Part 9 (1/2)
It may be appropriate here, before leaving the subject of the Second Birth, to inquire how it has come about that this doctrine--so remote and metaphysical as it might appear--has been taken up and embodied in their creeds and rituals by quite PRIMITIVE people all over the world, to such a degree indeed that it has ultimately been adopted and built into the foundations of the latter and more intellectual religions, like Hinduism, Mithraism, and the Egyptian and Christian cults. I think the answer to this question must be found in the now-familiar fact that the earliest peoples felt themselves so much a part of Nature and the animal and vegetable world around them that (whenever they thought about these matters at all) they never for a moment doubted that the things which were happening all round them in the external world were also happening within themselves. They saw the Sun, overclouded and nigh to death in winter, come to its birth again each year; they saw the Vegetation shoot forth anew in spring--the revival of the spirit of the Earth; the endless breeding of the Animals, the strange transformations of Worms and Insects; the obviously new life taken on by boys and girls at p.u.b.erty; the same at a later age when the novice was transformed into the medicine-man--the choupan into the angakok among the Esquimaux, the Dacotah youth into the wakan among the Red Indians; and they felt in their sub-conscious way the same everlasting forces of rebirth and transformation working within themselves. In some of the Greek Mysteries the newly admitted Initiates were fed for some time after on milk only ”as though we were being born again.” (See Sall.u.s.tius, quoted by Gilbert Murray.) When sub-conscious knowledge began to glimmer into direct consciousness one of the first aspects (and no doubt one of the truest) under which people saw life was just thus: as a series of rebirths and transformations. (1) The most modern science, I need hardly say, in biology as well as in chemistry and the field of inorganic Nature, supports that view. The savage in earliest times FELT the truth of some things which we to-day are only beginning intellectually to perceive and a.n.a.lyze.
(1) The fervent and widespread belief in animal metamorphoses among early peoples is well known.
Christianity adopted and absorbed--as it was bound to do--this world-wide doctrine of the second birth. Pa.s.sing over its physiological and biological applications, it gave to it a fine spiritual significance--or rather it insisted especially on its spiritual significance, which (as we have seen) had been widely recognized before.
Only--as I suppose must happen with all local religions--it narrowed the application and outlook of the doctrine down to a special case--”As in Adam all die, so in CHRIST shall all be made alive.” The Universal Spirit which can give rebirth and salvation to EVERY child of man to whom it comes, was offered only under a very special form--that of Jesus Christ. (1) In this respect it was no better than the religions which preceded it. In some respects--that is, where it was especially fanatical, blinkered, and hostile to other sects--it was WORSE. But to those who perceive that the Great Spirit may bring new birth and salvation to some under the form of Osiris, equally well as to others under the form of Jesus, or again to some under the form of a Siberian totem-Bear equally as to others under the form of Osiris, these questionings and narrowings fall away as of no importance. We in this latter day can see the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is just one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding its scope, but whose chief att.i.tudes and orientations have been the same through the centuries.
(1) The same happened with regard to another great Pagan doctrine (to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of transformations and metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in these things, as the common and possible heritage of EVERY man, the Christians only allowed themselves to entertain the idea in the special and unique instance of the Transfiguration of Christ.
Many other ill.u.s.trations might be taken of the truth of this view, but I will confine myself to two or three more. There is the instance of the Eucharist and its exceedingly widespread celebration (under very various forms) among the pagans all over the world--as well as among Christians.
I have already said enough on this subject, and need not delay over it.
By partaking of the sacramental meal, even in its wildest and crudest shapes, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, one was identified with and united to the G.o.d; in its milder and more spiritual aspects as in the Mithraic, Egyptian, Hindu and Christian cults, one pa.s.sed behind the veil of maya and this ever-changing world, and entered into the region of divine peace and power. (1)
(1) Baring Gould in his Orig. Relig. Belief, I. 401, says:--”Among the ancient Hindus Soma was a chief deity; he is called the Giver of Life and Health.... He became incarnate among men, was taken by them and slain, and brayed in a mortar (a G.o.d of corn and wine apparently). But he rose in flame to heaven to be 'the Benefactor of the World' and the 'Mediator between G.o.d and Man!' Through communion with him in his sacrifice, man (who partook of this G.o.d) has an a.s.surance of immortality, for by that sacrament he obtains union with his divinity.”
Or again the doctrine of the Saviour. That also is one on which I need not add much to what has been said already. The number of pagan deities (mostly virgin-born and done to death in some way or other in their efforts to save mankind) is so great (1) as to be difficult to keep account of. The G.o.d Krishna in India, the G.o.d Indra in Nepaul and Thibet, spilt their blood for the salvation of men; Buddha said, according to Max Muller, (2) ”Let all the sins that were in the world fall on me, that the world may be delivered”; the Chinese Tien, the Holy One--”one with G.o.d and existing with him from all eternity”--died to save the world; the Egyptian Osiris was called Saviour, so was Horus; so was the Persian Mithras; so was the Greek Hercules who overcame Death though his body was consumed in the burning garment of mortality, out of which he rose into heaven. So also was the Phrygian Attis called Saviour, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis likewise--both of whom, as we have seen, were nailed or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose again from their biers, or coffins. Prometheus, the greatest and earliest benefactor of the human race, was NAILED BY THE HANDS and feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of Mount Caucasus. Bacchus or Dionysus, born of the virgin Semele to be the Liberator of mankind (Dionysus Eleutherios as he was called), was torn to pieces, not unlike Osiris.
Even in far Mexico Quetzalcoatl, the Saviour, was born of a virgin, was tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and his second coming looked for so eagerly that (as is well known) when Cortes appeared, the Mexicans, poor things, greeted HIM as the returning G.o.d! (3) In Peru and among the American Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar legends are, or were, to be found.
(1) See for a considerable list Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xx.
(2) Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.
(3) See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.
Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite abundantly that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated the same and (as the other cults did) gave it a special color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would have been far better and more generally known, had not the Christian Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on the subject. There is much to show that the early Church took this line with regard to pre-Christian saviours; (1) and in later times the same policy is remarkably ill.u.s.trated by the treatment in the sixteenth century of the writings of Sahagun the Spanish missionary--to whose work I have already referred. Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and fine man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities of the Aztec religion, was truthful enough to point out redeeming traits in the manners and customs of the people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the newly formed Mexican Church. They purloined the ma.n.u.scripts of Sahagun's Historia and scattered and hid them about the country, and it was only after infinite labor and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them together again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated them into Spanish (from the original Mexican) he sent them in two big volumes home to Spain for safety; but there almost immediately THEY DISAPPEARED, and could not be found! It was only after TWO CENTURIES that they ultimately turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in Navarre. Lord Kingsborough published them in England in 1830.
(1) See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.
I have thus dwelt upon several of the main doctrines of Christianity--namely, those of Sin and Sacrifice, the Eucharist, the Saviour, the Second Birth, and Transfiguration--as showing that they are by no means unique in our religion, but were common to nearly all the religions of the ancient world. The list might be much further extended, but there is no need to delay over a subject which is now very generally understood. I will, however, devote a page or two to one instance, which I think is very remarkable, and full of deep suggestion.
There is no doctrine in Christianity which is more reverenced by the adherents of that religion, or held in higher estimation, than that G.o.d sacrificed his only Son for the salvation of the world; also that since the Son was not only of like nature but of the SAME nature with the Father, and equal to him as being the second Person of the Divine Trinity, the sacrifice amounted to an immolation of Himself for the good of mankind. The doctrine is so mystical, so remote, and in a sense so absurd and impossible, that it has been a favorite mark through the centuries for the ridicule of the scoffers and enemies of the Church; and here, it might easily be thought, is a belief which--whether it be considered glorious or whether contemptible--is at any rate unique, and peculiar to that Church.
And yet the extraordinary fact is that a similar belief ranges all through the ancient religions, and can be traced back to the earliest times. The word host which is used in the Catholic Ma.s.s for the bread and wine on the Altar, supposed to be the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ, is from the Latin Hostia which the dictionary interprets as ”an animal slain in sacrifice, a sin-offering.” It takes us far far back to the Totem stage of folk-life, when the tribe, as I have already explained, crowned a victim-bull or bear or other animal with flowers, and honoring it with every offering of food and wors.h.i.+p, sacrificed the victim to the Totem spirit of the tribe, and consumed it in an Eucharistic feast--the medicine-man or priest who conducted the ritual wearing a skin of the same beast as a sign that he represented the Totem-divinity, taking part in the sacrifice of 'himself to himself.' It reminds us of the Khonds of Bengal sacrificing their meriahs crowned and decorated as G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses; of the Aztecs doing the same; of Quetzalcoatl p.r.i.c.king his elbows and fingers so as to draw blood, which he offered on his own altar; or of Odin hanging by his own desire upon a tree. ”I know I was hanged upon a tree shaken by the winds for nine long nights. I was transfixed by a spear; I was moved to Odin, myself to myself.” And so on. The instances are endless. ”I am the oblation,” says the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, (1) ”I am the sacrifice, I the ancestral offering.” ”In the truly orthodox conception of sacrifice,” says Elie Reclus, (2) ”the consecrated offering, be it man, woman or virgin, lamb or heifer, c.o.c.k or dove, represents THE DEITY HIMSELF.... Brahma is the 'imperishable sacrifice'; Indra, Soma, Hari and the other G.o.ds, became incarnate in animals to the sole end that they might be immolated. Perusha, the Universal Being, caused himself to be slain by the Immortals, and from his substance were born the birds of the air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of b.u.t.ter and curds.
The world, declared the Ris.h.i.+s, is a series of sacrifices disclosing other sacrifices. To stop them would be to suspend the life of Nature.
The G.o.d Siva, to whom the Tipperahs of Bengal are supposed to have sacrificed as many as a thousand human victims a year, said to the Brahamins: 'It is I that am the actual offering; it is I that you butcher upon my altars.'”
(1) Ch. ix, v. 16.
(2) Primitive Folk, ch. vi.
It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson, paraphrasing the Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse of his:--