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A History of Religion

History of Religion

By
HERBERT H. GOWEN, D.D., F.R.As.S.

Professor of Oritnta! Studies in the University of Washington

Hon. Fellow St. Augustine's Coll., Canterbury

Autkw of " The Universal Faith," " Asia, a Short History," "An Outline
History of Japan," "A History of Indian Literature" &c.

MOREHOUSE - GORHAM CO.
NEW YORK

QM> t

(r Firs* published 1934

Printed in Great Britain by
Billing and Sons Ltd., GafW/ord and Esher

94048

FOREWORD

present volume follows on the general lines of
a smaller book, entitled The Universal Faith, I
published some years ago. 1 It also uses some of
the material there assembled. But I have attempted here
something much more ambitious. It is indeed a survey so
comprehensive in its scope that a few of my friends tell me
it is the attempting of the impossible, namely, the relating
of the entire religious story of mankind, from as near as we
can get to the beginning up to the present stage of its
unfolding.

No one can be more sensible of the difficulties to be
expected in the effort to treat such a subject, or of the
many ways in which I was bound to fall short in fulfilling
my hearts desire. In many respects defects have been
corrected by the kind advice of colleagues and associates
in many parts of the world. I am sorry that, through the
exigencies of travel, in some cases suggestions reached me
too late for use in the text. For "example, the chapter on
Egyptian Religion would be much less faulty had I been
able to use help which came too late from Dr. S. A. B.
Mercer, of Trinity College, Toronto. To all my friends,
however, too numerous to be separately mentioned, I offer
sincere acknowledgment. I wish, however, specially to
acknowledge the sympathetic patience of Dr. W. K. Lowther
Clarke, of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
whose help has followed me over many thousand miles of
sea and land. If any errors still remain (as in all human
probability is the case), I must ask the consideration of
the critical. I should be ungrateful indeed, again j if I did
not express gratitude to my wife for assistance in the
arduous task of compiling the Index.

1 Morehouse Publishing Company, Milwaukee, 1926. Third Edition, 1929.

vi FOREWORD

My main hope now is that, through all the labyrinthine
ways of the human story, which I have endeavoured to
trace, there may be made plainer to the eyes of my readers
the vision of a divine purpose slowly but surely being
realized, through which the human spirit is being led
towards the goal set forth from all eternity.

HERBERT H. GO WEN.

TOKYO
Feast of all Saints .

1933 .

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION . . . . . i .

BOOK I.
THE PRINCIPLES OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION

CHAP. '

I. THE MEANING AND SCOPE OF RELIGION . . n

, II. WHAT is PRIMITIVE RELIGION? . .. . . 21

III. THE CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION . . .30

IV. THE RELIGION- OF NATURISM . . .. . . 46

V. THE CREED OF SPIRITISM . . . .66

VI. THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM . . . 78

BOOK II.
THE PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . , -93

VII. THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA AND THE PACIFIC 95

VIII. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA . . . 112

IX. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA I. . .127

#.--

X. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA II. . .142

XI. PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS . . 158

XII. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. OF THE KELTS . .172

XIII. THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS . . 181

XIV. THE RELIGION OF THE PRIMITIVE SLAVS . . . 192

vii

viii CONTENTS

BOOK III.
THE STATE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY

CHAP. PAGB

INTRODUCTION ,..,.. . . . 199"

XV. THE RELIGION OF THE EUPHRATES VALLEY . 201

XVI. THE RELIGION OF EGYPT . . . .217

XVII. THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA . . 237

XVIII. THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE . . 255

XIX. THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME . . 275

XX. RELIGION OF THE AMERINDIAN EMPIRES . . 291

BOOK IV.
THE RELIGIONS OF THE ORIENT

XXI. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA I. . . . 303
XXII. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA II. . . .321

XXIII. THE RELIGIONS OF. INDIA III. . . . 336

XXIV. THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA I. . . . 350
XXV. THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA II. . . . 367

XXVI. THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN . . . .381

XXVII. BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA . ... 400

BOOK V.
THROUGH JUDAISM TO THE -CHRIST

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . 413

SECTION I. JUDAISM, THE MIDDLE TERM

XXVIII. THE EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION . . 415

XXIX. JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA . . 433

' CONTENTS ix

SECTION II. CHRISTIANITY TO THE RISE OF

ISLAM

CHAP. PAGE

XXX. THE FOUNDER . . .'.-.. . 450

XXXI. THE GREAT FORTY YEARS . .. , 464

XXXII. CHRIST versus CMSAJL . ... , ' 478

XXXIII. CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS . . 492

XXXIV. CHRISTIANITY AND THE BARBARIANS . . 506

SECTION III. THE STORY OF ISLAM

XXXV. I. To THE ABBASID KHALIFATE . . 523

XXXVI. II. FROM THE ABBASIDS TO THE PRESENT

DAY . . , , . 541

. SECTION IV. THE SECOND MILLENNIUM OF
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

XXXVII. CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES . . 556

XXXVIII. THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT . . . 576

XXXIX. FROM THE "COUNTER-REFORMATION" TO THE

END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY . 595

XL. CHRISTIANITY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 616

XLI. CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 634

XLII. ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE . . 654

XLIII. EPILOGUE. BEYOND THE VEIL . . , ' 668

INDEX . . . . , , . 683

A History of Religion

INTRODUCTION *

MANY books have been written on the history of
religion; more still on the history of religions.
Of these, too, many have been written in a spirit
of supposedly scientific detachment from any particular
conviction as to religion itself. Hence, to avoid misunder-
standing,- I wish to confess here and now that the present
volume is conceived unashamedly from the Christian point
of view.

At the same time, lest so naive a confession should seem
from the first to invalidate my' attempt, let me add that I
do not thereby adjudge myself disqualified from showing
respect to the facts which a survey of such a subject must
necessarily involve. On the contrary, such a standpoint
for me seems to unify the survey in a manner which other-
wise would appear unthinkable. I make here no criticism
of those who write histories of religions as though these
were separate developments of the human spirit, unrelated
. to one another, and unrelated to any general scheme of
cosmogony. My reasons for rejecting such a method will
appear as I proceed. For me religion can mean little at
all unless it represent a biological necessity, implanted in
mankind by the author of life, going back beyond the
dawn of human consciousness, and extending onward beyond
our term of existence upon this planet, even to the ultimate
goal of human evolution. To use the words of John
Dewey: "Religion is a universal tendency of human
nature." Such an approach forces me to conceive of
religion as vitally and continuously associated with life, as
it has been through the indefinite past, as it is to-day, and
as it is to be throughout the ages of the, future. There is
no religious interest of the past which is without survival

A I

A DISTORT OF RELIGION

value for the present, and which is not predictive of com-
pleter expression and experience in the future.

A general sympathy for, and appreciation of, all forms
of religious belief and practice seems to demand that these
should find inclusion within the bounds of an all-compre-
hensive scheme which is purposeful from the beginning
and which represents an advolutiori as well as an evolution.
To study a number of religious systems, embodying human
ideals which have been fertilized with the contributions of
great personalities (unknown as well as known), only to
arrive at the conclusion that they are all equally true or
equally false, would be ruinously disastrous to our spiritual
life. Or to study the subject merely in order to reach the
conclusion of Auguste Comte that religion represents an
attitude towards the problems of life which, must be presently
superseded and pass away, would make a history of religion
only of archaeological interest, a story ending in futility,
like a stream such as promised to be the river of the water
of life in the City of God eriding in a desert.

If I may make my own conviction clear once for all, it
is that the Christian religion supplies just that unifying
principle for the religion of the past and of the future
which we need to render the entire subject intelligible. It
assures us as to the ultimate significance of the end, even
as it postulates an initial purpose, all within the bounds of
a creative process. Others may find some other kind of
unifying principle; for myself I can only -see the history
of religion against the background of a Christian philosophy.
And I love to think that the old Keltic Christians had some
such idea when they built their churches (as in Brittany
and. Wales) within the great stone circles of their pagan
ancestors. Even if only half conscious of what they did,
their action pointed to the proper synthesizing of religious
systems and experiences.

Perhaps I may put the substance of. what I have in
mind in the form, as it were, of a diagram. It was. Lord
Salisbury's advice to those engaged upon big questions of
foreign policy that they should learn to use large maps.
To judge rightly of a subject so vast that it includes the
consideration of all' past human history and the forecast of

INTRODUCTION

all that is to come, nothing may suffice except the largest
map of all, namely, the entire scheme of cosmic' purpose
such as embraces all history and at the same time starts
and closes with some vision of the eternal. Such a plan
may present itself in the form of a double triangle (in shape
not unlike an hour-glass), with the apices of the two
triangles in contact. The apices are supposed to be in
history, but the two base lines represent the eternity of the
past and the eternity of the future. In the first of these
two triangles we may think of God as revealed in relation
to a plan to be unfolded which includes nothing less than
all heaven and earth, that is, the universe. The base line
gives a starting-point from which is seen the working out
of a process which by successive siftings and selections
brings us- to our first apex, a single point at which (for
Christians) is concentrated in Christ the full revelation of
God, the first-fruits of the ideal creation. From this point,
in history, as from a second apex coincident with the first,
starts our second triangle, revealing the process by which
the ideal realized in the first-fruits is reproduced in the
mass. By a succession of expansions and inclusions, the
effects of the divine revelation are seen broadening out
towards that ultimate base line which represents in contact
with eternity the purpose of creation realized, as a new
heaven and a new earth, that is, a new universe.

Now as to the ideal completeness of the former triangle
there will be for Christians little or no question. All
things here are seen climbing out of nothingness to set
their feet upon the way (which is Christ) towards the goal
(which is also Christ). From atom to cell, from cell to
living organisms of every kind, from these again upward to
man, the way is continuous. With man appears that
"sense of the numinous " which is the history of religion
itself in germ. . Man's " august anticipations, hopes and
fears " contain within themselves the prophecy of his
destiny. His -aspirations shape themselves as a quest for
God; his failures to realize fellowship with God beget the
sense of sin; his efforts to remedy these failures become
creeds and cults, institutions and disciplines. As time
goes on, the moral earnestness of mankind digs and deepens

A HISTORT OF RELIGION

channels into which the currents of .religious history are
seen to flow. Into one of these channels, dug by an other-
wise insignificant, branch of the Semitic family, flow not
only the clarified feeling, reasoning and activity of the
primitive religions, but also the accumulated gains of the
great world religions of Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece
and Rome. Finally, as I have already suggested, our
triangle finds its apical point in the Christ, the full revelation
of God, as at once transcendent, immanent and human, the
revelation., moreover, of human life present and to come,
a microcosm of the perfect society which is by and by to
be realized in the City of God.

May I not find in the symmetry of such a cosmic plan
(no longer to be regarded, since Sir James Jeans' Mysterious
Universe, as the mere figment of a pious imagination) the
fitting background against which we may set the slow
unfolding of religious ideas from prehistoric times to the
present and against which we may forecast the possibilities -
of religious development in the centuries to come ?

Moreover, may I not here set forth what I conceive to
be the method by which religious advance has been ma^e
in the past and by which religious unity is to be secured in
the future ?

There would appear to be three possible conceptions
of the road to be followed toward the realization of a universal
religion.

The first is what we may call the exclusive way, by
which I mean the method of securing universality through
the repression and exclusion of all but one of a number of
competing systems. On this theory we must deal with
religions" as the Masoretic editors of the Old Testament
dealt with the various readings of the then existing Hebrew
MSS., or as the " Companions " of the Prophet dealt with
the varying copies of the. Quran with the result that the
present uniform texts are more confusing and, of course,
less accurate than would have been the perp'etuation of the
many textual differences. Similarly men have argued that
if all religions but one are eliminated, the victorious creed
and cult would have an indisputable title to universality.
Missionaries of all faiths have occasionally taken this view.

INTRODUCTION

I have a copy of an old Indian missionary's account of the
Gods of South India which was refused publication by the
Society to which he was accredited because he " was sent
to India to destroy the gods and not to write about them."
Far be it from me to deny that he who would promote the
cause of universal religion must at times be a good and
courageous iconoclast. " When the gods arrive the half
gods must go." Doubtless men like Boniface had ample
warrant for smashing the images which held back the
Frisians from giving up their paganism. But we must be
careful lest in smiting at the religion of primitive people
we smite where God has left. some witness to Himself,
rather than at what is literally a supers n #0, that is, a " hold-
over " something which has outlived its use. The story
of Paphnutius, casting a stone at the Sphinx and hearing from
the smitten lips of limestone the gently breathed name of
Christ, is a warning to those who would heedlessly destroy all
outside of their own (often narrow) conception of a creed.

The second path is that which we may name the eclectic
or syncretistic, that is, the picking out of elements here and
there from various creeds to make a kind of cosmopolitan
patchwork with appeal to everybody. Of course, all
religions borrow, more or less unconsciously, from one
another, but I am speaking not so much of the subtle
osmosis which is a part of every vital process as of the
deliberate attempt to build a system out of discongruous
elements. It has been a method with "special attraction
for some, especially in lands which have a syncretistic
culture. It was pre-eminently the Persian way, from the
days of Mani and Mazdak down to the time of Babism
and the eclectic systems which have from thence made
their way to the United States. It may prove the American
way unless we perceive the futility of the method and
stop cluttering up our religious life with the wrecks of
short-lived 'systems of this type. For, even though* men
doubt the wisdom of Horace, who taught the folly of so
combining diverse parts that " turpiter atrum desinat in
piscem mulier formosa superne," we might learn from
science that such is not the organic and natural way to
make anything that is to live.

6- A HISTORY OF RELIGION

The third and only possible path is that which we call
the evolutionary. It may seem strange at this date to
confess the necessity of having to guard oneself from the
implication that an evolutionary method of reaching universal
religion has to be a method deprived of the purposeful and
directive . power of God. No study of process, however
deep or high, can be effective which does not feel con-
tinuously the mystery that lies in and beyond the process.
As a little child, gazing at eventide upon the sun-suffused
sky, expressed the thought that " God is shining through,"
so it must be with the student in any department of know-
ledge. To use familiar words :

A fire-mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jelly-fish and a saurian,

And caves where cave-men dwell ;

Then a sense of love and duty,

And a face turned from the clod ;

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God. 1 .

In forming an evolutionary conception of religion we do
not thereby represent the universe as hurtling through time
and space uncontrolled, like some train with a dead engineer
at the throttle, but as something which needs God in- it and
with it all the way from the first impulse of " the love that
moves the sun and all the stars." "It is God, faithful to
Himself throughout, exhaustless' energy harnessed to an
infinite idea, in the animal which " climbs up its own
genealogical tree," as well as in the spirit which seeks to
rise to closer co-operation with a divinity whose kinship is
felt and understood.

It is obvious that Such a conception of religion supplies
us with adequate reasons for regarding history as " a novel
with a plot " all the past as the sphere for the operation
of "that Holy Spirit of assimilation" which we call
Revelation; all the present, with its apparent tragedy and
waste, as part of that act of creation which is itself limitation
and Passion ; all the future as the assured triumph of Him
who sees from" the beginning to the end the travail of His

1 Professor Carruth, quoted by R. F. Horton, in Great Issues.

INTRODUCTION

soul and its reward. The story of the universe is one
story whether, from above, we regard it as the -revelation
of a transcendent God, or, from below, as the evolution of
a creation in. which the divine element is necessarily im-
manent. Not only is the moral advance of man a divine
unfolding and growth, but the physical, too, God's
secret working at the web and woof of the flesh, that
our bodies may become at length the shrine -of the
All-holy. 1 ^ \

Is it not essential for the unity of religion that Chris-
tianity should not merely fit into but actually itself com-
prise such an evolutionary scheme ? It is certain that a
Christianity which is simply regarded as one religion among
a number of competing systems, perhaps mainly true where
others are mainly false, or a Christianity regarded as a kind
of medley, made up of the shreds and patches of Judaism
and the mystery cults, must be a very different thing from
the Christianity which claims to be coextensive with the
entire divine purpose, something, in fact, which may be
fitly called a cosmic epic, in the sense intended by Dante
in his Divina Commedia.

There have, of course, been dark ages in Christian
history when the more limited conception of religion was
common, if not general. Perhaps there are still to-day
those to whom the gods of other religions are nought but
devils and all earlier forms of ministry or sacrament but
the blasphemous parodies of Satan. There are, again,
those to-day for whom Christianity is sufficiently explained
as a complex eclecticism, with elements borrowed from
"Jew and Greek, from Persian and Buddhist. Yet, if we
ask. what is Christianity's own claim, in the light of its
hope to be the answer to all men's prayers and the
supply of all men's needs, the reply will be no uncertain
one.

In one of the old Mystery Plays a figure crosses the
stage at the beginning of the performance which is explained
as " Adam on his way to be born." Similarly, long before
the curtain of the New Testament lifts, we are made aware
that if the light of the Cross is to stream infinitely forward,

1 Psalm cxxxix. 1.

8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION ,

it must also illuminate the way back to the very beginning. 1
The very fact that the New Testament is preceded by an
Old Testament which has for its opening words: " In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," will
suggest this thought. Henry Adams has told us of that
window in the Cathedral at Chartres in which" are depicted,
somewhat grotesquely, the four Evangelists riding pig-a-
back upon the shoulders of the Old Testament prophets,
St. Matthew on Jeremiah, St. Mark on Daniel, St. Luke
on Isaiah, and St. John on Ezekiel. The grotesqueness
conceals the truth attested by Christ Himself when He
expounded to His disciples the fact that the Law, the
Prophets and the Psalms were full of things " concerning
Himself."

But the Old Testament must go back farther than to
the history of the Jew. The real scope of the Christian
revelation is best summarized- in that wonderfully com-
prehensive statement with which the Epistle to the Hebrews
opens: " God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers
in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom
also He made the worlds." Such a comprehensiveness is
the basis of the claim: " Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold," and of the commission (a true tradition,
even if a faulty text) : " Go ye into all the world and make
disciples of all the nations." 3 It is the basis also for the
missionary strategy of the greatest of all the apostles. For
when St. Paul testified to the Jews, as in the synagogue at
Antioch, 4 it was to the past history of the Jew that he
appealed t8 establish reasons for their acceptance of his
Gospel. But when the Apostle preached among the heathen
of Lycaonia, he appealed to their experience of a God
" who gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons,
filling their hearts with food and gladness," since for them
there was no need to recite the experience of the Jew. 5

1 It' is interesting to note that in the early Christian work known as The
Shepherd of Hennas, the Church is represented as an aged woman with many
wrinkles, because her age is the age of the world.

2 Luke xxiv. 27. 3 Matthew xxviii. 19.
4 Acts xiii. 16 fi, 6 Acts xiv. 15 ff.

INTRODUCTION

Again, when speaking to the Athenians, with inspired
common sense as well as out of a complete grasp of what
his faith implied, the Apostle, preaching neither the lessons
of Hebrew history nor the witness of natural religion, found
in " your own poets " the testimony to the truths he
desired to present. 1 And, once again, it is the basis for the
claim made by many of the wisest and most far-seeing of
.the Christian fathers. I quote but one passage, from
St. Clement of Alexandria, as follows: " It is clear
that, the same God to whom we owe the Old and
New Testament gave also to the Greeks their Greek
philosophy by which the Almighty is glorified among
the Greeks." 2

What an ancestry then for Christianity and for Christ!
When the Prophet asks his question, " Who shall declare
His generation? " may we not, for our part, answer, with
a conviction no preceding age has known, that we trace it,
not merely, with St. Matthew, to Abraham, or, with St.
TLuke, to Adam? Rather we trace it still farther back, if
you will, to Caliban or to the Heidelberg man; yea, still
farther to that first dawn of consciousness; we trace it
back to the birth of the cell; to the appearance of the
atom; yes, still farther back to the birth of the elements
among the stars and nebulae. At this point, or at any
other along the way, we have still to clinch our genealogy
with the affirmation of its ultimate term, in the words used
by the evangelist -to close his own: " Which was the Son
of God." In such a generation there is no break, no
missing link. The chain holds all the way from God the
Eternal to the Christ of history, and from Christ to the
humblest of those who through Him are . partakers of the
divine life.

It will be plain, I hope, moreover, that the genealogy
I am claiming for the religion of 'Christ necessarily draws

into it all religion, from the crudest and most primitive

1 Acts xvii. 22 S.

2 Stromata, VI. v. 42. Cf. also Strom., I. v. 28 ; Justin Martyr, Apol.,
i. 46 ; and St. Augustine, Retractationes , i. 13 : " Res ipsa, quae nunc religio
Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiques, nee defuit ab initio generis
humani, quousque Christus venerit in carnem, unde vera religio, quae jam
erat, coepit appellari Christiana."

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

A fire-mist and a planet, ,

A crystal and a cell,

A jelly-fish and a saurian,

And caves where cave-men dwell ;

Then a sense of love and duty,

And a face turned from the clod ;

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God. 1 .

In forming an evolutionary conception of religion we do
not thereby represent the universe as hurtling through time
and space uncontrolled, like some train with a dead engineer
at the throttle, but as something which needs God in- it and
with it all the way from the first impulse of " the love that
moves the sun and all the stars." It is God, faithful to
Himself throughout, exhaustless' energy harnessed to an
infinite idea, in the animal which " climbs up its own
genealogical tree," as well as in the spirit which seeks to
rise to closer co-operation with a divinity whose kinship is
felt and understood.

It is obvious that feuch a conception of religion supplies
us with adequate reasons for regarding history as " a novel
with a plot " all the past as the sphere for the operation
of "that Holy Spirit . of assimilation " which we call
Revelation; all the present, with its apparent tragedy and
waste, as part of that act of creation which is itself limitation
and Passion ; all the future as the assured triumph of Him
who sees from' the beginning to the end the travail of His

1 Professor Carruth, quoted by R. F. Horton, in Great Issues.

INTRODUCTION 7

All-holy. 1 '".'"

1 Psalm cxxxix. 15.

8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION ,

it must also illuminate the way back to the very beginning. 1
The very fact that the New Testament is preceded by an
Old Testament which has for its opening words: " In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth," will
suggest this thought. Henry Adams has told us of that
window in the Cathedral, at Chartres in which' are depicted,
somewhat grotesquely, the four Evangelists riding pig-a-
back upon the shoulders of the Old Testament prophets,
St. Matthew on Jeremiah, St. Mark on Daniel, St. Luke
on Isaiah, and St. John on Ezekiel. The grotesqueness
conceals the truth attested by Christ Himself when He
expounded to His disciples the fact that the Law, the

Prophets and the Psalms were full of things " concerning
Himself." 2

But the Old Testament must go back farther than to
the history of the Jew. The real scope of the Christian
revelation is best summarized- in that wonderfully com-
prehensive statement with. which the Epistle to the Hebrews
opens: " God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers
in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom
also He made the worlds." Such a comprehensiveness is
the basis of the claim: " Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold," and of the commission (a true tradition,
even if a faulty text): " Go ye into all the world and make
disciples of all the nations." 3 It is the basis also for the
missionary strategy of the greatest of all the apostles. For
when St. Paul testified to the Jews, as in the synagogue at
Antioch, 4 it was to the past history of the . Jew that he
appealed to establish reasons for their acceptance of his
Gospel. But when the Apostle preached among the heathen
of Lycaonia, he appealed to their experience of a God
" who gave them rain from heaven and fruitful seasons,
filling their hearts with food and gladness," since for them
there was no need to recite the experience of the Jew. 5

1 It" is interesting to note that in the early Christian work known as The
Shepherd of Hermas, the Church is represented as an aged woman 'with many
wrinkles, because her age is the age of the world.

2 Luke xxiv. 27. 3 Matthew xxviii. 19.
4 Acts xiii. 1 6 ff, 5 Acts xiv. 15 ff.

INTRODUCTION

Again, when speaking to the Athenians, with inspired
common sense as well as out of a complete grasp of what
his faith implied, the Apostle, preaching neither the lessons
of Hebrew history nor the witness of natural religion, found
in -" your own poets " the testimony to the truths he
desired to present. 1 And, once again, it is the basis for the
claim made by many of the wisest and most far-seeing of
.the Christian fathers. I quote but one passage, from
St. Clement of Alexandria, as follows: "It is clear
that- the same God to whom we owe the Old and
New Testament gave also to the Greeks their Greek
philosophy by which the Almighty is glorified among
the Greeks." 2

What an ancestry then for Christianity and for Christ!
When the Prophet asks his question, " Who shall declare
His generation ? " may we not, for our part, answer, with
a conviction no preceding age has known, that we trace it,,
not merely, with St. Matthew, to Abraham, or, with St.
X,uke, to Adam? Rather we trace it still farther back, if
you will, to Caliban or to the Heidelberg man ; yea, still
farther to that first dawn of consciousness ; we trace it
back to the birth of the cell; to the appearance of the
atom; yes, still farther back to the birth of the elements
among the stars and nebulae. At this point, or at any
other along the way, we have still to clinch our genealogy
with the affirmation of its ultimate term, in the words used
by the evangelist -to close his own: " Which was the Son
of God." In such a generation there is no break, no
missing link. The chain holds all the way from God the
Eternal to the Christ of history, and from Christ to the
humblest bf those who through Him are . partakers of the
divine life.

It will be plain, I hope, moreover, that the genealogy
I am claiming for the religion of 'Christ necessarily draws
into it all religion, from the crudest and most primitive

1 Acts xviu 22 S.

2 Stromata, VI. v. 42. Cf. also Strom., I. v. 28 ; Justin Martyr, Apol.,
i. 46 ; and St. Augustine, Retractationes, i. 13 : " Res ipsa, quae nunc religio
Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiques, nee defuit ab initio generis
humani, quousque Christus venerit in carnem, unde vera religio, quae jam
erat, coepit appellari Christiana."

io A BISTORT OF RELIGION

to the most advanced which may demand the homage of
the human heart. .

Having now, I trust, made clear my way of approach
to the subject, let me from henceforth sink the theologian
in the historian.

BOOK I

THE PRINCIPLES OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION

CHAPTER I
The Meaning and Scope of Religion,

MANY various interpretations have been given of
religion and many definitions attempted. Most
of them have erred either from excess of precision
or through some defect in comprehensiveness. It is natural
to approach the subject first by way of etymology and
derivation rather than, directly by definition. But un-
fortunately such a method does not take us very far. We
have, for instance, the two Latin verbs which have been
suggested as the derivation of the word "religion" itself.
But, while these give us ideas as to what religion might
have been for the Romans, neither points the way to a
satisfactory definition for ourselves. Religo (Inf. religare\
to tie, or bind back, is the word suggested by Lactantius
in the sentence: "Hoc vinculo pietatis obstricti deo et
religati sumus, unde ipsa religio nomen accepit." On the
other hand, Cicero uses the word relego (Inf. relegere\ to
"re-read, select, or care for (the opposite to negligere]^ and
implies that, so considered, religion is a careful knowledge
of the needs of the gods. In the treatise De Natura Deorum
he says: " Qui autem omriia quae ad cultum deorum
pertinerent, diligenter retractarent, et tanquam relegerent,
sunt dicti religiosi." And again, contrasting the idea of
religion with that of superstition, he says: " Religentem
esse oportet, religiosum nefas." But, putting both these
ideas together, we feel that the' Romans had an utterly
w inadequate conception of religion.

Nor are we much more fortunate in the vocabularies of
other peoples. The Hebrew words yir'ak (fear) and hesed

12 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

(piety) stress only particular aspects of religion. The
Greek ev<re(3eia (cf. Acts iii. 12 ; 2 Tim. iii. 5) corresponds
only to 'the Latin reverentia,. while Seia-tSai/jiovia (Acts
xxv. 19) implies rather what we mean by superstition. Or,
to go much farther afield for a term, we do not fare better
in borrowing the word chiao from the Chinese, or the word
matsuri from Japan. The former word is written with the
pictographic symbols to. beat and filial, forming the ideo-
graph with the signification of to teach. " Only indifferently,"
says Soothill, " does it connote our idea of religion." The
Japanese matsuri is really concerned with something official
and expresses religion only in a secondary way.

Altogether, an attempt to find a satisfactory explanation
of religion in the terms used to express it is disappointing.
Perhaps we shall do better to recall the definitions which
have been put forward by writers on the subject. Alas,
even here we fall short of success. It is plain that for the
most part the makers of definitions have had in mind a
particular aspect of religion rather than religion itself.
Here are a few examples :

In Plato we have Euthyphro asking 'the question, " Is
not religion perhaps merely a science of begging and
getting?" We need not suppose this was Plato's own
view, but many to-day unconsciously or consciously enter-
tain it. Otherwise we should not have so many staking
their religion on " getting some good but of it." It is
merely the translating into practice of the Latin phrase
" Do tit des " (/ give in order that thou ^mayest give). Sir
James Frazer, thinking probably only of religion among-
very primitive people, does not take us much farther when
he defines .religion as "A propitiation or conciliation of
powers superior to man." This merely amends the Latin
phrase quoted above to make it read " Do ut abeas " (I give
in order -that thou mayest go away). Unfortunately this '
definition, too, corresponds with the religion of many
modern people. Otherwise they would not speak so com-
monly of a calamity as a divine visitation. Another anthrop-
ologist, E. B. Tylor, speaks of religion as a " belief in
spiritual beings " and leaves out at least two-thirds of the
matter thereby. Matthew Arnold puts in the two-thirds,

MEANING AND SCOPE OF RELIGION 13

in ills- famous definition of religion as *' morality touched
with emotion," but he leaves "out the element of belief.
Pfleiderer leaves nothing but the emotion when he tells us
that " the mark of real religion is sentiment." Herbert
Spencer is characteristically abstract with his description
of religion as " the idea of the absolute and unconditioned,"
while Edward Caird is scarcely less so when he says:
" A man's religion is the expression of his summed-up
meaning and the purport of his whole consciousness of
things." Max Muller is trying to attain comprehensiveness
when he declares that religion is "the mental faculty or
disposition which, independent of, nay, in spite of, sense
and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under
different names and under varying disguises." Reville is
on the same lines with his definition of religion as " the
determination of human life by the sentiment of a bond
uniting the human mind to that mysterious mind whose
domination of the world and of itself it recognizes and to
whom it delights in feeling itself united."

All the above attempts at definition err by defect of
statement. Not a few others err by over-precision. For
example, we have Bishop Butler's well-known description :
" Religion is the belief in one God or Creator and Moral
Governor of the world and in a future state of retribution "
a definition which would exclude many more forms of
religion than it would include. Nearer our own time is
the not dissimilar definition by James Martineau: " Religion
is a belief, in an 'everlasting God, that is a Divine mind
and will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations
with mankind."

While on the subject two or three more definitions
which will recur to the memory of some of my readers may
.be quoted. For instance, we have William James' state-
ment that " Religion is the belief that there is an unseen
order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously
adjusting ourselves thereto " a better account than any
we have hitherto used. Then there is Hoffding's " Religion
is faith in the conservation of values." More elaborate is
Walter Gabriel's: " Religion ist das unverriickbare Etwas
im.Menschen, das keine Anstrengungen zu gross findet

t 4 'A HISTORY OF RELIGION

f _ _

um zur vollen Entfaltung zu gelangen, und das die Seele
nicht ruhen lasst, bis sie sich selbst gefunden, ihren Schopfer
und die wahre. innere Beziehuiig zwischen ihm und sich
selbst erkannt." l Much simpler are the hints in a' number
of other writers to the effect that,- e.g. " religion is something
vital to pur pursuit of character, happiness and servicejof
others"; that it' is a "keeping open of the divine, east -
window of surprise "; that if is " the anticipated attainment
of Gad "; and the like.

What definition may we, at the outset of our survey,
adopt, in order that .we may, include even the religion of
the Russian Communist (who says he has none), and in
order that we may find our proper material in all past time,
as well as in all inhabited lands, above all in every aspect
of man's complex personality expressive, in fact, of his
every need? So comprehensive an enquiry compels us to
postpone yet a while the formulation of a definition which
we could regard as satisfactory. Several pressing questions
seem to invite our prior consideration.

The first is an enquiry as to the geographical scope of
religion. /Is religion of human interest universally? Or, -is
it something which has been intruded here and there 'by
the perverse zeal of missionaries, bent upon "worrying
savages " into the profession of faiths and the practising
of cults which would never have occurred to them to adopt
in the nature of things ? Such a view has been many times
set forth, sometimes as of authority. Travellers, at least in
former days, were often wont to return from strange regions
with the dogmatic announcement, " This tribe has no idea
of religion." In reality, the traveller had probably no
knowledge of the tribal language, and the tribe had little
desire to break through its natural reticence for the benefit
of an inquisitive stranger. To-day, of course, in the case
of Russia, we have a whole country bent upon affording
illustration of an entire nation educated out of the idea of
religion. But what eventually will be the result of a cam--
paign to make atheists of a hundred arid fifty million
people it would be premature to predict. .Even here, in
the process of eradicating Christianity, communists are

1 See Walter Gabriel, Gandhi, Christus, und wir Christen,

MEANING AND SCOPE OF RELIGION 15

giving proof of their need for religion. For Communism
already possesses the emotion of a religion, the faith of a
religion, the philosophy of a religion, and some of the
institutions of a religion. The success of Communism
would by no means prove the non-necessity of religion.
Rather it would be the example of a new form of religion
taking the place of an older.

The second of our questions concerns the scope of
religion historically rather than geographically. If we admit,
so far as the present is concerned, that religion pervades
the whole field of human life, in some form or other, does
it follow that this has always been the case? Moreover,
will it remain so, rather than provide a stage in the process
of human development, as Comte predicted? In other
words, is there any period of human history in which
religion is added to some previously existing state ? Is it
in the prehistoric, as well as in the primitive, or does it
enter in .some era of inherited culture ? To put the matter
in still another way, is religion a biological fact, or some-
thing superimposed? Is it coterminous with the age-
long story of human evolution, from first to last ? I have
already expressed myself on this point in the Introduction^
and the answer to the above queries is obviously, in any
case, in the affirmative.

Such answer prepares us for the closely related query:
Should a history of the kind we are attempting be a History
of Religions or a History of Religion ? I have, as already
intimated, no hesitation in deciding for the latter. Those
who write histories of Religions are describing a tree by its
separate branches, but ignoring the trunk in which all the
branches find their origin and their unity* To describe
Religions by devoting a few pages to the lives of their
several founders, followed by an account of their several
tenets, and a sketch of their several careers in history, is to
forget the larger fact. The larger part of a religion lies far
back of the biography of any founder other, of course, than
of that Divine Spirit which is the source of creation itself.
It is true that great religious geniuses mark the parting
of many ways, stimulating the masses of men, and arousing
them to adventures of faith of which they were incapable

1 6 A. HISTORT OF RELIGION

by themselves. But the essential hopes and. fears and
yearnings of mankind, such as make up the constant urge
of religion, are present, however inarticulately, in the soul
of man from the dawn^of consciousness. Religion, then,
is fundamentally one, the historically continuous expression
of our common perplexities, our common problems, and
our common hopes. It is also the common manifestation,
in varied glints, and glimpses of that eternal Light which
" coming into the world, lighteth every man." We need
this conviction as to religion as originally, and in all its
present manifestations, a unitary thing, completely and
universally human, if we are to sustain our faith that the
ultimate goal of religion is to be universal too.

We have still to put our third question as to the scope
of religion. This is: What is its range -psychologically"*
Does religion concern merely one department of our per-
sonality, or must we regard it as applying to the whole?
To answer this question we must be permitted to assume
the common analysis of personality as including Feeling,
Reason and Will, or (as they are sometimes described) the
Emotive (or ./Esthetic), the Intellectual (or Rational), and
the Conative (or Moral) faculties. It is not necessary to
insist upon these as representing three separate things.
They are merely useful terms for the denoting of different
aspects of our complex individuality. For, first of all, it
is clear that religion does, and must, concern our Feelings.
In any religion worthy of the name the emotions must
necessarily be engaged. They serve to keep faith warm
and to stimulate to action. Yet it is clear. also that any
exclusive preoccupation of religion with feeling is not a
little dangerous. In such a case the result may easily be
hysteria and even madness. From ancient times to the
present the history of religion is prolific of instances in
which men and women have been swept by waves of
religious emotion from the mooring-posts of reason. In
ancient times it is the story of the Bacchantes; in more
modern times of the Holy Rollers. Nor. is it merely the
rational which, under such circumstances, is rejected; the
moral, too, often goes overboard with the rest, in the
\ second place, therefore, religion.^ needs the cultivation of

MEANING AND SCOPE OF RELIGION 1 7

the Reason. To serve God with the- mind is part of " the
first and great commandment." Here, too, there must be *
balance. There have been rational interpretations of
religion which have proved singularly barren in result, and
leaders, of highly intellectual cults have found themselves
surprised and disappointed at the lack of appeal which
their intelligence seemed to warrant, but did not secure.
It is not that there is any excess of reason- there is seldom
danger of this but rather that reason is not carried beyond
the limits of demonstration to the using of faith. For
faith is not opposed to reason, but to sight, and faith no
more destroys reason than a telescope destroys vision. It was
in elevating reason to the~ position of a goddess, enthroned
upon an altar dedicated to man's approach Jo God by faith,
that the French revolutionists made their mistake. Reason,
like knowledge, must " know her place "; "a higher hand
must make her mild." So, in the third place, we must-
make room for Will. The conative, or ethical, element is
as important as the others. No antinomian extravagance
of emotion, no enlightened gnosticism, may dispense with
morals, just as necessary under the Gospel as under the
Law, though achieved through the working of grace rather
than through the compulsions of legalism. And equally,
of course, it must be remembered that mere moral philosophy
is not religion and no system of ethics, even though it be
pressed with the insistency of the Confucian, suffices to
save or regenerate individual or nation. We must still
insist that religion, if it is to be vital, cannot afford to
ignore any one of the three elements we have mentioned.
To quote St. Paul, in three separate passages of his Epistles:
" Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing,
but the keeping of the commandments -of God ";* " Cir-
cumcision availeth nothing, nor uncircumcision, but faith
working through love"; 2 "Neither is circumcision any-
_ thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." 3 The
.supreme bliss of religion is not for the passionless, but for
those who have reached the apatheia of which St. Clement
wrote, the emotion of those whose passions are subdued
to the dominion of a- divine purpose God's lovers, not

1 i Cor. vii. 19. 2 Gal. v. 6. * Gal. vi. 15.

-A HISTORY OF RELIGION

slaves. The supreme bliss, again, is not for the
irrational. Intelligence must be understood (as the Latin
implies, and as we learn from Dante) as a higher form of
love. And, once again, the supreme bliss is not for the
weak of will, those who are, for their weakness, outside the
possibilities of disciplinary pain and of ecstatic joy alike.
To know at least this will save us from premature and
inadequate definition.

If we are still looking for a definition, we know now
'for what to seek. For myself, I am prepared to accept that
of Monsignor Le Roy, who describes religion as " the
ensemble of beliefs, obligations and practices by which
man recognizes the supernatural world, performs his duties
towards it, and asks help from it." 1 Or we may take that
of Dr. George Galloway, who tells us that religion is
" Man's faith in a power beyond himself, whereby he
seeks to satisfy emotional needs and gain stability of life,
and which he expresses in acts of worship and service." 2
In order to adapt the formula to the use of religions which,
like Buddhism and Communism, profess to be atheistic, we
need, perhaps, merely to alter the words " Man's faith in
a power beyond himself " to " Man's faith in an ideal
beyond himself." Such a definition will in general suffice
to cover the substance of the tremendous subject we have
set ourselves to survey.

Just one further point before bringing this chapter to
a close. As we shall find an evolution in the long story of
religion as a whole, so we shall find one in the story of the
three psychological aspects of individuality we have just
considered. We. may study the evolution of feeling, all
the way from that vague sense of mystery which so commonly
expresses itself as fear to the realization of a " love which
casteth out fear." The passion which is base and dark has
to be disciplined through many successive stages, providing
room for emotions of the most varied sorts, until at length
it becomes transfigured into that sublimated passion which
makes the atmosphere of heaven :

1 Monsignor A. Le Roy, The Religion of the Primitives, p. 33, New York
1922.

2 George Galloway, The Philosophy of Religion, p. 184, New York, 1914.

MEANING AND SCOPE OF RELIGION 19

So strong that love, could heaven bid love farewell,
Would turn to fruitless and devouring hell ;
So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,
Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven. 1

Yet the history of religion will have much to say as to the
legitimate place for that kind of fear we call reverence, and
for the kind of fear which shrinks from the peena damni
the pain of loss. The query will present itself again and
again as to how fast we dare go in ridding ourselves of
fear, and at what point fear becomes needless and dangerous.
At any rate, the purging of our emotions from their baser
elements will constitute an important part of religious
experience.

There must, again, be an evolution of reason, all the
way from the making of myths (a faculty by no means to
be despised) to the establishment of scientific generaliza-
tions, all the way from the aetiological guesses of primitive
men with regard to things imperfectly observed, to that
knowledge of Nature (still, of course, in the provisional
stage) which, through observations by ourselves and others,
we venture to formulate in so-called ' ' laws. ' ' Every religion,
apparently, has required a cosmogony and in the making
of cosmogonies the mythopceic faculty has performed a
religious function of value. Nevertheless, all along the
road, reason has been constantly correcting her conclusions
by enquiry, . engaged in sloughing off exploded hypotheses
and in making fresh hypotheses on which experience may
continue to build. Moreover, always beyond the provable
must be recognized the reasonableness of faith, which is
the leap of the soul's surmise to heights whitherward know-
ledge only journeys ploddingly.

Then, thirdly, we. have to take into consideration the
evolution of the will. The ethical faculty has to be trained,
all the way from the obedience of slaves to the obedience
of sons, and thence to that connubial obedience which is
the self-identification of the bride-soul with her bridegroom-
lover. The question will often have to be asked, at various
stages of religious history, as to how far the " being under
law " must persist and just where " the freedom of sons "

1 Algernon Swinburne, Tristram and Iseult.

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

commences. In the history of religion many types of
righteousness will be discovered which have little to do with
morality as we conceive it. But, all along, where religion
is felt to be advancing, there will be perceived a development
of the will towards freedom in the sense of being free to
fulfil the law of one's own being and towards life in
accord with that Supreme Will " which is. our peace."

In conclusion, it is plain that such a subject as the
history of religion brings us to the contemplation of things
infinitely large. In all humility, we are attempting " from
heights divine of the eternal purpose " a survey of that
purpose, so far as finite minds are capable of grasping it,
to the end that we may be intellectually enlightened and
morally stimulated. For the most part, of course, our
survey will keep its feet on the' earth and deal with details
we may reach by historical methods. Nevertheless, we
must keep in mind throughout the plan a plan which
antedates time and stretches out to the full redemption of
the Cosmos from its provisional Chaos, and to the perfecting
of the individual organism we call the soul. And, 'though
we say little about it, we shall have always in mind the
operation of the primal Force which is nothing less than
the Divine Love educating creation through the mysteries
and tragedies of life for the final conclusive triumph. We
shall also keep in mind the method of the education, . a
method which is revealed in the whole process of creation
as well as in the sacrifice on Calvary. Behind all the story
of development, in other words, is God, affirming in all
the ages His purpose in man, first as the little child set in
a new strange world to " embark on small adventures in
the wild "; then the man confronting mysterious adventures
of the spirit:

And, when he is older, he shall be
My friend, and walk here at my side ;
Or, when he wills, grow young with- me,
And to this happy world where once we died, -
Descending through the calm, blue weather,
Buy life again with our immortal breath,
And wander through the little fields together,
.And taste of love and death. 1

1 Alfred Noyes, Creation.

CHAPTER II
is Primitive Religion ?

WE will now, for the present,, abjure metaphysics
and confine ourselves, in the proper spirit of the
historian, to the experience of man upon this
planet. Yet, even on this planet, a large part of the history
of mankind is outside the limits of history properly so-
called. So'far as time is concerned, the prehistoric period
of humanity is almost infinitely longer than the historic.
Man's life on earth probably goes back some 350,000
years B.C., to the Quaternary Period and the various sub-
periods of the Glacial Age. Of all that lies between that
remote date and the beginnings of recorded history, say,
5000 years B.C., we know nothing save what is gleaned
from the scanty remains of burial mounds. Tins is enough
to prove that even prehistoric man was religious in the
sense' of believing in a future life and in the worship of
. certain powers of Nature like the. sun. But, while this
agrees with our conviction that man has been incurably
religious from the first, it affords us little in detail.

It will be seen, then, that the term primitive as applied
to religion is only relative. We know only a little more
of primitive religion than we know of primitive language.
Even with the help of prehistoric archaeology, with its
megaliths and dolmens and long^barrows, its ochre-graves
and its assemblage of life-givers, we have little in the way
: of real criteria. "

| Nevertheless, what we do have suggests that man's
general attitude towards the universe has not changed very
radically^ We may not accept the dictum of Tanquerey
that " primitive religion does not substantially differ from
the Christian religion "; we may feel it better to say with
Otto, " What is potential in religion in general becomes in
Christianity a pure actuality." But certainly we have cause

22 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

to recognize the same kinds of reaction to the great en-
compassing mysteries of Nature. Thus, convinced that
man in the Stone Age was striving to express the same kind
of attitude to the universe, we are not so badly handicapped
by our ignorance of the past as might be supposed. With
some measure of imaginative insight, aided and corrected
by the more or less laborious collecting of anthropological
data, we find ourselves able to reconstruct, with some
approximation to accuracy, the religion of the primitive,
even though we only catch up with him when he is far
advanced along the upward path. The ,two methods,
used co-operatively, at least furnish us with valuable and
suggestive material.

As an example of the former method, let us take
that wonderful piece of imaginative reconstruction which
Browning has given us in Caliban upon Setebos. Shakespeare
had already given us one Caliban, a Caliban who is the
primitive man. presented for comparison with those vulgar
products of civilization, Trinculo and Stephano. This
Caliban shows us little or nothing of his religious side. But
Browning offers us a Caliban who is not only potentially
but actually religious, the man of the spirit. To begin with,
however, it is not a promising picture, that of the savage

Flat on his belly .In the pit's much mire,

With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.

Yet we are shown that Caliban, too, is among the prophets
who prepare the way for fellowship with God. While, in
the flesh, Caliban is kicking his heels in the cool slush, a
spiritual sense is being awakened, and is becoming more
and more responsive to the stimuli which prick him from
without. His " daemonic dread," in the presence of the
unknown, contains the potentiality of a reverence which
is " the raw material for the feeling of religious humility "
and which will grow in time to love. Out of a respect
evinced for tradition, as received from his mother Sycorax,
awakens the capacity for a fellowship in faith such as shall
create the Church. Out of the self-consciousness which
postulates this or that hypothesis concerning God arises
that sense of kinship so triumphantly vindicated at last in

WHAT IS PRIMITIVE RELIGION? . 23

the doctrine of the Incarnation. Out of acts of propitiation,
ritually organized, springs the entire system of sacrifice
and prayer by which are fulfilled man's yearnings for com-
munion with a living God. In the speculations of the man
just emerging, as it were, from the slime, we discern anti-
cipations and presentiments of the creeds and cults of
advanced forms of religion, just as we might discern the
limbs and viscera of the human being predictively present
in the embryo.

Leaving a poetic reconstruction such as this of
Browning's Caliban^ and summarizing the data deriv-
able from the widest possible survey of the anthropological
field, we find in. the comparison nothing essentially
different. First, we find the emotion from which all
religion may be said to have sprung. Petronius calls it
fear, and asserts:

Primus in orbe deos fecit timor, ardua coeli
Fulmina dum caderent. 1

Rudolph Otto describes it, in his Das Heilige, more accur-
ately as " the sense of the numinous." He reminds us that
emotion has two poles, .the mysterium tremendum and the
mysterium fasdnans. One is the sense of horror in the
presence of mystery, the horror which is more often illus-
trated in the religions of the Orient, as, for example, Indian
Tantricism, than in those of the West.* 5 The other is that
sense of ecstasy, such as St. Catharine of Genoa expressed
when she declared that but a drop of her emotion falling
into Hell would turn Hell into Paradise. Certainly, though
we cannot go astray in describing this " sense of the
numinous " by the terser English word awe, we have to
allow for the two aspects of the emotion. Undoubtedly,
at first the element of fear may predominate, but it is a
fear capable of ultimate transformation into the ecstasy of
love. Fear of a sort will, of course, continue in religion
as reverence and the sense of dread in the presence of the

1 Petronius, borrowed by Statius, Thebais, III. 360. See also Lucretius,
at length, De Rerum Natura.

2 Yet appeals to the horrors of Hell have often enough been part of tfie
revivalistic preaching of the West.

24 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

infinite mystery must be considered one of the permanent
values of religion. As Goethe says :

Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Teil.
.Wie auch die Welt ihm das Gefuhl verteuere,
Ergriffen fuhlt er tief das Ungeheure. 1

To supersede such an element too rudely is to rationalize
religion mischievously and also to weaken its power over
the consciences of men. Nevertheless, even from the. first
there is in awe the attractiveness of a great challenge, the
incitement to a great adventure. Wonder is awakened
by the sense of mystery as well as fear, and he who ceases
to wonder soon ceases to be religious in the true sense of
the word. The man who is forced to the confession,
" I am so rapt in wonder I cannot speak," is not far from
reverence for Him whose Name, according to the prophet,
is Wonderful? . .

Yet primitive man soon learned that his awe was the
result not. of a single mystery but of two mysteries equally
awe inspiring. TheSe are distinguishable from the first
and have their separate developments, and each line of
development has had an~ important part -in moulding the
creeds and institutions and practices of religion. The first
of these (not necessarily in time sequence) is the mystery
which man discovered outside himself in the phenomena
and processes of Nature. ' Out of the awe thus inspired we
get the idea of God as the Shining One, Deus (with its
derivatives), the Divine Power in and beyond Nature, yet
revealed .especially in the heavens above.. To the type of
religion thus begotten we give the name of Naturism, and
from it man gains his conception of both the transcendence
and the immanence of God. The second mystery is that
which man feels within himself, the mystery of his own
being, of his life arid his death. From man's sense of this
we get the idea of God as the Spirit, Theos (with its deriv-
atives), the Greek term ultimately derived from an old root
signifying- to breathe. We call this type of religion Spiritism
and see in it the foreshadowing of what we shall later de-
scribe as the humanness of God. Both types of emotion

1 Goethe, Faust, II.. i. v. Cf. Jobiii. 12-16.

2 Isaiah ix. 6.

WHAT IS PRIMITIVE RELIGION? 25

are in tfreir essence anthropomorphic, but in the former
case we have the material world conceived of as the visible
vestureof a spirit like the wind (anima),vivifying theuniverse;
in the latter case the human body is regarded as inhabited
by a spiritual principle which is like the breath (animus)
which inspires or, at death, forsakes, the body.

It is important to note that these two types of primitive
religion are complementary rather than exclusive. They
may both be present (and generally are) in one and the same
religious system, though in varying proportion. It has been
too commonly, and most unfortunately, assumed by some
writers on religion that Naturism and Spiritism' are to be
reckoned antagonistic and mutually exclusive theories of
religious origins. To some the awe produced by the sight
of Nature's stupendous phenomena has sufficiently accounted
for man's tendency to religion. .The "spacious firmament
on high," the glories of the rising sun, the moon swimming
in a bank of clouds, the rolling storm-clouds these are
the things which first stirred man's soul to awe. To others
religion sprang rather from 'the fear of ghosts troubling
the visions of the night. It should be clear that either of
these theories separately set forth is necessarily incomplete.
To account for all the facts, both Naturism and Spiritism
must be permitted their proper place, and. to a large extent
their separate developments. There must be room per-
manently for the awe which breeds its proud humility when
we stand beneath the starry vault of heaven. There must be
equal place for the awe we feel when we bend in the pres-
ence of the dead. The universal religion of which we are
in quest must be a synthesis of both evolutions, not academ-
ically or artificially but naturally and vitally. We must find
God manifested'^ us on the one hand through the myster-
ious operations of Nature, and on the other hand through
the emotion engendered by the darker mystery of death.

Yet before we attempt to sketch the evolution of either
Naturism or Spiritism something should be said with
regard to the term anthropomorphism which was used a few.
paragraphs back and which requires explanation all the more
because of the general tendency to undervalue the function
it possesses in the evolution of religion. So far from being

26 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

tempted to despise the use of anthropomorphic terminology
in expressing our conceptions of God as the ultimate reality,
or repeating the sneer that whereas God first made man in
His own image men are now content to fashion God in
their own, we should realize that the use of anthropo-
morphic terms is inevitable at certain stages of theological
formulation and that its necessity by no means disappears
when we advance to the highest conceivable apprehension
of God. This is for two reasons : first, because in finding
terms for expressing our theology we can only draw upon
the knowledge we have of our own personality, the sole
knowledge we have of personality at first hand. The word
Father ', permeated as it is with anthropomorphism, is still
to-day more stimulating as a means of access to God than .
the most philosophic definition ever coined by manjs intelli-
gence. The terms we need to employ are, of course, not
definitions but symbols, _ and they are, moreover, symbols
which are effective only to the limit of their symbolism.
For example, when I point my finger to the sun and say,
"There is the sun!", my gesture is a symbol in that it
suggests, not the end of my finger, as the 'position of the
sun, but the line of direction which, followed up for millions
of miles, will eventually reach the 'sun. Equally at fault is
he who refuses to look beyond my finger and denies there-
upon the existence of the sun, and he who, perceiving the
inadequacy of the term Father as applied to God, rails at me
for dealing in anthropomorphisms instead of definition.
But, secondly, the use of the, anthropomorphic has warrant
skice God does indeed touch man through Nature, just as
man rises to communion with God through his immortal
spirit. Where God and man are felt to be akin, the one to
the other, why deny to man the assertion of the humanness
of God or of the divinity of man ?

There is a further extension of this use of anthropo-
morphic symbolism which it is not out of place to mention
at this. point. With our modern enlargement of the idea of
man's place in Nature, as having an inheritance from the
world below us as well as a gift from above, even the use of
theriomorphic (or zoomorphic] terminology is not without its
justification in theology. With man's genetic relationship

WHAT IS PRIMITIVE RELIGION? 27

extended backward to the animal world, it follows inevitably
that a completer Christology should take cognizance of
the tremendous problems ahd perplexities which run down
into subhuman regions in which life's earlier developments
took place. The religion of primitive men, who felt them-
selves on intimate terms with the animal world, was bound,
on the theological side, to employ the language of therio-
morphism as well as that of anthropomorphism and, on the
practical side, to use what we call theriolatry. On this
subject, of course, much has been written from the anthro-
pological standpoint. Theriolatry has been explained by all
sorts of things, pastoral cults, hunting cults, the cult of
dangerous animals, and the like. But the fact remains,
which has been frequently overlooked, that for primitive
man the transition from the theriomorphic to the anthro-
pomorphic involved but the shortest of steps. To most
primitives animals were not merely relatives but relatives
to be respected and reverenced for many qualities. This
will be more explicitly set forth when we come to the subject
of Totemism : in the meantime it must not be forgotten that
the language of theriomorphism, while it had great signifi-
cance in the early stages of man's religious experience,
has even to-day not entirely lost its. validity. It ensures
our recognition of the unity of all life, as derived from one
source, as being- subject to many of the same pains and
problems, and expressing, as the Apostle implies, through
the groaning of all creation, the same expectancy of an
ultimate redemption. All Nature shares in the method
by which life is exalted through sacrifice. In this method
the brute creation, as we call it, has its very real, if un-
conscious, part. The swine that ran violently down a steep
place to perish in the waters were nearer to the spirit of
Calvary than the selfish drovers who complained of loss of
wealth through th,e presence of Jesus. " The shabby old
scape-goat" was nearer to the programme of Messiah
inaugurated on Quarantania than were the priests and scribes
at Jerusalem. The ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem
on Palm Sunday, though " the tattered outlaw of the earth,"
had a share alike in the Passion and its triumph. Christ

1 Romans viii. 22.

28 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

accepted the title Lamb of God$s well as that of Son of Man,
and the completeness of redemption is illustrated by the
association of Ox and Lion and Eagle with Man around
the Great White Throne. 1 Such is the permanently valuable
truth which we find in the theriomorphic stage .of theology.
The forms in which religion clothed itself in primitive times
cease to be valuable, but the truths concealed behind the forms
survive to find new vesture under new conditions. There is.
always predictively present that " fullness of time " in
which truth shall appear no longer conditioned by temporal
necessities.

When we understand this we shall exhibit a very
generous tolerance for the symbolisms which other ages '
and other peoples find necessary for their expression of
religious truths. It will be possible for us to pierce through
the crudest of media and find thereby access to truths which
words are inadequate to express. Even the satire of Rupert
Brooke, in his description of the fishes' -Paradise, will
become for us significantly religious :

Some where .beyond Space and Time,

Is wetter water, slimier slime ! -

And there (they trust) there swimmeth One

Who swam ere rivers were begun ;

Immense, of fishy form and mind,

Squamous, omnipotent and kind ;

And under that Almighty Fin,

The littlest fish may enter in.

Oh, never fly conceals a hook,

Fish say, in that Eternal Brook,

But more than mundane weeds are there,

And mud celestially fair ;

Fat caterpillars drift around,

And Paradisal grubs are found ;

.Unfading moths, immortal flies,

And the worm that never -dies,

Arid in that Heaven of all they wish,

There shall be no more knd, say fish! 2

Satire^ we exclaim, upon our Christian ideas of heaven!
Yet neither our crudest Christian symbolism nor the above
quoted description of the fishes' elysium" is ridiculous

1 Revelation iv. 6 ff. a Rupert Brooke, Heaven.

WHAT IS PRIMITIVE RELIGION? 29

unless fish or men limit themselves to the letter of their
symbolism. The old man's remark, " There's golding
streets yonder, but I shan't think it natural unless there's
chimbleys too," was only ridiculous in so far as the farther
end of the man's symbolism was closed .against the thing
which " eye hath not seen nor ear heard." At the hither
end every symHol must relate itself to the user's own ex-
perience. But, whether through the veil of Nature or
through the mystery of his own being, man must continu-
ously reach out towards touch with a Power beyond all
Nature and towards a Spirit akin to his own. Moreover,
in the quest and in the attainment alike, he must find the
power which sets him on his feet and aids his advance " on
to the bounds of the waste, on to the City of God,",

CHAPTER III
The Greed of Primitive Religion

MANY will desire first to ask, What is a Creed?
and further, Why a Creed? These are questions
of permanent importance and deserve an answer.
There are few errors in popular conceptions of religion
more common or more serious than those prevailing on this
particular subject. To some people a creed is something
to be accepted solely on divine authority, as the result of
revelation, a proclamation of ultimate truths which are
altogether outside discussion or any appeal to reason.
" Credo quia absurdum." To such the acceptance of a
creed is simply an act of obedience to ecclesiastical authority,
a test of orthodoxy rather than the use of a symbol. Where
this idea prevails it is not strange that, while some yield to
the proclaimed dogma an unquestioning faith, others are
repelled by what appear to be gratuitous assumptions
independent of or even contrary to reason and resting upon
nothing more substantial than the decree of an ecclesiastical
Council. It should therefore be understood from the start
(as indeed has already been suggested) that a creed is properly
(as the Greek synonym indicates) a symbol, that is, an attempt
in the interest of practical religion to express our apprehension
of truths which lie beyond our powers of definition. As
we have already seen, the term Father, applied to God with
the implication that it connotes all that is contained in our
highest conception of human fatherhood, and- then extends
infinitely beyond into regions of thought where language
fails, suggests belief of far nobler significance than the
precisest definition we could frame. Words, even the most
exact, are but counters, and when used of things which
transcend experience can have no finality. They are true
so far as they suggest the direction; they are false so far as
they suggest the limitations of the original sense.

3 o

THE CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 3 1

If creeds, then, are but symbols and in no wise definitions,
why, it will be asked, use them? A little thought will
convince us that a working hypothesis is always a stimulus
to . activity and a road towards completer intelligence.
Experiments become experiences. Hence we might as
well talk of a creedless business as a creedless religion. As
the business man, trusting his acumen and the advice of
his friends, essays an undertaking which he knows to be
sound only after he has risked the experiment, or (to use
an even simpler illustration) as a hungry person trusts those
who have prepared a meal and only knows it to .be whole-
some after he has eaten it, so the man who craves a religious
experience, and trusts a teacher who recommends himself
as dependable, to the extent of making the venture, only
verifies his faith when he has made trial of it. It is obvious,
of course, that any theory of life on which a man is willing
to stake something demands faith. In this respect the
atheist, who rails at creeds, is quite as dogmatic a priori
as the theist. In fact his inverted theology is a creed which
is just as undemonstrable as that of any one else and is
proclaimed with just as much confidence in its authority.
Neither knows, to start with, of God as a matter of proof;
each yields his life and its issues to the creed he esteems
the best.

It should be added that when the reasonableness of
faifh has been conceded there will follow the fight to main-
tain faith. There is no more finality about faith than about
physical life.- As life is the moment by moment victory
of the forces of growth over the forces of disintegration, so
faith is the continuous victory of belief over the disposition
to disbelieve. Those who plead for a ""simple" creed,
like that of the Fatherhood of God, forget that such an
article of faith may under certain circumstances be the most
difficult of all to maintain. None breaks down so often or
so tragically in time of trouble. None needs a robuster
confidence to sustain. Indeed, all formulation of truth
works on the edge of mystery. .Like Thor we essay a
simple draught from the drinking-horn of the gods, only
to find that we are in contact with the waters of the illimit-
able ocean.

32 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Now when we ask ourselves concerning the creeds of
primitive man we do not assume that doctrines were as
clearly perceived and formulated as we shall here set them
forth. Quite possibly, in the minds of most, there was
nothing but what William James calls " big, buzzing,
booming confusion." Probably most men, even as to-day,
lived in one of the two twilights,

The twilight of a seeking unto light,
The twilight of a doubting unto night.

Not even Browning's Caliban could have held his views as
. " pat " as they are presented in the poem. Yet undoubtedly
.all the elements of a real creed were present, however
vaguely, much as we shall here present them. If here they
are given with some sort of logical sequence, it is, of course,
merely for the sake of explicitness and for the convenience
of the reader.

First of all a word is fitting in regard to that particular
school of writers which rejects the evolutionary hypothesis
and posits a primitive monotheism, in the place of the series
of developments presently to be described. Of this theory
three things may here be said. FirstJ that the evidence
adduced for the theory is in a large number of cases ex-
ceedingly weak and even founded on misinterpretation
of terms, such as manitu, and the like. Secondly, that much
of the evidence is obviously the result of ideas imparted by
missionaries themselves and mistaken by them for primitive
tradition. Thirdly, that there is no reason to deny that a
vague sense of unity did often lie behind the polydsemonism
and polytheism of primitive man, even as the idea of rita lay
behind the polytheism of Vedic India. We may well agree
.that the germ of a future monotheism (as well as the germs
of other doctrines later to be manifested) is there, even
though monotheism itself be absent.

Hence we begin, not with any tradition of a primitive
monotheism, but with what Marett calls Animatism^. or the
belief in universal vitality. It is the conviction that the life
of Nature corresponds with what man knows of himself.
As it is natural for the child to attribute life to stick or stone,
to chair or table, so it seemed natural to primitive man "to

THE GREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 33

assume that all Nature was instinct with life like his own.
Thus in Chinese mythology we have the conception of the
world as P'an Ku, the Chaos Man, whose head became
the mountains, his breath the wind, his voice thunder, his
limbs the four poles, his veins the rivers, his sinews the un-
dulations of the earth's surface, his flesh the fields, his beard
the stars, his hair the trees and his bones the rocks. Similarly
primitive Teutonic cosmogony gives us the giant Ymir,
product of the cold which came from Ginunggagap and
the heat which came from Muspellsheim. Or, if another
example be needed, we may find it in the Indian conception
of Purusha.

Animatism, it is clear, soon developed into what we "
call Animism, a theory which not only recognized the presence
of life but also that of a living spirit, independent of its
material embodiment. The word Animism, is first used by
Stahl in the eighteenth century as the equivalent of a belief in
the world-spirit, but since 1871, when E. B. Tylor employed
it as "a minimum definition of religion," the word has
been generally used in the sense mentioned above. It might,
however, have been more accurate to describe it as "a
minimum definition of theology " rather than of religion.

Just as the wind (anima) moving invisibly among the
trees suggested the action of a pervading spiritual presence,
so, by anthropomorphic analogy, is it with the primitive
man's conception of everything in the material universe.
By itself it is by no means an ignoble fancy. It postulates
a sensitively organized universe in tune with our own
emotions and riot entirely separable from our own nature.
It is a conception such as that which prompted the lines of
a modern Japanese poet :

. " So may I grow as pines upon her heights,

And flow with all her rivers to. the sea,
And fall on her like dew on summer nights,
And love and serve her through eternity.

From Animism it is but a short step and a natural
development to what is known as Dynamism, that is, the
belief that the spirit pervading material objects has a kind
of mystic potency which may be exerted benevolently or
malevolently upon those who come into contact with it.
c '. ~~ " "

34 A mSTORT OF RELIGION

For this power there are several terms employed. One of
the ^commonest is mana, first used by Dr. Codririgton of
Melanesia and generally known throughout the islands of
the Pacific. Codrington describes it as "a power or in-
fluence, not physical . . . which acts in all sorts of ways
for good and evil, and which it is of the greatest advantage
to possess or control." * Again: " If a man came upon a
large stone with a number of small ones beneath, it, lying
like a sow among her litter, he was sure that to offer money
upon it would bring pigs and such a stone would be thought
to have mana" z Maria is thus ambivalent, bringing good
or bad fortune to the man who possesses or touches the
object in question. Of the effect of mana for ill we have an
illustration in the Old Testament story 3 of the destruction
of the men of Bethshemesh who looked into the Ark of
God, whereas the house of Abinadab received it at the hands
of the men of Kirjath-jearim without disaster. An Iro.qiioian
word, meaning much the same thing, is jtrenda, literally
chant or song, but actually denoting the supernatural power
residing in trees, plants, stones, meteors, religious cere-
monies and medicine men. Other Indian words of similar
significance are the Siouan wakan, " the power that makes
or brings to pass " and the Algonquin word manitu, which
has sometimes been misinterpreted as referring to a personal
deity.

Closely associated with the theory of dynamism is the
systdm, with both theological and religious significance,
generally known as Fetishism. The term is an ill-defined
one and employed in too many diverse senses to be satis-
factory, but is now commonly understood in the sense given
to it by E. B. Tyloras denoting " the vessels or vehicles or
instruments of spiritual beings." Goblet d'Alviella pre-
serves the like sense in describing fetishism as " the belief
that the appropriation of a thing may secure the services
of a spirit lodged within it." For example, a man stubs his
toe against a stone and, thinking of the stone as harbouring
a grudge against him, possesses himself of it, henceforth

- - - l R. H. Codrington, The Melamesians, p.- -118, Oxford; 1891*

2 R. H. "Codrington, op. cit., p. 183. " " "- " - -

3 I Samuel vi. 19. ".*''""

- THE CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 35

controlling whatever properties there may be resident
within. The word fetish, however, was originally used in
an entirely different sense. It is derived from the Latin
factitius, i.e. something made, and was applied by the
Portuguese (in the form offeitifd) to relics, rosaries, images
and the like, supposed to possess spiritual powers. The
Portuguese term was brought into general use by de Brosses,
in his Du Culte des Dieux fetiches, of 1760. For many years
thereafter it was used in a very loose way of many different
things. Comte even speaks of sun' and moon and earth as
being " grands fetiches," while Herbert Spencer thought
of any " object with an indwelling ghost " as a fetish. If the
word is to .continue in use (which some would regret), it
must be understood to imply a mascot or object carried to
ensure luck, or, if too large for this, something of which
the mere possession ensures control of its potency. Some
fetishes will be used as amulets (from the Latin amuhtum
root amoliri, to ward off), 1 that is, objects employed
apotropaically, for the purpose of warding off evil. Others
will be known as talismans (from the Arabic telsam, Gk.
telesma, a magical figure), that is, objects used to secure
good fortune. The African word gngri is applied to both
the amulet and the talisman, an object which through a
secret and mysterious power preserves the wearer from
misfortune and disease or procures good luck in travel,
war or fishing.

It should be remembered that, though the belief in
mana and fetishes is associated with much superstition,
it has yet a real survival value, since in the very nature of
things the spiritual must use the material in a sacramental
way. But, altogether apart from the appreciation of this,
there is to-day a large use of fetishes of one sort or another,
with varying degrees of belief in their efficacy. The negro
carries his rabbit's foot, but many representatives of the
higher civilization " will be found more or less siiper-
stitiously attached to his lucky coin or the like. 2 Even "our

a Some have derived the word from the Arabic hamaia, to carry.

Paris a little statuette fetish, called Argine, is advertised- at the
^ 2 " * b rin luck in bridg 6 -" I* is also said to make " a charming
the 1 t* -T^ kring happiness to a letter-writer and to the one who receives

36 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

respect for flags, ikons, crosses, photographs and pressed
flowers is not unrelated to primitive beliefs of the sort we
have been describing, though in most cases we transfer the
idea of mana from the object itself to our subjective associ-
ation with it. -

The next step upwards from animism, in all its mani-
festations, was towards Personalization. Even Shakespeare's
Caliban (not to speak of Browning's) was a poet, and the
poet's faculty of personifying ., the phenomena of Nature
was closely allied with the child's habit of dealing similarly
with the objects he encounters. In either . case it has a
primitive character. The Psalmist who exclaims, " Why
hop ye so, ye high hills? ", ^Eschylus with his,

O Sky divine, O Winds of pinions swift,
O fountain-heads of Rivers, and O thou
Illimitable laughter of the Sea, -

O Earth, the mighty Mother, and thou Sun,

Whose orbed light surveyeth all !

and Longfellow's " Nature, the old nurse," are all going
back to the childhood of the race in adjurations of the sort.
Such personalizations are often the achievement of men far
advanced intellectually and spiritually, but they spring out
of the same sense of admiration and wonder in the presence
of natural phenomena.

There was further a very natural transition from per-
sonalization to Personification, or the imputing to separate
phenomena of some specialized aspect of divinity. In
certain cases and in certain stages there was some evident
reluctance to go in this direction too far or too fast. It
was a serious thing to give a name to any manifestation of
divinity. Hence, as among the Keltic peoples, people
often mentioned the godlihgs connected with Nature
indirectly and by periphrasis. The sidhe of Ireland were,
of course, probably spirits of the dead (cf. the Latin sedes)
rather than spirits of Nature, but the reference to them as
"the good people" and the avoidance of any definite
nomenclature witness to this reluctance. The spirits of
Nature are arranged in classes rather than referred to as
individuals. To use the Greek terms, there were oreads,
or spirits of the mountains, naiads, or spirits of the streams,

THE CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 37

dry ads ^ or spirits of the trees. The Teutons, also, had their
trolls, or giants of the obscure forest glades, elves ^ often
lurking spirits of evil intent, and the like. Other peoples
had their fairies, in all probability in origin the fata, or
norns. All Nature was pervaded with spiritual presences,
peeping between the leaves of the trees, dancing in the
brooks, or slaving in the bowels of the earth. It was. a
striking testimony to the belief, primitive but essentially
and religiously valid, that in the variety of Nature, as well in
her unity, the presence of deity was to be discerned, bafflingly
near to the life of man, both observant and observed.

Out of this stimulating imagination of primitive man,
happily not yet lost to wonder, there developed at last a
definite belief in many gods and the system we call Polytheism.
The earlier stages of polytheism are frequently distinguished
as Polyd ^monism, a. system which only differs from its
successor in that the spirits .worshipped are less objectively
and personally conceived. In all polytheistic theologies
we observe not only a sense of the variety which is so striking
a characteristic of the phenomena of Nature, hut also a
sense of the many antinomies, or conflicts. It is plain that
the storm-god, Indra, in Indian mythology, is often at
issue with the sun-god, Surya, and that the temper of Rudra
is of a more truculent sort than that, of Varuna, the god of
the cosmic ocean. So, again, in Greek polytheism, it is
natural to set over against the deities favourable to Troy
the gods who assisted the Greeks. There were supposedly
divine elements on the side of some communities which to
other communities were menacing or hostile. Later on,
these antinomies would stiffen into this or that form of
dualism, as in the Persian conception of- the warfare between
Ahura-mazda and Angra-mainyu, but in the more primitive
communities the differences between divine forces seem
more like the caprices of wilful children than the settled
antagonism of mutually incompatible principles.

Several causes, in addition to the above, assisted the
development of polytheism. One is the matter of sex. 1
Henry Adams, in his Mont Saint Michel, accounts for the

p 2 n v h V la l ge sub l ect of sex worship see the Article, " Phallism " in
Chicago' i 02 Hartland - and the work of Clifford Howard, Sex Worship,

38 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

passionate, adoration of the Virgin Mary by speaking of it
as the recovery of an element in deity which monkish gener-
ations (and, later on, a Puritan generation) had. attempted
to overlook. It was this same instinct for " the eternal
feminine " which provided consorts for the gods of Egypt
and Babylon and which mated the Baalim of Palestine with
the Ashtaroth. It was, once again, the instinct which
developed" the .fakti worship of India, with Sarasvati, Lakshmi
and Kali the respective spouses of Brahma, Vishnu and
iva. A second additional cause is to be found in the
domestic character given to- primitive polytheism. The
idea of the family had "much to do in determining the relation
of the gods to one another and in explaining the super-
session of one generation of deities" by another. We may
note this particularly in the polytheisms of Egypt and Greece.
In the former the Divine Ennead is simply the genealogical
tree of the gods traced from the ancestor Ra down to the
two pairs of sister-brother spouses, Osiris and Isis, Set and
Nephthys. In the other case, we see the generation of
Kronos succumbing to that of Zeus and all the other deities
finding their proper place in the domestic hierarchy. We
have here a significant symbol of the social quality we are
obliged to postulate of the Supreme Being, a quality ulti-
mately to be expressed in the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity. .

Still a third cause is to be found in the realm of political
ideas. It may not be exactly true to say, with Jevons, that
"polytheism is the price which must be paid by political
development." Nevertheless, we do find a parallel between
political conditions and conceptions of the divine world,
apart from the Chinese view of a terrestrial system of govern-
ment reflected in the other world just as trees are reflected-
in a lake. While, as in the Euphrates Valley, there existed
numerous city-states, it was easy to believe in a number of
locally limited gods, with a city-god of the most immediate
importance. But as federation of cities became common the
gods of the various cities had also to be federated until, as
in the case of Marduk of Babylon, the deity of the dominant
city in a federation became the supreme god in a pantheon.
Under this system there might be several nature gods all

.. THE CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 39

originally having the same function, but now subordinated
to one or another through political conditions. There
followed also from this circumstance that the discarding of
certain gods and introduction of new ones was of frequent
occurrence. In the former case, some gods would retire
into what Caliban calls " The Quiet," through supposed
change of celestial dynasty or the decline of popular support.
Some, instead of disappearing, would sink into the position
of a court of vassal godlings or angels, such as " the sons of
Yahweh " who are introduced into the Book of Job. Some,
again, would change their character, storm-gods becoming
war-gods, and so on. In the latter- case, foreign gods of
special renown or potency would be adopted after conquest
or borrowed in an emergency. Thus we shall see Rome
borrowing gods from Egypt and Asia Minor and the nations
of the Euphrates borrowing gods from the great -Emperors
of Egypt. Still another element in the development of
polytheism may be usefully remembered, namely, that some-
times there was a reflex action on the theology from the
ritual of worship. Much of the mythology of the Indian
fire-god, Agni, for example, was created at the altar itself,
and no small 'part of the mythology of the drink-god, Soma,
is probably derived from the actual ritual of the brewing.

Primitive polytheisms, then, were anything but stable
theological systems. They witnessed, not unhelpfully, to
man's instinctive sense of the manifoldness and complexity
of a world order which it was hard as yet to conceive of as
a universe. But in the presence of a growing demand
intellectually for such a conception of unity polytheism
was bound at last to yield: As a matter of fact it yielded
in several different directions not, of c6urse, in any strictly
chronological sequence.

One of these directions is represented by what is called
Henotheism, as a cult leading to a kind of monolatry. The
word henotheism was coined by Max Miiller in 1860, but
was later confused by him with the new term Katkenotheism,
a term which has quite lost favour at the present time,
though it seems possible to make a valid distinction between
the two terms. For there are two forms of henotheism,
one which selects gods for worship in rotation, as in the

40 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

idolatry of Mecca during the "days of ignorance"; the
other implies the choice of one deity out of many to be a
kind of tribal or national god, without any denial of the
existence of other gods whom it is well for other tribes to
recognize. A good illustration is furnished in the national
period of Hebrew religion when Yahweh was the national
god, a God of gods, though other nations were supposed
to be content with their own particular deities. It may be
observed that henotheism is the foundation of 'nationalism
in religion, a theology which has had some good results in
establishing among nations a sense of special mission, that
is, in creating the belief that each nation is in a true sense
" a chosen people " (chosen, that is, for service, not for
exclusive privilege), but which at the same time has
ministered much to race pride, to the belief that God is
" unser Gott," and which in times of war has led men to
attribute to God every imaginable atrocity and revengeful-
ness. The survival value of henotheism needs very careful
study and the whole subject of nationalism in religion may
be profitably pondered.

Henotheism is called by Pfleiderer' " the porch to pure
monotheism," but there are yet two or three steps to be
taken before that goal is reached. One is that obstinate
and, to some, ineradicable conviction that natural facts
compel belief in some form or other of Dualism. Living
in" a climate with, conflicting seasons of summer and winter,
or suffering in the body from attacks of disease intruding
into periods of robust health, or experiencing reverses of
fortune just when everything- looked prosperous, men found
it easy, to imagine two antagonistic principles warring for
the supremacy or disporting themselves benevolently or
malignly, as the case might be, with human beings for their
puppets. Sometimes the forces of evil were only half
personalized, irresponsible malignities resistant to the
divine control; sometimes the dualism was a more explicit
one, almost a campaign between two powers on equal terms,
as in Manichaeanism ; sometimes the struggle was less
strongly, dramatized or shot with gleams of hope, as in the
later Zoroastrianism. Sometimes, again, as in the Chinese
doctrine of the Yin and the Yang, there was a kind of

THE CREED, OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 41

* .

" bilateral symmetry " rather- than war to the knife between
hostile principles. Dualism dies out of a religion with
great difficulty; even to many Christians the ultimate fate
of the universe is determined by a kind of " tug God, tug
Devil " competition, with some doubt as to the final issue.

Another step which has to be surmounted by religion
on its way towards monotheism is over the tendency to
merge all divine personalities and powers, complementary
or antagonistic, into one impersonal solution, with the
theological result to which we give the name of Pantheism.
Practically this signifies the identification of Nature with
God. The idea of the divine transcendency (stressed to
the exclusion of all else in what is called Deism) is lost,
and all manifestations of the divine in Nature are viewed
as the self-revelation of the eternal World Soul. Philoso-
phically we may distinguish between the pantheism in which
God- is the only reality and the universe is illusory, and
that in which the conception of God is merged in that of
the universe. The former is known as acosmism 1 and may
be illustrated by the teachings of the Indian Vedanta; the
latter is called pancosmism. In the one case the idea of the
world is lost in that of God; in the other God is lost in
His world. Of the popular form, closely associated with
mysticism, which we call panentheism, that.is, God in the All,
we have an illustration in the familiar lines of Tennyson's
. The Higher Pantheism :

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet ;
Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.

In this last idea we have a much needed correction of the
deistic idea prevalent in the eighteenth century, a correction
which we owe largely to. the nineteenth-century teaching as
to evolution. Apart from the acceptance of a belief in the
divine immanence, the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation
lacked a vital element.

But the complementary, truths of transcendence and
immanence must be kept in their proper association with
one another. Unless this is done we are apt to have a
pantheism which blurs the distinction between the / of

1 Or Theopanism.

42 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Man and the Thou of God and (to quote Dr. A. E. Garvie)
" robs human personality of its sense of freedom." The
sense of sin," he adds, " the feeling of penitence, a ? nd the
effort of -amendment become, and must become, to the
consistent pantheistic thinker, illusive."

It was by way of turning away from pantheism that
theological thought was brought, in large part through
henotheism, to Monotheism, that is, the belief in one only
God. Many different circumstances aided this significant
transition, one which was most momentous in the interest
of science as well as for religion. In the case of certain
peoples the advance from a somewhat narrow' nationalism
towards an Empire inclusive of many different nation-
alities made the need of a unifying principle obvious. So
Amenhotep IV, in Egypt, tried, under- the Empire, to
unfte his subjects in the worship of Atun. So the Roman
Emperors found the need of going outside the pagan
pantheon to find a universally accepted God in Mithra or
Christ, or even in the genius of the Emperor. In- t&e next
place, we see the Jews, scattered through the lands after
their loss of territorial nationality and compelled either to
disown their national God, Yahweh, as a failure, or else
to endow Him with larger and universal qualities. . Thirdly,
we must not forget to give credit to the Greek philosophers
who sought to define God " as the source, or the explanation,
or the correlate, or the order, or the reasonableness of the
world." And, lastly, we must give weight to the witness
of individual prophets who, sometimes with philosophic
argument, as in Isaiah xl ff., lashed the folly of the poly-
theists with whips. of satiric scorn.

With monotheism humanity reached two out of the
three elements which make up the complete theology,
namely, transcendence and immanence. There was needed
further only something (as in the Christian doctrine of
the Incarnation) to convince the world as to God's
humanness. ...

Coincidently with the development of a complete idea
as to the power, character and 'attributes of God, there had
been growing up from primitive times the idea of a Sky-
world, or Heaven, in which life would find its consummation

THE CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 43

in communion with God, in and yet above Nature. The
religion of Naturism is uranic, or heavenly, rather than
chthonic, or earthly. It gives God an abode in the heavens
rather than upon earth. In the beginning, indeed, say
many of the cosmogonists, heaven and earth were close
together, as two deities lying prone one upon the other.
The intervention of a third deity caused a " heaving "
(whence the word heaven} of the sky, or, as in the Babylonian
myth, Marduk, the sun-god, splits the chaos-monster in
twain, one part forming the solid vault which Hebrew
cosmogony calls the firmament. Here were set the sun,
moon and stars, and, while the cosmic waters flowed round
and below the enclosed space, above all, in the central
height, dwelt God with his attendant deities. It was
natural that primitive man, to whom the sky-god was
long the first of the gods in the case of China T'ien,
or Heaven, is the one universal deity should look to
God -in the skies and think of the stars as the "hosts"
(Tzebaoth) who waited on the divine word. It was natural,
too, that sun, moon and stars should become deities in
their own right, especially in lands where they shone
more brilliantly than in our cloudier West. Only the
Japanese, for one reason or another, paid little attention
to the stars.

^ In contact with the earth, through pillars at the cardinal
points, or by means of mountain heights, the sky seemed
immovable and it was natural that men would be led to
" lift their eyes unto the hills " in order to commune with
God. The sacredness of mountains everywhere is stressed
in religion, from primitive times down to our own day.
Sages sought access to God by pilgrimages to Meru, or
Olympus, or T'ai Shan, or Sinai. Above these holy summits
God dwelt in the thick darkness, or, as m Greek mythology,
" lay beside their nectar." Here in dreams, as in the story
of Jacob, God 'was revealed at the crest of a mountain
ladder. Hither men journeyed, as in the story of Yudhisthira
pressing on to enter Elysium. Occasionally there were
other routes open to the heroes of old; the Norse heroes
passed to Valhalla by the path of the rainbow; the Chinese
Emperors on the back of the Dragon ; the Roman Emperors

44 ' A HISTORY OF RELIGION

mounted ad astra without any special -attention to the means.
Where there were no mountains, as in the Euphrates Valley,
there was erected the many-storeyed zikkurat, by which,
as by~ the planetary spheres, man might ascend to fellow-
ship with the Supreme, In other lands the pagoda served
a like purpose. The Chinese poet, Yang I, exclaims:

Upon the tall pagoda's" peak

My hand can nigh the stars enclose;
I dare not raise my voice to speak,

For fear of startling God's repose.

There is something of the same significance in the church
spire of the Christian world and a familiar verse tells how
" the parish priest of Austerity climbed up the high church
steeple to be near God, that he might bring God down to
the people." So through all the ages, from the days of
Sumerian city-states to the days of the Persian Book of Arda
Virafi and on again to the time of Muhammad's Night Ride
to Heaven, and thence again to the days of Dante, with his
planetary spheres leading upwards to the Empyrean, we
have preserved for us the primitive conception in all its
essential features intact.

Nor is this without its survival value. If our use of the
preposition up is a piece of mythology, and the article of
the Christian creed, " He ascende'd into .heaven," but a
figure to express a fact, have we not hold all through upon
a principle which Naturistic religion was indeed inspired to
seize ? Men may mock as they will about a ' ' three-storeyed ' '
conception of jthe universe, but, gazing upwards to the skies,
we are assisted in the realization of the life of man as indeed
linked with the order of the heavens, and that at any rate
one law binds our hopes with the courses of the stars. ' If
man physically seems but " a flea on the epidermis of the
earth," yet the fact that the light of a guiding star shines
" over the place where the young child lay " gives us not
merely one law but points also to " one far-off divine
event." 1 .

1 The Negrillos of Equatorial Africa bury their dead with face to the sky,"
" for it is to the sky that man must finally ascend." '

THE -CREED OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION 45

So we take our leave, not unsympathetically, of the
Creed of Naturism. If it be primitive to think of God as
close at hand, if, again, it be primitive to place Him in a
local heaven for His dwelling-place, we may yet remember
that without these primitive conceptions we could not have
our sense of God's abiding presence, nor could we look
beyond the starved aspirations of earth to fullness of life
in a heaven which, in the words of St. Bernard, is

Urbs Sion unica, mansio mystica, condita, coelo.

CHAPTER IV

The Religion of Natur ism

IF we cannot have a cult without a creed, it must be a
foregone conclusion that we cannot have a creed without
a cult. Out of beliefs which are quite ill-defined, even
out of beliefs which are held quite conventionally, or even
unconsciously, arises the main religious activity of mankind.
People, so far as the ritual of their daily life is concerned,
may be actually living on the capital of other men's faith,
but they are, nevertheless, living on a working hypothesis
of some sort. Among primitive men, however little they
were disposed to reason on "the matter, the practices of life
were the direct outcome of the things they had learned to
believe. <

Much of this, of course, followed from the inevitable
anthropomorphism of the popular theology to which we
have referred. If, on the one hand, it was felt that every
man " wears as his robe the garment of the sky, so close
his union with the cosmic plan," on the other hand, Nature
might well be represented under the figure of a cosmic man.
It might therefore safely be postulated that the activities
of Nature must betray the feelings and moods of a man.
Nature, like man, was sometimes fickle and must be wooed;
sometimes it was angry and must be placated ; sometimes
it was deliberately hostile and had better be evaded. Much
of primitive religion, as distinguished from primitive
theology, consisted of very human efforts to cajole or placate
or outwit a Nature with which man, in his own interest,
needed to be on good terms. On the whole, however, it
was man's conviction that Nature was not unreasonable
and might ordinarily be treated as one treated his fellow
human beings. This sense of the general reliability of
Nature, when its operations were not thwarted by failure
of power, was" from the first one of religion's great assets,

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 47

and has been also the foundation of science. Itrcorresponds
with that primary postulate of our own philosophy that
the operations of Nature are in the rational order and may.
be followed, at least up to a certain point, by our own
rational faculty. Such a belief was bound to provide
a tiny Ariadne thread which, held fast in human hands,
would eventually bring men out of the dark cave of ignor-
ance and set their faces towards the ligljt. It is from this
point that we start in order to follow aright the develop-
ments of practical, religion from the days of primitive men
to our own.

The first step, under the stimulus of naturistic awe,
arises from the observation and interpretation of what we call
OMENS. The use of the term, which is derived 'from the
Old Latin Osmen, but which is of doubtful meaning, should
be carefully distinguished from that of Divination, which we
shall discuss a little later. In the omen Nature is speaking
of its own accord, making advances for the warning or
guidance of mankind, the progeny of Nature. Where the
information given implies ill-fortune, we often speak of
omens as portents (Gk. terata\ but in general the word
signifies information conveyed without reference to its being
good or bad. From certain indications, each of which might
be regarded as a separate act of approach on the part of
Nature, man in course of time learned either to anticipate
success or to scurry away to shelter, as chickens learn to
flee from the shadow of a hawk.

The subject is a big one and must of necessity be here
treated with extreme brevity. It includes reference to the
observation of all sorts of things, some of them " true "
omens, others of the post hoc ergo propter hoc order. There
were many bodily actions, of an involuntary sort, such as
hiccoughing, sneezing, and the like, which .needed inter-
pretation. In this connection we shall" recall" the lines of
Macbeth: / :

By the twitching of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes '

and many presentiments of the kind in . Indian -literature,
mere were also omens from the sight of birds, snakes and

48 A BISTORT OF. RELIGION

beasts of all kinds. Magpies suggested to the experienced :

One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth.

The Babylonian Omen Tablets 1 contain hundreds of ex-
amples of omens upon wjiich men were wont regularly to
rely. There are omens derived from symptoms exhibited
by the sick, from the members of the body, from fire, flame,
light and smoke, from the shape, colour and movements -of
clouds, from the appearance of scorpions, horses, asses,
dogs, and, indeed, from almost every imaginable thing.
The whole constitutes a huge generalization, of which some
things are valid, others supported only by tradition or
accepted through superstition. A description of Chinese
omens, too, would fill a volume, embracing instances not
unlike those common in the Euphrates Valley and 'many
more besides. Japanese history, again, is full of reference
to omens, from those referred to in the ancient story of the
Empress Jingo and her invasion of Korea to those observed
at the present day. In Roman history many an issue was
determined by the appearance of some propitious or uri-
propitious omen. In the Bible, both in the Old 'and the
New Testament, many an intimation was conveyed by dreams,
altogether apart from the initiative of the dreamer. And,
to show the extent to which omens have continued to win
credence in comparatively modern times, we have only to
turn over the pages of Shakespeare. Thus we have Hubert's
warning to King John :

My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night :
Four fixed ; and the fifth did whirl about
The other four, in wondrous motion. 2

In Julius Caesar we have the omens predictive of the murder:

A lioness hath whelped in the streets :
And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead :
Fierce, fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol. 3

1 See British Museum Guide to Babylonian and Assyrian Collections.

2 King John, Act iv., Sc. 2.
3 JuliusCcssar,A.ctii.,Sc.2.

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 49

And in Macbeth we have the horses eating one another,
against the use of nature, on the night of Duncan's " taking
off." 1 Even the atmosphere of the plays of Shakespeare is
charged with the ominous, as in Lear, where the storm
on the heath corresponds with the inner^ aspect of the mad
monarch's devastated life.

The belief in omens, moreover, still survives, not merely
in generalizations which have a more or less tenuous thread
of science for their, support, but in fancies which are for
the most part merely superstitious. In my own University,
for example, the issue of a football game is quite frequently
regarded as depending upon the* flight of sea-gulls across
the stadium. . .

A large department in the history of omens concerns
the pseudo-science of astrology, that is, the belief that human
destiny is controlled by the stars or by the conjunction of
planets at the birth of an individual. .It was at the core of
much of the early religion of the Euphrates Valley and of
Arabia and many men in modern times, in spite of the words
of I ago and Edmund, have remained convinced that fate is
"in our stars and riot ourselves." 2 Napoleon III, for
example, believed firmly in his star, and biographers of
Robert Browning have connected the poet, both at birth
and death, with stellar phenomena. Our dictionary, more-
over, bears eloquent witness to man's erstwhile trust in
the heavenly bodies in such words as disaster, jovial, mer-
curial, martial, and the like. The story of the birth of Jesus,
too, would lack one of its most beautiful traditions if we
discarded the incident of " the gray-haired wisdom of the
East " led on to Bethlehem by the star.

Modern religion does not call upon us to discontinue
our use of omens so much as to weed them out a little
carefully and reject those only which show a misunder-
standing of the wise words Nature intends for our attentive
ear. So we pass to the consideration of a subject at least
as vast in its range, namely, that of

DIVINATION. The use of divination differs from the
observation of omens in that in this case we voluntarily and

* Macbeth, Actii., Sc. 4.

2 Othello, Act i., Sc. 3 ; King Lear, Act i., Sc. 2.

50 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

of set purpose interrogate. Nature as to what it has to say
for our guidance or on our behalf. We are now no longer
passive recipients of information, but earnest seekers, wooers
of Nature's favours, suppliants at her tribunal.

The varieties $f divination are practically endless and
many of them are designated by the use of the suffix mancy.
This is derived ultimately from the Skt. root man, to think,
but more immediately from the Greek mantia. The Greek
mantis, or diviner, was regarded as not distantly related
to the madman, and some mandes will appear to our modern
science as mad as anything to which man has ever given his
devotion. The instances' here to be mentioned must be
taken as merely windows opened upon a vast and bewildering
landscape. .

There .is, for example, oneiromancy, or divination by
dreams, that is, visions induced by the method known as
incubation. The seeker, wrapping himself perhaps in the
skin of a sacrificed animal, in order to ensure contact with
his divinity, would resort to a particular temple, there to be
visited by the god and oracularly inspired. Instances of
such induced dreams will occur to the reader from almost
any literature.- For instance, the Keltic druid would glut
himself with the flesh of a sacred white bull and sleep while
four fellow priests chanted over him " the spell of truth,"
with the expectation of receiving nocturnal direction as
to the choice of a king.

Then we have various forms of augury, in which the
movements of living birds were deliberately studied by
experts known as 'augurs. The bodies of the slain sacrifices
were examined for marks of significance upon the viscera.
This was the work of the haruspices and the examination
was called haruspicy. In the temples of Babylon and else-
where the study of the Kver was almost a speciality, since
the liver was regarded by many as a soul-seat. This form
of divination is called hepatoscopy. Scores of species of
divination are comprised under the "general head of sortilege,
or the casting of lots. This might take the form of tossing
up a coin or stick, the drawing out of short or long pieces
of paper or bamboo, the opening at random of a book in
order to offer a significant passage to the eye sortes litur-

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 51

ricae or the placing of sticks in a vertical position in a
bowl of water to watch the direction of their fall. Many
:hoices, important and unimportant, were determined by
such methods, from the finding of a lucky day for a funeral
to the election of a Christian apostle. 1 It is worth noting
in. all this that men never supposed they were making an
ippeal to mere chance. It was rather the throwing of
responsibility for a right choice on the unerring justice of
Nature. Not luck but a divine providence ruled, and settled
for man what he was unable, to settle for himself. Under
this same head would come rhabdomaricy, or the divining
tvith rods, as well as belomancy, the divining with arrows,
rhis last-named method has many illustrations, including
Nebuchadrezzar's use of arrows, as described in Ezekiel
scxi. 31, that of the prophet Elisha's in 2 Kings xiii. 15,
md perhaps that of David in i Sam. xx. 14. Then we have
hippomancy, the divining by the neighing of horses, so
sicturesquely illustrated in the account" by Herodotus of
the choice of Darius Hystaspes to be King of Persia. 2 There
ire, again, -pyromancy, divination by noting the flames rising
Tom the sacrificial altar; hydromancy, divination by water,
md cylicomancy, or divination by cups. This* last is found
in many forms, including examples as far apart as the divining
:up of Joseph, mentioned in Gen. xliv. 5, the " seven-ringed
:up " of Jamshid, mentioned by Umar Khayyam, and the
divining cup of the Irish king Cormac, by means of which
iie discerned between truth and falsehood. A form of cup-
iivination is that of crystal-gazing, which also has illus-
:rations in every part of the world.

Another wide-spread form of divination is that known
is scapulomancy^ or omoptatoscopy, in which the shoulder-blade
rf a sheep (in Scotland), or of a deer (in Japan), or a piece
rf tortoise-shell (in China) is scorched to provide the cracks
ivhich the diviner proceeds to interpret. We may also
mention here the curious form of divination by the last
wordy of which we have illustrations in the Bible in such
passages as Judges vii. u, I Sam. xiv. 7-11, and in many
Dlaces elsewhere.

One of the most important of all was the judicial test

1 Acts i. 26. z Herodotus, III. 85.

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

known as the ordeal, in which Nature was invoked to eke
out the inadequate judgement of man. There were many
varieties of ordeal, some of them simple, some of them quite
impressive. In certain cases it consisted of nothing but the
giving of a piece of bread to be swallowed, and, as to-day a
self-conscious child finds it difficult to swallow a pill, so no
doubt many a conscience-convicted criminal choked -over
the test. Sometimes the test was in drinking a medicated
draught and of this we have illustration in the ordeal of
bitter water prescribed in Jewish law for the woman sus-
pected of adultery, 1 and in the many poison, tests employed in
Central Africa. Sometimes the accused person was thrown
into the water to sink or swim. This is the test ordered in
the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, and this was the method
used by the witch-hunters of Salem. In this case the Code
was the more merciful, since in ancient Babylon the woman
who floated was regarded as innocent,' whereas in Massa-
chusetts she was promptly put to death as guilty. The
classical Indian ordeals were four in number, namely, by
water, fire, poison or hanging. In Japan there was the
walking across a hot bed of coals, a test still used, as described
by Percival Lowell, 2 and" one which in other lands provided'
us with the expression, " hauled over the coals." In Japan
it appears to require chiefly a good nerve, as does also the
test of the ladder of swords, which can be safely ascended
unless the climber nervously slides his foot on the sword.
A special form of ordeal, now happily discarded in most
civilized lands, is that of the duel, or wager of battle, a
contest which was not intended to favour the better shot
or swordsman, but rather to throw the responsibility of
revealing the juster cause upon God. A duel on the larger
scale, but undertaken in the like faith, is war, but the ancient
justification for the arbitrament of battle has been largely
forgotten to-day and superseded by less defensible arguments.
In all the forms of divination there was a real reliance
upon the essential justice and morality of Nature. A moral
universe, it was felt, would not let her children down. Thus
the survival value of all divination lies in .the fact that natural
law is indeed trusted to control the circumstances of man's

1 Numbers v. 18. 2 See Occult Japan by Percival Lowell.

.THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 53 -

daily life. Our uprising and our down-sitting, our going
out and our coming in, our eating arid drinking, even
.our amusements, are all guided and assisted through
the increasing articulateness of Nature. In this way
we become more and more a part of the cosmic process,
to co-operate with which is so important a part of our
religion.

A step further takes us from the practices of divination
to that of Imitative, or Sympathetic, or Analogic Magic.
The question has been quite frequently raised as to whether
Magic can' in any respect be regarded as religion. Some
writers have made religion begin only where magic ends.
Jevons has described magic as a perversion of science as
well as of religion. But this is hardly a fair statement. It
ought to be clear that in-what we call imitative magic, at any
rate, there was no intention whatsoever of overriding natural
law. It .was rather the assumption that man was able, by
imitating the natural process as far as he was able to under-
stand 'it, to assist, or even speed up the operations of Nature.
If he was able really to enter sympathetically into the methods
of Nature's working, it appeared to him that he not only had
the power to help, but that the obligation to help was his
also. Indeed^ he was but anticipating the conviction of
Francis Thompson that man was " the great arm-fellow of
God." Thanks to this primitive assurance, which some
have desired to put outside the boundaries of religion
altogether, man remains convinced that he has power to
work together with God for the carrying out of the divine
purpose.

With all primitive man's reliance upon Nature, he had
behind him only a brief tradition of the regularity of natural
processes, and therefore he could never be absolutely certain
that the operations of Nature would continue unflaggingly
without some aid from outside -itself. If the Kelts* of old
were not without fear that the sky might at any time fall
upon them, and if even John Ruskin could assert that he
should never be surprised if the sun some morning declined
to rise, it is not strange that early man had many a dread
ere he could be entirely sure of the constancy of Nature in
the matter of times and seasons. Yet he knew that upon

54 'A HISTORY OF RELIGION

this regularity depended not only the success of his quest
for food but even life itself. What, then, was more natural
than that he should bend himself to the task of co-operating,
with Nature in any way which seemed likely to be effective ?
It was not merely his responsibility; it .was also his duty
as a member of the group.

In the stage of nomadism it is probable that there was
less need for imitative magic, since the nomad could always
follow up the pasturage from one locality to another. Yet
he felt it necessary to stand in some awe of the moon and
from this developed in due time the institution of the Sabbath.
The general belief that the moon was dangerous, which is
reflected in such words as moonstruck and lunatic, made men
unwilling to work till particular crises were reached or -past.
But, after the period of settled agricultural life was reached,
there were several spheres in which the use of imitative
magic was. deemed a necessity.

There was, first of all, the need of bringing the rain.
The rain-cloud was readily personified. Sometimes, as in
China, it was -thought of as the Dragon, who had to be en-
couraged to visit and fructify the earth. Sometimes, as in
India, it was pictured as the divine Cow, whose milk was
required for the refreshment of the thirsty soil. Elsewhere
it was the Thunder-bird. In all cases something had to be
done. There were many ways in which man might render
assistance. In a great many cases all that was necessary was
to imitate the thunder. For this purpose we have the use
of the Bull-roarer, a piece of wood whirled in the air to give
forth the requisite noise. This curious device is found in
some form or another all the way from Australia to Ireland.
In the latter country, in ancient times, it was known, as the
voice of Fdl, or the wheel of Fdl, or Roth Ramach. Another
method, particularly in China, was the imitating of thunder
by the smiting of gongs and the beating of drums. The
imitation of lightning was thought -equally effective. In
many places, notably in Arizona and New Mexico, there
were the snake-dances, in which the wriggling of the serpents
upon the sand, or in the mouths of the performers, was
supposed to simulate the lightnings which would presently
rend the clouds and make the floods descend. In some

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 55

other places it was thought sufficient to pour forth a little
water on the ground as an imitative charm. It will be
remembered that this was an important piece of ceremonial
at the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles and had originally this
significance. It was while this libation was being poured
out on the Temple floor from a golden ewer that Christ
made the great announcement of Himself as the Water
of Life. 1

Even more important for imitative magic than the rain
was the Sun, in both its diurnal and its annual movements.
One of the very earliest of charms, found in pre-historic
graves, is the sun-wheel, which was supposed to have in-
fluence upon the solar chariot. Down to the present day
the Swastika, arranged as a wheel moving from left to right,
is 'for millions a -sign of good fortune. Other solar symbols
of a similar significance are to be recognized in tEe Three-
legged Crow, or Yata-garasu, .of Japanese myth, and the
three-legged symbol which forms the arms of the Isle of
Man, originally perhaps borrowed from the Hittites. But
the round dance, prevalent everywhere, was the sun-wheel
in practical use, in which men, keeping always to the right,
maintained the sun on its course and brought good luck
to the world. Thus was introduced into the marriage
ceremony of ancient India the triple circling to the right,
about the household fire, known as the fradakshina. This
became the dextratio of the Roman ceremony* and the deisil
of the Kelts. The circuit of a kingdom, from the days of
the old Indian -a^vamedha and the progresses of the High
Chiefs of Ireland down to the going of modern judges " on
circuit " was founded on this belief. To go in the opposite
direction was to invite disaster. When King Loiguire set
out to meet St. Patrick with hostile intent he drove his
chariot "with a left-hand-wise turn." At Tara-the term
deisil 'was given to " a sward that brought luck before dying,
where people used to make the right-hand-wise turn." " I
know not where to turn" says a young man in Plautus, and
his attendant replies, " Turn to the right, if you worship the
gods." In India and elsewhere the "swinging ceremonies"
were practised in aid of the sun; in Ireland and other

1 John vii. 37.

56 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

places horse races became popular for the same reason.
The result of many customs of this sort was to make,
down to our own day, the right hand the place of honour
for a guest, and the southern quarter, that is," to the
right of the sun-rising, was the fortunate point of the
compass. x

The seasonal positions of the sun were not less important
than the diurnal. All the four quarterly positions, namely,
the two solstices and the two equinoxes, were regarded as
critical and calling for human assistance. At the mid-
winter and midsummer solstices, the one associated with
the birth of Christ and the other with the birth of John the
Baptist (illustrating the Baptist's declaration: "He must,
increase, but I must decrease "), the sun must needs be helped
in his lengthening and his declining days alike with the gift
of fire. The Yule log and the Fires of St. John have the same
ultimate explanation and I have seen in the Yang-tze valley
the lighting of the midsummer fires precisely at noon on
the day of the summer solstice, though the Chinese seemed
quite unaware of the significance of their act.

The observances at the time of the equinoxes are less
stable, but in most religions one comes across the dramatic
representation, in some form or another, at the spring
season, of the annual passion and death of the earth (or
fruit) god, and of his resurrection amid the rejoicing of all
the faithful. In ancient' Babylonia was enacted the myth of
Tammuz and Ishtar, and as late as the sixth century B.C.
'Ezekiel reproves the women of Jerusalem for " weeping
for Tammuz " within the Temple courts. 2 In Egypt
Osiris took the place of Tammuz and -'Isis of Ishtar, while
the women made little clay figures of Osiris and embedded
therein seeds which the recovered vitality of the god would
cause to sprout. Isis was the goddess of fecundity, through
whose fidelity her brother-spouse was won back from the
land of the dead. Similarly, in Syria, we have the myth of
Adonis and Fenus, in the old Irish sagas the legend of Tephi,

1 .Cf. the mistake of the Latin geographers in translating Yemen (the
South) as Arabia Felix. Note also the giving by Jacob to his youngest son
the fortunate name of Ben-yamin (right-hand son).

? Ezekiel viii. 14.

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 57

the Keltic Persephone, and Tea, the Keltic Demeter, and
in the Teutonic lands it was the story of Balder the beau-
tiful, slain untimely by. his blind brother Hodir, and sent
down to the dark halls of Hela until, amid the rejoicings of
universal nature, -life was restored. From the making of
the old Adonis gardens to the sowing of sweet-peas on
Good Friday in our own day, the same idea continued to
find expression. In like manner, from the celebration of
the death and resurrection of Bel-Marduk in Babylon 1 to
tjie commemoration of the passion and resurrection of
Christ, there has been the same continuity of thought.
Not that the sanctions of the Christian Easter are invalidated
when seen to rest upon a natural basis, but rather that
Nature had from the beginning its " immanent Telos-"
The impressiveness of man's protest against death is thereby
increased and man's contributory ministry to the victory
of life over death enlarged. The Easter triumph is the more
secure because human grief of old demanded the return of
the earth-god. The observance of the autumnal equinox
is concerned rather with the cult of the dead than with
Naturism, so will not here be described.
. . Much importance is assigned in primitive religion to
the assistance which man may give through imitative magic
to the growth of the crops. Of course, we ^recognize this
to-day in many practical ways, but early man had his own
ways of rendering assistance. Frazer in The Golden Bough
gives us instances by the score. We have mention of the
flax-sowers in Thiiringen, walking with long strides through*
the, fields, the seed-bag swaying from their shoulders, so
that tall flax may sway in the wind. We are told of the
women in Sumatra, letting their long hair hang loose, that
the rice may grow luxuriantly. The peasants of the Franche-
Comte are described as dancing and leaping at the Carnival
that the hemp may grow tall. The peasants of Bavaria and
Swabia and Baden leap over the midsummer bonfires, with
the cry: . " Flax, flax, grow seven ells. high." Peasants in
Norway and Sweden leap over the Balder's bale-fires, with
the same intent. I myself have seen the girls in Korea,
at the New Year Festival, leaping from a kind of spring-

1 S. Langdon, J.R.A.S., January 1931.

58 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

board or see-saw, in order that the crops may grow taller
than the house. Customs of the sort abound the world
over.

Space, indeed, would fail us were we to recall all the
methods used in imitative magic. As one illustration out
of many we may select the matter of Knots. From the
Esquimaux woman, Oolahloo, who, as angiakok, takes her
fur cord from a cariboo's neck out into the storm to tie knots
in the wind to King Aeolus whom Jove empowers " foedere
certo et premere, et laxas sciret dare jussus habenas," and
so on to the commission given to St. Peter: " Whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven," we have real continuity of idea. Whether we
think of the Norns spinning and crossing and cutting off
the thread of life, or of Hardy's account of the " eternal
artistries in circumstance " which the " Will has woven
with an absent head," we find ourselves dealing with the
same thought. Magicians in ancient Babylon tied man
with the knots of disease; their fellows in Persia knotted
up the limbs of King Gushtasp's charger- which Zoroaster
healed with his counter-magic, as did Odin when he charmed,
away the lameness of " Balder's foal's foot." A wicked Jew
bewitched Muhammad by tying nine knots in a string
which he then threw . into a well; witches in the Middle
Ages prevented the consummation of marriage by fastening
locks and knotting a charm, which the careful bridegroom
sought to overcome by going to church with his shoe-laces
untied; Queen Mab worked mischief by plaiting the
" manes of the. horses in the night; " the Quran invokes
help from Allah against " the evil of the blowers upon
knots; " the Shetland seaman buys winds from the wise
women in the purchase of a knotted handkerchief. And
so we might go on almost indefinitely, remembering all
the while that these efforts of ignorant men to bind the
Fenriswulf of- evil were instinctive gropings towards the
undeniable truth that we are indeed God's "arm-fellows,"
in union with Him who " ad liberandum hominem "

became Incarnate. 1

1 H. H. Gowen, " Knots," Anglican Theological Review, July 1929.

'THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 59

It is- tempting to refer to some other methods of assist-
ing Nature, such as the making of clay or paper images of
horses and other beasts of burden to serve either as -porte-
bonheurS) or, as is the more common, porte-malhews. Steeds
on which the plagues of cholera and small-pox might ride
away are everywhere in evidence and touch upon the subject
of the scape-goat. Miss Emerson found the peasants of
Panchperwa, in India, using them with great conviction. 1 .

It is not difficult to see the survival value of imitative
magic. It is expressed in our own religious rites, as, for
instance, in the celebration of the Christian Eucharist,
where, in such words as, " Do this," there is of course far
more intended than participation in a commemorative act.
It is expressed, "again, in all forms of social service, in which
most people take part in the belief that they are co-operating
with a divine providence for the amelioration of human ills v
It is expressed in a larger way in the human instinct that the
cause of cosmic evolution isr itself served by our personal
effort to achieve the highest. Our contribution as yet may
be lamentably small,, but " the intent's the thing."

Before passing from the subject something should be
; said as to the relation of imitative magic to the Arts. Other
things have, of course, entered to determine the development
of these, but certainly the utilitarian preceded the aesthetic.
The "play" 2 element in the primitive world was small.
Children played by imitating the acts of their elders, but
the elders themselves "played" in grim earnest for the
achievement of communal, or, more rarely, of individual
ends. Thus, for example, in the dance and drama^ the
" acting " was not pretence but real " doing " (dromenon\
not for the entertainment of an audience but for the service
of a clan. Failure to participate was a public sin. " He
does not dance," complained the Greek of the civic slacker.
The round dance kept the sun in its orbit, the rain dance
brought delectable showers, the enactment of heroic r61es
made the heroism of the dead an asset for the living. So
the dancing-ground, or orchestrion,' became a social service
centre for the antique world. To use another example,

1 Miss Gertrude Emerson, Voiceless India, p. 90.

2 Play is probably from pflegen, to do one's duty.

6o .- A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the art of painting was in like manner dependent on its
utility as imitative magic. Men did not scratch the figures
of bears or of foes transfixed with spears upon the dark
walls of their caverns for the purpose of .providing" a picture-
gallery: it was thus they captured the mana of the beast they
hunted or the soul of the enemy they fought. Even the
women assisted the magic, by dance or song or picture,
while the men-folk were campaigning. Music, too, benefited
by this practice. In general, perhaps, the intention was
apotropaic, in assistance given to the sun to rid itself of the
shadow of eclipse. But quite often the most unmusical din
of primitive music was meant, as mentioned already, to
imitate the thunder and so bring the needed rain to refresh
the fields.

Probably one of the very -earliest manifestations of
primitive practice in religion is that intrusion of the negative
in what we call

TABIT. -This is a Tongan word which appears in its
Hawaiian form as Kapu, 1 doubtfully derived from the
primitive Polynesian words ta, a mark, and pu, exceedingly.
It has the same general significance as the Greek hagios
and the Latin sacer and represents the negative side of
mana, the ambivalence of which makes the appropriation
of certain things desirable and that of other things (or the
same things under different circumstances) dangerous.
It is to be illustrated all the way from the restrictions placed
upon the kings of Tara, as to letting the sun rise on them in
bed, as to crossing certain places after sunset, or dismounting
at certain places on a Wednesday, and the like, or the ban
placed upon the Flamen Dialis at Rome as to walking under
a vine-trellis, eating beans, or naming a goat, down to the
forbidding of the kings of Unyoro in Central Africa the
use of beef or milk except from a special herd. Even Papal
Interdicts, Defence of the Realm Acts, governmental regula-
tions of many sorts, are forms of tabu. Voltaire says,
satirically, of course, of the poems of Rousseau: " Sacres
ils sont, car personne n'y touche." But primitive .man'
took the matter of tabus very seriously. We have already
referred to man's primitive fear of the moon and to the

1 In Samoan and Marquesan the word is tapu.

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 61

connection of the Sabbath with man's early refusal to work
during the full of the moon. We have referred also to the
incident in the story of the Ark, whose mana proved so
destructive to the men of Beth-shemesh. Many, tabus are
recorded in the Old Testament, from the exclusion of the
people from the shrine of the Tabernacle and from the
neighbourhood of Mount Sinai during the giving of the Law
to food restrictions and restraints placed upon labour.
Indeed, the commandments of the Decalogue, with, their
reiterated " Thou shalt not," are largely of the character
of tabus.

Tabus are either inherent or imposed, the former being
the result of some age-long and general experience, the
latter developing with the extension of kingcraft and the
power of the priesthood. The many tabus of this latter
sort which prevailed in Hawaii, until their abolition in 1819
by Kamehameha II, afford an interesting study. In the year
just named, 1819, women were still being put to death in
Hawaii for eating bananas, or other food prohibited for the
female sex. 1 The protection of kings and priests by specially
imposed tabus was due to the belief that these had more
mana than ordinary folk. Some of the caste restrictions of
India, such as the refusal of the Veda to the c.udras, would
probably come under this head.

As representing the earlier stages of* law-making and
law-enforcement, the tabu had its value. It was, in most
respects, an evil day for Hawaii when the tabus were
abolished without time being allowed for the growth of a
higher law by way of substitute. We are still ourselves to
a great extent under the dominion of tabus, personal, social
and legal. It is, of course not intended that man should
ever escape the incidence of law, or, like Ajax, defy the light-
nings of a moral universe. But, if we are to become really
moral, the day should dawn when respect for law should
be without fear of the police and when the " Thou shalt
not " should be imposed from within rather than from
without. Eventually, no doubt, we shall find, with Dante,
that " in "His will is our peace." Meanwhile, we need to
have the moral equivalent of the tabu in what is called

1 There were very many tabus affecting the liberty of woman.

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

reverence. V Be ye holy, for I am holy, saith the Lord " ;
" serve Him with reverence and godly fear."

A step beyond the use of magic of the imitative sort
perhaps a little off the right line of development is the
use of another kind of magic to which we give the name of

MANTRAS. The word is Sanskrit, from the root man,
to think, but in the early Indian literature it is particularly
applied to the Vedic hymns considered not so much as poems
as spells. In the use of mantras generally Ve discern the
attempt to <go beyond the assisting of Nature towards the
effort to force Nature's hand, to compel her, willy-nilly, to
do anything we may require of her. Man asked, somewhat
impatiently, whether there were not a secret key to the
operations of Nature which, if known, would save him the
trouble of ordinary co-operation.. Might it not be possible-
to go beyond her somewhat pedestrian way of helping us
if we could only get access to that secret? So Nature might
be transformed into a " slave of the lamp," instead of an
ally. This thought suggested all sorts of magical devices,
among which the 'most, highly valued was a species of
asceticism, " or catharsis^ which would bestow upon men
superhuman powers. In this there was no inevitable
relation to morals, as we conceive them. A demon, such
as Ravana, could,, by standing on his head between five
fires for so many thousands of years, achieve power over
Brahma and all the gods. The proper charm, or mantra,
would cause the sun to stand still in the heavens and death to
stay its course. Mantras might enable men to storm the
heavens and dethrone the gods.

There were all kinds of mantras, from simple and
apparently meaningless words like abracadabra and sesame
to the secret name of some mighty divinity. This last in
itself touches a large subject,* since the Name was regarded
as part of the personality of a god or man. Isis, wringing
from Ra his hidden name in order to dethrone him, Jacob
exclaiming " Tell me thy name " to the mysterious stranger
wrestling with him at the fords of Jabbok, and so on to
children chanting their rhyme in the game:

What is your name ?
Pudding and tame.

THE RELIGION OF NATURISM 63

are all illustrations of this using of the name as a mantra.
Nomina sunt numina. " We know thy name, O assembly! "
says the author of the Atharva Veda, in a charm to get con-
trol of the town-meeting. So Alexander gained possession
of the secret name of Tyre before he could subdue the
fortress. To the Jew the name Tahweh was the secret
title not to be used " for a vain end " (Third Commandment]^
and the Toldoth Teshu tells the grotesque story of Jesus
stealing the Divine Name from the Holy of Holies and
hiding it in His thigh, in order to perform His miracles.
"The Name" of God is always to be " Hallowed," and
the Name of Jesus, in the New Testament, is " the Name
above every other Name." But primitive men used the
name, human Or divine, as they might have used any other
form of mana, to secure individual and sometimes quite
selfish ends. 1

The mantra idea has survived, unhappily, in certain
un-Christian conceptions of prayer. Not a few pray to
obtain, what. they think they want, even though the request
may be in defiance of the divine will. "Nor may we deny
altogether the power of man to get, in a terribly literal
fashion, the things he craves for. The Psalms describe
the experience of Israel in the wilderness: " He gave them
their desire and sent leanness withal into their souls." A
picture by G. F. Watts represents a young man being dragged
by a monster to the depths of the sea, and the motto runs :
" Thou hast what thou hast desired with all thy heart."

Yet, after all, the mantra idea has its proper survival
value. Man's control of Nature is in many respects real
and often beneficial to the race. Man has harnessed the
lightnings, bridled the cataracts, robbed many terrible
dragons of their teeth, forced an apparently reluctant Nature
to minister in the temple of his gods. In many rash attempts
he has hitherto been frustrated and has failed; but man's
Promethean role has not been wholly unworthy of the
creature in whom is the divine spark, nor has it on the
whole been played unsuccessfully.

There is only one more phase of the religion of Naturism
which need .be mentioned here and that is one which is

1 H. H. Gowen, " The Name," Anglican Theological Review, April 1930.

64 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

rendered more than ordinarily complex through its involve-
ment with things outside of Naturism. This is

SACRIFICE. Sacrifice, as just suggested, has several
diverse aspects, but from our present point of view it is
man's effort to sustain the course of Nature by providing
the requisite replenishment of power. It has therefore
affinity with Imitative Magic. The powers of heaven may
all too easily flag and fail :

The sun himself grow dim with age,
And Nature sink in years ;

therefore it is necessary to furnish sustenance in the way of
renewed force to Nature, just as we would give it to other
things upon which we depend. We must do this even
though we drain ourselves of our very life-blood in the
endeavour. We do not need to say much on the subject
now, as it will come, up for discussion again under another
head.

In conclusion, it will be seen that all the ritual of Natur-
istic religion bears witness to the homogeneity of life, the
interdependence of all things cosmic. It was a truly great
conception and one which necessarily, entailed the ultimate
doctrine of " all for each and each for all." As the clouds
fed the sea and the sea again gave its waters to the clouds,
so all men would feel bound to help the powers of heaven
to fulfil their mighty task. This is the real significance of
all uranic, as in some respects contrasted with chthonic,
religion. The head of the victim which was offered to the
skies was invariably lifted upwards, while the head of the
victim offered to' the powers below was bowed towards the
earth. "So sacrifice becomes our human way of eternalizing
values. The thing offered is not, as some complain, " spilt
like water on the ground: " it is life poured out for cosmic
ends. Nurhachu did not lose his famous document of " the
Seven Hates " when he burned it; he simply filed it in the
eternal world. Man does not lose the thing he sacrifices;
he simply lays it up " where neither moth nor rust can
corrupt."

Our last thought, then, of Naturistic Religion is of some-
thing in the main cheerful and uplifting. It has inspired

THE RELIGION OF NATURISU 65

many to great hopes and to great deeds. It is the kind of
influence (to which the prophet added the thought of One
Who was Nature's Lord) to which Isaiah appealed when he
bade the depressed Jews of the Exile period: "Lift up
your eyes on high, and see who hath created these; that
bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by
name." 1 It is, again, the influence implicit in the appeal
of George Herbert:

Lift up thine eyes ;

Take stars for money, stars not to be bought

By any art, yet to be purchased.

1 Isaiah xl. 26,

CHAPTER V
The Creed of Spiritism

A^RT altogether from the controversy, -waged with
some heat in the nineteenth century, as to whether
religion was the outcome of Nature worship or of Spirit
worship, considerable discussion has been carried on over
the question: Which was prior to the other? One might
almost as well argue as to the priority of the chicken or the egg.
Quite possibly primitive man did not think about the matter
at all, but felt mystified in the presence of both mysteries
impartially and as the mood took him. There is certainly
no reason for denying that the " sense of the numinous "
might easily be awakened in either direction more or less
coincidently. The same mind which could respond to the
sense of wonder with the words: " When I consider Thy
heaven, the work of Thy hands," would also be able to
express wonderment over the mystery within himself with
the reflection: "What is man that Thou art mindful of
him ? " All the way from Caliban to the Psalmist and thence
to Hamlet such questions would inevitably arise.

_It will follow that in Spiritism, as in Naturism, there
must be a creed before there could be a cult. Indeed the
word creed is etymologically connected with the primary
duty towards the dead which in India men called a $raddha
In the present chapter, therefore, we shall endeavour to
state the several articles of this creed with as much explicit-
ness as possible.

To begin with, it must have been exceedingly vague,
an obstinate impression that man's nature was not wholly
summed up in this body of flesh. It is not, of course,
necessary to read back" into the primitive past that complex
psychology which induced the Egyptian to describe man's
personality as consisting of nine different elements (fo,
ibit) ka, etc.), or which led the Chinese to distinguish

THE CREED OF SPIRITISM 67

between -the varieties of hun and the varieties of.po. It is
not even necessary to assume as very primitive the idea of
a tripartite personality such as we have in the Hebrew basar,
nephesh and ruah y or the Greek sarx> psyche and pneuma, an
analysis made familiar to us by the translation of these
terms respectively as body, soul and spirit. We have probably
read into the ideas of primitive people a more formal analysis
of personality than they actually possessed, though there is
but little doubt that savage races were often perplexed as
to the distinction between the " long " soul and the " short "
soul, between the animal soul which was dissipated soon
after death and the spirit which was believed to survive.
As to this there was inevitably much vagueness and even
the New Testament terms of body, soul and spirit are employed
with some uncertainty. Yet apparent in. all primitive
psychology is at least the dichotomy which recognized the
general distinction of soul (or spirit) from the body. If
all outside things had a soul, it would be obvious that man
was not less well endowed. Possibly the first idea of soul
was no more than that of life, but the belief soon became
prevalent that this life was in some way detachable from
the body. There were times of unconsciousness when, as
seemed certain in dreams, the soul appeared to wander.
It was easy at such times to imagine that the soul had slipped
away temporarily, perhaps in the form of a bird, or a mouse,
or a serpent. It was therefore necessary to keep it, like the
falcon, on a leash, 1 lest it escape permanently, or afford
opportunity for some malign spirit or vampire to take
possession of the body. Death was literally the departure
of the soul. The words of the Emperor Hadrian will be
recalled:

Animula, vagiila, blandula,
Hospes, comesque corporis !
Quae nunc abibis in loca,
Palliduk, frigida, nudula,
Nee, ut soles, dabis joca.

? Cf. the beautiful lines of Jalalu'din Rumi in Book I. of the Mctthnawi,
commencing :

Nightly the souls of men thou lettest fly
From out the trap wherein they captive lie.

68 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

So precautions against this departure must be taken, such
as quenching the thirst ere going to sleep, or placing
charms, in the way of ear-rings and nose-rings, upon the
openings of the head. Especially must one -use spells to
prevent the violent expulsion of the soul in the acts of
sneezing, hiccoughing or coughing.

Much thought was. naturally given to -the seat of the
soul. Was it to be identified with the breath* (animus) as
the soul of Nature was to be discovered in the wind (anima) ?
The possible connection of soul with sea and of ghost with
gust would point in this direction. Was it, as some believed,
in the shadow, which primitive man, not illogically, regarded
as part of his own person ? He resented the stepping on
his shadow as an insult and even feared the taking of a
photograph, lest thereby part of himself should pass under
the power of another. Certain Negro tribes, we are told,
fear the driving of a nail into the ground on which their
shadow is cast, and Frazer mentions the terror of the
Australian who " nearly died of fright because the shadow
of his mother-in-law fell on his legs as he lay asleep under
a tree," Others have supposed the seat of the soul to be
in the blood. There was visible evidence of this when men
saw life ebbing away with the streaming out of the blood.
" The blood is the life," said the Hebrew, and the accusing
voice said to Cain, " The voice of thy brother's blood crieth
to me from the earth." It was a widespread belief down
to quite modern times that a murderer might be convicted
by the re-flowing of blood in his presence from the corpse.
Empedocles affirmed: " The soul is the systasis of the
blood." In the effort to restore life men used to put a
daub of red paint on the forehead of the corpse or sprinkled
it with red powder. There were in certain parts of Europe
peoples whom we know to-day as the red-ochre folk because
of the habit of packing the graves with that substance as
a " life-giver." Other common life-givers were such things
as gold, beads, cowry-shells, incense and jade. " He who
swallows jade will exist as long as jade, and he who swallows'
gold as long as gold," 2 it was said. But it was the actual

1 Cf. Skt. dtman,'the breath, that is, the self.

3 Also : " Drink a pint of jade and you will live a thousand years."

THE CREED OF SPIRITISM 69

gift of blood which men specially craved for the renewal
of their life in the grave. So Odysseus fed the hungry
ghosts of the under-world, as described in the nth book
of the Odyssey.

Many people were accustomed to seek the seat of the
soul in the hair: This is -one of the most widespread of
primitive beliefs. Whether due to the knowledge that the
hair often continued to grow after death or to the association,
by imitative magic, of the hair with the rays of the sun, the
idea prevailed that the hair (as in the case of Samson) was
the seat of power and was also the residence of the vital
principle. Witches were shaven to rob them of their un-
holy might, and Japanese wrestlers were accustomed, on
retiring from the ring, to cut off their locks as an offering
.to the gods. " Hair! Hair! there is might in hair," says
George Meredith in The Shaving of Shagpat, and a thousand
illustrations conspire to confirm the assertion. Hair is
even divine, said the Japanese, using the same word, kami,
for hair as well as for the gods. Many a Japanese hero was
buried or cremated with his body represented by but a
single hair, even as a. Chinese Emperor commuted his own
death sentence by the sacrifice of his hair. The shaving
of the head, whether through the vow of the Nazarite, the
profession of the monk or the compulsion of a Manchu
tyrant, was always regarded as the offering of life. For
others to have possession of a man's hair was to gain control
over his life; hence the protection of priest or king by the
wearing of a fillet or a crown. Even prophets had their
sacred commission associated with abundance of hair.
Elijah was the more esteemed because he was " a lord of
hair," while Elisha suffered by comparison even in the
estimate of the children, who mocked his shorn locks with
the cry: ""Go up, thou bald head." 1

By some, again, the eye was the soul seat and " the
daughter of the eye," as the Hebrews called it, was the
double of the person. In India, as E. V. Hopkins reminds
us, the divine male was to be seen in the right eye and
his pakti, or female principle, in the. other. It was such a

w w 8 ^ E< X; 'IJW^'x' Ori in and ^volution of Religion, 115 f. ; and
H. H, Gowen, "The Hair Offering, "^^ c Theological Review, January 1927.

70 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

belief as this which led to the fear of the evil eye and the
dread of invidia, which we call envy, was something more
than moral shrinking from one of the- deadly sins. In
Egypt we are able to follow the development from the idea
of the Horns-eye, the symbol of life, to the eye of the
goddess Hathor, the evil eye, .the death-dealing avatar of
the goddess of destruction.

Another commonly received soul seat was the liver,
which was " the organ of divination " for many peoples,
including Babylonians, Greeks and Etruscans. The Hebrews,
too, often identified the soul with the liver and we have
passages in the Psalms which, if literally translated, would
run, . " Wake up, my liver!" rather, than "Awake, my
soul!" That the Hebrew word signifies .alike weight,
liver and glory, is in itself significant. In some passages of
the Psalms, however, the kidneys (reins) are suggested as
. the soul seat and this may be the case in ancient India.

More common in India, as in many other places (in-
cluding the lands of the West), is the thought of the heart,
at least as the seat of feeling and affection. To some,
according to Windisch (quoted by Hopkins), the soul
might be supposed to have distributed its functions, using
the liver for the passionate and sensual, the head for the
mental and intellectual, and the heart for courage as well
as for affection.

It has already been observed that the name was often
regarded, at least in part, as a seat of the soul. .This,
however, was probably a somewhat late conception. 1

'An important consideration for primitive man was in-
volved in the question, Was there not some -secret place,
external to the body, where the soul might be protected
from the violence which was so common an incident in
the life of mortal man ? - The doctrine of " the external
soul " is one of unusual interest. The reader will recall
Lafcadio Hearn's Story of Aoyagi, where the young wife
suddenly cries r "I am .dying. . : . Someone, at this cruel
moment, is cutting down my tree that is why I must
die." As, in the Bible, there were " the witches who
hunted souls," it was wise J:o have one's " bundle of life "

1 H. H. Gowen, " The Name," -Anglican Theological Review, April 1930.

THE CREED OF SPIRITISM 71

laid up where no enemy could get at it. The safest place
of all was, of course, with God; therefore the Psalmist
exclaims, " Hide me in the secret place of Thy tabernacle." x
In like manner St. "Paul writes: "Your life is hid with
Christ in God." 2 But many would fall short of security
such as this and seek other hiding-places. The fine ladies
of Jerusalem, according to Isaiah iii. 20, used, among
other articles of jewellery, the amulets called " houses of
the soul." For the souls of the dead little soul-houses
were placed near the graves, a custom prevailing all the
way from ancient Egypt to the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, and
one which had not a little to do with the evolution of our
own church building. We have in this an explanation of
the use of " portrait-statues," also in use from Egypt of
old to the megalithic tombs of ancient Britain and Brittany.
The portrait statue was a " forma corporis," in which the
spirit would naturally find a dwelling place. An old
Egyptian scribe,, one Qeni, once tied a papyrus to his
wife's wooden statuette to serve notice of a law-suit in the
underworld. But for the living as well as for the dead
there. were ingenious devices for providing a dwelling for
the soul. Many of our fairy tales, such as the Indian tale
of Punchkin, describe the souj of some giant, or ogre,
hidden in a bird's nest at the. top of a tree, in a coco-nut,
or in some shell-fish at the bottom of the sea. The hero
of the tale had first to learn the hiding-place of the ogre's
soul before he could execute justice upon him. 3 Whether
in the body or out of the body, it is plain that the soul
needed careful watching over and guardianship.

The next article of belief in the creed of spiritism was
that the soul survived the body when the separation took
place at ^ death. Death, for primitive man, was naturally
a mysterious thing. It was, indeed, unnatural, and always
considered as an act of violence, whether the instrument of
violence were or were not capable of being detected. When
by such violence the soul was expelled from the body it
had occupied, the question was, Did it still exist ? Primitive

1 Cf. Psalms xxvii. 5.

2 Col. iii. 3. -.--.

3 See Frazer; Folk-lore of the Old Testament, Part III., ch. 7.

72 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

man said without hesitation, Yes, and supported his affirma-
tion through the evidence of dreams, when dead relatives
quite visibly appeared to the living, as in the case of Aeneas
and Anchises and other heroes of classic literature. The
.soul disengaged by death became the manes, whence the
belief in the disembodied soul is sometimes known as
manism. With the advance towards deification of the dead
the manes were frequently spoken of as Dii manes. But
primitive man found evidence for the survival of the soul
also in the spread of some contagious disease. Where
some individual had died from such it was easy to explain
the spread of the disease in the camp as due to the -wrath
of the deceased spending itself on the living. The soul
expelled by violence, physical or occult, was presumably
in an angry frame of mind and not to be lightly encountered.
It is for this reason that in some countries, as in China,
the ignorant are unwilling to relieve the dying or to interfere
with the struggles of a- drowning man. There was no
telling what a disembodied spirit might not do to anybody
near at hand. To meet a disembodied spirit was every-
where a sign of death or disaster; in some countries it
brought lockjaw. Thus the dread of places thought to be
haunted, even in civilized lands, has remained in the blood.
In China, again, it was an excellent method of revenge for
a man to commit suicide on his neighbour's doorstep or to
wreck the fortunes of a railway by laying himself across
the rails.

It 'is not, of course, necessary to believe that primitive
man still less primitive woman felt no sense. ofj bereave-
ment. Such an idea would run counter to common animal
instinct as well as to many facts of primitive life. Witness
the efforts made to restore life by the pouring of water
or blood upon the corpse, or the use of what the Chinese
call the " calling back the dead." The shaking out of the
little garments, hung on a broomstick, with the cry:

Come back, little one, come back !

Where are you hiding ? Where are you playing ? '

Come, come, we are anxiously waiting for you.

is as primitive as it is pathetically human. Yet, on the
whole, there was a great fear of the dead, and a great desire

THE CREED OF SPIRITISM 73

. ; C

that they should not return. Some of the signs of this
fear we shall see a little later.

Where was the soul ? we may now ask. The answer
is variously given: For very many, possibly for most,
there was the belief that the soul remained hovering above
the grave for three days. Sometimes, as in the Avestan
belief, it was supposed to hover in the form of a bird;
others believed it was in the form of a butterfly, or perhaps
that of some earth-dwelling animal, such as a serpent or
a worm. Muhammadans believed that till the Day of
Judgement the souls of men were in the crops of birds,
green birds for the good, black birds for the bad, and owls
for those who had committed murder. In China it was a
common belief that one part of the soul the more earthy
part was dissipated in the air, while a certain other part
remained in the spirit tablet. There was yet another part
in the grave; for most primitive peoples the grave was.
generally recognized as the abode of the soul. Ideas of the
underworld, for the most part, developed from the conception
of an enlarged grave, a vast subterranean vault. This is
what we call hell, apart, of course/from all idea of a moralized
after-life. Hell is literally the hole, the hollow, the Sheol
of the Hebrews, the Hades of the Greeks. It is that chthonic
realm of the dead -so magnificently described in Ezekiel
xxxii. 17 ff.: " The mighty warriors in the underworld shall
hail him and his allies : Down with you, down, to a shameful
death, you, and all your host, amid victims of the sword.
Assyria is down there, with all her folk, their graves round
about their kings, buried in the abysses of the pit, all victims
of the sword, who. were a terror in the land of the living."
There are also classic descriptions of this same realm in
such passages as that of the nth book of the Odyssey, where

appear'd along die dusky coasts,
Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts ;
Fair, pensive youths and soft, enamour'd maids ;
And wither'd elders, pale and wrinkled shades ;
Ghastly with wounds the forms of warriors slain
Stalk'd with majestic port, a martial train.

A similar description appears in the 6th Aeneid^ and Vergil
shows some slight disposition to moralize the world of the

74 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

dead in the words: " Quisque suos patimur manes " (We,
each of us, suffer our own manes). It was not a cheerful
outlook, by no means so cheerful as that of uranic religion,
though a few of the dead were allowed the prospect of the
skies, and some of the Polynesians believed in "leaping
places " whence souls attained access to the stars or clouds.
In some places, all the way from Egypt to Russia, soul
ladders were provided from the graves, some of them with
seven rungs suggestive of the ascent through the planetary
spheres. Egyptian kings, in particular, were .supplied with
ladders that they might scale the skies. . The four sons of
Horus must bind a rope ladder, it was stated, "for this
king, Pepi II; they join together a (wooden) ladder for
'King Pepi II." But most souls had to be thankful that*
they had " somewhere to go to," however gloomy. Gloomy
it was assuredly, as the classic complaint of the great Achilles
testifies. The Japanese creator-god, Izanagi, going down
to hell to recover the soul of 'his dead wife, found it a place
of such unspeakable corruption that he fled precipitately,
pursued by the nine hags of hell. To the Greeks it was
Aides, the land of the unseen. To the Hebrews the dead
were the Rephaim, the helpless ones. To some the dead
were pictured as half decomposed. From the Epic of
Gilgamesh we learn that distinction was made between the
dead who were fed by the oblations, and so were com-
paratively strong, and the dead who had been thrown out
on the plain, and were unsustained, as also between these
and .the dead (such as the unmarried) who had died without
the normal fulfilment of life. These became demons. At
the best the world was " that low land where sun and moon
are mute and all the stars keep silence."

The accessories of hell are quite clearly marked and for
the most part recall old customs in connection with the
disposal of the .dead. To die was to go the way of the
setting sun. Thus " going west" became (in Egypt) a
synonym for dying, and men were laid to rest with their
faces in that direction. The metaphor of the river, which
we still employ in our popular hymns, 1 is one which is
quite natural when we remember that a tribe, camped

1 E'.g. " Shall we gather at the river ?"

- . THE CREED OF SPIRITISM 75

along the shores of a stream, would prefer to dispose of
their dead on the. other -side, to prevent return of the
unwelcome ghost.

To transport the dead across the river there would be
the boat or the bridge. The boat idea provided the funeral
barge of ancient Egypt and the barque of Charon in Greek
mythology. . The bridge idea has a long history, from the
use of a crazy log placed across a rushing stream to the
impressive conception of the Chinvad Bridge of the Zoroas-
trian and the 'Al-Sirat of the Muhammadan, stretched
across the Valley of Jehoshaphat, "sharper than a sword
and finer than a hair." In between extremes such as these
are the Snake Bridge of the Sioux Indians, the bridge in
the Irish saga of Cuchulain, and that of the Yorkshire
Lyke^wake Dirge :

From Whinny-moore when thou may passe,

Every night and alle ;
To Brig-o-Dread thou comes at last,

And Christe receive thy saule.

The Choctaw belief was that souls had to cross a dreadful
deep and rapid stream over a long slippery pine-log, which
had been stripped of its bark. People on the other side
threw stones at. those who crossed and it was in dodging
these that the wicked fell thousands of feet into the gulf
below. Allied with this is the belief of the Greenlanders
that after death the soul has to slide for five or six days
down a steep precipice, slippery with the blood of all who
have gone before, a journey specially hard in the winter.
It is not strange that bridge sacrifices came into vogue in
order to expedite the soul's journey through these fearful
ordeals, or that the wordPontifex (Bridge-builder) came to have
a religious significance in pagan and even in Christian times.
Children continued to play as games the dramas enacted by
their terrified elders, as we may note in such a one as " London
Bridge is falling down," with its forfeit of " a fair lady."

There ^was also the dog, OT jackal, or (occasionally) the
pig, as a kind of psychopomp, or soul-leader into the world
of the dead. It is easy to see how the dog of the primitive
man, which had shared his life above ground, might be

1 See-Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, art. " Bridge."

76 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

selected to become his inseparable companion in the grave.
If the dqg was the guardian of the home above-ground,
might he not, as Cerberus, continue his functions in the
.-grave ? But, perhaps, the association of the dog, or jackal,
.with the underworld came about through the unpleasant
interest which these beasts took in the. shallow graves
where the dead were laid. It is probable that Anubis, the
jackal god, was, a god of the dead before he was regarded
as the psychopomp under the new deity Osiris. In any
case, a family likeness exists between Anubis and Cerberus
and between these and the Indian dogs of Yama and the
Persian dogs of Yima. These last, mentioned in the Veda
and Avesta, and which became still more important in the
death rites of the Parsi, are "the four-eyed brindled "
dogs who must be dragged into the presence of the dying
in order that these might receive the sagdld^ or " look of
the dog." The sagdid' served, as a passport into the under-
world and enabled the dead to rest in peace.

One other accessory must here be noted, in connection
with the underworld, namely, the Hell-emperor, who is
generally identified with the first man, or the original head
of a tribe, some early pioneer whose grave mound was in
the centre of the family circle and whose early entrance to
the world of the dead gave him place and power. Such is
Yama in India, Yima in the Iran of the Avesta and Pluto
(Hades) in the classic mythology of Greece.

It should not, at this point, be overlooked that many
primitive peoples, and many, like the Hindus, quite advanced,
believed in transmigration of souls. What could seem to
these more natural than that the souls of men should pass
into the beasts they resembled or admired? There was
even some pride in the thought that a chief might return
to earth as a lion, an elephant, a leopard or a buffalo. In
such an idea there was no sense of humiliation, since, as
Frazer observes, to primitive man " many of the other
animals appear as his equals, or even his superiors, not
merely in brute force, but in intelligence."

The final article of the spiritistic creed that calls for
mention is the' belief in the deification of the dead. If we
ask whether this applied to all the dead.br only to chiefs

THE CREED OF SPIRITISM 77

perhaps, in certain cases, only to males the answer must
be with hesitation. In most cases, probably, only the
chiefs were supposed to survive as gods. ' Even in life
certain men, chiefs and priests, were credited with certain
powers (prenda) beyond those of others. Dynamistic as
well as animistic views were widely current. Such powers
were highly valued and regarded as contributing to the
well-being of the tribe. In many cases, when these powers
flagged, the former possessor was put to death, a subject
treated with great particularity in The Golden Bough. But
in other cases great men carried their mana with them
to ''the grave. Hence ghosts easily passed to godhood.
Euhemerus, a Greek mythographer who lived c. 300 B.C.,
interpreted the popular myths in his Sacred History as all
based upon the traditions of heroes and rulers who lived
and died and were thence raised ad astra. According to
this system, known as euhemerism, Zeus was simply an old
king of Crete who had forced the abdication of an earlier
dynasty. Osiris, likewise, was an early king of Egypt who
made wars and taught his people the arts of agriculture.
Euhemerism is unsatisfactory as an explanation of all myths,
but undoubtedly many of the gods are just deified human
beings. The Roman emperors naturally became deities on
their decease, just as the Egyptian Pharaohs, had done
before them. The Chinese emperors rode " the back of
the dragon " to the heaven whence they had received their
mandate. And the Japanese rulers- and many beside,
both men and women passed into the unknown as katfii
to be worshipped henceforth according to the rites of Shinto.
Such belief is by no means without its value to theology.
If it was important to have the idea of a transcendent God
and the idea of an immanent God, it was also important to
hold the idea of a God who had projected. Himself into
humanity. The humanity of God, as already suggested
earlier, gives us the third aspect of God which was needed
to make theology complete. In this way the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity, that is, belief in God as Father
(God in His transcendence), Son (God in His humanness)
and Spirit (God in His immanence) is found to have its
ground in primitive religion.

CHAPTER VI

The Religion of Spiritism

ON the ground of the beliefs described in our last
chapter a vast pre-occupation with death on the
part of primitive man will appear to have been
inevitable. We must not, however, jump to the conclusion
that this preoccupation implies a surrender to the idea' of
mortality. Rather it serves to illustrate a profounder faith
in life as the ultimate issue or, at the very least, an insistent
protest against death as >the ultimate issue. The thought of
Sophocles, that

Our last, our longest home is with the dead,
Therefore let us praise the lifeless/ not the living,
For we shall rest forever -there

is the outcome of a weary sophistication. Even more so is
the pessimism of James Thomson in his City of Dreadful
Night. To -the natural man life was good and it was fitting
that he should rebel against death as against something
unnatural, an evil resulting from violence, whether the
violence came from beast or man, or from the malignant
powers which he called demons and we bacilli. As already
noted, the attitude of man was towards death, and also
towards the dead, an attitude of great fear. It was fear of
the malevolent forces lurking invisibly near, perhaps in the
form of some contagious disease; fear of the angry ghost
torn untimely from all that he considered his; fear even of
the place where death had taken place and where unknown
dangers still remained in ambush. Even although occasion-
ally we see fear and grief struggling together for expression^
the. fear . had generally the upper hand and_ dictated, most
of ..the .rites, which gathered around .the cult, of _ the : dead.
The main elements of this cult we may now set forth; in
sequence. First there was _.

78 - '

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM 79

THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. As -might be expected
in the case of people obsessed with fear, there seeins to
have been a very general desire to rid themselves as speedily
as possible of " the body of this death." Sometimes this
was effected simply by abandonment, even to the extent of
leaving the locality where death had occurred. In the case
of the early Japanese emperors, prior to the Nara period,
A.D. 710-794, .the capital was moved at every, imperial
demise. Sometimes the return of the dead was hindered by
rites performed in connection with the funeral. These
included the decapitation or dismemberment of the corpse,
the fettering of the limbs * by anklets or swathings, the
placing of thorns beneath the feet, to make walking im-
possible, the closing of the eyes of the dead to render them
blind, the effacing of the footprints of the men who bore
the body to its last resting-place, or the placing of heavy
stones on the grave. In the case of dangerous persons,
suicides and murderers, or in the case of any suspected of
vampirism, a stake might be driven through the corpse's
breast. Even to recent times^it was the custom in England
to bury the body of one incurring the verdict of felo de se
at the junction of four cross-roads with a stake through the
breast, to make return impossible. In many cases, as among
the Jews, criminals and lunatics might be cremated, with
the original intention of. destroying the soul altogether. In
India efforts were made, "in the fraddha ceremonies, to
speed the gati, or going, of the spirit to the world of the
ancestors. While many practices, . some of which have
been already mentioned, were adopted, as in the gift 'of
hair, or blood, or other " life-givers " to furnish replenish-
ment ^ of vigour, it must always be remembered that this
new life was in the other world, not in this. In this world
no revenant was generally welcome, even by the relatives,
but among the ancestors it was highly desirable to preserve
identity by the making. of masks, portrait-statues, and the
iike,_ Reference has already been, made to these in Egypt
and Britain, and Crete may be added. to..the localities where
portrait-statues .have been, discovered. , Even iir East Africa,
as Father Le Roy has. recorded, "the natives .make earthen
statuettes and put therein parts of the dead, their hair,

8o A HIS.TORT OF RELIGION

skin, nails, or a small bone. While -this desire for per-
petuating the personality of the dead in the other world
prevailed, there was also the ambition to obtain use .of the
orenda of notable persons by contact with the corpse which
had been credited with unusual powers'. The desire some-
times, took strange forms, quite at variance with some of
the fears which have been described above. On the death
of a great chief or an enemy of unusual distinction, the
living "would rub themselves with the juices of the- decom-
posing body, possess themselves of the head, scalp, ears or
nose of the dead, or even engage in some sort of endo-
cannibalism to transfer to themselves the qualities of the
deceased. When Kamehameha I. died in 1 8 1 9, the Hawaiian
chiefs debated long what to do with the body and one
exclaimed: " My thought is that we eat him."

The motives which have been described will account
for most of the methods of disposing of the dead with
which we are acquainted. First of all, there was simple
abandonment or exposure, sometimes in the tree or cave
which had been the primitive dwelling, sometimes in the
jungle or on a mountain height. For a very large number
it seemed fitting that the dead should rest, at. least for a time,
on the bare soil, as in the lap of the earth which had been
their mother. It was- in harmony with the custom of
placing an infant on the ground for a while immediately
after birth. 1 There are many survivals of this custom,
from -the Chinese practice of placing the body on the earth
before it was coffined to the modern Parsi method of using
the dakhma, or tower of silence, for exposure of the corpse
to the vultures. Central Asia, too, furnishes many illustra-
tions of the practice.

Inhumation, or earth- burial, followed naturally where
the hut was deserted and allowed to fall in upon the aban-
doned body. An old Chinese ideograph for burial seems
to depict this falling down of the thatch upon the corpse
in the hole which had served the living man for a home..
Le Roy says: "Among several tribes of the Congo the
chief on his death has his house for a tomb: his body is
left there until the roof falls in ; then the village is aban-

1 See Albrecht Dietrich, Mutter Erde, Leipzig, 1925,

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM 8 1

doned." 1 Burial was evidently the general practice as far
back as Upper Palaeolithic times, and we find graves of
this period fenced round with the shoulder-blades of
mammoths, while the body had been wrapped in a mat or
skin and even placed in a coffin of wood or stone. The
coffin was the natural development from tree-trunk burial.
Some people, like the ancient Parthians, used slipper-
shaped coffins of pottery. Others in Greece arid pre-historic
South India used large jars, or two jars set mouth to mouth.
In certain cases burial became a rite to which men con-
tributed their labour and wealth on the most stupendous
scale. We have illustration of this not only in ancient
Egypt, in the case of the Pyramid builders, but to almost
the same extravagant extent among the makers of dolmens
and long barrows and sepulchral mounds in general from
Britain to China and Japan.' To be "monumentally
interred " was the general ambition of those who had been
great in the land of the living.

Cremation came in with the Bronze Age and was doubt-
less employed in order to hasten the departure of the spirit
or perhaps to destroy it altogether. In certain cases it was
used particularly for criminals and other undesirables, but
in some cases as a mark of honour to chiefs and men of high
estate, to speed their souls upward to the stars. As a
preventative of contagion it doubtless justified itself without
primitive man being aware of the reasons for his success.

Whether the dead were deposited in a grave or upon
the funeral pyre (but especially in the former case) care
was generally taken to place them with the knees drawn
up towards the chin. This is explained either through the
desire to restore the. dead man to the place he occupied as
an embryo in his mother's womb, in view of an anticipated
re-birth, or else by the desire to represent him as asleep.
This last idea is confirmed by the apparent habit of Nean-
derthal man of placing a pillow of flint-chips beneath the
h.ead of the corpse. Other positions, however, are some-
times encountered, including the seated position, and even
that of standing erect to which allusion was made in the
last chapter.

1 Monsignor Le Roy, The Religion of Primitive Men, New York, 1922.
F

82. A HlSTORT OF RELIGION

Our next heading is that of

GIFTS TO THE DEAD. The dead must not be left
hungry or unattended, or otherwise unequipped for the
ghostly life. If thus .unprovided for, they might return.
We have already noted the fact that the house, as in China
and Japan, was frequently left for such occupation as the
dead man might choose' to claim. Food also was a necessity
and must be placed where the soul might readily find, it,
before the spirit-tablet in the house, or periodically at the
grave. Large legacies used to be left in ancient Egypt to
provide the dead regularly with so many loaves of bread,
so much nieat, and so many jars of beer. Curses of the
most horrifying nature were invoked on anybody who
might attempt to steal the provender. Possibly some of
the quaint bequests still honoured in English parishes for
the provision weekly of so' many loaves to be given out at
the church originated in thought of the bequeathers rather
than of the legatees. Certainly many early temples and
churches were at first little more than altar shrines where
food gifts were deposited for the dead, with an attendant
priesthood to supervise the ritual. The taking of food to
the graves in modern China at the Ching .Ming festival
is in line with the same idea, even as was the pouring of
water upon the graves in ancient Babylon. Clothing also
was supposedly needed for the dead. The origin of our
modern funeral garb lies in the. fact that originally the
mourners went bare that the dead might take possession
of the clothes in hand. Then came the use by the survivors
of sackcloth and torn garments such as the dead would
not be disposed to envy. Lastly came the making of
special garments of funeral black. The funeral dress of
the Chinese consists of garments which have not been
dyed and are therefore unfinished. It is this which has
given rise to the belief that white is the Chinese colour of
mourning. Yet in some countries white is adopted for
mourning for other reasons. For example, in certain parts
of Africa the mourners paint themselves with paint made
from white chalk or tapioca flour, mixed with the powdered
bones of the dead. A traveller describes one such group
of mourners: " covered with flour, as we prepare a cutlet

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM 83

for the frying-pan . " In connection with -the gift of clothing,
it may be recalled that Herodotus tells the story of Periander,
tyrant of Corinth, whose dead wife from the underworld
reproached him for her lack of clothing. . The king im-
mediately commandeered the dresses of the Corinthian
ladies and sent them to the shades below by means of a
bonfire, thus silencing the complaints of his departed
spouse.

Implements, again, of all sorts were despatched to the
underworld for the use of the dead. Many vessels
broken in order to fit them for a realm where everything
tvas dead were buried in considerable numbers even in
pre-historic times. " By a curious symbolism," says Le
Roy, " the vases placed, in the graves are always cracked
Dr chipped, in a word, whatever is offered to the dead man
must be * dead/ " In the case of warriors and chiefs
tiorses were slain and interred with the deceased. In the
recent pictures of the funeral of Marshal Jofrjre the Jiorse
;ed behind the coffin is a reminiscence of this ancient
:ustom. Labourers, too, to work in the fields of the dead,
ivere slaughtered, or in later times (about the time of the
twelfth dynasty in Egypt) replaced by the small clay
igurines known in Egypt as ushabti, or answerers. The
*reat stone avenues leading up to the Ming Tombs in
China will remind us that ministers of state were not, in
many cases, exempt from -the duty of accompanying their
dead lord to his last abode. The Japanese custom of
mnshi, or " following in death," will be recalled. It was
supposedly abolished nearly two thousand years ago, by
the substitution of. clay figures (an arrangement suggested
by the head of the clay-workers' guild), but it has sporadic-
illy persisted till the present day as may be illustrated by
the suicide of General Nogi and his wife at the funeral of
the Emperor Meiji. Wives were naturally not free from
rendering such a service to the dead. The Indian practice
Df sati (lit. the faithful woman) was once (erroneously)
supported by the authority of the Veda but was abolished
by law in 1829,. Yet Kipling's Last Suttee was by no means
the last in India. Elsewhere the custom was common and
rften practised on the grand scale. - The Chinese Emperor

8 4 , .A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Ch'in Shih Huang Ti included in the great holocaust
which marked his funeral in 209 B.C. hundreds of women
as well as thousands of workmen and slaves and immense
treasure. At the funeral of Jenghiz Khan in A.D. 1227
the fairest women of Asia, as well as the finest stallions,
were all slaughtered to provide the dead conqueror with an
adequate entourage in the underworld. Gifts to 'the dead
are still common in many countries, as, for example, in
China where every city has its shops where nothing is sold
except for the dead. Here you can buy even a papier-
mache automobile with a papier-mache chauffeur. Indeed,
our. own use of flowers on the graves is not entirely the
expression of our own affection. It should be added that
ornaments as well as articles of utility were freely offered
from the first and in Palaeolithic graves we have anklets,
necklaces, ivory figurines, bone amulets, etc., which had
ornamental as well as magical reason for their use.

COMMEMPRATION OF THE DEAD. The commemoration
of the dead is variously observed in different lands, but
generally includes, first, a funeral service held shortly after
death, as in the Indian fraddha> or the Christian requiem, and,
secondly, an annual commemoration, commonly. at the fall
of the year, as in the Buddhist Bon and the Christian All
Saints' Day. It is interesting to note as showing the per-
durability of primitive ideas that to-day in America the
Eve of All Saints', commonly known as All Hallow E'en,
is much more generally observed after the old pagan fashion
than in line with Christian ideas. In ancient Egypt, apart
from the consecration of the tomb, which was generally
prepared in the lifetime of its occupant, and the actual
funeral ceremony, -there seems to have 'been an annual
commemoration service to secure the peace of the soul in
Amenti. The Zoroastrians had their general feast for all
the dead annually, as well as special services for the dead 3
not unlike those of the Indian fraddha, on the third, tenth
and thirtieth days after death, and also 'on the anniversary,
of death. The Romans, like the Greeks, had significant
rites in memory of the dead, with speeches and games.
The exsequi*, or obsequies, included prayers and sacrifices
in the house to the spirits of the dead and there was also

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM 85

a service on the anniversary. A general festival for the
dead, known as the Feralia, or Februalia, was held on
February 22 and was a service of purification. The Lemuria,
held in -May, were for the purpose of driving away the
Lemures, or hostile spirits of the dead. Hebrew usage
in ancient times is uncertain, but since the tenth century
"there have been days prescribed for the commemoration
of the dead." Islam has followed suit in pilgrimages and
services at the graves of the saints. Christian usage has
included many forms of commemoration, from the inscribing
of an epitaph on the tombstone, or the writing of the
deceased's name on the diptych on the altar, to the use of
the anniversary, or natalida, and the inclusion of the name
in the martyrology, and ultimately in the calendar of the
Church. Even outside of organized ecclesiastical life the
instinct for the commemoration of the dead is shown in
the observance of such days as Memorial Day, May 30, in
the United 'States as a National Holiday, in the various
services in widely separated countries at the grave of an
" Unknown Warrior," and in the general disposition to
observe anniversaries and centenaries.

The commemoration of the dead has often taken
monumental form,, from the time of the Pyramid Builders,
as already noted, to our own day. The ancient Egyptians
built their tombs, with a shaft for the victims sacrificed,
and a chapel for the reception of the gifts. Absalom built
his own tomb in the King's Dale, because he had no son to
succeed and carry on the ancestral cult. To-day every city
has its monuments to the dead and its cemeteries where
men recall " the touch of a vanished hand, the sound of a
voice that is still." It is a o n important part pf life to link
one's own generation with the past. Mrs. Browning asks:
" Who dared build temples without tombs in sight? " and
we have constantly occasion to recall the power of the dead
to control the destinies of the living. The important thing
is o to balance the rightful authority of the dead with the
prerogatives of the living so as not to constrain the liberties
of the present through the tyranny^ of " the dead hand."
Past and Future struggle together Yor recognition in the
ever-changing Present.

86 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

COMMUNICATIONS. WITH THE DEAD. Necromancy, or
divination by means of communication with the dead, is a
primitive as well as a widely extended practice. It rests
upon the belief that the dead are not .wholly out of reach
and may be conversed with under special conditions. There
is generally a recrudescence of this belief in times of wide-
spread mourning, as in the period of the Great War, when
young life went untimely over the Great. Divide in ^uch
abundance that there was a natural desire on the part of
the bereaved to reach over to the farther shore. The
methods of necromancy have not greatly varied from ancient
times, though some religious systems have favoured some
methods and discountenanced others. Dreams, induced in
special ways, have been a common means of bridging the
gulf. In China such various methods have been employed
as sacrifice, to which the dead are supposed to come, the
use of the personator of the dead,, generally the grandson of
the deceased, the use of the spirit-tablet, to which the ghost
comes at the time of sacrifice, the use of the spirit-pencil,
or chi, consisting of two long branches held by two people,
with a short branch by which the writing is traced in the
sand, the employment of the wu, or trance medium, and
even by such methods as the calling back of the soul,
referred to above, or the spreading of a table. The use of
mechanical media, such as planchetie, or ouija^ is common
the world over. Almost equally general' is the use of
personal media, in which the medium acts for the human'
enquirer, and a " control " acts for the spirit on the other
side whom it is desired to consult. The case of the Witch
of Endor, as described in i Sam. xxviii., is a classic instance,
in which Saul "calls 'up the spirit of .Samuel through the
wise woman of Endor to learn his fate in the morrow's
battle. In still earlier times it seems probable from the
mention of teraphim, as in Gen. xxxi. 34 and i Sam. xix. 13,
that the dead were invoked by means of mummified infants
used as media. In classical literature the dead are described
as being consulted through special visits made to the
borders of the underworld, as in the nth book of the
Odyssey and the 6th book of the Aeneid. In modern times
communication with the dead has supposedly been attained,

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM 87

not only by methods mentioned above, but what is known
as automatic, writing or even by telaudition. The whole
subject, so far as it is related to modern spiritism, must be
regarded as highly debatable; Given .the. belief in the
continued existence of the soul, there is nothing antecedently
unnatural in attempts made from either side of the grave
to establish communication. It is largely a question of
evidence in support of the assertions made. Societies for
Psychical Research ^on either side of the Atlantic have
done much to clear away what was the result of mere
credulity and superstition; they have done less to offer
substantially constructive material on which ' to form a
judgement.

To some minds the thought of being in possible contact
with the dead has been undoubtedly of great solace. To
others 'the dangers of necromancy are more obvious than
its advantages. These dangers include loss 'of time spent
in much vain effort; the possibilities of self-deception
through the confusion of all sorts of psychological pheno-
mena with genuinely spiritual manifestations ; the possibility
of deception through mediums financially interested in
securing spectacular results ; .and even the possibility of
being misled through the action of discarnate entities of
a malevolent sort. Most serious, perhaps, of all is the danger
of seeking to reverse the conditions of life by striving to
know prematurely what we must die to experience. At
least this was the thought of Dante when he put the sooth-
sayers in the Inferno with their heads turned backwards.
Some of these dangers are vividly depicted in Kipling's
Way to Endor and, more dramatically, in Browning's
Mr. Sludge the Medium.

The Christian position is adequately represented in the
doctrine of the Communion of Saints, in which, without
attempting to drag back the dead to the conditions of earth,
we enter with them into spiritual communion with God.
As for all that might minister to the gratification of curiosity,
we may say, " the rest remaineth unrevealed." In any case,
we have in the Christian teaching- as to the possibilities of
prayer and communion, enough to mark the survival value
of one of man's oldest and most continuous instincts.

88 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD. Ancestor worship was
for primitive man quite natural. Ties which had been
established on earth were not quickly loosed. There might
be occasions when an old man, having lost his mana, was
regarded as done with, and even buried alive, but the solid-
arity of the tribe nevertheless demanded that the father of
the clan should be honoured in death as in .life. Moreover,
as to-day, a hero easily took on proportions after death which
were greater than those attained in life. This is a feature of
our own hero-worship, in which figures of men, like Wash-
ington and Lincoln, drop after death all human foibles and gain
a certain fixity they never could have possessed while living.
It is through such experience that they come to "belong
to the ages." Indeed, by such steps we mount to the worship
of Him who proclaims : " I am He that liveth and was dead,
and, behold, I am alive for evermore." Naturally such a
worship of the dead included sacrifices both for the dead and
to the dead. Sacrifice, says Hopkins, is " the objective link
between man and the spiritual world." From our present
point of view it is primarily the feeding and sustaining of
the dead, but it is also the common meal to which all are
invited as well as the manes. That is, it is a communion
feast as well as a sacrifice. By it the- dead are enabled
to "rest in peace" and by it the unity of the family is
maintained.

But we cannot leave the subject of Spiritism without
some reference to that very important extension of human
relationship, backwards towards the animal, which we call

TOTEMISM. The word totem, or totam, is an Ojibway
word, first employed, that is, outside the tribe, by J. Long
in 1791, in his Travels and Voyages of an Indian
Interpreter. Since that time the word has been used
in senses quite .different from the original significance.
Frazer says: " A totem is a class of material objects which a
savage regards as with superstitious respect, believing that
there exists between him and every member of the class an
intimate and altogether special relation." 1 Reinach explains
it as " the animal, vegetable and, more rarely, the mineral
or heavenly body which the clan .regards as an ancestor,

1 Sir J. G. Frazer, Totemism (London, 1910), p. i.

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM 89

protector and a rallying sign. . . . The totem is not an
individual, but an animal clan affiliated to the human clan."
Le Roy says that " a pact by means of a visible creature is a
pact with the invisible world " and explains totemism further
as " an institution consisting essentially of a magical pact,
representing and forming a relationship of a mystical and
supernatural order, by which, under the visible form of an
animal and, by exception, of a vegetable, mineral or astral
body, an invisible spirit is associated with an individual, a
family, a clan, a tribe, a secret society, in view of a recipro-
city of services." 1

It is clear that totemism, as now understood*, refers not
merely to religious beliefs as to ancestry traceable to the
animal or vegetable world, but also that it implies a social
system, with an often quite complicated arrangement for
marriages, exogamic or endogamic, as the case may be.
Or it may represent little more than the badge of a secret
society, as in Africa, where we have " the society of the
leopard" in Loango, and the "society of the hyena"
among the Wanika. Here we shall use the term, doubtless
to the dissatisfaction of the rigorists, simply of that form of
ancestor-worship which carries the idea of ancestry back
beyond the human to the animal or vegetable world.

There are, however, it must be conceded, many forms
of totemism. Sometimes we have " split " totems, in which
buffalo-tongues appear rather than buffaloes. Sometimes
there are " linked " totems, as where snake, bird, fish, and
plant are linked together. Sometimes there are " plant "
totems, in which the ancestry is traced to a particular shrub
or tree. And occasionally we have " abstract " totems, as
in the adoption of the colour red for the totem of an Omaha
clan.

The evidence probably is not quite sufficient for a con-
fident generalization, but it seems likely that most clans
had a totemistic stage. It is certainly the best explanation
we possess for the animal-headed gods of Egypt to say that
once upon a time the separate nomes had their separate
totems, lion, baboon, ibis, etc., totems not so very unlike
those which the African tribes to the south of Egypt still

1 Le Roy, op. cit., p. 87.

90 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

hold in reverence. The ancient Semites, as. in the case of
the .Hebrews, had their tribal standards with totemistic
names, the lion for Judah, the wolf for-Benjamin, and so on.
Many of the Old Testament names, such as Oreb, or raven,
and Zeeb, or wolf, were derived from animals. Particularly
was this the case with -feminine names, as, for example,
Zipporah, sparrow, Deborah, bee, Rachel, ewe, Huldah,
weasel, Hoglah, Dorcas, etc. In Greece, again, many of
the classical myths, such as those of Europa and Leda, may
be best explained as of totemistic origin. Saxon England,
too, had her Hengist, stallion, and Horsa, mare, while over
Europe generally flourished' such families as the Orsini, or
bears, the Guelfs, or wolves, and the Colonna, ' or doves.
The science of Heraldry is full of illustrations of the way
in which men found their pleasure and their pride in tracing
their ancestry to an animal origin.

Of the social implications of totemism, best studied in
connection with the religion of the Australian aborigines,
we need not now speak, but of its religious significance it
should be said that this has been immensely heightened
since the teaching of Darwin convinced man that his lineage
is actually traceable backwards through the animal.' As
already pointed out, this doctrine carries with-it religious
consequences of the utmost importance. The new Christ-
ology must take cognizance of the animal world, with its
own pains and problems, as well as of the world of humanity.
It should now be easy to see why "the groans of all creation "
await " the redemption of sons," and why it is that the
earthly life of Christ is associated a His birth with " the
beasts of the stall, His temptation with the " wild beasts,"
His working of miracles with the incident of the swine that
" ran violently down a steep place into the sea," and His
riding into Jerusalem for His Passion with the use of the
ass borrowed specially -for the occasion. 1

* ' * * * #

From the many various beliefs and practices we have
sketched in these last six chapters certain generalizations
will be seen to emerge, such as not only contain indications

. 1 See H. H. Gowen, " The Theriomorphic in Theology," Anglican Theo-
logical Review, April 1927. " .

THE RELIGION OF SPIRITISM - 91

of much that we still claim as the accumulated values of
religion, but furnish even more broad hints as to what
religion is to be when the primitive feas" completely yielded
to the universal.

i. As TO GOD. God is revealed as transcendent,
" the wholly Other," the Maker, anterior to and superior
to His work. God is also revealed in the work itself, the
visible, the idea fulfilled in creation, and most consummately
in that sup'reme work of creation which the most perfectly
reflects the Divine Idea, the human. God is, once again,
the Immanent Spirit which abides, in the work, the power
by which creation is informed and inspired. Thus from
the first we have in germ the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity, no mere dogma of schoolmen and ecclesiastics,
but a teaching necessary from the beginning in order to
distinguish God from the "simple, impersonal force " to
which some would reduce Him.

2.' As TO MAN AND HIS DESTINY. We find human
destiny from the first prophetically described on the most
generous and majestic scale. The material is at no point
regarded as sufficiently explanatory pf the mystery, of man-
hood. There is a mysterium tremendum about Man as there
is about God. Man's spirit rises above the limitations of
time and matter. The future world as yet is but slightly
moralized, but in death, as in life, to be .a member of the
family is to continue such; only the alien and the outcast
have their portion " without the camp."

3. As TO SOCIETY. Here, too, there is the prophetic
presentiment of something vast, catholic, undefined, mysteri-
ous. The very mystery of worship in the earliest times,
like the mystery which still clings to the ritual and language
of the Mass, or the mystery of the far distances in some
great Gothic cathedral, suggests these large conceptions
of what communion is in store for the souls of men. Primi-
tive society might be bounded by the clan or the tribe, but,
both here and hereafter, there was continuously hinted a
solidarity which only sin whatever the conception of sin
might be was able to break. To be a member of. the human
family necessitated the recognition of obligations which
left no man free in the selfish sense. The higher the

92 "A HISTORT OF RELIGION

position of leadership accorded to the individual, the more
numerous and insistent became the ties. The rule was
evermore, " He who did most shall bear most." And to
be " gathered to the fathers " even though within the
narrow bounds of a desert grave embodied something
of the larger hope. The social morality which held within
itself the power of inclusion or of exclusion possessed in a
continuously increasing measure the promise of judgement
to come, the promise of heaven and of hell.- ""

4. BLOODY, too, as were the rites which primitive man
accepted as the condition of his security, the blood shed
was, we doubt not, faintly envisaged as part of the sacri-
ficial stream of life which flowed from beneath the altar
of a living God with redemptive power. It was life poured
out seemingly in vain, life as yet un vindicated, awaiting
the revelation of a Divine Love as yet unknown. But, in
the meantime, it was life crying, like the martyred saints
of Judaism, for the, answer which was by and by to speak
from the Cross :

How long, O Master, the holy, the true,
Dost Thou not judge arid avenge our blood,
On them that dwell on die earth ?

Out of the large amount of material available on the subject of these
last six chapters, the following, for various reasons, may be consulted : Sir
J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (second edition), London, 1900; (abridged
edition) 1922 ; Ernst Grosse, The Beginnings of Art, New York, 1898 ; Gen.
J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution, New York, 192*6 ; L. B. Paton, Spiritism
and the Cult of the Dead, New York, 1921 ; Shailer Mathews, The Growth of
the Idea of God, New York, 1931 ; Albert Schweitzer, Christianity and the
Religions of the World, New York, 1923 ; T. H. Robinson, Introduction to the
History of Religion, London, 1926 ; A. S. Geden, Comparative Religion, London,
1922 ; E. V. Hopkins, The Origin and Evolution of Religion, New Haven, 1924 ;
Edward Clodd, Magic in Names, New York, 1921 ; Carl Clemen, Religions of
the World, New York, 1931 ; R. R. Marett, Faith, Hope and Chanty in Primitive
Religion, New York, 1932 ; W. Schmidt, The Origin and Growth of Religion
(English trans.), New York, 1931 ; P. Saintyves, Essais de Folklore Biblique,
Paris, 1922 ; Joseph Fort Newton (editor), My Idea of God, Boston, 1926 ;
Eli E. Burriss, Taboo, Magic, Spirits, New York, 1931 ; G. W. Gilmore,
Animism, Boston, 1919 ; Jane E. Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual, London,
1913 ; W. O. E.-Oesterley, The Sacred Dance, Cambridge, 1923.

BOOK II

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS

* '

Introduction

WE have now discussed sufficiently the general
principles of primitive religion. These principles
will be found to be fairly constant in all the primi-
tive religions which we are about to study separately. They
seem to have applied likewise to all that we can discover of
the religious beliefs and practices of pre-historic man and
have certainly abundant illustration in such survivals of
the primitive as we find in the advanced religions of the
present day. This being the case, we might almost arrive
at the conclusion that the elements of religion are universal
from the start and that therefore separate treatment of the
religions of different tribes and peoples is a work of super-
erogation.

But other considerations demand expression which at
once reveal that our subject is one of much greater com-
plexity than might appear"from the preceding chapters.
As in the history of art, and the .history of human culture .
generally, we find ourselves compelled to allow for differ-
ences of climate, differences of occupation, differences of
race and racial experience, differences of fortune in migra-
tions hither and thither, differences such as show themselves
in changed language and physical character, and a multitude
of others. Quite important, too, is the fact that personal-
ities arise (most of them, doubtless, quite unknown to history)
whose thoughts, words, and deeds will stamp themselves in-
effaceably upon the traditions and habits of certain tribes.
Hence, men, whose general attitude towards the mysteries
of Nature and the soul appears at first to be the same all the
way from China to Peru, will be found gradually drawing
apart from one another, exaggerating historic prejudices,

94 ' A HISTORT OF RELIGION

elevating segmentary truths to the position of tribal and
national slogans, till a multitude of conflicting religions
usurp the place of a religion developing evenly along the
line. It is to these separate experiences, with their many
creeds and cults independently formed, and their many
institutions independently developed, that we must now
give our attention.. This is the more necessary in that much
less notice has been taken of the primitive religions than of
those which we may call ethnic or historical.

Quite naturally the subject will divide itself into a
.survey under two main heads :

I. The religions which for the most part have remained
primitive to the end of their course, or even to the present
day.

II. The religions which, through certain historical
circumstances, through political organizations of a certain
sort, or through the rise of exceptionally gifted r.eligious
personalities, have become religions of a more highly
specialized character and, in general, further advanced alike
in faith and practice.

This second class we shall have to divide again under
the two following heads :

1. The religions which have for the greater part run
their course and are now dead. These will include the
religions of Babylon, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome and the
Amerindian empires. These are dead faiths, even though
many elements of their belief and practice are found sur-
viving or held in solution among the living religions.

2. The religions which, like Hinduism, Buddhism,
Judaism, Muhammadanism and Christianity, are still active
and maintain their hold upon many millions of people.

The following eight chapters are limited to the con-
sideration of the religions of Class I, religions which have
retained throughout their entire history a primitive character.

CHAPTER VII

The Religions of Australasia
and the Pacific

STRESS has already been sufficiently laid upon the fact
that even the most constant elements of primitive
religion are found considerably modified by geo-
graphical, climatic, and other physical causes. Sir J. G.
Frazer says: " Religion, like all other institutions, has been
profoundly influenced by physical environment, and cannot
be understood without some appreciation of those aspects
of external nature which stamp themselves indelibly on the
thoughts, the habits, the whole life of a people." Even
where the same faith is carried from one continent to another
there will necessarily develop, in connection with this faith,
differences of detail and terminology of considerable moment.
The Greek will find his abode of the gods on Olympus,
the Hindu on Mt. Meru, the Hawaiian on Mauna Loa,
and the Bornean on Kinabalu. The idea will be the same
but the landscape will be vastly different.

Thus, in passing from the generalizations of the pre-
ceding chapters, it is necessary to survey, however briefly,
the primitive religions of many peoples distributed geo-
graphically over the surface of -our planet. And, first of
all, we may study the beliefs and practices of the races
occupying that enormous extent of land and water we call
Oceanica, or Australasia, including the island peoples of the
Pacific generally.

We may concede the original peopling of the Pacific
as having resulted from the migrations of a limited number
of stocks, all of them, to start with, emigrants from the
continent of Asia. As to matters of detail there will, of
course, be large variation of opinion, but it seems generally
agreed that the first inhabitants of Oceanica were related

96' A HISTORY OF RELIGION

to Pleistocene man, of whom we have the type in the
Javanese Pithecanthropes erectus. This stock is now found
surviving here and there over a wide area, as the negrito
element, first of all, which still lingers in the Andamans,
Philippines, Malay Peninsula, Java and elsewhere. Even
the old meles of Hawaii seem to refer to some such stock as
antedating the arrival of the Hawaiians. It is represented,
in the second place, by the taller blacks inhabiting New
Guinea and Melanesia, generally known as Papuasians.
To these earliest elements were added two branches of the
western Caucasian stock who, during the Stone Ages,
passed from Europe to Eastern Asia. One branch, similar
to the Ainus of Japan, passed by the northern route, through
Japan, into the Pacific, and are conceivably the people who

. constructed the megalithic buildings of which remains exist
on Easter Island and elsewhere.' The other branch came
by way of the south through Southern India and Indo-
China. Yet later, in movements continuing into historic
times, came the Mongoloid people whom we may call
Malayan or proto-Malayan, who, though the latest comers,
seem to have gone further afield than all the rest. By a

- series of movements, southward and eastward, with periods
of conquest interrupting long periods of quiescence and
isolation, it was possible for the ethnic and linguistic
'characteristics of the several groups to take form. Thus
were gradually developed that extraordinary complex of
peoples whom, for our special purpose, it is convenient to
divide under the five following heads :

I. Australia and Tasmania.

II. Malaysia and the Philippines.

III. Melanesia.

IV. Micronesia.

V. Polynesia (in which, for racial and religious
reason*, we shall include New Zealand).

I. AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA. Since the Tasmaniaris
have been practically extinct since 1876, and the last
representative of the race died, we are told, in 1890, we
may say what little needs to be said of these at once. They
were a black or dark-brown people, with woolly hair, who

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA

never advanced to the agricultural stage, but remained to
the end food gatherers, hunters and trackers. They used
only wind-brakes for houses, clad themselves, when neces-
sary, in skins, used stone implements, and obtained fire by
the saw and grove method. They seem to have made rough
drawings with charcoal, but betrayed no other signs of
artistic development. ocially they were polygamous, but
used no marriage ceremony. Their religion seems to have
been well-nigh confined to a fear of spirits, whom they
repelled in the dark with fire-sticks, but they also feared
the dead, whose return they sought to prevent by piling
stones upon the grave. Yet one story tells of a man leaving
a spear by the corpse of another " to fight with when he
sleep."

The Australian aborigines are chocolate-brown in colour
and are apparently derived from two streams of Asiatic
emigrants. Some describe the separate elements as three,
represented by the three totems of crow, sparrow-hawk and
emu. Others make 'Australian origins still more complex,
due to " movements, combinations, dispersions, recom-
binations, variations, changes of interest and environment,
changes of stress," as well as through the intrusion of foreign
influences. All these, considerations prevent us from seeing
much likelihood of homogeneity in the culture of the
Australian aborigines. For instance, there are said to be
six methods of treating the dead, five or six ' different
initiation ceremonies, three distinct methods of producing
fire, and so on. 1 In general, however, the culture of the
Australians is not unlike that of the Bushmen of Africa, or
even the Patagonians and Fuegians of South America.
They maintain a sort of gerontocracy, or government by
the elders, who maintain their ascendency by an elaborate
system of initiation ceremonies, including circumcision, the
knocking out of teeth, combats, food restrictions, and the
use of the bull-roarer. They have a very complicated system
of social totemism, of which two exogamous groups form
the chief feature. Each tribe is divided into two parts and
each of the halves again into two or four. The marriage
arrangements between these sections of society are of the

1 See Encyclopedia Britannica (i4th Ed.), II. 713.

9$ ^ A HISTOR T OF RELIGION'

most elaborate sort. The totem animal is sometimes eaten,
in a quasi-sacramental way, by the. headman of the tribe,
but by no others, with the curious exception, of outsiders.
Yet restrictions as to the totem vary much in severity and
are being gradually relaxed. As to religion some extreme
statements have been made. Some have denied to the
aborigines all religious belief, while others have ascribed
to them a creed of such definiteness as must have been, at
least in part, due to the Christian missionary. There seems
to be at present a rather widespread belief in an All-Father,
Baiame or Daramulun, but these two names are sometimes
put in opposition to one another, and. may only be deified
tribal ancestors.. There are also beings of malignant
character who may be the souls of the dead. Certain magical
power, or mana, is ascribed to certain men, also to things
made by man, such as the bull-roarer. Objects possessing
mana and capable of conveying tha,t mana to men are called
churingas. A person may acquire magical power by sleeping
on the grave of a dead man. There is a belief in reincarna-
tion, though rather vague. The soul is believed to be so
small as to be able to pass through a chink. It is also
believed to descend from the trees to feed on worms and
grubs. Some believe . that in a future state the black-
fellow will be reborn as a white man. Others -declare that
at death the soul, which is generally associated with the
' shadow, goes west to an abyss or to a certain island of the
dead. The dead are generally feared and are credited with
the power of raising storms. Burial is either simple
inhumation, or within a hut built upon the grave for a
soul-house. Sometimes, however, the dead are exposed on
a tree-platform,, and sometimes 'a kind of cannibalism is
practised in order to acquire the supposed powers of the
deceased.

There are .a few myths, though none exactly on the
origin of the world. As. to the origin of man, there are
several types of myth, such as that which represents the
two sky-beings fashioning men and women out of rudi-
mentary beings with knives of stone. There are also myths
accounting for the origin of fire and of the sun by the
throwing of an egg against the sky where . it broke upon

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA 99

a pile of firewood. A myth descriptive of the origin ^ of
death has a family likeness to myths which occur in Africa
and elsewhere over a wide area. It describes the moon as
offering immortality to men if they did what they were
told. " See this piece of bark? I throw it into the water
and it floats. So, if you obey me, when you die, you come
up again." But they obeyed not, and the moon-god dropped
a' stone into the water which sank and came up no more.
"Now you -will be only a black-fellow while you live, and
bones when you are dead." 1

II. MALAYSIA AND THE PHILIPPINES. i. Malaysia?
Under this head^we shall include both the Malays, whom
we take to be an Oceanic section of the Mongol family,
and older elements represented by many of the pagan tribes.
Geographically, we shall include most of the islands of the
Malay Archipelago, with the exception of New Guinea,
which, for our purpose, is best considered with Melanesia.

The primitive religion of. Malaysia is a good deal
intermingled with- elements derived from Islam, Hinduism
and even Buddhism, Most Malays to-day are Sunni
Muhamrriadans, and were converted to that faith at intervals
between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet the
primitive beliefs and practices still crop out everywhere and
colour the later ideas. The general creed of the primitive
Malay . is a kind of animism, sometimes of a vague and
general sort and sometimes developing into a belief in
individual spirits. These may be present in man or they
may occupy the bodies of animals. The elephant and the
tiger and, in places, the mouse-deer are particularly open to
possession. There is a general belief in wer-tigers, super-
natural beasts endowed with weird and terrible powers.
There is a general faith in the soul, which is known as a
semangat, a kind of homunculus, shaped like the individual
who possesses it, but red in colour and the size of a grain

1*T

"Many similar legends are to be found in the folk-lore of the African
races.

8 For the religion of the Australian aborigines see the article by N. W.
Thomas in E.R,, II. 244-48. Also such standard works as Spencer Gilleii's
Native Tribes (London, 1899), and Northern Tribes of Central Aiistralia
(London, 1904) ; A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes ofS.E. Australia, London, 1904 ;
and N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia, London, 1906.

loo A HISTORT OF RELIGION

of maize. The soul of a man may be stolen by magic arts.
For example, by taking soil from a man's footprints and
treating it magically vengeance may be wreaked on the
unlucky owner of the footprint. After death the soul is
supposed to cross a bridge made of the trunk of a tree,
from which, if he be bad, it may be shaken, or, if good,
pass over to a Paradise in the west. Souls may also enter
the bodies of animals and birds and it is often supposed
that the soul of such and such a chief is in the body of an
elephant. Even trees and other vegetable products have
their semangats. The cosmogony of the Malays, coloured
as it is by elements from various sources, is rather mixed.
It is believed by some that light came from the Supreme
Being, was transformed into an ocean, from which the earth
rose in seven stages (like a zikkurat), the sky above being
a solid rock pierced with holes to permit the light t shine
through as stars. A more primitive account of the origin
of man includes a story of a woman carrying fire-logs under,
her arms to simulate children until she was instructed by
a monkey. The worship of Malays, Muhammadan and
pagan alike, is of the simplest sort, with prayers for material
benefits and sacrifices offered as gifts to the spirits. Human
sacrifices must once have been offered, and among some
pagans there is still the sacrifice of a boy to obtain a soul
for the war-idol. Omens are observed, sneezing being
regarded as lucky in that demons are expelled, yawning
as unlucky as giving opportunity for the soul to escape.
Divination of many kinds is practised. Most religious
observances are associated with magic and the magician, or
pawang, has great influence. He is supposed to keep a
familiar spirit and is consulted on every occasion for the
discovery of the propitious moment. He also prescribes
, the tabus, or pantang. A special kind of magician is
employed for the curing of diseases. Magic enters into
most circumstances of life, even personal adornments having
the character of charms . and amulets. Magic is indeed
necessary from birth to death. The ceremonies on the
attainment of adolescence, such as tooth-filing, ear-boring,
an.d the. first head-shaving, are all of magical import. The
burial customs are generally simple. Among the Malays

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA 101

proper there is little or no fear of the dead, but the pagan
tribes are for the most part terrorized by death as much as
any primitive people we know. The body is generally laid
in a shallow hole, with three coco-nut shells of water
at the foot and three of rice at the head. The grave is
then roofed over with palm leaves and the structure
deserted. ,By some of the pagan tribes tree burial is
observed. 1

2. The Philippines. This archipelago, discovered by
the Spaniards in 1513 and bought from Spain by the
United States in 1898, after the Spanish-American War,
consists of a large number of islands variously computed as
from 1 200 to over 7000, with a total area of 1 15,000 square
miles. The largest island, Luzon, with 40,000 square miles,
is the most northerly and the next largest, Mindanao, of
36,000 square miles, lies far to the south. The population,
which has greatly increased since the American occupation,
is now above 10,000,000, of whom 9,000,000 are Christian,
about 500,000 pagan, and most of the rest Muhammadan.
The population is divided among a large number of ethnic
groups, 43 according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 87
according to Beyer, and over 80 according to Worcester.
These include, lowest in the scale, the Negritoes, or pygmies,
in the mountain regions; the Indonesians, immigrants who
have largely mingled with the Negritoes; the Moros,
who, divided into seven groups, occupy the Sulu archipelago
and are also found in North Borneo; the Pagan Malays,
consisting of the tribes known as Tinggians, Bontoc,
Igorot and Ifugao,. in northern Luzon, all former, head-
hunters; and, above these in scale, the Filipinos proper
of Malay extraction, though much intermarried with
other elements, Chinese and Spanish. These Filipinos
include eight principal tribes, as follows: Visayan,
4,000,000; Tagalog, 1,800,000; Ilocano, 1,000,000; Bikol,
700,000; Pangasinan, 400,000; Pampangan, 350,000;
and Tarlac, 350,000; Ibanag, 156,000; and Lambal,
56,000.

1 See W. W. Skeat, art. "Malay Peninsula," in EJl.E., VIII. 345-72.
Also Skeat, Malay Magic, London, 1900 ; and Skeat and Blagden, Pagan
Races of the Malay Peninsula, London, 1906.

102 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

There i3 naturally great variation of culture and religious
belief, due to the extraordinary amount of racial inter-
mixture and also to the historical vicissitudes which the
Philippines" have experienced, including contacts with Japan
and China as well as with Europe and America. The
following notes, however, will apply generally to the pagan
tribes and to such survivals of paganism as are elsewhere
present.

Socially, the general type of organization is a division
into small groups of from thirty to a hundred families..
Each of these is called a barangaynovr usually known as a
barrio and is under a kind of chief called a dato. Religious
belief varies, but all the tribes believe in spirits called anito,
who are appealed .to for most "material necessities. Some
tribes acknowledge greater gods who are supposed to be
beings of great stature living in the mountain cavities. A
simple form of naturism accounts for most of the common
phenomena. . Thus the clouds are the breath of the wind,
tides are caused by the movements of a great crab or a
great fish, an eclipse is the result of the sun or moon being
devoured by a. crab, and monkeys are men who were once
too idle to work, the sticks hurled at them having been
transformed into tails. Disease is caused by evil spirits
called majalok, who can fly through the air and devour the
hearts and livers of the sick. When a man dies, his house
is torn down and the body" carried into the woods and
buried, with broken pots and dishes strewn upon the grave.
There is a kind of vampire known as a balbal, man-like in
form, which sails through the air like a flying-squirrel and
licks up the corpse. The Tagbanua believe that the souls
of the dead go into a dark cave and there stand before a
judge named Taliakood, who is informed of the good and
bad deeds of the deceased by a louse from the corpse. The
dead may die -seven times, going deeper on each occasion
into the earth. The mountain people of Panay believe that
the dead need company, so they .sally forth with lances and
machetes to supply their lack by killing the first human
being encountered. The Mangyans, on the authority of
Dr. Worcester, have ho belief in a future life, but declare
" when a man's dead, he's dead." This tribe uses an ordeal

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA 103

consisting of a piece of red-hot iron to be grasped by the
accused who wishes to protest his innocence. 1

III. MELANESIA AND NEW GUINEA. Melanesia proper
consists of five principal groups, namely, the Solomon
Islands; the New Hebrides, with the Banks Islands; the
Santa Cruz group; New Caledonia, together with the
Loyalty Islands; and the Fiji Islands. To these I add, for
our purpose^ New Guinea, because of certain ethnic and
religious resemblances.- It should, however, be observed
that, while the inhabitants of New Guinea are Papuans, the
other island groups are occupied by an older Papuan
element, upon which have been superimposed wave after
wave of Indonesians from the mainland. Dr. W. H. R.
Rivers has taken, great pains to distinguish the different
elements of Melanesian population, and endeavours to show
that " all the chief social institutions of Melanesia, its dual
.organization, its secret societies, its totemism, its cult of
.the dead, and many of its less ^ssential customs, such as its
use of money, its decorative art, its practice of incision and
its square houses, have been the direct outcome of the
interaction between different and sometimes conflicting
cultures." 2

Thus the. social system of Melanesia naturally presents
different phenomena in the different groups. In the West
Solomons there is a clan system of a rather definite kind.
Descent is traced matrilineally in certain regions only, but
there is general, recognition of totemism, using the term
as denoting a relation accepted between the community
and certain animals, plants and objects, and the paying of
honour to these by refraining from their use or using them
sacramentally. The totems of the Melanesian groups are
generally birds, aquatic animals, or shells. In some parts
of the Solomons two of the six exogamic kindreds are named
a'fter the crab and the sea-eagle.. In the New Hebrides one
family is named after the octopus. In some groups the
" guardian animal " (tamanut) is respected as specially
concerned with a particular individual. Other individual

1 See A. E. Jenks, The Bontoc Igorot, Manila, 1905 ; W. A. Reed, Negritoes
of Zimbales, Manila, 1904; John . Foreman, The Philippine Islands, New
York, 1906.

a W. H. R. Rivers, History of Melanesian Society, II. 595, Cambridge, 1914.

io 4 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

totems are really fetishes, such as a stone kept for the purpose
of preserving health.

Secret societies and the observance of mysteries are
common throughout Melanesia. In Mota Dr. Rivers
counted seventy-seven societies of this sort, organized, it
has been supposed, 'to protect the secrets of the clan from
the older stock on the islands. Quite a few of the groups
possess the characteristic Melanesian institution of the
gama/, or men's club-house, a long building divided into
compartments to keep the initiations private and to separate
the various grades of initiates. Some societies meet in -the
village and others, such as the tamate (or ghost-societies) in
the bush. Initiation is rendered as mysterious as possible,
with use of masks and weird sounds (weretvere), produced
by scraping a stick upon a stone. Kava-drinking is also
a custom at these society meetings intimately associated with
religion.

In general, Melanesian religion makes large use of,
magic, for increasing the supply of yams and fish, and of
tabus, for the maintenance of law and order. Tabu marks
are placed at the graves of the chiefs, at certain seasons near
the coco-nut groves, to protect the places where food is
stored, or to bar entrance to certain roads and houses. The
cult of the skull is common in the West Solomons, but is
absent from Southern Melanesia. Head-hunting in some
districts once played an important part in the ceremonial
dedication of a new canoe or house.

The quintessence of Melanesian religion is the belief
in mana a word already noted as of Melanesian origin,
really a "metathetic form of nanama, to be powerful and
in spirits. The latter are of two kinds, tamate ', or ghosts,
and vui, or spirits which have never been embodied. Both
sorts are greatly feared, but especially the vuL In the
South-Eastern Solomons the souls of the dead are fished
for and placed in a relic-case, while in New Guinea images
of the dead (karwars] are made and provided with food
offerings. Of goblins, or ghouls, one of the most feared is
the atitigi, a white monster with one eye in front and one
behind, six fingers on each hand, and a sharp claw for
tearing the bodies of the dead. Sacred images are believed

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA 105

to be possessed by spirits and there are certain trees, stones
and streams in which spirits make their abode. Animals
also may be possessed, as the frigate-bird and the shark in
the Solomons and snakes in the New Hebrides. In some
groups a " high " god seems to be reverenced, such as Qat
in the Banks Islands and in the New Hebrides Tagaro,
probably the same as the Polynesian Tangaroa (Hawaiian,
Kanaka], In the New Guinea archipelago there is much
fear of "flying-witches." Certain women, known as
yoyova, recognizable by their taste for raw flesh, are believed
possessed by an immaterial spiritual principle called muluk-
wausi. These fly by night, feeding on corpses and destroying
shipwrecked sailors. 1

There is a general belief in the persistence of life after
death, but with variant details. Sometimes the world of
"spirits is but an enlarged grave, beneath the earth; some-
times an island to which the soul goes in a " ship of the
dead"; sometimes, as in the South-Eastern Solomons,
merely " the land of no return." The New Guinea belief
is that the dead go to the Isle of Watum, where their former
life is continued. Dr. Rivers suggests that the disposal of
the dead by inhumation was connected with the belief in
an underworld; putting the dead out to sea in a canoe, or
casting them into the water, with a conception of some
island world of spirits ; whilst cremation, which exists only
on the extreme edge of the Melanesian area, was associated
with the idea of an Elysium in the sky or in the air. Practic-
ally all the groups, nevertheless, believe in the possibility
of the tamate haunting their former home. The world of
the dead is but slightly moralized, though here and there
we learn of a 'shark of a fierce pig which will bite the
nose off the dead man guilty of some purely social
offence.

There is naturally much resort to magic and sorcerers
are believed capable of handing down their esoteric know-
ledge from generation to generation. Some of these sor-
cerers are adepts at making up parcels containing a hair
from the person, whom it is intended to destroy. In

1 fironisjaw Malinowski, Aygona^its oj the Western Pacific, London, 1923.

io6 A BISTORT. OF RELIGION ,

Malinowski's elaborate description of .the Kula 1 of the
New Guinea archipelago we have given with much detail"
the spells (with or without rites) for the carrying out of
canoe magic, love magic, garden magic, and the like. 2

It may be added that ordeals of many kinds are employed,
including the use of hot stones and the swallowing of
magical objects. Divination is used to discovef the causes
of sickness, or to promote success in fishing. Omens, of,
course, both actual and imaginary, are as commonly observed
here as elsewhere. 3 '

In the Fiji Islands^ which deserve a brief paragraph to
themselves, we have illustrations of most of the usual
beliefs and practices. The tribal system related everybody
to an ancestral spirit and hence the term matanitu. Human
sacrifices were offered on a large scale, especially at the
founding of a temple, when men were interred beneath
every post, or on the launching of a big canoe. There
were square enclosures' called Nang-a, in which altars were
set up for sacrifice. Many totems were reverenced, including
eels, lizards and snakes. There were superstitions con-
nected with circumcision, tattooing, name-giving, and such
like. Much mana was believed to pertain to the hair and
accounts are given of the care taken to guard the locks of
a chief. A kind of puuhonua (to use the Hawaiian term)
was used as a Rock of Refuge for unintentional homicides.
The souls of the dead were supposed to have " leaping
places," precipitous cliffs from which the spirit went north-
west to the far-off Isle of the Blest, known as Qaloqalo
or Burotu. 4

IV. THE MICRONESIANS. The groups which fall under
the head of Micronesia, or " the little islands," include the
Ladrone, or Marianne Islands, now under Japanese mandate
(with the exception of the United States island of Guam) ;

1 The Kula is an elaborate system of exchange, in the borderland of the
commercial and the religious, in which shell armlets and necklaces are em-
ployed. It is carried on throughout the New Guinea archipelago.
. 2 See Malinowski, op. cit., Chapter xvii., Magic and the Kula.

3 See, in addition to the work's above cited, R. H. Codrington, The
Melanesians, Oxford, 1891 ; and W. G. Ivens, The Melanesians of the S.E.
Solomons, London, 1927. Also the article by Dr. Codrington, " Melanesians,"
E.R.E., VIII. 529-38-

4 See A. B. Brewster, The Hill Tribes of Fiji, Philadelphia, 1922.

THE RELIGIONS OF .AUSTRALASIA 107

the Pellew (Palau) Islands ; the Caroline Islands ; the
Marshall Islands.; and the 'Gilbert Islands. The Carolines
and Marshalls are now Japanese and the Gilberts British.

The inhabitants are of mixed race, with a foundation
of Melanesian stock, to which has been added a strong
Polynesian element in the east, and later, especially in the
Carolines, 'an infusion of the Malay. The culture is in like
manner mixed. In the Carolines, particularly at Ppnape,
there is a considerable area occupied by the ruins of old
temples and palaces which seem to date from the time of
the megalithic builders, who came from the north by way
of Japan. The modern Micronesians, though lazy, make
excellent navigators and possess charts enabling them to
sail from island to island. The chiefs form a kind of caste
by themselves and are honoured as semi-divine. The tabus
imposed, such as " mourning tabus," on the death of a chief,
are burdensome in the extreme. Tattooing on the body,
for all but slaves, is in vogue and the Melanesian custom
of using men's club-houses is also fairly common. As to
religious beliefs, we have the account of the religion of
Guam written by the Jesuit father Le Gobien as far back
as 1700, but the so-called Chamorro religion is now
extinct. There is, however, a very general faith in animism,
with the usual dread of ghosts. Spirits, known as anu> are
supposed to communicate with men through the medium
of a shaman,, whose office, however, is not hereditary.
Ancestor worship is a cult maintained for the glorification
of the chiefs, living or dead. -The divinity of the chiefs,
however, is not recognized until after death. Burial is in
general under -the dwelling-house, beneath which the body
is allowed to shrivel. But warriors who fall in battle prefer
to be buried in the sea in imitation of the hero Rassau, who
has become the sea-god Arong, a deity worshipped in the
form .of a fish. It is probable that some of the myths
prevailing in the Micronesian groups are of Indonesian
rather than native origin. 1 -

V. POLYNESIA AND NEW ZEALAND. Under the head
of Polynesia, with which for racial reasons we associate
New Zealand, is included a wide stretch of ocean territory

1 See, for Micronesia, the article " Australasia " in E.R.E., II. 236 ff.

io8 . A BISTORT OF RELIGION

and its island groups, extending to within two thousand
miles of the American coast. The principal groups, apart
from New Zealand, are the Samoan, Tongan, Cook, Society
(Tahiti), Ellis and Hawaiian Islands. The population of
all these groups is Indonesian, though including the remains
of older populations. It seems derived ultimately through
India, the Malay Peninsula and Java, and thence to have
passed on across the Pacific at various times from the
beginning of the Christian era to as late as the sixteenth
century, for the last immigration movement of the Hawaiian
islands. A very considerable part of the Hawaiian language,
including many of its grammatical forms, may be traced
back to Indian originals. A number of the Hawaiian myths,
also, have Indian parallels. 1

As there is a family likeness in all the religious beliefs
and practices of the Polynesian groups, it. will probably be
sufficient to describe only the system which prevailed until
the early years of the nineteenth century in the Hawaiian
Islands, with a note or two as to variations in other groups
and a more special reference to the religion of New Zealand.
We are greatly assisted in our study of this system by the
writings of the first Christian missionaries, by the consider-
able number of meles which were orally transmitted from
older generations, and by lingering relics of ancient custom
found here and there almost to the present day.

The social order of Hawaii (and of the Polynesian groups
in general), included chiefs (a/it), priests (kahuna), and the
common people (makaainana). The chiefs were sacred
(kapu or tabu) and alone had the right to wear the red
feather cloak and helmet and the ivory clasp, or palaoa.
The head chief of an island "was called mot. It was not till
the end of the eighteenth century that Kamehameha I.
became king of the entire Hawaiian group. The kahunas,
or .priests, were also a class apart and were divided into
many orders, kilokilo, or diviners, kahuna anaana, or sor-
cerers, kahuna lapaau, or physicians, and so on. Beside
these general orders there were more specialized groups,
such as necromancers, astrologers, prophets, and so forth.

1 See A. Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race, 3 volumes,
Ixmdon, 1885.

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA 109

The gods (akua) were of "many classes, some of them
nature-gods, deities of the volcano, thunder, meteors, and
the like; others hero-gods, and seemingly spirits of the
ancestors. There were also the great gods apparently
nature-godsKane, Kanaloa, Ku and Lono who, it was
claimed, existed from the time of chaos (mat ka po mat).
There were also local gods worshipped at various shrines
to be found around the coasts; professional gods, such as
Kaili, the famous war-god of Kamehameha; even animal
gods, such as those supposed to inhabit the moo, or great
lizard, or the shark. There were, again, family gods,
aumakua (the oromatua of .Tahiti). Some gods were in a
class apart, such as Maui, the hero-god who fished up the
eight islands from the bottom of the sea and lassoed the sun
to prevent it from going too fast; Pele, who, with her
numerous family, controlled the volcanoes and the lava-
flows; and Kamapuaa, the demi-god who took the form of
a gigantic hog.

The Polynesians, again as represented by the Hawaiians,
had many temples, irregular parallelograms with thick walls
and a high altar, like a scaffolding, on which the pig, or
other sacrifice, was left to putrefy. In an inner court were
the idols, some of them of ohia wood, others of wicker-
work with eyes of mother-of-pearl and decoration of feathers.
The common people had smaller idols, some of them merely
pebbles supposed to contain mana. Human sacrifices were
not uncommon and, as late as 1 807, when Queen Keopuolani
was ill, four .men were sacrificed on her behalf. On great
occasions a priest -known as the " flesh-eating mu " would
go round and select his victims. In certain parts of the
islands were the cities of refuge, known as Puuhonua,
enclosures of which the gates stood over open, guarded
with a white flag fluttering from a spear. Here the man
guilty of unintentional (and even intentional) homicide
might find a shelter under the protection of the priests.
The kapu (tabu) was observed in the Hawaiian islands in
many, forms .and with great rigour. There were food tabus,
tabus on. particular places, and tabus on particular times;
a great variety of tabus applied specially to women. The
abolition of the tabus by Kamehameha II., in 1819, was at

no A HISTORT OF RELIGION -.

once the breaking up of a terrible tyranny and also the
demolition of a salutary system of restraint.

There were many beliefs and practices connected with
the dead. On the death of a chief efforts were at once made
by the kahunas 1 to discover by magic the person guilty of
the decease and a cruel revenge was taken on any suspected
of responsibility. The mourning customs involved an
almost complete moral anarchy," -with many burdens and
exactions placed upon the common people. The body of
a chief was generally concealed in some cave, but in the
case of a chief slain in war, the bones, made up into a bundle
known as a unihipili y were .carried about by the victor. It
was believed that the souls of men went either to a place
of happiness called Wakea, or else to an underground land
known as Milu, where they lived on butterflies and other
insects. For some, heaven was beyond the clouds, or
beyond the western horizon. 'In some of the Polynesian
groups the dead were buried in a canoe to suggest their
long voyage beyond the sunset. In Hawaii there was a
belief in a kind of psychopomp, Kaonohioka, " the eyeball
of the sun," who led the soul to the underworld. Certain
places, known as " leaping places," along the coast, expressed
the general Polynesian belief in the soul taking its-journey
to the sea. Much more might be said of the Polynesian
religion, but most of the notes given above will be found to
have their parallels in other groups than the Hawaiian,
while a few things, such as the use of bird omens in Samoa,
may be regarded as distinctive of other parts of the Polynesian
world.

New Zealand, a group of islands something over 100,000
square miles in extent, has a native population (excluding
the 1,500,000 whites) of about 65,000. These are called
Maoris, now somewhat increasing in number, and practically
all Christianized. In the old religion most of the features
resemble those of the Polynesian islands proper, with names
somewhat changed through modification of language, as
rangi (heaven) for the Hawaiian, lani\ ra (sun) for Hawaiian,
la\ Tani for Kane, Tangaroa for Kanaloa, and the like. The
Maori gods were sometimes great devils, working devasta-
tion through storm and lightning; sometimes they were

THE RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALASIA 1 1 1

small devils, like mosquitoes. Many were merely the
ghosts of the dead. Souls were supposed to pass over the
river Waioratane by means of a narrow bridge. Only the
brave, however, could cross successfully and these passed
upwards into the "sky as clouds or stars. 1

1 On Polynesian Religion generally, in addition to Fornander, see Cook's
Voyages ; W. Ellis, A Tour through Owhyhee, London, 1828 ; and H. Bingham,
Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, New York, 1847. Also the article
by Robert W. Williamson, in E.R.E., X ;

CHAPTER VIII
The Primitive Religions of Africa

IN no continent do we find such an enormous amount
of material bearing upon the subject of primitive religion
as in the continent which until recently has borne the
name of the Dark Continent. Yet although "darkest
Africa " is a territory where the early religion of the tribes
has been less covered over, till recently, by missionary
effort, than any other part of the world, it is by no means
so virgin a field for the student as may at first sight appear.
Apart from the early Semitic waves which so profoundly
affected the religion of ancient Egypt, and apart from
influences which may- conceivably have crossed the Mediter-
ranean from the north, the more modern introduction of
Muhammadanism has done much to colour the ideas and
practices of a large portion of the continent, north and east
and central. Even the comparatively recent propagation of
Christianity, so far as modern times are concerned, has
introduced teachings which may very readily be so given
back by the natives as to appear legends of their own. We
have in this a warning much stressed by Bishop Callaway
for the benefit of investigators, but which is still exceedingly
important.

How much has been borrowed from one foreign source
or another may never be known, but enough remains of the
undoubtedly primitive to make the study of African religion
a fascinating field.

In this chapter we shall find it convenient to consider
our material under four chief heads, namely: (i) The Eantus
of the south; (2) the Berbers of the north; (3) the Hamites
of the east; and (4) the Negroes of the west.

But there are some generalizations of a preliminary
kind which will assist us to cover a considerable portion
of the field without the necessity of any such divisions,

112

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA 113

; though we must make a few qualifications in respect to the
Berber population in the north. These generalizations are:

1. That African religion is Moody beyond almost any
primitive religion we know. Mr. Crawford says that we
can add to the Bible statement, " without shedding of
blood is no remission of sins " the corollary that, in Africa,
" without shedding of blood is no no anything." The
horrible holocausts of human victims which have marked
the " customs " in Ashanti and Dahomey have their counter-
part in every part of Africa. Yet, Mr. Crawford reminds
us, Do not blood, bloom, blossom, come from the same root? 1

2. A second generalization will stress the fact that
witchcraft also has in Africa a tremendously important place.
" The witch-doctor,'' says Mr. Melland, 2 " is the curse of
Africa," and the same writer has some lurid chapters on
witches and witch-finding, though at the same time he is
careful to recall that once in Geneva five hundred witches
were burned in a single month. 3 " .

3. A third important element of all African primitive
religion is the belief in fetishes. Fetishism, indeed, owes
its first naming to an African traveller, Bosman, in 1705,*
and also many of its most striking illustrations. Africa is
full of grigri, juju, and the like, as examples of fetishism
according to Mr. E. B. Tylor's definition of it as " the
doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying
influence through, certain material objects." The fetish,
explains Dr. E. V. Hopkins, differs from the idol in that
" the idol works for the group, the fetish for the individual."
African fetishism, says the same writer, is "rank with
evil "; it is " the dominating religious factor." Neverthe-
less, it may be supposed to have a certain ethical value as
guarding persons and places and things from unjust attack, .
as well as a certain religious value in its power to bring
blessing. The fetish-log, smeared with oil or blood, is

1 See D. Crawford, Thinking Black. Capt. Rattray, however, considers
the " bloodiness " of African religion; at least in Ashanti, as overstressed.

2 See F. H. Melland, In Witch-bound Africa, London, 1923.

3 Cf. also the words of Martin Luther : "I would have no pity on these
witches ; I would burn them all."

4 See Bosman, Description of Guinea, 1705.

n 4 A HlSTOkT OF RELIGION

sure to attract spirits who, in regaling themselves on the
.repast, take pleasure in the prosperity of their host.}

4. To the above may be added the general belief in the
existence and survival of the sou/. Major Leonard, in his
account of the tribes of the Lower Niger, 2 writes (and his
description applies generally to the African): " Among the
I bo and other Delta tribes the belief in the existence of the
human soul is universal. To them it is an active principle
that is awake and about when the body is asleep. Further,
it appears 'as a something, .indefinite and indefinable, an
invisible and to some extent intangible essence apart from
and of different .texture to the material body, which leaves
the latter during, sleep, or for good at dissolution. "...

It is probable that as time goes on it will be possible to
discern still more of unity in the entire scheme of African
religion than we see to-day. Already it is being pointed
out that the ancient religion of Egypt is in many particulars
best explained by customs still persisting in Central Africa.
For example, we have. Monsignor Le Roy declaring: " We
are struck by the curious analogy to be observed between
the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians and those of the Bantus
of to-day." 3 Something of this fundamental unity will, it
is hoped, be discovered ^ in much that is now to follow.
This must be our excuse for what may appear to be a certain
amount of repetition.

I. THE BERBERS. Only brief mention 'needs here to be
made of the Berbers, as the inhabitants of North Africa
are called, for a double reason. First, these are distinctively
a "white" race rather than African in the usual sense of
the word. Secondly, their primitive^ religion has been so
largely covered up with foreign elements, Phosnician,
Greek, Roman, Christian and Muhammadan, that they are
scarcely representative of primitive religion in Africa at the
present day.

The name, which is possibly derived from the Greek

1 Great care needs to be taken in noting, the various implications of the
term fetish in different parts of Africa. For tnis reason, as Mr. R. R. Marett
reminds us, a committee of' experts advised the discontinuance of the word
. " as a peculiarly dyslogistic and question-begging term."

8 Major Leonard, The Lower Niger ancfits Tribes, p. 139.

8 Le Roy, Religion of the Primitives, p. 94.

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA i 1

barbaroi, is applied to the different branches of the race
known in classical times as Libyan. It stretches all the way
from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the Mediterranean
to the Sahara. It includes also the Guanches of the Canary
Islands, from whom it is possible to derive interesting
glimpses of early religious ideas. Dr. Rene Basset 1 says
that, although the Berbers have a remarkable linguistic
unity, the same is not to be said of their religion. Indeed,
this seems largely influenced by the geographical location
as well as by .contact with the civilizations of antiquity.
There was mountain worship with that special reverence
for Mt. Atlas, " the pillar of heaven," to which the younger
Pliny alludes. Maximus of Tyre, again, speaks of it as
" both a-temple and a god." There was also, it seems clear,
rock worship, cave worship and the worship of -streams.
Sun worship was general, probably with the sun represented
as a ram, whose horns also were regarded as themselves
a solar emblem. Moon worship and star worship also
were common, and there were myths about the stars, such
as that of Orion, the hunter, dragging his foot out of the
mire. Other natural myths include the story of the rainbow
as the bride of the rain. There were also special gods to
whom human sacrifices were offered and the native cruelty
of the African was evident enough even before the primitive
religion was superseded by the later cults. Some gods seem
to have been deified kings and .others were apparently
mythical beings, ogres, and the like.

Among the religious practices which emerge from the
somewhat sparse references in the works of ancient writers
is the habit of induced dreaming on the tombstones of the
dead, spoken of by Pomponius Mela, and sundry methods
of divinatipn and witch-finding which link us with the
more purely African customs of the regions to the south.
There was much sorcery performed by the use of plants
for incantations; there was the use of a bag containing the
heads of animals; and there was the uncovering of a thief
by a secret writing passed round among the inquisitors.
The agrarian rites performed at the periods of seasonal
transition appear to have been much like those practised in

1 Encyclopedia of Religion and -Ethics, art. " Berbers,"

n6 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

other lands. An interesting rain charm involved the use
of a wooden spoon which was dressed up in feminine
garments and was supposed to invoke the coming of the
showers. Another method was the tying up of animals
away from their young, so that the cries of the separated
beasts might appeal to the weather gods.

II. THE HAMITES. The term Hamites is an unsatis-
factory one at the best; and confusion has been made worse
confounded by the diverse use to which the term has been
put. Some -writers have used the word of most of the
inhabitants of Africa, including the Berbers of the north and
east. Others have limited it to the Egyptian Bejas and the
southern Ethiopian group which includes Agaos, Sidamas,
Gallas and Somalis.

In this region, again, we encounter difficulty from the
fact that the primitive religion has been greatly overlaid
with Muhammadanism and with various forms of Chris-
tianity. But there are still a number of pagan tribes from
whom we may gather the general character of earlier forms
of religion. The Bejas are now entirely Muhammadan,
the earlier Christianity having disappeared, so that we need
not in this case say anything as to the character (purely
hypothetical) -of the earlier faith. As to the Agaos, Professor
C. Conti-Rossini writes: "Little is known of the ancient
Agao religion. 'Their chief god was the sky (Deban or
Jar). Under him were many genii : some malignant, like
the zar, and some beneficent. The latter dwelt in springs,
trees and mountain tops, and were there venerated. A
special worship was rendered to certain genii of the springs,
as, for instance, to that of the source of the Blue Nile.
Homage was paid to certain animals, especially the serpent,
from which omens were sought. For defence against
evil spirits, the intervention was permitted of special indi-
viduals, in whom exceptional faculties were recognized.
The priesthood was,, hereditary from father to son. - Life
continued after death and food was offered to .the dead." 1

The religion of the Sidama was not greatly different.
There was a supreme deity known as Hecco (or Deoc),
supposed to be incarnate in the kings of the Kaffa. These

1 E.R.E., vi.

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA 117

had twelve high priests, among whom one was regarded
as supreme. These healed the sick, prevented the effects
of the evil eye and, by going into a trance, announced the
will of the god. There were many food tabus, which
prohibited the use of the flesh of horse, ass, mule, wild boar,
hippopotamus and monkey. Men were not allowed to eat
cabbages nor could women eat fowls, while priests were
debarred from eating the flesh of the ox. Life beyond
death was believed in, at least for the king, who was supplied
with food every day for a year after his decease. One tribe,
known as the Zinjero, worshipped the sun and regarded
their king as a solar incarnation. They also worshipped
a meteorite which had fallen from heaven. Human victims
were offered on a mountain summit and one out of every
ten strangers who entered the territory was sacrificed to the
sun, a practice which, we are told, continued till the
Abyssinians conquered the land in 1887.

The Somalis have been for the most part converted to
Islam and the Gallas, less generally, to Christianity, but a
number of tribes still remain pagan. By these, a supreme
god, known as Waq, is worshipped, together with sundry
jinns, a female deity of fecundity, and the spirits of trees
and springs. There is also belief in a house-protecting
genius known as a qolo. Serpents and birds are reverenced
as assisting in divination, and for the same purpose the
peritoneum of the victims offered in sacrifice is examined.
There were also ordeals by means of boiling water and hot
iron. No idols appear to have been used. Rossini says
very much the same of the Kunama tribe and adds : " Their
god is called Anna, Religious offices are handed down from
father to son in certain families, as those of the Aula Manna
. . . who have the duty of causing rain at suitable seasons ;
the Ula Manna, who keep the locusts at a distance from the
Kunama country; and the Furda Manna, who- indicate
the time for beginning the ingathering of the grain, india-
' rubber and honey. The first two offices carry with them the
pain of death if the charms turn out to be ineffective. But the
religious practices of the Kunama consist in manifestations
of a gross superstition rather than in the worship of Anna." 3

1 E.R.E., VI. 492.

n8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

III. THE BANTUS. The word Bantu, which is the
plural of Ntu, or Muntu y merely a synonym for man, is a
linguistic rather than a racial term, applied to a large number
of tribes in S. and E. Africa which, from remote times, have
been separated from the negroes of the Sudan and of the
West. Their culture is generally tribal, each village having
a chief of its own, but with groups of villages ruled by a
high chief who is frequently a king and the founder of
a dynasty. But these dynasties are very unstable "and
dependent almost wholly on the personality and vigour
of the reigning monarch. In a great many of the tribes
there is an exogamic system of some complexity. For
instance, among the Hereros, of the former German S. W.
African territory, there is an eanda, or system of mother-
right, and at the same time a (more recent) system of oruzo,
or father-right. Each has its own totem, as, for instance,
the chameleon. Totemism is general and the totem may
be an animal, a vegetable or even an agricultural implement,
like the hoe. The Bechuanas, for example, have -among
their totems such animals as the monkey, the crocodile, the
lion, and certain fish. In one tribe the mushroom is a
totem. Among the Baganda and Banyoro, Sir Harry
Johnston mentions twenty-nine different totems. Generally
the totem. is not eaten, or is eaten sacramentally. In most
tribes circumcision, probably a relic of human sacrifice, is
practised, while the girls are kept for a time in what is
known as the " paint house " for instruction in the duties
of married life. After the initiation rites, which are per-
formed for both boys and girls, the newly initiated are
supposed for a time to mark their " new birth " by pre-
tended infancy, learning once again to feed, speak, and so
on. For all people there are many tabus, called by the
Bantus of the east coast mwiko, such as themselves point
to a totefnic origin. Many of these are food tabus and are
frequently special for particular families. One family, for
instance, is forbidden to eat the flesh of the buffalo; another
similarly restrained from partaking of the antelope; still
others denied the flesh of the pig. A royal family is debarred
from eating the meat of the sheep or goat.

The Bantu conception of God is generally vague, but

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA 1 19

it is stated by Mr. Melland that an habitual, all-pervading
sense of dependence on a higher power " is a very fair
summary of the religion of the Bantu peoples." Le Roy
also finds " behind what is called their naturism, animism,
or fetishism, everywhere there rises up, real and living,
though often more or less veiled, the notion of a higher
God, above men, manes, spirits, and all the forces of
nature." 1 As a creator, however, God is but dimly appre-
hended, though the Yaos talk about Mulungu (or Mtanga),
who pushed up the earth into mountains, dug channels for
the rivers, and brought down the rain to fill the streams.
Among other tribes the name (which seems to be applied
to anything mysterious) appears as Milungu and Mulenga,
a kind of rain-god. . Mr. Melland speaks of the conception
of Lesa and Nzambi as that of a creator god. Among the
Zulus there is the belief in Unkulunkulu, " the great-
great-grandfather," as the first man, originating the race
from reeds, but this seems to point to ancestor worship
rather than to the idea of a creator of heaven and earth.
Myths of creation appear here and there, some of them
no doubt a reflection of missionary teaching. Some of
them, too, are mere poetic imagery, as, for instance, the
explanation of the sun-spots and moon-spots as the result
of a mutual mud-slinging in the course of a beer quarrel.
The point may be sufficiently summed up by saying that
in many places there is a belief in " a relatively Supreme
Being," but that in general the tendency is towards a
naturistic and spiritistic polytheism.

Certainly there are many nature deities. In fact, while
the war-like tribes of the south and centre are nearly all
pure ancestor worshippers, that is, worshippers of the
spirits of the dead, the more settled agricultural peoples
around the Great Lakes show considerable devotion to the
divine powers of Nature. It has been suggested that this
is perhaps due to the entrance of two different streams of
population; it may equally well be the result of diverse
habit of life. Among the Ekoi the two deities of earth and
sky are reverenced and there are also acknowledged spirits
of the streams and trees and mountains. The Zulus, and

* J-e Roy, op. cit., p.

120 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

many of the other Bantu peoples, have .a thunder-god.
" We know him because he thunders " is no infrequent
argument for the existence of the deity. Indeed, most
of the tribes seem to have a sky-god who is at the same
time a lightning- and thunder-god. In some places the
spirit of a stream is appealed fo by food placed between
two small ant-hills made to lean against one another to form
an arch.

More widely spread than the worship of nature-gods,
however, is the belief in the spirits of the dead and in their
reincarnation in the bodies of the living. To the chief
while alive great powers are ascribed, as rain-maker, or
as the performer of the rites by which war is to be won.
This reverence is increased after death, with an added
element of fear and dread of the released spirit. Souls
were believed to have a perishable and an imperishable
part. The imperishable part was fed with rice balls, as
in the Indian fraddha, and in Mombasa was recognized in
the first worm which came forth from the putrefying corpse.
The funeral rites, which varied much in the several tribes,
are described by Le Roy as a "mysterious bridge which
leads the soul to its destination." In certain places the
dead were buried in their own huts, or the house was
duplicated in the grave, the village in the cemetery. In
other places the bodies were abandoned to the hyenas,
which might thus become, as in ancient Egypt, sacred
animals. In still other places the dead were left on a river
bank, or even eaten. In this latter case, the bodies were
exchanged for those belonging to another clan. When
buried, the body was placed in the position of the infant
in the womb, to await a second birth. The chief was
buried in a specially constructed barrow, with broken
calabashes and other utensils, and such sacrifices as might
seem meet. In some graves many valuables were sprinkled
after having been ground to powder. Among the Hereros
cattle were cut to pieces and their horns used to adorn the
tree planted as a resting-place for the spirit. The Banyoro
kings were placed in a pit, with nine living men all securely
pegged down under a cowhide, and a temple was built
upon the grave. In Uganda the king's underjaw was cut

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA 121

off prior to burial, ornamented, and kept in a special house,
with a specially designated chief as guardian of the royal
jaw a pleasant custom only abolished as recently as the
time of King Mtesa. In many parts of Africa a peasant was
slaughtered and buried immediately in front of the royal
tomb.- Among the Awemba the body was rolled in a mat
and lowered into the grave. Then the nearest relation
descended, cut a hole in the mat nearest the ear of the
deceased, and whispered to him certain things expressive
of hope that he would fare well in the land of spirits. Every
man had his chimvule, or shadow-soul, which he could
sometimes bottle up and carry with him in an antelope's
horn. There was also the soul which could be placed in a
chipanda, or stick planted outside the hut, to which prayers
were addressed by the survivors. The underworld, according
to someV consisted of villages like those on earth, where
roamed many white cattle, or blue cattle spotted with red
and white. Spirits could return in dreams or in the form
of animals. Some chiefs were particularly "anxious to return
in the shape of lions, and took medicine to secure that
desirable result. Others were believed to come back in
the form of snakes. Belief in transmigration was general.
But there were also evil spirits which might enter into
corpses where these were left unprotected. The act of
sneezing was regarded by many as a sign that the spirit
of the dead was present; some declared that the spirit voices
twittered like birds.

Practices of a more or less religious character included
the use of divination, the observation of omens, the offering
of sacrifices, and, of course, all the functions of the priests
and witch-doctors. Witches were sometimes believed to
be the unconscious carriers of evil influences, "plucking
out the soul of someone asleep," or, without intent, being
the cause of some similar calamity. Poison ordeals were
common, especially the use of the mvavi, given a man to
drink in order to prove him guilty or innocent of the charge
of witchcraft. Sacrifices in some tribes are performed by
the head of the family, but in general form but one of the
many functions of the priests, who may be witch-doctors,
witch-finders (" smellers out of witches "), rain-makers,

122 , A HISTORT OF RELIGION

healers, fortune-tellers, mad doctors, consecrators of weapons,
family priests, prophets and prophetesses, or necromancers.
Divination is performed in many ways, such as the usex>f
""the first word," water-gazing, placing of "a basket over
the head, using the divining-rod, and so on. Names
were chosen for children by divination and the practice .of
teknonymy^ or the parent taking a name from the child, was
common. Powerful charms were made from the hair,
nail parings and teeth of persons against whom harm was
designed. Spittle was regarded as a "soul holder " and
might 'be given as an honour to convey mana. It should
be added that among the tribes of the south-west, south-east
and centre idols are practically unknown, unless we include
the little dolls carried about as amulets.

IV. THE 'NEGROES. Under this head we include
generally the black races of equatorial and Western Africa,
as distinguished from the Berbers of the north, the Hamites
of the east, and the Bantu-speaking peoples of the south.
Of course, there is much intermingling with all three of
these groups. Although much has been" contributed on
the subject of West African religion by such competent
writers as Miss Mary Kingsley, Mr. R. E. Dennett,
Captain R. S. Rattray, 1 and Mr.- Mockler-Ferryman, it
cannot be said as yet that any very systematic treatment of
the whole field has been produced. This is partly due to the
comparative paucity of the investigators and to the natural
reticence "of 'the. negroes themselves, who dislike to be
interrogated on matters which seem to them to be subjects
of mere curiosity or even amusement to foreigners.

The general culture of the negro peoples of Africa is
agricultural, but they are expert in iron-smelting where
such is possible, and show considerable skill in the arts of
weaving and carving. In West Africa the Yorubas are
the most advanced, the Dahomians coming next, with the
Ashantis a rather bad third. Totemism is generally pre-
valent and polygamy is common, with many food tabus
applying to different families and tribes. Cannibalism is

1 See R. E. Dennett, At the Back of the Block Man's Mind, London, 1906 ;
M. H. Kingsley, Travels in W. Africa (1897), an( i West African Studies (1899) ;
R. S. Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti, Oxford, 1927. ; and A. F. Mockler-
Ferryman, Uf> the Niger, London, 1892,

-PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA 123

rife, more in some parts than others, and in some places
from natural taste, in others as a method for disposing of
and assimilating the mana of their dead relatives.

In religion, according to Miss Kingsley, there are four
main schools, namely: (i) from Sierra Leone to the Niger
mouth; (2) thence eastward to the Cameroons; (3) the
Mpongwe country; and (4) the Loango country north of
the Congo. The distinctions of religion, however, in these
regions do not seem to be very clearly drawn. Many gods
are acknowledged, national gods like the Bobowissi of the
Gold Coast, or Mawu, the sky-god of the Ewe-speaking
peoples; local deities, such as the long-haired, malignant
Sasabonsum and the female monster Srahmantin; local
spirits connected with trees, rocks, rivers, springs and hills,
such as the friendly goddess Fohsu, who assists -her devotees
in the gathering of salt; family gods, such as the bohsum
(or obosom\ who are supposed to protect the family line;
and individual gods, which are really but slightly different
from charms and fetishes. Fetish worship is universal
and the West African grigri and juju have wide repute.
It is interesting to note -that most of the gods worshipped
are malignant beings, since the benignant ones are not
supposed to require any attention. Among different
peoples, in addition to the above, there are special cults,
as that of the moon in Guinea and that of the thunder bird
in "Dahomey. Nature myths of all sorts abound, though
they concern rather the origin of man and questions of
human destiny than the creation of heaven and earth.

There is a very general belief in the soul, though great
variation as to the whereabouts of the soul-seat and the
number of souls a man possesses. The equatorial negroes
believed the soul to. be resident in the liver and hence
sealed blood-brotherhood by eating a piece of goat's liver.
The Yorubas acknowledge three souls and locate them
respectively in the hand, the stomach and the big toe
that they - may have strength, wisdom and the power to
move. Sonic believe in four souls, the immortal soul, the
bush soul, the shadow soul and the dream soul. The last
named may easily escape and will then have to be brought
back by the witch-doctor. On the Gold Coast it is believed

i2 4 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

that a man has a kra (or okra), or wandering soul, which
goes forth to seek another body when the other soul goes
to ghost -land, though Rattray uses the word okra as
merely a synonym for soul in general. Ghost-land is
apparently as little to the taste of the negro as it was to
Achilles, for a saying is quoted: " One day on earth is
better than a year in saman-dazi." In Ashanti the saman,
or ghost, is guided to the spirit world by the sacrifice .of
a fowl. The sacrifice of human beings at the funeral of
the great was common, as a kind of-" following the dead,"
and sometimes the sacrifice was repeated at an annual
commemoration, perhaps for the purpose of ensuring the
fertility of the land. The bones of the dead were generally
collected, preserved and marked, but in some places the
dead were merely floated down a stream. Most, however,
were buried, among the Bongos the men facing the .east
and the women to the west. In Ashanti the dead were
commonly buried with their feet away from the village, but,
since the dead were believed sometimes to turn around in
the grave, sometimes the other position was adopted to
deceive the spirit. Among the Fans the dead were eaten.
The ceremony of " making a father " equivalent to the
making of a pitri in India, involved certain complicated
rites. The skeletons of chiefs were- preserved and food
offerings continued to be placed before them. The skulls
of ancestors were frequently kept by families on a shelf in
small earthen pots.

In addition to. the ceremonies at burial there were many
associated with birth. The new-born child was regarded
at first as a ghost-child, that is, the result of a death in the
spirit world. "When 'a child is born in this world, a
ghost-mother mourns her child in the spirit world." For-
this reason it was very guardedly received and a name
given known as the "god's name." Later, on the fortieth
day, another name was given and there was a kind of
baptism. . Later still the earlier name was dropped and " a
strong name" bestowed. Other "rites de passage " (as
certain ceremonial customs are called by Arnold van Gennep)
were < performed in connection with arrival at puberty and
marriage, though the former was regarded as naturally

PRIMITIVE RELIGIONS OF AFRICA 125

connected with the latter. Sacrifices were offered on most
occasions, the scale of sacrificial values being in the following
order: man, bullock, sheep, fowl.

Religion in West Africa had little to do with morality
as we conceive it, but many offences were restrained by the
various oaths and tabus, and by the influence of powerful
secret societies, as to the organization of which there is
still much mystery. The members of these societies were
at once police, judges and executioners. Some crimes,
such as adultery, were restrained by very severe punishments,
as, for example, the terrible " dance of death " made the
penalty for an offence against the royal harem..

The religion of Ashanti has been so carefully observed
and described by Captain Rattray that a paragraph may be
permitted to summarize some of his observations. He gives
the- supreme god of Ashanti as Nyame, a sky-god, who is
associated with an earth-goddess, Asase-ya. The obosom^
or " high gods," are probably the ancestral deities. These
may have their shrines in trees and other natural objects.
The suman , or fetishes, are objects, containing mana^ often
used as a kind of scapegoat to take away the evils endangering
their possessors. The spirits of the dead are the saman-fo,
worshipped to secure the fertility of nature and man. A
native is quoted as saying: " The obosom and suman are like
the white man's cannon and lesser guns." The main power
of an obosom comes from. Nyame; the power of a suman
from plants and trees. An obosom is the god of the many;
the suman is the god of an individual. In addition to the
above, there are fairies (mmoatia\ whose feet point backward,
and whose speech -is a kind of whistling, and monsters such
.as the Sasabonsam (mentioned above), with long hair,
bloodshot eyes, long legs, and feet pointing both ways
(possibly a reminiscence of the gorilla).

Captain Rattray gives an elaborate account of his
observations on the various Rites de Pass age ^ but for these
the reader must be referred to his Religion and Art in Ashanti.

A very gruesome form of the primitive religion of West
Africa passed from the Gold Coast to Jamaica, Haiti and
certain . parts of the United States. This form of devil-
worship, as it really is, is known as Obeah, or Foodoo. What

126 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

is termed " Red " Voodoo involves the sacrifice of a girl-
child, euphemistically described as " a goat without horns."
Where circumstances make this sacrifice impossible a white
kid is accepted as a substitute. " White "Voodoo limits its
sacrifices to black dogs, or black cocks and hens, cruelly
slashed and slain. A fire-dance, often termed the Dance
of the Old Master (that is, the Devil), is performed at the
summer and winter solstices. There is often maintained
a secret and powerful priesthood, male and female, known
as papdloi and mamaloi, .and these witch-doctors specialize
in charms, herb-remedies, luck-balls, fingers of .death,
hands of love, and such like. In certain black communities
of the Western Hemisphere Voodoo undoubtedly exercises
a terrorizing influence upon the ignorant and is a menace
to many others. 1

1 See E.R.E., XII. 640-41.

CHAPTER IX

The Primitive _ Religion of Asia

A~ L the great historical religions of the world
Brahmanism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism,
Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and
Christianity^ are of Asiatic origin. Therefore, to write
the story of the religions of Asia would almost be to write
the entire history of religion. Yet I may once again remind
the reader that behind all the. above-mentioned movements,
considered historically, there lies an infinitely larger mass
of belief and practice pertaining to the field of primitive
religion. Of the countless clashes and interminglings
which have been going on in Asia for thousands of years,
of the countless migrations, along the lines of least resistance,
or enforced by climatic changes, or by pressure of armed
attack, we shall probably have to be content with ignorance.
Thousands of important but unknown personalities may
have contributed to the expression of this or that belief,
the formation of this or that habit, or the creation of this
or that institution. These must remain in enforced oblivion.
What we see in the remote abysm of time, or in those
jungles of to-day where the shadows have been only partially
lifted, is a widely extended .religious system which forms
a dense tropical mat out of which the tall trunks and
spreading branches of the historical faiths stand out as
things apart. Yet the undergrowth out of which these
faiths have sprung contains values which no subsequent
"developments- altogether superseded. The historical faiths
themselves depend for their elucidation on a knowledge of
the soiV climate and vegetation of which they are the
outstanding expression.

^ In different parts of Asia and under different conditions
this oldest of all religions will present very different features

127

128 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

and will bear many different names. Some of these separate
features we shall reserve for description when we come to
the conditions under which religions like Confucianism in
China, or Islam in Arabia, arose. For this reason the
present chapter and the next will make no attempt to
examine in detail the primitive religion of every portion of
the vast Asiatic continent. It will suffice if, without con-
fining' ourselves to the specific thing which goes under the
name, we here consider that important .type of primitive
religion, extending from the Ainus in the east to Asia
Minor in the west, and from Siberia in the north to Arabia
and Malaysia in the south, which goes under the convenient
name of Shamanism. To this we shall add such notes on
the early religions of certain peoples such as are more
conveniently treated here than under the head of the
historical religions.

The word shaman has had many suggested derivations,
including the very dubious one of the Persian shemen, an
idol. The most likely etymology connects it with the
Sanskrit framana, an ascetic, from the root $ram^ to be weary
(that is, of this illusory world). In its Chinese form the
term becomes sha-mGn^ and so we get to the immediate
derivative, the Tungus saman. In a highly specialized
sense the word is now used of one who, through the
possession of particular endowments, is able to control a
familiar spirit or spirits, and so becomes the intermediary
between the spiritual world and a needy humanity.

Though Shamanism is a religion of the widest possible
extent, ranging, as we have suggested, throughout the entire
continent of Asia, and beyond that> extending into America,
its most specialized form is found in northern and eastern
Asia, where in fact it is the real religion of the Ural-Altaic
peoples, and accords nicely with the polydsemonistic beliefs
of that region. The shaman is sometimes born into his
office, much of Asiatic shamanism being hereditary. Among
the Buriats it is believed that the first shamans, ninety-nine-
males and seventy-seven females, were chosen and con-
secrated by a deity named Mindiu. But some shamans,
are such by predisposition, particularly if they possess the
highly neurotic temperament which makes it easy to mani-

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 129

fest, in reality, or by simulation,- the frenzies and epileptic
fits which mark the successful practitioner. To this end
they practise diligently until it is clear that they have
vocation and can undergo initiation and consecration. The
initiation consists in bestowing upon the candidate a drum
and drum-stick, decorating him with a varied collection of
rattles, rings, rags, and other charms, and performing a
sacrifice which includes the sprinkling of the novice with
blood. Then the full-fledged shaman 1 is ready to become
a public servant in a large variety of ways. As a diviner
he will use the shoulder-blades of sheep or deer, after the
manner known as scapulomancy; he will also divine by
the casting forth of arrows; and in the hundred or more
ways which might be illustrated from the story of primitive
religion anywhere. As a healer he will use his own soul,
or a familiar spirit, to go in search, of the departing soul
of the sick man, pursuing the ghost even down to the realm
of Erlik, the prince of evil. Or he will suck out the evil
spirit by his incantations, or bribe the evil one with sacrifice,
or scare the demons with mad efforts on his drum. An
important preliminary to the cure is the diagnosis, so, in
serious cases, a white ram may have to be offered to. the
good spirits and a black ram to the evil spirits. 1 In still
more severe cases the offering has to be a horse.

The horse sacrifice is the highest function in which the
shaman is likely to be called "upon to take part. The horse
is chosen and brought to a certain hill, on which is a grove
of birch-trees. After birch branches have been waved over
the animal, the shaman uses his drum to collect the spirits.
Sitting on the figure of a goose, on which he intends to
ride to heaven with the spirit of the sacrifice, he then
superintends the slaying of the horse. Dr. Radlof 2 says
that the horse was strangled, and this may have been the
case where strangling was the Mongol method of execution,
as among the Gilaks. But Jeremiah Curtin describes the
horse sacrifice among the Buriats, in which the horse was
first fettered and thrown, then slain by an incision which

1 Gf. Eusebius, Prcsp. Evang., IV. 9 : " Dark victims to the powers of
darkness, light to the powers of light."

2 W. Radlof, Ency. Rel. and Eth., III. 17, IV. 177.

130 'A HISTORY OF RELIGION

enabled the shaman to extricate the .heart of the beast.
Two, fires had meanwhile been lighted near the sacred
grove, known as the " senior " and "junior " fires. Over
the senior fire are boiled the fore-quarters of the animal
and the hind-quarters over the other. Then each head of
the family women, were not allowed^ to be present ties
a long thread of flax, to which feathers are attached, to a
birch-tree, in order that by this " ladder " the incantations
may rise to the sky. The boiled flesh from the senior fire
is then carried round the circle in the sunward direction,
and afterwards consumed in the fire. The flesh from the
junior fire, on the other hand, is distributed and ceremonially
eaten. All remains, as in the Passover of the Jews, were
carefully committed to the fires. If the smoke of these
went up straight to the sky, it was a good omen for the year.
It is plain that the horse sacrifice was here, as in other parts
of the world, from Scandinavia to India, a solar rite, for
the winning of the year's prosperity. Curtin tells us that,
among the Buriats, the prayer at the sacrifice, was addressed
to such deities as the ." Pure Heaven," the "Creator of
Cattle," and the " Golden Sorrel," that is, the light of the
sun. He describes the fires as not two but fifteen, all
roaring beneath the iron kettles in which the flesh was
stewing. He adds that the gods were supposed to parti-
cipate in the. pleasure and sociability of the feast. 1

The gods of shamamstic Asia are of many sorts and
many names, according to locality. Some of them are
good, like Ulgen, and some of them malevolent, like Erlik.
Possibly the cosmogony of the shamans was coloured by
views derived from Buddhism, or even from Nestorian
Christianity. In any case, there "was. belief in a kind of
three-storeyed universe, with seventeen realms of light
above, seven or nine hells below and between the earth.
The evil being Erlik, a kind of fallen angel, lived in one
of the hells; the N supreme god, Kaira, lived in the topmost
heaven; and the nine great ancestors lived in one or another
of the lower heavens. In the fifth was a kind of demiurgus ;
in the third lived Ulgen and his two sons. It was the function
.of the shaman to have control over the nine ancestors or,

1 Jeremiah Curtin, A Journey in Southern Siberia, chap. iv.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 131

on the other hand, to 'be able to placate Erlik. It was the
specialty of the "white" shaman to dp the former, while
the " black " shaman was supposed competent for the
latter task. While sacrifices might be offered to Erlik
anywhere, the sacrifices to Ulgen had to be in secret. It
will be seen that most of these sacrifices were of the nature
of ancestor- worship, , though many of the good spirits,
known as Tengri, would come into the category of naturism.
Beneath the outward forms of shamanistic religion, more-"
over, may be found a great deal of totemism, often suggested
by the tamgas, or clan crests. The horse, for instance, may
well be a famga, or totem sign. Erlik, again, is sometimes
represented as a bear, while other animals venerated include
the wolf and (among birds) eagle, hawk and goose. Mr.
Curtin describes the use, among the Buriats, of fetishes he
calls ongons, little bags sometimes made of the skin of an
ermine and containing small images, to which people pray
for rain and crops. These are fixed to a post, but after the
death of the owner are carried to the forest and allowed
to rot. .

Most of the events iij a man's life, from birth to death,
are controlled by shamanism. There is a special goddess,
Umai, who is supposed to preside over birth. When a
child is born, a cow or sheep is iilled, partly for sacrifice
and partly for a feast. If it be a boy, another boy or if a
girl, Another girl stands by the cradle to answer questions
and in this way it is decided -whether to rock up or down
and what name is to be given. The placenta is then buried
and libations made to it as to a recognized ancestor. The
dead are sometimes burned, but more often buried.- In
the case, of the Buriats there are elaborate ceremonies 'for
nine days after death, and those gifted with second sight
are able to see the spirits of the dead clad in the " ghosts "
of their old clothes. By the Karzuk the dead are buried in
solid structures of wood, clay and brick. Burial mounds,
.known as kurgans, are to be found in thousands from the
Irtish to .the Orkhon, some of which go back to the Bronze
and Iron Ages. In many cases burial masks were used to
preserve the lineaments of the dead, or even rude stone'
figures buried with the corpse. The absence of the skull

132 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

from the skeleton which in many cases was buried in an
.erect position has been frequently observed. In some
instances there seems to have been a grouping of the graves,
with one mound a little apart from all the rest. There was
a general belief in the survival of the soul. It was supposed
that at birth a good spirit was sent to guard the new-born
individual and an evil spirit to mislead him, but that at
death both spirits accompanied the soul to judgement. ' It
is difficult, however, to say how much of this may be due
to the Buddhism, or Muhammadanism, or the Nestorian
Christianity, with which the original shamanism has been
overlaid.

If we travel^ from Northern Asia to the islands of the
extreme east, now composing the Japanese archipelago, we
come upon that curious survival of an ancient race known as

THE AINUS. These are the aboriginal people of the
Japanese islands, numbering now but 20,000 souls, and
confined to the coast of the northern islands. Some
ethnologists have convinced themselves of the existence of
a still earlier stock, now extinct, known as the Koropok-guro
(earth-hiders), but these were probably Ainus of an earlier
and still more rudimentary culture. Dr. A. C. Haddon
describes the Ainus as " the relics of an eastward movement
of an ancient mesocephalic group of 'white cymotrichi who
have not left any other representatives in Asia, though
travellers often refer to the resemblance of the Ainu to the
Russian mujik." 1 They were originally white people who
migrated across the entire Euro-Asiatic continent and are
proba'bly related to the aborigines of Australia. They are
very hairy people, with beards falling to the waist, a circum-
stance accounting for the* name Yemishi, or prawn-people.
The word Ainu means man^ though, by folk etymology, it
has been associated with the Japanese z#, a dog. Their
culture was neolithic and is illustrated by the contents of
some thousands of kitchen-middens (some of which may go
back six thousand years) around the coast of Japan. 2 It
seems probable that their early organization was totemistic,
though this has been denied. Even Archdeacon Batchelor,

1 A. C. Haddon, Races of Mem, p. 89.

2 N. Gordon Munro, Primitive Art of Japan, Trans. As. Soc. Japan, 1906.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 133

a defender of the general theory, acknowledges that the
people seldom talk of themselves as being connected with
bear, wolf, turtle, snipe, hawk and eagle, and never with -a
vegetable. The best evidence for totemism is found in the
interesting bear-cult, but Dr. E. V. Hopkins believes the
bear sacrifice rather a " sending " of the bear to its ancestors
to secure more bears for the next -season's hunting than an
actual indication of Ainu descent from the bear. The bear
sacrifice is, in any case, exceedingly striking and reminds
us forcibly of the similar sacrifice described in the Finnish
Kalevala*- and also said to exist among the Lilloet Indians
in British Columbia. The bear-cub is suckled by the
women, treated with every care as " the dear little divine
thing," and then sent, by strangling, to join the-great bear
ancestor to influence the powers above in favour of the
sacrificers.

As to the religion of the Ainus, there are very diverse
opinions. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, who, however, was
only among the Ainus a few weeks and only communicated
with the people through an interpreter, believed, that they
had little or no religion. On the other hand, Archdeacon
Batchelor, who has known the Ainus and their language
for many years, has too high an estimate of their beliefs,
even crediting them with a primitive monotheism. Dr.
Hopkins, who seems a little prejudiced against Batchelor,
declares, much too sweepingly, of the Ainus: " They have
neither gods, temples, nor priests." It seems probable
that Batchelor's Supreme God, kamui, means much the
same as the Japanese kami (the one above), and implies
belief in a large variety of spirits, the spirits of the dead,
and spirits which are merely " potencies " in nature. The
bear, as we have seen, is worshipped, possibly as an ancestor.
Much the same is true of the cereal, or millet worship. Fire
is also _ worshipped and the word Fuji (applied to the
mountain) is probably an Ainu word for fire. Fire would
naturally be worshipped also as a culture deity. Indeed
all nature was full of " potencies "earth, air, rivers and
seas. The sun and moon also were worshipped, the sun
being regarded as masculine and the moon as feminine

1 The Kalevala, Runo xlvi., Wainamoinen and the Bear.

134 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

contrary to the Japanese reckoning. There were, again,
many demons, of whom the swamp demon (aunt of the
marshes) was particularly malevolent.

Various myths have been transmitted to us, but it is
impossible to say what influence may have coloured them.
One represents the sun and moon as husband and wife
and explains the invisibility of the moon, at certain times by
saying: " she has gone to visit her husband." Another
describes the wagtaiPas having been sent down from heaven
to create the earth out of the waters and as accomplishing
this by trampling the mud from the sea-bottom into a
solid mass.

Only vague ideas seem to have prevailed with regard to
the state of the dead and the future life. The dead were
much feared and it is said that only the women were per-
mitted to gpeak to them. When burial had taken place
the bows and arrows and other implements of the deceased
were broken over the grave and sometimes the hut in
which the dead had lived was burned over the corpse.
Some believed that the dead went into the bodies of animals, .
while others, possibly as the result of foreign contacts, held
that there were six heavens and six hells to which people
went, according to their conduct here upon earth.

One of the most interesting features of Ainu religion
was its concern with fetishes. The fetish, or god-stick,
known as an inao^ was quite elaborately fashioned of a piece
of willow or lilac wood, fantastically dressed up with shavings,
provided with a slit for a mouth, and a warm, black cinder
for a heart. It may have corresponded with the back-
bone, which was regarded as a soul-seat, and so suggests
the Lares and Penates of ancient Rome. But there were
distinctions among the inao. There might be a private
inao, fixed in the hearth on the birth of an individual and
holding his fate. Or there might be a household, or even
tribal, inao, guarding the fortunes of the entire family.
There might, again, be an evil fetish, to which a noisome
mess was offered known as the evil-stew. This probably
represents an attempt to placate the evil spirits. There is
a rather close connection of Ainu fetish worship with
ancestor worship and this constant concern of men with the

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 135

" potencies " of nature and the spirit world, in spite of the
absence of professional shamans, links Ainu religion very
definitely with shamanism. The shaman, however, is not
unknown and may be called in for a variety of purposes.
Indeed, the frenzy of the Ainu shaman, in which all sorts
of -prophecies are uttered, seems to prelude the appearance
of the. Shinto priest and the phenomena of " possession."

Magic was, naturally, in general use and some use of
fox-skulls was - made -for the purpose of giving oracles.
Closely associated with magic were the various forms of

. ordeal and tabu which were from time to time enforced.
The ordeals included the use of fire, hot water, hot stones
and medicated water. A common form was the throwing
of a cup over the shoulder, the guilt of the thrower being
determined by the position of the cup when it reached the
earth. The. tabus involved the practice of couimde^ by the
father on the birth of a child betaking himself to bed. A

.ban was placed upon a woman uttering the name of her
husband and there was also a ban placed upon the shedding
of blood in the bear sacrifice. The strangling of the bear
seems to suggest that the same rule may have applied to the
horse and other sacrificial animals. 1

Let us now pass westward, through the great territories
of China, whose early form of religion we will leave
untouched for< the present, to the passes of the Hindukush.
Traversing these we enter the Indian peninsula and give
our attention briefly to the religion of

_ PRE-ARYAN INDIA. Under this head we include those
primitive elements of Indian religion which, are charac-
teristic of the aboriginal Negrito population and of the
prehistoric waves of immigration known generally as
Kolariari and Dravidiafi, which entered the land respectively
from the north-east and the north-west. The terms Kolarian
and Drayidian are linguistic rather than ethnological, but
they designate for our purpose the tribes, on the one
hand, Bhils, Kols, and so forth, and, on the other, Tamils,
Telugus, Malayalim, Kanarese, and the rest, spread over

-K l^ r . eli &.i? n of the Ainu is exhaustively described by Archdeacon John
Batchelor in his The Ainus in Japan, and in Ency. Rel. and Eth., Vol. I..
art. Amy. See also Isabella Bird Bishop, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 1885"

136 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the peninsula from the Ganges southward to Ceylon and
occupying the territories of Madras, Hyderabad, Chota
Nagpore and the Central Provinces.

The present-day religion of all these peoples is Hinduism,
as that religion is generally understood, but it must be'
realized that the basis of all popular Hinduism is something
vastly older than the faith imported by the Aryans and that
the average Indian peasant to-day is anything but an
orthodox Hindu except in the sense that he feeds the
Brahmans and in general accepts the restrictions of caste.
The general culture of . the representatives of this older
population is totemistic, though it may be hard to dis-
tinguish between totemism as a social institution and mere
animal worship. Risley tells that among the Oraons the
tribal names are those of animals and plants, and where
this is the ase the animal or plant (or some part of either)
becomes tabu. In Central India, at any rate, the totem
tree is never cut. Animism was the prevailing belief and
the control of particular spirits was often rigidly localized.
Boundaries between the realm of spirit and spirit were
defined, and boundary ceremonies included the use of a
goat, which was led around until certain symptoms of
shivering revealed that it was trespassing upon the domain
of another spirit. Many of the old Dravidian gods were
subsequently adopted into popular Hinduism as avatars
of Vishnu and Qiva. iva himself was regarded as a
survival of the older gods, and identified with the Vedic
Rudra. In general the coarser and more tantric elements
of popular Hinduism are derived from this older worship.
The worship of earth (Pritthivi), as the Great Mother, is
due specially to the old matrilinear agriculture rather than
to the Aryan immigrants. The fertility cults, with their
obscene orgies, in connection with the marriage of the
earth-deities, are also Dravidian rather than Aryan. Mother
Earth had her benevolent as well as her malignant, aspect,
and might be invoked as " the hope-fulfiller." But in
general the Earth was a goddess to be propitiated by dread
rites, and the cruelties and sexual excesses connected with
the cult of Kali, the spouse of Qiva, may be traced to these
primitive ideas.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 137

The Dravidian peoples distinguished many kinds of
spirits, friendly and hostile. There were tree spirits, which
were often regarded .as village gods, and great care was taken
to preserve such and such a tree or grove for the reverence
of the indwelling spirits. These had no special names, but
they, were often believed to be potent to heal. Rags were
frequently hung on the trees to obtain something of the
mana of the resident deities. Water spirits were specially
respected* and thought able to ward off the menace of a
flood. The coco-nuts offered to these, as in the Punjab,
have been suspected of being a modern commutation of the
old sacrifice of human heads.- Wind spirits and hail spirits
were likewise recognized, naturally so, because of the power
of the elements to destroy a growing crop. To the mountain
spirits sacrifices were offered, to placate them before an
attempted ascent. - Sun worship was another feature of
Dravidian religion, with the use of sympathetic magic to
sustain the solar power at the critical seasons. Some of
the fire ceremonies, such as those connected with leaping
through the flames, were for aspurgation. In any case,
much that survives in the Hindu Holi festival is vastly older
than Hinduism itself. Moon worship and star worship
were doubtless in vogue at a still earlier date, but they are
not important in Dravidian religion to-day. There were
certain fixed sanctuaries for the local and village gods, as
among the primitive Semitic tribes. Some of these were
little but a heap of stones under a tree, or a hut for the
spirit to dwell in. This was only repaired when the occur-
rence of an epidemic suggested the anger of the godling.
An interesting feature "of this oldest of Indian cults is the
implement worship, such as we see in ancient Rome and
elsewhere. 1 Ploughs, corn-sieves, baskets and brooms were
'all objects of worship; the palm-tappers in certain districts
present offerings to their sickles ; the potters decorate their
trade tools ; and many similar customs might be adduced.

Not only are nature-spirits recognized and worshipped,
but also the spirits of the dead, as might be expected.
Though ghosts were sometimes looked on as benignant,
as in the case of a woman who had performed sati, most of

1 Cf , in the Old Testament, Habakkuk i. 16,

138 ' N A BISTORT OF RELIGION

them were thought of as angry and had to be propitiated.
There were large numbers of bhuts, or bhutas, roaming
round ruthlessly because of lack of proper funeral rites.
Animals were naturally worshipped .hi the totemistic com-
munities, though not always as totems. The horse was
thought of as a steed for the dead, or for the carrying away
.of disease, and pottery figures of horses, with holes for the
entrance of the spirit, were placed here and there to rid
the locality of an unwelcome presence. 1 The tiger, known
often as "Lord Tiger," was worshipped, mainly out of
fear, and a V man-eater " was specially dreaded as adept
in "shape-shifting." Among the Marathas the dog was
worshipped and at the Malhari shrine in Dharwar the
priests were wont to assume the dress of dogs and meet
the arriving pilgrims with barking. The monkey-god,
Hanuman (long-jaw), was worshipped as a hero of the epic
Ramayana, but the cult evidently goes back to an older
theriolatry and was later .adopted by Hinduism. In con-
nection with animal worship it should be noted that the
shrinking from an 'animal as unfit for food was not always
due to the beast being thought unclean. Sometimes, on
the contrary, it was because of special sanctity as a totem.
This may -explain even the rejection of the 'pig as food by
the Semites.

The Dravidian peoples were not without a mythology,
which included a myth as to the way the sky escaped its
first contiguity with earth. This reminds us strongly of
similar myths, all the way from Egypt to New Zealand.
In the present case an old woman, annoyed through knocking
her head against the too lowly firmament, took her broom
and pushed the sky upwards out of reach.

The working religion of pre-Aryan India was, as in
other parts of Asia, shamanism. The shaman constituted
no regular priesthood, but was -sometimes hereditary. The
essence of the cult was the worship of powers, benevolent
and malignant, through a contact established: by frenzy
attained in the usual ways very often by the use of a
whip, or even a chain, for purposes of self-flagellation. The
shaman, if not a regular priest, was at least exorcist, sorcerer

1 Gertrude Emerson, Voiceless India.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 139

and medicine-man. He was surrounded by many tabus,
and in many cases the mana was supposed to be resident in
his carefully protected hair. As a disease-curer, for example,
in dealing with a ease of snakebite, the shaman would
consult a vessel full of water, waiting for the troubling of
the water (as did the sjufferers at the Pool of Bethesda) r to
betoken the arrival of the spirit. He would also use a goat
or buffalo as a scape-animal, drawing a little blood from the
ear of the beast and then sending it forth from the village
to bear away the disease. Religious festivals were observed
at the chief agricultural seasons, particularly in connection
with ploughing, sowing and harvesting. Sometimes the
rites were for purgation, and sometimes for the promotion
of fertility. Obscenities were common, as in similar agri-
cultural rites all the world over. Omens were carefully
observed and, among many common to all lands, we may
note those revealed in the eggs and entrails of fowls and in
the appearance of grains of rice. Sacrifices were offered on
the do ut des ffrinciple, and also as a feast in which friend-
ships were ratified with the placated gods. The victim
offered had always to be considered willing, and the better
to ensure this the animal was garlanded and fed before
being slain. Human sacrifices apparently had once been
common, but had been commuted by the substitution of
a buffalo or a goat. Magic had a large part in early
Dravidian religion, as may be inferred from what has
already been stated. For the carrying away of diseases
there^ were many devices, in addition to those already
mentioned. Toy carts were employed to remove the spirits
of cholera and small-pox. Scape-animals, marked with
vermilion and driven away with violence, were frequently
used for the same purpose. And in the Dekkan the custom
is recorded of sending forth a woman, who was, however,
permitted to return next day, to render like service to the
community. Much else of the popular Hinduism of
to-day will be found to belong to the underlying shamanism
of the earlier period, but the above sketch will suffice to
describe its general character.

1 See St. John v. 7.

1 4 o A BISTORT OF RELIGION

We may conveniently include one other region in this
present chapter, namely:

TIBET. As might be expected, from the fact that
Buddhism only entered Tibet as late as the seventh century,
and that the land is so walled about with mountains, as
well as by a climate so terrifically severe as to be very
uninviting to. strangers, the religion of Tibet retains many
features such as without doubt go back to the first arrival
of immigrants in the post-glacial period.

The culture of these first inhabitants was simple even
to barbarism, a barbarism which .continues to crop up
through the veneer of Buddhism with which manners have
in general been covered. Polyandry was prevalent, for
economic reasons, though monogamy is the more general
rule. As* far as occupation is concerned, the people were
divided into traders, peasants and herdmen, but a large
number from one-eighth to one-fifth are monks and
nuns, thus earning for Tibet the reputation of being the
most " religious " country on earth.

The old pre-Buddhistic religion is termed Bon (PSn)
a word of unknown meaning, but .signifying the same kind
of shamanism that we have encountered elsewhere in Asia.
The shamans had many functions, as explainers of omens,
namers of lucky days, arrangers of marriages and burials,
exponents of planetary influences, and casters of horoscopes.
In brief, the shaman played very much the role which in
China is assumed by the Taoist priest. In addition to
reverence for the shaman or medicine-man, the follower of
Bon (the Bonpa) was given to the use of prayer-flags
often seen fluttering from the house or bridge and to
the making of pilgrimages. As might be predicted from
the severity of the weather, and the frequency with which
the flocks and herds and crops of the Tibetan were destroyed
by snowstorms and avalanches, most of the spirits to whom
prayers were addressed were devils. Devils, too, took up
their dwelling in human bodies as diseases and had to be
expelled by means which must have been as unpleasant to
the patient as to the demon. Sometimes, indeed, the demon
was treated quite considerately, 'being provided with clothes,
hat, boots and steed, so long as he would go. The Abbe

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 141

Hue has described some of the exorcisms of which he was
himself the witness. Although Buddhism, in the form of
Lamaism, has been in control of Tibet since the ninth
century of our era, the Bon is still probably more extensively
accepted than Lamaism. Mr. W. W. Rockhill estimated
that two-thirds of the people were still Bon-pa. Of the
Bon priests there are now few in western and central Tibet,
but in eastern Tibet they are quite numerous and have
monasteries of their own. Here they display much evidence
of actual antagonism to the Lamas, using the Buddhist
formula (Om-mani-pad-me-hum) backwards as Muh-em-pad-
ni-moj and turning the swastika into a left-hand symbol.
Mr. Waddell supposes this to indicate an earlier lunar cult.
In early times there appear to have been many bloody
sacrifices., including the offering of man, horses, oxen and
asses, but at present these are generally represented as
images of dough. 7 Lamaism itself is not free from rites
which were originally Bon. The unreformed Red Hats
show most evidence of these survivals, but they are not
absent from the practices of the reformed Yellow Hats.
The devil-dances which are exhibited at the Lama Temple
in Peking are, of course, shamanistic in origin, though as
now performed only " stunts " for the edification of tourists.
The remaining regions of primitive Asia we must
reserve for another chapter.

CHAPTER X

The Primitive Religion of Asia

IN the present chapter we "shall consider the primitive
religion of certain other parts of Asia and, first of all,
must devote several pages to that of
THE. ABORIGINES OF CHINA. Of some primitive
elements in the religion of the Chinese themselves we shall
have something to say later. Here we confine ourselves
to the beliefs and practices of the tribes whom the Chinese
dispossessed or pushed aside and who are now found in
the south-west provinces of the Middle Kingdom. When
the Chinese first entered the country they are described as
subduing the Man in the south, the Yi in the east, the Tih
in the north, and the Jung in the west. Whatever the
distinctions between these tribes once were, they have now
disappeared. Consequently, in describing the present
aboriginal population, we can only refer to them as a
Mongoloid race, now occupying the provinces of Yunnan,
Szechuan and Kweichau, and from whom have been derived
the main elements in the population of Annam, -Siam, and
other parts of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. In Yunnan
about two-thirds of the people are aborigines and as many
as 141 tribes have, been listed, distinguished as Lolos,
Miao-tzu, and Shans (or Tai). The term Lolo is considered
objectionable, a word of contempt used by the Chinese.
It is better to speak of them as Nosu. A term of a general
nature, often employed, is that of Man-tzu, or " wild men."
The Nosu, to use that convenient term, are found prin-
cipally in Yunnan, the Miao in Kweichau, to a less extent
in Yunnan, with only a few in Szechuan. The Shan, or
Tai, are principally in Yunnan and on the Burmese frontier.
So far as language is concerned, the Nosu and Miao may
be classed together, while the Shans must be kept apart.

' ' 14*

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA , 143

It will be noted that, with 53 separate tribes in Kweichau
and as many as 180 in the whole region, the ethnological
field is a paradise of vast scope.

The religious ideas and practices of the population of
these provinces closely resemble those we have -already
described as Asiatic. That totemism was general is plain
from the names of some of the tribes :. Miao-tzu, sons of
the cat; Ma-tzu, sons of the horse; Kwei-tzu, sons of the
tortoise. Many practices reveal the separateness long
maintained from the Chinese population all around them.
No Buddhist temples are to be seen on the hills, nor are
there any .of the horrible Temples of Hell in the cities.
Chinese customs, such as the binding of the girls' feet, are
rejected and Nosu have been heard to say: "We would
sooner marry a daughter to a dog than to a Chinese." The
white towers which are frequently seen crowning the hills
have been built to strike terror into the hearts of the Chinese
and keep them at a distance. Even the custom of "cremation
is followed, not merely through long habit, but because it
contrasts with the " cold burial "of a Chinese. It is
difficult to say whether any high gods are recognized; the
evidence is rather that only the spirits of the dead and
spirits of natural phenomena are known. - Most of these are
malevolent, and the worship offered is generally of the
apotropaic kind. A future world is accepted and sacrifices
are. sent into this other world to secure certain results. In
one case a murderer is described as being sent to make his
peace with the dead, after he has been bound, gashed with
wounds into which candles were burned down, and the
tortured body divided and thrown to the dogs and wolves.
Malevolent spirits are greatly feared, and believed capable
of pursuing their victims as beasts of prey. By the Miao
the underworld is supposed to be a sort of barnyard, in
which people are turned into fowls and slaughtered by the
Hell-emperor for the entertainment of his guests, "

For all the aboriginal peoples of south-west China
religion lays stress on omens, such, for instance, as may be
deduced from the observation of .magpies, and on the use
of ordeals, of which those by boiling water and oil .are
common. In the former the slaves representing two

i 4 4 A HISTORT OF 'RELIGION

opposing families seek to snatch an egg from a cauldron of
boiling water without ill result. A few myths have passed
from generation to generation on such matters as the origin
of rain, snow, sun and moon,, though some have doubtless
been influenced by the teaching of missionaries. One
curious myth describes the snow as having produced twelve
men, of whom three were the first to introduce the art of
ploughing. .

Most religion, however, was mere shamanism and witch-
craft. The wizards, who are called Pee-mo, have an
elaborate technique for the sending off of their mana, to
achieve its good or evil purpose. Mr. Pollard 1 describes
the shaman as despatching a curse through the smoke of
a fire kindled for. the purpose, with the killing of a chicken
as a sacrifice to the spirit. Elsewhere he describes the
slaying of a dog in order that the spirit of the animal might
go hunting in the other world to secure justice. When
called in to see a sick man, the wizard will make the patient
breathe on an egg, which the demon is then supposed to
enter. Then the malignant power is conjured into a small
straw doll, which is carried out to the high road and lost.
Mr. Pollard tells us that he could never give his Nosu
children a doll because of this fear of witchcraft and because
it had been the practice of the wizards to use dolls as porte
malheurs. The circumvention of demons was an important
part of life, and in some places the hair was plucked out in
early manhood to prevent some demon from getting control.
Happily, as in China, the demons were often as stupid as
they were malevolent, and x;ould be generally disposed of
in some simple fashion.

From aboriginal China it is but a short step to

INDO-CHINA. The peninsula of Further India includes

French Indo-China, Cambodia, Siam and Burma. All of.

these are Buddhist countries, but from beneath the surface

layer of Buddhism, and from beneath the still earlier stratum

of Brahmanism (where such exists), come seeping up the

elements of a far older faith. This is quite irrespective of

race, though, of course, the older the race the more archaic

is, the religion represented. In Indo-China there are many

1 S. Pollard, In Unknown China, p. 250. ' " . '

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF 'ASIA 145

of these very primitive tribes, Muongs, Mois, Penongs and
Khas, all words synonymous with savages. Generally
speaking, the culture of these tribes is matrilinear and in
their marriage customs endogamous, though some go
outside the tribe for their wives or husbands.

In general religion is animistic, with a strong leaven
of fetishism arid polytheistic naturism. The spirits are
good or bad, and are believed to live in large rocks or trees.
Care is taken, before cutting down a tree, to kill a dog,
dip an arrow in the blood, and draw it across the tree to be
felled. Villages are supposed to be protected by a special
spirit "or genius, who is represented by .a roughly carved
figure, decorated with a plume of grass, armed with bow
and arrow, and sprinkled .with the blood of a chicken.
This guardian of the village is replaced annually. Many
sacrifices are offered, graded downwards from the buffalo
to the. pig, and thence to the goat and the chicken. Some
tribes, however, still remember when human sacrifices
were" offered at the funeral of a great chief.

While naturally there were feasts held at the time of
the fructification of the rice, the great feasts were in honour
of the dead, who were buried and not cremated. The
corpse was invariably bound around the jaw and then with
bands around the hands and feet. The coffin was filled
with the deceased's choicest possessions and communication
was established between the dead man and the upper air
by the insertion of a bamboo tube, down which gifts of
rice, alcohol and soup, or even tobacco-smoke, might be
sent and up which it was believed the soul escaped in due
time. After a year it was believed the soul was ready to
depart far from the grave, so a final great feast was held,
with offerings of many sbrts, the setting up of a kind of
portrait statue, and with games. After this there was no
further observance. The world to which the spirits passed
was but dimly envisaged. Some tribes believed it was
necessary for the dead to pass between two huge stones in
continual motion, and thence between two gigantic moving
scissor-blades, and then over a precarious bridge of tree
trunks spanning an awful precipice, with a gap which had
to be overleaped. Beyond all this was a life not unlike

146 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

that on earth, with slaves to do the work of the great ones
slaves represented by little wooden figures placed upon
the grave.

There was universal belief in sorcery. The sorcerers
were believed to have awful powers, particularly over fire
and water, and were accordingly dreaded. Ordeals were
commonly practised, most of them of the kinds generally
in vogue, but including an egg test in which the accused
had to break an egg between his thumb and forefinger.
There were many fetishes, especially pebbles of a peculiar
shape, or prehistoric flints and axe-heads. These were
sprinkled with blood and highly reverenced. Tabus were
naturally numerous, including a particular tabu placed upon
the road by which a village had been 'evacuated. Totemism
is not clearly defined, but it is natural to suppose it must have
existed, since certain tribes refuse to eat the flesh of the
domestic elephant and others decline the flesh of the tiger,
except by way of showing a spirit "of revenge. Quite a few
of the tribes have a vague kind of cosmogony, but "it is
difficult to separate imported ideas from those which may
have been primitive.

Over the whole of the Indo-Chinese peninsula Mongol
tribes have descended in successive waves of invasion and,
though the culture of these tribes is not in the strictest
sense of the word primitive, yet we may regard their religion
as coming under that head, in order to distinguish it from
the Brahmanism and Buddhism beneath which it was later
submerged. We shall find it -convenient to make a 'brief
survey of the religion of these invading Mongol peoples
under the separate heads of Cambodia, Siam and Burma.

CAMBODIA. Three-quarters of the population of Cam-
bodia is of the Mon-Khmer stock and represents the race
which once founded a state whose former power is attested
by the stupendous ruins of Angkor. The country has had
long periods during which Singhalese Buddhism was
dominant but before these the main religious influence
was that of Brahmanism. But the first animism was never
uprooted and is still widely prevalent. All kinds of super-
natural beings are believed in, ghosts, ogres, and spirits
masquerading as lions-, serpents (nagas) and birds. Some

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 147

spirits, called nak-ta, are thought to be good, the local
guardians of trees, rocks and streams. Oblations and
sacrifices are offered to these, some of the latter being of a
cruel character. It is believed that the 'prosperity of the
offerer, or the success of his intention, is greatly enhanced
by the prolonged groaning of the victim. There are also
individual tutelary spirits, such as the arak, which ^ are.
probably the spirits of ancestors. Many of the worst spirits
are those of the wicked dead, or of women who died in
child-birth. Some spirits take the. form of wer-wolves or
wer-tigers, both male .arid female. Happily these fearsome
monsters may be reduced to powerlessness by striking them
on the shoulder with a hook, though the operation may be
something like that of putting salt on a bird's tail.

Wizards, sorcerers, and diviners are legion. The kru
(guru?) exorcises in many quaint ways, such as by sending
a charm into the body of the afflicted one by means of a
worm or a black beetle. Others confine themselves to
astrology, the finding of lucky days, or the averting of the
evil effects of an eclipse. - Of the festivals observed some
are undoubtedly Buddhist, but others, such as the cutting
of the top-knot, the new-year festival, the water festival,
and festivities in honour of the dead, must go back to much
earlier times. . .

SIAM. -The Siamese are in' the main a branch of the
Tai, Mongol immigrants who came originally from the
high plateaux of Tibet and Yunnan, driving the earlier
Khmers, Mons and Burmese towards the coast. Buddhism
was introduced about A.D. 442, but there was an older
reign of Brahmanism and beyond that a general animism
of much the same character as that already described.
Spirits known as -phi were reverenced. They were both
benevolent and malevolent, but the malevolent were much
more numerous and powerful. The -phi-nang-mai^ or
female tree-spirits, were regarded as good and were supposed
to replenish the bowls of wearied pilgrims. Of evil spirits
there were three kinds, the spirits of the dead, spirits of
nature, and spirits belonging to another world than our
own. Most, dangerous of all were the phi-lok, or spirits of
the dead, giants in stature, with a tiny mouth, from whence

148 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

came only a whistling kind of ,speech, and who were wont
to pull people from their beds at night. The worst of
all were the spirits of the still-born or of people who had
died through cholera. To escape the malignancy of the
dead it was the custom to bury the corpse in a large pot,
folded up and bound to prevent return. A special kind of
spirit was the guardian of the house, frequently heard
whispering in the dark, and sometimes accommodated with
a small house of its own. Sorcerers (madu\ sorceresses
(thao) and diviners (mothafy had an important place in society.
Many of them were supposed to use, for the bewitching of
men, a familiar who could be reduced to the size of a- pea.
Clay figurines were also employed in order that the insertion
of a pin or a nail might ensure the torture of the intended
victim. Love philtres, as well as potions of more certain
(and more fatal) efficacy, were often mixed with the food
of anyone whom it was desirable to attract or to destroy.
Many Siamese superstitions go back to primitive types of
religion, such as the use of charms to secure invulnerability,
the use of rice as*a symbol of fecundity, the general fear of
having a picture taken, the use of foundation sacrifices,
with the victim (obtained by lot) buried alive beneath the
building, and a number of ceremonies connected with birth
and marriage, some of them possibly Buddhist.

BURMA. Burma is usually regarded as the Buddhist
country -par excellence. But Dr. Hackmann 1 says of Burma :
" The real acting religious force is not Buddhist at all."
He adds that it is "a factor dating from pre-Buddhist
times, and which Buddhism, notwithstanding the powerful
hold which it has obtained over this people, has been
entirely, unable to supersede." Bishop Bigandet writes to
similar effect: " The Buddhism of the people has but little
or no part in their daily life. In common. life, from the
day of birth to that of wedding, or even of death, all the
customs or formulae made use of by the Burmese originate
with demon worship and not with Buddhism."

The Burmese are of mixed race. -The oldest element
is that known as Mon, or Mon-Khmer (also spoken of as
Peguan) in Ta'laing. Next to this comes the. Shah or Tai

1 H. Hackmann, Buddhism as a Religion, p. 147.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 149

element, from south-west China, and last of all the Burmese.
No one of these elements presents what might technically
be called a primary culture, but their religion is sufficiently
near the primitive for our purpose. Buddhism was intro-
duced in the fifth century and with it a little Brahmanism,
and to-day all profess Buddhism except the (approximately)
340,000 Muhammadans, the 300,000 Hindus, and the
150,000 Christians.

Nevertheless, as already pointed out, the census figures
are misleading, and nat-worship is the true religion of
Burma. The nats (from a word derived possibly from
natha, a lord] represent something like the old Indian devas>
but are of all sorts. Every house has its nat^ with an estab-
lished place at the hearth, as in the homes of the early Slavs.
The nat is also provided with a vessel of holy water, and
offerings of rags and coco-nuts. Villages also have their
nats, spirits for whose benefit festivals and dramatic repre-
sentations are staged. The women who perform in the
nat-dances are believed to have powers of exorcism,
divination and necromancy. The nats themselves are
classified in thirty-seven divisions. The idea of a universal
creator god is certainly foreign to the Burmese and in its
stead is this all-pewading faith in nats as tutelary spirits,
ghosts, and supernatural beings from other worlds. A
number of other spirits find credence, however, such as do
not come under the category of nats. There are the ordinary
spirits of the dead, independent, immaterial entities which
are supposed to hover for a time over the corpse, or which
may, during the life of their owner, be kept within a charm.
People with the evil eye have two souls." The spirits of the
dead are feared and ceremonies are performed for the purpose
of keeping them at a distance. The other world is conceived
of rather vaguely, but a man who has been slain on earth
is supposed to remain a slave in Hades until his murder
has been avenged. Some ghosts, known as tase, are
particularly malignant, especially those of suicides or women
dying in child-birth. Evil spirits may take possession of a
house and bring about fevers and agues.

There are, however, nature spirits, representing sky,
sun, moon, rain, wind and trees. Many festivals celebrate

150 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the processes of nature, such as the seed-time, with its
maypole, or the harvest, with the sending forth of the
scape-animals and the driving forth- of the straw-woman
round the fields,' or the New Year, characterized by dowsings
of water, for a rain-charm.

Ancestor worship is not strongly stressed, except along
the Chinese frontier. Totemism..is indicated in numerous
ancient customs. Some tribes, like the Kachins, decline to
eat snakes, wild cats, dogs or monkeys, except those of the
white-eyelid variety. Some tribes, again, describe them-
selves as descended from the tiger, the wild goat, the
monkey, or the bear. " The Kachins think themselves
derived from a kind of gourd which fell from heaven and
split open on reaching the earth.

Sacrifices of .propitiation are offered to the nats.> and the
buffalo, pig, dog, cow, goat, chicken, are the animals most
favoured, as well as fish and eggs. Human sacrifices were
employed till recent times, and both foundation and
boundary sacrifices were offered to protect buildings and-
frontiers. The posting up of heads had much the same
object. There were many methods of divination, mostly
along lines already described^ unless it be in the special
use of chicken-bones and the entrails *of cattle and pigs.
Wizards were necromancers, exorcists, magicians and
averters of the evil eye, as well as diviners. There was no
particular ceremony at marriage, but many rites had place
in death, mainly to prevent return of the dead for the
injury of the living. The ghost was driven into the jungle
and the temporary shrine which had been erected destroyed,
to deprive the spiril of a home. All methods of disposing
of the dead were used, from simple neglect of the corpse
to crematory rites and the building of elaborate tombs.

Much else might be written with regard to the beliefs
and practices of the varied racial elements making up the
population of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, but the general
character of the religion will be sufficiently evident.

It is now necessary to take a long journey across .the
continent westward,- to consider briefly the primitive religion
of a region even more a museum of racial interminglings
than the Asia of the south-east.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 151

WESTERN ASIA. By Western Asia I have in mind three
extensive tracts of land in which .certain peoples of Asia
found their home, bringing thither in all probability a
culture elsewhere developed. These are, respectively, the
peninsula of Asia Minor, the most westerly of all, the regions
at the head of the Persian Gulf, mainly in the Euphrates
Valley, and the vast peninsula of Arabia. With these we
must associate the narrow strip of land along the eastern
shore of the Mediterranean we call Palestine, which was the
corridor linking together the three territories mentioned.

The student of ethnology will recognize in these regions
a veritable jungle of races, an area within which races
of the most various kind, Aryan, Turanian and Semitic,
have jostled one another through countless centuries,
until the component elements have become wellnigh
indistinguishable the one from the other. The historian,
too, will find these ancient clashings and interminglings
continued through the historical period with complications
which defy a conscientious analysis. It is not therefore
surprising that the student of religion should find the
same difficulty in the many elements which form the dense
undergrowth out of which the later religions of South-west
Asia arose.

It was in this region that at least four great historical
faiths first appeared, namely, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Chris-
tianity and Muhammadanism. It might therefore appear
that to deal with these, with some attention to the several
cultures from which they sprang, would be sufficient, and
that no need existed to call further attention to what someone
has called " the miry clay " in the feet of religion. But it
would be fairer to use another metaphor and to speak of
primitive religious elements as the living protoplasm out
of which future religion was to grow. Or, to use a still
different figure, it is well to remember that primitive religion
constitutes "the tap-root which sinks deepest in racial
human experience and continues its cellular and fibrous
structure in the tree-trunk of modern conviction."

Nevertheless, subsequent references which will be
inevitable in descriptions of the historical religions, make
it unnecessary to be otherwise than brief, especially in

1 52 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

regard to those primitive .religions which antedate the
Semitic -movements over the larger part of Western Asia.
In respect to the earliest religions of Asia Minor, we find
ourselves in very close contact with the beliefs and practices .
belonging to the old JEge&n culture, on which, in part,
was founded the civilization of ancient Greece. This
religion has left no literary history and we must be content
to rely on archaeological evidence of the Bronze Age or.
earlier. Certain salient features, however, emerge as to
which there can be little doubt. The idea of God seems
to have been connected for the most part with its expression
in female divinities, of whom we have representations with
the characteristic Minoan flounce, and guarded by lions.
We have here probably a picture of the Great Mother,
who in Cappadocja bore the name of Ma, and with whom
is generally associated a younger male divinity who is to
the Great Mother what Attis is to Cybele, or Tammuz-to
Ishtar. There seem to have been no proper temples, but
stones, baetyls, and triliths represented the abode of
divinity, or the sacred mountain,- while trees also served in
some degree as shrines. Rivers .and springs were also
sacred, especially' such fountains as the famous one of
Aflatun Bunar, near Iconium, and that on Mt. Argaeus.
There were, again, a number of sacred animals, especially
the bull, lion, goat, serpent and dove. The bull's skull, or
bucramum, often pictured as " the horns of consecration,"
was one of the commonest of symbols, and the bipennis, or
double axe, known as the labrys (whence the word labyrinth},
had also special significance. Another symbol in general
use was that of the knotted tie.

Had we more knowledge of the Hittites and their
language we should doubtless find much in common
between these and the Minoans. As it is we get glimpses
of a powerful Earth-mother cult, together with the associated
reverence for a son or a younger deity. We do not know
much about the Hittite gods, but of male deities there were
Teshub, a ^torm-god, and Tark, who may have supplied
.us with such words .as Teucrian, Tarquin and Etruscan,
Animism was as general here as elsewhere in the region;
divination by the liver reminds us of the Babylonian practice;

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 153

burial customs show interment in large jars after partial
cremation. It is regarded as some indication of Aryan
affinities (or contacts) that there are Hittite references to
several Aryan gods, such as Varuna, Indra, Mithra and
(probably) the Acvins.

Apart altogether from archaeological evidence we have
strong reason for believing that the primitive religions of
Asia- Minor had much of what Hinduism calls gakti^ or
worship of the female principle. The msenads, or " raving "
women, were as much a feature of ancient Phrygian religion
as were the frenzied devotees of Dionysos characteristic of
the Thracian cult. Indeed, the two movements may well
have been closely connected. Certainly Asia Minor was
many times in history the scene of impassioned outbreaks
of emotional excess of this sort.

The religion of the Euphrates Valley in Sumero-
Akkadian times will be dealt with in a later chapter. It
remains, for us here to acquaint ourselves somewhat with
the general principles of religion as they are reflected in
the primitive history of the Semitic peoples, particularly as
they show themselves . in the probable cradle of the race,
Arabia. It is, of course, not certain that Arabia was the
-original home of the Semites. Other theories of origin
have .been maintained, including those which derive the
stock from Africa, or even from Armenia. But it is clear
that, since the fourth millennium B.C., Arabia has been the
prolific mother of peoples who at intervals, approximately,
of a thousand years overflowed the limits of a land which
produced more than it could support. These periodic
migrations continued till all Western Asia was coloured in
its culture and religion by the Semite, even though he
was obliged to borrow many of the higher elements of this
culture from the peoples he dispossessed. In all this
territory the Semite, nevertheless, remained as a conqueror
till the arrival of the Turk and the Mongol.

It is a fairly accurate generalization when we- say, as
we have said the same of so many other regions, that the
primitive religion of the Semite was animistic. We may
add that it is this religion which has in large part survived
to the present day, cropping up through the superimposed

154 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Muhammadanism as a similar faith has cropped up through
the Buddhism of Eastern and Southern Asia. " The
Moslem," says Gottfried Simon, " is naturally inclined to
animism ; his animism does not run counter to the ideal .
of his religion." Later on we shall find illustrations of
this saying.

Arabia is the best locality for the study of primitive
Semitic religion since its isolation gave particular strength
to its conservatism in creed and cult. . Here the old
matriarchal tribalism lingered long and the tribal gods
long maintained their authority against occasional attempts
at innovation or reform. The fact that each tribe worshipped
one deity in the main as a kind of tribal god had. frequently
led to the supposition that we are here face to face with
a primitive monotheism. In reality the tribal god was but
one deity in a primitive polytheism, a god deemed to be
akin to his worshippers and the owner of the springs and
pasturage which were the source of their livelihood. This
sense of kinship was frequently stressed by the use of
theophorous -names asserting the fatherhood or the brother-
hood of the god. While the tribal .god was known as the
Baal (master), or Melek (king), ""or Adon (/or<f) y or 'El
(mighty one] of the tribe, it must be remembered that the
tribe did not grudge service to many other divine beings.
There were, for instance, feminine deities not a few. There
was a sun-goddess named Allat, accommodated, with a male
consort, Allah, afterwards taken up by Muhammad, a
planetary goddess, Al Uzzat (the Mighty), who corresponds
with Venus, a god of storrns, Qozah, and many stellar
deities, such as the Pleiades, the constellation worshipped
as a rain-bringer. Hubal, the god of Mecca, was another
rain-bringer, and has been identified with Allah. Another
well-known god was Wadd, the divinity of the firmament.
In the form of animals, too, were many deities, the lion-
formed Yaghuth, Ya'uk, in the shape of a horse, and Nasr,
the vulture god. Some gods appear to have been deified
heroes and others are evidently the personification of
abstract qualities, such as Friendship, "Goodwill, Time and
Fortune (Al Jadd).

Beside deities proper there were large numbers of

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 155

spirits good and bad, such as jinns, afrits and the lilith.
The jinns were made of fire prior to the creation of man,
and lilith was the nocturnal monster who infested the waste
with the jackals and ostriches. 1 . There were also fearful
hairy monsters known as the she'erim (satyrs) who were
greatly dreaded. The many forms of reverence given to
animals suggest the prevalence of totemism, and this
suggestion is confirmed by the number of tabus in the matter
of food. The. old Semitic word for holy (gadesK) itself
implies a cutting off from prohibited things. It is not
known whether the pig was rejected because it was originally
holy or because it was merely unclean. But many instances
may be cited of animals which became an " abomination "
that is, something ab-ominous because originally sacred
to a deity. Thus the fish was sacred to Atargatis and the
dove to Astarte later, of course, to Venus. The mouse
(and rat) may have been first of all sacred to a plague demon
and the horse was practically everywhere sacred to the sun.
It will be recalled that at the annual solar' feast at Rhodes
(largely Semitic) four horses were thrown into the sea. In
South Arabia, the camel was particularly sacred, possibly
in connection with a pastoral cult, and this sacrifice still
retains a special significance in Arabia.

Sacrifice was regarded as at once the food of the gods
and as a means of sustaining sacramental fellowship with
them on the part of man. It constituted further a blood-
bond between the several members of the tribe and their
gods, Many things connected with the sacrifices were
highly regarded, and the wearing of the skin of the victim
as a garment enabled the offerer to enter into a very special
relationship with his totem. To use the sacrificial fat for
x the anointing of the members of the tribe, or of the chiefs,
constituted 'a rite for the imparting to them of the vigour
of the sacrifice. Foundation sacrifices, with children as the
usual victims, , were thought necessary to give strength to
the different stages of a wall or building, from the laying
of the first stone to the setting up of the gates. The case
of Hiel, the Bethelite, as described in the Books of Kings ;
will recur to the reader. 2 It is the Semitic rite corresponding

1 Cf . Isaiah xxxiv. 14. 8 i Kings xvi. 34.

156 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

to our own custom of placing valuables in the foundation-
stone of a new building. But we should remember that
in Arabia the slaughter of infants had an economic aspect,
since families were generally larger than their means of
support. Human sacrifices seem once upon a time to have
been numerous, but the victim was generally redeemed at
the cost of so many camels or sheep. It will be remembered
that Muhammad regarded himself as one who had been
twice redeemed. The slaughter of an animal, even when
required for food, was always regarded as a sacrifice and
the cutting of the victim's throat was accompanied by a
kind of praise-shout, or tahlil^ a cry to the spirit of the place :
"Permission, O possessor of the ground!" In some
parts of the Semitic world human sacrifices lingered to a
late period, as is suggested by the Bible story of Jephthah's
daughter. In all probability, the rite of circumcision is a
relic of this ancient mode of sacrifice.

Other religious rites included the circling of- sacred
spots, keeping sunward, much after the fashion of the
faivaf, or visiting of the holy places, later authorized by the
Prophet as the Haj. Such a circuit, often accompanied by
whistling and clapping of hands, was (as the word haj
suggests) a synonym for a festival. 1 There were many
festivals, both pastoral and agricultural, and these exhibit
many of the features common at the equinoxes and solstices
all the world over. The shaman, or holy man (Ar. kahiri),
in early Semitic religion showed little promise of developing
into the ethical prophet of later Judaism. There was
indeed little that was ethical in their profession and the
close relation of the prophet to the madman was attested
by the use of the word majnun^ or one inspired with a jinn.
It was theirs to advise as to the use of charms, mainly
directed to the harming of an enemy, such as the burying
of an image with a date-palm thorn thrust into its body, or
the sewing up of a charm into the mouth of a toad, which,
in its own wasting and eventual death, brought about a like
calamity for the person against whom the charm was
devised.

The extent to which all this was deeply implanted in

1 Cf . -i Samuel xxx. 16.

THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ASIA 157

the manners and customs of the ancient Semites is plain
from the persistence with which the same practices and
beliefs maintain to the present day. "Islam," says Dr.
Zwemer, "at its very centre has remained pagan," 1 and
this estimate will be confirmed by any survey of the tree
worship, well worship, rock worship, serpent worship, and
even* worship of the dead, now prevailing in Moslem lands.
Many of the concessions made by Muhammad to the
stubborn paganism of his time witness to the fundamental
character of Semitic animism. We have, for instance, not
only the practices condemned, such as the " blowing upon
knots," the use of rain-making charms like " giving the
cat a bath," divination with arrows, the use of hair offerings,
the binding of the dead by tying thumbs and toes together
to prevent return, or the placing (for the like purpose) of
ashes on the eyes, eggs under the armpits, and thorns
beneath the feet, -or the use of familiar demons, invisible to
all but idiots and prophets. These -. things, though con-
demned, are still popular. But we have other things such
as are condoned if not actually recommended the worship
of the Black Stone fetish at the Ka'aba, the use of Quranic
texts as charms and amulets, the divining "by the beads of
the rosary, and the use of water in which a rosary has been
washed for healing. Many practices in modern Islam have
come about quite naturally through the infiltration of
superstitions from other countries such as India, or even"
China, but it must be confessed that most of them are
vigorous survivals from that dark background of religion
which hangs like a heavy curtain between us arid the
unknown beginnings of Semitic history.

1 S. M. Zwemer, The Influence of Animism on Islam.

CHAPTER XI
Primitive Religion in the Americas *-.

^ | AHERE is almost universal' agreement that the
I population of both North and South America
A entered the western continent by way of Behring
Straits, and that the nearest relatives of the Amerindians
as it is convenient to call them are the Mongoloid peoples
of North-eastern Asia. 1 Dr. A. H. Keane, however, believes
that somewhat earlier than this immigration came certain
long-headed European people by way of the Faroe Islands,
Iceland and Greenland. Others suppose there was a
westward movement across the Atlantic by a more southern
route; and others, again, that, by way .of Oceanica, some-
hardy voyagers crossed the Pacific and reached the western
coast. In" regard to this last theory, however, it must be
observed that the Polynesian migrations are of too recent
a date to have affected Amerindian culture to any extent.
It seems fairly certain that, in historical times, and until
the discovery of America in modern times, there has been
no cultural contact between the Amerindians and the
peoples of the Old World. The first immigrants brought
only the first elements of culture such as the use of the
fire-drill, the art of stone-chipping, the bow, throwing-
stick, harpoon, nets, the arts of basketry, and the domestica-
tion of the dog. They developed independently pottery-
making, agriculture (with the digging-stick), weaving, the
working of the softer metals and the domestication of the
llama and alpaca.

The arrival of these proto-Mongoloid tribes probably
took place more than ten thousand years ago and proceeded
so slowly, with small bodies of people crossing the straits at
considerable intervals, that an unusually large number of
linguistic stocks had time to develop, as many as a hundred

1 See Clark Wissler, The American Indian, New York, 1917, 355 ff.

158

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 159

and fifty altogether, and a disproportionately large number
on the Pacific coast. All show the same general features
and their holophrastic character contrasts them- markedly
with the .languages of the Old World. No Amerindian
peoples created a true script, though pictograms. were
employed among many tribes, wampum records among the
Algonquins, quipus among the Peruvians, and calendric
and astrological codices among Mayas and Aztecs. On
the continent itself the pathway of migration was generally
southward, following three main lines, along the coast,
across the inner plateaux, and by the main channels provided
in the east. That many bloody encounters took place
between the different waves of migration is shown by such
defence works as were erected by the mound-builders of Ohio
and by the constructions of the Pueblo-builders of the south.

A first survey of > the primitive religions of North
America and indeed of America as a whole incline one
to regard them as presenting a quite uniform character,
that of a shamanistic system of faith and conduct closely
resembling that of North-east Asia. But closer acquaintance
with the field reveals distinctions and shows that, while
the religions of certain, peoples of the extreme north and
the extreme south have remained crudely primitive, midway
between these extremes has been developed a. considerable
amount of reflective philosophy. There are also, naturally,
differences due to the .climatic and economic variations
between the several areas. The plains tribes are warlike,
hunters by occupation and dwellers in tfpis. The tribes
of the plateaux are agriculturists, living in stone houses and
peacefully inclined. The North-west Indians, again, are
fishermen, living in wooden huts and making some
ostentation of their wealth in the potlatch.

For such reasons we shall find useful Dr. Kroeber's
division of the field of North America into ten culture
areas, as follows: (i) Arctic, or Eskimo; (2) North-west
Pacific coast; (3) California; (4) Inter-mountain plateau;
(5) the Mackenzie- Yukon region; (6) Prairie region, or
Central plains; (7) North-east forest region; (8) South-east
woodland region; (9) South-west plateau; (10) Mexico. 1

1 See A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology, New York, 1923.

160 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

We might profitably discuss each of these areas separately,
but, for the sake of brevity, it will be better to take a general
view of Amerindian religion, so, far as the areas present
features in common, and then proceed to note features here
and there which may seem to call for separate notice.

It will at once appear that totemism has played an
important part in the history of Amerindian religion, though
whether the totem was first respected because of its relation
to the food supply and then reverenced as ancestor, or the
stages were the other way about, may remain uncertain.
At any rate, the word totem is an Amerindian word and
denotes an Amerindian characteristic. Sometimes a tribe
treated its totem as an ancestor and sometimes as .a badge.
Sometimes the totem was eaten and sometimes it was not.
In many cases there seemed more disposition to trace
descent from animal than from human ancestors. The
Delawares derived themselves from "the great Hare";
the Mohegans from the bear, wolf and deer. On the
other hand, the Algonquin " Foxes " are said to have had
seven totems, without tracing descent from any. 1 Totems
naturally had close relationship with the fauna of particular
districts. In Alaska the totems were bear, wolf, whale and
frog, while in California the raven (master of life), crane,
owl, wolf, hare and snake were favoured. In the middle
east and west there were some vegetable totems. 2

The conception of God is naturally vague all over the
continent and a number of statements most of which
emanate from the early missionaries as to the worship of
a Supreme Being must remain suspected of foreign influence.
Where a " high god " is reported it will often be found
that we are dealing rather with the personification of some
natural phenomenon or with some deified ancestor. The
word manitu, moreover, which has often been described as
a synonym for God, means no more than a spirit, which
may be either good or bad. Similarly, the supposed " high

1 See E. V. Hopkins, History of Religions, New York, 1918, chap. VI.

2 It must be remembered that the totemic complex is intimately bound
up (as in some parts of Oceanica) with the belief in a certain animal as an
individual guardian! The youth who went out to fast and pray and so put
himself into relation with the spirit world expected to be visited by the spirit
in the form of an animal, which from that time became his guardian. See
Wissler, The American Indian.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 1 6 1

god " of the Dakotans, called Wakanda^ is not a god at all
but rather a force like that which we call mana. As -for
the Michabo of the Algon quins and the loskeha of the
Iroquois, these were deified heroes rather than gods in our
sense of the word. Nature-gdds, of course, there were in
plenty sky-gods, earth-gods, gods of the four cardinal
points, gods of the four winds, corn-spirits, spirits of animals
and spirits of trees, springs and rocks. But the almost
universal theology, if we may use the term, of the Amer-
indian tribes was essentially animistic and- their worship '
was that of animal and .human ancestors, with a somewhat
higher kind of polytheism prevailing in Mexico and Central
America.

As in primitive religion elsewhere, there was much
concern over the dead and their state in the other wdrld,
though according to E. V. Hopkins, the Pend d'Oreille
Indians have no word for soul and know nothing of a future
life. f Such assertions, however, are frequently based on
imperfect information. In general the soul is taken for
granted. Some tribes, such as the Algonquins and Iroquois,
believe in two -souls, while the Siouans have a "third soul,*'
which goes either to the sky-heaven or to the ice-bound
hell. Evidently many views might be collected from -
different parts of the continent, varying all the way from
sheer agnosticism to a joyous certainty. The dead were
exposed on trees or stagings, buried or burned. 1 Sometimes
both burial and cremation were used by the same tribe,
according to the rank of the deceased. The souls of the
dead were supposed to start out from the grave for a goal
which took four days to reach. There was a " snake-,
bridge" to be crossed, corresponding to the Chinvad
Bridge of ancient Persia, and this bridge was by some,
like the Hurons, supposed to be guarded by a dog. But
some coast-dwelling tribes preferred to think of souls as
going to their final .abode by boat. 2 For most tribes there
was a sky world, where life went on much as on earth, the

' 1 Cremation was, however, rare and in some places inhumation was
feared as hindering the passage of the dead to the world of spirits, ;

2 In some parts of the west the " western trail " was mapped . out very
definitely, with a long log to be crossed immediately before -arriving at- the"
world of the dead.

1 62 A HISTORT OF RELIGION .

Eskimo busy with his kayak and harpoon, the hunter busy
with bow and arrow in pursuit of ghostly bisons, and so
on. At a period which perhaps can hardly be considered
primitive, the other world became moralized, and the sky
world was reserved for the good, while the bad found their
^*own place " in a world of storm and snow. A lightning
flash was supposed to separate good fr6m bad on the way
towards their proper abodes. Some tribes held a belief
that there might be vouchsafed a return of the dead to
earth for a second chance. Mourning rites included the
usual self-mortifications, mutilations," dishevelling or cutting
of the hair, stripping off of garments, and the offering of
blood and property at the grave. By such rites the mourners
were supposed to light torches, corresponding to the
corpse-candles of the West, for the guidance of souls along
the pathway of spirits.

The shamans naturallydiffered in function andauthority
from ti4beHb^tnBe7 I^T~

.- h unless we de"cTde~tKat~

the sEamans were an ujiorj^^
eh-widrf^

" merely

menT in othersjhehad a certain .^^
Ainong^he~Algon quins they formed -an-h'efeditary order,
confined to a single family. In general the description
holds good that the shaman possessed a sevenfold function,
curative, preventive, .inquisitive, malefic, operative, pre-
stidigative and prophetic. In any case his talents ran the
complete gamut, from the lowest kind of trickery, including
the use of hypnotic power, to a genuine healing skill, often
through the employment of vegetable remedies. Great
importance was attached to dreams, induced visions, and
the interpretation of the same. Some shamans, particularly
the women of the profession, worked mainly through
trances and waking visions; some by the use of a familiar
spirit; still others by taking the form of some animal,
often a bear.

. The mythology of the Amerindians, in part due to the
working of a poetical imagination, in part to indulgence in
a species of aetiological guessVork, in its .interpretation of

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 163

cosmic phenomena shows certain general features. The
deluge myth is found almost everywhere, and usually the
world is recovered from the waste of waters by the mission
of some animal, such as a crayfish or a musk-rat. The
universe was sometimes conceived of as a many-storeyed
structure and sometimes as modelled after the tipi, with a
flat earth, a tent-like heaven, and a door towards the east.
The relations of sun and moon and stars were patterned on
those of the family, and it was common to talk of Father
Sun and Mother Moon, with the Morning Star as the
child, though sometimes Sun and Moon are thought of as
brother and. sister. 1 Sometimes, too, the sun was depicted
as "the old man of the dawn," almost a personal deity.
The idea of the Thunder-bird is also a common element of
Amerindian mythology, with the Plumed Serpent in the
south along the Mexican border. Almost everywhere we
have the conception of the Trickster Helper, who may be
the demiurgic Raven of the western coast, the Coyote of
the western plains, the Great Hare of the Algonquins, or
the Rabbit (cf. the Brer Rabbit stories) of the Cherokees
and others. Many myths treat of the origin of death, some'
of them with a pathetically beautiful spirit of acquiescence.
Thus in the far north two .old women are represented as
debating whether they should choose both light and death
rather than neither light nor death, and they accept the
former alternative. Among the Blackfeet an old man and
an old woman argue the same high theme, with the result
that the ojd man refers the decision to the throwing of a
buffalo chip into the water to sink or swim. But the old
woman turns the chip into a stone, remarking, "Unless
we die we shall not pity one another." So, once again,
on the Pacific coast, Coyote persuades men to accept death
rather than access to the fount of eternal youth, declaring,
"Joy at birth and grief at dead* is better." '

Religious practices are naturally varied, but embrace
certain typical rites or usages such as the following: the
Dance, Prayer, Fasting, the Sweat-bath, the Smoke, and
Sacrifice.

and'l? Thte^Com ^ ^ relation ex P ressed as Father Sun, Mother Earth

1 64 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Dancing, which is universal, has in all probability several
objects. It is a means of auto-intoxication such as induces
religious ecstasy or arouses physical courage before battle.
Occasionally, perhaps, it is a mere effort at " showing off."
It is often, however, a species of imitative magic, used,
together with self-torture, for the purpose of keeping the
sun in its course or stimulating the growth of the crops.
Sometimes, with the actors masked, and accompanied with
song, the dance imitated the actions of animals and
brightened the prospects of a projected hunt. The Algon-
quins had their tribal dances for planting and harvesting,
for the declaration of war, the making of peace, for the
restoration of health and for honouring the dead. In
California there were victory dances over a fallen foe, and
adolescence dances for girls and boys. In Arizona and
New Mexico the Snake and Antelope fraternities have their
remarkable rites for the bringing of rain. And among the
Zuni the impressive Hako or Holy Rites "of the Corn-
maiden have been found worthy of imitation by Dr. William
Norman Guthrie in the Church of St. Mark's in the Bowerie, .
'New York. 1

Prayer, too, is wellnigh universally used, including the
silent meditation of some of the tribes in certain moods,
the crude petitions for maferial favours from the gods,
such as the Huron prayer: " Spirit of this place, we give
thee tobacco; so help us, save us from the enemy, bring
us wealth, bring us back safely," and the more spiritual
supplications of Navajos and Pawnees.

Fasting also has a great variety of aims. Sometimes it
is a simple purgation, the result of taking an emetic (the
" black drink "), for the cure of physical ills. Sometimes
it is a discipline to make possible the dreaming of vivid and
inspired dreams. " To be able to fast long," said the
Algpnquins, "is an enviable distinction." This is an idea
confirmed (to take an illustration from another continent)
by the Zulu proverb: "The continually stuffed body
cannot see secret things." It is possible also that fasting
was believed to assist the attainment of ecstasy, and even

1 William Norman Guthrie, Offices of Mystical Religion, 1927.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 165

that it was apotropaic in preventing evil spirits from
entering the body. * ~

The Sweat-bath was closely associated with fasting as
a means of warding off evil influences. It cured sickness,
assisted ecstasy,' and expelled demons. It is .remarkable
that the use of the sweat-house extends all the way from
Canada, except among the Eskimo, southward. The
Mexicans, like the Mayas and Incas, resorted to bleeding
instead.

Smoking is a characteristically Amerindian rite. The
pipe was regarded as a kind of portable altar and smoking
a kind of -sacrifice, offered to heaven and earth, and to the
gods of the four quarters, with the four ceremonial puffs
to the north, south, east and west. It was also a rain charm,
an inducer of trance, an invitation (as among the Blackfeet)
to spirits, a means of establishing friendship with spirits
(as with men), and also a method of propitiating the ghosts
of 'animals slain in the chase. For this last reason the
hunter filled the mouth of the slain bear with smoke and
begged the .beast to harbour no grudge against the slayer.

Sacrifice proper had a wide range both of purpose and
also in .the material offered. It was the offering of food
to .the spirits, the presentation of a friendly gift, an act of
propitiation, or an act of imitative magic to stimulate the
food supply. All sorts of things .were offered, from veget-
ables to dogs and other animals, and from these to human
beings, though human sacrifices were more in vogue in
the highly developed systems of Mexico than in the religions
we more properly entitle primitive.

But before speaking of the special form taken by religion
in Mexico under the Aztecs, it is well to mention a few
stray facts as to the characteristics of more northerly cultural
areas to which so far we have had no occasion to allude.
Most northerly of all we have the Eskimos, or (to use the
term preferred by themselves) the Innuits, that is, men.
Though divided into several ethnical groups, religiously
they are much on the same -level. Bancroft speaks of the
Eskimo religion as " vague fear, finding its expression in
witchcraft." Spirits inhabit all things, inanimate as well
as animate. Some acknowledge a kind of deity called

1 66 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Tornassuk, who rules over the tornat^ or helping spirits,
but it is hard to think of Tornassuk as a " high god."
The spirit of the food supply is the goddess Sedna (at least
among the central Eskimo). She causes storms and controls
the supply .of seals, which are considered as her " fingers,"
amputated by the act of her father. There are also rock
spirits and hill spirits and, of course, the spirits of the
dead, who are apt to be exceedingly wrathful when offended.
Death itself is a bad spirit who robs men of their souls.
Mgn are believed to have several souls, but after the dead
are buried not much attention is devoted to them by way
of mourning rites. The medium between man and the
spirits is the witch-doctor, or angiakok^ generally a man,
but sometimes of the other sex. Women are sometimes
employed to go from house to house stabbing the demons
who may be in possession, after the manner of the Taoist
priests in China. The angiakok is used to discover any
who have broken tabus and so provoked the wrath of the
spirits. 'The discovery is often made by induced visions.
Along the Pacific coast and southward to the four sub-
culture areas of California, religion, while the same in its
main features as that already described, tends to .become
more communal, with more. numerous and more elaborate
ceremonies. Its shamanism centres, as usual, in the
phenomena of disease and death, but its festivities include
not only the post-victory tribal dances and initiation rites,
but also such specialized rites as those of the first salmon
and the jimson-weed. The dead are either buried or
cremated and the mourning rites are restricted to one day
until the annual tribal commemoration comes round. The
mourners cut off their hair, burn the hut of the deceased,
together with such valuables as he may have left behind,
including his shell-money and his baskets. The name of
the deceased is henceforth avoided, and drops out of the
language, a significant fact in trying to understand the
differentiation of tribal dialects v Some of the dead are
supposed to go above and some below, while some are
believed to cross the ocean to the west. Occasionally,
however, they return in the form of animals.

One of the highest developments of primitive religion in

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 167

North America is to be' found among the Algonquins, who
include the Blackfeet of the west, the Cree-Ojibways of the
middle west, 'and the so-called Wabanaki or "easterners."
They are now mostly Christianized, but the early shamanism
shows plainly through the adopted faith. Many spirits
were recognized, both benevolent and malignant. One of
them was the rather clownish Kuloskap (Glooscap), who
has been sometimes described as a Supreme Being. Together
with Kuloskap is that spirit's evil genius Malsum, the wolf.
As the mythology is generally given, a certain missionary
colouring is more or less obvious. Kuloskap is really (as
Dr. J. D. Prince describes him) " a supernatural Indian
and the father of all the conjurors." To the old Algonquin
the other world was either above the firmament or in
the bowels of the earth where a company of gigantic,
immortal animals their own totem animals lived in
beatitude.

South of the Algonquins and north of Mexico lived the
important group of tribes known as the Dene's, a group
of very varied culture, embracing the fierce Apaches of the
south, the timid Hares of the north, the industrious Navahos
and the lazy' Dog-ribs and Slaves. These tribes are all
primitively shamanistic and zoptheistic. The powers of
Nature all originally spoke and fought amongst one another,
and kindly spirits still communicate with men in dreams
as animals, becoming from that moment personal totems.
The thunder-bird idea is strongly heldj the idea of a spirit
who causes lightning by the winking of his eyes and thunder
with the flapping of his wings. The tricky creator-hero
appears in some myths, and there is also a flood story
(possibly derived from the missionaries 1 ), in which the
earth is ultimately reconstructed by the efforts of a musk-rat
and a beaver. The dead are never buried but exposed on
a platform or hidden in hollow trees. The other world is
underground and is watered by a river in which the shades
catch fish for their subsistence. If any do not receive the
proper funeral rites, they are compelled to feed on mice

1 Dr. Boas thinks that some Old World themes got into Amerindian
mythology through the early Spanish missionaries. But the deluge story is
rather too general to be accounted for in this way.

1 68 -A BISTORT OF RELIGION

and vermin, while the more fortunate dance away their days '
upon the grass. .

In all that has been said so far there will be observed .
a certain resemblance, not only of the religion of one
American tribe as compared with any other,' but also with
the primitive religions of the continent of Asia.. That
evidence .exists of development towards the higher types
of religion I should be the last to deny, and, indeed, it is
plain that an immense distance separates the shamanism
of the Eskimos from that of the Iroqubis and the Algon-
quins. There is also the fact that out of the religion of the
peoples we have described developed the organized faiths
of the highly sophisticated civilizations of pre-Spanish
America, that of Aztecs and Mayas and Incas. Of this,
however, we shall treat in a later chapter, in .dealing with
the religious systems of the dead empires.

To complete the present chapter it remains only to
sketch briefly the primitive religion of South America.
Dr. Kroeber divides this continental area into four cultural
fields, namely, Columbia, or Ghibcha ; Andean, or Peru-
vian; the tropical forest land of the Orineco, Amazon and
La Plata drainages ; and Patagonia. It is somewhat
difficult, of course, to get back with any certainty to primitive
conditions in these regions, since some districts made great
cultural advances beyond their neighbours, and since the
original Indian population has been in many, places largely
intermingled with the Spanish and other European invaders
and, later, as in Brazil, with imported negroes. In some
parts, as in Uruguay, the Indians have practically dis-
appeared; in Bolivia they form from 60 to 70 per cent, of
the population ; Ecuador is 50 per cent. Indian ; and' the
population of Paraguay is mainly Indian. Comparing one
part with another, and reserving reference to those organized
religions which accompanied the advance of the Incas to
empire in the centuries preceding the Spanish conquest,
it is possible to make a general conspectus. By way of
summary it may be said that the furthest advance was
made by tribes in the north and centre, while least progress
was made by the Patagonians in the south. The general
average of culture. among the savage peoples was in early

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 169

times not greatly superior to that of the Australians and
Papuans, with almost entire absence of the forms of worship
or with the worship of beings who can hardly be considered
as having the nature of gods. A rather low form of animism
was the general rule, with stress on the worship of ghosts,
who were usually considered hostile. The dead were .
believed to reincarnate themselves as animals, jaguars,
snakes, hawks, and so on. Or they went to the land of
the " lathers " in the sky, where warriors were supposed
to give evidence of their continued existence in the fall
of shooting-stars or in fighting within the thunder-clouds.
There was also a naturistic worship showing itself in
reverence paid to the moon and stellar bodies. Tupan, " the
god of the eastern Tupi," was really a thunder-god, whose
voice was simulated in the magic. rattle. Dances, some of
them masked, were performed in the case of initiation
.ceremonies, at funeral rites, or in the establishment of a new
settlement. -

In Guiana, and other parts of the north and north-west,
the dead were buried in the house, which was then deserted,
while the possessions of the deceased, his hammock and
other necessities, were interred with him. Sometimes a
slave was strangled and buried at the same time with his
master. In the Andean region, in the Tiahuanaco period,
prior to the rise of the Incas, there does not seem to have
been any sun-worship, but there was a rain- and thunder-god
(that is, a fertility god), called Firacocha, to whom great
honour was paid. There were also moon- and sea-gods,
,and clan gods generally in animal form. The dead were
frequently mummified and made into tightly corded packs,
with the needed utensils and adornments included in the
bundle.

The Araucanians, who held up the advance of the
.terrible Incas and also, for a couple of centuries, resisted
the conquering Spaniards, illustrate much the same kind
of culture. Here we find tribes with a social organization
based on totemism, without temples, but with a ritual which
laid great stress^on clan totems and the ancestors. There
were also puberty rites, the latter being accompanied with
human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism.

170 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

The Patagonians, who called themselves Aoniken, or
Patak-aoniken (corrupted by Magellan, into Pafagoman),
consist of some much diminished tribes who have in part
become intermingled with the Araucanians and Puelches.
Information as to their religion is neither extensive nor
exact, but they recognized a number of family tutelary,
spirits, with whom communication was established through
the shaman, and, according to some, two or three powers
of a higher sort of whom one was a good spirit,. El-lal^ a
kind of creator-god, but. in all probability a culture-hero,
who taught the use of fire and the bow. There was also
an evil wind-demon, Maipe, and another, the dreaded
Keron-kenken, who was wont to devour new-born children,
drinking the tears'of the disconsolate mothers. The tribal
groups identify themselves with the ostrich, puma, guanaco,
and so on, and old tales^ tell of wars of totem against totem,
possibly only an echo of intrusions upon tribal hunting-,
grounds. The shamans were (and are) much sought after
for healing disease" and extracting evil spirits. As sorcerers
they seek to expel the malefic spirit with loud- din and
shouting and ferocious pursuit. There seems to be a belief
in transmigration, but while one spirit of the dead is thought
to traverse a mysterious ocean, a secondary spirit is believed
to prowl around the former habitation. The dead are
buried in. a squatting position', with food and utensils. After
a year the bones are exhumed and painted red, before being
restored to the grave. Persons who die away from home
are generally cremated.

It is hard to say how much or how little all these beliefs
affected the religion of the Incas, or how much of the
religion of the Incas really developed earlier ideas. But
we can at least discern in the later beliefs a number of
things which belong to primitive religion the world over.
These include the annual ritual renewing of the fire, the
seasonal dances, communion with the dead and the gods
in the sacred drink, the idea of the dead being led across
a hair-fine bridge by a black dog, the carrying of mummies
into battle as fetishes, the setting up of temple posts on the
bodies of men sacrificially slain, and the use of many forms
of divination, such as haruspicy, augury, games of odd and

PRIMITIVE RELIGION IN THE AMERICAS 171

even, little heaps of maize, and many others which will be
recognized as common in widely separated lands.

Our conclusion is that, whether or not the original
settlers from North-eastern Asia were subsequently rein-
forced or not- from across tile. Atlantic or the Pacific, the
religion they all alike professed and practised was that we
have already described as prevailing in the settlements of
the older world. 1

1 On the general subject of this chapter see the Encyclopedia of Religion
and Ethics, passim ; Hartley Burr Alexander, The Mythology of North America,
Boston/ 1916 ; the same author's The 'Mythology of Latin America, Boston,
1920 ; Clark Wissler, North American Indians of the Plains, New York, 1912 ;
and the same author's The American Indian, New York, 1917. -

CHAPTER XII
The Primitive Religion of the Kelts

A SURVEY of the primitive religion of the Kelts,
however brief, should afford a good introduction
to the study of the religions of Europe prior to
the rise of Christianity. The Keltic waves passed over
territories which had been occupied by still- earlier popula-
tions and probably absorbed from these a considerable
amount. Yet the indigenous elements of* pre-Keltic religion
probably made no essential difference to later beliefs and
practices, and we may confidently see among the Kelts the
religion of the older branches of the Indo-European family,
little changed by the influx of a new religion. This is
particularly true of Ireland, where no Roman conquest
occurred to "overlay or destroy the earlier culture. Thanks
to this fact, Ireland has, even through her superstitions,
render-ed service to those who desire to get back to a near
view of her most ancient faith.

As to the earliest populations of the west of Europe we
are almost entirely in the dark and at any rate have no
recorded history. Irish legend speaks of several pre-Keltic
invasions following the Flood, of which the third was that
of the Fir-bolg, possibly a Mediterranean people similar to
the Basques of Spain. These were conquered in due course
by a race known as the Tuatha De Danann, or People of
the Goddess Danu, generally supposed to be the legendary
deities of the Kelts themselves. Following on these came
the Children of M//, or Milesians, who are to be identified
with the first Irish Kelts.

The main Keltic wave seems to have begun its westward
march about 2000 B.C. Oh the way certain branches
turned aside from the main body and formed pockets in
southern lands. One such entered Asia Minor where,
some centuries B.C., it formed the people known as Galatians,

172

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE KELTS 173

to whom St. Paul wrote an Epistle. Other branches affected
the history of Greece and Italy. Gaul was probably reached
about 800. B.C., Spain three centuries later, and Britain and
Ireland a century or so still later. The final result was a
group of Keltic tribes in the west of Europe, distinguished
in the matter of language as Erse (in Ireland), Gaelic (in
North Britain), Cymric (in South Britain), and . Brezonec
(in Brittany). -

- A good deal of the religion brought to these lands by
the Kelts probably differed but slightly from that which
they found on their arrival. That is, it .was animistic,
involving the worship of many powers which were but
vaguely personalized, recognized both in the world of
nature and in the world of the dead. It is likely that many
of the spirits worshipped and feared were the ghosts of the
dead, who were supposed to haunt the mounds and barrows
made by the former population of the land. These barrows,
known as sid (cf. Latin, sedes^ seats) were supposedly
inhabited by aes strike, who were to the Irish Kelts what the
" Rephaim " were to the Hebrew invaders of Palestine.
It was quite natural that in course of time these should, by
a use of hypochoristic language, diminish to the fairies,
brownies, and " good people," whose presence had become
familiar, though it was' not wise to name them rashly.

Many of the " high " gods of Ireland* (to confine
ourselves for the most part to the mythology of the western
island) were the result of euhemerization, though it is
scarcely possible how to separate with any certainty the
divinities due to the personification of natural phenomena
from those due to the blurred memory of ancient kings
and heroes. Probably not a few of the gods were the
result of a merging process in which both spirit worship
and nature worship played an equal, part. Such, no doubt,
were the Tuatha De Danann of whom we have spoken,
" tribes^of the goddess Danu," who herself may have been
a sky divinity. In any- case, even at a late date, there was
close association between gods and kings, since the kings
preserved in themselves a certain divine power which had
tb.be protected by all kinds of tabus, called geasa, and
which had to be transmitted safely from one generation to

174 4 H-ISTORT OF RELIGION

another. Indeed, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish
between the mana of a king and the " soul " which had to be
hidden for security in some sacred tree. The slaying of a
king and the cutting down of a tree might have the same
magical end in passing on the sacred vigour to a successor
or to the solar orb. "

All this makes it exceedingly difficult to say where
euhemerism ends or w&ere naturism begins. Was Dagda
just a thunder-god, or was he, as the " clever " god, the
reminiscence of some long-dead chief? How far, again,
was Manannan, the three-legged, god, lord of the Isle of
Man, a mere legendary hero, or a solar myth, reminding us
of the three-legged crow of old Japan ? We know- not,
again, how far-Ler (the Llyr of the Welsh and the origin
of the place-name Leicester) was a god of the sea, or how
far he was some really human Lear. Nor do we know,
once again, whether Lug, from whom is derived the name of
some sixteen places called Lugdunum (cf. Lyons and Leyden\
was a sun-god, or whether in Lug, of the Long -Arm, son
of Cian, lord of many arts, sleep-strain, wail-strain, and
laughter-strain, we are to recognize the hero of some ancient
saga. -

While we are mentioning these " high " gods, we must
not omit some others of importance. For instance, there
was the Cumhal of the Irish, who is to be identified with
the Camulos of the British, evidently a sky-god (cf.' HimmeT),
Another is the Brigantia of the British, who is identical with
the Brigindu Danu, mother of the gods, lady of fertility,
goddess of poetry, and who survives under the Christianized
name of St. Brigit. Then we have the Nuada of the Irish,
who is the Lud of the British, from whom we derive such
place-names as London and Ludgate. There are, again,
Bran the Blessed, whom we shall mention again later in
connection with the Isles of the Blessed; Taranis, the
Keltic thunder-god, who gave his name to Tara; and so
on, right into the circle of heroes who gathered- around the
Table of Arthur. In addition to these are any number of
nature divinities, from those of sun and moon (in early
days more important than the sun) to those of mountains^
rivers, springs and wells. Some things later on gained

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE KELTS 175

a Christian significance, as, for instance, the Holy Grail,
originally that " divine cauldron from which none goes
unsatisfied and which restores the dead, the enchanted cup
in tales of Fionn which heals or gives whatever taste is
desired to him who drinks from it, and which is sometimes
the object of-a quest." 1

Fertility goddesses were common throughout the Keltic
field and especially " the mothers," worshipped by the
women, and represented with fruit in their laps or with
cornucopias. The " matres " were usually three in number
and in certain parts of Europe were subsequently confused
with " the three Marys." As a counterpoise, the men
worshipped war-deities like Camulos, Teutates, Albiorix
and Caturix.

Animal gods, top, were strongly in evidence, including'
Epona, the horse-goddess, a fertility god, the swine-god,
Moccus, the bull-god, Torvus, the stag-god, the bear-god,
the horned-serpent god, and others. Bird divinities were
common, generally associated with the spirits of the dead.
But some were thunder-birds and fire-birds. Even the
robin and the wren fall into this category, and the doggerel
rhyme of the Wren-boys, with its " .Though he's so little,
his family's great," is connected with old. superstitions of
this sort. Many trees, also, were reverenced, the ash and
the yew especially in Ireland, and the oak in Britain. . The
cutting down of a ' tree for the purpose of burning was
a piece of imitative magic, to stimulate magically the heat
of the sun. The cutting of the mistletoe (a parasite still
regarded as bringing good fortune) from the oak with
a golden sickle, as described (somewhat vaguely) by Pliny,
was for the purpose of taking " the soul of the tree," before
felling its protective host. In addition, there was a cult
of weapons, such as the sword and the hammer. Indeed,
Keltic countries were territories where almost anything
might be a god or the habitation of a god.

Whether the worship of animal deities indicates
totemism, or merely the propitiatory reverence of animals
hunted or .reared, we do not know for certain, but some
tribes .took their name from the red deer, the beaver and

1 John A. MacCulloch, Celtic Mytfiology, p. 203.

176 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

other animals. Such names, moreover, as Brannogenos'(son
of the raven), and Artigenos (son of the bear), suggest at
least a totemistic tendency. The great name of Arthur
itself has been derived from the word for bear (cf. Gk.,
artos), though some etymologists have ventured the opinion
that it is rather from the early Aryan root ar, to plough. In
favour of the totemic theory we may mention that exogamy
and the .tracing of descent matrilineally were common in
Ireland and that certain totemic animals were forbidden as
food, or only eaten sacramentally. We may also note the
use of animal . figures as military badges and the British
custom of tattooing animal figures on the body.

The Keltic priesthood had great importance and prestige,
whether considered as sacrificial priests, as bards, or as
diviners. Of the so-called Druids various opinions have
been entertained. There is not even certainty as to the
meaning of the term, since, while some derive the word
from the Greek drus, an 'oak, and adduce the Welsh derw
(cf. Derry) as confirmation, others explain it as dru-vid, the
very wise. Undoubtedly much of the lore once ascribed
to the Druid, partly on the authority of Caesar, is now
generally discredited. > The theory that the Druids built
the megalithic monuments, of which Stonehenge is the
best surviving example, is likewise recognized as an
invention of the seventeenth century. In extant literature
they appear only sporadically from 52,8.0. to A.D. 385,
and this literature includes Cae'sar's De Bello Gallico, where
we have the references to human sacrifices and the doctrine
of transmigration; Cicero's De Divinatione, as to certain
Druidical forms surviving in Gaul ; Diodorus Siculus, again
on the subject of transmigration; Pliny's Natural History ',
on the cutting of the mistletoe and the sacrifice of white"
bulls; Tacitus, on the destruction of the Druids; and
scattered references in Strabo, Ammianus Marcellinus,
Suetonius, and Pomponius Mela. As. to whether Druidism
was an essential feature of Keltic religion opinion varies.
Many believe the Druids to have been an earlier priesthood
absorbed by the Keltic conquerors, while Mr. Kendrick
holds that they originated with the Keltic priests in Gaul
about the fourth century B.C., and that in Britain they

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE KELTS 177

represented the grafting on of a Kelticized institution upon
an autochthonous element. 1

Keltic worship was carried on in sacred groves rather
than in temples, but temples were not unknown and often
in their architecture simulated the grove. Idols were not
common and were often nothing but roughly carved tree
trunks. The festivals were in the main those of a pastoral
rather than of an agricultural people, though marking the
four quarters of the year but not the solstices and the
equinoxes. The year began, in Ireland, with the great
feast of Samhain on November i (our All Saints' Day).
This, was the day of beginnings, the day for, moving the
flocks to winter quarters, and also the times for the
" assemblies." These assemblies were marked by the
ritual drinkings, which correspond to the soma-drinking
in India and the ." mead-circling " in Teutonic countries.
Triennially they were the occasions for equalizing the solar
and the lunar year, since in the course of three years eleven .
extra days would be accumulated for the assembly. -There
are still conventions held triennially out of obedience to
this ancient habit. The next great feast was St. Brigifs
Day, February i, but of this we have but the slightest
knowledge. The greatest of all was Beltane, on May i,
when the flocks returned to pasture. Dr. Macalister says
that the morning of May-day was " one of those critical
moments of the year when supernatural events might be
expected to happen." Then on August i, came Lugnasad,
the solar festival, sacred to Lug, when magical rites were
used to supply vigour to the orb of day, when the harvest
was begun and when horse-racing (dear ever since to the
Irish heart), lustration, and the performance of the deasil,
were the vogue. 2

The practical religion of the Kelts included most of
the observances already noted as common everywhere in
primitive life. There was divination of many sorts, including
the interpretation of cloud movements, the behaviour of
flame and smoke in the sacrifices, the cry and flight of
birds, -signs noted in the entrails of sacrificial victims, and -

1 See T. D. Kendrick, The Druids, passim.
See R. A. S. Macalister, Tara, passim.

178 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the manner in which the victims, animal or human, fell
and died. The chewing of acorns by the diviners was .a
favourite method of obtaining the gift of prophecy, and
oracles of various sorts were given through the leaves and
other parts of the oak. The mystic ceremony of " saving
the soul " of the oak by removing the mistletoe has already -
been noted. The gift of prophecy was a special prerogative
of the priestesses, who seem to have been highly reverenced
as seers. Sacrifices of all sorts were offered to the gods,
including the heads of foes slain in battle. Some human
sacrifices were offered to the manes of the dead ; others
seem to have been fertility rites designed to ensure an
abundant harvest. Among the latter was the burning of
human beings (as well as animals) in a great hollow effigy
made of branches and reeds. This horrid sacrifice was to
utilize and preserve the powers liberated by death for service
in the spiritual world. Much the same idea was involved
in the sacrifice of an ox or goat, whose skin was immediately
worn by the sacrificer to obtain the mana of the victim.
Tabus, known in Ireland as geasa, were common, and
generally imposed for the protection of the king's life.
Many geasa were restrictions voluntarily accepted to tide
over a dangerous moment. There was a characteristically
Keltic use of fasting as a tabu directed 'against an enemy.
" If B," says Dr. Macalister, " allows A to starve to death,
the ghost of A will haunt B continually." Illustrations of
this belief will be recalled in the hunger-strikes employed
as a weapon in Ireland in quite recent years.

A very important part of Keltic religion concerned
itself with the world of the dead, that orbis alius of which
such frequent mention is made in the sagas. This other
world was situated in different places according to the
geographical and intellectual standpoint of the various
branches of the Keltic family. For some it was simply an
. underground abode where the dead enjoyed a bodily
immortality resembling in most respects their terrestrial
estate. Hence the burial mounds were hot only places
where the dead were interred, together with the necessities
of life, even to wives, slaves, horses and implements, but
were also spots haunted by the disembodied spirits. So

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE KELTS 179

a mystic atmosphere prevailed productive of all kinds of
superstition. For it was well understood that the dead
could and did return, sometimes in wraith-like simulacra
of the former body and sometimes in the shape of an animal
or bird. The doctrine of transmigration was deeply rooted,
as Julius Caesar himself reported. An interesting illustration
is afforded by the tale of Tuan MacCarell, who was in one
life a deer, in another a wild boar, then a sea-eagle, after
this a salmon, which being eaten by the wife of Carell, was
reincarnated in her " son. Even within the bounds of a
single life transmigration could be effected, hence the
singular transmigration combats which form so characteristic
an element in Keltic literature.

Others believed the abode of the dead to be beneath
the waves, possibly an echo of some great catastrophe in
the sinking of a coastline or the engulfing of a group of
villages. A very general belief was that in the Isles of the
Blest beyond the western seas. 1 It was that Paradise of
which Claiidian wrote:

There soft movements are heard of shades that uncertainly hover,
Moaning and sighing in sadness ; there too the peasant sees ever
Beings with faces so pale, figures of those who have gone hence,

or like that Isle of Avallion, tempest-free, to which Arthur
was borne to be healed of his grievous wound. The Bretons
spoke of the Isle of Tevennic and the Bay of Souls, to
which the dead pass from Cape Race. The settlers at the
mouth of the Rhine, says Procopius, saw the dead depart
from the Isle of Brittia. And very numerous are the Irish
references to that Isle of Bresail (whence comes the name
of Brazil), of which we read in the half-Christianized sagas .
of the Voyage of Bran the Blest, or in the Adventures of
Cormac MacAirt. It is one of the great Irish tales which
tells how Bran heard from a woman of wondrous beauty
the story of the Blessed Isles, fifty in number, beyond the
western horizon, and how he sailed on till he was met by
the ^sea-king, Manannan MacLer, who guided the weary
mariners unto the desired haven. When Bran at length

1 See S. A. Coblentz, The Answer of the Ages, chap. xiv.

i8o A HISTORY OF RELIGION

returned to Ireland, generations had been born which
remembered him not.

In all these legends of an Elysium beyond the waves
there is naturally a family likeness. It is a land of unfading
beauty, with nothing rough or harsh, where the flowers
bloom perennially and birds sing celestial melodies, where
divine women minister to the newly immortal the food and
drink of gods, and where the dead may be visible' or not
at will. To the Irish especially this Tir nan Og is a living
reality,- as real as the brownies and other fairy-folk who
linger around the mounds and forts of their beloved land.

The .end of Keltic paganism is supposed to have come
with the preaching of St. Patrick, but it is by no means
certain that some features of that paganism have not sur-
vived in the story of the saint himself. As for St. Brigit,
she is but the old Brigindu, the British Brigantia, rebaptized,
as already noted. One need not go far to find other survivals
just as significant. Even the influence of the priesthood
in the Ireland of to-day reflects the authority of the Druids
who in ancient times had so much to do with the election
of chiefs and kings. In other parts of the Keltic world
Druidism was harshly treated by the Romans and died
before the advance of Christianity. Yet even in these
regions much of the old religion surrendered outwardly
to the new only to survive in thin disguise. 1

1 See Douglas Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland, chap. xiii.

CHAPTER XIII
The Primitive Religion of the Teutons

A~ we might expect, . the border line between the
religion of the Kelts and that of. the Teutons is
difficult sometimes to see and always easy to pass
without suspecting it. We have to keep in mind throughout
the common descent of these two branches of the Indo-
European family. Even the name Teuton has been derived
from that of a Keltic war-god, Teutates. In the second
place, we have to remember the extent to which both
religions, and not least that of the Teutons, have been
coloured by the Christianity which superseded them. It
is for this reason that such myths as that of Odin's hanging
for nine days over Niflheim and that of " the Twilight of
the Gods " must remain suspect as to their purely pagan
origin. A third consideration enters into the discussion
when we reflect upon the fact that, just as Greek mythology
modified almost to transformation that of the Romans, so
the Roman mythology did much to transform the religious
ideas of the countries subjugated by the Empire. The
result is that we cannot wholly trust the equation of Teutonic
with Roman divinities which was made by the conquerors,
or even the equation of the terms used in designating the
days of the week.

Once again, we have to give weight to the very .con-
siderable variation in mythology and religious practice
which existed in different parts of the Teutonic world, even
though all the regions may present a generally well-defined
and similar type. In the early history of Europe the
Teutons are represented by such well-marked movements
of men as are suggested by the terms Visigoth, Ostrogoth,
Vandal, Burgundian, Alaman, Bavarian, Frank, Longbeard,
and English. Eventually these settled down in the terri-
tories now known as Germany, Scandinavia, Iceland, and

181

182 A- HISTORT OF RELIGION

England. From these territories smaller groups went forth
as Angles and Saxons from the shores of the Baltic, to take
possession of South Britain, and others in like manner to
found new states or empires. But for the purpose of this
chapter we shall limit our analysis of the Teutonic stock by
thinking of it only under the three heads of Scandinavian
(inclusive of Norse, Swedish and Danish), Germanic and
English Teutons. Up to the time of the seventh century
most of the tribes forming these divisions were barbarous
and savage, and many centuries had to elapse before it
could be said that their conversion (even nominally) had
been actually achieved. For though the evangelization of
the Teutons began as early as the fourth century with the
preaching of Ulfilas to the Goths, paganism was not yet
overthrown among some tribes of the stock, until after the
eleventh.

For our knowledge of the primitive Teutonic religion
the sources are rather scanty. In the first place we have
some outside information, as it might be considered, such
as the Germania of Tacitus, written about A.D. 98, the
Lives of the Saints, like the story of St. Boniface, and a few
hints in the Baptismal Formularies. In the second place,
we have information from the more truly native literature,
such as the sagas, and particularly the poetical and prose
Eddas, though these latter, in their present form, come to
us from a time well into the Christian period.

From all sources, taken together, we get the impression
of a " crude cult with a crude belief," and yet one which is
not without gleams of poetic fancy and philosophic .dis-
cernment. The Teutonic gods form a fairly complete
pantheon, though it is by no means easy to assign to each
its proper importance in different parts of the Teutonic
world. Most of the deities are nature gods, but here and
there distinct hints of euhemeristic influence may be
detected. Caesar has described the Germanic tribes as
worshipping .the three great divinities of Sun, Moon arid
Fire, but it is hard to equate these with the chief gods of
the Teutonic pantheon. The moon, of course, was widely
reverenced, on account of its supposed influence on the
vegetation. The sun, also, " moon's bright sister " (for

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 183

the sun was regarded as feminine), was worshipped because
of its importance in connection with agriculture. In the
native literature, however, many divinities are more strongly
personalized than the sun and moon.

In general, we may divide the spiritual beings reverenced
into several classes. There were, first of all, the Aesir, with
which we may probably compare the Indian "strong ones,"
the Asuras. These included Odin, his son Thor, Balder,
Vali, Vithair, Vili and Vi. Then, in the second class, there
were the Vanir, who included Njorthr (the Gothic Nerthus), ,
here regarded as masculine, and his children, Freyr and
Frejya. These were under the overlordship of Odin. The
third class was that of the Jotunsj a monstrous brood of
giants frost giants and cliff giants who, as in the case of
Freyr and Gerd, are supposed to have intermarried with the
gods. One of these giants was Thrymr, the adventurer
who stole the hammer of Thor. Some of these divinities
are represented as theriomorphic, such as the Midgards-
worm and the Fenriswblf, or even the Grendel who figures
in the great poem of Beowulf. The dragon, too, or serpent,
appears now and then, as in the story of Fafnir, guardian
of treasure, and in the myth of the two serpents, Ofnir and
Svafnir, into whose form Odin was sometimes changed.
Many animals, too, are associated with. the gods, without
being regarded as divine. Such are the raven and wolf
associated with Odin, the boar and cat with Freyja, the
horse and boar with Freyr, and the goat with Thor. Then,
again, there were dwarfs, as, for example, the Miming who
becomes the famous Wayland^ the .Smith, in Anglo-Saxon
mythology. To these must be added the Alfar, or Elves
.(A.-S., T/fe) y who dwelt in Alfheim, the realm of Freyr.
Voluhd, or Wayland, was the prince of Alfar, though
whether we are to regard the elves as the souls of the dead,
as dream people, as a~ reminiscence of extinct races, or as
nature gods of lesser dignity, we cannot tell. Of a more
abstract character are the Norns, or Fates (the Weird Sisters
of Macbeth\ and the Valkyries, " choosers of the slain,"
who rode forth to the battlefields to seize the dead. One
strange figure, a little apart from the rest, is Loki, a son of
the giants, the evil one, the foe of the gods, " the ender."

-i 84 A-HISTORT OF RELIGION

He is represented also as the blood-brother of Odin and
may have been originally a fire-god, possibly a deity of the
subterranean fires. After the death of Balder Loki was
bound in Hell and the poison of serpents made to drip over
his face. But Sigyn, his wife, held a shell to receive the
venom so that only when she turned aside to empty the
vessel did the poison reach him. The story of Loki's
breaking loose before " the Twilight of the Gods " possibly
owes something to Christian influence.

Of the great gods, Odin (Wuotan, Woden), seems to
have been originally the chief, . at least in. Scandinavia. In
Germany he was known as Woden, from wode, the wind,
and was pictured as the frenzied rider on the grey eight-
legged steed, Sleipnir,- the very spirit of the storm. Later,
as in the parallel case of the Vedic Indra, he passed from
the role of a storm-god to that of a war-god, and as such
became Val-fadir, the god of the slain. As the god of the
dead Odin was the psychopomp, or leader of the spirits
to the underworld, Valhalla, " the hall of the slain." He
was reputed to be well versed in runes, a skill gathered from
his nine days' hanging over Niflheim on " the wind-stirred
tree," and he was also reverenced as the divine physician.
As the husband of Freyja (Frigg) Odin had added prestige
in the north and received in sacrificial tribute offerings of
horses and men. In the south his cult was not so prominent,
as may be gathered from the use of the term Mittwoch for
the fourth day of the week instead of Wo dens-tag. It will
be remembered that the worship of Odin was suppressed
among the Saxons by Charlemagne with particular severity.

The influence lost to Odin became. the heritage of Thor,
who in course of time became the national god of the north
and was highly reverenced elsewhere, in Germany under
the name of Donar, and in Saxon England as Thtinor. It
seems probable that the supremacy of Thor came about
as the result of a rebellion against the more aristocratic
followers of Odin. In consequence the Thing met on
Thors-day instead of O dins-day. In all cases the name,
with which we may compare the Keltic Taranis, denotes
the thunder-god, to whom the oak was especially sacred.
We have in this the explanation of the fact that the Romans

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 185

identified Thor with Jupiter and that the famous oak of
Geismar (cut down by St. Boniface) was called " robur
Jovis." Thor was visualized as a huge, red-haired, red-
bearded giant, drawn in a car by the two he-goats, Tooth-
gnasher and Tooth-gritter, and bearing with him his
terrible hammer. This latter suggests his connection with
a fertility cult, especially as we find that Thor was the
" king " of the May-pole festival. Yet this need not
prevent us from thinking of the hammer as having originally
been the thunder-bolt. Thor was the last of the old
Scandinavian deities to acknowledge the victory of the
" White Christ."

Tiu, whose name (otherwise written as Tyr, Ziu, or
Tyu) suggests the Indian Dyaus and the Greek Zeus, was
evidently an, old sky-god, whose power waned before the
vigour of a younger generation. Yet it is Tyu who lost
his right hand in the great contest with the Fenriswolf and
succeeded in binding the monster with the fetter Gleipnir,
made out of six non-existent things. Possibly he is to be
identified with Nuada, the sky-god- of the Keltic peoples.
At "the Twilight of the Gods" Tiu fought the Hel-dog
Gar and each slew v the other.

Of Freyr (or Frey) and Freyja, respectively the son
and daughter of Njord, there are many interesting myths.
Freyr was a fertility-god, to whom the wild boar was
sacred and the ceremonial bringing in of the boar's head
at Christmas in England, and the making of Yule-cakes
in the shape of a boar in Sweden are to be regarded as
reminiscences of the old boar sacrifice. Frey was also the
possessor of the famous magic barque, Skidbladnir,
"swiftest and best of ships." The sister of Freyr was
Freyja, the "lady" (cf.frati) queen of the fertility rites,_ the
Norse Venus, whose necklace is the dawn, the rainbow, and
the sunset in the sea. Freyja,

thin-robed, about her ankles slim
The grey cats pkying,

is a symbol of the fecundity of nature and her day (Friday)
was a favourite day for marriages till the custom was
repressed out of Christian reverence for the death-day of

1 86 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Jesus. The cat, with its " nine lives," still recalls the gift
of the nine worlds to Freyja by Odin. 1

Other divinities include Njord, whose sister-wife was
probably the Nerthus of Tacitus, " the mother of the
gods," whose image was carried for a bathing ceremony
by slaves who were subsequently drowned;. Balder, " the
beautiful, the fairest of the gods," a solar or year god,
whose death through the treason of his half-brother, Hodr,
caused all Nature to mourn till he was recovered from the
abode of Hela a deity referred to but seldom, yet familiar
to all through Matthew Arnold's 'beautiful poem, The Death
of Balder\ and Heimdall, the foe of Loki, the- Teutonic
Izrafil, announcer of the judgement; guardian of the bridge
of the dead, deity of light and of the beginnings.

It should be added that, in addition to the above-
mentioned, many things were worshipped as supposedly
the residence of divinity. Thus there -was Ran, the sea,
Mimir, the spring where Odin pledged his eye, and other
springs, trees and even . weapons of war, so dear to the
heart of the viking. -Some hills were sacred to Odin, as
to the lord of the dead, and some to Thor. Some were
regarded as personifications of the giants who were believed
to inhabit their hollows. Not only groves but single trees
were held to be sacred and in springs near by human
sacrifices were sometimes offered by drowning the victims.
Sometimes a sapling was split to allow a sickly child to
be passed through it, in the belief that healing would ensue.

Wood-spirits of wild and shaggy mien, with meeting
eyebrows, were known as Schrat (whence OUT -Old Scratcfi).
So sacred were trees that the man who wished to fell one
must first do obeisance, with bended knees and folded
hands, just as the Japanese artists pay reverence to the
cherry-trees they use for their wood-blocks. Water-spirits
were as numerous as wood-spirits, and these, too, as at
Upsala, were honoured with human sacrifices. One of
them was the German Nix, the Old Norse Nykr (whence
our Old Nick}, dangerous to children. It is when we
realize .the thoroughness with which Norse paganism peopled
the world of Nature that we can understand the query of.

1 See M. Oldfield Howey, The Cat4n the Mysteries of Religion and Magic.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 187

the old tenth century Penitential: " Hast thou gone to any
place other than the church to pray to fountains, stones,
trees, or cross-roads ... or sought there the welfare of
body or soul?" In this connection we must not omit
mention of the Landsvaetter, or tutelary spirits, related to
the land as the Fylgja to the people, and against which the
figure-heads on the ships were designed to be protective.

The cosmogony of Teutonic religion is shown in its
most highly systematized form in the Eddas, though our
hint as to the. possibility of Christian influence must not
be overlooked. First, we have the impressive conception
of Ginnunga-gap, "the yawning chasm," north of which
was Niflheim, the land of snow and ice, and to the south
Muspellheim, the land of warmth and light. Here life was
quickened and took form as the giant Ymir, who may be
regarded as the equivalent of the Indian Purusha and the
Chinese P'an-ku. From the melting frost came the world-
cow, whose licking of the ice produced Buri and Borr and
Borr's three "sons, Odin, Vili and Vi. Then came the
slaying of Ymir and the creation of the visible world from
his blood and bones, and teeth and hair and flesh. Hence-
forth we have the triple world, consisting of Midgard,the
earth, a vast disc on the ocean, around which lay coiled,
like a gleaming girdle, the Midgardsworm ; secondly,
Utgard, or Jotunheim, the world of the giants, beyond the
ocean ; and thirdly, at the summit of a mountain, Asgard,
the abode of the Aesir. Resting on this, and overarching
all, was Heaven, and between Heaven and Earth the
rainbow bridge, Bifrost, over which the gods ride to keep
tryst at Urda's well. In Asgard is Valhalla, the palace of
Odin, where the high gods feast with the victorious dead.
In the Foluspa, and elsewhere, we have reference to "the
nine worlds," as follows: Asgard, Vanaheim, Alfheim,
Midgard, Jotunheim, Muspellheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim,
and another of uncertain name and significance. Through
all these nine worlds grows the great ash-tree, Yggdrasil,
over Urda's or Mimir's well, the well of fate, with its three
roots fixed in earth and hell and the world of the frost-
giants. In the branches of Yggdrasil dwell the eagle,
hawk and squirrel, while four harts feed on the topmost

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

twigs and the Nidhog gnaws at it from below. It is possible
that in these various mythological features we may catch
gleams of ancient rites performed in the forest sanctuaries
of which the very memory has otherwise passed away.
Myths of a world-tree, of course, are common everywhere,
reflected in nursery tales like Jack and the Beanstalk as
well as in the sublimest of apocalyptic visions. In the case
of Yggdrasil, however, Christian writers discovered a too
tempting opportunity to find the shadow of the Cross. One
other piece of Teutonic mythology already mentioned has,
at least in equal degree, been affected by later Christian
ideas. This is the story of Ragnorok, " the Doom of the
Gods." The Eddas describe this terrible catastrophe as the
breaking-up of ' laws, the universal wreck of the world
involving the revolt of Loki, the death of Balder, and the
ending of life through the advent of an awful winter, like
that described in the Avesta as coming upon mankind in"
the days of Yima. Not only the death of mankind but also
the death of the gods was the fruit of the disaster; yet out
of the ruin emerges a new world and the final stanzas of
the Foluspa depict the return of Balder at peace with his
blind brother, and

A hill I see brighter than the sun,
. O'erlaid with gold, on Gimle stands ;
There dwell for ever the righteous hosts,
Enjoying delights eternally.

The world of the dead is less consistently envisaged,
though some of the confusion may be due to the contacts
with other systems of belief, both earlier and later. There
was a general faith in the survival of the soul, which was
conceived of as a Fylgja, or "follower," or " co-walker,"
that is, a kind of doppelganger of the body. Souls could
apparently return in the form of animals and could also
pass into the bodies of animals as wer-wolves, that is,
man-wolves, and the like. The world of the dead was
known as Hel (with many variants), conveying the general
idea of a " hollow " world. The queen of the dead, the
Teutonic Persephone, was known by the same name, or as
Hela. It is often quite difficult to. tell whether the goddess

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 189

or the place is intended. Hel is deep in the earth and
enclosed on every side, guarded also by the dog Garm,
" best of hounds," and the rust-red cock who gives warning
of the approach of souls by crowing. The approach is by
the Helveg,. or Hell-way, and a bridge which must be
identified with the brig-o-dread of the Yorkshire ballad.
Men were buried with shoes known as hel-shoes, so that
to quote the Lyke Wake ballad when they came to
Whinnymuir, they might not arrive " wi' shoonless feet."

Apparently Hel was the abode intended mainly for the
common folk who died what was called ." a straw death."
The souls of the warriors went to Valhalla, where they
fought all day and were renewed at night, feasting after the
fray on boar's flesh which replenished itself miraculously,
and quaffing huge quantities of intoxicating mead.

Nevertheless, v in spite of Hel and Valhalla, the dead
were also believed to reside in the barrow-mounds where
their bodies were laid to rest. Here they might be
approached for necromantic purposes in order to.-. furnish,
information such as only the dead could give. Here, too,
spells might be woven for the laying of an unquiet ghost,
since " a barrow wight" could be dangerously troublesome
to the living. It was in any case dangerous to have too
much to do with the dead and their dwellings; therefore
great care had to be exercised to avoid the lure of female
spirits and to observe the proper tabus in case of the offer
of food or drink.

The rites of Teutonic worship were not in essentials
different from those of the Keltic communities. In the
Norse lands especially there was general belief in magic and
particularly in the spells or runes which, coloured with blood,
were carried on all kinds of objects from swordhilts and
drinking horns to mythological ideas such as. the teeth of
Odin's horse, Sleipnir. Magic songs and cursing-spells
were also known and used with entire conviction: Witches
and wizards were supposed to be able to go .forth from the
body and as night riders speed forth on staff" or broomstick
to their nocturnal assemblies. Divination was extensively
used and in Germany took form in the casting of lots and
deductions from combats, dreams, smoke, the flow of blood,

190 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the flight of birds, and the neighing of white horses. There
was also abundant use of imitative magic, much of which
was for the purpose of obtaining fire or increasing the power
of the sun and moon. In the case of the latter we have the
witness of the old Saxon prayer, 1 Vince^ luna^ uttered at the
time of eclipse. To assist the sun fire-wheels were rolled
down the hills and bonfires lighted. A fire ritual was also
performed to establish a claim to land, in carrying the
fire around the plot, or shooting fire over it. Need-fires,
kindled by friction, were also lighted to drive the cattle
through them as a rite of purgation and other consecrated
fires were used to heal diseases.

The temples, as with the Kelts, were generally groves,
but there are also instances of temples constructed of wood
or stone and of these as containing idols. So far as Saxon
England is concerned, we may recall the letter of Gregory,
the Great to St. Augustine requesting him to destroy the
idols but to leave the temples standing, and also the story
of the conversion of Coifi after the preaching of Paulinus
in Ndrthumbria. As to the use of groves, reference has
already been made to the cutting down by Boniface of the
oak of Geismar. Confusion is sometimes caused by the
carrying over of the term grove to a constructed temple
built upon a site once occupied by a sacred tree. Grove
or temple, the -Teutonic sanctuary was esteemed so sacred
that, among the Semnones, no one was allowed to enter
except in chains to mark his humility in the presence of
divinity.

The priests were originally guardians of the groves, but
had many functions. While not generally so powerful as
their Keltic co-professionals, the Teutonic priests had
considerable authority in politics, especially in connection
with the choice of the chiefs. There were priestesses, to'o,
and a high priestess was often very influential, as in the case
of Velleda (" the prophetess "). Tacitus speaks in his
Germania of the large number of women with prophetic
power. Priests were also sacrificers and the importance of
the horse-sacrifice gave point to their influence, as we may
gather from the story of St. Boniface and again from that

1 See the " Indiculus Superstitionum," Ency, Rel. and Eth., I. 466.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 191

of the conversion of the Norsemen. In Anglo-Saxon
England the influence of the priests was only indirect and
moderate. They were not allowed ordinarily to bear arms
and were forbidden to ride except on mares.

The chief -festivals of Teutonic religion were the Mid-
summer feast on June 24, the Autumn feast on November
10 (afterwards Martinmas), the Winter Solstice, December
25 (and on till Twelfth Night\ and May-day, or Waty'urgis^
on May I. Most of these had close connection with
imitative magic, and were solar in character. The festival
at the Winter Solstice (our Christmas Day) had to do both
with the revival of the sun, as may be inferred from the use
of the Yule log, and also withlthe dead. During the twelve
days after Christmas the dead were supposed to ride forth
with Odin. In this connection the eve of the feast was
sometimes known as Mothers* Night and involved a kind
of ghost ceremony a circumstance which perhaps accounts
for the fact that ghost-tales are still popular in the Christmas
stories.

Taking it all in all, as we have seen, there was in
Teutonic religion plenty of cruelty and superstition, to
show the need of a milder and more merciful as well as of
a purer and juster creed. But there were also elements of
nobility, of virility and honesty, of chivalry towards woman-
hood and of honour among men, which promised well for
the race when more adequate ideas of God should dawn
upon the Teutonic world and blossom in more spiritual
realization of the significance of life. 1 -

1 On the general subject of this chapter see the following : E.R.E., XII.
246-58 ; J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology (Eng. trans.), London, 1880-88 ;
P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons (Eng. trans,), Boston,
1902; E. E. Kellett, The Religion of our Northern. Ancestors, London, 1914;
P. B. du Chaillu/TTze Viking Age, 2 vols., London, 1889 ; J. A. MacCulloch,
Eddie Mythology, Boston, 1930.

CHAPTER XIV
The Religion of the Primitive Slavs

A "\HE present chapter must be a short one, not because
I of any lack of literature on the subject, but because
JL when the material of this literature has been con-
scientiously sifted it is found that we really know much
less about ancient Slavic religion than men imagined they
knew in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even the greater
part of the nineteenth centuries.

The peoples, commonly designated . as Slavic occupy
almost the entire region of Eastern Europe, from the Baltic
and the Elbe in the west and north to the Adriatic and the
Black Sea in the south and eastward to Kiev and Novgorod.
They may conveniently be divided into the Baltic, or West,
Slavs, who include the Letts, Lithuanians and Prussians,
and the True Slavs, who include the Russians, Czechs,
Poles, Wends, Slovaks and Serbians. Both of these
divisions belong to the one linguistic family and have a
very close -affinity with the earliest of the Aryan-speaking
stock. Yet with all that they have in common there are
many differences observable and special care is necessary
to distinguish between Baltic Slavs and South Slavs.

Given the comparatively recent date at which all the
Slavic tribes separated from the parent stem and the com-
paratively limited range of their migrations since, it would
appear on the surface that the task of ascertaining and
describing their primitive religion should be an easy one,
especially since these tribes were the longest to remain
pagan of all European peoples. In the south it is true that
the conversion of the Slavs commenced as early as^the sixth
century, but the South Slavs generally were not evangelized
till the end of the ninth century, the Russians not till the
end of the tenth, and some of the tribes along the Baltic
not till a still later date. Unfortunately, however, we have

192

RELIGION OF THE PRIMITIVE SLAVS 193

little in the way of available tradition and although Christian
writers were not always averse to giving us certain informa-
tion of an historical character they seem to have been
deliberately unenlightening with respect to the paganism
they sought to eradicate. A considerable body of informa-
tion has, of course, survived through the medium of
folk-lore and language, and archaeological research has
revealed something more. Yet in general we must with
some humility admit that our success in unveiling the past
of Slavonic religion has not been conspicuous.

The main difficulties in the way are, naturally, precisely
those we encountered in dealing witlrthe religion of the Kelts
and the Teutons. On the one hand it is exceedingly difficult
to separate what is natively Slavic from what has entered into
Slavic beliefs and customs from contact with the Teutons,
contact which -was at once intimate and long continued.
And, on the other hand, it i-s particularly, hard to penetrate
beneath the veneering of Christian tradition to the genuinely
old conceptions which Christianity was supposed to displace.
It is plain that in a considerable number of instances old
Slavic divinities have been transformed into Christian saints
or -the histories of Christian saints have been read back into
the legends of pagan deities. As an illustration, we have
the popular confusion of the thunder-god, Perun, with
Elijah (St. Ilya) who called down fire from heaven upon
his -foes. A still more complete confusion has been made
between the god Svantovit, a deity of the Elbe Slavs, and
St. Vitus. There was also the general disposition to identify
the god Volos with St. Blasius. Even the keeping of the
midsummer festival of Ivan Kupald, among the Letts,
.shows an inextricable jumble of ideas about St. John the
Baptist and pagan fertility gods. The Virgin Mary herself
is in many places confused with the pagan figure of '* the
Mother of Cattle."

Probably we get nearest to the primitive Slavic religion
wlien we go back beyond the names of the greater gods to
the recognition of nature spirits and the spirits of the dead,
as in the other systems we have considered. Among all
the Slavic tribes the most generally accepted belief is that
in the tutelary spirit known as dedu^ or grandfather, de'duika

1 94'' A DISTORT OF RELIGION

domovoy, "grandfather house-lord," and other names of
like import. He is conceived of as an old man with bushy
hair and body covered with fur, a mere thurhbkin in size,
whose proper place was behind the oven or under it. When
the family moves its members are supposed to take the
domovoy with them. In certain districts the dedu is a
hobgoblin much like the Teutonic schrat^ and by the Slovaks
and others called by that name. Elsewhere he is a kind
of house serpent or genius loci, a kind of luck-guarder.
But almost everywhere the dedu has a malicious and
demoniac side and may -be exceedingly troublesome or even
dangerous to unwary sleepers.

There were hosts of other spirits. Some were known asr
Vili, or Wili (cf. peri, fairy), spirits of the dead and yet
doomed themselves to death should they lose a single hair."
The Rusalken also were spirits of the dead and potentially
hostile. Souls of unbaptized infants were called -Navky,
Navy, Mavky, Navji, etc. They were liable to entice the
wanderers on moonlight nights and bring about their death
by -drowning, leading them astray into deep waters. If
anyone heard them singing it was the part of wisdom to
exclaim: " I baptize thee in the name of the Father and- of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost," in which case the spirits
would turn into the Rusalky, or water-nymphs. " It might
seem that this baptizing for the dead was scarcely worth
the trouble, since the water-nymphs played upon travellers
much the same tricks themselves. Besides these, the
Russians had sylvan . spirits called Lesiy, .whom one
encountering could only escape by turning his clothes
inside out and putting the left-hand shoe on the right-hand
foot. There were also wild women and (more rarely) wild,
men, field-spirits, and "a special kind of water-spirit known
as Vodyanik, to whom a horse smeared with honey was
sacrificed. There were, once again, gnomes known as
Barz-dukai, or bearded men, living under the earth and
generally benevolent. The Fates were much worshipped
under such various names as Rozanice, in Russia, Narucniei
(destinies) in Bulgaria, and in the north Udelnicy, or
" dispensers " (of fate). They were supposed, like the
Norns, to spin, measure out, and cut off the thread of life.

RELIGION OF THE PRIMITIVE SLAVS 195

Beyond these very vaguely personalized beings, the ancient
Slavs worshipped the Sun, reverenced by the use of the
endearing diminutive suJmce, the Moon, believed to be
the residence of the spirits of the dead, and likewise wor-
shipped with a term of endearment, " dear moon," and the
stars, which were closely linked with the destinies of
individual men. Fire was also held in great reverence and
was deified as Ugnis, or Ogni. The gods, properly so
called, are not very well defined, and even of those we
know most about the functions are by no means dear.
The. word for the gods is bogu, from the Iranian baga, and
the Sanskrit bhaga (from the. root bhaj, to shine). The
discarding of the old pagan deities has given us our word
bogy, with such derivatives as bug and humbug.

The best known of the gods to us is Perun, or Perkunas,
though the latest authorities do not regard him as so
important as did earlier writers. He does not seem to have
been worshipped by Baltic and Southern Slavs alike,
though it is reported that, the ancient . Prussians prayed
during a thunderstorm, " O Perkunas, pass us by." The
name Perun, doubtfully equated with the Vedic Parjanya,
the rain-cloud, signifies " the beater," or " the striker."
He was evidently a thunder-god or a lightning-god, wor-
shipped especially in ancient times in the neighbourhood
of Kiev and Novgorod. Some recent authorities regard
him as having been borrowed from the conception of the
Teutonic Thor. It will be remembered that Vladimir
celebrated his baptism into the Christian faith by having
the image of Perun dragged ignominiously, attached to
a horse's tail, to the river. Yet in certain districts sacrifices
were offered to Perun as late as the seventeenth century.

Other gods mentioned here and there include Veyopatis
(cf. the Vedic Vayu-pati), lord of the wind, turned into a
"mother-god" by the Letts, who entitle her Veya-mate;
Svarog (cf. the Skt., svarga^ heaven), probably a sky-god
or a fire-god (Hephaistos), and Svarozic (son of Svarog),
one of the common : terms of endearment; Svantovit,
identified with St. Vitus, a chief god of the Elbe Slavs who
sacrificed to him a white horse and derived omens from the
sacrifice; Veles, or Volos, a god of flocks, identified with

196 % A HISTORY OF RELIGION

St. Blasius, who was a shepherd and a martyr of Caesarea
in Cappadocia; the Lithuanian Sauli-le, or Little Sun,
probably the Vedic Surya, to whom the peasants^at the
solstice cried, Ligo, ligo, O sun! (Swing, swing, O sun), with
Waving torches a piece of imitative magic similar to the
swing-ceremonies of other lands; another solar god,
worshipped by the pagan Russians, Dazbog, "the giving
god"; Stribog, a god of another sort, lord of frost and
cold; the three-headed god, Triglav, perhaps only a local
form, in Stettin, of Svantovit, worshipped with the dedica-
tion of a black horse and used for divination ; and Cernobog,
the Black God, personification of the forces of 1 evil and
perhaps influenced by Christian ideas. 'A more obviously
imported divinity is the Trojan, who is really a reminiscence
of the Emperor Trajan, conqueror of the Dacians in
A.D. 101-2, to whom divine honours were paid.

Temples for worship were not common and the idols
in most places, as in" Russia, were placed in the open air,
preferably on the slope of hills. The sacrifices, which were
of animals, grains and food, were generally offered by the
princes and householders. Only among the Elbe Slavs
was there a highly developed priesthood. Divination was
in common use, by all the usual methods, including a special
kind of fortune-telling by means of cakes.

The chief feasts were the quarterly' dziadys, which
corresponded approximately with the equinoxes and the
solstices. These festivals were both a commemoration of
the ancestors and connected, through imitative magic, with
the agricultural processes of the year. The Whitsuntide
festivities, known as Rusalye (cf. the Greek rousalia\ are
probably of foreign origin. At this feast a doll, called the
Rusalka, is thrown into the water and ceremonially drowned,
as an offering to the spirits of the dead. In some particulars
the ceremony reminds us of the familiar pre-Paschal rite of
" driving out the death."

Everywhere, among the Slavs the belief existed in the
soul, its power and its survival after death. In leaving the
body it might take form as a bird, bat, or butterfly. The
desertion of the body might take place at any time, as,
for instance, through thirst. At death its escape was aided

RELIGION OF THE PRIMITIVE SLA7S 197

by the opening of a door or window, for the soul that was
thwarted in its desires might prove troublesome to the
survivors. The souls of sorcerers could not leave in the
ordinary way, so that a board in the roof was generally
loosened for their accommodation. Most souls hovered
around the familiar neighbourhood for forty days and then
departed for the woods, or waters, or clouds. The common
desire was to get rid of them as speedily as possible, or at
any rate- to restrain them from haunting the old home.
For this reason the souls of suicides Were supposed to be
hindered from return by a stake .driven through the breast
of the deserted body. There was a widespread belief in
metempsychosis, and even in the ability of souls to take
animal form as wer-wolves, though horses, cows and other
animals might be similarly possessed. Some people were
specially predisposed to this habit of shape-shifting, and in
Lithuania the child born with teeth was regarded as .almost
a predestined Wer-wolf. It was also believed that a person
over whom fell an unclean, shadow, or one upon whom a
cat or dog jumped, was a potential vampire, whose body
would not corrupt in the grave, because sustained by the
power of the spirit to suck the life from other beings.

Burial and cremation were both used for the disposal
of the dead and sacrifices of slaves and women were often
made at the funeral ceremony. The world of the dead was
not clearly envisaged, but by many Veles or Volos (cf.
O.N., va/r), whose image, like that of Perun, the con-
verted Vladimir ordered to be thrown into the river, was
regarded as an actual god of the dead. Some customs
concerning the dead remind us of Persian usage, such as
the use of a dog to catch the expiring breath of the dying,
and the provision of a ladder to enable the spirit to climb
up from the confining grave. Other things, such as the
ship-like form of the coffin, seem to suggest the influence
of Scandinavia. Of the Slavic mythology, properly so
called, it is difficult to write clearly.. What Dr. Louis H.
Gray writes of "the pitifully scant remnants of what must
once have been a great mythology," in the case of the
Baltic Slavs, applies very generally to the whole family.
" Yet fragmentary as they are, they possess a distinctive

198 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

value. They help to explain the migrations .of important
divisions of our own Indo-European race . . . ; they cast
light upon and are themselves illuminated by, the myth-
ologies of far-off India and Iran; they reveal the wealth
of poetic imagery and fantasy inherent in the more primitive
strata of our race. . . . We may lament the paucity of the
extant Baltic myths ; yet let us not forget to be grateful and
thankful that even a few have survived." 1

1 See the chapter on Baltic Mythology by Louis H. Gray in Jan Machal's
Slavic Mythology, p. 330. The " Bibliography " at the end of Dr. Gray's volume
is the best guide possible to the literature of the subject. See also the " Index "
(sub voce Slavs) to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Other, useful
references will be The Slavs, by G. F. Maclear. in the series, The Conversion of
the West ; ".Slavic Religion " by Karl H. Meyer, in Carl Clemen's Religions
of the World ; and chapter ix. in E. V-. Hopkins' History of Religions."

BOOK III

THE STATE RELIGIONS OF ANTIQUITY

Introduction

IN the following chapters we pass from the religion of
the primitive peoples to the more highly organized
faiths of the world's first great Empires, excepting only
the religions of the Orient, which we shall have occasion
to deal with in a separate section.

Religion and government were always closely associated,
even in the tribal stage. It was inevitable that the authority
of rulership should find its sanctions in the will of the gods
and in their power to enforce that will in the obligations of
society. As, moreover, society advanced from the tribal
towards the national and thence towards the imperial, it
was certain that these sanctions would be pressed more
and more insistently and that the form of government
itself would be reflected in new conceptions of the divine
order and of the character of the gods. themselves. The
closer a secular government approximated to the idea of
a true empire, the nearer men must come to the conception
of God as one and supreme. The very conception of a
universe, as distinguished from a multiverse, or from the
thought of the world as chaos, must arise from experience
of a rule in which all differences of race and language and
nationality were obliterated under the comprehensive and
unchallenged authority of a single ruler. And, as a natural
consequence of this expanded conception of God, must
arise new ideas as to the largeness of human society, as
something inclusive and catholic, and new ideas as to the
range and significance of human life.

In this section we shall treat of six of these more or
less systematized forms of state religion, as follows :

I. The religion of the Euphrates V alley , from the days

199

200 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

of the Sumerian city states, on through the period of
Babylonian, Kassite, and Assyrian dominion, and down to
the fall of the neo-Babylonian dynasty in 539 B.C.

2. The religion of Egypt, from the beginning of the
dynastic history down to the time when the Nile Valley
came completely under the rule of the foreigner.

3. The religion of the Persians, from the founding of
the Achsemenian Empire by CVEUS down to the fall of the
Sasanids about A.D. 641.

4. The religion of the Greek communities, from the
first establishment of the Greek states till their absorption
into the Roman Empire.

5. The religion of Rome, from the. beginning of the
Roman kingdom down to the conversion of the Empire
under Constantine. .

To the above, for the sake of completeness, we shall
add:

6. The state religions of the Amerindian empires,
namely, those of the Aztecs in Mexico, the Mayas in
Guatemala, and the Incas in Peru.

CHAPTER XV
The Religion of the Euphrates Valley

WE need not be greatly concerned as to the relative
priority of the civilizations of the Euphrates
Valley and Egypt. So rapidly is the scroll of
history being unrolled backwards both in Mesopotamia and
in the Nile Valley that any decision we might make on the
question would be premature and open to speedy unsettle-
ment. If Egypt to date seems to have yielded the more
impressive evidence of the antiquity of civilization, it is
only fair to remember that climatic conditions in the Nile
Valley have been much more favourable for the preservation
of this material than those of the Euphrates, and that the
very materials on which the Sumerians inscribed . their
records were, under ordinary conditions, uncertain and
perishable.

In any case, it is hardly likely that the civilization of
these two districts was, in either instance, developed in loco,
unless it be that the hottest climates in the world were in
some past age within what we call " the zone of initiative."
The whole history of the Euphrates Valley, at least, has
shown a constant tendency to decline apart from continual
infiltrations of a more vigorous stock from the colder north.
These always found the more civilized people to the south
an easy prey and their, culture a desirable form of loot.
.Hence, apart altogether from archaeological evidence, it is
probable that a considerable part of the Sumerian civilization
was developed somewhere in Central Asia, before the
increasing aridity of that territory forced its occupants, to
the loss of their- " fighting edge," to find a -line of least
resistance in the direction of the tropical Tegion to the
south.

The matter is not irrelevant to our discussion of
Euphrates Valley religion, since it is evident that long

2OI

202 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

before the establishment of the Sumerian city states, the
inhabitants of the valley enjoyed a considerable culture,
including the art of writing in the cuneiform character and -
the religious ideas intermediate between those of a primitive
religion and those of an organized state cult.

. It may be well first of all to refer to some of these early
beliefs and practices, especially as they seem to have
remained more or less stable, however overlaid, in subse-
quent periods, and may be observed still cropping up
through all the more advanced conceptions of religion which
have been superimposed.

The general type was that of polydsemonism, with
spirits, good and bad, but mostly bad, on every hand, to
assist or thwart the desires of men. The evil spirits, who
were often invoked by use of the symbolic number seven,
were responsible for all sorts of disease and for death. To
gain relief from them, either by the use of spells or by
appeal to some power more divinely potent, it was necessary
first to know the name of the assailant. The idea of the
future life was not highly developed, but, as early as
3000 B.C., vases, arms and ornaments were laid with the -
corpse in the narrow trench which served as a grave. The
funeral cist, which at first was of brick, was superseded
later by the use of two large earthenware jars, and the
funeral furniture amplified to include knives, weights,
beads and arrows.. Food sacrifices were offered once a
month. The underworld was envisaged as a vast, dark
grave, " the house of darkness," where the profoundest
gloom reigned and the dead, "clad like birds in a garment
of feathers, had dust for food and mud for drink."

The worship of the earliest times consisted largely in
the use of sorcery and apotropaic magic.^ The exorcism
texts which have come down to us from the earliest times
afford an interesting study. An example is the Sumerian
" locust charm " (one of the oldest pieces of writing in
the world) which records the expulsion of locusts and
caterpillars from a certain piece of land by the breaking of
a jar, the muttering of a curse, and the cutting open of a
sacrifice. The fee for this particular operation was " one
tall palm-tree," Of omens we have copious examples in

RELIGION OF EUPHRATES PALLET 203

the tablets preserved in the British Museum. 1 In the
matter of divination there is ancient evidence of the use of
hepatoscopy, or divination by means of the liver of a sheep
the liver being (as earlier noted) a seat of the soul and
revealing clearly the attitude of the god towards the
proffered sacrifice; of lecanomancy, or the telling of fortunes
by the dropping of oil into a vessel of water; and of
oneiromancy, the ascertaining of the will of the gods by
dreams. Astrology, also, was in common use and star-gods
must have been recognized from very early times, as is
clear from the use of the star as an ideogram. Imitative
magic was general and there can be little doubt that the
observance of the seasonal feasts, for the purpose of
promoting the processes of nature, goes back to the remotest
-periods. Sacrifices, x both bloody and unbloody, were general,
the. former using as victims bullocks, sheep, goats, fish
and several kinds of birds, and the latter using bread, fruit,
wine and milk. We see also the beginning of such in-
stitutions as that of the sabbath, the; earliest shabitum being
a tabu day, at the full of the moon, when men ceased work
for superstitious reasons. There can be but small doubt
that religion of the usual sort was never displaced by
subsequent developments, and -that, moreover, it produced
a number of pseudo-sciences which long dominated the
Mesopotamian civilization.

To approach nearer to the religion of the region which
we may properly designate as a state cult it is necessary to
remind ourselves that from very early times people of
different racial origin occupied the lower part of the valley
of the Euphrates and. Tigris, which were at this time
streams pursuing their separate ways to the. Persian Gulf.-
In the most . southerly part were the Sumerians, a people
of Turanian stock, occupying such cities as Ur, Eridu,
Uruk, Nippur and Lagash, while further to the north were
the Semites, the so-called Akkadians, whose chief cities
were Babel, Sippar, Kish, Kutha and Akkad (or Agade).
The government was that of independent city-states
independent, butrfrequently at war with one another, though

1 See the British Museum Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities,
77 ff-

204 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

enjoying a common culture. This generalization will hold,
even though as early as 2700 B.C. Lugalzaggisi of Uruk
did succeed in uniting under one sway some of the smaller
city states. The government was so' closely connected
with religion that each city had a territorial god who was
the invisible ruler and a visible priest-king, or patesi, who
was believed .to be the son of the invisible god and of the
priestess who occupied the upper storey of the j:emple
tower, or zikkurat. The city^god was known to the
Sumerians as En, and in the Se^niticJongue as Bel (lord] or
M^k^ (king) of the city-state, though he had different
names in the different cities, as En-lil in JSfrppur, Marduk
at_Babylon, Shamash at Larsa, and so on. The god had his
female consort, so^that foF'every En there was a Nin and
for every Bel a Belit. The goddess was sometimes per-
.sonified by the high priestess who was regarded as " the
Bride of God," symbol of a humanity in fellowship with
the invisible. '

The city-god -or earth-god is generally found associ-
ated with two other high gods to form a divine triad. The
most ancient triad seems to have been that of Anu, Enlil
(the city-gocTof Nippur), and JEa. Arm was the suprerne
sky-god, worshipped especially at llroik, and associated
wmTa female counterpart, Antu. He reigned at the pole-
star where the universe was at eternal equipoise' and around
him circled the stars, the homes of the lesser gods. Ia.
was the god of the watery_w.aste, revered particularly at
Eridu, which long maintained its reputation for magic,
since a, was the lord of wisdom, the knower of all the
spells.

As time went, on, this triad, formed doubtless by the
association of father, mother and child in the human family,
was supplemented by others. One important triad was
that of Sin, Shamash and Ishtar. Sin was the moon-god,
who with his wife .Ningal represents one of the olcfest of
the Mesopotamian cults. Shamash, the sunj.god, is repre-
sented as the son of Sin, 'and was regarded as the gaduof
justice, the snpremejiidg-e of heascen. Jtehtar, in her earliest
form, was probably a fertility goddess, through whom the
earth renewed itself perioHicallypbut^Jatej^became identified

RELIGION OF EUPHRATES VALLET 205

with the planeJLYenus. Sometimes, in this triad, Ishtar is
replaced by Ramuian (or Adad), the Babylonian thunder-
god, the Rimmon of 2 Kings v. 18.

Other deities of the Sumero-Semitic mythology which
may here be mentioned include l\ajrduk, the city-god of
BajWlpn, who, on that .city becoming the. capital of an
empire, displaced his father Ea as a supreme divinity,
becoming conqueror of chaosand creator_of heaven _and
earth,; Nabu, the city-god" of Borsippa, who Became the
god of oracles, patron of writing and science; Ninib (as to
the pronunciation of whose name, we are uncertain), a
war-god, who as well as his wife Gula is accepted also
as a divinity of healing, a kind of Babylonian ^sculapius ;
and Nergal, the old Sumerian god of the underworld,
appealed to hy the necromancers. We may mention also
Tammuz, or Damuzi, the Sumero-Babylonian vegetation
god (corresponding with Osiris, Adonis, Balder, etc.),
who died annually to be lamented by the women (cf.
Ez. viii. 14) and was resuscitated bys the power of Ishtar.
It should also be mentioned that many divinities are
associated together under the name of Igigi and Annunaki,
the former na'me referring to the star-gods above the
horizon and the latter to those below. It must, of course,
be remembered that many of the old Sumerian gods, even
such as Tammuz, may have been euhemerized human
beings as well as personifications of the powers of Nature.

The temples of the region and time with which we are
dealing were many and some of them were magnificent.
We are fortunate in being able to supplement the extensive
information derived from archaeological exploration with
such accounts as are given in the famous Cylinders of Gudea^
the priest-king of Lagash about 2500 B.C. The description
of the dream through which Gudea was led to build the
great temple to Ningirsu, with the details respecting the
construction and the dedication, remind us of many subse-
quent instances of temple-building, from the building of
Solomon's temple at Jerusalem to that of Westminster
Abbey by Edward the Confessor. 1

The temple area consisted of a large rectangle, in which,

1 See L. W. King, A History of Sumer and Akkad, London, 1910.

206 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

at a point opposite to the entrance, was a curiously small
sanctuary, before which was probably placed the altar for
the sacrifices. Closely associated with the sanctuary was
reared the characteristic feature of the Sumerian temple,
'the artificial mountain, or zikkurat, a towering structure of
brick, generally of seven storeys, to represent the planetary
spheres, and coloured variously with glazes of blue, red
and black. We are reminded of " the City of God " in
the New Testament Apocalypse (xxi. 14) and its twelve
" foundations " or courses of different colours and all
manner of precious stpnes. Like "the Bride City" the
zikkurat was designed to be the meeting-place of the
divinity with the priestess, his spouse. No other was
privileged to pass the night in the sacred abode.

The priesthoods in ancient Babylonia must have been
exceedingly powerful. At the head of them was the king
himself (like Melchizedek, the king-priest- of Gen. xiv. 1 8),
proclaiming in his own person the divine right to rule.
Like Solomon at Jerusalem, we find Gudea officiating at the
dedication ceremonies of his temple to Ningirsu. Below
the king were the three large classes of priests, magicians,
soothsayers (an hereditary class) and musicians, or singers.
Priestesses also were endowed with much influence, from
the high-priestess who was the consort of the god down to
the three classes of hierodouloi, or temple prostitutes. These
were chosen by means of special omens. It will -be remem-
bered that the arts of reading and writing and the keeping
Up of the sciences (or pseudo-sciences) were almost entirely
in the hands of the priesthoods.

Great developments in the religion of the Euphrates
Valley came with the transformation of the Sumerian city-
states into an empire. One of the many ways in which
-Mesopotamia contrasts with Egypt is in the comparative
immunity enjoyed by the latter country from invasion by
a foreign foe. In the Euphrates Valley invasions were of
regular occurrence. One of the earliest of these was that
of Sargon of Agade, who about 2800 B.C., or according to
Nabonidus a thousand years earlier, attempted to make a
Semitic state in which the Sumerian cities should be parts
of a federated system. His efforts, however, and those of

' RELIGION OF -EUPHRATES PALLET 207

his successor Naramsin, seem to have had but a brief
success, and it was not till the time of the great Hammurabi,
about 2100 B.C., that the Semite attained the consummation
of his plan to consolidate the various elements of the
Empire, with Babylon as the capital.

The result of Hammurabi's victory over his neighbours
was of extraordinary significance from several points of
view. The world's- first real imperialism had been created,
something different in kind as well as in degree from any-
thing hitherto' attained in Egypt or in China. It was
something more than the achievement of a political con-
federation, for the federation now had a capital, and a real
master at its head. The consequences were politically,
culturally, commercially and religiously of vast and enduring
importance.

To confine ourselves to the religious aspects of the
transition from the Sumerian to the Babylonian system,
we may note first the theological developments. As there
was a head to the Empire so that must now be a head to
the pantheon. It was no longer satisfactory for each city
to have its own gods, even though these could be readily
equated with' those of other cities. The god of the capital
must be supreme, even as Babylon had become supreme
over her former rivals. Thus Mar-duk entered upon his
reign as victor over the ancient chaos and the creator of
heaven and earth, with his father Ea, of Eridu, and his
son Nabu, of Borsippa, placed in their proper relation to
one another. All the gods, moreover, who had lost prestige
with the declining power of their old shrines, might now
be admitted as members of an organized hierarchy of gods.
The systematization of the divine hierarchy is manifested
in all sorts of ways, including the ticketing of the several
deities with numbers, so that the designation of the moon*
god, Sin, became 30, and that of Shamash, the sun-god, 20.

Coincidently with the reorganization of the gods arose
the reorganization of the traditional mythology, in order
to ensure the awarding of the proper dignity of Marduk.
It is probably from this time that we get some degree
of cohesion in the stories which make up the substance of
the Gilgamesh Epic and other like sagas. At any rate it is

2o8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

in the atmosphere of Babylonia that we contemplate them
more intelligently than of yore.

There is, first of all, the Creation story, which begins
with telling of the primeval father, Apsu and Tiamat, the
personification of the watery chaos, which dwellers at the
head of the Persian Gulf saw as the primal source of the
land's life and of the civilization which had arisen upon it.
Together with their son, Mummu, these deities reigned
alone, and then sprang from them the gods. When Apsu
died Tiamat was remarried to Kingu, who receives from
his wife the tablets of destiny. So arose the war of the gods,
with uncertain result, till Marduk proclaimed to the
assembled deities his willingness to fight Tiamtt. The
story goes on to describe the arming of the divine hero and
his eventual combat and the victory over Kingu 'and his
evil allies. Splitting open the body of the monster Tiama't

frii- _i -.-.j.-^.^Q . ,J. --.-. J - - -- ' i.ii" ii ii i-

(cf. the thorn, or abyss, of Gen. i. 2), Marduk fashions from
one partthe heavens and from thejjther the, earth, following
up theUFst creative act with the creation of the various forms
of life, with man as the crqwning rftaulf-. It is interesting
to compare the old Babylonian myth with the spiritualized
Hebrew version of Gen. i. 12, 4, in which the fight
between Marduk and Tiamat is softened to ".moving,"
that is, " stirring " (not without struggle), of the Divine
Spirit over T'hom.

One of the greatest pieces of Babylonian literature, the
Gilgamesh Epic, has more than one aspect of religious
interest. We may pass over the story of the friendship of
Gilgamesh, a hero two-thirds divine and one-third human,
and Engidu, the story of the war with Khumbaba, and
other exploits. More interesting to us is the story of the
fashioning of Engidu by Aruru and of the passion of the
goddess Ishtar for Gilgamesh. We get interesting flashes
of older story in the description of the death of Tammuz
and of the descent of Ishtar herself into the underworld.
There is poetic beauty in the goddess' demand for admission
by the doorkeeper and of her stripping herself garment
by garment at the seven gates of hell. We are reminded
of the story of Balder when we hear of the cessation of love
on earth till the deity is restored to the upper air. Then

RELIGION OF EUPHRATES VALLEY 209

we have, the strange story of Engidu's sickness and death,
and the passing of our hero through the portals of the
western mountains that he may himself recover the means
of revival for his friend. The passing across the western
sea is graphically and grimly told, as is the meeting
with the immortalized ancestor, Ufr-napishtim, the hero of
the Babylonian Flood story. There is much pathos m~the
account given of the discovery of the plant of life, by which
old men become young, and of the snatching from him
of the plant by a serpent just when he is about to return.
Gilgamesh came back after a futile pilgrimage to the world
below and the poem ends, unsatisfactorily enough, with the
hero's resort to Nergal, the god of the dead, for the purpose
of gaining at least one glimpse of the dead Engidu. It is
a sad picture we get at the last of the condition of the dead,
with the one moral drawn as to the importance of attending
to the burial rites of those who pass hence from our sight.
Yet beyond the sadness we have, for the first time in
literature, the revelation of that Promethean spirit which
persists in demanding the fulfilment of a spiritual vision.

As for the Flood story, it is natural to make a comparison
between it and the Hebrew accounts in the two separate
documents of Genesis. We note such likenesses as the
building of the ark, the gathering together of the seeds of
life, the landing upon the mountain, and the sacrifice. We
note such differences as the briefer time assigned to the
flood in the Babylonian story and the addition of the swallow
to the raven and the dove sent out from the ship. But
beyond this, we note the distinctly purposeless nature of
the catastrophe in the older narrative as against the moral
atmosphere prominent in Genesis, as well as the polytheism
which gives us a picture of distracted deities howling like
dogs to their kennel or crying aloud like a woman in travail.
The spirituality of the Genesis account, while not complete,
shows great advance on the attitude of the old Babylonian
poet. 1

Some other pieces of Babylonian literature should be
mentioned for their religious significance. " For example,
the fragment of Adapa myth (by some supposed to show

1 See Sir J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the O.T., London, 1901, I. 104 ff.
O

A H1STORT OF RELIGION

affinity with the Genesis story of Adam 1 ) seems intended
to explain why man $id not become immortal like the gods.
Called upon to explain damage inflicted upon the west
wind, Adapa, warned by his father Ea, mistakenly declined
the food and drink of life offered by Anu. In the story
of Etana, again, we find the hero mounting to heaven on
the eagle to obtain the plant of life, and when almost on
the verge of success, falling back, out of misgiving and
fear, earthwards. In all these myths -we have flashes of
insight which betray the germs of a higher religion awaiting
the proper season to exhibit their -maturity.

The creation of the Babylonian empire gave not merely
a systematized theology and a systematized mythology but
also a systematized ethics. It is probable, of course, that
the famous Code of Hammurabi, set up in the market-place
of Babylon, reflects in many respects the custom laws of
earlier times, and even the existence of older Codes, such
as that of Urkagina. But, in formulating, promulgating
and enforcing uniform regulations which operated even in
the case of agents travelling in distant lands, a notable
service was rendered by Hammurabi to the cause of world
ethics.

There is no need to claim for the Code virtues which
were beyond the possibilities of the place and period.
There were many inequalities due to the division of men
into the three classes of nobles, freemen and serfs. There
were many .barbarities tolerated due to inadequate con-
ception of the aim of punishment and to rigid application
of the lex talionis. Death was inflicted for many offences,
including the casting of spells upon others, the sheltering
of runaway slaves, the pursuit of brigandage, defaulting
from military service, selling drink at a tavern for too high
a price, and so on. Slavery had its own inevitable injustices,
including the ear-marking of a slave who accepted a lifelong
servitude. There was no such thing as international
morality, but, on the other hand, there was a place for
woman in the business world and proper protection for her

1 The m of Adam is, as a labial, etymologically equivalent to the p of
Adapa. For the story see A. T. Clay, A Hebrew Deluge Story in Cuneiform
New Haven, 1922, 39 ff. . .

RELIGION OF EUPHRATES VALLEY 2 1 1

rights. There were many laws some of them excellent
dealing with property and the cultivation of land, inheritance,
divorce, wages, the carrying on of agencies, and the like.
While there was little of the transcendental about these
laws, and little even of the specifically religious, it was
clearly indicated that all law was divinely derived, transmitted
by Shamash, the god of justice, to the king. 1

We may infer even more than what is suggested above
from literature outside the Code. We have, -for instance,
proverbs which reflect ethical ideals, as follows :

Upon a glad heart oil is poured out of which no one knows.
. When thou seest the gains of the fear of God, exalt God and bless the king.

Or such a passage as this from A Moralist? Counsel:

Thou shalt not slander speak what is pure ?
Thou shalt not speak evil speak kindly !

* *

Daily approach thy God,

With offering and prayer as an excellent incense ! 2
Before thy God come with a pure heart,
. For that is proper toward the deity !

Or, yet once again, the following Interrogative Code^ from
an old ritual:

Has he estranged father from son ?
Has he estranged son from father ?

. *

Has he not released a prisoner, has he not loosened the bound one ?
Has he not permitted the prisoner to see the light ?

Has he for " No " said " Yes," for " Yes " said " No " ?
Has he used false weights ?

Was his mouth frank, but his heart false ?

Was it " Yes " with his mouth, but " No " with his heart ?

This, together with the testimony of the Babylonian Psalms
of Penitence^ affords evidence that Babylonian ethics were
by no means low. The sense of sin was definitely present
and prayers for forgiveness often reached a high standard
of spirituality.

1 See R. F. Harper, The Code of Hammurabi, Chicago, 1904.

2 Cf. Ps. cxli. 2.

212 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Meanwhile the Babylonians were losing vigour, as the
Sumeriahs had done before them, and new peoples were
triumphantly moving to the south. These invaders had
no native culture of any importance, but they had ability
to appreciate and absorb that of the peoples they conquered.
Hence, while the population of the Euphrates Valley
suffered change, there was no interference with the prevalent
civilization or religion. The conquerors represented three
stocks, Kassite, Hittite and Assyrian, but although. Kassite
influence lasted five centuries and the Hittite intermingled
with the Assyrian, it was through the last-named empire
that the downfall of the Babylonian state came about. The
Assyrian, of mixed Semitic and Hittite origin, appears on
the horizon of history as early as 2400 B.C., entrenched in
the mountain region to the north-east of the Tigris, and
occupying cities among which Ashur, Nineveh and Calah
are the best-known capitals. It was not till about eleven
centuries B.C. that, under Tiglath-Pileser I., the conquest
of the territory to the south was achieved, arid not till 689
that Babylon was destroyed though presently to be
rebuilt. Nevertheless, for five hundred years " the throned
tigers " of Assyria occupied a position which made them
the terror of the contiguous states, so that no event .in
ancient history was hailed with such paeans of exultation 1
.as the end of " the bloody city," when Nineveh at last fell
beneath the combined attack of the Medes and the rebel
governor of Babylonia, Nabopolasar, in 606 B.C.

Religiously, Assyria introduced a few new gods,
especially Ashuj:, origjnally^the 'city-god of the Assyrian
capital, but now clevatecTtojEhe plaarocrnpiH by M^rdnJr
in the Babylonian sagas. Adad, the storm-god, the equi-
valent ofTTamlmh, also comes to the fronf^and the war-god
whom welonow as Ninib won likewise a prominent place
in the pantheon. Special honour, again, was given to Anu,
Sin, Shamash and Ishtar, the latter in her character as a
war-goddess. Gods were freely equated with one another,
as, for example: " Sin is Marduk as giver of light in the
night ";* " Shamash is Marduk in the .sphere of the law ";

1 Cf. the " taunt-songs " of the prophet Nahum.

RELIGION -OF EUPHRATES VALLEY 213

"Adad is Marduk with reference to rain"; etc. Under
the Assyrian, too, the gods were depicted in colossal animal
forms, hewn out of the rock which now took the place of
the clay employed by the earlier civilization. The main
differences between the expression of Assyrian religion
and that of -Babylonian was the fiercer and more ruthless
spirit of the northerners, their preoccupation with war, and
the horrible nature of the punishments they inflicted upon
their foes. Yet towards the end the spirit of the southern
culture seemed to .be winning its way, and in the work
of Ashur-bani-pal there is evidence of a milder attitude as
well as of greater appreciation of the religious literature of
the past. But to the end Assyrian religion was strongly
nationalistic and the gods of Assyria were foes to
the divinities of other lands. We have only to recall,
by way of illustration, the taunt of Rabshakeh before
Jerusalem: " Where are the gods of Hena, of Ivah, and
of Sepharvaim ? ". 1

The recovery of the south, under what is called the
neo-Babylonian empire, 606539, was a revival of the old
Babylonian temple worship as well- as a revival of the older
nationalism. That it was a time of great splendour we may
learn even from the literature which mocked it, as in
isaiah xl.-lxvi. The very names of the kings, .moreover,
Nabopolasar, Nebuchadrezzar, Nabonidus, reveal a return,
to influence of the old god of prophecy, of the stylus, of
scholarship. Nebuchadrezzar was the builder of splendid
palaces and of splendid temples, and that he followed the
old religious customs is shown from many references in
the Old Testament. 2 As to Nabonidus, the last of the line,
his zeal for religious organization and for recovery of the
monuments of the past made him an antiquary as well as
a restorer of the older cult. He tried to restore the
supremacy of Marduk, but the lesser shrines resented the
endeavour, and the royal zeal produced discord rather than
unity. It was at this time too late to achieve a renaissance
of permanent value, but it may at least be said that the last

1 2 Kings xviii. 34.

2 Cf. Ezekiel xxi. 21 ; see also the novel by G. R. Tabouis, Nebuchadneggar,
English edition, New York, 1931.

2i 4 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

rulers of Babylonia did their best for Marduk's honour and
for the ancient order generally. .

In a general survey of the beliefs and practices of the
Euphrates Valley religion we come across many things
which belong to " the beggarly elements " of religion.
" The crude procedures of savage sorceries ".-were indeed
so deeply rooted that many of them still persist, in the form
of a kind of black magic, to the present day. We find also
expressions of pessimism cropping up from time to time,
as in the complaint of the so-called " Babylonian Job," with
its hopeless outlook upon life during his period of trouble. 1

Yet, on the "other hand, there were, from the earliest
Sumerian ages, germs of vital religious truth which it
became the special mission of Juclaism in later days to
accept, preserve and develop, in order that they might be
part of man's ultimate faith. Some of these elements we
may here present :

1 . The idea of creation as a struggle between the forces
of light and darkness, with -the victory resting ultimately
on the side of the light. However physical may be the
materials of this tremendous duel, dramatized from the
observed conflict between sea and land at the head of the
Persian Gulf, it is plain that the contest between Marduk
and Tiamat furnished the Bible writers with the conception
of the apocalyptic warfare between good and evil which had
in. the future such significant spiritual result.

2. In the Babylonian zikkurat worship, with its effort to
reach the abode of the gods, by means of temple towers
suggestive of the planetary spheres, there was symbolized,
first, the possibility of God's descent to communion with
mortal men, and, secondly, the possibility of man's ascent
to fellowship with God. Crude as was the imagining which
placed the dwelling-rplace of deity on a mountain height,
or, in default of the mountain, at the top of a man-erected
tower, it had in it the germ of all subsequent conceptions
of the City of God, with its courses of vari-coloured gems,-
and its open gates, within which God might dwell and man
live in God's presence. Whatever half-way errors the idea

1 The " Babylonian Job " was the governor Tabi-utul-Enlil. The poem
is given by Professor M. Jastrow, in his Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria.

RELIGION OF EUPHRATES 7ALLET 215

contained such as we associate with the Gnostic theory of
emanations, aeons, and the like, it was an idea most precious
and suggestive for the future of .religion.

3. In that topmost chamber where the high-priestess
resided, regarded by all as the spouse of God, we find the
first intuition of man as to the relation between the divine
and the human, described in the New Testament as the
marriage of the Lamb. It is a picture of redeemed society,
in which " the King woos His glorious Queen." It is,
moreover, a picture of the human heart prepared to be the
dwelling-place of " the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity," the Bridechamber of the. soul:

The hold that falls not when the town is got,

The heart's heart, whose immured plot

Hath keys yourself keep not. ...

Its keys are at the cincture hung of God ;

Its gates are trepidant to His nod ;

By Him its floors are trod. 1

4. In the divine rulership through the patesi, or priest-
king, represented as the Divine Son, we have the earliest
germ of the Messianic doctrine. Without human father or
mother, " a priest for ever," the patesi is the Shepherd.
He is, almost in the language of Isaiah (ix. 6),' " exalted
king, chief counsellor, the subduer, princely leader, great
lord."

5. In the quest, already commenced, for immortality
we have an element of religion which leads straight on to
the ultimate satisfaction of that quest in the Christian
religion. The words of Sabitu to Gilgamesh:

When the gods created mankind

They fixed death for mankind.

Life they retained in their own hands.

O Gilgamesh, let thy belly be filled,

Day and night be merry, daily arrange a merry-making ;

Day and night be joyous and contented ;

Let thy garments be pure, thy head be washed ;

Wash thyself with water ;

Regard the little one who takes hold of thy hand ;

Enjoy the wife lying in thy bosom.

1 Francis Thompson, The Fallen Yew.

2i6 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

are as little final to the hero of the Babylonian epic as are
the similar words of the Hebrew sage to the Jew (cf.
Eccles. ix. 7-9). The mention of the water of life, whereby
Ishtar is restored by Namtu, the very failure of Gilgamesh
to retain the plant of immortality, or to raise up more than
the ghost of Engidu, represent the seriousness of this age^
long quest. Moreover, the seasonal myth, in the story of
Tammuz- and Ishtar, made nature a partner with man in
the demand for faith in the more abundant life beyond the
changes and chances of mortality. And the bitter regrets
of Adapa at his failure to receive the proffered " bread
of life " and " drink of life " at the hand of the gods serves
to emphasize still further this mighty truth.

6. The laws of Hammurabi, resting as they do on codes
and customs long anterior even to the first Babylonian
dynasty, must be regarded as part of that revelation of law
which we rightly call divine, a revelation given from Shamash
as well as from Yahweh, and in both cases preparatory to
a higher law written not on " tables of stone " but on " the
fleshy tables of the heart."

7. Lastly, the moral and spiritual aspiration, expressing
itself in prayer and in hymns of penitence, or in such phrases
as the already quoted :

Daily approach thy God,

With offering and prayer as an excellent incense ;

Before thy God come with a pure heart,

show men as already on the rungs of that ladder of sunbeams
which " slopes through darkness up to God."

Babylon and all its secular splendours passed away, or
remain humbled in the dust, but the " word " which belongs
to the religion of the future was destined to survive, never
to pass "till all be fulfilled." 1

1 For the subject of this chapter the reader may consult, in addition to
the books referred to above", the following : The Cambridge Ancient History,
Vols. I., II. and III. ; R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamesh, London,
1928 ; M. Jastrow, Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions, New York, 1914 ;
L. Delaporte, Mesopotamia, New Yo'rk, 1925 ; R. W. Rogers, History of
Babylonia and A ssyria, sixth edition, London, 1915.

CHAPTER XVI
The Religion of Egypt

have a fair idea of Egypt geographically it is only
necessary to think of a rope some six or seven
hundred miles long, tied into a knot here and there
to represent the cataracts, and with the northern end frayed
ou,t to show the Delta. This rope will suggest both the
river Nile and the country which is little more than the
strip of mud formed by the sediment of the river gradually
spreading out fanwise towards the Mediterranean. 1 Hero-
dotus was correct in describing Egypt as " the gift of the
Nile." In Homer the word Aiguptos (Egypt) is actually
used of the river, but the true derivation of the word is
"from Het-ka-Ptah, " the temple of the ka of Ptah," a term
originally applicable to the city of Memphis. In the Old
Testament Egypt is generally spoken of as Mizraim^
"the two Musri," a reminiscence of the period of the
Double Kingdom. In the poetical books the phrase " Land
of Ham " is frequently employed. Ham (derived from
Qem or Qemt, black) is an old name. for the land in allusion
to the black soil of the river valley in contradistinction to
the red sand of the desert. The word Nile is actually a
Semitic word for river, or rather gully (nahat).

The Nile is one of the great rivers of the world in
physical proportions, but it is still more important as the
channel of Egyptian culture and religion. Laid down at
the rate of. about four inches a century, the sedimentary
deposit brought down from Central Africa has made the
present area of cultivable land and has indeed carried this
area out into the Mediterranean far beyond the ancient
limits. Three great branches, the White Nile, the Blue
Nile and the Atbara, swell the main stream, and the only
drawbacks to its importance are the six cataracts which
obstruct navigation here and there. The real Egypt is

1 But see Sanford and Arkell, First Report of the Prehistoric Survey
Expedition, University of Chicago, 1928.

21?

218 A HISTORT OF. RELIGION ". -

below the first cataract, a limit marked by the trading
station of Assouan, the ancient Syene (market), which the
Greeks called Elephantine, from the ivory offered here for
sale. The Delta of the Nile, marking the opposite limit, has
an area of no less than 14,500 square miles.

As intimated in an earlier chapter, the Egyptian people
are the result of much miscegenation. The general opinion
is that the oldest stock is the Hamitic, or Punt, as repre-
sented by the modern Somalis. To this, in prehistoric
times, came migrations of Semites from Arabia and Syria,
and also a more or less constant infiltration of Berber (or
Libyan) people, of Mediterranean origin, from the west.
Allowance must be made also for the inevitable . pressure
from the south of the blacks of Nubia and Central Africa.
Pictures on the old monuments show the ancient inhabitants
of Egypt with their pointed beards, loin-cloths, and belts
of skin, often with an animal's tail hanging down behind,
a somewhat close resemblance to certain present-day
inhabitants of Africa to the" south. 1

The Egyptian language belongs to the class known to
philologists as proto-Semitic, that is, a tongue from which
both the Egyptian and the Semitic languages have sprung,
the various branches having separated before either the
grammar or the vocabulary became established. 2 Later
oh, in the days of the Empire, many new Semitic words
were introduced. In a written form the language crystallized
very early, perhaps by 4000 B.C. The hieroglyphic script
was at first purely pictorial, but later on was reduced to a
kind of alphabet. It was lavishly used for inscriptions on
tombs and temples, and so became standardized. A more
cursive form of writing, comparable to our writing hand as
distinguished from print, is known as hieratic and was
used, by the priests from the fourth and fifth Dynasties
downward for the copying of literary compositions on
papyrus. After the Ethiopian period a still more cursive
form appeared to suit the needs of business, known to the
Greeks as demotic. Still later the Greek script became

1 For fuller accounts see Moret, The Nile and Egyptian Civilization,
London, 1927 ; and S. A. B. Mercer, Etudes sur les Origines de la Religion de
I'Egypte, London, 1929.

2 See iSdouard Naville, L'volution de la Langue egyptienne, Paris, "1920.
But the classification is doubtful.

THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 219

common, and the most modern of all, known (in the Church
books) as Coptic, was one using the Greek letters eked out
with seven characters from the demotic. 1

To confine ourselves to the history of Egyptian religion
(though the above-mentioned details are not impertinent
in the case of a faith making such large use of written
forms) we have first to ask as to the character of this religion
in prehistoric times. As the first date in Egyptian history
that for the establishment of the calendar by the heliacal
ascension of Sirius (Sothis) is given as July 19, 4241 B.C., 2
it will be seen that we have to go back some seven thousand
years for such a period. Even then we do not find ourselves
in an age of absolute barbarism. The dead were buried
in the sand with a certain amount of funerary ritual, in
a contracted position, with hips and knees bent, hands
before the face, and face turned westward. Sometimes
they were dismembered or decapitated, and the women
seem to have had (either before or after death) the left arm
broken. 3 A dab of red was frequently put on the forehead,
apparently as a life-giver. With the dead were buried
amulets of many sorts, slate palettes and paint for toilet
purposes, ointments and jars -containing the ashes of
offerings made at the grave. We are evidently in the
neolithic age and face to face with burial customs such as
we find common with many other primitive peoples.

The earliest stage of Egyptian history, politically, is
that of a small community state, known to the Greeks as a
nome, a stage corresponding very well to the Euphrates
Valley city-state. There were about forty of these nomes,
strung out north 'and south along the Nile valley. The
religion was of the same general character in all, except that
local circumstances involved "the use of different names for
the divinity and divinity itself was identified with some
different object, generally an animal. The animal worship
of ancient Egypt, whether rising from fear, or affection, or
belief in relationship -with some particular animal as a
totem, was practically universal. It is tempting to describe

1 See Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum, London, 1909.

a The date is disputed by some, as by Arthur Weigall, History of the
Pharaohs, I. 26 ff.

3 This has been explained by some as the result of the wife's defence of
her head from the blows of her husband's club. But burials were not always
as described. See V. Gordon Childe, The Most Ancient East, London, 1928.

220 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

this as totemism, but at present it is wise to accept the
statement of Dr. W. Max Miiller to the effect that "the
Egyptians in historic times were not conscious of a totemistic
explanation " of their animal symbols. 1 On the other hand
it may be said that the older view that the animal gods of
Egypt were adopted as symbols of divine attributes in a
system of much profundity is now generally discarded.
Manetho (third century B.C.) says that animal worship was
introduced by the second king of the second Dynasty, but
it is evident that the practice goes back much beyond any
date we may assign to the beginning of dynastic history.
It is, indeed, quite possible that the animals were originally
personal totems which in course of time were promoted to
the role of community gods. The districts in which par-
ticular animals were reverenced will often furnish a clue
to the reason for the reverence. The bull Apis, of Memphis,
was worshipped as " the second life of Ptah " the creator,
but other similar communities had their bull-gods, such as
the Mnevis of Heliopolis and the Bekh of Hermonthis.
At Dendereh was the cowrgoddess, Hathor, equated with
the sky 1 . At Mendes, in the Delta, was Ba, the ram-god,
later a deity oT reproduction. At Bubastis the favourite

.-. _.. j i - -* _*_ j^

divinity was the cat-god, Bast, or Pasht, 2 - earlier, per-
haps, that much more formidable feline, the lion. At
Abydos, ages before the development of Osiris worship,
the jackal, Anubis, was worshipped as a god of the dead,
possibly from its habit of prowling around the graves. In
the south were animal gods such as Sebek, or Sobk, the
crocodile, at Grocodilopolis, killed at Elephantine but
worshipped at Thebes, and (according to Strabo) actually
bred in the temple tanks; the baboon, later identified with
"the moon-god, Thoth, and esteemed as a god of wisdom;
and the hippopotamus, Taurt, with the hippopotamus
goddesses, Rert, Apit, and Shepuit. Then again there was
the mongoose, or ichneumon, Khatru, or Shedeti ("the
one from the city of Shedit "), worshipped especially at
Heracleoppolis. Among birds were worshipped the phoenix,

1 See W. Max Miiller, Egyptian Mythology, Boston, 1918.

2 See M. Oldfield Howey, The Cat in the Mysteries of Religion and Magic,
p. 66.

THE RELIGION OF.EGTPT 221

or bennu bird; the vulture, Nerau; the hawk, Horus,
later identified as the sun; the ibis, also worshipped . as
Thoth, the scribe of the gods; the goose; and the sw_allow.
The. cobra was reverenced among reptiles; and among
insects the scorpion, the scarab beetle, the grasshopper and
the praying-mantis! . Even fish were included among the
deities, especially those which were .supposed to predict
the rising of the Nile. Nor among the animal gods must
we omit the name of Set, later identified with the principle
of evil. With what particular animal he was originally
associated is- doubtful, as it was. to the Egyptians them-
selves. Okapi, jerboa, greyhound, oryx, giraffe arid ant-
eater have all been suggested, and it is not impossible that
he was identified with the pig, the totem of some primitive
tribe which warred against the Horus or hawk people.

' It may be assumed that even in the time of the monarchy
there was coincidently with the worship of animal gods the
worship of the powers of nature, and that these forms of
worship were readily equated, even if as yet there were no
systematized theology. No doubt, with the, moon serving
as chronometer, as among primitive people everywhere,
that luminary had a very early place in the respect of the
race, even before the identification of the moon, as measurer,
with Thoth, the scribe of the gods. But in a land like Egypt
sun worship was inevitable from the first. Many local
names were employed for the sun, and there were many
things with which the orb of day might be equated. In
the eastern. Delta the oldest sun-god was probably Atum,
of Heliopolis; in Memphis appears Ra, who, after the
fifth dynasty, became supreme and superseded Atum.
Nevertheless, Ra, who had risen so triumphantly over the
dark ocean of Nu, in time grew old and feeble, with his
bones turned to silver and his flesh to gold. He spent
half his days in the world of the dead and was presently
forced by magic to yield up his secret name to his daughter
Isis. In the twelfth dynasty Ra is^displaced by Amen, a
local sun-god of Karnak, who becomes the supreme god
with the ascendancy of Thebes. Other solar gods were
popular in particular communities or in a diffused way for
certain periods. * Horus, the hawk, was a sun-god in the

222 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

early dynasties; less popular but still widely recognized,
was the scarab-god, Khepra; both the lion-headed goddess
Tefnet and the cat-headed deity of Bubastis were regarded
as daughters of the sun; and even Hathor, the celestial
cow depicted with the sun between her horns, and the
goddess Isis had their solar aspects. About 2000 B.C.
almost every deity was in some way identified with the sun
and it was usual to speak of Ra as having his fourteen
" doubles." With the great religious revolution of Ikhnatun
towards the close of the eighteenth Dynasty Atun, the god .
of the solar disc (or rather ray), was proclaimed as the one
god, the source of all life. In addition to the identification
of the sun with some humanized deity or an animal, there
were, again, frequent representations of the sun in the form
of an eye 'or a boat.

Other early nature-gods include Nu, the god of the
primeval, watery waste; Shu, the air-god, with Tefnet, the
rain-goddess, as his wife; Qeb, the earth-god, with Nut,
the sky-goddess, represented both as woman and cow; Min^
a kind of primitive father-god, and Hathor, the primitive
mother; and. the Nile god, Hapi, represented in various
guises. Among nature-gods are also to be reckoned the
creator-gods such .as Ptah, the- fashioner, and Khnum, the
first creator's assistant. Thoth, who produced the world
by the word of his mouth, is also, from one point of view,
a nature-god, as are the stellar-gods and the gods of the
wind. Outside of both these and the animal-gods are
certain deities of an abstract character, such as the gods and
goddesses of birth, fertility, harvest and justice. Possibly,
too, in this last category we may include the name of
Menthu, an ancient and celebrated god of war.

Foreign gods begin to appear about the time of the
Hyksos invasion, and particularly after 1600 B.C. From
Africa to the south came such deities as the grotesque Bes,
Dedur, Anqet, and Sati; and from Asia (especially by way
of the Hittites and peoples of the Euphrates Valley) the
Baals and Ashtaroth, Reshpu, the lightning god, and
Sutekh. It is even possible that Ikhnatun's Atun himself
was an importation from Syria (cf. the Hebrew Adori). .

Fabulous beings of various sorts, typhons, chimaeras,

THE RELIGION OF EGTPT 223

sphinxes, may for the present conclude our list of Egyptian
deities. The systematizatipn of these various elements of
religion, distributed among the nomes, begins with the
formation of the Double Kingdom, before the thirty-seventh
century B.C. This consisted of Upper Egypt, represented
by its symbol of papyrus, and with white as its distinctive
colour, and Lower Egypt, with its symbol of the lotus and
its colour red. No doubt the war between the Set wor-
shippers of the south and the Horus worshippers of the
north, ending in the victory of Horus and the branding of
Set as the principle of evil, has some relation to this period.
The first two dynasties of Egyptian history ruled from
Abydos, but in 3407 B.C. Menes united the kingdoms,
accepted the double crown, and made Memphis the capital.
The inevitable result was a development of religion cor-
responding to -the transformation of the land from a duarchy
to a monarchy.

Now for the first time we have a more or less consistent
cosmogony. We have, for instance, the fashioning of the
earth by Ptah put, of _clay, with the assistance of Khnurn,
after the word of creationlias been uttered by Thoth. Also
we have the conception of the sky (Nut) as being originally
associated closely with the earth (Qeb), but raised to -the
form of a vault represented both as cow and woman
by the air-god Shu. The mythology includes also the
attempt of Ra to destroy mankind, through the agency of
the goddess Sekhmet, and, on the repentance of the sun-god,
the brewing of beer from the dada fruit to make a sleeping-
draught for the irate goddess. The aging of Ra and the
plot of Isis to rob him of his secret name have already been
mentioned. The cosmogony of Egypt of this time also
includes that weird conception of the underworld, the Duat, -
a region haunted by unimaginable terrors, guarded by bars
and doors, defended also by demons such as Flame-.hugger,
Shadow-eater, Bone-breaker and. Eyes of flame, a region where
souls were tormented by fire-spouting dragons, demons
with ^ sharp knives and claws, and monstrous monkeys
catching souls in phantom nets. Yet through this world
passed the sun, even Ra himself, during the hours of night.

The theology of Egypt now began to systematize itself

224 'A HISTORY OF RELIGION

in a series of triads and enneads. The complete ennead (or
Great Ennead) was as follows, starting with Atum or Ra,
the sole self-originated god, and giving us, first, Shu, the
air-god, and Tefnet, the rain-goddess, from whom were
born Qeb, the earth, and Nut, the sky. From these again
were born the two pairs of brother-husbands and wife-
sisters, Osiris and Isis, Set afid Nephthys. The ennead may
be diagrammatically set forth as follows :

Tefnet

i i

Osiris = Isis Set = Nephthys

The Osiris cycle was possibly .at first the local cult
of Abydos, where Osiris, Isis and Horus, father, mother
and child, formed a triad of their own. Later a special
myth arose connecting the births of Osiris, Isis, Horus,
Set and Nephthys with the five epagomenal days at the end
of the year, since Ra had sworn a mighty oath to Nut that
none of her children should .be born on any day of the
true year. It is evident from this myth (as from others)
that there were two deities of the name of Horus, one -the
brother and the other the son of Osiris.

The Osiris cycle is also responsible for the story which
is one of the most striking of all the seasonal myths and
may at the same time have some historical nucleus back
in the- days when the Set tribes "and the Horus tribes
contended for supremacy. 'Osiris was the victim of a plot
concocted by his brother Set and untimely slain. But
Isis, sister wife of the dead king, discovered the coffin at
Byblos and hid it. Not long after came Set and by the
light of the moon perceived the painted chest. He tore it
in pieces and scattered the members of the embalmed body

THE RELIGION OF EGTPT 225

over the land of Egypt. Great was the grief of Isis when
she learned of the outrage, but she searched patiently from
place ,to place till the dismembered body was recovered and
the funeral rites were duly performed. From this time
Osiris, displacing the older god Anubis, reigned as king
of the dead, " first of the westerners." The story of the
death of Osiris and the tears of Isis is annually dramatized
to symbolize the restoration of the earth's fruition through
the divine power of the spring. The whole tale is beautifully
told in Plutarch's De Iside et Qsiride^ but we must remember
that by the time of the Greek writer the story had lost much
of its first simplicity. The myth itself, however, had very
practical consequences, for, as Frazer reminds us, the
Egyptians believed " that every man would live eternally
in the other world if only his surviving friends did for his
body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris. Hence
the ceremonies observed by the Egyptians over the human
dead were an exact copy of those performed over the
dead god."

The mention of Osiris brings us at once to the fas-
cinating subject of Egyptian views as to the world of the
dead, and to that of Egyptian eschatology generally. But
first a few words should be said as to Egyptian theories of
psychology. According to some these were simply " savage,"
in no respect more advanced than those of some Central
African tribes; according to others they were elaborate and
complex beyond those of any other people. Certainly the
terms used for various aspects of personality are unusually
numerous, but our difficulty in defining these clearly and
unmistakably may just as well be the result of confusion
in the mind of the early Egyptian as of our own ignorance.
In the beginning it is probable there was nothing more
complicated than the ordinary primitive distinction between
body and spirit. In the fifth dynasty we find the statement:
" The soul belongeth to heaven and the body to earth."
A dynasty later it is' said to King Pepi: " Thy essence
belongeth to heaven and thy body belongeth to earth."
Later still we find as many as nine different terms employed
to distinguish the elements of human personality, as follows:
Khat, the body, which by mummification must be made to

226 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

retain its form and identity; Sahu> the glorified body;
Ka, the genius, or double, the actual individuality, which
must be sustained after death by offerings of meat and
drink, and which, if deprived of these, is apt to become
malicious and dangerous,, "like a wild fowl"; 1 ' Ab^ the
heart, or seat of life, comprising also, apparently, the. will
and intent it was very necessary to preserve the heart
(possessed of both a material and a spiritual character), lest
it be stolen through the use of magical arts; Sekhem, or
vital power, something closely associated with the ka;
Ba, the soul, an element also associated (in a manner difficult
to understand) with the ka\ Khu, best translated as spirit,
but hard to define; Khaibit^ the shadow, regarded (as also
in the case of the Greek skia and the Latin umbra} as
possessing independent existence; Ran, the name, always
supposed to carry with it some connotation of personality.
The preservation of personality was of the greatest concern
to the Egyptians; hence their constant preoccupation with
death. But though they unceasingly echoed the thought
of Sophocles that " our last, our longest home is with the
dead," yet they were thinking less of death than of continued
life. The Egyptian would have agreed :

'Tis life of which our nerves are scant ;
'Tis life, not death, for which we pant,
More life, and fuller, that we want.

Kings, at any rate, could not endure the thought of mortality.
Hence the pathetic (if amusing) bluff of King Unis, of the
fifth dynasty, when (in the Pyramid Texts) he tries to persuade
the gods that he is a terrible fellow who eats big gods for
his morning meal, middle-sized gods for his dinner, and
little ones every night, while the older (and presumably
tougher) divinities serve as fuel to keep his kettles boiling
all this to compel the yielding of entrance to that sky-world
n which his heart is set. In the time_^QfJCing--Unis it is
asserted again and again: "The King has not died the

- v ., . fj r ,,^ v - ,,.,-w * tJ ' ^_,- ,-" -- ^C3.--*i">'V.T5*2--'j'i-^:,.t--ti- --f^ff*~' '

death; . he has become one who rises from the horizon."

But if kirigs^nd' the great ones of earth were bent on-
reaching the stars, commoner folk had to be content with

1 In view 'of the various views advanced on the subject, this description
of the K a may be received with caution.

THE RELIGION OF EGTPT 227,

the belief that their souls, or some part of them, hovered
about the tomb and the cemetery. Here provision was
made to feed the hungry ghost, and vast legacies of bread
and beer were left, with dire threats against marauders who
might misappropriate the offering. Some had the idea
of an underworld more spacious than the grave, and allusion
has been made to the fields of the dead where the ushabti,
or " answerers," toiled for their masters. Some again
thought of the underworld as a pleasant land where milk
was given from the breasts of goddesses, where grapes and
figs' abounded, " bread from the divine granaries and fruit
from- the tree of life," amid' cool breezes and rippling
streams. The usual life above-ground was also reproduced,
and groups of bakers, butchers and brewers deposited in
the tombs were thought to work magically for the comfort
of their dead lords. Meanwhile, if the proper charms
were forthcoming, the soul might take shape as a bird or
butterfly to revisit occasionally " the glimpses of the moon."

Some enlargement of the idea of the underworld as the
grave is to be seen, again, in the conception of " going
west." For many this was nothing but the last grim voyage
across the Nile, in charge of the ferryman, Mr. Facing-
backwards, to find rest in the sands of "the western desert.
For others it ( became the highly mythologized conception
of joining the boat of the sun in its. westward journey, and
so on to the mysterious land of the caverns of the night.
Here was the residence of Sokar, the abode of the serpent
Apop, the burial mounds of Atunij Ra and Tefnet, and the
realm of Osiris.

The world of Qsiris furnishes us with the first moraliza-
tion of the underworKr in religious history. The dead
have their hearts weighed against an image of truth; they
fun the gauntlet of the forty-two assessors; they make
what is called " the negative confession "; they have their
deeds transcribed by Thoth, the scribe of the gods; they
stand^before the judge, Osiris, who is clad in mummy
ciotheTtq show thafHeTiad died and was alive; they receive
at last the verdict of justification, taking henceforth the
name Osiris N. or M. Justified. The life of bliss envisaged
beyond the judgement, however, seems to have been little

228 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

_ '

more than the renewal of the normal activity' of the agri-
culturist, with the element of sordid toil eliminated.

For this post-mortem experience .great preparation was
needful". First there was the preparation of the body, so
that recognition was possible in the other world. In pre-
historic times nothing more was deemed necessary but to
lay the corpse in the sand to become desiccated by natural
means. Later, various systems of mummification, differing
in different localities, were devised, some of them of a very
elaborate kind. The word mummy (Arabic, mummia,
bitumen) merely implies the keeping of the body from decay
by the use of spices, gums, natron or bitumen. But,
according to Herodotus, three methods were employed.
The most expensive involved the removal of the visce'ra
through an incision in the abdomen and of the brain by
means of a hook inserted through the nose, after which the
cavities were filled with powdered cassia and myrrh, the
openings sewed up and the body steeped for seventy days
in a tank filled with a solution of salt or soda. Then the
body was taken out, dried, anointed, and (with the application
at each stage of the proper formulae) swathed with layers of
linen. Beyond this it was only necessary to paint the outer
casing and inscribe on the covering the name of the
deceased. A less expensive method removed the viscera
by the use of oil of cedar, and the flesh was thereupon
dissolved from the bones with a preparation of soda, leaving
the body merely skin and bone. For the poor the body was
merely steeped for seventy days in a preparation of soda
and then handed over to the relatives for burial. The
common people did not obtain the privilege of mummifica-
tion proper till Saite times. In the case, of the wealthy the
viscera were embalmed separately and placed in .what are
known as Canopic jars, each jar dedicated to one of the
four gods of the cardinal points. Many kinds of pro-
fessionals were employed in the embalming process,
including those known as the -paraschists^ or cutters, who
were supposed to flee away after making the incision,
ceremonially pursued, and the taricheutes^ or swathers. In
comparatively late times brightly painted cartonnage cases
were used and in Greek times it was usual to paint the

THE RELIGION OF EGTPT 229

portrait of the deceased on the coffin. Embalming did not
completely cease till several centuries after the beginning
of the Christian era. 1

Coincidently with the development of the process of
embalming we note the evolution of the tomb, all the way
from sand-burial to the building of the Great Pyramids.
In all cases the idea was to protect the body from prowling
jackals and marauding men as well as from loss of identity.
To begin with, the body laid in the sand the fertile land
was too valuable for such a purpose was covered with
a simple slab and a hut erected close by to receive the
offerings. Soon the slab became more massive, till we get
the mastaba, or bench, type, concealing a chamber for the
ka, a chamber for the mummy and the offerings, and a
shaft or pit for the victims selected to accompany the
deceased. In course pf time we arrive at the " stepped
pyramid " type, of which the best example is the tomb
erected by King Zoser, " of the third dynasty, a structure
not unlike a six-staged zikkurat. After this it was but a
matter of time to reach the true pyramid, of which we have
the world-famous examples at Gizeh. These are the
Pyramid of Khufu, of the fourth dynasty, a vast pile 451
feet high, containing 65,000,000 cubic feet of masonry;
the Pyramid of Khufu's son, Khefre, only slightly less in
height than the former;, and that of Menkaure, only 210
feet high. It is a pathetic fact that in spite of all the efforts
of the Pharaohs to make their last home inviolable, by the
use of false doors and misleading passages, the ingenuity
of the thieves, not to mention the archaeological - zeal of
modern times, has in every case succeeded in breaking in
on the diuternity of their mortal slumbers. 2

It should be added that, beyond the provision made to
satisfy the elemental necessities of food and drink, by
the compilation of magical formulae, there was also furnished
a Book of the Dead,, a wade mecum to meet every emergency,
such as opening the mouth, breathing the air, remembering
the name, keeping the heart, with spells for the overcoming-

. * See G. Elliot Smith and Warren R. Warner, Egyptian Mummies, New
York, 1924.

' T 2 See , G - Maspero, Manual 9 of Egyptian Archeology (Revised Edition),
New York, 1926. . > '

230 . A HISTORT OF RELIGION

of the ghostly crocodiles and snakes which might be lurking,
in unexpected places. 1

In the observances of Egyptian religion the priesthoods
naturally played an important part. 2 First, no doubt, they
were but the humble guardians of the food offerings at
the tombs, but in course of time they developed into
imposing hierarchies which, as in the case of the priests of
Ra at Memphis and those of Amen at Thebes, became
extremely wealthy and powerful. They were divided into
many classes, bore different names, and were obliged to
observe special rules for ritual purity, being clean shaven,
clad in white, .or wearing ritual robes, as of leopard skin.
The feeding, washing and dressing of the gods was their
particular concern, as well as the pouring of libations and
the reciting of the magic spells. .

Side by side with the evolution of the priesthoods was
that of the temples, from the' crude huts of primitive times
to the magnificent structures of the Empire period, with
their splendid pylons, their avenues of sphinxes, their paved
courts, and their, adyta, or shrines^ for the performance of
the secret mysteries.

The festivals, too, were splendid and numerous, in-
cluding the observance of the great calendric days, the feast
of the New Year, and the observance of the five epagomenal
days. The seasonal festivals laid special stress on the story
of Osiris and the recovery of the earth's fertility through the
divine agency of Isis;

While the priestly religion consisted largely in the
performance of rites in the temples, from the, breaking of
the seals at dawn till the evening fell, the religion of the
people generally was largely based on the use of magic.
Magic indeed attracted the attention of all, high and low,
from early s times to the latest. From the Tales of the
Magicians, as told by the sons of King Khufu, to the story
of the Magic Book of Thoth, in the nineteenth dynasty, we
find much preoccupation with magic, as we might gather
from the references to Egyptian magic in the Bible. 3 Magic
was worked in many ways, through the knowledge of

1 See E. A. W. Budge., The Book of the Dead, London, 1910.

2 This includes the part played by the Pharaoh as priest.
8 See Exodus vii. n ; 2 Timothy iii. 8.

THE RELIGION OF EGTPT . 231

. . - - %~ "~~

secret names, through the use of wands, or through the use
of spells for the curing of disease. Spells, sometimes oral
and sometimes accompanied by manual acts, or by the
application of amulets, recited over herbs and mixtures,
became the means by which the Egyptians groped their
way towards the knowledge of drugs and medicine such as
was later to benefit mankind. There were also what were
called." magic shoutings " and one Hemi describes himself
as " high-voiced in shouting the name of the king in the
Day of Warding-off."

As to Egyptian -ethics, though we know but little of
the standards actually observed,- we conclude that on the
whole there was a clear insight into what was wrong and
what was right. The old "ethical wills," such .as the
Instructions of Ptah-kotep, and Kegemne, and Intef> naturally
bear on the surface indications of a prudential philosophy
reminding us of Lord Chesterfield's Letters and the advice
of Polonius to Laertes. But, though such maxims as:
" Render homage to the great man "; " Fill not thy mouth
at the house of thy neighbour "; " She (thy wife) will be
attached to thee if her chain is pleasant"; trend in this
direction, there is much of another sort. Counsels such as:
" Make a lasting monument for thyself in the love of thee "
touch a higher note. Moreover, while the items of the
Negative Confession are negative, such "an admission as: "I
have not destroyed the joy of others " is more than con-
ventional morality. The unit of society is -plainly the
family and the family finds its sanction in the relation of
Osiris, Isis and Horus. The king is 'divine and despotic,
and a large part of the population is in slavery, yet there is
much sense of charity and justice and even Khufu is
defended from the charge of harshness to' his subjects in
the building of the Great Pyramid. 1

Speaking of the kings, it is interesting to watch the
development of Pharaoh worship. Kings were also from
the first priests, but in course of time they, became more
and more sacrosanct, and their holiness had to be guarded
by the brother-sister marriages which are so curious a
feature of ancient history. The idea that the Pharaohs

1 See S. A, B. Mercer, Journal of Oriental Research, January 1926.

23.2 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

were children of the sun may have prevailed as early as
the fifth dynasty, 2750 B.C., at Heliopolis, while the first
use of the term " Son of Ra " occurs in connection with
Isesi, 2645 B.C. Later it became a fixed dogma of Egyptian
state religion.

In what has been said above we have in many par-
ticulars outrun the age of the Old Kingdom, but historical
developments from that time on are easily summarized.
A great shifting of Egypt's centre of gravity came at the
end of the eleventh dynasty, about 2111 B.C., at which
time it may be assumed that Abraham was deported, with
other Semites, as described in the Book of Genesis. 1 The
twelfth dynasty inaugurated a period of political change,
in which negroes were confined to Nubia and the capital
removed from Memphis to Thebes. The literature,
however, shows at first a considerable atmosphere of
pessimism, and poems like the Song of- the Harper and the
Misanthropist contrast strangely with earlier writing. Death
is now, at least to some, not so much a step on to communion
with the gods as a release from the wretchedness of living.

Then, about 1680 B.C., came the invasion of the Hyksos,
with Egyptian ideals for a while submerged beneath those
of the Semite. It was natural now that new gods should
enter from Syria and elsewhere. But a century later the .
victory of Anmes ended the eclipse of the Egyptian and
launched the new dynasty on adventures in foreign lands
which would have been incredible at an earlier period. The
next centuries are the great days of the Empire, the days
of the Amenhoteps and the Thothmes, of Queen Hat-
shepsut, and especially of Thothmes III., greatest of all the
Pharaohs. During this period Palestine came under
Egyptian sovereignty anel Semitic influence once again
flowed in apace. 2 Out of the spoils of war the priesthoods of
Amen at Thebes accumulated untold wealth and possession
of a large part of the lands of Egypt. Possibly it was this
which led towards the religious revolution inaugurated by
" the world's first, idealist," Amenhotep IV., who called
himself Ikhnatun, a movement, however, which lasted

1 Genesis xiii. r.

2 See George Cormack, Egypt in Asia, London, 1908,

THE RELIGION OF EGTPT 233

beyond the seventeen years of his reign, from 1375 B.C. to
1358 B.C. Young as he was, Ikhnatun, aided by his mother
and his wife, who have been suspected of some foreign
strain, . made heroic efforts to supersede the religion of Ra
and Amen with the worship of Atun, the god of the solar
ray. It is disputed whether Atun worship was, strictly
'speaking, ji monotheism or merely a form of henotheism,
but as to the stupendous nature of Ikhnatun 's effort there
can be no question. Almost alone, he braved the arrogance
and prestige of the official priesthoods, built his new city
of Akhetatun, away from the influence of Thebes, moved
thither the machinery of government, and endeavoured to
turn the stream of Egyptian religion into new channels.
The fact' that Atun worship eventually failed and that the
new capital was deserted less than sixty years after Ikhnatun 's
demise must not blind us to the significance of what was
actually accomplished. The glorious hymn of Atun as the
giver and sustainer of life, often compared with the Hebrew
iO4th Psalm, is enough in itself to show the height attained
by the religious idealism of Ikhnatun. Take, for example,
the paragraph :

Creator of the germ and maker of the seed,

Thou givest life to the son in the body of the mother,

Soothing him that he may not weep,

Nursing him in the womb,

Giving breath to animate all.

When in the shell the fledgling chirps in the egg,

Thou givest him breath to preserve him alive,

And when thou hast brought him to burst the shell,.

Then cometh he forth from the shell to chirp with all his might.

Manifold are thy works, thou sole God, whose power none other possesseth. 1

One may gather the nature of the change effected not only
from the literature but also from the art, of the period, since
there is needed but a comparison with the art of pre-
Ikhnatun times to show the sincerity and realism with
which Nature is now portrayed as contrasted with the
stiffness and conventionalism of earlier periods. * One almost
forgives Ikhnatun the fatuity of his foreign policy for the
sake of those gleams of idealism which, amid the arid patches

1 See ]. H. Breasted, History of Egypt, pp. 371-75, New York, 1905. For
later translations see Erman's Egyptian Religion (translated by Blackman),
and Scharff, Aegyptische Sonnenlieder, Berlin, 1928.

234 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

of dynastic history, lighten the story of the Pharaohs at
this point.

Alas, when Ikhnatun died, his reforms withered and
perished. His sons-in-law, Senenkhere and Tutenkhamen,
who succeeded him, were but poor creatures, and the
superseded name of Amen returns .to the annals of Egypt.
The discovery of Tutenkhamen's tomb, on November 22,
1922, in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, serves
mainly to reveal the extraordinary lavishness with which
the royal sepulchres were furnished, with couches, portrait
statues, crowns, maces, garlands, jewellery, ornaments,
canes, bows and arrows, undergarments, and even the
mummified game, meat and fowl, which the hungry soul was
supposed to crave. 1

Under the New Empire of .the nineteenth dynasty, in
which Rameses II. is the most conspicuous figure, great
wealth once again accrued to the official cult and the priest-
hood of Amen. We learn from the Harris Papyrus that
750,000 acres, or one-seventh of the area of Egypt, together
with the service of 100,000 slaves, were the property of the
Church. Rameses II. attributed his much-vaunted victory
over the Hittites to the help of the gods and acknowledged
especially his indebtedness to Menthu, the war-god.
Egyptian gods even obtained reputation in lands beyond
the border, as we learn from the curious story of the
" possessed " princess who obtained, from Rameses a loan
of the Egyptian god Khonsu for the healing of her malady. 2

But the days of decline were 'approaching. We need
only read the adventures of Unamen to perceive that the
old prestige of Egyptian religion, at any rate in Syria, is
on the- wane. The priest of Amen, seeking for timber for
the repair of his shrine, is but shabbily treated at ports
where once all would have bowed humbly as -before their
suzerain. Moreover, the taint of decay shows itself even
in the domestic field. Animal worship is - revived with
more and more grossness and the discovery of the sacred
Apis is surrounded with manifold superstitions. The more

1 See S. A. B. Mercer, Tutenkhamen and Egyptology, London, 1923.

2 The story is a pious forgery, but is paralleled by the actual borrowing
of the Ishtar of' Nineveh to cure .the sickness of Amenhotep III,

THE RELIGION OF EGYPT 235

barbarous elements of the old religion gain renewed
popularity and the Coffin Texts become more and more a
collection of meaningless abracadabra. Perhaps a notable
exception may be made for certain remains which reveal
the religion of the poor, in a spirit of self-abasing and
sorrowful appeal reminiscent of some of the Hebrew Psalms.
On the whole, "however, the period of foreign conquest
and political decadence is at the same time a period of
religious decline. The feeble line of the twentieth dynasty
Ramessids gave way to the twenty-first dynasty when a
union of the priesthood of Amen with the Pharaonic line
expressed some concern over the royal mummies. Then
came the twenty-second dynasty, whose most notable
monarch, Sheshonk (Shishak) married his daughter to
King Solomon. . The twenty-third dynasty is Ethiopian
and reveals one interesting individual, Piankhi, whose
concern over the horses is picturesquely expressed. 1 So"
we move on to the time of the Assyrian invasion, and thence
to the Pharaoh Necho of the twenty-sixth dynasty, against
whom Josiah made his fatal stand and fell at Megiddo. 2
AfteK. this the history of Egypt becomes a more or less
continuous record of foreign invasion and conquest. Some
of the invaders, like Cambyses, despised the Egyptian gods,
and some,, like Alexander, honoured them for political
effect. But it is plain that many of the gods are being
superseded by, or identified with, the .deities of Greece,
though at the very last Egypt had the ironic satisfaction of
seeing some of her ancient divinities transplanted to Rome
to allay the restless syncretism of the Imperial city.

In conclusion, we may ask what Egyptian religion
contributed to the future, even if, as a national cult, its end
was determined. First of all, there was a renewed expression
of the quest for life. The 'Babylonian myth of Tammuz
and Ishtar finds its parallel in the Egyptian story of Osiris
and Isis. There is infinite pathos in the cry which forms'
the Easter anthem of the Nile Valley: " He wakes, Osiris
wakes, the weary god awakes and stands; he controls his
body again. Stand up, thou shalt not end, thou shalt not

1 See E. A. W. Budge, Annals of the Nubian Kings, p. Ixx., London, 1912.
8 2 Kings xxiii. 29.

236 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

perish." There was, again, that moralizing of the after
life such as for the first time offers a vision of the final
judgement. However' much of magic might be associated,
too, with the progress of the soul, the ethical values were by
no means altogether obscured. And, once again, there is
that new conception of God of which one catches glimpses
in the religious revolution of Ikhnatun. "It even seemed
for a time as if the theology which had commenced with
something closely resembling a primitive totemism was
passing through the polytheistic stage towards a pure
monotheism, such as the world had not hitherto seen.
Lastly, it is not without significance that in the Hymn to
Atun and the Instructions of Amenemope we find passages
which are reflected in our own sacred literature, in the
iO4th Psalm and the Book of Proverbs? . It may even be
true, as some have suggested, that old pictures of Isis and
Horus afforded to Christian artists their conception of the
Madonna and Child, that the doctrine of Thoth's creation
of the world by his word had something to do with the
development of the Logos idea, and that the . asceticism of
certain stages of Egyptian religion was in part responsible
for the appearance of the eremites of the Thebaid. 2

1 The section of the Proverbs apparently borrowed from the Instructions
of Amenemope is from xxii. 1.7 to xxiii. n.

2 In addition to books referred to above the reader is advised to consult
the article in E.R.E., Volume V., on " Egyptian Religion," by W. Flinders
Petrie ; A. H. Gardiner's article, " Egypt, Religion," in the nth edition of
the Enc. Brit. ; A. Erman and Rabke, Aegypten und aegyptische Leben, 1923 ;
and J. H. Breasted's Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, 1912.

CHAPTER XVII
The Religion of Ancient Persia

f | *VHE story of the religion variously described as
I Magianism or, more correctly, Zoroastrianism begins
JL with the separation of the eastward moving Aryans
into the two branches distinguished as. Indian and Iranian.
That these two streams were originally one in their main
religious characteristics is- clear from the number of terms
which are their common property .and the number of beliefs
and practices which were identical or similar. But that the
separation which is an important incident in the Aryan
story carried with it religious as well as economic disagree-
ment is apparent from the diverse way in which the religious
terms common to the undivided stock are later employed.
On the economic side differences arose manifestly because
the Iranians wanted to settle down to the cultivation of the
soil, whereas those who had hitherto been their comrades
on the march desired to drive their cattle yet further to the
east. On the religious side the differences are still more
significant. Two terms for the divine powers of Nature
had hitherto been in general use, .the one " devas," or
" shining ones," the other " asuras " or " mighty ones."
Whether some antagonism had developed between the asura
worshippers and the deva worshippers prior to the separation
of the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians we do not know, but
with the separation it would appear that the dffoa worshippers
became abhorrent to the ancestors of the Persians and the
"-daevas" (to use the Iranian form) synonymous with
devils. Moreover, while the term asura (Iranian ahura)
was preferred to the term deva, -a reaction against poly-
theism led to the singling out of one asura -for special
worship. Henceforth Ahura-mazda, the Lord of Wisdom,
became the God of Iran. This .deity is probably to be
identified with the ethical god of the Veda, Varuna, whose

237

238 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

prestige declined in India to the same extent that it advanced
in Persia. The other Vedic gods, for the most part,. became
demons, and Indra, Rudra, and the A^vins were numbered
among the arch-demons. . Some escaped this fate and
became spiritual beings subordinate to Ahura-mazda. One
of them, Mitra (Mithra), the sun in his friendly aspect,
survived to play an important part in the last stages of .the
Zoroastrian religion.

Thus arose in Western Asia, at some period later than
that of the Vedic penetration of India, the closest approxima-
tion to monotheism the world had hitherto seen, if we
except Ikhnatun's brief experiment at the close of the
Egyptian eighteenth dynasty. Herodotus, writing, of
course, after the time of Zoroaster, describes the religion .
of the Persians as follows : -

" It is not their cus'tom to make and set up statues and
temples and altars, but those who make such they deem
foolish, as I suppose, because they never believed the gods, '
as do the Greeks, to be in the likeness of men; but they
call the whole -circle of heaven Zeus, and to him they offer
sacrifice on the highest peaks of the mountains; they
sacrifice also to the sun and moon and earth arid fire and
water and winds. These are the only gods to whom they
have ever sacrificed from the beginning; they have learnt
later to sacrifice to the ' heavenly ' Aphrodite, from the
Assyrians and Arabians* She is called by the Assyrians
Mylitta, by the Arabians Ahlat, by the Persians Mithra." 1

With the exception of the confusion in this last sentence
of the old solar deity Mithra with the female deity of the
waters, Anahita, , there is nothing in the above account
which forbids us to believe that the pre^Zoroastrian religion
had already taken the step of isolating Ahura-mazda from
the ruck of Aryan deities and had come fairly close to the
conception of ethical monotheism.

The theology which eventually prevailed was no doubt
gradually evolved. Behind all the divine beings there was
conceived to exist that eternal order of things which the
Persians called arta, as the Vedic Aryans called it'rifa.-

1 Herodotus, Book I. 131. . "

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 239

Then came the great figure of Ahura-mazda, the Greek
Ormuzd, a personal god of the moral order, and a remark-
able advance on Vedic theology. He is the god of light,
wisdom, righteousness, the creator of heaven and earth.
With him are associated the spiritual beings which were in
part the survival of the gods of earlier days and in part the
personifications of the divine attributes. As the Amesha-
spentas, or Amshaspands, " the holy immortals," they are
sometimes six and sometimes seven, thus corresponding
with the seven Igigi of Babylonian mythology and the
" seven spirits of God " in the Bible. 1 Three of these are
^represented as_ masculine and as standing at the right of
the eternal throne, Vohumano, or Good-will, Asha-vahishta,
or Best Truth, and Kshathra-vairya, or Desired Power.
Three of them are feminine and are stationed at God's left,
Spenta-armaiti, or Holy Piety, Haurvatat, or Holiness
(Wholeness), and Ameritat, or Immortality. Between these
two groups and opposite to the throne stands Sraosha, the
angel of Faith, or Obedience. And beside these great
archangels of the presence are other holy ones, the Yazatas,
of whom the greatest were the. divinities. borrowed from the
other Aryans, Mithra and Anahita.

But the monotheism of Zoroastrianism was not so
absolute as to exclude expression of that cosmogonic struggle
which was recognized as part of the moral and physical
worlds alike. People living in a region which included
such extremes as the winter of the Caucasus and the summer
of the Persian Gulf were not likely to ignore the apparent
dualism which Nature herself seemed to illustrate. So in
the world of spirit, even though Ahura-mazda were deemed
omnipotent," there was present .everywhere the work and
influence of a Counter-worker, a Lie-demon, whose effort
was ever to frustrate -the will of the God of truth. Of
course, the term dualism may be very loosely applied, and
it is fairly certain that in early times the Iranian used it of
a moral struggle apparent in the individual life, as well as
in the universe at large, rather than in the assertion of a
philosophical antinomy. Moreover, where good was
regarded. as "the 'final 'goal- 'of ill," it is hard to see that

1 Cf. Tobit xii. 15 ; Rev. v. 6.

2 4 o " A HISTORT OF RELIGION

rigid division of the universe into two eternally warring
spheres such as marked the later teaching of the Manichaean.
But in many respects the language of the early Iranian
scriptures is unguarded enough to excuse our use of the
term as applied to Persian religion. God was matched all
too evenly with Angra-mairiyu (whom the Greeks called
Ahriman), and his work parodied all too successfully the
work of Ahura-mazda. 1 Angra-mainyu also had his angels,
archangels of evil, multitudes of druj awaiting a chance to
harm mankind, from " the dasyu-slaying Indra," thus
transformed into a demon, to the 99,999 diseases which
were all attributable to evil spirits. And besides the evil
spirits who were definitely such there were mythical beings
such as the Pairikas, or fairies, and the great serpent Azhi
Dahaka, not to speak of the three-legged ass, Khara, or
the demons of a later age like Aeshma-deva, the Asmodeus
of the Book of Tobit.

As to religious practice, we may suppose that many
things were carried over from the common usage of the
undivided Aryan family. Certainly the fire-cult had a
special place in the thoughts of man, and the brewing of
the Haoma, corresponding to the Soma, or sacred drink,
of the Vedic Aryans, preceded and outlasted the reforms of
Zoroaster, who abhorred the practice.

Many elements may have been taken into the system
of Iranian religion from that of the Euphrates Valley, as it
existed prior to the Achaemenian conquest, but these may
be the result of accommodations made after the time of
Zoroaster, and will be mentioned later. It is sufficient at
present to assume that the disposal of the body by exposure,
the use of consanguineous marriages, and the larger place
given to magic, may be due to Median influence rather than
to anything present in. the undivided stock. It is the
predominance of this later element which is more properly
described as Magianism.

At some period to which it is difficult to assign a date
there entered on the scene one who, with all allowance
made .for the legendary, must be regarded as an heroic
figure, a reformer of the first importance, a prophet and an

1 Cf . Kipling's fragment, The Seven Nights of Creation.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 241

j. i -

organizer in one. This is Zarathushtra, whom the Greeks
called Zoroaster, and the modern Persians Zardusht. 1

Though some have thought Zoroaster an entirely
legendary figure, and some have even thought the name
a term signifying an hereditary priesthood, there can be
little doubt as to his historicity. But it is another question
when we try to fix a date or even a definite region for his
birth. Xanthus, the Lydian, who wrote about 450 B.C.,
describes him as having lived six thousand years before
the time of Xerxes and others have put the same gulf
between the prophet and Plato, or even made his date six
millennia prior to. the Trojan war. Masudi, however,
places Zoroaster 280 years before the time of Alexander,
and the Bundahish diminishes this date only about twenty
years, so that we may with some confidence, with the
majority of modern scholars, put the birth of the great
.. . Iranian about 660 B.C. Yet, fgr linguistic reasons, there
are not a few who would prefer an earlier "date, say, about
1000 B.C. As for the place, some, with Jackson, hold
that he was born in the district of Azerbaijan, between
L. Urumiah and the Caspian; others see his birthplace
further to the east,' in Bactria. It may very well be that
Zoroaster was a native of Media who migrated to Bactria
and there won his first successes as a % religious teacher.
Some information we gather from the Gathas and from
early tradition, as, for example that his father was Puru-
shaspa (Purusha y a man, and aspa, a horse), of the Spitama,
or " Whiting," family, and that his mother was Dughdhova.
The name Zarathushtra is of uncertain meaning, but ushtra,
a camel, like the name Purushaspa, betrays agricultural
associations. Legend adds nothing as to the name, but
surrounds the . story of the birth with much miraculous
detail. We are told of the bringing of the fravashi, or
genius, of the future prophet, at his conception, by. two
angels -who conveyed it in a stem of haoma plant and
deposited it, in a bird's nest, while his material part, also
brought by angels, was placed in milk drunk by his parents.
Pliny repeats the familiar story that the child laughed on

1 See A. V. W. Jackson, The Life of Zoroaster, New York, 1899 ; also
J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, chap, iii., London, 1913.

. Q

242 A HISTORT OF RELIGION"

being Born, a legend supposedly alluded to by Vergil in
. the line : " Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem." 1

Very early in his career the predestined prophet was
assailed by demons, particularly by Buiti (cf. the Skt.,
bhuta^ a ghost). There were attempts to burn him, to
strangle him, to have him trampled underfoot of oxen, to
deliver him to the wolves. But from all. perils he was
providentially protected, became notable for his love of
animals,- passed through a five-year period of tutelage under
a famous sage, and at twenty left his father's house, like
Gautama, to deliver his soul. Other accounts speak of his
marriage and the birth of three sons, who in time became
heads respectively of the three Iranian orders of priests,
warriors and herdsmen. He remained in the desert seven,
or, according to Pliny, twenty years, having communings
at intervals with Ahura-mazda. The supreme revelation
came at the age of thirty 5-" the year of the revelation "
and in the next ten years he was vouchsafed seven other
visions and underwent his " temptation," during which
the demon Buiti, sent by Angra-mainyu, tested him to the
uttermost. Connected with this time of preparation is the
story referred to by Shelley, as the utterance of Earth in

Prometheus Unbound:

Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magian Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

When Zoroaster commenced his preaching, he had at first
as small success as, long centuries after, fell to the lot of
Muhammad. His cousin, Metyomah, was his sole convert
and the legendary visits to India and China were as scantily
productive. The turning point came with the visit to
Balkh in the twelfth year of the ministry, when the prophet
.came to the court of King Gushtasp, or Vishtasp (Hystaspes),
whom some have tried to identify with the father of Darius I.
Here his preaching was at first in vain and the, plots of the
Magian priests caused him to be cast into prison. But the
miraculous cure of the famous Black Charger, whose legs
by witchcraft had been drawn up into its belly, brought

1 Vergil, Eclogue., III. 60. .

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 243

about the conversion of the court and the slaying of the
prophet's foes. The story is told, with much curious
circumstantiality, in the Dabistan?-

With the patronage of Gushtasp, and the support of
the brothers Jamasp and Frashaoshtra, whose daughter
Hvovi Zoroaster married, the prophet's cause now flourished
apace from Iran to Turan, and a Holy War was inaugurated
in which the king's son, Isfendiyar, bore an heroic part.
Missionaries, moreover, were despatched far and wide,
and fire temples founded throughout Iran, some of which
probably owed their fame to the naphtha wells which were
here and there discoverable. The last twenty years, which
correspond with the last decade of the life of Muhammad,
were years of great success, politically and militarily as
well as religiously. Then the prophet paid the penalty for
his fame by a violent death at Balkh at the age of seventy-
seven. Though the Greek accounts speak of Zoroaster
as having been slain by lightning, the more normal story is
that he was attacked and killed by a Turanian who forced
his way into the fire temple, where the aged prophet was at
the time officiating. 2

By the Zoroastrians of later times Zarathushtra was
.regarded as the inaugurator of a new era in the history of
mankind. According to this belief, world chronology was
divided into four periods of three thousand years each.
In the first period Ahura-mazda's word prevailed over the
power of Angra-mainyu, and Yima (the Indian Yama),
known also as Jamshid, ruled in the name of the Highest.
Then came the age in which the Evil Will, represented in
Azhi-Dahaka, the great serpent, the Zohak of the Shah
Nama, appeared to triumph. The third period was one of
struggle between the two powers of Light and Darkness,
culminating -in the appearance of Zarathushtra. Thus the
Zoroastrian age inaugurates a struggle which must continue
till the appearance of Saoshyant, the Messiah, when God
becomes " all in all."

Towards the consummation of this desired ideal Zara-

1 Shea and Troyer, The Ddbistan, 116 &., London, 1901.

2 A good (imaginary) description of the prophet's death is given in F.
Manor Crawford's novel, Zoroaster.

244 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

thushtra contributes in various ways. He is a practical
monotheist, one of the earliest of apocalyptists, a great
moral teacher, a fighter not beyond the use of magic and
the arm of the flesh, strongly interested in the. cultivation,
of the earth, a friend of the animals which are serviceable
to man, particularly of the ox, the dog and the domestic
fowl. He is also revealed as a great organizer and establisher
of fire-temples, not quite strong enough to resist certain
reversions to old practices, as in the case of the haoma
drink, but nevertheless keeping the face of mankind towards
the coming of the expected Messiah. *

The teachings of Zoroaster are to be found in the
Avesta, the discovery of which in modern times we owe to
the zeal of "the Frenchman, Anquetil Duperron, who, after
seeing a fragment of Avestan writing in the Bodleian
Library, went out to India in the latter part of the eighteenth
century and brought back a translation which he deposited
in the National Library at Paris. The story is familiar
of the ridicule -thrown upon the discovery by Sir William
Jones and it was indeed a long time before scholarship
condescended to become interested. Since the nineteenth
century, however, great progress has been made in Avestan
scholarship. 1

The Avestd^ sometimes erroneously named the Zend-
Avesta (a term really denoting the Avesta with its Pahlawi
commentary),- is now. known only through the portions
which survived Alexander's sack of Persepolis and were
subsequently restored through the zeal of the Sasanid
king, Shahpur I., in the first half of the third .century A.D.
Alexander is supposed to have destroyed the famous copy
of the whole, written on prepared cow-skins, in letters of
gold, and the part saved is regarded as* but one-twentieth
or less of the entire work. What we have is arranged under
four heads: The Tasna, including the Gathas, or songs,
generally conceded to be contemporary with Zarathushtra
himself, and full of signs of the conflict of the time;; the
Tashts, containing twenty-one hymns used on sacrificial
occasions; the Vendidad ("anti-demonic"), consisting of

1 See article " Avesta " in E.R.E., II. 266 ff.

2 Probably from the same root (vid, to knowj as the word Ved

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 245

twenty-two sections known as jargards \ and certain frag-
ments known, as the Khorda (or Little) .Avesta.

The Gathas') as mentioned above, are full of evidences
of an early date. They contain an account of Zarathushtra's
marriage to the daughter of Frashaoshtra and of the marriage
of the prophet's daughter, Purucishta, to Jamasp. They
describe also very vividly the appeal of. the Ox-soul to
Ahura-mazda, which is answered by the appointment of
Zarathushtra as protector, though the Ox-soul at first
demurs to having " the ineffectual word of an impotent
man for my protector." '

All the rest of the Avesta belongs to 'the period from
about the fifth to the third century B.C. The most interesting
portions are in the Fendidad^ where, for example, we have,
in Fargard /., the creation of the sixteen good lands by
Ahura-mazda, with an account of the marring of that work
by Angra-mainyu, " who is all evil." In Fargard II. we'
have an account of the increase of the population of the
world under Yima and its subsequent limitation by the
coming of the great winter a catastrophe corresponding
with the Flood of the Euphrates Valley legend. Fargard III.
contains the eulogy of the earth and of the work, of the
agriculturist. Fargards IF. to XII. deal with various forms
of uncleanness and their purification, with advice as to the
avoidance of the Druj Nasu, , or corpse-demon. XIII. is
the Fargard of the dog, the quaint survival of a much larger
literature dealing with the sacredness of the dog. In
Fargard XVIII. we have the praise of the cock, the bird
of the angel Sraosha, " the drum of the world," and the
special enemy 'of the sloth demon, whose significant name
is " Going-to-be." And Fargard XIX. describes Zara-
thushtra's victory over the tempter by the recitation of the
sacred formula, the Ahunaver " the will of Ahura-mazda
is the law of righteousness." -We have also more than one
reference to the famous Bridge of Decision, the Chinvad-
bridgCj across which the souls of men must pass to the
final judgement.

How far the Achsemenians were in the strict sense of
the word Zoroastrians is a matter of doubt. They do not
seem to have known* of Zarathushtra himself and there is

246 .'A BISTORT OF RELIGION

ample testimony to the effect that Cyrus worshipped, or
claimed to worship, .the various deities of his subjects in
the Euphrates Valley. . But Darius Hystaspes mentions
Ahura-mazda and seems to have been more nearly a
Zoroastrian than his predecessors. Meanwhile, there had
been interminglings with and accommodations to the older
religions of the -region. Artaxerxes Mnemon names both
Mithra and Anahita, the goddess of the fructifying waters,
side by side with Ahura-mazda. The practice of exposing
the dead, moreover, does not seem to have become general,
since the Achaemenian kings were buried, their bodies
encased in wax. A

From the time of the destruction of the " golden book "
by " Iskander Rumi " to the time of the Sasanids Zoro-
astrianism was only followed "in secret, as under both the
Seleucids and the Arsacids (Parthians) the culture of Persia
and much of its religion were Greek. Nevertheless, there
must have been much latent devotion to the older cults,
since it was precisely at this time, in the first century of
Sasanid rule, that Mithra-worship became popular in the
Roman Empire and attracted the attention of Emperors
like Diocletian and Julian. By the Roman soldiers 'it was
borne westward and Kipling has interpreted the devotion
of the legionaries in the " Song of Mithra "i

Mithra, God of the midnight, here where the great bull dies,
Look on thy children in darkness, oh, take our sacrifice.
ManyToads thou hast fashioned : all of them lead to the Light.
Mithra, also a soldier, teach us -to die aright ? x .

From Shahpur I., A,D. 240, and on through the reign of
Shahpur II., 310-380, there was great zeal for Zoro-
astrianism, and Khosru I. was called Nushirwan, the Just,
because of his severity towards other religions. Much
neo-Zoroastrian literature was produced, such as ultimately
formed the Bundahish, or Book of Beginnings, and the
Book of Arda Viraj. The former is a vast, rambling work
descriptive of the creation of the world, and running on to
its final destruction by fire, which to the good will appear
to be only like warm milk. In this general conflagration

1 In Puck ofPook's Hill,

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 247

"the stench and pollution which were in hell are burned,
and hell becomes quite pure." The Book of Arda Viraf is
important for its views on eschatology and its influence on
Muhammad's Night Ride to Heaven, and (ultimately) on
the Divina Commedia of Dante. To allay the doubts of a
sceptical age, it is decided by the dasturs (an order of priests)
to send one of their number, through the use of hashish,
to the other world, that he may report on his return as to
the realities of future reward and retribution. Arda Viraf,
chosen by lot, makes the journey and awakes to tell of his
journey across the Chinvad-bridge, guided by the angel
Sraosha, and meeting at the bridge the personification of
good thoughts, good words, good deeds. He followed the
souls of the pious through the realms of bliss and describes
the happiness of those in the star-track, the moon-track,
the sun-track, and so on, the bliss of the liberal, of those
who contracted next-of-kin marriages, of the warriors,, the
agriculturists, the shepherds, and all the rest. Then Arda
Viraf had his experience of the Hell world and saw the
dread river .which, like Dante's Styx, was made of the tears
of men, was met by the personification of ill thoughts, ill
words, ill deeds, and witnessed the punishments of the
damned. What the effect of Arda Viraf's revelation was
upon his time we know hot, but the stimulus was evidently
needed to revive the faith of men.

Then, in the middle of the seventh century, came the
overwhelming flood of Islam and from thenceforth Zoro-
astrianism was virtually extinguished on its native hearth.
Many died as martyrs, a larger number conformed, a few
succeeded in maintaining the faith under Muhammadan
rule. Dr. A. V. W. Jackson, in Persia, Past and Present?
gives an interesting account of his visit to Yezd and his
entertainment there by the Zoroastrian colony. He found
in that city over 8000 of the faithful, heard the Ahunaver
recited and the sacred texts read, witnessed the celebration
of the fire-sacrifice, by priests who still wore the ancient
veil, or -paitidana^ and used the barsom, and was presented
with a branch of the sacred haoma plant, that earthly
representative of the heavenly tree of immortality.

1 Chapter XXIII.

248 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Many Zoroastrians, naturally, fled from Persia before
the invading Arab horde, and some- reached China quite
early in the seventh century, where they established the
first fire-temple of the Middle Kingdom. Others fled to
India, where, under the "name of Parsis (Persians) they
form, in the city of Bombay, a flourishing, wealthy, and
enlightened community. As we learn from the Kissah-i-
Sanjan, a Persian work of about ; A.r>. 1600, the first colonies
landed on the coast of Gujerat in the eighth century,
subsequently settled in the city of Surat, where Duperron
found them in the eighteenth century, and then, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, removed to Bombay,
where to the number of over 80,000 they live at the present
day. They are divided into the 'two classes of Athorvans,
or fire-priests, and Behdins, or laymen, all alike known for
their wealth, benevolence and interest in education. They
still preserve most of the old Zoroastrian customs, especially
those connected with birth, marriage, death and the disposal
of the dead. The fire-temples, known as dar-mihr, or palaces
of Mithra, are still kept open, and the dakhma^ or tower of
silence, is a grim reminder of the custom of exposing the
dead. Parsis still observe the New Year festival, stress the
virtues of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
profess the old beliefs as to the resurrection and final
retribution, though in truth many are agnostic or inclined
to various forms of theosophy. . .

But it is now time to give a clearer, though condensed,
account of the Zoroastrian religion, without overmuch
reference to the various modifications and accommodations
made from age to age. We have, already noted the Iranian
belief in the world as a battlefield between the forces of
good and evil, set in array one against the other. Originally
there was much to suggest a true dualism, and occasionally
Ahura-mazda and Angra-mainyu are spoken of as brothers
from one womb. But as time went on what at first was a
kind of " bilateral symmetry." was envisaged as an ethical
monotheism, in which the power of Ahura-mazda was
expected to triumph through the appearance of Saoshyant,
the Saviour. Meanwhile, it is every man's duty, to the full
extent of his power, to help the good and hurt the evil.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 249

Hence its frequent intolerance, as in the reign of Khosru
Nushirwan.

Two expressions of faith may be quoted, one of them
quite old, and one comparatively modern, to bring out the
creed of the Zoroastrian. as clearly as possible. The first
is from the Twelfth Tasna :

" I repudiate the Daevas. I confess myself a worshipper
of .Mazda, a Zarathushtrian, as an enemy of the Daevas, a
prophet of the Lord, praising and worshipping the Immortal
Holy Ones (Amesha-spentas). To the Wise Lord I promise
all good; to him, the good, the beneficent, righteous,
glorious, venerable, I vow all the best; to him from whom
is the cow, the law, the (celestial) luminaries, with whose
(heavenly) luminaries blessedness is conjoined. I choose
the holy, good Armaiti (Humble Devotion), she shall be
mine. I abjure theft and cattle-stealing, plundering and
devastating the villages of Mazda worshippers."

The second is the confession known as the Patet Erani,
as follows:

. "I believe in the good faith. I believe in the coming
resurrection, in the later body, in the passage of the bridge
of judgement, in a future recompense of good deeds, and
in the punishment hereafter of evil deeds ; in the perpetual
state of Paradise for the good, and in the annihilation of
hell, of the Evil One, and of all the evil demons. I believe
that Ormuzd will -at last be victorious and that Ahriman
will perish, together with all the offshoots of darkness.
All that I ought to have thought and have not thought, all
that I ought to have said and have not said, all that I ought
to have done and have not done, all that I ought to have
commanded others -to do and have not commanded, and
all that I ought not to have thought and yet have thought,
and all that I ought not to have said and yet have said, all
that I ought not to have done and yet have done, all that
I ought not to have commanded and yet have commanded,
for every, thought, word and deed, whether of the body or
of the spirit, whether of earth or* of heaven, I pray for
forgiveness and repent of every sin with this Patet."

The Zoroastrian conception of personality is scarcely

250 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

less complex than that of the Egyptian. A man consisted
of his perishable body, his ahu, or vitality, his daena, or
ego (thinking conscience), his baoda, or intelligence, his
urvan, or soul, and hisfravasht. This last term, of uncertain
derivation, appears at first to have been applied to the
ancestral spirit, or manes, and corresponds somewhat to
the Indian idea of the pitri. But, later on, the word is
used as more closely correspondent with the Egyptian. &z,
or the Roman genius, a kind of double, sometimes not
unlike the Hebrew conception of the guardian angel. 1

The public rites of the .Zorpastrian religion preserve in
some respects a continuity from the time of the undivided
Indo-Iranian period, especially in such -matters as the fire-
cult and the use of the haoma, which latter Zoroaster was
apparently, as we have seen, unable to suppress. The fire
was always kept alive in the urn within the temple and five
times a day the mobed entered, wearing on his face the
paitidana, or sacred veil, to prevent the sacred element
from being contaminated by his breath. He wore at his
girdle the bunch of twigs, now represented by a bunch .of
wire, known as the barsom, or baresma, which is supposedly
referred to in Ezekiel's charge against the Jews: "They
put the branch to their nose.'- 2 Probably, however, the
barsom was originally the litter on which the fire was laid,
as in-the case of the kusa-grass used in the Vedic sacrifices.
On each visit to the shrine the priest laid a log of sandal-
wood upon the fire, with the threefold formula: " Good
thought, good word, good deed." He had also among his
duties the daily recitation of the Avestan texts. The priest-
hood was hereditary in certain families and the High Priest
was known as the Magupat, or Head Magian. The haoma,
like the Indian soma, was the sublimation of some early
intoxicating drink, now conceived of as the sacramental
expression of the drink of immortality, . brewed " from the
" Tree of All Seeds," the Gaokerena, or Ox-horn, which
as the " White haoma " was the heavenly counterpart .of
the " Yellow (or Green) haoma," obtainable on earth. In
one of the Hymns the haoma is thus invoked: " I call down
upon me thy. intoxicating inspiration, O Golden One ;

1 Cf. Matthew xviii. 10 ; Acts xii. 15. 2 Ezekiel viii. 17.

.THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 251

send down' power, victory, health, well-being, prosperity,
increase, strength to fill my whole frame, knowledge of all
things." Nowadays, the haoma is, in general, drunk only
by the priest, who pours a portion into an adjacent well in
order to assist the fruitfulness of nature. Beside the rites
performed at the fire-temples, there are many of a domestic
or personal character, such as the touching of a child's lips
at birth with haoma^ the awarding of the kushti, or girdle,
to the boy of twelve, the celebration of marriage, the use
of the-sagdid, or " look of the dog " at the moment of death,
and the performance of the funeral rites at the dakhma.
There are also festivals to be observed, particularly that of
the New Year (Nau-roz).and those of the equinoxes.

The eschatology of Zoroastrianism has already been
alluded to in connection with the Book of Arda Firaf. It
was the general belief that the soul survived and in a
disembodied state, on the third day after death, met its.
good or bad thoughts, words and deeds, personified as
beautiful maidens or horrible hags, at the head of the
Chinvad Bridge, or Bridge of Decision. The bridge was
supposed to be stretched from Mt. Daitya to Mt. Elburz,
and is mentioned several times in the Gdthas and frequently
in the later literature. It had a certain moral significance,
since it was nine fathoms wide for the good and as fine as
a hair for the ungodly. The Yazata, or Holy One, charged
with the meting out of justice was Rashnu, associated with
Mithra and Sraosha, but Zarathushtra himself also was held
to be the guide of the faithful to the realm of bliss. The
Paradise of Zarathushtra had its various felicities, starting
with the limbo where -dwelt those whose virtues exactly
balanced their vices and going on- thence to" the heaven of
the supremely obedient. Hell, the abode of the demons,
was in the north, and here too there were different com-
partments for the avenging of different offences. The
damned were crowded together in one indistinguishable
mass, and yet each one wailed in the darkness, " I am
alone." The rich who refused charity to the needy here
suffered from hunger and thirst and the untruthful hung
suspended, head downward, with twisted tongues. At the
very vortex of hell, as with Dante, was the prince of evil,

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Angra-mainyu, who continually mocked the damned by
asking, " Why did you eat the bread of Ahura-mazda. and
yet do my work?" But apparently the punishments of
hell were not everlasting, since hell itself, with all its
pollutions, was destined for destruction b.y devouring fire,
after which "the world, purified and renovated, would
become an immortal home for mankind.

As we have already seen, the ethics of Zoroastrianism
had, to use the phrase of Dr. G. F. Moore, " a strenuous
and militant quality." The Mazdean lived to help the
good and hurt the evil to the full extent of his power. ' The
greatest virtue of all was to tell the truth, as we see illustrated
by the remark of Herodotus, the inscription of Darius at
Behistun, and even in the well-known story of i Esdras,
where the people affirmed the verdict of the young Jew
Zerubbabel with the cry: " Great is the truth and it shall
prevail! "* Next came the insistence on 'physical purity.
" Next to life," ran the saying, " purity is man's greatest
need." Hence we have laid down the multitudinous and
meticulous rules as to avoiding impurity and as to purifica-
tions. The corpse-etruj,'* or Druj-nasu, was particularly
feared, visible often in the form of a 1 carrion-fly, as might
well be the case, and to be driven away by the glance of the
demon-averting dog. Other demoriifuges were the placing
of a drop of haoma on the lips and the burning of fragrant
woods. Constant emphasis was put on the threefold duty
of humata, hukhtva, and hvarshta (good thoughts, good
words, good deeds), and the avoiding of their opposites.
Only a little behind the moral virtues were placed what we
may call the economical virtues. Of these the care of the
land was the chief. " Who makes glad the earth? " it is
asked in the Vendidad (III., 23 ff.). " He who plants the
most grain, grass, and fruit-trees, who brings water to a
field where there is none, and draws it off where there is
too much. ... He who sows grain sows good; he makes*
the religion of Mazda progress." After this comes care of
the useful animals, such as the cow and the dog, and
correspondingly the- destruction of pests and the reclamation
of the waste. Some practices regarded as ethical are less

1 i Esclras iv. 41.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT PERSIA 253

in accord with western ideas, 'such as the permissible
polygamy and concubinage and the custom of con-
sanguineous marriages which was highly praised, and
rewarded with celestial bliss.

In conclusion, something must be said as to the con-
tributions made by Zoroastrianism to some of its rival
religions and to world religion in general. . That the religion
of Persia influenced Buddhism in a certain degree has been
generally believed. Mr. D. B. Spooner, in his papers on
The Zoroastrian Period .in Indian History? doubtless went
beyond the evidence furnished by his excavation of the old
palace of Acoka at Patna. But the impression still remains
that a good deal in the Buddhism of the Mauryan dynasty
is . best explained by the theory of Achaemenian contact.
Of course, there may have been currents in the reverse
direction, and the reference to " the heretic Gaotema " in
the Tashts may imply that the Buddha's teaching was as
obnoxious to the Persian monotheists as to the polytheists
of India. - .

As to Judaism, the relation of that faith to Zoroastrianism
has been alternately exaggerated and minimized. The fact
that for two hundred years Judah and Jerusalem were under
the Achaemenian Empire make the influence historically
more than probable. It was an influence which was likely
to work both ways. But in the development of Judaism it
would certainly appear that the angelology and eschatology
of post-captivity times were very essentially affected by
Iranian ideas. 2 And these ideas passed on into the Christian
era, influencing both Christians and pagans. On the one
hand, we find the Roman soldiers, as already observed,
extending the glory of the bull-slaying Mithra, and, on
the other hand, we find 'Zoroastrian ideas expressing them-
selves in the heresies of Christendom, some of which we
shall have later to discuss. Here we may just refer to
Majiichseanism as a particular example. Though embodying
a starker form of dualism, such as. goes back to an earlier
period of Euphrates Valley religion, Manichaeanism affords
a striking illustration of the Persian habit of expressing

1 See Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1915/63-89, 405-445.

2 Cf. Isaiah xliv. 28 ff. ; see also Menzies, History of Religion, 406.

254 A HISTORT. OF RELIGION

itself eclectically by combining genuine Persian ideas with
the tenets of other creeds. In this way Mani (A.D. 2 1 5-273)
was in the right line of succession from some of the earlier
prophets of Iran. 1

To world-religion Zoroastrianism contributed the fol-
lowing elements of permanent value : ^

1. The idea of a God no longer a mere Nature God,
but One who is Spirit, Light, Wisdom and Righteousness.

2. Religion as moral choice, the assertion of the great
principle: " The Will of the Lord is the Law of Righteous-

ness."

3. The doctrine of a future life, even more consistently
moralized than in the religion of Egypt.

4. The confession of a faith which made man a co-
operating partner with God in the establishment of His
Kingdom and a hastener of " the time of freshening," when
the Saviour, Saoshyant, should appear for the redemption
of man.

Surely those who supposed that of the Wise Men who
came to the cradle of Bethlehem one, at least, was a disciple
of Zoroaster did not greatly err. 2

1 See F. C. Burkitt, The Religion of the Manichees, Cambridge, 1925 ;
A. V. W. Jackson, Researches in Manicheeanism, New York, 1932.

2 In addition to the works referred to above, the general reader will find
.useful the following : Martin Haug, Essays on the Religion of the Parsis,
London, 1884 ; E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, Vol. I., London,
1902 ; D. J. Irani, The Divine Songs of Zarathushtra, New York, 1924 ; G. F.
Moore, History of Religions, Vol. I., chapters xv. and xvi.

CHAPTER XVIII
The Religion of Ancient Greece

NTIL recently most educated men would have
declared with little hesitation that of all ancient

.J religions we knew best that of the Greeks. The
intensive study of the Greek classics, from the time of the
Renaissance to the present, seemed to have so familiarized
the mind of man with every detail as to the beliefs and
practices of this gifted race as to make dogmatism quite
excusable." To-day we are more hesitant or more modest..
We are even uncertain with regard to etymologies which
were once regarded by philologists as completely established.

The present uncertainty arises because of the new
knowledge acquired during the past generation as to the
comparative modernness of what was once regarded as
ancient and as to the great complexity of what was once
. regarded as simple. In two particular ways we have had
to correct our view of Greek religion. First, we have found
ourselves obliged to trace it back to several intermingled
strains of different racial provenance. Secondly,, we are
now compelled to recognize in. the grossness and savagery
of many early aspects of this religion elements which are
more in "harmony with the primitive religions we have been
discussing than accordant with that exalted conception of
Greek culture derived from- the sculptors and dramatists
of the fifth century B.C.

To -begin with, we find ourselves in the presence of
racial elements which are both Indo-European and non-
Indo-European. We may indeed distinguish three separate
strata of population. First of all we have the final stage
of that remarkable civilization, with Crete and Cyprus as
special centres, which we call Minoan or ^Egean. This
civilization seems to have spread from Crete to the Cyclades
and thence to the mainland of Greece. Next we have that

255

256 , A HISTORY OF RELIGION

ancient native population to which we give the name of
Mycenean or Pelasgic, the evidence of whose high culture
and skilled artistry is open to inspection in the Museum at
Athens. Then, lastly, we have the successive waves, of
Aryan invaders, Achaeans, Dorians, and lonians, breaking
from their home beyond the Balkans, arid finding their way
gradually to all parts of the Greek peninsula and to the
adjacent shores of Asia Minor.

Each of these important ethnic elements had a primitive
religion which made contributions to the pan-Hellenic
religion of later times, x and much of which remained almost
unmodified through subsequent, periods of history. Some
features readily lent themselves to the shaping of the religion
which was later- so conspicuous a characteristic of the
Hellenic state, and many others helped to swell the current
of popular religion, with its magic,. mysticism, and worship
of the dead. As to the last, the famous domed sepulchres
of the Mycenaeans, with their furniture provided for the
spirits, are sufficient witness. As for the deities which
formed later so highly systematized a pantheon, it is easy
to see that some of. these derive from the .goddess cults of
the Cretan world, or from Semitic cults which had found
lodgment in Cyprus, while others were the product of the
same poetic fancy which had given the personified forces
of nature to the Vedic pantheon. t

Thus the first period of Greek religion, lying wholly
within the field of the primitive, may be said to extend all
the way from the Stone Age, at the close of the third
millennium B:C., through the Bronze Age, which 'may be
put roughly as extending from 2500 to 1260 B.C., and on
through the period of the Indo-European invasion which
introduced the ancestors of the Achaeans, Dorians, lonians,
and ^Eolians.

In earlier chapters we have already sufficiently described
the religion of this first period. It is enough to say here that
it contains all the usual features. There was a kind of
fetish .worship, in which springs, and trees, and stones, and
shapeless pieces of wood, called xoana> were reverenced for
their supposed possession of spiritual power. What we
call orendism was a very general belief. Primitive animism,

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 257

too, peopled: the mountains, rivers and air with beings
scarcely personified, but thought in their totality to present
some evidence of the divine. If there was no totemism in
the technical sense, there was abundant evidence of animal
worship, and later representations and legends of the gods
bear constant witness to the fact. So we have the cow-eyed
Hera, the association of Athene with the owl, of Apollo
with the wolf, of Zeus with the eagle, and of Artemis with
the bear, not to speak of the shape-shiftings of Zeus as ox
or swan. Human sacrifices were offered at the tombs of
heroes, and at stated times in the calendar the dead were
fed. Of the gods some were survivals from the goddess
cult of Minoan times, such as Hera, Aphrodite, Athene,
and Artemis; others were the strongly anthropomorphized
personifications of the Aryan mythology. Until recently it
was taken for granted that most of the Greek gods belonged
to the latter category, and nature myths were held to account
for the entire theogony. But a more cautious philology
prevails to-day and now the Indo-Hellenic equations are
reduced to a few, such as Dyaus-Zeus, Ushas-Eos, the
Asvins-Dioscuroi, and possibly Varuna-Ouranos. But, of
course,' up to the time of the systematization, every locality
had its own gods, who might quite easily be identified with
any other deities resembling them in function, as political or
religious unification developed. Perhaps, to start with,
many of the gods were just as departmental as the Roman
indigitamenta^ but, as time went on, there would be a Zeus
"on every hill, distinguished only by adjectives of local
significance. Such was the case when Homer and Hesiod
carried out the great work of systematization which made
their writings almost a Bible for the theologians of ancient
Greece. This systematization, of course, was .not accom-
plished at a stroke; separate orenda had gradually been
acquiring. the character of special gods; but Homer did
humanize and stabilize the conception of the gods, and,
moreover, made them members of a family which had much
to do with shaping a religion which was pan-Hellenic" rather
than local. He also gave a setting to the Olympians which
made for them a place distinct from that of the older and
displaced dynasty of Kronos, and at the same time left the

A HISTORT OF RELIGION

impression of certain forces behind and beyond all the gods,
such as Moira, or Fate, and Themis, the principle of law
and social order.

Greatest of all the Olympians was Zeus, the. syncretism
of an old Cretan god, the native sky-god of the undivided
Aryan peoples and the local sky-gods worshipped on every {
high hill throughout the land. Though Zeus had, as under
the circumstances was natural, many__fabled birth-places,
he came nearest to providing the Greek with the conception .
of monotheism and also nearest to providing the basis for
an ethical conception of religion.

Of the other Olympians, since -their names are not
self-interpreting, it is impossible to say which were foreign
and which were native. Hera, .the wife of Zeus, came
originally (superseding the older Dione) from Argos where,
from the epithet cow-eyed, she may originally have been
connected with a pastoral cult. But, in the Homeric system,
she becomes the goddess charged with the government
of the household, for which she does not seem in Homer
too well qualified, on account of her nagging and interfering
ways.

Athene, the greatest of the Olympians next to Zeus, is
one of the old gods. Homer does not describe her, as does
Hesiod, as born from the head of Zeus, but makes her the
goddess of civilization and the useful arts, wise not- in a
speculative way, but in the arts of spinning and weaving,
the giver of the olive-tree to Athens after a contest with
Poseidon. Apollo, generally regarded as the sun-god, did
not attain that character till comparatively late, though
from the beginning the brightest of the Olympians. He v
had, indeed, very varied characteristics, as the giver of
oracles, the slayer of the Python (in commemoration of
which originated the Pythian games), the patron of music,
friend of shepherds and their herds, and healer of the diseases
of men. His chief shrine at Delphi was one of the unifive-'
forces in Greek religion, though Apollo never threatened
the supremacy of Zeus. In comparatively late times
Artemis, the virgin huntress, goddess of wild nature both
animal and vegetable, was made the sister of Apollo. She
was probably a goddess of the older world^ .one of the

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 259

mother-goddesses of Mycenaean times, and connected with
some form of totemism which revered the bear. Another
foreign god adopted by the Homeric system is Ares, the
Thracian war-god, who was made, the son of Zeus and Hera
and the lover of Aphrodite. Hermes, again, was not
originally an Hellenic god, but the numanization of the
old fetish stone-heap, known as a herm. In the Homeric
theology h'e becomes the son of Zeus and Maia, famous
from his cradle for his cunning and thievery, perhaps for
that reason becoming -the god of markets, and for some
other reason the herald of the gods, and eventually the
psychopomp, or leader of souls into the -nether world.
Aphrodite, the foam-born, ,was doubtless, to start with,
a Cyprian, or Semitic, fertility-goddess, like the Ishtar of
the Euphrates Valley. In Homer she becomes the wife of
Hephaistos, and in other literature (not Homeric) the
mother. of Eros. Hephaistos himself was an old fire-god,
especially of the fire in the forge, the lame artificer of the
gods. When the hearth-fire crackled it was as natural for
the Greek to say, " Hephaistos laughs," as, during a shower,
to say, " Zeus rains." Hestia, the hearth-goddess, ruled
over the relations of the human family as Hera ruled over
those of the Olympians. Poseidon, the son of Kronos and
Rhea, and brother of Zeus, was at first the god of sweet
waters, then of inland lakes and brackish springs, and
ultimately the ruler of the sea. He was also the god of
horses, and in his original character may have had something
to do with the horse-sacrifice. Another brother of Zeus
was Hades, god of the underworld, but he may.have been
added as a chthonic deity to produce a measure of sym-
metry in the Olympian family. Other Homeric gods of
minor ^ importance, such as Dionysos, "the frenzied"
Thracian divinity associated with the invention and use of
wine, and Demeter (Ge-meter), a goddess of fertility and
tillage, are of distinctly foreign origin. The last named is
referred,to in Homer rather as a symbol than as a personality.
In addition we have a whole multitude of lesser divinities,
attendants on the gods, like Hebe and Ganymedes, Graces,
Muses, Hours, and spirits of ocean, air, winds, springs and
rocks. Qlympus where the gods " lie beside their nectar "

260 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

is for Homer the centre of. the universe, from which all
things human and divine are surveyed.

. Hesiod, writing possibly several centuries later than
Homer, 1 is still more bent than the older, poet upon playing
the part of the theologian and of affording men a consistent
answer to the question, Whence came the world, the gods
and men? Though following the authority of Homer, he
is more resolutely set on consolidating the rule of Zeus
over the pan-Hellenic world. The Theogony has. probably
been altered since it left the poet's hand, but its main
features are dear. First, we have Chaos, and then out of
the abyss " the broad-bosomed earth," Tartaros and Eros.
From Chaos, again, spring Erebus and Night. Night
bears to Erebus the Ether and the Day. Earth, of her own
power, produces the starry Sky. This last pair> Heaven
and Earth, as in other mythologies, become the parents of
all that follows. The. story of three generations is given,
namely, those of Ouranos, Kronos and Zeus. From the
blood of the mutilated Ouranos are born the giants, the
Titans, .who -wage war against the progeny- of Kronos and
Rhea, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and the
last-born, Zeus, who is saved by a ruse from being devoured
by his cannibalistically disposed sire. Then follows the
story of the battle of the Titans with Zeus, which possibly
conceals under a veil of mythology some struggle between
earthly dynasties ending with the triumph of the sky-god
arid his worshippers; \ .

The religion of the Heroic Period may .be briefly
summarized as follows: Many of the old practices still
persisted, including theriolatries in which the bull of Zeus,
the owl of Athene, the bear of Artemis, the dove of Aphrodite
and such like, were much in evidence; human sacrifices,
of which the echo still remains in the literature; 2 magical
rites, such as the beating of the human scapegoats tjtharmakoi}
at the Thargelia through the streets of Athens. But some
of the darker features of the older cults were disappearing^

1 Modern opinion tends to regard Hesiod .and Homer as b>eing nearly
contemporaneous.

2 As, for example, the actual sacrifice of twelve Trojan youths at the
funeral of Patroclos.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 261

though in a religion so local and disintegrated any general-
ization is unsafe. Yet the Greek had an inborn sense of
the reasonable, he was less than most under the sway of
religious authority, whether exercised by an official priestly
caste or by a sacred literature. There was an almost
complete absence of dogma (in the usual sense) and there
were no religious " founders " to overawe by the prestige
of their personality. Every city had its temple, or temenos,
and here with simplicity, and for the most part with
joyousness, the rites of religion were carried out. ' The
gods were not abstractions but highly humanized and, with
the growth of artistic experience, we see the divinities
transformed from, rude heirms and agalmata to statues of
the finest physical perfection. The festivals were numerous
and followed the changes of the calendar. Many of them
were at great shrines, such as those of Delos and Delphi,
and helped the cause of pan T Hellehic unity. Here als.o
were performed rites of a more personal character, such as
the interpretation of omens through the entrails or thighs
of the sacrificial victims, or the enquiry from famous oracles,
an enquiry sometimes stimulated by " induced " dreams at
the shrine. There were also many placation rites to be
performed, involving often the -casting of beans, or eggs, or
even .pigs to the avenging ghosts, or to turn aside the wrath
of the Erinyes and the Keres. The sacrifices were both
uranian, when the throat of the victim was pressed upwards,
and chthonian, when the victim's throat was pressed towards
the earth. The animals offered were sheep, goats, swine
or cattle, and there were also offered dough, honey, poppy-
seeds and grain. The victims were led forward adorned
with garlands, sometimes with their horns gilded, and the
sacrifice was always regarded as the occasion for a common
meal. The plunging of an altar-brand into a bowl of water
and the sprinkling therewith of the worshippers were re-
garded as a kind of baptismal ceremony uniting them in
the joy of a family celebration.

As to the^ ethics of Greek religion at this time there is
much that might be said to its disadvantage, but on the
other hand, in addition to the reasonableness and the
joyousness to which .allusion has already been made, there

262 *A BISTORT OF RELIGION

was a sense of public obligation which had, as we, shall
see, important consequences in the next period. In the
way of sin the vice most disliked was the hybris, or over-
weening pride, which men felt was bound to bring down
upon them the wrath of the jealous gods.

The second period of Greek religion, which we may call
the Middle Ages of Greece, extends from about 900 to
500 B.C. It shows the work of the Homeric and Hesiodic
systematizations now complete, with all the old functional
gods "identified with members of the Olympian pantheon
and these highly anthropomorphized. As particular cities,
such as Athens, increase in importance, particular deities
also grow in public favour, and civic duty becomes nearly
identical with religious obligation. Zeus, Athene and Apollo
become especially important, and the temples and shrines
of these deities become civic centres. The family cults are
now largely taken over by the polis and festivals organized
on the civic scale. The worship of heroes has assumed
almost the proportions of an American Memorial Day,
while reminiscences of the older practices remain, as in the
Feast of Pots on the last day of the Anthesteria, when the
spirits of the dead are placated with pots of porridge and
dismissed again to their dwelling in the nether world. Even
the market-place has now become sacred ground, the duties
of citizens have become religious obligations and the priests
and diviners have become public officials, on whose ministra-
tions the welfare and even the safety of the state may depend.
At the- same time games and festivals held at various
important centres have taken on a kind of national or
pan-Hellenic character.

There now enter into Greek religion two elements of
the greatest possible significance, corresponding in a certain
broad way with parallel developments we find in the religious
life of the Middle Ages of Europe. The first is the appear-
ance of the so-called redemptive religions in the form of the
Mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos, and in the movement
known as Orphism. The other is the appearance of a kind
of scholasticism by which the philosophers attempted to
construct a reasoned view of the universe and of ^the place
of religion therein. Both of these movements spring out

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE '263

of that spirit of enquiry which reflection upon the Homeric
theology was bound to engender. But whereas the
philosophic movement was an effort to rationalize life and
in general an appeal to the mind, the Mysteries made their
appeal to the conscience and to feeling. Religion to the
followers of the 'Mysteries was no longer civic but personal.
There arose a sense of sin and of need for expiation in ways
which these strange sacramental dramas seemed to make
possible. Thus, while the old altars were growing cold, a
new religion was being born of immense consequence to
the future.

One of the striking features about the history of the
Mystery religions is the lowliness of their origin and the
apparent ease with which they made headway against the
strongly entrenched cults of Zeus, Athene -and Apollo.
Originally the Mysteries were nothing but tribal manifesta-
tions of imitative magic, rustic festivals at the turn of the
seasons designed to carry the failing forces of nature over
the critical periods and recover the vigour of the year for
the uses of men. Thus they are in line with the similar
Mysteries associated , with the stories of Tammuz and
Ishtar, of Osiris and Isis.

In the case of Demeter, the earth mother, we have the
beautiful myth, as reflected in the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter, of the goddess forcing from the cold embrace of
Hades, god of the nether world, her daughter, Persephone,
that she may gladden again for a season the hearts of men.
The maiden, gathering flowers with her companions, has
been seized by the grim god of the. underworld and carried
off. But the bereaved mother held back the fertility of all
the earth till the will of the gods sent Hermes down to
Hades as a messenger. Thus Persephone was released,
but as she had partaken of the food of Hades, she must
spend below one-third of her time, returning again with the
annual miracle of the spring. v The solemn drama, repre-
senting the maid's abduction, the sorrow and search of the
mourning mother, and the joyous thrill of the resurrection,
must have been deeply impressive, even when performed
by peasant tribesmen as a piece of mitative magic.

It must have been vastly more impressive. and a per-

264 A HISTORY OF RELIGION '

formance of national significance when carried out at
Eleusis, with all the accessories that the best of Hellenic
art could afford. Eleusis had originally been ah independent
community, but about the -seventh century B.C. it came
under the dominion of Athens and from that time on till
several centuries after the "beginning of the Christian l era
was a place of pilgrimage to which even princes and
emperors travelled with expectation. Even the Christian
Emperor Valeiitinian I. found himself unable to forbid 'his
subjects to set forth upon a pilgrimage hallowed by long
tradition and by associations of the most' solemn sort. So
far as we know the Eleusinian rites occupied several days
during which time the initiates who had previously obtained
permission to participate from the noble families in charge
went through* the various stages of the' drama. One day
the rites took place in the middle of September known
as " To the sea, O mystics! " (d\aSe ^VGTTCU), they purified
themselves by a sea-bath ; the two following days they spent
in Athens, whence they came in procession along the sacred
way, calling on the name of the god lakchos. At Eleusis
itself the rites- were concealed from the gaze of the profane.
That it was possible to ridicule them is plain from the way
in which Demosthenes taunts ^Eschines for having once
acted as an acolyte in the Mysteries: " In the night time
wearing a fawn-skin and mixing the bowl ; purifying the
candidates, and swabbing them off with mud and bran ; '
then making the man arise from his purification, and
bidding him say, ' I have escaped evil, I have found a better
thing '-^priding yourself that no one ever shouted so loud'.
. . . By day leading the five companies marching through
the streets, wearing the chaplets. of fennel and poplar-
leaves, hugging their brown snakes and raising them above
their heads, bawling Euoi saboil and dancing to the tune
of Hues attesl. attes hues! while old women salute you by
the titles of Leader, Guide/ Ark-bearer, Sieve-bearer, and
the like. For such services you were paid with sops and
twisted rolls and fresh-baked cakes who would not -count
himself a lucky dog to fare so well ? "

Nevertheless, a Pindar could sing: "Blessed he, who
having seen (the Mysteries) passes beneath the hollow

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 265

earth; he knows the end of life, and knows its god-given
origin." And a Sophocles: '"O thrice-blessed those
[mortals, who having beheld these mysteries descend to
jHades; to them alone it is given there to live; for the rest
all evils are there."

Dionysos also was a foreign deity, a wild, Thracian
vegetation-god who, entering Attica from Boeotia, prior
to the Ionian invasion of Asia Minor, gave renewed oppor-
tunity to the sober-minded Athenians to let themselves go
emotionally at certain seasonal crises, namely, at the winter
solstice, and on towards the spring equinox. Dionysos
was originally a vegetation-god of the usual kind, but was
later identified with the spirit of the vine and was even
represented, euhemeristically, as the discoverer of the vine
and the introducer of its culture into lands as remote as
India. In the tribal rites out of which the Dionysiac revels
Developed the god was torn to pieces by wild women known
as Monads in order that, by imitative magic, the earth,
fertilized by the dismembered body, might recover from
the winter's sleep. In the earliest times it was a mad orgy
in which clashing music, ecstatic dances, savage ululations,
with the eating of raw flesh, were the distinctive features.
But in course of time the rites became softened, disciplined,
and to a certain extent spiritualized through the influence
of the normal reasonableness of the Hellenic mind. Some
indication, of the part played by Dionysos and his cult in
Greek life may: be perceived in the Bacchae of .Euripides.
It is interesting, moreover, to note that out of savage and
barbarous practices belonging to the sphere of primitive
religion emerged at last the stateliness of the Attic drama,
the spirituality of the Orphic brotherhoods, and eventually
the lofty moral teachings of philosophers like Plato.

Orphism may, indeed, be regarded as a special form of
the cult of Dionysos, though it may have sprung from the
sympathetic magic of a tribe in which the death of Orpheus
at the hands of the Mcenads, because he had despised
Dionysos and held Helios the greatest of the gods, had the
place usually occupied by the story of Dionysos. In con-
nection with, the latter it was believed that Zagreus, son of
Zeus and Persephone, had been killed by the Titans, who

266 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

devoured him. His heart, however, rescued by Athene, 7
was swallowed by Zeus, and Zagreus was reborn as Dionysos,
son of Zeus and Semele. Out of the ashes of the Titans
consumed by the lightnings of Zeus sprang mankind, who
henceforth celebrated the death of the god as a means of!
entering through death and burial upon a life of resurrection
bliss. It is clear that Orphism, propagated by the thiasoi,
or Orphic brotherhoods, with a missionary zeal hitherto
unknown among the Greeks, was something new in Hellenic
religion. The old physical ecstasy was superseded by an
emotion of the spirit, something esoteric was introduced
into the old tribal and communal rites, a certain democracy
entered the hitherto restricted circles, and, though much
charlatanry prevailed here and there, there was evidently
something very genuine at the 1 core: As Dr. Macchioro
puts it: " Orphism . . . became a primary element in
Greek culture, and constituted one of the most important
spiritual upheavals "which history has ever .witnessed." *
To quote Dr. L. R. Farnell: " It proclaimed a theory,
unfamiliar to native Greek mythology and religion, that
the soul of man is divine and of divine origin; that the ;
body is its impure prison-house,, where it is in danger of
contracting stain; that by elaborate purifications and
abstinences the soul might retain its purity, and by sacra-
mental and magic methods the pure soul might enjoy in.
this life and in the next full communion with God. Pre-
occupied with the problem of life after death, 'the Orphic
mysteries_jgyolyed the - concept _ of. purgatory, a mode of
posthumous punishment temporary and purificatory; also,
if we can trust certain indications in Pindar and Plato, the
dogma of reincarnation or more specially of a triple cycle
of lives both- in this world and in the next." 2

As to the cathartic side of Orphism probably nothing
more needs to be said, but a few further words may be useful
as to modifications entailed in the Greek eschatology.
Primitive Greek religion differed little in this respect from
other early systems that we have considered. Mycenaean
graves of the tenth century B.C. depict the spirits of the
dead, and an. early Spartan relief " shows a dead man seated

1 V. D. Macchioro, From Orpheus to Paul, p. 165, New York.

2 E.R.E., Vol. VI, sub voce "Greek Religion."

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 267

[with his wife, holding out a cup for libations, and accepting
^offerings from the living." But the later Greeks, unlike
the Egyptians^ avoided the thought of death as much as
possible. To them, for the most part, " the cup of death
was empty." Though not absolutely immaterial the soul
was thought of as an attenuated and devitalized thing which
could only be kept in being by periodical draughts of blood
supplied by the sacrifices. As to the dwelling-place of the
ghosts, while primitive opinion took it to be the grave and
its neighbourhoodj there was gradually elaborated the
doctrine of an unseen world, Hades, a dismal land, like
some Thracian morass, in which miserable souls wallowed
unceasingly. For most this infernal region was definitely
localized as a great subterranean vault, inhabited by a
monstrous brood of serpents and dire terrors of the darkness.
Some placed the entrance at Cape Taenaros, in Laconia,
others at Troizen in Argolis, others again, at Heracleia, in
Pontos. Occasional visits were paid by mortals, for special
reasons, as in the case of Odysseus and Orpheus. Their
experiences are told in many famous passages. Achilles,
for instance, tried to clasp the shade of Patroclos : -

Away like smoke it went with gibbering cry ;
Down to the earth Achilles sprang upright,
. Astonished, cksped his hands, and sadly said,
" Surely there dwell within the realm below .
Both soul and. form, though bodiless."

At the spring festival, known as the Anthesteria, the world
of ghosts as well as the world of vegetation was believed
to be quick with desire for the upper air, but when the
festival was past the cry: " Out, ye ghosts, the Anthesteria
is over! " was sufficient to banish them to their dark abode.
Moreover; the doors were smeared with pitch to prevent
return.

Some exceptions were made in the case of the very bad
and the very good. Hopeless sinners, and in particular
perjurers, ^rere from the first consigned to Tartaros, where
was carried out the punishment of "many and terrible
deeds of murders foul and violent." Here Ixion laboured
eternally with his wheel, .and Sisyphus groaned beneath his
stone. But there was also Elysium, with 'its boundless

268 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

plains, and its endless banquets for those enjoying the
favour of the gods, though one seeks for something other
than moral reasons for the inclusion of Helen, Menelaos
and Achilles. The character of Elysium may be judged
from the famous speech (in Homer) of Proteus to Menelaos:
" But thou, Menelaos, son of Zeus, art not ordained to die
and meet thy fate in Argos, the pasture-land of horses, but
the deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plain
and the world's end, where is Rhadamanthys of the fair
hair, where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor
yet great storm, nor any rain; but always Ocean sendeth
forth the breeze of the shrill west to blow cool on men."

The growth of interest in philosophy and in the
Mysteries brought about considerable change in the way
of regarding the dead. There was, in the first place, a
disposition to consider the soul as divine, but as temporarily
imprisoned, as in a tomb, within the mortal body. The
Orphic rituals expressed dramatically the eagerness of the
soul to escape from bondage back to its pristine freedom
ancl purity. So Empedocles described the soul as a fugitive
from God and a "wanderer," and proceeded to suggest
those successive embodiments in human, animal, or even
vegetable form, which at this point link Greek philosophy
with the Indian doctrine of metempsychosis. This- idea
was, as we know, largely accepted by Plato.

In the second place, the conception of judgement,
which had appeared earlier in Pindar, is more definitely
stressed. Plato gives us the names of the three infernal
judges, Minos, who reminds us of the Indian Manu s
Aiakos and Rhadamanthys, to whom later was added the
name of Triptolemos. The judgement scene is enlarged
also by the introduction of new divinities as participators.
Hermes is, of course, the psychopomp, as Anubis was in
Egypt. Charon, the grim ferryman, is provided to ferry
souls across the Styx at an obol per head, while to the Styx
and Acheron are added the names of other infernal streams,
such as Kokytos, Phthlegthbn and Lethe. Kerberos, the
three-headed hound of hellj guards the infernal portals,
and within reigns Hades, now a god, "the discipliher of
mortals," Later Pluto appears as the occupant of the

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 269

infernal throne. Nothing is said as to any limitation of the
sufferings of the dead; to all appearance they are doomed
to an eternity of misery.

All this while the old polytheism was probably as strong
as ever and no attack on traditional institutions or ritual
was permitted. Even in the fourth century Lysias declared:
" It is prudent to maintain the same sacrifices as had been
ordained by our ancestors who made our city great, if for
no other reason than for the sake of the city's luck." But
among an increasingly large number of the thoughtful the
spirit of enquiry was abroad and, with no obstacle in the
nature of sacred books or organized priesthood, even began
to flourish. The course of national history itself strengthened
the consciousness of moral agencies at work to fulfil the
destinies of Greece. The influence of the victories over
the huge armaments of Persia was particularly unifying and
stimulating. A new patriotic religion appeared in which
Zeus was now Zeus Hellenics and Zeus Eleutherios. Even
the winds and the sea-nymphs were praised as divine
instrumentalities, employed to increase the glory of Hellas.
Further stimulus came through tne resplendent art of
Pheidias, by whose genius the Athene of the' Acropolis and
the Zeus Olympics gave even to strangers like Emilius
Paulus " the thrill of a real presence."

The philosophers were indeed no rebels against the
established order, but sincere prophets of " Zeus however
called," and enlightened interpreters of the world in which
gods and men alike found themselves resident. In the.
main they were both reverent and constructive and it was
not without reason that Clement of Alexandria placed them
with the Hebrew prophets as heralds .of the Christ. Even
the least conservative were at least religiously bent on
purging mythology of absurdity and obscenity.

We have no space to discuss the teachings of the
philosophers in detail; it will suffice to refer to some put-
standing features and personalities. Pythagoras (sixth
century B.C.), head of a school at Colophon in South Italy,
taught that the universe was permeated " by a prodigious
intelligence, of which the intelligence of individuals is but
a reflection or a part." He presents us with " a genuine

270 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

theory of evolution, even though its foundations were psychic
rather than physical." Xenophanes of Colophon, also of
the sixth century, resident for many years in Sicily and
Italy, founded the Eleatic school of philosophy. He
denounces the inadequacy of former religious ideas in the
words: " Homer and Hesiod ascribe to the gods everything
that among men is a shame and disgrace theft, adultery
and deceit," and, on the other hand, he affirms: " There is
one God, greatest among gods and men, neither in shape
nor in thought like unto mortals." There is again Hera-
kleitos (540-475), of Ephesus, " the dark philosopher," who
asserts the supremacy of intelligence, of which he declares :
"One, the only wise, is unwilling and yet willing to be
called by the name of Zeus," and relates religion to life in
the saying": " The law of things is a law of universal reason,
but most men live as though they had a wisdom of their
own." Then comes Parrrienides (born about 539 B.C.) of
Elea, with his doctrine of reality founded on the teachings
of Xenophanes a teaching which through him passed into
the writings of Plato and Aristotle and the Christian
schoolmen. Empedocles (490-430) expounded his doctrine
of metempsychosis and his conception of the soul as a
divine element working its way back to unfettered fellowship
with God. About the same time Anaxagoras, at Athens,
taught his doctrine of the Nous (mind) and insisted on the
presence of mind in the universe, even though, as Socrates
complained, he gave it but little to do. Then came
Democritus (born about 470), greatest of the physical
pKilosophers, with his atomic theory atoms moving cease-
lessly in the void and by their collisions and combinations
integrating the sun in heaven and all the stars. Protagoras
(481-411), first of the sophists, introduced his theory of
knowledge and his denial of the possibility of valid truth,
asserting that " man is the measure of all things." . Socrates
(470399) was the younger contemporary of Protagoras
and also a sophist, suspected by the orthodox, but really
no radical. He revered the Delphic oracle, and his prayer
(in the Ph<edrus}\ " Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods,
who haunt this place, give me beauty of the inward soul,
and may the outward and the inward man be at one " goes

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 271

to the heart of -religion. Moreover, as a martyr to the truth,
"Socrates drinking the hemlock" is no unfitting herald
of " Jesus on the rood." The importance of Plato (428-
348) in the religious history, not of Greece only but of the
.world, has been generally recognized. As Dr. G. F. Moore
puts it: "In making goodness the dominant element in
the conception of the godhead, Plato goes a. long step
beyond those who tried to explain the dealings of God
with men from the point of view of justice." x It was the
reliance upon God's goodness which led him to confident
assertion of the immortality of the 'soul the soul which
brings from afar a memory of the ideal world of which it is
a part. Plato held with Wordsworth that " our birth ^ is
but a sleep and a forgetting," that we come " not in entire
forgetfulness " and " not in utter nakedness " from the
heaven which is our home. This is the constructive side
of a teaching which did more to purify the traditional
mythology than anything that had hitherto appeared in
Greece. The consequences for the future, under Chris-
tianity, are obvious. Scarcely less important for that future
is Aristotle (born about 384), "the master of those who
know," one whom later on we shall see coming into a
position of authority among the mediaeval schoolmen.
With little or nothing to say on. many questions either of
theology or of popular religion, he stands for ever in the
front rank of the sages of ancient Greece.

We cannot pass from this period without reference to
the poets and dramatists whose influence, if not so far
reaching as that of the philosophers, was at the time wider
and more popular. Though they preached no new religion,
they yet tended in theology towards monotheism, pro-
claiming the justice and majesty of Zeus, and they were all
moralists, affirming the surefootedness of an avenging fate
following hard on the steps of the sinner. This influence
goes back beyond the Attic poets to Pindar, " an original
thinker who spoke words of power," and emphasized the
wisdom and justice of the gods. The three great tragedians,
^Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, were all alive at the
time of the battle of Salamis, and contributed to the emotions

1 G. F. Moore, History of Religions Vol. II., 499, New York, 1913.

A. HISTORY OF RELIGION

of that wonderful era. .#schylus, who," like his successors,
shows no interest in Orphism, taught clearly the sovereignty
and justice of God. " Zeus,'' he said, " is the ether, Zeus
is the earth, Zeus is the. heaven, and what is beyond the
universe," a striking declaration of both the immanence
and the transcendence of deity. .Sophocles is more con-
cerned with the retribution which follows sin. Euripides
raises other problems and has been accused of being
agnostic. But it is clear he is just scornfully sceptical as
to the truth of the old myths and bent on the excoriation
of sin, even though gods themselves are the offenders. It
is plain that he has thrown over tlie traditional polytheism
and is desirous of warning men against a debasing anthropo-
morphism. On the positive side, moreover, he betrays a
real human sympathy, declaring. that "the whole earth is
the good man's fatherland."

A few words must suffice^ for the period of Greek history
which commences with the amazing adventures -of Alexander
the Great, through whom the dominion of Greek culture,
and in large measure Greek religion, extended to regions
of which the . older Greek states never dreamed. There
were, in truth, many developments on which "it would be
possible to dwell. With the familiarizing of men as to
the names and nature of a multitude of foreign gods, there
grew up not only the possibility of syncretism in religion,
but the more wholesome possibility of a catholicity both
in theology and practical religion of which the rule of
dynasties like the Seleucids was the earthly shadow. It
was now possible for a .poet like Aratus (third century B.C.)
to write the famous lines used on Mars' Hill by St. Paul:
"All the ways are full of God, and all the gathering places
of men, the sea and the harbours, and at every turn we
are all in need of God, for we are akin to Him." There
entered also into the hearts of the religious that longing
for salvation which was in part the sequel to the grant of
Greek rule to some of the downtrodden peoples of the
East, a salvation which was freedom and healing from the
ills of life. The idea of a ruler as Soter, or Saviour, was a

1 See Acts xvii. 28.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE 273

real pointing towards the fact of the Incarnate Son of God,
the Saviour of the world.

Other movements, of course, such as Epicureanism and
Stoicism, are characteristic of the age, but these may be
conveniently referred to under the head of Roman religion.
It is time to conclude -the chapter with some summary of
Greek contributions to the religion of the future.

Among these we have, first and foremost, the gift by
Greece of her superb language, which was to become the
language of the Bible carried by evangelists and ap.ostles
to the world, that the thoughts of the Hebrew poets and
prophets might become intelligible to the Gentiles.

There was, secondly, the ideal of beauty, the conception
of the kaloS) which, blended with the Hebrew idea of the
good and the Roman idea of the true, was to suggest the
full morality of the Christian. In the words of Plato: " It
is the clear view of truth, the possession of eternal beauty,
the contemplation of "absolute good, which makes up the
life of the just and happy."

There was, thirdly, the gradually evolved conception
of God which led men's thoughts away from the gross, the
savage and the crude to the idea of a God

who leadeth men in wisdom's way,
And fixeth fast the kw,
Wisdom by pain to gain.

To use again the words. of Plato: " What a pilot is to a
ship, a driver in a chariot, a leader in a chorus, law in a
state, a commander in a camp, this is God in the universe,
except that to those ruling is wearisome and full of effort
and full of care, but to Him it is without worry, without
toil, and free from all bodily weakness."

Once again, in many a myth as well as in the Mysteries,
there is more than suggestion of the victory over death, a %
hopeful creed sometimes dramatized and, sometimes ex-
pressed confidently in song. Still again, in the story of
Socrates, we have a moral teaching which was a genuine
gift of religion to the world. It has been well said that
" not only in the Man of Sorrows, as depicted by
the Evangelical Prophet, but in the anticipations of the

274 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Socratic dialogues, there was the vision, even to the very
letter, of ;the Just Man, scorned, despised, condemned,
tortured, slain, by an ungrateful and stupid world, yet
still triumphant." x

And, lastly, there is a touch, of the inevitable Cross
upon the very religion which, among all ancient religions,
was thought to have turned its back upon that Cross most
definitely. Hear the last words of Socrates before .his
judges: " You, too," O judges, it behooves to be of good |
hope about death, and to believe that this, at least, is true-^- fj
that there can no evil befall a good man, whether he be |
alive or dead, nor are liis affairs uncared for by the gods." |

. Is it not plain that the Jew Philo was not false to the |
mission of his race in receiving from the religion of the
Greek ideas which it was possible for him to blend with the
revelation vouchsafed to his fathers to form the doctrine
of the Logos, through which the world of the divine and

that of the human are set at one? 2 -

1 Dean Stanley, Lectures on the Jewish Church, III. 200, London, 1883. -' v

* On the whole subject covered by this chapter it will be useful to read
Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity, New York, 1925 ; the same
author's Religious Quests of the Gresco-Roman World, New York, 1919 ; Chapter
VI. of Carl Clemen's Religions of the World, .New York, 1931 ; L. Campbell,
Religion in Greek Literature, London, 1898 ; E. Caird, Evolution of Theology
in the Greek Philosophers, Glasgow, 1904 ; J. Adam, The Religious Teachers
of Greece, Edinburgh, 1908 ; and the article on " Greek Religion " by L. R.
Farnell in E.R.E., Vol. VI.

CHAPTER XIX
The Religion of Ancient Rome

difficulties we found in discussing the religion.

Iof ancient Greece are present in even larger measure
in any survey of the religion of Rome, partly because
of the greater area covered by the.Roman state in its palmier
days, and partly because of the more extensive intermingling
of peoples which, has to be kept in mind. Indeed, at the
very start, the blending of Etruscan, Italic and Greek
elements out of which Roman religion arose appears so
complex as to be beyond the possibility of any satisfactory
disentanglement. Yet a careful study of the entire period
enables us to discern certain elementary facts and a certain
nice adaptation of these to the successive political " patterns "
evolved from the days of the early Italic communities to the
period of Imperial decadence. . ' .

There emerges, moreover, the impression largely
justified of a religion specially suited for a hard-headed,
practical, unimaginative people, little given to fancy,
creative of little or no mythology, and inclined to make
small distinction between the jus sacrum and the jus civile.

The main elements which go to make up the Roman
religion are the Etruscan, the Italic and the Greek, but it
is not ordinarily recognized that Greek influence is early
as well as late. Greek colonies appeared in Italy as early
, as the eighth century B.C. to such an extent that the southern
portion of the peninsula was commonly known as Magna
Graecia. Greek influences also affected the Etruscans with
whom the history of the Romans commences.
_' ^ The origin of the Etruscans is still very obscure, though
it is generally conceded that they were non-Indo-European,
and probably came (as Herodotus suggests) from some part
of Asia Minor.- Many have, supposed them intimately
connected with the Hittites, .as such similarities as those

275

276. A BISTORT OF RELIGION

between Tarq (the Hittite war-god), Teucer and Tarquin
might seem to imply. The Etruscans had gods like Tinia
and Turan, who were later identified with Jupiter and Venus.
They had also a demon of the underworld in Tulchulcha,
and it has been ^surmised that Saturnus had an Etruscan
forerunner in Satre. The Etruscan mythology, of unknown
antiquity, expressed creation as a process involving the
passage of twelve millennia, of which six are already over
and six still to come. The first man, created at the
beginning of the sixth millennium, was a clod -turned up
by the plough and thereupon transformed into a child
named Tages. The Etruscan religion made large use of
different forms of divination, stressing the- value of odd
numbers; it employed human sacrifice on a somewhat
large scale ^ and emphasized the worship of the " twelve
gods." It is not clear how much of the old Etruscan religion
entered into the ultimate religion of Rome, but it is possible
that the name Rome is itself Etruscan and therefore that
the community was strongly affected by this influence. 1

It is clear that much more was supplied from the Indo-
European communities we call Italic, of which Rome was
at. first by no means the most considerable. In these
communities there were many deities who were taken'over
subsequently into the Roman pantheon, but it is not clear
to what extent these were anything more than local variations
of a very few and it seems probable that many of the names
used were mere adjectives descriptive of different aspects
of one and the same divinity.

Without being precise as to the historical order of these
Italic deities, it may be convenient to group them somewhat
as follows. Of the nature-gods the most prominent is
Jupiter (or Juppiter), the Latin equivalent of Zeus, a deity
of the open sky, and the chief god of most of 'the Italic
states. His might is shown in the thunderbolt, which was
exhibited by the Fetiales and used for the administration
of oaths, much as the Bible is used in our own law courts.
In this connection Jupiter was moralized as Deus Fidius.
But he bore a large number of names indicative of his main
characteristic, such as Fulgur, Fulmen, Feretrius, while as

1 Some of the kings of Rome were probably Etruscan.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 277

the light-bringer he was known as Lucetius, Elicius, and
so on. Another nature-deity was Mater matuta, the goddess
of the dawn, also worshipped as a sea-god and a divinity
of birth. The many seasonal divinities some of them of
later birth are also to be noted under this head, such as
Vertumnus and Pomona. There may also be mentioned,
,of the same. order, the Earth-mother, Tellus mater; the
fertility-god, Liber, afterwards identified with the Greek
Dionysos; the god of saving, Saturnus from whom Italy
was named by the poets, Saturnia; Census and Ops, deities
of the harvest and the granary; Faunus, the kindly spirit
of the out-of-doors (cf. favere, to favour); Silvanus, the god
of the woodland; Diana, an original tree-spirit, one of the
first of Italic gods to be adopted by the Romans; Venus,
originally a goddess of productivity, specifically of market-
gardens, eventually identified with the Greek Aphrodite
and the Semitic Ishtar, and raised to highest honours as the
reputed mother of ^Eneas and ancestress of the Julian
family; and Flora, the goddess of the springtime flowers.
Even Mars (Mavors), afterwards the most famous of war-
gods, was originally a vegetation-god, who was looked to
for stimulating the growth of the grain. Of water-gods
there were deities like Neptunus, the divinity of moisture,
belonging to the oldest cycle of the Italic gods, and such
lesser deities as Lympha, the goddess of the stream. Fire-
gods also appear, such as~Volcanus or Vulcan, gods of the
underworld like Vediovis (commonly invoked in oaths), and
disease-gods, like Febris appealed to for the avoidance or
cure of malaria.

Gods of human life and gods of society, again, were
common, often described as in pairs, male and female.
Every individual had his genius the power of reproductivity
or the corresponding feminine, Juno, not originally
associated with Jupiter. In the order of the household the
deities particularly invoked were Janus, the god of the
entrance gate, and Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Janus
was reputed to have had an affair with a nymph, Carna,
who was rewarded by being made the goddess of hinges
and renamed Cardo, with the gift of whitethorn that she
might banish mischief from the threshold. Besides these,

278 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the Dii Penates were worshipped as the family gods,
guardians of the things kept in the alcove, while the Lares
were reverenced as the gods of the ground,- later more
specially as the deities of street-corners'. There was also
Minerva, the goddess .of the household arts, later to be
identified with the Greek Athene.

The abstractions which are frequently mentioned as
among the earliest of Roman divinities are probably the
invention of later and more reflective "times, but it is not
beyond the bounds of possibility that gods such as Pavor
(fear), Pax (peace), Concordia (concord), and Spes (hope)
had objects of reverence corresponding to them in the
early days. The same thing is true of the functional or
departmental gods, described by the Germans as Sonder-
gotter. Of these there is a vast array, of which a considerable
number were thought to preside over specific agricultural
operations. Thus we have Subruncinator, the weeding;
Vervector, the ploughing of the fallow; Occator, the
harrowing ; Reparator, the preparing of the soil ; Imporcitor,
the drawing of the furrow; Messor, the mowing; Con-
vector, the gathering; Segesta, the sowing; Matura, the
ripening; Tutilina, the storing of the grain ; and Terminus,
the preserving of the boundaries. Many of these were
inscribed in lists known as the Indigitamenta (from indigito,
to point with the finger), and were called Dii indigetes, or
native gods, by way of contrast' with the imported foreign
gods, Dii novensides. Childhood alone had its forty^three
guardian deities, such as Cunina, the cradle god, Statura,
the god of standing up; Edula, the god of. eating; Locutius,
the god of speaking; Adeona, the god of coming to one;
.and Abeona, the god of going away. Of course some of
these titles may easily have been mere. adjectives applied
to more important deities, but by the common folk
they were distinguished, even as by the ignorant Our
Lady of Lourdes is distinguished from Our Lady of
Loretto.

There were no temples, in the sense of buildings (<edes),
much before the end of the monarchy, but sacred places
became known as templa, or spaces marked off, and images
were in course of time erected with their faces set towards

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 279

the west, by way of contrast with the eastward facing
images of the Greeks;

The father of the family was the first priest and then
the king of the community. After a while, to relieve
himself of responsibility, the king appointed 2. rex sacrorum
and gradually there was developed the whole hierarchy of
collegia and guilds, augurs, flamens, fratres arvales, luperci,
or wolfmen, salii, or leapers, vestals, to watch over the
.sacred hearth flame,, pontifices, and the rest.

Though not entirely independent of the state religion,
there were sacra private* as well as sacra fublica. The
central point of family religion was the atrium, or hall, and
of this' again the focus, or hearth. Behind this was the
penuSy or store-closet, which was the seat of the Penates, or
family divinities. The Lar familiaris was not, as sometimes
represented, an ancestral spirit, but the spirit of the holding,
a hallowing of the place rather than of the person. In all
probability the lares were first worshipped at the compita,
or street corner. On the other hand, as already pointed out,
the genius was the generative force of the paterfamilias, the
numen residing in a person not his soul -upon which
depended. the continuance of the line.

Family religious rites took place on many occasions, as,
for example, at a marriage or on the birth of a child. The
child had to be guarded against the wild, untamed powers
of nature. by the wearing of an amulet, or bulla. So far as
the death-bed was concerned, the offices of religion were
hot much invoked, but 'the piety of the living was relied
upon to protect the dead and to keep them supplied with
food. There were annual rites at the grave, on as many as
nine different occasions, corresponding to the Christian use
of All Saints' Day. Much of the family religion, apart from
this, consisted of rites designed to increase the productivity
of the fields and to ensure the security of the beasts employed
in agriculture.

Something should here be said as to the authorities
from which we derive knowledge of the early Italic religion.
These consist, first, of the Fasti, or Kalendars, which,
though mainly dated between 31 B.C. and A.D. 51, take us
back in substance to several centuries beyond the Christian

280 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

era. We have , fragments of some thirty of these Fasti
and are thereby enabled to reconstruct the old Italic year,
with its Dies fasti (lucky) and nefasti (unlucky). Apparently
the Kalendars were drawn up almost purely for agricultural
purposes and confirm our estimate of the early Roman
religion as one of fields and woods, with a multitude of
functional deities. The primitive Kalendar shows a year
of ten months, but with the Numanic, following the reign
of Numa Pompilius, came in the year of twelve months
and no further reform was introduced till the time of Julius
Caesar, to whom we owe the Julian Kalendar. Secondly,
we learn much as to the early religion from men like Varro
(11627 B.C.) and Verrius Flaccus (c. 10 B.C.), later, of
course, from such writers- as Ovid and Pliny, and something
from references in the Christian Fathers.

Roman religion, as distinguished from its more primitive
components, may be conveniently divided into four main
periods, as follows:

1. From the earliest time of which we have knowledge
to the end of the regal period, about 500 B.C.

2. From the time of Tarquinius Superbus, to the wars
with Hannibal, 200 B.C.

3. From the age of Hannibal to the reign of Augustus,
shortly before the Christian era.

4. From the establishment of the Empire under
Augustus to the conversion of Constantine, A-.D. 323.

In the first period the general " pattern " is that of
a religion adapted to a race of agriculturists and stock-
raisers. All .the festivals seem to imply the importance of
this aspect. We have, for example, the Cerealia, in honour
of Ceres, on April 19; the Robigalia y on April 25, when a
red dog was sacrificed to avert the danger of rust in the
crops ; the Ides at certain times of the year sacred to Jupiterj
and the Kalends similarly sacred to Juno. In March the
Salii leaped to assist the growth of the crops; in October
(on the 1 5th) there were rites in honour of Mars, to protect
the community from the menace of war and disease, . with
a horse offered in sacrifice on the Campus Martius.

The gods worshipped at this period were numiria of a

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 281

very undefined personality and it was advisable to keep on
good terms with them nevertheless. Jupiter was, as pointed
out above, the numen of the sky and the bearer of the
thunderbolt. Mars and Quirinus were probably but
different names for 'the same god, worshipped by Romans
and Sabines alike. Janus and Vesta were the house-gods,
deities of the gate and hearth, protectors of the sacred
entrance and the sacred recess.. At the same time there
Iwas a widespread cult of the dead, as represented by the
\Dii -parentes and the Dii manes. This cult had ample
[expression at the various calendric festivities. The Parentalia
were observed from February 13 to 22- as a kind of ghostly
home-coming, when, with temples closed, business sus-
pended, and even marriages uncelebrated, people went
forth with roses and violets, or with offerings of oil, milk
and honey to the tombs. The celebration culminated on
February 22 in a " feast of love " when place was made
for the effigies of the dead in seats of honour. Three
months later, on May 9, 1 1 and 13, the Lemuria were
held, when the head of the house rose at midnight to cast
I black beans over his shoulder and repeat nine times the
words: "With these beans I redeem myself and mine."
At the stroke of a gong the spirits were then bidden to
[ depart. Again, at the Compitalia, there was the hanging
| outside the doors of the woollen effigies of the inmates,
I which it was believed the prowling ghosts would bear away
I instead of their living originals.

j- The temples, as already noted, show a gradual deyelop-
f ment from the use of sacred groves to the erection of special
I buildings, or <edes. In these was enacted a primitive ritual,
j with its sacrifices, both bloody and unbloody, all designed
j for the purpose of making over a value to the deity there
| adored. One of the most significant of these sacrifices was
the suovetauritia, or the sacrifice of sheep, swine and bulls
[in one oblation. With these were offered the salted meal,
j or mola salsa, from whence we derive our word immolate.
(The officiating priest acted with his eyes covered, with
| music .sounding in his ears (to prevent distraction), and
'amid the silence of the multitude. Ill effects would follow
to the land and the community were the perfection of any

282 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

rite marred, deliberately or inadvertently, and a
or " apologetic sacrifice " was necessary to atone for errors
of this sort. One of the most remarkable of all rites was
the lustratio, when prayer and sacrifice -were combined with
processions, to cut off the intrusion of' evil from the land.
The rite arose doubtless from a very primitive fencing off
of the farm by the use of magic, but the typical illustration
of the lustratio is that which took place at the Ambarvalia
of, May, when the threefold sacrifice was three times driven
around the given territory before being offered to. the gods
by the Fratres arvales. There is naturally much in the
religion of this period which is barbarous and superstitious,
and much that was founded on fear, but it had, nevertheless,
its good side in that duty to the community was strongly
stressed.

The second period, from about 500 to 200 B.C., saw
many changes. The last of the Etruscan kings had already
given certain religious privileges to the plebeians which
had hitherto been restricted to the patricians, so it is not
surprising to see certain steps towards democracy. But
a much greater change came about through Rome's
absorption of the surrounding communities and the desire
shown to systematize religion in a large way as compared
with what had been hitherto deemed possible. Thus, while
the list of Dii indigetes was now closed, the process of
Hellenization commenced with a view to the creation of
an inclusive and homogeneous pantheon. First of all, we
find the goddess Diana brought from her famous shrine
at Aricia by Lake Nemi to occupy her new home on the
Aventine Hill,- while the grove itself remained a sanctuary
for the whole Latin federation for many generations yet to
come. Then followed the introduction of the Greek
divinities. The Dioscuroi,- under the name of Castor and
Pollux, came by way of Tusculum, and Heracles was
'introduced to become the Latin Hercules, a deity of trade
profits and of -booty taken in war." Then the original
Etruscan triad of Tinia, Thalna and- Minerva, which had
later become Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, was superseded
by the new triad of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno and
Minerva, and the new temple raised upon the Capitoline

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 283

Hill became common ground for the worship, of plebeians
and patricians alike. In 493 B.C. the Greek triad of Demeter,
Dionysos and Persephone was introduced and identified
with the Latin divinities Ceres, Liber and Libera. Mean-
while, the Sibylline Oracles had been imported from their
ancient home of Cumae and, closely associated with these,
in 43 1, came the Greek Apollo, as a god of healing in time
of plague, but destined to find no Latin equivalent. The
Greek Aphrpdite, brought from Mt. Eryx in Sicily, was
now identified with Venus and Artemis with Diana, while
in the third century B.C., on the advice of the Sibylline
Oracles,, an entirely new foreign god was introduced in
^Esculapius, the sacred serpent being brought with honour-
able escort from Epidaurus to its new habitation on an
island in the Tiber, where it swam ashore. It remained
only to identify the Latin Neptunus with the Greek
Poseidon, to equate Orcus with Pluto, and to introduce
Hermes under the name of Mercury to make the pantheon
complete. Mercury was regarded as the protector of the
routes .by which the grain was imported and so naturally
a god appealed to against the failure of the crops.

Certain changes in ritual inevitably accompanied the
expansion of the Roman theology. The ritus Gr<ecus, in
which the priests officiated with uncovered heads, took the
place of the Latin rite, in which they remained covered.
An important innovation was the use of the lectisternium^
or couch for the banquet of the gods, with the richly attired
puppets reclining to partake of the provided feast. The
first use of lectisternia appears to have been in 399 B.C. and
was ordered by the Sibylline Oracles to rid the land of
pestilence. Of a more native sort was the development of
the two great collegia of Pontifices and Augures. The
pontifices were now increased from three to nine and thence
to fifteen, and found new occupation in drawing up the
lists we have mentioned as Indigitamenta^ in which all kinds
of new gods (of a rather academic sort) are mentioned.
These include such divinities as Salus, Spes, Fides, Pudicitia,
Victoria, Fortuna, and the like. They were never per-
sonalized in any proper sense of the word, but it is important
to remember that though many of the so-called Sondergotter

284 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

are primitive in character many of those here indicated are
of priestly rather than of popular provenance. The Augurs
were frequently magistrates, who had always the right of
spectio in the performance of their official duties, and had
much occasion, in their own uncertainty, to depend upon
indications furnished them by the flight of birds or the
feeding of chickens.

The third period of Roman religion extends from the
end of the second Punic war, about 204 B.C., to the time of
Augustus. The Punic wars proved a turning point in the
history of religion since, under stress of the conflict (to use
a phrase of Sir Gilbert Murray, applied to Greece), Rome
" lost nerve." Either the gods were impotent or angry
and there was every justification for the people to seek relief
in any direction charlatanry or superstition might suggest.
So there were endless supplications and paradings of
lectisternia for three entire days in honour of the twelve
Greek gods. There was even, resort to human sacrifice in
the case of certain Gaulish and Greek prisoners. In 206 B.C.
an event took place which marks the beginning of an
Orientalizing process in the Roman religiqn. / On the
recommendation of the decemviri, aghast at the I progress
made by Hannibal, there was imported from Pessinus in
Asia Minor an image of the goddess Cybele, Mater Deum
Magna Idaea, the Attis of Asiatic religion. The festival
held in Rome on April 4 proved the prelude to Scipio's
great victory over the Carthaginians and the timely triumph
had the effect of popularizing the foreign superstitions.
Mathematici, soothsayers and Chaldseans began to flourish
on Roman credulity and other foreign deities were im-
mediately sought. Ma, or Bellona, .was welcomed from
Cappadocia, Isis . and Sarapis (Osar-hapi) from Egypt,
Adonis and Atargatis from Syria, and Mithra from Persia,
though the oldest Mithraea in Rome are not earlier than, the
time of Trajan. Many of these cults, however, including
the dangerously emotional worship of Bacchus imported
from Thrace, were regarded with considerable misgiving,
and here and there prodigies seemed to show the wrath of
the Roman gods. In B.C. 58 the Senate gave orders for
the destruction of the altars of Isis, though the consul, L.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 285

Emilius Paulus, in the following year, found no workmen
willing to carry out the order. Augustus gave command
in the case of the Egyptian gods that they should only be
worshipped outside the Pomerium. It was not till the
third century A.D. that this restriction was removed.
Together with the worship of the Oriental gods there was
displayed an increased tendency to consult the stars and
astrologers multiplied to meet the demand.

Meanwhile, many of the intelligent classes, repelled by
popular superstition, took refuge in one or another type of
philosophy. The two favourite schools were those of the
Epicureans and the Stoics. The best Roman example of
Epicureanism is Lucretius, who confounded all religions
with superstition and put aside alike the native and the
foreign gods. Stoicism was much better calculated to bring
out the nobler side of Roman character and from this time
on to the conversion of the Empire many of the finest
Romans were Stoics, holding fast to the ideal of duty,
however much the sea of faith had ebbed.

But the prevailing attitude, of men was sceptical, even
in regard to virtue. Cicero, though proud to be an augur,
was a thorough-paced sceptic, till he lost his daughter
Tullia, when natural affection restored his belief in im-
mortality. So was Varro, in spite of his academic interest
in the religious tradition. The festivals, such as the
Lupercalia^ were now kept without real understanding of
their origin or significance. Temples went to pieces till
Augustus undertook their restofation. The priesthoods
fell into contempt. Mucius Scaevola, though holding the
office of Pontifex Maximus, declared that there were three
kinds of religion, the poetic, the philosophic and the political.
Of these only the last, he said, was of consequence, and this
was not true. Religion was plainly at a low ebb, with
immorality rampant and all classes selfish and callous to the
corruptions of the time.

Just prior to the opening of the Christian era it may
well have seemed that Roman religion had lost whatever
savour, it had anciently possessed. But, while we may
think of that " hard pagan world " aa spiritually dead, we
shall have to award Augustus the credit for a tour de force

286 A HISTORT OF RELIGION ''

in the way of religious revival which is almost unique in
history. It is true that this revival was part of a political
scheme. The Emperor rightly discerned that the prosperity
of the State was inseparable from the attention to be
bestowed upon religion. A reflection of this is to be seen
in Horace's famous Carmen Seculare> written for the great
Secular : Games of 1,7 B.C. The occasion was meant to
be the beginning of a new secu/um, the turning over of a new
leaf. Not only in the mind of the Emperor, but also in the
consciousness of the people, there was a feeling of weariness
and disappointment .which almost amounted to a sense of
sin. Yet out of the darkness a new era might be born and
the wellnigh Messianic expectation of Vergil's Fourth
Eclogue reflects the felt possibility of the situation. At the
same time the extension of the Empire gave a new sense
of destiny, and it was considered worth while to make an
epic of the story of ^Eneas in order to trace the generation
of Rome to the gods and to exult in the glory still to be
revealed. Together with this was the stress on the pietas
of jfEneas which was to reproduce itself in the character of
her citizens if Rome was to fulfil her mission.

It was on this wave of hope that the Emperor rode to
carry out his - wonderful series of reforms. Waiting
patiently till the death of Lepidus, Augustus became
Pontifex Maximus in 12 B.C., having long been a member
of the colleges of augurs and pontifices. He immediately
proceeded to "revive other ancient collegia such as those of
the Luperci, Salii, and Ffatres arvales. . Eighty-two temples
were restored through the imperial bounty, including that
of Apollo Palatinus, the* Temple of Mars, and the Temple
of Vesta on the Palatine Hill. Later the Emperor made
still further approach to the religious unification of his
realm by associating the Genius Augusti with the two Lares
compitales, with the symbol of this new trinity placed at the
intersection of all the streets. What paganism could do for
the creation of a catholic" religion, such as called for the
loyalty of all to one idea, -and co-operation in a common
service, was done by Augustus. It is well to note that,
while the effort failed, some ideas were so strongly entrenched
in the popular mind as to make the transference of certain

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 287

celebrations easy from the pagan to the Christian calendars
and the transition possible from a catholic paganism to
the beginnings, of a catholic Christianity.

It is not here necessary to describe the various stages by
which the Roman ideal passed on towards a tragical debacle.
The fall came in spite of many an attempt to stem it, both
from the political and the religious side. If there were
Emperors who strove loyally to weld together this great
organization of diverse peoples into a unity by pressing on
their subjects the importance of worshipping the Imperial
Genius^ there were others who, seeing in this direction
failure, were already casting- about for some other faith,
whether it came from Persia or from Egypt, which by its
adoption might save the State from disintegration. And if
there were philosopher^ like Seneca and Epictetus and Mar-
cus Aurelius striving to steady themselves amid the general
drift by adherence to the Stoic ideal, there were also many
others genuinely seeking illumination and strength through
attendance at the grottoes of the Mithraists, or feeling after
a Saviour God and regeneration through the Mysteries
or purification, through such rites as the Taurobolium and
Criobolium, or endeavouring to purge out the grosser part
of nature by fasting and enforced chastity, or to strengthen
the spiritual element by participation in a sacramental meal.

The religious system had already, been revealed which
was to offer fully what was thus being ignorantly sought,
though the majority knew it not or sought the way to
salvation amiss. Hence it was that the Roman religion
which tried to retain its authority by archaic revivals or by
despotic use of the imperial power became the blasphemous
parody of what might have been its proper line of develop-
ment. It was terribly easy for Rome, in failing to become
the Bride-city of the New Dispensation, to become the
Harlot-city, the doomed Babylon instead of the New
Jerusalem. Setting herself to secure her strength through
material force, she set in array against her .those spiritual
forces which the apocalyptists of the time saw coming down
out of the heaven of the absolute world. Setting; herself to
secure unity by forcing all men to offer incense to the Genius
of the Emperor, she left men to worship the shadow -of a

288 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Beast which had already been slain and whose body had
already been given to the devouring fire. Setting herself to
secure peace by crushing out the free life of the peoples
she had subdued, she roused against her that spirit of
freedom through whose breath she was destined to perish.

Yet, though we are accustomed thus to see Rome as
the antithesis to that city of redeemed humanity which had
been revealed from heaven, we must not forget that her
religion, like that of Greece, had its contributions for the
future, and that the language of Rome, like the tongues of
the Greek and the Hebrew, witnessed to Christ's Kingdom
on the Cross. We need not stress overmuch the witness of
the Stoics. Whether Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius are, as thinkers, in the right line of descent from
Cleanthes, or whether they were themselves touched with
the golden ray of the newly arisen Sun, in either case we
cannot put them outside the category of the minds " naturally
Christian," such as illustrate the continuity of the divine
leading. If even " the fierce Tertullian " could speak of
" Seneca, saepe noster," it does not become us to be catholic
in a lesser -degree. 1 . .

But, outside the witness of the Stoics, we have con-
tribution to the religion of the future from the Roman in
the following particulars :

i. Rome gave to the first Christian apostles that vision
of catholicity which is so powerfully reflected in the missionary
strategy of St. Paul. With her divine representative
Augustus, Divus, ruler over what appeared to be the
World, Rome was at once the symbol, as she, alas, became
the parody, of the oecumenical dominion of the Christ.
That " the kingdoms of the world " were to become " the
.Kingdom of our God and of His Christ," that " all peoples,
nations, kindreds, tongues " were to accept His authority,
was a vision which was not a little assisted by the spectacle
of political achievement which had welded nations, east
and west, into one great imperial entity, all 'elements of
which paid tribute to the Lord who reigned from the
Seven Hills of Rome. Presently, of course, the symbolism

1 See F. W. Farrar, Seekers after God, Lcmdon, 1868.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ROME 289

would bring into strong relief the contrasts between the
brutishness of the material Rome and the vision of the
City of God. But, in the years preceding the Neronian
persecution, it is not to be overlooked that it was Rome
which gave St. Paul the sense of the scope of his evangel ;
it was Rome which offered to his eager feet the roads which
linked city to city within the Empire; it was Rome, again,
whose even-handed justice ensured his protection time and
time again against the violence of the mob.

2. In the second place, it was from Rome that, with
the vision of catholicity came also the expectation of
universal law, an order like that of Camelot,

Where all about a healthful people moved,
As in the presence of a gracious king.

The sense of law which pervaded the Roman system, when
divorced from other things, had its mischievous influence,
in later days making too rigid and precise both the thinking
and the conduct of Christian men. But, in these early
days, in its influence on the organization and the administra-
tion of the Christian communities, we cannot fail to
recognize it as a providential gift for the extension of that
spiritual kingdom which, first inspired by the conception
of so vast an Empire, was destined in time to proclaim its
message to " regions Caesar never knew."

3. To the expectation of universal empire under the
reign of universal law was added the hope of universal
peace, the beginning of that new age which, after all the
troubles of the Republic, seemed predicted by the auspicious
accession of Octavius Caesar. It makes little difference
what the immediate occasion may have been for the writing
of Vergil's Fourth Eclogue. The poet prophesied better
than he knew:

A mighty line of ages springs anew ;

The Maid returns and Saturn's golden prime ;

From heaven on high a new-born race descends.

In course of time, as has been said, Rome became the
parody rather than the type. Nevertheless, through all
the smoke of apocalypse, she still emerges as a wonderfjil
and inspiring idea. We can %ell understand how the

290 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Abbe Pierre Froment, in Zola's Rome,. could take his stand
upon the hills outside the Sacred City, and " in the soft
and veiled light of the lovely morning" dream of "the
Rome of that first meeting, the Rome of early morning,"
suggested to his sanguine soul. " What a shout of coming
redemption seemed to arise from her house-roofs, what
a promise of universal peace seemed to issue from that
sacred soil, twice .already Queen of the World."

Perhaps, having in mind the impressive story of her
religious development, we, too, with the Abbe, may dream
of what that " third Rome " might be, if we could see all
that its history suggests placed at the feet of the Christ
who became heir of all that it achieved. Then, indeed,
while we should still continue to sing our " Jerusalem, the
Golden," we should also hold in our hearts and upon our
lips the greeting: "Ave, Roma Immortalis! " *

1 On the general .subject of Roman religion the reader is referred to W.
Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, London, '
1899 ; the same author's Religious Experience of the Roman People, London,
1911 ; Carl Clemen, Religions of the World ; G. F. Moore, History of Religions,
Vol. I., chap. xxi. ; E. V. Hopkins, History of Religions, chap, xxiii. ; W. S.
' Fox, Greek and Roman Mythology, Part III., Boston, 1916 ; and the article
" Roman Religion " in E.R.E., Vol. X., by W. War.de Fowler.

CHAPTER XX

Religion of the Amerindian Empires

THE more settled civilizations of the American
continent, prior to the Spanish Conquest, had four
centres, namely, Mexico, Guatemala, Yucatan and
Peru, but, we may describe their civilization, arid the
religion which, at least in part, expressed that civilization,
under the three heads of Aztec, Mayan and Inca.

Whether any part of this culture was the result of
overseas contact in historical times has been a moot question.
Some have maintained the theory of communication with
Europe by way of. Greenland; others have been zealous to.
prove the establishment of communication with Oceanica
by means of canoes. For either of these hypotheses there
seems but slight evidence. Mr. Stuart Chase 1 expresses
himself as follows: " I am inclined to cast my vote . . .
with those who, like Dr. Franz Blom, hold that American
culture in its more advanced phases was a purely American
phenomenon. It took nothing from Egypt, nothing from
China, nothing from Angkor. Granting the invasions,
they came before old-world civilizations had developed, or
from races out of contact with them. Peru, Mexico, and
the rest hammered out their own destiny from their
environment. Diffusion took place within the Americas,
but hardly from the old world, unless we go back to stone
hatchets and wooden dugouts. Any bright morning,
however, this patriotic theory may be overturned. A stone
Asiatic elephant that. is obviously not a macaw or tapir
may be found on a newly excavated temple, thus proving
beyond peradventure cultural diffusion from Asia. Until
-that definitive discovery; is made, I shall continue to ascribe
Mexico to Mexicans and not to Egyptians, Chinamen or
Polynesians." . .

* Stuart Chase, Mexico, a Study of Two Americas, p. 3.

291

292 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

In any case, whether the civilizations we have in mind
are independent creations, due to the emergence of important
personalities, or whether they are the natural development,
in communities of exceptional intellectual and physical
vigour, of primitive ideas, the primitive ideas, such as we
have discussed in earlier chapters, were never completely
overlaid by the subsequent religious experience of Aztecs,
Mayans or the Incaic Peruvians.

Dealing first with what may be called the "higher"
religion of Mexico^ it is easy to see that the Aztec civilization
is something which has been superimposed on that of the
earlier Toltecs, many of whom seem to have been driven
south into Central America when the Aztecs established
their empire somewhere about A.D. loocx The old Toltec
gods were, as was usual after the conquest of one people
by another, imprisoned, but even as " prisoned gods " they
retained much of their old authority. The general character
of the superseded religion may very well have been as
bloody and filthy as that of the conquerors which Bernal
Diaz found, so "far as its temples bore witness, a good
imitation of hell.

Yet it cannot be denied that there must have been a
certain intellectual quality about the cult which produced
a calendric system of fifty-two years and which embodied
a certain amount of astronomical lore in the worship .of
the gods of the Four Quarters. It may be noted that some
tribes preferred to speak of the five points of the compass,
recognizing (as did the Chinese) the place where you stand
as well as the direction to which you look. Others, again,
raised the number to seven, the perfect figure, by including
the zenith and the nadir.

The " high gods " embraced many of the deified powers
of nature. There was, for example, Huitzipochtli, originally
the morning star, " lord of the south," the war-god, often
represented by his symbol, the humming-bird. Then came
Tezcatlipoca, the sun-god, or fire-god, represented by a
smoking mirror. Best known of all (to the Spanish) was
the famous Quetzalcoatl, " the bright-feathered snake,"
god of the eastern quarter, a culture-god, and probably, to
begin with, a deified ancestor. Equally important to the

RELIGION OF AMERINDIAN EMPIRES 293

Aztee was Tlaloc, the thunder- or rain-god, to whom babes
were sacrificed (afterwards devoured in cannibalistic feasts),
that the tears of the little ones and their mothers might act
as a rain charm. Mictlantecutli, represented as a fearful
skeleton, was the god of death and guardian of the north.
To him the dead were commended with passports such as
remind us of Egyptian charms in the Book of the Dead,
Tlauizcalpantecutli was guardian of the west and Venus as
the evening star. In addition to these we have an important
deity in Xipe-Totec, " the flayed one," represented as clad
in a skin stripped from a human sacrifice. At his festival,
which was in the spring and meant, by imitative magic, to
assist nature to acquire her new vesture of green, many
human beings were sacrificed and youths appeared in the
skins of the victims.

In addition to the high gods, there was an almost
infinite number of lesser divinities, including (in very early
times) moon-goddesses, gods of merchants, weavers, potters,
fishermen and metal-workers, water-gods, fire-gods, moun-
tain-gods, and volcano-gods, gods of medicine, and gods of
disease, animal-gods, and even flower-gods.

The worship of the Aztecs was elaborately ceremonial.
The huge pyramids, or teocalli, with their many storeys
and varied colours, reminding us of the old Babylonian
zikkurats, -must have been strangely imposing. , Even with
their 'horrible sacrifices and cannibal feasts, they could
hardly have suggested to the people what they did to Bernal
Diaz, -when he described an Aztec temple " such as one
pictures at the mouth of Inferno, showing great teeth for
the devouring of poor souls." The terraced pyramids were
often of enormous size, rivalling even the Pyramids of Gizeh
in bulk. As parts of a sacred city, with their towers and
perennial fires, they must have been exceedingly impressive,
especially t Tenochitlan, the capital (now Mexico City),
which was founded in 1325. Altars smoked by their
hundreds through the land and priests by thousands busied
themselves with the offices of their profession, as diviners,
guardians of the idols, thurifers, musicians, and singers, as
well as sacrificers. In 'Mexico City were two chief priests,
and special priesthoods were attached to the service of

294 A HISTORY OF RELIGION .

various gods, such as Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. Some
of the priests were esteemed as so charged with dangerous
mana that they had to be kept secluded for the sake of
others. Of the prayers used some have been preserved
and are striking enough to invite comparison with the
liturgies of other faiths, but Dr. Hartley B. Alexander
speaks of " a kind of world-weary melancholy" as being,
generally typical of Aztec supplication. Enough has
already been said of the sacrifices to show the place occupied
by the offering of men and women sacrifices as horrible
as any recorded in the history of religion. Some victims
were prisoners of war, but many were selected from the
youth of the land. Specially in vogue Was the offering of
human hearts, torn from the bosoms of their still-quivering
victims, .in order to supply vigour to the sun and other
powers of nature. Many sacrifices were followed by
cannibal feasts, though " eating the god " was often a
sacramental rite in which the god was represented in paste,
divided and distributed to the worshippers.

There were naturally many seasonal festivities, of which
the Great Spring Feast was one of the most important. It
was in connection with this that an unblemished youth was
chosen, provided with four selected maidens as wives,
feasted and reverenced till the day when, after the new fire
had been kindled on his breast, his heart was torn from his
body and presented to the sun-god, Tezcatlipoca. -Then
swift runners carried brands lighted from the new fire to
rekindle all the hearth-fires of the land. .

The Aztecs had a rather detailed cosmogony, such as
included the idea of four ages preceding the creation of
man. First there was the jaguar age; this was followed by
the ape age, the bird age, and the fish age. After this fourth
epoch the fallen sky was raised and the earth -revived; then
came in succession the kindling of the fire and the creation
of .man. After men began to multiply wars arose, for the
purpose of supplying the human hearts necessary for the
sun's support. Only when this support had been assured
was the sun itself created. 1

1 See Hartley B. Alexander, Latin- American Mythology, chapters" ii.
and iii. . ' -

RELIGION OF AMERINDIAN EMPIRES 295

There were supposed to be thirteen regions of heaven
above the earth and nine regions of hell below. In these
regions the souls of men were distributed after death.
Warriors went eastward and mounted to the zenith; women
went westward, but climbed in the morning towards the
zenith to receive the sun from the hands of the warriors.
On the death 1 of a king the corpse was provided with a jug
of water for the journey, a bunch of cut papers to pass him
through the dangers of the road, garments to protect him
from the wind, and a little dog to guide him across the
nine rivers. The souls of men are often represented as
passing between clashing mountains and knives of obsidian,
to stand before the skeleton god, Mictlantecutli, for judge-
ment. Thence they fare over " the ninefold stream " to their
final abode. On this fearsome journey the dead man is
guided by the red dog which was sacrificed at the grave,
and this becomes his psychopomp, corresponding to the
Anubis of ancient Egypt. It may be added that the bodies
of the dead were wrapped like mummies and sprinkled with
water from the vessel placed beside the grave.

In conclusion, we may say that, in spite of the awful
cruelty which characterized the religious ritual of Mexico,
the morals of the people, so far as observed, show a rather
high ethical standard, and a conception of life by no means
so debased as we mighthave expected.

THE MAYAN RELIGION.- For our present purpose we
may consider the ancient civilization of Yucatan and the
(Quiche) civilization of Guatemala and parts of Honduras
as one. With some tribal interminglings, the peoples of]
these regions represent one linguistic family and one
religious type conveniently described as Mayan. The
Mayan Empire seems to have been founded in Guatemala
about the beginning of the Christian era and reached its
high point between 450 and 600 A.D. It was early in the
seventh century when the Mayans migrated into Yucatan
and built cities like Chichen; Itza. Whether, as some
suppose, these people are to be identified with the Toltecs
driven south by the Aztecs, or not, it is clear that they
developed an impressive knowledge of astronomy one
to which .modern mathematicians " take off their hats."

296 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Though the time record of the Mayans begins on August 6,
513 B.C., astronomical studies extending back for centuries
before this were necessary to secure the data requisite for
this calculation. The Mayan calendric system is, moreover,
singularly complete. Each year was divided into eighteen
periods of twenty days, with five nameless days at the
year's end when sacrifices were offered to the Gods of the
Four Quarters. Fifty-two of these years formed a cycle,
or " bundle." In several other ways beside astronomy the
Mayans seem to have been far in advance of other Amer-
indian peoples. In architecture and sculpture certainly,
though they never knew the principle of the keystone to
the arch, they show extraordinary ability. It is from these
architectural survivals, as at Chichen Itza, we obtain a
fairly clear idea of the Mayan religion, though we should
know much more had not the Spanish Bishop, Diego de
Landa, in the middle of the sixteenth .century, destroyed
the Mayan records. A recent traveller, Mr. Phillips
Russell, writes of the Ghichen site: "Here we found
everything which could provide (the Mayan) with a complete
emotional katharsis bloody human sacrifices to arouse his
terror, processions, to gratify his love of spectacle, cavernous
temples to provoke his awe, naturalistic representations of
gods to create his submission, and ball games to divert and
excite him." 1

On the whole, however, the Mayan religion was not
nearly so bloody as that of the Aztecs. Dogs, rather than
human beings, were customarily offered in sacrifice, .though
the ceremonial tearing out of the heart of a human being,
after smearing the body with stripes of blue, was still
performed' on special occasions. For example, in time of
drought, a virgin was chosen to hurl herself into the Sacred
Well at Chichen, to propitiate the rain-god, while the
devout followed up the sacrifice by throwing in their jewels.
Imitative magic was much in vogue, as is clear from the
feasts which were kept at the seasonal crises. The year
began about July, when the " new fire " was obtained by-
friction, all the implements of labour consecrated by
anointing or colouring with blue, and other rites ued to

1 Phillips Russell, Red Tiger, p. 33.

RELIGION OF AMERINDIAN EMPIRES 297

promote the year's prosperity. In October there was a
feast to " the feathered snake," which among the Mayans
was named Kukulcan (identifiable with the Aztec Quetzal-
coatl). To quote Alexander: 1 " They say and hold for
certain that Kukulcan descended from the sky the last day
of the feast and personally received the sacrifices, the
penitences, and the offerings made in his honour." About
December came a festival for the initiation and strengthening
of the youth (a kind of Confirmation service), and a month
later all the ceremonial utensils were renewed. March was
the month for the feast of extinguishing the fire, when fires
were first of all lighted into which all manner of animals
(and especially their hearts) were thrown. When the
victims were consumed water was poured over the holocaust
till all was thoroughly extinguished. This, of course, was
a rite for bringing rain. April contained the feast in honour
of the god of caravans and merchant adventurers, and May
witnessed another rain festival, when a dog was slain and
its heart placed in a bowl over which another bowl was put
as a cover. Then jars full of water were dashed over the
spot and the rain was invoked.

Many Mayan myths have been preserved for us in the
Popul Vuh) an heroic saga written down in the Quiche
language in the seventeenth century by a Christianized
native of Guatemala. Though the narrative is suspected of
Christian colouring, we learn much from its four books as
to the Quichd theology, as well as Mayan ideas as to creation.
The Quiche* equivalent for the Quetzalcoatl of the Aztecs
(the Kukulcan of Yucatan) is Qucumatz. Here also we
learn of Huragan, the one-legged 2 god of wind and storm,
and of Camazotz, the bat-god, ruler of subterranean caves
and the underworld.

THE INCAS. The period of the Incas, conquerors of
Peru, and the neighbouring territories of an empire attaining,
prior to the coming of the Spaniards, an area of 300,000
square miles, and culminating in the reign of Huayna Capac
(14821529) is, of course, but the last of a whole series of
Peruvian culture- periods, and cannot be considered as

* 1 Hartley B. Alexander, Latin-American Mythology, p. 136,
? Whence our word hurricane.

298 -A HISTORY OF RELIGION

independent of the Chinin and Tiahuanaco periods which
preceded it. The country from the mountains to the sea
was favourable enough to agriculture to make possible the
cultivation on a large scale of the potato, maize and cotton,
and the energy (or the necessities) of the people had suc-
ceeded in taming and adapting to their needs such animals
as the llama and the guanaco. \

x The religion of these earlier peoples, was mainly one of
intermingled fear and gratitude, fear in the presence of
mysteries which were probably hostile, and gratitude in the
presence of powers from which they derived their sustenance.
All things, animate and inanimate, were supposed to have
resident in them some spiritual power, capable of doing
harm or good to mankind. Such objects were known as
huaca^ a Quechua word for " holy thing." They included
springs, rivers, mountains, cliffs, rocks of curious formation,
gnarled trees, fierce or uncommon animals, and the like.
The " irreflective wonderment " of men before these objects
made of them gods. At special times particular reverence
was given to one huaca or another. For example, when the
planting time came round the women spoke pleadingly with
Mother Earth, and when a voyage had to be made similar
supplications were addressed' to the sea. Huacas were the
objects reverenced by the tribe, but there were also household
or personal fetishes (Lares and Penates), known as conopas,
worshipped by families and individuals as house-guardians.
Religion as thus described naturally persisted into the
Incaic period and beyond it as a kind of " undying,
archaic culture," but there were gods which played a larger
role than the huacas and the conopas. One of these was the
deity known as Viracocha in the mountain regions and'
Pachacamac on the coast. He was possibly a deified
ancestor, a circumstance suggested by Don Felipe Huaman's
remark that " the first race of men in Peru bore the name of
Viracocha." But Viracocha was also (if not originally) a
kind of sky^-god or rain-god, identifiable with the so-called
" weeping god " of Peru, whose tears provide the rain.
The Viracocha (Pachacamac) worship of -the coast was low
and fetid, but in the highlands it presented a more .philo-
sophic aspect and it was this last which was adopted as a

^RELIGION OF AMERINDIAN EMPIRES 299

; ' ' T ~ '

kind of superior religion by the Inca Pachacutec. The
Inca religion officially was, however, sun-worship, super-
imposed on the older cults -of Peru. Temples of the sun
rose in many places, notably at Cuzco, and here the sanctuary
was so holy that anyone who had recently visited the
temple took precedence of the man who was journeying
towards it. At the Inca Passover all evils were ceremonially
expelled from the land,, including strangers, deformed
persons, those " whose ears were broken," and all dogs.
The solemn festival was at the June solstice, to which the
tribes came up in picturesque array, some in puma skins,
some in feather plumage, .and some dressed as condors
with outspread wings. A black llama from the herds of the
sun was sacrificed, with its head turned towards the east,
and. its heart torn out while still alive. Many other animals
were at the same time offered to the sun and omens drawn
from the hearts and other viscera. A little cotton wool
was then lighted by means of a metallic mirror and the
anger or "pleasure of the deity deduced from the time
taken to kindle the flame. From the " new fire " the
households of all the land were supplied.

Naturally there were other festivals, such as the sowing
festival in September, when brown llamas were sacrificed at
various shrines, the farms of the sun ploughed by priests
and priestesses, and maize beer sprinkled over the fields.
There was also a moon festival in October, to ward off"
sicknesses and other evils. At this time all dogs, and
people suffering from infirmities (as noted above), were
driven forth and the prayer: " O sicknesses ... go forth
from the land " repeated again and again. Coincidently
thirty white llamas were' sacrificed, and with the blood. and
maize little loaves were made which were distributed to the
worshippers to form a kind of sacramental meal. By this
fellowship was supposed to be established both with the
gods and among themselves. In November the brewing of
the maize beer took place, as a rain charm, and a black llama
was tied out in the fields of the sun to remain unfed till
the gods relented and sent rain on the land. In January
was celebrated the feast of " breeching " or knighting the
youths, who were subjected to severe ordeals and fasts,

300 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

followed by races and sham battles to teach the enduring of
hardness. Other festivals, ' manifesting the characteristic
Amerindian knowledge of astronomy were held at intervals in
the year, and the local shrines held their own observances in
honour of the moon, Venus and the thunder-god.

Among the priests there were quite a number of orders.
Some -priests were appointed by the Inca and some were
hereditary. The high priest was called Villac-unm, " the
soothsayer who speaks." An important place in Inca
religion must be assigned to the consecrated virgins, or
" chosen women " who, like the Vestal Virgins of Rome,
suffered burial alive if guilty of any neglect of their sacred
duties.

In the reign of the Inca Pachacutec (14001448) a
royal effort was made, reminding us of the efforts of the
Egyptian idealist Ikhnatun, to secure a higher religion
than sun-worship, by the making of Viracocha into a
supreme deity. The sun, he declared, was not illimitable
in power and not always able to penetrate the clouds.
Why not worship a god more adapted to the respect of
reflective minds ? The effort came too late to save the
Inca Empire from decline and ultimate conquest by the
Spaniards, but it must be recorded to the credit of one of
the best of the Peruvian rulers. It is quite possible to see
in Viracocha the making of an Ens Supremum. One of the
prayers addressed to him begins as follows :

Viracocha, lord of the universe,

Whether male or female,

At any rate commander of heat and reproduction . . . _

Where art Thou ?

And it ends :

O hearken to

Listen to me,

Let it not befell

That I grow weary and die.

And another hymn ends :

Give us life everlasting,

Preserve us and accept this our sacrifice.

RELIGION OF AMERINDIAN EMPIRES 301

The Andean religion, such as it was, was quenched in
blood by the Spanish conquistadores, but not a little of
what it believed and practised still survives and maintains
itself as intermingled with the religion of its conquerors. 1

1 For the history of the Inca dynasties see especially Philip Ainsworth
Means, Ancient Civilization of the Andes, Chapters VI. and VII. .

The general works to be consulted on the subject of this chapter should
include : H.'H.. Bancroft, History of Mexico, San Francisco, 188388 ; H. I.
Priestley, The Mexican Nation, A History, New York, 1923 ; Eduard Seley,
article, " Mayans," in E.R.E., VIII. 505 f. ; C. R. Markham, History of
Peru, Chicago, 1892 ; W. H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, New
York, 1847.

BOOK IV
THE 'RELIGIONS OF THE ORIENT

CHAPTER XXI
The Religions of IndianI.

GROUND has ' already been prepared for some
description of the great historical religions of India.
In Chapter IX. a sketch was given of the religion of
the pre-Aryan peoples, particularly that of the Dravidians,
who, as Tamils, Telugus, and the rest, still hold an important
place in Indian ethnology. It was noted that many features
of the old shamanistic cults of the Kolarian and Dravidian
races remain as elements in present-day Hinduism.

Somewhere about 1500 B.C. the most significant event
in the whole history of India took place in the invasion of the
peninsula by the people generally described as Aryans.
Little enough is known of the origin -and course of this
migratory movement, but we have already, in Chapter XVI L,
said something of its relation to the beginnings of Iranian
as well as of Indian history. We have seen what the
relations were between the people we call Indo-Aryan and
Iranian; we have seen the probable circumstances under
which the two parts of the great stream separated; and we
have seen something (from the Iranian point of view) of the
religious consequences of that separation, through which
the gods of one section became the devils of the
other.

; - It is now our task to describe as briefly and simply
as may be the religious developments which followed
the Aryan invasion of India, starting with the revelation
of Aryan theology and religion '= afforded by means of
its earliest literature, the Feda, and. proceeding thence
to -the remaining stages. The subject will thus arrange

304 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

itself under four heads, in their historical sequence as
follows:

I. The Vedic Age.
II. The Age of the Brahmanas. *

III. The Age of the Upanishads and of the

Philosophies generally.

IV. The Age of the great Heresies, particularly

those of Jainism and Buddhism.
V. The Age of Hinduism.

Of Indian Muhammadanism arid other religious develop-
ments we shall speak in later chapters.

I. VEDIC RELIGION. " In India," says Dr. L. D.
Barnett, " there is no twilight before the dawn. In the
darkness the eastern sky suddenly flushes and the ruddy"
edge of the morning sun swiftly leaps upon the horizon."
This break in the darkness comes with the emergence of
the Vedic Aryans through the passes of the Hindukush in
the north-west of India. We know not whether they came
in small detachments or in large but, by the light of the
Rig-veda^ we see them gradually advancing from the Indus
valley to the valley of the Ganges, crossing river after river,
fighting with the " noseless," non-sacrificing aborigines, and
more than occasionally with one another, even as English,
French and Spanish fought one another in the intervals
of subduing Indians on the North American continent.

Though a fighting and aggressive people, these Vedic
Aryans were by no means barbarous or primitive. They
had domesticated the cow, bull, sheep, goat, swine, dogs
and horses. They loved pastoral work among the flocks
as well as to follow the plough. Among the arts of life
they used spinning, weaving, plaiting and dyeing, and wore
woollen clothing as well as skins and furs. They had
blacksmiths and goldsmiths, and their weapons of war were
of metal as well as of bone and wood. They employed no
coined money, but used ornaments as a sort of currency.
They did not practise child-marriage, nor as yet the horrible
rite of sati, but they had, nevertheless, many of the vices
of a considerable civilization as well as its virtues, drinking
and gambling recklessly. Altogether the Vedic Indians

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA . 305

were a virile, flesh-eating, hard-drinking, hard-fighting
stock, who .found little difficulty in extending their sway
beyond the region of the Sapta-sindhavas into the Duab,
and further to the south.

Their literature, the Veda (knowledge)^ is the oldest
Aryan literature we possess, and is the source of almost all
we know about the people socially and religiously. When
the first assemblage of the hymns was made and the whole
collection (samhita) first regarded as of religious authority
we do not know. The careful preservation of the text, and
the counting of lines, words and syllables, resulted, however,
from the use of the hymns as spells, or mantras^ rather than
from any purely literary valuation. As the Vedti stands, we
speak of the Four Vedas^ or sometimes (omitting the Atharva)
as Three. These are the Rig-veda, the Tajur-veda, a
collection of sacrificial hymns, divided into the Black and
White -Tajur^ the Sama-veda, or book of songs, and the
Atharva-veda^ a later collection which, however, contains
much ancient material of a magical character. The most
important, of course, is the Rig, a collection of 1017 hymns,
or suktas (plus eleven supplementary hymns known as
Valakhilyas\ divided into ten books, or Mandates, and
assigned to a number of mythical seers known as rishis. As
poetry, there is already great attention paid to form, and
various metres are employed, while the substance of the hymns
is a sincere and devout nature worship, the result evidently
of genuine emotion produced by the experience of the march.

The religious attitude of the poets with which we are
chiefly concerned is that of men still obsessed with many
of the superstitions of primitive people, yet in the main
with hearts uplifted to the beneficent powers of nature in
the common human prayer, " Give us this day our daily
bread." Thus, while there are spells for the curing of a
cough, or for the prolongation of life, most of the suktas are
in praise of kindly powers in and beyond the sky, from
whom the gifts of rain and sunshine and fruitful seasons
might be hopefully requested.

The theology of the Veda is a well-defined polytheism,
though with the clear-cut divine personalities of the
Homeric pantheon lacking. Back behind all the gods
u

306 . A HlSTORT OF RELIGION

appears the conception of Rita (the Iranian Arta\ a kind of
moral law to which the gods themselves were subject. ;
Then we have the familiar dualism of Heaven and Earth,
Dyaus-pitar, the Sky-father, and (much less prominent in
Vedic times) Pritthivi-matar, the Earth-mother. Next we
have the sublime conception of Varuna, who might so
easily have become the god of an Indian monotheism had
the trend been that way. Varuna probably represents the
old idea of a cosmic ocean above and below the earth- the
" sea " of the Babylonian mythology. But to-day he has
degenerated into a mere godling concerned with pools and
puddles. In the Veda^ however, Varuna is the ethical god,
to whom the worshipper addressed himself in penitence :

What gift of mine will he enjoy unangered ?
When shall I, happy-hearted, see his mercy?

Varuna is often invoked together with Mitra (the friend),
an old, displaced solar deity, who later came again into his
own -as the Mithra of Persia and the Roman soldiers.

Most powerful of all the Vedic gods was Indra, to whom
are addressed 250 hymns in the Rig-veda. He is, first of
all, the storm-god of the pantheon, but later was India's
war-god, the slayer of the monster who dried up the rivers
and pastures, and the leader of the mighty host of con-
quering Aryans against the Dasyus. With Indra are
associated other storm-gods. There was Rudra (the ruddy\
the wild boar of the sky, the lightning flash, whose dis-
tinctiveness ma'de it natural that he should later be trans-
formed into (Jiva. There were also the Maruts, or Crushers,
the storm-angels who, with golden helmets, and wielding
lightnings, drove their swift, tawny horses across the
wind-blown heavens. There was, again, Parjanya, the
rain-cloud, invoked in but three hymns, which, nevertheless,
are notable for their beauty. Once again, we have Vayu,
or Vata, the wind-god, the breath of the gods, which " comes
rending the air, with noise of thunder."

Next in importance to Indra is Agni, the fire-god,

1 1 J 1 TTT 1

whose praises are chanted in 2,00 hymns. We see here
the importance" of the fire cult, upon which, indeed, civiliza-
tion itself was in large part founded. Agni has many

'THE RELIGIONS OF 'INDIA 307

forms ; he is the god ' of the hearth-fire, the god of the
funeral pyre, the god of the fire in the air and in the sky.
But he is especially the god of the sacrifice, the priestly
god, now appearing" in his avatar as a dwarf to win back the
universe from the demons, now making his circuit through
the heavens as the sun. So associated with Agni we have
the sun-god Surya (known also as Savitar), to whom many
beautiful hymns are addressed; Ushas, the rosy-fingered
goddess of the dawn, the Eos of the Greeks and Aurora of
the Latins; also the divine Twins, the Asvins, or Horsemen
(the Dioscuroi of the Greeks), who probably represent the
two twilights, or the morning and evening star.

A god of a quite special character is the drink-god,
Soma, to whom all the hymns of the ninth book of the
Rig-veda are addressed. Soma was probably the deified
juice of the moon-plant, Sarcostema viminale, or Asclepias
acida^ a milkweed out of which an intoxicating liquor was
brewed to take the place of the barley beer brewed by the
Aryans in their earlier habitat. It is easy to realize that
the use of, such a drink would in time take on a sort of
sacramental significance, as in the corresponding use of
haoma with the Iranians. In course of time Soma came to
represent the invigorating sap of life with which the moon
was supposed to charge herself gradually during the month.
Hence the custom of planting seeds at the full moon, Vhen
nature reached her climax of vigour. Gods such as Indra
were described as quaffing huge quantities of soma, and
many wonderful properties were ascribed to the beverage
by its participants, mortal and immortal alike.

There still remain a number of lesser gods belonging to
the Vedic system. There is Pushan, originally perhaps a
solar god, but here approached by the devout as a path-
finder, to whom shepherds and wanderers looked for
guidance in the night. There is, again, Brihaspati, lord of
prayer, naturally associated with Agni, the god of sacrifice.
We have also Yama, god of death, originally a king, with
his wife Yami, and his spotted, broad-snouted, four-eyed
dogs, the children of Sarama. It was his work to lead the
dead along the road, a psychopomp, like Anubis. Once
again, there are the Pitris, or ancestors, and many divinities

308 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

ofyet lower degree, including the horses of Indra, the cows,
the waters, even the dice-gods, and the gods of medicinal
herbs.

Towards the end of the 'tenth book' of the Rig-veda it
is obvious that we are already, beginning the passage from
polytheism towards pantheism. Dr. Macdonell considers
the famous hymn, X. 90, as "the starting-point of the
pantheistic philosophy." It commences:

A thousand hands has Purusha,
A thousand, eyes, a thousand feet ;
He holding earth enclosed about,
Extends beyond, ten fingers' length.

Even more striking is the magnificent cosmic hymn: To
the Unknown God:

The Golden Germ arose in the beginning,
Born the sole lord of everything existing ;
He fixed and holdeth up the earth and heaven ;
Who is the god to worship with oblation ?

But there is not much in the Veda like this. On the whole,
the deities are more or less highly anthropomorphized
physical forces, endowed with the virtues and the vices of
their worshippers, and appealed to for things which belong
mostly to the material world. 1

Let us now see what type of cult found its sanctions in
such theology. It is plain from what has been said that
the attitude of men in Vedic India was profoundly religious.
Everything done in the home was a religious act. The
lighting of the household fire, indeed, was the laying of the
foundation of the home, and the leading of the bride around
the fire, in the ceremony known as the -pradakshina, was an
important part of the marriage rite. The god of marriage,
Vi9vavasu, was appealed to for his presence on such an
occasion. Similarly, the funeral rites, or graddhas^ were of
religious importance, both for the sake of the dead (to
hasten their ga$ towards the world of the pitris), and for the
sake of the survivors. Both burial and cremation were at
first used, as may be seen from such hymns as R.V.X. 18.
SatI, as already remarked, is not supported by the correct

1 On the theology of the " Veda " see H. D. Griswold, The Religion of the
Rigveda, Oxford, 1923 ; also A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, London, 1897.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 309

reading of R.V.X. 18, 7, but was nevertheless of ancient
authority. The Vedic hymns, however, declare: "Rise,
woman, and go to the world of living beings : come, this
man near whom thou sleepest is lifeless; thou hast enjoyed
this state of being the wife of thy husband, the suitor who
took thee by the hand."

Primitive and popular religion - soon came under the
direction of an organized ecclesiasticism and the Brahman,
who had at first been inferior to the warrior, gained an
ascendancy he has succeeded in retaining to the present
day. There were four orders of priests (all, of course,
Brahmans), namely, the Hotar, or C alter > whose business it
was to recite the verses in praise of the gods; the Udgatri,
or Singer, who accompanied the offering of the sacrifice
with song; the Adhvarya, who was expert in the muttered
formulae suitable for each particular sacrifice; 'and the
Brahman proper, who was the overseer of the entire ritual.
Of the ritual itself we shall speak presently.

The institution of Caste, which plays so important
a part in the subsequent history, does not seem to have
been originally Vedic. As its Sanskrit equivalent varna
(colour) denotes, the observance of caste was originally the
precaution taken by the white-skinned -Aryans to prevent
assimilation with the darker-skinned aborigines. As time
went on, however, the caste divisions became four, and in
the last book of the Rig-veda (X. 90) we have the suggestion
that the four castes of Brahmans, or priests, Kshatriyas, or
warriors, Vaicyas, or people generally, and Qudras, or
non- Aryans, were derived respectively from the head, arms,
thighs and feet of the immolated divine being, Purusha.
It is perhaps needless to say that in later times these four
castes" multiplied themselves indefinitely and now constitute
India's major social problem. 1

II. THE BRAHMANIC PERIOD. With the achievement
of the-ascendancy of the Brahman we reach a stage of Indian
religion which we may call Brahmanic, commencing at
some rather uncertain epoch following the Aryan conquest
and attaining its height about the seventh century B.C. It

1 On the civilization of Vedic times see Zenaide Ragozin, Vedic India,
New York, 1895.

310 A HISTORY OF RELIGION '

should -be explained that while the word Brahm denotes
the impersonal element out of which the world periodically
evolved, and while the word "Brahma signifies that mani-
festation of Brahm which is concerned with creation, the
Brahman is the " prayer-man," or representative of the
divine among men. As the technique of his priestly office
became too elaborate to be easily retained by the unaided
memory, it came in time to be embodied in ritual com-
mentaries on the Veda known as Brahmanas, and it is from
these that most of our knowledge of Brahmanic religion is
derived. Each of the Vedas has its Brahmanas, the Rig-
<veda the Aitereya and the Kaushitaki, the Tajur-veda the
Taittiriya and the Qatapatha, the Sama-veda eight, of which
the best known is the Chhandogya, and the Atharva-veda the
Gopatha. They represent, says Eggeling, ** the intellectual
activity of a sacerdotal caste which by turning to account
the" instincts, of a gifted and naturally devout race, had
succeeded in transforming a primitive worship of the powers
of nature 'into a highly artificial system of sacrificial
ceremonies." 1 . - .

Naturally much -of the concern of the Brahmanas is
with sacrifice and the linking up .of the Vedic songs with
the ritual. Sacrifice was regarded not so .much as an
expiation for sin as a means of strengthening the exhausted
gods. It was' also a means for gaining power entirely
apart from moral considerations. Some were thereby
enabled, by sacrifices on the grand scale, for example, the
hundred-horse sacrifice, to obtain power over the gods. In
this way the demon Ravana made himself invulnerable,
except through the agency of men or monkeys. Three
great groups of sacrificial rites are described, each group
with seven separate sacrifices. There was the Great Sacrifice,
with its three fires, its games, chariot-races and drinking
bouts. There was the Havir Sacrifice, with its oblations
of butter, milk, rice and meat, at which, all four. orders of
priests had to be present. There was also the seven-fold
Paka Sacrifice, performed at the domestic hearth at certain
seasons of the year. In early times there had undoubtedly

1 Julius Eggeling, Introduction to the Qatapatha Brahmatta, Vol. IX.,
Sacred Books of the East.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 311

been the use of human sacrifices, as is plain From the story
of (Junacepa and from the order 1 to make the altar in the
shape of a human being." But for man had been substituted
the horse, in the greatest of Vedic sacrifices, known as the
apvamedha where the horse was a symbol of the sun.
Later still the goat was substituted for the horse. The
place of sacrifice was normally a room in a Brahman's house,
or in a. large shed. The floor was first covered with the
sacred kusa grass, the couch of 'the gods. Much attention
had to be paid to all the implements used, such as the
sacrificial pillar, which must be hewn with an axe, while
the axe .itself was entreated: " O axe, hurt it not." The
earthly sacrifice was supposed to have its counterpart in
the heavenly sacrifices of Prajapati, lord of creatures, whose
strength, exhausted by the act of creation, had to be
recuperated by the Brahmanic ritual. At the same time
the worshipper had to do his best .to identify himself with
the animal offered to the gods, and this he achieved by
wearing the skin of the victim and by a sacramental feast,
so as to feel himself reborn to a more highly vitalized
relation with his god and his community.

The Brahmanas have much of interest apart from their
character as textbooks for the priestly order. They give us
old myths and legends, such as that of the Flood from which
Manu was saved through the intervention of Vishnu, and
that of Indra's defeat of the demons' attempt to raise a
fire-tower to the heavens. They explain curious questions
of ritual by such apologues as that of Mind and Speech^ and
in other ways they throw light on the systematization of
religion in the priestly stage. They reveal religion as what
is termed Karma-kanda, the religion of doing things, a type
in which all depended on the meticulous exactness with
which every detail of a ceremony was performed.

It is obvious that such a conception of religion threw
enormous power into the hands of the priestly caste and
many, some of them grotesque, are the illustrations given
of enormous fees earned by the Brahmahs in the performance
of their responsible office. For example, one worshipper is
said to have given 85,000 white horses, 10,000 elephants,

1 Catapatha Brtttimana, I.- 2, 5, 16,

312 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

and 80,000 slave girls to 'a Brahman as a fee. When King
Janaka offered to Yajnavalkya 1000 cows, each with ten
pieces of gold fastened to its horns, the Brahman's only
notice of the generosity was an order to'his pupil to drive
home the cows. . ;

That the power of the Brahmans has never since that
time except during the supremacy of Buddhism been
broken is one of the salient facts of Indian history, but even
the seventh century B.C. was not without its revolts.

III. THE UPANISHADIC PERIOD. A very broad dis-
tinction has been commonly made between the Brahmanas
and Upanishads, or philosophic commentaries on the Veda,
as though these represented completely opposite poles of
thought. It is true that the Brahmanas give us the religion
of works, the Karma-kanda, while the Upanishads are
concerned with Jnana-kanda, or the religion of knowing.
But the transition is not so abrupt as .has sometimes been
described. As Dr. Edgerton has shown, even the intellectual
quests of India have always been associated with practical
ends " If one could only know everything, he could thereby
get everything."

Thus the Upanishads are not so much experiments in
a direction opposite to that of the Brahmanas ; they rather
continue the Indian effort to achieve release, or moksha, by
the way of knowledge instead of by way of works.

From this point of view an interesting and significant
transition is marked by the books known as Aranyakas, or
"forest Brahmanas" As men decided to abandon the
preoccupations of domestic life, and to settle down to the
ascetic career, it -became necessary to provide these with
textbooks in the art of meditation rather than manuals of.
ritual. And these, forest Brahmanas^ in turn, formed a
bridge by which men might -pass to meditate on the one
reality in the true Upanishadic sense.

The word Upanishad probably signifies " a sitting down
under " (u-pa-ni-shad) a teacher, and it may be remembered
that the teacher need not be a Brahman. The books
probably belong to a period about 600 B.C., and must have
been very numerous. The number has been reckoned from
1 50 to nearly 250, some so late that there is even a Muham-

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 313

madan Upanishad, the Alia Upanishad. They are not
always. easy to analyse, since they show abrupt change of
manner and subject, and (as Professor Geden says) "the
entire treatment is suggestive .rather of intimate oral
instruction than of methodical exposition."

They stress the use of the syllable Om (really Aunt] as
the symbol of the highest self. They suggest the spiritualiza-
tion.of much of the old ritual, as, for instance, when the
Chhandogya Upanishad declares: " Man is sacrifice. His
first twenty-four years are the morning oblation. The
next forty-four years are the midday libation. The next
forty-eight years are the third libation." They speak much
of the hidden self,, which is contiguous to the absolute self,
and show that here dwell all our true desires and our power
to attain them. They reveal the steps which have been
taken from the old polytheism towards the pantheism of the
future. When Yajnavalkya is asked, How "many gods are
there? he replies at first, Three and three hundred, three
and three thousand, but when the question is repeated he
declares ultimately there is but one. The general attitude
of all the Upanishadic writers is the idealistic monism which
we .shall presently note as Vedanta. The beautiful prayer of
the Brihad-aranyaka is :

From the unreal lead me to the real :
From darkness lead me to light :
From death lead me to immortality.

It is unnecessary here to describe the influence which
the Upanishads among the first Indian writings translated
into a- western tongue have had on the philosophy of -the
West, through Schopenhauer and his successors. It is as
important to know the influence they still possess in Indian
religion, as witness the words of Rabindranath Tagore (in
Sadhana): "The writer has been brought up in a family
where the texts of the Upanishads are used in daily worship.
. . . To me the verses of the Upanishads have ever been
things of the spirit, and therefore endowed with boundless
vital, growth."

In the Upanishads the general drift of Indian philosophy
is sufficiently apparent. But there are important variations

3 14 -A HISTORY OF RELIGION

of interpretation such as lead eventually to the creation, of
differing and even antagonistic schools. But before giving
a necessarily brief account of the Six Orthodox Schools it
will be useful to mention certain principles common to all
the schools.

Foremost among these is the practically unanimous
belief in samsara, or metempsychosis, a doctrine probably
not originally Aryan, -but borrowed from the aboriginal
population*. It took such complete possession of the Indian
mind as to become everywhere an accepted postulate. On
the theory of samsara no unmerited punishmentx:ould befall
a man. "As among a thousand cows a calf follows its
mother, so the previously done deed follows the doer."
Closely connected with this was the belief in a cyclical
creation and dissolution of tjie material world, the process
requiring a kalpa, or period amounting to 4,320,000,000
years. : Other ideas were the eternity of the soul, though
distinction has to be made between the $aramatman y or
supreme, universal soul, and the jivatmatF, or individual
soul. Some schools believed in the existence of an uncount-
able (though not infinite) number of individual souls,
eternal retrospectively as well as prospectively, while others
held that the Universal soul alone existed, and that indi-
vidual souls only existed through avidya, or ignorance.
Another 'general belief was that in the eternity of matter,
though here again a distinction must be made between the
belief in gross matter, as maintained by the materialist,
and belief in matter as an illusion of the soul overspread
by may a. It was accepted by all that consciousness could
only arise when the soul was invested with bodily- form,
through association with a physical particle known as the
manas translated as mind. This union of body and soul
was, however, uniformly productive of misery and while,
in view of preceding beliefs, heavens and hells were necessary
for working out the consequences of acts, known as karma,
beyond all heavens and hells lay the only desirable bourn,
Nirvana, which was release (moksha) from bondage to
matter. This hoped-for consummation is not to be interr
preted as extinction, but rather the surrender of all supposed
separateness the sliding of the dewdrop into the ocean.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA

It is easy to see that, even with certain ideas held in
common, there was much room in the above-mentioned
beliefs for diversity. A Buddhist writer speaks of as many
as sixty-two varieties of Upanishadic thought. But very
early a distinction was. made between philosophies which
were orthodox and those which were heterodox. Strangely
enough, the distinction was not based on theologic belief,
since even among the orthodox schools some were atheistic,
some pantheistic, and some dualistic. Orthodoxy was rather
a matter of compliance with custom as to the acceptance of
the Veda and of the authority of the Brahmans.

As to the six orthodox schools, known as the Shad
Darfanas (Six Fiews\ it is perhaps unfortunate that we
cannot treat them in their historic sequence. This is due
not merely to the fact t)iat we know so little of the authors,
but also to the fact that early and late elements appear in
every system. Here it will be sufficient to name them and
indicate briefly the characteristic feature of each. They
may be remembered best by thinking of them as three
pairs, namely, the Nyaya and Vaigeshika, the Samkhya and
Yoga, and the Purva-mimamsa (Mimamsa) and Uttara-
mimamsa (Vedanta).

i . The Nyaya (analysis] is really a system of logic rather
than philosophy, and is based on a textbook by one Gautama
(not the Buddha) called the Nyaya-sutra. It furnishes a
" correct method of philosophical enquiry into all the
objects and subjects of human knowledge, including,
amongst others, the process of reasoning and the laws of
thought." It may be noted in passing that Indian logic
differs from the Greek in using a syllogism of .five members
rather than one of three. For example (to use a common
illustration), it states a proposition as follows: "The hill
is fiery; For it smokes; Whatever smokes is fiery; This
hill smokes; Therefore this hill is fiery." Nyaya is to
Indian thought what Aristotelianism is to the thought of
the West. It provides the tools for the thinker, so that the
latter may do his work understanding^. From false notions,
it was believed, spring false activities of the soul, and thence
samsara. So salvation, after all, was held to depend upon
a correct logic. For the rest the philosophy accepted an

3 1 6 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

ultimate reality of " things," of souls, and of God as distinct
from His creation.

2. Vai$eshika was so named from the particularity
ifesha) which is emphasized in a theory of atoms ascribed
to one named (or nicknamed) Kanada (the atom-eater). The
system extends the logical method of Nyaya to physical
investigations, maintaining the reality, not only "of souls,
but also of such things as space, time and atoms. The
world is supposedly formed by the aggregation of atoms,
which, although 'eternal and innumerable, are not infinite
in number. Their constant combination, disintegration
and recombination are due to the activity of a hypothetical
force called adrishta (the unseen), which is in turn the result
of the accumulated karma of all sentient beings. Though
impersonal, this adrishta became for many of the followers
of Kanada a kind of blind deity. It will be observed that
in the atomic theory of this philosophy there is something
not wholly unlike Nietzsche's doctrine of " the eternal

return."

3. Samkhya, which signifies synthesis, and is probably
the oldest of the philosophical schools, is ascribed to Kapila,
a semi-mythical sage, whose historical reality is now being
generally abandoned. He was supposed to have made the
first protest against . monism and to have taught that
primordial matter was the basis' of the universe. The
school is frankly dualistic. On the one hand, there is
postulated an innumerable number of uncreated souls,
eternally separate one from the other,. and yet (since what
is eternal is incapable of disintegration) omnipresent. On
the "other hand, there is the ever-active potentiality of nature,
Prakriti (the producer), the eternal, rootless evolver, a subtle
essence made up of three constituent qualities, or gutias,
namely, sattva (goodness), rajas (passion), and tamas
(darkness, or stolidity). When Prakriti is in union with
the soul (Purusha) then everything is produced, as milk is
secreted by the cow. To use the illustration of Monier-
Williams, " the soul is a looker-on, uniting itself with
unintelligent Prakriti, as a. lame man mounted on a blind
man's shoulders,- for the sake of observing the phenomena
of creation, which Prakriti himself is unable to observe."

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 317

Samkhya, in its classical form, is thoroughly atheistic,
but some later thinkers, dissatisfied with the apparently
accidental harmony between the interacting souls and
natural possibility, assume a kind of god in an omniscient
spirit. The system was, of course, held within the poles
of orthodoxy by its profession of belief in the Veda.

4. Intimately related to the Samkhya philosophically is
Toga, or " yoking," i.e. with the divine, a. practical con-
cession to those unable to endure the stark pessimism of the
older system. A proverb sayst "No knowledge like the
Samkhya, no power like the Yoga." It is a concession,
first, in its acceptance of a Supreme Being and, secondly, in
providing a practical discipline whereby the soul may find
union with this Being. In brief, Yoga is an art for the
securing of larger vision and the powers latent in all
men -through which the lower self is conquered and the
higher self set free for fellowship with God. Some of these
methods, though unduly subjected to the Indian obsession
for classification, are suggested Jby common sense rather
than by any particular system of philosophy. Some of
them have been over-enthusiastically hailed in the West
for the benefit of the esoterically minded. Others consist
of practices which have made the Yogi in India an object
of pity if not of contempt. Yet these eccentricities of self-
mortification have for others represented the summit level
of spirituality. The Rhagavad-gita declares :

That holy man who stands immovable,

As if erect upon a pinnacle,

His appetites and organs all subdued,

Sated with knowledge secular and sacred,

To whom a lump of eafth, a stone, or gold,

To whom friends, relatives, or acquaintances,

Neutrals and enemies, the good and bad,

Are all alike, is called " one yoked with God." x

The Swami Vivekananda describes the Yogi as revealing
to the world the living power which lies coiled up in every
being, the Giver of eternal happiness. On the other hand,
Sir M. Monier- Williams declares that the system is " a
mere contrivance for getting rid of all thought, or rather

1 Translation by Sir M. Monier-Williams, Hinduism, London, 1885.

3 1 8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

for. concentrating the mind with the utmost intensity upon
nothing in particular." The sober truth probably lies
somewhere midway between these extremes. The textbook
of Yoga, the Toga Sutra^ is ascribed to Patanjali, though the
practices associated with the system undoubtedly go much
further back than the second century B.C.

5. The Mimamsa, or Purva-Mimamsa, i.e. " the earlier
investigation," is ascribed to Jaimini, arid, like the Yoga,
is a practical system, 1 teaching the ceremonial- duty of man
in reference to the sacrifices,*' while in its theological attitude
it is either agnostic or polytheistic. " The Supreme Being
might exist, but was not necessary to the system." On the
other hand, the Veda was eternal, as are all articulate sounds.
" The echoes of a word once uttered vibrate in space to
all eternity." ,

6. Connected philosophically with the above is the
Uftara-Mimamsa, or " later investigation," generally known
as the Vedanta^ or "end of the Veda." It represents a
definite gathering up of the doctrine of the Upanishads and
in its various formulations extends over a long period of
history, down to the time of the great Qamkaracharya, in
the eighth century, and even to the time ,of men like
Ramkrishna Parahamsa and the Swami Vivekananda in
modern times. Vedantism is really a kind of pantheistic
monism, expressing its main tenets in such terms as advaita,
or non-dualism^ and in such phrases as "Brahma exists
truly, the world falsely; the soul is only Brahma and no
other." All else but Brahma is may a, or illusion, but by
reason of ignorance (avidya) the living soul mistakes the
world and his own body and mind for realities, just as a
man walking along the road 'may mistake a piece of rope
for a serpent. ' To remind man of his constant need for a
right comprehension of his - relation to the universe, the
Vedantist employs the catchword, Tat tvam- asi (Thou art
that). When man has ceased to distinguish between the
soul and God, he attains moksha, or release. 1

It must, be observed, however, that some teachers, such

1 On the " Vedanta " see especially Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the
Upanishads, Edinburgh, 1906 ; also Rudolf Otto, Mysticism, East and West,
New York, 1932. In the latter book is an elaborate comparison of amkara
and Eckhart.

. THE RELIGIONS OF. INDIA 319

as .amkara, taught -an unqualified monism, others, like
Ramanuja and Ramananda, a monism which was qualified
by many concessions to the less advanced. It was natural
that, in addition to the orthodox schools to which allusion
has been made, there should be shadings off here and there
in the direction of eclecticism.

One of these eclectic systems must here be mentioned
since it produced one of the best-known religious poems of
India, the Bhagavad-gita. This is a long philosophic poem
set in the midst of the great epic, the Mahabharata, as the
discourse of the god Krishna, acting as the charioteer of
Arjuna, in answer to his master's question as to the moral
right of kinsmen to engage in mortal combat with one
another. The battle is set in array, the Pandavas and the
Kauravas are about to fight, when Arjuna puts the query.
Then the god, who is attached to "the side of the Pandavas,
launches into a disquisition in which he declares that every
caste, including that of the warriors, was bound to fulfil its
obligations" and that, moreover, there was no serious harm
done by slaughter, since both "the red slayer" and the
man who thinks he is slain are merely the victims ofmaya.

The poem, eighteen cantos in length, is probably the
work of a pious Brahman, writing subsequently to the.
opening of the Christian era, who endeavours to reconcile the
contradictory principles of Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta,
and who has probably included also some sentiments
originally Christian. In large stretches of the poem the
philosophy is pure Vedanta in which the god reveals himself
as the manifestation of all in heaven and earth:

The life in all, the father, mother, husband,

Forefather and sustainer- of the world,

Its friend and lord..

It should be added that, in addition to the philosophy, the
poem reflects that new type of religion we call bhakti^ in
which the devotion of the soul to God, through one of the
avatars of Vishnu, notably that of Krishna, has become a
prominent feature of religion. It was a daring thing to
take the legendary, human Krishna, with all his faults thick
upon him, and transform him into a revelation of the

320 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Supreme God. Yet who will deny ^the grandeur of the
conception? It is with good reason that Dr. Kenneth
Saunders writes: * - .

"Here indeed Upanishadic thought. comes very near
to that of the Prologue of. the Fourth Gospel; the Logos
doctrine finding its fulfilment in the Incarnate Christ is a
doctrine of divine immanence, of the creative power of God
which is in all things, and which is the light that lights
all men."

Here we must pause in the long story of the development
of Indian religion to take note of the rise of movements
which the Indian called heresies, notably the two great
heresies of Jainism and Buddhism. 2

1 Kenneth Saunders, The Gospel for Asia, pp. 90-91.

2 For a fuller treatment of the literature embraced in this chapter see
H. H. Gowen, History of Indian Literature, New York, 1931. The chapters
covered are from iv. to ix. inclusive. For further material on the " religion "
of -the period consult : Sir Ananda Acharya, BraJtmadarsanam, New York,
1917 ; Auguste Barth, The Religion's of India, London, 1882 ; S. Dasgupta,
Yoga, London, 1924 ; John N. Farquhar, A Primer of Hinduism, Oxford,
1912; Richard Garbe, The Philosophy of Ancient India, Chicago, 1899;
E. W. Hopkins, The Religions of India, Boston, 1895 '> A. A. MacdoneU,
Vedic Mythology, London, 1897 ; Nicol MacNicol, Indian Theism, London,

CHAPTER XXII .

The ^Religions of India II.

THE GREAT HERESIES

IT has been already pointed put tha.t not all Indian
schools of philosophy were orthodox,, in the sense of
accepting the authority of the Brahmans. In certain
cases, as in that of the Nastikas (from na-asti, it is not\
negation was carried to an extreme point and the Veda was
denounced as foolish and untrue. The legendary founder
of this school is one Charvaka, whence the school was
known as that of the Charyakas. It was also called Lokayata,
that is, directed toward " the world of sense." The theory
was an entirely naturalistic one and may be gathered from
the following quotation from the Sarva-darfana-samgraha :

There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world.
Nor do the actions of the four castes, or orders, produce any effect . . .
-While life remains let -man live happily, let him .feed on ghee, even

though he runs in debt.

When once the body becomes ashes, how tan it ever return again ? . . .
All these ceremonies for the dead there is no other fruit anywhere.
The three authors from the Vedas were buffoons, knaves and demons.

As a sect the Charvakas are now extinct, but there are other
heterodox schools which have shown great vitality. Two
of these we must consider somewhat at length, Jainism and
Buddhism.

JAINISM. The religious movements of the sixth century
B.C. are not to be taken as a mere perverse revolt against
the power of the Brahmans. They may quite well have had
some relation to that mighty current of religious awakening
which passed across the entire continent of Asia, giving
Lao Tzu and Confucius to the East even as it gave Zoroaster
and the Hebrew prophets to the West. In India itself we
have exuberant illustration of unwonted interest at this
time in the things of the spirit. Seventy or more move-
x 321

322 , A HISTORY OF RELIGION

ments have been referred to, most of which have perished
unsung and unwept. But two were destined to survive,
in a strikingly diverse way. Jainism was fated to find no
home outside of India but, nevertheless, in its native land
to attain permanent status. Buddhism was destined to
become a world religion, though practically banished from
the country of its origin. .

It is not possible here to present a complete account of
the Jain philosophy and religion, but a few, things must not
be overlooked. The word Jain is derived from the root
;V, to conquer^ and signifies the religion of those who have
overcome the lust of living. Dr. Farquhar says : " Jainism
was originally merely a specialization and intensification of
the old ascetic discipline under the influence of an extreme
reverence for life and of a dogmatic belief that not only
men, animals and plants, but even the smallest particles of
earth, fire, water and wind are endowed with living souls.
Consequently, a very large part of the Jain monk's attention
was directed towards using the extremest care not to injure
any living thing. So eager were the Jains to part with the
world to the uttermost that many of their monks wore not
a scrap of clothing. Twelve years of most severe asceticism
were necessary for salvation. After that, if a monk did not
wish to live, he was recommended to starve himself to
death." * .

Jainism seems to represent a teaching long antecedent
to the career of its most distinguished teacher, Mahavira.
Indeed the Jains always speak of their faith as eternal.
Nevertheless, it is convenient to start consideration of the
system with some account of this Vardhamana Mahavira,
whose life seems to have extended from 599 to 527 B.C.,
dates which make him an older contemporary of the Buddha.
Like Gautama he was a kshatriya and hailed from the region
of Magadha. He is said to have been the son of a nobleman
of Vai^ali and related to the royal family of his native state.
Many legends are told of his mother Tricala and of her
dreams concerning her progeny, but we pass these over to
mention the bare facts of his vocation to the ascetic life.

f . *

his marriage to the Lady Yacoda, the birth of his daughter,

1 J. N. FarcfUhar, Primer of Hinduism, p. 50.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 323

who eventually married Jamali (the first .schismatic), his
initiation as a monk in the thirtieth year of his age, his
fasting under the Acoka tree, and other episodes closely
paralleling the career of his younger contemporary. Born
with three degrees of knowledge, Mahavira attained the
remaining fourth at his kevala, or enlightenment, and then
for forty-two years of monkhood preached the message of
deliverance to his generation, till " the two terrible ones "
who dog the soul, birth and death, ceased to have power
over him and he passed away quietly and alone.

Mahavira is regarded by Jains as the latest born of
twenty-four historical "conquerors " known as the Tirthan-
karas (or Tirthakaras), or " ford-makers." Of the early
Tirthakaras there are endless, and frequently grotesque,
legends. The nineteenth is said to have been born as a
woman owing to deceitfulness in a previous life. This
one " little rift within the lute " marred the perfection of
the ascetic life in its twenty particulars, and Mallinatha
became, in spite of all else, a woman. The immediate
predecessor of Mahavira was Parcvanatha, said to have been
born at Benares about 817 B.C. It is possible that, like his
successor, he was an historical personage.
. In addition to the twenty-four Tirthakaras, Jain mytho-
logy speaks of twelve Chakravartins, or world-monarchs, of
nine Vasudevas, nine Baladevas, and nine Prativasudevas,
making altogether the sixty^three great personages, as
celebrated in more than one piece of Jain literature.

Mahavira gathered around him in his lifetime 14,000
disciples, divided into four orders, or tirthas^ of monks,
nuns, lay-men and lay-women. But difference of "opinion
appeared early and eight great schisms are recorded,
beginning with that of Mahavira's son-in-law, Jamali, and
ending with the permanent split of A.D. 83, which produced
the- Digambaras. The schism of Jamali was over the
question as to whether a thing was perfected whea it was
begun, but the real discussion concerned the more practical
matter of the right way to make beds. The eighth schism
came about through the influence of Vajrasena, and hence-
forth the Digambaras, or " sky-clothed," held to the prin-
ciple . of nakedness, and such other matters as the iin-

324 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

possibility of women achieving deliverance, and the need
of food after a saint has obtained " complete knowledge."
The older body of Jains were known as the (Jvetambaras,
or " white-clothed."

The Jains built many shrines, some of which are stupas,
or towers, and some cave-temples, hewn out of the solid
rock. The best known are those of Mt. Abu in the Aravalli
range. Sir 'Richard Temple writes of this famous place:
" The numerous cupolas, obelisks and spires, often bright
with the whitest marble, seem to pierce the sky. The
shrines are laden with the weight of gorgeous offerings,
sent by wealthy members of the sect from almost every
populous city of the empire."

Jain literature is quite extensive and includes, beside
the Canon and its commentaries, much in the way of poetry
and moral tales, as also a number of works on lexicography
and grammar. The Digambara Canon differs from that of
the vetambara, the -latter having been fixed in A.D. 454.
The Jain books were written in both prose and verse and
originally, in a vernacular known as Ardha^Magadhi, but
for the last thousand years it has been customary to use
the Sanskrit. It is difficult to convey in a few words the
teachings of the Jain Canon. The leading ideas approximate
to the Samkhya philosophy, but much emphasis is laid, on
the " indefiniteness of being " thus explained by Dr. Jacobi:

"Existing things are permanent only as regards their
substance, but their accidents, or qualities, originate and
perish. To explain: any: -material thing continues to exist
for ever as matter; this matter, however, may assume any
shape and quality. Thus clay, for example, may be regarded
as permanent, but the form of a jar of clay, or its colour,
may come into existence and perish."

Souls also are eternal and are infinite in number, good
Jains being ever engaged in freeing these from their
association with matter along the threefold way of right
faith, right knowledge, and right conduct. - The monk
takes five vows : not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, to abstain
from sexual intercourse, and to renounce all earthly pos-
sessions. ,When these vows are completely fulfilled, the
Jain, as already noted, may commit suicide by self-starvation.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 325

In general, it may be said that the rules laid down for the
Jain do not greatly differ from those laid down for the
Brahmanic ascetic, but whether one copied from the other,
and which one, are matters of uncertainty.

The Jains to-day number but i,i78,~596, according to
the latest figures, but they have exercised an influence out
of all proportion to their numbers. In the south a good
deal of Tamil literature has been much coloured by the
faith of Mahavira, some of the finest of Tamil poems
being distinctively Jain. And they form still quite an
important religious community, found in all parts of northern
Hindustan, but especially in the West, in Mewar and
Gujerat. Unfortunately, however, their literary activity is
to-day wellnigh confined to journalism and pamphleteering. 1

BUDDHISM. Historically the story of Buddhism in
India is little more than an interlude, and even religiously
the faith .seems from the first to have revealed . currents
at variance with the general trend. Some years ago the
exploration of A?oka's old capital of Pataliputra (Patna)
by Mr. ' D. B. Spooner suggested that the palace of the
first Buddhist Emperor of India was " a Mauryan copy of
the entire Persepolitan design " of the palace of Darius
Hystaspes. On this archaeological foundation Mr. Spooner
built the theory that Buddhism stood for the spiritual
acclimatization of Iranians domiciled in India after the
invasion of Alexander the Great, and that even before this
Gautama represented the beginnings of "a Zoroastrian
period" in Indian religion. Of this interesting hypothesis
not much has survived, and we can offer other reasons for
the success of Buddhism than the supposition of its foreign
origin. 2 -

First and foremost, is the undoubted appeal made by
the personality of the founder. This appeal not only made
Gautama the centre of a considerable circle of devoted
disciples, but it later compelled the Hindus to include him
as one of the ten avatars of Vishnu, and it had the even

1 On Jainism see Hermann Jacobi, Gaina Sutras, Vol. X., S.B.E. ; Mrs.
Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism, Oxford, 1915. Also Encyclopedia
of Religion and Ethics, art. " Jainism."

2 See D. B. Spooner, " The Zoroastrian Period in Indian History," Journal .
Royal Asiatic Society, 1915, pp. 63-89, 405-445.

326 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

more remarkable result of securing the canonization of the
Buddha, under the name of St. Josaphat, in the Christian
Church, in the Calendar of the Eastern Church on August 26
and in that of the Western Church on November 27. This
came about through the popularity of the romance, Barlaam
and Josaphat, written by St. John of Damascus, on the
basis of materials borrowed from the Lalitavistara.

We may be -doubtful as to the precise date of Gautama's
birth and death; yet we feel that the India of the sixth
century B.C. was a soil well prepared for such a life and such
a teaching. It was in this significant time, within what is
known as the Nepalese Terai, in the raj of one Quddhodhana,
whose capital was Kapilavastu, that the child was born,
whose personal name was Siddhartha, his family name
Gautama, and the name of his clan that of the akyas.
The actual birthplace is marked by a pillar erected by
King Acoka, in the third century B.C., which is first referred
to by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien 1500 years ago, and was
rediscovered in December 1896. *

We need not pursue the fantastic sequence of legendary
lore with which a pious fancy has embroidered the story
of Prince Siddhartha. It will be. found in all its exuberance
of detail in Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia, which is itself
based on a Sanskrit work:

The Scripture'of the Saviour of the World,
Lord Buddha, Prince Siddhartha styled on earth
In Earth and Heavens and Hells incomparable,
All-honoured, Wisest, Best, most Pitiful ;
.The Teacher of Nirvana and the Law.

We may just recall the legends making known to Mayadevi
the miraculous birth to be; the story of wonders attending
that birth ; the shout of victory and the seven steps ; the
story of the mother's death seven days after; the coming
of the grey-haired sage, Asita. " Then, with epic wealth of
detail, follows the account of the young kshatriya's education/
his supernatural athletic skill, the tossing of the elephant
over the wall, the creation of a spring where the miraculous
arrow fell, the discovery on his body of the thirty-two
marks which betokened the arrival of a world-ruler or a
Buddha, the making of the " five great observations "

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 327

which designated him as born of the right family., in the
right continent, the right district, at the right time, and of
the right mother. .

Now appears the father's anxiety lest Siddhartha's
choice should lead him into the path of the ascetic rather
than into that of the warrior. To influence the youth's
destiny he is married to his cousin, Yasodhara, and of the
union a son, Rahula, is born. Further to fence the prince
from brooding over " the weary weight of this unintelligible
world," all things suggestive of misery were carefully
concealed by the king's command. But destiny proved
too strong. So we come to the familiar story of the " Four
Seeings," i.e* the four expeditions with his charioteer in the
course of which, by the intervention of divine providence,
Siddhartha beheld in sequence the spectacles of age, sickness,
death, and the ascetic. With full force the Hindu con-
viction of the essential sorrow of existence smote on the
hitherto untroubled calm of a sheltered . manhood. So
came about the " Great Renunciation." Siddhartha was
twenty-nine years old when he carried out his far-reaching
resolution, rose in the night, stepped lightly over the
sleeping . forms of wife and child, and attended by his
charioteer alone, mounted the horse Kantaka to forsake for
ever the white domes of Kapilavastu. When he reached
the edge of the jungle the future Buddha took off his royal
robes, cut the long locks which were the symbol of his
freedom, and sent back chariot, horse and servant to the
deserted palace. Then, facing with unaverted eyes the"
.mystery of sorrow, with all the trappings of life surrendered,
Siddhartha attached himself to five ascetics from Benares, to
find perchance'in the accepted way release and peace.

Alas, six years of struggle passed without spiritual
result; it was " like time spent in tying the air into knots."
So Gautama left the anchorites as he had left the palace,
and went forth alone to take his place beneath the Bo-tree
at Buddhagaya, there to wrestle with the principalities and
powers of evil till peace should crown his conflict. The
temptation of Gautama has been many times described, and
in fullest detail; suffice it here to say that the triumphant
result was the " illumination " which made the (Jakya

3-28 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

prince .henceforth the " enlightened," the Buddha. The
enlightenment is embodied in what aVe called the Four Noble
Truths, which may be succinctly stated as follows :

i. The truth that life is sorrow, that all happiness is
illusory and vain.

2. That the cause of sorrow is desire, trishna, as to which
the philosophers had already had much to say.

3. That the way out of sorrow is Nirvana, that sliding
of the dewdrop into the ocean which ends at once the
illusion of personality and the pain of consciousness the
glad city of peace, the final rest.

4. The " Eightfold Way "to Nirvana consists of right
belief^ right resolve, right speech, right behaviour, right
occupation, right effort, right contemplation and right
concentration:

So is the Eightfold Path which leads to peace ;
By lower or. by upper heights it goes.

The Buddha did not believe in a soul; man was but
a concatenation of physical and mental experiences. T nere
could be no permanent " I " even as there was no Oversoul.
It is difficult to see in Gautama's conclusions aught but
the starkest pessimism. Even so sympathetic an interpreter
as Rhys Davids writes: "Thus is the soul tossed about
from life to life, from billow to billow, in the great ocean
of transmigration. And there is no escape save for the very
few who during their birth as men obtain a right knowledge
of the Great Spirit and then enter into immortality, or, as
the later philosophies taught, are absorbed into the Divine
essence." Yet Buddhism was not particularly indebted to
its philosophy. Much more attractive was tlie social gospel,
which came to India like an outburst of spring, that religious
privileges which had hitherto been monopolized by the
Brahman might now be the portion of all, without distinction
of caste, or race, or sex. It was like the voice of a great
bell suspended from the heavens, proclaiming a common
consolation to be won, if men willed it, even in this life,
through the gaining of Nirvana.

That the ministry of the Buddha for the next forty and
more years was fruitful is clear, even if we do not admit its

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 329

spread beyond the borders of Magadha. After seven days
of delirious bliss, following upon his victory, the Buddha
started his " turning of the Wheel of the Law." . He
delivered his first sermon to the ascetics of Benares, gathered
into a Samgha, or community, his first converts, sent them
out to beg and preach during the fine season of the year,
and during the rains kept them around him^n retreat'. So
the -Buddhist trinity of Buddha^ the Teacher, Samgha^ the
Society, and Dharma, the Law, appears early in the move-
ment. Outstanding men, like Kacyapa, Ananda and Upali,
joined -the ranks. Women also flocked to listen and were
eventually permitted to join the order as nuns. The
preaching even gained the honour of opposition, especially
from a cousin of the Buddha, Devadatta, who, moved by
jealousy, repeatedly endeavoured to bring about the teacher's
death.

So passed years of devoted and unremitting labour till,
now an old man, Gautama arrived at the city of Vai^ali
and was overtaken, by his last sickness. The traditional
story is that a blacksmith named Chunda, out of hospitality,
offered the sage some dried boar's flesh, of which the
Buddha partook and presently died. Buddhists have argued
sometimes that the " boar's flesh " was really a kind of
mushroom, or 'that perhaps Gautama did not wish to repel
the man's hospitality. But it must 'be remembered that
at this period India had not completely turned its back on
flesh food.

The death of the Buddha took place about 487 B.C.
some say 477 at Ku9inagara. Here between two sala
trees Gautama lay down " after the manner of a lion " for
his last sleep. And " the trees bloomed out of season and
scattered their' flowers on him as he lay." Even the hour of
dying was not without its act of ministry, for it was at this
time that Gautama solved the doubts of sp'me of his disciples.
The body was cremated and an eightfold division made of
the ashes, with two extra portions from the embers after the
fire had been extinguished. We are once again indebted to
a reference by Fa-hien, the Chinese pilgrim, for the dis-
covery, in 1907, amid the ruins of the old stupa at Purusha-
pura, of the little box of silver filagree work, containing a

330 A BISTORT- OF RELIGION

golden casketj within which one of these portions of the
Buddha's dust has survived.

Immediately after the Buddha's death the first General
Council of the order was held at Rajagriha, at which^
according to tradition, 500 monks were present. The
whole Canon was recited, Ananda rendering the Sufms,
Upali the Vinaya, and Kacyapa the Abhidharma. It must
be remembered that the organization was from the first
primarily monastic. The regime of the monk included the
five ordinary commandments, obligatory also to laymen,
namely, not to steal, not to take life, to refrain from unlawful
sexual intercourse, not to lie and not to drink intoxicants.
But it had three supplementary obligations: only to take
food at -certain specified times, not to take part in music,
dancing or theatrical performances, and not to use perfumes
or unguents. Lastly, completing the rules, it was forbidden
to sleep on a high or wide bed, or to possess gold or silver.
Women had been admitted to the order only after much
debate, and on the intercession of Buddha's aunt, Maha-
prajapati, who cut off her hair, put on yellow garb, and used
the sympathetic aid of Ananda to secure her end. For
laymen the rule was made easy to prepare for the higher
path in some succeeding incarnation. " The quintessence,"
says Hackmann, " of this moral code for laymen is that
their conduct should 'be governed by a careful observance
of the moral norm prevailing in their days."

A second General Council was held about 377 B.C., at
Vaic.ali, seventy miles north of Rajagriha, and here the first
sign of a -line of cleavage made itself apparent, such as
later led to the development of the two schools of Hinayana
(Little Vessel), sometimes called Southern Buddhism, and
Mahayana (Great Vessel), known also (not quite accurately)
as Northern Buddhism. But at this time the dispute was
on small points, for example, as to whether the bhikshus, or
monks, could drink unfermented liquors. A committee
of four on each side tried to arrange a compromise, but in
general the southern school retained the orthodox position,
while the northern favoured modification of the conservative
view.

Soon after this came the great event which transformed

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 331

the entire history of India and made possible the entrance
of other religious ideas .beside those connected with the
teaching of the Buddha. This was the invasion by Alexander
the Great in 330 B.C., in the endeavour to complete the
conquest of the Achaemenian Empire by the subjugation
of the two north-west provinces of India. The incident
only concerns us in that shortly after the return of Alexander
to Babylon an insurrection took place against Seleucus
Nicator, his general, headed by an Indian who had been
a camp-follower in the Macedonian army. This was
Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan dynasty, which
lasted from the time of the revolt till 1 84 B.C. Chandragupta
has been claimed by the Jains, but our present interest is in
his grandson,, the great Aoka, one of the most notable
rulers in the whole history of the peninsula. Acoka (274
236 B.C.) started out with conquests which carried his
domain southward . to Madras. Legends of his ruthless
cruelty, including a probably fictitious story of the massacre
of his brothers and sisters, are of later invention, but it
seems true that, some eleven years after his accession,
Acoka came under the influence of Buddhism and from
thence was .enthusiastically active in the support and
extension of the faith. He had" inscriptions made on pillars
and rocks all over the land, in order that he might announce
the principles of religion he desired to recommend to monks
and laity. He also dug wells for the benefit of travellers
and provided hospitals and medicines for animals and men.
He made quinquennial circuits of his dominion for the
purpose of stimulating the administration of justice, and
sent missionary envoys as far as the Seleucid realm* of
Antiochus. One famous piece of missionary -work was the
sending of his son (or younger brother) Mahendra to
Ceylon, following it up with the despatch shortly after of his
daughter, Sanghamitra. Of this mission I shall have
somewhat to say in a later chapter.

Acoka reigned thirty-six or thirty-seven years, founded
the city of (prinagar in Kashmir, beautified his capital of
Pataliputra, and died about 236 B.C. in the fulness of his
powers and in the odour of sanctity. That he was subse-
quently ignored must be set down to the revival of

332 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Brahmanism, to which religion the name of A^oka was
naturally anathema. Fortunately, however, his fame has
been saved by the rediscovery of the Rock and Pillar Edicts
and by the sympathetic references to the great Buddhist
emperor in the writings of Fa-hien. . It is probable that in
this reign, about 250 B.C., the Third General Council was
held at Pataliputra. The historicity of this assembly is not
beyond doubt, but there is support for the tradition in the
Singhalese Chronicles and in the writings of Buddhaghosha.

The end of the Mauryan dynasty, as stated above, came
in 184 B.C., and from this time we have scanty knowledge
of the fortunes of Buddhism in India. Gradually in the
south, and in the Pali language, was accumulating that vast
mass of material which in course of time was fashioned into
the Canon, known as the Tripitaka, or, in the Pali, Ti-pitaka,
that is, " the Three Baskets" This name is given to the
whole collection of speeches, stories, rules and reflections
which were, according to tradition, put into form as early as
the reign of Ac,oka. The Three Baskets are respectively the
Finaya, or Basket of Discipline, the Suttas (Sutras), or
Basket of Teaching, and the Abhidhamma (Abhidharma\ or
Basket of Metaphysics. A brief word will suffice for the
Finaya, since this was kept" secret by the monks, concealed
even from the knowledge of the Buddhist laity. It comprised
rules for the reception of members into the Samgha, for the
periodical confession of -sin, for the retreat during the rainy
season, for simple medicinal treatment, and rules of a legal
sort for the settlement of controversies and discords.

The Suttas form the " Sermon Basket " and are divided
info five smaller collections known as Nikayas, or " lectures."
In Nikaya I. we have the famous Mahaparinibbana Sutta,
generally known as the Book of the Great Decease. Many of
the Suttas are series of verses, with repetitions and refrains,
designed for recitation by the whole monkish community.
Such are the Snake Sutta, where every verse ends with the
refrain, " as a snake casts off its decayed, old skin," and the
Rhinoceros Sutta, of which the refrain is, " Let one walk
alone like a rhinoceros." The Suttas known as Thera-gatha
(Songs of the Monks] and Theri-Gatha (Songs of the Nuns),
are well known to us through Mrs. Rhys Davids' Psalms of

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 333

the Brethren and Psalms of the Sisters, and show much more
of spiritual joy than most pieces of Buddhist literature. One
of the best-known pieces of Buddhist literature of this class
is the Dhammapada, or Path of the Law, a work written
about 70 B.C. It is an anthology of maxims, arranged in
over four hundred stanzas, with -the maxims frequently
illustrated by stories of the Buddha and his disciples. Under
the twenty-six headings of the Pali version we have treated
such objects as Twin Verses, Reflection, Thought, Flowers,
the Fool, the Wise Man, and so on. Ere leaving the Suttas
we must not forget the jatakas, or " birth stories," which
are tales of the previous lives of the Buddha as a Bodhisattva,
or one on the way to Buddhahood. Many of them are
beast-stories and shdw how Gautama, as a tortoise, or a hare,
or in some other form, outwitted Mara, the prince of evil,
or performed praiseworthy acts of compassion and self-
sacrifice.

The Abhidhamma, or Third Basket, contains the Buddhist
scholastic, a better term on the whole than metaphysics.
Mrs. Rhys Davids declares that our knowledge of Buddhist
philosophy would not greatly suffer wer r e the whole of the
Abhidhamma to be lost. " The burden of the Abhidhamma
is not any positive contribution to the philosophy of early
Buddhism, but analytical and logical and methodological
elaboration of what is already given."

While in the south Buddhism gradually passed out of
India by way of Ceylon, in the north it gravitated towards
the north-west and became distinctly of the Mahayana type.
Following upon the collapse of the Mauryan dynasty we
have several rather short-lived semi-foreign dynasties, all of
which were favourable to Buddhism. First came the Indo-
Bactrians about 147 B.C., in which line appears Menander
(known to Indian literature as Milinda), famous for a
Buddhist book in Pali, The Questions of Milinda (Milinda-
panha), a series of seven dialogues between the king and the
sage Nagasena. At the close of the third dialogue Menander
is converted, but he continues to ask questions and to
receive instruction till the end of the book. After the
Indo-Bactrians came the Andhras, or Indo-Parthians, whose
king Gondopharnes (or Gondophorus) is said to have

334 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

received both the Christian apostle St. Thomas and- the
emissaries, of the Chinese emperor Ming-ti, who carried
back with them to the Middle Kingdom the first Buddhist
books and images. It is quite possible that at this point
there was some intermingling of the two streams of religion.
The Parthian power gave way before the end of the first
century to the Kushans, 1 or Indo-Scythians, of whom
Kanishka, famous alike in international trade and -in the
history of Buddhism, is said to have called together, at his
capital, Purushapura, the Fourth General Council. Maha-
yana Buddhism was now in full control in the north, and
Kanishka was probably much influenced in his views by the
-great Mahayana teacher, Acvaghosha, famous also as
dramatist and as the biographer of Gautama.

It may be convenient here to point out that Mahayana
Buddhism differs from the original teaching in four special
particulars. First, in its theology, as making out of the
original Buddha-essence, the Adi-buddha, a kind of god,
whereas the original doctrine was atheistic. Secondly, in
its soteriology, as offering to men salvation through the help
of beings known as,Bodhisattvas, that is, beings on their way
to Buddhahood, whereas, according to Gautama, every man
was his own saviour. Thirdly, in its eschatology^ as offering
to men, through its doctrine of the Western Paradise, a
future less blank than had been suggested by Nirvana.
And, 'fourthly, in its practical ethics, as stressing the
advantage of becoming a Buddha, or teacher, in some future
life, rather than an arhat^ whose whole interest was in
securing release from the wheel of existence.

In spite of all changes, Indian Buddhism was now in
a state of decline, through the reasserted dominance of the
Brahman caste. With the rise of the Gupta dynasty, about
A.D. 360, there are many signs as in the revival of the
apvamedha, or horse-sacrifice that the days of Buddhism in
India were numbered. It is true that the Chinese pilgrims,
from Fa-hien to Hiuen-tsang, found in India much of
interest to them as Buddhists,- but to the latter the apostasy
from the faith was plain, while even to the former the
heresies (as he considered them) were numerous. Yet
Harsha, " the last native lord-paramount of India " (A.D. 607-

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 335

647), was more than fair to the Buddhist cause, whatever
were his own personal convictions. Some say that he was
converted by Hiuen-tsang from the Hinayana to the
Mahayana school. At any rate, he was the pilgrim's patron
and protector and saw to it that in the debates staged
between the Chinese visitor and the Brahmans the Buddhist
should have fair play. Harsha, who was dramatist as well
as king, has left us the one Buddhist play, the Nagananda,
which has survived in Indian literature.

But no favour shown by Harsha, or others, could avert
the end. The Gupta rulers were worshippers of Vishnu,
the Gupta dramatists invoked the benediction of Qiva, and
the Brahman ascendancy was ere long completely re-
established. The large amount of Buddhist literature
written in Sanskrit was gradually carried across the frontier
to be translated into Chinese and the languages of Central
Asia, and the one poor consolation left to the Indian
Buddhist was the acceptance by the Hindu of Gautama as
the ninth avatar of Vishnu.

To-day the total number of Buddhists in India (including
Burma and Nepal) is about 11,000,000, and most of these
are outside of India proper. The last stronghold of
Buddhism in India, Magadha, fell before the sword of
Islam rather man before the power of the Brahman. But
by this time the missionaries of Gautama had carried (if
not the exact teachings) at any rate something of the spirit
of the Blessed One over all central, eastern and southern
Asia. In later chapters we shall, give some account of
developments in these regions. Meanwhile, we must finish
the story of Indian religion (except for the part concerned
with -Islam) with some description of the revival of Brah-
manism, under the name of Hinduism. 1

1 On Indian 'Buddhism generally see T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India,
London, 1880 ;'" J. H. Kern, A Manual of Indian Buddhism, London, 1896 ;
J. B. Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism, New York, 1928 ; Moritz Winternitz,
Geshichie der indischen Litteratur, Vol. II., Leipzig, 1909-1920 ; Samuel Beal,
Buddhist Records of the Western World, 2 Vols., London, 1884 ; J. M.-McPhail,
Asoka, Oxford, 1918 ; R ; Mookerji, Harsha, Oxford, 1926 ; H. H. Goweh,
History of Indian Literature, chaps. xix.-xxiv., New York, 1931.

CHAPTER- XXIII
The Religions of India ///.

HINDUISM AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS

decline of Buddhism in the sixth and following
centuries A.D. was followed by a revival of Brah-
manism for which, doubtless among many others, tHe
great Vedantist amkaracharya has been by many held
responsible. amkara lived and taught between A.D. 788
and 850, and wrote commentaries on the principal Upani-
shads and the Bhagavad-gita. But he is best known as
the teacher of the unqualified monism, or non-dualism
(advaita\ referred to in Chapter XXI. He taught that
" beyond Brahman nothing exists save 'an illusive principle
called may a" by means of which the supposedly individual
soul is kept back from union with the Oversoul. At the
end of each kalpa Brahman rests, free from the power of
maya. Then all individual souls are merged in the Eternal.
"This Eternal," says Dr. Rudolf Otto, " f is wholly and
purely Atman^ or spirit '(chit and chaifanyam), pure conscious-
ness (Jnana\ pure knowledge. Similarly, because it is
without division, this spirit, or consciousness, or knowledge
is beyond the three antitheses of Knower, Known, and the
act of Knowing. Thus it is at once ' anantam,' without
end, and beyond space and time." 1

But although Vedantism, either in its unqualified or in
its qualified form, remained the generally accepted phil-
osophy of thoughtful -Indians, and much else that belonged
to pre-Buddhistic habits of thought notably in the matter
of caste again raised its head, in strict truth Brahmanism
never did return, nor did the philosophic Schools regain the
sincerity and simplicity of the Upanishadic period. Instead
of the karma-marga, or way of works, and- the jnana-marga,
or way of knowledge, we find now the religion of

1 Rudolf Otto, Mysticism, East and West, New York, 1932. See p. 3.

336

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 337

bhakti) that is, of devotion to a multitude of gods and
.goddesses.

. For the origins of bhakti men have looked in many
directions. Some have suspected indebtedness to Chris-
'tianity, while recent Muhammadan writers believe that, at
least in the second period of its development, much is owing
to the Sufistic philosophy of Islam. 1 Others are satisfied
to regard it as the natural reaction of the Indian mind from
the Brahmanic ritual and from the . speculations of the
Upanishads. At any rate bhakti found much to feed upon
iiv the local village cults, where some particular deity
attracted to itself the homage -and affection of its votaries,
unwilling to go further back for their theology. So we
arrive at that mixture of elements we call Hinduism, a huge
syncretistic system in which complicated polytheisms are
united with an involved series of caste usages, and something
borrowed from almost everything, even down to the super-
stitious beliefs and practices of the Negrito fetish-wor-
shippers. From Buddhism itself everything was accepted
except its atheism, its denial of the eternity of the soul, and
its opposition to caste.

Although it is a difficult thing to systematize so parti-
coloured a 1 religion, yet the systematization is found as nearly
as possible in the scriptures known as Puranas, which have
the same kind of authority for Hinduism that the Veda has
for the earlier religion.

The Pur anas signify literally " old things," or archie o-
togtca^ but though the contents of the books may go back
to quite early times, the books themselves belie their name.
Probably none of them is older than the sixth century A.D.,
and so, of course, could have had nothing to do with their
traditional author, Vyasa, also regarded as the traditional
author of the Mahabharata.

The Puranas, however, are almost entirely concerned
with things fabulous and mythical. According to the Canon
of Amara Sinha, each had to deal with five subjects. These
are: (i) The Sarga, or creation of the universe; (2) the
Prati-Sarga, the destruction and recreation of the universe ;
(3) the Va'nua^ the genealogy of the gods and patriarchs;

1 See Yusuf Husain, L'Inde Mystique au Moyen Age, Paris, 1929.
Y

3 3& -A HISTORY OF RELIGION

(4) the Manvantara, or reigns of the various Manus; and

(5) the Vamtyanucharita,) or history of the solar arid lunar
kings.

A-few words on these several topics will serve to present
the distinctive features of Hinduism. Creation was the
outbreathing of worlds from the mouth of Brahma -to
return to their original nothingness at the expiration of a
kalpa of 4,320,000,000 mortal years. The kalpa was
divisible into fourteen periods, each governed by one of the
many successive Manus. Indians believe .they are now
living in the Kali-yuga, or evil age -an age .of degeneracy '
described in the Vishnu Purana as one in which

the rights of men

Will be confused, no property be safe,
No joy and no' prosperity be lasting.

All the successive kalpas are governed by Manus, the first
of wnpm Vas Manu Swayambhuva, whose seven sons ruled
over the seven continents, of which the central one was
Jambudwipa (India). These seven continents were separated
one from the other by six oceans, respectively of salt water,
sugar-cane juice, wine, melted butter, curdled milk and milk.

The eighteen Puranas are divided into three series, each
of six. The last six serve to honour Brahma, the creator,
and are intended to express the quality of ragas, or passion ;
the next six are in honour of Qiva, the "destroyer, and
represent the quality of tamas^ or gloom ; and the first six
exalt Vishnu, the redeemer, ,and express the quality of
sattva 3 or reality. ,

All these deities are manifestations of the impersonal
Brahm, and form together what is known as the Trimurti,
or " threefoldness." In theory Brahma, Vishnu and iva
are equal, as is expressed in the lines : ' .

In hose three persons the one God was shown
Each first in place, each last not one alone ;
Of Civa, Vishnu, Brahma, 'each may be
First, second, third among the Blessed Three.

But in practice, so far as the teaching of the Puranas goes,
the chief honours are with Vishnu. Brahma, as the god of
creation, which is past and done with, has small recognition

THE RELIGIONS OF INDI : A 339

in India at the present day, and but one or two temples in
the whole land. iva has a very much larger share of
India's allegiance, as the Hindu continuation of the Vedic
god Rudra, the god of nature's destructive forces. By some
he is regarded as the primal creator, who by his austerities
has won the right to be the lord of life. As the typical Yogi,
Qiva embodies for many all that is s austere. He is the ideal
of the naked ascetic. He satisfies, moreover, the religious
ideas of the wild aboriginal tribes, and has become the
substitute for their primitive deities. As " the lord of
spirits and demons," with his string of skulls for a necklace,
and serpents for a garland, he is the delight of the more
uncouth element of the populace. And, again, as the
representative free-liver of the Tan trie rites, he is the wild,
jovial god, given to drink and dancing, surrounded by
troops of buffoons and dwarfs. The (Jaivite temple is
everywhere to be seen, even though the aivites themselves
are not so commonly beheld outside the ranks of yogis and
sunnyasis. Their sect-mark consists of the three horizontal
strokes of white or grey ashes on the forehead.

But Vishnu was the god who satisfied most the longings
of the Indian heart and the religion of bhakti was pre-
dominantly Vaishnavite. Everywhere might be seen the
worshipper of Vishnu with his sect-mark of two perpendicular
strokes, ending below in a curve, which was supposed to
represent the footprint of the god. The preference given
to Vishnu is somewhat grotesquely set forth in the Bhagavata-
ptirana, where the sage Bhrigu is described as going forth
to test the temper of the" three deities of the Trimurti.
When Bhrigu omitted the customary obeisance to Brahma,
the god's anger blazed forth terribly and Jt was with
difficulty restrained. Then the sage passed on to iva and
deliberately failed to return the god's salute. (Diva's eyes
flashed fire and he raised his trident to destroy the im-

. pertinent visitor, but Parvati, the divine spouse, interceded
and won forgiveness for the sage. Then Bhrigu went on

..to Vishnu, whom he found asleep, and awakened the god
with a kick in the breast. Immediately Vishnu arose, asked
the sage's pardon for not having greeted him on his arrival,
and expressed the honour he felt at having received the

340 fr HISTORT OF RELIGION

imprint of Bhrigu's foot upon his breast. Thus it was
revealed that Vishnu was the greatest of the g9ds.

Vishnu, whose name is derived from the root'vif, to
pervade, was originally a god of the solar ray, but came
later to be regarded as a form of the Supreme Spirit,~.under
the name of Narayana, or he that moves upon the waters.
As the divine pervader,'he infused his presence into all
created things and these self-projections came to be known
as avatars, or descents, undertaken to preserve the world
of gods and men in certain dangerous crises. The story of
these avatars is a considerable part of the substance of the
Puranas. They are arranged under the five following heads :*

I. Full avatars, in human form, as, for example, when"
Vishnu was born as Krishna.

. 2. Half-human avatars, as when Vishnu imparted 50 per
cent of his essence to Rama, the son of Dacaratha.

3. Quarter avatars, as in the case of Rama's brother,
Bharata.

4. Eighth-part avatars, as in the ca'se of Rama's other
brothers, Lakshmana and Qatrughna.

5. The diffusion of the divine essence irito ordinary
men, animals, and other sentient beings. .

According to the general Puranic conception, the avatars
of Vishnu are ten in number the ten being, as elsewhere,
the symbol of development, that is, 1 + 2+3 + 4=10. The
upward trend in the sequence will be obvious. The ten are:

1. The Mafsya, or Fish avatar, when, as related in the
Mahabharata, the Qqtapatha Rrahmana, and the Vishnu
Purana, Vishnu saved Manu by appearing in the form of a
fish and ordered the building of the ship wherein Manu
was saved.

2. The Kurma, or Tortoise avatar, which took place
when Vishnu descended, to the bottom of the sea to recover
the things lost in the deluge and made himself a pivot for
Mt. Mandara, with Vasuki, the serpent, as a rope, for the
churning of the amrita from the sea of milk.

3. The Varaha, or Wild-boar avatar, in which form
Vishnu descended into the abyss to fight the demon Hiran-
yaksha, who had seized the world and borne it away.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 341

. 4. The Nara-sinha, or Man-lion avatar, when Vishnu
delivered the world from the demon Hiranyacipu, who was
invulnerable to gods, men and animals, but not to a com-
posite of all three. Vishnu entered a stone* pillar in the
demon's hall and came forth, half-man and half-lion, to
tear "his antagonist asunder.

5. The Vamana, or Dwarf avatar the familiar story
of Vishnu's three strides when the god, appearing with the
other gods before Bali as a dwarf to claim as much territory
as he could step over in three paces, overpassed heaven and
earth, but left the infernal regions to the Daitya king.

6. The Parafu-Rama avatar, when Vishnu as Rama-
with-the-axe slew the Kshatriyas and established the
supremacy of the Brahmans.

7. The Rama, or Rama-chandra avatar, when Vishnu
became Rama, son of Dasaratha, and slew Ravana, the
demon king of Lanka.

8. The Krishna avatar, probably the most popular of
all, when Vishnu became Krishna, the dark god, one of the
heroes of the Mahabharata, and the subject of innumerable
legends.

9. The Buddha avatar, arranged as a concession to the
Buddhists, and to counteract their influence as a religion
separate from Hinduism.

10. The Kalki, or White-horse avatar, of the future,
when, at the end of the Kali-yuga, Vishnu shall appear,
riding a white horse and wielding a "sword blazing like a
comet, to create, renew and establish purity on the earth.
Some have advocated the recognition of this avatar as
fulfilled in Christ.

It should be added that the Bhagavata-purana speaks
of twelve other avatars of Vishnu and indeed declares that
his avatars are innumerable " like the rivulets flowing from
an inexhaustible lake."

Another sid.e of Hinduism than that presented in the
Pur anas is that which concerns the worship of the gods in
their gakti, or female essence. This is given especially in
the works called Tantras, a word which may be explained
as, first, web or woof, next, an uninterrupted series, and
lastly, as rule or ritual. The Tantras are esteemed by

342 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Hindus next after the Pur anas and date in general from the
sixth or seventh century. Though some thus place the,
authority of these books very high, they are in general
devoted to low and magical conceptions of religion. Each
of the gods of the Trimurti has his fakti. That of Brahma
is Sarasvati (the watery), the old lost rjver oif India, deified
as Vach, the goddess of eloquence. Vishnu's, cakti is
Lakshmi, or Qri, the goddess of good fortune, and mother
of Kama, the Indian Cupid. She is sometimes identified
with Sita, sometimes with Radha, and as Mombadevi she
has given her name to Bombay, of which city she is especially
" Our Lady." Qiva's fakti is the dread goddess Kali, known
also as Durga, the inaccessible, Parvati, the mountain
goddess, Bhairavi, the terrible, and as Devi, the goddess
par excellence. As Kali she is depicted with a black skin,
a hideous and terrible countenance, dripping with blood,
encircled with snakes, hung round with skulls, and in all
respects a fury rather than a goddess. She has given her
name to Calcutta, Kalighat, the temple steps of Kali, and
as Kumari, the maiden, to Cape Comorin, the southernmost
point of India. She is the mother of the elephant-headed
god Ganesha and of Karttikeya, the: god of war.

Tan trie worship is frequently of the grossest description,
particularly that which is known as left-handed tantra, in
which the five requisites are the five M's, Madya, wine;
Mams a, flesh; Matsya, fish; Mudra, parched grain, or
mystical gesticulation; and Maithuna, sexual intercourse.
In left-handed Tantric worship we reach the lowest depths
of religious degradation. Tantric worship generally is most
commonly encountered in Bengal and in the Eastern
Provinces. From this last-named region a native writer
declares: "Two-thirds of 'our religious rites are Tantric
and almost half our medicine." . -

The doctrine of bhakti, developed in the cult of both
Vishnu and Qiva, has had enormous consequences in the
history of Hinduism during the past thousand years and
has done much to give to Hinduism its distinctive character.
It has broken the force of the old pantheistic philosophy for
many millions and has made these .millions worshippers of
a countless number of deities with a devotion rising in many

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 343

cases to an emotional mysticism of the first order. Much
of the worship of India is, it is true, exceedingly superstitious
and in many cases gross. In every city the temples are
filled -with the images of the gods, many-headed and many-
handed, and often represented with a symbolism which, to
westerners at least, is distasteful. Not only are the chief
gods of the pantheon represented, but such deities as
Hanuman, the monkey general of Rama, and Ganesha, the
elephant-headed son of (Jiva. The villages teem with
shrines to gods still lowlier in the mythological hierarchy,
and many animals share in the heverence awarded to the
human and superhuman deities. The cow is naturally a
sacred animal, while monkeys and serpents also have their
numerous votaries. Even trees and stones, the fetishes of
primitive folk, are adored by many in the hill districts.
Pilgrimages are acts of worship which are exceedingly
popular and rivers are especially sought as goals in these
religious adventures. Supreme in the heart of all Hindus
is the river Ganges, on which the maidens float their love-
lamps and the bereaved their dead. But the confluences of
rivers, such as the seven sangamas (confluences) are the
favourite resorts. India is full of holy places, like the four
residences of the gods, of which that of Jagar-nath in Puri
is one of the best known, or like the twelve places marked
by the phallic symbol of Qiva. Hinduism permeates the
life of its* professors in every act all the year long^ but there
are many festivals of peculiar sanctity, most of them regulated
by the moon, such as the great Indian Saturnalia, known as
SoRy which takes place on the ten days before the full moon
of February-March.

Hinduism, like other religions, has a multitude of sects,
apart from the broad distinction made between Vaishnavite
and (Jaivite. Many of these sects originate with the great
religious revivals of the twelfth and subsequent centuries
and were certainly influenced by the more spiritual aspect
of Islam which we call Sufism. There is little doubt that
many Hindus were unconsciously affected by the mono-
theism of Islam and it is possible also that the situation was
influenced by Christian teaching.

Some of these movements are deserving of careful

344 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

attention, but we must be content to mention but a few.
Earliest are the Nimbarkas, founded by Nimbarka, an
enthusiastic votary of Vishnu and Radha in the eleventh
century. Their sect-mark consists of two yellowish per-
pendicular lines joined below in a curve. In this sect we
may probably reckon the great lyric poet Jayadeva, writer
of the Gita-govinda. In the middle of the eleventh century
comes Ramanuja who, in opposition to Qamkara, espoused
the doctrine of modified- monism. He wrote numerous
commentaries on the Brahma-sutras and the Bhagavad-gita
but gained the popular ear most by the hymns in which he
sang of the Supreme Soul manifested in Vishnu. The two
perpendicular marks which form the sect-mark of the
Ramanujas are white. Not long after Ramanuja came
Madhava, born possibly in 1 197, founder of the Madhavas.
Madhava was originally a aivite, but was converted to
Vaishnavism and held that the Supreme Soul was manifested
in Vishnu. He lived in the Kanarese country and by some
has been regarded as the last of the great southern teachers.
But he travelled extensively in the north and left behind
him numerous disciples distinguished by the red perpen-
dicular sect-mark. The Madhavas by some have been
supposed to have received influence from the Nestorian
Christians. In 1299, probably at Allahabad, was born
Ramananda, whom two million Ramanandis to-day accept
as their master. Ramananda is regarded as the fifth guru
in descent from Ramanuja. A child prodigy and a pundit
at twelve, he made pilgrimages over the greater part of
India, gathered together his twelve apostles, of whom one
was a weaver, and preached everywhere the pure doctrine of
Rama as distinguished from the more erotic teachings
connected with reverence for Krishna. Many held that
Ramananda was himself an incarnation of Rama. Another
great teacher and the founder of a sect bearing his name was
Vallabhacharya, born about 1479, and looked upon by his
followers as an incarnation of Krishna. He was Vedantist
in his general outlook, but preached a doctrine called
Pushti-marga, the way of enjoyment, as contrasted with the
usual recommendation of asceticism. Vallabhacharya gained
a large number of adherents, not merely at Benares, where

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 345

he lived, but also in Bombay and Gujerat. One other great
Vaishnavite sectary was Chaitanya, who was born in 1485
and was likewise regarded as an incarnation of Krishna.
He was a revivalist preacher of great power and influence
and a thorough-going ecstatic who often became self-
entranced. Some accounts describe him as translated to the
heaven of Vishnu without dying.

In the life and teaching of men such as these we get
sight of a quality in religion which transcends Hinduism
and links its representatives with the mystics of all times and
climates. The same thing is true of some of the poets who
belong to the period we call mediaeval in India. The
religious poetry of some of these possesses a sincerity which
atones for the defects of their theology. There is for,
.instance, Namdev, who worshipped the village god of
Pandharpur, Vithoba, and yet found a revelation of the
Supreme which he had failed to discover in Vedas or Puranas.*
There was the 9udra woman Jamabai, the voluntary drudge
of Namdev, who found poetry as well as piety in her
drudgery. There was again the Maratha poet Ekanath,
who learned that :

God dwells in all and yet we find
To Him the faithless man is blind.
Water or stones or what you will
What is it that He does not fill ?

There was Tulsi Das, who wrote a great poem on Rama-
the popular Ramayana of Bengal and thought of the hero
.as a great father in heaven through whom all men on earth
were brothers. There was, to mention but one more,
Tukaram, the cudra grain-dealer, who wrote hundreds of
hymns in praise of his god which have become as familiar
on the lips of the Marathas as the Psalms of David to us.

, In all these many converging influences have produced
their proper result in making Hinduism at once more
popular and more spiritual than the older religion. But in
certain cases there was a more or less deliberate effort made
to synthesize the religious elements which, through the
Muhammadan conquest, had found place in Indian life

\ See C. A. Kincaid, Tales of the Saints of Pandharpur, Oxford, 1919.

346 ' A HISTORY OF RELIGION

side by side with old customs and old beliefs. Two of these
instances require our attention, first, that of Katir and his
following, the Kabirpanthis, and^ secondly, that of Nanak
and the religion which came to be known as Sikhism.

Kabir (1440- 151 8) was born in or near Benares,
probably of Muslim parentage, and in his early life Was
cared for by a weaver and his wife. He became a disciple
of Ramananda. and ;was by him, through the success of a
simple stratagem, initiated into the cult of Rama. From
that time on Kabir was the enthusiastic preacher of a theism
to which there was neither temple, church nor kaaba^ The
child alike of Allah and Rama, he maintained: " There is
nothing but water in the sacred bathing-places; and I
know that they are useless, for -I have -bathed in them.
Lifeless are all the images of the gods; they cannot speak;
I know it, for I have called aloud to them." He was
naturally much opposed by the Brahrrians, and on one
occasion they sent a woman of ill-fame to tempt, him. But,
instead of yielding, Kabir converted the courtesan . Though
a genuine mystic, teaching that God had spread his form
of love throughout the world, " he earned his living as a
weaver, finding industry in no way incompatible with vision."
Kabir's poetry on the subject of bh'akti introduces an element
of passion into Indian literature which is Semitic rather than
Aryan, as will - be felt by those who have read the Songs
of KaUr, translated by Rabindranath Tagore. 1 When Kabir
died, so runs a beautiful legend, both Muslim and Hindu
desired his body, the Muslim to bury it, the Hindu to
consume it on the pyre. Long they wrangled over the
matter, until the shroud was lifted and found to cover
nothing but a mass of flowers. These were then reverently
divided and the share of each disposed of in the. accustomed
way. The Kabirpanthis number less than a million in all
India, but their influence is out of all proportion to their
numerical strength. Some other sects, such as the Dadu-
panthis, followers of Dadu, the cotton-cleaner of Ahmadabad,
derive their theology from Kabir.

It was the influence of Kabir to which, at least in part,
is due the religious movement of Nanak Shah, the founder

1 The Songs of Kabir, translated by 'Rabindranath Tagore, New York, 1919.

THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 347

of Sikhism. Nanak was born in 1469, in the Punjab. He
became early acquainted with both Quran and Sutras, but
only gradually, formed the resolution to purify religion by
the elimination of formalism and corruption. In his pil-
grimage to Mecca he was rebuked for sleeping with his
head to the house of God and replied: " Tell me, pray, in
which direction the house of God is not." Soon he became
convinced that Hinduism had to be emancipated -from the
fetters of mythology and that neither sacrifice nor pil-
grimage was so meritorious as the search for truth. Salvation
must be won by devotion to God, together with good
conduct towards men. Nanak died x at the age of seventy,
in 1538, and the leadership of the reforming sect fell to a
series of Gurus, of whom the fourth built the famous lake
temple at Amritsar, henceforth the centre of Sikhism. The
fifth Guru, in 1601, compiled the' sacred book known as
the Adi Granth* which is now reverenced almost as a god.
Arjun also organized the faith on such a scale that later on
it attracted the bigoted Aurungzib, who imprisoned the
ninth Guru and waged a war of suppression against the
faith. The tenth Guru answered the challenge of perse-
cution by creating the Khalsa, or inner circle, the nucleus of
a militant nation, with each individual under a vow to wear
steel, slay the Muslim on sight, and use the common name
Singh (lion), as an indication of resolve to fight .and die.
When the tenth Guru died the succession was regarded as
closed and the Adi Granth remained the- sole authority.
To-day the Sikhs number about 3,256,000, but they have
lost much of their importance since the annexation of the
Punjab and show themselves much more complacent towards
the customs of Hinduism. -

An' influence of an entirely different sort and one which
is due to Christianity and the West, is that which produced
the Samaj movements of the nineteenth century. The real
founder of this movement was the famous Ram Mohun Roy
(1772-1833), who co-operated with Lord William JBentinck
in the suppression ofsati. Becoming convinced of the many
corruptions in Hinduism, Ram Mohun Roy formed the
Brahma Samaj, evolved a kind of Protestant service com-

1 Translated by Ernest Trumpp, London, 1877.

348 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

posed mainly out of the Upanishads and the Gospels. , After
the premature death of the founder, the movement, with
less leaning towards Christianity, was taken up, first by
Dvarkanath Tagore (grandfather of the poet) and later by
Debendranath Tagore, the poet's father, who continued as,
its Maharshi (great risk?) until his death. -In 1857 the
movement was joined by the brilliant Keshub Chunder Sen
who, however, disagreed with the Tagores on the question
of caste and formed in 1866 a new Samaj, leaving the older
society to function as the Adi. (original) Brahma Samaj.
Then Keshub for a time fell under the influence of Ram
Krishna and showed a trend towards Hinduism which,
together with certain inconsistencies of conduct, cost him
.his influence in the movement. Yet he made one last effort
to contribute to the cause of Indian theism by founding in
1881 the Naba Badhan (New Rule\ a peculiar mixture of
Christian and Hindu ideas which has not outlived the death
of its founder in 1884. ' . .

By this time many .Hindus had become genuinely
alarmed over the interpretation of their religion given to
and by foreigners. So we have the rise of certain movements
designed to save Hinduism from disintegration through
attack direct or indirect. The first of these was the Arya
Samaj, founded by Dayananda Sarasvati (182483), with
his slogan of Back to the Vedas. Here we have asserted the
absolute adequacy of Hinduism to the needs of modern life
and the absolute infallibility of the Veda. Other Hindu
teachers who have rallied to the defence of the Indian
religion include Ram Krishna, mentioned above, who,
though trying to absorb the ideals of Christianity and Islam,
was really a devotee of the goddess Kali and a professor of
Yoga. Among the followers of Ram Krishna was the Swami
Vivekananda who attracted much attention in America at
the time of the Chicago World Fair of 1893, arid laboured
till his death in the cause of religious nationalism. Since
Vivekananda's time other teachers have arisen such as Bal
Gangadhai Tilak, who died in 1920, and Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, whose religious nationalism has played
a startling role in recent history.

It is. easy to take a one-sided view 'of Hinduism, To

THE. RELIGIONS OF INDIA 349

many it will recall nothing but superstition, cruelty and
grossness, social backwardness and political ineptness. To
others it will be the one thing needful to rescue the West
from the grip of materialism, the fragrance of a sacrifice that
rises for the benefit of all humanity. To most thoughtful
people it will be apparent that Hinduism cannot fulfil itself
until it has been Christianized. Only a " genuine" God
such as St. John presents as the antithesis to the " shadow
gods " of the heathen (i John v. 2 1) can satisfy the yearning
of Indian bhakti. Many indeed are the saints of India who
by true faith have risen to the seeing and doing of noble
and inspiring things. But for the salvation of India (to
quote Dr. J. N. Farquhar): "A new religion must be
found, a religion which will provide a religious foundation
for the wider and truer ideas which now- dominate the
Hindu mind; satisfy the religious instincts of the people,
and stimulate them to purity, progress and strength.
Christianity is unquestionably, the. source 'of the new
explosive thought which is recreating the Indian character
and intelligence to-day. There is no other religion which
contains these master ideas. Only in the realm of Chris-
tianity, Christ and His Cross, the Fatherhood of God, the
Brotherhood of Man, and the Kingdom of God, can Hindus
find. the universal, principles needed for a new intellectual,
moral and social life." 1 2

1 J. N. Farquhar, A Primer of Hinduism, Oxford, 1912, p. 202.

z Other" books on this subject which it will be useful to consult are as
follows : Sophia D. Collett, Life and Letters of Ram Mohun Roy, London, 1900 ;
W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, 2 Vols., London,
1896 ; John Dowson, A Classical Dictionary of Hindu- Mythology, London,
1879; Francis Kingsbury and G. E. Philips, 'Hymns of the Tamil Saivite
Saints, Oxford, 1921 ; Margaret MacNicol, Poems by Indian Women, London,
1923 ; H. Mitra, Hinduism, The World Ideal, London, 1916 ; Sir M. Monier-
Williams, Hinduism, London, 1885. .

CHAPTER XXIV
The Religions of China /.

To THE ADVENT OF BUDDHISM.

A FAMOUS living 'Chinese philosopher expresses the
opinion that the Chinese are not naturally a religious
people. The basis of his idea (which is rather widely
held) is that, first, the Chinese are not emotional in their
expression of religion and, secondly, that religion is so tied
up for them with their entire philosophy of life that it seems
to occupy no special place. Yet there is little doubt, on
reflection, that the Chinese attitude towards life, as haying
cosmic significance and as involving definite relations with
the family and the state, ,is essentially religious.

It is a common error, in treating of the history .of Chinese
religion, to commence, with the teaching and career of the
great sages Confucius and Lao Tzu, in forgetfulness of the
fact that these simply represent different strata of a system
which was many centuries old when they appeared, and
that neither of them claimed to be the originator of the
philosophy he expounded. Indeed, Confucius arid Lao Tzu,
and others after them, only gave system and stability to
beliefs and practices which they desired to transmit to their
posterity.

No doubt many personalities unknown to us did con-
tribute to the earlier religion. The names of culture-heroes
like Fu-hsi, of " model Emperors " like Yao and Shun, and
of philosophers like Chou Kung, do not appear in the early
annals without justification. But, in the main, Chinese
religion developed all along from popular appreciation of
those two aspects of the numinous sense which we have
labelled respectively Naturism and Spiritism. It may be
that in describing these developments we shall introduce
unconsciously ideas which belong, in their formulated stage,
to later times, but it would not be difficult to show that

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 351

even these are probably discoverable in germ at the earliest
period to which we can penetrate.

Let us treat first, as briefly as may .be, of the naturistic
side of Chinese popular religion. Viewed as " a collectanea
of all the powers of Nature " was the sky, or Tien. To
many T'ien was a real god, while to the Taoist T'ien was
but the equivalent of Tao. But in popular religion T'ien
was never personalized and stood rather for the law behind
all the gods than for a deity such as shared with earth the
honours of a primitive dualism. A much more personal view
of God as lord of nature is suggested by the term Shang-ti, or
Supreme Being, though the actual worship of Shang-ti was
restricted to the Emperors. There is, however,- a popular
conception of Nature as a kind of god in itself presented in
the myth of P'an-ku, which Dr. Carus declares is "a
Chinese version not only of the Norse myth of the giant
Ymir, but also of the Babylonian story of Tiamat. ' ' P'an-ku
is represented as dying for his handiwork, so that his head
became mountains, his breath wind and clouds, his voice
thunder, his limbs the four poles, his veins the rivers, his
sinews the undulations of the earth's surface, his skin the
herbs and trees, his bones the rocks and metals, his sweat the
rain, and the insects which infested his body men and women.

It was generally recognized though not systematically
expressed till much later that the Universe was the result
of the interplay of the two eternal principles of Chi (gaseous
matter) and Li (form). These combined in varying pro-
portions of finer and grosser matter, so that the world, and
all things in it, presented the opposite but complementary
aspects of the Tin and the Tang. The former was feminine
and negative, specially represented by the earth; the latter
was masculine and positive, and identifiable with the heavens.
In the monad, or world-egg, the Yin is the dark part of the
circle, represented in divination by the broken line and the
even number; the Yang is the light segment of the circle,
and is represented by the unbroken line and the odd number.
From this symbolism originated, first the use in divining of
the four bigrams, as 'follows: ==, ==, =, =; and later
the use of -the eight trigrams, as follows: = (heaven),
== (earth), s= (thunder), == (mountains), == (fire), == (water),

352 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

= (steam), and = (wind). The invention of these is ascribed
to Fu-hsi about 2 8 5" 2 B.C. Later still, about 1122 B.C., the
system was further extended by the use of the sixty-four
hexagrams, upon which is built up the volume of the
Classics known as the Ti-ching^ or Book of Changes.

The general belief in the harmonious adjustment of
form and matter finds multifarious expression. It explains,
for instance, the Chinese resort to the five sacred mountains,
by which approach is possible to the world of heaven.
These are T'ai-shan in Shantung, Hua-shan in Shensi,
Hng-shan in Shansi, Nanyii-shan in Hunan, and Sung-shan
in Honan. It explains also the place given to the pseudo-
'. science' of ' Ftng-shui^ literally, wind and water ^ a kind of
geomancy, based on the belief that the harmony of wind
and water currents makes fortunate the building of a house
or the digging of a grave in one spot rather than in another.
Much trouble for foreigners has arisen from ignorance or
disregard of this strongly entrenched superstition. In the
third place, out of the Chinese reverence for the supposed
dependence of man upon harmonious co-operation with the
powers of nature has arisen a vast complex of methods in the
way of divination. Only a few of these may be mentioned,
in addition to those already referred to, such as the use
of the whole and broken line in the bigrams and trigrams.
Variations of this are to be noted in the bringing out of
. lines upon a piece of scorched bone or tortoise-shell, and in
the use of . the stalks of the Achillea millefolium grown
especially on the grave of Confucius. Other forms of
divination include a kind of juggling with the names of
the twelve animal " branches " an3 the ten elemental
" stems," used in the construction of the calendar; indica-
tions from human physiognomy, or from the shape of the
ears, and the length of the arms; the tossing of coins and
the throwing of oyster-shells ; the use of lucky ideographs ;
the placing of sticks in a bowl of water; and the use of
omens derivable from the song of birds, the cawing of
crows, the burning of a lamp-flame, the twitching of the
fingers, the casting of horoscopes, and the like. 1 One of

1 See Henri Dore, Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine, Shanghai,
1911-19.

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA ' 353

the commonest of present-day methods is the use of a piece
of bamboo-root, split in the middle so as to be flat on one
side and curved on the other. Favourable omens are
indicated by the falling of one half stick with the flat surface
uppermost and the other reversed.

Naturism involves also tjie belief in many protective
agencies such as are now commonly associated with Taoism.
Such are the various talismans against fire, sometimes
consisting of the mere ideograph for water painted on the
wall and sometimes of more elaborate formulae in blue,
green, red, yellow and violet posters placed north, east,
south and west of the house, and in the centre. Healing
talismans often consist of simple spells to be burned and
mixed with a soup or drink; others belong to the scape-
goat order and are representations of man, horse, pig or
ox, to receive the disease and bear it away. These are just
illustrations taken from a vast body of popular practices, all
bearing witness to man's sense of dependence on, and
trust in, Nature, as also to the necessity for creating
and maintaining harmony between her multitudinous
manifestations. 1

No less important than the Chinese attitude towards
Nature is the attitude towards the world of spirits. In
China, as elsewhere, there was a general belief in the
continuity of existence after death and a cult based on the
belief. Chinese views as to personality were quite com-
plicated. According to some, man -had just two souls, the
lower (corresponding to the psyche), in which there was a
predominance of Tin, and the higher (pneuma), in which
the Tang was in control. Others maintained that man
possessed seven animal souls (po), which gradually eva-
porated and ceased to be, and three spirits (hun), one of
which stayed with the body in the grave, while a second
remained in the spirit-tablet, and the third departed to
Hades. Those who held the simpler theory believed that
at death the lower soul was reabsorbed in matter while the
higher ascended to the celestial regions. Popularly the
spirits of the dead were considered as " rough " or "mild,"
good .or bad, shtn or kwei, according to the manner in which

1 See J. J. M. de Groot, The Religion of the Chinese, New York, 1910.

354 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

they were treated by the survivors. 1 Mourning customs
were all the development of concern on the part of the
living lest the dead should return to plague them. Hence
the care taken to provide the dead with what was supposed
to be necessary for their repose. Many of the graves were
constructed in imitation of the. hut and images of the things
needed by the dead were therein deposited; It will be
remembered that, when the great Ch'in Shih Huang-ti,
210 B.C., was interred, a tumulus 500 feet long and nearly
two miles around was built to contain the utensils, slaves,
women and workmen who were buried with him. To most
Chinese the other world was a vast grave in which the
departed constituted a kind of hierarchy, reflecting the
conditions prevailing above-ground much as a mountain is
mirrored in the clear waters of a lake. There are not a
few to-day who believe that the underworld changed its
form of government with the setting up of a Republic and
that Lao Tzti is at present the Hell President.

A large part of Chinese life in early times was lived as
it were in the presence of the dead. Ancestor worship held
together both the family and the State. In the family a
living descendant, generally the grandson, 2 was chosen, to
be " the perspnator of the dead." The spirits of the
departed were then believed to enter through the open
door. To quote the Shih-ching:

The spirits come, but when and where .
No one beforehand can declare.
Therefore we should not .spirits slight,
But ever live as in their sight.

Large collations Were prepared of which the spirits were
supposed to partake. At the close the " prayer officer "
announced the satisfaction of the dead. Sometimes panto-
mimic, dances were performed " to give pleasure to .the
august personators of the dead." The annual festival of
Ching-ming, in the spring of the year, when men and women
resort to the. graves of the ancestors, after a. visit -to. the

* See W. E. Sbothill, The Three Religions of China, Oxford University
Press^ 1924. .".."': ...

2 On this .see especially Book II. of Marcel Granet's Chinese Civilization,
New York, 1930.

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 355

temples, is still impressive testimony as to the solidarity of
Chinese life, in which death is felt to make no real break.
Communication with the dead, moreover, was maintained
in other ways than by offerings at the ancestral tablets and
at the grave. Some employed the wu, or wizard, to bring
men into contact with the dead; others used the chi, or
spirit-pencil, to obtain written communications inscribed
upon the sand. 1

Beyond the spirits of the ancestors was a multitude of
other spirits, for the most part non-human and discarnate,
though it- is sometimes hard to be precise as to their nature.
The work of driving away the malevolent spirits, or kwei t
was a serious business and produced a busy and lucrative
profession. Methods employed varied from crude forms
of disinfection, such as. the vapourizing of red vinegar, to
the burying of figurines (supposedly, representing the cause
of the evil), sword strokes in the air with a magic sword
made out of cash, the careful construction of houses with a*
spirit-screen, or without opposite doors and windows this
because spirits (unlike humans) could only move in a straight
line or even by the use of the seal of a mandarin, who
in ancierit times was credited with authority in both worlds.

There were also spirit animals of significance in
mythology and practical religion alike. These included the
tortoise (kwei), the phoenix (ffag-kuang), the unicorn (chi-lin\
and the dragon (lung). Other animals were also feared as
easily possessed by the spirits; one had specially to be on
guard against fox-devils and devils occupying the bodies-
of apes and tigers.

At some unknown period in Chinese history a special
form of religion became the State cult. This deserves
careful consideration, all the more because, since the time
of Yuan Shihrk'ai, the Temples of Heaven and Earth have
remained deserted shrines and to-day no national rite exists
to exercise a unifying influence, unless we so regard the
worship at the tomb of Sun Yat-sen at Nanking. 2 The
Emperor as the Son of Heaven-^in his representative
rather than in his personal character had special relations

1 See J. J. M. de Groot, The Religion of the Chinese, New York, 1910. -
8 Since Sun's deatii in 1925 there has been much falling off in the acceptance
of his- ideology.

356 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

with T'ien and with Shang-ti. Indeed, he was " the
representative man " in a kind of Chinese Trinity of Heaven,
Earth and Man. He officiated as the High Priest of the
nation in the three grades of sacrifices. Great, Medium and
Inferior. The four Great Sacrifices were those of Heaven
and Earth, the Great Temple of the Ancestors, and to the
gods of the land and grain. The Medium Sacrifices were
nine in number, offered to Sun, Moon, the Imperial Manes,
Confucius, the patron deities of Agriculture and Silk, and
the gods of Heaven, Earth and the Cyclic Year. The
third grade included a crowd of sacrifices offered to the
Clouds, Rain, Wind, Thunder, the Sacred Mountains, and
so on, down to the gods of gates and flags. In the per-
formance of the sacred rites the Emperor was assisted by a
Board of Rites, but he himself was the Pontifex Maximus,
wearing for the worship of Heaven a- blue robe, yellow for
the worship of Earth, red for the Sun, and pale white for
the Moon.

One of the most impressive of all State rites was the
worship at the Temple of Heaven at the time of the winter
solstice. At the dead of night the Emperor and his atten-
dants went out through the deserted streets to the beautiful
park in which stands the Altar of Heaven, "a beautiful
pearl set in an emerald ocean." The son of Heaven pre-
pared himself for his solemn duties in the Hall of Fasting,
which still though rebuilt in modern times rears its
roof of blue a hundred feet into the sky. Everything in
the ceremony of the day was marked by impressive sym-
bolism, the form of the buildings being circular, and the
steps arranged in series of threes and nines. The Emperor
knelt on a single round stone at the top of the altar and
there made his supplications for the prosperity of the
nation. The rites performed at the Temple of Earth at
the summer solstice were similarly striking, with their own
appropriate symbolism ? the square buildings, the yellow
colouring, and the use of the even numbers instead of the
odd. In fact all the details of State worship are deserving
of the serious study of those interested in the history of
religion. Few are. alive to-day who ever witnessed them,
and the fact that ceremonies so free from idolatrous im-

THE- RELIGIONS OF CHINA 357

plication and so fitted to remind the nation of its essential
unity have now passed away for ever add an interest which
is almost unique. 1

In the provinces there was some attempt made to give
official recognition to religion by special observances, and
during periods of drought and famine resort was had to
extraordinary rites to secure the intervention of the gods,
but these too are going the way of the worship of Shang-ti
under the Empire.

It is as an ardent supporter of the official religion and
all that it connoted that K'ung-fu Tzu, that is, Master
K'ung, the -Philosopher, whose name was Latinized by the
Jesuits as Confucius, appears upon the scene. Attention
has already been drawn to the fact that Confucius made
little or no constructive contribution to Chinese religion.
We may, indeed, say that he contributed less to religion
than any religious founder whom we can call to mind.
But he is, nevertheless, a very great force in the history of
his people, though at the present time his system is exposed
to a double attack, on the part of the less intelligent type
of missionary, and on the part of the more hysterical type
of modern student.

K'ung was born in the state of Lu, in the present
province of Shantung, in 55 1 B.C. The K'ungs of Shantung
are probably members of the oldest nobility on earth, the
present holder of the family name having passed the
seventieth generation. The sage's father was already the
father of nine daughters and one crippled son when he
married the woman who became the mother of China's
most illustrious son. The birth took place in a cave on
Mt. Ni, whither the mother had gone on a pilgrimage.
His father having died, Confucius was brought up from
his first to his seventh year by his mother. Early in life
he became distinguished for the gravity and formality of
his deportment,- and a familiar story tells of his playing at
" rules of propriety " with his child companions. At
school he soon became a monitor and so remained till the
age of seventeen, when he accepted an under mandarinate,

1 See chapter xiii. of E. T. Williams' China Yesterday and To-day, New
York, 1927.

358 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the inspectorship of the sale of grains. This office he filled
with such success that a regular agricultural school was the
result. At the age of nineteen he married, but the match
turned out unfortunately, and a divorce took, place after
the birth of a son-. The child was .named Li (Carp) in
allusion to the present a good augury for the future of a
boy received that day from the Duke of. Lu. Probably
Confucius was but a cold father, as he had been a cold
husband! A story tells of the question addressed to Li by
a disciple of the sage: " Have you learned any lessons
from your father different from those received by us?"
The youth replied that he only remembered two questions
addressed to him by his 'father, namely, Have you read the
Odes ? and Have you studied the rules of propriety ? From
which answer the questioner deduced that " the superior
man " always shows reserve towards his children. For a
time Confucius acted as inspector of fields and herds, but
his mother's death necessitated three years of retirement
which the sage devoted to study, music and archery. He
then became a teacher and in course of time rallied to him
three thousand disciples, by whom he was deeply and
sincerely reverenced. According to his own account, he
was not patient with stupid scholars; he expected a pupil,
when he himself had lifted one corner of a subject, to lift
the other three himself. Raised to the position of a minister
of crime in his native duchy, he brought about notable
reforms. Those who gave the sheep much water to drink
before taking them to sell, those who decorated the cattle
to get better prices, and those who lived extravagantly,
were brought to justice. As in the days of King Alfred,
people became so honest that jewels dropped on the high-
way were untouched; all men were faithful and all women
chaste. The Duke and his people, however, became tired
of this moral severity, and when the Duke of a neigh-
bouring State, jealous of the sage's influence, sent to Lu
some female musicians and thirty teams of fine horses, the
.era of reform came to a sudden end. Confucius, who had
himself been wearied by the Duke's inconsistencies, and
who felt as much a stray dog as did Dante at Verona,
retired in despair. It had been, as he put it, a case of

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 359

"Virtue in the rear and Vice in front," so he was not,
unwilling to seek a new sphere for his politico-moral
experiments, or else to confine himself to the instruction of
his disciples. His own life he summed up as follows :
"At fifteen I was bent on learning; at thirty I stood fast;
at fifty I knew the will of God; at sixty my ear was open to
the truth; at seventy I could follow my desires without
transgressing the ' square.* " Nevertheless, the last years
of Confucius were saddened by a sense of failure and he
died in 479 B.C., at the age of seventy-two, with the dis-
couraging confession: " The great mountain must crumble,
the strong beam must break, the wise man wither away
like a plant." He was buried at Ch'u-fu, where his grave
is still visited by a multitude of pilgrims. Dead, Confucius
was mourned even by those who in his life-time had despised
him. His work was carried on by others and the sage's
fame owes much to the loyalty of disciples who, like Mencius,
upheld the principles he had taught. After a brief period
of persecution during, the Ch'in dynasty, 249-210 B.C.,
the influence of Confucius experienced a great revival.
He was -made Duke and Earl under the Han dynasty;
Perfect Sage in the. fifth century A.D.; King (Wang) under
the T'ang dynasty; Emperor (Huang-tt) under the Sungs;
while Mings and Manchus paid him reverence under the
title Perfect Sage, Ancient Teacher. As late as 1907 the
great Empress Dowager in reply to the Christian doctrine
of the deity of Christ raised Confucius to a position of
equality with Shang-ti. The sage's own grandson wrote
the impassioned eulogy which represents not unfairly the
deliberate opinion of most Chinese, at least till recent years:
" His fame overflows the Middle Kingdom and reaches
the barbarians of north and south. Wherever ships and
wagons can go, or the strength of man penetrate ; wherever
there is heaven above and earth below; wherever the sun
and moon shed their light, or frosts and dews fall, all who
have blood and breath honour and love him. Wherefore it
may be said that he 'is the peer of God."

Probably the greatest service Confucius rendered his
countrymen was in the part he took in collecting the books
which have come to be known as the Confucian Classics^ in

360 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

which the general principles of Confucianism are embodied
,and expounded. These are generally reckoned as nine in
number and though some have supposed the bulk of them
to be forgeries of the Han period the general consensus of -
scholarly opinion has favoured their genuineness. The
nine consist of two - groups, the Five Ching, sometimes
described as the Old Testament of Cpnfucianism, and the
Four Shu, which may .be called the New Testament of the
system. The Five Chlng are: (i) The. Shu Ching, or Book of
History, a compilation of fragmentary annals extending from
the days of Yao and Shun, about 2400 to 619 B.C. -all
put together to show that the maintenance of Confucian
principles brought prosperity while their neglect always
entailed disaster. (2) The Shih Ching, or Book of Odes, a
collection of 305 poems, historical, lyrical, religious, and
miscellaneous, brought together by the zeal of the sage.
(3) The Ti Ching, or Book of Changes, already alluded to as
an elaboration of the system of the Hexagrams ascribed to ,
W6n Wang and the Duke of Chou, with certain appendices
contributed by Confucius himself. (4) The Li Chi, or Book
of Rites, the vade mecum of the " superior man " and the
textbook of the Board of Ceremonies. (5) The Ch'un Ch j iu,
or Spring and Autumn, a rather dull chronicle (expanded by
a more readable commentary) of the State of Lu for a period
of 250 years prior to the time of Confucius. The Four Shu
are: (i) The Lun Tu, or Analects, an entertaining com-
pendium of the table talk of Confucius, containing dialogues
between the sage and his disciples and a variety of remarks
on government and human affairs in general. (2) The
Ta Hsueh, or Great Learning, an interesting little outline of
Confucian ethics, with an analysis of the process whereby
man becomes, first, the sage and, secondly, the ruler.
(3) The Chung Tung, or Doctrine of the. Mean, compiled by
K'ung Chi, the sage's grandson, an enthusiastic exponent
of his ancestor's teaching. (4) The four books of Mencius,
a treatise of political science such as the student of to-day
can hardly afford to neglect. 1

As Mencius contributed so much to the subsequent fame

1 See F. Max Miiller (Editor), Sacred Books of the East Volumes on
China. Oxford, 1899.

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 361

of Confucius, a word or two ought in fairness to be devoted
to this illustrious philosopher. MSng K'o, as he is called
in China, was born in the province of Shantung about
372 B.C. and was brought up by a mother who is generally
regarded as one of .the model women of Chinese history.
She moved her dwelling-place successively from the neigh-
bourhood of a cemetery, a slaughter-house and a market
because her boy seemed overmuch affected by an unfavour-
able environment. In the neighbourhood of a school she
finally found satrsfaction and there devoted herself to the
upbringing of the future philosopher. Mencius was both
philosopher and political economist, a thoroughgoing
democrat and a pacifist. He insisted that if taxes were
light and the people were well governed a nation ought to
be able to repel an invader with sticks and stones. Mencius
died, after twenty years of retirement, about 289 B.C.

It will be obvious that, while Confucianism could be
by no means th'e last word in Chinese religion, it made
certain contributions of considerable significance, such as
" the Master of all good workmen "will surely acknowledge.
First, there is the emphasis on individual virtue. The
" superior man " must constantly cultivate the moral sense.
In this way he gains "a nature constantly right." That
a man should daily judge himself in the forum of his own
conscience' is a fine conception, however infrequently the
idea may have been realized in practice. The story of the
Four Knowings tells how an official replied to one who had
tempted him to accept a bribe with the plea, " No one
will know it"; "No one know? Why, I know; you
know; Heaven knows; Earth knows. How can you say
that no one will know it ? " Secondly, there is the emphasis
on those social obligations which are comprised in the
doctrine of the Five Relations, namely, the relation of the
subject to the ruler, that of the son to the father, of wife
to husband, of younger brother to older brother, and of
friend to friend. All this has had its effect not only on the
Chinese character but also on Chinese culture, which,
largely through Confucianism, became a venerable tradition
staying the disintegrating tendencies of political tyranny
and anarchy, binding together family with family and village

362 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

with village, even moulding the incoming hordes of
barbarians into conformity with Confucian ideals.

Nevertheless, something different and something better
was needed to complete what had been begun. and to save
China for her mission to civilization.. Confucius, though
esteemed by his disciples, was in general cold and unsym-
pathetic, even (as we have seen) to wife and son. " Knowing
God only as majesty and never as Father, the spring of his
affections could not bubble joyously forth." 1 The love
which Christ offered to the world of Inen would have
seemed to Confucius unworthy of a philosopher. Moreover,
he could put in no valid claim to know the Way, the Truth,
or the Life. He " did not know the ford," for knowing
less than perfectly the meaning of life, he was unable to
expound the mystery of death. And, once again, Confucius
was by no means satisfied with the travail of his own soul;,
or able to glimpse the victory ahead. We have already
quoted the last despairing utterance, the* cry of the dis-
appointed:

The great mountain must crumbkj

The strong beam break,
* And the sage wither like grass.

But we must now pass from the man and the system
which have had most influence on the ethical ideals of
China to the man and the system which might very easily,
in combination with the other, have made possible for
China a more vitalizing experience in religion than it has
hitherto been her lot to know.

Little is known of Lao Tzu, to whom is ascribed the
origin of the religion known as Taoism. His personal name
was Li Erh, and his posthumous name Li Tan, but some
have regarded him as a purely legendary character. Most
scholars, however, accept him as historical and give his
birth, as about 604 B.C., thus making him a somewhat
younger contemporary of Confucius. A picturesque story
tells of an interview between the two sages in which Lao Tzu
was curt and enigmatical, and Confucius so perplexed that
he could only compare the older philosopher to the dragon,

1 W-. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China, 'Oxford University Press, 1924.

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 363

whose mounting of the winds and clouds was beyond the
understanding of men. Lao Tzu was for a time Keeper
of the Archives in the old 'capital of China, but official life
was distasteful and he withdrew eventually towards the west.
Here he was besought, according to tradition, by the
warden of the passes to put his precious teachings into
writing before retirement from the world. Thus was
written the Tao Tt Ching, or Classic of the Way of Virtue^
the Bible of Taoism. It is not certainly the work of the
sage, but is in any case an exposition of early Taoism which,
as Dr. E. T. Williams remarks, is as different from the
teachings of Taoism to-day as the teaching of Spinoza is
from that of Madame Blavatsky.

The word Tao has been translated in a variety of ways,
as Way, Nature-^ Logos, even God. Perhaps the word Way
is as satisfactory as any, since Lao Tzu had in view a certain
principle a kind of Ewigzeitgeisfor elan 'vital coincident
with the universe, with which man only needed to harness
himself in order to find happiness and success. Thus,
instead of learning by heart the multifarious legalism of the
Confucian system the Taoist was urged to get at once into
harmonious relations with Nature and then "by doing
nothing all .would be done." Lao Tzii himself, if he were
the author of the Tao Tt Ching, did not say expressly what
the Tao was. " The Tao," he said, " which can be defined
is not the eternal Tao; the name by which it can be named
is not its eternal name. When nameless, it is the origin of
the universe; when it has a name it is the mother of all
things. Therefore only he who is ever passionless may
behold its mystery." Practically, Lao Tzii taught a
doctrine of grace as opposed to a doctrine of law. He said :
*' The crow does not become black- through being painted,
nor the pigeon white through bathing." The general
attitude of the Taoist was that of the mystic and the quietist,
as is plain from such sayings as the following :

Keep behind and you shall be put in front; Keep out and you shall

be put in.

Mighty is he who conquers himself.
He who is conscious of being strong is content to be weak.
He who is content has enough.

364 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

To the good I would be good. To the not good also I would be good

in order to make them good.
Recompense injury with kindness.
The weak overcometh the strong ; the soft overcometh the hard.

What Mencius was to the system of Confucius Chuang
Tzu, one of the most delightful characters among the
Chinese sages, was to Taoism. He belongs to a time two
centuries later than that of his master, but still reflects the
spirit of " the old philosopher." So entirely did he identify
himself with Nature that having on one occasion dreamed
that he was a butterfly he declared that he was thenceforth
uncertain whether he were a man who had dreamed he
was a butterfly or a butterfly which had dreamed it was
a man. All official life was distasteful to him, so much so
that when approached with the request that he should
become the Prime Minister of Ch'u he reminded the envoys
of the stuffed tortoise in their master's hall while he pointed
to the little live tortoises waggling their tails in the mud
and asked which they would prefer to be. When Chuang
Tzu was dying he forbade his disciples to bury him, saying :
" I will have Heaven and Earth for my sarcophagus; the
sun and moon shall be the insignia where I lie in state; and
all creation shall be my mourners." Chuang Tzu left
voluminous writings behind him from which a single
quotation will suffice to illustrate his point of view: " The
command of armies is the lowest form of virtue. Rewards
and punishments are the lowest form of education. Cere-
monies and laws are the lowest form of government. Music
and fine clothes are the lowest form of happiness. Wailing
and mourning are the lowest form of grief. These five
should follow the movements of the mind." 1

It is convenient here to give a brief summary of the
history of Taoism on to the days of its present decline.
Some have felt disposed to restrict the term Taoism, to the
subsequent developments, using ,for the early system the
name of Laoism. ' But it is better to use a single term and
to divide the history of the religion into three, periods or
stages. The first is that of philosophic sincerity and covers
the age of Lao Tzti and his better-known disciples. The

1 Lionel Giles, Musings of a Chinese Mystic, London, 1911.

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 365

second is that of imperial patronage, at its height in the
time of the great Ch'in emperor 249-210 B.C. The third
is the modern period of superstition and charlatanry.
During the Ch'in period the Emperor himself expounded
Taoism, to his courtiers and those who yawned were turned
over to the executioner. The first of the Han emperors
also was devoted to the cult- which by this time had become
largely a quest for the two secrets of the Elixir Vitae and the
Philosopher's Stone. The hierarchy of. Taoist Popes dates
from this era and the first Pope was Chang Tao-ling, who
ascended to heaven at the age of 123 from the Dragon-
Tiger Mountain in Kiangsi, where his descendants have
resided ever since. " He had acquired power to walk
among the stars, to divide mountains, and seas, to command
the wind and the thunder, and to quell demons." Later
Taoism received the worst of Buddhism from that system
and perhaps imparted to Buddhism the best that had once
been its own. Taoism is now little better than a system
of magic, though much resorted to by the superstitious of
all ranks; The present Pope or " Great Wizard," is
employed to expel evil spirits from the dwellings of the
wealthy. "All new gods are declared by the Emperor " so
it was said prior to the Revolution of 191 1, " through him,
and on the first day of every month he gives audience to an
invisible host of gods and demi-gods who come to present
their compliments."

It has thus come about that the system which promised
so well for China is now but another illustration of the
proverb: " Corruptio optimi pessima est." The Way
of Taoism was, after all, not a Living Way. Taoism,
instead of promoting spirituality, sold itself to man's craving
for magic. What might have been at least the complement
and corrective of a mere moral philosophy degenerated into
a mass of stupid futilities. No more than its rival system
has the religion of Lao Tzti been able to supply the full
answer to its questionings for which the soul or China has
so long been waiting.

The same thing is true of the several philosophies which
arose in China independently of both Confucianism and
Taoism and which have left but a small impression on the

366 A HISTORT OF REIIGION

China of to-day. They deserve mention^ however, if only
to show that the Chou period did not follow the ways of
K'ung'and Lao exclusively. Yang Tzu, or Yang Chu, for
instance, of the fourth century B.C. is mentioned by Mencius
and Chuang Tzfi as having founded a school of extreme
ethical egoism. He has sometimes been compared with
Epicurus, whp was his contemporary, and apparently shared
some of his opinions. Again, Mo Ti, or Mo' Tzu, Latinized
as Micius, preached the opposite doctrine of communism
and mutual love. Mencius declared that, while Yang Tzu
would riot have parted with a single hair of his head to save
the world, Mo Tzti would willingly have sacrificed all.
" He was vigorously opposed," says Giles, "by Meneius,
who exhibited the unpractical side of an otherwise fascinating
doctrine." Another contemporary philosopher mentioned
by Chuang Tzfi is. Lieh Tzu, or Licius, but it is now
supposed that he is merely a man of straw used in a kind of
allegory by Chuang Tzti for the purposes of argument.
Later historians were misled into taking him for an historical
personage.

Certainly China was not without her many doctors and
doctrines offering spiritual solace to the heart of men in
the centuries prior to the appearance of Christianity. All
alike, however, were impotent in the effort to stay the
plague of misery and corruption which during these ages
swept over the body politic. In our next chapter we shall
consider the new competitor which arose to challenge the
attention of the Middle Kingdom. While Buddhism by
no means supplied what Confucianism .and Taoism so
obviously lacked we shall see that it recommended itself so
far as to be in time included in the San Chiao, the Three
Religions, of China. 1

1 Other useful books to which the reader of this chapter may be referred
will include the following : Abel Bonnard, In China, London, 1926 ;. Richard'
Wilhelm, A Short History .of Chinese Civilization, New York, 1929 ; H. G.
Creel, Sinism, Chicago, 1929 ; S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom,
2 Vols. (Revised Edition), New York, 1907 ; R. K. Douglas, Confucianism
and Taoism, London ; Edwin D. Harvey, The Mind of China, Yale University
Press, 1933. - ...

CHAPTER XXV
The Religions of China //.

BUDDHISM

SOME time after the first half of the first century of
our era, in the reign of Ming Ti, A.D. 5876, an
important incident, according to the common tradition,
brought about -a great religious change in the Middle
Kingdom. The Emperor dreamed that a great golden
image, its head surrounded with a halo of light came flying
from heaven and hovered over the imperial palace. Sum-
moning his soothsayers, Ming Ti learned from them that
a great teacher had been born in the west, , and he was
advised by his brother to send envoys immediately who
might bring back a true report of the great event. Eighteen
men were sent who visited the court of the Indo-Parthian
ruler of North-west India, Gondophorus, or Gondopharnes.
From this ruler they received a sandal-wood image and the
sutra supposed to be Asvaghosha's life of the Buddha. It
has been surmised that, since the Christian apostle St.
Thomas was at this time, according to tradition, present at
the same court, the Chinese emissaries may very con-
ceivably have borne back with them Christian as well as
Buddhistic ideas. In any case, they returned to the Imperial
capital, Loyang, about A.D. 68, accompanied by two Indian
teachers, Ka$yapa Matanga and Gobharana. This, says
the generally accepted story, was the beginning of Buddhism
in China. The White Horse Temple was erected in Loyang
as a reminder of the white' horse on, which the precious
images and books were transported.

Naturally -we ask whether the Emperor had anything
to go. by beyond supernatural guidance or intuition. Some
believe that Buddhism was probably not unknown in China
two centuries earlier. A record in fact exists which describes
missionaries of the Indian faith as coming to China about

367

368 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

2 1.7 B.C. and of their imprisonment by- the reigning monarch.
It is readily seen that from the beginning of the Han period,
about 200 B.C., Chinese contact with Buddhism was more
than possible, not only in North-west India, Kashmir and
Nepal but also in Central Asia. During the reign of Han
Wu Ti, 14087 B.C., Chinese generals had extended the
imperial domain westward almost as far as the Caspian, and
it is certain that soldiers of this " far-flung " empire must
have brought back reports of the rapidly expanding faith,
even though the account which describes the bringing back
of a golden image be not literally true.

Once introduced, Buddhism did not at first spread
widely or rapidly. There were certain obvious drawbacks
in the eyes of the Chinese, such as the emphasis placed on
the monastic life, an emphasis which did not well accord
with ancestor worship or the doctrine of filial piety. There
was also the revolt from that official preoccupation which
to the majority of Chinese was as the breath of life. And
there was again the worship of relies which was distasteful
to the mind of the Chinese, not to speak of the general
anti-foreignism of a conservative people to whom it was
a sufficient condemnation of Buddhism to assert that
Gautama was one who buttoned his coat, on the wrong side.

Nevertheless, there were features of Buddhism which
gradually gained Chinese approval. The new religion was
a literary system and brought a new type of culture to a
people already strongly obsessed with reverence for the
written word. There was also inherent in Buddhism a
transcendental value entirely lacking in Confucianism and
at least in the later stages of Taoism. It was shown, more-
over, by experience that Mahayana Buddhism was ex-
ceedingly tolerant of the older beliefs and that the deities
of Chinese polytheism could be without difficulty retained
as Bodhisattvas, or future incarnations of the Buddha. It
is not to be forgotten, too, that early Chinese Buddhism
produced not a few saintly lives such as went far towards
thawing the cold hearts of stolid Mongolians and inclining
them to the Gospel of Gautama.

Nevertheless, for three hundred years the faith spread
but slowly and it was not till A.D. 333 that some of the

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 369

States gave permission for 'the taking .of the vows. The
edict of tolerance seems to have. been followed by a period
of rapid growth, since we are told that in 381 nine-tenths
of the people in North-west China were Buddhists. Even
an emperor, of the short-lived Ts'in .dynasty, took the
vows, and alarm was presently excited by the stream of
people deserting official life for the monasteries. Then
followed a period of persecution, due partly to the discovery
of a conspiracy in which monks were involved, as a result
of which many monasteries were destroyed and nuns
forbidden to enter the palace. After a few years, however,
about A.D. 451, the edict was revoked and a more friendly
feeling for the foreign faith prevailed for several centuries.
One emperor, Liang Wu Ti, 502550, took so much
interest in the propagation of Buddhism that he is sometimes
called the Chinese Acoka.

It was in this reign that Buddhism, which in India had
now entered upon the period of decline, transferred its
headquarters to China. In 526 came the .twenty-eighth
patriarch in - succession to Gautama, Bodhidharma, known
to the Chinese as Tamo (whence the confusion with St.
Thomas) and to the Japanese as Daruma. Bodhidharma
arrived at Nanking, where he much displeased the Emperor
by the brusque announcement: " I am heaven and you are
hell." Then he crossed the river to visit the capital Loyang,
where he made himself famous as " the wall-gazing saint,"
from the meditation protracted through nine years, during
which time his feet were worn away and the rats gnawed off
his ears. A popular legend makes him the discoverer of
tea, since, having cut off his eyelashes to keep himself
awake; the tea-plant immediately sprang up and afforded
the beverage which dispelled his somnolence at less personal
inconvenience. Notwithstanding the story about his feet
being worn off, Bodhidharma is said to have left one shoe
in his coffin, frpm which his body disappeared transferred
supposedly to celestial regions. The saint was the founder
of the -sect of meditation, known as Dhyana in India, as
Ch'an Tsung in China (where it remains one of the most
influential schools) and later introduced into Japan as, Zen.

During these centuries, from the fourth to the seventh,

A mSTORT OF RELIGION

we must not overlook the important contributions' made to
literature and religion by the Chinese pilgrims who left
their monasteries, sometimes for many years at a time, to
add to the treasures of their temple libraries -by visits to the
Holy Places of Buddhism in India. The most famous of
these pilgrims are Fa-hien, a. simple and sincere man who
travelled, mostly on foot, for fifteen years and brought back
the books of the Vinaya for his temple library at Ch'ang-an; *
I Tsing; and, perhaps the most important of all, Hiuen
Tsang, who became a favourite of the Indian king Harsha,
in the middle of the seventh century, and staged debates
against the heretics with great credit to Buddhism. 2 It is
along the track of Hiuen Tsang's journeys through Central
Asia that Sir Marc Aurel Stein has laboured for so many
years-. The discovery by Stein in 1 907 of the famous
" polyglot library " at . the Tun-huang oasis is a good
illustration of the work of these Chinese pilgrims down to the
end of the ninth century. 3 ~

All through this period Buddhism had been spreading
in Central and Southern China and a very large mass of
literature had been translated from the Sanskrit into Chinese.
It was in connection with this work of translation that a
method was devised by the Hindu missionaries for grouping
the Chinese ideographs under the radical forms; also, to
assist knowledge of the Chinese pronunciation, each mono-
syllable was given with an initial and a. final sound. These
features have been ever since retained in the standard
Chinese dictionaries. . .

Buddhism, as already suggested, found favour with the
early T'ang rulers, in the seventh century as did also the
other foreign faiths, Magianism, Islam, Manichaeanism,
and Nestorian Christianity. But from time to time there
were anti-foreign reactions. Kao Tsung, for example, was
influenced by his minister, Fu Yi, to oppose Buddhism. A
little later, in the eighth century, the emperor sent 12,000
monks home from their monasteries) though the same
monarch subsequently relented and issued an edition of the

1 See James Legge, Record of Buddhist Kingdoms' Oxford, 1886 ; Samuel
BeaJ, Buddhist Records of the Western World, London, 1884.

2 See S. Beal, Life of Hiuen Tsang, London, 1911.

3 See Sir Marc Aurel Stein, Ruins" of Desert Cathay, London, 1912.

- THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 371

Tripitaka. The worst of all the persecutions came about
819, when a double attack was made on Buddhism, by the
Taoists, jealous of the increasing prestige of the faith, and
tlie Confucianists who were moved to protest by the worship
of relics. It was on this occasion that the philosopher Han
Yii presented his " Memorial, on a Bone of Buddha," and
was in consequence exiled to the South.

After this Buddhism remained a tolerated religion,
gradually achieving a position as one of the San Chtao, or
" Three Teachings." Under the Mongols, in the time of
Kublai Khan, the form of Buddhism known as Lamaism
was introduced and* flourished. (Of this type we shall
speak later.) Under the Mings (1368-1644) Buddhism
was favoured, .though at the same time the growing wealth
of the monastic establishments was looked at somewhat
askance. The Manchus, who followed the Mings in 1 644,
were not quite consistent in their attitude, favouring Lama-
ism in Mongolia and Tibet, .while in China proper dislike
was expressed for all religions but the Confucian. For
some years before the Revolution of 1911 a very vigorous
propaganda was directed from Japan, but in recent years
this has lost some of its force and much of modern China
professes itself hostile to Buddhism as to other religions.
Of the present condition of Buddhism in China something
will be said presently.

It has been pointed out that Mahayana Buddhism
showed considerable willingness to accommodate its beliefs
and practices to those of the peoples among whom its
lot was cast. This is particularly true of Buddhism in
China, and in order to' understand the religion as com-
pared with the faith taught by Gautama some account
of the various theological and sectarian developments is
necessary. Already, ere leaving North-west India, the
reverence manifested to Gautama as the Buddha was
largely superseded by worship rendered to various Bodhi-
sattvas, or future Buddhas, whose characteristics in certain
cases may owe something to the religions of the West.
Then in China itself it became natural to identify some of
these Bodhisattvas with gods already in the pantheon, or to
increase the number of worshipful beings by deifications

372 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION -

and canonizations of various grades,. Ultimately we get a
hierarchy of gods and near-gods in Chinese Buddhism
which may be thus systematized :

1 . The Heavenly Buddhas, which include Gautama
(Shih-chia-mo-ni, that is, (Jakyamuni), who is represented as
the glorified Buddha, sometimes standing in an attitude of
teaching^ and sometimes seated in the act of meditation;
Amitabha (O-mi-to-fo^ the. Buddha who leads souls into the
Western Paradise; and Yao-Shih !K>, who is probably the
same as the Sanskrit Bhaisajyaguru, and is connected with
medicine. He lives in endless light and draws all creation,
out of the darkness of error into . the* light of peace. (In
parenthesis it should be said that th'e various triads of
Chinese religion may easily be the -source of confusion.
Sometimes we have represented the Three Founders,
Confucius, Lao Tzu and Gautama; sometimes the old
Buddhist triad of the Buddha, the Law and th Society;
sometimes the Taoist triad of the Three Agents, Heaven,
Earth and Water; and sometimes even the Three Model
Emperors, Yao, Shun and Yii. It is by no means easy to
separate in these triads what is Buddhist from what originally
had a place in other systems.)

2. The Bodhisatfvas (P'u-sa\ generally given as Kuan-
yin, the goddess of mercy, who corresponds with the Indian
Avalokitecvara (probably "the down-looking god"); Ta-
shih-chih (Mahasthana), a deity of power, sometimes
represented as Amitabha's second son; Maitreya (Milo-fo\
the Buddha expected at the close of the present era, repre-
sented as a- jolly, bon-vivant kind of a god, with round
and protuberant stomach and smiling face; We"n-shu (the
Sanskrit Manjusrfy the god of learning, represented as
seated on a lion; and P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra\ a god
of mercy, seated on an elephant. Of these Kuan-yin, though
identified with Avalokitecvara, has a purely Chinese tradition.
.Her real name was Miaorshan and she had ,two sisters,

\,f

Miao-chin and Miao-yin. The two latter married, but
Miao-shan from the first, braving her father's anger, felt
a vocation for the religious life and fled, to a convent. The
father sent soldiers to burn the convent, and for this outrage
was stricken with blindness. For this there was no cure

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 373

except that a near relative should tear out her own eyes. This
heroic act Miao-shan performed for her sire and it was for this
ihat she became a Bodhisattva in a subsequent birth. Kuan-
yin's special shrine is on the island of P'ut'o, in the Ningpo
Archipelago, a great resort for pilgrims from all over China.

3. The Arhats (in Chinese Lohans\ or saints of Bud-
dhism, including sometimes only the closest of Gautama's
friends, Ananda.and Kagyapa, sometimes the ten, sometimes
the twelve, sometimes the eighteen, and in some .cases the
five hundred disciples. At the famous temple of the

.five hundred khans at Canton the figure of Marco Polo
seems to have been included. The image at any rate
has a very un-Chinese appearance. In some classifications
the Patriarchs of Buddhism, such as Bodhidharma, are
comprised under this head.

4. The Tutelary Deities^ a very motley collection of
worshipful beings, including the Four Heaven Kings
(Lokapalas\ that is, the old Indian gods, Indra, Agni,
Varuna, and Yama, placed as guardians at the entrance
of Buddhist shrines; the Twenty-four Devas; the two
Door-gods, who were originally two famous soldiers of the
T'ang period; and other deified individuals, such as the
popular Kwan-ti (the Goci 'of War), originally a general of
the period of. anarchy which followed the Han dynasty in
the third century A.D. 1

The sects, or schools, of Chinese Buddhism present a
rather complicated problem, .since many of them 'represent
the teachings of individual monks whose following rapidly
disintegrated. Even as to the variations of teaching repre-
sented in these schools there is often an inextricable
confusion. Ten schools are generally .recognized, but for
practicaUpurposes half of them may be disregarded. The
three most important are the Chan Tsung, the T'ienfai
Tsung, and the Ching-fu Tsung. The Ch'an is the sect
of meditation known in India as Dhyana and in Japan as
Zen. It was founded (in China) by the first- Buddhist
patriarch, Bodhidharma, who aimed at the " emptying of
consciousness " to the exclusion of other religious activities.
As "the wall-gazer " Bodhidharma is the subject of many

1 Made a god in 1594, when the Ming dynasty was declining.

374 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

' , t

popular legends. The sect itself is now broken up into
five subdivisions, though each section claims the title of
tsung. The T'ien t'ai, known later in Japan as Tendai, was
founded by the monk Chih-k'ai, who died in A.D. 597, in
the T'ien-t'ai Mountains. He tried to create a system which
harmonized the various traditions an "all-ways " school.
So, in addition to the practice of meditation, he advocated
the study of the scriptures. In their zeal for copying the
sutras it .is said that some^ monks opened their veins and
wrote the sacred books in their oVn blood. The favourite
sutra of the sect was the Lotus Scripture, the Saddharma-
fundarika (in Chinese, Miao-ja-lien-hua ching). The Ch'ing-
t'u, or Pure Land Sect, known later in Japan as Jodo, is
by some reckoned the 'oldest of all, tracing its teachings
back to Vasabandhu, the pupil of Nagarjuna. It was
established in -China in the fourth century by Hui-yuan,
who had been converted from Taoism to a belief in
Amitabha (O-mi-to-fo) and the Western Paraclise to which
Amitabha was supposed to lead the soul. With Amitabha
reign the Bodhisattvas Kuan-yin and Ta-shih-chih, the
"three holy ones of the western land." Beside these
principal schools may be mentioned the Lu-tsung, or school
of diseipline, occupied with the Vinaya ; and the Hien-shou-
tsung, founded by Tu-fa-shun, who died in 640 and
followed the text-book prepared by Nagarjuna, the great
Indian exponent of Mahayana. 1

. Buddhism in China is properly a monastic religion,
though there are, of course, many millions of Chinese who
follow Buddhist teachings and practices without taking the
vows. The monks and nuns probably number considerably
over a million, but it is hard to obtain accurate figures. The
monasteries are for the most part outside the cities, on
mountain tops, and surrounded by trees. They follow in
their structure a general plan, which often includes several
great halls around a central court, beside smaller buildings
for guest rooms, store rooms, kitchen and dining half. The

1 For the general subject of Chinese Buddhism see R. F. Johnston, Buddhist
China, London, 1913 ; K. L. Reichelt, Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism,
Shanghai, 1918 ; H. Hackmann, Buddhism as a Religion, London, 1910 ;
W. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China, Oxford, 1924 ; Joseph Edkins,
Chinese Buddhism, London.

THE' RELIGIONS OF CHINA 375

temple bell is a characteristic feature, as is also the fish-
pond, often beautiful with lotus blossoms. The images
are arranged in the order already described, Buddhas,
Bodhisattvas, Saints and Patriarchs, and Tutelary Gods.
Many of the images have a small hole at the back, through
which a living animal has been inserted to give life to die
statue. The monks are mainly recruited from the ranks
of children vowed to religion by their parents, not infre-
quently at a time of illness. They are not, however, formally
admitted to jthe monastic order till after their twentieth
year, when they pass successively through the three stages
of initiation, in certain cases undergoing very severe and
painful tests. In addition to the regular monks there are
Buddhist hermits, who live in mat sheds in close connection
with a monastery. Some monasteries have great fame, as,
for instance, those of the T'ien-t'ai Mountains, and those
connected with places of pilgrimage like Pu-to-shan,
Chiu-hua-shan, Wu-t'ai-shan and O-mi-shan.

On the surface at least, Chinese Buddhism seems to
have lost much of it& former vigour. Few of the monks
seem to have much acquaintance with the Canon, or even
with the names of the images under their care in the temples.
Their morality, again, is said to be of a low order. The
present-day practice of Buddhism includes much that is
grossly superstitious. The cult of the " dried priest " who,
under a special regime, starves himself to death and is
henceforth carried around the village or placed in the
temple as a holy relic, is much in vogue in the Yang-tze
' valley. Not infrequently one comes across the fanatic who
immures himself for a term of years, bricked up in a narrow-
place, within which he will neither change his clothes, or
wash, or cut his hair. The keeping of the birthday of the
Buddha in one of the large cities of China seemed to have
as jits principal feature the purchase of live eels in the
market that, as an act of mercy, these might be set free
in the river. The temples generally are loathsome with
the presence of lepers and other diseased persons, while
the common adornments concern the torments of the ten
hells, realistically portrayed in stucco groups around the
court. It is, indeed, in preoccupation with the future life

376 A BISTORT OF RELIGfON

that the Chinese Buddhist is to.be distinguished from his
Confucian or Taoist brother. Everywhere in the temples
one finds the figure of the Hell Emperor, T'i-tsang-wang,
who was once a saint of the T'ang period, zealous for the
welfare of souls in the other world. Compassion is 'not
exactly the feature of the Hell Emperor which manifests -
itself in the temples of China to-day. The .various punish-
ments meted out in the ten departments of Hades exhaust
in imagination the possibilities of human cruelty. Yet it
is to be remembered that the punishments of the Buddhist
hells are not eternal, but rather the fulfilment of a man's
karma ,' and preparation for a new incarnation to which he
goes forth presently through the gates of oblivion.

Though the above picture of Chinese Buddhism, is that
which will recur to the memories of most people acquainted
with conditions in the Middle Kingdom, it is only fair to
say that some have discerned recent signs. of revival. Where
these exist they are due in part to the impact of Christian
teaching and Christian institutions, in part to the influence
of Japanese Buddhism, which has lent its help for the
increase of knowledge and improvement of morals, and in
part to the new movement towards the defence of religion,
forced by recent events ,on the professors of all the
faiths.

As to one section of Chinese Buddhism, however,
little can be said that is good.. This is Lamaism, ta which
we' must devote a few words before concluding the
chapter.

Lamaism is so called from the title given to the monks '
of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a Tibetan word (blama) meaning
" superior " and was applied originally to the- head of a
monastery. Tibetan religion, as stated earlier, was in the
earliest period what is called Bon, a form of nature worship,
with reverence paid to the dead, carried on by shamans
who were experts in magic". But in the seventh century A.D.
a change occurred which marks not only the introduction
of .a new religion but also the beginnings of authenticated
Tibetan history. A certain prince named Srong Tsan
Gampo had succeeded in subjugating the neighbouring
tribes and, to mark his newly acquired prestige, married

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 377

two wives, one from- China and one from Nepal. Both of
these ladies were Buddhist and, once again in the history
of religion, we are called upon to mark the influence of
woman in the propagation of a faith. The devotion of the
Nepalese princess, however, seems to have been the
dominant one and in consequence, when help was asked in
the extension of Buddhism, India was the direction to which
the Tibetans turned. But at this time Buddhism in India
was decadent almost to the point of extinction, so that the
doctrines introduced were rather reminiscent of Tantric

. Yoga than of the teachings of Gautama. One has only to
look at the picture of the Tibetan Judgement, with Yama-
raja, the king of the dead,' adorned with human skulls, a
serpent necklace, for a cape a human hide from which
protrude the head, a hand and a foot (and other grim
accessories), to mark the difference between this and the
genuine Buddhist art. The missionary who came at this
time was one Padma Sambhava, known to the Tibetans as
Guru Rimpo Che, and under his leadership monasteries
were founded, books translated, and, in course of time, new
sects created. In the eleventh century a new doctrine was
propagated by an Indian teacher named Atica, and at the
height of the Mongol supremacy, in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, Lamaism was carried from Tibet into
Mongolia and even found favour with the Great Khan,
Kublai, who saw in it a useful tool for the political unification
of his vast realm. By this time the organization of Lamaism
had attained much of its later character as a politico-religious
system governed by a " living Buddha." With the fifteenth
century, however, came a more far-reaching movement in
the reformation under Tsong Kapa, whose new sect, the

. Gelugpa, may conceivably be indebted to Christian mis-
sionaries. This sect is known as that of the Yellow Caps,
in distinction from the earlier Lamaists, the Ningmapa, or
Red Caps. The fifth of Tsong Kapa's successors became
so powerful that he was able to obtain from China the
acknowledgement of his sovereignty over Tibet, with the.
title of Dalai (" ocean ") Lama. The Dalai Lama was
supposed to be a reincarnation of the Bodhisattva Ava-
Iokite9vara, and was chosen by an elaborate piece of

378 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

divination in which the fresh incarnation was indicated.
Other sects followed the example of the monks resident at
Lhasa and found in the heads of their respective monasteries
incarnations of other Bodhisattvas. The Grand Lama at
Tashi Lhumpo at Shigatze even obtained a position scarcely
inferior to that of the Dalai Lama. And as Lamaism
spread through Mongolia, the head lamas of different
districts, about a hundred and sixty (it is said) in number,,
were recognized as Living Buddhas under the general title
of Hutukhtu. It will be remembered that, at the Revolution
of 1911, the Hutukhtu of Outer Mongolia, at Urga,
became the ruler of the territory which is now a part of the
Soviet system. As the persecution of the Red Caps by the
Yellow Caps increased during the seventeenth century, the
Manchu sovereigns were led to intervene and both K'ang
Hsi and Ch'ien Lung assumed the overlordship of Tibet
together with the patronage of the Lamaist Church. The
Tibetan War during the reign of Ch'ien Lung was in
consequence of this intervention. A further result was the
erection of the. Lama Temple at Peking (Peiping), where
the so-called "Devils' Dance " takes place at the New Year.
But the temple and its occupants have now fallen on evil
days; the hangers-on have much diminished in number,
and most of the "dancing" consists .of rather vulgar
"stunts" put on for the edification (?) of- foreign tourists.
Not much needs to be said of Lamaism as a religion except
that, with some few exceptions, the monks are ignorant and
superstitious beyond most other Buddhists. Most of the
men of Tibet are monks of one sort or another, sometimes
" home " monks, who live on farms with their families, with
little to mark them as " religious " ; sometimes " vagabond "
monks wandering from lamasery to lamasery and supporting
themselves by begging; and sometimes genuine monks
living in vast establishments such as are found throughout
Tibet but especially at Lhasa. In these there is much use-
of charms and mantras, much dependence on prayer-flags
and prayer-wheels, much use of sacred symbols such as
the swastika, much use of finger-twistings (like those
employed in the Shingon sect of Japan), use of religious
dances, and other observances in general due to the ever-

THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA 379

present fear of devils and the desire to escape the terrors of
the Buddhist hells. 1

It is perhaps an unduly pessimistic vision of. Buddhism
with which we finish bur sketch of Chinese religion, but it
will be allowed that the facts as given above are not distorted.
We shall do well to keep in mind the distance between
Buddhism at its best and degradations of the best such as
we see, for example, in 'Lamaism. But even Buddhism at
its best was proved to be a very undependable Way. Sir
Edwin Arnold was not exaggerating when he placed on
the lips of his Buddhist visitor to Galilee the words :

I do discern that, forth from this fair life
.And this meek death and thine arisen Christ,
Measureless things are wrought ; a thought-dawn born
Which shall not cease to- broaden, till its beam
Makes noon of knowledge for a gathered world,
Completing what our Buddha, left unsaid ;
Carpeting bright his noble Eight-fold Way
With fragrant blooms of all-renouncing love,
And bringing high Nirvana nearer hope,
Easier and plainer. 2

There was, after all, more about jpity, human and divine,
than it was possible for Gautama to discover for the
remedying of the ills of men. In the eternal issue, moreover,
there was fuller content than what the negations of Nirvana
suggested. Buddhism, considered as a finality, was an
utter failure. It was quite powerless to lift the individual
above the insurgent ills of life; it was powerless to deliver
the Orient from its many social and political miseries. Only
too obviously, in the grossness and superstition of modern
China, one realizes how Buddhism has sunk into ready
connivance with the charlatanry of a debased Taoism. Nor
is it difficult to assign reasons for such a failure. God,
under whatever name, even in polytheistic or apparently
monolatrous forms of Buddhism, is Himself but part of
the great illusion. Amida, Maitreya, this one or that, all
sink back ultimately into Maya; they fade away just when

1 For Tibetan Buddhism see H. Hackmann, Buddhism as a Religion,
London, 1910 ; W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Oxford,
1927 ; Ency. Rel. and Ethics, sub voce " Lamaism."

s Sir Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia.

3*0 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

human hands most yearn to touch them. "Amida's Paradise
is indeed a very concrete heaven to the average believer.
But as the believer grows in intelligence and'begins to delve
in the deeper teachings of his sect, his vision of Paradise
begins to fade. He learns that for practical purposes
he should act and live as if the achievement of an enriched
personality were the. goal of all our strivings and the one
value which abides the wreck of time, but in reality
personality and all individuality cannot be a permanent
state/' ^'

Hence the cure of sorrow, except to those who have
taken despair to themselves as a bride, must be illusory too.
As in the familiar story of the woman and the millet seed,
Buddhism has no comfort to give save that " loss is common
to the race," and that misery is inseparable from life. No
wonder we find that, at its very best, Buddhism is tinged
with ineffaceable sadness, the sadness of those who panted
for life, yet were offered consolation only in the abnegation
of life; of those who craved for peace, but were offered
peace only in the dreamless sleep of Nirvana. As it has
been put by a non-Christian Chinese writer, quoted by
Dr. Soothill: " Buddhism abandons the world, Christianity
would redeem it." 2 . . '

Surely Prince Siddhartha, had he lived in Galilee instead
of India, and had he been able to share the lot of Jesus
of Nazareth, rather than that of the ascetics of Benares,
would not have fled to bleak negations as a refuge from the
world's sorrow. Rather, hearing the invitation: " Come
unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will
give you rest," we may reasonably suppose he would have
been among the first to follow in the Way. And thus
following he would have learned how to exhaust pessimism
at its very source. .

1 W. E. Soothill, The Three Religions of China, Oxford, 1924.

2 W. E. Soothill, op. dl., p. in.

- CHAPTER XXVI
The Religions of Japan

population of the Japanese Archipelago, in
addition to the Ainus, whose religion we have
discussed in Chapter X, was in early times made up
out of ethnic contributions from three different directions.
First, there was an inconsiderable migration by way of
Kamchatka and the north of people known as Sushen, or
Siberic, a stock wi'th some affinity to the race we know later
under the name of Manchu. Next, we have a much more
important movement, probably in three or more separate
migrations, known as the Yamato, which came from the
Continent by way of Korea and settled first of all in the
region bearing that name on the western shores of the main
island. Lastly, from the south, possibly from South China,
possibly from the Malay Peninsula or Borneo, possibly even
from as far afield as the Polynesian Islands, came the virile
and warlike stock known as the Kumaso. These settled
first in the southern island of Kyushu. It was from these
last two elements the Anglo-Saxons and Normans respect-
ively of the Japanese population that the ultimate race
descended. The Empire was actually founded by the
incursion of the Kumaso, some centuries before Christ, into
the main island -and by their subjugation of the older .
population i Culturally, too,- though many elements were
transmitted from the Continent, it. was the Kumaso stock
which became dominant, as one may see by a study of the
food and the houses which became habitual.

The traditional date of the accession of Jimmu Tenno,
the first emperor, is February 1 1, 660 B.C., but this precision
is uncritical and due to later arrangement of the chronicle.
During this period of legend it is probable that Japanese
religion was a simple form of nature worship, in which
appreciation was more conspicuous than fear, and in which

381

382 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the worship of ancestors had as yet found little or no place.
This religion we call Shinto, from the Chinese Shtn-tao, the
Way of the Gods, though the proper Japanese term (meaning
'the same thing) is Kami-no-Michi. - -

Who are the gods, known to the Chinese as Shn and
to the Japanese as Kami ? The word itself, which is similar
to the Ainu word for Godi kamui, means literally "that
which is above" and is* applied to many different things,
including the chiefs of clans (believed to be divinely
descended) and even the hair of the head (a recognized
soul-seat). As applied to the gods it may be translated as
" heaven-dwellers." The kami may be grouped under three
heads, though the first must be regarded as in all probability
the original. This first group includes ^ the large class of
deities who are the personifications of natural forces. Among
these are the creator pair, Izanagi (the male-who-invites)
and Izanami (the female-who-invites), who produced the
islands when Izanagi, from " the floating bridge of heaven,"
dipped his spear into the Pacific and turned the congealed
drops into islands as they fell. One myth, however, declares
that, even before the time of Izanagi and Izanami, a reed
sprouted from the ocean of chaos from which deities,
personifying the germinating powers of Nature, were
produced in pairs. Izanagi and Izanami also produced new
gods and it was at the birth of the Fire-god that Izanami
died and descended to the Japanese Hades, " the land of
gloom." In an effort to rescue his spouse Izanagi himself
went down to Yomotsu-kuni, but was so horrified at the
corruption of the place that he fled incontinently, pursued
by the nine hags of hell. While purifying himself after his
escape Izanagi produced still more gods, including the
Sun-goddess, Amaterasu, from the washing of his left eye,
the Moon-god, Tsuki-yomi, from the washing of the right
eye, and the Storm-god, Susa-no-wo, from the washing of
his nose. The Moon-god ceased to have a place in Japanese
mythology, and there were never any star-gods there is
no mention of the stars in Japanese poetry. The Sun-
goddess soon acquired the supremacy she afterwards
maintained as the Divine Ancestress, and all princes and
princesses were known as hiko and hime, that is " sun-child."

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 383

The .mythology goes on to- tell of the pranks played by
Susa-no-wo upon his sister, the Sun-goddess, of his tearing
off the roof of the house where she sat weaving with her
maidens, of her flight to the cave where she sulked till by
various dances and charms the myriad gods lured her forth
and decreed the exile of .the Storm-god to Idzumo. It
becomes clear as the mythology proceeds that Izanagi and
Izanami represent the old dualism of heaven and earth,
that the two eyes of the sky are the Sun and the Moon and
that the nostrils of the sky is nothing but the typhoon,
dreaded in ancient times even more than to-day. Sub-
ordinate nature deities are described as sea-gods, wind-gods,
mountain-gods, and such poetic creations of the imagination
as Konohanasakuya-hime, the Lady who makes the trees to
bloom, and Tatsuta-hime, the Lady who weaves the brocade
(of autumn leaves), but these last belong more to the realm
pf poetry than to that of mythology. The second class of
gods are really personified abstractions, such as the god of
growth, and the food-god, though this last, Ukemochi-no-
kami, is by some thought to be one of the most ancient of
all. The third class is that of the deified men and women
who represent the ancestor-worship introduced from the
Continent. It is, however, a very large class, and includes
gods figuring in Japanese history all the way from the
Empress Jingo, in the third century A.D., down to General
Nogi and others in our own time. It should be added that
besides these three classes there is a countless host of other
divine beings such as fairies, vampires, fox-spirits, and
dragon-spirits, but in ' the larger number of cases it is
impossible to determine how far these were originally
Japanese or merely importations (in Buddhist times) from
India and China.

For the worship of the gods, or the spirits of the dead,
there were built the severely simple shrines known as miya,
or " august houses." As the word denotes, the Shinto
shrine was first of all nothing but the dwelling-place of the
reigning sovereign (the high-priest of the nation)/and the
depository of the sacred insignia of, Shinto, the mirror, the
sword and the jewel (magatama). After a while, with the
delegation by the emperor of his religious duties to special

384 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

clans such as the Nakatomi and the Mononobe, the miya
multiplied, till now, scattered over the Empire there may
be as many as 200,000, great arid small. The approach to
the shrine was a gateway known as torii> which has sometimes
(by folk-etymology) been explained as " fowl-perch," but
is more probably derived from . the Indian turan, or .gate,,
and may correspond thus with the Chinese pao-lao. The

temple is plain and unpainted and generally fenced about

. , r r 1 7 t 1-

with paper fringes, known as gohet r hung upon a hempen

rope. There are no idols, but the shin-tai^ or. god-body, is
an object which is supposed to enshrine the invisible god-
presence, or mitama. In addition to the shtntai the temple
ma/ contain some of the insignia referred to above as the
Three Treasures. Of these the magatama, or jewel, is
thought by some to represent an old bear's-claw fetish.

The ministers of the temples, and of the Shinto religion
generally speaking, are represented by numerous orders.
There are katartbe^ or reciters, urabe, or diviners, and
kangahari) the god-possessed ones, while the priests of the
local shrines are known as kannushi. The powers of some
of these in the region of the occult are described by some as
very remarkable. 1

In Shinto worship there is considerable variety. Much
of it is extremely archaic and shows th.% survival of panto-
mimic dances described in the mythology. These were
originally, no doubt, rites connected with imitative magic.
There is the use of prayers, called norito, but these seem to
have little relation to supplication properly so-called. ' Imi 9
or abstentions (tabus), misogi, or cleansings, and harai, or
exorcisms, are common. The crowning rite of the year is
the O-harai, or Great Purification, a kind of scapegoat
ceremony, by which, at the beginning of the year, the sins -
and pollutions of the year are transferred to 'paper patterns
of the body which are then taken out to be sunk in .deep
water. The idea of sin (tsumt) seems to have relation to
ritual offences rather than to moral delinquencies. Pil-
grimages have great importance and are health-giving
excursions to the mountain shrines, especially to Fuji-san,
Ise and Idzumo, in special garb and supported by the

1 See Percival Lowell, Occult Japan, Boston, 1894.

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN ' .385

pilgrim staff, which bears the name of the Buddhist saint,
Kobo Daishi. Naturally to-day the pilgrimages are quite as
much a vogue with Buddhists as with Shintoists.

Beliefs in the future, too, are highly coloured from
Buddhist contact, but it seems clear that the early Japanese
believed in a .soul, which they called tama-shii (ball-wincT).
This soul wasidivided into two parts, one mild and gentle,
such as stayed with the- body and ministered to its happiness,
the other rough and inclined to go away on adventures of its
own. After death one of these souls remained in the
neighbourhood of the body for a while, and the other, as a
shade, journeyed towards its abode in the Land of Gloom,
or, as a kami, to the Plain of High Heaven. The idea of
coming to the River of the Three Routes, where the soul
had to make its choice between hell, the world of beasts, or
the world of hungry ghosts, is obviously Buddhistic.

The history of Shinto may be summarized as passing
through three stages. First, we have the period of Primitive
Shinto, prior to the introduction of Buddhism, when it was
merely a rather bizarre kind of nature worship, which
inculcated personal cleanliness and loyalty to the Emperor.
It is to be noted that the word matsurigoto has the double
sense of government and of religious observances. After the
coming of Buddhism in A.D. 552 we have what is known as
" Ryobu, or the "twofold doctrine," a mixture of the two
faiths by the identification of the old gods with the Bodhi-
sattvas. It originated with the visit of Gyogi, a priest of the
Hpsso sect, to the shrine, of the Sun-goddess at Ise, and his
return with the announcement from the goddess: " I am
Vairochana (Dainichi)." Though the fusion of the two
religions was never complete, Ryobu remained generally
acceptable, till the eighteenth century, when there came a
revulsion against things Chinese, including Buddhism, and
the attempt of scholars like Motoori, Mabuchi and Hirata
to bring about a revival of Pure Shinto. Lastly, since the
beginning of Meiji, in 1868, has come the official effort to
present Shinto as a political philosophy and to evacuate it
as far as possible of its religious content. Many Japanese,
including a number of the most distinguished Christians,
have accepted this view and use the elaborately beautiful
2 B

386. A HISTORY OF RELIGION

rites of Shinto to rally the people to imperial unity -and
loyalty to the emperors. Thus the ceremonies connected
with the enthronement, marriage and burial of the emperors
are Shinto. In spite of their archaic character many of these
rites are profoundly impressive and well worthy of study
on account of their symbolism. As a religion, however,
Shinto will probably have little place in the future of the
Japanese people. 1

Ere outlining the story of -Buddhism in Japan, from the
time of its arrival in the sixth century to. the present day, it
is necessary to say something about Suddhism in Korea,
or Chosen, from whence it passed to the archipelago. The
peninsula was first reached by the religion of Gautama in
A.D. 372, when a monk called by the Koreans -Sundo arrived .
from the present province of Shensi with sutras and images.
Contact with the Continent was at this time much more
constant than has been generally supposed. Korea was at
this time split up into three kingdoms, a northern one
called Kokurye, one in the south-west, Pakche, and one in
the south-east, Silla. Sundo came to the northern kingdom
and had such success that two monasteries were erected as
a cradle for the new faith. The kingdom of Pakche, anxious
not to be behind its northern neighbour, then sent to the
Chinese Emperor, and presently, in 385, came a missionary,
Marananda, with ten monks, to undertake the conversion
of the kingdom. Then last of all, Silla, yielded to the new
propaganda and by the beginning of the sixth century the
whole peninsula was religiously Buddhistic and culturally, of
course, Chinese. The golden age of Korean Buddhism, how-
ever, came with the tenth century and with the unification of
the country as Korye, an accomplishment due largely to the
efforts of a Buddhist monk who was, however, murdered and
left the fruit of his labours to a successful rival. From 912
to 1392, with Song-do as the capital, Korea was zealously
Buddhist, claiming one out of every three sons for the
monastic life. Just before and after this period the two
Korean alphabetic systems were invented, the Nido system

1 See W. G. Aston, Shinto, the Way of the Gods, London, 1905 ; D. C.
Holtom, The Political Philosophy of Modern Shinto. Transactions of the
Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. xix., Part II., 1922.

THE RELIGIONS. OF JAPAN 387

as early as the ninth century, and the present Un-men script
(" the most simple and perfect alphabet in the world ")
about the middle of the fifteenth. By this time, however,
Buddhism was on the decline. It lost State support and
suffered from the attempt to replace it with Confucianism.
So it lost its initiative and presently sank to its present
condition of ineptitude. Nevertheless, some large monas-
teries still retain importance, especially those in the Diamond
Mountains, and around Keijo, the capital. In the Korean
Buddhism of the present day much of the older cults of
sun, moon, stars, mountains^ rivers and caves crops up and
the witch, or mudang, is so frequently employed for exorcism
as practically to have driven the monk out of the field. It
is possible that the Japanese regime in Chosen may do
something to revive Buddhism and return to it some of its
former authority. 1

It was in A.D. 552, in the reign of the Emperor Kimmei,
that envoys came from the kingdom of Pakche (or Kudara)
with presents of books and a letter stating: "-This doctrine
is hard to understand, but marvellously excellent. It
furnishes men with treasure to their heart's content. Every
prayer may be fulfilled and every wish granted." King
Seimei was not entirely disinterested in his missionary work
since he asked for a quid -pro quo in the shape of military
assistance against his enemies, a singular request in the
passing on and recommendation of a pacifist religion.
Whether this were so or not, the Emperor, after his first
enthusiasm, was as suspicious of the new cult as was
Ethelbert of the missionary, St. Augustine, when, for fear
of magic, he insisted on hearing the monk in the open air.
To test the faith Soga-no-Iname, head of the clan specially
charged with the care of foreigners, was ordered to afford
hospitality to the Korean visitors. It was a foregone con-
clusion that the Nakatomi clan, who (with the Mononobe)
formed the high. priesthood of Shinto, would be ranged in
opposition to the .new cult. So we have a struggle
inaugurated between the conservatives (o-murajt) and the
innovators (o-omi\ with the Emperor endeavouring to be

1 See H. Hackmann, Buddhism as a Religion, pp. 85 ff., 257 8., London,
1910.

388 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

neutral. At first fortune favoured the Nakatomi since the
envoys had brought with them small-pox as well as sutras
and the plague caused a summary dumping of the images
into the Naniwa Canal. But, the plague continuing, the
fearful were inclined to think their judgement premature,
so the images were dredged up and the " experiment con-
tinued. The rumour that" a wonderful log of camphor wood
had floated in from the sea, to strains of heavenly music,
gave fresh prestige to the faith. Then, in 577 and 584,
came more missionaries and, after a brief civil war in 587,
a test on the anvil triumphantly vindicated the indestructi-
bility of a Buddhist relic said to have been the pupil of one
of the eyes of Shaka and patronage of the foreign faith
soon became open and unashamed.

One more struggle, however, was necessary, involving
the determination of the succession as well as the respective
claims of the Soga and Nakatomi clans. .In this struggle
the remarkable man came to the front who was destined to
be the Constantine of Japanese Buddhism. This was
Prince Umayado, regent under the Empress Suiko, and
known generally as Shotoku Taishi, that .is Crown Prince
Shotoku. This illustrious individual, the thirteenth cen-
tenary pf whose death was observed throughout Japan in
1921, was from the beginning inclined toward the Sogas,
but his activity was the result of a vow that, if victorious
over the rebel Moriya, he would further the faith of Shaka. 1
Placing the images of the Four Heaven Kings in his helmet,
Prince Umayado went valiantly into the fight and emerged
as conqueror. One may still see the Temple, of the Four
Heaven Kings, the Shi-tenno-ji, at Osaka on" the site where
Shotoku raised his memorial of the victory, and in the
Temple of the Guiding Bell it is still believed that the
souls of children are guided by the compassionate prince
into the - presence of their playmates, who invoke the aid
of the saint by pulling a bell-rope made of the bibs of dead
children. Here too is the conduit of running water which
is supposed to bear letters and prayers for the dead into
Shotoku's presence. One story reminds us of the legend of
St. Martin of Tours. It tells how Prince Umayado covered

1 Dr. Anesaki says Shotoku was possibly a. Buddhist of the third generation,
certainly of Buddhist parentage

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN- 389

a dying beggar with his cloak and how subsequently when
the beggar,' s tomb was opened no body was found therein
but only a cloak neatly folded. It was thus revealed that
the saint's charity had been bestowed upon a divine being.
Another -story speaks of Shotoku as an incarnation of
the Goddess of Mercy, Kwannon, who had proclaimed:
" Wherever a gnat cries, there am I," a tribute probably
to the fame of the prince's generosity rather than the
affirmation of .a dogma. When Shotoku died it was said:
" All the princes and omi, as well as the people of the Empire
the old, as if they had lost a dear child, had no taste for
vinega'r, the young," as if they had lost a beloved parent,
filled the ways with the sound of their lamenting." The
tribute was neither insincere nor undeserved.

Though in A.D. 645 the Soga family was overthrown
and wellnigh exterminated, the future of Buddhism in
Japan had now become secure and, as in other lands, the
religion of "Shaka brought with success important con-
sequences for the art, literature and government of the land
as well as for religion. The introduction of Chinese writing
and Chinese books had enormous effect in stimulating the
intellectual life of Japan, even though it was several cen-
turies before the development of native scripts, the kata-kana
and the hira-gana^ to add to the Chinese ideographs. As for
art, to quote Professor Asakawa, "Almost every branch of
industrial and artistic development owes something to the
influence of the (Buddhist) creed." And Mr. Saito declares
that in the Horiuji, built by Shotoku, one may study the
influence of Chinese, Indian, and even Greek ideas upon the
art of Japan, all alike transmitted by Buddhism. The bare
simplicity of the Shinto temples was now superseded by the
warmth of colour and the splendour of gold and lacquer
which we associate with the Buddhist tera. There was a
sort of common, impulse towards the making of beautiful
things, as when the Empress Suiko, in 592, founded the
majestic shrine of Miyajima, or as Emperors and Empresses
vied with one another in the casting of great images of
Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. .

Much of this advance we see in the eighth century,
when for the first time the Empire created a fixed capital.

390 , A 'HISTORY OF RELIGION

This was Nara, where some seven sovereigns ruled from
710 to 794. It was a great time for Japan,, " the few
bright decades of political ardour, aesthetic awakening and
religious exaltation."- 1 There was an enthusiasm for temple
building and image making for which it is difficult to
find a parallel, save in the cathedral building of thirteenth-
century Europe. It was now that the Daibutsu of Nara,
still standing, though after many restorations (in the course
of which everything of the original except a part of the -
trunk and legs, with a few petals of the lotus on which the
Buddha sits, has been lost) was cast under the orders of the
-Emperor Shomu. Certain Empresses carried enthusiasm
for Buddhism so far as to forbid the taking of any form of
life, even of fish, and the poor fishermen, all but reduced
to starvation by the edict, had to be relieved by imperial'
subsidies of rice. The Empress Komyo vowed to wash the
feet of a thousand beggars, and finding among these a
beggar hideous with leprosy discovered later that she had
ministered to a god in disguise. It was about this time that
the priest Gyogi, famous otherwise as the. inventor of the
potter's wheel, and himself the builder of forty-nine temples,
invented also a way of reconciling the old religion with the
new by proclaiming, as the result of a vision, that the Sun-
goddess and Vairochana were one.

Nevertheless, Buddhism had its own sectarian develop-
ments, more or less independent of the Shinto., In Nara
times there arose six denominations of Buddhists, as follows :
i. Sanron, the school of the Three Treatises, brought over
by Ekwan from China in 625; 2. Jojitsu, a Hinayana sect,
brought over from the Korean kingdom of Pakche" ; 3 . Hosso,
brought over from China by Dosho; 4. Kusfia, established
by two Japanese priests who had studied in China; 5, Kegon,
which held that the original Buddha, from whom arose all
the Buddhas of history, sat on a lotus of a thousand petals,
each petal a universe and each universe consisting of a
myriad worlds. This sect was introduced in 736; 6. Ritsu,
a Hinayana sect brought over in 754, and particularly
strict in the matter of discipline and regularity of ordination.
Of the six Nara sects only Hosso and Kegon survive, but

1 G. B. Sansom, Japan, A Cultural History, New York, 1931.

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN ' 391

it should -be remembered that sectarian- differences did. not
involve rancour and that varying doctrines were frequently
taught in the same monasteries. As it was said :

From various sides the paths ascend,
Many and far abreast,
But when we gaze on the calm, full moon,
Single's the mountain's crest.

Generally speaking, the influence of Buddhism on Japan
was good. Manners were much ameliorated and, as Dr.
Harada puts it, Buddhism "optimized Japan." But there
is another side, bearing on the subject of political develop-
ment. As the" Emperors became more and more interested
in the practice and propagation of religion they became less
concerned with the conduct of State affairs and the manage-
ment of a military campaign was generally relegated to the
clan leaders. So we have presently a number of Emperors
known as "learned emperors," because of their almost
'exclusive preoccupation with the sutras rather than with
affairs of State. A little later the " learned emperors "
pushed their devotion to- religion further and became
" cloistered emperors." At times there were three or four
of these abdicated sovereigns living at the same time and
it became a temptation to some of the more aggressive"
daimyos to " save face " in an otherwise seditious movement
by putting, a " cloistered emperor " at the head of his
faction. Naturally, when adult emperors, almost as a matter
of course, took the vows soon after their accession, it became
difficult to find heirs except minors. So " child emperors "
became common and proved a source of serious weakness
by playing into the hands of ambitious daimyos. It was
out of such conditions that the Shogunate, or military
government, arose- an institution which, with brief inter-
vals, held sway from 1186 to i&67.

From 804 to 1186 we find ourselves in that period of
Japanese history known as the Heian, ,or Kyoto, era. The
new. capital was very likely chosen that the emperors might
get away from the overshadowing influence of the Buddhist
priesthood. Priests, like Dokyo, had interfered seriously
in politics and had acquired a large amount of property in
the name of their temples. But the move, if it had this
reason, proved in vain, for Buddhism continued to flourish

392 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

and new contacts were established with the faith in China.
Some notable Japanese scholars visited the T'ang capital' in
the early ninth century and brought back new ideas, some
of which were possibly coloured by Manichaean and
Christian influences prevalent in China at this time. 1 Two
scholars merit special mention since they became the
founders of two new sects and were greatly influential in
other ways. Saicho, afterwards known as Dengyo Daishi
the first to receive the title of M Great Saint " (Daishi}
went to China in 802 in the train of an ambassador of the
Sugawara family. He returned in 805 to introduce to his
native land T'ien-tai Buddhism, under the name of Tendai,
and established on Hiyeizan, a mountain north-east of
Kyoto, the famous monastery 'which in course of time
became a nursery for hosts of swaggering bonzes who
occasionally terrorized emperors into compliance with their
demands. Tendai, indeed, became worldly and corruptj
though Saicho's identification of the Shinto divinities with
the avatars of the Buddha popularized the work commenced
by Gyogi, and completed the triumph of Ryobu. Kukai,
later known as Kobo Daishi, painter, poet, sculptor and
traveller, is one of the great figures of Japanese Buddhism.
He went to China in 804, with one of the Fujiwara princes.
When he returned, about 807, he brought with him a
syncretism, in which Manichaean .influences probably find
place, known as Shingon, the True Word sect. It belongs
to the mantra school^ is related to the Indian system of
Yoga, and but faintly reflects the teachings of Gautama.
It was supposed by talismanic devices to assist enlighten-
ment and used particularly the five-syllabled charm, a-bi- .
ra-un-ken. Kobo became in 816 the abbot of Koyosan, a
famous monastery in the mountains between Kishu and
Yamato. Thousands of pilgrims visit the - monastery
annually, along the " Road of Many Turnings," chanting
as they go the hymn: " May our six senses grow pure as
we climb the heights! " In the " Hall of Ten-thousand
Lamps " is shown the " Poor Woman's Single Lamp," the
gift of one who sold her hair to buy the precious offering.
Though all the rest are the gifts of the rich, it is said that

1 So it is contended by Arthur Lloyd in 'his Creed of Half Japan.
Dr. Anesaki doubts it.

THE RELIGIONS OF JAP'AN 393

in a. high wind all blow out except the woman's lamp, which
burns steadily through the gale. Kobo Daishi is honoured
by all pilgrims, who call their pilgrim staff by his name.
To be buried in the same ground as Kobo is to obtain
rebirth in Paradise. Thus, after cremation, the " Adam's
apple " of a dead man is often sent to be cast into the hall
of bones at Koyosan. Many legends persist in the neigh-
bourhood, of which a specimen is the story that soil from
India has been dropped at each of the eightyrseven stations,,
or that which declares that the fire at Koyosan has burned
unquenched for a thousand years. Kobo Daishi's fame
extends to the realms of art and literature as well as to that
of religion. But that is another story. 1

In the periods we have so far discussed most Buddhist
teaching came by way of China. But in the thirteenth
century religious movements were initiated of great signifi-
cance but of genuinely native origin. It is interesting to
notice, however, that these are contemporaneous with
religious movements which swept over the entire Euro-
Asiatic Continent, affecting alike Western Europe, India
and China as well as Japan. At this epoch, though the
emperors resided at Kyoto, the administrative capital was
Kamakura, three hundred miles away, and here the Hojo
Shikken, or Regents, ruled in the'name of -Shadow Shoguns
and they at least as shadowy emperors. The period,
extending from 1199 to r 333> ^ s known therefore as the
Hojo period. The Buddhistic movements of the time
began with the rise and teaching of certain distinguished
reformers who were reacting strongly from the " prosperous
and degenerate " Buddhism of the Kyoto court and also
from the prevalent. pessimism of the time. Most pf the new
teachers came from the Tendai school. Such was Genshin
who, though he never left the Tendai, must be considered
a forerunner of the Amida sects. Of him, says Dr.
Reischauer, " His three small volumes on Paradise, the
Intermediate State, and HeU have exerted a great influence
and should be of special interest to Western readers,

1 For Japanese Buddhism see especially A. K. Reischauer, Studies in
Japanese Buddhism, New York, 1917 ; Arthur Lloyd, The Creed of Half
Japan, London, 1912 ; Kishio Satomi, The Discovery of Japanese Idealism,
London, 1924 ; J. B. Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism, New York, 1928.

394 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

especially to students of Dante." * Then came Ryonin,
107 2- 1 132, with his clear-cut teaching as to Amida Buddha
and the reiterated formula, Namu Amida Butsu, which gained
the name of Nembutsu for the sect. Both of these teachers
are outside the Kamakura period, but may be regarded as
heralds of the dawn. .

First among the real founders of the epoch is Genku,
commonly known as Honen Shonin. He was born about
1130 and as a child was about to slay the assassin of his
father when the dying parent besought him rather to seek
enlightenment. So Genku entered Hiyeizan and studied
Tendai, only somewhat later to turn away from what seemed
a religion of despair to a religion which offered hope and
salvation through the merits of Amida. So Honen, in
1 175, became the founder (in Japan) of the Jodo, or " Pure
Land" sect, with its doctrine of future blessedness in the
Paradise of Amida. Japanese Buddhism makes a clear
distinction between ji-riki, or salvation by one's own merits
(as taught by Gautama), and ta-riki, or salvation 'by the
merits of another. Jodo was not entirely one or the other,
since the use of the Nembutsu was necessary. Nevertheless,
it marked a clear advance towards Amidaism and was so
welcomed by multitudes, including some of the emperors.
To-day Jodo is the second largest Buddhistic sect in Japan.

A certain disciple of Genku, Shinran, soon passed
beyond his master's position by rejecting iheji-riki doctrine
altogether and proclaiming salvation through faith in Amida
alone. " We have nothing to do," he said, " with salvation;
we have but to believe." Shinran Shonin, 1173-1262, is
one of the most interesting of the Buddhist fathers. Visitors
to the great Western Hongwanji at Kyoto may still see
the image of Shinran, carved with his own hand as a gift
to his daughter for the Shin-shu priests need not be
celibate. After the saint's death the ashes remaining from
the cremation were mixed with lacquer and used to varnish
the effigy. Shinran entered one of the Hiyeizan monasteries
at an early age, but was converted to Amidaism by the
preaching of Honen and two years later founded the Jodo-
Shinshu., or True Pure Land sect, now the largest of the

1 A. K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, p. 103.

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN ' 395

Japanese Buddhistic schools. A story tells that while
Shinran was still at Hiyeizan he met a charming princess
who showed him that the scattered rays of the sun could be
gathered together at a focus by means of a burning-glass,
and asked him if he could not do the same for the teachings
of Shaka. Shinran, who has been termed the " Luther of
Buddhism," did his best to achieve this unification. He died
atthe age of eighty-nine, "true to the end to his deter-
mination not to know anything but Amida and salvation in
his Western Paradise." He wrote a famous book, the
Kyogo-sho-monrui) or the Analects of Doctrine, Practice and
Attainment, as an exposition of his teaching. Justification
by faith in Amida is still the central truth of Shin-shu and
dying men still lay hold upon a coloured cord -connected
with the image of Amida to be. drawn in death towards the
refuge of his compassion.

Just prior to the establishment of Shin-shu another sect
arose .destined to have great influence upon Japanese
religion. In this case the provenance was foreign, for the
new sect was no other than the Zen Buddhism associated
with the name of the patriarch Bodhidharma, which in India
had been known as Dhyana and in China as Ch'an. Bodhi-
dharma, of whom many wonderful tales are told, is the
original of the toy known as Dafuma, so weighted that
nothing can destroy its poise. It was to afford spiritual
poise that meditation was recommended, and the tea-
ceremony (cha-no-yu) was developed to illustrate as well as
to assist the winning of this steadiness of mind and heart.
Zen became for this reason the special cult of soldiers, who*
became also the most famous connoisseurs of the tea-cult.
In Japan Zen was first preached by Eisai, about 1191.
This sage, like the others mentioned, had resided at
Hiyeisan, but remained unsatisfied till he revisited China
and became converted to the doctrine of Bodhidharma.

In some, respects the founder of the fourth Kamakura
sect is the most, interesting of all. Professor Lloyd calls
Nichtren " the greatest and most striking personality in the
whole of Japanese Buddhist literature." Dr. Anesaki opens
his biography thus: " If Japan ever produced a prophet or
a religious man of prophetic zeal, Nichiren was the man.

396 " A HISTORT OF RELIGION

He stands almost a unique figure in the History of Buddhism,
not only because of Jiis persistence through hardship and
persecution, but for his unshaken conviction that he himself
was the messenger of Buddha, and his confidence in the
future of his religion and country." Born in 1222, the son
of a fisherman, Nichiren early passed from under the
influence of Shingon to that of Tendai and thence to the
denunciation of all the current schools. In striking contrast
to the tolerant attitude of other sects, this " strong .man of
combative temperament " denounced the other sects as
treasonable inventions of the devil. He called Kobo "the
greatest liar in Japan " and described the Zen as teaching
a " doctrine of fiends and devils." Yet it is not easy to
find anything precisely new in Nichiren 's teaching. . He
advocated a return to the " pristine purity " of the Buddhism
of Gautama, but betrayed ignorance of what this was by
pinning his faith to the Hokkekyo, a scripture of later time
and of -a very different doctrinal trend. Nichiren's sig-
nificance is not, however, that he taught new truths so much
as that his belligerent attitude brought him -into stormy
relation to the political events of the time. More than once
his uncompromising preaching brought him within the
shadow of death. In 1271 he was arrested and tried for
high treason. " Behold, the pillar of Japan is falling! " he
cried as the soldiers closed around the giant monk and bore
him to the execution ground near Kamakura. But as he
passed the temple of Hachiman, Nichiren addressed the
war-god in a famous prayer, in which the monk threatened
*to denounce the god's ingratitude in the presence of the
Buddha, on the Vulture Peak, immediately after his death.
"And what will you do then ? " he added. Legend goes on .
to describe the*coming of a lightning flash which paralysed
the executioner and secured his victim's reprieve. Nichiren's
great opportunity came with the menace of .the Mongol
invasion. His predictions gave him a tremendous popular
vogue and in course of time the " Ishmael of Buddhism "
became the " Lotus of the Law " and the founder of the
sect called after his name. Famous as " an eloquent preacher,
a powerful writer, and a man of tender heart," he died
on November 14, 1282,- surrounded by his disciples and

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 397

reciting with them the " stanzas of eternity." Where he
died is now the Hommonji, and the saint's bones, enclosed
in a reliquary of rock crystal, repose on a jewelled table :
supported by eight green tortoises, before which burns a
perpetual lamp. Under the influence of Nichiren Buddhism
in Japan became truly national. 1

The four Kamakura sects mentioned remain to-day the
strongest of the fifty recognized by the Government and
occupy 53,000 out of the 72,000 existing temples.
Buddhism had now a clear field in the Empire until the end
of the Ashikaga Shogunate in 1573, when Oda Nobunaga
was given a commission to rescue the Empire from the chaos
into which it had fallen. Nobunaga found his chief
opponents in the " turbulent shavelings " of Hiyeizan, with
their centuries of immunity from control. He therefore
put the whole community to the sword and burned the great
temple, Yenryakuji, with historical materials of irreplaceable
worth. The burning of Hiyeizan, on St. Michael's Day
1571, was an event giving satisfaction to the Jesuits, who
were favoured by Nobunaga out of his desire to encourage
a religious influence in the land such as might act as a check
upon the power of the Buddhists.

Hideyoshi, Nobunaga's successor, cared nothing for
Buddhism, though he occasionally wrote letters to the gods
for the sake of their effect on the public mind. As a boy
he had been turned out of a Buddhist shrine for smashing the
idols which did not consume the offerings, he placed before
them. On the accession of lyeyasu, however, in 1600,
Buddhism came again into its own, though the seventeenth
century is also marked by the rise of a Chinese school of
learning which was devoted to the neo-Confucianism of the
Sung philosophers. The Tokugawa Shoguns were earnest
Buddhists, who in their efforts to eradicate Christianity
compelled all Japanese to enroll themselves in their
respective Buddhist parishes. The founder of the line was
reverenced after death as a god, and lies in his sumptuous
shrine at Nikko " Noble of the First Degree of the First
Rahk, Great Light of the East, Great Incarnation of
Buddha;"

1 Masaharu Anesaki, Nichiren, the Buddhist Prophet, Harvard, 1916. '

398 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Space forbids our pursuing further the story of
Buddhism^ in Japan, except to say that at the Restoration
in 1867, when Shinto became a political philosophy,
Buddhism was disestablished. The result has not been
as harmful to religion as was at the time anticipated.
Thrown upon their own resources the priests and congre-
gations have ^ made notable steps towards a great revival.
This revival has manifested itself -in a variety of ways.
Many old and dilapidated temples have been restored and
many new ones built. The building of the great Hongwanji
at Kyoto is said to have cost several million dollars, not to
speak of the ropes of hair contributed by thousands of
Japanese women that the great beams might be hoisted into
place by the strongest of cables. Buddhist universities have
also been established and the present writer can vouch for
the comprehensive character of the literature used in their
libraries. Young Men's Buddhist Associations have been
founded in obvious imitation of the Western Y.M.C.A.
The methods of Western religion have been in many cases
adopted, even to what, seems almost the parodying of
familiar Christian hymns. Much has been done in the way
of Social Reform and almost every agency known in the
West has been reproduced in Tokyo and other cities by
Japanese Buddhists. Even missionary work to foreign
lands has been attempted. As early as 1876 Japanese
missionaries were sent to China and in more recent years to
Honolulu and to the Pacific coast, mainly, of course, to
their own fellow-countrymen.

The situation, naturally, is- not without its anxieties.
Okuma said in 1 909 : " Japan at present may be likened to
a sea into which a hundred currents of Oriental and
Occidental thought have poured, and, not having yet
effected fusion, are raging wildly, tossing, warring and
roaring. . ; .A portion of our people go neither by the
old code -of ethics and etiquette nor by those of modern
days, while they are also disinclined to conform to those of
foreign countries, and such persons convey the impression
of neither possessing nor being governed by any ideas about
morality, public or private." That anxiety exists is proved,
again, by the calling of the Tri-Religion Conference (with

THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 399

Shinto, Buddhist and Christian representatives) in March
1 9 1 2 to discuss how they might best meet" the spiritual needs
of the nation.'

So far as Buddhism is concerned, Professor Inouye, ,of
the Imperial University, Tokyo (quoted by Dr. Rieischauer),
suggests the following five reforms :

i. The raising of the standard among the priests,
" though Christian rivalry has stirred some of them to
emulation in educational and charitable enterprises of recent
years."

2. The abolition of idols and the substitution of the
Japanese language for the unintelligible Sanskrit and Chinese
in the ritual and scriptures.

3. The shedding of the pessimism which is charac-
teristic of the Indian faith, since "'pessimism is the creed
of a decaying nationality, ih the hour of adversity when the
world looks dark and life has no hope to offer us."

4. The reform of ethics, so as to "bring the ethical
system into harmony with present-day needs."

5. The abandonment of the many superstitions which
" the ignorant accept blindly and the educated laugh at."

Perhaps I may add to this Dr. Reischauer's comment
that " if Japanese Buddhism cannot lay hold on the Living
God without undergoing a radical change in its fundamentals,
it does not follow that Japanese Buddhists cannot fling 'away
their pessimism and lay hold on Him and so find satisfaction
for their hopes and aspirations." - 1 ' 2

1 A. K. Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, p. 327.

a Other books recommended are : . M. Anesaki, Japanese Mythology,
Boston, 1928 ; B. H. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, London, 1905 ; fi. H.
Gowen, An Outline History of Japan, New -York, 1927; W.. E. Griffis, The
Religions of Japan, New York, 1907 ; G. W. Knox, The Development of Religion
in Japan, New York, 1907 ; J. A. B. Scherer, The Romance of Japan, New
York, 1926. The' most authoritative work on Japanese Religion is Dr. M.
Anesaki's History of Japanese Religion, London, 1930. We have here not
only an adequate account of Shinto, and Buddhism, but also a, description of
Confucian influence, an account of the popular religious movements at the
end of the eighteenth century under two women, Kino (1756-1826) and
Miki (1798-1887), an account of the modern religions known a.sTenri-Kyo
and Konkokyo, and sympathetic reference to such Japanese Christian leaders
as Joseph Neesima, Paul Sawayama, and the still living Toyohiko Kagawa.

CHAPTER XXVII

Buddhism in Southern Asia

SO far our account of Buddhism has concerned itself
mainly with the extension of the faith in its Mahayana
form, and in the countries of Central and Eastern
Asia. But it must be remembered that what is generally,
and perhaps inaccurately, termed Southern Buddhism has
even more claim to be regarded as a genuine outgrowth
from the teaching of Gautama and that it passed beyond the
borders of India proper at an even earlier date than did the
Buddhism of the -North. There is a hint of allegory in the
fact that the Bo-tree under which Gautama sat has perished -
and yet, nevertheless, lives and flourishes in the shoot
transplanted into Ceylon. For the religion which, after a
thousand years of life in India, has there died, probably
beyond hope of revival, is still, through the zeal of the great
Buddhist Emperor, Acoka, a powerful influence in the lives
of millions and millions of people in the countries of Southern
Asia. It is now our task, therefore, to describe, with
necessary brevity, the fortunes of the faith in these
interesting lands.

The first result of Agoka's missionary work is to be
seen in Ceylon, the Lanka of the epics, supposedly inhabited
by demons of whom Havana is a specimen. These
" demons " probably are the original inhabitants of the
island, people such as the Veddas of to-day^, or Dravidians
who had invaded Ceylon at various epochs. '

It is quite possible that rumours of the preaching of
Buddhism had reached Ceylon even prior to the mission of
Agoka in 250 B.C., and that the envoys sent by King Tissa
to the court of the Mauryan really went to obtain definite
instruction in the faith. In any case,, Acoka immediately
despatched a mission under his son (or younger brother)
Mahendra (Mahinda), who, accompanied by a number of

400

B UDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA 40 1

monks, flew through the air (according to the legend) and
alighted on Mt. Mahintale, just when Tissa was drawn
forth from his capital at Anuradhapura by divine providence
to meet the emissaries. The preaching of the young prince
was so effective that the. ladies of the court at once demanded
a provision for nunneries as well as monasteries. Their
petition was granted by the sending of the princess Sang-
hamitra (Sanghamitta), who brought with her a shoot of
the Bo-tree (already referred to). This was planted and still
lives among the ruins of Anadhurapura, the oldest historical
tree in the world. . ' .

* Buddhism flourished in Ceylon from the first. Many
availed themselves, of the land grants of King Tissa to build
monasteries and dagobas. Images were made, gardens were
laid out and relics imported. In the fourth century was
brought the famous relic purporting to be the left canine
tooth of the Buddha, saved from the ashes after his cremation.
A special shrine was erected for it, but in the eighth century
it was removed to the new capital, Pollanaruva, and later
-still transferred to the Temple of the Holy Tooth at Candy.
Fa-hien, at the end of the fourth century, speaks of it as
having been carried about in procession. In 1560 it was
burned by order of the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa, but
a new tooth (miraculously, say the Singhalese) was
immediately forthcoming. Those who have seen it report
that it resembles the tooth of a crocodile rather than that
of a human being. -

For some centuries the fortunes of Singhalese Buddhism
remained set fair, but a period of stagnation supervened,
from which the religion was only rescued by a great revival
which took place in the twelfth century, under King
Parakrama Bahu II. Several centuries later came the
Portuguese, after them the Dutch, and later still the British,
who have been in possession of the island since 1796.
During this period^of foreign control Buddhism has some-
times fallen on evil days and at one time was so near
extinction as only to be saved by the arrival of ten Siamese
monks, who re-established the succession of the order.
Naturally, under foreign -rule, Buddhists could no longer
bask in tHe favour and under the patronage of kings. On
2C

402 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the other hand, however, many were driven by disaster to
a deeper loyalty, and the faith of Gautama is still the chief
religion of Ceylon. Yet the number of monks, which
Fa-hien reported to be 20,000, was at the census of 1901
only 7331 and it is probable that this number is diminishing.

The monkhood is largely recruited from children given
into the hands of the priests from an early year. Their
education may begin as early as the eighth year and the
novitiate is -undertaken at the age of eleven, when the
novice's hair is cut and his robes assumed. The novitiate is
spent in the service of the priests and in the study of the
sutras. Then, in the twentieth year, there is admission to
full monkhood, though, it must be remembered, the vows are
not lifelong and at any time may be cancelled. The monks
live in monasteries which contain, first of all, the -pansalas^
or huts, for the dwelling-place of the monks ; secondly, the
vihara, or temple, with its statues of the Buddha, standing,
sitting, or lying, its images of the disciples and even .of
some of the Brahmanic gods; lastly, the preaching-hall, an
adjunct to all the larger establishments.- In the court are.
the usual Buddhist features lotus-pond, bell, and generally
a Bo-tree. Ceylon contains a number of important and
historically interesting sanctuaries. The year of the monks
is generally divided into a period of nine months of preaching
and three months of retreat and study, the latter period
corresponding with the rainy season. Lay adhesion to
Buddhism is usual, but the layman is only Buddhist to the
extent of accepting the tenets of the faith and taking upon
himself periodical vows of a temporary character.

Though Singhalese Buddhism follows in the main the
teachings inculcated in the Pali literature of India, it is
much intermingled with dark and sinister forms of
demonolatry. The general verdict as to the effect of
Buddhism on the Singhalese is not favourable. Dr. T. W.
Rhys Davids sums up the matter as follows : " There is no
independence of thought in Ceylon Buddhism; and, as in
most cases where a pagan country has adopted a higher faith
from without, the latter has not had sufficient power to
eradicate the previous animism. But Buddhism has had a
great attraction for the better educated, and has led to

BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA 403

remarkable literary results. The nation as a whole has
undoubtedly suffered from the celibacy of many of the most
able and earnest; but, on the other hand, there is very little
crime, and, in certain important particulars, such as caste
and the position of woman, Ceylon is in advance of other
parts of our Indian Empire, with the single exception of
Burma, where the same causes have been at work and the
same disadvantages felt." i

BURMESE BUDDHISM. The introduction of Buddhism
into Burma took place under very uncertain circumstances.
The Singhalese chronicle, the Mahavamfa, is authority for
the statement that the first missionary was Buddhaghosha,
about A.D. 450. This saint came from Magadha, where he
had been converted from Brahmanism to Buddhism, to
Ceylon, where he engaged with zeal in the translation of
the Singhalese commentaries into Pali. Thence he is
supposed to have gone to Burma for the propagation of
his beliefs, jbut the tradition of this visit is generally dis-
credited by scholars. It is far more probable that Buddhism
filtered into Burma from Northern India, together with
other elements of Indian culture, and that the first Burmese
Buddhism was of the Mahayana school. One tradition is
explicit enough to declare that, following upon the Council
of Pataliputra, 250 B.C., two missionaries went from India
to the country of Suvarnabhumi (the Gold-country), sup-
posedly to be. identified with Burma. A^oka's missionaries
are said to have found an uncultured people, who were only
too glad to receive ideas from so civilized a land as India,
though they blended these ideas naturally enough with the
naga-worship, ^/-worship, and magical practices of which
their religion had heretofore consisted. The result was a
. syncretism of which we see more than occasional traces to
the present day.

At this early time the population of Burma consisted
of four main elements, the Shans in the north, Telaings (or
Mons) in the south, Arakanese in the west, and Burmese
in the centre. War between these elements was of frequent
occurrence and in these wars Buddhism often fared badly.
It was not till the reign of the great king Anawrahta, 1044-

1 Encycl&p&dia of Religion and Ethics, III.,ip. 334.

4 o 4 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

1077, that the conflict between Burmese and Telaings was
terminated, at least temporarily, by the establishment of
Pagan as the capital. The king also ensured the ascendancy
of the Hinayana and the use of the Pali scriptures. From
this time on to the destruction of Pagan, with its 9999
dagobas, several centuries later, Hinayana continued to
triumph and the devotion of the people knew no bounds.
" For two centuries," says Mr. G. E. Harvey, " Pagan
.had witnessed the spectacle of a whole population filled with
a passion for covering the earth's surface with pagodas,
and now she was perishing to the drone of prayer." 1

Several circumstances contributed to the decline of the
enthusiasm which had been awakened by Anawrahta's
" rape of the king and of the religious books " and his
victory over the earlier ariya (Aryan) priests. . One was
the invasion of Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century, and
another was the constant .warfare between Burma and other
parts of further India till the unification of the country under
the strong Toungoo dynasty in the sixteenth century, and
then on to the rise of the Alaungpaya dynasty from 1752
to the period of British annexation. During much of this
time the land was in a state of practical' anarchy, with periods
of tyranny and cruelty wellnigh beyond belief interposed.
If one laments the fact that Buddhism was unable to avert
the cruelty, it .may at least be said that the religion of
Gautama did something to ameliorate it. To quote Mr.
Harvey again: " The harshness of the rulers was mitigated
by the humanity of the monks: if the distressed mariner
wandered into a monastery, he was safe, for the monks
would bind up his wounds, feed him, clothe him, and send
him .as if in sanctuary with letters of commen4ation from
monastery to monastery till he reached Syriam, there to
await the chance of some passing ship." 2

Since Burma became part of the . British Empire
Buddhism has naturally lost some of its former prestige,
especially as there is no longer a king to appoint the chief
abbot, known as the Thatanabaing, but in other respects
Buddhism has gained, and has even to many become a

1 G. E. Harvey, History of Burma, p. 63.

2 G. E. Harvey, op. cit., p. 205-6.

BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA 405

i > _ _

symbol" of the lost nationality they regret. In general it
has entered deeply into the life of the people and has, with
this cheerful and contented folk, cast off much of the
pessimism so characteristic of the faith in India.

There are said to be as many as 75,000 monks in
Burma, but, as a matter of fact, every man in Burma is
admitted at least for a short time into the order, as a kind .
'of initiation into manhood. Since the monasteries are
schools, the boys will begin attendance at the age of eight
or nine and will continue to study the Burmese and Pali"
languages, the jafakas, and, in general, to get as adequate
a knowledge of the Tripitaka as possible till they "have
decided on a career. If the vocation is to be permanent,
the novice will take special vows at the age of twenty,
otherwise he returns to the world. The professed monk
puts on the yellow robe, has his head shaved, receives his
new name, and is given the utensils which are the monk's
sole possessions. The ceremony of ordination takes place
at a great festival held about the month of July. After
ordination the occupation of the monk consists of begging,
copying the sutras, teaching, and also (it must be said)
spending a considerable time in more or less e_difying gossip.
The.monk who has gone through ten Was^ or July festivals,
is known as a hpongyi (man of great renown) ; the abbot of
a monastery is a sayadaw, the head of a number "of
monasteries in- a district is $.gaung-douk, a kind of bishop ; and
the chief abbot of the whole* country is the thathanabaung^
who is elected by the monks, but must have his appointment
confirmed by the British Government.

Burmese monasteries and temples are very numerous,
so much so that.it has been estimated there are two .temples
for every village. The principal building, generally built
of teak, is called the kyoung, and is divided into two parts,
one serving as a dwelling-place for the monks and the other
as the image hall, containing images of the Buddha in the
three conventional attitudes of standing, sitting and lying
down for the entrance into Nibbana (Nirvana). Beside the
kyoung there is the thein^ or storied pagoda, used for various
purposes. Many of the shrines are reliquaries rather than
temples and correspond to the Indian chaitya. They were

4 o6 . A HISTORY OR RELIGION

built to secure merit for the builder and to afford shelter
for some supposed relic of the Buddha or his disciples. The
typical dagoba is a kind of four-sided pyramid, ^culminating
in a lotus-bud, of which the finial is a kind" of umbrella
known as the hti. Burma possesses many celebrated
dagobas, of wjiich the most famous are the Shwe Dagon at
Rangoon, the Shwe Maw Daw at Pegu, and the Shwe San
Daw at Prome. The old capital at Pagan is said to have"
contained 9999 of these sacred buildings and the ruins of
many of these still remain.

The question is often raised as to how far the religion
of Burma may still be called Buddhism, seeing that
obviously the worship ofnats is much more deeply entrenched
in the habits of the people than the following of the precepts
of Gautama. The nats are . variously explained, as the
spirits of the dead, or as Indian devas, Whose worship
antedates the introduction of Buddhism. Some of them are
.regarded as protecting the dagobas, much as the four heaven
kings of Indian origin protect the temples of China or
Japan. Most people show a disposition to propitiate the
natSy even where there is no actual belief in their existence,
following the principle of the legendary Englishwoman who
bowed to Satan because " civility costs nothing and you
never know what may happen." On this point Bishop
Bigandet (quoted by Hackmann) declares : " The Buddhism
of the people has but little or no part in their daily life.
In common life, from the day of birth to that of wedding,
or even of death, all the customs and formulae made use of
by the Burmese originate with demon-worship, and not
with Buddhism. If a misfortune befalls him, he attributes
it to the nat\ if he wishes to undertake an important matter,
he tries to enlist the favour of the nat. Even the monks
frequently give in to the influence of this strong undercurrent
of animistic religion which underlies their Buddhist faith." 1

In the Shan states the evidence for the persistence of
the primitive religion is still stronger than in Burma proper.
But Buddhism in Burma has not only retained elements
from the far-distant past,, but has also assimilated a con-
siderable amount through contact with the West. Some

1 H. Hackmann, Buddhism as a Religion, p. 148.

BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA 407

of this assimilation comes from the adhesion of Europeans
and other foreigners, who, in exchange for the retreat from
the challenge of life afforded by the shelter of a monastery,
have, unconsciously, contributed ideas from their own
cultural past. There has been also no small influence as
a result of the more conscious imitation of Western ways
for which Burmese trained abroad must be held responsible.
Dr. Saunders illustrates this by quoting such parodies of
Christian poetry as :

Glory, laud and honour
To our Lord and King,
This through endless ages
Men and devas sing.
or

Buddha loves me, this I know,
For the Scriptures .tell me so. 1

Various estimates have been made of the effect of
Buddhism on the life and character of the Burmese. In
general it has left them cheerful and contented, has given
a much higher place to women than in most Oriental
countries, and in the judgement of one competent to judge,
is " harmless and antique, kindly and considerate." It has
quite obviously not stuck too closely to the principles of
the founder, for, though Burmese Buddhism is of the
Hinayana type, there is much looking for the next .Buddha,
Mettaya (Maitreya), " The Loving One."

There has also been observable considerable laxity in
the matter of begging, while the desire for money (a not
exclusively Oriental failing) seems on the increase. A
Government Report for 1912 reads: " The moral sense of
the people is diminishing with a slackening of religious
observances. With the decay of ancient beliefs the Buddhist
religion is losing its moral sanction as an .inspiring force in
the lives of its adherents. Drunkenness, gambling, drug-
taking and vicious habits, increasing as they all are, tend
to produce a weakening x>f self-control and a loss of self-
respect which in favouring circumstances easily create the
criminal."

Some reform movements have been initiated, one of

1 K. J. Saunders, Buddhism in the Modern World.

4 o8 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

them by a Scotsman, Mr. Allan B. MacGregor, who was
converted to Buddhism 'from Roman Catholicism nearly
thirty years ago. Another movement of the sort is the
Chulla-gandi, which has endeavoured to bring about greater
severity of discipline in the monasteries, but has not
succeeded in disarming the hostility of the Maha-gandi.
.As to the part taken by European and American converts
in the promotion of Burmese Buddhism, Dr. K. J. Saunders
has something interesting and suggestive to say in an
Appendix to his Buddhism in the Modern World?-

SIAMESE BUDDHISM: Siam is the " one officially
Buddhist state " of Asia, but we know very little of the
circumstances under which Buddhism Was introduced. As
the Siamese are a Mongol people, and 'closely related both
geographically and ethnically to the Chinese, it may well
be suspected that Buddhist missionaries from China entered
Siam at an early date. One tradition has it that the faith
came by way of Cambodia about A.D. 422* On the other
hand, the contacts with India were early and constant, and
the oldest ruins in the land show plenty of signs of Brah-
manism, signs which diminish in number as we approach
modern times. The first Buddhism was of the Mahayana
type, but when the Siamese people pushed their way, in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, into Burmah, they
very soon, from, con tact with the Telaing folk of the south,
accepted the teachings of the Hinayana. In 1260 the king
was so anxious to validate the succession of the order that
he sent to Ceylon for assistance and an abbot was sent back
who was able to link up the line of the order in Siam with
that descended from the illustrious Mahendra. At the
same time relics were imported and a branch of the Bo-tree.
After this Siamese Buddhism so flourished that in 1750
the Singhalese monks returned the compliment which had
been paid them by sending to Siam for clergy to strengthen
their own organization. The new dynasty which was
inaugurated in 1782 showed great enthusiasm for the cause
of religion-^an enthusiasm which has been fully maintained
to the present day. .

Since Siam has been, until recently, an absolute monarchy

1 K. J. Saunders, Buddhism in the Modern World, Appendix I.

BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA 409

it may well be understood that the support of religion by
the king gives Buddhism great prestige. The king is not
the high priest, or chief abbot, but by his nomination of the
chief abbot, called sangkharat (Skt., sangharaja\ he wields
great influence. One of the king's chief duties is to attend
the feast held between the eleventh and twelfth months, for
the purpose of bestowing upon the monks the gift of " holy
clothes." On this occasion all the people are supposed to
make patched garments monks are not supposed to wear
any other but the king's gift naturally throws all the rest
into the shade. The monarch comes in his royal barge
with great bales of cloth which he presents, after he has
made his threefold obeisance to the image of the Buddha,
the sacred books, and the monkish assembly, and after he
has taken the five vows of the Buddhist layman, together
with the three vows special for the day. This homage
rendered by the king to the representatives of religion gives
the monks power as well as prestige, and it cannot be
complained that the power conferred has been to any extent
abused.

The monks, who are known as talapoins, numbered in
1924 i I4j349, of whom only i ro came from other countries.
In spite of their numbers they are held generally in high
regard. Dr. Pratt tells us that their ten vows include the
wearing of the yellow robe, the begging day. by day of food
just sufficient for the day's heeds, charity towards the poor,
refraining from scolding, the paying of courteous attention
to those who address them, constant self-reminders as to
the impermancy of living things, recollectedness as to the
states of future retribution, earnest effort for self-improve-
ment in virtue, frequent meditation in some lonely place,
and the pursuit of learning. 1

The temples in Siam are known as wats and are numerous
and splendid, especially in the capital, Bangkok. The
largest of these houses as many as 250 monks. Four kinds
of wats are recognized, built : respectively through the
generosity of kings, princes, nobles and the common people.
Within the wats are images of the Buddha, almost exclusively
in the familiar seated or standing attitude. One reclining

1 J. B. Pratt, The Pilgrimage of Buddhism, p. 163.

4 io. A BISTORT OF RELIGION

figure, however, about 1 60 feet in length, is to be found in
one of the Bangkok temples.

From early times Siamese Buddhism has been devoted
to literature. In the eighteenth century, under King Phaya
Tak, 1767-80, there was compiled in Siamese a com-
mentary on the Pali Canon, known as Trai Phum, the
Three Places, dealing first of all with the universe in general,
then of the heavens and their inhabitants, and lastly of the
hells. A good deal was accomplished in the way of printing
the Buddhist classics in the nineteenth century by the king
Chulalongkdrn and his father, and sumptuous copies of the
Pali Tipitaka were made, some of which were presented to
Western universities and libraries. Under Prince Damrong
the Vajiranana National Library has continued this good
work and carried out research of considerable extent and
value.

The influence of Buddhism on Siam generally has been
good, though much superstition and ignorance naturally
underlie the tolerant and undogmatic faith of this singularly
attractive people. The prevalent Hinayana is much inter-
mingled with belief in Maitreya as the coming Buddha,
there is little stress placed on the Four Noble Truths, Heavens
and Hells are more in the minds of men than the longing
for Nibban (Nirvana). Yet - more than one scholar has
approved Dr. Pratt's respect for " the religion of that sunny
land." "Its marble wats, its golden shrines, and much more
of the simple steady faith of the laity, the training given
them by the monks in the fundamentals of morality, the
impress, still so deep, of the Founder's limitless, devotion
these rather than the undoubted defects of his teaching, fill
one's thoughts as one embarks once more upon the tawny
Menam and sails slowly downstream, past the jungle vistas,
past the native huts, past the last little wat on the banks of
the widening river, out into the gulf, until Siam has become
again merely a thin green line between sky and sea, and
the ship turns with its steady course towards Cambodia." *

BUDDHISM IN CAMBODIA. Cambodia is a remnant' of
the most extensive Khmer Empire, to which we owe the
dead splendours of the Angkor wats. Situated as it is

1 J. B. Pratt, The Pilgyimage of Buddhism, p. 187.

BUDDHISM IN SOUTHERN ASIA 411

geographically we naturally find, together with the remains
of the ancient Brahmanism, much that shows the slight
distance which separates us from China. Indian influence
entered very early and has remained to the present day as
a kind of (Jaivistic colouring observable in the architecture
and decorative art as well as in the religion. Also, naturally,
there are remains of the primitive worship of the neaca-ta,
or spirits of the land, such as correspond with the nats of
Burmah.

Buddhism, in the Mahayanist form, was introduced to
Cambodia somewhere between the fifth and seventh cen-
turies, but had a long struggle with the Qaivism which
represented the official cult of the Khmers, before its
triumph in the thirteenth and following centuries. The
Chinese traveller Chon To-kuan witnesses to the fact. that
in 1296 the Hinayana had completely superseded the
teachings of the other school. From that time Cambodia
has remained enthusiastically Buddhist, devoted to the Pali
Canon and the Singhalese type of Hinayana. When Cam-
bodia became French in 1862 the conquerors allowed the
king to remain as the temporal head of the Church and by
him the two " archbishops " of the " right " and the "'left "
are nominated who divide the oversight of religious matters
in the kingdom between them.

The monks are a highly privileged class, on the whole
less learned and intelligent than their fellow-clergy in Siam,
but rendering service in the education of the young, in
performance of the services at the wats, and in expounding
the Law several times in the month. Boys begin their
education at the temples at a very early age, becoming
" disciples " by a kind of confirmation rite at the age of
twelve, and (if they choose) full-fledged monks at the age
of twenty-one. The monks are exempt from military duty,
taxes and public works, and subsist on the alms of the
faithful. There is also an order of female devotees, or nuns,
drawn partly from the ranks of widows and partly from those
who have been vowed to religion from childhood.

The watt, usually erected in the middle of a Wooded
park, are familiar objects throughout the land, though not
on so magnificent a scale as in Burmah or Siam. The kings

412 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

have vied with one another and with Siam in the building of
these, but -have not greatly succeeded. The images in the
wats are generally of the seated or standing Buddha, but
.occasionally an image of the Chinese Mi-lei-fo. (Maitreya)
obtrudes itself and reminds one of the nearness of the Middle
Kingdom. -

The Cambodians are practically all Buddhists, but know
little of Buddhist doctrine. As in Siam, the Heavens and
Hells are much more strongly stressed than Nirvana. In
concluding this chapter I cannot do better than give a
summary of Southern Buddhism as a whole by Dr. K. J.
Saunders: " Such, in bare outline, is Southern Buddhism-
in its origin a stoical agnosticism which ignored the gods
and bade men rely upon themselves in following the paths
of goodness that lead to happiness. Because it thus ignored
the deepest instincts of humanity, first by turning the
thoughts of men away from God', and again by glorifying
celibacy, these instincts, refusing to be snubbed, have taken
a revenge, so that to-day Buddhism survives, largely because
of the teachings.it has been compelled to adopt in the process
of moulding itself * nearer to the heart's desire.' This may
be illustrated in two ways. Nibbana at best, originally an
ideal of negative, solitary bliss, has been replaced by an
ideal of social life hereafter. Moreover, faith in self-mastery
has given place to prayers for help, or, among the most
conservative, to the belief that there is a store of merit
gained by the sacrificial lives qf the Buddhas throughout the
ages, which may be tapped by the faithful. Buddhism has
.thus passed through an interesting history of adjustment.
It is important for the student of religion to give close
attention to this history, one of the most amazing and.
fascinating chapters in human thought." l "

1 K. J. Saunders, Buddhism in the Modern World, pp. 41 fi.

BOOK V

THROUGH JUDAISM TO THE CHRIST

Introduction

IN this last and I fear lengthy portion of the volume
it is my purpose to show how all the different elements
of a potentially universal religion are gathered together
into one somewhat narrow stream, thence to broaden out
for the uses of all. the world, or (to change the metaphor)
brought to a single focal point of revelation, in order that
from this point the gains of all prior history, as exemplified
in one Divine-Human figure, accepted as the heir "of the
ages, are made available for all mankind.

The four sections of this concluding book may be
described as follows :

I. The story of the evolution of Judaism r-the middle

term in the history of religion.

II. The rise and extension of Christianity up to the
preaching, of Islam.

III. The story of Islam as a Judseo-Christian develop-

ment.

IV. The history of Christianity from the rise of Islam

to the present day.

Several points may be preliminarily noted to make clear
my general attitude. First, though I believe that the witness
of Judaism was practically complete with the opening of the
Christian era, I hold it important to follow the continued
bearing of that witness not without the Cross through
the troubled centuries which have passed since the Fall
of Jerusalem.

Secondly, I conceive of Islam not so much as a separate
religious system as a reform movement in Arabia- strongly
influenced by Jewish and Christian ideas and maintaining
the character of its origins down to the present day.

Thirdly, since man is a " billion-year plant " rather than

413

4H .-A HISTORY OF RELIGION

a " century plant," I do not conceive of the Christian story
as much more than begun. Two thousand years, I judge,
make but a brief period in which to realize ideals which
have been slowly dawning for the spirit of man through the
countless ages of the past. When as much time has elapsed
for the reproduction of the Christ as was deemed necessary
for the production of the Christ, then we may find excuse
for impatience with the slow grinding of the mills of God.
But not till then.

SECTION I
JUDAISM, THE MIDDLE TERM

CHAPTER XXVIII
The Evolution of Hebrew Religion

RENAN once declared that only three ancient histories
were really deserving of the study of intelligent men,
namely, those of Greece, Rome, and the people of
Israel. The statement to-day hardly carries conviction, for
several reasons. The peoples referred to might even find
themselves excluded from the field of ancient history
altogether, when their story is put alongside that of nations
now known to be immensely more venerable. But from the
point of view of religious history the story of the Jew cannot
be dismissed so cavalierly, even though we may not attach
.the importance -to the subject assigned it by the Great
Frederick's chaplain who, asked by his master in a hurry
for a proof of Christianity, responded, equally in a hurry,
" The Jews, Your Majesty, the Jews ! "

We have assumed throughout the preceding pages that
the record of revelation given to the Jew in the Old Testa-
ment is but one Old Testament among many designed to
prepare men's minds for the dawning of the new spiritual
day. This is a point of view essential to the modern
exposition of Christianity as the universal religion. Never-
theless, the assertion needs qualification. Even if the
Hebrew Scriptures did not exist to be their own witness, it
would be difficult to overlook the special role the Jew has
played in establishing a liaison between the old and the new.
The reasons for ascribing such a distinction to Judaism
using the term for the present of the religion of Israel in
all its stages may be assembled as follows:

i. Because the human lineage of Christ is traced for
us, in the main, from the seed of Abraham. I say "-In the

415

4 1 6 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

main," since St. Matthew, most Jewish of the evangelists,
takes pains to reveal to us the intrusion of the foreign element
in the case of the three named ancestresses 'of Christ, Rahab,
the Canaanitess; Ruth, the Moabitess; and Bathsheba, the
wife of Uriah the Hittite. This strong statement is made
for the definite purpose of proclaiming Christ as the heir
of all humanity, with its sins and frailties as well as its racial
differences. It is of no small significance that of the four
women mentioned in the legal genealogy of Jesus three were
alien in blood and three bore a blot on their character.
Nevertheless, the genealogy is a Jewish one, intended to
mark Christ as the Son of David. Not all the Nordic zeal
of a Houston Chamberlain is ingenious enough to prove
the contrary.

2. The geographical and historical contacts of. the
people of Israel made them the inevitable recipients, carriers
and distributors of ideas from, and between-, the great
world-powers of the pre-Christian epoch. Like a full
stream . fed by many tributaries, Judaism bore the waters
collected from these many sources towards the ocean of
their goal. " The giant forms of empire," with which
Israel was brought into contact, were indeed " on their way
to ruin." Yet, ere they fell, they yielded up gifts of the
spirit which had been their dower, such as we have referred
to in earlier chapters, to the Jews whom they despised and
on whom they had trampled. All these manifold con-
tributions, which some have even feared to acknowledge,
lest they should seem thereby to be doing violence to the
unique claims of Christianity, from the creation myths of
Babylon to the angelology of Persia, or to the philosophies
of Greece, must, on the contrary, be regarded as essential
to the completeness of the Hebrew witness. The Jew was
a guest, or a captive, in every land, in order that he might
become the link between what had already been revealed
and the new things yet to appear.

3. What Israel was able to receive from the -Gentile
world what, by reason of her geographical position in that
corridor between the continents along which ran the chariot-
ruts of history, she was able to gather she was able, by
reason of the same conditions, to distribute. As we shall

EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION 417

see later, she possessed a centripetal .force which compelled
her to concentrate and retain; she possessed also a centri-
fugal force which compelled her to distribute. In her little
hill-fort of a capital, Jerusalem, or " Security-burg," loyalty
to the talent, which had been committed to her became
a passion wellnigh a fanaticism. In her other capital,
Alexandria, she developed a sense of responsibility for
diffusion and became, almost in spite of herself, the great
apostle to the Gentiles.

While stressing this important point as to the uniqueness
of Judaism, in preparation for the propagation of a universal
faith, we must, nevertheless, be careful to remember in the
history of religion Israel was a kind of tiaison-oSicer with
a responsibility at either end of the story. At the point
where the developed product of the faith of Abraham, as
an accumulated fund of trust and .experience, is poured into
the life of the New Dispensation, there are links which have
not failed to obtain more or less general recognition. The
nationality of the first apostles, the use of the Hebrew
Scriptures, the emphasis put on the fulfilment of the Jewish
sacrificial system, the dramatic passing of the priesthood
and the Temple order all this has made the fact inescapable,
" In Novo Testamento patet quod in Veteri Testamento
latet." ',

But the liaison is equally significant at the other end,
where the religion of Israel is first beginning to differentiate
itself from the religion of the contiguous Semitic tribes. At
this point, too, we have a contact, less recognized, but
providentially ordered and equally suggestive.

Let us try, at the outset of this brief sketch of the
development of Hebrew religion, to link the story with that
of the primitive religions we discussed earlier in this volume..
Noting the salient points of this relation we shall see how
the truths glimpsed in primitive religion were changed, as by
a subtle alchemy, in the laboratory of Jewish experience, to '
become serviceable" at last for the religion of all mankind.

It is a. very distinct gain to religion that the. supposed,
separateness of early. Israel in- face, language,: and . religion^
can no longer be defended. The older (and now discarded)
idea was in part due to the chauvinistic pride .of the Jew, in

4 i B - A HiSTOkr OF RELIGION

T , . -_ _ . , .

part to our own traditional misconception of what was to
be understood by the term " chosen people." Now .that
archaeology, philology and comparative religion have all
alike thrown light upon the subject, we see how little in the
Hebrew Scriptures themselves the traditional view had in
its favour. It is much more significant to recognize with
Isaiah 1 that the Hebrew language was "a tongue of
Canaan," an ordinary Semitic dialect, than to think of it as
the primal, sacred language spoken by our first parents in
Eden. It is much more significant, again, to appreciate the
brutal force of the prophet Ezekiel 2 when he reminded the
Jew: "Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of the
Canaanite ; the Amorite was thy father and thy mother was
an Hittite," than to think of the Jew as unrelated to the
ethnic world in which he moved. So in religion we must
bear in mind that the. quality of Hebrew faith and its value
for the purposes of the divine plan are 'in no wise conditioned
by the advanced character of its theology and the supposed
superiority of its morals. .

If we enquire as to the true reasons for the special place
Judaism was destined to occupy in the field of religious
history, even as Greece was assigned her special place in
the field of art, and Rome in the field of law, we find the
answer in two main facts. The first is that a consistently
spiritual outlook, in spite of the defection of the many, kept
the essential soul of the nation watching for God "more
than they that watch for the morning." The story of Jacob
is the historical illustration of how the Jew, carnal and
material as he might be in appetite, trickster and mean as
he might be by inclination, nevertheless, struggles on, until
by wrestling, as it were with God Himself, he wins his new
nature and the new name which is its sign and reward. The
second is in that intensity of moral earnestness, amounting
sometimes to a fanaticism, such as insisted on the turning
of vision into conduct.

. Of course, it is obvious that not all Israel was ".of
Israel*", To quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, there was an
Israel which produced the " old clo* man " and. there was

1 Isaiah xix. 18 * Ezekiel xvi. 3.

EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION 419

an Israel which produced the Evangelical Prophet. Zang-
will says:

Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, the Lord, our God, is One,
But we, Jehovah, His people, are dual and so undone.

Yet, after all, it was the soul of the nation which determined
its religious experience, and though " the remnant "
dwindled and dwindled till "the. Servant of Yahweh "
became an ideal Person rather than the nation as a whole,
.yet of that ideal it was still true :

Wheresoe'er a Jew dwelt there dwelt Truth,
And wheresoe'er a Jew was there was Light,
And wheresoe'er a Jew went there went Love.

Having recalled to ourselves, then, the fact that the Jew
was called upon to be an apostle, exactly as the first Christian
apostles were called by the Lake of Galilee, not for what
they knew, or were, or could do, but because of what they
were capable of becoming, and knowing, and achieving, let
us see what that same Jew did with the primitive conceptions
of religion he received as the inheritance of his. race and
through the circumstances of his environment.

The primitive, or patriarchal, stage of Hebrew religion
extends from the time that Abraham and his descendants
first appear on the field of history to the religious revolution
under Moses. Though the patriarchal narratives are, in
their present form, the product of a later age, and have
read into them the ideas and manners of that later age, they
yet reflect more or less accurately the beliefs and practices
of the primitive stage. So we gather thence a conception of
God not far removed from the animistic. The plural name
Elohim suggests a vaguely personalized aggregation of
" powers," which must be recognized and propitiated at all
likely places, 'such .as springs, rocks and trees. We gather
also at this time a primitive morality such as makes it credible
that God may on occasion demand the actual slaying of a
son in sacrifice; lying is not, highly reprehensible when a
foreigner is the victim; and there is little in the way of
injury which it is unlawful to inflict upon the alien. There
is also revealed a primitive conception of society as tribal.
For all the purposes of social morality society is confined to

420 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the. clan .or family. Intertribal morality is unknown and
even " the stranger within thy gates " is accepted only
when, separated from his own kin, he comes to throw
himself upon the hospitality of the camp. There is, "once
again, a primitive conception of human destiny, the idea of
a future life which is simply the passing of the disembodied
ghost into the underworld of the grave. As in the case
of the pagan Semites, the life beyond the present was. but
the reunion of the spirit with the spirits of ancestors in some
dim, shadowy simulacrum of life beneath the soil. It was
from such beliefs and such attitudes of mind that the moral
earnestness and spiritual vision of the potential " Servant"
illustrated so wonderfully in the faith of Abraham and his
seed broke the way towards the great revolutionary step
which marks the transition from the first to the second stage
of Hebrew religion. .

The national period begins with the appearance and
leadership (under God) of the great law-giver, Moses.
Here, as so often in the history of religion, personality plays
its significant part. In its every incident, while the sub-
ordination of Moses to the great " head of the army " is
clearly acknowledged, we get the sense of a great personality
assisting a laggard people through the wilderness, a true
shepherd who feels himself charged with leading a foolish
and reluctant flock to their -proper goal.

Nevertheless, there were other elements in the situation
which were to produce their fruit in due season. Just as
Abraham's experience in the city-states of the Euphrates
Valley, though it provoked revulsion against the materialism
of the Babylonian, transmitted seeds of finer things which
were presently to germinate and flourish, so the experience
of Israel in Egypt, though its bitterness of bondage brought
revolt against the tyranny of the Pharaohs, absorbed ideas
which later contacts were to make abundantly fruitful.
Furthermore, the henotheism of Midian, with its mpre-
personally conceived deity of storm and war, Yahweh^
'introduced a. new element, in to the religion of Israel, or at
least "re-emphasized- one which had hitherto been vague
and local. . .-. ;.'--..--. : .- . : :

:. .The recognition by. the people, through the teaching of

EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION 421

Moses, that they had been adopted by a god to whom they
were not akin, defective as the conception will appear to
modern theology, marked an immense advance beyond the
worship of the Elohim. There was about Yahweh, en-
throned murkily on Sinai, something more personal, more
anthropomorphic, at once more passionate and more tenderly
concerned, than anything they had hitherto conceived in
deity. To be taken up by Yahweh, led and sustained,
championed and fought for, even punished and afflicted,
brought about an entirely new sense of the relation between
God and mankind. To return to Canaan behind the
standard of such a one was the very stimulus to heroic
endeavour they needed to lift them to a sterner conception
of moral values. For this God was not merely a mighty
God; he was also a "holy" God. And just because he
was so holy, they too must be dedicated to Him and wage
a holy war against the idolatrous naturalism of the agri-
cultural tribes, whose fertility cults they now perceived to
be, in the light of their desert experience, filthy and abomin-
able. In brief, the word " holiness " was in process of
taking on a new and more transcendent meaning. Can we
wonder that this great adventure, in which Yahweh left the
clouds and darkness of His dwelling-place on Sinai to
march before the people till they were able to give Him a
new abiding. place on Zion, assumes an aspect of enormous
importance for the future of religion ? .

The national period was not destined to be of long
duration. It was only in the lull that followed the decline
of the Babylonian Empire, the withdrawal of Egypt and
the Hittites alike, after the dubious victory of Rameses II.
at Kadesh, .and which preceded the rise of the Assyrians,
that the territorial nationality of Israel was politically
possible. Nevertheless, the period lasted long enough to
accomplish what it was providentially prepared to achieve.
For a while, ua.der the conditions of the new life, it seemed
a struggle to the death, a struggle between the nomad and
the settled folk, between Yahweh and the male and female
fertility gods, the Baalim and Ashtaroth, between moral
ideals- and the licentious rites which, along the lines, of
imitative magic, were supposed to stimulate the reproductive

4 22 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

powers of the soil. In this struggle the general tendency
of the masses and their rulers was to assimilate themselves
in belief and practice to the older habits of the land. But
the vital force of religion, what one may call " the law of
vital procedure," that " tendency towards perfection " by
which life seems to direct itself towards better things,
shows itself in the rise of the prophetic order. Few more
striking illustrations of evolution . in a religious organism
are to-be found than the way in which the shaman^ or
medicine man, is enabled to lend himself to divine uses,
until -he becomes the spokesman for God of the highest
religious truths. Beginning as the mere clairvoyant minister
to the secular necessities of a village community, uncouthly-
clad, eccentric in conduct, emotionally controlled and
affected by music, used as a finder of lost cattle and the
like, 1 we see the prophet in Israel gradually transformed,
through right spiritual attitude and intensity of moral
earnestness, into the prophet as we see him in the pages of
Isaiah. Thenceforth there is no great crisis in Hebrew
history, to the beginning of the Christian era, which is
without its prophetic interpretation, an interpretation,
moreover, which has significance for all ages and for all
mankind.

From the struggle between the entrenched forces of the
older naturalism and the new Yahwism we eome to the
interpretation of the Assyrian menace of the eighth cen-
tury B.C., which the prophets were the first to perceive and
the first to understand. Amos, the wool-grower of Tekoa,
brought into contact with" world politics in the cities to
which he took his wool, and brooding over those politics
in his pastures and among his fig-trees, becomes convinced
of ah overruling Power, to whom all the nations were
subject, about to break in upon the fancied security of
Israel in a storm of judgement. Hosea, the poet-prophet of
Galilee, out of his experience of love and grief, adds to the
announcement of judgement the proclamation of divine love
which uses judgement as an educative discipline to purify
and redeem. Isaiah and Micah btax their witness in the
southern kingdom, shaken as that kingdom is by the

1 See i Samuel ix. 6 ff. ; x. 5 fi.

EVOLUTION OF. HEBREW RELIGION 423

downfall of the northern capital. Isaiah stresses the assur-
ance of that divine presence which makes Jerusalem safe,
even amid the confident truculence of the hitherto victorious
foe. Micah, in the light of that same passage of the Assyrian
through the land, is concerned with the need of social
penitence and the revival of faith. Then appears Zephaniah,
scenting from afar the terror of the Scythian and pro-
claiming the near advent of Yahweh's "Day," a pro-
clamation which coloured the visions of apocalypse for
.ages to come. Nahum raises his voice in taunt-songs, at
once hailing and anticipating the downfall of the " bloody
city," Nineveh, which had so .'long tyrannized over the
.surrounding States. Then a new step for prophecy
Habakkuk, " the first sceptic in Israel," ascends his lonely
watch-tower to fight out the battle of faith, even when
truth seemed slain in the streets. Suppose, he asks, Isaiah's
optimism to be ill-founded, and the assault of the Chaldean
to 'succeed where the Assyrian had failed, what then must
be the relation of the- soul to God? And the prophet
wrings out of hostile circumstance the sublime affirmation
such as strengthened religion for all time to come that
the life of the just man was still bound up with fidelity to
Yahweh. 1

By this time the period of territorial nationality, with
its national religion now beginning to be discredited as
a religious " pattern " is drawing to a close. Much has
been accomplished since Moses accepted his mission. A
more personal and a more ethical conception of God has
been proclaimed; a higher morality, and one more con-
sonant with the character of. "a holy God," has been
preached and practised; there has been a deliberate re-
nunciation of the primitive traffic in necromancy and a
refusal to look beyond the grave, for 'the time being, for
signs of the divine government and the divine favour;
and there has been a strengthened sense of the nation's
raison d'etre as an instrument in God's hands for the working
of His will.

But these truths had now served their purpose and were
begging to be regarded as outworn. Already Amos had

1 Ilabakkuk ii. .

4 2 4 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

heralded a larger conception of God and a larger con-
ception of human society than Yahwism made possible.
For a "time we watch the breaking down of the old philosophy.
Two great prophets found themselves doomed to look upon
and explain to a depressed age the calamity which was all
too obviously imminent.. Jeremiah, in the unpopular rdle
of one who knew the captivity to be inevitable, had to
-vindicate faith in God in a time of ruinous catastrophe, and
to be himself an illustration of that faith. Ezekiel, among
the first band of captives by the canal Ghebar, far off from
the scene of the fatal 'denouement^ had to endure, for himself
and others, the shock and the reverberation of Jerusalem's
fall, and thenceforward to brace himself to the vision and .
task of reconstruction.

It is in this time of reconstruction that we find the
religion of Israel passing from nationalism to international-
ism, from henotheisnxto monotheism. Following -upon the
capture of Babylon by Cyrus, who seemed to the Jew a
true " Messiah," the " Evangelical Prophet " appears,
singing the return of the " remnant " in immortal poetry,
making monotheism secure for all the ages to come, and
proclaiming, as no other human voice has done, the hearten-
ing mission to which the Servant People had been called in
the providence of God. It is true that after the -Return
sordid years elapsed, years of disillusion and disappointment.
But, while some, with eyes upon the past, asked whether
any revival of nationalism, with the restoration -of David's
line, were possible, others were straining their eyes to behold
in Israel's mission some grander end than had yet been
dreamed of. So the old man Haggai appears, to proclaim
the future glories of Judaism in her ministry to the world,
and the young man Zechariah, in a series of striking visions,
to reassure his people as to the validity of the worship and
witness of Hebrew religion.

In truth, the double mission of Judaism was beginning
to be made clear: first, the mission to condense, concentrate,
hold and defend to the very death what was essential;
secondly, the mission to distribute and transmit, even to
the dissolution of what had been provisional, the message
which summed up the religious experience of the race.

EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION 425

The centripetal aspect of this mission has given us the
Law/ the Temple, the Priesthood, the Sacrificial system.
It provided that wonderful pentagonal idea of Holiness, as
. represented in the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement, in
which the holiness of all Mankind was represented by the
. High Priest, the holiness of all Time by the symbolism of the
Day itself, the holiness of all Space by the symbolism of the
Holy of Holies, the holiness of all Matter by the symbolism
of the sacrificial Blood, and the holiness of all Acts by the
sprinkling of the blood upon the Mercy-seat. It was as
though the entire religious system of the Jew was an
intensification by specialized emphasis in the five regions
of Person, . Time, Space, Matter and Act, such as might
enable the conception to flow back upon the world with
redemptive power. Thus all men might become High
Priests, all days time in which God and Man might meet,
all space filled with the glory of God, -even the bells upon
the horses become consecrate to God, and every act reckoned
as sacrificial service at the altar of God. The centrifugal
aspect of the mission of Judaism is thus _ seen to spring out
of the significance of the centripetal. As there was a
mission to conserve and defend, 'so there was a mission to
disperse and evangelize. The nationality which is so
passionately defended in the book of Esther the Jew must
be prepared to cast into the crucible in order that books
like Ruth and 'Jo nah may .become possible- books in which
place is found for the Gentile in the manifest purpose of God.
Hence there opens for Judaism a new era in which the
chosen people is no longer the little, pent-up, struggling
nation, . striving to maintain precarious foothold on its
narrow isthmus between Asia and Africa, but rather an
influence of world-wide significance, spreading out from
Alexandria as well as from Jerusalem, at once receiving and
distributing the treasures she had accumulated in the days
of her obscurity. Of what she had received we have already
spoken in the chapters on the religion of peoples in historical
contact with the^Jew. What she was inspired to contribute
must be summed up in a few paragraphs. As the prophet
had been- moved to touch the moral conscience of mankind,
and as the priest had been led to organize ritually the

426 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

symbolism of religion, so now the sage was employed to be
the instrument for establishing and maintaining touch with
the wisdom of the nations and to address these nations in
a tongue easy for them to understand. So, too, came the
new language of Israel to the world in the Greek (koine]
into which the sacred Scriptures were translated. It is, of
course, merely one among the many evidences of the
appearance of that " fulness of time " when it was the part
of the Jew, by the sacrifice of himself, to dim the torch
of his own national life, in order to pass on a brighter light
to the Gentile world. .

Ere, however, we reach this point, it is needful to note
that the two more or less contemporary aspects of Jewish
religion, the one with its centre at Jerusalem, the other at
Alexandria, contradictory as they sometimes seem in their
literature and their attitude to life, were yet working together
towards giving to the world another gift of transcendent
import for the cause' of the world's religion. This is the
new sense of the largeness of life.- Both the sage at
Alexandria and the martyr at Jerusalem, under stress of the
persecution of Antiochus, had come to recognize the falsity
of the old philosophy which made all divine favour, to
nation" or individual, measurable by the degree of material
prosperity enjoyed. It was now necessary to transcend this
philosophy or the Deuteronomic Code, as it applied to the
nation, and the doctrine of Ezekiel, a i s it applied to the
individual, that justice was meted out by the divine Judge
invariably within the limits of three score mortal years.' The .
problem was faced by some of the Psalmists (cf. 73) and in
the book of Job, and, while no certain conclusion was
possible for the Old Testament- mind, light appeared from
two directions. On the one hand, Job's demand for a God
akin to himself in sympathy and in a common sense of
right and wrong became the link which made all earlier
anthropomorphic elements of religion predictive of the
Incarnation. And, on. the other hand, the sense of the
divine kinship made credible the sharing of the divine life
beyond the grave, and gathered up all the intuitions of
primitive men, as preserved in various forms of spiritism
and necromancy intuitions which, as we have seen, were

. . EVOLUTION OF. HEBREW RELIGION 427

suppressed by Yahwism as, by themselves, morally fruitless
into one great conviction as to a quality of life which it
would be good to enjoy for evermore.

Under the stimulus of hopes such as these it was possible
for the Jew, out of the very furnace of his affliction, to see,
through the fervid eyes of the-apocalyptist, the triumph of
that kingdom which was at once Theophany and Theodicy,
the world-wide rule of righteousness and of a righteous God,
in partnership and kinship with humanity.

In such a development as we have thus briefly sketched,

what are the special elements of religious truth which

Judaism has gathered out of the chaotic beliefs and practices

'of primitive men to lay at the feet of a world awaiting the

fuller revelation of God ? -.

1. There is clear advance made towards an adequate
conception of God. We see the tribal idea of God, not
far removed from animism, displaced by the more anthropo-
morphically conceived Yahweh, war-god and champion of
tribes now welded ^into nationality. Satisfaction with a
national divinity eventually gives way before the larger
vision of a God who has been concerned with the exodus
of the Philistines from Caphtor as well as with that of
Israel from Egypt. 1 From Amos onward this feeling grows,
until the henotheism of the national stage is superseded by
the genuine monotheism of the " Second Isaiah," the
proclamation of -a God whose dominion is universal and
absolute, and beside whom is no other.

2. There is a corresponding development of the con-
ception of the Church or Society. In the beginning the
elect element was the tribe alone, and outside was a humanity
always alien and generally hostile. The necessities of
defence against the tribes of Canaan, and of loyalty to
Yahweh who had adopted them as His people, enabled- the
people of Israel to create the monarchy, centralized at
Jerusalem-, and to maintain its integrity until its peculiar
task had been accomplished. The patriotism .thus engen-
dered furnished the world with a still living symbolism
and " Jerusalem " remains still to the spirit something
beyond the power of speech or imagination to express,

1 Amos ix. 7.

428 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

But, even before, the tragedy came which dissolved
the nation as a territorial unit, the Jew learned that
there was something greater than patriotism. When
the triple bond of God, Land and People was so
rudely severed -just as the idea of God rose to nobler
proportions instead of perishing the ideas of Land and
People, by the aid of an inspired symbolism, became vaster
and more wonderful. What a communion became possible
for those who had eyes to behold the nations of the earth
bowed before a common God and engaged in a common
service! What 'a Zion rose before the vision of men as
they thought of the Gentile taking hold of the skirts of
the Jew and demanding participation in the privileges of
a common faith ! Gradually all those elements of humanity
which had been, as it were> eliminated while the specializa-
tion of Israel's function was in process, are seen to be
coming back in order that they may enjoy the fruits of that
specialization. The "chosen " people is indeed chosen, not
for the enjoyment of a splendid isolation, but in order that
it may become " a light to lighten the Gentiles." :

3. In the third place, continuously with the expansion
of the idea of the national into the human, we see the
development of the sense of the individual. The failure
of the old philosophy of material reward for religious
fidelity, to which allusion was made above, led necessarily
to discrimination within the nation between those who kept
and those who violated the law of God. Surely justice must
dictate the recognition of some other principle beside that
of the solidarity of the family or tribe. It could not be fair
that' for ever the fathers would eat sour grapes and that the
children's teeth must thereby be set on edge. Solemn as
was the certainty that evil consequences followed the evil
doer to the third and fourth' generation, there must be
another side. This other side, first announcedsby Jer v emiah,
is formulated by Ezekiel in the -famous words: " The soul
that sinneth it shall die." 1 With the enunciation of this
great truth, there opened on the world possibilities of
personal religion and personal freedom of which earlier
generations had not dreamed. As there was a world outside

1 Ezekiel xviii. 20.

EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION 429

the nation which was under the direction of the Spirit of
God, so also within the nation was, as it = were, a microcosm,
in which, equally as in Jerusalem, God could set up His
throne. By and by it would come to pass that a truer
nationalism would find place for" a truer individualism,
even as nationalism would have found fof itself an abiding
place in the true internationalism of the Kingdom, when
" the glory of the nations " should enter within the open
gates of the City of God.

4. Fourthly, Judaism brought to birth, in the train of
the prophetic teaching as to the significance of individualism,
a larger conception of life itself. As we have seen, Ezekiel's
teaching that God rewarded or punished the actions of
individual men here and now for a while sufficed. In many
of the circumstances of the normal life it did actually appear
that it paid to be pious. " I have been young and now am
old, yet never saw I the righteous forsaken or his seed
begging their bread,"- said the Psalmist. But circumstances
soon revealed contradictions to so optimistic a creed.
Another Psalmist, perplexed by the prosperity of the wicked,
exclaims : " They are not in trouble like other men ; neither
are they plagued like other men." The book of J0,-as
already pointed out, took up the subject with great boldness,
even with an audacity which to some seemed blasphemy,
carrying opposition to the traditional orthodoxy up to
argument with God Himself. The solution, only faintly
glimpsed in the poem, in course of time began to grow
clearer. If life is to be judged justly, the judgement must
take cognizance of a larger conception of life than one
confined to thought of the mortal body. So the old view as
to survival of the soul, which had been suppressed in the
interest of practical morality, now returns . charged with
new significance. " The glory of going on and still to
be " becomes credible if men have some share in the
life of the Eternal. In such a case, a theodicy may be
hoped for such as shall, hot outrage the sense of justice
in the martyr who lays down his life for the sake of
truth.

5. Fifthly, "all these enlarged conceptions of God, of
Society, of the worth of the Individual, and of the largeness

430 - A. HISTORT OF RELIGION

of Life, meet in the comprehensive doctrine of the later
Judaism as to the Coming of God in the Person of His
Anointed to judge the world, for the avenging of wrongdoing^
and for the establishment of the divine Kingdom. The
apocalyptic dreams nourished in .the Essene communities
and elsewhere during the last two centuries of the Old
Testament dispensation, bring to a focal point not merely
the hope of Israel but also "the desirable things of the
nations" which it was the mission of Judaism to clarify
and interpret. There were, of course, pagan throwbacks
not a few, revivals of old dreams of a restored nation with"
its secular monarchy. There were manifold differences and
inconsistencies in the visions received and proclaimed.
Some looked for a kingdom both of and in the world ; others
had their eyes lifted beyond the grave and the resurrection
of the dead. But the essence of the hope was in all the
same, however crude the terms in which that hope was
clothed. Men knew that God. was drawing near to give
answer to the universal yearning. They knew that out of
that shaking of heaven and earth which His appearing must
bring about there would dawn the beginning of a new and
better day. As in their own experience the veil had been
taken away from many of the things in which the heathen
believed concerning God and human life, so a new rending
of the veil was about to happen, and beyond it a new
revelation of God. The primitive world together with the
Jewish world David cum Sibylla are ready to unite in
one sublime acclamation : .

Say among the nations, The Lord reigneth :

The world also is stablished that it cannot be moved ;

He shall judge the people with equity.

Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice ;

Let the sea roar and the fulness thereof;

Let the field exult and all that is therein ;

Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy

Before the Lord, for He cometh ;

For He cometh to judge the earth. 1

1 Psalm xcvi. 10 ff.

EVOLUTION OF HEBREW RELIGION 431

'From the Christian point of view, Judaism as a whole
turned its back upon the great commission tthe privilege
of being the missionary, trained from the beginning, to be
the. apostle to the Gentiles. Thus she did not enter the
Promised Land prepared for -her dwelling. As, after the
forty years' trial in the wilderness, only a scanty remnant
entered into Canaan, so, after the forty years of opportunity
between the Crucifixion and the Fall of Jerusalem. The
result was that her " house was left unto her desolate."
the Temple destroyed and the Priesthood and sacrificial
system .rendered for ever obsolete.

Yet the work of Israel in the world was not brought
altogether to an end. The fate of Israel was to be something
more than that of " the Wandering Jew " of the legend.
Judaism rejected the Cross, but she could not remove its
weight from her own shoulders. She bore about with her
throughout the world the witness of a people who had won
power by martyrdom. In a sense never intended by the
utterers, the words, "His Blood be on us and on our
children," have proved true. But for healing rather than
for hurt. In a very .real sense the best power of the Jew
has come from his sharing the Cross with Him whom the
rulers rejected. The victims of " the Ghetto's plague " and
the Inquisition might well plead:. '

Thou ! if Thou wast He, who at midnight came,
By the starlight, naming a dubious name !
And if, too heavy with sleep too rash
With fear O Thou, if that martyr gash
Fell on Thee coming to take Thy own,'
' And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne
Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.
But the Judgement over, join sides with us !
Thine too is the cause. 1

The Christian will, I believe, gladly acknowledge that in
that tragic but heroic history of Judaism, from the beginning
of the Christian era to the present day, the method and the
secret of Jesus have not altogether been obscurecl. Many
a time in that long story the Jew may be regarded as

1 R. Browning, Holy Cross Day.

4.32 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

appealing confidently to the Christ of Calvary in the words :
" Thine too is the cause." 1

11 It has not been thought necessary in the above sketch to give more than
a few references or to quote authorities. But for the sake of those desiring
more detailed treatment of the subject of Hebrew religion the following
books are recommended : George Adam Smith, Book of the Twelve Prophets,
New York, 1898 ; J. Wellhausen, Israelitische und jildische Geschichte, Berlin,
1901 ; -Francis Brown, Contemporary History of the Old Testament, New York,
1905 ; A. B. Davidson, Theology of the Old Testament, New York, 1906 ;
Henry P. Smith, Old Testament History, New York, 1906 ; W. Robertson
Smith, The O.T. in the Jewish Church, London, 1908 ; same author, The
Religion of the Semites, London, 1914 ; R. H. Charles', Eschatology, Hebrew,
Jewish and Christian, London, 1913 ; J. P. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews,
London, 1914 ; Harlan Creelman, An Introduction to the O.T., New York,
1917; George A. Barton The Religion of Israel, New York, 1918; A. C.
Knudson, The Religious History of the Old Testament ; S. R. Driver, Intro-
duction to the Literature of O.T.,. Edinburgh, 1913 ; John A. Rice, The O.T.
in the Life of To-day, New York, 1921.

CHAPTER XXIX
Judaism from the Christian Era

"VHIS is a difficult chapter for the professed Christian
to write and probably a painful one for either Jew
or Christian to read. Even to the Jewish Christians
of the first century it was the essence of " the seven-sealed "
book of mystery, a draught bitter to the taste, to know that
the Day of Yahweh had passed unrecognized. That the
blood of all the sacrifices was, as it were, like water spilled
upon the ground, that the Four Horsemen had ridden ruth-
lessly over the Holy Land, that the Holy City, which had
once shaken her head at the foe, was now to be a desolation
all these things seemed like a blasphemy reflecting on the
fidelity of God to His ancient covenant. Even to Christian
apostles the realization that the Old. Dispensation was as
a mother who must die to give birth to her child was hard
to understand.

Nevertheless, though from the time of the destruction
of Jerusalem Judaism was left to wander shrineless and
homeless, a Judaism without priest or sacrifice, .a Judaea
capta (as the coin proclaims her), yet she went forth into the
world to continue her mission, as she understood it, and
not without witness to the things she had learned through
the. travail of her soul. Like Jesus, she " went forth bearing
the cross.". Like Jesus, " outside the camp" she became
a spectacle to the nations, that she might discover her power
in martyrdom and her redemption through pain.

It is not necessary to dwell upon those last terrible days
at Jerusalem with which the seven years' struggle against
Rome terminated. Gessius Florus, worst of all the Roman
procurators, did much to hasten the inevitable rebellion and
the end was rendered the more certain by the fierce faction
fights within and without the city. Nero, determined to
subjugate once for all the most obstinate of rebels against

2 E 433

434 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Rome, sent Vespasian to .take charge, and sufficient progress
was made in the pacification of the land for Josephus, the
historian, first of all a general on the side of the patriots and
then a captive, to announce to the Roman leader the greatness
which was soon to be his. With Vespasian become emperor,
the siege was pressed and brought to a bloody end by
Titus in A.D. 70. The Arch of Titus is the monument
of as grim a tragedy as may be read in the story of
mankind.

For a time, as in the days of Ezekiel, the hope of Israel
lay stunned in the dust. But presently, with all other
parties discredited and disillusioned, the Pharisees began,
under Johanan, son of Zaccai, the constructive work which
that aged leader soon turned oyer to Gamaliel II. The
need was to find a substitute for the Temple cult and much
was done at the Council of Jamnia, in A.D. 90, first to
stabilize the Canon of the Scriptures and next to organize
the synagogue worship in all the towns and villages of the
land. The Sanhedrin, tooj was reorganized without inter-
ference by the Roman authorities at Caesarea.

Trouble, however, was hot long quiescent. In 95
Gamaliel, who had meanwhile been deposed and reinstated,
went to Rome with a delegation to protest against the edict
forbidding proselytism. Then in 132 came the so-called
Second War, in the time of Trajan, encouraged by the
rising of the Parthians. In the lull following the suppression
of this pains were taken to supersede the use of the Septua-
gint with a Greek version less favourable to the Christian
claims, or, better still, to suppress the study .of Greek
entirely. With the accession of Hadrian came the Third
War, due in part to revolt against the prohibition of circum-
cision, in part to the patriotism of the famous Rabbi Akiba,
who fixed his hopes on Simon of Koziba as the expected
Messiah. But the would-be Messiah, known to ecclesi-
astical writers as Bar Kokba, was defeated, Jerusalem was
almost completely demolished and turned into a heathen
city, Aelia Capitolina. From this time it was forbidden for
a Jew to enter the city, though many came as near as they
could get to weep over and lament her desolation.

Hadrian's purpose had been to make a clean sweep of

JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 435 -

everything Jewish, including circumcision, the observance
of the Sabbath, and the study of the Law. But the policy
called forth such an outburst of willing martyrdom (in which
the Rabbi Akiba was one of the victims) * that the attempt
proved abortive. Many fled to Babylonia and the school
at Jabneh -was closed. But better times came with the
accession of Antoninus Pius, 13-8-161, who suspended the
most intolerant of the laws. Under the new Patriarch, or
Nasi, Simon, son of Gamaliel, great devotion was shown to
the Torah, which a little before had been in such imminent
danger. Scholars like Rabbi Meir -and Judah I. took in
hand .the codification of the Mishnah, or sum of traditional
lore. Altogether, in the period between Hillel.and Rabbi
Judah, no fewer than 148 scholars were esteemed worthy
of special mention. These are known as the Tannaim, or
teachers of the Mishnah. During the long-continued wars
between the Sasanids of Persia and Rome the possession of
Palestine was several times in dispute, but the victory of
Carus left it finally in Roman hands. Meanwhile, the
headquarters of Hebrew learning had been moved to
Tiberias, where scholarship still flourished, but no longer
under control of the Patriarchs. The new type of instruction
was known as Talmud, or dialectical exposition, and' the
foundations of what is known as the Palestinian Talmud were
laid by Rabbi Johanan, who taught at . Sepphoris and
Tiberias, and died about A.D. 279.

Then, at the beginning of the fourth century, came a
great change which affected all religions in the Empire alike.
Constantine the Great, won the battle of the Milvian Bridge
in 3 1 2 and the next year issued his famous Edict of Toleration.
By this edict Judaism became a religio licita. Nevertheless,
as interpreted, it speedily began to involve discriminations
and restrictions against which the Jews' protested in vain.
For a brief period during the reign of Julian the Apostate
who, out of his 'hatred for Christianity, favoured the Jews,
and even promised them the rebuilding of their Temple,
there was once again a real tolerance. Nor had the Jews
much to complain of during the reigns - of Theodosius I.
and Theodosius II. But on the death of Gamaliel. VI., in
425, the last-named Emperor abolished the Patriarchate

436 A HISTORY -OF RELIGION

and from that date Judaism, with its headquarters in
Palestine, ceased to be.

The new centre of Judaism was Babylonia, where Jews
had continued to form an important part of the population
since the deportation under Nebuchadrezzar in* 597 B.C.
At this time (fifth century) the Jewish population numbered
several millions and their- settlements were not only in
towns and cities, like Nisibis, Pumbedita and Sura, but also
in adjacent farm lands. In these communities life went on
as it had done in Palestine, except that the head was no
longer a Patriarch but an Exilarch (Resh Galutha), with
whom the Persian authorities treated whenever necessary.
The greatest of the early exilarchs was Rab, that is, the
Master par excellence, who founded the illustrious school at
Sura which, with some vicissitudes, endured nearly eight
hundred years. " He found an open plain and fenced it."
After the death of Rab in A.D. 247 the succession was
continued by Samuel, who earned a reputation as physician,
judge and liturgist. The Parthian, or Arsacid, rule, which
had succumbed .to the revolution under Ardashir-in 226,
had been generally tolerant of Judaism, but the Sasanids,
who displaced them, were so zealous for the orthodox
Magian faith that once again the Jews found themselves
oppressed. The two chief schools of Pumbedita and Sura
had therefore many trials to surmount, yet there were
always scholars such as Rabbah, Nahmani and Ashi to
carry on the tradition of learning. The most distinguished
of them was Ashi, of the Sura school, who laid the foundation
of the Babylonian Talmud, a gigantic encyclopaedic work
which involved the labours of a thousand scholars (known
as the Amoraim) extending over wellnigh three hundred
years. Some additions were made to this by the successors
of the Amoraim, the Saboraim, or Ponderers, and to these
succeeded the Geonim, or " Excellencies," under whom
still further improvements were made. 1 By this time
another revolutionary .change was imminent. For several
centuries the Roman and the Sasanid empires had bled one
another white in mutual conflict and now that the Arab

x See article by I. Elbogen in E.R.E., VIII. 99 f. ; also article " Talmud,"
Jewish Encyclopedia, XII. i ff.

JUDAISM FROM T^HE CHRISTIAN ERA 437

had risen to the appeal of Islam, there was nothing in the
path of a conquest at once political and religious which
was to stagger the world.

Muhammad had learned much from the Jews of Arabia
long before he announced himself as the Apostle of Allah.
He had been much influenced by the Scriptures and it was
the Jewish element at Yathrib (afterwards Madinah) which
was largely responsible for the invitation which preceded
the Hijra^ or Flight, from Mecca. But, once launched on
his conquering career, the prophet was _not over mindful of
earlier engagements and, though the Jews remained always
" a people of the book," they soon came under the heavy
hand of the Prophet, who declared that two religions could
not co-exist in the land. After Muhammad's death, in 632,
efforts were made to expel the Jews from Arabia altogether,
but this policy became impracticable as soon as Palestine
and Egypt, not to speak of regions further to the west,
yielded to Islam. Then a policy of accommodation became
necessary and the Jews began -to settle down under the rule
of the Khalifs as they had done under other foreign rulers
from the time of the Babylonian. The exilarchs once again
resumed their oversight of the Euphrates Valley communities,
the schools reopened and continued much of their literary
activity, the results of which were felt westward as far as
the settlements in Spain.

Not that the period of the Umayyad Khalifs, A.D. 66 1-
753, and of the early Abbasids was without its troubles.
Moved possibly by the Shiite expectation of " the hidden
Imam," several would-be Messiahs sought to arouse the
people and were put down by the Muhammadans with
much bloodshed. Then arose trouble over the election of
the exilarchs, and out of this schism started by Anan and
carried on by Benjamin of Nahawand known as the
" Scripturist," or Karaite, movement. Then, again, at the
beginning of the tenth century, we have a Gaon of Sura,
Saadiah, who was not only one of the greatest scholars of
Judaism but also a born controversialist. At this time
Palestinian Judaism had once again reared its head. The
schools of Ramleh and Tiberias were once again active, the
vowel -system had been invented for the convenience of

438 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

students of the Hebrew script, and a movement had been
started to improve the Calendar from which the dates of the
festivals were computed. It was this last which raised the
fierce wrath of Saadiah, who kept the controversy unsleeping
for seven years. It- was not till 937 that the leaders were
reconciled. But Saadiah deserved better to be known for
his vast scholarship, his Book of Creation, his translation of
the Scriptures into Arabic, his poems and, not least, for his
Grammar of the Hebrew Language.

But the end of t]ie great Babylonian schools was at hand.
The school of Sura expired about the middle of the eleventh
century and the Pumbedita, or Bagdad, school soon followed
it to an honoured grave. *For, though from this time the
centre of gravity for Judaism passed from Babylonia to the
West, the influence of the East was not dead. " In the
halls of learning of Northern Africa and Europe reverberated
the discussions of Rab and Samuel, of Rabbah and Joseph,
of Abaye and Raba. The Geonim of Sura and Pumbedita
had blazed the path and given direction to Jewish life for
centuries to come." 1

In some parts of Western Europe Jews had found a
dwelling-place from the beginning of the Christian era and
even earlier. Juvenal's reference to the Jew at the gates
of Rome with his big basket (kophinos) and his wisp of
straw is well known. In spite of occasional expulsions, as
in the time of Claudius, and laws which became ever severer
to the time of Justinian's Code, the Hebrew population
continued to grow. The development of the Papacy did
not at first have any effect on Jewish life in the Western
Empire. Popes like Gregory the Great were tolerant,
except in the matter of refusing Jews the ownership of
Christian slaves. But, with the decline of Palestinian and
Babylonian Judaism, the leaders of Israel began a westward
movement which had the result of extending the faith in
that direction and in a development of the communal spirit.

This extension presently embraced Spain, where the
Jews were destined to " sit on thrones." Many had been
in the Peninsula since A.D. 300, and under the Arian rulers

1 Margolis and Marx, A History of the Jewish People, p. 276, Philadelphia,

' JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 439

of Spain had lived in amity. With the reascendency of
Catholicism at the beginning of the seventh century, came
a change for the worse. With occasional relaxation, the
rule became one of severe restriction, especially when the
Metropolitan Julian, himself the son of Jewish parents,
came into, power in 68 1. Judaism was now harried into
discord and discontent, and only too ready to welcome the
victory of Islam which came with the invasion of Tarik
in 711.

Under the rule of the Muhammadans, -and especially
under that of the Western Umayyads, the Spanish Jews at
once rose to positions of influence and power. Indeed, from
the tenth to the thirteenth century they prospered ex-
ceedingly. Hasdai ibn Shaprut, prime minister under two
khalifs, is representative of the Jew as the " middleman "
of Oriental, and Western learning. Poetry, in particular,
with Hebrew verse accommodated to Arabic metres, now
rose into eminence. Of the Jewish exponents of the " new
poetry " it was said: " In the days of Hasdai they began
to' chirp."

Political conditions, however, -did not continue stable.
The Western Umayyads gave place to the Almoravides in
1085 and these to the Almohades in 1 1 4 8 . Toledo fell again
to the Christians in 1085 and as time went on the Christian
kingdoms in the north increased in number and in power.
But through all vicissitudes Jews continued to prosper.
Samuel-ha-Levi, known as Nagid, or Prince, became vizier,
making a name for himself also as poet. Ibn Gabirol,
known to the West as Avicebron, " the nightingale of
piety," wrote the ever-beautiful Royal Crown. 1 Judah ha
Levi, the singer " pure and faultlessly true," flourished,
contemporary with Abraham Ibn Ezra, the master of
Hebrew prose. . .

Then came evil times, and while some remained in Spain
to pay lip service to Islam, others fled. One of the fugitives,
in this case to Egypt, was Maimun, whose son, generally
known as Maimonides, rose to become the greatest spiritual
authority in Judaism of the age. He wrote three great

1 See Selected Religious Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, translated by
Israel Zangwill. Philadelphia, 1923.

440 A HISTORY* OF RELIGION

books, The Sayings of the Fathers, The Second Torah, and A
Guide to the Perplexed. . In the first of these he restates
authoritatively the Creed of the Jew in thirteen articles. In
these he proclaims the existence of God, His unity, incor-
poreality, immutability, eternity, pre-mundane existence,
His worshipfulness, the inspiration of the prophets, the
authority of Moses, the divine origin of the Torahj the
doctrine of future retribution, the future advent of the
Messiah, and the resurrection of the dead. When
Maimonides died in 1204 the lament of an older -generation
was recalled: "The glory is departed from Israel; for
the ark of God is taken," and men said: " From Moses
to Moses there was none like Moses."

Judaism was now moving north. In France the
Merovingians had imposed a number of vexatious regula-
tions, but under the Carlovingians there was tolerance.
Charlemagne even included a Jew in the embassage he
sent to Harun al Rashid. 1 ' 2 Nevertheless, for various reasons,
economic and religious, antagonism continued to develop.
The Jews were blamed for the evils of the slave-trade;
under the feudal system they could not own land, hence they
were driven to commerce, and in -this proved rather more
successful than their competitors. Moreover, animosity was
excited by certain cases of conversion to Judaism, and it
was by no means appeased when permission was given to
Christians, as at Bezieres, to throw staves at Jews in Holy
Week, or, as at Toulouse, to smite the .cheek of the Syndic
on Good Friday. The Emperor Henry II. ordered the
expulsion of all Jews from Mayence in 1012, and the forced
baptisms which this act entailed did not make for sincerity
or for peace.

Here and there was preserved some little oasis of
quietness where some scholar like Rashi born at Troyes
in 1040 could pursue a great task, such as the writing of
the commentary on the Scriptures and the Babylonian
Talmud. But in general it was a bad time for Jews,
especially when the end of the eleventh century brought
about the First Crusade and undisciplined hordes of soldiery

1 See article " Moses ben Maimon," Jewish Ency., IX. 73 ff.

2 Qbviously because he was acquainted with the Arabic language.

JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 441

were only too ready to include Jews with Saracens among
the enemies of the Holy Sepulchre. Massacres, stormings
of synagogues, assaults, wholesale suicides, forced baptisms
all these are elements in one of the ugliest chapters of
religious history. Moreover, kings and barons were not
slow to perceive a means of financing their campaigns in
the Jews whose commercial genius had so obviously pros-
pered, even though they showed no intention of -returning
the sums they borrowed. '

What is true of the First Crusade applies equally to the
Second and Third, with the addition that this time super-
stition and ignorance reared their heads together and raised
the cry of ritual murder and of Christian blood' mingled
with the Passover bread. Hence savage reprisals on the
part of the populace, heavy-handed injustice on the part of
kings like Philip Augustus of France, and merciless severity
on the part of Pope Innocent III. at the beginning of the
thirteenth century. Yet amid all this carnival of crime
individual scholars and mystics continued to brood, to write,
and even to sing. .

The thirteenth century carried on the tragic story,
except for the influence of one remarkable man. This was
the Emperor Frederick II. who, in Sicily and Provence,
encouraged Arabic and Hebrew scholarship and was for his
liberality adjudged a heretic. Elsewhere society was
uniformly against the Jew, now compelled to wear a yellow
badge of shame in order to distinguish him from his fellows
and thereby invite insult and outrage. There was also a
deliberate effort .made by Pope Gregory IX. to destroy all
Hebrew literature, and on one Sabbath eve, in or about
1 242, twenty-four cartloads of books (which we would, give
much to-day to possess) were consigned to the flames at
Paris. Even the general terror of the Mongol invasion,
which conjured up all sorts of Messianic dreams, did not
help matters, for many thought that the Jews were in league
with the invaders, even if the- Mongols themselves were not
the "Lost Ten Tribes " reappearing for the devastation
of Europe.

So far nothing has been said of Judaism in England,
whither certain Jews came with William the Conqueror,

442 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

In spite of sporadic accusations of ritual murder, the Jews
of England were in general protected by the kings, especially
since as money-lenders they filled " a gap in the economic
life " of the-country. But the natural prejudices of debtors
brought about an intense hatred for the lenders, a hatred
which culminated in massacres such as that which marked
the coronation of King Richard I. at Westminster, arid the
still more terrible massacre at York in, March 1190. As
a result of such incidents, English Jewry began of its own
will to withdraw to the continent or to the Holy Land, even
before the general expulsion proclaimed on July 18, 1290.
As a result of this : the first general expulsion of Jews
about 1 6,000 men, women and children left for France and
Flanders.

It was not long before France, too, adopted the policy
of expulsion, first in 1306, when 100,000 Jews were turned
adrift with little but the clothes upon their backs, secondly,
after a brief period of recall, in 1394. It is interesting to
note that during these periods, specially in Provence, which
was outside the French jurisdiction, a great controversy was
being waged between Maimunians and anti-Maimunians,
that is, -between liberals and orthodox. In this controversy
the famous scholar, David Kimhi, played a memorable part.

It has been stated that, if Judaism had suffered eclipse
in France, its sorrows were destined elsewhere to be all the
more increased. In Germany where, as the serfs of the
exchequer, the Jews could not well be expelled, they suffered
terribly from the ignorance and superstition of the populace.
Charges, such as could only be the spawn of the basest
impulses of humanity, maddened the ignorant to outrages
of the most heartrending kind. As a single instance we
may take the case of Rottingen in 1298, where the whole
Jewish community was burned at the stake. The Black
Death only came to increase the anti-Jewish feeling, since
the rumour prevailed that the Jews had poisoned the wells.
Bands of fanatics roamed the land, recommending the
killing of Jews as an act of piety, and though popes and
emperors intervened when and where they could the latter
out of self-interest little was done to cure the evil at its
source.

JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 443

Returning to Spain we find that the gradual reconquest
of the P.eninsula for Christianity- boded in general no good
to the Jew. In some of the Christian states there was
tolerance and here and there scholars began to .open schools
and cultivate " the Jewish knowledge," with which was
mingled a considerable element of neo-Platonism. At
Gerona, Moses, son of Nahman (Nahmani), was a shining
light, only, however, to be driven to an exile in the Holy
.Land when the Inquisition commenced operations in Aragon.
Other scholars continued at work and the Kabbah* began to
take shape. The controversy between Maimunists and
anti-Maimunists also revived. Ibn Adret, the mystic, made
a fantastic visit to Rome to convert Pope Nicholas III. to
Judaism. Asher, son. of Jehiel, established a school in
Toledo. Under Ferdinand IV. and Alphonso XI. and,
strangely enough, under Pedro the Cruel, there were even
those who forecasted an era of religious peace.

From the time of Pedro, however, the wind of favour
rapidly shifted to the opposite quarter. Bloody massacres
throughout the Peninsula, involving not merely the pro-
fessing Jews but the crypto-Jews who had accepted forced
baptism and were known as Maranos, or Accursed^ were
frequent, and even the reading of the Talmud was. prohibited.
The persecution culminated, in 1483, in the setting up of
the Inquisition under the infamous Torquemada. All these
measures, moreover, after the surrender of the last Muham-
madan stronghold of Granada, must be regarded as merely
preparatory to the final expulsion of the Jews, by the edict
of Their Most Catholic Majesties/ Ferdinand and Isabella,
on March 30, 1492. The result was untold suffering on
the part of many thousands of fugitives, insincere conversion
to Christianity of thousands more, and the flight of still more
to the Ottoman Empire, where Sultan Bayazid II. gave
them hearty welcome.

Though expelled from England, France and Spain,
Judaism still found a dubious shelter in Italy, as might be
suggested by' the friendship of Dante with Immanuel of
Rome. As the Renaissance dawned upon Western -Europe,
hope for the Jew increased, at any rate out of appreciation

1 See article " Cabala," Jewish Ency., III. 456 ff.

444 ^ HISTORT OF RELIGION

for his cultural life. Humanists like Pico della Mirandola
found value as well as interest in the Kabbala. Later the
same spirit penetrated Germany and Christian scholars like
Reuchlin urged the study of Hebrew as well as tolerance
for Hebrews. The invention of printing, too, came to make
possible the printing of the .Hebrew Bible and that of the
Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud. For a time it seemed
that the Reformation leaders might even become the
champions. of the Old Testament people, even as they made
themselves responsible for the revival of Old Testament
study. Unfortunately the expectation proved ill-founded,^
for even Luther, who in his early years had pleaded for
tolerance, became rabidly anti-Jewish towards the end of
his career.

Jews were now wanderers over the face of the earth,
though in Italy, and not least in the Papal States, they found
a welcome domicile, and were able to establish settlements
in places like Amsterdam and Hamburg. Out of the
former community arose that remarkable and " god-
intoxicated " mystic, Baruch Spinoza, who, however, was
not fortunate enough to square his -pantheistic theories with
Hebrew orthodoxy and was in consequence, in 1656,
excommunicated. About the same time Oliver Cromwell,
in England, out of self-interest, discovered that there was no
legal barrier against the residence of Jews in England and
thereupon sanctioned their return.

In the Ottoman Empire, meanwhile, Judaism was not
only tolerated but flourishing. In Constantinople, the
largest settlement, there were 30,000 Jews, while in
Saloniki, the next largest colony, Jews outnumbered the
rest of the population. Under such circumstances, Jews
once again rose .to power and eminence. Joseph Nasi
became Duke of Naxos, under Selim II.; Solomon Ash-
kenazi became the same monarch's trusted ambassador to
Poland and Venice. Also scholars like Joseph Karo and
Isaac Luria conferred lustre on their age as well as on
their race.

From the beginning of the Christian era there had been
a continuous stream of Jews flowing into the territories now
composing Poland, Lithuania and Russia, In the eighth

JUDAISM- FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 445

century, the conversion took place of an entire tribe on the
Euro-Asiatic frontier known as the Khazars, 1 and from this
community there went forth a deputation at the beginning
of the eleventh century to urge the acceptance of Judaism
by the Russian prince Vladimir. The prince,. however, was
not impressed oy the appeal of a homeless race. In all these
regions the Hebrew population increased^ rapidly, so that
in' Poland and Lithuania alone the Jews, who had numbered
but 50,000 at the beginning of the sixteenth century^ a
century later numbered half a million. The zenith of
prosperity was here reached during the first half of the
seventeenth century, but Jews were not so fortunate in the
Ukraine, .where, after several hideous massacres, they
were expelled and did not have the right to return
restored till 1651. During the decade from 1648 to 1658
it has been estimated that at least 100,000 Jews were
slaughtered.

It was about this time that a remarkable Messianic
movement was inaugurated by a Smyrna Jew, Sabbatai
Zevi, who in 1 648 proclaimed the Ineffable Name, announced
his mystic wedlock to the Torah, visited Jerusalem as
Messiah, preached to frenzied multitudes, drew converts
from every part of Europe, aroused the hopes of all Jewry
and of many Christians, so that- men wagered as to the time
his coronation would takeplace in Jerusalem, and was
after all this persuaded by Muhammad IV. to turn Moslem.
As Mehemet Effendi, he died in 1676, but' his followers
were slow to abandon their expectancy. Similar impostures
or illusions continued to appear for the rest of the century.

A movement of a different kind was that of the Hasidim,
or Pietists, which arose partly out of the spirit of depression
engendered by continued persecution, and partly out of a
reaction against merely intellectual interest in religion. The
leader of the movement was Israel Baal.Shem Tob, 1700-
1760, better known, from his initials, as Besht. He was
a mystic and solitary of deep personal holiness but, on
.account of their apparent disparagement of learning, the

1 The Khazar dynasty was converted in A.D. 740, the people following
their rulers or not, as they pleased. See article " Khazars," Ency. Brit.
(nth Edition), XV. 774 ff.

446 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Hasidim were bitterly opposed and in some cases expelled
from the synagogues.

Though the cup of suffering was as yet by no means
fully drained, the dawn of better things for the Jew was
not so far away as at the time seemed probable. . The first
signs of this dawn were discernible in Prussia, where the
principles of the Aufklarung disposed men to liberalism,
where "protected" Jews, like Moses Mendelsohn, were
in themselves an augury of better things, where Lessing's
Nathan, der Weise^ was a notable tract in the interest of
tolerance, and where Joseph II. marked a great advance
from early days by the issuing of his Patent of Tolerance in
1782. The programme of " civic emancipation and fidelity
to Judaism " was now clear to many besides Moses
Mendelsohn.

The story of Jewish emancipation must be briefly
summarized, with the omission of much that is important
as well^as interesting. We have said nothing of the story
of the Jews in China (at Kai-feng-fu), or in India, or in
Africa; we have omitted all mention of the struggle
between Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews; we "have
said nothing of the revival of learning in the nineteenth
century.

What cannot be omitted is some reference to the great
movement for emancipation which the conscience of man-
kind has backed during the past century and a half, the
recognition of the equality of all religions under the American
Constitution, the proclamation of that same equality in the
French Revolution by the Declaration of the Rights of Man ,
the removal of all disabilities under which Jews had suffered
in England for centuries, and by the free use of Jewish talent
in the political history of Europe during the past two or
three generations.

All this is the sign of a developing Christian conscience
among the nations of the world. But the task of building
up the practice of men to the level of their best ideals is but
slowly being achieved. The nineteenth and twentieth,
centuries are by no means free from some of the blots which
disfigure the story of the Middle Ages. We have to
remember pogroms in Russia such as that of Kishinev in

JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 447

1 903 ; we cannot yet forget the Dreyfus case which for six
long years drags its trail across the history of France; nor
can we ignore the publication since the war of The Jewish
Pm'/and Protocols of .the Elders of Zion,.a& recently as 1920,
or the ri.se of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. 1 On
the other hand, it is satisfactory to recall that other move-
ments, less widely exploited, are in being for the inculcation
of a kindlier spirit and for the removal of the traditional
misunderstandings.

One movement stands by itself and cannot be ignored
everi in so brief a sketch as the present. This is Zionism,
which has its roots both in the soil of economics and in that
of religious idealism. No Jew for" economic reasons alone
would select Palestine as a national home, but in the soul
of the Jew is an ancient Helmweh which has become a passion.
There is also the conviction of many that " das ganz Land
braucht Israel." Even "movements as far back as those of
David Reuben and Sabbatai Zevi witness to this. The
Mendelsohniah movement of the eighteenth century diverted
the hope into other channels, but the nineteenth century
saw a renascence of the old' longing for the Promised Land.
In the mid-nineteenth century Sir Moses Montefiore, and
towards the end Herzl and Pinsker, founded modern Zionism
and ho suggestion of settlement in East Africa for long
superseded the desire to make Palestine the national home
of Jewry. Then came the- Great War and the Balfour
Declaration, and following upon these the problems which it
was hardly possible for statesmen to "foresee. Much has
been done to. give Zionism " a local habitation " as well as
a name. Jews have been planted on the soil and capital
expended in making that soil productive. But the guarding
of the rights of the non-Jewish part of the population and,
indeed, the making of Palestine capable of supporting more
than a very limited population, -bristle with difficulties. Still
the presence of 150,000 Jews in the Holy Land, the restored
use of the Hebrew language, and the opening of the new
Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus in 1925, are eloquent
symbols of the new hope of Israel. Moreover, the Holy

1 The year 1933 saw a recrudescence of anti-Semitism and the burning
of Jewish books in Germany, under the rule of Chancellor Hitler.

448 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Land itself, and its capital Jerusalem, are (as to the Christian
world) but the outward symbol of that ideal fellowship of
redeemed men, the city to which -the tribes of men go up to
appear before God, the cynosure of all faithful eyes, before
Us and not behind us. Through it, indeed, we see coming
down out of heaven, " the Jerusalem which is above, the
mother of us all."

The pilgrimage of Judaism towards this desired and
desirable goal is not yet complete. It is still and must be.
still a via dolor osa^ a way of pain. But in the pain itself
is at work the victorious principle of sacrificial love, which
the Jew could not reject even though he would. He has
borne the cross for much of the way unflinchingly and
found it to be his source of strength. As Miss- Lazarus
puts it:

Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel.

I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by the sword,

burned at the stake, tossed into the seas. '

And always the same patient, resolute martyr face arose in silent rebuke

and defiance.
A Prophet with four eyes ; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit above the

sleeping eyelids of the senses.
A^Poet, who plucked from his bosom, the quivering heart and fashioned it

Jnto a lyre.

A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial meditation.
These I saw, with prince and people in their train ; the monumental de,ad

and the standard-bearers of the future.
And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter ; and, turning, I beheld

the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask of the son

of the Ghetto.
Turn again, O daughter of Israel," my sister, and behold, with divinely

awakened eyes the son of man, the man of sorrows and acquainted with

grief.
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,

ye have done it unto Me." Who has ever spoken words so tender and

close, so fulfilled of the brotherhood of man ? " And I, if I be lifted up,

will draw all men unto Me."
Be ye then uplifted, ye who would, uplift. You w,ho come in His name

and yet deny Him, with Christ on your lips but with hatred and scorn in

your hearts, behold the suffering child of God, your brother ; behold

our divine humanity crushed beneath the burden of the flesh, the sins

and sorrows of the world !
Ye, who would bear witness to His spirit and His truth, to the Christ.

that is within, you, look with the eyes of Christ, the heart of Christ ;

JUDAISM FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA 449

pierce with illuminated' vision the hollow mask ; let the warm rays,
the gentle touch of love, fall upon the dull clod of clay and awake the
sleeping soul, the higher, the divine self, that slumbers in every child
- of earth, every one of God's creatures -the Christ that is to be, when
all men know themselves as He knew, one with the Father and one
with His fellow-men. 1 ' 2

1 Emma Lazarus, Poems.

2 For the period of Jewish history covered in this chapter the reader is
referred to the later volumes of H. Graetz, History of the Jews from the Earliest
Times to the Present Day ; Margolis and Marx, A History of the Jewish People,
and the bibliography given as an " Appendix " to the last-named work.

2 F

SECTION II
CHRISTIANITY TO THE RISE OF ISLAM

CHAPTER XXX
The Founder

FROM the Christian point of view the last chapter
must necessarily seem .something of a digression, the
continuance of an experience outside the direct line
of religious evolution. ,If, according to the Christian view,
all Jewish hope is " chaptered up " in Christ, it is inevitable
that the story of Christ must be the apical point to which
all previous religion converges and from which the religion
of the future is to broaden out towards the fulfilment of the
divine purpose. The first triangle, from the first stirrings
of the religious instinct in the consciousness of man to the
period represented by the Christian phrase " the fulness of
time," has now been roughly covered. We have seen in
primitive religion the yearnings often expressed crudely,
savagely, even obscenely^ for the things upon which the
heart's desire of the ancient world was set. We have seen,
too, the religion of the Jew restated, refined, reinterpreted.
We have seen, once again, the stream of Jewish witness
reinforced by tributary waters which flowed into it from
the religions of those nations which lived in contact with
the Jew. We have seen it further enlarged put of emotions
and experiences expressed in the faiths of lands at first
^remote. Now we have to take our stand at the point where
Judaism, as the elect priest of humanity, is privileged to
make the sacrifice of itself to the long-expected Messianic
age, in order that the world's desire might be fulfilled.

As we face the story of nearly twenty centuries of
Christian history it is easy to perceive the difficulty of
approaching it objectively. In the 'middle of the eighteenth

450

THE FOUNDER ' 451

century, while a great scholar of the English Church was
declining the Archbishopric of- Canterbury because he
thought it too " late to save a falling Church," another great
English churchman was inaugurating the evangelistic
movement which probably, saved industrial England from
rejecting, religion altogether and became eventually a
following of twenty-eight million souls apart from all
indirect results. Similar differences of temperament to-day
will view Christian history from opposite points of view.
Probably in America and Western Europe to-day there is
not the open hostility to religion that existed in the
eighteenth century. An occasional book appears like The
Twilight of Christianity, in which the author is assured of the
speedy demise of the religion and its ripeness for burial out
of sight of men.' But for one book of this type there are
a dozen in which the history of the Christian Church is
written so objectively as to miss altogether any element
such as we may call divine. Of this sort of history three
general criticisms seem to be invited. First, they are
written in the . popular style which is reminiscent of the
journalism in which startling headlines and a*" story " are
of the first importance, with a murder as more significant
than a million quiet and kindly acts, and a social scandal
outweighing any number of lives lived in purity and piety.
Secondly, they are written from the point of view which
regards the entire field of history from start to finish spread
before the author, so that he may neatly arrange his periods
from the story of beginnings to the story of the halcyon
days, thence to the breakdown, and then to the point where
he 'stands sadly by the bedside of an invalid as to whose
survival he is extremely sceptical. Anyone with a sense
of humour, or who remembers the story of the Ugly. Duckling,
will perceive at once that, proportionately to the whole tale
of man's development on earth, the two thousand years of
Christian history are but a beginning, and that those who
judge religion to have run its course because of present-day
lapses and inadequacies might just as well take two thousand
years out' of the period when the great saurians flourished
to demonstrate that God was unable -to get beyond the
creation of a brute.

452 A HISTORY OF RELIGION '

Thirdly, and chiefly, books of the sort I have in mind
leave out of the story of the Christian Church the presence
of Christ as its living Lord. They try to describe the
garden, but they do not recognize the gardener. To them
Christ is nothing but a figure dimly seen at the back of a
long tradition, to most men but a rapidly fading memory,
and to those who are still mindful of Him only the dead
teacher of a few beautiful maxims, a lovely example of a
course of action such as brought Him to the cross.

In the following chapters I trust it may be remembered,
even when I tell the story as objectively as I can, that these
three errors, for the Christian, are fatal to any right under-
standing of Christian history. First of all, the main currents
of the history flow softly, like the waters of Siloah. Beyond
all the excitement of councils and controversies, religious
warfare and religious persecution, corruption and worldli-
ness, which make up so sadly large a part of the outward
history of the -Church, must be kept in mind the story
of unrecorded struggle against temptation, humble endea-
vour to walk close to God, and the million-fold performance
of inconspicuous duty through the grace received. Secondly,
it will be kept in mind that God, who takes a summer to
make a rose, requires ages to shape the spiritual plan through
which by and by the animal inheritance of the race may be
overpassed and man raise the cry: " Hallelujah to the
Maker: Hallelujah, Man is made!" And, thirdly, it
should be evident that Christianity is saved from failure, not
by any Back to Jesus movement, but by realization of His
promise: " Lo I am with you all the days, even to the end
of the world."

In all religions, as we have seen, personality plays a great
part, in fertilizing the age, stimulating the attention of men,
and inspiring men to rise above their natural level. In
Christianity this is true beyond any other case we may
recall. While in other religions the teacher is subordinated
to his teaching, we find in Christianity a religion not of a
philosophy, or of a rule of life, but that of a Living Person
actively engaged in distributing what we call grace. We
do not go back to Christ as the Confucianist goes back to
Confucius, or the Muhammadan to Muhammad, but we

THE FOUNDER 453

find Christ when we remember that " where two or three
are gathered together, in My name, there am I in the midst
of them."

Hence, before attempting to offer any survey of the
history of the system, prepared for us as the. means for
'securing this relation, it is necessary to ask, What do we
know of this Person as an historical figure, before we accept
the transcendent claims made for Him by . the Christian
Church? .

Perhaps we are baffled at the outset by the very embarrass-
ment of our wealth. Lives of Christ have appeared, par-
ticularly of late, with a profusion which is a curious comment
on the assertion of a Professor of History at Columbia
University that " all we have " upon which to rely for our
knowledge of Jesus Christ " is the material for a three-line
obituary." If this be so, the declaration of Dr. Robert
Millikan'that " when the life and teachings of Jesus became
the basis of the religion of the whole Western world, an
event of stupendous importance for the destinies of man-
kind had certainly taken place, for a new set of ideals h'ad
been definitely and officially adopted " would seem strangely
baseless.

No doubt a great many theories have been presented to
account for Jesus, an indication in itself of the imperious
claim He makes "upon human judgement. Some of these
theories we can sift away from the others, as no longer having
a right to stand in the light of sane and responsible scholar-
ship. We' may deal thus with the theory of Christ as. myth,
only now to be regarded as an eccentricity of hypothesis.
We may also put aside definitely the theory of imposture,
even when critics stumble over the self-consciousness and
apparent " egoism " of Jesus in the setting forth of His
claims. We may discard once for all the theory that Jesus
was an impressionable visionary moved by the preaching of
John the Baptist to imagine Himself the Messiah and so
start the series of events which led to His . condemnation
and execution. If there are any conclusions to which all
the evidence leads, these are, -first, that Christ, so far from
being "conformed " to the type of Messianism which was
in the air, opposed it from beginning to end, choosing not

454 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

to be. Messiah by miraculous bread-making, or spectacular
wonder-working, or to receive the world power as a gift
from the Satanism of the time, but rather to win the kingdom
slowly by the painful travail of the Cross. And, again, that
from .the very beginning He was cpnscieus of the fate to
which such a conception of Messiahship must bring Him,
moving grandly on, and " measuring with calm presage the
infinite descent."

With these theories discarded, what have we left? To
my own mind none of the books which are most calcu-
lated to work serious mischief is an exposition of the
theories mentioned above.. They are rather those which
exploit the subjective treatment of the Life and come from
writers who, having discarded the Gospels as evidence,
proceed to evolve a conception of Jesus out of their inner
consciousness. Even here/there are two things not wholly
bad. For, in- the first place, every man who handles with
sincerity the subject finds in his own imagination something
of the truth and at least touches the hem of the divine
garment. And, secondly, in this sort of writing, criticism
cancels criticism, so that he who accepts what any one writer
admits will have the whole, while he who rejects what any
one rejects will lose all.

The matter then settles. down to be primarily a matter
of sources, out- of which we should be able to gather wiiat
the historical Jesus was like. This subject is simplified for
us by the work of unbiased scholars outside the Christian
fold, of whom we may take as a type the learned Doctor
Joseph Klausner of Jerusalem, whose Jesus' of Nazareth 1
opens with a discussion of the sources. What a Jew of the
highest scholarship regards as certain will not be suspected
of Christian bias.

Dr. Klausner begins by setting forth the Jewish evidence
available, all the more important because so commonly
overlooked. He rehabilitates Josephus for Christian use,
holding the historian to be only in certain phrases inter-
polated, to be saying just about as much as one given to
hedging could be expected to say, and in what he does say
proving as facts the preaching of John the Baptist, the

1 Rabbi Joseph Klausner, Jtsus of Nazareth, New York, 1929.

THE FOUNDER 455

teaching and wonder-working of Jesus, and the suffering
by Him of a cruel death under Pontius Pilate, with the
connivance of the principal Jews. As to the Talmud, while
the Rabbi points out that if we depended upon the Talmud
for bur information we should never have known of the
existence of Judas Maccabaeus, he shows that the Gospel
stories were clearly known to the Talmudic 'authors, as is
proved by the distortion of them rather than by silence or
denial, and that under the name of Balaam (the destroyer)
Jesus is several times alluded to, while the chief apostles
are concealed under the names of Doeg, Ahithophel and
Gehazi. Dr. Klausner also quotes the suggestion that the
slanderous tale about Jesus as the illegitimate son of Mary
by a man named Panthera is an echo of the description of
Him as " Son of the Virgin " (Parthenon}? In the next
place, the Rabbi deals with the Latin sources, scanty indeed,
and ill informed, but no more so than we might expect
from the superciliousness of Roman officials in regard to
a religio illicita. Nevertheless, we learn from Tacitus that
" Christ, from whom the Christians derive their name, was
condemned -to death in the reign of Tiberius by the. Pro-
curator, Pontius Pilate. "^ From Suetonius we learn that
Claudius " banished from Rome the Jews who made great
tumult because of Chrestus," 3 thus confirming the statement
of the Acts (xviii. 2) that ten years after the crucifixion
Christianity was, at least;, not unknown in the Imperial
City. And from Pliny the Younger we learn that the
Christians of Bithynia in Asia Minor, at the beginning of
the second century, were already accustomed to sing " some
sacred hymn in which they appeal to Christ as God." 4

' In the next place we have discussed the Scriptures of the
New Testament. Now, of course, though no entire MSS. of
these writings have survived from earlier than the fourth
century, yet we could almost reconstruct the books from
quotations made by earlier writers who use them as of
authority, back indeed to the time of Clement of Rome.

1 See also Rabbi" Hyamson, Jewish Quarterly Review, October 1931".

2 Tacitus, Annales, xv. 44 written about A.D. 115.
^ Suetonius, Claudius, 25.

4 Pliny the Younger, Ep., x. 96-97.

456 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Moreover, back of all the quotations thus made is the
evidence of their use in the Christian communities. All of
this Dr. Klausner candidly admits, speaking of the New
Testament writings as " documents dated from the earliest
days of Christianity." The Pauline Epistles, or at least
the majority of them, he holds were written within a few
years of Christ's ministry, and, of the Gospels, three were
written prior to, or contemporaneous with, the Fall of
Jerusalem, St. Mark between 66 and 68, St. Matthew about
70, and St. Luke not greatly later. 1

Once again, apart from New Testament quotations, we
have in writings of the sub-apostolic period much that
belongs to the authentic tradition concerning Jesus. Dr.
Klausner adduces' in this category Polycarp, Ignatius,
Clement of Rome, Papias and Justin Martyr, as well as the
uncanonical writings of the first two Christian centuries.
To all this (going beyond the Rabbi) we may add that we
have in the Church, its creeds, its ministry, and its sacra-
ments, avowedly recalling the teaching and commandments
given by Christ Himself and founded on these as on a rock.
The main facts of the Divine Life would still be validated
by these, even had the New Testament books never been
written.

Out of all this material only perversity can fail to
reconstruct the picture that Browning gives :

That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Becomes my universe that feels and knows.

Of course, men will continue to see that face through the
coloured spectacles of their own personality. The Jesus
who to the little child is "meek and gentle," or to the martyr-
" the Son of God " who " goes forth to war," or to the proud
English queen " the man who hung 'twixt heaven and
earth six- mortal hours " and " spat out the anodyne and
would not drink," will inevitably appeal to each in a different
way. But to those who take the documents available as
they are, and use them sincerely, He can at least never be
myth, or impostor, or visionary, or weakling.

1 Rabbi Enelow, in his still more recent book, A Jewish View of Jesus,
even accepts, for certain incidents, the authority of St. John's Gospel.

THE FOUNDER 457

Let us then, using these sources thus approved to us,
see first of all what impression He made upon His own
environment. That the people were in expectation of the
coming of Messiah we have every proof, both from 'the
canonical and apocalyptic literature of the time. The elect
remnant of Israel, saints like Simeon and Anna, waited day
and night in the temple courts. As the priests from the
Temple platform watched for the first glint of the rising
sun so that the silver trumpets might give the signal for
the morning sacrifice, so, even beyond the confines of the
Holy Land, an expectant humanity waited " upon the
world's great altar-stairs " for the promised Redeemer.
And when, heralded by the Baptist's cry, which in anticipa-
tion of the kingdom summoned the people to repentance,
Jesus 'appeared "preaching the Gospel of the kingdom,"
what did the people see in Him ?

First, unclouded by any variations of the Gospel records,
we feel the impression He made" as the unique Teacher who
gathered up in exquisite parables all the wisdom of the sages
in the closing period of Old Testament literature, and
there so falteringly expressed. We see also the com-
passionate Healer, shrinking from the reputation of a
wonder-worker, yet calling forth by His marvellous per-
sonality long-submerged powers in the weakened wills of
those who came to Him. for succour, reaching down into
hitherto unfathomed depths to soothe bodily pain and
restore peace to jangled nerves. Once again, we recognize
the Prophet of the new era, proclaiming the approaching close
of "ha-olamfiazzeh" (the present age} and the imminence
of "ha-olam habbo 1 " (the coming age) 1 which prophets and
apocalyptists had predicted. He is seen, moreover, as the
interpreter, in immortal words, of the difference between
the passing era and the one about to dawn. He gives to
men the new, positive and spiritual Law which is to supersede
all outworn codes. Not with the Old Testament formula
" Thus saith the Lord," but with His own authoritative " I
say unto you," uttered without arrogance or conceit, He
sets forth the spiritual principle behind the legal precept.
That the people hailed Him as Messiah, Dr. Klausner,

1 Phrases unfortunately rendered in. A.V. as " this world," " the world
to come." .

458 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

speaking as a Jew, has no doubt. The term " Son of
Man," used so commonly as a designation of Himself, made
clear at the first, even as the declaration to the apostles and
the oath taken at the High Priest's adjuration made plain
at the last, that Jesus accepted the popular recognition,
though He rejected the popular ideal. 1

So much it was possible for the crowd to gather as to
what Jesus was and what He claimed. But to the intimate
friends whom He . had gathered around Him and who
companioned with Him daily He was infinitely more. It
is said that no man is a hero to his valet de chambre, but the
more the apostles knew of Jesus the more they stood in
awe before the mystery of His being and His mission.
First, they gained very distinct convictions concerning His
Person. To Christ's question concerning. Himself Peter
replied: " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living
God " ; the doubts of Thomas vanished with the cry : " My
Lord and my God!"; John, many years after, declared:
" We beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of
the Father, full of grace and truth "; and Paul, growing in
knowledge as in zeal, with experience, could describe Him
in no other terms than as " the fullness of Him that filleth
all in all."

In the second place, they came step by step to appre-
ciate the value of the method by which Jesus would over-
come the world and open the kingdom of heaven to all
believers. It was the method of the Cross, a method so
startling and so incredible even (to those who saw power
only in force), that for long generations to come that Cross
was to be to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks
foolishness. Yet with full confidence in it as the symbol of
a sacrificial love stronger than anything the world had ever
seen, Jesus went on unfaltering towards His. goal.

Once again, the apostles lived to see and to proclaim
the victory of that Cross which had at first seemed but
the badge of shame. It was borne triumphantly through '
the grave and gate of death and in the Risen Christ they
perceived that the method which at first only the robber
crucified with Jesus recognized as valid was henceforth

1 Of course the term " Son of Man " has been variously explained, but
its general Messianic significance can hardly be questioned.

THE FOUNDER 459

crowned with glory. " Of the reality of this conviction,"
writes Mr. J. Middleton Murry, "of the reality of the
experience that created this- conviction, we cannot doubt.
The great Christian Church was not built on a lie, but on
a truth. Nor can we doubt that the experience of Peter,
like the later experience of Paul, was the experience of an
objective presence. Peter was not the victim of an hallucina-
tion, nor Paul the dupe of an illusion. That our intellects
cannot conceive the nature of an objective presence which is
not physical, or that of * a spiritual being ' remains for our
minds a contradiction in terms, is only evidence that our
minds are still inadequate to reality." *

The proclamation of this victory of the Cross was not
only the declaration that the life and character of Jesus stood
secure from the corroding effects of time and the decay of
death, but also the announcement of a new law for human
life and a new revelation of the character of God. That God
was all-powerful, all-wise and even all-loving was no news
to the religious world, but that He was eternally pouring
out His life ." like the rush of a river ". for the redemption
of His creatures was something hitherto unrealized. Thus
the supreme " epiphany," or manifestation, of God by Christ
was not in -His wise teaching or in His wonderful works,
but rather in His revelation that " the being equal with
God," so far from being "a grasping of things," was a
' letting go of things," an emptying of Himself in love,
even though it were the pouring out of life upon the Cross.

Lastly, the apostles came to see that the triumph of the
Cross ensured a continuous and abundant supply of power
for them to carry on the work committed to them. Never
could the memory of what Christ" had been empower them
to fulfil this commission by. itself. Only the sense of His
ever-present grace, increasing their scant supply of human
courage, deepening their devotion to. the cause committed
to them, and nerving them to hold out unto the end made
of these Galilean fishermen and artisans the force which
shook the world.

In the belief that the faith of the apostles is being
vindicated in history I write these next chapters on the

1 J.. Middleton Murry, Jesus, Man of Genius, p. 371, London, 1926.

460 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

story of the Christian Church. We shall come upon many
sins against that faith, on the part of imperfectly developed
individuals as well as on the part of the official Church,
itself often enough out of touch with the Master's guiding
hand. We shall see corruption creeping in. through the
failure to renounce the depravities of the natural man. 'We
shall see alliances with worldliness for the sake of securing
the prestige which Christ repudiated when it was offered
by Satan. We shall see men trying to extend the kingdom
of God by means and methods totally opposed to the secret
and method of the Cross. All this will furnish ample
enough material for those who wish to pronounce Chris-
tianity a failure. It couid scarcely be otherwise when we
consider the slow process by which the spiritual man is
fashioned by the operation of divine grace. Yet we shall
also see that every departure from the faith brings inevitably
its own Nemesis in humiliation and disaster, and at every
disposition to turn in penitence to the pursuit of the old
ideals there comes immediate resurrection as it were from
the dead and new progress of the Church towards its distant
goal. I hold it true that in no other way than by ever
renewed possibility of living contact with a permanently
accessible Christ may the story of the Church be other than
a depressing record of gulfs ever widening between the
ideals revealed of old in Palestine and the historic com-
munity which now represents these ideals to the world.

Hence no mere " Back to Christ " movement is to be
considered consonant with fidelity to the plan of Jesus.
Even if we could reproduce exactly for men of the twentieth
century the conditions of life as it was lived in the first, we
should not find the Living Christ under those old conditions.
Much, of course, of that, human life, the life " after the
flesh," still remains valid for bur imitation. As a great
moral example, harmonizing in the white light of His
perfection all the broken hues of virtue as we behold virtue
exemplified in the best of all other men, the human life of
Christ remains secure. It stands for ever " nearer than our
own, by some space to us immeasurable, to that which is
infinitely far."

Secure also is the Christian conviction that the life of

THE FOUNDER 461

Christ as it was lived among men has been and will continue
to be the mainspring of all social and religious reform in
the history of mankind. To use the words of Baron
Friedrich von Hiigel: "A Person came and lived and loved
and did and taught and died and rose again and lives on by
His power and His spirit for ever within us and amongst
US) so unspeakably rich and yet so simple, so sublime and
yet so homely, so divinely above us in being so divinely
near, that His character and teaching require, for an ever
fuller and yet never complete understanding, the varying
study and different experiments and applications, embodi-
ments and unrollings, of all the races of men have not been
able to conceive of a higher ideal or even to reach the
heights thus realized." And Professor Le Conte says:
" It is true that in many ways we have advanced and are
still advancing by the use of partial ideals; but this use of
partial and relative ideals is itself only a temporary stage of
evolution. At a certain stage we catch, glimpses of the
absolute ideals. Then our gaze becomes fixed and we are
thenceforward drawn upwards for ever. The human race
has already reached a point where the absolute ideal of
character is attractive. This divine ideal can never again
be lost to humanity." *

To acknowledge all this, however, is still insufficient
unless we hold that the Christ is not alone the interpreter
of the past and the revealer of the path which still lies
ahead for the pilgrimage of men, but is also the power
(symbolized by the presence of Beatrice in the Paradiso) by
which we mount from spiritual experience to spiritual
experience, until we reach our rest in the Beatific Vision.
The story of the ministry, which in the present chapter we
have so briefly indicated, beautiful and .eternally significant
as it must continue to be, is but the earthly introduction to
that eternal ministry which is carried on from the spiritual
world. It was perhaps the good fortune of the apostle
St. Paul that he was not permitted to companion with the
Christ " after the flesh," since he was the sooner privileged
to realize Him as his living, victorious Lord.

Thus in the history of religion, as the Christian under-

1 Joseph Le Conte, Evolution, New York, 1897.

462 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

stands it, Christ can never be equated with the dead founders
of other systems. He can never be the hero of a tradition
such as Islam holds of Muhammad. He can never be
compared with the Gautama whose attainment of Nirvana
left him to be but a beautiful memory. He can never be
likened to any Bodhisattva whom the disconsolate Maha-
yanist imagined as sharing the sorrows of humanity. . He
can never be thought of as a mere illusory avatar of the
divine, like those of Vishnu, created to save the heart from
breaking against the starkness of dependence upon an
impersonal Brahm. We must insist, as already pointed out,
upon setting Christ as the meeting-point of two evolutions,
on the one hand, the revelation of transcendent deity,
culminating in the Incarnation of the Son of God; on the
other hand, the revelation of immanent deity, culminating in
the birth of One who bears fitly the title of Son of
Man.

So Christ is found to fulfil in His Person more than all
the Confucianist hoped to behold in his " Superior Man ";
more than all the Taoist dared to expect in the revelation
of a Way by which he might gain immortal life ; more than
the Buddhist dreamed of aspiring to in the way of deliverance
from the iron law of Karma; more than the Hindu longed
to find in some downward manifestation of the divine such
as might strengthen, his will, enlighten his mind, and assuage
his heart's unrest.

It should therefore be no presumptuous claim, but
rather an appeal to the obvious facts of religious history,
which finds but one place for Jesus in the long story of man's
quest for God which is, of course, also the story of God's
quest for man. That place makes him unique and sets His
name above every other name that may be named. To use
the well-worn, but ever true, words of Browning, put upon
the. lips of the dying apostle, St. John :

I say, the acknowledgement of God in Christ, .
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee. to be wise.
Wouldst thou unprove this to reprove the proved ?
In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof,

THE FOUNDER 463

- Leave knowledge and revert to whence it sprung ?
Thou hast it, use it, and forthwith, or die !
For I say, this is death-and the sole death,
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain ?
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest. 1 ' a

1 Robert Browning, A Death in the Desert.

2 Out of the vast number of books dealing, more or less adequately, with
the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the following may be recommended :
F. C. Burkitt, The Gospel History and its Transmission (3rd Ed.), 1911 ;
B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels, 1924 ; W. Sanday, Life of Christ, 1907 ;-
E. F. Scott, The Kingdom and Messiah, 1911 ; Charles Gore, The Doctrine of
Christ; 1922 ; A. E. Rawlinson, The New Testament Doctrine of the Christ,
1926 ; H. R, Macintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 1912 ; A.
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (and Ed.), 191 1- See also the
article " Jesus Christ " by C. A. Scott in Ency. Brit. (i4th Ed.).

CHAPTER XXXI
The Great Forty Years

IN the last chapter I stressed the point that of two methods
possible in writing a history of the Christian Church the
professing Christian was necessarily restricted to the
one which regarded Christ as a living, operative presence
throughout, rather than a merely human originator. In the
one case the Founder could only be regarded as a dead
teacher whose memory must gradually dwindle to a legend
and the Church could only be envisaged as an institution
inevitably becoming the more feeble as it became the more
venerable. In the other case the Founder is the victorious
Lord who rules His Church from the eternal world and the
Church is His Body increasing in power as it partakes of.
the power of its living Head. It is in this latter way alone
that the Founder escapes the criticism of permanently
wearing first-century clothes and therefore being inadequate
to the problems of the present. . It is in this way alone that
the Church may be presented as a living and growing
organism instead of being merely an interesting but archaic
survival.

No more striking illustration of this conception of the
Church can be conceived than is furnished by the story of
what I have ventured to call the Great Forty Years. The
period from the Resurrection of Christ to the Fall of Jeru-
salem, that is, from A.D. 30 to 70, is not only a period of
forty years historically, but a period which lends itself
readily to the suggestions of symbolism. Forty (4x 10) is
the number of world-wide development, as well as the
number signifying a generation. It lends itself also nicely
to the parallel to which attention is drawn in the third and
fourth chapters of the E-pistle to the Hebrews^ where the forty
years now in question is suggested by the forty years in
the wilderness between the Exodus and the entrance into

464

THE GREAT FORTT TEARS 465

the land of Canaan. As in the Old Testament period God
took the people of Israel, gave them His Law, trained them
to become a nation ready to advance to the conquest of the
land, so in the corresponding New Testament period the
Spirit of God was preparing the Church to be launched
upon the field of history, independently of Judaism, to
begin its task of conquering the world. The writer of the
epistle utters his solemn warning to the Jews of his time
lest they should neglect the opportunity of entering into the
rest of the kingdom, even as their fathers had neglected the
opportunity offered by Moses, with the result that "-their
carcases fell in the wilderness." It was to him a tragical
thought that a promise having been given to Israel that they
should enter into this rest, any of them should seem to come
short of it. 1

Moreover, the writer of the epistle was but reaffirming
what Christ Himself had declared in the last days of His
ministry when by pa'rable and discourse alike He solemnly
warned that generation of His countrymen that, while
people were seeking entrance to the kingdom from north,
east, south and west, " the sons of the kingdom " were in
danger of self-exile to the outer darkness. It has been a
most unfortunate misinterpretation, as already remarked, of
those wonderful twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of
St. Matthew, first, that the phrase " the age to come " has
been misrendered as " the world to come," thus suggesting
some post mortem condition, and, secondly, that the substance
of Christ's teaching on this occasion has been so split up by
interpretation as suggesting that one part refers to the
destruction of Jerusalem and another part to the ending of
our planetary ~ life by a kind of General Judgement. In
consequence, many people, finding the expected end of the
planet deferred beyond the point at which they fixed it,
have decided that the apostles were deceived, without
reflecting that, if so, Christ Himself had deceived them. . It
should be plain to every intelligent reader that in using the
terms, " this age " and " the coming age," Christ was but
employing familiar Jewish terminology descriptive of the
anticipated transition from the pre-Messianic to the

1 Hebrews iv. 6 fi.
2G

466 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

Messianic eras. It was in the Messianic age, the age of" the
. New TTestament Church, that His " Coming " (literally
<c Presence ") was assured and the promise fulfilled: " Lo,
I am with you all the days, even to the end of the world."

Let rne . sketch very briefly the story of the great
transition period from the point of view thus presented. .It
begins' with the story of the Day of Pentecost as described
in Acts ii. To the outsider this account must remain a
great mystery. But we must judge the event by its fruits
and these .are so obvious that ""he who runs may read."
The . men who had been stampeded by, the tragedy on
Calvary into a group of perplexed and panic-stricken
fugitives become " a small transfigured band whom the
world could not tame." Pentecost becomes the starting-
point for a development unparalleled in human history.
But the common habit of describing Pentecost as the
birthday of the Christian Church is unwarranted. It would
seem fitter to think of it as the day on which the material
elements of which the Church was . to be composed were
quickened, while these were still parts of the body of the
mother Church, that is, of Judaism. It was the divine
operation by which the Church, to be born only by the
death of the mother in A.D. 70, began that shaping which
would by and by set it free to pursue its separate way through
history and yet continue' in history the inheritance of all
the past. During this period the apostles were still Jews
faithful to the obligations of the Old Testament Law. They
went up to the Temple to pray at the accustomed hours ;
they kept the annual feasts; they remembered their responsi-
bilities to the Hebrew poor. Even St. Paul, who by some
of his brethren was regarded as a dangerous innovator, not
only kept the feasts at Jerusalem but even .took upon
himself unnecessary vows to show that he was still obedient
to the requirements of the Law. 1 Yet all the time something
was going on in secret which, would presently reveal the
new order in all the power of its liberated life.

Let me describe this gestation period as a threefold
shaping, a shaping which emerges upon the world of history
as a complete fulfilment of the idea conveyed in the Buddhist

1 Acts xxi. 23 ff.

THE GREAT FORTT TEARS 467

Trinity of Buddha, Dharma and Samgha, namely, a con-
ception of the Person of Christ which would take the place
of merely reminiscent homage to a Jesus " after the flesh ";
a conception of teaching and discipline to which Christians
would hold through all the ages to come; and a conception
of society' in the Church which would be catholic and world-
wide in its appeal to humanity.

First of all, let us consider the gradual shaping of
doctrine, especially of doctrinal conceptions of the Person
of Christ. Some people will misunderstand this idea of a
developing doctrine, supposing that all truth had been
revealed to the disciples by Christ at a flash and understood
at a flash. These forget the saying: " I -have many things
to say unto you, -but ye cannot bear them' now." It will
save us many a futile effort to gather fruit out of season
if we remember that the apostles, who grew in spiritual
power and in practical experience, grew also in under-
standing of the principles of the faith. Some of the first
generation of Christian teachers were more rapid in their
apprehension of this faith than others. James, the " brother"
of Jesus, remained to the last attached to the old order and
disposed to see in Jesus the Prophet of Galilee, the moralist
of the Sermon on the Mount, the exponent of Divine Wisdom.
Others, like the writer of the Fourth Gospel, were quick to
attain the vision of the mystic, seeing in the historic
the temporal illustration of the eternal fact. Others,
again, like St. Paul, grew gradually from the one attitude
to the other. Every student of the New Testament will
naturally put the Epistles of the great Apostle to the Gentiles
in their proper chronological sequence (an arrangement
unfortunately lacking in our current versions) in order that
he may watch 'the steady unfolding of the truth' to the
apostle's mind. From the earliest surviving letters written
to the Thessalonians on matters of.local concern, on through
the Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians and Romans,
occupied with the then burning controversy as to the
relation of Jews and Gentiles within the Church, and so on
to the great Christological Epistles to the Philippians,
Colossians and Ephesians, in which we learn his final views
as- to Christ and a Christocentric universe, we see con-

468 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

sistent advance towards the ultimate Christian conviction'
as to the Personality of the Master. In all this there is no
revolutionary change, nor any departure (such as some have
fantastically imagined) from the mind of Christ Himself.
It is a genuine unfolding of ideas germinal in the religious
systems of Hebrew, Greek and Roman, yet " chaptered
up " in Christ. And St. Paul Jewish Rabbi, student of a
Greek university, and Roman citizen was peculiarly fitted
to proclaim the ultimate synthesis.

In the second place, there is in these forty years the
shaping of those organs which were necessary for the function-
ing of the Church's life as a living body. From the very first,
'as we have seen, the community as a spiritual fact needed
the organs by which it came to be something more than a
machine. We have seen these shaping in primitive religious
societies and have watched their development into the
organs of the Jewish Church. And it is from behind these,
as the grain grows behind the husk, that we may note the
development of the living organs of the Christian Church.
The divine authority of ministry and sacraments does not
depend upon their manifestation full-statured from the date
of Pentecost, even though in certain cases we connect these
with explicit commands given by Christ to His disciples.
It depends rather upon the claim to take the place of all
that had had the sanction of the earlier systems now on
their way to obsolescence. The early Christians, together
with the apostles, for the forty years of which we speak,
lived (as already pointed out) as faithful sons of the Jewish
law, keeping the obligations to which they had been trained.
But within these ordinances were ripening for manifestation
new growths which would presently burst their sheath and
become obligations of a new and more permanent sort.
Behind the covenant rite of circumcision, now becoming
out of date, appeared the new rite of Christian baptism,
with its implication of regeneration as weir as cleansing.
Behind the observance of the Passover there appeared
the new obligation of the Christian Eucharist, not merely
as a memorial feast but as the channel for transmission of
divine strength and refreshment. Behind the old Aaronic
priesthood, about to become (through the destruction of

THE GREAT FORTT TEARS 469

the Temple) a sinecure, was growing up the new priesthood
whereby the ministry of Christ in heaven was to be every-
where made effective in the Church on earth. And behind
the old Temple, with its services and its sacrifices, was
growing up the new Temple, " not made with hands,"
which was to remain after the old shrine, " with the courts
thereof," was given over to destruction. Moreover, every
one of these new institutional elements must be understood
as foreshadowed by the religious rites of the non-Hebrew
world, from the earliest .magic of the shamans to the sacra-
mental initiation of the Greek mysteries. In other words, the
sacramental system and the ministry of the Christian Church
have their sanction, not merely in the authoritative words
of Christ as their Institutor, but also in the need which runs
through all religious history for just such a climax as Christ's
words, of institution express.

Thirdly, in the great forty years we have the shaping of
a great and catholic plan of missionary work, through which
the universal character of the Church to be is at once
illustrated and in part realized. The conclusion has some-
times been drawn, by singling out certain isolated words of
Christ and certain incidents of the ministry as, for example,
the story of the Syro-Phrenician woman that Christ came
consciously only to " the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
No such conclusion can be legitimately entertained in the
light of other incidents and in the light of the Great Com-
mission given to- the apostles (St. Matthew xxviii.19) 1
certainly no misrepresentation of the purpose of Jesus, who
had willed through the travail of His soul to draw all men
unto Him.

Yet on more' than one occasion Christ did declare that
the whole of the Jewish people, scattered abroad throughout
the Roman " world," must be given the opportunity of
entering the kingdom before the end of the Old Dispensation
came about through the Fall of Jerusalem. And it is one
of the marvels of religious history that this diffusion of the
Gospel over the cities of the Dispersion was actually realized
prior to the fatal year A.D. 70. How it came about we are
able to trace (though only in part) in the story of the Acts.

1 Cf. e.g. Matthew xxiv. 14.

470 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

In this book we have described step by step the circum-
stances" under, which the apostles bore their message
" Jesus and the Resurrection " from Jerusalem to Judaea,
from Judaea to Samaria, from thence to Antioch in Syria, for
the benefit of the Gentiles, and thence again, along the great
Roman highways, from city to city, from land to land, till
even Rome, within ten years of the Crucifixion, had its
Christian colony. From this one narrative we might
naturally conclude that a large part of this diffusion was
due solely to the marvellous zeal and passionate courage of
St. Paul. Yet it is, of course, certain that many others
contributed to the result. Of this we have illustration in
the famous "letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan, by which
we learn that in Bithynia, the very place which St. Paul
through illness was prevented from visiting, such a multitude
of men and women had deserted the pagan temples for the
meetings of the Christians that the Roman official was
puzzled how to proceed. To such missionary work as this,
doubtless, many agencies contributed. Tradesmen carried
the " good news " from city to city as well as their wares;
artisans in search of work, or, like Aquila and Priscilla,
expelled from Rome by Claudius, were carriers of the
evangel. Whenever Christians were scattered abroad " they
went everywhere, preaching the word." .

In this far-flung effort of missionary expansion, more-
over, it is interesting to note that, as Christianity, in its
foundations was the heir of all that had been conveyed along
the main channels of religious history, Hebrew, Greek and
Latin, so for its propagation it was providentially destined
to use the means which had been no less providentially
prepared. What, for example, could these simple Galilean
evangelists have done to find a starting-point for their
proclamation had it not been that wherever they went
throughout the Empire they were bound to discover
communities of fellow-countrymen always ready to listen to
any rabbi, however humble, who had a word for them from
the old land reminding them of the hope of Israel ? Wher-
ever there were ten men of leisure there would be a synagogue
and even where there were fewer Jews than this a proseucha,
or prayer-place, by the riverside would be the gathering

THE GREAT FORTT TEARS 471

point for the faithful on the Sabbath. 1 Consequently, the
Christian missionary would always have his pulpit, from
which to preach the Master's message. The rule was:
" To the Jew first and also to the Gentile." Even if the
apostolic address led to opposition and a riot," it was none
the less an inducement for others to come on succeeding
Sabbaths, that they might hear whatever was to be said.

So, again, there had been providentially prepared, for
them the Greek "koine" or vernacular, such as would
everywhere make their speech intelligible. Even on the
Day of Pentecost at Jerusalem the apostles had occasion to
note the glad . surprise of the multitude assembled at the
Feast, when, instead of the pedantic speech of the Hebrew
pandits, was heard the language of the Dispersion, the
common Greek. " We do hear them speak," cried the
motley throng from all the provinces of the Empire, " in
our own tongue the wonderful works of God." 2 We must
remember, of course, that, this preparation had been begun
two hundred years earlier when, for the convenience of
Jews residing in Egypt, the Old Testament Scriptures had
been translated into the language - of Alexandria. The
Septuagint, as this version is called, has been termed " the
first apostle to the Gentiles," and with equal truth we may
speak of it as the precursor of Pentecost.

Yet once again, we may see how providentially the first-
century world had been prepared for the sowing abroad of
the Christian message by the organization " of the Roman
Empire, the making of the Roman roads, and the imposition
on the Western world of Roman law. The great Roman
highways had much to*, do with the successful missionary
strategy of St. Paul and his - fellow-apostles. Travelling
along these with an ease which was perhaps never again
equalled until the era of railways, they journeyed from
metropolis to metropolis, staying but a short time in the
smaller towns, but making great cities like Ephesus the
headquarters of operations in the entire countryside. In
this way the news flew as though carried by the imperial
couriers, and the disciples who were left behind to continue

1 Cf. Acts xvi. T3.

2 Is this an untenable interpretation of Acts ii. 5-8 ?

472 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the work formed the rural organizations such as made the
apostolic campaigns permanently fruitful. Nor was the
apostolic debt: particularly in the case of St. Paul less to
the impartiality of Roman law. Three times the apostle
owed his security from mob violence to his status as a
Roman citizen, and on other occasions, too, we find him
relying on the justice of the Roman officials to whom his
cause was committed. 1 In after times, of course, when the
Empire embarked on a policy of persecution, the situation
was altered. But by that time the Gospel had been preached
throughout the Empire and the forty years of opportunity
were nearing their close.

The end of this significant period is coincident with the
time of transition termed by the Jewish apocalyptists as " the
pangs of the Messiah." The many who at this time were
keeping watch for the coming of the promised kingdom
knew that Judgement and Deliverance were the two hands
on the clock of time and that salvation could not come
except by the shaking of what had been their heaven and
earth. For Christians who seek to understand the signi-
ficance of this period, as it appeared to the generation then
alive, there is no document so illuminating as the Apocalypse
known as the Revelation of St. John the Divine, an apocalypse
mystifying enough to those who would use it as a manual
of soothsaying, -but plain enough, to those who knew it as
an " unveiling " and not as a mystification, a book wnose
reading brought with it a special blessing, rather than an
enigma whose key had been flung into the waters of the
^gean. The Jews who sought the aid of the Apocalypse
were like those who suggested the writing of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, patriots who in view of the menace and tyranny
of the time were eagerly demanding, " Hath God cast away
His people? " And the answer was to reveal the figure of
the Messiah, Judge as well as Saviour, at- the very door,
moving indeed among the candlesticks of the Churches, and
calling them to repentance; To those who judged of the
universe and its forces solely through the outward eye
things looked black indeed. The power behind all things
was that old Dragon, symbol of the ancient Chaos which

1 See Acts xviii. 14 ; xxii. 25 ; xxv. 10.

THE GREAT FORTT TEARS 473

after all, they thought, ha.d not been slain by Marduk, as
in- Babylonian myth, but was lord of all. . Evidence of this
undefeated' power of darkness was plain enough in the
Dragon's emissary and agent, that Wild Beast from the
Sea, which was incarnate in the Roman Empire and its
heads, the emperors whose armies encircled the walls of the
Holy City, and whose brute force was being invoked to crush
the infant Church of Christ. In addition, there was the
'Wild Beast from the Land, that spirit of pagan philosophy,
speaking with glozing tongues of falsehood against truth
as .revealed in Jesus. What could the outcome be of a
society founded on belief in this anti-Trinity of Hell but
the Harlot City, defiant of God and worshipping the powers
of Force and Falsehood? The majority of men at this
time possibly the majority still believed that all this
represented the world of reality. If not, why should truth
be slain in the streets and the ungodly triumph ?

But the Seer, entering in spirit into " the Day of the
Lord" so long "predicted by the prophets, saw reality in
another guise. He gives us in two wonderful chapters
(iv. and v.) " The Revelation of the Things that Are."
He shows us first that Ancient of Days, the primal power
of righteousness already victorious over Chaos, the eternally
creative .force which Christians describe as the Father.
Then he bids us see that the agent of this Eternal Power
is (not the Beast, but) " the Lamb, slain from the foundation
of the world," the eternal principle of sacrificial love which
Christians call the Son. Then, again, he shows us the
Seven Spirits of God ~which, like the Amesha-spentas of
Zoroastrianism, are the reflected personality of God in all
the events of history, the immanence of God in the process
,of evolution. And the outcome of this is the Bride City,
humanity redeemed and glorified, which is the Church
coming down age by age out of the heaven which is the
realm of the absolute, to realize itself in the earth which is
.the realm of becoming.

All this, moreover, is no dream of a visionary removed
from the events of the time, but rather the philosophy of
religion as that time, made it plain. As in the great conflict
of Marduk with Tiamat, victory may not be bought except

474 * HISTORT OF RELIGION

through war in the spiritual realm. So we have unfolded
before us a marvellously dramatic picture of the troubles
of the age in three separate sevenfold sequences of Seals,
Trumpets and Bowls. The. Seven Seals -of the Book of
Mystery are one by one broken by the Lamb to show the
inner meaning of the things from which the land of Palestine
was- suffering, from the horrors of invasion, war, /amine,
and death, to the fall of the great " silence " in which the
Old Testament dispensation is to close. Then comes the
sounding of the Seven Trumpets of. War, which brings
before us the incidents of the Roman campaign against
Jerusalem, up to the day when .the Temple was destroyed,
with its courts, though the Holy of Holies (that
is, the eternal values of the old order) remains to appear
as the Foursquare City. Then, in the description of the
outpoured Bowls of Judgement, we have depicted the
trials which are to fall upon the infant Church, forced
to flee into the .wilderness from the fury of the Wild Beast.

But beyond all the tribulation of the time the Seer is
able to describe the victorious issue. He sees the Dragon,
the Wild Beast and the False Prophet slain and Death and
Hell cast into the Lake of Fire. People, he foresees, will
still go on worshipping the shadows of these things, ignorant
of the fact that they are dethroned and dead. In consequence
they will gnash their. teeth in painj suffering the results of
their illusion.

Then, in the last chapters of his book, the apocalyptist
unveils for us the descent from heaven of the Foursquare
City, the city of redeemed humanity, perfect in its length
and breadth and height, the fulfilment of the symbolism
embodied in the Holy of Holies which survives from the
Old Testament order. Within the walls of this city, with
its twelve courses of vari-coloured precious stone like the
coloured courses of the Babylonian zikkurats will be
drawn the glory of all the nations streaming through the
open gates which invite mankind from north and south and
east and west. Here is to be realized, the new Heaven and
Earth, free at last from the Sea of Chaos which had been
the raw material of their evolution. .Here is the "con-
tinuing city " which men had sQught ever since the time

THE GREAT FORTY TEARS 475

when they turned their backs upon companionship with the
brute in Eden. Here is to be found the new Paradise, with
its Tree of Life and Water of Life, from which the curse
has been for ever excluded.

Two kinds of people have misunderstood the implications
of this sublime vision and, in consequence, have started
amiss with the story of the' Christian Church on earth. On
the one hand are those who put the realization of the whole
in the celestial world at some infinite remove from our
present-day experience. And on the other hand are those
who claim to see the whole vision as realized with the first
steps taken by the infant Church in its historic pilgrimage.
Of course, neither of these views is the entire truth. What
we do see is the working of a new force which has begun,
the process of changing the face of society, the first scene
of a drama which is not to have its denouement till the
progressive devolution of God and the progressive evolution
of man are alike complete. The victory ideally has been
won. Ideally " the kingdoms of this world are become the
kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ." Ideally, in the
revelation of God through Christ, the Dragon, the Wild
Beast and the False Prophet are dead, however much the
deceived among men may continue to worship --their
shadows. 1 Shadow gods are shown up for what they are;
the " genuine " tjod is made manifest. So, again, the City
of God, which is also the City of Man, is coming down, and
the union of God and Man is achieved in the bridal of
Christ and His Church. All through the history to be
surveyed, even in the darkest ages, we shall see glints and
.glimpses of the descending splendour. Nevertheless, the
vision of our high moments is as yet far from being realized
among men. The Seer knows that the battle will continue
far beyond the time of Rome', on and on to the present, and
through ages yet to come. Though before his eyes gleamed
the walls of the eternal Camelot, most men would exclaim
with Tennyson's hind, " Lord, there is no such city any-
where." As the woman .told the painter Turner, that she
had never seen such colour in a sunset, so the sceptics of all

1 See Charles Kingsley, The Roman and the Teuton (London, edition of 1889),
chap. iii.

476 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

ages will refuse to behold what was so plain to the eyes of
JSt. John the Divine.

Yet it is a wonderful starting-point for the history of
the Christian Church, freed from the trammels of the past,
that a few at least, with little in the way of history to go
upon, "could look from the small and doubtful beginning
to the triumph of the completed work. By anticipation
they could sing:

This hath. He done and shall we not adore Him ?
This shall He do, and can we still despair ?
Come, let us quickly fling ourselves before Him,
Cast at His feet the burden of our care.
Flash from our eyes the joy of our thanksgiving,
Glad and regretful, confident and calm,
Then through all life and what is after living,
Thrill to the music of Creation's psalm.

It may be retorted that this is not the proper attitude
for the historian who aims at objectivity. The facts of
history, it will be said, must be set forth dispassionately and
the issue decided by the ultimate result. Yet I am sure we
shall reach altogether wrong conclusions as to the significance
of religious history, unless we keep in mind some vision
of the glory which faith 'sees as the final goah Christian
history will be to us a sad record of futile hope, of misspent
zeal, of wrongly directed enthusiasm, unless we see beyorid
the achievement of any age in the past. We shall have
sickening records of cruelty, error, fanaticism, stupidity,
foolishness, unless we can remember that the Golden Age
of religion is still indefinitely ahead. If we employ our
simile of the two triangles, one of the past, with its apical
point in Christ as the heir of all the ages, and one with its
apical point as the Christ from whom starts all the story of
the future, we shall have to confess that, in comparison with
the finished triangle of the past, the space in our second
triangle, represented by but two thousand years, is a
relatively insignificant* segment of time, small even by
comparison with the historical era embraced in the earlier
half of our diagram. In a very striking illustration Sir
James Jeans asks us to take a postage stamp and stick it on
a penny, then put the 'penny, with the postage stamp upper-

THE GREAT FORTT TEARS 477

most, -on a pillar like Cleopatra's Needle. The height of
the whole structure will then represent the age of the
earth; the thickness of the penny and the stamp together
will represent the time man has been on earth; and the
thickness of the stamp will" represent approximately the time
during which man has been " civilized." Then, he adds,
keep on adding stamps to your pillar till it reaches the
height of Mont Blanc and you .will have represented the ages
during which man may still survive upon this planet.

When we get depressed, as we often must, in our reading
of history, over the littleness^ of our gains, let us remember
this. It is in the courage afforded by such a thought that
I . shall endeavour in these succeeding chapters to give a
rapid sketch of the progress, the lapses, the failures, and
withal the achievements of the Christian religion. 1

1 Books to be consulted on the period will include : W. M. Ramsay, St.
Paul, the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, London, 1895 ; the same author's
The Church in the Roman Empire, 1898 ; F. W. Farrar, The Life and Work of
St. Paul, 1872 ; the same author's The Early Days of Christianity, 1882 ; A. C.
McGiffert, History of Christianity in the Apostohc Age, New York, 1906 ; G. P.
Fisher, History of the Christian Church, New York, 1889, pp. 1-87 ; Salomon
Reinach, A Short History of Christianity (Eng. trans.), London, 1922 ; Ernest
Renan, L' Antichrist, Paris, 1873 ; Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews.

CHAPTER XXXII
Christ versus Ccesar

JERUSALEM had not yet fallen when the Christians
residing there, warned, as Eusebius says, " by a certain
oracle given to their leaders by revelation," or, as
Epiphanius declares, "by an angel," left the doomed city
and took refuge in the little Perean town of Pella. They
could not have been a large company, yet already the
mustard-seed of the Church was developing into a tree and
sending branches abroad throughout the Empire. If Cassar
was sitting in untroubled security on the Seven Hills, God,
at any rate, " within the shadow," was " keeping watch
above His own." '

For the most part the members of the Christian Church,
whether in Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Gaul, or
Egypt, were drawn from the poorer strata of society. St.
Paul tells us " not many rich, not many wise," so far as this
world is concerned, were chosen. And, many years after,
Celsus used the gibe that "any one who is a sinner, or
foolish, or simple-minded in short, any unfortunate, will
be accepted by the kingdom of God." Yet, doubtless, a few
wealthy, as had been the case in Jerusalem, and one or two
connected with the imperial court, had found their way into
the Church.

Organization followed evangelization very rapidly, and
for this training in the system of the Roman Empire was
to a considerable extent responsible. Yet the development
of the threefold ministry was indebted also to the Old
Testament order and, quite obviously, also to the teaching
of Christ and His training, of the apostles. The genuine
epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch bear eloquent witness to
progress made in this direction.

Until the close of the ministry of St. Paul the policy
of the Roman authorities had been, in respect to Christianity,

478

CHRIST FERSUS CMSAR 479

tolerant and protective. To use the symbol of the
Apocalypse, "the earth helped the- woman." But under
Nero,, about A.D. 64, persecution broke out furiously at
Rome, involving, in all' probability, the death of two leading
apostles (SS. Peter and Paul), and of a large number of
others who on this occasion " passed through the great
tribulation."

. From the time of the Neronian persecution, to the Edict
of Milan, in 313, persecution of the Christians was the rule
rather than the exception, though this was not often empire-
wide, or due to the direct initiative of the emperors. In
any case the statement as 'to the sequence of Ten General
Persecutions is far from being correct. Christianity came
under the definition of a religio illicita more or less per-
manently from the time of Vespasian, but the putting of
the law into effect depended largely upon local circumstances
and upon the attitude of the provincial governors. The
letter of Pliny the Younger, when governor of Bithynia,
about 117, .together with the Emperor Trajan's response,
illustrates very well the general procedure. Doubtless many
Christians were punished solely because of their profession,
but in most cases it was thought necessary to bring against
them some specific charge, substantial or imaginary. Some-
times persecution arose because of the popular demand,
sometimes a fit of panic at time of national catastrophe,
earthquake or fire, sometimes the result of widely propagated
slander, such as the existence of Thyestean banquets or the
indulgence in unnatural vices, sometimes through mere
prejudice, because Christians abstained from the gladiatorial
sports and other, occasions involving pagan rites. While
the populace was carried away by unreasoning madness, the
philosophers were hostile because of what seemed in the
Christians to be narrowness, philistinism, or even lack of
common humanity. As for the emperors, they encouraged
or discouraged persecution according to their personal
temperament, public policy, or to their agreement or dis-
agreement with the popular mood. There can be but little
doubt that Nero and Domitian were persecutors out of
personal cruelty and dislike of the Christians. Trajan was
a persecutor when it seemed necessary for the security of

480 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the state and when it seemed likely that the Christians were
chargeable with crime. Yet in later times Trajan was so
far forgiven that Dante admits him into the Paradiso.
Hadrian, who occupied the imperial throne from 1 17 to 138,
and in whose reign the Apologies began to appear, persecuted
for much the same reasons, though he opposed the yielding
of the officials to popular clamour. It was in this reign that
the Jewish revolt under Bar Cochba'("'jo of a sfar"} was
suppressed . and Jerusalem further destroyed and renamed
Aelia Capitolina. The two Antonines, Antoninus Pius and
Marcus Aurelius, were not naturally persecutors, but the
latter as a philosopher had a ratlier hard contempt for- the
Christians as obstinate bigots. Commodus was infamously
cruel, and . Septimius Severus carried on persecution for
reasons of state. Nothing good can be said of Caracalla
and Heliogabalus, but of Alexander Severus we have the
story that he reverenced a statue of Christ in his rather
eclectic pantheon. In the time of Philip the Arabian,
A.D. 248, the millennium of the foundation of Rome was
celebrated with great eclat, but the outlook was viewed with
misgiving on account of the breakdown of the old religious
sanctions. Under Decius the first really general persecution
was carried out. with great severity, as a sincere effort to
unify the Empire by enforcing the worship, of the emperors.
Valerian revived the persecution, but fell into the hands of
the Persians and died an exile. Gallienus proved rather
favourable to the faith than otherwise and-it is not till the
reign of Diocletian, in 303, that another concerted effort
was made to crush out Christianity by the destruction of
books and buildings as well as by the execution of Christians.
This was the final endeavour on a large scale to suppress the
faith by force, and after the civil war which followed^ the
death of Diocletian we come to the accession of Constantihe
and the promulgation of the Edict of Tolerance at Milan in
313. Caesarism was defeated and Christ had conquered.
How far the victory was complete we shall have occasion
presently to enquire.

There can be no certainty as to .the actual number of
those who died as martyrs during the entire period of
persecution. On the one hand there were many who did

CHRIST VERSUS CAESAR " 481

not stand the test of the times, the libellatid^ who took
tickets (libelli) to show that they had conformed to the
requirements of the officials, the thurificati, who, under
pressure, consented to sprinkle incense upon the altars
erected to the genius of the emperor, as well as, no doubt,
many who recanted from sheer shrinking of the flesh. On
the other hand, there were many who, in a fit of ecstasy,
offered- themselves needlessly to martyrdom, or those, like
Origen, who had to be restrained by the hiding -of their
clothes. Taking all the localities together affected by the
persecutions, Asia Minor, Italy, North Africa, Gaul and
Britain, and putting together such accounts as have come
down to us, " the noble army of martyrs " swells to a notable
size, and the heroism with - which timid men and weak
women and tender children faced the flame, the sword and
the wild beasts, is a wonderful testimony to the faith which
had overcome the world.

They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,

Through peril, toil and pain. .

There was Ignatius of Antioch, journeying to Rome as in
a kind of triumphal procession, to be ground by the teeth of
hungry lions to become " the fine wheat of God." There
was the venerable Polycarp at Smyrna, confessing Christ
through the roaring veil of flame. There was, again, Justin
Martyr at Rome, in the reign of Marcus AureKus, a phil-
osopher suffering death at the edict of a philosopher. There
were the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, who with their
companions suffered by the beasts in North Africa. And
in the churches of Lyons and Vienne there was the valiant
company who endured a cruel death in 1 77. So the terrible
story runs, till we come to the innumerable multitude of the
age of Decius and on to the last flare of imperial desperation
in the days of Diocletian. The words of the Epistle to the
Hebrews are a fitting description: "They were stoned,
they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were
slain by the sword; they went about in sheepskins and
goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (of whom
the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and
mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth." *

1 Hebrews xi. 37.
2H

482 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Among the great figures of the period we have some
who were martyrs both in will and deed; others who were
martyrs in will but not in deed. A few are -notable as
continuing the catena of witmess from the days of the
apostles in literary form. To the earliest of these we give
the name of the Apostolic Father -s, as to men linked with the
first generation of the Church. - There is Clement of Rome,
possibly the friend referred to by St. Paul in the Epistle to
the Philippians.* His Epistle to the Corinthians^ written about
96, is an effort on the part of the community at Rome to
settle a dispute in the Corinthian Church.. It is not a great
work, but remarkable for its ready quotations from the New
Testament books as already of authority. It adds to our
knowledge of the apostles SS. Peter and Paul, mentioning
the martyrdom of each and, in the case of St. Paul, stating
that he had visited " the utmost bounds of the west." 2 It
speaks also of the ministerial order of the Church and, in
support of the doctrine of the Resurrection, uses the quaint
Egyptian myth of the Phrenix. The letter was sent by the
hands of trusted brethren to the elders of the church
addressed.

Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, A.D. 30-107, according to
legend the child whom Christ had as an example taken in
His arms (and therefore called Theophoros\ wrote letters
which have come down to us in two recensions. The
longer recension, however, which consists of fifteen epistles,
is not regarded as authentic, and only the shorter version,
of seven letters, has been generally accepted. These letters
are of great importance. When Trajan visited Antioch in
107 Ignatius, as Bishop of the local church, could hardly do
otherwise than confess himself a Christian and was thereupon
condemned to be devoured by wild beasts at Rome. On
his journey thither he wrote the letters which have survived,
to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians^ and Romans, from
Smyrna and, from Troas, to the Philadelphians, Smyrniotes,
and to his friend Polycarp. They have great human as well
as doctrinal interest. Ignatius suffered not a little from his
surly guards, whom he describes as "leopards," but he is
in an ecstasy of- expectation with regard to 'his imminent

1 Written about A.D. 96. z Possibly referring to Spain.

CHRIST FERSUS CMSAR 483

martyrdom and hopes that no intercession will rob him of
the triumph. . Doctrinally,- the letters confirm the use made
of the New Testament books as scripture, speak very
definitely and dogmatically of the need of the threefold
ministry, and bear witness to the Christian acceptance of
the divinity of Christ and the virginity of Mary. From the
literary point of view, also, the letters are notable for such
terse expressions as " Find time to pray without ceasing ";
" Every wound is not healed with the same remedy " ;
" The times demand thee as the pilots the haven "; " Stand
like a beaten anvil."

Polycarp, 65-155, Bishop of .Smyrna, is traditionally
the disciple of St. John and died by fire at Smyrna as the
result of a popular uprising demanding a Christian victim
at the hands of the officials. He has left us xn.- Epistle to the
Philippians which is a singularly beautiful testimony to one
of the noblest of Christian' confessors. It is full of New
Testament quotations, reminds us not a little of St. Paul's
letter to the same community, and warns against the rise
of Docetism, .a heresy which denied the reality of Christ's
suffering upon the Cross.

Other writings of this class we must pass over in order
to refer to a new type of Christian literature, the Apologies ,
written deliberately for "the purpose of informing the
emperors and officials as to the harmless and law-abiding
character of the Christian religion. They appear first in
the resign of Antoninus Pius, about 138, and include as
authors the names of Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr,
Tatian, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, and Melito of Sardis.
The most illustrious of them all is Justin Martyr, a student
of philosophy, born in Samaria and converted to Christ
after experimenting with various other systems. He wrote
his Apologies to Antoninus Pius and to Marcus Aurelius,
and suffered martyrdom in the reign of the latter about 165.
The Apologies are exceedingly valuable, not merely for their
defence of the Christians against the usual charge's, but for
their constructive testimony as to things actually believed
and practised. Much stress is laid upon Christ's fulfilment
of Old Testament prophecy, but the most striking passages
are those which deal with Baptism (Chapter. UCI.), the

484 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Eucharist (LXVI.), and the weekly worship of the Christians
(LXVII.). These are among the most illuminating pieces
of literature which have come to us from the Second
Century.

Not only pagan officials - but Christians themselves
needed information and instruction. While many sought to
propound authoritatively the principles of the faith, others
were beginning to ventilate strange opinions and specula-
tions, which naturally invited refutation. The word heresy
(Gk., hairesiS) choice] was in its first meaning harmless
enough, but " choice " became dangerous when it led to
rebellion against the authorized teaching of the Church, or
even to schism, that is, an actual rending of " the seamless
robe of Christ." The first controversy of Christianity,
over the relation of the New Testament Dispensation to
Judaism, was now dead, though in the time of Marcion it
was destined to be revived in an altered form. But other
errors began to rear their heads and to find supporters among
men, who, if they were eccentric, were also at the same time,
for the most part, sincere. We have already mentioned
Docetism, the teaching which maintained that the Incarna-
tion was a mere " seeming," since the Christ could not be
born as a babe nor as a man hang upon the Cross. Not
unconnected with this theory was the dangerous heresy
which came out of the East about the beginning of the
second century and which for a time threatened to turn the
Christian story into a myth. This was Gnosticism, a
speculative system associated with many names, such as
those of Valentinus, Basilides, Heracleon, Ptolemaeus,
Marcion and Bardesanes, but essentially one in its repudia-
tion of the material universe as the work of the Supreme God,
or as the sphere of redemption by Christ. It was a system
founded on speculations as old as the dualism of Babylonian
and Magian times, but subversive of the entire Christology
expounded by St. Paul in the JL-pistle to the Colossians.
Marcion carried the Gnostic position into a thorough-going
opposition to the entire Jewish dispensation as the work
of a Demiurge^ or secondary God, wholly inimical to the
doctrine of grace as revealed by Christ. To support his
theory Marcion, who appeared in Rome about 140, made

CHRIST VERSUS CMSAR 485

his own New Testament out of a bowdlerized Gospel of
St. Luke and ten of the Pauline Epistles. About the same
time Valentinus was preaching at Rome his doctrine of
asons, emanating in pairs, male and female, from the High
God dwelling in the Pleroma. All alike the Gnostic systems
failed to recognize in Christ the one, all-sufficient revelation
of the Eternal, redeemer of the whole universe, material as
well as spiritual.

A movement of a different sort is Montanism, so called
after a truly sincere and unworldly Phrygian, Montanus,
who appeared at Pepuza about the middle of the second
century. The early Montanists exhibited much of the
disposition to extravagant ecstasy which was characteristic
of Phrygian religion generally, but their main aim was to
raise the standard of Christian living in the face of what
appeared to be a growing disposition to worldliness on the
part of bishops and clergy. They maintained also a stern,
unbending attitude in withholding the Church's forgiveness
-from those who had lapsed under stress.. of persecution.
They did not deny the possibility of forgiveness at the hand
of God, but refused to permit the Church to be the instru-
ment for extending leniency to sinners of this type. At
a time when large numbers of Christians were being driven
into apostasy 'by persecution there was some excuse for this
severity but, as in the case of the later Novatian schism, the
attitude became one of needless hardness, which became the
more pronounced as it extended into Africa. It was here
that. " the fierce Tertullian," as Matthew Arnold calls him,
became one of the champions of Montanism.

A few years later there came from Persia, then under the
Sasanids, that curious eclecticism which was to prove a
serious competitor with Christianity as far east as China,
as far west as Britain; and particularly in North Africa and
the Balkan peninsula. This was Manichaeanism, so named
from Mani, who began his teaching before Shapur I. in
Seleucia-Ctesiphon in March 242. About thirty years later
Mani was savagely executed and his skin stuffed with straw.
But his doctrines gained wide sway and eventually a kind '
of papacy was established in Bulgaria from whence mis-
sionaries went forth over the empire and beyond. The

4 86 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

youthful Augustine became a hearer of the Manichaeans;
the Catechism of the sect was taught in the capital of China;
and, as late as the thirteenth century, the Albigenses are
supposed to have represented the heresy in Europe. It
taught a dualism, with the Lord of Light and Spirit in-
habiting the Pleroma, and Satan, the Lord of Darkness
and Matter dwelling in the Abyss. The frontier had been
straightly drawn and it was Satan's raid across the border
which led to the creation of the solar system, a machinery
designed, like the buckets of a Persian water-wheel, to
dredge up the particles of light taken captive by Satan,
until once again the frontier could be established and the
world destroyed by fire. As a dualism holding that matter
was irredeemably evil, Manichaeanism had opposite conse-
quences in the realm of morals. While some sought to rid
themselves of the material by asceticism, others maintained
that the pure spirit could not be polluted by the flesh, and .
so plunged into extremes of license. The system was
highly organized, with its five grades of believers, its sacred
literature, and even its sacred language. 1

Against all. these forms of error the Church waged
valiant warfare and Christian theology owes much, in
insight and clarity, to the writers of the first three Christian
centuries. . Though in its organization Catholic, yet at this
time the Church exhibited certain regional characteristics.
It is therefore convenient to speak of the writers of the time
as belonging to certain " schools."

In point of importance, if not in date, we must give
first place to the school of Alexandria. This great city, the
foundation of Alexander had already played a role in the
history of Judaism and was destined to play no less a part
in the history of Christianity. Even in the lifetime of the
apostles, it is said, a Catechetical school had been there
established by the evangelist St. Mark, and in the middle
of the second century Pantaenus, " the Sicilian bee," was
keeping up the repute of the academy. To Pantaenus
succeeded the more famous Clement of Alexandria, born

1 Recent books on Manichseanism include : F. C. Burkitt, Rehgion of the
Manichees, Cambridge, 1925 ; A. V. W. Jackson, Researches in Manich&anism,
New York, 1932.

CHRIST FERSUS CMSAR 487

about 150, and bringing to the oversight of the school a
well^-trained Greek mind, a large knowledge of Greek
literature, a clear appreciation of the doctrine of the Logos,
and a sympathetic insight into the relations which must
exist between Greek philosophy and the Christian revelation.
In the Stromata Clement has given us a fine exposition, in
Christian terms, and within the bounds of Christian theology,
of what the Gnostic had been labouring to express.

A still more considerable, figure in the Alexandrian
school of the third century is Origen, appropriately enough
surnamed Adamantius. He was the son of the martyr
Leonidas, whose witness unto death the youthful Origen
strove hard to share." Frustrated, however, in this, he took
up the task of teaching and, by selling the manuscripts
in his possession, endeavoured to make his instruction
gratuitous. He soon acquired that mastery of the Greek
text of the Scriptures which made him the first textual
critic in the long story of Christian scholarship, and the
compiler of the Hexapla, a version in the Hebrew, the
Hebrew in Greek letters, and the.four Greek texts of Aquila,
Theodotion, Symmachus and Alexandria, arranged in
parallel columns. Origen also found time for controversy
and wrote a refutation of the attack on Christianity by
Celsus. His controversial talents brought about a quarrel
'with the Alexandrian Bishop, Demetrius, and this led to an
exile in Syria from which Origen never returned. It was
in Syria that much of his critical work was done and the
great scholar died in Tyre about 252 .after intense sufferings
incurred during the Decian persecution. Later theologians
arose to impugn the orthodoxy of Origen, but he will
nevertheless remain an heroic example of devotion to a
cause for which he was ready to lay down his life as well
as to consecrate to it the fullness- of his extraordinary talent.

Earlier than Origen, as representative of the Church in
Gaul, we have Irenaeus, c. 130-202, who provides an
important link between the churches of the West and those
of Asia Minor. Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor, .where
he held Polycarp in reverence as his master. In early
manhood he visited Rome and, a few years later, about 177,
succeeded the martyr Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons. He

48 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

seems to have fallen a victim to the persecution of Septimius
Severus about the beginning of the third century. Irenseus
wrote a famous treatise Against Heresies^ dealing mainly with
the errors of the Gnostics. In his theology he represents
a moderate orthodoxy such as specially recommends him as
an interpreter of Christian belief at this time. The Gallican
school, embodying, as it did, the Asiatic rather than the
Roman tradition, was destined to have some influence in
the shaping of belief and practice in the Church in Britain.
More important than the Gallican school in the third
century, though later destined to witness the extinguishing
of its candle, is the Church of North Africa, as represented
by the two' outstanding personalities of Tertullian and
Cyprian. . Tertullian was a Latin lawyer, with all "the
extreme logic of the profession, and with some strain also
of the African hardness. He was born about 1 60 and, on
attaining manhood, soon began the development of his
unusual ability, not only in .the defence of Christians against
attack but also in carrying the war into the enemy's camp.
He has been described as the " Carlyle " of his generation,
though the comparison hardly does justice to the clearness
of his thought and the relentless logic of his argument. He
is a master of epigrammatic phrase, such as occasionally
leads - to misrepresentation. The phrases: " I believe
because it is absurd," " the soul naturally Christian," "The
blood of Christians is their seed," only in part convey
Tertullian's meaning. In his later years fear of minimizing
the moral standards of religion led to his joining the
Montanists, but he never ceased to contend as the un-
flinching champion of orthodox doctrine and remains
to-day one of the most stimulating and impressive of the
Christian fathers. The Spanish " tertulia," a club or'
debating society, bears witness to some part of his reputation.
A recent writer has described him as " the .most human of
the Fathers, keen, witty, sarcastic, argumentative, morally
intense, intellectually extreme, capable of love and wrath
and scorn, and in the midst of his strong assertions and high
moral imperatives, a lowly man, conscious of his own sin
and ashamed." r

1 Robert Rainy, The Ancient Catholic Church, p. 189.

CHRIST VERSUS CMSAR 489

Inspired by the writings of -Tertullian, but in most
respects a man of different character, is Gyprian, one of the
very greatest Christian names in the third century. Carthage
at this time was the most, important city in the western
world, after Rome, "and when Cyprian was chosen as its
Bishop about 248, there was much surprise and some
criticisnij since the new Bishop had only come into the
Church in mature years and had not long been baptized.
But it was very soon perceived that he was .the man for that
difficult time. The fierce persecution of Decius brought
into prominence many " certificated "apostates, with whom
the Bishop of Carthage was disposed to deal severely. In
Rome, on the other hand, great leniency was shown, with
the'result that Novatian, a rather gloomy Puritan, made a
schism. Cyprian was severe on schismatics, whether at
Rome or in Carthage. He was the author of the famous
saying: " He has not God for his Father who has not the
Church for his mother." He even denied the validity of
baptism performed outside the organized 'Church and on
this question had a dispute with Stephen, Bishop of Rome.
But while Cyprian was doing much to strengthen the power
of the episcopate, he was also, like the humblest of his flock,
facing the perils of persecution. During the Decian perse-
cution he felt that, in the interest of the diocese, he should
go into hiding, but later on, during the persecution -of
Valerian, he felt it equally his duty to give himself up to the
authorities. He was tried at Carthage, condemned to death,
and perished by the sword, about 261, with the words,
" Thanks be to God ! " upon his lips. He had just previously
issued a touching pastoral to the clergy and laity of the
diocese of Carthage.

The Edict of Milan, promulgated in 313, by Constantine,
the Augustus of the West, and Licinius, the Augustus of
the East, is a turning point in world history. Constantine
at this time probably knew little of Christ or Christianity,
but twenty-five years after the battle of the Milvian Bridge
he swore that he had seen, just before the battle, a vision
of the Cross, with the motto below it, " By this sign thou
shalt conquer." His victory confirmed him in the belief
that only through Christianity could the* Empire be unified.

490 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

It took Constantino ten years to make himself sole emperor,
but when this was achieved in 323, he began at once to
carry out his plan to make Christianity the established
religion. Constantine was not .baptized till some short time
before his death and it cannot be alleged that his life as
emperor was free from acts grievously at variance with a
Christian profession. But there is much evidence that
Constantine was in general worthy of the title "Great,"
and the New Rome which he built at Byzantium, and which
was eventually called Constantinople, after himself, was the
first city in the Roman Empire to be built without a pagan
temple. Of certain achievements of this first .Christian
emperor we shall have to speak in the next chapter. It is
only necessary now, in summing up the present chapter,
to ask: What were the main results, good and bad, of the
conversion of Constantine ?

To speak of the good results first, we must recall that
more than two centuries of official opposition to the faith
had now come to an end, bringing a relief from strain which
it is hard to over-estimate, and a freedom to pursue the
normal Christian life in acts of worship and service un-
shadowed by the tyranny of a hostile world. There was,
moreover, protection extended to the buildings hired or
erected for Christian worship, so that no longer need
Christians flee for refuge to caves and catacombs. There
were grants also now available for the evangelization of
districts where the Gospel had not hitherto been able to
penetrate. And, instead of the treasured manuscripts of the
Christian Scriptures being sought out for burning, imperial
orders were given for fifty sumptuous copies of the Scriptures
of both Testaments to be set up for reading in the larger
Churches of the Empire. .

Unfortunately, there - is another side to the shield.
After all, the Empire, so far as it represented the power of
this world, could not be converted, and must still remain
the throne of Antichrist. The persecuting power of the
emperors had indeed been curbed and the imperial favour
secured, but this was at a price. If there had before been
danger from the power of the lion, the power of the, serpent
was no less a menace. If the sacrificati 3 thurificati^ and

CHRIST VERSUS CAESAR 491

libellatiri had once been a weakness to the cause of Christ,
there was a hundredfold greater danger through the fawning
courtiers who had once been persecutors but were now
patrons. The growth of worldliness stimulated the increase
of insincerity. It was easy now for men to be nominally
Christians who had never had in them the stuff to be
martyrs. Though there were doubtless many thousands of
Christians who carried into the new order the ardour which
had never flagged beneath the assaults of paganism when
that paganism was openly arrayed against them, there were
also thousands who found it hard to resist the paganism
which was-sapping the life of the Church from within. The
story of the Donation of Constantine is historically baseless, but
the words of Dante are not without their sad fullness of truth:

All, Constantine, to how much ill gave birth,
Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower .
Which the first wealthy Father gained from thee I 1

It is plain that the City of God is not yet fully estab-
lished on the earth in the fourth century no more than in
the first. Nor could the " converted " Empire be hailed
as identical with the Church of redeemed humanity. The
main lesson of the period is that men's eyes must still be
turned towards the future. The Wild Beast and the False
Prophet had indeed been slain, but their shadow was still
generally worshipped.. The fight must go on. Christians
must learn to be " in the world, yet not of it." Some
shirked the difficult task and went out to seek 'the descending
City in the deserts; some all too easily succumbed to the
lure of the world. But the " sinners .who kept on trying "
were witnesses to the faith as were the martyrs of the earlier
generation, and among these were some of the Church's
greatest saints, whose testimony was not in vain. 2

1 Dante, Inferno xix, ,118-20.

2 Other books to be consulted .will include : The Ante-Nicene Fathers
(Edited by Drs. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, American edition,
1896), Vols. I. to IV., containing the Apostolic Fathers, Justin ]Vfartyr, Irenaeus,
Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen ; Williston. Walker, A History
of the Christian Church, New York, 1921 ; Louis Duchesne, The Early History
of the Christian Church, 2 vols. (Eng. ed.), New York, 1909-12 ; H. M. Gwatkin,
Early Church History to A.D. 313, 2 vols., London, 1909 ; Adolf von Harnack,
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (2nd
ed.}, 2 vols., New York, 1908 ; F. W, Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, 2 yols.,
New York, 1889 ; H. B. Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, London, 1906.

CHAPTER XXXIII
Controversies^ Councils , Creeds

SOME writers, including John Stuart Mill, have
remarked on the strange circumstance that the first
Christian emperor was such a one as Constantine
rather than a Marcus Aurelius, Niebuhr, too, has declared
that " when certain Oriental writers call him * equal to the
apostles ' (tsa-postohs}) they do not know what they are
saying : and to speak of him as a saint is a profanation of the
word." This is, of course, true, yet we must not transport
Constantine out of his own age and environment. His
acceptance of the Christian name was symbolic of the
conquest of the pagan state by the Cross, a bowing of the
imperial neck to the victorious Christ, the end of the age-
long conflict between two opposed ideals. The acceptance,
moreover, bore immediate fruit in a long, series of reforms,
beginning with the Edict of Toleration, and including the
recognition of the weekly anniversary of the Resurrection
as Sunday, the abolition of the gladiatorial sports in the
East - (to be followed later after the self-immolation of
Telemachus in the West), the ban on infanticide and
other pagan vices, and the blessing of the new city of Con-
stantinople, of which the foundations were laid soon after
the Nicene Council by the visiting bishops.

The period from the accession of Constantine to the
invasions in the West of Alaric and Attila was, nevertheless,
one of intense political and religious unrest. Politically
three dynasties divided the epoch East and West, sometimes
ruling the entire Empire in their own ;name and sometimes
with emperors sharing their responsibility with sons or
brothers. Constantine died in 337 and was succeeded by
his three sons, Constantine II., Constantius and Constans,
of whom Constans, in the West, favoured orthodoxy, and
Constantius, in the East, the semi-Arian party. . Then
came a pagan reaction under Julian, called the Apostate,

49Z

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS 493

really an idealist who sought to bring in a religion which
was neither Christian nor pagan. When Julian died in
363, in battle against the Persians, (according to a doubtful
legend), with the cry, " Galilean, thou hast conquered," on
his lips, he was succeeded for a year by the Christian soldier
Jovian, and he in 364 by Valentinian I., founder of a second
Christian dynasty. With his brother Valens in control of
the East until his defeat and death at Adrianople, in battle
against the Goths Valentinian ruled the West till 375,
when he perished at the hands of Theodosius I., founder of
the third dynasty. Theodosius died in 395 and from that
time to the sack of Rome. by Alaric in 410 and the invasion
of Attila in 453, we have nothing but futile rulers unable
to hold together what the strong rulers had consolidated
and leaving little but a heritage of confusion.

Parallel with the vicissitudes of the political realm are
those of the ecclesiastical, though out of the controversies
of the time emerge convictions which were hammered, as
it were, on the anvil and tempered ^to a strength such as
proved capable of surviving the wreck of the Empire itself.
^Constantino was not a little disappointed to find that the
religion he expected would be. the means of unifying the
Empire was itself torn by discord and party strife. Under
the circumstances, of course, it was natural that, in a religion
which had extended itself with remarkable rapidity and had
been for so long occupied in defending itself against
persecution, differences of theological opinion should have
multiplied. The revelation, nevertheless, was bitter to the
emperor and he immediately took steps to unify the Church,
in order that it might the more effectively in turn unify the
Empire. The result was the calling of the great (Ecumenical
or General Council of Nicsea in 325, to settle the points, both
doctrinal and practical, which were at issue.

Of the Four General Councils of the Church all of
them held in the East there is no question as to the
supreme importance attaching to that of Nicaea. It was the
only one which had any considerable representation from
the Western Church, and the results though supplemented
by the acts of the later councils were such as are plain
to-day in the worship and beliefs of the Christian Church

494 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

both East and West. Nothing more picturesque can be
imagined than the assembling of the 318 bishops, with their
attendants, at the little town of Niesea, on the summons of
the emperor. There were men from every grade of society,
of every grade of culture, city men and men from the rural
districts, men who had withstood the rigours of persecution
and bore in their bodies " the marks of the Lord Jesus," as '
well as men from the court. The Council that followed,
too, was marked by the presence of personality and in any
other assembly it would have been impossible to overlook
men like Eusebius f Caesarea, Hosius of Cordova (repre-
sentative of the Western Church), the Alexandrian Patriarch
Alexander, together with* his deacon, Athanasius, or that
" strange,' captivating moon-struck giant," Arius, who was
to a large degree the cause of the assembly. No one,
moreover, could overlook the significance of the emperor's
presence and of the opening, charge to the Council. 1

It was plain to all that men had been called together
from -the ends of the Empire, and beyond, for no mere
theological debate, The teachings of Arius at Alexandria
teachings which had been even popularized as songs
..touched vital points in theology and Christology. In
default of the knowledge that Christ is the meeting-point
of a revelation of God and so Son of God- with that of
a revelation of Man -and so Son of Man and therefore
" divinest when He most is Man," it seemed at the time
that the Divinity and the Humanity of Christ were at
opposite poles and that therefore to guard the Humanity
one must swing away from the Divinity, or vice versa.
Arius had been specially concerned with the assertion of
Christ's Humanity, but by teaching " there was 'when the
Son of God was not "he was making Christ only the first
and greatest of creatures rather than the Logos. His
position is but one illustration out of many we find in this
age of controversy that paradox rather than logic provides
the solution *of most of our. difficulties^ intellectual and
practical, and that the logician almost invariably became the
heretic. The argument on either side was bitterly waged

1 See A. P. Stanley; History of the Eastern Church (London, 1883), Lectures
I. to VI. - -

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS 495

and language used such as happily is seldom employed in
our most partisan assemblies -to-day. St. Gregory of
Nazianzus spoke later of some of these ecclesiastical councils
as " assemblies of cranes and geese," but the' truth remains,
as even so undogmatic a thinker as Thomas Carlyle acknow-
ledged, that had the Arian position been maintained, the
Christian doctrine of Christ would have dwindled into a
legend. In spite of all strong language, a very real unity
prevailed and the legend-makers were not entirely -wrong
who asserted that the 318 Bishops always counted up as 3 1 9,
since there was a presence there which added the divine to
the human element. There was, therefore, secured for the
Council 'a very substantial result in the adoption of the
Nicene Creed, a formula by no means new at the time, .and
differing from the Nicene Creed of to-day mainly in the use of
" We. believe " instead of " I believe," in the addition of
" Life of Life," to the epithets descriptive of the Son, and
in the ending of the Creed with the words: "And we
believe in the Holy Ghost." The formula, ended with an
anathema pronounced on those who refused to accept the
Symbol of the Faith as thus promulgated throughout the
Church. .

There were, of course, many other acts of the Council
which space compels us to ignore, but the authoritative
decision as to the Arian controversy was the outstanding
achievement. The Arian movement, however, was not
immediately curbed by the action of the Council. The
emperors patronized and persecuted Arians and -Orthodox
with consistent impartiality. Arian teachings were, widely
disseminated by missionaries like Ulfilas, the first evangelist
among the Goths, with the result that most of the barbarian
invaders, so far as they were Christians at all, were Arians.
But the heresy was ultimately overcome, in no small degree
through the dialectical skill and unflinching moral character
of men like Athanasius. Three memorials exist to-day in
our Christian liturgies in the West, first, the use of an
Eastern Creed, the Nicene; secondly, the use in that. Creed
of the so-called Filioque clause, inserted as the result of a
western council; and thirdly, in the use, after a Psalm, of
the Gloria Patrt, et Filio, et Spiriiu Sancto. It was a great

496- A HISTORY OF RELIGION

and memorable struggle, but it eventually left the Church
the stronger for the conflict. Whatever crimes we may
impute to Constantine, we need not begrudge him the title
of Great when we consider how much he accomplished for
the unity of the Church by calling together the Nicene
Council.

Though, as we have seen," the decisions of Nicaea did
not destroy Arianism, it is from that date we perceive the
swing of the pendulum in an opposite direction. The
swing is particularly associated with the teaching of Apol-
linarius, Bishop of Laodicsea, who illustrates the fact that
a very acute mind may be pressed into an apparent heresy
by over-emphasis of statement. In his eagerness to champion
the cause of Christ's divinity, Apollinarius was led to ascribe
to Him the possession of the Divine Logos instead of a
human spirit (pneuma). So the complete humanity of
Christ was apparently denied, a position which at once
caught the attention of ecclesiastics with a flair for heresy.
The teaching of Apollinarius, together with that of Mace-
donian and others, was condemned at a Council summoned
by the Emperor Theodosius to meet in Constantinople.
The Council of Constantinople, 381, is regarded as the
Second General Council, but was not at the time thought of
great importance. Only 150 bishops attended ancl, apart
from the condemnation of Apollinarius, the main result was
the acceptance of the Nicene Creed, with the additional
articles (following on " We believe in the Holy Ghost ")
which had been meanwhile appended to the formula. It
should, however, be remembered that these articles were
not drawn up at the Council itself. 1 s

Further stress was laid on the finality of the Nicene
Creed by the Third General Council, which was called,
under the authority of the Emperor Theodosius II., to meet
in Ephesus in 431. The circumstances were as follows: A
certain eloquent presbyter of Antioch, named Nestorius,
had been raised to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Here
his preaching attracted great attention, but on one occasion
he aroused the heresy-hunters by declaring that the term
Theotokos (the bearer of God] should not properly be applied

1 But see W. P. Du Bose, The (Ecumenical Councils, p. 177 f.

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS 497

to the Virgin Mary, since she was the bearer only of the
human part of the Christ. This was, of course, a return
swing to emphasis on Christ's Humanity, but to the critics
of Nestorius it appeared that he was making a separation
between the Divinity and the Humanity and was therefore
teaching heresy. Hence the coming of the bishops to
Ephesus, some of them in such haste that the unfortunate
Patriarch was condemned and exiled before the arrival of
the Syrian bishops who were favourable to the accused. The
positive side of the Council's work lay in the affirmation that
in Jesus Christ the Humanity and the Divinity were united
inseparably. In his exile Nestorius probably achieved more
though apart from the official recognition of the Church
than he would have done had he retained his see. For as
a missionary he created a movement which spread through
Syria and Persia and eastward to China and is still repre-
sented in the Churches of the East.

A Fourth General Council was called by the widow of
Theodosius II., Pulcheria (who had meanwhile married the
soldier Marcian)^ to meet at Chalcedon in 451. This was
the aftermath of a controversy which had arisen in Con-
stantinople over the teaching of an aged monk, Eutyches,
who had supposed he was simply expounding his opposition
to Nestorius, and was rather amazed to find himself a heretic.
He had undoubtedly entangled himself in his own logic and
in his desire to be precise had seemed to imply that the
human nature of Christ was not consubstantial with ours,
thus swinging back to something like the position of
Apollinarius. His condemnation was pronounced, first, by
a synod of bishops who happened to be in Constantinople.
This decision was protested by the friends of Eutyches and
a council was assembled at Ephesus in 449, at which the
monk was restored and some of his opponents deposed. It
was this act of what is known as the " Robber " Council of
Ephesus which led to the summoning of the important
Council of Chalcedon one largely attended and strongly
influenced by Leo, Bishop of Rome. Here the orthodox
doctrine of the two natures Was put into its final form.
Henceforth Christ is to be " owned in two natures, without
confusion, without conversion, without division, without

21 -

498 A DISTORT OF RELIGION

separation; the difference of the natures not being taken
away by the union, but rather each nature being preserved
by its propriety, and concurring to one person and to one
hypostasis; not parted or divided into two persons, but one
and the same Son, only begotten^ God the Word, Lord
Jesus Christ, as the prophets of old, and the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself, have taught us, and the confession of the
fathers has delivered to us." x

It would be impossible, within the limits of our space,
even to summarize the story of other disputes some on
matters of doctrine and some on matters of practice-; which
fill these significant centuries. Some things were settled,
such as the controversy over the time for keeping Easter.
This is known as the Quartodeciman (fourteenth day)
dispute, because, while some maintained that Easter should
always be observed on the fourteenth day of the month
Nisan, like the Jewish Passover, others held that the Sunday
after that was the correct date. The latter opinion became
the officially accepted one. Other controversies, from the
Melitian, of the early fourth century, to the Donatist, of
the fifth, turned on the .degree of severity to be meted out
to the lapsed who desired restoration. The African churches
showed themselves particularly hard on these offenders.

Probably we can best get an idea of the significance of
the period by reference to some of the more conspicuous
personalities who played their part in the age of the Councils.
Certainly the presence of Christ in the Church is witnessed
as much in the transformed character of individual men as
in the decisions of the Councils. Such personalities we can
group under the general heading of East and West.

In the East we have a number of names, of which the
following are examples :

Eusebius (260340) is famous as Bishop of Caesarea, the
friend of the Emperor Constantine, a vigorous participant
in the debates of the Nicene Council, with some leaning

1 A good account of the Great Councils is given by W. P. Du Bose, The
(Ecumenical Councils, New York, 1896. The subject is treated more exhaus-
tively by K. J. Hefele, A History of the Christian Councils (Eng. trans.) 5 vols.
Edinburgh, 1871-96. Volume XIV. of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
contains a full .report of the Seven (Ecumenical Councils,

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS 499

towards a semi-Arian position, and specially as " the father
of ecclesiastical history." *

Athanasius (300 ? 373) is " the royal-hearted Athanase',"
a figure almost as outstanding in legend and romance as in
the records of sober history, even the reputed wizard of the
mediaeval poets. It is well said by Dean Stanley that "*no
fugitive Stuart in the Scottish Highlands could count more
securely on. the loyalty of his subjects than did Athanasius
in his hiding-places in Egypt count upon the faithfulness
and secrecy of his countrymen." Yet beyond all the
stories which show us this extraordinary man in the role
" of an adventurous and wandering prince, rather than of
a persecuted theologian," from the time of his first appear-
ance as a deacon at the Nicene Council, on through his
five-times-repeated exile, we have the impression of the man
of iron will and steadfast character who by his championship
of orthodoxy against Arian and semi-Arian emperors gave
justification for the phrase: "Athanasius contra^ mundum"
We have also the record of a subtle, if not highly intellectual,
mind in the writings which made the name of Athanasius a
synonym for orthodoxy for many generations yet to come. 2

In the case of Antony (250356) we have a reminder of
the extent to which dissatisfaction with the court and the
world was breeding the desire already exemplified in the
Oriental religions for complete retirement from the world.
Two forms of monasticism grew up in the Church from the
third century onward. One, monasticism proper, or
eremitism, in which men and women retired to complete
solitude in the desert; the other, better described as
coenobitism, in which .. they devoted themselves to a com-
munity life, separated from all secular cares. The latter
type is represented by men like Pachomius, the Copt who
established hfs community on an island in the Nile, in the
middle of the third century.' The other type is represented
by the Copt, Antony, who, -apart from "his one visit to
Alexandria to support the cause of Athanasius, lived out his

1 The .works of Eusebius, including the Ecclesiastical History and the Life
of Constantine, are given in Vol. I. of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
(Amer. ed.), New York, 1890.

2 See A. P. Stanley, History of the Eastern Church, Lecture VIT. Volume IV.
of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers contains the selected works of Athanasius.

500 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

life not without strange experiences in his self-chosen
hermitage, to the neighbourhood of which flocked so great
a multitude in pursuit of the same ascetic ideal.

Among the famous names of the fourth century bishops
must be included the three Cappadocians, Basil (32979),
who after a career as advocate and rhetorician, became
Bishop of Cassarea, his brother Gregory (33695), Bishop
of Nyssa, and one of the most valiant foes of Arianism at
the Nicene Council, and Gregory (32690) of Nazianzits,
esteemed as author and poet as well as ecclesiastic. 1

Lastly (so far as the East is concerned), we have the great
John (347407), known as Chrysostomos (" the golden-
mouthed"} because of his eloquence. St. Chrysostom was
born at Antioch and was there ordained to the priesthood.
His repute as a pulpit orator at length Brought him to the
attention of the emperor, arid in 398 he was elevated to the
Patriarchate of Constantinople. But the austere ascetic had
little in common with the gay life of the Imperial court and
it was not long before violent antagonism was aroused in the
breast of the Empress Eudoxia. In due course followed the
Patriarch's exile, first to the solitary regions of the Taurus
Mountains, and then to the desolate shores of the Black Sea,
where death ended the weary way of the great preacher.
Just before he died St. Chrysostom uttered his last word in
the thanksgiving: " Praise be to God for all things."

No less an array of great names is to be found during
these centuries in the Church of the West. Out of them we
must select but four or five. First of all we may take two
from the fourth-century history of the Church in Gaul,
namely, Hilary of Poictiers and Martin of Tours. The former
passed from " a refined and thoughtful paganism " to
Christianity in mature manhood, was baptized about 350
and three years later was chosen by popular acclaim to be
bishop of his native city. " Though at a distance from the
red-hot centre of Arianism, Hilary took his full share in the
dispute and brought to the support of the orthodox position
an acute min<i and a judgement the more independent since
the less affected by proximity to Constantinople. He was

1 Some of the works of the three great Cappadocians are contained in
Vols. V., VII. and VIII. of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS .,501

not, however, so remote as to escape banishment, though he
sensibly improved his exile by the writing of his two most
considerable treatises. He returned to his see city in 362
and died four years later, famous not only for his champion-
ship of the Nicene faith, but also as a commentator and a
hymnologist. 1

Martin, elected Bishop of Tours in 371, was a disciple
of Hilary. Originally from Pannonia and of pagan parentage
later on his mother was converted to Christianity*
Martin became a catechumen while in the Roman army
and the famous story of his charity bestowed upon a beggar
and the vision of Christ arrayed m the half-cloak belongs to
this period. After baptism, the neophyte made a visit to
his native Pannonia, but returned to Poictiers where he set
up a religious house. His election to the episcopate is the
prelude to a long list of services for the Church, only ter-
minated by his death in 397. St. Martin leaves on the
mind of the student an impression of soldier-like courage,
of singular charm, and of a humanity such as that which
appealed to the emperor against his execution of the heretic
Priscillian.

Passing to Italy we have before us the very distinguished
figure of Ambrose, the great Bishop of Milan.' Ambrose
was born in 340, the son of a high Roman official at Milan.
Apparently the" family was Christian, but Ambrose himself
was not baptized till his call to the episcopate. The story of
this call is among the most familiar episodes of Church
history. Auxentius, the Arian holder of the see, had just
died, and the struggle was. fierce between the orthodox and
Arian parties to select a successor. All at once a child's
voice was heard: "Ambrose for bishop!" and, in a way
regarded as miraculous, the cry was taken up till the popular
young governor of Liguria found himself stampeded into
the sacred office, of course, after his baptism and his passing
through the lower orders of the ministry. Ambrose ruled
over Milan for twenty-three years, and indeed over much
more than Milan, for his influence upon the .politics of this
distracted time was immense. To the young Emperor

1 The works of Hilary of Poictiers are given in the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, Vol. IX.

502 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Gratiari (till his murder in 383) he was guide, philosopher
and friend. . In the next reign he was in opposition, but
eventually he won the favour of Justinian. and later acted as
intermediary between Valentinian and his general Maximus.
One of the most dramatic events in Church history occurred
in the following reign when the Emperor Theodosius I.,
after his massacre at Thessalonica, found himself barred
from the cathedral services at Milan by the orders of Ambrose
and was only admitted after an expression of penitence. The
connection" of Ambrose with the story of Augustine is
familiar and must be referred to again. The great bishop
was not only a voluminous writer but also pre-eminently an
administrator and statesman who raised the prestige of tlie
episcopate throughout the Empire. He was also, like
Hilary, a hymnologist and a patron of church music. His
stamp has remained upon the Church at Milan unto the
present day. 1

Italy has also much to do ,with the next great figure we
have to name. This is Jerome, or Hieronymus (346420).
He was born at Stridon in Aquileia, but came to Rome at an
early age, there commenced* the studies which remained his
passion to the end, and was there baptized. After a while,
restless and quarrelsome, he wandered from monastery to
monastery, visiting in .his wanderings Gaul, Asia Minor,
and Constantinople. An illness determined him to forsake
his beloved Cicero for an ascetic devotion to Christ, and
from this time his severity, towards himself and others,
knew no bounds. Finding favour with Pope Damasus,
Jerome devoted his scholarly leisure to a revised Latin
Psalter and a revision of the Latin version of the New
Testament. His austerity found scope in the spiritual
direction of certain ladies who flocked around him. Notable
among these was the wealthy Paula and her two daughters,
the widowed Blesilla and the unmarried Eustochium.
Under the regime which Jerome prescribed for Blesilla the
lady died, and the incident called forth so much criticism
that it was thought .better for the little band of devotees
to leave Italy for the East. After a " brief stay in Egypt

1 For the select \vorks of Ambrose see Nicene and Po$t-Nicene Fathers,
Vol. X.

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS 503

and jMt. Sinai, Jerome, with his fellow-pilgrims, came to
Bethlehem, . where the wealth of Paula provided establish-
ments which proved attractive to other ascetics. Here
Jerome lived for thirty-five years, engaged at his main task
of learning Hebrew and utilizing his learning for the
gigantic work of a new translation of the Bible into Latin.
This monumental edition was destined to become the versio
vulgata, commonly known as the Vulgate, of the Roman
Catholic Church. At intervals in the work of translation
Jerome found opportunity to carry on a long correspondence
with St. Augustine of Hippo, sundry rather quarrelsome
controversies with a number of others, and the making of
commentaries on various parts of the Scriptures. He had
abundant energy and a general scholarship much in advance
of his own time, but all Jerome's diligence could not make
him a sagacious exegete. Of his work as translator, on the
other'hand, there is much to be said in the way of praise. 1

The greatest of all the Western Fathers of the Church
during this eventful" period is undoubtedly Augustine, a
man no less significant for the spiritual experience which
lifted him from degradation and sin than for the vigour of
his intellect and the dominance of his influence as a theo-
logian upon the generations which followed. Augustine
was born at Tagaste, in Numidia, in 354, the child of a
rough, pagan father, Patricius, and of a Christian -mother,
Monica, who is. rightly numbered among the great Christian
mothers of history. The bright, high-spirited, mischievous
boy was sent to school at Carthage, where he easily distin-
guished himself (except in Greek) among his fellows, but
early fell into the lax ways of a great heathen city. As the
result of an irregular union a child was born to him to whom
was given the name of Adeodatus. But the mind of
Augustine Was stilt bent on finding the truth and we see him
wandering through a tangle of strange philosophies. He
Was much attracted to Manichaeanism perhaps because of
his admiration for a famous Manichaean oratbr-^and for
nine years he remained a " hearer " of this oriental dualism.
For a while he taught at Rome and then, providentially,

1 The select -works and Letters of Jerome are given in the Niceti? and
Nice-tie Fathers, Vol. VI,,

504 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

went to Milan where he fell in love with the preaching of
the great bishop, Ambrose. His mother, too, was . now
with him. A well-known story is told of her anxious visit
to a certain bishop and of the reply: " Go thy way, it can-
not be that the child of so many prayers should perish."
Monica's prayers were answered, for not long afterwards the
event occurred so beautifully described in the Confessions.
When Augustine, leaving Alypius, heard in the garden a
child's voice saying, " Tolle, lege" and, taking up the book
read words which almost instantly unsealed the long-
accumulating flood of tears and sent him back to the
house an exultant penitent. Augustine was baptized by
St. Ambrose in 387 and the same year the devoted mother
yielded up to God her grateful soul. It had been Augustine's
wish to take his mother back to her native Africa, but
Matthew Arnold interprets aright her real desire:

Care not for that, but lay me where I fall,
Everywhere heard will be God's judgment call,
But at God's altar O remember me. 1

The new convert himself returned to Africa, determined
upon a life of retirement. But his ability soon called him
to service in the Church and in 395 he was made bishop of
the city of Hippo Regius, where he lived and laboured till his
death from fever in 430.

Augustine's administration of his African see .was in
itself notable, but to future ages his importance derives
rather from his voluminous writings writings which make
his career epoch-making in the history of the Western
Church, for Roman and Protestant alike. Perhaps we may
say that his thought became too dominant, to the obscuring
of other elements of Christian theology which we find in
Alexandrian rather than Western writings. Apart from the
general mass of his theology, in which it is plain that the
Manichaean cast of thought is not wholly expelled, we may
divide the works of Augustine under three heads. There
are, first, the controversial writings, as against the Pelagians
and Manichaeans, marked with all that hard and ruthless
lucidity which is characteristic of the Latin 'lawyer at his

1 Matthew Arnold, Monica's Last Prayer.

CONTROVERSIES, COUNCILS, CREEDS 505

best. Then there are the Confessions, surely one of the most
candid and beautiful of human documents, in which all the
waywardness of a human soul is traced, through all " the
labyrinthine ways " of its own ignorant impulse, until at
last the sublime conclusion is reached: " Lord, Thou hast
made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it rest in
Thee." Lastly, there is the wonderful work, in twenty-two
books, De Civitate Dei; which stands at the end of this
period much as the Apocalypse stands at the end of the
Great Forty Years. 1 In 410 Alaric was hammering at the
gates of Rome and while the Bishop of Hippo lay dying in
430 the Vandals were besieging the city. In the first
generation of the Christian Church the destruction, of Rome
as " Babylon the Great " had been looked upon as a foregone
conclusion. The fall of Antichrist on his city of the seven
hills had been envisaged as coincident with the triumph of
the Christ. But, after a while, and particularly from the
time of Constantine, it had appeared possible that Empire
and Church might prosper in alliance as later in the days
of the so-called Holy Roman Empire. That dream was now
about to be dissipated. Rome was doomed. and men were
asking in fear and trembling whether this might not also
imply the downfall of the Kingdom of Christ. Would not
the barbarian flood, just about to burst into the heritage of
the Roman, bring about both the end of Roman civilization
and the destruction of the Church ? It was St. Augustine's
special mission to stand, as St. John had stood at Patmos, to
reveal beyond the falling of the stars from heaven the
upbuilding of the great spiritual Empire in which both Jew
and Gentile, Roman and Vandal, Greek and Goth, should
have their place, under the kingship of Christ and bound
together in the common service of humanity.

1 There is a veritable library of works on St. Augustine of Hippo. His
writings are contained in the great Benedictine edition of 1679, reprinted in
II volumes in 1838. Poujoulat's Histoire de S. Augustin, 2 vols., Paris, 1843-52;
P. Schaff s Life and Labours of St. Augustine, London, 1851 ; and A. Dorner's
Augustinus, Berlin, 1873, are still to be recommended. For a brief but sym-
pathetic sketch see Rainy, The Ancient Catholic Church, chap, xxviii.

CHAPTER XXXIV
Christianity and the Barbarians

religion of Christ, in the first century of its
existence, had been called upon to make a great leap
beyond the boundaries first recognized by the
apostles, namely, from the world of the Jew to that of .the
Gentiles. Now, after several centuries of rapid progress, it
was summoned to make a leap still more considerable, even
from the Empire which had done so .much to shape its
system of administration, and to suggest the idea of
catholicity, to that outside world of the barbarian, which to
the apocalyptists was but a sea of anarchy and chaos whose
waves beat eternally against the shores of the civilized earth.
Yet it was now to be revealed that the organization of the
Christian Church must transcend even the organization of
Rome and that the catholicity of the Church must grow to
include in its comprehension nations that " Caesar never
knew." . .

First of all, we must, of course, admit that much mis-
sionary work had been carried on among the barbarians who
were, actually or theoretically, under the sway of the Imperial
eagles. Some of it would seem to have been necessary for
the protection of the Empire. For example, the Goths to
whom Ulfilas, the great apostle to the Goths, ministered in
the fourth-century, had already been giving concern to the
Wardens of the Marches in the eastern. part of the Empire!
It was inevitable that 'the boundary between the two
dominions should be exceedingly elastic. Many Goths
were serving in the "Roman army and, many Christian
captives were in slavery north of the Danube. Some have
supposed that Ulfilas himself was descended from these
slaves. His name, at any rate, is good Gothic and he was
born among the Goths about 311. Yet he was educated at
Constantinople and, since the time was one of Arian

506

CHRISTIANITT AND THE' BARBARIANS 507

ascendency, he went back to his native land in 34 1 at least
a semi-Arian, though never one of the extreme and con-
troversial sort. For forty years he laboured and taught and
never did missionary see a more abundant harvest from his
labours. For the Apostle to the Goths created through his
work a Christian people, who in due course captured the city
.of Rome without plunging the imperial domain into the
darkness of pagan barbarism. He became also the founder
of Teutonic literature by his translation of the Scriptures
into the language of the Goths, and by creating, to start
with, a Gothic alphabet by means of which his translation
might be made available for his fellow-countrymen. Cer-
tainly, when Ulfilas died in 380, he had accomplished work
of immense 'significance for the future history of Europe.
It may here be noted that all the barbarian conquerors of
Rome, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals, were Christians,
though with Arian proclivities. 1

But missionary work among the barbarians had begun
even earlier than the time of Ulfilas. Britain was, of course,
part of the Empire, but the Christianization of the Empire
had in certain- large areas chiefly concerned itself with
city-dwellers or with / communities evangelized from the
city as a centre. The terms -pagani (country-people) and
heathen (heath-folk) still imply localities outside the
Church. If such was the case in continental Europe, we
may be sure it was still more so in outlying regions like
Britain. As to how Christianity first reached Britain we
have no certain knowledge. Legend has been busy with the
story of Joseph of Arimathea landing, with eleven com-
panions, and planting the Holy Thorn at Avalon, or
Glastonbury. The reference by Clement of Rome to St.
Paul's visit to " the utmost bound of the West " suggested to
some a visit to Britain in the interval between the two
Roman imprisonments. This is. unlikely, though the great
apostle may have come into contact with the British chief
Caractacus, when the latter was a prisoner under Claudius.
Linus, an early Bishop of Rome, referred to by St. Paul, is

1 For the life and work of Ulfilas see Waitz, Das Leben des Ulfilas, 1840 ;
H. M. Gwatkin, Studies in Ananism, 1900 ; C. A. Scott, Ulfilas, Apostle of
the Goths, 1885.

508 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

said to have been the son of Caractacus. Other stories tell
of Lucius, the British king in the second century, who sent
an embassy to Bishop Eleutherius of Rome, asking for
missionaries. None of these tales may have historical
foundation, yet the testimony of Tertullian, Origen and
Theodoret is clear to the effect that Christianity had arrived
in Britain long before the conversion of the Empire. The
persecution of Diocletian, about 303, though lasting but
two years, took heavy toll in Britain as elsewhere, and the
names of Alban, Aaron and Julius are in .the martyrologies
of the time. Alban is often called the proto-martyr of
Britain, and the city and cathedral bearing his name have,
given a local habitation to the story.. When the conversion
of the Empire came about it was a matter of pride to British
Christians that the first Christian emperor had been born at
York. In the Council of Aries, called in 314, to deal with
the Donatist heresy, three British bishops attended, namely,
those of York, London, and (probably) Caerleon on Usk.
British bishops also were present at two other councils of
the fourth century, that of Sardica in 347, and that of Rimini
in 360. There must have existed considerable Christian
communities in the British townships during the fourth and
fifth centuries, and there was without doubt very close
connection with the Church of Gaul. This is evidenced by
the fact that the British Church followed the use of the East
rather than that of Rome, in such matters as the date of
keeping Easter, the method of administering Baptism, and
the style of wearing the tonsure. There is no proof that
British Christianity was affected in any large degree by the
Arian controversy, but in the Pelagian movement the island
church must have had a lively interest, since Pelagius (the
Latinized form of Morgan) was himself a Briton. It was
to counteract this heresy, which taught the sufficiency of
human nature in itself to perform works acceptable to God,
that two bishops, Germanus and Lupus, were sent over
from the continent. During one of the two visits of
Germanus, in 430, a memorable victory was won by
Christian soldiers over an invading band of Picts and Scots.
The battle was won on the " Field of German " and is known
as the Alleluia victory, from the battle-cry of the victorious

CHRISTIANITT AND THE BARBARIANS 509

army, which alone was sufficient to send the raiders away in
panic. But by this time the Roman protectors were already
commencing to withdraw from the island, leaving the
British a-prey to the marauding bands of Angles, Jutes and
Saxons harrying the eastern coast. -From this date the
British Church held its own only in the mountain regions of
Wales and Cornwall. 1

Only a step from Wales lay the island of Ireland, the one
piece of Western Europe (unless we reckon the Scandinavian
peninsula) outside the Roman dominion. Ireland was at
.this time a barbarous land, ruled by chiefs more or less
constantly at war with, one another, and in religious matters
devoted to the worship of the old Keltic gods. The British
Christians, perhaps naturally, considering what they had
suffered from the Saxons, were not active in missionary work
among the invaders, but they found both opportunity and
inducement to propagate the faith among people -of their
own race across the Irish Channel. Of one such effort, that
of Palladius, about 431, all we know is that -it failed. Of
another the fruits remain to the present day. This brings
before us the famous St. Patrick, who has attracted to
himself almost as much of the legendary as of the historical.
Succoth, called Patridus^ on account of his family's rank, was
born about 389. As to his birthplace there are many
surmises, but the balance of authority now suggests a place
on British soil not far from the Severn, rather than the
neighbourhood of Dumbarton in Scotland. Both his grand-
father and his father, Calphurnius, seem to have been clergy,
so that the boy had from the first the ad vantage- of Christian
nurture. But as a youth Succoth became the victim of a
piratical raid which sent him into slavery in the island he was
destined to evangelize. He escaped, but only to be
recaptured a little later, and this time the Vox Hiberionacum
sounded so appealingly that, after a second escape, Patrick
made up his mind to become a missionary in the land of his
exile. He was trained and ordained in Gaul and thence

1 For the early history of the British Church, see W. Bright, Early English
Church History, Oxford, 1878 ; A. H. Hore, Eighteen Centuries of the Church in
England, Oxford, 1881 ; A. W. Haddan, Apostolic Succession in the Church
of England (new edition), London, 1883.

510 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

returned to Ireland in 440, where he made without delay
that attack, as courageous as it was well-timed, on the
primitive idolatry. Made a .bishop in 454, he founded the
see of Armagh and established here the centre for a splendid
and successful administration. Schools and monasteries
were planted, hundreds of churches built, converts baptized
by the thousand, and all strongly welded together by fifty
years of devoted labour. Patrick died about 466, leaving
behind him a church rooted to endure, and three interesting
pieces of writing. The Confession throws much Tight on his
methods for inculcating Christian truth. The Letter to.
Coroticus is one of the earliest protests of the Christian Church
against the iniquities of the slave-trade. And the Lorica, or
Breastplate, is a Christian hymn which is still repeated by
the peasantry to ward off the evil influences of the night. It
forms, moreover, in the beautiful version of Mrs. Alexander,
one of our church hymns of the present day :

I bind unto myself to-day

The strong name of the Trinity.

There are many other characters some of them much
transformed by legend in the early history of Christian
Ireland. The work of these pioneer missionaries was such
as to win for Erin the title ,of " The Isle of Saints." This
missionary zeal, moreover, overflowed the limits of the land
into the neighbouring domains of paganism. 1

Notable among these pioneers is Columba, or Columskill
(Dove of the Church), through whom was achieved the
conversion of North Britain, or Scotland. - Some work had
already been carried on here among the Lowland Picts by
Ninian, son of a British chief, but Columba's work was both
more permanent and more exte_nsive. The saint was born
in Donegal in 521, and gave himself early to a life of piety
and study in the school of St. Finnian. After his ordination
Columba established the monastery near Deny the place
of his heart's love. But about 560 circumstances brought
about change and exile. Through his love of learning
Columba had been led to copy a certain Psalter belonging

1 See Douglas Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland, London, 1903; J. B.
Bury, St Patrick and his -Place in History, London, 1903.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE BARBARIANS 511

to St. Finnian, and the copy was subsequently declared by
tribal law to belong to the owner of the book, on the prin-
ciple, " To every cow its own calf." Columba's indignation
led 'to a tribal war with considerable loss of life, and the
angry scholar was condemned as " a man of blood " to go
into exile in order to expiate his fault. So we see Columba,
with his companions, in their coracles crossing the channel
to settle in the rocky archipelago off the west coast of
Scotland. Hy, or lona, thus destined to become the cradle
of Scottish Christianity, was soon made the centre for a work
which was as practical and civilizing as it was inspired by
faith. Slowly the influence of the Christian chief, with
his athletic figure, his noble presence, and his winning
method of instruction, spread to and across the mainland,
till the rude Picts stooped, like their Irish kinsmen, to accept
the yoke of Christ. For thirty years Columba worked to lay
the foundations for Scottish Christianity and, well pleased to
leave the further harvesting of his labours to others, passed
to his rest on a June day of 597- 1

This same year, 597, is for ever* memorable in the
religious history of the more southern portion of Great
Britain. The ravages of the Saxons had not- destroyed
Christianity^ but had driven it to find shelter among the
mountains of Wales. In the south-east corner of the island
was the kingdom of Kent, where the reigning chief, Ethel-
bert, had been permitted to marry Bertha, daughter of
Caribert, King of Paris, on condition that the princess was
allowed the practice of the Christian religion.

At this point it is .convenient to interpolate a brief
reference to the conversion of the Franks, at the close of the
fifth century, without which the conversion of the Saxon
tribes is scarcely conceivable. Towards the end of the
fourth century a young Prankish hero, Clovis (Louis) by
name, was hoisted upon the shields of his comrades and
acclaimed king of the Salii. - Down to his thirtieth year this
Clovis was merely a pagan barbarian waging more or less
successful war against the neighbouring tribes. But when

1 See W. Reeves, Life of St. Columba, written by Adamnan, London, 1857 ;
also Douglas Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland, chap. xv. The poems here
given, however, are probably of later date.

A BISTORT OF RELIGION

he married the Christian princess Clothilde, from the Bur-
gundians, Clovis became transformed. With fatherly
tenderness he consented to the baptism of his child, and at
a crisis in the battle of Tolbiac he promised in case of victory
his own personal allegiance to the Christ. It was no mean
struggle, and there are few incidents in history so dramatic
as the challenge flung down before Clovis by the Bishop
Remigius, or St. Remi. " Stoop, proud Sicambrian," cried
the bishop, " thou must burn what thou hast hitherto adored,
and worship what thou hast hitherto burned." The
Sicambrian stopped and that day of baptism, in 496, was
memorable not only for the Franks but for all Western
Europe. The conversion, naturally, was but a superficial
one and the wars of Clovis were not waged with the less
relentlessness because of the king's new profession. 1 But
Christ had been, nevertheless, /ecognized, and one of the
consequences of the recognition was the journey of a
Christian princess from Paris, with her chaplain, to find her
home in the land of the Kentishmen.

Thus the old Roman church of St. Martin's at Canter-
bury was not wholly unused at the time when the monk
Augustine arrived with his comrades as missionaries from
the presence of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome. The
story is familiar of Gregory's earlier sight of the Saxon
slaves in the Roman slave-market, of his punning reference
to the opportunity afforded to the Church of the time, and
of the way in which his missionary intention was at the
time thwarted by his election to the episcopate. But now
Gregory was in the seat of authority, and the sending of
Augustine was the result. 2 Once out of fear the missionaries
turned back, but they soon recovered their courage and,
passing through Gaul, arrived at the court of Ethelbert.
The Kentish chief suspected witchcraft and refused to meet
Augustine except in the open air. Here, however, the
monk witnessed valiantly to the faith and made such an
impression on his hearers that on Christmas Day Ethelbert,
with some thousands of his subjects, submitted to baptism.

1 The sources for the career of Clovis (to be used with caution) are to be
found in Book TI. of the Historia Francomm by Gregory of Tours.

2 See F. H. Dudden, Gregory the Great, 2 vols., London, 1905.

" CHRISTIANITY AND THE BARBARIANS 513

The king furthermore made large and munificent gifts to
the Church in his capital with the result that here in Canter-
bury arose the first English University, the monastery of
SS. Peter and Paul, the first Cathedral, Christ Church, and
the first school, King's School. So Canterbury became the
cradle of English (as distinguished from British} Christianity,
and the Metropolis of the English Church from that day
to the present. Had Augustine been a greater man he
might at once have established amicable relations with the
remnant of the old British Church, but at the one meeting
recorded as having taken place between the Archbishop-
for Augustine had been consecrated archbishop by the
bishops of the neighbouring Church of Gaul and the
British bishops, the pride of the Italian was resented by the
representatives of the older order and it required some
generations for the various elements of Christianity in
England to come together under one central authority.

Even among the Saxons many missions from different
sources co-operated in laying the foundations for the Church
of England as we know it to-day. The work of St. Augustine
and his successor St. Lawrence did not extend far beyond
the kingdom of Kent, but in Northumbria, where Edwin
was reigning, a missionary named Paulinus achieved a
notable success by his preaching. This, together with an
opportune victory, led to the conversion of the king and
many of his people, and the establishment of the northern
Archbishopric of York. It may be said that the baptism of
Edwin in 6 '2 7 was as epoch-making for the north as that of
-Ethelbert was for the south. Northumbria unfortunately
suffered one relapse into paganism, but a new period of
evangelism was opened with St. Aidan, a missionary from
lona, who succeeded Paulinus at York in 635. Soon after
Aidan removed his headquarters to Lindisfarne, on the
Northumbrian coast, a foundation which in a short time led
to the foundation of the illustrious See of Durham, " half
Church of God, half fortress against the Scot." Wilfrid,
another distinguished ecclesiastic, returned later to York
and still later became the evangelist of Sussex and founder
of the See of Chichester. In East Anglia the Gospel was
spread in the pagan kingdom of Redwald by a Burgundian,
2 K

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Felix and by the Irish monk, Fursey. In Wessex, at the
time sunk in the deepest paganism, the work of evangeliza-
tion was carried on by Birinus, who founded the Bishopric of
Dorchester. In Mercia another famous British missionary,
St. Chad, established the See of Lichfield. So it came to
pass that between 597 and 68 1 the whole of the island was
drawn into the Christian fold and only the arrival of the
seventh Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, in
669," was needed to weld the separate missions into one
organic body under one head. Thus the Church of England
was one long before there was a union of the kingdoms of
the Heptarchy into one nation. Of Theodore it was said
by the Venerable Bede: "'Is primus erat in Archepiscopis
cui omnis Anglorum ecclesia manus dare consentiret." 1

And now, as Keltic Ireland had combined with mission-
aries from the Continent to Christianize the marauding
Saxons, so English Christianity became responsible for
heroic and successful efforts to extend the faith among the
barbarians of Western and Northern Europe. Already some
splendid work had been carried on by the British missionaries.
St. Columban had crossed from Ireland to Gaul in 589 and
founded three monasteries in the Vosges. Driven from the
country in 610, he went first to Switzerland and thence to
Italy, founding a new monastery in the Cottian Alps, where
he died in 615. His companion, St. Gall, remained behind
in Switzerland, established a famous monastery named after
himself, and there died in 627. Kilian, with another band
of Irish 'missionaries, laboured about the same time in
Thuringia and there died a martyr to the faith. 2

Now came the turn of the Saxon missionaries and we have
the illustrious' name of Winfrid, better-known as St. Boniface,
the Apostle of Germany. Winfrid was born at Crediton
about 680 and, after ordination, proceeded to Utrecht 1 to
join the aged Willibrord. Visiting Rome in 723 he was
consecrated, under the name of Boniface, as missionary
bishop to Germany, and from that day to the date of his
martyrdom in 754 his holy and laborious life witnessed

1 For the whole of this period see Bede's Ecclesiastical History, translated
by L. Gidley, Oxford, 1870.

2 See G. F. Maclear^ Apostles of Medicsval Europe, London, 1869.

C-HRISTIANITT AND THE BARBARIANS 515

marvellous fruition in Friesland and Germany. By this time
.the greatest catastrophe Christianity had yet known was
taking place in the East .through the onslaught of Islam.
That we. shall consider separately in the next chapter, but
may meanwhile complete the story of the evangelizing of the
northern barbarians, which went on comparatively undis-
turbed by the advance of Muhammadanism.

The word " comparatively " is used advisedly, for there
was a time in the early eighth century when it seemed likely
that, with Spain in the grip of the Muslim, Gaul also must
rapidly succumb, and the recently converted barbarians go
the way of the Eastern and North African Churches. But
the staunchness of Charles Martel and his Franks saved the
day, and the victory at Tours in 732 rolled back the tide
of Islam, making possible the continuance of missionary
work among the barbarians. Charlemagne, grandson of
Charles Martel, made little difference between the methods
to be used in subduing Islam and those lawful in the con-
version of his Saxon subjects, and the latter exploit will
always remain a discreditable episode in the ecclesiastical
history of the West. But Charlemagne, with his assumption
of the title, Emperor of Rome, touches a period as to which
we must defer discussion; so, passing over much of the
contemporary history, we must complete our summary
within the limits already defined.

North of the dominions of Charlemagne lay a region
which was at this time quite untouched by Christian
influence. Nay, more, for the great Emperor at Narbonne
had burst into tears at the sight of the viking ships, reflecting
on the menace to civilization which his own power was
unable to stem. The remedy, as in the earlier case of Rome
menaced by the Goths, was, of course, in fresh missionary
work, and in 826 the first mission to Denmark resulted in
the baptism of Harold, King of Jutland, together with his
wife, and a large number of his retainers. The event had
a political complexion, since Harold thus became a feudatory
of the Carlovingian crown, but out of it came another piece
of missionary work of the most genuine and heroic quality.
The missionary was Anskar, from the monastery of Corbey,
who made his first headquarters in Schleswig, where he

516 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

found bitter opposition and resentment over the baptism of
Harold. In 831 Anskar, with a brother monk, went still-
farther north, to Sweden^ where he received permission to
preach and baptize, and was ultimately consecrated Arch-
bishop of Hamburg. The time, however, was hardly ripe for
successful work in Sweden and the entire mission at Hamburg
was presently destroyed by an invasion of the Northmen.
"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be
the name of the Lord," exclaimed the gallant missionary, and
he began all over again. Prospects brightened, Anskar won
some measure of favour with Eric II. of Sweden, grants of
land were made, and monasteries erected. One of the last
events of Anskar's life was^ his interposition on behalf of
the slaves kidnapped by the pagan chiefs. He succeeded
in ransoming some and even pbtaining the freedom, without
ransom, of others. Anskar had hoped to win the, martyr's
crown; he certainly lived the martyr's life. He spent his
last days in arranging the affairs of his vast diocese and
passed quietly away on February 3, 865.

At this time Norway was divided into a number of small
" States, whence hordes of pirates swarmed forth to devastate
the coasts of the western world. But, in the latter part of
the ninth century, Harold, son of Halfdan, in order to make
himself a fitter- match for the Princess Gyda, vowed never
to cut his hair until he had become a real monarch. Harold
Lufa (" of the horrid hair "), as he was thenceforth called,
achieved his ambition, married his beloved Gyda, and died
in 938, leaving his kingdom to a son, Eric Blodoxe. But
Eric's cruelties brought about a revolution in which the
king was obliged to flee, while his, younger brother, Hacon,
came over from England and took the vacant crown. Now
Hacon in the court of the English Athelstan had become a
Christian and, once established in his new realm, he
attempted the wholesale conversion and baptism of his
subjects. The bonders bitterly opposed so tremendous' an
innovation and, when at a great festival the horse was
sacrificed and the feast commenced, the reluctant king was
forced to hold his mouth over the cauldron to inhale the
steam, even though he refused to partake of the fle.sh. After
this, naturally, Hacon ? s propaganda* was rather lukewarm.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE BARBARIANS 517

In any case, the kingdom was presently invaded by his
nephews, the sons of Eric Blodoxe, and Hacon was mortally
wounded in the battle which ensued. At the last he repented
his slackness as an evangelist. Yet, curiously enough, the
eldest son of Eric, who had also been baptized in England,
continued the attempt to Christianize the land, though
harried by foreign invasion and internal dissension till the
coming in 995 of Olaf Tryggveson.

Olaf, who was welcomed as a deliverer, had been first
attracted to Christianity through the militant Bishop
Thangbrand, whose shield, bearing the figure of the
Crucified, was henceforth highly prized by the chief.
Journeying to England Olaf was confirmed in the faith by
the famous Alphege, Bishop of Winchester. He then
returned to Norway, resolved upon the extermination of
paganism. The story of his journeys in the -ship Crane and
the strong measures he took to convert his subjects, high
and low, make the substance of some famous sagas. Truth
to tell, the missionary methods of Olaf Tryggveson smack
too much of the pagan temper of the times to be admirable.
Nor was their success really great. Much more was accom-*
plished a few years later when a descendant of Harold Lufa,
known as Olaf the Saint, came to the throne, and, attended
by the famous Bishop Grimkil, made a systematic visitation
of the realm to enforce the observance of Christianity. Not
even St. Olaf's methods were free from blame, but the zeal
of the kings began from this time to prevail and soon " the
White Christ " was definitely enthroned in the land above
the might of Odin and Thor. By the time of Canute, who
was king both of England and Norway, the Christianization
of Scandinavia, so far as extension is concerned, was
complete.

Now we must turn back again several centuries in order
to survey the victories of the Cross over the barbarians in
an entirely different part of Europe. So far scarcely any
impression "had been made by Christianity upon the tribes
on either side of the Danube, where there had been no
Charlemagne to bring order out of chaos. At the end of the
seventh century a people of Asiatic origin, whom we call
Bulgarians, had been moving slowly southward into the

5 1 8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Balkan Peninsula. By the beginning of the ninth century
their inroads had become so serious as to compel the
attention of the Greek Emperors. In 8 1 1 the Emperor
Nicephorus made an attack upon their capital, .. but the
Bulgars took a terrible revenge and the skull of the slain
Byzantine was fashioned by the barbarians into a drinking-
cup. One good thing, however, came out of this conflict,
for the captive Bulgarian princess, sister to Bogoris (Boris),
learned in Constantinople the Christian faith, and her
appeal in course of time led to the establishment of relations
between Bogoris and the Patriarchate. In response to the
prince's request a painter the monk Methodius, who was
later connected with the conversion of Moravia was sent
to decorate the palace of the barbarian and so luridly did the
artist treat his subject, the Last Judgement, that the prince
and many of his subjects were literally terrorized into the
acceptance of Christianity. Missionary work in Bulgaria
was considerably retarded and complicated by the com-
petition of rival evangelists, Greek, Roman and Armenian,
but there was, nevertheless, real fruit, and many reforms
of a practical sort were carried into effect.

From Bulgaria the Gospel soon made its way into various
parts of the Slavic world. In Moravia, particularly, largely
through the interest of the Greek Emperor Michael, the
two ' sons of Leon of Thessalonica, Methodius arid Con-
stantine (better known as Cyril), laboured with great
devotion and success. The brothers had gone earlier to the
Crimea, where they studied the Khazar language, but lack
of success in this region suggested their coming to Moravia
in 864. Cyril was the creator of the Slavonic alphabet which
is still called after him, the Cyrillic. A considerable part of
Holy Scripture was also translated and churches erected
wherever possible. But the Moravian Church, like other
parts of the East, suffered grievously from the invasion of
the pagan Magyars. They suffered also from the rivalry
of the German bishops, who maintained that since only
Hebrew, Greek and Latin were used in the inscription on
the Cross it must be heretical to translate the Holy Scriptures
into any other tongues. Yet, spite of all opposition from
within or without, the work prospered. and before the death

CHRISTIANITT AND THE BARBARIANS 519

of Methodius in 885 foundations had been laid which were
destined to endure.

We have long passed the period marked by the first
onslaughts of Islam on the Churches of Christendom, but
there is still one part of Europe to the story of whose con-
version we must devote a paragraph. This is Russia where
in 862 had arisen the kingdom of the Norman Ruric, in
which, again,' a woman's influence was the means chosen
to prepare the way for the conquests of the Cross. This
woman was the Princess Olga, who visited Constantinople
in 955 and there received baptism. Legend indeed says that
as far back as the time of the apostle ' St. Andrew, Chris-
tianity was proclaimed at the ancient capital of Russia,
Kiev, then a city of the -Scythians. But it was not^ really
till the ninth century that the barbarian Russ came into
contact with Christian civilization, and this by way of
Constantinople. At the beginning of the century the
Russians extended their raids so rapidly that in 865 they
came under the very walls of Constantinople, greatly to the
consternation of the inhabitants and of the Patriarch Photius..
An opportune storm, regarded as a divine interposition,
scattered the fleet of the marauders, but before many years
the invaders returned under Oleg, who is said to have put
his ships on wheels for use on dry land. It was shortly
after this that 'the widowed Olga received baptism, under the
name of Helena, and with the Emperor himself acting as
godfather. But, on returning to Russia, Olga strove in vain
to secure the conversion of her son Sviatoslav, who remained
a barbarian to the last, using a human skull as a drinking-cup,
and died in battle in 972. Qlga's grandson, Vladimir, was
more amenable, though he resisted renunciation of paganism
for some years. About this time several religious deputations
appear to have visited the Russian prince, asking for his
favourable consideration. The Jews were rejected because
they represented a people without a country; 'the Muham-
madans because of their abstinence from wine ; the Romans
because Vladimir was unprepared to recognize the Pope.
Only the Greek emissaries remained and the Russian prince
would not at once commit himself. Instead "he sent his own
representatives to Constantinople to gain a first-hand

520 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

impression. They returned amazed at the beauty of Santa
Sophia and completely carried away by the splendour of the
services. " We want no further proof," they had exclaimed,
" send us home again." So Vladimir, confirmed by th'e
opinion of the boyars, who reminded him of the faith of his
grandmother Olga, determined to make Russia Christian
and, in the spirit of the age, to suppress paganism by force.
One other consideration ' comes into view, since Vladimir
was desirous of marrying the Greek Emperor's sister,
Anne, and could only do so as a Christian. So the great
thunder-god Perun was dragged ignominiously down to the

' Dnieper, at a horse's tail, flogged on the way by those who
had but recently paid him honour. And the next day, on
peril jgf being declared enemies of the king, the whole
population of Kiev swarmed down to the riverside to
receive the lustral waters of baptism. On the site of the
old temple of Perun arose the beautiful cathedral church
dedicated to St. Basil. Schools and churches were erected

- throughout the land, the liturgy of Cyril and Methodius,
written in the old Slavonic alphabet, introduced, and the
splendid music and ceremonial of the Greek Church widely
welcomed. The Chronicle of Nestor declares: " Thus did
Christianity diffuse her light over Russia, like the rising sun,
with progressively increasing splendour, and Vladimir
rejoiced thereat, and was liberal towards the poor and
afflicted, and distributed'his gifts among all the people." *

Paganism still lingered in certain parts of Europe, such
as Pomerania, Lithuania and Prussia, but the first great
period of Christian extension was closed, with the first
millennium of Christian history. We shall see in the next
chapter that, while all this extension was proceeding, there
were also large lapses taking place through the spread of
Islam. Except, however, in Spain these made little change in
the map of Christian Europe, at least for a long time to come.
Outside of Europe, moreover, there are certain gains to
be recorded for Christianity which, notwithstanding the
proper limits of the present chapter, we may refer to for the
sake of convenience. The most important of these move-

1 See W. F. Adeney, The Greek and Eastern Churches, pp. 355-70, New
York, 1908 ; A. P. Stanley, History of the Eastern Church, Lecture IX,

CHRISTIANITY AND THE BARBARIANS 521

ments is that connected with the missionary enterprise of
Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople condemned by
the Council of Ephesus in 431. Even before the time of
Nestorius we find great monastic establishments at Edessa
and in the Euphrates Valley generally. "In 424 there were
Christian bishops at Rai, Nishapur, Herat and Merv.
Under the Sasanid dynasty of Persia Christianity was fairly
strong, but bitterly persecuted for its supposed dependence
on the hostile Empire of Rome. Later on the Nestorian
headquarters were moved to Bagdad and from thence
missionaries followed the trade routes into Central Asia and
even into China. The most interesting reference to this is
contained in the famous Nestorian monument at Si-an-fu, the
capital of China under the T'angs, 618905. This monu-
ment, erected in 781, and rediscovered in 1625, com-
memorates the arrival of the missionary Alopn (Olupun)
from Ta-ch'in (the Roman Empire), his favourable reception
by the T'ang Emperor, T'ai Tsung, and the consequent
spread of the faith among the Chinese. The inscription is
signed, both in Chinese and Syriac, by over fifty ecclesiastics,
headed by one "Adam, priest and chorepiscopus, and pope
of China." The inscription, headed with the figure of a
cross, is described as: " Monument commemorating the
propagation of the noble law of Ta-ch'in in the Middle
Kingdom." From the self-felicitating terms of the inscrip-
tion it is plain that Christianity had made great progress in
China in the eighth century, and had doubtless done
something towards the shaping of Buddhist doctrine. Other
references to the Nestorian missions in China are contained
in documents from the Tun-huang oasis and from edicts
issued by the emperors in 638 (soon after the arrival of
Alope"n), 745 and 845. It was in the last-named year that
Christianity, together with all the other " foreign religions,"
came under the imperial ban. Persecution became general,
though Nestorianism' lingered here and there and was not
extinct in the time of Marco Polo, towards the close of the
thirteenth century. 1

1 See K. S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China, chap, iv.,
New York, 1929 ; P. Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China, London,
1916.

522 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Now we must turn for a while from the story of Christian
missions, alike in the West and in the East, to dwell upon
the terrific catastrophe which drove a wedge between the
two great- mission fields and tore away some of the fairest
provinces of the Christian Church.

Yet, before doing soj we may well sum up the sig-
nificance of the period in a sentence or two. It is sadly
easy to see that the age we- have considered is no more
an ideal one than that which preceded it. There was, it
is true, a marvellous extension of the. Christian name. But
the methods used were wild, rough and ignorant; often
they were quite at variance with the spirit of Christ. The
extension was, after all, the ploughing of lands and the
seeding of lands rather than the reaping of a harvest. But
in the lives of thousands of individuals there was more
than promise of the harvest to come. The path towards the
ultimate victory was blazed. Kings and queens, like Clovis
and Clothilde, Ethelbert and Bertha, Olaf of Norway and
Olga of Russia, did become nursing fathers and -nursing
mothers of the Church. If still displaying the traits of the
barbarian, they did, nevertheless, learn to become as little
children that they might find entrance into the Kingdom.
Moreover, ignorant as they often were, they rejoiced to
bring the glory of the nations within the open gates of the
City of God. And, amid all the tumult of the times, a new
knighthood was being slowly formed out of the old pagan
society whose battle-cry might be expressed in the words :

Blow, trumpet, for the world is white with May ;
Blow, trumpet, the long night hath rolled away ;
Blow through the living world : Let the King reign ! 1

1 For the general subject of this chapter the four volumes of Dr. G. F
Maclear, The Conversion of the West, London, 1878-79, will be found useful.

SECTION III
THE STORY OF ISLAM

CHAPTER XXXV
Islam': I. -To the Abbasid Khalifate

f | ^HE error of treating religions as self-contained and
I independent movements has no better exemplifica-
A tion than in the history of Islam. St. John of
Damascus was right, as Dante was right several centuries
later, in thinking of Muhammadanism as a Christian
heresy. 1 To be more explicit we should say that it is a
Judaeo-Christian heresy, with a background of Semitic
animism. By the sixth century A.D. Christianity had
already been ravaged by many forms of doctrinal
error, due sometimes to the swing back and forth of
a pendulum which passed from one extreme of over-
emphasis to - the other, and partly due to conditions
peculiar to" particular localities. In Arabia, given all the
conditions at this time prevailing, it 1 would have been
surprising if the misconceptions of Christianity there
entertained, had not avenged themselves in a disastrous
fashion.

Again, in accounting for the rapid extension of Islam
we have to' take into account the political circumstances of
the time and especially the fact that the " bleeding white "
of the Eastern Empire and of the Sasanid Empire of Persia
by centuries of warfare had left all Western Asia and
Eastern Europe exposed to the assaults of a fanatical horde
of Semites in a way which at an earlier period would justly
have seemed impossible.

In any case it is not easy to overestimate the effect
upon a hitherto victorious Christianity of the Muhammadan
movement. The great Florentine who depicts the founder
of Islam as in Hell> mangled as a schismatic, and his son-
in-law Ali with face cleft from chin to forelock, was quick

1 Dante, Divina Commedia, Inf., xxviii. 31 ff.
523

524 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

to realize the damage done to the chariot of Christ by

Islam: . *

Then it seemed

That the earth opened, between either wheel ;
And I beheld a dragon issue thence,
That through the chariot fixed his forked train ;
And like a wasp, that draggethback the sting,
So drawing forth his baleful train, he dragged
Part of the bottom forth ; and went his way
Exulting. 1

Yet, although Muhammadanism is in its origins so
strangely compounded of such various elements, and in its
extension so strangely indebted to political as well as to
religious motives, there is probably no great religious
movement whose actual history is so much in the open and
therefore so easy to trace from stage to stage. We may add

1 1 ] T 1 1 ^ J

that there is no religion whose principles and practices are
so definitely laid down. Indeed, it is out of the very definite-
ness and precision of the creed and cult of Islam that spring
some of its most obvious limitations.

The story of the founder is one of the romances of
history. In the province of the Arabian peninsula known,
perhaps through an etymological misunderstanding, as
Arabia Felix? the principal market-town was Mecca, earlier
known as Bacca. The city was at the same time- a sacred
shrine. The attraction to the religious was in the presence
of the fetish known as the Black Stone, kept in a building
called, the Ka'aba (or Cube). Here was worshipped the
chief god of "the days of ignorance," known as Hubal.
Near by was the sacred spring, called- Zem-zem. 3 The
keepers of the shrine were drawn from the family of the
Quraysh, of which Muhammad was -a member. Here in
A.D. 571 was born to .Abdullah destined never to seer his
illustrious son the boy distinguished by the name of

1 Dante, Purg., xxxii. 130 ff.

2 Felix is the Latin translation of Yemen, which means, first-south (literally,
right hand) and, next, fortunate. It is possible that the term was applied to
the district because of its " temperate climate, reasonable rainfall, and good
soil."

3 Muhammad claimed that the Ka'aba was the original home of our first
parents in Eden, shrunken and blackened by the sins of men, and that the
Zem-zem was the spring miraculously created to sve Ishmael from death by
thirst, as narrated in Genesis xxi. 19.

ISLAM: I.TO ABB AS ID KHALIFATE 525

Muhammad, " the Praised." The year of the prophet's
birth came to be known as " the Year of the Elephant,"
because in this year an Abyssinian prince, Abraham, the
Slit-nosed, raided the sacred city, and, in order to terrorize
the unsophisticated Meccans, brought with him that
hitherto unknown beast, an elephant. But, the legend
declares, the animal refused to advance upon the Ka'aba,
sinking to its knees. At the same time appeared a swarm of
small birds, who dropped stones on the heads of the invaders
with such fatal effect that only one returned to his prince to
tell the tale. Later on, Muhammad included in the Quran
a Sura known as the Sura of the Elephant, beginning: " Hast
thou not seen what thy Lord did with the masters of the
Elephant?" 1

, Abdullah, dying away from home, left his son only five
camels, a flock of goats, and a slave-girl, but the young child
was first of all adopted by his grandfather and, on the latter 's
death, by his uncle, Abu Talib, who had the custody of the
shrine at Mecca. So, from A.D. 578 onward, the boy had
ample opportunity to learn the traditions of the place and
also to open his eyes on the outside world through contact
with the numerous strangers who made their pilgrimage to
Mecca. Occasionally also he went far afield with his uncle
and came to know something of the religion of the Jews,
who were strong at Yathrib, and that of the Christians, who,
in small sectarian bodies, were scattered here and there, or
as ascetics were to be found isolated in various parts of the
desert. 2 He would also doubtless come across some of those
earnest religionists known as Hanifs, who probably turned
his attention in the direction his teaching was afterwards to
take. But in addition to drinking in a certain amount of
rather muddled information on the subject of religion, drawn
alike from Arabian legends and bits of Jewish and Christian
tradition, Muhammad also saw something of the fighting
spirit of the Arab, and, we are told, loosed his first arrows
against the' foe. He entered thus early into one of the

1 See Quran, Sura cv.

2 Many Christian sects had taken refuge in Arabia in order to evade the
imperial edicts against their particular tenets. This will explain in part the
inadequate conception of Christianity the Prophet acquired.

526 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

traditions of Arab life, though Muhammad never developed
personally into a very successful soldier.

Up to the age of twenty-five the young camel-driver of
Mecca seemed unaware of the beckoning hand of destiny. It
was through his marriage to the rich widow Khadijah, a woman
already twice married and considerably older than her new
husband, that there came to the future prophet that social
prestige and that leisure which afforded him .opportunity
to indulge his brooding thoughts. For this latter purpose
he retired frequently to Mt. Hira, not far from the city,
and there his meditatio'ns shaped themselves into a growing
sense of the unity of God, as opposed to the animism and
polytheism of the Arab, together with a gathering abhorrence
of the Arab practice of infanticide. Visions attended his
prolonged reveries, due supposedly, in part, to certain
epileptic tendencies, but, nevertheless, tremendously real to
Muhammad, and destined to become immensely fruitful.
In the voices which seemed to him the utterance of the
archangel .Gabriel, speaking the eternal decrees of Allah,
we have the germ of the Quran, or Recitation, which, after-
wards put together by the Prophet's successors, became the
Bible of Islam. The first revelation is that which now forms
Sura xcvi., commencing: " Read, in the name of thy Lord,
who hath created all things; who hath created man of
congealed blood." 1

But when Muhammad lifted up his voice to preach, he
found on the part of the Quraysh. at Mecca 3 nothing but
hostility. Vested interests, together with the inertia, of long-
established tradition, proved too strong in the sacred city
to be easily . disturbed. For a while Khadijah was her
husband's only convert, and as time flew by without more
visible result, the Prophet experienced the reaction of
profound discouragement. At one time he was even
tempted to compromise, and issued a revelation permitting
the worship of the old goddesses, such as Allat, Uzzat, and
Manat. Then he repented and cancelled the unworthy
permission. 2 While a few " companions," such as the

1 An attempt has been made to put the revelations of the Quran in their
proper chronological order by Stanley Lane-Poale in his Speeches of Muhammad.

2 See Quran, liii. 19, 20.

ISLAM: /. TO ABB ASID KHALIFATE 527

freedman Zaid, All, his nephew, and, a little later, Abu Bekr
and Umar, gradually rallied round him, their numbers were
still so few that he was at one time disposed to shake the dust
of Arabia from his feet and betake himself to Abyssinia.
Circumstances became so* difficult that the members of the
Quraysh were only prevented from slaying their kinsman by
the fact that the city was a sanctuary within which no
execution could be suffered. When the Prophet sought
refuge at Taif the plotting became open and unabashed and
the experiment of preaching at this place resulted in hopeless
failure.

Then, when the horizon was darkest, came the turning-
point in Muhammad's fortunes. Two hundred miles north
of Mecca was the city of Yathrib, where lived a considerable
community of Jews, and where a kind of religious revival,
somewhat along the lines of Muhammad's own teaching,
had already found a welcome. One day in A.D. 621 there
arrived at Mecca from Yathrib a deputation with the
proposal that the Prophet should transfer his residence to
that city, and that they should yield themselves to his
religious direction. Some local rivalry probably lurked in
the proposal, as well 'as genuine religious zeal, but the offer
provided just the outlet Muhammad desired. So the Pledge
of Aqaba^ as the covenant came to be known, remains an
agreement of epoch-making significance. 1 The immediate
-result was what is known as the Hijra, or " Flight," from
Mecca to Yathrib, hereafter to be famous as Madinah, that
is, "The City" (of the Prophet). The Flight was not
.without its perils, for the Quraysh got wind of the movement
and attempted to slay the fugitives. One story (told, how-
ever, of other heroes in history) 2 describes the Prophet,
with one of the " Companions," trapped in a cavern, from
whence they only escaped their pursuers through the spider
which had spun its web over the entrance and the dove
which sat peacefully above its eggs. On such occasions

1 Al Aqaba was a hill to the north of Mecca, where the oath was taken by
the deputies from Yathrib to renounce idolatry, to refrain from fornication,
infanticide and stealing, and to obey the Prophet in all things reasonable.

8 As of David, in his flight from Saul, and other heroes in places as remote
as China and Japan. The story is given by Sir Edwin Arnold in his Pearls oj
the Faith.

528 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Muhammad was wont to impress on his followers the truth
that where there seemed to be but two there were really
three, with Allah himself the third. It is not strange that
this year of the Hijra, A.D. 622, came to be the starting-
point of Islamic chronology. 1

Arrived at Madinah, the little company found unfolding
itself before them a wonderful opportunity. The Meccans
naturally were much displeased, since the northern city was
in a position to intercept all the trade -between the south and
Syria. But, within the city, the " Helpers " became zealous
in the cause of Muhammad, and the Jews likewise expected
great things from the new movement. Unfortunately, the
ten years of success which followed the Hijra were purchased
at the cost of considerable moral decline. The preaching of.
Isfam was now accompanied and confirmed by military
demonstrations on a large scale, and the Arabs who had been
left cold by the doctrine of the Unity waxed ever more
enthusiastic before the opportunity of loot. The use of
force by those who had but lately been its victims, turned
out first to the disadvantage of the Jews, who soon found
the teachings of Islam less sympathetic than they -had at
first surmised. Then came the expeditions against Mecca,
resulting in 630 in the capture of the Holy City and the
restoration of the Pilgrimage. The entry of Muhammad,
riding on a camel, into the city which had cast him forth was
a dramatic symbol of success. And coincidently with the
effort to unify Arabia by the bearing down of all opposition
to Islam came to Muhammad the idea of extending the faith
into the contiguous territories. The letters which the
Prophet despatched to rulers such as Heraclius of Rome and
Khosru Parviz, the Sasanid, would have seemed amusing
had the armies of Islam been eventually less successful. But
while Muhammad was ^inditing letters, demanding sub-
mission to Islam, generals like Khalid were enforcing that
submission with fire and sword.

The second evidence of moral decline is seen in the
growing polygamy of the Prophet. In the lifetime of
Khadijah Muhammad took no other wife, but two months
after her death the Prophet married Sauda and espoused

1 It is to be remembered, however, that the Muhammadan year is lunar.

ISLAM: I.TO ABBASID KHALIFATE 529

Ayesha, then a child of ten years old. A little later he
married Hana, somewhat later Zeinab and Um, and four
others in rapid succession, without reckoning the concubine,
Mary the Copt. Thus Muhammad soon overpassed the
liberal limit he had imposed upon the believers. In this
were the seeds of disaster and family disintegration, and out
of it issued feuds which have divided the Muhammadan
world down to the present day. -

In A.D. 632 Muhammad made a memorable visit to
Mecca on pilgrimage. Returning to Madinah he preached
his last sermon in the mosque, though mortally ill at the
time, and soon after reaching home expired on the lap of
Ayesha, his favourite wife, with the words upon his lips:
"Lord, grant me pardon; and join me to the blessed
companionship on high."

Muhammad is doubtless one of the most faultily human
of religious founders. -He was neither the demon Mahound
nor the unscrupulous imposter of Crusading imagination on
the one hand, nor was he the hero imagined by Carlyle and
others of the early nineteenth century. His human weak-
nesses were many and he had probably in his original plan
no exact idea beyond that of welding together the Arab
tribes under the banner of a simple monotheistic creed. But
he started something which no one person was able to
control, and to-day to over two hundred millions of the
faithful Muhammad is the latest and most authoritative
word of the Most High, the founder of the dispensation
which has superseded Christianity and must endure till the
expected Mahdi prepares the way for the final Judgement.

As to the system itself, it is one admirably adapted to
accommodate itself to the piety of the average man, neither
too lofty nor too low for human nature's daily food. The
term Islam^ from a root salama, ".to be at peace," signifies
the attitude of submission to the divine decrees, and the
follower of Islam is thence termed a Muslim. The religion
has a very definite creed and a very definite set of obligations. 1
The Creed includes the acceptance of the five following

1 The obligations of Islam are taught not only in the Quran but also in
the Hadith, or traditional sayings of Muhammad, the Ijmah, or consensus of
opinion, and the Qujas, or " analogy."

2 L

530 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

beliefs: (i) The Unity of God, that is, the belief that'" God
has no partners," a tenet aimed alike at the polytheism of the
heathen and at the trinitarianism of the Christians. God,
or Allah (a title, rather than a personal name, signifying " the
Mighty One "), is conceived as a magnified sheikh, paternal
but despotic, ordering all things according to his own fore-
ordained and absolute will. Muhammadan theology stresses
the transcendence of God, apart from his immanence. He
" remains eternally apart upon a frosty throne; his voice is
heard, but he cannot condescend." (2) The existence of
spiritual beings, good and bad, all the way from the four
supreme archangels, Jibrail (Gabriel), Rafail (Raphael),
Azrail (Azrael), the angel of death, and Izrafil, the angel of
the last Judgement, to evil beings like Shaitan (Satan), or '
Iblis, and the jinns and afrits of primitive Arab animism.
(3) Heaven and Hell. Heaven is conceived after the manner
of an Arabian oasis, with plenty of shade, rest, water, fruit,
and pleasant company. Hell (Jahannum) is patterned after
the infernal vortex of Irano- Judaic eschatology, with its
seven circles for the sundry torments of the damned. (4)
The Resurrection and the Last Judgement, expected to take
place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, at Jerusalem. After
burial it was believed that a man was visited by the two
angels of examination, Munkir and Nakir. If the inquisi-
tion was satisfactory, the dead man was permitted to rest
in peace till the' Judgement. Otherwise he Vas beaten with
iron maces till his cries could be heard throughout the
universe by all except men and jinns. Then the earth was
pressed down and his body left to be torn by serpents and
dragons. At the Day of Doom all were summoned to life
by the threefold trumpet-blast of Izrafil and.were compelled
to cross the bridge Al-Sirat (the Chinvad bridge of Persia),
which was supposed to be suspended between the Mount of
Olives and the Golden Gate at Jerusalem. The Judge would
. be Isa (Jesus), as in the creed of the Christian. Preceding"
the general Judgement the Mahdi, or " Guide " was
expected to appear, filling the earth with righteousness, but
at the same time sealing the doom of the impious. (5) The
Prophets were 224,000 in number, 313 of them apostles
and five founders of dispensations. The five-.founders were

ISLAM: LTO AB BASIS KHALIFATE 531

Adam, the Chosen of God; Noah, the Prophet of God;
Abraham, the Friend of God ; Jesus, the Spirit of God ; and
Muhammad, the Apostle of God. By adopting the word
" Parakfatos " (Praised) as the reading in St. John xiv. 16
instead of " Parakletos " (Comforter), Muhammadans were
led to believe that the dispensation of Islam had been
foretold by Christ Himself. 1

The practices of Muhammada'nism were still more
definitely prescribed than the articles of belief. These also
were five in number, as follows: (i) The recitation of the
Kalimah (Word), that is, the formula: " There is no God
but Allah, and Muhammad is his Apostle." 2 (2) Prayer, to
be performed at five stated times a day, namely, between
dawn and sunrise, after the sun has begun to decline, midway
between these, two, shortly after sunset, and in the night.
Prayer must be preceded by ablutions, which might be
made in sand, provided, (as was all too often the case) there
was no water at hand. The attitude in prayer varied in
different sects, but was generally that of standing, with the
thumb touching the lobe of the ear, and the face turned
towards the qiblah, which was Mecca. The hours of prayer
were generally announced in the cities by the muezzin from
the top of a minaret, with the formula added at morn:
" Prayer is better, than sleep." This was the form used by
the Prophet's own crier Bila, at the establishment of the
first mosque (masjid), or place of adoration (sijdafi). The
mosques are everywhere open for prayer, and on Fridays
there is a special service with the giving of a homily.
(3) Fasting. The great fast comes in the ninth month,
Ramadan, when it is unlawful between sunrise and sunset
to take even a drop of water on the lips. When Ramadan
occurs in the hot season this is a rigorous piece of discipline,
though dispensation is granted to the sick and infirm, and to
soldiers on a campaign. The most solemn part of Ramadan
is the tenth night, known as the Night of Power, 'kept
in observance of the Prophet's famous Night Ride to

1 Of course this identification was the work of a later and more sophisticated
age than that of Muhammad himself.

2 The term apostle (rasul) was used of Muhammad to distinguish him from
Noah, who was specifically called " the prophet of Allah."

532 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Heaven. 1 The legend states that, summoned by the angel
Gabriel, Muhammad flew on his seraph steed, Al Borak, to
Jerusalem, tethered the fleet courser at the temple entrance,
and thence ascended through the planetary spheres to the
empyrean where he beheld Allah. (4) Alms-giving, which
includes a kind of poor-rate, known as Zakat, originally a
contribution to the war-chest, to carry on the campaign
against the unbelievers, but now a charity fund, consisting
of one-fortieth of all such property as a man has had for a
year ; and Sadaqah, a special offering voluntarily made.
Under the same head is mentioned the Waqf, a religious
bequest or endowment. (5) The Haj is literally the M cir-
cuit," but includes a considerable number of complicated
ceremonials, such as .the putting on of the pilgrim garb, the
sevenfold circling of the venerable fetishes, the kissing of
the Black Stone, the stone-throwing to drive away the devil,
the sacrifice, the visit to Madinah, and so on. On his return
home the pilgrim takes to himself the name of Haji, and
regards himself as having attained the earthly goal of piety.

Of course, there are other observances, such as the
keeping -of the birthday of Muhammad, and the Tike, and
the various sects have special festivals of their own, but the
above-mentioned obligations sum up the duties enjoined oa
the whole body of the faithful.

Something must here be said of the Quran., a book read,
and often memorized, by many millions of people, to whom
the book is support in life and consolation in death, the one
great miracle of Muhammad, and the Khalif Umar's one
necessary book. Islamic tradition speaks, indeed, of a
hundred and four sacred 'writings, ten ascribed to Adam,
fifty to Seth, thirty to Enoch, ten to Abraham, and besides
these, the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the
Quran. Muhammad challenged the angels and the demons
to produce the like of the Quran and, of course, they failed.
It has already been remarked that the word Quran signifies
merely the Reading, or rather the Recitation, since reading in

1 The Night Ride is said to have taken place during the " year of waiting "
on the proposals from Yathrib, in A.D. 621. Cf. Quran, xvii. i : " Celebrated
be the praises of Him who took His servant from the Sacred Mosque to the
Remote Mosque, the precinct of which we have blessed to show him of our
signs."

ISLAM: I. TO ABB AS ID KHALIFATE 533

ancient times was always ore rotundo. Sometimes, however,
the word Kitab, or Writing, is used, though we are ignorant
as to the circumstances under which the Prophet's revelations
were copied down. In all probability he himself could
neither read nor write. Certainly not sufficiently to acquaint
himself at first hand with the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures. At Muhammad's death the whole mass of
inspired documents was but a miscellaneous collection of
writing made by his amanuenses on parchment, palm-
leaves, leather, shoulder-blades of sheep, and the like. It
was impossible to put them into any accurate chronological
order, so the plan was adopted unfortunately on the
precedent of the arrangement- of our Old Testament
prophets of placing them in order of their length. One
exception has been made, since the whole collection is
prefaced by the Fatiha, or " opening " Sura, sometimes
called the Lord's Prayer of Islam. As now arranged, the
Quran consists of 114 suras, or chapters, each preceded by
certain mysterious letters, such as ALM, which have been
variously explained, but may be nothing less or more than
labels attached to the various fragments.

The Quran owes its authority to the belief that it is
taken from an eternal tablet in the heavens, from whence the
revelation was brought in piecemeal form by Gabriel. But it
owes much also to the fact that it is composed in a sonorous
Arabic, in rhymed prose, and particularly impressive when
declaimed to the multitude. No variation has been allowed
in the text since the time when the Khalif Uthman, in 650,
found his short and effective method of securing textual
uniformity by the destruction of all variants. Yet, however
impressive to the faithful, as recited in the original, it must
be confessed that the Quran makes but a poor show in
translation. (Many, however, will keep certain beautiful
and impressive passages in reverent memory.) Its contents,
moreover, are full of discrepancies, historical absurdities,
and tiresome repetitions. Its main limitation is that it
" stays at home," the work of one man, in one style, and
applicable to but one type of society. In this it contrasts,
much to its disadvantage, with the magnificent compre-
hensiveness of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, the Quran

534 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

set for all time the standard of the Arabic language and
literature, and when the book was passed on to other peoples,
Berbers, Persians, Indians, and others, it became the means
of winning among non-Arabic peoples an immense prestige
for the original tongue. Nor must we minimize the
importance of the faith which was sustained by the sublime
assertions of the Divine unity in the Quran, or by the
recitation twenty times a day of the opening sura, the
Fatiha. We must remember again that the Quran is one
principal source of Muhammadan jurisprudence, civil and
ecclesiastical alike. Few books, indeed, in the history of
religion have been so literally received and so implicitly
followed as the Bible of Islam. Yet, to Christians, the words
of Lord Houghton will recur :

" Muhammad's truth lay in a holy book,
Christ's in a Sacred Life.

So while the .world rolls on from change to change,
And realms of thought expand,
The letter stands without expanse or range,
Stiff as a dead man's hand.
While, as the life-blood fills the glowing form,
The Spirit Christ hath shed
Flows through the ripening ages, fresh and warm,
More felt than heard or read. 1

It will be convenient here to continue our summary of
the history of Islam, even though the summary must carry
us far beyond the date we have already reached- in the story
of Christianity,. As stated above, when Muhammad died
there seems to have been but little foresight as to the future
of the religion he had founded. Probably AH, the husband
of Muhammad's surviving daughter, Fatima, and likewise
his nephew, was expected to succeed. But that strong-
minded virago, Ayesha, had taken offence at some putative
reflection upon her modesty by Ali, and was determined to
thwart the young man's ambition. So Abu Bekr, one of
the " Companions " and Ayesha's father, was designated as
Khalif, that is, " Vicar," or representative. .Thus was
inaugurated the remarkable religio - political institution
which, existing in various forms, and regarded with vary-
ing degrees of reverence, was only abolished after the

1 Lord Houghton, Palm Leaves, 38.

ISLAM: I, TO ABB AS ID KHALIF ATE 535

inauguration of the Turkish Republic by Mustapha Kemal
in March 1924.

Abu Bekr was already an old man on his accession and
only held "office for two years. He was the only one of the
four Orthodox Khalifs to die a natural death. The Orthodox
Khalifs.are those who held the headship of Islam from 632
to 66 1, with their capital at Madinah, and preserved the
original form of simple Arab theocracy propounded - by
Muhammad. At this time the future of the faith was by
no means too secure, but the progress of foreign conquest
soon .gave an impetus which distracted the attention of
Muhammadans from the situation in Arabia. These
conquests became miraculously rapid and extensive in the
days of the second Khalif, Umar, who took office on the
nomination of the dying Abu Bekr. " I have no occasion
for the office," protested Umar, but when Abu Bekr replied:
" The place has occasion for you," he felt constrained to
accept. Umar, 634644, proved to be a great ruler, whose
personal policy was to limit the extent of what was fast
becoming a mighty empire, but whose armies were con-
tinually adding thereto. Damascus was captured in 635,
and in the following year all Syria, with Jerusalem, fell to
Islam. Egypt was overrun in 641, and in the same year
the empire of "the Sasanids in Persia was brought to an end
through the battle of Nahawand. At home Umar's policy
is illustrated by his famous dictum: " He that is weakest
among you shall be in my sight as the strongest till I have
vindicated his rights, and he that is strongest- shall be as
the weakest until he obeys the law." At the end often years
of masterly rule Umar refused to will the Khalifate either
to Ali or to his own son, but selected six electors to make
a choice for the government of a still expanding realm after
his own death. This event came, unfortunately, soon after
his decision. Umar. was stabbed in the mosque by a
workman of Kufa who was disgruntled over the fiscal laws
enacted by the Khalif. The succession now fell to one of
Muhammad's sons-in-law, Uthman, who had been also
the Prophet's secretary. -He held sway over the faithful for
twelve years, but was in most respects a weak ruler, guilty
of nepotism and unable to provide troops for his own

536 . A HISTORY OF RELIGION

defence, while the armies of the faith were victorious almost
to the ends of the earth. After a somewhat inglorious reign
Uthman too was murdered, in his own house, with the
Quran (for the compilation of which he was largely respons-
ible) on his lap. His wife, Na'ila, vainly endeavoured to
shield him and had her fingers cut off in the attempt to ward
off. the assassin's blow. Uthman was eighty years of age
at the time of his death. Now at last was All's opportunity
to come to his own. It was probably too kte, though for five
years the Prophet's nephew enjoyed (if the term does not
seem ironical) the tardy reward of his patience or impatience.
AH was much loved by those who knew him, and highly
reverenced by those who remembered his relationship to
the Prophet. He was also personally respected for his
great simplicity of life. His particular rival was the Syrian
general Muawiya, who exhibited the severed fingers of
Na'ila and the bloody garments of Uthman in the mosque
at Damascus and thereby roused all Syria to a frenzy of
revolt. A battle between the factions took place at Siffin, in
which the tide was flowing strongly in behalf of AH when the
Quran was suddenly hoisted by the other party on a lance
and a demand made for an appeal to the sacred volume.
Thereupon a truce was made and for a while compromise
was in the air. Nevertheless, shortly after a conspiracy was
hatched by the extreme democratic wing of Islam, the
Kharijites, who resented the retention of the Khalifate in
the hands of the " Companions." The conspirators, in their
eagerness to proclaim any Arab eligible for election to the
Khalifate, determined to make a clean sweep of AH, Muawiya
and of Amru, the conqueror of Egypt. The plot succeeded
only in the case of AH, whose murder in 66 1 in his sixty-*
third year, brought the Orthodox Khalifate to an end and
at the same time removed the control of Islam from Arabia
and the Arabs.

The next period of the Khalifate, from 66 1 to 753, is
known as that of the Umayyads, inaugurated by the above-
named Muawiya, who like Uthman had once been one of
the Prophet's secretaries. He was a born ruler, with
splendid self-control, gifted also with mildness and mag-
nanimity. During this reign many expeditions were made

ISLAM: LTO ABBASID KHALIFATE 537

to the Mediterranean, in one of which the famous Colossus
of Rhodes was broken up and sold to a Jew of "Edessa.
Constantinople itself was twice threatened and in one naval
battle, known as the " Mast Fight," the Greek Emperor
was utterly routed. Yet Muawiya was far from enjoying
unanimous support at home, and the sack of Madinah, after
a three months' siege, created , much hostility. Under
Muawiya's successors Yazid and Abd al Malik occurred the
tragedy which made a permanent schism in Islam. The
Umayyads were . really a Syrian despotism, with its head-
quarters in Damascus, to which the older traditions of the
faith were entirely alien. Hence there were many who
clung to the belief that the family of Ali, as represented by
his two sons, Hasan and Husayn, might yet recover the
Khalifate. Hasan had been persuaded to abdicate his
claims, but sufficient encouragement was given to Husayn
to lead him into a fatal conflict on the plain of Kerbela.
The result was a massacre rather than a battle, and from that
time to the present day Islam has been divided between the
Shiites who follow the Shiah, or faction, of Ali and his
" martyred " sons and the Sunnites who follow the Sunnah,
or tradition. The two sects differ mainly on the legitimacy
of the first three Orthodox Khalifs. Sunnites acknowledge
Abu Bekr and his successors, and the Shiites commence the
Khalifate with Ali. But the Shiites differ among themselves
as to the number of Ali's successors, the Sect of the Twelve
holding the doctrine of the twelve Imams and the Sect of the
Seven acknowledging but seven. In either case a " hidden "
Imam is expected prior to the coming of the great Day of
Judgement. In later centuries an extreme section of the
Shiites provided the famous " assassins," or users of hashish;
employed for political ends by Hasan ben Sabah, the
original " Old Man of the Mountain " (Sheikh ul Jebel)
of the Crusaders. The feud between Shiite and Sunnite
is kept alive to-day by the annual performance of the Passion
Play, commemorating the death of Hasan and Husayn,
during the first ten days of the month Muharram, in Persia,
India, and other lands where Shiites are to be found.

Abd al Malik was the most powerful of the Umayyad
Khalifs, but he represents something of a pagan reaction.

538 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

" Lo, now there is separation between me and thee," he
exclaimed to the Quran when informed of his election.
This same reaction is manifested in the reign of Walid,
during whose time took place the conquest of Spain. This
notable event came about in part through the treachery of
Count Julian, Governor of Ceuta, who out of animosity
against Roderick, the last Gothic king of Spain, lent his aid
to the Moor Witiza, and assisted Tariq, the Arab governor
of Tangier, with ships, thus enabling him to cross the
straits which have since borne the name, Gibraltar (Jebel
Tariq). The invasion thus begun was not undone till the
end of the fifteenth century. The best of the Umayyads
is said to have been Umar II., of whom it was* written :
"Thou hast succeeded to the throne and didst not revile
AH, nor terrify the innocent man, nor follow v the counsel
of the evil-doer. Thou didst speak and confirm what thou
didst say by what thou didst do, and every Muslim became
well content." With Umar II. we come to the end of
Islam's first century and the last days of Umayyad power.
For there were several forces engaged in bringing about the
termination of the Syrian dynasty. One was the hatred of
the Syrians by the subject peoples, particularly in Persia.
A second was the growth of Shiite sentiment due to horror
at the cruel fate of the Prophet's grandsons. A third was
the expectation of the Mahdi, who would announce the end
of all things.

The collapse of the Umayyads came about in this
manner. The family of AH was still represented, namely,
by Muhammad ben AH, and to him was born a son, Abu'l
Abbas (Abdullah ben AH ben Abdullah). On the other
hand was the last Umayyad Khalif, Marwan ben Muham-
mad ben Marwan, nicknamed the Ass. It had been
prophesied that in the Tear of the Ass 'A. ben 'A. ben 'A.
was to slay M. ben M. ben M., and the poets chanted the
song: " I see amid the embers the glowiof fire and it wants
but little to burst into a blaze." So it came to pass that in
747 the Black Standard of the Abbasids was raised and a
call addressed to all the disaffected to rise in 'revolt, under
the leader Abu Muslim. Marwan was defeated in 750 on
the banks of the Zab ; Damascus was taken ; the tombs of

- ' ISLAM: I. TO ABBASID KHALIFATE 539

the Umayyads sacked. One member of the Umayyad line
escaped to Spain where, under the name of the Western
Umayyads, Khalifs continued to claim authority with their
capital at Cordova. Abbas now became the first Khalif of
a new line, known as the Abbasid, with his capital at
Bagdad. The great general, Abu Muslim, who had done
most to secure victory, had his reward in 755, when he
was cruelly murdered. .

The chapter may fitly be closed with a quotation from
Gibbon, eloquently summing up the achievements of the
ill-fated Umayyads:

"At the end of the first century of the Hijra, the Khalifs
were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe.
Their prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or
in fact by the power of the nobles, the freedom of the
commons, the privileges of the Church, the votes of a senate,
or the memory of a free constitution. The authority of the
companions of Muhammad expired with their lives ; and
the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian tribes left behind, in
the desert, the spirit of equality and independence. The
regal and sacerdotal characters were united in the successors
of Muhammad; arid if the Quran was the rule of their
actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of
that divine book. They reigned by the right of conquest
over the nations of the East to whom the name of liberty
was unknown and who were accustomed to applaud in their
tyrants the acts of violence and severity that were exercised
at their own expense. Under the last of the Umayyads,
the Arabian Empire extended two hundred days' journey
from east to west, from the confines of Tartary and India
to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we retrench
the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their writers, the long
and narrow province of Africa, the solid and compact
dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat,
will spread on every side to the measure of four or five
months of the march of a caravan. We should vainly seek
the indissoluble union and easy obedience that pervaded the
government of Augustus and the Antonines ; but the
progress of the Muhammadan religion diffused over his
ample space a general resemblance of manners and opinions.

540 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

The language. and laws of the Quran were studied with
equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville; the Moor and
the Indian embraced as countrymen and brother in the
pilgrimage of Mecca; and .the Arabian language was
adopted as the popular idiom in all the provinces to the
westward of the Tigris." l

1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, iv., 490.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Islam: II. From the Abbasids to the

Present Day

Abbasid Khalifate, with its capital at Bagdad,
represents a decided decline of the Arabian influence
upon Islam and a swing back politically to the earlier
predominance of Persia. This swing of the pendulum is
illustrated not merely by the choice of the capital, but also
by -the use of some of the old Sasanian machinery of govern-
ment, and particularly in the employment of Persians in the
office of Vizier. The rise of the Barmecide family Barmak
with his son Yahya and his grandson Jafar is a special
instance of this, until the massacre of. the ' family in the
reign of Harun-al-Rashid. The undivided Khalifate was
no longer co-extensive with Islam, since the- formation of the
Western Umayyad Khalifate in Spain, but the first Abbasids
were immensely powerful, particularly such men as Mansur,
the founder of Bagdad, Harun-al-Rashid, who is said to
have corresponded with Charlemagne, and Mamun, who
reigned from 813 to 833.

It was in this last reign that we find that great enthusiasm
for literature which was destined in time- to influence so
powerfully the Europe of the Middle Ages, by the way of
Spain, Sicily and Provence, and even to affect the ideas of
the Schoolmen. The Arabs did not quite maintain their
early importance in the .extension of the faith, but among the
non-Arab peoples there was an immediate demand for
grammars and dictionaries, since it was only permissible to
study the Quran in the original. The wide diffusion of
the faith also called forth books on geography and history,
as well as translations from the Greek. Travelling developed
into a craze. It was said: " Whosoever goeth forth to seek
for learning is in the way of God until he returns home:

541

542 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the angels blithely spread their wings over him and all
creatures pray for him, even the fish in the water."

This interest took, among other forms, that of devotion
to science, and medicine, astronomy and mathematics found
many ardent votaries. Fiction also flourished, as may be
noted in the case of the Thousand and One Nights of universal
fame. The beast fables of India, too, became popular in
the version of the Persian Qalilah and Dimnah made by
Ibn'ul Muqaffa. Muhammadan law attracted many students,
moreover, and eventually produced the four famous schools
of law known as the Hanifite, founded by Hanif, the
Malikite, founded by Malik ibn Anas, the Shafiite, founded
by Shaft 'k, and the Hanbalite, founded by Ibn Hanbal.
Naturally, too, there was special interest in philosophy and
theology, particularly as the Semitic dogmatism became more
and more leavened with the Aryan spirit of enquiry. A
rationalistic sect of great prominence at the time was that
of the Mutazilites, whose doctrines were embraced by the
Khalif Mamun. The Mutazilites denied the doctrines of
the uncreated Quran, and tried hard to rid the conception
of God of its cruder anthropomorphism, but these teachings
were later declared heretical, largely through the influence
of the theologian Al-Ashari (died 935), who went over from
the Mutazilite to the traditional position.

The golden age of the Abb.asids declined after the time
of the Khalif Motasim, who did nothing to stay the
decadence. At the beginning of the tenth century it was
obvious that the ecclesiastical rulers of Bagdad were no
longer capable of holding together the Muhammadan
Empire of the East, not to mention the territories of Egypt
.and North Africa and the far western conquests in Spain.
From the tenth century onward, while the Khalifs fre'tted
themselves unavailingly in Bagdad, or became but pawns
and puppets in the hands of men stronger than themselves,
it" was open to these latter to carve out on their own behalf
kingdoms, small and great, to last just as long as their
dynasty could hold itself together. Politically the power of
the Khalifs sank almost to zero, however much their religious
authority might be theoretically recognized. For the con-
quering rulers of lines such as Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaz-

ISLAM: ILAB-BASIDS TO PRESENT DAT 543

navids, and the like, were still good Muslims and harried
the lands they invaded in the name of Allah. In some few
countries, as in China, peaceful penetration (rather than
force), was used, at least to start with, but in most of the
new Muhammadan territories entrance was won by mili-
taristic methods. For example, as early as 664, the Muslim
entered Afghanistan and captured Kabul. A little later,
about 714, Scinde was conquered by 'Muhammad ibn
Qasim, who presently advanced to Multan, making many
converts and, at the same, time, securing immense loot. At
the beginning of the eleventh century the great Ghaznavid,
Mahmud ("Allah-breathing lord "), made his seventeen
invasions of India in the course of twenty-five years, and
demolished the idols on a large scale, without attempting any
permanent conquest. It was plain that Islam, in passing
from one race to another, was by no means diminishing
in vigour.

One remarkable development to be noted in Islam in
its passage from the Semite to the Aryan and thence to the
Mongol is to be found in the philosophical mysticism known
as Sufism. The word sufi, from the Arabic suf (woofy
not from the Greek sophos denoted primarily the follower
of the simple life who preferred the coarse woollen garments
of the ascetic to robes of linen or silk. Several theories as to
its origin have been advanced. Some describe it as an
esoteric doctrine preached by the Prophet himself. Others
regard it as a reaction of the Aryan mind against the
dogmatism of a Semitic religion. Others suppose it to be
derived from what is known as neo-Platonism. Still others
think it a product of Indian Vedantism. And, lastly, there
are those who believe it to be of entirely independent'origin.
In any case,- it represents that mystical, quietistic and
pantheistic attitude which has had its votaries in most
religions, from the Taoism, of China to the mysticism of a
Thomas a Kempis or a Tauler.

Sufism appears first about 777, in the teaching of Abu
Hashim and finds a rather extreme expression in Al Hallaj,
who insisted that one could perform the'Haj in a private
room quite as well as by undertaking the tedious journey to
Mecca. The language of the Sufists, however, is frequently

544 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

so extravagant that it is often impossible to take it literally.
Sometimes, indeed, it is difficult to draw the line between
what is spiritual and what is merely erotic. Three types of
Sufism are generally recognized, namely, the ' TheosopMc, in
which the emphasis is laid on fellowship with God in His
vision; the Theopathic, in which the believer is raised
emotionally almost to identity with God (as is illustrated in
the story of Bayazid); * and the Theurgic, in which the
mystic claimed to be able to work miracles. Persia was the
true home of Sufism and most of the great Persian poets,
such as Sana'i, Faridu'din Attar, Jalalu'din Rumi, down to
Jami, were Sufists. Later on, as a result of the Muham-
madan invasions, India became powerfully influenced by
this form of mysticism, and much of the religion represented
by men like Kabir and Nanak, not to mention the great
Bengali poets, was probably the result of this importation.

As the Arab had yielded the torch of Islam, in the west
to the Moor, and in the east to the Persian, so at least so
far as the east is concerned we find, from the twelfth
century on, the Persian yielding the leading role^ first to
the Seljuk, and then to the Mongol. The Seljuks appear
as early as the eleventh century and found the disintegrated
Khalifate ripe for attack. " These rude nomads," says
Stanley Lane-Poole, " unspoilt by town life and civilized
indifference to religion, embraced Islam with all the fervour
of their uncouth souls." From Seljuk and Tughril, on
through the reigns of Alp Arslan and Malik Shah (who
died in 1092), we have a succession of able leaders who were
rigidly orthodox Muslim's and therefore the foes of the-
Fatimid or Ismaili (the Sect of the Seven) Khalifs then ruling
in Egypt. It was under Malik Shah that Hasan ibn Sabah
lived and founded the order of the Assassins, and it was
shortly after that the power of the Seljuks and their possession
of the Holy Places in Palestine led to. the appeal of Urban II.
and the launching of 'the first Crusade. It was a Seljuk too,
the famous Salahu'din (Saladin), who made himself master
of Egypt through the removal of the Fatimid Khalif and

1 A native of Khorasan whose self-identification with God led him to
declare : " Verily, I am God, there is no God but me, so worship me. Glory
to me ! How great is my. majesty 1 " See E.R.E. xii., p. 12. .

ISLAM.: ILABBASIDS TO PRESENT DAT 545

became the most formidable foe of western chivalry. On
their return the Crusaders took back with them many crude
ideas as to Muhammad and his religion, but they at least
learned to respect the courage and courtesy of Saladin,
finding his ideals of knighthood in no way inferior to their
own. But the last of the great Seljuks, Sanjar, fell before
the invasion of the Khwarazmshahs, and a great Persian
poem. The Tears of Khorasan, laments his fate.

The Kharazmshahs, or kings of Khiva, did not long
retain power within the territories of the Khalifs. In 1162
was born that thunderbolt of war, Jenghiz Khan, and
before his death, in 1227, the empire of the Khiyans was
shattered to pieces. His son Ogdai followed this up with
an attack on the Khalifate and in 1258 Bagdad was taken
and sacked, with the massacre of 800,000 people. The
last of the Khalifs of Bagdad was beaten to death in a felt
sack (to avoid bloodshed) and the survivors of his family
escaped to Cairo which for the next two or three centuries
was regarded as the capital of Islam.

The Mongols, in the course of their career probably
" inflicted more suffering on the human race than any other
event in the world's history of which records are. preserved
to us," 1 but on their first appearance in Western Asia, their
arrival was taken to be the death-blow of Islam. Indeed, it

was for a long while believed that they offered the means, so
ardently desired by Christendom, for making headway
against the conquering forces of the Turk. Jenghiz Khan,
brought up in the principles of primitive shamanism, was
minded to favour all religions equally while giving adherence
to none. His grandson, Kublai Khan, while personally
favouring a form of lamaistic Buddhism, was anxious for
the Polos to secure Christian missionaries from Europe.
Had this plan succeeded, the history of Asia might well
have been completely changed. A few missionary envoys,
like John de Piano Carpini and x William de Rubruk, did
their best, during the brief visits they paid to the Great
Khans, and John de Monte Corvino, the Franciscan Arch-
bishop of Peking, laboured with conspicuous success for
many years. But eventually the attractions of Islam pre-

1 E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, II. 427.
2 M ^

546 A HiSTORT OF RELIGION

vailed with the Khans. Ghazan Khan, 12951304, was the
first to embrace Muhammadanism, and a little later some of
thell-Khans of Persia, who had even been baptized in infancy,
became fiercely attached to the religion of the Prophet.
From this time on, the Mongols were as vehemently bent
upon the spread of Islam as had been the Seljuks earlier.

As it was in Persia and in Central Asia, so it was in
India. One Muhammadan dynasty after another carried
fire and sword into the peninsula, together with the message
of the Quran. The Slave Kings of Delhi began with Qutb-
ud-din in 1206; then came the Khiljis, from 1290 to 1320,
extending the propagation of the faith into South India.
At last, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, came that
redoubtable descendant of the Timurids, Babar, and laid
the foundations of the Great Moghul Empire, the strongest
and longest-lived of the Muhammadan dynasties. Babar
and Humayun were devout, Akbar was eclectic, anxious to
create a religion inclusive - of the best points ' in Islam,
Hinduism and Christianity, Jahangir and Shah JaJian were
more orthodox, though sadly lax in the matter of wine-
bibbing, Aurungzib, who reigned from 1658 till 1707, was
a gloomy fanatic, who provided for his own funeral expenses
by copying the Quran> and warred incessantly upon Ithose
who resisted his effort to Islamize the whole of India.

This is, of course, but one side of a great period of
missionary zeal. To many doubtless Islam appeared to be
propagated only by the sword, and the world was divided
rigidly into the two realms, Dar ul Islam (the rule of Islam)
and Dar ul Harb (the rule of war). Yet, in spite of all the
forced conversions which have taken place in India some
of them as recently as 1921, in the course of the Moplah
Rebellion there has been a good deal of peaceful pene-
tration, and some fine examples of missionary work by
persuasion, as, for example, the work of Kwajah Mu'in ud
Din Chishti (died 1236), who heard the voice of the Prophet
commissioning him to convert Ajmir.

Outside of India great impetus was given to the military
and political prestige of Islam by the rise of the Ottoman
Turks. These were but a small horde of some three or
four thousand warriors when they arrived in Asia Minor

ISLAM: II.ABBASWS TO PRESENT DAT 547

but the timely aid they rendered to the Seljuks in their
struggle against the Mongols, won permission for them to
settle in the neighbourhood of their present capital of
Angora. Before the middle of the fourteenth century the
Greek power was practically expelled from Asia Minor and
a few years later the Sultan Murad I. captured the city of
Adrianople and made it plain that the Turks had entered
Europe to stay. There was a temp9rary set-back through
the great victory of Timur Leng over Sultan Bayazid at
Angora in 1402, but fifty years later, in 1453, Sultan
Muhammad II. put an end to the Eastern Empire by the
siege and capture of Constantinople. We here reach one
of the chief landmarks of Muhammadan history, when the
great city of the Eastern Caesars became the capital of a
triumphant Islam, and the Church of Santa Sophia was
transformed into a mosque.

After the destruction of the Abbasid Khalifate at Bagdad
the title Khalif came to be assumed by many independent
sultans of various dynasties, more by way of political
pretension than out of a desire to claim ecclesiastical authority.
As early as 1362 the Ottoman Murad I. called himself
Khalif, and from that time on the title was used by successive
Turkish Sultans. The story that Selim I. bought the
Khalifate in 1516 at Cairo from a descendant of the
Abbasids is now generally discredited. But there is no
doubt that the Ottoman Sultans made large use of the
claim, for political purposes, down to the end of the nine-
teenth century. On this ground they assumed the titular
headship of Islam, an honour precariously held till after the
Great War, when Mustapha Kemal summarily " pricked
the bubble " of the Khalifate by its abolition, only two years
after the office had been bestowed upon Abdul Majid, cousin
of the last Sultan, Muhammad VI.

The apogee of Muhammadan power, at any rate in the
political and military sense, was reached in the sixteenth
century, and that power did not begin to decline till the
long-continued wars with Venice from 1646 to 1669.
From this time onwards such extension as is gained by
Islam comes rather through peaceful penetration than
through warlike measures. Conversion to Muhammadanism

548 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

in India -was quite common, sometimes indeed merely to
escape from the tyranny of caste. In Western China the
advance of the faith was due in large part to immigration.
In Eastern Africa the penetration had a sinister association
with the slave trade and can hardly be regarded as peaceful.

In Arabia, towards the close of the eighteenth century,
the long repose of the "silent peninsula " was interrupted
by a movement of religious as well as of political importance,
even down to the present day, known as Wahabism. The
founder, Ibn Abd'ul Wahab, had grown up in serious
distress over the. increasing laxity, of Muhammadan belief
and practice. He noted the use of wine and tobacco, the
worship of the Muhammadan saints^ or watts, such as had
developed into a kind of polytheism, and the growing
disrespect for the " traditions." Thereupon he preached
a great Puritan revival, and enforced his preaching by the
slaughter of heretics and unbelievers. .To every one of his
soldiers he gave a passport to heaven, in case of death on
the battlefield. Ibn Abd'ul Wahab died in 1791, but the
movement was espoused by Muhammad Ibn Sa'ud, and in
1 804 led to the capture and looting of Madinah. * So
seriously was the menace regarded that the famous Muham-
mad Ali, an Albanian soldier in Egypt, was called upon by
the Turkish Government to crush the movement by force.
This was accomplished, but the Wahabi State was recon-
stituted in 1824 and in 1836 was once more independent of
foreign control. The line of descent from Ibn Sa'ud has
been maintained to the present bearer of the name, and the
Wahabi power is still supreme in certain parts of Arabia.

An important chapter in the history of Islam, to which
but the barest allusion has so far been made, is that which
concerns the. Iberian Peninsula. The crossing of the
Straits of Gibraltar by Tariq in 711, at the command of his
general Musa, and through the treachery of Count Julian,
speedily brought about the downfall of the Visigoth king-
dom. Though Tafiq was presently recalled, the mixed host
.of Berbers and Arabs flowed northward in an irresistible
tide, in 7 1 8 crossed the Pyrenees, and was only brought to
a standstill by the great victory of Charles Martel at Tours
in 732. There followed a time of confusion and anarchy,

ISLAM: ILABBASWS TO PRESENT DAT 549

but in 758 a representative of the Umayyad family, now
fugitive from Syria, reachecl Spain and commenced a rule
independent of Bagdad. This was Abd ur Rahman I.,
under whom Muslim Spain began its era 'of prosperity.
Many years later, in 929, Abd ur Rahman III. promulgated
an edict that from Friday, January 1 6 of that year, he was
to be acclaimed as Khalif and Commander of the Faithful.
This begins the Khalifate of the Western Umayyads in the
official sense. It was a period during which Muslim
culture reached its highest point in Spain and began to
extend its influence thence into the rest of Europe. These
were indeed halcyon days for Islam. Cordova took on
the appearance of a great capital, with large libraries and
impressive assemblies of learned men. With the help of
Jews, who were only too glad, to escape from Christian
persecution . by courting the followers of the Prophet,
translations of many important works were made and
circulated far beyond the Pyrenees. The greatest of
Western Umayyad princes, whose navy disputed the
mastery of the Mediterranean with the Fatimids of Egypt,
and with whom the proudest of monarchs. sought alliance,
passed away in 961. His work was carried on by Al
Hakam II., who possessed a library so large that forty,
volumes were required for its catalogue, and under Al
Hakam's successors 'the great minister Al Mansur (Al-
manzor) for long kept up the prestige of Spanish Islam.
When Almanzor died in 1002, on his tomb were engraved
the words: "His history is written on the earth if-thou
hast eyes to read it. By Allah, the years will never produce
his like, nor such another defender of our coasts."

After this there was swift disintegration and a series of
shifting principalities took the place of the Western
.Umayyads. From A.D. noo, for a few years, the Almora-
vides, a Berber dynasty with a considerable intermixture of
other blood, -held sway over Spain in the name of the King
of Morocco. Then an even more bigoted line arose, the
Almohades, or followers of the Mahdi. But the time was
now ripening for a Christian reconquest. For a long while
the kings of Leon and Aragon had been using every
opportunity to attack and weaken the Muslim rule. Now,

550 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

with an increasing disposition on the part of the Christian
princes to unite against the foe', came ampler opportunity
for driving them from stronghold to stronghold, southward
to the dividing straits. The final blow came in 1492, in
the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella, through the reconquest
of Granada. So once more Spain entered the Christian
fold, though the strong impress made by five centuries of
Muhammadan culture was never lost in the Peninsula and
in the contiguous lands. 1

Before presenting two or three, general observations on
the history of Islam, it remains for me in this chapter to
mention several movements in the Muhammadan world
which are of considerable present-day significance.

One of these is the Babist movement, genetically con-
nected with the Shiite Sect of the Twelve, and with ante-
cedents, moreover, which carry us far back into the curiously
eclectic history of Persian Islam. The religion of the Bab,
or Gafe, was founded by AH Muhammad, the son of a
Shiraz tradesman. He was born in 1820 and, after a visit
to the tombs of Hasan and Husayn at Kerbela, announced
himself as the Bab in 1844. Later on he visited Mecca
and subsequently commenced the sending of missionaries
throughout Persia, even announcing himself to the Shah
as the " Hidden Imam," the " Primal Point " of revelation,
and other things which led not merely to controversy but
also to an outbreak which had to be suppressed by military
force. The Persian Government, deeming that the new
prophet's teachings were dangerously, subversive, executed
him in a cruel way at Tabriz in 1850. Two years later an
attempt on the life of the Shah led to the arrest and death
of twenty-eight of the leading lights of the movement.

But now arose a disciple of the Bab, one Husayn, who
assumed the title of Baha Allah, the Splendour of GW, and
proceeded to teach the old doctrine in a new form. Bagdad
was the centre first chosen for what soon came to be known
as Bahai, but the Turkish Government was persuaded by
Persia to transport the two chief leaders first to Con-
stantinople and then to Adrianbple. In this last-named city
Baha Allah formally announced himself as " Him whom

1 See Reinhart Dozy, Spanish Islam.

ISLAM: II.ABBASWS TO PRESENT DAT

God shall manifest " and a split was caused by the announce-
ment. Baha Allah and his party were now transported to
Acre in Palestine, where a propaganda was organized which
has reached the United States as well as other parts of the
civilized world. " Bahaism claims to be not so much a form
of Islam as a universal religion, with a revelation superseding
both the Quran and the Gospel. The founder died in 1892
and his death led to still further schism In an already divided
community. The number of those professing Bahai has
been variously given, all the way from one or two hundred
thousand to as many as three million. 1

Another interesting offshoot of Islam is what is known as
the Ahmadiya movement, started in India about 1889 by
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who eventually claimed that he was
not only the promised Mahdi, but also Christ in His second
coming, and the predicted tenth avatar of Vishnu. He died
at Lahore in 1908, but his work has been continued by
disciples who have made the most of Ahmad's syncretistic
teachings. Missionary stations have been established
outside of India, including England, an Islamic Review has
been published in England and a Review of -Religions in
India, while an edition of the Quran, in an English trans-
lation, has been made in the interest of the sect. The number-
of people professing the Ahmadiya doctrine has been set
down by some authorities as about 5o,ooo. 2

Some reform movements in Indian Islam are along more
orthodox lines, though doubtless much influenced by
contact with Christianity. One is that associated with the
talligh (propaganda) carried on by Kwajah Hasan Nizami,
of Delhi, a Sufi of the Chishti order, who gives the objects
of the Tablighi Mission as follows: " (i) To strengthen
Muslims through religious teaching. (2) To assist Muslims
to improve their economic condition. (3) To inspire
Muslims with missionary zeal. (4) To propagate Islam
among non-Muslims." 3

Undoubtedly^ western influence has sufficiently leavened
Muhammadanism in India so as to diminish intolerance, at

1 Dr. E. G. Browne gives us much interesting information on the origins
of this movement in his fascinating, A Year Amongst the Persians.

2 See H. A. Walter, The Ahmadiya Movement, Oxford, 1918.

3 Murray T. Titus, Indian Islam, p. 51, Oxford, 1930.

552 A DISTORT OF RELIGION

least in .certain quarters, and to dispose some to see, the good
in other systems. A few have even insisted that " there is
no inherent antagonism between Christianity and Islam." 1
But this attitude is not common in Islam as a whole. For
example, we have, outside of India, a quite militant move-
ment known under the name of Sanusi (or Senusi). This,
which is in part an outcome of Wahabism, is so named after
a North African reformer, born about the end of the
eighteenth century, who visited Mecca and there obtained
the support of the Prince of Wadai, Muhammad Sherif.
Anticipating his death Sanusi called his two sons and
ordered them to jump from the top of a palm-treei The
younger son jumped first and was thereupon designated as
his father's successor. Under this Sanusi el Mahdi the sect
has spread widely throughout North Africa, and from the
Sahara to Somaliland. The Sanusi were troublesome to
the Allies during the Great War, but profess to be less
interested in politics than in religious reform. Their tenets
are puritanical as well as mystical. The drinking of wine
and coffee is forbidden, as well as the use of tobacco.
Missionary agents travel extensively and are often persons
of wealth and importance. 2

Other reform movements in modern Islam might be
mentioned, but for the most part they are of slight im-
portance. It will be sufficient to note the attempt to adjust
Islam to modern scientific knowledge made in recent years
by the Egyptian reformer and patriot, Muhammad Abdu,
whose exposition of the Muslim religion from this 'new
point of view has been translated into French. 3

Muhammadanism, while mainly a " religion of the heat
belt," is professed over a large part of the earth's surface.
There are in the world about 233,000,000 Muslims, of
whom 169,000,000 are in Asia. In. China they number
about 1 6,000,000, largely as the result of immigration since
the day when the Khalif Mansur, in 755, sent 400 men to
assist the T'ang Emperor to- suppress the rebellion of Ah
Lu-shan. In Turkey there are 10,000,000, mostly now
in their homeland of Asia Minor. In India there are

1 Titus, Indian Islam, p. 209. 2 See article "Sanusi," E.R.E., xi. 194 f.
8 Rissalat al Tawhid, Paris, 1925.

ISLAM: II.ABBASmS TO PRESENT DAT 553

77,000,000, distributed among many races. All Persia
is Muhammadan, largely of the Shiite sect. Most of North
Africa, including Egypt, is under the banner of the Prophet.
In Central Asia there are even Soviet Republics which -are
Muhammadan in religion. Java, into which Muhammadan
missionaries entered in 1419, is now predominantly Islamic;
in the Dutch East Indies as a whole there are 25,000,000
Muhammadans. Even in the Philippines, among the
Moros (Moors) there -are some 300,000 of the faith.

All these populations constitute a vast brotherhood, but
Islam has no longer a living head. Following upon the
Great War and the drawing up of the Treaty of Sevre s, great
excitement prevailed in Islam over the belief that the Sultan
of Turkey, representative of the leadership of Islam, was
to be deposed. The result was the raising of the Khalifate,
or Khilafat, question in every Muhammadan land from
Morocco to the Philippines. In consequence of the
agitation the Allies scrapped the Treaty of Sevres and
negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne, which was signed by
. Turkey. The new treaty avoided the thorny question of the
Khalifate, but, almost immediately after, the new Turkish
leader, Mustapha Kemal, himself deposed the Sultan and
shortly afterwards abolished the Khalifate. Very little
protest seems to have been made and to-day, though there
are potential claimants to the office here and there, the
question seems to be dead. Muhammadanism is to-day
,a religion of brotherhood, but with no overlordship or
directing priesthood. '

Of Islam we may say in conclusion that, as shown by
its history, it is a religion with many obvious defects, apart
from its general lack of idealism and its catering to the
standards of the average man. In its morals Islam is
proverbially static and unprogressive. A low position has
been commonly assigned to woman, and slavery has been
generally condoned, even though slavery has been abolished
in some Muhammadan lands.

In addition to its congenital defects, Muhammadanism
has retained no small amount of pre-Islamic animism, while
many corruptions have crept into beliefs and practices which
were originally blameless, The worship of saints, for

554 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

example, "has served to create even a species of polytheism,
and the reverence for dervishes has made up for the lack
of an organized priesthood.

Where political reform has been introduced into Muham-
madan countries the result has frequently been seen in the
breaking down of religious faith and in the neglect of
religious obligations. In Istanbul, for example, to-day the
mosques are wellnigh empty, even on festival occasions, and
the edict abolishing the fez has made it difficult for men to
make the customary prostrations in prayer, with head
covered and forehead touching the ground.

On the whole, while Islam has not been without its
beneficial influence on peoples of a low degree of 'culture,
and while we must certainly not forget the great boon that
Muhammadan learning rendered to mediseval scholarship,
in Europe, Islam has been a religion of stagnation, an
instrument only too well fitted for the use of tyrannical and
oppressive governments. Sir William Muir concludes his
History of the Khalifate, first published in 1888, with the
words :

" The political ascendancy of the faith is doomed.
Every year witnesses a sensible degree of subsidence. In
the close connection of the spiritual with the civil power,
this cannot but affect the prestige of the religion itself; but,
nevertheless, the religion maintains, and will no doubt
long continue to maintain, its hold upon the people singularly
unimpaired by the* decline of its political supremacy. As t
regards the spiritual, social and dogmatic aspect of Islam,
there has been neither progress nor material change. Such
as we found it in the days of the Khalifs, such is it also at
the present day. Christian nations advance in civilization,
freedom and morality, in philosophy, science and the arts,
but Islam stands still. And thus stationary, so far as the
lessons of history avail, it will remain." 1

The political and social renaissance witnessed in recent
years in Turkey, Persia and Egypt has not greatly served to
modify this view in the minds of most. What the future
has in store for Islam is, of course, unpredictable. In a

1 Sir William Muir, The Caliphate, Rise, Fall and Decline, p. 603. Reprint
of 1924 (Edinburgh).

ISLAM: ILABBASIDS TO PRESENT DAT 555

recent Survey of International Affairs^ by Mr. Arnold J.
Toynbee, the statement is made: "In 1929 it was hardly
possible, after all, to answer the question whether there was
still an Islamic World in the spiritual sense. In the eyes
of certain Western observers, Islam was then in articulo
mortis; in the eyes of certain Wahabi fanatics, who recog-
nized no true believers among contemporary mankind
outside the ranks of the Ikhwan, Islam in 1929 stood again
where it stood in 633, when the tribes of Arabia, fused
together by the Faith, were straining at the leash as they
awaited the signal to go forth conquering and to conquer
far and wide beyond the bounds of the Peninsula." The
writer adds that whether the observer's analysis or the
fanatic's intuition comes nearer to the mark only the future
may reveal. But he suggests a third possibility, namely,
that Islam may yet adapt herself to the environment of a
Westernized World 3 whatever this environment may become.

SECTION IV
THE SECOND MILLENNIUM OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

CHAPTER XXXVII
Christianity in the Middle Ages

IT is unfortunate that, looking at the story of Christianity
from the point of view of our own time to some a
time of failure and decadence, to - others a time of
realized perfection we should put ourselves at the mercy
of terms such as that of " the Middle Ages." It matters
little whether we view the period as one of darkness, or
whether (as a recent writer has done) we speak of it as " the
halcyon years " which enable us to describe the following
era as the time of " breaking down." In the story of a
religion which we can only worthily judge as coincident
with the whole range of human history, future as well as
past, we cannot fix a middle point. Nor can we speak of an
ideal age in any century of the past any more than we can
brand any other century as one of breaking down. Chris-
tianity in history has often seemed to flag and fail, through
the frailty and ignorance of those who profess it, but it
always rose again to pursue its course when it resought the
power of the promised Spirit to fulfil its mission.

Looked at from the outside, the failures of any age are
more obvious than its triumphs. It was so with the period
we are now concerned with. To those who see only the
imperfections of the time against the splendours of the
envisioned City of God the age from A.D. 800 to 1300 may
well be the Dark Ages, gathering up towards a fitting
denouement in the end of the world. But it is equally an
error for men to-day, looking back as to an era of undimmed
faith and unquestioning acceptance of the Church's authority,
to talk of the Middle Ages as "the halcyon days."

The Middle Ages (so-called) had their failures and their

556

CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES 557

successes, but from neither the one point of view nor the
other were they aught but a single stage in the age-long
march of the Church of God on earth. As a stage, and not
a stopping-place, as a challenge from both the past and the
future, rather than as a station in which to rest, they must
always be envisaged in. the light of the propulsive force
which gave them being and in the light of the goal which
beckoned them.

A great period of extension had come to an end, as a
result of which the. larger part of Europe had been super-
ficially evangelized. It was now time to commence that
new work of intension, which would require for its com-
pletion who shall say how many generations generations
during which the incompleteness of the stages would be all
too sadly evident ? In the religious history of the individual
and of the nation alike the " ugly duckling " phases must
frequently enough be more than exasperating to those who
expected miraculous transformation. The misunderstanding
of this is the source of the common criticism of "first
generation Christians " in heathen lands to-day. But, in
justice to the work of extension in the first millennium of
Christian Europe, we may recollect the production of
saintly lives like that of Alfred among the kings, or
Nicholas I. among the Popes, or many an " ignotus " in the
cloister.

It cannot really be wondered at that, almost coincidently
with the end of this millennium, there should be great
misgiving as to the future of mankind on earth, even to the
oft-expressed expectation of the general Day of Judgement.

, Though for the present Rome had beaten off the Saracen
through the valour of Pope Leo, and Constantinople had
repelled Islam through Leo the Emperor, men's hearts
were failing them with fear of what was to come. Of the

five patriarchates three 'Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria
had fallen to the Muslim, and many were, trembling as to
the ability of the remaining two capitals of Christendom to
survive. Society, too, though nominally Christian, was
pagan in heart and conduct. Many indeed were wondering
whether any refuge for virtue remained outside the
monastery. Yet, though the Church, East and West, was

558 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

menaced by the arms of the unbeliever, there seemed a
superabundance of\time and energy to spend upon inter-
patriarchal controversies. For this the responsibility is to
be shared alike by Constantinople and Rome.

It is, of course, to the credit of Constantinople that for
several centuries after the rise of Islam in her eastern terri-
tories she continued her missionary work in Bulgaria,
Moravia, Bohemia and Russia. But it was most unfortunate
not merely for herself, but also for the Western Church
that the occasion was now found for a controversy which
issued at last in open schism. There were several reasons
for this controversy, racial, political, as well as religious.
The ideals of Eastern Christendom were far removed from
those of the West, which followed in the main the political
pattern of the Roman Empire. There were also the con-
flicting personalities of the Pope and the Patriarch Photius.
There was, again,, the insertion of the so-called " Filioque
clause " " Proceeding from the Father and the Son "
in the Nicene Creed, by the synod of Toledo in 589. And
there were trivial questions as to the keeping of Saturday as
a fast, as to the marriage of priests before ordination, as to
the right of priests to administer confirmation, and the like.
But the immediate cause of conflict is to be found in the
dispute over the use of icons, or sacred pictures. In the
Iconoclastic controversy, as it is called, we may perceive the
indirect influence of Islam in the general condemnation of
pictures and statues. Leo III, the Isaurian, in the first stage
of this controversy, 716, was genuinely anxious to propitiate
Jews and Muslims by the repudiation of anything that
savoured of idolatry. He had, however, against him the
full power of the monks, and, fifty years after his death, his
policy was repudiated by the Second Council of Nicaea, 787.
A few years later, in the days of Leo, the Armenian, 8 1.5, it
broke out again, but this time the Empress Theodora arose
as a champion of the icons, and their use has continued m
the devotions of the Eastern Church ever since.

Irritation over this question, and others mentioned by
Photius in a famous encyclical of 867, brought about an
open quarrel between Rome and Constantinople which was
continued into the next two centuries. Excommunications

CHRISTIANITT IN THE MIDD'LE AGES 559

were hurled at one another by the ecclesiastical heads of
either patriarchate, and at last, in the patriarchate of
Caerularius and the papacy of Leo IX., on July 16, 1054, a
formal bull of excommunication was laid by the papal
legates before the high altar of the Church of Santa Sophia.
Its language is sufficiently drastic: " Let them be Anathema
Maranatha, with Simoniacs, Valerians, Arians, Donatists,
Nicolaitans, Severians, Pneumatomachi, Manichees and
Nazarenes, and with all heretics ; yea, with the devil and his
angels. Amen. Amen. Amen." Henceforth, in the eyes
of the Roman Church, the Orthodox Church of the East
was to be regarded as excommunicate, heretical and schis-
matic. For nearly a thousand years this unhappy breach-
to the great loss of both communions has remained
unclosed. 1

The Great Schism, together with the weakening of the
Eastern Church through the impact of Islam, played
miraculously into the hands of the Papacy, which from this
time forward, at least for some centuries, now assumed
control of all Western Christendom. For this control there
were many reasons, apart altogether from the doctrinal
arguments based on Christ's commission to St. Peter, and
apart also, in the other direction, from the use of fraudulent
means of support such as the so-called Donation of Constantine
and the forged Decretals of St. Isidore. Rome was the one
great apostolic see of the West and, moreover, was advant-
aged by the withdrawal of the Emperors to Byzantium, the
prominent part taken by the Bishops of Rome in the
repression of "heresy, and the important part taken also by
the Popes in resistance to the barbarian invasions.. Even
more important was now the use made by the Roman
pontiffs of political conditions, whereby the Emperors of
Germany, blessed by the Popes, and in open alliance with
them, were to take the place of the rulers (hostile to Rome)
at Byzantium. The Holy Roman Empire, as this alliance
came to be called, has been criticized as neither Holy, nor
Roman, nor yet an Empire, but it must never be forgotten
that, given the unsettled conditions of the time, it did
render service to the religion and civilization of Europe. It

1 W. F. Adeney, The Creek and Eastern Churches, chaps, iii.-vi.

560 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

embodied a grandiose ideal of unity, secular and ecclesiastical
such as surrounds even its failure with a sort of halo. Like
other idealistic schemes since, it failed largely because of the
corruption and frailty of human nature. 1

When Charlemagne, grandson of the great Mayor of
the Palace, Charles Martel, the victor of Tours, became
King of the Franks in 768, it was not without foresight that
the Pope looked to him for some solution of the problems
of the age. Charles the Great was not unworthy of his
name, in spite of his cruel wars and forced conversions. He
was, according to the light of his time, a sincere Christian,
with .some pretension to scholarship, and a true patron of
learning through his employment of scholars like the
Anglo-Saxon, Alcuin. He was also, unlike the Eastern
Emperor, on good terms with the Abbasid Khalif of Bagdad,
Harun al-Rashid, and had received from him (according to
tradition) three unique presents in the shape of an elephant, .
a clock, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. Hence, when,
on Christmas Day, 800, Pope Leo III. placed a crown on the
Carlovingian's head, and proclaimed him Roman Emperor,
as well as King of Germany, a relation was established
which, in theory, was destined to a thousand years of life.
At the time, too, there seemed some likelihood of the theory
being translated into fact. For all Western Christendom to
be under a government, which was at once the heir of
St. Peter and of the Caesars, was to .ensure a unity which
would abolish the civil and religious anarchy of the time.
The whole world would be illuminated by the greater light
of the Church which rules the day and the lesser light of
the Empire which rules 'the night. Alas K after a while
nothing but the theory remained, often nothing but a fitful
phantom of the theory. As a fact, the Holy Roman Empire
perished, and its unquiet ghost troubled the peace of
Europe a Europe it was unable to unify. Yet, though
the ghost of empire passed, from Carlovingian to Franconian,
and from Franconian to Hohenstaufen, the ecclesiastical
side of the dazzling vision survived and even for long
continued to increase in might.

As the political influence of Rome declined, her social

1 See James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire (new edition), London, 1904.

CHRISTI-ANTrr IN THE MIDDLE AGES 561

and religious position grew in significance as a symbol of
authority and unity. The power of the old Roman Emperors
revived in the persons of the Popes, who even took the title
of Pontifex Maximus which the Emperors had used. Clotked
in " the decent rigidity of the Latin language " the Papal
Bulls thundered with the same authority as that once
wielded by the Imperial edicts. As a^ modern Roman
Catholic historian puts it: " The majority (of the Popes)
were wisely content to increase their power slowly and
cautiously." 1 But from time to time personalities arose
who shaped the occasion to the interest of the Roman See.
One of these is the great Hildebrand one of the most
impressive figures of the period who, after exerting
powerful influence in the court of several of his papal
predecessors, came to the Chair of St. Peter in 1073 as
Gregory VII. Like Charlemagne, Hildebrand had fashioned
dreams out of the reading of St. Augustine's City of God>
and, like the great Carlovingian, he proceeded to translate
these dreams into reality. The papacy of Gregory VII. was
a brief one, for all the work that he was able to accomplish.
He imposed celibacy upon the clergy; he battled with the
civil rulers of the time for the abolition of lay investiture;
and he carried out to the bitter end the struggle with
Henry IV., which culminated in the Emperor's submission
at Canossa in 1077. There is hardly an episode in mediaeval
history at once more dramatic and more pitiful than the
grovelling of the erstwhile proud and arrogant monarch
at the feet of the peasant-born ex-Cluniac who had risen
to the supreme place in Christendom. The ruthlessness
of Gregory VII. had its triumph, but later on the Emperor
had his revenge in the setting up of Guibert as anti-Pope.
Gregory had presently to flee, and the great Pope died with
the words on his lips: " I have loved righteousness and
hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile." 2

The Papacy regained its lost prestige shortly after
through the alertness of another Cluniac monk, raised to

1 Gilbert Bagnani, Rome and the Papacy, New York, 1930.

2 See M. R. Vincent, The Age of Hildebrand, New York, 1906 ; also The
Correspondence of Gregory VII., translated by Ephraim Emerton, New York.
1932.

2 N

562 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the Popedom, to take the tide of fortune at the flood. His
adroitness, moreover, meant not merely great consequences
for the Papacy, ultimately bad as well as good, but also
great consequences for all Western civilization. This was
the .Frenchman Urban II., chosen by the College of Cardinals
to oppose the usurping anti-Pope. The excommunication
of the Emperor Henry IV. by Gregory VII., and the conse-
quent choice of Guibert to be Pope, had put the Papal
authorities into something of a quandary. Guibert held the
fort at Rome, backed by Henry and his Council, and when
Urban was elected by the College of Cardinals he seemed
to be little more than " an apostolic wanderer." It was a
deadlock between Emperor and Pope, when the idea came
to Urban of a way open by which he might become leader
of all Christendom in a cause to which, if the right note
were struck, the better part of Europe would rally.

The occasion was supplied by the stories which had been
filtering into Europe of outrageous treatment of the Christian
pilgrims in the Holy Land. In the golden days of the
Abbasid Khalifs Christians were protected from mal-
treatment by treaty. But in 1077 the brother of Malik
Shah, the Seljuk ruler now in possession of the territories
of the Khalifate, conquered Syria and captured Jerusalem,
accompanying his conquest with terrible barbarities inflicted
upon the pilgrims. A certain Peter the Hermit had, it is
said, been already bent upon stirring up Europe to the
situation, but with small success. In any case, it was
Urban's initiative which created the great movement of the
Crusades, whose successive waves were destined for two
centuries to dash against the western frontiers of Islam.
Urban's address at Clermont, in Auvergne, delivered in
the vernacular Romance tongue, made an instant impression.
" Dieu lo vult," cried the excited throng, and almost at
once the wind was taken out of the sails of Guibert, while
a great multitude of men and women, quite ignorant of
the difficulties, or even of the geography, of the situation,
prepared to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel.
The enthusiasm of the enlisted crusaders outran Urban's
organization, and long before the real army, led by seasoned
warriors, was able to start, there were dust-covered crowds

CHRISTIANITT IN THE MIDDLE AGES 563

pressing on towards Constantinople and the lands beyond.
It was a mere mob which first reached the Byzantine capital,
and the Emperor, Alexius Comnenusj only half anxious to
be delivered by such allies, gladly shunted them across the
Bosphorus to Nicaea, there to be massacred wholesale by
the Saracens. It was already becoming almost a tragi-
comedy, when the real Crusading force under men like
Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother Baldwin, Robert of Nor-
mandy, Bohemund and Tancred, reached Byzantium. They
also had their troubles with Alexius, and before they could
be speeded onwards had to pledge him their conquests in
Asia Minor and Syria. This they did with much mental
reserve and then, repelling the Turks at Nicaea, marched
on to the taking of Antioch. Here Bohemund, wanting
only a conquest of his own, prepared to stay, but the other
knights continued their advance and, with great emotion,
found themselves beneath the walls of Jerusalem. The
Holy City was taken on July 15, 1099, the capture sullied
by a massacre which Godfrey and Tancred did their best
to halt. Godfrey was then made King of Jerusalem, but
refused to wear a crown where Christ had worn a diadem of
thorns. The other leaders were suitably recompensed,
orders of knighthood, like the Knight Templars and Knights
Hospitallers, were founded, and the Pope expressed his
satisfaction by the establishment of a Latin Patriarchate.
Two weeks later Urban died and on his tomb the words
were inscribed: " Urbanus Secundus, Auctor Expeditionis
in Infideles."

The kingdom of Jerusalem lasted eighty-eight years, but
was in difficulties almost from the first. Godfrey died in 1 1 oo
and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin. After^this the
Latin rulers of Jerusalem were weaklings and for the most
part unworthy of their charge. The little Frank principality
had again to look to Europe for recruitments and in 1 147
St. Bernard preached the Second Crusade. This time no
English joined, because of the war then raging between
England and Scotland, but Louis VII. of France and
Conrad III. of Germany led a host which had as its objective
the restoration of Edessa rather than the giving of aid to
Jerusalem. It failed completely; Conrad returned after

564 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

an unsuccessful siege of Damascus, and Louis a year later.
St. Bernard tried to rally Europe to another effort, but he,
too, failed and died in 1 153.

In 1187 came the loss of Jerusalem through the new
Saracen troops from Kurdistan and their brilliant leader
Salah-ud-din (Prosperity of the Faith\ or Saladin. He had
become Sultan of Egypt, had routed the Crusading force
in a great battle near the Horns of Hattin, not far from
Tiberias, and soon thereafter took Jerusalem, purifying the
mosques afresh with four camel-loads of rose-water brought
. from Damascus.

The loss of Jerusalem stirred Europe to its depths and
a new Crusade the Third was preached by William,
Archbishop of Tyre, who gathered together a great array
of princes, knights and common folk. The princes included
King Philip . Augustus of France, Richard Coeur de Lion
of England, and Leopold of Austria. Had these been of
one mind, they might have done great things. But they
disagreed from -the first. Richard went off on a private
expedition to Cyprus, and when he arrived before Acre a
little later, even his renowned valour could not compensate
for the offence he gave to Leopold and the King of France.
The city was taken, but Philip Augustus went home in high
dudgeon and Richard was left to continue alone 'the march
to Jerusalem. It was in sight of the city that, harassed by
fever, and still more by the knowledge of treachery behind
him in England, that the Lion-hearted reluctantly made a
truce for three years, three months, three weeks, three days,
three hours, three minutes, three seconds with his brave
antagonist Saladin. Richard had hardly sailed when the
knights ^e left behind broke the truce. Moreover, Saladin
died in 1193, sending his shroud around the city the day
before his decease to show men how little so great a warrior
could take with him. -

The end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth
century were of ill omen for the crusaders defending their
scattered posts in Palestine. But Pope Innocent III., one
of the greatest of all the Popes, was now occupying St.
Peter's chair, and big with ideas for the aggrandisement of
his office. Fulk, cure of Neuilly, preached on the Pontiff's

CHRISTIANITT IN THE MIDDLE AGES 565

behalf a new Crusade, with promises of salvation to those
who should give themselves and their wealth, But this time
the crusaders decided to go to Palestine by sea, and for
transport hired the fleet of the Venetians, who, with their
old blind Doge, Dandolo, had their own ideas as to the
outcome. For, first of all, Dandolo insisted on the crusaders
recapturing the city of Zara, of which the Hungarians had
robbed the Republic. This done, they insisted further on
the need of restoring Isaac Angelus to the throne of
Byzantium, These tasks were entirely foreign to the
object of the Crusade, but they were accomplished and the
expedition thereupon proceeded to compel the allegiance of
Byzantium to the Popes. Thus the result of the Fourth
Crusade was to establish a Latin kingdom in Constantinople
rather than in Jerusalem, and to force Baldwin, Count of
Flanders, upon the Byzantines as king. The knights of the
West held their Eastern principality for over fifty years, but
the spirit of the Crusades was gone. Innocent III., more-
over, having-once used the armed forces of the -West agp.inst
his fellow-Christians was not minded to stop there. To
quote Mr. Harold Lamb: " From the years 1206 to 1213
Innocent availed himself of the crusade power to further his
own policy from Constantinople to Granada. For the first
time, in the south of France, he had drawn the papal sword
to exterminate heretics. But it was not to be the last time.
For more than five blood-stained centuries other popes and
monarchs would follow his example." 1

But the attempt to regain the Holy Land was by no
"means over. In the Easter of 1212 that pathetic tragedy
took place known as the Children's Crusade, a miracle of
faith and fanaticism, but ending in one long horror of
misery, starvation and slavery. Perhaps something in this
shamed the grown-up folk, for at the Council of the Lateran
in 1215 once more Innocent appealed for men to take the
Cross. One army went to Damietta in Egypt, and with it
St. Francis of Assisi, anxious to convert the infidel or win
the crown of martyrdom. Meanwhile, too, the famous

1 Harold Lamb, The Crusades, II. 275, New York, 1930-31. See also Dr.
Ernest Barker's article, " Crusades," in Ency. Brit. (i4th Ed.), with its
Bibliography.

566 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

Frederick II. of Germany and Sicily promised, on falling
heir to the Imperial Crown, to lead a Crusade. He collected
a fleet and sailed in 1227, but soon returned, having been
delayed by a storm. His dilatoriness brought an edict of
excommunication from Pope Gregory IX. and, still under
the ban, Frederick sailed the following spring and marched
from Acre to Jerusalem. Here he obtained rights for all
but the Mosque of Umar from Malik el Kamal, but found
all the monks and 'Knights Hospitallers against him, so
that he had to put the crown on his head with his own
hands. All Frederick's efforts at reconciliation with the
Papacy failed and when he died in 1250 he was still
excommunicate and under suspicion of heresy.

By this time the Seventh Crusade had been launched,
with St. Louis of France as its leader. The saintly king
had made the vow on his recovery from a dangerous illness
and sailed from Marseilles for Damietta in 1248. Louis IX,
however, was no great soldier and allowed his army to be
surrounded at Mansurah. Sick almost to death he was
captured and with great difficulty ransomed. Then,
recovered from his fever, he sailed for Acre, but was soon
after recalled to France by the death of his mother, Blanche
of Castile.

We must only summarize the rest. The Greeks
recovered Constantinople in 1261, under Michael Palaeo-
logoSj and another attempt at reconciling the Eastern and
Western Churches was made, only to fail, in 1274. The
last Crusade took place in 1270, when St. Louis once again
took the field, followed by Prince Edward (afterwards
Edward I.) of England. Louis IX. went to Tunis only tp
die, with the words, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem" upon his
lips. Prince Edward went to Acre, recovered Nazareth,
wellnigh lost his life through an attack by " assassins," and
was soon thereafter obliged to return to England. He had
set his mind on returning to Palestine, but this was not
to be. The Crusades were over. They had entailed the
misery and death of countless thousands and had failed in
their main object. But they had done something through
the sacrifices made, though something quite different from
what they had purposed. " They drained the cup of

CHRISTIANITT IN THE MIDDLE AGES 567

devotion, and if they tasted the dregs of shame, they knew
also the exaltation of victory. They reached the summit of
daring. And the memory of that will endure long after our
own workaday lives are ended." *

Even before the- final failure of the Crusades doubt had
begun to insinuate itself into the minds, of many as to the
validity of the method, apart altogether from failure or
success. Was the military method congruous with the way
of the Cross ? Was success possible through the ideals of
the " iron men " ? We have already noted the visit of
St. Francis to the Muslim lines, based on the desire to
witness for Christ by preaching or by martyrdom. The
incident is symptomatic of a great change. Already men
had retired in multitudes from an unconverted world to
save their souls from impending doom. Now men began to
conceive of the ascetic way as a method by which the world
around them might be saved. Surely this way, neglected
throughout the Crusading period, was worth the trying.

The beginning of monasticism in the Eastern Church
has already been described. Simple eremitism developed,
as we have seen, quite naturally into coenobitism. Moreover,
in the East the regulation of monasteries had been accepted
by many according to the rule of St. Basil. Western
monasticism was a little slower in development, but in 480
was born the great organizer St. Benedict who, moved by
the prevailing anarchy, drew up in 529 the famous " Rule "
which was soon widely accepted. Benedict of Nursia
created no new order, but regulated the life of the western
monks, making each monastery a self-contained and self-
supporting " house," within which dwelt men .who were
bound by lifelong vows and attached permanently to their
own establishments. .The life of the monk was to be
devoted to the chief religious duties of prayer, study, labour
and self-denial, and the three vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience had to be rigidly observed. It was not long
before houses following the Benedictine Rule were scattered
all the way from Monte Cassino to Rome and to the coast.
In Gaul especially men like St. Martin, Cassian and Caesarius

1 - Harold Lamb, The Crusades, II. 467. See also ]. M. Ludlow, The Age
of the Cmsades, New York, 1896.

568 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

of Aries devoted themselves enthusiastically to the propaga-
tion of the Benedictine Rule.

Yet the time came when this, like other human institu-
tions, corrupted itself, and the rules became more honoured
in the breach than in the observance. Even though personal
poverty was maintained, the monastic corporations became
enormously rich. Also, though the obligation of clerical
celibacy was insisted on, the concubinage and unchastity of
the ecclesiastics, including the monks, became notorious.
Nor could superiors always depend on the obedience of
those in the ranks. Hence such reform movements as that-
which established the monastery at Cluny, from which
many of the Benedictine houses, including even the mother
house at Monte Cassino, adopted reforms. All the new
orders from the beginning of the eleventh century, Car-
melites, Carthusians, and the rest, originated in the fervour
of reform. The Cistercian order was founded in 1098, but
its great influence dates from the arrival of St. Bernard in
1 1 21, and Clairvaux soon eclipsed Citeaux when Bernard
became abbot a little later. .In 1130 the Cistercian order
possessed only thirty houses, but before St. Bernard's death,
in 1 153, there were 288. 1

The twelfth century, however, is remarkable, for an
ascetic movement which took lines entirely different from
those adopted, by the monastic orders a movement which
for a time proved singularly fruitful, though in the end it
too yielded in many respects to the influence of the world
around it. The movement which we may describe as that
of Preaching Friars, unconnected with any house and free
to wander wherever opportunity led them, includes the
work of two great mediaeval Christians, St. Francis of
Assisi, founder of the order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans,
and St. Dominic, founder of the order of Dominicans.

St. Francis (Pietro Bernardone) was born at Assisi in
1182. At the age of twenty-four, after a somewhat gay
and' thoughtless youth, he was converted to a desire to
give himself wholly to the service of Christ. Cast off by
his father on account of such " eccentric " acts as changing

1 See article " Monasticism " in Ency. Brit. (i4th Ed.) ; and article
" Mouasticism " (III. "Christian Monasticism"), in E.R;E., VIII. 783 ff.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE MIDDLE AGES 569

clothes with a beggar, he renounced his property and in
1209, at the Chapel of the Portiuncula, vowed himself to
religious poverty. Having thus found his vocation and
gathered around him a few like-minded souls, he obtained
permission from the Pope to organize the Friars Minor,
whom he began to send abroad, first throughout Umbria
and then farther afield. The characteristics of St. Francis
himself were striking and appealing. He accepted poverty
as a bride, showed his appreciation of Nature in -true
poetry, as well as in his preaching to birds and fishes and
the wolf of Gubbio, while the joyousness with which he
carried on his work gained for him and his comrades the
title of " Troubadors of God." His visit to the Muslim
camp has already been mentioned and Giotto's picture
" Before the Soldan " commemorates the incident. At
home St. Francis organized, in addition to 'the Friars, the
order of St. Claire for women, and the Tertiary order for
lay-folk. In his sufferings he is said to have received the
stigmata on his hands and feet and side. He died in 1226,
leaving a name for sanctity not approached by that of any
other in the Middle. Ages. 1 Not long after his death
Franciscans were at work almost all over the world. Ray-
mond Lull laboured to introduce the study of Arabic
into the Universities, as a means for converting the Muslim,
and was stoned to death June 30, I3I5- 2 Men like John
de Piano Carpini and William de Rubruk went as am-
bassadors of Christian Europe to the court of the Great
Khans. John de Monte Corvino laboured for forty years
in China and became the first Archbishop of Peking. 3
Roger Bacon, in England, laid the foundation of modern
science. The list might be indefinitely extended.

St. Dominic, born in Castile, in 1170, at first joined
the Augustinian order, in 1204, but was presently awakened
.by the spread of the heresy of the Cathari to organize a
body of preaching friars whose business it should be to

1 See Paul Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assisi, New York, 1894.

2 Lull was regarded by his fellow-countrymen as a martyr, but his death
at Bugia was in fact the consequence of his own fanaticism. For a full account
of Lull and " Lullism " see W. T. A. Barber, Raymond Lull, the Illuminated
Doctor, London, 1903.

8 K. S. Latourette, History of Christian Missions in China, chap. v.

570 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

combat heresy in all its forms. The order spread rapidly
and in 1215 Dominic begged the approval of Innocent III.
This was not forthcoming, as the Pope deemed that the
existing orders were sufficient for the task. A year later,
however, the new Pope, Honorius III., gave the movement
his blessing and the '* Domini canes," or " watch-dogs of
the Lord," soon became well known throughout Europe.
Unfortunately, their flair for heresy was unduly developed,
and out of the Dominican zeal arose the Inquisition, with
its unexampled horrors. 1 Yet Dominic was sincere enough
in his desire to exterminate what - he believed perilous
beyond the pain of every earthly torment and, of course,
by handing over the culprits to the secular arm for punish-
ment, the Church believed she was keeping her own skirts
clear. An illustration of the dangerous course to which
the Church was committing herself, after the failure to
overcome the Muslim, is in the suppression of the Albigenses
in Provence; Pope Calixtus II. prepared the way in the
Council of Toulouse in 1119 when, going beyond the
previous policy of excommunicating heretics, he invited
the secular arm to use force for their extermination. The
Albigensians doubtless held a doctrine similar to that of
the Manichaeans: one generally held to be subversive of
political as well as of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. But the
purity of their life made Raymond of Toulouse unwilling
to drive them from his territories, and there was but the
slenderest right on the side of Innocent III. when he
moved the princes of Europe against these Proven9al
sectaries as though they had been infidels. The so-called
Crusade of Simon de Montfort developed into a racial as
well as a religious war, and the destruction of the Albigenses
involved much more than the heresy of which they had
been adjudged guilty. It was a bad precedent which
was only too frequently followed in succeeding generations.
This is all the more to be deplored seeing that at this
time a certain tolerance as to matters of thought was
beginning to find place among the ecclesiastics of Europe.
This was in part the result of the larger learning introduced
.into Europe by Islam, and especially into such territories

1 There is no need to associate Dominic himself with the persecuting
zeal of his successors.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE MIDDLE AGES 571

as Spain, Sicily and Provence. Of course, western learning
of the classical .sort had never been completely eradicated.
The Irish monasteries had done much to preserve it and
to circulate it, _and men like Alcuin at the court of Charle-
magne had done much to impress their age with the love
of literature and scholarship. Nevertheless, the Church
and the Universities of Europe owed an immense debt to
the Islam they had sought to destroy, both in the matter
of the books translated from Greek into Arabic and thence
into Latin, and in the matter of the spirit of learning itself.
It was largely through Islam that Aristotle once again
became " the master of them that know," and the spirit of
logical reasoning, out of which grew what we call Scholasti-
cism, was largely due to the fact that Aristotle had found
a secure place in the cloister as well as in the academy. 1

The most obvious expression of this new thirst for
learning is seen towards the end of the twelfth century in
the establishment of Universities, of which the earliest
types are the Universities of Paris and Bologna. In each
case the initiative came from certain famous teachers who
attracted students to their lectures from all parts of Europe.
In Paris the Episcopal school had already gained some
repute under the directorship of William of Champeaux,
but when Abelard arrived about 1115 and commenced his
lectures in the " Isle," and later opened the school on
Mont St. Genevieve, students flocked to him in incredible
numbers. Other teachers followed Abelard's example and
the result was the organization of a corporation, or Univer-
sifas, to protect the interests of students and teachers.
The students were divided into " nations," according to
their respective provenance, and lived in extreme indigence.
Dante's reference to " the street of straw," of which he had
personal experience, will be recalled. But " colleges "
were formed in course of time, to supply food and lodging,
and the curriculum gradually broadened, to embrace not
only the trivium and quadrivium? but also law, medicine
and theology. The University of Bologna originated about

1 See The Legacy of Islam, edited by Thomas Arnold and Alfred GuiUaume,
Oxford, 1931.

2 The trivium included the subjects of grammar, rhetoric and logic, and
the quadrivium those of astronomy, arithmetic, geometry and music.

572 A : HISTORY OF RELIGION

the same time, largely through the influence of the foreign
students, and the success of the establishment or rather
the two establishments, one for the Ultramontanes, or
students from beyond the Alps, the other for the Citra-
montanes, or students south of the Alps led speedily to
the foundation of others. Thus came into being the
Universities of Padua, Oxford and Salerno, and in the
fourteenth century there were in all Europe as many as
forty-five. 1

As we have noted, the fame of the Universities was
from the first associated with the reputation of the individual
teachers, and much of the teaching took the form of a
philosophical statement of the traditional theology. This is
known to us as Scholasticism. Much of it was arid and,
from our point of view, profitless, dealing by the methods
of logic, with subjects largely beyond its province. But the
schoolmen were by no means engaged in what a modern
writer calls " a perverse crucifying of the mind." They
were in general the possessors of a keen and subtle mentality
which did much to strip away many of the misinterpreta-
tions of theology then current. Given the limitations of
the mediaeval knowledge, many of their arguments had
value beyond the limits of their own age in the formulation
of Christian dogma. Scholasticism drew from many sources,
alike from Scripture and from Aristotle, using freely the
methods of dialectic and exposition.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the chief school-
men were Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070,
whose famous treatise on the Incarnation, Cur Deus Homo ?
(to quote Dr. G. F. Moore) " gave a new orientation to the
theological mind " and " accustomed it to translate dogmas
into rational concepts connected with one another by more
or less vigorous bonds," and Abelard, the popular teacher
at the University of Paris, whose Sic et Non is " the first
great theological synthesis," a work setting over against
one another all . the contradictory opinions held by the
ecclesiastical authorities on the various doctrines of the
Christian faith.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we have a

1 See J. B. Mullinger, article " Universities," Ency. Brit. (i4th Ed.).

CHRISTIANITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES 573

number of great schoolmen whose lustre has been dimmed
without being destroyed by subsequent ages. St. Thomas
Aquinas, born in 1225 at the village of Aquino, in the
territory of Naples, of royal descent, is the great systematizer
of Christian doctrine. His Summa Theologize assembled all
the knowledge of his time, and it is not fair to say that it
has been wholly buried " hr the . grave dug for it by the
friends of experimental research since "the time of Roger
Bacon." Fifty years after his death Thomas Aquinas -was
canonized by the action of Pope John II. Alexander of
Hales, who joined the Franciscan order and died about
1245, is the putative author of an earlier Summa Theologize.
Albertus Magnus, like St. Thomas Aquinas, whom he
outlived but six years, was a Dominican. He was born in
Bavaria in 1206, joined his order in 1223, taught both at
Cologne and Paris, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle
and the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Bonaventura was
born in Tuscany in 1221, became a Franciscan in 1243,
taught at Paris, and later became both Bishop and Cardinal.
He. also wrote a commentary on the Sentences^ and a mystical
work, Itinerarium mentis adDeum. Duns Scotus, of Scottish
or Irish descent, was likewise a Franciscan and taught at
Oxford, Paris and Cologne. He too wrote a commentary
on the Sentences. The last of the great schoolmen was
William of Occam, in the county of Surrey. He found
himself in opposition to the Pope and was in consequence
imprisoned at Avignon. Escaping thence he became a
partisan of Louis of Bavaria, and dwelt at Munich, where
he taught and wrote. Later on he again fell into the hands
of the Pope and died, probably excommunicate, in 1349.
He marks the turn from the rationalism of Anselm to the
dogmatism of the next century. 1 --

At the same time that scholasticism was blazing the
way towards a completer freedom of theological thought,

1 Occam himself was very much of a rationalist. Mr. Williston Walker
writes ; " His system was a far more vigorous and destructive nominalism than
that of Rbscelin. Yet actual knowledge of things in themselves men do not
have, only of inental. concepts. This denial Jed him to the conclusion that no
theological doctrines are philosophically provable. They are to be -accepted
and he accepted them simply on authority." (A History of the Christian
Church, p. 279 )

574 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the like end was being served by a religious movement of
a quite different character. The. mysticism which appears in
European Christianity in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, notably in Germany and in Holland, had much
to do with preparing for the reformation which was to
follow. St. Bernard in the twelfth century was a mystic, so
were others of the French and Italian school. But the new
endeavour to bring the soul into direct and ecstatic com-
munion with God is especially associated with men like
Eckhart, Tauler and Nicolas of Basle, or, in Holland, with
the Brethren of the Common Life, an order founded by
Gerhardt Groot, under the influence of Ruysbroek, and
including among its members Thomas a Kempis, author of
the famous De Imitatione Christi. It is well known that
Luther was powerfully influenced by these writings, and
more particularly by the Theologia Germanica, which he
esteemed as almost on the level of Holy Scripture. "

The chapter is already threatening a disproportionate
length, but I must just allude to other aspects of the late
Middle Ages which, in view of the future, have their
significance. The great awakening of art^ with its realiza-
tion of the religious value of colour, as in the pictures of
Cimabue and Giotto, is characteristic of a new attitude
and a new enthusiasm. Similarly, whatever the motives
which inspired them, we see in the Cathedral builders of the
time an expression of faith and devotion as well as the
desire to purchase mansions in heaven by erecting mansions
for God upon earth. It was a movement in which lay-folk
were as enthusiastic as the monkish communities, as we
note in Florence, for example, where, while Dominicans
laboured at building Santa Maria Novella and Franciscans
worked on the Santa Croce, the citizens rejoiced in rearing
the fabric of the Duomo.

Lastly, we have in literature the Divina Commedia
which is to the close of the Middle Ages what the Apocalypse
of St. John was to the Apostolic period and St. Augustine's
City of God was at the time when Rome was menaced by
the barbarians. It is characteristic of Christianity, in its
earthly course, to set terrestrial goals which fade away as
they are about to be reached, and to dream of institutions,

CHRISTIANITY- IN, THE MIDDLE AGES 575

as realizing the Christian ideal, which break down as they
are approached. Dante had dreamed often enough of the
glorious denouement when all the world should live in
peace under the two great earthly vicars of Christ, Pope
and Emperor. His disillusionment did but lift his eyes to
the vision of a vaster fulfilment in the spiritual world.
The breaking down of the theory of the Holy Roman
Empire served only to reveal the spiritual realm in which
God's inexorable love was operating on the infinite and
eternal scale. The will that revolted against the eternal
law was seen to be suffering, not for sinning, but by sinning,
until it learned the lesson that only through following the
divine plan was peace possible. This stage is life's Inferno.
The will that repents its wilfulness, but still suffers from
the weakness which the habit of sin has left behind, was
seen aided and sustained till the weakness is outgrown.
This is Purgaiorio. And, thirdly, the will that, without
other compulsion than that of love, has learned the law of
its own being (which is also the will of its creator), was
seen entering into that fullness of joy which is essentially
nearness to the Throne of God. This is Paradiso. How-
ever impermanent the material out of which the poet
fashioned the framework of his poem, we here behold a
vision only to be realized after the breaking down of
temporal hopes. It is but one illustration among many in
the history of religion that crusts form only to be burst
asunder by the insurgence .of life beneath, and that all
earthly failures save us from dependence on the transitory
and consequent loss of the perfection yet ahead. All the
failures of the Middle Ages are of small account in view of
the emerging triumph presented to us by Dante, until
" vision fails the towering fantasy." It was the triumph of
Creation, beheld as the fruit of the toil of endless aeons,
the victory of Love's infinite patience, the revelation of
Rosa mystica, with each petal perfect in its individual beauty,
and all blended into the perfection of God's realized idea. 1

1 For the subjects touched upon in this chapter the following works, among
others, may be consulted : The Cambridge Mediceval History, Vol. 11^, New
York, 1913 ; Wilhelm Moeller, History of the Christian Church, Vol. II,, The
Middle Ages (Eng. trans.), London, 1893.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
The Reformation Movement

Reformation movement which came to -a head
in the sixteenth century has been described as a
revolution rather than a reformation. There is
some ground for the statement. In that shaking of all
things which was involved in the Reformation crisis many
good things were imperilled and some (at least temporarily)
lost. The unity of the Church, which had already been
shattered by the schism of East and West in 1054, and
which subsequent efforts, down as late as 1437, failed to
heal, was once again broken by the separation of important
sections of the Church from the Western Patriarchate.
The unity hitherto prevailing had, of course, been largely
the result of pressure from outside, but now that the
pendulum started to swing in the opposite direction, the
result was for a time a veritable riot of irresponsible
individualism.

Much has been said as to the slowness with which the
Reformation movement gathered, though we have to note
also the suddenness with which it broke. It is due to the
fact that many forces, moral^ intellectual^ social and -political^
were all working coincidently towards the climax. I shall
devote a few words to these forces before essaying the
briefest summary of the period covered.

First, we must consider the revulsion slowly gathering
against the moral corruption in the Church of the Middle
Ages and its rulers. In this revulsion the entire Papal
system was involved. There were Popes like Boniface VIII.
who, according to the supposed prediction of Pope Celestine,
"intrabit ut vulpis, regnabit ut leo, morietur ut canis,"
like Innocent III., and like Alexander. VI., the Borgia. 1

1 See Ranke, History of the Popes (Eng. trans.), 1840 ; Mandell Creighton,
History of the Papacy, 6 vols., London, 1907.

576

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 577

It is charitable to call these merely " sullied souls." And
with them we must associate plenty of -cardinals, bishops,
monks, and. lay-folk of every degree. Yet the moral ideal
of Christianity was not dead, and indeed was vigorous to
protest against the travesty in high places. The rise of.
pietism at this time is a striking illustration of the way in
which individual souls turned from dependence upon
external authority to find security in personal communion
with God. It is therefore by no means strange to find a
general loss of respect for a Papacy entangled in political
intrigue, playing off Empire against France and France
against Empire. A Pope exiled in Avignon, as the creature
of France, lost face just because he was not in Rome. The se-
venty years of "Babylonish Captivity, ' ' ending after the Council
of Constance with the deposition of three Popes, had much
to do with preparing men's minds for a final break with Rome.
Secondly, we must keep under consideration the revival
of learning, in all its many phases. Scholasticism, by its
championship of rationalism, and its use of the dialectic of
Aristotle, had already gone far towards undermining the
unintelligent acceptance of ecclesiastical pronouncements"
as to doctrine. Now we have to note the beginnings of an
eclairdssement due, first of all, to the invention of printing
in the West, and the consequent multiplication of books,
including, of course, the Scriptures in the Latin or in
European vernaculars. Coincidently, there developed a
humanism , which profited by the Fall of Constantinople in
1453. When the splendid Eastern capital fell from the
hands of John Palaeologos into the arms of Muhammad II.,
there resulted a great scattering of scholars and a wide
diffusion of books and manuscripts which were eagerly
fought for by the awakening West. 1 A new and un-
exampled enthusiasm took possession of men like Reuchlin,
Erasmus, Pico della Mirandola, John Colet> and scores of
others. The Popes, not foreseeing the ultimate result to
their own disadvantage, became the patrons of a Renaissance,
which if not frankly pagan, was in many of its aspects non-
Christian. In some countries, such as Germany, where the
spirit of the Italian Renaissance found small, response, the

1 See E. Pears, Fall oj Constantinople, London, 1890.

.. 20

578 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

enthusiasm for. learning showed itself in the study and trans-
lation of the Bible, and many private and often erratic
interpretations of the Scriptures did much to prepare for the
rejection of ecclesiastical authority as hitherto understood.

Thirdly, there were causes which were purely social and
economic. The invention of gunpowder had proved almost
a death-blow to the ' chivalry of mediaeval times. The
common man was now, with his new weapons, a match for
his master. The submissive serfs of feudal times began to
awaken to a consciousness of their own manhood. " We
are men formed in Christ's likeness and we are kept like
beasts," they cried and rose in revolt. Hence movements
like the Jacquerie in France,, the Peasant Rebellion in
England, the Peasant War of 1525 in Germany. The
conscience of the common man was from henceforth to
determine the acceptability of dogmas and duties which
had so far been forced upon him by his liege lord as well
as by the authorities of the Church.

In the fourth place, many political considerations enter
into the situation. The rise of many new nationalisms out
of the wreckage of the Empire was fatal to the theory of
the Holy Roman Empire. These new nationalities resented
such interferences as appeared in Innocent III. 's Interdict
in France and England, in the insistence upon Investiture,
such as bred so many disputes between popes and kings, or
even in the flooding of a land with clergy of alien nationality.
This resentment was particularly strong in England, where
the independence of the Church had been continually
insisted^upon from the time of the Conqueror. William I.
refused to accede to the demands of Gregory VII. and
William Rufus quarrelled with the Pope over Anselm and
in the matter of investiture. The feud was continued
through the reigns of Henry I. and Henry II. The
despicable John defied the Pope till brought to his knees
by the Interdict of Innocent III., but then became servile
in his submission. To- save English pride Archbishop
Langton and the barons brought about the signing of the
Magna.Carta on June 15, 1215, and laid down the. principle,
"This Church of England shall be free and maintain all its
rights and privileges inviolate." Succeeding kings took the

THE. REFORMATION MOVEMENT 579

same position- and scarcely a reign passed without some
enactment designed to protect the realm, from encroach-
ments on the part of the Papal See. So we proceed till we
come to the final breach in the time of Henry VIII. In
this long-drawn-out contention, English bishops as well as
English monarchs played their part, as witness the story of
Bishop GrostSte of Lincoln and his defiance of Innocent IV. 1
In the fourteenth century we find several Reformation
movements coming to a head. The first is that associated
with John Wiclif, who was born in 1324, educated at
Queen's and Merton College, Oxford, and presently came
into prominence at the University by his denunciation of
the corruption of the Mendicant orders. In 1374 Wiclif
was included in a mission, headed by John of Gaunt, to
Bruges, to discuss with the Papal Nuncio the intrusion of
foreign clergy. into English benefices. On his return he
was made Rector of Lutterworth, and from this country-
side pulpit inveighed against the evils of the Papacy and
the friars. The effect of this was such that in 1377 Pope
Gregory XI. began to issue bulls to Archbishop Courtenay
calling for the reformer's suppression. Wiclif was haled
into the Archbishop's court, but was saved somewhat at
the expense of the dignity of the occasion by the inter-
vention of his friend, John of Gaunt. Support was also
vouchsafed in a letter from the young king Richard's
mother and in the sympathy of the mob rather menacingly
displayed. Wiclif, nevertheless, was brought by worry
wellnigh to death's door and the friars improved the occasion
by paying a visit to the sick bed. But the fiery reformer
raised himself from his pillow to exclaim: " I shall not die
but live and declare the works of the friars." He did
recover and proceeded from the attack on the morals of
the friars to an attack upon the doctrines of the Church,
notably upon the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Steps
were again taken to silence him and but for the Papal
schism might have proved successful. As it was, Wiclif
retired to Lutterworth, went on with his Latin writing and

1 See R. W. Stephens, The English Church from the Norman Conquest to the
accession of Edward I., London, 1901 ; W. W. Capes, The English Church in
the \$ih and i^th centuries, London, 1900.

5.8o A BISTORT OF RELIGION

his despatch of " poor priests " to propagate his teachings
throughout the country, and then died in his bed in 1384;
Later on, in 1415, the Council of Constance decided to
take vengeance on his bones, but -the sentence was not
carried out till 1428, when Wiclif 's ashes were cast into the
Swift, whence they were carried to the Avon, thence into
the Severn, and thence into the ocean. "Which things,"
it has been remarked, " are an allegory." 1 .

It is not fair to attribute to Wiclif all the excesses of his
followers, the so-called Lollards. Nevertheless, we may be
glad that the English Reformation was not carried out along
the lines he favoured. There was much in his 'opinions
which was revolutionary rather than reformatory, politically
as well as ecclesiastically. Some of his teachings were
without doubt socially subversive. Yet one great legacy
Wiclif left to England in the Bible which he translated,
with the help, of Nicholas Hereford and John Purvey, from
the Vulgate. Beyond this, too, was the influence he exerted,
in England by the preaching of his "poor priests," and on
the Continent by such writings as his De Ecclesia^ De
Potestate Papae, and De Suffidentia legis Christi. It is
certain that Luther was much influenced by these.

The most direct effect of Wiclif s teaching, however,
was felt rather far afield, namely, in Bohemia. This will
appear strange till we recall that Richard II. had married
a Bohemian princess, " the good Queen Anne." After the
queen's death many of her ladies returned to Bohemia,
carrying with them a number of Wiclif's tracts. Hundreds
of these were burned, but some fell into the hands of a
young man, John Huss, who was already moved by the
prevalent nationalism against the Papacy. Huss was no
heretic, in the proper sense of the word, but it was deter-
mined to bring him to book. At this time the Western
Church was in a sufficiently critical situation. Islam was
steadily advancing westward; the Eastern Church was
getting desperate; Lollardism was in several lands thriving
on the popular discontent. The summoning of the Council

1 See G. M. Trevelyan, England in the Time of Wiclif, London, 1909 ;
E. L. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People in the '.Middle Ages in England,
London, 1898.-

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 58 1

of Constance, 1414 1418, by Pope John XXIII. furnished
an opportunity for real reform, but the evil genius of the
Council was the Emperor Sigismund, who was far from
equal to playing the role of a Constantine at Nicaea. Sigis-
mund has earned undying infamy by granting a safe conduct
.to John Huss and then betraying him immediately on his
arrival. " The blush of Sigismund " has become pro-
verbial.. Huss was imprisoned, condemned to death, and
consigned to the flames, his ashes being cast into the Rhine. 1
A few months later his friend Jerome of Prague met a like,
fate. The Council of Constance did nothing to promote
peace. In England, where from fear of an impending
Lollard revolt. Sir John Oldcastle and others were executed,
the policy of repression was continued. In Bohemia Ziska
revolted, demanding that the laity be permitted the use of
the chalice in the Eucharist. But Ziska died in 1424 and
the last Hussite " Crusade " was quenched in blood by 143 1 .
Some effort was made by Pope Eugenius IV. to meet
the appeal of the Greek Church now in despair because
of the Muslim advance. But this came to nothing. The
Council of Florence in 1437 ended in useless compromise.
In 1453 the walls of Constantinople fell before the assault
of Sultan Muhammad II. Even in Italy there were many
who, moved by the weakness and corruption of the: age,
had become inspired with the desire for ecclesiastical reform.
The* most important of these was the fervent Dominican
monk, Girolamo Savonarola, who, as prophet, politician,
reformer and preacher, occupies the stage in Florence
during the second half of the fifteenth century. Savonarola's
immediate concern was with public and private morals, and
such was the preacher's eloquence on this subject that the
conscience-stricken Florentines came . together with their
Bonfire of .Vanities as a symbol of their penitence. Savonarola
was also a politician, strong for the upholding of the rights
and liberties of the Florentine citizens, and insisting that
Christ was their only king. Yet he was at the same time
a reformer in matters doctrinal and practical within the
Church and was demanding the calling of a General Council

' 1 See David S. Schaff, John Huss, His Life, Teachings and Death, New
York, 1915. -.--.

582 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

to initiate the needed reforms. All this was naturally
distasteful to the Borgian Pope, Alexander V.I., and to his
sons. These were not slow to denounce the prophet-
preacher as a heretic. Savonarola's excommunication
followed, while he appealed from the decision of the Church
Militant ta that of the Church Triumphant. After the
failure of the projected ordeal, and after enduring the
rigours of imprisonment, Savonarola, with two other friars,
was brought out into the Piazza for degradation from the
.priestly office and for death at the stake. The martyrdom
took place in the month of May, 1498. So perished yet
another who might have aided the reform of the Western
Church without the danger of further schism. 1

Thus we hasten on from movements which have been
described as " abortive reformations " to the great ex-
plosion of the sixteenth century. By the end of the fifteenth
century combustible materials had so far accumulated as
almost to make certain a spontaneous conflagration. One
added source of discontent with things ecclesiastical is to
be* found in the enlarged use made of the Inquisition which
followed the union of the Crowns of Christian Spain under
Ferdinand and Isabella. Isabella had many virtues, but
few can fail to associate her unfavourably with the work of
her Dominican confessor, Tomas de Torquemada. Against
the unfortunate Jews and against wretched heretics of
every description the fires of the Inquisition were lighted
and, by a kind of irony, the horrors which received the
sanction of Pope Sixtus IV. in 1478 and commenced in
Spain with the. Epiphany of 1479 were known as autos dafe,
or "acts of faith." 2 Another fact to be taken into con-
sideration is that of the consolidation of temporal power in
the hands of Pope Julius II., to which must be added the sale of
Indulgences authorized in order to meet theexpenseof building
the great church of St. Peter's at Rome. It was this traffick-
ing in pardons, with the-abuses springing out of the traffic,
and with the particular horror aroused by the salesmanship
methods of the Dominican monk, Tetzel, which precipitated

1 See P. Villari, Life and Times ofGirolamo Savonarola, 2 vols. (Eng. trans.),
New York, 1888. '

2 See H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, New York,
1887 ; F. Vacandard, The Inquisition (Eng. trans.), London, 1908.

.THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 583

the storm which had. so long been brewing. The man
destined to be the protagonist of the Reformation movement,
at least in Germany, was now awaiting his call to the task.

Martin Luther was born in 1483 at the village of
Eisleben in Saxony. He was the son of a poor miner and
spent his childhood in a hard and sordid environment,
redeemed, however, by the genuine piety of a Christian
family life, and early instructed in the Creed, Lord's Prayer,
and Commandments. The practice of witchcraft and
sorcery was all about him, but to combat this Luther had
from the first the buckler of sincerest faith in the Church's
teaching and practice. He attended school first at Mansfeld,
then with the Brethren of the Common Life at Magdeberg,
and then at Eisenach. In 1501" he entered the University
of Erfurt for the study of Law, but he occupied himself
so largely with the study of the Bible as to incur the rebuke
of his superiors. Suddenly, about 1505,' he joined the
order of Augustinians at Erfurt, probably because of doubts
as to spiritual matters. Here he lived a 'hard and ascetic
life and only found peace several years later, while reading
the Epistle to the Romans. Shortly after he was sent to the
newly established University of Wittenberg, where he
greatly- distinguished himself. In 1511 he was sent on
business to Rome and the journey proved a turning-point
in his career, since, while climbing (so it is said) the Scala
Santa at Rome, he was. suddenly taken with a thorough-
going detestation of the corruptions he had witnessed in
the Papal city and of the distance separating the life there
.led from a life looking for justification by faith. He went
back to Wittenberg, but as a changed man, feeling a breach
gradually widening between his own views and those of
the official Church. The long-gathering cloud-burst came
with the arrival of John Tetzel, preaching the Indulgence
which Pope Leo X. had so recently authorized. On All
Saints' Day Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on the door
of the church at Wittenberg and awaited the consequences.
These were not long in coming. To attack Indulgences
was not only to diminish their sale but to impeach the
authority of the Pope. The bold monk was summoned to
Rome, but the summons was cancelled through the inter-

584 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

vention of the Elector Frederick, Nationalism in Germany
supported the cause of Luther and further support came
after the famous " disputation " with Eck at Leipzig, and
especially after the publication of Luther's three great
Reformation treatises. These at once drew the lightnings
of the Papacy in the form of a Bull of Excommunication
a Bull which was burned by Luther in 1520. So great was
the consternation at Rome that an appeal was made to the
Emperor, Charles V., and Luther was summoned to appear
before the Diet at Worms in 1521. Here the reformer
made his defence, but could not avoid being placed under
the ban of the Empire. He resided for a while in the
castle of the Wartburg, but presently returned to Witten-
berg where he continued 'to carry on a brisk- campaign.
So large a national support was given him that it was im-
possible to enforce the ban. In 1524 came the Peasants'
Revolt, an unfortunate illustration of the influence which
the breaking away from authority was exercising on the
popular mind. In this matter Luther was on the side of
the princes and against the people, thus occasioning a
good deal of bitter controversy. Controversy also arose
within the ranks of the reformers between Luther and the
Swiss reformer Zwingli over the doctrine of the Eucharist.
The result was an estrangement between the several groups
of. reformers. Luther had already parted company with
Erasmus and the Humanists. But the German was to the
last a fighter, though it would serve no good purpose to
detail the disputes of his later years. The important work
of his declining years was the revision of his German Old .
Testament and his translation of the New Testament, an
epoch-making contribution to European literature as well as
to the cause which the reformers had at heart. Luther died in
1 546 in his native town, steadfast to the last in the doctrines
he had taught. He had all the faults of a strong character,,
but probably without these faults he would have gone less
far. Possibly, too, we must place some of his extreme views
and acts to the credit of those who so ruthlessly opposed him. 1

1 See A. C. M'Giffert, Martin Luther, the Man and His Work, New York,
1911 ; H. Boehmer, Martin Luther in the Light of Recent Research (Eng. trans.),
New York, 1916.

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 585

From this time the German Reformation went on its
own way and there was no real attempt to heal the breach
which had been made. The princes of Germany were by
no means unanimous in proclaiming their legal right to
establish territorial churches. What was resolved at the
first Diet of Augsburg in 1526 was rejected at the Diet of
Speyer in 1529. It was this which drew forth the protest
of 1529 a political rather than a religious pronunciamento
from which the name Protestant came into use. As to
the doctrinal aspect of things, this was presented in the
Augsburg Confession of 1530. The quarrel over this
which, however, did not concern the Swiss reformers or the
Reformed, or Calvinistic, Church led to the Emperor's
efforts to crush the Reformation. The war broke out in
1546, but was terminated by a compromise, known as the
Religious Peace of Augsburg. From this time the German
Reformation was carried out on conservative lines, and
organized itself after the manner familiar to us to-day. 1 .

It is plain that a large part of the history of the Refor-
mation concerns itself with countries beyond the German
states, Switzerland, France, Scotland, England, the Nether-
lands, Bohemia, Hungary, not to speak of Italy and Spain,
all felt the tension of the time. For a small country,
Switzerland had rather more than its fair share of reform
movements. The thirteen cantons were .independent, but
presented generally a united front against foreign inter-
ference, though Swiss soldiers were in the employ of both
France and the Papacy. Ulrich Zwingli himself was in
receipt of a Papal pension for many years. This remarkable
man was born in 1484, the son of the headman of the
commune and nephew of the parish priest. He was
educated- at Berne and Vienna and was a Humanist before
he became a Reformer. It was the influence of his friend
Thomas Wyttenbach which led to his detestation of Indul-
gences and other abuses of the time. Wyttenbach also
gave him his enthusiasm for the study of the Scriptures.
In 1506 Zwingli became parish priest of Glarus, whence
he accompanied his parishioners, as chaplain, to the cam-
paigns in Italy. Gaining increased reputation as a preacher,

1 See T. M. Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, Vol. I., New York, 1906.

586 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

he was appointed people's priest at Zurich, the city with
which he was henceforth to be identified. He now became
known as an out and out reformer, taking part in public
disputations, spreading his doctrines by letters (drafting
the famous Ten Theses), casting down the gauntlet to the
Papacy, on the one hand, while coincidently he was main-
taining quarrels with his fellow-reformers (including Luther)
over Eucharistic doctrine. Zwingli's contention was that
the Sacrament of the Altar was a commemoration and
nothing more. In 1531 he went out to war with his fellow-
citizens of Zurich to oppose the invasion of the Forest
Cantons, which were Romanist. A battle was fought at
Kappell in which Zwingli was slain. A great boulder
marks to-day the spot where he fell. .The Peace of Kappell
followed and the Swiss Reformation proceeded under other
direction. For a brief period Henry Bullinger held sway
and then the leadership passed from Bullinger to Calvin
and from Zurich to Geneva. 1

The career of John Calvin brings us into immediate
contact with the Reformed movement in France. As
related to Humanism the French Reformation doubtless
owed much to Marguerite d'Angouleme, sister of -King
Francis I. The more religious side of the movement' is
likewise indebted to Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples. But it
was Calvin who gave it its main direction. John, or Jean,
Calvin (Cauvin) was born in 1509, the son of a lawyer
belonging to the ecclesiastical court of Noyon, the boy
studied first at Paris, where he narrowly escaped being
a fellow-student with Ignatius Loyola. Then he. was
sent to study law at Orleans, but on his father's death
returned to Paris to take up more congenial subjects.
About 1533 he experienced a kind of sudden conversion
and embraced the principles of the reformers. Obliged on
this account to flee from France he took up his abode in
Switzerland, where he entered enthusiastically into the
reform campaign. At Basle he .wrote his epoch-making
treatise, Christiana Religionis Institutio, generally known as
the Institutes. This was dedicated to the King of France
and was destined to exert great influence upon the course

1 See S. M. Jackson, Heroes of the Reformation, London, 1901,

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 587

of the Reformation. Soon after this Calvin went to Geneva,
and, largely through the influence of William Farel, plunged
into the task of making Geneva a city with room in its
streets for the soul. His zeal brought about expulsion, but
in 1541 he returned and, according to John Knox, made
Geneva " the most perfect school of Christ that ever was
on the earth since the days of the Apostles." In the light
of what happened to Servetus and . other heretics this
may be regarded as an exaggeration. Undoubtedly,
in turning Geneva into a theocracy, Calvin did reorganize
the life of the community pretty thoroughly. He refused
to regard the State as subject to the Church, as did the
Romanists, or the Church as subject to the State, as did
the Lutherans, or, with the Anabaptists, the Church and
State as distinct, the one from the other. To Calvin the
Church was the State, as with the people of Israel in the
wilderness. In doctrine Calvin taught a very rigid system
of Predestination, by which every man's fate was determined
by the absolute foreknowledge and decree of Almighty
God. This doctrine, it has been said, made for democracy,
but it certainly is at some removes from the teaching of the
Gospels. Yet even Renan says of Calvin that he was " the
most Christian man of his generation." *

In France, where the New Learning had taken hold
among the aristocracy largely, as stated above, through the
influence of Marguerite d'Angouleme, the Reformation, as
a religious movement, suffered many vicissitudes. It
prospered greatly in the early years and was then persecuted
through the agency of Henry II. 's Fiery Chamber in 1547.
Yet the churches continued to multiply and, in the latter
part of the sixteenth century, Coligny estimated their
number as over two thousand. Then came the unfortunate
trend towards politics and warlike preparation, which cul-
minated in 1572, on St. Bartholomew's Eve, in one of the
most hideous massacres in religious history. The Hugue-
nots, as the French Protestants 'were now called, never
rallied from this brutal attack, which was justified on
religious as well as on political grounds. Henry of Navarre,

1 See Williston Walker, John Calvin, New York, 1906 ; H. Y. Reyburn,
John' Calvin, His Life, Letters, and Work, London, 1914.

A HISTORY OF RELIGION

of whom the Huguenots expected much, failed the cause,
deeming Paris " well worth a mass." He believed, possibly
with sincerity, that only by "making the religion of France
Roman Catholic could he secure the unity of his realm.
From this time on, the French Protestants, though un-
subdued in spirit, were fitly enough described as " the
Church in the Wilderness." In 1598, indeed, the Edict
of Nantes restored to the Huguenots their rights as citizens,
but it could .never restore the numbers who had perished
or the prestige of an earlier day. 1

In the Low Countries some preparation for the Reform
movement may be discerned among the "Brethren of the
Common Life, but the main sources of Dutch Protestantism
are Lutheran. The first martyrs, also, Henry Voes and
John Esch, were Lutherans. But the persecution was even
more severe against the Anabaptists, who in 1532 had a
price set upon their heads. Persons who harboured them
were adjudged equally guilty. This severity had the effect
of driving the Anabaptists to every extreme of fanaticism,
and even to. the taking up of arms against the Emperor.
The Lutherans loved the Anabaptists as little as they loved
the Papacy, but stood side by side with them in the battle
for national liberty. It may be said that the struggle waged
with Charles V. was as much a national as a religious
movement, and that the Emperor introduced the Inquisition
in 1522 as much to quell the patriots as to extirpate the
heretics. When Charles abdicated in 1555, his successor
Philip II. was no milder in his methods. It is said of him
that he " was not much liked by Italians, was thoroughly
disliked by the Flemings, and was hated by the Germans."
His general, the Duke of Alva, raised the opposition , to
fever point. The establishment of the Bloody Tribunal
and the execution of Counts Egmont and Hoorn had their
repercussions as far as Japan, where the Dutchmen were
glad to vent their hatred on the missionary friars who
represented the Peninsula Empire. During these years the
Lutheran character of Protestantism in the Netherlands
gradually yielded to Calvinism, and when the Belgic Con-
fession was adopted at the Synod of Emden in 1571 this

1 See T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation, Vol. II., pp. 136-221-.

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 589

character was confirmed. The struggle against the Duke
of Alva and the Empire brought out a great hero in William
of Orange, who became a Calvinist in 1573 and fought on
behalf of religious and national freedom until his assassina-
tion in 1584. It is remarkable that during these terrible
years the Dutch love of learning, which had been con-
spicuous from the time of the great humanist Erasmus, did
not wane. The establishment of the University of Leyden,
as a thankoffering for the deliverance of that . city, and
subsequently of the Universities of Groningen and Utrecht
is evidence of this fact- Among the great Dutch theologians
of the time is Arminius, whose teaching conflicted somewhat
fundamentally with that of Calvin. But Calvinism triumphed
at the Synod of Dort in 1618. To-day it is said. that the
Reformed Church in the Netherlands has a membership of
over a million. 1

The more or less continuous contact of the Low Countries
and France with Scotland made it inevitable that the latter
country should speedily be reached by the Reformation.
Scotland had even before this been affected by the specula-
tions of scholasticism and by the preaching of Wiclif's
" poor priests." Patrick Hamilton, the first victim in the
persecution of Protestantism, in 1528, was a Lutheran.
George Wishart, who was executed in 154 6, -was a Scottish
Calvitiist. To Wishart succeeded the famous John Knox,
who was born in 1 505, and grew up as a loyal son of the
Church till about 1547. Then it was said of him that,
while others merely shed the branches of Papistry, he had
chosen to strike at the roots. Labouring for a while in
England, he found his way to Geneva, visited Calvin,
prepared the Book of Common Order and the Metrical Psalms
for the Scots reformers, and returned to Scotland in 1559.
In the next year the Reformed Church of Scotland was
organized, the Confession of Faith drawn up, and the
First Book of Discipline put forth. There followed a
dramatic struggle between Knox and Mary Queen of Scots,
but by 1567 the victory for Scottish Protestantism had been
definitely won. Knox died ill 1572, having left the proud

- * See P. J. Biok, History, of the People of the Netherlands (Eng. trans.),
5 vols., New York, 1898-1912.

590 - A HISTORY OF RELIGION

testimony: " None have I corrupted; none have I depraved;
merchandise I have not made of the glorious evangel of
Jesus Christ." After Knox, under the influence of Andrew
Melville, the Reformed Church of Scotland was definitely
shaped on Presbyterian lines. In 1 592 by Act of Parliament
it was declared that Church government was by General
Assembly, Synods, Presbyteries and Kirk Sessions. To
this system Scotland has remained generally faithful to the
present day. 1

The Reformation in England took an entirely different
course from that in Germany, or Switzerland, neither going
to the revolutionary extremes of the. continental reformers,
nor seeking to. maintain what were deemed accretions in
the Papal system. It drew from the several sources of
humanism, nationalism, and protest against ecclesiastical
corruption, but the force of the movement in each of these
aspects had been long gathering to a head. National dis-
approval of the Papal Supremacy, indeed, had been sporadic-
ally displayed from the time of the Conquest and only now
reached the final explosion. It has often been stated that
the breach with the Papacy was the result of the moral
depravity of that much-married man, Henry VIII. This
is a serious misrepresentation of the matter. The original
marriage of Henry with Katharine of Aragon was at the
time regarded as of doubtful validity, and when the question
of the divorce came up the opposition of the Popes (who
had given such dispensations before) was not so much moral
as political, due to the pressure of Katharine's relative, the
Emperor. Pope Clement even made the suggestion that
Henry, might take a second wife without the formality of
divorcing Katharine. Moreover, it should be remembered
that Cranmer, who has been vilified as a mere time-server,
appealed to the canonists of Europe and was upheld not
only by the Universities of England but also by those of
France and Italy. Henry was certainly of no estimable
character, hut he was probably sincere in his desire for a
marriage which would yield male issue and so make the
succession secure. Whatever the immediate occasion for

1 See P. Hume Brown, History of Scotland, 3 vols.; Cambridge, 1902-1909 ;
D. Hay Fleming, The Scottish Reformation, London, 19*10.

THE -REFORMATION MOVEMENT 591

the breach, it was clearly in line with the expressed will of
Church and people, and was regarded as no separation from
the historic Church. There was, again, to start with, very
little controversy on doctrinal subjects, though Lollardism
had been prevalent in England since the time of Wiclif.
Nor was there anything essentially new in Henry's claim
in 1531 to be "so far as the law of Christ permits, the
Supreme Head of the English Church and clergy." It was
an appeal to the Statute of Pr<emunire. In 1534 the Acts of
Parliament which confirmed the action taken earlier by
Convocation forbade the payment of annates and of Peter's
Pence to Rome, affirmed the validity of the King's marriage
to Anne Boleyn and the legitimacy of her issue, and solemnly
.reaffirmed the declaration that " the Roman Pontiff had no
greater jurisdiction bestowed on him by God in the Holy
Scriptures than any other foreign Bishop." 1

Yet though the Reformation in England at first placed
little stress on doctrinal issues, these were bound, sooner .or
later, to come to the front, because of the then existing
relations between England and the Continent. The Ten
Articles put forth by Henry in 1536 varied little doctrinally
from the older formulas. They were such, it has been said,
that " a pliant Lutheran and a pliant Romanist might agree
upon." A much more important step was taken when it
was agreed to offer the English people a Bible in their own
tongue. The first real translation of the Bible into English
from the original languages was that of -William Tyndale, a
great scholar, whose language still survives in much of our
modern versions. Tyndale had to work abroad and his
Bible was burned at St. Paul's Cross in 1530. The trans-
lator himself suffered the. like fate on the Continent. But
after the. Bible of Miles Coverdale made from the Vulgate
had been licensed in 1536, Archbishop Cranmer himself
recommended the adoption of a version which, signed by
the fictitious name of one Matthews, was really a work
edited by John Rogers and made up largely of the trans-
lations of Tyndale and Coverdale. When licensed, it was

1 See R. W. Dixon, History of the Church of England from the Abolition of
the Roman Jurisdiction, 5 yols., London, 18781892 ; A. F. Pollard, Henry
VIII., London, 1905 ; same author, Thomas Cranmer, New York, 1904.

592 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

known, as the Great Bible, or, on account of the Archbishop's
preface, Cranmer's Bible.

One of the most significant incidents of the English
Reformation is the dissolution of the monasteries, due in
the first place to tlje transfer of these establishments from
Pope to Crown, and secondly to the visitation by Thomas
CromwelL Though this attack on the monasteries was in
large part carried out as it was through the rapacity and
avarice of the king, we must remember that Wolsey had
already sequestrated some of the emoluments of the monastic
houses in the interest of education. There is no doubt also
that many of the monasteries had outlived their usefulness
and were the homes of idle if not dissolute monks. But
Cromwell's " visitation " was carried out with entire .lack
of scruple and a very large part.of the loot went to other
interests than those of education and the establishment of
new bishoprics. Altogether 376 houses were suppressed
and their revenues handed over to the king, after the several
thousands of the expelled monks had been placated with a
small pension. The general feeling of the people against
this act of spoliation was shown in the several insurrectionary
movements which broke out, notably in Yorkshire, where
the revolt was known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. The
insurgents were appeased by promises which the king had
no intention of keeping. Indeed, later on, in 1545, a
third statute of confiscation was passed, whereby more
colleges, chantries, chapels and hospitals were_closed. Only
six new bishoprics and some colleges were established from
the proceeds ; the rest went to the king and his friends. -

Altogether the reign of Henry VIII. .contributed little
to the English Reformation beyond the breach with the
Papacy, the dissolution of the monasteries, the licensing of
the English Bible, and the setting forth of the Litany which
still remains part of the Prayer Book. In some respects
Henry was even reactionary, winning the title of Fidei
Defensor from the Pope for his book against Luther. Fisher
and More were put to death for disputing the king's
supremacy, but more persons were executed for the teaching
of heresy.

In the next reign, however, that of Edward VI., Protes-

THE REFORMATION MOVEMENT 593

tantism gained a temporary ascendancy. New counsels
prevailed, and Edward reigned entirely under the
thumb of that ardent Protestant, Somerset, Lord Protector.
There were now three parties in the Church, moderate
reformers, who wanted only to maintain the independence
of the historic English Church as against Papal aggression,
reformers who leaned towards the principles "of the German
Reformation, and reformers who favoured the extreme
Puritanism which had taken hold in Switzerland. In
addition there were swarms of Anabaptists, regarded by all
the rest much as we regard Bolshevists at the present day.
Happily, while the Protector favoured the extremer type of
reform and even appointed commissioners to make a still
cleaner sweep of the old ecclesiastical establishments, his
downfall in 1549 and the good sense of the general body of
Convocation frustrated too radical a departure from the old
lines. Some things of great value were achieved in Edward's
short reign, notably the setting forth of the Prayer Book
of 1549, which has been described as " the noblest monu-
ment of piety and learning which the sixteenth century has
produced." It was, however, not satisfactory to the ultra-
Protestants and a revision was undertaken which resulted
in the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI., of 1552, con-
siderably more Protestant in tone. The same year witnessed
the publication of the Forty-two Articles, a formulation of
doctrine which was later transformed into the Thirty-nine
Articles, still bound up with the Prayer Book largely as a
matter of historical interest.

Edward died in 1553 and was succeeded by his sister
Mary, whose reign was reactionary from beginning to end.
There was no disposition on the part of the Papacy to deny
the continuity of the English Church - but, while Mary
continued to use the title of Head of the Church, the
authority, of the Popes was restored by Act of Parliament
in 1554. The statutes against heresy also were revived
and a large number of Protestant recalcitrants suffered the
extreme penalty in this reign. Mary was certainly a bigot,
but she was sincere, and the execution of heretics was quite
in accordance with the intolerant spirit of the age. Mary
rendered herself hateful to her subjects, however, not merely
2 P

594 'A HIST OR T OF RELIGION

through her religious views, but also because of her marriage
to the foreigner, Philip of Spain, and, not least of all, because
of her loss of Calais. She died after a brief reign of five
years, a gloomy and disappointed woman.

The reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603, shows a return to
equilibrium and the inauguration of an era marked by the
complete victory over the menace of Spain, as well as the
definite rejection by the English Church of the Papal
Supremacy. Elizabeth and her counsellors, especially Cecil,
desired the Church to be equally removed from Romanism
and Puritanism. By a new 'Act the Queen was declared to
be Supreme Governor rather than Supreme Head, and the
title was explained as a declaration that, under God, she
was sovereign over all persons in the realm, whether
ecclesiastical or civil. A new revision of the Prayer Book
was set forth, which Pope Pius IV. was not indisposed to
consider, provided the Queen would acknowledge the
supremacy. Elizabeth's refusal led to her excommunication
and, in 1570, to the creation of a schism which has. ever
since separated the Roman and the Anglican Churches.
The new Jesuit order .opened seminaries on the Continent
for the training of missionaries for the reconversion of
England. When this happened the Romanists were already
settling down to the worship of the English Church, but
the intrusion of agents who regarded Elizabeth excom-
municate and therefore dethroned led to the execution of
many, considered as traitors, or martyrs, according to the
point of view. This severity seemed at the time to be
successful, for when Elizabeth died .there were but few
Romanists in the land, and these in hiding. Calm reigned
during Elizabeth's last years, but Puritanism, of the con-
"tinental type, was by no means extinct. Indeed, in the
closing years of the reign it was becoming a menace both
to Church and State and continued so until it found its
inevitable climax in revolution. The story of the triumph
of Puritanism we must, however, reserve for another chapter. 1

1 On the general subject covered by this chapter see Williston Walker,
The Reformation, New York, 1900 ; T. M. Lindsay, History of the Reformation ;
Wilhelm Moeller, History of the Christian Church, Vol. III., The Reformation
and Counter-Reformation, The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II.

CHAPTER XXXIX

From the " Counter-Reformation" to the
. End of the Seventeenth Century

IT is a very common error to limit the term "Reforma-
tion " to those religious movements which concern only
northern and western Europe, such as the Protestantizing
of Germany in 1525, of Sweden in 1523, of Denmark in
the same year, and to the separation of the English Church
from the Roman obedience in 1534. In this use of the
term the Churches yielding allegiance to Rome are regarded
as untouched by the reforming spirit. While it may be
true that the Churches of Protestant and Anglican com-
plexion, in breaking away from the Papacy," found themselves
freer to adopt changes of a thoroughgoing character, we
must not ignore the fact that the desire for reform was not
all on the Protestant side. Emperors like Charles V.,
Popes like Adrian VI., and Cardinals like Ximines, were
probably as sincere in their desire to see the Augean stable
of the Church cleansed from its abominations as anyone in
Germany or in Switzerland.

From this point "of view the term " Counter-Reforma-
tion," which seems to imply a movement inaugurated merely
to recover from losses inflicted on the Church by the
Reformation, is not a particularly happy one. In carrying
on the Christian story through the present chapter, it must
be kept in mind that reform movements occurred in Italy
and Spain as well as in Germany and that these were not
less significant for the future than those we associate with
the names of Calvin and Luther.

First, we may speak of movements in the direction of
reform in Italy. Here in the main the echoes of the
Lutheran controversy which crossed the Alps suggested
first the removal from the institution of the Papacy of the

595

596 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

things which had caused men to stumble rather than any
revolutionary change. This impulse was felt in the forma-
tion of new societies and in the revival of others. For
example, we have the new Oratory of Divine Love, founded
specially for the deepening of spiritual religion. Associated
with this we have reformers of the type of Cardinals
Contarini and Caraffa. There was also a host of devout
individuals, ma.ny of them women, like Vittoria. Colonna,
who engaged in correspondence with one another in the
ardent endeavour to bring about reformation, within and
outside the Peninsula, without the risk of revolution. The
monastic establishments themselves caught the fire of this
desire and so we get the revival of the great Benedictine
order and the founding of the order of Capucins. Paul III.,
who assumed the tiara in 1534, was himself a reformer and
appointed a commission to formulate a programme. Cardinal
Cojitarini was deputed by both Pope and Emperor to visit
Germany and find means for the ending of the Lutheran
schism. The effort, unfortunately, came too late by two
decades. Nevertheless, the effort was made and the Re-
gensburg Conference of 1541 was the result. It failed
and henceforth Contarini's influence was gone.

Outside of Italy, the most important part of Latin
Christendom which demanded reform was Spain, which had
once before made its contribution towards the purifying of
the Church in the founding of the Dominican order. The
Iberian Peninsula, by the expulsion of the Moors and the
union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand
and Isabella was now politically one and so naturally in a
favourable position for advance towards religious reform.
In the attempt to realize this aim several great personalities
were engaged. One of the most conspicuous was Cardinal
Ximines, whose interest lay particularly in purifying the
morals and enlightening the ignorance of the Spanish
clergy. The attitude of Luther, to begin with, had in
Spain a host of admirers, though these gradually fell away
as the German Reformer's methods led to open schism.
The zeal for reformation in Spain then took the form of a
passionate yearning to cleanse the ship of the Church of all
those barnacles of corrupt accretion which were impeding

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 597

its voyage. Men already saw opportunities, not only in
Europe, but even in those new lands across the Atlantic,
to repair the ravages made by all the foes of the Church
alike, pagan humanists, sensualists, hypocrites, heretics,
schismatics, and the rest. 1

To this great task one man was particularly called
Ignatius Loyola, one of the greatest figures in all ec-
clesiastical .history. Ignatius was a Basque, born about
1493, who began his active career as a soldier. In 1521,
while defending Pampeluna against the French, he was
badly wounded and, with great agony, had to accept the.
fact that his soldiering days were done. In distress of soul
he passed through an experience out of which he arose
determined to consecrate his life to God and to turn all his
militant ambitions towards the Cross. The parallel between
the conversion of Ignatius and that of Luther has frequently
been pointed out. But the sequel in either case is strangely
different. Ignatius went for a while the way of the mystics,
like Sta. Teresa and other Spaniards, and out of his devotion
grew that remarkable manual, the Spiritual Exercises,
destined to have such important results. Life was not easy
just now and twice Ignatius fell into the hands of the
Inquisition, escaping with difficulty. In 1528, after wander-
ings in other lands, he went to Paris, where he began to
discern his life's work, and gathered together the little band
of nine disciples among them a fellow-Basque, the future
St. Francis Xavier who, in 1534, in the Church of St.
Mary at Montmartre, became the first Company of Jesus.
They met again in 1537, at Venice, and thence journeyed
to Rome to seek the favour of the Pope. They settled the
Constitution of the Order, stressed the fact that they "were
enrolled to be the Pope's own militia, but were obliged to
wait until 1540 for the issue of the Bull which gave definite
substance to the Company. Ignatius, somewhat against
his will, was elected as the first General, and soon made
the new organization felt throughout Europe. It was an
organization, like its founder, . " at once sternly practical
and wildly visionary." Its members were under an iron
discipline, with the significant motto, " Perinde ac cadaver."

1 See W. T. Walsh, Isabella of Spain, New York, 1930.

598 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

They were fashioned as a polished weapon wherewith to
fight all the enemies of the Pope everywhere and by all
means. The Company of Jesus had great and almost
immediate success in Europe, winning Portugal at once,
Spain and France more slowly, and soon carrying the
Gospel message and the organization of the Roman Church
into the countries of the Far East, as well as to the newly
discovered Americas. Of these great missionary adventures
we shall speak later in the chapter. Suffice it to say here
that, though the Company suffered some lowering of ideals
under a few of Loyola's successors, the Jesuits as a body,
by their splendid training, their broad-minded knowledge
of human nature, and by their extraordinary personal
devotion, did much to win for the Roman Churches territory
far larger in area than those which had been lost through
the Protestant Reformation. 1

The general desire for reform within the Church of
the Roman obedience, which was shared by the Emperor,
the national episcopates, and such Popes as Paul III.,
Paul IV. and Pius IV., and greatly stimulated by the
nephew of the last named, the famous Cardinal Borromeo,
led to the holding of the Council of Trent. This important
..assembly was convoked by Paul III. in 1546, later on
removed to Bologna, then reassembled at Trent by Pope
Julius III., and brought finally to a close in 1563. Al-
together the Council covered eighteen years, but these
included an intermission of nearly a decade. The delegates
represented three parties, distinguished by their attitude
towards the Reformation. The objects they had mainly in
view were the healing of the Lutheran schism, and the
reforming of the ecclesiastical abuses which had been its
immediate cause. Many different subjects, however, came
up for discussion, including the sources of revelation, the
Catholic doctrine as to original sin and justification, the
means of grace, the veneration of saints, and the source
and limits of ecclesiastical authority. As the Council
proceeded, the hope of restoring the broken unity of
the Church through an arrangement with the Reformers

1 See article, " Jesuits," by H. Thurston, in E.R.E., Vol. VII. ; also article,
" Society of Jesus," in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 599

gradually diminished, and from 1555, the date of the
Peace of Augsburg, fell out of the programme. But the
results, apart from this, were quite sufficient to justify the
assembly. A systematic exposition of doctrine did much
to dispel uncertainty as to Roman Catholic teaching, the
Bible (inclusive of the Apocrypha, as in the Septuagint)
was set forth, important steps were taken for the stricter
education of the clergy, abuses in the way of pluralities
and non-residence were abolished, and. reforms introduced
into the Curia. The results of the Council, in these
directions, are plainly to be noted in the lives of the successive
Popes in this era, and in the many saintly characters which
appeared shining like stars in the firmament, even when all
around them was dark. In this connection one has only to
mention such men as Carlo Borromeo, 15381584, nephew
of Paul IV., statesman at the age of twenty-two, Archbishop
of Milan, founder of the order of Oblates, and canonized
in i6ioj Philip Neri, 1515-1595, founder in 1575 of the
Congregation of the Oratory, a man whose labours among
the sick poor won him the title of " apostle of Rome " and
canonization in 1622; Francis de Sales, 1567 1622, Bishop
of Geneva, founder of the order of the Visitation, canonized
in 1665; and Vincent de Paul, 1576-1660, worker among
the galley-slaves, for whom he established a hospital at
Marseilles, founder of the order of Lazarites, and canonized
in I737. 1

Unfortunately, neither the reforms initiated by the
Council of Trent nor the lives of the devout Churchmen
of the period brought peace to Europe. Out of the very
zeal for reform which animated so many leaders of the
Church came the horrors of the Inquisition and the in-
justices of the Index. The Papal Inquisition itself dates
back to the time of Innocent III., in the early days of the
thirteenth century, when the Pope sought to go over the
heads of the diocesan authorities for the suppression of
heresy. .It. was revived in Spain (where zeal against heresy
survived from, the time of St. Dominic) at the close of the
fifteenth century. The revival is associated with the sinister

1 See J. A. Froude, Lectiives on the Council of Trent, London, 1905 ; and
- article, "Council of Trent," E.R.E., Vol. IV.

6oo A HISTORT OF, RELIGION

fame of Tomas de Torquemada, the confessor of Queen
Isabella, and took the form of obtaining papal permission
for the Spanish' sovereigns to control the inquisitorial
machinery. The Papal Bull to this effect was issued in
1478, and in 1480 the first auto da fe was carried out.
The hideous system included the use of spies, informers,
and every extreme of torture. It is said that in the first
century and a half of the Spanish .Inquisition there were
3,000,000 persons who suffered from it in one way- or
another. In the eighteen years of Torquemada' s presidency
over ten thousand persons were burned alive in Spain and
nearly a hundred thousand consigned to perpetual im-
prisonment. The system spread to the Netherlands and
Italy; it brought about the death of Giordano Bruno at
Rome in 1600, and the condemnation of Galileo in 1623
the saying " e pur si muove," however, was the invention
of a wit more than a century later. But nowhere was the
machinery of the Inquisition so relentlessly employed as in
Spain, and in this country the institution was not abolished
till 1 834.!

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum^ designed to do for
heretical writings what the Inquisition sought to accomplish
for heretical men and women, was finally published in .1564,
after the adjour-nment of the Council of Trent, whence it is
known as the .Tridentine Index. It had small effect north of
the Alps, but to learning in the south it brought disastrous
consequences, especially in Italy. 2

Notwithstanding all these efforts, some of them, in inten-
tion at least, conciliatory, and some of them relying on the use
of force, neither unity nor accord came to Christian Europe.
Already the Reformation movement had become so entangled
with political aims and methods that war rather than peace
was the result. Zwingli had died in the Battle of Kappell,
Luther had consented to the formation of the League of
Smalcald, Calvin had lent aid to the fighting Huguenots,
and William of Orange had warred (both for country and
for conscience) against the Spanish generals in the Nether-
lands. But, just a century after Luther had nailed up his

1 See H. C. Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain, 5 vols., London, 1905-8.

2 See article, " Index," by J. Hilgers, in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 60 1

Theses at Wittenberg, there broke .out a conflict bitterer
than any of the preceding, known because of its duration
as the Thirty Years' War/. It started in 1618 at Prague
with the throwing of the Hapsburg agents out of the castle
windows, an incident honoured with the high-sounding
name of the Defenestration of Prague. There were three
phases of the struggle, one ending in 1629 with the all but
complete defeat of the Protestants, a second, in which the
great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden came to the front as
a hero, and in which the Romanists were beaten, and a
third, following the death of Gustavus Adolphus at the
Battle of Lutzen, which ended in the Treaty of Westphalia
in 1648. The story of the war is one long record of grim
and inhuman wastefulness, with whole territories devastated
and depopulated. Schiller well says that " history has no
speech and poetry no pen " to describe its horrors. The
Peace of Westphalia was intended to guarantee " a peace
Christian, universal and perpetual, and a friendship true
and sincere." But it did nothing more than assure to an
outwearied Europe the continuance of a status quo in which
Germany remained largely Lutheran, Switzerland Calvinist,
and southern Europe faithful to the Papacy. The most
beneficent result was that from this time on some measure
of tolerance took the place of futile efforts to bring about a
return to uniformity. This approach to religious liberty
had been dearly purchased, but it was something European
Christianity had long awaited in vain.

Two or three other incidents in seventeenth-century,
religious history on the Continent niay here be mentioned.
The most serious, perhaps, concerns the quarrel between
Jansenists and Jesuits which arose from the publication of
a ponderous work by Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of Ypres.^
The work savoured of what the Jesuits described as "a
bungled Calvinism " and was accordingly opposed. The
condemnation of the book in 1641, however, rallied support
for its teachings from a little group known as the Port
Royalists, who included the Arnaulds and the more famous
Blaise Pascal. The latter 's Provincial Letters, by their
biting irony, created a great sensation, but eventually the
Jesuits procured Papal action against their adversaries and

6o2 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

the .breaking up of the community of Port Royal. The
nuns were expelled and vengeance did not stop with cruelty
towards the living. Jansenism, nevertheless, died down very
slowly in France and still survives in Holland. 1

Another incident is the revival of Gallicanism about
1682. This for a while promised to put Louis XIV. of
France in the role of Henry VIII. of England.. But the
interest of Louis in the restoration of national rights was
rather sordidly limited to the desire to reclaim for himself
certain ecclesiastical revenues. This was resisted by
Innocent XI. with such firmness that in 1689, through^the
refusal of Bulls of appointment, twenty-nine French bishop-
rics lay vacant. After this, interest in the matter waned
and the " four articles " drawn up by the French clergy
were abrogated.

In England the stabilizing of the religious situation was
long delayed and required at last a resort to arms. When
James I. succeeded Elizabeth in 1 603 there was an expecta-
tion on the part of his Puritan subjects that he would favour
the extremer reformers, and the Millenary Petition was
presented by professedly Church of England clergy re-
questing this support. But James proved loyal to the
National Church and, to bring about a common under-
standing, he summoned the Hampton Court Conference
in 1604. Out of this came a very few alterations in the
Prayer Book, but a very great achievement in the appoint-
ment of a commission to -undertake a fresh revision of the
translation of the Bible. After seven years the result of
this work was published and is generally known as the
Authorized Version^ or the King James Version of 1611. It
has since been improved, so far as text and accuracy of
translation are concerned, but will ever remain a precious
monument of Elizabethan English and a means of grace to
millions within and without the Christian Church. James
did not otherwise contribute to the religious settlement of
Europe, though he sent delegates to the Synod o.f Dort
in 1618 to accept a reconciliation between Arminians and
Calvinists. When he died in 1625 the gulf had been
considerably widened between the Church and the Puritans,

i See article, " Jansenism," by St. Cyres, in E.R.E., Vol. VII.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 603

while the famous Gunpowder Plot -of 1605 illustrates the
attitude of the Roman Catholics. 1

Under Charles I. the struggle continued, aggravated by
the popular resentment against the despotic habit of the
Stuarts, who were thoroughgoing believers in the divine
right of kings. It was no doubt due to political as much- as
to religious causes that this disaffection at length broke out
into open warfare. Charles was in some respects the
victim of circumstances, but his tactlessness and vacillation
contributed largely to the defeat of his own cause. More-
over, Charles dragged down with him better men than
himself, including Archbishop Laud, who was reluctantly
the king's adviser, and for this reason, rather than for his
religious views, came at last to the Tower and, in 1645,
to the block. The attempt to foist episcopacy upon the
Scottish people was particularly ill-timed and such incidents
as the "casting of the stools," the signing of the Solemn
League and Covenant, and the calling of the Westminster
Assembly showed clearly enough the temper of the people
in North Britain. The situation was complicated by the
Protestant division into Presbyterians and Independents,
.and when the English Parliament fell into the hands of the
latter and of their leader, Oliver Cromwell, the end was to
be foreseen. Charles was beaten in battle, in spite of the
rallying to his side of the most gallant Cavaliers of the
realm, and after his delivery into the -hands of his enemies
by the Scots the end came quickly in his trial, con-
demnation, and execution at Whitehall on January 30,
1649.2

The Commonwealth under Cromwell lasted from 1649
to 1660 and placed the English Church under a tyrannical
"and unjust ban. Much of value was destroyed in the
cathedrals and churches of the land,' the use of the Prayer
Book and of the feasts and fasts of the Church was pro-
scribed, and a gloomy, if conscientious, Puritanism became

1 See W. H. Frere, The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James,
London, 1904.

2 See W. H. Hutton, The English Church from the Accession of Charles I.
to Anne, London, 1905 ; S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, London,
1893 ; G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, London, 1906.

6o 4 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

temporarily supreme. The Cromwellian regime, in fact,
worked its own undoing, so that when the Restoration of
Charles II. came about in 1660 the king was welcomed
with an enthusiasm he by no means personally deserved.
The general rejoicing, however, was not without its tragedies.
There was another Black Bartholomew's Day, in 1662,
when the Presbyterian and Independent ministers who had
been placed over English parishes were ejected, though we
must remember that they owed their place to the' earlier
eviction of the Church of England clergy during the
Commonwealth. Nevertheless, the general desire for a
settlement led to the holding of the Savoy Conference,
which resulted in nothing more important than the setting
forth of the revised Prayer Book of 1662, the last revision
until modern times. It was an era of plots arid counter-
plots and of rumours as mischievous as the plots themselves.
Yet, despite the wickedness of the court and the unrest -of
the people, it was also a " golden age " of English divinity.
The Caroline divines hold a deservedly -high place among
the Fathers of Anglicanism. But with the death of Charles
and the accession of James II., who went over to the
Romanists, a new era of confusion, both political and
ecclesiastical, arrived. The king made a deliberate attempt
to undo the work of the .English Reformation and was
probably surprised at the strength of the resistance his
arbitrary actions called forth. The opposition of the Seven
Bishops, including such men as- Sancroft, Compton, Lake
and Ken, and tHeir triumphal acquittal by the Judges, will
always remain one of the high points in the story of the
development of English liberty. After this rebuff to his
policy, James had no option but flight, and William, Prince
of Orange, who had married the king's sister, Mary, was
called in to receive the crown which James, it was held,
had forfeited. The success of the Revolution, as it is
called, ushered in a period of comprehensiveness and
toleration. Some of the Bishops, it is true, regarded their
oath to James as precluding them from swearing allegiance
to the new regime, and these remained as the Non-juring
Bishops. Apart from such incidents as this, the Church
of England settled down to pursue the even tenor of its

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 605

way and to minister as best it was able to the needs of the
nation. 1

The brightest aspect of Christianity in the period we are
considering is not to be found in the controversies between
reformers and traditionalists, but rather in the great out-
burst of missionary activity which characterized the Roman
Church, and to a much lesser extent a few of the Reformed
Communions. Several facts account for this renewed
evangelical ardour. In part it was due to the new geo-
graphical discoveries which opened fresh territories to the
Gospel message, in part to the new intellectual movement
which stimulated curiosity as to the manners, customs and
religious beliefs of peoples beyond the sea, in part also to
the emergence of new nationalities bent upon expansion and
the reproduction of their own culture, and in part, once
again, to the new religious fervour kindled by the rise of
the Jesuit and other orders. If the question be asked why
it so happened that the missionary work of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries was so largely in the hands of
Roman Catholics, the answer is, first, that the great powers
earliest to seek dominion beyond the seas were Spain arid
Portugal, the most devoted to the Roman obedience, and
but recently emerging from their triumphant expulsion of
the Muslim from the Peninsula powers, moreover, whose
position on the high seas had been guaranteed to them by
the famous Bull of Pope Alexander IV. Secondly, we
must remember that the Protestant powers were still in
the throes of the formative period, both religiously and
politically. We must still, however, admit that Protestant-
ism was slow in awaking to a sense of missionary responsi-
bility. Some, like the Dutch, smarting under the operation
of the Inquisition, deemed it their duty to hinder the work
of the Peninsula missionaries in the Far East as much as
was possible. Some Protestant theologians even insisted
that the Christianity/of their own day had no missionary
responsibility so far as the heathen were concerned. Be
this as it may, the missionary history of the sixteenth and
a large part of the seventeenth century is the history of

1 See T. Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors, London, 1845 ; J. H. Overton,
The Nonjurors, London, 1902. -

606 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Roman Catholic missions in the Americas, the Philippines,
in India, Japan and China a work at first almost entirely
under the patronage of the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal,
but later carried on by hosts of Frenchmen, with a smaller
sprinkling of priests drawn from Italy, Germany, Austria
and Belgium. All the work was, of course, gradually
centralized in the Curia at Rome. There was, quite
naturally, a large intermingling of political and commercial
motive in all this, but the religious motive in many places,
and in the majority of individual cases, was maintained
as the predominant one. In our disapproval of some of the
methods used and in our criticism of some of the results
secured, it is only too easy to blind ourselves to the enormous
mass of consecrated heroism which fills the story of this
great missionary revival. 1

The story begins with the evangelization of the Americas,
following upon the voyage of Columbus in 1492. The
Spaniards seem to have made but little effort to convert the
Caribs of the West Indies, but in Central America a
splendidly successful work, albeit not enthusiastically sup-
ported by the conquerors, was carried on by the great
missionary, Las Casas. Las Casas sailed with Columbus
in 1498 and by his labours in Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and
Guatemala won for himself the title, "Protector of the
Indians." He was the first priest 'ordained in the West
Indies; in 1522 he became a Dominican monk, and many
years later, after his return to Spain, we find him, at the
age of ninety-two, still pleading before His Catholic Majesty
of Spain the Indian cause.

Ponce de Leon, sailing for Florida in 1520, brought to
the natives 'the Spanish king's command to submit them-
selves to the Cross of Christ and the Crown of Spain under
penalty of the sword. The expedition was deservedly
repulsed, but eventually Dominicans, Franciscans and
Jesuits arrived, and soon the converts were to be counted
by their thousands. When, however, Florida passed to
Great Britain in 1763, the fabric reared at the cost of so
much devotion seemed to collapse. Similar failure was the

1 See C. H. Robinson, History of Christian Missions, New York, 1915.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 607

ultimate outcome of the work in New Mexico, where the
population had been evangelized by Franciscans from 1598
onwards. Texas in 1717 and California as late as 1769
became fields for the missionary energy of the Franciscans
and here the results were more satisfactory. Farther north,
where the territory was under French control, French
Jesuits were the missionary agents and no one should forget
the heroic and successful labour of Pere Marquette who,
from 1674 on, converted a large part of the Illinois nation.
In what is now Canada the earliest of many famous mission-
aries was Father Fleche, who joined Champlain's expedition
on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. In 1633 we find Jesuit
missionaries working among the Indian tribes of Quebec,
and among the many stories of exalted heroism and willing
martyrdom (among native converts as well as foreign priests)
we must not omit that of Father Rene, who, after un-
exampled sufferings among .the Ottawas, won the martyr's
crown sometime later than I66O. 1

When Cortes came to Mexico in 1521 he was avowedly
engaged in a crusade on behalf of the Christian religion.
In 1524 twelve Franciscan friars arrived to undertake the
work of conversion in the newly conquered land. So
successful was their work though we may not condone
the violence by which many of the Spanish conversions
were achieved that, nine years later, nine million converts
were claimed, a number in excess of the whole population
at the time. The Spanish policy was to make'a clean sweep
of the old Aztec religion, and to this end not only were
temples cast down and idols destroyed, but many valuable
pieces of literature were ruthlessly burned, to the great
regret of modern scholars. At the present time, while the
population of Mexico is nominally Roman Catholic, much
of the old superstition, and probably many of the old pagan
practices, survive. 2

In South America the missionary work in Brazil was
carried on by Portuguese Jesuits, who, by the Bull of Pope
Alexander, claimed this as their sphere of influence. The

1 See Thomas Hughes, History of the Society of Jesus in North America,
2 vols., London, 1908.

2 See Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, New York, 1909.

608 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

first missionary band was sent by King John in 1549, and
many hundreds most of them men of devotion followed.
One of the greatest was Joseph Anchieta, who laboured
from 1553 to 1597 with great success. For the most part
the Jesuits supported the cause of the Indians against the
cruelty of the military. Consequently they became very
unpopular with the government and Were deported, for
this and other reasons, in 1760. It must be acknowledged,
however, that as time went on the morals and manners of
the missionaries suffered deterioration, with ill results in
the case of their flocks. A Roman Catholic bishop is
quoted as saying : " Brazil has no longer any faith. Religion
is almost extinct here" a statement, one hopes, greatly
exaggerated. In the rest of South America most of the
missionary work was inaugurated and carried on by the
Spaniards. In Peru the conquest of the Incas by Pizarro
in 1532 left behind the rankling memory of much cruelty,
but the missionaries did their best to heal the wounds
made. One great name stands out from the rest, that of
St. Francis Solano, 1589-1610, a man greatly beloved
whose converts were numbered by the thousand. Spanish
priests also accompanied Valdivia in the conquest . of
Chili in 1540, while the Jesuits established a mission in
Bolivia in 1577. In Paraguay there was a great Jesuit
missionary in the person of Manuel de Ortega, who died
in 1622, while scarcely less famous was Christoval de
Mendoza.

The missionary work of the Spaniards was not confined
to the Americas. In 1521 the Philippine Islands were
discovered by Magellan and a few years later, in '1565, the
work of conquest' and conversion was simultaneously com-
menced. On the whole the conquest was carried out with
less cruelty than had been employed on the Western
Continent. The pioneer missionary was an Augustinian
friar, Urdaneta, but others followed rapidly. After the
Augustmians came the Franciscans in 1577, the Jesuits in
1581, and the Dominicans in 1587. All gained and used
a considerable amount of political as well as ecclesiastical
authority^ and all orders alike seem to have lost their original,
zeal through encroaching ease and wealth. It was for this

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 609

reason, among others, that the Jesuits were expelled in
1767, not to be readmitted till I852. 1

Now we may turn to the work of the Portuguese
missionaries who followed in the wake of Vasco da Gama to
the Malabar coast of India in 1498. It was natural that
the Portuguese should blend their interest in commerce
with an intense zeal for proselytism, since the great pioneer
of Portuguese discovery, Prince Henry .of Portugal, had
been Grand Master of the Order of Christ. Portuguese
Dominicans reached Goa in 1510, and a few years later,
in 1542, arrived the great " Apostle of the Indies," Francis
Xavier, Papal Nuncio and head of the Jesuits in the East.
We may well pause a moment to view more closely this
illustrious missionary.

Francisco de Xavier, 2 born 1506 in his mother's -castle
of Xavier at the foot of the Pyrenees, was of a noble
Navarrese family. At the University oi" Paris he came
under -the compelling influence of Ignatius and became
one of the original Company of Jesus in 1534. In 1541
he sailed from Lisbon for the Portuguese Indies and spent
many months of self-denying labour at Goa and Travancore.
Xavier was not a linguist and did all his preaching by inter-
preter, a fact which makes the more remarkable his great
personal influence, though reflecting also on the thorough-
ness of the work accomplished. The poet Whittier describes
the missionary as ringing a bell in the streets of Goa to
attract the crowd. There were many conversions, especially
among the low-caste pearl-divers, or Paravas. Xavier left
India in 1549 and from that date there was a change of
policy. Forced conversions were frequent from 1567 and
when the Italian, Robert de Nobili, arrived in 1605, we
may even suspect an element of fraud, since the production
of a new^ feda, confirmatory of the Christian position, may
hardly be designated by any other name. The missionaries
accepted, too, the caste system, and work on these lines was
continued for the rest of the century.

1 See John Foreman, The Philippine Islands, chaps, iv., v. and xii., New
York, 1906.

2 See E. A. Stewart, A Life of St. Francis Xavier, London, 1917 ; Otis
Carey, A History of Christianity in Japan, 2 vols., 1909.

6 io A BISTORT OF RELIGION

Xavier had gone on to Malacca, where he met a Japanese,
Anjiro (or Yajiro), whom he baptized as Paul. Then with
his new convert, and with Father Fernandez, Xavier sailed
for Japan, which had been first reached by the Portuguese
in 1542. They landed at Kagoshima and for twenty-seven
months worked ind'efatigably in a field which seemed ripe
for the harvesting. At Yamaguchi, on the Inland Sea,
Xavier built the first Christian church in Japan, calling it
" The Temple of the Great Way." He says of the people
here: " In all my life I never tasted so much consolation
as at Yamaguchi." Thousands of converts were made here
and elsewhere, but in accounting for the success we must
allow not only for the attraction of Xavier's personality and
the sincere desire of the people, but also for the com-
mercial advantage of being friendly with the Portuguese
and also for the hostility of the dictator Nobunaga (a little
later) to the Buddhists. Xavier left Japan in 1551, because
he realized that it was wiser to start the work in China,
the mother land of Japanese culture. His work was con-
tinued by Fathers Torres and Fernandez and by native
converts. It was not only continued but flourished;
Nagasaki was built up as a Christian city, with wellnigh
30,000 inhabitants. Within thirty years of Xavier's % de-
parture there were seventy-five Jesuits at work in the Empire-
and the converts were estimated to be not less in number
than 300,000. Then came trouble, partly from the accession
of Hideyoshi, less favourably inclined to the Christians than
was Nobunaga, partly from bigotry on the part of some
missionaries in their relation with the Buddhists, partly
from the intrusion of Franciscan and Dominican monks
from the Philippines, and partly from the suspicion of the
rulers (encouraged by the Dutch) that conversion to
Christianity was but the preliminary to conquest by
Spain or Portugal. Hence, though Hideyoshi used a
Christian general, Konishi Yukinaga, in his war with
Korea, in 1587 he promulgated an edict expelling the
missionaries, and in the same year took place " The
Crucifixion of the Twenty -six, "by which six Spanish
Franciscans, three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen
Japanese laymen bore witness to Christ by their

THE CO UNTER-REFORMATIDN 6 1 1

death. 1 Hideyoshi died in 1598 and in 1600 the
Tokugawa Shogunate was founded by lyeyasu, who
initiated (for political reasons) a thorough-going system
of persecution which was not relaxed until 1865. All
Christian books and symbols were prohibited, the notice-
boards offered rewards for the betrayal of Christians, the
ceremony of the " trampling on the cross " was made a
regular obligation, and many thousands of victims perished
in what was practically a war to the death against the
religion of Christ. The historian Lecky adduces the per-
secution as one instance of a complete and successful sup-"
pression, yet when, in 1865, the edicts against Christianity
were abolished something over 2000 persons were found in
the neighbourhood of Nagasaki who for more than two
hundred years had in secrecy kept the faith. " The Dis-
covery of the Christians " is observed as a festival of the
Roman Catholic Church in Japan on March 17. But in
the seventeenth century the Christian cause seemed hopeless.
Edicts followed one another in 1624, 1633, 1634 and 1637.
In 1638 came the terrible Shimabara massacre, in which
33,000 persons (including 13,000 women and children)
perished. In this affair the Dutch assisted the Japanese
authorities with ships and guns. .It was thought that the
coup de grace had been given to " the evil faith." 2

The first stage of missionary enterprise in China on the
part of the Roman Catholic missionaries was almost' entirely
in the hands of the Portuguese. Later on, the adjustment
of the Portuguese political sovereignty over the missionaries
with the authority of the Papacy was not the least of the
difficulties encountered in the Middle Kingdom. Portu-
guese reached China first in 1516 and, after having suffered
expulsion from ports such as Ningpo, settled down in the
little island of Shang-ch'uan, off Canton, and about 1550
built the city of Macao which is still a Portuguese possession.
We have spoken of Xavier's desire to visit China which
led him to leave Japan in 1551. He sailed first to Goa
and returned eastward in April 1552. With some opposition

1 See Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XLIV., Part I.,
Tokyo, 1916. .

2 See H. H. Gowen, An Outline History of Japan, pp. 249 ff., New York, 1927.

6 1 2 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

he left Malacca for Shang-ch'uan and was there landed, only
to die in a lonely hut, attended by one faithful Chinese.
He had sought to purchase with his life an entrance to the
Chinese Empire. Several attempts followed, of which that
of Valignani in 1573 is the best known. The despairing
words of Valignani: " O Rock, Rock, when wilt thou
open?" are familiar. No real touch was gained with
continental China till the time of the great missionary
Mateo Ricci, who reached Goa in 1578, proceeded to
Macao in 1582, and thence planned the career for which he
stands almost supreme among missionaries to China. For
awhile he worked at Nanking and about this time gained
the conversion of Paul Hsu and his daughter Candida,
from whom came the princely bequest on which the Roman
Catholic establishment of Zikawei now stands at Shanghai.
In 1 60 1 Ricci reached Peking and inaugurated that policy
which has sometimes been described as " egregious con-
cession," but which may more fittingly be regarded as a
wise and sympathetic discernment as to what was funda-
mental in Christianity and what Chinese practices might
safely be tolerated. Ricci died in 1610 leaving, as he said,
with his last breath, " a door open to great merits, but not
without trouble and danger."

Soon after Franciscans and Dominicans began to arrive
from the Philippines not too welcome, because of the
reports of massacres of Chinese in the Islands by the
Europeans. They were also unwelcome to the Jesuits. In
1616 and 1622 persecution began to raise its head, but
this was followed by a period of success in which .converts
were won from the royal house of the Mings. The heir of
the last Ming Emperor, with his wife and mother, were
Christians, named by the Jesuits Constantine, Anne and
Mary respectively. The Manchu conquest of 1 644 changed
the whole situation, but many Jesuits, including the famous
Adam Schall, recommended themselves to the Manchu
Emperors through their superior skill as calendar makers.
Yet from this time the Jesuits in Peking had a difficult
task, beset oh the one hand by rivals among the native
astronomer.s and on the other hand by Dominican and
Franciscan friars who strongly criticized, and reported to

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 613

the Pope, the concessions made to Chinese practice. Strained
relations also existed between the Portuguese missionaries
who still acknowledged the royal authority and the other
missionaries, particularly those sent out by the French
Societe des Missions Etrangeres, who worked directly under
a Vicar- Apostolic from Rome. In 1 664, during the minority
of the Emperor K'ang Hsi, a new persecution broke out,
but the danger passed for a while when the Emperor
assumed control. At this time many Jesuits, French,
Italian, German and Belgian, were contributing to the
scientific knowledge and skill of the Chinese. Among
these was Verbiest, who was responsible for some of the
famous astronomical instruments on the walls of Peking.
At the close of the century there were in all China 75
priests, 38 of them Jesuits, 9 Spanish Dominicans, 5 Spanish
Augustinians, 7 French missionaries of the Societe, 12
Spanish Franciscans, and 4 Italian Franciscans. While
missionary hopes were still high, there broke out the un-
fortunate Controversy of the Rites, the Dominicans and
others objecting to the use by the Jesuits of the old Chinese
name for God, Shang TV, instead of the term Tien Chu
(Heaven-Lord), which they themselves favoured. The
matter, greatly to the Emperor's indignation, was referred
to the Pope and ultimately decided against the Jesuits.
Browning refers to the case in The Ring and the Book,
though mistakenly writing ".To-kien " for " Fu-kien ":

Five years since in the Province of To-kien,

Which is in China, as some people know,

Maigrot, my Vicar-Apostolic, there,

Having a great qualm, issues a decree.

Alack, the converts use as God's name, not

Tien-chu, but pkin Tien or else Shang-ti,

As Jesuits please to fancy politic,

While say Dominicans, it calls down fire,

For Tien means Heaven, and Shang-ti, supreme prince,

While Tien-chu means the Lord of Heaven. 1

The decision was unfortunate in more ways than one. It
superseded a good term for God by a bad one, now generally
discredited ; it angered the Emperor to see a matter appealed

i R. Browning, The Ring and the Book, X. The Pope.

614 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

to an authority outside the realm; and it revealed a bitter
antagonism between, representatives of the different orders.
The question is an open one as to whether the Papal decision
was not the ruin of the Roman Catholic missions in China
for the time being. There is no question at all as to the
severe damage inflicted by the dispute on the Christian
cause in the Empire. 1 .

Outside the Roman Catholic Church the amount of
missionary work undertaken before the end of the seven-
teenth century is not large. Among Protestant bodies we
may recall that the Pilgrim Fathers who sailed for Massa-
chusetts in the Mayflower in 1620 did not altogether forget
their duty to the Indians, though it was not a propitious
time for conversions. " Oh, that you had converted some
before you had killed any! " wrote John Robinson. Appeals,
however, were made on behalf of missionary work and the
charter of King Charles I. to the colony said that the
principal end of the plantation was to " win and invite the
natives of the country to the knowledge of the only true
God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith."
A little later we have the inspiring career of John Eliot,
"Apostle of the Indians," who in 1632, when pastor of
Roxbury near Boston, commenced his missionary work
among the tribes. In course of time the fourteen " praying
Indian villages," with some 3600 Christians, was the result.
In addition Eliot made translations of both the Old and
New Testaments into the Mohican tongue and put forth
Indian grammars, primers, and other manuals. He died
in 1690, after witnessing the ruin of much of his work
through war. 2

Dutch colonization and conquest here and there paid
tribute to the importance of missionary work, as in Ceylon
after the expulsion of the Portuguese, and in South Africa,
where the efforts of Van Riebeek were extended on behalf
of slaves and Hottentots as well as settlers.

Anglican missions were at first wellnigh confined to the
care of English subjects, as in India, where eighteen chap-
lains were employed by the East India Company between

1 See K. S. Latourette, History of Christian Missions in China, chap. vii.

2 See L. W. Bacon, A History of American Christianity, New York, 1901.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 615

1667 and 1700, though even here we read of the conversion
of a certain Indian known as " Peter Papa," taken home
by Captain Best in 1614. In the charters given to the
adventurers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
however, there was generally some reminder of religious
duty, as in that given to Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583,
where in speaking of the " poor infidels " it was added
that it seemed " probable that God hath reserved these
Gentiles to be introduced into Christian civility by the
English nation."

Having now strayed over the world field in our survey
of the missionary activities of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, we must return to Europe to pursue the story
of Christianity through another interesting and significant
epoch. 1

1 See article, " Missions " (with its Bibliography), by W. Paton, in Ency.
Brit. (i4th Ed.) ; also C. H. Robinson, History of Christian Missions.

CHAPTER XL
Christianity in the Eighteenth Century

AT the close of the last chapter I spoke of the eighteenth
century as interesting and significant. Others have
set it down as dull and decadent. It may be described
in either way a Janus-faced era, on the one hand, depressing
in its evidence of failure in faith and morals and, on the
other hand, manifesting even out of deadness -and corruption
signs of vitality which meant much for the religion of the
future. It is an illustration of the ever-present truth that,
however much religion may seem to die down in the heart
of man, the germ of life still remains and will -presently
revive. In the present chapter our survey must necessarily
be both brief and general. We shall touch on parts of the
Christian story in many different parts of the world, but
seeking rather a total impression than an account of the
history in detail.

Glancing first. at the Eastern Church, which had suffered
most in the earlier centuries from the ravages of Islam, we
see very distinct indications of recovery from the tyranny of
Saracen and Mongol and Turk. They begin with the great
victory of John Sobieski at the gates of Vienna in 1683 and
the new freedom becomes fairly assured with the Treaty of
Carlowitz in 1699, by which Hungary and Transylvania
were restored to Christendom. Following upon this, we
note a very vigorous effort on the part of the Church in
Constantinople to regain its hegemony over the Eastern
Churches. But, as a matter of fact, the centre of orthodoxy
turned out to be in Russia rather than Byzantium. Up
to the time of Peter the Great the Russian Czars took an
enthusiastic interest in the restoration of the faith which
had been .trampled underfoot through so many generations..
As for Peter, as was natural with a man of his antecedents,
he sometimes flirted with the Lutherans of Germany, then

616

CHRISTIANITT IN THE X7IIITH CENTURT 617

seemed inclined to seek union with the Church of England,
and at times even showed interest in the Church of Rome.
When he suppressed the Patriarchate, it was made clear that
he meant to use the Church as a tool for the furthering of
his political plans. Yet it is to be observed that during
this very period the Russian Church was more active in
missionary work than any other of the Eastern communions.
The pioneering adventures of Yermak the Cossack, by
which Siberia was won for Russia, opened up a way for
missionaries of the Russian Church as far as to China. 1

The Roman. Catholic Church in the eighteenth century
was not quite living up to the promise of the century before.
In England Roman Catholics were still struggling against
heavy disabilities and found it difficult to obtain the ministra-
tion of the sacraments. In 17^9 they found- it advisable to
draw up a Protestation affirming their sincere loyalty to the
Crown and their innocence of the plots in which participation
was suspected. Toleration, nevertheless, made very slow
progress through theTeighteenth century, though a path was
being prepared for the abolition of the Test Act, in 1828,
and the Emancipation Act of the following year. On the
Continent there was a fairly general attack by the various
national governments on the Jesuits, and soon after the
middle of the century the order was expelled from France,
Portugal and Spain. A certain type of revival in the Church
came about through the consecrated zeal of St. Alphonsus
Liguori, who has been termed " the father of modern
Roman Catholicism." Alphonsus, who was canonized in
1839, did a great deal to arouse the laity to a more devout
attitude. The cult of the Heart of Jesus and the increased
pla'ce given to the worship of the Virgin Mary are charac-
teristic of the directions taken by his pious zeal. In spite
of the revival, however, the power of the Papacy was much
diminished during the century. Frederick the Great told
Voltaire that he would live to see the end of the R.oman
Church. The swing of the age seemed to be away from the
centralized power of the Papacy and in the direction of the
National Churches. In France Gallicanism seemed to be

1 W. F. Adeney, The Greek and Eastern Churches, Division III., chap. iv. ;
A. P. Stanley, History of the Eastern Church, Lectures IX. -XII.

6i8 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

in the ascendancy. In Germany a similar attitude took the
name of Febronianism, from Fe'bronius, the pseudonym of
Bishop Nicolas von Hontheim. In Austria we have co-
incidently what was termed Josephism, in reference to the
support given by the Emperor Joseph II. to the Toleration
Act of 1781. Among the Protestant Churches Calvinism
had now won an equal place with Lutheranism. But in
both these communions there was a depressing sense of
deadness, except where pietism still lingered to warm the
hearts of men. To this point we shall presently return. 1

To all Europe there came a great shaking, of the living
hearts of men as well as of the dry bones of decaying faiths,
in the outbreak of the French Revolution. This world-
shaking cataclysm discharged its wrath on Church as well
as Throne and it is impossible to contend that a time-
serving and corrupt clergy, in alliance with a still more
corrupt political system, had not been in large part respons-
ible for the storm which burst upon them. Within a year
from the time that a French mob stormed the Bastille on
July 14, 1789, the Church was despoiled of all her vast
material wealth, bishoprics were abolished, hundreds of
priests slain, and the Goddess of Reason enthroned on the
high altar of the Church of Notre Dame. In 1793 all
religion was declared abolished and the worship of Reason
alone permitted. But this proved too radical a step for the
Deist leaders of the Revolution, who had had Christianity
mainly in mind in following the Voltairean injunction,
" Ecrasons 1'infame." Presently a kind of religion known
as Theophilanthropy, or " the love of God and Man " was
set up, and in 1797 there were eighteen -Theophilanthropist
churches in Paris. Religious freedom was granted to the
French people two years earlier than this date, and ere long
there was a revival of the old French attitude towards
religion called Gallicanism. It was made clear that while
the Pope's spiritual authority was admitted, the Church of
France was henceforth to be regarded as outside his juris-
diction. This attitude lasted only till the establishment of
the Concordat between Napoleon Buonaparte and the Papacy
in 1 80 1. On Buonaparte's visit to Rome in 1797 Pius VI.

i See article, " Toleration (Christian)," by W. F. Adeney, EM.E., Vol. XII,

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XFIIITH CENTURT 619

was forced to sign a humiliating treaty by which he sacri-
ficed a third of the territory included in the Papal States.
The Pope was also compelled to come to France, where he
died in 1799.' After this episode Napoleon was willing
enough to come to terms, recognizing the support that the
Papacy could impart to his usurpation of power in France.
He therefore admitted that " the Catholic, Apostolic and
Roman religion is the religion of the great body of French
citizens."- The French Church established by the Concordat
was in many respects a new creation and thirteen bishops
who declined to recognize it were excommunicated, and
thereupon founded 'a religious body known as La Petite
Eglise, which lasted for about a hundred years. 1

It is now necessary to go back a few years to follow the
fortunes of the Church of England after the accession of
William III. William, who was a Dutch Calvinist, and is
reputed to have worn his hat during divine service, had no
particular love for the English Church, but he perceived
that the people were, for the most part, greatly attached
to the Prayer Book and to the principle of episcopacy. So
he had at least to appear sympathetic, even if his actual
preference was for the Puritans. In favour of these the
Toleration Act was passed in 1689, a welcome move towards
religious freedom, though no civil disabilities were removed
from any dissenters and no disabilities of any sort from
Roman Catholics, Unitarians and Jews. During the whole
of this reign and for long after the schism caused by the
Non-juring bishops, who had refused to swear allegiance to
William, persisted, though the bishops and clergy some
400 in number made no other protest than that implied
in the resignation of their offices in the Church. In Scotland
Episcopacy was abolished by Parliament and both north
and south of the Tweed there was still the old fear of Roman
Catholicism which had been fanned anew by James II. in
the Declaration of Indulgence.

When Queen Anne succeeded William and Mary the
Church entered on better days. Anne was a dull woman
herself, but the Church of her day flourished. The reign

1 See article, " France, The Revolution," in Ency. Brit. (i4th Ed.), IX.,
pp. 635 ff.

620 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

is particularly noted for the Societies which sprang up and
which have for the. most part continued to the present day.
The famous Dr. Bray, Rector of Sheldon, who had failed
to get a bishop consecrated for the North American colonists,
succeeded in several other important endeavours. He
founded libraries, eighty of them in England and thirty-
nine in North America; he started in 1698 the English
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which has grown
to such vast proportions in our own day; having visited
the American Colonies as the commissary of the Bishop of
London, he returned to found the missionary Society for
the Prop agation of the Gospelin Foreign Parts (more familiarly
known as S;P.G.). On the Queen's birthday in 1704 she
performed a great and generous act of belated restitution in
assigning the Annates which had been seized by Henry VIII.
for the use of the Crown to a Fund for augmenting the
stipends of the poorer clergy. This Fund, known as
Queen Annes Bounty,, has continued to be of service in
promoting the Church's work. It may be added that many
of the churches which had been destroyed in the Great
Fire of London were now rebuilt. Sir Christopher Wren
was responsible not only for the rebuilding of St. Paul's
Cathedral, but also for fifty-three parish churches in the
'same city.

It was in the reign of Queen Anne that the distinction
began to be made between the particular type of Church-
manship known as Lpw_Church and the more ritually
ornate type known as HigiijChurc^. The former, which
leaned to Protestantism, found its chief supporters among
the Whigs; the latter, which stressed the Catholic character
of the Church, was in large part the party of the Tories.
The controversy between the two came in this reign to a
head in the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, who had preached
before the Lord Mayor of London, and subsequently
published, a sermon which was, much resented by the
Whigs. The Lords convicted him and ordered two of his
sermons to be burned, but the populace regarded it as a
virtual acquittal and a wave of High Churchism took
possession of the Church. Altogether Churchmen were in
a curiously restless mood, objecting strongly to the establish-

CHRISTIAN1TT IN THE XVIIITH CENTURT 621

ment of Presbyterianism in Scotland by the Act of Union
. in 1 707 and looking askance at the Act of Toleration of 1 7 1 2. 1

But another wave was about to pass over the land in tEe
form of Deism, that is, a belief in God which so stresses his
transcendence as to afford little room for the doctrine of the
Incarnation. In England the father of Deism is generally -
set down as Lord Herbert of Cherbury, but the philosophy
of Locke had much to do .with extending its influence. The
most famous Deists in England during this period were,
in addition to those justr named, Toland, Shaftesbury,
Collins, Woolston, Tindal and Bolingbroke. They did not
have things all their own way, for valiant defenders of the
Christian tradition appeared in men like Bishop Berkeley,
the idealist, Cpneybeare, and War burton. But the influence
of Deism spread far beyond England and even had some-
thing to do with preparing for and shaping the course of
the French Revolution. In Germany it was largely respons-
ible for the movement known as the Aufkldrung^ or En-
lightenment^ of which Goethe was a distinguished representa-
tive. Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were also sharers
in and contributors to the Aufklarung. It produced, it has
been said, " a Christianity without Christ and a Protestant-
ism which was Protestant without being Christian." 2

Nevertheless, though Deism exerted a kind of deadening
influence on the fervid Protestantism of earlier times, German
Pietism was not dead. It began to rally even while Deism
seemed in the ascendant and the signs of its renewed vitality
are nowhere better seen than in the awakened zeal for
foreign missions. One of the great figures in this con-
nection was Nicolaus von S^inzendorf, 1700-1760, who had
been a pupil of Francke. Zinzendorf, after a remarkable
spiritual experience, joined a little community of German-
speaking Moravians at Herrnhut. Here was revived, in
1727, the Moravian Church, or Unitas Fratrum, resembling
closely one of those collegia pietatis which had earlier played
their part on German soiL In a few years the movement

1 See A. H. Hore, Eighteen Centuries of the Church in England, Part VI.,
chap. i.

2 See J. A; Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, Particularly in Germany
(Eng. trans.), z vols., Edinburgh, 1871.

622 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

spread to America where, on Christmas Day 1741, a
settlement was made at Bethlehem, in the present State of
Pennsylvania. From this and other similar settlements
missionary work among the Indians was carried on. A
notable example is in the life of David Zeisberger, who
laboured for the almost unprecedented term of sixty-three
years among the North American Indians. 1

It is curious to note that just as English Deism had
passed over to" Germany to produce, the Aufkldrung^ so
German Pietism should have been brought into contact
with the evangelicalism of the Church of England to
produce one of the most far-reaching revivals of religion in-
modern times. One can hardly describe the Methodist
movement, with its present membership of some thirty
million souls, in any lower terms. The Hanoverian line
had now succeeded to the throne vacated by the last of the
Stuarts and the outlook for the Church under a German
Lutheran was scarcely more promising than it had been a
generation earlier under a Dutch Calvinist. As already
noted, the Church of England at the time was not lacking
in able champions against the prevailing Deism, but most
of these made their appeal to the intellect rather than to the
heart. Even Bishop Butler, whose Analogy was destined to
be a text-book of Christian Evidences for many years to
come, was not enthusiastic as to the future of the Church.
He wrote: " It has come, I know not how, to be tak;en
for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so
much a subject for enquiry; but that it is, now at' length,
discovered to be fictitious." Where the giants had lost
heart, it is not surprising that the rank and file stayed in
the tents rather than take the field against the foe. Happily
no time is so dark but that men are raised up to redeem the
time. This was now the case in the appearance of the
Wesleys and their associates.

John and Charles Wesley were the sons of a clergyman
of the Church, Rector of Epworth, in the diocese of Lincoln.
John in his childhood was rescued with difficulty from the

1 SeeWilliston Walker, History of the Christian Church, pp. 501-507 ; A. G.
Spangenberg, Life of Nicholas, Count Zinzendorf (Eng. trans.), London, 1838 ;
A. C. Thompson, "Moravian Missions, New York, 1895.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XVIIITH CENTURY 623

burning of the rectory and ever after regarded himself as a
brand plucked from the , burning. Taking life with corre-
sponding seriousness, he passed through Lincoln College,
Oxford, was ordained in 1725, and soon after elected
Fellow of his College. For two years he assisted his father
in the work of. the parish and then returned to Oxford.
Here he found that his brother Charles had gathered
around him a little band of earnest men who., on account of
the devotion which they showed in keeping the fasts and
other obligations of the Church had been nicknamed
Methodists. In addition to the rigid studies they had
prescribed for themselves they spent much time in visiting
the sick and prisoners at the Castle. One of the young
men who attached themselves to the little band was a poor
servitor named George Whitefield, afterwards a preacher of
almost equal fame with John Wesley himself.

In 1736 John went out to the colony of Georgia as a
missionary under the S.P.G. and it was on this voyage he
formed the acquaintance of a band of Moravians with
whose piety he was much impressed. Wesley's work in
Georgia was not an unqualified success and he soon returned
to England. Then, in 1738, he had the spiritual experience
which his Moravian friends persuaded him he had hitherto
lacked and, after a brief visit to the Moravian settlement at
Herrnhut, .he returned to England to commence that mar-
vellous career of preaching and evangelizing which turned
the country upside down with religious emotion. The
time, with its industrial revolution, was ripe- for the work,
which, though it had in it much that bordered on the
hysterical, gave new direction to the lives of many thousands
of the common people. It was unfortunate that many
bishops and most of the parish clergy received Wesley with
less than his proper meed of sympathy, but we must re-
member that he himself was not over-scrupulous as to
intruding into the vineyards which to him appeared to be
neglected by their authorized guardians. A more serious
failure was the impatience which led him to go eventually
against his own conviction in the recognition of Dr. Coke
as a bishop, and the ordination of two others, to act as
superintendents for the work growing with great rapidity

624 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

in America. John Wesley had appealed to his lay-workers :
" Be Church of England men still; do not cast away the
peculiar glory which God hath put upon you." But cir-
cumstances were too strong for him. He endeavoured to
persuade the Greek Bishop, Erasmus of Arcadia,- to ordain
preachers for his work, and on a repulse from this quarter
felt that, with old age creeping on him, and much work
still to be done,, he might be pardoned for the transgression
of ecclesiastical regularity. In 1784 Wesley executed the
Deed of Declaration by which a hundred of his preachers
were designated as the Methodist Conference to care for
the societies after their founder's death. For seven years
longer the great evangelist continued his indefatigable
labours and passed peacefully away in 1791. After this a
Plan of Pacification, framed in 1795, g ave permission to the
preachers to administer the sacraments. Thus a movement
which commenced within the Church became separate from
the Church left weakened by the loss of many who could
ill be spared. 1

But the loss, serious as it was, was not without com-
pensation, in stirring up a hew spirit of evangelicalism, such
as in a few years issued in a definite movement, this time
retained in communion with the- Church of England. The
author of this movement was George Whitefield, whom we
have already mentioned as an early associate of Methodism
at Oxford. Whitefield was ordained at the unusual age of
twenty-one and had soon after commenced that career of
itinerant 'preaching which made him famous. Whitefield's
views were Calvinistic where Wesley's were Arminian, so
the two revivalists by no means saw eye to eye. The two
types of Methodism were promulgated coincidently but,
though some of Whitefield's work crystallized in the de-
nomination known as Lady Huntingdon's Connection, a
great deal of its results flowed back into the Church of
England and inaugurated an evangelical movement notable
for many saintly lives. Men like Fletcher of Madeley,
Venn of Huddersfield, Newton, Cowper, Simeon, Williams
and Wilberforce did much to prevent the salt of the Church

1 The standard Life of Wesley is by J. S. Simons, John Wesley, The Master
Builder, London, 1927 ; see also W. H. Hutton, John Wesley, London, 1927.

CHRISTIANITY IR THE XVIIITH CENTURY 625

from losing its savour. Some of them did evangelistic work
on the lines of Wesley and Whitefield; some of them
cultivated piety in the circle of their own parishes and
families; Wilberforce became an earnest worker for the
emancipation of the slaves; Robert Raikes in 1781 com-
menced the work at Bristol which gained him his title of
Father of Sunday Schools. And, in line with the development
of the Unitas Fratrum^'a. new-born zeal for. the conversion of
the heathen brought about, in 1800, the foundation of the
Church Missionary Society of the Church of England.

This will be a convenient point at which to give some
general sketch of the development of Christianity in the
North American continent, even at the risk of touching
again on several points referred to in earlier chapters. The-
whole of the continent had so far, as we have already seen,
been strongly coloured by the religious faith and practice of
the first Spanish conquerors and this remained in large part
the background against which the later work proceeded.
As the Spanish hegemony weakened, its place was taken
first of all by the French who continued the same religious
tradition. But already the Anglo-Saxon was entering into
the heritage of the Latin, with the immediate result of a
religiqus confusion accentuated by the various types of
Christianity represented among the new-comers. As early
as the latter part of the sixteenth century some Anglo-
Saxons had looked enviously upon the religious propaganda
being carried on by their Spanish rivals. In 1584 Richard
Hakluyt. had contrasted the Iberian zeal for the conversion
of the pagan world with the lukewarmness of his own
countrymen. And John Davis, the explorer of the north-
west passage, had written: " Sith it is appointed that there
shall be one Shepherd and one Flock, what hinderth us of
England not to attempt that which God hath appointed to
be performed ?" x ?

The real movement of Europeans of Anglo-Saxon stock
towards the American shores came with the seventeenth
century and as a result of the twofold dissatisfaction felt by
lovers of liberty with the prevailing conditions in Church

1 See Mrs. Ashley Carus- Wilson, The Expansion of CJwisiendom, London,
1910. " .

2 R

626 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

and State in the other countries. Thus from the first there
was among the colonists an element of unrest, though
naturally less so in the case of members of the Church of
England than elsewhere. As a matter of fact, the first
service according to the English Prayer Book was that held
by Sir Francis Drake's chaplain on the shores of San
Francisco Bay, where now stands the impressive Prayer
Book Cross. But English settlements on the Atlantic coast
began with the founding of Jamestown in Virginia, where
the Rev. Robert Hunt was the minister of the Church of
England, in 1607.

Meanwhile, the Puritans were beginning to arrive from
various parts of Western Europe. The most celebrated of
all the arrivals was that of the " Pilgrim Fathers " in the
Mayflower in November 1620. The story is a familiar one.
A little band of impoverished separatists had left England
under the leadership of John Robinson and settled at
Leyden, in Holland, in 1607. After some years of con-
tinental exile, they set out in their famous ship and landed
near Cape Cod on the coast of Massachusetts. They had
not, it would appear, originally planned to leave the Mother
Church. Indeed, their farewell to England declared: " We
do not go to New England as separatists- from the Church
of England, though -we cannot but separate from the cor-
ruption in it." Presently, however, separation, as was more
or less inevitable, became a fact. A little theocracy was
established which in that form lasted for about fifty, years.
Soon circumstances shaped the .religious life of the com-
munity into a fixed polity and larger numbers of immigrants
kept arriving, of like views, to swell the New England
Puritan communities. 1

Meanwhile, others came of far different ecclesiastical
antecedents. For instance, in 1634 came Lord Baltimore,
who was the means of establishing his little company of
Roman Catholics in Maryland, especially in the city called
after his name. Another religious element, again, gave a
special character to the beginnings of the city of New York.
As early as 1 609 Henry Hudson had arrived off Albany in
the Half-Moon. He thought he was entering the harbour

1 See Williston Walker,_Tew Neiv England Leaders, Boston, 1901.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XVIIITH CENTURT 627

of Canton in China, but concluded that he had discovered
an excellent site for the Dutch settlers who were demanding
a home in the New World. The territory was not colonized
till 1626 and it was not till 1628 that an authori-zed minister
was introduced to cater to the spiritual needs of the Dutch
Calvinists who formed New York's first church - going
population. In 1 647 came the illustrious Peter Stuyvesant,
just in time to save the colony from ruin. It is said that at
this time there were in Manhattan eighteen different
languages spoken and the varieties of religion represented
included, in addition to the Calvinists, Roman Catholics,
English Puritans, Lutherans, and Anabaptists (Mennonites).

Even as early as this, the ranks of the New England
Puritans were beginning to exhibit signs of cleavage. A
notable example is the case of Roger Williams, who not
only insisted on separating from the Church of England
but also from other Puritans who held different views from
his own. So he passed over to the Baptists and succeeded
in founding a strong Baptist community in Rhode Island.
Acrimonious controversy came to be the prevalent atmo-
sphere of the time and the life of Ann Hutchinson is an
example of the difficulty many genuinely good people found
to be pleasant as well. Even the Quakers of the time are
.described as " a fierce, aggressive type."

These latter had come over in 1677, when the town of
Burlington was established by a community of Friends.
By 1 68 1 1400 Quakers had arrived and "the Burlington
Yearly Meeting " became a regular event. The great
success of Quakerism, however, is associated with the
coming of William Penn, who had turned from being " the
petted favourite at the shameful court of the last two
Stuarts " to engage in " the Holy Experiment "^in his new
city of Philadelphia. In August 1683" the City of Brotherly
Love " consisted of but three or four cottages. Two years
later, there were six hundred houses. " And by the end of'
the century the city had a population of 20,000, about
equally divided between Quakers, German Lutherans and
Moravians, and people of miscellaneous affiliation.

The general character of American Protestantism was
at this time sufficiently apparent. There was a much

628 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

larger sympathy with Old Testament theology, legislation
and social ideals than with the system inaugurated with the
New Testament in the establishment of the Christian
Church. The resemblance of the Puritans to the people of
the Old Testament has often been pointed out. " Born of
the wrong race," says Dow, " Aryan when they should
have been Semitic, the Puritans aspired to the sublimity of
the old Hebrews." " The Puritans," says Fiske drew from
the Old Testament " the same ethical impulse which-
animates the glowing pages of the Hebrew poets and
prophets." The language of the Puritans is redolent of the
Old Testament. England is " the land of Egypt," James I.
is " Pharaoh," the Atlantic is " the Red Sea," America is
" the Promised Land."'' The Puritan names are from the
Old rather than from the New Testament, even to Shear-
jashub and Maharshalalhashbaz. The Mosaic Code was the
foundation of the Pilgrim Code of 1636 and of its revision
in 1656. More than one legislator demanded the incor-
poration of the entire Mosaic legislation in the law of the
land. Even as it was, the eight causes for capital punish-
ment in the Pentateuch were also accepted in New England.
Spengler says: " The grand Old Testament exaltation of
Parliament and the camps of Independency ... dominated
also the emigration to America which began with the
Pilgrim Fathers of 1620. It formed that which may -be
called the American religion of to-day." 1 Well might
Lecky say: " The Hebraic mortar cemented the foundations
of American democracy."

Into all this, about the middle of the eighteenth century,
came a wave of emotionalism which did much to break
down some of the scholasticism of the earlier Protestantism
and to fuse elements which had hitherto preserved themselves
apart. This is known as the Great Awakening, which swept
over many parts of the country about 1 740. It is generally
associated with the life and work of Jonathan Edwards,
perhaps the most illustrious of America's Protestant divines.
He was at Yale when, in 1722, a serious defection from
Protestantism took place in the conversion of Dr. Timothy

1 See Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, II., p. 305, New York, 1929 ;
see also L. W. Bacon, History of A merican Christianity.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XnilTH CENTURT 629

Cutler, the Rector, Tutor Brown (these constituting the
entire faculty), and five prominent pastors in the Connecticut
churches to the principles of Episcopacy. Five years after
this, Jonathan Edwards was ordained and started out on
his wonderful career. 1 In 1733 there were signs of the
coming " time of refreshing "and ere long the new warmth,
like that of a spiritual springtide, had spread over all the
Connecticut Valley, till John Wesley, in England, was
moved to write in his journal: ** Surely this is the Lord's
doing and it is. marvellous in our eyesl" Soon afterwards
the great evangelist George Whitefield came on the scene
and the revival spread still further. Not all people approved,
since of excesses there were enough and to spare. Pres-
byterians generally watched the movement coldly, Epis-
copalians held aloof, and many others were more than a
little doubtful. But for Methodists, among some other
bodies, the type of evangelism was fixed for many years to
come. The Baptists, too, benefited by the use of revival
methods, especially in the South.

It should be noted that while movements of this kind
were infusing warmth into the rather censorious sectarianism
of the earlier "days, new bodies were arriving to make their
contribution to the religious life of the Colonies. Im-
migration was responsible for a large influx of German
Lutherans, who remained for the most part shepherdless
until the arrival of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg in 1742,
and of Michael Schlatter, who brought about the establish-
ment of the Lutheran Synod in 1748. The Lutheran
Church in America to-day is largely a monument to the
sagacity and zeal of these men.

Methodism also was beginning to assume the character
of an" organization separate, from the communion which had
given it birth. It was in 1766 that some of the American
Methodist groups began . to organize on their own lines.
The work was carried on successfully by Philip Embury,
but in 1769 John Wesley himself sent over a commission
for the organization to proceed. Francis Asbury was chosen
as director in 1771 and. the choice ratified by Wesley in the
following year. During the Revolutionary War Methodists

1 A. V. G. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, Boston, 1889.

630 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

were under some suspicion as British sympathizers but,
having weathered this test, they continued to thrive apace.
In 1779 came the self-ordination of three of the preachers,
contrary to the advice of Wesley and Asbury, but in 1784
Wesley himself yielded in the matter of the. consecration of
Dr. Coke, and soon after Asbury too was made a bishop.
Thus the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States
was founded and started on its vigorous career. 1

The coming of Presbyterianism was due largely to the
great influx of immigrants of Scots-Irish race who arrived
about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Their
first minister was Francis Makemie, who got into trouble
with Lord Cornbury and was . for a time imprisoned for
preaching without a licence. Presbyterianism at the time
of the Revolution found itself much in accord with the
national feeling and prospered accordingly. 2

Naturally the religious community which suffered most
through the Revolution was the Episcopal Church, which
was still part of the Church of England and under the
jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. This anomalous
situation had come about through the steady opposition, on
both sides of the Atlantic, to the consecration of bishops
who should be able to give complete organization to
American Episcopalianism. As far back as the time of
Archbishop Laud, in 1638, the proposition had been made
to consecrate a bishop for the colonies. In 1700 it was
still being discussed, and opposed largely because the
Puritans regarded bishops as officers of the State on which
they had turned their backs. Some of the Puritan separatists
opposed the introduction of the Episcopate none the less
vigorously that they themselves were freed from episcopal
control. At the time of the Revolution it was obvious that
baptized members of the Church could not go back to
England 1 for Confirmation, nor could candidates for the
ministry go back for ordination. So at last, in 1784, came
the consecration of Samuel Seabury of Connecticut at the

1 See Abel Stevens, History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 4 vols.,
New York, 1864-67.

2 C. A. Briggs, American Presbyterianism, Its Origin and Early History,
New York, 1885.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XFIIITH CENTURT 63 1

hands of three non-juring bishops in Scotland, and in 1787
the consecration of Bishops White and Provoost by the
Archbishop of Canterbury. With three bishops lawfully
consecrated, the American Episcopate was now self-per-
petuating, and in 1788 Seabury, White and Provoost united
in the consecration of Bishop Maddison. By this time the
ecclesiastical authorities in England ha'd awakened to the
duty of caring for the Church's children overseas, and in
1787 Bishop Inglis was consecrated as Bishop of Nova
Scotia. Six years later a bishop was set 'apart for Quebec,
and from that date the Colonial Episcopate multiplied
rapidly. In 1679 there was no Episcopal Church in all
New England; in 1700,. with the exception of Trinity
Church, New York, founded in 1697, there was no Church
of England organization in all Long Island or New York
Province. From 1702 to 1740, through the efforts of
S.P.G., there were nine missionaries of the Church at work
in North Carolina and thirty-five in South Carolina. But
progress was not remarkable till after the granting of the
Episcopate* and the holding of the First General Convention
at Philadelphia. Even then the outlook was not otherwise
than gloomy, and Bishop Provoost prophesied the extinction
of the Church with the dying out of the old Colonial families. 1
The period of reconstruction which followed the
Revolutionary War showed the following bodies at work
within the territories of the United States : Episcopalians,
Reformed Dutch, Congregationalists, Roman Catholics,
Friends, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, German Re-
formed Church, Lutherans and Moravians. In 1800 came
the " United Brethren," an offshoot from Methodism; a
few years earlier the followers of Emmanuel Swedenborg,
known as the Church of the New Jerusalem. The first
Universalist Church was founded by a Mr. Murray in
1779 and Unitarianism with the beginning of the new
century found its way into the theological school at Harvard.
All these were regarded as free and equal before the law by
Jefferson's Act of Religious Liberty which was at first thought
to be aimed against religion.

1 See S. D. McConnell, History of the American Episcopal Church, New
York, 1890,

632 . A BISTORT OF RELIGION

Another " Great Awakening " came about in" 1792,
rather badly needed when one considers the deadness and
scepticism of the time, but manifesting itself in a variety of
extravagances. At the end of the eighteenth century
American religion, so far as most of the Protestant denomina-
tions are concerned, had attained a character shaped as
much by the new environment as by inheritance. The
very freedom which the air of the continent was supposed
to favour was an inducement to run riot in sectarianism.
Early difficultieSj too, in the way of securing an educated
ministry, particularly as the population commenced its
westward trek, made conditions tolerant of personal eccen-
tricity in the preaching of the Word. With careers,
ecclesiastical as well as political, open to all talents, or to no
talent at all, no absurdity was debarred from shining success.
So the field was prepared for Shakerism, Mormonism, and
many vagaries of a similar sort. It was not even too absurd
to found a sect on objection to High Schools because of the
injunction: " Mind not high things." With sectarianism
came naturally the spirit of competition, which in religion
well matched the cut-throat policies which at this time
seemed to be the normal thing in business. When eventually
it was forced upon the logical mind of the American that
religious competition was undesirable it was not on the
ground of its conflicting with the mind of Christ, but
because it was demonstrably wasteful and inefficient.

That there were certain gains through the American
inheritance and the American environment may be taken
for granted. The Puritan conscience was an inheritance of
which more use might reasonably have been expected to-day.
Freedom . from historical prejudice was again something
which promised great things. But the weakness of American
religion at this stage, through historical conditions, is none
the less obvious. It was bound to lend itself to such forms
of caricature as Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, which unfor-
tunately is not all a caricature. The religion which, by the
very nature of its dependence on what the world calls
success for its existence, is bound to lay emphasis on such
qualities as smartness, management, and the ability to be
a good "joiner " and a good " mixer." Nojt only scholar-

CHRISTIANITY IN THE XVIIITH CENTURT 633

ship but even piety of the old-fashioned sort is apt to be
regarded as a handicap, or to be discarded as " highbrow
stuff," which fails to " get across " with the public. .

Eighteenth-century American Protestantism, moreover,
was not only emotional sometimes even hysterical but
also largely negative, makmg religion to consist mainly in
a number of things prohibited rather than in positive
Christian virtues. When the vigour of the nation began to
express itself in accomplishment, then religion, too, became
busy manward rather than godward. American churches
were erected for the comfort of man rather than for the
glory of God. Cushions were commoner than crucifixes.
Greetings at the church doors were more in vogue than
reverence before the altar. The practice of the presence of
God was less the aim of the churches than the organizing
of " mixers," bazaars and church suppers. The love of one's
fellow-man may well, of course, earn the approval of the
recording angel for what it is in itself. Some years ago
Dr. David Starr Jordan put this as well as it could be put
in his Religion of the Sensible American'. " The religion of*
the sensible American is not one of creed, or ceremony, or
emotion, not one primarily of the intellect, but a religion
of faith, and love, and action -a confidence that the universe

' * j* .

of matter and of spirit is a 'reality, that its functions are in
wise hands, for .the time being our own hands as well as
the hands of God, and our part is to help our brother
organisms to more abundant life."

Nevertheless, Mr. Chesterton is well advised in directing
American attention to the other side of our responsibility
in the poem commencing:

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe decrease

By cautious birth-control, and die in peace !)

Mellow with learning, lightly took the word

That marked him not with them that loved the Lord. 1

1 Gilbert K. Chesterton, Poems, The Philanthropist,

CHAPTER XLI
Christianity in the Nineteenth Century

common habit of depreciating that which is
immediately older than ourselves, and which led
nineteenth-century people to despise the eighteenth,
has made it fashionable for moderns to express themselves,
disdainfully with regard to the nineteenth. As a matter of
fact, a sane survey will convince fair-minded people that the
nineteenth century is one of the most significant in human
history. It does not seem fanciful to see in the centuries of
our history a certain rhythm, with crests and hollows re-
curring every third hundred years. The first Christian
century gives us the story of the Founder; the fourth
witnesses the conversion of the Empire; the seventh the
conversion of the Western barbarians; the tenth the con-
version of the Eastern Slavs; the thirteenth marks the
culmination of the Middle Ages and prepares for the
modern era; the sixteenth is the age of the Reformation;
and the nineteenth can scarcely be deemed less important
than any previous climacteric.

It is impossible here to give more than the briefest
summary of religious movements which have been world-
wide in a sense with which no previous movements may
compare. Commencing our survey in the east of Europe
we find in Russia in the early part of the century a re-
crudescence of intolerance due, strangely enough, to reaction
from the policy of Alexander I., who showed some sympathy
with outside forms of Christianity and gave permission for
the establishment of a Bible Society. In 1815 the Jesuits
were expelled from St. Petersburg and four years later from
the whole of Russia. The proclamation of the Holy Alliance
led to a persecution of the unorthodox sects, especially of
the so-called Doukhobors, or " spirit-wrestlers," who had
first come into existence about 1740 through the erratic

634

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XIXTH CENTURT 635

teachings of a Prussian Quaker. In 1861 the Metropolitan
of Moscow, Philaret, became responsible for drafting the
edict by which 23,000,000 serfs were emancipated. Un-
fortunately, these unhappy beings, long' unused to self-
support, found themselves worse off than before, and it was
out of the discontent thus engendered that much of the
Nihilistic agitation sprang which continued to accumulate
force until the storm broke in 1917. After the murder of
Alexander II. in 1881, we have another period of reaction
under Alexander III. The Procurator of the Holy Synod,
the notorious Pobiedonostseff, gained an unenviable reputa-
tion through the repressive measures he brought into
operation against dissenters, such as Jews and Stundists,
and the growth of disaffection towards both Church and
Throne continued to the end of the century and beyond.
The suppression of the Stundists, who had revived the old
opposition to image-worship, was particularly savage. It is
not pleasant to. accuse the clergy of the Russian Church in
the nineteenth century of bringing down on their heads a"
fate they themselves had earned, but it is clear that, in spite
of the mystic piety of many, the clergy as a whole were at
this time ah ignorant body who discredited in their persons
the creed they professed. 1

Elsewhere in the Eastern Church the story is of gradually
won freedom from the Turkish yoke. In Serbia freedom
was won as early as 1 8 30 in matters of religion, and after a
time the Metropolitan of Belgrade .was recognized as the
head of an autonomous church. Greece freed herself from
the Muslim in 1827, and in 1833, after the abolition of
many superfluous monasteries, the Church was placed in
the hands of a Holy Synod. Rumania was declared free
from the authority of any foreign bishop as late as 1864.
In 1860 the Bulgarian Church was released -from the
authority of the (Ecumenical Patriarch and placed under an
Exarch. As for other Eastern Churches, the pitiful story
of the Armenian Christians and of the horrible massacres
in 1894 and 1896 by the orders of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.,
will be too readily recalled. In Egypt the Monophysite

, x SeeW. F. Adeney, History of the Greek and Eastern Churches, Division III.,
chaps, vi. and vii.

636 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Christians, forming the Coptic Church,, secured freedom to
worship according to their consciences and their ancient
rites in 1882, after the British victory at Tel el Kebir.
The old Assyrian, or Nestorian, Church, which had suffered
from the Turks almost as much as their brothers in
tribulation, the Armenians, was assisted by a Mission of
Help sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This
had great effect in dispelling the ignorance of the
priesthood and in raising the standard of * life and
teaching. 1 " .

During the nineteenth century the progress made by
the Roman Catholic Church has been remarkable, though
the century seemed to open badly. The secularization of
the .German archiepiscopal electorates and the use of the
territory thus made available, to rehabilitate the princes who
had been Napoleon's victims, seriously impaired the secular
power of the Church, especially when the Diet ratified the
spoliation in 1803. Then in 1806 came the surrender by
'Francis II. of the title of Holy Roman Emperor, a surrender
which swept away the phantom of a dream vastly attractive
to the, idealists of the Middle Ages. The coronation of
Napoleon by himself, while Pope Pius VII. merely bestowed
upon the Emperor the unction and the blessing, was
followed by the seizure of the Pope's person and the annexa-
tion of the papal estates. But with the passing of the
Napoleonic era in 1815 the Papacy rapidly revived and
many European rulers, looked hopefully to the Church for
support. In 1814 the ban on the Jesuits had been rescinded
and the members flocked back to exercise even greater
influence than before. It is due largely to the Jesuit order
that the new type of Roman Catholicism we call Ultra-
montanism gained supremacy. The Pope was encouraged
to issue edicts denouncing such Protestant institutions as
the newly founded Bible Societies (1816) and. a few years
later (1824) to issue a further fulmination against the
errors of Rationalism. Later still, in the Papacy of Pius IX.,
the papal authorities decided to deal strongly, with dogma,
and in 1 8 54 was promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate

1 See W. F. Adeney, History of the Greek and Eastern Churches, Division- IV,

CHRISTIANITY IN THE XIXTH CENTURY 637

Conception of the Virgin Mary, -a belief which had long
been held as a private opinion but was now raised to the
rank of official doctrine. The publication, of the Syllabus of
Errors in 1864 was a further attack on Liberalism and(,
Protestantism. Then, in 1 870, was held the famous Vatican
Council in which the dogma of Papal Infallibility was set
forth in the following words: " The Roman Pontiff, when
he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in the discharge of the
office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of
his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine re-
garding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church ;
by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter,
is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine
Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed."
This dogma was not put forth without creating a schism.
Though only two votes were cast against- Infallibility 'in the
Council, there was much searching of heart among Roman
Catholics all over the world. The chief opponent, Dr. von
Dollinger, of Munich, was excommunicated, while others
of like mind organized the Old Catholic Church, to which
the apostolic succession was secured through the Jansenist
Bishop of Utrecht. Pope Leo XIII., who succeeded Pius JX.
was one of the ablest in the long line of able men who have
occupied the Papal Chair. He maintained his hostility to
the Government of Italy, which he considered had, on the
accession 'of Victor Emmanuel, deprived him of temporal -
power. But his generally sympathetic attitude to other
questions, and his skilful diplomacy, did -much to create
better feeling towards the Papacy in France and Germany.
At the same time, he showed himself hostile to the
movement initiated to secure the recognition of Anglican
orders.

Pius X., who came next, was neither so wise- nor so
successful as his predecessor. France broke off relations
with the Vatican and passed the Lot de la Separation, and
the Italian Government was affronted by the Papal protest
against the visit of the French President to the King
of Italy. Coincidently, trouble was stirred up by the
Pope's unsympathetic attitude towards Modernism, as
exemplified by the ban placed upon the works of

638 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

the Abbe Loisy and the author's excommunication in
1 907.*

Outside continental Europe Roman Catholic influence
increased rapidly, in England through the Act of Emancipa-
tion which came in 1829, and in the United States through
the immigration of people from Ireland and . Southern
Europe. The establishment of the Papal hierarchy in
England in 1850, soon after the conversion of Newman,
was much resented by Anglicans and Protestants, but
Cardinal Wiseman, as Archbishop of Westminster, un-
doubtedly .gained prestige for his communion, as did
Cardinal Manning after him.

In the Church of England at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and indeed up to the passing of the.
Reform Bill of 1832, the condition of the Church was
deplorable. Though the Methodist revival had stimulated
piety within the Church in creating what is called the
Evangelical movement, to which reference has been made,
'in other directions it drained the Church of much of its
fervour, and indeed produced a kind of repulsion away from
what were deemed the extravagances of revivalism. In 1812
a bill had to be passed compelling the non-resident clergy
either to stay in their parishes or at least to provide a curate
who should be responsible for the services. When Bishop
Blomfield was consecrated Bishop of London in 1828 he
found the most meagre provision for the spiritual care of
his vast diocese. In one parish of 40,000 souls there was
only one clergyman. From 1787 to 1808 not a single new
church had been built in the capital city. Bishops were
wont to owe their preferment to family interest or political
services. The examination of candidates for the ministry
had become in many cases a farce, one man being examined
while the examiner was shaving and another being let off
with the construing of a couple of words. ' Many of the
parish churches were in a ruinous condition or cluttered' uf>
with huge monuments in the worst taste. There -were no
hymn-books except metrical versions of the Psalter, such as

1 See article " Ultramontanism," E.R.E. XII., by F. F. Urquhart ; F-
Neilsen, History of the Papacy in the igth Century (Eng. trans.), 2 vols., London,
1906 ; article " Modernism," E.R.E. VIII. ; M. Petre, Autobiography and Life
of George Tyrrell, London, 1912.

CHRISTIANITY IN THE XIXTH CENTURY 639

that of Tate and Brady, while the accompaniment was
provided by a fiddle and a bass violin. On Easter Day,
1800, there were only six . communicants at the services at
St. Paul's Cathedral.

It was this condition of neglect and decay to which the
Church was stormily awakened by the Tractarian movement.
In 1833 John Keble, who in 1827 had published the
beautiful collection of religious poetry known as The Christian
Year, preached at St. Mary's Oxford his famous Assize
Sermon on National Apostasy. It was just the spark needed
to divert men's minds from an individualistic pietism and to
rekindle an appraisal of their heritage in the historic Church.
That same month was held the meeting of a few kindred
souls which resulted in the writing and publication of Tracts
for the Times, from 'which the term Tractarian is derived.
Popularly it was known as Puseyite, on account of the
prominence therein of Dr. E. B. Pusey, Regius Professor
of Hebrew at Oxford, though Dr. Pusey was not associated
with the movement till 1835. O ne f *^- e m ost famous of
the early Tractarians was Dr. John Henry Newman, Vicar
of St. Mary's, whose sermons during these eventful years
had the most profound influence on the University and the
country. The Tractarians bent their energies not only on
the restoration of primitive Catholic practice in the Church,
but also on opposition to Erastianism in the Establishment.
The appointment of Dr. Hampden, whose Bamfton Lectures
had been accused of unorthodoxy, by Lord Melbourne to
be Regius Professor of Divinity, was the occasion for an
outspoken protest. At the same time, the expression in the
Tracts of beliefs unfamiliar to the churchmanship of the
period evoked storms of disapproval from the rank and file
of churchmen. It was a situation with which the timid
episcopate of. the time was unprepared to cope. In 1841
the Tracts had to be discontinued, and thereafter there were
signs of impatience and loss of heart among some of the
Tractarians. A few of these found refuge in the bosom of
the Roman Church. The most .outstanding of these was
Dr. Newman who, in addition to his general disquietude,
had been seriously disturbed by the scheme to create a
Bishopric of Jerusalem in alliance with the Prussian Pro-

6 4 o A HISTORY OF RELIGION

. . _

testants. Newman was received into the Roman Church in
1845, b ut 5 wn il e his change of faith caused great per-
turbation in the hearts of his friends and a disposition "to
identify Tractarianism with a Romeward tendency, it did
but serve to steady the devotion of men like Keble and
Pusey. The movement thus inaugurated had before it a
long period of popular misunderstanding, even expressing
itself in riots and persecutions ; it received scant sympathy
from the majority of the bishops; in Parliament it was
attacked by the forces of Erastianismr an attack culminating
in the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874. But, as time
went on, it was clear that much of value had been accom-
plished. The so-called " Six points " Eastward position,
Vestments, Lights 3 Mixed Chalice, Unleavened Bread, and
Incense were by no means in general use. Nevertheless,
their right to a place in the Eucharistic ritual was confirmed,
and there were few churches which did not witness a steady
(if slow) improvement in the order, decency and beauty of
the Church services, in the quickened devotion of the
clergy to the care of souls . committed to them, and in a
broader appreciation of the Church as something more' than
a department of the State. 1

Apart, too, from all interest in history and tradition, or
in dignity of worship, a stimulated interest in the general
mission of the Church resulted. New bishoprics were
established, the first since the Reformation, in England, to
take care of the new centres of population which the indus-
trial revolution had created. To note only the earliest, such
were the sees of Manchester and Ripon. Interest, too,
began to be more practically expressed in the spiritual
condition of the English populations overseas and, in
addition to the sees of Nova Scotia and Quebec, bishoprics
were established in Calcutta, Jamaica, Barbadoes, and ejse-
where. Hitherto all overseas Churchmen were supposed to
be under, the pastoral care of the Bishop of London. In the
one year 1842 no fewer than five additional bishops were
consecrated at one service.. A further and very concrete
expression of interest in the world-wide mission of Anglican

1 See R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement, London, 1891 ; J. H. Overton,
The Anglican Revival, London, 1897.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XIXTH CENTURT 641

Christianity was afforded by the summoning of the first
Lambeth Conference by Archbishop Longley, at the sug-
gestion (it is said) of the then Bishop of Ontario. Only
seventy-six bishops attended, from the Churches of Great
Britain and Ireland, the Colonies, and the United States,
and the proceedings were far from harmonious. Dean
Stanley refused Westminster Abbey for the closing service
of the Conference. But a beginning had been made which
was destined to grow to great things, as may be realized by
a comparison of the Conference of 1867 with that of 1930.
One of the burning questions was the status of Bishop
Colen'so, of Natal, whose views as to the accuracy of certain
Old Testament statements were so far beyond the official
opinion of the Church of his time as to warrant his deposition
for heresy. The days of unfettered Biblical criticism, for
the general body of the clergy, were still far in the future.
But that the educational standards of the clergy were not
unregarded is seen in the establishment at this time of
Theological Colleges. Some of them, like Wycliffe Hall
and Ridley Hall, were founded to ensure the preservation
of evangelical tenets, and others, like the Colleges at
Cuddesdon, Ely, Lichfield and Salisbury, were representative
of the views of the Tractarians. In addition, from 1841
onward, we have the revival of Sisterhoods in the English
Church, and for men devoted to service under special vows
the order of the Cowley Fathers was formed in 1866.
Convocation, though still subject to the will of the Crown,
was restored in 1 8 5 1 . l

From the middle of the nineteenth century, and on to
the end, without expressing itself in anything which could
be described as a " Movement," we may mark the rise of
what is called the Broad Church school. . The term was
intended to denote a liberal attitude towards the many
ecclesiastical, scientific and critical questions which at this
time excited the attention of men. Individuals like F. D.
Maurice, Thomas Arnold, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes,
Benjamin Jowett, ^suggest themselves rather than societies
and organizations, but the influence of these individuals was

J See A. H. Hore, Eighteen Centuries of the Church in England, Part VII.,
chap. iv.

642 A BISTORT OF RELIGION '

strong enough to demand notice and to. bridge over some of
the chasms which had opened before men's feet. The,
appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species had shaken the
older hypothesis of separate creative acts, and the new
sciences, with the advance of knowledge through historical,
archaeological and philological research, had thrown an
entirely new light on the composition and contents of the
Old and New Testament Scriptures. Adjustment to the
implications of all this raised many a fierce storm in eccles-
iastical waters, from the publication of Essays and Reviews
in 1860 to that of Lux Mundi at the end of the century.
Old traditions were only slowly abandoned and there were
many to whom the shattering of an obsolete opinion seemed
to evoke the cry, " They have taken away my Lord, and I
know not where they have laid Him." Others, happily,
recognized in the new light the Divine command, " Take
away her battlements, for they are not the Lord's." 1

Coincidently with the struggle for order in worship and
for such restatement of the symbols of faith as the " New
Learning " made inevitable, we have at this time, and
continuously therefrom, a remarkable revival in the interest
taken in the poor and the social problems connected with
the life of the poor both in the cities and the rural districts.
The work of men like Canon Barnett was the inauguration
of much that in course of time developed such experiments
as Toynbee Hall and the University Settlements. What-
ever were the fears of churchmen as to the intellectual
tendencies of the time, it is plain that the Church of England
was getting into touch with the life of the nation as never
before.

At the same time we must recognize that in these years
she was in part paying the price of earlier neglect and at
the same time bowing to the new spirit of the age by.yielding,
often reluctantly and ungraciously, some of the privileges
she had inherited from days when the Church had actually
provided the pattern for the State. Thus we have the
Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, the abolition of Church

i A long list of books might be given to show the modern, adjustment
which has taken place between Science and Religion. Many of these are
included in the Bibliography to An Outline of Christianity, Vol. IV-, Book I.,
New York, 1926.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XIXTH CENTURT ' 643

Rates in 1868, the Education Act of 1870, by which a
system of School Boards came into competition with the
National Schools supported by the Church, the abandonment
of Tests at the Universities in 1871, and the amendment of
the Burial Laws in 1880, by which permission was given to
Nonconformist ministers to officiate in the burial grounds.
In addition, we have the Disestablishment of the Irish
Church in 1871, following oh the recognition of the fact
that the ancient endowments of the Church were in the
hands of a small minority of the population. The move-
ment for the disestablishment of the Church of England
and Wales was also kept alive, though the agitation only
succeeded "in the case of the Welsh Dioceses, and that not
until the second decade of the twentieth century.

In spite of the rapidity with which the Church was
readjusting itself to the new needs of the nation, during the
greater part of the nineteenth century Dissent was wide-
spread and militant. In addition to the numerical growth
of the older sects, particularly Methodism, new denomina-
tions were continually appearing.' Some of these present
special .features. For example, we have the " Catholic
Apostolic Church" commonly known as Irvingite. It was
founded by Edward Irving, a Scots Presbyterian minister
who, coming to London, commenced there a series of
apocalyptic lectures which led to the separation of the
movement from the Church of Scotland in 1832. It rested
itself largely on the belief that the spiritual/' gifts " of
apostolic times had been revived in Irving's own case and
also on the expectation of an imminent reappearance of
Christ. Irving repudiated the creation of a new sect but,
after his death in 1834, six additional "apostles" felt
themselves called upon to complete the number of the
twelve, and these maintained supreme authority. Each
congregation, moreover, was presided over by an "angel,"
under whom were twenty-four priests, besides " sub-
deacons, acolytes, singers and doorkeepers." 1

More widely diffused was the influence of Plymouth
Erethrenism^ or Darbyism, so called from- the Rev. J. N.

1 See Mrs. Oliphant, Lije of Edward Irving, 2 vols., London, 1862 ; Thomas
Carlyle, Reminiscences, Vol. I., London, 1881.

644 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

Darby who left the Anglican Church to start the new
organization about 1830.- Progress was rapid and the
movement spread from England to Switzerland, France,
Sweden, Germany and North America. Division soon
overtook the sect and by 1885 two rival churches had been
formed, agreed in regarding the baptism of infants as an
open question, but repudiating the ordination of ministers
as a denial of the spiritual priesthood of all believers. In
addition to a somewhat vague membership in England and
on the continent of Europe, there are said to be about
10,000 Plymouth Brethren in the United States. But an
accurate estimate is difficult, since Plymouth Brethrenism
may leaven the opinions of men without leading them to
separate from the body to which they are already affiliated. 1
Still more generally diffused, and of vast practical
significance to nineteenth-century Protestantism, is the
Salvation Army, founded by William Booth, a Methodist
revivalist who was casting about for ways to carry the
-appeal of the Gospel more effectively to the impoverished
masses of East London. It was in 1878 that Mr. Booth
reorganized his London mission on military lines, and two
years later he gave the movement the name it has since
borne, together with the uniform and general methods of
evangelization which have been distinctive. The theology
of the Salvation Army was along popular evangelical lines.
Little attention was paid to the sacramental side of religion,
but much stress was laid on preaching, prayer, singing, and
the use of instrumental music. The lives of members
were strictly regulated and marked by abstinence" from
alcohol, tobacco, and luxurious clothing. From the first,
service for others was emphasized. The poor, the " down
and out," fallen women, and other victims ''of- the social
system became the special care of the Army. Under the
tremendous driving power of the General, branches of the
Army were created in many lands, including Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, the United States, India, Japan,
and most of the countries of continental Europe. The
publication in 1891 of Darkest London and the Way Out

1 See W. B. Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren, second edition,
London, 1902.

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XIXTH CENTURT 645

made a great appeal to the British public and 100,000
came into the treasury of the Army for its social programme.
On General Booth's death the organization came into the
hands of his son, William Bramwell Booth, who held it to
the year before his death, when, in the interest of the Army,
it was decided to appoint a High Council with power to
elect the General. The present head is General E. J.
Higgins, formerly chief of staff. 1

Protestantism in Scotland was strongly Presbyterian
throughout the century. In the early years there was much
interest taken both in education and in missions, and the
famous Dr. Alexander Duff, the first missionary of the
Church of Scotland to be sent abroad, went out to India.
Later on troubles of a sectarian kind began to multiply.
In 1820 came the secession of the body known as the
United Presbyterian Church, and controversies continued
in the Church of Scotland till the Disruption of 1 843, when
450 ministers out of 1200, together with many of their
flocks, went over to the Free Church. The Church of
Scotland was badly hit, but rallied to its task with courage.
At length (to continue the story into the twentieth century)
the United Church and the Free Church came together in
1904 and, finally, after many tentative negotiations, the
Church of Scotland and the United Free Church healed
their long schism on October 2, 1929, in the Cathedral of
St. Giles. 2

The revival movements which in England had done so
much for the extension of the Protestant evangelical sects
had their counterparts on the continent, especially in
Switzerland, Germany and Scandinavia. There was a
reawakening of German Pietism, of which signs have been
noted in the .philosophy of Kant. Schleiermacher, 1768-
1 8 34, taught a kind of religious romanticism, declaring
that "religion should float about human life like a sweet
and pleasant melody, a vague but beneficent presentiment
of a life of dreams in which the human soul can find felicity."
In France a somewhat similar position was held by Alexandre

1 See William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out, London, 1890 ;
Harold Begbie, Life of William Booth, London, 1920.

2 See article, " Free Church of Scotland," Ency. Brit.. IX., pp. 729 f.
(i 4 th Ed.).

646 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Vinet, 1797-1847, who "preached a pacific Christ, recon-
ciled to modern civilization, and still living in, the conscience
of humanity." x Much of the new energy of continental
Protestantism was directed into practical channels, such as
the building of churches, the formation of Bible societies,
and the organisation of work by colporteurs, lay-preachers,
and workers among seamen, in prisons, and hospitals, and
those engaged in rescue work.

In the United States the "Awakening" of 1792 was
continued into the new century, with a remarkable revival
in Kentucky and Tennessee commencing in 1800. The
camp-meeting of this period has been thus explained: " A
population perfervido ingenio, of a temper peculiarly suscep-
tible of intense excitement, transplanted into a wild country,
under little control either of conventionality or law, deeply
engrained from many generations with the" religious senti-
ment, but broken loose from the control of it and living
consciously in reckless disregard of the law of God, is
suddenly aroused to a sense of its apostasy and wickedness."
But the emotionalism of the time did not save religion from
fresh schisms. Unitarianism had taken possession of King's
Chapel at Boston, and from among the Congregationalists
no fewer than 126 churches turned their backs on the
Trinitarian doctrine. Harvard became a strong citadel of
Unitarianism and many distinguished men, including
Channing, Emerson, Longfellow, and Holmes, gave it
their adhesion. In 1837 came a schism between the New
and Old School among the Presbyterians and in 1844 the
Methodist Church divided into North and South. Mean-
while, denominations hitherto unknown were multiplying.
From among the Baptists came the body known as Disciples
of Christ, originating about 1809 from the preaching of
Thomas Campbell and his more famous son Alexander.
Separate existence was achieved at length under the rather
too inclusive title of " Churches of Christ ". One very
remarkable movement came from the following of Joseph

1 Solomon Reinach, A Short History of Christianity , p. 197 ; see also W. B.
Selbie, Schleiermacher, A Critical and Historical Study, New York, 1913 ;
F. A. Lichtenberger, German -Theology in the igth Century (Eng. trans.), Edin-
burgh, 1889.

CHRISTIANITY IN THE XIXTH CENTURY 647

Smith, who in 1827 claimed the discovery of the Book of
Mormon and founded on his translation of this the Church
of Latter Day Saints, generally known as Mormons. The
first organization was at Fayette, N.Y., in 1830; thence
the sect moved to Nauvoo, 111., where Smith was brutally
murdered, out of popular hostility to the recently announced
sanction given to polygamy. The Mormons thereupon
found a new and able leader in Brigham Young, who led his
followers westward to the present site of Salt Lake City in
Utah. Here a Temple was built and, as the Mormons
showed themselves to be capable pioneers alike in agri-
culture and business, the settlement prospered and was
readily recruited from European countries where missionary
agents carried on an extensive propaganda. Eventually,
in 1890, the practice of polygamy was abandoned and the
Mormons settled down to a religion not greatly differing
from that of the evangelical sects. 1 Contemporary with
Mormonism, we have the rise of Adventism, founded by
William Miller about 1831. Miller was obsessed with
fantastic, ideas as to the near approach of the end of the
world. He first announced the event as due in 1843, DUt
subsequently proclaimed a revised date, October 22, 1844.
Adventists, distinguished by their observance of the seventh
day Sabbath rather than the Christian Sunday, are now
divided into ahout five bodies and have spread far beyond
the borders of the United States. Still another movement .
which has obtained widespread influence, not merely in the
upbuilding of a new denomination but also in the. leavening
of thought generally among members of the older organiza-
tions, is that known as Christian Science. It was founded
in 1876 by Mary Baker Eddy and is now represented in
practically every considerable American community, as well
as in Europe. The kernel of the teaching is that God is
Spirit and that all creation is derived from Him. Sin,
sickness, evil and death have therefore no reality and belief
in them is a disease of the mortal mind. The general
practice is to renounce the use of medical aid in the treatment
of disease, relying wholly on prayer and faith. Many

- 1 See James H. Snowden, The Truth about Mormonism, New York, 1926.

648 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

varieties of this attitude towards sickness and evil generally
have sprung up all over the United States. 1

North of the United States the population is largely
representative of the religions of the old countries whence
it was derived. The Roman Catholic religion is dominant
among the French of the Province of Quebec, the Church
of England is strong in the larger cities and in the smaller
communities near the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, while
Presbyterianism and Methodism are particularly strong in
the central provinces. The first Methodist society reached
Montreal in 1803 and, much increased by emigration in
the intervening years, Methodists- organized the Methodist
Episcopal Church of Canada in 1828. After the Act of
Union of 1867 the title became Methodist Church of
Canada. Since the beginning of the twentieth century
efforts were made for the union of all Methodists, Con-
gregationalists and Presbyterians in one . body. This was
finally effected in 1925, when the United Church of Canada
came into existence, with two and a half million members. 2

Outside of Protestantism we find notable expansion both
in the United States and Canada during the nineteenth
century. In the United States the Roman Catholic Church
had grown consistently, especially during the years of the
great rush of immigration from Ireland and Southern
Europe. Many communicants are said to have lapsed in
the course of their westward movement across the continent
and during the process of settlement, but it has been
estimated that in 1893, out of a population of 70,000,000,
there were 9,000,000 Roman Catholics in the United
States, while to-day the total is not far short of 1 5,000,000.
The Roman Church has been particularly active in the
large cities, in which splendid churches, parochial schools,
and hospitals have been erected, while the clergy and laity
have taken a conspicuous part in the social service work of
the communities.

1 A comprehensive but by no means sympathetic study of a large number
of the cuJts at present in vogue in the United States is given by C. W. Ferguson,
The Confusion of Tongues, New York, 1929. The Bibliography will be found
particularly useful.

2 Not all Presbyterians joined the United Church. There is a. nourishing
body of " continuing Presbyterians."

CHRISTIANITT IN- THE XIXTH CENTURT 649

The Anglican Church, known by its cumbrous legal
title of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States- of America, has also grown steadily, and from four
bishoprics in 1792 has increased to considerably more than
a hundred in the early years of the twentieth century.
Moreover, the Church's influence has been far more wide-
spread than its communicant list of over a million might
suggest. Similarly in Canada the small beginnings of the
episcopate made in the closing years of the eighteenth
century have borne fruit in the creation of some thirty
episcopal sees between the Atlantic and the Pacific. -

. One feature of religious work which is characteristic of
the nineteenth century, and which is not confined to any
one Church or any one land is that of work among young
men and girls. Of these particular organizations we may
mention the Y.M.C.A., founded in England in 1844, by
George Williams, a draper's assistant, who came from
Somersetshire in 1841 and started meetings in his bedroom.
The movement thus initiated spread across the Atlantic and
associations were formed in Montreal and Boston in 1851.
In 1876 Mr. Williams (afterwards Sir George Williams)
crossed the Atlantic himself to oversee developments. The
Y.M.C.A. is now familiar all the world over and Japanese
Buddhists have done the Association the compliment of
organizing the Y.M.B'.A. (Young Men's Buddhist Associa-
tion) on the model. In 1884 the Y.W.C.A. was started,
also in England, by Miss Roberts, and has since seen
phenomenal growth. The present membership is over a
million, scattered over forty-six countries, and engaged in
an extraordinary variety'of social and religious enterprises.
Of a more specialized type is the Student Christian Move-
ment, originated by the famous " Cambridge Seven " in
1885, just before they sailed for China. It was stimulated
by the adhesion of men like Henry Drummond, John R.
Mott, Robert Wilder and Sherwood Eddy, and has had
remarkable success in recruiting young men for missionary
work in foreign lands. Beside the above-mentioned or-
ganizations we may recall the Epworth League, a young
people's movement fostered by the Methodists, the Brother-
hood of St. Andrew, a society for men in the Episcopal

650 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Church, and the Knights of Columbus, a powerful organiza-
tion of men in the Roman Catholic Church.

Of all the evidences which may be adduced as proving
the vitality of Christianity during the nineteenth century
none is so convincing as the extraordinary development of
Foreign Missions. To give even a summary of this develop-
ment would* occupy more space than we have available. It
is almost sufficient to say that for the first time in human
history we have the entire world open for the proclamation
of the Gospel. In India that " heaven-sent genius," William
Carey, sent out by the Baptists from England, associated
himself with two other members of the Serampore Brother-
hood, Marshman and Ward, and achieved marvellous
success as evangelist and translator. Henry Martyn landed
in Calcutta in 1806 and spent his short life in fruitful
service in India and Persia. His one convert, Abdul Masih,
was one of the first natives of India ordained to the Anglican
priesthood. Other English missionaries entered into the
labours of the great Danish evangelist, Christian Schwartz.
Bishop Middleton was consecrated the first Bishop of
Calcutta in 1814 and from that time on new sees were
constantly created, till at last, in 1912, the first Indian
Bishop was set apart for work in South India in the person
of Dr. Azariah. Many Societies had entered into this
promising field, including the C.M.S., the S.P.G., the
Cambridge Mission to Delhi, and the Oxford Mission to
Calcutta. The Church of Scotland -had sent out Alexander
Duff in 1830 and by 1857 this great educator had laid the
foundation of a magnificent future. American Protestant
Missions - Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Baptist and
Methodist had also claimed a share in the work. Mean-
while, the Roman Catholic missions had flourished, till, by
the end of the century, there were 8 archbishops, and over
2600 bishops and priests. The Christian population of
India since the end of the nineteenth century has grown
even more rapidly and now numbers something like five
million souls.

In China the Roman Catholic missions which had
struggled through the persecutions of the eighteenth century
continued their heroic witness. Bishops like Dufresne (i 815)

CHRISTIANITY IN THE XIXTH CENTURT 651

and Boric, tied to a stake and cut slowly into little bits,
together with hundreds of their priests and laity, died as
martyrs. But the roll of living adherents grew till, at the
end of the century, it included at least a million and a half
baptized members. The great revival began as early as
1830. Outside the Roman Catholic Church in 1842 there
were but six native Christians in China, but by 1877 these
had increased to over 13,000. Robert Morrison, of the
London Missionary Society, had come, by way of America,
in 1807; in 1835 the American Episcopal Church sent
Dr. Boone, who became bishop in 1845. ^he Church of
England began its workin 1 844 and George Smith was the first
Bishop of Victoria (Hongkong) in 1 8 50. By this datea dozen
Anglican and Protestant Societies were vigorously at work,
with sonic missionaries of outstanding fame. The China
Inland Mission was founded in 1865,. and since then every
province of the Middle Kingdom has been occupied by
men who have held on through good report and ill report,
not always successful, or even wise in their methods, but
braving death and persecution unflinchingly and, after
every period of discouragement, returning to the field with
added zeal. 1

The story of Christian missions in Japan during the
nineteenth century is not less inspiring. No sooner was
the Empire reopened to the foreigner than missionaries of
many Societies began to enter for the work. To the sur-
prise of the outside world, it was found that 1 500 people in
the neighbourhood where St. Francis Xavier laboured came
forward in 1865 as a. proof that the faith had never been
completely exterminated by the two centuries of persecution.
The day of the "discovery of the Christians" is still
observed on March 17. American Protestant and Anglican
missionaries were active from the time of the Treaty of 1 858
and their work has produced direct results in the creation
of strong native churches and a more significant indirect
result in the leavening- of Japan with Christian ideals. 2

In Africa, from the time when, in 1 846, 50,000 liberated

_* See K. S. Latourette, History oj Christian Missions in China, from
chap. xvii.. onward.

2 See Otis Carey, History of Christianity in China, 2 vols. The work of
Sei Kokwai (Anglican) is now represented by eleven bishops.

652 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

slaves were gathered together in Sierra Leone, marvellous
results have been achieved. Samuel Crowther, the ex-slave,
became a bishop in 1 864. In Central Africa the Universities
Mission was established in 1 858 as a result of the appeal of
David Livingstone; in 1873 a cathedral was built on the
site of the slave-market at Zanzibar; in 1875 tne C.M.S.
established its mission in Uganda, as a result of the im-
pression produced by the discoveries of Stanley. Watered
by the blood of the martyred Bishop Hannington, this
mission grew to wonderful proportions after 1894. In
South Africa Robert Moffatt, of the L.M.S., laboured for
fifty years in Bechuanaland ; in 1847 Bishop Gray was
consecrated Bishop of Capetown; and from this date the
work spread over the whole of that vast territory among
whites and natives- alike.

In Australasia and Oceanica isles which even John
Wesley believed beyond the possibility of evangelization
Christianity has become generally supreme, though here
and there, as in Tasmania, the native population died out
before missionary work had begun. In Australia, while a
large part of the organized work of the churches aimed at
providing spiritual care for the colonists, missionary work
among the aborigines goes back to the time of Marsden's
arrival at the beginning of the century. In the Church of
England work was begun in 1823 by S.P.G. and in 1830
by C.M.S. The L.M.S. started a mission in 1825 and
since then work has been undertaken by Presbyterians,
Methodists and Moravians. An interesting Roman Catholic
mission was inaugurated near Perth, where Bishop Salvado
laboured for more than fifty years of his episcopate, dying
in 1900. Samuel Marsden's appeal, about 1809, led to the
first recruiting of missionaries for New Zealand and Marsden
himself arrived in 1814. The Williams brothers came in
1822 and 1825 and one of them became the first Bishop of
Waiapu. But the work was slow till the annexation of the
group by Great Britain in 1840. In 1842 Bishop Selwyn
was able to announce: "We see here a whole nation of
pagans converted to the faith." Later on considerable
losses were experienced through the rise of a strange
fanaticism known as the Hau-hau. In addition to the

CHRISTIANITT IN THE XIXTH CENTURT 653

Anglican work among Maoris and whites, muqh has been
done by Wesleyans and even by Mormons. About 5000
Maoris belong to the Roman Catholic Church* The
Hawaiian Islands were first evangelized by missionaries of
the A.B.C.F.M. beginning with 1820, the year after the
abolition of the tabus by Kamehameha II. In fifty years
paganism was almost entirely destroyed. After considerable
opposition, the Roman Catholic Church commenced work
in 1839 and in 1861 the Church of England sent its first
Bishop of Honolulu, as the result of Kamehameha IV.'s
appeal to Queen Victoria. Since the annexation of the group
by the United States this work has been taken over by the
American Episcopal Church. The religious work of the
Hawaiian Islands has been made specially significant and
interesting through the numbers of Chinese, Japanese and
Koreans who are accessible away from their former pagan
environment. To describe the work of evangelization in
the separate Pacific groups is impossible. It must suffice to
say that some of the very greatest names in missionary
annals have a place among the evangelists of the Pacific.
Such are Bishop Patteson, murdered in the Santa Cruz
group in .187-1, James Chalmers, martyred in New Guinea
in 1877, John Williams, martyred in the New Hebrides,
and, in the same group, J. G. Paton gave twenty-four years
of devoted labour and lived to see 20,000 natives brought
into the fold.

In the Muhammadan world Christian missions have
been hitherto less successful, but here too there are names
which will shine for ever, such as those of Henry Martyn,
missionary in India and Persia, Ian Keith Falconer, who
died prematurely at Aden in 1887, and Bishop Thomas
Valpy French, who died at Muscat in 1891. 1

It is not a little significant that by the end of the nine-
teenth century, as already noted, the religion which at the
Cross on .Calvary was represented only by a dying robber
and a few heart-broken disciples now found the whole wor-ld,
with a few insignificant exceptions, open to its appeal. 2

1 See C. H. Robinson, History of Christian -Missions.

z On the whole period Vols. IV. and V. of An Outline History of Christianity
(New York, 1926), will be found useful, together with" the bibliographies
provided.

CHAPTER XLII
On the Threshold of the Future

A THIRD of the twentieth century has gone, by and
perhaps the majority of those who welcomed its
dawn with hope survey its achievements up to date
with disappointment. The expected millennium has not
arrived, in spite of all the boasted mechanism which has
speeded up our civilization and added to life's material
facilities. Yet it is at least equally certain that, whatever be
our misgivings, hope still " springs eternal in the human
breast " and it is not impossible in gathering up our ex-
perience of the past to look to the future with some measure
of courage and faith.

Let us grant at once that many people are convinced,
as some have been convinced in every generation for the
last two thousand years, that religion is now on its last legs.
The discredited pessimists of earlier ages have said the same
thing, but to-day's sceptics say it a little more blatantly
and confidently. And, of course, it would be idle to deny
that, as in previous times, there is plenty of human faith-
lessness and failure to support their argument. It is enough
to recall some of the anti-religious movements of the age.
In China, according to some, religion is " an out-of-date
problem," and the systems of Confucius, Lao-tzu and the
Buddha are put in the same condemned cell with that of
the Christ. In other Buddhist countries, with the possible
exception of Siam and Japan (where Buddhism has been
fertilized with western ideas), the faith .of Gautama is
manifestly decadent and corrupt. In most large Muham-
madan centres, notably in Istambul, Islam has lost its hold
over even the outward habit of many and flourishes only
where, as in Palestine and India, it is stimulated by fanatical
hostility to another faith. Nor is Christianity anywhere
immune from attack, even though the western writers who

654

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 655

regard it as moribund express their wish rather than their
thought. Yet even here is material at hand. The denun-
ciation of the Concordat with the Papacy by France in 1 905
was hailed as the apostasy of " the eldest daughter of the
Church." The Vatican Edict against Modernism in 1907,
whereby the Roman Church sacrificed such sons as Loisy
and Tyrrell, was set down as the final break with the " New
Learning." The Russian Revolution of 1917, with its
bloody sequels, was plain evidence to the critic that a death-
blow had been inflicted on the venerable Churches of the
East and that godlessness was established in the new order
of the Soviets. The rejection of the traditional authority of
the Roman Church in Mexico and some of the South
American Republics, followed by the overthrow of the
ecclesiastical supremacy in Spain, was but fresh evidence
tending towards the same conclusion. Protestantism,
weakened by the loss of much of its historical raison d'fore,
and struggling to maintain itself by all kinds of popularity-
seeking devices, was, to the same observers, in no better
state. In certain cases, success seemed only attainable by
the adoption of eccentricities allied to the professional tricks
of the mountebank. Even the staid Churches of the
Anglican Communion seemed deadlocked with dispute over
trivialities, as was illustrated by the frustration of Prayer
Book reform through the intervention of a Parliament
representative of all creeds and of none. Outside organized
Christianity, moreover, in lands still professing Christian
ideals, there was conspicuous the spectacle of shaken ethical
standards, of weakened discipline, of lowered sense of
obligation, and even of communities delivered over to the
tyranny of gangsters and outlaws.

It is a gloomy enough picture, in all conscience, yet not
the whole. All along our story we have been watching the
gradual descent of the City of God against a background
of Babylonish shadows in which the majority of men have
continued to put their trust. And when we watch the slow
evolution of religious consciousness with eyes open to the
glints and gleams of the descending City rather than to the
dark features of the background we find no more need for
discouragement than -had Christians of the first, or fourth,

656 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

or sixteenth centuries. Even the lapses and set-backs we
have been forced to note may have, -in the eternal process,
no more significance than a landslip on the side of a mountain
or an eddy by the bank of a flowing stream. Indeed, set-
backs may in the long run be seen as incidents in the story
of a general progress, the " reculer a mieux sauter " of
which religious history has so many examples. Sometimes
it is the nemesis of overstress on some one-sided apprehen-
sion of truth, an overstress which demands readjustment in
what seems to be an opposite direction. Not infrequently
it is the due punishment of a mistaken method or the
discipline, needed to make possible a more effective witness.
Progress seldom moves along with even front, but often by
reaction against movements projected beyond the proper
line of advance. The student of religious history needs
often to recall the words of Arthur Hugh Clough:

Say not, the struggle nought availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain. ...
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

That we may see how, through " Eastern windows "
and " Western " alike, the light does grow upon the world,
let us give attention to the following considerations :

i. As remarked in our last chapter, the world is
open as never before to the message of the Gospel. .No
fewer than 500,000,000 souls are nominally within the
Christian fold. If we be disposed to depreciate the quality
of the religion thus professed, let us remember that the
gulf between profession and practice has always been wide
and deep, in former ages as much as in our own. Yet,
even so, the number of " sinners who keep on trying,"
and are therefore the potential saints, is probably larger
to-day than ever. Certainly, as judged by the amount of
religious literature produced and read, earnestness in
religious matters is extraordinarily widespread. Moreover,
the indirect influence of religions on one another, and

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 657

especially of Christianity on them all, has had a stimulating
effect in extending the power of Christian ideals, while the
new science of Comparative Religion has revealed to men
the omnipresence of the Divine' Spirit, moving as in a
garden^ even though men may not recognize the Gardener.
Even in Russia, where the " godless " seem for the moment
in control, in the revolt of ignorance against an ancient
tyranny may be detected an idealism with its martyrs, its
servants and its worshippers an idealism which is the
rejection of a super-Czar rather than the conscious turning
of the back upon a Father in the heavens. Of all religions
in the world to-day it may be said that subjection to the
fierce test of historical ajnd social criticism tends only to the
removal of the things which may be shaken and may be
depended upon ultimately to " leave free from mist the
permanent stars behind."

When we look at movements rather than at isolated
events, our judgement on the outlook for religion need, not
be other than reassuring, and our failures themselves point
the way from error towards a resplendent success. This is
particularly true of the Mission Field, where nationalistic
and sectarian methods have deserved the set-backs which
they invited. A Christianity which in the past history of
India or China seeks for the leading of the Holy Spirit,
which finds in the ancient scriptures of these peoples an
Old Testament to which the religion of Christ supplies the
New, which learns to employ the terminology of the people,
and finds use for Indian or Chinese ideals in modes of
worship or type of ministry, is not likely to fail.

2. We feel in the air, like the prediction of a spiritual
springtide, the unmistakable desire for religious unity. In-
tolerance, it is true, is by no means dead, and religious
discord, as in Palestine between Jew and Arab, or in India
between Hindu and Muslim, has by no means disappeared.
Race-feeling, too, even in soTcalled Christian lands, still
rears its ugly visage and takes its toll in rioting and lynching.
Yet in the presence of such manifestations men in cool
blood are no longer unashamed. The old competitive
spirit, again, in which men gloried as a legitimate stimulus
to zeal a generation ago, is no longer in vogue, if only for

2 T

658 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

reasons of economy. Efforts are now more frequently
made to synthesize opposite views than to exaggerate them. .
Indeed, even principles are occasionally neglected in order
to make the more display of tolerance. Be this as it may,
the longing for unity is achieving results. It is seen in the
formation of the United Church of Canada, alluded to in
our last chapter, and in the movement towards unity in
South India. It is seen in the larger tolerance of parties,
or schools of thought, for . one another within the same
communion, notably in such gatherings as the General
Convention of the American Episcopal Church and in the
decennial meetings of the Lambeth Conference. It is
reported of the last -Lambeth Conference, held in 1930,
that almost every resolution was passed with practical
unanimity. It taxed the- ingenuity of the sensational press
to invent discords where there were none to be discovered.
Still more impressive to many is the evidence of a striving
after unity manifested in the assembling of Conferences
between different religious bodies to find some basis for
common practice and belief. Among these will be recalled
the Stockholm Conference of 1925 and (more significant
still) the Lausanne Conference on Faith and Order of 1927,
participated in by representatives of the Eastern, Churches
as well as by those of the Protestant and Anglican com-
munions. " Indeed, the recent movement of the Eastern
Orthodox Churches towards fellowship with the various
branches of the Anglican Communion is one of the happiest
omens of the coming time when schisms .shall be healed
and all become members of one flock under one Shepherd. 1
The securing of the Church's visible unity must, of
course, require a larger patience than some of its enthusiastic
advocates may realize. There are many schemes for
achieving unity, but the -adoption of most of these would
be fatal to the object sought. With some the belief prevails
that unity is to be secured by blending all varieties of
Christianity into a homogeneous and boneless system by
finding the lowest common denominator of all the Churches.

1 See Charles H. Brent (Editor), Can the Churches Unite ?, New York, 1927 ;
Eclw. S. Woods, Lausanne, New York, 1927 ; James Marchant (Editor), The
Reunion of Christendom, New York, 1929 ;- T. A. Lacey, The One Body and the
One Spirit, New York, 1926.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 659

By such a plan all distinctive truths which, while they have
separated men into denominations, have yet their saving
virtue, become nebulous and undistinguishable. What was
intended to be a body becomes a jelly. Others have sought
a basis for unity through the subjugation by one of all the
others, by compelling all divergent forms of belief and
practice to yield themselves to the dominance of the stronger.
It is. a theory more generally held than might be suspected,
since the tyranny which demands unity by way of subjection
may be as. characteristic of the tiniest sect as of the Holy
Roman Empire itself. The dogmatism of an individual is
even more distasteful than the dogmatism 'of a Council.
Still another favoured theory is that of federation, whereby
denominations remain content with their own segmentary
creeds and methods of worship, while allowing themselves
to be bound together by a tenuous thread of tolerance
such as makes creed and cult of relatively small account.
Fortunately, by no one of these paths is unity realizable, for
a unity brought about through mistaken premises must in
the long-run prove a mischievous failure. In true unity
there is no losing of oneself but the finding of the full self
meet for communion with God. In the obedience required
by loyalty there is no servile subjection to the divine will
but rather the free co-operation of sons. We may be very
sure that the shattering of ecclesiastical unity which resulted
from the attempt to impose on the Church a system in
which the individual possessed no rights was but the
legitimate step towards the recovery of the liberty of the
sons of God. Equally true is it that the riot of individualism
which marked the return swing of the pendulum cannot be
regarded otherwise than as a call to the enfranchised mind
and spirit in the Church to learn unity once again by
voluntary submission to the Chufch's Lord. The synthesis
of the two movements is the harmonious unity so wonder-
fully described by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians
(iv. 15, 1 6) as the growing up of the Church " in all things
unto . Him who is the Head, even Christ, from whom all
the Body fitly framed together, through that which every
joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of
every several part, making the increase of the body unto

66o A BISTORT OF RELIGION

the building up of itself in love." To attain this would be
even beyond that unity suggested in Kipling's tale of
The Ship that Found Herself. First, we see the ship Dimbula,
newly and strongly built, capable in each of its several parts,
yet straining and complaining because no part is self-
adjusted to its neighbour. So rivets and deck- beams,
stringers and ribs, capstan and everything else, groan and
whine and murmur, till one would have supposed the whole
vessel about to go to pieces. Yet at last, after weathering
a tremendous storm, there comes to the ship a strange lull,
out of which emerges the voice: " I am the Dimbula, of
course, and I've never been anything else but that and
a fool!"

3. We may also feel in the religious world increasing
concern with the great question of world peace. Many, it
is true, have expected peace too soon and too easily. It is
often forgotten that peace is the last, crowning gift of God
rather than the first. Love is the foundation, joy the fruit
of love, peace the reward of love. The textual' change in
the angelic song: " Peace on earth to men of goodwill,"
made to read: "Peace on earth, goodwill to men," has
blinded men to the fact that "the fruit of peace is sown to
them that love peace." The cultivation of goodwill, social,
national, and international, is the prerequisite for any possible
attainment of peace. And how slowly has even the desire
for certain kinds of goodwill been formed! International
morals are hardly as yet apparent in the world as a whole,
even the Christian world. Hence the presence of Christ in
the world has first to banish the ignorance which separates
men into potentially hostile camps ; then to banish the
suspicion which is the result of ignorance; and then to
banish the fear which is the consequence of suspicion and
which sooner or later makes war inevitable. Only with
these things banished can we develop the international mind
which in course of time will become an international con-
science, and in due course bring about the possibility of
international co-operation. 1

The promotion of all this is definitely Christian work

1 See W. E. Orchard, Christianity and World Problems, New York, 1925 ;
J. T Shotwell, War as an Instrument of National Policy, New York, 1929.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 661

and all the mechanism by which international co-operation
may be made more effective is a definite application of
Christian principles to human life. Efforts such as are
embodied in the Hague Court, the Kellogg Pact, the League
of Nations, and in the various Conferences called to promote
reciprocal disarmament, may all fail as final solutions; but
only as they fail to be supported by that goodwill on which
the world must ultimately rely for the maintenance of peace.
Just at present perhaps there is most apparent the pre-
liminary need of repressing the hysteria which excites mis-
understanding and hatred and the baser journalism which
battens upon international discord. Till some curb is put
upon the licence of a sensational press, voluntarily through
our national sense of responsibility, no instrument of inter-
national government is likely to prove effective.

4. We may sense, in the fourth place, a gradually
improved relation between the acknowledged representatives
of science and the acknowledged representatives of the
Christian faith. The old fight, waged during the second
half of the nineteenth century, was largely a conflict between
those on the side of science who went beyond their science
to draw deductions fatal to the claims of religion and those
on the side of religion who insisted on attaching to the
faith cosmogonic and historical theories which -they fondly
supposed to have been supernaturally revealed. It is clear
to-day that the long drawn-out conflict between science and
religion was, like some other wars, absolutely needless.
'Each had. its own field and its own lawful claim as being a
revelation of the truth. Science has certainly in many
respects added to the interest of life. To quote from the
Lambeth Encyclical of 1.930 : " We recognize in the modern
discoveries of science whereby the boundaries of know-
ledge are extended, the needs of men are satisfied, and their
sufferings alleviated veritable gifts of God, to be used with
thankfulness to Him and with that sense of responsibility
which such a thankfulness must create." Unfortunately,
for a time, many men of science felt that their discoveries
supported a mechanistic theory of the universe and so denied
.or ignored the God to whom .gratitude was due, with
consequences to .men's sense of obligation such as were

662 A BISTORT OF RELIGION

inevitable. Happily the turn of the tide has come, even
though (to use the simile of Dr. Rufus Jones), like the
raging of a battle on some remote front after the signing of
an- armistice, many of the underlings in science are not yet
aware of .the turn. Sir James Jeans makes the statement:
" To-day there is wide-spread agreement, which on the
physical side of science amounts almost to unanimity, that
the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical
reality. The universe begins to look more like a great
thought than like a great machine." Similarly, the President
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
in 1931, affirmed: " Materialism has practically dis-
appeared. The ancient spiritual goods and heirlooms of
our race need not be ruthlessly scrapped." From the
International Congress of Philosophy at Oxfo'rd in 1930
comes the word: " The materialist front is broken up and
scientists are no longer dominated by the notion that to be
real is to be like a piece of matter and to work like a machine."
And once again, on my own side of the Atlantic, Dr.
Robert Millikan writes: "It is a sublime conception of
God which is furnished by science and one wholly consonant
with the highest ideals of religion, when it represents Him
as revealing Himself through countless ages in the develop-
ment of the earth as an abode for man, and in the age-long
inbreathing of life into its constituent matter, culminating in
man with his spiritual nature and all his God-like powers." *
Naturally, as already hinted, there are here and there
" pockets " of obscurantism, reflecting the influence of ill-
educated men of science and of ill-educated clergy. The
Scoopes' trial in Tennessee is an even darker blot on twentieth
century Christianity than was that of Galileo on that of the
seventeenth. But the light is spreading and this is the
result not only of the labours of biologists, astronomers,
and physicists, but also of philologists, archaeologists,
historians and professors of literary criticism all aided by
the receptivity and insight of a more enlightened* clergy and

1 See Science and, Religion, A Symposium, with Foreword by Michael
Pupin, New York, 1931 ; Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge,
!93i I Charles A. Dinsmore, Religious Certitude in an Age of Science, North
Carolina Press, 1924 ; J. W. Oman, The Natural and the Supernatural, New
York, 1931 ; A. E. Baker, The Gospel and Modernism, Milwaukee, 1929. See
also Bishop Barnes' recent Scientific Theory and Religion, Cambridge, 1933.

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 663

laity than in any previous age of the Church. It is now
seen that whereas a little science disposed men to atheism,
a larger knowledge is bringing men back to God. " No
one knows better," it has been said, "than the man who
works in science how soon we get beyond the boundaries of
the known." To which Professor Munsterburg has added:
" Science is not, and cannot be, and never ought to try to
be, an expression of ultimate reality." I cannot more fitly
sum up the subject than in a further quotation from Dr.
Millikan to the effect that " the first fact which seems to
me altogether obvious and undisputed by thoughtful men
is that there is actually no conflict between science and
religion when each is correctly understood."

5. Fifthly, we see signs of a more vigorous functioning
of Christian activity in all that bears upon the regeneration
of -human society. To quote the words of Washington
Gladden, Christ, in His Church, has " planted a social
standard on the further side of twenty centuries which bids
kings, law givers, prophets and statesmen march on with all
their hosts till they attain it." - And the Church is slowly
proceeding towards this attainment. Not only do we see
within the organized Christianity of our time a keener
corporate interest .in the education of the young, the estab-
lishment of guilds, the organization of conferences and
retreats, the training of the clergy, the building of churches
and cathedrals, and the provision of worship of a worthier
and more dignified sort, but we find the Churches leavening
the community with the sense of obligation in similar
directions. It is now the conscience of the community,
educated up to the Christian standard, which supplies
schools and hospitals, gymnasia and recreation grounds,
organizations for the poor, Red Cross and anti-tuberculosis
societies, and a hundred other community projects which
were once either the monopoly of religious establishments or
neglected altogether. 1

1 See A. D. Lindsa) 7 , and others, Christianity and the Present Moral Unrest,
Oxford, 1927 ; G. A. Studdert Kennedy, The Warrior, the Woman and the
Christ, New York, 1929 ; Frederick C. Grant, The Economic Background of
the Gospels, Oxford, 1926 ; Spencer Miller and J. F. Fletcher, The Church
and Industry, New York, 1931 ; Shailer Mathews, Jesus on Social Institutions,
New York, 1928.

664 A HISTORT'OF RELIGION

So we face the future, not proud, but confident of the
finality of Christ as the one Power of Life through whom
all the bitter waters of the world must eventually be
sweetened. To quote once again from the Lambeth
Encyclical of 1 9 30 : " -The Revelation of Christ was presented
to the world under the forms of Jewish life and thought.
It has found fuller expression, not without some admixture
of misunderstanding, through the thought of Greece and
Rome, and the sentiment of the Teutonic and Slavonic
races. We anticipate that when this same revelation possess
the minds of the Asiatic and African races, these nation's
will still further enrich the Church of Christ by characteristic
statements of the permanent Gospel and by characteristic
examples of Christian virtue and types of Christian worship."

Such a Catholicity is perhaps yet far in the future. For
we need not merely a Christianity universally diffused and
universally accepted, but one which has lost no element of
the full witness made possible by the presence of the divine
Spirit among men. We are even now, in some respects,
more catholic than our controversies might lead the world
to suppose, yet, alas, the majority of Christians still make
more of their differences than of their agreements and
regard getting to the eternal shore " on broken pieces of
the ship " as the normal way of salvation. What a spectacle
it is, as compared with what might be, this fleet of rudely
constructed and ludicrously navigated rafts .and tubs and
hen-coops, proudly marked with sectarian badges, holding
their precarious way upon the sea of life, rather than come
grandly into port together ! It is not, however, sufficient to
be shamed into repentance for our discords ; we ought also
to be ashamed for the treacherous elimination of truths
which seem to us discordant only because we have per-
mitted them to remain unharmonized. It is to our credit
to-day that sectarian banners are commonly raised only over
neglected truths, though, alas, these truths are often dis-
torted into errors for lack of correlation or by reason of
misplaced emphasis. For segmentary truths may be ex-
ceedingly mischievous, not for what they state, but for the
things unstated which they seem to deny. The cure for
sectarianism is not in a spineless religion without theological

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 665

affirmation or organized order, but in a real catholicity,
worthy of the name because expressive of the fact no
exploitation of solitary elements, but the realization in
principle and practice of " the whole counsel of God."
Only thus may we attain the Christianity which provides for
the world " the desirable things " of all the nations.

In addition to catholicity the religion of the future
must reveal a genuinely spiritual quality. There may be
less in the way of " wheels," but "the spirit within the
wheels " must be assured. Since, the Great War there has
been a tendency to secure efficiency by an intensive and
complicated mechanization of religious life. This machinery
has had to be operated by technically trained men and
women . who keep things going by methods startlingly
foreign, to the spirit of Christ. Dean Inge has remarked
that whereas Christ promised that " where two or three were
gathered together " there was He in their midst, nowadays
the first disposition of the " two or three " is to elect a
chairman, a secretary and a treasurer. The craze for up-
to-date organization, with societies to enlist the energies of
men, women and children, ramifying from the congregation
over the nation, claiming the attention of bureaus of secre-
taries and business agents, turning the pastor into a
bewildered director of an administrative system, perpetually
engaged in inaugurating, sustaining, reviving and gal-
vanizing into the appearance of life a multiplicity of societies,
while it has undoubtedly stimulated the physical activity of
the Churches, has done little to increase their moral influence
in the community. Not a little of the world's disbelief
to-day comes from the consciousness of a Church which, in
its lust for competitive organization, in its foolish habit of
depending on statisticalized greatness, in its employment -of
methods which are more ingenious than religious, must
surely be regarded by the devout as an obstacle in the way
of the Kingdom rather than an instrument for the hastening
of its coming.

When the Churches turn the whole force of their
ministries and the loyalty of their congregations into the
task of spiritualizing the atmosphere of the communities
within which they function, men will not be backward in

666 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

savouring the quality of their witness. They will discover
that to withdraw from the noisier world into the secret
place where power is generated for the whole world's use
is by no means to relinquish the service of the active life,
but rather to manifest that new and higher type 'of activity
which is not the less real for being primarily spiritual.
Growing up to the conception of Christian witness, as the
mountain lifts itself to catch the dew wafted from the
height of Hermon to fall upon the hill of Zion, the Church
will be recognized as rising from the dwelling-place of
humanity into that divine mystery -whence grace is distilled
for the helping and healing of all mankind.

The ages of the future, like those of the past, must be
trusted to be agencies of the indwelling Spirit. In spite of
all human lapse and apostasy, through ignorance and per-
versity, God "is working His purpose out." Institutions
will often betray the very divine element through which
they were embodied, yet, as of old, men will see the glint
of the descending City of GoH through the ruin of what is
temporal. Individuals will often enough betray the grace
through which they were meant to grow up to the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ, yet the failure of the
Christian will not obscure the fact that, to those who seek
Him, Christ is an ever-present source of strength. - A
nominally Christian society may still, through wars and
lynchings, and all other forms of social injustice, betray the
ideals which hold forth the promise of a redeemed humanity,
yet the failures will but stimulate to fresh effort through
shame and penitence. The religion which is found hard,
and so remains untried, will insist on being tried before
being condemned. Men who have built on false foundations
or with untempered mortar, when they have seen their
error, will begin again, and learn to build aright. All
through, moreover, those whose eyes are open will discern
the abiding presence and take courage from the slow march
of men towards " the bounds of the waste." " Even now,"
says Dr. R. A. Holland, " the streets of the City of God
turn to gold under errands of duty, and its meanest hovels
shine like celestial mansions when the heavenly Father's
children are greeted in their doorways; and its works, and

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE FUTURE 667

cares, and sympathies the farm, the shop, the mill, the
wharf, hospitals, and schools, and hustings, and council
chambers, and halls of justice all have tints and lustres
that fit them for foundation gems in the City of God.
Immortality has begun."

Faithful and fearless, gratefully mindful of the past, yet
ever confident as to the future, pandering to no man or
movement, or age or race, yet bearing in her hands unfailing
consolation for all, patient with the frailties of men and
with the mysterious providences of God, firm to maintain
and free ever to restate, the Church need never heed the cry
of the panic-mongers that " the foundations are being cast
down", and that we must therefore "flee as a bird unto
their hill." The vision of the New Jerusalem is in our
hearts, and the power to build up on earth according to the
pattern reveale'd from heaven is in our hands. It is ours to
resolve, and to work, until the resolve be realized:

Bring me my bow of burning gold ;

Bring me my arrows of desire ;

Bring me my spear ; O clouds, unfold,

Bring me my chariot of fire !

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hands,

Till I have built Jerusalem

(Within this) green and pleasant land. 1 ' 2

1 William Blake, From the Prophetic Book " Milton."

2 The following books will be found useful on the general subject of this
chapter : J. W. C. Wand, A History of the Modern Church, New York, 1929 ;
Rufus M. Jones, Pathways to the Reality of God, New York, 1931 ; same
author, A Preface to Christian Faith in a New Age, New York, 1932 ; Joseph
Fort Newton (Editor), My Idea of God, Boston, 1926 ; W. E. Orchard, The
Present Crisis in Religion, New York, 1929; Charles L. Slattery (Editor),
Christ in the World To-day, New York, 1927 ; Charles Fiske, Christ and
Christianity, Milwaukee, 1930 ; Harry Emerson Fosdick, Adventurous Religion,
New York, 1926 ; B. H. Streeter, The Buddha and the Christ, New York, 1933
P. T. R. Kirk, The Movement Christwards, Milwaukee, 1931 ; Shailer Mathews,
The Growth of the Idea of God, New York, 1931.

EPILOGUE
! CHAPTER XLIII
Beyond the Veil

history of religion started, as we have seen,
beyond the veil which hangs over the first awakening
of creation into consciousness. It is but natural,
therefore, that the story should pass again behind the veil
whiclj for the present conceals creation's future. The entire
process of creation, like the soul of man itself, goes " from
the great deep to the great deep."

The physicists tell us that there is still reasonable
prospect of much extended experience of humanity upon
this planet. Barring accidents, we are told, man's life here
on earth so far, by comparison with what may still lie
ahead, is but .as the thickness of a postage-stamp measured
against the height of some Alpine peak. Such a forecast,
of course, implies room for much in the way of foolishness,
for all manner of experiments in vice and godlessness. Yet,
if we bear in mind the general line of human evolution, it
gives also much ground for hope. Human nature is not
likely to change radically as to its demands in the way of
spiritual satisfaction, and the opportunity of coming nearer
to the realization of its. ideals is thus immeasurably enhanced.
In view of the progress seen to be possible, our failures and
lapses will cease to be impressive. What now seem to be
mountainous illustrations of loss and defeat will have
dwindled to the proportion of mole-hills. The race still has
its chance to make " a new and a better world," on a scale
which would seem incredible to modern reformers in a
hurry.

This is, of course, as it should be. Religion has, at
least for the present, a definitely terrestrial interest. It is
surely, under present circumstances, the concern of religion

668

BETOND THE VEIL 669

to promote better business, better politics, better social
conditions, better education, in short a wider distribution
of happiness and of health. The effort to transform the
world will be itself transforming. . .

Yet the humanizing and Christianizing of a merely
terrestrial civilization will remain a quite inadequate object
for religion. . When Emerson was asked if he realized that
the end of the world was imminent he responded, ".I can
get along very well without it." We shall all have to learn
to get along without this present world. Be the end near
or distant, our solar system j according to a law of thermo-
dynamics, is " running "down." Therefore, under such
limitations, to speak of progress is only to adopt a new kind
of geocentric philosophy in place of the old one. All we
may ever be able to boast of in the way of progress, be that
progress physical, intellectual or spiritual, must be ultimately
waste effort, if Nature, which began by being our mother,
is at last to prove our undertaker. However great our
courage, we can scarcely fail to be haunted by the proffered
spectacle of final failure, when the cooling sun shall have
removed the last possibility of continued life on this planet.
In the light of hopes excited, enterprises essayed, struggles
to carry on through pain and sacrifice, how ironical must
be the conclusion if, to the Divinity who made possible so,
much frustrated faith, and hope, and love, we have to say
at last: "This one began to build and was not able to
finish! " Or must we postulate of Nature the indifference,
worse than powerlessness, which cries : " I care for nothing;
*all shall go"? In either case, what becomes of all the
edifices, material and moral alike, which have been reared
through aeons of struggle ? In the prospect of so tragic an
end, has the effort 'to carry on the development of character
something beyond the savage level been worth the while?
If the victory towards which we have been fighting our way
be. but illusion, " why urge the long, unequal fight? "

Thus it becomes plain that, unless we desire to connive
at our own delusion, we must look beyond the fate of this
planet to find sufficient stimulus for the doing of the things
we feel instinctively are worth the doing. Hence, the
query, Is there an ascending stream of energy, of a spiritual

670 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

character, to which we belong more than to that descending
stream of material energy to which we are attached in time
and space ? The possibilities of life beyond this planet are
certainly important for the individual and for society alike.
Let us first ask as to the possibilities of personal survival
for the individual.

To begin with, the question will occur, Is it desirable?
We can hardly accept the statement of Eucken that as the
Beyond has retired more and more into the background,
we have needed it less and less. and that the doctrine of
immortality has lost its roots in the soul of the modern
man. Huxley, on the other hand, was wont to say that the
older he got the less he relished the idea of extinction. It
is, of course, true that human life must find its meaning
" through work in time and the experience of time," but
this life in time must be rooted in an order which exists
beyond time. It is a wrong conception of life as well as a
wrong conception of immortality which is responsible for
the sad lines of Robert Buchanan :

Perchance He will not wake us up, but when

He sees us look so happy in our rest,

Will murmur, Poor dead women and dead men,

Dire was their doom and weary was their quest

Wherefore awake them unto life again ?

Let them sleep on untroubled, it is best.

or the still gloomier and more rebellious words of James
Thomson :

We do not ask a longer term of strife,

Weakness, and weariness, and nameless woes ;

We do not claim renewed and endless life,

When this which is our torment here shall close,

An everlasting, conscious inanition !

We yearn for speedy death in full fruition,

Dateless oblivion and divine repose.

When the present life is of such a quality as to make ;us
crave for " dateless oblivion," there is little more to be said.
One must find meaning in the life which now is, before we
can aspire to have more of the same. Dr. Rufus Jones
well says: " The appraisal of life as something worthy of
immortality is the first step toward the discovery of solid

BETOND THE VEIL 671

grounds for the faith that it will be immortal." Christ
especially stressed the need of knowing " eternal life " here
and now, in order that men might embrace " the glory of
going on," and Harnack is faithful to that teaching when
he asserts: " Christianity is one simple and sublime thing.
It is eternal life in the midst of time." We may most of us
have been repelled by the crudeness of the symbols men
have accepted or invented to bring home to themselves the
character of the future life. But all who feel a real zest for
life, whether on its intellectual or its moral side, are able to
rise above the symbols to the thing symbolized with in-
stinctive faith that the belief in personal survival, which has
been man's oldest and most continuous conviction from
prehistoric times, will outlast all assaults of doubt.

But another question raises its head: Desirable or not,
is personal survival likely? Some have maintained the
existence of reasonable evidence, apart from that accepted
by Christians on the ground of the resurrection of Christ.
Huge masses of literature, of more or less value, have been
compiled by Societies of Psychical Research, and evidence
has been proffered by Spiritualists as to the return of many
a traveller from beyond the bourne of death. Such, evidence
must be allowed its due weight, and sceptics are not entitled
to more than specific disproofs or the expression of their
own agnosticism. To most minds the evidence hitherto
adduced falls short of constituting proof. We may never
be able to demonstrate scientifically the continuance of
personal existence beyond the grave. Yet of recent years
not a few men, distinguished in science and philosophy,
have expressed themselves hopefully as to the scientific
reasonableness of such a doctrine. For example, we have
the words of Bergson to the effect that survival is not only
possible but probable: " In its passage through the matter
which it finds here, consciousness is tempering itself like
steel, and preparing itself for a more efficient action, for an
intenserlife." According to Hoffding, "The whole course
of evolution is to increase and intensify values and it does
so by bringing out that which was potential or latent, so as
to make it actual or real." Or, to quote Professor William
McDougall of Harvard, " The predominance of mind in the

672 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

later stages of the evolutionary process, the indications of
purposive striving at even the lowest levels, the combination
of marvellous persistency of type with indefinite plasticity "
are all predictive of a destiny beyond the material universe.
If we dare say no more, we may at least affirm that the
theory of personal survival is so reasonable and so in accord
with the demands and intuitions of our nature, that the
shaping of the present life on any other hypothesis must
inevitably limit the character of our ideals and so the range
of our experience. In any case, the denial, in the name of
science, of the possibility of persisting personality is gratui-
tous. As Mr. H. G. Wells points out in the early part of
his Outline of History, there was a point in the evolution of
life when that life was associated- with water, as its home,
its medium, and its " fundamental necessity. It seemed
demonstrable that life must perish as soon as living things
climbed above the water-line, just" as jelly-fish dry up and
perish on the sea-beaches. Yet some instinct in the climbing
organism proved victorious over the menace of death. Life
did climb and succeeded in adjusting itself to other con-
ditions. It is at least as reasonable to believe that this will
prove true of the life which .has become valuable enough to
the cosmic purpose to pass beyond the conditions of its
present physical organism. As Dr. J. A. Hadfield puts it:
" The mind may henceforth become indifferent to the
disasters which, in course of nature, are bound to overtake
the body, and may hope to survive its destruction and decay
and perhaps thereafter to find or create for itself a
' spiritual body ' adapted to a different sphere .of existence
and to other modes of life." '

Of course, no amount of probability so far constitutes
what the scientist can be asked to accept as demonstration.
The doctrine of the future life is, for the Christian, based
on faith, not on sight. This is as it should be. It were not
well, in the interest of the present, to be too sure about the
future. Two modern poets have dealt with the return of
Lazarus from the grave, as recorded in the Gospel, and
each has stressed the fact that the revenant did not help the
living with any revelation as to the condition of the dead.
Tennyson says: " He told it not, or something sealed the

BETOND THE VEIL 673

lips of that evangelist," while Browning goes further and
shows how the earthly life of Lazarus himself was put out
of focus by his experience beyond the gates of death. For
the Christian, I repeat, both the fact of the future life and
its conditions are left to faith. And the experience of the
" Dark Chamber" with faith as handmaid, is in every way
salutary. For faith ultimately rests on love. " We love
His .stars too well to fear the night." For the present it is
enough that man, the most unfinished of created beings,
should feel the urge of life beyond this mortal experience,
that he should be able to confess with " Clean ":

We know this, which we had not else perceived,
" That there's, a world of capability

For joy, spread round about us, meant for us,
Inviting us, and still the soul craves all,
And still the flesh replies, Take no jot more
Than ere thou climbest the tower to look abroad.

Feeling this, he is content to die in the fai'th that at the end
of this life's volume the words are written: " To be continued

in our next"

As to the where and what of the future life religion has
been content to teach men in parables. Sometimes, un-
fortunately, the parable has been mistaken for the fact, the
symbol for the reality. Insistence on the retention of
outworn symbols suggestive of the life to come is responsible
for the distaste or even disgust with which men have viewed
the future. Possibly as many have been bored with popular
conceptions of the Christian heaven as have been terrified
by conceptions of the Christian hell. The request of the
little child, trained in the hard school of Sabbatarian piety,
" Mother, if I'm good, do you think I shall be allowed to
leave heaven on Saturday afternoons to play in hell?"
reflects the natural result of siich conceptions. The entire
story of religion ought to teach us to escape from mis-
conceived finalities in ideas as to the future life, on and ever
onward to the grasping of more adequate symbols. In the
advance from primitive religion men won a higher hope
for the dead than that of a mere gathering in the sub-
terranean dwelling-place of the ancestral shades. It was
again a great advance to envisage those happy fields where
2u

674 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

to hunt and fight constituted man's main activity, even
though there was pleasure in quaffing mead from the skulls
of fallen foes. It was a still greater advance when heaven
became a series of spheres nicely graded to reward men for
certain kinds and degrees of primitive virtue. So men
passed to the grasping of other symbols of bliss, to exchange
these in course of time for others still. In the first Christian
centuries these symbols were still sufficiently crude. There
were holdovers from various stages of Hebrew eschatology,
intrusions from the mythologies of Greece and Rome,
millennial dreams from the Far East. Some views were as-
material as the one described by Papias, in which the
Kingdom is depicted as a gigantic vine with a thousand
branches, each branch with a< thousand bunches of grapes,
and each grape bursting with a superabundance of delicious
wine. There is little to choose between a heaven of this
pattern and that of Muhammad which so well recommended
itself to the Arab's. And we are still so close to these ideas
that many not to speak of the negro children in " The
Green Pastures " who fin/1 in heaven a celestial " fish-fry "
are content with the literalism which demands of God
reward eternal in the shape of actual harps and crowns and
palms and streets of gold.

Nevertheless, the presence of " the eternal primitive "
is not without the suggestion "of an inspiration vouchsafed
according to our several needs, a means of grace, provided
we do not mistake our metaphors for realities. To one,
heaven is essentially rest after toil, the folding of quiet
hands after a life of cark and care and drudgery. To
another it is the promise of fuller activity, after a life of
restraint and frustrated effort. To another it is the possibility
of fuller knowledge, after years of vain beating against the
closed portals of enticing mystery. To another, hampered
and fettered by the clogging weight of a -besetting sin, it is
the proffer of freedom, advance in moral strength and
holiness/ To another it is ~ greater amplitude of life; to
another larger capacity and experience of joy; to still
another larger opportunity for fellowship. No symbol,
however faulty, may completely disguise the essential validity
of these aspirations after life, since all are yearning for

BETOND THE VEIL . 675

more abundance of life, and since for all Christians the
flying goal of life is the prayer that we may " be filled with
the fullness of Him who filleth all in all." It is thus that
religion stimulates- the desire and quest for fullness and at
the same time both furnishes and spiritualizes the terms in
which we express the heart's desire.

Yet are we justified in finding in the doctrine of im-
mortality something more than the fulfilment of human
yearning. Immortality is the consummation of that hope
which runs through the whole story of religion, from the
primitive man's first " sense of the numinous " to the full
manifestation of God in Jesus Christ, the faith, namely,
that human life is to be lifted up to fellowship with the
divine, even as the divine life' has reached down to contact
with the human. If the infinite God can so project Himself
into the experience of the creature, there need be no longer
fear lest a jealous God should keep to Himself the over-
brimming chalice of immortal life. A divine fullness has
become our right, since God has established His own right
to immanence in creation. It is on this ground of the
Incarnation that the best thought of the" day has insisted so
passionately that life's enlargement is assured beyond the
power of death to arrest it. 'Love must necessarily fulfil
itself because of its likeness to the love of. God. It is no
longer blasphemy to. say, " O thou soul of my soul, I shall
clasp thee again." Knowledge must necessarily have its
full fruition, so that here below, without distrust or im-
patience, we may do our work- even underground work,
never to be revealed to or rewarded by man, work " aiming
at a million," even though it may seem to miss its unit.
Work, again, of every worthy sort, is made possible, because
it is in line with what God asks of His partners. The
artist in John Masefield's poem, Dauber^ who, striving to
paint the sea-scape aright, works as a common sailor and
falls from the slippery mast, expresses but the truth when
he cries: " It shall go on "

The eager faces glowered red like coal ;

They glowed, the great sea glowed, the sails, the mast.

" It will go on," he cried aloud, and passed.

6 76 A HISTORY OF RELIGION

Even unfulfilled hopes, and our very failures, have promise
of fulfilment in the hope that

All we have willed, or hoped, pr dreamed of good shall exist ;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power,

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the earth to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; '

Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by and by.

But we may go further than the thought of the fulfilment
of the individual life. Many have perhaps failed to give
complete expression to the Christian doctrine of immortality
because too limited in their concern with the implications
of the Incarnation as they bear .upon the individual. The
Creed contains the doctrine of the Communion of Saints as
well as that of the Resurrection of the Body. The desire
for reunion with a loved one, or the desire to fill one's cup
to overflowing with knowledge, must not be placed out of
relation with the fulfilment of an eternal purpose of which
the perfecting of the individual is but a part. The faith
which looks to heaven as merely the opportunity to secure
personal ends, however exalted, is as defective as. the
Buddhism which makes nothing at all of these individual
perfections. The purpose which goes on is cosmic, and we
go along with it, because the cosmos cannot be complete
without its parts, particularly those parts which represent
the supreme gains of the evolutionary process.

Here is the triumphant issue the envisaging of which,
and the attainment of which, constitute the ultimate aim of
religion. It has had as yet no embodiment on earth, nor
ever can have, though millions have lived in the light of
the vision, seeing that which is invisible and beholding as
present that which is still far off. The several stages of
religious history catch glimpses of the issue, but only to
betray it, and where men rest content with the form of their
betrayal there Christ becomes Antichrist and their Church
the " harlot " rather than the " Bride." Fortunately, how-
ever, the Church has seldom lacked its seers to recall men's
hearts from the travesties of the time to the substance of

BETOND THE VEIL 677

the eternal vision -the eternally ideal which is also the only
real. To one of these we may turn, in conclusion, as to the
stimulus of a prophetic eye, in order that this faulty
survey of the faith of men from the beginning of
time may close upon a note not all unworthy of the
theme.

For it is Dante, and Dante alone, who with wings
divinely strong, beyond the power of any Icarus to emulate
him, soars into the upper regions of religious philosophy
that he may suggest for us something of the comprehensive
sweep of the Christian faith as it bears upon the world of
reality. In the Divina Commedia I find the dramatization
of the whole process I have sought to keep in mind and to
describe. The poet's theme is nothing less than that of the
infinite energy of the divine Will, fulfilling the purpose of
divine Wisdom, sustained by the inexorable might of divine
Love: "the love that moves the sun in heaven and all
the stars." ..

- 'All this, which is the expression of the very nature and
character of Almighty God, is seen as operant on the cosmic
material a material which, however refractory, has affinity
with -the will, and reason, and heart of God. But the
creature's will is as yet weak and errant; the creature's
reason gropes uncertainly with unopened eyes ; the creature's
love is as yet self-centred and perverse. If Creation, to
fulfil the Creator's plan, is to be taken up into .partnership,
that the universe may become- indeed a cosmos, one har-
monious and perfected whole, then Go.d must lift up His
handiwork to the level of Himself. How may this be
effected ? To lower the divine standard in order to make
the creature inheritor of a heaven less splendid than the
dwelling-place of God, is to do violence to the fidelity of
the Creator to His -plan and to contradict the optimism of
Almighty Love. To crush the creature into servile com-
pliance with the Supreme Will is to do violence to the
freedom which is part of man's essential endowment. What
other course is conceivably open except the process of
divine education which employs judgement as the means of
maintaining before the eyes of men the standards of divine
holiness and trains men to aspire to and love these standards

678 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

through the patience and love and faith which represent the
method of the Cross ?

Hence the ultimate destiny of each and all must be
viewed in relation to the creature's attitude in the presence
of the Creator's untiring love. The will that revolts against
the eternal law, imagining that persistence in revolt will
leave man free to sin or immune from suffering for sin,
must learn the lesson that we are by our very nature bound
to suffer, not merely for sinning but by sinning. The rebel
soul thus finds hell to be the reaction of his own attitude to
the Will which is alone his peace. Then, secondly, the will
which repents its wilfulness, but suffers still from the
weakness which the habit of sin has left behind, must be
sustained, as well as disciplined, until the weakness is
outgrown. Thirdly, the will which, without other Com-
pulsion than that of love, has learned the peace which flows
from obedience to law (the law of its own nature as well
as the Jaw of God) enters into the fullness of joy in a
Paradise which is essentially nearness to the Throne of
God.

Two things in all this are held to be fundamental. The
first is that God evermore respects the freedom of His
creatures' being, even as He must respect His own. The
gains of evolution are in this respect absolute, not wantonly
to be tossed aside out of indifference or despair. God does
not create, as was imagined did Brahma, worlds which are
outbreathed in sport and again inbreathed as things no more
substantial than a mirage. In the lowest depths of hell, as
well as in the spheres of Paradise, the optimism of divine
Love holds fast that which the far-seeingness of divine
Faith first launched into being. God is indeed " the Hound
of Heaven" who through all the aeons follows after the
soul which seeks to evade pursuit. The soul at last is
fain to confess:

Halts by me that footfall :

Is my gloom after all

Shade of His hand outstretched caressingly ?

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He whom thou seekest !

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.

BETOND THE VEIL . 679

Thus the immortality of man, which secures the infinite
spaciousness needful to achieve his ultimate perfection, is
not merely the answer vouchsafed to man's own lust for
life, but springs out of God's fidelity to His own primal
purpose, regard for " His own Name's sake," as well as
regard for the satisfaction of His children.

The second point is that a point already stressed-
God's regard for personal values must always be considered
in close relation to His regard for the entire cosmic plan.
Individual perfection is conditioned by its fitting into the
whole scheme. It is only thus that we can round off our
conception of the universal fellowship we have tried all
along to keep in mind. Individual evolution and social
evolution reach their consummation at one single point.
So the pains of .the Inferno are pains resulting from man's
selfish disregard of the social rights violated by his sin. In
proportion as he sins against society he sinks to the lowest
vortex of self-abasement. The miserly and the spendthrift
lose their very names, the things which most of all mark
man's individuality; thieves lose the confidence which even
thieves crave on the part of their fellows; liars lose that
faith in the word, of man which even liars know to be the
necessary foundation of society. And at the awful focus of
the horrible funnel, in the thick-ribbed ice, is Lucifer, the
last embodiment of self, the supreme traitor against;; the
divine plan, alone but for the three typical traitors -he
macerates in his infernal jaws, Cassius, Brutus and Judas,
betrayers of the purpose which would have had all men'
under one rule of Church and State. Then, as we survey
the paths which. encircle the Mount"' of Purgatory, we see
men climbing, and learning as they climb, the corrective of
their former sins in the discipline of healing fellowship.
The proudjean on one another's shoulders, who once chose
to walk alone; the envious through purged eyes learn to
look in love upon their fellows. And so on, till all the
weakness of sin, which once kept men separate,- is done
away, and entry is permitted into the beauties of the terrestrial
Paradise. Then, once again, we see in the Paradiso men
discovering their true joy in ever closer fellowship as they
mount from planetary sphere to planetary sphere, and so on

68o A HISTORY OF RELIGION

towards the Beatific Vision. In every sphere some form of
celestial fellowship is related to some special symbol of
fellowship. The theologians who formed factions in the
lower life are here to be seen hand in hand, making truth's
perfect circle, a circle which revolves so quickly that every
single truth is blended into a great wheel of stainless light.
Martyrs in the heaven of Mars form themselves into the
glorious Gross of Paradise, the cross which is the eternal
symbol of redeeming love. Rulers in Jupiter spell out
together the motto : "' Love righteousness, ye that are judges
of the earth," and form the symbolic figure of the imperial
eagle. Mystics, again, in Saturn, make, through the fellow-
ship of their ecstasy, the celestial ladder on which angels
ascend and descend between heaven and earth. So from
sphere to sphere men's spirits are borne from one glory of
communion to another, till at the last the goal of all desire
is reached, where all souls are knit together into the
great White Rose of Bliss, which opens to. the light
streaming upon it from the face of God, and sends up
into that face the fragrance of a perfected human
devotion.

What a vision of the cosmic plan is here presented,
fruit of all the toil of endless aeons, victory of Infinite Love's
eternal patience, Rosa mystica, with every petal, perfect in
its individual beauty, blended into, the one perfection of the
universal. This is indeed the flower of which the poet
sings, in answer to the question, "What does it take to
make a rose ? "

The God that died to make it knows,
It takes the world's eternal wars,
It takes the sun and all the stars,
It takes the might of heaven and hell,
And the everlasting love as well.-

It is the making of this which constitutes the plot of that
cosmic epic of which, from point to point, we have been
trying to follow the development. Vision may well " fail
the towering fantasy," however we view the stupendous
theme, whether we look back to beginnings, or forward to
their consummation. Yet, fail as we may or falter, we are

BETOND THE 7EIL 68 1

inevitably heartened when we turn our eyes from what is
little and local to gain even the faintest glimpse of the plan
which embraces all "from, life's minute' beginnings/' up to
the glory of Creation and Creator at one. We are heartened
to discover that all the tremendous reaches of time, when
the universe must have seemed, not only lifeless and, void,
but aimless, were nevertheless not outside the range of the
operation of the divine Spirit; that all those countless
aeons when life was slowly climbing out of the water and
the mire to inherit the dry land arid the upper air, were
not left to the dominion of the dragons which " tare one
another in the primeval slime," but were already instinct
with purpose ; that God was not leaving Himself without
witness even in the days when the first appearance of man,
for millennium after millennium, seemed to produce nothing
better than the Cro-Magnon; that, in all the ages since,
our impatience is rebuked when we measure the changes
our own scant history has been able to record of the upward
way. Even to think on these things is to find faith in the
forward movement of -ages still to come. Are we not
therefore justified in declaring that the ultimate summing-up
of the. epic must correspond worthily with the opening
verse of "Genesis which declares: " In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth " ?

Looking expectantly ahead towards the infinite goal,
with all creation represented as the Four Living Ones
around the Throne, with all the religious movements of
past, present and to come, represented by the Four and
twenty Elders, and with all the angelic host, to the outmost
rim of infinity, representative of all that lies beyond our
tiny but most significant planet, even though we now see
but through a glass darkly, and not face to face, we may
surely even now join in the great " Amen chorus " of
creation, and confess: "Worthy is the Lamb that hath
been slain to receive the power and riches and .wisdom and
might and honour and glory and blessing." To share in
that song is not only to discover the vindication of man's
religious instinct in the eternal issue, but to pay reverence
to that instinct as it has existed from the beginning the
germ of all the values which it has been the mission of

682 A HISTORT OF RELIGION

history to produce and to conserve. It is to recognize the
sanctity of the primitive man's first " sense'of the numinous" ;
it is to triumph in the perfected work :

Hallelujah to the Maker !
Hallelujah, man is made ! :

THE END

INDEX

. . A. .

Abbasid Khalifate, the, 538 ff.

Abd al-Malik, 537

Abelard," 571

Abhidharma, 330 ff.

Aborigines (of China), the, 142 f.

Abu, Mt., 324

Abu Bekr, 535

Achaemenians, the, 240, 245 f .

Acoka, 331 fi., 400

Acosmism, 41

Acvaghosha, 334, 367

Agvamedha, the, 55, 311

Agvins, the, 153

Adad, 212

Adams, Henry, 8, 37

Adapa, 209 f .

Adi Granth, the, 347

Adonis and Venus, 56

Aelia Capitolina, 434, 480

Aeneas, 72

Aeneid, the, 73, 86

.flDschylus, 36, 271 f.

Aesir, the, 183, 187 .

Afghanistan, 543

Africa (religion of), -112 ff. ; (Chrisr

tian missions in), 651 f.
Afrits, 155
Agaos, the, 116
Age to Come, the, 457, 465
Agni, 39, 306 f. -
Ahunaver,.ihe, 246, 247
Ahuramazda, 37, 237 ff .
Ahuras, the, 237
Aldan,- St., 513
Ainus, the, 132 ff., 387
Akbar the Great, 546
AMba, Rabbi, 434 f .
Akkadians, the, 203
Alaric, 493
Alaska, 160
Alban, St., 508
Albertus Magnus, 573
Albigenses, the, 486
Alexander the Great, 272, 331
Alexander Severus, 480
Alexander IV, Pope; 6o"5
Alexander VI, Pope, 576, 582.
Alexander, H. B., 171, 246, 294

Alexandria, 425 f., 486

Alfar (Elves), 183

Alfred, King, 557

Algonquins, the, i6o,/i67 f.

Ali, 527, 584

Allah, 154, 530

Allat, 526

Almanzor, 549

Almohades, the, 439, 549

Almoravides, the, 439

Almsgiving (Muhammadan), 532

Alop'en (Olopun), 521

Alphege, St., 517

Al Sirat, 75, 530

Alva, the Duke of, 588

Amaterasu^ 382

Ambarvalia, the, 282

Ambrose, St., 501 f.
. Amen (god), 280 ff.

Amenhotep IV (Ikhnatunj, 12, 232
' Amerindians, the, 158 ; (Amer.
empires), 200 ff .

Amesha - spentas (Amshaspands),
the, 239

Amida, 379 f ., 394 f .

Amitabha, 374

Amoraim, the, 436

Amos, 422

Amulets, 35

Anabaptists, the, 588

Anahita, 238 f .

Anawrahta, King, 403 f .

Ancestor worship, 150, et passim
1 Anesaki, Professor, 395 f .

Angiakok, the, 58, 166

Angkor, 146

Anglicanism (in the U.S.A.), 630 f .,
648 f .

Angora, 547

Angra-mainyu, 37, 242

Animatism, 32

Animism, -33, 145, 154, 157, 256, et.
passim

Anjiro, 610
' Anne, Queen, 619

Annunaki (Igigi), the, 205

Anselm, St., 572

Anskar, St., 515 f.

Anthesteria, the, 262, 267

Anthropomorphism, 25
683

684

INDEX

Antiochus Epiphanes, 426

Antoninus Pius, 435, 480

Antony, St., 499

-Anubis, 76, 220, 225

Aphrodite, 257, 258, 283

Apis, 220

Apocalypse, the, 472 fi., 505, 681

Apollinarius, 496

Apollo, 257, 258, 283

Apologists, the, 483 f.

Apop, 227

Apostolic Fathers, the, 482 f.

Arabia, 151, 153, 524

Arabian Learning, 541 f .

Arabian Nights, The, 542

Aranyakas, the, 312

Araucanians, the, 161

Archangels (Muhammadan), the,

53'
Avda Viraf, The Book of, 44, 246,

251

Ares, 259

Arianism, 495

Aristotle, 270

Arms, 494 f .

Aries, the Council of, 508

Armenians, the, 635

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 326, 379

Arnold, Matthew, 186

Artemis, 257, 258

Aryans, the, 303

Ashanti, 122, 124 f.

Ashur,.2i2

Asia Minor, 151 -

Assassins, the, 537, 544

Assouan (Syene), 218

Assyrians, the, 212

Astrology, 49 " -

Athanasius, St., 494 f., 499 f.

Atharva veda, the, 63, 305

Atitigi, the, 104

Atlas, Mt, 115

Attila, 493

Attis, 152

Atun, 42, 222, 233, 236 ; (Hymn
to), 236

Aufklarung, the, 446, 621

Augsburg, The Peace of, 599

Augury, 50

Augustine of Canterbury, St., 512 f.

Augustine of Hippo, St., 503 ff.

Augustus, Emperor, 280, 284, 286

Australasia, 95 f . ; (Christian mis-
sions in), 652

Australia, 96 f .

Avalokitefvara, 372, 377

Avesta, the, 73, 244 f .

Avignon, 597

Ayesha, 529, 534

Aztecs, the, 292, 294 f .

Baal (Melek, Adon), 154, 204

Baalim and Ashtaroth, 38, 421

Babar, 546

Babism, 5, 550

Babylonia, 212 ; (ethics of), 211 f. ;

(Jews in), 436

Babylonish Captivity, the, 577
Bacchus, 284 f.

Back to Christ Movement, the, 460
Bagdad, 541
Bahai, 550 f .
Balder, 57, 183, 186
Balfour Declaration, the, 447
Baltic Slavs, the, 192, 197 f.
Baltimore, Lord (and Maryland),

626

Bantus, the, 112, 118
Barangay, 162

Barbarians, Conversion of the, 506 ff .
Bark (of the Dead), the, 75
Bar Kochba, 434, 480
Barlaam and Josaphat, 326
Barmecides, the; 541
Barnett, Dr. L. D., 304
Barsom, 247, 250
Basil of .Caesarea, St., 500
Basset, Dr. Rene, 115
Batchelor, Archdeacon John, 132 f.
Bayazid, 547

Beautiful, Idea of the, 271
Bede, the Venerable, 514
Bejas, the, 116
Bekh, 220
Bel Marduk, 57
Belomancy, 51
Beltane, 117

Benedict, St., 567 -

Berbers, the, 112, 114, 218
Bergson, 671

Bernard, St., 45, 563 f., 574
Bhagavadgita, the, 319, 336
Bhakti, 337, 342, 349
Bhuts, 138
Bible, Translations of the, 580, 584,

591, 602, 614
Bird divinities, 175
Birinus, 514

Bishop, Mrs. Isabella Bird, 133
Bishopric of Jerusalem Question,

the, 629

Blackfeet, the, 163, 167
Black Stone, the, 524
Blake, William, 6157
Blomfield, Bishop, 638
Blood, the, 68, 92, 113
Bodhidharma, 369, 373, 395
Bodhisattvas, 371, 372
Bogoris, 518

INDEX

685

Boleyn, Anne, 591
Bolivia, 168

Bon (Pon) religion, the, 140 f., 376
Boniface, St., 5, 182, 190, 514 f .
Boniface VIII, Pope, 576
Book of the Dead, the, 229 f .
Booth, General William, '644 f .
Borromeo, Cardinal, 598 f .
Bo-tree, the, 327, 401
Brahm, 310
Brahma, 338

Brahmanas, the, 303, -310 f.
Brahmans, 309 f .
Brahma-samaj, the, 347 f.
Bray, Dr., 620
Brazil, Missions in, 607
Breath, the, 68
^Bresail, Isle of, 179 -
'Bride (of God), the, 215, 287
Bridge (of the Dead), the, 75
Brigit, St., 177, 1 88
Brihaspati, 307

Britain, the Conversion of, 507 ff.
Broad Church School, the, 641
Brooke, Rupert, 28
de Brosses, 35
Brotherhood of St. Andrew, the,

649 f.

Browning, Mrs., 85
Browning, Robert, 22, 87, 456, 462,

481, 613, 673, 676
Bubastis, 220, 222
Buchanan, Robert, 670
Bucranium, the, 152
Buddha, the, 229 ; see also Gautama
Buddha avatar, the, 341
Buddhaghosha, 332
Buddhas, the, 372
"Bulgaria, the Conversion of, 517 f. ;

(the Church in), 635
Bull-roarer, the, 54, 97, 98
Bundahish, the, 341, 346
Burial of the Dead, 80 f ., 354
Burmese monasteries, 405 f .
Butler, Bishop, 13, 622

Caivism, 343 f .

Qakti, 38, 69, 153, 341

akya Muni, see Gautama

Caliban, 22, 32, 36, 39, 66

Calling back the Dead, 72

Calvin, John, 586 f .

Calvinism, 587, 589

Cambodia, 144, 146 ; (Buddhism

in), 411

Camkaracharya, 318, 336
Camulos, 174 f.
Cannibalism, 122

Canon, the (Buddhist), 330, 332
Canon, the (Jain), 324
Canossa, 561
Canterbury, 513
Capucins, the, 596
Caracalla, 480
Caractacus, 507
Caroline Is., the, 107
Caroline Divines, the; 604
. Carpini, Joha de Piano, 545, 569
Carruth, Professor, 6
Caste, 309

Cathedral Builders, the, 574
Catherine, St. (of Genoa), 23
Catholic Apostolic Church, the,

643

Catholicity, the Idea of, 288, 644
Cerberus, 76
Cerealia, the, 280
Ceres, 283
Ceylon, 400 S.
Chad, St., 514
Chaitanya, 345
Chalcedon, Council of, 497 '
Chamorro Religion, the, 107
Chandragupta, 331
Charlemagne, 440, 515 f., 560
Charles Martel, 515, 560
Charles V, Emperor, 584, 588, 595
Charles I, of England, 603
Charles II, of England, 604
Charvakas, the, 321
Chase, Stuart, 291
Cherokees, the, 163
Chesterton, G. K., 623
Chi, 351

Chichen Itza, 295 f .
Ch'ien Lung, 378
Child Emperors, 391
Children's Crusade, the, 565
China vule, the, 121
Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, 84
Chinese Religions, 380 ff.
Chinvad Bridge, the, 75
Chipanda, the, 121
Christianity, 151, 450-522, 556-682
Chrysostom, St., 500
Chthonic Religion, 64
Chuang Tzu, 364
Ch'un Ch'iu, the, 360
Chunda, 329
Chung Yung, the, 360
Church of England (in nineteenth

century), the, 638
Church Missionary Society, the, 625
Cicero, n, 176, 285
Cistercians, the, 568
City of God, St. Augustine's, 505, 561
"City of Refuge, the, 106, 109
Civa, 306, 338 f .

686

INDEX

Clement of Alexandria, St., 9, 17,

269, 486 -

Clement of Rome, St., 455, 456, 482
Cloistered Emperors, 391
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 656
Cloyis, 511 f.
Cluny, 568
Codrington, Dr. R. H., 34
Coffin Texts, the, 235
Coifi, 190

Coke, Dr., 623, 630
Colenso, Bishop, 641
Colet, John, 577
Collegia, Roman, 279, 283, 286
Colonial Episcopate, the, 631
Colossians, Epistle to the, 484
Columba, St., 510 f.
Columban, St., 514
Coming of Christ, the, 466
Commemoration of the Dead, the,

14, 18

Commodus, 480
Commonwealth, the, 608 f.
Communion of Saints, the, 87
Communism, 14, 18
Comparative Religion, the Science

of, 657

Comte, Auguste, 2, 15, 35
Concordat, the, 619
Confucian Classics, the, 359 f .
Confucianism, 362 f .
Confucius, 350 ff., 357 ff.
Constance, Council of, 581
Constantine the Great, 435, 489 f.
Constantino II, 492
Constantinople, 444, 490, 496, 547,

583

Constantius, 492
Contarini, Cardinal, 596
Coriti-Rossini, Professor, 116
Controversies, Early Christian, 492 fi.
Coptic Church, the, 636 .
Cordova, 539, 549
Cormac, 51
Cortes, 607

Councils, the Four General, 492 ff.
Counter-Reformation, the, 595
Coverdale, Miles, 591
Cow, the Divine, 54
Coyote, the, 163
Craddhas, 79, 84, 120, 308
Cranmer, Archbishop, 590 f .
Creation, The Book of, 438
Creation story, the, 208, 214 ;

(Hindu). 338
Creeds, 30 ff. ; (Zoroastrian), 249 ;

(Christian), 492 ff.
Cremation (of the Dead), 81
Criobolium, the, 287
Cromwell, Oliver, 603

Cromwell, Thomas, 592
Crop-magic, 57 f.
Crow, the Three-legged, 55
Crucifixion of the Twenty-six, the,

610
Crusades, the, 440 f., 544 f ., 562 ff.,

577
Cudras, 309

Cult, 46!

Curtin, Jeremiah, 129 f .

gvetambaras, the, 324
ybele, 152, 284
Cyprian, St., 488 f .
Cyril and Methodius, 518

Dabistan, the, 243

Daevas, 237

Daibutsu of Nara, the, 390

Dakhma, the, 80, 248

Dalai Lama, the, 377

Dance, the, 59 ; (Indian), 164

Dandolo, 565

Dante, 7, 18, 44, 61, 87, 247, 251,

480, 491, 523 f., 574 ff.,' 677 ff.
Daramulun, 98
Darwin, Charles, 90, 642
Day of Atonement, the, 425
Day of Yahweh, the, 423, 433
Decius, 480, 48i> 489
Declaration (of Indulgence), the, 619
Decretals of St. Isidore, the, 559
Dgdu, 193

Definitions of Religion, n f .
Deification of the Dead, the, 76 f.
Deism, 621
Delawares, the, 160
Demeter, 259, 262, 263
Democritus, 270

Denes, the, 167 . "

Dengyo Daishi, 392
Deus, 24

Deuteronomic Code, the, 426
Dewey, Dr. John, i
Dhammapada, the, 333
Dharma, 329
Dhyana, 369, 373
Diana, 277

Diaz, Bernal, 292, 293
Diocletian, 480, 481, 508
Dionysos, 259, 262, 265
Dioscuroi, the, 282, 307
Disciples of Christ, the, 646
Discovery of the Christians, the, 611
Disestablishment, Acts of, 643
Dispersion, the, 469
Disposal of the Dead, the, 79 ff.
Divination, 49 ff., 106, 150, 177,

189, 352, 384

INDEX

687

Dog, the, 75, 245
Dokyo, 391

Doll^pger, Dr. von, 637
Dominic, St./ 569 f .
, Dominicans, the, 568, 570!., 596,

608, 612
Domitian, 479
Donation of Constantine, the, 491,

559

Donatism, 508
Dort, the Synod of, 602
Doukhobors, the, 634
Dragon, the, 54
Drake, Sir Francis, 626
Drama, the, 59
Dravidians, the, 135, 137
Dreams, 86
Dreyfus Case, the, 446
Druids, the, 176
Druj, 252

Dualism, 37, 40, 239
Duat, the, 223
Duel, the, 52
Duns Scotus, 573
Duperron, Anquetil, 244
Dutch Protestantism, 588 f.
Dwarfs, 183
Dyaus, 306
Dynamism, 33 f.

Ea, 207

East India Company, the, 614 1.

Eckhart, 574

Eclectic Theory, the, 5

Ecuador, 168

Eddas, the, 187, 188

Edict of Milan, the, 479, 480, 489,
492

Edward I, of England, 566

Edward VI, of England, 593

Edwards, Jonathan, 628 f .

Egyptian Religion, 200, 217 ff. ;
(animal worship), 219 ; (disposal
of the dead), 219 ; (eschatology),
225 ff. ; (language), 218 ; (magic),
230 ; (priesthoods), 230 ; (psy-
chology), 225 f. ; (script), 218

Eighteenth Century, the, 616 ff.

Eightfold Way, the, 328

Ekanath, 345

Ekoi, the, 119

Eleusis, 264.

Elijah and Elisha, 69

Eliot, John, 614

Elixir vitae, the, 365

Elizabeth of England, 594

Elohim, 419, 421, et passim

Elysium, 43, 180, 267

Emancipation Act, the, 617

Emancipation, Roman Catholic, 638

Emerson, Miss Gertrude, 59

Emerson, R. W., 669

Empedocles, 268

Endor, The Witch of, 86

Engidu, 208 f .

England, the Reformation in, 590

Ennead, the Great, 38, 224

Ephesus, the Council of, 496 f .

Epictetus, 287 f .

Episcopate, Expansion of the, 640

Epona, 175 -

Equinoxes, the, 56

Erasmus, 577, 584, 589

Eric Blodoxe, 516

Erinyes, the, 261

Erlik, 130 f .

Esdras, First Book of, 252

Eskimos, the, 165 f ., 168

Essays and Reviews, 642

Esther, the Book of, 425

Ethelbert, of Kent, 511, 512 f.

Etruscans, the, 275 f ., 282

Eucharist, the, 468

Eugenius IV, Pope, 581

Euhemerism, 77

Euphrates Valley, the, 151, 199.

201 ff.

Euripides, 265, 271
Eusebius of Csesarea, 494, 498 f .
Evangelical Movement, the, 624
Evolution in Religion, 6
Exclusive Theory, the, 4
Excommunication of the Eastern

Church, the, 559
Exposure .of the Dead, the, 80
Eye, the, 69
Ezekiel, 418, 426

Fa-hien, 329, 370

Fairies, 37

Fall of Jerusalem, the, 464, 469, 478

Farnell, L. R., 266

Farquhar, Dr. J. N., 349

Fasti, the, 279

Fasting, 164

Fatiha, the, 533

Fatimids, the, 544

Febronianism; 618 -

Feeling in Religion, 16

Felo de se, 79

Feng-shui, 352

FeraJia, 85

Ferdinand and Isabella, 443, 550,

582, 596

Fernandez, Father, 610
Festivals (Teutonic), 191 ; (Slavic),

196 ; (Mexican), 294 ; (Inca), 299

688

INDEX

Fetishism, 35 f., 113, 134

Fiji Islands, the, 106

Filioque Clause, the, 495, 558

Finnian, St., 510 f .

Fir-bolg, the, 172

Fire- wheels, 190

Fires of St. John, 56

Five Ching, the, 360

Five Relations, the, 361

Flood Story, the, 209

Foreign Missions, Development of,

650 f .

Forty Years, the Great, 464 fi .
Foundation Sacrifices, 155 . .
Four Heaven Kings, the, 388
Four Noble Truths, the, 328
Four Shu, the, 360
France, the Reformation in, 586 f .
Francis, St. (of Assisi), 565, 567,

568 f.
Franciscans, the, 545, 568 f., 608,

612

Franks, Conversion of the, 511 f.
Fravashi, the, 241

Frazer, Sir James, 12, 57, 68, 76, 88
Frederick II, 566
Frederick the Great, 415, 617
Free Church of Scotland, the, 645
Frejya, 183, 185
French Revolution, the, 618
Freyr, 183, 185
Fu-hsi, 350
Fursey, 514
Fylgja, the, 188

Gabriel, Walter, 13

Galatians, Epistle to the, 172

Gallas, the, 117

Gallicanism, the Revival of, 602, 617

Galloway, Dr. George, 18

Gamaliel, 434

Gandhi, Mohandas, 348

Garvie, Dr. A. E., 42

Gaihas, the, 244, 251

Gaul, 173

Gautama, 322, 325 fi., 379, 462

Genealogy of Christ, the, 415 f.

Geneva, 587

Genius Augusti, 286 f .

Geographical scope of religion, the,

Geonim, the, 436
Gessius Floras, 433
Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 539 f .
Gifts to the Dead, 82
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 615
Gilgamesh, the Epic of, 207, 208,

215, 216

Ginnungagap, 33, 187

Gita-gobinda, the, 344

Gladden, Dr. Washington, .663

Glastohbury, 507

Gnosticism, 484

Goddess of Reason, the, 618

Godfrey of Bouillon, 563

Goethe, 24

Gold Coast, the, 123

Golden Bough, the, 57, 77, et passim

Gondopharnes (Gondophorus), 333,

367
Gospels, the, 456

Gray, Dr. L. H., 197 f.

Great Awakening, the, 628 ; (se-
cond), 632 -

Greece, the Church in, 635

Greek Religion, 200, 255 ff. ; (ethics),
261 ; (eschatology), 266

Gregory of Nazianzus, 500

Gregory of Nyssa, 500

Gregory the Great, 43*8, 512

Gregory VII, Pope (Hildebrand), 561

Gregory IX, Pope, 441

Grigri, 123

Grostete, Bishop, 579

Guatemala, 291, 295

Gudea, 205 f.

Guiana, 169 :

Gupta dynasty, the, 335

Gushtasp, 58, 242

Gustavus, Adolphus, 601

Gyogi, 385 -

Habakkuk, 423

Hackmann, Dr. H., 140, 406

Hacon, 516

Haddon, Dr. A. C., 132

Hades (Greek), 259, 263, 267;

(Japanese), 382
Hadrian, 67, 434
Haggai, 424
Hair, 69 f.
Haj, the, 156,
Hakam II, 549
Hakluyt, Richard, 625
Hako, the, 164
Ha-Levi, Samuel, 439
Hamilton, Patrick, 589
Hamites, the, 112, n6f.
Hamlet, 66

Hammurabi (Code of), 52 ; 207, 210
Hampden, Dr., 639
Hampton Court Conference, the, 602
Hannibal, 280, 284
Hanuman, 343
Han Wu Ti, 368
Haoma (Soma), 240 f ., 247, 250, 252

INDEX .

689

Hapi, 222

Harold Lufa, 516

Harsha, 335

Harun al-Rashid, 440

Haruspicy, 50

Harvey, G. E., 404

Hasan and Husayn, 537

Hasidim, the, 495

Hathor, 220

Hawaii, 61, 96, 108 f . ; (Missions

in), 653

Head-hunting, 104
Hearn, Lafcadio, 70
Heart, the, 70
Heaven, 42 f . ; (Christian ideas of),

673 f-
Hebrew University, the, 447

Hebrews, Epistle to the, 8, 461 f ., 481
Heian Period, the, 391 ff.
-Heliogabalus, 480
Hell (Hades, Sheol), 73, 188
Henotheism, 39
Henry VIII, of England, 579,

590 f ., 592

Henry of Navarre, 587 f .
Henry of Portugal, Prince, 609
Hepatoscopy, 50
Hephaistos, 259
Hera, 257
Heraclius, 528
Herakleitos, 270
Herbert, George/65
Hermes, 259

Herodotus, 51, 83, 228, 238, 275
Hesiod, 257, 260, 262, 270
Hexagrams, the, 552
Hexapla, the, 487
Hideyoshi, 397, 610 f .
High Church, 620
Hijra, the, 437, 527
Hilary of Poictiers, 500 f .
Hinayana, 330, 404
Hinduism,
Hippomancy, 51

Historical scope of Religion, the, 15
Hittites, the, 152 f., 212, 275 f., 421
Hiuen-tsang, 335
Hiyeizan, 392, 397 .
Hodir, 57

Hpffding, 13 .

Hojos, the, 393 f .
Holi Festival, the, 137
Holland, Dr. R, A.. 666
Holy Roman Empire, the, 559, 578,

636

Homer, 257, 260, 262, 267, 268, 270
Honen, 394

Hopkins, Dr. E. V., 69, 113, 133
Horace, 5, 286
Horse sa'crifice, the, 129 f .

Honis, 221, 223

Hosea, 422 .

Hosius, of Cordova, 494 .

Hosso sect, the, 390

Hubal, 154

Hudson, Henry, 626

Huguenots, the, 587 ff.

Human sacrifices, 109, 139

Humanity in Deity, 77

Humayun, 546

Hunt, Rev. Robert, 626

Hurons, the, 161

Huss, John, 580 f .

Hutchlnson, Ann, 627

Hyksos, the, 222, 232

Ibn Ezra, 439

Ibn Gabirol, 439

Ignatius of Antioch, 481, 482 f.

Ikhnatun (Amenhotep IV), 222,

233, 236, 300

Immaculate Conception, the, 636 f .
Immanence, the Divine, 42
Immanuel oi Rome, 443
Incarnation, the, 42, et passim
Incas, the, 169, 170, 292, 297 ff.
Index, the, 599 f .
India, the Religions of, 303 ff . ;

(Muhammadan), 546 ; (Missions

to India), 650

Indigitamenta, 278, 282, 283
Indo-Bactrians, the, 333
Indo-China, 144 ff.
Indo-Parthians, the, 333
Indo-Scythians, the, 334
Indra, 153, 306
Indulgences, 582 f.
Inge, Dean, 665
Initiation Rites, 118
Innocent III, Pope, 441, 564, 576,

578

Innocent XI, Pope, 602
Inouye., Professor, 399
Inquisition, the, 582 f., 599
Instructions, the (of Pthah-hotep),

231 ; (of Kegemne), 231 ; (of

Intef), 231 ; (of Amenemope), 236
Interdicts, Papal, 578
Investiture Dispute, the, 578
lona, 511

Ireland, the Conversion of, 509 f .
Irenaeus, 487 f .
Iroquois, the, 161
Irving, Edward, 643
Isaiah, 42, 422 ; (the second), 424,

427

Ise, 385
Isis, 56, 224

690

. INDEX

Ishtar, 204, 208, 212

Islam, Beliefs and Practices of,

529 ff.

Isles of the Blest, the, 179
Italy, Reform movements in, 595
lyeyasu, 397
Izanagi and Izanami, 382

Jackson, A. V. W., 241, 247

Jacob, the Story of, 418

Jacobi, Dr. H., 324

Jahangir, 546

Jainism, 303, 321 ff.

Jamabai, 345

James, St. (Brother of Jesus), 467

James I, of England, '602

James. II, of England, 604

Jamestown, 626

Jamnia, Council of, 434

Jamshid, 51

Jansenists, the, 601 f .

Janus, 277

Japan, the Religions of, 381 ff. ;

(Missions in), 651 f .
Jatakas, 333, 405
Jeans, Sir James, 4, 476, 662
Jenghiz Khan, 84, 545
Jeremiah, 424
Jerome, St., 503 f.
Jerome of Prague, 581
Jerusalem, 417, 563!; (Fall of),

464, 469, 47 8

Jesuits, the, 594, 598 f. ; (Missions),
- 607!, 6iof., 612 f.
Jesus Christ, 450 ff., et passim
Jews, the (in England), 441 ; (in
- France), 442 ; (in Spain), 443 ;

(in China), 446
Jimmu Tenno, 381
Jingo, Empress, 383
Jinns, 117, 155
Jivatman, the, 314
Jnana-marga, the, 336
Job, Book of, 39, 426
Jodo sect, the, 394
Johanan, Rabbi, 435 ,
John, St., 467, et passim
John XXIII, Pope, 580
Johnston, Sir Harry, 118
Jojitsu sect, the, 390
Jonah, Book of ,425
Jones, Dr. Rufus, 662, 670
Jotuns, the, 183
Judaism, 151, 413 ff. ; (and Zoroas-

trianism), 253
Judesa capta, 433
Judgement, the (Egyptian), 227 f .
Julian the Apostate, 493

Julian, Count, 538

Julius Caesar, 176; (Shakespeare's

/. C.). 48
Juno, 277
Jupiter, 276 f .
Justin Martyr, 456, 481; 483 f.

Ka'aba, the, 157

Kabbala, the, 443, 444

Kabir, 346

Kali (Parvati), 38, 342

Kalimah, the, 581

Kalki Avatar, the, 341

Kamakura, 393 f . ; (the Kamakura

sects), 394 f .
Kamehameha I, 80
Kamehameha II, 61, 109
Kami, the, 77, 382
Kamui, 133
K'ang Hsi, 378, 613
Kapilayastu, 327
Kappell, Peace of, 586
Karma-kanda, 311
Kassites, the, 212
Katharine of Aragon, 590
Kathenotheism, 39
Keane, A. H., 158
Keble, John, 639 f .
Kegon sect, the, 390
Keltic religion-, the, 172 ff.
Kendrick, T; D., 176 f .
Kent, the Conversion of, 511
Khadijah, 526, 528
Khalifate, the, 534 ff.
Khazars, the, 445
Khefre, 229
Khepra, 222

Khilafat Question, the, 553 f.
Khosru Parviz, 528 ;
Khufu, 229

Khwarazmshahs, the, 545
Kidneys, the, 70
Kinabalu, Mt., 95
King John, 48
Kirigsley, Charles, 475
Kingsley, Miss Mary, 122 f.
Kipling, 83, 87, 240, 246, 660
Klausner, Rabbi, 454 ff.
Knights Hospitallers, 563
Knights Templars, 563
Knot magic, 58
Knox, John, 589 f .
Kobo Daishi, 392 f.
Kolarians, the, 135
Korea, 381, 386 f.
Korean Buddhism, 386. f .
Koropok-guru, the, 132
Krishna, 319, 344 * ; (avatar), 341

INDEX

691

Kroeber, Dr. A. L., 159, 168
Kronos, 257
Kshatriyas, 309
Kuan-yin, 372, 374
Kublai Khan, 404, 545
Kuginagara, 329
Ku Klux Klan, the, 447
Kukulcan, 297
Kuloscap (Glooscap), 167
Kumaso, the, 381
Kurma avatar, the, 340
Kusha sect, the, 390
.Kwajah Hasan Nizami, 551
Kwan-ti, 373
Kwei, 355

Lady Huntingdon's Connection, 624

Lakshmi, 38, 342

Lalitavistara, the, 326

Lama Temple, the, 378

Lamaism, 141, 376 ff.

Lambeth Conference, the, 641, 658

Lambeth Encyclical, the, 661, 664

Langton; Archbishop, 578

Lao Tzu, 350 ff., 354, 362 ff.

Lares, the, 279, 286

Las Casas, 606

Laud, Archbishop, 603

Lausanne Conference, the, 658

Law, the Idea of, 289

Lawrence, St. (of Canterbury), 513

Lazarus, Miss, 448 f.

Learned Emperors, 391

Lecanomancy, 203

Le Conte, Professor, 461

Lectisternia, 283

Le Gobien, Father, 107

Lemuria, the, 281

Leonard, Major, 114

Leo, the Armenian, 558

Leo, the Isaurian, 558

Leo the First, Pope, 497, 557

Leo the Third, Pope, 560

Leo IX,. Pope, 559

Leo XIII, Pope, 637

Ler (Lear), 174

Le Roy, Monsignor, 18, 78, 80, 81,

89, 114, 120
Lex talionis, 210
Lhasa, 378

Li, 35i

Libellatici, the, 481

Liber, 277, 283

Li Chi, the, 360

Lieh Tzu, 366

Liguori, St. Alphonsus, 617

Lilith, 155

Lindisfarne, 513

Liver, the, 70

2X*

Living Buddha, the, 378

Livingstone, David, 652

Locust Charm, the, 202

Logos, the, 320

Lokapalas, the, 373

Loki, 183 f. .

Lollards, the, 580

Lotus Scripture, the, 374

Louis IX (St. Louis), 566 f.

Louis XIV, 602

Low Church, 620

Lowell, Percivat, 52

Lower Niger, the, 114

Loyola, Ignatius, 597 f .

Lud, 174

Lugalzaggisi, 204

Lugnasad, 177

Lun Yu, the, 360

Lupercalia, the, 285

Luther, Martin, 583 ff .

Lutheranism (in America), 629

Lux Mundi, 642

Ma (goddess), 152

Mabuchi, 385

Macao, 611

Macbeth, 47, 49

Macchioro, Dr. V. D., 266

Macdonell, A. A., 308

Madhava, 344

Magianism, 237

Magic (Imitative, etc.), 53 f., ibo,

no, 139

Magna Carta, 578
Mahabharata, the, 319, 337
Mahavamca, the, 403
; Mahavira, 322 f .
Mahayana, 330 f ., 368, 371
Mahdi, the, 530, 549
Mahendra, 331, 400, 408
Mahmud of Ghazni, 543
Maimonides, 439 f .
Maitreya, 372, 379
Malacca, 610
Malik Shah, 544
Malinowski, B., 105 f.
Mamurr, Khalif, 541
Mana, 34, 63, 104, 109, 125, T39,

161, 178

Manannan, 174, 179
Manas, 314
Manat (goddess) ,526
Manchus, the, 612 f.
Mancy, 50 f.
Manes, the, 178, 381
Manetho, 220
Manichaeanism, 253, 392^ 485!.,

53 f

692

INDEX

Manitu, 32, 34, 160

Manning, Cardinal, 638

Mansur, Khalif, 541

Mantras, 305, 378

Manu, 268

Marcion, 484

Marco Polo, 521

Marcus Aurelius, 287 f ., 480

Marduk, 38, 43, 204, 205, 207, 212

Marett, R. R ; , 32

Marquette, Pere, 607

Mars, 277, 281

Martin, St. (of Tours), 500 f . .

Martineau, James, 13

Martyn, Henry, 653

Maruts, the, 306

Mary I, of England, 593

Mary, Queen of Scots, 589

Maryland, Roman Catholics in, 626

Masefield, John, 675

Matsya avatar, the, 340

Maximus of Tyre, 1 15

Maya, 3 14, .31 8

Mayans, the, 292, 295 f .

Mayflower, the, 614, 626

McDou gall, William, 671

Means, P. A., 301

Mecca, 524 f .

Meir, Rabbi, 435

Melchizedek, 206

Mencius, 360 f .

Mendelsohn, Moses, 446

Menes", 223

Menkaure, 229

Menthu, 222, 234

Meredith, George, 69

Mem, Mt., 43

Messiah, the, 458, 472

Methodism, 623 ff. ; (in America),
629 ; (in Canada), 648

Mexico, 291 ff.

Mexico City,' 294

Miao Tzu, the, 143

Micah, 422

Michaboj 161

Michael Palaeologos, 566

Mictlantecutli, 293, 295

Middle Ages, the, 555 ff.

Midgardsworm, the, 183 .

Milesians, the, 172

Milinda, the Questions of, 333

Millenary Petition, the, 602

Millikan, Dr. Robert, 453, 662

Mimamsa, 318 -

Minerva, 278 .

Mings, the, 612

MingTi, 367

Misanthropist, the, 232

Mishnah, the, 435

Mission Field, the, 657

Missions, Foreign, 605, et passim

Mithra, 153, 238, 246, 253/284, 287

Miya, the, 383

Mnevis, 220

Moccus, 175

Moffatt, Dr. Robert, 652

Moksha, 314, 318

Monasteries (Chinese), 375

Monasticism, 567 f .

Mongols, the, 544 f .

Monier-Williams, Sir M., 317

Mon-khmers, the, 146, 148

Mononobe (Clan), the, 384

Monotheism, 42

Montanism, 485

Moore, Dr. G. F., 252, 271

Moplahs, the,. 546

Moravia, the Conversion of, 518

Moravian Church, the, 621, 623

Mormonism, 632, 646 f .

Moses, 419 f.

Mo Ti, 366

Motoori, 385

Mourning Rites (Amerindian), 162

Muawiya, 536 f .

Muhammad, 437, 462, 524 ff.

Muhammad II, 547, 577

Muhammad Abdu, 552

Muhammadanism (Islam), 151, 515,

523 ff. ; (in China), 548, 552 ;

(to-day), 552 ; (Muhammadan

law), 542

Muharram, Feast of, 537
Muir, Sir William, 554
Miiller, Max, 13, 39
Mummification, 228 ,

Munsterburg, Professor, 663
Murad I, Sultan, 547
Murray, Sir Gilbert, 284
Murry, J. Middleton, 459
Muspellheim, 187
Mustapha Kemal, 535, 547
Mutazilites, the, 542
Mycenaean culture, the, 256
Mysteries, the, 262 f ., 268, 273
Myths (Amerindian), 162

N -

Nabonidus, 206, 213

Nabopolassar, 212, 213

Nabu, 205

Nagarjuna, 374

Nahum, 423

Nakatomi, Clan, the, 384

Namdev, 345 .

Nanak, 346 f . . . .

Nara, 389 f . :

Nara-sinha avatar, the, 341

Nasi, Joseph, 444

INDEX

693

Nathan der Weise, 446

Nat Worship, 149 f ., 403, 406

Navahos, the, 167

Nazarite, the, 69

Nebuchadrezzar, 213

Necho, Pharaoh, 235

Necromancy, 86 f.

Negative Confession, the,

Negroes, the, 112, 122 ff.

Nenibutsu, the, 394

Nepal, 368, 377

Neptunus, 283

Nergal, 205, 209

Neri, St. Philip, 599

Nestor, the Chronicle of, 520

Nestorianism, 370 ; (to-day), 636

Nestorius, 496 f ., 521

New Hebrides, the, 105

New Testament Canon, the, 455

New Zealand, 107, no f.

Newman, John Henry, 639 f .

Nicaea, Council of, 493 ff .

Nicene Creed, the, 494 f.

Nichiren, 395 f .-

Nicolas I, Pope, 557

Niflheim, 187

Night Ride to Heaven, Muhammad's,

44, 247, 531
Nikayas, the, 332
Nile, the, 217
Nineteenth Century Christianity,

634 fr

Ninety-five Theses, the, 583
Nineveh, 212
Ninib, 205, 212
Nirvana, 314,. 328, 380
Njord, 186
Nogi, General, 83
Nonjurors, the, 604 f .
Norns, the, 183
North American Indians, Missions

to, 622

Norway, the Conversion of, 516 ff.
Nosu, the, 142, 144
Novatian, 489
Noyes, Alfred, 680
Nu, 222

Numa Pempilius, 280
Nut, 222
Nyaya, 315

Obosom, 125
Oceanica, 95 f.
Oda Nobunaga, 397, 610
Odin, 183, 184 f .
Odyssey, the, 69, 73, 86
O-harai, the, 384
Olaf the Saint, 517

Olaf Tryggveson, 517
Olga, Princess, 519
Olympus, Mt., 43, 95, 259
Om (Aum), 313
Omen Tablets, 48
Omens, 47 f .
Oneiromancy, 50
Ordeals, 52, 106
Orenda, 34, 81, 89, 257
Origen, 487 f .
Orphism, 262, 265 f .
de Ortega, Manuel, 608
Orthodox Khalifs, the, 535 f.
Osiris, 56, 76, 220, 224 f .
Otto Rudolf, 23, 336
Ottoman Turks, the, 546
Ouranos, 257

Pachacamac, 298

Pachacutec, 300

Pachomius, 499

Padma Sambhava, 377

Painting and Religion, 60

Paitidana, the, 247, 250

Pali, 332

P'an-ku, 33, 187, 351

Pantaenus, 486

Pantheism, 41

Papal Infallibility, 637

Papal States, the, 444

Paphnutius, 5

Papias, 456, 674

Papuasians, 96

Para9u-Rama avatar, the, 341

Paraguay, 168

Paramatman, 314

Parmenides, 270

Parsis, the, 248

Parthians, the, 436

Parvati (Kali), 339

Pascal, Blaise, 601

Patagonians, the, 170

Patesi, the, 204, 215

Patet Erani, the, 249 -

Patrick, St., 509 f .

Patteson, Bishop, 653

Paul, St., 9, 17. 2 7 2 . 288 f., 467, 659

de Paul, St. Vincent, 599

Paul III, Pope, 598

Pauline Epistles, the, 456, 467 f .

Paulinus, 513

Peace World, 289

Pelagianism, 504, 508

Pele, 109

Penates, the, 278

Penitence, Hymns of, 216

Penn, William, 627

Pentecost, the Day of, 466, 471

694

INDEX

Pepi II, 225

Periander, 83

Perpetua and Felicitas, 481

Persecution, the Age of, 478 ff.

Persephone, 57, 263

Persia, 200, 485, 493 ; (eschatology

of), 250 ; (poets of), 544 ; (religion

of), 237 ff.
Personalization, 36
Personator of the Dead, the, 86
Personification, 36 .
Peru, 291, 299
Perun, 193, 195
Peter the Great, 616
Peter the Hermit, 562
Peter Lombard, 573
Petronius, 23
Pfleiderer, 13, 40
Pharaoh Worship, 231
Philip IV, of Spain, 594
Philippine Islands, the, 96, 99 ff.,

101 ; (Missions in the), 608
Philosopher's Stone, the, 365
Phi-nang-mai, the, 147 .
Photius, 558

Pico della Mirandola, 577
Pietism (in Germany), 622, 645
Pilgrim Fathers, the, 626
Pindar, 264, 268
Pius IV, Pope, 594
Pius IX, Pope, 635 f.
Pius X, Pope, 637
Plato, 12, 268, 270 f.; 273
Pliny the Younger, 455, 479
Plumed Serpent, the, 163
Plymouth Brethren, the, 643
Pobiedonostseff, 635
Poison ordeals, 121
Pollard, S., 144
Polyandry, 140
Polycarp, 481, 483
Polydsemonism, 37, 202
Polynesia, 96, 107 f.
Polytheism, 37 ; (Greek), 269
Pomponius Mela, 115
Ponce de Leon, 60.6
Pontifex, 75 ; (Maximus), 285, 561
Popul Vuh, the, 297
Porte-bonheurs, and Porte-malheurs,

59
Portuguese, the (in China), 6n ;

(in Japan), 6iof.
Poseidon, 259, 283
Pradakshina (dextratio), 55, 308
Preemunire, Statute of, 591
Pratt, Dr. J. B., 409 f.
Prayer, 63 ; (Amerindian), 164;

(Muhammadan), 531
Prayer Book, the English, 592, 593,

604, 605

Pre- Aryan India, 135
Presbyterianism (in Scotland), 590,

621, 645 ; (in America), 630
.Primitive Religion, 21 ff. ; (God in),

91 ; (Man), 91 ; (Society), 91
Prince, Dr. J. D., 167
Pritthivi, 306
Prophetic order, the, 422
Protagoras, 270
Protestantism, 585 ; (in America),

627 f . ; (to-day), 655
Protestation, the, 617
Proverbs, Book of, 236
Psalms, the, 36, 63, 70, 71, 426, 430
Psychical Research, 87, 671
Psychological scope of Religion, 16 f .
Psychology (Egyptian), 66 ;

(Chinese), 67, 353 1 (Hebrew),

67 ; (Greek), 67
Psychopomp, the, 75, 295, 307
Ptah, 220, 222, 223
Public Worship Regulation Act, the,

640 .

Pumbedita, 436, 438
Punchkin, the story of, 71
Punt, 218
Puranas, the, 337
Pure Land (Jodo) sect, the, 374
Puritanism, 594 f .
Purusha, 33, 187
Purushapura, 329, 334
Pusey, Dr. E. B., 639 f .
Pushan, 307
Pyramids, the, 229 ; (builders of),

81, 85 ; (Pyramid texts), 226-
Pythagoras, 269

Qalilah and Dimnah, 542

Qeb, 222, 224

Qozah, 154

Quakers, the, 627

Quartodeciman Controversy, the,

498

Queen Anne's Bounty, 620
Quetzalcoatl, 292, 297
Quirinus, 281 '

Quran, the, 4, 58, 532

Ra, 221, 223, 224
Radlof, Dr., 129 f.
Ragnarok, 188
Raikes, Robert, 625
Rajagriha, 330-
Ram Krishna, 348
Ram Mohun Roy, 347
Rama avatar, the, 341

INDEX

695

Ramadan, 531

Ramananda, 344

Ramanuja, 344

Ramayana, the, 345

Rameses II, 234, 421

Ramessids, the, 235

Ramman (Rimmon), 205

Rashi, 440

Rattray, Capt. R. S., 122, 124

Reason in -Religion, the, 17

Red Hats, the, 141, 377

Reformation, the, 576 ff.

Reischauer, 'Dr. A. K., 393, 399

Remigius, St., 512

Renaissance, the, 577 f .

Renan, Ernest, 415

Reuchlin, 577

Rhabdomancy, 51

Rhys Davids, Dr. T. W., 228

Rhys Davids, Mrs., 333

Rice Festivals, 145

Ricci, Mateo, 612

Rig veda, the, 305

Rita, 306

Rites de passage, 124 f .

Ritsu sect, the, 390

River (of death), the, 74

Rivers, Dr. W. H. R., 103, 104, 105

Robigalia, the, 280

Robinson, John, 614, 626

Rockhill, W. W., 141

Roman Catholicism in nineteenth

century, 626 f .

Roman Catholicism in U.S.A., 648 f .
Roman Law, 471
Roman Roads, the, 471
Rome, 200 ; (Religion of), 275 ff. ;

(the third? Rome), 290
Rosa mystica, 575, 680
de Rubruk, William, 545, 569
Rudra, 306, 339

Rumania, the Conversion of, 625
Rusalky, the, 194
Ruskin, John, 53
Russell, Phillips, 296
Russia, the Conversion of, 519 f.
Ruth, Book of, 425
Ryobu Shinto, 385

Saadiah, 438

Sabbath, the, 203

Saboraim, the, 436

Sacheverell, Dr., 620

Sacrifice, 64 ; (Amerindian), 165 ;

(Chinese), 356 ; et passim
Saladin, 544, 564
de Sales, St. Francis, 599
Salvation Army, the, 644

Santa veda, the, 305

Samgha, the, 329

Samhain, 177

Samkhya, 316

Samsara, 314

San Chiao, the, 366, 371

Sanghamitra, 331

Sanhedrin, the, 434

Sanron sect, the, 390

Sanusi, the, 552

Saoshyant, 243", 248, 254

Sarasvati, 38, 342

Sarasvati, Dayananda, 348

Sardica, Council of, 508

Sargon of Agade, 206

Sasanids, the, 436

Sati, 304

Saturnus, 277

Saunders, Dr. K. J., 407, 412

Savonarola, 581 ff.

Scapulomancy, 51

Schall, Adam, 612

Schism, the Great, 559

Schleirmacher, 645

Schoolmen, the, 571 ff.

Science and Religion, 661

Scotland, the Reformation in, 589

Seabury, Bishop, 630 f .

Sea Dyaks, the, 71

Sebek, 220

Secret Societies, 104 .

Sedna, 166

Sekhmet, 223

Seleucus Nicator,'33i

Seljuks, the, 544

Semitic Religion (Primitive), 153

Seneca, 287 f .

Septuagint, the, 471

Serbia, the Church in, 635

Set, 221, 223

Seven Bishops, the, 604

Seventh Day Adyentism, 647

Shad Darfanas, the, 315

Shadow, the (as soul seat), 68

Shah Jahan, 546

Shamanism, 170, 422, et passim

Shamash, 204, 207, 212

Shang-ti, 356, 613

Shape-shifting, 197

Sh'eerim, the, 155

Shelley, 242

Shiah, the, 587

Shih-ching, the, 354, 360

Shiites, the, 437

Shin sect, the, 394

Shingon sect, the, 392

Shinran, 394 f .

Shintai, the, 384

Shinto, 382 ff., 398

Shi-Tenno-ji, the, 388

696

INDEX

Shogunate, the, 391

Shotoku Taishi, 388 f .

Shu, 224

Shwe, Dagon, the, 406

Siam, 144, 147 ; (Buddhism in),

408 ff .

Sidama, the, 116
Sidhe, the, 36, 173
Sigismund, Emperor, 581
Sikhism, 346 f .
Sin (moon god), 204, 212
Sinai, Mt., 43

Singhalese Buddhism, 401 ff .
Slavic Religion, 192 f .
Smoke, the, 165
Snake Bridge, the, 161
Sobieskii John, 616
Society for Promoting Christian

Knowledge, the, 620
Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel, the, 620
Socrates, 270 f ., 274
Soga Clan, the, 387, 389
Solano, St. Francis, 608
Solemn League and Cove'nant, the,

603

Soma (Haoma), 39, 307
Somalis. the, 117
Somerset, Lord Protector, 593
Song of the Harper, the, 232
SoothiU, Dr.'W. E., 380
Sophocles, 78, 271 f.
Sorcery (see Witchcraft), 146, et

passim
Sortilege, 50 -
Soul, the, 66 ff., et passim
South Slavs, the, 192
Spanish Islam, 548 f .
Spanish Judaism, 438 f .
Spencer, Herbert, 13, 35
Spinoza, 444
Spirit Animals, 355
Spiritism, 78 ff., et passim
Spirituality (in the Church), 665
Spooner, Dr. D. B., 253, 325
Sraosha, 245, 251
State Worship (in China), 355
St. Bartholpmew's Eve Massacre,

587

Stein, Sir M. A., 370
Stockholm Conference, the, 658
Stuyvesant, Peter, 627
Suetonius, 455
Sufism, 543 f.
Suiko, Empress, 389
Sumerian religion, 201 ff .
Sun Yat-sen, 355
Sunnah, the, 537 .
Sun Worship (Slavic), 195
Surya, 307

Susa-no-wo, 382
Sutras (Suttas), 330, 382 f .
Svantovit, 193, 195
Swastika, the, 378
Sweat Bath, the, 165 '
Sweden, the Conversion of, 516
Switzerland, the Reformation in,
585 f

Ta Hsueh, the, 360
Tablighi Mission, the, 551
Tabus, 173, et passim
Tacitus, 176, 182, 455
Tagore, Debendranath, 347
Tagore, Rabindranath, 313
T'ai Shan, 43

Tales of the Magicians, 230
Talismans, 35

Talmud, the (Babylonian), 436, 440,
444 ; (Palestinian), 435, 444, -455
Tammuz, 152, 205, 216
T'ang Dynasty, the, 370
Tantricism, 339, 341 f., 377
Taoism, 351, 353, 362 ff.
Tao, the, 363
Too T& Ching, the, 363
Tara, 174
Tariq, 538

Tarquinius Superbus, 280
Tauler, 574

Taurobolium, the, 287

Taurt, 220

Tefnet, 222

Temple of Heaven, the, 356

Temples (Keltic), 177..; (Slavic),

196 ; (Teutonic), 190 ; (Greek),

261 ; (Roman), 278, 281
Temples of .Hell (in China), 143, 376
Tendai sect, the, 392
Tennyson, 41, 522
Teocalli, 293
Tertullian, 288, 485, 488
Test Act, the, 617
Tetzel, John, 583
Teutonic Religion, 181 ff.
Tezcatlipoca, 292
Thargelia, the, 260
Theodicy, the, 427
Theodore of Tarsus, 514
Theodosius I, 435, 493
Theodosius II, 437
Theological Colleges, 641 .

Theophany, the, 427
Theophilanthropy, 618
Theories as to Christ, 453 f.
Thirty-nine Articles, the, 593
Thirty Years' War, the, 601
Thomas* St., 334, 367

INDEX

697

Thomas of Aqninum, St., 573
Thomas a Kempis, 574
Thompson, Francis, 215, 678
Thomson, James, 78, 670
Thor, 31, 183, 184

Thoth, 221, 222, 227

Thothmes III, 232 *

Thunder-bird, the, 163, 167

Thurificati, the, 481

Tiamat, 351

Tiberias, the School of, 48

Tibet, 140 ; (Tibetan religion), 376

T'ien, 43, 351

T'ien-tai Buddhism, 373

Timur Leng, 547

Tirthakaras, the, 323

Tissa, King, 400 f .

Titus, 434

Tiu, 185

Tlaloc, 293, 294

Tlauizcalpantecutli, 293

Taibit, Book of, 240

Tokugawa Shoguns, the, 397 f.

Toledo, Synod of, 558

Toleration Act, the, 618

Toltecs, the, 292, 295

Torah, the, 445

Torii, the, 384

Tornassuk, 166

Torquemada, 443, 582, 600

Torvus, 175

Totemism, 118, 155, 160, et passim

Toynbee, Arnold, 555

Tractarian Movement, the, 639

Trajan, 434, 479

Transcendence, the Divine, 42

Transubstantiation, 570

Trent, Council of, 598 f .

Trimurti, the, 338, 342

Trinity, the, 38

Ttipitaka, the, 332, 371

Trishna, 328

Tsong Kapa, 377

TsuM-yomi, 302

Tuatha De Danann, 172

Tukaram, 345

Tulsi Das, 345

Tupan, 169

Tutelary Deities, 373

Tutenkhamen, 234

Twilight of Religion, the, 452

Tyndale, William, 591

Uganda, 120

Ulfilas, 182, 495, 506 f.

Ulgen, 130

Umai, 131

Umar, Khalif, 535

Umar II, Khalif, 538

Umayyads, the, 437, 536 f . ;

(Western), 439
Unis, King, 226
Unitarianism (in the U.S.A.), 631,

646

United Brethren, the, 631
United Church of Canada, the, 648
Unity, Church, 657
Universities, the, 571
Unknown God, the, 308
Unkulunkulu, 119
Upanishads, the, 303, 312 ff., 337
Uranic religion, 64
Urban II, Pope, 562 f .
Urdaneta, Father, 608
Uruguay, 168
Ushabti, 83
Ushas, 307

Uthman, Khalif, 533, 535
Uzzat, 154, 526

Vaifali, 330

Vai9eshika, 316

Vai9yas, the, 309

VaiShnavism, 343 f .

Valens, 493

Valentinian I, 493

Valerian, 400, 489

Valhalla, 43, 189

Valignani, 612

Valkyries, the, 183

Vallabhacharya, 344

Vamana avatar, the, 341

Van Riebeck, 614 :

Varaha avatar, the, 340

Varro, 285

Varuna, 153, 237

Vatican Edict against Modernism,

the, 655

Vayu (Vata), 306
Veda, the, 61, 303 ff .
Vedanta, the, 313, 318 ff.
Vedic Religion, 304 f .
Veles (Volos), 195, 197 :

Vendidad, the, 244 f ., 252
Venus, 277

Vergil, 73, 86, 286, 289
Vespasian, 434, 479
Vesta, 277
Veyopatis, 195
Vili (Wili), the, 194
Vinaya, the, 330 f., 370
Viracocha, 169, 298, 300
Vishnu, 325, 335, 538 ff. ;* (avatars

of), 340

Vishnu-Purana, the, 338
Vivekananda, Swami, 348
Vladimir, 445, 519 f .
Voltaire, 60

698

INDEX

Voodoo, 125 f.

Voyage of Bran, the, 179 f.

Vulgate, the, 503

Wadd, 154

Wahabism, 548

Wakanda, 161

Walpurgis, 191

Wampum, 159

War, 52

Wats, 400

Wells, H.'G., 672

Wesley, Charles, 622!.

Wesley, John, 622 f .

Western Umayyads, 439, 549

Westphalia, Peace of, 601

Whitefield, George, 623, 624, 629

Wiclif, John, 579 f.

Will, the (in Religion), 17

William III, of England, 619 ,

William of Occam, 573

William of Orange, 600

Williams, Roger, 627

Wiseman, Cardinal, 638

Wishart, George, .589

Wissler, Clark, 171

"Witchcraft, 113, 121, 144, 147, et

passim

Wood-spirits, 186
Worcester, Dr. E., 102 .
Wordsworth, 271
World Peace, 660
Worms, Diet of, 584
Worship of the Dead, 88
Wren-boys, the, 175

Xavier, St. Francis, 597 f ., 609 f .,

611

Xenophanes, 270
Ximines, Cardinal, 596
Xipe Tote:, 293
Xoana, 256

Yahweh, 40, 63, 420, 427

Yajur veda, the, 305

Yama, 307

Yamato, 381

Yang I, 44

Yang Tzu, 366

Yashts, the, 244

Yasodhara, 327

Yathrib (Madinah), 437, 527

Yazid, 537

Yellow Hats, the, 141, 377 .

Yemishi, the, 132

Yggdrasil, the, 187 f.

Yi-ching, the, 352, 360

Yima, 76

Yin and Yang, the, 40

Ymir, .187, 351

Yoga, 316 f.

Yorubas, the, 122 f .

Young Men's Christian Association,
the, 649

Young Women's Christian Associa-
tion, the, 649

Yudhisthira, 43

Yule log/the, 56

Zangwill, Israel, 419

Zechariah, 424

Zemzem, the, 524

Zen Buddhism, 395

Zephaniah, 423

Zeus, 257, 258, et passim

Zevi, Sabbatai, 445, 447

Zikawei, 612

Zikkurat, the, 44, 206, 214

Zinjiro, the, 117

Zinzendorf, 621

Zionism, 447

Zohak, 243

Zoroaster, 58, 238, 241 f .

Zoroastrianism, 40, 151, 238 ff., 325

Zulus, the, 119, 164

Zwemer, Dr. S. M., 157

Zwingli, 584 f .

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

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