God-man

Front matter

f LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.!

\i

#w

Contents

I. SEARCH.

PAGE

Introductory , 15

II. The Buddhist

BUDDHISM is one of the sublimest religious phenomena that has visited this world. It is not a primitive religion, but was originally a feature of Brahminism ; it is safe to remark that the primitive types of all known religions have only been approximately ascertained. Buddha was early worshipped by the Brahmins as one of the incarnations or manifestions of Vishnu. He was looked upon, however, as a propagator of heresies, and the originator of all forms of scepticism. This designation, Buddha, was very likely given to the reformer Sakya-muni, at first, by way of reproach, who, by a most remarkable life, raised it above obloquy, making it as distinctive and honorable as Brahm or any other descriptive term could have been.*

The modern phases of Buddhism originated in Northern India, from five hundred to a thousand years B. C, and were sincere and manly efforts to restore certain early types of Brahminism, and free

* Compare the once opprobrious terms " Christian," "Methodist," and the like. 30 the people from a galling yoke of hierarchy and dogma. It was a dissent of human nature and philanthropy against the obnoxious Hindoo system of religious caste.

A few leading steps in the controversy between Brahminism and Buddhism are the following : Brahm, of Brahminism, is a passive intelligence, w T ith which it was contended that the sacerdotal orders only, may through Brahma ultimately become purely identical.

The corruptions of the priesthood, as with the Roman clergy before the Reformation, after a while brought a stigma upon this dogma. The more intelligent among the people felt they were as good, and if as good, then as worthy of divine honors, as their priests. This led them to demand for a God, a being less abstract and more active ; one who can enter into fellowship, not with one class, the priests merely, but with all classes alike.

These bold Protestants of their time and country, like Luther and the Reformers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, called upon their countrymen not to trust the sacerdotal classes, not to worship them, or Brahm through them, but to become their own priests, and worship, " not on this mountain " or that, but everywhere and directly the universal Intelligence. These reformatory movements led to controversy, and were doubtless inaugurated under severe persecution. The bloody Spanish Inquisition may have been anticipated.

As has always been*the case with similar reforms, it was a time, too, of religious break-up, attended with many and diverse " departures." The infidel philosophies of India probably took their rise in this period. Humanitarian, rationalistic, naturalistic, and materialistic parties appeared, contesting the pre-eminence of their several claims to universal respect. India must have had its Hobbes, its Voltaire, and possibly its Frederick the Great. It is with not a little interest we find the modern u Development " theory started at this time, or near it, in the formula, " The rising of the world is a natural cause."

But too many interests supported Brahminism to allow it to be overthrown by infidelities worse than itself, or supplanted by a revolution better than itself, but which was not without its grand defects. The seed of scepticism remained, however, producing more or less fruit ever after.

Buddhism soon yielded, and her noble sages became pilgrims, and fled to other countries. The leading spirit in this reformatory movement was Siddharta, of the family of the Sakya. He has borne the names of Sakya-muni, Sramana, Gautama, and Buddha.

He told the people that purity, abstinence, patience, brotherly love, and repentance were better than sacrifice. He, like Jesus, became the poor man's preacher and friend, employed the language of the common people, and chose his followers out of all classes, even from among the poorest women.

The subsequent success of Buddhism is well nigh incredible. It spread with amazing rapidity, and has held its ascendency with unparalleled vigor. It is to-day the faith of Thibet, Siam, of the Burmese Empire, Cochin China, Japan, Ceylon, and is the popular, though not the state religion of China. The later Yoga system of Brahmin asceticism was formed by the introduction of Buddhistic elements, and to Buddhism is almost entirely indebted for its success. Buddhism is therefore, in numbers, the most extensively prevailing religion that has ever existed in this world. It has not less than three hundred million disciples. It holds under its sway one third of the globe, and perhaps it might be worse held.

There are those who look upon this great religious movement as of no account. To say that it is not worthy of a moment's attention is easy enough, but argues a void in the speaker. Ideas which have exercised sway over such multitudes must, from the nature of the case, have foundation in fact and truth. Upon their surface there may be unseemly " parasite growths," but underneath there are vitality and reality. Newman is not far from correct in saying that " the majority is always true-hearted." " What every man says must be true " contains truth. It is a late day for Christianity to fall into a jealous fit, for fear that she has something to lose from paying respect to the thoughts of so many men. There is truth in Buddhism, "an inward perennial truth," or there is truth nowhere. These fore-thoughts of Buddhisits may be as good and the same as our after-thoughts. Sakya-muni peered for a time into the very heart and depths of divine things. His religious system is the " enormous shadow" of what he saw. His apprehensions may have anticipated and foreshadowed the similar apprehensions of all believers in all ages. He looked and saw for others. u What he says, all men were not far from saying — were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start lip, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought, answering to it, Yes, even 3 so ! Joyfully to men as the dawning of day from night, is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no being into being, from death into life ? " * from a night of nightmare into the tranquil smile of spring morning? The "perplexing jungle of Paganism" springs from a grand tap-root, nourished by the soul's life and thought. Its root is embedded in human nature; its leaves can but exhale something of truth. All admit that Christianity is the highest form of religious truth and thought. Buddhism approaches and makes obeisance : why scoff at it? Christians can afford to be something near as charitable as the Buddhist of Ceylon w r ho surprised a missionary by saying, " I respect Christianity because I regard it as a help to Buddhism."

Recall some of its great lessons to the race. It taught that not merely the priest, but the vilest person of the vilest race, even if a woman,j may become one with Buddha. The word Buddha means pure intelligence — - the Brahm of Hindooism. Buddha and Brahm are of cognate, if not of the same signification.

No thoughts known to the world could be, therefore, more inspiring to Brahmin or Buddhist, than identity with this divine intelligence of Brahm and Buddha. The cry in fact to all nations w T as, " Ho, every one that thirsteth," " without money," " without price," and " without priest." Thirsty humanity lifted its drooping eyes and exclaimed, " I would, and I will." Buddhism also maintains the highest admiration for intelligence. The low estimate placed upon

* Carlyle.

t It is now universally admitted that women are better treated by Buddhism than by any other Oriental religion.

human life by the Brahmin, the Buddhist could not brook.

Intelligence, wherever found, to him is sacred. A drop of human blood must not be spilt. The laws of Gautama rigidly forbid the killing of any animal, from the minutest insect even, up to man. Brutes are felt by the Buddhist to have intelligence. They even must not be offered in sacrifice. Their half-human faculites and affections are thought to be other forms of Buddha. Buddhism was, therefore, consistent and emphatic in saying to the world, " I will defend your life, for it is grand and sacred. " " You need spill no more blood." " Hereafter crown your altars, instead, with fruit and flowers." Affrighted humanity fleeing from the sacrificial knife, and crushed under the footfall of tyrants and priests, heard the message, and said, "I will — defend me."

Buddhism also advocated not only the sacredness but the infinite capacity, nay, the infinite actuality, of the human intellect. " The one infallible diagnostic of Buddhism is a belief in the infinite capacity of the human intellect." * Emerson, speaking of " the infinite enlargement of the heart, with a power of growth to a new infinite on every side," and of the soul of man as " an immensity not possessed, and that cannot be possessed," but reiterates sentiments with which Buddhism abounds.

It also taught that the Pure Intelligence, the Illimitable One, may be embodied in an infant. It affirmed that men are not brutes, but the true high priests of the

* Hodgson.

universe, nay, even gods. It anticipated in the same spirit the claim of Empedocles, " I am God," indorsed by our New England philosopher. " The seer and the spectacle, the subject and object, are one." * It anticipated the Spirit of Revelation, but with different import. " I have said. Ye are gods, and all of you are the children of the Most High." f It told the mother that her child need not, and must not, be plunged into the Ganges, but be reared ; for in the image of God had it been created, and " of such is the kingdom of heaven." No wonder that these declarations were hailed as messages from heaven, and that whole tribes and whole nations exclaimed, " We too are Buddhists." And- who is not, in these respects, a Buddhist?

But again, to the Buddhist, belief in God is the most constant and the most awful of all thoughts ; and his relation to Him started strange and deep questions. Explanations were demanded ; thence other religious positions were taken. The Buddhist saw, for instance, that men are degraded ; hence Buddha is represented as descending to earth, in order to raise men into a higher and purer life. The transcendental school holds that this Buddha was not a real personage, but the imaginary or spiritual character of a perfectly spotless being, God's representative, an example and a Saviour.

Though Buddhism started out as a protest against the idea of any kind of intervention or formal mediation between God and man, and likewise against the idea of sacrifice as an element of reconciliation, still, through a philosophical necessity, both these ideas

* Emerson. f Psalm lxxxii. 6.

gradually fastened themselves upon the system, though not in old and repulsive forms, yet in essential forms. Buddhism in these, as also in certain other matters, has, like Roman Catholicism, been, beyond question, a flexible religion, and upon this, in a measure, has depended its success.

Notice further developments : There is pure intelligence, and there is matter, said the Buddhist, but these positions inevitably lead to a third.* There is a mediating influence or personage who occupies the intervening territory, and this is Sanga. The Buddhist's idea of the God-man appears also in those ancient idols which represent God's illimitable greatness in colossal human forms. The solemn idea of sacrifice, strange and contradictory as it may seem, also found an important place in the Buddhist faith. It is really the essential foundation of its view of human and divine relations. The Buddhist's deity, not the priest, is to destroy man and perfect him, and perfect by destroying, and make perfect by absorption. The sacrificial idea is thus retained, but the prerogative of it is left, not with the caste^ but with God. The Sankhya Cajhila state that " sacrifice is the best of all temporal means of elevation ; but to arrive at the possession of the prerogatives of the wise, %visdom itself must be sought." The lofty idea here embodied is, that " temporal means," like the Jewish economy, must give place to something higher ; yet these temporal means must not be discarded. The purer Buddhist souls

* "The conception of religion presupposes, (a) God as object; (£) man as subject; (c) the mutual relation existing between them." — Professor J. H. Scholten.

seemed to half apprehend that wonderful economy which embraces all others, and which does not abolish the idea of sacrifice, but sees that Divine Reason has somehow been offered, " once for all," and that there is no longer needed a sacrifice of blood for sin. Indeed, the more we examine the Christian side of Buddhism, the more it seems to be crowded with points of light ; though its dark side leaves its followers in deepest ignorance and superstition. Notice additional aspects.

The Buddhist believes, for instance, that it is the privilege of divine men to contemplate divinity in its purity. It is likewise the teaching of Christianity that good men may know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. #

This privilege, says the Buddhist, is obtained by sanctification. And thus Jesus prays the Father to sanctify his disciples through divine truth. f

Buddhism calls good men Buddhas ; Christianity calls them " sons of God." Buddhism affirms and reaffirms that there must be some one person, and he a human person, in whom " perfect wisdom " resides. He may be a child in form, but he must be a God in power. All other persons utter only a part of the divine mind ; this One is himself perfect " Utterance." He is the perfect Image. Thus also Christianity points to One who is the Word, and in whom " dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." J

The Buddhist believes in the final loss of himself in some form of the Deity, perhaps the negative. The thought startles him, and almost induces non-belief.

* John xvii. 3. f John xvii. 17. J Col. ii. 9.

Nirvana, the absorbing One, is — Nothing. The Christian also holds to the well nigh overwhelming thought of the union of Father, Son, and Spirit in One, which thought our Saviour extends until it embraces all the pure in heart: " That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." *

We need not carry our investigations further. We have seen enough to convince us that in Buddhism there may be a "half-play," but also " real earnest " — rubbish, but gold.

Yes, it may be asked, but has not too much been shown? Why the need of special revelations, if these seekers have come so near God's facts ? If Buddhism has done so much, why may it not do all? If so near the truth, why may it not be the truth?

Suppose, philosophically, there could be no reply ; there are facts. One is, that there is no joy in Buddhism nothing but profound sorrow. With other lights about it, there is also felt to be for it no further progress. Beyond the Mongol nations it can never step. The system has truth, but is not the Truth; paths it has, but is not the Way ; light it gives, but not the Light;

* John xvii. 21. This thought is also peculiarly delightful to Emerson ; so much so that he ventures a compliment upon the apostle who re-stated the same idea. "There never was a young philosopher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church, by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially prized — 4 Then shall also the Son be subject unto him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all.' Let the claims and virtue of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable."

and never so sterile have been its fields as they are to-day. u It is now Atheism, fast merging into utter Idolatry." * With these thoughts in mind we may admit all that the admirers of the system claim for it. Nay, we are desirous of allowing that these devout thinkers deciphered in a rude style their inmost thoughts, which are also inmost truths. They saw, simply, what all true and earnest men must always see. " There is a Delphi and a Pythoness in every human breast," though not all are willing or know how, to listen. Externals change and pass away, but underneath the crust there are essentials which remain forever. God loves truth wherever found, and will see to it that nothing harms it. No age in history has been a thoroughly dark age. God has always kept fires lighted upon some altars. u The whole Past, as I keep repeating," says Carlyle, u is the possession of the Present ; the Past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these ; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. v To which of these three Religions do you specially adhere ? ' inquires Meister of his Teacher. 8 To all the Three,' answers the other. ' To all the Three ; for they by their union first constitute the True Religion.' ''

* Legge.

III. The Greek And Roman

GRECIAN mythology presents a field so vast and attractive, of such lofty spiritual development, and is so crowded with thoughts of the divine, that we hesitate before entering it, lest, while searching for the vital points demanded by our discussion, we be allured from the chief purpose, and linger here and there until the ultimate design eludes us.

We shall not attempt, in this review, to follow the chronological order of development, because the chronological and logical orders often seem at variance.

We also treat of the Grecian and Roman faiths as though they were one. The earlier religion of the Sabines, who inhabited the hills around Rome, is very little known. It may have had an Indian origin, and may have slightly modified the subsequent Roman faith. But Greek culture so affected the Roman that it seems dependent upon it. The same is true of its later mythology ; it does not present itself as essentially independent.*

* We are aware that Hegel claims that the resemblance between the two religions is superficial. Cicero ought to be

4 1

The only marked distinction is, that the aesthetic and moral character of the Grecian people was deified, while the deification in case of the Romans had relation to their practical and political character.* There was, in consequence, but little piety in Rome ; religion was utilitarian. It was different for a time, at least, in Greece.

But setting aside these comparisons, we seek leading ideas. It is well known to all, that first and last the God-idea pervaded to the fullest extent the ancient Grecian faith. Pantheism nowhere appears. Grecian theism was in vogue long before the time of Homer, who, though the first theologian of Greece, invented nothing ; he gathered up the thoughts of ancients and of his contemporaries and set them to music ; he was the Grecian Ezra.f

Tyler shows clearly in his chapter on " The Homeric Doctrine of the Gods," that correct attributes were theoretically ascribed to them ; but their conduct, as represented, presents thereto strange incongruities. The false ideas are the invention of men, the correct ones are the intuitive and almost unconscious testimony of the reason and conscience of man to the truth af God.

good authority. " A full river of influence/' he says, u and not a little brook, has flowed into Rome out of Greece."

* Scholten.

f It will afford the Bible believer no little delight to notice how modern investigations are accumulating evidence, directly and indirectly, in support of Scripture truth. They point with an absolutely inflexible finger to a common original centre or source for mankind — an Eden, an ark, one blood, one family, and one religion, received by inspiration or developed by a common mind.

COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY.

./Eschylus, the later u theological poet" of Greece, represents the supreme deity as " the universal father," M the universal cause," the • - all-seer," and " all-doer," and " all-wise." and " holy," and " merciful," the " most high and perfect one, blessed Zeus."

The current expressions, u God grant," " if God will," " God bless thee," " God will make amends," " God does good, men ill," betray most clearly a popular belief in God's unity. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Arnobius employ with great force against the pagans an argument based upon this thought.

The relations of Zeus to the Invisible and Unknown have not yet been well drawn. This Zeusdeity merely stands at the head of Grecian civilization, art, and poetry. The representations that he is universal and eternal must be received with qualification, for he was always represented as specific, as well as geiteric. He brings the world into light, but his inviolable decrees anticipated his own birth, and he has father and mother ; so that we may well ask, back of Zeus and back of Saturn, back of Coelus, or Uranus, and Terra, is — what?

Philosophy gives an indirect answer to the question. Pythagoras and Philolaus tell us that u God" and u One " are the same. Zeno said that no temples should be built to that deity, who is so far above all works of art and of artisans. Thales taught that the formative principle of motion, somehow connected with water, is God. This reminds one of Mr. Carlyle's " Force," Darwin's " Development," and Huxley's " Protoplasm."

Apollonius taught that no offerings should be made to that God who is called the First. It was a dictum of Aristotle that " God, who is invisible to every mortal, is seen alone in his works." We perceive errors, undoubtedly, in these speculations, but they are errors that lie near or in the direction of truth. The unit of Pythagoras, the infinite of Anaximander, water of Thales, air of Anaximenes, the symmetry of Anaxagoras, the good of Euclid, the one and all of Plato, mean more than they express. " They stand for a great unutterable thought." They were stepping-stones in the majestic struggle of the human intellect towards the Invisible One, yet only stepping-stones. They were attempted solutions of the riddles and enigmas of divine manifestation, yet only attempts. We fail not to recognize in these higher philosophical speculations of the daring minds of Greece a vigorous but repeatedly baffled search after God. And were this, as should be the case, the attitude of modern scientific speculation, it would no longer call forth the antagonism of Christian faith.

But these ideas of the philosophers were too abstract for the popular mind. We therefore discover a continual blending of the God-idea with the idea of a mediator. A tangible God was, from the nature of the case, resolutely demanded. Zeus answered this description for a season, and in the mean time that which is beyond Zeus was, by the people, forgotten. The masses in their search lost heart when they reached Zeus, and would go no farther. From terror, wonder, or perplexity of the vastness of the All Soul, even the search for it was abandoned. It was at this point that Grecian idolatry began ; and here begins all idolatry. The moment Zeus in Greece and Jupiter in Rome became the only generally recognized First and Father of all, that moment the earlier mythologies of Greece and Rome, except a few faint traces, were abandoned and lost ; and lost, it will be observed, in consequence of an existing and absolute necessity of a mediator between the First God, whoever he is, and man. It is merely an unconscious repetition of what took place with both Brahminism and Buddhism ; nay, it is what occurs in every human soul, as well as in every religious system — an effort to clear away all rubbish, and find some one, or some thing, real and available between God and man.

Socrates, Plato, Plutarch, as well as the masses of the people discovering no direct approach to God, were ever looking for this stand-between. Hence Porphyry and Phidias defended the popular image w r orship. Something for a mediator there must be, they claimed ; the what, was a matter of opinion. The popular Zeus-manifestation could not long satisfy. He was too well known to the philosophers, and not well enough known to the masses. Socrates embodied a prevailing sentiment, when he said that the true religious philosophy for imperfect beings is " an infinite search after the divine." " What God is," he says, " I know not ; w T hat he is not, I know." He knew he was not Zeus.

" Believe in God and adore him," said one of the Greek poets, " but investigate him not ; the inquiry is fruitless."

" O Jupiter ! " said Euripides, " I know nothing of thee but thy name."

How clearly these expressions embody Spencers theory of the Unknowable. Forcibly do they confirm Hobbes's remark, " The name of God is used, not to make us conceive him, for he is inconceivable ; but that we may honor him." An echo is all this of the same sublime sentiment which broke from the lips of Job — " Canst thou by searching find out God?"

In this confused condition of things, the leading minds of Greece vacillated between hope and despair ; they went from the Peripatetics to the Stoics, and from the Stoics to the Platonics ; but all seemed alike shrouded in confusion, contradiction, and doubt. Plato significantly defined man as the " hunter after truth." Diogenes lighted his lantern and walked the streets of Athens in daylight to find a — man; a faultless man ; an ideal man ; a leader to higher attainments. This effort of the Greek philosopher calls to mind the similar challenge of the Hebrew prophet, " Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth ; and I will pardon it." *

The search, at times, seemed to end in despair. The elder Pliny was in so great darkness while attempting to understand the way in which the " immeasurable creative Spirit " could be related to man, that he exclaimed, u What is* God ? If in truth he be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the compass of man's understanding to know. It is a foolish delusion to imagine that the infinite spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men. Man is full

* Jeremiah v. 1.

of desires. Man's nature is a lie. The greatest good God has bestowed on man is the power of taking his own life."

Philosophers were at times exasperated into avowing themselves atheists. Lucretius openly denied the existence of the gods, Euhemerus made sport of them, reduced them to a history of nature and to symbols of agriculture, and Plutarch subtilized them. At other times Nature was looked upon as the tie between God and man. Plato, who was both the most ultra of spiritualists and the most ultra of materialists, found the chief divine manifestation in the outer universe. This was also a phase of ancient Persian worship.

There were two Gods in Plato's scheme, the Seen and the Unseen ; upon the principle of the Ego and the Alter Ego. The universe was simply a created God, " the only begotten universe." It was something

" Whose body Nature is, and God the soul."

Even the world, to Plato's mind, has a soul ; therefore it was, he thought, an animal. We can easily imagine him bowing to the stars throbbing in the midnight heavens, and to the various forms of earthly beauty, as our New England philosopher gives his lusty morning salute to the whispering pine or the incoming ocean. But Plato fondly and easily stepped from this materialism into spiritualistic idealism. Nature, he felt, as we may presently see, was not the only tie between God and man.

Back of all this materialism and these troops of gods, we find in others, as well as in Plato, occasional glimpses of a really lofty spiritualism. Such, most likely, was the original basis of all Grecian mythology. Mercury, the messenger of God, Perseus, born of a virgin, Hercules, who burned himself to death, Orpheus, Musaeus, Melampus, and Pompilius Numa of Rome enter into a material, better, perhaps, an objective superstructure, which has a profound and everlasting spiritual basis. As soon as the material form, or the personification, was presented, it caught the popular eye, and held it ; and this was the heathen's necessity, but also his mistake. Much advantage had the Jew ; it rested chiefly in his Scripture and authority.

It was so much easier for the Greek to speak of Phoebus Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Hestia, Hermes, Artemis, than of the abstract powers of nature which they were made to represent ; and so very much easier than to dwell upon the Universal Abstract which lies, and is felt to lie, back of all, that they often fell into unbelief and listlessness. In their doubt and scepticism they came to worship the creature more than the creator. Indolence is usually the nurse, if not the mother, of scepticism.