"Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom,Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom;Rather I'd choose laboriously to bearA weight of woes and breathe the vital air,A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread,Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead."
But, whether from contact with the East and Egypt or otherwise, more definite conceptions of the abode of disembodied spirits were afterwards formed, which have found best expression in Virgil's Æneid, written about B.C. 20. There
"The gates of hell are open night and day,Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;"
just as in the sermon on the mount,—"Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat."
At a certain point hell is thus divided:
"The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;The left to that unhappy region tendsWhich to the depths of Tartarus descends."
So in the New Testament, the sheep (the saved) are on the right, the goats (the lost) on the left hand of the Son of man sitting on the throne of his glory.
The region to the left is thus described:
"These are the realms of unrelenting fate,And awful Rhadamanthus rules the state;He hears and judges each committed crime,Inquires into the manner, place, and time:The conscious wretch must all his acts reveal(Loth to confess, unable to conceal)From the first moment of his vital breathTo his last hour of unrepenting death.Straight o'er the guilty wretch the Fury shakesThe sounding whip, and brandishes her snakes,And the pale sinner, with her sisters, takes.All these within the dungeon's depth remain,Despairing pardon, and expecting pain."
Far other the region to the right:
"These holy rites performed, they took their wayWhere long-extended fields of pleasure lay;The verdant fields with those of heaven may vie,With ether vested and a purple sky,The blissful seats of happy souls below,Stars of their own, and their own suns they know."
19. Plutarch (about a.d. 90), referring to the tradition of the mysterious disappearance of Romulus and the suspicions of regicide aroused against the patricians, wrote,—"While things were in this disorder, a senator, we are told, of great distinction, and famed for sanctity of manners, Julius Proculus by name, who came from Alba with Romulus, and had been his faithful friend, went into the Forum, and declared, upon the most solemn oaths, before all the people, that as he was travelling on the road, Romulus met him in a form more noble and august than ever, and clad in bright and dazzling armour. Astonished at the sight, he said to him, 'For what misbehaviour of ours, O king, or by what accident, have you so untimely left us to labour under the heaviest calumnies, and the whole city to sink under inexpressible sorrow?' To which he answered, 'It pleased the gods, my good Proculus, that we should dwell with men for a time; and after having founded a city which will be the most powerful and glorious in the world,return to heaven, from whence we came. Farewell, then, and go, tell the Romans that by the exercise of temperance and fortitude they shall attain the highest pitch of human greatness; and I, the god Quirinus, will ever be propitious to you.' This, by the character and oath of the relater, gained credit with the Romans, who were caught with the enthusiasm, as if they had been actually inspired; and far from contradicting what they had heard, bade adieu to all their suspicions of the nobility, united in the deifying of Quirinus, and addressed their devotions to him. This is very like the Grecian fables concerning Aristeas, the Proconnesian, and Cleoraedes, the Astypalesian. For Aristeas, as they tell us, expired in a fuller's shop; and when his friends came to take away the body, it could not be found. Soon after, some persons coming in from a journey, said they met Aristeas travelling towards Croton. As for Cleomedes, their account of him is that he was a man of gigantic size and strength; but behaving in a foolish and frantic manner, he was guilty of many acts of violence. At last he went into a school, where he struck the pillar that supported the roof with his fist, and broke it asunder, so that the roof fell in and destroyed the children. Pursued for this, he took refuge in a great chest, and having shut the lid upon him, he held it down so fast that many men together could not force it open; when they had cut the chest in pieces, they could not find him either dead or alive. Struck with this strange affair, they sent to consult the oracle at Delphi, and had from the priestess this answer:—
"'The race of heroes ends in Cleomedes.' It is likewise said, that the body of Alcmena was lost as they were carrying it to the grave, and a stone was seen lying on the bier in its stead. Many such improbable tales are told by writers who wanted to deify beings naturally mortal."
20. Dio Cassius relates that Livia, about a.d. 14, gave a large reward to Numericus Atticus, a senator, who affirmed that he had seen her husband, the Emperor Augustus, ascending to heaven in the same manner as Romulus had been seen by Proeulus.
21. It is thus clearly manifest that the beliefs of the Gentile nations of antiquity with reference to a future life, are similar to the New Testament ideas; in fact, the same beliefs under different guises. So, also, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, his subsequent appearances, and his ascension to heaven, are not without parallels in preceding and contemporary fame. The alleged appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, Peter, James, Paul, and the others, rest on no evidence intrinsically stronger than the appearance of Romulus to Julius Proeulus, or of Augustus to Numericus Atticus. The fact of Livia paying money to one who reported that he had seen Augustus ascend to heaven shows how deeply this idea was rooted in Roman belief. All, therefore, who were swayed by the current Roman traditions would have seen nothing incredible in Jesus and his claims. These exactly corresponded to what they had been taught from childhood. They had merely to transfer to Jesus marvels similar to those which had formed their early faith. The rise of Christianity to be the dominant-religion of the Roman empire is often referred to as a proof of its divine origin and guidance; but uniting, as it did, the discipline, organisation, earnestness, moral authoritative-ness, and exclusive claim to the favour of God (transferring to believers of every race, but to believers alone, that divine favour which was previously the peculiar possession of the seed of Abraham),—all derived from the synagogue,—uniting these with the ancient fundamental beliefs, under another name, of the various Gentile nations, it is not difficult to discern the causes of its triumph, in an age unaccustomed to weigh evidence, and at a time whenancient formswere losing their hold on the faith and allegiance of the masses. Even in modern religious revivals, the most common manifestations are of convictions which had lost their hold on the mind, or which had become practically powerless to stir under regular ministrations, springing up into renewed vigour and intensity in some novel guise, or through a description of preaching or service out of the common.
22. And this belief in a life beyond the grave, and pretended knowledge of its conditions—under one form or other one of the most ancient and widespread conceptions of the human race—what has it led to? Inhumanity in time past, inhumanity now; bloodshed and misery, dark delusion, degrading superstition, priestly pretence, persecution and intolerance, creed exclusiveness and bigoted zeal, misdirected fervour and visionary hopes—all the offspring of this conviction—fill the records of mankind.
23. Among barbarous races the vivid realisation of the spiritual world has led to such sad misguidance of the life on earth as the following;—(a.) The custom, prevalent both in ancient and modern times, of sacrificing wives, friends, and slaves at funerals to supply the wants of the deceased in the land of spirits, or to accompany him thither, (b.) Men killing their relations "out of love," as soon as they showed signs of decrepitude, under the belief that in the next world the spirits will be vigorous or otherwise, corresponding to the state of the body at time of death, (c.) Incitement to bloodshed and war by the belief that the enemies a man killed in this world, or those of whose skulls or scalps he obtained possession, would serve him as slaves in the next; or by the more manly conviction that a warring life on earth and a glorious death in battle were the best preparations for the future state, (d.) The practice, still carried on to a frightful extent among some of the African races, of killing men to serve as messengers to their departed kindred in the other world, (e.) The various gloomy and degrading delusions through the arts of spirit-mediums, sorcerers, witches, or other pretenders to intercourse with or control over the spirit-world.
24. Among nations more advanced, the union of assurance of a blissful or woeful immortality, with adherence or non-adherence to any particular banner, sect, or creed, has led—(a.) To bloody religious wars, such as those waged for the spread of Islam, the Mohammedan believing that if he fell in battle he would immediately possess a paradise of every sensual delight; or such as the Crusades, where the red cross was held to be the symbol of sure salvation. (6.) To those inhuman persecutions where men, in the name of religion and in the interest of their own souls, condemned their fellow-men to the dungeon, the stake, the gibbet, and the sword, butchers and butchered both believing that they were doing "God service." Where the sufferers in such cases were sacrificed solely to the intolerance of their adversaries, and themselves wished for no more than freedom of thought—sad their lot! But impartial inquiry reveals that, in most instances, the persecuted would have dealt the same measure to their persecutors, if the conditions of power had been reversed, all alike holding that those whose belief was, in their eyes heretical had no right to share either the chequered happiness of this life or the bliss of the world to come. Heirs of salvation on one side, heirs of damnation on the other.
25. The belief that the immortal soul, while on earth, is enchained or imprisoned in a corrupt body, and that the more the body is attenuated and exhausted the purer, the soul will be, and the more fitted for the contemplation of divine things, has led men and women to separate themselves from their kind, to pass unnatural lives in penitential exercises and mortifications, either in solitude or among communities apart from the world. Abstinence from marriage has been a condition common to almost all these devotees, so that for the sake of the soul, fondly believed to be immortal, they forbear the enjoyment of the only means for the continuance of human life—viz., that of living over again in children and descendants. Myriads of lives have been utterly wasted and perverted by this form of the delusion, their folly receiving, for the most part, the countenance, support, and reverence of blinded contemporaries.
26. The ideas handed down from past ages, and still widely prevalent, that there are certain orders of men who have the keys of heaven and hell, who possess such favour or influence with the invisible powers as to be able to ensure a happy or a wretched immortality, or even to alter the condition of the soul after death; or, in other quarters, that certain orders of men are the divinely appointed teachers of that doctrine or belief, on the correct acceptance or appreciation of which the state of the future life depends; or, among others, that apart from any particular clerical order there is a saving doctrine or belief, and that on its correct reception or understanding, or otherwise, eternal bliss or woe will result;—to what do such ideas tend? They are not new or peculiar to Christianity. The worshippers under the ancient Persian religion are thus exhorted:—"To obtain the acceptation of this guide to salvation (the priest), you must faithfully pay him tithes of all you possess, of your goods, of your lands, and of your money. If the priest be satisfied your soul will escape hell tortures; you will secure praise in this world and happiness in the next. For the priests are the teachers of religion; they know all things and deliver all men." This is explicit and straightforward, and contrasts favourably with the more guarded phrase in which modern clergy advocate similar claims, or claims founded on the same idea,that their ministration, in one way or other, is connected with the future lot of their hearers. The "remedy of the soul" under one form of Christianity, the "advancement of the cause of Christ," who will repay deeds done in his service with the riches of "grace and glory", under another, are and have been the two ruling motives by which the offerings of the faithful flow into the coffers of the clergy, for the establishment, whether by states or individuals, of orders of men claiming titles of reverence from, moral control over, and direction and limitation of the knowledge and professed belief of their fellows, all under the prevailing idea "of a life to come," to happiness in which their ministrations and counsel are believed to be safe guides. Thus, unsparing generosity, steadfast devotion, self-sacrificing enthusiasm, intellectual power, love of kind, and others of the highest and best human traits, instead of being turned towards remedying the evils and inequalities of the life on earth, and of improving it to the utmost, have been utterly perverted and wasted on orders of men and ecclesiastical establishments, and observances and doctrines, all more or less connected with a future state, the fond hope of misguided mortals.
27. Such and so great, then, in brief, are among the more prominent evils that have arisen out of the ancient and widespread belief in a "life to come," of which the resurrection of Jesus, and the connected doctrines and practices, constitute one important development; to which the religion of Moses was antagonistic, not, as Christians claim, antecedent, but which, under one form or other, has exercised a powerful sway under almost all, if not all, the other ancient religions.
(a.) It has been shown that none of the supernatural occurrences mentioned in the New Testament, as testimonies to the supernatural claims of Jesus, rest on the accordant testimony of two or three witnesses; that there is also the most serious variance between the accounts of the different writers,—not that variance resulting in substantial agreement which often characterises the statements of two independent eye-witnesses relating different impressions of the same event, but that variance which characterises illusion and man-deifying fable. Thus, a condition of ordinary proof, required by the deity of the Mosaic as well as by the deity of the Christian system, is not fulfilled. Far less does the evidence satisfy that most righteous demand ever put forward by each earnest man, for proof of the highest and strictest kind, before he yields a conscience-approved assent to occurrences and to claims professing to be specially representative of a being held to be beyond and supreme over Nature. How else but by the demand for strictest proof could special manifestations of a true God (if any such had occurred or were to occur) be distinguished from pretence and imposture? Each religious system judges the pretensions of all others by severe tests of evidence and rightful incredulity, but refuses to apply these to its own. And what sort of being can they conceive an Almighty to be who affirm that he not only commands and approves belief in supernatural events, on such evidence and on such grounds as are put forth by the New Testament compilers, or on the impassioned utterances of preachers or other emotional influences, but also that he has left those to perish in their sins who do not so believe. He, an Almighty maker of the universe, approve credulity, disapprove rightful incredulity and keen inquiry, ordain belief without conscience-satisfying evidence, less regardful of truth, less righteous than man!
(b) It has also been made clear that the New Testament deity is altogether different from the Mosaic, and that the various conceptions with reference to the supernatural claims of Jesus are of heathen (i.e., non-Mosaic) origin. A woman conceiving a child through direct intercourse with the deity, that child brought up as the reputed son of her husband, the tale of the star-gazing wise men of the East, the spirit of the Eternal appearing in a bodily shape like a dove, the ordinance of baptism, the arch-fiend Satan and his subject demons, the heaven and hell of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, his subsequent appearances, his ascension, the doctrine of a future life, all, it has been found, corresponded to the prominent religious beliefs of the various Gentile nations, and were wholly opposed to or ignored by Mosaic teaching. The claim of Christianity, therefore, to be the representative of the Mosaic deity is thus destroyed, and the alleged fulfilment of Jewish prophecy in the events of the life of Jesus is also seen, on careful examination of the details, to be altogether without foundation. There is thus no ground for that conscience-satisfying belief which might otherwise have rested on valid evidence of the power, and wonder-working, and special revelations, and faithfully fulfilled predictions ofone and the same beingcontinued down through many generations of men.
2. What, then, is left to those who had cherished these beliefs, and rested on them, when their fond faith and hope are overthrown by fairly prosecuted inquiry? What, rather, isnotleft? Their own life on earth; their fellow-men in their various relations; the good earth on which man holds the highest position and subdues to his own use; the knowledge and understanding of the material and moral laws of the universe and its harmony and order; the application of these laws, so far as they affect the well-being of man, to the alleviation of misery, to the diffusion of comfort, and to general progress, physical, moral, and intellectual,—all these remain,—sources of rejoicing and thankfulness, objects of affection, of solicitude, of admiration—ample scope for the exercise of every useful and loving and noble quality of the race. So, then, may we be taught to number the days of our brief life "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."