PRINCETON, N. J. BR 129 .S38 1877 Scott, Charles Newton. The foregleams of Christianity fiy THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY AN ESSAY ON THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF ANTIQUITY EY CHARLES NEWTON SCOTT Atto Ta>v KapnSiv avrav encyvdoaeade avrovs Matt. vii. 1 6 and 20 npocprjreia^ p^ e^ovSevelre. Udpra doKCfxdCere- r6 Ka\6u Karex^re I Thess. V. 20, 21 LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO, 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1877 lAll rights reserved^ TO MY DEAR FATHER. AND MOTHER PREFACE. It is the ambition of the following pages to be, in a humble manner, supplemental to the Boyle Lectures of the late Rev. R D. Maurice, a new- edition having been issued this year of his no less captivating than profound work on the Religions of the World. 1 It is now more than thirty years since those lectures were delivered, and, as the authorities which I quote are for the most part of more recent date, I venture to hope that I may interest my ' The Religions pf the World and their Relations to Christianity. (Macmillan and Co.) viii PREFACE. readers by enabling them to see, at little cost of time, how the fruitful historical researches and speculations of the last quarter-century have but served to increase the value of Professor Maurice's views, both as a historian and as a metaphysician. CONTENTS. PAGE PURPOSE OF ESSAY I I. THREE KINDS OF REVELATION — EXTERNAL REVELATION — INTERNAL REVELATION — DIVINATORY REVELATION — EXTERNAL REVELATION OF TRINITY — PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICISM , . . 5 11. FETISHISM — PANTHEISM — POLYTHEISM — ANTHROPO= MORPHISM — DUALISM — MONOTHEISM — THEISM — PR^- CHRISTIAN TRUTHS AND ERRORS— SYNTHESIS OF CHRIS- TIANITY . . .20 III, CORRUPTION FROM PROGRESS — CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS — PROGRESS IN TURANIAN ASIA — PROGRESS IN EGYPT — PROGRESS IN HELLAS — PROGRESS AT ROME— PRO- GRESS IN GAUL — PROGRESS IN INDIA — PROGRESS IN ISRAEL — CLERICALISM AND PROGRESS I05 CONCLUSIONS . . . . . , , , , 209 APPENDIX 211 EX 223 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY, We owe to the recently created department of History, called the 'Science of Religion,' a careful analysis and definition of the various elements that are common to the doctrines, rites, and prescriptions of Christianity, and to those of the religions which preceded it ; and that such elements should be found could not but have been ex- pected by all who accept the unequivocal statement of St. Paul concerning the Gentile world : — 'The wrath of God ' is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and un- ' righteousness, because that which may be known of God is ' manifest in them ; for God hath showed it unto them. ' For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the ' world are clearly seen, being U7ider stood by the things that ' ai'e made, even His eternal power and Godhead ; so 'they are without excuse.' ^ * Rom. i. 18-20. B THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTI/n.ITY. But the new science would but half fulfil its purpose if it contented itself with a mere analysis, for it is already sufficiently advanced to demonstrate : — Firstly, that the elements of truth, which lay scattered in the various religions and philosophies anterior to Christianity, can only be satisfactorily harmonised in the creed of the Catholic Church. Secondly, that, apart from that creed, the more ad- vanced in tone, the more pure in aspiration- have been rehgions and philosophies, the less consistent were the doctrines of their several metaphysical systems either with facts or with each other. Thirdly, that the hand of God is manifest in the succession of religious developments which gradually prepared mankind for the revelation of Christianity in ' the fulness of time.' ^ The purpose of the following pages is to collect within a small compass the admissions of some of the principal and latest authorities,^ which, it is hoped, will justify the 1 GaL iv. 4. 2 For the conclusions contained in the following pages the authorities to whom I am most indebted are : — Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, ITcro-Worship, and the Heroic in Histojy^"^; Fustel de Coulanges, La Citi antique'^ ; Ernst Curtius, History of Greece** ^ translated by A. W. Ward ; Emanuel Deutsch, Articles on The Tabnud* and Islam* in the Quarterly Review; H. Doherty, PURPOSE OF ESSAY. submission of the foregoing conclusions to the reader's consideration. Philosophy of Pe/i^^z'on**; Comte de Gobineau, Les Pensions et les Philosophies dans VAsie centi-ale**; Andrew Jukes, The Restitution of all Things**; Victor de Laprade, Le Sentiment de la Auifitre avant le Christianis/ne** ; Francois Lenormant, Manuel d'' Histoire ancienne de V Orient'*'''' , Les premieres Civilisations'^'^ ^ and Les Sciences occultes en Asie* ; F. D. Maurice, The Religions of the JVorld** ; Alfred Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grece antique, and La Tei-re et V Homjue ; Max Miiller, Introduction to the Science of Religion^'*', and Chips from a German Workshop'^'^ ; Otfried Miiller, Dissertations on the Etimenides of ALschylus'^'^ , and Ancient Art and its Remains**, translated by J. Leitch ; L. Preller, Les Dieux de V ancienne Rome {Romische Mythologie) **, traduction de Dietz ; John Ruskin, The Queen of the Air'*'*; W. Sewell, Intro- duction to the Dialogues of Plato**. For information of the facts on which these conclusions are based I am also much indebted to : — Clarisse Bader, La Femme grecque**, and La Femme biblique ; Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, and Mahomet et le Coran; C. Beule, EArt grec avant Pericles**, and Fouilles et Decouvertes** ; E. Biot, Con- siderations sur les anciens Temps de V Histoire chinoise*; S. Birch, Egypt in Ancient History from the Monuments ; Emile Boutmy, Philosophic de r Architecture en Grece; Emile Burnouf, La Science des Religions, and La L^gende athenienne ; Victor Cousin, Histoire ginerale de la Philosophic*, Fragi7ients de Philosophie ancienne*, and Du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien* ; Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations; G. Desmousseaux, Les hauls Phenojuenes de la Magic**; V. Duruy, Histoire romaine* ; F. W. Farrar, Seekers after God**; James Fergusson, History of Architecture* ; Henry Houssaye, His- toire d'' A pelles ; A. de Jancigny, Histoire de V Inde* ; Eliphas Levi (A. L. Constant), Histoire de la Magie* ; G. Lewes, Biographical History of Philosophy ; Dean Milman, Ilistoiy of the Jews*; Theo- B 2 4 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. dor Mommsen, History of Rome*^ translated by W. Dick- son ; Mounicou, Mythologie japonaise ; A. Noel des Vergers, F Etrurie et Ics Etnisqiies** ; Alexis Pierron, Histoire de la IJttcratin-e grecqiie,** and Histoire de la Litteratiire romaine** ; E. B. Pusey, Lccttwes on Daniel**; De Quatrefages, Unite de V Espece hji7naine** ; Vicomte Emmanuel de Rouge, Notice sommaire des Monnments egypticns exposes dans les Galeries du Mitsee du Louvre**; Emile Saisset, Essais sur la Philosophie et la Religion au XIX^ Siecle**; George Smith, Assyria* in Ancient History from the Momnnents ; William Smith, Diciio^iajy of Greek and Roman Antiqjiities** , Classical Dictionary*, and Concise Dictionary of the Bible* ; Alfred Sudre, Histoire de la Soiiverainete ; Henri Taine, Philosophie de V Art eti Grhe; Amedee Thierry, His- toire des Gaulois*; S. Vaux, Persia in Ancient History from the Monuments. The works marked * are much, and those marked ** particu- larly recommended to the reader. THREE KINDS OF REVELATION. I. 1. All revelation of Deity to man is either internal revelation, without which no other would be possible ; exterfial revelation, in the perception of external objects and events ; or divinatory revelation, by means of con- ventional signs. As it may be concluded from the above-quoted words of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, that at least internal and external revelation have been vouchsafed more or less to all mankind,^ the following list gives the various ' That St. Paul's doctrine on this point was thus understood by the Fathers of the Church is strongly argued by the passages from their writings quoted by Max Miiller in Chips from a German Workshop. Among them is the following from the first Apologia of St. Justin Martyr : — * We have been taught that Christ is the ' first-begotten of God, and we have already demonstrated that He is ' the Word, in which all mankind participates {\6'yov, ov irau yeuos ' avdpufiTioi/ fjLerecTx^)- Those, whose life has been in conformity ' with the Word, are Christians, even should they have been taken * for atheists ; such have been, among the Greeks, Socrates, Hera- ' clitus, and those who have resembled them, and, among foreigners ' {iv fiap^dpois), Abraham, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, Elijah, and • many others.' . . . 'Likewise those who have lived in times past 6 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. elements of cxtei-nal revelation, which the Science of Religion has discerned and analysed, and here placed according to the order of time in which it tends to show that men were first capable of receiving them ; the defi- nition of each phase of man's conception of Deity being confined to the truth which it contained, without refer- ence for the present to the heresy of which the exaggera- tion of that truth was too often the nucleus. 1. Fetishism (Revelation of God in the Phenomena of Nature) : — That there is something venerable mani- fested in Nature. 2. Pantheism (Revelation of God in the Forces of Nature) : — That Nature is not merely matter, but that it is venerable because animated by something superior to what is visible or tangible in it. ' in a manner contrary to the Word have been perverse, enemies of * Christ, and murderers of those who lived according to the Word. ' Those who make the Word the rule of their life are Christians ; 'men without fear and at peace with themselves.' Another passage is from the Stromata of St. Clement of Alexandria : — ' God is the ' cause of all good things ; but of some He is the primary cause, as of ' the Old and New Testaments ; and of others He is only the secon- ' dary cause, as of philosophy. Perhaps, however, did He act as * primary cause in giving philosophy to the Greeks, before they were * called by the Lord. For it has educated the Greek world, as the ' Law has educated the Hebrews, for Christ. Philosophy, accord - * ingly, is a preparation, opening a way for those who are made * perfect by Christ.' EXTERNAL REVELATION. 3. Polytheism (Revelation of God in Variety) : — That Nature is made up of many distinct parts and individualities, and, consequently, that the manifestations of the something animating Nature are manifold and distinct. 4. Anthropomorphism (Revelation of God in Man) : — That of these distinct parts and individualities, some being more animated than others by the aforesaid some- thing, none famiharly known is more so than Man, especially his free-will, affections, and reason. 5. Dualism (Revelation of God in Righteousness) : — That there is a radical difference between some human affections and others, and that the whole universe (the ' macrocosm ') is divided like the human soul (the ' microcosm ') into two radically distinct elements — Good and Evil. 6. Monotheism (Revelation of God in Unity) : — That all Good is derived from one centre — God. 7. Theism (Revelation of God in History) : — That in God resides the principle of all power, and that, conse- quently, nothing separated from God has self- existence or uncontrolled action.^ ' On the order of this evolution, vide Victor de Laprade's beau- tiful work, Le Sentiment de la Nature avant le Christianisme, to which this treatise is much indebted. * E 4 8 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. As races and societies passed in their conception of Deity from any one of these stages of external revelation to another, their earlier conceptions were, according to their idiosyncrasies and circumstances, more or less re- tained or more or less modified. It must, however, be remembered — firstly, that in most societies there are individuals who are far ahead of their co-religionists ; secondly, that, on the other hand, a long time usually has to elapse before a new revelation can be satisfactorily defined for didactic or polemical purposes, so that the inner consciousness of a race, or society, is often in advance of its metaphysical system ; thirdly, that the most intense conviction of the members of a religious community or philosophical school is not always the basis or even the principal feature of its metaphysical system, either on account of careless reasoning, or the difficulty of the problems it has to resolve, even when it has not been drawn up by a teacher in advance of his disciples, or when it is not fettered by the authority of an earlier system.* By the side of these successive revelations of Deity external to self. Mysticism is the revelation of Deity ' Thus a metaphysical system based on the most intense convic- tions of Stoicism would have been Dualistic, and not, as was the 'case, decidedly Pantheistic. INTERNAL REVELATION. witJwi self — author of * that peace which the world cannot give.' ^ In the absence of this interior there could be no exterior revelation of Deity ; for without an experimental knowledge, however slight or vague, of Divine Love, Wisdom, and Life, it would be impossible to form an idea of their nature, or even to conceive their existence. ^ But there is, of course, a great difference of degree between the vague intuition of all men who are not totally de- praved, and the dear inward sight of the relatively few who can be legitimately called Mystics. There is, more- over, a Pseudo-Mysticism, which is the more difficult to discern at first sight from true Mysticism, that Divine influx and a deceitful imagination are not, for a time at least, incompatible in the same individual. Opposed to Mysticism is Materialism, or the sensual enjoyment and perception of external things without the concurrence or awakening of any sense of Deity. These internal and external revelations of Deity, which are actual perceptions, 'the evidence of things ' It has been happily said that ' mysticism is to religion what love is to marriage.' Vide the chapter entitled De la disposition religieuse appelee^ viysticite in Madame de Stael's De VAlleinagne, and Chapters V. (entitled The Experimental Knowledge of God the End of all Christian Endeavour), VII., VIII., XI., XV., and XXII., in Dean Goulbum's Pursuit of Holiness. - Vide I John iv. 8. lo THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. unseen' ^ {i.e. by the carnal eyes), must be distinguished from divi?iatory revelation, which is effected either super- naturally or providentially by means of conventional signs . (such as the letters of the alphabet), addressed objectively to one or more of the five external senses, or, in the first instance, by representations produced subjectively in the imagination of a seer. Divinatory revelation presupposes at least internal revelation ; for a sign cannot have a con- ventional meaning, or a vision a spiritual meaning, unless that meaning be already apprehended. Divination serves, firstly, to prevent wrong and exces- sive conclusions from being drawn from spiritual percep- tions, by defining and combining their elements ; the method of Philosophy (induction and deduction) being insufiEicient for that purpose, when the heart of man is ' deceitful above all things and desperately wicked ; ' ^ secondly, to make known general or special Divine com- mands to individuals or communities, unable sufl&ciently to discern ' the still small voice ' ^ of God within the soul ; thirdly, to supply a criterion for distinguishing true Mys- ticism from Pseudo-Mysticism. Divination must not be confounded with Vaticination, which is the enunciation of external or internal revelation, or with Prophecy, which is any enunciation that has been * Heb. xi. I. 2 y^y^ xvii. 9. ^ I Kings xix. 12. DIVINATORY REVELATION. sanctioned by Divination ; the office of the Divine {/.lavTig, kbrpvnc) being to interpret conventional signs siipernaturally or providentially produced (such as the articulations or the handwriting of an unconscious medium); or, again, the visions of a seer {roeh, chozeJi) ; that of the Va^es {nabi), to express in his own language his own spiritual perceptions ; and that of the Prophet,^ to speak in any manner in the name of a Divinity, who sanctions his utterances by conventional signs.^ Philosophy is based on the scientific observation of natural and spiritual phenomena, whereas Prophecy is the only subject-matter of Theology. 2. The perception of God in Nature is a revelation cJiiefly of a pervading Spirit, acting on things according to the mode and degree in which they are recipients * ' In classical Greek, npotprfTrfs signifies o/ze who speaks for * another, specially one who speaks for a god, and so interprets his ' will to man.' — Article Prophet in Smith's Concise Dictionary of the Bible. Comp. Exod. vii. i, and iv. i6. ' It is, however, to be observed that these offices have often been united in the same individual; and that the sanction of Divination, which converts Vaticination or any other enunciation into Pro- phecy, may be prospective. The only form of Divination appealed to at present in Catholic Christendom is the permanent witness of the Church, as expressed by her authorised representatives, to the Divine origin of a docu- ment or to the truth of a tradition. 12 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. thereof ; the perception of God in human Righteousness, a revelation chiefly of an absolute Standard of right and wrong ; and the perception of God in History, a revelation chiefly of an Almighty Will, making all things work together for good — bringing good even out of evil. The dogma, consequently, of the Holy Trinity in Unity, proclaims the inestimable truth, that the God dwelling in the World of the Pantheist, the God antago- nistic to the World of the Dualist, and the God invisible creator and omnipotent master of the World of the Theist are One — the God of the Mystic, who exists eternally in three hypostases — God in His Emanation, which is Life; God in His Form, which is Thought; and God in His Essence, which is Love. The something in Nature which acts on the aesthetic faculty, so as to make men look up in veneration on the sunrise, the star-spangled heavens, the huge mountains, the vast ocean, or the exuberant vegetation of the forest, is the evidence that external things are, as their own souls, the recipients of the life which is not their own, of a life beyond the ken of a mere physiologist; but which, manifest to the poet's second sight, is the sub- stance of all real and perfect beauty.^ ' 0ea;i/ Tr\r]pr} iravra. — Lazi's. Vide the Discourses of Socrates on Beauty in the Phccdt-us and the Banquet. EXTERNAL REVELATION OF TRINITY. 13 There is much, on the other hand, in Nature which is offensive even to the cesthetic sense; and the daily spectacle of disease, pain, dissolution, and angry strife forbade extra-human Nature alone, and superficially observed, to reveal but very imperfectly the Divine Arche- type of the World as it should be, and, still less, omnipo- tent Love. For who can be blind to the evidences in Creation of the ancient, deeply-rooted, and tremendous power of Evil : things which are revolting to the aesthetic sense ; things which shock reason, as being irreconcil- able with Divine order ; and things which shock the moral sense, as being actively antagonistic t-o Divine order ? The most enthusiastic optimist can hardly maintain that a decomposed corpse is beautiful in any sense of the word; that the undeserved sufferings of infants or of the lower animals are in conformity with Divine order ; or that the temptations to which men are exposed from their own diseased passions, from other men, or from beings of a still more depraved race, contribute directly to the realisation of Divine order. Can one, for instance, rationally attribute to the direct action of a beneficent Creator, if not the nerves of the poor dumb animals liable to vivisection, at any rate the horrible desire recently manifested by many of our fellow-countrymen to benefit by atrocities unparalleled 14 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTL4NITY. in the history of human crime? Geology, moreover, shows how ancient must have been even the physical action of ' the Prince of this World ' ^ on the surface of our planet. ' We wrestle,' writes St. Paul,^ ' against ' principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the * darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in ' high places.' These * principalities,' ' powers,' and * rulers ' were surely not in the Apostle's mind mere abstractions or blind impersonal forces, fresh from the Creator's hands.^ It is on this account that hope is so much insisted on, in the Apostolic writings,"* as one of the most essential elements of Christian life — the U7iselfish hope that has been so well expressed by a great living poet: — ' Oh, yet we trust that, .sorriehow, good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; That nothing walks with aimless feet ; That not one life shall be destroyed, ^ Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete ; ' John xvi. II. 2 Eph. vi. 12. ' Vide Vaughan's ^rt^rw^'J/" Thoitghts for Earnest Men^ p. 167. * Vide especially Ro7n. viii, 21 -28. EXTERNAL REVELATION OF TRINITY. 15 That not a worm is cloven in vain ; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.' ' Of extra-human Nature, indeed, to the sky alone was due an occasional glimpse of a region of peace, stability, and unsullied loveliness; but, even up aloft, the usually beneficent sun occasionally shoots down the arrow of pestilence or death, the angry storm-clouds gather to do battle with the light, and provoke, if they do not wield, the terrible thunderbolt, and the harpy winds awake to ravage the ripening harvests; though, on the other hand, even the cruel powers of earth are not without beneficence : they resuscitate the buried seed-corn, and perhaps the buried corpse; they receive fecundation from the powers above, and nourish mater- nally the races of men and animals ; and they spring up in the form of limpid fountains to cleanse and to heal. The sun-illumined and unclouded sky, however, shaped for mankind its first idea of a power at least more friendly than those of the earth; so that the name of the sky (Dyaus, Zeus, Theos, Ju-piter, Deus, (Sec.) is that which has successively passed among so many branches of the great Aryan race to the supreme divinity of * Tennyson, In Memoriam. i6 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. Anthropomorphism, Dualism, Monotheism, and Chris- tian Theism ; and, in looking up to the sky, men of all races and at all times have uttered fervent prayers, and have learned to call upon a ' Father, who is in Heaven.' In the hero venerated by the Anthropomorphist, and especially in the saint venerated by the Dualist, there is quite a new revelation of Deity: viz., the evidence of something in the human soul, which, however mixed with extraneous impurity, is nevertheless susceptible of being, at least ideally, abstracted, like metal from its ore, and which, thus extracted, would present a specimen of somettiing absolutely perfect. This is a revelation of God the Word, Archetype of the World as it should be, ' the true Light which lighteth every man,' ^ and ' the Judge' of all creatures; because in Him resides the absolute standard, the supreme Iciai of the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, in the Universe (the Beautiful being the splendour of divine Order, cognisable- by the sesthetic sense; the True, that which is in conformity with divine Order, cognisable by the intellectual sense or reason; and the Good, that which contributes to the realisation of divine Order, cognisable by the moral sense, to which we owe the idea of Duty).^ ' Jolm i. 9. ' ' Le Beau est la splendeur de I'Ordre ; le Vrai, ce qui est con- EXTERNAL REVELATION OF TRLNITY. 17 It is the fatality of Evil to generate its Word, and consequently to produce in the Universe, by its Spirit, the Untrue and the Unbeautiful, as well as the Unjust; but it is frequently the policy of Evil to respect the True and the Beautiful, and to appropriate them, within the limits of the possible, tO' its own dark purposes ; so that the Tempter was able to offer fo7' a time to the Saviour not only ' all the kingdoms of the world,' but ' the glory of them' also.^ As the True and the Beautiful are capable of being thus detached by Evil from the Good, it follows that the Fetishist's revelation of the Divine Word in the Beautiful, and the Pantheist's revelation of the Divine Word in the True, were not only imperfect, ' forme a I'Ordre; le Bien, cequi concourt a I'Ordre.' — Definition of the late M. de la Rosiere. The Beautiful, in the narrowest meaning of the word, as used in the above definition, is the manifestation of the Divine in the external properties of material things ; but the True is also called intellectual Beauty, and the Good, moral Beauty, when viewed as the objects of feeling rather than of perception ; for every feeling generates a con-esponding perception, and every perception is generated by a corresponding feeling. The Divine is manifested in the external properties of material thiiigs by their correspondence with spiritual things ; and it is because even the former are, in their manner, recipients both of Divine and diabolical life, that there is such a correspondence between the material and the spiritual world. ' Matt. iv. 8, Comp. John viii. 44 with James ii. 19. C i8 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. but of little consequence to man's vocation, which is to attain to union with Divine Love ; for the only access to Divine Love is through the Good,^ w^hich is the revela- tion of the Word to the Dualist ; and, although the only divine, if not also the only perfect, realisation of the Good on this earth has been the Incarnation of the Saviour, the partial realisation of the Good in the more or less isolated virtues of prae-Christian saints, sufficed at least to furnish the ideal of a perfect humanity.^ The last external revelation of Deity, that of omnipo- tent Love, required a more diligent and scientific obser- vation of Nature than that of the Fetishist or even of the Pantheist. Instead of merely observing the pheno- mena or forces of Nature in themselves, Theism argues the doctrine of final causes from the study of their sequence and concatenation, as seen from the standpoint of Dualism, and concludes that, notwithstanding the evidence of temporary evil, 'all things are working together for good.' ^ Philosophy, apart from a profound Mysticism, proves ' Hence Christ's words : — ' No man cometh to the Father but by Me. If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also.' — John xiv. 6-7. - Already to Abraham the command was given : — ' Walk before Me, and be thou perfect.' — Gen. xvii. i. ^ Rom. viii. 28. PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICISM. 19 the existence of the Spirit by the Platonic method of arguing Substance from Accident ; and the existence of the Word and of the Father by the Cartesian method of arguing Cause from Effect. The Mystic's knowledge of God, being entirely ex- perimental, only requires the aid of philosophy or theo- logy to guard him from delusions, and to define his per- ceptions for the benefit of others. In the Persian story, a Philosoph-er said to a Mystic : ' All that you see, I know;' and the Mystic returned : 'All that you know, I see.' 20 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. II. 1. There is no lower stage of religiosity than Fetish- ism, which differs from Materialism merely in looking up to, instead of down upon, material Nature.^ Its essence ' ' What in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to ' teach us, namely, the stripping off of those poor undevout wrap- * pages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays, — this, the ancient < earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. 'The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine * to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it * face to face. "All was Godlike or God : " Jean Paul still finds it so ; ' the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays : but ' then there were no hearsays. Canopus shining down over the ' desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that wild blue spirit-like * brigbtness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce ' into the heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding ' through the solitary waste there. To his wild heart, with all feel- ' ings in it, with no speech for any feeling, it might seem a little eye, 'that Canopus, glancing out on him from the great deep Eternity ; * revealing the inner Splendour to him. Cannot we understand how * these men ivorshipped Canopus ; became what we call Sabeans, ' worshipping the stars ? ' . . . ' And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us * also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not a God 'made visible, if we will open our minds and eyes? We do not 'worship in that way now : but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof *■ of what we call a "poetic nature," that we recognise how every FETISHISM. is aesthetic emotion ; often, indeed, conducive to genuine religious feeling, but so easily diverted from connection with the moral sense, that all purely Fetishistic religions have tolerated the grossest immorality and cruelty, even as an accompaniment to the most solemn acts of wor- ship. It is the same feeling of awe inspired by the beauties of Nature or the fine arts, which accounts for a certain religiosity occasionally expressed in the writings even of such poets as Byron or Victor Hugo, and in the rites of the most degraded savages. Fetishism is, in fact, the worship of physical Beauty, and the result of all sensual impressions which affect the ccsthetic faculty, whether produced by Nature alone, or by the work of man (such as architecture or music) achieved in imitation or after the manner of Nature, and whether or no these impressions be instrumental to the awakening of any other feeling, or to the conveyance by symbolism of a truth to the understanding. Mere aesthetic emotion is, however, not to be de- ' object has a divine beauty in it ; how every object still verily is "a ' window through which we may look into Infinitude itself?" He ' that can discern the loveliness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, ' Man of Genius, gifted, loveable. These poor vSabeans did even 'what he does — in their own fashion. That they did it, in what ' fashion soever, was a merit ; better than what the entirely siupitl ' man did, what the horse and camel did — namely, nothing ! ' — Carlyle, On Heroes^ Hero- Worships and the Heroic in History. 32 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY, spised by him who would ' receive the kingdom of God as a Uttle child.' ^ • Before one is fit for 'Ascetic' or ' Puritanical' religion, the tendency of which is Xo forsake all things in order to approach God, it is necessary to accei)t in humility ' Ritualistic ' religion, the tendency of which is to make use of all things in order to approach God. In the case of individuals, as of societies and races, the formalism and sestheticism of the Law must precede the mysticism and asceticism required by the Gospel ; the elaborate rites of the Temple, the worship ' in spirit and in truth ' ^ of the God who is as present to true believers on Mount Gerizim as on Mount Moriah. There is, in fact, a mysterious correspo7idence between the natural and the spiritual world,^ so that the aesthetic faculty, rightly cultivated and directed, may be made highly conducive to the awakening of the soul to a sense of Divine presence ; and, indeed, its gratification is dangerous if not thus sanctified. It has, consequently, pleased the Allwise Being to have regard to man's weakness, in providing the most beautiful and attractive imagery in both sections of His written "U^ord, and to permit, since He has even enjoined, the use ' Z///J'^ xviii. 17; Alatt. xviii. 3. - John iv. 21. ^ As expressed by the old adage, attributed to Hermes Trisme- gistus : — ' Quod SHpei'ius siciit quod inferms.'' FETISHISM. 23 of Music, Rhythm, /Architecture, Vestments, Processions, Pilgrimages, and the hke, in the celebration of public worship. It must, however, be remembered that all rites, ceremonies, and other aesthetic incentives to piety become ' idolatrous,' ^ when they defeat their object by drawing ' * Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a ' Symbol of God ; and perhaps one may question whether any the most ' benighted mortal ever took it for more than a Symbol. I fancy, he ' did not think that the poor image his own hands had made was ' God ; but that God was emblemed by it, that God was in it some ' way or other. And now in this sense, one may ask, Is not all ' worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by eidola, or things ' seen ? Whether seen, rendered visible as an image or picture to the ' bodily eye ; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, ' to the intellect : this makes a superficial, but no substantial differ- ' ence. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead ; an Idol. ' The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intel- ' lectual Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby ; ' thereby is worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, ' religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in * this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must pro- ' ceed by symbols, by Idols: — we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, ' and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. ' Where, then, lies the evil of it ? Some fatal evil must lie in it, ' or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it. ' Why is Idolatry so hateful to Prophets ? It seems to me as if, in * the worship of those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had ' chiefly provoked the Prophet, and filled his inmost soul with indig- ' nation and aversion, was not exactly what suggested itself to his * own thought, and came out of him in words to others, as the thing. ' The rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black ' Stone, he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that worshipped 2 4 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. attention from, instead of to, the presence of Deity, or by sinking worship into routine. Their economy, restric- tion, and adaptation to the manifold idiosyncrasies of the faithful is, consequently, an important duty of the Church. ' nothing at all ! Nay there was a kind of lasting merit in that poor ' act of his ; analogous to what is still meritorious in Poets : recog- ' nition of a certain endless divine beauty and significance in stars and ' all natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so merci- ' lessly condemn him ? The poorest mortal worshipping his Fetish, ' while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of contempt ' and avoidance, if you will ; but cannot surely be an object of ' hatred. Let his heart be honestly full of it, the whole space of ' his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby ; in one word, let him ' entirely believe in his Fetish, — it will then be, I should say, if not ' well with him, yet as well as it can readily be made to him, and ' you will leave him alone, unmolested there. ' But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the ' era of the Prophets, no man's mind is any longer honestly filled * with his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing ' through it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun ' dimly to doubt that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is ' insincej-e Idolatry. Doubt has eaten out the heart of it : a human * soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, ' which it half feels now to have become a Phantasm. This is one of ' the balefulest sights. Souls are no longer JUled with their Fetish ; ' but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel ' that they are filled. "You do not believe," said Coleridge ; "you ' only believe that you believe." It is the final scene in all kinds of ' Worship and Symbolism ; the sure symptom that death is now nigh. 'It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship of For- ' mulas, in these days of ours.' — Carlyle, 6*;^ Heroes^ Hero-lVorship, and tJie Heroic in History. FETISHISM. 'S Of populations that have attained to a high degree of civilisation, the Turanian have shown the least disposi- tion to advance beyond Fetishism, though occasionally rising to Pantheism, as in the philosophies of Lao Tseu and Confucius ; or sinking to Materialism, as shown by the lives of so large a proportion of the luxurious classes from the earliest times in China. Even the Anthropo- morphic and Dualistic religions borrowed from other races (such as Buddhism) have among the Turanians rapidly deteriorated and become Fetishistic, and their leading doctrines misunderstood, except by a select few.^ The Fetishistic element always remained strong also in ^ Christianity, however, began at one time to strike deep roots in Japan, the heroic labours of St. Francis Xavier and the other early Jesuit missionaries in that country being crowned with the most startling success. Their wojk was ruined, not of course by the cruel persecutions of its enemies, but by the arrival in the far East of European traders, whose conduct soon cast a slur on everything connected with the unknown West. The supernatural strength and universal adaptability of Christianity are strikingly brought into relief by its success, when it had a fair chance, among popula- tions so materialistic as the Turanians ; for although Buddhism, under State patronage, may justly boast of the prodigious quantity of its Turanian converts, and has even here and there produced among them such a saintly life as that of Iliuen-thsang (the pilgrim monk whose biography has recently been translated by M. Stanislas Julien), what was so remarkable about the Japanese Christians of the 1 6th and 17th centuries was the large proportion, in their total number, of those who proved themselves ready and willing to seal their faith in martyrdom. 26 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. the popular cultus of the Hamites, although the meta- physical systems of their theologians have been, from an early period of their history, profoundly Pantheistic. The transition from Fetishism to Pantheism resulted from development of the inductive faculty. Pantheism transcends Fetishism in being able to trace the Divine manifested in natural phenomena to the action of intelligent force; consequently, in perceiving that, how- ever intimately connected, there is nevertheless a differ- ence between spirit and matter, and that the former is superior to the latter. To the Fetishist, for instance, the sun's external splendour sufficed to reveal the presence of a god ; but the Pantheist is aware that there is something still more divine in the intelligent force regulating the sun's movements and its action on the earth. The idea of spirit as at once distinct from and connected with matter, and the idea of a hierarchy^ or gradation of Divinity in the Universe, are, in fact, the two great truths of Pantheism. The heresy of Pantheism — a most dangerous heresy — lies in its exaggeration of the connection between spirit and matter, as w^ell as of the connection between divine and natural life — in the notion that this connection is fatal and indissoluble. Nor are the consequences of the heresy less pernicious w^hen Pantheism has passed from a Polytheistic to a Monotheistic stage, and has found a PANTHEISM. 27 philosophical expression in the doctrine of EmauatioJi^ according to which all things, both spiritual and material, both good and evil, are generated by or consubstantial with the one Self-existent Being, and are consequently divine, though not equally divine. This Pantheistic Monotheism has, indeed, little be- yond its fundamental idea of unity, in common with the Monotheism which springs from Dualism, and finds a resolution in Theism ; for, (i) Pantheistic Mono- theism, assuming the Universe to be a generation of the Self-existent Being, and not being able to detach the Generated from the Generator (as in Catholic Theology the Word cannot be detached from the Father),^ implies ' On the difference between the theodicy of Catholic theolog)', and the Pantheistic theodicy of the Alexandrian school, which also admitted a Trinity, Emile Saisset writes : ' Dans la Trinite chre- * tienne le monde est profondement separe de Dieu. Le Pere, le ' Fils et le Saint-Esprit forment, si Ton pent ainsi parler, un cercle ' divin. Ces trois personnes n'ont de rapport necessaire qu'entre ' elles. Elles se suffisent ; elles ne supposent rien au dela. Si le ' monde depend de Dieu, c'est par un lien tout different de celui qui ' enchaine I'une a I'autre les personnes divines. Le monde n'est pas '' engetidre de Dieu, c'est-a-dire forme de sa substance ; il xvq procede ' pas de Dieu, dans la rigueur theologique ; il est librement tire du ' neant, c'est-a-dire cree. De la une separation radicale entre la ' nacure divine et I'univers ; de la I'independance, la liberte de Dieu, ' et, dans cet etre auguste, une sorte de personnalite sublime dont la ' notre offre quelque image; de laenfin, dans I'ordre moral, des con- ' sequences inepuisables. Dans la doctrine alexandrine, au contraire, 28 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. the negation of free-will either in God or in any other being,^ whereas Theism necessarily implies a free Crea- tion and Providence on the part of God, and, unless it be a very shallow Theism, the possibility of free obedi- ence on the part of Man ; (2) Pantheistic Monothe- ism, assuming that all things emanate from one Self- existent Being, can only admit, if it consents to admit as much, a difterence of degree between good and ' les degres de I'existence divine, au lieu de former un cercle, se ' deploient sur une ligne qui se prolonge a I'infini. L' Unite engendre ' r Intelligence, I'lntelligence I'Ame, I'Ame, a son tour, produitau- ' dessous d'elle d'autresetres qui, aleur tour, en enfantent de nouveaux, * jusqu'a ce qu'on arrive a un terme oil la fecondite de Tetre est ' absolument epuisee. II en resulte un systeme oil la fatalite preside, * d'oii sont exilees la personnalite et la liberte ; oil Dieu, decompose ' en une serie de degres, se. confond presque, en perdant son unite, ' avec tous les autres degres de I'existence.' — Essais siir la Philosophie et la Religion ati XlXiiie Siccle. ' E. Saisset writes in criticism of Spinoza's Pantheistic phi- losophy : — ' Ainsi tout est necessaire : Dieu une fois donne, ses ' attributs sont egalement donnes, les determinations de ces attributs, ' les ames et les corps, I'ordre, la nature, le progres de leur developpe- ' ment, tout cela est egalement donne. Dans ce monde geometrique, ' il n'y a pas de place pour le hasard, il n'y en a pas pour le caprice, * il n'y en a pas pour la liberte. Au sommet, au milieu, a I'extremite, ' regne une necessite inflexible , et irrevocable. S'il n'y a point de ' liberte ni de hasard, il n'y a point de mal. Tout est bien, car tout ' est ce qu'il doit etre. Tout est ordonne, car toute chose a la place ' qu'elle doit avoir. La perfection de chaque objet est dans la ' necessite relative de son etre, et la perfection de Dieu est dans ' I'absolue necessite qui lui fait produirenecessairement toutes choses.' PANTHEISM. 29 evil, whereas Theism perceives a difference of essence \ (3) Pantheistic Monotheism, though admitting the exist- ence of any number of invisible beings more powerful than man, and consequently the possibility of phenomena commonly called ' supernatural,' cannot accept the inh-a- culous, as, according to its theory, the modes of operation of Nature's laws are unchangeable, because inseparable from the Divine essence, whereas to a consistent Theist these modes of operation have been created from no- thing, and may consequently be suspended or even modified — provided, of course, that such modification by the Creator be not inconsistent with His own attri- butes ; ^ (4) the Self-existent Being of Monotheistic Pantheism, from whom emanate evil as well as good, inertia as well as movement, must necessarily be assumed * Or, as a Christian Platonist would say with more precision, if not inconsistent with the tSeat which have a real existence in God the Word. The A070S of Plato is the second hypostasis also of the Alex- andrian Trinity ; but, according to the Pantheistic doctrine of the school, the loiai have without exception 2. pc7-fect realisation and the Aoyos a divine realisation in the whole World ; whereas, according to Christian metaphysics, the tSe'at have a perfect realisation in the World only where there has been no intervention of Evil (as in the axioms of mathematics and logic), and the Christian Church knows of no divine realisation of the t\.6'yos on earth but the humanity of Christ, which is, however, communical)le to His saints. Vide I John iii. 9 ; and v. 4. 30 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. to be too impersonal, too abstract, or, as a Pantheist would say, too ' pure ' a being to have the attributes of love, goodness, or activity ; so that it is not astonishing that the popular cultus of Pantheistic religions have usually been addressed to beings, who, however superior to men, were, nevertheless, not held to be self-existent or even eternal ; ^ whereas the love that is manifested in activity, and is inseparable from goodness, is an essential attribute of the Self-existent Being of Theism. On the other hand, the Pantheist's assertion, that Nature is in God, is very different from the Materialist's, that Nature alone is God, and, although the latter may contend that he holds all things to be divine, as he is not able to grasp, like the former, the idea of a spiritual hierarchy in the Universe, he cannot but mean that he holds all things to be equally divine, which is tantamount to the assertion that nothing is divine. Monotheistic Pantheism, with its division of the Uni- verse into stages all assumed to be emanated from, but not equally near to. Self-existence, can only find a place for the truth of Dualism, that there is a signal difference between Good and Evil, by localising the latter in the * One has never heard, for instance, of a popular cultus ad- dressed to Svayamohu in India, to Ilu in Babylonia, or to Zarvan in Media. PANTHEISM. 31 lower stages of its cosmos ; but, even when Dualism is thus combined with or fitted into Pantheism, this can only be done very imperfectly, or at the expense of much contradiction with facts, owing to the impossibility of dis- posing two hierarchies — that of holiness and that of intellect and power — along the divisions of a single perpendicular line ; and what is still more unfortunate, even should a very high place have been assigned to holiness in the hierarchy, — under the empire of a system which is compelled by its logic to concede a certain degree of Divinity to every- thing, and to deny free-will — innocence and virtue are but means of rising in the scale of existence or preserving a rank already attained, or of escaping the painful conse- quences which are the fatal result of certain actions to the doer ; but there can be, strictly speaking, no moral obligation^ binding those who are unambitious of nearness to the self-existence of an impersonal Deity; so that pride, self-interest, and natural good inchnations would still be the only incentives to rectitude of moral conduct. It is, consequently, not surprising to find how callous is public opinion to the most outrageous violations of moral law in the greater part of the Asiatic continent, where an external conformity to the more or less Dualistic religions ofShem and Japheth has done little to modify the deeper con- victions even of the mixed populations, and where a more 32 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. or less avowed Pantheism is still the basis of most metaphysical speculation.^ The man, doubtless, who constantly tries to do his duty towards his neighbour is appreciated and respected, and he who pretends to a still more intimate union with Deity is revered and envied ; but the very absence of hypocrisy on the part, for instance, of a sovereign or a magistrate, who rids himself of any one happening to stand in his way without form of trial or alleged motive, shows how little public opinion is im- pressed with the idea of moral obligation. ^ • Nothing can be more Pantheistic than the metaphysics of Babism, the last religion of any importance that has sprung up in Western Asia ; and that, dating only from about the year 1847, • already bids fair to become dominant in the dominions of the Schah. Vide Count de Gobineau's charming and profound work, Les Reli- gions .et les Philosophies dans V Asic centrale, for an account of this new religion, as well as for the author's valuable remarks on the in- flexible adherence of the Asiatics even to forms of worship dating from a remote antiquity. 'Tous ces choeurs,' he writes, 'que je *viens de decrire : confreries dansant sur place, berberys, corps de ' ballet, tout cela est I'heritage de la plus haute antiquite. Rien n'y ' est change, ni la musique des tambourins, ni les battements de ' poitrine, ni les cantiques, ni les litanies. Les noms des divinites ' sont autres, voila tout, et la Perse moderne entoure ses tazyehs des ' memes ceremonies, des memes expiations, de la meme pompe qui ' se voyaient jadis aux fetes d'Adonis. Ce n'est pas un mediocre ' sujet de reflexion que de voir partout et toujours cette Asie si tenace * dans ses resolutions, dans ses admirations, braver et traverser deux ' cultes aussi puissantsque le Christianisme et I'lslam, pour conserver ' ou reprendre ses plus anciennes habitudes.' - ' Les Asiatiqucs ne comprennent pas la raison d'Etat comme PAi\ THEISM. 33 Pantheism, perceiving the existence of a hierarchy in the Universe, cannot reasonably be unfavourable to ' nous. Sur ce point, peut-etre, eclate plus encore que dans toutes 'nosautres conceptions juridiques la haute idee que nous nous faisons * du droit et de ses exigences. En definissant ce qui autorise un 'pouvoir afrapper son adversaire comme'coupable, on a ete amene, * des I'origine des societes modernes, a repudier, pour ainsi dire, cette ' fameuse raison d'Etat, puisqu'on a essaye de la deguiser sous toutes ' sortes de voiles, dont les plus epais et les mieux brodes de raisons ' n'ont jamais reussi a tromjDer ni a satisfaire la conscience legale. * Des crimes se sont commis contre le droit a toutes les epoques de ' nos histoires et se commettront encore assurement ; mais on en a ' toujours rougi, et les condamnateurs ont ete condamnes, je ne dis ' point par la posterite, mais par leurs contemporains, par leurs par- tisans, parleurs complices, par eux-memes.' . . . * Nous avorvs ' ete hommes, c'est-a-dire souvent pervers, emportes, mechants, * injustes ; mais nous ne sommes jamais entres dans de telles voies ' que nous nous soyons trouves a I'aise dans I'iniquite, et, aux plus ' horribles periodes de nos annales, I'hypocrisie regne, s'etale, nous 'degoute, mais nous honore.' . . . 'En Asie, rien de cela ' n'existe. A vrai dire, la preoccupation du juste et de I'injuste y est ' si faible, que Tideede la raison d'Etat, qui est deja elle-meme une ex- ' cuse ou une ombre d'excuse inventee par la conscience en souffrance, ' n'y existe pas du tout. La, non plus, pas de traces de ces indi- ' vidualites fletries par le sentiment commun ; de ces tribunaux, ' comme la chambre etoilee ou la chambre ardente ou les commissions ' militaires, dont on ne s'entretient chez nous qu'avec reprobation. ' II n'y a pas d'hypocrisie non plus, et quand on tue, on ne met pas ' meme en avant un simulacre d' instruction judiciaire : on tue parce ' qu'on est le plus fort ; on n'a pas de raisons a donner de ce qu'on 'fait, parce qu'on est le pouvoir, et I'opinion publique n'en demande 'paset n'en demandera jamais, parce qu'elle pense que le pouvoir est 34 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. Mysticism, but it is no less favourable to Pseudo-Mysti- cism, from its inability to distinguish one from the other, both implying the union of an inferior with a superior being through the medium of a common quality. True Mysticism consists in the union of a creature with a Self- existent Being, whose essence is love (ayctTr??),^ a love implying activity and inseparable from righteousness, and such a union can only be effected through and in active charity; but ecstatic union with the Self-existent Being of Pantheism, who, from the exigencies of its doctrine, must be far too impersonal, far too ' pure,' to be actively loving or righteous, would be tantamount to the extinction of all moral life, however flattering to human pride or vanity. ^ * de sa nature une combinaison nee pour Tabus et dont I'unique * legitimite est le fait d'exister. Chez nous, il n'est pas, dans les plus 'mauvais jours des pires revolutions, un tribunal installe dans un ' cabaret, qui ne cherche a imposer a ses victimes meme la recon- * naissance de son droit a les juger et du principe en vertuduquel il * les juge. Si une de celles-ci laisse entendre qvi'elle se regarde * comme condamnee d'avance et qu'elle considere les formes suivies ' comme derisoires, on la rappelle a I'ordre. Mais, en Asie, la ♦uaivete du juge est complete.' — De Gobineau, ibid. * I yoktt iv. 8. 2 Count de Gobineau thus writes of the fatal results of Panthe- istic mysticism among the Sufis of Asia at the present day : — * A ' force d'ou'ir repeter que le monde ne vaut rien et meme n'existe pas, ' que I'affection de la femme et des enfants n'a rien que de faux, que ' I'homme sense doit se renfermer en lui-meme, se borner a lui-meme, PANTHEISM. 35 There remains, indeed, the aspiration to a union with beings who, although not self-existent, are held to be immeasurably superior to mankind ; but in the hierarchy of Pantheism, unless very much qualified by Dualism, it is rather intellectual power than holiness that constitutes superiority, and misdirected intercourse with the invisible world leads to little but the mesmeric possession by evil ' ne pas compter sur des amis qui le trahiraient, et que c'est dans son ' coeur seul qu'il peut trouver la felicite, la securite, le pardon facile ' de sesfautes, la plus tendre indulgence, et finalement Dieu, il serait * bien extraordinaire que le plus grand nombre de ceux qui re9oivent ' de pareilles le9ons et qui les voient si universellement approuvees, ' ne finissent pas par accepter comme des vertus I'egoisme le plus ' naif et toutes ses consequences, dont la principale est le plus entier * detachement de tout ce qui se passe autour d'eux dans la famille, ' dans la ville et dans la patrie.' . . . ' Un soufy de grade * superieur, arrive a se considerer lui-meme comme^Dieu, admet sans ' peine et professe avec hauteur que la creation au milieu de laquelle ' il se trouve momentanement et imparfaitement detenu, est toute 'entiere digne de ses dedains. 11 parle des prophetes comme d'avor- ' tons qui auraient encore grand chemin a faire pour arriver jusqu'a * lui. II ne reconnait aucune distinction, quant a lui, entre le bien et ' le mal ; car, au point de vue ou il en est, toutes les antinomies se ' resolvent dans le fait unique de son existence interieure.' . ' Ce quietisme, et non I'islam, voila la grande plaie des pays orien- 'taux.' It is to be observed that the whole tendency of the Sufy philosophy, with its quietism and fatalism, is as radically opposed to the religion of Mahomet as was Gnosticism to Christianity, and that its connection even with the Schyite religion, which is Ma- hometan in little but pretension, is of the loosest kind. 36 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. spirits, which is so common in all countries where Pan- theistic doctrines are flourishing. Pantheism, consequently, fosters pride, quietism, and perilous intercourse with the invisible world in those who profess to live a higher life than their neighbours, and, like Fetishism, tolerates the grossest self-indulgence in the multitudes who are contented to substitute the charms of religiosity to the duties of religion. The social organisation most in harmony with Pan- theism is the Caste system, which assigns a different code of morals, and different gods to be worshipped, as well as different duties and privileges, to each caste. The most appropriate symbol of a generating god is the phallus, which was the usual* form of the precious stones and aeroliths used to represent male divinities in the sanctuaries of many Hamitic nations. The creed of Monotheistic Pantheism is well expressed in the famous inscription, mentioned by Plutarch, on the pedestal of a statue representing an Egyptian goddess : — ' I am all that has been, that is, and that is to come, and no mortal has ever lifted my veil,' ^ and in a definition of Victor Hugo — ' Dieu est le moi latent de V Univers patent''^ iriirKov ouSets irco Qv'i]r'6s aireKakv^eu. 2 And most poetically in the famous answer of Serapis to Nico- POLYTHEISM, yj Pantheism is particularly noticeable in the Hamitic theologies of Babylonia, Southern Arabia, Syria, Media, Etruria, India, and Egypt, though not unmixed with Anthropomorphic and Dualistic elements (probably due in part to Aryan or Shemitic influence), especially in those of India, Media, and Egypt, and equally favourable to Fetishism and Mysticism, Monotheism and Polytheism. It is also the basis of the philosophies of Lao-Tseu, Confucius, pseudo-Vyasa, pseudo-Patanjali, Heraclitus, the Alexandrians, the Kabalists, the Gnostics, the Sufis, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Hegel, Allan Kardec, &c. These systems differ chiefly from their unequal con- nection with Mysticism on the one side and with Mate- rialism on the other. In the Alexandrian school Pantheism is seen at its highest, and in the so-called ' Spiritist ' sect of the present day almost at its lowest. The transition of Pantheism from an undetermined to a Polytheistic stage ^ resulted partly from development of creon of Salamis, who had begged to know what manner of god he was : — * Et'/ni 0ebs T0ts from a German Workshop^ that men must have had the notion of a god before they could have 38 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. the analytic faculty, and partly from the union, confede- ration, or mere intercourse of nations, tribes, and families rejoicing in different religious symbols according to their idiosyncrasies and circumstances. The great moral danger of Polytheism is that, in obscuring the idea of Divine omnipotence and in fostering impure and morally insufficient conceptions of Deity, it permits cultus which satisfy by their aesthetic charm man's instinct of veneration, without exacting from him the eiiiire surrender of his heart and will, and which con- sequently encourage him to try to serve at the same time ' God and Mammon.' This is particularly the case when Polytlieism is Fetishistic or Pantheistic, for when Deity is revealed only in Nature, one cannot be oblivious of the fact that Nature in her parts is to a certain degree in man's power, and in all countries men have believed that there are means, known to the initiated, of increasing that power a hundred or a thousand fold ; so that a Poly- theistic worship of God in Nature easily degenerates, without losing its aesthetic charm, into the celebration of real or supposed magical incantations, even when it does not become literally the medium of devil-worship. Nor is the moral danger much lessened when Polytheism acquired the notion of several gods, and that of several gods before that of one only God. POLYTHEISM. 39 is Anthropomorphic, wlien worship is addressed to a pki- raUty of human-shaped beings ; for the tendency is strong on the part of the worshippers to suspect or hope that so limited a god or goddess may be placed more or less in their power, if not otherwise, at least by his or her being sensible of flattery, or being easily moved by misplaced compassion to tolerance of human frailty. This tendency of Polytheists is usually betrayed by a strong preference for idols in the form of the weaker sex.^ But even when the object of a cultus is clearly under- stood to be, mediately or immediately, the omnipotent Master of the Universe, morality is still endangered if, in the worshipper's conception of that object, the idea of Divine holiness or justice 'without respect of persons,'^ and that of Divine benevolence towards all creatures,^ are not both, at least impHcitly, contained. Fragmentary conceptions of Deity, as the objects of special cultus, are consequently secured from moral dan- ger only in communities, such as the Catholic Church, 1 'To embody the object of adoration in a female form is the ' natural tendency of polytheism and idolatry, because it unites the * two opposite tendencies of looking up and looking down, worship- ' ing a being as our God, and at the same time commanding it as our ♦ creature.' — W. Sewell, Introduction to the Dialogues of Plato. 2 I Pet. i. 17. ' Ps. cxlv. 9 ; xxxvi. d-'j ; Matt. v. 44-5. 40 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. where the authorised invocations and symbols of Deity are so linked together in the minds of the faithful by the teaching of creeds, liturgies, &c., that they run no chance of getting isolated, and where they are not exposed, as of old in Israel, to fusion with the impure conceptions of other religions. Under these conditions, however, the Church permits the use of many invocations and conceptions in di\dne worship — thus Christ is variously invoked and repre- sented as the good Shepherd, the King of Saints, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, the Babe, the Crucified, the Entombed, the Risen, the Ascending Lord, &c. — because this variety is adapted to the manifold idiosyn- crasies, circumstances, and moods of the faithful, and because the human soul is rarely able to sustain itself in adoration, without varying its conception of the object to which that adoration is addressed. In this as in most other matters, the more strictly the discipline of the Church is enforced and obeyed, the greater is the amount of liberty which can be safely indulged, where liberty is expedient* ' It is worthy of remark that it was precisely because the laws of Manu were so strictly and universally obeyed, and the Brahmi- nical caste all powerful, from about the tenth to the end of the seventh century B.C., that it could admit every artistic conception ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 41 The transition from Pantheistic to Anthropomorphic Polytheism resulted chiefly from the deepening of men's consciousness of free-will and responsibility, and from into its pantheon, and allow eveiy system of philosophy to be taught in its schools, from the mystical doctrine of pseudo-Patan- jali and the Yoguis, which rejected the necessity of outward ceremonies, to the doctrine of pseudo-Kapila, which was avowedly atheistic. The Brahminical caste, however, miscalculated its strength when it disdained to take active measures against Bud- dhism, until the latter threatened to upset the whole social organi- sation of the country. It was not in theocratic India, but in democratic Athens, when the city was practically under mob rule, that a Socrates was condemned to death merely on account of his theories. Recent discoveries are also beginning to dissipate the phantasniagoria of sacerdotal repression of intellect and imagina- tion in ancient Egypt, where, in spite of political and ecclesiastical centralisation, each provincial town had its own symbolism, its own pantheon and hierarchy of divinities, its own theological and cosmogonical system, for the most part at variance with the tradi- tions of the supreme sacerdotal authorities at Thebes. Nor was the Papacy much less tolerant of the independent creations of artists and the independent theories of metaphysicians, when it was at the apogee of its power in the thirteenth century, except in countries, such as Languedoc, where intellectual liberty had been abused to stir up whole populations against the Church's authority and disci- pline. The complete emancipation from sacerdotal control of the sculptors and painters who decorated the great ecclesiastical build- ings of the three last mediaeval centuries is even quite amazing. It was only from the middle of the sixteenth century, in consequence of the panic occasioned by the Reformation, and partly also of the influence acquired by a newly founded religious order, that a quite different policy has prevailed at the Vatican. 42 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. admiration of human beauty and intelligence, which awoke an admiration of the virtues in early times usually accom- panying or believed to be connected with physical and intellectual superiority ; but it was also favoured by the gradual modification of languages,^ which accidentally converted common into proper names, ^ and by the creations of epic poetry and plastic art. ' The richness and instability notably of the Aryan languages gave birth quite accidentally to many poetical myths, which were afterwards stereotyped in still more fascinating forms by poets and artists. 2 Zeus, for instance, was once the common name of the sky, and was also the name of a god, because the sky was worshipped as a god ; but in course of time the word Zeus was supplanted by other words as a designation of the sky, so that its meaning was for- gotten, but it continued in use as the proper name of a being supposed to dwell in the sky, and who inherited as a divine person most of the epithets which had been applied to the sky as a divine thing ; so that he was invoked as the spouse of the earth-goddess, the father of the river-gods and the sun-god, the broad-browed, the serene-countenanced, the thunderer, &c. The philological school of Kuhn, represented in England by Max Miiller, Cox, &c., has successfully traced most of the Aryan myths of the gods to a naturalistic origin ; but its favourite maxim, ' Nomina immvia, ' may be abused. Names certainly supplied attri- butes and legends to anthropomorphised gods, but only exception- ally produced these gods themselves. It is not likely, for instance, that the word ZeiJs would have survived as a proper name when it was dropped as a common name, if the sky-god had not been already conceived as a being detached from the sky ; though, on ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 43 Anthropomorphism, recognising in the gods only superior men, and having, at its best, but an imperfect ideal of moral excellence in man, is more conducive to acts of virtue, especially of courage, energy, and generosity, than to the repression of vice ; and it even tends to aggravate the evils of Polytheism, when it fails to supply the moral ideal which is within its province, though un- known to Fetishism or Pantheism. So long as men worshipped the sun, for instance, they were not taught, but were simply allowed to remain in their vices, but when they worshipped Hercules they had before their eyes, as a model for imitation, the ideal portrait either of a hero or of a ruffian, according to the fancy of the artist or bard of the locality, or to the taste of his employers ; and unfortunately many of the gods of Anthropomorphism, who had spoiled the earlier naturalistic gods of their attributes, were from the beginning the heroes and heroines of stories, which were quite innocent, as well as true, when related of the sun or the moon, but much less to the credit of beings in a human shape. But, on the whole, the birth of the new gods was one of the most the other hand, the sky was much more likely to remain in naked impersonality under a new name, when the attributes of its divinity had been carried off by the bearer of its old name. ' The reaction ' consequently ' of language on ideas,' served rather to accentuate and fortify than to produce Anthropomorphism. 44 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. fortunate events in the history of mankind ; ^ for apart from a Mysticism rarely compatible with the vitiated con- ' ' II n'y a dans I'histoire qu'une seule revolution, dont la * grandeur depasse celle que la Grece represente ; cette revolution 'c'est le christianisme.' . . 'La Grece est I'avenement de 'I'homme, de la liberte humaine, de I'idee d'humanite au sein du ' pantheisme ecrasant des religions de I'Asie.' . . , 'Entre le * mysticisme pantheiste de I'Orient et le mysticisme chretien, la ' Grece etait destinee a commencer le travail de la conscience et de * la liberte prenant possession d'elles-memes.' . . . 'Pendant ' plusieurs siecles, la Gr^ce adoral'homme divinise pour se soustraire * au culte oppresseur de la Nature ; son paganisme fut moins mons- ' trueux que celui de I'Egypte et de I'lnde, car en laissant subsister 'I'idee de la liberte dans ses idoles, elle maintenait I'idee d'une 'volonte libre, d'une conscience morale dans I'liomme, I'idee de la 'distinction du bienet du mal, I'idee d'une lutte possible contre la ' fatalite, tous ces fondements de la morale sapes par le pantheisme ' oriental. La Grece a conduit les intelligences a la porte de la vraie 'religion, Quand I'idee chretienne de I'Homme-Dieu devra se * repandre, elle trouvera son chemin prepare par les religions et les ' philosophies helleniques ; elle s'assoiera tout naturellement dans les ' temples et dans les ecoles fondees par le genie grec ; tandis ' qu'apres dix-huit siecles elle n'a pu reussir encore a detroner les ' cultes pantheistes de la haute Asie. Ainsi I'esprit de I'antiquite ' grecque'etlatine, que Ton a considere longtemps comme le principal ' adversaire de I'Evangile, fut, au contraire, pour le christianisme, * I'auxiliaire le plus puissant. Aux disciples de Platon et aux ' apotres de Jesus, il ne fallut que le temps de se parler et de se 'comprendre pour s'embrasser au nom du A({7os eternel. En un ' petit nombre de siecles, Athenes et Rome furent reconciliees a 'I'Evangile, a la doctrine du Verbe ; et, de nos jours encore, le ' christianisme n'a pas reussi a franchir sur la carte de I'ancien monde ' les limites de la philosophie grecque et de I'empire romain.' — V. de La]Drade, Le Sentijue^it de la N'attire avant le Christianisme. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 4^ dition of humanity, the most precious revelation of God is in Righteousness, and there could have been no reve- lation of God in Righteousness to man except in man. ' * 'You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying in ' reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible Revelation 'of God, among the Hebrews : "The true Shekinah is Man !" ' Yes, it is even so : this is no vain phrase ; it is veritably so. The ' essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself " I "—ah, * what words have we for such things ? — is a breath of Heaven ; the ' Highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, * this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed ? *V There is but one Temple in the Universe," says the devout ' Novalis, "and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than ' that high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this * Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand * on a human body !" This sounds much like a mere flourish of ' rhetoric ; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be ' a scientific fact ; the expression, in such words as can be had, of the 'actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles, — the * great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand it, we ' know not how to speak of it ; but we may feel and know, if we 'like, that it is verily so.' . . ' And now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, ' how much more might that of a Hero ! Worship of a Hero is ' transcendent admiration of a Great Man. I say great men are still ' admirable ; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable ! No ' nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than him- ' self dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all ' hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Religion I find stand ' upon it ; not Paganism only, but far higher and truer religions, — all ' religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate admi- ' ration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form * of Man, — is not that the germ of Christianity itself? The greatest 46 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. Hence it was necessary that the humanity of the Divine Word, the only perfect revelation to man of God in Righteousness, should not be a mere ideal (as asserted by many of the Gnostics), or a phantom (as asserted by the Docetists), but a concrete reality, that the passion of the Saviour, from Bethlehem to Calvary, should be enacted in a body freely manifested to the eyes of men. Hence also the permission of the Church to represent Christ and ' of all Heroes is One — whom we do not name here ! Let sacred 'silence meditate that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate ' perfection of a principle extant throughout man's whole history on 'earth,' — Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-ivoj-ship, and the Ha-oic in His- tory. 'Those who object to anthropomorphic ideas of God and 'Nature, as too limited a standard of almighty powers and attri- * butes, do not reflect that man cannot possibly conceive any ideas ' but such as originate in his own mind ; nor can God reveal to man, 'either in Scripture or in Nature, through angels or otherwise, any ' ideas or conceptions but such as may and do assume an anthropo- ' morphic shape in the human mind.' . , . ' God, we repeat, can ' only reveal Himself to man within the limits of human thought ; ' and these cannot transcend the heights and depths of perfect ' human nature ; above which is the Infinite, in every sphere of 'speculation.' . . . 'Infinite, formless extensionis certainly not 'anthropomorphic ; but then it is "without form, and void," until ' God or man creates a form within it.' . . . ' Man, therefore, can ' only understand science, religion, and philosophy, through the * faculties of his own mind. He has no other means of understand- ' ing anything in physical or spiritual being, in visible or invisible 'worlds, in finite or infinite degrees of power, beauty, truth, and ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 47 the saints, in whom Christ has Hved ' on earth and con- tinues to live in Paradise, as corporeally present to the faithful. Anthropomorphism is, in fact;, as inseparable from Dualism as substance is from form ; and, although the knowledge of perfect sanctity is not stricdy within the scope of Anthropomorphism apart from Dualism, the former is at least competent to attain to an admiration of heroism or imperfect sanctity, and it is from hero-worship ' love. His own powers of mental vision or perception are the mea- ' sure of his definitions and denominations in all language. The * insignificant smallness of man's body compared with the sublime *vastness of the physical universe, and the finite powers of his mind ' compared with those of Omnipotence, mislead the judgment of intui- 'tive thinkers by means of contrast in degrees, which are allowed to ' obscure the identity of principles in physical and mental nature ; and ' yet it is clear that infinite mind in God must be as much in har- ' mony with finite mind in man, as infinite matter in the universe is * in harmony with his body.' . . . 'Anthropomorphism, therefore, ' is angelomorphism and theomorphism as far as the finite can repre- ' sent the infinite, as far as the physical sun and planets of our ' system can represent the Infinite Source of physical heat and light, ' as far as the incarnate spiritual light of Christianity, *' the light of 'the world," can represent the Infinite Source of Divine Love and ' Wisdom. But what kind of Anthropomorphism do we mean — ' Pagan, Jewish, or Christian ? There is a vast difference between ' these three, although merely difference of degree ; as there is a vast * difference between imperfect man and perfect man, and their con- 'ceptions of Divinity.' — H. Doherty, Philosophy of Religion. * Gal. ii. 20. 48 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. that saint-worship is developed. From the idea of a Hercules who wrestled with serpents (originally a solar myth) was developed the idea of the' Hercules who wrestled with vice of a later tradition ; for men have to learn the value and beauty of manliness and heroism before they are fit to appreciate sanctity. Consequently, when, at the close of the dark age which terminated with the eleventh century, the mediaeval Church awoke to the duty of bringing home her teaching, not merely to a relatively few studious and contemplative minds, but to the multitudes engaged in active occupations, she began by making crusaders of them, before she sought to enlist them in confraternities such as the great preaching orders founded in the thirteenth century, or the numerous and immense guilds (third-orders, &c.) affiliated to these holy institutions ; so it is not astonishing that the marauding troopers, who took the cross in the later crusades, were a very different set of men from the companions of Godefroy de Bouillon, for the noblest activities of a more deeply religious age were absorbed by another warfare ; whereas at the time of the earlier crusades the very saints of Para- dise reappear on earth as belted knights, fighting, like St. James of Compostella, at the head of red-crossed armies. But, a hero being an imperfect saint, there is always a ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 49 certain amount of moral danger in hero-worship,^ from which saint- worship is, if genuine^ free, though even a cultus addressed to Christ's humanity may be taxed with idolatry, if unaccompanied by an idea of its perfection : that is, when it is not the Christ of Scripture who is worshipped, but the Christ of an impure imagination. Andiropomorphism is strongly expressed in the say- ing of a Greek, ' Men are mortal gods, and the gods immortal men,' in the Aryan cultus addressed to heroes, in epic poetry, and in the heroic tone of the purely Aryan mythologies, as contrasted with those of the Tura- nians and Hamites. Homer's epics are perhaps the most intense^ but not the most complete, expression of Anthropomorphism; for its worst features are there displayed in much higher relief than its best, and the irreverent tone of the epic muse in Ionia must be attributed chiefly to the well- know^n corruption by luxury of the Asiatic Greeks. ' Alexander the Great, for instance, had taken Achilles for his patron hero, and, although he certainly was animated by the courage and occasional generosity of that worthy, the famous copy of Homer, which the petulant monarch always had by him in a golden casket, never failed to supply him with an excuse, if hot an encouragement, for indulging in his favourite vices. In Napoleon-worship, one of the latest and most remarkable revivals of a purely Anthropomorphic religion, its defects and evils are no less conspicuous. so THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. ' With the exception of Apollo,' writes E. Curtius, ' all ' the gods are treated with a kind of irony; Olympus ' becomes the type of the world with all its infirmities. ' The more serious tendencies of human consciousness are ' less prominent ; whatever might disturb the comfortable * enjoyment of the listeners is kept at a distance; the ' Homeric gods spoil no man's full enjoyment of the * desires of his senses. Already Plato recognised Ionic * life, with all its charms and all its evils and infimiities, in * the epos of Homer ; and we should wrong the Greeks * who lived before Homer if we judged of their moral and ' religious condition by the frivolity of the Ionic singer.' ^ It is, however, to be remarked that neither Homer nor earlier singers of the Olympians invented the puerile and immoral anecdotes in which they are made to play such unworthy parts; and it is the glory of the Anthropo- morphic gods, of at least many of them, that their dignity was on the whole so little compromised by the taint of what the Science of Religion proves to have been a fatal inheritance from the gods of Fetishism and Pantheism ; that, in spite of their birth-sin, that, in spite even of their ill-treatment at the hands of the epic poets, they were able to take the lead in the great work of private and public moralisation which was always steadily carried on • History of Greece^ translated by A. W. Ward. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 51 by at least a minority in every purely Ar}^an and Shemitic population; nor were they deemed unworthy to be sung by the pious muse of Pindar, to be portrayed by a Phidias and a Polygnotus,^ or to be devoutly worshipped by a Socrates and a Plato. ^ ' The works of Phidias, in which Greek statuary attained its apogee, were celebrated for their devotional sublimity, and his statue of Zeus at Olymjpia is said to have produced quite a religious revival. His contemporary Polygnotus seems from ail accounts to have been, as a painter, the Greek Cimabue and the Greek Orcagna in one. ■- The advice of Plato to all who were assailed by sinful thoughts was to go at once and cast themselves down before the altars of the gods, the averters of evil : '"Ifli 67rt flewj/ airorpoiraiccv Upa iKeTrjs.^ {La7C's.) The earaest and sweet piety of Socrates towards the gods of his country is amply illustrated in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, and in many of Plato's Dialogues, as, for instance, in the following passage from the first book of the Memorabilia, thus translated in Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy: — * "I would they (the gods) should send and inform me." said ' Aristodemus, "what things I ought or ought not to do, in like ' manner as thou sayest they frequently do to thee." "And what 'then, Aristodemus? Supposest thou that when the gods give * out some oracle to all the Athenians they mean it not for thee ? * If by their prodigies they declare aloud to all Greece — to all ' mankind — the things which shall befall them, are they dumb to ' thee alone ? And art thou the only pei-son whom they have ' placed beyond their care ? Believest thou they would have ' wrought into the mind of man a persuasion of their being able ' to make him happy or miserable, if so be they had no such power ? * Or would not even man himself, long ere this, have seen through 'the gross delusion? How is it, Aristodemus, thou rememberest or ' remarkest not, that the kingdoms and commonwealths most re- E 2 52 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. The Science of Religion has contributed much to dispose of a cakunnious taunt, often repeated against Anthropormorphism since the days when Xenophanes of Colophon wrote : — * If oxen or lions were gifted with hands, If they knew how to paint with their hands, and to do the works of men, Then would horses take horses, and oxen take oxen, To portray their ideas of the gods, and would give to them bodies Like unto their own.' For it may be answered, that if horses and oxen had no familiar knowledge of any being superior to them- ' nowned as well for their wisdom as antiquity, are those whose piety ' and devotion hath been the most observable? and that even man ' himself is never so well disposed to serve the Deity as in that ' part of life when reason bears the greatest sway, and his judg- ' ment is supposed in its full strength and maturity ? Consider, 'my Aristodemus, that the soul which resides in thy body can ' govern it at pleasure ; why then may not the soul of the universe, ' which pervades and animates eveiy part of it, govern it in like 'manner? If thine eye hath the power to take in many objects, ' and these placed at no small distance fi-om it, marvel not if the ' eye of the Deity can at one glance comprehend the whole. And, * as thou perceivest it not beyond thy ability to extend thy care, at ' the same time, to the concerns of Athens, Egypt, Sicily, why ' thinkest thou, my Aristodemus, that the Providence of God 'may not easily extend itself through the whole universe? ' As therefore, among men, we make best trial of the affec- * tion and gratitude of our neighbour by showing him kind- * ness, and discover his wisdom by consulting him in distress, do ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 5.3 selves, they could not do better than represent their gods as these had been revealed to them ; but if these good beasts Jiad familiar knowledge of a being superior to themselves, such as man, and were able to appreciate his superiority, there is no reason whatever to suppose that they would act otherwise than men, who refrained from portraying the gods in their own form so long as they beheved the sun, the stars, the tlnmder, &c., to be superior in power and intelligence to humanity. Already, even by Fetishists, had monarchs and an- cestors been worshipped as divine ; but this cultus must be distinguished from the hero-worship into which it was transformed by Anthropomorphism. The Fetishist wor- shipped the king of the nation or of the family, both before and after his death, as he worshipped the thunder, mainly on account of his power, real or supposed, but without any reference to his moral qualities; though ' thou in like manner behave towards the gods ; and if thou * wouldest experience what their wisdom and what their love, 'render thyself deserving the communication of some of those 'divine secrets which may not be penetrated by man, and are 'imparted to those alone who consult, who adore, who obey the * Deity. Then shalt thou, my Aristodemus, understand there is a ' Being whose eye pierceth throughout all nature, and whose ear is * open to every sound ; extended to all places, extending through * all time ; and whose bounty and care can know no other bound •than those fixed by his own creation." ' 54 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. from hero-worship sprang a new and potent motive of respect for men and women of noble birth, that is, for the real or supposed descendants of heroes. To Anthropomorphism was due a much clearer no- tion than had been entertained before of the moral equality of the sexes and the origin of chivalrous devo- tion to the physically weaker but more gentle sex. It is probable that even the various unmixed branches of the Aryan race ^ did not accept Monogamy as a religious obligation until their AnthropomoqDhism had become strongly accentuated. The feelings and ideas, however, which gave birth to Monogamy and Chivalry received a further development under the empire of Dualism. Of the fine arts, the most developed by Anthropo- morphism was Statuary, the fittest to express the physical beauty, the intellectual superiority, and the virtue in extraordinary circumstances of heroic humanity, without needing to concern itself with the homely details of ordinary life, which have so much importance in the career of saints ; for the gods and heroes of Anthropo- morphism are seen to most advantage when represented * In respect to the Shemitic race, Fergusson writes : ' If iiot ' absolutely monogamic, there is among the Jews, and among the ' Arabic races where they are pure, a strong tendency in this direc- ' tion ; and but for the example of those nations among whom they ' were placed, they might have gone further in this direction.' — Ilistojy of Architcchtrc. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 55 as abstract ideals, each embodying only one species of excellence, and Statuary can do wonders in portraying a Leonidas dying for his country, or an Apollo slaying Python, though incompetent to treat such a subject as the ' servant with a broom,' of George Herbert, making ' drudgery divine.' To Anthropomorphism, moreover, was due man's first idea of a Demiurge, i.e. neither a Creator nor a Gene- rator,^ but an Arranger of matter already existing. The gods of a pronounced Anthropomorphism are no longer the forces that generate natural phenomena, and still less are they the actual phenomena ; but there is still a fatality in matter which they have, like men, a limited but free power to resist and utilise. Phoebus, for instance, has ceased to be the sun, or to generate its splendour, but its orb is a chariot which he drives and directs, and the expanse of the firmament is but the arena of his exploits. * Zeus is indeed styled by Homer * Trarrjp ay^pwu re QeSov re,' but this invocation, so far from implying any Pantheistic notion of cosmic generation, merely shows that the Olympian community was conceived by the poet and his contemporaries as a sort of model clan, of which Zeus was the chief or iraTrjp, the other Olympians, and among immortals the Olympians only, as his near kinsmen, and men of illustrious family {dudpes, not &u6pct)Trot) as also affi- liated to the celestial clan as retainers of its chief. 56 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. It is not, however, to be supposed that the gods of Pantheism were quite ecHpsed under the empire of Anthropomorphism. Some of them even, especially those that had come to embody the idea of an inflexibly fatal force in Nature (such as the Moirse of Greece, the Fata of Rome, the Nomas of Germany and Scandinavia, all originally chthonian divinities '), were held to be much more powerful than the anthropomorphised gods, who had stolen so many attributes from the former, as well as their place in the hearts of men. A cultus was still addressed to the forces of Nature, but in general no longer because they were loved, but because they were feared. Anthropomorphism, in fact, appears like a brilliant embroidery, of which the dark background was Pantheism, but the background was dark because the brilliant hues it once possessed had been absorbed by the embroidery; and it is consequently not to be won- dered at, that in historical times the ancient Greeks, for a people endowed with such exquisitely fine senses, and ' The Greeks practically recognised two sets of Moirce, the daughter or daughters of Night, and the daughters of Zeus and Themis ; but the latter, of relatively late origin, were, like the Parcse of Rome, mere genethliac goddesses, and rarely confounded with the terrible Moira of Homer and the Tragedians, to whose decrees even Zeus has to submit humbly. Vide Histoire des Religions de la Grcce antique^ by A. Maury. ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 57 with such a glorious capacity for aesthetic enjoyment, were singularly indifferent to the beauties of extra- human nature, to which the literature and art of Hin- dustan and China, as well as of modern Europe, owe so much of their inspiration.^ It is also to be observed, that, although Anthropomorphism at last personified everything, the forces of Nature, which both in mytho- logy and in reality had generated the new race of immortals — Ouranos and Ge, for instance — were gene- rally and clearly understood to be mere personifications, and, though still held to be divine, not actual persons with human sentiments, such as Zeus or Hera. The new generation of gods was, for the most part, though not exclusively, of celestial origin, whereas the gods who continued to personify the forces of Nature, instead of intervening as independent persons to modify their action, were for the most part, though not exclu- sively, chthonian, such as the earth-born giants and most of the Titans — the earlier brood of gods, catalogued in the Thcogonia of Hesiod — who struggled with the bright Olympians, and such as the Jotuns of Teutonic mytho- logy, who struggled with the gods of Walhalla. Indeed, many divinities of chthonian origin, who had ^ Vide Le Sentiment de la Nature avant le Christiariisme, by V. de Laprade, SS THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. been much anthropomorphised, quite lost their original characteristics, and ended by being either transformed or absorbed into celestial divinities. Hera, for instance, originally a personification of the earth, had, as the spouse of Zeus, at last been transformed into a queen of heaven; and even the Titan Demeter (mother-earth) ended by finding, as the directress of agriculture, a place in some pantheons among the Olympians. The fact was, that in countries where plastic art was carried to a high pitch of perfection,^ as at Athens the cradle of the ' twelve-god system,' the original connection of divinities with natural phenomena or forces was almost obliterated by their later connection in men's , minds with distinct and strictly defined types of human beauty or character, stereotyped for each one of them by poets and sculptors; thus Artemis had come to be particularly thought of as the ideal of a Dorian virgin, Hermes of an Athenian ephebus properly trained in the gymnasium, Demeter of a matron, Hera of a queen, &c.^ Under such circum- stances, two divinities, who were commonly portrayed ' ' The great antagonism in the history of Greek rehgion be- ' tween the worship of the chthonian and the Olympian gods is recon- ' ciled in the plastic arts, so as that the peculiar feelings of the former ' have found therein no correct expression.' — Otfried Miiller, Ancient Art and its Remains, translated by J. Leitch. 2 Vide Histoire des Religions de la Grece antique, by A. Maury ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 59 with the same cast of features, or even with the same headdress, would be more hkely to get assimilated and confounded than if their connection was that of a common origin or even a common jurisdiction. Anthropomorphism is particularly noticeable in the religions of the Aryan and Shemitic races, and in the philosophy, based on ethical psychology, of Socrates. It is remarkable that at a time when the theology of Delphi and other Greek sanctuaries had almost attained to Dualistic Monotheism, and when Anthropomorphism reigned almost exclusively in the domain of the fine arts, the earliest school of Greek philosophy, that founded by Thales in Ionia, confined its attention to extra-human nature, seeking for the principle of all things only in matter. Thales supposed that this principle {'^px'i) of all things was water or moisture; Anaximander, his disciple, supposed that it was undetermined matter (ru cnretpor) ; a little later Anaxagoras even perceived the duality in extra-human nature of intelligent force and matter; but the philosophy of the Ionic school being exclusively based on physics, it could not transcend the bounds of a materiaHstic Pantheism, and it produced the frankly atheistic doctrine of Democritus, who asserted that everything was the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and the scepticism of the Sophists, who, per- 6o THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. ceiving rightly that the external senses could not always be depended on as mstriiments for discovering truth, went on to declare that absolute truth existed nowhere, so that its search was vain. That a Greek school of philosophy should have based its speculations entirely on physics is probably due to the introduction at this time of natural sciences into the Greek world from the East, perhaps also to a reaction against the frivolities which so often degraded anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity, but chiefly to the fact that philosophy, in con- tradistinction to theology, bases its speculations entirely on the observation of phenomena, and when men first began to observe scientifically, the same thing happened as when they had begun to observe superficially, namely, that their attention was first riveted by the phenomena of matter. The healthy anthropomorphic tendency of Hellenism, however, at length asserted itself in philo- sophy, when the sculptor ^ Socrates took for the text of a new system the old oracular maxim inscribed on the temple of Delphi — ^VvHt^i Cfcturor' — declaring that the basis of a transcendental philosophy should be ethical psychology and not physics, that in man would be found ' The group of the three Graces executed by Socrates is said to have found a place on the walls of the Acropolis close behind the Athene of Phidias. DUALISM. 6 1 the clearest revelation of God. Socrates seems to have been chiefly engaged in laying the foundations of the new philosophy, but the superstructure was the magnifi- cent and immortal system of Plato, whom all generations will call ' the divine.' The transition from Anthropomorphic to Dualistic Polytheism resulted from development of the moral sense, especially when the inauguration of a more regulated and centralised state of society obliged the thinking and governing classes of nations to give a serious attention to legislation, and consequently to the solution of ethical problems. Moses, Zoroaster, Numa, the Pythia of Delphi, Hu-Cadarn, Manco-Capac, in short, all the earliest moralists in their respective countries were also legislators. Dualism is not merely the perception of a difference between right and wrong, for, since man has been man, his moral sense must have been more or less in activity, but it is the perception of a radical difference, of a dif- ference at least sufficiently accentuated to be the basis of the classification which men consciously or unconsciously make of things external to themselves. Anthropomorphism had taught men that it was a noble thing to struggle manfully against the fatalities of Nature and circumstances; but Dualism now began to 62 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. make them perceive that there was something still more noble, namely to resign themselves to circumstances, and to make of necessity virtue; not, indeed, to crouch before necessity as the Fetishist or the Pantheist, who had not yet learned to use his free-will and energy, but to accept necessity with the self-restraint that commands energy. Anthropomorphism had taught men to act ; Dualism taught them to suffer.^ Anthropomorphism had looked on the inhuman powers of Nature as foes ; Dualism perceived they were sometimes friends in dis- guise, who furnished the means of expiating sin. This resignation of the DuaHst, which is so conspicuous in Stoicism, lacks, however, one important characteristic of Christian resignation, namely that it is not necessarily connected with that faith in Divine Love, which is the essence of Christian hope; for, apart from Mysti- cism, it was not before men had attained to Theism that they knew of an almighty Father in Heaven, who ' makes all things work together for good,' ^ because His very essence is Love, and the God of Theism was but ' Contrast the indomitably energetic heroes of the Homeric or Nibelungen epics with the suffering heroes of the great Athenian * Passion-plays.' Who that has read the tragedy of ^schylus will ever forget the sublime silence and passivity of Prometheus when he is being chained to the rock ? 2 Rom. viii. 28. DUALISM. 63 very imperfectly revealed before the manifestation of Christ's mediatorial work on earth. The last vice, con- sequently, which prae-Christian Dualism could afford to attack or even to recognise as a vice was pride. To Dualism men owed a much profounder notion than they' had hitherto entertained of sacrifice in general, and of human sacrifices in particular. Already from the earliest times even Fetishists had offered up costly gifts in order to win temporal blessings from the gods or to avert their wrath, but not for the express purpose of ob- taining salvation, not merely from the consequences of sin, but from sin itself, and still less with the conviction that the trespass-offering would avail only as the evi- dence of ' a broken and contrite heart.' ^ Fetishists also had sacrificed to their gods helpless children and cap- tives, not unfrequently with the most revolting cruelty ; but it was Dualism that gave men the notion of the beauty and value of a willing human victim, ^ and ' the profound idea of substitution.^^ With Dualism, con- sequently, lustrations and other forms of expiation and purification make their first appearance, or at least ' Psahn li. 17, 2 Vide Psalm xl, 6-8 (9-10 in P. B. version), ' Mommsen, referring to the devotio in his History of Rotne, translated by W. Dickson. 64 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. acquire a new importance ; and acts of self-immolation, such as the dcvotio of the Romans, begin to shed a glory on history. The prescription of external ablutions and the like as a means of effacing moral guilt had, of course, its drawbacks, and was abused by many to ' drug their consciences ; ' but the expiatory and purificatory rites of Dualism were instituted at a time when it was before all things necessary to impress the imagination of multitudes with the idea of the foulness of sin, and for that purpose, to accustom them to divide, however arbitrarily, all things into clean and unclean. It was only when the task of the ' schoolmaster ' ^ had been accomplished that men were ready for the truth, that they were not defiled ' by whatsoever entereth in at the mouth,' but only ' by such things which come forth from the heart' ^ To Dualism, also, nations owed their first pastoral clergies, men and women set apart for their sacred office by a special call and training, and by a more or less ascetic discipline, such as the Prophets of Israel, the Pythagoreans of Magna Graecia, the Athravas of Persia, the Bikshus of Buddhism, the Druids of the Kymric Celts. These Avere usually united into colleges or cen- tralised hierarchies, and were intended by their founders 1 Gal. iii. 24-5. "^ Matt. xv. 17-20. DUALISM. 65 rather to supplement than to supersede hereditary priests of an older date, whose functions were in no wise in- compatible and usually connected with civil and military command, and were more ritualistic than pastoral or even prophetic. These later priesthoods differed moreover from the earlier in the manner in w^hich they derived or claimed to derive their authority; for the first men who exercised a sacerdotal office were priests by an hereditary divine right because they were kings by hereditary divine right, and they were kings by hereditary divine right be- cause they had inherited from their ancestors the paternal authority of a chief of a family; whereas, at a later period priests and prophets based their authority, no longer on a naturally, but on a supernaturally communicated divine right. ^ The new clergies were usually connected with ' There was a time when every chief of a free family was, like Abraham, an independent king and priest ; and a family became the nucleus of a clan, when it was voluntarily joined by individuals in need of sustenance, protection, or religious privileges, or by its own emancipated slaves, the new comers being naturally admitted to a place at the family altar and table only as dependants (such as the 07jTey in Greece, the dientes in Italy, the ' stranger within thy gate ' in Palestine). In the course of time, several clans discerning or be- lieving that they worshipped the same divinity would voluntarily join together to form a tribe, possessing a sanctuary common to its scattered clans, and afterwards several tribes in similar religious con- ditions would join together to form a nation, possessing a strong- hold and a permanent market-place (070^0, forum), as well as a F 66 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. more or less missionary religions, i.e. with religions which sought to increase the number of their adherents from sanctuary, common to its scattered tribes. When such a confedera- tion took place, the chief of the clan owning the sanctuary round which the tribe had been formed became naturally and justly the high-priest and king of that tribe (as representative of the divinity who had formed it and as the necessary medium of its formation), and in a similar manner the chief of a tribe {(pvKoPaa-iXevs) would become the high-priest of a nation (such as Melchizedek or Cecrops); while in general the chiefs of the other confederate clans and tribes still preserved a local jurisdiction and the priesthood of their own sanctuaries ; and at a later period, when the nation had come to be more centralised, if the highpriest-king of the nation had not in effecting that centralisation succeeded in making himself quite de- spotic, the other chiefs (such as the original patres of Rome, or the elders of Israel) would gradually exchange their local jurisdiction for legislative and judicial authority as members of a Senate. In the meanwhile, with the development of civilisation, division of labour became frequently necessary, and many chiefs began to confide more or less of their sacerdotal functions to others, either members of their family (such as the son of Micah the Ephraimite, before he was replaced by a Levite — yitdgesy.m\. 3 — Conf. Ahi77ib.\\\. 12 — ), or not unfrequently to bards (such as Orpheus) or divines (such as Calchas) ; but, in any case, the religious authority of these substitutes was only a delegated one, which could be at any time withdrawn, and the chiefs still remained de jure if not de facto the supreme religious authorities of the sanctuaries in their possession. It must, however, be added that this evolution was not unfrequently broken into by violence, and that even in the earliest times sacerdotal and political authority was often seized by a rvpavvos, i.e. by a ruler who owed his authority to might instead of to right ; but Carlyle, if, as seems undeniable. Max Miiller's derivation is correct, must have adopted a wrong etymology for the word kin^, connecting it with konnen DUALISM. 67 disinterested motives; for hitherto the admission of a stranger to the sacra of a family had either involved his (mighl, ability) instead of with the xoo\. gan, from •^'\\\(i}[\. generator'\% also derived ; and we find that usurping dynasties (such as the Heraclidce in Peloponnesus or the Pandavas in India) nearly always forged some legend or altered some tradition in order to legitimise their usurpation by connecting themselves with the fami- lies they had ousted. The pastoral clergies which appeared at a later period also based their authority on a divine right, but conferred by a special call from the invisible world either to individuals or to self-continuing orders ; for, unlike the earlier patriarchal priests, these new ministers of re- ligion were usually united in colleges or centralised hierarchies, in which vacancies were filled by cooptation. There was however in many countries a period of transition, in which a priesthood was constituted, basing its authority both on a natural and on a supernatural divine right, i.e. on the hereditary principle and on that of a special call. Its founders were usually the chiefs of clans and tribes who with their kinsmen had quite given themselves up to study and sacerdotal duties at a time when other chiefs were giving all their time and attention to political or military engagements. Such were the Aaronic priests of Israel, the Brahmins of India, the Magians of Media, the Chaldaeans of Baby- lonia, and the ruling families of Delphi. As the constitution of the earlier priesthoods was intimately con- nected M'ith a quite decentralised state of society, and the later clerical orders were, on the contrary, generally favourable to eccle- siastical centralisation, it was usually the wisest policy for the chiefs of whole nations to ally themselves with the latter against the former. Among populations more inclined to Pantheism and less to Dualism than the Aryans or Shemites, and even among some ot the Aryans and Shemites when first coming into contact with the F 2 68 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. acceptance of a condition bordering on that of servitude, or had been granted with less onerous stipulations only as a great and exceptional favour. Dualism infused a new life into the cultus of chthonian powers, which had hitherto been rather neglected by Anthropomorphism ; these now became either the aven- gers of conscious guilt, such as the Greek Erinnyes (closely connected with Demeter), or suffering mediators, such as the Dionysus of the Orphici, or the Soma of the Vedas. But, besides transforming gloomy gods of the lower world into suffering mediators, demanding ' hilastic' rites, and effecting the ' death unto sin,' ^ Dualism civilisation of other races, a similar evolution took place, but here the patriarchs of early times M^ere supplemented or superseded by clergies, composed of doctors rather than of pastors, and who com- bined the study of metaphysics with that of natural, mathematical and occult sciences. The Druids of the Kymric Celts and many of the Egyptian priests were indeed at the same time pastors and men of science, but the BrahmiiJl of India, the Magians of Media, and especially the Chaldseans of Babylonia were much more occupied in studying science and metaphysics on their own account than in im- parting religious instruction to the laity, and the Telchins and Dactyls of Asia Minor were especially known to the Greeks as adepts in magic. On the religious and political evolution of the Aryan nations, vide La Cite antique by Fustel de Coulanges. ' Connected with this idea was the brazen serpent of Moses which healed the serpent's sting, the serpent being in all parts of the world a symbol of the earth, the material world, with its destruc- DUALISM. 69 developed the bright and in general more anthropomor- phised gods of celestial origin, such as the Delphic tive and healing properties, the seat of evil and death, and the medium of expiation and life. ' Hence,' writes J. Ruskin, 'the continual change in the inter- ' pretation put upon it in various religions. As the worm of corrup- ' tion it is the mightiest of all adversaries of the Gods— the special ' adversary of their light and creative power — Python against Apollo. ' As the power of the earth against the air the Giants are serpent- ' bodied in the Gigantomachia ; but as the power of the earth upon ' the seed— consuming it into new life ('* that which thou sowest is 'not quickened except it die") — serpents sustain the chariot of the ' spirit of agriculture. Yet on the other hand there is a power in the ' earth to take away corruption, and to purify (hence the very fact of ' burial, and many uses of earth, only lately known) ; and in this sense ' the serpent is a healing spirit —the representative of ^sculapius, ' and of Hygieia ; and is a sacred earth-type in the temple of the ' Dew — being there especially a symbol of the native earth of Athens; ' so that its departure from the temple was a sign to the Athenians ' that they were to leave their homes. And then, lastly, as there is a ' strength and healing in the earth, no less than the strength of air, ' so there is conceived to be a wisdom of earth no less than a wisdom ' of the Spirit ; and when its deadly power is killed its guiding power ' becomes true ; so that the Python serpent is killed at Delphi, when 'yet the oracle is from the breath of the earth.' — The Queen of the Air. 'The Delphic oracle,' writes E, Curtius, 'was always anxious to ' encourage the veneration of relics of the dead, to order the restora- ' tion of sacred remains to the womb of their native earth ; and ' Delphi was also the home of the myth of the doemon of the infernal ' regions, Eurynomus, who ate the flesh of the buried, but left their * bones untouched.' . . . ' For if with death everything passes ' away, the body of the dead is also a thing of no value or moment ; 70 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. Apollo, the Agni of the Vedas^ the Persian Mithra, into victorious saviours (aXet,iKat:oi, aivTpjpeg), demanding ' caf/iarmic' rites, and effecting the 'new birth unto right- eousness.' ^ These imperfect Messiah-conceptions contributed much to prepare men's minds for the greatest event in history ; but even when the suffering and the victorious Messiah were identified, or united in one person,^ and ' hence it is given up to the flames before its beauty is destroyed by ' death. If, on the other hand, death is the point at which the soul ' first enters upon a newer and higher existence, this existence also 'hallows the external encasement of the soul.' . . . 'The ' growth of plants becomes a consolatory symbol of immortality, and ' the remains pf the dead are left like a sacred treasure in the vicinity * of the survivors.' — History of Greece, translated by A. W. Ward. ^ On the difference between Hilastnoi and Kathartnoi (viz. ceremonies of Atonement or Expiation, and ceremonies of Lustration or Purification), vide Dissertations on the Etimenides of yEschyhis, by Otfried Miiller. 'It is true,' he writes, ' hilastic cerem.onies also * occur in connection with the Gods who bear rule in the bright ' upper world, the Gods of Olympus, as Jupiter or Apollo ; but, ' upon closer inspection, it seems to me beyond doubt that it was ' to deities and daemonic beings of the infernal world that the pro- ' pitiatory cultus properly and immediately appertained. ' - In the Orphic myth of Dionysus, that god is torn to pieces by the Titans, who here represent the unbridled passions of humanity ; but it is the victorious Apollo who, restoring him to life, is the saviour of the suffering Dionysus and consequently of the latter's worshippers. In the cultus organised by Ribhu, however, for which the hymns in the Sama-Veda collection were written, the suffering Soma, a personification of a fermented and very combus- DUALISM. even when that personaHty was free from any impure element or association, which it was ahvays exposed by tible liquor, is identified with Agni, a personification of fire, and both with Indra, a personification of the sunhght. This identi- fication of Soma with Agni and Indra — in physical truth, of latent beat and light in a combustible substance, sprung from the earth through the operation of the air (Vayu), and adapted for nutrition by the process of crushing, &c., with the manifest heat and light of fire and of the sun ; in corresponding metaphysical truth, of the suffering victim, born of an earthly mother through the operation of the Spirit, with the victorious heavenly saviour, the ' Sun of Right- eousness ' — was pregnant with one of the most essential doctrines of Christianity, that of the Real Presence ; for, the sacrifice of bread and fermented liquor being always connected with a distribution of the consecrated elements to the worshippers present, the agapse became a communion, and the communicants were united not only to the victim, but also to the saviour with -whom he was identified ; so that the life and sufferings of the faithful communicants being henceforth united to and consecrated by the life and sufferings of the sacred victim, they were made strong in the strength of the saviour and capable of participating in his victory over death — in the resurrection of the ' Sun of Righteousness ' from the lower world. That the worshippers of Agni were able to grasp one tithe of the metaphysical truths expressed by their liturgy is more than doubtful, and it is not improbable that even the original framers of that liturg)' were almost unconscious instruments in the hands of Divine Providence, as was Virgil when he announced in his 8th Eclogue the birth of a Saviour to the Roman world (Conf. the prophecy of Caiaphas, Jolm xi. 49^52). The cultus of Agni, as it was celebrated in the region of the Seven Rivers (Septa Sindhu), has been recently made known to us by the translation and. publication of the Vedas, but there is little reason to doubt that a similar teaching of the Real Presence was connected with many other Aryan cultus, 72 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. its anthropormorphic form to receive, the great defect of all these conceptions was not that they were too anthro- and among populations with which the Jews after the Leading into Captivity came into contact, either as dispersed traders and colo- nists or as subjects of the Medo- Persian Empire. It is conse- quently not surprising to find that in the synagogues of the Essenian and Therapeutic brethren, where a liturgy quite different from that of the Temple had been adopted and developed (for one reason, because the Temple service was forbidden elsewhere), there was a sacrifice with communion of bread (if not also of wine) which implied a belief in a real presence of the coming Messiah ; for it is not likely that such earnest ascetics as the Essenes or the Therapeutse would have adopted for their most solemn act o." worship a mere * supper ' or idle ceremony. Is it not reasonable then to conclude that since the doctrine of the Real Presence was (as several other Aryan doctrines equally distasteful to the conservative Sadducees) already familiar to the Jewish world, and as the liturgy of the Christian Church was destined to be developed not from the Temple — but from the Synagogue— service, it is, to say the least, not probable that the Saviour, when He proclaimed Himself to be the long and eagerly expected Messiah by the very unequivocal words, * This is My body,' . . . 'This is J/r blood,' would have used expres- sions which could not but have been understood by His disciples in any other sense than that which was accepted by all Christendom until the Berengarian controversy, if He had not intended to ratify and consecrate formally the already familiar doctrine of the Real Presence in the eucharistic sacrifice and communion ? We have to thank the reformers of our liturgy for placing after the communion of the faithful the prayer of oblation, which expresses by words what the elevation in the Roman liturgy expresses by a very beautiful and eloquent gesture ; as the intimate connection of the sacrifice with the communion, — of redemption with sanctification, — is DUALISM. 72> pomorphic, but that they were not anthropomorphic enough : that they represented a moral ideal which not only never had been realised, but never could be realised- in humanity. For men felt and understood that a mere human being, however virtuous or powerful, could not be the redeemer of all mankind, so they had to seek for their Messiah among divinities, who had been personifi- cations of natural phenomena or forces, and whose legend could never consequently be completely human- ised. During the celebration at certain seasons of very impressive rehgious rites, the devout might indeed work themselves up to a temporary state of excitement, and actually weep for Dionysus torn to pieces by the Titans, or for Soma crushed in the wine-press, or with Demeter (the mater dolorosa of Greek antiquity), bereaved of her child the seed-corn ; but they could derive Httle from the contemplation of such^ purely imaginary sufferings that could exert a lasting influence on their every-day lives. thereby more significantly manifested, and the congregation is thus reminded that the consummation of Christ's sacrifice is the commu- nion of saints, or their union with Him in His willingness to suffer as well as in His victory, and that Christ, in offering His own acts and sufferings, offered therewith the acts and sufferings of all in whom He continues to live on earth through the medium of the blessed sacrament. 74 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. It is also important to note that the Messiah-idea is not actually coiitamed in the revelation of Dualism, and that apart from a deep Mysticism and the authority of pro- phecy, it could only be a very plausible and welcome hypothesis suggested by the revelation of Dualism ; and that so long as Duahsm was not combined with Theism, ithe idea of substitution — the idea that love is stronger than death — had no need to imply the sufferings of a ■divinity worshipped as supreme. It was however of immense consequence to the spiritual welfare of mankind that Dualism raised the divinities who were already the authors of harmony in the physical world to a similar function in the moral world. The Apollo of Delphi may be taken as one of the most complete types of these gods of eviojiia. After having been successively the sun's luminous body, the soul of that body, the independent ruler of the sun's movements, the ruler of the seasons, the author of harmony and health throughout the material world, and hence the god of medicine and citharcedic music, he now makes the strains of his golden lyre vibrate in the souls of men, compelHng them to regulate their lives in unison with its harmony.^ ' The law of Analogy or Correspondence between things spiritual and things material has been so lost sight of, and, since the so- called Renaissance^ all the fine arts have been so desecrated, so DUALISM. 75 The Pythian Apoilo now became the very soul of the Greek world ; to him was due everything that contributed to the superiority of the Hellenic race ; and wherever the voice of his apostles — the early Gnomic poets, the Orphici, the Pythagoreans, the Sibyls, &c. — was heard, there was the beginning of a new order of things both in public and in private life. ' The first signs,' writes the great German historian of dragged in the mire, that We modern Europeans have some difficulty in believing that the ancient Greeks entrusted- the moral education of their children to the music and dancing-master {KidapKrTijs). The young Hellene was taught to connect the idea of a wrong step in conduct with that of a wrong step in dancing, and the idea of dis- cord in his soul with that of discord in the notes of his voice or lyre, so that he was brought up from an early age to regard sin as an ugly thing, disgraceful to anyone who received the education of a free- born citizen. Hence the earnest wish expressed by Plato to restore music to the high office which it had begun to lose at Athens, when Phrynis of Mitylene and Timotheus of Miletus had emancipated the art from the salutary trammels imposed on it by legislators and sages; for 'Music,' writes E. Curtius, 'above all the sister-arts * served to educate the young, and to furnish a sure standard for the 'moral bearing of the community, and thus became the object of the ' most careful cultivation and superintendence on the part of the state, ' in whose interest it specially lay, that music should be preserved in ' harmony with the existing constitution. The salutary power of a ' well-ordered art of music and the dangers of a degenerate one which ' should mistake its task, have nowhere found a more thorough appre- ' elation than in Greece.' — History of Greece^ translated by A. W. Ward. 76 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. the lonians,^ 'of this development are the realisation of a ' higher order of life, the foundation of towns, the increas- ' Dr. Ernst Curtius, History of Greece, translated by A. W. Ward. In the same work there is the following magnificent de- scription of the Pui-ification and Consecration to Apollo of Athens, by Epimenides at the prayer of Solon, after the pollution of the city by sacrilege : — 'In how lofty a spirit Solon conceived his task his * next steps prove. For he contemplated not a few external successes, ' but the moral elevation of the whole national body. A political ' community, not less than a private family, is desecrated by dis- ' union : the gods avert their countenances, and will receive nothing ' from impure hands. Therefore Solon had no thought of calming or ' lightly dissipating the uneasy feeling which had remained behind ' ever bince the outbreak of the internal feuds, the fear of the citizens, ' which was fostered by sickness and terrible signs from heaven, and * the sense of divine disfavour ; but he rather confirmed the citizens in ' their perturbed state of mind, and declared a general humiliation ' before -the gods and an expiation of the whole city necessary. In ' order to give a thoroughly impressive significance to this solemn ' rite, he advised the invitation of Epimenides from Crete, a man ' enjoying a high priestly authority among all the Hellenes, and fre- ' quently summoned by domestic and national communities to restore, 'by exhortation, instruction, and expiatory rites, the disturbed rela- ' tion with the invisible powers. Since men like Plato believed in the ' healing influence of such measures, we should assuredly not be jus- 'tified in thinking meanly of the agency of an Epimenides. * He was a prophet, not in the sense that he encouraged super- ' stitionby a soothsayer's tricks, but in this, that he inquired into the * origin of moral and political evils, and pointed out remedies for ' them. He was deeply cognisant of the relations of human life — a ' physician after the type of Apollo, whose worship he extended ; a ' spiritual adviser — a man whose gifts of speech and whose whole * personality exercised a deeply-moving power ; and these gifts he DUALISM. yj ' ing refinement of manners ; its perfection is the common ' religion of Apollo, which was nowhere introduced without ' taking hold of and transforming the whole life of the ' people. It liberated men from dark and grovelling wor- ' ships of nature ; it converted the worship of a God into ' the duty of moral elevation ; it founded expiations for ' those oppressed with guilt, and for those astray sacred * was ready, at the desire of Solon, with whom he stood in relations of ' friendship, to devote to the Athenians, as he had before devoted ' them to others. ' By the combination of various forms of religious worship * Athens had become the capital, and Attica one united whole. But ' this religious union was as yet incomplete. Apollo still remained a ' god of the nobility, and his religion a wall of separation between the ' different classes of the population of Attica. According to the plan ' of Solon, this was to be changed. Epimenides, after by sacrificial ' processions round the city their ancient guilt had been expiated, ' consecrated the entire city and the entire state to the god of the ' Ionic families. To every free Athenian belonged henceforth the ' right and the duty of sacrificing to Apollo. All the houses and ' homesteads, all the altars and hearths, received consecration by ' means of the sacred laurel-branch. In all the streets statues were 'erected of Apollo Agyieus, and the oath holiest to all the Athenians ' was now sworn by Zeus, Athene, and Apollo, such being an express ' ordinance ever since the time of Solon. The systems of religious ' worship were regulated anew ; prayers and hymns, serving to edify ' the mind, promulgated ; and beneficent forms of divine service esta- ' blished. Before all the altars of the city new fires glowed ; the old ' times were at an end, the heavy clouds dissipated, and once more ' the Athenians, with wreaths around their brows, serenely passed up ' to the temples of their gods.' 78 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. ' oracles. The rich blessings granted by this religion * brought with them the obligation and awakened the desire ' of unwearyingly spreading it, and carrying it across the 'sea into the lands still lingering in the obscurity of 'earlier forms of divine worship.' . . . 'Though ' Apollo is by no means a stranger to the Homeric world, ' yet it was in the post-Homeric world, and especially from 'Delphi, that he first established his influence on the ' Greek view of life. This influence presented many points ' of contrast with Ionic poetry. To a harmless Hfe from ' day to day, in nature and the world, are opposed the ' demands of close self-examination ; ^ to the free and ' ' The highest, nay, the only, principles which might in a cer- ' tain sense be regarded as a Hellenic moral law, proceeded from the ' Apolline woi^ship. For the latter alone emphatically declared every ' external exercise of religion. worthless, so long as the heart and mind 'of men were not religiously disposed. Apollo did not sell his wis- ' dom to every impertinent questioner. The pure god demanded a 'pure heart. For a symbol of internal purification was designed the ' act of sprinkling the person with the water of Castalia, collected in ' a large vessel before the entrance of the court of the temple for the ' use of the pilgrims. But ' ' deceive not yourselves " (thus the Pythia 'addressed the pilgrims) : "for the good, indeed, one drop of the ' sacred spring suffices, but from the bad no sea of water shall wash ' away the pollution of sin." Nor shall he who, notwithstanding, 'risks the discovery of his evil mind, tempt the holy god in vain. ' For none but the innocent is blessed by the god, whose sayings the ' wicked man cannot understand, for guile is upon his soul, and his ' misunderstanding of the oracle hurries him but the more rapidly to DUALISM. 79 '■ open development of all the gifts belonging to an indi- ' vidual, a strict discipline in the case both of every ' individual and of the entire body of men united as a ' state ; instead of an unsuspicious communion between ' gods and men, a gulf is fixed between them, and man is ' taught to feel the want of expiation ; in the place of easy ' self-content, a demand arises for an unwearying search ' and labour of the mind. These were the ideas which 'had been developed at Delphi.' . . . ' How ' vast is the discrepancy between these ideas and the ' Homeric views of life ! In the latter the vigour of ' vitality, the enjoyment of the present, and the happy ' consciousness of health and strength, are everything ; and ' beyond this life is nothing but an awful world of shades ' and ghosts, a place of weakness and humiliation : so that ' his ruin ; as in the case of the Lydian king, who arrogantly desired ' to transgress the limits of his empire, and therefore interpreted the ' mysterious answer of the god according to the desires of his own ' perversity. In general, no questions may be asked except those ' harmonising with the god's own sentiments : e.g. , the mere question ' whether a suppliant should be taken out of a temple to be given up * to his enemies of itself constitutes an impiety upon which the punish- ' ment must follow. The Spartiate Glaucus, who had sought divine ' justification for an intended act of perjury, was doomed "to perish ' with his whole house, although he had soon repented of his inquiry, ' returned the money the receipt of which he wished to deny, and ' craved the pairdon of Apollo.' — E. Curtius, History of Greece^ trans- lated by A. W. Ward. 8o THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. ' the life of a day-labourer on earth, in the light of the sun, ' is yet inconr.parably preferable to a Hero-king's powerless ' after-life in Hades. Although the opposite view never ' became an article of popular faith, which might be pre- ' supposed in every Hellene, like the veneration of the * Olympian gods, yet it was adopted with full earnestness ' by those among the people who felt deeper religious ' cravings, and was cherished with devout fidelity in more ' limited circles, which formed themselves inside the multi- ' tude as isolated communities. And although these secret ' doctrines or mysteries principally attached themselves to '■ the religion of Demeter, yet they were acknowledged and ' recommended by Apollo in his own sanctuary. In * Delphi, above all other places, the worship of Heroes, ' which is based on a belief in the continued personal life ' of the deceased and in the heightening of their power in ' death, was held in honour. Finally, among the wise men ' and the poets who connected themselves with Delphi, the ' graver view of life, which most strenuously opposes the ' Homeric conceptions, is also most decisively put forward. * Thus in the first instance with Hesiod, in whose poems ' life on earth appears utterly stripped of the joyous bril- ' liancy which Homer spreads out over it ; for with Hesiod ' life is a sunken and fallen state, a school of adversity, ' through which man has to pass in the exercise of virtue, DUALISM. 8 1 ' under the observation and support of beatified spirits. ' Solon declares death to be better than life, the value of 'which he measures by its end. Pindar teaches with ' prophetic inspiration the divine origin of the soul and its ' destiny, according to which it shall at some future time, ' freed from sins, return into blessed communion with God. ' These are the same doctrines which Pythagoras, who was ' believed to be a son of Apollo, spread abroad in wide ' circles. Here again we meet with the belief in the world ' of spirits, in the gradual refinement of the fallen soul of ' man ; here again we recognise the aversion from every ' frivolous attempt to make the gods perceptible to the ' senses, and the same tendency of the mind towards a ' world beyond the limits of the present, towards a world ' where the true sun first dawns upon man.' Dualism also transformed hero-worship into saint- worship ; and the material dragons, hydras, &c., which the heroes had overcome, recovered a symbolical value which they, for the most part, had possessed when they had antagonists who were personifications of natural phenomena or forces ; but with this important difference, that formerly the darkness or disorder which they sym- bolised had been material, and now it was spiritual. The dragon, for instance, slain by St. George, had once been the dark storm-cloud (the serpent Ahi of the Vedas\ G 82 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. which was slain by the sun-Ught, and had afterwards been a real live dragon slain by Apollo or Hercules. Of the fine arts, Dualism especially developed Paint- ing, which is much more adapted than Statuary to the representation of saints, their victories over external evil and over their own passions, and generally of moral beauty as expressed by actions and in the countenance. These subjects, for the most part, require an anecdotic and realistic ^ treatment, which is rarely of good effect in Statuary, and hardly within its province ; whereas the painter by the magic of his colour can redeem any homely detail from aesthetic vulgarity, and can reveal the halo of glory which is seen in the spiritual world to illuminate some of the most apparently common-place scenes, actions, and personages. In Literature the Novel is to Painting what the Epos is to Statuary. There are two degrees of Dualism : a superficial and a profound DuaHsm. ^ There are two realistic schools of art (called by Ruskin the ' Sensualistic ' and the 'Naturalistic'), which must not be con- founded. There is the realism of materialism, which ignores spiritual beauty and truth, and there is the realism of spiritualism, which seeks for a realisation of spiritual beauty and truth in real life. The first is opposed to all idealism but the lowest kind, whereas the second is only opposed to idealism, when the latter is in a morbid condition. DUALISM. 83 In the first variety there is a knowledge of good and evil partially derived from a decided preference for good, and sufficient to make men condemn severely the faults of their neighbours, especially such as are irksome to their own comfort. In the second variety there is a deep conviction of their own sin (such as that expressed by the author of Psalm li.), sufficiently deep for them to perceive their inability to supply by themselves any means of atonement for the past or of sanctification for the future. The unfortunate tendency of the shallower Dualism, apart from its insufficience, is to foster uncharitableness and consequently self-righteousness, and to favour arbi- t7'ary divisions of mankind into the children of God and the children of Evil, as of extra-human Nature into clean and unclean. The unfortunate tendency of the deeper and purer Dualism, unless corrected by knowledge of a suffering but victorious Messiah, is to give rise to despair of sal- vation ; for the doctrine of the Atonement alone can satisfactorily reconcile the truth of Dualism, — that there is an eternal gulf between an all-holy God and whatever is polluted by Evil, — with the truth of Mysticism, — that even a being that has been thus polluted can be made the recipient of Divine influx (as it is participation in the 84 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. humanity of Christ which alone can enable men to be- come by adoption and through regeneration sons of God). When this deeper Dualism, ignorant of a Messiah, is only partially qualified by Mysticism, despair of salvation is replaced by a less dangerous but still pernicious belief, of which the extreme consequence is to regard indeed the souls of the elect as saved or capable of salvation, but the rest of the world as entirely in the power of Evil, so that, all contact with unregenerate persons and material things being logically accounted a pollution, there is not only no scope allowed to the lower or ' ritualistic ' stage of re- ligion to serve as a means of leading the soul up to the higher or ' ascetic ' stage of religion, but, what is more grave, the children of God^ who are not of the world, are forbidden to work out their salvation in the world, ^ whether they have received a special call to a purely con- templative life on this earth or no. The shallower Dualism is conspicuous in primitive Judaism, in Mahometanism, and in the later develop- ments of many Aryan religions ; and it is the basis of a metaphysical system ^ in Mazdaeism.^ • Vide John xvii. 15 ; and xvi. t^-},. - The definition that has been given above of Dualism forbids the classification as Duolistic of systems, such as that of Anaxagoras, which are based, not on a duality of Good and Evil, but merely on DUALISM. 85 The deeper Dualism is conspicuous in Prophetic Judaism,"* Buddhism,^ Orphism,^ Pythagoreanism, Plato- a duality of an active and a passive principle in Nature, as of force and matter. Such systems belong for the most part either to the province of Pantheism or to that of Materialism, even if, in the phraseology of their authors, mere force is designated by the word God. There was also the Fetishistic duality of the Heavens and the Earth, or of Fire and Air v. Water and Earth. Even the duality of beings friendly and hostile to man in the universe, connected with that of pleasure and pain, is hardly beyond the scope of Materialism. ^ The Mazdcmn religion of Persia (Farsistan) must not be con- founded with the Magian religion of Media, though both claimed to be founded by Zoroaster. In the latter country, Iranians only com- posed the two upper castes (the sacerdotal caste of the Magians and the warrior-noble caste of the Arizanti), and perhaps only in part, the bulk of the population consisting of Turanians. Magianism was a compound of Aryan, Turanian and (owing to the vicinity of Babylon) Cushite elements, as Brahminism was in India. The basis of its metaphysical system was Pantheism, the Iranian supreme good and evil beings, Ormuzd and Ahriman (the latter in Media confounded with the aboriginal Turanian serpent-god Afrasiab, still worshipped by the Yezidis), being both conceived not as self-existent, but as emanated from the inactive Zarvan-Akarana. It is also to be observed that the Zoroastrian religion as it was recon- stituted under the Sassanian dynasty, in the 3rd century A.C, was penetrated with many Magian elements, which also passed into the Schyite religion of mediaeval and modern Persia. * As understood especially by the Essenian and Therapeutic brotherhoods. ^ Buddhism, owing to its missionary activity, spread rapidly and with immense success among the Turanian populations of Asia, and, 86 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. nism, Stoicism, and the later developments of several owing to its practical incompatibility with the caste system as then established in India, it frequently became an instrument in the hands of ambitious men to unite the lower castes against Brahminical rule. It has in consequence been represented by some historians as both religiously and politically a reaction of the Cushite and Tura- nian populations of India against their Aryan conquerors. In answer to this conclusion, it may be urged: (i) that the Anthropo- morphic and profoundly Dualistic elements of Buddhism point rather to an Aryan reaction against the Hamitic Pantheism of Brahminism ; (2) that Sakya Muni, its founder, belonged himself to the caste of Kchatryas or warrior-nobles, who were constantly at odds with the Brahmins, and who had remained much more Aryan in feeling, if not in race, than the latter; {3) that the Brahminical caste is by no means so purely Aryan as it pretends to be, as in the early days of the Aryan settlement in India, not only were mar- riages frequent between the invaders and the natives, but many Cushite sacerdotal families, worshippers of Shiva and of ichthyo- phallic gods, were admitted (according to F. Lenormand and von Eckstein) into the Brahminical order, and can be distinguished to this day by their cast of features and dark complexion ; (4) that outside of India, Buddhism has been much transformed among purely Turanian populations (such as the worshippers of the Great Lama), not unfrequently degenerating into mere 'Chamanism' (a combination of fetishistic idolatry and sacerdotal magic), and its leading doctrines misunderstood except by a select few. ® The Orphic brotherhood appeared in Greece in the century of Solon and the Pisistratidse ; the best known of its early members being the prophet-priest of Apollo, Epimenides, who purified Athens, the theologian Pherecydes, who was the master of Pytha- goras, and the poet Onomacritus, who wrote many of the hymns fathered upon Orpheus. There was always much connection be- tween the Orphic and the Pythagorean brotherhoods ; both, under MONOTHEISM. . 87 Egyptian cultus ; ^ as the basis of a metaphysical system it is particularly noticeable in Manichseism ; and it is needless to say that it is one of the most important elements of Christianity. The heresy peculiar to either phase of Dualism is to attribute self-existence or uncontrolled power, a virtual divinity, either to Evil or to its seat the World. The transition from Polytheistic to Monotheistic Dualism resulted from the inductive faculty coming again into play to make a synthesis of the materials analysed by- Polytheism and Dualism. patronage of the Delphic Apollo, being engaged in the same work, that of spiritualising and developing the popular religions of the Greek world. The Orphici met with most success in the transfor- mation which they fostered of the cultus of Dionysus, combined with that of Apollo at Delphi, and of the cultus of Demeter, united with that of Dionysus in Attica. At Delphi they opposed their ascetic cultus of Dionysus Zagreus, 'the hunter of souls,' to the or- giastic cultus of the popular Dionysus ; and at Eleusis they reno- vated by their influence the famous 'Mysteries,' into which so many of the deepest thinkers of the Greek world were initiated. ' Especially that of Osiris, one of the most Anthropomorphic conceptions of the Egyptian pantheon, Osiris was originally a per- sonification of the sun, and the object of his worshippers was to be so united to him by virtue, or at least by obedience, as to be buried with him in the underworld, and thus to participate in his resurrec- tion. Osiris was the tutelary divinity of Abydos, and his religion radiated from thence all over Egypt. He is always represented from head to foot as a man. 88 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. The Shemitic populations were perhaps predisposed to Monotheism by their Hfe in the desert, where the sky, in which they locaHsed the seat of Deity and, recognised His most striking emblem, appears in all its majestic unity and glory, instead, as in moister regions, of being fre- quently troubled by atmospheric phenomena, or outvied in beauty by luxuriant vegetation. For the same reason the Monotheism of the Mazdeean religion may have been favoured by the pastoral hfe of the Iranians in the steppes of central Asia. The work of syncretism which resolved Dualistic Polytheism into Dualistic Monotheism was of course gradual ; in general the tutelary divinity of a nation absorbed by degrees the divinities of other nations, with whom he had some point of contact, and every new attribute thus acquired increased the number of his points of contact with others, until his attributes became so numerous that he could be regarded as resuming all others. The analytic tendency of Hellenic thought, and the exuberant anthropomorphism of Hellenic art, which created such varied and strictly defined types of human beauty and character for its gods, was however a great hindrance to this syncretism in Greece ; ^ but among the ' The Orphici and Pythagoreans, however, who had some acquaintance with the Monotheistic theologies of Asia and Egypt, MONOTHEISM. 89 Shemitic and Iranian populations that had no plastic art, the evolution could take place with much less difficulty. There was a time when each free Shemitic family wor- shipped its own Eloah or Allah, and, when families united to form tribes and nations, they came to worship several Elohim, until an Abraham was born, unto whom it was revealed that all the Elohim, of whom nothing ungodlike was related, were One.^ Under the empire of Monotheism, the idea of a Demiurge god began to be replaced by that of a Creator from nothing ; but so long as religious speculation could not supply a truer solution to the problem of the origin of Evil, the creative power of Good could not well be ex- tended to the whole World. Ahura- Mazda (Ormuzd) and Ahriman, the supreme good and evil beings of Maz- perhaps even with that of the dispersed Israelites, did their best to forward the work of syncretism in the Greek world, teaching the initiated either that the names of their numerous gods were but in- vocations of one supreme God, or that these were but dependent angels (8ai'/u.oi/es) of one supreme God. Such also were the teachings of Delphic theology in its later developments ; Apollo himself being regarded only as the chief of the prophets of Zeus, or else as the voice or the \6'^o% of Zeus. ^ Hence the plural form of the singular noun Elohim, as shown by Max Muller in Chips fro j?i a German Workshop. In Gen. xiv. we find Abraham recognising his God in the El Elyon worshipped by Melchizedek. 90 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. daean theology, are both assumed to be creators. As soon as the idea of creation by the supreme good being was extended to the whole World, as in Ge7i. i., Monotheism had resolved itself into Theism ;, the Elohim revealed to Abraham ^ had become the Jehovah revealed to Moses. ^ The transition from Monotheistic Dualism to Theism resulted from a careful observation of the sequence and concatenation of natural phenomena and laws, as viewed from the standpoint of the former. The Theistic doctrine of Creation from nothing does not necessarily imply a beginning in time of the created Universe ^ (for the Deity's free creative activity may be conceived as existing eternally in esse as well as in posse), but it completely destroys the idea of Fatahty and replaces it everywhere by that of Providence. Theism, when unqualified by the truths contained in Fetishism, Pantheism, or Anthropomorphism, has this disadvantage, that Deity is practically removed so very ' Gen. xvii. I. ^ Ex. vi. 3. ' Vide Essais siir la Philosophic et la Religion au XlXme Siecle, by E. Saisset, who quotes the following remarkable passage from the De Civitate Dei of St. Augustine :—' Quapropter, si Deus * semper dominus fuit, semper habuit creaturam suo dominatui ser- ' vientem ; verumtamen non de ipso genitam, sed ab ipso de nihilo ' factam ; nee ei coeternam : erat quippe ante illam, quamvis nullo ' tempore sine ilia; non earn spatio transeunte, sed manente perpetui- * tate prsecedens.' — Lib. xii., cap. 15. THEISM. 91 far from man, when the aesthetic faculty and human affection have no scope to contribute to the awakening of rehgious feehng ; for the Mystic alone who has entirely divested himself of self-will is sufficiently open to Divine influx to worship only ' in spirit and in truth,' and, as Carlyle has observed, between the ei^ioXov painted on the imagination and the eUioXoy painted on canvas there is but a superficial difference. If the Jews and the Arabs have been so enthusiastically attached to their Theistic religions, this was partly due to patriotism or party feel- ing, but chiefly to their Theism being more or less qualified by Anthropomorphism ; indeed to this day the Arabs, for the most part, conceive Allah as a great Calif reigning from his palace in the material sky ; the strong imagination of the Shemitic race requiring no assistance from the plastic arts prohibited by its prophets. Restric- tions on plastic art were, however, absolutely necessary in the case of the chosen people, on account of the con- nection with the abominable cultus of their Hamitic neigh- bours of the artistic forms best known in Palestine. There are two varieties of Theism, a shallow and Materialistic Theism and a profound and Mystical Theism, the first proceeding from the shallow and the second from the profound variety of Dualism.^ ' The difference between the significations commonly attributed 92 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. The former just perceives that the Creator is kindly disposed towards His creatures and is able to carry out His intentions for their welfare, and it may conclude that all pain unjustly suffered will in some way be compensated for either in this world or in another, and that ' all is for the best ; ' but its best is mere worldly enjoyment, its paradise, a place where the pleasures of this world will be increased in number and improved in quaUty, and where there will be no call either to labour or to suffer. Such conceptions and hopes, whether false or true, belong for the most part to the province of Materialism, and those who entertain them have been happily classed by Cole- ridge as the ' (^//^f?;'- worldly.' This Materialistic Theism is conspicuous in primitive Judaism and in Mahometanism. The latter perceives that Love, even omnipotent Love, does not exist where there is no desire of self-sacrifice,^ and only can find its full expression in the ' Religion of the Cross,' and a satisfactory definition in its creed. It has already been shown that Theism is not the only possible resolution of Monotheistic Dualism, as Good and Evil may be assumed to be both emanated from an unde- to the words Deist and Ihcist answers pretty accurately to the difference between Materialistic and Mystical Theism. * Vide John i. i8 ; iii. i6 ; i John iii. i6; iv. 9-10. THEISM. 93 termined self-existent Being, instead of in opposition as a self-existent Creator and a rebellious self-vitiated Creation; but there will remain the difficulty of accounting for a double hierarchy, that of goodness and purity and that of intellect and power. Pantheists are consequently obliged either to deny the most obvious facts in asserting that the two hierarchies coincide, or to make an altogether fantastic classification in order to dovetail them. In Hindustan, for instance, the most wicked Brahmin, quali- fied by the intellectual superiority of his race to study sacred, occult, and natural sciences, is esteemed a much more divine being than the most virtuous Sudra, and the intellect and power of a Lucifer would be a much stronger recommendation to the object of a popular cultus than the infantile holiness of a St. Agnes ; ^ though on the other hand a cow, on account of its gentleness and utility, is accounted higher in the scale of being than a man or woman of the lower castes, which are known to be de- graded by hereditary vices. The Pantheists of the present day in Europe, still less observant of facts than the Hindus, simply cut the knot of the difficulty by flatly denying the compatibility of vice with intellectual power or of elevation of character with ignorance ; consequently, ' Hence the popularity in India of such devil-worships as that of Shiva. 94 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. they join Materialists in detnanding that all education supplied by the state be restricted to development of the mental powers and in proclaiming such education to be the only remedy for moral evil. But to a philosophical mind a truly spiritualistic Theism encounters a still more insuperable difficulty, namely that of reconciling the stern but very obvious fact of Evil in the World with the idea of an all-good, all- wise, and all-powerful Creator ; and, as the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice and victory is the only satisfactory solution of the difficulty, it is not surprising that so profound and earnest a thinker as Plato was not a Theist, and that he wavered between Pantheism and Dualism, in seeking a basis for a philosophy invaluable to Theistic meta- physics. 2- To recapitulate : — The Materialist perceives rightly the existence, qualities, and effects of Matter ; but is wrong to conclude that nothing exists beyond Matter, or no happiness beyond that which Matter can afford. The Fetishist perceives rightly that connected with the phenomena of Matter there is something immeasur- ably greater than himself, — the Divine ; but is wrong to conclude that the substance of the Divine is not to be sought further than in Matter. prjE-christian truths and errors. 95 The Pantheist perceives rightly that Matter is con- nected with intelligent Force, and that the Divine resides more in the latter than in the former ; but is wrong to conclude that the connection between Spirit and Matter, or that between God and the World, is fatal or indissoluble, or that all life in the World is divine. The PoLYTHEiST perccivcs rightly that the manifesta- tions of the Divine in Nature are various ; but is wrong to conclude that Deity has not unity of substance or unity of purpose. The Anthropomorphist perceives rightly that the Divine is more manifested in Man than in any other natural being familiarly known ; but is wrong to con- clude that the attributes of Deity differ only in degree from his own. The Dualist perceives rightly that there is some- thing in Man and in the rest of the World totally opposed to divine Love, Wisdom, and Life ; but is wrong to con- clude that Evil or its cause is self-existent, or that Good is not more powerful than Evil, and the World or any part of it entirely in the power of Evil. The Monotheist perceives rightly that all Good is derived from one centre, — God \ but is wrong to conclude that God exists only in one hypostasis, or that His mani- festations are not various. 96 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. The Theist perceives rightly that all things but God have been created from nothing by God, and remain subject to His control ; but is wrong to conclude that Evil has not acquired a positive existence, or that there is no more intimate link than that of dependence between God and the World. The Mystic perceives rightly that there is a Life directly proceeding from eternal Love and Wisdom within himself, without being of himself; but is wrong to con- clude that he is emancipated from the pressure of the World (the seat of Evil), or that his own nature is not more or less vitiated and consequently exposing him to delusions of evil spirits or of his own imagination. The Christian is taught by divinatory revelation, and may be enabled by grace to perceive, that only through the Incarnation and Atonement of the Divine Word can the self-vitiated World be so united to the three Divine Persons of the Trinity that ' God may be all in all,' ^ and that. Divine peniiission of Evil through the free-will of creatures being necessary and solely intended for the complete satisfaction of Divine love, only the sufferings of incarnate Deity could satisfy and sufficiently manifest Divine love of the World, the seat of Evil, and Divine abhorrence of Evil itself > I Cor. XV. 28. SYNTHESIS OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 Owing, therefore, its three great fundamental doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement to divinatory revelation. Christian Theology can de- duce therefrom the elements of a metaphysiG?l system, which will reject the heresies ^ and harmonise the ' * Quand la metaphysique chretienne s'organisa clans les ecrits * ties Peres et par les decrets des conciles, elle rencontra ces deux * grands adversaires, le Dualisme et le Pantheisme, et les combattit ' tons deux avec une egale vigueur. Centre le Dualisme, elle etablit ' la parfaite unite du premier principe. Centre le Pantheisme, elle ' maintint la distinction radicale de Dieu et du monde. A ses yeux, ' le Dualisme n'est qu'un Manicheisme deguise ; et le Pantheisme, ' une tentative sacrilege de diviniser la nature. Qui, sans doute, ' Dieu est distinct du monde ; mais le monde est son ouvrage, et I'etre ' du monde depend du sien. Et, d'un autre cote, ce lien de depen- ' dance, si fort qu'elle puisse etre, laisse au monde une realite propre, ' fondee sur la volonte de Dieu, et profondement distincte de sa sub- ' stance. Le Verbe seul est consubstantiel a Dieu ; Dieu ne le fait ' pas, ne le cree pas, il I'engendre {gemtum, non factum, constib- ' stantialem Fatri). Dire que le monde est une emanation de la sub- ' stance divine, c'est une parole aussi sacrilege que de soutenir que le ' Verbe est une creature du Pere. Dans le premier cas, on eleve le 'monde a la dignite de Dieu; dans le second, on abaisse Dieu au ' niveau de la misere humaine. Dieu a done fait le monde, et il I'a ' fait de rien ; en d'autres termes, il I'a fait sans le tirer de soi-meme ' et sans avoir besoin d'aucun principe etranger. Voila la creation. ' Si Ton demande maintenant comment Dieu a fait le monde le ' systeme de la creation ne repond pas. Ce systeme n'est point une ' explication du rapport du fini a I'infini, une troisieme conception * metaphysique substituee a la conception dualiste et a la conception * pantheiste. En d'autres termes, c'est une troisieme conception, H 98 THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. truths ^ of all other systems, and, in the language of Philosophy, it can teach accordingly: — ' si Ton veut, mais qui est tout entiere dans I'exclusion commune des 'deux autres.' — E. SoXssei, Introduction atix (Euvres de Spiuoza, quoted in Essais siir la Philosophic et la Religion au XIX^^^ Sicclc, by the same author. 1 ♦ Qu'exprime en effet, pour un chretien philosophe, le dogme ' de la sainte Trinite, sinon que Dieu considere en soi, dans la pleni- ' tude solitaire de son existence absolue, n'est point un etre indeter- ' mine, une activite purement virtuelle, une abstraite et inerte unite, ' maisun principe vivant, une intelligence qui se possede et qui s'aime, ' feconde sans sortir de soi, n'ayant rapport necessaire qu'asoi, n'ayant ' besoin que de soi, se suffisant pleinement a soi-meme dans son * eternelle et ineffable beatitude ? De la la parfaite independance de ' Dieu et la parfaite liberte de I'acte createur. En donnant I'etre au ' monde, Dieu n'augmente ni ne diminue son incommunicable et ' indefectible perfection. Ce n'est point en effet de sa substance 'qu'il tire I'univers, ni d'une substance etrangere. II dit, et les ' mondes sortent du neant. Voila le miracle, voila le mystere de la ' creation. Dieu ne tire de soi que ce qui est egal a soi. Le Pere 'engendre le Fils, le Saint- Esprit precede de I'un et de I'autre, et, ' dans cette region sublime, la coeternite et la consubstantialite sont ' necessaires. Partout ailleurs elles sont impossibles et sacrileges. ' Tout ce qui n'est pas Dieu differe infiniment de Dieu et est separe ' de lui par un abime infranchissable. 'Ce Dieu si prodigieusement eloigne de I'homme, un mystere ' d' amour Ten va rapprocher: Dieu s'incarne dans I'homme. Ne •croyez pas pourtant que Dieu et I'homme deviennent consubstantiels. * La personne divine et la personne humaine s'unissent, il est vrai, et * meme s'identifient dansle divin Redempteur ; mais la distinction des * natures subsiste. Et comme en Dieu la triplicite des personnes ' n'ote pas 1' unite de substance, dans I'homme- Dieu I'unite de la per- ' Sonne ne saurait effacer la diversite des natures, tant le christianisme SYNTHESIS OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 That omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, infinite, and self-existing Love is the first Hypostasis of the holy- Trinity in Unity,^ the Creator of the World, and the Generator only of the Word.^ That the second Hypo- stasis, the Word, eternally generated by the Father, is the eternal Archetype (not Creator) of the World,^ in which Evil exists, neither by creation nor by emanation from a self-existent being, but only through the free-will of creatures (free-will created and necessary for the full satisfaction of Divine love). That the third Hypostasis, the Spirit, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, is the substance, not of all life, but of all divine life * in the World. That the World was originally ' good,' ^ and conse- ' a voulu maintenir dans la variete necessaire de la vie divine I'unite ' du principe divin, et dans I'union intime de I'homme et de Dieu ' rinefifagable separation de la creature et du createur. ' , . . * Certes, quiconque sait entendre cette haute metaphysique, et s'est * resolu, dans son esprit et dans son ame, a ne laisser jamais echapper ' la chaine solide que forme la suite de ces dogmes, ne tombera 'jamais dans le pantheisme,' — E. Saisset, Essais sitr la Philosophie et la Religion au XlXme Siecle. ^ I John iv. 7-16. 2 Heb. i. 5. 3 John i. 3, 9 ; Heb. \. 2-3. * 'The Giver of life {vivificante?n).^ — N^icene Creed. * Gen. i. 4, 31. H 2 loo THE FOREGLEAMS OF CHRISTIANITY. quently susceptible of becoming so united to God, that * God may be all in all ' ^ {i.e. in all creatures made children of God by adoptmn^), but susceptible also of becoming evil through misappropriation of natural life by free-will ; that, on the other hand, the World has only partially become vitiated by misappropriation of life, so that it still admits of regeneration and of ultimate union with God, 'accord- ' ing to the working whereby Christ is able to subdue all * things unto Himself ^ That divine life cannot be directly misappropriated, but is proportionally lost by the misappropriation of natural life ; so that there is no salvation for a vitiated creature out of spiritual death ^ (death to God) except ' "iva ^ 6 ©ebs ra irdvTa eV iraciv. — I Cor. xv. 28. 2 The Word being ' the only-begotten Son of God ' the Father, it is precisely because angels and men are creatures that they can only become children of the Father by adoption, and in union with the Word inworlded. ' Phil. iii. 21, Vide also Johnx. 29 ; iii. 17 ; vi. 39 ; Acts iii. 21 ; Rom. viii. 18-23; I <^^^- ^v. 24-8; Eph. i. 10; Phil. ii. lO-i; Col. \. 20; Heb. xiii. 8; l John ii. 2; Rev. v. 13; xxi. 4-5; and the com- mentary of these texts in The Restitution of all Things, by A. Jukes. * ' Our translators have sometimes rendered eK Qa.va.Tov by the ' English words ''■from death," as in Heb. v. 7; but the force of the ' original is always "-^ out -ans, 42, 49, 54, 59, 71, 1 19, 131, 189, 211, 213, 218, 220, 221 Asceticism, 22, 84 Assur, 188 Assyria, Assyrians, 114, 188, 212, 215, 217, 220 Athena, 77, 133, 167 Athens, Athenians, 41, 58, 76, 154 Athravas, 64 Atonement, The, 96, 97 Augurs, Roman, 166 Augustine, St., 90 Augustus, 161 "OABEL, The Tower of, 119 ^ Babism, 32 Babylonia, liabylonians, 30, 37, 67, no, 114, 215, 217, 220 Balaam, 131, 162 Baptism, 102, 197 Beautiful, Definition of The, 16 124 INDEX. BEN ELE Benedict IX., 204 Coleridge, 24, 92 Beule, C, 3, 158 Comitia Curiata, 167, 169 Bikshus, 64, no Communion of Saints, The, 7^, Biot, E., 3, 115 136 Bonzes, 115 Comte, Aug., 107, 108, in Bouillon, Godefroy de, 48 Confucius, 25, 37, 115, 125 Brahmins, Brahminism, 40 67, Coulanges, Fustelde, 2, 68, 168, 85, 86, 93, no, n;, 135, 183 174 Bruno, Giordano, 37 Cousin, Victor, 3, 137, 141 Buddhists, Buddhism, 25, 41, Cox, G., 3, 42 64, 85, no, 112, 186 Creator, Creation, 28, 89, 90 Burial, 69, 102, 138 Crusades, 48 Burnouf, Em., 3, no Cthonian Divinities, 56, 57 Butadie, 133, 167 Cuneiform Inscriptions, 113 Byron, 21 Curtius, Ernst, 2, 50, 69, 75, 76, 79, 132, 134, 143, 144, 146 Cybele, n8^ 181 pAIAPHAS, 71 v^ Cainites, 212, 220 Calchas, 66, 132 T-^ACTYLS, 68, \iZ, 220 ■^-^ Death, (y'^, 100 Carlyle, T., 2, 21, 24, 46, 66, 91, 164 Decius Mus, 174 Caste-System, 36, 221 Delphi, 59, 61, 6'], 69, 74, 133 Catharmic Rites, 70 Demeter, 58, 73, 80, 87 Cecrops, 66 Demiurge, 55 Chalcedon, Council of, 103 Democritus, 59 Chaldaeans, 67, n7, 131 Deutsch, Em., 2, 106, 191, 196, Chalybians, n8, i8i, 213, 214, 198 215, 217, 220 Devotio, 63 Chamans, Chamanism, 86, n2 Dionysus, 68, 70, 73, 87, 144 Charlemagne, 203 Divination, Definition of, 10 Charondas, 143 Docetists, 46 Chephren, 121 Doherty, Hugh, 2, 47 China, Chinese, 25, 57, no. Druids, 64, 180 115, 212, 216, 220 Dualism, 7, 12, 16, 30, 61, 95, Chivahy, 54 97 Christ, 46, 105, 197 Duruy, V., 14 1 Christianity, 25, 32, 96, 97 Dyaus, 15 Chrysostom, St., 45 Claudii, 170 Clement of Alexandria, St., 6 ■pCKSTEIN, Baron von, Z6, Cleomenes, 154 ^-^ 220 Clergy, 64, ni, n9, 201 Egypt, Egyptians, 37, 41, 68, Clericalism, 201 '61, no, nc, 212, 215, 220, Clients, 65, 171 221 Clisthenes of Sicyon, 153 El Elyon, 89 INDEX. 125 ELD Elders, 66, 190 Eleusis, 87, 133, 141 Eloliim, 89 Emanation, 27, 92 Epaminondas, 139 Epicums, 158 Epimenides, 76, 86 Erectheum, 146 Erinnyes, 68 Essenes, 72, 85, 106, 196 Eumolpidx, 133 Eurynomus, 69 Evil, 7, 13, 17, 29, 83, ^'j, 92, 95 > 96, 99 Ezra, 195 pALL, The, 105 -■- Fatality, 26, 56, 90 Fergusson, J., 3, 54, 107, 120, 121, 129, 205, 220 Fetishism, 6, 17, 20, 94 r;Aius, 176 ^ Ge, 57 George, St., 81 Gnomic Poets, 75 Gnostics, Gnosticism, 35, 37, 46 Gobineau, Count de, 3, 32, 34 Good, Definition of The, 16 Goulburn, E. M., 9 Greece, Greeks. V. Hellas TTAMITES, 26, 114, 118, -*■ -^ 212, 215, 219, 220 Hanyfs, 188 Harris, T. Lake, 116 Hegel, 37 Hellas, Hellenes, Greece, Greeks, 44, 58, 75, 88, no, 132, 211, 213, 214, 219, 221 Hera, 57, 58, 139 Heraclidx, 6^ Heraclitus, 5, 37 JUD Herbert, George, 55 Hercules, 43, 48, 82, 167 Hermes, 58 Hermes Trismegistus, 22 Hero-Worship, 45, 47, 53, 80, 125 Herod the Great, 197 Hesiod, 57, 80 Hesus. V. Hu-Cadarn Hezekiah, 191 Hieuen Thsang, 25 High Places, 190 Hilastic Rites, 68 Hillel, 196 Hindustan. V. India Hoefer, 137 Homer, 49, 55, 56, 62, 78, 132 Hu-Cadarn, 61, 181 Hugh the Abbot, 204 Hugo, Victor, 21, 36 Hygieia, 69 Hypostyle Hall, The, 128 IDOLATRY, 23,39 -■■ Ilu, 30, 188 Incarnation, The, 96, 97 India, Hindustan, 37, 41, 57, 67, 93, 117, 183, 214, 215, 216, 217 Indra, 71 Ionic School, 59 Isis, no, 127, 144 Islam, 32, 35, 188 Israel, Jews, 40, 54, 64, 67, 72, 89, 91, no, 188, 220, 221 Izdubar, n4 TAMES, St. 48 •J Japheth, Prophecy of, 218 Jews. V. Israel Job, 162 John, King, 205 Jotuns, 57 Judaism, 84, 85, 92, 18S 226 INDEX. JUD Judas of Galilee, 198 Jukes, A., 3, icx), loi, 102 Julien, Stanislas, 25 Jupiter, 15, 162 Justin, 113 Justin Martyr, St., 5 TT-ABALISTS, 37 -•^ Kapila, Pseudo-, 41 Kardec, Allan, 37 Kchatriyas, '^6, 184 Kuhn, 42 Kymry, 64, 180, 212 T AO-TSEU, 25, 37, 115 ^ Laprade, V. de, 3, 7, 44, 5 7 Law, W., 103 Lenormant, F., 3, 86, 113, 116, 122, 126, 127, 130, 187,211, 220 Le Play, F., 147 Levites, 188 Lysippus, 158 MAGIANS, 67, 85 Magic, 38, 68, 116 Mahomet, Mahometanism, 84, 92, 188 Manco-Capac, 61 Manetho, 120 Manichseism, 87, 97 Manu, Laws of, 40 Marabut, 112 Mariette, Aug., 120 Marriages, Roman, 179 Mary, The B. Virgin, 103 Materialism, 9, 20, 92, 94 Maury, A., 3, 56, 58, 140, 151, 160, 211, 220 Mazdaeism, 84, 88 Media, 30, 37, 67, 85, 214, 217 Melchizedek, 66, 89, 165 Menes, 120 Messiah, 70, 83, 197 PAR Micah the Ephraimite, 66 Milo of Croton, 137 Mithra, 70 Moiroe, 56 Mommsen, T., 4, 63, 149, 176, 178 Monogamy, 54 Monotheism, 7, 26, 87, 95 Montalembert, Count de, 205 Moses, 61, 68, 188, 213 Miiller, Max, 3, 5, 37, 42, 66, 89, Miiller, Otf., 3, 58, 70 Muses, 149, 152 Music, 21, 74 Mysticism, 8, 12, 19, 34, 83, 96 ]V| APOLEON-WORSHIP, ^^ 49 Neptune, ill Newman, J. H., 189 Nibelungen, 62 Nimrod, 114 Nomas, 56 Novalis, 45 Numa, 61, 165 f^LYMPUS, Olympians, 50, ^ 55,57,58 Onomacritus, ^d Oral Law, The, 195 Ormuzd, 85, 89 Orpheus, 66, 86 Orphici, Orphism, 68, 75, 85, 88, 136 Osiris, 87, 121 Ouranos, 57 pAINTING, 82, 147, 218 Pandavas, 67 Pantheism, 6, 12, 17, 26, 56, 92, 95, 97, 189 Papacy, The, 41, 135, 153, 204 Parcse, 56 Parthenon, 146 INDEX. 227 PAT Patanjali, Pseudo-, 37, 41 Patricians, Roman, 168 Paul, St., I, 5, 14, 107, 189 Paul, Jean, 20 Pentaur, 128 Pericles, 146 Persia, 64, 85, 214 Phallus, 36, 221 Pharisees, 106, 194 Pherecydes, 86 Phidias, 51, 146 Philo, 162 Philosophy, II, 18 Phtah-hotep, 125 Pierron, AL, 4, 142 Pindar, 51, 81 Plato, Platonism, 12, 29, 44, 50, 51, 61, 75, 76, 85, 94, 148, 156, 157, 158 Plutarch, 36, 142, 164 Polygnotus, 51 Polytheism, 7, 37, 43, 95 Pontiffs, Roman, 165, 175 Potitii, 167 Praetors, 176 Praxiteles, 158 Preller, L., 3, 162, 163, 166 Proclus, 142 Prometheus, 62 Prophecy, Definition of, 10 Prophets, Israelite, 64, 191, 194 Providence, 28, 90 Pseudo-Mysticism, 9, 34 Pyramids, The, 120 Pythagoras, Pythagoreans, Py- thagoreanism, 64, 75, 81, 85, 86, 88, no, 136, 158 Python, 69 Q UIETISM, 35, 36 OAMSES II., 129 -^^ Raphael, 147 SOP Rawlinson, Sir H., 220 Real Presence, The, 71 Realism, 82 Religion, 116 Renaissance, The, 74 Revelation, 5 Ribhu, 70 Ritual of the Dead, 126, 128 Ritualism, 22, 84 Rome, Romans, 64, 141, 165 Romulus, 173 Rosiere, E. de la, 1 7 Ruskin, J., 3, 69, 82, 102 CABAZIUS, 144 ^ Sacred War, The First, 153 Sadducees, 72, 133, 193 Saint Martin, Vivien de, 184 Saint-Worship, 49, 81 Saisset, Em., 4, 27, 28, 90, 98, 99 Sakya Muni, 86 Sama-Veda, 70 Samuel, 190 Sanhedrin, 172, 196 Sargon, 117 Schammai, 196 Science, 107 Scribes, 194 Semo Sancus, 167 Senate, Roman, 66, 167, 172, 178 Serapis, 36 Serpent, 6%, 81, 102, 220, 221 Sethos I., 128 Sewell, W., 3, 39, 156, 157, 161 Shemites, 54, 59, 88, 91, 119, 131, 189, 212, 215, 219, 221 Shiva, 86, 93 Sibyls, 76, 162 Smith, G., 4, 114 Socrates, 5, 12, 41, 51, 59, 158 Solon, 76, 151, 168 Soma, 68, 70, 73 Sophists, 59, 156 Sophocles, 146 228 INDEX. SPI Spinoza, 28, 37 Spirit, The Holy, li, 99 Spiritists, 37 Stael, Madame de, 9 Statuary, 54, 82, 218 Stoicism, 8, 62, 86, 158 Sufism, 34, 37 Svayambhu, 30 Synagogue, The Great , 195 T^ABERNACLE, The, 190 •^ Talmud, 106, 195, 199 Tao-sse Religion, 115 Telchins, 68, 118, 220 Temple, The, 72, 197 Tennyson, Alf,, 15 Terpander, 134 Thales, 59 Theism, 7, 12, 18, 27, 90, 96 Theology, ii Therapeutse, 72, 85 Thetes, 65 Thierry, Am., 4, 181, 183 Thierry, Aug., 203 Tilans, 57 Trinity, The Holy, il, 27, 97, 99 Trogus Pompeius, 113 True, Definition of the, 16 Turanians, 25, 85, 113, 131, 212, 216, 220 ZOR VATICINATION, Definition of, 10 Vaughan, C. J., 14 Vayu, 71 Vedas, 68, 70, 81, in, 183 Vesta, 165 Vestals, 165 Vicvamitra, 184 Virgil, 71, 162 Vyasa, Pseudo-, 37 29 WALHALLA, 57 Winckelmann, I Weber, A., 185 Word, The, 16, 99, 103, 104 "VAVIER, St. Francis, 25 -^^ Xenophanes, 52 Xenophon, 51 VAO, 115 ■^ Yezidis, 85 Yoguis, 41, no VAID, 188 Zaleucus, 143 Zarvan, 30, 85 Zerdusht. V. Zoroaster Zeus, 15, 42, 51, 55, 57, 77, ; Zoroaster, 61, 85, 192 LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISV/OODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET il / y^