Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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So we see that the Greek worship, like their theology, was natural and
human, a cheerful and hopeful worship, free from superstition. This
element only arrives with the mysteries, and the worship of the Cthonic
gods. To the Olympic gods supplications were addressed as to free moral
agents, who might be persuaded or convinced, but could not be compelled.
To the under-world deities prayer took the form of adjuration, and
degenerated into magic formulas, which were supposed to force these
deities to do what was asked by the worshipper.

Sec. 8. The Mysteries. Orphism.

The early gods of most nations are local and tribal. They belong only to
limited regions, or to small clans, and have no supposed authority or
influence beyond. This was eminently the case in Greece; and after the
great Hellenic worship had arrived, the local and family gods retained
also their position, and continued to be reverenced. In Athens, down to
the time of Alexander, each tribe in the city kept its own divinities and
sacrifices. It also happened that the supreme god of one state would be
adored as a subordinate power in another. Every place had its favorite
protector. As different cities in Italy have their different Madonnas,
whom they consider more powerful than the Madonna of their neighbors, so
in Greece the same god was invoked in various localities under different
surnames. The Arcadian Zeus had the surname of Lycaeus, derived, probably,
from [Greek: Lux], Lux, light. The Cretan Jupiter was called Asterios.
At Karia he was Stratios. Iolaus in Euripides (the Herakleidae, 347) says:
"We have gods as our allies not inferior to those of the Argives, O king;
for Juno, the wife of Jove, is their champion, but Minerva ours; and I
say, to have the best gods tends to success, for Pallas will not endure to
be conquered."[260] So, in the "Suppliants" of Aeschylus, the Egyptian
Herald says (838): "By no means do I dread the deities of this place; for
they have not nourished me nor preserved me to old age."[261]

Two modes of worship met in Greece, together with two classes of gods. The
Pelasgi, as we have seen, worshipped unnamed impersonal powers of the
universe, without image or temple. But to this was added a worship which
probably came through Thrace, from Asia and Egypt. This element introduced
religious poetry and music, the adoration of the muses, the rites and
mysteries of Demeter, and the reverence for the Kabiri, or dark divinities
of the lower world.

Of these, the MYSTERIES were the most significant and important. Their
origin must be referred to a great antiquity, and they continued to be
practised down to the times of the Roman Emperors. They seem not to belong
to the genuine Greek religion, but to be an alien element introduced into
it. The gods of the Mysteries are not the beings of light, but of
darkness, not the gods of Olympus, but of the under-world. Everything
connected with the Mysteries is foreign to the Hellenic mind. This
worship is secret; its spirit is of awe, terror, remorse; its object is
expiation of sin. Finally, it is a hieratic worship, in the hands of
priests.

All this suggests Egypt as the origin of the Mysteries. The oldest were
those celebrated in the island of Samothrace, near the coast of Asia
Minor. Here Orpheus is reputed to have come and founded the Bacchic
Mysteries; while another legend reports him to have been killed by the
Bacchantes for wishing to substitute the worship of Apollo for that of
Dionysos. This latter story, taken in connection with the civilizing
influence ascribed to Orpheus, indicates his introducing a purer form of
worship. He reformed the licentious drunken rites, and established in
place of them a more serious religion. He died a martyr to this purer
faith, killed by the women, who were incited to this, no doubt, by the
priests of the old Bacchic worship.

The worship of Dionysos Zagreus, which was the Orphic form of Bacchism,
contained the doctrines of retribution in another life,--a doctrine common
to all the Greek Mysteries.

It would seem probable, from an investigation of this subject, that two
elements of worship are to be found in the Greek religion, which were
never quite harmonized. One is the worship of the Olympian deities, gods
of light and day, gods of this world, and interested in our present human
life. This worship tended to promote a free development of character; it
was self-possessed, cheerful, and public; it left the worshipper unalarmed
by any dread of the future, or any anxiety about his soul. For the Olympic
gods cared little about the moral character of their worshippers; and the
dark Fate which lay behind gods and men could not be propitiated by any
rites, and must be encountered manfully, as one meets the inevitable.

The other worship, running parallel with this, was of the Cthonic gods,
deities of earth and the under-world, rulers of the night-side of nature,
and monarchs of the world to come. Their worship was solemn, mysterious,
secret, and concerned expiation of sin, and the salvation of the soul
hereafter.

Now, when we consider that the Egyptian popular worship delighted in just
such mysteries as these; that it related to the judgment of the soul
hereafter; that its solemnities were secret and wrapped in dark symbols;
and that the same awful Cthonic deities were the objects of its
reverence;--when we also remember that Herodotus and the other Greek
writers state that the early religion of the Pelasgi was derived from
Egypt, and that Orpheus, the Thracian, brought thence his doctrine,--there
seems no good reason for denying such a source. On the other hand, nothing
can be more probable than an immense influence on Pelasgic worship,
derived through Thrace, from Egypt. This view is full of explanations, and
makes much in the Greek mythology clear which would otherwise be obscure.

The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, for example, seems to be an
adaptation to the Hellenic mind and land of the Egyptian myth of Osiris
and Isis. Both are symbols, first, of natural phenomena; and, secondly, of
the progress of the human soul. The sad Isis seeking Osiris, and the sad
Demeter seeking Persephone constitute evidently the same legend; only
Osiris is the Nile, evaporated into scattered pools by the burning heat,
while Persephone is the seed, the treasure of the plant, which sinks into
the earth, but is allowed to come up again as the stalk, and pass a part
of its life in the upper air. But both these nature-myths were
spiritualized in the Mysteries, and made to denote the wanderings of the
soul in its search for truth. Similar to these legends was that of
Dionysos Zagreus, belonging to Crete, according to Euripides and other
writers. Zagreus was the son of the Cretan Zeus and Persephone, and was
hewn in pieces by the Titans, his heart alone being preserved by Athene,
who gave it to Zeus. Zeus killed the Titans, and enclosed the heart in a
plaster image of his child. According to another form of the story, Zeus
swallowed the heart, and from it reproduced another Dionysos. Apollo
collected the rest of the members, and they were reunited, and restored to
life.

The principal mysteries were those of Bacchus and Ceres. The Bacchic
mysteries were very generally celebrated throughout Greece, and were a
wild nature-worship; partaking of that frenzy which has in all nations
been considered a method of gaining a supernatural and inspired state, or
else as the result of it. The Siva worship in India, the Pythoness at
Delphi, the Schamaism of the North, the whirling dervishes of the
Mohammedans; and some of the scenes at the camp-meetings in the Western
States, belong to the same class as the Bacchic orgies.

The Eleusinian mysteries were very different. These were in honor of
Ceres; they were imported from Egypt. The wanderings of Isis in search of
Osiris were changed to those of Ceres or Demeter (the mother-earth = Isis)
in search of Persephone. Both represented in a secondary symbolism the
wanderings of the soul, seeking God and truth. This was the same idea as
that of Apuleius in the beautiful story of Psyche.

These mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis by the Athenians every fourth
year. They were said to have been introduced B.C. 1356, and were very
sacred. All persons were required to be initiated. If they refused it they
were supposed to be irreligious. "Have you been initiated?" was asked in
dangerous situations. The initiated were said to be calm in view of death.
It was the personal religion of the Greeks.

In the greater mysteries at Eleusis the candidates were crowned with
myrtle, and admitted by night into a vast temple, where they were purified
and instructed, and assisted at certain grand solemnities. The doctrines
taught are unknown, but are supposed to have been the unity of God and the
immortality of the soul. But this is only conjecture.

Bacchus is believed to have been originally an Indian god, naturalized in
Greece, and his mysteries to be Indian in their character. The genial life
of nature is the essential character of Bacchus. One of the names of the
Indian Siva is Dionichi, which very nearly resembles the Greek name of
Bacchus, Dionysos. He was taken from the Meros, or thigh of Jupiter. Now
Mount Meru, in India, is the home of the gods; by a common etymological
error the Greeks may have thought it the Greek word for _thigh_, and so
translated it.

The Bacchic worship, in its Thracian form, was always distasteful to the
best of the Greeks; it was suspected and disliked by the enlightened,
proscribed by kings, and rejected by communities. It was an interpolated
system, foreign to the cheerful nature of Greek thought.

As to the value of the mysteries themselves, there was a great difference
of opinion among the Greeks. The people, the orators, and many of the
poets praised them; but the philosophers either disapproved them openly,
or passed them by in silence. Socrates says no word in their favor in all
his reported conversations. Plato complains of the immoral influence
derived from believing that sin could be expiated by such ceremonies.[262]
They seem to have contained, in reality, little direct instruction, but to
have taught merely by a dramatic representation and symbolic pictures.

Who Orpheus was, and when he lived, can never be known. But the
probabilities are that he brought from Egypt into Greece, what Moses took
from Egypt into Palestine, the Egyptian ideas of culture, law, and
civilization. He reformed the Bacchic mysteries, giving them a more
elevated and noble character, and for this he lost his life. No better
account of his work can be given than in the words of Lord Bacon.

"The merits of learning," says he, "in repressing the inconveniences
which grow from man to man, was lively set forth by the ancients in
that feigned relation of Orpheus' theatre, where all beasts and birds
assembled; and, forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some
of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the
airs and accords of the harp; the sound thereof no sooner ceased or was
drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own
nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men, who
are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of
revenge, which, as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to
religion, sweetly touched by eloquence and persuasion of books, of
sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if
these instruments be silent, or that sedition and tumult make them not
audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion."[263]

Of the Orphic doctrines we are able to give a somewhat better account. As
far back as the sixth century before Christ, there were scattered through
Greece hymns, lyrical poems, and prose treatises, treating of theological
questions, and called Orphic writings. These works continued to be
produced through many centuries, and evidently met an appetite in the
Greek mind. They were not philosophy, they were not myths nor legends, but
contained a mystic and pantheistic theology.[264] The views of the
Pythagoreans entered largely into this system. The Orphic writings
develop, by degrees, a system of cosmogony, in which Time was the first
principle of things, from which came chaos and ether. Then came the
primitive egg, from which was born Phanes, or Manifestation. This being is
the expression of intelligence, and creates the heavens and the earth. The
soul is but the breath which comes from the whole universe, thus
organized, and is imprisoned in the body as in a tomb, for sins committed
in a former existence. Life is therefore not joy, but punishment and
sorrow. At death the soul escapes from this prison, to pass through many
changes, by which it will be gradually purified. All these notions are
alien to the Greek mind, and are plainly a foreign importation. The true
Greek was neither pantheist nor introspective. He did not torment himself
about the origin of evil or the beginning of the universe, but took life
as it came, cheerfully.

The pantheism of the Orphic theology is constantly apparent. Thus, in a
poem preserved by Proclus and Eusebius it is said:[265]--

"Zeus, the mighty thunderer, is first, Zeus is last,
Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle of all things.
From Zeus were all things produced. He is both man and woman;
Zeus is the depth of the earth, and the height of the starry heavens;
He is the breath of all things, the force of untamed fire;
The bottom of the sea; sun, moon, and stars;
Origin of all; king of all;
One Power, one God, one great Ruler."

And another says, still more plainly:--

"There is one royal body, in which all things are enclosed,
Fire and Water, Earth, Ether, Night and Day,
And Counsel, the first producer, and delightful Love,
For all these are contained in the great body of Zeus."

Sec. 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.

One of the greatest events in the history of man, as well as one of the
most picturesque situations, was when Paul stood on the Areopagus at
Athens, carrying Christianity into Europe, offering a Semitic religion to
an Aryan race, the culmination of monotheism to one of the most elaborate
and magnificent polytheisms of the world. A strange and marvellous scene!
From the place where he stood he saw all the grandest works of human
art,--the Acropolis rose before him, a lofty precipitous rock, seeming
like a stone pedestal erected by nature as an appropriate platform for the
perfect marble temples with which man should adorn it. On this noble base
rose the Parthenon, temple of Minerva; and the temple of Neptune, with its
sacred fountain. The olive-tree of Pallas-Athene was there, and her
colossal statue. On the plain below were the temples of Theseus and
Jupiter Olympus, and innumerable others. He stood where Socrates had stood
four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of
atheism; where Demosthenes had pleaded in immortal strains of eloquence in
behalf of Hellenic freedom; where the most solemn and venerable court of
justice known among men was wont to assemble. There he made the memorable
discourse, a few fragments only of which have come to us in the Book of
Acts, but a sketch significant of his argument. He did not begin, as in
our translation, by insulting the religion of the Greeks, and calling it
a superstition; but by praising them for their reverence and piety. Paul
respected all manifestations of awe and love toward those mysteries and
glories of the universe, in which the invisible things of God have been
clearly seen from the foundation of the world. Then he mentions his
finding the altar to the unknown God, mentioned also by Pausanias and
other Greek writers, one of whom, Diogenes Laertius, says that in a time
of plague, not knowing to what god to appeal, they let loose a number of
black and white sheep, and whereever any one laid down they erected an
altar to an unknown god, and offered sacrifices thereon. Then he announced
as his central and main theme the Most High God, maker of heaven and
earth, spiritual, not needing to receive anything from man, but giving him
all things. Next, he proclaimed the doctrine of universal human
brotherhood. God had made all men of one blood; their varieties and
differences, as well as their essential unity, being determined by a
Divine Providence. But all were equally made to seek him, and in their
various ways to find him, who is yet always near to all, since all are his
children. God is immanent in all men, says Paul, as their life. Having
thus stated the great unities of faith and points of agreement, he
proceeds only in the next instance to the oppositions and criticisms; in
which he opposes, not polytheism, but idolatry; though not blaming them
severely even for that. Lastly, he speaks of Jesus, as a man ordained by
God to judge the world and govern it in righteousness, and proved by his
resurrection from the dead to be so chosen.

Here we observe, in this speech, monotheism came in contact with
polytheism, and the two forms of human religion met,--that which makes man
the child of God, and that which made the gods the children of men.

The result we know. The cry was heard on the sandy shore of Eurotas and in
green Cythnus.--"Great Pan is dead." The Greek humanities, noble and
beautiful as they were, faded away before the advancing steps of the
Jewish peasant, who had dared to call God his Father and man his brother.
The parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan were stronger
than Homer's divine song and Pindar's lofty hymns. This was the religion
for man. And so it happened as Jesus had said: "My sheep hear my voice and
follow me." Those who felt in their hearts that Jesus was their true
leader followed him.

The gods of Greece, being purely human, were so far related to
Christianity. That, too, is a human religion; a religion which makes it
its object to unfold man, and to cause all to come to the stature of
perfect men. Christianity also showed them God in the form of man; God
dwelling on the earth; God manifest in the flesh. It also taught that the
world was full of God, and that all places and persons were instinct with
a secret divinity. Schiller (as translated by Coleridge) declares that
LOVE was the source of these Greek creations:--

"'Tis not merely
The human being's pride that peoples space
With life and mystical predominance,
Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love
This visible nature, and this common world
Is all too narrow; yea, a deeper import
Lurks in the legend told my infant years
That lies upon that truth, we live to learn.
For fable is Love's world, his home, his birthplace;
Delightedly dwells he 'mong fays and talismans,
And spirits, and delightedly believes
Divinities, being himself divine.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of Old Religion,
The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms or wat'ry depths;--all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of Reason.
But still the heart doth need a language; still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names."

_The Piccolomini_, Act II. Scene 4.

As a matter of fact we find the believers in the Greek religion more ready
to receive Christianity than were the Jews. All through Asia Minor and
Greece Christian churches were planted by Paul; a fact which shows that
the ground was somehow prepared for Christianity. It was ready for the
monotheism which Paul substituted for their multitude of gods, and for
their idolatry and image-worship. The statues had ceased to be symbols,
and the minds of the Greeks rested in the image itself. This idolatrous
worship Paul condemned, and the people heard him willingly, as he called
them up to a more spiritual worship. We think, therefore, that the Greek
religion was a real preparation for Christianity. We have seen that it was
itself in constant transition; the system of the poets passing into that
of the artists, and that of the artists into that of the philosophers; so
that the philosophic religion, in turn, was ready to change into a
Christian monotheism.

It may be said, since philosophy had undermined the old religion and
substituted for it more noble ideas, why did it not take the seat of the
dethroned faith, and sufficiently supply its place? If it taught a pure
monotheism and profound ethics, if it threw ample and adequate light on
the problem of God, duty, and immortality, what more was needed? If ideas
are all that we want, nothing more. That Greek philosophy gave way before
Christianity shows that it did not satisfy all the cravings of the soul;
shows that man needs a religion as well as a religious philosophy, a faith
as well as an intellectual system. A religion is one thing, a speculation
is a very different thing. The old Greek religion, so long as it was a
living faith, was enough. When men really believed in the existence of
Olympian Jove, Pallas-Athene, and Phoebus-Apollo, they had something above
them to which to look up. When this faith was disintegrated, no system of
opinions, however pure and profound, could replace it. Another faith was
needed, but a faith not in conflict with the philosophy which had
destroyed polytheism; and Christianity met the want, and therefore became
the religion of the Greek-speaking world.

Religion is a life, philosophy is thought; religion looks up, philosophy
looks in. We need both thought and life, and we need that the two shall be
in harmony. The moment they come in conflict, both suffer. Philosophy had
destroyed the ancient simple faith of the Hellenic race in their deities,
and had given them instead only the abstractions of thought. Then came
the Apostles of Christianity, teaching a religion in harmony with the
highest thought of the age, and yet preaching it out of a living faith.
Christianity did not come as a speculation about the universe, but as a
testimony. Its heralds bore witness to the facts of God's presence and
providence, of his fatherly love, of the brotherhood of man, of a rising
to a higher life, of a universal judgment hereafter on all good and evil,
and of Jesus as the inspired and ascended revealer of these truths. These
facts were accepted as realities; and once more the human mind had
something above itself solid enough to support it.

Some of the early Christian Fathers called on the heathen poets and
philosophers to bear witness to the truth. Clement of Alexandria[266]
after quoting this passage of Plato, "around the king of all are all
things, and he is the cause of all good things," says that others, through
God's inspiration, have declared the only true God to be God. He quotes
Antisthenes to this effect: "God is not like to any; wherefore no one can
know him from an image." He quotes Cleanthes the Stoic:--

"If you ask me what is the nature of the good, listen:
That which is regular, just, holy, pious,
Self-governing, useful, fair, fitting,
Grave, independent, always beneficial,
That feels no fear or grief; profitable, painless,
Helpful, pleasant, safe, friendly."

"Nor," says Clement, "must we keep the Pythagoreans in the background, who
say, 'God is one; and he is not, as some suppose, outside of this frame of
things, but within it; in all the entireness of his being he pervades the
whole circle of existence, surveying all nature, and blending in
harmonious union the whole; the author of his own forces and works, the
giver of light in heaven, and father of all; the mind and vital power of
the whole world, the mover of all things.'"

Clement quotes Aratus the poet:--

"That all may be secure
Him ever they propitiate first and last.
Hail, Father! great marvel, great gain to man."

"Thus also," says Clement, "the Ascraean Hesiod dimly speaks of God:--

'For he is the king of all, and monarch
Of the immortals, and there is none that can vie with him in power.'

"And Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, says:--

'One, in truth, one is God,
Who made both heaven and the far-stretching earth;
And ocean's blue wave, and the mighty winds;
But many of us mortals, deceived in heart,
Have set up for ourselves, as a consolation in our afflictions,
Images of the gods, of stone, or wood, or brass,
Or gold, or ivory;
And, appointing to these sacrifices and vain festivals,
Are accustomed thus to practise religion.'

"But the Thracian Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, hierophant and poet, at
once, after his exposition of the orgies and his theology of idols,
introduces a palinode of truth with solemnity, though tardily singing the
strain:--

'I shall utter to whom it is lawful; but let the doors be closed,
Nevertheless, against all the profane. But do thou hear,
O Musaeus, for I will declare what is true.'