would men open their eyes to admit it ? "Would they be willing to enter the way in which they should walk ? To settle his mind on this subject, and determine upon a method of teaching to be carried out consistently and without variation, he clung to his solitary meditation some time longer, meditating thus in his heart : " The law which proceeds from me is profound, luminous, subtle, difficult to com- prehend ; it eludes criticism ; it is beyond the range of reasoning, accessible only to the learned and the wise ; it is in opposition to all the w^orld. Having abandoned all conception of individuality, extinguished every idea, interrupted all existence by the way of tranquillity, it is invisible in its character of vacuum ; having dried up desire, exempted from passion, stopping all pro- duction of new existences, it conducts to Nirvana. But if become Buddha truly complete, I teach that law, other men will not understand it, it may expose me to their insults. I will not abandon myself to my own compassion." Three times was Buddha on the point of succumb- 2M0 COMI'AkA'JIVK KK/JfJlON. inij^ to tli.'il, wcakncHH, and |i(}rlia])K would li.'ivo rc- rioiirif;(!(| I'nntvcr hin j^roul ()Mt(3rj>riH(;, Hiitihliod with liHviii;^ found for liiiiiHtjlf the HVA-riit of otcrnnl nalva- lion ; l)iit ;i liii;il rcflcc^tiori d(;(;id(;d lilin, ;ind I'oi-lj.'idu tl)(! return of his irroHoliitioii. "All l)cint^K," Huid lu;, " vvli(!tli(ir low, iriod(;nitc, or (jxahcd, wlM'.tli<',r vary ^ood, irriporicjfjt, (jr vt;ry bad, iriay l)o arranged in tlinjo (daHHCJH. One chiKK in in tlio falw!, and will remain thorcj; a H(;oond is in tin; true, and ;i tliiivl i,s ir« nnf;(;rtainty ; an a man on tlio hanks ofn, j>ond hi'A'M lotnH(;.s whicjh an? honcath the water, others whieli are junt at tli(; HurlacHi, and oth(;rs which have riwjn above it. VVlietlujr I teach the law or not, thoKC who are in the; faiwi will nev(;r iind(!rHtand it ; whether I t(;ach or do not tciU'h th(; law, those who arc certainly in the truth will u(i