There are two conflicting theories now in vogue in regard to the origin
of religion. The first is that of Christian theists as taught in the Old
and New Testament Scriptures, viz., that the human race in its first
ancestry, and again in the few survivors of the Deluge, possessed the
knowledge of the true God. It is not necessary to suppose that they had
a full and mature conception of Him, or that that conception excluded
the idea of other gods. No one would maintain that Adam or Noah
comprehended the nature of the Infinite as it has been revealed in the
history of God's dealings with men in later times. But from their simple
worship of one God their descendants came gradually to worship various
visible objects with which they associated their blessings--the sun as
the source of warmth and vitality, the rain as imparting a quickening
power to the earth, the spirits of ancestors to whom they looked with a
special awe, and finally a great variety of created things instead of
the invisible Creator. The other theory is that man, as we now behold
him, has been developed from lower forms of animal life, rising first to
the state of a mere human animal, but gradually acquiring intellect,
conscience, and finally a soul;--that ethics and religion have been
developed from instinct by social contact, especially by ties of family
and the tribal relation; that altruism which began with the instinctive
care of parents for their offspring, rose to the higher domain of
religion and began to recognize the claims of deity; that God, if there
be a God, never revealed himself to man by any preternatural means, but
that great souls, like Moses, Isaiah, and Plato, by their higher and
clearer insight, have gained loftier views of deity than others, and as
prophets and teachers have made known their inspirations to their
fellow-men. Gradually they have formed rituals and elaborated
philosophies, adding such supernatural elements as the ignorant fancy of
the masses was supposed to demand.
According to this theory, religions, like everything else, have grown up
from simple germs: and it is only in the later stages of his development
that man can be said to be a religious being. While an animal merely,
and for a time even after he had attained to a rude and savage manhood,
a life of selfish passion and marauding was justifiable, since only thus
could the survival of the fittest be secured and the advancement of the
race attained.[125] It is fair to say that there are various shades of
the theory here presented--some materialistic, some theistic, others
having a qualified theism, and still others practically agnostic. Some
even who claim to be Christians regard the various religions of men as
so many stages in the divine education of the race--all being under the
direct guidance of God, and all designed to lead ultimately to
Christianity which is the goal.
That God has overruled all things, even the errors and wickedness of
men, for some wise object will not be denied; that He has implanted in
the human understanding many correct conceptions of ethical truth, so
that noble principles are found in the teachings of all religious
systems; that God is the author of all truth and all right impulses,
even in heathen minds, is readily admitted. But that He has directly
planned and chosen the non-Christian religions on the principle that
half-truths and perverted truths and the direct opposites of the truth,
were best adapted to certain stages of development--in other words, that
He has causatively led any nation into error and consequent destruction
as a means of preparing for subsequent generations something higher and
better, we cannot admit. The logic of such a conclusion would lead to a
remorseless fatalism. Everything would depend on the age and the
environment in which one's lot were cast. We cannot believe that
fetishism and idolatry have been God's kindergarten method of training
the human race for the higher and more spiritual service of His kingdom.
Turning from the testimony of the Scriptures on the one hand and the _à
priori_ assumptions of evolution on the other, what is the witness of
the actual history of religions? Have they shown an upward or a downward
development? Do they appear to have risen from polytheism toward simpler
and more spiritual forms, or have simple forms been ramified into
polytheism?[126] If we shall be able to establish clear evidence that
monotheistic or even henotheistic types of faith existed among all, or
nearly all, the races at the dawn of history, a very important point
will have been gained. The late Dr. Henry B. Smith, after a careful
perusal of Ebrard's elaborate presentation of the religions of the
ancient and the modern world, and his clear proofs that they had at
first been invariably monotheistic and had gradually lapsed into
ramified forms of polytheism, says in his review of Ebrard's work: "We
do not know where to find a more weighty reply to the assumptions and
theories of those writers who persist in claiming, according to the
approved hypothesis of a merely naturalistic evolution, that the
primitive state of mankind was the lowest and most debased form of
polytheistic idolatry, and that the higher religions have been developed
out of these base rudiments. Dr. Ebrard shows conclusively that the
facts all lead to another conclusion, that gross idolatry is a
degeneration of mankind from antecedent and purer forms of religious
worship.... He first treats of the civilized nations of antiquity, the
Aryan and Indian religions, the Vedas, the Indra period of Brahmanism
and Buddhism; then of the religion of the Iranians, the Avesta of the
Parsees; next of the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians, the Canaanites,
and the heathen Semitic forms of worship, including the Phoenicians,
Assyrians, and Babylonians. His second division is devoted to the
half-civilized and savage races in the North and West of Europe, in Asia
and Polynesia (Tartars, Mongols, Malays, and Cushites); then the races
of America, including a minute examination of the relations of the
different races here to the Mongols, Japanese, and old Chinese
immigrations."[127]
Ebrard himself, in summing up the results of these prolonged
investigations, says: "We have nowhere been able to discover the least
trace of any forward and upward movement from fetichism to polytheism,
and from that again to a gradually advancing knowledge of the one God;
but, on the contrary, we have found among all the peoples of the heathen
world a most decided tendency to sink from an earlier and relatively
purer knowledge of God toward something lower."[128]
If these conclusions, reached by Ebrard and endorsed by the scholarly
Dr. Henry B. Smith, are correct, they are of great importance; they
bring to the stand the witness of the false religions themselves upon an
issue in which historic testimony as distinguished from mere theories is
in special demand in our time. Of similar import are the well-considered
words of Professor Naville, in the first of his lectures on modern
atheism.[129] He says: "Almost all pagans seem to have had a glimpse of
the divine unity over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays
of the divine holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a
Greek (Cleanthus) who wrote these words: 'Nothing is accomplished on the
earth without Thee, O God, save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in
their folly.' It was in a theatre at Athens, that the chorus of a
tragedy sang, more than two thousand years ago: 'May destiny aid me to
preserve, unsullied, the purity of my words, and of all my actions,
according to those sublime laws which, brought forth in the celestial
heights, have the raven alone for their father, to which the race of
mortals did not give birth and which oblivion shall never entomb. In
them is a supreme God, and one who waxes not old.' It would be easy to
multiply quotations of this order and to show, in the documents of
Grecian and Roman civilization, numerous traces of the knowledge of the
only and holy God."
With much careful discrimination, Dr. William A.P. Martin, of the
Peking University, has said: "It is customary with a certain school to
represent religion as altogether the fruit of an intellectual process.
It had its birth, say they, in ignorance, is modified by every stage in
the progress of knowledge, and expires when the light of philosophy
reaches its noon-day. The fetish gives place to a personification of the
powers of nature, and this poetic pantheon is, in time, superseded by
the high idea of unity in nature expressed by monotheism. This theory
has the merit of verisimilitude. It indicates what might be the process
if man were left to make his own religion; but it has the misfortune to
be at variance with facts. A wide survey of the history of civilized
nations (and the history of others is beyond reach) shows that the
actual process undergone by the human mind in its religious development
is precisely opposite to that which this theory supposes; in a word,
that man was not left to construct his own creed, but that his
blundering logic has always been active in its attempts to corrupt and
obscure a divine original. The connection subsisting between the
religious systems of ancient and distant countries presents many a
problem difficult of solution. Indeed, their mythologies and religious
rites are generally so distinct as to admit the hypothesis of an
independent origin; but the simplicity of their earliest beliefs
exhibits an unmistakable resemblance, suggestive of a common source.
"China, India, Egypt, and Greece all agree in the monotheistic type of
their early religion. The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the
popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the Universal God. The odes
compiled by Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the
Supreme Euler. The Vedas speak of 'one unknown true Being, all-present,
all-powerful; the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the universe.'
And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there were still vestiges
of a monotheistic worship. 'The other Egyptians,' he says, 'all made
offerings at the tombs of the sacred beasts; but the inhabitants of the
Thebaïd stood alone in making no such offerings, not regarding as a god
anything that can die, and acknowledging no god but one, whom they call
Kneph, who had no birth, and can have no death. Abraham, in his
wanderings, found the God of his fathers known and honored in Salem, in
Gerar, and in Memphis; while at a later day Jethro, in Midian, and
Balaam, in Mesopotamia, were witnesses that the knowledge of Jehovah was
not yet extinct in those countries.'"[130]
Professor Max Müller speaks in a similar strain of the lapse of mankind
from earlier and simpler types of faith to low and manifold
superstitions: "Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first
beginning," says the distinguished Oxford professor, "we find it free
from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The
founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge,
were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for
truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and
unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom
realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form,
offered often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to
be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more
particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the
foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original
foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the
plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart and matured in his
communings with his God."[131]
But in pursuing our subject we should clearly determine the real
question before us. How much may we expect to prove from the early
history of the non-Christian systems? Not certainly that all nations
once received a knowledge of the Old Testament revelation, as some have
claimed, nor that all races possessed at the beginning of their several
historic periods one and the same monotheistic faith. We cannot prove
from non-scriptural sources that their varying monotheistic conceptions
sprang from a common belief. We cannot prove either the supernatural
revelation which Professor Max Müller emphatically rejects, nor the
identity of the well-nigh universal henotheisms which he professes to
believe. We cannot prove that the worship of one God as supreme did not
coexist with a sort of worship of inferior deities or ministering
spirits. Almost as a rule, the worship of ancestors, or spirits, or
rulers, or the powers of nature, or even totems and fetishes has been
rendered as subordinate to the worship of the one supreme deity who
created and upholds all things. Even the monotheism of Judaism and of
Christianity has been attended with the belief in angels and the worship
of intercessory saints, to say nothing of the many superstitions which
prevail among the more ignorant classes. We shall only attempt to show
that monotheism, in the sense of worshipping _one God as supreme_, is
found in nearly all the early teachings of the world. That these crude
faiths are one in the origin is only presumable, if we leave the
testimony of the Bible out of the account.
When on a summer afternoon we see great shafts of light arising and
spreading fan-shaped from behind a cloud which lies along the western
horizon, we have a strong presumption that they all spring from one
great luminary toward which they converge, although that luminary is
hidden from our view. So tracing the convergence of heathen faiths with
respect to one original monotheism, back to the point where the
prehistoric obscurity begins, we may on the same principle say that all
the evidence in the case, and it is not small, points toward a common
origin for the early religious conceptions of mankind.
Professor Robert Flint, in his scholarly article on theism in "The
Britannica," seems to discard the idea that the first religion of
mankind was monotheism; but a careful study of his position will show
that he has in view those conceptions of monotheism which are common to
us, or, as he expresses it, "monotheism in the ordinary or proper sense
of the term," "monotheism properly so called," "monotheism which excludes
polytheism," etc. Moreover, he maintains that we cannot, from historical
sources, learn what conceptions men first had of God. Even when speaking
of the Old Testament record, he says: "These chapters (of Genesis),
although they plainly teach monotheism and represent the God whose words
and acts are recorded in the Bible as no mere national God, but the only
true God, they do not teach what is alone in the question--that there
was a primitive monotheism, a monotheism revealed and known from the
beginning. They give no warrant to the common assumption that God
revealed monotheism to Adam, Noah, and others before the Flood, and that
the traces of monotheistic beliefs and tendencies in heathendom are
derivable from the tradition of this primitive and antediluvian
monotheism. The one true God is represented as making himself known by
particular words and in particular ways to Adam, but is nowhere said to
have taught him that He only was God." It is plain that Professor Flint
is here dealing with a conception of monotheism which is exclusive of
all other gods. And his view is undoubtedly correct, so far as Adam was
concerned. There was no more need of teaching him that his God was the
only God, than that Eve was the only woman. With Noah the case is not so
plain. He doubtless worshipped God amid the surroundings of polytheistic
heathenism. Enoch probably had a similar environment, and there is no
good reason for supposing that their monotheism may not have been as
exclusive as that of Abraham. But with respect to the Gentile nations,
the dim traces of this monism or henotheism which Professor Flint seems
to accord to Adam and to Noah, is all that we are contending for, and
all that is necessary to the argument of this lecture. We may even admit
that heathen deities may sometimes have been called by different names
while the one source of power was intended. Different names seem to have
been employed to represent different manifestations of the one God of
the Old Testament according to His varied relations toward His people.
There are those who deny this polyonomy, as Max Müller has called it,
and who maintain that the names in the earliest Veda represented
distinct deities; but, by similar reasoning, Professor Tiele and others
insist that three different Hebrew Gods, according to their respective
names, were worshipped in successive periods of the Jewish history. It
seems quite possible, therefore, that a too restrictive definition of
monotheism may prove too much, by opening the way for a claim that even
the Jewish and Christian faith, with its old Testament names of God, its
angels, its theophanies, and its fully developed trinity, is not
strictly monotheistic. For our present purpose, traces of the worship of
one supreme God--call it monotheism or henotheism--is all that is
required.
With these limitations and qualifications in view, let us turn to the
history of some of the leading non-Christian faiths. Looking first to
India, we find in the 129th hymn of the Rig Veda, a passage which not
only presents the conception of one only supreme and self-existing
Being, but at the same time bears significant resemblance to our own
account of the creation from chaos. It reads thus:
"In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught,
Then there was neither atmosphere nor sky above,
There was neither death nor immortality,
There was neither day nor night, nor light, nor darkness,
Only the EXISTENT ONE breathed calmly self-contained.
Naught else but He was there, naught else above, beyond.
Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom;
Next all was water, chaos indiscrete,
In which ONE lay void, shrouded in nothingness."[132]
In the 121st hymn of the same Veda occurs a passage which seems to
resemble the opening of the Gospel of St. John. It reads thus, as
translated by Sir Monier Williams:
"Him let us praise, the golden child that was In the beginning, who
was born the Lord, Who made the earth and formed the sky."
"The one born Lord" reminds us of the New Testament expression, "the
only begotten Son." Both were "in the beginning;" both were the creators
of the world. While there is much that is mysterious in these
references, the idea of oneness and supremacy is too plain to be
mistaken. Professor Max Müller has well expressed this fact when he
said: "There is a monotheism which precedes polytheism in the Veda; and
even in the invocation of their (inferior) gods, the remembrance of _a_
God, one and infinite, breaks through the mist of an idolatrous
phraseology like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds."[133]
These monotheistic conceptions appear to have been common to the Aryans
before their removal from their early home near the sources of the Oxus,
and we shall see further on that in one form or another they survived
among all branches of the migrating race. The same distinguished scholar
traces the early existence of monotheism in a series of brief and rapid
references to nearly all the scattered Aryans not only, but also to the
Turanians on the North and East, to the Tungusic, Mongolic, Tartaric,
and Finnic tribes. "Everywhere," he says, "we find a worship of nature,
and the spirits of the departed, but behind it all there rises a belief
in some higher power called by different names, who is Maker and
Protector of the world, and who always resides in heaven."[134] He also
speaks of an ancient African faith which, together with its worship of
reptiles and of ancestors, showed a vague hope of a future life, "and a
not altogether faded reminiscence of a supreme God," which certainly
implies a previous knowledge.[135]
The same prevalence of one supreme worship rising above all idolatry he
traces among the various tribes of the Pacific Islands. His
generalizations are only second to those of Ebrard. Although he rejects
the theory of a supernatural revelation, yet stronger language could
hardly be used than that which he employs in proof of a universal
monotheistic faith.[136] "Nowhere," he says, "do we find stronger
arguments against idolatry, nowhere has the unity of God been upheld
more strenuously against the errors of polytheism, than by some of the
ancient sages of India. Even in the oldest of the sacred books, the Rig
Veda, composed three or four thousand years ago, where we find hymns
addressed to the different deities of the sky, the air, the earth, the
rivers, the protest of the human heart against many gods breaks forth
from time to time with no uncertain sound." Professor Müller's whole
position is pretty clearly stated in his first lecture on "The Science
of Religion," in which he protests against the idea that God once gave
to man "a _preternatural_ revelation" concerning Himself; and yet he
gives in this same lecture this striking testimony to the doctrine of an
early and prevailing monotheistic faith:
"Is it not something worth knowing," he says, "worth knowing even to us
after the lapse of four or five thousand years, that before the
separation of the Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Greek,
or Latin, before the gods of the Veda had been worshipped, and before
there was a sanctuary of Zeus among the sacred oaks of Dodona, one
Supreme deity had been found, had been named, had been invoked by the
ancestors of our race, and had been invoked by a name which has never
been excelled by any other name?" And again, on the same subject, he
says: "If a critical examination of the ancient language of the Jews
leads to no worse results than those which have followed from a careful
interpretation of the petrified language of ancient India and Greece, we
need not fear; we shall be gainers, not losers. Like an old precious
medal, the ancient religion, after the rust of ages has been removed,
will come out in all its purity and brightness; and the image which it
discloses will be the image of the Father, the Father of all the nations
upon earth; and the superscription, when we can read it again, will be,
not only in Judea, but in the languages of all the races of the world,
the Word of God, revealed where alone it can be revealed--revealed in
the heart of man."[137]
The late Professor Banergea, of Calcutta, in a publication entitled "The
Aryan Witness," not only maintained the existence of monotheism in the
early Vedas, but with his rare knowledge of Sanskrit and kindred
tongues, he gathered from Iranian as well as Hindu sources many
evidences of a monotheism common to all Aryans. His conclusions derive
special value from the fact that he was a high caste Hindu, and was not
only well versed in the sacred language, but was perfectly familiar with
Hindu traditions and modes of thought. He was as well qualified to judge
of early Hinduism as Paul was of Judaism, and for the same reason. And
from his Hindu standpoint, as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, though
afterward a Christian convert, he did not hesitate to declare his
belief, not only that the early Vedic faith was monotheistic, but that
it contained traces of that true revelation, once made to men.[138]
In the same line we find the testimony of the various types of revived
Aryanism of our own times. The Brahmo Somaj, the Arya Somaj, and other
similar organizations, are not only all monotheistic, but they declare
that monotheism was the religion of the early Vedas. And many other
Hindu reforms, some of them going as far back as the twelfth century,
have been so many returns to monotheism. A recent Arya catechism
published by Ganeshi, asserts in its first article that there is one
only God, omnipotent, infinite, and eternal. It proceeds to show that
the Vedas present but one, and that when hymns were addressed to Agni,
Vayu, Indra, etc., it was only a use of different names for one and the
same Being.[139]
It represents God as having all the attributes of supreme Deity. He
created the world by His direct power and for the revelation of His
glory to His creatures. Man, according to the Aryas, came not by
evolution nor by any of the processes known to Hindu philosophy, but by
direct creation from existing atoms.
In all this it is easy to see that much has been borrowed from the
Christian conception of God's character and attributes, but the value of
this Aryan testimony lies in the fact that it claims for the ancient
Vedas a clear and positive monotheism.
If we consult the sacred books of China, we shall find there also many
traces of an ancient faith which antedates both Confucianism and
Taouism. The golden age of the past to which all Chinese sages look with
reverence, was the dynasty of Yao and Shun, which was eighteen centuries
earlier than the period of Confucius and Laotze. The records of the
Shu-king which Confucius compiled, and from which unfortunately his
agnosticism excluded nearly all its original references to religion,
nevertheless retain a full account of certain sacred rites performed by
Shun on his accession to the full imperial power. In those rites the
worship of One God as supreme is distinctly set forth as a "customary
service," thereby implying that it was already long established.
Separate mention is also made of offerings to inferior deities, as if
these were honored at his own special instance. It is unquestionably
true that in China, and indeed in all lands, there sprang up almost from
the first a tendency to worship, or at least to fear, unseen spirits.
This tendency has coexisted with all religions of the world--even with
the Old Testament cult--even with Christianity. To the excited
imaginations of men, especially the ignorant classes, the world has
always been a haunted world, and just in proportion as the light of true
religion has become dim, countless hordes of ghosts and demons have
appeared. When Confucius arose this gross animism had almost monopolized
the worship of his countrymen, and universal corruption bore sway. He
was not an original thinker, but only a compiler of the ancient wisdom,
and in his selections from the traditions of the ancients, he compiled
those things only which served his great purpose of building up, from
the relations of family and kindred, the complete pyramid of a
well-ordered state in which the Emperor should hold to his subjects the
place of deity. If such honor to a mortal seemed extravagant, yet in his
view a wise emperor was far worthier of reverence than the imaginary
ghosts of the popular superstitions. Yet, even Confucius could not quite
succeed in banishing the idea of divine help, nor could he destroy that
higher and most venerable worship which has ever survived amid all the
corruptions of polytheism. Professor Legge, of Oxford, has claimed, from
what he regards as valid linguistic proofs, that at a still earlier
period than the dynasty of Yao and Shun there existed in China the
worship of one God. He says: "Five thousand years ago the Chinese were
monotheists--not henotheists, but monotheists"--though he adds that even
then there was a constant struggle with nature-worship and
divination.[140]
The same high authority cites a remarkable prayer of an Emperor of the
Ming dynasty (1538 A.D.) to show that in spite of the agnosticism and
reticence of Confucius, Shangte has been worshipped in the centuries
which have followed his time. The prayer is very significant as showing
how the One Supreme God stands related to the subordinate gods which
polytheism has introduced. The Emperor was about to decree a slight
change in the name of Shangte to be used in the imperial worship. He
first addressed the spirits of the hills, the rivers, and the seas,
asking them to intercede for him with Shangte. "We will trouble you,"
said he, "on our behalf to exert your spiritual power and to display
your vigorous efficacy, communicating our poor desires to Shangte, and
praying him graciously to grant us his acceptance and regard, and to be
pleased with the title which we shall reverently present." But very
different was the language used when he came to address Shangte himself.
"Of old, in the beginning," he began,--"Of old in the beginning, there
was the great chaos without form, and dark. The five elements had not
begun to revolve nor the sun and moon to shine. In the midst thereof
there presented itself neither form nor sound. Thou, O spiritual
Sovereign! earnest forth in thy presidency, and first didst divide the
grosser parts from the purer. Thou madest heaven: Thou madest earth:
Thou madest man. All things got their being with their producing power.
O Te! when Thou hadst opened the course for the inactive and active
forces of matter to operate, thy making work went on. Thou didst
produce, O Spirit! the sun and moon and five planets, and pure and
beautiful was their light. The vault of heaven was spread out like a
curtain, and the square earth supported all on it, and all creatures
were happy. I, thy servant, presume reverently to thank Thee." Farther
on he says: "All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to
Thy favor for their being. Men and creatures are emparadised in Thy
love. All living things are indebted to Thy goodness. But who knows
whence his blessings come to him? It is Thou, O Lord! who art the
parent of all things."[141]
Surely this prayer humbly offered by a monarch would not be greatly out
of place among the Psalms of David. Its description of the primeval
chaos strikingly resembles that which I have quoted from the Rig Veda,
and both resemble that of the Mosaic record. If the language used does
not present the clear conception of one God, the Creator and the
Upholder of all things, and a supreme and personal Sovereign over kings
and even "gods," then language has no meaning. The monotheistic
conception of the second petition is as distinct from the polytheism of
the first, as any prayer to Jehovah is from a Roman Catholic's prayer
for the intercession of the saints; and there is no stronger argument in
the one case against monotheism than in the other. Dr. Legge asserts
that both in the Shu-king and in the Shiking, "Te," or "Shangte,"
appears as a personal being ruling in heaven and in earth, the author of
man's moral nature, the governor among the nations, the rewarder of the
good and the punisher of the evil.[142] There are proofs that Confucius,
though in his position with respect to God he fell short of the doctrine
of the ancient sages, yet believed in the existence of Shangte as a
personal being. When in old age he had finished his writings, he laid
them on an altar upon a certain hill-top, and kneeling before the altar
he returned thanks that he had been spared to complete his work.[143]
Max Müller says of him: "It is clear from many passages that with
Confucius, Tien, or the Spirit of Heaven, was the supreme deity, and
that he looked upon the other gods of the people--the spirits of the
air, the mountains, and the rivers,[144] and the spirits of the
departed, very much with the same feeling with which Socrates regarded
the mythological deities of Greece."[145]
But there remains to this day a remarkable evidence of the worship of
the supreme God, Shangte, as he was worshipped in the days of the
Emperor Shun, 2356 B.C. It is found in the great Temple of Heaven at
Peking. Dr. Martin and Professors Legge and Douglas all insist that the
sacrifices there celebrated are relics of the ancient worship of a
supreme God. China is full of the traces of polytheism; the land swarms
with Taouist deities of all names and functions, with Confucian and
ancestral tablets, and with Buddhist temples and dagobas; but within the
sacred enclosure of this temple no symbol of heathenism appears. Of the
August Imperial service Dr. Martin thus eloquently speaks:[146] "Within
the gates of the southern division of the capital, and surrounded by a
sacred grove so extensive that the silence of its deep shades is never
broken by the noise of the busy world around it, stands the Temple of
Heaven. It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent azure
is intended to represent the form and color of the aerial vault. It
contains no image; but on a marble altar a bullock is offered once a
year as a burnt sacrifice, while the monarch of the empire prostrates
himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Universe. This is the high
place of Chinese devotion, and the thoughtful visitor feels that he
ought to tread its courts with unsandalled feet, for no vulgar idolatry
has entered here. This mountain-top still stands above the waves of
corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests a faint ray of
its primeval faith. The tablet which represents the invisible deity is
inscribed with the name Shangte, the Supreme Ruler, and as we
contemplate the Majesty of the Empire before it, while the smoke ascends
from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts are irresistably carried back
to the time when the King of Salem officiated as priest of the Most High
God. There is," he adds, "no need of extended argument to establish the
fact that the early Chinese were by no means destitute of the knowledge
of the true God." Dr. Legge, the learned translator of the Chinese
classics, shares so fully the views here expressed, that he actually put
his shoes from off his feet before ascending the great altar, feeling
that amidst all the mists and darkness of the national superstition, a
trace of the glory of the Infinite Jehovah still lingered there. And in
many a discussion since he has firmly maintained that that is in a dim
way an altar of the true and living God.
Laotze, like Confucius, was agnostic; yet he could not wholly rid
himself of the influence of the ancient faith. His conception of Taou,
or Reason, was rationalistic, certainly, yet he invested it with all the
attributes of personality, as the word "Wisdom" is sometimes used in the
Old Testament. He spoke of it as "The Infinite Supreme," "The First
Beginning," and "The Great Original." Dr. Medhurst has translated from
the "Taou Teh King" this striking Taouist prayer: "O thou perfectly
honored One of heaven and earth, the rock, the origin of myriad
energies, the great manager of boundless kalpas, do Thou enlighten my
spiritual conceptions. Within and without the three worlds, the Logos,
or divine Taou, is alone honorable, embodying in himself a golden light.
May he overspread and illumine my person. He whom we cannot see with the
eye, or hear with the ear, who embraces and includes heaven and earth,
may he nourish and support the multitudes of living beings."
If we turn to the religion of the Iranian or Persian branch of the Aryan
family, we find among them also the traces of a primitive monotheism;
and that it was not borrowed from Semitic sources, through the
descendants of Abraham or others, Ebrard has shown clearly in the second
volume of his "Apologetics." Max Müller also maintains the identity of
the Iranian faith with that of the Indo-Aryans. The very first notices
of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda,
even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or
gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to
evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism,
therefore, was of later growth. Zoroaster, whom Monier Williams assigns
to the close of the sixth century B.C.,[147] speaks of himself as a
reformer sent to re-establish the pure worship of Ahura, and Haug
considers the conception of Ahura identical with that of Jehovah. High
on a rocky precipice at Behistun, Rawlinson has deciphered an
inscription claiming to have been ordered by Darius Hystaspes, who lived
500 B.C., which is as clearly monotheistic as the Song of Moses. The
Vendidad, which Rawlinson supposes to have been composed 800 years B.C.,
is full of references to minor gods, but Ahura is always supreme. The
modern Parsees of Bombay claim to be monotheistic, and declare that such
has been the faith of their fathers from the beginning.
A Parsee catechism published in Bombay twenty-five years ago reads thus:
"We believe in only one God, and do not believe in any besides Him....
He is the God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels, the stars,
the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, ... and all things of the
worlds; that God we believe in, Him we invoke, Him we adore." And lest
this should be supposed to be a modern faith, the confession further
declares that "This is the religion which the true prophet Zurthust, or
Zoroaster, brought from God."
The Shintoists of Japan, according to their sacred book, the "Kojiki,"
believe in one self-existent and supreme God, from whom others emanated.
From two of these, male and female, sprang the Goddess of the Sun, and
from her the royal line of the Mikados. There was no creation, but the
two active emanations stirred up the eternally existing chaos, till from
it came forth the teeming world of animal and vegetable life.
It has often been asserted that tribes of men are found who have no
conception of God. The author of "Two Years in the Jungle" declares that
the Hill Dyaks of Borneo are without the slightest notion of a divine
being. But a Government officer, who for two years was the guest of
Rajah Brooke, succeeded after long delay in gaining a key to the
religion of these Dyaks. He gives the name of one Supreme being among
subordinate gods, and describes minutely the forms of worship. Professor
Max Müller, while referring to this same often-repeated allegation as
having been applied to the aborigines of Australia, cites one of Sir
Hercules Robinson's Reports on New South Wales, which contains this
description of the singular faith of one of the lowest of the interior
tribes:[148] First a being is mentioned who is supreme and whose name
signifies the "maker or cutter-out," and who is therefore worshipped as
the great author of all things. But as this supreme god is supposed to
be inscrutable and far removed, a second deity is named, who is the
_revealer_ of the first and his mediator in all the affairs of men.[149]
Rev. A.C. Good, now a missionary among the cannibal tribes of West
Africa, stated in the Presbyterian General Assembly at Saratoga in May,
1890, that with all the fetishes and superstitions known among the
tribes on the Ogovie, if a man is asked who made him, he points to the
sky and utters the name of an unknown being who created all things.[150]
When Tschoop, the stalwart Mohican chief, came to the Moravians to ask
that a missionary might be sent to his people, he said: "Do not send us
a man to tell us that there is a God--we all know that; or that we are
sinners--we all know that; but send one to tell us about
salvation."[151] Even Buddhism has not remained true to the atheism of
its founder. A Thibetan Lama said to Abbé Huc: "You must not confound
religious truths with the superstitions of the vulgar. The Tartars
prostrate themselves before whatever they see, but there is one only
Sovereign of the universe, the creator of all things, alike without
beginning and without end."
But what is the testimony of the great dead religions of the past with
respect to a primitive monotheism? It is admitted that the later
developments of the old Egyptian faith were polytheistic. But it has
generally been conceded that as we approach the earliest notices of that
faith, monotheistic features more and more prevail. This position is
contested by Miss Amelia B. Edwards and others, who lean toward the
development theory. Miss Edwards declares that the earliest faith of
Egypt was mere totemism, while on the other hand Ebrard, gathering up
the results of the researches of Lepsius, Ebers, Brugsch, and Emanuel de
Rougé, deduces what seem to be clear evidences of an early Egyptian
monotheism. He quotes Manetho, who declares that "for the first nine
thousand years the god Ptah ruled alone; there was no other." According
to inscriptions quoted by De Rougé, the Egyptians in the primitive
period worshipped "the one being who truly lives, who has made all
things, and who alone has not been made." This one God was known in
different parts of Egypt under different names, which only in later
times came to stand for distinct beings. A text which belongs to a
period fifteen hundred years before Moses says:
"He has made all that is; thou alone art, the millions owe their being
to thee; he is the Lord of all that which is, and of that which is not."
A papyrus now in Paris, dating 2300 B.C., contains quotations from two
much older records, one a writing of the time of King Suffern, about
3500 B.C., which says: "The operation of God is a thing which cannot be
understood." The other, from a writing of Ptah Hotep, about 3000 B.C.,
reads: "This is the command of the God of creation, the peaceable may
come and issue orders.... The eating of bread is in conformity with the
ordinance of God; can one forget that his blessing rests thereupon?...
If thou art a prudent man teach thy son the love of God."[152]
Professor Ernest Naville, in speaking of this same subject in a course
of popular lectures in Geneva, said: "Listen now to a voice which has
come forth actually from the recesses of the sepulchre: it reaches us
from ancient Egypt.
"In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in
popular practice complete. But under the confused accents of
superstition the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar
the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number
of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred
text which is called 'The Book of the Dead.' Here is the translation of
some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God
who speaks thus: 'I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that
replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of
mortals. I am the Prince of the infinite ages. I am the Great and Mighty
God, the Most High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of
the armies which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise the
evil-doers and the persecutors of Godly men. I discover and confound the
liars. I am the all-seeing Avenger, ... the Guardian of my laws in the
land of the righteous.' These words are found mingled in the text, from
which I extract them, with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be
acknowledged that the translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is
uncertain enough; still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to
the general sense and bearing of the recent discoveries of our
_savans_."[153]
Professor Flint as against Cudworth, Ebrard, Gladstone, and others,
maintains that the Egyptian religion at the very dawn of its history had
"certain great gods," though he adds that "there were not so many as in
later times." "Ancestor worship, but not so developed as in later times,
and animal worship, but very little of it compared with later times." On
the other hand, as against Professor Tiele, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, and
others, he says: "For the opinion that its lower elements were older
than the higher there is not a particle of properly historical evidence,
not a trace in the inscriptions of mere propitiation of ancestors or of
belief in the absolute divinity of kings or animals; on the contrary
ancestors are always found propitiated through prayer to some of the
great gods; kings worshipped as emanations and images of the sun god and
the divine animals adored as divine symbols and incarnations."
Among the Greeks there are few traces of monotheism, but we have reason
for this in the fact that their earliest literature dates from so late a
period. It began with Homer not earlier than 600 B.C., and direct
accounts of the religion of the Greeks are not traced beyond 560 B.C.
But Welcker, whose examinations have been exhaustive, has, in the
opinion of Max Müller, fairly established the primitive monotheism of
the Greeks. Müller says: "When we ascend with him to the most distant
heights of Greek history the idea of God as the supreme being stands
before us as a simple fact. Next to this adoration of One God the father
of men we find in Greece a worship of nature. The powers of nature,
originally worshipped as such, were afterward changed into a family of
gods, of which Zeus became the king and father. The third phase is what
is generally called Greek mythology; but it was preceded in time, or at
least rendered possible in thought, by the two prior conceptions, a
belief in a supreme God and a worship of the powers of nature.... The
divine character of Zeus, as distinguished from his mythological
character, is most carefully brought out by Welcker. He avails himself
of all the discoveries of comparative philology in order to show more
clearly how the same idea which found expression in the ancient
religions of the Brahmans, the Sclavs, and the Germans had been
preserved under the same simple, clear, and sublime name by the original
settlers of Hellas."[154]
The same high authority traces in his own linguistic studies the
important fact that all branches of the Aryan race preserve the same
name for the Supreme Being, while they show great ramification and
variation in the names of their subordinate gods. If, therefore, the
Indo-Aryans give evidence of a monotheistic faith at the time of their
dispersion, there is an _à priori_ presumption for the monotheism of the
Greeks. "Herodotus," says Professor Rawlinson, "speaks of God as if he
had never heard of polytheism." The testimony of the Greek poets shows
that beneath the prevailing polytheism there remained an underlying
conception of monotheistic supremacy. Professor Rawlinson quotes from an
Orphic poem the words:
"Ares is war, peace
Soft Aphrodite, wine that God has made
Is Dionysius, Themis is the right
Men render to each. Apollo, too,
And Phoebus and Æschlepius, who doth heal
Diseases, are the sun. All these are one."
Max Müller traces to this same element of monotheism the real greatness
and power of the Hellenic race when he says: "What was it, then, that
preserved in their hearts (the Greeks), in spite even of the feuds of
tribes and the jealousies of states, the deep feeling of that ideal
unity which constitutes a people? It was their primitive religion; it
was a dim recollection of the common allegiance they owed from time
immemorial to the great father of gods and men; it was their belief in
the old Zeus of Dodona in the Pan-Hellenic Zeus."[155] "There is, in
truth, but one," says Sophocles, "one only God, who made both heaven and
long-extended earth and bright-faced swell of seas and force of winds."
Xenophanes says: "'Mongst gods and men there is one mightiest God not
mortal or in form or thought. Entire he sees and understands, and
without labor governs all by mind." Aratus, whom Paul quotes,[156] says:
"With Zeus began we; let no mortal voice of men leave Zeus unpraised.
Zeus fills the heavens, the streets, the marts. Everywhere we live in
Zeus. Zeus fills the sea, the shores, the harbors. _We are his
offspring, too._" The reference made by Paul evidently implies that this
Zeus was a dim conception of the one true God.
That all branches of the Semitic race were monotheistic we may call not
only Ebrard and Müller, but Renan, to witness. According to Renan,
evidences that the monotheism of the Semitic races was of a very early
origin, appears in the fact that all their names for deity--El, Elohim,
Ilu, Baal, Bel, Adonai, Shaddai, and Allah--denote one being and that
supreme. These names have resisted all changes, and doubtless extend as
far back as the Semitic language or the Semitic race. Max Müller, in
speaking of the early faith of the Arabs, says: "Long before Mohammed
the primitive intuition of God made itself felt in Arabia;" and he
quotes this ancient Arabian prayer: "I dedicate myself to thy service, O
Allah. Thou hast no companion, except the companion of whom thou art
master absolute, and of whatever is his." The book of Job and the story
of Balaam indicate the prevalence of an early monotheism beyond the pale
of the Abrahamic church. In the records of the kings of Assyria and
Babylonia there is a conspicuous polytheism, yet it is significant that
each king worshipped _one God only_. And this fact suggests, as a wide
generalization, that political and dynastic jealousies had their
influence in multiplying the names and differentiating the attributes of
ancient deities. This was notably the case in ancient Egypt, where each
invasion and each change of dynasty led to a new adjustment of the
Egyptian Pantheon.
Rome had many gods, but Jupiter was supreme. Herodotus says of the
Scythians, that they had eight gods, but one was supreme, like Zeus. The
Northmen, according to Dr. Dascent, had one supreme god known as the
"All-fader." The Druids, though worshipping various subordinate deities,
believed in One who was supreme--the creator of all things and the soul
of all things. Though conceived of in a Pantheistic sense, He was
personal and exerted a moral control, as is shown by the famous triad:
"Fear God; be just to all men; die for your country." In the highest and
purest period of the old Mexican faith we read of the Tezcucan monarch
Nezahualcoyotl, who said: "These idols of wood and stone can neither
hear nor feel; much less could they make the heavens and the earth, and
man who is the lord of it. These must be the work of the all-powerful
unknown God, the Creator of the universe, on whom alone I must rely for
consolation and support."[157] The Incas of Peru also, though
sun-worshippers, believed in a supreme creator who made the sun. The
oldest of their temples was reared to the supreme god "Virachoca." And
one of the greatest Incas has left his declared belief that "there must
be above the sun a greater and more powerful ruler, at whose behest the
sun pursues his daily and untiring round."[158]
It has been assumed throughout this lecture, that instead of an advance
in the religions of men, there has everywhere been decline. Our proofs
of this are not theoretic but historic. As an example, all writers are
agreed, I believe, that during the historic period the religion of the
Egyptians steadily deteriorated until Christianity and Mohammedanism
superseded it. In strong contrast with the lofty and ennobling prayer
which we have quoted from an ancient Egyptian record, is the degradation
of the later worship. On a column at Heliopolis, belonging to the fourth
century before Christ, is inscribed this petition: "O thou white cat,
thy head is the head of the sun god, thy nose is the nose of Thoth, of
the exceeding great love of Hemopolis." The whole prayer is on this low
level. Clement, of Alexandria, after describing the great beauty of an
Egyptian temple, proceeds to say: "The innermost sanctuary is concealed
by a curtain wrought in gold, which the priest draws aside, and there is
seen a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent, which wriggles on a purple
cover."[159]
That the religions of India have degenerated is equally clear. The fact
that all the medieval and modern reforms look back for their ideals to
the earlier and purer Aryan faith, might of itself afford sufficient
proof of this, but we have also abundant evidence which is direct. In
the Rig Veda there is little polytheism, and no idolatry. There is no
doctrine of caste, no base worship of Siva with the foul enormities of
Saktism.[160] In the most ancient times there was no doctrine of
transmigration, nor any notion that human life is an evil to be overcome
by self-mortification. Woman was comparatively free from the oppressions
which she suffered in the later periods. Infanticide had not then been
sanctioned and enjoined by religious authority, and widow burning and
the religious murders of the Thugs were unknown. And yet so deeply were
these evils rooted at the beginning of the British rule in India, that
the joint influence of Christian instruction and Governmental authority
for a whole century has not been sufficient to overcome them.
Buddhism in the first two or three centuries had much to commend it.
King Ashoka left monuments of practical beneficence and philanthropy
which have survived to this day. But countless legends soon sprang up to
mar the simplicity of Gautama's ethics. Corruptions crept in.
Compromises were made with popular superstitions and with Hindu
Saktism.[161] The monastic orders sank into corruption, and by the ninth
century of our era the system had been wholly swept from India. The
Buddhism of Ceylon was planted first by the devout son and daughter of a
king, and for a time was characterized by great purity and devotion. But
now it exists only in name, and a prominent missionary of the country
declared, in the London Missionary Conference of 1888, that nine-tenths
of the Cingalese were worshippers of serpents or of spirits.[162] The
prevailing Buddhism in Thibet, from the eighth to the tenth century, was
an admixture with Saktism and superstition. Where the system has
survived in any good degree of strength, it has been due either to
government support or to an alliance with other religions. The history
of Taouism has shown a still worse deterioration. Laotze, though
impracticable as a reformer, was a profound philosopher. His teachings
set forth a lofty moral code. Superstition he abominated. His ideas of
deity were cold and rationalistic, but they were pure and lofty. But the
modern Taouism is a medley of wild and degrading superstitions.
According to its theodicy all nature is haunted. The ignorant masses are
enthralled by the fear of ghosts, and all progress is paralyzed by the
nightmare of "fung shuay." Had not Taouism been balanced by the sturdy
common-sense ethics of Confucianism, the Chinese might have become a
race of savages.[163]
The decline of Mohammedanism from the sublime fanaticism of Abu Bekr and
the intellectual aspirations of Haroun Al Raschid, to the senseless
imbecility of the modern Turk, is too patent to need argument. The worm
of destruction was left in the system by the vices of Mohammed himself;
and from the higher level of his early followers it has not only
deteriorated, but it has dragged down everything else with it. It has
destroyed the family, because it has degraded woman. It has separated
her immeasurably from the status of dignity and honor which she enjoyed
under the influence of the early Christian church, and it has robbed her
of even that freedom which was accorded to her by heathen Rome. One need
only look at Northern Africa, the land of Cyprian and Origen, of
Augustine and the saintly Monica, to see what Islam has done. And even
the later centuries have brought no relief. Prosperous lands have been
rendered desolate and sterile, and all progress has been paralyzed.
In the history of the Greek religion it is granted that there were
periods of advancement. The times of the fully developed Apollo worship
showed vast improvement over previous periods, but even Professor Tiele
virtually admits that this was owing to the importation of foreign
influences. It was not due to any natural process of evolution; and it
was followed by hopeless corruption and decline. The last days of both
Greece and Rome were degenerate and full of depression and despair.
It is not contended that no revivals or reforms are possible in
heathenism. There have been many of these, but with all allowance for
spasmodic efforts, the general drift has been always downward.[164]
There is a natural disposition among men to multiply objects of
worship. Herbert Spencer's principle, that development proceeds from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is certainly true of the religions of
the world; but his other principle, that development proceeds from the
incoherent to the coherent, does not apply. Incoherency and moral chaos
mark the trend of all man-made faiths. The universal tendency to
deterioration is well summed up as follows by Professor Naville:
"Traces are found almost everywhere in the midst of idolatrous
superstitions, of a religion comparatively pure and often stamped with a
lofty morality. Paganism is not a simple fact; it offers to view in the
same bed two currents (like the Arve and the Arveiron)--the one pure,
the other impure. What is the relation between these two currents? ...
Did humanity begin with a coarse fetishism, and thence rise by slow
degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of a comparatively pure
monotheism first show themselves in the recent periods of idolatry?
Contemporary science inclines more and more to answer in the negative.
It is in the most ancient historical ground that the laborious
investigators of the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion.
Cut to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few
years afterward. In place of the tree cut down you will find
coppice-wood; the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided
among a multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the
opinion which tends to prevail among our savants on the subject of the
historical development of religions. The idea of one God is at the
roots--it is primitive; polytheism is derivative."[165]
We have thus far drawn our proofs of man's polytheistic tendencies from
the history of the non-Christian religions. In proof of the same general
tendency we now turn to the history of the Israelites, the chosen people
of God. We may properly appeal to the Bible as history, especially when
showing idolatrous tendencies even under the full blaze of the truth. In
spite of the supernatural revelation which they claimed to
possess--notwithstanding all their instructions, warnings, promises,
deliverances, divinely aided conquests--they relapsed into idolatry
again and again. Ere they had reached the land of promise they had begun
to make images of the gods of Egypt. They made constant compromises and
alliances with the Canaanites, and not even severe judgments could
withhold them from this downward drift. Their wisest king was
demoralized by heathen marriages, and his successors openly patronized
the heathen shrines. The abominations of Baal worship and the nameless
vices of Sodom were practised under the very shadow of the Temple.[166]
Judgments followed upon this miserable degeneracy. Prophets were sent
with repeated warnings, and many were slain for their faithful messages.
Tribe after tribe was borne into captivity, the Temple was destroyed,
and at last the nation was virtually broken up and scattered abroad.
There was indeed a true development in the church of God from the
Abrahamic period to the Apostolic day. There was a rising from a narrow
national spirit to one which embraced the whole brotherhood of man, from
type and prophecy to fulfilment, from the sins that were winked at, to a
purer ethic and the perfect law of love; but these results came not by
natural evolution--far enough from it. They were wrought out not by man,
but we might almost say, in spite of man. Divine interpositions were all
that saved Judaism from a total wreck, even as the national unity was
destroyed. A new Dispensation was introduced, a Divine Redeemer and an
Omnipotent Spirit were the forces which saved the world from a second
universal apostasy.
We come nearer still to the church of God for proofs of man's inherent
tendency to polytheism. Even under the new Dispensation we have seen the
church sink into virtual idolatry. Within six centuries from the time of
Christ and His apostles there had been a sad lapse into what seemed the
worship of images, pictures, and relics, and a faith in holy places and
the bones of saints. What Mohammed saw, or thought he saw, was a
Christian idolatry scarcely better than that of the Arabian Koreish.
And, as if by the judgment of God, the churches of the East were swept
with a destruction like that which had been visited upon the Ten Tribes.
In the Christianity of to-day, viewed as a whole, how strong is the
tendency to turn from the pure spiritual conception of God to some more
objective trust--a saint, a relic, a ritual, an ordinance. In the old
churches of the East or on the Continent of Europe, how much of virtual
idolatry is there even now? It is only another form of the tendency in
man to seek out many devices--to find visible objects of trust--to try
new panaceas for the ailments of the soul--to multiply unto himself gods
to help his weakness. This is just what has been done in all ages and
among all races of the world. This explains polytheism. Man's religious
nature is a vine, and God is its only proper support. Once fallen from
that support, it creeps and grovels in all directions and over all false
supports.
We have not resorted to Divine revelation for proofs except as history.
But our conclusions drawn from heathen sources bring us directly, as one
face answereth to another face in a glass, to the plain teachings of
Paul and other inspired writers, who tell us that the human race was
once possessed of the knowledge of One Supreme God, but that men
apostatized from Him, preferring to worship the creature rather than the
Creator. There are no traces of an upward evolution toward clearer
knowledge and purer lives, except by the operation of outward causes,
but there are many proofs that men's hearts have become darkened and
their moral nature more and more depraved. In all lands there have been
those who seemed to gain some glimpses of truth, and whose teachings
were far above the average sentiment and character of their times, but
they have either been discarded like Socrates and the prophets of
Israel, or they have obtained a following only for a time and their
precepts have fallen into neglect. It has been well said that no race of
men live up to their religion, however imperfect it may be. They first
disregard it, and then at length degrade it, to suit their apostate
character.
Paul's estimate of heathen character was that of a man who, aside from
his direct inspiration, spoke from a wide range of observation. He was a
philosopher by education, and he lived in an age and amid national
surroundings which afforded the broadest knowledge of men, of customs,
of religious faiths, of institutions. Trained as a Jew, dealing
constantly with the most enlightened heathen, persecuting the
Christians, and then espousing their cause, his preparation for a broad,
calm, and unerring judgment of the character of the Gentile nations was
complete; and his one emphatic verdict was _apostasy_.