The question, Have we still a religion, propounded by David Friedrich
Strauss some few years ago, will long engage the attention of radical
thinkers. It is clear that to answer it satisfactorily we must
determine, in the first instance, what meaning ought rightly to be
attached to the term religion. In common parlance, it is often used with
reference to mere externals, a religious person being one who conforms
to the rites and usages of some particular church. On the other hand,
every innovation in the sphere of doctrine is branded as irreligious.
Thus Luther was deemed irreligious by the Catholics; St. Boniface by
the heathen Germans, Jesus by the Jews, Elijah by the servants of Baal.
There is not any single form, nor even a single fundamental principle
common to all religions. Religion is not identical with theology. It
is indeed often maintained that the belief in a personal God should
be regarded as the foundation and criterion of religion; but upon this
assumption, two facts remain inexplicable, the existence of religion
before ever the idea of a deity had arisen among men, and the existence
of what may be termed an atheistical religion, in conscious antagonism
to the doctrine of a personal God. Among the lower races we find men
worshipping, sacrificing and uttering their invocations to mountains,
fountains, rivers, rocks and stones: they know not a deity--sometimes
they have not even idols, and yet they certainly have, after a fashion
of their own, a religion. Again, Buddhism, while possessing a subtle
system of philosophy and an admirable code of ethics, starts with the
proposition that there never was a creation, and in consequence, never
a creator, and yet more than four hundred millions of the earth's
inhabitants call it their religion!
The question returns to us, What is religion? It is not creed; it is
not sacrifice; it is not prayer; it is not covered by the dogmas of any
special form of belief; it has acted as a controlling force in all ages,
in every zone, among all manner of men. Are we devoid of it? Of it? Of
what?
The feeling which the presence of the Infinite in the thoughts of man
awakens within him, is called, the feeling of the sublime. _The feeling
of the sublime is the root of the religious sentiment._ It assumes
various phases, and to these correspond the various religions. Let us
endeavor to enumerate some of the most prominent.
The feeling of the sublime is awakened by the mysterious. The indefinite
gives us our earliest presentiment of the infinite; the religion
of mystery is fetishism. The feeling of the sublime is awakened by
exhibitions of superhuman power. The religion of power is paganism. The
feeling of the sublime is evoked by vastness; the religions of vastness
are Brahminism and Buddhism. The loftiest type of sublimity is to be
found in the morally infinite. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have
sought to give it expression.*
* We do not pretend that the above schedule is at all
exhaustive. Various elements of the sublime, not mentioned
in the text, have entered into the composition of each of
the great religions. We have merely attempted to seize the
more salient feature of a few leading types.
Let us discuss in the first place the origin of Fetishism. There are
certain natural phenomena that fill us with alarm, without our being
able to attribute the effect to any definite cause. The darkness of
night, the rustling of leaves, the moaning of the wind through the
forest, the wailing cry of certain birds, and the peculiar effects of a
gathering fog, are of this kind. I have had occasion to observe a little
child suddenly starting from its play with every sign of fear depicted
upon its countenance; the spasm passed away as quickly as it had come,
but was repeated at various intervals, until at last the child ran up to
me in uncontrollable alarm, and threw up its arms for protection: it was
a raw wintry day, a gusty wind blew fitfully against the windows; and
the dreary sound of the rattling panes could be distinctly heard in the
stillness of the room; on closer observation I noticed that the signs
of alarm in the child recurred with great regularity, as often as
this sound was repeated. In a similar way we may imagine our earliest
ancestors to have been affected by whatever was vague and mysterious in
nature. The sense of uncertainty occasioned in this manner, gave rise in
the primitive man to the first conceptions of mysterious powers beyond
him.
The invention, or rather the discovery, of fire tended still further in
the same direction. To us it is barely possible to imagine life without
this most useful of the elements. The wild beast flees fire and fears
it, man uses it, and it becomes the chief instrument of civilization.
But if we strive to picture to ourselves the state of the savage's mind
on his first acquaintance with fire and its properties we shall find
him utterly at a loss to account for. How will he regard this nimble,
playful being, so bright and yet so fearful in its ravages. Of the laws
of chemical action he has of course no conception, but he has sometimes
seen the lightning strike into the wood of the tree, and now from the
same wood he evokes the semblance of the lightning. He is twirling two
dry sticks between his hands; of a sudden, a lambent flame shoots forth,
seizes the wood, makes away with it, and leaves nothing but blackened
cinders behind. Whence did it come, whither has it vanished? Here was
a new mystery; a spiritual presence, latent in trees and stones; kindly
and beneficent at times, then again hostile and fiercely destructive.
The mystery of the preparation of fire is celebrated in the ancient
hymns of the Vedah. We there find its birth from the friction of the
double sticks described, and its properties rehearsed in reverent
language. It is invoked like any superior spirit to bless its votaries,
and to protect them from harm. The important role ascribed to fire in
the sacred usages of the ancients, is well-known, and the origin of fire
worship apparent.
The theory of dreams, to which we have referred on a previous occasion,
contributed in like manner, to extend the boundaries of the world of
mystery. Convinced that he bore within himself an airy counterfeit of
self, the savage attributed the same species of possession to things
animate and inanimate alike. Why should not beasts and rivers and stones
have their ghosts like man? Moreover, as to the ghosts of the human
dead, no one could tell where they might take up their abode. They
might be anywhere and everywhere. Their countless legions surrounded
the living in all places. They were heard shouting in the echo among
the hills; they were seen to ride past on the midnight gale. Often
they assumed the shape of birds and reptiles and beasts of prey. Those
creatures were singled out with a preference, whose movements and habits
suggested the idea of mystery. Thus the owl was supposed to harbor an
evil spirit, and the serpent was worshipped because of its stealthy,
gliding motion, its venomous bite, and the fascination in its eye.
Serpent worship existed the world over. Traces of it are preserved in
the literature of the Greeks and Romans, and it was practised even among
the Hebrews, as the Books of Kings attest. Among certain African tribes
it is still customary to keep huge serpents in temples, and priests are
dedicated to their service. Powerful animals also, such as the bear,
the lion and the tiger, were sometimes supposed to contain the ghosts of
departed chieftains, and were revered accordingly.
If we remember the unfriendly relations supposed to subsist between the
living and the dead, we may conceive the state of alarm in which our
primitive ancestors must have passed their lives on beholding themselves
thus beset on every side, with ghosts or demons in disguise. A thousand
fabulous terrors haunted their imagination. Wherever they turned they
suspected lurking foes; spirits were in the earth, in the air, in birds,
in animals, in reptiles, in trees. They could not move a step without
infringing on the boundaries of the spirit realm. Every object the least
extraordinary in size, or shape, or color, appeared to them the token of
some demon's presence, and was worshipped in consequence, not on its own
account, but because of the mystery which it suggested.
In this manner Fetishism arose. The fetish worshipper leaves his hut in
the morning, sees some bright pebble glistening on his path, lifts it
from the ground and says, this shall be my fetish. If he succeeds in the
business of the day, he places the little object in a shrine, gilds it,
brings it food, addresses his prayers to it; if it fails, it is cast
aside. Again, if after a little time the fetish ceases to fulfil his
wishes, he breaks it and drags it in the mire by way of punishment.
Such are a few of the gross and grotesque conceptions to which the
religion of mystery has given birth. It is true, to the educated mind
of the present day they will appear the very reverse of sublime. But
greatness is relative, and our own loftier conceptions of the sublime
are but the slow result of a long process of growth and development.