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Ten Great Religions, An Essay in Comparative Theology
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.