THE INSTITUTION OF A PRIESTHOOD.
9. It would appear, from such traces of a religious tendency as are found in the primary languages, that the religious instinct was awakened by an observation of the forces of nature, which struck the mind with wonder, admiration, or terror. The mysteries of growth, the power of winds and storms and waters, the calm beauty, beneficence and brilliance of the sun, moon and stars riding undisturbed in the heavens, impressed man with a sense of something superior to himself. The moods of nature suggested some unknown being with a varying disposition like his own. His wants, his hopes and fears, and his sense of helplessness soon led him to seek to propitiate these unknown powers. The first religion, among all the primitive nations, seems to have been a worship of the powers of nature. The head of the family was naturally the first priest of the family. This office increased the respect in which he was held by his multiplying descendants, and contributed to strengthen his authority.
10. But when, in the organization of cities and states, patriarchal influence decayed, and was replaced by the authority of the chieftain or the king, a class of men was set apart to fill the office of religious instructors, to discover the art and conduct the acts of general worship. The great mystery and uncertainty surrounding the objects of worship, required exclusive study and a supposed purity and elevation of mind impossible to others which soon raised the priesthood into an institution much revered. It acquired great influence, and afforded an opening to ambition only inferior to that of the chief or king. The two commonly united for mutual support, and thus mankind gained two institutions destined to be of incalculable value, as well as of almost boundless injury. In the earlier ages they must have been an almost unmixed good. They disciplined, the one the labors, the other the minds, of communities. They were the two most powerful instruments for initiating progress. They moulded the mass, gave it form, and directed its energies.
To a certain degree they each formed a check on the excessive tendencies of the other. But, the power of each fairly established, they often united to set very hurtful limits to spontaneous action. The king used his power to the common injury, and the priests their knowledge to the common debasement. The first exhausted the sources of prosperity and growth among his people to gratify his caprices and pleasures, and the priesthood promoted degrading superstitions and a gross idolatry to strengthen their influence. It was for the interest of both to keep the people in pupilage, and check all tendencies to independent action or thought. Had it been possible for them to be wise and high-minded, the race would have been saved many centuries of debasement and misery.
11. These evils were, in some degree, checked by influences which have ever since been the mainspring of progress—War and Commerce. In early times, relationships of blood or of immediate interest were the chief bonds among men. All outside the family, tribe, or nation were usually held as enemies; and passion, interest, or ambition in the ruler led to constant conflict. But the shock of peoples awakened their minds, made them acquainted with each other, made their inventions and arts in some degree common property, and mingled the thought and blood of different races; and this greatly enlarged the ideas and capacities of both conquerors and conquered. The acquaintance made in this way, with men and countries, led to an interchange of products, during quiet times, and trade and commerce soon sprung up. This, appealing to the best interests and instincts of the most enterprising among the people, has always been a powerful instrument of advancement. It led to distant voyages and travels, to observation and intercourse, with a view to pecuniary advantage, to inventions and improvements in industry and art, that kept the peoples so related in a state of constant progress.
12. A growing population required increasing attention to agriculture and the mechanic arts, and increasing wealth led to architectural display and the increase of instruments of luxury, the production of which disciplined the skill of the artisan and contributed to the general growth. All these were the elements and foundation of civilization. An organization commenced, and a state founded, the king soon found leisure to look about and envy the wealth and territories of his neighbor. He made war and commenced a career of conquest, or fell, under defeat, into his neighbor’s hand, when time took a step forward, and a new consolidation, wider and higher than the former, was laid on a broader base. Slowly but surely an advance was made.
13. We are now to observe this gradual development in the successive history of five monarchies in Asia and the kingdom of Egypt, down to the time when they all fell before the conquering power of Greece, under Alexander the Great, which introduces new and far higher elements of progress among the civilized races, and forms the full opening of a new Era.
SECTION IV.
ANCIENT MONARCHIES.
1. The Chaldean Monarchy was the first in order of time. It seems very likely that the first settlement which, in the slow development of the earliest races, finally produced an organized kingdom on the lower part of the Euphrates, was made somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 years before the Christian Era. It is, however, a matter of dispute between the best authorities whether it can be placed so far back. The monuments of that age are difficult to decipher, but it seems pretty certain that a Scythian or Turanian government preceded that which the traditions of ancient history, the statements of the Bible, and the indications of the ruins unite in placing at 2234 B. C. The founder appears as Nimrod, or Bilu-Nipur. Many indications render it fairly certain that the early formative stages of a kingdom had already passed, and that Nimrod merely changed the capital. The first people had learned to subdue their soil, had begun to build and to bring language and art to some degree of order, when it appears that a Hamitic race, more advanced than they, and showing strong likeness to the early Egyptians, mingled with them. In the first inscriptions the language is Turanian, but the character Hamitic, or Egyptian. So far as can be judged, the displacement was peaceful and gradual. About the time above named, a man of great genius, Nimrod, a Hamite, or Cushite, as he is termed in the Mosaic record, a “mighty hunter,” as his name implies, founded a kingdom farther up the Euphrates, and on the plain which lay between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris.