With these axioms well in mind, we can advance with confidence to examine the claims of a religion. It will rise in the scale just in proportion as its behests, were they universally adopted, would permanently increase the happiness of the human race.
In their origin, as I have said, morality and religion are opposites; but they are opposites which inevitably attract and unite. The first lesson of all religions is that we gain by giving, that to secure any end we must sacrifice something. This, too, is taught by all social intercourse, and, therefore, an acute German psychologist has set up the formula," All manners are moral,"[30] because they all imply a subjection of the personal will of the individual to the general will of those who surround him, as expressed in usage and custom.
Even the religion which demands bloody sacrifices, which forces its votaries to futile and abhorrent rites, is at least training its adherents in the virtues of obedience and renunciation, in endurance and confidence.
But concerning American religions I need not have recourse to such a questionable vindication. They held in them far nobler elements, as is proved beyond cavil by the words of many of the earliest missionaries themselves. Bigoted and bitter haters of the native faiths, as they were, they discovered in them so much that was good, so much that approximated to the purer doctrines that they themselves came to teach, that they have left on record many an attempt to prove that there must, in some remote and unknown epoch, have come Christian teachers to the New World, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew, monks from Ireland, or Asiatic disciples, to acquaint the natives with such salutary doctrines. It is precisely in connection with the myths which I have been relating in this volume that these theories were put forth, and I have referred to them in various passages.
The facts are as stated, but the credit of developing these elevated moral conceptions must not be refused to the red race. They are its own property, the legitimate growth of its own religious sense.
The hero-god, the embodiment of the Light of Day, is essentially a moral and beneficent creation. Whether his name be Michabo, Ioskeha, or Quetzalcoatl, Itzamna, Viracocha or Tamu, he is always the giver of laws, the instructor in the arts of social life, the founder of commonwealths, the patron of agriculture. He casts his influence in favor of peace, and against wars and deeds of violence. He punishes those who pursue iniquity, and he favors those who work for the good of the community.
In many instances he sets an example of chaste living, of strict temperance, of complete subjection of the lusts and appetites. I have but to refer to what I have already said of the Maya Kukulcan and the Aztec Quetzalcoatl, to show this. Both are particularly noted as characters free from the taint of indulgence.
Thus it occurred that the early monks often express surprise that these, whom they chose to call savages and heathens, had developed a moral law of undeniable purity. "The matters that Bochica taught," says the chronicler Piedrahita, "were certainly excellent, inasmuch as these natives hold as right to do just the same that we do." "The priests of these Muyscas," he goes on to say, "lived most chastely and with great purity of life, insomuch that even in eating, their food was simple and of small quantity, and they refrained altogether from women and marriage. Did one transgress in this respect, he was dismissed from the priesthood."[31]
The prayers addressed to these deities breathe as pure a spirit of devotion as many now heard in Christian lands. Change the names, and some of the formulas preserved by Christobal de Molina and Sahagun would not jar on the ears of a congregation in one of our own churches.
Although sanguinary rites were common, they were not usual in the worship of these highest divinities, but rather as propitiations to the demons of the darkness, or the spirits of the terrible phenomena of nature. The mild god of light did not demand them.