It has often been said that fear is the beginning of religion; a
statement of this kind however, cannot be accepted, without serious
qualification. There is a sense of kinship with the great, in whatever
form it may appear, of which even the meanest are susceptible. A nation
worships the hero who ruins it; and slaves will take a certain pride in
the superiority of their masters. It is not fear so much as admiration
of might which makes men servants of the mighty. The first tyrants on
earth were, in all likelihood, strong, agile, and brave men, possessing
in an extraordinary degree, the qualities which all others coveted. They
won applause, they were looked up to as natural leaders, and the arm of
force maintained what the esteem of their fellows had accorded in the
first instance. There is a touch of the sublime even in the rudest
adoration of force.
In the second stage of religious development, which we are now
approaching, the theory of possession discussed in the above, was
extended to the heavenly bodies, and the sun, moon and stars were
endowed with the attributes of personal beings. Hence the origin of the
great gods. As the sun is the most conspicuous body in the heavens,
the sun god figures as the central deity in every pantheon. The various
phases through which the luminary passes are represented in distinct
personalities. We find gods of the rising sun and of the setting
sun; gods of the sun of spring, summer and winter, gods also of the
cloud-enshrouded sun, that battles with the storm giants.
Since the hosts of heaven were supposed to be beings allied in nature
to ourselves, the action and interaction of the meteoric phenomena
was ascribed to personal motives, and the ingenuity of the primitive
philosophers was exhausted in finding plausible pretexts to explain
their attractions and repulsions, their seeming friendships and
hostilities. Thus arose the quaint and fanciful myths with which the
traditions of antiquity abound. Those problems which the modern mind
seeks to settle with the help of scientific investigation, the limited
experience of an earlier age was barely competent to attack, and it
covered with some pretty fiction, the difficulties which it could not
solve. The genealogy and biography of the sun-god formed the main theme
of all mythologies.
The daily progress of the sun through the heavens, is described as
follows: Each morning the golden crowned god leaves his golden palace
in the East, deep down below the ocean's waves; he mounts his golden
chariot, drawn by fiery steeds. A rosy fingered maiden opens the purple
gate of day, upward rush the steeds through blinding mist along the
steep ascent of heaven, down they plunge at evening into the cooling
waters of the sea; the naiads await the deity and bear him backward to
his orient home.
Again the fair youth Adonis is said to come out of the forest, where
nymphs had nurtured him. Venus and he hunt in joyous company through
wood and dale. One day Adonis is slain; the blood that trickled from
his wounds has turned the roses red, and the tender anemones have sprung
from the tears that love wept when she beheld his fall. The young god
who comes out of the forest is Spring; for a time he disports joyously
on earth, with love for his companion, but his term of life is quickly
ended. Spring dies, but ever returns anew. Among the Syrian women it
was customary for a long period to observe the festival of the Adoneiah;
with every sign of grief they first bemoaned the god's untimely death;
they beat their breasts, cut off the rich luxuriance of their hair;
showed upon his effigy the marks of the wounds he had received; bound
him with linen bands, anointed him with costly oil and spices, and then
buried him. On the seventh day the cry was heard, Adonis lives, Adonis
is resurrected from the grave. The story of a young god typical of the
Spring who suffers a premature death, and after a time resurrects from
the grave is well known in the mythologies of other nations.
The progress of the sun through the seasons is thus personified. The
rays of the sun are described as the locks of the sun-god's hair. When
the sun's heat waxes, these locks increase in abundance, when it wanes
they diminish, until in mid-winter the head of the sun-god is entirely
bald. At this season the god is supposed to be exceedingly weak, and his
eye, bright in the summer, is now become blind. He is far from his home,
and subject to the power of his enemies, the wintry storms. These traits
recur in the familiar Hebrew myth of Samson. The word Samson means sun;
he is bound with ropes, as is also the sun-god among the Polynesians.
The secret of his strength is in his hair. Shorn of this the giant
becomes feeble as a child, and is blinded by his foes.
But it is the sun in its conflict with the demons of the storm, the sun
as a warrior and a hero, that chiefly attracts the _religious_ reverence
of the heroic age. In nature there is no more striking exhibition of
power than is revealed in the phenomena of the thunder-storm. Even to us
it has not lost its sublimity, and a sense of awe overcomes us whenever
the mighty spectacle is enacted in the heavens. Primitive man had a far
deeper interest in the issue of the tempest than we are now capable of
appreciating. To him the clouds appeared to be ferocious monsters, and
when they crowded about the central luminary, he feared that they might
quench its light in everlasting darkness. The very existence of the
universe seemed to be threatened. The sun-god, the true friend of man,
however arises to wage war against the demons: a terrific uproar follows
and the contending forces meet. Do you hear Thor's far-sounding
hammer, Jove's bolt falling in the thunder clap: do you see Indra's
lightning-spear flashing across the sky, and piercing the sides of the
storm dragon? The light triumphs; the tempest rolls away, but presently
returns to be again defeated. In this way arose the transparent stories
of Jupiter's conflict with Typhon, his precipitate flight, and his final
victory; the story of Indra's warfare against the writhing serpent,
Vritra, and numerous others that might be mentioned. It is the sun-god
who flashes the lightning and hurls the thunder. To him men owe the
maintenance of the order of existence. He is the mightiest of the gods.
Fighting their battles on high, he is invoked by the warriors to aid
them in their earthly-conflicts; he takes precedence of all the other
deities; he the strongest god is raised to the throne of the celestial
state.
Now if we study the history of these deities, their intercourse among
themselves and with men, we find them to be no more than colossal images
of ourselves cast on the mists of the unknown. It is our face and form
that Jupiter wears; the echo of our wishes comes back to us in his
oracles. "If horses and cows could draw their gods," an ancient
philosopher has pointedly said, "as horses and cows would they draw
them." The gods share our passions, the good and the evil, distinguished
only in this, that what we feebly attempt, they can execute on a scale
of gigantic magnitude. They love and bless and shower a thousand gifts
upon their worshippers; but they can hate also; are vain, vindictive,
cruel.
The gods demand tribute. Like the kings of earth, they received the best
share of the spoils of war and of the chase; and gold and silver also
was deposited in their sanctuaries. Perfumed incense and dainty cakes
were placed upon their altars. The gods are hungry, they must be fed.
The gods are thirsty, and certain strong narcotic beverages were brewed
especially for their benefit. For this among the Hindoos the juice of
the soma plant was mixed with pure milk.
The gods demand blood. The wide prevalence of human sacrifice is the
saddest fact that stains the annals of religious history. Among the
Fijians the new boat of the chieftain was not permitted to venture upon
the waves until it had been washed with human blood, in order to secure
it against shipwreck. Among the Khonds of India, we learn that the body
of a human victim was literally torn in pieces and his blood mixed
with the new turned clod, in order to insure a plentiful harvest. It is
estimated that at least twenty-five hundred human beings were annually
sacrificed in the temples of Mexico. Human sacrifice was known among
the Greeks, and its practice among the Hebrews is recorded in the Hebrew
Bible.
When the manners of men ameliorated, and gentler customs began to
supplant the barbarous usages of an earlier day, the tyranny of the
gods was still feared, but various modes of substitution were adopted
to appease their jealousy of human happiness. In India we are told, that
the god of light being displeased with the constant effusion of blood,
commanded a buffalo to appear from out the jungle, and a voice was heard
saying, sacrifice the buffalo and liberate the man.
Another mode of substitution was to give a part for the whole. Some one
member of the body was mutilated or curtailed in order to indicate that
the person's life was in reality forfeit to the god. Among certain of
the aboriginal tribes of America, the youth, on reaching the years of
maturity, was forced to place his hand upon a buffalo's skull, and one
or more joints of the finger were then cut off and dedicated to the
great spirit. There were other modes of mutilation of which I dare not
speak, but I will briefly add that the so-called rite of the covenant,
which is practised among the Jews even at the present day, rose in
exactly the same manner. Of course the original signification of the
custom has been forgotten and a purely symbolical mean-ing has been
attached to it. Nevertheless, its continuance is a disgrace to religion.
The grounds of sanity on which it is urged, are not in themselves
tenable, and if they were, religion would have no concern with them. It
is but a fresh instance of the stubborn vitality which seems to inhere
in the hoary superstitions of the past.
Occasionally, when a whole people was threatened with destruction, some
prominent and beloved individual was selected for sacrifice, in order
that by his death he might save the rest. The same feature was also
introduced into the legends of the gods. Philo tells us that the great
God El whom the Hebrews and Phoenicians worshiped, once descended to
earth, and became a king. This El was the supreme deity. He had an only
son whom he loved. One day when great dangers threatened his people,
the god determined to sacrifice his only begotten (--Greek--) son and
to redeem his people: and year by year thereafter a solemn festival was
celebrated in Phoenicia in honor of that great sacrifice.
The religion of force has left its dark traces in the history of
mankind. Even the higher religions accepted, while they spiritualized,
its degrading conceptions into their systems. Slowly only and with the
general spread of intelligence and morality, can we hope that its last
vestiges will be purged from the minds of men.
Vastness is an element of the sublime. In the religious conceptions of
the Hindoos we find it illustrated. It entered alike into the system of
the Brahmin and of the Buddhist, and determined their tone and quality.
A certain fondness for the gigantic, is peculiar to Hindoo character.
Witness the almost boundless periods of their ancient chronology;
the colossal forms with which the remains of their monuments and
architecture abound. A great Aryan nation having advanced from the
waters of the Indus to the shores of the sacred Ganges and having
subdued the natives by the force of superior numbers or bravery,
had learned to forget the active pursuits of war, and yielded to the
lassitude engendered by the climate of their new settlements. Around
them they beheld a rich and luxuriant vegetation; birds of rare and
many colored plumage, stately trees rising from interminable jungles.
Ravishing perfumes lulled their senses as they reposed in the shade of
these fairy-like forests. It was a land suited to dreamy contemplation.
Here the philosophic priests might dwell upon the vastness of the
Universal, and the imagination bewildered by the ever shifting phenomena
of the scene might well seek some principle of unity which could connect
and explain the whole. Brahma was the name they gave to the pervading
Spirit of All things. From Brahma the entire order of existence has
emanated; the elements of material things, plants, birds, beasts and
men. The lower castes came forth first and are nearest the brutes;
the castes of free-born workmen, and of warriors next, the priests and
saints last, in whom the world's soul found its loftiest expression.
To Brahma all things must return. Passing through an endless series of
transformations, and paying in the long and painful interval the penalty
of every crime it has committed, the migrating spirit of man is led back
at last to its primal source, and is resolved in the Brahma whence it
arose. The connection between individual and universal life was thus
kept constantly in view. The soul in the course of its wanderings might
pass through every conceivable mode of existence; might assume the
shape of creeping plants and worms, and wild animals; might rise to the
possession of miraculous powers in the heavens of the Rishis, while its
final destiny was to be reunited with the One and All.
The Buddhist Nirvana resembles the Brahma in being accounted the
ultimate principle of the world. When in the sixth century B. C. the
royal Hermit of the Cakyas revolted against the cruel despotism of the
priesthood, the legend relates that the sight of suffering in the forms
of sickness, old age and death, roused him from a life of indolent
pleasure, and impelled him to seek a remedy for the ills of human life.
His counsels were sweet and kindly; he taught self-control and wise
moderation in the indulgence of the passions, and brotherly help and
sympathy to lessen the evils which foresight cannot avert. He lifted
the degraded masses of the Indian land from out their dull despair; he
warred against the distinctions of caste, he took women and slaves for
his companions, he was a prophet of the people, whom the people loved.
But even to him the ills of this mortal condition seemed little when
compared with the endless possibilities of future ill that awaited
the soul in the course of its ceaseless transmigrations. He yearned to
shorten its weary path to the goal; and the mystic methods by which he
sought to enter Nirvana were a means adapted to this end. Nirvana is
the beginning and the end of things. Nirvana in which there is neither
action nor feeling; in which intelligence and consciousness are
submerged, appeared to this pessimist preacher the last, the only
reality. Life is a delusion, real only in its pains: the entire
cessation of conscious existence, is the solution he offers to human
suffering.
Nirvana is the universal--its conception is vast and dim; it hovers in
the distance before the pilgrim of the earth; there will he find rest.
Unlike the Western nations, the Hindoos regarded the idea of immortality
with dread and terror, rather than pleased anticipation. The highest
promises of their religion, were intended to assure them that they would
cease to continue as individual beings or cease to continue altogether.
Peace in the tomb when this present toil is over seemed to them the
most desirable of goods, and a dreamless sleep from which no angel trump
should ever wake the sleeper.
"Two things," says Kant, "fill the soul with ever new and increasing
admiration and reverence; the star-lit heavens above me, and the moral
law within me."*
* Kant's Works (Rosenkranz edition) vol. viii. p. 312.
The Hebrews were the first to lend to the moral ideas a controlling
influence in the sphere of religion. Let me attempt to briefly sketch
the origin of Monotheism amongst them, as numerous considerations
elsewhere recited in detail, have led me to conceive of it. The
religions of the Semitic nations who surrounded ancient Israel were
intensely emotional in character, and their gods were gods of pleasure
and pain. In the temples unbounded license alternated with self
sacrificing asceticism. The lewd rites of the goddess of love must
be regarded as typical of the one; the slaughter of sons in honor of
Moloch, of the other. Now the Hebrews have been distinguished for the
purity of their home life from a very early period of their history. The
high value which they set on male offspring, the jealous vigilance with
which they guarded the virtue of their women are alike illustrated in
the narratives of the Bible. The more gifted and noble minded among
them, beholding their domestic feelings outraged by the prevailing
religions, rebelled against the gross conceptions of idolatry. How could
they offer up their beloved sons for sacrifice, how could they give
over their wives and daughters to shame? The controlling force of their
character determined the doctrines of their creed. Judaism became, so to
speak, a family religion. Jehovah is conceived of as the husband of
the people. Israel shall be his true and loyal spouse, the children
of Israel are His children. The image of Jehovah is that of the ideal
patriarch. Like the patriarch, he is the head of the spiritual family
of man. Like the patriarch in ancient times, he is the lawgiver and
the judge; He is the guardian of domestic purity. The word for false
religion in Hebrew signifies fornication. "Contend against your mother,"
says Jehovah, "for I am not her spouse, nor she my wife." "My people
lust after false gods, for the spirit of impurity has seduced them." And
the day of the triumph of the true religion is thus predicted: "On that
day thou shalt not call me any more my Baal, (paramour) but thou shalt
call me my husband, and I shall wed thee in justice, etc." Thus the idea
of Jehovah sprang from the soil of the family, and the conception of a
divine father in heaven was derived from the analogy of the noblest of
moral institutions on earth. The spiritual God of the Hebrews was the
personification of the moral Ideal.
Like his relations to the chosen people and to mankind in general,
the relations of the Deity to the external world were described in
accordance with the demands of the Ethical Law. Two things morality
insists upon; first, that the natural in its coarser acceptation shall
be subordinate to the moral. Secondly, that in the scale of values
itself shall occupy the highest rank, and that the purpose human life on
earth can only be a moral purpose. As the mechanism of nature is not of
itself calculated to harmonize with the purposes of spirit, it behooves
that the spiritual God shall possess a power over matter adequate to
enforce the claims of the moral ideal, such power as only the creator
can exert over his creatures. Hence the doctrine of the creation. And
again the state of perfection to which the human heart aspires can only
be attained through the instrumentality of supreme wisdom, power and
love, in a millennial age when the scheme of the universe will be
perfected in the reign of absolute justice and peace. Hence the doctrine
of the Messiah. Both doctrines are the typical expression of a moral
need.
In the opening of Genesis we read a description of the making of the
world. All was wild vast chaos, and darkness brooded over the abyss,
when the Spirit of Jehovah breathed on the waters; a single word of
command and light penetrated the gloom, the waters divided, the great
luminaries started forth on their course; the earth clothed herself in
verdure, and the forms of living beings sprang into existence. The words
"God saw everything he had made and behold it was very good," contain
the gist of the narrative. In Zephaniah and Isaiah we read: "On that day
I will turn to the people a pure language that they may all call upon
the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent." "No one shall then
do evil, no one hurt in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be
full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."
These visions are not true in the sense of historical occurrences past
or future. That the world was ever created out of nothing, what human
understanding can conceive of it? That a time will come when society
shall be so transformed that the pure language of love alone shall be
spoken, who that is instructed in the failings of our finite nature can
credit it? They are true in the sense of ideals; true, with the truth
of poetry, bodying forth in concrete shape the universal yearnings of
mankind.
There is also another element of belief associated with the doctrine of
the Messiah, which still more plainly illustrates the typical value of
religious tenets. In the coming week the churches throughout Christendom
will rehearse the story of the passion and the death of their founder.
Mournful chants and lamentations will recall every circumstance of the
dark drama that closed on Calvary. That tale of harrowing agony still
moves the hearts of millions as though it were a tale of yesterday. It
is the symbol of the suffering and the crucifixion of the whole human
race. "Ah, but our griefs he has borne, our sorrows he has carried, he
was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities."
Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the author of these lines
transcribed in them the sad experience of the reformers of his day. He
does not refer to any one Messiah; he speaks of that legacy of sacrifice
which is the heritage of the great and good, the world over. For who can
help us when we are plunged in deepest anguish, when it seems as though
we must sink under the load of trouble, but one who has endured like
trials, endured and triumphed over them? It is the martyrdom of the pure
that has redeemed mankind from guilt and sin? There is this constant
atonement of the strong for the weak, of the good for the evil. As old
Paul Gerhard has it in his seventeenth century hymn:
"When utmost dread shall seize me,
That human heart can know,
Do thou from pain release me,
By thy great pain and woe."
The teachings of religion then have their source in the aspirations
of the human heart; are the echoes of our wishes and our hopes. Not
valueless on that account, but valuable only in so far as they express
in noble types, noble aspirations of our souls. It were sad indeed if
morality depended upon the certainty of dogma. On the contrary it
is true that all that is best and grandest in dogma, is due to the
inspiration of the moral law in man. The time will come when the tenets
of faith will no longer be narrowly understood as now; and while
their influence will still be great, they will cease to be harmful
and confining. They will be used as rare imagery, to deck the sublime
meanings which they symbolize; not as vessels that contain the absolute
truth, but as choice and beautiful vases, fit to hold the ever fresh and
ever blooming flowers of the ideal.
The dogmatic assertion of religious teachings we hold to be a serious
evil, and dogma as such we cannot accept. Its influence in the past has
been pernicious, and is so at the present day no less. It has inflamed
the hatred of man against his brother man, it has led to the fatal error
of duties toward a personal Creator, distinct from our duties toward our
fellows: it has perverted the moral sense, by giving to the concern of
future salvation, a degree of prominence before which the interests
of the present life sink into comparative insignificance; it does not
afford us a common basis whereon we could unite, for it is by nature
uncertain and calculated to provoke dissensions. On the other hand we
behold in conscience the root of whatever good religion has achieved,
and the law of conscience must suffice to guide and elevate our lives.
To refresh the moral sentiment is the one thing needful in our time, and
indeed presents a task on whose accomplishment the highest interests of
society depend. Time will show that a simple appeal to duty will surely
suffice to lead men to more earnest exertions toward the good. Time will
show that those who know no other mode of salvation than the salvation
which is attained by works of love, will be at least as active in the
pursuit of virtue as those who put their trust in faith.
The gold of morality has been variously coined in the world's religious
systems. Various have been the symbols that were stamped thereon, and
various the images of the King in whose name it was issued, but
their value so far as they had value was in the moral gold that they
contained, and in naught else. Let Liberalism stamp its coin with the
Eagle of Liberty only, in its ethical teachings it will still retain the
substance of all religion.
Dogma we will keep in abeyance,--this is our point of departure, and
the deed superior to the creed. Be it ours to hold high the moral ideal,
whether we clothe it with personality or not. Be it ours to act divine
things, no matter how we regard divine mysteries. Be it ours to help in
lifting up the fallen, to lend free utterance to the complaints of
the oppressed, to brand the social iniquities of our time, to give our
hearts warmth and the labor of our hands to the cause of their redress,
and to push on with whatever power we may, the progress of our race
toward those high and holy goals of which the dreamers dream, the
prophets prophesy.