From Egypt to Japan Part 2

CHAPTER IV.

THE EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

The valley of the Nile is one vast sepulchre. Tombs and temples!

Temples and tombs! This is the sum of the monuments which ancient Egypt has left us. Probably no equal portion of the earth's surface was ever so populous, at once with the living and the dead. It is but a narrow strip of territory--a line of green between two deserts; and yet on this mere _ribbon_ of Africa lived the millions that made one of the most populous and powerful of ancient empires. They were fed by the marvellous fertility of the Nile valley, till they stood upon it almost as thick as the ranks of corn that waved around them: and here, when life was ended, they found a resting-place in the bosom of the earth that nourished them, on which they slept as children on a mother's breast. This strip of earth, long and narrow like a grave, has been the sepulchre of nations. Here the myriads of Egypt's ancient reigns--from the time of Menes--through the long line of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies--the generations that built the Pyramids and those that came after--laid themselves down to sleep in the great valley. Thus the very dust of Egypt was made up of the dust of ancient Egyptians.

But this was only the lot of the common people, to mingle their dust with common clay--their tomb the common earth, their end to be exhaled into the common air, or to reappear in other natural forms, living in plants, blooming in flowers, or in broad-leaved palms, casting a shadow on the earth from which they sprung. But for her great ones, more enduring monuments were reared to guard their dust and perpetuate their names. No people, ancient or modern, ever lavished so much on these sacred and pious memorials. They expended more on the tombs of the dead than on the houses of the living, for they reasoned that the latter were but temporary dwellings, while the former were everlasting habitations. The kings of Egypt cared more for great tombs than great palaces, and they reared such mausoleums as the earth never saw before. The Pyramids were their tombs, and the mountains were hollowed into royal sepulchres. The rock tombs of Beni-Ha.s.san are cut in the side of the hills. The barren mountain that looks off upon the great Libyan desert, is honeycombed with vast and silent halls of the dead.

At Thebes the traveller, ascending from the Nile, winds his way among hills of sand into a valley of desolation. The summits around are not covered with pines like our own darkly wooded hills, nor do even the rocks gather moss--but all is bare and desolate. The desert has overflowed the earth like a sea, and not a shrub nor a blade of gra.s.s has survived the universal deluge. Yet here where not a living thing can be found, has been discovered underground the most remarkable series of tombs which exists. A whole mountain is pierced with deep excavations. Pa.s.sages open into its rocky sides, running many hundred feet into the bowels of the earth, and branching off into recesses like side chapels. These Halls of Death are like kings' palaces, with stately chambers broad and high, whose sides and ceilings are covered with hieroglyphics and ill.u.s.trative symbols.

A fact so remarkable as this, that the architecture of a great empire which has built the most colossal structures in the world, has this tomblike character, must have a meaning. The Egyptians were a very religious people. They were not a gay and thoughtless race, like some of their Asiatic and European neighbors. There is something grave even in their faces, as seen in ancient statues and monuments. Their very architecture had this heavy and solemn character. These colossal temples, these silent sphinxes, seem oppressed with some great mystery which they cannot reveal. These tombs show that the Egyptian mind was full of the idea of death, and of another life. The Egyptians were not Atheists, nor Sadducees. They believed devoutly in G.o.d, and in a life to come.

How strongly the idea of another life had taken hold of the Egyptian mind is evident from the symbols in their religion. The symbol most frequently employed is that of the _scarabaeus_--or beetle--the image of which appears everywhere, which by a.n.a.logy teaches that life, in pa.s.sing through death, may be born to a new life. The beetle lays its eggs in the slime of the Nile; it buries them in mud, which it works into a ball, and rolls over and over, back to the edge of the desert, and buries in sand. There its work is ended: nature does the rest. Out of this grave comes in time a resurrection, and life is born of death.

The ostrich eggs hung up in mosques, have the same symbolical meaning.

The ostrich buries its eggs in the sand, and nature, that kind mother which watches over all life, gives them being. Thus is conveyed the same idea as in the a.n.a.logy of the chrysalis and the b.u.t.terfly.

Studying the religious faith of the Egyptians a little more closely, we see that they believed not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the resurrection of the body. The doctrine taught by Paul, was long before taught by the priests of Egypt. Their tombs were not merely memorials of those who had ceased to live, but resting-places for the bodies of those whose spirits were absent but would some day return.

For this, bodies were embalmed with religious care; they were buried in tombs hewn out of the solid rock, laid away in Pyramids, or in caverns hollowed out of the heart of the mountains. There, embedded in the eternal rocks, locked up with the bars of the everlasting hills, it seemed that their remains would rest secure till the morning of the resurrection day.

Further, they believed not only in immortality and in resurrection, but also in retribution. The soul that was to pa.s.s into another life, was to go into it to be judged. There it was to be called to account for the deeds done in the body. Even the funeral rites indicated how strong was the belief of a judgment to come for all who departed this life. After the bodies were embalmed, they were borne in solemn procession to the Nile (most of the tombs being on the western bank), or to a sacred lake, across which they were to be ferried. (Did not this suggest to later Roman mythologists the river Styx, and the boatman Charon who conveyed departed souls to the gloomy shades of Pluto?) As the funeral procession arrived at the borders of the lake, it paused till certain questions were answered, on which it depended whether the dead might receive burial: or should be condemned to wander in darkness three thousand years. If it pa.s.sed this ordeal, it moved forward, not to its everlasting repose, but to the Hall of Judgment, where Osiris sits upon his throne as the judge of all mankind. This scene is constantly represented in sculptures, in bas-reliefs, and in frescoes on the walls of tombs. In one of them a condemned wretch is driven away in the shape of a pig! (Was it here that Pythagoras, who studied in Egypt, obtained his doctrine of the transmigration of souls?) Before Osiris is the scribe, the recording angel, who keeps a faithful record of the deeds done in the body. A long line of judges--forty-two in number--sit arrayed as the final arbiters of his fate--each with his question, on the answer to which may depend the destiny of the departed soul.

The "Book of the Dead" (copies of which are still found wrapped up with mummies: several are in the British Museum) gives the answers to be made to these searching questions, and also the prayers to be offered, and the hymns that are to be sung, as the soul enters the gloomy shades of the under-world.

In this Egyptian doctrine of a future life there are Christian ideas.

Some indeed will say that Egypt gave rather than received; that she was the mother of all learning and all wisdom in the ancient world; that the Greeks obtained their philosophy from her (for Plato as well as Pythagoras studied in Egypt); that the Eleusinian mysteries came from Africa; that Moses here found what he taught the Hebrews; and that even the Christian mysteries and the Christian faith came from the banks of the Nile.

There is certainly much food for reflection in this reappearance of certain religious ideas in different countries and under different forms. But there is a contrast as well as a resemblance. While the Hebrews learned so much from the Egyptians, it is very remarkable that they did _not_ imbibe that strong faith in the reality of the invisible world, which lies at the foundation of religion. One would suppose that the Israelites, coming out of Egypt, would be full of these thoughts, and of the hopes and fears of a life to come. Yet in all the books of Moses, rarely, if ever, are these motives addressed to the Hebrews. The German critics argue from this that the Hebrews did not believe in another life. The late Dr. Edward Robinson, the distinguished Hebrew scholar, said that he could not find that doctrine in the Old Testament. Without admitting such an extreme view, it is certainly remarkable that that idea is much less prominent in the Old Testament than in the New. It is not Moses, but Christ who has brought life and immortality to light.

But the Egyptian doctrine of a future life, while very curious and interesting as a study of ancient belief, is utterly unsatisfying. The ideas are detached and fragmentary, and wholly without evidence or authority; they are merely the crude fancies of mythology, and not the precise teachings of Revelation. And so in all the tombs and temples of Egypt there is nothing which can relieve the doubts of a troubled mind, or the sorrows of a heavy heart.

I have had some sober thoughts while floating on the bosom of the Nile. We cannot but see the world through our own eyes and through our moods of mind. To those who have left their dead beyond the sea, foreign travel has many sad and lonely hours. The world seems cold and empty, and even the most religious mind is apt to be haunted with gloomy thoughts. This is not a mood of mind peculiar to atheists and unbelievers. Many devout men, in seasons of mental depression, are tortured with doubts whether, after all, their religious faith is not a delusion and a dream.

And so many dark and bitter questionings come to me here in this land of sepulchres. I have come to Egypt to learn something of the wisdom of the Egyptians. Tell me then, ye tombs and temples and pyramids, about G.o.d; tell me about the life to come! But the Pyramids speak not; and the Sphinx still looks towards the East, to watch for the rising sun, but is voiceless and mute. This valley of the Nile speaks of nothing but death. From end to end its rock-ribbed hills are filled with tombs. Yet what do they all teach the anxious and troubled heart of man? Nothing! All these hills are silent. Not a sound, or even an echo, comes from these dark sepulchres. No voice of hope issues out of the caverns hollowed in the bosom of the hills. The hard granite of the tombs itself is not more deaf to the cry of human anguish, or the voice of supplication.

I turn from the monuments of man to nature. I stand on the bank of the Great River, and ask if it brings not some secret out of the heart of Africa? Tell me, ye night winds, blowing from African deserts; tell me, ye stars shining in the African heaven (this sky of Egypt is so pure and clear that the stars seem higher and more distant from this lower world), what light can ye throw on this great mystery of death?

And the stars twinkle, but speak not, and the palm trees quiver in the night wind, but give no answer; and the great Nile flows on silently to the sea, as life flows on to eternity. Nature is dumb; the great secret is not revealed.

For the revelation of that secret we turn not to Egypt, but to Jerusalem. While the Egyptians groped darkly after the truth, how do these dim shadows, these poor emblems and a.n.a.logies, set forth by contrast the clearer and better truth of revelation! All that is written on the tombs of Egypt; all that is carved in stone, or written in hieroglyphics on ancient sarcophagi; all that is built in temples and pyramids; is not worth that one saying of our Lord, "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

We spent Christmas day at Thebes, where a number of English boats had drawn up to the landing to keep the day, so dear to the hearts of Englishmen throughout the world. On Christmas eve they were decorated with palm branches, and at night were lighted up with Chinese lanterns, while row-boats were floating about, the Arab boatmen singing their wild, plaintive melodies.

Christmas brought a scene, if not so picturesque, yet far more sweet and tender. It had been our good fortune to meet there Rev. Dr. Potter of New York, the rector of Grace Church. He was going up the Nile with Miss Wolfe, of Madison square. They were on two dahabeeahs, but kept company, and anch.o.r.ed every night together. On Christmas day there was a service on board Miss Wolfe's boat, which was attended by all the English parties. It was held on the upper deck, which was spread with carpets and covered with an awning on the top and sides to protect us from the sun. Whether it was the strange scene, occurring in a distant part of the world, or sad memories which were recalled by these anniversary days, seldom has a service touched me more. It was very sweet to hear the old, old prayers--some of them almost as old as Christianity itself--to which we had so often listened in other lands, and to join with the little company in the Christmas hymn:

"Hark! the herald angels sing, Glory to the new-born King; Peace on earth and mercy mild; G.o.d and man are reconciled."

Dr. Potter read the service in his clear, rich voice, following it with a sermon which was quite extempore and brief, but so simple and so appropriate to the day that it went to every heart. And when at the close was celebrated the communion, we all felt how pleasant it was in such a place, so far from home, in a country surrounded by the ruins of the temples of old idolatries, to join in the worship of Him who on this day was born to be the Light and the Hope of the world. Better is this than all that Egypt can teach us about a life to come.

And so we turn from these great temples and tombs, which only mock our hopes, to Him who has pa.s.sed through the grave, and lighted the way for us to follow Him. Let scholars dispute the first intent of the words, yet nothing in the Old Testament or the New, more distinctly expresses what I rest upon than this: "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see G.o.d!"

CHAPTER V.

THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHET.

In a review of the faiths of Egypt, one cannot overlook that which has ruled in the land for more than a thousand years, and still rules, not only in Egypt, but over a large part of Asia and Africa. We arrived in Cairo a few days too late to witness the departure of the pilgrims for Mecca. Once in the year there is a gathering of the faithful for a journey which is the event of their lives. The spectacle is one of the most picturesque in the East, as a long procession, mounted on camels, many of which are richly caparisoned, files through the streets of the city, amid the admiring gaze of the whole population, and takes the way of the desert. Slowly it moves Eastward to the Red Sea, and pa.s.sing around it, turns South to the heart of the Arabian Peninsula.

A caravan of pilgrims crossing the desert to visit the birthplace of the prophet, is a proof that religious enthusiasm still lives even in this unbelieving age. Perhaps the Moslem spirit is not so bigoted here as at Constantinople. The Turk, with his heavy stolid nature, is a more obstinate religionist than the Arab. And yet Mohammed was not a Turk; he was an Arab, and the faith which he taught still fires the heart of his race.

In one view Cairo may be considered the capital of Islam, as it is the seat of the great University, from which its priests go forth to all parts of the Mohammedan world. This University is nine hundred years old--older than Oxford, and still flourishes with as much vigor as in the palmy days of the Arabian conquest. A visit to it is the most interesting sight in Cairo. There I saw collected together--not one hundred or two hundred students, such as are found in our Theological Seminaries in America--but ten thousand! As one expressed it, "there were two acres of turbans," a.s.sembled in a vast inclosure, with no floor but a pavement, and with a roof over it, supported by four hundred columns, and at the foot of every column a teacher, surrounded by pupils, who sat at his feet precisely as Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. As we entered there rose a hum of thousands of voices, reciting the Koran. These students are not only from Egypt, but from all parts of Africa, from Morocco to Zanzibar. They come from far up the Nile, from Nubia and Soudan; and from Darfour beyond the Great Desert, and from the western coast of Africa. Asia too is largely represented in students both from Western Asia, from Turkey, Arabia, and Persia; and from Central Asia, from Khiva and Bokhara, and Turkistan and Afghanistan, and the borders of China. They come without staff or scrip. There is no endowment to support them; no Students'

Fund or Education Board. They live on the charities of the faithful, and when their studies are ended, those who are to be missionaries on this continent mount their camels, and joining a caravan, cross the Desert, and are lost in the far interior of Africa.

This strange sight has set me a-thinking, and the more I think, the more the wonder grows. A religion that supports great universities from generation to generation; and that sends forth caravans, that are like armies, on long pilgrimages, is not dead; it is full of life, and can bring into the field tremendous forces to uphold its empire in the East. What is the secret of its power, by which it lives on from century to century, and seems as if it could not but by annihilating die? There is no question of more interest to the historical student; and no one which it is more necessary to understand in order to form some just idea of the great Eastern War which is already looming above the horizon. A full recognition of that which is good in Islam, and of that which gives it power, would prevent many mistakes in forecasting the future, although it might abate the sanguine confidence of our missionary friends in the speedy triumph of Christianity over its hereditary foe.

First of all, we must recognize the fact of its existence as one of the great religions of the world. The number of its adherents is variously estimated at from a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty millions. It holds but a corner of Europe, but extends its empire over a large part of Asia and Africa. The whole of Africa which is not Pagan, is Moslem. In Asia Islam disputes the sway of Hindooism in India, where the Queen has more Moslem subjects than the Sultan himself, and of Buddhism in the islands of the Malayan Archipelago.

Over so large a part of the earth's surface is extended the wide dominion of the Prophet. His followers number one-tenth, perhaps one-eighth, or even one-sixth part of the human race.

Nor is this dominion a merely nominal thing. On the contrary, the true believers are strong believers. It may well be doubted, whether among the nations nominally Christian the ma.s.s of the people really believe with half the firmness and the fervor of Mussulmans. The Moslems are as sincere, and in their way as devout, as the adherents of any religion on the face of the globe. No one can enter the mosque of St.

Sophia, and see the worshippers turning their faces towards Mecca, not only kneeling but prostrating themselves, touching the pavement with their foreheads, and repeating, in a low, mournful tone, pa.s.sages from the Koran, without feeling that these men really believe. Those prostrate forms, those wailing voices, are not the signs of hypocrisy, but of a faith that, however mistaken, is at least sincere. In their own minds they are in the presence of the Highest, and offer worship to the unseen G.o.d. Indeed they are more than believers, they are zealots, carrying their faith to fanaticism. A body so vast in number, composed of such fierce religionists, is certainly a great power in the political and military, as well as religious, forces, that are yet to contend for the mastery of the Eastern world.

Nor is this power inactive in spreading its faith; it is full of missionary zeal. Max Muller divides all the religions of the world into proselytizing and non-proselytizing. Mohammedanism belongs to the former cla.s.s as much as Christianity. The days are past when the followers of the Prophet swept over large parts of Asia and Africa, converting tribes and nations by the sword. And yet even at the present day it keeps up a Propaganda as vigorous as that of the Catholics at Rome. Its university here is training ten thousand young apostles. Moslem missionaries preach the Koran, and make proselytes, in all parts of India. But the chief field of their labors is in Africa, where they have penetrated far into the interior, and converted numerous tribes to the faith. It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics in regard to the spread of Islam in Africa.

Livingstone thought the reports greatly exaggerated. That is quite possible, and yet, making every allowance, there can be no doubt that it has obtained a success much greater than that of Christian missions.

A religion which has such a foundation on the solid earth, holding nations and empires in its wide dominion; and which has such a history, stretching over twelve centuries; is a subject worthy the closest attention of scholars. Its history is not unlike that of Christianity itself, in the feebleness of its beginning and the greatness of its results. It started in an obscure corner of the world--in the deserts of Arabia--and rapidly conquered the East, overrunning all the adjacent parts of Asia and Africa, and extending along the Mediterranean to the Straits of Gibraltar, and thence crossed into Spain, where it maintained itself for eight hundred years against all the power of Europe to expel it. Such conquests show a prodigious vitality--a vitality not yet exhausted, as it still holds the half of Asia and Africa. A faith which commands the allegiance of so large a part of mankind must have some elements of truth to give it such tremendous power. Perhaps we can find the key in the character of its Founder, and in the faith which he taught.

A great deal has been written about the life of Mohammed, but even yet his character is imperfectly understood. Perhaps we cannot fully understand it, for there are in it contradictions which perplex the most patient and candid student. By many he is dismissed at once as a vulgar impostor, a sort of Joe Smith, who invented monstrous lies, and by stoutly sticking to them got others to believe in them, and as soon as he rallied a few followers about him, compelled neighboring tribes to accept his faith by the unsparing use of the sword.

This is an easy way to get rid of a difficult historical question, but unfortunately it does not explain the facts. It is by that sort of cheap reasoning that Gibbon undertakes to explain the rapid spread of Christianity. But if Mohammed had been a cunning impostor, his first claim would have been to work miracles, which on the contrary he never claimed at all, but distinctly repudiated. Nor was he a greedy mercenary; he was a poor man; his followers relate with pride how he mended his own clothes, and even pegged his own shoes. But he combined every element of the visionary and the enthusiast. He had that vivid imagination that conceives strongly of things invisible to the natural sense, to which "things that are not become as things that are," and that ardent temperament that kindles at the sight of these unseen realities. Perhaps this temperament was connected with his bodily const.i.tution; from his youth he was subject to epileptic fits, and his revelations were accompanied with convulsions. Such things are found in other religions. They are quite common in the history of devout and pa.s.sionate Romanists. Nor are they unknown even among Protestants, who profess to be more sober and rational. Among the Methodists, at camp-meetings, a very frequent effect of religious emotion has been that strong men were so prostrated that they fell to the ground and became as dead, and when they recovered, retained impressions never to be effaced, as if they had seen things which it was not lawful to utter. The revelations of Mohammed were all accompanied by these "physical manifestations." Sometimes the angel spoke to him as one man to another; at other times something within his bosom sounded like a bell, which he said "rent him in pieces." At such times he fell to the ground and foamed at the mouth, or his eyes turned red, and he streamed with perspiration, and roared like a camel, in his struggle to give utterance to the revelation of G.o.d. This does not look like imposture, but like insanity. The const.i.tution of such a man is a psychological study.

This natural ardor was inflamed by long seclusion. From his youth he loved solitude. Like the old prophets, he withdrew from the world to be alone with G.o.d. Like Elijah, he hid himself in a cave. Every year, during the month of Ramadan, he retired to a cave in Mount Hera, three miles from Mecca, to give himself up to religious contemplation; and there, it is said, amid spasmodic convulsions, he had his first vision, in which the angel Gabriel appeared to him.

This explanation of a mind half disordered, subject to dreams and visions and fanatical illusions, is much more rational than that of supposing in him an artful design to impose a new religion on his countrymen. Like other enthusiasts, he became the victim of his own illusions. His imagination so wrought upon him that he came to accept his visions as Divine revelations. In this he was not playing a part; he was not the conscious hypocrite. No doubt he believed himself what he wished others to believe. Indeed he made them believe, by the very sincerity and intensity of his own convictions.

Mohammedanism may be considered as a system of theology, and as a system of morality. The former seems to have been derived largely from Judaism. Mohammed belonged to the tribe of the Koreis.h.i.tes, who claimed to be descended from Abraham through Ishmael. His family were the keepers of the Caaba, or holy place of Mecca, where is the black stone which was brought from heaven, and the spring Zemzem, which sprang up in the desert to save the life of Hagar and her child. Thus he was familiar from his earliest years with the traditions of the patriarchs.

When a boy of fourteen he made a journey with his uncle into Syria, where he may have learned more of the ancient faith. Much is said of his becoming acquainted with a Nestorian bishop or monk, from whom he is supposed to have learned something of Christianity. But he could not have learned _much_, for his views of it were always extremely vague. It is doubtful whether he ever saw the New Testament, or had any knowledge of it other than that derived from some apocryphal books. There is no trace in the Koran of the sublime doctrines of the Gospel, or even of its moral precepts. Although Mohammed professed great reverence for Jesus, whom with Moses he considers the greatest of prophets next to himself, yet his ideas of the Religion which He taught were of the most indefinite kind.

But one thing he did learn, which was common to Judaism and Christianity--that there is but one G.o.d. The Monotheism of the Hebrews took the stronger hold of him, from its contrast to the worship around him, which had degenerated into gross idolatry. The tribes of Arabia had become as base idolaters as the Canaanites. Even the holy Caaba was filled with idols, and the mission of the prophet--as he regarded it--was to restore the worship of the One Living and True G.o.d. His first burst of prophetic fire and prophetic wrath was a fierce explosion against idolatry, and it was a moment of triumph when he was able to walk through the Caaba, and see the idols dashed in pieces.

Here then is the first and last truth of Islam, the existence of one G.o.d. The whole is comprehended in this one saying, "G.o.d is G.o.d, and Mohammed is his prophet."

With the homage due to G.o.d, is the respect due to His revealed will.

Moslems claim for the Koran what many Christians do not claim for the Bible--a literal and verbal inspiration. Every word is Divine.

And not only is the unity of G.o.d the cardinal truth, but it is vital to salvation. In this respect Islam is a Religion. It is not a mere philosophy, the acceptance or rejection of which is a matter of indifference. It is not merely a system of good morals--it is a Divine code for the government of mankind, whose acceptance is a matter of life and death--of salvation or d.a.m.nation.