Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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In like manner the poetic conception of Apollo was inferior to that of the
sculptor. In the mind of the latter Phoebus is not merely an archer, not
merely a prophet and a singer, but the entire manifestation of genius. He
is inspiration; he radiates poetry, music, eloquence from his sublime
figure. The Phidian Jupiter is lost to us, except in copies, but in the
Belvedere Apollo we see how the sculptor could interpret the highest
thought of the Hellenic mind. He who visits this statue by night in the
Vatican Palace at Rome, seeing it by torchlight, has, perhaps, the most
wonderful impression left on his imagination which art can give. After
passing through the long galleries of the Vatican, where, as the torches
advance, armies of statues emerge from the darkness before you, gaze on
you with marble countenance, and sink back into the darkness behind, you
reach at last the small circular hall which contains the Apollo. The
effect of torchlight is to make the statue seem more alive. One limb, one
feature, one expression after another, is brought out as the torches move;
and the wonderful form becomes at last instinct with life. Milman has
described the statue in a few glowing but unexaggerated lines:--

"For mild he seemed, as in Elysian towers,
Wasting, in careless ease, the joyous hours;
Haughty, as bards have sung, with princely sway
Curbing the fierce flame-breathing steeds of day;
Beauteous, as vision seen in dreamy sleep
By holy maid, on Delphi's haunted steep."

* * * * *

All, all divine; no struggling muscle glows,
Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows,
But, animate with Deity alone,
In deathless glory lives the breathing stone."[241]

In such a statue we see the human creative genius idealized. It is a
magnificent representation of the mind of Greece, that fountain of
original thought from which came the Songs of Homer and the Dialogues of
Plato, that unfailing source of history, tragedy, lyric poetry, scientific
investigation. In the Belvedere Apollo we see expressed at once the genius
of Homer, Aristotle, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Pindar, Thales, and Plato.

With Apollo is associated his sister Artemis, or Diana, another exquisite
conception of Greek thought. Not the cold and cruel Diana of the poets;
not she who, in her prudish anger, turned Actaeon into a stag, who slew
Orion, who slew the children of Niobe, and demanded the death of
Iphigenia. Very different is the beautiful Diana of the sculptors, the
Artemis, or untouched one, chaste as moonlight, a wild girl, pure, free,
noble; the ideal of youthful womanhood, who can share with man manly
exercises and open-air sports, and add to manly strength a womanly grace.
So she seems in the statue; in swift motion, the air lifting her tunic
from her noble limbs, while she draws a shaft from the quiver to kill a
hind. No Greek could look at such a statue, and not learn to reverence the
purity and nobleness of womanhood.

Pallas-Athene was the goddess of all the liberal arts and sciences. In
battle she proves too strong for Ares or Mars, as scientific war is always
too strong for that wild, furious war which Mars represented. She was the
civilizer of mankind. Her name Pallas means "virgin," and her name Athene
was supposed to be the same as the Egyptian Neith, reversed; though modern
scholars deny this etymology.

The Parthenon, standing on the summit of Athens, built of white marble,
was surrounded by columns 34 feet high. It was 230 feet long, 102 feet
wide, and 68 high, and was perhaps the most perfect building ever raised
by man. Every part of its exterior was adorned with Phidian sculpture; and
within stood the statue of Athene herself, in ivory and gold, by the same
master hand. Another colossal statue of the great goddess stood on the
summit of the Acropolis, and her polished brazen helmet and shield,
flashing in the sun, could be seen far out at sea by vessels approaching
Athens.

The Greek sculptors, in creating these wonderful ideals, were always
feeling after God; but for God incarnate, God in man. They sought for and
represented each divine element in human nature. They were prophets of the
future development of humanity. They showed how man is a partaker of the
divine nature. If they humanized Deity, they divinized humanity.

Sec. 6. The Gods of the Philosophers.

The problem which the Greek philosophers set themselves to solve was the
origin of things. As we have found a double element of race and religion
running through the history of Greece, so we find a similar dualism in its
philosophy. An element of realism and another of idealism are in
opposition until the time of Plato, and are first reconciled by that great
master of thought. Realism appears in the Ionic nature-philosophy;
idealism in Orphism, the schools of Pythagoras, and the Eleatic school of
Southern Italy.

Both these classes of thinkers sought for some central unity beneath the
outward phenomena. Thales the Milesian (B.C. 600) said it was water. His
disciple, Anaximander, called it a chaotic matter, containing in itself a
motive-power which would take the universe through successive creations
and destructions. His successor, Anaximenes, concluded the infinite
substance to be air. Heraclitus of Ephesus (B.C. 500) declared it to be
fire; by which he meant, not physical fire, but the principle of
antagonism. So, by _water_, Thales must have intended the fluid element in
things. For that Thales was not a mere materialist appears from the
sayings which have been reported as coming from him, such as this: "Of all
things, the oldest is God; the most beautiful is the world; the swiftest
is thought; the wisest is time." Or that other, that, "Death does not
differ at all from life." Thales also taught that a Divine power was in
all things. The successor of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras (B.C. 494), first
distinguished God from the world, mind from matter, leaving to each an
independent existence.

While the Greek colonies in Asia Minor developed thus the Asiatic form of
philosophy, the colonies in Magna Graecia unfolded the Italian or ideal
side. Of these, Pythagoras was the earliest and most conspicuous. Born at
Samos (B.C. 584), he was a contemporary of Thales of Miletus. He taught
that God was one; yet not outside of the world, but in it, wholly in every
part, overseeing the beginnings of all things and their combinations.[242]

The head of the Italian school, known as Eleatics, was Xenophanes (born
B.C. 600), who, says Zeller,[243] both a philosopher and a poet, taught
first of all a perfect monotheism. He declared God to be the one and all,
eternal, almighty, and perfect being, being all sight, feeling, and
perception. He is both infinite and finite. If he were only finite, he
could not _be_; if he were only infinite, he could not _exist_. He lives
in eternity, and exists in time.[244]

Parmenides, scholar and successor of Xenophanes at Elea, taught that God,
as pure thought, pervaded all nature. Empedocles (about B.C. 460)[245]
followed Xenophanes, though introducing a certain dualism into his
physics. In theology he was a pure monotheist, declaring God to be the
Absolute Being, sufficient for himself, and related to the world as unity
to variety, or love to discord. We can only recognize God by the divine
element in ourselves. The bad is what is separate from God, and out of
harmony with him.

After this came a sceptical movement, in which Gorgias, a disciple of
Empedocles (B.C. 404) and Protagoras the Abderite, taught the doctrine of
nescience. The latter said: "Whether there are gods or not we cannot say,
and life is too short to find out."[246] Prodicus explained religion as
founded in utility, Critias derived it from statecraft. They argued that
if religion was founded in human nature, all men would worship the same
gods. This view became popular in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian
War. Euripides, as we have seen, was a sceptic. Those who denied the
popular gods were persecuted by the Athenians, but the sceptical spirit
was not checked by this course.[247] Anaxagoras escaped with his life only
through the powerful protection of Pericles. Protagoras was sentenced to
death, and his writings were burned. Diogenes was denounced as an atheist,
and a reward of a talent was offered to any one who should kill him. For
an unbelieving age is apt to be a persecuting one. When the kernel of
religion is gone, more stress is laid on keeping the shell untouched.

It was in the midst of these dilapidated opinions that Socrates came, that
wonderful phenomenon in human history. A marvellous vision, glorifying
humanity! He may be considered as having created the science of ethics. He
first taught the doctrine of divine providence, declaring that we can only
know God in his works. He placed religion on the basis of humanity,
proclaiming the well-being of man to be the end of the universe. He
preferred the study of final causes to that of efficient causes. He did
not deny the inferior deities, but regarded them only as we regard angels
and archangels, saints and prophets; as finite beings, above man, but
infinitely below the Supreme Being. Reverence for such beings is quite
consistent with the purest monotheism.

In Plato, says Rixner[248] the two polar tendencies of Greek philosophy
were harmonized, and realism and idealism brought into accord. The school
of realism recognized time, variety, motion, multiplicity, and nature; but
lost substance, unity, eternity, and spirit. The other, the ideal Eleatic
school, recognized unity, but lost variety, saw eternity, but ignored
time, accepted being, but omitted life and movement.

The three views may be thus compared:--

Italian Philosophy, Plato. Ionian or Asiatic Atomic.
or Eleatic.
The One. The One in All. The All.
Unity. Unity and Variety. Variety.
Being. Life. Motion.
Pantheism. Divine in Nature. Naturalism.
Substance. Substance and Manifestation. Phenomena.

The philosophy of Plato was the scientific completion of that of Socrates.
Socrates took his intellectual departure from man, and inferred nature and
God. Plato assumed God, and inferred nature and man. He made goodness and
nature godlike, by making God the substance in each. His was a divine
philosophy, since he referred all facts theoretically and practically to
God as the ground of their being.

The style of Plato singularly combined analysis and synthesis, exact
definition with poetic life. His magnificent intellect aimed at uniting
precision in details with universal comprehension.[249]

Plato, as regards his method of thought, was a strict and determined
transcendentalist. He declared philosophy to be the science of
unconditioned being, and asserted that this was known to the soul by its
intuitive reason, which is the organ of all philosophic insight. The
reason perceives substance, the understanding only phenomena. Being
[Greek: to on], which is the reality in all actuality, is in the ideas or
thoughts of God; and nothing exists or appears outwardly, except by the
force of this indwelling idea. The WORD is the true expression of the
nature of every object; for each has its divine and natural name, beside
its accidental human appellation. Philosophy is the recollection of what
the soul has seen of things and their names.

The life and essence of all things is from God. Plato's idea of God is of
the purest and highest kind. God is one, he is Spirit, he is the supreme
and only real being, he is the creator of all things, his providence is
over all events. He avoids pantheism on one side, by making God a distinct
personal intelligent will; and polytheism on the other, by making him
absolute, and therefore one. Plato's theology is pure theism.[250]

Ackermann, in "The Christian Element in Plato,"[251] says: The Platonic
theology is strikingly near that of Christianity in regard to God's being,
existence, name, and attributes. As regards the existence of God, he
argues from the movements of nature for the necessity of an original
principle of motion.[252] But the real Platonic faith in God, like that of
the Bible, rests on immediate knowledge. He gives no definition of the
essence of God, but says,[253] "To find the Maker and Father of this All
is hard, and having found him it is impossible to utter him." But the idea
of Goodness is the best expression, as is also that of Being, though
neither is adequate. The visible Sun is the image and child of the Good
Being. Just so the Scripture calls God the Father of light. Yet the idea
of God was the object and aim of his whole philosophy; therefore he calls
God the Beginning and the End;[254] and "the Measure of all things, much
more than _man_, as some people have said" (referring to Protagoras, who
taught that "man was the measure of all things"). So even Aristotle
declared that "since God is the ground of all being, the first philosophy
is theology"; and Eusebius mentions that Plato thought that no one could
understand human things who did not first look at divine things; and tells
a story of an Indian who met Socrates in Athens and asked him how he must
begin to philosophize. He replied that he must reflect on human life;
whereupon the Indian laughed and said that as long as one did not
understand divine things he could know nothing about human things.

There is no doubt that Plato was a monotheist, and believed in one God,
and when he spoke of gods in the plural, was only using the common form of
speech. That many educated heathen were monotheists has been sufficiently
proved; and even Augustine admits that the mere use of the word "gods"
proved nothing against it, since the Hebrew Bible said, "the God of gods
has spoken."

Aristotle (B.C. 384), the first philologian and naturalist of antiquity,
scholar of Plato, called "the Scribe of Nature," and "a reversed Plato,"
differing diametrically from his master in his methods, arrived at nearly
the same theological result. He taught that there were first truths, known
by their own evidence. He comprised all notions of existence in that of
the [Greek: kosmos], in which were the two spheres of the earthly and
heavenly. The earthly sphere contained the changeable in the transient;
the heavenly sphere contained the changeable in the permanent. Above both
spheres is God, who is unchangeable, permanent, and unalterable.
Aristotle, however, omits God as Providence, and conceives him less
personally than is done by Plato.

In the Stoical system, theism becomes pantheism.[255] There is one Being,
who is the substance of all things, from whom the universe flows forth,
and into whom it returns in regular cycles.

Zeller[256] sums up his statements on this point thus: "From all that has
been said it appears that the Stoics did not think of God and the world as
different beings. Their system was therefore strictly pantheistic. The sum
of all real existence is originally contained in God, who is at once
universal matter and the creative force which fashions matter into the
particular materials of which things are made. We can, therefore, think of
nothing which is not either God or a manifestation of God. In point of
being, God and the world are the same, the two conceptions being declared
by the Stoics to be absolutely identical."

The Stoic philosophy was materialism as regards the nature of things, and
necessity as regards the nature of the human will. The Stoics denied the
everlasting existence of souls as individuals, believing that at the end
of a certain cycle they would be resolved into the Divine Being.
Nevertheless, till that period arrives, they conceived the soul as
existing in a future state higher and better than this. Seneca calls the
day of death the birthday into this better world. In that world there
would be a judgment on the conduct and character of each one; there
friends would recognize each other, and renew their friendship and
society.

While the Epicureans considered religion in all its usual forms to be a
curse to mankind, while they believed it impious to accept the popular
opinions concerning the gods, while they denied any Divine Providence or
care for man, while they rejected prayer, prophecy, divination, and
regarded fear as the foundation of religion, they yet believed, as their
master Epicurus had believed, in the existence of the immortal gods. These
beings he regarded as possessing all human attributes, except those of
weakness and pain. They are immortal and perfectly happy; exempt from
disease and change, living in celestial dwellings, clothed with bodies of
a higher kind than ours, they converse together in a sweet society of
peace and content.

Such were the principal theological views of the Greek philosophers. With
the exception of the last, and that of the Sceptics, they were either
monotheistic or consistent with monotheism. They were, on the whole, far
higher than the legends of the poets or the visions of the artists. They
were, as the Christian Fathers were fond of saying, a preparation for
Christianity. No doubt one cause of the success of this monotheistic
religion among the Greek-speaking nations was that Greek philosophy had
undermined faith in Greek polytheism.

This we shall consider in another section.

Sec. 7. The Worship of Greece.

The public worship of Greece, as of other ancient nations, consisted of
sacrifices, prayers, and public festivals. The sacrifices were for
victories over their enemies, for plentiful harvests, to avert the anger
of some offended deity, for success in any enterprise, and those specially
commanded by the oracles.

In the earliest times fruits and plants were all that were offered.
Afterward the sacrifices were libations, incense, and victims. The
libation consisted of a cup brimming with wine, which was emptied upon the
altars. The incense, at first, was merely fragrant leaves or wood, burnt
upon the altar; afterward myrrh and frankincense were used. The victims
were sheep, oxen, or other animals. To Hecate they offered a dog, to Venus
a dove, to Mars some wild animal, to Ceres the sow, because it rooted up
the corn. But it was forbidden to sacrifice the ploughing ox. The
sacrifices of men, which were common among barbarous nations, were very
rare in Greece.

On great occasions large sacrifices were offered of numerous victims,--as
the hecatomb, which means a hundred oxen. It is a curious fact that they
had a vessel of holy water at the entrance of the temples, consecrated by
putting into it a burning torch from the altar, with which or with a
branch of laurel the worshippers were sprinkled on entering. The
worshippers were also expected to wash their bodies, or at least their
hands and feet, before going into the temple; a custom common also among
the Jews and other nations. So Ezekiel says: "I will sprinkle you with
clean water and you shall be clean." And the Apostle Paul says, in
allusion to this custom: "Let us draw near, having our hearts sprinkled
from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."

All these customs had a natural origin. The natural offering to the gods
is that which we like best ourselves. The Greeks, eminently a social
people, in the enjoyment of their feasts, wished to give a part of
everything to the gods. Loving wine, perfumes, and animal food, they
offered these. As it was proper to wash before feasting with each other,
it seemed only proper to do the same before offering the feast to the
gods.

The essential part of the sacrifice was catching and pouring out the
blood of the victim; for, in the view of the ancients, blood was the seat
of life. Part of the victim was burned, and this was the portion supposed
to be consumed by the god. Another part was eaten by the worshippers, who
thus sat at table with the deity as his friends and companions. The joyful
character of Greek worship also appeared in the use of garlands of
flowers, religious dances and songs.

All the festivals of the Greeks were religious. Some were of the seasons,
as one in February to Zeus, the giver of good weather; and another in
November to Zeus, the god of storms. There were festivals in honor of the
plough, of the threshing-floor; festivals commemorating the victories at
Marathon, Salamis, etc.; of the restoration of democracy by Thrasybulus;
feasts of the clothing of the images, on which occasion it was not lawful
to work; feasts in commemoration of those who perished in the flood of
Deucalion; feasts of nurses, feasts of youth, of women, of trades. Then
there were the great national festivals, celebrated every four years at
Olympia and Delphi, and every three and five years at Nemea and the
isthmus of Corinth. The Panathenaeic festival at Athens was held every
five years in honor of Athene, with magnificent processions, cavalcades of
horsemen, gymnastic games, military dances, recitations of the Homeric
poems, and competition in music. On the frieze of the Parthenon was
represented by the scholars of Phidias the procession of the Peplos. This
was a new dress made for the statue of Athene by young girls of Athens,
between the ages of seven and eleven years. These girls, selected at a
special ceremony, lived a year on the Acropolis, engaged in their sacred
work, and fed on a special diet. Captives were liberated on this occasion,
that all might share in the festival.

Such festivals constituted the acme of Greek life. They were celebrated in
the open air with pomp and splendor, and visitors came from far to assist
on these occasions. Prizes were given for foot and chariot races; for
boxing, leaping, music, and even for kissing. The temples, therefore, were
not intended for worship, but chiefly to contain the image of the god.
The _cella_, or _adytum_, was small and often dark; but along the
magnificent portico or peristyle, which surrounded the four sides of the
Doric temples, the splendid processions could circulate in full view of
the multitude.[257] The temple was therefore essentially an out-door
building, with its beauty, like that of a flower, exposed to light and
air. It was covered everywhere, but not crowded, with sculpture, which was
an essential part of the building. The pediments, the pedestals on the
roofs, the metopes between the triglyphs, are as unmeaning without the
sculpture as a picture-frame without its picture. So says Mr.
Fergusson;[258] and adds that, without question, color was also everywhere
used as an integral part of the structure.

Priesthood was sometimes hereditary, but was not confined to a class.
Kings, generals, and the heads of a family acted as priests and offered
sacrifices. It was a temporary office, and Plato recommends that there
should be an annual rotation, no man acting as priest for more than one
year. Such a state of opinion excludes the danger of priestcraft, and is
opposed to all hierarchal pretensions. The same, however, cannot be said
of the diviners and soothsayers, who were so much consulted, and whose
opinions determined so often the course of public affairs. They were often
in the pay of ambitious men. Alcibiades had augurs and oracles devoted to
his interests, who could induce the Athenians to agree to such a course as
he desired. For the Greeks were extremely anxious to penetrate the future,
and the power and influence of their oracles is, says Doellinger, a
phenomenon unique in history.

Among these oracles, Delphi, as is well known, took the highest rank. It
was considered the centre of the earth, and was revered by the
Pan-Hellenic race. It was a supreme religious court, whose decisions were
believed to be infallible. The despotism of the Pythian decisions was,
however, tempered by their ambiguity. Their predictions, if they failed,
seldom destroyed the faith of the believers; for always some explanation
could be devised to save the credit of the oracle. Thus, the Pythian
promised the Athenians that they would take all the Syracusans prisoners.
They did not take them; but as a muster-roll of the Syracusan army fell
into their hands, this was considered to fulfil the promise.[259]
Aristides, the rhetorician, was told that the "white maidens" would take
care of him; and receiving a letter which was of advantage, he was fully
convinced that this was the "white maiden." But neither imposition nor
delusion will satisfactorily explain the phenomena connected with oracles.
The foundation of them seems to have been a state allied to the modern
manifestations of magnetic sleep and clairvoyance.

"As the whole life of the Greeks," says Doellinger, "was penetrated by
religion," they instinctively and naturally prayed on all occasions. They
prayed at sunrise and sunset, at meal-times, for outward blessings of all
kinds, and also for virtue and wisdom. They prayed standing, with a loud
voice, and hands lifted to the heavens. They threw kisses to the gods with
their hands.