COMPARATIVE
RELIGION
BY
J. ESTLIN CARPENTER
D.LITT.
PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I INTRODUCTORY
II THE PANORAMA OF RELIGIONS
III RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE
IV SPIRITS AND GODS
V SACRED ACTS
VI SACRED PRODUCTS
VII RELIGION AND MORALITY
VIII PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
"Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence."
WORDSWORTH.
"To the philosopher the existence of God may seem to rest on a
syllogism; in the eyes of the historian it rests on the whole evolution
of human thought."--MAX MÜLLER.
{7}
COMPARATIVE RELIGION
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Over the chancel-arch of the church at South Leigh, a few miles west of
Oxford, is a fresco of the Last Judgment and the Resurrection, of the
type well known in mediæval art. On the adjoining south wall stands
the stately figure of the archangel Michael. In his right hand he
holds a pair of scales. In one scale is the figure of a soul in the
attitude of prayer; beside it is Our Lady carrying a rosary. The other
contains an ox-headed demon blowing a horn. This scale rises steadily,
though another demon has climbed to the beam above to weigh it down,
and a third from hell's mouth below endeavours to drag it towards the
abyss. The same theme recurs in several other English churches; and it
is carved over the portals of many French cathedrals, as at Notre Dame
in Paris.
Unroll a papyrus from an Egyptian tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty before
the days of Moses, and you will see a somewhat similar {8} scene. The
just and merciful judge Osiris, "lord of life and king of eternity,"
sits in the Hall of the two goddesses of Truth. Hither the soul is
brought for the ordeal which will determine his future bliss or woe.
Before forty-two assessors he declares his innocence of various
offences: "I am not a doer of what is wrong; I am not a robber; I am
not a slayer of men; I am not a niggard; I am not a teller of lies; I
am not a monopoliser of food; I am no extortioner; I am not unchaste; I
am not the causer of others' tears...." Then he is led, sometimes
supported by the two goddesses of Truth, to the actual trial. Resting
on an upright post is the beam of a balance. It is guarded by a
dog-headed ape, symbol of Thoth, "lord of the scales." Thoth has
various functions in the ancient texts, and even rises into a kind of
impersonation of the principle of intelligence in the whole universe.
Here as the computer of time and the inventor of numbers he plays the
part of secretary to Osiris. In one scale is placed the heart of the
deceased, the organ of conscience. In the other is sometimes a square
weight, sometimes an ostrich plume, symbol of truth or righteousness.
Thoth stands beside the scales, tablet in hand, to record the issue as
the soul passes to the great award.
The scenes and the persons differ; but the fundamental conception of
judgment is the same, and it is carried out by the same method. Is
this an accidental coincidence of metaphor? {9} The figure of the
balance was naturally suggestive for the estimate of worth, and the
Psalmist cried in bitterness of heart--
Surely men of low degree are vanity,
And men of high degree are a lie,
In the balances they will go up;
They are altogether lighter than vanity.
The mysterious hand wrote upon the wall of Belshazzar's palace the
strange word Tekel, which contained the dreadful sentence, "Thou art
weighed in the balances and art found wanting." To early Indian
imagination, before the days of the Buddha (500 B.C.), the ordeal of
the balance was part of the outlook into the world beyond. In the
ancient Persian teaching, Rashnu, the angel of justice, before the
shining "Friend," the mediator Mithra, presided over the weighing of
the spirits at the bridge of destiny, over which they would pass to
heaven or hell.
Is Michael the heir of Thoth or Rashnu? He passed into the Christian
Church from the Jewish Synagogue, where he was specially connected with
the destinies of the dead. He guided the souls of the just to the
heavenly world, where he led them into the mystic city, the counterpart
of Jerusalem below; or he stood at the gate as the angel of
righteousness to decide who should be admitted. So for the Greeks
Hermes was the guardian of the spirits of the departed, whom he
conducted {10} to the judgment in the under-world. In this respect,
then, Hermes and Michael were akin. But Hermes also played many other
parts, and the Greeks identified him with the Egyptian Thoth. When the
destinies of Hector and Achilles were weighed against each other, ere
the last mortal combat, the vase-painter could represent Hermes as
holding the balance in the presence of Zeus, much as Thoth had presided
over it before Osiris. The Etruscan artists depicted Mercury, the
Italian equivalent of Hermes, fulfilling the same function. True, the
purport of the test was different. But the symbol was the same; and
when Hermes gave place to Michael, as Christianity was carried to the
West, the scales passed from the Hellenic to the Jewish Christian
figure, though they had in the one case been used to decide the
allotment of fate, and in the other were employed for judgment. Why
they remained so long unused in Christian symbolism is obscure. The
revival of intercourse with the East through the Crusades may have
given new force to the idea as part of the great judgment-process; and
the figure to which it was most natural to assign it was that of
Thoth-Hermes-Michael.
The religion of the ancient Hindus was founded, as every one knows,
upon the venerable hymns collected into one sacred book under the name
of the Rig Veda. These hymns, 1017 in number, containing over {11}
10,000 verses, are now arranged in ten books, twice the number of the
divisions of the Hebrew Psalter. Like most of the Psalms they are
traditionally ascribed to different poets, in whose families they were
sung; and their authors were regarded as Rishis, bards, or sages. Of
their real origin nothing is definitely known; their composition
probably extends over many generations, perhaps over several centuries;
and dim suggestions of their super-earthly origin already appear in
some of the latest poems. They became the peculiar treasure of the
priestly order; the most laborious efforts were devised for the study
and preservation of the sacred text; the methods of pronunciation, the
rules of grammar, the principles of metre, the derivations of words,
were all elaborated with the utmost minuteness into different branches
of Vedic lore. Two other smaller Vedas, collections of sacrificial
formulæ and hymns, were very early placed beside the main work, and a
fourth collection gained similar rank much later. With the development
of the great schools of Hindu philosophy, especially after the decline
of Buddhism, the whole question of authority as the foundation of
belief and reasoning was forced to the front, and this in due time was
applied to the Veda. Brahmanical speculation had been long concerned
with its divine origin. It sprang from one of the mysterious figures
in which the ancient theologians expressed their sense of the real {12}
unity of the heavenly powers, Prajāpati, the "lord of creatures,"
through the medium of Vach, or sacred Speech. As such it was "the
firstborn in the universe." But as proceeding from Prajāpati it
issued from the world of the _an-anta_, the "un-ending" or "infinite,"
which was likewise the sphere of the _a-mrita_, the "im-mortal" or
"deathless." So it belonged to the realm of the eternal, where it
could be beheld, not indeed with the eye of sense, but with the higher
discernment of the holy Seer. The philosophical schools occupied
themselves accordingly with the defence of the eternity and consequent
infallibility of the Veda. Elaborate arguments were devised to explain
the relation of words to things, and of sound in the abstract to
uttered speech or again to show how behind individuals which had their
origin in time there existed species (even of the gods) which belonged
to the timeless order transcending our experience. So the conclusion
was reached, in the words of the great philosopher Çankara (A.D.
788-820), that "the authority of the Veda with regard to the matters
stated by it is independent and direct; just as the light of the sun is
the direct means of our knowledge of form and colour."
Just at this era, by a singular coincidence, a remarkable controversy
was raging in the schools of Mohammedan theology. Mohammed died in
A.D. 632. He had himself recorded nothing; the traditions about him
are not even {13} agreed whether he could read or write. His oracles
were taught to his disciples, who began to note down some of them
during the prophet's life; soon after his death the formal collection
of them was undertaken; and under Caliph Othman (651) four copies were
deposited in the cities of Mecca, Cufa, Basra, and Damascus. We know
the work under the name of the Koran (_Qurān_ = reading), one of the
numerous expressions which Mohammed was said to have coined for the
revelation imparted to him from on high. Later generations attached
the title exclusively to the utterances fixed in literary form, and
discerned in them a unity designed by the prophet; but it seems more
consonant with his view to regard each of the 114 discourses (_suras_)
as a unit in itself, and the whole as only a fragment of his teaching.
Many passages raise a claim to specific divine origin; others allude to
the uncreated Scripture, _umm-al-kitab_, "the mother of the book."
On such hints was founded the remarkable doctrine that the Koran was
eternal in its essence as the word of God, a necessary attribute of the
Most High. First formulated in the middle of the eighth century (A.D.
747-748), it roused extraordinary interest outside the theological
schools. It was fostered by the early Caliphs, for it supported their
political authority, and the emphasis which it placed on the doctrine
of predestination supplied them with a potent weapon. Opposition {14}
arose on the ground of free will; the passages enforcing the principle
of predestination were evaded by the handy method of allegorical
interpretation, and the revolt of the moral consciousness led, as it
has done elsewhere, to rationalism. Public debates were held amid
general excitement, when the Caliph Ma'mun (813-833) unexpectedly
espoused the rationalist cause, and issued a decree forbidding the
discussion. The popular forces, however, were in the long run
triumphant. In 847 a new Caliph came into power, inclined for
political reasons to the higher doctrine. Lectures were instituted in
the mosques on the attributes of God, and vast audiences--the
historians report twenty and even thirty thousand hearers--listened
eagerly while the theologians disputed whether God's word could be
conceived distinct from his absolute being. Faith in the prophet
triumphed; the exaltation of the product reacted on that of the person;
and the Arabian shepherd could be regarded as the inerrant, sinless,
uncreated light, sent forth from Deity himself, who for his sake spread
out the earth and arched the heavens, and proclaimed the great
confession "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."
Every great historical religion passes through numerous phases, as it
is brought into contact with different cultures, and evokes various
forms of speculative thought and inward {15} experience. Buddhism has
been no exception to this rule. It sprang up in a moral revolt against
the claims of the Brahmanical teachers, and in the midst of the
discussions of the sophists turned its back on metaphysics and sought
to concentrate attention on the Noble Path of the good life. It
offered a way of deliverance from the weary round of births and deaths
by the victory over ignorance and sin, and sought to overcome
selfishness by eliminating the idea that man has, or is, a Self.
Accordingly it presented its founder Gotama (500 B.C.), as the man who
had attained the Truth, who had by a long series of lives devoted to
the higher righteousness acquired the insight into the causes and
meaning of existence, and imparted it to his followers with
instructions to carry it forth for the welfare of their fellow-men.
For this end he founded a union or order; he instituted a discipline,
and committed his teaching to a body of disciples whose successors
gradually bore it into distant lands. He himself passed away, leaving
no trace behind. His memory was cherished with dutiful devotion.
Pilgrimages to the scenes of his birth and Buddhahood, commemorative
festivals and pious rites, kept the image of the Teacher before the
mind of the believer. But no prayer was offered to him; no worship
created any bond of fellowship between the departed Gotama and the
community which he had left on earth.
{16}
But in the course of several generations remarkable changes took place.
Environed by philosophical speculations, Buddhism could not remain
wholly unaffected by the great ideas of metaphysics. While one branch,
now surviving in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, remained faithful to the
Founder's exclusion of all such conceptions as being, substance, and
the like, others began to interpret the person of the Buddha in terms
of the Absolute, and identified him with the Eternal and the
Self-Existent, who from time to time for the welfare of the world took
on himself the semblance of humanity, and appeared to be born, to
attain Enlightenment, and die. The great aim of the deliverance of all
sentient beings from error, suffering, and guilt, expressed itself
further in the association with him of numerous other holy forms
sharing the same purpose of the world's salvation.
Among these was the Buddha Amitâbha, the Buddha of Boundless Light,[1]
who had made a wondrous vow in virtue of which a blessed future of
righteousness and joy in the Western Paradise was secured for all who
put their trust in him. Carried into China, this devotion acquired
great popularity, and centuries later it passed into Japan. There,
while Europe was sending its warriors to win back from the Crescent the
city of the Cross, while Bernard and Francis and Dominic were awakening
new enthusiasm for the monastic {17} life, two famous teachers, Honen
(1133-1212) and Shin-ran (1173-1262), developed the doctrine of
"salvation by faith." Honen was the only son of a military chief who
died of a wound inflicted by an enemy. On his deathbed he enjoined the
boy never to seek revenge, and bade him become a monk for the spiritual
enlightenment both of his father and his father's foe. So the lad
passed in due time into one of the great Buddhist monasteries on mount
Hiei. Long years of laborious study followed, till in 1175 he reached
the conviction that faith in Amida[2] was the true way of salvation. A
deep sense of human sinfulness and the belief in an All-Merciful
Deliverer were the essential elements of his religion. Three emperors
became his pupils, and his life, compiled by imperial order after his
death, resembles that of a mediæval Christian saint. Visions of Amida
and of the holy teachers of the past were vouchsafed to him. He
preached--like another St. Francis--to the serpents and the birds. His
person was mysteriously transfigured, and a wondrous light filled his
dwelling.
[1] Also called Amitâyus, the Buddha of Boundless Life.
[2] The Japanese form of the Sanskrit Amitâbha.
His disciple Shin-ran carried the doctrine of his master yet a little
farther. Filled with adoring gratitude to the Buddha of Boundless
Light, who, as the deliverer, was also the Buddha of Boundless Life, he
argued that infinite mercy and infinite wisdom must belong to him; and
these in their turn implied the {18} power to give effect to his great
purpose. He passed from village to village through the Eastern
provinces, rousing enthusiasm by the hymns into which he wrought his
new faith. They are still sung in the temples at the present day. But
whereas Honen had recognised a value in good works, and had enjoined
the duty of constant repetition of the sacred name of Amida, Shin-ran
insisted that all element of "self-exertion" must be purged away, and
faith in the merits of Amida--"the exertion of another"--should alone
remain. Some of the conceptions of Western teaching thus present
themselves in Japan in the midst of modes of life and thought of purely
Indian origin. Christian theologians had debated whether faith was to
be regarded as an _opus_ or a _donum_, a "work" or a "gift," was it
something to be attained by man or was it bestowed by God? The
Japanese answer was unhesitating. Faith was not earned by effort, or
achieved by merit, it was granted out of immeasurable love. "The
Buddha," we read, "confers this heart. The heart which takes refuge in
his heart is not produced by oneself. It is produced by the command of
Buddha. Hence it is called the believing heart by the Power of
Another." The natural corollary was that in due course this grace
would be bestowed on all. The Buddha of Boundless Light and Life would
overcome the darkness of ignorance and death; and this type of
Buddhism, now the most active and {19} influential in Japan, preaches
the doctrine of universal salvation. The student finds here a whole
series of parallels to the Evangelical interpretation of Christianity.
Both schemes are founded on the same essential ideas, man's need of a
deliverer, and the attainment of salvation by no human conduct but by
faith in a divine person.
The foregoing sketches raise many problems. What are the actual
features in different religions which are susceptible of comparison?
How can we distinguish between resemblances which are deep-seated and
spring from the fundamental principles of two given faiths, and those
which are only on the surface, and probably accidental? How far can
such parallels be ascribed to suggestion through historical contact,
and, if they lie too far apart for possibilities of any form of mutual
dependence, out of what common types of experience are they derived,
what forces of thought have shaped them, what feelings do they express?
The student of Comparative Religion seeks answers to these and similar
questions. A vast field of inquiry is at once opened before him. It
embraces practically every continent, people, and tribe on the face of
the globe. It begins in the last period of the great ice age, when men
lived in this country in the company of the elephant, the rhinoceros,
and the mammoth, and hunted their game through {20} Germany, Belgium,
and France. In dim recesses of the caves they painted the deer, the
bison, the antelope and the wild boar, under conditions which imply
some kind of mysterious or holy place. They buried their dead with
care, and though we can ask them no questions we may infer with much
probability that they celebrated some kind of funeral meal, and
deposited implements and ornaments in the grave for the use of the
departed in the world beyond. In one case hundreds of shells were
found buried with the skull of a little child. Similar usages may be
traced through the slow advances of culture to the present day. Death
is an element of universal experience; and it is not unreasonable to
suppose that if the negroid peoples of Western Europe had worked out
some view of its meaning and consequences, there were other things to
be done or avoided out of fear or reverence for the Unseen.
The first objects of comparison are thus found in the outward acts
which fall more or less clearly within the sphere of religion, the
places where these are performed, the persons who do them, the means
required for them, the occasions to which they are attached. These all
belong to the external world; they can be observed and recorded, even
though we may not be sure what they mean. When they are brought
together, a series of gradations of complexity can be established,
while a common purpose may be traced through all. {21} From the negro
who lays his offering of grain or fruit at the foot of a tree with the
simple utterance, "Thank you, gods," to a great Eucharistic celebration
at St. Peter's, a continuous line of ritual may be followed, in which
the action becomes more elaborate, the functions and character of the
officiating ministers more strictly defined, the accessories of worship
more complicated. This corresponds to the enrichment and elevation of
the ideas and emotions that animate the act, as that which is at first
performed as part of tribal usage and ancestral custom acquires the
force of divine institution and personal duty.
Behind the external act lies the internal world of thought and feeling.
The social sanction may invest the ceremony itself with so much force
that the worshipper's interest may lie rather in the due performance of
the rite than in the deity to whom it is addressed. The element of
belief may be relatively vague and indefinite. But in the more highly
organised religions belief also may externalise itself through hymn and
prayer, through myth and history and prophecy. When a religion is
strong enough to create a literature, a fresh object of comparison is
presented. The utterances of poet and sage, of lawgiver and seer, can
be set side by side. Their conceptions of the Powers towards which
worship is directed can be studied; the characters and functions of the
several deities can be determined. This {22} is the intellectual
element in religion. It has often been regarded as the element of most
importance, because it seemed most readily to admit of the test of
truth. It finds its most formal expression in the articles of a creed,
and has sometimes been erected into the chief ground of the supreme
arbitrament of heaven and hell.
There remains the element of feeling. This also may be so entangled in
tradition, so enveloped in the pressure of surrounding influences, that
it is at first obscure and indistinct. But its importance was early
recognised when the origin of religion was ascribed to fear, in the
oft-quoted line of the Roman Satirist Petronius Arbiter at the court of
Nero (who committed suicide A.D. 66)--
"Primus in orbe deos fecit timor.
In the eighteenth century the genius of Lessing (1729-1781) fastened on
the feeling of the heart as the essential foundation of religion. No
written record, no historical event, could guarantee its truth; that
lay in the constitution of the human spirit in its interpretation of
its experience. In his famous drama of "Nathan the Sage" he applied
this to the representatives of three great historical religions which
were thus brought together for comparison: the Christian Templar, the
Mohammedan Saladin, and the Jew Nathan. Herder (1744-1803) endeavoured
with the {23} materials then at command to trace the origin and
development of religion, starting from the primitive impressions made
upon the mind by the world without, and sought to interpret mythology
as the imaginative utterance of man's consciousness of the power,
light, and life in Nature. In the next generation Schleiermacher
(1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute
dependence, without attempting to define the object towards which it
was directed. The study of origins has passed out of the hands of the
philosophers and the theologians. But it cannot dispense with
psychology; and among the factors of early religious life will be found
the beginnings of wonder, reverence and awe. And this element, often
cruelly twisted into false and degraded forms, and sometimes refined in
the higher types of mysticism into the loftiest spirituality, inheres
in all practice and belief.
What, then, is the basis of comparison among different faiths? The
student who is engaged in tracing the life-history of any one religion
will naturally start from the field of investigation thus selected. As
he widens his outlook he will find that a number of illustrative
instances force themselves upon his view. The people whose
institutions and ideas he is examining are members of a given ethnic
group. The ancient Hebrews, for instance, belong on the one side to
the life of the desert, and are kin with the nomad Arabs, {24} on the
other they are related to the authors of Babylonian culture. Or in the
course of events a new religion is brought by missionary impulse into a
less-developed civilisation, as when Buddhism passed from China through
Corea into Japan, and was planted in the midst of a cruder faith.
Widely different modes of thought are thus brought into close
juxtaposition, their relation and interaction can be examined, and the
inner forces of each compared.
That such inquiries must be conducted without prejudice need not now be
enforced. An eighteenth-century writer might lay it down that "the
first general division of _Religion_ is into _True and False_," and
might draw the conclusion that "the chapter of _False Religions_ is by
much the longest in the History of the religious opinions and practices
of mankind."[3] Dr. Johnson could sententiously declare that "there
are two objects of curiosity, the Christian world and the Mohammedan
world--all the rest may be considered as barbarous." A learned Oxford
scholar of the last generation could speak of the "three chief false
religions," Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. Missionaries and
travellers of an elder day, who took some form of Christianity as their
foundation, sometimes found the savages among whom they laboured
destitute of religion because they had no Father in heaven {25} and no
everlasting hell. These attitudes, it is now freely recognised, are
not scientific. For purposes of comparison no single religion can be
selected as a standard for the whole human race. Particular products
may be set side by side. The asceticism of India may be compared with
that of early Christianity. The ritual of sacrifice may be studied in
the book of Leviticus or the Hindu Brāhmanas. What are sometimes
called "Ethnic Trinities" may be examined in the light of Alexandrian
theology. The _suras_ of the Koran may be read after the prophecies of
Isaiah. The various phases of the Buddhist Order, with its missionary
zeal, its power of adaptability to different cultures, its readiness to
accept new teaching, may be contrasted with the wonderful cohesiveness
and expansion of the Roman Catholic Church. The ideas of the Hellenic
mystery-religions may be found to throw light on the language of St.
Paul. Out of the multitudinous phases of human experience all the
world over innumerable resemblances will be discovered. Each is a fact
for the student, and must be treated on equal terms in the field of
science. But they will have more or less intrinsic significance in the
scale of values. Philosophy may attempt to range them in gradations of
worth, in nobility of form, in dignity of expression, in moral purity,
in social effectiveness. Beneath infinite diversity the mystic will
affirm the unity of the whole, with the poet of the {26} _Masnavi_,
Jalálu-'d-Dïn of Balkh (A.D. 1207-1273)--
"Because He that is praised is, in fact, only One,
In this respect all religions are only one religion."
[3] Broughton, _Dictionary of all Religions_, 1745.
The materials of comparison are, of course, of the most varied kind.
The interest of the ancient Greeks was early roused in the diverse
practices which they saw around them, and the observations of Herodotus
concerning the Egyptians, the Persians, the Scythians, and many another
tribe upon the fringe of barbarism, have earned for him the modern
title of the "Father of Anthropology." Travellers, missionaries,
government officers, men of trade and men of learning, have recorded
the usages of the lower culture all over the world, naturally with
varying accuracy and penetration, and a vast range of facts has been
registered through successive stages of complexity in social and
religious development. Many of these have their parallel in the
folklore of countries where the uniformity of modern civilisation has
not crushed out all traditional beliefs, while annual customs or even
village games may contain survivals of what were once important
ceremonial rites. The irruption of the Arab conquerors into Europe
brought Christianity face to face with Mohammedanism and its sacred
book. In the {27} seventeenth century the Jesuit Fathers in China
first made known the teachings of Kong-fu-tse ("Philosopher Kong") 500
B.C. whose name they Latinised into Confucius. Towards the end of the
eighteenth century a brilliant little band of English scholars in
Calcutta began to reveal the astounding copiousness of the sacred
literature of India. During the expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in
1799 the Rosetta Stone (now in the British Museum) yielded the clue to
the hieroglyphics which cover the walls of temple and tomb. A
generation later a young British officer, Lieutenant Henry Rawlinson,
began in 1835 to copy a triple inscription on a cliff of Mount
Behistun, near Kermanshah in Persia. The work was dangerous and
difficult, but he was enabled to complete it ten years later. It
contained an identical record in three languages, Persian, Median, and
Babylonio-Assyrian, and provided the means for deciphering the
cuneiform script of the tablets and cylinders soon recovered from the
mounds of Mesopotamia.
Meanwhile the lovers of the past were at work in many other directions.
The Swedish Lonrott collected the ancient songs of the Finnic people,
under the name of the Kalevala. Other scholars brought to light the
treasures of Scandinavian mythology in the Icelandic Edda with its two
collections of poetry and prose. In Wales and Ireland the texts which
enshrined the Celtic faith awoke new interest. The students of
classical antiquity began to {28} collect inscriptions, and it was soon
realised that the spade might be no less useful in Greece or Asia Minor
than beside the Nile or the Euphrates.
The last century has thus accumulated an immense mass of material in
literature and art. There are codes of law regulating in the name of
deity the practice of family and social life. There are hymns of
praise or of penitence, sometimes in strange association with the
spells of magic. There are books of ritual and sacrifice, of
ceremonial order, of philosophical speculation and moral precept.
There are rules of discipline for religious communities; and there are
pictures of judgment and delineations of the heavenly life. Sculpture
and painting have been employed to give external form to the objects of
pious reverence; and the architecture of the sanctuary has wrought into
stone the fundamental conceptions of majesty, proportion, and grace.
All this, it is plain, rests upon history. When Confucius visited the
seat of the imperial dynasty at the court of Chow, he studied with deep
interest the arrangements for the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth;
he surveyed the ancestral temples in which the emperor offered his
worship; he inspected the Hall of Light whose walls bore paintings of
the sovereigns from the remotest times; and then he turned to his
disciples with the remark: "As we use a glass to examine the forms of
things, so must we study the past to {29} understand the present."
Comparison that confines itself solely to counting up resemblances here
and there will be of small value. We cannot comprehend the real
meaning of a single religious rite, a single sentence of any scripture,
apart from the context to which it belongs. Acts and words alike issue
out of experiences that may be hundreds of years old, and sum up
generations, it may be whole ages, of a continuous process. To trace
the successive forms of these changes, to describe the steps through
which they have passed, is like making a chart of a voyage, and laying
down the lines of continent and ocean, island and cape. Or just as the
races of man are sorted, and their characteristics are enumerated
without reference to the various causes which have produced their
modifications, so geography and ethnography might companion
_hierography_, the delineation of "the Sacred" in its concrete
manifestations.
But behind the external evolution of a given religion, its modes of
worship, its ministers, its doctrines, lie more complicated questions.
What causes shaped these acts and moulded these beliefs? What elements
of race are to be discerned in them? How can we account for the
diversities between the religions of peoples belonging to a common
stock, like those of India and those of ancient Italy? What have been
the effects of climate, of the struggle with alien peoples and new
environment? How does the food-supply influence {30} the formation of
religious ideas? What contacts have been felt with other races, and
what positive loans or more impalpable influences have passed from one
side to the other? We, find here in _hierology_, the science of "the
Sacred," an analogue to the reasoning which accounts for the
distribution of land and water, the rise of mountain ranges and the
sculpture of valleys and river-beds out of the stratification of the
earth's crust, and builds up a science of geology; or which traces the
results of migration upon peoples, the consequences of inter-marriage
with other tribes, the disastrous issues of war, surveys the immense
variety of causes which have contributed to new developments of racial
energy, and arranges this knowledge in the science of ethnology.
And, lastly, the values of these facts must be estimated. How far can
they be accepted as expressing the reality of the Unseen Power, and
man's relation to it? Hierology may explain how men have developed
certain practices or framed certain beliefs; to determine their
reasonableness is the task of the philosophy of religion or
_hierosophy_.[4]
[4] These three terms have been suggested by Count Goblet d'Alviella,
of Brussels.
The study of "Comparative Religion" assumes that religion is already in
existence. It deals with actual usages, which it places side by side
to see what light they can throw upon each other. It leaves the task
of {31} formulating definitions to philosophy. It is not concerned
with origins, and does not project itself into the prehistoric past
where conjecture takes the place of evidence. An old miracle-play
directed Adam to pass across the stage "going to be created." Whether
religion first appeared in the cultus of the dead, or only entered the
field after the collapse of a reign of magic which had ceased to
satisfy man's demands for help, or was born of dread and desired to
keep its gods at a distance, only remotely affects the process of
discovering and examining the resemblances of its forms, and
interpreting the forces without and within which have produced them.
The sphere of speculation has its own attractions, but in this little
book an attempt will be made to keep to facts.
Three hundred years ago Edward Herbert,[5] an Oxford scholar who played
many parts and played them well, in deep revolt against the
ecclesiastical doctrine that all the world outside the pale of the
Church was doomed to eternal damnation, devoted himself to the study of
comparative religion. With the materials which the classics afforded
him, he examined the recorded facts among the Greeks and Romans, the
Carthaginians and Arabs, the Phrygians, the Persians, the Assyrians.
The whole fabric of human experience was built up, he argued, on
certain common knowledges or notions, which could be distinguished by
{32} specific marks, such as priority, independence, universality,
certainty, necessity for man's well-being, and immediacy. Here were
the bases of law in relation to social order, and of religion in
relation to the Powers above man. These principles in religion were
five: (1) that there is one supreme God; (2) that he ought to be
worshipped; (3) that virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine
worship; (4) that we ought to be sorry for our sins and repent of them;
(5) that divine goodness doth dispense rewards and punishments both in
this life and after it. These truths had been implanted by the Creator
in the mind of man, and their subsequent corruption produced the
idolatries of antiquity.
[5] 1583-1648., elder brother of "Holy George Herbert."
The theory held its ground in various forms till its last echoes
appeared in highly theologic guise in the writings of Mr. Gladstone.
He pleaded that there must have been a true religion in the world
before an untrue one began to gather and incrust upon it, and this
religion included three great doctrines--the existence of the Triune
Deity, the advent of a Redeemer, and the power of the Evil One and the
defeat of the rebel angels. These had formed part of a primeval
revelation. In the Homeric theology he traced the first in the three
sons of Kronos--Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. The second he found in
Apollo, whose mother Leto represented the Woman from whom the Redeemer
should descend. The rebel angels were equated with the Titans; {33}
the power of temptation was personified in Ate; the rainbow of the
covenant was identified with Iris. The student of to-day can hardly
believe that this volume could have been published in the same year in
which Darwin and Wallace formulated the new scientific principle of
"natural selection" as the great agent in the formation of species, and
thus laid the foundation of the modern conception of evolution (1858).
It is on this great idea that the whole study of the history of
religion is now firmly established. At the foundation of all
endeavours to classify the multitudinous facts which it embraces, lies
the conviction that whatever may be the occasional instances of
degeneration or decline, the general movement of human things advances
from the cruder and less complex to the more refined and developed. In
the range of knowledge, in the sphere of the arts, in the command over
nature, in the stability and expansion of the social order, there are
everywhere signs of growth, even if isolated groups, such as the
Australians, the Todas of India, or the Veddas of Ceylon, seem to be in
the last stages of stagnation or decay. Religion is one phase of human
culture, it expresses man's attitude to the powers around him and the
events of life. Its various forms repose upon the unity of the race.
The anthropologist is convinced that if a new tribe is discovered in
some forest in central Africa, whether its stature be large or small,
its {34} persons will contain the same limbs as other men, and will
live by the same physical processes. The sociologist expects that
their social groups will approximate to other known types of human
relations. The philologist anticipates that behind the obscurities of
their speech he will find modes of thought which he can match
elsewhere. The student of religions will in the same way be on the
look-out for customs and usages akin to those which he already knows;
he will assume that under similar conditions experience will be moulded
on similar lines, and the streams of thought and feeling--though small
causes may easily deflect their course--will tend to flow in parallel
channels as they issue from minds of the same order, and traverse
corresponding scenes.
And just as the general theory of evolution includes the unity of
bodily structure and mental faculty, so it will vindicate what may be
called the unity of the religious consciousness. The old
classifications based on the idea that religions consisted of a body of
doctrines which must be true or false, reached by natural reflection or
imparted by supernatural revelation, disappear before a wider view.
Theologies may be many, but religion is one. It was after this truth
that the Vedic seers were groping when they cried, "Men call him Indra,
Mitra, Varuna, Agni; sages name variously him who is but one"; or
again, "the sages in their hymns give many forms to him {35} who is but
one." When the Roman Empire had brought under one rule the
multitudinous peoples of Western Asia, North Africa, and Southern and
Middle Europe, and new worships were carried hither and thither by
priest and missionary, soldier and merchant and slave, the titles and
attributes of the gods were freely blended and exchanged. Thinkers of
different schools invented various modes of harmonising rival cults.
When "Jupiter best and greatest" was surrounded by a vast crowd of
lesser deities, the philosophic mind discerned a common element running
through all their worship. "There is one Supreme God," wrote Maximus
of Madaura to Augustine, about A.D. 390, "without natural offspring,
who is, as it were, the God and Mighty Father of all. The powers of
this Deity, diffused through the universe which he has made, we worship
under many names, as we are all ignorant of his true name. Thus it
happens that while in diverse supplications we approach separated, as
it were, certain parts of the Divine Being, we are seen in reality to
be the worshippers of him in whom all these parts are one." Here is
the prayer of a Blackfoot chief of our generation in the great
ceremonial of the Sun-Dance, reported by Mr. McClintock,[6] which
blends the implications of theology with the impulses and emotions of
religion--
[6] _The Old North Trail_, 1910, p. 297.
"Great Sun Power! I am praying for my people that they may be happy in
the summer {36} and that they may live through the cold of winter.
Many are sick and in want. Pity them and let them survive. Grant that
they may live long and have abundance. May we go through these
ceremonies correctly, as you taught our forefathers to do in the days
that are past. If we make mistakes, pity us!
"Help us, Mother Earth! for we depend upon your goodness. Let there be
rain to water the prairies, that the grass may grow long and the
berries be abundant.
"O Morning Star! when you look down upon us, give us peace and
refreshing sleep.
"Great Spirit! bless our children, friends, and visitors through a
happy life. May our trails lie straight and level before us. Let us
live to be old. We are all your children, and ask these things with
good hearts."
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