SPIRITS AND GODS
Religion in the lower culture takes many forms, but, speaking broadly,
they rest upon a common interpretation of the world. Man sees around
him all kinds of motion and change. He finds in everything that
happens some energy or power; and the only kind of power which he knows
is that which he himself exerts. As long as he is alive he can run and
fight, he can throw the spear or guide the canoe; death comes to the
comrade by his side, and all is still. So in wind and stream, in beast
and tree, in the stones that fall upon the mountain side, in the stars
that march across the nightly sky, he sees a like power; they, too,
have some sort of life.
Life as an abstract idea, a potency or principle, is but rarely
grasped. But its manifestations early attract notice, and can be
roughly explained. They are due to something inside the living body,
which can pass in and out, and can finally leave it altogether. Here
is an immense store of causality provided, to account for all the
incidents of each day's experience. Modern language calls {102} such
agents spirits, and recognises in their multitude two mingled groups,
both active: the spirits of the dead on the one hand, and those of
natural objects, the bubbling well, the gloomy forest, the raging
storm, upon the other.
Sometimes these are merged under a common term, like the Japanese
_kami_, sometimes they are separately named. They bear different
characters of good and evil, as they are ready to help or hurt; and the
same spirit may be now kindly and now hostile, without fixity of
disposition or purpose. To such spirits the ancient Babylonians gave
the name of _zi_. Literally, we are told, the word signified "life";
it was indicated in their picture-writing by a flowering plant; the
great gods, and even heaven and earth themselves, all had their _zi_.
The Egyptians, in like manner, ascribed to every object, to human
beings, and to gods, a double or _ka_. The word seems to be identical
with that for "food"; it was another way of indicating that all visible
things, the peoples of the earth, the dwellers in the realms above and
below, shared a common life.
The history of religion is concerned with the process by which the
great gods rise into clear view above the host of spirits filling the
common scene; with the modes in which the forces of the world may be
grouped under their control; with the manifold combinations which
finally enable one supreme power to {103} absorb all the rest, so that
a god of the sky, like the Greek Zeus, may become a god of rain and
sunshine and atmospheric change, of earth and sea, and of the nether
world; and may thus be presented as the sole and universal energy, not
only of all outward things but also of the inner world of thought. Of
this immense development language, archæology, literature, the
dedications of worship, the testimonies of the ancient students of
their still more ancient past in ritual and belief, contain the
scattered witness, which the student of to-day laboriously gathers and
interprets. It is the humbler object of a little manual of Comparative
Religion to set some of the principal issues of such historic evolution
side by side, and show how similar reactions of the mind of man upon
the field of his experience have wrought like results.
As the inquirer casts his eye over the manifold varieties of the
world's faiths, he sees that they are always conditioned by the stage
of social culture out of which they emerge. The hunter who lives by
the chase, and must range over large areas for means of support; the
pastoral herdsman who has acquired the art of breeding cattle and
sheep, and slowly moves from one set of feeding-grounds to another; the
agriculturist who has learned to rely on the co-operation of earth and
sky in the annual round,--have each their own way of expressing their
view of the Powers on which they depend.
{104}
Little by little they are arranged in groups. The Celts, for instance,
coming to river after river in their onward march, employed the same
name again and again, "Deuona," divine (still surviving in this country
in different forms, Devon, Dee, etc.), as though all rivers belonged to
one power. They were the givers of life and health and plenty, to whom
costly sacrifices must be made. So they might bear the title "Mother,"
and were akin to the powers of fertility living in the soil, the
"Mothers" (_Matres_ or _Matronæ_), cognate with the "Mothers" who
fulfil similar functions in modern India. The adjacent Teutonic
peoples filled forest and field with wood-sprites and elves, dwellers
in the air and the sunlight. The springs, the streams, and the lakes,
were the home of the water-sprites or nixes; in the fall of the mighty
torrent, among the rocks on the mountain heights, in the fury of the
storm or the severity of the frost, was the strength of the giants.
Yet further east and north the Finnic races looked out on a land of
forest and waters, of mists and winds. The spirits were ranged beneath
rulers who were figured in human form. The huntsman prayed with vow
and sacrifice to the aged Tapio, god of the woods and the wild animals.
Kekri watched over the increase of the herd, while Hillervo protected
them on the summer pastures. The grains and herbs--of less importance
to tribes {105} only imperfectly agricultural--were ascribed to the
care of Pellervoinen, who falls into the background and receives but
little veneration. Water, once worshipped as a living element
(_vesi_), is gradually supplanted by a water-god (Ahto) who rules over
the spirits of lakes and rivers, wells and springs. "Mother-earth"
still designates in the oldest poetry the living energy of the ground,
though she afterwards becomes the "lady of the earth" and consort of
the lord of the sky. The sky, Jumala, was first of all conceived as
itself living; "Jumala's weather" was like "Zeus's shower" to an
ancient Greek. And then, under the name Ukko, the sky becomes a
personal ruler, with clouds and rain, thunder and hail, beneath his
sway; who can be addressed as--
Ukko, thou of gods the highest,
Ukko, thou our Heavenly Father.
Many causes contribute to the enlargement and stability of such
conceptions. Tribes of limited local range and a meagre past without
traditions may conceive the world around them on a feeble scale. But
migration helps to enlarge the outlook. Local powers cannot accompany
tribes upon the march. Either they must be left behind and drop out of
remembrance, or they must be identified with new scenes and adapted to
fresh environments. When the horizon moves ever further forwards with
each advance, earth and sky loom vaster {106} before the imagination,
and sun and moon, the companion of each day or the protector of each
night, gain a more stately predominance. The ancestors of the Hindus,
the Greeks, the Romans, the Teutons, carried with them the worship of
the sky-god under a common name, derived from the root _div_, to
"shine" (Dyaus = Zeus = Jovis = old High German Tiu, as in Tuesday).
Other names gathered around the person in the actual firmament, such as
the Sanskrit Varuna (still recognised by some scholars as identical
with the Greek Ouranos, heaven), loftiest of all the Vedic gods. The
Aryan immigrants are already organised under kings, and Varuna sits
enthroned in sovereignty. His palace is supported by a thousand
pillars, and a thousand doors provide open access for his worshippers.
But he is in some sense omnipresent, and one of the ancient poets sang--
"If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or to get
up, what two people sitting together whisper, King Varuna knows it, he
is there as the third.
"This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky with
its ends far apart. The two seas (sky and ocean) are Varuna's loins;
he is also contained in this small drop of water.
"He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of
Varuna, the king."
{107}
The supreme power of the universe is here conceived under a political
image. Conceptions of government and social order supply another line
of advance, parallel with the forces of nature. On the African Gold
Coast, after eighteen years' observation, Cruickshank ranged the
objects of worship in three ranks: (1) the stone, the tree, the river,
the snake, the alligator, the bundle of rags, which constituted the
private fetish of the individual; (2) the greater family deity whose
aid was sought by all alike, sometimes in a singular act of communion
which involved the swallowing of the god (p. 144); and (3) the deity of
the whole town, to whom the entire people had recourse in times of
calamity and suffering.
The conception of the deity of a tribe or nation may be greatly
developed under the influence of victory. War becomes a struggle
between rival gods. Jephthah the Gileadite, after recounting the
triumphs of Israel to the hostile Ammonite king, states the case with
the most naked simplicity: "Yahweh, Israel's god, hath dispossessed the
Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess
them? Wilt thou not possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to
possess? So whomsoever Yahweh our god hath dispossessed from before
us, them will we possess" (Judges xi. 23, 24). The land of Canaan was
the gift of Israel's God, but at first his power was limited by its
boundaries: to be driven from the country was to be {108} alienated
from the right to offer him worship or receive from him protection. In
the famous battle with the Hittites, celebrated by the court-poet of
Rameses the Great (1300-1234 B.C.), the king, endangered by the flight
of his troops, appeals to the great god Amen, a form of the solar deity
Rê, with confidence of help, "Amen shall bring to nought the ignorers
of God": and the answer comes, "I am with thee, I am thy father, my
hand is with thee, I am more excellent for thee than hundreds of
thousands united in one." Success thus enhanced the glory of the
victor's gods. Like the Incas of Peru in later days, the Assyrian
sovereigns confirmed their power by bringing the deities of tributary
peoples in a captive train to their own capital: and the Hebrew prophet
opens his description of the fall of Babylon by depicting the images of
the great gods Bel and Nebo as packed for deportation on the
transport-animals of the conqueror.
Other causes further tended to give distinction to the personality of
deities, and define their spheres. A promiscuous horde of spirits has
no family relationships. A god may have a pedigree; a consort is at
his side; and the mysterious divine power reappears in a son. Instead
of the political analogy of a sovereign and his attendants, the family
conception expresses itself in a divine father, mother and child. Thus
the Ibani of Southern Nigeria recognised Adum as the father of all
{109} gods except Tamuno the creator, espoused to Okoba the principal
goddess, and mother of Eberebo, represented as a boy, to whom children
were dedicated. The Egyptian triad, Osiris, Isis and Horus, is well
known; and the divine mother with the babe upon her lap passed into the
Christian Church in the form of the Virgin Mary and her infant son.
The divisions of the universe suggested another grouping. The Vedic
poets arranged their deities in three zones: the sky above, the
intervening atmosphere, and the earth beneath. Babylonian cosmology
placed Anu in the heaven, Bel on the earth, and Ea in the great deep,
and these three became the symbols of the order of nature, and the
divine embodiments of physical law. Homer already divides the world
between the sky-god Zeus, Poseidon of earth and sea, and Hades of the
nether realm: and Rome has its triads, like Jupiter, Mars, and
Quirinus, or again Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Whatever be the origin
of the number three in this connection, it reproduces itself with
strange reiteration in both hemispheres. Other groups are suggested by
the sun and moon and the five planets, and appear in sets of seven.
Egyptian summaries recognised gods in the sky, on earth, and in the
water; and the theologians of different sanctuaries loved to arrange
them in systems of nine, or three times three.
Out of this vast and motley multitude emerge certain leading types in
correspondence {110} with certain modes of human thought, with certain
hopes and fears arising out of the changes of the human lot. Curiosity
begins to ask questions about the scene around. The child, when it has
grasped some simple view of the world, will inquire who made it; and to
the usual answer will by and by rejoin "And who made God?" Elementary
speculation does not advance so far: it is content to rest if necessary
in darkness and the void, provided there is a power which can light the
sun, and set man on his feet. But the intellectual range of thought
even in the lower culture is much wider than might have been
anticipated; while the higher religions contain abundant survivals of
the cruder imagination which simply loves a tale.
Sometimes the creative power (especially on the American continent) is
figured as a marvellous animal, a wondrous raven, a bird-serpent, a
great hare, a mighty beaver. Or the dome of sky suggests an original
world-egg, which has been divided to make heaven and earth. Even the
Australians, whose characteristics are variously interpreted as
indications of extreme backwardness or of long decline, show figures
which belong to what Mr. Andrew Lang designated the "High Gods of Low
Races." Among the Narrinyeri in the west Nurrundere was said to have
made all things on the earth; the Wiimbaio told how Nurelli had made
the whole country with the rivers, trees, and animals. Among the {111}
Western Bantu on the African continent Nzambi (a name with many
variants over a large area) is described as "Maker and Father." "Our
forefathers told us that name. Njambi is the One-who-made-us. He is
our Father, he made these trees, that mountain, this river, these goats
and chickens, and us people." That is the simple African version of
the "ever-and-beyond." But as with so many of the chief gods, not only
on the dark continent, but elsewhere, he is regarded as a
non-interfering and therefore negligible deity.
Sometimes speculation takes a higher flight. The Zuñis of Mexico have
remained in possession of ancient traditions, uninfluenced by any
imported Christianity. After many years' residence among them Mr.
Cushing was able to gather their ideas of the origin of the world.
Awona-wilona was the Maker and Container of all, the All-Father-Father.
Through the great space of the ages there was nothing else whatever,
only black darkness everywhere. Then "in the beginning of the
new-made" Awona-wilona conceived within himself, and "thought outward
in space," whereby mists of increase, steams potent of growth, were
evolved and uplifted. Thus by means of his innate knowledge the
All-Container made himself in the person and form of the sun. With his
appearance came the brightening of the spaces with light, and with the
brightening of the spaces the great {112} mist-clouds were thickened
together and fell. Thereby was evolved water in water, yea and the
world-holding sea. And then came the production of the
Fourfold-Containing Mother-Earth and the All-Covering Father-Sky.
With a yet bolder leap of imagination did a Polynesian poet picture the
great process. From island to island between Hawaii and New Zealand is
a "high god" known as Taaroa, Tangaloa, Tangaroa, and Kanaroa. The
Samoans said that he existed in space and wished for some place to
dwell in, so he made the heavens; and then wished to have a place under
the heavens, so he made the earth. Tahitian mythology declared (the
versions of priests and wise men differed) that he was born of night or
darkness. Then he embraced a rock, the imagined foundation of all
things, which brought forth earth and sea; the heavens were created
with sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, and rain, and the dry land
appeared below. The whole process was summed up in a hymn--
"He was: Taaroa was his name.
He abode in the void; no earth, no sea, no sky.
Taaroa calls, but nought answers,
Then, alone existing, he became the universe."
The relations of these creative Powers to man are conceived very
differently. The {113} Maker of the world may be continually
interested in it, and may continue to administer the processes which he
has begun. The Akkra negro looks up to the living sky, Nyongmo, as the
author of all things, who is benevolently active day by day: "We see
every day," said a fetish-man, "how the grass, the corn, and the trees,
spring forth through the rain and sunshine sent by Nyongmo [_Nyongmo
ne_ = 'Nyongmo rains'], how should he not be the creator?" So he is
invoked with prayer and rite. The great Babylonian god, Marduk, son of
Ea (god of wisdom and spells), alone succeeds in overcoming the might
of Tiamat (the Hebrew _tehôm_ or "deep"), the primeval chaos with her
hideous brood of monsters, and out of her carcass makes the firmament
of heaven. He arranges the stations of the stars, he founds the earth,
and places man upon it. "His word is established," cries the poet,
"his command is unchangeable: wide is his heart, broad is his
compassion." A conqueror so splendid could not relinquish his energy,
or rest on his achievements: he must remain on the throne of the world
to direct and support its ways. Here is a prayer of Nebuchadrezzar to
this lofty deity--
"O eternal ruler, lord of all being, grant that the name of the king
thou lovest, whose name thou hast proclaimed, may flourish as seems
pleasing to thee. Lead him in the right {114} way. I am the prince
that obeys thee, the creature of thy hand. Thou hast created me, and
hast entrusted to me dominion over mankind. According to thy mercy, O
lord, which thou bestowest upon all, may thy supreme rule be merciful!
The worship of thy divinity implant within my heart. Grant me what
seems good to thee, for thou art he that hast fashioned my life."
On the other hand, the "High Gods of Low Races" often seem to fade away
and become inactive, or at least are out of relations to man. Olorun,
lord of the sky among the African Egbas, also bore the title of Eleda,
"the Creator." But he was too remote and exalted to be the object of
human worship, and no prayer was offered to him. Among the southern
Arunta of central Australia, reports Mr. Strehlow, Altjira is believed
to live in the sky. He is like a strong man save that he has emu feet.
He created the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars. When rain-clouds
come up, it is Altjira walking through the sky. Altjira shows himself
to man in the lightning, the thunder is his voice. But though thus
animate, he is no object of worship. "Altjira is a good god; he never
punishes man; therefore the blacks do not fear him, and render him
neither prayer nor sacrifice." In Indian theology the reason for the
discontinuance of homage was thus frankly stated by one of the poets
{115} of the great epic, the Mahābhārata; "Men worship Çiva the
destroyer because they fear him; Vishnu the preserver, because they
hope from him; but who worships Brahman the creator? _His work is
done._"[1]
[1] Hopkins, _India, Old and New_, p. 113. Prof. Hopkins adds that in
India to-day there are thousands of temples to Çiva and Vishnu, but
only two to Brahman.
If the deity who has provided the scene of existence thus recedes into
the background, it is otherwise with the powers which maintain and
foster life. Among the impulses which drive man to action is the need
of food; and the sources of its supply are among the earliest objects
of his regard. A large group of agencies thus gradually wins
recognition, out of which emerge lofty forms endowed with functions far
transcending the simple energies at first ascribed to them. Even the
rude tribes of Australia, possessing no definite worship, perform
pantomimic ceremonies of a magical kind, designed to stimulate the food
supply. The men of the plum-tree totem will pretend to knock down
plums and eat them; in the initiation ceremony of the eagle-hawks two
representatives will imitate the flapping of wings and the movements of
attack, and one will finally wrench a piece of meat out of the other's
mouth. At a higher stage of animism the Indians of British North
America pray to the spirit of the wild raspberry. When the young
shoots are six or eight inches high above the ground, a small bundle is
{116} picked by the wife or daughters of the chief and cooked in a new
pot. The settlement assembles in a great circle, with the presiding
chief and the medicine-man in the midst. All close their eyes, except
certain assisting elders, while the chief offers a silent prayer that
the spirit of the plants will be propitious to them, and grant them a
good supply of suckers.
Here the whole class of plants is already conceived as under the
control of a single power. In ruder stages the hunter will address his
petitions to the individual bear, before whose massive stature he feels
a certain awe, entreating him not to be angry or fight, but to take
pity on him. Pastoral peoples will employ domesticated animals in
sacrifice, while the products of the field occupy a second place; the
cow may become sacred, and the daily work of the dairy may rise, as
among the Todas, to the rank of religious ritual. Some element of
mysterious energy will even lie in the weapons of the chase, in the net
or the canoe, and may be found still lingering in the implements of
agriculture, such as the plough.
Among settled communities which live by tillage the succession of the
crops from year to year acquires immense importance. Earth and sky,
the sun, the rain, and time itself in the background, are all
contributory powers, but attention is fastened upon the spirit of the
grains. The Iroquois look on the spirits of corn, of squashes, and of
beans, as three {117} sisters, who are known collectively as "Our Life"
or "Our Supporters." In central America each class of food-plants had
its corresponding spirit, which presided over its germination,
nourishment, and growth. This was called the _mama_ or "mother" of the
plant: in Peru there was a cocoa-mother, a potato-mother, a
maize-mother; just as in India the cotton-spirit is worshipped as
"cotton-mother." A "maize-mother," made of the finest stalks, was
renewed at each harvest, that the seed might preserve its vitality.
The figure, richly clothed, was ceremoniously installed, and watched
for three nights. Sacrifice was solemnly offered, and the interpreter
inquired, "Maize-mother, canst thou live till next year?" If the
spirit answered affirmatively, the figure remained for a twelvemonth;
if no reply was vouchsafed, it was taken away and burnt, and a fresh
one was consecrated. In Mexico maize was a much more important food
than in Peru, and the maize-deity acquired in consequence a much higher
rank. She became a great harvest goddess. Temple and altar were
dedicated to her; spring and summer festivals were celebrated in her
honour; and a youthful victim was slain, whose vitality might enter the
soil, and recruit her exhausted energies.
The ceremonies connected with the cultus of the rice-spirit in the East
Indies still perpetuate in living faith beliefs once vital {118} in the
peasantry of Europe, and surviving to this day (as Mannhardt and Frazer
have shown) in many a usage of the harvest-field. Out of this group of
ideas arise divine forms which express mysteries of life and time.
What is it that guides the circle of the year? What power brings forth
the blade out of the ground, and clothes the woods with verdure? As
the months follow their constant course, are not the seasons the organs
of some sacred force, lovely figures as Greek poets taught, born of
Zeus and Themis (holy law); or angels of the Most High, ruling over
heat and cold, summer and winter, spring and autumn, as the later
Israel conceived the continuance of God's creative work? And when the
fields are bare and the leaves fall, have not the energies of
vegetation suffered an arrest, to come to life again when the great
quickening of the spring returns? So while here and there dim
speculations (as in India or Persia or the Orphic hymns of Greece)
hover round Time, the generator of all things, and the recurring
periodicity of the Year, more concrete imagination conceives the
processes of the growth, decay, and revival of vegetation under the
symbols of the life, the death, and resurrection of the deities of corn
and tree.
To such a group belong different forms in Egypt, Syria and Greece,
whose precise origin cannot always be traced amid the bewildering
variety of functions which they came to fulfil. But they all
illustrate the same general theme. {119} In the ritual of their
worship similar motives and symbols may be traced; and the incidents of
their life-course were presented in a sort of sacred drama which
reproduced the central mystery. Such were Osiris in Egypt, Adonis (as
the Greeks called the Syrian form of the ancient Babylonian Tammuz),
Attis of Phrygia in Asia Minor, and in Greece the Thracian Dionysus,
and the divine pair Demeter and her daughter Persephonê blended with
the figure of Korê "the Maid."
The worship of Osiris early spread throughout Egypt, and its various
phases have given rise to many interpretations of his origin and
nature. Recent studies have converged upon the view that he was
primarily a vegetation deity. In the festival of sowing, small images
of the god formed out of sand or vegetable earth and corn, with yellow
faces and green cheek-bones, were solemnly buried, those of the
preceding year being removed. On the temple wall of his chamber at
Philæ stalks of corn were depicted springing from his dead body, while
a priest poured water on them from a pitcher. This was the mystery of
him "who springs from the returning waters." The annual inundation
brought quickening to the seed, and in the silence and darkness of the
earth it died to live.
Of this process Osiris became the type for thousands of years. Already
in the earliest days of the Egyptian monarchy he is presented as the
divine-human king, benevolent, wise, {120} just. To him in later times
the arts and laws of civilised life could be traced back; he was the
founder of the social order and the worship of the gods. But the
jealousy of his brother Set brought about his death. The ancient texts
do not explicitly state what followed. But his body was cut to pieces
and his limbs were scattered, until his son Horus effected their
reunion. Restored to life, he ascended to the skies, and became "Chief
of the Powers," so that he could be addressed as the "Great God." There
by his resurrection he became the pledge of immortality. Each man who
died looked to him for the gift of life. Mystically identified with
him, the deceased bore the god's name and was thus admitted into
fellowship with him. Over his body the ceremonies once performed upon
Osiris were repeated, the same formulæ were recited, with the
conviction that "as surely as Osiris lives, so shall he live also." But
magic was early checked by morals, and by the sixth dynasty Osiris had
also become the august and impartial judge (p. 8).
Such might be the splendid evolution of a deity of the grains. But
food was not, of course, the only need. The family as well as each
individual must be maintained. Mysterious powers wrought through sex.
Strange energies pulsed in processes of quickening, and these, too,
were interpreted in terms of divine agency. They found their parallels
in the operations of nature (like the Yang and {121} Yin of ancient
China), and begot new series of heavenly forms. The greater gods all
had their consorts. Birth must be placed under divine protection, just
as the organ of generation might itself be sacred. The Babylonian
looked to the spouse of Marduk, "creator of all things," to whom as
Zēr-panîtum, "seed-creatress," the processes of generation were
especially referred. Or with ceremony and incantation the child was
set beneath the care of Ishtar, queen of Nineveh, and goddess of the
planet Venus. The Greek prayed to Hera, Artemis, or Eileithyia; and
all round the world superhuman powers, for good or ill, gathered round
the infant life, whose aid must be sought, or whose hurt averted.
Dread agencies of disease, like fever, smallpox, or cholera, were in
like manner personalised. Demonic forces cut short the tale of years.
From the equator to the arctic zone Death is ascribed in the lowest
culture to witchcraft. Strange stories were told of his intrusion into
the world, commonly through man's transgression of some divine command.
And gradually the other world must be ruled like this; the multitudes
of the dead need a sovereign like the living; and after the fashion of
Osiris the Indian Yama, "first to spy out the path" to the unseen
realm, becomes the "King of Righteousness" before whom all must in due
time give their account (p. 244).
Such deities, however, represent much more than the physical life.
They have a social {122} character, and have become the expression of
organised morality. On this field another group of divine powers comes
into view, symbols of order in the home or the city, charged with the
maintenance of the family or the State. Round the hearth-fire gathers
a peculiar sanctity. There is the common centre of domestic interests;
there, too, the agent by which gifts are conveyed to the spirits of the
dead. There, then, was a sacred force, dwelling in the hearth itself,
and animating the fire that burned upon it. The Greek Hestia seems
originally to have been not the goddess who made the hearth holy, nor
the sacrificial fire which it sustained, but the mysterious energy in
the actual stones upholding the consecrated flame. All kinds of
associations were attached to it; and though her personality remained
somewhat dim and indistinct, and carven forms of her were rare, and her
worship was never sacerdotalised like that of the Latin Vesta, she
nevertheless had the first place in sacrifice and prayer. She was
worshipped in the city council-hall. Athenian colonists carried her
sacred fire across the seas. The poets provided her with a pedigree,
and made her "sister of God most high, and of Hera the partner of his
throne." The sculptor placed her statue at Athens beside that of
Peace. The family deity expanded into an emblem of the unity of
government and race. But the primitive character of the ancient
hearth-power still clung to her. {123} She never rose into the lofty
functions of guide and protector of moral order like the great
city-gods Zeus, Athena, or Apollo.
In Rome numerous powers were recognised in early days as guardians of
the home and the farm-lands. Vesta had her seat upon the hearth, which
was the centre of the family worship, and afterwards became the object
of an important city-cult. The store-chamber behind was the
dwelling-place of the Penates, and with its contents no impure person
might meddle. Where farm met farm stood the chapel of the local Lares,
and there whole households assembled, masters and slaves together, in
annual rejoicings and good fellowship. Brought into the home, the Lar
became the symbol of the family life, and the ancestral pieties
gathered round him. More vague and elastic was the conception of the
Genius, a kind of spiritual double who watched over the fortunes of the
head of the home, and through the marriage-bed provided for the
continuity of descent. This protecting power could take many forms
with continually expanding jurisdiction. The city, the colony, the
province, the "land of Britain," Rome, the Emperor himself, were thus
placed under divine care, or rather were viewed as in some way the
organs of superhuman power. In the energy which built up states and
brought peoples into order lived something that was creative and divine.
From distant times in many forms of society {124} it was felt that
there was something mysterious in sovereignty. The king (once
connected with the priest) was hedged round with some sort of divinity
which expressed itself in language amazing to the modern mind. In the
ancient monarchies of Egypt and Babylon the royal deity was the
fundamental assumption of government, and it was represented upon the
monuments beside the Nile with startling realism. In later days the
Greek title _Theos_ (god) was boldly assumed by the sovereigns of Egypt
and Syria. It was conferred, with the associated epithet _Sotér_
(Saviour or Preserver), as early as 307 B.C., on Demetrius and his
father Antigonus, who liberated Athens from the tyranny of Cassander.
On the Rosetta stone (in the British Museum) Ptolemy V, 205 B.C.,
claims the same dignity, and is described as "eternal-lived," and "the
living image of Zeus." Ephesus designated Julius Cæsar as "God
manifest and the common Saviour of human life."
This is something more than the extravagance of court-scribes, or the
fawning adulation of oriental dependents. In the worship paid to the
Roman Emperor many feelings and associations were involved. The power
which had brought peace, law, order, into the midst of a multitude of
nations and languages, and subdued to itself the jarring wills of men,
seemed something more than human. When Tertullian of Carthage coined
the strange word "Romanity," he summed up the infinite {125} variety of
energies which spread one culture from the Persian Gulf to the
Atlantic, from the cataracts of the Nile to the sources of the Tyne.
Of this mysterious force the Emperor was the symbol. So Augustus was
saluted throughout the East as "Son of God," and in inscriptions
recently discovered in Asia Minor, and referred by the historian
Mommsen to the year 11 or 9 B.C., we read the startling words: "the
birthday of the God is become the beginning of glad tidings
(_evangelia_[2]) through him to the world." He is described as "the
Saviour of the whole human race"; he is the beginning of life and the
end of sorrow that ever man was born. An inscription at Philæ on the
Nile equated him with the greatest of Greek deities, for he is "star of
all Greece who has arisen as great Saviour Zeus."
[2] The word which designates our "Gospels."
This is the most highly developed form of the doctrine of the divine
king, which the Far East has retained for the sovereigns of China and
Japan to our own day. The language and practice of Roman imperialism
called forth the impassioned resistance of the early Christians, and
the clash of opposing religions is nowhere portrayed with more
desperate intensity than in the Book of Revelation at the close of our
New Testament, where Rome and her false worship are identified with the
power of the "Opposer" or Sâtân, and are hurled with all their
trappings of wealth and luxury into the abyss.
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The conception of a god as "saviour" or deliverer is founded on
incidents in personal or national experience, when some unexpected
event opens a way of escape from pressing danger. When the Gauls were
advancing against Rome in 388 B.C., a strange voice of warning was
heard in the street. It was neglected, but when they had been
repelled, Camillus erected an altar and temple to the mysterious
"Speaker," Aius Locutius, whose prophetic energy was thus manifested.
In the second Punic war, when the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, was
marching against the city in 211 B.C., he suddenly changed his course
near the Capena gate. Again the might of an unknown deity was
displayed, and the grateful Romans raised a shrine to him under the
name of Tutanus Rediculus, the god who "protects and turns back." It
might be the attack of an enemy, it might be the imminence of
shipwreck, it might be a desolating plague, or any one of the
vicissitudes of fortune, the distresses and anxieties of the soul or of
the State, in the power which brought rescue or health or peace to body
or mind, or life hereafter in a better world, the grateful believer
recognised the energy of some superhuman being. Just as the making of
the world required a creative hand, just as the arts and laws of social
life were the product of some divine initiative (p. 171), just as the
higher virtues belonged to a band of spiritual forces which had a kind
of individuality of their own, {127} so the shaping of affairs bore
witness to the interest and intervention of wills above those of man.
All through the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean the greater
deities, such as Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Æsculapius, Dionysus, Isis,
Zeus, bore the title of "Deliverer." And in the mysteries which drew
so many worshippers to their rites in the first centuries of our era,
this deliverance took the form of salvation from sin, and carried with
it the promise of re-birth into eternal life.
Similar conceptions are seen in India. The founder of Buddhism, Gotama
of the Sākyan clan, was believed to have attained the Enlightenment
which enabled him to discern the whole secret of existence. After a
long series of preparatory labours in previous lives he had appeared as
a man in his last birth, to "lift off from the world the veils of
ignorance and sin." He had himself repudiated all ontological
conceptions; he had explained the human being without the hypothesis of
a soul or self, and the world without the ideas of substance or God.
But in due time the rejected metaphysics insisted on recognition; and
some three hundred years or more after his death a new interpretation
of his person arose. Under the stress of pious affection, the
influence of philosophical Brahmanism, and the need of permanent
spiritual help, he was conceived as a manifestation of the Infinite and
Eternal, who for the sake of suffering humanity from time to time {128}
condescended to seem to be born and die, that in the likeness of a man
he might impart the saving truth. So he was presented as the
Self-Existent, the Father of the world, the Protector of all creatures,
the Healer of men's sicknesses and sins.
Over against this great figure Brahmanism placed another, that of
Vishnu, with his series of "descents," in which the Buddha was formally
incorporated as the ninth. The most famous of these were the heroes
Rama and Krishna; and Krishna became the subject of the best-known book
of Indian devotion, the Bhagavad-Gita or the "Divine Lay," which has
been sometimes supposed to show traces of the influence of the Gospel
of St. John. Here was a religion founded on the idea of divine grace
or favour on the one part, and adoring love and devotion on the other.
Krishna, also, taught a way of deliverance from the evils of human
passion and attachment to the world; and Vishnu came to be the
embodiment of divine beneficence, at once the power which maintained
the universe and revealed himself from time to time to man.
Vishnu was an ancient Vedic deity connected with the sun; and by his
side Hindu theology set another god of venerable antiquity, once fierce
and destructive, but now known under the name of Çiva, the
"auspicious." The great epic entitled the Mahābhārata does not
conceal their rivalry; but with the facility of identification {129}
characteristic of Indian thought, either deity could be interpreted as
a form of the other. Çiva became the representative of the energies of
dissolution and reproduction; and his worship begot in the hearts of
the mediæval poets an ardent piety, while in other aspects it
degenerated into physical passion on the one side and extreme
asceticism on the other. But in association with Brahma, Vishnu and
Çiva constituted the Trimurti, or "triple form," embracing the
principles of the creation, preservation, destruction, and renewal of
the world. Symbolised, like the Christian Trinity, by three heads
growing on one stem,[3] these lofty figures were the personal
manifestations of the Universal Spirit, the Sole Existence, the
ultimate Being, Intelligence, and Bliss.
[3] Some of the Celtic deities are three-faced, or three-headed.
By various paths was the goal of monotheism approached, but popular
practice perpetually clung to lower worships, and philosophy could
often accommodate them with ingenious justifications. A bold and
decisive judgment like that of the Egyptian Akhnaton might fix on one
of the great powers of nature--the sun--as the most suitable emblem of
Deity to be adored, and forbid all other cults. Or the various groups
and ranks of divine beings might be addressed in a kind of collective
totality, like the "all-gods" of the Vedic hymns. At Olympia {130}
there was a common altar for all the gods; and a frequent dedication of
Roman altars in later days consecrated them "to Jupiter Greatest and
Best, and the Other Immortal Gods." If reflection was sufficiently
advanced to coin abstract terms for deity, like the Babylonian
_'ilûth_, or the Vedic _asuratva_ or _devatva_, some poet might
apprehend the ultimate unity, and lay it down that "the great
_asuratva_ of the _devas_ is one." Both India and Greece reached the
conception of a unity of energy in diversity of operation; "the One
with many names" was the theme of the ancient Hindu seers long before
Æschylus in almost identical words proclaimed "One form with many
names." The great sky-god Zeus, whose personality could be almost
completely detached from the visible firmament, brought the whole world
under his sway, and from the fifth century before Christ Greek poetry
abounded in lofty monotheistic language which the early Christian
apologists freely quoted in their own defence. A philosophic sovereign
like Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco, might build a temple to "the Unknown
God, the Cause of Causes," where no idol should be reared for worship,
nor any sacrifice of blood be offered. But other motives were more
often at work. Conquest led to the identification of the deities of
the victor and the vanquished; and the importance of military triumph
enhanced the majesty of the successful god. In his great inscription
{131} on Mount Behistun Darius celebrated the grandeur of Ahura Mazda,
"Lord All-Wise," in language resembling that of a Hebrew psalm, "A
great God is Ahura Mazda, the greatest of the gods." Under the Roman
Empire the principle of delegated authority could be invoked to explain
the unity of the Godhead above inferior agencies; in the heavenly order
there was but one sovereign, though there were many functionaries.
Even Israel had its hierarchy of ministering spirits, and the Synagogue
found it necessary to forbid pious Jews to pray to Michael or to
Gabriel.
When the unity of the moral order was combined with the unity of
creative might, the transition to monotheism was even more complete.
It could, indeed, be deferred. In the ancient poems of the great
religious reformer whom the Greeks called Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda is the
supremely Good. Beside him are the Immortal Holy Ones, Holy Spirit,
Good Mind, Righteous Order, and the rest. True, in the oppositions of
light and darkness, heat and cold, health and sickness, plenty and
want, life and death, he is for a time hampered by the enmity of "the
Lie"; but the power of evil would be finally destroyed, and the
sovereignty of Ahura established for ever (p. 247).
From another point of view the divine purpose of deliverance must be
conceived upon an equally world-wide scale. One type of Indian
Buddhism looked to Avalokiteçvara {132} (Chinese Kwanyin, Japanese
Kwannon), who made the famous vow not to enter into final peace until
all beings--even the worst of demons in the lowest hell--should know
the saving truth and be converted. And in the Far East rises the
figure of the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is also the Buddha of
Infinite Life, whose grace will avail for universal redemption (p. 18).
The motive of creation falls away. The world is the scene of the moral
forces set in motion under the mysterious power of the Deed. No praise
rises to Amida for the wonders of the universe or the blessings of
life. But to no other may worship be offered. Here is a monotheism
where love reigns supreme, and it is content to trust that Infinite
Mercy will achieve its end.
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