Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

In the land of Ham nothing was nobler than a few dull emblems of thought, sitting on a lotus leaf, immersed in the contemplation of their own divinity, or fierce warrior-deities, Molochs, Baals, or Saturns, while the classic West deified the sentiments of the human mind; and, though steeped in viciousness, yet represented as beings presiding over nature in beautiful and commanding forms. A potent spell of fascination dwelt in the mere abstractions of pagan thought embodied in a Hebe, Venus, or Minerva; and false as were the spiritual views of their authors, they exercised a charm of imagination which still speaks to more enlightened intellects, and evokes sad regrets from holier hearts. The province of Shem was faith and not philosophy. His descendants were never successful in dialectics, and the best of them under the old dispensation only stated the matter of their belief, but never undertook to prove it. When Job attempted religious argumentation, and would justify the ways of God to man by a process of theodicean philosophy, he acknowledged his failure by avowing the incomprehensibility of human destinies. And when the pious and philosophic Ecclesiastes attempted to argue on rationalistic principles, he fell into inextricable doubt, and could resist despair only by implicit submission to the word vouchsafed from heaven: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Such was the last dictum of Hebraism in the fifth century before Christ, at the moment when the daring speculation of Japhet had passed its culminating point. This, too, was the age of Haggai and Malachi, in whom sacred truth is announced in purely didactic and not argumentative forms. Without anticipating the designs of Providence, we think with inexpressible delight of the last and best expression of Jewish faith united to Japhetic reason, and happily blended together in the splendors of an infinitely loftier wisdom to enlighten mankind.

The functions of humanity are of a social nature; they merge in the whole species, and have religion for their foundation and centre. If absolute isolation were possible to man, it would virtually nullify his existence. Only societies act in and upon the world, with religion for their bond and protection. Among the nations which have shared in the work of progress accomplished hitherto, each has exerted an influence by some characteristic feature, some special function in the general advance. In addition to the literature, art, science, and philosophy of the Greeks, we should carefully note the great civilizing might which dwelt in their religion. This was felt by them to be an infinite and universal necessity. Without it, the social state is impossible, since the nature of man demands active progress under a moral law too exalted to emanate from human will. It must be divinely ordained, and in a way which clearly indicates the means and end of human perfection. That alone can create and proclaim the legitimate end of human activity, at the same time it becomes synonymous with religious morality.

The ideas which obtain among different nations respecting their own creation, are usually much like themselves. Scandinavians suppose that they sprang from dense forests on their hills, the Libyans from the sands of their native deserts, while the Egyptians conceived themselves to have arisen from the mud of the Nile. But the cheerful and active Greek associated his origin with the grasshopper, and went singing on his agile way. A kindred diversity exists in the choice made by nations as to the objects to be adored. The Egyptians deified water, the Phrygians earth, the Assyrians air, and the Persians fire. But the Greek, impelled by nobler instincts, went beyond grosser natures and deified himself. The mighty conclave shining round the resplendent heights of Olympus, was only the counterpart of a vast congregation worshiping below. As Amon or Osiris presides among the deities of a lower grade, Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs the chorus of the constellations, and Zeus leads the solemn procession of celestial troops in the astronomical theology of the Pythagoreans. The apotheosis of Orpheus, with his harp, in their scientific heavens, is a starry record of oriental worship sublimated by the devout intellect of Greece. The nations of antiquity believed that their ancestors dwelt closely allied to the gods, or were gods themselves. Cadmus and Cecrops were half human, half divine. The Greeks inherited many cosmogonical legends from the Hindoos, out of which was composed the theogony of Hesiod. Thebes rising to the sound of Amphion's lyre, was the world awakening at the music of the shell of Vishnou. Conflicting Centaurs and Lapithæ, Titans and giants, are supposed to represent the elemental discord out of which arose the stability and harmony of nature.

The great heroes of India became the chief gods of Greece; so that their mythology was not a pure invention, but rested on a historical basis. The introduction of the Lamaic worship into north-eastern Hellas, is distinctly preserved in the earliest religious annals. The famous moralist Pythagoras was the special devotee and professor of eastern doctrines, and, under their inspiration, established a brotherhood strictly devotional, and with observances of monastic sanctity. Grote speaks of this great preacher to the Grecian race in the following terms: "In his prominent vocation, analogous to that of Epimenides, Orpheus, or Melampus, he appears as the revealer of a mode of life calculated to raise his disciples above the level of mankind, and to recommend them to the favor of the gods; the Pythagorean life, like the Orphic life, being intended as the exclusive prerogative of the brotherhood, approached only by probation and initiatory ceremonies, which were adapted to select enthusiasts rather than to an indiscriminate crowd, and exacting active mental devotion to the master." Traditionary history commemorates a wonderful reformation produced by this stern religionist in different lands. The effect produced among the Crotoniates by the illustrious missionary of morality is indicated by the recorded fact, that two thousand persons were converted under his first discourse. The Supreme Council were so penetrated with the noble powers of the Lamaic apostle that they offered him the exalted post of their President, and placed at the head of the religious female processions his wife and daughter.

The religion of the Greeks was the deification of the faculties and affections of man. Human character and personality preponderated therein, but it was neither inert nor wanting in intellect. The passionless, immovable deities of Egypt and Persia were superseded by the active and powerful hierarchy of Olympus. Free and independent, they were presided over by the great conqueror of those blind and deaf gods of necessity, who had reigned absolutely over all the ancient East. Under this new dispensation, the various forces of nature were emancipated and endowed with the affections, and subjected to the weaknesses, of mortal beings. Fountains, rivers, trees, forests, mountains, rose into objects of adoration under the form of nymphs, goddesses, and gods. Social existence was elevated to a corresponding degree, by the removal of castes, and the sacerdotal despotisms which had so long impeded the progress of democratic principles in individual and social life. Preceding nations, of lively sensibility, had reverenced as deities single rays of the Divine Being separated from their great centre; but the polytheism which prevailed over adolescent men, appeared in Hellas invested with a purer majesty. Oriental polytheism desecrated its altars and temples with images of deformity; but the West conceived a nobler symbol of divinity, when the Greek created God in his own image, and seemed to inhale life-giving breath while he worshiped in the midst of every phenomenon that could refine his taste or stimulate his imagination. This was utterly inadequate to the attainment of the great end of spiritual existence; but one important step in paganism was gained; natural religion, which had before been absorbed in the immeasurableness of the formless infinite, became fixed to the eye under the limitations of a cognizable form, eminently human, but suggestive of the divine. Thus, religion produced ideality in art, and art fostered enthusiasm in religion. The beauty and dignity of many altar-statues appeared to have descended from a higher sphere, and commanded the reverence due to beings of celestial birth. The earthly was so blended with the heavenly, and visibly presented, that Plato looked upon the harmony as something complete, and most ennobling in its power of assimilation. In all the public enterprises and festal assemblies of the Greeks, a high religious tone was present which paid homage only to the exalted and the beautiful. They were of the earth, earthy; but it is impossible not to look back with respect upon that people whose whole civilization was imbued with a spirit of renunciation, sublime self-sacrifice, and beneficent deeds. The magical splendor which yet pours about them, in the depths of that old world, after so many centuries, is nothing else than the reflection of their purer worship and nobler stamp of character. Of all the states, Athens, in this regard, as in every other, was by far the noblest. Sparta, it is true, appreciated highly the blessings of liberty, and was not only content by a joyless existence to purchase this, but delighted even to sacrifice life for its preservation. But the refined capital of Minerva went beyond the severe law which makes a useful slave, as one would harden a growth of oak; she elicited perfume from the fairest bloom of the soul, wherein the moral man was made to unfold in the development of a higher freedom. The genius of the Greek was as profoundly devotional as it was emulative. To his sensitive imagination, the fair objects of nature became invested with a living personality; day and night presented engrossing deities, while he adored the golden-haired Phœbus, or the silvery Artemis. Actuated by a glowing fancy, material creation seemed spiritualized, and each agreeable retreat was the habitation of a god. Naiads in the fountains; Dryads in the groves; Fauns, Satyrs, and Oreads on the mountains, indissolubly associated sublunary scenes with intelligent beings, and kindled the starry heavens with the effulgence of supreme divinities.

The dawn of civilization has ever been confined to those who were intrusted with the care of sacred ceremonies, and who devoted their exclusive knowledge to the support of their religion. In the beginning all contemplation was religious; the whole universe was esteemed divine, and it was to the solving of this problem that the first efforts of mind were given. "Whence, and who am I?" are the first questions which occur to Brahma, as represented in Hindoo theology, when he awakens to conscious being amid the expanse of waters. But the early Greek sages surveyed nature with the more penetrating glance of a Lynceus, or Atlas, who saw down into the ocean depths. There was no distinct astronomy, history, philosophy, or theology; there was but one mental exercise, whose results were called "Wisdom." It was this personification that Solomon saw standing alone with God before the creation. All mythologies may in one sense claim to rank as truths, inasmuch as they in fact represent what once existed as mental conceptions. On this principle the Grecian dogmas, though in reality absurdities, are most worthy of attention, because they are expressed in the purest forms. Their conceptions of super-human beings were products of the devotional sentiment. Nature was to them a perpetually flowing fountain, whose pellucid waters mirrored earth and sky; like the stream in which Narcissus was dazzled by the reflection of his own image, and beneath whose surface he bent in sadness, and was melted into its transparent depths.

Efforts to deify the beautiful existed among the Hindoos and Hebrews, as well as among the Greeks; but in the former races, a wish to blend in one expression a great variety of theological ideas obliterated elegance, and rendered the idols of Egypt and India elaborate metaphysical enigmas, a sculptured library of symbols, instead of an attractive gallery of religious art. But in Greece, the development of sacred imagery fell into the hands of masters in whom the character of priest was subordinate to that of artist; from the servant art became the mistress, the teacher, even the institutor of the religion in whose aid she had been employed, and the works so produced were received as fresh revelations from heaven.

Poets gave a local habitation to the gods, and were the first teachers of religion. With the eye of taste, and impelled by sentimental reverence, they people the hills and groves, glens and rivers, with imaginary beings. Much of the Homeric theology is of Egyptian parentage, but in his hands all borrowed material was greatly improved. Mere personification of natural powers became moral agents; and, instead of being represented under disgusting images, they became models of human beauty, elegance, and majesty. The inspired bards, though blind without, were full of eyes within, and Acteon-like, gazed on nature's naked loveliness through the light of their illumined souls. To these poet-priests of nature, like Orpheus, or Eumolpus, was ascribed the first religious establishment, as well as the first practical compositions. The commencement of literature was not a scheme contrived to win the savage to civilization: it was the wild and spontaneous outburst of religious enthusiasm. If powerful institutions are always ascribed to distinguished men only, it is simply because that the full light of common thoughts is never condensed and vividly set forth but by that exalted order of genius which is the rarest of gifts. Minds of the finest tone express the most comprehensive doctrines, as the lyre of Orpheus, and the pipe of Silenus, sung how heaven and earth rose out of chaos. Atlas taught respecting men and beasts, tempestuous elements, and the eclipses and irregularities of the heavenly bodies. The laws of Menu, like those of Moses, begin with cosmogony; and Niebuhr has shown that the history of the Etruscans, like that of the Brahmins and Chaldeans, is contained in an astronomico-theological outline embracing the whole course of time.

Evidently the first colonizers of Greece brought with them much of the simple faith and worship recorded in the Hebrew writings. A stone, or the trunk of a tree, was set up for a memorial, and, according to the alarm that had been felt, or the deliverance experienced, on some spot thereby sanctified, worship was offered to that great Being whose rule all acknowledged, but whose name none ventured to pronounce. Doubtless the excess of awe, if no more mundane influence, generated superstition; as the vow of Jephtha had its parallel in the almost cotemporaneous sacrifice of Iphigenia, and of Polyxena. It was this barbarous race that the polished and erudite traveler, Orpheus, endeavored to civilize. Perhaps, as in later times, he imagined that hidden doctrines would best improve the higher classes; while the minds of the vulgar would be easier won by fables, and weaned from gloomy superstitions by the worship of divine benevolence, manifested in the varied products and powers of nature. The attempt, however, failed, and the grossness of depraved perceptions converted those different manifestations into separate deities, so that different localities and cities came to have their tutelary stone, or wooden idol, or marble statue. The temple was built on the spot hallowed by devotion, as at Bethel; but in a subsequent age the impulse of the original consecration was no longer felt, and its intent was forgotten. The gorgeous fane, and the fascinating image therein, became objects of degenerate worship; the source of profit to a mercenary priesthood, and of deterioration to the most intellectual and moral of mankind.

Monuments were early erected in grateful commemoration of religious events, as the hill of stones by Jacob and Laban; or to gratify secular ambition, as was exemplified in the tower of Babel. In Greece, when the pioneers were feeble, the first settlers chose some hill readily defensible, and having fortified the summit as the first space to be occupied, they proceeded to build a taphos, or temple for the divinity. Such was the origin of Athens. The inclosed city was called Cecropia, from Cecrops, it is said, who first founded the state, and his was the first place of worship for the original inhabitants. Others interpret Acropolis to mean "Height of the City," which, in this instance, was accessible only on the western side, through the Propylæa, and was crowned by that shrine of Truth and Wisdom, the Parthenon. Religious instincts have ever sought the vast solitudes of untainted nature, or the open heights of the mighty temple of the great God, whereon the pure spirit of love reigns and smiles over all. Pilgrimages were made to the oaks of Mamre, near Hebron, from the days of Abraham; and the nations surrounding the divinely favored tribes conspired to attach the idea of veneration to rivers and fountains, and were accustomed not only to dedicate trees and groves to their deities, but even to sacrifice on high mountains; customs which were practiced by the Jews themselves, previous to the building of Solomon's temple. The beginning of wisdom was in the wilds of Asia, and it was there that the God of nature implanted grand ideas in the minds of shepherds, meditating on those antique eminences, teaching them to wonder and adore. As the loftiest mountains are surmounted with the most unsullied snow, so the purest sentiments crowned their elevated souls, and forever rendered them the chief source of fertilizing streams to all lands, through every region of thought.