study of the Roman religious experience, cannot do more than give us a
little help; they cannot reveal the secret. History can explain the
progress of morality, but it cannot explain its consecration. With St.
Paul the contrast is not merely one of good and bad, but of the spirit
and the flesh, of life and death. No mere contemplation of the world
around him could have kindled the fervency of spirit with which this
contrast is by him conceived and expressed. Absolute devotion to the
life and death of the Master, apart even from His work and teaching (of
which, indeed, St. Paul says little), this alone can explain it. The
love of Christ is the entirely new power that has come into the
world;[991] not merely as a new type of morality, but as "_a Divine
influence transfiguring human nature in a universal love_." The passion
of St. Paul's appeal lies in the consecration of every detail of it by
reference to the life and death of his Master; and the great contrast is
for him not as with the Stoics, between the universal law of Nature and
those who rebel against it; not as with Lucretius, between the blind
victims of _religio_ and the indefatigable student of the _rerum
natura_; not, as in the _Aeneid_, between the man who bows to the
decrees of fate, destiny, God, or whatever we choose to call it, and the
wilful rebel, victim of his own passions; not, as in the Roman State
and family, between the man who performs religious duties and the man
who wilfully neglects them--between _pius_ and _impius_; but between the
universal law of love, focussed and concentrated in the love of Christ,
and the sleep, the darkness, the death of a world that will not
recognise it.
I will conclude these lectures with one practical illustration of this
great contrast, which will carry us back for a moment to the ritual of
the old Roman _ius divinum_. That ritual, we saw, consisted mainly of
sacrifice and prayer, the two apparently inseparable from each other. I
pointed out that though the efficacy of the whole process was believed
to depend on the strictest adherence to prescribed forms, whether of
actions or words, the prayers, when we first meet with them, have got
beyond the region of charm or spell, and are cast in the language of
petition; they show clearly a sense of the dependence of man on the
Power manifesting itself in the universe. There was here, perhaps, a
germ of religious development; but it was arrested in its growth by the
formalisation of the whole Roman religious system, and no substitute was
to be found for it either in the imported Greek ritual, or in the more
enlightening doctrines of exotic Greek philosophy. The prayers used in
the ritual of Augustus' great festival, which was almost as much Greek
as Roman in character, seem to us as hard and formal as the most ancient
Roman prayers that have come down to us. In the most emotional moments
of the life of a Roman of enlightenment like Cicero, when we can truly
say of him that he was touched by true religious feeling, as well as by
the spiritual aspirations of the nobler Greek philosophers, prayers find
no place at all.
But for St. Paul and the members of the early Christian brotherhood the
whole of life was a continuous worship, and the one great feature of
that worship was prayer. It has been said by a great Christian writer
of recent times that "when the attention of a thinking heathen was
directed to the new religion spreading in the Roman Empire, the first
thing to strike him as extraordinary would be that a religion of prayer
was superseding the religion of ceremonies and invocation of gods; that
it encouraged all, even the most uneducated, to pray, or, in other
words, to meditate and exercise the mind in self-scrutiny and
contemplation of God."[992] And, as the same writer says, prayer thus
became a motive power of moral renewal and _inward civilisation_, to
which nothing else could be compared for efficacy. And more than this,
it was the chief inward and spiritual means of maintaining that
universal law of love, which, so far as this life was concerned, was the
great secret of the new religion.
NOTES TO LECTURE XX
[956] P. Gardner, _The Growth of Christianity_, 1907, p.
2. Cp. some remarks of Prof. Conway in _Virgil's
Messianic Eclogue_, p. 39 foll.
[957] The phrase "enthusiasm of humanity" is, of course,
that of the author of _Ecce Homo_, a most inspiring book
for all students of religious history, as indeed for all
other readers.
[958] Dobschuetz on "Early Christian Eschatology," in
_Transactions of the Third Congress for the History of
Religions_, vol. ii. (Oxford, 1908), p. 320.
[959] The words are those of Mr. Glover in the last page
of his _Studies in Virgil_.
[960] It should be understood that these legacies, with
the exception of the last (the vocabulary), were only
taken up by the Church after the first two centuries of
its existence. And even the vocabulary of the early
Roman Church was mainly Greek (Gwatkin, _Early Church
History_, ii. 213), and it was not till the rise of the
African school of writers (Tertullian, Arnobius,
Augustine) that the Latin vocabulary really established
itself. Any real assimilation of Christian and pagan
forms of worship was not possible until the latter were
growing meaningless; then "the assimilation of
Christianity to heathenism from the third century is
matter of history" (Gwatkin, i. 269).
[961] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 353, has
some interesting remarks on this point.
[962] See above, p. 211.
[963] _Growth of Christianity_, p. 144.
[964] See _Roman Festivals_, p. 308.
[965] _Confessions_, i. 14.
[966] Westcott, _Religious Thought in the West_, p. 246.
Gwatkin writes (vol. ii. 236) that all Augustine's
conceptions are shaped by law and Stoicism. Cp. p. 237.
So, too, of Tertullian.
[967] By W. Otto, in the _Archiv fuer
Religionswissenschaft_, vol. xii. (1909) p. 533 foll.
[968] _De Inventione_, ii. 161.
[969] _De Legibus_, ii. 10. 25.
[970] _Ib._ 10. 23.
[971] Lucretius i. 101.
[972] _E.g._ Octavius 38. 2; and again at the end of
that chapter.
[973] Lactantius, bk. v. (_de Iustitia_) ch. 19. I may
note here that the paragraph in the text where this is
quoted was first published in the _Transactions of the
Congress for the History of Religions_ (Oxford, 1908),
vol. ii. p. 174. I may also add that the restricted
sense of the word _religio_ as meaning the monastic
life is, of course, comparatively late. This restrictive
use of heathen words, from the third century onwards, is
the subject of some valuable remarks by Prof. Gwatkin in
his _Early Church History_, vol. i. p. 268 foll.
[974] See _Roman Festivals_, p. 299, and the references
there given.
[975] Livy i. 32, ix. 8. 6; Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 476;
Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_, p. 56.
[976] Lactantius iv. 3 (_de vera sapientia_).
[977] _Ib._ v. (_de Iustitia_) ch. 10.
[978] _Aen._ xi. 81.
[979] Marquardt, 145, note 5.
[980] _Aen._ xii. 648.
[981] Servius, _ad Aen._ xii. 648.
[982] The original meaning of _sanctus_ as applied to
things, _e.g._ walls and tombs, was probably
"inviolable"; Nettleship, _Contributions to Latin
Lexicography_, _s.v._ "sanctus," who also suggests a
connection between the word and the attitude of the
Roman towards his dead: thus Cicero in _Topica 90_
writes of _aequitas_ as consisting of three
parts,--_pietas_, _sanctitas_, and _iustitia_,--meaning
man's relation to the gods, the Manes, and his
fellow-men. Nettleship also quotes _Aen._ v. 80 (_salve
sancte parens_), Tibull. ii. 2. 6, and other passages,
which show that the word was specially used of the dead
and their belongings. But when used of persons living,
as frequently in the last century B.C., it expresses a
certain purity of life, not without a religious
tincture, which could not so well be expressed by any
other word, owing to the original meaning being that of
religious inviolability. Thus Cicero uses it in the 9th
Philippic of his old friend Sulpicius, one of the best
and purest men of his time; and long before Cicero, Cato
had used it of an obligation at once ethical and
religious: "Maiores _sanctius_ habuere defendi pupillos
quam clientem non fallere." It is interesting to notice
that it was used later on of Mithras and other oriental
deities (Cumont, _Mon. myst. Mithra_, i. p. 533; _Les
Religions orientales_, p. 289, note 45); in the case of
Mithras, at least, this meant that his life was pure,
and that he wished his worshippers to be pure also.
[983] Marquardt, p. 318, note 4; Mommsen, _Strafrecht_,
pp. 902, 1026. See also Greenidge, _Roman Public Life_,
p. 56; Festus, p. 347.
[984] Greenidge, _op. cit._ p. 154.
[985] Cumont, _Mysterien von Mithras_, p. 116 of the
German edition. See also De Marchi, _La Religione nella
vita privata_, vol. ii. 114. It may be worth noting that
the idea of life as the service of a soldier bound to
obedience by his oath is found also in Stoicism; see
Epictetus (_Arrian_), _Discourses_, i. 14, iii. 24,
99-101, ii. 26, 28-30; (Crossley's _Golden Sayings of
Epictetus_, Nos. 37, 125, 132, 134).
[986] Arnobius, _adv. Nationes_, i. 3.
[987] _Ib._ ii. 6.
[988] Tertull., _ad Martyr._ c. 3. Cp. _de Corona
Militiae_, c. 11.
[989] It is curious that the word _sacerdos_ did not
find its way into the Christian vocabulary. Apparently
it had its chance; for Tertullian uses it in several
ways, _e.g._, "summus sacerdos" for a bishop (_de Bapt._
17; "disciplina sacerdotalis," _de Monog._ 7. 12; and
for other examples see Harnack, _Entstehung und
Entwickelung der Kirchenverfassung und des Kirchenrechts
in den zwei ersten Jahrhunderten_, 1910, p. 85). But the
words finally adopted for the grades of the priesthood
were Greek: bishop, priest, and deacon. Nevertheless,
the general word for the priesthood, as distinguished
from the laity, is Latin (_ordo_); hence "ordination"
and holy "orders." It is not of religious origin, but
taken from the language of municipal life, _ordo et
plebs_ being contrasted just as they were contrasted in
_municipia_ as senate (_decuriones_) and all
non-official persons. See Harnack, _op. cit._ p. 82.
[990] This is, of course, in one light, the legitimate
development of the union of religion and morality in the
Hebrew mind. "For the Israelite morality, righteousness,
is simply doing the will of God, which from the earliest
age is assumed to be ascertainable, and indeed
ascertained. The Law in its simplest form was at once
the rule of morality and the revealed will of God." "The
central feature of O.T. morality is its religious
character" (Alexander, _Ethics of St. Paul_, p. 34). In
the religious system we have been occupied with,
religion can only be reckoned as one of the factors in
the growth of morality; it supplied the sanction for
some acts of righteousness, but (in historical times at
least) by no means for all.
Prof. Gwatkin, in his _Early Church History_, vol. i. p.
54, states the relation of early Christianity to
morality thus: "Christ's person, not His teaching, is
the message of the Gospel. If we know anything for
certain about Jesus of Nazareth, it is that He steadily
claimed to be the Son of God, the Redeemer of mankind,
and the ruler of the world to come, and by that claim
the Gospel stands or falls. Therefore, the Lord's
disciples went not forth as preachers of morality, but
as witnesses of his life, and of the historic
resurrection which proved his mightiest claims. Their
morality is always an inference from these, never the
forefront of their teaching. They seem to think that if
they can only fill men with true thankfulness for the
gift of life in Christ, morality will take care of
itself." I cannot but think that this is expressed too
strongly, or baldly; but it is in the main in keeping
with the impression left on my mind by a study of St.
Paul. It must, however, be remembered that the Pauline
spirit is not exactly that of early Christianity in
general: see Gwatkin, vol. i. p. 98. In the _Didache_,
_e.g._, there is no trace of St. Paul's influence (104).
[991] In a book which had just been published when I was
delivering these lectures at Edinburgh (_The Ethics of
St. Paul_, by Archibald Alexander), I found a very
interesting chapter on "The Dynamic of the New Life," p.
126 foll. The word which for the author best expresses
that dynamic is _faith_, which is "the spring of all
endeavour, the inspiration of all heroism" (p. 150). "It
brings the whole life into the domain of spiritual
freedom, and is the animating and energising principle
of all moral purpose." What exactly is here understood
by faith is explained on p. 151 to the end of the
chapter, of which I may quote the concluding words:
"Faith in Christ means life in Christ. And this complete
yielding of self and vital union with the Saviour, this
dying and rising again, is at once man's supreme ideal
and the source of all moral greatness."
[992] Doellinger, _The First Age of Christianity and the
Church_ (Oxenham's translation), p. 344 foll.
APPENDIX I
ON THE USE OF HUTS OR BOOTHS IN RELIGIOUS RITUAL
This may be taken as an addendum to Lecture II. on taboo at Rome; but
owing to the uncertainty of the explanation given in it, I reserved it
for an Appendix. The custom here dealt with is found both in the public
and private worship of the Romans, and also in Greece and elsewhere, but
has never, so far as I know, been investigated by anthropologists.
On the Ides of March, at the festival of Anna Perenna, a deity explained
as representing "the ring of the year," whose cult is not recognised in
the ancient religious calendar, the lower population came out of the
city, and lay about all day in the Campus Martius, near the Tiber. Ovid,
fortunately, took the trouble to describe the scene in the third book of
his _Fasti_, as he had witnessed it himself. Some of them, he says, lay
in the open, _some constructed tents, and some made rude huts of stakes
and branches, stretching their togas over them to make a shelter_.
plebs venit ac virides passim disiecta per herbas
potat, et accumbit cum pare quisque sua.
sub Iove pars durat, pauci tentoria ponunt,
sunt quibus e ramis frondea facta casa est,
pars, ubi pro rigidis calamos statuere columnis,
desuper extentas imposuere togas.
sole tamen vinoque calent, annosque precantur,
quot sumant cyathos, ad numerumque bibunt.[993]
It appears also from Ovid's account that there was much drunkenness and
obscene language; this was, in fact, a _festa_ very different in
character from those of the Numan calendar; and that there was a magical
element in the cult of the deity seems proved by the mysterious allusion
to "virgineus cruor" in connection with her grove not far from this
scene of revelry, in Martial iv. 64. 17 (cp. Pliny, _N.H._ xxviii. 78,
and Columella x. 558). Tibullus describes something of the same kind at
a rustic festival,[994] though he does not make it clear what time of
year he is speaking of; a few lines before he had mentioned the drinking
and leaping over the fire at the Parilia, the shepherd's festival in
April, though I cannot feel sure that the following lines are also meant
to refer to it:--
tunc operata deo pubes discumbet in herba,
arboris antiquae qua levis umbra cadit,
aut e veste sua tendent umbracula sertis
vincta, coronatus stabit et ipse calix.
Here it is too much to suppose that the _umbracula_ were contrived
to make up for the want of shade in a country so covered
with woodland as Italy was then; and the words "_sertis vincta_"
show that there was some special meaning in the practice. I
think we may guess that in both instances the extemporised huts
had some forgotten religious meaning. Yet another passage of
Tibullus, which also describes a rural festival, alludes to a similar
custom.[995] I have given reasons in the _Classical Review_ for
thinking that this was a summer festival, accompanied as it was,
like many midsummer rites all over Europe, by bonfires and
revelry, though the usual interpretation ascribes it to the winter.[996]
tunc nitidus plenis confisus rusticus agris
ingeret ardenti grandia ligna foco,
turbaque vernarum, saturi bona signa coloni,
ludet et ex virgis exstruet ante casas.
The slaves can here hardly be playing at building houses of
twigs, like the children in Horace's _Satire_,[997] unless we are to
suppose that Tibullus is thinking of slave children only, which
is indeed possible; but even if that were so, how are we to
account for the popularity of this curious form of sport?
There was, however, at Rome a public summer festival,
included in the calendar, in which we find this same custom.
At the Neptunalia, on July 23, huts or booths were erected,
made of the foliage of trees. "Umbrae vocantur Neptunalibus
_casae frondeae pro tabernaculis_," says Festus[998] (following Verrius
Flaccus), where the last word is one in regular use for military
tents. This is the only thing that is told us about this festival,
and we may assume that even this would not have come down
to us if it had not been a survival rigidly adhered to, _i.e._ the
construction of shelters from the foliage of trees, instead of
using tents, which could easily have been procured in the city.
As the festival was in the hot month of July, we might suppose
that shelter from the sun was the real object here; but we do
not hear of it at other summer festivals, and the parallel practices
I shall now mention make the rationalising explanation very
doubtful. It is unlucky that we know hardly anything about
the older and un-Graecised Neptunus, and nothing about his
festival except this one fact; the comparative method is here
our only hope.
The Jewish feast of tabernacles will, of course, occur at once to every
one; this was in the heat of the summer, and the booths were here, as at
the Neptunalia, made of the branches of trees;[999] the explanation
given to the Israelites was not that they were thus to shelter
themselves from the heat, but to be reminded of their homeless
wanderings in the wilderness, plainly an aetiological account, as in the
case of the passover. There are distinct examples in Greece of the same
practice, _e.g._ the [Greek: skiades] at the Spartan Carneia,[1000] and
tents ([Greek: skenai]) in several cases, as at the mysteries of
Andania, where the peculiar regulations for the construction of the
tents points to a ritualistic origin almost unmistakably.[1001] But
perhaps the most striking parallel is to be found in the famous letter
of Gregory the Great, preserved by Bede, about the British converts to
Christianity, who were to be allowed to use their heathen temples as
churches:
"Et quia boves solent in sacrificio daemonum multos occidere,
debet iis etiam hac in re aliqua solemnitas immutari: ut die
dedicationis, vel natalicii sanctorum martyrum quorum illic
reliquiae ponuntur, _tabernacula sibi circa easdem ecclesias quae ex
fanis commutatae sunt, de ramis arborum faciant_, et religiosis conviviis
sollemnitatem celebrent: nec diabolo iam animalia immolent,
et ad laudem Dei in esu suo animalia occident," etc.[1002]
Why should Gregory here take the trouble to describe the
material out of which these huts were to be made? Surely
because the custom was one which had been described to him
by Augustine or Mellitus as part of the heathen practice, and
one which he was willing to condone as harmless (possibly with a
recollection of the Jewish feast), since the Britons set great store
by it.
If these examples from Europe and Palestine are sufficient to
suggest that there was originally a religious or mystic meaning in
the custom, we must look for its explanation in anthropological
research. Robertson Smith was,[1003] I think, the first to suggest a
possible explanation of the Feast of Tabernacles, by comparing
with it the rule, stated in Numbers xxxi. 19, that men might not
enter their houses after bloodshed: "Do ye abide without the
camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever
hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your
captives on the third day and on the seventh day." He also
pointed out that pilgrims are subject to the same rule, or
taboo, in Syria and elsewhere. Since then an immense mass of
evidence has been collected showing that all the world over
persons in a holy or unclean state are placed under this or some
similar restriction;[1004] and if this be the case with pilgrims and
warriors after a battle, it may also have been so with worshippers
at some particular festival, even if we are quite unable to recover
the special character of the worship which produced the
restriction.[1005] In the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a harvest
festival, the cause seems to have been the great sanctity of the
first-fruits, which are regarded with extreme veneration in many
parts of the world. In the now famous festival of the first-fruits
among the Natchez Indians of Louisiana, of which the details
have been recorded with singular care and obvious accuracy,[1006] we
find that the chief, the Great Sun, and all the celebrators, have
to live in huts two miles from their village, while the corn, grown
for the purpose in a particular spot, is sacramentally eaten. It
is quite impossible, without further evidence, which is not likely
ever to be forthcoming, to explain either the Greek, Roman, or
British customs in this way; we must be content with the
general principle that the holiness of human beings at particular
times is liable to carry with it the practice of renouncing your
own dwelling and living in an extemporised hut or booth. The
tents that we hear of in the Greek rites I look upon as late
developments of this primitive practice. The inscription of
Andania, which is the best Greek evidence we possess, dates
only from 91 B.C.; and by that time there would have been
every opportunity for the rude huts to become civilised tents.
The _casae_ made by the _vernae_ in Tibullus' poem were, I would
suggest, a kind of unconscious survival of the same feeling and
practice, the real religious meaning being almost entirely lost.
Lastly, I will venture to suggest that the _casae_ of the Roman
custom, made of branches at the Neptunalia and the feast of
Anna Perenna, and of _virgae_ by the slaves on the farm, are
a reminiscence of the earliest form of Italian dwelling, which
survived to historical times in the round temple of Vesta, and of
which we have examples in the hut-urns discovered in the
necropolis at Alba.[1007] The earliest form of all was probably
a round structure made of branches of trees stuck into the
ground, bent inwards at the top and tied together.[1008] Just as
bronze instruments survived from an earlier stage of culture in
some religious rites at Rome, so, I imagine, did this ancient
form of dwelling, which really belongs to an age previous to
that of permanent settlement and agricultural routine. The hut
circles of the neolithic age, such as are abundant on Dartmoor,
were probably roofed with branches supported by a central
pole.[1009]
[993] _Fasti_, iii. 525 foll. See _R.F._ p. 50 foll.
[994] Tibull. ii. 5. 89 foll. Mr. Mackail has pointed
out to me a passage in the _Pervigilium Veneris_, line
5, which seems to contain a hint of the same practice
(cp. line 43).
[995] Tibull. ii. 1. 1-24.
[996] _Classical Review_, 1908, p. 36 foll. My
conclusions were criticised by Dr. Postgate in the
_Classical Quarterly_ for 1909, p. 127.
[997] Hor. _Sat._ ii. 3. 247.
[998] Festus, ed. Mueller, p. 377.
[999] Leviticus xxiii. 40-42. Cp. Plutarch, _Quaest.
conviv._ 4. 2. This was a feast of harvest and
first-fruits (Exodus xxiii. 16). Nehemiah viii. 13 foll.
gives a graphic account of the revival of this festival
after the captivity.
[1000] Athenaeus iv. 41. 8 F. Cp. Farnell, _Cults of the
Greek States_, vol. iv., p. 260.
[1001] Dittenberger, _Sylloge inscript._ (ed. 2), 653,
lines 34 foll. Cp. p. 200 (Teos).
[1002] Baeda, _Hist. eccl._ i. 30 (ed. Plummer). There
is a curious case of isolation in a hut in a process by
which the sacrificer of the _soma_ in the Vedic religion
becomes divine, quoted by Hubert et Mauss, _Melanges_,
p. 34. This may possibly afford a clue to the mystery.
[1003] _Religion of the Semites_, notes K and N at the
end of the volume.
[1004] See _e.g._ Frazer, _G. B._ ed. 2, index, _s.v._
"Seclusion."
[1005] It has occurred to me that the shedding of blood
in animal sacrifice may possibly be the reason in some
of these rites. The last words of the passage quoted
above from Baeda suggest this explanation in the case of
the Britons. In the first-fruits festivals the "killing
of the corn" may be a parallel cause of taboo. See _G.
B._ i. 372.
[1006] Du Pratz, translated in _G. B._ ii. 332 foll.