T.H./, RELIGIONS BEFORE CHRIST.*
Isl. DE PaBssmisi's work may, perhaps, be best described as an answer to Gibbon's celebrated chapters on the rise and progress of Christianity. Engaged on a magnum opus, a minute and exhaustive history of the first three Christian centuries, the French pastor has naturally been struck with the preparations for Christ visible over the Roman world just before his coming. Naturally, also, the point he seeks is the answer to the special heresy now creeping among French Protestants—the theory that Christianity is but the outcome, the net product of a certain condition of human thought, generated by the external circumstances of the age. He thus travels over Gibbon's own ground to arrive at the exactly opposite conclusion. Gibbon's theory, so far as he had a theory beyond the blind prejudice that priests invented all faiths to fill their own pockets, was that Christianity was the precipitate of all the creeds, philosophies, and modes of hfe which had been fused into one mixture by the weight of the Roman sword. M. de Pressense's, on the other hand, is stated by himself in the sentence, "Christianity is the answer of Heaven to the aspirations of earth." He holds that the two great systems of pagan thought, nature worship and humanism, had both broken down, had failed to satisfy the crave which Heaven has planted within all human souls. The worship of nature failed be-
* The Religions Before Christ. By Id. de Presaenad. T. and T. Clark.
cause it ended always either in mad sensuality, or in the desire for annihilation. If men deified nature, sought by exaggerating and acknowledging her to raise humanity out of itself, they were sure itx the end to plunge into phallic worship with all its abominations. If, on the other hand, they strove to subjugate her and mortify the flesh, they were led into asceticism, thence into its logical conse- quence, dislike and contempt for life, and thence into the terrible thirst for death and annihilation. Buddhism has trodden that path to its end. Humanism, on the other hand, that deification of man which was the rocit of the Hellenic cult, though a higher creed— inasmuch as any worship which gives man an exemplar is better than the mere worship of nature—still never stood its ground against the elder faith, and the foul old systems of Asia were, in the last century before Christ, rapidly penetrating the Roman world. The superstitious turned to dark mysteries, worships like that of Isis, the wise became universally sceptic of all things, while the people„ without a belief or a hope, but with the need for reverence, cried out that the gods had deserted Rome. Then humanity, despairing, tossed up its arms in a cry to the " unknown God" for help, for redemption, and for light. So far from Christianity being the precipitate of all creeds, they had all failed, ailed by the admission of mankind, which. had become either sensual or sceptic, and had lost their power of keeping alive, much more of giving new life. It was because all human systems had crumbled away to powder that the road was clear for the march of the redeeming Messiah. Christianity, therefore, so far from being a product, is in its utter contrast to these creeds, its total dissociation from the old systems of thought, presumptively. divine. It was, at all events, au original creed, for which the philo- sophies of the old world, M. de Pressense thinks, were at most but a preparation—a course of education.
The destructive portion of this argument is supported by a vast array of facts and learning, and is, we conceive, satisfactory. Out of rottenness comes only stench, and having proved that the only theories of life and nature current within the Roman world had admittedly rotted away, M. de Pressense has disposed of Gibbon's argument, long considered so formidable. But on the constructive side this view, like every other, fails. M. de Pressense has only brought us face to face with an ancient problem, to which, we fear, the only human answer must be now as ever: "Shall not the Budge of all the earth do right ?" He has confused his vision with the fallacy of almost all Western thinkers, the idea that the Roman world con- tained also the human race. Christ died for man, not for the subjects of Rome. If the whole earth desired Him and He came in answer to their aspirations, why did He not reveal himself likewise to the whole earth ? If Paganism was but an education preparatory to the reconciliation of man with God, why did it endure among half mankind after the reconciliation had been effected ? The theory is too small to cover the limitless fact, and we are driven back once more into the old dreary search for the cause of human idolatry, a search in other words for the origin of evil.
M. de Pressense would, probably, admit that quest to be vain, anti we may pass on to consider his view of the process by which the false creeds have developed themselves, without deeper inquiry into their ultimate cause. . He obviously holds what we believe to be the just theory that all false creeds spring in one sense from a divine source.. They rise from the fierce efforts of man to ascend to something higher than himself, efforts which spring from the fragments of divine truth always in his heart, but which must always be misdirected without a revelation. Man always, in all circumstances, feels a necessity for becoming better, or, to express it theologically, for reconciling himself with his God. Unguided, he has but two ways to this end—to do battle with thefleshwithout limitor direction, which is asceticism, or to develop, his lower nature to the full, which is the true Epicurean idea. Under the former and more common error he considers Nature malignant, and the body in itself evil ; sets up horrible deities who are to be propitiated by human blood, and condemns himself to tortures which destroy all vitality without securing relief. That idea was the very basis of the Phcenician and Egyptian theogonies, of the worship of Moloch and of Osiris ; and the Syrian mother who cast her child into the flames was impelled to the infernal act by a thought originally one of- penitential self-sacrifice. It is the very root also of Hindoo- ism, which makes penance a weapon wherewith to wrest power from Fate, and of Buddhism, which declares only the recluse absolutely per- feet, and on his way to absorption ion into the universal soul It m intruded into Mahomedanism, IV the Santon be believed holy ; drove the Christian monks of Egypt into the Thebaid ; is the cause and origin of the Catholic scheme of monastic life, and has reap- peared now and again in the Protestant Church, making amusement sinful, and teaching us to fly from the contamination of the " world." In the far East, and occasionally in Europe, it has produced what M. de Pressense calls a development, but what we call a recoil—a strong and enduring belief in an all-subduing fate. We are going, says the Buddhist, to annihilation, and what matters the problem of life ? Arayen, said the Greek, is stronger than the gods, so where was the proof that sin would produce its punishment ? Fate, says the Mus- sulman, must he obeyed, and sinks into helpless lethargy. What is ordained will be, says the Autinomian, and finds that pleasant sins are very often ordained. The other solution of the problem Yielded but little better re- sults. If nature is to be developed without restraint, the pas- sions, which are part of nature, should be developed too Man cultivates strength, why not cultivate lust ? He reveres courage, why not deify pleasure ? And so the worshipper of Nature glides from the polished Epicurean into the ordinary sensualist, and he again into the madman, who in Rome, as among the Arreoi, made
the worst violations of natural instincts acts of divine worship. This philosophy is one source of the Gnosticism which has over and over again tainted Oriental Christianity—which we strongly sus- pect had tainted the Templars—which threatened at the revival of learning to drown Christianity in a flood of sensual pleasure, and which inspires at this day the dreamy half-crazy indecency with which Walt Whitman tries to sing his belief that the passions are part of the Universal Being, and therefore holy as virtues. We said this worship was not quite so dangerous as the contrary theory, and for this excellent reason: Asceticism has no satiety. The develop- ment notion is so much the more tempting to human nature that Providence has fixed its limits, and utter weariness—weariness such as that of the ancient world, or of our own tenth century, or which stamps its immovable melancholy into every Asiatic face—soon punishes the exclusive cultivation of nature. The Greek, it may be retorted, escaped this, and doubtless the Greek, possessed of a peer- less organization, which made taste—and therefore harmony—a law which to him was divine, did avoid some of the worst effects of Pa- ganism. But he could not avoid weariness from a different source, universal scepticism, bringing with it the loss of all motive to progress, all care for the call of duty. There was no progress possible in the ancient world, for without revelation what can men do except strive to rise, either by exaggerating their natural (ratifies or by subduing, them, in either case without limit. The divine wisdom of Chris- tianity, as an ethical system, is shown perhaps most of all in this— that it uses both the great principles implanted in human nature, while releasing them from the limits which would otherwise tend to weariness. Under the Christian law we may crucify the flesh as we will, and remain still far below Christ, while so long as we ob- serve that law, we cannot in so doing lose either our energy, or for- sake our duties to other men. The example of Christ forbids seclu- sion as much as self-maceration. And there is no development of nature, no effort to realize the dream of the muscular Christians, which is not equally permitted, while the process of development is still restrained from the ancient aberrations. We may worship the body, to use an old phrase—and for that end keep it pure—develop every faculty of the mind, for in the service of God every faculty has its use. When man has strained himself to the utmost, when his flesh is subdued till temptation is barely felt, and his mind is raised till he can acquire by perception rather than study, when knowledge has doubled his life, and wisdom driven his passions into their God- made grooves, there will still remain before him a limitless course of progress before he can hope to become even a recognizable copy of his accepted Exemplar. Weariness and satiety, the solvents of all the ancient cults, are impossible under the Christian creed.
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