“Put out the light, and then,—put out the light!”
“Put out the light, and then,—put out the light!”
“Put out the light, and then,—put out the light!”
A second association of light was with the sky, in day the home of the bright sun, at night where glitter a thousand points of brilliancy.
In most mythologies the sky is supposed to be a solid, shining arch or dome which covers the earth like a roof. Upon it, out of sight to mortal eyes, live the gods. It constitutes the “Hill of Heaven,” the celestial mountain upon which are the homes of the divine beings. So it is oft likened to some known terrestrial elevation, as in Greek mythology,Mt. Olympus, and in that of India, Mt. Meru. Such sacred hills are mentioned by most of the American tribes.[76]In Polynesian myth it was “the blue mountain, the land of the divine water,” a fluid of such vital virtue that were even a dead man sprinkled with it he would come to life. On the island of Mangaia a certain hill was pointed out which in old times propped up the sky.[77]
The Tehuelches of Patagonia relate that the Creator first moulded men and all animals on the “Hill of God” and then set them loose to people the earth. The natives of Southern Borneo assign to their supreme divinity Atala a home in the highest heaven, on the shore of the “celestial lake, moved by the Moon and surrounding the Sun.” Homi, the high heaven, is the deity of the Hottentots, who pours the rains, blows the wind, and sends heat and cold on earth.[78]
Thus it is that everywhere the Sky God is also the High God. This blending of the ideas of life and light with the sky led to another and obvious association which has left its mark on every religion, primitive or developed. The sky is, in direction,above us. The god of the sky is therefore the god on high. He is the one who dwells above, our lord in the heaven.
This he is in all mythologies. Among the Indians of the plains he is (or, It is) “the great medicineabove,” and in the sign language, to indicate this, when the sign is made for “medicine” (mystery) the finger is pointed to the zenith.[79]The Puluga of the Andamanese “lives in the sky.” Tangaloa is addressed as “He above in the heavens”; the Finnish Ukko is also called “The Navel of the Sky,” and so on.[80]
Examples are innumerable. But what need of collecting them? Do we not ourselves constantly use the adjective theSupremeBeing, for God, which means simply the highest being? And did not the founder of our religion forbid his followers to swear by the sky, giving as the reason that it was the throne of God, who sitteth upon it?[81]
This idea runs through the whole of his teachings. In the Gospel of Matthew the same term, οὐρανιος, or, ἐν τοῖς οὐρανιος as a descriptive term of divinity,is applied not less than eighty-eight times; and in the first clause of the Lord’s Prayer, it is to “Our Father in the Skies,” that the invocation is addressed.
Strange that this very word οἰρανὀς, in Sanscrit Uaruna, is that which, in the primitive religion of the Aryan peoples, was applied to the most exalted of their gods, to him “whose realm is above us,” “the very strong,” “the shining one,” “the king of sky and earth,” “creator of all, the earth-enveloping sky.”[82]
What more striking evidence do we wish of the indissoluble unity of religious thought, no matter what its stage of development, in all centuries and all races?
In the Polynesian mythology, Tangaloa, the bright daylight, has as his brother, Rongo, the god of darkness and night. Tangaloa is fair-haired and light in hue, Rongo is black in hair and skin. Tangaloa is beneficent, the dispenser of good, and inventor of the arts of peace; Rongo is the fomenter of strife, the god of war and author of bloodshed. In accordance with these, all the gods were classed in two orders, “dwellers in day,” and “dwellers in night.”[83]
The contrast which is here presented prevails throughout early cults. The night, when man, deprivedof light and sight, becomes the prey of stealthy beasts, was everywhere considered the time when the unseen powers of destruction are let loose and the malevolent agencies of the spirit-world run riot.
This is one of the most primitive of religious beliefs and is discovered in the rudest tribes. The Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego say that the invisible spirits go about at night; the Australian tribes everywhere manifested a deep dread of the darkness, not like the unconscious shuddering of a child on entering a dark room, but because they believed spirits walked in the gloom seeking whom they could devour. It is then, said they, that Cuchi (Kootche) goes forth, either in the form of a snake or some nocturnal bird. He it is who causes sickness among men. The thunder is the growl of his anger, the whirlwinds his breath, and the aurora australis the fitful light of his camp fire.[84]
Associated with the gloom of night, was the darkness of the storm, which in many mythologies is contrasted with the sunshine in some divine struggle. Endless are the tales and rites which bear upon this contest in early religions. Indeed, according to some, they are the chief staple of all mythologies.[85]
4. I have already mentioned that the idea of Power is one of the first to be connected with deity. The god is one who can do more than man. Especially any sudden and striking display of force, either in the material or immaterial world, stimulates the religious sense. The historian Buckle claimed that the inhabitants of countries subject to earthquakes are peculiarly superstitious. In myths and names, the hurricane of the tropics, the storm-winds of higher latitudes, indeed all sudden and tremendous outbreaks of natural violence, are regarded as exhibitions of divine Power.
Notably is this the case with the thunder storm. That manifestation of tremendous power has excited the religious feelings of all races. Moreover, the highly charged electrical atmosphere exerts a special influence on the nervous system, predisposing it to emotional outbreaks. The roll and reverberation of the thunder, the zigzag flash and destructive blow of the lightning and the roar of the tempest, combine to present the phenomenon as a manifest display of supernatural power. Hence in innumerable tribes the thunder god was identified with, or was the peer of, the highest in the Pantheon.[86]The same is trueof potent and coercive mental traits. Their possessors are regarded as partaking of the deific being to a greater extent than others, or even actually divine. It is not merely that they excite the emotion of fear. That is a shallow interpretation of the psychic process. Underlying it is the deeper suggestion of energy, of action, of the spiritual mastery of material existence. This is as real, though not so clear, in the mind of the savage as in that of the philosopher.
This is also seen in the names and titles applied to the concept of Divinity by all nations. They speak of God “All-mighty,” the “Omnipotent Ruler”; and ever the attribute of indefinite power belongs to the great gods.
In early religions the manifestations of power are personified as single deities. We thus find in native American myths the figures of Huracan, the hurricane; Huemac, the Strong Hand, god of earthquakes, and numberless thunder, lightning, and storm gods.
5. It has been remarked by a German historian that the richest development of early poetry has been found among tribes dwelling by the ocean or among mountains; and another writer has claimed that the most rapid development of religions hastaken place where the broad expanses of deserts or seas have stimulated the mind to contemplation of spacial magnitude on earth and in the sky.[87]
The languages of primitive peoples bear traces of this. In the Aztec tongue any wide level prairie is calledteotlalli, godland; and the ocean,teoatl, godwater; among the Peruvians the termhuaca, holy, is synonymous with “vast” or “immense.” With the Polynesianstaula, the ocean space, is the home of the gods and where the souls go at death. The traveller Castren once stood on the shore of the Arctic Ocean with a Samoyed. Turning to the native, he asked, “where is Num?” (their chief god). “There,” instantly replied the Samoyed, waving his hand toward where “loomed the dark broad sea.”[88]
In many cults this idea is attempted expression by assigning to deities hugeness of size. The colossal stone images of Easter Island, the huge statues of the Maoris, are endeavours to present it to the senses.
In more developed faiths the same tendency prevails. The Buddhists rival each other in constructing enormous statues of Sakya Muni; in the Sanscrit Upanishads, Aditi, who represents the endless visible expanse, is termed “mother and father of all godsand men, the substance of whatever has been or shall be born”[89]; and according to some Mahommedan writers, God is so great that it is 72,000 days’ journey between his eyes!
Such are some of the potent stimuli which stir the depths of man’s psychical nature, awakening in him the belief in unknown powers far beyond his ability to measure or to cope with. Not from any conscious act of intelligence, not from any process of voluntary reasoning, is that belief born, but from the unknown, the unplumbed abyss of the sub-conscious mind.
Let not this be considered as something degrading to the religious conceptions themselves. Though all are drawn from out the human spirit itself, and are nowise the direct revelations their believers think them, yet who dare measure the height and the depth of the sub-conscious intelligence? It draws its knowledge from sources which elude scientific research, from the strange powers which we perceive in insects and other lower animals, almost, but not wholly, obliterated in the human line of organic descent; and from others, now merely nascent or embryonic, new senses, destined in some far off æon to endow our posterity with faculties as wondrous to us as would be sight to the sightless.
More than this: the teachings of the severest science tell us that Matter is, in its last analysis, Motion, and that motion is nought else than Mind[90]; and who dare deny that in their unconscious functions our minds may catch some overtones, as it were, from the harmonies of the Universal Intelligence thus demonstrated by inductive research, and vibrate in unison therewith?