A Comparative View of Religions
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A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF RELIGIONS.
Translated from the Dutch of
J. H. SCHOLTEN,
Professor at Leyden,
by Francis T. Washburn.
Reprinted by permission from "The Religious Magazine and Monthly
Review."
Boston: Crosby & Damrell, 100 Washington St. 1870.
A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF RELIGIONS.
INTRODUCTION.[1]
The conception of religion presupposes, _a_, God as object; _b_, man as
subject; _c_, the mutual relation existing between them. According to
the various stages of development which men have reached, religious
belief manifests itself either in the form of a passive feeling of
dependence, where the subject, not yet conscious of his independence,
feels himself wholly overmastered by the deity, or the object of
worship, as by a power outside of and opposed to himself; or, when the
feeling of independence has awakened, in a one-sided elevation of the
human, whereby man in worshiping a deity deifies himself. In the highest
stage of religious development, the most entire feeling of dependence is
united in religion with the strongest consciousness of personal
independence. The first of these forms is exhibited in the fetich and
nature-worship of the ancient nations; the second in Buddhism, and in
the deification of the human, which reaches its full height among the
Greeks. The true religion, prepared in Israel, is the Christian, in
which man, grown conscious of his oneness with God, is ruled by the
divine as an inner power of life, and acts spontaneously and freely
while in the fullest dependence upon God. Since Christ, no more perfect
religion has appeared. What is true and good in Islamism was borrowed
from Israel and Christianity.
Although it is probable that every nation passed through different forms
of religious belief before its religion reached its highest development,
yet the earlier periods lie in great part beyond the reach of historical
investigation. The history of religion, therefore, has for its task the
review of the various forms of religion with which we are historically
acquainted, in the order of psychological development.
CHAPTER I.
FETICHISM. THE CHINESE. THE EGYPTIANS.
1. FETICHISM.
The lowest stage of religious development is fetichism, as it is found
among the savage tribes of the polar regions, and in Africa, America,
and Australia. In this stage, man's needs are as yet very limited and
exclusively confined to the material world. Still too little developed
intellectually to worship the divine in nature and her powers, he thinks
he sees the divinity which he seeks in every unknown object which
strikes his senses, or which his imagination calls up. In this stage,
religion has no higher character than that of caprice and of love of
the mysterious and marvelous, mixed with fear and a slavish adoration of
the divine. The worship and the priest's office (Shaman, Shamanism)
consist here chiefly in the use of charms, to exorcise a dreaded power.
From this savage fetichism the nature-worship found among the Aztecs in
Mexico, and the worship of the sun in Peru, are distinguished by the
greater definiteness and order of their religious conceptions and
usages. In them the gods have names, and an ordained priesthood cares
for the religious interests of the people. The highest form to which
fetichism has attained is the worship of Manitou, the great spirit,
which is found among the ancient tribes of North America.
2. THE CHINESE.
When man reaches a higher development, caprice and chance disappear from
religion. Having outgrown fetichism, man begins, as is the case among
the Chinese, to distinguish in the world around him an active and a
passive principle, force and matter (Yang and Yn), heaven and earth
(Kien and Kouen). We have here nature-worship in its beginnings. In this
stage, even less than in fetichism, is there a definite idea of God,
much less a conception of him as personal and spiritual lord. The
Chinese, from the practical, empirical point of view peculiar to him,
recognizes the spiritual only in man and chiefly in the state. His
religion, therefore, is confined exclusively to the faithful keeping of
the laws of the state (the Celestial Kingdom), in which he sees the
reflection of heaven, to the recognition of the Emperor as the son and
representative of heaven, and to the worship of the forefathers,
especially of the great men and departed emperors, to whose memory the
Chinese temples, or pagodas, are dedicated. The origin of this religion
dates, according to the tradition, from Fo-hi (2950 B.C.), the founder
of the Chinese state. In the fifth century before Christ, Kong-tse, or
Kong-fu-tse (Confucius), appeared as a reformer of the religion of his
countrymen, and gathered the ancient records and traditions of his
people into a sacred literature, which is known by the name of the
"King" (the books), "Yo-King" (the book of nature), "Chu-King" (the book
of history), "Chi-King" (the book of songs). The contents of the "King"
became later with the Chinese sages Meng-tse (360 B.C.) and Tschu-tsche
(1200 A.D.) an object of philosophical speculation. The doctrine of
Lao-tse, the younger contemporary of Kong-tse, which lays down as the
basis of the world, that is of the unreal or non-existent, a supreme
principle, _Tao_, or _Being_, corresponds with the Brahma doctrine of
the Indians, among whom he lived for a long time; but this doctrine
never became popular in China.
3. THE EGYPTIANS.
The worship of nature, which is seen in its beginnings among the
Chinese, exhibits itself among the Egyptians in a more developed form as
theogony. Here also the reflecting mind rose to the recognition of two
fundamental principles, the producing and the passive power of nature,
Kneph and Neith, from which sprang successively the remaining powers of
nature, time, air, earth, light and darkness, personified by the fantasy
of the people into as many divinities. The Egyptian mythology also (none
has as yet been discovered among the Chinese) exhibits a like character.
Fruitfulness and drought, the results of the Nile's overflowing and
receding, are imaged in the myth of _Osiris_, _Isis_, and _Typhon_. The
visible form under which the divine was worshiped in Egypt was the
sacred animal, the bull _Apis_, dedicated to _Osiris_, the cow,
dedicated to _Isis_, as symbols of agriculture; the bird _Ibis_, the
crocodile, the dog _Anubis_, and other animals, whose physical
characteristics impressed the as yet childish man, who saw in them the
symbol, either of the beneficent power of nature which moved him to
thankfulness, or of a destructive power which he dreaded and whose anger
he sought to avert. The religion of Egypt was not of a purely spiritual
character. To the man whose eye is not yet open to the manifestation of
the spiritual around him and in him, the divine is not spirit, but as
yet only nature. The animal, although in the form of the sphinx
approaching the human, holds in Egyptian art a place above the human as
symbol of the divine.
CHAPTER II.
THE ARIAN NATIONS.
1. THE EAST ARIANS. THE INDIANS.
In the development of religion among the Indians, the following periods
may be distinguished:--
_a._ The original Veda-religion.
_b._ The priestly religion of the Brahmins.
_c._ The philosophical speculation.
_d._ Buddhism.
_e._ The modified Brahminism after Buddha, in connection with the
worship of Vishnu and Siva.
_a. The original Veda-religion._
The original religion of Arya originated in Bactria. From thence, before
the time of Zoroaster, it was brought over, with the great migration of
the people, to the land of the seven rivers, which they conquered, and
which stretched from the Indus to the Hesidrus. It consisted, according
to the oldest literature of the Veda, in a polytheistical worship of the
divine, either as the beneficent or the baneful power of nature. The
clear, blue sky, the light of the sun, the rosy dawn, the storm that
spends itself in fruitful rain, the winds and gales which drive away the
clouds, the rivers whose fruitful slime overspreads the fields,--these
moved the inhabitants of India to the worship of the divine as the
beneficent power of nature which blesses man. On the other hand, he
changed under the impression of the harmful phenomena of nature, the
dark and close-packed clouds which hold back the rain and intercept the
sunshine, the parching heat of summer, which dries up the rivers and
hinders growth and fruitfulness, and these also he erected into objects
of awe and religious adoration. From this view of nature sprang the
Indian mythology. The oldest divinity (Deva) of the Indians is Varuna,
the all-embracing heaven, who marks out their courses for the heavenly
luminaries, who rules the day and the night, who is lord of life and
death, whose protection is invoked, whose anger deprecated. After him,
the great ruler of nature, there appear, in the Veda hymns, Indra, the
blue sky, god of light and thunder, the warrior who in battle stands
beside the combatants; Vayu, the god of the wind, the chief of the
Maruts, or the winds; Rudra, the god of the hurricane; Vritra, the
hostile god of the clouds; Ahi, the parching heat of summer. In the
mythology of the people, Indra, god of light, aided by Vayu and Rudra,
wages war with Vritra,--who, as god of the clouds, holds back the rain
and the light,--and appears as opponent of the destructive Ahi. The
other divinities also which appear in the Vedas are personified powers
of nature,--the twin brothers Aswins (equites), or the first rays of the
sun, Ushas the maiden, or the rosy dawn, Surya, Savitri, the god of the
sun. Great significance is given in the Indian mythology to Agni, the
god of fire, who burns the sacrifice in honor of the gods, who conveys
the offerings and prayers of men to gods and their gifts to men, who
gladdens the domestic hearth, lights up the darkness of night, drives
away the evil spirits, the Ashuras and Rakshas, and purges of evil the
souls of men. Religion, still wholly patriarchal in form, and free from
hierarchical constraint and from the later dogmatic narrowness, bore in
this earlier stage of its development the character of the still free
and warlike life of a nomadic people living in the midst of a sublime
nature, where everything, the clear sky, sunshine, and boisterous storm,
mountains and rivers, disposed to worship. As yet the Indian knew no
close priestly caste. Worship consisted in prayers and offerings,
especially in the Soma-offering, which was offered as food to the gods.
No fear of future torment after death as yet embittered the enjoyment of
life and made dying fearful. Yama was the friendly guide of the souls of
heroes to the heaven of Indra or Varuna, and not yet the inexorable
prince of hell who tormented the souls of the ungodly in the kingdom of
the dead. Of later barbarous usages also, such as the widow's
sacrificing herself on the funeral pile of her departed husband, there
was as yet no trace; and in the heroic poetry, as yet not disfigured by
later Brahminical alterations and additions, the heroes Krishna and Rama
appear as types of courage and self-sacrifice, and not, as later, as
avatars, or human incarnations, of the deity.
_b. Brahminism._
When the nomadic and warlike life of the nations of India in the land of
the seven rivers, in connection with their removal to the conquered land
of the Ganges (1300 B.C.), gave place to a more ordered social
constitution, a priestly class formed itself, which began to represent
the people before the deity, and from its chief function, _Brahma_, or
prayer, took the name of _Brahmins_, i.e., the praying. This Brahma,
before whose power even the gods must yield, was gradually exalted by
the Brahmins to the highest deity, to whom, under the name of Brahma,
the old Veda divinities were subordinated. Brahma is no god of the
people, but a god of the priests; not the lord of nature, but the
abstract and impersonal _Being_, out of whom nature and her phenomena
emanate. From Brahma the priest derives his authority; and the system of
caste, by which the priesthood is raised to the first rank, its origin.
The worship of Brahma consists in doing penance and in abstinence. Yama,
once a celestial divinity, now becomes the god of the lower world, where
he who disobeys Brahma is tormented after death. Immortality consists in
returning to Brahma; but is the portion only of the perfectly godly
Brahmin, while the rest of mankind can rise to this perfect state only
after many painful new births. The Brahmin, in the exclusive possession
of religious knowledge, reads and expounds the Vedas (knowledge),
exalted to infallible scripture, and on them constructs his doctrine.
Thus the once vigorous, natural life of the Indians gave place to a
conception of the world which repressed the soul, and annihilated man's
personality. The many-sidedness of the earlier theology resolved itself
into the abstract unity of an impersonal All, and thus the glory of
nature passed by unmarked, as nought or non-existent, and lost its
charm. At the same time, the old heroic sagas were displaced by legends
of saints, and the heroic spirit of the olden epic by an asceticism
which repressed the human, and before whose power even the gods stood in
awe. With Brahminism the religion lost its original and natural
character, and became characterized by a slavish submission to a
priesthood, which abrogated the truly human.
_c. The Speculative Systems._
The doctrine of the Brahmins occasioned the rise of various theological
and philosophical systems. To these belong, first, the "Vedanta," (end
of the Veda) or the dogmatic-apologetic exposition of the Veda. This
contains (1) the establishment of the authority of the Veda as holy
scripture revealed by Brahma, and also of the relation in which it
stands to tradition; (2) the proof that everything in the Veda has
reference to Brahma; (3) the ascetic system, or the discipline. To
explain contradictory statements in the older and later parts of the
Veda, Brahminical learning makes use of the subtleties of an
harmonistical method of interpretation. Second, the "Mimansa" (inquiry),
devoted to the solution of the problem, How can the material world
spring from Brahma, or the immaterial? According to this system, there
is only one Supreme Being, Paramatma, a name by which Brahma himself had
been already distinguished in Manu's book of law. Outside of this
highest _Being_, there is nothing real. The world of sense, or nature,
(Maya, the female side of Brahma), is mere seeming and illusion of the
senses. The human spirit is a part of Brahma, but perverted, misled by
this same illusion to the conceit that he is individual. This illusion
is done away with by a deeper insight, by means of which the dualism
vanishes from the wise man's view, and the conceit gives place to the
true knowledge that Brahma alone really exists, that nature, on the
contrary, is nought, and the human spirit nothing else than Brahma
himself. Third, the "Sankya" (criticism) originating with Kapila, in
which, in opposition to the "Mimansa," the individual being and the real
existence of nature, in opposition to spirit, is laid down as the
starting-point, and the result reached is the doctrine of two original
forces, spirit and nature, from whose reciprocal action and reaction
upon each other the union of soul and body is to be explained. Is this
union unnatural, then the effort of the wise man should be to free
himself, through the perception that the soul is not bound to the body,
from the dominion of matter. In this system, there is no room for an
infinite being, for, if a material world exist, then must God be limited
by its existence, and therefore cease to be infinite, that is God. The
Sankya philosophy here came in conflict with the orthodox doctrine of
the Brahmins, and prepared the way for Buddhism.
_d. Buddhism._
Against Brahminism Buddhism arose as a reaction. Siddharta, son of
Suddhodana, the King of Kapilavastu, of the family of the Sakya, (about
450 B.C.) moved by the misery of his fellow-countrymen, determined to
examine into the causes of it, and, if possible, to find means of
remedying it. Initiated into the wisdom of the Brahmins, but not
satisfied with that, after years of solitary retirement and quiet
meditation, penetrated with the principles of the Sankya, he traversed
the land as pilgrim (Sakya-muni, Sramana, Gautama) and opened to the
people of India a new religious epoch. The tendency of the new doctrine
was to break up the system of caste, and free the people from the
galling yoke of the Brahminical hierarchy and dogmas. While in
Brahminism man was deprived of his individuality, and regarded only as
an effluence from Brahma, and tormented by the fear of hell, and by the
thought of a ceaseless process of countless new births awaiting him
after death, whence the necessity of the most painful penances and
chastisements, Sakya-muni began with man as an individual, and in morals
put purity, abstinence, patience, brotherly love, and repentance for
sins committed above sacrifice and bodily mortification, and opened to
his followers the prospect, after this weary life, no more to be exposed
to the ever-recurring pains of new birth, but released from all
suffering to return to Nirvana, or nothingness. While Brahminism drew a
distinction between man and man, and with hierarchical pride took no
thought of the Sudra or lower class of the people, and limited wisdom to
the priestly caste, Sakya-muni preached the equality of all men, came
forward as a preacher to the people, used the people's language, and
chose his followers out of all classes, even from among women. Both of
these opposed systems are one-sided. In Brahminism, God is all, and man,
as personal being, nothing; in Buddhism, man is recognized as an
individual, but apart from God, while in both systems, the highest
endeavor is to be delivered from, according to Brahminism a seeming,
according to Sakya-muni a really existing individuality, the source of
all human woe, and to lose one's self either in Brahma or in the
Nirvana.
Less on account of his doctrine, in which there is found neither a God
nor a personal immortality, than on account of the universal character
of his words and of his life, Sakya-muni continued in honor after his
death, as the benefactor of the people and as the Buddha, the wise,
pre-eminently; and afterwards was deified, and took his place in the
ranks of the recognized gods as their superior. Thus there arose in
Buddhism, by a departure from the doctrine of the master, a new
polytheism. This was afterwards, through the influence of the
Brahminical priestly caste, suppressed in India, but spread over other
parts of Asia, to the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and also to
China.
_e. Later modification of Brahminism in connection with the worship of
Siva and Vishnu._
While Brahminism saw itself menaced by the steadily increasing influence
of Buddhism, the former nature-religion, dispossessed by the Brahmins,
asserted its rights in the worship of Siva in the valleys of the
Himalaya Mountains, and in that of Vishnu on the banks of the Ganges.
Siva is the Rudra of the Veda, the boisterous god of storms, the giver
of rain and growth. Vishnu is the same divinity among other races,
conceived under the influence of a softer climate in a modified form as
the blue sky. Both divinities, originally belonging to different parts
of India, were afterwards taken, first Vishnu, and then also Siva, into
the theological system of the Brahmins, and formed with Brahma, but not
until the fourth century after Christ, the trimurti, according to which
the one supreme being Parabrama is worshiped in the threefold form of
Brahma the creating, Vishnu the sustaining, and Siva the destroying
power of nature. To this later period of Brahminism belongs also the
alteration of the old epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, by which the
heroes Rama and Krishna are represented as avatars, that is incarnations
or human impersonations, of Vishnu. In this also there is evidently an
effort to bring the deity, conceived as the abstract One, into closer
union with man, an effort which is likewise visible in the later Yoga
system of the Brahmins, in which, by the admission of Buddhistic
elements, the visible world is recognized as real, the old rigid
asceticism mitigated, Vishnu represented as the soul of the world, and
immortality taught as a return of the individual soul to Brahma.
2. THE WEST ARIANS, IRANIANS.
[THE BACTRIANS, MEDES, PERSIANS.]
The ancient religion of the Bactrians in the period before Zoroaster was
patriarchal, and consisted in the worship of fire, as the beneficent
power of nature, and of Mithras, the god of the sun, combined with that
of the good spirits (Ahuras), among which were Geus-Urva (the spirit of
the earth), Cpento-mainyus (the white spirit), Armaiti (the earth, or
also the spirit of piety), and of the hero-spirits Sraosha, Traetona,
which as light and darkness are distinguished from Angro (the black
spirit).
Later, as it seems, the theology and worship of the neighboring nomadic
Arya penetrated to these nations, and caused a religious conflict which
ended with the migration of Arya to the south. At this period
Zarathustra[2] (Zoroaster) came forward under the Bactrian priest and
King Kava Vistaspa, as defender and reformer of the religion of the
fathers against the encroachments of a strange doctrine. The Devas
(Zend, Dews) or the gods of the Indian Veda appear with Zarathustra as
evil spirits. Not Indra, but the hero Traetona, wages war with Ahi
(Zend, Azhi), while the kavis, or priests, are attacked by him as
deceivers and liars. From the belief in good spirits (Ahuras, i.e.,
the living, and Mazdas, i.e., the wise), the ancient genii of the
country, Zarathustra developed the belief of one highest God,
Ahura-Mazda (Ormuzd, Greek, [Greek: Osompzes]), a doctrine which he
received by divine inspiration through the mediation of the spirit
Srasha. Ahura-Mazda, surrounded by the Amesha-Spenta (Amshaspands), or
the holy immortals, not until later reduced to seven, is the creator of
light and life. The hurtful and evil, on the contrary, is non-existence
(akem), and in the oldest parts of the Avesta, the Gathas, which go back
to Zarathustra and his first followers, is not yet conceived as a
personal being. First in the Vendidad, written after Zarathustra, does
Angro-mainyus (Ahriman), or the evil one, with his Dews, although
subordinated to Ahura-Mazda, gain a place in the Iranian conception of
the universe, as the adversary of Ahura-Mazda, and as the cause of evil
in the natural and spiritual world. From these conceptions there was
developed in the later Parsism the system of the four periods of the
world, each of three thousand years, in the book "Bundehesh." In the
first period, Ahura-Mazda appears as creator of the world and as the
source of good. The creation, completed by Ahura-Mazda in six days by
means of the word (Honover), is in the second period destroyed by
Angro-mainyus, who, appearing upon the earth in the form of a serpent,
seduces the first human pair, created by Ahura-Mazda. In the third
period, which begins with the revelation given to Zarathustra,
Ahura-mazda and Angro-mainyus strive together for man. After this
follows, in the fourth period, the victory gained by Ahura-Mazda.
Sosiosh (Saoshyas), the deliverer already foretold in the Vendidad,
appears. The resurrection of the dead, not taught by Zarathustra or in
the Vendidad, takes place. The judgment of the world begins; the good
are received into paradise and the sinners banished to hell. At last,
all is purified, and Angro-mainyus himself and his Dews submit
themselves to Ahura-Mazda, whose victory is celebrated in heaven with
songs of praise.
Thus among the Iranian races, out of the old patriarchal worship of fire
and light, on the occasion of the religious struggle with the Indian
Arya, and under the influence of Zarathustra, there was developed the
doctrine of one supreme God,[3] who, surrounded by the good spirits of
heaven, wages war against evil, whence arose later the moral opposition
between Ahura-Mazda and Angro-mainyus resulting in the victory of the
good principle over the bad. The old dualism of force and matter,
beneficent and destructive powers of nature, light and darkness, becomes
in Parsism moral. The deity, no longer identified with nature, becomes a
personal, spiritual being, the creator of mankind; and the end of the
world's development is conceived as the triumph of the good. Hence the
high rank which the doctrine of Zarathustra and its further development
holds in the history of religion.
3. THE GREEKS.
As man rises in spiritual development, nature becomes to him a
revelation ever more and more manifold of the divine. To the Greek
(Pelasgi, Hellenes) the whole of nature was living, and his imagination
peopled her everywhere with divine beings, who in wood and field, in
rivers and on mountains (Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, Sileni, &c.), hovered
friendly round him. The Greek was indeed distinguished from other
nations by this richer and more elevated view of nature; but he excelled
them most of all in this, that the divine object which he worshiped was
conceived both in form and character after the human. Zeus, Phoebus
Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hestia, Hermes,
Artemis, were originally powers of nature personified, as some epithets
in Homer[4] still indicate; but they became, sometimes under the same
names, types of power and lordship, science and art, courage and
sensuous beauty. While Dionysus, Demeter, Hades, and Persephone remained
earthly, and Helios, Eos, Iris, and Hecate, heavenly divinities, and
Oceanus, Poseidon, Amphitrite, Proteus, and Nereus ruled the waters,
Zeus was conceived as the god of the sky and of thunder, who hurled the
bolts, the great king and lawgiver, the father of men, and Hera,
originally the air, became the protecting goddess of married life;
Apollo, the god of light, who shot forth his arrows, not at first
identified with Helios, became the god of divination and poetry, who led
the choir of the muses; the goddess of light, Athene, became the
contentious goddess of wisdom; Aphrodite, born of the foam of the sea,
once the symbol of the fruitful power of nature, later, encircled by the
Graces, became the type of womanly beauty and charm, to which the
strength of man, personified in Ares, corresponds. In like manner in the
later mythology, Hephaestus, the god of fire, appeared as the god of the
forge, Hestia, the goddess of fire, as the protector of the household
hearth, and Hermes, the god of the storm and of rain, as the messenger
of the gods, the type of cunning and craftiness, while Artemis, the
goddess of the moon, the fruitful mother of nature, took the character
of the chaste maiden, the goddess of hunting, who with her nymphs and
hounds nightly roamed the fields and woods. The monsters, the Sphinx,
the Minotaur, the Cyclops, the Centaurs, symbols of a yet unhuman or
half human power of nature, were overcome by the Greek heroes, Perseus,
Hercules, Jason, Theseus, OEdipus, the types of human strength and
valor. The religious festivals were enlivened by trials of men's
strength and skill in games, and the historian and poet offered to the
gods the products of human genius. In the religion of the Greeks,
however, the moral element, although not passed over and in the Greek
epic and tragedy not seldom expressed in grand characters, stood
nevertheless too little in the foreground, so that the worship of the
divine, as in the older nature-worship, especially in the feasts in
honor of Dionysus and Aphrodite, was marked by immoral practices. The
conception of a future life, which taken in connection with a future
retribution has a moral tendency, had but little attraction for the
Greek, who rejoiced in the glory of the earth, and saw in nature and in
man the kingdom of the divine. The passage from the earlier poetical
nature-worship to the worship of the divine in human form seems to be
indicated in the war which Olympian Zeus waged with Cronos and the
Titans. The origin and development of the various elements and powers of
nature, Chaos, Eros, Uranus, Gaea, the Giants, Styx, Erebus, Hemera,
AEther, &c, became, with the poets and philosophers after Homer, matters
of speculation, of which the theogonies of Hesiod, Orpheus, Pherecydes,
and others furnish proof.