An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

Nearly related to the supposed influence of priests over physical suffering, is their supposed power to foretell the future. Here, however, a number of unauthorized and schismatic priesthoods often enter into competition with those sanctioned by the state. Technically, they would not be termed priests at all; but tested by the true mark of priesthood, the gift, alleged by themselves and admitted by others, of forming channels of communication from the celestial powers to man, they are entitled to that name, and this although they may perhaps receive no regular consecration to their office. The Roman Senate during the Empire came into frequent collision with these irregular priests. It endeavored from time to time to combat the growing belief in the unorthodox practices of astrologers and magi, by decreeing their expulsion from Italy, and occasionally by visiting some of them with severer penalties; but such endeavors to stem the tide of popular superstition are naturally useless (Tac. Ann., ii. 32; xii. 52). Magic of some description is universal. In New Zealand the priest "seems to unite in his person the offices of priest, sorcerer, juggler, and physician." He predicts the life or death of members of his tribe (N. Z., p. 80). By the Kafirs the prophet is consulted on all kinds of domestic occasions, and (while the people beat the ground in assent to what he says) he is held to see in a vision the event which has led to the consultation (K. N., p. 167 ff). The inhabitants of Sierra Leone have other methods of divining. Their diviners make dots and lines in sand spread upon a goat's skin, which dots and lines they afterwards decipher; or they place palm-nuts in heaps upon a goat's skin, and by shifting them about suppose that an answer is obtained (N. A., vol. i. p. 134). The heathen Mexican had the habit, on the birth of a child, of consulting a diviner in order to ascertain its future. The diviner, having learnt from the child's parents the hour at which it was born, turned over his books to discover the sign under which its nativity had occurred. Should that sign prove to be favorable, he would say to the parents: "Your child has been born under a good sign; it will be a senor, or senator, or rich, or brave," or will have some other distinction. In the opposite case he would say: "The child has not been born under a good sign; it has been born under a disastrous sign." In some circumstances there was hope that the evil might be remedied; but if the sign were altogether bad, they would predict that it would be vicious, carnal, and a thief; or that it would be dull and lazy; or possibly that it would be a great drunkard; or that its life would be short. A third alternative was when the sign was indifferent, and the expected fortune was therefore partly good and partly bad. The diviner, in this case and in that of a bad, but not hopelessly bad, sign, assisted the parents by pointing out an auspicious day for the baptism of the infant (A. M., vol. v. pp. 479, 480).

Prediction of coming events was practiced by the priests in North America, as it was elsewhere. They persuaded the multitude, says Charlevoix, that they suffered from ecstatic transports. During these conditions, they said that their spirits gave them a large acquaintance with remote things, and with the future (N. F., vol. iii. p. 347). Moreover, they practiced magic, and with such effect that Charlevoix felt himself compelled to ascribe their performances to their alliance with the devil. They even pretended to be born in a supernatural manner, and found believers ready to think that only by some sort of enchantment and illusion had they formerly imagined that they had come into the world like other people. When they went into the state of ecstasy, they resembled the Pythoness on the tripod; they assumed tones of voice and performed actions which seemed beyond human capacity. On these occasions they suffered so much that it was hard to induce them, even by handsome payment, thus to yield themselves to the spirit. So often did they prophesy truly, that Charlevoix can only resort again to his hypothesis of a real intercourse between them and the "father of seduction and of lies," who manifested his connection with them by telling them the truth. Thus, a lady named Madame de Marson, by no means an "esprit faible," was anxious about her husband, who was commanding at a French outpost in Acadia, and who had stayed away beyond the time fixed for his return. A native woman, having ascertained the reason of her trouble, told her not to be distressed, for that her husband would return on a certain day at a certain hour, wearing a grey hat. Seeing that the lady did not believe in her, she returned on the day and at the hour named, and asked her if she would not come to meet her husband. After much pressing, she induced the lady to accompany her to the bank of the river. Scarcely had they arrived, when M. de Marson appeared in a canoe, wearing a grey hat upon his head. The writer was informed of this fact by Madame de Marson's son-in-law, at that time Governor-General of the French dominions in America, who had heard it from herself (N. F., vol. iii. p. 359-363). The priests of the Tartars are also their diviners. They predict eclipses, and announce lucky and unlucky days for all sorts of business (Bergeron, Voyage de Rubruquis, ch. 47).

Among the Buddhist priesthood of Thibet, there is a class of Lamas who are astrologers, distinguished by a peculiar dress, and making it their business to tell fortunes, exorcise evil spirits, and so forth. The astrologers "are considered to have intercourse with Sadag," a spirit who is supposed to be "lord of the ground," in which bodies are interred, and who, along with other spirits, requires to be pacified by charms and rites known only to these priests. To prevent them from injuring the dead, the relations offer a price in cattle or money to Sadag; and the astrologers, when satisfied with the amount, undertake the necessary conjuration (B. T., pp. 156, 271).

In the Old Testament, this class of unofficial priests is mentioned with the reprobation inspired by rivalry. The Hebrew legislator is at one with the Roman Senate in his desire to expel them from the land. "There shall not be found among you any one that ... useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consultor with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee" (Deut. xviii. 10-12). The very prohibition evinces the existence of the objects against whom it is aimed; and proves that, along with the recognized worship of Jehovah, there existed an unrecognized resort to practices which the sterner adherents of that worship would not permit.

In addition to their claim to be in possession of special means of ascertaining the occult causes of phenomena (as in illness), and of special contrivances for penetrating the future (as in astrology or fortune-telling), priesthoods pretend to a more direct inspiration from on high, qualifying them either to announce the will of their god on exceptional occasions, or to intimate his purpose in matters of more ordinary occurrence. This inspiration was granted to the native North American priests at the critical age of puberty, "It was revealed to its possessor by the character of the visions he perceived at the ordeal he passed through on arriving at puberty; and by the northern nations was said to be the manifestation of a more potent personal spirit than ordinary. It was not a faculty, but an inspiration; not an inborn strength, but a spiritual gift" (M. N. W., p. 279). So in India; among the several meanings of the word Brahman, is that of a person "elected by special divine favor to receive the gift of inspiration" (O. S. T., vol. i. p. 259). The missionary Turner, who has an eye for parallels, observes, among other just reflections, that "the way in which the Samoan priests declared that the gods spoke by them, strikingly reminds us of the mode by which God of old made known his will to man by the Hebrew prophets" (N. Y., p. 349). Although the Levites were said to be the Lord's, and to have been hallowed by him instead of all the first-born of Israel, yet it does not appear that they were in general endowed with any high order of inspiration. The high-priest no doubt received communications from God by the Urim and Thummim. Priests were also the judges whom the Lord chose, and whose sentence in court was to be obeyed on penalty of death; but the inspiration that was fitted to guide the Israelites was supplied not so much by them as by the prophets, a kind of supplementary priesthood of which the members, sometimes priests, sometimes consecrated by other prophets, were as a rule unconsecrated, deriving their appointment directly from Jehovah. While, therefore, it was attained in a somewhat unusual way, the general need of an inspired order was supplied no less perfectly among the Israelites than elsewhere. Christian priests enjoy two kinds of inspiration. In the first place, they are inspired specially when assembled in general councils, to declare the truth in matters of doctrine, or in other words, to issue supplementary revelations; in the second place, they are inspired generally to remit or retain offenses, their sentence being—according to the common doctrine of Catholics and Episcopalian Protestants—always ratified in the Court above.

Consistently with this exalted conception of their authority, priestly orders threaten punishment to offenders, and announce the future destiny of souls. Thus the Mexican priests warned their penitents after confession not to fall again into sin, holding out the prospect of the torments of hell if they should neglect the admonition (A. M., vol. v, p. 370). The priests in some parts of Africa know the fate of each soul after death, and can say whether it has gone to God or to the evil spirit (G. d. M., p. 335).

Sometimes the priests are held to be protected against injury by the especial care of heaven. To take away a Brahman's wife is an offense involving terrible calamities, while kings who restore her to the Brahman enjoy "the abundance of the earth" (0. S. T., vol. i. p. 257). A king who should eat a Brahman's cow is warned in solemn language of the dreadful consequences of such conduct, both in this world and the next (Ibid., vol. i. p. 285). The sacred volumes declare that "whenever a king, fancying himself mighty, seeks to devour a Brahman, that kingdom is broken up, in which a Brahman is oppressed" (Ibid., vol. i. p. 287). "No one who has eaten a Brahman's cow continues to watch (i.e., to rule) over a country." The Indian gods, moreover, "do not eat the food offered by a king who has no ... Purohita," or domestic chaplain (A. B., p. 528). The murder of a king who had honored and enriched the Buddhist priesthood, is said to have entailed the destruction of the power and strength of the kingdom of Thibet, and to have extinguished the happiness and welfare of its people (G. O. M., p. 362). And Jewish history affords abundant instances of the manner in which the success or glory of the rulers was connected, by the sacerdotal class, with the respect shown towards themselves as the ministers of Jehovah, and with the rigor evinced in persecuting or putting down the ministers of every other creed. That the same bias has been betrayed by the Christian priesthood and their adherents in the interpretation of history needs no proof.

The presence of a priest or priests at important rites is held to be indispensable by all religions. With the negroes visited by Oldendorp, the priest was in requisition at burials; for he only could help the soul to get to God, and keep off the evil spirit who would seek to obtain possession of it (G. d. M., p. 327). "For most of the ceremonies" (in Thibet) "the performance by a Lama is considered indispensable to its due effect; and even where this is not so, the efficacy of the rite is increased by the Lama's assistance" (B. T., p. 247). Much the same thing may be said here. For certain ceremonies, such as confirmation, the administration of the sacrament, the conduct of divine service on Sundays, the priest is a necessary official. For others, such as marriage, the majority of the people prefer to employ him, and no doubt believe that "the efficacy of the rite is increased" by the fact that he reads the words of the service. Nor is this surprising when we consider that, until within very recent times, no legitimate child could be produced in England without the assistance of a priest.

Not only is the ecclesiastical caste required to render religious rites acceptable to the deity, but they are often endowed with the attribute of ability to modify the course of nature. Tanna, one of the Fiji group, "there are rain-makers and thunder-makers, and fly and musquito makers, and a host of other 'sacred men;'" and in another island "there is a rain-making class of priests" (N. Y., pp. 89, 428). In Christian countries all priests are rain-makers, the reading of prayers for fine or wet weather being a portion of their established duties.

Naturally, the members of a class whose functions are of this high value to the community enjoy great power, are regarded as extremely sacred, and above all, are well rewarded. First, as to the power they enjoy. This is accorded to them alike by savage tribes and by cultivated Europeans. According to Brinton, all North American tribes "appear to have been controlled" by secret societies of priests. "Withal," says the same authority, "there was no class of persons who so widely and deeply influenced the culture, and shaped the destiny of the Indian tribes, as their priests" (M. N. W., p. 285). Over the negroes of the Caribbean Islands the priests and priestesses exercised an almost unlimited dominion, being regarded with the greatest reverence. No negro would have ventured to transgress the arrangements made by a priest (G. d. M., p. 327). On the coast of Guinea there exists, or existed, an institution by which certain women became priestesses; and such women, even though slaves before, enjoyed, on receiving this dignity, a high position and even exercised absolute authority precisely in the quarter where it must have been sweetest to their minds, namely, over their husbands (D. C. G., p. 363). Writing of the Talapoins in Siam, Gervaise says, that they are exempted from all public charges; they salute nobody, while everybody prostrates himself before them; they are maintained at the public expense, and so forth (H. N. S., troisième partie, chs. 5, 6). Of the enormous power wielded by the clerical order in Europe, especially during the Middle Ages, it is unnecessary to speak. The humiliation of Theodosius by Ambrose was one of the most conspicuous, as it was one of the most beneficent, exercises of their extensive rights.