The Project Gutenberg eBook ofComparative ReligionThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Comparative ReligionAuthor: J. Estlin CarpenterRelease date: October 13, 2013 [eBook #43947]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPARATIVE RELIGION ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Comparative ReligionAuthor: J. Estlin CarpenterRelease date: October 13, 2013 [eBook #43947]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines
Title: Comparative Religion
Author: J. Estlin Carpenter
Author: J. Estlin Carpenter
Release date: October 13, 2013 [eBook #43947]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPARATIVE RELIGION ***
BY
J. ESTLIN CARPENTER
D.LITT.
PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
NEW YORKHENRY HOLT AND COMPANYLONDONWILLIAMS AND NORGATE
CONTENTS
CHAP.
IINTRODUCTORYIITHE PANORAMA OF RELIGIONSIIIRELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTUREIVSPIRITS AND GODSVSACRED ACTSVISACRED PRODUCTSVIIRELIGION AND MORALITYVIIIPROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINYBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX
"Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which, be they what they may,Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing;Uphold us, cherish, and have power to makeOur noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal Silence."WORDSWORTH.
"To the philosopher the existence of God may seem to rest on a syllogism; in the eyes of the historian it rests on the whole evolution of human thought."—MAX MÜLLER.
Over the chancel-arch of the church at South Leigh, a few miles west of Oxford, is a fresco of the Last Judgment and the Resurrection, of the type well known in mediæval art. On the adjoining south wall stands the stately figure of the archangel Michael. In his right hand he holds a pair of scales. In one scale is the figure of a soul in the attitude of prayer; beside it is Our Lady carrying a rosary. The other contains an ox-headed demon blowing a horn. This scale rises steadily, though another demon has climbed to the beam above to weigh it down, and a third from hell's mouth below endeavours to drag it towards the abyss. The same theme recurs in several other English churches; and it is carved over the portals of many French cathedrals, as at Notre Dame in Paris.
Unroll a papyrus from an Egyptian tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty before the days of Moses, and you will see a somewhat similarscene. The just and merciful judge Osiris, "lord of life and king of eternity," sits in the Hall of the two goddesses of Truth. Hither the soul is brought for the ordeal which will determine his future bliss or woe. Before forty-two assessors he declares his innocence of various offences: "I am not a doer of what is wrong; I am not a robber; I am not a slayer of men; I am not a niggard; I am not a teller of lies; I am not a monopoliser of food; I am no extortioner; I am not unchaste; I am not the causer of others' tears...." Then he is led, sometimes supported by the two goddesses of Truth, to the actual trial. Resting on an upright post is the beam of a balance. It is guarded by a dog-headed ape, symbol of Thoth, "lord of the scales." Thoth has various functions in the ancient texts, and even rises into a kind of impersonation of the principle of intelligence in the whole universe. Here as the computer of time and the inventor of numbers he plays the part of secretary to Osiris. In one scale is placed the heart of the deceased, the organ of conscience. In the other is sometimes a square weight, sometimes an ostrich plume, symbol of truth or righteousness. Thoth stands beside the scales, tablet in hand, to record the issue as the soul passes to the great award.
The scenes and the persons differ; but the fundamental conception of judgment is the same, and it is carried out by the same method. Is this an accidental coincidence of metaphor?The figure of the balance was naturally suggestive for the estimate of worth, and the Psalmist cried in bitterness of heart—
Surely men of low degree are vanity,And men of high degree are a lie,In the balances they will go up;They are altogether lighter than vanity.
The mysterious hand wrote upon the wall of Belshazzar's palace the strange word Tekel, which contained the dreadful sentence, "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting." To early Indian imagination, before the days of the Buddha (500 B.C.), the ordeal of the balance was part of the outlook into the world beyond. In the ancient Persian teaching, Rashnu, the angel of justice, before the shining "Friend," the mediator Mithra, presided over the weighing of the spirits at the bridge of destiny, over which they would pass to heaven or hell.
Is Michael the heir of Thoth or Rashnu? He passed into the Christian Church from the Jewish Synagogue, where he was specially connected with the destinies of the dead. He guided the souls of the just to the heavenly world, where he led them into the mystic city, the counterpart of Jerusalem below; or he stood at the gate as the angel of righteousness to decide who should be admitted. So for the Greeks Hermes was the guardian of the spirits of the departed, whom he conductedto the judgment in the under-world. In this respect, then, Hermes and Michael were akin. But Hermes also played many other parts, and the Greeks identified him with the Egyptian Thoth. When the destinies of Hector and Achilles were weighed against each other, ere the last mortal combat, the vase-painter could represent Hermes as holding the balance in the presence of Zeus, much as Thoth had presided over it before Osiris. The Etruscan artists depicted Mercury, the Italian equivalent of Hermes, fulfilling the same function. True, the purport of the test was different. But the symbol was the same; and when Hermes gave place to Michael, as Christianity was carried to the West, the scales passed from the Hellenic to the Jewish Christian figure, though they had in the one case been used to decide the allotment of fate, and in the other were employed for judgment. Why they remained so long unused in Christian symbolism is obscure. The revival of intercourse with the East through the Crusades may have given new force to the idea as part of the great judgment-process; and the figure to which it was most natural to assign it was that of Thoth-Hermes-Michael.
The religion of the ancient Hindus was founded, as every one knows, upon the venerable hymns collected into one sacred book under the name of the Rig Veda. These hymns, 1017 in number, containing over10,000 verses, are now arranged in ten books, twice the number of the divisions of the Hebrew Psalter. Like most of the Psalms they are traditionally ascribed to different poets, in whose families they were sung; and their authors were regarded as Rishis, bards, or sages. Of their real origin nothing is definitely known; their composition probably extends over many generations, perhaps over several centuries; and dim suggestions of their super-earthly origin already appear in some of the latest poems. They became the peculiar treasure of the priestly order; the most laborious efforts were devised for the study and preservation of the sacred text; the methods of pronunciation, the rules of grammar, the principles of metre, the derivations of words, were all elaborated with the utmost minuteness into different branches of Vedic lore. Two other smaller Vedas, collections of sacrificial formulæ and hymns, were very early placed beside the main work, and a fourth collection gained similar rank much later. With the development of the great schools of Hindu philosophy, especially after the decline of Buddhism, the whole question of authority as the foundation of belief and reasoning was forced to the front, and this in due time was applied to the Veda. Brahmanical speculation had been long concerned with its divine origin. It sprang from one of the mysterious figures in which the ancient theologians expressed their sense of the realunity of the heavenly powers, Prajāpati, the "lord of creatures," through the medium of Vach, or sacred Speech. As such it was "the firstborn in the universe." But as proceeding from Prajāpati it issued from the world of thean-anta, the "un-ending" or "infinite," which was likewise the sphere of thea-mrita, the "im-mortal" or "deathless." So it belonged to the realm of the eternal, where it could be beheld, not indeed with the eye of sense, but with the higher discernment of the holy Seer. The philosophical schools occupied themselves accordingly with the defence of the eternity and consequent infallibility of the Veda. Elaborate arguments were devised to explain the relation of words to things, and of sound in the abstract to uttered speech or again to show how behind individuals which had their origin in time there existed species (even of the gods) which belonged to the timeless order transcending our experience. So the conclusion was reached, in the words of the great philosopher Çankara (A.D. 788-820), that "the authority of the Veda with regard to the matters stated by it is independent and direct; just as the light of the sun is the direct means of our knowledge of form and colour."
Just at this era, by a singular coincidence, a remarkable controversy was raging in the schools of Mohammedan theology. Mohammed died in A.D. 632. He had himself recorded nothing; the traditions about him are not evenagreed whether he could read or write. His oracles were taught to his disciples, who began to note down some of them during the prophet's life; soon after his death the formal collection of them was undertaken; and under Caliph Othman (651) four copies were deposited in the cities of Mecca, Cufa, Basra, and Damascus. We know the work under the name of the Koran (Qurān= reading), one of the numerous expressions which Mohammed was said to have coined for the revelation imparted to him from on high. Later generations attached the title exclusively to the utterances fixed in literary form, and discerned in them a unity designed by the prophet; but it seems more consonant with his view to regard each of the 114 discourses (suras) as a unit in itself, and the whole as only a fragment of his teaching. Many passages raise a claim to specific divine origin; others allude to the uncreated Scripture,umm-al-kitab, "the mother of the book."
On such hints was founded the remarkable doctrine that the Koran was eternal in its essence as the word of God, a necessary attribute of the Most High. First formulated in the middle of the eighth century (A.D. 747-748), it roused extraordinary interest outside the theological schools. It was fostered by the early Caliphs, for it supported their political authority, and the emphasis which it placed on the doctrine of predestination supplied them with a potent weapon. Oppositionarose on the ground of free will; the passages enforcing the principle of predestination were evaded by the handy method of allegorical interpretation, and the revolt of the moral consciousness led, as it has done elsewhere, to rationalism. Public debates were held amid general excitement, when the Caliph Ma'mun (813-833) unexpectedly espoused the rationalist cause, and issued a decree forbidding the discussion. The popular forces, however, were in the long run triumphant. In 847 a new Caliph came into power, inclined for political reasons to the higher doctrine. Lectures were instituted in the mosques on the attributes of God, and vast audiences—the historians report twenty and even thirty thousand hearers—listened eagerly while the theologians disputed whether God's word could be conceived distinct from his absolute being. Faith in the prophet triumphed; the exaltation of the product reacted on that of the person; and the Arabian shepherd could be regarded as the inerrant, sinless, uncreated light, sent forth from Deity himself, who for his sake spread out the earth and arched the heavens, and proclaimed the great confession "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."
Every great historical religion passes through numerous phases, as it is brought into contact with different cultures, and evokes various forms of speculative thought and inwardexperience. Buddhism has been no exception to this rule. It sprang up in a moral revolt against the claims of the Brahmanical teachers, and in the midst of the discussions of the sophists turned its back on metaphysics and sought to concentrate attention on the Noble Path of the good life. It offered a way of deliverance from the weary round of births and deaths by the victory over ignorance and sin, and sought to overcome selfishness by eliminating the idea that man has, or is, a Self. Accordingly it presented its founder Gotama (500 B.C.), as the man who had attained the Truth, who had by a long series of lives devoted to the higher righteousness acquired the insight into the causes and meaning of existence, and imparted it to his followers with instructions to carry it forth for the welfare of their fellow-men. For this end he founded a union or order; he instituted a discipline, and committed his teaching to a body of disciples whose successors gradually bore it into distant lands. He himself passed away, leaving no trace behind. His memory was cherished with dutiful devotion. Pilgrimages to the scenes of his birth and Buddhahood, commemorative festivals and pious rites, kept the image of the Teacher before the mind of the believer. But no prayer was offered to him; no worship created any bond of fellowship between the departed Gotama and the community which he had left on earth.
But in the course of several generations remarkable changes took place. Environed by philosophical speculations, Buddhism could not remain wholly unaffected by the great ideas of metaphysics. While one branch, now surviving in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, remained faithful to the Founder's exclusion of all such conceptions as being, substance, and the like, others began to interpret the person of the Buddha in terms of the Absolute, and identified him with the Eternal and the Self-Existent, who from time to time for the welfare of the world took on himself the semblance of humanity, and appeared to be born, to attain Enlightenment, and die. The great aim of the deliverance of all sentient beings from error, suffering, and guilt, expressed itself further in the association with him of numerous other holy forms sharing the same purpose of the world's salvation.
Among these was the Buddha Amitâbha, the Buddha of Boundless Light,[1] who had made a wondrous vow in virtue of which a blessed future of righteousness and joy in the Western Paradise was secured for all who put their trust in him. Carried into China, this devotion acquired great popularity, and centuries later it passed into Japan. There, while Europe was sending its warriors to win back from the Crescent the city of the Cross, while Bernard and Francis and Dominic were awakening new enthusiasm for the monasticlife, two famous teachers, Honen (1133-1212) and Shin-ran (1173-1262), developed the doctrine of "salvation by faith." Honen was the only son of a military chief who died of a wound inflicted by an enemy. On his deathbed he enjoined the boy never to seek revenge, and bade him become a monk for the spiritual enlightenment both of his father and his father's foe. So the lad passed in due time into one of the great Buddhist monasteries on mount Hiei. Long years of laborious study followed, till in 1175 he reached the conviction that faith in Amida[2] was the true way of salvation. A deep sense of human sinfulness and the belief in an All-Merciful Deliverer were the essential elements of his religion. Three emperors became his pupils, and his life, compiled by imperial order after his death, resembles that of a mediæval Christian saint. Visions of Amida and of the holy teachers of the past were vouchsafed to him. He preached—like another St. Francis—to the serpents and the birds. His person was mysteriously transfigured, and a wondrous light filled his dwelling.
[1] Also called Amitâyus, the Buddha of Boundless Life.
[2] The Japanese form of the Sanskrit Amitâbha.
His disciple Shin-ran carried the doctrine of his master yet a little farther. Filled with adoring gratitude to the Buddha of Boundless Light, who, as the deliverer, was also the Buddha of Boundless Life, he argued that infinite mercy and infinite wisdom must belong to him; and these in their turn implied thepower to give effect to his great purpose. He passed from village to village through the Eastern provinces, rousing enthusiasm by the hymns into which he wrought his new faith. They are still sung in the temples at the present day. But whereas Honen had recognised a value in good works, and had enjoined the duty of constant repetition of the sacred name of Amida, Shin-ran insisted that all element of "self-exertion" must be purged away, and faith in the merits of Amida—"the exertion of another"—should alone remain. Some of the conceptions of Western teaching thus present themselves in Japan in the midst of modes of life and thought of purely Indian origin. Christian theologians had debated whether faith was to be regarded as anopusor adonum, a "work" or a "gift," was it something to be attained by man or was it bestowed by God? The Japanese answer was unhesitating. Faith was not earned by effort, or achieved by merit, it was granted out of immeasurable love. "The Buddha," we read, "confers this heart. The heart which takes refuge in his heart is not produced by oneself. It is produced by the command of Buddha. Hence it is called the believing heart by the Power of Another." The natural corollary was that in due course this grace would be bestowed on all. The Buddha of Boundless Light and Life would overcome the darkness of ignorance and death; and this type of Buddhism, now the most active andinfluential in Japan, preaches the doctrine of universal salvation. The student finds here a whole series of parallels to the Evangelical interpretation of Christianity. Both schemes are founded on the same essential ideas, man's need of a deliverer, and the attainment of salvation by no human conduct but by faith in a divine person.
The foregoing sketches raise many problems. What are the actual features in different religions which are susceptible of comparison? How can we distinguish between resemblances which are deep-seated and spring from the fundamental principles of two given faiths, and those which are only on the surface, and probably accidental? How far can such parallels be ascribed to suggestion through historical contact, and, if they lie too far apart for possibilities of any form of mutual dependence, out of what common types of experience are they derived, what forces of thought have shaped them, what feelings do they express?
The student of Comparative Religion seeks answers to these and similar questions. A vast field of inquiry is at once opened before him. It embraces practically every continent, people, and tribe on the face of the globe. It begins in the last period of the great ice age, when men lived in this country in the company of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the mammoth, and hunted their game throughGermany, Belgium, and France. In dim recesses of the caves they painted the deer, the bison, the antelope and the wild boar, under conditions which imply some kind of mysterious or holy place. They buried their dead with care, and though we can ask them no questions we may infer with much probability that they celebrated some kind of funeral meal, and deposited implements and ornaments in the grave for the use of the departed in the world beyond. In one case hundreds of shells were found buried with the skull of a little child. Similar usages may be traced through the slow advances of culture to the present day. Death is an element of universal experience; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that if the negroid peoples of Western Europe had worked out some view of its meaning and consequences, there were other things to be done or avoided out of fear or reverence for the Unseen.
The first objects of comparison are thus found in the outward acts which fall more or less clearly within the sphere of religion, the places where these are performed, the persons who do them, the means required for them, the occasions to which they are attached. These all belong to the external world; they can be observed and recorded, even though we may not be sure what they mean. When they are brought together, a series of gradations of complexity can be established, while a common purpose may be traced through all.From the negro who lays his offering of grain or fruit at the foot of a tree with the simple utterance, "Thank you, gods," to a great Eucharistic celebration at St. Peter's, a continuous line of ritual may be followed, in which the action becomes more elaborate, the functions and character of the officiating ministers more strictly defined, the accessories of worship more complicated. This corresponds to the enrichment and elevation of the ideas and emotions that animate the act, as that which is at first performed as part of tribal usage and ancestral custom acquires the force of divine institution and personal duty.
Behind the external act lies the internal world of thought and feeling. The social sanction may invest the ceremony itself with so much force that the worshipper's interest may lie rather in the due performance of the rite than in the deity to whom it is addressed. The element of belief may be relatively vague and indefinite. But in the more highly organised religions belief also may externalise itself through hymn and prayer, through myth and history and prophecy. When a religion is strong enough to create a literature, a fresh object of comparison is presented. The utterances of poet and sage, of lawgiver and seer, can be set side by side. Their conceptions of the Powers towards which worship is directed can be studied; the characters and functions of the several deities can be determined. Thisis the intellectual element in religion. It has often been regarded as the element of most importance, because it seemed most readily to admit of the test of truth. It finds its most formal expression in the articles of a creed, and has sometimes been erected into the chief ground of the supreme arbitrament of heaven and hell.
There remains the element of feeling. This also may be so entangled in tradition, so enveloped in the pressure of surrounding influences, that it is at first obscure and indistinct. But its importance was early recognised when the origin of religion was ascribed to fear, in the oft-quoted line of the Roman Satirist Petronius Arbiter at the court of Nero (who committed suicide A.D. 66)—
"Primus in orbe deos fecit timor.
In the eighteenth century the genius of Lessing (1729-1781) fastened on the feeling of the heart as the essential foundation of religion. No written record, no historical event, could guarantee its truth; that lay in the constitution of the human spirit in its interpretation of its experience. In his famous drama of "Nathan the Sage" he applied this to the representatives of three great historical religions which were thus brought together for comparison: the Christian Templar, the Mohammedan Saladin, and the Jew Nathan. Herder (1744-1803) endeavoured with thematerials then at command to trace the origin and development of religion, starting from the primitive impressions made upon the mind by the world without, and sought to interpret mythology as the imaginative utterance of man's consciousness of the power, light, and life in Nature. In the next generation Schleiermacher (1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence, without attempting to define the object towards which it was directed. The study of origins has passed out of the hands of the philosophers and the theologians. But it cannot dispense with psychology; and among the factors of early religious life will be found the beginnings of wonder, reverence and awe. And this element, often cruelly twisted into false and degraded forms, and sometimes refined in the higher types of mysticism into the loftiest spirituality, inheres in all practice and belief.
What, then, is the basis of comparison among different faiths? The student who is engaged in tracing the life-history of any one religion will naturally start from the field of investigation thus selected. As he widens his outlook he will find that a number of illustrative instances force themselves upon his view. The people whose institutions and ideas he is examining are members of a given ethnic group. The ancient Hebrews, for instance, belong on the one side to the life of the desert, and are kin with the nomad Arabs,on the other they are related to the authors of Babylonian culture. Or in the course of events a new religion is brought by missionary impulse into a less-developed civilisation, as when Buddhism passed from China through Corea into Japan, and was planted in the midst of a cruder faith. Widely different modes of thought are thus brought into close juxtaposition, their relation and interaction can be examined, and the inner forces of each compared.
That such inquiries must be conducted without prejudice need not now be enforced. An eighteenth-century writer might lay it down that "the first general division ofReligionis intoTrue and False," and might draw the conclusion that "the chapter ofFalse Religionsis by much the longest in the History of the religious opinions and practices of mankind."[3] Dr. Johnson could sententiously declare that "there are two objects of curiosity, the Christian world and the Mohammedan world—all the rest may be considered as barbarous." A learned Oxford scholar of the last generation could speak of the "three chief false religions," Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. Missionaries and travellers of an elder day, who took some form of Christianity as their foundation, sometimes found the savages among whom they laboured destitute of religion because they had no Father in heavenand no everlasting hell. These attitudes, it is now freely recognised, are not scientific. For purposes of comparison no single religion can be selected as a standard for the whole human race. Particular products may be set side by side. The asceticism of India may be compared with that of early Christianity. The ritual of sacrifice may be studied in the book of Leviticus or the Hindu Brāhmanas. What are sometimes called "Ethnic Trinities" may be examined in the light of Alexandrian theology. Thesurasof the Koran may be read after the prophecies of Isaiah. The various phases of the Buddhist Order, with its missionary zeal, its power of adaptability to different cultures, its readiness to accept new teaching, may be contrasted with the wonderful cohesiveness and expansion of the Roman Catholic Church. The ideas of the Hellenic mystery-religions may be found to throw light on the language of St. Paul. Out of the multitudinous phases of human experience all the world over innumerable resemblances will be discovered. Each is a fact for the student, and must be treated on equal terms in the field of science. But they will have more or less intrinsic significance in the scale of values. Philosophy may attempt to range them in gradations of worth, in nobility of form, in dignity of expression, in moral purity, in social effectiveness. Beneath infinite diversity the mystic will affirm the unity of the whole, with the poet of theMasnavi, Jalálu-'d-Dïn of Balkh (A.D. 1207-1273)—
"Because He that is praised is, in fact, only One,In this respect all religions are only one religion."
[3] Broughton,Dictionary of all Religions, 1745.
The materials of comparison are, of course, of the most varied kind. The interest of the ancient Greeks was early roused in the diverse practices which they saw around them, and the observations of Herodotus concerning the Egyptians, the Persians, the Scythians, and many another tribe upon the fringe of barbarism, have earned for him the modern title of the "Father of Anthropology." Travellers, missionaries, government officers, men of trade and men of learning, have recorded the usages of the lower culture all over the world, naturally with varying accuracy and penetration, and a vast range of facts has been registered through successive stages of complexity in social and religious development. Many of these have their parallel in the folklore of countries where the uniformity of modern civilisation has not crushed out all traditional beliefs, while annual customs or even village games may contain survivals of what were once important ceremonial rites. The irruption of the Arab conquerors into Europe brought Christianity face to face with Mohammedanism and its sacred book. In theseventeenth century the Jesuit Fathers in China first made known the teachings of Kong-fu-tse ("Philosopher Kong") 500 B.C. whose name they Latinised into Confucius. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a brilliant little band of English scholars in Calcutta began to reveal the astounding copiousness of the sacred literature of India. During the expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in 1799 the Rosetta Stone (now in the British Museum) yielded the clue to the hieroglyphics which cover the walls of temple and tomb. A generation later a young British officer, Lieutenant Henry Rawlinson, began in 1835 to copy a triple inscription on a cliff of Mount Behistun, near Kermanshah in Persia. The work was dangerous and difficult, but he was enabled to complete it ten years later. It contained an identical record in three languages, Persian, Median, and Babylonio-Assyrian, and provided the means for deciphering the cuneiform script of the tablets and cylinders soon recovered from the mounds of Mesopotamia.
Meanwhile the lovers of the past were at work in many other directions. The Swedish Lonrott collected the ancient songs of the Finnic people, under the name of the Kalevala. Other scholars brought to light the treasures of Scandinavian mythology in the Icelandic Edda with its two collections of poetry and prose. In Wales and Ireland the texts which enshrined the Celtic faith awoke new interest. The students of classical antiquity began tocollect inscriptions, and it was soon realised that the spade might be no less useful in Greece or Asia Minor than beside the Nile or the Euphrates.
The last century has thus accumulated an immense mass of material in literature and art. There are codes of law regulating in the name of deity the practice of family and social life. There are hymns of praise or of penitence, sometimes in strange association with the spells of magic. There are books of ritual and sacrifice, of ceremonial order, of philosophical speculation and moral precept. There are rules of discipline for religious communities; and there are pictures of judgment and delineations of the heavenly life. Sculpture and painting have been employed to give external form to the objects of pious reverence; and the architecture of the sanctuary has wrought into stone the fundamental conceptions of majesty, proportion, and grace.
All this, it is plain, rests upon history. When Confucius visited the seat of the imperial dynasty at the court of Chow, he studied with deep interest the arrangements for the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth; he surveyed the ancestral temples in which the emperor offered his worship; he inspected the Hall of Light whose walls bore paintings of the sovereigns from the remotest times; and then he turned to his disciples with the remark: "As we use a glass to examine the forms of things, so must we study the past tounderstand the present." Comparison that confines itself solely to counting up resemblances here and there will be of small value. We cannot comprehend the real meaning of a single religious rite, a single sentence of any scripture, apart from the context to which it belongs. Acts and words alike issue out of experiences that may be hundreds of years old, and sum up generations, it may be whole ages, of a continuous process. To trace the successive forms of these changes, to describe the steps through which they have passed, is like making a chart of a voyage, and laying down the lines of continent and ocean, island and cape. Or just as the races of man are sorted, and their characteristics are enumerated without reference to the various causes which have produced their modifications, so geography and ethnography might companionhierography, the delineation of "the Sacred" in its concrete manifestations.
But behind the external evolution of a given religion, its modes of worship, its ministers, its doctrines, lie more complicated questions. What causes shaped these acts and moulded these beliefs? What elements of race are to be discerned in them? How can we account for the diversities between the religions of peoples belonging to a common stock, like those of India and those of ancient Italy? What have been the effects of climate, of the struggle with alien peoples and new environment? How does the food-supply influencethe formation of religious ideas? What contacts have been felt with other races, and what positive loans or more impalpable influences have passed from one side to the other? We, find here inhierology, the science of "the Sacred," an analogue to the reasoning which accounts for the distribution of land and water, the rise of mountain ranges and the sculpture of valleys and river-beds out of the stratification of the earth's crust, and builds up a science of geology; or which traces the results of migration upon peoples, the consequences of inter-marriage with other tribes, the disastrous issues of war, surveys the immense variety of causes which have contributed to new developments of racial energy, and arranges this knowledge in the science of ethnology.
And, lastly, the values of these facts must be estimated. How far can they be accepted as expressing the reality of the Unseen Power, and man's relation to it? Hierology may explain how men have developed certain practices or framed certain beliefs; to determine their reasonableness is the task of the philosophy of religion orhierosophy.[4]
[4] These three terms have been suggested by Count Goblet d'Alviella, of Brussels.
The study of "Comparative Religion" assumes that religion is already in existence. It deals with actual usages, which it places side by side to see what light they can throw upon each other. It leaves the task offormulating definitions to philosophy. It is not concerned with origins, and does not project itself into the prehistoric past where conjecture takes the place of evidence. An old miracle-play directed Adam to pass across the stage "going to be created." Whether religion first appeared in the cultus of the dead, or only entered the field after the collapse of a reign of magic which had ceased to satisfy man's demands for help, or was born of dread and desired to keep its gods at a distance, only remotely affects the process of discovering and examining the resemblances of its forms, and interpreting the forces without and within which have produced them. The sphere of speculation has its own attractions, but in this little book an attempt will be made to keep to facts.
Three hundred years ago Edward Herbert,[5] an Oxford scholar who played many parts and played them well, in deep revolt against the ecclesiastical doctrine that all the world outside the pale of the Church was doomed to eternal damnation, devoted himself to the study of comparative religion. With the materials which the classics afforded him, he examined the recorded facts among the Greeks and Romans, the Carthaginians and Arabs, the Phrygians, the Persians, the Assyrians. The whole fabric of human experience was built up, he argued, on certain common knowledges or notions, which could be distinguished byspecific marks, such as priority, independence, universality, certainty, necessity for man's well-being, and immediacy. Here were the bases of law in relation to social order, and of religion in relation to the Powers above man. These principles in religion were five: (1) that there is one supreme God; (2) that he ought to be worshipped; (3) that virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine worship; (4) that we ought to be sorry for our sins and repent of them; (5) that divine goodness doth dispense rewards and punishments both in this life and after it. These truths had been implanted by the Creator in the mind of man, and their subsequent corruption produced the idolatries of antiquity.
[5] 1583-1648., elder brother of "Holy George Herbert."
The theory held its ground in various forms till its last echoes appeared in highly theologic guise in the writings of Mr. Gladstone. He pleaded that there must have been a true religion in the world before an untrue one began to gather and incrust upon it, and this religion included three great doctrines—the existence of the Triune Deity, the advent of a Redeemer, and the power of the Evil One and the defeat of the rebel angels. These had formed part of a primeval revelation. In the Homeric theology he traced the first in the three sons of Kronos—Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. The second he found in Apollo, whose mother Leto represented the Woman from whom the Redeemer should descend. The rebel angels were equated with the Titans;the power of temptation was personified in Ate; the rainbow of the covenant was identified with Iris. The student of to-day can hardly believe that this volume could have been published in the same year in which Darwin and Wallace formulated the new scientific principle of "natural selection" as the great agent in the formation of species, and thus laid the foundation of the modern conception of evolution (1858).
It is on this great idea that the whole study of the history of religion is now firmly established. At the foundation of all endeavours to classify the multitudinous facts which it embraces, lies the conviction that whatever may be the occasional instances of degeneration or decline, the general movement of human things advances from the cruder and less complex to the more refined and developed. In the range of knowledge, in the sphere of the arts, in the command over nature, in the stability and expansion of the social order, there are everywhere signs of growth, even if isolated groups, such as the Australians, the Todas of India, or the Veddas of Ceylon, seem to be in the last stages of stagnation or decay. Religion is one phase of human culture, it expresses man's attitude to the powers around him and the events of life. Its various forms repose upon the unity of the race. The anthropologist is convinced that if a new tribe is discovered in some forest in central Africa, whether its stature be large or small, itspersons will contain the same limbs as other men, and will live by the same physical processes. The sociologist expects that their social groups will approximate to other known types of human relations. The philologist anticipates that behind the obscurities of their speech he will find modes of thought which he can match elsewhere. The student of religions will in the same way be on the look-out for customs and usages akin to those which he already knows; he will assume that under similar conditions experience will be moulded on similar lines, and the streams of thought and feeling—though small causes may easily deflect their course—will tend to flow in parallel channels as they issue from minds of the same order, and traverse corresponding scenes.
And just as the general theory of evolution includes the unity of bodily structure and mental faculty, so it will vindicate what may be called the unity of the religious consciousness. The old classifications based on the idea that religions consisted of a body of doctrines which must be true or false, reached by natural reflection or imparted by supernatural revelation, disappear before a wider view. Theologies may be many, but religion is one. It was after this truth that the Vedic seers were groping when they cried, "Men call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; sages name variously him who is but one"; or again, "the sages in their hymns give many forms to himwho is but one." When the Roman Empire had brought under one rule the multitudinous peoples of Western Asia, North Africa, and Southern and Middle Europe, and new worships were carried hither and thither by priest and missionary, soldier and merchant and slave, the titles and attributes of the gods were freely blended and exchanged. Thinkers of different schools invented various modes of harmonising rival cults. When "Jupiter best and greatest" was surrounded by a vast crowd of lesser deities, the philosophic mind discerned a common element running through all their worship. "There is one Supreme God," wrote Maximus of Madaura to Augustine, about A.D. 390, "without natural offspring, who is, as it were, the God and Mighty Father of all. The powers of this Deity, diffused through the universe which he has made, we worship under many names, as we are all ignorant of his true name. Thus it happens that while in diverse supplications we approach separated, as it were, certain parts of the Divine Being, we are seen in reality to be the worshippers of him in whom all these parts are one." Here is the prayer of a Blackfoot chief of our generation in the great ceremonial of the Sun-Dance, reported by Mr. McClintock,[6] which blends the implications of theology with the impulses and emotions of religion—
[6]The Old North Trail, 1910, p. 297.
"Great Sun Power! I am praying for my people that they may be happy in the summerand that they may live through the cold of winter. Many are sick and in want. Pity them and let them survive. Grant that they may live long and have abundance. May we go through these ceremonies correctly, as you taught our forefathers to do in the days that are past. If we make mistakes, pity us!
"Help us, Mother Earth! for we depend upon your goodness. Let there be rain to water the prairies, that the grass may grow long and the berries be abundant.
"O Morning Star! when you look down upon us, give us peace and refreshing sleep.
"Great Spirit! bless our children, friends, and visitors through a happy life. May our trails lie straight and level before us. Let us live to be old. We are all your children, and ask these things with good hearts."
Twice in the history of the world has it been possible to survey a wide panorama of religions, and twice has the interest of travellers, men of science, and students of philosophy, been attracted by the immense variety of worships and beliefs. In the second century of our era the Roman Empire embraced an extraordinary range of nationalities within its sway. In the twentieth the whole history of the human race has been thrown open to the explorer, and an overwhelming mass of materials from every land confronts him. It may be worth while to take a hasty glance at the chief groups of facts that are thus disclosed, and make a sort of map of their relations.
I
The scientific curiosity of the ancient Greeks was early awakened, and Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.), chief of the seven "wise men," and founder of Greek geometry and philosophy, was believed to have studied under the priests of Egypt, as well as to havevisited Asia and become acquainted with the Chaldean astronomy. Still more extensive travel was attributed to his younger contemporary Pythagoras, whose varied learning was explained in late traditions by his sojourn east and west, among the Persian Magi, the Indian Brahmans, and the Druids of Gaul. The first great record of observations is contained in the History of Herodotus of Halicarnassus on the coast of Asia Minor. Born in 484 B.C., six years after Marathon, and four years old when the Greeks put Xerxes to flight at Salamis, he devoted his maturity to the record of the great international struggle. Hither and thither he passed, collecting information, an eager student of human things. In Egypt he compared the gods with those of Greece, and attempted to distinguish two sets of elements in Hellenic religion, Egyptian and Pelasgic. He left notes on the Babylonians and the Persians, on the Scythians in the vast tracts east of northern Europe, on the Getæ south of the Danube.
When the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) threw open the gates of Asia, a stream of travellers passed into Persia and India, whose reports were utilised by the geographers of later days. The religion of Zoroaster, whose name was already known to Plato, attracted great attention. At the court of Chandragupta on the Ganges, at the opening of the third century B.C., Megasthenes,the ambassador of Seleucus (who had succeeded to the dominions of Alexander in Asia), set down brief memoranda on the usages and belief of the Hindus among whom he resided. Nearer home the representatives of Mesopotamian and Egyptian learning commended their national cultures to their conquerors. Berosus, priest of Bel in Babylon, translated into Greek a Babylonian work on astronomy and astrology, and compiled a history of his country from ancient documents; while his contemporary, Manetho, of Sebennytus in the Nile Delta, undertook a similar service for his native land.
Meanwhile the great library and schools at Alexandria had been founded. Hither came students from many lands; and the Christian fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius in the fourth century attributed to the librarian of the royal patron of literature, Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.), the design of collecting the sacred books of the Ethiopians, Indians, Persians, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, Phœnicians, Syrians, and Greeks. The Jews had settled in Alexandria in considerable numbers; they began to translate their Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and little by little they planted their synagogues all round the Eastern Mediterranean, and finally established their worship in Rome. The Egyptian deities in their turn went abroad. The worship of Serapis was introduced at Athens. Isis, the sister-wife ofOsiris and mother of Horus, goddess of many functions—among others of protecting sailors—was carried round the Levant to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and as far north as the Hellespont and Thrace. Westwards she was borne to Sicily and South Italy. In due time she entered Rome, and in spite of senatorial orders five times repeated (in the first century B.C.), to tear down her altars and statues, she secured her place, and received homage all through the West from the outskirts of the Sahara to the Roman wall north of our own Tyne.
The introduction of Greek gods had begun centuries before. As early as 493 B.C., at a time of serious famine, a temple had been built to Demeter, Dionysus, and Persephonê; many others followed; resemblances among the native gods quickly led to identifications; and new forms of worship tended to displace the old. After another crisis (206 B.C.) the "Great Mother," Cybelê, the Phrygian goddess of Mount Ida, was imported. The black aerolite which was supposed to be her abode, was presented by King Attalus to the ambassadors of the Roman senate. The goddess was solemnly welcomed at the Port of Ostia, and was ultimately carried by noble Roman ladies on to the Palatine hill.
The history of later days was full of notes upon religion. Cæsar interspersed them among the narratives of his campaigns in Gaul; Tacitus drew on his recollections asan officer in active service for his description of the Germans. There was as yet no literature in Wales or Ireland to embody the Celtic traditions; and the Scandinavian Saga was unborn. But the geographers, like Strabo (first century A.D.), collected a great deal of material that must have been gathered ultimately from travellers, soldiers, traders, and slaves. A wise and gentle philosophic Greek, Plutarch of Chæronea in Bœotia (A.D. 46-120), student at the university of Athens, lecturer on philosophy at Rome, and finally priest of Pythian Apollo in his native city, is at home in many religions. Beside altars to the Greek gods Dionysus, Herakles, and Artemis, in his own streets, were those of the Egyptian Isis and Anubis. The treatise on Isis and Osiris (commonly ascribed to him) is an early essay in comparative religion. In the latter half of the second century the traveller Pausanias passes through Greece, describing its sacred sites, noting its monuments, recording mythological traditions, and observing archaic rites. In this fascinating guide-book to religious practice are survivals of ancient savagery, still lingering at country shrines, set down with curious unconsciousness of their significance. The historical method is as yet only in its infancy. But Pausanias rightly discerned that its first business is to know the facts.
In Rome, where ritual tradition held its ground with extraordinary tenacity amid thedecay of belief, Marcus Terentius Varro, renowned for his wide learning (116-28 B.C.), devoted sixteen books of his great treatise on Antiquities to "Divine Things." Like so many other precious works of ancient literature it has disappeared, but its contents are partly known through its use by St. Augustine in his famous work on "The City of God." Following a division of the gods by the chief pontiff Mucius Scævola, he treated religion under three heads. In the form presented by the poets' tales of the gods it was mythical. Founded by the philosophers upon nature (physis) it was physical. As administered by priests and practised in cities it was civil. It was an old notion that religion was a legal convention imposed by authority for purposes of popular control; and Varro does not disdain to declare it expedient that States should be deceived in such matters. This police-notion long regulated public custom, and tended to render the identification of deities presenting superficial resemblances all the more easy.
By this time the origin of the term "religion" had begun to excite interest, as its meaning began slowly to change. Varro's contemporaries, Cicero (106-43 B.C.) and Lucretius (about 97-53), discussed its derivation. Cicero connected it with the rootlegere, to "string together," to "arrange"; while Lucretius found its origin inligare, to "bind." Philology gives little help when itspeaks with uncertain voice. More important is the primitive meaning which Mr. Warde Fowler defines as "the feeling of awe, anxiety, doubt, or fear, which is aroused in the mind by something that cannot be explained by a man's experience or by the natural course of cause and effect, and which is therefore referred to the supernatural." It has nothing to do at the outset with any special rites or doctrines. It is not concerned with state-usage or with priestly law. In its adjectival form "religious days" or "religious places" are not days or places consecrated by official practice; they are days and places which have gathered round them man's sentiments of awe and scruple. The word thus came to be applied to anything that was in some way a source or embodiment of mysterious forces. The naturalist Pliny can even say that no animal is "more full of religion than the mole," because strange medicinal powers were supposed to reside in its heart and teeth.
But, on the other hand, a new use of it passes into Roman literature in the writings of Cicero. The feeling of awe still lies in the background, but the word takes on a reference to the acts which it prompts, and thus comes to denote the whole group of rites performed in honour of some divine being. These make up a particular cult or worship, ordained and sanctioned by authority or tradition. "Religion" thus comes to mean a body of religious duties, the entire series of sacred acts in whichthe primitive feeling is expressed. Roman antiquity conceived these as under the care of priesthoods, legitimated by the State. Around them lay a fringe of superstitions, which a hostile critic like Lucretius could also sum up under the same term. And thus in an age when philosophy was addressing itself to the whole question of man's relation to the world and its unseen Rulers, and a single word was wanted to describe his attitude to the varied spectacle, "religion" was at hand to fill the place. It covered the whole field of human experience, and as different nations presented it in different forms, it became possible to speak of "religions" in the sense of separate systems of worship and belief. The champion of Christianity naturally distinguished his religion as the true from the false; and over against the multiformity of polytheism he set the unity of the faith of the Church.
Of these "religions" history and philosophy sought to give some account. As will be seen hereafter (Chap. VI), Babylon and Egypt both claimed a divine origin for their rites, their arts, and laws. Plutarch expressly defends the idea of revelation in the cases of Minos of Crete, the Persian Zoroaster, Zaleucus the shepherd legislator of the Locrians, Numa of Rome, and others. Pan was in love with Pindar, and Æsculapius conversed with Sophocles: if such divine diversions were allowed, how much more should these greaterattempts for human welfare be prompted from heaven! Numa had been enabled through Camena Egeria to regulate the ceremonial law as priest-king, and pontiffs, augurs, flamens, virgins, received their duties from him with supernatural sanctions.
Philosophers, on the other hand, discussed the meaning of religion upon different lines. A wide-spread view already noted presented it as a mere instrument of policy, devised to overawe the intractable. The diversity of religions seemed to support this view. Plato's Athenian, in one of his latest works, the Laws, mentions the teaching of sophists who averred that the gods existed not by nature but by art, and by the laws of States which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them. In a fragment of a drama on Sisyphus ascribed to Critias, the friend of Alcibiades, it was alleged that in the primeval age of disorder and violence laws might strike crimes committed in open day, but could not touch secret sins, hidden in the gloomy depths of conscience. A sage advised that to moralise men they must be made afraid. Let them invent gods who could see and hear all things, cognisant not only of all human actions but also of men's inmost thoughts and purposes. They were accordingly connected with the source of the most terrifying and the most beneficent phenomena, the sky, home alike of thunder and lightning, of the shining sun and fertilisingrain, seat of divine powers helpful and hurtful to mankind. In the discussion on "the Nature of the Gods" (by Cicero), Cotta, of the Academic school, inquires of his Epicurean opponent Velleius, "What think you of those who have asserted that the whole doctrine concerning the immortal gods was the invention of politicians, whose notion was to govern that part of the community which reason could not influence, by religion?"
From another point of view, however, the practical universality of religion was again and again cited in proof of its truth. Antiquity was not scientific in its method of treatment, and though it did not accept all religions as altogether equal, it had no difficulty in regarding them as substantially homogeneous. The Egyptian worship of animals might be lashed with satiric scorn, but the mysteries of its religion, venerable from an immemorial past, deserved the highest respect. The process of identification of the gods of different religions was always going on as they were carried from land to land. The Apologist, therefore, like the Cretan Cleinias in Plato'sLawswhen the Athenian stranger asked him to prove the existence of the gods, could always appeal to two main arguments—first, the fair order of the universe and the regularity of the seasons, and secondly, the common belief of all men, both Hellenes and barbarians. This common belief, however, itself required explanation. Its valuereally depended on its origin. If that ranked no higher than the crouching impulses of fear, it had little worth. Even if it was sought in the sense of dependence, in quiet trust in a sheltering order, or in intelligent inference based on the demand for a cause, the question still pressed for an answer, "What made this possible?" The answer was given by the doctrine of theLogos.
The termlogoshas played a famous part in philosophical theology. It appears in our New Testament at the opening of the fourth Gospel, "In the beginning was the Logos." Our translators render the Greek term by the English "Word." It is derived from the verblegein, to "speak" or "say."Logosis primarily "what is said," utterance, or speech. Speech, however, must mean something. When we look out upon the objects of the world around us—rock, river, tree, horse, star—we learn to separate them into groups, because while some say quite different things to us, others speak to us, as it were, with nearly the same meaning. We recognise a common meaning in various sorts of dogs, or in still larger classes such as the whole family of birds. But in human intercourse what is said has first been thought.Logosthus takes on another meaning; it is what thinking saysto itself, or what we call "reason." The processes of science consist in finding out these meanings or reasons, and getting them into intelligible relations with each other.And when the early Greek thinkers had reached the conception of the unity of the world, here was a term which could be called in to express it. The world must have a meaning; it must express some thought. And did not thought imply thinking?
The philosophy of Heracleitus "the Obscure" (at Ephesus, 500 B.C.) has received in modern times widely different interpretations; but whether or not the Stoics were right in understanding his doctrine of the Logos to imply the existence of a cosmic reason universally diffused, present both in nature and man, it is certain that such ideas appear soon afterwards in Greek literature. Pindar affirms the derivation of the soul from the gods. Plato and Euripides declare the intelligence of man both in nature and origin to be divine; and Pseudo-Epicharmus lays it down (in the second half of the fifth century) that "there is in man understanding, and there is also a divine Logos; but the understanding of man is born from the divine Logos." On this basis the Stoics worked out the conception of a fellowship between man and God which explained the universality of religion. Its seat was in human nature. Every one shared in the Generative Reason, the Seminal Word (theLogos spermatikos). In the long course of ages, says Cicero, when the time arrived for the sowing of the human race, God quickened it with the gift of souls. So we possess a certain kinship with the heavenlyPowers; and while among all the kinds of animals Man alone retains any idea of Deity, among men themselves there is no nation so savage as not to admit the necessity of believing in a God, however ignorant they may be what sort of God they ought to believe in.
The part played by this doctrine in the early Church is well known. When the new faith began to attract the attention of the educated, it was impossible that the resemblances between Christian and Hellenic monotheism should be ignored. Philosophy had reached many of the same truths, and poets and sages bore the same witness to the unity and spirituality of God as the prophets and psalmists of Israel. It was easy to suggest that the Hebrew seers had been the teachers of the Greek; might not Plato, for instance, have learned of Jeremiah in Egypt? On the other hand, the pleas of chronological and literary dependence might be insufficient; there were radical differences as well as resemblances; the Apologist might deride the diversities of opinion and make merry over the contradictions of the schools. Nevertheless Christianity was often presented by its defenders as "our philosophy." The Latin writer Minucius Felix (in the second century) is so much struck by the parallels in the higher thought that he boldly declares, "One might think either that Christians are now philosophers, or that philosophers were then already Christian." The martyr Justin (aboutA.D. 150) incorporates such teachings into the scheme of Providence by the aid of the Logos. For Justin, as for his co-believers, the popular religion was the work of demons. But philosophy had combated them in the past like the new faith. If Socrates had striven to deliver men from them, and they had compassed his death through evil men, it was because the Logos condemned their doings among the Greeks through him, just as among the barbarians they were condemned by the Logos in the person of Christ. The great truths of God and Providence, of the unity of the moral government of the world, of the nature and destiny of man, of freedom, virtue, and retribution, which were to be found in the writings of the wisest of the past, were the product of "the seed of the Logos implanted in every race of men." Those who had lived with the Logos were Christians before Christ, though men might have called them atheists, like Heracleitus and Socrates. All noble utterances in theology or legislation arose through partial discovery or contemplation of the Logos, and consequently Justin could boldly claim "whatever things have been rightly said among all men" as "the property of us Christians."
The cultivated and mystical Clement, who became head of the catechetical school of Alexandria towards the close of the second century, enforced the same theme. An enormous reader, he loved to compare thetruths enunciated by Greek poets and philosophers with the wisdom of the barbarians. Philosophy, indeed, was a special historical manifestation of thought along a peculiar line of development. It affected a particular race, it spread over a distinct area, and appeared in a definite time. In these respects it resembled the preparatory work of Israel itself. It was a discipline of Providence, so that beside the generalisation of St. Paul that the Law had been a tutor to bring the Jews to Christ, Clement could set another, that philosophy had played the same part for the Greeks. On the field of common speech Clement's contemporary, the fiery Tertullian of Carthage, appealed to the worshipper who bore the garland of Ceres on his brow, or walked in the purple cloak of Saturn, or wore the white robe of Egyptian Isis—what did he mean by exclaiming "May God repay!" or "God shall judge between us?" Here was a recognition of a supreme authority and power, the "testimony of a soul naturally Christian."
Such comparisons, however, had a very different side. Greece had long had its secret mysteries, with their sacred initiations, their rites of purity and enlightenment, their promises of welfare beyond the grave. When the new deities from Asia Minor, from Egypt, Syria, and the further East, were brought to Italy, the resemblances of their practice to that of the Christian Church excited thebeliever's alarm, and roused at once the charge of plagiarism. There was a congregation of Mithra at Rome as early as 67 B.C., and towards the end of the first century of our era his mysteries began to be widely spread. Here was a baptism; here was a "sacrament" as the neophyte took the oath on entering the warfare with evil; here were grades of soldiership and service; here were oblations of bread and water mingled with wine which were naturally compared with the Lord's supper; here were doctrines of deliverance from sin, of judgment after death and ascent to heaven, which brought the theology and practice of Mithraism very close to that of the Church. So Mithra bore the august titles of the holy and righteous God; or he was the Mediator, author of order in nature and of victory in life between the ultimate powers of good and evil.
For a time the rivalry was acute, as his worship was carried through the West as far as York and Chester and the Tyne. But with the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century the sounds of conflict die away. The men of learning, Eusebius of Cæsarea (about A.D. 260-340), Augustine (A.D. 354-430) bishop of Hippo, surveyed the religions and philosophies of antiquity as conquerors. The faiths of Egypt, Phœnicia, Greece, and Rome, are passed in review. With a broad sweep of learning Eusebius comments on the ancient mythologies, the oracles, the theory of demons,the practice of human sacrifice, the history of Mosaism. His treatise on the "Preparation for the Gospel" is the first great work on comparative religion which issued out of Christian theology. With generous recognition of what lay beyond the Church he taught (in theTheophania) that all higher culture was due to participation in the Logos. Idolatry might be the work of demons; the world might be filled with the babblings of philosophers and the follies of poets; but the Logos had been continuously present, sowing in the hearts of men the rudiments of the divine laws, of various orders of teaching, of doctrines of every kind. Thus ethics, art, science, and the fairest products of human thought, were genially brought within the scope of Revelation.
II
The panorama of religions unrolled before the student of the present day is far vaster than that which offered itself to the thinkers of Greece and Rome, and its meaning is far better understood. When Pausanias describes the daily sacrifice to a hero at Tronis in Phocis, where the blood of the victim was poured down through a hole in the grave to the dead man within, while the flesh was eaten on the spot, he notes, like the careful author of a guide-book, a curious local usage, but he does not know that it belongs to a group ofsavage practices that may be traced all round the globe. On Mount Lycæus in Arcadia, he tells us, was a spring which flowed with equal quantity in summer as in winter. In time of drought the priest of Lycæan Zeus, after due prayer and sacrifice, would dip an oak-branch into the surface of the spring, and a mist-like vapour would rise and become a cloud. In the midst of Hellenic culture it was still possible, as among the negroes of West Africa or the Indians of North America, to make rain.
From continent to continent a multitude of observers have gathered an immense range of facts, which show that amid numerous differences in detail the religions of the lower culture may all be ranked together on the basis of a common interpretation of the surrounding world. Philosophy suggests that man can only explain nature in terms of his own experience. He is encompassed by powers that are continually acting on him, as he to a much smaller extent can in his turn act on them. By various processes of observation and reflection (p.85), he comes to the conclusion that within his body lives something which enables it to move and feel and think and will, until at death it goes away. To this mysterious something many names are given, and for purposes of modern study they are all ranked under the term "spirits." This explanation is then applied to the behaviour of all kinds of objects withinhis view; though it does not at all follow that this was actually the first explanation. The animals that are stronger and more cunning than himself, the trees that move in the wind, the corn that grows so mysteriously, the bubbling spring, even the things that he himself has made, his weapons, tools, and jars, all have their "spirits," so that the entire scene of his existence is pervaded by them. To this doctrine, with its many branches of belief and practice, Sir E. B. Tylor, in his classical work onPrimitive Culture(1871), gave the name of "Animism," and the religions founded upon it are called "animistic," or sometimes, from the multitude of unorganised spirits which they recognise, "polydæmonistic" religions.