The Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Buddhist, are the great prevailing faiths of the world. A person indeed who should insist upon reducing all the religious thoughts and convictions he met with in different places under one of these three heads, would exhibit great practical ignorance; for the feelings and apprehensions which belong to actual human beings will not bear to be so treated. A man will not really be intelligible to you, if, instead of listening to him and sympathising with him, you determine to classify him. But it is true, that one who has patiently studied and livingly realized the characteristics of these wide-spread beliefs, will not be hopelessly puzzled by the notions of men in any part of the globe, civilized or savage. There are no other existing forms of religious thought sufficiently distinct from these to deserve a separate examination in such a course as this; none which have not grown out of them, or have not been rapidly absorbed into them. And it is of existing systems that I wished first and chiefly to speak, because for the practical object I proposed to myself, and which Boyle desired we should keep in sight, these must be the most important. I could not, however, do proper justice to the subject if, before I enter upon the second division of it—the consideration of the way in which Christianity is related to different religions—I did not touch upon what may be called the defunct systems, those which belong to history, and which have yielded to the might either of the Crescent or the Cross. The word ‘defunct,’ we shall soon find, is only in one sense applicable to them; they had that in them which is not dead, and cannot die; that which is exerting an influence upon the mind and education of Christendom at the present day. Still, as systems, they belong to the past; they will therefore supply a new kind of test for trying the maxims respecting the worthlessness and transitoriness of what is merely theological, which I have been examining in former Lectures. For the reason I have given they ought not to be treated in the same detail as those which have occupied us hitherto: indeed, I do not think we should gain so much by considering them in detail, as by glancing at them side by side; so that the principles which distinguish them, and those wherein they are alike, may be more readily discerned. I shall therefore endeavour to compress what I have to say of them into a single Lecture.
I. The old Persian religion is the first which offers itself to our notice, as standing in a close relation, both outwardly and inwardly, to the Hindoo. The Zendavesta, the religious book in which this faith is professedly set forth, cannot be appealed to as a very certain authority respecting it; what we possess is confessedly a compilation from earlier sources; and though critics think that they can detect older fragments in the midst of it, there is great difficulty in separating them from the mass, or in determining the time when it was put together. The age and history of the man who is spoken of as the great prophet of this faith, Zerdusht or Zoroaster, are equally obscure. It has even been questioned whether such a man ever existed—whether he does not merely represent a divine principle, or a stage in a nation’s history. It might seem, then, as if this doctrine, of which we have such vague records, must have exercised but a slight influence; at all events, that its essential character cannot be ascertained. Both conclusions would be erroneous. Whatever authority the Zendavesta may have, whatever kind of person Zoroaster may have been, the Persian faith has been bound up with the life of a great portion of Asia, and has left as strong evidences as any both of its nature and of its power over the minds of men, even in generations far removed from each other.
The readers of Gibbon will remember a splendid passage of his history describing a great Asiatic revolution which took place in the third century after Christ. The old Persian empire was then ruled by the Parthians. Their dynasty had lasted for several centuries: it had been set up after the Greek armies had conquered Asia; after they had established their own habits and civilization in the midst of it. Their worship the Parthians to a considerable extent adopted; the old faith of the Persians they crushed. At the period I speak of it was found that this faith had lain hidden under the soil, but had never been destroyed. The Magi came forth and proclaimed that which they affirmed to be the original teaching of Zoroaster. The innovations of five centuries were swept away—a dynasty which the Persians recognized as the continuation of the old kingdom of Cyrus was established, and the nation’s old belief was the foundation upon which it rested. This power became the great Eastern antagonist of Rome: at a later period, it had nearly wrested the empire of Asia from Constantinople: it sunk at last under the irresistible strength of the Mahometan armies. For a time, those whom the Mahometans called fire-worshippers struggled hard: at length they vanished into an insignificant sect; Persia acknowledged the Prophet of Arabia as its one divine teacher.
But what was the faith which governed the old Persian while he ruled the world—which dwelt so deeply in the heart of a people that it could revive after a lapse of centuries—which perished all but utterly at last? We have seen that the Brahm of the Hindoo, the Buddha of that mighty sect which arose out of Hindooism, is especially the Intelligent Being, He in whom light dwells, and by communication with whom men become enlightened. Observe how naturally, how inevitably, one uses this word Light for Intelligence. We feel instinctively that it is much the better word of the two; that one is hard and abstract, the other living and real. So men have felt in all countries and ages. Their bodily eye distinguished one thing from another—could exert itself in the day, was useless in darkness. They had as certainly something within them which could discern a sense in words, a meaning in things. This surely was an eye too. There was no better way of speaking about it. And there must be some light answering to this eye, older than it, otherwise it could not be. They discovered, too surely also, that there was a state in which this eye saw nothing, a state of darkness. If we keep these very simple thoughts in our minds, (I say, keep them in our minds, for they are there already; we are obliged to make use of this language—it belongs to us all, to prince and peasant alike); and if we recollect that what we are apt to overlook as too simple, is oftentimes just the most important thing of all—the key which unlocks a multitude of treasure-houses, we shall be able to enter into the belief of different people, and to trace the transition from one to another far more easily. The conviction which we have found dwelling so strongly in the minds of Brahmin and Buddhist, though taking different forms, was this—‘he who has the inward eye most opened, must be the greatest man: he in whom it is quenched, must be the lowest and most miserable man.’ And the puzzle which we saw tormenting them both, in different ways and different degrees, was this. But where is this light? Is it only in the eye? What then does the eye behold? Is it not in the eye? How then can I call that a light? A very deep question indeed; the answers to which, in every case, are full of practical significance. The Persian solution was the most simple of all. He felt that his whole life was precisely this debate between light and darkness. There must, he said, be Lords over this light and darkness. This had probably been his oldest and strongest conviction.
The nights in Persia are clear and beautiful. The stars were a language which spoke to peasant and priest alike of light coming out of darkness. On these the one will have meditated till he thought them powers and rulers of the world; the other will have paid them actual homage. The Magians, the servants of the Light, will have devised a system of worship addressed to these. If Zerdusht or Zoroaster were a real man, he probably arose at a time when this worship had become very general, and when the mind of the people had become much debased by it. To some man, or some men, it was given to perceive that the ministers of light had become ministers of darkness. Those things which testified of a Divine Light had been substituted for it. He rose up as the witness for Ormuzd, the Lord of Light, to testify that light comes from him, and not from the outward, material things; that whoso serves them is the servant of Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness. While Ahriman teaches his servants to bow down before visible things, Ormuzd communicates to men his living Word, (that is the meaning of Zendavesta,) speaks to their hearts, teaches them the laws of justice and order. The battle between Ormuzd and Ahriman will be long, but Ormuzd must triumph at last. The kingdom of light is mightier than the kingdom of darkness. This was the substance of the Persian faith, to the revival of which, in its strength and simplicity, all that was vigorous in the Persian character and government, seems to have been owing. There was the greatest difference between it and the Hindoo—precisely this difference. The Hindoo thought of light and darkness as the opposition between cultivation and ignorance—between the Brahmin and the Sudra; the Persian looked upon them as expressions for right and wrong. Far less refined and intellectual than the Indian, far less capable of mere speculation, he had a sense of practical, moral distinctions, to which the other was almost a stranger, or, at least, which never presented themselves to him, nakedly and directly, as the foundation of all other distinctions. Hence a difference in their scheme of life. Right must be proclaimed by some one; not merely recognized or perceived. The Persian, therefore, looked much more to an authority which should command men, or to a teacher who should impart wisdom, than merely to a thinker or devotee. He regarded the king, from whom the law and words of grace proceeded, with more reverence than the priest. There might be many conflicts between the two, at times they might work in harmony, but this was the abiding, characteristic Persian feeling.
But there were two or three difficulties specially besetting him who held this faith. The Persian felt that visible things were not to be adored. It was the worship of Ahriman to set up them as the lords of men. Yet he had more need than the Hindoo to feel that the object he was worshipping was above himself, not merely of himself. He must speak of the Light as coming to him, not merely as proceeding from him. But if so, how shall he realize it? Must not the light, or must not the fire, or must not the sun, be in some sense or other an object for him to fear and obey? This thought would be always re-appearing in the popular mind, nay, in the mind of the teacher who most protested against it, when he was struggling with the tendency in himself and other men to set up their own thoughts as if the true Light was in them. To meet it the Magian devises a theory. These outward objects are but images or counterfeits of something within; they are the productions of the king of darkness: the good and great beings who appear in the world come forth from the inner kingdom to subvert these. Starting from such a notion as this, it was easy to produce a universe of phantasies, against which the simple and earnest mind of the Persian, struggling, and struggling in vain, would plunge into direct idolatry. Another awful question there was: Did this power of good originate the power of evil, or is each self-created? Or whence do they come? Some hidden being there must be—some deeper ground than all that man could conceive. They tried to express it in some name—they called this ground of all things, Time without Bounds.
Under this last form the Persian faith came into contact with the Christian Church of the first ages. The influence of the Gospel over Persia was slight and partial; but the preachers of it perceived a deep meaning in the Persian speculations. Gradually some appeared who thought the speculation beautiful, who cared little for the solution. These produced some of the darkest of the early heresies. When the Mussulman encountered the Persian faith he felt no such temptation. “Is this your God—this Time without bounds, this phantasy the Living Being? It is impossible. No! pretend what you will, you are worshippers of fire, or of the sun, or of the stars. With our swords we cut through your webs of sophistry—through your worlds seen and unseen—your good and your evil principles. There is one God, and Mahomet is his prophet. Yield to that belief, or perish!”
The victory was very complete; such an one is hardly recorded in the annals of the world. But when it was effected there was found to be something imperishable in Persian faith and feelings which could change the characteristics of Mahometanism itself. To it we owe those stories of fairies and genii, which mix with our earliest impressions of Mahometanism, though they certainly have no natural connexion with it. In a later time Persia became the home of the great Sofi schism, which has introduced a new Pantheistic element into the doctrine of the Koran. Under the Mahometan teaching, which in Turkey has certainly been favourable to veracity, the strong sense of moral right and wrong which distinguished the Old Persian has deserted him. He who was celebrated by Xenophon as above all men the speaker of truth, has become proverbial for lying.
II. The history of Persia at a certain period becomes connected with that of Egypt. The connexion is a religious one. The Persian king, Cambyses, seems to have been a fanatic, and to have carried on wars, if not for the propagation of his own faith, at least, for the punishment of those who held what he thought a false one. The Egyptian priests were especial objects of his abhorrence. If we ask on what grounds, we shall be led into the consideration of another faith of the old world, which has left the most singular records of itself; which at different periods of its existence is bound up with Jewish and with Greek history; which was an object of profound interest to students 2000 years ago, and is scarcely of less interest to the students of our own century.
One subject immediately suggests itself to most of us when we think of Egypt. I mean its hieroglyphics, or sacred symbolical writing. And as the deciphering of this writing has been the key to all modern discoveries respecting the details of the history of this people, so the mere fact itself that they did use such a character, is, perhaps, the most helpful of all to the understanding of its principle. We have seen what a puzzle it was to the Persian to connect the outward things which he saw with those which were objects of his thought; how continually there seemed to be some light very near to his mind and heart which was revealing itself to him; how while he realized this conviction, the outward sensible things which withdrew him from this light, were regarded as dark and evil; and yet how difficult he found it to express his thoughts about that inward light, except in terms which soon became confused with sensible images. The Egyptian never seems to have had this horror of visible things. He felt that something very sacred lay beneath them, and was expressed by them. To discover what this was, to read what was hidden in the objects of nature, was, in his apprehension, the function of the wise man. Then he was to translate back these perceptions of his, into outward forms and images, that the vulgar might be able to profit by them so far as it was meant that they should. Hence there grew up an order of priests in Egypt, as separate from the rest of society, as the Brahmins. A caste system organized itself in the African, as in the Asiatic nation. But the Egyptian priest was not an abstracted man in the same sense as the Hindoo; he did not so much withdraw himself from the contemplation of outward things, as seek to extract a virtue and a meaning from them. His first thought of all seems to have been that there was a Being hidden from man, but who was making himself manifest in different forms and signs. His operations in nature, the power which is exerted over the earth, and the life which goes on within it, might, especially in a country of such unparalleled fertility as Egypt, present themselves as objects of wonder and witnesses of a Divine presence. But it would be impossible to think of these powers in the earth, without thinking of the animals which dwell upon it—of the different powers and qualities which they display, of their birth, and decay and renewal. These animals supply him more distinct and definite symbols than the vague expanse of the heaven or earth. Different kinds of power are more concentrated and expressed in them; they can be far more easily exhibited in stone or in writing. Hence these became predominant objects of meditation to the priests. The various characteristics of the Godhead very soon become Gods. Students of Egyptian monuments discover three stages in the worship—three different cycles of gods. In the earliest cycle the idea of the Ammon, the hidden god, is the predominant one; and his manifestations are themselves rather in active energies, in vital operations, than in outward objects. The third cycle is the one most directly outward, hinting, however, at principles which in the first period were less perceived. As might be expected, different cities are found to have different classes of symbols; those in Upper Egypt to be characteristically diverse from those in the Lower; though at some period an attempt must have been made to bring all into one system.
Here, then, we seem to be in the idolatrous country—the country of divided worship: that which teaches us what idolatry means; how man loses sight of a centre: how every separate thing about him may become his master. And yet, throughout the whole of this idolatry there is a perpetual questioning of an unknown power to tell what this visible creation means. Each thing that is beheld is a riddle, an oppressive, tormenting riddle, of which some solution must be found. The Egyptian priest feels that the riddle is in the things. He does not put it into them, and it is not for him to do more than catch a stray hint of what each is denoting. But there is some object, some centre. The Pyramids point up to heaven as if they would say, “We are in search of it, we would reach it if we could.”
Such a system as this, on whatever side he viewed it, would be very offensive to a Persian king, especially if he lived shortly after the revival of his own faith, and before it had undergone any of its later changes. The Egyptians would seem to him worshippers of those outward things, which he was taught to regard as in some sort the possessions of Ahriman. And all their mystical wisdom would look like miserable attempts to bring light out of darkness. It was far otherwise with the Greek. The enquiries and speculations of the Egyptian priests were listened to by him with attention and wonder. He thought they had a secret which he did not possess; he eagerly, but often in vain, questioned them to learn what it was. In later times, when a Greek kingdom had established itself in the heart of Egypt, under the Ptolemies, both Jews and Greeks met upon that soil, and the old Egyptian feeling, of a mysterious meaning lying at the root of all things, exercised a remarkable influence over both. The influence was felt by the Christian Church which established itself afterwards there, and which consisted of both elements. It has left deep traces in the thoughts of men during all subsequent periods. But Christianity, which had a strong hold upon the Greek cities of Egypt, seems never to have penetrated into the heart of the country population. The symbolizing tendencies which it had inherited from the old faith led to divisions on most momentous points, which appeared to lose their momentousness in the violent party strifes and intellectual subtleties to which they gave rise. Egypt became sectarian and demoralized; the Mahometan power established itself there. Various dynasties and various forms of Islamism have possessed it at different times; the arms which swept away subtleties and janglings were utterly unable to cultivate the mind of the Egyptian. All the European refinements and material wisdom of its present ruler have not awakened one thought in the people’s heart, or done ought but make their slavery more ignominious and hateful. If the Memnon lyre is again to give forth any music, it must be touched by the rays from some sun which is not yet visible in that heaven.
III. To understand the difference between the Egyptian and the Greek faith, it is not necessary to study a great many volumes, or to visit different lands: our own British Museum will bring the contrast before us in all its strength. If we pass from the hall of Egyptian antiquities into the room which contains the Elgin marbles, we feel at once that we are in another world. The oppression of huge animal forms, the perplexity of grotesque devices, has passed away. You are in the midst of human forms, each individually natural and graceful, linked together in harmonious groups; expressing perfect animal beauty, yet still more the dominion of human intelligence over the animal. You perceive that the Greek is not mainly occupied with spelling out a meaning in the forms of nature: their symmetry and harmony present themselves to him as delightful and satisfying. He is not trying to find out the natural characters in which he shall utter his thoughts: he feels that he is able to write them in a character devised by themselves, upon nature. He can take the forms of the world and mould them into expressions of the spirit that is working in himself. The Brahm or Buddha of the East, the God of Intelligence, is with him. At Delphi, the centre of the world, He utters his oracles of wisdom, by which states and men are to rule themselves. But he is no mere formal, abstract Divinity: He is all Light like the Persian divinity; you may see him in the sun; but he himself is a beautiful human being, with his quiver and bow, destroying the creatures that offend the earth, or punishing human wrongs; with the lyre, at the sound of which cities spring up and men are brought into order and harmony. Apollo seems to be the central figure in Greek mythology, that around which the others have disposed themselves. The idea of Light and Wisdom, which is concentrated in him, is diffused in different forms, male and female, through the rest of the mythology, each having some particular locality, and presenting some different aspect to the Greek mind.
But it is felt that this bright, clear, human form cannot be the ground of all things. A Hindoo might have said that he was an emanation from the First Principle; but a Greek, with his strong human feelings, at once refers him to a Parent, says that he must be the Son of Zeus, the Lord of All. And what is He, and where does He dwell? On a high Thessalian hill, out of the sight of men. There his thunders are heard; thence his decrees come forth. An awe surrounds his habitation, but He too very speedily becomes a clear, definite conception. He is beheld in a human form, presently figured in sculpture. Human acts and passions are ascribed to him. The thought of mere solitary, self-subsisting grandeur is intolerable to the Greek; around him therefore must be a council of chiefs. And since the upper world seems his possession, since it is impossible to conceive of him otherwise than in the World of Light, the nether world, the dark world, must have its own ruler, and that other strange region, which seems neither to belong to the world above nor to the world below, the illimitable ocean, on which the Greek gazed with delight and childlike wonder, which was ready to swallow him up, and yet which owned his rule, which he could traverse with his ships, which gave him a sense of unbounded freedom and communion, even while it shut him in, and separated him from his fellows—this too must have its ruler.
There was delight in forming these conceptions, in moulding them into actual shapes; and yet the heart craved for something else, something that it could not thus conceive and mould. Dreams came to them of an earlier period, when another divinity, older than Zeus, had dominion—Chronos, or Time, was his name. Of such a one Zoroaster had spoken, but his abstraction of time without limits is quickly moulded by the Greek into an outward form—an old man with a scythe, who devours his children so soon as they are born. So soon did these visions of a world above man, or of a world in the past, take their shape and colouring from the actual world, and from the mind of him who observed it. And other visions there were, which confessedly belonged to earth, though they began and ended with heaven. The Greek Hercules is the head of a whole class of human benefactors and heroes, who tilled and subdued the earth, drained marshes, destroyed beasts and oppressive men, one of whom also penetrated into the lower world, delivered the victims of death, so proving his title to be a son of the god, and, ultimately, rising into fellowship with the gods. With these were mingled men who aspired rashly and presumptuously to that glory—Titans, who strove to overcome the Lord of Heaven by pure strength—one who was sentenced to perpetual thirst for seizing the divine nectar—one whose name declares him to be the representative of wisdom and foresight, who opposed the brute strength of the Titans, but who, because he stole fire from heaven for the good of man, must be fastened to a rock, and be the prey of a vulture, till a predestined deliverer should come.
All these conceptions could harmonize very well with that worship of Apollo which seems to have been characteristically the Greek worship. But at some time or other a mysterious divinity appeared, who possessed men with an inspiration which raised them into gods, or degraded them into brutes—a power to be felt rather than beheld. The Greek imagination was able to give even this Deity a form and a name; to invest him with ivy-leaves, and describe him as coming amid songs and shoutings from India. But the idea of such a power, so near to man, so deep and inward, could not forsake them. It uttered itself in poems, which were of a very different character from the free songs of early times; which spoke of man as carrying on a conflict with himself and with the world; which spoke of a deep, unknown Fate, whereto even the gods must bow. This faith associated itself also with mysteries, which imparted to the mind of the whole nation a sense of something most sacred, which no words could utter, or images represent, and which must, nevertheless, lie at the root of human life and society.
Meantime the feelings which these mysteries conveyed to the popular mind were realized in another way by thoughtful men; they began to say within themselves, The origin of the things we see, of our own lives, of human society, cannot be in those persons to whom the traditions of our ancestors have ascribed them. The authors, they said, of these traditions were poets, who created our creators. But where is that which is not conceived, not created? Is it in the things themselves—in water, or earth, or air, or fire? Is it in our own mind? Is it in some principle which unites these together? These were the questions which the Greeks asked themselves, when they could be no longer content with the vision of a fair-haired Apollo, but must find out what that Light or Intelligence was of which he testified. In pursuing such enquiries, some were willing to ask aid of those Egyptian priests who seemed to have discerned the meaning of things, and not to have invented a meaning for them. Some sought to turn the stories of their childhood into mere abstract speculations; some discarded them, and all belief together. The wisest of them laboured to shew them that their consciences and reason did demand something which they did not create for themselves; that all faith and reverence and worship, the words which they spoke—their own existence—their very doubts and questionings, pointed to a deep, eternal ground, which could not be a visible phantom, nor a theory, nor an abstraction which must be the Being.
We may easily perhaps persuade ourselves that with this record of human thoughts we have nothing to do. But with it is bound up the history of one of the most remarkable people that has ever existed upon the earth. This inward history is necessary to interpret the outward one. From it we must learn why the Greeks were so mighty, and why they were so weak, why their intellect asserted such a dominion over the greatest physical power, and why it could not be victorious over the animal nature in themselves, why, when they were feeble, they seemed capable of ruling the world, and why, when they became its masters, they were broken in pieces. And this enquiry has not become an obsolete one even in reference to Greece itself: the last thirty years have given it new interest. The Greek mythology, after some desperate efforts to ally itself with philosophy, and in that shape to put itself forth as an antagonist to Christianity, sunk into insignificance; the last school of purely Greek philosophy was closed in the reign of Justinian. But the habits and character which that mythology and philosophy embodied, exhibited themselves most remarkably in the history and controversies of the Christian church, were preserved at Constantinople through the whole of the middle ages, penetrated into the West at the revival of letters, have survived on their own soil three centuries of Mahometan dominion, and must be earnestly studied by all who desire that the new Greek kingdom should not exhibit all the vices and none of the merits of the old Greek republics; who desire that it should be, as it may be, an efficient bond between the European and the Asiatic, the Western and the Eastern World.
IV. The Faith which is embodied in the acts and literature of the Romans is often supposed to be the same with that of the Greeks. But this opinion arises, I think, from the habit of comparing the systems together, instead of seeking the main and central object in each. The majority of the Latin books which we read belong to a period after the Greeks had become the teachers of Rome, and after its own faith had in a great measure disappeared. Yet even from these, it is easy to perceive that Apollo, who, as the teacher of wisdom, the model of human beauty, the source of harmony, was the prominent Greek Divinity, never could have occupied any similar place in the Latin mind. In the system of the Greeks the father of gods and men was of course the centre. He was so, I think, practically and vitally to the Roman. But he did not habitually think of Jupiter as seated on a mountain, as the lord of earth and air. Such notions might gradually develop themselves in his mind; but, first of all, he believed there was one in the capitol of his own city; a presence there from which all law and government, the right of the father, the authority of the consul, proceeded. This idea of a Being not dwelling somewhere in the centre of the world, and uttering oracles of wisdom, to guide the thoughts and understandings of men, but dwelling in the centre of the City, and issuing words of authority and law to bind citizens together, to restrain, mould, organize societies, seems to mark the difference between the characters and doings of the two nations; each wonderfully asserting the power of man over natural things, and ascribing this power to his connexion with a divine ruler, or teacher, or inspirer: but the one using nature to set forth man’s thoughts, the other making it the servant of his purposes; the first creating statues, the other, roads and aqueducts; both aiming at unity, but the one always ready to sacrifice actual unity to an ideal, the other considering everything subordinate to that of keeping men practically at one; each alike disturbed by the oppositions of selfwill and individual interest; but these concealing themselves, in the Greek, under the pretence of defending some principle; in the Roman, under the appearance of upholding the rights of some order.
This distinction is apparent in every part of the Roman faith. A god who defines and preserves boundaries is more sacred in his eyes than the teacher of the divinest art. If he honours any being as a teacher it is Mercury, because he imparts the gift of eloquence, by which bodies of men are swayed—by which armies are moved or regulated. This result, and not the cultivation of any faculty for its own sake, is what he seeks from the god. The god of war, who is often utterly contemptible in the Greek legends, is his great patron and defender. The first king in old Roman heroic traditions is his son, though it is not as a conqueror, but as the organiser of an infant community, that those traditions present him to us. War, in the Roman conception of it, is not an exhibition of individual prowess, however such prowess may be called forth by it: but a means of subduing restless, striving atoms into order. It is, then, not at all inconsistent with his reverence for Mars, that a feeling of the sanctity of domestic ties, should especially belong to his faith. Virgil, who though as a writer he may have copied Greek models, was in heart a Roman, and entered into the spirit of his country’s traditions better than most men, lays the foundation of it in filial reverence, in the care of household gods. If the Roman entertained any of the Persian awe of fire, as the symbol of light and penetrating power, it was expressed in his worship of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, the preserver of family purity, and in the fire which was ever to be kept burning within her temple. The power of the father lay at the root of his law and life; and it was not, like the Chinese, a mere human apprehension, it was practically and essentially connected with all his thoughts of a Divine Being. He looked upon the bonds of family life as implied in the existence of a compact commonwealth—as its necessary basis and continual support. Upon any less real foundation so mighty a power could not have stood. Having such a ground, whatever threatened it with dissolution ultimately contributed to its strength. Conflicts of different orders of society brought out principles of the constitution which were previously latent; opposing principles, yet necessary to each other. And soon it seemed as if a power which had grown up by such regular and mysterious processes must be irresistible. Carthage, Egypt, Greece, bowed before it. The Parthian empire disputed with it the sovereignty of Asia. The countries of Western Europe it appeared specially appointed to subdue and civilize. The Belief of Rome gave it, as we have seen, its centre; in the capitol where Jove dwelt, the nation and the world which it ruled found the principle of its cohesion. The statesmen saw that it was so; they lost the belief, but determined that it must be upheld for the state’s sake. Family life they would have acknowledged it was expedient to uphold for the same reason; but that refused to stand upon a fiction, to live merely because it was wanted by the politician. As all the bonds of it were relaxed, the forms of the religion became more consciously unreal. And then it was seen that the state could not exist any longer upon its old ground. A visible Emperor must supply the place of an invisible Law and Presence. The military sacrament of the soldiers to the commander must be the one substitute for the old reverence. And such was the force of this bond, so much of the old feeling and principle of order still survived in it, that the state could last even for centuries with this thin plank separating it from the abyss. The plank cracked often—gave way utterly at last; and the nations, which had been prepared for the day and the hour, seized the spoil. Before that catastrophe the proclamation of a set of Galilean fishermen, that a crucified man was the Lord of the World, had been believed by the Emperors. Roman paganism seemed to disappear from the earth. But its peculiar character, the secret of its power, the cause of its decay, should be carefully reflected on, or the history of Western Christendom for 1200 years will be to us an inexplicable riddle.
V. Very soon after Rome became an empire it was discovered that there was a part of Europe which was more formidable to it than even the Parthian empire in the East. Intelligent Romans began to enquire very earnestly what that German race was which seemed to present the newest and strangest obstacle to Roman ascendency. They had a prophetic feeling that the question would be a very interesting one in after days to their own country and to mankind. They found a people who recalled to them the traditions of their own ancestors; rude and scattered, full of individual energy, severe and chaste, reverencing family bonds; with a sense, however imperfectly developed, of social order. A few observations they made upon the faith of this people, which are well worthy of note. “The Germans looked upon day,” says Tacitus, “as coming out of night, the last as the ground of the first. They appeared to pay a kind of worship to the earth. They looked upon themselves as descended from Mannus.” It seemed to the Roman, trying to translate their notions into his own, that Mercury was their chief god. These hints, slight and imperfect as they are, throw great light upon the mythology of Germany and the North, as we receive it from those who lived under its influence. To trace it through all its mazes may be difficult, and not very profitable; but there are certain great features in it which are worthy of earnest consideration.
The feeling of light and darkness, as two opposing worlds, is as strong among the Gothic people as it was among the Persians. Perhaps there was this difference; Darkness might be regarded as the invader by one, Light by the other. You would perhaps expect as much from the climate and atmosphere of Iran, as compared with that of Sweden or Norway; and hence you might easily pass to the conclusion, that the mythology of one, or both, has merely to do with the physical world, merely embodies the observations of men about the heavenly bodies and their influences upon the earth, or the processes that go on in its womb. Doubtless, these observations may be traced everywhere. The phenomena of the world occasioned the Northerns deepest perplexity; all the powers of earth and air, and fire and water, are at work in their tales and poems. The conflicts of these powers may, in one sense, be said to be the subject of them. The sea commonly seems to be contemplated as that out of which all things have emerged.
But we know little, indeed, about our ancestors, if we suppose that they were thinking merely about such matters. They described wars of giants, of good and evil powers. It is easy to say these giants only express the struggles and throes of nature—life contending with death, spring succeeding winter. But why are they giants? Why do they take this personal form? Why, if winter and spring were chiefly in their minds, did they not speak of winter and spring? Tacitus is most right in saying that the earth is the object of their study, perhaps, of their worship; but he is still more right in saying that they felt themselves derived from Mannus. Man is the subduer of the earth; because he lives upon it, tills it, sows it, rescues it from the waters, brings the harvests of autumn out of the frosts of winter, therefore do these Northerns care about the earth. And those battles which they see going on upon it, or beneath it, those struggles of gigantic powers of evil with deliverers and benefactors, are interpreted to them by what they feel going on in themselves; they are the wars of Mannus, much more than of the earth, and sea, and sky. Read them in this light, and every Northern saga is full of profoundest interest and instruction. A mighty power of death and of darkness struggling to draw all creatures into itself; mightier powers of good struggling against it: consuming fires, that are to destroy what is corrupt; life coming out of death, second birth, resurrection—these are ideas by which you see that they were haunted and possessed. They could find no clue to the strange mystery, yet they felt that it was near them, and about them, and that there must be some bright sun, which would come forth one day to scatter the shadows, and shew all things in their true relations and proportions. But yet it is equally true that Mannus himself and his origin are lost in the Infinite. Tacitus expresses the idea of the mythology in this respect too distinctly and definitely, but not unhappily, when he speaks of Mercury, the messenger of gods and men, who passes rapidly from heaven to earth, and from earth to the shades below, who connects each with the other, as the object of Gothic reverence. Such a being, only surrounded with vagueness and mist, not capable of being exhibited in a form like the Greek Hermes, or the Roman Mercury, is the Northern Odin. Each new theorist about him will present him in a different aspect, one as a mere mortal, to whom a history may be ascribed—one as a mere Divinity one as a teacher of human wisdom—one as merely the ideal of wisdom—one perhaps as the representation of some physical process—one as the establisher of a political order. Each may give plausible reasons for his opinion; no worshipper of him could have told you which was true; he would have felt that in some sense all must be true. Precisely the necessity of his mind was to find some object in which these characters might really meet: who should bring the clear light out of the darkness, and be a conqueror in that war with the earth’s tormentors.
I have now completed this division of my subject, and I may ask you for a moment to consider how the different portions of it are connected together, and what is the general result. Mahometanism, we see, stands upon a different ground from all the rest. It starts from the Divine Will, it assumes a declaration of that Will to men, it affirms men to be the servants of God to execute His Will. Hindooism has only the faintest conception of a Divine Will; but it recognizes a Divine original Light or Intelligence from which the intelligence in man proceeds, and which it is to contemplate. In striving to ascertain what this Light is—how it is distinct from the human intelligence—the Brahmin becomes lost in speculation. The Buddhist cuts the knot, practically makes man’s intellect the origin of all things; yet recognizes a certain universal Intelligence dwelling in the race, and concentrated from time to time in some person. Hindooism and Buddhism have been compelled in different ways to come down from the merely abstract region, and to speak of the Divinity as concerned with the doings of ordinary men; as exercising influences beneficent or pernicious over them: each has been obliged to explain what the universe has to do with the original Intelligence; each has been compelled into an idolatry of material things, against which, in its first conception, it is a protest. Both have struggled with Mahometanism, and been overcome by it; neither has been able to amalgamate with it, for neither has it been found to be a substitute. Buddhism in China has established itself side by side with a system of social order, the basis of which is the recognition of paternal authority, and which regards the knowledge of the invisible as unattainable. Entirely opposed to this system, Buddhism has been found nevertheless an indispensable supplement to it; even for the accomplishment of its own purpose. These different faiths which exercise a dominion over so large a portion of the universe, do claim something to satisfy them, something to unite them. Not one of them contains the solution of the difficulties which it has raised; each testifies that there is a chasm which the other seems meant to fill up; but it remains a chasm still. Not one of them can be satisfied by any philosophical theory about the universe, or about man, or about God, or about all of them. Mahometanism meets all such substitutions by its primary proclamation, God is; He must be a living personal Being: he must be the King of Men. Hindooism is continually attempting to philosophize, but every new turn of its history proclaims, We want a Living Intelligence, which shall hold converse with men, and with which men may converse. Buddhism has been a continual effort at philosophy; but every passage of its history proclaims, Theories will not do for us; we want a Living Intelligence to dwell in man. And now we have to add some new evidence to this. First, we hear from Persia a cry for some infinite, absolute Being, the ground of Light and Darkness, which he can only call Illimitable Time. Then from the Egyptian the witness of an Ammon, or hidden God. Then from the Greek the cry for something which he cannot express—which must be veiled in mysteries, which the poet speaks of as irresistible fate, which the philosopher says must be the Being, which cannot be material, and yet is no abstraction. The Roman must have an invisible God of the city, a righteous lawgiver, preserving the authority of his state, or it perishes. Unless in the heaven or the abyss there be one higher than Mannus, the dark thoughts of the Goth signify nothing. But none of them can be satisfied with the recognition of this hidden Being. There must be a manifestation of Him. From the immeasurable Time a Light must come forth, and that Light must be a Person. An Ormuzd must speak living words, nay, must be a living Word. Ammon must assume forms; the visible must, in some way set forth the invisible. One all clear and bright must be himself Wisdom to the Greeks—must utter the thoughts of wisdom, which keep them a people, and then must scatter himself through a thousand visible images. The Jove of the capitol cannot be only there. His presence must come forth in the host and in the family. Odin must travel lands, teach, give laws, and open Walhalla to men.
Look at each of these religions, and you see that there is a witness of oneness in all places and times. Look at them again, and you see there is something which divides them from each other. They feel that if they are to unite, it must be in something above themselves; they cannot unite for things beneath themselves, the accidents of their life, the climate, the soil of the lands in which they dwell, seem to determine what it is that is above them. They feel that if they are to unite, it must be in something above themselves; but their habits, tempers, tastes of their own minds, determine what it is which is above them.
This is the report which history gives of these religions—the mark which they have left of themselves in the actual universe. Dare you talk of all this as merely an illustration of the working of the religious principle in men? Dare you use such a dry, withered, heartless abstraction, to get rid of the recollection that you have been hearing how beings of your own flesh felt and did and suffered? Or can you comfort yourselves with saying, “These have all passed away; the Persian Ormuzd and Ahriman—the Egyptian dream of types in the world which must have some antitype—the Greek question, how is it I can create such marvels? what is it I cannot create?—the Roman sense of a divine order in the nation and family; the Odin warfare of good and evil spirits; they have passed away as visions of the night.” Visions they were, but visions which came to men concerning the dreadful realities of their own existence. They were visions of the night, but by them men had to steer their vessels and shape their course; without them all would have been dark. And we belong to the same race with those men who had these visions; some were nearer to us, some more distant, some brought up in regions utterly unlike our own, some almost our kinsmen after the flesh; all our kinsmen in reality. It has not been a mistake, I believe, in our education that we have busied ourselves so much with the legends of Greece and Rome. If we used them aright, they would not serve for the food of an idle dilettantism—they would teach us reverence and fear. We should tremble as we remembered ‘These dreams of a beauty which eye hath not seen, or ear heard, have visited the hearts of human beings generations ago; the dark and filthy imaginations which mingled with these dreams were engendered in the same hearts: by one as much as the other and by the fearful combination we know that those hearts were like our own. They will dwell together in us, and in time the vile will seem real, the beautiful only a shadow, unless we can find that the beauty has been somewhere substantiated; unless we can see the beauty apart from the corruption; unless there is some power which can establish the one, and destroy the other, in ourselves.’
Such reflections often come, I trust, to the young men of our land, as they read the classical fables. Yet these belong rather to a refined cultivation, and they may so possess the mind with the love of finite forms as to make it forget that those who conceived them could not be satisfied with them; but craved for the Infinite beyond. It is otherwise with the tales of our own proper ancestors. These are bound up with the thoughts of our peasantry; the most ignorant man feels that they represent some of the unspeakable fears and hopes of his spirit. And they clothe themselves in no graceful forms. The storms and earthquakes of nature are the only adequate types of the conflict which they speak of, a conflict in which human beings of that day were actually engaged. Are we not engaged in it too? Have we asked ourselves whether we can bear up in it alone? if not, whether we know where help in it is to be found?