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Section 16 of 18 - Table of Contents
XVI. THE EXODUS OF CHRISTIANITY
We have dealt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now
come to the Exodus. For that Christianity can CONTINUE
to hold the field of Religion in the Western World is neither
probable nor desirable. It is true, as I have remarked already,
that there is a certain trouble about defining what we mean
by "Christianity" similar to that about the word "Civilization."
If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and
rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those
which commend themselves to the most modern and humane
and rational human mind and choose to call that resulting
(but rather small) body of belief and practice 'Christianity'
we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to hope (as we do
hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into
the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and
certainly not logical. It enables Christianity to pose as
an angel of light while at the same time keeping discreetly
out of sight all its own abominations and deeds of darkness.
The Church--which began its career by destroying, distorting
and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang;
whose bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each
other in their theological rancour "of wild beasts," which
encouraged the wicked folly of the Crusades--especially
the Children's Crusades--and the shameful murders of
the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which
burned at the stake thousands and thousands of poor
'witches' and 'heretics'; which has hardly ever spoken a
generous word in favor or defence of the animals; which
in modern times has supported vivisection as against the
latter, Capitalism and Commercialism as against the poorer
classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its
various sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant,
have in these last days rushed forth to urge the nations to
slaughter each other with every diabolical device of Science,
and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism in defiance of the
principle of universal Brotherhood--such a Church can hardly
claim to have established the angelic character of its
mission among mankind! And if it be said--as it often
IS SAID: "Oh! but you must go back to the genuine article,
and the Church's real origin and one foundation in the
person and teaching of Jesus Christ," then indeed you
come back to the point which this book, as above, enforces:
namely, that as to the person of Jesus, there is
no CERTAINTY at all that he ever existed; and as to the teaching
credited to him, it is certain that that comes down from a
period long anterior to 'Christianity' and is part of what
may justly be called a very ancient World-religion. So, as
in the case of 'Civilization,' we are compelled to see that
it is useless to apply the word to some ideal state of affairs
or doctrine (an ideal by no means the same in all people's
minds, or in all localities and times), but that the only
reasonable thing to do is to apply it in each case to a
HISTORICAL PERIOD. In the case of Christianity the historical
period has lasted nearly 2,000 years, and, as I say, we can
hardly expect or wish that it should last much longer.
The very thorough and careful investigation of religious
origins which has been made during late years by a great
number of students and observers undoubtedly tends to show
that there has been something like a great World-religion
coming down the centuries from the remotest times and
gradually expanding and branching as it has come--that
is to say that the similarity (in ESSENCE though not always
in external detail) between the creeds and rituals of widely
sundered tribes and peoples is so great as to justify the view
--advanced in the present volume--that these creeds and
rituals are the necessary outgrowths of human psychology,
slowly evolving, and that consequently they have a common
origin and in their various forms a common expression. Of
this great World-religion, so coming down, Christianity
is undoubtedly a branch, and an important branch. But
there have been important branches before; and while
it may be true that Christianity emphasizes some points
which may have been overlooked or neglected in the Vedic
teachings or in Buddhism, or in the Persian and Egyptian
and Syrian cults, or in Mahommedanism, and so forth, it is also
equally true that Christianity has itself overlooked or neglected
valuable points in these religions. It has, in fact, the defects
of its qualities. If the World-religion is like a great tree, one
cannot expect or desire that all its branches should be directed
towards the same point of the compass.
Reinach, whose studies of religious origins are always
interesting and characterized by a certain Gallic grace
and nettete, though with a somewhat Jewish non-perception
of the mystic element in life, defines Religion as a combination
of animism and scruples. This is good in a way, because
it gives the two aspects of the subject: the inner,
animism, consisting of the sense of contact with more or
less intelligent beings moving in Nature; and the outer,
consisting in scruples or taboos. The one aspect shows
the feeling which INSPIRES religion, the other, the checks and
limitations which DEFINE it and give birth to ritual. But
like most anthropologists he (Reinach) is a little TOO
patronizing towards the "poor Indian with untutored
mind." He is sorry for people so foolish as to be animistic
in their outlook, and he is always careful to point out that
the scruples and taboos were quite senseless in their origin,
though occasionally (by accident) they turned out useful.
Yet--as I have said before--Animism is a perfectly sensible,
logical and NECESSARY attitude of the human mind. It is
a necessary attribute of man's psychical nature, by which
he projects into the great World around him the image
of his own mind. When that mind is in a very primitive,
inchoate, and fragmentary condition, the images so projected
are those of fragmentary intelligences ('spirits,'
gnomes, etc.--the age of magic); when the mind rises
to distinct consciousness of itself the reflections of it are
anthropomorphic 'gods'; when finally it reaches the
universal or cosmic state it perceives the presence of
a universal Being behind all phenomena--which Being is
indeed itself--"Himself to Himself." If you like you
may call the whole process by the name of Animism. It
is perfectly sensible throughout. The only proviso is
that you should also be sensible, and distinguish the different
stages in the process.
Jane Harrison makes considerable efforts to show that Religion
is primarily a reflection of the SOCIAL Conscience (see
Themis, pp. 482-92)--that is, that the sense in Man
of a "Power that makes for righteousness" outside (and
also inside) him is derived from his feeling of continuity
with the Tribe and his instinctive obedience to its
behests, confirmed by ages of collective habit and experience.
He cannot in fact sever the navel-string which connects
him with his tribal Mother, even though he
desires to do so. And no doubt this view of the origin
of Religion is perfectly correct. But it must be pointed
out that it does not by any means exclude the view that
religion derives also from an Animism by which man recognizes
in general Nature his foster-mother and feels himself
in closest touch with HER. Which may have come first, the
Social affiliation or the Nature affiliation, I leave to
the professors to determine. The term Animism may,
as far as I can see, be quite well applied to the social
affiliation, for the latter is evidently only a case in which
the individual projects his own degree of consciousness
into the human group around him instead of into the
animals or the trees, but it is a case of which the justice
is so obvious that the modern man can intellectually seize
and understand it, and consequently he does not tar it with
the 'animistic' brush.
And Miss Harrison, it must be noticed, does, in other passages
of the same book (see Themis, pp. 68, 69), admit
that Religion has its origin not only from unity with the
Tribe but from the sense of affiliation to Nature--the
sense of "a world of unseen power lying behind the visible
universe, a world which is the sphere, as will be seen, of
magical activity and the medium of mysticism. The
mystical element, the oneness and continuousness comes
out very clearly in the notion of Wakonda among the Sioux
Indians. . . . The Omahas regarded all animate and inanimate
forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common
life, which was continuous and similar to the will-power
they were conscious of in themselves. This mysterious
power in all things they called Wakonda, and through
it all things were related to man, and to each other. In the
idea of the continuity of life, a relation was maintained between
the seen and the unseen, the dead and the living, and
also between the fragment of anything and its entirety." Thus
our general position is confirmed, that Religion in
its origin has been INSPIRED by a deep instinctive conviction
or actual sense of continuity with a being or beings in the
world around, while it has derived its FORM and ritual by
slow degrees from a vast number of taboos, generated in
the first instance chiefly by superstitious fears, but gradually
with the growth of reason and observation becoming
simplified and rationalized into forms of use. On the one
side there has been the positive impulse--of mere animal
Desire and the animal urge of self-expression; on the
other there has been the negative force of Fear based
on ignorance--the latter continually carving, moulding and
shaping the former. According to this an organized study and
classification of taboos might yield some interesting results;
because indeed it would throw light on the earliest forms of
both religion and science. It would be seen that some taboos,
like those of CONTACT (say with a menstruous woman,
or a mother-in-law, or a lightning-struck tree) had an obvious
basis of observation, justifiable but very crude; while
others, like the taboo against harming an enemy who
had contracted blood-friendship with one of your own
tribe, or against giving decent burial to a murderer, were
equally rough and rude expressions or indications of the growing
moral sentiment of mankind. All the same there would
be left, in any case, a large residuum of taboos which could
only be judged as senseless, and the mere rubbish of the
savage mind.
So much for the first origins of the World-religion;
and I think enough has been said in the various chapters
of this book to show that the same general process has obtained
throughout. Man, like the animals, began with
this deep, subconscious sense of unity with surrounding
Nature. When this became (in Man) fairly conscious, it led
to Magic and Totemism. More conscious, and it branched,
on the one hand, into figures of Gods and definite forms
of Creeds, on the other into elaborate Scientific Theories--
the latter based on a strong INTELLECTUAL belief in Unity, but
fervently denying any 'anthropomorphic' or 'animistic'
SENSE of that unity. Finally, it seems that we are
now on the edge of a further stage when the theories
and the creeds, scientific and religious, are on the verge of
collapsing, but in such a way as to leave the sense and the
perception of Unity--the real content of the whole
process--not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened
and illuminated. Meanwhile the taboos--of which there
remain some still, both religious and scientific--
have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves into a
reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.
I have said that out of this World-religion Christianity
really sprang. It is evident that the time has arrived when
it must either acknowledge its source and frankly endeavor
to affiliate itself to the same, or failing that must
perish. In the first case it will probably have to change its
name; in the second the question of its name 'will interest
it no more.'
With regard to the first of these alternatives, I might venture--
though with indifference--to make a few suggestions.
Why should we not have--instead of a Holy
Roman Church--a Holy HUMAN Church, rehabilitating the
ancient symbols and rituals, a Christianity (if you still
desire to call it so) frankly and gladly acknowledging
its own sources? This seems a reasonable and even feasible
proposition. If such a church wished to celebrate a Mass
or Communion or Eucharist it would have a great variety
of rites and customs of that kind to select from; those that
were not appropriate for use in our times or were connected
with the worship of strange gods need not be rejected or
condemned, but could still be commented on and explained
as approaches to the same idea--the idea of dedication
to the Common Life, and of reinvigoration in the partaking
of it. If the Church wished to celebrate the Crucifixion
or betrayal of its Founder, a hundred instances of such
celebrations would be to hand, and still the thought that
has underlain such celebrations since the beginning of the
world could easily be disentangled and presented in concrete
form anew. In the light of such teaching expressions
like "I know that my Redeemer liveth" would be traced
to their origin, and men would understand that notwithstanding
the mass of rubbish, cant and humbug which has
collected round them they really do mean something and
represent the age-long instinct of Humanity feeling its way
towards a more extended revelation, a new order of being,
a third stage of consciousness and illumination. In such a
Church or religious organization EVERY quality of human nature
would have to be represented, every practice and
custom allowed for and its place accorded--the magical
and astronomical meanings, the rites connected with sun-worship,
or with sex, or with the worship of animals; the
consecration of corn and wine and other products of the
ground, initiations, sacrifices, and so forth--all (if indeed it
claimed to be a World-religion) would have to be represented
and recognized. For they all have their long human origin
and descent in and through the pagan creeds, and they all
have penetrated into and become embodied to some degree
in Christianity. Christianity therefore, as I say, must either
now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from
the great Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate THAT and carry
mankind one step forward in the path of evolution--or else it
must perish. There is no other alternative.[1]
[1] Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have
had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in
making it all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The
seed of Life was not in it.
Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient
ritual which has survived from the far Past and is still
celebrated, but with little intelligence or understanding, in
the Catholic Church of to-day, might be adopted in such
a Church as I have spoken of, interpreted, and made eloquent
of meaning to modern humanity. When I was in Ceylon
nearly 30 years ago I was fortunate enough to witness a
night-festival in a Hindu Temple--the great festival of
Taipusam, which takes place every year in January. Of
course, it was full moon, and great was the blowing up of
trumpets in the huge courtyard of the Temple. The
moon shone down above from among the fronds of tall coco-palms,
on a dense crowd of native worshipers--men and
a few women--the men for the most part clad in little
more than a loin-cloth, the women picturesque in their colored
saris and jewelled ear and nose rings. The images of
Siva and two other gods were carried in procession round
and round the temple--three or four times; nautch girls
danced before the images, musicians, blowing horns and huge
shells, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms, accompanied
them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with
flaming coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each
side, elated and excited with the sense of the present
divinity, yet pleasantly free from any abject awe. The whole
thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief of a Bacchanalian
procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus--and
especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly
intimacy with the god. There were singing of hymns and
the floating of the chief actors on a raft round a sacred
lake. And then came the final Act. Siva, or his image, very
weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was carried
into the first chamber or hall of the Temple and
placed on an altar with a curtain hanging in front. The
crowd followed with a rush; and then there was more music,
recital of hymns, and reading from sacred books.
From where we stood we could see the rite which was performed
behind the curtain. Two five-branched candlesticks
were lighted; and the manner of their lighting was
as follows. Each branch ended in a little cup, and in the
cups five pieces of camphor were placed, all approximately
equal in size. After offerings had been made, of fruit,
flowers and sandalwood, the five camphors in each candlestick
were lighted. As the camphor flames burned out the music
became more wild and exciting, and then at the moment of
their extinction the curtains were drawn aside and the
congregation outside suddenly beheld the god revealed
and in a blaze of light. This burning of camphor was,
like other things in the service, emblematic. The five
lights represent the five senses. Just as camphor consumes
itself and leaves no residue behind, so should the five senses,
being offered to the god, consume themselves and disappear.
When this is done, that happens in the soul which was now
figured in the ritual--the God is revealed in the
inner light.[1]
[1] For a more detailed account of this Temple-festival, see
Adam's Peak to Elephanta by E. Carpenter, ch. vii.
We are familiar with this parting or rending of the veil.
We hear of it in the Jewish Temple, and in the Greek and
Egyptian Mysteries. It had a mystically religious, and also
obviously sexual, signification. It occurs here and there in
the Roman Catholic ritual. In Spain, some ancient
Catholic ceremonials are kept up with a brilliance and
splendor hardly found elsewhere in Europe. In the
Cathedral, at Seville the service of the Passion, carried
out on Good Friday with great solemnity and accompanied
with fine music, culminates on the Saturday morning--i.e.
in the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection--
in a spectacle similar to that described in Ceylon.
A rich velvet-black curtain hangs before the High Altar. At
the appropriate moment and as the very emotional strains
of voices and instruments reach their climax in the "Gloria
in Excelsis," the curtain with a sudden burst of sound
(thunder and the ringing of all the bells) is rent asunder,
and the crucified Jesus is seen hanging there revealed in a
halo of glory.
There is also held at Seville Cathedral and before the
High Altar every year, the very curious Dance of the Seises
(sixes), performed now by 16 instead of (as of old) by 12
boys, quaintly dressed. It seems to be a survival of
some very ancient ritual, probably astronomical, in which
the two sets of six represent the signs of the Zodiac, and
is celebrated during the festivals of Corpus Christi, the
Immaculate Conception, and the Carnival.
Numerous instances might of course be adduced of how
a Church aspiring to be a real Church of Humanity might
adopt and re-create the rituals of the past in the light of
a modern inspiration. Indeed the difficulty would be to
limit the process, for EVERY ancient ritual, we can now
see, has had a meaning and a message, and it would be a
real joy to disentangle these and to expose the profound
solidarity of humanity and aspiration from the very dawn
of civilization down to the present day. Nor would
it be necessary to imagine any Act of Uniformity or dead
level of ceremonial in the matter. Different groups might
concentrate on different phases of religious thought and
practice. The only necessity would be that they should
approach the subject with a real love of Humanity in
their hearts and a real desire to come into touch with the deep
inner life and mystic growing-pains of the souls of men and
women in all ages. In this direction M. Loisy has done
noble and excellent work; but the dead weight and selfish
blinkerdom of the Catholic organization has hampered him
to that degree that he has been unable to get justice done
to his liberalizing designs--or, perhaps, even to reveal
the full extent of them. And the same difficulty will
remain. On the one hand no spiritual movement which
does not take up the attitude of a World-religion has now
in this age, any chance of success; on the other, all the
existing Churches--whether Roman Catholic, or Greek, or
Protestant or Secularist--whether Christian or Jewish or
Persian or Hindu--will in all probability adopt the same
blind and blinkered and selfish attitude as that described
above, and so disqualify themselves for the great role of
world-wide emancipation, which some religion at some time
will certainly have to play. It is the same difficulty which
is looming large in modern World-politics, where the local
selfishness and vainglorious "patriotisms" of the Nations are
sadly impeding and obstructing the development of that
sense of Internationalism and Brotherhood which is the
clearly indicated form of the future, and which alone can
give each nation deliverance from fear, and a promise of
growth, and the confident assurance of power.
I say that Christianity must either frankly adopt this generous
attitude and confess itself a branch of the great
World-religion, anxious only to do honor to its source--
or else it must perish and pass away. There is no other
alternative. The hour of its Exodus has come. It may be,
of course, that neither the Christian Church nor any
branch of it, nor any other religious organization, will
step into the gap. It may be--but I do not think this is
likely--that the time of rites and ceremonies and formal
creeds is PAST, and churches of any kind will be no more
needed in the world: not likely, I say, because of the still far
backwardness of the human masses, and their considerable
dependence yet on laws and forms and rituals. Still, if it
should prove that that age of dependence IS really approaching
its end, that would surely be a matter for congratulation.
It would mean that mankind was moving into a knowledge
of the REALITY which has underlain these outer shows--that
it was coming into the Third stage of its Consciousness.
Having found this there would be no need for it to dwell
any longer in the land of superstitions and formulae. It
would have come to the place of which these latter are only
the outlying indications.
It may, therefore, happen--and this quite independently
of the growth of a World-cult such as I have described, though
by no means in antagonism to it--that a religious philosophy
or Theosophy might develop and spread, similar to
the Gnonam of the Hindus or the Gnomsis of the pre-Christian
sects, which would become, first among individuals and
afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion
of--or perhaps one should say the religious approach to the
Third State. Books like the Upanishads of the Vedic
seers, and the Bhagavat Gita, though garbled and obscured
by priestly interferences and mystifications, do undoubtedly
represent and give expression to the highest
utterance of religious experience to be found anywhere
in the world. They are indeed the manuals of human
entrance into the cosmic state. But as I say, and as has
happened in the case of other sacred books, a vast deal of
rubbish has accreted round their essential teachings,
and has to be cleared away. To go into a serious explication
of the meaning of these books would be far too large an
affair, and would be foreign to the purpose of the present
volume; but I have in the Appendix below inserted two papers,
(on "Rest" and "The Nature of the Self") containing the
substance of lectures given on the above books. These papers
or lectures are couched in the very simplest language,
free from Sanskrit terms and the usual 'jargon of the
Schools,' and may, I hope, even on that account be of
use in familiarizing readers who are not specially
STUDENTS with the ideas and mental attitudes of the cosmic
state. Non-differentiation (Advaita[1]) is the root attitude of
the mind inculcated.
[1] The word means "not-two-ness." Here we see a great subtlety
of definition. It is not to be "one" with others that is urged,
but to be "not two."
We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation
in the Past-non-differentiation from other members
of the Tribe, from the Animals, from Nature and the Spirit
or Spirits of nature; why should there not arise a similar
sense of non-differentiation in the FUTURE--similar but more
extended more intelligent? Certainly this WILL arrive, in
its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the
bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing
of all Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos
in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth
have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction
and assimilation into the general body of rational thought
and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but
they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will
shake itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the
animals (as in the old rituals)[1] will be restored; the sense
of kinship with all the races of mankind will grow and
become consolidated; the sense of the defilement and impurity
of the human body will (with the adoption of a
generally clean and wholesome life) pass away; and the body
itself will come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines
in which the gods may be worshiped and less as a mere
organ of trivial self-gratifications;[2] there will be no form
of Nature, or of human life or of the lesser creatures, which
will be barred from the approach of Man or from the
intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and as in
certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a
citizen is sometimes received into the community of his own
city, so the emancipated human being on the completion of
his long long pilgrimage on Earth will be presented with
the Freedom of the Universe.
[1] The record of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly
Callous and inhuman in this matter of the animals.
[2] See The Art of Creation, by E. Carpenter.
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