Ten Great Religions Part 44

-- 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

Christianity and Brahmanism. The essential value of Brahmanism is its faith in spirit as distinct from matter, eternity as distinct from time, the infinite as opposed to the finite, substance as opposed to form.

The essential defect of Brahmanism is its spiritual pantheism, which denies all reality to this world, to finite souls, to time, s.p.a.ce, matter.

In its vast unities all varieties are swallowed up, all differences come to an end. It does not, therefore, explain the world, it denies it. It is incapable of morality, for morality a.s.sumes the eternal distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, and Brahmanism knows no such difference. It is incapable of true worship, since its real G.o.d is spirit in itself, abstracted from all attributes. Instead of immortality, it can only teach absorption, or the disappearance of the soul in spirit, as rain-drops disappear in the ocean.

Christianity teaches a Supreme Being who is pure spirit, "above all, through all, and in all," "from whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things," "in whom we live, and move, and have our being." It is a more spiritual religion than Brahmanism, for the latter has pa.s.sed on into polytheism and idolatry, which Christianity has always escaped. Yet while teaching faith in a Supreme Being, the foundation and substance below all existence, it recognizes him as A LIVING G.o.d. He is not absorbed in himself, nor apart from his world, but a perpetual Providence, a personal Friend and Father. He dwells in eternity, but is manifested in time.

Christianity, therefore, meets the truth in Brahmanism by its doctrine of G.o.d as Spirit, and supplies its deficiencies by its doctrine of G.o.d as a Father.

Christianity and the system of Confucius. The good side in the teaching of Confucius is his admirable morality, his wisdom of life in its temporal limitations, his reverence for the past, his strenuous conservatism of all useful inst.i.tutions, and the uninterrupted order of the social system resting on these ideas.

The evil in his teaching is the absence of the supernatural element, which deprives the morality of China of enthusiasm, its social system of vitality, its order of any progress, and its conservatism of any improvement. It is a system without hope, and so has remained frozen in an icy and stiff immobility for fifteen hundred years.

But Christianity has shown itself capable of uniting conservatism with progress, in the civilization of Christendom. It respects order, reveres the past, holds the family sacred, and yet is able also to make continual progress in science, in art, in literature, in the comfort of the whole community. It therefore accepts the good and the truth in the doctrines of Confucius, and adds to these another element of new life.

Christianity and Buddhism. The truth in Buddhism is in its doctrine of the relation of the soul to the laws of nature; its doctrine of consequences; its a.s.surance of a strict retribution for every human action; its promise of an ultimate salvation in consequence of good works; and of a redemption from all the woes of time by obedience to the truth.

The evil in the system is that belonging to all legalism. It does not inspire faith in any living and present G.o.d, or any definite immortality.

The principle, therefore, of development is wanting, and it leaves the Mongol races standing on a low plane of civilization, restraining them from evil, but not inspiring them by the sight of good.

Christianity, like Buddhism, teaches that whatever a man sows that shall he also reap; that those who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and immortality shall receive eternal life; that the books shall be opened in the last day, and every man be rewarded according to his works; that he whose pound gains five pounds shall be ruler over five cities. In short, Christianity, in its Scriptures and its practical influence, has always taught salvation by works.

Yet, beside this, Christianity teaches justification by faith, as the root and fountain of all real obedience. It inspires faith in a Heavenly Father who has loved his every child from before the foundation of the world; who welcomes the sinner back when he repents and returns; whose forgiving love creates a new life in the heart. This faith evermore tends to awaken the dormant energies in the soul of man; and so, under its influence, one race after another has commenced a career of progress. Christianity, therefore, can fulfil Buddhism also.

-- 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in all Religions.

The essential truth in the Avesta and the Eddas is the same. They both recognize the evil in the world as real, and teach the duty of fighting against it. They avoid the pantheistic indifference of Brahmanism, and the absence of enthusiasm in the systems of Confucius and the Buddha, by the doctrine of a present conflict between the powers of good and evil, of light and of darkness. This gives dignity and moral earnestness to both systems. By fully admitting the freedom of man, they make the sense of responsibility possible, and so purify and feed morality at its roots.

The difficulty with both is, that they carry this dualistic view of nature too far, leaving it an unreconciled dualism. The supreme Monad is lost sight of in this ever-present Duad. Let us see how this view of evil, or the dual element in life, appears in other systems.

As the Monad in religion is an expression of one infinite supreme presence, pervading all nature and life, so the Duad shows the antagonism and conflict between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil, the infinite perfection and the finite imperfection. This is a conflict actually existing in the world, and one which religion must accept and account for. Brahmanism does not accept it, but ignores it. This whole conflict is Maya, a deception and illusion. Yet, in this form of illusion, it makes itself so far felt, that it must be met by sacrifices, prayers, penances, and the law of transmigration; until all the apparent antagonism shall be swallowed up in the Infinite One, the only substance in the universe.

Buddhism recognizes the conflict more fully. It frankly accepts the Duad as the true explanation of the actual universe. The ideal universe as Nirvana may be one; but of this we know nothing. The actual world is a twofold world, composed of souls and the natural laws. The battle of life is with these laws. Every soul, by learning to obey them, is able to conquer and use them, as steps in an ascent toward Nirvana.

But the belief of Zoroaster and that of Scandinavia regard the Duad as still more deeply rooted in the essence of existing things. All life is battle,--battle with moral or physical evil. Courage is therefore the chief virtue in both systems. The Devil first appears in theology in these two forms of faith. The Persian devil is Ahriman; the Scandinavian devil is Loki. Judaism, with its absolute and supreme G.o.d, could never admit such a rival to his power as the Persian Ahriman; yet as a being permitted, for wise purposes, to tempt and try men, he comes into their system as Satan. Satan, on his first appearance in the Book of Job, is one of the angels of G.o.d. He is the heavenly critic; his business is to test human virtue by trial, and see how deep it goes. His object in testing Job was to find whether he loved virtue for its rewards, or for its own sake.

"Does Job serve G.o.d for naught?" According to this view, the man who is good merely for the sake of reward is not good at all.

In the Egyptian system, as in the later faith of India, the evil principle appears as a power of destruction. Siva and Typhon are the destroying agencies from whom proceed all the mischief done in the world.

Nevertheless, they are G.o.ds, not devils, and have their worship and worshippers among those whose religious nature is more imbued with fear than with hope. The timid worshipped the deadly and destructive powers, and their prayers were deprecations. The bolder worshipped the good G.o.ds.

Similarly, in Greece, the Chtonic deities had their shrines and worshippers, as had the powers of Blight, Famine, and Pestilence at Rome.

Yet only in the Avesta is this great principle of evil set forth in full antagonism against the powers of light and love. And probably from Persia, after the captivity, this view of Satan entered into Jewish theology. In the Old Testament, indeed, where Satan or the Devil as a proper name only occurs four times[404], in all which cases he is a subordinate angel, the true Devil does not appear. In the Apocrypha he is said (Wisdom ii. 24) to have brought death into the world. The New Testament does not teach a doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something new and revealed then for the first time, but a.s.sumes a general though vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its communication with the Persian dualism.

But though the doctrine of a Devil is no essential part of Christianity[405], the reality and power of evil is fully recognized in the New Testament and in the teachings of the Church. Indeed, in the doctrine of everlasting punishment and of an eternal h.e.l.l, it has been carried to a dangerous extreme. The Divine sovereignty is seriously infringed and invaded by such a view. If any outlying part of the universe continues in a state of permanent rebellion, G.o.d is not the absolute sovereign. But wickedness is rebellion. If any are to continue eternally in h.e.l.l, it is because they continue in perpetual wickedness; that is, the rebellion against G.o.d will never be effectually suppressed. Only when every knee bows, and every tongue confesses that Christ is Lord to the glory of G.o.d the Father; only when truth and love have subdued all enemies by converting them into friends, is redemption complete and the universe at peace.

Now, Christianity (in spite of the illogical doctrine of everlasting punishment) has always inspired a faith in the redeeming power of love to conquer all evil. It has taught that evil can be overcome by good. It a.s.serts truth to be more powerful than error, right than wrong. It teaches us in our daily prayer to expect that G.o.d's kingdom shall come, and his will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven. It therefore fulfils the truth in the great dualisms of the past by its untiring hope of a full redemption from all sin and all evil.

-- 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

The Religion of Egypt. This system unfolded the truth of the Divine in this world, of the sacredness of bodily organization, and the descent of Deity into the ultimate parts of his creation. Its defect was its inability to combine with this an open spiritualism. It had not the courage of its opinions, so far as they related to the divine unity, spirituality, and eternity.

Christianity also accepts the doctrine of G.o.d, present in nature, in man, in the laws of matter, in the infinite variety of things. But it adds to this the elevated spiritualism of a monotheistic religion, and so accepts the one and the all, unity and variety, substance and form, eternity and time, spirit and body, as filled with G.o.d and manifesting him.

The Religions of Greece and Rome. The beauty of nature, the charm of art, the genius of man, were idealized and deified in the Greek pantheon. The divinity of law, organizing human society according to universal rules of justice, was the truth in the Roman religion. The defect of the Greek theology was the absence of a central unity. Its polytheism carried variety to the extreme of disorder and dissipation. The centrifugal force, not being properly balanced by any centripetal power, inevitably ends in dissolution. The defect of Roman worship was, that its oppressive rules ended in killing out life. Law, in the form of a stiff external organization, produced moral death at last in Rome, as it had produced moral death in Judaea.

Now Christianity, though a monotheism, and a monotheism which has destroyed forever both polytheism and idolatry wherever it has gone, is not that of numerical unity. The G.o.d of Christianity differs in this from the G.o.d of Judaism and Mohammedanism. He is an infinite will; but he is more. Christianity cognizes G.o.d as not only above nature and the soul, but also as in nature and in the soul. Thus nature and the soul are made divine. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity expresses this enlargement of the Jewish monotheism from a numerical to a moral unity. The G.o.d of Christ is human in this respect, that he is conceived of in the image of man. Man is essentially a unit through his will, in which lies the secret of personal ident.i.ty. But besides will he has intellect, by which he comes into communion with the universe; and affection, by which he comes into communion with his race. Christianity conceives of G.o.d in the same way. He is an omnipresent will as the Father, Creator, and Euler of all things. He is the Word, or manifested Truth in the Son, manifested through all nature, manifested through all human life. He is the Spirit, or inspiration of each individual soul. So he is Father, Son, and Spirit, above all, through all, and in us all. By this larger view of Deity Christianity was able to meet the wants of the Aryan races, in whom the polytheistic tendency is so strong. That tendency was satisfied by this view of G.o.d immanent in nature and immanent in human life.

Judaism and Mohammedanism, with their more concrete monotheism, have not been able to convert the Aryan races. Mohammedanism has never affected the mind of India, nor disturbed the ascendency of Brahmanism there. And though it nominally possesses Persia, yet it holds it as a subject, not as a convert. Persian Sufism is a proof of the utter discontent of the Aryan intellect with any monotheism of pure will. Sufism is the mystic form of Mohammedanism, recognizing communion with G.o.d, and not merely submission, as being the essence of true religion. During the long Mohammedan dominion in Turkey it has not penetrated the minds or won the love of the Greek races. It is evident that Christianity succeeded in converting the Greeks and Romans by means of its larger view of the Deity, of which the doctrine of the Trinity, as it stands in the creeds, is a crude illogical expression.

-- 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in all Religions.

There are three religions which teach the pure upity of G.o.d, or true monotheism. These three Unitarian religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. They also all originated in a single race, the Semitic race, that which has occupied the central region of the world, the centre of three continents. It is the race which tends to a religious unity, as that of our Aryan ancestors tended to variety.

But what is pure monotheism? It is the worship of one alone G.o.d, separated by the vast abyss of the infinite from all finite beings. It is the worship of G.o.d, not as the Supreme Being only, not as the chief among many G.o.ds, as Jupiter was the president of the dynasty on Olympus, not merely the Most High, but as the only G.o.d. It avoids the two extremes, one of making the Supreme Being head of a council or synod of deities, and the other of making him indeed infinite, but an infinite abstraction, or abyss of darkness. These are the two impure forms of monotheism. The first prevailed in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia. In each of these religions there was a supreme being,--Zeus, Jupiter, Ammon, Odin,--but this supreme G.o.d was only _primus inter pares_, first among equals. The other impure form of monotheism prevailed in the East,--in Brahmanism, Buddhism, and the religion of Zoroaster. In the one Parabrahm, in the other Zerana-Akerana, in the third Nirvana itself, is the Infinite Being or substance, wholly separate from all that is finite. It is so wholly separate as to cease to be an object of adoration and obedience. Not Parabrahm, but Siva, Vischnu, and Brahma; not Zerana-Akerana, but Ormazd and the Amschaspands; not the infinite world of Nirvana, nor the mighty Adi-Buddha, but the Buddhas of Confession, the finite Sakya-Muni, are the objects of worship in these systems.

Only from the Semitic race have arisen the pure monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Each of these proclaims one only G.o.d, and each makes this only G.o.d the object of all worship and service.

Judaism says, "Hear! O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d is one Lord!" (Deut. vi.

4.) Originally among the Jews, G.o.d's name as the "Plural of Majesty"

indicated a unity formed from variety; but afterward it became in the word Jahveh a unity of substance. "By my name Jehovah I was not known to them"

(i.e. to the Patriarchs).[406] That name indicates absolute Being, "I am the I am."[407]

Ancient Gentile monotheism vibrated between a personal G.o.d, the object of worship, who was limited and finite, and an infinite absolute Being who was out of sight, "whose veil no one had lifted." The peculiarity of the Mosaic religion was to make G.o.d truly the one alone, and at the same time truly the object of worship.

In this respect Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism agree, and in this they differ from all other religions. Individual thinkers, like Socrates, aeschylus, Cicero, have reached the same conviction; but these three are the only popular religions, in which G.o.d is at once the infinite and absolute, and the only object of worship.

Now it is a remarkable fact that these three religions, which are the only pure monotheistic religions, are at the same time the only religions which have any claim to catholicity. Buddhism, though the religion of numerous nations, seems to be the religion of only one race, namely, the Turanic race, or Mongols. The people of India who remain Buddhists, the Singalese, or inhabitants of Ceylon, belong to the aboriginal Tamul, or Mongol race.

With this exception then (which is no exception, as far as we know the ethnology of Eastern Asia), the only religions which aim at Catholicism are these three, which are also the only monotheistic religions. Judaism aimed at catholicity and hoped for it. It had an instinct of universality, as appeared in its numerous attempts at making proselytes of other nations. It failed of catholicity when it refused to accept as its Christ the man who had risen above its national limitations, and who considered Roman tax-gatherers and Samaritans as already prepared to enter the kingdom of the Messiah. The Jews required all their converts to become Jews, and in doing this left the catholic ground. Christianity in the mouth of Paul, who alone fully seized the true idea of his Master, said, "Circ.u.mcision availeth nothing, nor uncirc.u.mcision, but a new creature."

In other words, he declared that it was _not_ necessary to become a Jew in order to be a Christian.

The Jewish mind, so far forth as it was monotheistic, aimed at catholicity. The unity of G.o.d carries with it, logically, the unity of man. From one G.o.d as spirit we infer one human family. So Paul taught at Athens. "G.o.d that made the world and all things therein, ... hath made of one blood all races of men to dwell on all the face of the earth."

But the Jews, though catholic as monotheists, and as worshipping a spiritual G.o.d, were limited by their ritual and their intense national bigotry. Hereditary and ancestral pride separated them, and still separate them, from the rest of mankind. "_We have Abraham to our Father_" is the talisman which has kept them together, but kept them from union with others.

Christianity and Mohammedanism, therefore, remain the only two really catholic religions. Each has overpa.s.sed all the boundaries of race.

Christianity, beginning among the Jews, a Semitic people, pa.s.sed into Europe, and has become the religion of Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Germans, and the Slavic races of Russia, and has not found it impossible to convert the Africans, the Mongols, and the American Indians. So too the Mohammedan religion, also beginning among the Semitic race, has become the nominal religion of Persia, Turkey, Northern Africa, and Central Asia. Monotheism, therefore, includes a tendency to catholicity. But Islam has everywhere made subjects rather than converts, and so has failed of entire success.

It has not a.s.similated its conquests.

The monotheism of Christianity, as we have already seen, while accepting the absolute supremacy of the Infinite Being, so as to displace forever all secondary or subordinate G.o.ds, yet conceives of him as the present inspiration of all his children. It sees him coming down, to bless them in the sunshine and the shower, as inspiring every good thought, as a providence guiding all human lives. And by this view it fulfils both Judaism and Mohammedanism, and takes a long step beyond them both.