The same liberal and humane spirit still prevails among those nations
whose religion is founded on the same principles. “The Siamese,” says a
traveller of the seventeenth century, “shun disputes and believe that
almost all religions are good” (“Journal du Voyage de Siam”). When the
ambassador of Louis XIV asked their king, in his master’s name, to
embrace Christianity, he replied, “that it was strange that the king of
France should interest himself so much in an affair which concerns only
God, whilst He, whom it did concern, seemed to leave it wholly to our
discretion. Had it been agreeable to the Creator that all nations should
have had the same form of worship, would it not have been as easy to His
omnipotence to have created all men with the same sentiments and
dispositions, and to have inspired them with the same notions of the
True Religion, as to endow them with such different tempers and
inclinations? Ought they not rather to believe that the true God has as
much pleasure in being honoured by a variety of forms and ceremonies, as
in being praised and glorified by a number of different creatures? Or
why should that beauty and variety, so admirable in the natural order of
things, be less admirable or less worthy of the wisdom of God in the
supernatural?”
The Hindus profess exactly the same opinion. “They would readily admit
the truth of the Gospel,” says a very learned writer long resident among
them, “but they contend that it is perfectly consistent with their
Shastras. The Deity, they say, has appeared innumerable times in many
parts of this world and in all worlds, for the salvation of his
creatures; and we adore, they say, the same God, to whom our several
worships, though different in form, are equally acceptable if they be
sincere in substance.”
The Chinese sacrifice to the spirits of the air, the mountains and the
rivers; while the Emperor himself sacrifices to the sovereign Lord of
Heaven, to whom all these spirits are subordinate, and from whom they
are derived. The sectaries of Fohi have, indeed, surcharged this
primitive elementary worship with some of the allegorical fables of
their neighbours; but still as their creed—like that of the Greeks and
Romans—remains undefined, it admits of no dogmatical theology, and of
course no persecution for opinion. Obscure and sanguinary rites have,
indeed, been wisely prescribed on many occasions; but still _as actions
and not as opinions_. Atheism is said to have been punished with death
at Athens; but nevertheless it may be reasonably doubted whether the
atheism, against which the citizens of that republic expressed such
fury, consisted in a denial of the existence of the gods; for Diagoras,
who was obliged to fly for this crime, was accused of revealing and
calumniating the doctrines taught in the Mysteries; and from the
opinions ascribed to Socrates, there is reason to believe that his
offence was of the same kind, though he had not been initiated.
These were the only two martyrs to religion among the ancient Greeks,
such as were punished for actively violating or insulting the Mysteries,
the only part of their worship which seems to have possessed any
vitality; for as to the popular deities, they were publicly ridiculed
and censured with impunity by those who dared not utter a word against
the populace that worshipped them; and as to the forms and ceremonies of
devotion, they were held to be no otherwise important, then as they were
constituted a part of civil government of the state; the Pythian
priestess having pronounced from the tripod, that _whoever performed the
rites of his religion according to the laws of his country, performed
them in a manner pleasing to the Deity_. Hence the Romans made no
alterations in the religious institutions of any of the conquered
countries; but allowed the inhabitants to be as absurd and extravagant
as they pleased, and to enforce their absurdities and extravagances
wherever they had any pre-existing laws in their favour. An Egyptian
magistrate would put one of his fellow-subjects to death for killing a
cat or a monkey; and though the religious fanaticism of the Jews was too
sanguinary and too violent to be left entirely free from restraint, a
chief of the synagogue could order anyone of his congregation to be
whipped for neglecting or violating any part of the Mosaic Ritual.
The principle underlying the system of emanations was, that all things
were of one substance, from which they were fashioned and into which
they were again dissolved, by the operation of one plastic spirit
universally diffused and expanded. The polytheist of ancient Greece and
Rome candidly thought, like the modern Hindu, that all rites of worship
and forms of devotion were directed to the same end, though in different
modes and through different channels. “_Even they who worship other
gods_,” says Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an ancient Indian poem
(_Bhagavat-Gita_), “_worship me although they know it not_.”—_Payne
Knight._