Theological Essays and Other Papers Volume I Part 1

Theological Essays and Other Papers.

VOL 1.

by Thomas de Quincey.

ON CHRISTIANITY, AS AN ORGAN OF POLITICAL MOVEMENT.

[1846.]

FORCES, which are illimitable in their compa.s.s of effect, are often, for the same reason, obscure and untraceable in the steps of their movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can arrest its eternal increments? The hour-hand of a watch, who can detect the separate fluxions of its advance? Judging by the past, and the change which is registered between that and the present, we know that it must be awake; judging by the immediate appearances, we should say that it was always asleep. Gravitation, again, that works without holiday for ever, and searches every corner of the universe, what intellect can follow it to its fountains? And yet, shyer than gravitation, less to be counted than the fluxions of sun-dials, stealthier than the growth of a forest, are the footsteps of Christianity amongst the political workings of man. Nothing, that the heart of man values, is so secret; nothing is so potent.

It is _because_ Christianity works so secretly, that it works so potently; it is _because_ Christianity burrows and hides itself, that it towers above the clouds; and hence partly it is that its working comes to be misapprehended, or even lost out of sight. It is dark to eyes touched with the films of human frailty: but it is 'dark with excessive bright.'[Footnote: 'Dark with excessive bright.' _Paradise Lost_. Book III.] Hence it has happened sometimes that minds of the highest order have entered into enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned it as a curse to man, and have fought against it even upon Christian impulses, (impulses of benignity that could not have had a birth except in Christianity.) All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which the _social_ action of Christianity involves itself to the eye of a contemporary. Simplicity the most absolute is reconcilable with intricacy the most elaborate. The weather--how simple would appear the laws of its oscillations, if we stood at their centre!

and yet, because we do _not_, to this hour the weather is a mystery. Human health--how transparent is its economy under ordinary circ.u.mstances! abstinence and cleanliness, labor and rest, these simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that may be engrossed upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain the equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that equilibrium is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced that the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not in the object beheld. Let a planet be wheeling with heavenly science, upon arches of divine geometry: suddenly, to us, it shall appear unaccountably retrograde; flying when none pursues; and unweaving its own work.

Let this planet in its utmost elongations travel out of sight, and for _us_ its course will become incoherent: because _our_ sight is feeble, the beautiful curve of the planet shall be dislocated into segments, by a parenthesis of darkness; because our earth is in no true centre, the disorder of parallax shall trouble the laws of light; and, because we ourselves are wandering, the heavens shall seem fickle.

Exactly in the predicament of such a planet is Christianity: its motions are intermingled with other motions; crossed and thwarted, eclipsed and disguised, by counter-motions in man himself, and by disturbances that man cannot overrule. Upon lines that are direct, upon curves that are circuitous, Christianity is advancing for ever; but from our imperfect vision, or from our imperfect opportunities for applying even such a vision, we cannot trace it continuously. We lose it, we regain it; we see it doubtfully, we see it interruptedly; we see it in collision, we see it in combination; in collision with darkness that confounds, in combination with cross lights that perplex. And this in part is irremediable; so that no finite intellect will ever retrace the total curve upon which Christianity has moved, any more than eyes that are incarnate will ever see G.o.d.

But part of this difficulty in unweaving the maze, has its source in a misconception of the original machinery by which Christianity moved, and of the initial principle which const.i.tuted its differential power. In books, at least, I have observed one capital blunder upon the relations which Christianity bears to Paganism: and out of that one mistake, grows a liability to others, upon the possible relations of Christianity to the total drama of this world. I will endeavor to explain my views. And the reader, who takes any interest in the subject, will not need to fear that the explanation should prove tedious; for the mere want of s.p.a.ce, will put me under a coercion to move rapidly over the ground; I cannot be diffuse; and, as regards quality, he will find in this paper little of what is scattered over the surface of books.

I begin with this question:--What do people mean in a Christian land by the word _'religion?'_ My purpose is not to propound any metaphysical problem; I wish only, in the plainest possible sense, to ask, and to have an answer, upon this one point--how much is understood by that obscure term,* _'religion,'_ when used by a Christian? Only I am punctilious upon one demand, viz., that the answer shall be comprehensive. We are apt in such cases to answer elliptically, omitting, because silently presuming as understood between us, whatever _seems_ obvious. To prevent _that_, we will suppose the question to be proposed by an emissary from some remote planet,--who, knowing as yet absolutely nothing of us and our intellectual differences, must insist (as _I_ insist) upon absolute precision, so that nothing essential shall be wanting, and nothing shall be redundant.

*[Footnote: '_That obscure term;_'--i. e. not obscure as regards the use of the term, or its present value, but as regards its original _genesis_, or what in civil law is called the _deductio_. Under what angle, under what aspect, or relation, to the field which it concerns did the term _religion_ originally come forward? The general field, overlooked by religion, is the ground which lies between the spirit of man and the supernatural world. At present, under the humblest conception of religion, the human spirit is supposed to be interested in such a field by the conscience and the n.o.bler affections, But I suspect that originally these great faculties were absolutely excluded from the point of view. Probably the relation between spiritual _terrors_ and man's power of propitiation, was the problem to which the word _religion_ formed the answer. Religion meant apparently, in the infancies of the various idolatries, that _latreia_, or service of sycophantic fear, by which, as the most approved method of approach, man was able to conciliate the favor, or to buy off the malice of supernatural powers. In all Pagan nations, it is probable that religion would, an the whole, be a degrading influence; although I see, even for such nations, two cases, at the least, where the uses of a religion would be indispensable; viz. for the sanction of _oaths_, and as a channel for grat.i.tude not pointing to a human object. If so, the answer is easy: religion _was_ degrading: but heavier degradations would have arisen from irreligion.

The n.o.blest of all idolatrous peoples, viz. the Romans, have left deeply scored in their very use of their word _religlo_, their testimony to the degradation wrought by any religion that Paganism could yield. Rarely indeed is this word employed, by a Latin author, in speaking of an individual, without more or less of sneer. Reading that word, in a Latin book, we all try it and ring it, as a petty shopkeeper rings a half-crown, before we venture to receive it as offered in good faith and loyalty. Even the Greeks are nearly in the same ?p???a, when they wish to speak of religiosity in a spirit of serious praise. Some circuitous form, commending the correctness of a man, pe?? ta ?e?a, _in respect of divine things_, becomes requisite; for all the direct terms, expressing the religious temper, are preoccupied by a taint of scorn. The word ?s???, means _pious_,--not as regards the G.o.ds, but as regards the dead; and even e?se??, though not used sneeringly, is a world short of our word 'religious.' This condition of language we need not wonder at: the language of life must naturally receive, as in a mirror, the realities of life.

Difficult it is to maintain a just equipoise in any moral habits, but in none so much as in habits of religious demeanor under a Pagan [that is, a degrading] religion. To be a coward, is base: to be a sycophant, is base: but to be a sycophant in the service of cowardice, is the perfection of baseness: and yet this was the brief a.n.a.lysis of a devotee amongst the ancient Romans. Now, considering that the word _religion_ is originally Roman, [probably from the Etruscan,] it seems probable that it presented the idea of religion under some one of its bad aspects. Coleridge must quite have forgotten this Paganism of the word, when he suggested as a plausible idea, that originally it had presented religion under the aspect of a coercion or restraint. Morality having been viewed as the prime restraint or obligation resting upon man, then Coleridge thought that religion might have been viewed as a _religatio_, a reiterated restraint, or secondary obligation. This is ingenious, but it will not do. It is cracked in the ring. Perhaps as many as three objections might be mustered to such a derivation: but the last of the three is conclusive. The ancients never _did_ view morality as a mode of obligation: I affirm this peremptorily; and with the more emphasis, because there are great consequences suspended upon that question.]

What, then, is religion? Decomposed into its elements, as they are found in Christianity, how many _powers_ for acting on the heart of man, does, by possibility, this great agency include?

According to my own view, four.[Footnote: there are _six_, in one sense, of religion: viz. 5_thly_, corresponding moral affections; 6_thly_, a suitable life. But this applies to religion as _subjectively possessed_ by a man, not to religion as _objectively contemplated_. ] I will state them, and number them.

1st. A form of worship, a _cultus_.

2dly. An idea of G.o.d; and (pointing the a.n.a.lysis to Christianity in particular) an idea not purified merely from ancient pollutions, but recast and absolutely born again.

3dly. An idea of the relation which man occupies to G.o.d: and of this idea also, when Christianity is the religion concerned, it must be said, that it is so entirely remodelled, as in no respect to resemble any element in any other religion. Thus far we are reminded of the poet's expression, 'Pure religion _breathing_ household laws;' that is, not _teaching_ such laws, not formally _prescribing_ a new economy of life, so much as _inspiring_ it indirectly through a new atmosphere surrounding all objects with new attributes. But there is also in Christianity,

4thly. A _doctrinal_ part, a part directly and explicitly occupied with _teaching_; and this divides into two great sections, a, A system of ethics so absolutely new as to be untranslatable[Footnote: This is not generally perceived. On the contrary, people are ready to say, 'Why, so far from it, the very earliest language in which the Gospels appeared, excepting only St. Matthew's, was the Greek.'

Yes, reader; but _what_ Greek? Had not the Greeks been, for a long time, colonizing Syria under princes of Grecian blood,--had not the Greek language (as a _lingua h.e.l.lenistica_) become steeped in Hebrew ideas,--no door of communication could have been opened between the new world of Christian feeling, and the old world so deaf to its music. Here, therefore, we may observe two preparations made secretly by Providence for receiving Christianity and clearing the road before it; first, the diffusion of the Greek language through the whole civilized world (? ?????e??) some time before Christ, by which means the Evangelists found wings, as it were, for flying abroad through the kingdoms of the earth; secondly, the Hebraizing of this language, by which means the Evangelists found a new material made plastic and obedient to these new ideas, which they had to build with, and which they had to build upon.] into either of the cla.s.sical languages; and, , A system of mysteries; as, for instance, the mystery of the Trinity, of the Divine Incarnation, of the Atonement, of the Resurrection, and others.

Here are great elements; and now let me ask, how many of these are found in the Heathen religion of Greece and Rome? This is an important question; it being my object to show that no religion but the Christian, and precisely through some one or two of its _differential_ elements, could have been an organ of political movement.

Most divines who anywhere glance at this question, are here found in, what seems to me, the deepest of errors. Great theologians are they, and eminent philosophers, who have presumed that (as a matter of course) all religions, however false, are introductory to some scheme of morality, however imperfect. They grant you that the morality is oftentimes unsound; but still, they think that some morality there must have been, or else for what purpose was the religion? This I p.r.o.nounce error.

All the moral theories of antiquity were utterly disjoined from religion. But this fallacy of a dogmatic or doctrinal part in Paganism is born out of Anachronism. It is the anachronism of unconsciously reflecting back upon the ancient religions of darkness, and as if essential to _all_ religions, features that never were suspected as possible, until they had been revealed in Christianity.[Footnote: Once for all, to save the trouble of continual repet.i.tions, understand Judaism to be commemorated jointly with Christianity; the dark root together with the golden fruitage; whenever the nature of the case does not presume a contradistinction of the one to the other.]

Religion, in the eye of a Pagan, had no more relation to morals, than it had to ship-building or trigonometry. But, then, why was religion honored amongst Pagans? How did it ever arise? What was its object? Object! it _had_ no object; if by this you mean ulterior object. Pagan religion arose in no motive, but in an impulse. Pagan religion aimed at no distant prize ahead: it fled from a danger immediately behind. The G.o.ds of the Pagans were wicked natures; but they were natures to be feared, and to be propitiated; for they were fierce, and they were moody, and (as regarded man who had no wings) they were powerful. Once accredited as facts, the Pagan G.o.ds could not be regarded as other than terrific facts; and thus it was, that in terror, blind terror, as against power in the hands of divine wickedness, arose the ancient religions of Paganism. Because the G.o.ds were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of sycophants.

Had the religions of Paganism arisen teleologically; that is, with a view to certain purposes, to certain final causes ahead; had they grown out of _forward_-looking views, contemplating, for instance, the furthering of civilization, or contemplating some interests in a world beyond the present, there would probably have arisen, concurrently, a section in all such religions, dedicated to positive instruction. There would have been a _doctrinal_ part. There might have been interwoven with the ritual or worship, a system of economics, or a code of civil prudence, or a code of health, or a theory of morals, or even a secret revelation of mysterious relations between man and the Deity: all which existed in Judaism. But, as the case stood, this was impossible. The G.o.ds were mere odious facts, like scorpions or rattlesnakes, having no moral aspects whatever; public nuisances; and bearing no relation to man but that of capricious tyrants. First arising upon a basis of terror, these G.o.ds never subsequently enlarged that basis; nor sought to enlarge it. All antiquity contains no hint of a possibility that _love_ could arise, as by any ray mingling with the sentiments in a human creature towards a Divine one; not even sycophants ever pretended to _love_ the G.o.ds.

Under this original peculiarity of Paganism, there arose two consequences, which I will mark by the Greek letters a and .

The latter I will notice in its order, first calling the reader's attention to the consequence marked a, which is this:--In the full and profoundest sense of the word _believe_, the pagans could not be said to believe in _any_ G.o.ds: but, in the ordinary sense, they did, and do, and must believe, in _all_ G.o.ds. As this proposition will startle some readers, and is yet closely involved in the main truth which I am now pressing, viz.

the meaning and effect of a simple _cultus_, as distinguished from a high doctrinal religion, let us seek an ill.u.s.tration from our Indian empire. The Christian missionaries from home, when first opening their views to Hindoos, describe themselves as laboring to prove that Christianity is a true religion, and as either a.s.serting, or leaving it to be inferred, that, on that a.s.sumption, the Hindoo religion is a false one. But the poor Hindoo never dreamed of doubting that the Christian was a true religion; nor will he at all infer, from your religion being true, that his own must be false. Both are true, he thinks: all religions are true; all G.o.ds are true G.o.ds; and all are _equally_ true. Neither can he understand what you mean by a false religion, or how a religion _could_ be false; and he is perfectly right. Wherever religions consist only of a worship, as the Hindoo religion does, there can be no compet.i.tion amongst them as to truth. _That_ would be an absurdity, not less nor other than it would be for a Prussian to denounce the Austrian emperor, or an Austrian to denounce the Prussian king, as a false sovereign. False! _How_ false? In what sense false? Surely not as non-existing. But at least, (the reader will reply,) if the religions contradict each other, one of them _must_ be false. Yes; but _that_ is impossible.

Two religions cannot contradict each other, where both contain only a _cultus_: they could come into collision only by means of a doctrinal, or directly affirmative part, like those of Christianity and Mahometanism. But this part is what no idolatrous religion ever had, or will have. The reader must not understand me to mean that, merely as a compromise of courtesy, two professors of different idolatries would agree to recognise each other. Not at all. The truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other. Both are true as _facts:_ neither can be false, in any higher sense, because neither makes any pretence to truth doctrinal.

This distinction between a religion having merely a worship, and a religion having also a body of doctrinal truth, is familiar to the Mahometans; and they convey the distinction by a very appropriate expression. Those majestic religions, (as they esteem them,) which rise above the mere pomps and tympanies of ceremonial worship, they denominate '_religions of the book_.' There are, of such religions, three, viz., Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism. The first builds upon the Law and the Prophets; or, perhaps, sufficiently upon the Pentateuch; the second upon the Gospel; the last upon the Koran. No other religion can be said to rest upon a book; or to need a book; or even to admit of a book. For we must not be duped by the case where a lawgiver attempts to connect his own human inst.i.tutes with the venerable sanctions of a national religion, or the case where a learned antiquary unfolds historically the record of a vast mythology. Heaps of such cases, (both law and mythological records,) survive in the Sanscrit, and in other pagan languages. But these are books which build upon the religion, not books upon which the religion is built. If a religion consists only of a ceremonial worship, in that case there can be no opening for a book; because the forms and details publish themselves daily, in the celebration of the worship, and are traditionally preserved, from age to age, without dependence on a book. But, if a religion has a doctrine, this implies a revelation or message from Heaven, which cannot, in any other way, secure the transmission of this message to future generations, than by causing it to be registered in a book. A book, therefore, will be convertible with a doctrinal religion:--no book, no doctrine; and, again, no doctrine, no book.

Upon these principles, we may understand that second consequence (marked ) which has perplexed many men, viz., why it is that the Hindoos, in our own times; but, equally, why it is that the Greek and Roman idolaters of antiquity, never proselytized; no, nor could have viewed such an attempt as rational. Naturally, if a religion is doctrinal, any truth which it possesses, as a secret deposit consigned to its keeping by a revelation, must be equally valid for one man as for another, without regard to race or nation. For a _doctrinal_ religion, therefore, to proselytize, is no more than a duty of consistent humanity. You, the professors of that religion, possess the medicinal fountains. You will not diminish your own share by imparting to others. What churlishness, if you should grudge to others a health which does not interfere with your own! Christians, therefore, Mahometans, and Jews originally, in proportion as they were sincere and conscientious, have always invited, or even forced, the unbelieving to their own faith: nothing but accidents of situation, local or political, have disturbed'this effort. But, on the other hand, for a mere '_cultus_' to attempt conversions, is nonsense. An ancient Roman could have had no motive for bringing you over to the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus; nor you any motive for going. 'Surely, poor man,' he would have said, 'you have, some G.o.d of your own, who will be quite as good for _your_ countrymen as Jupiter for mine. But, if you have _not_, really I am sorry for your case; and a very odd case it is: but I don't see how it could be improved by talking nonsense.

You cannot beneficially, you cannot rationally, worship a tutelary Roman deity, unless in the character of a Roman; and a Roman you may become, legally and politically. Being such, you will partic.i.p.ate in all advantages, if any there _are_, or our national religion; and, without needing a process of conversion, either in substance or in form. _Ipso facto_, and without any separate choice of your own, on becoming a Roman citizen, you become a party to the Roman worship.' For an idolatrous religion to proselytize, would, therefore, be not only useless but unintelligible.

Now, having explained _that_ point, which is a great step towards the final object of my paper, viz., the investigation of the reason why Christianity _is_, which no pagan religion ever _has_ been, an organ of political movement, I will go on to review rapidly those four const.i.tuents of a religion, as they are realized in Christianity, for the purpose of contrasting them with the false shadows, or even blank negations, of these const.i.tuents in pagan idolatries.

First, then, as to the CULTUS, or form of the national worship:--In our Christian ritual I recognise these separate acts; viz. A, an act of Praise; B, an act of Thanksgiving; C, an act of Confession; D, an act of Prayer. In A, we commemorate with adoration the _general_ perfections of the Deity. There, all of us have an equal interest. In B, we commemorate with thankfulness those special qualities of the Deity, or those special manifestations of them, by which we, the individual worshippers, have recently benefited.

In C, by upright confession, we deprecate. In D, we pray, or ask for the things which we need. Now, in the _cultus_ of the ancient pagans, B and C (the second act and the third) were wanting altogether. No thanksgiving ever ascended, on his own account, from the lips of an individual; and the state thanksgiving for a triumph of the national armies, was but a mode of ostentatiously publishing the news. As to C, it is scarcely necessary to say that this was wanting, when I mention that penitential feelings were unknown amongst the ancients, and had no name; for _pnitentia_[Footnote: In Greek, there is a word for repentance, but not until it had been rebaptized into a Christian use. _Metanoia_, however, is not that word: it is grossly to defeat the profound meaning of the New Testament, if John the Baptist is translated as though summoning the world to _repentance_; it was not _that_ to which he summoned them.] means _regret_, not _penitence_; and _me pnitet hujus facti_, means, 'I rue this act in its consequences,' not 'I repent of this act for its moral nature.' A and D, the first act and the last, _appear_ to be present; but are so most imperfectly. When 'G.o.d is praised aright,' praised by means of such deeds or such attributes as express a divine nature, we recognise one great function of a national worship,--not otherwise. This, however, we must overlook and pardon, as being a fault essential to the religion: the poor creatures did the best they could to praise their G.o.d, lying under the curse of G.o.ds so thoroughly depraved. But in D, the case is different.

Strictly speaking, the ancients never prayed; and it may be doubted whether D approaches so near to what _we_ mean by prayer, as even by a mockery. You read of _preces_, of a?a?, &c.

and you are desirous to believe that pagan supplications were not _always_ corrupt. It is too shocking to suppose, in thinking of nations idolatrous yet n.o.ble, that never _any_ pure act of approach to the heavens took place on the part of man; that _always_ the intercourse was corrupt; _always_ doubly corrupt; that eternally the G.o.d was bought, and the votary was sold.

Oh, weariness of man's spirit before that unresting mercenariness in high places, which neither, when his race clamored for justice, nor when it languished for pity, would listen without hire! How gladly would man turn away from his false rapacious divinities to the G.o.dlike human heart, that so often would yield pardon _before_ it was asked, and for the thousandth time that would give without a bribe! In strict propriety, as my reader knows, the cla.s.sical Latin word for a prayer is _votum_; it was a case of contract; of mercantile contract; of that contract which the Roman law expressed by the formula--_Do ut des_. Vainly you came before the altars with empty hands. "But _my_ hands are pure." Pure, indeed! would reply the scoffing G.o.d, let me see what they contain.

It was exactly what you daily read in morning papers, viz.:--that, in order to appear effectually before that Olympus in London, which rains rarities upon us poor abject creatures in the provinces, you must enclose 'an order on the Post-Office or a reference.' It is true that a man did not always register his _votum_, (the particular offering which he vowed on the condition of receiving what he asked,) at the moment of asking. Ajax, for instance, prays for light in the 'Iliad,' and he does not then and there give either an order or a reference. But you are much mistaken, if you fancy that even light was to be had _gratis_. It would be 'carried to account.' Ajax would be 'debited' with that 'advance.'

Yet, when it occurs to a man that, in this _Do ut des_, the general _Do_ was either a temple or a sacrifice, naturally it occurs to ask what _was_ a sacrifice? I am afraid that the dark murderous nature of the pagan G.o.ds is here made apparent. Modern readers, who have had no particular reason for reflecting on the nature and management of a sacrifice, totally misconceive it. They have a vague notion that the slaughtered animal was roasted, served up on the altars as a banquet to the G.o.ds; that these G.o.ds by some representative ceremony 'made believe' to eat it; and that finally, (as dishes that had now become hallowed to divine use,) the several joints were disposed of in some mysterious manner: burned, suppose, or buried under the altars, or committed to the secret keeping of rivers. Nothing of the sort: when a man made a sacrifice, the meaning was, that he gave a dinner. And not only was every sacrifice a dinner party, but every dinner party was a sacrifice. This was strictly so in the good old ferocious times of paganism, as may be seen in the Iliad: it was not said, 'Agamemnon has a dinner party to-day,' but 'Agamemnon sacrifices to Apollo.' Even in Rome, to the last days of paganism, it is probable that some slight memorial continued to connect the dinner party [_cna_] with a divine sacrifice; and thence partly arose the sanct.i.ty of the hospitable board; but to the east of the Mediterranean the full ritual of a sacrifice must have been preserved in all banquets, long after it had faded to a form in the less superst.i.tious West. This we may learn from that point of casuistry treated by St. Paul,--whether a Christian might lawfully eat of things offered to idols. The question was most urgent; because a Christian could not accept an invitation to dine with a Grecian fellow-citizen who still adhered to paganism, _without_ eating things offered to idols;--the whole banquet was dedicated to an idol. If he would not take _that_, he must continue _impransus_. Consequently, the question virtually amounted to this: Were the Christians to separate themselves altogether from those whose interests were in so many ways entangled with their own, on the single consideration that these persons were heathens? To refuse their hospitalities, _was_ to separate, and with a hostile expression of feeling. That would be to throw hindrances in the way of Christianity: the religion could not spread rapidly under such repulsive prejudices; and dangers, that it became un-Christian to provoke, would thus multiply against the infant faith. This being so, and as the G.o.ds were really the only parties invited who got nothing at all of the banquet, it becomes a question of some interest,--what _did_ they get?

They were merely mocked, if they had no compensatory interest in the dinner! For surely it was an inconceivable mode of honoring Jupiter, that you and I should eat a piece of roast beef, leaving to the G.o.d's share only the mockery of a _Barmecide_ invitation, a.s.signing him a chair which every body knew that he would never fill, and a plate which might as well have been filled with warm water? Jupiter got _something_, be a.s.sured; and what _was_ it? This it was,--the luxury of inhaling the groans, the fleeting breath, the palpitations, the agonies, of the dying victim. This was the dark interest which the wretches of Olympus had in human invitations to dinner: and it is too certain, upon comparing facts and dates, that, when left to their own choice, the G.o.ds had a preference for _man_ as the victim. All things concur to show, that precisely as you ascend above civilization, which continually increased the limitations upon the G.o.ds of Olympus, precisely as you go back to that gloomy state in which their true propensities had power to reveal themselves, was man the genuine victim for _them_, and the dying anguish of man the best 'nidor' that ascended from earthly banquets to _their_ nostrils. Their stern eyes smiled darkly upon the throbbings of tortured flesh, as in Moloch's ears dwelt like music the sound of infants' wailings.

Secondly, as to the birth of a new idea respecting the nature of G.o.d:--It may not have occurred to every reader, but none will perhaps object to it, when once suggested to his consideration, that--as is the G.o.d of any nation, such will be that nation. G.o.d, however falsely conceived of by man, even though splintered into fragments by Polytheism, or disfigured by the darkest mythologies, is still the greatest of all objects offered to human contemplation.

Man, when thrown upon his own delusions, may have raised himself, or may have adopted from others, the very falsest of ideals, as the true image and reflection of what he calls G.o.d. In his lowest condition of darkness, terror may be the moulding principle for spiritual conceptions; power, the engrossing attribute which he ascribes to his deity; and this power may be hideously capricious, or a.s.sociated with vindictive cruelty. It may even happen, that his standard of what is highest in the divinity should be capable of falling greatly below what an enlightened mind would figure to itself as lowest in man. A more shocking monument, indeed, there cannot be than this, of the infinity by which man may descend below his own capacities of grandeur: the G.o.ds, in some systems of religion, have been such and so monstrous by excesses of wickedness, as to insure, if annually one hour of periodical eclipse should have left them at the mercy of man, a general rush from their own worshippers for strangling them as mad dogs. Hypocrisy, the cringing of sycophants, and the credulities of fear, united to conceal this misotheism; but we may be sure that it was widely diffused through the sincerities of the human heart. An intense desire for kicking Jupiter, or for hanging him, if found convenient, must have lurked in the honorable Koman heart, before the sincerity of human nature could have extorted upon the Roman stage a public declaration,--that their supreme G.o.ds were capable of enormities which a poor, unpretending human creature [homuncio] would have disdained. Many times the ideal of the divine nature, as adopted by pagan races, fell under the contempt, not only of men superior to the national superst.i.tion, but of men partaking in that superst.i.tion. Yet, with all those drawbacks, an ideal _was_ an ideal. The being set up for adoration as G.o.d, _was_ such upon the whole to the worshipper; since, if there had been any higher mode of excellence conceivable for _him_, that higher mode would have virtually become his deity. It cannot be doubted, therefore, that the nature of the national divinities indicated the qualities which ranked highest in the national estimation; and that being contemplated continually in the spirit of veneration, these qualities must have worked an extensive conformity to their own standard. The mythology sanctioned by the ritual of public worship, the features of moral nature in the G.o.ds distributed through that mythology, and sometimes commemorated by gleams in that ritual, domineered over the popular heart, even in those cases where the religion had been a derivative religion, and not originally moulded by impulses breathing from the native disposition. So that, upon the whole, such as were the G.o.ds of a nation, such was the nation: given the particular idolatry, it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the taint of a voluptuous effeminacy.

Against this principle, there could have been no room for demur, were it not through that inveterate prejudice besieging the modern mind,--as though all religion, however false, implied some scheme of morals connected with it. However imperfectly discharged, one function even of the pagan priest (it is supposed) must have been--to guide, to counsel, to exhort, as a teacher of morals. And, had _that_ been so, the practical precepts, and the moral commentary coming after even the grossest forms of worship, or the most revolting mythological legends, might have operated to neutralize their horrors, or even to allegorize them into better meanings. Lord Bacon, as a trial of skill, has attempted something of that sort in his 'Wisdom of the Ancients.' But all this is modern refinement, either in the spirit of playful ingenuity or of ignorance.

I have said sufficiently that there was no _doctrinal_ part in the religion of the pagans. There was a _cultus_, or ceremonial worship: _that_ const.i.tuted the sum total of religion, in the idea of a pagan. There was a necessity, for the sake of guarding its traditional usages, and upholding and supporting its pomp, that official persons should preside in this _cultus_: _that_ const.i.tuted the duty of the priest. Beyond this ritual of public worship, there was nothing at all; nothing to believe, nothing to understand. A set of legendary tales undoubtedly there was, connected with the mythologic history of each separate deity. But in what sense you understood these, or whether you were at all acquainted with them, was a matter of indifference to the priests; since many of these legends were variously related, and some had apparently been propagated in ridicule of the G.o.ds, rather than in their honor.

With Christianity a new scene was opened. In this religion the _cultus_, or form of worship, was not even the primary business, far less was it the exclusive business. The worship flowed as a direct consequence from the new idea exposed of the divine nature, and from the new idea of man's relations to this nature. Here were suddenly unmasked great doctrines, truths positive and directly avowed: whereas, in Pagan forms of religion, any notices which then were, or seemed to be, of circ.u.mstances surrounding the G.o.ds, related only to matters of fact or accident, such as that a particular G.o.d was the son or the nephew of some other G.o.d; a truth, if it _were_ a truth, wholly impertinent to any interest of man.

As there are some important truths, dimly perceived or not at all, lurking in the idea of G.o.d,--an idea too vast to be navigable as yet by the human understanding, yet here and there to be coasted,--I wish at this point to direct the reader's attention upon a pa.s.sage which he may happen to remember in Sir Isaac Newton: the pa.s.sage occurs at the end of the 'Optics;' and the exact expressions I do not remember; but the sense is what I am going to state: Sir Isaac is speaking of G.o.d; and he takes occasion to say, that G.o.d is not good, but goodness; is not holy, but holiness; is not infinite, but infinity. This, I apprehend, will have struck many readers as merely a rhetorical _bravura_; sublime, perhaps, and fitted to exalt the feeling of awe connected with so unapproachable a mystery, but otherwise not throwing any new light upon the darkness of the idea as a problem before the intellect. Yet indirectly perhaps it _does_, when brought out into its latent sense by placing it in juxtaposition with paganism. If a philosophic theist, who is also a Christian, or who (_not_ being a Christian,) has yet by his birth and breeding become saturated with Christian ideas and feelings,[Footnote: this case is far from uncommon; and undoubtedly, from having too much escaped observation, it has been the cause of much error. Poets I could mention, if it were not invidious to do so, who, whilst composing in a spirit of burning enmity to the Christian faith, yet rested for the very sting of their pathos upon ideas that but for Christianity could never have existed. Translators there have been, English, French, German, of Mahometan books, who have so colored the whole vein of thinking with sentiments peculiar to Christianity, as to draw from a reflecting reader the exclamation, 'If this can be indeed the product of Islamism, wherefore should Christianity exist?' If thoughts so divine can, indeed, belong to a false religion, what more could we gain from a true one?] attempts to realize the idea of supreme Deity, he becomes aware of a double and contradictory movement in his own mind whilst striving towards that result. He demands, in the first place, something in the highest degree generic; and yet again in the opposite direction, something in the highest degree individual; he demands on the one path, a vast ideality, and yet on the other, in union with a determinate personality. He must not surrender himself to the first impulse, else he is betrayed into a mere _anima mundi_; he must not surrender himself to the second, else he is betrayed into something merely human. This difficult antagonism, of what is most and what is least generic, must be maintained, otherwise the idea, the possible idea, of that august unveiling which takes place in the Judaico-Christian G.o.d, is absolutely in clouds. Now, this antagonism utterly collapses in paganism. And to a philosophic apprehension, this peculiarity of the heathen G.o.ds is more shocking and fearful than what at first sight had seemed most so. When a man pauses for the purpose of attentively reviewing the Pantheon of Greece and Rome, what strikes him at the first with most depth of impression and with most horror is, the _wickedness_ of this Pantheon. And he observes with surprise, that this wickedness, which is at a furnace-heat in the superior G.o.ds, becomes fainter and paler as you descend. Amongst the semi-deities, such as the Oreads or Dryads, the Nereids or Naiads, he feels not at all offended. The odor of corruption, the _saeva mephitis_, has by this time exhaled. The uproar of eternal outrage has ceased. And these gentle divinities, if too human and too beset with infirmities, are not impure, and not vexed with ugly appet.i.tes, nor instinct of quarrel: they are tranquil as are the hills and the forests; pa.s.sionless as are the seas and the fountains which they tenant. But, when he ascends to the _dii majorum gentium_, to those twelve G.o.ds of the supreme house, who may be called in respect of rank, the Paladins of the cla.s.sical Pantheon, secret horror comes over him at the thought that demons, reflecting the worst aspects of brutal races, ever _could_ have levied worship from his own. It is true they do so no longer as regards _our_ planet. But what _has_ been apparently _may_ be. G.o.d made the Greeks and Romans of one blood with himself; he cannot deny that _intellectually_ the Greeks--he cannot deny that _morally_ the Romans--were amongst the foremost of human races; and he trembles in thinking that abominations, whose smoke ascended through so many ages to the _supreme_ heavens, may, or might, so far as human resistance is concerned, again become the law for the n.o.blest of his species. A deep feeling, it is true, exists latently in human beings of something perishable in evil. Whatsoever is founded in wickedness, according to a deep misgiving dispersed amongst men, must be tainted with corruption.

_There_ might seem consolation; but a man who reflects is not quite so sure of _that_. As a commonplace resounding in schools, it may be justly current amongst us, that what is evil by nature or by origin must be transient. But _that_ may be because evil in all human things is partial, is heterogeneous; evil mixed with good; and the two natures, by their mutual enmity, must enter into a collision, which may possibly guarantee the final destruction of the whole compound. Such a result may not threaten a nature that is purely and totally evil, that is _h.o.m.ogeneously_ evil. Dark natures there may be, whose _essence_ is evil, that may have an abiding root in the system of the universe not less awfully exempt from change than the mysterious foundations of G.o.d.

This is dreadful. Wickedness that is immeasurable, in connection with power that is superhuman, appals the imagination. Yet this is a combination that might easily have been conceived; and a wicked G.o.d still commands a mode of reverence. But that feature of the pagan pantheon, which I am contrasting with this, viz., that no pagan deity is an _abstraction_ but a vile _concrete_, impresses myself with a subtler sense of horror; because it blends the hateful with a mode of the ludicrous. For the sake of explaining myself to the non-philosophic reader, I beg him to consider what is the sort of feeling with which he regards an ancient river-G.o.d, or the presiding nymph of a fountain. The impression which he receives is pretty much like that from the monumental figure of some allegoric being, such as Faith or Hope, Fame or Truth. He hardly believes that the most superst.i.tious Grecian seriously believed in such a being as a distinct personality. He feels convinced that the sort of personal existence ascribed to such an abstraction, as well as the human shape, are merely modes of representing and drawing into unity a variety of phenomena and agencies that seem _one_, by means of their unintermitting continuity, and because they tend to one common purpose. Now, from such a symbolic G.o.d as this, let him pa.s.s to Jupiter or Mercury, and instantly he becomes aware of a revolting individuality. He sees before him the opposite pole of deity. The river-G.o.d had too little of a concrete character.

Jupiter has nothing else. In Jupiter you read no incarnation of any abstract quality whatever: he represents nothing whatever in the metaphysics of the universe. Except for the accident of his power, he is merely a man. He has a _character_, that is, a tendency or determination to this quality or that, in excess; whereas a nature truly divine must be _in equilibrio_ as to all qualities, and comprehend them all, in the way that a _genus_ comprehends the subordinate _species_. He has even a personal history: he has pa.s.sed through certain adventures, faced certain dangers, and survived hostilities that, at one time, were doubtful in their issue. No trace, in short, appears, in any Grecian G.o.d, of the generic. Whereas we, in our Christian ideas of G.o.d, unconsciously, and without thinking of Sir Isaac Newton, realize Sir Isaac's conceptions. We think of him as having a sort of allegoric generality, liberated from the bonds of the individual; and yet, also, as the most awful among natures, having a conscious personality. He is diffused through all things, present everywhere, and yet not the less present locally. He is at a distance unapproachable by finite creatures; and yet, without any contradiction, (as the profound St.

Paul observes,) 'not very far' from every one of us. And I will venture to say, that many a poor old woman has, by virtue of her Christian inoculation, Sir Isaac's great idea lurking in her mind; as for instance, in relation to any of G.o.d's attributes; suppose holiness or happiness, she feels, (though a.n.a.lytically she could not explain,) that G.o.d is not holy or is not happy by way of partic.i.p.ation, after the manner of other beings: that is, he does not draw happiness from a fountain separate and external to himself, and common to other creatures, he drawing more and they drawing less; but that he, himself _is_ the fountain; that no other being can have the least proportion of either one or the other but by drawing from that fountain; that as to all other good gifts, that as to life itself, they are, in man, not on any separate tenure, not primarily, but derivatively, and only in so far as G.o.d enters into the nature of man; that 'we live and move' only so far and so long as the incomprehensible union takes place between the human spirit and the fontal abyss of the divine. In short, here, and here only, is found the outermost expansion, the centrifugal, of the TO catholic, united with the innermost centripetal of the personal consciousness. Had, therefore, the pagan G.o.ds been less detestable, neither impure nor malignant, they could not have won a salutary veneration--being so merely concrete individuals.

Next, it must have degraded the G.o.ds, (and have made them instruments of degradation for man,) that they were, one and all, incarnations; not, as even the Christian G.o.d is, for a transitory moment and for an eternal purpose; but essentially and by overruling necessity. The Greeks could not conceive of spirituality. Neither can _we_, metaphysically, a.s.sign the conditions of the spiritual; but, practically, we all feel and represent to our own minds the agencies of G.o.d, as liberated from bonds of s.p.a.ce and time, of flesh and of resistance. This the Greeks could _not_ feel, could _not_ represent. And the only advantage which the G.o.ds enjoyed over the worm and the grub was, that they, (or at least the Paladins amongst them--the twelve supreme G.o.ds,) could pa.s.s, fluently, from one incarnation to another.

Thirdly. Out of that essential bondage to flesh arose a dreadful suspicion of something worse: in what relation did the pagan G.o.ds stand to the abominable phenomenon of death? It is not by uttering pompous flatteries of ever-living and _ambrotos aei_, &c., that a poet could intercept the searching jealousies of human penetration.

These are merely oriental forms of compliment. And here, by the way, as elsewhere, we find Plato vehemently confuted: for it was the undue exaltation of the G.o.ds, and not their degradation, which must be ascribed to the frauds of poets. Tradition, and no poetic tradition, absolutely pointed to the grave of more G.o.ds than one.

But waiving all _that_ as liable to dispute, one thing we know, from the ancients themselves, as open to no question, that all the G.o.ds were _born_; were born infants; pa.s.sed through the stages of helplessness and growth; from all which the inference was but too fatally obvious. Besides, there were grandfathers, and even great-grandfathers in the Pantheon: some of these were confessedly superannuated; nay, some had disappeared. Even men, who knew but little of Olympian records, knew this, at least, for certain, that more than one dynasty of G.o.ds had pa.s.sed over the golden stage of Olympus, had made their _exit_, and were hurrying onward to oblivion. It was matter of notoriety, also, that all these G.o.ds were and had been liable to the taint of sorrow for the death of their earthly children, (as the Homeric Jupiter for Sarpedon, Thetis for Achilles, Calliope, in Euripides, for her blooming Rhesus;) all were liable to fear; all to physical pain; all to anxiety; all to the indefinite menaces of a danger not measurable.[Footnote: it must not be forgotten that all the superior G.o.ds pa.s.sed through an infancy (as Jove, &c.) or even an adolescence, (as Bacchus,) or even a maturity, (as the majority of Olympus during the insurrection of the t.i.tans,) surrounded by perils that required not strength only, but artifice, and even abject self-concealment to evade.] Looking backwards or looking forwards, the G.o.ds beheld enemies that attacked their existence, or modes of decay, (known and unknown,) which gnawed at their roots. All this I take the trouble to insist upon: not as though it could be worth any man's trouble, at this day, to expose (on its own account) the frailty of the Pantheon, but with a view to the closer estimate of the Divine idea amongst men; and by way of contrast to the power of that idea under Christianity: since I contend that, such as is the G.o.d of every people, such, in the corresponding features of character, will be that people. If the G.o.d (like Moloch) is fierce, the people will be cruel; if (like Typhon) a destroying energy, the people will be gloomy; if (like the Paphian Venus) libidinous, the people will be voluptuously effeminate. When the G.o.ds are perishable, man cannot have the grandeurs of his nature developed: when the shadow of death sits upon the highest of what man represents to himself as celestial, essential blight will sit for ever upon human aspirations. One thing only remains to be added on this subject: Why were not the ancients more profoundly afflicted by the treacherous gleams of mortality in their G.o.ds? How was it that they could forget, for a moment, a revelation so full of misery?

Since not only the character of man partly depended upon the quality of his G.o.d, but also and _a fortiori_, his destiny upon the destiny of his G.o.d. But the reason of his indifference to the divine mortality was--because, at any rate, the pagan man's connection with the G.o.ds terminated at his own death. Even selfish men would reconcile themselves to an earthquake, which should swallow up all the world; and the most unreasonable man has professed his readiness, at all times, to die with a dying universe--_mundo sec.u.m pereunte, mori_.

But, _thirdly_, the G.o.ds being such, in what relation to them did man stand? It is a fact hidden from the ma.s.s of the ancients themselves, but sufficiently attested, that there was an ancient and secret enmity between the whole family of the G.o.ds and the human race. This is confessed by Herodotus as a persuasion spread through some of the nations amongst which he travelled: there was a sort of truce, indeed, between the parties; temples, with their religious services, and their votive offerings, recorded this truce.

But below all these appearances lay deadly enmity, to be explained only by one who should know the mysterious history of both parties from the eldest times. It is extraordinary, however, that Herodotus should rely, for this account, upon the belief of distant nations, when the same belief was so deeply recorded amongst his own countrymen in the sublime story of Prometheus. Much[Footnote: not all: for part was due to the obstinate concealment from Jupiter, by Prometheus, of the danger which threatened his throne in a coming generation.]

of the sufferings endured by Prometheus was on account of man, whom he had befriended; and, _by_ befriending, had defeated the malignity of Jove. According to some, man was even created by Prometheus: but no accounts, until lying Platonic philophers arose, in far later times, represented man as created by Jupiter.

Now let us turn to Christianity; pursuing it through the functions which it exercises in common with Paganism, and also through those which it exercises separately and incommunicably.

I. As to the _Idea of G.o.d_,--how great was the chasm dividing the Hebrew G.o.d from all G.o.ds of idolatrous birth, and with what starry grandeur this revelation of _Supreme_ deity must have wheeled upwards into the field of human contemplation, when first surmounting the steams of earth-born heathenism, I need not impress upon any Christian audience. To their _knowledge_ little could be added. Yet to _know_ is not always to _feel:_ and without a correspondent depth of feeling, there is in moral cases no effectual knowledge. Not the understanding is sufficient upon such ground, but that which the Scriptures in their profound philosophy ent.i.tle the 'understanding heart.' And perhaps few readers will have adequately appreciated the prodigious change effected in the theatre of the human spirit, by the transition, sudden as the explosion of light, in the Hebrew cosmogony, when, from the caprice of a fleshly G.o.d, in one hour man mounted to a justice that knew no shadow of change; from cruelty, mounted to a love which was inexhaustible; from gleams of _essential_ evil, to a holiness that could not be fathomed; from a power and a knowledge, under limitations so merely and obviously human,[Footnote: It is a natural thought, to any person who has not explored these recesses of human degradation, that surely the Pagans must have had it in their power to invest their G.o.ds with all conceivable perfections, quite as much as we that are _not_ Pagans. The thing wanting to the Pagans, he will think, was the _right_: otherwise as regarded the _power_.] to the same agencies lying underneath creation, as a root below a plant. Not less awful in power was the transition from the limitations of s.p.a.ce and time to ubiquity and eternity, from the familiar to the mysterious, from the incarnate to the spiritual. These enormous transitions were fitted to work changes of answering magnitude in the human spirit. The reader can hardly make any mistake as to this. He _must_ concede the changes.

What he will be likely to misconceive, unless he has reflected, is--the immensity of these changes. And another mistake, which he is even more likely to make, is this: he will imagine that a new idea, even though the idea of an object so vast as G.o.d, cannot become the ground of any revolution more than intellectual--cannot revolutionize the moral and active principles in man, consequently cannot lay the ground of any political movement. We shall see. But next, that is,--

II. Secondly, as to the idea of man's relation to G.o.d, this, were it capable of disjunction, would be even more of a revolutionary idea than the idea of G.o.d. But the one idea is enlinked with the other. In Paganism, as I have said, the higher you ascend towards the original fountains of the religion, the more you leave behind the frauds, forgeries, and treacheries of philosophy; so much the more clearly you descry the odious truth--that man stood in the relation of a superior to his G.o.ds, as respected all moral qualities of any value, but in the relation of an inferior as respected physical power. This was a position of the two parties fatal, by itself, to all grandeur of moral aspirations. Whatever was good or corrigibly bad, man saw a.s.sociated with weakness; and power was sealed and guaranteed to absolute wickedness. The evil disposition in man to worship success, was strengthened by this mode of superiority in the G.o.ds. Merit was disjoined from prosperity. Even merit of a lower cla.s.s, merit in things morally indifferent, was not so decidedly on the side of the G.o.ds as to reconcile man to the reasonableness of their yoke. They were compelled to acquiesce in a government which they did not regard as just. The G.o.ds were stronger, but not much; they had the unfair advantage of standing over the heads of men, and of wings for flight or for manoeuvring. Yet even so, it was clearly the opinion of Homer's age, that, in a fair fight, the G.o.ds might have been found liable to defeat. The G.o.ds again were generally beautiful: but not more so than the _elite_ of mankind; else why did these G.o.ds, both male and female, continually persecute our race with their odious love? which love, be it observed, uniformly brought ruin upon its objects. Intellectually the G.o.ds were undoubtedly below men. They pretended to no great works in philosophy, in legislation, or in the fine arts, except only that, as to one of these arts, viz. poetry, a single G.o.d vaunted himself greatly in simple ages. But he attempted neither a tragedy nor an epic poem. Even in what he did attempt, it is worth while to follow his career. His literary fate was what might have been expected. After the Persian war, the reputation of his verses rapidly decayed. Wits arose in Athens, who laughed so furiously at his style and his metre, in the Delphic oracles, that at length some echoes of their scoffing began to reach Delphi; upon which the G.o.d and his inspired ministers became sulky, and finally took refuge in prose, as the only shelter they could think of from the caustic venom of Athenian malice.