Veda in which a belief in immortality is expressed, remarks with great
truth: 'We here find, not without astonishment, beautiful conceptions
on immortality expressed in unadorned language with child-like
conviction. If it were necessary, we might here find the most powerful
weapons against the view which has lately been revived, and proclaimed
as new, that Persia was the only birthplace of the idea of
immortality, and that even the nations of Europe had derived it from
that quarter. As if the religious spirit of every gifted race was not
able to arrive at it by its own strength.'--('Journal of the German
Oriental Society,' vol. iv. p. 427.) See Dr. Muir's article on Yama,
in the 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' p. 10.]
[Footnote 29: M. M., Die Todtenbestattung bei den Brahmanen
'Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft,' vol. ix. p.
xii.]
[Footnote 30: Dr. Muir, article on Yama, p. 18.]
Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the
discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our
thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life.
No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions
into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we
distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and
all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of
view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come
to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight
into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that
a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most
important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism,
will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to
the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we
stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and
without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it
critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.
Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of
religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:
1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form,
or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which
does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth
sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after
Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we
have in our own religion. No one who has not examined
patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can
know what Christianity really is, or can join with such
truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not
ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'
II.
CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.[31]
In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other
Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of
questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can
select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick
intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been
published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having
discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies
of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of
the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate
chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old
Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the
principles according to which the religions of the world should be
judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the
religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very
clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at
present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of
Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the
so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic
poems, the Ramaya_n_a and Mahabharata. The next chapter is devoted to
the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or
less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the
first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr.
Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent
and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion,
and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial
glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of
Buddhism, and the later Pura_n_as. All these questions are handled
with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence,
that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the
subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at
least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India.
The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year,
is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied
descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with
an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by
Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the
Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified
form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After
this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of
Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New
World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America,
and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races
of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down
before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea,
and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west
coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of
the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of
the Malayo-Polynesians.
[Footnote 31: 'Christ and other Masters.' An Historical Inquiry into
some of the chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and
the Religious Systems of the Ancient World, with special reference to
prevailing Difficulties and Objections. By Charles Hardwick, M.A.,
Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. Parts I, II, III.
Cambridge, 1858.]
The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various
systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself,
must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and
defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume,
have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He
declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is
not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful
minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable
that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the
keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of
truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are
difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as
possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'
We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this
line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of
Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor
helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with--a man
brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or
gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood--a man who had
derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these
gods--who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid
of the anger of a Divine Being--who had performed severe penance,
because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods--who had given, not
only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the
whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they
might pray for him or absolve him from his sin--if, in discussing any
of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had
tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would
himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his
subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good
elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary
could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do,
and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel,
that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth
and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is
possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of
ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged
to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not
theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of
Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are
born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to
believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in
his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to
think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble
the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical
justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates
wrangling for victory--we are no longer tranquil observers,
compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses
himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more
than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or
may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards
the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of
human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the
existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the
Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in
all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little
has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should
criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has
governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is
born blind--we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his
arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to
treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor
blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a
Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or
at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold
judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited
pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove
that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on
the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be
frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian
truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine
was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian
will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he
boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many
errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want
of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of
the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith,
except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will
rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are
revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans,
or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can,
how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies
hidden somewhere--a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the
Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory,
and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in
Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has
certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may
be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language,
because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming
Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he
is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter
that their systems are mere _rechauffes_ of ancient heathenism. Thus
he says, in his introduction to the third volume:
'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present
chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to
recognise the proper tendency of certain current
speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that
they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science,
and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us.
Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf,
those theories are little more than a return to
long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes;
or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array
of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other
countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class
of China, for example, have long been familiar with the
metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the
social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible
scale. For ages they have been what people of the present
day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference
only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in
God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral
status of his subjects by the study of political science, or
devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the
positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed
into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a
religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of
all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and
dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a
specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century
after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius
and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its
religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human
progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral
imbecility.'
Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The
history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to
be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a
Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments
such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his
case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the
Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to
produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must
try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and
political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the
historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall
never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one
instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with
the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight
against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a
long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity,
and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the
contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a
passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their
minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call
of the priest--nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a
better life--they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth.
Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by
the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an
irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal
devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will
make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where
his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife,
or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does
not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the
conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or
for his country--he does it because he knows that every one would do
the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow
himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish
to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we
must take into account their national character. Nations who value
life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay
nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for
instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the
widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but
that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her
husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following
her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow
would do--she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the
prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernath, to be
crushed to death by the idol they believe in--where the plaintiff who
cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his
judge--where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this
world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity,
quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore
of existence--in such a country, however much we may condemn these
practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions
of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of
morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is
but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order
to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life--let him once
consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage
and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from
whence he came--and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation,
sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame
and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we
shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of
such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from
what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality.
They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in
immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures,
which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and
heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping
ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and
compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians,
for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can
still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that
the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a
future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral
obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy
their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they
actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son
should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the
Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their
mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her
children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave
the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren,
relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope,
made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her
sons, who took hold of it and strangled her--after which she was put
into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and
mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not
existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human
thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There
is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of
that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham;
and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the
voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and
give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their
religion.
It is among these tribes that the missionary, if he can speak a
language which they understand, gains the most rapid influence. But he
must first learn himself to understand the nature of these savages,
and to translate the wild yells of their devotion into articulate
language. There is, perhaps, no race of men so low and degraded as the
Papuas. It has frequently been asserted they had no religion at all.
And yet these same Papuas, if they want to know whether what they are
going to undertake is right or wrong, squat before their karwar, clasp
the hands over the forehead, and bow repeatedly, at the same time
stating their intentions. If they are seized with any nervous feeling
during this process, it is considered as a bad sign, and the project
is abandoned for a time--if otherwise, the idol is supposed to
approve. Here we have but to translate what they in their helpless
language call 'nervous feeling' by our word 'conscience,' and we shall
not only understand what they really mean, but confess, perhaps, that
it would be well for us if in our own hearts the karwar occupied the
same prominent place which it occupies in the cottage of every Papua.
_March, 1858._
III.
THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA.
THE VEDA.
The main stream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the
north-west. No historian can tell us by what impulse these adventurous
Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of
Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a
period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the
soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans,
Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as
irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic
tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the
Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness,
to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather
ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to
let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves--to take a
road which, lead where it may, can never lead us to join those again
who speak our language and worship our gods--is a course which only
men of strong individuality and great self-dependence are capable of
pursuing. It was the course adopted by the southern branch of the
Aryan family, the Brahmanic Aryas of India and the Zoroastrians of
Iran.