CHAPTER V.
RELIGION.
TheEast is the native land of religion, whence a perpetual exodus has continually advanced toward the West. As the sun in the beginning, so truth and life first shone from the orient; and the march of civilization has ever since been in the direction of that great orb.
The Assyrians were not monotheistic, but they were far from being so polytheistic as the Egyptians, who were imbued with an African fetichism such as never debased the Asiatic race. Hence, their symbolism was much simpler and less repulsive than that of the Egyptians. The ancient Persians were less superstitious than the Assyrians, and presented their paraphrase of Te Deum first among intellectual nations without temples. They have left nothing that pertains to sacred art, not even tombs. With them God was omnipresent, fire his symbol, the firmament his throne, the sun and stars his representatives, the elements his ministers, and the most acceptable worship a holy life. But a belief in the existence and exercise of supernatural powers is older than the magism or magic, whose origin belongs to that indefinite antiquity which witnessed the feuds of Ninus and Zoroaster, when the gods instructed the Indian devotee how to subordinate them to his purposes, or when Odin discovered the Runes, which could chain the elements and awake the dead. Earlier than Assyrian Chaldeans, Israelitish Levites, or Median and Persian Magi, religious sentiments were native to man, and magician and priest were synonymous terms. Then was the arbiter of weal and woe, of blessings and curses, invested with the awful privilege of invoking the gods and performing religious services. Aided by popular credulity, the inspired seer could move mountains, stir up Leviathan, govern disease, or, like Balaam, destroy foes by imprecations.
It would be a hopeless task to trace with accuracy the theology of the earliest periods, buried as it is under a mass of allegory and fable which can not now be removed. Yet there are indications of a purer morality, and a more worthy faith, than is portrayed in the anthropomorphic mythology of the Hesiodic and Homeric poems. Inachus is supposed to have migrated from the Asian shore about the same time the Israelites entered Egypt. Then, the worship prevalent among the Nomadic tribes of Asia, according to Job, was that of one almighty Creator, typified by, and already half confounded with light, either the sun or other celestial bodies. Plato speaks vaguely of the divine unity, and Aristotle more distinctly avers, that "it was an ancient saying received by all from their ancestors, that all things exist by and through the power of God, who being one, was known by many names according to his modes of manifestation."
In the opening chapter of this work, allusion was made to the Kylas mountain in Asia, from the lofty terraces of which the ancestors of the Greeks descended, bringing with them to Hellas a memento of their origin in the wordkoilon, which they used to designate heaven, and illustrating their hereditary theology by going for congenial worship to the loftiest shrines. The best authority tells us that they were exceedingly religious, a fact which even their grossest errors confirm. Endowed with the most acute and active sensibilities, the Greek sought to satisfy the ardent aspirations of his devout spirit; he even yearned to be himself enrolled among the deified heroes whom his valor or imagination had exalted to the dazzling halls of Olympus. This general impulse may be illustrated by particular examples, as in the subtle Themistocles and majestic Pericles, who placidly hailed in worship traditions discarded by the historic mind as transparent fictions. So powerful and all pervading was the religiousness of the cultivated Greeks, that the same judgment which so profoundly harmonized with the severe grandeur of the Olympian Jove, enthroned by Phidias amid the marshaled columns of the national temple, bowed to the legend of Aphrodite, the foam-born queen of Love. Heroism and piety were perpetually invigorated at costly fanes; and how deeply the spirit of worship and belief in retribution, were impressed upon the most powerful intellect, is shown by the awful apostrophe of Demosthenesto the heroes who fell at Marathon, and the breathless attention which then absorbed the very soul of the Athenian.
In the land of Ham nothing was nobler than a few dull emblems of thought, sitting on a lotus leaf, immersed in the contemplation of their own divinity, or fierce warrior-deities, Molochs, Baals, or Saturns, while the classic West deified the sentiments of the human mind; and, though steeped in viciousness, yet represented as beings presiding over nature in beautiful and commanding forms. A potent spell of fascination dwelt in the mere abstractions of pagan thought embodied in a Hebe, Venus, or Minerva; and false as were the spiritual views of their authors, they exercised a charm of imagination which still speaks to more enlightened intellects, and evokes sad regrets from holier hearts. The province of Shem was faith and not philosophy. His descendants were never successful in dialectics, and the best of them under the old dispensation only stated the matter of their belief, but never undertook to prove it. When Job attempted religious argumentation, and would justify the ways of God to man by a process of theodicean philosophy, he acknowledged his failure by avowing the incomprehensibility of human destinies. And when the pious and philosophic Ecclesiastes attempted to argue on rationalistic principles, he fell into inextricable doubt, and could resist despair only by implicit submission to the word vouchsafed from heaven: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Such was the last dictum of Hebraism in the fifth century before Christ, at the moment when the daring speculation of Japhet had passed its culminating point. This, too, was the age of Haggai and Malachi, in whom sacred truth is announced in purely didactic and not argumentative forms. Without anticipating the designs of Providence, we think with inexpressible delight of the last and best expression of Jewish faith united to Japhetic reason, and happily blended together in the splendors of an infinitely loftier wisdom to enlighten mankind.
The functions of humanity are of a social nature; they merge in the whole species, and have religion for their foundation and centre. If absolute isolation were possible to man, it would virtually nullify his existence. Only societies act in and upon the world, with religion for their bond and protection. Among the nations whichhave shared in the work of progress accomplished hitherto, each has exerted an influence by some characteristic feature, some special function in the general advance. In addition to the literature, art, science, and philosophy of the Greeks, we should carefully note the great civilizing might which dwelt in their religion. This was felt by them to be an infinite and universal necessity. Without it, the social state is impossible, since the nature of man demands active progress under a moral law too exalted to emanate from human will. It must be divinely ordained, and in a way which clearly indicates the means and end of human perfection. That alone can create and proclaim the legitimate end of human activity, at the same time it becomes synonymous with religious morality.
The ideas which obtain among different nations respecting their own creation, are usually much like themselves. Scandinavians suppose that they sprang from dense forests on their hills, the Libyans from the sands of their native deserts, while the Egyptians conceived themselves to have arisen from the mud of the Nile. But the cheerful and active Greek associated his origin with the grasshopper, and went singing on his agile way. A kindred diversity exists in the choice made by nations as to the objects to be adored. The Egyptians deified water, the Phrygians earth, the Assyrians air, and the Persians fire. But the Greek, impelled by nobler instincts, went beyond grosser natures and deified himself. The mighty conclave shining round the resplendent heights of Olympus, was only the counterpart of a vast congregation worshiping below. As Amon or Osiris presides among the deities of a lower grade, Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs the chorus of the constellations, and Zeus leads the solemn procession of celestial troops in the astronomical theology of the Pythagoreans. The apotheosis of Orpheus, with his harp, in their scientific heavens, is a starry record of oriental worship sublimated by the devout intellect of Greece. The nations of antiquity believed that their ancestors dwelt closely allied to the gods, or were gods themselves. Cadmus and Cecrops were half human, half divine. The Greeks inherited many cosmogonical legends from the Hindoos, out of which was composed the theogony of Hesiod. Thebes rising to the sound of Amphion's lyre, was the world awakening at the music of the shell of Vishnou. Conflicting Centaurs and Lapithæ, Titans and giants, are supposedto represent the elemental discord out of which arose the stability and harmony of nature.
The great heroes of India became the chief gods of Greece; so that their mythology was not a pure invention, but rested on a historical basis. The introduction of the Lamaic worship into north-eastern Hellas, is distinctly preserved in the earliest religious annals. The famous moralist Pythagoras was the special devotee and professor of eastern doctrines, and, under their inspiration, established a brotherhood strictly devotional, and with observances of monastic sanctity. Grote speaks of this great preacher to the Grecian race in the following terms: "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favor of the gods; the Pythagorean life, like the Orphic life, being intended as the exclusive prerogative of the brotherhood, approached only by probation and initiatory ceremonies, which were adapted to select enthusiasts rather than to an indiscriminate crowd, and exacting active mental devotion to the master." Traditionary history commemorates a wonderful reformation produced by this stern religionist in different lands. The effect produced among the Crotoniates by the illustrious missionary of morality is indicated by the recorded fact, that two thousand persons were converted under his first discourse. The Supreme Council were so penetrated with the noble powers of the Lamaic apostle that they offered him the exalted post of their President, and placed at the head of the religious female processions his wife and daughter.
The religion of the Greeks was the deification of the faculties and affections of man. Human character and personality preponderated therein, but it was neither inert nor wanting in intellect. The passionless, immovable deities of Egypt and Persia were superseded by the active and powerful hierarchy of Olympus. Free and independent, they were presided over by the great conqueror of those blind and deaf gods of necessity, who had reigned absolutely over all the ancient East. Under this new dispensation, the various forces of nature were emancipated and endowed with the affections, and subjected to the weaknesses, of mortal beings. Fountains, rivers, trees, forests, mountains, rose into objects of adoration under theform of nymphs, goddesses, and gods. Social existence was elevated to a corresponding degree, by the removal of castes, and the sacerdotal despotisms which had so long impeded the progress of democratic principles in individual and social life. Preceding nations, of lively sensibility, had reverenced as deities single rays of the Divine Being separated from their great centre; but the polytheism which prevailed over adolescent men, appeared in Hellas invested with a purer majesty. Oriental polytheism desecrated its altars and temples with images of deformity; but the West conceived a nobler symbol of divinity, when the Greek created God in his own image, and seemed to inhale life-giving breath while he worshiped in the midst of every phenomenon that could refine his taste or stimulate his imagination. This was utterly inadequate to the attainment of the great end of spiritual existence; but one important step in paganism was gained; natural religion, which had before been absorbed in the immeasurableness of the formless infinite, became fixed to the eye under the limitations of a cognizable form, eminently human, but suggestive of the divine. Thus, religion produced ideality in art, and art fostered enthusiasm in religion. The beauty and dignity of many altar-statues appeared to have descended from a higher sphere, and commanded the reverence due to beings of celestial birth. The earthly was so blended with the heavenly, and visibly presented, that Plato looked upon the harmony as something complete, and most ennobling in its power of assimilation. In all the public enterprises and festal assemblies of the Greeks, a high religious tone was present which paid homage only to the exalted and the beautiful. They were of the earth, earthy; but it is impossible not to look back with respect upon that people whose whole civilization was imbued with a spirit of renunciation, sublime self-sacrifice, and beneficent deeds. The magical splendor which yet pours about them, in the depths of that old world, after so many centuries, is nothing else than the reflection of their purer worship and nobler stamp of character. Of all the states, Athens, in this regard, as in every other, was by far the noblest. Sparta, it is true, appreciated highly the blessings of liberty, and was not only content by a joyless existence to purchase this, but delighted even to sacrifice life for its preservation. But the refined capital of Minerva went beyond the severe law whichmakes a useful slave, as one would harden a growth of oak; she elicited perfume from the fairest bloom of the soul, wherein the moral man was made to unfold in the development of a higher freedom. The genius of the Greek was as profoundly devotional as it was emulative. To his sensitive imagination, the fair objects of nature became invested with a living personality; day and night presented engrossing deities, while he adored the golden-haired Phœbus, or the silvery Artemis. Actuated by a glowing fancy, material creation seemed spiritualized, and each agreeable retreat was the habitation of a god. Naiads in the fountains; Dryads in the groves; Fauns, Satyrs, and Oreads on the mountains, indissolubly associated sublunary scenes with intelligent beings, and kindled the starry heavens with the effulgence of supreme divinities.
The dawn of civilization has ever been confined to those who were intrusted with the care of sacred ceremonies, and who devoted their exclusive knowledge to the support of their religion. In the beginning all contemplation was religious; the whole universe was esteemed divine, and it was to the solving of this problem that the first efforts of mind were given. "Whence, and who am I?" are the first questions which occur to Brahma, as represented in Hindoo theology, when he awakens to conscious being amid the expanse of waters. But the early Greek sages surveyed nature with the more penetrating glance of a Lynceus, or Atlas, who saw down into the ocean depths. There was no distinct astronomy, history, philosophy, or theology; there was but one mental exercise, whose results were called "Wisdom." It was this personification that Solomon saw standing alone with God before the creation. All mythologies may in one sense claim to rank as truths, inasmuch as they in fact represent what once existed as mental conceptions. On this principle the Grecian dogmas, though in reality absurdities, are most worthy of attention, because they are expressed in the purest forms. Their conceptions of super-human beings were products of the devotional sentiment. Nature was to them a perpetually flowing fountain, whose pellucid waters mirrored earth and sky; like the stream in which Narcissus was dazzled by the reflection of his own image, and beneath whose surface he bent in sadness, and was melted into its transparent depths.
Efforts to deify the beautiful existed among the Hindoos and Hebrews, as well as among the Greeks; but in the former races, a wish to blend in one expression a great variety of theological ideas obliterated elegance, and rendered the idols of Egypt and India elaborate metaphysical enigmas, a sculptured library of symbols, instead of an attractive gallery of religious art. But in Greece, the development of sacred imagery fell into the hands of masters in whom the character of priest was subordinate to that of artist; from the servant art became the mistress, the teacher, even the institutor of the religion in whose aid she had been employed, and the works so produced were received as fresh revelations from heaven.
Poets gave a local habitation to the gods, and were the first teachers of religion. With the eye of taste, and impelled by sentimental reverence, they people the hills and groves, glens and rivers, with imaginary beings. Much of the Homeric theology is of Egyptian parentage, but in his hands all borrowed material was greatly improved. Mere personification of natural powers became moral agents; and, instead of being represented under disgusting images, they became models of human beauty, elegance, and majesty. The inspired bards, though blind without, were full of eyes within, and Acteon-like, gazed on nature's naked loveliness through the light of their illumined souls. To these poet-priests of nature, like Orpheus, or Eumolpus, was ascribed the first religious establishment, as well as the first practical compositions. The commencement of literature was not a scheme contrived to win the savage to civilization: it was the wild and spontaneous outburst of religious enthusiasm. If powerful institutions are always ascribed to distinguished men only, it is simply because that the full light of common thoughts is never condensed and vividly set forth but by that exalted order of genius which is the rarest of gifts. Minds of the finest tone express the most comprehensive doctrines, as the lyre of Orpheus, and the pipe of Silenus, sung how heaven and earth rose out of chaos. Atlas taught respecting men and beasts, tempestuous elements, and the eclipses and irregularities of the heavenly bodies. The laws of Menu, like those of Moses, begin with cosmogony; and Niebuhr has shown that the history of the Etruscans, like that of the Brahmins and Chaldeans, is containedin an astronomico-theological outline embracing the whole course of time.
Evidently the first colonizers of Greece brought with them much of the simple faith and worship recorded in the Hebrew writings. A stone, or the trunk of a tree, was set up for a memorial, and, according to the alarm that had been felt, or the deliverance experienced, on some spot thereby sanctified, worship was offered to that great Being whose rule all acknowledged, but whose name none ventured to pronounce. Doubtless the excess of awe, if no more mundane influence, generated superstition; as the vow of Jephtha had its parallel in the almost cotemporaneous sacrifice of Iphigenia, and of Polyxena. It was this barbarous race that the polished and erudite traveler, Orpheus, endeavored to civilize. Perhaps, as in later times, he imagined that hidden doctrines would best improve the higher classes; while the minds of the vulgar would be easier won by fables, and weaned from gloomy superstitions by the worship of divine benevolence, manifested in the varied products and powers of nature. The attempt, however, failed, and the grossness of depraved perceptions converted those different manifestations into separate deities, so that different localities and cities came to have their tutelary stone, or wooden idol, or marble statue. The temple was built on the spot hallowed by devotion, as at Bethel; but in a subsequent age the impulse of the original consecration was no longer felt, and its intent was forgotten. The gorgeous fane, and the fascinating image therein, became objects of degenerate worship; the source of profit to a mercenary priesthood, and of deterioration to the most intellectual and moral of mankind.
Monuments were early erected in grateful commemoration of religious events, as the hill of stones by Jacob and Laban; or to gratify secular ambition, as was exemplified in the tower of Babel. In Greece, when the pioneers were feeble, the first settlers chose some hill readily defensible, and having fortified the summit as the first space to be occupied, they proceeded to build a taphos, or temple for the divinity. Such was the origin of Athens. The inclosed city was called Cecropia, from Cecrops, it is said, who first founded the state, and his was the first place of worship for the original inhabitants. Others interpret Acropolis to mean "Height of the City," which, in this instance, was accessible only on thewestern side, through the Propylæa, and was crowned by that shrine of Truth and Wisdom, the Parthenon. Religious instincts have ever sought the vast solitudes of untainted nature, or the open heights of the mighty temple of the great God, whereon the pure spirit of love reigns and smiles over all. Pilgrimages were made to the oaks of Mamre, near Hebron, from the days of Abraham; and the nations surrounding the divinely favored tribes conspired to attach the idea of veneration to rivers and fountains, and were accustomed not only to dedicate trees and groves to their deities, but even to sacrifice on high mountains; customs which were practiced by the Jews themselves, previous to the building of Solomon's temple. The beginning of wisdom was in the wilds of Asia, and it was there that the God of nature implanted grand ideas in the minds of shepherds, meditating on those antique eminences, teaching them to wonder and adore. As the loftiest mountains are surmounted with the most unsullied snow, so the purest sentiments crowned their elevated souls, and forever rendered them the chief source of fertilizing streams to all lands, through every region of thought.
In Greece, there was no hereditary priesthood, as in Egypt. The right of presiding at public sacrifices pertained to the highest civil office, and probably the head of each family was also its ecclesiastic; but there was no priestly combination with secular power, and no national creed. Nestor, at home, conducts religious service, aided by his sons, and Achilles offers sacrifice to the manes of Patroclus. Pausanias informs us that early in Arcadia, the twelve gods were worshiped under the forms of rude stones; and before Dædalus, the statues had eyes nearly shut, legs close together, and the arms scarcely detached from the body; but as the correlative arts and sciences improved, sculpture, like the civilization it expressed, acquired freedom, proportion, and natural action. Altars were commonly erected in the open air, and propitiatory offerings most frequently smoked before Zeus, Poseidon, Athene, and Apollo. The first three of these are better known under their Latin designations of Jupiter, Neptune, and Minerva. The supremacy of the first over all inferior deities is decisively marked. His own declaration, according to Homer, is at the same time the most affirmative on this point, and a curious indication of the social condition of thegods. Says the supreme, "If I catch any one of you helping the Trojans or the Greeks, he shall either make his escape to Olympus disgraced and bruised, or else I will seize him, and throw him into Tartarus. Then you shall know my supremacy in power. Come, now, make the trial; hang a gold chain from heaven, and fasten yourselves at the end of it, all of you, gods and goddesses; you can not pull Zeus down, but, whenever I please, I can pull you up with the earth and the sea, wind the chain round Olympus, and there you would all dangle in the air."
According to Herodotus, the Egyptians invented twelve gods, which were imported into Greece. These were, doubtless, of the lowest order of merit, but of sufficient importance to justify the report that the worship of stone images originated in the East. Venus was first adored at Paphos under the form of an ærolite fallen from heaven. It was by such circumstances that a special sanctity was conferred upon particular localities. The artistic merit of the idols was vastly improved, but still the theology of the Greeks remained purely anthropomorphous, the human form being to them the paragon of excellence. But to his whole intellectual being this was a representative, the embodiment and very identity of divinity. All the susceptibilities of his immortal nature, full of the endless enthusiasms respecting every thing splendid, so that in the estimation of an apostle, he was "very religious," were exercised to refine this image and exalt it. Living, he did this, and dying, he looked beyond the grave but to a world of men, sublimated, indeed, but still with human passions, and capable of human enjoyments. He turned with fond desire toward the radiance of the descending sun, which with genial glories seemed wooing him to another and purer earth. The great ocean stream severed the world of debasing toil from the bright sphere of not less active but nobler pursuits, and on that western shore he anticipated fairer as well as more abundant fruits than the East might behold. The great national altar on the Acropolis was exterior to the temple, and fronted the setting sun.
Egyptian worship was so closely allied to that of India, that when the sepoys in Sir Ralph Abercrombie's expedition entered the ancient temples in the valley of the Nile, they immediately asserted that their own divinities were discovered upon the walls, and worshipedthem accordingly. But no such identity ever existed with the purer forms of the West. All the gods of Hellenic Greeks, from Jupiter down to Hercules, were the ancestors of the primitive Pelasgic tribes which existed in Asia Minor, Crete, and the islands of the Archipelago, but seldom in Greece itself. At its intellectual and moral centre, Egyptian fetichism had some influence on the one hand, and Indo-Germanic metaphysics a good deal on the other; still the chief element in Greek mythology was hero-worship, made as unexceptionable as it could be by a people whose religion mainly consisted in ancestral adoration. True, their whole system was a fable and an absurdity; but the puerilities which defaced its beauty were the remnant of a more barbarous state of things upon which they improved, and we may wonder most that they so for emancipated themselves.
Orpheus is said to have come from Thrace, a region of indefinite extent in the estimation of the Greek, and one which was a chief source of the Hellenic sacred rites. Both the Orphic and Pythagorean doctrines Herodotus believed to have emanated from Egypt, which would appear to support the fact of a double current of emigration, clearly proved on other grounds. This great religionist was older than Homer, and seems to have exerted a great influence on the civilization of Greece. It is said he accompanied Jason and the other Argonauts on their piratical expedition, that he visited Egypt, and brought thence the doctrine which greatly corrupted the rude but simple theology of primitive times. Many hymns attributed to him are probably spurious; but enough was authentic to the ancients to justify the conclusion that he taught the doctrine of one self-existing God, the maker of all things, and who is present to us in all His works. But this great truth was always somewhat disguised, and grew increasingly fabulous. Cudworth preserves the following specimen: "The origin of the earth was ocean; when the water subsided, mud remained, and from both of these sprang a living creature—a dragon having the head of a lion growing from it, and in the midst, the face of God; by name Hercules, or Chronos." By him an immense egg was produced, which being split into two parts, one became the heavens the other the earth. Heaven and earth mingled, and produced Titans or giants.
The Delphic oracle occupied a high position in the political andreligious government of mankind. It had a powerful influence in molding the first national confederacy, and was its presiding centre. Both Strabo and Pausanias specially refer to the Amphictyonic league, as being formed for the maintenance of harmony and union among the states which composed it. The original confederacy was greatly enlarged by the Dorian accession; oracular control was thus extended throughout the Peloponnesus, and soon embraced within its influence the entire Grecian world. By this central assimilative and directing power the mighty republic was happily consummated, and its citizens first termed Hellenes. It was by the peculiarity of its oracular system, even more than by the other traits we have noticed, that the Greek religion was distinguished from that which prevailed in Egypt, and the yet remoter East. Based as it was on delusion, it still was a great improvement upon the preceding, inasmuch as it was presented in a higher character than the mere constitution of nature. According to the Delphic teaching, the supreme Deity was a moral and personal being, actively interesting himself in human affairs, and claiming authority over human volitions. Hence, while the oriental systems displayed only a crowd of mere personifications of natural powers, without moral character or substantial being, the system of the Greeks presented a divine reality for the human mind to embrace; an actual course of Providence, and deities palpably real to religious feelings. Amidst a multitude of deformities, the most marked feature of the Greek religion stood forth in enhancing, if not with ennobling beauty. The Egyptians worshiped animals, but the Greeks never sank lower than the worship of idealized man. The former were superstitious upon physical objects, their system resting upon a physical deity; but the latter adored a moral deity, and, however disastrous superstition ever is, hero-worship was not entirely void of redeeming qualities. It held up ancient worthies for the imitation of successors, rendered their memories motives to excellence, and, by the sublimating power of oracular canonization, exerted a mighty influence in the spheres of political and moral life. Lessons of respect for antiquity, and submission to authority, were constantly inculcated, the effect of which shines clearly in the Grecian character, exemplified in all the tumultuous growth and varied grandeur of her democracy. It was a lofty hero-worship,fostered by their sacred system, which fortified the sentiments of reverence and subordination in the popular mind, and supplied at once motive and restraint in every sphere of secular and religious life. Their approximation to truth took the boldest form of superstition, and indicates the working of a higher order of mind than had yet appeared. The Greeks were a nation of poets and philosophers as acutely refined in understanding as they were tender of heart, and, since we still turn their writings to a moral account, our sympathy for the worth they attained should furnish some degree of apology for the errors which they unfortunately embraced. The reality and firmness of their belief in divination was tested, for example, at Platæa, when the Greeks sustained the charge of the Persian cavalry, and "because the victims were not favorable, there fell of them at that time very many, and far more were wounded." And whether the national fleet should risk a battle at Salamis was determined in council by the appearance of an owl. How strange that when courage and wisdom had failed to persuade, superstition saved the liberties of the world! It is painful to contemplate the human mind debased by such childish absurdities, commingled with traits so fair, and excellences so great. Still, despite all its fraud and folly, the religion of Greece contained much that was both admirable in morality and profound in speculation. Hooker remarks, "The right conceit that they had, that to perjury vengeance is due, was not without good effect, as touching the course of their lives."
The tragic genius of Æschylus was imbued with religious sentiment, and found its fittest material in the simple and sublime traditions of his forefathers. He has handed down to our days clear memorials of the still popular faith, in his noble drama of Prometheus Bound; wherein he represents Jupiter as sending to beg from the tortured prophet a revelation of the yet future decrees of destiny. This mythical benefactor, the most significant of ancient religious fables, was a Japhetite, who brought his celestial fire from the remote East to man. Prometheus indignantly refuses to gratify the curiosity of his oppressor, and utters severe invectives against thenewpower of Jove. He alludes to wars in which he had himself assisted him, leads us back to the first colonization of Greece, and leaves us justly to conclude that the nature-worship of Orpheushad been mixed up with hero-worship also, and that the Jupiter of the poets was little better than a Cretan pirate, who, with his associates, drove out the Asian chief already beginning to civilize the people, and banished him to the wild regions of the Caucasus. The several centuries which transpired between Prometheus and Hesiod was a period long enough in legendary times to invest heroes, or benefactors of the human race, with supernatural attributes. Æschylus set forth a yet sublimer article of Athenian belief, when he represented the two Powers, immovable destiny and human consciousness, weighing the motives of the son of Agamemnon, and, under the presiding auspices of the goddess of Wisdom, leaving the ultimate decision to the Areopagus. God-conscious reason was thus called upon to sit in judgment upon the past, and to proclaim the eternal ways of infinite justice to coming generations. Herodotus, also, in the clear light of Hellenic freedom, recapitulated lapsed centuries, and foretold future destinies, through the prophetic mirror of Nemesis, that clearest reflection of Greek religiousness; and, like his predecessor, pictured the divine drama of eternal law and retribution. Thucydides followed, and became the final prophet of the great struggle of his nation, and her influence in the developments of future time.
Sophocles, of all the dramatists, was the most religious; his whole life was said to be one continual worship, and his writings are redolent of his tender spirit. The Œdipus Colonæus was a marked consecration after death; the gods conferred that honor, to show that in the terrible example they made of him, it was not personal vengeance, but a salutary admonition designed for the whole human race. That the self-condemned criminal should at last find peace in the grove of the Furies, the very spot from which guilt would instinctively shrink with acutest horror, bears a moral of profound and tranquilizing significancy.
The moral charms of domestic affection in antiquity are depicted by Homer, in what is undoubtedly an embellished, but may have been a real, scene. The manly beauty of Hector, the feminine graces of Andromache, and the budding charms of the babe Astyanax, live before us in vivid representation. Such a blending of gentleness and strength is not often seen on earth, as was manifested by him who set aside his burnished armor lest its strangedazzling should frighten his child. Paternal affection indeed sits gracefully on the plumed helmet of this bravest hero of Troy, but not even that can dissuade him from the conscientious discharge of a most comprehensive duty. Neither the entreaties of a wife, the prayers of a father, the tears of a mother, nor his own fondest parental hopes, could divert him from his devotion to country and religion. He knows and feels that inexorable fate has declared against him, but he bows to the will of the gods with a heroism equaled only by the placid self-denial which silences both inclination and interest in his bosom.
The ancient games were moral in their purpose and influence. Of the great number of athletes who gained prizes thereat, very few became famous in warlike pursuits. Their enthusiasm flowed from a higher and purer source. The vigorous, disinterested, salutary, and heaven-appointed contest was to the Greeks a thrilling symbol of an exalted life, the struggle through an emulative career of exhausting duties, in order to attain and enjoy, at the goal of consummate glory, the reward of a blissful immortality.
All the stray sybilline leaves of ancient history and legendary faith are inscribed with indications of a moral order of the universe, and encourage the expectation of perpetual progress. Pindar believed that the beginning and end of man were divinely ordained; and while many erudite teachers held to the supremacy of fate, none were ever so foolish as to suppose that accident governed the world.
Socrates was the first to turn speculation from physical nature to man; and his celebrated "demon" announced the birth of conscience into the Grecian world. It was a divine teacher ever present, taking cognizance of the most secret movements of mind and will, and who reproved, restrained, warned him as to all things everywhere. So far from wondering at his martyrdom, in view of the purity and boldness of his teaching, Mr. Grote very reasonably wonders how such a man should have been allowed to go on teaching so long. No state, he adds, ever showed so much tolerance for differences of opinion as Athens. According to his various writings, we infer that the god of Plato was not an idea simply, but a real being, endowed with supreme intelligence, movement, and life. He was beauty without mixture, and went out of himself to produce man and the world by the effusion of his own goodness. Thisgreat pupil of Socratic wisdom was profoundly imbued with that religious sentiment which is the lofty distinction of humanity, and which neither superstition can utterly debase, nor worldliness extinguish. But a feeling alone, however refined, can never constitute safety in religion. The Republic terminates with a noble discussion on immortality, and if it has been less popular than the Phœdo, it is because the scenery of it is less startling; but for intrinsic worth, it is doubtless entitled to the greatest consideration.
Gross polytheism was the creed of the multitude, but this was much refined by the moralists. The graces and perfections of the great intelligences that rule the world, under the controlling wisdom and care of the one omnipotent, were so described in the dialogues of Plato, and by Pythagoreans, as to furnish not only models of perfect beauty to art, but also the most attractive traits of person and character to the various orders of the Grecian hierarchy.
The Greeks felt that the origin of art was divine, since it was the offspring of religion. The first rhythmical expression was a hymn, and the first creations of plastic genius were dedicated to the worship of the Godhead. Jupiter, whose awful nod shook the poles, was yet benignant in his majesty, and could smile with bewitching fascination on his daughter Venus. Beauty was universally expressed, whether in the gorgeous sanctuary of their religious worship, or the simplest implement of ordinary use; the heart-rending anguish of the priest Laocoon and his sons, or in the sculptured deity of day himself. In the opinion of Visconti, the Apollo Belvidere is the Deliverer from Evil as well as God of Light, and was made by Calamis, to be set up at Athens in memory of a plague which had desolated that city. In life, the consecrated champion was greeted with the praises of appreciative countrymen, and divine honors followed his decease.
The idea of divine omniscience seems to have profoundly actuated the Greeks in the execution of all their great religious works. It gave perfection to every part of their edifices, essential and ornamental, and impressed upon each part alike a feeling purely devotional. What escaped the human eye, the Deity beheld, and therefore every mass and molding, frieze and pediment, bas-relief and statue, should be rendered equally worthy of that immortal Beingto whom the edifice was consecrated. As fine a finish was bestowed upon the hidden portions as upon the exposed, as is proved by the fragmentary masterpieces we still possess, the most elaborated features of which were never seen from below when in their original positions. The material which Athens employed to eternize her mental conceptions was happily adapted in texture and tone to the end desired. On one side lay the quarries of sparkling Phenolic and veined Carystian, and, on the other side, the pearl-like beauty of Megarean; all of which, impregnated by the creative genius of the poets, and obedient to the talismanic touch of the sculptors, came forth from the marble tomb of Attica a new-born progeny stamped with all the lineaments of their noble parent. Thus, as the thought of Homer coalesced with the executive might of Phidias and his associates, the awful gods of his country spread an invincible palladium over the patriotic citizen, and rendered their terror ever present to the eyes of treachery and guilt. If the Sphinx, the Centaur, and Satyr were sometimes demanded by the legendary element of the ancestral East yet lingering in the national faith, the effort to subjugate the grotesque to the laws of beauty was no less successful than it was difficult, and twenty centuries have admired the result. The corporate religious crafts of India and Egypt were abandoned, but the divinest element therein was still preserved, and made to cast a hallowed spell over country and home, making each father the high priest of his domestic temple, and planting household gods round every hearth. An all-pervading religious influence was stamped on every rank of character, every region of nature, every type of art, and every department of enterprise. It exalted the dauntless courage of Miltiades, and added energy to the lofty daring of Themistocles, as they were conscious that the gods from Olympus gazed upon them in the fight, and were their guardians, as of old they had been to their ancestors on the plains of Troy.
With a very few exceptional cases, the art of the Greeks is never voluptuous, even in its earthly matter and shape. Under the pious feelings of the maker, as he breathed into it the soul of a lofty enthusiasm, dead material shaped itself into a nature as elevated as the source from which its strength was derived. And this moral dignity and grace which were born from the artist in his process ofcreation, communicated themselves in turn to the beholder; and the consecrated feeling in which the godlike conception was developed, generated an atmosphere of sanctity around it, as manifested divinity is supposed to drive demons away. It was fitting that in the groves of Delphi, Lycurgus should conceive the idea of his laws, and from the mouth of Apollo receive their ratification. All the great and wise legislators of antiquity cultivated an intercourse with the gods, and continued to covet the privilege of their society. The excellence of great works of religious art consists in the principle, that the purity and nobleness with which they were imbued pass into their admirers; and thus the serene repose and celestial fervor in which they are conceived are perpetually reproduced so long as the original qualities endure. The earliest poetry was religious, and its spirit migrated through succeeding generations; and, even down to the most degenerate age, perpetuated a delicate moral sense in the judgment, and mostly, also, in the works of the Greek nation. The refined taste, for which they have always been extolled, was produced entirely by this. Even the wit-intoxicated muse of Aristophanes perpetually maintains a chaste demeanor, and shows on her earnest countenance the moral meaning of her gayety.
Although the system of Athenian life was deformed by many imperfections, yet never at an earlier period had so much energy, virtue, and beauty, been developed; never was blind force and obdurate will so disciplined and ennobled, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. If the early Pythian and Dodonean oracles tended to consolidate national union, the improved wisdom of later philosophers did much to cultivate the citizens. Many a Grecian, engarlanded with laurel, then adorned the various walks of secular and moral life. It is probable that some were self-deceived, when no unworthy fraud was intended. Vividly conscious of a calling to some great vocation, and seeking, in the depths of their own imperfect religiousness, for the means of fulfilling it, they felt what seemed to be veritable inspiration, and accepted as the voices of supernatural beings what was in fact only the promptings of their own minds. To this influence, in great part, must be accredited much of the sublimity of Homer, patriotism of Tyrtæus, enthusiasm of Pindar, terror of Æschylus, andtenderness of Sophocles. The presence of divinity was indeed so palpable and enduring, that many nations, invulnerable to Grecian arms, received her beautiful system of mythology, and crowded her temples with eagerness to listen to her sacred instruction. Lightning strikes only kindred matter, which it seeks and salutes in the vividness of its own flash; and thus do great and effulgent examples glow into genial hearts, strengthen their illuminating power as they extend, and burn with greater splendor the wider they are diffused.
The more reflecting among the ancients seem to have keenly felt that earth and time are not ample enough to admit the full unfolding of the human soul. In man, the microcosm, they recognized the universe and its Maker, but it was by a very imperfect vision. They needed a clearer light, even that of the true God, to fill the profundity within them, and to reveal eternity unto them, that they might in reality know the vastness of their spiritual being. The vital seeds which the Almighty cast with a bountiful hand into the new-made earth, and which have not yet produced all their fruits, in Attica sprang up with a wonderful profusion, but the harvest was that of beauty, and not holiness. The dew of Hermon, the eternal sunshine of Zion, the transforming and tempering breath of Jehovah, are ever requisite to develop the higher capabilities of the soul, and elicit sanctified fruit from those mighty powers which, for bliss or bane, germinate in every mortal breast, and can never die. The poetical idolatry of Greece is often invested with a magical beauty to classical enthusiasts; but the thoughtful reader of history will often stumble upon most disenchanting facts, such as, for instance, that Themistocles, the deliverer of his country, offered up three youths, to propitiate the favor of his gods. A supreme Being was nominally recognized; and, though this doctrine was practically destroyed by the admission of subordinate deities to share in the offices of praise and prayer, still it was better than absolute atheism. The pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, clearly or dimly seen, has never ceased to lead the vanguard of advancing humanity. It was something that the voice of praise, humiliation, and prayer, was raised to some object in public worship, and thus the feelings of religion kept alive in aspiring souls. It is to be deplored that the most cultivated of ancient nations didnot possess and appreciate purer religious light; and most of all is it a grief and a warning that, if in the time of Homer, social morality was bad, in the age of Pericles it was worse. When Athenian life had received the most exquisite polish, and human intellect the richest discipline, then it was that public fanes were most abandoned, and private virtue was most debased.
Nature is most perfect in her forms the higher she ascends; and man, standing at the apex of her wonders, is appointed to partake of the divine nature, through the homogeneous medium who bends from a celestial height for his relief; when so reached and renovated, the godlike part of the redeemed is molded to a whole of the purest, holiest, and, therefore, most enchanting harmony. The Greeks had their idealization of beneficence and atonement set forth in Hercules and Prometheus. The genealogy of the first was connected with Egypt and Persia. He was lineally descended from Perseus, whose mortal mother claimed connection with an Egyptian emigrant. He was the great epic subject of the poets before Homer, the model chief of those who fought at Thebes or Troy, and, at a later period, was the allegory of human effort ascending through rugged valor to the highest virtue. He was the ideal perfection of the ordinary life of the Greeks, as the higher exaggeration of heroes, invested with immortality, became gods. Every pagan nation has had such a mythical being, whose strength or weakness, victories or defeats, measurably describe the career of the sun through the seasons. A Scythian, an Etruscan, and a Lydian Hercules existed, whose legends all became tributary to those of the Greek hero. His name is supposed to meanroverandperambulatorof earth, as well ashyperion of the sky, and he was the patronizing model of those famous navigators who spread his altars from coast to coast through the Mediterranean, to the extreme West, whereArkaleusbuilt the city of Gades (Cadiz), on which perpetual fire burned at his shrine. So deep and pervading were religious sentiments in that wonderful people at the best epoch, that not only in lowland towns, and on metropolitan eminences, were temples erected to the national deities, but also on lofty promontories; near the sea, beneficent zeal provided fanes exclusively for the casual worship of the passing mariner. The notion of a suffering deity, of one who, tortured, blinded, or imprisoned, might representthe earthly speculations of his worshipers, and, as a penitent, their religious emotions, was widely spread, from India westward, and by the Greeks was fixed forever in Prometheus, the ever dying and yet deathless Titan. Ancient sages taught that the discord of stormy elements would be dissolved and reduced to peace by the power of love, and the magic of beauty in the renovated soul would eventually curb its passions with a gentle rein; but how the infinite should coalesce with the finite, God with man, and thus transform the soul by planting therein the germ of almighty blessedness, they never by uninspired wisdom could comprehend. A mediator of unearthly excellence was indeed requisite; one who would realize in his person the loftiest ideas of beauty and sublimity, whose wisdom would be competent to elevate beyond mere morality, and whose grace would forever unfold the revelation of heavenly life. Not only, like the son of Tydeus, ought that luminary to come forth, with glory blazing round it, and kindling admiration, as well as emulous delight, in the outward world, but his beauty must specially pervade within, and transfigure every secret impulse with the splendors of his imparted Godhead.
Such a divine need was generally felt, and this was the cause of that high estimation in the common mind which the devout moralists enjoyed. Homer inculcated the idea that life is a contest; and Plato directed his hearers to the search after unity as the source of truth and beauty; Æschylus to power; Euripides to the law of expiation. The contempt of life and pleasure, the superiority of the intellectual over the physical nature, are expressed by these and kindred writers in great thoughts which are almost identical with the light of faith. Heraclitus taught Hesiod, Pythagoras, Zenophanes, and Hecateus, that the sole wisdom consists in knowing the will according to which all things in the world are governed. Marsilius Ficinus says that Socrates was raised up by heaven to pacify minds; and St. John Chrysostom proposes him as an example of Christian poverty and monastic profession. St. Augustine entertained equal admiration for one who preferred eternal to temporal things, fearing to act unjustly more than death, and for conscience sake was ready to undergo labor, penury, insult, and death. In the Enthypro of Platonician wisdom, Socrates disengages ideas from words; in the Apology, he shows that thewisest are the most humble, and that we must bear our witness to truth, even at the risk of our lives; in the Laws, that the soul has need of a celestial light to be able to see; in the Crito, that the least duty is to be preferred to the greatest advantage; in the Phædo, that life should be employed in elevating the soul—that there is a future existence—and that the soul should be disengaged from the body; in the Theætetus, that, the germ of truth resides in all men, but that no individual has the full measure of truth; in the Gorgias, that it is better to suffer than to commit injustice; that it is useful to the soul to be chastised, and that he who suffers punishment is delivered from the evil of his soul; in the Euthydemus, that the science of the Sophists is empty and vain; in the second Alcibiades, that it is better to be ignorant than to have false knowledge; in the Theages, that the only true wisdom is love; in the Phædrus, that it is love, or, as Socrates defines it, the desire of something that is wanting, which gives wings to the soul, and enables it to mount to heaven; in the Meno, that virtue is the gift of God, not of nature, but an infusion by a divine influence; in the Banquet, that love leads us to contemplate the supreme beauty, the universal type, the Creator, from which vision we derive virtue and immortality. In view of such focal beamings at the heart of pagan night, we need not wonder that Thomas of Villanova should exclaim with enthusiasm, "Let philosophers know, that faith is not without wisdom; the evangelist does not Platonize, but Plato evangelized."
The mythical beings of Grecian theology display in their beautiful but ineffectual imagery the first efforts of cultivated minds to communicate with nature and her God. They resemble the flowers which fancy strewed before the youthful steps of Psyche when she first set out in pursuit of the immortal object of her love. The parable of the Syrens teems with valuable moral instruction. They dwelt in fair and lovely islands, full of beauty, and through whose leafy alcoves moved a perpetual loveliness. On the tops of tall rocks sat the enchantresses, pouring their tender and ravishing music on the ears of passing mortals, till they turned their prows thitherward, and rushed into the destruction to which the deceitful song was a fatal prelude. Two by their wisdom and piety escaped. Ulysses caused his arms to be bound to the mast, and the ears ofhis company to be filled with wax, with special orders to his mariners that they should not loose him even though he desired it. But Orpheus, disdaining to be so bound, with sweet melody went by, singing praises to the gods, thus outsounding the melody of the Syrens, and so escaped.
The most influential teachers among the Greeks declared the inutility of profuse legislation, and taught that "the halls should not be filled with legal tablets, but the soul with the image of righteousness." They sought less to guard the citizen by force and fear than to fortify him with a sense of his duty and its dignity. Parental authority was sustained by legislative sanction, as well as by popular customs, and even up to the first steps of public life was constantly guarded by the elders; but the principal intent was ever to kindle filial esteem into the potency of living law, to illuminate progressive youth in the path of virtue and of fame. Sound morals were recognized as the only sure foundation of republican freedom, and the general watchfulness over this constituted the spirit of ancient religion, and the origin of free states. To such an extent did parental influence and pious example, rather than arbitrary statutes and severe punishments, prevail at Athens, that the youth generally were moral and temperate; despite their national inflammability, the most authentic records affirm, that both in domestic and public life they remained sober and moral, until broken down by the interference of hostile power. Following the defeat of Cheronea, the change in the Greek character was rapid. The guiding stars of literature and art were lost in clouds; and morals, which had attained a splendid maturity, lost both strength and hue.
Sacred ceremonies at Athens were the most luminous that prevailed in Greece, and were most characteristic of the city of intelligence. In the great Panathenean rites, there was carried in solemn procession to the Acropolis a symbolical vessel covered with a vail upon which were figured the triumph of Pallas over the Titans, children of earth who undertook to scale Olympus and dethrone Jove. The conflict between physical and moral force was therein represented, that triumph above mere natural religion which exists in mental supremacy and the civilization of law. Moreover, Athenian coins preserve to us allusions to impressive rites whichwere performed three times a year in honor of Vulcan and Prometheus. The votaries assembled at night, and at the altar of the deity, upon which a fire continually burned, at a given signal lighted a torch and ran with the blazing symbol to the city's outer bound. If the lights of some became extinguished, the more fortunate still pursued with greater zeal, and he was most honored who first reached the goal with his torch a-light. But the religion of Greece was not characterized by ritual splendor only; on the contrary, their public worship was marked by the simplicity of devout fervor, as well as by the chasteness of fine taste and that unadorned solemnity which had been inherited from the patriarchal ages. They were much less inclined to pomp and finery connected with their devotion, than are the moderns. Rude emblems were sometimes borne at sacred solemnities, but they were in the hands of honorable women, and all offense to religious feeling was arrested in their being first hallowed by the dignity of the festival.
It was a doctrine of immemorial antiquity, that death is far better than life; that the worst mortality belongs to those who are immersed in the Lethe passions and fascinations of earth, and that the true life begins only when the soul is emancipated for its return. All initiation was but introductory to the great change at death. Many regarded water as the source and purifier of all things—efficacious to renew both body and mind, as the virginity of Juno was restored when she bathed in the fountain Parthenion. Baptism, anointing, embalming, burying, or burning, were preparatory symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descending to the shades, pointing out the moral change which should precede the renewal of existence. The funeral ceremonies of the Greeks were in harmony with that feeling which through all antiquity paid marked respect to the dead, whose eyes were closed by relatives most nearly allied. The funeral robe was often woven by the prospective piety of filial hands, as the web of Penelope was destined to shroud her husband's father. The body, washed, anointed, and swathed, was placed with its feet toward the door, and as the train of mourners went forth, women and bards raised a funeral chant, interrupted by nearest kindred, who eulogized the departed, and bewailed their own loss. Reaching the pyre of wood, the corpse was burned and the ashes collected in a golden vase. While thebody lay in state, the chief mourners supported the head. Dark garments, and long abstinence from convivial gatherings, were the outward signs of sorrow. The excessive grief of Achilles showed itself by his throwing dust on his head; torn habiliments and lacerated cheeks were the offerings made to Agamemnon; and a single lock of hair was the touching tribute to his memory by the filial affection of Orestes. The lifeless form was covered and crowned with flowers, a piece of money placed in its mouth, as a fee to Charon for being ferried over the Styx, and a cake of honeyed flour to appease Cerberus. Bust, statue, and mausoleum, grassy mound, inscribed marble, and monumental brass, attested the universal desire of sepulchral honors. The immortality of affectionate remembrances and of public renown was a profound aspiration in their breasts. If the dead were ever insulted, it was the rare instance of momentary rage toward a stubborn foe, and soon gave place to worthier emotions. Achilles dragged behind his chariot the corpse of Hector thrice round the tomb of his beloved Patroclus; but, after the first burst of passion, he ordered his own slaves to wash and anoint the mutilated remains, himself assisting to raise them to a litter, swathed in costly garments, that the eye of a broken-hearted father might bear the sight.
The statesmen of Greece, superior as they were in universality of accomplishment, were incomplete personages compared with the pure theocratic natures of antiquity, of whom Moses is the most familiar and accurate type. Many of them were not only priest and magistrate, but also philosopher, artist, engineer, and physician; such a combination for intensity, regularity, and permanence of human power, never was found elsewhere. Pericles, through the whole tenor of his administration, seemed to have had the permanent welfare of his fellow-countrymen at heart, and is said to have boasted, with the benevolence of a true patriot, that he never caused a citizen to put on mourning.
The Greek was by no means insensible to high destinies, as he majestically assumed the moral dominion on earth to which he was born; but he formed no idea of future happiness, nor of intellectual dignity vaster than his own. He girded himself for the fearful contest which was his inheritance, bravely struggling against the terrible powers of destiny and the certainty of death. Amazed athis temerity, the sun started back in his course; opposing deities, wounded by his spear, fled howling to Olympus; and the dread abodes of Tartarus yielded up the departed to his triumphant call. Concentrating in the present the intensity of immortal aspirations, he sought to link them forever to the perishable body. Earthly as was his spirit, he yet supremely coveted eternal life, and labored through transcendent genius and fortitude to unite himself immediately with the gods, and ultimately soar amid the splendid hierarchy of the upper skies.
The worship of Greece was the Beautiful, and Athens was its most magnificent Shrine. One of her latest and fairest altars was dedicated to the Unknown God. Would that the plinth of artistic beauty had also been the memento of spiritual prayer. Alas! that after all the fine imaginings and glorious achievements of the wondrous Greeks, we must still feel that their loftiest conceptions of divine worship were really as void of true consolation as the empty urn which Electra washed with her tears.