Ten Great Religions 2(2)

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Ten Great Religions





Frontispiece

Ten Great Religions

An Essay in Comparative Theology

by

James Freeman Clarke

Prophets who have been since the world began.—Luke i. 70.

Gentiles ... who show the work (or influence) of the (that) law which is written in their hearts.—Romans ii. 15.

God ... hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth ... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they may feel after him and find him.—Acts, xviii. 24-27.

Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1871,
by James Freeman Clarke, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Copyright, 1899,
By Eliot C. Clarke.
To
William Heney Channing,
My Friend and Fellow-Student
During Many Years,
This Work
Is Affectionately Inscribed.


Chapter VIII.

The Religion of Rome.

§ 1. Origin and essential Character of the Religion of Rome.

In the Roman state nothing grew, everything was made. The practical understanding was the despotic faculty in the genius of this people. Fancy, imagination, humor, seem to have been omitted in the character of the Latin race. The only form of wit which appeared among them was satire, that is, wit used for a serious purpose, to punish crimes not amenable to other laws, to remove abuses not to be reached by the ordinary police. The gay, light-hearted Greek must have felt in Rome very much as a Frenchman feels in England. The Romans did not know how to amuse themselves; they pursued their recreations with ferocious earnestness, making always a labor of their pleasure. They said, indeed, that it was well sometimes to unbend, Dulce est desipere in locis; but a Roman when unbent was like an unbent bow, almost as stiff as before.
In other words, all spontaneity was absent from the Roman mind. Everything done was done on purpose, with a deliberate intention. This also appears in their religion. Their religion was not an inspiration, but an intention. It was all regular, precise, exact. The Roman cultus, like the Roman state, was a compact mass, in which all varieties were merged into a stern unity. All forms of religion might come to Rome and take their places in its pantheon, but they must come as servants and soldiers of the state. Rome opened a hospitable asylum to them, just as Rome had established a refuge on the Capitoline Hill to which all outlaws might come and be safe, on the condition of serving the community.
As everything in Rome must serve the state, so the religion of Rome was a state institution, an established church. But as the state can only command and forbid outward actions, and has no control over the heart, so the religion of Rome was essentially external. It was a system of worship, a ritual, a ceremony. If the externals were properly attended to, it took no notice of opinions or of sentiments. Thus we find in Cicero ("De Natura Deorum") the chief pontiff arguing against the existence of the gods and the use of divination. He claims to believe in religion as a pontifex, while he argues against it as a philosopher. The toleration of Rome consisted in this, that as long as there was outward conformity to prescribed observances, it troubled itself very little about opinions. It said to all religions what Gallio said to the Jews: "If it be a question of words and names and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters." Gallio was a genuine representative of Roman sentiment. With religion, as long as it remained within the limits of opinion or feeling, the magistrate had nothing to do; only when it became an act of disobedience to the public law it was to be punished. Indeed, the very respect for national law in the Roman mind caused it to legalize in Rome the worship of national gods. They considered it the duty of the Jews, in Rome, to worship the Jewish God; of Egyptians, in Rome, to worship the gods of Egypt. "Men of a thousand nations," says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, "come to the city, and must worship the gods of their country, according to their laws at home." As long as the Christians in Rome were regarded as a Jewish sect, their faith was a religio licita, when it was understood to be a departure from Judaism, it was then a criminal rebellion against a national faith268.
The Roman religion has often been considered as a mere copy of that of Greece, and has therefore been confounded with it, as very nearly the same system. No doubt the Romans were imitators; they had no creative imagination. They borrowed and begged their stories about the gods, from Greece or elsewhere. But Hegel has long ago remarked that the resemblance between the two religions is superficial. The gods of Rome, he says, are practical gods, not theoretic; prosaic, not poetic. The religion of Rome is serious and earnest, while that of Greece is gay. Dionysius of Halicarnassus thinks the Roman religion the better of the two, because it rejected the blasphemous myths concerning the loves and quarrels of the heavenly powers. But, on the other hand, the deities of Greece were more living and real persons, with characters of their own. The deities of Rome were working gods, who had each a task assigned to him. They all had some official duty to perform; while the gods of Olympus could amuse themselves as they pleased. While the Zeus of Greece spent his time in adventures, many of which were disreputable, the Jupiter Capitolinus remained at home, attending to his sole business, which was to make Rome the mistress of the world. The gods of Rome, says Hegel, are not human beings, like those of Greece, but soulless machines, gods made by the understanding, even when borrowed from Greek story. They were worshipped also in the interest of the practical understanding, as givers of earthly fortune. The Romans had no real reverence for their gods; they worshipped them in no spirit of adoring love, but always for some useful object. It was a utilitarian worship. Accordingly the practical faculties, engaged in useful arts, were deified. There was a Jupiter Pistor, presiding over bakers. There was a goddess of ovens; and a Juno Moneta, who took care of the coin. There was a goddess who presided over doing nothing, Tranquillitas Vacuna; and even the plague had an altar erected to it. But, after all, no deities were so great, in the opinion of the Romans, as Rome itself. The chief distinction of these deities was that they belonged to the Roman state269.
Cicero considers the Romans to be the most religious of all nations, because they carried their religion into all the details of life. This is true; but one might as well consider himself a devout worshipper of iron or of wood, because he is always using these materials, in doors and out, in his parlor, kitchen, and stable.
As the religion of Rome had no doctrinal system, its truths were communicated mostly by spectacles and ceremonies, which chiefly consisted in the wholesale slaughter of men and animals. There was something frightful in the extent to which this was carried; for when cruelty proceeds from a principle and purpose, it is far worse than when arising from brutal passion. An angry man may beat his wife; but the deliberate, repeated, and ingenious torments of the Inquisition, the massacre of thousands of gladiators in a Roman amphitheatre, or the torture of prisoners by the North American Indians, are all parts of a system, and reinforced by considerations of propriety, duty, and religious reverence.
Mommsen remarks270, that the Roman religion in all its details was a reflection of the Roman state. When the constitution and institutions of Rome changed, their religion changed with them. One illustration of this correspondence he finds in the fact that when the Romans admitted the people of a conquered state to become citizens of Rome, their gods were admitted with them; but in both cases the new citizens (novensides) occupied a subordinate position to the old settlers (indigites271).
That the races of Italy, among whom the Latin language originated, were of the same great Asiatic stock as the Greeks, Germans, Kelts, and Slavic tribes, is sufficiently proved by the unimpeachable evidence of language. The old Latin roots and grammatic forms all retain the analogies of the Aryan families. Their gods and their religion bear marks of the same origin, yet with a special and marked development. For the Roman nation was derived from at least three secondary sources,—the Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans. To these may be added the Pelasgian settlers on the western coast (unless these are included in the Etruscan element), and the very ancient race of Siculi or Sikels, whose name suggests, by its phonetic analogy, a branch of that widely wandering race, the Kelts272. But the obscure and confused traditions of these Italian races help us very little in our present inquiry. That some of the oldest Roman deities were Latin, others Sabine, and others Etruscan, is, however, well ascertained. From the Latin towns Alba and Lavinium came the worship of Vesta, Jupiter, Juno, Saturn and Tellus, Diana and Mars. Niebuhr thinks that the Sabine ritual was adopted by the Romans, and that Varro found the real remains of Sabine chapels on the Quirinal. From Etruria came the system of divination. Some of the oldest portions of the Roman religion were derived from agriculture. The god Saturn took his name from sowing. Picus and Faunus were agricultural gods. Pales, the goddess of herbage, had offerings of milk on her festivals. The Romans, says Döllinger, had no cosmogony of their own; a practical people, they took the world as they found it, and did not trouble themselves about its origin. Nor had they any favorite deities; they worshipped according to what was proper, every one in turn at the right time. Though the most polytheistic of religions, there ran through their system an obscure conception of one supreme being, Jupiter Optimus-Maximus, of whom all the other deities were but qualities and attributes. But they carried furthest of all nations this personifying and deifying of every separate power, this minute subdivision of the deity. Heffter273 says this was carried to an extent which was almost comic. They had divinities who presided over talkativeness and silence, over beginnings and endings, over the manuring of the fields, and over all household transactions. And as the number increased, it became always more difficult to recollect which was the right god to appeal to under any special circumstances. So that often they were obliged to call on the gods in general, and, dismissing the whole polytheistic pantheon, to invoke some unknown god, or the supreme being. Sometimes, however, in these emergencies, new deities were created for the occasion. Thus they came to invoke the pestilence, defeat in battle, blight, etc., as dangerous beings whose hostility must be placated by sacrifices. A better part of their mythology was the worship of Modesty (Pudicitia), Faith or Fidelity (Fides), Concord (Concordia), and the gods of home. It was the business of the pontiffs to see to the creation of new divinities. So the Romans had a goddess Pecunia, money (from Pecus, cattle), dating from the time when the circulating medium consisted in cows and sheep. But when copper money came, a god of copper was added, Æsculanus; and when silver money was invented, a god Argentarius arrived.

§ 2. The Gods of Rome.

Creuzer, in speaking of the Italian worship, says that "one fact which emerges more prominently than any other is the concourse of Oriental, Pelasgic, Samothracian, and Hellenic elements in the religion of Rome." In like manner the Roman deities bear traces of very different sources. We have found reason to believe, in our previous chapters, that the religion of Egypt had a twofold origin, from Asiatic and African elements, and that the religion of Greece, in like manner, was derived from Egyptian and Pelasgic sources. So, too, we find the institutions and people of Rome partaking of a Keltic and Pelasgic origin. Let us now see what was the character of the Roman deities.
One of the oldest and also most original of the gods of Rome was the Sabine god JANUS. He was the deity who presided over beginnings and endings, over the act of opening and shutting. Hence the month which opened the year, January, received its name from this god, who also gave his name to Janua, a gate or door274, and probably to the hill Janiculum275.
The Romans laid great stress on all beginnings; believing that the commencement of any course of conduct determined, by a sort of magical necessity, its results. Bad success in an enterprise they attributed to a wrong beginning, and the only remedy, therefore, was to begin anew. Ovid (Fasti, I. 179) makes Janus say, "All depends on the beginning." When other gods were worshipped, Janus was invoked first of all. He was god of the year. His temple had four sides for the four seasons, and each side had three windows for the months. That his temple was open in war, but closed in peace, indicated that the character of Rome in times of war was to attack and not to defend. She then opened her gates to send her troops forth against the enemy; while in seasons of peace she shut them in at home. This symbol accords well with the haughty courage of the Republic, which commanded victory, by not admitting the possibility of defeat276.
This deity is believed by Creuzer and others to have had an Indian origin, and his name to have been derived from the Sanskrit "Jan," to be born. He resembles no Greek god, and very probably travelled all the way from Bactria to Rome.
On the Kalends of January, which was the chief feast of Janus, it was the duty of every Roman citizen to be careful that all he thought, said, or did should be pure and true, because this day determined the character of the year. All dressed themselves in holiday garb, avoided oaths, abusive words, and quarrels, gave presents, and wished each other a happy year. The presents were little coins with a Janus-head, and sweetmeats. It was customary to sacrifice to Janus at the beginning of all important business.
Janus was the great god of the Sabines, and his most ancient temple appears to have been on Mount Janiculum277. The altar of Fontus, son of Janus, and the tomb of Numa, a Sabine king, were both supposed to be there. Ovid also278 makes Janus say that the Janiculum was his citadel. Ampère remarks as a curious coincidence, that this god, represented with a key in his hand, as the heavenly gate-keeper, should have his home on the hill close to the Vatican, where is the tomb of Peter, who also bears a key with the same significance. The same writer regards the Sabines as inhabiting the hills of Rome before the Pelasgi came and gave this name of Roma (meaning "strength") to their small fortress on one side of the Palatine.
In every important city of Etruria there were temples to the three gods, JUPITER, JUNO, and MINERVA. In like manner, the magnificent temple of the Capitol at Rome consisted of three parts,—a nave, sacred to Jupiter; and two wings or aisles, one dedicated to Juno and the other to Minerva. This temple was nearly square, being two hundred and fifteen feet long and two hundred feet wide; and the wealth accumulated in it was immense. The walls and roof were of marble, covered with gold and silver.
JUPITER, the chief god of Rome, according to most philologists, derives his name (like the Greek Ζεὸς) from the far-away Sanskrit word "Div" or "Diu," indicating the splendor of heaven or of day. Ju-piter is from "Djaus-Pitar," which is the Sanskrit for Father of Heaven, or else from "Diu-pitar," Father of Light. He is, at all events, the equivalent of the Olympian Zeus. He carries the lightning, and, under many appellations, is the supreme god of the skies. Many temples were erected to him in Rome, under various designations. He was called Pluvius, Fulgurator, Tonans, Fulminator, Imbricitor, Serenator,—from the substantives designating rain, lightning, thunder, and the serene sky. Anything struck with lightning became sacred, and was consecrated to Jupiter. As the supreme being he was called Optimus Maximus, also Imperator, Victor, Invictus, Stator, Prædator, Triumphator, and Urbis Custos. And temples or shrines were erected to him under all these names, as the head of the armies, and commander-in-chief of the legions; as Conqueror, as Invincible, as the Turner of Flight, as the God of Booty, and as the Guardian of the City. There is said to have been in Rome three hundred Jupiters, which must mean that Jupiter was worshipped under three hundred different attributes. Another name of this god was Elicius, from the belief that a method existed of eliciting or drawing down the lightning; which belief probably arose from an accidental anticipation of Dr. Franklin's famous experiment. There were no such myths told about Jupiter as concerning the Greek Zeus. The Latin deity was a much more solemn person, his whole time occupied with the care of the city and state. But traces of his origin as a ruler of the atmosphere remained rooted in language; and the Romans, in the time of Augustus, spoke familiarly of "a cold Jupiter," for a cold sky, and of a "bad Jupiter," for stormy weather.
The Juno of the Capitol was the Queen of Heaven, and in this sense was the female Jupiter. But Juno was also the goddess of womanhood, and had the epithets of Virginensis, Matrona, and Opigena; that is, the friend of virgins, of matrons, and the daughter of help. Her chief festival was the Matronalia, on the first of March, hence called the "Women's Kalends." On this day presents were given to women by their husbands and friends. Juno was the patroness of marriage, and her month of June was believed to be very favorable for wedlock. As Juno Lucina she presided over birth; as Mater Matuta,279 over children; as Juno Moneta, over the mint.
The name of Minerva, the Roman Athênê, is said to be derived from an old Etruscan word signifying mental action.280 In the songs of the Sabians the word "promenervet" is used for "monet." The first syllable evidently contains the root, which in all Aryan languages implies thought. The Trinity of the Capitol, therefore, united Power, Wisdom, and Affection, as Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno. The statue of Minerva was placed in schools. She had many temples and festivals, and one of the former was dedicated to her as Minerva Medica.
The Roman pantheon contained three classes of gods and goddesses. First, the old Italian divinities, Etruscan, Latin, and Sabine, naturalized and adopted by the state. Secondly, the pale abstractions of the understanding, invented by the College of Pontiffs for moral and political purposes. And thirdly, the gods of Greece, imported, with a change of name, by the literary admirers and imitators of Hellas.
The genuine deities of the Roman religion were all of the first order. Some of them, like Janus, Vertumnus, Faunus, Vesta, retained their original character; others were deliberately confounded with some Greek deity. Thus Venus, an old Latin or Sabine goddess to whom Titus Tatius erected a temple as Venus Cloacina, and Servius Tullius another as Venus Libertina,281 was afterward transformed into the Greek Aphroditê, goddess of love. If it be true, as is asserted by Nævius and Plautus, that she was the goddess of gardens, as Venus Hortensis and Venus Fruti, then she may have been originally the female Vertumnus. So Diana was originally Diva Jana, and was simply the female Janus, until she was transformed into the Greek Artemis.
The second class of Roman divinities were those manufactured by the pontiffs for utilitarian purposes,—almost the only instance in the history of religion of such a deliberate piece of god-making. The purpose of the pontiffs was excellent; but the result, naturally, was small. The worship of such abstractions as Hope (Spes), Fear (Pallor), Concord (Concordia), Courage (Virtus), Justice (Æquitas), Clemency (Clementia), could have little influence, since it must have been apparent to the worshipper himself that these were not real beings, but only his own conceptions, thrown heavenward.
The third class of deities were those adopted from Greece. New deities, like Apollo, were imported, and the old ones Hellenized. The Romans had no statues of their gods in early times; this custom they learned from Greece. "A full river of influence," says Cicero, "and not a little brook, has flowed into Rome out of Greece282." They sent to Delphi to inquire of the Greek oracle. In a few decades, says Hartung, the Roman religion was wholly transformed by this Greek influence; and that happened while the senate and priests were taking the utmost care that not an iota of the old ceremonies should be altered. Meantime the object was to identify the objects of worship in other countries with those worshipped at home. This was done in an arbitrary and superficial way, and caused great confusion in the mythologies283. Accidental resemblances, slight coincidences of names, were sufficient for the identification of two gods. As long as the service of the temple was unaltered, the priests troubled themselves very little about such changes. In this way, the twelve gods of Olympus—Zeus, Poseidôn, Apollo, Arês, Hêphæstos, Hermes, Hêrê, Athênê, Artemis, Aphroditê, Hestia, and Dêmêtêr—were naturalized or identified as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, Juno, Minerva, Diana, Venus, Vesta, and Ceres, Dionysos became Liber or Bacchus; Persephonê, Proserpina; and the Muses were accepted as the Greeks had imagined them.
To find the true Roman worship, therefore, we must divest their deities of these Greek habiliments, and go back to their original Etruscan or Latin characters.
Among the Etruscans we find one doctrine unknown to the Greeks and not adopted by the Romans; that, namely, of the higher "veiled deities,"284 superior to Jupiter. They also had a dodecad of six male and six female deities, the Consentes and Complices, making a council of gods, whom Jupiter consulted in important cases. Vertumnus was an Etruscan; so, according to Ottfried Müller, was the Genius. So are the Lares, or household protectors, and Charun, or Charon, a power of the under-world. The minute system of worship was derived by Rome from Etruria. The whole system of omens, especially by lightning, came from the same source.
After Janus, and three Capitoline gods (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva), above mentioned, the Romans worshipped a series of deities who may be classed as follows:—
I. Gods representing the powers of nature:—
1. SOL, the Sun. A Sabine deity. In later times the poets attributed to him all the characters of Helios; but as a Roman god, he never emerged into his own daylight.
2. LUNA, the Moon. Also regarded as of Sabine origin.
3. MATER MATUTA. Mother of Day, that is, the dawn. Worshipped at the Matronalia in June, as the possessor of all motherly qualities, and especially as the protector of children from ill-treatment. As the storms were apt to go down at morning, she was appealed to to protect mariners from shipwreck. The consul Tib. Semp. Gracchus dedicated a temple to her B.C. 176.
4. TEMPESTATES, the tempests. A temple was dedicated to the storms, B.C. 259.
5. VULCANUS. This name is supposed to be from the same root as "fulgeo," to shine. He was an old Italian deity. His temple is mentioned as existing B.C. 491.
6. FONTUS, the god of fountains. The Romans valued water so highly, that they erected altars and temples to this divinity, and had a feast of fountains (Fontinalia) on October 13th. There were also goddesses of fountains, as Lynapha Juturna, the goddess of mineral springs. Egeria is the only nymph of a fountain mentioned in Roman mythology.
7. DIVUS PATER TIBERINUS, or Father Tiber, was of course the chief river god. The augurs called him Coluber, the snake, from his meandering and bending current.
8. NEPTUNUS. The origin of this word has been a great puzzle to the learned, who, however, connect it with nebula, a cloud, as the clouds come from the sea. He had his temple and his festivals at Rome.
Other deities connected with the powers of nature were PORTUNUS, the god of harbors; SALACIA, a goddess of the salt sea; TRANQUILLITAS, the goddess of calm weather.
II. Gods of human relations:—
1. VESTA, an ancient Latin goddess, and one of the oldest and most revered. She was the queen of the hearth and of the household fire. She was also the protector of the house, associated with the Lares and Penates. Some offering was due to her at every meal. She sanctified the home.
Afterward, when all Rome became one vast family, Vesta became the goddess of this public home, and her temple was the fireside of the city, in which burned always the sacred fire, watched by the vestal virgins. In this worship, and its associations, we find the best side of Roman manners,—the love of home, the respect for family life, the hatred of impurity and immodesty. She was also called "the mother," and qualified as Mater Stata, that is, the immovable mother.
2. The PENATES and LARES. These deities were also peculiarly Roman. The Lar, or Lares, were supposed to be the souls of ancestors which resided in the home and guarded it. Their images were kept in an oratory or domestic chapel, called a Lararium, and were crowned by the master of the house to make them propitious. The paterfamilias conducted all the domestic worship of the household, whether of prayers or sacrifices, according to the maxim of Cato, "Scito dominum pro tota familia rem divinam facere285." The Penates were beings of a higher order than the Lares, but having much the same offices. Their name was from the words denoting the interior of the mansion (Penetralia, Penitus). They took part in all the joys and sorrows of the family. To go home was "to return to one's Penates." In the same way, "Lar meus" meant "my house "; "Lar conductus," "a hired house "; "Larem mutare" meant to change one's house. Thus the Roman in his home felt himself surrounded by invisible friends and guardians. No other nation, except the Chinese, have carried this religion of home so far. This is the tender side of the stern Roman character. Very little of pathos or sentiment appears in Roman poetry, but the lines by Catullus to his home are as tender as anything in modern literature. The little peninsula of Sirmio on the Lago di Garda has been glorified by these few words.
3. The GENIUS. The worship of the genius of a person or place was also peculiarly Italian. Each man had his genius, from whom his living power and vital force came. Tertullian speaks of the genius of places. On coins are found the Genius of Rome. Almost everything had its genius,—nations, colonies, princes, the senate, sleep, the theatre. The marriage-bed is called genial, because guarded by a genius. All this reminds us of the Fravashi of the Avesta and of the Persian monuments. Yet the Genius also takes his place among the highest gods.
III. Deities of the human soul:—
1. MENS, Mind, Intellect.
2. PUDICITIA, Chastity.
3. PIETAS, Piety, Reverence for Parents.
4 FIDES, Fidelity.
5. CONCORDIA, Concord.
6. VIRTUS, Courage.
7. SPES, Hope.
8. PALLOR or PAVOR, Fear.
9. VOLUPTAS, Pleasure.
IV. Deities of rural and other occupations:—
1. TELLUS, the Earth.
2. SATURNUS, Saturn. The root of this name is SAO = SERO, to sow. Saturn is the god of planting and sowing.
3. OPS, goddess of the harvest.
4. MARS. Originally an agricultural god, dangerous to crops; afterwards god of war.
5. SILVANUS, the wood god.
6. FAUNUS, an old Italian deity, the patron of agriculture.
7. TERMINUS, an old Italian deity, the guardian of limits and boundaries.
8. CERES, goddess of the cereal grasses.
9. LIBER, god of the vine, and of wine.
10. BONA DEA, the good goddess. The worship of the good goddess was imported from Greece in later times; and perhaps its basis was the worship of Dêmêtêr. The temple of the good goddess was on Mount Aventine. At her feast on the 1st of May all suggestions of the male sex were banished from the house; no wine must be drunk; the myrtle, as a symbol of love, was removed. The idea of the feast was of a chaste marriage, as helping to preserve the human race.
11. MAGNA MATER, or Cybele. This was a foreign worship, but early introduced at Rome.
12. FLORA. She was an original goddess of Italy, presiding over flowers and blossoms. Great license was practised at her worship.
13. VERTUMNUS, the god of gardens, was an old Italian deity, existing before the foundation of Rome.
14. POMONA, goddess of the harvest.
18. PALES. A rural god, protecting cattle. At his feast men and cattle were purified.
The Romans had many other deities, whose worship was more or less popular. But those now mentioned were the principal ones. This list shows that the powers of earth were more objects of reverence than the heavenly bodies. The sun and stars attracted this agricultural people less than the spring and summer, seedtime and harvest. Among the Italians the country was before the city, and Rome was founded by country people.

§ 3. Worship and Ritual.

The Roman ceremonial worship was very elaborate and minute, applying to every part of daily life. It consisted in sacrifices, prayers, festivals, and the investigation by augurs and haruspices of the will of the gods and the course of future events. The Romans accounted themselves an exceedingly religious people, because their religion was so intimately connected with the affairs of home and state.
The Romans distinguished carefully between things sacred and profane. This word "profane" comes from the root "fari," to speak; because the gods were supposed to speak to men by symbolic events. A fane is a place thus consecrated by some divine event; a profane place, one not consecrated.286 But that which man dedicates to the gods (dedicat or dicat) is sacred, or consecrated.287 Every place which was to be dedicated was first "liberated" by the augur from common uses; then "consecrated" to divine uses by the pontiff. A "temple" is a place thus separated, or cut off from other places; for the root of this word, like that of "tempus" (time) is the same as the Greek τέμνω, to cut.
The Roman year was full of festivals (feriæ) set apart for religious uses. It was declared by the pontiffs a sin to do any common work on these days, but works of necessity were allowed. These festivals were for particular gods, in honor of great events in the history of Rome, or of rural occurrences, days of purification and atonement, family feasts, or feasts in honor of the dead. The old Roman calendar288 was as carefully arranged as that of modern Rome. The day began at midnight. The following is a view of the Roman year in its relation to festivals:—
January.
  • 1. Feast of Janus, the god of beginnings.
  • 9. Agonalia.
  • 11. Carmentalia. In honor of the nymph Carmenta, a woman's festival.
  • 16. Dedication of the Temple of Concord.
  • 31. Feast of the Penates.
February.
  • 1. Feast of Juno Sospita, the Savior: an old goddess.
  • 13. Faunalia, dedicated to Faunus and the rural gods.
  • 15. Lupercalia. Feast of fruitfulness.
  • 17. Fornacalia. Feast of the oven goddess Fornax.
  • 18 to 28. The Februatio, or feast of purification and atonement, and the Feralia, or feast of the dead. Februus was an old Etrurian god of the under-world. Also, the Charistia, a family festival for putting an end to quarrels among relations.
  • 23. Feast of Terminus, god of boundaries. Boundary-stones anointed and crowned.
March.
  • 1. Feast of Mars. Also, the Matronalia. The Salii, priests of Mars, go their rounds, singing old hymns.
  • 6. Feast of Vesta.
  • 7. Feast of Vejovis or Vedius, i.e. the boy Jupiter.
  • 14. Equiria, or horse-races in honor of Mars.
  • 15. Feast of Anna-Perenna, goddess of health.
  • 17. Liberalia, Feast of Bacchus. Young men invested with the Toga-Virilis on this day.
  • 19 to 23. Feast of Minerva, for five days. Offerings made to her by all mechanics, artists, and scholars.
April.
  • 1. Feast of Venus, to whom the month is sacred.
  • 4. Megalesia. Feast of Cybele and Altys. It lasted six days, and was the Roman analogue of the feast of Ceres in Greece and of Isis in Egypt.
  • 12. Cerealia. Feast of Ceres. Games in the circus.
  • 15. Fordicicia. Feast of cows.
  • 21. Palililia. Feast of Pales, and of the founding of Rome.
  • 23. Vinalia. Feast of new wine.
  • 25. Robigalia. Feast of the goddess of blight, Robigo.
  • 28. Floralia. Feast of the goddess Flora; very licentious.
May.
  • 1. Feast of the Bona Dea, the good goddess; otherwise Maia, Ops, Tellus, or the Earth. This was the feast held by women secretly in the house of the pontiff.
  • 9. Lemuralia. Feast of the departed spirits or ghosts.
  • 12. Games to Mars.
  • 23. Tubilustria, to consecrate wind instruments.
June.
  • 1. Feast of Carna, goddess of the internal organs of the body, and of Juno Moneta.
  • 4. Feast of Bellona.
  • 5. Feast of Deus Fidius.
  • 7 to 15. Feast of Vesta.
  • 19. Matralia. Feast of Mater Matuta.
Other lesser festivals in this month to Summanus, Fortuna, Fortis, Jupiter Stator, etc.
July.
  • 1. Day devoted to changing residences, like the 1st of May in New York. 4. Fortuna Muliebris.
  • 5. Populifuga. In memory of the people's flight, on some occasion, afterward forgotten.
  • 7. Feast of Juno Caprotina.
  • 15. Feast of Castor and Pollux.
Other festivals in this month were the Lucaria, Neptunalia, and Furinalia.
August.
  • 1. Games to Mars.
  • 17. Feast of the god Portumnus.
  • 18. Consualia, feast of Consus. Rape of the Sabines.
  • 23. Vulcanalia, to avert fires.
  • 25. Opeconsivia. Feast of Ops Consiva.
September.
The chief feasts in this month were the games (Ludi Magni or Romani) in honor of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
October.
  • 13. Fontinalia. Feast of fountains, when the springs were strewed with flowers.
  • 15. Sacrifice of a horse to Mars.
The feasts in November are unimportant.
December.
  • 5. Faunalia, in honor of Faunus.
  • 19. Saturnalia, sacred to Saturn. A Roman thanksgiving for the harvest. It lasted seven days, during which the slaves had their liberty, in memory of the age of Saturn, when all were equal. The rich kept open table to all comers, and themselves waited on the slaves. Presents were interchanged, schools were closed. The Senate did not sit.
Thus religion everywhere met the public life of the Roman by its festivals, and laid an equal yoke on his private life by its requisition of sacrifices, prayers, and auguries. All pursuits must be conducted according to a system, carefully laid down by the College of Pontiffs. Sacrifices and prayers of one or another kind were demanded during most of the occasions of life. Hidden in our word "inaugurate" is the record of the fact that nothing could be properly begun without the assistance of the augurs. Sacrifices of lustration and expiation were very common, not so much for moral offences as for ceremonial mistakes. The doctrine of the opus operatum was supreme in Roman religion. The intention was of little importance; the question was whether the ceremony had been performed exactly in accordance with rule. If not, it must be done again. Sometimes fifty or a hundred victims were killed before the priestly etiquette was contented. Sometimes magistrates must resign because the college of augurs suspected some informality in the ceremonies of their election. Laws were annulled and judicial proceedings revoked for the same reason. If the augurs declared the signs unfavorable, a public meeting must be adjourned and no business done. A single mistake in the form of a prayer would make it ineffectual. If a man went out to walk, there was a form to be recited; if he mounted his chariot, another. All these religious acts were of the nature of charms, which acted on the gods by an inherent power, and compelled them to be favorable, whatever their own wishes might be. The gods were, therefore, as much the slaves of external mechanical laws as the Romans themselves. In reality, the supreme god of Rome was law, in the form of rule. But these rules afterward expanded, as the Roman civilization increased, into a more generous jurisprudence. Regularity broadened into justice.289 But for a long period the whole of the Roman organic law was a system of hard external method. And the rise of law as justice and reason was the decline of religion as mere prescription and rule. This one change is the key to the dissolution of the Roman system of religious practices.
The seat of Roman worship in the oldest times was the Regia in the Via Sacra, near the Forum. This was the house of the chief pontiff, and here the sacrifices were performed290 by the Rex Sacrorum. Near by was the temple of Vesta. The Palatine Hill was regarded as the home of the Latin gods, while the Quirinal was that of the Sabine deities. But the Penates of Rome remained at Lavinium, the old metropolis of the Latin Confederation, and mother of the later city. Every one of the highest officers of Rome was obliged to go and sacrifice to the ancient gods, at this mother city of Lavinium, before entering on his office.
The old worship of Rome was free from idolatry. Jupiter, Juno, Janus, Ops, Vesta, were not represented by idols. This feature was subsequently imported by means of Hellenic influences coming through Cuma and other cities of Magna Græcia. By the same channels came the Sibylline books. There were ten Sibyls,—the Persian, Libyan, Delphian, Cumæan, Erythræan, Samian, Amalthæan, Hellespontine, Phrygian, and Tiburtine. The Sibylline books authorized or commanded the worship of various Greek gods; they were intrusted to the Decemviri.
Roman worship was at first administered by certain patrician families, and this was continued till B.C. 300, when plebeians were allowed to enter the sacred colleges. A plebeian became Pontifex Maximus, for the first time, B.C. 253.
The pontiffs (Pontifices) derived their name (bridge-builders) from a bridge over the Tiber, which it was their duty to build and repair in order to sacrifice on either bank. They possessed the supreme authority in all matters of worship, and decided questions concerning marriage, inheritance, public games.
The Flamens were the priests of particular deities. The office was for life, and there were fifteen Flamens in all. The Flamen Dialis, or priest of Jupiter, had a life burdened with etiquette. He must not take an oath, ride, have anything tied with knots on his person, see armed men, look at a prisoner, see any one at work on a Festa, touch a goat, or dog, or raw flesh, or yeast. He must not bathe in the open air, pass a night outside the city, and he could only resign his office on the death of his wife. This office is Pelasgic, and very ancient.
The Salii were from early times priests of Mars, who danced in armor, and sang old hymns. The Luperci were another body of priests, also of very ancient origin. Other colleges of priests were the Epulones, Curiones, Tities.
The Vestal virgins were highly honored and very sacred. Their work was to tend the fire of Vesta, and prevent the evil omen of its extinction. They were appointed by the Pontifex Maximus. They were selected when very young, and could resign their office after thirty years of service. They had a large revenue, enjoyed the highest honors, and to strike them was a capital offence. If a criminal about to be executed met them, his life was spared. Consuls and prætors must give way to them in the streets. They assisted at the theatres and at all public entertainments. They could go out to visit and to dine with their relations. Their very presence protected any one from assault, and their intercession must not be neglected. They prepared the sacred cakes, took part in many sacrifices, and had the charge of a holy serpent, keeping his table supplied with meat.
The duty of the augurs was to inquire into the divine will; and they could prevent any public business by declaring the omens unfavorable. The name is probably derived from an old Aryan word, meaning "sight" or "eye," which has come to us in the Greek αὐγή, and the German auge. Our words "auspicious" and "auspicate" are derived from the "auspices," or outlook on nature which these seers practised. For they were in truth the Roman seers. Their business was to look, at midnight, into the starry heavens; to observe thunder, lightning, meteors; the chirping or flying of birds; the habits of the sacred chickens; the appearance of quadrupeds; or casualties of various kinds, as sneezing, stumbling, spilling salt or wine. The last relics of these superstitions are to be found in the little books sold in Rome, in which the fortunate number in a lottery is indicated by such accidents and events of common life.
The Romans, when at prayer, were in the habit of covering their heads, so that no sound of evil augury might be heard. The suppliant was to kiss his right hand, and then turn round in a circle and sit down. Many formulæ of prayers were prescribed to be used on all occasions of life. They must be repeated three times, at least, to insure success. Different animals were sacrificed to different gods,—white cattle with gilded horns to Jupiter, a bull to Apollo, a horse to Mars. Sometimes the number of victims was enormous. On Caligula's accession, one hundred and sixty thousand victims were killed in the Roman Empire.
Lustrations were great acts of atonement or purification, and are often described by ancient writers. The city was lustrated by a grand procession of the four colleges of Augurs, Pontifices, Quindecemviri, and Septemviri. Lucan, in his Pharsalia, describes such a lustration.291 Tacitus gives a like description, in his History,292 of the ceremonies attending the rebuilding the Capitol. On an auspicious day, beneath a serene sky, the ground chosen for the foundation was surrounded with ribbons and flowers. Soldiers, selected for their auspicious names, brought into the enclosure branches from the trees sacred to the gods. The Vestal virgins, followed by a band of children, sprinkled the place with water drawn from three fountains and three rivers. The prætor and the pontiff next sacrificed a swine, a sheep, and a bull, and besought Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva to favor the undertaking. The magistrates, priests, senators, and knights then drew the corner-stone to its place, throwing in ingots of gold and silver.
The Romans, ever anxious about the will of the gods, naturalized among themselves the Etruscan institution of the Haruspices. The prodigies observed were in the entrails of animals and the phenomena of nature. The parts of the entrails observed were the tongue, lungs, heart, liver, gall bladder, spleen, kidneys, and caul. If the head of the right lobe of the liver was absent, it was considered a very bad omen. If certain fissures existed, or were absent, it was a portent of the first importance. But the Romans were a very practical people, and not easily deterred from their purpose. So if one sacrifice failed they would try another and another, until the portents were favorable. But sceptical persons were naturally led to ask some puzzling questions, such as these, which Cicero puts in his work on Divination:293 How can a cleft in a liver be connected, by any natural law, with my acquisition of a property? If it is so connected, what would be the result, if some one else, who was about to lose his property, had examined the same victim? If you answer that the divine energy, which extends through the universe, directs each man in the choice of a victim, then how happens it that a man having first had an unfavorable omen, by trying again should get a good one? How happens it that a sacrifice to one deity gives a favorable sign, and that to another the opposite? But these criticisms only arrived after the old Roman faith had begun to decline.
Funeral solemnities were held with great care and pomp, and festivals for the dead were regularly celebrated. The dead father or mother was accounted a god, and yet a certain terror of ancestral spectres was shown by a practice of driving them out of the house by lustrations. For it was uncertain whether the paternal Manes were good spirits, Lares, or evil spirits, and Lemures. Consequently in May there was the Lemuria, or feast for exorcising the evil spirits from houses and homes, conducted with great solemnity.

§ 4. The Decay of the Roman Religion.

"The more distinguished a Roman became," says Mommsen, "the less was he a free man. The omnipotence of law, the despotism of the rule, drove him into a narrow circle of thought and action, and his credit and influence depended on the sad austerity of his life. The whole duty of man, with the humblest and greatest of the Romans, was to keep his house in order, and be the obedient servant of the state." While each individual could be nothing more than a member of the community, a single link in the iron chain of Roman power; he, on the other hand, shared the glory and might of all-conquering Rome. Never was such esprit de corps developed, never such intense patriotism, never such absolute subservience and sacrifice of the individual to the community. But as man is manifold and cannot be forever confined to a single form of life, a reaction against this narrow patriotism was to be expected in the interest of personal freedom, and it came very naturally from Greek influences. The Roman could not contemplate the exuberant development of Greek thought, art, literature, society, without bitterly feeling how confined was his own range, how meagre and empty his own life. Hence, very early, Roman society began to be Hellenized, but especially after the unification of Italy. To quote Mommsen once more: "The Greek civilization was grandly human and cosmopolitan; and Rome not only was stimulated by this influence, but was penetrated by it to its very centre." Even in politics there was a new school, whose fixed idea was the consolidation and propagandism of republicanism; but this Philhellenism showed itself especially in the realm of thought and faith. As the old faith died, more ceremonies were added; for as life goes out, forms come in. As the winter of unbelief lowers the stream of piety, the ice of ritualism accumulates along its banks. In addition to the three colleges of Pontiffs, Haruspices, and Quindecemviri, another of Epulones, whose business was to attend to the religious feasts, was instituted in A.U. 558 (B.C. 196). Contributions and tithes of all sorts were demanded from the people. Hercules, especially, as is more than once intimated in the plays of Plautus, became very rich by his tithes.294 Religion became more and more a charm, on the exact performance of which the favor of the gods depended; so that ceremonies were sometimes performed thirty times before the essential accuracy was attained.
The gods were now changed, in the hands of Greek statuaries, into ornaments for a rich man's home. Greek myths were imported and connected with the story of Roman deities, as Ennius made Saturn the son of Coelus, in imitation of the genealogy of Kronos. That form of rationalism called Euhemerism, which explains every god into a mythical king or hero, became popular. So, too, was the doctrine of Epicharmos, who considered the divinities as powers of nature symbolized. According to the usual course of events, superstition and unbelief went hand in hand. As the old faith died out, new forms of worship, like those of Cybele and Bacchus, came in. Stern conservatives like Cato opposed all these innovations and scepticisms, but ineffectually.
Gibbon says that "the admirable work of Cicero,'De Naturâ Deorum,' is the best clew we have to guide us through this dark abyss" (the moral and religious teachings of the philosophers).295 After, in the first two books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the gods have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the welfare of mankind. To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course believes in the gods, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their existence. "I believe in the gods," says he, "on the authority and tradition of our ancestors; but if we reason, I shall reason against their existence." "Of course," he says, "I believe in divination, as I have always been taught to do. But who knows whence it comes? As to the voice of the Fauns, I never heard it; and I do not know what a Faun is. You say that the regular course of nature proves the existence of some ordering power. But what more regular than a tertian or quartan fever? The world subsists by the power of nature." Cotta goes on to criticise the Roman pantheon, ridiculing the idea of such gods as "Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor, Envy, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy," etc. He shows that there are many gods of the same name; several Jupiters, Vulcans, Apollos, and Venuses. He then denies providence, by showing that the wicked succeed and the good are unfortunate. Finally, all was left in doubt, and the dialogue ends with a tone of triumphant uncertainty. This was Cicero's contribution to theology; and Cicero was far more religious than most men of his period.
Many writers, and more recently Merivale,296 have referred to the remarkable debate which took place in the Roman Senate, on the occasion of Catiline's conspiracy. Cæsar, at that time chief pontiff, the highest religious authority in the state, gave his opinion against putting the conspirators to death; for death, says he, "is the end of all suffering. After death there is neither pain nor pleasure (ultra neque curæ, neque gaudii locum)." Cato, the Stoic, remarked that Cæsar had spoken well concerning life and death. "I take it," says he, "that he regards as false what we are told about the sufferings of the wicked hereafter," but does not object to that statement. These speeches are reported by Sallust, and are confirmed by Cicero's fourth Catiline Oration. The remarkable fact is, not that such things were said, but that they were heard with total indifference. No one seemed to think it was of any consequence one way or the other. Suppose that when the question of the execution of Charles I. was before Parliament, it had been opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (had he been there) on the ground that after death all pain and pleasure ceased. The absurdity of the supposition shows the different position of the human mind at the two epochs.
In fact, an impassable gulf yawned between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought. It was out of the question for an educated Roman, who read Plato and Zeno, who listened to Cicero and Hortensius, to believe in Janus and the Penates. "All very well for the people," said they. "The people must be kept in order by these superstitions."297 But the secret could not be kept. Sincere men, like Lucretius, who saw all the evil of these superstitions, and who had no strong religious sense, would speak out, and proclaim all religion to be priestcraft and an unmitigated evil. The poem of Lucretius, "De Rerum Naturâ," declares faith in the gods to have been the curse of the human race, and immortality to be a silly delusion. He denies the gods, providence, the human soul, and any moral purpose in the universe. But as religion is an instinct, which will break out in some form, and when expelled from the soul returns in disguise, Lucretius, denying all the gods, pours out a lovely hymn to Venus, goddess of beauty and love.
The last philosophic protest, in behalf of a pure and authoritative faith, came from the Stoics. The names of Seneca, Epictetus, and Aurelius Antoninus gave dignity, if they could not bring safety, to the declining religion of Rome.
Seneca, indeed, was inferior to the other two in personal character, and was more of a rhetorician than a philosopher. But noble thoughts occur in his writings. "A sacred spirit sits in every heart," he says, "and treats us as we treat it." He opposed idolatry, he condemned animal sacrifices. The moral element is very marked in his brilliant pages. Philosophy, he says, is an effort to be wise and good.298 Physical studies he condemns as useless.299 Goodness is that which harmonizes with the natural movements of the soul.300 God and matter are the two principles of all being; God is the active principle, matter the passive. God is spirit, and all souls are part of this spirit.301 Reason is the bond which unites God and other souls, and so God dwells in all souls.302
One of the best sayings of Epictetus is that "the wise man does not merely know by tradition and hearsay that Jupiter is the father of gods and men; but is inwardly convinced of it in his soul, and therefore cannot help acting and feeling according to this conviction."303
Epictetus declared that the philosopher could have no will but that of the deity; he never blames fate or fortune, for he knows that no real evil can befall the just man. The life of Epictetus was as true as his thoughts were noble, but he had fallen on an evil age, which needed for its reform, not a new philosophy, but a new inspiration of divine life. This steady current downward darkened the pure soul of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, of whom Niebuhr says,304 "If there is any sublime human virtue, it is his." He adds: "He was certainly the noblest character of his time; and I know no other man who combined such unaffected kindness, mildness, and humility with such conscientiousness and severity towards himself." "If there is anywhere an expression of virtue, it is in the heavenly features of M. Aurelius. His 'Meditations' are a golden book, though there are things in it which cannot be read without deep grief, for there we find this purest of men without happiness." Though absolute monarch of the Empire, and rich in the universal love of his people, he was not powerful enough to resist the steady tendency to decay in society. Nor did he know that the power that was to renew the life of the world was already present in Christianity. He himself was in soul almost a Christian, though he did not know it, and though the Christian element of faith and hope was wanting. But he expressed a thought worthy of the Gospel, when he said: "The man of disciplined mind reverently bids Nature, who bestows all things and resumes them again to herself, 'Give what thou wilt, and take what thou wilt.'"305
Although we have seen that Seneca speaks of a sacred, spirit which dwells in us, other passages in his works (quoted by Zeller) show that he was, like other Stoics, a pantheist, and meant the soul of the world. He says (Nat. Qu., II. 45, and Prolog. 13): "Will you call God the world? You may do so without mistake. For he is all that you see around you." "What is God? The mind of the universe. What is God? All that you see, and all that you do not see."306
It was not philosophy which destroyed religion in Rome. Philosophy, no doubt, weakened faith in the national gods, and made the national worship seem absurd. But it was the general tendency downward; it was the loss of the old Roman simplicity and purity; it was the curse of Cæsarism, which, destroying all other human life, destroyed also the life of religion. What it came to at last, in well-endowed minds, may be seen in this extract from the elder Pliny:—
"All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God is, if in truth he be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the compass of man's understanding to know. But it is a foolish delusion, which has sprung from human weakness and human pride, to imagine that such an infinite spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men. It is difficult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures; since the other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and wants that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life."307
The system of the Stoics was exactly adapted to the Roman character; but, naturally, it exaggerated its faults instead of correcting them. It supplanted all other systems in the esteem of leading minds; but the narrowness of the Roman intellect reacted on the philosophy, and made that much more narrow than it was in the Greek thought. It became simple ethics, omitting both the physical and metaphysical side.
Turning to literature, we find in Horace a gay epicureanism, which always says: "Enjoy this life, for it will be soon over, and after death there is nothing left for us." Virgil tells us that those are happy who know the causes of things, and so escape the terrors of Acheron. The serious Tacitus, a man always in earnest, a penetrating mind, is by Bunsen called "the last Roman prophet, but a prophet of death and judgment. He saw that Rome hastened to ruin, and that Cæsarism was an unmixed evil, but an evil not to be remedied."308 He declares that the gods had to mingle in Roman affairs as protectors; they now appeared only for vengeance.309 Tacitus in one passage speaks of human freedom as superior to fate,310 but in another expresses his uncertainty on the whole question.311 Equally uncertain was he concerning the future life, though inclined to believe that the soul is not extinguished with the body.312
But the tone of the sepulchral monuments of that period is not so hopeful. Here are some which are quoted by Döllinger,313 from Muratori and Fabretti: "Reader, enjoy thy life; for, after death, there is neither laughter nor play, nor any kind of enjoyment." "Friend, I advise thee to mix a goblet of wine and drink, crowning thy head with flowers. Earth and fire consume all that remains at death." "Pilgrim, stop and listen. In Hades is no boat and no Charon; no Eacus and no Cerberus. Once dead, we are all alike." Another says: "Hold all a mockery, reader; nothing is our own."
So ended the Roman religion; in superstition among the ignorant, in unbelief among the wise. It was time that something should come to renew hope. This was the gift which the Gospel brought to the Romans,—hope for time, hope beyond time. This was the prayer for the Romans of the Apostle Paul: "Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost."314 A remarkable fact, that a Jewish writer should exhort Romans to hope and courage!

§ 5. Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity.

The idea of Rome is law, that of Christianity is love. In Roman worship law took the form of iron rules; in Roman theology it appeared as a stern fate; in both as a slavery. Christianity came as freedom, in a worship free from forms, in a view of God which left freedom to man. Christianity came to the Roman world, not as a new theory, but as a new life. As, during the early spring, the power of the returning sun penetrates the soil, silently touching the springs of life; so Christianity during two hundred years moved silently in the heart of Roman society, creating a new faith, hope, and love. And as, at last, in the spring the grass shoots, the buds open, the leaves appear, the flowers bloom; so, at last, Christianity, long working in silence and shadow, suddenly became apparent, and showed that it had been transforming the whole tone and temper of Roman civilization.
But wherever there is action there is also reaction, and no power or force can wholly escape this law. So Roman thought, acted on by Christianity, reacted and modified in many respects the Gospel. Not always in a bad way, sometimes it helped its developments. For the Providence which made the Gospel for the Romans made the Romans for the Gospel.
The great legacy bequeathed to mankind by ancient Rome was law. Other nations, it is true, had codes of law, like the Institutes of Manu in India, or the jurisprudence of Solon and the enactments of Lycurgus. But Roman law from the beginning was sanctified by the conviction that it was founded on justice, and not merely on expediency or prudence. In submitting to the laws, even when they were cruel and oppressive, the Roman was obeying, not force, but conscience. The view which Plato gave as an ideal in Crito was realized in Roman society from the first. Consider the cruel enactments which made the debtors the slaves of the creditor, and the fact that when the plebeians were ground to the earth by that oppression, they did not attempt to resist the law, but in their despair fled from their homes, beyond the jurisdiction of Rome, to establish a new city where these enactments could not reach them. Only when the laws are thus enforced by the public conscience as something sacred, does society become possible; and this sense of the divinity which hedges a code of laws has been transmitted from ancient Rome into the civilization of Europe.
Cicero, in his admirable treatise on the laws, which unfortunately we have in an imperfect condition, devotes the whole of the first book to establishing eternal justice as the basis of all jurisprudence. No better text-book could have been found for the defence of what was called "the higher law," in the great American antislavery struggle, than this work of Cicero. "Let us establish," he says, "the principles of justice on that supreme law which has existed from all ages before any legislative enactments were written, or any political governments formed." "Among all questions, there is none more important to understand than this, that man is born for justice; and that law and equity have not been established by opinion, but by nature." "It is an absurd extravagance in some philosophers to assert that all things are necessarily just which are established by the laws and institutions of nations." "Justice does not consist in submission to written laws." "If the will of the people, the decrees of the senate, the decisions of magistrates, were sufficient to establish rights, then it might become right to rob, to commit adultery, to forge wills, if this was sanctioned by the votes or decrees of the majority." "The sum of all is, that what is right should be sought for its own sake, because it is right, and not because it is enacted."
Law appears from the very beginnings of the Roman state. The oldest traditions make Romulus, Numa, and Servius to be legislators. From that time, after the expulsion of the Tarquins, Rome was governed by laws. Even the despotism of the Cæsars did not interfere with the general administration of the laws in civil affairs; for the one-man power, though it may corrupt and degrade a state, does not immediately and directly affect many persons in their private lives. Law continued to rule in common affairs, and this legacy of a society organized by law was the gift of Rome to modern Europe. How great a blessing it has been may be seen by comparing the worst Christian government with the best of the despotic governments of Asia. Mohammedan society is ruled by a hierarchy of tyranny, each little tyrant being in turn the victim of the one above him.
The feudal system, introduced by the Teutonic races, attempted to organize Europe on the basis of military despotism; but Roman law was too strong for feudal law, and happily for mankind overcame it and at last expelled it.
Christianity, in its ready hospitality for all the truth and good which it encounters, accepted Roman jurisprudence and gave to it a new lease of life.315 Christian emperors and Christian lawyers codified the long line of decrees and enactments reaching back to the Twelve Tables, and established them as the laws of the Christian world. But the spirit of Roman law acted on Christianity in a more subtle manner. It reproduced the organic character of the Roman state in the Western Latin Church, and it reproduced the soul of Roman law in the Western Latin theology.
It has not always been sufficiently considered how much the Latin Church was a reproduction, on a higher plane, of the old Roman Commonwealth. The resemblance between the Roman Catholic ceremonies and those of Pagan Rome has been often noticed. The Roman Catholic Church has borrowed from Paganism saints' days, incense, lustrations, consecrations of sacred places, votive-offerings, relics; winking, nodding, sweating, and bleeding images; holy water, vestments, etc. But the Church of Rome itself, in its central idea of authority, is a reproduction of the Roman state religion, which was a part of the Roman state. The Eastern churches were sacerdotal and religious; the Church of Rome added to these elements that of an organized political authority. It was the resurrection of Rome,—Roman ideas rising into a higher life. The Roman Catholic Church, at first an aristocratic republic, like the Roman state, afterwards became, like the Roman state, a disguised despotism. The Papal Church is therefore a legacy of ancient Rome.316
And just as the Roman state was first a help and then a hindrance to the progress of humanity, so it has been with the Roman Catholic Church. Ancient Rome gradually bound together into a vast political unity the divided tribes and states of Europe, and so infused into them the civilization which she had developed or received. And so the Papal Church united Europe again, and once more permeated it with the elements of law, of order, of Christian faith. All intelligent Protestants admit the good done in this way by the mediæval church.
For example, Milman317 says, speaking of Gregory the Great and his work, that it was necessary that there should be some central power like the Papacy to resist the dissolution of society at the downfall of the Roman Empire. "The life and death of Christianity" depended, he says, "on the rise of such a power." "It is impossible to conceive what had been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages, without the mediæval Papacy."
The whole history of Rome had infused into the minds of Western nations a conviction of the importance of centralization in order to union. From Rome, as a centre, had proceeded government, law, civilization. Christianity therefore seemed to need a like centre, in order to retain its unity. Hence the supremacy early yielded to the Bishop of Rome. His primacy was accepted, because it was useful. The Papal Church would never have existed, if Rome and its organizing ideas had not existed before Christianity was born.
In like manner the ideas developed in the Roman mind determined the course of Western theology, as differing from that of the East. It is well known that Eastern theological speculation was occupied with the nature of God and the person of Christ, but that Western theology discussed sin and salvation. Mr. Maine, in his work on "Ancient Law," considers this difference to have been occasioned by habits of thought produced by Roman jurisprudence. I quote his language at some length:—
"What has to be determined is whether jurisprudence has ever served as the medium through which theological principles have been viewed; whether, by supplying a peculiar language, a peculiar mode of reasoning, and a peculiar solution of many of the problems of life, it has ever opened new channels in which theological speculation could flow out and expand itself."
"On all questions," continues Mr. Maine, quoting Dean Milman, "which concerned the person of Christ and the nature of the Trinity, the Western world accepted passively the dogmatic system of the East." "But as soon as the Latin-speaking empire began to live an intellectual life of its own, its deference to the East was at once exchanged for the agitation of a number of questions entirely foreign to Eastern speculation." "The nature of sin and its transmission by inheritance, the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction, and like theological problems, relating not to the divinity but to human nature, immediately began to be agitated." "I affirm," says Mr. Maine, "without hesitation, that the difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law. For some centuries before these controversies rose into overwhelming importance, all the intellectual activity of the Western Romans had been expended on jurisprudence exclusively. They had been occupied in applying a peculiar set of principles to all combinations in which the circumstances of life are capable of being arranged. No foreign pursuit or taste called off their attention from this engrossing occupation, and for carrying it on they possessed a vocabulary as accurate as it was copious, a strict method of reasoning, a stock of general propositions on conduct more or less verified by experience, and a rigid moral philosophy. It was impossible that they should not select from the questions indicated by the Christian records those which had some affinity with the order of speculations to which they were accustomed, and that their manner of dealing with them should not borrow something from their forensic habits. Almost every one who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by contract or delict, the Roman view of debts, etc., the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by universal succession, may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of mind to which the problems of Western theology proved so congenial, whence came the phraseology in which these problems were stated, and whence the description of reasoning employed in their solution." "As soon as they (the Western Church) ceased to sit at the feet of the Greeks and began to ponder out a theology of their own, the theology proved to be permeated with forensic ideas and couched in a forensic phraseology. It is certain that this substratum of law in Western theology lies exceedingly deep."318
The theory of the atonement, developed by the scholastic writers, illustrates this view. In the East, for a thousand years, the atoning work of Christ had been viewed mainly as redemption, as a ransom paid to obtain the freedom of mankind, enslaved by the Devil in consequence of their sins. It was not a legal theory, or one based on notions of jurisprudence, but it was founded on warlike notions. Men were captives taken in war, and, like all captives in those times, destined to slavery. Their captor was Satan, and the ransom must be paid to him, as he held them prisoners by the law of battle. Now as Christ had committed no sin, the Devil had no just power over him; in putting Christ to death he had lost his rights over his other captives, and Christ could justly claim their freedom as a compensation for this injury. Christ, therefore, strictly and literally, according to the ancient view, "gave his life a ransom for many."
But the mind of Anselm, educated by notions derived from Roman jurisprudence, substituted for this original theory of the atonement one based upon legal ideas. All, in this theory, turns on the law of debt and penalty. Sin he defines as "not paying to God what we owe him."319 But we owe God constant and entire obedience, and every sin deserves either penalty or satisfaction. We are unable to make it good, for at every moment we owe God all that we can do. Christ, as God-man, can satisfy God for our omissions; his death, as offered freely, when he did not deserve death on account of any sin of his own, is sufficient satisfaction. It will easily be seen how entirely this argument has substituted a legal basis for the atonement in place of the old warlike foundation.
This, therefore, has been the legacy of ancient Rome to Christianity: firstly, the organization of the Latin Church; secondly, the scholastic theology, founded on notions of jurisprudence introduced into man's relations to God. In turn, Christianity has bestowed on Western Europe what the old Romans never knew,—a religion of love and inspiration. In place of the hard and cold Roman life, modern Europe has sentiment and heart united with thought and force. With Roman strength it has joined a Christian tenderness, romance, and personal freedom. Humanity now is greater than the social organization; the state, according to our view, is made for man, not man for the state. We are outgrowing the hard and dry theology which we have inherited from Roman law through the scholastic teachers; but we shall not outgrow our inheritance from Rome of unity in the Church, definite thought in our theology, and society organized by law.

Chapter IX.

The Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion.

§ 1. The Land and the Race.

The great Teutonic or German division of the Indo-European family entered Europe subsequently to the Keltic tribes, and before the Slavic immigration. This people overspread and occupied a large part of Northern Central Europe, from which the attempts of the Romans to dispossess them proved futile. Of their early history we know very little. Bishop Percy contrasts their love of making records, as shown by the Runic inscriptions, with the Keltic law of secrecy. The Druids forbade any communication of their mysteries by writing; but the German Scalds put all their belief into popular songs, and reverenced literature as a gift of the gods. Yet we have received very little information concerning these tribes before the days of Cæsar and Tacitus. Cæsar describes them as warlike, huge in stature; having reverence for women, who were their augurs and diviners; worshipping the Sun, the Moon, and Fire; having no regular priests, and paying little regard to sacrifices. He says that they occupied their lives in hunting and war, devoting themselves from childhood to severe labors. They reverenced chastity, and considered it as conducive to health and strength. They were rather a pastoral than agricultural people; no one owning land, but each having it assigned to him temporarily. The object of this provision was said to be to prevent accumulation of wealth and the loss of warlike habits. They fought with cavalry supported by infantry. In the time of Augustus all attempts at conquering Germany were relinquished, and war was maintained only in the hope of revenging the destruction of Varus and his three legions by the famous German chief Arminius, or Herrman320.
Tacitus freely admits that the Germans were as warlike as the Romans, and were only inferior in weapons and discipline. He pays a generous tribute to Arminius, whom he declares to have been "beyond all question the liberator of Germany," dying at thirty-seven, unconquered in war.321 Tacitus quotes from some ancient German ballads or hymns ("the only historic monuments," says he, "that they possess") the names of Tuisto, a god born from the earth, and Mannus, his son. Tacitus was much struck with the physical characteristics of the race, as being so uniform. There was a family likeness, he says, among them all,—stern blue eyes, yellow hair, large bodies. Their wealth was in their flocks and herds. "Gold and silver are kept from them by the anger, or perhaps by the favor, of Heaven." Their rulers were elective, and their power was limited. Their judges were the priests. They saw something divine in woman, and her judgments were accepted as oracles. Such women as Veleda and Aurinia were reverenced as prophets; "but not adored or made into goddesses," says Tacitus, with a side-glance at some events at home. Their gods, Tacitus chooses to call Mercury, Hercules, and Mars; but he distinctly says that the Germans had neither idols nor temples, but worshipped in sacred groves322. He also says that the Germans divined future events by pieces of sticks, by the duel, and by the movements of sacred horses. Their leaders might decide the less important matters, but the principal questions were settled at public meetings. These assemblies were held at regular intervals, were opened by the priest, were presided over by the chief, and decided all public affairs. Tacitus remarks that the spirit of liberty goes to such an extreme among the Germans as to destroy regularity and order. They will not be punctual at their meetings, lest it should seem as if they attended because commanded to come.323 Marriage was sacred, and, unlike other heathen nations, they were contented with one wife. They were affectionate and constant to the marriage vow, which meant to the pure German woman one husband, one life, one body, and one soul. The ancient Germans, like their modern descendants, drank beer and Rhenish wine, and were divided into numerous tribes, who afterward reappeared for the destruction of the Roman Empire, as the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, and Franks.
The Scandinavians were a branch of the great German family. Their language, the old Norse, was distinguished from the Alemannic, or High German tongue, and from the Saxonic, or Low German tongue. From the Norse have been derived the languages of Iceland, of the Ferroe Isles, of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. From the Germanic branch have come German, Dutch, Anglo-Saxon, Mæso-Gothic, and English. It was in Scandinavia that the Teutonic race developed its special civilization and religion. Cut off from the rest of the world by stormy seas, the people could there unfold their ideas, and become themselves. It is therefore to Scandinavia that we must go to study the German religion, and to find the influence exercised on modern civilization and the present character of Europe. This influence has been freely acknowledged by great historians.
Montesquieu says:324—
"The great prerogative of Scandinavia is, that it afforded the great resource to the liberty of Europe, that is, to almost all of liberty there is among men. The Goth Jornandes calls the North of Europe the forge of mankind. I would rather call it the forge of those instruments which broke the fetters manufactured in the South."
Geijer, in his Swedish History, tells us:—
"The recollections which Scandinavia has to add to those of the Germanic race are yet the most antique in character and comparatively the most original. They offer the completest remaining example of a social state existing previously to the reception of influences from Rome, and in duration stretching onward so as to come within the sphere of historical light."
We do not know how much of those old Northern ideas may be still mingled with our ways of thought. The names of their gods we retain in those of our weekdays,—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Their popular assemblies, or Things, were the origin of our Parliament, our Congress, and our general assemblies. If from the South came the romantic admiration of woman, from the North came a better respect for her rights and the sense of her equality. Our trial by jury was immediately derived from Scandinavia; and, according to Montesquieu, as we have seen, we owe to the North, as the greatest inheritance of all, that desire for freedom which is so chief an element in Christian civilization.
Scandinavia proper consists of those regions now occupied by the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The geographical peculiarity of this country is its proximity everywhere to the sea, and the great extent of its coast line. The great peninsula of Sweden and Norway, with the Northern Ocean on its west, the Baltic and Gulf of Bothnia on its east, penetrated everywhere by creeks, friths, and arms of the sea, surrounded with innumerable islands, studded with lakes, and cleft with rivers, is also unrivalled, except by Switzerland, in the sublime and picturesque beauty of its mountains. The other peninsula, that of Denmark, surrounded and penetrated also everywhere by the sea, differs in being almost level; rising nowhere, at its highest point, more than a thousand feet above the ocean. Containing an area of only twenty-two thousand square miles, it is so penetrated with bays and creeks as to have four thousand miles of coast. Like the northern peninsula, it is also surrounded with a multitude of islands, which are so crowded together, especially on its eastern coast, as to make an archipelago. It is impossible to look at the map of Europe, and not be struck with the resemblance in these particulars between its northern and southern geography. The Baltic Sea is the Mediterranean of Northern Europe. The peninsula of Denmark, with its multitudinous bays and islands, corresponds to Greece, the Morea, and its archipelago. We have shown in our chapter on Greece that modern geography teaches that the extent of coast line, when compared with the superficial area of a country, is one of the essential conditions of civilization. Who can fail to see the hand of Providence in the adaptation of races to the countries they are to inhabit? The great tide of human life, flowing westward from Central Asia, was divided into currents by the Caspian and Black Seas, and by the lofty range of mountains which, under the name of the Caucasus, Carpathian Mountains, and Alps, extends almost in an unbroken line from the western coast of the Caspian to the northern limits of Germany. The Teutonic races, Germans, Saxons, Franks, and Northmen, were thus determined to the north, and spread themselves along the coast and peninsulas of the Northern Mediterranean. The other branch of the great Indo-European variety was distributed through Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Southern France, Italy, and Spain. Each of these vast European families, stimulated to mental and moral activity by its proximity to water, developed its own peculiar forms of national character, which were afterwards united in modern European society. The North developed individual freedom, the South social organization. The North gave force, the South culture. From Southern Europe came literature, philosophy, laws, arts; from the North, that respect for individual rights, that sense of personal dignity, that energy of the single soul, which is the essential equipoise of a high social culture. These two elements, of freedom and civilization, always antagonist, have been in most ages hostile. The individual freedom of the North has been equivalent to barbarism, and from time to time has rolled down a destroying deluge over the South, almost sweeping away its civilization, and overwhelming in a common ruin arts, literature, and laws. On the other hand, civilization at the South has passed into luxury, has produced effeminacy, till individual freedom has been lost under grinding despotism. But in modern civilization a third element has been added, which has brought these two powers of Northern freedom and Southern culture into equipoise and harmony. This new element is Christianity, which develops, at the same time, the sense of personal responsibility, by teaching the individual destiny and worth of every soul, and also the mutual dependence and interlacing brotherhood of all human society. This Christian element in modern civilization saves it from the double danger of a relapse into barbarism on the one hand, and a too refined luxury on the other. The nations of Europe, to-day, which are the most advanced in civilization, literature, and art, are also the most deeply pervaded with the love of freedom; and the most civilized nations on the globe, instead of being the most effeminate, are also the most powerful.
The Scandinavian people, destined to play so important a part in the history of the world, were, as we have said, a branch of the great Indo-European variety. We have seen that modern ethnology teaches that all the races which inhabit Europe, with some trifling exceptions, belong to one family, which originated in Central Asia. This has appeared and is proved by means of glossology, or the science of language. The closest resemblance exists between the seven linguistic families of Hindostan, Persia, Greece, Rome, Germany, the Kelts, and the Slavi; and it is a most striking fact of human history, that from the earliest period of recorded time down to the present day a powerful people, speaking a language belonging to one or other of these races, should have in a great measure swayed the destinies of the world.
Before the birth of Christ the peninsula of Denmark was called by the Romans the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Cimbric peninsula. This name came from the Cimbri, a people who, one hundred and eleven years before Christ, almost overthrew the Roman Republic, exciting more terror than any event since the days of Hannibal. More than three hundred thousand men, issuing from the peninsula of Denmark and the adjacent regions, poured like a torrent over Gaul and Southern Germany. They met and overthrew in succession four Roman armies; until, finally, they were conquered by the military skill and genius of Marius. After this eruption was checked, the great northern volcano slumbered for centuries. Other tribes from Asia—Goths, Vandals, Huns—combined in the overthrow of the Roman Empire. At last the inhabitants of Scandinavia appear again under the name of Northmen, invading and conquering England in the fifth century as Saxons, in the ninth century as Danes, and in the eleventh as Normans again overrunning England and France. But the peculiarity of the Scandinavian invasions was their maritime character. Daring and skilful navigators, they encountered the tempests of the Northern Ocean and the heavy roll of the Atlantic in vessels so small and slight that they floated like eggshells on the surface of the waves, and ran up the rivers of France and England, hundreds of miles, without check from shallows or rocks. In these fragile barks they made also the most extraordinary maritime discoveries. The sea-kings of Norway discovered Iceland, and settled it A.D. 860 and A.D. 874. They discovered and settled Greenland A.D. 982 and A.D. 986. On the western coast of Greenland they planted colonies, where churches were built, and diocesan bishoprics established, which lasted between four and five hundred years. Finally, in A.D. 1000, they discovered, by sailing from Greenland, the coast of Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Massachusetts Bay; and, five hundred years before the discovery of Columbus, gathered grapes and built houses on the southern side of Cape Cod. These facts, long considered mythical, have been established, to the satisfaction of European scholars, by the publication of Icelandic contemporaneous annals. This remarkable people have furnished nearly the whole population of England by means of the successive conquests of Saxon, Danes, and Normans, driving the Keltic races into the mountainous regions of Wales and North Scotland, where their descendants still remain. Colonizing themselves also everywhere in Northern Europe, and even in Italy and Greece, they have left the familiar stamp of their ideas and habits in all our modern civilization325.

§ 2. Idea of the Scandinavian Religion.

The central idea of the Scandinavian belief was the free struggle of soul against material obstacles, the freedom of the Divine will in its conflict with the opposing forces of nature. The gods of the Scandinavians were always at war. It was a system of dualism, in which sunshine, summer, and growth were waging perpetual battle with storm, snow, winter, ocean, and terrestrial fire. As the gods, so the people. War was their business, courage their duty, fortitude their virtue. The conflict of life with death, of freedom with fate, of choice with necessity, of good with evil, made up their history and destiny.
This conflict in the natural world was especially apparent in the struggle, annually renewed, between summer and winter. Therefore the light and heat gods were their friends, those of darkness and cold their enemies. For the same reason that the burning heat of summer, Typhon, was the Satan of Egypt; so in the North the Jotuns, ice-giants, were the Scandinavian devils.
There are some virtues which are naturally associated together, such as the love of truth, the sense of justice, courage, and personal independence. There is an opposite class of virtues in like manner naturally grouped together,—sympathy, mutual helpfulness, and a tendency to social organization. The serious antagonism in the moral world is that of truth and love. Most cases of conscience which present a real difficulty resolve themselves into a conflict of truth and love. It is hard to be true without hurting the feelings of others; it is hard to sympathize with others and not yield a little of our inward truth. The same antagonism is found in the religions of the world. The religions in which truth, justice, freedom, are developed tend to isolation, coldness, and hardness. On the other hand, the religions of brotherhood and human sympathy tend to weakness, luxury, and slavery.
The religion of the German races, which was the natural growth of their organization and moral character, belonged to the first class. It was a religion in which truth, justice, self-respect, courage, freedom, were the essential elements. The gods were human, as in the Hellenic system, with moral attributes. They were finite beings and limited in their powers. They carried on a warfare with hostile and destructive agents, in which at last they were to be vanquished and destroyed, though a restoration of the world and the gods would follow that destruction.
Such was the idea in all the faith of the Teutonic race. The chief virtue of man was courage, his unpardonable sin was cowardice. "To fight a good fight," this was the way to Valhalla. Odin sent his Choosers to every battlefield to select the brave dead to become his companions in the joys of heaven.

§ 3. The Eddas and their Contents.

We have observed that Iceland was settled from Norway in the ninth century. A remarkable social life grew up there, which preserved the ideas, manners, and religion of the Teutonic people in their purity for many hundred years, and whose Eddas and Sagas are the chief source of our knowledge of the race. In this ultimate and barren region of the earth, where seas of ice make thousands of square miles desolate and impenetrable, where icy masses, elsewhere glaciers, are here mountains, where volcanoes with terrible eruptions destroy whole regions of inhabited country in a few days with lava, volcanic sand, and boiling water, was developed to its highest degree the purest form of Scandinavian life.
The religion of the Scandinavians is contained in the Eddas, which are two,—the poetic, or elder Edda, consisting of thirty-seven poems, first collected and published at the end of the eleventh century; and the younger, or prose Edda, ascribed to the celebrated Snorro Sturleson, born of a distinguished Icelandic family in the twelfth century, who, after leading a turbulent and ambitious life, and being twice chosen supreme magistrate, was killed A.D. 1241. The principal part of the prose Edda is a complete synopsis of Scandinavian mythology.
The elder Edda, which is the fountain of the mythology, consists of old songs and ballads, which had come down from an immemorial past in the mouths of the people, but were first collected and committed to writing by Sæmund, a Christian priest of Iceland in the eleventh century. He was a Bard, or Scald, as well as a priest, and one of his own poems, "The Sun-Song," is in his Edda. This word "Edda" means "great-grandmother," the ancient mother of Scandinavian knowledge. Or perhaps this name was given to the legends, repeated by grandmothers to their grandchildren by the vast firesides of the old farm-houses in Iceland.
This rhythmical Edda consists of thirty-seven poems326. It is in two parts,—the first containing mythical poems concerning the gods and the creation; the second, the legends of the heroes of Scandinavian history. This latter portion of the Edda has the original and ancient fragments from which the German Nibelungen-lied was afterward derived. These songs are to the German poem what the ante-Homeric ballad literature of Greece about Troy and Ulysses was to the Iliad and Odyssey as reduced to unity by Homer.
The first poem in the first part of the poetic Edda is the Voluspa, or Wisdom of Vala. The Vala was a prophetess, possessing vast supernatural knowledge. Some antiquarians consider the Vala to be the same as the Nornor, or Fates. They were dark beings, whose wisdom was fearful even to the gods, resembling in this the Greek Prometheus. The Voluspa describes the universe before the creation, in the morning of time, before the great Ymir lived, when there was neither sea nor shore nor heaven. It begins thus, Vala speaking:—
"I command the devout attention of all noble souls,
Of all the high and the low of the race of Heimdall;
I tell the doings of the All-Father,
In the most ancient Sagas which come to my mind.
"There was an age in which Ymir lived,
When was no sea, nor shore, nor salt waves;
No earth below, nor heaven above,
No yawning abyss and no grassy land.
"Till the sons of Bors lifted the dome of heaven,
And created the vast Midgard (earth) below;
Then the sun of the south rose above the mountains,
And green grasses made the ground verdant.
"The sun of the south, companion of the moon,
Held the horses of heaven with his right hand;
The sun knew not what its course should be,
The moon knew not what her power should be,
The stars knew not where their places were.
"Then the counsellors went into the hall of judgment,
And the all-holy gods held a council.
They gave names to the night and new moon;
They called to the morning and to midday,
To the afternoon and evening, arranging the times."
The Voluspa goes on to describe how the gods assembled on the field of Ida, and proceeded to create metals and vegetables; after that the race of dwarfs, who preside over the powers of nature and the mineral world. Then Vala narrates how the three gods, Odin, Honir, and Lodur, "the mighty and mild Aser," found Ask and Embla, the Adam and Eve of the Northern legends, lying without soul, sense, motion, or color. Odin gave them their souls, Honir their intellects, Lodur their blood and colored flesh. Then comes the description of the ash-tree Yggdrasil, of the three Norns, or sisters of destiny, who tell the Aser their doom, and the end and renewal of the world; and how, at last, one being mightier than all shall arrive:—
"Then comes the mighty one to the council of the gods,
He with strength from on high who guides all things,
He decides the strife, he puts an end to struggle,
He ordains eternal laws."
In the same way, in the Song of Hyndla, another of the poems of this Edda, is a prediction of one who shall come, mightier than all the gods, and put an end to the strife between Aser and the giants. The song begins:—
"Wake, maid of maidens! Awake, my friend!
Hyndla, sister, dwelling in the glens!
It is night, it is cloudy; let us ride together
To the sacred place, to Valhalla."
Hyndla sings, after describing the heroes and princes born of the gods:—
"One shall be born higher than all,
Who grows strong with the strength of the earth;
He is famed as the greatest of rulers,
United with all nations as brethren.
"But one day there shall come another mightier than he;
But I dare not name his name.
Few are able to see beyond
The great battle of Odin and the Wolf."
Among the poems of the elder Edda is a Book of Proverbs, like those of Solomon in their sagacious observations on human life and manners. It is called the Havamal. At first we should hardly expect to find these maxims of worldly wisdom among a people whose chief business was war. But war develops cunning as well as courage, and battles are won by craft no less than by daring. Consequently, among a warlike people, sagacity is naturally cultivated.
The Havamal contains (in its proverbial section) one hundred and ten stanzas, mostly quatrains. The following are specimens:—
1. "Carefully consider the end
Before you go to do anything,
For all is uncertain, when the enemy
Lies in wait in the house.
4. "The guest who enters
Needs water, a towel, and hospitality.
A kind reception secures a return
In word and in deed.
7. "The wise man, on coming in,
Is silent and observes,
Hears with his ears, looks with his eyes,
And carefully reflects on every event.
11. "No worse a companion can a man take on his journey
Than drunkenness.
Not as good as many believe
Is beer to the sons of men.
The more one drinks, the less he knows,
And less power has he over himself.
26. "A foolish man, in company, had better be silent.
Until he speaks no one observes his folly.
But he who knows little does not know this,
When he had better be silent.
29. "Do not mock at the stranger
Who comes trusting in your kindness;
For when he has warmed himself at your fire,
He may easily prove a wise man.
34. "It is better to depart betimes,
And not to go too often to the same house.
Love tires and turns to sadness
When one sits too often at another man's table.
35. "One's own house, though small, is better,
For there thou art the master.
It makes a man's heart bleed to ask
For a midday meal at the house of another.
36. "One's own house, though small, is better;
At home thou art the master.
Two goats and a thatched roof
Are better than begging.
38. "It is hard to find a man so rich
As to refuse a gift.
It is hard to find a man so generous
As to be always glad to lend.
42. "Is there a man whom you distrust,
And who yet can help you?
Be smooth in words and false in thought,
And pay back his deceit with cunning.
48. "I hung my garments on two scarecrows,
And, when dressed, they seemed
Ready for the battle.
Unclothed they were jeered at by all.
52. "Small as a grain of sand
Is the small sense of a fool;
Very unequal is human wisdom.
The world is made of two unequal halves.
53. "It is well to be wise; it is not well
To be too wise.
He has the happiest life
Who knows well what he knows.
54. "It is well to be wise; not well
To be too wise.
The wise man's heart is not glad
When he knows too much.
55. "Two burning sticks placed together
Will burn entirely away.
Man grows bright by the side of man;
Alone, he remains stupid."
Such are the proverbs of the Havamal. This sort of proverbial wisdom may have come down from the days when the ancestors of the Scandinavians left Central Asia. It is like the fables and maxims of the Hitopadesá.327
Another of these poems is called Odin's Song of Runes. Runes were the Scandinavian alphabet, used for lapidary inscriptions, a thousand of which have been discovered in Sweden, and three or four hundred in Denmark and Norway, mostly on tombstones. This alphabet consists of sixteen letters, with the powers of F, U, TH, O, R, K, H, N, I, A, S, T, B, L, M, Y. The letters R, I, T, and B very nearly resemble the Roman letters of the same values. A magical power was ascribed to these Runes, and they were carved on sticks and then scraped off, and used as charms. These rune-charms were of different kinds, eighteen different sorts are mentioned in this song.
A song of Brynhilda speaks of different runes which she will teach Sigurd. "Runes of victory must those know, to conquer thine enemies. They must be carved on the blade of thy sword. Drink-Runes must thou know to make maidens love thee. Thou must carve them on thy drinking horn. Runes of freedom must thou know to deliver the captives. Storm-Runes must thou know, to make thy vessel go safely over the waves. Carve them on the mast and the rudder. Herb-Runes thou must know to cure disease. Carve them on the bark of the tree. Speech-Runes must thou know to defeat thine enemy in council of words, in the Thing. Mind-Runes must thou know to have good and wise thoughts. These are the Book-Runes, and Help-Runes, and Drink-Runes, and Power-Runes, precious for whoever can use them."
The second part of the poetic Edda contains the stories of the old heroes, especially of Sigurd, the Achilles of Northern romance. There is also the Song of Volund, the Northern Smith, the German Vulcan, able to make swords of powerful temper. These songs and ballads are all serious and grave, and sometimes tender, having in them something of the solemn tone of the old Greek tragedy.
The prose Edda, as we have said, was the work of Snorro Sturleson, born in Iceland in 1178328. He probably transcribed most of it from the manuscripts in his hands, or which were accessible to him, and from the oral traditions which had been preserved in the memory of the Skalds. His other chief work was the Heimskringla, or collection of Saga concerning the history of the Scandinavians. In his preface to this last book he says he "wrote it down from old stories told by intelligent people"; or from "ancient family registers containing the pedigrees of kings," or from "old songs and ballads which our fathers had for their amusement"
The prose Edda begins with "The deluding of Gylfi," an ancient king of Sweden. He was renowned for his wisdom and love of knowledge, and determined to visit Asgard, the home of the Æsir, to learn something of the wisdom of the gods. They, however, foreseeing his coming, prepared various illusions to deceive him. Among other things, he saw three thrones raised one above another.
"He afterwards beheld three thrones raised one above another, with a man sitting on each of them. Upon his asking what the names of these lords might be, his guide answered: 'He who sits on the lowest throne is a king; his name is Har (the High or Lofty One); the second is Jafnhar (i.e. equal to the High); but he who sitteth on the highest throne is called Thridi (the Third).' Har, perceiving the stranger, asked him what his errand was, adding that he should be welcome to eat and drink without cost, as were all those who remained in Háva Hall. Gangler said he desired first to ascertain whether there was any person present renowned for his wisdom.
"'If thou art not the most knowing,' replied Har, 'I fear thou wilt hardly return safe. But go, stand there below, and propose thy questions; here sits one who will be able to answer them.'
"Gangler thus began his discourse: 'Who is the first, or eldest of the gods?'
"'In our language,' replied Har, 'he is called Alfadir (All-Father, or the Father of All); but in the old Asgard he had twelve names.'
"'Where is this God?' said Gangler; 'what is his power? and what hath he done to display his glory?'
"'He liveth,' replied Har, 'from all ages, he governeth all realms, and swayeth all things great and small.'
"'He hath formed,' added Jafnhar, 'heaven and earth, and the air, and all things thereunto belonging.'
"'And what is more,' continued Thridi, 'he hath made man, and given him a soul which shall live and never perish, though the body shall have mouldered away, or have been burnt to ashes. And all that are righteous shall dwell with him in the place called Gimli, or Vingólf; but the wicked shall go to Hel, and thence to Niflhel, which is below, in the ninth world.'"
Of the creation of the world the Eddas thus speak: In the day-spring of the ages there was neither seas nor shore nor refreshing breeze; there was neither earth below nor heaven above. The whole was only one vast abyss, without herb and without seas. The sun had no palace, the stars no place, the moon no power. After this there was a bright shining world of flame to the South, and another, a cloudy and dark one, toward the North. Torrents of venom flowed from the last into the abyss, and froze, and filled it full of ice. But the air oozed up through it in icy vapors, which were melted into living drops by a warm breath from the South; and from these came the giant Ymir. From him came a race of wicked giants. Afterward, from these same drops of fluid seeds, children of heat and cold, came the mundane cow, whose milk fed the giants. Then arose also, in a mysterious manner, Bor, the father of three sons, Odin, Vili, and Ve, who, after several adventures,—having killed the giant Ymir, and made out of his body Heaven and Earth,—proceeded to form a man and woman named Ask and Embla. Chaos having thus disappeared, Odin became the All-Father, creator of gods and men, with Earth for his wife, and the powerful Thor for his oldest son. So much for the cosmogony of the Edda.
On this cosmogony, we may remark that it belongs to the class of development, or evolution, but combined with a creation. The Hindoo, Gnostic, and Platonic theories suppose the visible world to have emanated from God, by a succession of fallings, from the most abstract spirit to the most concrete matter. The Greeks and Romans, on the contrary, suppose all things to have come by a process of evolution, or development from an original formless and chaotic matter. The resemblance between the Greek account of the origin of gods and men and that of the Scandinavians is striking. Both systems begin in materialism, and are radically opposed to the spiritualism of the other theory; and in its account of the origin of all things from nebulous vapors and heat the Edda reminds us of the modern scientific theories on the same subject.
After giving this account of the formation of the world, of the gods, and the first pair of mortals, the Edda next speaks of night and day, of the sun and moon, of the rainbow bridge from earth to heaven, and of the great Ash-tree where the gods sit in council. Night was the daughter of a giant, and, like all her race, of a dark complexion. She married one of the Æsir, or children of Odin, and their son was Day, a child light and beautiful, like its father. The Sun and Moon were two children, the Moon being the boy, and the Sun the girl; which peculiarity of gender still holds in the German language. The Edda gives them chariot and horses with which to drive daily round the heavens, and supposes their speed to be occasioned by their fear of two gigantic wolves, from Jotunheim, or the world of darkness, which pursue them. The rainbow is named Bifrost, woven of three hues, and by this, as a bridge, the gods ride up every day to heaven from the holy fountain below the earth. Near this fountain dwell three maidens, below the great Ash-tree, who decide every man's fate. These Fates, or Norns, are named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld,—three words meaning "past," "present," and "future." From Urd comes our word "weird," and the weird sisters of Shakespeare. The red in the rainbow is burning fire, which prevents the frost-giants of Jotunheim from going up to heaven, which they otherwise might do. This region of the gods is called Asgard, and contains Valhalla, where they feast every day, with all heroes who have died in battle; drinking mead, but not out of their enemies' skulls, as has been so often said. This mistake modern scholars have attributed to a mistranslation of a word in the original, which means "curved horns," the passage being, "Soon shall we drink ale out of the curved branches of the skull," that is, of an animal. Their food is the flesh of a boar, which is renewed every day.
It is not to be supposed that Odin and the other gods lived quietly on their Olympus without adventures. Many entertaining ones are narrated in the Edda, had we room to tell them. One of these describes the death of Baldur the Good, whom all beings loved. Having been tormented with bad dreams, indicating that his life was in danger, he told them to the assembled gods, who made all creatures and things, living or dead, take an oath to do him no harm. This oath was taken by fire and water, iron and all other metals, stones, earths, diseases, poisons, beasts, birds, and creeping things. After this, they amused themselves at their meeting in setting Baldur up as a mark; some hurling darts or shooting arrows at him, and some cutting at him with swords and axes; and as nothing hurt him, it was accounted a great honor done to Baldur. But wicked Loki, or Loke, was envious at this; and, assuming the form of a woman, he inquired of the goddess who had administered the oath, whether all things had taken it. She said everything except one little shrub called mistletoe, which she thought too young and feeble to do any harm. Therefore Loki got the mistletoe, and, bringing it to one of the gods, persuaded him to throw it at Baldur, who, pierced to the heart, fell dead. The grief was immense. An especial messenger was despatched to Queen Hela, in Hell, to inquire if, on any terms, Baldur might be ransomed. For nine days and nights he rode through dark chasms till he crossed the river of Death, and entering the kingdom of Hela, made known his request. Hela replied that it should now be discovered whether Baldur was so universally loved as was represented; for that she would permit him to return to Asgard if all creatures and all things, without exception, would weep for him. The gods then despatched messengers through the world to beg all things to weep for Baldur, which they immediately did. Then you might have seen, not only crocodiles but the most ferocious beasts dissolved in tears. Fishes wept in the water, and birds in the air. Stones and trees were covered with pellucid dew-drops, and, for all we know, this general grief may have been the occasion of some of the deluges reported by geology. The messengers returned, thinking the work done, when they found an old hag sitting in a cavern, and begged her to weep Baldur out of Hell. But she declared that she could gain nothing by so doing, and that Baldur might stay where he was, like other people as good as he; planting herself apparently on the great but somewhat selfish principle of non-intervention. So Baldur remains in the halls of Hela. But this old woman did not go unpunished. She was shrewdly suspected to be Loki himself in disguise, and on inquiry so it turned out. Whereupon a hot pursuit of Loki took place, who, after changing himself into many forms, was caught, and chained under sharp-pointed rocks below the earth.
The adventures of Thor are very numerous. The pleasantest, perhaps, is the account of his journey to Jotunheim, to visit his enemies, the giants of Cold and Darkness. On his way, being obliged to pass the night in the forest, he came to a spacious hall, with an open door, reaching from one side to the other. In this he went to sleep, but being aroused by an awful earthquake, Thor and his companions crept into a chamber which opened out of the hall. When day came they found, sleeping near them, an enormous giant, so large, that, as it appeared, they had passed the night in the thumb of his glove. They travelled with him all day; and the next night Thor considered himself justified in killing this giant, who was one of their enemies. Three times he launched his mallet with fearful force at the giant's head, and three times the giant awoke to inquire whether it was a leaf or an acorn which had fallen on his face. After taking leave of their enormous and invulnerable companion, they arrived at the abodes of Jotunheim, and the city of Utgard, and entered the city of the king, Utgard Loki. This king inquired what great feat Thor and his companions could do. One professed to be a great eater; on which the king of giants called one of his servants named Logi, and placed between them a trough filled with meat. Thor's companion ate his share, but Logi ate meat and bone too, and the trough into the bargain, and was considered to have conquered. Thor's other companion was a great runner, and was set to run with a young man named Hugi, who so outstripped him that he reached the goal before the other had gone half-way. Then Thor was asked what he could do himself. He said he would engage in a drinking-match, and was presented with a large horn, and was requested to empty it at a single draught, which he expected easily to do, but on looking in the liquor seemed scarcely diminished. The second time he tried, and lowered it slightly. A third, and it was still only sunk half an inch. Whereupon he was laughed at, and called for some new feat. "We have a trifling game here," answered the king, "in which we exercise none but children. It is merely to lift my cat from the ground." Thor put forth his whole might, but could only lift up one foot, and was laughed at again. Angry at this, he called for some one to wrestle with him. "My men," said King Utgard, "would think it beneath them to wrestle with thee, but let some one call my old nurse Eld, and let Thor wrestle with her." A toothless old woman entered the hall, and after a violent struggle Thor began to lose his footing, and went home excessively mortified. But it turned out afterward that all this was illusion. The three blows of the mallet, instead of striking the giant's head, had fallen on a mountain, which he had dexterously put between, and made three deep ravines in it, which remain to this day. The triumphant eater was Fire itself, disguised as a man. The successful runner was Thought. The horn out of which Thor tried to drink was connected with the ocean, which was lowered a few inches by his tremendous draughts. The cat was the great Midgard Serpent, which goes round the world, and Thor had actually pulled the earth a little way out of its place; and the old woman was Old Age itself329.
According to this mythology, there is coming a time in which the world will be destroyed by fire and afterward renewed. This will be, preceded by awful disasters; dreadful winters; wars, and desolations on earth; cruelty and deceit; the sun and moon will be devoured, the stars hurled from the sky, and the earth violently shaken. The Wolf (Fenrir), the awful Midgard Serpent, Loki, and Hela come to battle with the gods. The great Ash-tree will shake with fear. The Wolf (Fenrir) breaks loose, and opens his enormous mouth. The lower jaw reaches to the earth, and the upper to heaven. The Midgard Serpent, by the side of the Wolf, vomits forth floods of poison. Heaven is rent in twain, and Surtur and the sons of Muspell ride through the breach. These are the children of Light and Fire, who dwell in the South, and who seem to belong neither to the race of gods nor to that of giants, but to a third party, who only interfere at the close of the conflict. While the battle goes on between the gods and the giants they keep their effulgent bands apart on the field of battle. Meantime Heimdall—doorkeeper of the gods—sounds his mighty trumpet, which is heard through the whole universe, to summon the gods to conflict. The gods, or Æsir, and all the heroes of Valhalla, arm themselves and go to the field. Odin fights with the Wolf; Thor with the Midgard Serpent, whom he kills, but being suffocated with the floods of venom dies himself. The Wolf swallows Odin, but at that instant Vidar sets his foot on its lower jaw, and laying hold of the upper jaw tears it apart. He accomplishes this because he has on the famous shoe, the materials of which have been collecting for ages, it being made of the shreds of shoe-leather which are cut off in making shoes, and which, on this account, the religious Scandinavians were careful to throw away. Loki and Heimdall fight and kill each other. After this Surtur darts fire over the whole earth, and the whole universe is consumed. But then comes the restitution of all things. There will rise out of the sea a new heaven and a new earth. Two gods, Vidar and Vali, and two human beings, a man and woman, survive the conflagration, and with their descendants occupy the heavens and earth. The suns of Thor come with their father's hammer and put an end to war. Baldur, and Hodur, the blind god, come up from Hell, and the daughter of the Sun, more beautiful than its mother, occupies its place in the skies.

§ 4. The Gods of Scandinavia.

We can give no better account of the Norse pantheon than by extracting the passages from the prose Edda, which describe the gods. We take the translation in Mallet's Northern Antiquities:—
"OF ODIN.
"'I must now ask thee,' said Gangler, 'who are the gods that men are bound to believe in?'
"'There are twelve gods,' replied Har, 'to whom divine honors ought to be rendered.'
"'Nor are the goddesses,' added Jafhhar, 'less divine and mighty.'
"'The first and eldest of the Æsir,' continued Thridi, 'is Odin. He governs all things, and although the other deities are powerful, they all serve and obey him as children do their father. Frigga is his wife. She foresees the destinies of men, but never reveals what is to come. For thus it is said that Odin himself told Loki, "Senseless Loki, why wilt thou pry into futurity? Frigga alone knoweth the destinies of all, though she telleth them never."'
"'Odin is named Alfadir (All-father), because he is the father of all the gods, and also Valfadir (Choosing Father), because he chooses for his sons all those who fall in combat. For their abode he has prepared Valhalla and Vingólf, where they are called Einherjar (Heroes or Champions). Odin is also called Hangagud, Haptagud, and Farmagud, and, besides these, was named in many ways when he went to King Geirraudr.'....
"OF THOR.
"'I now ask thee,' said Gangler, 'what are the names of the other gods? What are their functions, and what have they brought to pass?'
"'The mightiest of them,' replied Har, 'is Thor. He is called Asa-Thor and Auku-Thor, and is the strongest of gods and men. His realm is named Thrúdváng, and his mansion Bilskirnir, in which are five hundred and forty halls. It is the largest house ever built. Thus it is called in the Grímnismál:—
"Fire hundred halls
And forty more,
Methinketh, hath
Bowed Bilskirnir.
Of houses roofed
There's none I know
My son's surpassing."
"'Thor has a car drawn by two goats called Tanngnióst and Tanngrisnir. From his driving about in this car he is called Auku-Thor (Charioteer-Thor). He likewise possesses three very precious things. The first is a mallet called Mjölnir, which both the Frost and Mountain Giants know to their cost when they see it hurled against them in the air; and no wonder, for it has split many a skull of their fathers and kindred. The second rare thing he possesses is called the belt of strength or prowess (Megingjardir). When he girds it about him his divine might is doubly augmented; the third, also very precious, being his iron gauntlets, which he is obliged to put on whenever he would lay hold of the handle of his mallet. There is no one so wise as to be able to relate all Thor's marvellous exploits, yet I could tell thee so many myself that hours would be whiled away ere all that I know had been recounted.'
"OF BALDUR.
"'I would rather,' said Gangler, 'hear something about the other Æsir.'
"'The second son of Odin,' replied Har, 'is Baldur, and it may be truly said of him that he is the best, and that all mankind are loud in his praise. So fair and dazzling is he in form and features, that rays of light seem to issue from him; and thou mayst have some idea of the beauty of his hair when I tell thee that the whitest of all plants is called Baldur's brow. Baldur is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the Æsir, yet such is his nature that the judgment he has pronounced can never be altered. He dwells in the heavenly mansion called Breidablik, in which nothing unclean can enter. As it is said,—
"'T is Breidablik called,
"Where Baldur the Fair
Hath built him a bower,
In that land where I know
The least loathliness lieth."'
"OF NJÖRD.
"'The third god,' continued Har, 'is Njörd, who dwells in the heavenly region called Noátún. He rules over the winds, and checks the fury of the sea and of fire, and is therefore invoked by seafarers and fishermen. He is so wealthy that he can give possessions and treasures to those who call on him for them. Yet Njörd is not of the lineage of the Æsir, for he was born and bred in Vanaheim. But the Vanir gave him as hostage to the Æsir, receiving from them in his stead Hoenir. By this means was peace re-established between the Æsir and Vanir. Njörd took to wife Skadi, the daughter of the giant Thjassi. She preferred dwelling in the abode formerly belonging to her father, which is situated among rocky mountains, in the region called Thrymheim, but Njörd loved to reside near the sea. They at last agreed that they should pass together nine nights in Thrymheim, and then three in Noátún. One day, when Njörd came back from the mountains to Noatun, he thus sang:—
"Of mountains I'm weary,
Not long was I there,
Not more than nine nights;
But the howl of the wolf
Methought sounded ill
To the song of the swan-bird."
'"To which Skadi sang in reply:—
"Ne'er can I sleep
In my couch on the strand,
For the screams of the sea-fowl.
The mew as he comes
Every morn from the main
Is sure to awake me."
"'Skadi then returned to the rocky mountains, and abode in Thrymheim. There, fastening on her snow-skates and taking her bow, she passes her time in the chase of savage beasts, and is called the Ondur goddess, or Ondurdís.....'
"OF THE GOD FREY, AND THE GODDESS FREYJA.
"'Njörd had afterwards, at his residence at Nóatún, two children, a son named Frey, and a daughter called Freyja, both of them beauteous and mighty. Frey is one of the most celebrated of the gods. He presides over rain and sunshine, and all the fruits of the earth, and should be invoked in order to obtain good harvests, and also for peace. He, moreover, dispenses wealth among men. Freyja is the most propitious of the goddesses; her abode in heaven is called Fólkváng. To whatever field of battle she rides, she asserts her right to one half of the slain, the other half belonging to Odin.....'
"OF TYR.
"'There is Tyr, who is the most daring and intrepid of all the gods. 'T is he who dispenses valor in war, hence warriors do well to invoke him. It has become proverbial to say of a man who surpasses all others in valor that he is Tyr-strong, or valiant as Tyr. A man noted for his wisdom is also said to be "wise as Tyr." Let me give thee a proof of his intrepidity. When the Æsir were trying to persuade the wolf, Fenrir, to let himself be bound up with the chain, Gleipnir, he, fearing that they would never afterwards unloose him, only consented on the condition that while they were chaining him he should keep Tyr's right hand between his jaws. Tyr did not hesitate to put his hand in the monster's mouth, but when Fenrir perceived that the Æsir had no intention to unchain him, he bit the hand off at that point, which has ever since been called the wolf's joint (úlflidr). From that time Tyr has had but one hand. He is not regarded as a peacemaker among men.'
"OF THE OTHER GODS.
"'There is another god,' continued Har, 'named Bragi, who is celebrated for his wisdom, and more especially for his eloquence and correct forms of speech. He is not only eminently skilled in poetry, but the art itself is called from his name Bragr, which epithet is also applied to denote a distinguished poet or poetess. His wife is named Iduna. She keeps in a box the apples which the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in renovated youth until Ragnarök.....
"'One of the gods is Heimdall, called also the White God. He is the son of nine virgins, who were sisters, and is a very sacred and powerful deity. He also bears the appellation of the Gold-toothed, on account of his teeth being of pure gold, and also that of Hallinskithi. His horse is called Gulltopp, and he dwells in Himinbjörg at the end of Bifröst. He is the warder of the gods, and is therefore placed on the borders of heaven, to prevent the giants from forcing their way over the bridge. He requires less sleep than a bird, and sees by night, as well as by day, a hundred miles around him. So acute is his ear that no sound escapes him, for he can even hear the grass growing on the earth, and the wool on a sheep's back. He has a horn called the Gjallar-horn, which is heard throughout the universe.....
"'Among the Æsir,' continued Har,'we also reckon Hödur, who is blind, but extremely strong. Both gods and men would be very glad if they never had occasion to pronounce his name, for they will long have cause to remember the deed perpetrated by his hand.
"'Another god is Vidar, surnamed the Silent, who wears very thick shoes. He is almost as strong as Thor himself, and the gods place great reliance on him in all critical conjunctures.
"'Vali, another god, is the son of Odin and Rinda; he is bold in war, and an excellent archer.
"'Another is called Ullur, who is the son of Sif, and stepson of Thor. He is so well skilled in the use of the bow, and can go so fast on his snow-skates, that in these arts no one can contend with him. He is also very handsome in his person, and possesses every quality of a warrior, wherefore it is befitting to invoke him in single combats.
"'The name of another god is Forseti, who is the son of Baldur and Nanna, the daughter of Nef. He possesses the heavenly mansion called Glitnir, and all disputants at law who bring their cases before him go away perfectly reconciled.....'
"OF LOKI AND HIS PROGENY.
"'There is another deity,' continued Har, 'reckoned in the number of the Æsir, whom some call the calumniator of the gods, the contriver of all fraud and mischief, and the disgrace of gods and men. His name is Loki or Loptur. He is the son of the giant Farbauti.....Loki is handsome and well made, but of a very fickle mood, and most evil disposition. He surpasses all beings in those arts called Cunning and Perfidy. Many a time has he exposed the gods to very great perils, and often extricated them again by his artifices.....
"'Loki,' continued Har, 'has likewise had three children by Angurbodi, a giantess of Jötunheim. The first is the wolf Fenrir; the second Jormungand, the Midgard serpent; the third Hela (Death). The gods were not long ignorant that these monsters continued to be bred up in Jötunheim, and, having had recourse to divination, became aware of all the evils they would have to suffer from them; their being sprung from such a mother was a bad presage, and from such a sire, one still worse. All-father therefore deemed it advisable to send one of the gods to bring them to him. When they came he threw the serpent into that deep ocean by which the earth is engirdled. But the monster has grown to such an enormous size that, holding his tail in his mouth, he encircles the whole earth. Hela he cast into Niflheim, and gave her power over nine worlds (regions), into which she distributes those who are sent to her, that is to say, all who die through sickness or old age. Here she possesses a habitation protected by exceedingly high walls and strongly barred gates. Her hall is called Elvidnir; Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife; Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care, her bed; and Burning Anguish forms the hangings of her apartments. The one half of her body is livid, the other half the color of human flesh. She may therefore easily be recognized; the more so, as she has a dreadfully stern and grim countenance.
"'The wolf Fenrir was bred up among the gods; but Tyr alone had the daring to go and feed him. Nevertheless, when the gods perceived that he every day increased prodigiously in size, and that the oracles warned them that he would one day become fatal to them, they determined to make a very strong iron fetter for him, which they called Læding. Taking this fetter to the wolf, they bade him try his strength on it. Fenrir, perceiving that the enterprise would not be very difficult for him, let them do what they pleased, and then, by great muscular exertion, burst the chain, and set himself at liberty. The gods, having seen this, made another fetter, half as strong again as the former, which they called Drómi, and prevailed on the wolf to put it on, assuring him that, by breaking this, he would give an undeniable proof of his vigor.
"'The wolf saw well enough that it would not be so easy to break this fetter, but finding at the same time that his strength had increased since he broke Læding, and thinking that he could never become famous without running some risk, voluntarily submitted to be chained. When the gods told him that they had finished their task, Fenrir shook himself violently, stretched his limbs, rolled on the ground, and at last burst his chains, which flew in pieces all around him. He thus freed himself from Drómi, which gave rise to the proverb "at leysa or læðingi eða at drepa or dróma" (to get loose out of Læding, or to dash out of Drómi), when anything is to be accomplished by strong efforts.'
"'After this, the gods despaired of ever being able to bind the wolf; wherefore All-father sent Skirnir, the messenger of Frey, into the country of the Dark Elves (Svartálfaheim) to engage certain dwarfs to make the fetter called Gleipnir. It was fashioned out of six things; to wit, the noise made by the footfall of a cat; the beards of women; the roots of stones; the sinews of bears; the breath of fish; and the spittle of birds. Though thou mayest not have heard of these things before, thou mayest easily convince thyself that we have not been telling thee lies. Thou must have seen that women have no beards, that cats make no noise when they run, and that there are no roots under stones. Now I know what has been told thee to be equally true, although there may be some things thou art not able to furnish a proof of.'
"'I believe what thou hast told me to be true,' replied Gangler, 'for what thou hast adduced in corroboratiou of thy statement is conceivable. But how was the fetter smithied?'
"'This I can tell thee,' replied Har, 'that the fetter was as smooth and soft as a silken string, and yet, as thou wilt presently hear, of very great strength. When it was brought to the gods they were profuse in their thanks to the messenger for the trouble he had given himself; and taking the wolf with them to the island called Lyngvi, in the Lake Amsvartnir, they showed him the cord, and expressed their wish that he would try to break it, assuring him at the same time that it was somewhat stronger than its thinness would warrant a person in supposing it to be. They took it themselves, one after another, in their hands, and after attempting in vain to break it, said, "Thou alone, Fenrir, art able to accomplish such a feat."
"'"Methinks," replied the wolf, "that I shall acquire no fame in breaking such a slender cord; but if any artifice has been employed in making it, slender though it seems, it shall never come on my feet."
"'The gods assured him that he would easily break a limber silken cord, since he had already burst asunder iron fetters of the most solid construction. "But if thou shouldst not succeed in breaking it," they added, "thou wilt show that thou art too weak to cause the gods any fear, and we will not hesitate to set thee at liberty without delay."
"'"I fear me much," replied the wolf, "that if ye once bind me so fast that I shall be unable to free myself by my own efforts, ye will be in no haste to unloose me. Loath am I, therefore, to have this cord wound round me; but in order that ye may not doubt my courage, I will consent, provided one of you put his hand into my mouth as a pledge that ye intend me no deceit."
"'The gods wistfully looked at each other, and found that they had only the choice of two evils, until Tyr stepped forward and intrepidly put his right hand between the monster's jaws. Hereupon the gods, having tied up the wolf, he forcibly stretched himself, as he had formerly done, and used all his might to disengage himself, but the more efforts he made, the tighter became the cord, until all the gods, except Tyr, who lost his hand, burst into laughter at the sight.
"'When the gods saw that the wolf was effectually bound, they took the chain called Gelgja, which was fixed to the fetter, and drew it through the middle of a large rock named Gjöll, which they sank very deep into the earth; afterwards, to make it still more secure, they fastened the end of the cord to a massive stone called Thviti, which they sank still deeper. The wolf made in vain the most violent efforts to break loose, and, opening his tremendous jaws, endeavored to bite them. The gods, seeing this, thrust a sword into his mouth, which pierced his under jaw up to the hilt, so that the point touched the palate. He then began to howl horribly, and since that time the foam flows continually from his mouth in such abundance that it forms the river called Von. There will he remain until Ragnarök.'"
There are also goddesses in the Valhalla, of whom the Edda mentions Frigga, Saga, and many others.

§ 5. Resemblance of the Scandinavian Mythology to that of Zoroaster.

These are the main points of the Scandinavian mythology, the resemblance of which to that of Zoroaster has been often remarked. Each is a dualism, having its good and evil gods, its worlds of light and darkness, in opposition to each other. Each has behind this dualism a dim presence, a vague monotheism, a supreme God, infinite and eternal. In each the evil powers are for the present conquered and bound in some subterranean prisons, but are hereafter to break out, to battle with the gods and overcome them, but to be destroyed themselves at the same time. Each system speaks of a great conflagration, in which all things will be destroyed; to be followed by the creation of a new earth, more beautiful than the other, to be the abode of peace and joy. The duty of man in each system is war, though this war in the Avesta is viewed rather as moral conflict, while in the Edda it is taken more grossly for physical struggle. The tone of the theology of Zoroaster is throughout higher and more moral than that of the Scandinavians. Its doctrine of creation is not a mere development by a dark, unintelligent process, nor, on the other hand, is it a Hindoo or Gnostic system of emanation. It is neither pure materialism on the one hand nor pantheism on the other; but a true doctrine of creation, for an intelligent and moral purpose, by the conscious and free act of the Creator. But in many of the details, again, we find a singular correspondence between these two systems. Odin corresponds to Ormazd, Loki to Ahriman, the Æsir to the Amschaspands, the giants of Jótunheim to the Daêvas. So too the ox (Adudab) is the equivalent of the giant Ymir, and the creation of the man and woman, Meshia and Meshiane, is correlated to Ask and Embla. Baldur resembles the Redeemer Sosiosh. The bridge, Bifrost, which goes up to heaven, is the bridge Chinevat, which goes from the top of Albordj to heaven. The dog Sirius (Sura), the watchman who keeps guard over the abyss, seems also to correspond to Surtur, the watchman of the luminous world at the South. The earth, in the Avesta, is called Hethra, and by the ancient Germans and Scandinavians, Hertha,—the name given by Tacitus to this goddess, signifying the earth, in all the Teutonic languages. In like manner, the German name for heaven, Himmel, is derived from the Sanskrit word "Himmala," the name of the Himmalah Mountains in Central Asia, believed by the ancient inhabitants of Asia to be the residence of their gods330.

§ 6. Scandinavian Worship.

The religious ceremonies of the Scandinavians were simple. Their worship, like that of the followers of Zoroaster, was at first held in the open air; but in later times they erected temples, some of which were quite splendid. There were three great festivals in the year. The first was at the winter solstice, and on the longest night of the year, which was called the Mother Night, as that which produced the rest. This great feast was called Yul, whence comes the English Yule, the old name for Christmas, which festival took its place when the Scandinavians became Christians. Their festival was in honor of the sun, and was held with sacrifices, feasting, and great mirth. The second festival was in spring, in honor of the earth, to supplicate fruitful crops. The third was also in the spring, in honor of Odin. The sacrifices were of fruits, afterward animals, and occasionally, in later times, human beings. The people believed in divine interposition, and also in a fixed destiny, but especially in themselves, in their own force and courage. Some of them laughed at the gods, some challenged them to fight with them, and professed to believe in nothing but their own might and main. One warrior calls for Odin, as a foeman alone worthy of his steel, and it was considered lawful to fight the gods. The quicken-tree, or mountain-ash, was believed to possess great virtues, on account of the aid it afforded to Thor on one occasion.
Beside the priests, the Northern nations had their soothsayers. They also believed that by the power of runes the dead could be made to speak. These runes were called galder, and another kind of magic, mostly practised by women, was called seid. It was thought that these wise women possessed the power of raising and allaying storms, and of hardening the body so that the sword could not cut it. Some charms could give preternatural strength, others the power of crossing the sea without a ship, of creating and destroying love, of assuming different forms, of becoming invisible, of giving the evil eye. Garments could be charmed to protect or to destroy the wearer. A horse's head, set on a stake, with certain imprecations, produced fearful mischief to a foe.331
Very few remains of temples have been found in the North. But (as Laing remarks in his "Sea-Kings of Norway") the most permanent remains of the religion of Odin are found in the usages and languages of the descendants of those who worshipped him. These descendants all retain, in the names of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the recollections of the chief gods of this mythology. Mara (the nightmare) still torments the sleep of the English-speaking people; and the Evil One, Nokke (so says Laing), is the ancestor of Old Nick.
Every ninth year solemn sacrifices were held in the great temple at Upsal in Sweden. The king and all citizens of importance must appear in person and bring offerings. Crowds came together on these occasions, and no one was excluded, except for some base or cowardly action. Nine human beings were sacrificed, usually captives or slaves, but in times of great calamity even a king was made a victim. Earl Hakon, of Norway, offered his son in sacrifice to obtain a victory over some pirates. The bodies were buried in groves, which thence were regarded as very sacred. One, called Odin's grove, near the temple of Upsal, was sacred in every twig and leaf.

§ 7. Social Character, Maritime Discoveries, and Political Institutions of the Scandinavians.

Of the manners, customs, and habits of the Scandinavians, we cannot speak at length. Society among them was divided into two classes,—the landholder or bondsmen, and the thralls or slaves. The duty of the last was to perform domestic service and till the ground, and they consisted of prisoners taken in war and their children. The business of the landholder or bondsman was war, and his chief virtue courage. His maxim was, to conquer a single opponent, to attack two, not to yield to three, and only to give way to four. To die in battle was their high ambition; then they believed that they should pass to the halls of Odin. King Ragnar died singing the pleasure of receiving death in battle, saying, "The hours of my life have passed away; I shall die laughing." Saxo, describing a duel, said that one of the champions fell, laughed, and died. Rather than die in their bed, some, when sick, leaped from a rock into the sea. Others, when dying, would be carried into a field of battle. Others induced their friends to kill them. The Icelandic Sagas are filled with stories of single combats, or holm-gangs. When not fighting they were fond of feasting; and the man who could drink the most beer was counted the best. The custom of drinking toasts came from the North. As the English give the Queen, and we the President, as the first health on public occasions, so they begin with a cup, first to Odin, and afterward to other deities, and then to the memory of the dead, in what was called grave-beer. Their institutions were patriarchal; the head of the family was the chief of the tribe and also its priest. But all the freemen in a neighborhood met in the Thing, where they decided disputes, laid down social regulations, and determined on public measures. The Thing was, therefore, legislature, court of justice, and executive council in one; and once a year, in some central place, there was held a similar meeting to settle the affairs of the whole country, called the Land-Thing or All-Thing. At this the king was chosen for the whole community, who sometimes appointed subordinate officers called Yarls, or earls, to preside over large districts. Respect for women was a marked trait among the Scandinavians, as Tacitus has noticed of their congeners, the Germans. They were admired for their modesty, sense, and force of character, rather than for the fascinations which the nations of the South prefer. When Thor described his battle with the sorceress, the answer was, "Shame, Thor! to strike a woman!" The wife was expected to be industrious and domestic. She carried the keys of the house; and the Sagas frequently mention wives who divorced their husbands for some offence, and took back their dowry. The Skalds, or Bards, had a high place and great distinction among this people. Their songs constituted the literature and history of the Scandinavians, and the people listened, not as to the inspiration of an individual mind, but to the pulsation of its own past life. Their praises were desired, their satire feared, by the greatest heroes and kings. Their style was figurative, sometimes bombastic, often obscure.
Of the maritime expeditions of the Northmen we have already spoken. For many centuries they were the terror of Europe, North and South. The sea-kings of Norway appeared before Constantinople in 866, and afterward a body-guard of the emperors of the East was composed of these pirates, who were called the Varangians. Even before the death of Charlemagne their depredations brought tears to his eyes; and after his death they pillaged and burnt the principal cities of France, and even his own palace at Aix-la-Chapelle. They carried their arms into Spain, Italy, and Greece. In 844 a band of these sea-rovers sailed up the Guadalquiver and attacked Seville, then in possession of the Moors, and took it, and afterward fought a battle with the troops of Abderahman II. The followers of Mohammed and the worshippers of Odin, the turbaned Moors and the fair-haired Norwegians, here met, each far from his original home, each having pursued a line of conquest, which thus came in contact at their furthest extremes.
The Northmen in Italy sold their swords to different princes, and under Count Rainalf built the city of Aversa in 1029332. In Sicily the Northern knights defeated the Saracens, and enabled the Greek Emperor to reconquer the island. Afterward they established themselves in Southern Italy, and took possession of Apulia. A league formed against them by the Greek and German Emperors and the Pope ended in the utter defeat of the Papal and German army by three thousand Normans, and they afterward received and held Apulia as a Papal fief. In 1060 Robert Guiscard became Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and at last of the whole kingdom of Naples. Sicily was conquered by his brother, Count Roger, who, with a few Northmen, routed vast numbers of the Saracens and completed the subjection of the island, after thirty years of war. Meantime his brother Robert crossed the Adriatic and besieged and took Durazzo, after a fierce battle, in which the Scandinavian soldiers of the Greek Emperor fought with the Normans descended from the same Scandinavian ancestors.

§ 8. Relation of this System to Christianity.

The first German nation converted to Christianity was that of the Goths, whose teacher was Ulphilas, born 318, consecrated a bishop in 348. Having made many converts to Christianity among his people, a persecution arose against them from the pagan Goths; and in 355, in consequence of this persecution, he sought and obtained leave to settle his converts in Mæsia. He preached with fervor, studied the Scripture in Greek and Latin, and made the first translation of the Bible into any German language. Fragments of his Gothic version are preserved at Upsal. This copy, called the "Codex Argenteus," was captured by the Swedes at Prague during the Thirty Years' War. This manuscript is of the sixth century, and, together with some palimpsests, is the only source of our knowledge of this ancient version333.
Ulphilas was an Arian, and died confessing his faith in that form of Unitarianism. Neander says it is to the credit of the orthodox historians that they do not on that account abate anything of their praise of Ulphilas for his great labors as a missionary, confessor, and doctor. His translation was, for a long time, used all over Europe by the various tribes of German descent.
Ulphilas, therefore, led the way in that work which resulted in one of the greatest events of modern history; namely, the conversion of the German race to Christianity. It was by various families of this Teutonic stem—Goths, Vandals, Saxons, Lombards, Burgundians, Franks—that the Roman Empire was overthrown. If they had not been converted to Christianity before and during these conquests, what would have been the fate of European civilization? The only bond uniting the modern and ancient world was the Christian faith, and this faith was so adapted to the German character that it was everywhere accepted by them334. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons by Augustin (A.D. 597), of the Germans by Boniface (A.D. 718-755), of the Saxons (A.D. 803), and the universal downfall of German heathenism, was a condition sine qua non of that union of Latin and Greek culture with the German vitality, which was at the root of modern European civilization. Previous to this the Visigoths were converted, as we have seen; then the Ostrogoths; then the Vandals and Gepidæ,—all in the fourth century. The Franks became Christians in the fifth century, the Alemanni and Lombards in the sixth. All of these tribes were converted by Arian missionaries, except the Franks. But the records of these missions have perished, for the historians were Catholics, "who," says Milman335, "perhaps destroyed, or disdained to preserve, the fame of Arian conquests to a common Christianity." "It was a surprising spectacle," says he, "to behold the Teutonic nations melting gradually into the general mass of Christian worshippers. In every other respect they were still distinct races. The conquering Ostrogoth or Visigoth, the Vandal, the Burgundian, the Frank, stood apart from the subjugated Roman population, as an armed or territorial aristocracy. They maintain, in great part at least, their laws, their language, their habits, their character; in religion alone they are blended into one society, constitute one church, worship at the same altar, and render allegiance to the same hierarchy. This is the single bond of their common humanity."
The German races also established everywhere the feudal system, that curious institution, which has been the subject of so much discussion, and has perplexed the readers of history by its incongruities. These perplexities, however, may perhaps be relieved if we see that the essential character of this institution was this, that it was an army permanently quartered on a subject people. This definition contains the explanation of the whole system. The Germans had overrun and conquered the Roman Empire. They intended to possess and retain it. But being much fewer in numbers than the conquered people, how could they do this? Suppose that when the Confederate States had been conquered by the Union Army it had been determined to hold them permanently as a conquered territory. It could be done thus. First, the original inhabitants must be disarmed and put under stringent laws, like that of the curfew, etc. Then to every private soldier in the Union Army a farm, say of fifty acres, would be assigned, on condition that whenever summoned by the captain of his company he would present himself armed to do military duty. In like manner the captain would receive, say a hundred acres, on condition of appearing with his company when summoned by his colonel. Then the colonel would receive five hundred acres, on condition of appearing with his regiment when summoned by the general. The general (dux, duke) must appear with his brigade when summoned by the commander-in-chief (imperator, emperor), and he would hold perhaps a thousand acres on this condition. All this land, thus held on condition of military service, would be held in fee, and would exemplify the actual foundation of the whole feudal system, which was simply an arrangement by which a conquering army could hold down the conquered nation.
Of course, such a system as this was one of tyranny and cruelty, and during several centuries it was tempered and softened only by the mediatorial influence of the Christian Church. This was the only power strong enough to shield the oppressed and to hold back the arm of the tyrant. Feudalism served, no doubt, some useful purposes. It was a method of riveting together, with iron nails, the conquerors and conquered, until they could come into a union of a better kind.
It was about the year 1000 that the people of the North were converted to Christianity. This process of conversion was a long time going on, and there were several relapses into paganism; so that no precise time can be fixed for the conversion of a single nation, much less for that of the different branches of the Scandinavian stock separately situated in Sweden and Denmark, Iceland and Greenland, and colonized in England and Normandy. A mission was established in Denmark, A.D. 822, and the king was baptized; but the overthrow of this Christian king restricted the labors of the missionary. An attempt was made in Sweden in 829, and the missionary, Anschar, remained there a year and a half; but the mission there established was soon overthrown. Uniting wisdom with his ardor, Anschar established at Hamburg schools where he educated Danish and Swedish boys to preach Christianity in their own language to their countrymen. But the Normans laid waste this city, and the Christian schools and churches were destroyed. About 850 a new attempt was made in Sweden, and there the subject was laid by the king before his council or parliament, consisting of two assemblies, and they decided to allow Christianity to be preached and practised, apparently on the ground that this new god, Christ, might help them in their dangers at sea, when the other gods could not. And thus, according to the independent character of this people, Christianity was neither allowed to be imposed upon them by their king against their will, nor excluded from the use of those who chose to adopt it. It took its chance with the old systems, and many of the Danes and Normans believed in worshipping both Odin and Christ at the same time. King Harold in Denmark, during the last half of the tenth century, favored the spread of Christianity, and was himself baptized with his wife and son, believing at first that the Christian God was more powerful than the heathen gods, but finally coming to the conclusion that these last were only evil spirits. On the other hand, some of the Danes believed that Christ was a god, and to be worshipped; but that he was a less powerful god than Odin or Thor. The son of King Harold, in 990, returned to paganism and drove out the Christian priests; but his son, Canute the Great, who began to reign in 1014, was converted to Christianity in England, and became its zealous friend. But these fierce warriors made rather poor Christians. Adam of Bremen says: "They so abominate tears and lamentations, and all other signs of penitence which we think so salubrious, that they will neither weep for their own sins nor at the death of their best friends." Thus, in these Northern regions, Christianity grew through one or two centuries, not like the mustard-seed, but like the leaven, infusing itself more and more into their national life. According to the testimony of an eye-witness, Adam of Bremen, the Swedes were very susceptible to religious impressions. "They receive the preachers of the truth with great kindness," says he, "if they are modest, wise, and able; and our bishops are even allowed to preach in their great public assemblies." In Norway, Prince Hacon, in the middle of the tenth century, attempted to establish Christianity, which he had learned in England. He proposed to the great national assembly that the whole nation should renounce idolatry, worship God and Christ, keep Sundays as festivals, and Fridays as fasts. Great opposition was made, and there was danger of universal insurrection, so that the king had to yield, and even himself drink a toast to Odin and eat horse-flesh, which was a heathen practice. Subsequent kings of Norway introduced Christianity again; but the people, though willing to be baptized, frequently continued Pagans, and only by degrees renounced, with their old worship, their habits of piracy. The Icelanders embraced Christianity at their All-Thing in the year 1000, but with the condition that they might also continue their old worship, and be permitted the eating of horse-flesh and exposition of infants. When the All-Thing broke up, the assembled multitudes went to the hot-baths to be baptized, preferring for this rite hot water to cold. The Scandinavians seem at this period to have lost their faith in their old religion, and to have been in a transition state. One warrior says that he relies more on his own strength and arms than upon Thor. Another says, "I would have thee know that I believe neither in idols nor spirits, but only in my own force and courage." A warrior told King Olaff in Norway, "I am neither Christian nor Pagan. My companions and I have no other religion than confidence in our own strength and good success." Evidently Christianity for a long time sat very lightly on these nations. They were willing to be baptized and accept some of the outward ceremonies and festivals of the Catholic Church, which were considerately made to resemble their old ones.
Nevertheless Christianity met many of the wants of this noble race of men; and, on the other hand, their instincts as a race were as well adapted to promote an equal development of every side of Christian life. The Southern races of Europe received Christianity as a religion of order; the Northern races, as a religion of freedom. In the South of Europe the Catholic Church, by its ingenious organization and its complex arrangements, introduced into life discipline and culture. In the North of Europe Protestant Christianity, by its appeals to the individual soul, awakens conscience and stimulates to individual and national progress. The nations of Southern Europe accepted Christianity mainly as a religion of sentiment and feeling; the nations of Northern Europe, as a religion of truth and principle. God adapted Christianity to the needs of these Northern races; but he also adapted these races, with their original instincts and their primitive religion, to the needs of Christianity. Without them, we do not see how there could be such a thing in Europe to-day as Protestantism. It was no accident which made the founder of the Reformation a Saxon monk, and the cradle of the Reformation Germany. It was no accident which brought the great Gustavus Adolphus from the northern peninsula, at the head of his Swedish Protestants, to turn the tide of war in favor of Protestantism and to die on the field of Lutzen, fighting for freedom of spirit. It is no accident which makes the Scandinavian races to-day, in Sweden and Norway, in Denmark and North Germany and Holland, in England and the United States, almost the only Protestant nations of the world. The old instincts still run in the blood, and cause these races to ask of their religion, not so much the luxury of emotion or the satisfaction of repose, in having all opinions settled for them and all actions prescribed, as, much rather, light, freedom, and progress. To them to-day, as to their ancestors,
"Is life a simple art
  Of duties to be done,
A game where each man takes his part,
  A race where all must run;
A battle whose great scheme and scope
  They little care to know;
Content, as men at arms, to cope
  Each with his fronting foe."

Chapter X.

The Jewish Religion.

§ 1. Palestine, and the Semitic Races.

Palestine is a word equivalent to Philistia, or the land of the Philistines. A similar name for the coast region of Syria has been found on a monument in Nineveh,336 and at Karnak in Egypt.337 Josephus and Philo use the term "Palestine," as applying to the Philistines; and the accurate learning of Milton appears in his using it in the same sense.338 "The land of Canaan," "The land of Israel," and "Judæa" were the names afterward given to the territory of the children of Israel. It is a small country, like others as famous; for it is only about one hundred and forty English miles in length, and forty in width. It resembles Greece and Switzerland, not only in its small dimensions, but by being composed of valleys, separated by chains of mountains and by ranges of hills. It was isolated by the great sea of sand on the east, and the Mediterranean on the west. Sharply defined on the east, west, and south, it stretches indefinitely into Syria on the north. It is a hilly, high-lying region, having all the characters of Greece except proximity to the sea, and all those of Switzerland except the height of the mountains. Its valleys were well watered and fertile. They mostly ran north and south; none opened a way across, Judæa to the Mediterranean. This geographical fact assisted in the isolation of the country. Two great routes of travel passed by its borders without entering its hills. On the west the plains of Philistia were the highway of the Assyrian and Egyptian armies. On the north the valley of the Orontes, separated by the chain of Lebanon from Palestine, allowed the people of Asia a free passage to the sea. So, though surrounded by five great nations, all idolatrous,—the Babylonians, Medes, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians,—the people of Judæa were enabled to develop their own character and institutions without much interference from without. Inaccessible from the sea, and surrounded, like the Swiss, by the natural fortifications of their hills, like the Swiss they were also protected by their poverty from spoilers. But being at the point of contact of three continents, they had (like the Mahommedans afterwards) great facilities for communicating their religious ideas to other nations.
Palestine is so small a country that from many points the whole of it may be overlooked339. Toward the east, from all points, may be seen the high plateau of Moab and the mountains of Gilead. Snow-capped Hermon is always visible on the north. In the heart of the land rises the beautiful mountain Tabor, clothed with vegetation to its summit. It is almost a perfect cone, and commands the most interesting view in all directions. From its top, to which you ascend from Nazareth by a path which Jesus may have trod, you see to the northeast the lofty chain of Hermon (Jebel es Sheikh = the Captain) rising into the blue sky to the height of ten thousand feet, covered with eternal snow. West of this appears the chain of Lebanon. At the foot of Tabor the plain of Esdraelon extends northerly, dotted with hills, and animated with the camps of the Arabs340. The Lake of Galilee gleams, a silver line, on the east, with Bashan and the mountains of Gilead in the distance, and farther to the southeast the great plateau of Moab rises like a mountain wall beyond the Jordan. The valley of the Jordan itself, sunk far below the level of the Mediterranean, is out of sight in its deep valley; nor is anything seen of the Dead Sea. To the northwest rises rocky Carmel, overhanging the Bay of Accha (or Acre), on the Mediterranean.
The whole country stands high. Hebron, at the south, is three thousand feet above the level of the sea; Jerusalem is twenty-six hundred; the Mount of Olives, twenty-seven hundred; and Ebal and Gerizim in Samaria, the same. The valley in which Nazareth stands is eight hundred and twenty feet above the sea; that at the foot of Tabor, four hundred and thirty-nine; while the summit of Tabor itself is seventeen hundred and fifty. From Judæa the land plunges downward very rapidly toward the east into the valley of Jordan. The surface of Lake Galilee is already five hundred and thirty-five feet below that of the Mediterranean, and that of the Dead Sea is five hundred feet lower down.341 Palestine is therefore a mountain fastness, and most of the waves of war swept by, leaving it untouched and unassailed. From Jerusalem to Jericho the distance is only thirteen miles, but the latter place is a thousand feet lower than the former, so that it was very proper to speak of a man's "going down from Jerusalem to Jericho."
The Jews belonged to what has been called the Semitic race. This family, the only historic rival of the Japhetic (or Aryan) race, is ethnologically composed of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews and other Syrian tribes, the Arabs and the Carthaginians. It is a race which has been great on land and at sea. In the valley of the Euphrates and that of the Tigris its sons carried all the arts of social life to the highest perfection, and became mighty conquerors and warlike soldiers. On the Mediterranean their ships, containing Phoenician navigators, explored the coasts, made settlements at Carthage and Cadiz, and sailing out of the Straits of Gibraltar went as far north as Great Britain, and circumnavigated Africa two thousand years before Vasco da Gama. This race has given to man the alphabet, the Bible, the Koran, commerce, and in Hannibal the greatest military genius of all time.
That the different nations inhabiting the region around the Euphrates and Tigris, Syria and Arabia, belonged to one great race, is proved by the unimpeachable testimony of language. The Bible genealogies trace them to Shem, the son of Noah. Ewald,342 who believes that this region was inhabited by an aboriginal people long before the days of Abraham,—a people who were driven out by the Canaanites,—nevertheless says that they no doubt were a Semitic people. The languages of all these nations is closely related, being almost dialects of a single tongue, the differences between them being hardly greater than between the subdivisions of the German group of languages.343 That which has contributed to preserve the close homogeneity among these tongues is, that they have little power of growth or development. As M. Renan says, "they have less lived than lasted."344
The Phoenicians used a language almost identical with the Hebrew. A sarcophagus of Ezmunazar, king of Sidon, dating from the fifth century before Christ, was discovered a few years since, and is now in the Museum of the Louvre. It contains some thirty sentences of the length of an average verse in the Bible, and is in pure Hebrew.345 In a play of Plautus346 a Carthaginian is made to speak a long passage in his native language, the Punic tongue; this is also very readable Hebrew. The black basalt stele, lately discovered in the land of Moab, contains an inscription of Mesha, king of Moab, addressed to his god, Chemosh, describing his victory over the Israelites. This is also in a Hebrew dialect. From such facts it appears that the Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Canaanites were all congeners with each other, and with the Babylonians and Assyrians.
But now the striking fact appears that the Hebrew religion differed widely from that of these other nations of the same family. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians all possessed a nearly identical religion. They all believed in a supreme god, called by the different names of Ilu, Bel, Set, Hadad, Moloch, Chemosh, Jaoh, El, Adon, Asshur. All believed in subordinate and secondary beings, emanations from this supreme being, his manifestations to the world, rulers of the planets. Like other pantheistic religions, the custom prevailed among the Semitic nations of promoting first one and then another deity to be the supreme object of worship. Among the Assyrians, as among the Egyptians, the gods were often arranged in triads, as that of Ann, Bel, and Ao. Anu, or Cannes, wore the head of a fish; Bel wore the horns of a bull; Ao was represented by a serpent. These religions represented the gods as the spirit within nature, and behind natural objects and forces,—powers within the world, rather than above the world. Their worship combined cruelty and licentiousness, and was perhaps as debasing a superstition as the world has witnessed. The Greeks, who were not puritans themselves in their religion, were shocked at the impure orgies of this worship, and horrified at the sacrifice of children among the Canaanites and Carthaginians.
How then did the Hebrews, under Moses and the later prophets, originate a system so widely different? Their God was above nature, not in it. He stood alone, unaccompanied by secondary deities; he made no part of a triad; he was not associated with a female representative. His worship required purity, not pollution; its aim was holiness, and its spirit humane, not cruel. Monotheistic in its spirit from the first, it became an absolute monotheism in its development. Whence this wide departure in the Hebrews from the religious tendencies and belief of the surrounding nations, who spoke the same language and belonged to the same stock?
M. Renan considers this a question of race.347 He says: "The Indo-European race, distracted by the variety of the universe, never by itself arrived at monotheism. The Semitic race, on the other hand, guided by its firm and sure sight, instantly unmasked Divinity, and without reflection or reasoning attained the purest form of religion that humanity has known." But the Assyrians, Babylonians, Arabians before Mohammed, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians, and perhaps the Egyptians, belonged to the Semitic race. Yet none of these nations attained to any monotheism purer than that of the Veda or the Avesta. The Arabs, near relations of the Hebrews, were divided between a worship like that of Babylon and Sabæism, or star-worship. No doubt in all these Semitic families the idea of one supreme god lay behind that of the secondary deities; but this was also the case in the Aryan races. And in both this primitive monotheism receded instead of becoming more distinct, with the single exception of the Hebrews. M. Renan's view is not, therefore, supported by the facts. We must look further to find the true cause, and therefore are obliged to examine somewhat in detail the main points of Hebrew history. It would be easy, but would not accord with our plan, to accept the common Christian explanation, and say, "Monotheism was a direct revelation to Moses." For we are now not able to assume such a revelation, and are obliged to consider the subject from the outside, from the stand-point of pure history.

§ 2. Abraham; or, Judaism as the family Worship of a Supreme Being.

We have been so accustomed to regard the Jewish religion as a part of our own, and so to look at it from within, that it is hard to take the historic position, and to look at it from without. But to compare it with other religions, and to see what it really is and is not, this is necessary. It becomes more difficult to assume the attitude of an impartial observer, because of the doctrine of verbal inspiration, so universally taught in the Protestant Church. From childhood we have looked on the Old Testament as inspired throughout, and all on the same level of absolute infallibility. There is no high, no low, no degrees of certitude or probability, where every word is assumed to be the very word of God. But those who still hold to the plenary inspiration of the Old Testament must consent, for our present purpose, to suspend their faith in this doctrine, and provisionally to look at the Old Testament with the same impartial though friendly scrutiny with which we have regarded the sacred books of other nations. Not a little will be gained for the Jewish Scriptures by this position. If they lose the authority which attaches to the Word of God, they will gain the interest which belongs to the utterance of man.
While M. Renan finds the source of Hebrew monotheism in a like tendency in the whole Semitic race,—a supposition which we have seen to be contradicted by the facts,—Max Müller regards the true origin of this tendency to be in Abraham himself, the friend of God, and Father of the Faithful. He calls attention to the fact that both Moses and Christ, and subsequently Mohammed, preached no new God, but the God of Abraham. "Thus," says he, "the faith in the one living God, which seemed to require the admission of a monotheistic instinct grafted in every member of the Semitic family, is traced back to one man." He adds his belief that this faith of Abraham in one supreme God came to him by a special revelation.
And if, by a special revelation, is meant a grand profound insight, an inspired vision of truth, so deep and so living as to make it a reality like that of the outward world, then we see no better explanation of the monotheism of the Hebrews than this conviction transmitted from Abraham through father and son, from generation to generation.
For the most curious fact about this Jewish people is, that every one of them348 is a child of Abraham. All looked back with the same ancestral pride to their great progenitor, the friend of God. This has never been the case with any other nation, for the Arabs are not a nation. One can hardly imagine a greater spur to patriotism than this union of pride of descent with pride in one's nation and its institutions. The proudest and poorest Jew shared it together. There was one distinction, and that the most honorable, which belonged equally to all.
We have seen that, in all the Semitic nations, behind the numerous divine beings representing the powers of nature, there was dimly visible one Supreme Being, of whom all these were emanations. The tendency to lose sight of this First Great Cause, so common in the race, was reversed in Abraham. His soul rose to the contemplation of the Perfect Being, above all, and the source of all. With passionate love he adored this Most High God, Maker of heaven and earth. Such was his devotion to this Almighty Being, that men, wondering, said, "Abraham is the friend of the Most High God!" He desired to find a home where he could bring up his children in this pure faith, undisturbed and unperverted by the gross and low worship around him. In some "deep dream or solemn vision" it was borne in on his mind that he must go and find such a home.
We are not to suppose, however, that the mind of Abraham rose to a clear conception of the unity of God, as excluding all other divine beings. The idea of local, tribal, family gods was too deeply rooted to be at once relinquished. Abraham, as described in Genesis, is a great Arab chief, a type of patriarchal life, in which all authority is paternal. The religion of such a period is filial, and God is viewed as the protector and friend of the family or tribe. Only the family God of Abraham was the highest of all gods, the Almighty (Gen. xvii. 1), who was also the God of Isaac (Gen. xxviii. 3) and of Jacob (Gen. xxxv. 11).
Stanley349 expresses his satisfaction that the time has past in which the most fastidious believer can object to hearing Abraham called a Bedouin sheik. The type has remained unchanged through all the centuries, and the picture in the Bible of Abraham in his tent, of his hospitality, his self-respect, his courage, and also of his less noble traits, occasional cunning and falsehood, and cruelty toward Hagar and Ishmael,—these qualities, good and bad, are still those of the desert. Only in Abraham something higher and exceptional was joined with them.
In the Book of Genesis Abraham enters quite abruptly upon the scene. His genealogy is given in Genesis (chap, xi.), he being the ninth in descent from Shem, each generation occupying a little more than thirty years. The birth of Abraham is usually placed somewhere about two thousand years before Christ. His father's name was Terah, whom the Jewish and Mohammedan traditions describe as an idolater and maker of idols. He had two brothers, Nahor and Haran; the latter being the father of Lot, and the other, Nahor, being the grandfather of Rebecca, wife of Isaac. Abraham's father, Terah, lived in Ur of the Chaldees (called in Scripture Casdim). The Chaldees, who subsequently inhabited the region about the Persian Gulf, seemed at first to have lived among the mountains of Armenia, at the source of the Tigris; and this was the region where Abraham was born, a region now occupied by the people called Curds, who are perhaps descendants of the old Chaldees, the inhabitants of Ur. The Curds are Mohammedans and robbers, and quite independent, never paying taxes to the Porte. The Chaldees are frequently mentioned in Scripture and in ancient writers. Xenophon speaks of the Carduchi as inhabitants of the mountains of Armenia, and as making incursions thence to plunder the country, just as the Curds do now. He says they were found there by the younger Cyrus, and by the ten thousand Greeks. The Greeks, in their retreat, were obliged to fight their way through them, and found them very skilful archers. So did the Romans under Crassus and Mark Antony. And so are they described by the Prophet Habakkuk (chap, i. 6-9):—
"For lo, I raise up the Chaldeans,
A bitter and hasty nation,
Which marches far and wide in the earth,
To possess the dwellings that are not theirs.
They are terrible and dreadful,
Their decrees and their judgments proceed only from themselves.
Swifter than leopards are their horses,
And fiercer than the evening wolves.
Their horsemen prance proudly around;
And their horsemen shall come from afar and fly,
Like the eagle when he pounces on his prey.
They all shall come for violence,
In troops,—their glance is ever forward!
They gather captives like the sand!"
As they were in the time of Habakkuk, so are they to-day. Shut up on every side in the Persian Empire, their ancestors, the Carduchi, refused obedience to the great king and his satraps, just as the Curds refuse to obey the grand seignior and his pashas. They can raise a hundred and forty thousand armed men. They are capable of any undertaking. Mohammed himself said, "They would yet revolutionize the world."
The ancient Chaldees seem to have been fire-worshippers, like the Persians. They were renowned for the study of the heavens and the worship of the stars, and some remains of Persian dualism still linger among their descendants, who are accused of Devil-worship by their neighbors.
That Abraham was a real person, and that his story is historically reliable, can hardly be doubted by those who have the historic sense. Such pictures, painted in detail with a Pre-Raphaelite minuteness, are not of the nature of legends. Stories which are discreditable to his character, and which place him in a humiliating position towards Pharaoh and Abimelech, would not have appeared in a fictitious narrative. The mythical accounts of Abraham, as found among the Mohammedans and in the Talmud,350 show, by their contrast, the difference between fable and history.
The events in the life of Abraham are so well known that it is not necessary even to allude to them. We will only refer to one, as showing that others among the tribes in Palestine, besides Abraham, had a faith in God similar to his. This is the account of his meeting with Melchisedek. This mysterious person has been so treated by typologists that all human meaning has gone out of him, and he has become, to most minds, a very vapory character.351 But this is doing him great injustice.
One mistake often made about him is, to assume that "Melchisedek, King of Salem," gives us the name and residence of the man, whereas both are his official titles. His name we do not know; his office and title had swallowed it up. "King of Justice and King of Peace,"—this is his designation. His office, as we believe, was to be umpire among the chiefs of neighboring tribes. By deciding the questions which arose among them, according to equity, he received his title of "King of Justice." By thus preventing the bloody arbitrament of war, he gained the other name, "King of Peace." All questions, therefore, as to where "Salem" was, fall to the ground. Salem means "peace"; it does not mean the place of his abode.
But in order to settle such intertribal disputes, two things were necessary: first, that the surrounding Bedouin chiefs should agree to take him as their arbiter; and, secondly, that some sacredness should attach to his character, and give authority to his decisions. Like others in those days, he was both king and priest; but he was priest "of the Most High God,"—not of the local gods of the separate tribes, but of the highest God, above all the rest. That he was the acknowledged arbiter of surrounding tribes appears from the fact that Abraham paid to him tithes out of the spoils. It is not likely that Abraham did this if there were no precedent for it; for he regarded the spoils as belonging, not to himself, but to the confederates in whose cause he fought. No doubt it was the custom, as in the case of Delphi, to pay tithes to this supreme arbiter; and in doing so Abraham was simply following the custom. The Jewish traveller, Wolff, states that in Mesopotamia a similar custom prevails at the present time. One sheik is selected from the rest, on account of his superior probity and piety, and becomes their "King of Peace and Righteousness." A similar custom, I am told, prevails among some American tribes. Indeed, where society is organized by clans, subject to local chiefs, some such arrangement seems necessary to prevent perpetual feuds.
This "King of Justice and Peace" gave refreshments to Abraham and his followers after the battle, blessing him in the name of the Most High God. As he came from no one knows where, and has no official status or descent, the fact that Abraham recognized him as a true priest is used in the Book of Psalms and the Epistle to the Hebrews to prove there is a true priesthood beside that of the house of Levi. A priest after the order of Melchisedek is one who becomes so by having in him the true faith, though he has "no father nor mother, beginning of days nor end of life," that is, no genealogical position in an hereditary priesthood.
The God of Abraham was "The Most High." He was the family God of Abraham's tribe and of Abraham's descendants. Those who should worship other gods would be disloyal to their tribe, false to their ancestors, and must be regarded as outlaws. Thus the faith in a Supreme Being was first established in the minds of the descendants of Abraham by family pride, reverence for ancestors, and patriotic feeling. The faith of Abraham, that his God would give to his descendants the land of Palestine, and multiply them till they should be as numerous as the stars or the sand, was that which made him the Father of the Faithful.
The faith of Abraham, as we gather it from Genesis, was in God as a Supreme Being. Though almighty, God was willing to be Abraham's personal protector and friend. He talks with Abraham face to face. He comes to him, and agrees to give to him and to his posterity the land of Canaan, and in this promise Abraham has entire faith. His monotheism was indeed of an imperfect kind. It did not exclude a belief in other gods, though they were regarded as inferior to his own. His family God, though almighty, was not omnipresent. He came down to learn whether the rumors concerning the sinfulness of Sodom were correct or not. He was not quite sure of Abraham's faith, and so he tested it by commanding him to sacrifice Isaac, in whom alone the promise to Abraham's descendants could be fulfilled. But though the monotheism of Abraham was of so imperfect a kind, it had in it the root of the better kind which was to come. It was imperfect, but not false. It was entire faith in the supreme power of Jehovah to do what he would, and in his disposition to be a friend to the patriarch and his posterity. It was, therefore, trust in the divine power, wisdom, and goodness. The difference between the religion of Abraham and that of the polytheistic nations was, that while they descended from the idea of a Supreme Being into that of subordinate ones, he went back to that of the Supreme, and clung to this with his whole soul.

§ 3. Moses; or, Judaism as the national Worship of a just and holy King.

In speaking of Moses and of his law, it may be thought necessary to begin by showing that such a man as Moses really existed; for modern criticism has greatly employed itself in questioning the existence of great men. As the telescope resolves stars into double, triple, and quadruple stars, and finally into star-dust, so the critics, turning their optical tubes toward that mighty orb which men call Homer, have declared that they have resolved him into a great number of little Homers. The same process has been attempted in regard to Shakespeare. Some have tried to show that there never was any Shakespeare, but only many Shakespeare writers. In like manner, the critics have sought to dissolve Moses with their powerful analysis, and, instead of Moses, to give us a number of fragmentary writings from different times and hands, skilfully joined together; in fact, instead of Moses, to give us a mosaic. Criticism substitutes human tendencies in the place of great men, does not love to believe in genius, and often appears to think that a number of mediocrities added together can accomplish more than one man of genius.
Certainly this is a mistake. The easiest and most natural solution of wonderful results is the supposition of genius, inspiration, heroism, as their cause. Great men explain history. Napoleon explains the history of Europe during a quarter of a century. Suppose a critic, a thousand years hence, should resolve Napoleon into half a dozen Napoleons; would they explain the history of Europe as well? Given a man like Napoleon, and we can understand the French campaigns in Italy and Germany, the overthrow of Austria, the annihilation of Prussia, the splendid host of field-marshals, the Bonaparte circle of kings, the Codex, the Simplon Road, and the many changes of states and governments on the map of Europe. One man of genius explains it all. But take away the man of genius, and substitute a group of small men in his place, and the thing is much more obscure and unintelligible. So, given Moses, the man of genius and inspiration, and we can understand the Exodus, understand the Jewish laws, understand the Pentateuch, and understand the strange phenomenon of Judaism. But, instead of Moses, given a mosaic, however skilfully put together, and the thing is more difficult. Therefore, Moses is to be preferred to the mosaic, as the more reasonable and probable of the two, just as Homer is preferable to the Homerids, and Shakespeare to the Shakespeare Club.352
We find in Moses the three elements of genius, inspiration, and knowledge. Perhaps it is not difficult to distinguish them. We see the natural genius and temperament of Moses breaking out again and again throughout his career, as the rocky strata underlying the soil crop out in the midst of gardens, orchards, and fields of corn. The basis of his nature was the hardest kind of rock, with a surging subterranean fire of passion beneath it. An awful soul, stem and terrible as Michael Angelo conceived him, the sublime genius carving the sublime lawgiver in congenial marble. The statue is as stern as law itself. It sits in one of the Roman churches, between two columns, the right hand grasping the tables of the law, the symbolic horns of power protruding from the brow, and the austere look of the judge bent upon those on the left hand. A fiery nature, an iron will, a rooted sense of justice, were strangely overflowed and softened by a tenderness toward his race, which was not so much the feeling of a brother for brethren as of a parent for children.
Educated in the house of Pharaoh, and adopted by his daughter as her child, taken by the powerful and learned priesthood of Egypt into their ranks, and sharing for many years their honors and privileges, his heart yearned toward his brethren in the land of Goshen, and he went out to see them in their sufferings and slavery. His impetuous nature broke out in sudden indignation at the sight of some act of cruelty, and he smote the overseer who was torturing the Jewish slave. That act made him an exile, and sent him to live in Arabia Petrea, as a shepherd. If he had thought only of his own prospects and position, he would not have gone near the Israelites at all, but lived quietly as an Egyptian priest in the palace of Pharaoh. But, as the writer to the Hebrews says, he "refused, to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."353 Another instance of his generous and tender feelings toward his nation is seen in his behavior when the people made the golden calf. First, his anger broke out against them, and all the sternness of the lawgiver appeared in his command to the people to cut down their idolatrous brethren; then the bitter tide of anger withdrew, and that of tenderness took its place, and he returned into the mountain to the Lord and said, "O, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written." Moses did not make much account of human life. He struck dead the Egyptian who was ill-treating a Jew; he slew the Jews who turned to idolatry; he slew the Midianites who tempted them; but then he was ready to give up his own life too for the sake of his people and for the sake of the cause. This spirit of Moses pervades his law, this same inconsistency went from his character into his legislation; his relentless severity and his tender sympathy both appear in it. He knows no mercy toward the transgressor, but toward the unfortunate he is full of compassion. His law says, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning, stripe for stripe." But it also says, "Ye shall neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child." "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer." "If thou at all take thy neighbor's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down, for that is his covering." "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again."
Such severities joined with such humanities we find in the character of Moses, and such we find to have passed from his character into his laws. But perhaps the deepest spring of character, and its most essential trait, was his sense of justice as embodied in law. The great idea of a just law, freely chosen, under its various aspects of Divine command, ceremonial regulations, political order, and moral duty, distinguished his policy and legislation from that of other founders of states. His laws rested on no basis of mere temporal expediency, but on the two pivots of an absolute Divine will and a deliberate national choice. It had the double sanction of religion and justice; it was at once a revelation and a contract. There was a third idea which it was the object of his whole system, and especially of his ceremonial system, to teach and to cultivate,—that of holiness. God is a holy God, his law is a holy law, the place of his worship is a holy place, and the Jewish nation as his worshippers are a holy people. This belief appears in the first revelation which he received at the burning bush in the land of Midian. It explains many things in the Levitical law, which without this would seem trivial and unmeaning. The ceremonial purifications, clean and unclean meats, the arrangements of the tabernacle, with its holy place, and its Holy of Holies, the Sabbath, the dresses of the priests, the ointment with which the altar was anointed, are all intended to develop in the minds of the people the idea of holiness.354 And there never was a people on whose souls this notion was so fully impressed as it was upon the Jews. Examined, it means the eternal distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, and the essential hostility which exists between them. Applied to God, it shows him to have a nature essentially moral, and a true moral character. He loves good and hates evil. He does not regard them with exactly the same feeling. He cannot treat the good man and the bad man in exactly the same way. More than monotheism, this perhaps is the characteristic of the theology of Moses.
The character of Moses had very marked deficiencies, it had its weakness as well as its strength. He was impetuous, impatient, wanting in self-possession and self-control. There is a verse in the Book of Numbers (believed by Eichhorn and Eosenmuller to be an interpolation) which calls him the meekest of men. Such a view of his character is not confirmed by such actions as his killing the Egyptian, his breaking the stone tables, and the like. He declares of himself that he had no power as a speaker, being deficient probably in the organ of language. His military skill seems small, since he appointed Joshua for the military commander, when the people were attacked by the Amalekites. Nor did he have, what seems more important in a legislator, the practical tact of organizing the administration of affairs. His father-in-law, Jethro, showed him how to delegate the details of government to subordinates, and to reserve for himself the general superintendence. Up to that time he had tried to do everything by himself. That great art, in administration, of selecting proper tools to work with, Moses did not seem to have.
Having thus briefly sketched some of the qualities of his natural genius and character, let us see what were the essential elements of his legislation; and first, of his theology, or teachings concerning God.
Monotheism, as we all know, lay at the foundation of the law of Moses. But there are different kinds of monotheism. In one sense we have seen almost all ancient religions to have been monotheisms. All taught the existence of a Supreme Being. But usually this Supreme Being was not the object of worship, but had receded into the background, while subordinate gods were those really reverenced. Moses taught that the Supreme Being who made heaven and earth, the Most High God, was also the only object of worship. It does not appear that Moses denied the existence of the gods who were adored by the other nations; but he maintained that they were all inferior and subordinate, and far beneath Jehovah, and also that Jehovah alone was to be worshipped by the Jews. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exod. xx. 3; Deut. v. 7). "Ye shall not go after other gods" (Deut. vi. 14). "Ye shall make no mention of the name of other gods" (Exod. xxiii. 13). "For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords" (Deut. x. 17). The first great peculiarity of the theology of Moses was therefore this, that it taught that the Infinite and Supreme Being, who in most religions was the hidden God, was to the Jews the revealed and ever-present God, the object of worship, obedience, trust, and love. His name was Jahveh, the "I am," the Being of beings.355
In a certain sense Moses taught the strict unity of God. "Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. vi. 4), is a statement which Jesus calls the chief of the commandments (Mark xii. 29, 30). For when God is conceived of as the Supreme Being he becomes at once separated by an infinite distance from all other deities, and they cease to be gods in the sense in which he is God. Now as Moses gave to Jehovah infinite attributes, and taught that he was the maker and Lord of heaven and earth, eternal (Deut. xxxiii. 27), a living God, it followed that there was no God with him (Deut. xxxii. 39), which the prophets afterwards wrought out into a simple monotheism. "I am God, and there is no other God beside me" (Isaiah xliv. 8). Therefore, though Moses did not assert in terms a simple monotheism, he taught what contained the essential germ of that idea.
This one God, supreme and infinite, was also so spiritual that no idol, no statue, was to be made as his symbol. He was a God of truth and stern justice, visiting the sins of parents on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hated him, but showing mercy to thousands of those who loved and obeyed him. He was a God who was merciful, long-suffering, gracious, repenting him of the evil, and seeking still to pardon and to bless his people. No doubt there is anthropomorphism in Moses. But if man is made in God's image, then God is in man's image too, and we must, if we think of him as a living and real God, think of him as possessing emotions like our human emotions of love, pity, sorrow, anger, only purified from their grossness and narrowness.
Human actions and human passions are no doubt ascribed by Moses to God. A good deal of criticism has been expended upon the Jewish Scriptures by those who think that philosophy consists in making God as different and distant from man as possible, and so prefer to speak of him as Deity, Providence, and Nature. But it is only because man is made in the image of God that he can revere God at all. Jacobi says that, "God, in creating, theomorphizes man; man, therefore, necessarily anthropomorphizes God." And Swedenborg teaches that God is a man, since man was made in the image of God. Whenever we think of God as present and living, when we ascribe to him pleasure and displeasure, liking and disliking, thinking, feeling, and willing, we make him like a man. And not to do this may be speculative theism, but is practical atheism. Moses forbade the Jews to make any image or likeness of God, yet the Pentateuch speaks of his jealousy, wrath, repentance; he hardens Pharaoh's heart, changes his mind about Balaam, and comes down from heaven in order to see if the people of Sodom were as wicked as they were represented to be. These views are limitations to the perfections of the Deity, and so far the views of Moses were limited. But this is also the strong language of poetry, which expresses in a striking and practical way the personality, holiness, and constant providence of God.
But Moses was not merely a man of genius, he was also a man of knowledge and learning. During forty years he lived in Egypt, where all the learning of the world was collected; and, being brought up by the daughter of Pharaoh as her son, was in the closest relations with the priesthood. The Egyptian priests were those to whom Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato went for instruction. Their sacred books, as we have seen, taught the doctrine of the unity and spirituality of God, of the immortality of the soul, and its judgment in the future world, beside teaching the arts and sciences. Moses probably knew all that these books could teach, and there is no doubt that he made use of this knowledge afterward in writing his law. Like the Egyptian priests he believed in one God; but, unlike them, he taught that doctrine openly. Like them he established a priesthood, sacrifices, festivals, and a temple service; but, unlike them, he allowed no images or idols, no visible representations of the Unseen Being, and instead of mystery and a hidden deity gave them revelation and a present, open Deity. Concerning the future life, about which the Egyptians had so much to say, Moses taught nothing. His rewards and punishments were inflicted in this world. Retribution, individual and national, took place here. As this could not have been from ignorance or accident, it must have had a purpose, it must have been intentional. The silence of the Pentateuch respecting immortality is one of the most remarkable features in the Jewish religion. It has been often objected to. It has been asserted that a religion without the doctrine of immortality and future retribution is no religion. But in our time philosophy takes a different view, declaring that there is nothing necessarily religious in the belief of immortality, and that to do right from fear of future punishment or hope of future reward is selfish, and therefore irreligious and immoral. Moreover it asserts that belief in immortality is a matter of instinct, and something to be assumed, not to be proved; and that we believe in immortality just in proportion as the soul is full of life. Therefore, though Moses did not teach the doctrine of immortality, he yet made it necessary that the Jews should believe in it by the awakening influence of his law, which roused the soul into the fullest activity.
But beside genius, beside knowledge, did not Moses also possess that which he claimed, a special inspiration? And if so, what was his inspiration and what is its evidence? The evidence of his inspiration is in that which he said and did. His inspiration, like that of Abraham, consisted in his inward vision of God, in his sight of the divine unity and holiness, in his feeling of the personal presence and power of the Supreme Being, in his perception of his will and of his law. He was inwardly placed by the Divine Providence where he could see these truths, and become the medium of communicating them to a nation. His inspiration was deeper than that of the greatest of subsequent prophets. It was perhaps not so large, nor so full, nor so high, but it was more entire; and therefore the power that went forth from the word and life of Moses was not surpassed afterward. "There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." No prophet afterward till the time of Jesus did such a work as he did. Purity, simplicity, and strength characterized his whole conduct. His theology, his liturgy, his moral code, and his civil code were admirable in their design and their execution.
We are, indeed, not able to say how much of the Pentateuch came from Moses. Many parts of it were probably the work of other writers and of subsequent times. But we cannot doubt that the essential ideas of the law proceeded from him.
We have regarded Moses and his laws on the side of religion and also on that of morals; it remains to consider them on that of politics. What was the form of government established by Moses? Was it despotism or freedom? Was it monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, or republicanism? Were the Jews a free people or an enslaved people?
Certainly the Jews were not enslaved. They had one great protection from despotism,—a constitution. The Mosaic law was their constitution. It was a written constitution, and could therefore be appealed to. It was a published constitution, and was therefore known by all the people. It was a sacred constitution; given on the authority of God, and therefore could not be modified, except by the same authority. This constitution therefore was a protection against despotism. A constitution like this excludes all arbitrary and despotic authority. We can therefore safely say that the law of Moses saved the nation from despotism. Thus he gave them an important element of political freedom. No matter how oppressive laws are, a government of fixed law involves in the long run much more real freedom than the government, however kind, which is arbitrary, and therefore uncertain and changeable.
But were these laws oppressive? Let us look at them in a few obvious points of view.
What did they exact in regard to taxation? We know that in Eastern governments the people have been ground to the earth by taxation, and that agriculture has been destroyed, the fruitful field become a wilderness, and populous countries depopulated, by this one form of oppression. It is because there has been no fixed rate of taxation. Each governor is allowed to take as much as he can from his subordinates, and each of the subordinates as much as he can get from his inferiors, and so on, till the people are finally reached, out of whom it must all come. But under the Mosaic constitution the taxes were fixed and certain. They consisted in a poll-tax, in the first-fruits, and the tithes. The poll-tax was a half-shekel paid every year at the Temple, by every adult Jew. The first-fruits were rather an expression of gratitude than a tax. The tithes were a tenth part of the annual produce of the soil, and went for the support of the Levites and the general expenses of the government.
Another important point relates to trials and punishments. What security has one of a fair trial, in case he is accused of crime, or what assurance of justice in a civil cause? Now we know that in Eastern countries everything depends on bribery. This Moses forbade in his law. "Thou shalt take no gift, for the gift blindeth the eyes; thou shalt not wrest the judgment of the poor, but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor."
Again, the accuser and accused were to appear together before the judge. The witnesses were sworn, and were examined separately. The people had cheap justice and near at hand. "Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, throughout thy tribes; and they shall judge the people with just judgment."
There were courts of appeal from these local judges.
There seems to have been no legislative body, since the laws of Moses were not only a constitution but also a code. No doubt a common law grew up under the decisions of the local courts and courts of appeal. But provision was made by Moses for any necessary amendment of his laws by the reference which he made to any prophet like himself who might afterward arise, whom the people were to obey.356
There was no provision in the Jewish constitution for a supreme executive. But the law foretold that the time would come in which they would desire a king, and it defined his authority. He should be a constitutional king. (Deut. xvii. 14-20.)
We have already said that one great object and purpose of the ceremonial law of Moses was to develop in the minds of the people the idea of holiness. This is expressed (Lev. xix. 2), "Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy."
Another object of the ceremonial law was to surround the whole nation with an impenetrable hedge of peculiarities, and so to keep them separate from surrounding nations. The ceremonial law was like a shell which protected the kernel within till it was ripe. The ritual was the thorny husk, the theology and morality were the sacred included fruit. In this point of view the strangest peculiarities of the ritual find an easy explanation. The more strange they are, the better they serve their purpose. These peculiarities produced bitter prejudice between the Jews and the surrounding nations. Despised by their neighbors, they despised them again in turn; and this mutual contempt has produced the result desired. The Jews, in the very heart of the world, surrounded by great nations far more powerful than themselves, conquered and overrun by Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, have been more entirely separated from other nations than the Chinese or the people of Japan. Dispersed as they are, they are still a distinct people, a nation within other nations. Like drops of oil floating on the water but never mingling with it, so the Jews are found everywhere, floating drops of national life in the midst of other nationalities. In Leviticus (xviii. 3) we find the command, "After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do; and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do; neither shall ye walk in their ordinances." They have not obeyed this command in its letter, but continue to obey its spirit in its unwritten continuation: "After the doings of the English and French and Americans shall ye not do, nor walk in their ordinances, but shall still continue a peculiar people."

§ 4. David; or, Judaism as the personal Worship of a Father and friend.

Many disasters befell the Jews after their settlement in Palestine, which we should allude to were we writing the heads of their history rather than giving an account of their religion. Among these were their long conflict with the Philistines, and their subjection by that people during twenty years. The Philistines, it has been recently discovered, were not a Semitic nation, and were not in the land in the time of Moses. They are not mentioned as a powerful people in the Pentateuch or the Book of Joshua, but suddenly appear as invaders in the time of the Judges, completely defeating and subduing the Canaanites along the shore. In fact, the Philistines were probably an Indo-European or Aryan people, and their name is now believed to be the same as that of the Pelasgi. They were probably a body of Pelasgi from the island of Crete, who, by successive invasions, overran Palestine, and gave their name to it.357 They were finally reduced by David; and as his reign is the culminating period of Judaism, we will devote some space to his character and influence.
The life of David makes an epoch in Jewish history and human history. Nations, like plants, have their period of flowers and of fruit. They have their springtime, their summer, autumn, and winter. The age of David among the Jews was like the age of Pericles among the Greeks, of Augustus among the Romans, of Louis XIV. in France, of Charles V. in Spain. Such periods separate themselves from those which went before and from those which follow. The period of David seems a thousand years removed from that of the Judges, and yet it follows it almost immediately. As a few weeks in spring turn the brown earth to a glad green, load the trees with foliage, and fill the air with the perfume of blossoms and the song of birds, so a few years in the life of a nation will change barbarism into civilization, and pour the light of literature and knowledge over a sleeping land. Arts flourish, external enemies are conquered, inward discontents are pacified, wealth pours in, luxury increases, genius accomplishes its triumphs. Summer, with its flowers and fruits, has arrived.
When a nation is ripe for such a change, the advent of a man of genius will accomplish it. Around him the particles crystallize and take form and beauty. Such a man was David,—a brave soldier, a great captain, a sagacious adventurer, an artist, musician, and poet, a man of profound religious experience; he was, more than all these, a statesman. By his great organizing ability he made a powerful nation out of that which, when he came to the throne, consisted of a few discordant and half-conquered tribes. In the time of Saul the Israelites were invaded by all the surrounding nations; by the Syrians on the north, the Ammonites and Moabites on the east, the Amalekites and Edomites on the south, and the Philistines on the west. In the time of David all these nations were completely subdued, their cities garrisoned, and the power of the Israelites submitted to from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean.
Most great men are contented to be distinguished in one thing, and to lead a single life; but David led three lives, each distinct from the other,—the life of a soldier and statesman, the life of a poet and artist, the life of deep religious experience. We will look at his character in each of these three directions.
We have already said that David found the Israelites divided and half conquered, and left them united and conquerors. By means of his personal qualities he had made himself popular among the tribes. He was known as a brave and cautious guerilla chief. His native generosity and open-heartedness won him the love of the people. His religious tendencies gained for him the friendship of the priests, and the great influence of Samuel was always exerted in his favor. He was thus enabled to unite the people, and gain their confidence till he could make use of them in larger enterprises. The Jews were not naturally a military nation, and were never meant to be such. Yet when their strength was united they were capable, by their determination and tenacity of purpose, of extraordinary military exploits. Everything depended on their morale. Demoralized and weakened by doubts and scruples, or when conscious that they were disobeying the laws of Moses, they were easily defeated by any invader. The first duty of their general was to bring them back from their idolatries and backslidings to the service of God. Under Joshua it only needed two great battles to conquer the whole land of Palestine. So, reunited under David, a few campaigns made them victorious over the surrounding nations.
The early part of David's life was a perpetual discipline in prudence. He was continually beset with dangers. He had to fly from the presence and ferocious jealousy of Saul again and again, and even to take refuge with the Philistines, who had reason enough to be his enemies. He fled from Saul to Samuel, and took shelter under his protection. Pursued to this retreat by the king, he had no resource but to throw himself on the mercy of the Philistines, and he went to Gath. When he saw himself in danger there, he pretended to be insane; insanity being throughout the East a protection from injury. His next step was to go to the cave Adullam, and to collect around him a body of partisans, with whom to protect himself. Saul watched his opportunity, and when David had left the fastnesses of the mountain, and came into the city Keilah to defend it from the Philistines, Saul went down with a detachment of troops to besiege him, so that he had to fly again to the mountains. Betrayed by the Ziphites, as he had been before betrayed by the men of Keilah, he went to another wilderness and escaped. The king continued to pursue him whenever he could get any tidings of his position, and again David was obliged to take refuge among the Philistines. But throughout this whole period he never permitted himself any hostile measures against Saul, his implacable enemy. In this he showed great wisdom, for the result of such a course would have been a civil war, in which part of the nation would have taken sides with one and part with the other, and David never could have ascended the throne with the consent of the whole people. But the consequence of his forbearance was, that when by the death of Saul the throne became vacant, David succeeded to it with scarcely any opposition. His subsequent course showed always the same prudence. He disarmed his enemies by kindness and clemency. He understood the policy of making a bridge of gold for a flying enemy. When Abner, the most influential man of his opponents, offered to submit to him, David received him with kindness and made him a friend. And when Abner was treacherously killed by Joab, David publicly mourned for him, following the bier, and weeping at the grave. The historian says concerning this: "And all the people took notice of it and it pleased them: as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people. For all the people understood that day that it was not of the king to slay Abner the son of Ner." His policy was to conciliate and unite. When Saul's son was slain by his own servants, who thought to please David by that act, he immediately put them to death. Equally cautious and judicious was his course in transferring the Ark and its worship to Jerusalem. He did this only gradually, and as he saw that the people were prepared for it.
We next will look at David in his character as man of genius, musician, artist, poet. It is not often that an eminent statesman and soldier is, at the same time, a distinguished poet and writer. Sometimes they can write history or annals, like Cæsar and Frederick the Great; but the imaginative and poetic element is rarely found connected with the determined will and practical intellect of a great commander. Alexander the Great had a taste for good poetry, for he carried Homer with him through his campaigns; but the taste of Napoleon went no higher than a liking for Ossian.
But David was a poet, in whom the tender, lyrical, personal element rose to the highest point. The daring soldier, when he took his harp, became another man. He consoled himself and sought comfort in trial, and sang his thankfulness in his hours of joy. The Book of Psalms, so far as it is the work of David, is the record of his life. As Horace says of Lucilius and his book of Odes, that the whole of the old man's life hangs suspended therein in votive pictures; and as Goethe says that his Lyrics are a book of confessions, in which joy and sorrow turn to song; so the Book of Psalms can only be understood when we consider it as David's poetical autobiography. In this he anticipates the Koran, which was the private journal of Mohammed.
"The harp of David," says Herder, "was his comforter and friend. In his youth he sang to its music while tending his flocks as a shepherd on the mountains of Judæa. By its means he had access to Saul, and could sooth with it the dark mood of the king. In his days of exile he confided to it his sorrows. When he triumphed over his enemies the harp became in his royal hands a thank-offering to the deity. Afterward he organized on a magnificent scale music and poetry in the worship of God. Four thousand Levites, distinguished by a peculiar dress, were arranged in classes and choirs under master-singers, of whom the three most distinguished, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, are known to us by specimens of their art. In his Psalms his whole kingdom lives."
We speak of the inspiration of genius, and distinguish it from the inspiration of the religious teacher. But in ancient times the prophet and poet were often the same, and one word (as, in Latin, "vates") was used for both. In the case of David the two inspirations were perfectly at one. His religion was poetry, and his poetry was religion. The genius of his poetry is not grandeur, but beauty. Sometimes it expresses a single thought or sentiment, as that (Psalm cxxxiii.) describing the beauty of brotherly union, or as that (Psalm xxiii.) which paints trust in God like that of a sheep in his shepherd. Of the same sort is the fifteenth Psalm, "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?" the twenty-ninth, a description of a thunderstorm; the sixty-seventh, "O God, be merciful to us and bless us"; the eighty-fourth, "How lovely are thy tabernacles"; and the last Psalm, calling on mankind to praise God in all ways.
It is a striking fact that these Hebrew lyrics, written long before the foundation of Rome, and before the time of Homer, should be used to-day in Christian worship and for private devotion all over the world.
In speaking of the Vedas and the Avesta we said that in such hymns and liturgies the truest belief of a nation can be found. What men say to God in their prayers may be assumed to express their practical convictions. The Jewish religion is not to be found so surely in its Levitical code as in these national lyrics, which were the liturgy of the people.358
What then do they say concerning God? They teach his universal dominion. They declare that none in the heaven can be compared to him (Psalm lxxxix.); that he is to be feared above all gods (Psalm xcvi.). They teach his eternity; declaring that he is God from everlasting to everlasting; that a thousand years in his sight are as yesterday; that he laid the foundations of the earth and made the heavens, and that when these perish he will endure; that at some period they shall be changed like a garment, but that God will always be the same (Psalm xc., cii.). They teach in numerous places that God is the Creator of all things. They adore and bless his fatherly love and kindness, which heals all our diseases and redeems our life, crowning us with loving-kindness, pitying us, and forgiving our sins (Psalm ciii.). They teach that he is in all nature (Psalm civ.), that he searches and knows all our thoughts, and that we can go nowhere from his presence (Psalm cxxxix.). They declare that he protects all who trust in him (Psalm xci., cxxi.), and that he purifies the heart and life (Psalm cxix.), creating in us a clean heart, and not asking for sacrifice, but for a broken spirit (Psalm li.).
These Psalms express the highest and best moments of Jewish life, and rise in certain points to the level of Christianity. They do not contain the Christian spirit of forgiveness, nor that of love to one's enemy. They are still narrowed to the range of the Jewish land and nation, and do not embrace humanity. They are mountain summits of faith, rising into the pure air and light of day from hidden depths, and appearing as islands in the ocean. They reach, here and there, the level of the vast continent, though not broad enough themselves to become the home of all races and nations.
There is nothing in the Vedas, nothing in the Avesta, nothing in the sacred books of Egypt, or the philosophy of Greece and Rome, which so unites the grandeur of omnipotence with the tenderness of a father toward his child.

§ 5. Solomon; or, the Religious Relapse.

We have seen how the religion of Abraham, as the family worship of the Supreme Being, was developed into that of Moses, as the national worship of a just and holy King. We have seen it going onward from that, ascending in the inspirations of David into trust in an infinite God as a friend, and love to him as a father. We now come to a period of relapse. Under Solomon and his successors, this religion became corrupted and degraded. Its faith was changed into doubt, its lofty courage into the fear of kings and tyrants, its worship of the Most High into adoration of the idols of its neighbors. The great increase of power and wealth in the hands of Solomon corrupted his own heart and that of his people. Luxury came in; and, as in Rome the old puritanic virtues were dissolved by the desire for wealth and pleasure, so it happened among the Jews. Then came the retribution, in the long captivity in Babylon, and the beginning of a new and better life under this hard discipline. And then comes the age of the Prophets, who gradually became the teachers of a higher and broader faith. So, when the Jews returned to Jerusalem, they came back purified, and prepared to become once more loyal subjects of Jehovah.
The principle of hereditary succession, but not of primogeniture, had been established by an agreement between David and the people when he proposed erecting a Temple at Jerusalem. He had appointed his son Solomon as his successor before his own death. With the entrance of Solomon we have an entirely different personality from any whom we have thus far met. With him also is inaugurated a new period and a different age. The age of Moses was distinguished as that of law,—on the side of God absolute authority, commanding and forbidding; on the side of man the only question was between obedience and disobedience. Moses was the Law-giver, and his age was the age of law. In the time of the Judges the question concerned national existence and national independence. The age of the Judges was the heroic age of the Jewish nation. The Judges were men combining religious faith with patriotism; they were religious heroes. Then came the time of David, in which the nation, having become independent, became also powerful and wealthy. After his time the religion, instead of being a law to be obeyed or an impulse to action, became ceremony and pageant. Going one step further, it passed into reflection and meditation. In the age of Solomon the inspiration of the national religion had already gone. A great intellectual development had taken the place of inspiration. So that the Jewish nation seems to have passed through a fourfold religious experience. Religion was first law, then action, next inspiration and sentiment, afterward ceremony, and lastly opinion and intellectual culture.
It is the belief of Herder and other scholars that the age of Solomon gave birth to a copious literature, born of peace, tranquillity, and prosperity, which has all passed away except a few Psalms, the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon.
Solomon is personally a much less interesting character than David; for policy is never so interesting as impulse, and the crimes of policy seem worse than those of passion. The first act of Solomon was of this sort. He put his brother Adonijah to death for his attempt to seize the throne. Joab, who supported Adonijah against Solomon, was also put to death, for which we do not grieve, when we remember his assassination of Abner and Amasa, shedding the blood of war in peace. But the cold, unscrupulous character of Solomon is seen in his ordering Joab to be slain in the tabernacle while holding the horns of the altar, and causing Adonijah to be taken by force from the same place of refuge. No religious consideration or superstitious fear could prevent Solomon from doing what he thought necessary for his own security. He had given Adonijah a conditional pardon, limited to good behavior on his part. But after his establishment on the throne Adonijah requested the mother of Solomon, Bathsheba, to ask her son to give him for a wife the beautiful Abishag, the last wife of David. Solomon understood this to mean, what his mother did not understand, that his brother was still intriguing to supplant him on the throne, and with cool policy he ordered him to immediate execution. Solomon could pardon a criminal, but not a dangerous rival. He deposed the high-priest for the same reason, considering him to be also dangerous. Shimei, who seems to have been wealthy and influential as well as a determined character, was ordered not to leave Jerusalem under penalty of death. He did so, and Solomon put him to death. David, before his death, had warned Solomon to keep an eye both on Joab and on Shimei, for David could forgive his own enemies, but not those of his cause; he was not afraid on his own account, but was afraid for the safety of his son.
By the death of Joab and Shimei, Solomon's kingdom was established, and the glory and power of David was carried to a still higher point of magnificence. Supported by the prophets on the one hand and by the priests on the other, his authority was almost unlimited. We are told that "Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and making merry. And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt; they brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his life. And Solomon's provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl." The wars of David were ended. Solomon's was a reign of peace. "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen." "And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea-shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all nations round about." "And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom." The great power and wealth of the Jewish court at this period are historically verified by the traditions still extant among the Arabs of Solomon's superhuman splendor.
The story (1 Kings iii. 5) of Solomon's dream, in which he chose an understanding heart and wisdom, rather than riches and honor, reminds us of the choice of Hercules. It is not unlikely that he had such a dream, it is quite probable that he always preferred wisdom to anything else, and it is certain that his wisdom came from God. This is the only connection we can trace between the dream and its fulfilment.
Solomon inaugurated a new policy by entering into alliances and making treaties with his powerful neighbors. He formed an alliance with the king of Egypt, and married his daughter. He also made a treaty of commerce and friendship with the king of Tyre on the north, and procured from him cedar with which to build the Temple and his own palace. He received an embassy also from the queen of Sheba, who resided in the south of Arabia. By means of the Tyrian ships he traded to the west as far as the coasts of Spain and Africa, and his own vessels made a coasting voyage of three years' duration to Tarshish, from which they brought ivory, gold, silver, apes, and peacocks. This voyage seems to have been through the Red Sea to India.359 He also traded in Asia, overland, with caravans. And for their accommodation and defence he built Tadmor in the desert (afterward called Palmyra), as a great stopping-place. This city in later days became famous as the capital of Zenobia, and the remains of the Temple of the Sun, standing by itself in the midst of the Great Desert, are among the most interesting ruins in the world.360
The great work of Solomon was building the Temple at Jerusalem in the year B.C. 1005. This Temple was destroyed, and rebuilt by Nehemiah B.C. 445. It was rebuilt by Herod B.C. 17. Little remains from the time of Solomon, except some stones in the walls of the substructions; and the mosque of Omar now stands on the old foundation. No building of antiquity so much resembles the Temple of Solomon as the palace of Darius at Persepolis. In both buildings the porch opened into the large hall, both had small chambers on the side, square masses on both sides of the porch, and the same form of pillars. The parts of Solomon's Temple were, first, a porch thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep; second a large hall sixty by thirty; and then the holy of holies, which was thirty feet cube. The whole external dimensions of the building were only sixty feet by one hundred and twenty, or less than many an ordinary parish church. The explanation is that it was copied from the Tabernacle, which was a small building, and was necessarily somewhat related to it in size. The walls were of stone, on extensive stone foundations. Inside it was lined with cedar, with floors of cypress, highly ornamented with carvings and gold. The brass work consisted of two ornamented pillars called Jachin and Boaz, a brazen tank supported by twelve brass oxen, and ten baths of brass, ornamented with figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim.
The Book of Kings says of Solomon (1 Kings iv. 32) that "he spake three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl and of creeping things, and of fishes." He was, according to this account, a voluminous writer on natural history, as well as an eminent poet and moralist. Of all his compositions there remains but one, the Book of Proverbs, which was probably in great part composed by him. It is true that three books in the Old Testament bear his name,—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. But of these Ecclesiastes was probably written afterward, and though the Song of Songs may have been written by Solomon, it was probably the work of another, living at or near his time.
But of the Book of Proverbs there cannot be much doubt. It contains some of the three thousand of which Solomon was the reputed author. It shows his style of mind very clearly,—the cool understanding, the calculating prudence, the continual reference to results, knowledge of the world as distinguished from knowledge of human nature, or of individual character. The Book of Proverbs contains little heroism or poetry, few large ideas, not much enthusiasm or sentiment. It is emphatically a book of wisdom. It has good, hard, practical sense. It is the "Poor Richard's Almanac" of Hebrew literature. We can conceive of King Solomon and Benjamin Franklin consulting together, and comparing notes of their observations on human life, with much mutual satisfaction. It is curious to meet with such a thoroughly Western intellect, a thousand years before Christ, on the throne of the heroic David.
Among these proverbs there are many of a kindly character. Some are semi-Christian in their wise benevolence. Many show great shrewdness of observation, and have an epigrammatic wit. We will give examples of each kind:—

Proverbs Having a Semi-christian Character.

"If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread;
If thirsty, give him water to drink,
For thou wilt heap coals of fire on his head,
And Jehovah will reward thee."
"To deliver those that are dragged to death,
Those that totter to the slaughter,
Spare thyself not.
If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not,
Doth not He that weighs the heart observe it?
Yea, He that keeps thy soul knows it.
And He will render to every man according to his works."
"Put not thyself forth in the presence of the king,
Nor station thyself in the place of great men.
Far better it is that one should say to thee,
Come up hither!
Than that he should put thee in a lower place,
In the presence of the prince."
"The lip of truth shall be established forever,
But the tongue of falsehood is but for a moment."

Proverbs Showing Shrewdness of Observation.

"As one that takes a dog by the ears,
So is he that passing by becomes enraged on account of another's quarrel."
"Where there is no wood the fire goes out;
So where there is no talebearer contention ceases."
"The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower is servant to the lender."
"The slothful man says, There is a lion without,
I shall be slain in the streets."
"A reproof penetrates deeper into a wise man
Than a hundred stripes into a fool."
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick."
"The way of transgressors is hard."
"There is that scatters, and yet increases."
"It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer,
But when he goeth his way then he boasteth."

Proverbs Wittily Expressed.

"The legs of a lame man are not equal,
So is a proverb in the mouth of fools."361
"As a thorn runs into the hand of a drunkard,
So is a proverb in the mouth of a fool."362
"As clouds and wind without rain,
So is a man who boasts falsely of giving."
"A soft tongue breaks bones."
"As vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes,
So is the sluggard to him that sends him."
"The destruction of the poor is their poverty."
"A merry heart is a good medicine."
But what are human wisdom and glory? It seems that Solomon was to illustrate its emptiness. See the king, in his old age, sinking into idolatry and empty luxury, falling away from his God, and pointing the moral of his own proverbs. He himself was the drunkard, into whose hand the thorn of the proverb penetrated, without his heeding it. This prudent and wise king, who understood so well all the snares of temptation and all the arts of virtue, fell like the puppet of any Asiatic court. What a contrast between the wise and great king as described in I Kings iv. 20-34 and the same king in his degenerate old age!
It was this last period in the life of Solomon which the writer of Ecclesiastes took as the scene and subject of his story. With marvellous penetration and consummate power he penetrates the mind of Solomon and paints the blackness of desolation, the misery of satiety, the dreadful darkness of a soul which has given itself to this world as its only sphere.
Never was such a picture painted of utter scepticism, of a mind wholly darkened, and without any remaining faith in God or truth.
These three books mark the three periods of the life of Solomon.
The Song of Songs shows us his abounding youth, full of poetry, fire, and charm.
The Proverbs give his ripened manhood, wise and full of all earthly knowledge,—Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates, and Franklin, all in one.
And Ecclesiastes represents the darkened and gloomy scepticism of his old age, when he sank as low down as he had before gone up. But though so sad and dark, yet it is not without gleams of a higher and nobler joy to come. Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the noble sentiments breaking out in Ecclesiastes, especially at the end of the book.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful description of a doubt so deep, a despair so black, that nothing in all literature can be compared to it. It describes, in the person of Solomon, utter scepticism born of unlimited worldly enjoyment, knowledge, and power.
The book begins by declaring that all is vanity, that there is nothing new under the sun, no progress in any direction, but all things revolving in an endless circle, so that there is neither meaning nor use in the world.363 It declares that work amounts to nothing, for one cannot do any really good thing; that knowledge is of no use, but only produces sorrow; that pleasure satiates.364 Knowledge has only this advantage over ignorance, that it enables us to see things as they are, but it does not make them better, and the end of all is despair.365 Sensual pleasure is the only good.366 Fate and necessity rule all things. Good and evil both come at their appointed time. Men are cheated and do not see the nullity of things, because they have the world in their heart, and are absorbed in the present moment.367
Men are only a higher class of beasts. They die like beasts, and have no hereafter.368
In the fourth chapter the writer goes more deeply into this pessimism. He says that to die is better than to live, and better still never to have been born. A fool is better than a wise man, because he does nothing and cares for nothing.369
Success is bad, progress is an evil; for these take us away from others, and leave us lonely, because above them and hated by them.370
Worship is idle. Do not offer the sacrifice of fools, but stop when you are going to the Temple, and return. Do not pray. It is of no use. God does not hear you. Dreams do not come from God, but from what you were doing before you went to sleep. Eat and drink, that is the best.371 All men go as they come.
So the dreary statement proceeds. Men are born for no end, and go no one can tell where. Live a thousand years, it all comes to the same thing. Who can tell what is good for a man in this shadowy, empty life?372
It is better to look on death than on life, wiser to be sad than to be cheerful. If you say, "There have been good times in the past," do not be too sure of that. If you say, "We can be good, at least, if we cannot be happy," there is such a thing as being too good, and cheating yourself out of pleasure.373
Women are worse than men. You may find one good man among a thousand, but not one good woman.374
It is best to be on the right side of the powers that be, for they can do what they please. Speedy and certain punishment alone can keep men from doing evil. The same thing happens to the good and to the wicked. All things come alike to all. This life is, in short, an inexplicable puzzle. The perpetual refrain is, eat, drink, and be merry.375
It is best to do what you can, and think nothing about it. Cast your bread on the waters, very likely you will get it again. Sow your seed either in the morning or at night; it makes no difference.376
Death is coming to all. All is vanity. I continue to preach, because I see the truth, and may as well say it, though there is no end to talking and writing. You may sum up all wisdom in six words: "Fear God and keep his commandments."377
The Book of Ecclesiastes teaches a great truth in an unexampled strain of pathetic eloquence. It teaches what a black scepticism descends on the wisest, most fortunate, most favored of mankind, when he looks only to this world and its joys. It could, however, only have been written by one who had gone through this dreadful experience. The intellect alone never sounded such depths as these. Moreover, it could hardly have been written unless in a time when such scepticism prevailed, nor by one who, having lived it all, had not also lived through it all, and found the cure for this misery in pure unselfish obedience to truth and right. It seems, therefore, like a Book of Confessions, or the Record of an Experience, and as such well deserves its place in the Bible and Jewish literature.
The Book of Job is a still more wonderful production, but in a wholly different tone. It is full of manly faith in truth and right. It has no jot of scepticism in it. It is a noble protest against all hypocrisies and all shams. Job does not know why he is afflicted, but he will never confess that he is a sinner till he sees it. The Pharisaic friends tell him his sufferings are judgments for his sins, and advise him to admit it to be so. But Job refuses, and declares he will utter no "words of wind" to the Almighty. The grandest thought is here expressed in the noblest language which the human tongue has ever uttered.

§ 6. The Prophets; or, Judaism as the Hope of a spiritual and universal Kingdom of God.

Before we proceed to examine the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, it is desirable to make some remarks upon prophecy in general, and on the character of the Hebrew prophets.
Prophecy in general is a modification of inspiration. Inspiration is sight, or rather it is insight. All our knowledge comes to us through the intellectual power which may be called sight, which is of two kinds,—the sight of external things, or outsight; and the sight of internal things, which is insight, or intuition. The senses constitute the organization by which we see external things; consciousness is the organization by which we perceive internal things. Now the organs of sense are the same in kind, but differ in degree in all men. All human beings, as such, have the power of perceiving an external world, by means of the five senses. But though all have these five senses, all do not perceive the same external phenomena by means of them. For, in the first place, their senses differ in degrees of power. Some men's eyes are telescopic, some microscopic, and some are blind. Some men can but partially distinguish colors, others not at all. Some have acute hearing, others are deaf. And secondly, what men perceive through the senses differs according to what is about them. A man living in China cannot see Mont Blanc or the city of New York; a man on the other side of the moon can never see the earth. A man living in the year 1871 cannot see Alexander the Great or the Apostle Paul. And thirdly, two persons may be looking at the same thing, and with senses of the same degree of power, and yet one may be able to see what the other is not able to see. Three men, one a geologist, one a botanist, and one a painter, may look at the same landscape, and one will see the stratification, the second will see the flora, and the third the picturesque qualities of the scene. As regards outsight then, though men in general have the same senses to see with, what they see depends (1) on their quality of sense, (2) on their position in space and time, (3) and on their state of mental culture.
That which is true of the perception of external phenomena is also true of the perception of internal things.
Insight, or intuition, has the same limitations as outsight. These are (1) the quality of the faculty of intuition; (2) the inward circumstances or position of the soul; (3) the soul's culture or development. Those who deny the existence of an intuitive faculty, teaching that all knowledge comes from without through the senses, sometimes say that if there were such a faculty as intuition, men would all possess intuitively the same knowledge of moral and spiritual truth. They might as well say that, as all men have eyes, all must see the same external objects.
All men have more or less of the intuitive faculty, but some have much more than others. Those who have the most are called, by way of eminence, inspired men. But among these there is a difference as regards the objects which are presented by God, in the order of his providence, to their intuitive faculty. Some he places inwardly among visions of beauty, and they are inspired poets and artists. Others he places inwardly amid visions of temporal and human life, and they become inspired discoverers and inventors. And others he places amid visions of religious truth, and they are inspired prophets, lawgivers, and evangelists. But these again differ in their own spiritual culture and growth. Moses and the Apostle Paul were both inspired men, but the Apostle Paul saw truths which Moses did not see, because the Apostle Paul had reached a higher degree of spiritual culture. Christ alone possessed the fulness of spiritual inspiration, because he alone had attained the fulness of spiritual life.
Now the inspired man may look inwardly either at the past, the present, or the future. If he look at the past he is an inspired historian; if at the present, an inspired lawgiver, or religious teacher; if at the future, an inspired prophet. The inspired faculty may be the same, and the difference may be in the object inwardly present to its contemplation. The seer may look from things past to things present, from things present to things to come, and his inspiration be the same. He fixes his mind on the past, and it grows clear before him, and he sees how events were and what they mean. He looks at the present, and sees how things ought to be. He looks at the future, and sees how things shall be.
The Prophets of the Old Testament were not, as is commonly supposed, men who only uttered predictions of the future. They were men of action more than of contemplation. Strange as it may seem to us, who are accustomed to consider their office as confined to religious prediction, their chief duty was that of active politicians. They mixed religion and politics. They interfered with public measures, rebuked the despotism of the kings and the political errors of the people. Moreover, they were the constitutional lawyers and publicists of the Hebrews, inspired to look backward and explain the meaning of the Mosaic law as well as to look forward to its spiritual development in the reign of the Messiah. Prediction, therefore, of future events, was a very small part of the work of the Prophets. Their main duty was to warn, rebuke, teach, exhort, and encourage.
The Hebrew prophets were under the law. They were loyal to Moses and to his institutions. But it was to the spirit rather than to the letter, the idea rather than the form. They differed from the priests in preferring the moral part of the law to the ceremonial. They were great reformers in bringing back the people from external formalism to vital obedience. They constantly made the ceremonial part of the law subservient to the moral part of the law. Thus Samuel said to Saul: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." And so afterward Isaiah declared in the name of the Lord, that the sacrifices of a wicked people were vain, and their incense an abomination.
We read of the schools of the Prophets, where they studied the law of Moses, and were taught the duties of their office. In these schools music was made use of as a medium of inspiration.
But the office of a prophet was not limited by culture, sex, age, or condition. Women, like Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Huldah, and Noadiah; inexperienced youths, like Jeremiah; men of high standing in society, like Isaiah and Daniel; humble men, like the ploughman Elisha and the herdsman Amos; men married and unmarried, are numbered among the Prophets. Living poorly, wearing sackcloth, feeding on vegetables, imprisoned or assassinated by kings, stoned by the people, the most unpopular of men, sometimes so possessed by the spirit as to rave like madmen, obliged to denounce judgments and woes against kings and people, it is no wonder that they often shrank from their terrible office. Jonah ran to hide in a ship of Tarshish. They have called their message a burden, like Isaiah; they have cried out like Jeremiah, "Ah, Lord God, I cannot speak, for I am a child"; like Ezekiel, they have been obliged to make their faces harder than flints in order to deliver their message.
Dean Stanley, in speaking of the Prophets of the Old Testament, says that their theology consisted in proclaiming the unity of God against all polytheism, and the spirituality of God against all idolatry, in declaring the superiority of moral to ceremonial duties, and in announcing the supremacy of goodness above the letter, ceremony, or dogma. This makes the contrast between the Prophets and all other sacred persons who have existed in pagan and, he adds, even in Christian times. Dean Stanley says the Prophets were religious teachers, without the usual faults of religious teachers, and he proposes them as an example to the Christian clergy. He says: "O, if the spirit of our profession, of our order, of our body, were the spirit, or anything like the spirit, of the ancient Prophets! If with us truth, charity, justice, fairness to opponents, were a passion, a doctrine, a point of honor, to be upheld with the same energy as that with which we uphold our own position and our own opinions!"
The spirit of the world asks first, Is it safe? secondly, Is it true? The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it true? secondly, Is it safe? The spirit of the world asks first, Is it prudent? secondly, Is it right? The spirit of the Prophets asks first, Is it right? secondly, Is it prudent? Taken as a whole, the prophetic order of the Jewish Church remains alone. It stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient days, with ramparts broken, with inscriptions defaced, but stretching from hill to hill, conveying in its long line of arches the pure rill of living water over deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny modern buildings which have grown up at its feet, and into the midst of which it strides with its massive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic proportions, unrivalled by any erection of modern time.
The predictions of the future by the Prophets of Judæa were far higher in their character than those which come occasionally to mankind through dreams and presentiments. Yet no doubt they proceeded from the same essentially Iranian faculty. This also is asserted by the Dean of Westminster, who says that there is a power of divination granted in some inexplicable manner to ordinary men, and he refers to such instances as the prediction of the discovery of America by Seneca, that of the Reformation by Dante, and the prediction of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the apparition of twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood four hundred years before its actual accomplishment. If such presentiments are not always verified, neither were the predictions of the Prophets always fulfilled. Jonah announced, in the most distinct and absolute terms, that in forty days Nineveh should be destroyed. But the people repented, and it was not destroyed. Their predictions of the Messiah are remarkable, especially because in speaking of him and his time they went out of the law and the spirit of the law, and became partakers of the spirit of the Gospel. The Prophets of the Jews, whatever else we deny to their predictions, certainly foresaw Christianity. They describe the coming of a time in which the law should be written in the heart, of a king who should reign in righteousness, of a prince of peace, of one who should rule by the power of truth, not by force, whose kingdom should be universal and everlasting, and into which all nations of the earth should flow. What the Prophets foresaw was not times nor seasons, not dates nor names, not any minute particulars. But they saw a future age, they lived out of their own time in another time, which had not yet arrived. They left behind them Jewish ceremonialism, and entered into a moral and spiritual religion. They dropped Jewish narrowness and called all mankind brethren. In this they reach the highest form of foresight, which is not simply to predict a coming event, but to live in the spirit of a future time.
Thus the Prophets developed the Jewish religion to its highest point. The simple, childlike faith of Abraham became, in their higher vision, the sight of a universal Father, and of an age in which all men and nations should be united into one great moral kingdom. Further than this, it was not possible to go in vision. The difference between the Prophets and Jesus was, that he accomplished what they foresaw. His life, full of faith in God and man, became the new seed of a higher kingdom than that of David. He was the son of David, as inheriting the loving trust of David in a heavenly Father; he was also the Lord of David, by fulfilling David's love to God with his own love to man; making piety and charity one, faith and freedom one, reason and religion one, this life and the life to come one. He died to accomplish this union and to make this atoning sacrifice.

§ 7. Judaism as a Preparation for Christianity.

After the return from the captivity the Jewish nation remained loyal to Jehovah. The dangers of polytheism and idolatry had passed. We no more hear of either of these tendencies, but, on the contrary, a rigid and almost bigoted monotheism was firmly established. Their sufferings, the teaching of their Prophets, perhaps the influence of the Persian worship, had confirmed them in the belief that Jehovah was one and alone, and that the gods of the nations were idols. They had lost forever the sacred ark of the covenant and the mysterious ornaments of the high-priest. Their kings had disappeared, and a new form of theocracy took the place of a royal government. The high-priest, with the great council, became the supreme authority. The government was hierarchal.
Hellenic influences began to act on the Jewish mind, and a peculiar dialect of Hebrew-Greek, called the Hellenistic, was formed. The Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament, was made in Alexandria about B.C. 260. In Egypt, Greek philosophy began to affect the Jewish mind, the final result of which was the system of Philo. Greek influences spread to such an extent that a great religious revolution took place in Palestine (B.C. 170), and the Temple at Jerusalem was turned into a temple of Olympic Jupiter. Many of the priests and leading citizens accepted this change, though the heart of the people rejected it with horror. Under Antiochus the Temple was profaned, the sacrifices ceased, the keeping of the Sabbath and use of the Scriptures were forbidden by a royal edict. Then arose the Maccabees, and after a long and bitter struggle re-established the worship of Jehovah, B.C. 141.
After this the mass of the people, in their zeal for the law and their old institutions, fell in to the narrow bigotry of the Pharisees. The Sadducees were Jewish Epicureans, but though wealthy were few, and had little influence. The Essenes were Jewish monks, living in communities, and as little influential as are the Shakers in Massachusetts to-day. They were not only few, but their whole system was contrary to the tone of Jewish thought, and was probably derived from Orphic Pythagoreanism.378
The Talmud, that mighty maze of Jewish thought, commencing after the return from the captivity, contains the history of the gradual progress and development of the national mind. The study of the Talmud is necessary to the full understanding of the rise of Christianity. Many of the parables and precepts of Jesus may have had their origin in these traditions and teachings. For the Talmud contains much that is excellent, and the originality of Jesus was not in saying what never had been thought before, but in vitalizing all old truth out of a central spiritual life. His originality was not novelty, but vitality. We have room here but for a single extract.379
"'Six hundred and thirteen injunctions,' says the Talmud, 'was Moses instructed to give to the people. David reduced them all to eleven, in the fifteenth Psalm: Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle who shall dwell on thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly,' &c.
"'The Prophet Isaiah reduced them to six (xxxiii. 15): He that walketh righteously,' &c.
"'The Prophet Micah reduced them to three (vi. 8): What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
"'Isaiah once more reduced them to two (lvi. 1): Keep ye judgment and do justice.
"'Amos (v. 4) reduced them all to one: Seek ye me and ye shall live.
"'But lest it might be supposed from this that God could be found in the fulfilment of his whole law only, Habakkuk said (ii. 4): The just shall live by his faith.'"
Thus we have seen the Jewish religion gradually developed out of the family worship of Abraham, through the national worship of the law to the personal and filial trust of David, and the spiritual monotheism of Job and the Prophets. Through all these changes there ran the one golden thread of faith in a Supreme Being who was not hidden and apart from the world, but who came to man as to his child.
At first this belief was narrow and like that of a child380 We read that when Noah went into the ark, "the Lord shut him in"; that when Babel was built, "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built"; that when Noah offered burnt-sacrifices, "the Lord smelled a sweet savor"; that he told Moses to make him a sanctuary, that he might dwell among the Israelites. We have seen, in our chapter on Greece, that Homer makes Jupiter send a pernicious dream to Agamemnon, to deceive him; in other words, makes Jupiter tell a lie to Agamemnon. But how is the account in I Kings xxii. 20-23, any better?381
But how all this ignorance was enlightened, and this narrowness enlarged, let the magnificent theism of the Psalms, of Job, and of Isaiah testify. Solomon declares "The heaven of heavens cannot contain him, how much less this house that I have builded." Job and the Psalms and Isaiah describe the omniscience, omnipresence, and inscrutable perfections of the Deity in language to which twenty centuries have been able to add nothing.382
Thus Judaism was monotheism, first as a seed, then as a blade, and then as the ear which the sun of Christianity was to ripen into the full corn. The highest truth was present, implicitly, in Judaism, and became explicit in Christianity. The law was the schoolmaster to bring men to Christ. It taught, however imperfectly, a supreme and living God; a Providence ruling all things; a Judge rewarding good and punishing evil; a holy Being, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. It announced a moral law to be obeyed, the substance of which was to love God with all the heart, and one's neighbor as one's self.
Wherever the Apostles of Christ went they found that Judaism had prepared the way. Usually, in every place, they first preached to the Jews, and made converts of them. For Judaism, though so narrow and so alien to the Greek and Latin thought, had nevertheless pervaded all parts of the Roman Empire. Despised and satirized by philosophers and poets, it had yet won its way by its strength of conviction. It offered to men, not a philosophy, but a religion; not thought, but life. Too intolerant of differences to convert the world to monotheism, it yet made a preparation for its conversion. This was its power, and thus it went before the face of the Master, to prepare his way.

Chapter XI.

Mohammed and Islam.

§ 1. Recent Works on the Life of Mohammed.

Dr. Samuel Johnson once declared, "There are two objects of curiosity, the Christian world and the Mohammedan world; all the rest may be considered as barbarous." Since Dr. Johnson's time we have learned to be curious about other forms of human thought, and regard the famous line of Terence as expressing more accurately the proper frame of mind for a Christian philosopher. Nevertheless, Mohammedanism still claims a special interest and excites a peculiar curiosity. It is the only religion which has threatened Christianity with a dangerous rivalry. It is the only other religion, whose origin is in the broad daylight of history. Its author is the only one among the great men of the world who has at the same time founded a religion, formed a people, and established an empire. The marvellous spread of this religion is a mystery which never ceases to stimulate the mind to new inquiry. How was it that in the short space of a century the Arab tribes, before always at war among themselves, should have been united into an irresistible power, and have conquered Syria, Persia, the whole of Northern Africa and Spain? And with this religious outbreak, this great revival of monotheism in Asia, there came also as remarkable a renaissance of learning, which made the Arabs the teachers of philosophy and art to Europe during a long period. Arab Spain was a focus of light while Christian Europe lay in mediæval darkness. And still more interesting and perplexing is the character of Mohammed himself. What was he,—an impostor or a prophet? Did his work advance or retard human progress? What is his position in history? Such are some of the questions on which we shall endeavor to throw light in the present chapter.
Within a few years new materials for this study have been made accessible by the labors of Weil, Caussin de Perceval, Muir, Sprenger, Döllinger, and Arnold. Dr. Gustav Weil published his work383 in 1843. It was drawn from Arabic manuscripts and the Koran. When Weil began his studies on Mohammed in 1837, he found no book except that of Gagnier, published in 1732, from which he could derive substantial aid. But Gagnier had only collected, without any attempt at criticism, the traditions and statements concerning Mohammed believed by orthodox Moslems. Satisfied that a literary want existed at this point, Dr. Weil devoted himself to such studies as should enable him to supply it; and the result was a work concerning which Milman says that "nothing has escaped" the diligence of its author. But four years after appeared the book of M. Caussin de Perceval,384 a work of which M. Saint-Hilaire says that it marks a new era in these studies, on account of the abundance and novelty of its details, and the light thrown on the period which in Arabia preceded the coming of Mohammed. Dr. A. Sprenger, an eminent German scholar, early determined to devote himself to the study of Oriental literature in the East. He spent a long time in India, and was for twelve years principal of a Mohammedan school in Delhi, where he established, in 1845, an illustrated penny magazine in the Hindoo language. After returning to Europe with a vast number of Oriental manuscripts, he composed his Life of Mohammed,385 the result of extensive studies. Among the preparations for this work we will cite only one. Dr. Sprenger edited in Calcutta the first volume of the Içâba, which contains the names and biographies of eight thousand persons who were personally acquainted with Mohammed.386 But, as if to embarrass us with riches, comes also Mr. Muir387 and presents us with another life of the prophet, likewise drawn from original sources, and written with learning and candor. This work, in four volumes, goes over the whole ground of the history of Arabia before the coming of the prophet, and then, from Arabic sources, narrates the life of Mohammed himself, up to the era of the Hegira. The result of these researches is that we know accurately what Mr. Hallam in his time despaired of knowing,—all the main points of the history of Mohammed. There is no legend, no myth, to trouble us. M. Saint-Hilaire says that the French are far less acquainted with Charlemagne than the Moslems are with their prophet, who came two centuries earlier.
A Mohammedan writer, Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador, has lately published, in English, a series of Essays on the life of Mohammed, Arabia, the Arabs, Mohammedan traditions, and kindred topics, written from the stand-point of a believer in Islam.388 He is dissatisfied with all the recent works on Mohammed, including those of Dr. Sprenger and Mr. Muir. He believes that the Arabic sources from which these biographies are derived are not the most authentic. The special objections, however, which this able Mohammedan urges against these European biographies by Sprenger and Muir do not affect any of the important points in the history, but only details of small moment. Notwithstanding his criticisms, therefore, we may safely assume that we are in a condition to understand the actual life and character of Mohammed. All that the Syed says concerning the duty of an impartial and friendly judgment of Islam and its author is, of course, true. We shall endeavor in our treatment of Mohammed to follow this exhortation.
Something, however, is always gained by hearing what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf, and these essays of the Mohammedan scholar may help us in this way. One of the most curious parts of the volume is that in which he treats of the prophecies concerning Mohammed in the Old and New Testament. Most of our readers will be surprised at learning that any such prophecies exist; and yet some of them are quite as striking as many of those commonly adduced by writers on prophecy as referring to Jesus Christ. For example (Deut. xviii. 15, 18), when Moses predicts that the Lord will raise up a prophet for the Jews, from among their brethren; by emphasizing this latter clause, and arguing that the Jews had no brethren except the Ishmaelites, from whom Mohammed was born, an argument is derived that the latter was referred to. This is strengthened by the declaration of Moses, that this prophet should be "like unto me," since Deuteronomy xxxiv. 10 declares that "there arose no prophet in Israel like unto Moses."
Habakkuk iii. 3 says: "The Holy One came from Mount Paran." But Mount Paran, argues our friend, is the mountain of Mecca.
The Hebrew word translated "desire" in Haggai ii. 7, "The desire of all nations shall come," is said by Bahador to be the same word as the name Mohammed. He is therefore predicted by his name in this passage.
When Isaiah says (xxi. 7), according to the Septuagint translation, that he "saw two riders, one on an ass and one on a camel," Bahador argues that the rider on the ass is Jesus, who so entered Jerusalem, and that the rider on the camel is Mohammed.
When John the Baptist was asked if he were the Christ, or Elijah, or "that prophet," Mohammedans say that "that prophet," so anticipated, was their own.

§ 2. The Arabs and Arabia.

The Arabs are a Semitic people, belonging to the same great ethnologic family with the Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Ethiopians, and Carthaginians. It is a race which has given to civilized man his literature and his religion; for the alphabet came from the Phoenicians, and the Bible from the Jews. In Hannibal, it produced perhaps the greatest military genius the world has seen; and the Tyrian merchants, circumnavigating Africa, discovering Great Britain, and trading with India, ten centuries before Christ, had no equals on the ocean until the time of the Portuguese discoveries, twenty-five centuries after. The Arabs alone, of the seven Semitic families, remained undistinguished and unknown till the days of Mohammed. Their claim of being descended from Abraham is confirmed by the unerring evidence of language. The Arabic roots are, nine tenths of them, identical with the Hebrew; and a similarity of grammatical forms shows a plain glossological relation. But while the Jews have a history from the days of Abraham, the Arabs had none till Mohammed. During twenty centuries these nomads wandered to and fro, engaged in mutual wars, verifying the prediction (Gen. xvi. 12) concerning Ishmael: "He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him." Wherever such wandering races exist, whether in Arabia, Turkistan, or Equatorial Africa, "darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people." The earth has no geography, and the people no history. During all this long period, from the time of Abraham to that of Mohammed, the Arabs were not a nation, but only a multitude of tribes, either stationary or wandering. But of these two the nomad or Bedouin is the true type of the race as it exists in Northern Arabia. The Arab of the South is in many respects different,—in language, in manners, and in character,—confirming the old opinion of a double origin. But the Northern Arab in his tent has remained unchanged since the days of the Bible. Proud of his pure blood, of his freedom, of his tribe, and of his ancient customs, he desires no change. He is, in Asia, what the North American Indian is upon the western continent. As the Indian's, his chief virtues are courage in war, cunning, wild justice, hospitality, and fortitude. He is, however, of a better race,—more reflective, more religious, and with a thirst for knowledge. The pure air and the simple food of the Arabian plains keep him in perfect health; and the necessity of constant watchfulness against his foes, from whom he has no defence of rock, forest, or fortification, quickens his perceptive faculties. But the Arab has also a sense of spiritual things, which appears to have a root in his organization. The Arabs say: "The children of Shem are prophets, the children of Japhet are kings, and the children of Ham are slaves." Having no temples, no priesthood, no religious forms, their religion is less formal and more instinctive, like that of children. The Koran says: "Every child is born into the religion of nature; its parents make it a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian." But when Mohammed came, the religion of the Arabs was a jumble of monotheism and polytheism,—Judaism, Christianity, idolatry, and fetichism. At one time there had been a powerful and intolerant Jewish kingdom in one region. In Yemen, at another period, the king of Abyssinia had established Christianity. But neither Judaism nor Christianity had ever been able to conquer the peninsula; and at the end of the sixth century idolatry was the most prevailing form of worship.
At this time Mohammed appeared, and in a few years united in one faith all the warring tribes of Arabia; consolidated them into a single nation, and then wielded their mighty and enthusiastic forces against Syria, Persia, and North Africa, triumphant wherever they moved. He, certainly, if ever man possessed it, had the rare gift of natural empire. To him, more than to any other of whom history makes mention, was given
"The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding,
  The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon,
Of wielding, moulding, gathering, welding, banding,
  The hearts of thousands till they moved as one."

§ 3. Early Life of Mohammed, to the Hegira.

But it was not as a soldier or ambitious conqueror that Mohammed began his career. The first forty years of his life were passed in the quiet pursuits of trade, or taking care of the property of Khadîjah. Serious, thoughtful, devout, he made friends of all about him. His youth was unstained by vice, and his honorable character early obtained for him the title, given him by common consent, of Al Amîn, "the faithful." At one time he tended sheep and goats on the hills near Mecca. At Medina, after he became distinguished he referred to this, saying, "Pick me the blackest of those berries; they are such as I used to gather when I fed the flocks at Mecca. Verily, no prophet has been raised up who has not performed the work of a shepherd." When twenty-five years of age, he entered into the service of Khadîjah, a rich widow, as her agent, to take charge of her merchandise and to sell it at Damascus. When the caravan returned, and his adventure had proved successful, Khadîjah, then forty years old, became interested in the young man; she was wise, virtuous, and attractive; they were married, and, till her death, Mohammed was a kind and loving husband. Khadîjah sympathized with her husband in his religious tendencies, and was his first convert. His habit was to retire to a cave on Mount Hira to pray and to meditate. Sadness came over him in view of the evils in the world. One of the Suras of the Koran, supposed to belong to this period, is as follows:—
Sura 103.
"By the declining day I swear!
Verily, man is in the way of ruin;
Excepting such as possess faith,
And do the things which be right,
And stir up one another to truth and steadfastness."
About this time he began to have his visions of angels, especially of Gabriel. He saw a light, and heard a voice, and had sentences like the above put into his mind. These communications were accompanied by strong convulsions (epilepsy, says Weil), in which he would fall to the ground and foam at the mouth. Sprenger considers it to have been a form of hysteria, with a mental origin, perhaps accompanied with catalepsy. The prophet himself said: "Inspiration descends on me in two ways. Sometimes Gabriel cometh and communicateth the revelation, as one man to another. This is easy. But sometimes it is as the ringing of a bell, which rends me in pieces, and grievously afflicts me." One day, when Abu Bakr and Omar sat in the Mosque at Medina, Mohammed came suddenly upon them, lifting up his beard and looking at it; and Abu Bakr said, "Ah thou, for whom I would sacrifice father and mother; white hairs are hastening upon thee!" "Yes," said the prophet, "Hûd" (Sura 11) "and its sisters have hastened my white hairs." "And who," asked Abu Bakr, "are its sisters?" "The Inevitable" (Sura 56) "and the Striking" (Sura 101), replied Mohammed. These three are called the "terrific Suras."
But these last Suras came later than the period now referred to. At this time his visions and revelations possessed him; he did not possess nor control them. In later years the spirit of the prophet was more subject to the prophet. But the Koran is an unintelligible book unless we can connect it with the biography of its writer. All the incidents of his life took shape in some revelation. A separate revelation was given to encourage or to rebuke him; and in his later years the too subservient inspiration came to appease the jealousy of his wives when a new one was added to their number. But, however it may have been afterward, in the beginning his visions were as much a surprise to him as to others. A careful distribution of the Suras, according to the events which befell him, would make the Koran the best biography of the prophet. As we said of David and his Psalms, so it may be said of Mohammed, that his life hangs suspended in these hymns, as in votive pictures, each the record of some grave experience.389
Now, it is impossible to read the detailed accounts of this part of the life of Mohammed, and have any doubt of his profound sincerity. His earliest converts were his bosom-friends and the people of his household, who were intimately acquainted with his private life. Nor does a man easily begin an ambitious course of deception at the age of forty; having lived till that time as a quiet, peaceful, and unobtrusive citizen,390 what was he to gain by this career? Long years passed before he could make more than a handful of converts. During these weary years he was the object of contumely and hatred to the ruling tribe in Mecca. His life was hardly safe from them. Nothing could be more hopeless than his position during the first twelve years of his public preaching. Only a strong conviction of the reality of his mission could have supported him through this long period of failure, loneliness, and contempt. During all these years the wildest imagination could not have pictured the success which was to come. Here is a Sura in which he finds comfort in God and his promises.—
Sura 93.
"By the rising sunshine!
  By the night when it darkeneth!
Thy Lord hath not removed from thee, neither hath he been displeased.
And verily the future shall be better than the past....
What! did he not find thee an orphan, and give thee a home?
And found thee astray, and directed thee?"
In this Sura, Mohammed refers to the fact of the death of his mother, Amina, in his seventh year, his father having died a few months before. He visited her tomb many years after, and lifted up his voice and wept. In reply to the questions of his companions, he said: "This is the grave of my mother; the Lord hath permitted me to visit it, and I asked leave to pray for her, and it was not granted. So I called my mother to remembrance, and the tender memory of her overcame me, and I wept." The child had been taken by his grandfather, Abd al Mut-talib, then eighty years old, who treated him with the greatest indulgence. At his death, shortly after, Mohammed was adopted by his uncle, Abu Tâlib, the chief of the tribe. Abu Tâlib brought him up like his own son, making him sleep by his bed, eat by his side, and go with him wherever he went. And when Mohammed, assuming his inspired position, declared himself a prophet, his uncle, then aged and universally respected, protected him from his enemies, though Abu himself never accepted his teaching. Mohammed therefore had good reason to bless the Providence which had provided such protectors for his orphaned infancy.
Among the earliest converts of Mohammed, after Khadîjah, were his two adopted children, Ali and Zeid. Ali was the son of his guardian, Abu Tâlib, who had become poor, and found it hard to support his family. Mohammed, "prompted by his usual kindness and consideration," says Mr. Muir, went to his rich uncle Abbas, and proposed that each of them should adopt one of Abu Tâlib's children, which was done. His other adopted son, Zeid, belonged to a Syrian tribe, and had been taken captive by marauders, sold into slavery, and given to Khadîjah, who presented him to her husband. After a while the father of Zeid heard where he was, and coming to Mecca offered a large sum as ransom for his son. Mohammed had become very fond of Zeid, but he called him, and gave him his choice to go or stay. Zeid said, "I will not leave thee; thou art in the place to me of father and mother." Then Mohammed took him to the Kaaba, and touching the Black Stone said, "Bear witness, all here! Zeid is my son. I shall be his heir, and he mine." So the father returned home contented, and Zeid was henceforth known as "Zeid ibn Mohammed,"—Zeid, the son of Mohammed.
It is reported that when Ali was about thirteen years old Mohammed was one day praying with him in one of the retired glens near Mecca, whither they had gone to avoid the ridicule of their opponents. Abu Tâlib, passing by, said, "My nephew! what is this new faith I see thee following?" "O my uncle," replied Mohammed, "it is the religion of God, his angels and prophets, the religion of Abraham. The Lord hath sent me as his apostle; and thou, uncle, art most worthy to be invited to believe." Abu Tâlib replied, "I am not able, my nephew, to separate from the customs of my forefathers, but I swear that while I live no one shall trouble thee." Then he said to Ali, "My son, he will not invite thee to anything which is not good; wherefore thou art free to cleave to him."
Another early and important convert was Abu Bakr, father of Mohammed's favorite wife, Ayesha, and afterward the prophet's successor. Ayesha said she "could not remember the time when both her parents were not true believers." Of Abu Bakr, the prophet said, "I never invited any to the faith who did not show hesitation, except Abu Bakr. When I proposed Islam to him he at once accepted it." He was thoughtful, calm, tender, and firm. He is still known as "Al Sadîch," the true one. Another of his titles is "the Second of the Two,"—from having been the only companion of Mohammed in his flight from Mecca. Hassan, the poet of Medina, thus says of him:—
"And the second of the two in the glorious cave, while the foes were searching around, and they two were in the mountain,—
And the prophet of the Lord, they well knew, loved him more than all the world; he held no one equal unto him."391
Abu Bakr was at this time a successful merchant, and possessed some forty thousand dirhems. But he spent most of it in purchasing and giving freedom to Moslem slaves, who were persecuted by their masters for their religion. He was an influential man among the Koreish. This powerful tribe, the rulers of Mecca, who from the first treated Mohammed with contempt, gradually became violent persecutors of him and his followers. Their main wrath fell on the unprotected slaves, whom they exposed to the scorching sun, and who, in their intolerable thirst, would sometimes recant, and acknowledge the idols. Some of them remained firm, and afterward showed with triumph their scars. Mohammed, Abu Bakr, Ali, and all who were connected with powerful families, were for a long time safe. For the principal protection in such a disorganized society was the principle that each tribe must defend every one of its members, at all hazards. Of course, Mohammed was very desirous to gain over members of the great families, but he felt bound to take equal pains with the poor and helpless, as appears from the following anecdote: "The prophet was engaged in deep converse with the chief Walîd, for he greatly desired his conversion. Then a blind man passed that way, and asked to hear the Koran. But Mohammed was displeased with the interruption, and turned from him roughly."392 But he was afterward grieved to think he had slighted one whom God had perhaps chosen, and had paid court to a reprobate. So his remorse took the form of a divine message and embodied itself as follows:—
"The prophet frowned and turned aside
Because the blind man came to him.
Who shall tell thee if he may not be purified?
Or whether thy admonition might not profit him?
    The rich man
    Thou receivest graciously,
    Although he be not inwardly pure.
But him who cometh earnestly inquiring,
And trembling with anxiety,
    Him thou dost neglect."393
Mohammed did not encourage his followers to martyrdom. On the contrary, he allowed them to dissemble to save themselves. He found one of his disciples sobbing bitterly because he had been compelled by ill-treatment to abuse his master and worship the idols. "But how dost thou find thy heart?" said the prophet. "Steadfast in the faith," said he. "Then," answered Mohammed, "if they repeat their cruelty, thou mayest repeat thy words." He also had himself an hour of vacillation. Tired of the severe and seemingly hopeless struggle with the Koreish, and seeing no way of overcoming their bitter hostility, he bethought himself of the method of compromise, more than seven centuries before America was discovered. He had been preaching Islam five years, and had only forty or fifty converts. Those among them who had no protectors he had advised to fly to the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. "Yonder," said he, pointing to the west, "lies a land wherein no one is wronged. Go there and remain until the Lord shall open a way for you." Some fifteen or twenty had gone, and met with a kind reception. This was the first "Hegira," and showed the strength of faith in these exiles, who gave up their country rather than Islam. But they heard, before long, that the Koreish had been converted by Mohammed, and they returned to Mecca. The facts were these.
One day, when the chief citizens were sitting near the Kaaba, Mohammed came, and began to recite in their hearing one of the Suras of the Koran. In this Sura three of the goddesses worshipped by the Koreish were mentioned. When he came to their names he added two lines in which he conceded that their intercession might avail with God. The Koreish were so delighted at this acknowledgment of their deities, that when he added another line calling on them to worship Allah, they all prostrated themselves on the ground and adored God. Then they rose, and expressed their satisfaction, and agreed to be his followers, and receive Islam, with this slight alteration, that their goddesses and favorite idols were to be respected. Mohammed went home and began to be unhappy in his mind. The compromise, it seems, lasted long enough for the Abyssinian exiles to hear of it and to come home. But at last the prophet recovered himself, and took back his concession. The verse of the Sura was cancelled, and another inserted, declaring that these goddesses were only names, invented by the idolaters. Ever after, the intercession of idols was condemned with scorn. But Mohammed records his lapse thus in the seventeenth Sura of the Koran:—
"And truly, they were near tempting thee from what we taught thee, that thou shouldst invent a different revelation; and then they would have inclined unto thee.
And if we had not strengthened thee, verily thou hadst inclined to them a little.
Then thou shouldst not have found against us any helper."
After this, naturally, the persecution became hotter than ever. A second body of exiles went to Abyssinia. Had not the venerable Abu Tâlib protected Mohammed, his life might have been lost. As it was, the persecutors threatened the old man with deadly enmity unless he gave up Mohammed. But Abu Tâlib, though agreeing with them in their religion, and worshipping their gods, refused to surrender his nephew to them. Once, when Mohammed had disappeared, and his uncle suspected that the Koreish had seized him, he armed a party of Hâshimite youths with dirks, and went to the Kaaba, to the Koreish. But on the way he heard that Mohammed was found. Then, in the presence of the Koreish, he told his young men to draw their dirks, and said, "By the Lord! had ye killed him, not one of you had remained alive." This boldness cowed their violence for a time. But as the unpopularity of Mohammed increased, he and all his party were obliged to take refuge with the Hâshimites in a secluded quarter of the city belonging to Abu Tâlib. The conversion of Omar about this time only increased their rage. They formed an alliance against the Hâshimites, agreeing that they would neither buy nor sell, marry, nor have any dealings with them. This oath was committed to writing, sealed, and hung up in the Kaaba. For two or three years the Hâshimites remained shut up in their fortress, and often deprived of the necessaries of life. Their friends would sometimes secretly supply them with provisions; but the cries of the hungry children would often be heard by those outside. They were blockaded in their intrenchments. But many of the chief people in Mecca began to be moved by pity, and at last it was suggested to Abu Tâlib that the bond hung up in the Kaaba had been eaten by the ants, so as to be no longer valid. This being found to be the case, it was decided that the league was at an end, and the Hâshimites returned to their homes. But other misfortunes were in store for Mohammed. The good Abu Tâlib soon died, and, not long after, Khadîjah. His protector gone, what could Mohammed do? He left the city, and went with only Zeid for a companion on a mission to Tâyif, sixty or seventy miles east of Mecca, in hopes of converting the inhabitants. Who can think of the prophet, in this lonely journey, without sympathy? He was going to preach the doctrine of One God to idolaters. But he made no impression on them, and, as he left the town, was followed by a mob, hooting, and pelting him with stones. At last they left him, and in the shadow of some trees he betook himself to prayer. His words have been preserved, it is believed by the Moslems, and are as follows: "O Lord! I make my complaint unto thee of the feebleness of my strength, and the weakness of my plans. I am insignificant in the sight of men. O thou most merciful! Lord of the weak! Thou art my Lord! Do not abandon me. Leave me not a prey to these strangers, nor to my foes. If thou art not offended, I am safe. I seek refuge in the light of thy countenance, by which all darkness is dispersed, and peace comes. There is no power, no help, but in thee." In that hour of prayer, the faith of Mohammed was the same as that of Luther praying for protection against the Pope. It was a part of the universal religion of human nature. Certainly this man was no impostor. A man, going alone to summon an idolatrous city to repentance, must at least have believed in his own doctrine.
But the hour of success was at hand. No amount of error, no bitterness of prejudice, no vested interest in falsehood, can resist the determined conviction of a single soul. Only believe a truth strongly enough to hold it through good report and ill report, and at last the great world of half-believers comes round to you. And usually the success comes suddenly at last, after weary years of disappointment. The great tree, which seems so solid and firm, has been secretly decaying within, and is hollow at heart; at last it falls in a moment, filling the forest with the echoes of its ruin. The dam, which seems strong enough to resist a torrent, has been slowly undermined by a thousand minute rills of water; at last it is suddenly swept away, and opens a yawning breach for the tumbling cataract. And almost as suddenly came the triumph of Mohammed.
At Medina and in its neighborhood there had long been numerous and powerful tribes of Jewish proselytes. In their conflicts with the idolaters, they had often predicted the speedy coming of a prophet like Moses. The Jewish influence was great at Medina, and that of the idolaters was divided by bitter quarrels. Now it must be remembered that at this time Mohammed taught a kind of modified Judaism. He came to revive the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He continually referred to the Old Testament and the Talmud for authority. He was a prophet and inspired, but not to teach anything new. He was to restore the universal religion which God had taught to man in the beginning,—the religion of all true patriarchs and prophets. Its essential doctrine was the unity of God, and his supremacy and providence. Its one duty was Islam, or submission to the Divine will. Its worship was prayer and almsgiving. At this time he did not make belief in himself the main point; it was to profess the unity of God, and to submit wholly to God. So that the semi-Judaized pilgrims from Medina to Mecca were quite prepared to accept his teachings. Mohammed, at the time of the pilgrimage, met with many of them, and they promised to become his disciples. The pledge they took was as follows: "We will not worship any but the one God; we will not steal, nor commit adultery, nor kill our children (female): we will not slander at all, nor disobey the prophet in anything that is right." This was afterward called the "Pledge of Women," because it did not require them to fight for Islam. This faith spread rapidly among the idolaters at Medina,—much more so than the Jewish system. The Jews required too much of their proselytes; they insisted on their becoming Jews. They demanded a change of all their previous customs. But Mohammed only asked for submission.
About this time Mohammed had his famous dream or vision, in which he was carried by Gabriel on a winged steed to Jerusalem, to meet all the prophets of God and be welcomed by them to their number, and then to the seventh heaven into the presence of God. It was so vivid that he deemed it a reality, and maintained that he had been to Jerusalem and to heaven. This, and the Koran itself, were the only miracles he ever claimed.
The Medina Moslems having entered into a second pledge, to receive Mohammed and his friends, and to protect them, the prophet gave orders to his followers to leave Mecca secretly in small parties, and repair to Medina. As the stout sea-captain remains the last on a sinking vessel, Mohammed stayed quietly at Mecca till all the others had gone. Only Abu Bakr's family and his own remained. The rest of the believers, to the number of about two hundred, had disappeared.
The Koreish, amazed at these events, knew not what to do. Why had the Moslems gone? and why had Mohammed remained? How dared he to stay, unprotected, in their midst? They might kill him;—but then his tribe would take a bloody vengeance on his murderers. At last they proposed to seize him, and that a number of men, one from each tribe and family, should at the same moment drive their dirks into him. Or perhaps it might be better to send an assassin to waylay him on his way to Medina. While they were discussing these alternatives, news was brought to them that Mohammed also had disappeared, and Abu Bakr with him. They immediately went to their houses. In that of Mohammed they found the young Ali, who, being asked where his father was, replied, "I do not know. I am not his keeper. Did you not order him to go from the city? I suppose he is gone." Getting no more information at the house of Abu Bakr, they sent out parties of armed men, mounted on swift horses and camels, to search the whole route to Medina, and bring the fugitives back. After a few days the pursuers returned, saying that there were no signs of any persons having gone in that direction. If they had gone that way they would certainly have overtaken them.
Meantime where were the fugitives? Instead of going north to Medina, they had hidden in a cave on a mountain, about five or six miles to the south of Mecca. Here they remained concealed three days and nights, in imminent danger from their pursuers, who once, it is said, came to the mouth of the cave, but, seeing spiders' webs spun across the opening, concluded no one could have gone in recently. There was a crevice in the roof through which the morning light entered, and Abu Bakr said, "If one of them were to look down, he would see us." "Think not so, Abu Bakr," said the prophet. "We are two, but God is in the midst, a third."
The next day, satisfied that the heat of the pursuit had abated, they took the camels which had privately been brought to them from the city by the son of Abu Bakr, and set off for Medina, leaving Mecca on the right. By the calculations of M. Caussin de Perceval, it was on the 20th of June, A.D. 622.

§ 4. Change in the Character of Mohammed after the Hegira.

From the Hegira the Mohammedan era begins; and from that point of the prophet's history his fortunes rise, but his character degenerates. He has borne adversity and opposition with a faith and a patience almost sublime; but prosperity he will not bear so well. Down to that time he had been a prophet, teaching God's truth to those who would receive it, and by the manifestation of that truth commending himself to every man's conscience. Now he was to become a politician, the head of a party, contriving expedients for its success. Before, his only weapon was truth; now, his chief means was force. Instead of convincing his opponents, he now compelled them to submit by the terror of his power. His revelations changed their tone; they adapted themselves to his needs, and on all occasions, even when he wanted to take an extra wife, inspiration came to his aid.
What sadder tragedy is there than to see a great soul thus conquered by success? "All these things," says Satan, "I will give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." When Jesus related his temptation to his disciples he put it in the form of a parable. How could they, how can we, understand the temptations of a nature like that of Christ! Perhaps he saw that he could have a great apparent success by the use of worldly means. He could bring the Jew and the Gentile to acknowledge and receive his truth. Some slight concession to worldly wisdom, some little compromise with existing errors, some hardly perceptible variation from perfect truthfulness, and lo! the kingdom of God would come in that very hour, instead of lingering through long centuries. What evils might not be spared to the race, what woes to the world, if the divine gospel of love to God and man were inaugurated by Christ himself! This, perhaps, was one of the temptations. But Jesus said, "Get thee behind me, Satan." He would use only good means for good ends. He would take God's way to do God's work. He would die on the cross, but not vary from the perfect truth. The same temptation came to Mohammed, and he yielded. Up to the Hegira, Mohammed might also have said, "My kingdom is not of this world." But now the sword and falsehood were to serve him, as his most faithful servants, in building up Islam. His ends were the same as before. His object was still to establish the service of the one living and true God. But his means, henceforth, are of the earth, earthy.
What a noble religion would Islam have been, if Mohammed could have gone on as he began! He accepted all the essential truths of Judaism, he recognized Moses and Christ as true teachers. He taught that there was one universal religion, the substance of which was faith in one Supreme Being, submission to his will, trust in his providence, and good-will to his creatures. Prayer and alms were the only worship which God required. A marvellous and mighty work, says Mr. Muir, had been wrought by these few precepts. From time beyond memory Mecca and the whole peninsula had been steeped in spiritual torpor. The influences of Judaism, Christianity, and philosophy had been feeble and transient. Dark superstitions prevailed, the mothers of dark vices. And now, in thirteen years of preaching, a body of men and women had risen, who rejected idolatry; worshipped the one great God; lived lives of prayer; practised chastity, benevolence, and justice; and were ready to do and to bear everything for the truth. All this came from the depth of conviction in the soul of this one man.
To the great qualities which Mohammed had shown as a prophet and religious teacher were now added those of the captain and statesman. He had at last obtained a position at Medina whence he could act on the Arabs with other forces than those of eloquence and feeling. And now the man who for forty years had been a simple citizen and led a quiet family life—who afterward, for thirteen years, had been a patient but despised teacher of the unity of God—passed the last ten years of his strange career in building up a fanatical army of warriors, destined to conquer half the civilized world. From this period the old solution of the Mohammedan miracle is in order; from this time the sword leads, and the Koran follows. To this familiar explanation of Mohammedan success, Mr. Carlyle replies with the question: "Mohammedanism triumphed with the sword? But where did it get its sword?" We can now answer that pithy inquiry. The simple, earnest zeal of the original believers built up a power, which then took the sword, and conquered with it. The reward of patient, long-enduring faith is influence; with this influence ambition serves itself for its own purpose. Such is, more or less, the history of every religion, and, indeed, of every political party. Sects are founded, not by politicians, but by men of faith, by men to whom ideas are realities, by men who are willing to die for them. Such faith always triumphs at last; it makes a multitude of converts; it becomes a great power. The deep and strong convictions thus created are used by worldly men for their own purposes. That the Mohammedan impulse was thus taken possession of by worldly men is the judgment of M. Renan.394 "From all sides," says he, "we come to this singular result: that the Mussulman movement was started almost without religious faith; that, setting aside a small number of faithful disciples, Mahomet really wrought very little conviction in Arabia." "The party of true Mussulmans had all their strength in Omar; but after his assassination, that is to say, twelve years after the death of the prophet, the opposite party triumphed by the election of Othman." "The first generation of the Hegira was completely occupied in exterminating the primitive Mussulmans, the true fathers of Islamism." Perhaps it is bold to question the opinions of a Semitic scholar of the force of M. Renan, but it seems to us that he goes too far in supposing that such a movement as that of Islam could be started without a tremendous depth of conviction. At all events, supported by such writers as Weil, Sprenger, and Muir, we will say that it was a powerful religious movement founded on sincerest conviction, but gradually turned aside, and used for worldly purposes and temporal triumphs. And, in thus diverting it from divine objects to purely human ones, Mohammed himself led the way. He adds another, and perhaps the greatest, illustration to the long list of noble souls whose natures have become subdued to that which they worked in; who have sought high ends by low means; who, talking of the noblest truths, descend into the meanest prevarications, and so throw a doubt on all sincerity, faith, and honor. Such was the judgment of a great thinker—Goethe—concerning Mohammed. He believes him to have been at first profoundly sincere, but he says of him that afterward "what in his character is earthly increases and develops itself; the divine retires and is obscured: his doctrine becomes a means rather than an end. All kinds of practices are employed, nor are horrors wanting." Goethe intended to write a drama upon Mohammed, to illustrate the sad fact that every man who attempts to realize a great idea comes in contact with the lower world, must place himself on its level in order to influence it, and thus often compromises his higher aims, and at last forfeits them395. Such a man, in modern times, was Lord Bacon in the political world; such a man, among conquerors, was Cromwell; and among Christian sects how often do we see the young enthusiast and saint end as the ambitious self-seeker and Jesuit! Then we call him a hypocrite, because he continues to use the familiar language of the time when his heart was true and simple, though indulging himself in luxury and sin. It is curious, when we are all so inconsistent, that we should find it so hard to understand inconsistency. We, all of us, often say what is right and do what is wrong; but are we deliberate hypocrites? No! we know that we are weak; we admit that we are inconsistent; we say amen to the "video meliora, proboque,—deteriora sequor," but we also know that we are not deliberate and intentional hypocrites. Let us use the same large judgment in speaking of the faults of Cromwell, Bacon, and Mohammed.
No one could have foreseen the cruelty of which Mohammed, hitherto always a kind-hearted and affectionate man, was capable toward those who resisted his purpose. This first showed itself in his treatment of the Jews. He hoped to form an alliance with them, against the idolaters. He had admitted the divine authority of their religion, and appealed to their Scriptures as evidence of the truth of his own mission. He conformed to their ritual and customs, and made Jerusalem his Kibla, toward which he turned in prayer five times a day. In return for this he expected them to receive him as a prophet; but this they refused to do. So he departed by degrees from their customs, changed his Kibla to Mecca, and at last denounced the Jews as stiff-necked unbelievers. The old quarrel between Esau and Jacob could not be appeased, nor an alliance formed between them.
M. Saint-Hilaire396 does not think that the character of Mohammed changed when he became the founder of a state and head of a conquering party. He thinks "that he only yielded to the political necessities of his position." Granted; but yielding to those necessities was the cause of this gradual change in his character. The man who lies and murders from the necessity of his political position can hardly remain a saint. Plunder, cold-blooded execution of prisoners, self-indulgence, became the habit of the prophet henceforth, as we shall presently see.
The first battle against the Koreish, that of Badr, took place in January, A.D. 624. When Mohammed had drawn up his army, he prayed earnestly for the victory. After a desperate struggle, the Koreish fled. Mohammed claimed, by a special revelation, the fifth part of the booty. As the bodies of his old opponents were cast into a pit, he spoke to them bitterly. When the prisoners were brought before him he looked fiercely at one of them. "There is death in that glance," said the unhappy man, and presently the prophet ordered him to be beheaded. Two days after, another was ordered for execution. "Who will take care of my little girl?" said he. "Hell-fire," replied Mohammed, and ordered him to be cut down. Shortly after the battle, a Jewess who had written verses against Mohammed, was assassinated by one of his followers; and the prophet praised him for the deed in the public mosque. Another aged Jew, for the same offence, was murdered by his express command. A quarrel between some Jews and Moslems brought on an attack by Mohammed upon the Jewish tribe. They surrendered after a siege of fifteen days, and Mohammed ordered all the prisoners to be killed; but at last, at the urgent request of a powerful chief in Medina, allowed them to go into exile, cursing them and their intercessor. Mr. Muir mentions other cases of assassination of the Jews by the command of the prophet. All these facts are derived from contemporaneous Moslem historians, who glorify their prophet for this conduct. The worst action perhaps of this kind was the deliberate execution of seven or eight hundred Jewish prisoners, who had surrendered at discretion, and the sale of their wives and children into slavery. Mohammed selected from among these women one more beautiful than the rest, for his concubine. Whether M. Saint-Hilaire considers all this as "yielding to the political necessities of his position," we do not know. But this man, who could stand by and see hundreds of captives slaughtered in cold blood, and then retire to solace himself with the widow of one of his victims, seems to us to have retained little of his early purity of soul.
About this time Mohammed began to multiply wives, and to receive revelations allowing him to do so beyond the usual limit of his law. He added one after another to his harem, until he had ten wives, besides his slaves. His views on such subjects are illustrated by his presenting three beautiful female slaves, taken in war, one to his father-in-law, and the others to his two sons-in-law.
So, in a series of battles, with the Jewish tribes, the Koreish, the Syrians, passed the stormy and triumphant years of the Pontiff King. Mecca was conquered, and the Koreish submitted in A.D. 630. The tribes throughout Arabia acquiesced, one by one, in the prophet's authority. All paid tribute, or accepted Islam. His enemies were all under his feet; his doctrines accepted; the rival prophets, Aswad and Museilama, overcome. Then, in the sixty-third year of his age, death drew near. On the last day of his life, he went into the mosque to attend morning prayer, then back to the room of his favorite wife, Ayesha, and died in her arms. Wild with grief, Omar declared he was not dead, but in a trance. The grave Abu Bakr composed the excited multitude, and was chosen caliph, or successor to the prophet. Mohammed died on June 8, A.D. 632, and was buried the next day, amid the grief of his followers. Abu Bakr and Omar offered the prayer: "Peace be unto thee, O prophet of God; and the mercy of the Lord, and his blessing! We bear testimony that the prophet of God hath delivered the message revealed to him; hath fought in the ways of the Lord until God crowned his religion with victory; hath fulfilled his words commanding that he alone is to be worshipped in unity; hath drawn us to himself, and been kind and tender-hearted to believers; hath sought no recompense for delivering to us the faith, neither hath sold it for a price at any time." And all the people said, "Amen! Amen!"
Concerning the character of Mohammed, enough has been already said. He was a great man, one of the greatest ever sent upon earth. He was a man of the deepest convictions, and for many years of the purest purposes, and was only drawn down at last by using low means for a good end. Of his visions and revelations, the same explanation is to be given as of those received by Joan of Arc, and other seers of that order. How far they had an objective basis in reality, and how far they were the result of some abnormal activity of the imagination, it is difficult with our present knowledge to decide. But that these visionaries fully believed in their own inspiration, there can be little doubt.

§ 5. Religious Doctrines and Practices among the Mohammedans.

As to the religion of Mohammed, and its effects on the world, it is easier to come to an opinion than concerning his own character. Its essential doctrine, as before indicated, is the absolute unity and supremacy of God, as opposed to the old Arab Polytheism on the one hand and the Christian Trinity on the other. It however admits of angels and genii. Gabriel and Michael are the angels of power; Azriel, angel of death; Israfeel, angel of the resurrection. Eblis, or Satan, plays an important part in this mythology. The Koran also teaches the doctrine of Eternal Decrees, or absolute Predestination; of prophets before Mohammed, of whom he is the successor,—as Adam, Noah, Moses, and Jesus; of sacred books, of which all that remain are the Pentateuch, Psalms, Gospels, and Koran; of an intermediate state after death; of the resurrection and judgment. All non-believers in Islam go into eternal fire. There are separate hells for Christians, Jews, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, and the hypocrites of all religions. The Moslem is judged by his actions. A balance is held by Gabriel, one scale hanging over heaven and another over hell, and his good deeds are placed in one and his bad ones in the other. According as his scale inclines, he goes to heaven or hell. If he goes to heaven, he finds there seventy-two Houris, more beautiful than angels, awaiting him, with gardens, groves, marble palaces, and music. If women are true believers and righteous, they will also go to heaven, but nothing is said about husbands being provided for them. Stress is laid on prayer, ablution, fasting, almsgiving, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Wine and gaming are forbidden. There is no recognition, in the Koran, of human brotherhood. It is a prime duty to hate infidels and make war on them. Mohammed made it a duty for Moslems to betray and kill their own brothers when they were infidels; and he was obeyed in more cases than one. The Moslem sects are as numerous as those of Christians. The Dabistan mentions seventy-three. The two main divisions are into Sunnites and Shyites. The Persians are mostly Shyites, and refuse to receive the Sunnite traditions. They accept Ali, and denounce Omar. Terrible wars and cruelties have taken place between these sects. Only a few of the Sunnite doctors acknowledge the Shyites to be Moslems. They have a saying, "to destroy a Shyite is more acceptable than to kill seventy other infidels of whatever sort."
The Turks are the most zealous of the Moslems. On Friday, which is the Sabbath of Islam, all business is suspended. Prayers are read and sermons preached in the mosques. No one is allowed to be absent. The Ramadan fast is universally kept. Any one who breaks it twice is considered worthy of death. The fast lasts from sunrise to sunset. But the rich feast in the night, and sleep during the day. The Turks have no desire to make proselytes, but have an intolerant hatred for all outside of Islam. The Kalif is the Chief Pontiff. The Oulema, or Parliament, is composed of the Imans, or religious teachers, the Muftis, or doctors of law, and Kadis, or ministers of justice. The priests in Turkey are subordinate to the civil magistrate, who is their diocesan, and can remove them at pleasure. The priests in daily life are like the laity, engage in the same business, and are no more austere than they.
Mr. Forster says, in regard to their devotion: "When I contrast the silence of a Turkish mosque, at the hour of public prayer, with the noise and tumult so frequent in Christian temples, I stand astonished at the strange inversion, in the two religions, of the order of things which might naturally be expected." "I have seen," says another, "a congregation of at least two thousand souls assembled in the mosque of St. Sophia, with silence so profound, that until I entered the body of the building I was unaware that it contained a single worshipper."
Bishop Southgate, long a missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, says: "I have often met with Mussulmans who seem to possess deep religious feeling, and with whom I could exercise something of a religious communion. I have sometimes had my own mind quickened and benefited by the reverence with which they spoke of the Deity, and have sometimes mingled in harmonious converse with them on holy things. I have heard them insist with much earnestness on the duty of prayer, when they appeared to have some spiritual sense of its nature and importance. I have sometimes found them entertaining elevated views of moral duty, and looking with contempt on the pleasures of this world. These are indeed rare characters, but I should do injustice to my own conviction if I did not confess that I had found them. In these instances I have been uniformly struck with a strong resemblance to patriarchal piety." He continues: "When we sat down to eat, the old Turkish Bey implored a blessing with great solemnity, and rendered his thanks when we arose. Before he left us he spread his carpet, and offered his evening devotions with apparent meekness and humility; and I could not but feel how impressive are the Oriental forms of worship when I saw his aged head bowed to the earth in religious homage."
Bishop Southgate adds further: "I have never known a Mussulman, sincere in his faith and devout and punctilious in his religious duties, in whom moral rectitude did not seem an active quality and a living principle."
In seasons of plague "the Turks appear perfectly fearless. They do not avoid customary intercourse and contact with friends. They remain with and minister to the sick, with unshrinking assiduity.... In truth, there is something imposing in the unaffected calmness of the Turks at such times. It is a spirit of resignation which becomes truly noble when exercised upon calamities which have already befallen them. The fidelity with which they remain by the bedside of a friend is at least as commendable as the almost universal readiness among the Franks to forsake it."
Five times a day the Mezzuin proclaims the hour of prayer from the minaret in these words: "There is no God but God. Mohammed is his prophet. Come to prayer." In the morning call he adds, "Prayer is better than sleep." Immediately every Mussulman leaves his occupation, and prostrates himself on the floor or ground, wherever he may he. It is very disreputable to omit this.
An interesting account is given of the domestic life of Moslem women in Syria, by Miss Rogers, in her little book called "Domestic Life in Palestine," published in 1862.
Miss Rogers travelled in Palestine with her brother, who was British consul at Damascus. The following passage illustrates the character of the women (Miss Rogers was obliged to sleep in the same room with the wives of the governor of Arrabeh, near Naplous):—
"When I began to undress the women watched me with curiosity; and when I put on my night-gown they were exceedingly astonished, and exclaimed, 'Where are you going? Why is your dress white?' They made no change for sleeping, and there they were, in their bright-colored clothes, ready for bed in a minute. But they stood round me till I said 'Good night,' and then all kissed me, wishing me good dreams. Then I knelt down, and presently, without speaking to them again, got into bed, and turned my face to the wall, thinking over the strange day I had spent. I tried to compose myself to sleep, though I heard the women whispering together. When my head had rested about five minutes on the soft red silk pillow, I felt a hand stroking my forehead, and heard a voice saying, very gently, 'Ya Habibi,' i.e. 'O beloved.' But I would not answer directly, as I did not wish to be roused unnecessarily. I waited a little while, and my face was touched again. I felt a kiss on my forehead, and a voice said, 'Miriam, speak to us; speak, Miriam, darling.' I could not resist any longer; so I turned round and saw Helweh, Saleh Bek's prettiest wife, leaning over me. I said, 'What is it, sweetness, what can I do for you?' She answered, 'What did you do just now, when you knelt down and covered your face with your hands?' I sat up, and said very solemnly, 'I spoke to God, Helweh.' 'What did you say to him?' said Helweh. I replied, 'I wish to sleep. God never sleeps. I have asked him to watch over me, and that I may fall asleep, remembering that he never sleeps, and wake up remembering his presence. I am very weak. God is all-powerful. I have asked him to strengthen me with his strength.' By this time all the ladies were sitting round me on the bed, and the slaves came and stood near. I told them I did not know their language well enough to explain to them all I thought and said. But as I had learned the Lord's Prayer, by heart, in Arabic, I repeated it to them, sentence by sentence, slowly. When I began, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' Helweh directly said, 'You told me your father was in London.' I replied, 'I have two fathers, Helweh; one in London, who does not know that I am here, and cannot know till I write and tell him; and a Heavenly Father, who is here now, who is with me always, and sees and hears us. He is your Father also. He teaches us to know good from evil, if we listen to him and obey him.'
"For a moment there was perfect silence. They all looked startled, and as if they felt that they were in the presence of some unseen power. Then Helweh said, 'What more did you say?' I continued the Lord's Prayer, and when I came to the words, 'Give us day by day our daily bread,' they said, 'Cannot you make bread yourself?' The passage, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,' is particularly forcible in the Arabic language; and one of the elder women, who was particularly severe and relentless-looking, said, 'Are you obliged to say that every day?' as if she thought that sometimes it would be difficult to do so. They said, 'Are you a Moslem?' I said, 'I am not called a Moslem. But I am your sister, made by the same God, who is the one only God, the God of all, my Father and your Father.' They asked me if I knew the Koran, and were surprised to hear that I had read it. They handed a rosary to me, saying, 'Do you know that?' I repeated a few of the most striking and comprehensive attributes very carefully and slowly. Then they cried out, 'Mashallah, the English girl is a true believer'; and the impressionable, sensitive-looking Abyssinian slave-girls said, with one accord, 'She is indeed an angel.'
"Moslems, men and women, have the name of Allah constantly on their lips, but it seems to have become a mere form. This may explain why they were so startled when I said, 'I was speaking to God.'" She adds that if she had only said, "I was saying my prayers," or, "I was at my devotions," it would not have impressed them."
Next morning, on awaking, Miss Rogers found the women from the neighborhood had come in "to hear the English girl speak to God," and Helweh said, "Now, Miriam, darling, will you speak to God?" At the conclusion she asked them if they could say Amen, and after a moment of hesitation they cried out, "Amên, amên!" Then one said, "Speak again, my daughter, speak about the bread." So she repeated the Lord's Prayer with explanations. When she left, they crowded around affectionately, saying, "Return again, O Miriam, beloved!"
After this pleasant little picture, we may hear something on the other side. Two recent travellers, Mr. Palgrave and Mr. Vambéry, have described the present state of Mohammedanism in Central Arabia and Turkistan, or Central Asia. Barth has described it as existing among the negroes in North Africa. Count Gobineau has told us of Islam as it is in Persia at the present day397. Mr. MacFarlane, in his book "Kismet, or the Doom of Turkey," has pointed out the gradual decay of that power, and the utter corruption of its administration. After reading such works as these,—and among them let us not forget Mr. Lane's "Modern Egyptians,"—the conclusion we must inevitably come to is, that the worst Christian government, be it that of the Pope or the Czar, is very much better than the best Mohammedan government. Everywhere we find arbitrary will taking the place of law. In most places the people have no protection for life or property, and know the government only through its tax-gatherers. And all this is necessarily and logically derived from the fundamental principle of Mohammedan theology. God is pure will, not justice, not reason, not love. Christianity says, "God is love"; Mohammedanism says, "God is will." Christianity says, "Trust in God"; Mohammedanism says, "Submit to God." Hence the hardness, coldness, and cruelty of the system; hence its utter inability to establish any good government. According to Mr. MacFarlane, it would be a blessing to mankind to have the Turks driven out of Europe and Asia Minor, and to have Constantinople become the capital of Russia. The religion of Islam is an outward form, a hard shell of authority, hollow at heart. It constantly tends to the two antagonistic but related vices of luxury and cruelty. Under the profession of Islam, polytheism and idolatry have always prevailed in Arabia. In Turkistan, where slavery is an extremely cruel system, they make slaves of Moslems, in defiance of the Koran. One chief being appealed to by Vambery (who travelled as a Dervish), replied, "We buy and sell the Koran itself, which is the holiest thing of all; why not buy and sell Mussulmans, who are less holy?"



§ 6. The Criticism of Mr. Palgrave on Mohammedan Theology.

Mr. Palgrave, who has given the latest and best account of the condition of Central and Southern Arabia,398 under the great Wahhabee revival, sums up all Mohammedan theology as teaching a Divine unity of pure will. God is the only force in the universe. Man is wholly passive and impotent. He calls the system, "A pantheism of force." God has no rule but arbitrary will. He is a tremendous unsympathizing autocrat, but is yet jealous of his creatures, lest they should attribute to themselves something which belongs to him. He delights in making all creatures feel that they are his slaves. This, Mr. Palgrave asserts, is the main idea of Mohammedanism, and of the Koran, and this was what lay in the mind of Mohammed. "Of this," says he, "we have many authentic samples: the Saheeh, the Commentaries of Beydāwee, the Mishkat-el-Mesabeeh, and fifty similar works, afford ample testimony on this point. But for the benefit of my readers in general, all of whom may not have drunk equally deep at the fountain-heads of Islamitic dogma, I will subjoin a specimen, known perhaps to many Orientalists, yet too characteristic to be here omitted, a repetition of which I have endured times out of number from admiring and approving Wahhabees in Nejed.
"Accordingly, when God—so runs the tradition,—I had better said the blasphemy—resolved to create the human race, he took into his hands a mass of earth, the same whence all mankind were to be formed, and in which they after a manner pre-existed; and, having then divided the clod into two equal portions, he threw the one half into hell, saying, 'These to eternal fire, and I care not'; and projected the other half into heaven, adding, 'And these to paradise, and I care not.'
"Commentary would here be superfluous. But in this we have before us the adequate idea of predestination, or, to give it a truer name, pre-damnation, held and taught in the school of the Koran. Paradise and hell are at once totally independent of love and hatred on the part of the Deity, and of merits and demerits, of good or evil conduct, on the part of the creature; and, in the corresponding theory, rightly so, since the very actions which we call good or ill deserving, right or wrong, wicked or virtuous, are in their essence all one and of one, and accordingly merit neither praise nor blame, punishment nor recompense, except and simply after the arbitrary value which the all-regulating will of the great despot may choose to assign or impute to them. In a word, he burns one individual through all eternity, amid red-hot chains and seas of molten fire, and seats another in the plenary enjoyment of an everlasting brothel, between forty celestial concubines, just and equally for his own good pleasure, and because he wills it.
"Men are thus all on one common level, here and hereafter, in their physical, social, and moral light,—the level of slaves to one sole master, of tools to one universal agent. But the equalizing process does not stop here: beasts, birds, fishes, insects, all participate of the same honor or debasement; all are, like man, the slaves of God, the tools and automata of his will; and hence Mahomet is simply logical and self-consistent when in the Koran he informs his followers that birds, beasts, and the rest are 'nations' like themselves, nor does any intrinsic distinction exist between them and the human species, except what accidental diversity the 'King,' the 'Proud One,' the 'Mighty,' the 'Giant,' etc., as he styles his God, may have been pleased to make, just as he willed it, and so long as he may will it."
"The Wahhabee reformer," continues Mr. Palgrave, "formed the design of putting back the hour-hand of Islam to its starting-point; and so far he did well, for that hand was from the first meant to be fixed. Islam is in its essence stationary, and was framed thus to remain. Sterile like its God, lifeless like its First Principle and Supreme Original, in all that constitutes true life,—for life is love, participation, and progress, and of these the Koranic Deity has none,—it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all development. To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the 'written book' is the 'dead man's hand,' stiff and motionless; whatever savors of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection.
"But Christianity, with its living and loving God, begetter and begotten, spirit and movement; nay more,—a Creator made creature, the Maker and the made existing in one; a Divinity communicating itself by uninterrupted gradation and degree, from the most intimate union far off to the faintest irradiation, through all that it has made for love and governs in love; one who calls his creatures not slaves, not servants, but friends,—nay sons,—nay gods: to sum up, a religion in whose seal and secret 'God in man is one with man in God,' must also be necessarily a religion of vitality, of progress, of advancement. The contrast between it and Islam is that of movement with fixedness, of participation with sterility, of development with barrenness, of life with petrifaction. The first vital principle and the animating spirit of its birth must, indeed, abide ever the same, but the outer form must change with the changing days, and new offshoots of fresh sap and greenness be continually thrown out as witnesses to the vitality within; else were the vine withered and the branches dead. I have no intention here—it would be extremely out of place—of entering on the maze of controversy, or discussing whether any dogmatic attempt to reproduce the religious phase of a former age is likely to succeed. I only say that life supposes movement and growth, and both imply change; that to censure a living thing for growing and changing is absurd; and that to attempt to hinder it from so doing by pinning it down on a written label, or nailing it to a Procrustean framework, is tantamount to killing it altogether. Now Christianity is living, and, because living, must grow, must advance, must change, and was meant to do so: onwards and forwards is a condition of its very existence; and I cannot but think that those who do not recognize this show themselves so far ignorant of its true nature and essence. On the other hand, Islam is lifeless, and, because lifeless, cannot grow, cannot advance, cannot change, and was never intended so to do; stand-still is its motto and its most essential condition; and therefore the son of Abd-el-Wahhāb, in doing his best to bring it back to its primal simplicity, and making its goal of its starting-point, was so far in the right, and showed himself well acquainted with the nature and first principles of his religion."

§ 7. Mohammedanism a Relapse; the worst Form of Monotheism, and a retarding Element in Civilization.

According to this view, which is no doubt correct, the monotheism of Mohammed is that which makes of God pure will; that is, which exaggerates personality (since personality is in will), making the Divine One an Infinite Free Will, or an Infinite I. But will divorced from reason and love is wilfulness, or a purely arbitrary will.
Now the monotheism of the Jews differed from this, in that it combined with the idea of will the idea of justice. God not only does what he chooses, but he chooses to do only what is right. Righteousness is an attribute of God, with which the Jewish books are saturated.
Still, both of these systems leave God outside of the world; above all as its Creator and Ruler, above all as its Judge; but not through all and in all. The idea of an Infinite Love must be added and made supreme, in order to give us a Being who is not only above all, but also through all and in all. This is the Christian monotheism.
Mohammed teaches not only the unity but also the spirituality of God, but his idea of the divine Unity is of a numeric unity, not a moral unity; and so his idea of divine spirituality is that of an abstract spirituality,—God abstracted from matter, and so not to be represented by pictures and images; God withdrawn out of the world, and above all,—in a total separation.
Judaism also opposed idolatry and idol-worship, and taught that God was above all, and the maker of the world; but it conceived of God as with man, by his repeated miraculous coming down in prophets, judges, kings; also with his people, the Jews, mysteriously present in their tabernacle and temple. Their spirituality was not quite as abstract then as that of the Mohammedans.
But Christianity, as soon as it became the religion of a non-Semitic race, as soon as it had converted the Greeks and Romans, not only imparted to them its monotheism, but received from them their strong tendencies to pantheism. They added to the God "above all," and the God "with all," the God "in us all." True, this is also to be found in original Christianity as proceeding from the life of Jesus. The New Testament is full of this kind of pantheism,—God in man, as well as God with man. Jesus made the step forward from God with man to God in man,—"I in them, thou in me." The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea, of God who is not only will and power, not only wisdom and law, but also love; of a God who desires communion and intercourse with his children, so coming and dwelling in them. Mohammed teaches a God above us; Moses teaches a God above us, and yet with us; Jesus teaches God above us, God with us, and God in us.
According to this view, Mohammedanism is a relapse. It is going back to a lower level. It is returning from the complex idea to the simple idea. But the complex is higher than the simple. The seed-germ, and the germ-cell, out of which organic life comes, is lower than the organizations which are developed out of it. The Mollusks are more complex and so are higher than the Radiata, the Vertebrata are more complex than the Mollusks. Man is the most complex of all, in soul as well as body. The complex idea of God, including will, thought, and love, in the perfect unity, is higher than the simplistic unity of will which Mohammed teaches. But the higher ought to come out of and conquer the lower. How, then, did Mohammedanism come out of Christianity and Judaism?
The explanation is to be found in the law of reaction and relapse. Reaction is going back to a lower ground, to pick up something which has been dropped, forgotten, left behind, in the progress of man. The condition of progress is that nothing shall be lost. The lower truth must be preserved in the higher truth; the lower life taken up into the higher life. Now Christianity, in going forward, had accepted from the Indo-Germanic races that sense of God in nature, as well as God above nature, which has always been native with those races. It took up natural religion into monotheism. But in taking it up, it went so far as to lose something of the true unity of God. Its doctrine of the Trinity, at least in its Oriental forms, lost the pure personal monotheism of Judaism. No doubt the doctrine of the Trinity embodies a great truth, but it has been carried too far. So Mohammedanism came, as a protest against this tendency to plurality in the godhead, as a demand for a purely personal God It is the Unitarianism of the East. It was a new assertion of the simple unity of God, against polytheism and against idolatry.
The merits and demerits, the good and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be found in this, its central idea concerning God. It has taught submission, obedience, patience; but it has fostered a wilful individualism. It has made social life lower. Its governments are not governments. Its virtues are stoical. It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to an infinite despotism. Time is that it came to an end. Its work is done. It is a hard, cold, cruel, empty faith, which should give way to the purer forms of a higher civilization.
No doubt, Mohammedanism was needed when it came, and has done good service in its time. But its time is almost passed. In Europe it is an anachronism and an anomaly, depending for its daily existence on the support received from Christian powers, jealous of Russian advance on Constantinople. It will be a blessing to mankind to have the capital of Russia on the Bosphorus. A recent writer on Turkey thus speaks:—
"The military strength of Mohammedanism was in its steady and remorseless bigotry. Socially, it won by the lofty ideality of its precepts, without pain or satiety. It accorded well, too, with the isolate and primitive character of the municipalities scattered over Asia. Resignation to God—a motto well according with Eastern indolence—was borne upon its banners, while in the profusion of delight hereafter was promised an element of endurance and courage. It had, too, one strikingly Arabic characteristic,—simplicity.
"One God the Arabian prophet preached to man;
  One God the Orient still
Adores, through many a realm of mighty span,—
  God of power and will.
"A God that, shrouded in his lonely light,
  Rests utterly apart
From all the vast creations of his might,
  From nature, man, and art.
"A Power that at his pleasure doth create
  To save or to destroy;
And to eternal pain predestinate,
  As to eternal joy.
"It is the merit and the glory of Mohammed that, beside founding twenty spiritual empires and providing laws for the guidance through centuries of millions of men, he shook the foundations of the faith of heathendom. Mohammed was the impersonation of two principles that reign in the government of God,—destruction and salvation. He would receive nations to his favor if they accepted the faith, and utterly destroy them if they rejected it. Yet, in the end, the sapless tree must fall."
M. H. Blerzey,399 in speaking of Mohammedanism in Northern Africa, says:—
"At bottom there is little difference between the human sacrifices demanded by fetichism and the contempt of life produced by the Mussulman religion. Between the social doctrines of these Mohammedan tribes and the sentiments of Christian communities there is an immense abyss."
And again:—-
"The military and fanatic despotism of the Arabs has vested during many centuries in the white autochthonic races of North Africa, without any fusion taking place between the conquering element and the conquered, without destroying at all the language and manners of the subject people, and, in a word, without creating anything durable. The Arab conquest was a triumph of brute force, and nothing further."
And M. Renan, a person well qualified to judge of the character of this religion by the most extensive and impartial studies, gives this verdict:400—
"Islamism, following as it did on ground that was none of the best, has, on the whole, done as much harm as good to the human race. It has stifled everything by its dry and desolating simplicity."
Again:—
"At the present time, the essential condition of a diffused civilization is the destruction of the peculiarly Semitic element, the destruction of the theocratic power of Islamism, consequently the destruction of Islamism itself."401
Again:—
"Islamism is evidently the product of an inferior, and, so to speak, of a meagre combination of human elements. For this reason its conquests have all been on the average plane of human nature. The savage races have been incapable of rising to it, and, on the other hand, it has not satisfied people who carried in themselves the seed of a stronger civilization."402

Note to the Chapter on Mohammed.

We give in this note further extracts from Mr. Palgrave's description of the doctrine of Islam.
"This keystone, this master thought, this parent idea, of which all the rest is but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is contained in the phrase far oftener repeated than understood, 'La Ilāh ílla Allāh,' 'There is no God but God.' A literal translation, but much too narrow for the Arab formula, and quite inadequate to render its true force in an Arab mouth or mind.
"'There is no God but God' are words simply tantamount in English to the negation of any deity save one alone; and thus much they certainly mean in Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is, not only to deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature or of person, in the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity of the Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable Oneness, but besides this the words, in Arabic and among Arabs, imply that this one Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure, unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence,' La Ilāh illa Allāh,' is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force, or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good. I say 'relative,' because it is clear that in such a theology no place is left for absolute good or evil, reason or extravagance; all is abridged in the autocratic will of the one great Agent: 'sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas'; or, more significantly still, in Arabic, 'Kemā yesha'o,' 'as he wills it,' to quote the constantly recurring expression of the Koran.
"Thus immeasurably and eternally exalted above, and dissimilar from, all creatures, which lie levelled before him on one common plane of instrumentality and inertness, God is one in the totality of omnipotent and omnipresent action, which acknowledges no rule, standard, or limit save his own sole and absolute will. He communicates nothing to his creatures, for their seeming power and act ever remain his alone, and in return he receives nothing from them; for whatever they may be, that they are in him, by him, and from him only. And secondly, no superiority, no distinction, no pre-eminence, can be lawfully claimed by one creature over its fellow, in the utter equalization of their unexceptional servitude and abasement; all are alike tools of the one solitary Force which employs them to crush or to benefit, to truth or to error, to honor or shame, to happiness, or misery, quite independently of their individual fitness, deserts, or advantage, and simply because he wills it, and as he wills it.
"One might at first think that this tremendous autocrat, this uncontrolled and unsympathizing power, would be far above anything like passions, desires, or inclinations. Yet such is not the case, for he has with respect to his creatures one main feeling and source of action, namely, jealousy of them lest they should perchance attribute to themselves something of what is his alone, and thus encroach on his all-engrossing kingdom. Hence he is ever more prone to punish than to reward, to inflict than to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build. It is his singular satisfaction to let created beings continually feel that they are nothing else than his slaves, his tools, and contemptible tools also, that thus they may the better acknowledge his superiority, and know his power to be above their power, his cunning above their cunning, his will above their will, his pride above their pride; or rather, that there is no power, cunning, will, or pride save his own.
"But he himself, sterile in his inaccessible height, neither loving nor enjoying aught save his own and self-measured decree, without son, companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for himself than for his creatures, and his own barrenness and lone egoism in himself is the cause and rule of his indifferent and unregarding despotism around. The first note is the key of the whole tune, and the primal idea of God runs through and modifies the whole system and creed that centres in him.
"That the notion here given of the Deity, monstrous and blasphemous as it may appear, is exactly and literally that which the Koran conveys, or intends to convey, I at present take for granted. But that it indeed is so, no one who has attentively perused and thought over the Arabic text (for mere cursory reading, especially in a translation, will not suffice) can hesitate to allow. In fact, every phrase of the preceding sentences, every touch in this odious portrait, has been taken, to the best of my ability, word for word, or at least meaning for meaning, from the 'Book,' the truest mirror of the mind and scope of its writer.
"And that such was in reality Mahomet's mind and idea is fully confirmed by the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition."

Chapter XII.

The Ten Religions and Christianity.

§ 1. General Results of this Survey.

We have now examined, as fully as our limits would allow, ten of the chief religions which have enlisted the faith of mankind. We are prepared to ask, in conclusion, what they teach us in regard to the prospects of Christianity, and the religious future of our race.
First, this survey must have impressed on every mind the fact that man is eminently a religious being. We have found religion to be his supreme and engrossing interest on every continent, in every millennium of historic time, and in every stage of human civilization. In some periods men are found as hunters, as shepherds, as nomads, in others they are living associated in cities, but in all these conditions they have their religion. The tendency to worship some superhuman power is universal.
The opinion of the positivist school, that man passes from a theological stage to one of metaphysics, and from that to one of science, from which later and higher epoch both theology and philosophy are excluded, is not in accordance with the facts we have been observing. Science and art, in Egypt, went hand in hand with theology, during thousands of years. Science in Greece preceded the latest forms of metaphysics, and both Greek science and Greek philosophy were the preparation for Christian faith. In India the Sankhya philosophy was the preparation for the Buddhist religion. Theology and religion to-day, instead of disappearing in science, are as vigorous as ever. Science, philosophy, and theology are all advancing together, a noble sisterhood of thought. And, looking at facts, we may ask, In what age or time was religion more of a living force, acting on human affairs, than it is at present? To believe in things not seen, to worship a power above visible nature, to look forward to an unknown future, this is natural to man.
In the United States there is no established religion, yet in no country in the world is more interest taken in religion than with us. In the Protestant denominations it has dispensed with the gorgeous and imposing ritual, which is so attractive to the common mind, and depends mainly on the interest of the word of truth. Yet the Protestant denominations make converts, build churches, and support their clergy with an ardor seemingly undiminished by the progress of science. There are no symptoms that man is losing his interest in religion in consequence of his increasing knowledge of nature and its laws.
Secondly, we have seen that these religions vary exceedingly from each other in their substance and in their forms. They have a great deal in common, but a great deal that is different. Mr. Wentworth Higginson,403 in an excellent lecture, much of which has our cordial assent, says, "Every race believes in a Creator and Governor of the world, in whom devout souls recognize a Father also." But Buddhism, the most extensive religion on the surface of the earth, explicitly denies creation, and absolutely ignores any Ruler or Governor of the world. The Buddha neither made the world nor preserves it, and the Buddha is the great object of Buddhist worship. Mr. Higginson says: "Every race believes in immortality." Though the Buddhists, as we have seen, believe in immortality, it is in so obscure a form that many of the best scholars declare that the highest aim and the last result of all progress in Buddhism is annihilation. He continues, "Every race recognizes in its religious precepts the brotherhood of man." The Koran teaches no such doctrine, and it is notorious that the Brahmanical system of caste, which has been despotic in India for twenty-five hundred years, excludes such brotherhood. Mr. Higginson therefore is of opinion that caste has grown up in defiance of the Vedas. The Vedas indeed are ignorant of caste, but they are also ignorant of human brotherhood. The system of caste was not a defiance of the Vedas.
Nothing is gained for humanity by such statements, which are refuted immediately by the most evident facts. The true "sympathy of religions" does not consist in their saying the same thing, any more than a true concord in music consists in many performers striking the same note. Variety is the condition of harmony. These religions may, and we believe will, be all harmonized; but thus far it is only too plain that they have been at war with each other. In order to find the resemblances we must begin by seeing the differences.
Cudworth, in his great work, speaks of "the symphony of all religions," an expression which we prefer to that of Mr. Higginson. It expresses precisely what we conceive to be the fact, that these religions are all capable of being brought into union, though so very different. They may say,
"Are not we formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
Such difference, without discord, as shall make
The sweetest sounds."
But this harmony can only be established among the ethnic religions by means of a catholic religion which shall be able to take each of them up into itself, and so finally merge them in a higher union. The Greek, Roman, and Jewish religions could not unite with each other; but they were united by being taken up into Christianity. Christianity has assimilated the essential ideas of the religions of Persia, Judæa, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia; and each of these religions, in turn, disappeared as it was absorbed by this powerful solvent. In the case of Greece, Rome, Germany, and Judæa, this fact of their passing into solution in Christianity is a matter of history. Not all the Jews became Christians, nor has Judaism ceased to exist. This is perhaps owing to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, which offend the simplistic monotheism of the Jewish mind. Yet Christianity at first grew out of Judaism, and took up into itself the best part of the Jews in and out of Palestine.
The question therefore is this, Will Christianity be able to do for the remaining religions of the world what it did for the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutonic nations? Is it capable of becoming a universal religion?

§ 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.

It is evident that Christianity can become the universal human religion only by supplying the religious wants of all the races of men who dwell on all the face of the earth. If it can continue to give them all the truth their own religions contain, and add something more; if it can inspire them with all the moral life which their own religions communicate, and yet more; and, finally, if it can unite the races of men in one family, one kingdom of heaven,—then it is fitted to be and will become the universal religion. It will then not share the fate of those which have preceded it. It will not have its rise, progress, decline, and fall. It will not become, in its turn, antiquated, and be left behind by the advance of humanity. It will not be swallowed up in something deeper and broader than itself. But it will appear as the desire of all nations, and Christ will reign until he has subdued all his enemies—error, war, sin, selfishness, tyranny, cruelty—under his feet.
Now, as we have seen, Christianity differs from all other religions (on the side of truth) in this, that it is a pleroma, or fulness of knowledge. It does not differ, by teaching what has never been said or thought before. Perhaps the substance of most of the statements of Jesus may be found scattered through the ten religions of the world, some here and some there. Jesus claims no monopoly of the truth. He says. "My doctrine is not mine, but his who sent me." But he does call himself "the Light of the World," and says that though he does not come to destroy either the law or the prophets, he comes to fulfil them in something higher. His work is to fulfil all religions with something higher, broader, and deeper than what they have,—accepting their truth, supplying their deficiencies.
If this is a fact, then it will appear that Christianity comes, not as an exclusive, but as an inclusive system. It includes everything, it excludes nothing but limitation and deficiency.
Whether Christianity be really such a pleroma of truth or not, must be ascertained by a careful comparison of its teachings, and the ideas lying back of them, with those of all other religions. We have attempted this, to some extent, in our Introduction, and in our discussion of each separate religion. We have seen that Christianity, in converting the nations, always accepted something and gave something in return. Thus it received from Egypt and Africa their powerful realism, as in the writings of Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, and gave in return a spiritual doctrine. It received God, as seen in nature and its organizations, and returned God as above nature. Christianity took from Greece intellectual activity, and returned moral life. It received from Rome organization, and returned faith in a fatherly Providence. It took law, and gave love. From the German races it accepted the love of individual freedom, and returned union and brotherly love. From Judaism it accepted monotheism as the worship of a Supreme Being, a Righteous Judge, a Holy King, and added to this faith in God as in all nature and all life.
But we will proceed to examine some of these points a little more minutely.

§ 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

Christianity and Brahmanism. The essential value of Brahmanism is its faith in spirit as distinct from matter, eternity as distinct from time, the infinite as opposed to the finite, substance as opposed to form.
The essential defect of Brahmanism is its spiritual pantheism, which denies all reality to this world, to finite souls, to time, space, matter. In its vast unities all varieties are swallowed up, all differences come to an end. It does not, therefore, explain the world, it denies it. It is incapable of morality, for morality assumes the eternal distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, and Brahmanism knows no such difference. It is incapable of true worship, since its real God is spirit in itself, abstracted from all attributes. Instead of immortality, it can only teach absorption, or the disappearance of the soul in spirit, as rain-drops disappear in the ocean.
Christianity teaches a Supreme Being who is pure spirit, "above all, through all, and in all," "from whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things," "in whom we live, and move, and have our being." It is a more spiritual religion than Brahmanism, for the latter has passed on into polytheism and idolatry, which Christianity has always escaped. Yet while teaching faith in a Supreme Being, the foundation and substance below all existence, it recognizes him as a living God. He is not absorbed in himself, nor apart from his world, but a perpetual Providence, a personal Friend and Father. He dwells in eternity, but is manifested in time.
Christianity, therefore, meets the truth in Brahmanism by its doctrine of God as Spirit, and supplies its deficiencies by its doctrine of God as a Father.
Christianity and the system of Confucius. The good side in the teaching of Confucius is his admirable morality, his wisdom of life in its temporal limitations, his reverence for the past, his strenuous conservatism of all useful institutions, and the uninterrupted order of the social system resting on these ideas.
The evil in his teaching is the absence of the supernatural element, which deprives the morality of China of enthusiasm, its social system of vitality, its order of any progress, and its conservatism of any improvement. It is a system without hope, and so has remained frozen in an icy and stiff immobility for fifteen hundred years.
But Christianity has shown itself capable of uniting conservatism with progress, in the civilization of Christendom. It respects order, reveres the past, holds the family sacred, and yet is able also to make continual progress in science, in art, in literature, in the comfort of the whole community. It therefore accepts the good and the truth in the doctrines of Confucius, and adds to these another element of new life.
Christianity and Buddhism. The truth in Buddhism is in its doctrine of the relation of the soul to the laws of nature; its doctrine of consequences; its assurance of a strict retribution for every human action; its promise of an ultimate salvation in consequence of good works; and of a redemption from all the woes of time by obedience to the truth.
The evil in the system is that belonging to all legalism. It does not inspire faith in any living and present God, or any definite immortality. The principle, therefore, of development is wanting, and it leaves the Mongol races standing on a low plane of civilization, restraining them from evil, but not inspiring them by the sight of good.
Christianity, like Buddhism, teaches that whatever a man sows that shall he also reap; that those who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and immortality shall receive eternal life; that the books shall be opened in the last day, and every man be rewarded according to his works; that he whose pound gains five pounds shall be ruler over five cities. In short, Christianity, in its Scriptures and its practical influence, has always taught salvation by works.
Yet, beside this, Christianity teaches justification by faith, as the root and fountain of all real obedience. It inspires faith in a Heavenly Father who has loved his every child from before the foundation of the world; who welcomes the sinner back when he repents and returns; whose forgiving love creates a new life in the heart. This faith evermore tends to awaken the dormant energies in the soul of man; and so, under its influence, one race after another has commenced a career of progress. Christianity, therefore, can fulfil Buddhism also.

§ 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in all Religions.

The essential truth in the Avesta and the Eddas is the same. They both recognize the evil in the world as real, and teach the duty of fighting against it. They avoid the pantheistic indifference of Brahmanism, and the absence of enthusiasm in the systems of Confucius and the Buddha, by the doctrine of a present conflict between the powers of good and evil, of light and of darkness. This gives dignity and moral earnestness to both systems. By fully admitting the freedom of man, they make the sense of responsibility possible, and so purify and feed morality at its roots.
The difficulty with both is, that they carry this dualistic view of nature too far, leaving it an unreconciled dualism. The supreme Monad is lost sight of in this ever-present Duad. Let us see how this view of evil, or the dual element in life, appears in other systems.
As the Monad in religion is an expression of one infinite supreme presence, pervading all nature and life, so the Duad shows the antagonism and conflict between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil, the infinite perfection and the finite imperfection. This is a conflict actually existing in the world, and one which religion must accept and account for. Brahmanism does not accept it, but ignores it. This whole conflict is Maya, a deception and illusion. Yet, in this form of illusion, it makes itself so far felt, that it must be met by sacrifices, prayers, penances, and the law of transmigration; until all the apparent antagonism shall be swallowed up in the Infinite One, the only substance in the universe.
Buddhism recognizes the conflict more fully. It frankly accepts the Duad as the true explanation of the actual universe. The ideal universe as Nirvana may be one; but of this we know nothing. The actual world is a twofold world, composed of souls and the natural laws. The battle of life is with these laws. Every soul, by learning to obey them, is able to conquer and use them, as steps in an ascent toward Nirvana.
But the belief of Zoroaster and that of Scandinavia regard the Duad as still more deeply rooted in the essence of existing things. All life is battle,—battle with moral or physical evil. Courage is therefore the chief virtue in both systems. The Devil first appears in theology in these two forms of faith. The Persian devil is Ahriman; the Scandinavian devil is Loki. Judaism, with its absolute and supreme God, could never admit such a rival to his power as the Persian Ahriman; yet as a being permitted, for wise purposes, to tempt and try men, he comes into their system as Satan. Satan, on his first appearance in the Book of Job, is one of the angels of God. He is the heavenly critic; his business is to test human virtue by trial, and see how deep it goes. His object in testing Job was to find whether he loved virtue for its rewards, or for its own sake. "Does Job serve God for naught?" According to this view, the man who is good merely for the sake of reward is not good at all.
In the Egyptian system, as in the later faith of India, the evil principle appears as a power of destruction. Siva and Typhon are the destroying agencies from whom proceed all the mischief done in the world. Nevertheless, they are gods, not devils, and have their worship and worshippers among those whose religious nature is more imbued with fear than with hope. The timid worshipped the deadly and destructive powers, and their prayers were deprecations. The bolder worshipped the good gods. Similarly, in Greece, the Chtonic deities had their shrines and worshippers, as had the powers of Blight, Famine, and Pestilence at Rome.
Yet only in the Avesta is this great principle of evil set forth in full antagonism against the powers of light and love. And probably from Persia, after the captivity, this view of Satan entered into Jewish theology. In the Old Testament, indeed, where Satan or the Devil as a proper name only occurs four times404, in all which cases he is a subordinate angel, the true Devil does not appear. In the Apocrypha he is said (Wisdom ii. 24) to have brought death into the world. The New Testament does not teach a doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something new and revealed then for the first time, but assumes a general though vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its communication with the Persian dualism.
But though the doctrine of a Devil is no essential part of Christianity405, the reality and power of evil is fully recognized in the New Testament and in the teachings of the Church. Indeed, in the doctrine of everlasting punishment and of an eternal hell, it has been carried to a dangerous extreme. The Divine sovereignty is seriously infringed and invaded by such a view. If any outlying part of the universe continues in a state of permanent rebellion, God is not the absolute sovereign. But wickedness is rebellion. If any are to continue eternally in hell, it is because they continue in perpetual wickedness; that is, the rebellion against God will never be effectually suppressed. Only when every knee bows, and every tongue confesses that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father; only when truth and love have subdued all enemies by converting them into friends, is redemption complete and the universe at peace.
Now, Christianity (in spite of the illogical doctrine of everlasting punishment) has always inspired a faith in the redeeming power of love to conquer all evil. It has taught that evil can be overcome by good. It asserts truth to be more powerful than error, right than wrong. It teaches us in our daily prayer to expect that God's kingdom shall come, and his will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven. It therefore fulfils the truth in the great dualisms of the past by its untiring hope of a full redemption from all sin and all evil.

§ 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

The Religion of Egypt. This system unfolded the truth of the Divine in this world, of the sacredness of bodily organization, and the descent of Deity into the ultimate parts of his creation. Its defect was its inability to combine with this an open spiritualism. It had not the courage of its opinions, so far as they related to the divine unity, spirituality, and eternity.
Christianity also accepts the doctrine of God, present in nature, in man, in the laws of matter, in the infinite variety of things. But it adds to this the elevated spiritualism of a monotheistic religion, and so accepts the one and the all, unity and variety, substance and form, eternity and time, spirit and body, as filled with God and manifesting him.
The Religions of Greece and Rome. The beauty of nature, the charm of art, the genius of man, were idealized and deified in the Greek pantheon. The divinity of law, organizing human society according to universal rules of justice, was the truth in the Roman religion. The defect of the Greek theology was the absence of a central unity. Its polytheism carried variety to the extreme of disorder and dissipation. The centrifugal force, not being properly balanced by any centripetal power, inevitably ends in dissolution. The defect of Roman worship was, that its oppressive rules ended in killing out life. Law, in the form of a stiff external organization, produced moral death at last in Rome, as it had produced moral death in Judæa.
Now Christianity, though a monotheism, and a monotheism which has destroyed forever both polytheism and idolatry wherever it has gone, is not that of numerical unity. The God of Christianity differs in this from the God of Judaism and Mohammedanism. He is an infinite will; but he is more. Christianity cognizes God as not only above nature and the soul, but also as in nature and in the soul. Thus nature and the soul are made divine. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity expresses this enlargement of the Jewish monotheism from a numerical to a moral unity. The God of Christ is human in this respect, that he is conceived of in the image of man. Man is essentially a unit through his will, in which lies the secret of personal identity. But besides will he has intellect, by which he comes into communion with the universe; and affection, by which he comes into communion with his race. Christianity conceives of God in the same way. He is an omnipresent will as the Father, Creator, and Ruler of all things. He is the Word, or manifested Truth in the Son, manifested through all nature, manifested through all human life. He is the Spirit, or inspiration of each individual soul. So he is Father, Son, and Spirit, above all, through all, and in us all. By this larger view of Deity Christianity was able to meet the wants of the Aryan races, in whom the polytheistic tendency is so strong. That tendency was satisfied by this view of God immanent in nature and immanent in human life.
Judaism and Mohammedanism, with their more concrete monotheism, have not been able to convert the Aryan races. Mohammedanism has never affected the mind of India, nor disturbed the ascendency of Brahmanism there. And though it nominally possesses Persia, yet it holds it as a subject, not as a convert. Persian Sufism is a proof of the utter discontent of the Aryan intellect with any monotheism of pure will. Sufism is the mystic form of Mohammedanism, recognizing communion with God, and not merely submission, as being the essence of true religion. During the long Mohammedan dominion in Turkey it has not penetrated the minds or won the love of the Greek races. It is evident that Christianity succeeded in converting the Greeks and Romans by means of its larger view of the Deity, of which the doctrine of the Trinity, as it stands in the creeds, is a crude illogical expression.

§ 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in all Religions.

There are three religions which teach the pure upity of God, or true monotheism. These three Unitarian religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. They also all originated in a single race, the Semitic race, that which has occupied the central region of the world, the centre of three continents. It is the race which tends to a religious unity, as that of our Aryan ancestors tended to variety.
But what is pure monotheism? It is the worship of one alone God, separated by the vast abyss of the infinite from all finite beings. It is the worship of God, not as the Supreme Being only, not as the chief among many gods, as Jupiter was the president of the dynasty on Olympus, not merely the Most High, but as the only God. It avoids the two extremes, one of making the Supreme Being head of a council or synod of deities, and the other of making him indeed infinite, but an infinite abstraction, or abyss of darkness. These are the two impure forms of monotheism. The first prevailed in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia. In each of these religions there was a supreme being,—Zeus, Jupiter, Ammon, Odin,—but this supreme god was only primus inter pares, first among equals. The other impure form of monotheism prevailed in the East,—in Brahmanism, Buddhism, and the religion of Zoroaster. In the one Parabrahm, in the other Zerana-Akerana, in the third Nirvana itself, is the Infinite Being or substance, wholly separate from all that is finite. It is so wholly separate as to cease to be an object of adoration and obedience. Not Parabrahm, but Siva, Vischnu, and Brahma; not Zerana-Akerana, but Ormazd and the Amschaspands; not the infinite world of Nirvana, nor the mighty Adi-Buddha, but the Buddhas of Confession, the finite Sakya-Muni, are the objects of worship in these systems.
Only from the Semitic race have arisen the pure monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Each of these proclaims one only God, and each makes this only God the object of all worship and service. Judaism says, "Hear! O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!" (Deut. vi. 4.) Originally among the Jews, God's name as the "Plural of Majesty" indicated a unity formed from variety; but afterward it became in the word Jahveh a unity of substance. "By my name Jehovah I was not known to them" (i.e. to the Patriarchs).406 That name indicates absolute Being, "I am the I am."407
Ancient Gentile monotheism vibrated between a personal God, the object of worship, who was limited and finite, and an infinite absolute Being who was out of sight, "whose veil no one had lifted." The peculiarity of the Mosaic religion was to make God truly the one alone, and at the same time truly the object of worship.
In this respect Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism agree, and in this they differ from all other religions. Individual thinkers, like Socrates, Æschylus, Cicero, have reached the same conviction; but these three are the only popular religions, in which God is at once the infinite and absolute, and the only object of worship.
Now it is a remarkable fact that these three religions, which are the only pure monotheistic religions, are at the same time the only religions which have any claim to catholicity. Buddhism, though the religion of numerous nations, seems to be the religion of only one race, namely, the Turanic race, or Mongols. The people of India who remain Buddhists, the Singalese, or inhabitants of Ceylon, belong to the aboriginal Tamul, or Mongol race. With this exception then (which is no exception, as far as we know the ethnology of Eastern Asia), the only religions which aim at Catholicism are these three, which are also the only monotheistic religions. Judaism aimed at catholicity and hoped for it. It had an instinct of universality, as appeared in its numerous attempts at making proselytes of other nations. It failed of catholicity when it refused to accept as its Christ the man who had risen above its national limitations, and who considered Roman tax-gatherers and Samaritans as already prepared to enter the kingdom of the Messiah. The Jews required all their converts to become Jews, and in doing this left the catholic ground. Christianity in the mouth of Paul, who alone fully seized the true idea of his Master, said, "Circumcision availeth nothing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." In other words, he declared that it was not necessary to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.
The Jewish mind, so far forth as it was monotheistic, aimed at catholicity. The unity of God carries with it, logically, the unity of man. From one God as spirit we infer one human family. So Paul taught at Athens. "God that made the world and all things therein, ... hath made of one blood all races of men to dwell on all the face of the earth."
But the Jews, though catholic as monotheists, and as worshipping a spiritual God, were limited by their ritual and their intense national bigotry. Hereditary and ancestral pride separated them, and still separate them, from the rest of mankind. "We have Abraham to our Father" is the talisman which has kept them together, but kept them from union with others.
Christianity and Mohammedanism, therefore, remain the only two really catholic religions. Each has overpassed all the boundaries of race. Christianity, beginning among the Jews, a Semitic people, passed into Europe, and has become the religion of Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Germans, and the Slavic races of Russia, and has not found it impossible to convert the Africans, the Mongols, and the American Indians. So too the Mohammedan religion, also beginning among the Semitic race, has become the nominal religion of Persia, Turkey, Northern Africa, and Central Asia. Monotheism, therefore, includes a tendency to catholicity. But Islam has everywhere made subjects rather than converts, and so has failed of entire success. It has not assimilated its conquests.
The monotheism of Christianity, as we have already seen, while accepting the absolute supremacy of the Infinite Being, so as to displace forever all secondary or subordinate gods, yet conceives of him as the present inspiration of all his children. It sees him coming down, to bless them in the sunshine and the shower, as inspiring every good thought, as a providence guiding all human lives. And by this view it fulfils both Judaism and Mohammedanism, and takes a long step beyond them both.

§ 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the Life of Jesus.

Christianity has thus shown itself to be a universal solvent, capable of receiving into itself the existing truths of the ethnic religions, and fulfilling them with something higher. Whenever it has come in contact with natural religion, it has assimilated it and elevated it. This is one evidence that it is intended to become the universal religion of mankind.
This pleroma, or fulness, integrity, all-sidedness, or by whatever name we call it, is something deeper than thought. A system of thought might be devised large enough to include all the truths in all the religions of the world, putting each in its own place in relation to the rest. Such a system might show how they all are related to each other, and all are in harmony. But this would be a philosophy, not a religion. No such philosophy appears in the original records of Christianity. The New Testament does not present Jesus as a philosopher, nor Paul as a metaphysician. There is no systematic teaching in the Gospels, nor in the Epistles. Yet we find there, in incidental utterances, the elements of this many-sided truth, in regard to God, man, duty, and immortality. But we find it as life, not as thought. It is a fulness of life in the soul of Jesus, passing into the souls of his disciples and apostles, and from them in a continuous stream of Christian experience, down to the present time.
The word pleroma (πλήρωμα), in the New Testament, means that which fills up; fulness, fulfilling, filling full. The verb "to fulfil" (πληρόω) carries the same significance. To "fulfil that which was spoken by the prophets," means to fill it full of meaning and truth. Jesus came, not to——-File: 516.png—-\ljwalter\prishan\——————————————————destroy the law, but to fulfil it; that is, to carry it out further. He fulfilled Moses and the prophets, not by doing exactly what they foretold, in their sense, but by doing it in a higher, deeper, and larger sense. He fulfilled their thought as the flower fulfils the bud, and as the fruit fulfils the flower. The sense of the fulness of life in Jesus and in the Gospel seems to have struck the minds of the early disciples, and powerfully impressed them. Hence the frequency with which they use this verb and noun, signifying fulness. Jesus fulfilled the law, the prophets, all righteousness, the Scriptures. He came in the fulness of time. His joy was fulfilled. Paul prays that the disciples may be filled full of joy, peace, and hope, with the fruits of righteousness, with all knowledge, with the spirit of God, and with all the fulness of God. He teaches that love fulfils the law, that the Church is the fulness of Christ, that Christ fills all things full of himself, and that in him dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily.
One great distinction between Christianity and all other religions is in this pleroma, or fulness of life which it possesses, and which, to all appearance, came from the life of Jesus. Christianity is often said to be differenced from ethnic religions in other ways. They are natural religions: it is revealed. They are natural: it is supernatural. They are human: it is divine. But all truth is revealed truth; it all comes from God, and, therefore, so far as ethnic religions contain truth, they also are revelations. Moreover, the supernatural element is to be found in all religions; for inspiration, in some form, is universal. All great births of time are supernatural, making no part of the nexus of cause and effect. How can you explain the work of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of the Buddha, of Mohammed, out of the existing state of society, and the educational influences of their time? All such great souls are much more the makers of their age than its result; they are imponderable elements in civilization, not to be accounted for by anything outside of themselves. Nor can we urge the distinction of human and divine; for there is a divine element in all ethnic religions, and a broadly human element in Christianity. Jesus is as much the representative of human nature as he is the manifestation of God. He is the Son of man, no less than the Son of God.
One great fact which makes a broad distinction between other religions and Christianity is that they are ethnic and it is catholic. They are the religions of races and nations, limited by these lines of demarcation, by the bounds which God has beforehand appointed. Christianity is a catholic religion: it is the religion of the human race. It overflows all boundaries, recognizes no limits, belongs to man as man. And this it does, because of the fulness of its life, which it derives from its head and fountain, Jesus Christ, in whom dwells the fulness both of godhead and of manhood.
It is true that the great missionary work of Christianity has long been checked. It does not now convert whole nations. Heathenism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, stand beside it unmoved. What is the cause of this check?
The catholicity of the Gospel was born out of its fluent and full life. It was able to convert the Greeks and Romans, and afterward Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks, Scandinavians, because it came to them, not as a creed, but as a life. But neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants have had these large successes since the Middle Ages. Instead of a life, Christianity became a church and a creed. When this took place, it gradually lost its grand missionary power. It no longer preached truth, but doctrine; no longer communicated life, but organized a body of proselytes into a rigid church. Party spirit took the place of the original missionary spirit. Even the majority of the German tribes was converted by Arian missionaries, and orthodoxy has not the credit of that last grand success of Christianity. The conversion of seventy millions of Chinese in our own day to the religion of the Bible was not the work of Catholic or Protestant missionaries, but of the New Testament. The Church and the creed are probably the cause of this failure. Christianity has been partially arrested in its natural development, first by the Papal Church, and secondly by the too rigid creeds of orthodoxy.
If the swarming myriads of India and Mongolia are to be converted to Christianity, it must be done by returning to the original methods. We must begin by recognizing and accepting the truth they already possess. We must be willing to learn of them, in order to teach them. Comparative Theology will become the science of missions if it help to show to Christians the truth and good in the creeds outside of Christendom. For to the Church and to its sects, quite as much as to the world, applies the saying, "He that exalteth himself shall be abased, but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

§ 8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of Universal Unity.

As long as a tree or an animal lives it continues to grow. An arrest of growth is the first symptom of the decline of life. Fulness of life, therefore, as the essential character of Christianity, should produce a constant development and progress; and this we find to be the case. Other religions have their rise, progress, decline, and fall, or else are arrested and become stationary. The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Scandinavia, have come to an end. As ethnic religions, they shared the fortunes of the race or nation with which they were associated. The systems of Confucius, of the Buddha, of Brahmanism, of Judæa, of Mohammed, are arrested. They remain stationary. But, thus far, Christianity and Christendom advance together. Christianity has developed; out of its primitive faith, several great theologies, the mediæval Papacy, Protestantism, and is now evidently advancing into new and larger forms of religious, moral, and social activity.
The fact of a fulness of divine and human life in Jesus took form in the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity. The fact of the reconciling and uniting power of this life took form in the doctrine of the atonement. Both of these doctrines are illogical and false, in their form, as church doctrines. But both of them represent most essential facts. We have seen the truths in the doctrines of incarnation and the Trinity. The truth in the atonement is, as the word itself signifies, the at-one-making power of the Gospel. The reconciliation of antagonist truths and opposing tendencies, which philosophy has always unsuccessfully endeavored to state in theory, Christianity accomplishes in practice. Christianity continually reproduces from its depths of life a practical faith in God, both as law and as love, in man, both as a free and yet as a providentially guided being. It gives us God as unity and as variety, as the substance and as the form of the world. It states the reality of evil as forcibly as any system of dualism, and yet produces a practical faith in good as being stronger than evil and sure to conquer it. In social life it reconciles the authority of human law with the freedom of individual thought and action. In the best Christian governments, we find all the order which a despotism can guarantee, with all the freedom to which a democracy can aspire. No such social organization is to be found outside of Christendom. How can this be, unless it is somehow connected with Christianity?
The civilization of Christendom consists in a practical reconciliation of antagonist tendencies. It is a "pleroma" in social life, a fulness of concord, a harmony of many parts. The harmony is indeed by no means complete, for the millennium has not arrived. As yet the striking feature of Christendom is quantity, power, variety, fulness; not as yet co-operation, harmony, peace, union. Powers are first developed, which are afterward to be harmonized. The sword is not yet beaten into a ploughshare, nor has universal peace arrived. Yet such is the inevitable tendency of things. As knowledge spreads, as wealth increases, as the moral force of the world is enlarged, law, more and more, takes the place of force. Men no longer wear swords by their sides to defend themselves from attack. If attacked, they call the policeman. Towns are no longer fortified with walls, nor are the residences of noblemen kept in a state of defence. They are all folded in the peaceful arms of national law. So far the atonement has prevailed. Only nations still continue to fight; but the time is at hand when international law, the parliament of the world, the confederation of man, shall take the place of standing armies and iron-clad navies.
So, in society, internal warfare must, sooner or later, come to an end. Pauperism and crime must be treated according to Christian methods. Criminals must be reformed, and punishment must be administered in reference to that end. Co-operation in labor and trade must take the place of competition. The principles by means of which these vast results will be brought about are already known; the remaining difficulties are in their application. Since slavery fell in the United States, one great obstacle to the progress of man is removed. The next social evils in order will be next assailed, and, one by one, will be destroyed. Christianity is becoming more and more practical, and its application to life is constantly growing more vigorous and wise.
The law of human life is, that the development of differences must precede their reconciliation. Variety must precede harmony, analysis must prepare the way for synthesis, opposition must go before union. Christianity, as a powerful stimulus applied to the human mind, first develops all the tendencies of the soul; and afterward, by its atoning influence on the heart, reconciles them. Christ is the Prince of Peace. He came to make peace between man and God, between man and man, between law and love, reason and faith, freedom and order, progress and conservatism. But he first sends the sword, afterward the olive-branch. Nevertheless, universal unity is the object and end of Christianity.

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Index of Subjects Treated in this Work.

A.

Abraham, source of Hebrew monotheism, 403.
  "      his inspiration, 403.
  "      his worship of the Most High God, 404.
  "      his native home at the source of the Tigris, 405.
  "      his historic character and events of his life, 406.
  "      his relation to Melchisedek, 406.
  "      character of his faith, 408.
  "      his monotheism imperfect, 408.
Adam of Bremen, his account of Northern Christians, 394.
Æschylus, big religious character, 284.
Anschar, missionary to the Swedes, 393.
Antoninus, M. Aurelius, his religious character, 344.
Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican, 289.
Arabs, the, and Arabia, 452.
  "    without a history till the time of Mohammed, 452.
Aristotle, his view of God, 296.
Artemis, or Diana as represented by the sculptors, 290.
Aryana-Vaêjo, a region of delight, 184.
  "           its climate changes to cold, 185.
  "           supposed to be in Central Asia, 186.
Aryans, the, in Central Asia, 85.
  "     consist of seven races, 86.
  "     their name mentioned in Manu, in the Avesta, and by Herodotus, 87.
  "     their original home, 87.
  "     their mode of life, 88.
  "     they arrive in India, 89.
Atonement, Christian, in its early form, influenced by Egyptian thought, 255.
  "        in its scholastic form, derived from Roman law, 352.
Augurs, their duties, 337.
Avesta, discovered by Duperron, 179.

B.

Baldur, his character described, 378.
  "     death of, the story, 373.
Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean of modern Europe, 359.
Bona Dea, the good goddess, 330.
Bragi, the Scandinavian Apollo, 380.
Brahma, chief deity in the Laws of Manu, 125.
  "     his worship has entirely disappeared, 128.
Brahmanism, a difficult study, 81.
  "         no individual founder, 81.
  "         is a one-sided spiritualism, 83.
  "         passes into pantheism, 84.
  "         becomes idolatry, 85.
Buddha, his early tendency to devotion, 148.
  "     not a proper name, but an official title, 148.
  "     his birthplace In India, 148.
  "     his different names (note), 148.
  "     his father, a prince of the solar race, 148.
  "     his early tendency to devotion, 148.
  "     he arrives at Nirvana, 149.
  "     devotes himself to teaching, 150.
  "     dies at the age of eighty years, 150.
  "     period of his death, 150.
Buddhism, Protestantism of the East, 139.
  "       resemblance of its customs to those of the Romish Church, 139.
  "       its worship of relics very ancient, 140.
  "       its singular and beautiful architecture, 140.
  "       its shrines for relics, 141.
  "       its rock-cut temples and monasteries, 141.
  "       cannot have been copied from Catholicism, 141.
  "       its interior resemblance to Protestantism, 142.
  "       its respect for human freedom and human rights, 143.
  "       its belief in the capacity of the human intellect, 144.
  "       its monastic character, 144.
  "       its expulsion from India, 145.
  "       the religion of the Mongol nations, 146.
  "       its scriptures and their discovery, 147.
Buddhists, their general councils, 151.
  "        their missionaries and missionary spirit, 151.
  "        their leading doctrines, 153.
  "        their idea of human development and progress, 154.
  "        their four great truths, 155.
  "        their moral commandments, 156.
  "        their system rational and humane, 156.
  "        their toleration, 157.
  "        their benevolence and hospitality, 158.
  "        their worship and ritual, 159.
  "        their doctrines of Karma and Nirvana, 161.
  "        good and evil of their system, 164.
  "        their doctrine of transmigration, 167.
  "        how far their teaching resembles Christianity, 167.
Bundehesch, opinion of Windischmann concerning it, 194.
  "         doctrinal system of, 195.
Burlingame, Anson, his mission, 70.

C.

Carthaginians, their language a form of Hebrew, 400.
Catholic religious, three, 18.
  "        " teach the unity of God, 18.
  "        " which have failed of universality, 19.
Ceres, Liber, Flora, and Pomona, rural deities, 330.
Chaldees of Ur, same as modern Curds, 405.
Chandragupta, contemporary of Alexander, 86.
Cherubim, its derivation from the Sphinx, 252.
Chinese civilization, its peculiarities, 32.
  "       "           prose of Asia, 32.
  "       "           its antiquity, 33.
  "       "           its grotesque character, 36.
Chinese empire, its size, 33.
  "     history commences, 34.
  "     language, 34.
  "     wall and canals, 34.
  "     artesian wells, 34.
  "     inoculation, bronze money, mariner's compass, gunpowder, 35.
  "     art of printing, and libraries, 35.
  "     people possess freedom (note), 37.
  "     government based on education, 38.
  "     monarchy a family, 38.
  "     government a literary aristocracy, 38.
  "     civil-service examinations, 39.
  "     public boards and their duties, 42.
  "     viceroys, or governors of provinces, 42.
  "     agriculture carried to perfection, 43.
  "     "Kings," or sacred books, 47.
  "     philosophy in its later developments, 52.
  "     doctrine of the grand extreme, 52.
  "     doctrine of Yang and Yin, or the positive and negative essences, 52.
  "     doctrine of holy men, 53.
  "     people, their amiable character, 59.
  "       "     described by Lieutenant Forbes, 59.
  "       "     described by Du Halde, 60.
  "       "     described by Meadows, 60.
  "       "     treatment of woman, 61.
Christian apologists, their errors, 4.
  "         "         have regarded most religions as human inventions, 4.
  "         "         have considered them as debasing superstitions, 4.
Christianity adapted to the Northern races, 395.
  "          a pleroma, or fulness of life, 492.
  "          an inclusive system, not exclusive, 493.
  "          summary of its relation to other religions, 494.
  "          a religion of progress, 507.
  "          a religion of universal unity, 508.
  "          has the power of continued progress, 29.
  "          in its various developments,29.
  "          meets the positive and negative side:
               of Brahmanism, 24.
               of Buddhism, 25.
               of Confucius, 26.
               of Zoroaster, 26.
               of Egypt, 27.
               of Greece, 28.
Cicero, his work "De Natura Deorum," 341.
  "     on the speech of Cæsar, 342.
Circumcision, its origin and extent, 251.
Cleanthes, the Stoic, his hymn, 285.
Comparative Philology, its discoveries, 86.
  "         Theology either analytical or synthetical, 2.
  "           "     its relation to Comparative Geography, 2.
  "           "      its relation to human progress, 2.
  "           "      must do justice to all religions, 3.
  "           "      is still in its infancy, 3.
  "           "      is a science, 3.
  "           "      will furnish new evidence to the truth of Christianity, 13.
  "           "      will show Christianity to be a catholic religion, adapted to all races, 15.
  "           "      will show Christianity to be all-sided, 21.
  "           "      will show Christianity capable of progress, 29.
  "           "      in its probable results, 30.
Confucius, his birth and ancestors, 44, 45.
  "        his influence, 44, 45.
  "        events of his life, 45, 46.
  "        edits the sacred books, or Kings, 47.
  "        his own writings, 47.
  "        his Table-Talk, extracts from, 48, 49.
  "        had a large organ of veneration, 50.
  "        had great energy and persistency, 51.
  "        his books distributed by tract societies, 51.
  "        one thousand six hundred and sixty temples erected to his memory, 51.
  "        defects in his doctrine, 58.
  "        his system compared with Christianity, 59.
  "        good influence of his teachings, 58.
Conversion of the German races to Christianity, 390.
Cudworth and the Platonists have defended the Greek philosophers, 5.

D.

David, his life and epoch in human history, 422.
  "    his great military successes, 422.
  "    his prudence and sagacity in affairs, 423.
  "    a man of genius, poet, musician, 425.
  "    Book of Psalms a record of his life, 425.
  "    his Psalms often rise to the level of Christianity, 426.
Decay of the Roman religion, 339.
Denmark and Norway converted to Christianity, 392.
Devil, the, in Old and New Testament, 498.
Divination, Cicero speaks concerning, 339-341.
Doctrinal influence of the Egyptian religion on Christianity, 258.
Downfall of German heathenism, 391.
Druids and Scalds, 355.
Duad, the, in all religions, 396.
Dualism or monotheism the doctrine of the Avesta, 203.
  "     of the Scandinavian system, 384.
  "     in Christianity, 496.
Duperron, Anquetil, his zeal for science, 178.
  "         "       discovers the Avesta in India, 179

E.

Ecclesiastes, a wonderful description of utter despair, 435.
Eddas, the, chief source of our knowledge of the early Scandinavians, 363.
  "    elder, or poetic, described, 364.
  "    its author, Sæmund, 364.
  "    prose, by Snorro Sturteson, 369.
  "      "    its contents, 369.
  "      "    its account of creation, 370.
  "      "    its account of the gods and giants, 371.
  "      "    story of Baldur, 372.
  "      "    adventures of Thor, 374.
  "      "    consummation of all things, 375.
Egyptian chronology, its uncertainty, 231.
   "         "       opinions of Egyptologists concerning, 231, 232.
   "         "       point of contact with that of the Hebrews, 233.
Egyptian civilization, its extent, 209.
  "      architecture, its characteristics, 209.
  "      knowledge of arts, 210.
  "      love for making records, 210.
  "      mural paintings in tombs, 210.
  "      sphinxes discovered by Marietta, 210.
  "      mummies, their anatomy, 237.
  "      religion, its influence on Judaism, 250
  "        "       its influence on Christianity, 253.
  "        "       its triads, 254.
Egyptians, ancient, their great interest in religion, 214.
  "        their gods on the oldest monuments, 215.
  "        lived in order to worship, 215.
  "        number of their festivals, 216.
  "        their priests, 217.
  "        their doctrine of immortality, 218.
  "        their ritual of the dead, 219.
  "        their funeral ceremonies, 220.
  "        their domestic and social virtues, 221.
  "        specimen of their hymns, 222, 223.
  "        mysterious character of their theology, 223.
  "        sources of our knowledge concerning, 224.
  "        modern works upon (note), 225.
  "        their doctrine of transmigration (note), 226.
  "        their animal worship, 227.
  "        their tendency to nature-worship, 229.
  "        their origin, 230-236.
Epictetus, his view of religion, 343.
Epicureans, believed in God, but not in religion, 297.
Essential idea of Brahmanism, 21.
  "        "   of Buddhism, 21.
  "        "   of Confucius, 22.
  "        "   of Zoroaster, 22.
  "        "   of Egypt, 23.
  "        "   of Greece, 24.
Ethnic religions, defined, 15.
  "      "        most religions are such, 15.
  "      "        related to ethnology, 15.
  "      "        limited to races, 17.
Euripides, his tragedy anti-religious, 285.

F.

Faunus, an old Italian god, 330.
Fenrir, the wolf, how he was fastened, 382.
Feudal system, its essential character, 391.
Flamens, priests of particular deities, 336.
Fontus, god of fountains, 328.
Frey, and his daughter Freyja, 379.

G.

Geiger, Swedish history quoted, 357.
Genius, a Roman god, 329.
German races essentially Protestant, 395.
German tribes converted by Arian missionaries, 506.
Gods of Egypt, the three orders of, 239.
  "   "   "    names of the first order, 239.
  "   "   "    character of the first order, 240.
  "   "   "    significant of the divine unity, 242.
  "   "   "    second order of, their human qualities, 243.
  "   "   "    third order of, the Osiris group, 242.
Gods of Greece before Homer, 270.
  "   "   "    oldest were the Uranids, 270.
  "   "   "    second race of, the Titans, 271.
  "   "   "    third race of, the Olympians, 271.
  "   "   "    the oldest were gods of the elements, 272.
  "   "   "    worshipped by the Dorians, were Apollo and Artemis, 274.
  "   "   "    local distribution of, 275.
  "   "   "    first symbolical, afterward personal, 276.
  "   "   "    in Hesiod and Homer, 277.
  "   "   "    poetic character of, 279.
  "   "   "    in Homer very human beings, 280.
  "   "   "    as described by the lyric poets, 283.
  "   "   "    as described by the tragedians, 284.
  "   "   "    as unfolded by the artists, 286.
  "   "   "    as seen in the works of Phidias, 287.
  "   "   "    as described by the philosophers, 291.
  "   "   "    how related to Christianity, 310.
Gods of the Vedas are the evil spirits of the Avesta, 202.
Greece, its physical geography, 259.
  "     its mountains, climate, and soil, 260.
  "     its language akin to Sanskrit, 261.
  "     its people an Aryan race, 262.
  "     first inhabited by the Pelasgians, 262.
  "     afterward received the Dorians, 264.
  "     influenced powerfully by Egypt, 265.
Greek mysteries, derived from Asia and Egypt, 302.
  "     "        gods of belong to the underworld, 302.
  "     "        alien to the Greek mind, 303.
  "     "        Eleusinian, in honor of Ceres, 305.
  "     "        in honor of Bacchus, derived from India, 305.
  "     "        Orphic, and their doctrines, 306.
  "   religion, an essentially human religion, 266.
  "     "       its gods, men and women, 267.
  "     "       has no founder or restorer or priesthood, 267.
  "     "       its gods evolved, not emanations, 268.
  "     "       its freedom and hilarity, 269.
  "     "       as viewed by Paul, 308.
  "     "       as regarded by the early Christian fathers, 312.
  "     "       and philosophy, a preparation for Christianity, 313.
  "   worship, sacrifices, prayers, and festivals, 297.
  "     "      in early times, 298.
  "     "      had numerous festivals, 299.
  "     "      connected with augurs and oracles, 300.
Gylfi, deluding of, in the Edda, 369.

H.

Haruspices, derived from Etruria, 338.
Havamal, or proverbs of the Scandinavians, 366.
Heathen religions must contain more truth than error, 6.
  "       "       cannot have been human inventions, 6.
  "       "       must contain some revolution from God, 8.
  "       "       how viewed by Christ and his apostles, 9.
  "       "       how treated by Paul at Athens, 10.
  "       "       how regarded by the early apologists, 12.
Heimdall, warder of the gods, 380.
Herder, his description of David, 425.
Hesiod, his account of the three groups of gods, 270.
Hindoo Epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, 128.
  "      "    they refer to the time succeeding the Vedic age, 128.
  "      "    composed before the time of Buddhism, 129.
Hindoos, antagonisms of their character, 82.
  "      acute in speculations, but superstitious, 82.
  "      unite luxury and asceticism, 82.
  "      tend to idealism and religious spiritualism, 83.
  "      their doctrine of Maya, 84.
Hindoo year, calendar of, 132.
  "      "   begins in April, a sacred month, 132.
Holy of Holies, in the Egyptian and Jewish temples, 252.
Homer his description of the gods, 280.
Horace, his view of religion, 346.
Hyksôs, constitute the middle monarchy, 232.
  "     expelled from Egypt after five hundred years, 233.
  "     Hebrews in Egypt during their ascendency, 234, 235.
  "     or Shepherd Kings in Egypt, 213.
  "     a Semitic people from Asia, 232.
  "     conquered Lower Egypt B.C. 2000, 233.
Hyndla, song of, extracts from, 366.

I.

Icelanders converted to Christianity, 394.
Incarnation, the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, 28.
India, always a land of mystery, 81.
  "    overrun by conquerors, 81.
Infinite and finite elements in Brahmanism and Christianity, 137.
Injustice done to ethnic religions, 4.
Inspiration, its origin in the intuitive faculty, 439.
Isis and Osiris, their legend, from Plutarch, 244.
  "   "    "     explanations of their myth, 246.
  "   "    "     identified with the first and second order, 248.

J.

Janus, one of the oldest of Roman gods, 322.
  "    presided over beginnings and endings, 322.
  "    invoked before other gods, 322.
  "    his temple open in war, closed in peace, 322.
  "    believed by Creuzer to have an Indian origin, 323.
  "    has his chief feast in January, 323.
  "    a Sabine god on Mount Janiculum, 323.
Jews, a Semitic race, 399.
Job, its grandeur of thought and expression, 438.
Jones, Sir William, his life and works, 78.
  "    progress since his time, 80.
Judaism, a preparation for Christianity, 444.
  "      monotheistic after the captivity, 444.
  "      influenced by Greek philosophy, 444.
  "      its process of development, 445.
  "      at first childlike and narrow, 446.
  "      the seed of Christianity, 446.
Juno, queen of heaven, and female Jupiter, 324.
  "   goddess of womanhood, 324.
  "   her chief feast the Matronalia in March, 324.
  "   her month of June favorable for wedlock, 325.
Jupiter, derived his name from the Sanskrit, 324.
  "      had many temples in Rome, 324.
  "      god of the weather, of storm, of lightning, 324.

K.

"Kings," Chinese, names and number, 47.
  "      teach a personal God, 57.
  "      republished by Confucius, 47.

L.

Language of Ancient Egypt, 236.
Lao-tse, founder of Tao-ism, 50, 52.
  "      called a dragon by Confucius, 51.
  "      three forms of his doctrine, 54.
Lares, gods of home, 328.
Loki, the god of cunning, 381.
Lower Egypt, gods worshipped in, 248.
Lucretius, his view of religion, 343.
Luna, the moon, a Sabine deity, 327.
Lustrations, or great acts of atonement, 338.

M.

Magna Mater, a foreign worship at Rome, 330.
Maine, his work on ancient law quoted, 351.
Mann, laws of, when written, 100.
  "   account of Creation, 101.
  "   dignity of the Brahmans, 103.
  "   importance of the Gayatari, 104.
  "   account of the twice-born man, 105.
  "   description of ascetic duties, 106.
  "   the anchorite described, 107.
  "   duties of the ruler described, 109.
  "   crimes and penalties described, 110.
  "   the law of castes described, 110.
  "   penance and expiation described, 110.
  "   respect for cows enjoined, 111.
  "   transmigration and final beatitude, 112.
Maritime character of the Scandinavians, 361.
Mars, originally an agricultural god, 330.
Materialism in Christian doctrines, derived from Egypt, 256.
Mater Matuta, Latin goddess of the dawn (note), 325, 327.
Melchisedek, king of justice and king of peace, 407.
Minerva, her name derived from an Etruscan word, 325.
  goddess of mental activity, 325.
  one of the three deities of the capitol, 325.
Missionary work of Christianity, why checked, 506.
Moabite inscription in the Hebrew dialect, 400.
Mohammed, recent works concerning, 448.
  "       lives of, by Muir, Sprenger, Weil, and others, 449.
  "       essays on his life by Babador, 450.
  "       prophecies of, in the Old Testament, 451.
  "       lived a private life for forty years, 454.
  "       his early religious tendencies, 454.
  "       his inspirations, 454.
  "       his biography in the Koran, 455.
  "       his mother's death, 456.
  "       his first converts, 457.
  "       protected by his tribe, 458.
  "       his temporary relapse, 460.
  "       and his followers persecuted, 461.
  "       his first teaching a modified Judaism, 463.
  "       his departure to Medina with his followers, 464.
  "       change in his character after the Hegira, 465.
  "       in his last ten years a political leader, 467.
  "       Goethe's view of his character, 468.
  "       his cruel treatment of the Jews, 469.
  "       his numerous wives, 470.
  "       his death and character, 471.
Mohammedanism, its special interest, 448.
  "            its essential doctrine the absolute unity of God, 472.
  "            its teaching concerning the Bible and Koran, 472.
  "            does not recognize human brotherhood, 473.
  "            among the Turks, its character, 473.
  "            promotes religious feeling, 474.
  "            inspires courage and resignation, 474.
  "            in Palestine, described by Miss Rogers, 475.
  "            in Central Arabia, described by Mr. Palgrave, 478.
  "            in Central Asia, described by M. Vambéry, 477.
  "            in Persia, described by Count Gobmeau, 477.
  "            in Egypt, described by Mr. Lane, 477.
  "            in Turkey, described by Mr. MacFarlane, 478, 484.
  "            in Northern Africa, described by Barth and Blerzey, 477, 485.
  "            its character given by M. Renan, 485.
  "            its monotheism lower than that of Judaism and Christianity, 481.
  "            does not convert the Aryan races, 500.
  "            pure from Polytheism, 502.
  "            has a tendency to catholicity, 503.
  "            a relapse to a lower stand point, 483.
  "            summary of its good and evil influence, 484.
Monotheism (or Dualism), the doctrine of the Avesta, 203.
Montesquieu quoted, 357.
Moses, his historic character, 409.
  "    described by Strabo (note), 410.
  "    his natural genius and temperament, 411.
  "    his seventy and tenderness, 412.
  "    his sense of justice embodied in law, 412.
  "    his object to teach the holiness of God, 413.
  "    defects of his character, 413.
  "    character of his monotheism, 414.
  "    his monotheism described by Stanley (note), 414.
  "    his anthropomorphic view of God, 415.
  "    his acquaintance with Egyptian learning, 416.
  "    nature of his inspiration, 417.
  "    political freedom secured to the Jews by his law, 418.
  "    object of his ceremonial law, 420.
Mythology of Scandinavia and that of Zoroaster compared, 384.

N.

Names of our week-days Scandinavian, 358.
Neptunus, origin of the name, 328.
Nestorian inscription in China, 71-78.
Njord, ruler of the winds, 378.
Northern and Southern Europe compared, 359.
Northmen in France, Spain, Italy, and Greece, 389.
Number of Christians in the world, 146.
  "    of Buddhists in the world, 146.
  "    of Jews in the world, 146.
  "    of Mohammedans in the world, 146.
  "    of Brahmans, 146.
Nyaya, system of philosophy, assumes three principles, 122.
  "    system of philosophy, described by Banerjea, 123.

O.

Odin, or All-father, eldest of the Æsir, 377.
  "   corresponds to Ormazd, 385.
  "   his festival in the spring, 386.
Opa, goddess of the harvest, 330.

P.

Pales, a rural god, 330.
Palestine, or the land of the Philistines, 397.
  "        resembles Greece and Switzerland, 397.
  "        its mountainous character, 397.
  "        a small country, 398.
  "        its mountains and valleys, 399.
Palgrave, note giving an extract from his book, 486.
Papacy, mediæval, good done by it, 350.
  "     a reproduction of the Roman state religion, 350.
Parsî religion, its influence on Judaism, 205.
  "     "       its influence on Christianity, 204.
  "     "       teaches a kingdom of heaven, 207.
  "     "       still continues in Persia and India, 208.
Parthenon, the, temple of Minerva, described, 290.
Penates, gods of home, 328.
Persepolis, ruins of the palace of Xerxes at, 170.
  "         inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes at, 170.
  "         tombs of the kings of Persia at, 174.
Pharisees, Sadducets, and Essenei, 444.
Phidias, his statue of Jupiter described, 288.
Philistines, probably Pelasgi from Crete, 421.
Philosophy, early Greek, 291.
  "         Greek, in Asia Minor, 291.
  "         in Italy, 292.
Phœnicians, their language a form of Hebrew, 400.
Plato harmonizes realism and idealism, 293.
  "   his philosophy completes that of Socrates, 294.
  "   his method that of transcendentalism, 294.
  "   his idea of God pure and high, 295.
  "   Christian element in, 295.
Pliny, the elder, his view of religion, 345.
Present work, an essay, or attempt, 1.
  "      " companson of religions its object, 1.
Prophecy, a modification of inspiration, 438.
Prophets of the Old Testament, men of action, 440.
  "      politicians and constitutional lawyers, 440.
  "      preferred the moral law to ceremonial, 441.
  "      described by Dean Stanley, 441.
  "      their inspiration came through a common human faculty, 442.
  "      their predictions not always realized, 443.
  "      their foresight of Christianity, 443.
  "      developed Judaism to its highest point, 443.
Proverbs, Book of, in the Edda, 365.
Pontiffs, their authority, 336.
Positivism, its law of progress examined, 489.
Puranas, the, much read by the common people, 130.
  "      devoted to the worship of Vischnu, 131.
  "      extol the power of penances, 132.
  "      ideas those of the epics, 132.
  "      their philosophy that of the Sunkhya, 132.

R.

Ramses II. a powerful king B.C. 1400, 233.
  "        supposed to be the same as Sesostris, 234.
  "        birth of Moses during his reign, 335.
Recognition of God in nature, best element of Egyptian religion, 257.
Relation of the religion of the Avesta to the Vedas, 201.
Results of the survey of ten religions, 489.
  "     in regard to their resemblance and difference, 490.
Resemblance of the Roman Catholic ceremonies to those of Pagan Rome, 350.
Roman calendar, described, 332.
Roman Catholic Church, teaches an exclusive spiritualism, 143.
  "     "        "     is eminently a sacrificial system, 143.
  "     "       "     its monastic system an included Protestantism, 145.
Roman deities adopted from Greece, 326.
  "     "     manufactured by the pontiffs, 326.
  "     "     representing the powers of nature, 327.
  "     "     representing human relations, 328.
  "     "     presiding over rural occupations, 330.
  "     "     derived from the Etruscans, 327.
  "   empire gave to Christianity its outward form (note), 350.
  "     "    united the several states of Europe, 350.
  "   law, its influence on Western theology, 351.
  "   legal notions transferred to theology, 352.
  "   mind, wanting in spontaneity, 316.
  "     "   serious, practical, hard, 316.
  "   religion, an established church, 317.
  "     "       regarded chiefly external conduct, 317.
  "     "       tolerant of questions of opinion, 317.
  "     "       not a mere copy from Greece, 318.
  "     "       described by Hegel, 318.
  "     "       described by Cicero, 317-319.
  "     "       described by Mommsen, 319.
  "     "       a polytheism, with monotheism behind it, 320.
  "     "        deified all events, 321.
Romans, as a race, whence derived, 319.
  "        "       belong to the Aryan family, 319.
  "        "       composed of Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans, 320.
  "        "       related to the Pelasgi and Celts, 320.
  "     their oldest deities, Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan, 320.
Roman sepulchral monuments, their tone, 346.
Roman thought and Roman religion opposed, 342.
Roman worship, very elaborate and minute, 331.
  "     "      full of festivals, 331.
  "     "      distinguished between things sacred and profane, 331.
  "     "      a yoke on the public life of the Romans, 334.
  "     "      directed by the College of Pontiffs, 334.
  "     "      chief seat in the Via Sacra, 335.
  "     "      governed by etiquette, 335.
  "     "      originally free from idolatry, 336.
  "     "      acted like a charm, 340.
Rome, ancient, its legacy to Christianity, 353.
Runes, Odin's song of, in the Edda, 368.

S.

Salii, ancient priests of Mars, 336.
Sánkhya philosophy, 114.
  "     founded on two principles, 120.
  "     considered atheistic, 120.
  "     the basis of Buddhism, 121.
  "     a very ancient system, 122.
Saturnus, Saturn, god of planting, 330.
Scandinavia, consisting of what regions, 358.
  "          surrounded by the sea, 358.
  "          its adaptation to the Teutonic race, 359.
  "          formerly inhabited by the Cimbri, 360.
  "          the home of the Northmen, 361.
Scandinavian religion, a system of dualism, 362.
  "            "       war its essential idea, 362.
  "            "       its virtues, truth, justice, courage, 362.
Scandinavians, their early history, 355.
  "            described by Cæsar, 355.
  "            described by Tacitus, 356.
  "            a branch of the great German family, 357.
  "            their language, the Norse and its derivatives, 357.
  "            our inheritance from, 358.
  "            their manners and institutious, 387.
  "            their respect for women, 388.
  "            their Scalds, or bards, 388.
  "            their maritime expeditions, 389.
Sea-Kings of Norway, their discoveries, 361.
Seat of the Scandinavian race, 355.
Secrecy, the evil in Egyptian religion, 257.
Semitic races, their character and exploits, 399.
  "       "    great navigators and discoverers, 399.
  "       "    identity of their languages, 400.
  "       "    nations of which they consist, 399.
  "       "    their religion and gods, 401.
  "       "    their tendency to monotheism, 402.
Seneca, his view of religion, 343, 344.
Serapis, the same as Osiris-Apis, 257.
Sibylline books, derived from Greece, 336.
Siculi, supposed to be Kelte (note), 320.
Silvanus, god of the woods, 330.
Siva, does not appear in the Vedas, 125.
  "   worshipped with Brahma and Vischnu at the present time, 127.
  "   worshipped in the Puranas, 132.
  "   girls worship him with flowers, 132.
  "   his wife Doorga, festival of, 134.
  "   men swing on hooks in honor of, 135.
Solomon, and the relapse of Judaism, 428.
  "      a less interesting character than David, 429.
  "      his unscrupulous policy, 429.
  "      the splendor and power of his reign, 430.
  "      his alliances with Egypt, Phoenicia, and Arabia, 341.
  "      his temple described, 432.
  "      his Book of Proverbs and its character, 433.
  "      account of his last days, 434.
  "      his scepticism described in Ecclesiastes, 435.
Socrates, his character and work, 293.
Sol, the sun, a Sabine deity, 327.
Soma plant of the Veda, the Haŏma, 202.
Sophocles, the most devout of the Greek tragedians, 284.
Spiritualism, in Brahmanism and Christianity, 136.
Stoics, as described by Zeller, 296.

T.

Tacitus, the spirit of his writings, 346.
Tae-Ping (or Ti-Ping) insurrection, its origin, 62.
  "                     "           its leader the heavenly prince, 62.
  "                     "           essentially a religious movement, 64.
  "                     "           based on the Bible, 65.
Tae-Pings (or Ti-Pings), their prayers, 65.
  "                      their public religious exercises, 66.
  "                      their moral reforms, 68.
  "                      put down by British intervention, 68.
  "                      worshipped one God, and believed in Jesus, 69.
Talmud, the, extracts from, 445.
Tao-te-king, its doctrines described, 54.
     "       resembles the system of Hegel, 54.
     "       its doctrine of opposites, 55.
     "       its resemblance to Buddhism, 55.
     "       its tendency to magic, 56.
Tellus, the earth, a Roman god, 330.
Tempestates, the tempests, worshipped at Rome, 327.
Terminus, an old Italian god, 330.
Three classes of Roman gods, 325.
Tiberinus, or father Tiber, a Roman god, 328.
Things, or popular assemblies of the Scandinavians, 358.
Thor, his character and prowess, 377.
  "   his famous mallet, 378.
  "   his journey to Jotunheim, 374.
  "   his fight with the Midgard serpent, 376.
Triad, the Hindoo, its origin, 124.
  "    compared with other Triads, 124.
Trinity, Christian, derived from Egypt, 255.
Trinity the, its meaning in Christianity, 500.
Truths and errors of the different systems, 21.
Tyr, the Scandinavian war god, 379.
  "  how he lost his hand, 380, 383.

U.

Ulphilas, the Arian, first Christian teacher of the Germans, 390.
  "       his translation of the Bible into Gothic tongue, 390.

V.

Vedanta philosophy assumes a single principle, 116.
  "       "        knows no substance but God, 119.
  "       "        described by Chunder Dutt, 118.
  "       "        souls absorbed in God, 119.
Vedas, the, when written, 89-99.
  "         their chief gods, 89-99.
  "         traces of monotheism in, 90.
  "         some hymns given, 91, 92, 93, 95.
Vedic literature, divided into four periods, 95.
  "     "         contains Chhandas, Mantras, Brâhmans, Upanishads, Sûtras, and Vedângas, 96.
  "     "         at first not committed to writing, 97.
Venus, an early Latin or gabine goddess, 325.
Vertumnus, god of gardens, 330.
Vesta, goddess of the hearth, 328.
Vestal Virgins, their duties, 337.
Vischnu, mentioned in the Rig-Veda as Sun-God, 125.
  "      his Avatars, 126.
  "      one of the Triad, 126.
  "      incarnate as Juggernaut, 133.
  "      worshipped as Krishna, 134, 135.
  "      worshipped in the Puranas, 132.
Völuspa, or wisdom of Vala, extracts from, 364.
Vulcanus, an Italian deity, 328.

W.

Wahhabee, revival in Arabia, described by Palgrave, 478.
Wedding ring, in Egypt and Christendom, 253.
Welcker, his opinion of the substance of Greek religion, 286.
Works on Scandinavian religion (note), 362.
Worship of the Scandinavians, 385.

Z.

Zend Avesta, a collection of hymns, prayers, and thanksgivings, 187.
  "    "     extracts from the Gathas, 188.
  "    "     extract from the Khordah Avesta, 189.
  "    "     hymn to the star Tistrya, 190.
  "    "     hymn to Mithra, 190.
  "    "     a confession of sin, 191.
Zoroaster, mentioned by Plato, Diodorus, and other classic writers, 175.
  "        account of him by Herodotus, 175.
  "        account of him by Plutarch, 176.
  "        inquiry as to his epoch, 180.
  "        resided in Bactria, 181.
  "        spirit of his religion, 182.
  "        he continually appears in the Avesta, 186.
  "        oppressed with the sight of evil, 184.

The End.

Footnotes

1. It is one of the sagacious remarks of Goethe, that "the eighteenth century tended to analysis, but the nineteenth will deal with synthesis."
2. Professor Cocker's work on "Christianity and Creek Philosophy," should also be mentioned.
3. James Foster has a sermon on "The Advantages of a Revelation," in which he declares that, at the time of Christ's coming, "just notions of God were, in general, erased from the minds of men. His worship was debased and polluted, and scarce any traces could be discerned of the genuine and immutable religion of nature."
4. John Locke, in his "Reasonableness of Christianity," says that when Christ came "men had given themselves up into the hands of their priests, to fill their heads with false notions of the Deity, and their worship with foolish rites, as they pleased; and what dread or craft once began, devotion soon made sacred, and religion immutable." "In this state of darkness and ignorance of the true God, vice and superstition held the world." Quotations of this sort might be indefinitely multiplied. See an article by the present writer, in the "Christian Examiner," March, 1857.
5. Mosheim's Church History, Vol. I. Chap. I.
6. Neander, Church History, Vol. I. p. 540 (Am. ed.).
7. Essays and Reviews, Article VI.
8. In this respect the type has changed.
9. The actual depth reached in the St. Louis well, before the enterprise was abandoned, was 3,843½ feet on August 9, 1869. This well was bored for the use of the St. Louis County Insane Asylum, at the public expense. It was commenced March 31, 1866, under the direction of Mr. Charles H. Atkeson. At the depth of 1,222 feet the water became saltish, then sulphury. The temperature of the water, at the bottom of the well, was 105°F. Toward the end of the work it seemed as if the limit of the strength of wood and iron had been reached. The poles often broke at points two or three thousand feet down. "Annual Report (1870) of the Superintendent of the St. Louis County Insane Asylum."
10. Andrew Wilson ("The Ever-Victorious Army, Blackwood, 1868") says that "the Chinese people stand unsurpassed, and probably unequalled, in regard to the possession of freedom and self-government." He denies that infanticide is common in China. "Indeed," says he, "there is nothing a Chinaman dreads so much as to die childless. Every Chinaman desires to have as large a family as possible; and the labors of female children are very profitable."
11. Quoted by Mr. Meadows, who warrants the correctness of the account. "The Chinese and their Rebellions," p. 404.
12. Dr. Legge thus arranges the Sacred Books of China, or the Chinese Classics:—
  1. The Five King. [King means a web of cloth, or the warp which keeps the threads in their place.]
    1. Yih-King. (Changes.)
    2. Shoo-King. (History.)
    3. She-King. (Odes.)
    4. Le-Ke-King. (Rites.)
    5. Ch'un-Ts'eu. (Spring and Autumn. Annals from B.C. 721 to 480.)
  2. The Four Books.
    1. Lun-Yu. (Analects, or Table-Talk of Confucius.)
    2. Ta-Hio. (Great Learning. Written by Tsang-Sin, a disciple of Confucius.)
    3. Chung-Yung (or Doctrine of the Mean), ascribed to Kung-Keih, the grandson of Confucius.
    4. Works of Mencius.
After the death of Confucius there was a period in which the Sacred Books were much corrupted, down to the Han dynasty (B.C. 201 to A.D. 24), which collected, edited, and revised them: since which time they have been watched with the greatest care.
"The evidence is complete that the Classical Books of China have come down from at least a century before our era, substantially the same as we have them at present."—Legge, Vol. I. Chap. 1. § 2.
The Four Books have been translated into French, German, and English. Dr. Marshman translated the Lun-Yu. Mr. Collie afterward published at Calcutta the Four Books. But within a few years the labors of previous sinologues have been almost superseded by Dr. Legge's splendid work, still in process of publication. We have, as yet, only the volumes containing the Four Books of Confucius and his successors, and a portion of the Kings. Dr. Legge's work is in Chinese and English, with copious notes and extracts from many Chinese commentators. In his notes, and his preliminary dissertations, he endeavors to do justice to Confucius and his doctrines. Perhaps he does not fully succeed in this, but it is evident that he respects the Chinese sage, and is never willingly unfair to him. If to the books above mentioned be added the works, of Pauthier, Stanislas Julien, Mohl, and other French sinologues, and the German works on the same subject we have a sufficient apparatus for the study of Chinese thought.
13. "On the top of his head was a remarkable formation, in consequence of which he was named Kew."—Legge, Vol. I. Chap. VI. (note).
14. Meadows, "The Chinese and their Rebellions," p. 332.
15. Meadows, p. 342.
16. "Le Tao-te-king, le livre de la voie et de la vertu, composé dans, la vie siècle avant l'ère Chrétienne, par le philosophe Lao-tseu, traduit par Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1842."
17. "Le livre des Récompenses et des Peines. Julien, 1835."
18. "Seyn and Nichte ist Dasselbe." Hegel.
19. "The meek shall inherit the earth."
20. See "La Magie et l'Astrologie, par Alfred Maury."
21. Was it some pale reflection of this Oriental philosophy which took form in the ode of Horace, "Integer vitæ" (i. 22), in which he describes the portentous wolf which fled from him?
22. Meadows, p. 28.
23. Meadows, p. 18.
24. Ti-Ping Tien-Kwoh; The History of the Ti-Ping Revolution, by Lin-Le, special agent of the Ti-Ping General-in-Chief, &c. Davy and Son, London, 1866. Vol. 1. p. 806.
Mr. Andrew Wilson, author of "The Ever-Victorious Army" (Blackwood, 1868), speaks with much contempt of Lin-Le's book. In a note (page 389) he brings, certain charges against the author. Mr. Wilson's book is written to glorify Gordon, Wood, and others, who accepted roving commissions against the Ti-Pings; and of course he takes their view of the insurrection. The accusations he brings against Lin-Le, even if correct, do not detract from the apparent accuracy of that writer's story, nor from the weight of his arguments.
25. Ibid., Vol. I. p. 315. These forms are given, says the writer, partly from memory.
26. Hong-Kong Gazette, October 12, 1855.
27. Intervention and Non-Intervention, by A. G. Stapleton.
28. Official Papers of the Chinese Legation. Berlin: T. Calvary & Co., Oberwasser Square. 1870.
29. From Hue's "Christianity in China."
30. Now usually written Sákoontalá or Sákuntalá.
31. To avoid multiplying footnotes, we refer here to the chief sources on which we rely in this chapter. C. Lassen, Indische Altherthumskunde; Max Müller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (and other works); J. Muir, Sanskrit Texts; Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Européennes; Sir William Jones, Works, 13 vols.; Vivian de Saint-Martin, Etude, &c., and articles in the Revue Germanique; Monier Williams, Sakoontalá (a new translation), the Rámayána, and the Mahá Bhárata; Horace Hayman Wilson, Works (containing the Vischnu Purana, &c.); Burnouf, Essai sur la Vêda, Le Bhagavata Purana; Stephenson, the Sanhita of the Sama Veda; Ampère, La Science en Orient; Bunsen, Gott in der Geschichte; Shea and Troyer, The Dabistan; Hardwick, Christ and other Masters; J. Talboys Wheeler, History of India from the Earliest Times; Works published by the Oriental Translation Fund; Max Duncker, Die Geschichte der Arier; Rammohun Roy, The Veds; Mullens, Hindoo Philosophy.
32. "The soul knows no persons."—EMERSON.
33. All Indian dates older than 300 B.C. are uncertain. The reasons for this one are given carefully and in full by Pictet.
34. Our English word daughter, together with the Greek θυγἀτηρ, the Zend dughdar, the Persian docktar, &c., corresponds with the Sanskrit duhitar, which means both daughter and milkmaid.
35. Hatchet, in Sanskrit takshani, in Zend tasha, in Persian tosh, Greek τόχος, Irish tuagh, Old German deksa, Polish tasalc, Russian tesaku. And what is remarkable, the root tak appears in the name of the hatchet in the languages of the South Sea Islanders and the North American Indians.
36. M. Vivien de Saint-Martin has determined more precisely than has been done before the primitive country of the Aryans, and the route followed by them in penetrating into India. They descended through Cabul to the Punjaub, having previously reached Cabul from the region between the Jaxartes and the Oxus.
37. The Rig-Veda distinguishes the Aryans from the Dasjus. Mr. Muir quotes a multitude of texts in which Indra is called upon to protect the former and slay the latter.
38. Agni, whence Ignis, in Latin.
39. See Talboys Wheeler, "History of India."
40. Müller's Ancient Sanskrit Literature, page 569. He adds the following remarks: "There is nothing to prove that this hymn is of a particularly ancient date. On the contrary, there are expressions in it which seem to belong to a later age. But even if we assign the lowest possible date to this and similar hymns certain it is that they existed during the Mantra period, and before the composition of the Brâhmanas. For, to spite of all the indications of a modern date, I see no possibility how we could account for the allusions to it which occur in the Brâhmanas, or for its presence in the Sanhitâs, unless we admit that this poem formed part of the final collection of the Rig-veda-Sanhitâ, the work of the Mantra period."
41. Max Müller translates "breathed, breathless by itself; other than it nothing since has been."
42. Max Müller says, "Love fell upon it."
43. Müller, Sanskrit Lit., p. 546.
44. Müller, Sanskrit Lit., p. 552.
45. Ibid., p. 553.
46. That heat was "a form of motion" was thus early discovered.
47. It is the opinion of Maine ("Ancient Law") and other eminent scholars, that this code was never fully accepted or enforced in India, and remained always an ideal of the perfect Brahmanic state.
48. See Vivien de Saint-Martin, Revue Germanique, July 16, 1862. The Sarasvati is highly praised in the Rig-Veda. Talboys Wheeler, II. 429.
49. Max Müller, Sanskrit Lit., p. 425.
50. Institutes of Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Manu, according to the Gloss of Calluca, Calcutta, 1796, §§ 5, 6, 7, 8.
51. See translation of the Sanhita of the Sama-Veda, by the Rev. J. Stevenson. London, 1842.
52. Max Müller, "Chips," Vol. I. p. 107.
53. Geschichte der Arier, Buch V. § 8.
54. Lassen, I. 830.
55. Laws of Manu (XII. 50) speaks of "the two principles of nature in the philosophy of Kapila."
56. Duncker, as above.
57. Müller, Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 102.
58. Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, I. 349.
59. Lassen, I. 834.
60. Colebrooke, I. 350, 352.
61. Duncker, I. 204 (third edition, 1867).
62. The Sánkhya-Káriká, translated by Colebrooke. Oxford, 1837.
63. Essay on the Vedanta, by Chunder Dutt. Calcutta, 1854.
64. Colebrooke, I. 262.
65. The Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy: A Prize Essay, by Joseph Mullens, p. 43. London, 1860. See also Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy, by Rev. K. M. Banerjea. London, 1861.
66. Mullens, p. 44.
67. Duncker, I. 205. He refers to Manu, II. 160.
68. The Bhagavat-Gita, an episode in the Maha-Bharata, in an authority with the Vedantists.
69. Burnouf, Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien, I. 511, 520. He says that Sukya-Muni began his career with the ideas of the Sánkhya philosophy, namely, absence of God; multiplicity and eternity of human souls; an eternal plastic nature; transmigration; and Nirvana, or deliverance by knowledge.
70. Cours de l'Histoire de Philosophie, I. 200 (Paris, 1829); quoted by Hardwick, I. 211.
71. Karika, 8. "It is owing to the subtilty of Nature ... that it is not apprehended by the senses."
72. Karika, 19.
73. Karika, 58, 62, 63, 68.
74. Quoted from the Lalita Vistara in Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy. By Rev. R. M. Banerjea. London: Williams and Nordgate, 1861.
75. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV. p. 253.
76. Journal Am. Orient. Soc., III. 318.
77. Even in the grammatical forms of the Sanskrit verb, this threefold tendency of thought is indicated. It has an active, passive, and middle voice (like that of the cognate Greek), and the reflex action of its middle voice corresponds to the Restorer or Preserver.
78. See Colebrooke, Lassen, &c.
79. Lassen, I. 838; II. 446.
80. See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, Part IV. p. 136.
81. Lassen, Ind. Alterthum, I. 357.
82. Max Müller, Sanskrit Lit., 37.
83. Ibid., p. 46.
84. Ind. Alterthum, I. 483-499. Müller, Sanskrit Lit., 62, note.
85. As of the Atheist in the Ramayana, Javali, who advises Rama to disobey his dead father's commands, on the ground that the dead are nothing.
86. Preface to the Vischnu Purana, translated by Horace Hayman Wilson. London, 1864.
87. Duncker, Geschichte, &c., II. 318.
88. Preface to his English translation of the Vischnu Purana.
89. Translated by E. Burnouf into French.
90. The Ramayana, &c., by Monier Williams Baden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford.
91. Preface to the translation of the Vischnu Purana, by H. H. Wilson.
92. Kesson, "The Cross and the Dragon" (London, 1854), quoted by Hardwick.
93. See Note to Chap. II. on the Nestorian inscription in China.
94. Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, p. 67.
95. Hardy, Eastern Monachism, p. 224. Fergusson, p. 9.
96. Fergusson, p. 10. Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes of India.
97. Upham, Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon.
98. Here are a few of the guesses:—
Cunningham, Bhilsa Topes.
Christians270millions.
Buddhist222"
Hassel, Penny Cyclopædia.
Christians120millions.
Jews4"
Mohammedans252"
Brahmans111"
Buddhists315"
Johnston, Physical Atlas.
Christians301millions.
Jews5"
Brahmans133"
Mohammedans110"
Buddhists245"
Perkins, Johnson's American Atlas.
Christians369millions.
Mohammedans160"
Jews6"
Buddhists320"
New American Cyclopædia.
Buddhists290millions.
And Professor Newmann estimates the number of Buddhists at 369 millions.
99. Le Bouddha et sa Religion. Par J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire.—Eastern Monachism. By Spence Hardy.—Burnouf, Introduction, etc.—Koeppen, Die Religion des Buddha.
100. The works from which this chapter has been mostly drawn are these:—Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme indien. Par E. Burnouf. (Paris, 1844) Le Bouddha et sa Religion. Par J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire. (Paris, 1860.) Eastern Monachism. By R. Spence Hardy. (London, 1850.) A Manual of Buddhism in its Modern Development. By R. Spence Hardy. (London, 1853.) Die Religion des Buddha. Von Karl F. Koeppen. (Berlin, 1857.) Indische Alterthumskunde. Von Christian Lassen. (Bonn, 1852.) Der Buddhismus, Seine Dogmen, Geschichte, und Literatur. Von W. Wassiljew. (St. Petersburg, 1860.) Ueber Buddha's Todesjahr. Von N. L. Westergaard. (Breslau, 1862.) Gott in der Geschichte. Von C. C. J. Bunsen. (Leipzig, 1858.) The Bhilsa Topes, or Buddhist Monuments of Central India. By A. Cunningham. (London, 1854.) Buddhism in Thibet. By Emil Schlagintweit. (Leipzig and London, 1863.) Travels in Eastern countries by Hue and Gabet, and others. Eeferences to Buddhism in the writings of Max Müller, Maurice, Baur, Hardwick, Fergusson, Pritchard, Wilson, Colebrooke, etc.
101. At the end of the fourth century of our era a Chinese Buddhist made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Buddha, and found the city in ruins. Another Chinese pilgrim visited it A.D. 632, and was able to trace the remains of the ruined palace, and saw a room which had been occupied by Buddha. These travels have been translated from the Chinese by M. Stanislas Julien.
102. Buddha is not a proper name, but an official title. Just as we ought not to say Jesus Christ, but always Jesus the Christ, so we should say Siddârtha the Buddha, or Sakya-muni the Buddha, or Gautama the Buddha. The first of these names, Siddârtha (contracted from Sarvârtha-siddha) was the baptismal name given by his father, and means "The fulfilment of every wish." Sakya-muni means "The hermit of the race of Sakya,"—Sakya being the ancestral name of his father's race. The name Gautama is stated by Koeppen to be "der priesterliche Beiname des Geschlechts der Sakya,"—whatever that may mean.
103. The Sanskrit root, whence the English "bode" and "forebode," means "to know."
104. Saint-Hilaire.
105. Bhilsa Topes.
106. Goethe, Faust.
107. Die Persischen Keilinscriften (Leipzig, 1847.) See also the account of the inscription at Behistun, in Lenormant's "Manual of Ancient History."
108. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies.—Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, B. II.—Heeren, The Persians.—Fergusson, Illustrated Hand-Book of Architecture.—Creuzer, Schriften. See also the works of Oppert, Hinks, Menant, and Lassen.
109. Vendidad, Fargard, XIX.—XLVI. Spiegel, translated into English by Bleek.
110. Herodotus, I. 131.
111. Herodotus, in various parts of his history.
112. "Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. London. Printed for W. Taylor, at the Ship in Pater-noster Eow. 1718." This passage concerning Zoroaster is from the "Isis and Osiris" in Vol. IV. of this old translation. We have retained the antique terminology and spelling. (See also the new American edition of this translation. Boston, Little and Brown, 1871.)
113. This is the Haôma spoken of on page 202.
114. These, with Ormazd, are the seven Amshaspands enumerated on page 197.
115. See the account, on page 195, of these four periods of three thousand years each.
116. Kleuker (Anhang zum Zend Avesta) has given a full résumé of the references to Zoroaster and his religion in the Greek and Roman writers. More recently, Professor Bapp of Tubingen has gone over the same ground in a very instructive essay in the Zeitschrift der Deutsohen Morgenlândisshen Gesellschaft. (Leipzig, 1865.)
117. Anq. du Perron, Zend Avesta; Disc. Prèlim., p. vi.
118. At the time Anquetil du Perron was thus laboring in the cause of science in India, two other men were in the same region devoting themselves with equal ardor to very different objects. Clive was laying the foundations of the British dominion in India; Schwartz was giving himself up to a life of toil in preaching the Gospel to the Hindoos. How little would these three men have sympathized with each other, or appreciated each other's work! And yet how important to the progress of humanity was that of each!
119. And with this conclusion the later scholars agree. Burnouf, Lassen, Spiegel, Westergaard, Haug, Bunsen, Max Müller, Roth, all accept the Zend Avesta as containing in the main, if not the actual words of Zoroaster, yet authentic reminiscences of his teaching. The Gâthâs of the Yaçna are now considered to be the oldest part of the Avesta, as appears from the investigations of Haug and others. (See Dr. Martin Haug's translation and commentary of the Five Gâthâs of Zarathustra. Leipzig, 1860.)
120. Even good scholars often follow each other in a false direction for want of a little independent thinking. The Greek of Plato was translated by a long succession of writers, "Zoroaster the son of Oromazes," until some one happened to think that this genitive might imply a different relation.
121. Duncker (Gesch. des Alterthums, B. II.) gives at length the reasons which prove Zoroaster and the Avesta to have originated in Bactria.
122. Duncker (B. II. s. 483). So Döllinger.
123. Egypt's Place in Universal History, Vol. III. p. 471.
124. Eran, das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris.
125. Journal of the Am. Or. Soc., Vol. V. No. 2, p. 353.
126. The Gentile and Jew, Vol. I. p. 380.
127. Five Great Monarchies, Vol. III. p. 94.
128. Essays, &c., by Martin Haug, p. 255.
129. Die Religion und Sitte der Perser. Von Dr. Adolf Rapp. (1865.)
130. Bunsen, Egypt, Vol. III. p. 455.
131. Written in the thirteenth century after Christ. An English translation may be found in Dr. J. Wilson's "Pârsî Religion."
132. Chips, Vol. I. p. 88.
133. So Mr. Emerson, in one of those observations which give us a system of philosophy in a sentence, says, "The soul knows no persons." Perhaps he should have said, "The Spirit."
134. Islam is, in this sense, a moral religion, its root consisting in obedience to Allah and his prophet. Sufism, a Mohammedan mysticism, is a heresy.
135. Vendidad, Farg. I. 3. "Therefore Angra-Mainyus, the death-dealing, created a mighty serpent and snow." The serpent entering into the Iranic Eden is one of the curious coincidences of the Iranic and Hebrew traditions.
136. Lyell, Principles of Geology (eighth edition), p. 77.
137. Idem., p. 83. A similar change from a temperate climate to extreme cold has taken place in Greenland within five or six centuries.
138. The Daêvas, or evil spirits of the Zend books, are the same as the Dêvas, or Gods of the Sanskrit religion.
139. The Patets are formularies of confession. They are written in Pârsî, with occasional passages inserted in Zend.
140. Zoroast. Stud. 1863.
141. Vendidad, Fargard XIX. 33, 44, 55.
142. The Albordj of the Zend books is doubtless the modern range of the Elbrooz. This mighty chain comes from the Caucasus into the northern frontier of Persia. See a description of this region in "Histoire des Perses, par le Comte de Gobineau. Paris, 1869."
143. See Burnouf, Comment, sur le Yaçna, p. 528. Flotard, La Religion primitive des Indo-Européens. 1864.
144. Vendidad, Fargard X. 17.
145. See Spiegel's note to the tenth Fargard of the Vendidad.
146. See Windischmann, "Ueber den Soma-Cultus der Arien."
147. Perhaps one of the most widely diffused appellations is that of the divine being. We can trace this very word divine back to the ancient root Div, meaning to shine. From this is derived the Sanskrit Devas, the Zend Daêva. the Latin Deus, the German Zio, the Greek Zeus, and also Jupiter (from Djaus-piter). See Spiegel, Zend Avesta, Einleitung, Cap. I.
148. Spiegel, Vend. Farg. XIX. note.
149. Vendidad, Farg. XVIII. 110. Farvardin-Yasht, XVI.
150. Article in Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1865.
151. Article in Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1865.
152. Other Egyptologists would not agree to this antiquity.
153. Revue des Deux Mondes, September 1, 1887.
154. Revue des Deux Mondes, p. 195.
155. Yet this very organic religion, "incorporate in blood and frame," was a preparation for Christianity; and Dr. Brugsch (Aus dem Orient, p. 73) remarks, that "exactly in Egypt did Christianity find most martyrs; and it is no accident, but a part of the Divine plan, that in the very region where the rock-cut temples and tombs are covered with memorials of the ancient gods and kings, there, by their side, other numerous rock-cut inscriptions tell of a yet more profound faith and devotion born of Christianity."
156. It is yet marked in the almanacs as Candlemas Day, or the Purification of the Virgin Mary.
157. De Rougé, Revue Archéologique, 1853.
158. Ampère, Revue Arch. 1849, quoted by Döllinger.
159. These designations are the Greek form of the official titles.
160. I do not know if it has been noticed that the principle of Swedenborg's. heaven was anticipated by Milton (Paradise Lost, V. 573),—
                "What surmounts the reach
Of human sense I shall delineate so
By likening spiritual to corporeal forms,
As may express them best; though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein.
Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought."
161. Bunsen, Egypt's Place, Vol. V. p. 129, note.
162. This Museum also contains three large mummies of the sacred bull of Apis, a gold ring of Suphis, a gold necklace with the name of Menes, and many other remarkable antiquities.
163. Book of Job, Chap. xxix.
164. Brugsch, as above.
165. Lenormant, Ancient History of the East, I. 234, in the English translation.
166. Translated by De Rougé. See Revue Contemporaine, August, 1856.
167. Egypt 3300 Years ago. By Lanoye.
168. Beside the monuments and the papyri, we have as sources of information the remains of the Egyptian historians Manetho and Eratosthenes; the Greek accounts of Egypt by Herodotus, Plato, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, Jamblichus; and the modern researches of Heeren, Champollion, Rossalini, Young, Wilkinson. The more recent writers to be consulted are as follows:—
Bunsen's "Ægypten's Stelle in der Weltgeschichte. Hamburg." (First volume printed in 1845.) This great work was translated by C. C. Cottrel in five 8vo volumes, the last published in 1867, after the death of both author and translator. The fifth volume of the translation contains a full translation of the "Book of the Dead," by the learned Samuel Birch of the British Museum.
Essays in the Revue Archéologique and other learned periodicals, by the Vicomte de Rougé, Professor of Egyptian Philology at Paris. Works by M. Chabas, M. Mariette, De Brugsch, "Aus dem Orient," etc., Samuel Sharpe, A. Maury, Lepsius, and others.
169. The Egyptian doctrine of transmigration differed from that of the Hindoos in this respect, that no idea of retribution seems to be connected with it. According to Herodotus (II. 123), the soul must pass through all animals, fishes, insects, and birds; in short, must complete the whole circuit of animated existence, before it again enters the body of a man; "and this circuit of the soul," he adds, "is performed in three thousand years." According to him, it does not begin "until the body decays." This may give us one explanation of the system of embalming; for if the circuit of transmigration is limited to three thousand years, and the soul cannot leave the body till it decays (the words of Herodotus are, "the body decaying," τοῦ σώματος δὲ καταφθίνοντος), then if embalming delays decay for one thousand years, so much is taken off from the journey through animals. That the soul was believed to be kept with the body as long as it was undecayed is also expressly stated by Servius (Comm. on the Æneid of Virgil): "The learned Egyptians preserve the corpse from decay in tombs in order that its soul shall remain with it, and not quickly pass into other bodies."
Hence, too, the extraordinary pains taken in ornamenting the tombs, as the permanent homes of the dead during a long period. Diodorus says that they ornamented the tombs as the enduring residences of mankind.
Transmigration in India was retribution, but in Egypt it seems to have been a condition of progress. It was going back into the lower organizations, to gather up all their varied life, to add to our own. So Tennyson suggests,—
"If, through lower lives I came,
Though all experience past became
Consolidate in mind and frame," etc.
Beside the reason for embalming given above, there may have been the motive arising from the respect for bodily organization, so deeply rooted in the Egyptian mind.
170. Animals and plants, more than anything else, and animals more than plants, are the types of variety; they embody that great law of differentiation, one of the main laws of the universe, the law which is opposed to that of unity, the law of centrifugal force, expressed in our humble proverb, "It takes all sorts of people to make a world."
171. Maury, "Revue des Deux Mondes, 1867." "Man's Origin and Destiny, J. P. Lesley, 1868." "Recherches sur les Monumens, etc., par M. de Rougé, 1866."
172. Article "Ægypten," in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon, 1869. Duncker, "Geschichte des Alterthums, Dritte Auflage, 1863."
173. See Duncker, as above.
174. Les Pasteurs en Egypt, par F. Chabas. Amsterdam, 1868.
175. The "hornets," Ex. xxiii. 28, and Josh. xxiv. 11, 12, are not insects, but the Hyksôs, who, driven from Egypt were overrunning Syria. See New York Nation, article on the Hyksôs, May 13, 1869.
176. Pap. Tallier (Bunsen IV. 671) as translated by De Rougé, Goodwin, &c.: "In the days when the land of Egypt was held by the invaders, King Apapi (at Avaris) set up Sutekh for his lord; he worshipped no other god in the whole land."
177. I follow here De Rougé, Brugsch, and Duncker, rather than Bunsen.
178. Athenæum Français, 1856.
179. Lesley, Man's Origin and Destiny, p. 149. Brugsch, Aus dem Orient, p. 37.
180. A common title on the monuments for the king is Per-aa, in the dialect of Upper Egypt, Pher-ao in that of Lower Egypt, meaning "The lofty house," equivalent to the modern Turkish title, "The Sublime Porte."
181. "Ægypten und die Bücher Mosis, von Dr. Georg Ebers. Leipzig, 1868." "Bunsen, Bibel-Werk," Erster Theil, p. 63.
182. Æschylus calls the Egyptian sailors μελάγχιμος. Lucian calls a young Egyptian "black-skinned," but Ammianus Marcellinus says, "Ægyptii plerique subfusculi sunt et atrati."
183. "Ægypten und die Bücher Mosis, von Ebers, Vol. I. p. 43."
184. "Th. Benfey, Ueber das verhältniss der ägyptîschen Sprache zum semitischen Sprachstamme, 1844."
185. Ægypten, &c.
186. "The skulls of the mummies agree with history in proving that Egypt was peopled with a variety of tribes; and physiologists, when speaking more exactly, have divided them into three classes. The first is the Egyptian proper, whose skull is shaped like the heads of the ancient Theban statues and the modern Nubians. The second is a race of men more like the Europeans, and these mummies become more common as we approach the Delta. These are perhaps the same as the modern Copts. The third is of an Arab race, and are like the heads of the laborers in the pictures."—Sharpe, Hist. of Egypt, I. 3. He refers to Morton's Crania Ægyptiaca for his authority.
Prichard (Nat. Hist. of Man and Researches, &c.), after a full examination of the question concerning the ethnical relations of the Egyptians, and of Morton's craniological researches, concludes in favor of an Asiatic origin of the Egyptians, connected with an amalgamation with the African autocthones.
187. "Dieser Völkerschaften gehorten der kaukasischen Race an; ihre Sprachen waren dem Semitischen am nächsten Verwandt." G. des A. I. 11.
188. Brugsch derives it from Ki-Ptah = worshippers of Ptah.
189. Plato, Timæus. Herod. II. 59. Gutschmidt and others deny this etymologic relation of Neith to Athênê.
190. "There is a profound consolation hidden in the old Egyptian inscribed rocks. They show us that the weird figures, half man and half beast, which we find carved and painted there, were not the true gods of Egypt, but politico-religious masks, concealing the true godhead. These rocks teach that the real object of worship was the one undivided Being, existing from the Beginning, Creator of all things, revealing himself to the illuminated soul as the Mosaic "I AM THE I AM." It is true that this pure doctrine was taught only to the initiated, and the stones forbid it to be published. 'This is a hidden mystery; tell it to no one; let it be seen by no eye, heard by no ear: only thou and thy teacher shall possess this knowledge.'" Brugsch, Aus dem Orient, p. 69.
May not one reason for concealing this doctrine of the unity and spirituality of God have been the stress of the African mind to variety and bodily form? The priests feared to encounter this great current of sentiment in the people, and so outwardly conformed to it.
191. So says Wilkinson.
192. The finger on the mouth symbolizes, not silence, but childhood.
193. The name "Mut" was also given to Neith, Pacht, and Isis.
194. Brugsch, Aus dem Orient, p. 48.
195. See Merivale, Conversion of the Northern Nations, p. 187, note, where he gives examples of "the inveterate lingering of Pagan usages among the nominally converted." But many of these were sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
196. Kenrick, I. 372 (American edition).
197. See for proofs, Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity, by Samuel Sharpe, 1863.
198. Sharpe, Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity.
199. Sharpe, as above.
200. The earliest form of the Christian doctrine of the atonement was that the Devil killed Jesus in ignorance of his divine nature. The Devil was thus deceived into doing what he had no right to do, consequently he was obliged to pay for this by giving up the souls of sinners to which he had a right. The Osiris myth of the death of a god, which deeply colored the mysteries of Adonis and Eleusis, took its last form im this peculiar doctrine of atonement.
201. Hase, Kirchengeschichte, § 87.
202. Which continues in Christianity, in spite of Paul's plain statement, "Thou sowest not the body which shall be."
203. Serapis was not a god of the Pharaonic times, but came into Egypt under the Ptolemies. But lately M. Mariette has shown that Serapis was the dead bull Apis = Osiris-Apis. (Ὀσοραπις.)
204. Mr. Grote (Vol. II. p. 222, American edition) refers to Strabo's remark on the great superiority of Europe over Asia and Africa in regard to the intersection and interpenetration of the land by the sea. He also quotes Cicero, who says that all Greece is in close contact to the sea, and only two or three tribes separated from it, while the Greek islands swim among the waves with their customs and institutions. He says that the ancients remarked the greater activity, mutability, and variety in the life of maritime nations.
205. Mr. Buckle is almost the only marked exception. He nowhere recognizes the doctrine of race.
206. The ox is, in Sanskrit go or gaûs, in Latin bos, in Greek βοῦς.
The horse is, in Sanskrit açva, in Zend açpa, in Greek ἵππος, in Latin equus.
The sheep is, in Sanskrit avis, in Latin ovis, in Greek ὄϊs.
The goose is, in Sanskrit hansa, in Latin anser, in Old German kans, in Greek χήν.
House is, in Sanskrit dama, in Latin domus, in Greek δόμος. Door is, in Sanskrit dvâr or duâra, in Greek θύρα, in Irish doras.
Boat or ship is, in Sanskrit naûs, in Latin navis, in Greek ναύς. Oar is, in Sanskrit aritram, in Greek ἐρετμός in Latin remus.
The Greeks distinguished themselves from the Barbarians as a grain-eating race. Barbarians ate acorns.
207. Herod., I. 56, 57, 146; II. 51, 171; IV. 145; V. 26; VI. 137; VII. 94; VIII. 44, 73.
208. Maury, Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique, Chap. I. p. 5. He mentions several Pelasgic words which seem to be identical with old Italian or Etruscan names.
209. Müller, Dorians, Introduction, § 10.
210. Griechische Gotterlehre, Einleitung, § 6.
211. See Müller, Dorians.
212. Symbolik und Mythologie, Th. III., Heft 1, chap. 5, § 1.
213. Herod. II. 50 et seq.
214. Among the ancients Ονὸμα often had this force. It denoted personality. The meaning, therefore, of Herodotus is that the Egyptians taught the Greeks to give their deities proper names, instead of common names. A proper name is the sign of personality.
215. Maury, Religions de la Grèce, III. 263.
216. Diod. Sic., I. 92-96.
217. Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, § 50, Vol. 1.
218. Mr. Grote (History of Greece, Part I. Chap. 1.) maintains that Heaven, Night, Sleep, and Dream "are Persons, just as much as Zeus and Apollo." I confess that I can hardly understand his meaning. The first have neither personal qualities, personal life, personal history, nor personal experience; they appear only as vast abstractions, and so disappear again.
219. Keats, in his Hyperion, is the only modern poet who has caught the spirit of the mighty Titanic deities and is able to speak
"In the large utterance of the early gods."
220. Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Européenes.
221. B.C. 1104. Döllinger.
222. Die Dorier, X. 9.
223. Ottfried Müller, Die Dorier.
224. Varro, quoted by Maury.
225. Dione was the female Jupiter, her name meaning simply "the goddess," identical with the Italic "Juno," formed from Διος.
226. But not the same character. At Dodona he was invoked as the Eternal. Pausanias (X. c. 12, § 5) says that the priestesses of that shrine used this formula in their prayer: "Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus shall be! O great Zeus!" On Olympus he was not conceived as eternal, but only as immortal.
227. Rev. G. W. Cox (A Manual of Mythology, London, 1867. The Mythology of the Aryan Nations, London, 1870) has shown much ingenuity in his efforts to trace the myths and legends of the Greeks, Germans, etc., back to some original metaphors in the old Vedic speech, most of which relate to the movements of the sun, and the phenomena of the heavens. It seems probable that he carries this too far; for why cannot later ages originate myths as well as the earlier? The analogies by which he seeks to approximate Greek, Scandinavian, and Hindoo stories are often fanciful. And the sun plays so overwhelming a part in this drama, that it reminds one of the picture in "Hermann and Dorothea," of the traveller who looked at the sun till he could see nothing else.
"Schweben sichet ihr Bild, wohin er die Blicke nur wendet."
228. See Le Sentiment Religieux en Grèce, d'Homère à Eschyle, par Jules Girard, Paris, 1869.
229. Iliad, Book I. v. 600.
230. Margaret Fuller used to distinguish Apollo and Bacchus as Genius and Geniality.
231. Isthmian, VI.
232. Pythian, II.
233. Nemean, VI.
234. God in History, IV. 10.
235. "Atrocem animam Catonis."—Horace.
236. Antigonê, 450.
237. Yet, even in Euripides, we meet a strain like that (Hecuba, line 800), which we may render as follows:—
"For, though perhaps we may be helpless slaves,
Yet are the gods most strong, and over them
Sits LAW supreme. The gods are under law,—
So do we judge,—and therefore we can live
While right and wrong stand separate forever."
238. See the original in Herder's Greek text, Hellenische Blumenlese, and in Cudworth's Intellectual System.
239. Welcker, Grieschische Gotterlehre, § 25.
240. Ottfried Müller, History of Greek Art, §§ 115, 347.
241. Oxford Prize Poems, Poem for 1812.
242. Ὁ μέν θεὸς εις· κοὗτος δὲ οὐκ, ὡς τινὲς ὑπονοῦσιν, ἐκτὸς τὰς διακοσμήσεας· ἀλλ ἐν αὐτᾷ, ὅλος ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ κύκλῳ, ἐπίσκοπος πάσας γενέσες και κράσεως τῶν ὅλων.—Clem. Alex. Cohort. ad gentes.
243. Monotheism among the Greeks, translated in the Contemporary Review, March, 1867. Victor Cousin, Fragments de Philosophie Ancienne.
244. Quotations from Aristotle, in Rixner, I. § 75.
245. See Rixner, Zeller, and the poem of Empedocles on the Nature of Things (περὶ φάσεως), especially the commencement of the Third Book.
246. His famous doctrine, that "man is the measure of all things," meant that there is nothing true but that which appears to man to be so at any moment. He taught, as we should now say, the subjectivity of knowledge.
247. Zeller, as before cited.
248. Geschichte der Philosophie.
249. The sentence which Plato wrote over his door, οὐδεις ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω, probably means, "Let no one enter who has not definite thoughts." So Goethe declared that outline went deepest into the mysteries of nature.
250. For Proofs, see Ackermann, Cudworth, Tayler Lewis, and the New-Englander, October, 1869.
251. Page 28, German edition.
252. Laws, X. 893.
253. Timæus, IX.
254. Laws, IV. 715.
255. Zeller, as above. Also Zeller, "Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics," translated by Reichel. London: Longmans, 1870.
256. Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, p. 140.
257. Mr. Fergusson thinks the peristyle not intended for an ambulatory, but is unable to assign any other satisfactory purpose.
258. Illustrated Hand-Book of Architecture.
259. Plutarch, quoted by Döllinger.
260. Buckley's translation, in Bohn's Classical Library.
261. Ibid.
262. Republic, II. 17. See Döllinger's discussion of this subject, in "The Gentile and the Jew," English translation, Vol. I. p. 125.
263. Advancement of Learning.
264. Ottfried Müller has shown that some of these writings existed in the time of Euripides.
265. Cudworth's Intellectual System, I. 403 (Am. ed.). Rixner, Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Anhang, Vol. I.
266. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. IV. p. 71.
267. Christianity and Greek Philosophy. By B. F. Cocker, D.D. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1870.
268. See Neander, Church History, Vol I. p. 88, American edition.
269. Hegel's Philosophic in Wörtlichen Ausüzgen. Berlin, 1843.
270. Romische Geschichte, von Theodor Mommsen, Kap. XII.
271. Janus, Picus, Faunus, Romulus, were indigites. Funke, Real Lexicon.
272. See Niebuhr's Lectures on the History of Rome, for facts concerning the Siculi. The sound el appears in Keltic, Gael, Welsch, Welsh, Belgians, Gauls, Galatians, etc. M. Grotefend (as quoted by Guigniaut, in his notes to Creuzer) accepts this Keltic origin of the Siculi, believing that they entered Italy from the northwest, and were gradually driven farther south till they reached Sicily. Those who expelled them were the Pelasgic races, who passed from Asia, south of the Caspian and Black Seas, through Asia Minor and Greece, preceding the Hellenic races. This accounts for the statement of Herodotus that the Pelasgi came from Lydia in Asia Minor, without our being obliged to assume that they came by sea,—a fact highly improbable. They were called Tyrrheanians, not from any city or king of Lydia, but, as M. Lepsius believes, from the Greek τύῤῥις (Latin, turris), a tower, because of their Cyclopean masonry. The Roman state, on this supposition, may have owed its origin to the union of the two great Aryan races, the Kelts and Pelasgi.
273. Mythologie der Griechen und Romer, von Dr. M. W. Heffter. Leipzig, 1854.
274. And so our word "janitor" comes to us from this very old Italian deity.
275. Ampère, L'Histoire Romaine.
276. This seems to us more probable than Buttman's opinion, that the temple of Janus was originally by the gate of the city, which gate was open in war and closed in peace. In practice, it would probably be different.
277. "Quis ignorat vel dictum vel conditum a Jano Janiculum?" Solinus, II. 3, quoted by Ampère.
"Arx mea collis erat, quem cultrix nomine nostro
Nuncupat hæc ætas, Janiculumque vocat."—Fasti, I. 245.
279. Mater Matuta ("matutina," matinal) was a Latin goddess of the dawn, who was absorbed into Juno, as often happened to the old Italian deities. Hartung says: "There was no limit to the superficial levity with which the Romans changed their worship."
280. The Etruscans worshipped a goddess named Menerfa or Menfra.—Heffter.
281. Heffter, p. 525. Cloaca is derived from cluere, which means to wash away. Libertina or Libitina is the goddess of funerals.
282. Republic, II. 19.
283. Hartung.
284. "Diis quos superiores et involutes vocant."—Seneca, Quæst. Nat., II. 41.
285. "De re rustica"; quoted by Merivale in the Preface to The Conversion of the Roman Empire.
286. From the same root come our words "fate," "fanatic," etc. "Fanaticum dicitur arbor fulmine icta."—Festus, 69.
287. From "sacrare" or "consecrare." Hence sacrament and sacerdotal.
288. The word "calendar" is itself derived from the Roman "Kalends," the first day of the month.
289. See Merivale, The Conversion of the Roman Empire, Lect. IV. p. 74.
290. Döllinger, Gentile and Jew. Funke, Real Lexicon. Festus.
291. Book I. 592.
292. IV. 593.
293. De Divinatione, II. 12, etc.
294. A Greek epigram, recently translated, alludes to the same fact:—
"Honey and milk are sacrifice to thee,
Kind Hermes, inexpensive deity.
But Hercules demands a lamb each day,
For keeping, so he says, the wolves away.
Imports it much, meek browsers of the sod,
Whether a wolf devour you, or a god?"
295. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap. II.
296. Conversion of the Roman Empire, Note A.
297. "Expedit civitates falli in religione," said Varro.
298. "Philosophia sapientiæ amor est." "Nec philosophia sine virtute, nec sine philosophia virtus." Epist. XCI. 5.
299. "Physica non faciunt bonos, sed doctos." Epist. CVI. 11.
300. "Bonum est, quod ad se impetum animi secundum naturam movet." Epist. CXVIII. 9.
301. "Universa ex materia et Deo constant." Epist. LXV. 24.
302. "Socii Dei sumus et membra. Prope a te Deus est, tecum est, intus est. Sacer intra nos Spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos. Deus ad homines venit; immo, in homines." Epist. XCII. 41, 73.
303. Arrian's "Discourses of Epictetus," III. 24.
304. Lectures on the History of Rome, III. 247.
305. Monolog., X. 14.
306. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, p. 150.
307. Quoted by Neander, Church History, I. 10 (Am. ed.).
308. Gott in der Geschichte, Zweiter Theil, Seite 387.
309. Tacitus, History, I. 3.
310. Ibid., Annals, IV. 20.
311. Ibid., Annals, VI. 22.
312. Ibid., Agricola, 46.
313. The Greek and the Jew, Vol. II. p. 147.
314. Epistle to the Romans, xv. 13.
315. "The legislation of Justinian, as far as it was original, in his Code, Pandects, and Institutes, was still almost exclusively Roman. It might seem that Christianity could hardly penetrate into the solid and well-compacted body of Roman law; or rather the immutable principles of justice had been so clearly discerned by the inflexible rectitude of the Roman mind, and so sagaciously applied by the wisdom of her great lawyers, that Christianity was content to acquiesce in these statutes, which she might despair, except in some respects, of rendering more equitable."—Milman, Latin Christianity, Vol. II. p. 11.
316. See Ranke, History of the Popes, Chap. I., where he says that the Roman Empire gave its outward form to Christianity (meaning Latin Christianity), and that the constitution of the hierarchy was necessarily modelled on that of the Empire.
317. History of Latin Christianity, Vol. II. p. 100.
318. Maine, Ancient Law, Chap. IX.
319. "Non aliud peccare quam Deo non reddere debitum."
320. Cæsar, Bell. Gall., I. 36, 39, 48, 50; VI. 21, 22, 23.
321. "Præliis ambiguus, bello non victus."—Annals, II. 88.
322. Tacitus, Germania, §§ 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9.
323. "Illud ex libertate vitium, quod non simul, nec ut jussi, conveniunt."—Germania, § 11.
324. Esprit des Loix.
325. See, for the history and religion of the Teutonic and Scandinavian race, Cæsar; Tacitus; Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie; Geschichte und System der Altdeutschen Religion, von Wilhelm Muller; Northern Mythology, by Benjamin Thorpe; The Sea-Kings of Norway, by S. Laing; Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, by G. Pigott; Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, by William and Mary Hewitt; Die Edda, von Karl Simrock; Aryan Mythology, by George W. Cox; Norse Tales, by Dasent, etc. But one of the best as well as the most accessible summaries in English of this mythology is Mallet's Northern Antiquities, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library. This edition is edited by Mr. Blackwell with great judgment and learning.
326. See Die Edda, von Karl Simrock. Stuttgart, 1855. Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, by William and Mary Howitt. London, 1852. Geschichte und System der Altdeutschen Religion, von Withelm Muller. Gottingen, 1844. Mallet's Northern Antiquities, edited by Blackwell, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library.
327. Hitopadesá; or, Salutary Counsels of Vishnu Sarman. Translated fiom the Sanskrit by Francis Johnson. London and Hertford, 1848.
328. See Memoir of Snorro Sturleson, in Laing's Sea-Kings of Norway.
329. It would appear from this legend that the gods are idealizations of human will set over against the powers of nature. The battle of the gods and giants represents the struggles of the soul against the inexorable laws of nature, freedom against fate, the spirit with the flesh, mind with matter, human hope with change, disappointment, loss; "the emergency of the case with the despotism of the rule."
330. Physical circumstances produced alterations in the mythologies, whose origin was the same. Thus, Loki, the god of fire, belongs to the Æsir, because fire is hostile to frost, but represents the treacherous and evil subterranean fires, which in Iceland destroyed with lava, sand, and boiling water more than was injured by cold.
331. Northern Mythology, by Benjamin Thorpe.
332. Gibbon, Chap. LVI.
333. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Neander, Church History, Vol. II. Appendix.
334. See, for the conversion of the German races, Gibbon; Guizot, History of Civilization; Merivale, Conversion of the German Nations; Milman, Latin Christianity; Neander, History of the Christian Church; Hegel; Lecky, History of European Morals.
335. Latin Christianity, Book III. Chap. II.
336. Palaztu, on the Western Sea. Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I., p. 487.
337. The word has been deciphered "Pulusater." Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Palestine.
338. Ibid.
339. Palestine, and the Sinaitic Peninsula. By Carl Ritter. Translated by William L. Gage. New York. 1866.
340. Ritter's Palestine, Vol. II. p. 315.
341. Lynch makes it thirteen hundred feet below the surface of the Mediterranean. See Ritter.
342. History of Israel, translated by Russell Martineau, Vol. I. p. 231.
343. New American Cyclopædia, art. Semitic Race.
344. Quoted by Le Normant, Manual of Ancient History of the East, Vol. I. p. 71.
345. Remarks on the Phoenician Inscription of Sidon, by Professor William W. Turner, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. VII. No. 1.
346. Poenulus, Act V. Sc. 1.
347. See his Essay on the People of Israel, in Studies of Religious History and Criticism, translated by O. B. Frothingham.
348. Except the proselytes, who are adopted children.
349. History of the Jewish Church, Lect. I.
350. See, for these marvellous stories, Weil, Legends of the Mussulmans.
351. See my sermon on "Melchisedek and his Moral," in "The Hour that Cometh," second edition.
352. Strabo, who probably wrote in the reign of Tiberius, thus describes Moses:—
"Moses, an Egyptian priest, who possessed a considerable tract of Lower Egypt, unable any longer to bear with what existed there, departed thence to Syria, and with him went out many who honored the Divine Being. For Moses taught that the Egyptians were not right in likening the nature of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans or even the Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the form of men. He held that this only was God,—that which encompasses all of us, earth and sea, that which we call heaven, the order of the world, and the nature of things. Of this, who that had any sense would venture to invent an image like to anything which exists among ourselves? Far better to abandon all statuary and sculpture, all setting apart of sacred precincts and shrines, and to pay reverence without any image whatever. The course prescribed was that those who have the gift of divination for themselves or others should compose themselves to sleep within the Temple, and those who live temperately and justly mjiy expect to receive lome good gift from God."
353. "Esteeming the reproach of the Christ" (that is, of the anointed, or, the anointed people) "greater riches than the treasures of Egypt."
354. See this well explained in The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation, by James B. Walker.
355. "'Behold, when I shall come to the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THE I AM..... Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you!'
"It has been observed that the great epochs of the history of the Chosen People are marked by the several names, by which in each the Divine Nature is indicated. In the patriarchal age we have already seen that the oldest Hebrew form by which the most general idea of Divinity is expressed is 'El-Elohim,' 'The Strong One,' 'The Strong Ones,' 'The Strong,' 'Beth-El,' 'Peni-El,' remained even to the latest times memorials of this primitive mode of address and worship. But now a new name, and with it a new truth, was introduced. I am Jehovah; I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name of El-Shaddai (God Almighty); but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them. The only certain use of it before the time of Moses is in the name of 'Jochebed,' borne by his own mother. It was the declaration of the simplicity, the unity, the self-existence of the Divine Nature, the exact opposite to all the multiplied forms of idolatry, human, animal, and celestial, that prevailed, as far as we know, everywhere else."—Stanley's Jewish Church.
356. A man became a prophet only by his powers of insight and foresight; until that was certified to the people, he was no prophet to them. When it was, it was because he convinced them by his manifestation of the truth; consequently any revision of the law by a prophet was a constitutional amendment by the people themselves.
357. Hitzig, Urgeschichte und Mythologie der Philister. Tacitus probably referred to the Cretan origin of the Philistines, when he says that the Jews were originally natives of the island of Crete. See his account of Moses and his institutions, Historia, V. 1-6.
358.
"Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,—
The canticles of love and woe."
Emerson, The Problem.
359. See this point fully discussed in Ritter, Palestine (Am. ed.), Vol. I. pp. 81-151.
360. See Weil, Biblical Legends, for the Mohammedan traditions concerning Solomon.
361. For he perceives the idea, but not its application to himself.
362. Neither of them perceives that he is the object of the injury.
363. Eccles. i. 2-11.
364. Ibid. i. 12; ii. 11.
365. Ibid. ii. 12-20.
366. Ibid. ii. 24.
367. Ibid. iii. 1-11.
368. Ibid. iii. 18-21.
369. Ibid. iv. 1-3.
370. Ibid. iv. 9-12.
371. Ibid. v. 1-7, 18.
372. Ibid. vi.
373. Eccles. vii. 2, 10, 15, 16.
374. Ibid. vii. 26-28.
375. Ibid. viii. 2, 3, 4, 11, 14(ix. 2, 3), 15, 17.
376. Ibid. xi. 1, 2, 6.
377. Ibid. xii. 1-8, 9, 12, 13.
378. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew.
379. See article on the Talmud, Quarterly Review, 1867.
380. An anecdote was recently related of a little girl, five years old, who was seen walking along the road, looking up into the trees. Being asked what she was seeking, she replied: "Mamma told me God was everywhere, but I cannot see him in that tree." The faith of the patriarchs was like that of this child,—not false, but unenlightened.
381. "And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth and do so."
382. See Greg, The Creed of Christendom, Chap. V. Also, The Spirit of the Bible, by Edward Higginson.
383. Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre. Stuttgart, 1843.
384. Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes, avant l'Islamisme, pendant l'époque de Mahomet, et jusqu'à la réduction de toutes les tribus sous la loi mussulmane. Paris. 3 vols. 8vo. 1847-48.
385. Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed, etc. Von A. Sprenger. Berlin, 1861.
386. Sprenger, Vorrede, p. xii.
387. The Life of Mahomet and History of Islam. By William Muir, Esq. London, 1858.
388. A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, and Subjects subsidiary thereto. By Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador. London: Trabner & Co. 1870.
                    "Quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat velut descripta tabella
Vita senis."
Horace.
390. The same remark will apply to Cromwell.
391. "Mohammed once asked Hassan if he had made any poetry about Abu Bakr, and the poet repeated these lines; whereupon Mohammed laughed so heartily as to show his back teeth, and said, 'Thou hast spoken truly, O Hassan! It is just as thou hast said.'"—Muir, Vol. II. p. 256.
392. Muir, Vol. II. p. 128.
393. Koran, Sura 80.
394. Mahomet and the Origin of Islam. Studies of Religious History. Translated by O. B. Frothingham.
395. Lewes, Life of Goethe, Vol. I. p. 207.
396. Mahomet et le Coran, par J. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Paris, 1865, p. 114.
397. Les Religions et les Philosophies dans L'Asíe Centrale. Par M. le Comte Gobineau. Paris.
398. A Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia. By William Gifford Palgrave. Third edition. 1866. London.
399. Article in Revue des Deux Mondes, January 15, 1868.
400. Studies in Religious History and Criticism. The Future of Religion in Modem Society.
401. Ibid., "The Part of the Semitic People in the History of Civilization."
402. Ibid. The Future of Religion in Modern Society, The Origins of Islamism.
403. The Sympathy of Religions, an Address by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston, 1871.
404. Job i. 6, 12; ii. 1; Zech. iii. 1; 1 Chron. xxi. 1.
405. In the passages where Satan or the Devil is mentioned, the truth taught is the same, and the moral result the same, whether we interpret the phrase as meaning a personal being, or the principle of evil. In many of these passages a personal being cannot be meant: for example, John vi. 70; Matt. xvi. 23; Mark viii. 33; 1 Cor. v. 5; 2 Cor. xii. 7; 1 Thess. ii. 18; 1 Tim. i. 20; Heb. ii. 14.
406. Exodus vi. 2.

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