Part 11 (1/2)
But it may be said these crosses, these crucifixes, are peculiar to Catholic countries. You do not see them in North Germany, in England, in America. Teutonic nations do not parade this sacrifice. No, they do not, for it does not appeal to them so much as to the nations of Southern Europe. Sacrifice was not unknown to the Teutons and the Northern people, but it never reached the height it did further South. It has been the Latin peoples who in this as in other matters went to extremes.
It was the Greeks who sacrificed Iphigenia, who had the festival of the Thargalia; it was Rome which produced Curtius and others who sacrificed themselves. It was the Romans who sacrificed thousands in the Coliseum.
It is in the tumuli of Celtic peoples where we find the cloven skulls of slaves.
Sacrifice has appealed always more to the Latin then and now; and therefore you see the crucifix in Latin countries, but not with us.
Still, we are not free from the emotion. We have the sacrament of Communion; the Atonement appeals to us also. The pa.s.sions that are strong in the Latin peoples are weak with us, yet they exist. The instincts are the same. When executions were public our people thronged to see them. Death has always a peculiar attraction, quite apart from any idea connected with it. It is such a wonderful thing the taking of life, so awe-inspiring, that it has appealed always to men; especially in the west.
In the East that has accepted Buddhism, especially in Burma, it is much less so. They have, it is true, the usual pleasure and curiosity in seeing blood and death. And occasionally you come across some petty sacrifice like that of the fowls mentioned above; but the instinct is comparatively weak. It has never, even before they were Buddhists, been general, and never extended even to cattle. The sacrifice of a man (remember, I say sacrifice, not execution), would be absolutely abhorrent to them, how much more so that of a G.o.d? They have not the instinctive recognition of any beauty in it. Therefore, for this amongst other reasons, the Burmese reject Christianity.
But to the Western instinct this sacrifice and this atonement is wonderful and beautiful. It appeals to us. The old instinct is satisfied.
Therefore, amongst other reasons, Christians cling to the Atonement, and to make that sacrifice the greatest possible it must be the sacrifice of G.o.d, and as G.o.d can only be sacrificed to G.o.d the Christian G.o.d must be a multiple one. To postulate as the Mahommedan does, G.o.d is G.o.d, would destroy the depth of the Atonement. Hence arises the creed, the attempt to reconcile two opposed instincts. There is one G.o.d--that is an instinct, arising from our generalising power; there must be at least two G.o.ds to explain the Atonement, and so we have the Father and the Son.
For of the three G.o.dheads only these two are real to most people. There is G.o.d the Ruler, the Maker of the world, and there is Christ. These are both very real to all Christians. They are prayed to individually, they are wors.h.i.+pped separately, they are clear conceptions. But is there any clear conception of the Holy Ghost as a distinct personality? Is He ever cited separately from the others? Has He any special characteristics?
There are, for instance, many pictures of G.o.d, and many more of Christ--are there any of the Holy Ghost? This Third Person of the Trinity appeals to no instinct, and is only an abstraction in popular thought. When the Creed was framed it was necessary to include the Holy Ghost because He is mentioned in the New Testament. He has remained an abstraction only. But the other two G.o.dheads are realities, because they appeal to feelings that are innate. They are the explanation of these feelings.
Thus do creeds arise out of instincts. It is never the reverse.
Postulate G.o.d the Father as All-Powerful, All-Merciful, and see if by any possibility you can work out the Atonement or see any beauty in it.
Can anyone see aught but horror in this Almighty demanding the sacrifice of His Son? You cannot. But granted that Atonement and sacrifice have to you an innate beauty of their own, and the dogma of a multiple G.o.dhead easily follows. There are creeds built on ceremonies, and ceremonies upon instincts: ceremonies are never deduced from creeds.
CHAPTER XX.
G.o.d THE MOTHER.
The only other form in which the Christ is presented to popular adoration is as a baby in the Madonna's arms. Out of all the life of Christ, all the varied events of that career which has left such a great mark upon the Western world, only the beginning and the end are pictured. Christ the teacher, Christ the preacher, the restorer of the dead to life, the feeder of the hungry, the newly arisen from the grave, where is He? The great masters have painted Him, but popular thought remembers nothing of all that. There is Christ the sacrificed and Christ the infant with His mother. To the Latin people these two phases represent all that is worth daily remembrance. There are crucifixes and Madonnas in every hill side, by every road, at the street corners, in every house, and of the rest of the story not a sign.
What is the emotion to which the Madonna appeals? Why do she and her Child thus live in Latin thought?
There are historians who tell us that the wors.h.i.+p of the Madonna was introduced from Egypt. She is Astarte, Queen of Heaven, the Phoenician G.o.ddess of married love or maternity, she is the Egyptian Isis with her son Horus. It is a cult that was introduced through Spain, and took root among the Latin people and grew. There is no question here of Christ, they say; it is the G.o.ddess and her son.
It has also absorbed the wors.h.i.+p of Venus and Aphrodite. Venus was the tutelary G.o.ddess of Rome, she was the G.o.ddess of maternity, of production. It was not till the Greek idea of beauty in Aphrodite came to Rome and became confounded with the G.o.ddess Venus that her status changed. She was the G.o.ddess of married love, she became later the emblem of l.u.s.t. But it was she who purified marriage to the old Roman faith; she was the purifier, the justifier, the G.o.ddess of motherhood, which is the sanction of love and marriage.
It may be that all this is true. It may be possible to trace the wors.h.i.+p back through the various changes to Astarte, Ashtoreth, to Isis, to older G.o.ds, maybe, than these. All this may be true, and yet be no explanation. The old G.o.ds are dead. Why does she alone survive? What is the instinct that requires her, that pictures her on the street corners, that makes her wors.h.i.+p a living wors.h.i.+p to-day?
And why is it that she appeals not at all to the Teutonic people? Where are her pictures in Protestant Germany, in England, in Scotland, in America? Do you ever hear of her there? Do the preachers tell of her, the picture makers paint her, the people pray to her? Such a wors.h.i.+p is impossible. And why? What is the answer that to-day gives to that question? Is the answer difficult? I think not, for it is written in the hearts of the people, it is written in the laws they have made, in the customs they adhere to, in the oaths they take, in their daily lives.
Consider the Roman laws of two thousand and more years ago, the French laws of to-day. What is there most striking to us when we study them? It is, I think, the cult of the family.
The Roman son was his father's slave. He could not own property apart from the father, he could not marry without leave, his father could execute him without any trial. Family life lay outside the law; not Senate, nor Consul nor Emperor could interfere there. The unit in Rome was not the man, but the family.
As it was so it is. The laws are less stringent, but the idea remains. A man belongs not to himself but to his people, to his father and to his mother. In France even now he has to ask their leave to marry. The property is often family property, and his family may restrain a man from wasting it.
There is no bond anywhere stronger than the family bond of the Latin peoples. In mediaeval Rome, even often in Rome of to-day, all the sons live with their father and mother even if married. It is the custom, and, like all customs that live, it lives because it is in accord with the feelings of those who obey it.