LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA GIFT OF MRS. BRUCE C. HOPPER Crucifixion as it really existed and as descril>ed by the Fathers of the Church, and not as exaggerated and falsified by the mere fancy of Artists and Poets of modern times. A RATIONAL VIEW OF JESUS AND RELIGION. EMBRACING AN EXAMINATION OF THE ORIGIN AND RATIONALE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND OF THE CLAIMS OF SUPERNATURALISM AND REVF.ALED RELIGIONS ; AND A SOLUTION OF THE MYSTERIES ENSHROUDING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, AND THE BIRTH, LIFE, CHARACTER, AND SUPPOSED MIRACLES AND RESURRECTION OF ITS FOUNDER. BY E. W. McCOMAS. NEW YORK: JOHN WURTELE LOVELL, No* 24 BOND STREET. 1880. Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1879, by E. W. McCOMAS, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. IN the following pages I have attempted to give an exposition of the views at which I have arrived, (after many experiences and much thought,) upon the origin and significance of men's religious -beliefs, and especial- ly with regard to the mysteries surrounding the origin, faith and founder of that phase of religious development known as Christianity. The work has no pretentions to erudition or literary merit. If it has merit of any kind, it consists in its direct, rational and candid methods and its unbiased and truthful conclusions in its giving the essential truth and true reasons in a frank and fearless manner. This seemed to the author to be what was most needed : and this he has endeavored to supply. The object has been, not to give the reader religious information, since that is abundantly supplied, but to aid him to an insight into the " true inwardness " of facts already accessible. The author does not flatter himself that success, even in his aims, will render the work popular or interesting, inas- much as the real, unvarnished truth on subjects upon which men's bias, partisanship and prejudice are so ex- 6 PREFACE. treme as in matters of religion, is rarely palatable or charitably judged. Men are rarely so interested in right thinking as in agreeable thinking, or in correcting their opinions as in defending them, or in the prolonged state- ments and reasonings necessary to insure correct con- clusions as in new facts and fine writing. For these difficulties, however, the author has no remedy consistent with his success in reaching his true object. The very purpose is to oppose prepossessions and to supply that candid and unbiased thinking which, if it were agreeable and popular, would long since have been supplied ; and, had the author the power to add attractive adornments to his plain expositions and reasonings, they would only divide the attention of the reader and gain credit for the author at the expense of his purpose : results that are by no means desirable. The object has been, not to write a fine book or to persuade people into particular religious notions, but to furnish correct thought and true conceptions and reasons for those who are desirous of such aid. The spancels, indeed, which an anxious and extreme desire to avoid all possible error and even doubtful truths place upon the mind, are antagonistic to fine writing. To row against the current requires force, and not fancy. Most persons are concerned, not to ascertain the truth in relation to religion, but to successfully maintain the religion they inherit or pre- fer ; and they feel and act as if their faith or belief as to the facts could affect the facts themselves. To those who really prefer to thus blind themselves to the real facts of nature, I must frankly say " Let the book alone : it will not aid you in such a purpose : it is not safe for you." Those, however, who are desirous or PREFACE. 7 willing to know the real truth for the sake of being right, will hardly fail to find substantial aid in attaining their desires if they can command the patience to indulge in a careful and appreciative examination of the views and reasoning advanced, a patience especially demanded by the condensed statements of the first chapter. With this hope, I remain their obedient servant, THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGB. I. Origin and Development of Religious Beliefs 9 Part 2. Relations between God and Man. . 44 Part 3. Saviour-idea Revelations, &c 63 Part 4. Miracles, Hells, &c 88 II. The Tap-root or Basic Fact of Christianity 119 III. The Obstructions to a fair Discussion of the Main Issue 130 IV. The Promulgators of the Evidence 141 V. The Written Gospels, their Authors and their Value. . 176 VI. An Epoch of Myths and Miracles 202 VII. The effect of the Resurrection of Jesus upon the Wit- nesses and their Testimony 213 VIII. Examples of the Unhistoric and Mythic in the Gospels 223 IX. The same Continued ... 263 X. Jesus and his Miracles 300 XI. The same Continued 341 XII. The same Continued 399 XIII. Characteristics, Methods and Motives of Jesus. ..... 429 XIV. The Men who prosecuted, tried and executed Jesus. . 479 XV. The Arrest 486 CONTENTS. CHAP. PACK. XVI. The Trial 506 XVII. The Crucifixion 521 XVIII. Was he Dead? 543 XIX. Theory of Continued Life 588 XX. The Revival 609 XXI. The Escape 627 XXII. The Black Curtain Falls 668 XXIII. The Conclusion 690 A RATIONAL VIEW OF JESUS AND RELIGION. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. MEN'S religious beliefs are measured by their de- velopment and education, chiefly by their capacity to comprehend the nature and source of causation and the various potencies and manifestations in Nature and their connection with the origin, life and destiny of man. Such beliefs have their source *and controlling support in man's imperishable love of life and his aspirations for a higher, a harmonious, and an assured individiial ex- istence. This fundamental, personal life-aspiration is persistent and controlling in all phases of human development, and constitutes the primal fountain of all human motives and the mainspring of all human endeavor and progress, as Mr. Hebert Spencer has so fully and ably shown. No amount cf education can eradicate it. No belief which attempts to either oppose or ignore it can either be general or of long duration. The develop- IO JESUS AND RELIGION. ment of human intelligence itself is, directly or remotely, the result of this same love of continued and progressive personal life and personal identity, and all beliefs must ultimately conform to it. The beliefs in an immortal soul and in a God are so connected and so largely interdependent, that a belief in our own immortality immeasurably strengthens our belief in a God ; so that the belief in Deity is, also, by this connection with the Soul-idea, strongly and per- sistently buttressed and supported by this fundamen- tal life-aspiration. Man cannot, and ought not, to give give up. his belief in either. Under the influence of this fundamental and controlling aspiration and with such light as has been possible to him, he has, through all ages, continued to stretch forth his arms towards an unknown future and an Unknown Power. When old beliefs have become indefensible and untenable under the assaults of Reason and Development, the Few may have rushed out into the night and darkness of Negation, but the 'mass of mankind have ever refused to yield the shelter of their old faiths until supplied with new ones. Their notions of God and immortality may be changed, but the belief in their existence cannot be given up. The human soul cannot live upon negation. Its natural life- food is affirmative belief. Materialism and Atheism are the starvation of the Soul. Reason is first destructive, before it is reconstructive. Skepticism finds its legiti- mate but limited office in making manifest our miscon- ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. II ceptions and the necessity of a reconstruction of our beliefs : an office merely negative and destructive, yet necessary to progress. It undermines existing creeds : it cannot destroy either the facts or the resistless desire to know them-. It destroys only to be asked " If not this, what then ? " Man has not erred in his fundamental aspirations and aims, since they are higher than his intelligence and stronger than his volition are the fountains of both of them. God and Immortality are secure beyond all human error or control. The general belief in them will always be impregnable ; while the real fact of their existence is unaffected by human notions and creeds. Our present error lies, not in recognizing their existence, but in fostering and forcing notions of God and of the soul and of future states which we have inherited from by-gone ages of ignorance and superstition notions antagonistic to our advanced intelligence and unworthy of our high civilization ; and also in basing our faith upon evidences which can no longer command the respect, much less the support, of our own reason. We err in clinging to the methods and thoughts of an ignorant and infantile Past which are no longer really credible and realizable to us, and still more in endeavor- ing to force its crude notions upon the plastic and credulous minds of our children, and thus closing them to all rational doubt, the only road to further investiga- tion and higher light. We so fear to loose our hold upon 12 JESUS AND RELIGION. these great truths, that we act as if our notions of them had some effect upon the fact of their existence ; and we would bar all doubt and question of them, lest they should be proved not to exist at all, and thus escape us forever. We had rather blindly believe than risk the chance of doubt. This very fear is not only a. barrier to all progress, but is proof of our own conscious weak- ness and craven, but smothered, fears. If we had a rational and assured faith we should court and defy investigation. Our timid fears and coward hopes are the strongest barriers to their own relief and to the securing of those higher conceptions which an exhaust- ive and rational investigation must inevitably bring. We yet need to realize the simple truths that facts are not controlled by our opinions and that the primordial and persistent tendencies of Nature are never mistakes, however we may mistake them. Religion is imperish- able, since it is based upon the ultimate facts, purposes and end of all evolution ; but creeds and notions ought to, and must, vary with the progressively changing alti- tude and range of man's mental vision. Progressive peoples those to whom God has en- trusted the vanguard and standards of the advancing columns of Humanity, are not permitted to enjoy the repose of inherited beliefs. Rest comes not until they can repose in the absolute conviction of the ultimate truth. Their very progress consists in the acquisition of a higher knowledge and truer morality. And how- ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 13 ever unpleasant it may be to drift from our present moorings and provisional havens, and to battle with the storms of Doubt upon the open sea of Speculation, or to tempt the dangers of untried deeps, we have no alterna- tive when the very foundations of our old anchor-beds are swept away by the mighty currents of Progress. Let us never fear, however, that either God or the Soul will cease to exist because we have approached them through a false channel. The Continent to which the facts of Nature pointed Columbus did not cease to exist because his own labors ended in the island of St. Domingo. In reviewing and estimating the religious or theo- logical notions of Humanity under the new lights of Evolution, we should be unhampered by the invariable, but ever varied and conflicting, claims of existing Faiths to special and exclusive infallibility by reason of their several pretended divine revelations. For, independent of the utter irrationality and impossibility of such reve- lations, a true conception of the nature and origin of such beliefs, must at once relegate the whole to the ordinary grade of mere human conceptions. ' An impar- tial and rational review of the evidences in this regard can leave no true reason to doubt that all existing beliefs have a common origin in human nature itself, and are the necessary outgrowths of man's primal and childish ignorance and his subsequent progressive enlightenment. 14 JESUS AND RELIGION. Fortunately, Nature has furnished ample evidence of her methods and progressive steps in this religious development of man. Firstly : we are furnished with the ascending gradation of intelligence among existing races and peoples, with the appropriate phases of religious belief for each grade. Secondly : we are fur- nished the progressive gradation in Time, exhibited by the histories of enlightened races and peoples, showing the progressive, intellectual and religious phases through which they have passed. Each of these gradations shows the fact that each phase of intelligence and pro- gress has its corresponding and appropriate phase of religious beliefs, and also the fact that there is a real and substantial correspondence in the religious concep- tions and notions of all peoples in the same stage of development, and that such conceptions and notions are, in fact, natural resultants of the given phase of develop- ment, with proper allowance for differences of race and conditions. Thirdly : we have another exhibition of the character, order and course of intellectual development and of the resultant and accompanying phases of reli- gious conceptions, in the mental history of enlightened in- dividuals, during their progress from infancy to manhood. Fourthly : we have the necessary order and mode of acquiring human knowledge and conceptions, consequent upon their very nature and origin and the nature and unity of. the soul. The human Soul being a personal unit, can only be conscious and efficient as a unit can only think and act upon one thing at a time, and there- fore must acquire its entire knowledge by serial and successive impressions and thoughts. Its entire knowl- edge of objective existence and of the facts, laws and ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 1$ relations of Being must originate in separate individual experiences. It commences its career, both in the individual and in the race, in absolute ignorance of all things save itself ; and is compelled to win its way to knowledge, and to even the power to know, by separate, serial individual experiences and activities. From the very nature of the relative and experimental knowledge thus derived, it is consecutive and dependent and can only be acquired and comprehended in a certain serial and consecutive order, that is to say, in the order from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, from the concrete to the abstract, from the simple to the general. The human mind is compelled to commence with the a. b. c. of everything, and to win its way up by a progres- sive course of consecutive, serial accretions, abstractions and generalizations in which each progressive achieve- ment is the product of prior acquisitions. It cannot comprehend two, without first comprehending one. It can form no conception without first comprehending the elements and relations involved in, or constituting, that conception. Naturally it does, and, unaided, it must, in all cases, " crawl before it can walk." It is not only a fact, therefore, but a necessity, that man should have primarily acquired his conceptions of causation and his generalizations of natural sequences in an approximately definite and consecutive order ; since in a certain order alone was it possible for him to have comprehended them. And, although certain facilities may be added by development and instruction, the same general order of evolution of ideas and of mental progress must still con- tinue to be followed by every individual infant born even among enlightened peoples. Consequently, we must 16 JESUS AND RELIGION. rationally expect, and shall actually find, that there are certain phases of belief touching causation and unseen powers and agencies, which are natural to certain cor- responding stages of intellectual development, and that there is a certain corresponding order as well as family likeness in the successive phases of religious beliefs both among individuals and races. The stage of development governs, and therefore assimilates, their ideas. And we find, not only that men are best satisfied and subserved by the phase of religious beliefs and prac- tices peculiar to their own stage of development, but that they are really capable of comprehending and appreciating no higher ones. We may nominally convert Savage races to a higher religion, but their real, funda- mental conceptions will, at best, prove to be only newly- named and slightly-modified types of their old ones, and must still take their measure from their own intellectual and moral status, and be superimposed upon their old substratum of superstitious notions. The Christ and Triune God of the converted Feegee are not identical conceptions with those of Dean Stanley or Dr. McCosh. Their conceptions, though nominally the same, differ as widely as do their developments. And we -find Voudou- ism and sorcery still holding sway over the nominal Colored Christians in the rice fields of South Carolina as it does over their Mohammedan brethren in Central Africa and over their original fetichistic brethren on the Congo. The rational conclusion from the evidence derived from each and all of these sources is uniform and con- clusive, each pointing to the same general order of ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. I/ intellectual and religious progression and to the same natural succession of phases of belief. The child's thoughts and the boy's thoughts, after making the neces- sary allowances for race-development, education and special influences, are the same in grade and^similar in character in all times and in all lands ;" and the Savage Wild-man, to-day, thinks the thoughts and dreams the dreams that floated through the brains of the ancestors of the men of the Stone Age. Then, as now, the primi- tive Wild-man was, morally and intellectually, the simple Child-man. The nature of man's knowledge, the pro- gressive steps of his individual and race progress, the ascending scale of race-developments in the existing phases of human societies or peoples, and the historical scale of progression of all races in their natural ascent from savageism, all show that men's religious beliefs are a natural and law-governed product of their mental development and condition, and necessarily change with the progressive phases of their intellectual and moral growth. And as each phase of religious belief is an out- growth of its corresponding phase or stage of develop- ment, it cannot be irrational, incongruous, or detrimental to the very intelligence from which it grew, but must, of necessity, fit it, and be conformed to it, like the bark of a tree or the shell of a mollusk. The incongruities and absurdities in primitive and lower beliefs which are patent to us, are hidden from those who entertain them ; while equally gross irrationalities existing in our own popular or personal beliefs now go unchallenged by our- selves. only to be smiled at in the future. What men will treat and worship as their God is 2 1 8 JESUS AND RELIGION. determined by what, as they conceive, causes and con- trols their own being and destiny and is the author of those acts and influences in nature which affect their lives and happiness. How they will treat and worship their Gods, will depend upon their notions of the sup- posed nature, powers and character of the objects or beings worshipped and of their relations with, and inclinations towards, themselves, and these will depend upon their stage of development. The primary purpose of worship was the propitiation or control of the causal or controlling beings, and the mode and means of propi- tiation or control were those which were supposed to be most suitable and efficient for the purpose of controlling or influencing a being of the conceived nature and character of the being or object thus worshipped or pro- pitiated. Time, locality and race have had no marked substantial influence upon the nature and order of such religious beliefs and methods. Through many minor variations substantially the same progressive phases and order of beliefs have always and everywhere been mani- fested ; and this law-governed order and character of religious progress is often strikingly manifested by the specific similitudes in the religious notions, rites, customs and symbols of people widely separated in time, space and race. Nature unfolds all things by a law-governed process of self-evolution. Mental progress, including mojal and religious development, furnishes no exception to this ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. IQ necessary and universal method. The Present is ever a transformation of a continuously transformed Past. The entire Past is but a practical demonstration of the Pres- ent is the Present in embryo. In her physical evolu- tions, Nature's materials are fixed in amount, and she forever knits, unravels, and re-knits the same materials into ever brighter and more complex patterns. In her evolution of intelligence, on the contrary, her material or means is ever improving and her progress cumula- tive ; and she is ever, not only transforming the Old, but superimposing and improving the New. The tree of knowledge and of intellectual life is ever germinating new buds, and the old and changing form is ever com- mingling with, and merging into, new and growing germs : the whole having a common primordial tap-root and vital support. New Religions may present new con- ceptions of morals and duty and of modes and objects of worship, or may give higher assurances to human aspirations, but they are ever the legitimate offspring of older religions, and are rarely ever more than mere reconstructions and modifications of older and borrowed forms and beliefs. The dogmas, rites and ceremonies, as well as the marvels, myths and legends by which they are supported, which now swell the great on-flowing current of religious thought and life, have been gathered in, through the successive ages, from the countless riv- ulets of the by-gone thoughts and life-modes of the generations. Many of these primitive notions, forms, symbols and legends, although now fused into our com- posite beliefs and customs, are still recognizable, like the grains of quartz and feldspar in a mass of granite ; while others, crystallized by time, still float on uncrushed, 2O JESUS AND RELIGION. like stray ice-floes upon an ocean current. The youths of Great Britain, even now, annually perform rites once sacred to Baal, and indulge in scores of customs and in- cantations inherited from the Druids and from the wor- shippers of Balder and Odin. There was scarcely a Jewish notion from that of a belief in witchcraft and devil-pos- session not a rite from Circumcision to blood-offerings nor a symbol, from the breast-plate of the High-Priest to the winged cherubim or symbolic beast upon the ark of the covenant, which was not borrowed or imitated fr:m those of their masters of Egypt, Persia or Chaldea or from other conquering or neighboring peoples. There is scarcely a single Christian belief from that in a divine incarnation to the belief in a queen of Heaven and a triple God not a rite from baptism to sacrificial feasts not a legend from that of the Golden *Age in Eden to that of a universal deluge, nor a moral precept or prin- ciple, which had not already been substantially believed in or practiced long before the advent of Christianity. It could not, indeed, have been otherwise. Even if these facts were not historically demonstrable, it is impossible to rationally believe that a people, like the Jews, who had been for so many centuries in personal as well as political bondage to peoples of superior knowledge and civiliza- tion' a people whose laws^ rites and ceremonies had been first established by one who had been educated by the Egyptian priests, and whose religious ideas and be- liefs took shape and mould under the pressure of such controlling influences, could fail to have a borrowed and composite religion. That the moral and religious ideas and doctrines promulgated in the New Testament were well understood and taught, in many lands, as well as in ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 21 Judea, long before the reign of Herod the Great, is be- yond rational doubt. That Jesus of Nazareth himself was singularly indifferent to all forms, ceremonies and rituals is still more certain. And the fact that he was so, furnished an ample reason why his followers should have accommodated their doctrines to the popular forms and customs of those whom they desired to proselyte, and should have modified and appropriated these accus- tomed rituals and symbols of the people to the use of their new Church. Jesus was not only indifferent to forms, but expressly accepted the established Jewish re- ligion, and endeavored to infuse his own ideas and spirit into its existing laws. He professed to re-interpret and supplement rather than to overthrow. His success- ors followed his example, and wisely won their way by being " all things to all men," and by cheerfully accom- modating their new spirit to the accustomed rites, cer- emonies and symbols of both Jew and Pagan, ryielding form for the sake of substance. Those features and doctrines which distinguished the Christian religion from the religion from whose bosom it sprung and from the surrounding religions and philosophies of the Roman Empire, were chiefly Buddhistic in their character and perhaps in their origin. Its spirit and morality was essentially Buddhistic. So that, in a broad sense, it may be characterized as the infusion of the Spirit and ideas of Buddhism into the modified body and forms of the religions and philosophies of the Roman Empire, the whole engrafted on a tap-root of Judaism. Like all other religions it was an evolution a new progressive outgrowth from existing beliefs and customs ; and whether its theological notions and its mystic rights and 22 JESUS AND RELIGION. characteristic moralities were borrowed from one source or another, it is certain they were, in the main, not pure inventions, but grew up, and took their nutriment from those older beliefs, symbols and customs which had grown, like wild flowers, fresh from the growing aspira- tions, desires, sympathies and intelligence of successive generations. Even the legends and myths concerning Jesus personally, are largely moulded from borrowed materials. Combine, modify and reform as it may, or might, its ancestral flesh-marks remain, and the odor of the soil from which it sprung still clings about it. The magic effects produced by the mere name "Jesus," by the chips of the true cross, by sacred shrines and consecrated bells, by the bones of pious anchorites, by the blood- stained garments of martyrs, and by the toe-nails and other relics of Saints, as well as its witch'craft and devil- possession, give forth even odors of Fetichism which it is impossible to rationally misconceive, and which point to an origin in the grimmest and remotest past. To that past let us turn for their true origin and significance. ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS. Man's earliest and lowest mental condition cannot be directly known, since all existing races of men have already made some progress in mental development ; ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 23 and neither their ancestors, nor those of the more civ- ilized races, either did leave, or could have left, any record or evidences of their beliefs ; since they were wholly without arts. Still we may, as we have seen, rationally approach the primordial mental condition of our Race by means of our knowledge of the nature of our intel- ligence and its necessary origin and order of acquisition, aided by the analogies furnished by the mental manifes- tations and progress of individual childhood. The low- est existing races, however, furnish us examples of men- tal conditions and development sufficiently primitive for our present purposes, and, indeed, too low for our clear realization. There still exist races of men who, having the passions and instincts of the brute, are nearly in- fantile in their mental development and attainments. We still find men (such as the wild Dyaks of Borneo) who have attained no conception of modesty or of the family relations; whose children are begotten, nurtured and abandoned like those of animals ; who rave and prowl through the forest and jungle singly, like beasts of prey ; who subsist like brutes, and, like brutes, die alone and unburied ; who could scarcely command a score of words for their entire vocabulary, or add two to three, or comprehend the simplest moral principles ; and who have no religious rites or ceremonies. The mental condition of even these existing wild- men is scarcely conceivable to us. Outside of their animal appetites and the indiscriminate propagation of their species, their minds are absorbed in their efforts to secure food and to avoid danger. Their one prevailing and ever-haunting emotion is fear. Ignorant of the 24 JESUS AND RELIGION. agencies and laws of Nature, all things either are, or may become, dangerous to them. The Unknown, with its swarms of mysterious spirits and menacing shadows, fills the air, the streams, the forest, with enemies which meet him at every turn, and dog his footsteps through life. His real and natural enemies are supplemented by a host of others made so by his ignorance and stupidity ; while even this number is inconceivably multiplied by his conception of causation. In direct analogy to his own action he conceives all motions and effects what- ever to be personal and voluntary, and regards all ob- jects in nature as having an invisible, conscious self like his own mental self. In every untried object, therefore, there may lurk a foe to be feared, hated and avoided. A wild and restless fear of both visible and invisible foes and of evil spirits pervades his life, and colors all his serious thoughts and conduct. The Unknown is ever an object of dread and hate to him, since it not only may be dangerous to him, in known or unknown ways, but his ignorance of it will probably make it so ; while the very fact of its being unknown makes the danger immeasurable, uncertain, and dreadful. The question here presented is, whether this wild, haunted savage of the primtive or lowest races, can be said to have a religion. Can we find in this brutal na- ture and almost brute-intelligence the true germs of the later and higher religions the seeds even of that reli- gion whose incense once floated over the blood-stained altar at Jerusalem, and of that of its offspring whose . ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 2g " Te Deum laudimus " still thunders through the aisles of St. Peter's ? There has been much doubt as to the proper answer to this question. The later and better evidences and authorities, however, would seem to settle the propriety of an affirmative answer. While we have had much incompetent and biased testimony as to the capacity of Savages in this regard, the true difficulty would seem to be one of definition rather than fact. That there are men who have no notion of a God, of Creation, of a First Cause, or of religious obligations of any kind, and who pay no worship to good Spirits, is be- yond rational question. And yet it is equally true, that Religion germinates, and has its root deep down, in this lowest and most childish Savageism. As the seed in the dark earth-mould contains the germ and potency of the lordly forest-tree, even so, in this grim night of human ignorance, we find that fear and hate of the Unknown of the uncomprehended agencies of nature, which, through the long ages of human development, grew and changed until it ripened into a religion of hope and ador- ation. As man's ignorance has been gradually trans- formed into knowledge, his ideas of causation have ex- panded and his fear of the unknown sources or agencies of natural manifestations has been transformed into con- fidence and love. That the germs of our religions should be different from, and even opposite to, their developed and final characters, is a result which is natural to Evo- lution ; and however the common, primordial germ may become modified by varying conditions and influences or may be metamorphosed by development, it is as much a part of the common growth and history as the root is a part of the tree. 26 JESUS AND RELIGION. Passing from the imperfectly understood mental status and condition of the Wild-man to that of the Savage we find that man has here taken a distinct step in social, intellectual and religious development. We find him already on the threshold of the Social State, having some notions of the family relations, also loose political associations governed by patriarchs or chiefs, and some crude notions of morality. Corresponding with this social and intellectual advance we find a reli- gious progression introducing us to the phase of religion known as Fetichism. In this stage of development men still regard all causation as personal and voluntary, and continue to consider it as generally direct and immediate, if not wholly so. Their religion is still a religion of fear. In treating of it, Sir John Lubbock says " We regard the Deity as good ; they look upon him as evil ; we submit ourselves to him ; they endeavor to obtain con- trol over him ; we feel the necessity of accounting for the blessings by which. we are surrounded; they think, that the blessings come of themselves, and attribute all evil to the influence of malignant beings. These charac- teristics are not exceptional and rare. On the contrary, I shall attempt to show (continues Lubbock,) that, though the religions of lower races have received different names, they agree in their general characteristics, and are but phases of one sequence, having the same origin and oassing through similar, if not identical stages." It is almost impossible for us to comprehend the childish notions of the Fetichist to comprehend how adult men can believe in the existence and hidden power and malignity of the Spirits of what we know to be in- ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 2J animate objects, and that all motions and effects are due to direct conscious or voluntary powers residing within the thing apparently initiating them men who have no conception whatever of natural causation, and but little, if any, of secondary causation. To such men anything may become a fetich or controlling potency. Any chance notion derived from a single coincidence the merest casual concomitance or an apparent relation be- tween an object and an effect is sufficient to suggest one, or it may be adopted on trial and be childishly ac- cepted or rejected as chance or success or failure may determine. It may represent a human being, or be a stone or a pebble, some seed or herb, the part of an ani- mal, or any " villanous compound " of animal or vege- table matter. Not only elemental phenomena, but disease, death and personal disasters and good luck are regarded as under the control of these fetichistic agen- cies, even the affections, capacities and conduct of individuals. There is also a singular notion of the effi- ciency of representation accompanying and influencing their notions of Causation. They conceive that parts of a being or thing, or even .its name or image represents the whole : for example, that parts of a courageous animal will give courage to the person using it, or that, by having an image or a bit of the clothing, the hair, or the spittle of a person, they have the means of charming or bewitching them as effectually as if they were person- ally present. In fact, fetichism is nothing more than primitive and unadulterated sorcery and Witchcraft a belief that inanimate objects not only have potency for good and evil, but that such potency is due to a hidden spirit within them, in analogy to the conscious Ego in 28 JESUS AND RELIGION. man. It is not to be identified with Idolatry or the wor- ship of divine images, nor with Nature-worship. Feti- chism is not real worship or adoration of a good being at all ; but, on the contrary, it is devoted to the circumven- tion or control of malevolent or inimical beings, or to securing their neutrality, favor or aid. What it further and mainly behooves us to note in this first step in man's religious development is, that it is the product of, and corresponds with, an equivalent phase of intellectual progress a phase embracing some vague conceptions of general powers in nature of a per- sonal or conscious character, including some of an indif- ferent or even friendly nature, and also the experiences and ideas inducing the first rude attempts to aggregate into social and political unions as families and septs ; that it is the inimical powers or spirits, alone, which are propitiated, through fear of the consequences of their enmity the friendly ones being supposed to be right already ; that their gods, if they can be called such, are beings with like natures, needs, appetites and passions as themselves and are to be influenced and controlled by like means and methods as would be efficient with human enemies ; and that the bribes or propitiatory offerings, consequently, which are presented to them, are such as would be acceptable to themselves or a human enemy, mainly meats, fruits, rice and other foods, whose hidden spirit they suppose to be as palatable and neccessary to their unseen spiritual enemies as the visible portions are to themselves : a notion exhibited by our ancestors when they sought the houses of, and left food and water for, the fairies, and which is still retained and exemplified ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 2 9 by our Indian tribes, who continue to place food, weapons, &c., in the graves, or near the bodies, of their dead for use after death, well knowing that the visible part of these articles remain unused and undisturbed. In short, to keep his fetich and invisible enemies in a good humor, and to influence them, the Fetichist feeds and flatters, and even scolds, threatens and abuses them ac- cording to his notions of their nature : a favorite mode being to frighten them. Here, we find the germ and origin of religious sacrifices or propitiatory offerings to the Gods. In the rain-doctors, witch-doctors, sorcerers and medicine-men who are called forth by this phase of beliefs, we also have the legitimate progenitors of our priests and physicians. In the primitive belief in the substantial reality of dreams and visions and in the superhuman and sacred character of the hallucinations and illusory visions of the morbid and insane, born in this childish age of literalism and appearances, we find, also, the fountains of all future beliefs in prophecy and inspiration. A still more advanced phase of Religion is known as Shamanism. Here we find, not only a still further gen- eralization of the potencies of Nature, but a vague con- ception of beings of a different nature from that of mortal men-beings of a divine essence and nature. The Gods of the Shamanite are no longer the enemies of man, but neither are they his friends and guardians. They live 3O JESUS AND RELIGION. remote and apart from humanity and are indifferent to their conduct or affairs. They are unapproachable by ordinary mortals, and can only be communicated with through the medium of a Shaman a kind of priestly " Convulsionair " or inspired Dervish, who is sometimes, when the fit is on, permitted to have intercourse with them, and to even visit them in their distant abodes. Accompanying this progress in religion and intelligence, we find, also, the corresponding advance in social progress and political generalizations. Shamanism is found flourishing among such vast, barbaric hordes as roam over the undefined countries of central Asia and give an equally undefined allegiance to some distant and unapproachable emperor or khan. Advancing another step we find Anthropomorphism. In this phase of progress men worship men-shaped Gods deified Ancestors, Heroes and Benefactors and the personified powers of Nature. Even their highest Gods are still a part of Nature are its offspring, not its crea- tors. Although endowed with divine and imperishable natures, they have' man-like forms, intelligence, frailties, passions and appetites, and human capacities for want and suffering ; although these characteristics are vari- ously modified from those of men. It has been plausibly contended, indeed, that the very conception of such Gods arose from the deification of men. It is in this phase or stage that idolatry begins to ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 3! play its important part in man's psychical development. By adopting representative images as aids to the sen- suous realization of unknown and invisible deities, Reli- gion gave a new and mighty stimulant to intellectual de- velopment, by calling forth the genius, and inspiring the energies, of the poet, the sculptor, the painter and the architect in the idealization and representation of imagi- nary Gods, angels, deified heroes and their achievements, and in the erection of altars and temples for their resi- dence and worship. Idolatry may be said to have been the* mother of the fine arts. It is in this anthropomorphic phase, also, that we find the tendency to generalize and grade personal causation most signally manifested, and witness the process of ul- timating secondary causation and natural sequences in First Cause and Creator of all things and a creation by fiat. In examining natural phenomena and observing the order and sequences of these natural manifestations, men could not fail to ultimately observe, that there was a more or less regular gradation in the importance of nat- ural objects and causes, and a more or less" consecutive subordination and dependence of natural agencies and powers, and that the multiplied manifestations in nature tended to mount up towards common and ever fewer sources. They could not rank the Naiad of the fountain with the Goddess of the Sea, nor Aurora with the God of day. This tendency towards a final generalization, indeed, must have gradually reached some kind of culmination even under the more distinctly fetichistic conception of 32 JESUS AND RELIGION. causation, when, as yet, men regarded all objects as self- efficient and all causes alike voluntary and internal. From this standpoint, an observation of the visible phe- nomena of the Universe would naturally lead men to place the Sun and Earth at the head of the hierarchy of natural powers the one as masculine, the other feminine. Such a generalization, however, would not be reached without there having arisen some vague suggestions and questionings as to the origin and primal source of all things some conjectures and vague conceptions of a First Cause or Unknown Power existing prior to all visible bodies, or at least dominating them. Thus there was formed the primary strata or plain, as it were, of religious beliefs. When the more developed minds ceased to believe in the self -efficiency of inanimate objects, or that all things were animate, they necessarily assigned their actions and government to other efficiencies ; and as they had no conception of any causation but that which was vol- untary, they attributed such actions and control to imag- inary, invisible beings, or to personal Gods. This change in the conception or notion of the sources of causation, however, did not materially affect the previous gradation of powers or Gods, further than to more specially define and co-ordinate them ; but merely substituted separate personal movers and controllers for the old hidden spirits of the objects themselves and the vague idea of some unknown original Power : causing a worship of the in- visible personal Rulers or Gods of natural phenomena instead of the phenomena themselves. Thus, Apollo and Diana were substituted for Sol and Luna. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 33 As this advanced step, however, would be originally attained by the more advanced minds, it would not destroy the previous popular notions or worship, but would be superimposed upon them ; and there would be and was, two co-existing and approximately-correspond- ing hierarchies of Gods ; the one being that of the phenomenal objects and manifestations themselves, the other that of their supposed invisible Rulers. This would seem to have been both the natural and actua order of intellectual and religious development. The first tendency and result of this gradation of natural objects and powers was, not to finally unify all causation, but to subordinate and rank the powers of Nature ; giving a hierarchy of Gods, with a chief or supreme head a God-of-Gods ; and thus bringing man to the very threshold of Monotheism. From the belief in a Supreme or chief God in nature, the ascent to a belief in a Sole anthropomorphic Creator and Ruler of the Universe may require time and perhaps favoring conditions, but such a result was inevitable unless human development had been wholly arrested. When- ever the human mind departed from its primitive con- ception of the imminence and directness of causation., or of self-causation, and accepted the notions of outside causation and secondary or remote causation, by substi- tuting imaginary personal agencies for inherent powers, and taking incitement or inducement and sequence for cause and causation, there could be no final and legiti- mate pause until a personal First Cause was reached. Anthropomorphic Monotheism seems to have been more definitely and early attained by the Semitic peoples than any other, and it is with its origin among the 3 34 JESUS AND RELIGION. Abrahamic branch of that race that we feel the deepest interest, and with which it will be sufficient to here concern ourselves. ISRAELITISH MONOTHEISM. We find in the Jewish book of Genesis the early conceptions of the Jews in relation to the general crea- tion, to the nature and character of the Divine Powers and of their relations to man, to the origin of Evil, and to the primal creation and condition or state of man and the causes and order of his earlier steps in knowledge and mental progress ; all embraced in a supposed his- tory of these early facts and relations, and expressed in that concrete, narrative and figurative form which is alone possible to peoples who are as yet incapable of speaking or even thinking in the abstract. This exposi- tion furnishes us, not only the appropriate and expected phase of beliefs appertaining to the then existing stage of their mental development, but an unusually sagacious notion of the true primitive state of man and of the order and mode of his subsequent progress towards enlightenment. From Genesis we learn, that prior to ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 3$ Abraham his people were Polytheists, with the taint of Fetichism still strong upon them. We find, that Abraham's father worshipped other Gods besides Je- hovah-Elohim the Lord God ; and that, even in the time of Jacob, the father of Rebecca had his little house- hold Gods or fetiches, and that his daughter Rebecca greatly outraged him, when leaving the paternal home, by stealing them and hiding them in her " camel furniture." Prior to the time of Moses they evidently nad not reached a conception of Ultimate Being, but, at best, only an anthropomorphic conception of Supreme or dominant power, represented by the chief of the Elohim the Lord of the Heavenly Host. It was Moses who introduced to them the Egyptian conception of ultimate Essential Existence itself the " I Am," who " is, was, and is to be." This conception is a conception of one- ness an ultimate conception lying back of all imper- sonations of mere powers or attributes, and formed the true basis of Monotheism. And it is this Egyptian conception, by its mystic and unspeakable name of "Jehovah," that Moses proposed to the Israelites as the one true and ultimate God, and which he induced them to accept as the " God of their fathers," although he expressly told them that, as Jehovah, he was not known by their fathers, that is, by His name indicating Ultimate Existence or self-existent Being. 36 JESUS AND RELIGION. The first account in Genesis of the cosmical creation was written by an author who uses the plural word Elo- him or Gods to express the Creative Powers, and who was evidently unacquainted with even the name, Jehovah. The recorder or transcriber of. the second account, being that of the formation of man and of his subsequent condi- tion and history, (abruptly commencing with the 4th verse of the second chapter,) could not have lived earlier than the Mosaic Age, since he was acquainted with the name, Jehovah, and prefixes it to the original Elohim to identify him with the old Polytheistic conception of the Supreme Power the patriarchal Lord of the Heavens. The whole language of the narrative, however, shows that the idea of a plurality of Gods was in the mind of the original author. Not only is the plural Elohim used to express the personal creating powers, but the Gods are represented as consulting together concerning the crea- tion, and as using language only applicable to a plurality of Gods such as " now let us make man in our own image," * * "and ye shall be as Gods," * * * " Behold, the man has become as one of its," and the like expressions of plurality. These palpably plural expressions cannot be explained as referring to a single " Truine God," since such language is never used by, or about, Jehovah in the writings of subsequent Monotheists, nor was the idea of a trinity ever entertained bv any of the Abrahamic peoples. Such language as was used by the Israelites to Shihon shows that, even at that late period, they recog- nized the actual existence of other Gods, namely, "Wilt thou possess that which thy God ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 3/ thee ? So, whomsoever the Lord (Jehovah) out God shall drive out before us, them will we possess " (Judges xxiv. n). Here then is a distinct recognition of two distinct Gods, each having equal and actual existence and active efficiency. The very fact, indeed, that the Israelites were so constantly prone to fall back upon the worship of the old Gods, is conclusive of the fact of their recent or imperfect conversion from Polytheism and of their inability to appreciate the higher conception and worship of Jehovah, and of their consequent ten- dency to revert to their old notions and practices. Even Moses seems to respect their hereditary notions in the Decalogue itself. It does not assert, or imply, that there is no other God but Jehovah, but demands that the Israelites shall worship Him, and "have no other Gods before Him : " Seeming to imply, rather than deny, the existence of such other Gods. Of a like import is the command, " Thou shalt not revile the Gods" (Exodus xxii. 28.) The facts would seem to be, that Abraham had been reared in the Chaldean faith in, and worship of, the Heavenly Powers, chief among whom was Baal, the Sun-God the Lord of the Heavens ; that, being inspired by the idea of becoming the father and founder of a separate People, he " moved West " into Caanan ; that, in pursuance of the common custom, he selected 38 JESUS AND RELIGION. a patron Deity as his special object of worship, inspired by the hope that he should thus secure His special pro- tection and patronage for himself and his descendants ; and with a magnanimity worthy of his high aspirations he selected the chief of his ancestral Gods, and vowed that he and his descendants would worship Him, and Him alone, in consideration of His special favor and pro- tection ; and that, in pursuance of this supposed covenant, when meeting with Melchisedec in Caanan, and finding him to be a priest of this same " most high God" he paid tithes to him as the representative of his own chosen God. Thus-, it would seem that, while Abraham wor- shipped but one God, he did not disbelieve in the exist- ence of others, nor conceive that his patron God was Ultimate Existence itself, but the all-powerful Heavenly Ruler. Having once entered into this perpetual covenant for practical Monotheism, the real Monotheistic idea would be the more readily developed. Perpetually covenanted, and exclusively devoted, to one God, and under the sole and potent influence of Moses and of a powerful and vitally-interested hereditary priesthood, who were jeal- ously devoted to the worship of this sole God and were living upon the sacrifices and offerings at His altars, the conception and final triumph of Monotheism could not be doubtful. Once under such potent and exclusive guidance, and fighting for their lives and most sacred interests, through ages of cruel and exterminating wars, ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 39 under the sole banner and protection of Jehovah, and against nations worshipping and fighting under other and opposing Gods, the Israelites naturally came to finally regard all other Gods than their own Jehovah as antagonistic and inimical powers as objects of dread and hatred, and, for these very reasons, as also evil and wicked beings. Thus, the hated Gods of their enemies degenerated into evil beings or devils : the God Baal- zebub or Beelzebub becoming the chief of devils. Thus, the solely-worshipped Jehovah finally came to stand con- fronting, not " other Gods," but a hierarchy of devils. With all the potent Monotheistic influences operating upon them, however, the priests could not prevent the Israelites from exhibiting the strongest .proclivity to revert to their old polytheistic notions and practices. It was only when dangers and misfortunes menaced or over- whelmed them, that their fears and enmities fully over- come their old polytheistic proclivities, to which they again and again yielded. IMPROVED CONCEPTIONS. This progress towards the unification and ultimation of causation was accompanied by a marked progress in 4