It will help us in our proposed investigation, if we first notice that the ecclesiastical doctrine as to an impending destruction of the world is not solitary, but has prototypes and parallels in the faiths of other nations and ages. Almost every people, every tribe, has its cosmogony or theory of the creation, in which there are accounts, more or less rude or refined, general or minute, of the supposed beginning and of the imagined end of nature. All early literatures from the philosophic treatises of the Hindus to the oral traditions of the Polynesians are found to contain either sublime dreams or obscure prophecies or awful pictures of the final doom and destruction of earth and man. The Hebrew symbols and the Christian beliefs in relation to this subject therefore stand not alone, but in connection with a multitude of others, each one plainly reflecting the degree of knowledge and stage of development attained by the minds which originated it. Before proceeding to examine the familiar doctrine so enveloped in our prejudices, a brief examination of some kindred doctrines, less familiar to us and quite detached from our prejudices, will be of service.
The sacred books of the Hindus describe certain enormous periods of time in which the universe successively begins and ends, springs into being and sinks into nothing. These periods are called kalpas, and each one covers a duration of thousands of millions of years. Each kalpa of creation is called a day of Brahma; each kalpa of destruction, a night of Brahma. The belief is that Brahma, waking from the slumber of his self absorbed solitude, feels his loneliness, and his thoughts and emotions go forth in creative forms, composing the immense scheme of worlds and creatures. These play their parts, and run their courses, until the vast day of Brahma is completed; when he closes his eyes, and falls to rest, while the whole system of finite things returns to the silence and darkness of its aboriginal unity, and remains there in invisible annihilation through the stupendous night that precedes the reawaking of the slumbering Godhead and the appearance of the creation once more.
A little reflection makes the origin of this imagery and belief clear. Each night, as the darkness comes down, and the outer world disappears, man falls asleep, and, so far as he is consciously concerned, every thing is destroyed. In his unconsciousness, everything ceases to be. The light dawns again, he awakes, and his reopened senses create anew the busy frame and phenomena of nature. Transfer this experience from man to God; consider it not as abstract and apparent, but as concrete and real, and you have the Hindu doctrine of the kalpa. When we sleep, to us all things are destroyed; and when we awake, to us they reappear. When God sleeps, all things in themselves really end; and when he wakes, they begin anew to be. The visible and experimental phenomena of day and night, sleeping and waking, are universalized, and attributed to God, It is a poetic process of thought, natural enough to a rich minded, simple people, but wholly illegitimate as a logical ground of belief, But being stated in books supposed to be infallibly inspired, and in the absence of critical tests for the discrimination of sound from unsound thought, it was implicitly accepted by multitudes.
Closely allied to the foregoing doctrine, yet in several particulars strikingly different from it, and evidently quite independent in its origin, was the Great Year of the Stoics, or the alternative blotting out and restoration of all things. This school of philosophers conceived of God as a pure artistic force or seed of universal energy, which exhibits its history in the evolution of the kosmos, and, on its completion, blossoms into fire, and vanishes. The universal periodical conflagration destroys all evil, and leaves the indestructible God alone in his pure essence again. The artistic germ or seed force then begins, under its laws of intrinsic necessity, to go once more through the same process to the same end.
The rise of this imagery and belief is not so obvious as in the last instance, but it is equally discoverable and intelligible. Every animal, every flower, every plant, begins from its proper specific germ or force, goes through a fixed series of growths and changes, and relapses into its prime elements, and another and another follow after it in the same order. The seasons come and go, and come again and go again, Every planet repeats its revolutions over and over. Wherever we look, this repetition of identical processes greets our vision. Now, by imaginative association universalize this repetition of the course of phenomena as seen in the parts, and take it up and apply it to the whole creation, and you have the doctrine in hand.
It is a poetic process of thought not scientific or philosophic, and without claim to belief; yet, in the absence of scientific data and standards, it might easily win acceptance on authority.
The Scandinavians, also, have transmitted to us, in their sacred books, descriptions of their belief in the approaching end of the world, descriptions rude, wild, terrible, not without elements of appalling grandeur. They foretell a day called Ragnarok, or the Twilight of the gods, when all the powers of good and evil shall join in battle, and the whole present system of things perish in a scene of unutterable strife and dismay. The Eddas were composed in an ignorant but deeply poetic and fertile age, when all the mythological elements of mind were in full action. Their authors looking within, on their own passions, and without, on the natural scenery around them, conscious of order and disorder, love and hate, virtue and crime, beholding phenomena of beauty and horror, sun and stars, night and tempest, winter and summer, icebergs and volcanoes, placid moonlight and blinding mist, assisting friends and battling foes, personified everything as a demon or a divinity. Asgard, above the blue firmament, was the bright home of the gods, the Asir. Helheim, beneath the rocky earth and the frozen ocean, was the dark and foul abode of the bad spirits, the Jotuns. Everywhere in nature, fog and fire, fertility and barrenness, were in conflict; everywhere in society, law and crime were contending. In the moon followed by a drifting cloud, they saw a goddess chased by a wolf. The strife goes on waxing, and must sooner or later reach a climax. Each side enlists its allies, until all are ranged in opposition, from Jormungandur, the serpent of the deep, to Heindall, the warder of the rainbow, gods and brave men there, demons, traitors, and cowards here. Then sounds the horn of battle, and the last day dawns in fire and splendor from the sky, in fog and venom from the abyss. Flame devours the earth. For the most part, the combatants mutually slay each other. Only Gimli, the high, safe heaven of All Father, remains as a refuge for the survivors and the beginning of a new and fairer world.
The natural history of this mythological mess is clear enough. It arises from the poetic embodiment and personification of phenomena, the grouping together of all evil and of all good, then imaginatively universalizing the conflict, and carrying it out in idea to its inevitable ultimatum. The process of thought was obviously natural in its ground, but fictitious in its result. Yet in a period when no sharp distinction was drawn between fancy and fact, song and science, but an indiscriminate faith was often yielded to both, even such a picturesque medley as this might be held as religious truth.
The Zarathustrian or Persian scheme of a general judgment of men and of the world in some respects resembles the systems already set forth, in other respects more closely approaches that Christian doctrine partially borrowed from it, and which is hereafter to be noticed. Ahura Mazda, the God of light and truth, creates the world full of all sorts of blessings. His adversary, Angra Mainyus, the author of darkness and falsehood, seeks to counteract and destroy the works of Ahura Mazda by means of all sorts of correspondent evils and woes. When Ahura Mazda creates the race of men happy and immortal, Angra Mainyus, the old serpent, full of corruption and destruction, steals in, seduces them from their allegiance, and brings misery and death on them, and then leads their souls to his dark abode. The whole creation is supposed to be crowded with good spirits, the angels of Ahura Mazda,
seeking to carry out his beneficent designs; and also with evil spirits, the ministers of Angra Mainyus, plotting to make men wicked, and to pervert and poison every blessing with an answering curse. Light is the symbol of God, darkness the symbol of his Antagonist. Under these hostile banners are ranged all living creatures, all created objects. For long periods this dreadful contention rages, involving everything below in its fluctuations. But at last Ahura Mazda subdues Angra Mainyus, overturns all the mischief he has done, by means of a great deliverer whom he has sent among men to instruct and redeem them raises the dead, purifies the world with fire, and, after properly punishing the guilty, restores all nature to its original paradisal condition, free from pain and death.