its claim to be considered as part of the Divine. "The purity of the
spirit," says Van Helmont, "is shown through energy and efficaciousness
of will. God, by the agency of an infinite will, created the Universe,
and the same sort of power in an inferior degree, limited more or less
by external hindrances, exists in all spiritual beings." The higher we
ascend in antiquity, the more does prayer take the form of incantation;
and that form it still in a great degree retains, since the rites of
public worship are generally considered not merely as an expression of
trust or reverence, as real spiritual acts, the effect of which is
looked for only within the mind of the worshipper, but as acts from
which some direct outward result is anticipated, the attainment of some
desired object, of health or wealth, of supernatural gifts for body or
soul, of exemption from danger, or vengeance upon enemies. Prayer was
able to change the purposes of Heaven, and to make the Devs tremble
under the abyss. It exercised a compulsory influence over the gods. It
promoted the magnetic sympathy of spirit with spirit; and the Hindū and
Persian liturgies, addressed not only to the Deity Himself, but to His
diversified manifestations, were considered wholesome and necessary
iterations of the living or creative Word which at first effectuated the
divine will, and which from instant to instant supports the universal
frame by its eternal repetition.
In the narrative of the Fall, we have the Hebrew mode of explaining the
great moral mystery, the origin of evil and the apparent estrangement
from Heaven; and a similar idea, variously modified, obtained in all the
ancient creeds. Everywhere, man had at the beginning been innocent and
happy, and had lapsed, by temptation and his own weakness, from his
first estate. Thus was accounted for the presumed connection of increase
of knowledge with increase of misery, and, in particular, the great
penalty of death was reconciled with Divine Justice. Subordinate to
these greater points were the questions, Why is the earth covered with
thorns and weeds? whence the origin of clothing, of sexual shame and
passion? whence the infliction of labor, and how to justify the degraded
condition of woman in the East, or account for the loathing so generally
felt toward the Serpent Tribe?
The hypothesis of a fall, required under some of its modifications in
all systems, to account for the apparent imperfection in the work of a
Perfect Being, was, in Eastern philosophy, the unavoidable accompaniment
and condition of limited or individual existence; since the Soul,
considered as a fragment of the Universal Mind, might be said to have
lapsed from its pre-eminence when parted from its source, and ceasing to
form part of integral perfection. The theory of its reunion was
correspondent to the assumed cause of its degradation. To reach its
prior condition, its individuality must cease; it must be emancipated
by re-absorption into the Infinite, the consummation of all things in
God, to be promoted by human effort in spiritual meditation or
self-mortification, and completed in the magical transformation of
death.
And as man had fallen, so it was held that the Angels of Evil had, from
their first estate, to which, like men, they were, in God's good time,
to be restored, and the reign of evil was then to cease forever. To this
great result all the Ancient-Theologies point; and thus they all
endeavored to reconcile the existence of Sin and Evil with the perfect
and undeniable wisdom and beneficence of God.
With man's exercise of thought are inseparably connected freedom and
responsibility. Man assumes his proper rank as a moral agent, when with
a sense of the limitations of his nature arise the consciousness of
freedom, and of the obligations accompanying its exercise, the sense of
duty and of the capacity to perform it. To suppose that man ever
imagined himself not to be a free agent until he had argued himself into
that belief, would be to suppose that he was in that below the brutes;
for he, like them, is _conscious_ of his freedom to act. Experience
alone teaches him that this freedom of action is limited and controlled;
and when what is outward to him restrains and limits this freedom of
action, he instinctively rebels against it as a wrong. The rule cf duty
and the materials of experience are derived from an acquaintance with
the conditions of the external world, in which the faculties are
exerted; and thus the problem of man involves those of Nature and God.
Our freedom, we learn by experience, is determined by an agency external
to us; our happiness is intimately dependent on the relations of the
outward World, and on the moral character of its Ruler.
Then at once arises this problem: The God of Nature must be One, and His
character cannot be suspected to be other than good. Whence, then, came
the evil, the consciousness of which must invariably have preceded or
accompanied man's moral development? On this subject human opinion has
ebbed and flowed between two contradictory extremes, one of which seems
inconsistent with God's Omnipotence, and the other with His beneficence.
If God, it was said, is perfectly wise and good, evil must arise from
some _independent_ and _hostile_ principle: if, on, the other hand, all
agencies are subordinate to One, it is difficult, if evil does indeed
exist, if there is any such thing as Evil, to avoid the impiety of
making God the Author of it.
The recognition of a moral and physical dualism in nature was adverse to
the doctrine of Divine Unity. Many of the Ancients thought it absurd to
imagine one Supreme Being, like Homer's Jove, distributing good and evil
out of two urns. They therefore substituted, as we have seen, the
doctrine of two distinct and eternal principles; some making the cause
of evil to be the inherent imperfection of matter and the flesh, without
explaining how God was not the cause of that; while others personified
the required agency, and fancifully invented an Evil Principle, the
question of whose origin indeed involved all the difficulty of the
original problem, but whose existence, if once taken for granted, was
sufficient as a popular solution of the mystery; the difficulty being
supposed no longer to exist when pushed a step further off, as the
difficulty of conceiving the world upheld by an elephant was supposed to
be got rid of when it was said that the elephant was supported by a
tortoise.
The simpler, and probably the older, notion, treated the one only God as
the Author of all things. "I form the light," says Jehovah, "and create
darkness; I cause prosperity and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these
things." "All mankind," says Maximus Tyrius, "are agreed that there
exists one only Universal King and Father, and that the many gods are
His Children." There is nothing improbable in the supposition that the
primitive idea was that there was but one God. A vague sense of Nature's
Unity, blended with a dim perception of an all-pervading Spiritual
Essence, has been remarked among the earliest manifestations of the
Human Mind. Everywhere it was the dim remembrance, uncertain and
indefinite, of the original truth taught by God to the first men.
The Deity of the Old Testament is everywhere represented as the direct
author of Evil, commissioning evil and lying spirits to men, hardening
the heart of Pharaoh, and visiting the iniquity of the individual sinner
on the whole people. The rude conception of sternness predominating over
mercy in the Deity, can alone account for the human sacrifices,
purposed, if not executed, by Abraham and Jephthah. It has not been
uncommon, in any age or country of the world, for men to recognize the
existence of one God, without forming any becoming estimate of His
dignity. The causes of both good and ill are referred to a mysterious
centre, to which each assigns such attributes as correspond with his own
intellect and advance in civilization. Hence the assignment to the Deity
of the feelings of envy and jealousy. Hence the provocation given by the
healing skill of Æsculapius and the humane theft of fire by Prometheus.
The very spirit of Nature, personified in Orpheus, Tantalus, or Phineus
was supposed to have been killed, confined, or blinded, for having too
freely divulged the Divine Mysteries to mankind. This Divine Envy still
exists in a modified form, and varies according to circumstances. In
Hesiod it appears in the lowest type of human malignity. In the God of
Moses, it is jealousy of the infringement of the autocratic power, the
check to political treason; and even the penalties denounced for
worshipping other gods often seem dictated rather by a jealous regard
for His own greatness in Deity, than by the immorality and degraded
nature of the worship itself. In Herodotus and other writers it assumes
a more philosophical shape, as a strict adherence to a moral equilibrium
in the government of the world, in the punishment of pride, arrogance,
and insolent pretension.
God acts providentially in Nature by regular and universal laws, by
constant modes of operation; and so takes care of material things
without violating their constitution, acting always according to the
nature of the things which He has made. It is a fact of observation
that, in the material and unconscious world, He works _by_ its
materiality and unconsciousness, not against them; in the animal world,
_by_ its animality and partial consciousness, not against them. So in
the providential government of the world, He acts by regular and
universal laws, and constant modes of operation; and so takes care of
human things without violating their constitution, acting always
according to the human nature of man, not against if, working in the
human world by means of man's consciousness and partial freedom, not
against them.
God acts by general laws for general purposes. The attraction of
gravitation is a good thing, for it keeps the world together; and if the
tower of Siloam, thereby falling to the ground, slays eighteen men of
Jerusalem, that number is too small to think of, considering the myriad
millions who are upheld by the same law. It could not well be repealed
for _their_ sake, and to hold up that tower; nor could it remain in
force, and the tower stand.
It is difficult to conceive of a Perfect _Will_ without confounding it
with something like mechanism; since language has no name for that
combination of the Inexorable with the Moral, which the old poets
personified separately in Ananke or Eimarmene and Zeus. How combine
understandingly the Perfect Freedom of the Supreme and All-Sovereign
Will of God with the inflexible necessity, as part of His Essence, that
He should and must continue to be, in all His great attributes, of
justice and mercy for example, what He is now and always has been, and
with the impossibility of His changing His nature and becoming unjust,
merciless, cruel, fickle, or of His repealing the great moral laws which
make crime wrong and the practice of virtue right?
For all that we familiarly know of Free-Will is that capricious exercise
of it which we experience in ourselves and other men; and therefore the
notion of Supreme Will, still guided by Infallible Law, even if that law
be self-imposed, is always in danger of being either stripped of the
essential quality of Freedom, or degraded under the ill-name of
Necessity to something of even less moral and intellectual dignity than
the fluctuating course of human operations.
It is not until we elevate the idea of law above that of partiality or
tyranny, that we discover that the self-imposed limitations of the
Supreme Cause, constituting an array of certain alternatives, regulating
moral choice, are the very sources and safeguards of human freedom; and
the doubt recurs, whether we do not set a law above God Himself; or
whether laws self-imposed may not be self-repealed: and if not, what
power prevents it.
The Zeus of Homer, like that of Hesiod, is an array of antitheses,
combining strength with weakness, wisdom with folly, universal parentage
with narrow family limitation, omnipotent control over events with
submission to a superior destiny;--DESTINY, a name by means of which the
theological problem was cast back into the original obscurity out of
which the powers of the human mind have proved themselves as incapable
of rescuing it, as the efforts of a fly caught in a spider's web to do
more than increase its entanglement.
The oldest notion of Deity was rather indefinite than repulsive. The
positive degradation was of later growth. The God of nature reflects the
changeful character of the seasons, varying from dark to bright.
Alternately angry and serene, and lavishing abundance which she again
withdraws, nature seems inexplicably capricious, and though capable of
responding to the highest requirements of the moral sentiment through a
general comprehension of her mysteries, more liable, by a partial or
hasty view to become darkened into a Siva, a Saturn, or a Mexitli, a
patron of fierce orgies or blood-stained altars. All the older poetical
personifications exhibit traces of this ambiguity. They are neither
wholly immoral nor purely beneficent.
No people have ever deliberately made their Deity a malevolent or guilty
Being. The simple piety which ascribed the origin of all things to God,
took all in good part, trusting and hoping all things. The Supreme Ruler
was at first looked up to with unquestioning reverence. No startling
discords or contradictions had yet raised a doubt as to His beneficence,
or made men dissatisfied with His government. Fear might cause anxiety,
but could not banish hope, still less inspire aversion. It was only
later, when abstract notions began to assume the semblance of realities,
and when new or more distinct ideas suggested new words for their
expression, that it became necessary to fix a definite barrier between
Evil and Good.
To account for moral evil, it became necessary to devise some new
expedient suited both to the piety and self-complacency of the inventor,
such as the perversity of woman, or an agent distinct from God, a Typhon
or Ahriman, obtained either by dividing the Gods into two classes, or by
dethroning the Ancient Divinity, and changing him into a Dev or Dæmon.
Through a similar want, the Orientals devised the inherent corruption of
the fleshy and material; the Hebrew transferred to Satan everything
illegal and immoral; and the Greek reflection, occasionally adopting the
older and truer view, retorted upon man the obloquy cast on these
creatures of his imagination, and showed how he has to thank himself
alone for his calamities, while his good things are the voluntary
_gifts_, not the _plunder_ of Heaven. Homer had already made Zeus
exclaim, in the Assembly of Olympus, "Grievous it is to hear these
mortals accuse the Gods; they pretend that evils come from us; but they
themselves occasion them gratuitously by their own wanton folly." "It is
the fault of man," said Solon, in reference to the social evils of his
day, "not of God, that destruction comes;" and Euripides, after a formal
discussion of the origin of evil, comes to the conclusion that men act
wrongly, not from want of natural good sense and feeling, but because
knowing what is good, they yet for various reasons neglect to practise
it.
And at last reaching the highest truth, Pindar, Hesiod, Æschylus, Æsop,
and Horace said, "All virtue is a struggle; life is not a scene of
repose, but of energetic action. Suffering is but another name for the
teaching of experience, appointed by Zeus himself, the giver of all
understanding, to be the parent of instruction, the schoolmaster of
life. He indeed put an end to the golden age; he gave venom to serpents
and predacity to wolves; he shook the honey from the leaf, and stopped
the flow of wine in the rivulets; he concealed the element of fire, and
made the means of life scanty and precarious. But in all this his object
was beneficent; it was not to destroy life, but to improve it. It was a
blessing to man, not a curse, to be sentenced to earn his bread by the
sweat of his brow; for nothing great or excellent is attainable without
exertion; safe and easy virtues are prized neither by gods nor men; and
the parsimoniousness of nature is justified by its powerful effect in
rousing the dormant faculties, and forcing on mankind the invention of
useful arts by means of meditation and thought."
Ancient religious reformers pronounced the worship of "idols" to be the
root of all evil; and there have been many iconoclasts in different ages
of the world. The maxim still holds good; for the worship of idols, that
is, of fanciful conceits, if not the source of _all_ evil, is still the
cause of much; and it prevails as extensively now as it ever did. Men
are ever engaged in worshipping the picturesque fancies of their own
imaginations.
Human wisdom must always be limited and incorrect; and even right
opinion is only a something intermediate between ignorance and
knowledge. The normal condition of man is that of progress. Philosophy
is a kind of journey, ever learning, yet never arriving at the ideal
perfection of truth. A Mason should, like the wise Socrates, assume the
modest title of a "lover of wisdom"; for he must ever long after
something more excellent than he possesses, something still beyond his
reach, which he desires to make eternally his own.
Thus the philosophic sentiment came to be associated with the poetical
and the religious, under the comprehensive name of Love. Before the
birth of Philosophy, Love had received but scanty and inadequate homage.
This mightiest and most ancient of gods, coeval with the existence of
religion and of the world, had been indeed unconsciously felt, but had
neither been worthily honored nor directly celebrated in hymn or pæan.
In the old days of ignorance it could scarcely have been recognized. In
order that it might exercise its proper influence over religion and
philosophy, it was necessary that the God of Nature should cease to be a
God of terrors, a personification of mere Power or arbitrary Will, a
pure and stern Intelligence, an inflictor of evil, and an unrelenting
Judge. The philosophy of Plato, in which this charge became forever
established, was emphatically a mediation of Love. With him, the
inspiration of Love first kindled the light of arts and imparted them to
mankind; and not only the arts of mere existence, but the heavenly art
of wisdom, which supports the Universe. It inspires high and generous
deeds and noble self-devotion. Without it, neither State nor individual
could do anything beautiful or great. Love is our best pilot,
confederate, supporter, and saviour; the ornament and governor of all
things human and divine; and he with divine harmony forever soothes the
minds of men and gods.
Man is capable of a higher Love, which, marrying mind with mind and with
the Universe, brings forth all that is noblest in his faculties, and
lifts him beyond himself. This higher love is neither mortal nor
immortal, but a power intermediate between the human and the Divine,
filling up the mighty interval, and binding the Universe together. He is
chief of those celestial emissaries who carry to the gods the prayers of
men, and bring down to men the gifts of the gods. "He is forever poor,
and far from being beautiful as mankind imagine, for he is squalid and
withered; he flies low along the ground, is homeless and unsandalled;
sleeping without covering before the doors and in the unsheltered
streets, and possessing so far his mother's nature as being ever the
companion of want. Yet, sharing also that of his father, he is forever
scheming to obtain things good and beautiful; he is fearless, vehement,
and strong; always devising some new contrivance; strictly cautious and
full of inventive resource; a philosopher through his whole existence, a
powerful enchanter, and a subtle sophist."
The ideal consummation of Platonic science is the arrival at the
contemplation of that of which earth exhibits no express image or
adequate similitude, the Supreme Prototype of all beauty, pure and
uncontaminated with human intermixture of flesh or color, the Divine
Original itself. To one so qualified is given the prerogative of
bringing forth not mere images and shadows of virtue, but virtue itself,
as having been conversant not with shadows, but with the truth; and
having so brought forth and nurtured a progeny of virtue, he becomes the
friend of God, and, so far as such a privilege can belong to any human
being, immortal.
Socrates believed, like Heraclitus, in a Universal Reason pervading all
things and all minds, and consequently revealing itself in ideas. He
therefore sought truth in general opinion, and perceived in the
communication of mind with mind one of the greatest prerogatives of
wisdom and the most powerful means of advancement. He believed true
wisdom to be an attainable idea, and that the moral convictions of the
mind, those eternal instincts of temperance, conscientiousness, and
justice, implanted in it by the gods, could not deceive, if rightly
interpreted.
This metaphysical direction given to philosophy ended in visionary
extravagance. Having assumed truth to be discoverable in thought, it
proceeded to treat thoughts as truths. It thus became an idolatry of
notions, which it considered either as phantoms exhaled from objects, or
as portions of the divine pre-existent thought; thus creating a
mythology of its own, and escaping from one thraldom only to enslave
itself afresh. Theories and notions indiscriminately formed and defended
are the false gods or "idols" of philosophy. For the word _idolon_ means
_image_, and a false _mind_-picture of God is as much an idol as a false
_wooden_ image of Him. Fearlessly launching into the problem of
universal being, the first philosophy attempted to supply a compendious
and decisive solution of every doubt. To do this, it was obliged to make
the most sweeping assumptions; and as poetry had already filled the vast
void between the human and the divine, by personifying its Deity as man,
so philosophy bowed down before the supposed reflection of the divine
image in the mind of the inquirer, who, in worshipping his own notions,
had unconsciously deified himself. Nature thus was enslaved to common
notions, and notions very often to words.
By the clashing of incompatible opinions, philosophy was gradually
reduced to the ignominious confession of utter incapacity, and found its
check or intellectual fall in skepticism. Xenophanes and Heraclitus
mournfully acknowledged the unsatisfactory result of all the struggles
of philosophy, in the admission of a universality of doubt; and the
memorable effort of Socrates to rally the discomfited champions of
truth, ended in a similar confession.
The worship of abstractions continued the error which personified Evil
or deified Fortune; and when mystical philosophy resigned its place to
mystical religion, it changed not its nature, but only its name. The
great task remained unperformed, of reducing the outward world and its
principles to the dominion of the intellect, and of reconciling the
conception of the supreme unalterable power asserted by reason, with the
requisitions of human sympathies.