The religions of the world. An outline of the great religious systems

Preface

A MAN who rejects all other religions and accepts Christianity ought to be able to give a reason for it (i Pet. 3:15). To this end, obviously, he should have at the least a general acquaintance with the systems of religion which have, at one time or other, claimed the world's mind and conscience. It is the purpose of this book to present an outline of the great systems measurably clear, concise and accurate — such as shall enable the reader to characterize each at sight and defend his faith against them all. For, as there is only one true God, there can be only one true religion. Christianity claims to be that one. It may verify that claim, on the one hand, by a setting forth of its own merits, and, on the other, by a comparison with other and rival faiths. In this comparison our religion, if true, has everything to gain and nothing to lose. We therefore rejoice in the fact that of late the science of Comparative Religion has rapidly pushed itself to the front.

The essays in this book were originally prepared in brief for a Bible-class of young men. They were afterward revised and extended for a university lecture course, and once more for an association of pastors in a summer assembly. It is at the request of some of the foregoing auditors that the essays have now been ar-

4 PREFACE,

ranged for publication. It is the writer's hope that the book may prove interesting and profitable — not, perhaps, to those who are already more or less familiar with the science, so much as to the many common folk, who, cumbered with much serving in secular affairs, yet feeling the need of information on a subject which claims ever more and more of public thought, must have their reading in simple terms, clear outline and compact form.

The following conclusions will probably occur to the reader: (i) There is a measure of good in each of the great religions ; (2) It is not true that " one religion is as good as another ;" (3) The Christian religion alone is altogether good; (4) The false systems cannot be regarded as progressive steps toward the true; (5) The true religion derives little or nothing from the false : " It gives a light to every age ; it gives, but borrows none ;" (6) The false philosophies which are from time to time advanced against the Christian religion are nearly or quite all borrowed from the erroneous systems of the past ; (7) Christianity is the absolute religion ; that is, it is wholly free from error and contains all good ; (8) It alone reveals the true God ; (9) It alone presents the ideal man; (10) It alone suggests a plan for the reconciliation of guilty man and offended God ; (11) It is the only moral system ; (12) It is fair, therefore, to regard it as final ; (13) It is destined to be the universal religion. Jesus shall reign where'er the sun doth his successive journeys run.

Contents

PAGE

I. FETICHISM 7

II. THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT ...... 29

I. Fetichism

The Fetich is any material thing, living or dead, not divine, to which reverence is paid on account of a supernatural influence proceeding from it.

Central Thought: A man is not the controller of his own affairs.

(i) His master is fetich, the fortune-giver.

(2) He may have many fetiches of divers kinds.

(3) Fetichism is [a] not Polytheism,

(b) nor Henotheism, (^) nor Pantheism.

(4) It is, however, a system, having both a creed and a

cultus.

(5) It is better than any form of materialism, because it holds

to the reality of supersensible things.

(6) Providence vs. the modern fetich.

" What shall I do to be saved f No answer.

THE

Religions of the World.

I. FETICHISM.

The religion of Adam was the true one. He worshiped God in spirit and in truth. He had his theologydirect from the divine lips. He *^ heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden." There was no such thing as spiritual ignorance or unbelief in those days. But Adam sinned and then fled shamefaced from the garden of delights. Night closed in around him — an Egyptian night, a darkness that could be felt. He was without God and without hope in the world. But he was not without memory. Amid the ruins of his former greatness walked the dim figure of his Creator. The prodigal could not forget his home and his Father, could not wholly forget that he was made after the divine image. A guilty wanderer, his soul cried out for God. In the darkness he groped after him. Oh, blessed reminiscence ! The Moslem felt it when he wrote —

" As thy beloved*s eyes are mirrored in thine eyes, God's Spirit, painted so, within thy spirit lies."

lO THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.

And also when he wrote —

*' God and the soul are two birds free, And dwell together in one tree.

This eateth various flavored fruits Of sense's thoughts and world's pursuits; Thai tasteth not nor great nor small, But silently beholdeth all."

In this deep night we come upon Fetichism^ the rehgion of the abject masses of men, such as the Eskimos, the Australian bushmen, the jungle-dwellers of Africa. It is the lowest grade of religion. Comte, in his Positive Philosophy, makes it the primordial faith, or the initial stage in the logical evolution of religion.^ We prefer to regard it as the farthest point — the point of arrest, as it were — in the retrogression of the soul from God.^

^ " Fetichism is not only the most ancient, but it is also the most universal, form of religion. It furnishes incontrovertible proof that the lack of correct knowledge was the true and only cause of polytheism, and that for the uncultured savage everything is God or may be God." — Meiner's History of Religion.

2 Altogether, the theoiy to which the facts appear on the whole to point is the existence of a primitive religion communicated to man from without, whereof monotheism and expiatory sacrifice were parts, and the gradual clouding over of this primitive revelation everywhere, unless it were among the Hebrews. Even among them a worship of teraphim crept in (Gen. 31 : 19-35), together with other corruptions (Josh. 24 : 14) ; and the terrors of Sinai were needed to clear away polytheistic accretions. Elsewhere degeneration had free play,. " a dark cloud stole over man's original consciousness of the divinity, and in consequence of his own guilt an estrangement of the creature from the one living God took place : man, as under the overpowering sway of sense and sensual lust, proportionally weakened, therefore, in his moral freedom, was unable any longer to conceive of the divinity as a pure,

FETICH ISM. II

Max Miiller says : '' Fetichism, so far from being, as we are told by almost every writer on the history of religion, a primitive form of faith, is, on the contrary, so far as facts enable us to judge, a decided corruption of an earlier and simpler religion. If we want to find the true springs of religious ideas, we must mount higher. Stocks and stones were not the first to reveal the Infinite before the wondering eyes of men." The true order is, ** In the beginning, God.''

Definition. — The word fetich is from the Portuguese fetisso, a charm.^ A fetich is defined by Waitz as ** an object of religious veneration, wherein the material thing and the spirit within it are regarded as one;" by Schultze, as " any object whatsoever viewed anthropopathically or as endowed with human characteristics;" by Aug. Comte, as " a body animated in the same manner as the human body, and, like that, governed by a will;" by Peterson, as "a vehicle through which a

spiritual, supernatural, and infinite Being distinct from the world and exalted above it." — RAWLmsoN^S Andenf J^eltgzons, pp. 175, 176.

1 The first writer to employ the word fetich was De Brosses in his work Du culte des dieux Fetiches , which appeared in 1 760, anonymously and without the name of the place of publication. As to the origin of the word, he mentions " . . . . certain deities whom Europeans call fetiches, a word formed by our traders in Senegal out of the Portuguese term fetisso — /. e. enchanted, divine, oracular."

It is from the Latin root fatum, fanum, fari.

Winterbottom, in his Accozmt of the Native Aficans in the Neighhood of Sierre Leone ^ derives the word from the Portuguese faticeira, witch, ov faticaria, witchcraft. The negroes borrowed not only this, but also another vfoxd^gree-gree, from the Portuguese. According to Bastian, the universal name in West Africa for a fetich is enquizi. Another name is mokisso, or juju, also wong ; among several American tribes, manitu. — Fetichisniy Fritz Schultze, Ph.D., p. 24.

supernatural power makes itself felt;" by Tyler, as "a spirit embodied in or attached to, or conveying influence through, certain material objects."

All these definitions seem too broad. A fetich is any viatcrial tilings living or dead, which, while not regarded as diviyie, is revere7iced on account of a supposed super- 7iatural ijiflnence proceeding from it}

Central Thought, — The savage has a clear perception of the fact that he is not his own master ; he is controlled by a power or powers not himself. The most important business of his life is to discover those forces that hold him in their mysterious grasp.

(i.) He finds presently, as he supposes, that his good or ill fortune is associated with some material thing, as a stone or a crooked stick ; this henceforth becomes his fetich or potent charm. He invokes its kind offices or placates its wrath, believing that his luck is made or marred by it.

He may have more fetiches than one ; the number, indeed, may be indefinitely increased by the addition of anything whatever that in any way affects his fortune. He may believe in the mysterious animation of all sensible things. The world is full of potent life.^ He fears to tread upon a plant or hurt a noisome rep-

^ Webster's definition of fetich is as follows : " A material thing, living or dead, which is made the object of brutish and superstitious worship, as among certain African tribes." The objection to this definition is that it confuses the respective ideas of fetich and idol.

* ** The negro carries the belief in an animated nature to its uttermost limits, but as his mind is too rude to conceive of one universal animated nature, his imagination leads him to regard every trifling object around him as endowed with life." — Waitz, Anthropology of Savage Tribes ; SCHULTZE, p. 3.

tile, lest it avenge itself upon him. An Indian salutes a snake by the wayside, '^ Hail, friend ! take this gift of tobacco-dust; it will comfort you on your long journey." He may crush the reptile, but not until he has first placated it.

(2.) He may have Many Fetiches, — The kinds of fetich are innumerable. Trees, rivers and mountains are invested with the mysterious power.^ The Australians worship the rock-crystal.^ The aborigines of North

^ Jacob Grimm gives a very full account of the worship paid to water in the spring, the brook, the river and the sea, and describes the religious observances of the people as they " offered their prayers, lighted lamps or made their sacrifices on the banks of the stream or on the margin of the spring;'' and these usages he traces from the remotest antiquity down into the Christian era.

"The pure, flowing, bubbling evanescent water; the flaming, glowing, dying fire ; the air, perceptible, not to the eye, but to the ear and to the touch ; the earth, which maintains all things and to which they all revert, — these have ever been regarded by man as sacred and worshipful, and through them he has been wont to bestow a solemn consecration upon the customs, the pursuits and the events of his life. Their action upon the entire universe being steady and constant, the untutored mind pays them worship for their own sake, without any reference to a deity residing in them." — Schultze, p. 66.

2 The Ephesians worshiped a block of black stone having a remote resemblance to a human figure, which they called Diana. It was said to have fallen down from heaven, the fact being, probably, that it was a meteoric stone.

Keary says in his Outlines of Primitive Belief p. %2> * " The great typical instance is that of the Artemisium at Ephesus. Some remains of this wonder of the world have in quite recent days been recovered and brought to this country, and we may judge from them (if we were in doubt before) that in outward decorative art it was inferior to no production of its own age.

" In the holy of holies still stood the time-honored image of the Ephesian Artemis, that hideous figure, only part human, part bestial or worse, and part still a block. This had been the central object of all

America attached a peculiar virtue to the wampumbelt. There are negroes in the interior of Africa who know no god greater than a cord which they wear knotted about the calves of their legs. (The Jesuit missionaries are said to have substituted for this a rope of twisted palm-leaf which had been blessed on Palm Sunday.)

A star/ a cloud,^ the 'Mights of St. Elmo/'^ an

from earliest to latest days. For the sake of this the three temples had risen, one upon the site of the other. A real Greek Artemis might adorn the sculptures of the walls, might be allowed presence as an ornament merely, but the popular worship was paid to the deformed figure within."

^ *' The vices which degrade the moral character of the Komans are mixed with a puerile superstition that disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the predictions of haruspices, who pretend to read, in the entrails of victims, the signs of future greatness and prosperity ; and there are many who do not presume either to bathe or to dine or to appear in public till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of astrology, the situation of Mercury and the aspect of the moon." — Gibbon's Rome, chap. 31.

On the 1 2th of December, 1680, John Evelyn writes: "This evening, looking out of my chamber window toward the west, I saw a meteor of an obscure bright color, very much in shape like the blade of a sword, the rest of the sky being very serene and clear. What this may portend God only knows. But such another phenomenon I remember to have seen in 1640, about the trial of the great earl of Strafford preceding our bloody revolution." — Yj^igwy'^ England, vol. iv. chap. 22.

2 All men had a touch of superstition. Evelyn looks with wonder upon " a shining cloud in the air in shape resembling a sword." After the battle of Edgehill, " in the very place where the battle was stricken, have since and doth appear strange and portentous apparitions of two jarring and contrary armies." So records a tract in which the apparitions and prodigious noises of war and battles are certified by a justice of the peace, a preacher and other persons of quality. — Knight's England, chap. 3.

3 " Toward the latter part of October they had in the night a gust of elephant's tooth, a lion's tail, a bunch of hair from a white man's beard, a splinter of a tree struck by lightning, a curious stone, a heap of mud, birds and beasts of every kind,^ dwarfs and albinos — in short, anything material in heaven above or earth beneath — may come to be regarded as a fetich.

This is not Polytheism, — Observe that this investheavy rain, accompanied by the severe thunder and lightning of the tropics. It lasted for four hours, and they considered themselves in much peril until they beheld several of those lambent flames playing about the tops of the masts and gliding along the rigging which have always been objects of superstitious fancies among sailors. Fernando Columbus makes remarks on them strongly characteristic of the age in which he lived : * On the same Saturday, in the night, was seen St. Elmo, with seven lighted tapers at the topmast ; there was much rain and great thunder; I mean to say that those lights were seen which mariners affirm to be the body of St. Elmo, on beholding which they chant litanies and orisons, holding it for certain that in the tempest in which he appears no one is in danger.' " — Irving's Columbus ^ book vi. chap. I.

^ In the East India islands, as in Africa also, the shark is a mighty fetich along the sea-coast. Eels are worshiped in Cusaie and in the Marian Isles. In the Carolines the god Mani is represented as a fish. " At Eap there are kept in a pond of fresh water two fishes of extreme age, but yet only a span in length, which always stand in a right line, head to head, without moving. If any man touch them and they are made to stand at right angles with each other, an earthquake is the result."

The reverence paid by American Indians to the rattlesnake was the means of saving the life of the Count von Zinzendorf (1742): ** The Cayugas, with whom he was staying, were about to put him to death, supposing that his presence was productive of ill-luck to them. The count was seated one night on a bundle of sticks, writing by the light of a small fire. Unknown to him, a rattlesnake lay alongside him. When the Indians who were to take his life approached and observed the snake, they withdrew, firmly convinced that the stranger was of divine origin." — Schultze.

iture of all things with a living power is not Polytheism. The fetich is not an idol ; that is, a symbol or image of the true God. No doubt, as we shall presently see, there are savages who believe in the Invisible One, but their fetiches, as such, are in no wise associated with him. The moment an object stands for God it ceases to be a fetich in any proper sense, and becomes an idol. Schultze says, referring to animal veneration, " They worship the animal itself m propria naiiird^ and without any reference to any divinity which it may represent." ^

Nor is it Henotheism. — Observe, again, that this is not what Max Miiller calls *' Henotheism ;" that is, the worship of anything as a god in and of itself, without respect to the Supreme One. The fetich, we repeat, is not in any wise whatsoever regarded or treated as a god.

Nor Pantheism. — Once more observe : it is not Pantheism. It does indeed fill the earth with mysterious powers, but there is no blending or expanding of all into one. The savage cannot generalize in that way. He merely personifies, like a child playing with a doll.^ His fetich is a living thing, with an influence

^ " It is not as if the savage in his anthropopathic apprehension represented to himself a self-existent superior power, a self-existenc soul which merely assumed for a time the external shape of the fetich No: the stone remains a stone, the river a river." — Schultze, p. 21.

^ " The little girl who in perfect seriousness regards her doll as a playmate, who strips and clothes it, feeds and chastises it, puts it to bed and hushes it to sleep, calls it by a personal name, etc., never imagines that all her care is expended on a lifeless thing ; she does not make any such reflections as these : ' This is all merely an illusion that I indulge on purpose — a play that I engage in, but with the distinct understanding all its own to make or mar his fortune ; it is, in other words, a mascot taking the place of a god. It is not divine ; it can scarcely be called supernatural. It is a material object supposed to be endowed with supernatural gifts. Its power is an unknown quantity which experience alone can estimate.

A Kaffir broke a piece off the anchor of a stranded vessel and soon after died. The Kaffirs thenceforth regarded that anchor as possessed of the mysterious influence, and saluted it as they passed by with a view to propitiating it.

If a fetich fails to stand the test of experience, it is scolded, flogged, imprisoned, dragged in the mire or cast into the sea.^ It is not uncommon, after an epidemic, for an entire tribe to make a bonfire of their fetiches. These are obviously, therefore, not regarded as divine in any important sense, although they may be said to be esteemed by the savages as tentative powers to be cast aside when their insufficiency is shown, as, e.g.^ their not being able to ward off a plague. When Xerxes ordered three hundred lashes to be administered to the Hellespont because it had broken up his bridge of boats, he manifestly had no flattering

that it is only play.' She has no thought that the doll is a lifeless thing; for her it is possessed of a human life." — Schultze, p. 21.

1 " In front of the American's house (in Shemba-Shemba, West Africa) there was a crowd of people assembled, in the midst of whom a fetich-priest was running up and down with loud cries, jerking hither and thither a wooden puppet decked with tatters of every color, and beating it with a switch on the face and shoulders. I learned that a knife had been stolen from one of the negroes, and he had applied for its recovery to this priest, who was the owner of a fetich in high repute as a detective of thieves." — Schultze, p. 27.

opinion of its power ; he did not regard the Hellespont as either a god or the symbol of a god ; it was a fetich overpowered by the winds, and therefore to be treated with angry contempt.

The fetich is understood to be more or less familiar with the future. It is consulted on the chase and in time of war. In Lapland a ring is used for divination upon the head of a magical drum. The North American Indians foretell coming events by taking the direction of smoke from the wigwam of the great medicineman.

Fortune-telling is a rudimental kind of Fetichism. The prospector who in these days in our mining districts wanders over the hills with a hazel switch poised in his hand searching for ore is a fetichist. Emerson wrote,

*• Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind."

This is evidently true of such things as horseshoes, hazel twigs and crooked sixpences.

The savage ascribes to his fetich the power of defending him from evil. He has one fetich against the thunder, another against lions, another against diseases, another to extract thorns from his feet. Potsherds are scattered around burying-places to keep off evil spirits, and the camp is surrounded with mussel-shells to cut the devil's feet. A beaver-skin or an earthen pot on a pole in the midst of the encampment is an effective ** totem " to avert evil. Among certain tribes on the western coast of Africa it is the custom for a son to preserve the skull of his father as a great fetich. It is kept in a secret place where no one but himself is ever allowed to see it. He sets food and offers sacrifices before it. This attention secures him victory over all his foes.^

Here we have the most abject form of spiritual bondage. It is the harpy Superstition wielding a whip of scorpions. The infant at its birth is placed under the tutelage of a fetich. A vow of faithful service is made in its behalf by the fond parents and tattooed in hieroglyphics upon the tender flesh. The fetich thus chosen is called the great one, and is thenceforth the controlling genius of the life of this immortal being. He is accustomed from his earliest childhood to revere the terms of this parental covenant. He expects his fetich to preserve him from danger and misfortune, in return for which he renders an unquestioning and unfaltering service. Other fetiches he may have, but this is always the supreme one. An Indian lad upon the verge of manhood takes a new fetich. He retires to a lonely

^ Rev. A. W. Marling, of the Gaboon mission, speaks as follows of a revolting form of w^orship prevailing among the Fang tribe of Western Africa : " It is called in their language beatee. It is practiced by the men only; the vromen are not allow^ed to know^ anything about it. When a man has been dead and buried for some time the skull is taken from the grave, given to his eldest son, vi^ho takes it to his own house and places it in some secret corner. Henceforth no one except himself, not even his wife, is allowed to see it. The spirit of his father is now supposed to have a special care for the son. If the latter be setting out on a journey, he has a fowl or a goat killed and food prepared. This he himself takes and deposits in private before the skull. The spirit is supposed to partake of the refreshment and to be propitiated toward the son, and to grant him protection in his journey and success in his undertaking, whatever it may be." — Foreign Missionary, June, 1885, pp. 21, 22.

place in the forest and dreams his Hfe-dream, wherein his destiny is revealed to him. On awaking he tracks an animal to its lair and kills it, and its skin, worn thenceforth upon his person, is regarded as a magical protector. Should he lose it he receives an ignominious title, " The man without medicine." The skin serves him as his Providence. It stands him in the place of a god.

(3.) // is a System, — This rude form of religion — if religion it may be called — is found sometimes possessing the characteristics of a system. It has a creed and a cultus. It has an order of ministers^ called gangas, magians, feticeros or medicine-men, etc., whose duties are to reveal the future^ practice necromancy and juggling tricks, minister at the altar and guard the mysteries from profane eyes. They usually speak a language of their own, a dialect quite unintelligible to lay folk. They have temples also. One of these in Africa is thus described by Bastian : " The sacred place was quadrangular, constructed of straw matting, the entire front being of wooden framework with three arched doorways. Each of the two side-doorways was surmounted by a pyramid, while over the middle one rose a cupola, and the doorposts were adorned with figures in blue and green. Within was the fetich, a simple mound of earth, on which stood three forked sticks painted red and white in alternate stripes."

Such is Fetichism, the religion of the charm, the cabal, the talisman, the " mascot."

(4.) // is Better than Materialisin. — There is this only to be said in its favor : it betrays an instinctive faith in the unseen. May we venture with Schleiermacher to call this the '* God-consciousness "? No man created in the divine image ever yet sank so low in barbarism as to be a thorough materialist. The naked cannibal believes in the reality of invisible things. His Fetichism, if not worship, is a step taken through the darkness toward God.^ The Hindus have this proverb :

" The wall said to the nail, * What have I done That through me thy sharp tooth thou thus dost run?' The nail replied, * Poor fool ! what do I know ? Ask him who beats my head with many a blow.' "

I say, therefore, that though he does obeisance to nothing better than a coil of dried intestines hung on the ridge-pole of his tent, the fetich-worshiper is nearer heaven than the fool (Ps. 14 : i) whose university culture has emboldened him to say, *' There is no God." The fetichist has something that serves him as a rule of faith and practice, though it be merely, as Bastian calls it, "a system of the universe in smallest twelvemo."^ Better a philosophy of gorgons, hydras and

^ " Primitive man has a belief in the great thing — the tree, river, mountain, or what not. This belief is an afifection of the mind, very different from the simple sense that the thing is physically broad and high. Along with the physical sensation goes a subtler inward feeling, a sense not easily measurable, as physical sensations are, but still discoverable. We know it to be there by the answer which the material sensation has called out of man's heart, and which makes itself audibly known in his worship." — Keary's Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 17.

2 " The vow he has undertaken is for him the sum-total of religion. So long as things go pleasantly for him he is happy and contented under the guardianship of his mokisso ; he feels strong in the assurance of chimeras dire than what Carlyle calls a " religion of frog-spawn," a '' philosophy of dirt." The fetichist believes in an overruling spiritualism, in presences more or less powerful, here and there and everywhere. Moreover, he believes in his own helplessness. His destiny is in the grip of these unseen and unknown presences. He must somehow keep on the right side of them or disaster will overtake him. He has little or no conception of sin or of virtue, as such. His chief end is to please himself, and all his aspirations are briefly comprehended in good-htck} Give him success in the chase, victory in battle, rings and bracelets,