Aleph, the Chaldean; or, the Messiah as Seen from Alexandria

by E. F. Burr

What should they do in the meantime? Aleph consulted his programme of lectures, and found that Seti was to speak at the third hour in his course on Comparative Religions—special topic, The Religion of Egypt. They would settle with their landlord and then leisurely find their way to the lecture. They were curious to hear what the high-priest of Egypt would say about its religion. Perhaps they would get some light on the mystery of his position.

Accordingly, in due time they found themselves in the lecture-room of the Serapeum. They noticed that the room was fuller than before, and conjectured that this was owing to the special interest felt in the topic to be discussed. Seti evidently noticed their presence as he came in and passed near them to his seat on the dais.

What follows is a condensed statement of the main points of the lecture—without the vigorous argument and abundant illustrations by which these points were supported.

Seti began with reminding the students that he had in previous lectures on the origin and history of religion expressed the conviction that its earliest stage in all countries was monotheism. The evidence of this, he thought to be especially clear in the case of Egypt. All his researches had converged on a remote time when the Egyptian temples contained no visible object of worship; but were dedicated to a single spiritual Being who was supposed to be the eternal, almighty, and all wise creator of all things else, and who was to be worshipped by prayer and praise and gifts and sacrifice. They called Him Amun Re.

How long the popular religion remained at this point is not known. Nor is it known by any record how a change came to take place. But probably it was after this manner. Some of the ruder people began to use visible symbols of the Great Spirit to assist their conception and devotion; and by degrees their example was copied extensively by the people at large. The next step was to pass from the worship of the Being symbolized to the worship of the symbol itself—a thing about as easy as the descent of rivers to the sea.

Before long there crept in a new element. The people had all along believed, as all other nations have done, in a multitude of invisible beings, intermediate between the Supreme and man in dignity and faculty, and having more or less influence over human fortunes. These, whether supposed good or bad, the people gradually came to think it worth while to propitiate by various services and honors, very much as they were accustomed to do to the various grades of powerful officials under the Pharaohs; and in process of time the services and honors given to these minor but nearer deities grew to overshadow those of Amun Re himself.

This secondary worship, too, found symbols natural and convenient. Its objects were invisible beings hard to be conceived of and realized. In this case the familiar animals of the country were taken as symbols. Foreigners have sometimes wondered at this, and perhaps with some reason; but there are not wanting philosophers who say that even the humblest living creature is a more wonderful object than any dead statue can be, though of the most precious material and exquisite workmanship; and that it better represents the wisdom and power of a living spiritual being. Whatever one may think of the propriety of this animal symbolism, it was certainly general in Egypt at a very early period. And men went as naturally from such a symbolism to a worship of the symbols themselves as they did to sin and death.

But where, meanwhile, was the priesthood of Amun Re? Through all these changes among the lower orders the higher Egyptian priesthood held fast the original theory of religion. To them there was still but one God to whom religious worship should be paid, and He should be worshipped without symbol. So they resisted the downward drift—resisted it strongly. But the popular current was too strong for them. And, after long struggling against it unsuccessfully, they came by degrees to feel that the lower orders are incapable of worthily grasping and appropriating a strictly spiritual religion—that the gross thoughts and cares and toils amid which their lives are necessarily spent make a grosser form of religion a necessity to them. The heavens are best read and understood from eminences—how can the stars of the higher truth be seen to advantage save from the eminences of human life with their culture and leisure and broad outlook? They cannot. It must not be expected. A spiritual religion is not for the vulgar. It is too high and sacred for common handling. It were a profanation of the lofty and holy to put them into such hands as hold our plows, work our quarries, and embalm our dead.

These views at first tolerated, then favored, next embraced and justified, and finally established as a policy and institution, made two worlds in Egypt, with a great abyss between them, which have continued down to the present time. On the one hand has been the world of Pharaohs, priests and philosophers holding fast the primitive religion of Egypt as a sacred Mystery: on the other hand has been a world of peasants and idolaters judged unfit for such high knowledge and carefully excluded from it.