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Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

J >> James Freeman Clarke >> Ten Great Religions




These views, we trust, will be amply confirmed when we come to examine
each great religion separately and carefully. We shall find them always
feeling after God, often finding him. We shall see that in their origin
they are not the work of priestcraft, but of human nature; in their
essence not superstitions, but religions; in their doctrines true more
frequently than false; in their moral tendency good rather than evil. And
instead of degenerating toward something worse, they come to prepare the
way for something better.



Sec. 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles.


According to Christ and the Apostles, Christianity was to grow out of
Judaism, and be developed into a universal religion. Accordingly, the
method of Jesus was to go first to the Jews; and when he left the limits
of Palestine on a single occasion, he declared himself as only going into
Phoenicia to seek after the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he
stated that he had other sheep, not of this fold, whom he must bring,
recognizing that there were, among the heathen, good and honest hearts
prepared for Christianity, and already belonging to him; sheep who knew
his voice and were ready to follow him. He also declared that the Roman
centurion and the Phoenician woman already possessed great faith, the
centurion more than he had yet found in Israel. But the most striking
declaration of Jesus, and one singularly overlooked, concerning the
character of the heathen, is to be found in his description of the day of
judgment, in Matthew (chap. XXV.). It is very curious that men should
speculate as to the fate of the heathen, when Jesus has here distinctly
taught that all good men among them are his sheep, though they never heard
of him. The account begins, "Before him shall be gathered all the
Gentiles" (or heathen). It is not a description of the judgment of the
Christian world, but of the heathen world. The word here used ([Greek: ta
ethnae]) occurs about one hundred and sixty-four times in the New
Testament. It is translated "gentiles" oftener than by any other word,
that is, about ninety-three times; by "heathen" four or five times; and in
the remaining passages it is mostly translated "nations." That it means
the Gentiles or heathen here appears from the fact that they are
represented as ignorant of Christ, and are judged, not by the standard of
Christian faith, but by their humanity and charity toward those in
suffering. Jesus recognizes, therefore, among these ethnic or heathen
people, some as belonging to himself,--the "other sheep," not of the
Jewish fold.

The Apostle Paul, who was especially commissioned to the Gentiles, must be
considered as the best authority upon this question. Did he regard their
religions as wholly false? On the contrary, he tells the Athenians that
they are already worshipping the true God, though ignorantly. "Whom ye
ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." When he said this he was
standing face to face with all that was most imposing in the religion of
Greece. He saw the city filled with idols, majestic forms, the perfection
of artistic grace and beauty. Was his spirit then moved _only_ with
indignation against this worship, and had he no sympathy with the
spiritual needs which it expressed? It does not seem so. He recognized
piety in their souls. "I see that ye are, in all ways, exceedingly
pious." He recognized their worship as passing beyond the idols, to the
true God. He did not profess that he came to revolutionize their religion,
but to reform it. He does not proceed like the backwoodsman, who fells the
forest and takes out the stumps in order to plant a wholly different crop;
but like the nurseryman, who grafts a native stock with a better fruit.
They were already ignorantly worshipping the true God. What the apostle
proposed to do was to enlighten that ignorance by showing them who that
true God was, and what was his character. In his subsequent remarks,
therefore, he does not teach them that there is one Supreme Being, but he
_assumes_ it, as something already believed. He assumes him to be the
creator of all things; to be _omnipotent_,--"the Lord of heaven and
earth"; _spiritual_,--"dwelleth not in temples made with hands";
_absolute_,--"not needing anything," but the source of all things. He says
this, as not expecting any opposition or contradiction; he reserves his
criticisms on their idolatry for the end of his discourse. He then states,
quite clearly, that the different nations of the world have a common
origin, belong to one family, and have been providentially placed in space
and time, that each might seek the Lord in its own way. He recognized in
them a power of seeking and finding God, the God close at hand, and in
whom we live; and he quotes one of their own poets, accepting his
statement of God's fatherly character. Now, it is quite common for those
who deny that there is any truth in heathenism, to admire this speech of
Paul as a masterpiece of ingenuity and eloquence. But he would hardly have
made it, unless he thought it to be true. Those who praise his eloquence
at the expense of his veracity pay him a poor compliment. Did Paul tell
the Athenians that they were worshipping the true God _when they were
not_, and that for the sake of rhetorical effect? If we believe this
concerning him, and yet admire him, let us cease henceforth to find fault
with the Jesuits.

No! Paul believed what he said, that the Athenians were worshipping the
true God, though ignorantly. The sentiment of reverence, of worship, was
lifting them to its true object. All they needed was to have their
understanding enlightened. Truth he placed in the heart rather than the
understanding, but he also connected Christianity with Polytheism where
the two religions touched, that is, on their pantheistic side. While
placing God _above_ the world as its ruler, "seeing he is Lord of heaven
and earth," he placed him _in_ the world as an immanent presence,--"in him
we live, and move, and have our being." And afterward, in writing to the
Romans, he takes the same ground. He teaches that the Gentiles had a
knowledge of the eternal attributes of God (Rom. i. 19) and saw him in his
works (v. 20), and that they also had in their nature a law of duty,
enabling them to do the things contained in the law. This he calls "the
law written in the heart" (Rom. ii. 14,15). He blames them, not for
ignorance, but for disobedience. The Apostle Paul, therefore, agrees with
us in finding in heathen religions essential truth in connection with
their errors.

The early Christian apologists often took the same view. Thus Clement of
Alexandria believed that God had one great plan for educating the world,
of which Christianity was the final step. He refused to consider the
Jewish religion as the only divine preparation for Christianity, but
regarded the Greek philosophy as also a preparation for Christ. Neander
gives his views at length, and says that Clement was the founder of the
true view of history.[6] Tertullian declared the soul to be naturally
Christian. The Sibylline books were quoted as good prophetic works along
with the Jewish prophets. Socrates was called by the Fathers a Christian
before Christ.

Within the last few years the extravagant condemnation of the heathen
religions has produced a reaction in their favor. It has been felt to be
disparaging to human nature to suppose that almost the whole human race
should consent to be fed on error. Such a belief has been seen to be a
denial of God's providence, as regards nine tenths of mankind. Accordingly
it has become more usual of late to rehabilitate heathenism, and to place
it on the same level with Christianity, if not above it. The _Vedas_ are
talked about as though they were somewhat superior to the Old Testament,
and Confucius is quoted as an authority quite equal to Paul or John. An
ignorant admiration of the sacred books of the Buddhists and Brahmins has
succeeded to the former ignorant and sweeping condemnation of them. What
is now needed is a fair and candid examination and comparison of these
systems from reliable sources.



Sec. 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support
of Christianity.


Such an examination, doing full justice to all other religions,
acknowledging their partial truth and use, will not depreciate, but exalt
the value of Christianity. It will furnish a new kind of evidence in its
favor. But the usual form of argument may perhaps be changed.

Is Christianity a supernatural or a natural religion? Is it a religion
attested to be from God by miracles? This has been the great question in
evidences for the last century. The truth and divine origin of
Christianity have been made to depend on its supernatural character, and
to stand or fall with a certain view of miracles. And then, in order to
maintain the reality of miracles, it became necessary to prove the
infallibility of the record; and so we were taught that, to believe in
Jesus Christ, we must first believe in the genuineness and authenticity of
the whole New Testament. "All the theology of England," says Mr.
Pattison,[7] "was devoted to proving the Christian religion credible, in
this manner." "The apostles," said Dr. Johnson, "were being tried one a
week for the capital crime of forgery." This was the work of the school of
Lardner, Paley, and Whately.

But the real question between Christians and unbelievers in Christianity
is, not whether our religion is or is not supernatural; not whether
Christ's miracles were or not violations of law; nor whether the New
Testament, as it stands, is the work of inspired men. The main question,
back of all these, is different, and not dependent on the views we may
happen to take of the universality of law. It is this: Is Christianity, as
taught by Jesus, intended by God to be the religion of the human race? Is
it only one among natural religions? is it to be superseded in its turn by
others, or is it the one religion which is to unite all mankind? "Art thou
he that should come, or look we for another?" This is the question which
we ask of Jesus of Nazareth, and the answer to which makes the real
problem of apologetic theology.

Now the defenders of Christianity have been so occupied with their special
disputes about miracles, about naturalism and supernaturalism, and about
the inspiration and infallibility of the apostles, that they have left
uncultivated the wide field of inquiry belonging to Comparative Theology.
But it belongs to this science to establish the truth of Christianity by
showing that it possesses all the aptitudes which fit it to be the
religion of the human race.

This method of establishing Christianity differs from the traditional
argument in this: that, while the last undertakes to _prove_ Christianity
to be true, this _shows_ it to be true. For if we can make it appear, by a
fair survey of the principal religions of the world, that, while they are
ethnic or local, Christianity is catholic or universal; that, while they
are defective, possessing some truths and wanting others, Christianity
possesses all; and that, while they are stationary, Christianity is
progressive; it will not then be necessary to discuss in what sense it is
a supernatural religion. Such a survey will show that it is adapted to the
nature of man. When we see adaptation we naturally infer design. If
Christianity appears, after a full comparison with other religions, to be
the one and only religion which is perfectly adapted to man, it will be
impossible to doubt that it was designed by God to be the religion of our
race; that it is the providential religion sent by God to man, its truth
God's truth its way the way to God and to heaven.



Sec. 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are
Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to
become the Religion of all Races.


By ethnic religions we mean those religions, each of which has always been
confined within the boundaries of a particular race or family of mankind,
and has never made proselytes or converts, except accidentally, outside of
it. By catholic religions we mean those which have shown the desire and
power of passing over these limits, and becoming the religion of a
considerable number of persons belonging to different races.

Now we are met at once with the striking and obvious fact, that most of
the religions of the world are evidently religions limited in some way to
particular races or nations. They are, as we have said, _ethnic_. We use
this Greek word rather than its Latin equivalent, _gentile_, because
_gentile_, though meaning literally "of, or belonging to, a race," has
acquired a special sense from its New Testament use as meaning all who are
not Jews. The word "ethnic" remains pure from any such secondary or
acquired meaning, and signifies simply _that which belongs to a race_.

The science of ethnology is a modern one, and is still in the process of
formation. Some of its conclusions, however, may be considered as
established. It has forever set aside Blumenbach's old classification of
mankind into the Caucasian and four other varieties, and has given us,
instead, a division of the largest part of mankind into Indo-European,
Semitic, and Turanian families, leaving a considerable penumbra outside as
yet unclassified.

That mankind is so divided into races of men it would seem hardly possible
to deny. It is proved by physiology, by psychology, by glossology, and by
civil history. Physiology shows us anatomical differences between races.
There are as marked and real differences between the skull of a Hindoo and
that of a Chinaman as between the skulls of an Englishman and a negro.
There is not as great a difference, perhaps, but it is as real and as
constant. Then the characters of races remain distinct, the same traits
reappearing after many centuries exactly as at first. We find the same
difference of character between the Jews and Arabs, who are merely
different families of the same Semitic race, as existed between their
ancestors, Jacob and Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. Jacob and
the Jews are prudent, loving trade, money-making, tenacious of their
ideas, living in cities; Esau and the Arabs, careless, wild, hating
cities, loving the desert.

A similar example of the maintaining of a moral type is found in the
characteristic differences between the German and Kelts, two families of
the same Indo-European race. Take an Irishman and a German, working side
by side on the Mississippi, and they present the same characteristic
differences as the Germans and Kelts described by Tacitus and Caesar. The
German loves liberty, the Kelt equality; the one hates the tyrant, the
other the aristocrat; the one is a serious thinker, the other a quick and
vivid thinker; the one is a Protestant in religion, the other a Catholic.
Ammianus Marcellinus, living in Gaul in the fourth century, describes the
Kelts thus (see whether it does not apply to the race now).

"The Gauls," says he, "are mostly tall of stature,[8] fair and red-haired,
and horrible from the fierceness of their eyes, fond of strife, and
haughtily insolent. A whole band of strangers would not endure one of
them, aided in his brawl by his powerful and blue-eyed wife, especially
when with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, poising her huge white arms,
she begins, joining kicks to blows, to put forth her fists like stones
from a catapult. Most of their voices are terrific and threatening, as
well when they are quiet as when they are angry. All ages are thought fit
for war. They are a nation very fond of wine, and invent many drinks
resembling it, and some of the poorer sort wander about with their senses
quite blunted by continual intoxication."

Now we find that each race, beside its special moral qualities, seems also
to have special religious qualities, which cause it to tend toward some
one kind of religion more than to another kind. These religions are the
flower of the race; they come forth from it as its best aroma. Thus we see
that Brahmanism is confined to that section or race of the great Aryan
family which has occupied India for more than thirty centuries. It belongs
to the Hindoos, to the people taking its name from the Indus, by the
tributaries of which stream it entered India from the northwest. It has
never attempted to extend itself beyond that particular variety of
mankind. Perhaps one hundred and fifty millions of men accept it as their
faith. It has been held by this race as their religion during a period
immense in the history of mankind. Its sacred books are certainly more
than three thousand years old. But during all this time it has never
communicated itself to any race of men outside of the peninsula of India.
It is thus seen to be a strictly ethnic religion, showing neither the
tendency nor the desire to become the religion of mankind.

The same thing may be said of the religion of Confucius. It belongs to
China and the Chinese. It suits their taste and genius. They have had it
as their state religion for some twenty-three hundred years, and it rules
the opinions of the rulers of opinion among three hundred millions of men.
But out of China Confucius is only a name.

So, too, of the system of Zoroaster. It was for a long period the religion
of an Aryan tribe who became the ruling people among mankind. The Persians
extended themselves through Western Asia, and conquered many nations, but
they never communicated their religion. It was strictly a national or
ethnic religion, belonging only to the Iranians and their descendants, the
Parsees.

In like manner it may be said that the religion of Egypt, of Greece, of
Scandinavia, of the Jews, of Islam, and of Buddhism are ethnic religions.
Those of Egypt and Scandinavia are strictly so. It is said, to be sure,
that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods
themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the
gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left
behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power
to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received.
For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of
the state,--a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real
Olympus of Rome was the Senate Chamber on the Capitoline Hill. Judaism
also was in reality an ethnic religion, though it aimed at catholicity and
expected it, and made proselytes. But it could not tolerate unessentials,
and so failed of becoming catholic. The Jewish religion, until it had
Christianity to help it, was never able to do more than make proselytes
here and there. Christianity, while preaching the doctrines of Jesus and
the New Testament, has been able to carry also the weight of the Old
Testament, and to give a certain catholicity to Judaism. The religion of
Mohammed has been catholic, in that it has become the religion of very
different races,--the Arabs, Turks, and Persians, belonging to the three
great varieties of the human family. But then Mohammedanism has never
sought to make _converts_, but only _subjects;_ it has not asked for
belief, but merely for submission. Consequently Mr. Palgrave, Mr. Lane,
and Mr. Vambery tell us, that, in Arabia, Egypt, and Turkistan, there are
multitudes who are outwardly Mohammedan, but who in their private belief
reject Mohammed, and are really Pagans. But, no doubt, there is a catholic
tendency both in Judaism and Mohammedanism; and this comes from the great
doctrine which they hold in common with Christianity,--the _unity of God_.
Faith in that is the basis of all expectation of a universal religion, and
the wish and the power to convert others come from that doctrine of the
Divine unity.

* * * * *

But Christianity teaches the unity of God not merely as a supremacy of
power and will, but as a supremacy of love and wisdom; it teaches God as
Father, and not merely as King; so it seeks not merely to make proselytes
and subjects, but to make converts. Hence Christianity, beginning as a
Semitic religion, among the Jews, went across the Greek Archipelago and
converted the Hellenic and the Latin races; afterward the Goths,
Lombards, Franks, Vandals; later still, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans.
Meantime, its Nestorian missionaries, pushing east, made converts in
Armenia, Persia, India, and China. In later days it has converted negroes,
Indians, and the people of the Pacific Islands. Something, indeed, stopped
its progress after its first triumphant successes during seven or eight
centuries. At the tenth century it reached its term. Modern missions,
whether those of Jesuits or Protestants, have not converted whole nations
and races, but only individuals here and there. The reason of this check,
probably, is, that Christians have repeated the mistakes of the Jews and
Mohammedans. They have sought to make proselytes to an outward system of
worship and ritual, or to make subjects to a _dogma_; but not to make
converts to an idea and a life. When the Christian missionaries shall go
and say to the Hindoos or the Buddhists: "You are already on your way
toward God,--your religion came from him, and was inspired by his Spirit;
now he sends you something more and higher by his Son, who does not come
to destroy but to fulfil, not to take away any good thing you have, but to
add to it something better," then we shall see the process of conversion,
checked in the ninth and tenth, centuries, reinaugurated.

Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all teaching the strict unity of God,
have all aimed at becoming universal. Judaism failed because it sought
proselytes instead of making converts. Islam, the religion of Mohammed (in
reality a Judaizing Christian sect) failed because it sought to make
subjects rather than converts. Its conquests over a variety of races were
extensive, but not deep. To-day it holds in its embrace at least four very
distinct races,--the Arabs, a Semitic race, the Persians, an Indo-European
race, the Negroes, and the Turks or Turanians. But, correctly viewed,
Islam is only a heretical Christian sect, and so all this must be credited
to the interest of Christianity. Islam is a John the Baptist crying in the
wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord"; Mohammed is a schoolmaster to
bring men to Christ. It does for the nations just what Judaism did, that
is, it teaches the Divine unity. Esau has taken the place of Jacob in the
economy of Providence. When the Jews rejected Christ they ceased from
their providential work, and their cousins, the Arabs, took their place.
The conquests of Islam, therefore, ought to be regarded as the preliminary
conquests of Christianity.

There is still another system which has shown some tendencies toward
catholicity. This is Buddhism, which has extended itself over the whole of
the eastern half of Asia. But though it includes a variety of
nationalities, it is doubtful if it includes any variety of races. All the
Buddhists appear to belong to the great Mongol family. And although this
system originated among the Aryan race in India, it has let go its hold of
that family and transferred itself wholly to the Mongols.

But Christianity, from the first, showed itself capable of taking
possession of the convictions of the most different races of mankind. Now,
as on the day of Pentecost, many races hear the apostles speak in their
own tongues, in which they were born,--Parthians, Medes, Elamites,
dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judaea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia
and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, strangers of
Rome, Cretes and Arabians. The miracle of tongues was a type of the effect
of the truth in penetrating the mind and heart of different nationalities.
The Jewish Christians, indeed, tried to repeat in Christianity their old
mistake which had prevented Judaism from becoming universal. They wished
to insist that no one should become a Christian unless he became a Jew at
the same time. If they had succeeded in this, they would have effectually
kept the Gospel of Christ from becoming a catholic religion. But the
Apostle Paul was raised up for the emergency, and he prevented this
suicidal course. Consequently Christianity passed at once into Europe, and
became the religion of Greeks and Romans as well as Jews. Paul struck off
from it its Jewish shell, told them that as Christians they had nothing to
do with the Jewish law, or with Jewish Passovers, Sabbaths, or ceremonies.
As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know
him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew. So Christianity became
at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths
and a divine life. It overflowed the nationalities of Greece and Rome, of
North Africa, of Persia and Western Asia, at the very beginning. It
conquered the Gothic and German conquerors of the Roman Empire. Under
Arian missionaries, it converted Goths, Vandals, Lombards. Under Nestorian
missionaries, it penetrated as far east as China, and made converts there.
In like manner the Gospel spread over the whole of North Africa, whence it
was afterwards expelled by the power of Islam. It has shown itself,
therefore, capable of adapting itself to every variety of the human race.

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