Ten Great Religions, An Essay in Comparative Theology
James Freeman Clarke
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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.
Preface.
The first six chapters of the present volume are composed from six
articles prepared for the Atlantic Monthly, and published in that magazine
in 1868. They attracted quite as much attention as the writer anticipated,
and this has induced him to enlarge them, and add other chapters. His aim
is to enable the reader to become acquainted with the doctrines and
customs of the principal religions of the world, without having to consult
numerous volumes. He has not come to the task without some preparation,
for it is more than twenty-five years since he first made of this study a
speciality. In this volume it is attempted to give the latest results of
modern investigations, so far as any definite and trustworthy facts have
been attained. But the writer is well aware of the difficulty of being
always accurate in a task which involves such interminable study and such
an amount of details. He can only say, in the words of a Hebrew writer:
"If I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I
desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain
unto."
Contents.
Chapter I.
Introduction.--Ethnic and Catholic Religions.
Sec. 1. Object of the present Work
Sec. 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position
Sec. 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian
Apologists
Sec. 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles
Sec. 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in
Support of Christianity
Sec. 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are
Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or
adapted to become the Religion of all Races
Sec. 7. It will show that Ethnic Religions are partial, Christianity
universal
Sec. 8. It will show that Ethnic Religions are arrested, but that
Christianity is steadily progressive
Chapter II.
Confucius and the Chinese, or the Prose of Asia.
Sec. 1. Peculiarities of Chinese Civilization
Sec. 2. Chinese Government based on Education. Civil-Service Examinations
Sec. 3. Life and Character of Confucius
Sec. 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Confucianism
Sec. 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism
Sec. 6. Religious Character of the "Kings."
Sec. 7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese
Sec. 8. The Tae-ping Insurrection
Note. The Nestorian Inscription in China
Chapter III.
Brahmanism.
Sec. 1. Our Knowledge of Brahmanism. Sir William Jones
Sec. 2. Difficulty of this Study. The Complexity of the System. The
Hindoos have no History. Their Ultra-Spiritualism
Sec. 3. Helps from Comparative Philology. The Aryans in Central Asia
Sec. 4. The Aryans in India. The Native Races. The Vedic Age. Theology
of the Vedas
Sec. 5. Second Period. Laws of Manu. The Brahmanic Age
Sec. 6. The Three Hindoo Systems of Philosophy,--The Sankhya, Vedanta,
and Nyasa
Sec. 7. Origin of the Hindoo Triad
Sec. 8. The Epics, the Puranas, and Modern Hindoo Worship
Sec. 9. Relation of Brahmanism to Christianity
Chapter IV.
Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the East.
Sec. 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit,
Protestantism
Sec. 2. Extent of Buddhism. Its Scriptures
Sec. 3. Sakya-muni, the Founder of Buddhism
Sec. 4. Leading Doctrines of Buddhism
Sec. 5. The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane
Sec. 6. Buddhism as a Religion
Sec. 7. Karma and Nirvana
Sec. 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism
Sec. 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity
Chapter V.
Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta.
Sec. 1. Ruins of the Palace of Xerxes at Persepolis
Sec. 2. Greek Accounts of Zoroaster. Plutarch's Description of his Religion
Sec. 3. Anquetil du Perron and his Discovery of the Zend Avesta
Sec. 4. Epoch of Zoroaster. What do we know of him?
Sec. 5. Spirit of Zoroaster and of his Religion
Sec. 6. Character of the Zend Avesta
Sec. 7. Later Development of the System in the Bundehesch
Sec. 8. Relation of the Religion of the Zend Avesta to that of the Vedas
Sec. 9. Is Monotheism or pure Dualism the Doctrine of the Zend Avesta
Sec. 10. Relation of this System to Christianity. The Kingdom of Heaven
Chapter VI.
The Gods of Egypt.
Sec. 1. Antiquity and Extent of Egyptian Civilization
Sec. 2. Religious Character of the Egyptians. Their Ritual
Sec. 3. Theology of Egypt. Sources of our Knowledge concerning it
Sec. 4. Central Idea of Egyptian Theology and Religion. Animal Worship
Sec. 5. Sources of Egyptian Theology. Age of the Empire and Affinities of
the Race
Sec. 6. The Three Orders of Gods
Sec. 7. Influence upon Judaism and Christianity
Chapter VII.
The Gods Of Greece.
Sec. 1. The Land and the Race
Sec. 2. Idea and general Character of Greek Religion
Sec. 3. The Gods of Greece before Homer
Sec. 4. The Gods of the Poets
Sec. 5. The Gods of the Artists
Sec. 6. The Gods of the Philosophers
Sec. 7. Worship of Greece
Sec. 8. The Mysteries. Orphism
Sec. 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity
Chapter VIII.
The Religion of Rome.
Sec. 1. Origin and essential Character of the Religion of Rome
Sec. 2. The Gods of Rome
Sec. 3. Worship and Ritual
Sec. 4. The Decay of the Roman Religion
Sec. 5. Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity
Chapter IX.
The Teutonic and Scandinavian Religion.
Sec. 1. The Land and the Race
Sec. 2. Idea of the Scandinavian Religion
Sec. 3. The Eddas and their Contents
Sec. 4. The Gods of Scandinavia
Sec. 5. Resemblance of the Scandinavian Mythology to that of Zoroaster
Sec. 6. Scandinavian Worship
Sec. 7. Social Character, Maritime Discoveries, and Political Institutions
of the Scandinavians
Sec. 8. Relation of this System to Christianity
Chapter X.
The Jewish Religion.
Sec. 1. Palestine, and the Semitic Races
Sec. 2. Abraham; or, Judaism as the Family Worship of a Supreme Being
Sec. 3. Moses; or, Judaism as the national Worship of a just and holy King
Sec. 4. David; or, Judaism as the personal Worship of a Father and Friend
Sec. 5. Solomon; or, the Religious Relapse
Sec. 6. The Prophets; or, Judaism as a Hope of a spiritual and universal
Kingdom of God
Sec. 7. Judaism as a Preparation for Christianity
Chapter XI.
Mohammed and Islam.
Sec. 1. Recent Works on the Life of Mohammed
Sec. 2. The Arabs and Arabia
Sec. 3. Early Life of Mohammed, to the Hegira
Sec. 4. Change in the Character of Mohammed after the Hegira
Sec. 5. Religious Doctrines and Practices among the Mohammedans
Sec. 6. The Criticism of Mr. Palgrave on Mohammedan Theology
Sec. 7. Mohammedanism a Relapse; the worst Form of Monotheism, and a
retarding Element in Civilization
Note
Chapter XII.
The Ten Religions and Christianity.
Sec. 1. General Results of this Survey
Sec. 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life
Sec. 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism,
Confucianism, and Buddhism
Sec. 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in
all Religions
Sec. 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome
Sec. 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The
Monad in all Religions
Sec. 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the Life of Jesus
Sec. 8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of universal Unity
Ten Great Religions.
Chapter I.
Introduction.--Ethnic and Catholic Religions.
Sec. 1. Object of the present Work.
Sec. 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position.
Sec. 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian
Apologists.
Sec. 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles.
Sec. 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in
Support of Christianity.
Sec. 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are
Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or
adapted to become the Religion of all Races.
Sec. 7. It will show that Ethnic Religions are Partial, Christianity
Universal.
Sec. 8. It will show that Ethnic Religions are arrested, but that
Christianity is steadily progressive.
Sec. 1. Object of the present Work.
The present work is what the Germans call a _Versuch_, and the English an
Essay, or attempt. It is an attempt to compare the great religions of the
world with each other. When completed, this comparison ought to show what
each is, what it contains, wherein it resembles the others, wherein it
differs from the others; its origin and development, its place in
universal history; its positive and negative qualities, its truths and
errors, and its influence, past, present, or future, on the welfare of
mankind. For everything becomes more clear by comparison We can never
understand the nature of a phenomenon when we contemplate it by itself, as
well as when we look at it in its relations to other phenomena of the same
kind. The qualities of each become more clear in contrast with those of
the others. By comparing together, therefore, the religions of mankind,
to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ, we are able to perceive
with greater accuracy what each is. The first problem in Comparative
Theology is therefore analytical, being to distinguish each religion from
the rest. We compare them to see wherein they agree and wherein they
differ. But the next problem in Comparative Theology is synthetical, and
considers the adaptation of each system to every other, to determine its
place, use, and value, in reference to universal or absolute religion. It
must, therefore, examine the different religions to find wherein each is
complete or defective, true or false; how each may supply the defects of
the other or prepare the way for a better; how each religion acts on the
race which receives it, is adapted to that race, and to the region of the
earth which it inhabits. In this department, therefore, it connects itself
with Comparative Geography, with universal history, and with ethics.
Finally, this department of Comparative Theology shows the relation of
each partial religion to human civilization, and observes how each
religion of the world is a step in the progress of humanity. It shows that
both the positive and negative side of a religion make it a preparation
for a higher religion, and that the universal religion must root itself in
the decaying soil of partial religions. And in this sense Comparative
Theology becomes the science of missions.
Such a work as this is evidently too great for a single mind. Many
students must co-operate, and that through many years, before it can be
completed. This volume is intended as a contribution toward that end. It
will contain an account of each of the principal religions, and its
development. It will be, therefore, devoted to the natural history of
ethnic and catholic religions, and its method will be that of analysis.
The second part, which may be published hereafter, will compare these
different systems to show what each teaches concerning the great subjects
of religious thought,--God, Duty, and Immortality. Finally, it will
compare them with Christianity, and will inquire whether or not that is
capable of becoming the religion of the human race.
Sec. 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position.
The work of Comparative Theology is to do equal justice to all the
religious tendencies of mankind. Its position is that of a judge, not that
of an advocate. Assuming, with the Apostle Paul, that each religion has
come providentially, as a method by which different races "should seek the
Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him," it attempts to
show how each may be a step in the religious progress of the races, and "a
schoolmaster to bring men to Christ." It is bound, however, to abstain
from such inferences until it has accurately ascertained all the facts.
Its first problem is to learn what each system contains; it may then go
on, and endeavor to generalize from its facts.
Comparative Theology is, therefore, as yet in its infancy. The same
tendency in this century, which has produced the sciences of Comparative
Anatomy, Comparative Geography, and Comparative Philology, is now creating
this new science of Comparative Theology.[1] It will be to any special
theology as Comparative Anatomy is to any special anatomy, Comparative
Geography to any special geography, or Comparative Philology to the study
of any particular language. It may be called a science, since it consists
in the study of the facts of human history, and their relation to each
other. It does not dogmatize: it observes. It deals only with
phenomena,--single phenomena, or facts; grouped phenomena, or laws.
Several valuable works, bearing more or less directly on Comparative
Theology, have recently appeared in Germany, France, and England. Among
these may be mentioned those of Max Mueller, Bunsen, Burnouf, Doellinger,
Hardwicke, St. Hilaire, Duencker, F. C. Baur, Renan, Creuzer, Maurice, G.
W. Cox, and others.
In America, except Mr. Alger's admirable monograph on the "Doctrine of the
Future Life," we have scarcely anything worthy of notice. Mrs. Lydia Maria
Child's work on the "Progress of Religious Ideas" deserves the greatest
credit, when we consider the time when it was written and the few sources
of information then accessible.[2] Twenty-five years ago it was hardly
possible to procure any adequate information concerning Brahmanism,
Buddhism, or the religions of Confucius, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. Hardly
any part of the Vedas had been translated into a European language. The
works of Anquetil du Perron and Kleuker were still the highest authority
upon the Zendavesta. About the Buddhists scarcely anything was known. But
now, though many important _lacunae_ remain to be filled, we have ample
means of ascertaining the essential facts concerning most of these
movements of the human soul. The time seems to have come to accomplish
something which may have a lasting value.
Sec. 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian
Apologists.
Comparative Theology, pursuing its impartial course as a positive science,
will avoid the error into which most of the Christian apologists of the
last century fell, in speaking of ethnic or heathen religions. In order to
show the need of Christianity, they thought it necessary to disparage all
other religions. Accordingly they have insisted that, while the Jewish and
Christian religions were revealed, all other religions were invented;
that, while these were from God, those were the work of man; that, while
in the true religions there was nothing false, in the false religions
there was nothing true. If any trace of truth was to be found in
Polytheism, it was so mixed with error as to be practically only evil. As
the doctrines of heathen religions were corrupt, so their worship was only
a debasing superstition. Their influence was to make men worse, not
better; their tendency was to produce sensuality, cruelty, and universal
degradation. They did not proceed, in any sense, from God; they were not
even the work of good men, but rather of deliberate imposition and
priestcraft. A supernatural religion had become necessary in order to
counteract the fatal consequences of these debased and debasing
superstitions. This is the view of the great natural religions of the
world which was taken by such writers as Leland, Whitby, and Warburton in
the last century. Even liberal thinkers, like James Foster[3] and John
Locke,[4] declare that, at the coming of Christ, mankind had fallen into
utter darkness, and that vice and superstition filled the world. Infidel
no less than Christian writers took the same disparaging view of natural
religions. They considered them, in their source, the work of fraud; in
their essence, corrupt superstitions; in their doctrines, wholly false; in
their moral tendency, absolutely injurious; and in their result,
degenerating more and more into greater evil.
A few writers, like Cudworth and the Platonists, endeavored to put in a
good word for the Greek philosophers, but the religions of the world were
abandoned to unmitigated reprobation. The account which so candid a writer
as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account of its sweeping
character. "All the nations of the world," he says, "except the Jews, were
plunged in the grossest superstition. Some nations, indeed, went beyond
others in impiety and absurdity, but all stood charged with irrationality
and gross stupidity in matters of religion." "The greater part of the gods
of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and
their worthy deeds, such as kings, generals, and founders of cities." "To
these some added the more splendid and useful objects in the natural
world, as the sun, moon, and stars; and some were not ashamed to pay
divine honors to mountains, rivers, trees, etc." "The worship of these
deities consisted in ceremonies, sacrifices, and prayers. The ceremonies
were, for the most part, absurd and ridiculous, and throughout debasing,
obscene, and cruel. The prayers were truly insipid and void of piety, both
in their form and matter." "The priests who presided over this worship
basely abused their authority to impose on the people." "The whole pagan
system had not the least efficacy to produce and cherish virtuous emotions
in the soul; because the gods and goddesses were patterns of vice, the
priests bad men, and the doctrines false."[5]
This view of heathen religions is probably much exaggerated. They must
contain more truth than error, and must have been, on the whole, useful to
mankind. We do not believe that they originated in human fraud, that their
essence is superstition, that there is more falsehood than truth in their
doctrines, that their moral tendency is mainly injurious, or that they
continually degenerate into greater evil. No doubt it may be justly
predicated of all these systems that they contain much which is false and
injurious to human virtue. But the following considerations may tend to
show that all the religions of the earth are providential, and that all
tend to benefit mankind.
To ascribe the vast phenomena of religion, in their variety and
complexity, to man as their author, and to suppose the whole a mere work
of human fraud, is not a satisfactory solution of the facts before us.
That priests, working on human ignorance or fear, should be able to build
up such a great mass of belief, sentiment, and action, is like the Hindoo
cosmogony, which supposes the globe to rest on an elephant, the elephant
on a turtle, and the turtle on nothing at all.
If the people were so ignorant, how happened the priests to be so wise? If
the people were so credulous, why were not the priests credulous too?
"Like people, like priests," is a proverb approved by experience. Among
so many nations and through so many centuries, why has not some one priest
betrayed the secret of the famous imposition? Apply a similar theory to
any other human institution, and how patent is its absurdity! Let a
republican contend that all other forms of government--the patriarchal
system, government by castes, the feudal system, absolute and limited
monarchies, oligarchies, and aristocracies--are wholly useless and evil,
and were the result of statecraft alone, with no root in human nature or
the needs of man. Let one maintain that every system of _law_ (except our
own) was an invention of lawyers for private ends. Let one argue in the
same way about medicine, and say that this is a pure system of quackery,
devised by physicians, in order to get a support out of the people for
doing nothing. We should at once reply that, though error and ignorance
may play a part in all these institutions, they cannot be based on error
and ignorance only. Nothing which has not in it some elements of use can
hold its position in the world during so long a time and over so wide a
range. It is only reasonable to say the same of heathen or ethnic
religions. They contain, no doubt, error and evil. No doubt priestcraft
has been carried very far in them, though not further perhaps than it has
sometimes been carried in Christianity. But unless they contained more of
good than evil, they could not have kept their place. They partially
satisfied a great hunger of the human heart. They exercised some restraint
on human wilfulness and passion. They have directed, however imperfectly,
the human conscience toward the right. To assume that they are wholly evil
is disrespectful to human nature. It supposes man to be the easy and
universal dupe of fraud. But these religions do not rest on such a sandy
foundation, but on the feeling of dependence, the sense of accountability,
the recognition of spiritual realities very near to this world of matter,
and the need of looking up and worshipping some unseen power higher and
better than ourselves. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind
forbids us to ascribe pagan religions to priestcraft as their chief
source.
And a reverence for Divine Providence brings us to the same conclusion.
Can it be that God has left himself without a witness in the world, except
among the Hebrews in ancient times and the Christians in modern times?
This narrow creed excludes God from any communion with the great majority
of human beings. The Father of the human race is represented as selecting
a few of his children to keep near himself, and as leaving all the rest to
perish in their ignorance and error. And this is not because they are
prodigal children who have gone astray into a far country of their own
accord; for they are just where they were placed by their Creator. HE "has
determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation."
HE has caused some to be born in India, where they can only hear of him
through Brahmanism; and some in China, where they can know him only
through Buddha and Confucius. The doctrine which we are opposing is; that,
being put there by God, they are born into hopeless error, and are then
punished for their error by everlasting destruction. The doctrine for
which we contend is that of the Apostle Paul, that God has "determined
beforehand the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord,
IF HAPLY THEY MAY FEEL AFTER HIM AND FIND HIM." Paul teaches that "all
nations dwelling on all the face of the earth" may not only seek and feel
after God, but also FIND him. But as all living in heathen lands are
heathen, if they find God at all, they must find him through heathenism.
The pagan religions are the effort of man to feel after God. Otherwise we
must conclude that the Being without whom not a sparrow falls to the
ground, the Being who never puts an insect into the air or a polyp into
the water without providing it with some appropriate food, so that it may
live and grow, has left the vast majority of his human children, made with
religious appetences of conscience, reverence, hope, without a
corresponding nutriment of truth. This view tends to atheism; for if the
presence of adaptation everywhere is the legitimate proof of creative
design, the absence of adaptation in so important a sphere tends, so far,
to set aside that proof.
The view which we are opposing contradicts that law of progress which
alone gives meaning and unity to history. Instead of progress, it teaches
degeneracy and failure. But elsewhere we see progress, not recession.
Geology shows us higher forms of life succeeding to the lower. Botany
exhibits the lichens and mosses preparing a soil for more complex forms of
vegetation. Civil history shows the savage state giving way to the
semi-civilized, and that to the civilized. If heathen religions are a
step, a preparation for Christianity, then this law of degrees appears
also in religion; then we see an order in the progress of the human
soul,--"first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the
ear." Then we can understand why Christ's coming was delayed till the
fulness of the time had come. But otherwise all, in this most important
sphere of human life, is in disorder, without unity, progress, meaning, or
providence.
These views, we trust, will be amply confirmed when we come to examine
each great religion separately and carefully. We shall find them always
feeling after God, often finding him. We shall see that in their origin
they are not the work of priestcraft, but of human nature; in their
essence not superstitions, but religions; in their doctrines true more
frequently than false; in their moral tendency good rather than evil. And
instead of degenerating toward something worse, they come to prepare the
way for something better.
Sec. 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles.
According to Christ and the Apostles, Christianity was to grow out of
Judaism, and be developed into a universal religion. Accordingly, the
method of Jesus was to go first to the Jews; and when he left the limits
of Palestine on a single occasion, he declared himself as only going into
Phoenicia to seek after the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he
stated that he had other sheep, not of this fold, whom he must bring,
recognizing that there were, among the heathen, good and honest hearts
prepared for Christianity, and already belonging to him; sheep who knew
his voice and were ready to follow him. He also declared that the Roman
centurion and the Phoenician woman already possessed great faith, the
centurion more than he had yet found in Israel. But the most striking
declaration of Jesus, and one singularly overlooked, concerning the
character of the heathen, is to be found in his description of the day of
judgment, in Matthew (chap. XXV.). It is very curious that men should
speculate as to the fate of the heathen, when Jesus has here distinctly
taught that all good men among them are his sheep, though they never heard
of him. The account begins, "Before him shall be gathered all the
Gentiles" (or heathen). It is not a description of the judgment of the
Christian world, but of the heathen world. The word here used ([Greek: ta
ethnae]) occurs about one hundred and sixty-four times in the New
Testament. It is translated "gentiles" oftener than by any other word,
that is, about ninety-three times; by "heathen" four or five times; and in
the remaining passages it is mostly translated "nations." That it means
the Gentiles or heathen here appears from the fact that they are
represented as ignorant of Christ, and are judged, not by the standard of
Christian faith, but by their humanity and charity toward those in
suffering. Jesus recognizes, therefore, among these ethnic or heathen
people, some as belonging to himself,--the "other sheep," not of the
Jewish fold.
The Apostle Paul, who was especially commissioned to the Gentiles, must be
considered as the best authority upon this question. Did he regard their
religions as wholly false? On the contrary, he tells the Athenians that
they are already worshipping the true God, though ignorantly. "Whom ye
ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." When he said this he was
standing face to face with all that was most imposing in the religion of
Greece. He saw the city filled with idols, majestic forms, the perfection
of artistic grace and beauty. Was his spirit then moved _only_ with
indignation against this worship, and had he no sympathy with the
spiritual needs which it expressed? It does not seem so. He recognized
piety in their souls. "I see that ye are, in all ways, exceedingly
pious." He recognized their worship as passing beyond the idols, to the
true God. He did not profess that he came to revolutionize their religion,
but to reform it. He does not proceed like the backwoodsman, who fells the
forest and takes out the stumps in order to plant a wholly different crop;
but like the nurseryman, who grafts a native stock with a better fruit.
They were already ignorantly worshipping the true God. What the apostle
proposed to do was to enlighten that ignorance by showing them who that
true God was, and what was his character. In his subsequent remarks,
therefore, he does not teach them that there is one Supreme Being, but he
_assumes_ it, as something already believed. He assumes him to be the
creator of all things; to be _omnipotent_,--"the Lord of heaven and
earth"; _spiritual_,--"dwelleth not in temples made with hands";
_absolute_,--"not needing anything," but the source of all things. He says
this, as not expecting any opposition or contradiction; he reserves his
criticisms on their idolatry for the end of his discourse. He then states,
quite clearly, that the different nations of the world have a common
origin, belong to one family, and have been providentially placed in space
and time, that each might seek the Lord in its own way. He recognized in
them a power of seeking and finding God, the God close at hand, and in
whom we live; and he quotes one of their own poets, accepting his
statement of God's fatherly character. Now, it is quite common for those
who deny that there is any truth in heathenism, to admire this speech of
Paul as a masterpiece of ingenuity and eloquence. But he would hardly have
made it, unless he thought it to be true. Those who praise his eloquence
at the expense of his veracity pay him a poor compliment. Did Paul tell
the Athenians that they were worshipping the true God _when they were
not_, and that for the sake of rhetorical effect? If we believe this
concerning him, and yet admire him, let us cease henceforth to find fault
with the Jesuits.
No! Paul believed what he said, that the Athenians were worshipping the
true God, though ignorantly. The sentiment of reverence, of worship, was
lifting them to its true object. All they needed was to have their
understanding enlightened. Truth he placed in the heart rather than the
understanding, but he also connected Christianity with Polytheism where
the two religions touched, that is, on their pantheistic side. While
placing God _above_ the world as its ruler, "seeing he is Lord of heaven
and earth," he placed him _in_ the world as an immanent presence,--"in him
we live, and move, and have our being." And afterward, in writing to the
Romans, he takes the same ground. He teaches that the Gentiles had a
knowledge of the eternal attributes of God (Rom. i. 19) and saw him in his
works (v. 20), and that they also had in their nature a law of duty,
enabling them to do the things contained in the law. This he calls "the
law written in the heart" (Rom. ii. 14,15). He blames them, not for
ignorance, but for disobedience. The Apostle Paul, therefore, agrees with
us in finding in heathen religions essential truth in connection with
their errors.
The early Christian apologists often took the same view. Thus Clement of
Alexandria believed that God had one great plan for educating the world,
of which Christianity was the final step. He refused to consider the
Jewish religion as the only divine preparation for Christianity, but
regarded the Greek philosophy as also a preparation for Christ. Neander
gives his views at length, and says that Clement was the founder of the
true view of history.[6] Tertullian declared the soul to be naturally
Christian. The Sibylline books were quoted as good prophetic works along
with the Jewish prophets. Socrates was called by the Fathers a Christian
before Christ.
Within the last few years the extravagant condemnation of the heathen
religions has produced a reaction in their favor. It has been felt to be
disparaging to human nature to suppose that almost the whole human race
should consent to be fed on error. Such a belief has been seen to be a
denial of God's providence, as regards nine tenths of mankind. Accordingly
it has become more usual of late to rehabilitate heathenism, and to place
it on the same level with Christianity, if not above it. The _Vedas_ are
talked about as though they were somewhat superior to the Old Testament,
and Confucius is quoted as an authority quite equal to Paul or John. An
ignorant admiration of the sacred books of the Buddhists and Brahmins has
succeeded to the former ignorant and sweeping condemnation of them. What
is now needed is a fair and candid examination and comparison of these
systems from reliable sources.
Sec. 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support
of Christianity.
Such an examination, doing full justice to all other religions,
acknowledging their partial truth and use, will not depreciate, but exalt
the value of Christianity. It will furnish a new kind of evidence in its
favor. But the usual form of argument may perhaps be changed.
Is Christianity a supernatural or a natural religion? Is it a religion
attested to be from God by miracles? This has been the great question in
evidences for the last century. The truth and divine origin of
Christianity have been made to depend on its supernatural character, and
to stand or fall with a certain view of miracles. And then, in order to
maintain the reality of miracles, it became necessary to prove the
infallibility of the record; and so we were taught that, to believe in
Jesus Christ, we must first believe in the genuineness and authenticity of
the whole New Testament. "All the theology of England," says Mr.
Pattison,[7] "was devoted to proving the Christian religion credible, in
this manner." "The apostles," said Dr. Johnson, "were being tried one a
week for the capital crime of forgery." This was the work of the school of
Lardner, Paley, and Whately.
But the real question between Christians and unbelievers in Christianity
is, not whether our religion is or is not supernatural; not whether
Christ's miracles were or not violations of law; nor whether the New
Testament, as it stands, is the work of inspired men. The main question,
back of all these, is different, and not dependent on the views we may
happen to take of the universality of law. It is this: Is Christianity, as
taught by Jesus, intended by God to be the religion of the human race? Is
it only one among natural religions? is it to be superseded in its turn by
others, or is it the one religion which is to unite all mankind? "Art thou
he that should come, or look we for another?" This is the question which
we ask of Jesus of Nazareth, and the answer to which makes the real
problem of apologetic theology.
Now the defenders of Christianity have been so occupied with their special
disputes about miracles, about naturalism and supernaturalism, and about
the inspiration and infallibility of the apostles, that they have left
uncultivated the wide field of inquiry belonging to Comparative Theology.
But it belongs to this science to establish the truth of Christianity by
showing that it possesses all the aptitudes which fit it to be the
religion of the human race.
This method of establishing Christianity differs from the traditional
argument in this: that, while the last undertakes to _prove_ Christianity
to be true, this _shows_ it to be true. For if we can make it appear, by a
fair survey of the principal religions of the world, that, while they are
ethnic or local, Christianity is catholic or universal; that, while they
are defective, possessing some truths and wanting others, Christianity
possesses all; and that, while they are stationary, Christianity is
progressive; it will not then be necessary to discuss in what sense it is
a supernatural religion. Such a survey will show that it is adapted to the
nature of man. When we see adaptation we naturally infer design. If
Christianity appears, after a full comparison with other religions, to be
the one and only religion which is perfectly adapted to man, it will be
impossible to doubt that it was designed by God to be the religion of our
race; that it is the providential religion sent by God to man, its truth
God's truth its way the way to God and to heaven.
Sec. 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are
Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to
become the Religion of all Races.
By ethnic religions we mean those religions, each of which has always been
confined within the boundaries of a particular race or family of mankind,
and has never made proselytes or converts, except accidentally, outside of
it. By catholic religions we mean those which have shown the desire and
power of passing over these limits, and becoming the religion of a
considerable number of persons belonging to different races.
Now we are met at once with the striking and obvious fact, that most of
the religions of the world are evidently religions limited in some way to
particular races or nations. They are, as we have said, _ethnic_. We use
this Greek word rather than its Latin equivalent, _gentile_, because
_gentile_, though meaning literally "of, or belonging to, a race," has
acquired a special sense from its New Testament use as meaning all who are
not Jews. The word "ethnic" remains pure from any such secondary or
acquired meaning, and signifies simply _that which belongs to a race_.
The science of ethnology is a modern one, and is still in the process of
formation. Some of its conclusions, however, may be considered as
established. It has forever set aside Blumenbach's old classification of
mankind into the Caucasian and four other varieties, and has given us,
instead, a division of the largest part of mankind into Indo-European,
Semitic, and Turanian families, leaving a considerable penumbra outside as
yet unclassified.
That mankind is so divided into races of men it would seem hardly possible
to deny. It is proved by physiology, by psychology, by glossology, and by
civil history. Physiology shows us anatomical differences between races.
There are as marked and real differences between the skull of a Hindoo and
that of a Chinaman as between the skulls of an Englishman and a negro.
There is not as great a difference, perhaps, but it is as real and as
constant. Then the characters of races remain distinct, the same traits
reappearing after many centuries exactly as at first. We find the same
difference of character between the Jews and Arabs, who are merely
different families of the same Semitic race, as existed between their
ancestors, Jacob and Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. Jacob and
the Jews are prudent, loving trade, money-making, tenacious of their
ideas, living in cities; Esau and the Arabs, careless, wild, hating
cities, loving the desert.
A similar example of the maintaining of a moral type is found in the
characteristic differences between the German and Kelts, two families of
the same Indo-European race. Take an Irishman and a German, working side
by side on the Mississippi, and they present the same characteristic
differences as the Germans and Kelts described by Tacitus and Caesar. The
German loves liberty, the Kelt equality; the one hates the tyrant, the
other the aristocrat; the one is a serious thinker, the other a quick and
vivid thinker; the one is a Protestant in religion, the other a Catholic.
Ammianus Marcellinus, living in Gaul in the fourth century, describes the
Kelts thus (see whether it does not apply to the race now).
"The Gauls," says he, "are mostly tall of stature,[8] fair and red-haired,
and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and
haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of
them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blue-eyed wife, especially
when with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms,
she begins, joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists like stones
from a catapult. Most of their voices are terrific and threatening, as
well when they are quiet as when they are angry. All ages are thought fit
for war. They are a nation very fond of wine, and invent many drinks
resembling it, and some of the poorer sort wander about with their senses
quite blunted by continual intoxication."
Now we find that each race, beside its special moral qualities, seems also
to have special religious qualities, which cause it to tend toward some
one kind of religion more than to another kind. These religions are the
flower of the race; they come forth from it as its best aroma. Thus we see
that Brahmanism is confined to that section or race of the great Aryan
family which has occupied India for more than thirty centuries. It belongs
to the Hindoos, to the people taking its name from the Indus, by the
tributaries of which stream it entered India from the northwest. It has
never attempted to extend itself beyond that particular variety of
mankind. Perhaps one hundred and fifty millions of men accept it as their
faith. It has been held by this race as their religion during a period
immense in the history of mankind. Its sacred books are certainly more
than three thousand years old. But during all this time it has never
communicated itself to any race of men outside of the peninsula of India.
It is thus seen to be a strictly ethnic religion, showing neither the
tendency nor the desire to become the religion of mankind.
The same thing may be said of the religion of Confucius. It belongs to
China and the Chinese. It suits their taste and genius. They have had it
as their state religion for some twenty-three hundred years, and it rules
the opinions of the rulers of opinion among three hundred millions of men.
But out of China Confucius is only a name.
So, too, of the system of Zoroaster. It was for a long period the religion
of an Aryan tribe who became the ruling people among mankind. The Persians
extended themselves through Western Asia, and conquered many nations, but
they never communicated their religion. It was strictly a national or
ethnic religion, belonging only to the Iranians and their descendants, the
Parsees.
In like manner it may be said that the religion of Egypt, of Greece, of
Scandinavia, of the Jews, of Islam, and of Buddhism are ethnic religions.
Those of Egypt and Scandinavia are strictly so. It is said, to be sure,
that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods
themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the
gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left
behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power
to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received.
For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of
the state,--a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real
Olympus of Rome was the Senate Chamber on the Capitoline Hill. Judaism
also was in reality an ethnic religion, though it aimed at catholicity and
expected it, and made proselytes. But it could not tolerate unessentials,
and so failed of becoming catholic. The Jewish religion, until it had
Christianity to help it, was never able to do more than make proselytes
here and there. Christianity, while preaching the doctrines of Jesus and
the New Testament, has been able to carry also the weight of the Old
Testament, and to give a certain catholicity to Judaism. The religion of
Mohammed has been catholic, in that it has become the religion of very
different races,--the Arabs, Turks, and Persians, belonging to the three
great varieties of the human family. But then Mohammedanism has never
sought to make _converts_, but only _subjects;_ it has not asked for
belief, but merely for submission. Consequently Mr. Palgrave, Mr. Lane,
and Mr. Vambery tell us, that, in Arabia, Egypt, and Turkistan, there are
multitudes who are outwardly Mohammedan, but who in their private belief
reject Mohammed, and are really Pagans. But, no doubt, there is a catholic
tendency both in Judaism and Mohammedanism; and this comes from the great
doctrine which they hold in common with Christianity,--the _unity of God_.
Faith in that is the basis of all expectation of a universal religion, and
the wish and the power to convert others come from that doctrine of the
Divine unity.
* * * * *
But Christianity teaches the unity of God not merely as a supremacy of
power and will, but as a supremacy of love and wisdom; it teaches God as
Father, and not merely as King; so it seeks not merely to make proselytes
and subjects, but to make converts. Hence Christianity, beginning as a
Semitic religion, among the Jews, went across the Greek Archipelago and
converted the Hellenic and the Latin races; afterward the Goths,
Lombards, Franks, Vandals; later still, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans.
Meantime, its Nestorian missionaries, pushing east, made converts in
Armenia, Persia, India, and China. In later days it has converted negroes,
Indians, and the people of the Pacific Islands. Something, indeed, stopped
its progress after its first triumphant successes during seven or eight
centuries. At the tenth century it reached its term. Modern missions,
whether those of Jesuits or Protestants, have not converted whole nations
and races, but only individuals here and there. The reason of this check,
probably, is, that Christians have repeated the mistakes of the Jews and
Mohammedans. They have sought to make proselytes to an outward system of
worship and ritual, or to make subjects to a _dogma_; but not to make
converts to an idea and a life. When the Christian missionaries shall go
and say to the Hindoos or the Buddhists: "You are already on your way
toward God,--your religion came from him, and was inspired by his Spirit;
now he sends you something more and higher by his Son, who does not come
to destroy but to fulfil, not to take away any good thing you have, but to
add to it something better," then we shall see the process of conversion,
checked in the ninth and tenth, centuries, reinaugurated.
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all teaching the strict unity of God,
have all aimed at becoming universal. Judaism failed because it sought
proselytes instead of making converts. Islam, the religion of Mohammed (in
reality a Judaizing Christian sect) failed because it sought to make
subjects rather than converts. Its conquests over a variety of races were
extensive, but not deep. To-day it holds in its embrace at least four very
distinct races,--the Arabs, a Semitic race, the Persians, an Indo-European
race, the Negroes, and the Turks or Turanians. But, correctly viewed,
Islam is only a heretical Christian sect, and so all this must be credited
to the interest of Christianity. Islam is a John the Baptist crying in the
wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord"; Mohammed is a schoolmaster to
bring men to Christ. It does for the nations just what Judaism did, that
is, it teaches the Divine unity. Esau has taken the place of Jacob in the
economy of Providence. When the Jews rejected Christ they ceased from
their providential work, and their cousins, the Arabs, took their place.
The conquests of Islam, therefore, ought to be regarded as the preliminary
conquests of Christianity.
There is still another system which has shown some tendencies toward
catholicity. This is Buddhism, which has extended itself over the whole of
the eastern half of Asia. But though it includes a variety of
nationalities, it is doubtful if it includes any variety of races. All the
Buddhists appear to belong to the great Mongol family. And although this
system originated among the Aryan race in India, it has let go its hold of
that family and transferred itself wholly to the Mongols.
But Christianity, from the first, showed itself capable of taking
possession of the convictions of the most different races of mankind. Now,
as on the day of Pentecost, many races hear the apostles speak in their
own tongues, in which they were born,--Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judaea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia
and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, strangers of
Rome, Cretes and Arabians. The miracle of tongues was a type of the effect
of the truth in penetrating the mind and heart of different nationalities.
The Jewish Christians, indeed, tried to repeat in Christianity their old
mistake which had prevented Judaism from becoming universal. They wished
to insist that no one should become a Christian unless he became a Jew at
the same time. If they had succeeded in this, they would have effectually
kept the Gospel of Christ from becoming a catholic religion. But the
Apostle Paul was raised up for the emergency, and he prevented this
suicidal course. Consequently Christianity passed at once into Europe, and
became the religion of Greeks and Romans as well as Jews. Paul struck off
from it its Jewish shell, told them that as Christians they had nothing to
do with the Jewish law, or with Jewish Passovers, Sabbaths, or ceremonies.
As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know
him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew. So Christianity became
at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths
and a divine life. It overflowed the nationalities of Greece and Rome, of
North Africa, of Persia and Western Asia, at the very beginning. It
conquered the Gothic and German conquerors of the Roman Empire. Under
Arian missionaries, it converted Goths, Vandals, Lombards. Under Nestorian
missionaries, it penetrated as far east as China, and made converts there.
In like manner the Gospel spread over the whole of North Africa, whence it
was afterwards expelled by the power of Islam. It has shown itself,
therefore, capable of adapting itself to every variety of the human race.
Sec. 7. Comparative Theology will probably show that the Ethnic Religions are
one-sided, each containing a Truth of its own, but being defective,
wanting some corresponding Truth. Christianity, or the Catholic Religion,
is complete on every Side.
Brahmanism, for example, is complete on the side of spirit, defective on
the side of matter; full as regards the infinite, empty of the finite;
recognizing eternity but not time, God but not nature. It is a vast system
of spiritual pantheism, in which there is no reality but God, all else
being Maya, or illusion. The Hindoo mind is singularly pious, but also
singularly immoral. It has no history, for history belongs to time. No one
knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began,
what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it
is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It
combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the
most voluptuous self-indulgence. The key to the whole system of Hindoo
thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man;
eternity, not time; the infinite, not the finite.
Buddhism, which was a revolt from Brahmanism, has exactly the opposite
truths and the opposite defects. Where Brahmanism is strong, it is weak;
where Brahmanism is weak, it is strong. It recognizes man, not God; the
soul, not the all; the finite, not the infinite; morality, not piety. Its
only God, Buddha, is a man who has passed on through innumerable
transmigrations, till, by means of exemplary virtues, he has reached the
lordship of the universe. Its heaven, Nirvana, is indeed the world of
infinite bliss; but, incapable of cognizing the infinite, it calls it
nothing. Heaven, being the inconceivable infinite, is equivalent to pure
negation. Nature, to the Buddhist, instead of being the delusive shadow of
God, as the Brahman views it, is envisaged as a nexus of laws, which
reward and punish impartially both obedience and disobedience.
The system of Confucius has many merits, especially in its influence on
society. The most conservative of all systems, and also the most prosaic,
its essential virtue is reverence for all that is. It is not perplexed by
any fear or hope of change; the thing which has been is that which shall
be; and the very idea of progress is eliminated from the thought of China.
Safety, repose, peace, these are its blessings. Probably merely physical
comfort, earthly _bien-etre_, was never carried further than in the
Celestial Empire. That virtue so much exploded in Western civilization, of
respect for parents, remains in full force in China. The emperor is
honored as the father of his people; ancestors are worshipped in every
family; and the best reward offered for a good action is a patent of
nobility, which does not reach forward to one's children, but backward to
one's parents. This is the bright side of Chinese life; the dark side is
the fearful ennui, the moral death, which falls on a people among whom
there are no such things as hope, expectation, or the sense of progress.
Hence the habit of suicide among this people, indicating their small hold
on life. In every Chinese drama there are two or three suicides. A soldier
will commit suicide rather than go into battle. If you displease a
Chinaman, he will resent the offence by killing himself on your doorstep,
hoping thus to give you some inconvenience. Such are the merits and such
the defects of the system of Confucius.
The doctrine of Zoroaster and of the Zend Avesta is far nobler. Its
central thought is that each man is a soldier, bound to battle for good
against evil. The world, at the present time, is the scene of a great
warfare between the hosts of light and those of darkness. Every man who
thinks purely, speaks purely, and acts purely is a servant of Ormazd, the
king of light, and thereby helps on his cause. The result of this doctrine
was that wonderful Persian empire, which astonished the world for
centuries by its brilliant successes; and the virtue and intelligence of
the Parsees of the present time, the only representatives in the world of
that venerable religion. The one thing lacking to the system is unity. It
lives in perpetual conflict. Its virtues are all the virtues of a soldier.
Its defects and merits are, both, the polar opposites of those of China.
If the everlasting peace of China tends to moral stagnation and death, the
perpetual struggle and conflict of Persia tends to exhaustion. The Persian
empire rushed through a short career of flame to its tomb; the Chinese
empire vegetates, unchanged, through a myriad of years.
* * * * *
If Brahmanism and Buddhism occupy the opposite poles of the same axis of
thought,--if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to
that of Zoroaster,--we find a third development of like polar antagonisms
in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature;
Greece for Man. Inscrutable as is the mystery of that Sphinx of the Nile,
the old religion of Egypt, we can yet trace some phases of its secret. Its
reverence for organization appears in the practice of embalming. The
bodies of men and of animals seemed to it to be divine. Even vegetable
organization had something sacred in it: "O holy nation," said the Roman
satirist, "whose gods grow in gardens!" That plastic force of nature which
appears in organic life and growth made up, in various forms, as we shall
see in the proper place, the Egyptian Pantheon. The life-force of nature
became divided into the three groups of gods, the highest of which
represented its largest generalizations. Kneph, Neith, Sevech, Pascht, are
symbols, according to Lepsius, of the World-Spirit, the World-Matter,
Space and Time. Each circle of the gods shows us some working of the
mysterious powers of nature, and of its occult laws. But when we come to
Greece, these personified laws turn into men. Everything in the Greek
Pantheon is human. All human tendencies appear transfigured into glowing
forms of light on Mount Olympus. The gods of Egypt are powers and laws;
those of Greece are persons.
The opposite tendencies of these antagonist forms of piety appear in the
development of Egyptian and Hellenic life. The gods of Egypt were
mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of
worship; and so religion in Egypt became priestcraft. In Greece, on the
other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be
worshipped with any real reverence. Partaking in all human faults and
vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed
contempt. And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from
the people, as an esoteric system in the hands of priests, that of Greece,
in which there was no priesthood as an order, came to an end because the
gods ceased to be objects of respect at all.
* * * * *
We see, from these examples, how each of the great ethnic religions tends
to a disproportionate and excessive, because one-sided, statement of some
divine truth or law. The question then emerges at this point: "Is
Christianity also one-sided, or does it contain in itself _all_ these
truths?" Is it _teres atque rotundus_, so as to be able to meet every
natural religion with a kindred truth, and thus to supply the defects of
each from its own fulness? If it can be shown to possess this amplitude,
it at once is placed by itself in an order of its own. It is not to be
classified with the other religions, since it does not share their one
family fault. In every other instance we can touch with our finger the
weak place, the empty side. Is there any such weak side in Christianity?
It is the office of Comparative Theology to answer.
The positive side of Brahmanism we saw to be its sense of spiritual
realities. That is also fully present in Christianity. Not merely does
this appear in such New Testament texts as these: "God is spirit," "The
letter killeth, the spirit giveth life": not only does the New Testament
just graze and escape Pantheism in such passages as "From whom, and
through whom, and to whom are all things," "Who is above all, and through
all, and in us all," "In him we live and move and have our being," but the
whole history of Christianity is the record of a spiritualism almost too
excessive. It has appeared in the worship of the Church, the hymns of the
Church, the tendencies to asceticism, the depreciation of earth and man.
Christianity, therefore, fully meets Brahmanism on its positive side,
while it fulfils its negations, as we shall see hereafter, by adding as
full a recognition of man and nature.
The positive side of Buddhism is its cognition of the human soul and the
natural laws of the universe. Now, if we look into the New Testament and
into the history of the Church, we find this element also fully expressed.
It appears in all the parables and teachings of Jesus, in which man is
represented as a responsible agent, rewarded or punished according to the
exact measure of his works; receiving the government of ten or five cities
according to his stewardship. And when we look into the practical working
of Christianity we find almost an exaggerated stress laid on the duty of
saving one's soul. This excessive estimate is chiefly seen in the monastic
system of the Roman Church, and in the Calvinistic sects of Protestantism.
It also comes to light again, curiously enough, in such books as Combe's
"Constitution of Man," the theory of which is exactly the same as that of
the Buddhists; namely, that the aim of life is a prudential virtue,
consisting in wise obedience to the natural laws of the universe. Both
systems substitute prudence for Providence as the arbiter of human
destiny. But, apart from these special tendencies in Christianity, it
cannot be doubted that all Christian experience recognizes the positive
truth of Buddhism in regarding the human soul as a substantial, finite,
but progressive monad, not to be absorbed, as in Brahmanism, in the abyss
of absolute being.
The positive side of the system of Confucius is the organization of the
state on the basis of the family. The government of the emperor is
paternal government, the obedience of the subject is filial obedience.
Now, though Jesus did not for the first time call God "the Father," he
first brought men into a truly filial relation to God. The Roman Church is
organized on the family idea. The word "Pope" means the "Father"; he is
the father of the whole Church. Every bishop and every priest is also the
father of a smaller family, and all those born into the Church are its
children, as all born into a family are born sons and daughters of the
family. In Protestantism, also, society is composed of families as the
body is made up of cells. Only in China, and in Christendom, is family
life thus sacred and worshipful. In some patriarchal systems, polygamy
annuls the wife and the mother; in others the father is a despot, and the
children slaves; in other systems, the crushing authority of the state
destroys the independence of the household. Christianity alone accepts
with China the religion of family life with all its conservative elements,
while it fulfils it with the larger hope of the kingdom of heaven and
brotherhood of mankind.
This idea of the kingdom of heaven, so central in Christianity, is also
the essential motive in the religion of Zoroaster. As, in the Zend Avesta,
every man is a soldier, fighting for light or for darkness, and neutrality
is impossible; so, in the Gospel, light and good stand opposed to darkness
and evil as perpetual foes. A certain current of dualism runs through the
Christian Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. God and Satan, heaven
and hell, are the only alternatives. Every one must choose between them.
In the current theology, this dualism has been so emphasized as even to
exceed that of the Zend Avesta. The doctrine of everlasting punishment and
an everlasting hell has always been the orthodox doctrine in Christianity,
while the Zend Avesta probably, and the religion in its subsequent
development certainly, teaches universal restoration, and the ultimate
triumph of good over evil. Nevertheless, practically, in consequence of
the greater richness and fulness of Christianity, this tendency to dualism
has been neutralized by its monotheism, and evil kept subordinate; while,
in the Zend religion, the evil principle assumed such proportions as to
make it the formidable rival of good in the mind of the worshipper. Here,
as before, we may say that Christianity is able to do justice to all the
truth involved in the doctrine of evil, avoiding any superficial optimism,
and recognizing the fact that all true life must partake of the nature of
a battle.
The positive side of Egyptian religion we saw to be a recognition of the
divine element in nature, of that plastic, mysterious life which embodies
itself in all organisms. Of this view we find little stated explicitly in
the New Testament. But that the principles of Christianity contain it,
implicitly, in an undeveloped form, appears, (1.) Because Christian
monotheism differs from Jewish and Mohammedan monotheism, in recognizing
God "_in all things_" as well as God "_above all things_." (2.) Because
Christian art and literature differ from classic art and literature in the
_romantic_ element, which is exactly the sense of this mysterious life in
nature. The classic artist is a [Greek: poietes], a maker; the romantic
artist is a troubadour, a finder. The one does his work in giving form to
a dead material; the other, by seeking for its hidden life. (3.) Because
modern science is _invention_, i.e. finding. It recognizes mysteries in
nature which are to be searched into, and this search becomes a serious
religious interest with all truly scientific men. It appears to such men a
profanity to doubt or question the revelations of nature, and they believe
in its infallible inspiration quite as much as the dogmatist believes in
the infallible inspiration of Scripture, or the churchman in the
infallible inspiration of the Church. We may, therefore, say, that the
essential truth in the Egyptian system has been taken up into our modern
Christian life.
And how is it, lastly, with that opposite pole of religious thought which
blossomed out in "the fair humanities of old religion" in the wonderful
Hellenic mind? The gods of Greece were men. They were not abstract ideas,
concealing natural powers and laws. They were open as sunshine, bright as
noon, a fair company of men and women idealized and gracious, just a
little way off, a little way up. It was humanity projected upon the skies,
divine creatures of more than mortal beauty, but thrilling with human life
and human sympathies. Has Christianity anything to offer in the place of
this charming system of human gods and goddesses?
We answer that the fundamental doctrine of Christianity is the
incarnation, the word made flesh. It is God revealed in man. Under some
doctrinal type this has always been believed. The common Trinitarian
doctrine states it in a somewhat crude and illogical form. Yet somehow the
man Christ Jesus has always been seen to be the best revelation of God.
But unless there were some human element in the Deity, he could not reveal
himself so in a human life. The doctrine of the incarnation, therefore,
repeats the Mosaic statement that "man was made in the image of God."
Jewish and Mohammedan monotheism separate God entirely from the world.
Philosophic monotheism, in our day, separates God from man, by teaching
that there is nothing in common between the two by which God can be
mediated, and so makes him wholly incomprehensible. Christianity gives us
Emmanuel, God with us, equally removed from the stern despotic omnipotence
of the Semitic monotheism and the finite and imperfect humanities of
Olympus. We see God in Christ, as full of sympathy with man, God "in us
all"; and yet we see him in nature, providence, history, as "above all"
and "through all." The Roman Catholic Church has, perhaps, humanized
religion too far. For every god and goddess of Greece she has given us, on
some immortal canvas, an archangel or a saint to be adored and loved.
Instead of Apollo and the Python we have Guido's St. Michael and the
Dragon; in place of the light, airy Mercury she provides a St. Sebastian;
instead of the "untouched" Diana, some heavenly Agnes or Cecilia. The
Catholic heaven is peopled, all the way up, with beautiful human forms;
and on the upper throne we have holiness and tenderness incarnate in the
queen of heaven and her divine Son. All the Greek humanities are thus
fulfilled in the ample faith of Christendom.
By such a critical survey as we have thus sketched in mere outline it will
be seen that each of the great ethnic religions is full on one side, but
empty on the other, while Christianity is full all round. Christianity is
adapted to take their place, not because they are false, but because they
are true as far as they go. They "know in part and prophesy in part; but
when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be
done away."
Sec. 8. Comparative Theology will probably show that Ethnic Religions are
arrested, or degenerate, and will come to an End, while the Catholic
Religion is capable of a progressive Development.
The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, have come to an end; having
shared the fate of the national civilization of which each was a part. The
religions of China, Islam, Buddha, and Judaea have all been arrested, and
remain unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. Like great vessels anchored
in a stream, the current of time flows past them, and each year they are
further behind the spirit of the age, and less in harmony with its
demands. Christianity alone, of all human religions, seems to possess the
power of keeping abreast with the advancing civilization of the world. As
the child's soul grows with his body, so that when he becomes a man it is
a man's soul and not a child's, so the Gospel of Jesus continues the soul
of all human culture. It continually drops its old forms and takes new
ones. It passed out of its Jewish body under the guidance of Paul. In a
speculative age it unfolded into creeds and systems. In a worshipping age
it developed ceremonies and a ritual. When the fall of Rome left Europe
without unity or centre, it gave it an organization and order through the
Papacy. When the Papacy became a tyranny, and the Renaissance called for
free thought, it suddenly put forth Protestantism, as the tree by the
water-side sends forth its shoots in due season. Protestantism, free as
air, opens out into the various sects, each taking hold of some human
need; Lutheranism, Calvinism, Methodism, Swedenborgianism, or Rationalism.
Christianity blossoms out into modern science, literature, art,--children
who indeed often forget their mother, and are ignorant of their source,
but which are still fed from her breasts and partake of her life.
Christianity, the spirit of faith, hope, and love, is the deep fountain of
modern civilization. Its inventions are for the many, not for the few. Its
science is not hoarded, but diffused. It elevates the masses, who
everywhere else have been trampled down. The friend of the people, it
tends to free schools, a free press, a free government, the abolition of
slavery, war, vice, and the melioration of society. We cannot, indeed,
here _prove_ that Christianity is the cause of these features peculiar to
modern life; but we find it everywhere associated with them, and so we can
say that it only, of all the religions of mankind, has been capable of
accompanying man in his progress from evil to good, from good to better.
We have merely suggested some of the results to which the study of
Comparative Theology may lead us. They will appear more fully as we
proceed in our examination of the religions, and subsequently in their
comparison. This introductory chapter has been designed as a sketch of the
course which the work will take. When we have completed our survey, the
results to which we hope to arrive will be these, if we succeed in what we
have undertaken:--
1. All the great religions of the world, except Christianity and
Mohammedanism, are ethnic religions, or religions limited to a single
nation or race. Christianity alone (including Mohammedanism and Judaism,
which are its temporary and local forms) is the religion of all races.
2. Every ethnic religion has its positive and negative side. Its positive
side is that which holds some vital truth; its negative side is the
absence of some other essential truth. Every such religion is true and
providential, but each limited and imperfect.
3. Christianity alone is a [Greek: plaeroma], or a fulness of
truth, not coming to destroy but to fulfil the previous religions; but
being capable of replacing them by teaching all the truth they have
taught, and supplying that which they have omitted.
4. Christianity, being not a system but a life, not a creed or a form, but
a spirit, is able to meet all the changing wants of an advancing
civilization by new developments and adaptations, constantly feeding the
life of man at its roots by fresh supplies of faith in God and faith in
man.
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