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A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF RELIGIONS.
Translated from the Dutch of
J. H. SCHOLTEN,
Professor at Leyden,
by Francis T. Washburn.
Reprinted by permission from "The Religious Magazine and Monthly
Review."
Boston: Crosby & Damrell, 100 Washington St. 1870.
A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF RELIGIONS.
INTRODUCTION.[1]
The conception of religion presupposes, _a_, God as object; _b_, man as
subject; _c_, the mutual relation existing between them. According to
the various stages of development which men have reached, religious
belief manifests itself either in the form of a passive feeling of
dependence, where the subject, not yet conscious of his independence,
feels himself wholly overmastered by the deity, or the object of
worship, as by a power outside of and opposed to himself; or, when the
feeling of independence has awakened, in a one-sided elevation of the
human, whereby man in worshiping a deity deifies himself. In the highest
stage of religious development, the most entire feeling of dependence is
united in religion with the strongest consciousness of personal
independence. The first of these forms is exhibited in the fetich and
nature-worship of the ancient nations; the second in Buddhism, and in
the deification of the human, which reaches its full height among the
Greeks. The true religion, prepared in Israel, is the Christian, in
which man, grown conscious of his oneness with God, is ruled by the
divine as an inner power of life, and acts spontaneously and freely
while in the fullest dependence upon God. Since Christ, no more perfect
religion has appeared. What is true and good in Islamism was borrowed
from Israel and Christianity.
Although it is probable that every nation passed through different forms
of religious belief before its religion reached its highest development,
yet the earlier periods lie in great part beyond the reach of historical
investigation. The history of religion, therefore, has for its task the
review of the various forms of religion with which we are historically
acquainted, in the order of psychological development.
CHAPTER I.
FETICHISM. THE CHINESE. THE EGYPTIANS.
1. FETICHISM.
The lowest stage of religious development is fetichism, as it is found
among the savage tribes of the polar regions, and in Africa, America,
and Australia. In this stage, man's needs are as yet very limited and
exclusively confined to the material world. Still too little developed
intellectually to worship the divine in nature and her powers, he thinks
he sees the divinity which he seeks in every unknown object which
strikes his senses, or which his imagination calls up. In this stage,
religion has no higher character than that of caprice and of love of
the mysterious and marvelous, mixed with fear and a slavish adoration of
the divine. The worship and the priest's office (Shaman, Shamanism)
consist here chiefly in the use of charms, to exorcise a dreaded power.
From this savage fetichism the nature-worship found among the Aztecs in
Mexico, and the worship of the sun in Peru, are distinguished by the
greater definiteness and order of their religious conceptions and
usages. In them the gods have names, and an ordained priesthood cares
for the religious interests of the people. The highest form to which
fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the great spirit,
which is found among the ancient tribes of North America.
2. THE CHINESE.
When man reaches a higher development, caprice and chance disappear from
religion. Having outgrown fetichism, man begins, as is the case among
the Chinese, to distinguish in the world around him an active and a
passive principle, force and matter (Yang and Yn), heaven and earth
(Kien and Kouen). We have here nature-worship in its beginnings. In this
stage, even less than in fetichism, is there a definite idea of God,
much less a conception of him as personal and spiritual lord. The
Chinese, from the practical, empirical point of view peculiar to him,
recognizes the spiritual only in man and chiefly in the state. His
religion, therefore, is confined exclusively to the faithful keeping of
the laws of the state (the Celestial Kingdom), in which he sees the
reflection of heaven, to the recognition of the Emperor as the son and
representative of heaven, and to the worship of the forefathers,
especially of the great men and departed emperors, to whose memory the
Chinese temples, or pagodas, are dedicated. The origin of this religion
dates, according to the tradition, from Fo-hi (2950 B.C.), the founder
of the Chinese state. In the fifth century before Christ, Kong-tse, or
Kong-fu-tse (Confucius), appeared as a reformer of the religion of his
countrymen, and gathered the ancient records and traditions of his
people into a sacred literature, which is known by the name of the
"King" (the books), "Yo-King" (the book of nature), "Chu-King" (the book
of history), "Chi-King" (the book of songs). The contents of the "King"
became later with the Chinese sages Meng-tse (360 B.C.) and Tschu-tsche
(1200 A.D.) an object of philosophical speculation. The doctrine of
Lao-tse, the younger contemporary of Kong-tse, which lays down as the
basis of the world, that is of the unreal or non-existent, a supreme
principle, _Tao_, or _Being_, corresponds with the Brahma doctrine of
the Indians, among whom he lived for a long time; but this doctrine
never became popular in China.
3. THE EGYPTIANS.
The worship of nature, which is seen in its beginnings among the
Chinese, exhibits itself among the Egyptians in a more developed form as
theogony. Here also the reflecting mind rose to the recognition of two
fundamental principles, the producing and the passive power of nature,
Kneph and Neith, from which sprang successively the remaining powers of
nature, time, air, earth, light and darkness, personified by the fantasy
of the people into as many divinities. The Egyptian mythology also (none
has as yet been discovered among the Chinese) exhibits a like character.
Fruitfulness and drought, the results of the Nile's overflowing and
receding, are imaged in the myth of _Osiris_, _Isis_, and _Typhon_. The
visible form under which the divine was worshiped in Egypt was the
sacred animal, the bull _Apis_, dedicated to _Osiris_, the cow,
dedicated to _Isis_, as symbols of agriculture; the bird _Ibis_, the
crocodile, the dog _Anubis_, and other animals, whose physical
characteristics impressed the as yet childish man, who saw in them the
symbol, either of the beneficent power of nature which moved him to
thankfulness, or of a destructive power which he dreaded and whose anger
he sought to avert. The religion of Egypt was not of a purely spiritual
character. To the man whose eye is not yet open to the manifestation of
the spiritual around him and in him, the divine is not spirit, but as
yet only nature. The animal, although in the form of the sphinx
approaching the human, holds in Egyptian art a place above the human as
symbol of the divine.