Introduction to the History of Religions Part 29

+1074+. The minimum of priestly influence is found in the national religion of China, in which there is no priestly cla.s.s proper.[1973] In the wors.h.i.+p of ancestors, which satisfies the daily religious needs of the people, every householder and every civil official is a ministrant.

The great annual sacrifices to the heavenly bodies have been conducted till recently by the emperor in person.[1974] Public religion is, in the strictest sense, a function of the State. Society, according to the Chinese view, is competent to manage relations with the supernatural Powers--it needs no special cla.s.s of intermediaries. This thoroughgoing conception of civic autonomy in religion connects itself with the supreme stress laid on conduct in the Confucian system, which represents the final Chinese ideal of life:[1975] man constructs his own moral life, and extrahuman Powers, while they may grant physical goods, are chiefly valued as incidents in the good social life. The great speculative systems of thought, Confucianism and Taoism, gradually gave rise to definite sacerdotal cults; but the priests of the Confucian temples serve mainly to keep before the people the teaching of the Master, and the Taoist priests have become largely practicers of magic and charlatans. Chinese religious practice remains essentially nonsacerdotal.

+1075+. The Peruvian cult presents a remarkable example of a finely organized hierarchy closely related to the civil government.[1976] The priests were chosen from the leading families; the highpriest was second in dignity to the Inca only. The functions of the priests were strictly religious; and as the ma.s.ses of the people were devoted to the wors.h.i.+p of local deities and natural objects, it seems probable that the sacerdotal influence was merely that which belonged to their supervision of the State religion. Details on this point are lacking.

Priests played a more prominent part in Mexico, entering, as they did, more into the life of the people.[1977] On the one hand, the numerous human sacrifices, of which the priests had complete control, kept the terrible aspect of religion constantly before the mind of the public; and, on the other hand, the milder side of the cult (for the Mexican religion was composite) brought the priests into intimate relations with adults and children. As the priests, apart from their monstrous sacrificial functions, appear to have been intelligent and humane, it is not unlikely that their general moral influence was good.

+1076+. The influence of the priesthood on religion (and on civilization so far as religion has been an element of civilization) has been of a mixed character. On the one hand, while not the sole representative of the idea of the divine government of the world (for soothsayers and prophets equally represented this idea), it has stood for friendly everyday intercourse between man and the deity, and has so far tended to bring about an equable and natural development of the ordinary religious life; it was involved in the sacerdotal functions that the deity might be placated by proper ceremonies, whence it followed that the priest, who knew the nature of these ceremonies, was a benefactor, and, more generally, that man had his salvation in his own hands. The business of the priest was to maintain the outward forms of religion, to order and elaborate the ritual, to organize the whole cultus.[1978] This was a work that required time and the cooperation of many minds. Priests were, in fact, naturally drawn together by a common aim and common interests--with rare exceptions they lived in groups, formed societies and colleges, had their traditions of policy, gathered wealth.[1979] For this reason they were in general opposed to social changes--they were a conservative element in society, and in this regard were the friends of peace.

+1077+. On another side they did good work; they were to some extent the guardians of morals. In ancient popular life ethics was not separated from religion--religion adopted in general the best moral ideas of its time and place and undertook to enforce obedience to the moral law by divine sanctions. Priests announced, interpreted, and administered the law, which was at once religious and ethical; they were teachers and judges, and this function of theirs was of prime importance, particularly where good systems of popular education did not exist.

Further, as a leisured cla.s.s they often turned to literary occupations; examples of their literary work are found in India (poetry and philosophy), Babylonia (the history of Berossus), Palestine (Old Testament Psalter, the works of Josephus). They offered a place of rest in the midst of the continual warfare of ancient times.

+1078+. On the other hand, the priesthood has been generally conservative of the bad as well as of the good. It has maintained customs and ideas that had ceased to be effective and true, and in order to preserve them it has resorted to forced interpretations and has invented accounts of their origin. It has thus in many cases been obscurantive and mendacious. It has tended to make the essence of religion consist in outward observances, and has not infrequently degraded the placation of the deity to a matter of bargaining--it has sold salvation for money. Priests have not always escaped the danger that threatens all such corporations--that of sacrificing public interests to the interests of the order. They have drifted naturally toward tyranny--the enormous power put into their hands of regulating men's relations with the deity has led to the attempt to regulate men's general thought, though in most of the great religions their power in this regard has been partly controlled by the civil authority and by the general intelligence of the community. When they have not been controlled, they have often succ.u.mbed to the temptations that beset wealth; they have fallen into habits of luxury and debauchery.

+1079+. In a word the history of the priesthood has been like that of all bodies of men invested with more or less arbitrary power. Its role has varied greatly in different places and at different times. It has numbered in its ranks good men and bad, and has favored sometimes righteous, sometimes unrighteous, causes. It is not possible to define its influence on religion further than to say that it has been a natural element of the organization of religion, taking its form and coloring from the various communities in which it has existed, embodying current ideas and thus acting as a uniting and guiding force at a time when higher forces were lacking. It has formed a transitional stage in the advance of religious thought toward better conceptions of the relation of man to the deity.

+1080+. Islam has no priesthood, as it has no provision for atonement for sin except by the righteous conduct of the individual; its cultic officials are preachers or leaders of prayer (imams) in the mosque wors.h.i.+p, and jurists or scholars (ulamas) who interpret the Koran.

Judaism has had no priests since the destruction of the Second Temple (70 A.D.); its synagogue services are conducted by men trained in the study of the Bible or the Talmud (rabbis). In Christianity the conception of a sacrificial ministrant has been retained in those churches (the Greek and the Roman) which regard the eucharistic ceremony as a sacrifice. In the West the "presbyter" (such is the New Testament term), the head of the congregation, took over the function of the old priest as conductor of religious wors.h.i.+p, and the word a.s.sumed the form "priest" in the Latin and Teutonic languages. Among Protestants it is employed only in the Church of England, in which, however, for the most part it has not the signification of 'sacrificer.'

WORs.h.i.+P

+1081+. _Places of wors.h.i.+p._ The simplest form of early wors.h.i.+p is the presentation of an offering to the dead or to some extrahuman object of reverence. Such objects were held to exist in all the world, in the sky, in rocks, streams, woods, caves, hills and mountains, and beneath the surface of the earth; but it was chiefly in places of human resort that their presence was expected. On some natural object or at some spot regarded as sacred, particularly where, it was believed, a spirit or deity had manifested himself (in some remarkable natural phenomenon, or in some piece of good fortune or ill fortune), the wors.h.i.+per would place his offering. Sometimes it was left to be disposed of by the deity or spirit or dead person at his pleasure. When the offering was an animal, the blood, as food, was often applied to the grave or to the stone or other object connected with a superhuman Power. In the course of time, it may be supposed, it would be found convenient to erect a table or some other structure on which an animal could be slain. Such a structure would be an altar. At first simple, a heap of stones, a pile of dirt, a rough slab, it was gradually enlarged and ornamented,[1980] and itself, by a.s.sociation, became sacred.

+1082+. Places where the presence of the divine was recognized were sacred. In them wors.h.i.+p was paid to the deity, and in the course of time they were marked off and guarded against profane use. At first, however, they were merely spots on hills or in groves, by streams or in the open country, needing no marks or watches, for they were known to all and were protected by the reverence of the people.[1981] When the land came to be more thickly populated and religion was better organized, such places were inclosed and committed to the care of official persons.

Well-known examples are the Greek _temenos_ and the Arabian _haram_.[1982] Taboos and privileges attached themselves to such inclosures. Precautions had to be taken on entering them; the shoes, for example, were removed, lest they should absorb the odor of sanct.i.ty and thus become unfit for everyday use. The s.p.a.ces thus set apart were sometimes of considerable extent (as was and is the case at Mecca); within them no war could be waged and no fugitive seized. Sometimes they owed their sacredness to the buildings to which they were attached.

+1083+. The necessity for a house of wors.h.i.+p arose very early.[1983]

Where there was an image or a symbol of a G.o.d, or where the apparatus of sacrifice or of other ritual practice was considerable, buildings were required for the protection of these objects and perhaps for the convenience of the ministrants. The development of buildings followed the course of all such arrangements--at first rude, they became gradually elaborate and costly. In many savage tribes and in the earliest period of civilized peoples (Egyptians, Hebrews, al.) a hut, constructed like those of the people and therefore of a very simple character, houses the image or other representative of the G.o.d. With the progress of artistic feeling and skill abodes of men grow into palaces and abodes of deities into temples. It is on the temples that the greatest labor has been expended, partly because they are the work of the whole community, partly because it has been believed that the favor of the deity would be gained by making his dwelling-place magnificent.[1984] The essential fact in a temple--its definition--is (in the lower cults) and was (in the great ancient cults) that it is or was the home of a G.o.d, the specific place of approach to him, with the possibility of face-to-face intercourse and a greater probability of gaining the blessings desired. This local conception of the deity continued after larger ideas had arisen,[1985] and is to be found at the present day in some Christian circles.

+1084+. Temples have tended to grow not only in beauty and magnificence but also in elaborateness of interior arrangements and of connected structures. Anciently they were specifically places of sacrifice--the abodes of G.o.ds to whom sacrifice was offered--and this function generally determined their interior form. Sometimes they contained a single room in which stood an image and an altar; this was the simplest architectural embodiment of the idea of divine sacredness. But the progress of ritual forms was accompanied by the notion of grades of sanct.i.ty, and a special sanct.i.ty was indicated by a special room, an adytum, an inner or most holy shrine;[1986] where, as was often the case, gradations in priestly rank existed, only the highest priest could enter the adytum. For the implements of service and for the priests there were buildings attached to the temple. The people gathered in courts adjoining the sacred structure; where ritual exactness was carried very far (as in Ezekiel's plan and in Herod's temple), there were gradations in the courts also.[1987] Usually an altar stood in one of the courts. The sacredness of the sanctuary communicated itself to the vessels and other implements of the sacrificial service.

+1085+. Temples, like sacred inclosures and altars, were often asylums, and doubtless in many cases served to protect innocent persons. The privilege, however, was often abused, and it became necessary in Greece and Rome to restrain it.[1988]

+1086+. As a factor in the development of art the temple has been important. It has called forth the best architectural skill of man, and the statues that often adorned sacred buildings have stimulated sculpture. It does not appear that symbolism entered into the idea of ancient temples.[1989] The Babylonian and a.s.syrian zikkurat (or ziggurat) was a staged structure (resembling in this regard the Egyptian pyramid), supposed by many scholars to be an imitation of the mountains whence the predecessors of the Semites in Babylonia came, and on which they wors.h.i.+ped;[1990] if this be so, there is no attempt at pointing upward to the abode of the G.o.ds. Nor is there any trace elsewhere in the ancient world of a symbolic significance attached to temples beyond the distinction of place, referred to above, between the sacred and the profane and between different degrees of sacredness. The form of temples appears to have been determined by imitation of early nonreligious usage or by considerations of convenience;[1991] the ziggurat may have been suggested by a high place, the adytum by a cave, but most temples were probably copies of ordinary human dwellings or civic buildings (as in late Latin, basilica is used in the sense of 'cathedral').

As abodes of priests temples were the centers of all priestly activities in the development of ritual and literature. Being strong and well guarded they were often used by kings as treasure-houses; but they were stripped of their wealth by native kings in times of need, and were freely plundered by conquerors.

+1087+. _Forms of wors.h.i.+p._ The ancient forms of divine wors.h.i.+p, as is remarked above,[1992] follow in a general way the modes of approaching human potentates. Ceremonies of wors.h.i.+p reached a high degree of elaboration in the great religions, Egyptian, Babylonian-a.s.syrian, Hebrew, Hindu, Greek, Roman.[1993] The central fact was the presentation of the offering, and with this came to be connected prayers and hymns, ceremonies of purification, vows, imprecations, exorcisms, oracles; the festivals also were religious functions. Prayer is spoken of below.[1994] Hymns sometimes consisted of or contained pet.i.tions, more generally were laudations of the power and benefactions of a deity. For poetical charm the first place is to be a.s.signed to the Egyptian, Hebrew, and Hindu hymns. The religious ideas expressed in such compositions varied with time and place, but they show a general tendency toward a monolatrous or henotheistic point of view and toward higher ethical and spiritual feeling. Many of the Egyptian hymns seem to be substantially monotheistic, and the same thing is true of the Babylonian, the a.s.syrian, and the Vedic. The Babylonian hymns so far recovered (belonging in their present form mostly to the seventh century B.C.) are chiefly penitential[1995] and show a close resemblance to some Hebrew psalms. In the Veda traces of philosophical thought, pantheistic and other, are not lacking. The poems of the Old Testament Psalter vary greatly in breadth and elevation of thought--some, dealing generally with national affairs (occasionally with individual experiences), are narrow and ethically low; others show exalted conceptions of the deity and fine moral feeling. The Avestan ritual is concerned largely with physical details, but is not lacking in a good ethical standard; the Gathas, particularly, though not free from national coloring, give a noteworthy picture of the government of the world according to moral law. Of Greek ritual hymns we have few remains, and these are of no great interest.

+1088+. Everywhere the temple-hymns, as is natural, deal chiefly with the desires and hopes of the wors.h.i.+per, and often do not rise above mere egoism. Their object is to secure blessing, and the blessing is often, perhaps generally, of a nonmoral character--wealth, children, triumph over enemies. Desire for moral purity appears in some Hebrew hymns, and perhaps in some Babylonian. Of the modes of presenting liturgical poems to the deity we have few details. In the Second Temple at Jerusalem there were choruses of ministrants (Levites), and some of the t.i.tles of the psalms contain what seem to be names of musical instruments and melodies; but of this temple-music nothing further is known than that it was sometimes sung antiphonally, but without harmony.[1996] In some parts of Greece boys were trained to render hymns musically in the daily service and on special occasions. The general character of old Greek music is indicated in the Delphian hymn to Apollo discovered in 1893;[1997] the melody is simple but impressive--there is no harmony.

+1089+. The temple-music doubtless tended to heighten devotional feeling among the wors.h.i.+pers, and possibly a similar popular effect was produced by the festivals that were common in the ancient world. Here the whole population took part, there were religious ceremonies, and the consciousness of the presence of the deity was made more distinct not only by visible and tangible representations, but often also by the fact that these occasions were connected in current myths and legends with histories of G.o.ds and ancient national experiences. Processions and pilgrimages brought the people to sacred places to which stories were attached, and the religious life became a series of object lessons. The Greek and Roman calendars contain a great number of feast days, each a.s.signed to some G.o.d.[1998] The Hebrews at a comparatively early date (eighth or ninth century B.C.) connected their great festivals with remote national events;[1999] examples of festivals attached to recent historical events are Purim,[2000] the Feast of Dedication established in commemoration of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabaeus (December, 165 B.C.) after the Syrian profanation,[2001] and the "Day of Nicanor" commemorating the victory of Judas over that general (March, 161 B.C.).[2002] In the Hindu festivals (New Year's Day and during the spring months) stories of G.o.ds formed a prominent feature.[2003] The Greek Genesia, the season of mourning for the dead, came to be connected with the victory of Marathon.[2004]

All such celebrations tend to become seasons of merrymaking, and the religious element in them then receives less and less attention.[2005]

This remark holds of the festivals that Christianity took over from the old religions, adapting them to the new conditions.[2006] Such occasions lose their distinctive religious significance in proportion as the events they commemorate recede into the past and become less and less distinct. It is in very early times, when they are thought of as representing realities, that they are religiously effective; in later times they give way to more reflective forms of devotion.

+1090+. Vows, blessings, and curses may be considered to belong to wors.h.i.+p in the regard that they contain pet.i.tions to the deity; the curse or the blessing, however, sometimes rested on a baldly objective conception of the power of words, sometimes was held to be magical: once uttered, the word, beneficent or maleficent, went to its object, person or thing, did its work, and could not be recalled; its effect could be set aside only by an utterance in the opposite direction.[2007] A magician, by the power resident in him, could fix a curse or a blessing on man or thing. An exorcism, also, might be effected by magic or by invoking the aid of a deity; an evil spirit is a supernatural Power and has to be considered--one does not wors.h.i.+p such a being, but one may employ religious means to circ.u.mvent him. Bad magic may be overcome by good magic, and a deity, hostile and maleficent under certain circ.u.mstances, may be placated by offerings. It is not always easy to draw the line between wors.h.i.+p proper and modes of defense against injurious Powers. But in general true wors.h.i.+p implies friendly relations between human and superhuman persons.

+1091+. _Idols._ From an early time men have desired to have visible representatives of the supernatural. So long as natural objects, trees, stones, mountains, were regarded as themselves divine or as the abodes of spirits, so long as a loose social organization and the absence of definite family life led men to spend their lives in the open air, there was no need of artificial forms of the Powers. Such a need arose inevitably, however, under more advanced social conditions. Exactly at what stage men began to make images it is hardly possible to say,--the process was begun at different stages in different regions,--but it appears that in general it was synchronous with some fairly good form of social organization. Yet, where such forms exist, there are differences in the use of images. These are found--to take the lower peoples--in Melanesia and the Northern Pacific Ocean, in the northern part of South America, in North America apparently only among the Eastern Redmen (as the Lenape or Delawares),[2008] and on the western coast of Africa (Ashanti, Dahomi, Yoruba). Where the cult of beasts (whether totemic or not) is a living one, idolatry does not find a place; it is only when communities have begun to be agricultural that they have artificial forms of G.o.ds; that is, idolatry comes in with the stage of culture connected with the agricultural life.[2009]

The development in the form of images is familiar. The rude and, to modern eyes, grotesque idols of the lower peoples gradually pa.s.s into the more finished forms of the civilized nations.[2010] Really artistic forms, however, were produced only by some Semites (Babylonians and a.s.syrians) and in the h.e.l.lenic and Graeco-Roman worlds. In Central America, Mexico, and Peru images are anthropomorphic but lacking in symmetry and grace. Hindu idols are often composite and grotesque, sometimes (especially images of Buddha) highly impressive.

+1092+. The Hebrews appear to have had no anthropomorphic images of their national deity. Down to a late period there was a cult of household G.o.ds,[2011] and of these, probably, there were images in private houses and in shrines, whether anthropomorphic or not is uncertain. In Solomon's temple (and in Ezekiel's proposed plan) figures of cherubs (originally divine beings) stood on the walls of the main room and guarded the ark in the adytum; they were winged creatures, the forms derived immediately from Phoenicia, ultimately from Babylonia; they appear only in the great public cult, probably did not enter into the religious life of the people at large, and there is no evidence that they ever received divine wors.h.i.+p.[2012] The Hebrews had no plastic art of their own, seem to have had small disposition in their earlier history to make images, and later such forms were excluded by the antagonism of the prophets to foreign cults and by refined ideas of the deity.[2013] The absence of images in the Zoroastrian cult may be accounted for in a similar way--from early lack of artistic impulse and later elevated conceptions. In China there are images in household wors.h.i.+p, but none in the great imperial religious ceremonies.[2014]

Though the Koran does not expressly forbid the cult of images, yet, as the old Arabian cults denounced by the prophet were all idolatrous, images were identified with false religion (polytheism) and have been avoided by the Moslems, whose strict monotheism left no place for them.

+1093+. Images were credited in half-civilized times with a certain personality, were flogged or destroyed when they failed to do what was expected of them, or were bound in order to prevent their going away.[2015] In such cases the conception of the power of these objects was probably a confused one; though they were known to be inanimate pieces of wood or stone or other material, it was believed that they were inhabited by spirits or deities, and it was held that in some undefined way the power of the divine agent was transferred to its physical incas.e.m.e.nt--the two were practically identified. This sort of conception soon pa.s.sed away and was succeeded by a symbolical interpretation. Whatever the ultimate origin of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hindu divine and semi-divine forms (which are sometimes monstrous),[2016] it is probable that for the more thoughtful wors.h.i.+pers they represented divine powers and functions. Uncouth shapes may be softened or transformed by familiarity, and by a.s.sociation with higher ideas--things in themselves repulsive may become vehicles of devotion.[2017] In all religious wors.h.i.+p objects a.s.sociated with pious acts acquire sanct.i.ty and beauty.

+1094+. That idolatry in ancient times was not a wholly bad feature of wors.h.i.+p is shown by the excellence of the great religions in which it was practiced. Its general function was to make the deity more real to the wors.h.i.+per, to make the latter more sharply conscious of the divine presence, to fix the attention, and so far to further a real communion.

On the other hand, it tended to produce a low physical conception of the divine person, and to distract the mind of the wors.h.i.+per from the ethical side of wors.h.i.+p. Its moral effect was dependent on the man's character and thought. When the image was regarded as the symbol of an ethically good Power, it was a reenforcement of pure religious feeling; when it was regarded as in itself a source of physical benefit, it was a degrading influence. This difference of effect exists in those Christian bodies that include images and pictures of the deity and of saints in their apparatus of wors.h.i.+p.

CHURCHES

+1095+. The history of the social organization of religion is the history of the growth of churches--voluntary a.s.sociations for wors.h.i.+p; it is toward the Church that society has. .h.i.therto moved.[2018] Every ancient community may be said to be an incipient church in the sense that it contains the germs of the later ecclesiastical development. But this later form exists in such communities only in germ--the most ancient wors.h.i.+p was communal, an affair of clan, tribe, or State. Men were born into their religious faith and could no more change it, or think of changing it, than they could change, or think of changing, their language or any other inheritance. It was inevitable, however, that there should be a growth of individualism--instinct impelled men to think for themselves in religion as in all other things. Religion was a part of the general social movement, affected by all other parts of that movement. Independence of thought led to social aggregations, the members of which were drawn together by similarity of ideas and aspirations. This is the familiar history of social movements, and that in religion such movements have been continuous will be evident from a brief statement of the historical facts.

+1096+. _Savage secret societies._ These societies are referred to above;[2019] here we have only to notice their germinal ecclesiastical character. They represent a partial break-up of tribal communal wors.h.i.+p by a.s.signing special duties and granting special privileges to certain initiated persons. Totemic groups are sometimes (as in Central Australia) charged with specific functions in the tribal life; but members.h.i.+p in such groups is a matter of birth, and they everywhere tend to give way to secret societies. These latter often have charge of certain religious rites, and from their secret proceedings and from a knowledge of their secret lore the rest of the tribe are excluded.

The extent to which religious organization and influence have been carried is ill.u.s.trated by the history of the Polynesian Areoi, the most remarkable of such fraternities.[2020] The Areoi created 'mysteries,'

with an elaborate ritual whose effectiveness was dependent on absolute accuracy in words; its members were chosen without regard to tribal position and entered of their own free will; it was a voluntary a.s.sociation and made its own religious laws. It was restricted (as all such a.s.sociations are) by the necessity of paying regard to existing customs, but within such limits it was independent of the tribe, and its members were held to be ent.i.tled to special honors and enjoyments in this life and the next (a crude conception of salvation). It was essentially a church, and other societies, in Polynesia, Africa, and North America, approached this position more or less nearly. They all tended to become tyrannical--their social influence enabled them to impose their authority on the tribe, and they did not hesitate to employ violence in a.s.serting their rights.[2021] To foreign influence they were naturally hostile, since this generally diminished their power. Founded as they are on savage ideas they have disappeared, or are disappearing, before foreign civilizations. In their best form they doubtless gave a certain unity to communities and were thus an element of order.

+1097+. _Greek mysteries._ In Greece dissatisfaction with the current cults expressed itself in various ways, largely through poets and philosophers, who a.s.serted themselves, indeed, individually, but showed no power of organization. The task of organizing religious opinion fell to that new direction of thought (vaguely called "Orphic"[2022]) which, while it gave prominence to spiritual ideas and moral ideals, introduced a lively emotional element into wors.h.i.+p. In the Eleusinian and other mysteries this element was both external (dramatic representations, songs, processions, ceremonies of initiation) and internal (the hope of salvation). Without breaking with the popular religious forms the mysteries constructed their own forms, chose their members, and created a religious _imperium in imperio_. They were voluntary a.s.sociations for wors.h.i.+p, ignored distinctions of social rank, had great ideas and impressive rituals--apparently all the elements necessary to the establishment of churches or of a national church. Yet they faded gradually away, and perished finally without leaving any definite impression, as it seemed, on Greece or the world without.[2023]

+1098+. The reasons of their failure are not far to seek. They did not reach the h.e.l.lenic mind for the reason that they were of foreign origin and much in them was opposed to the genius of the h.e.l.lenic religion.

Even the Pythagorean reform movement of Southern Italy, with its strenuous moral culture of the individual, seems to have had a foreign (Asiatic) coloring. It was, indeed, at one with the better Greek thought of the time (sixth century B.C. and later) in its elevated conception of the deity and of wors.h.i.+p, but with this it combined ascetic observances and, apparently, mystical ideas; it established what may be called a church, which had a great vogue in Southern Italy for several centuries but did not, as an organization, penetrate into Greece. It attracted some thoughtful men, but was too calm and restrained for the ma.s.ses.[2024]

+1099+. It was different with the Dionysiac cult, whose wildness made it popular; of foreign origin, it was in time partly h.e.l.lenized and in Athens took its place in the regular national wors.h.i.+p; some of its foreign features were taken up in the mysteries. These latter, with their enthusiasm and their half-barbaric ceremonies, excited the contempt of most of the educated cla.s.s.[2025] These cults were Asiatic--not Semitic--but probably a product of a non-h.e.l.lenic population of Asia Minor (Phrygia and other regions), developed during a period the history of which is obscure.

+1100+. The Semites seem to have produced no mysteries--there is no record of such cults in Babylonia, Syria, Phoenicia, the Hebrew territory, or Arabia; Semitic religion was objective, simple, nonmystical.[2026] The Syrian cult of Tammuz (Adonis), which was adopted by Hebrews in the sixth century B.C. (Ezek. viii, 14), was an old folk-ceremony, not a mystery; it is allied to the Attis ceremonies of Asia Minor and to the mourning ceremony mentioned in Judges xi, 40 (mourning for a dead deity, but there referred to Jephthah's daughter).

+1101+. The Greek mysteries, then, derived their orgiastic side partly from Thrace, partly from Asia Minor. They chiefly attracted the lower cla.s.ses and particularly slaves, for they offered individual independence in religion, freedom from the sense of social inferiority, and hope for the life to come. Thus they did not appeal to the h.e.l.lenic spirit, and did not, as organizations, survive the political decadence of the Greek States. But it is probable that their effects survived in the recognition of the possibility of religious wors.h.i.+p apart from the traditional cults, and, more generally, in contributing to the establishment of the principle of individualism in religion. An historical connection between the Greek mysteries and the later individualistic cults is, indeed, not probable. c.u.mont believes that Mithraism did not imitate the organization of the Greek secret societies.[2027] The New Testament use of the term 'mystery' in the sense of 'esoteric doctrine'[2028] may have come from the Asian cult; the Mithraic wors.h.i.+p was practiced in Tarsus, the native city of the Apostle Paul, in the first century of our era. However this may be, it seems probable that the conception of a church existed in the Graeco-Roman world before the beginning of our era, and that its existence was due in part to the Greek mysteries, whose members were scattered throughout the empire of Alexander.

+1102+. The _philosophical systems_ that arose in Asia and Europe concurrently with the Greek mysteries did not found ecclesiastical organizations. The disciples of philosophers formed schools, and the adherents of each school const.i.tuted a group the members of which were united one with another by the bond of a common intellectual aim and a common conception of life and of the world; and there was also a scientific union between the various groups, the fundamental methods of investigation and lines of thought being the same everywhere. But the object of thought was the discovery of truth by human reason, not the quest of salvation by wors.h.i.+p of the divine. The emotional element essential to the formation of a church was wanting, and where philosophical systems adopted devotional forms these were not the creation of philosophy but were borrowed from current cults. They sought happiness, but not through religious ritual. They did not always formally discard or condemn existing cults, but they ignored them as means of salvation; they sometimes recognized traditional G.o.ds and forms of wors.h.i.+p, but interpreted them in accordance with their own ideas.

+1103+. In India the Upanishads practically abolished the national pantheon and the old Brahmanic ritual--knowledge, they taught, was the key to bliss, and the knowledge was not that of the Veda, it came by reflection; emanc.i.p.ation from earthly bonds, absorption into the Infinite, was the goal of effort, but the effort was individualistic and led to no devotional organization. Ascetic observances, as a means of attaining perfection, were an inheritance from popular Brahmanism.[2029]

In China Taoism, originally a system of thought (based on the conception of all-controlling order) that appealed only to a certain cla.s.s of philosophic minds, became a religion by borrowing crude ideas and sensational methods from a debased form of Buddhism and other sources.[2030] Confucius steadily declined to teach anything about divine wors.h.i.+p; Confucianism remained merely an ethical system, dealing only with the present life, until its founder, with disregard of his teaching, was divinized.

+1104+. Many of the Greek philosophers, from Socrates and Plato on, were definitely (some of them warmly) religious, but their religion was chiefly valued as an aid to ethical life, and it did not respond to the demand for communal wors.h.i.+p. The Platonic and Stoic conceptions of the deity were pure, but they remained individualistic--salvation was the creation of the man himself. The n.o.ble hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus[2031]

and the fine religious morality of Marcus Aurelius led to no church organization. The attempted combination of Platonism and Judaism by Philo was equally resultless. Neo-Platonism also, though it had enthusiasm and some sense of brotherhood, showed itself unable to produce a church. Plotinus, indeed, proposed to the Emperor Gallienus the establishment in Campania of a city of philosophers, a Platonopolis, in which the ideal life should be lived, but the proposal came to nothing.[2032] The Neo-Platonic union with the deity was too vague a conception to bring about communal wors.h.i.+p, and the deity had no definite role in securing the salvation of men.

+1105+. Thus, in the period beginning about the sixth century B.C. and extending into the Christian era, all over the civilized world attempts were being made to reconstruct life by ethical and philosophical systems, by ascetic observances, and by mysteries. These attempts bear witness to the prevailing sense of the insufficiency of current schemes of life. They differ according to differences of place and time, but agree in the search after something better; this better thing was always ethical and in most cases religious. Their failure to construct effective organizations was due to the deficiencies pointed out above.

+1106+. _Buddhism and Jainism._ The first churches produced by civilized men arose in India in the sixth century B.C. out of the bosom of Brahmanism, whose failure to establish a church was due in part to its dependence on philosophical speculation. Of the protests against the Brahmanic orthodoxy the most important were Buddhism and Jainism.[2033]

Buddhism discarded philosophy and asceticism, and came forward with a plan of salvation that was intelligible to all.[2034] Disciples gathered about the Master and he became the object of enthusiastic devotion. All complete churches have owed their origin each to a single founder; this is due to the fact that the insight and constructive genius of the founder have chosen out of the ma.s.s of the existing thought those broad principles that the times demanded and have presented them in incisive form and with freshness and enthusiasm.[2035] Buddha's followers quickly formed themselves into a.s.sociations, the entrance into which was by free choice. As his doctrine of salvation was nontheistic, so his church was nontheistic, but not therefore nonreligious. The ecclesiastical organization was simple, but effective. The original Buddhism has been degraded, especially in Tibet, China, and Korea, but the church form remains everywhere more or less recognizable.[2036]

+1107+. Jainism, while differing from its contemporary, Buddhism, in its metaphysical dualism and its asceticism, agreed with it practically in its method of salvation from the ills of life. It established a nontheistic church which has had experiences (polytheistic and other) like those of Buddhism. Historically it is less important than the latter; it still has a considerable following, but it has never pa.s.sed out of India. Apparently its local features, metaphysical and ascetic, have impeded its progress--it lacks the simplicity of Buddhism.

+1108+. _Judaism._ Judaism stands on the border line--it was a cult that approached the position of a church, yet failed to reach it. Its line of movement differed _in toto_ from those described above. It had no philosophy, no asceticism, no secret societies, and it did not rely on its ethical code. It was essentially religious, in theory a theocracy, in form a national cult. The steps by which the old polytheistic Israelite nation pa.s.sed into the monotheistic Judaism can be traced historically, but the impulse to the movement was a part of the genius of the people and cannot be further explained. The leaders of the small body of people that gathered at Jerusalem in the sixth century, after the break-up of the year 586, were animated by a patriotic devotion to the national deity; without political autonomy, merely a province of the Persian empire, the sole interests possible for the people were racial and religious, and these isolated them from the neighboring peoples.

Those who remained in Babylonia (where they were prosperous and comfortable) were similarly isolated, devoted themselves to their own development, and their religious att.i.tude was the same as that of the Palestinian community. Distance from the temple led to gatherings in various places for wors.h.i.+p (synagogues).