is so instructive as the large question of PAGAN ORACLES. Every
part, indeed, of the Pagan religion, the course, geographically
or ethnographically, of its traditions, the vast labyrinth of its
mythology, the deductions of its contradictory genealogies, the disputed
meaning of its many secret "mysteries" [_teletai_--symbolic rites
or initiations], all these have been submitted of late years to
the scrutiny of glasses more powerful, applied under more combined
arrangements, and directed according to new principles more
comprehensively framed. We cannot in sincerity affirm--always with
immediate advantage. But even where the individual effort may have
been a failure as regarded the immediate object, rarely, indeed, it
has happened but that much indirect illumination has resulted--which,
afterwards entering into combination with other scattered currents of
light, has issued in discoveries of value; although, perhaps, any one
contribution, taken separately, had been, and would have remained,
inoperative. Much has been accomplished, chiefly of late years; and,
confining our view to ancient history, almost exclusively amongst the
Germans--by the Savignys, the Niebuhrs, the Otfried Muellers. And, if
that _much_ has left still more to do, it has also brought the means of
working upon a scale of far accelerated speed.
The books now existing upon the ancient oracles, above all, upon the
Greek oracles, amount to a small library. The facts have been collected
from all quarters,--examined, sifted, winnowed. Theories have been
raised upon these facts under every angle of aspect; and yet, after all,
we profess ourselves to be dissatisfied. Amongst much that is sagacious,
we feel and we resent with disgust a taint of falsehood diffused over
these recent speculations from vulgar and even counterfeit incredulity;
the one gross vice of German philosophy, not less determinate or less
misleading than that vice which, heretofore, through many centuries,
had impoverished this subject, and had stopped its discussion under the
anile superstition of the ecclesiastical fathers.
These fathers, both Greek and Latin, had the ill fortune to be
extravagantly esteemed by the church of Rome; whence, under a natural
reaction, they were systematically depreciated by the great leaders of
the Protestant Reformation. And yet hardly in a corresponding degree.
For there was, after all, even among the reformers, a deep-seated
prejudice in behalf of all that was "primitive" in Christianity; under
which term, by some confusion of ideas, the fathers often benefited.
Primitive Christianity was reasonably venerated; and, on this argument,
that, for the first three centuries, it was necessarily more sincere.
We do not think so much of that sincerity which affronted the fear of
persecution; because, after all, the searching persecutions were rare
and intermitting, and not, perhaps, in any case, so fiery as they have
been represented. We think more of that gentle but insidious persecution
which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of
the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the
fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far
beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world,
a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one
period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we,
in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great
carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps
and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life,
which, for the old world, was even more oppressive than it is for us.
In all principal cities, so as to be within the reach of almost all
provincial inhabitants, there was a hippodrome, often uniting the
functions of the circus and the amphitheatre; and there was a theatre.
From all such pleasures the Christian was sternly excluded by his
very profession of faith. From the festivals of the Pagan religion his
exclusion was even more absolute; against them he was a sworn militant
protester from the hour of his baptism. And when these modes of
pleasurable relaxation had been subtracted from ancient life, what could
remain? Even less, perhaps, than most readers have been led to
consider. For the ancients had no such power of extensive locomotion, of
refreshment for their wearied minds, by travelling and change of scene,
as we children of modern civilization possess. No ships had then been
fitted up for passengers, nor public carriages established, nor roads
opened extensively, nor hotels so much as imagined hypothetically;
because the relation of _xenia_, or the obligation to reciprocal
hospitality, and latterly the Roman relation of patron and client, had
stifled the first motions of enterprise of the ancients; in fact, no
man travelled but the soldier, and the man of political authority.
Consequently, in sacrificing public amusements, the Christians
sacrificed _all_ pleasure whatsoever that was not rigorously domestic;
whilst in facing the contingencies of persecutions that might arise
under the rapid succession of changing emperors, they faced a perpetual
_anxiety_ more trying to the fortitude than any fixed and measurable
evil. Here, certainly, we have a guarantee for the deep faithfulness
of early Christians, such as never can exist for more mixed bodies of
professors, subject to no searching trials.
Better the primitive Christians were (by no means individually better,
but better on the total body), yet they were not in any intellectual
sense wiser. Unquestionably the elder Christians participated in the
local follies, prejudices, superstitions, of their several provinces and
cities, except where any of these happened to be too conspicuously at
war with the spirit of love or the spirit of purity which exhaled at
every point from the Christian faith; and, in all intellectual features,
as were the Christians generally, such were the fathers. Amongst the
Greek fathers, one might be unusually learned, as Clement of Alexandria;
and another might be reputed unusually eloquent, as Gregory Nazianzen,
or Basil. Amongst the Latin fathers, one might be a man of admirable
genius, as far beyond the poor, vaunted Rousseau in the impassioned
grandeur of his thoughts, as he was in truth and purity of heart; we
speak of St. Augustine (usually called St. Austin), and many might be
distinguished by various literary merits. But could these advantages
anticipate a higher civilization? Most unquestionably some of the
fathers were the _élite_ of their own age, but not in advance of their
age. They, like all their contemporaries, were besieged by errors,
ancient, inveterate, traditional; and accidentally, from one cause
special to themselves, they were not merely liable to error, but usually
prone to error. This cause lay in the _polemic_ form which so often they
found a necessity, or a convenience, or a temptation for assuming, as
teachers or defenders of the truth.
He who reveals a body of awful truth to a candid and willing auditory
is content with the grand simplicities of truth in the quality of his
proofs. And truth, where it happens to be of a high order, is generally
its own witness to all who approach it in the spirit of childlike
docility. But far different is the position of that teacher who
addresses an audience composed in various proportions of sceptical
inquirers, obstinate opponents, and malignant scoffers. Less than an
apostle is unequal to the suppression of all human reactions incident
to wounded sensibilities. Scorn is too naturally met by retorted scorn:
malignity in the Pagan, which characterized all the known cases of
signal opposition to Christianity, could not but hurry many good
men into a vindictive pursuit of victory. Generally, where truth is
communicated _polemically_ (this is, not as it exists in its own
inner simplicity, but as it exists in external relation to error), the
temptation is excessive to use those arguments which will tell at the
moment upon the crowd of bystanders, by preference to those which will
approve themselves ultimately to enlightened disciples. Hence it is,
that, like the professional rhetoricians of Athens, not seldom the
Christian fathers, when urgently pressed by an antagonist equally
mendacious and ignorant, could not resist the human instinct for
employing arguments such as would baffle and confound the unprincipled
opponent, rather than such as would satisfy the mature Christian. If
a man denied himself all specious arguments, and all artifices of
dialectic subtlety, he must renounce the hopes of a _present_ triumph;
for the light of absolute truth on moral or on spiritual themes is too
dazzling to be sustained by the diseased optics of those habituated to
darkness. And hence we explain not only the many gross delusions of
the fathers, their sophisms, their errors of fact and chronology, their
attempts to build great truths upon fantastic etymologies, or upon
popular conceits in science that have long since exploded, but also
their occasional unchristian tempers. To contend with an unprincipled
and malicious liar, such as Julian the Apostate, in its original sense
the first deliberate _miscreant_, offered a dreadful snare to any man's
charity. And he must be a furious bigot who will justify the rancorous
lampoons of Gregory Nazianzen. Are we, then, angry on behalf of Julian?
So far as _he_ was interested, not for a moment would we have suspended
the descending scourge. Cut him to the bone, we should have exclaimed at
the time! Lay the knout into every "raw" that can be found! For we are
of opinion that Julian's duplicity is not yet adequately understood. But
what was right as regarded the claims of the criminal, was _not_
right as regarded the duties of his opponent. Even in this mischievous
renegade, trampling with his orangoutang hoofs the holiest of truths,
a Christian bishop ought still to have respected his sovereign, through
the brief period that he _was_ such, and to have commiserated his
benighted brother, however wilfully astray, and however hatefully
seeking to quench that light for other men, which, for his own misgiving
heart, we could undertake to show that he never _did_ succeed in
quenching. We do not wish to enlarge upon a theme both copious and easy.
But here, and everywhere, speaking of the fathers as a body, we charge
them with anti-christian practices of a two-fold order: sometimes as
supporting their great cause in a spirit alien to its own, retorting in
a temper not less uncharitable than that of their opponents; sometimes,
again, as adopting arguments that are unchristian in their ultimate
grounds; resting upon errors the reputation of errors; upon
superstitions the overthrow of superstitions; and drawing upon the
armories of darkness for weapons that, to be durable, ought to have been
of celestial temper. Alternately, in short, the fathers trespass against
those affections which furnish to Christianity its moving powers, and
against those truths which furnish to Christianity its guiding lights.
Indeed, Milton's memorable attempt to characterize the fathers as a
body, contemptuous as it is, can hardly be challenged as overcharged.
Never in any instance were these aberrations of the fathers more vividly
exemplified than in their theories upon the Pagan Oracles. On behalf of
God, they were determined to be wiser than God; and, in demonstration of
scriptural power, to advance doctrines which the Scriptures had nowhere
warranted. At this point, however, we shall take a short course; and, to
use a vulgar phrase, shall endeavor to "kill two birds with one stone."
It happens that the earliest book in our modern European literature,
which has subsequently obtained a station of authority on the subject of
the ancient Oracles, applied itself entirely to the erroneous theory of
the fathers. This is the celebrated _Antonii Van Dale, "De Ethnicorum
Oraculis Dissertationes_," which was published at Amsterdam _at least_
as early as the year 1682; that is, one hundred and sixty years ago. And
upon the same subject there has been no subsequent book which maintains
an equal rank. Van Dale might have treated his theme simply with a
view to the investigation of the truth, as some recent inquirers have
preferred doing; and, in that case, the fathers would have been noticed
only as incidental occasions might bring forward their opinions--true
or false. But to this author the errors of the fathers seemed capital;
worthy, in fact, of forming his _principal_ object; and, knowing their
great authority in the Papal church, he anticipated, in the plan of
attaching his own views to the false views of the fathers, an opening
to a double patronage--that of the Protestants, in the first place,
as interested in all doctrines seeming to be anti-papal; that of the
sceptics, in the second place, as interested in the exposure of whatever
had once commanded, but subsequently lost, the superstitious reverence
of mankind. On this policy, he determined to treat the subject
polemically. He fastened, therefore, upon the fathers with a deadly
_acharnement_, that evidently meant to leave no arrears of work for
any succeeding assailant; and it must be acknowledged that, simply in
relation to this purpose of hostility, his work is triumphant. So much
was not difficult to accomplish; for barely to enunciate the leading
doctrine of the fathers is, in the ear of any chronologist, to overthrow
it. But, though successful enough in its functions of destruction,
on the other hand, as an affirmative or constructive work, the long
treatise of Van Dale is most unsatisfactory. It leaves us with a hollow
sound ringing in the ear, of malicious laughter from gnomes and
imps grinning over the weaknesses of man--his paralytic facility in
believing--his fraudulent villany in abusing this facility--but in no
point accounting for those real effects of diffusive social benefits
from the Oracle machinery, which must arrest the attention of candid
students, amidst some opposite monuments of incorrigible credulity, or
of elaborate imposture.
As a book, however, belonging to that small cycle (not numbering,
perhaps, on _all_ subjects, above three score), which may be said to
have moulded and controlled the public opinion of Europe through the
last five generations, already for itself the work of Van Dale merits a
special attention. It is confessedly the _classical_ book--the original
_fundus_ for the arguments and facts applicable to this question; and
an accident has greatly strengthened its authority. Fontenelle, the
most fashionable of European authors, at the opening of the eighteenth
century, writing in a language at that time even more predominant than
at present, did in effect employ all his advantages to propagate and
popularize the views of Van Dale. Scepticism naturally courts the
patronage of France; and in effect that same remark which a learned
Belgian (Van Brouwer) has found frequent occasion to make upon
single sections of Fontenelle's work, may be fairly extended into a
representative account of the whole--"_L'on trouve les mêmes arguments
chez Fontenelle, mais dégagés des longueurs du savant Van Dale, et
exprimés avec plus d'élégance._" This _rifaccimento_ did not injure the
original work in reputation: it caused Van Dale to be less read, but to
be more esteemed; since a man confessedly distinguished for his powers
of composition had not thought it beneath his ambition to adopt and
recompose Van Dale's theory. This important position of Van Dale with
regard to the effectual creed of Europe--so that, whether he were read
directly or were slighted for a more fashionable expounder, equally in
either case it was _his_ doctrines which prevailed--must always confer
a circumstantial value upon the original dissertations, "_De Ethnicorum
Oraculis_."
This original work of Van Dale is a book of considerable extent. But, in
spite of its length, it divides substantially into two great
chapters, and no more, which coincide, in fact, with the two separate
dissertations. The first of these dissertations, occupying one hundred
and eighty-one pages, inquires into the failure and extinction of the
Oracles; when they failed, and under what circumstances. The second of
these dissertations inquires into the machinery and resources of the
Oracles during the time of their prosperity. In the first dissertation,
the object is to expose the folly and gross ignorance of the fathers,
who insisted on representing the history of the case roundly in this
shape--as though all had prospered with the Oracles up to the nativity
of Christ; but that, after his crucifixion, and simultaneously with the
first promulgation of Christianity, all Oracles had suddenly drooped;
or, to tie up their language to the rigor of their theory, had suddenly
expired. All this Van Dale peremptorily denies; and, in these days, it
is scarcely requisite to add, triumphantly denies; the whole hypothesis
of the fathers having literally not a leg to stand upon; and being, in
fact, the most audacious defiance to historical records that, perhaps,
the annals of human folly present.
In the second dissertation, Van Dale combats the other notion of the
fathers--that, during their prosperous ages, the Oracles had moved by
an agency of evil spirits. He, on the contrary, contends that, from
the first hour to the last of their long domination over the minds and
practice of the Pagan world, they had moved by no agencies whatever, but
those of human fraud, intrigue, collusion, applied to human blindness,
credulity, and superstition.
We shall say a word or two upon each question. As to the first, namely,
_when_ it was that the Oracles fell into decay and silence, thanks
to the headlong rashness of the Fathers, Van Dale's assault cannot be
refused or evaded. In reality, the evidence against them is too flagrant
and hyperbolical. If we were to quote from Juvenal--"Delphis et Oracula
cessant," in that case, the fathers challenge it as an argument on
_their_ side, for that Juvenal described a state of things immediately
posterior to Christianity; yet even here the word _cessant_ points to a
distinction of cases which already in itself is fatal to their doctrine.
By _cessant_ Juvenal means evidently what we, in these days, should
mean in saying of a ship in action that her fire was slackening. This
powerful poet, therefore, wiser so far than the Christian fathers,
distinguishes two separate cases: first, the state of torpor and
languishing which might be (and in fact was) the predicament of many
famous Oracles through centuries not fewer than five, six, or even
eight; secondly, the state of absolute dismantling and utter extinction
which, even before his time, had confounded individual Oracles of the
inferior class, not from changes affecting religion, whether true or
false, but from political revolutions. Here, therefore, lies the first
blunder of the fathers, that they confound with total death the long
drooping which befell many great Oracles from languor in the popular
sympathies, under changes hereafter to be noticed; and, consequently,
from revenues and machinery continually decaying. That the Delphic
Oracle itself--of all oracles the most illustrious--had not expired, but
simply slumbered for centuries, the fathers might have been convinced
themselves by innumerable passages in authors contemporary with
themselves; and that it was continually throwing out fitful gleams of
its ancient power, when any very great man (suppose a Caesar) thought
fit to stimulate its latent vitality, is notorious from such cases as
that of Hadrian. He, in his earlier days, whilst yet only dreaming of
the purple, had not found the Oracle superannuated or palsied. On the
contrary, he found it but too clear-sighted; and it was no contempt in
him, but too ghastly a fear and jealousy, which labored to seal up the
grander ministrations of the Oracle for the future. What the Pythia had
foreshown to himself, she might foreshow to others; and, when tempted
by the same princely bribes, she might authorize and kindle the same
aspiring views in other great officers. Thus, in the new condition of
the Roman power, there was a perpetual peril, lest an oracle, so
potent as that of Delphi, should absolutely create rebellions, by
first suggesting hopes to men in high commands. Even as it was, all
treasonable assumptions of the purple, for many generations, commenced
in the hopes inspired by auguries, prophecies, or sortileges. And
had the great Delphic Oracle, consecrated to men's feelings by hoary
superstition, and _privileged by secrecy_, come forward to countersign
such hopes, many more would have been the wrecks of ambition, and
even bloodier would have been the blood-polluted line of the imperial
successions. Prudence, therefore, it was, and state policy, not the
power of Christianity, which gave the _final_ shock (of the _original_
shock we shall speak elsewhere) to the grander functions of the Delphic
Oracle. But, in the mean time, the humbler and more domestic offices of
this oracle, though naturally making no noise at a distance, seem
long to have survived its state relations. And, apart from the sort of
galvanism notoriously applied by Hadrian, surely the fathers could not
have seen Plutarch's account of its condition, already a century later
than our Saviour's nativity. The Pythian priestess, as we gather from
_him_, had by that time become a less select and dignified personage;
she was no longer a princess in the land--a change which was proximately
due to the impoverished income of the temple; but she was still in
existence; still held in respect; still trained, though at inferior
cost, to her difficult and showy ministrations. And the whole
establishment of the Delphic god, if necessarily contracted from that
scale which had been suitable when great kings and commonwealths were
constant suitors within the gates of Delphi, still clung (like the
Venice of modern centuries) to her old ancestral honors, and kept up
that decent household of ministers which corresponded to the altered
ministrations of her temple. In fact, the evidences on behalf of Delphi
as a princely house, that had indeed partaken in the decaying fortunes
of Greece, but naturally was all the prouder from the irritating
contrast of her great remembrances, are so plentifully dispersed through
books, that the fathers must have been willingly duped. That in some
way they _were_ duped is too notorious from the facts, and might
be suspected even from their own occasional language; take, as one
instance, amongst a whole _harmony_ of similar expressions, this short
passage from Eusebius--_hoi Hellenes homologentes ekleloipenai auton ta
chresteria_: the Greeks admitting that their Oracles have failed. (There
is, however, a disingenuous vagueness in the very word _ekleloipenai_),
_ed' allote pote ex aionos_--and when? why, at no other crisis through
the total range of their existence--_e kata tes chrones tes euangelikes
didaskalias_--than precisely at the epoch of the evangelical
dispensation, etc. Eusebius was a man of too extensive reading to be
entirely satisfied with the Christian representations upon this point.
And in such indeterminate phrases as _kata tes chrones_ (which might
mean indifferently the entire three centuries then accomplished from the
first promulgation of Christianity, or specifically that narrow punctual
limit of the earliest promulgation), it is easy to trace an ambidextrous
artifice of compromise between what would satisfy his own brethren,
on the one hand, and what, on the other hand, he could hope to defend
against the assaults of learned Pagans.