THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion deisidaimonesterois.--ST. PAUL.
As a prelude and preparation for the study of the religion of the Athenians, it may be well to consider religion in its more abstract and universal form; and inquire in what does religion essentially consist; how far is it grounded in the nature of man; and especially, what is there in the mental constitution of man, or in his exterior conditions, which determines him to a mode of life which may be denominated religious? As a preliminary inquiry, this may materially aid us in understanding the nature, and estimating the value of the religious conceptions and sentiments which were developed by the Greek mind.
Religion, in its most generic conception, may be defined as a form of thought, feeling, and action, which has the Divine for its object, basis, and end. Or, in other words, it is a mode of life determined by the recognition of some relation to, and consciousness of dependence upon, a Supreme Being. This general conception of religion underlies all the specific forms of religion which have appeared in the world, whether heathen, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian.
That a religious destination appertains to man as man, whether he has been raised to a full religious consciousness, or is simply considered as capable of being so raised, can not be denied. In all ages man has revealed an instinctive tendency, or natural aptitude for religion, and he has developed feelings and emotions which have always characterized him as a religious being. Religious ideas and sentiments have prevailed among all nations, and have exerted a powerful influence on the entire course of human history. Religious worship, addressed to a Supreme Being believed to control the destiny of man, has been coeval and coextensive with the race. Every nation has had its mythology, and each mythologic system has been simply an effort of humanity to realize and embody in some visible form the relations in which it feels itself to be connected with an external, overshadowing, and all-controlling Power and Presence. The voice of all ancient, and all contemporaneous history, clearly attests that the religious principle is deeply seated in the nature of man; and that it has occupied the thought, and stirred the feelings of every rational man, in every age. It has interwoven itself with the entire framework of human society, and ramified into all the relations of human life. By its agency, nations have been revolutionized, and empires have been overthrown; and it has formed a mighty element in all the changes which have marked the history of man.
This universality of religious sentiment and religious worship must be conceded as a fact of human nature, and, as a universal fact, it demands an explanation. Every event must have a cause. Every phenomenon must have its ground, and reason, and law. The facts of religious history, the past and present religious phenomena of the world can be no exception to this fundamental principle; they press their imperious demand to be studied and explained, as much as the phenomena of the material or the events of the moral world. The phenomena of religion, being universally revealed wherever man is found, must be grounded in some universal principle, on some original law, which is connate with, and natural to man. At any rate, there must be something in the nature of man, or in the exterior conditions of humanity, which invariably leads man to worship, and which determines him, as by the force of an original instinct, or an outward, conditioning necessity, to recognize and bow down before a Superior Power. The full recognition and adequate explanation of the facts of religious history will constitute a philosophy of religion.
The hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and most of them are, in our judgment, eminently inadequate and unsatisfactory. The following enumeration may be regarded as embracing all that are deemed worthy of consideration.
I. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in SUPERSTITION, that is, in a fear of invisible and supernatural powers, generated by ignorance of nature.
II. The phenomenon of religion is part of that PROCESS or EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity), which gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to perfect self-consciousness in philosophy.
III. The phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--the feeling of dependence and of obligation; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition or instinctive faith, traces this dependence and obligation we call God.
IV. The phenomenon of religion had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of REASON, that is, the necessary à priori ideas of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful and contingent phenomena of the world.
V. The phenomenon of religion had its origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to which reason is related as a purely passive organ, and heathenism as a feeble relic.
As a philosophy of religion--an attempt to supply the rationale of the religious phenomena of the world, the first hypothesis is a skeptical philosophy, which necessarily leads to Atheism. The second is an idealistic philosophy (absolute idealism), which inevitably lands in Pantheism. The third is an intuitional or "faith-philosophy," which finally ends in Mysticism. The fourth is a rationalistic or "spiritualistic" philosophy, which yields pure Theism. The last is an empirical philosophy, which derives all religion from instruction, and culminates in Dogmatic Theology.
In view of these diverse and conflicting theories, the question which now presents itself for our consideration is,--does any one of these hypotheses meet and satisfy the demands of the problem? does it fully account for and adequately explain all the facts of religious history? The answer to this question must not be hastily or dogmatically given. The arbitrary rejection of any theory that may be offered, without a fair and candid examination, will leave our minds in uncertainty and doubt as to the validity of our own position. A blind faith is only one remove from a pusillanimous skepticism. We can not render our own position secure except by comprehending, assaulting, and capturing the position of our foe. It is, therefore, due to ourselves and to the cause of truth, that we shall examine the evidence upon which each separate theory is based, and the arguments which are marshalled in its support, before we pronounce it inadequate and unphilosophical. Such a criticism of opposite theories will prepare the way for the presentation of a philosophy of religion which we flatter ourselves will be found most in harmony with all the facts of the case.
I. It is affirmed that the religious phenomena of the world had their origin in SUPERSTITION, that is, in a fear of unseen and supernatural powers, generated from ignorance of nature.
This explanation was first offered by Epicurus. He felt that the universality of the religious sentiment is a fact which demands a cause; and he found it, or presumed he found it not in a spiritual God, which he claims can not exist, nor in corporeal god which no one has seen, but in "phantoms of the mind generated by fear." When man has been unable to explain any natural phenomenon, to assign a cause within the sphere of nature, he has had recourse to supernatural powers, or living personalities behind nature, which move and control nature in an arbitrary and capricious manner. These imaginary powers are supposed to be continually interfering in the affairs of individuals and nations. They bestow blessings or inflict calamities. They reward virtue and punish vice. They are, therefore, the objects of "sacred awe" and "superstitious fear."
Whate'er in heaven, In earth, man sees mysterious, shakes his mind With sacred awe o'erwhelms him, and his soul Bows to the dust; the cause of things conceal Once from his vision, instant to the gods All empire he transfers, all rule supreme, And doubtful whence they spring, with headlong haste Calls them the workmanship of power divine. For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned In heaven sublime--to SUPERSTITION back Lapses, and fears a tyrant host, and then Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do, While yet himself nor knows what may be done, Nor what may never, nature powers defined Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass: Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks.[41]
[Footnote 41: Lucretius, "De Natura Rerum," book vi. vs. 50-70.]
In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, consequently, of all religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that "nature" alone is adequate to the production of all things, and there is no need to drag in a "divine power" to explain the phenomena of the world.
This theory has been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been the first to discover the great law of the three successive stages or phases of human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in dealing with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a Theological, second, a Metaphysical, and finally reaches a third, or Positive stage.
In attempting an explanation of the universe, human thought, in its earliest stages of development, resorts to the idea of living personal agents enshrined in and moving every object, whether organic or inorganic, natural or artificial. In an advanced stage, it conceives a number of personal beings distinct from, and superior to nature, which preside over the different provinces of nature--the sea, the air, the winds, the rivers, the heavenly bodies, and assume the guardianship of individuals, tribes, and nations. As a further, and still higher stage, it asserts the unity of the Supreme Power which moves and vitalizes the universe, and guides and governs in the affairs of men and nations. The Theological stage is thus subdivided into three epochs, and represented as commencing in Fetichism, then advancing to Polytheism, and, finally, consummating in Monotheism.
The next stage, the Metaphysical, is a transitional stage, in which man substitutes abstract entities, as substance, force, Being in se, the Infinite, the Absolute, in the place of theological conceptions. During this period all theological opinions undergo a process of disintegration, and lose their hold on the mind of man. Metaphysical speculation is a powerful solvent, which decomposes and dissipates theology.
It is only in the last--the Positive stage--that man becomes willing to relinquish all theological ideas and metaphysical notions, and confine his attention to the study of phenomena in their relation to time and space; discarding all inquiries as to causes, whether efficient or final, and denying the existence of all entities and powers beyond nature.
The first stage, in its religious phase, is Theistic, the second is Pantheistic, the last is Atheistic.
The proofs offered by Comte in support of this theory are derived:
I. From Cerebral Organization. There are three grand divisions of the Brain, the Medulla Oblongata, the Cerebellum, and the Cerebrum; the first represents the merely animal instincts the second, the more elevated sentiments, the third, the intellectual powers. Human nature must, therefore, both in the individual and in the race, be developed in the following order: (1.) in animal instincts; (2.) in social affections and communal tendencies; (3.) in intellectual pursuits. Infant life is a merely animal existence, shared in common with the brute; in childhood the individual being realizes his relation to external nature and human society; in youth and manhood he compares, generalizes, and classifies the objects of knowledge, and attains to science. And so the infancy of our race was a mere animal or savage state, the childhood of our race the organization of society, the youth and manhood of our race the development of science.
Now, without offering any opinion as to the merits of the phrenological theories of Gall and Spurzheim, we may ask, what relation has this order to the law of development presented by Comte? Is there any imaginable connection between animal propensities and theological ideas; between social affections and metaphysical speculations? Are not the intellectual powers as much concerned with theological ideas and metaphysical speculations as with positive science? And is it not more probable, more in accordance with facts, that all the powers of the mind, instinct, feeling, and thought, enter into action simultaneously, and condition each other? The very first act of perception, the first distinct cognition of an object, involves thought as much as the last generalization of science. We know nothing of mind except as the development of thought, and the first unfolding, even of the infant mind, reveals an intellectual act, a discrimination between a self and an object which is not self, and a recognition of resemblance, or difference between this object and that. And what does Positive science, in its most mature and perfect form, claim to do more than "to study actual phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession."
Cerebral organization may furnish plausible analogies in favor of some theory of human development, but certainly not the one proposed by Aug. Comte. The attempt, however, to construct a chart of human history on such an à priori method,--to construct an ideal framework into which human nature must necessarily grow, is a violation of the first and most fundamental principle of the Positive science, which demands that we shall confine ourselves strictly to the study of actual phenomena in their orders of resemblance, coexistence, and succession. The history of the human race must be based on facts, not on hypotheses, and the facts must be ascertained by the study of ancient records and existing monuments of the past. Mere plausible analogies and à priori theories based upon them, are only fitted to mislead the mind; they insert a prism between the perceiving mind and the course of events which decomposes the pure white light of fact, and throws a false light over the entire field of history.
2. The second order of proof is attempted to be drawn from the analogies of individual experience.
It is claimed that the history of the race is the same as that of each individual mind; and it is affirmed that man is religious in infancy, metaphysical in youth, and positive, that is, scientific without being religious, in mature manhood; the history of the race must therefore have followed the same order.
We are under no necessity of denying that there is some analogy between the development of mind in the individual man, and in humanity as a whole, in order to refute the theory of Comte. Still, it must not be overlooked that the development of mind, in all cases and in all ages, is materially affected by exterior conditions. The influence of geographical and climatic conditions, of social and national institutions, and especially of education, however difficult to be estimated, can not be utterly disregarded. And whether all these influences have not been controlled, and collocated, and adjusted by a Supreme Mind in the education of humanity, is also a question which can not be pushed aside as of no consequence. Now, unless it can be shown that the same outward conditions which have accompanied the individual and modified his mental development, have been repealed in the history of the race, and repeated in the same order of succession, the argument has no value.
But, even supposing it could be shown that the development of mind in humanity has followed the same order as that of the individual, we confidently affirm that Comte has not given the true history of the development of the individual mind. The account he has given may perhaps be the history of his own mental progress, but it certainly is not the history of every individual mind, nor indeed, of a majority even, of educated minds that have arrived at maturity. It would be much more in harmony with facts to say childhood is the period of pure receptivity, youth of doubt and skepticism, and maturity of well-grounded and rational belief. In the ripeness and maturity of the nineteenth century the number of scientific men of the Comtean model is exceedingly small compared with the number of religious men. There are minds in every part of Europe and America as thoroughly scientific as that of Comte, and as deeply imbued with the spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, which are not conscious of any discordance between the facts of science and the fundamental principles of theology. It may be that, in his own immediate circle at Paris there may be a tendency to Atheism, but certainly no such tendency exists in the most scientific minds of Europe and America. The faith of Bacon, and Newton, and Boyle, of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Pascal, in regard to the fundamental principles of theology, is still the faith of Sedgwick, Whewell, Herschel, Brewster, Owen, Agassiz, Silliman, Mitchell, Hitchcock, Dana, and, indeed of the leading scientific minds of the world--the men who, as Comte would say, "belong to the élite of humanity." The mature mind, whether of the individual or the race, is not Atheistical.
3. The third proof is drawn from a survey of the history of certain portions of our race.
Comte is far from being assured that the progress of humanity, under the operation of his grand law of development, has been uniform and invariable. The majority of the human race, the vast populations of India, China, and Japan, have remained stationary; they are still in the Theological stage, and consequently furnish no evidence in support of his theory. For this reason he confines himself to the "élite" or advance-guard of humanity, and in this way makes the history of humanity a very "abstract history" indeed. Starting with Greece as the representative of ancient civilization, passing thence to Roman civilization, and onward to Western Europe, he attempts to show that the actual progress of humanity has been, on the whole, in conformity with his law. To secure, however, even this semblance of harmony between the facts of history and his hypothetical law, he has to treat the facts very much as Procrustes treated his victims,--he must stretch some, and mutilate others, so as to make their forms fit the iron bed. The natural organization of European civilization is distorted and torn asunder. "As the third or positive stage had accomplished its advent in his own person, it was necessary to find the metaphysical period just before; and so the whole life of the Reformed Christianity, in embryo and in manifest existence, is stripped of its garb of faith, and turned out of view as a naked metaphysical phenomenon. But metaphysics, again, have to be ushered in by theology; and of the three stages of theology Monotheism is the last, necessarily following on Polytheism, as that, again, on Fetichism. There is nothing for it, therefore, but to let the mediæval Catholic Christianity stand as the world's first monotheism, and to treat it as the legitimate offspring and necessary development of the Greek and Roman polytheism. This, accordingly, Comte actually does. Protestantism he illegitimates, and outlaws from religion altogether, and the genuine Christianity he fathers upon the faith of Homer and the Scipios! Once or twice, indeed, it seems to cross him that there was such a people as the Hebrews, and that they were not the polytheists they ought to have been. He sees the fact, but pushes it out of his way with the remark that the Jewish monotheism was 'premature.'"[42]
[Footnote 42: Martineau's Essays, pp. 61, 62.]
The signal defect of Comte's historical survey, however, is, that it furnishes no evidence of the general prevalence of Fetichism in primitive times. The writings of Moses are certainly entitled to as much consideration and credence as the writings of Berosus, Manetho, and Herodotus; and, it will not be denied, they teach that the faith of the earliest families and races of men was monotheistic. The early Vedas, the Institutes of Menu, the writings of Confucius, the Zendavesta, all bear testimony that the ancient faith of India, China, and Persia, was, at any rate, pantheistic; and learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, confidently affirm that the ground of the Brahminical, Buddhist, and Parsist faith is monotheistic; and that one Being is assumed, in the earliest books, to be the origin of all things.[43] Without evidence, Comte assumes that the savage state is the original condition of man; and instead of going to Asia, the cradle of the race, for some light as to the early condition and opinions of the remotest families of men, he turns to Africa, the soudan of the earth, for his illustration of the habit of man, in the infancy of our race, to endow every object in nature, whether organic or inorganic, with life and intelligence. The theory of a primitive state of ignorance and barbarism is a mere assumption--an hypothesis in conflict with the traditionary legends of all nations, the earliest records of our race, and the unanimous voice of antiquity, which attest the general belief in a primitive state of light and innocence.
[Footnote 43: "The Religions of the World in their Relation to Christianity" (Maurice, ch. ii., iii., iv.).]
The three stages of development which Comte describes as necessarily successive, have, for centuries past, been simultaneous. The theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific elements coexist now, and there is no real, radical, or necessary conflict between them. Theological and metaphysical ideas hold their ground as securely under the influence of enlarged scientific discovery as before; and there is no reason to suppose they ever had more power over the mind of man than they have to-day. The notion that God is dethroned by the wonderful discoveries of modern science, and theology is dead, is the dream of the "profond orage cérébral" which interrupted the course of Comte's lectures in 1826. As easily may the hand of Positivism arrest the course of the sun, as prevent the instinctive thought of human reason recognizing and affirming the existence of a God. And so long as ever the human mind is governed by necessary laws of thought, so long will it seek...
[Transcriber's note: In the original document, page 64 is a duplication of page 63. The real page 64 seems to be missing.]
....eur, and consequently to develop its true philosophy. Its fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena--that is, to changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless." Spiritual entities, forces, causes, efficient or final, are unknown and unknowable; all inquiry regarding them must be inhibited, "for Theology is inevitable if we permit the inquiry into causes at all."
II. The second hypothesis offered in explanation of the facts of religious history is, that religion is part of that PROCESS OR EVOLUTION OF THE ABSOLUTE (i.e., the Deity) which, gradually unfolding itself in nature, mind, history, and religion, attains to the fullest self-consciousness in philosophy.
This is the theory of Hegel, in whose system of philosophy the subjective idealism of Kant culminates in the doctrine of "Absolute Identity." Its fundamental position is that thought and being, subject and object, the perceiving mind and the thing perceived, are ultimately and essentially one, and that the only actual reality is that which results from their mutual relation. The outward thing is nothing, the inward perception is nothing, for neither could exist alone; the only reality is the relation, or rather synthesis of the two; the essence or nature of being in itself accordingly consists in the coexistence of two contrarieties. Ideas, arising from the union or synthesis of two opposites, are therefore the concrete realities of Hegel; and the process of the evolution of ideas, in the human mind, is the process of all existence--the Absolute Idea.
The Absolute(die Idée) thus forms the beginning, middle, and end of the system of Hegel. It is the one infinite existence or thought, of which nature, mind, history, religion, and philosophy, are the manifestation. "The absolute is, with him, not the infinite substance, as with Spinoza; nor the infinite subject, as with Fichte; nor the infinite mind, as with Schelling; it is a perpetual process, an eternal thinking, without beginning and without end."[44] This living, eternal process of absolute existence is the God of Hegel.
It will thus be seen that the Absolute is, with Hegel, the sum of all actual and possible existence; "nothing is true and real except so far as it forms an element of the Absolute Spirit."[45] "What kind of an Absolute Being," he asks, "is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?"[46] The Absolute, therefore, in Hegel's conception, does not allow of any existence out of itself. It is the unity of the finite and the infinite, the eternal and the temporal, the ideal and the real, the subject and the object. And it is not only the unity of these opposites so as to exclude all difference, but it contains in itself, all the differences and opposites as elements of its being; otherwise the distinctions would stand over against absolute as a limit, and the absolute would cease to be absolute.
God is, therefore, according to Hegel, "no motionless, eternally self-identical and unchangeable being, but a living, eternal process of absolute self-existence. This process consists in the eternal self-distinction, or antithesis, and equally self-reconciliation or synthesis of those opposites which enter, as necessary elements, into the constitution of the Divine Being. This self-evolution, whereby the absolute enters into antithesis, and returns to itself again, is the eternal self-actualization of its being, and which at once constitutes the beginning, middle, and end, as in the circle, where the beginning is at the same time the end, and the end the beginning."[47]
[Footnote 44: Morell, "Hist, of Philos., p. 461."]
[Footnote 45: "Philos. of Religion," p. 204.]
[Footnote 46: Ibid., chap. xi. p. 24.]
[Footnote 47: Herzog's Real-Encyc., art. "Hegelian Philos.," by Ulrici.]
The whole philosophy of Hegel consists in the development of this idea of God by means of his, so-called, dialectic method, which reflects the objective life-process of the Absolute, and is, in fact, identical with it; for God, says he, "is only the Absolute Intelligence in so far as he knows himself to be the Absolute Intelligence, and this he knows only in science [dialectics], and this knowledge alone constitutes his true existence."[48] This life-process of the Absolute has three "moments." It may be considered as the idea in itself--bare, naked, undetermined, unconscious idea; as the idea out of itself, in its objective form, or in its differentiation; and, finally, as the idea in itself, and for itself, in its regressive or reflective form. This movement of thought gives, first, bare, naked, indeterminate thought, or thought in the mere antithesis of Being and non-Being; secondly, thought externalizing itself in nature; and, thirdly, thought returning to itself, and knowing itself in mind, or consciousness. Philosophy has, accordingly, three corresponding divisions:--1. LOGIC, which here is identical with metaphysics; 2. PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE; 3. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.
[Footnote 48: "Hist, of Philos.," iii. p. 399.]
It is beyond our design to present an expanded view of the entire philosophy of Hegel. But as he has given to the world a new logic, it may be needful to glance at its general features as a help to the comprehension of his philosophy of religion. The fundamental law of his logic is the identity of contraries or contradictions. All thought is a synthesis of contraries or opposites. This antithesis not only exists in all ideas, but constitutes them. In every idea we form, there must be two things opposed and distinguished, in order to afford a clear conception. Light can not be conceived but as the opposite of darkness; good can not be thought except in opposition to evil. All life, all reality is thus, essentially, the union of two elements, which, together, are mutually opposed to, and yet imply each other.
The identity of Being and Nothing is one of the consequences of this law.
1. The Absolute is the Being (das Absolute ist das Seyn), and "the Being" is here, according to Hegel, bare, naked, abstract, undistinguished, indeterminate, unconscious idea.
2. The Absolute is the Nothing (das Absolute ist das Nichts). "Pure being is pure abstraction, and consequently the absolute-negative, which in like manner, directly taken, is nothing." Being and Nothing are the positive and negative poles of the Idea, that is, the Absolute. They both alike exist, they are both pure abstractions, both absolutely unconditioned, without attributes, and without consciousness. Hence follows the conclusion--
3. Being and Nothing are identical (das Seyn und das Nichts ist dasselbe), Being is non-Being. Non-Being is Being--the Anders-seyn--which becomes as Being to the Seyn. Nothing is, in some sense, an actual thing.
Being and Nothing are thus the two elements which enter into the one Absolute Idea as contradictories, and both together combine to form a complete notion of bare production, or the becoming of something out of nothing,--the unfolding of real existence in its lowest form, that is, of nature.
The "Philosophy of Nature" exhibits a series of necessary movements which carry the idea forward in the ascending scale of sensible existence. The laws of mechanics, chemistry, and physiology are resolved into a series of oppositions. But the law which governs this development requires the self-reconciliation of these opposites. The idea, therefore, which in nature was unconscious and ignorant of itself, returns upon itself, and becomes conscious of itself, that is, becomes mind. The science of the regression or self-reflection of the idea, is the "Philosophy of Mind."
The "Philosophy of Mind" is subdivided by Hegel into three parts. There is, first, the subjective or individual mind (psychology); then the objective or universal mind, as represented in society, the state, and in history (ethics, political philosophy, or jurisprudence, and philosophy of history); and, finally, the union of the subjective and objective mind, or the absolute mind. This last manifests itself again under three forms, representing the three degrees of the self-consciousness of the Spirit, as the eternal truth. These are, first, art, or the representation of beauty (æsthetics); secondly, religion, in the general acceptation of the term (philosophy of religion); and, thirdly, philosophy itself, as the purest and most perfect form of the scientific knowledge of truth. All historical religions, the Oriental, the Jewish, the Greek, the Roman, and the Christian, are the successive stages in the development or self-actualization of God.[49]
It is unnecessary to indicate to the reader that the philosophy of Hegel is essentially pantheistic. "God is not a person, but personality itself, i.e., the universal personality, which realizes itself in every human consciousness, as so many separate thoughts of one eternal mind. The idea we form of the absolute is, to Hegel, the absolute itself, its essential existence being identical with our conception of it. Apart from, and out of the world, there is no God; and so also, apart from the universal consciousness of man, there is no Divine consciousness or personality."[50]
[Footnote 49: See art. "Hegelian Philosophy," in Herzog's Real-Encyc., from whence our materials are chiefly drawn.]
[Footnote 50: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 473.]
This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and conflicts with the actual facts of man's religious nature and religious history. If the word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is "a mode of life determined by the consciousness of dependence upon, and obligation to God." It is reverence for, gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from humanity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of God--a stage in the development or self-actualization of God. Viewed under one aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God--the worship of God by God; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since God only becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is that upon which his entire method proceeds, viz., "the identity of subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the consciousness of each individual man, and the universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If thought and being are identical, then whatever is true of ideas is also true of objects, and then, as Kant had before remarked, there is no difference between thinking we possess a hundred dollars, and actually possessing them. Such absurdities may be rendered plausible by a logic which asserts the "identity of contradictions," but against such logic common sense rebels. "The law of non-contradiction" has been accepted by all logicians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of thought. "Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not A=O, or A--A=O."[51] Non-existence can not exist. Being can not be nothing.
[Footnote 51: Hamilton's Logic, p. 58.]
III. The third hypothesis affirms that the phenomenon of religion has its foundation in FEELING--the feeling of dependence and of obligation; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition of instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obligation we call God.
This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent upon the differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory of Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Hamilton. Its fundamental position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either from sense or reason, and, consequently, the only valid source of real knowledge is feeling--faith, intuition, or, as it is called by some, inspiration.
There have been those, in all ages, who have made all knowledge of invisible, supersensuous, divine things, to rest upon an internal feeling, or immediate, inward vision. The Oriental Mystics, the Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek and Latin Church, the German Mystics of the 14th century, the Theosophists of the Reformation, the Quietists of France, the Quakers, have all appealed to some special faculty, distinct from the understanding and reason, for the immediate cognition of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that special faculty was regarded as an "interior eye" which was illuminated by the "Universal Light;" by others, as a peculiar sensibility of the soul--a feeling in whose perfect calm and utter quiescence the Divinity was mirrored; or which, in an ecstatic state, rose to a communion with, and final absorption in the Infinite.
Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the "faith-philosophy," as it is now designated, a definite form. He assumes the position that all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready formed. The process of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of perception there is something actual and present, which can not be referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world, and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an immediate knowledge of a spiritual world--God, the soul, freedom, immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All philosophic knowledge is thus based upon belief, which Jacobi regards as a fact of our inward sensibility--a sort of knowledge produced by an immediate feeling of the soul--a direct apprehension, without proof, of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal.
Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by the deservedly greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth in Theology could not be obtained by reason, but by a feeling, insight, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called God-consciousness, and in its highest form, Christian-consciousness. The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the feeling of dependence on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness is the perfect union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion with God.
Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of self-consciousness. "In all self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn, and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet something else from whence the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would not be just this."[52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility supposes an object, and a relation between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the feeling of dependence, gives God consciousness. And it is only by the presence of world consciousness and God-consciousness that self consciousness can be what it is.
We have, then, in our self-consciousness a feeling of direct dependence, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are revealed in us."[53] The felt, therefore, is not only the first religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the religious spirit; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its ground and principle in feeling, upon which it depends for its development; and the sum-total of the forces constituting religious life, inasmuch as it is a life, is based upon immediate self-consciousness.[54]
[Footnote 52: Glaubenslehre, ch. i. § 4.]
[Footnote 53: Dialectic, p. 430.]
[Footnote 54: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.]
The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his "Limits of Religious Thought." He maintains, with Schleiermacher, that religion is grounded in feeling, and that the felt is the first intimation or presentiment of the Divine. Man "feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being, and the instinct to worship, before he can argue from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of wisdom and benevolence scattered through the creation."[55] He also agrees with Schleiermacher in regarding the feeling of dependence as a state of the sensibility, out of which reflection builds up the edifice of Religious Consciousness, but he does not, with Schleiermacher, regard it as pre-eminently the basis of religious consciousness. "The mere consciousness of dependence does not, of itself, exhibit the character of the Being on whom we depend. It is as consistent with superstition as with religion; with the belief in a malevolent, as in a benevolent Deity."[56] To the feeling of dependence he has added the consciousness of moral obligation, which he imagines supplies the deficiency. By this consciousness of moral obligation "we are compelled to assume the existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity."[57] "To these two facts of the inner consciousness the feeling of dependence, and consciousness of moral obligation may be traced, as to their sources, the two great outward acts by which religion, in its various forms, has been manifested among men--Prayer, by which they seek to win God's blessing upon the future, and Expiation, by which they strive to atone for the offenses of the past. The feeling of dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a superior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope and fear, and reverence and gratitude."[58] The feeling of moral obligation--"the law written in the heart"--leads man to recognize a Lawgiver. "Man can be a law unto himself only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God."[59] The conclusion from the whole is, there must be an object answering to this consciousness: there must be a God to explain these facts of the soul.
[Footnote 55: Mansel, "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 115.]
[Footnote 56: Id., ib., p. 120.]
[Footnote 57: Id., ib., p. 122.]
[Footnote 58: Id., ib., pp. 119, 120.]
[Footnote 59: Id., ib., p. 122.]
This "philosophy of feeling," or of faith generated by feeling, has an interest and a significance which has not been adequately recognized by writers on natural theology. Feeling, sentiment, enthusiasm, have always played an important part in the history of religion. Indeed it must be conceded that religion is a right state of feeling towards God--religion is piety. A philosophy of the religious emotion is, therefore, demanded in order to the full interpretation of the religious phenomena of the world.
But the notion that internal feeling, a peculiar determination of the sensibility, is the source of religious ideas:--that God can be known immediately by feeling without the mediation of the truth that manifests God; that he can be felt as the qualities of matter can be felt; and that this affection of the inward sense can reveal the character and perfections of God, is an unphilosophical and groundless assumption. To assert, with Nitzsch, that "feeling has reason, and is reason, and that the sensible and felt God-consciousness generates out of itself fundamental conceptions," is to confound the most fundamental psychological distinctions, and arbitrarily bend the recognized classifications of mental science to the necessities of a theory. Indeed, we are informed that it is "by means of an independent psychology, and conformably to it," that Schleiermacher illustrates his "philosophy of feeling."[60] But all psychology must be based upon the observation and classification of mental phenomena, as revealed in consciousness, and not constructed in an "independent" and à priori method. The most careful psychological analysis has resolved the whole complex phenomena of mind into thought, feeling, and volition.[61] These orders of phenomena are radically and essentially distinct. They differ not simply in degree but in kind, and it is only by an utter disregard of the facts of consciousness that they can be confounded. Feeling is not reason, nor can it by any logical dexterity be transformed into reason.
[Footnote 60: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 21.]
[Footnote 61: Kant, "Critique of Judg.," ch. xxii.; Cousin, "Hist, of Philos.," vol. ii. p. 399; Hamilton, vol. i. p. 183, Eng. ed.]
The question as to the relative order of cognition and feeling, that is, as to whether feeling is the first or original form of the religious consciousness, or whether feeling be not consequent upon some idea or cognition of God, is one which can not be determined on empirical grounds. We are precluded from all scrutiny of the incipient stages of mental development in the individual mind and in collective humanity. If we attempt to trace the early history of the soul, its beginnings are lost in a period of blank unconsciousness, beyond all scrutiny of memory or imagination. If we attempt the inquiry on the wider field of universal consciousness, the first unfoldings of mind in humanity are lost in the border-land of mystery, of which history furnishes no authentic records. All dogmatic affirmation must, therefore, be unjustifiable. The assertion that religious feeling precedes all cognition,--that "the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, and the instinct of worship" are developed first in the mind, before the reason is exercised, is utterly groundless. The more probable doctrine is that all the primary faculties enter into spontaneous action simultaneously--the reason with the senses, the feelings with the reason, the judgment with both the senses and the reason, and that from their primary and simultaneous action arises the complex result, called consciousness, or conjoint knowledge.[62] There can be no clear and distinct consciousness without the cognition of a self and a not-self in mutual relation and opposition. Now the knowledge of the self--the personal ego--is an intuition of reason; the knowledge of the not-self is an intuition of sense. All knowledge is possible only under condition of plurality, difference, and relation.[63] Now the judgment is "the Faculty of Relations," or of comparison; and the affirmation "this is not that" is an act of judgment; to know is, consequently, to judge.[64] Self-consciousness must, therefore, be regarded as a synthesis of sense, reason, and judgment, and not a mere self-feeling (coenæsthesis).
[Footnote 62: Cousin, "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p. 337.]
[Footnote 63: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88.]
[Footnote 64: Hamilton, "Metaphys.," p. 277]
A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the à priori idea of space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of event without the rational idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the rational idea of identity or unity. And so the mere "feeling of dependence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of God, without the rational à priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowledge, and never can become knowledge, without the intervention of reason, and a concentrated self feeling can not rise essentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being ruling over nature and man.
Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its pathological form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any significance.
Regarded in its moral form, as "the feeling of obligation," it can have no real meaning unless a "law of duty" be known and recognized. Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty is. When that which is right, and just, and good is revealed to the mind, then the sense of obligation may urge man to the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the good, are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, consequently, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmonious and living relation between the reason and the sensibilities.
Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity." We think his "fact of religious intuition" is as inadequate as Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of religion. In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is a Power or Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power or Being "we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr. Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and even the existence of God is "assumed" and we are entitled to ask on what ground it is assumed. It will not be asserted that feeling alone generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a logical connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation between the feeling and the idea, so that when the feeling is present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This latter opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of God as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the reason,--a logical inference from the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feelings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates into mysticism--a mysticism "which pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives man of that which enables him to know God, and puts him in a just communication with God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth."[65]
[Footnote 65: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 110.]
The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted from the union of thought and feeling--the living and harmonious relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which disregards either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena.
IV. The fourth hypothesis is, that religion has had its outbirth in the spontaneous apperceptions of REASON; that is, in the necessary, à priori ideas of the infinite, the perfect, the unconditioned Cause, the Eternal Being, which are evoked into consciousness in presence of the changeful, contingent phenomena of the world.
This will at once be recognized by the intelligent reader as the doctrine of Cousin, by whom pure reason is regarded as the grand faculty or organ of religion.
Religion, in the estimation of Cousin, is grounded on cognition rather than upon feeling. It is the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of duty in its relation to God and to human happiness; and as reason is the general faculty of all knowing, it must be the faculty of religion. "In its most elevated point of view, religion is the relation of absolute truth to absolute Being," and as absolute truth is apprehended by the reason alone, reason "is the veridical and religious part of the nature of man."[66] By "reason," however, as we shall see presently, Cousin does not mean the discursive or reflective reason, but the spontaneous or intuitive reason. That act of the mind by which we attain to religious knowledge is not a process of reasoning, but a pure appreciation, an instinctive and involuntary movement of the soul.
[Footnote 66: Henry's Cousin, p. 510.]
The especial function of reason, therefore, is to reveal to us the invisible, the supersensuous, the Divine. "It was bestowed upon us for this very purpose of going, without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and from necessary and eternal truths, to the eternal and necessary principle" that is God.[67] Reason is thus, as it were, the bridge between consciousness and being; it rests, at the same time, on both; it descends from God, and approaches man; it makes its appearance in consciousness as a guest which brings intelligence of another world of real Being which lies beyond the world of sense.
Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being directly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To assert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of God, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with God. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a manifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."[68] Incapable of contemplating God face to face, reason adores God in the truth which represents and manifests Him.
[Footnote 67: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103.]
[Footnote 68: Id., ib., p. 99.]
Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to the reason of man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual revelation of God to man. The mind of man is "the offspring of God," and, as such, must have some resemblance to, and some correlation with God. Now that which constitutes the image of God in man must be found in the reason which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the truth which manifests God, just as the eye is correlated to the light which manifests the external world. Absolute truth is, therefore, the sole medium of bringing the human mind into communion with God; and human reason, in becoming united to absolute truth, becomes united to God in his manifestation in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest destination of man, is to become united to God by seeking a full consciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.[69]
[Footnote 69: Henry's Cousin, p. 511, 512.]
It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which this philosophy of religion is to be tested are--
1st. How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in possession of universal and necessary principles or absolute truths? and,
2d. How are these principles shown to be absolute? how far do these principles of reason possess absolute authority?
The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove reason to be in possession of universal and necessary principles by the analysis of the contents of consciousness, that is, by psychological analysis. The phenomena of consciousness, in their primitive condition, are necessarily complex, concrete, and particular. All our primary ideas are complex ideas, for the evident reason that all, or nearly all, our faculties enter at once into exercise; their simultaneous action giving us, at the same time, a certain number of ideas connected with each other, and forming a whole. For example, the idea of the exterior world, which is given us so quickly, is a complex idea, which contains a number of ideas. There is the idea of the secondary qualities of exterior objects; there is the idea of the primary qualities; there is the idea of the permanent reality of something to which you refer these qualities, to wit, matter; there is the idea of space which contains bodies; there is the idea of time in which movements are effected. All these ideas are acquired simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, and together form one complex idea.
The application of analysis to this complex phenomenon clearly reveals that there are simple ideas, beliefs, principles in the mind which can not have been derived from sense and experience, which sense and experience do not account for, and which are the suggestions of reason alone: the idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Eternal; the true, the beautiful, the good; the principle of causality, of substance, of unity, of intentionality; the principle of duty, of obligation, of accountability, of retribution. These principles, in their natural and regular development, carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and reveal to us a world of real being beyond the world of sense. They carry us up to an absolute Being, the fountain of all existence--a living, personal, righteous God--the author, the sustainer, and ruler of the universe.
The proof that these principles are absolute, and possessed of absolute authority, is drawn, first, from the impersonality of reason, or, rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or truths of reason.
It is not we who create these ideas, neither can we change them at our pleasure. We are conscious that the will, in all its various efforts, is enstamped with the impress of our personality. Our volitions are our own. So, also, our desires are our own, our emotions are our own. But this is not the same with our rational ideas or principles. The ideas of substance, of cause, of unity, of intentionality do not belong to one person any more than to another; they belong to mind as mind, they are revealed in the universal intelligence of the race. Absolute truth has no element of personality about it. Man may say "my reason," but give him credit for never having dared to say "my truth." So far from rational ideas being individual, their peculiar characteristic is that they are opposed to individuality, that is, they are universal and necessary. Instead of being circumscribed within the limits of experience, they surpass and govern it; they are universal in the midst of particular phenomena; necessary, although mingled with things contingent; and absolute, even when appearing within us the relative and finite beings that we are.[70] Necessary, universal, absolute truth is a direct emanation from God. "Such being the case, the decision of reason within its own peculiar province possesses an authority almost divine. If we are led astray by it, we must be led astray by a light from heaven."[71]
[Footnote 70: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 40.]
[Footnote 71: Id., "Lectures," vol. ii. p. 32.]
The second proof is derived from the distinction between the spontaneous and reflective movements of reason.
Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary; reflection is personal, spontaneity is impersonal; reflection is analytic, spontaneity is synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. Reflection is a process, more or less tardy, in the individual and in the race. It sometimes engenders error and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, from being rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force of habit, as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the true logic of nature,--instant, direct, and infallible. It is a primitive affirmation which implies no negation, and therefore yields positive knowledge. To reflect is to return to that which was. It is, by the aid of memory, to return to the past, and to render it present to the eye of consciousness. Reflection, therefore, creates nothing; it supposes an anterior operation of the mind in which there necessarily must be as many terms as are discovered by reflection. Before all reflection there comes spontaneity--a spontaneity of the intellect, which seizes truth at once, without traversing doubt and error. "We thus attain to a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition, the legitimate daughter of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet." Such is the first act of knowing, and in this first act the mind passes from idea to being without ever suspecting the depth of the chasm it has passed. It passes by means of the power which is in it, and is not astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished when by reflection it returns to the analysis of the results, and, by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. "Hence comes the strife between sophism and common sense, between false science and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of which come from free reflection."[72]
It is this spontaneity of thought which gives birth to religion. The instinctive thought which darts through the world, even to God, is natural religion. "All thought implies a spontaneous faith in God, and there is no such thing as natural atheism. Doubt and skepticism may mingle with reflective thought, but beneath reflection there is still spontaneity. When the scholar has denied the existence of God, listen to the man, interrogate him, take him unawares, and you will see that all his words envelop the idea of God, and that faith in God is, without his recognition, at the bottom, in his heart."[73]
Religion, then, in the system of Cousin, does not begin with reflection, with science, but with faith. There is, however, this difference to be noted between the theory of the "faith-philosophers" (Jacobi, Schleiermacher, etc.) and the theory of Cousin. With them, faith is grounded on sensation or feeling; with him, it is grounded on reason. "Faith, whatever may be its form, whatever may be its object, common or sublime, can be nothing else than the consent of reason. That is the foundation of faith."[74]
[Footnote 72: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 106.]
[Footnote 73: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 137.]
[Footnote 74: Ibid., vol. i. p. 90.]
Religion is, therefore, with Cousin, at bottom, pure Theism. He thinks, however, that "true theism is not a dead religion that forgets precisely the fundamental attributes of God." It recognizes God as creator, preserver, and governor; it celebrates a providence; it adores a perfect, holy, righteous, benevolent God. It holds the principle of duty, of obligation, of moral desert. It not only perceives the divine character, but feels its relation to God. The revelation of the Infinite, by reason, moves the feelings, and passes into sentiment, producing reverence, and love, and gratitude. And it creates worship, which recalls man to God a thousand times more forcibly than the order, harmony, and beauty of the universe can do.
The spontaneous action of reason, in its greatest energy, is inspiration. "Inspiration, daughter of the soul and heaven, speaks from on high with an absolute authority. It commands faith; so all its words are hymns, and its natural language is poetry." "Thus, in the cradle of civilization, he who possessed in a higher degree than his fellows the gift of inspiration, passed for the confidant and the interpreter of God. He is so for others, because he is so for himself; and he is so, in fact, in a philosophic sense. Behold the sacred origin of prophecies, of pontificates, and of modes of worship."[75]
[Footnote 75: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 129.]
As an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human intelligence, the doctrine of Cousin must be regarded as eminently logical, adequate, and satisfactory. As a theory of the origin of religion, as a philosophy which shall explain all the phenomena of religion, it must be pronounced defective, and, in some of its aspects, erroneous.
First, it does not take proper account of that living force which has in all ages developed so much energy, and wrought such vast results in the history of religion, viz., the power of the heart. Cousin discourses eloquently on the spontaneous, instinctive movements of the reason, but he overlooks, in a great measure, the instinctive movements of the heart. He does not duly estimate the feeling of reverence and awe which rises spontaneously in presence of the vastness and grandeur of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is a symbol and shadow. He disregards that sense of an overshadowing Presence which, at least in seasons of tenderness and deep sensibility, seems to compass us about, and lay its hand upon us. He scarcely recognizes the deep consciousness of imperfection and weakness, and utter dependence, which prompts man to seek for and implore the aid of a Superior Being; and, above all, he takes no proper account of the sense of guilt and the conscious need of expiation. His theory, therefore, can not adequately explain the universal prevalence of sacrifices, penances, and prayers. In short, it does not meet and answer to the deep longings of the human heart, the wants, sufferings, fears, and hopes of man.
Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illuminated by the light of God. It is quite pertinent to ask, Why may not the universal heart of humanity be touched and moved by the spirit of God? If the ideas of reason be a revelation from God, may not the instinctive feelings of the heart be an inspiration of God? May not God come near to the heart of man and awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible Presence, and an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him? May he not draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and raise man to a conscious fellowship? Is not God indeed the great want of the human heart?
Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influence of revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and of the positive institutions of religion, as a divine economy, supernaturally originated in the world. He grants, indeed, that "a primitive revelation throws light upon the cradle of human civilization," and that "all antique traditions refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand of God, received from him immediately all lights, and all truths."[76] He also believes that "the Mosaic religion, by its developments, is mingled with the history of all the surrounding people of Egypt, of Assyria, of Persia, and of Greece and Rome."[77] Christianity, however, is regarded as "the summing and crown of the two great religious systems which reigned by turn in the East and in Greece"--the maturity of Ethnicism and Judaism; a development rather than a new creation. The explanation which he offers of the phenomena of inspiration opens the door to religious skepticism. Those who were termed seers, prophets, inspired teachers of ancient times, were simply men who resigned themselves wholly to their intellectual instincts, and thus gazed upon truth in its pure and perfect form. They did not reason, they did not reflect, they made no pretensions to philosophy they received truth spontaneously as it flowed in upon them from heaven.[78] This immediate reception of Divine light was nothing more than the natural play of spontaneous reason nothing more than what has existed to a greater or less degree in every man of great genius; nothing more than may now exist in any mind which resigns itself to its own unreflective apperceptions. Thus revelation, in its proper sense, loses all its peculiar value, and Christianity is robbed of its pre-eminent authority. The extremes of Mysticism and Rationalism here meet on the same ground, and Plotinus and Cousin are at one.
[Footnote 76: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 148.]
[Footnote 77: Ibid., vol. i. p. 216.]
[Footnote 78: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 661.]
V. The fifth hypothesis offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world is that they had their origin in EXTERNAL REVELATION, to which reason is related as a purely passive organ, and Ethnicism as a feeble relic.
This is the theory of the school of "dogmatic theologians," of which the ablest and most familiar presentation is found in the "Theological Institutes" of R. Watson.[79] He claims that all our religious knowledge is derived from oral revelation alone, and that all the forms of religion and modes of worship which have prevailed in the heathen world have been perversions and corruptions of the one true religion first taught to the earliest families of men by God himself. All the ideas of God, duty, immortality, and future retribution which are now possessed, or have ever been possessed by the heathen nations, are only broken and scattered rays of the primitive traditions descending from the family of Noah, and revived by subsequent intercourses with the Hebrew race; and all the modes of religious worship--prayers, lustrations, sacrifices--that have obtained in the world, are but feeble relics, faint reminiscences of the primitive worship divinely instituted among the first families of men. "The first man received the knowledge of God by sensible converse with him, and that doctrine was transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations."[80] This belief in the existence of a Supreme Being was preserved among the Jews by continual manifestations of the presence of Jehovah. "The intercourses between the Jews and the states of Syria and Babylon, on the one hand, and Egypt on the other, powers which rose to great eminence and influence in the ancient world, was maintained for ages. Their frequent dispersions and captivities would tend to preserve in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the once common and universal faith."[81] And the Greek sages who resorted for instruction to the Chaldean philosophic schools derived from thence their knowledge of the theological system of the Jews.[82] Among the heathen nations this primitive revelation was corrupted by philosophic speculation, as in India and China, Greece and Rome; and in some cases it was entirely obliterated by ignorance, superstition, and vice, as among the Hottentots of Africa and the aboriginal tribes of New South Wales, who "have no idea of one Supreme Creator."[83]
[Footnote 79: We might have referred the reader to Ellis's "Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature;" Leland's "Necessity of Revelation;" and Horsley's "Dissertations," etc.; but as we are not aware of their having been reprinted in this country, we select the "Institutes" of Watson as the best presentation of the views of "the dogmatic theologians" accessible to American readers.]
[Footnote 80: Watson, "Theol. Inst," vol. i. p. 270.]
[Footnote 81: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 31.]
[Footnote 82: See ch. v. and vi., "On the Origin of those Truths which are found in the Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathen."]
[Footnote 83: Ibid., vol. i. p. 274.]
The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the idea of duty, and the knowledge of right and wrong. "A direct communication of the Divine Will was made to the primogenitors of our race," and to this source alone we are indebted for all correct ideas of right and wrong. "Whatever is found pure in morals, in ancient or modern writers, may be traced to indirect revelation."[84] Verbal instruction--tradition or scripture--thus becomes the source of all our moral ideas. The doctrine of immortality, and of a future retribution,[85] the practice of sacrifice--precatory and expiatory, are also ascribed to the same source.[86] Thus the only medium by which religious truth can possibly become known to the masses of mankind is tradition. The ultimate foundation on which the religious faith and the religious practices of universal humanity have rested, with the exception of the Jews, and the favored few to whom the Gospel has come, is uncertain, precarious, and easily corrupted tradition.
[Footnote 84: Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. ii. p. 470.]
[Footnote 85: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 11.]
[Footnote 86: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 26.]
The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this theory will be obvious from the following considerations:
1. It is highly improbable that truths so important and vital to man, so essential to the well-being of the human race, so necessary to the perfect development of humanity as are the ideas of God, duty, and immortality, should rest on so precarious and uncertain a basis as tradition is admitted, even by Mr. Watson, to be.
The human mind needs the idea of God to satisfy its deep moral necessities, and to harmonize all its powers. The perfection of humanity can never be secured, the destination of humanity can never be achieved, the purpose of God in the existence of humanity can never be accomplished, without the idea of God, and of the relation of man to God, being present to the human mind. Society needs the idea of a Supreme Ruler as the foundation of law and government, and as the basis of social order. Without it, these can not be, or be conserved. Intellectual creatureship, social order, human progress, are inconceivable and impossible without the idea of God, and of accountability to God. Now that truths so fundamental should, to the masses of men, rest on tradition alone, is incredible. Is there no known and accessible God to the outlying millions of our race who, in consequence of the circumstances of birth and education, which are beyond their control, have had no access to an oral revelation, and among whom the dim shadowy rays of an ancient tradition have long ago expired? Are the eight hundred millions of our race upon whom the light of Christianity has not shone unvisited by the common Father of our race? Has the universal Father left his "own offspring" without a single native power of recognizing the existence of the Divine Parent, and abandoned them to solitary and dreary orphanage? Could not he who gave to matter its properties and laws,--the properties and laws through whose operation he is working out his own purposes in the realm of nature,--could not he have also given to mind ideas and principles which, logically developed, would lead to recognition of a God, and of our duty to God, and, by these ideas and principles, have wrought out his sublime purposes in the realm of mind? Could not he who gave to man the appetency for food, and implanted in his nature the social instincts to preserve his physical being, have implanted in his heart a "feeling after God," and an instinct to worship God in order to the conservation of his spiritual being? How otherwise can we affirm the responsibility and accountability of all the race before God? Those theologians who are so earnest in the assertion that God has not endowed man with the native power of attaining the knowledge of God can not, on any principle of equity, show how the heathen are "without excuse" when, in involuntary ignorance of God, they "worship the creature instead of the Creator," and violate a law of duty of which they have no possible means to attain the barest knowledge.
2. This theory is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the universality of religious rites, and especially of religious ideas.
Take, for example, the idea of God. As a matter of fact we affirm, in opposition to Watson, the universality of this idea. The idea of God is connatural to the human mind. Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthy development[87], this idea has arisen spontaneously and necessarily. There has not been found a race of men who were utterly destitute of some knowledge of a Supreme Being. All the instances alleged have, on further and more accurate inquiry, been found incorrect. The tendency of the last century, arbitrarily to quadrate all the facts of religious history with the prevalent sensational philosophy, had its influence upon the minds of the first missionaries to India, China, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific. They expected to find that the heathen had no knowledge of a Supreme Being, and before they had mastered the idioms of their language, or become familiar with their mythological and cosmological systems, they reported them as utterly ignorant of God, destitute of the idea and even the name of a Supreme Being. These mistaken and hasty conclusions have, however, been corrected by a more intimate acquaintance with the people, their languages and religions. Even in the absence of any better information, we should be constrained to doubt the accuracy of the authorities quoted by Mr. Watson in relation to Hindooism, when by one (Ward) we are told that the Hindoo "believes in a God destitute of intelligence" and by another (Moore) that "Brahm is the one eternal Mind, the self-existent, incomprehensible Spirit". Learned and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as European, however, confidently affirm that "the ground of the Brahminical faith is Monotheistic;" it recognizes "an Absolute and Supreme Being" as the source of all that exists.[88] Eugene Burnouf, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Koeppen, and indeed nearly all who have written on the subject of Buddhism, have shown that the metaphysical doctrines of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of the Brahminic philosophy. "Buddha." we are told, is "pure intelligence" "clear light", "perfect wisdom;" the same as Brahm. This is surely Theism in its highest conception.[89] In regard to the peoples of South Africa, Dr. Livingstone assures us "there is no need for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of a God, or of a future state--the facts being universally admitted.... On questioning intelligent men among the Backwains as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and of a future state, they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects."[90] And so far from the New Hollanders having no idea of a Supreme Being, we are assured by E. Stone Parker, the protector of the aborigines of New Holland, they have a clear and well-defined idea of a "Great Spirit," the maker of all things.
[Footnote 87: Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. i. p. 46.]
[Footnote 88: Maurice, "Religions of the World," p. 59: Edin. Review,1862, art "Recent Researches on Buddhism." See also Müller's "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. ch. i. to vi.]
[Footnote 89: "It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans admit, in some form or another, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist."--Müller, "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. pp. 224,5.
Buddha, which means "intelligence," "clear light," "perfect wisdom," was not only the name of the founder of the religion of Eastern Asia, but Adi Buddha was the name of the Absolute, Eternal Intelligence.--Maurice, "Religions of the World," p. 102.]
[Footnote 90: "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," p. 158.]
Now had the idea of God rested solely on tradition, it were the most natural probability that it might be lost, nay, must be lost, amongst those races of men who were geographically and chronologically far removed from the primitive cradle of humanity in the East. The people who, in their migrations, had wandered to the remotest parts of the earth, and had become isolated from the rest of mankind, might, after the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,--a necessity of thought. A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what time, their ancestors came. There are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the present inhabitants can give no account. How, then, can a pure, abstract idea which can have no sensible representation, no visible image, retain its hold upon the memory of humanity for thousands of years? The Fijian may not remember whence his immediate ancestors came, but he knows that the race came originally from the hands of the Creator. He can not tell who built the monuments of solid masonry which are found in his island-home, but he can tell who reared the everlasting hills and built the universe. He may not know who reigned in Vewa a hundred years ago, but he knows who now reigns, and has always reigned, over the whole earth. "The idea of a God is familiar to the Fijian, and the existence of an invisible superhuman power controlling and influencing nature, and all earthly things, is fully recognized by him."[91] The idea of God is a common fact of human consciousness, and tradition alone is manifestly inadequate to account for its universality.
[Footnote 91: "Fiji and the Fijians," p. 215.]
3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of God to an intelligence "purely passive" and utterly unfurnished with any à priori ideas or necessary laws of cognition and thought.
Of course it is not denied that important verbal communications relating to the character of God, and the duties we owe to God, were given to the first human pair, more clear and definite, it may be, than any knowledge attained by Socrates and Plato through their dialectic processes, and that these oral revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And furthermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure fountain of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among the heathen nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny.
All this, however, supposes, at least, a natural power and aptitude for the knowledge of God, and some configuration and correlation of the human intelligence to the Divine. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can not be moved and controlled by forces and laws, unless it have properties which correlate it with those forces and laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless it have active powers of apprehension and conception which are governed by uniform laws. The "material" of thought may be supplied from without, but the "form" is determined by the necessary laws of our inward being. All our cognition of the external world is conditioned by the à priori ideas of time and space, and all our thinking is governed by the principles of causality and substance, and the law of "sufficient reason." The mind itself supplies an element of knowledge in all our cognitions. Man can not be taught the knowledge of God if he be not naturally possessed of a presentiment, or an apperception of a God, as the cause and reason of the universe. "If education be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture to act upon."[92] A mere verbal revelation can not communicate the knowledge of God, if man have not already the idea of a God in his mind. A name is a mere empty sign, a meaningless symbol, without a mental image of the object which it represents, or an innate perception, or an abstract conception of the mind, of which the word is the sign. The mental image or the abstract conception must, therefore, precede the name; cognition must be anterior to, and give the meaning of language.[93] The child knows a thing even before it can speak its name. And, universally, we must know the thing in itself, or image it by analogies and resemblances to some other thing we do know, before the name can have any meaning for us. As to purely rational ideas and abstract conceptions,--as space, cause, the infinite, the perfect,--language can never convey these to the mind, nor can the mind ever attain them by experience if they are not an original, connate part of our mental equipment and furniture. The mere verbal affirmation "there is a God" made to one who has no idea of a God, would be meaningless and unintelligible. What notion can a man form of "the First Cause" if the principle of causality is not inherent in his mind? What conception can he form of "the Infinite Mind" if the infinite be not a primitive intuition? How can he conceive of "a Righteous Governor" if he have no idea of right, no sense of obligation, no apprehension of a retribution? Words are empty sounds without ideas, and God is a mere name if the mind has no apperception of a God.
[Footnote 92: Nitzsch, "System of Christian Doctrine," p. 10.]
[Footnote 93: "Ideas must pre-exist their sensible signs." See De Boismont on "Hallucination," etc., p. iii.]
It may be affirmed that, preceding or accompanying the announcement of the Divine Name, there was given to the first human pair, and to the early fathers of our race, some visible manifestation of the presence of God, and some supernatural display of divine power. What, then, was the character of these early manifestations, and were they adequate to convey the proper idea of God? Did God first reveal himself in human form, and if so, how could their conception of God advance beyond a rude anthropomorphism? Did he reveal his presence in a vast columnar cloud or a pillar of fire? How could such an image convey any conception of the intelligence, the omnipresence, the eternity of God? Nay, can the infinite and eternal Mind be represented by any visible manifestation? Can the human mind conceive an image of God? The knowledge of God, it is clear, can not be conveyed by any sensible sign or symbol if man has no prior rational idea of God as the Infinite and the Perfect Being.
If the facts of order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the à priori ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work of an intelligent mind, how can any preternatural display of power produce a rational conviction that God exists? "If the universe could come by chance or fate, surely all the lesser phenomena, termed miraculous, might occur so too."[94] If we find ourselves standing amid an eternal series of events, may not miracles be a part of that series? Or if all things are the result of necessary and unchangeable laws, may not miracles also result from some natural or psychological law of which we are yet in ignorance? Let it be granted that man is not so constituted that, by the necessary laws of his intelligence, he must affirm that facts of order having a commencement in time prove mind; let it be granted that man has no intuitive belief in the Infinite and Perfect--in short, no idea of God; how, then, could a marvellous display of power, a new, peculiar, and startling phenomenon which even seemed to transcend nature, prove to him the existence of an infinite intelligence--a personal God? The proof would be simply inadequate, because not the right kind of proof. Power does not indicate intelligence, force does not imply personality.
[Footnote 94: Morell, "Hist. of Philos." p. 737.]
Miracles, in short, were never intended to prove the existence of God. The foundation of this truth had already been laid in the constitution and laws of the human mind, and miracles were designed to convince us that He of whose existence we had a prior certainty, spoke to us by His Messenger, and in this way attested his credentials. To the man who has a rational belief in the existence of God this evidence of a divine mission is at once appropriate and conclusive. "Master, we know thou art a teacher sent from God; for no man can do the works which thou doest, except God be with him." The Christian missionary does not commence his instruction to the heathen, who have an imperfect, or even erroneous conception of "the Great Spirit," by narrating the miracles of Christ, or quoting the testimony of the Divine Book he carries along with him. He points to the heavens and the earth, and says, "There is a Being who made all these things, and Jehovah is his name; I have come to you with a message from Him!" Or he need scarce do even so much; for already the heathen, in view of the order and beauty which pervades the universe, has been constrained, by the laws of his own intelligence, to believe in and offer worship to the "Agnostos Theos"--the unseen and incomprehensible God; and pointing to their altars, he may announce with Paul, "this God whom ye worship, though ignorantly, him declare I unto you!"
The results of our study of the various hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world may be summed up as follows: The first and second theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an explanation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, taken by itself, is incomplete and inadequate. The third hypothesis overrates feeling; the fourth, reason; the fifth, verbal instruction. The first extreme is Mysticism, the second is Rationalism, the last is Dogmatism. Reason, feeling, and faith in testimony must be combined, and mutually condition each other. No purely rationalistic hypothesis will meet and satisfy the wants and yearnings of the heart. No theory based on feeling alone can satisfy the demands of the human intellect. And, finally, an hypothesis which bases all religion upon historical testimony and outward fact, and despises and tramples upon the intuitions of the reason and the instincts of the heart can never command the general faith of mankind. Religion embraces and conditionates the whole sphere of life--thought, feeling, faith, and action; it must therefore be grounded in the entire spiritual nature of man.
Our criticism of opposite theories has thus prepared the way for, and obviated the necessity of an extended discussion of the hypothesis we now advance.
The universal phenomenon of religion has originated in the à priori apperceptions of reason, and the natural instinctive feelings of the heart, which, from age to age, have been vitalized, unfolded, and perfected by supernatural communications and testamentary revelations.
There are universal facts of religious history which can only be explained on the first principle of this hypothesis; there are special facts which can only be explained on the latter principle. The universal prevalence of the idea of God, and the feeling of obligation to obey and worship God, belong to the first order of facts; the general prevalence of expiatory sacrifices, of the rite of circumcision, and the observance of sacred and holy days, belong to the latter. To the last class of facts the observance of the Christian Sabbath, and the rites of Baptism and the Lord's Supper may be added.
The history of all religions clearly attests that there are two orders of principles--the natural and the positive, and, in some measure, two authorities of religious life which are intimately related without negativing each other. The characteristic of the natural is that it is intrinsic, of the positive, that it is extrinsic. In all ages men have sought the authority of the positive in that which is immediately beyond and above man--in some "voice of the Divinity" toning down the stream of ages, or speaking through a prophet or oracle, or written in some inspired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority of the natural in that which is immediately within man--the voice of the Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of man. A careful study of the history of religion will show a reciprocal relation between the two, and indicate their common source.
We expect to find that our hypothesis will be abundantly sustained by the study of the Religion of the Athenians.
THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS.
"All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion (deisidaimonesterous). For as I passed through your city, and beheld the objects of your worship, I found amongst them an altar with this inscription--'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.' Whom therefore ye worship...."--ST. PAUL.
Through one of those remarkable counter-strokes of Divine Providence by which the evil designs of men are overruled, and made to subserve the purposes of God, the Apostle Paul was brought to Athens. He walked beneath its stately porticoes, he entered its solemn temples, he stood before its glorious statuary, he viewed its beautiful altars--all devoted to pagan worship. And "his spirit was stirred within him," he was moved with indignation "when he saw the city full of images of the gods."[95] At the very entrance of the city he met the evidence of this peculiar tendency of the Athenians to multiply the objects of their devotion; for here at the gateway stands an image of Neptune, seated on horseback, and brandishing the trident. Passing through the gate, his attention would be immediately arrested by the sculptured forms of Minerva, Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, and the Muses, standing near a sanctuary of Bacchus. A long street is now before him, with temples, statues, and altars crowded on either hand. Walking to the end of this street, and turning to the right, he entered the Agora, a public square surrounded with porticoes and temples, which were adorned with statuary and paintings in honor of the gods of Grecian mythology. Amid the plane-trees planted by the hand of Cimon are the statues of the deified heroes of Athens, Hercules and Theseus, and the whole series of the Eponymi, together with the memorials of the older divinities; Mercuries which gave the name to the streets on which they were placed; statues dedicated to Apollo as patron of the city and her deliverer from the plague; and in the centre of all the altar of the Twelve Gods.
[Footnote 95: Lange's Commentary, Acts xvii. 16.]
Standing in the market-place, and looking up to the Areopagus, Paul would see the temple of Mars, from whom the hill derived its name. And turning toward the Acropolis, he would behold, closing the long perspective, a series of little sanctuaries on the very ledges of the rocks, shrines of Bacchus and Æsculapius, Venus, Earth, and Ceres, ending with the lovely form of the Temple of Unwinged Victory, which glittered in front of the Propylæa.
If the apostle entered the "fivefold gates," and ascended the flight of stone steps to the platform of the Acropolis, he would find the whole area one grand composition of architecture and statuary dedicated to the worship of the gods. Here stood the Parthenon, the Virgin House, the glorious temple which was erected during the proudest days of Athenian glory, an entire offering to Minerva, the tutelary divinity of Athens. Within was the colossal statue of the goddess wrought in ivory and gold. Outside the temple there stood another statue of Minerva, cast from the brazen spoils of Marathon; and near by yet another brazen Pallas, which was called by pre-eminence "the Beautiful."
Indeed, to whatever part of Athens the apostle wandered, he would meet the evidences of their "carefulness in religion," for every public place and every public building was a sanctuary of some god. The Metroum, or record-house, was a temple to the mother of the gods. The council-house held statues of Apollo and Jupiter, with an altar to Vesta. The theatre at the base of the Acropolis was consecrated to Bacchus. The Pnyx was dedicated to Jupiter on high. And as if, in this direction, the Attic imagination knew no bounds, abstractions were deified; altars were erected to Fame, to Energy, to Modesty, and even to Pity, and these abstractions were honored and worshipped as gods.
The impression made upon the mind of Paul was, that the city was literally "full of idols," or images of the gods. This impression is sustained by the testimony of numerous Greek and Roman writers. Pausanias declares that Athens "had more images than all the rest of Greece;" and Petronius, the Roman satirist, says, "it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man."[96]
[Footnote 96: See Conybeare and Howson's "Life and Epistles of St. Paul;" also, art. "Athens," in Encyclopædia Britannica, whence our account of the "sacred objects" in Athens is chiefly gathered.]
No wonder, then, that as Paul wandered amid these scenes "his spirit was stirred in him." He burned with holy zeal to maintain the honor of the true and only God, whom now he saw dishonored on every side. He was filled with compassion for those Athenians who, notwithstanding their intellectual greatness, had changed the glory of God into an image made in the likeness of corruptible man, and who really worshipped the creature more than the Creator. The images intended to symbolize the invisible perfections of God were usurping the place of God, and receiving the worship due alone to him. We may presume the apostle was not insensible to the beauties of Grecian art. The sublime architecture of the Propylæa and the Parthenon, the magnificent sculpture of Phidias and Praxiteles, could not fail to excite his wonder. But he remembered that those superb temples and this glorious statuary were the creation of the pagan spirit, and devoted to polytheistic worship. The glory of the supreme God was obscured by all this symbolism. The creatures formed by God, the symbols of his power and presence in nature, the ministers of his providence and moral government, were receiving the honor due to him. Over all this scene of material beauty and æsthetic perfection there rose in dark and hideous proportions the errors and delusions and sins against the living God which Polytheism nurtured, and unable any longer to restrain himself, he commenced to "reason" with the crowds of Athenians who stood beneath the shadows of the plane-trees, or lounged beneath the porticoes that surrounded the Agora. Among these groups of idlers were mingled the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus, who "encountered" Paul. The nature of these "disputations" may be easily conjectured, The opinions of these philosophers are even now familiarly known: they are, in one form or another, current in the literature of modern times. Materialism and Pantheism still "encounter" Christianity. The apostle asserted the personal being and spirituality of one supreme and only God, who has in divers ways revealed himself to man, and therefore may be "known." He proclaimed that Jesus is the fullest and most perfect revelation of God--the only "manifestation of God in the flesh." He pointed to his "resurrection" as the proof of his superhuman character and mission to the world. Some of his hearers were disposed to treat him with contempt; they represented him as an ignorant "babbler," who had picked up a few scraps of learning, and who now sought to palm them off as a "new" philosophy. But most of them regarded him with that peculiar Attic curiosity which was always anxious to be hearing some "new thing." So they led him away from the tumult of the market-place to the top of Mars' Hill, where, in its serene atmosphere, they might hear him more carefully, and said, "May we hear what this new doctrine is whereof thou speakest?"
Surrounded by these men of thoughtful, philosophic mind--men who had deeply pondered the great problem of existence, who had earnestly inquired after the "first principles of things;" men who had reasoned high of creation, fate, and providence; of right and wrong; of conscience, law, and retribution; and had formed strong and decided opinions on all these questions--he delivered his discourse on the being, the providence, the spirituality, and the moral government of God.
This grand theme was suggested by an inscription he had observed on one of the altars of the city, which was dedicated "To the Unknown God." "Ye men of Athens! every thing which I behold bears witness to your carefulness in religion. For as I passed by and beheld your sacred objects I found an altar with this inscription, 'To the Unknown God;' whom, therefore, ye worship, though ye know him not [adequately], Him declare I unto you." Starting from this point, the manifest carefulness of the Athenians in religion, and accepting this inscription as the evidence that they had some presentiment, some native intuition, some dim conception of the one true and living God, he strives to lead them to a deeper knowledge of Him. It is here conceded by the apostle that the Athenians were a religious people. The observations he had made during his short stay in Athens enabled him to bear witness that the Athenians were "a God-fearing people,"[97] and he felt that fairness and candor demanded that this trait should receive from him an ample recognition and a full acknowledgment. Accordingly he commences by saying in gentle terms, well fitted to conciliate his audience, "All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion." I recognize you as most devout; ye appear to me to be a God-fearing people,[98] for as I passed by and beheld your sacred objects I found an altar with this inscription, "To the Unknown God," whom therefore ye worship.
[Footnote 97: Lange's Commentary, in loco.]
[Footnote 98: "Ôs before deisid.--so imports. I recognize you as such."--Lange's Commentary.]
The assertion that the Athenians were "a religious people" will, to many of our readers, appear a strange and startling utterance, which has in it more of novelty than truth. Nay, some will be shocked to hear the Apostle Paul described as complimenting these Athenians--these pagan worshippers--on their "carefulness in religion." We have been so long accustomed to use the word "heathen" as an opprobrious epithet--expressing, indeed, the utmost extremes of ignorance, and barbarism, and cruelty, that it has become difficult for us to believe that in a heathen there can be any good.
From our childhood we have read in our English Bibles, Ye men of Athens, I perceive in all things ye are too superstitious and we can scarcely tolerate another version, even if it can be shown that it approaches nearer to the actual language employed by Paul. We must, therefore, ask the patience and candor of the reader, while we endeavor to show, on the authority of Paul's words, that the Athenians were a "religious people," and that all our notions to the contrary are founded on prejudice and misapprehension.
First, then, let us commence even with our English version: "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." And what now is the meaning of the word "superstition?" It is true, we now use it only in an evil sense, to express a belief in the agency of invisible, capricious, malignant powers, which fills the mind with fear and terror, and sees in every unexplained phenomenon of nature an omen, or prognostic, of some future evil. But this is not its proper and original meaning. Superstition is from the Latin superstitio, which means a superabundance of religion,[99] an extreme exactitude in religious observance. And this is precisely the sense in which the corresponding Greek term is used by the Apostle Paul. Deisidaimonia properly means "reverence for the gods." "It is used," says Barnes, "in the classic writers, in a good sense, to denote piety towards the gods, or suitable fear and reverence for them." "The word," says Lechler, "is, without doubt, to be understood here in a good sense; although it seems to have been intentionally chosen, in order to indicate the conception of fear(deidô), which predominated in the religion of the apostle's hearers."[100] This reading is sustained by the ablest critics and scholars of modern times. Bengel reads the sentence, "I perceive that ye are very religious"[101] Cudworth translates it thus: "Ye are every way more than ordinarily religious."[102] Conybeare and Howson read the text as we have already given it, "All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion."[103] Lechler reads "very devout;"[104] Alford, "carrying your religious reverence very far;"[105] and Albert Barnes,[106] "I perceive ye are greatly devoted to reverence for religion."[107] Whoever, therefore, will give attention to the actual words of the apostle, and search for their real meaning, must be convinced he opens his address by complimenting the Athenians on their being more than ordinarily religious.
[Footnote 99: Nitzsch, "System of Christ. Doctrine," p. 33.]
[Footnote 100: Lange's Commentary, in loco.]
[Footnote 101: "Gnomon of the New Testament."]
[Footnote 102: "Intellectual System," vol. i. p. 626.]
[Footnote 103: "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," vol. i. p. 378.]
[Footnote 104: Lange's Commentary.]
[Footnote 105: Greek Test.]
[Footnote 106: Notes on Acts.]
[Footnote 107: Also Clarke's Comment., in loco.]
Nor are we for a moment to suppose the apostle is here dealing in hollow compliments, or having recourse to a "pious fraud." Such a course would have been altogether out of character with Paul, and to suppose him capable of pursuing such a course is to do him great injustice. If "to the Jews he became as a Jew," it was because he recognized in Judaism the same fundamental truths which underlie the Christian system. And if here he seems to become, in any sense, at one with "heathenism," that he might gain the heathen to the faith of Christ, it was because he found in heathenism some elements of truth akin to Christianity, and a state of feeling favorable to an inquiry into the truths he had to present. He beheld in Athens an altar reared to the God he worshipped, and it afforded him some pleasure to find that God was not totally forgotten, and his worship totally neglected, by the Athenians. The God whom they knew imperfectly, "Him" said he, "I declare unto you;" I now desire to make him more fully known. The worship of "the Unknown God" was a recognition of the being of a God whose nature transcends all human thought, a God who is ineffable; who, as Plato said, "is hard to be discovered, and having discovered him, to make him known to all, impossible."[108] It is the confession of a want of knowledge, the expression of a desire to know, the acknowledgment of the duty of worshipping him. Underlying all the forms of idol-worship the eye of Paul recognized an influential Theism. Deep down in the pagan heart he discovered a "feeling after God"--a yearning for a deeper knowledge of the "unknown," the invisible, the incomprehensible, which he could not despise or disregard. The mysterious sentiments of fear, of reverence, of conscious dependence on a supernatural power and presence overshadowing man, which were expressed in the symbolism of the "sacred objects" which Paul saw everywhere in Athens, commanded his respect. And he alludes to their "devotions," not in the language of reproach or censure, but as furnishing to his own mind the evidence of the strength of their religious instincts, and the proof of the existence in their hearts of that native apprehension of the supernatural, the divine, which dwells alike in all human souls.
[Footnote 108: Timæus, ch. ix.]
The case of the Athenians has, therefore, a peculiar interest to every thoughtful mind. It confirms the belief that religion is a necessity to every human mind, a want of every human heart.[109] Without religion, the nature of man can never be properly developed; the noblest part of man--the divine, the spiritual element which dwells in man, as "the offspring of God"--must remain utterly dwarfed. The spirit, the personal being, the rational nature, is religious, and Atheism is the vain and the wicked attempt to be something less than man. If the spiritual nature of man has its normal and healthy development, he must become a worshipper. This is attested by the universal history of man. We look down the long-drawn aisles of antiquity, and everywhere we behold the smoking altar, the ascending incense, the prostrate form, the attitude of devotion. Athens, with her four thousand deities--Rome, with her crowded Pantheon of gods--Egypt, with her degrading superstitions--Hindostan, with her horrid and revolting rites--all attest that the religious principle is deeply seated in the nature of man. And we are sure religion can never be robbed of her supremacy, she can never be dethroned in the hearts of men. It were easier to satisfy the cravings of hunger by logical syllogisms, than to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart without religion. The attempt of Xerxes to bind the rushing floods of the Hellespont in chains was not more futile nor more impotent than the attempt of skepticism to repress the universal tendency to worship, so peculiar and so natural to man in every age and clime.
[Footnote 109: The indispensable necessity for a religion of some kind to satisfy the emotional nature of man is tacitly confessed by the atheist Comte in the publication of his "Catechism of Positive Religion."]
The unwillingness of many to recognize a religious element in the Athenian mind is further accounted for by their misconception of the meaning of the word "religion." We are all too much accustomed to regard religion as a mere system of dogmatic teaching. We use the terms "Christian religion," "Jewish religion," "Mohammedan religion," as comprehending simply the characteristic doctrines by which each is distinguished; whereas religion is a mode of thought, and feeling, and action, determined by the consciousness of our relation to and our dependence upon God. It does not appropriate to itself any specific department of our mental powers and susceptibilities, but it conditions the entire functions and circle of our spiritual life. It is not simply a mode of conceiving God in thought, nor simply a mode of venerating God in the affections, nor yet simply a mode of worshipping God in outward and formal acts, but it comprehends the whole. Religion (religere, respect, awe, reverence) regulates our thoughts, feelings, and acts towards God. "It is a reference and a relationship of our finite consciousness to the Creator and Sustainer and Governor of the universe." It is such a consciousness of the Divine as shall awaken in the heart of man the sentiments of reverence, fear, and gratitude towards God; such a sense of dependence as shall prompt man to pray, and lead him to perform external acts of worship.
Religion does not, therefore, consist exclusively in knowledge, however correct; and yet it must be preceded and accompanied by some intuitive cognition of a Supreme Being, and some conception of him as a free moral personality. But the religious sentiments, which belong rather to the heart than to the understanding of man--the consciousness of dependence, the sense of obligation, the feeling of reverence, the instinct to pray, the appetency to worship--these may all exist and be largely developed in a human mind even when, as in the case of the Athenians, there is a very imperfect knowledge of the real character of God.
Regarding this, then, as the generic conception of religion, namely, that it is a mode of thought and feeling and action determined by our consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, we claim that the apostle was perfectly right in complimenting the Athenians on their "more than ordinary religiousness," for,
1. They had, in some degree at least, that faith in the being and providence of God which precedes and accompanies all religion.
They had erected an altar to the unseen, the unsearchable, the incomprehensible, the unknown God. And this "unknown God" whom the Athenians "worshipped" was the true God, the God whom Paul worshipped, and whom he desired more fully to reveal to them; "Him declare I unto you." The Athenians had, therefore, some knowledge of the true God, some dim recognition, at least, of his being, and some conception, however imperfect, of his character. The Deity to whom the Athenians reared this altar is called "the unknown God," because he is unseen by all human eyes and incomprehensible to human thought. There is a sense in which to Paul, as well as to the Athenians--to the Christian as well as to the pagan--to the philosopher as well as to the peasant--God is "the unknown," and in which he must forever remain the incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thoughtful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his mind God is "the ineffable," the unspeakable. Zophar, the friend of Job, asks, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" This knowledge is "high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Does not Wesley teach us to sing,
"Hail, Father, whose creating call Unnumbered worlds attend; Jehovah, comprehending all, Whom none can comprehend?"
To his mind, as well as to the mind of the Athenian, God was "the great unseen, unknown." "Beyond the universe and man," says Cousin, "there remains in God something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. Hence, in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in this inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is therefore to us incomprehensible."[110] And without making ourselves in the least responsible for Hamilton's "negative" doctrine of the Infinite, or even responsible for the full import of his words, we may quote his remarkable utterances on this subject: "The Divinity is in part concealed and in part revealed. He is at once known and unknown. But the last and highest consecration of all true religion must be an altar 'to the unknown God.' In this consummation nature and religion, Paganism and Christianity, are at one."[111]
[Footnote 110: "Lectures," vol. i. p. 104.]
[Footnote 111: "Discussions on Philosophy," p. 23.]
When, therefore, the apostle affirms that while the Athenians worshipped the God whom he proclaimed they "knew him not," we can not understand him as saying they were destitute of all faith in the being of God, and of all ideas of his real character. Because for him to have asserted they had no knowledge of God would not only have been contrary to all the facts of the case, but also an utter contradiction of all his settled convictions and his recorded opinions. There is not in modern times a more earnest asserter of the doctrine that the human mind has an intuitive cognition of God, and that the external world reveals God to man. There is a passage in his letter to the Romans which is justly entitled to stand at the head of all discourses on "natural theology," Rom. i. 19-21. Speaking of the heathen world, who had not been favored, as the Jews, with a verbal revelation, he says, "That which may be known of God is manifest in them," that is, in the constitution and laws of their spiritual nature, "for God hath showed it unto them" in the voice of reason and of conscience, so that in the instincts of our hearts, in the elements of our moral nature, in the ideas and laws of our reason, we are taught the being of a God. These are the subjective teachings of the human soul.
Not only is the being of God revealed to man in the constitution and laws of his rational and moral nature, but God is also manifested to us objectively in the realm of things around us; therefore Paul adds, "The invisible things of him, even his eternal power and Godhead, from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." The world of sense, therefore, discloses the being and perfections of God. The invisible attributes of God are made apparent by the things that are visible. Forth out of nature, as the product of the Divine Mind, the supernatural shines. The forces, laws, and harmonies of the universe are indices of the presence of a presiding and informing Intelligence. The creation itself is an example of God's coming forth out of the mysterious depths of his own eternal and invisible being, and making himself apparent to man. There, on the pages of the volume of nature, we may read, in the marvellous language of symbol, the grand conceptions, the glorious thoughts, the ideals of beauty which dwell in the uncreated Mind, These two sources of knowledge--the subjective teachings of God in the human soul, and the objective manifestations of God in the visible universe--harmonize, and, together, fill up the complement of our natural idea of God. They are two hemispheres of thought, which together form one full-orbed fountain of light, and ought never to be separated in our philosophy. And, inasmuch as this divine light shines on all human minds, and these works of God are seen by all human eyes, the apostle argues that the heathen world "is without excuse, because, knowing God (gnontes ton Theon) they did not glorify him as God, neither were thankful; but in their reasonings they went astray after vanities, and their hearts, being void of wisdom, were filled with darkness. Calling themselves wise, they were turned into fools, and changed the glory of the imperishable God for idols graven in the likeness of perishable man, or of birds, and beasts, and creeping things,...and they bartered the truth of God for lies, and reverenced and worshipped the things made rather than the Maker, who is blessed forever. Amen."[112]
[Footnote 112: Rom. i. 21-25, Conybeare and Howson's translation.]
The brief and elliptical report of Paul's address on Mars' Hill must therefore, in all fairness, be interpreted in the light of his more carefully elaborated statements in the Epistle to the Romans. And when Paul intimates that the Athenians "knew not God," we can not understand him as saying they had no knowledge, but that their knowledge was imperfect. They did not know God as Creator, Father, and Ruler; above all, they did not know him as a pardoning God and a sanctifying Spirit. They had not that knowledge of God which purifies the heart, and changes the character, and gives its possessor eternal life.
The apostle clearly and unequivocally recognizes this truth, that the idea of God is connatural to the human mind; that in fact there is not to be found a race of men upon the face of the globe utterly destitute of some idea of a Supreme Being. Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthful development, it has spontaneously and necessarily led the human mind to the recognition of a God. The Athenians were no exception to this general law. They believed in the existence of one supreme and eternal Mind, invisible, incomprehensible, infeffable--"the unknown God."
2. The Athenians had also that consciousness of dependence upon God which is the foundation of all the primary religious emotions.
When the apostle affirmed that "in God we live, and move, and have our being," he uttered the sentiments of many, if not all, of his hearers, and in support of that affirmation he could quote the words of their own poets, for we are also his offspring; [113] and, as his offspring, we have a derived and a dependent being. Indeed, this consciousness of dependence is analogous to the feeling which is awakened in the heart of a child when its parent is first manifested to its opening mind as the giver of those things which it immediately needs, as its continual protector, and as the preserver of its life. The moment a man becomes conscious of his own personality, that moment he becomes conscious of some relation to another personality, to which he is subject, and on which he depends.[114]
[Footnote 113:
"Jove's presence fills all space, upholds this ball; All need his aid; his power sustains us all, For we his offspring are." Aratus, "The Phænomena," book v. p. 5.
Aratus was a poet of Cilicia, Paul's native province. He flourished B.C. 277.
"Great and divine Father, whose names are many, But who art one and the same unchangeable, almighty power; O thou supreme Author of nature! That governest by a single unerring law! Hail King! For thou art able, to enforce obedience from all frail mortals, Because we are all thine offspring, The image and the echo only of thy eternal voice." Cleanthes, "Hymn to Jupiter."
Cleanthes was the pupil of Zeno, and his successor as chief of the Stoic philosophers.]
[Footnote 114: "As soon as a man becomes conscious of himself, as soon as he perceives himself as distinct from other persons and things, he at the same moment becomes conscious of a higher self, a higher power, without which he feels that neither he nor any thing else would have any life or reality. We are so fashioned that as soon as we awake we feel on all sides our dependence on something else; and all nations join in some way or another in the words of the Psalmist, 'It is He that made us, not we ourselves.' This is the first sense of the Godhead, the sensus numinis, as it has well been called; for it is a sensus, an immediate perception, not the result of reasoning or generalization, but an intuition as irresistible as the impressions of our senses.... This sensus numinis, or, as we may call it in more homely language, faith, is the source of all religion; it is that without which no religion, whether true or false, is possible."--Max Müller, "Science of Language," Second Series, p. 455.]
A little reflection will convince us that this is the necessary order in which human consciousness is developed.
There are at least two fundamental and radical tendencies in human personality, namely, to know and to act. If we would conceive of them as they exist in the innermost sphere of selfhood, we must distinguish the first as self-consciousness, and the second as self-determination. These are unquestionably the two factors of human personality.
If we consider the first of these factors more closely, we shall discover that self-consciousness exists under limitations and conditions. Man can not become clearly conscious of self without distinguishing himself from the outer world of sensation, nor without distinguishing self and the world from another being upon whom they depend as the ultimate substance and cause. Mere coenoeesthesis is not consciousness. Common feeling is unquestionably found among the lowest forms of animal life, the protozoa; but it can never rise to a clear consciousness of personality until it can distinguish itself from sensation, and acquire a presentiment of a divine power, on which self and the outer world depend. The Ego does not exist for itself, can not perceive itself, but by distinguishing itself from the ceaseless flow and change of sensation, and by this act of distinguishing, the Ego takes place in consciousness. And the Ego can not perceive itself, nor cognize sensation as a state or affection of the Ego except by the intervention of the reason, which supplies the two great fundamental laws of causality and substance. The facts of consciousness thus comprehend three elements--self, nature, and God. The determinate being, the Ego, is never an absolutely independent being, but is always in some way or other codetermined by another; it can not, therefore, be an absolutely original and independent, but must in some way or another be a derived and conditioned existence.
Now that which limits and conditions human self-consciousness can not be mere nature, because nature can not give what it does not possess; it can not produce what is toto genere different from itself. Self-consciousness can not arise out of unconsciousness. This new beginning is beyond the power of nature. Personal power, the creative principle of all new beginnings, is alone adequate to its production. If, then, self-consciousness exists in man, it necessarily presupposes an absolutely original, therefore unconditioned, self-consciousness. Human self-consciousness, in its temporal actualization, of course presupposes a nature-basis upon which it elevates itself; but it is only possible on the ground that an eternal self-conscious Mind ordained and rules over all the processes of nature, and implants the divine spark of the personal spirit with the corporeal frame, to realize itself in the light-flame of human self-consciousness. The original light of the divine self-consciousness is eternally and absolutely first and before all. "Thus, in the depths of our own self-consciousness, as its concealed background, the God-consciousness reveals itself to us. This descent into our inmost being is at the same time an ascent to God. Every deep reflection on ourselves breaks through the mere crust of world-consciousness, which separates us from the inmost truth of our existence, and leads us up to Him in whom we live and move and are."[115]
[Footnote 115: Müller, "Christian Doctrine of Sin," vol. i. p. 81.]
Self-determination, equally with self-consciousness, exists in us under manifold limitations. Self-determination is limited by physical, corporeal, and mental conditions, so that there is "an impassable boundary line drawn around the area of volitional freedom." But the most fundamental and original limitation is that of duty. The self-determining power of man is not only circumscribed by necessary conditions, but also by the moral law in the consciousness of man. Self-determination alone does not suffice for the full conception of responsible freedom; it only becomes, will, properly by its being an intelligent and conscious determination; that is, the rational subject is able previously to recognize "the right," and present before his mind that which he ought to do, that which he is morally bound to realize and actualize by his own self-determination and choice. Accordingly we find in our inmost being a sense of obligation to obey the moral law as revealed in the conscience. As we can not become conscious of self without also becoming conscious of God, so we can not become properly conscious of self-determination until we have recognized in the conscience a law for the movements of the will.
Now this moral law, as revealed in the conscience, is not a mere autonomy--a simple subjective law having no relation to a personal lawgiver out of and above man. Every admonition of conscience directly excites the consciousness of a God to whom man is accountable. The universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, has always associated the phenomena of conscience with the idea of a personal Power above man, to whom he is subject and upon whom he depends. In every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty apprehensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices, and penances, and prayers to expatiate his wrath.
It is clear, then, that if man has duties there must he a self-conscious Will by whom these duties are imposed, for only a real will can be legislative. If man has a sense of obligation, there must be a supreme authority by which he is obliged. If he is responsible, there must be a being to whom he is accountable.[116] It can not be said that he is accountable to himself, for by that supposition the idea of duty is obliterated, and "right" becomes identical with mere interest or pleasure. It can not be said that he is simply responsible to society--to mere conventions of human opinions and human governments--for then "right" becomes a mere creature of human legislation, and "justice" is nothing but the arbitrary will of the strong who tyrannize over the weak. Might constitutes right. Against such hypotheses the human mind, however, instinctively revolts. Mankind feel, universally, that there is an authority beyond all human governments, and a higher law above all human laws, from whence all their powers are derived. That higher law is the Law of God, that supreme authority is the God of Justice. To this eternally just God, innocence, under oppression and wrong, has made its proud appeal, like that of Prometheus to the elements, to the witnessing clouds, to coming ages, and has been sustained and comforted. And to that higher law the weak have confidently appealed against the unrighteous enactments of the strong, and have finally conquered. The last and inmost ground of all obligation is thus the conscious relation of the moral creature to God. The sense of absolute dependence upon a Supreme Being compels man, even while conscious of subjective freedom, to recognize at the same time his obligation to determine himself in harmony with the will of Him "in whom we live, and move, and are."
[Footnote 116: "The thought of God will wake up a terrible monitor whose name is Judge."--Kant.]
This feeling of dependence, and this consequent sense of obligation, lie at the very foundation of all religion. They lead the mind towards God, and anchor it in the Divine. They prompt man to pray, and inspire him with an instinctive confidence in the efficacy of prayer. So that prayer is natural to man, and necessary to man. Never yet has the traveller found a people on earth without prayer. Races of men have been found without houses, without raiment, without arts and sciences, but never without prayer any more than without speech. Plutarch wrote, eighteen centuries ago, If you go through all the world, you may find cities without walls, without letters, without rulers, without money, without theatres, but never without temples and gods, or without prayers, oaths, prophecies, and sacrifices, used to obtain blessings and benefits, or to avert curses and calamities.[117] The naturalness of prayer is admitted even by the modern unbeliever. Gerrit Smith says, "Let us who believe that the religion of reason calls for the religion of nature, remember that the flow of prayer is just as natural as the flow of water; the prayerless man has become an unnatural man."[118] Is man in sorrow or in danger, his most natural and spontaneous refuge is in prayer. The suffering, bewildered, terror-stricken soul turns towards God. "Nature in an agony is no atheist; the soul that knows not where to fly, flies to God." And in the hour of deliverance and joy, a feeling of gratitude pervades the soul--and gratitude, too, not to some blind nature-force, to some unconscious and impersonal power, but gratitude to God. The soul's natural and appropriate language in the hour of deliverance is thanksgiving and praise.
[Footnote 117: "Against Kalotes," ch. xxxi.]
[Footnote 118: "Religion of Reason."]
This universal tendency to recognize a superior Power upon whom we are dependent, and by whose hand our well-being and our destinies are absolutely controlled, has revealed itself even amid the most complicated forms of polytheistic worship. Amid the even and undisturbed flow of every-day life they might be satisfied with the worship of subordinate deities, but in the midst of sudden and unexpected calamities, and of terrible catastrophes, then they cried to the Supreme God.[119] "When alarmed by an earthquake," says Aulus Gellius, "the ancient Romans were accustomed to pray, not to some one of the gods individually, but to God in general, as to the Unknown."[120]
[Footnote 119: "At critical moments, when the deepest feelings of the human heart are stirred, the old Greeks and Romans seem suddenly to have dropped all mythological ideas, and to have fallen back on the universal language of true religion."--Max Müller, "Science of Language." p. 436.]
[Footnote 120: Tholuck, "Nature and Influence of Heathenism," p. 23.]
"Thus also Minutius Felix says, 'When they stretch out their hands to heaven they mention only God; and these forms of speech, He is great, and God is true, and If God grant(which are the natural language of the vulgar), are a plain confession of the truth of Christianity.' And also Lactantius testifies, 'When they swear, and when they wish, and when they give thanks, they name not many gods, but God only; the truth, by a secret force of nature, thus breaking forth from them whether they will or no;' and again he says, 'They fly to God; aid is desired of God; they pray that God would help them; and when one is reduced to extreme necessity, he begs for God's sake, and by his divine power alone implores the mercy of men.'"[121] The account which is given by Diogenes Laertius[122] of the erection of altars bearing the inscription "to the unknown God," clearly shows that they had their origin in this general sentiment of dependence on a higher Power. "The Athenians being afflicted with pestilence invited Epimenides to lustrate their city. The method adopted by him was to carry several sheep to the Areopagus, whence they were left to wander as they pleased, under the observation of persons sent to attend them. As each sheep lay down it was sacrificed to the propitious God. By this ceremony it is said the city was relieved; but as it was still unknown what deity was propitious, an altar was erected to the unknown God on every spot where a sheep had been sacrificed."[123]
[Footnote 121: Cudworth, vol. i. p. 300.]
[Footnote 122: "Lives of Philosophers," book i., Epimenides.]
[Footnote 123: See Townsend's "Chronological Arrangement of New Testament," note 19, part xii.; Doddridge's "Exposition;" and Barnes's "Notes on Acts."]
"The unknown God" was their deliverer from the plague. And the erection of an altar to him was a confession of their absolute dependence upon him, of their obligation to worship him, as well as of their need of a deeper knowledge of him. The gods who were known and named were not able to deliver them in times of calamity, and they were compelled to look beyond the existing forms of Grecian mythology for relief. Beyond all the gods of the Olympus there was "one God over all," the Father of gods and men, the Creator of all the subordinate local deities, upon whom even these created gods were dependent, upon whom man was absolutely dependent, and therefore in times of deepest need, of severest suffering, of extremest peril, then they cried to the living, supreme, eternal God.[124]
[Footnote 124: "The men and women of the Iliad and Odyssey are habitually religious. The language of religion is often on their tongues, as it is ever on the lips of every body in the East at this day. The thought of the gods, and of their providence and government of the world, is a familiar thought. They seem to have an abiding conviction of their dependence on the gods. The results of all actions depend on the will of the gods; it lies on their knees (Theôn ev gounasi keitai, Od. i. 267), is the often repeated and significant expression of their feeling of dependence."--Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," p. 165.]
3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious emotions which always accompany the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being.
The first emotional element of all religion is fear. This is unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a Christian or a heathen stand-point. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Associated with, perhaps preceding, all definite ideas of God, there exists in the human mind certain feelings of awe, and reverence, and fear which arise spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an overshadowing Presence which "compasseth man behind and before, and lays its hand upon him."
This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and presence pervading and informing all nature is beautifully described by Wordsworth in his history of the development of the Scottish herdsman's mind:
So the foundations of his mind were laid In such communion, not from terror free. While yet a child, and long before his time, Had he perceived the presence and the power Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed So vividly great objects, that they lay Upon his mind like substances, whose presence Perplexed the bodily sense. ... In the after-day Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn, And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags, He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments, Or from the power of a peculiar eye, Or by creative feeling overborne, Or by predominance of thought oppressed, Even in their fixed and steady lineaments He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind.... Such was the Boy,--but for the growing Youth, What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked: Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched. And in their silent faces could he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life, In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God.[125]
But it may be said this is all mere poetry; to which we answer, in the words of Aristotle, "Poetry is a thing more philosophical and weightier than history."[126] The true poet is the interpreter of nature. His soul is in the fullest sympathy with the grand ideas which nature symbolizes, and he "deciphers the universe as the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit." Spontaneous feeling is a kind of inspiration.
It is true that all minds may not be developed in precisely the same manner as Wordsworth's herdsman's, because the development of every individual mind is modified in some measure by exterior conditions. Men may contemplate nature from different points of view. Some may be impressed with one aspect of nature, some with another. But none will fail to recognize a mysterious presence and invisible power beneath all the fleeting and changeful phenomena of the universe. "And sometimes there are moments of tenderness, of sorrow, and of vague mystery which bring the feeling of the Infinite Presence close to the human heart."[127]
[Footnote 125: "The Wanderer."]
[Footnote 126: Poet, ch. ix.]
[Footnote 127: Robertson.]
Now we hold that this feeling and sentiment of the Divine--the supernatural--exists in every mind. It may be, it undoubtedly is, somewhat modified in its manifestations by the circumstances in which men are placed, and the degree of culture they have enjoyed. The African Fetichist, in his moral and intellectual debasement, conceives a supernatural power enshrined in every object of nature. The rude Fijian regards with dread, and even terror, the Being who darts the lightnings and wields the thunderbolts. The Indian "sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." The Scottish "herdsman" on the lonely mountain-top "feels the presence and the power of greatness," and "in its fixed and steady lineaments he sees an ebbing and a flowing mind." The philosopher[128] lifts his eyes to "the starry heavens" in all the depth of their concave, and with all their constellations of glory moving on in solemn grandeur, and, to his mind, these immeasurable regions seem "filled with the splendors of the Deity, and crowded with the monuments of his power;" or he turns his eye to "the Moral Law within," and he hears the voice of an intelligent and a righteous God. In all these cases we have a revelation of the sentiment of the Divine, which dwells alike in all human minds. In the Athenians this sentiment was developed in a high degree. The serene heaven which Greece enjoyed, and which was the best-loved roof of its inhabitants, the brilliant sun, the mountain scenery of unsurpassed grandeur, the deep blue sea, an image of the infinite, these poured all their fullness on the Athenian mind, and furnished the most favorable conditions for the development of the religious sentiments. The people of Athens spent most of their time in the open air in communion with nature, and in the cheerful and temperate enjoyment of existence. To recognize the Deity in the living powers of nature, and especially in man, as the highest sensible manifestation of the Divine, was the peculiar prerogative of the Grecian mind. And here in Athens, art also vied with nature to deepen the religious sentiments. It raised the mind to ideal conceptions of a beauty and a sublimity which transcended all mere nature-forms, and by images, of supernatural grandeur and loveliness presented to the Athenians symbolic representations of the separate attributes and operations of the invisible God. The plastic art of Greece was designed to express religious ideas, and was consecrated by religious feeling. Thus the facts of the case are strikingly in harmony with the words of the Apostle: "All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion," your "reverence for the Deity," your "fear of God."[129] "The sacred objects" in Athens, and especially "the altar to the Unknown God," were all regarded by Paul as evidences of their instinctive faith in the invisible, the supernatural, the divine.
[Footnote 128: Kant, in "Critique of Practical Reason."]
[Footnote 129: See Parkhurst's Lexicon, under Deisidaimonia, which Suidas explains by eulabeia peri to Theion--reverence for the Divine, and Hesychius by Phubutheia--fear of God. Also, Josephus, Antiq., book x. ch. iii, § 2: "Manasseh, after his repentance and reformation, strove to behave himself (tê deisidaimonia chrêstheia) in the most religious manner towards God." Also see A. Clarke on Acts xvii.]
Along with this sentiment of the Divine there is also associated, in all human minds, an instinctive yearning after the Invisible; not a mere feeling of curiosity to pierce the mystery of being and of life, but what Paul designates "a feeling after God," which prompts man to seek after a deeper knowledge, and a more immediate consciousness. To attain this deeper knowledge--this more conscious realization of the being and the presence of God, has been the effort of all philosophy and all religion in all ages. The Hindoo Yogis proposes to withdraw into his inmost self, and by a complete suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.[130] Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend "the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become "assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortification to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections in himself; and in an ecstatic state, wherein all individuality vanishes, he would realize a union, or identity, with the Divine Essence.[131] While the universal Church of God, indeed, has in her purest days always taught that man may, by inward purity and a believing love, be rendered capable of spiritually apprehending, and consciously feeling, the presence of God. Some may be disposed to pronounce this as all mere mysticism. We answer, The living internal energy of religion is always mystical, it is grounded in feeling--a "sensus numinis" common to humanity. It is the mysterious sentiment of the Divine; it is the prolepsis of the human spirit reaching out towards the Infinite; the living susceptibility of our spiritual nature stretching after the powers and influences of the higher world. It is upon this inner instinct of the supernatural that all religion rests. I do not say every religious idea, but whatever is positive, practical, powerful, durable, and popular. Everywhere, in all climates, in all epochs of history, and in all degrees of civilization, man is animated by the sentiment--I would rather say, the presentiment--that the world in which he lives, the order of things in the midst of which he moves, the facts which regularly and constantly succeed each other, are not all. In vain he daily makes discoveries and conquests in this vast universe; in vain he observes and learnedly verifies the general laws which govern it; his thought is not inclosed in the world surrendered to his science; the spectacle of it does not suffice his soul, it is raised beyond it; it searches after and catches glimpses of something beyond it; it aspires higher both for the universe and itself; it aims at another destiny, another master.
[Footnote 130: Vaughan, "Hours with the Mystics," vol. i. p. 44.]
[Footnote 131: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 65.]
"'Par delà tous ces cieux le Dieu des cieux réside.'"[132]
So Voltaire has said, and the God who is beyond the skies is not nature personified, but a supernatural Personality. It is to this highest Personality that all religions address themselves. It is to bring man into communion with Him that they exist.[133]
[Footnote 132: "Beyond all these heavens the God of the heavens resides."]
[Footnote 133: Guizot, "L'Eglise et la Societé Chretiennes" en 1861.]
4. The Athenians had that deep consciousness of sin and guilt, and of consequent liability to punishment, which confesses the need of expiation by piacular sacrifices.
Every man feels himself to be an accountable being, and he is conscious that in wrong-doing he is deserving of blame and of punishment. Deep within the soul of the transgressor is the consciousness that he is a guilty man, and he is haunted with the perpetual apprehension of a retribution which, like the spectre of evil omen, crosses his every path, and meets him at every turn.
"'Tis guilt alone, Like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mode, Fills the light air with visionary terrors, And shapeless forms of fear."
Man does not possess this consciousness of guilt so much as it holds possession of him. It pursues the fugitive from justice, and it lays hold on the man who has resisted or escaped the hand of the executioner. The sense of guilt is a power over and above man; a power so wonderful that it often compels the most reckless criminal to deliver himself up, with the confession of his deed, to the sword of justice, when a falsehood would have easily protected him. Man is only able by persevering, ever-repeated efforts at self-induration, against the remonstrances of conscience, to withdraw himself from its power. His success is, however, but very partial; for sometimes, in the moments of his greatest security, the reproaches of conscience break in upon him like a flood, and sweep away all his refuge of lies. "The evil conscience is the divine bond which binds the created spirit, even in deep apostasy, to its Original. In the consciousness of guilt there is revealed the essential relation of our spirit to God, although misunderstood by man until he has something higher than his evil conscience. The trouble and anguish which the remonstrances of this consciousness excite--the inward unrest which sometimes seizes the slave of sin--are proofs that he has not quite broken away from God."[134]
[Footnote 134: Müller, "Christian Doctrine of Sin," vol. i. pp. 225, 226.]
In Grecian mythology there was a very distinct recognition of the power of conscience, and a reference of its authority to the Divinity, together with the idea of retribution. Nemesis was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraidings of conscience, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in the human heart after the commission of sin. And as the feeling of remorse may be considered as the consequence of the displeasure and vengeance of an offended God, Nemesis came to be regarded as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable woe and ruin. The Erinyes or Eumenides are the deities whose business it is to punish, in hades, the crimes committed upon earth. When an aggravated crime has excited their displeasure they manifest their greatest power in the disquietude of conscience.
Along with this deep consciousness of guilt, and this fear of retribution which haunts the guilty mind, there has also rested upon the heart of universal humanity a deep and abiding conviction that something must be done to expiate the guilt of sin--some restitution must be made, some suffering must be endured,[135] some sacrifice offered to atone for past misdeeds. Hence it is that men in all ages have had recourse to penances and prayers, to self-inflicted tortures and costly sacrifices to appease a righteous anger which their sins had excited, and avert an impending punishment. That sacrifice to atone for sin has prevailed universally--that it has been practised "sem-per, ubique, et ab omnibus," always, in all places, and by all men--will not be denied by the candid and competent inquirer. The evidence which has been collected from ancient history by Grotius and Magee, and the additional evidence from contemporaneous history, which is being now furnished by the researches of ethnologists and Christian missionaries, is conclusive. No intelligent man can doubt the fact. Sacrificial offerings have prevailed in every nation and in every age. "Almost the entire worship of the pagan nations consisted in rites of deprecation. Fear of the Divine displeasure seems to have been the leading feature of their religious impressions; and in the diversity, the costliness, the cruelty of their sacrifices they sought to appease gods to whose wrath they felt themselves exposed, from a consciousness of sin, unrelieved by any information as to the means of escaping its effects."[136]
[Footnote 135: Punishment is the penalty due to sin; or, to use the favorite expression of Homer, not unusual in the Scriptures also, it is the payment of a debt incurred by sin. When he is punished, the criminal is said to pay off or pay back (apotinein) his crimes; in other words, to expiate or atone for them (Iliad, iv. 161,162),
syn te megalô apetisan syn sphêsin kephalêsi gynaixi te kai tekeessin.
that is, they shall pay off, pay back, atone, etc., for their treachery with a great price, with their lives, and their wives and children.--Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," p. 194.]
[Footnote 136: Magee, "On the Atonement," No. V. p. 30.]
It must be known to every one at all acquainted with Greek mythology that the idea of expiation--atonement--was a fundamental idea of their religion. Independent of any historical research, a very slight glance at the Greek and Roman classics, especially the poets, who were the theologians of that age, can leave little doubt upon this head.[137] Their language everywhere announces the notion of propitiation, and, particularly the Latin, furnishes the terms which are still employed in theology. We need only mention the words ilasmos, ilaskomai, lytron, peripsêma, as examples from the Greek, and placare, propitiare, expiare, piaculum, from the Latin. All these indicate that the notion of expiation was interwoven into the very modes of thought and framework of the language of the ancient Greeks.
[Footnote 137: In Homer the doctrine is expressly taught that the gods may, and sometimes do, remit the penalty, when duly propitiated by prayers and sacrifices accompanied by suitable reparations ("Iliad," ix. 497 sqq.). "We have a practical illustration of this doctrine in the first book of the Iliad, where Apollo averts the pestilence from the army, when the daughter of his priest is returned without ransom, and a sacrifice (elatombê) is sent to the altar of the god at sacred Chrysa.... Apollo hearkens to the intercession of his priest, accepts the sacred hecatomb, is delighted with the accompanying songs and libations, and sends back the embassy with a favoring breeze, and a favorable answer to the army, who meanwhile had been purifying (apelymainonto) themselves, and offering unblemished hecatombs of bulls and goats on the shore of the sea which washes the place of their encampment."
"The object of the propitiatory embassy to Apollo is thus stated by Ulysses: Agamemnon, king of men, has sent me to bring back thy daughter Chryses, and to offer a sacred hecatomb for (yper) the Greeks, that we may propitiate (ilasomestha) the king, who now sends woes and many groans upon the Argives" (442 sqq.).--Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," pp. 196, 197.]
We do not deem it needful to discuss at length the question which has been so earnestly debated among theologians, as to whether the idea of expiation be a primitive and necessary idea of the human mind, or whether the practice of piacular sacrifices came into the post-diluvian world with Noah, as a positive institution of a primitive religion then first directly instituted by God. On either hypothesis the practice of expiatory rites derives its authority from God; in the latter case, by an outward and verbal revelation, in the former by an inward and intuitive revelation.
This much, however, must be conceded on all hands, that there are certain fundamental intuitions, universal and necessary, which underlie the almost universal practice of expiatory sacrifice, namely, the universal consciousness of guilt, and the universal conviction that something must be done to expiate guilt, to compensate for wrong, and to atone for past misdeeds. But how that expiation can be effected, how that atonement can be made, is a question which reason does not seem competent to answer. That personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own sins are not transferable either in their guilt or punishment, is so obviously just that we feel it must have been as clear to the mind of the Greek who brought his victim to be offered to Zeus, as it is to the philosophic mind of to-day.[138] The knowledge that the Divine displeasure can be averted by sacrifice is not, by Plato, grounded upon any intuition of reason, as is the existence of God, the idea of the true, the just, and good, but on "tradition,"[139] and the "interpretations" of Apollo. "To the Delphian Apollo there remains the greatest, noblest, and most important of legal institutions--the erection of temples, sacrifices, and other services to the gods,... and what other services should be gone through with a view to their propitiation. Such things as these, indeed, we neither know ourselves, nor in founding the State would we intrust them to others, if we be wise;... the god of the country is the natural interpreter to all men about such matters."[140]
[Footnote 138: "He that hath done the deed, to suffer for it--thus cries a proverb thrice hallowed by age."--Æschylus, "Choëph," 311.]
[Footnote 139: "Laws," book vi. ch. xv.]
[Footnote 140: "Republic," book iv. ch. v.]
The origin of expiatory sacrifices can not, we think, be explained except on the principle of a primitive revelation and a positive appointment of God. They can not be understood except as a divinely-appointed symbolism, in which there is exhibited a confession of personal guilt and desert of punishment; an intimation and a hope that God will be propitious and merciful; and a typical promise and prophecy of a future Redeemer from sin, who shall "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." This sacred rite was instituted in connection with the protevangelium given to our first parents; it was diffused among the nations by tradition, and has been kept alive as a general, and, indeed, almost universal observance, by that deep sense of sin, and consciousness of guilt, and personal urgency of the need of a reconciliation, which are so clearly displayed in Grecian mythology.
The legitimate inference we find ourselves entitled to draw from the words of Paul, when fairly interpreted in the light of the past religious history of the world, is, that the Athenians were a religious people; that is, they were, however unknowing, believers in and worshippers of the One Supreme God.