Comparative Religion

by J. Estlin Carpenter

CHAPTER IV

SPIRITS AND GODS

Religion in the lower culture takes many forms, but, speaking broadly, they rest upon a common interpretation of the world. Man sees around him all kinds of motion and change. He finds in everything that happens some energy or power; and the only kind of power which he knows is that which he himself exerts. As long as he is alive he can run and fight, he can throw the spear or guide the canoe; death comes to the comrade by his side, and all is still. So in wind and stream, in beast and tree, in the stones that fall upon the mountain side, in the stars that march across the nightly sky, he sees a like power; they, too, have some sort of life.

Life as an abstract idea, a potency or principle, is but rarely grasped. But its manifestations early attract notice, and can be roughly explained. They are due to something inside the living body, which can pass in and out, and can finally leave it altogether. Here is an immense store of causality provided, to account for all the incidents of each day's experience. Modern language calls such agents spirits, and recognises in their multitude two mingled groups, both active: the spirits of the dead on the one hand, and those of natural objects, the bubbling well, the gloomy forest, the raging storm, upon the other.

Sometimes these are merged under a common term, like the Japanese kami, sometimes they are separately named. They bear different characters of good and evil, as they are ready to help or hurt; and the same spirit may be now kindly and now hostile, without fixity of disposition or purpose. To such spirits the ancient Babylonians gave the name of zi. Literally, we are told, the word signified "life"; it was indicated in their picture-writing by a flowering plant; the great gods, and even heaven and earth themselves, all had their zi. The Egyptians, in like manner, ascribed to every object, to human beings, and to gods, a double or ka. The word seems to be identical with that for "food"; it was another way of indicating that all visible things, the peoples of the earth, the dwellers in the realms above and below, shared a common life.

The history of religion is concerned with the process by which the great gods rise into clear view above the host of spirits filling the common scene; with the modes in which the forces of the world may be grouped under their control; with the manifold combinations which finally enable one supreme power to absorb all the rest, so that a god of the sky, like the Greek Zeus, may become a god of rain and sunshine and atmospheric change, of earth and sea, and of the nether world; and may thus be presented as the sole and universal energy, not only of all outward things but also of the inner world of thought. Of this immense development language, archæology, literature, the dedications of worship, the testimonies of the ancient students of their still more ancient past in ritual and belief, contain the scattered witness, which the student of to-day laboriously gathers and interprets. It is the humbler object of a little manual of Comparative Religion to set some of the principal issues of such historic evolution side by side, and show how similar reactions of the mind of man upon the field of his experience have wrought like results.

As the inquirer casts his eye over the manifold varieties of the world's faiths, he sees that they are always conditioned by the stage of social culture out of which they emerge. The hunter who lives by the chase, and must range over large areas for means of support; the pastoral herdsman who has acquired the art of breeding cattle and sheep, and slowly moves from one set of feeding-grounds to another; the agriculturist who has learned to rely on the co-operation of earth and sky in the annual round,—have each their own way of expressing their view of the Powers on which they depend.

Little by little they are arranged in groups. The Celts, for instance, coming to river after river in their onward march, employed the same name again and again, "Deuona," divine (still surviving in this country in different forms, Devon, Dee, etc.), as though all rivers belonged to one power. They were the givers of life and health and plenty, to whom costly sacrifices must be made. So they might bear the title "Mother," and were akin to the powers of fertility living in the soil, the "Mothers" (Matres or Matronæ), cognate with the "Mothers" who fulfil similar functions in modern India. The adjacent Teutonic peoples filled forest and field with wood-sprites and elves, dwellers in the air and the sunlight. The springs, the streams, and the lakes, were the home of the water-sprites or nixes; in the fall of the mighty torrent, among the rocks on the mountain heights, in the fury of the storm or the severity of the frost, was the strength of the giants.

Yet further east and north the Finnic races looked out on a land of forest and waters, of mists and winds. The spirits were ranged beneath rulers who were figured in human form. The huntsman prayed with vow and sacrifice to the aged Tapio, god of the woods and the wild animals. Kekri watched over the increase of the herd, while Hillervo protected them on the summer pastures. The grains and herbs—of less importance to tribes only imperfectly agricultural—were ascribed to the care of Pellervoinen, who falls into the background and receives but little veneration. Water, once worshipped as a living element (vesi), is gradually supplanted by a water-god (Ahto) who rules over the spirits of lakes and rivers, wells and springs. "Mother-earth" still designates in the oldest poetry the living energy of the ground, though she afterwards becomes the "lady of the earth" and consort of the lord of the sky. The sky, Jumala, was first of all conceived as itself living; "Jumala's weather" was like "Zeus's shower" to an ancient Greek. And then, under the name Ukko, the sky becomes a personal ruler, with clouds and rain, thunder and hail, beneath his sway; who can be addressed as—

Ukko, thou of gods the highest,
Ukko, thou our Heavenly Father.

Many causes contribute to the enlargement and stability of such conceptions. Tribes of limited local range and a meagre past without traditions may conceive the world around them on a feeble scale. But migration helps to enlarge the outlook. Local powers cannot accompany tribes upon the march. Either they must be left behind and drop out of remembrance, or they must be identified with new scenes and adapted to fresh environments. When the horizon moves ever further forwards with each advance, earth and sky loom vaster before the imagination, and sun and moon, the companion of each day or the protector of each night, gain a more stately predominance. The ancestors of the Hindus, the Greeks, the Romans, the Teutons, carried with them the worship of the sky-god under a common name, derived from the root div, to "shine" (Dyaus = Zeus = Jovis = old High German Tiu, as in Tuesday). Other names gathered around the person in the actual firmament, such as the Sanskrit Varuna (still recognised by some scholars as identical with the Greek Ouranos, heaven), loftiest of all the Vedic gods. The Aryan immigrants are already organised under kings, and Varuna sits enthroned in sovereignty. His palace is supported by a thousand pillars, and a thousand doors provide open access for his worshippers. But he is in some sense omnipresent, and one of the ancient poets sang—

"If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, King Varuna knows it, he is there as the third.

"This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (sky and ocean) are Varuna's loins; he is also contained in this small drop of water.

"He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of Varuna, the king."

The supreme power of the universe is here conceived under a political image. Conceptions of government and social order supply another line of advance, parallel with the forces of nature. On the African Gold Coast, after eighteen years' observation, Cruickshank ranged the objects of worship in three ranks: (1) the stone, the tree, the river, the snake, the alligator, the bundle of rags, which constituted the private fetish of the individual; (2) the greater family deity whose aid was sought by all alike, sometimes in a singular act of communion which involved the swallowing of the god (p. [144]); and (3) the deity of the whole town, to whom the entire people had recourse in times of calamity and suffering.

The conception of the deity of a tribe or nation may be greatly developed under the influence of victory. War becomes a struggle between rival gods. Jephthah the Gileadite, after recounting the triumphs of Israel to the hostile Ammonite king, states the case with the most naked simplicity: "Yahweh, Israel's god, hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess them? Wilt thou not possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever Yahweh our god hath dispossessed from before us, them will we possess" (Judges xi. 23, 24). The land of Canaan was the gift of Israel's God, but at first his power was limited by its boundaries: to be driven from the country was to be alienated from the right to offer him worship or receive from him protection. In the famous battle with the Hittites, celebrated by the court-poet of Rameses the Great (1300-1234 B.C.), the king, endangered by the flight of his troops, appeals to the great god Amen, a form of the solar deity Rê, with confidence of help, "Amen shall bring to nought the ignorers of God": and the answer comes, "I am with thee, I am thy father, my hand is with thee, I am more excellent for thee than hundreds of thousands united in one." Success thus enhanced the glory of the victor's gods. Like the Incas of Peru in later days, the Assyrian sovereigns confirmed their power by bringing the deities of tributary peoples in a captive train to their own capital: and the Hebrew prophet opens his description of the fall of Babylon by depicting the images of the great gods Bel and Nebo as packed for deportation on the transport-animals of the conqueror.

Other causes further tended to give distinction to the personality of deities, and define their spheres. A promiscuous horde of spirits has no family relationships. A god may have a pedigree; a consort is at his side; and the mysterious divine power reappears in a son. Instead of the political analogy of a sovereign and his attendants, the family conception expresses itself in a divine father, mother and child. Thus the Ibani of Southern Nigeria recognised Adum as the father of all gods except Tamuno the creator, espoused to Okoba the principal goddess, and mother of Eberebo, represented as a boy, to whom children were dedicated. The Egyptian triad, Osiris, Isis and Horus, is well known; and the divine mother with the babe upon her lap passed into the Christian Church in the form of the Virgin Mary and her infant son.

The divisions of the universe suggested another grouping. The Vedic poets arranged their deities in three zones: the sky above, the intervening atmosphere, and the earth beneath. Babylonian cosmology placed Anu in the heaven, Bel on the earth, and Ea in the great deep, and these three became the symbols of the order of nature, and the divine embodiments of physical law. Homer already divides the world between the sky-god Zeus, Poseidon of earth and sea, and Hades of the nether realm: and Rome has its triads, like Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, or again Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Whatever be the origin of the number three in this connection, it reproduces itself with strange reiteration in both hemispheres. Other groups are suggested by the sun and moon and the five planets, and appear in sets of seven. Egyptian summaries recognised gods in the sky, on earth, and in the water; and the theologians of different sanctuaries loved to arrange them in systems of nine, or three times three.

Out of this vast and motley multitude emerge certain leading types in correspondence with certain modes of human thought, with certain hopes and fears arising out of the changes of the human lot. Curiosity begins to ask questions about the scene around. The child, when it has grasped some simple view of the world, will inquire who made it; and to the usual answer will by and by rejoin "And who made God?" Elementary speculation does not advance so far: it is content to rest if necessary in darkness and the void, provided there is a power which can light the sun, and set man on his feet. But the intellectual range of thought even in the lower culture is much wider than might have been anticipated; while the higher religions contain abundant survivals of the cruder imagination which simply loves a tale.

Sometimes the creative power (especially on the American continent) is figured as a marvellous animal, a wondrous raven, a bird-serpent, a great hare, a mighty beaver. Or the dome of sky suggests an original world-egg, which has been divided to make heaven and earth. Even the Australians, whose characteristics are variously interpreted as indications of extreme backwardness or of long decline, show figures which belong to what Mr. Andrew Lang designated the "High Gods of Low Races." Among the Narrinyeri in the west Nurrundere was said to have made all things on the earth; the Wiimbaio told how Nurelli had made the whole country with the rivers, trees, and animals. Among the Western Bantu on the African continent Nzambi (a name with many variants over a large area) is described as "Maker and Father." "Our forefathers told us that name. Njambi is the One-who-made-us. He is our Father, he made these trees, that mountain, this river, these goats and chickens, and us people." That is the simple African version of the "ever-and-beyond." But as with so many of the chief gods, not only on the dark continent, but elsewhere, he is regarded as a non-interfering and therefore negligible deity.

Sometimes speculation takes a higher flight. The Zuñis of Mexico have remained in possession of ancient traditions, uninfluenced by any imported Christianity. After many years' residence among them Mr. Cushing was able to gather their ideas of the origin of the world. Awona-wilona was the Maker and Container of all, the All-Father-Father. Through the great space of the ages there was nothing else whatever, only black darkness everywhere. Then "in the beginning of the new-made" Awona-wilona conceived within himself, and "thought outward in space," whereby mists of increase, steams potent of growth, were evolved and uplifted. Thus by means of his innate knowledge the All-Container made himself in the person and form of the sun. With his appearance came the brightening of the spaces with light, and with the brightening of the spaces the great mist-clouds were thickened together and fell. Thereby was evolved water in water, yea and the world-holding sea. And then came the production of the Fourfold-Containing Mother-Earth and the All-Covering Father-Sky.

With a yet bolder leap of imagination did a Polynesian poet picture the great process. From island to island between Hawaii and New Zealand is a "high god" known as Taaroa, Tangaloa, Tangaroa, and Kanaroa. The Samoans said that he existed in space and wished for some place to dwell in, so he made the heavens; and then wished to have a place under the heavens, so he made the earth. Tahitian mythology declared (the versions of priests and wise men differed) that he was born of night or darkness. Then he embraced a rock, the imagined foundation of all things, which brought forth earth and sea; the heavens were created with sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, and rain, and the dry land appeared below. The whole process was summed up in a hymn—

"He was: Taaroa was his name.
He abode in the void; no earth, no sea, no sky.
Taaroa calls, but nought answers,
Then, alone existing, he became the universe."

The relations of these creative Powers to man are conceived very differently. The Maker of the world may be continually interested in it, and may continue to administer the processes which he has begun. The Akkra negro looks up to the living sky, Nyongmo, as the author of all things, who is benevolently active day by day: "We see every day," said a fetish-man, "how the grass, the corn, and the trees, spring forth through the rain and sunshine sent by Nyongmo [Nyongmo ne = 'Nyongmo rains'], how should he not be the creator?" So he is invoked with prayer and rite. The great Babylonian god, Marduk, son of Ea (god of wisdom and spells), alone succeeds in overcoming the might of Tiamat (the Hebrew tehôm or "deep"), the primeval chaos with her hideous brood of monsters, and out of her carcass makes the firmament of heaven. He arranges the stations of the stars, he founds the earth, and places man upon it. "His word is established," cries the poet, "his command is unchangeable: wide is his heart, broad is his compassion." A conqueror so splendid could not relinquish his energy, or rest on his achievements: he must remain on the throne of the world to direct and support its ways. Here is a prayer of Nebuchadrezzar to this lofty deity—

"O eternal ruler, lord of all being, grant that the name of the king thou lovest, whose name thou hast proclaimed, may flourish as seems pleasing to thee. Lead him in the right way. I am the prince that obeys thee, the creature of thy hand. Thou hast created me, and hast entrusted to me dominion over mankind. According to thy mercy, O lord, which thou bestowest upon all, may thy supreme rule be merciful! The worship of thy divinity implant within my heart. Grant me what seems good to thee, for thou art he that hast fashioned my life."

On the other hand, the "High Gods of Low Races" often seem to fade away and become inactive, or at least are out of relations to man. Olorun, lord of the sky among the African Egbas, also bore the title of Eleda, "the Creator." But he was too remote and exalted to be the object of human worship, and no prayer was offered to him. Among the southern Arunta of central Australia, reports Mr. Strehlow, Altjira is believed to live in the sky. He is like a strong man save that he has emu feet. He created the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars. When rain-clouds come up, it is Altjira walking through the sky. Altjira shows himself to man in the lightning, the thunder is his voice. But though thus animate, he is no object of worship. "Altjira is a good god; he never punishes man; therefore the blacks do not fear him, and render him neither prayer nor sacrifice." In Indian theology the reason for the discontinuance of homage was thus frankly stated by one of the poets of the great epic, the Mahābhārata; "Men worship Çiva the destroyer because they fear him; Vishnu the preserver, because they hope from him; but who worships Brahman the creator? His work is done."[[1]]

[[1]] Hopkins, India, Old and New, p. 113. Prof. Hopkins adds that in India to-day there are thousands of temples to Çiva and Vishnu, but only two to Brahman.

If the deity who has provided the scene of existence thus recedes into the background, it is otherwise with the powers which maintain and foster life. Among the impulses which drive man to action is the need of food; and the sources of its supply are among the earliest objects of his regard. A large group of agencies thus gradually wins recognition, out of which emerge lofty forms endowed with functions far transcending the simple energies at first ascribed to them. Even the rude tribes of Australia, possessing no definite worship, perform pantomimic ceremonies of a magical kind, designed to stimulate the food supply. The men of the plum-tree totem will pretend to knock down plums and eat them; in the initiation ceremony of the eagle-hawks two representatives will imitate the flapping of wings and the movements of attack, and one will finally wrench a piece of meat out of the other's mouth. At a higher stage of animism the Indians of British North America pray to the spirit of the wild raspberry. When the young shoots are six or eight inches high above the ground, a small bundle is picked by the wife or daughters of the chief and cooked in a new pot. The settlement assembles in a great circle, with the presiding chief and the medicine-man in the midst. All close their eyes, except certain assisting elders, while the chief offers a silent prayer that the spirit of the plants will be propitious to them, and grant them a good supply of suckers.

Here the whole class of plants is already conceived as under the control of a single power. In ruder stages the hunter will address his petitions to the individual bear, before whose massive stature he feels a certain awe, entreating him not to be angry or fight, but to take pity on him. Pastoral peoples will employ domesticated animals in sacrifice, while the products of the field occupy a second place; the cow may become sacred, and the daily work of the dairy may rise, as among the Todas, to the rank of religious ritual. Some element of mysterious energy will even lie in the weapons of the chase, in the net or the canoe, and may be found still lingering in the implements of agriculture, such as the plough.

Among settled communities which live by tillage the succession of the crops from year to year acquires immense importance. Earth and sky, the sun, the rain, and time itself in the background, are all contributory powers, but attention is fastened upon the spirit of the grains. The Iroquois look on the spirits of corn, of squashes, and of beans, as three sisters, who are known collectively as "Our Life" or "Our Supporters." In central America each class of food-plants had its corresponding spirit, which presided over its germination, nourishment, and growth. This was called the mama or "mother" of the plant: in Peru there was a cocoa-mother, a potato-mother, a maize-mother; just as in India the cotton-spirit is worshipped as "cotton-mother." A "maize-mother," made of the finest stalks, was renewed at each harvest, that the seed might preserve its vitality. The figure, richly clothed, was ceremoniously installed, and watched for three nights. Sacrifice was solemnly offered, and the interpreter inquired, "Maize-mother, canst thou live till next year?" If the spirit answered affirmatively, the figure remained for a twelvemonth; if no reply was vouchsafed, it was taken away and burnt, and a fresh one was consecrated. In Mexico maize was a much more important food than in Peru, and the maize-deity acquired in consequence a much higher rank. She became a great harvest goddess. Temple and altar were dedicated to her; spring and summer festivals were celebrated in her honour; and a youthful victim was slain, whose vitality might enter the soil, and recruit her exhausted energies.

The ceremonies connected with the cultus of the rice-spirit in the East Indies still perpetuate in living faith beliefs once vital in the peasantry of Europe, and surviving to this day (as Mannhardt and Frazer have shown) in many a usage of the harvest-field. Out of this group of ideas arise divine forms which express mysteries of life and time. What is it that guides the circle of the year? What power brings forth the blade out of the ground, and clothes the woods with verdure? As the months follow their constant course, are not the seasons the organs of some sacred force, lovely figures as Greek poets taught, born of Zeus and Themis (holy law); or angels of the Most High, ruling over heat and cold, summer and winter, spring and autumn, as the later Israel conceived the continuance of God's creative work? And when the fields are bare and the leaves fall, have not the energies of vegetation suffered an arrest, to come to life again when the great quickening of the spring returns? So while here and there dim speculations (as in India or Persia or the Orphic hymns of Greece) hover round Time, the generator of all things, and the recurring periodicity of the Year, more concrete imagination conceives the processes of the growth, decay, and revival of vegetation under the symbols of the life, the death, and resurrection of the deities of corn and tree.

To such a group belong different forms in Egypt, Syria and Greece, whose precise origin cannot always be traced amid the bewildering variety of functions which they came to fulfil. But they all illustrate the same general theme. In the ritual of their worship similar motives and symbols may be traced; and the incidents of their life-course were presented in a sort of sacred drama which reproduced the central mystery. Such were Osiris in Egypt, Adonis (as the Greeks called the Syrian form of the ancient Babylonian Tammuz), Attis of Phrygia in Asia Minor, and in Greece the Thracian Dionysus, and the divine pair Demeter and her daughter Persephonê blended with the figure of Korê "the Maid."

The worship of Osiris early spread throughout Egypt, and its various phases have given rise to many interpretations of his origin and nature. Recent studies have converged upon the view that he was primarily a vegetation deity. In the festival of sowing, small images of the god formed out of sand or vegetable earth and corn, with yellow faces and green cheek-bones, were solemnly buried, those of the preceding year being removed. On the temple wall of his chamber at Philæ stalks of corn were depicted springing from his dead body, while a priest poured water on them from a pitcher. This was the mystery of him "who springs from the returning waters." The annual inundation brought quickening to the seed, and in the silence and darkness of the earth it died to live.

Of this process Osiris became the type for thousands of years. Already in the earliest days of the Egyptian monarchy he is presented as the divine-human king, benevolent, wise, just. To him in later times the arts and laws of civilised life could be traced back; he was the founder of the social order and the worship of the gods. But the jealousy of his brother Set brought about his death. The ancient texts do not explicitly state what followed. But his body was cut to pieces and his limbs were scattered, until his son Horus effected their reunion. Restored to life, he ascended to the skies, and became "Chief of the Powers," so that he could be addressed as the "Great God." There by his resurrection he became the pledge of immortality. Each man who died looked to him for the gift of life. Mystically identified with him, the deceased bore the god's name and was thus admitted into fellowship with him. Over his body the ceremonies once performed upon Osiris were repeated, the same formulæ were recited, with the conviction that "as surely as Osiris lives, so shall he live also." But magic was early checked by morals, and by the sixth dynasty Osiris had also become the august and impartial judge (p. [8]).

Such might be the splendid evolution of a deity of the grains. But food was not, of course, the only need. The family as well as each individual must be maintained. Mysterious powers wrought through sex. Strange energies pulsed in processes of quickening, and these, too, were interpreted in terms of divine agency. They found their parallels in the operations of nature (like the Yang and Yin of ancient China), and begot new series of heavenly forms. The greater gods all had their consorts. Birth must be placed under divine protection, just as the organ of generation might itself be sacred. The Babylonian looked to the spouse of Marduk, "creator of all things," to whom as Zēr-panîtum, "seed-creatress," the processes of generation were especially referred. Or with ceremony and incantation the child was set beneath the care of Ishtar, queen of Nineveh, and goddess of the planet Venus. The Greek prayed to Hera, Artemis, or Eileithyia; and all round the world superhuman powers, for good or ill, gathered round the infant life, whose aid must be sought, or whose hurt averted. Dread agencies of disease, like fever, smallpox, or cholera, were in like manner personalised. Demonic forces cut short the tale of years. From the equator to the arctic zone Death is ascribed in the lowest culture to witchcraft. Strange stories were told of his intrusion into the world, commonly through man's transgression of some divine command. And gradually the other world must be ruled like this; the multitudes of the dead need a sovereign like the living; and after the fashion of Osiris the Indian Yama, "first to spy out the path" to the unseen realm, becomes the "King of Righteousness" before whom all must in due time give their account (p. [244]).

Such deities, however, represent much more than the physical life. They have a social character, and have become the expression of organised morality. On this field another group of divine powers comes into view, symbols of order in the home or the city, charged with the maintenance of the family or the State. Round the hearth-fire gathers a peculiar sanctity. There is the common centre of domestic interests; there, too, the agent by which gifts are conveyed to the spirits of the dead. There, then, was a sacred force, dwelling in the hearth itself, and animating the fire that burned upon it. The Greek Hestia seems originally to have been not the goddess who made the hearth holy, nor the sacrificial fire which it sustained, but the mysterious energy in the actual stones upholding the consecrated flame. All kinds of associations were attached to it; and though her personality remained somewhat dim and indistinct, and carven forms of her were rare, and her worship was never sacerdotalised like that of the Latin Vesta, she nevertheless had the first place in sacrifice and prayer. She was worshipped in the city council-hall. Athenian colonists carried her sacred fire across the seas. The poets provided her with a pedigree, and made her "sister of God most high, and of Hera the partner of his throne." The sculptor placed her statue at Athens beside that of Peace. The family deity expanded into an emblem of the unity of government and race. But the primitive character of the ancient hearth-power still clung to her. She never rose into the lofty functions of guide and protector of moral order like the great city-gods Zeus, Athena, or Apollo.

In Rome numerous powers were recognised in early days as guardians of the home and the farm-lands. Vesta had her seat upon the hearth, which was the centre of the family worship, and afterwards became the object of an important city-cult. The store-chamber behind was the dwelling-place of the Penates, and with its contents no impure person might meddle. Where farm met farm stood the chapel of the local Lares, and there whole households assembled, masters and slaves together, in annual rejoicings and good fellowship. Brought into the home, the Lar became the symbol of the family life, and the ancestral pieties gathered round him. More vague and elastic was the conception of the Genius, a kind of spiritual double who watched over the fortunes of the head of the home, and through the marriage-bed provided for the continuity of descent. This protecting power could take many forms with continually expanding jurisdiction. The city, the colony, the province, the "land of Britain," Rome, the Emperor himself, were thus placed under divine care, or rather were viewed as in some way the organs of superhuman power. In the energy which built up states and brought peoples into order lived something that was creative and divine.

From distant times in many forms of society it was felt that there was something mysterious in sovereignty. The king (once connected with the priest) was hedged round with some sort of divinity which expressed itself in language amazing to the modern mind. In the ancient monarchies of Egypt and Babylon the royal deity was the fundamental assumption of government, and it was represented upon the monuments beside the Nile with startling realism. In later days the Greek title Theos (god) was boldly assumed by the sovereigns of Egypt and Syria. It was conferred, with the associated epithet Sotér (Saviour or Preserver), as early as 307 B.C., on Demetrius and his father Antigonus, who liberated Athens from the tyranny of Cassander. On the Rosetta stone (in the British Museum) Ptolemy V, 205 B.C., claims the same dignity, and is described as "eternal-lived," and "the living image of Zeus." Ephesus designated Julius Cæsar as "God manifest and the common Saviour of human life."

This is something more than the extravagance of court-scribes, or the fawning adulation of oriental dependents. In the worship paid to the Roman Emperor many feelings and associations were involved. The power which had brought peace, law, order, into the midst of a multitude of nations and languages, and subdued to itself the jarring wills of men, seemed something more than human. When Tertullian of Carthage coined the strange word "Romanity," he summed up the infinite variety of energies which spread one culture from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic, from the cataracts of the Nile to the sources of the Tyne. Of this mysterious force the Emperor was the symbol. So Augustus was saluted throughout the East as "Son of God," and in inscriptions recently discovered in Asia Minor, and referred by the historian Mommsen to the year 11 or 9 B.C., we read the startling words: "the birthday of the God is become the beginning of glad tidings (evangelia[[2]]) through him to the world." He is described as "the Saviour of the whole human race"; he is the beginning of life and the end of sorrow that ever man was born. An inscription at Philæ on the Nile equated him with the greatest of Greek deities, for he is "star of all Greece who has arisen as great Saviour Zeus."

[[2]] The word which designates our "Gospels."

This is the most highly developed form of the doctrine of the divine king, which the Far East has retained for the sovereigns of China and Japan to our own day. The language and practice of Roman imperialism called forth the impassioned resistance of the early Christians, and the clash of opposing religions is nowhere portrayed with more desperate intensity than in the Book of Revelation at the close of our New Testament, where Rome and her false worship are identified with the power of the "Opposer" or Sâtân, and are hurled with all their trappings of wealth and luxury into the abyss.

The conception of a god as "saviour" or deliverer is founded on incidents in personal or national experience, when some unexpected event opens a way of escape from pressing danger. When the Gauls were advancing against Rome in 388 B.C., a strange voice of warning was heard in the street. It was neglected, but when they had been repelled, Camillus erected an altar and temple to the mysterious "Speaker," Aius Locutius, whose prophetic energy was thus manifested. In the second Punic war, when the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, was marching against the city in 211 B.C., he suddenly changed his course near the Capena gate. Again the might of an unknown deity was displayed, and the grateful Romans raised a shrine to him under the name of Tutanus Rediculus, the god who "protects and turns back." It might be the attack of an enemy, it might be the imminence of shipwreck, it might be a desolating plague, or any one of the vicissitudes of fortune, the distresses and anxieties of the soul or of the State, in the power which brought rescue or health or peace to body or mind, or life hereafter in a better world, the grateful believer recognised the energy of some superhuman being. Just as the making of the world required a creative hand, just as the arts and laws of social life were the product of some divine initiative (p. [171]), just as the higher virtues belonged to a band of spiritual forces which had a kind of individuality of their own, so the shaping of affairs bore witness to the interest and intervention of wills above those of man. All through the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean the greater deities, such as Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Æsculapius, Dionysus, Isis, Zeus, bore the title of "Deliverer." And in the mysteries which drew so many worshippers to their rites in the first centuries of our era, this deliverance took the form of salvation from sin, and carried with it the promise of re-birth into eternal life.

Similar conceptions are seen in India. The founder of Buddhism, Gotama of the Sākyan clan, was believed to have attained the Enlightenment which enabled him to discern the whole secret of existence. After a long series of preparatory labours in previous lives he had appeared as a man in his last birth, to "lift off from the world the veils of ignorance and sin." He had himself repudiated all ontological conceptions; he had explained the human being without the hypothesis of a soul or self, and the world without the ideas of substance or God. But in due time the rejected metaphysics insisted on recognition; and some three hundred years or more after his death a new interpretation of his person arose. Under the stress of pious affection, the influence of philosophical Brahmanism, and the need of permanent spiritual help, he was conceived as a manifestation of the Infinite and Eternal, who for the sake of suffering humanity from time to time condescended to seem to be born and die, that in the likeness of a man he might impart the saving truth. So he was presented as the Self-Existent, the Father of the world, the Protector of all creatures, the Healer of men's sicknesses and sins.

Over against this great figure Brahmanism placed another, that of Vishnu, with his series of "descents," in which the Buddha was formally incorporated as the ninth. The most famous of these were the heroes Rama and Krishna; and Krishna became the subject of the best-known book of Indian devotion, the Bhagavad-Gita or the "Divine Lay," which has been sometimes supposed to show traces of the influence of the Gospel of St. John. Here was a religion founded on the idea of divine grace or favour on the one part, and adoring love and devotion on the other. Krishna, also, taught a way of deliverance from the evils of human passion and attachment to the world; and Vishnu came to be the embodiment of divine beneficence, at once the power which maintained the universe and revealed himself from time to time to man.

Vishnu was an ancient Vedic deity connected with the sun; and by his side Hindu theology set another god of venerable antiquity, once fierce and destructive, but now known under the name of Çiva, the "auspicious." The great epic entitled the Mahābhārata does not conceal their rivalry; but with the facility of identification characteristic of Indian thought, either deity could be interpreted as a form of the other. Çiva became the representative of the energies of dissolution and reproduction; and his worship begot in the hearts of the mediæval poets an ardent piety, while in other aspects it degenerated into physical passion on the one side and extreme asceticism on the other. But in association with Brahma, Vishnu and Çiva constituted the Trimurti, or "triple form," embracing the principles of the creation, preservation, destruction, and renewal of the world. Symbolised, like the Christian Trinity, by three heads growing on one stem,[[3]] these lofty figures were the personal manifestations of the Universal Spirit, the Sole Existence, the ultimate Being, Intelligence, and Bliss.

[[3]] Some of the Celtic deities are three-faced, or three-headed.

By various paths was the goal of monotheism approached, but popular practice perpetually clung to lower worships, and philosophy could often accommodate them with ingenious justifications. A bold and decisive judgment like that of the Egyptian Akhnaton might fix on one of the great powers of nature—the sun—as the most suitable emblem of Deity to be adored, and forbid all other cults. Or the various groups and ranks of divine beings might be addressed in a kind of collective totality, like the "all-gods" of the Vedic hymns. At Olympia there was a common altar for all the gods; and a frequent dedication of Roman altars in later days consecrated them "to Jupiter Greatest and Best, and the Other Immortal Gods." If reflection was sufficiently advanced to coin abstract terms for deity, like the Babylonian 'ilûth, or the Vedic asuratva or devatva, some poet might apprehend the ultimate unity, and lay it down that "the great asuratva of the devas is one." Both India and Greece reached the conception of a unity of energy in diversity of operation; "the One with many names" was the theme of the ancient Hindu seers long before Æschylus in almost identical words proclaimed "One form with many names." The great sky-god Zeus, whose personality could be almost completely detached from the visible firmament, brought the whole world under his sway, and from the fifth century before Christ Greek poetry abounded in lofty monotheistic language which the early Christian apologists freely quoted in their own defence. A philosophic sovereign like Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco, might build a temple to "the Unknown God, the Cause of Causes," where no idol should be reared for worship, nor any sacrifice of blood be offered. But other motives were more often at work. Conquest led to the identification of the deities of the victor and the vanquished; and the importance of military triumph enhanced the majesty of the successful god. In his great inscription on Mount Behistun Darius celebrated the grandeur of Ahura Mazda, "Lord All-Wise," in language resembling that of a Hebrew psalm, "A great God is Ahura Mazda, the greatest of the gods." Under the Roman Empire the principle of delegated authority could be invoked to explain the unity of the Godhead above inferior agencies; in the heavenly order there was but one sovereign, though there were many functionaries. Even Israel had its hierarchy of ministering spirits, and the Synagogue found it necessary to forbid pious Jews to pray to Michael or to Gabriel.

When the unity of the moral order was combined with the unity of creative might, the transition to monotheism was even more complete. It could, indeed, be deferred. In the ancient poems of the great religious reformer whom the Greeks called Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda is the supremely Good. Beside him are the Immortal Holy Ones, Holy Spirit, Good Mind, Righteous Order, and the rest. True, in the oppositions of light and darkness, heat and cold, health and sickness, plenty and want, life and death, he is for a time hampered by the enmity of "the Lie"; but the power of evil would be finally destroyed, and the sovereignty of Ahura established for ever (p. [247]).

From another point of view the divine purpose of deliverance must be conceived upon an equally world-wide scale. One type of Indian Buddhism looked to Avalokiteçvara (Chinese Kwanyin, Japanese Kwannon), who made the famous vow not to enter into final peace until all beings—even the worst of demons in the lowest hell—should know the saving truth and be converted. And in the Far East rises the figure of the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is also the Buddha of Infinite Life, whose grace will avail for universal redemption (p. [18]). The motive of creation falls away. The world is the scene of the moral forces set in motion under the mysterious power of the Deed. No praise rises to Amida for the wonders of the universe or the blessings of life. But to no other may worship be offered. Here is a monotheism where love reigns supreme, and it is content to trust that Infinite Mercy will achieve its end.