God in creation...

Front matter

LIBRARY. OF CONGRESS.

3TTOX^

UNITED STATES OE AMERICA.

Contents

I. CHRISTIANITY NOT EVOLVED FEOM GHOSTS AND HERO-WORSHIP.

SUMMARY : Evolution Dispboved by Egyptian Histoby. — Remains of Temples Oldeb than of Tombs. — Babil. — Tomb of Cyeus. — Of Napoleon I. — Egyptian Gods not Deified Men. — Persian Altabs Centueies befobe Pebsian Temples.— The Druids and C^sae. — Pebsian Iconoclasts. — Buening the Dead. — Jehovah has no Peee ob Paballel. — Hebeew Religion Pbepabatoby. — Its End Detebmined. — Isaiah and Divine Instbuction. — Abeaham, Chedoelaomee, Melchisedec, Jethbo. — From the Simple to the Complex. — Peevalence of Religious Feeling. — Temple of Nimeod, but no Tomb. — Ancient Facts Withstand Modebn Ceiticism. — Mb. Spencer Misquotes a Prophet and Misrepresents Hebbew Theology. — Moses and Samuel. — Balaam and the Necbomancees. — Peactices not Peescbibed by Moses. — Pbepabation foe the Coming One. — Attila vs. Evolution. — Taetae Customs. — Conclusion.

II. GOD IN CREATION AND IN WORSHIP.

Conclusion

MONOTHEISM OF PHOENICIANS. — LENORMANT's TESTIMONY. — IDEAS OF

HEAVEN.

r.

CHRISTIANITY NOT EVOLVED FROM GHOSTS AND HERO-WORSHIP.

The} 7, shall be ashamed who serve a graven image, who boast themselves in idols ; worship Him, all ye gods. For Thou, Jehovah, art most high above all the earth ; greatly hast Thou been exalted above all gods. Say ye among the gentiles, Jehovah reigneth ; fear before Him all the earth. (Ps. 97 : 7, 9 ; 96 : 9, 10.) Thou shalt have no other gods before Me : thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them. . . . Thou shalt break down their images. (Ex. 20 : 3, 5 ; 23, 24.) " Jehovah was originally one God among many ! With the Hebrews, as with the Egyptians and numerous other peoples, a god simply meant a powerful being. Abraham was a demigod to whom prayers were addressed. The god of Israel was clearly a local god. The command in Ex. 20 : 3 did not imply that there were no other gods, but that the Israelites were not to recognize their authority !" (Herbert Spencer, " Ecclesiastical Institutions, " pp. 696, 697.)

There is in Mr. Spencer's book on "Ecclesiastical Institutions" just that which makes one, who does not scrutinize his reasonings, tremble, like Eli of old time, for the Ark of God. He masses together so many facts and inferences, so many names and nationalities, with such a sweep of history and ethnology, as almost to intimidate one. But he makes many serious omissions.

Since he quotes Mr. Kenrick's "Ancient Egypt," I refer him to page 295 of vol. i., where that author says : " There is nothing in history or in the monu- 1* ments which indicates that the gods of Egypt were really deified men." Again, at page 65, of vol. ii. : u In the history of Diodorus we perceive two changes which had taken place since the time of Herodotus, who represents the gods of Egypt as wholly distinct from men. But in the interval between Herodotus and Diodorus the opinion had sprung up among the Greeks that the gods had been illustrious chiefs and warriors, inventors and improvers of the arts and sciences, raised to the rank of divinity through the admiration and gratitude of mankind." From this later view Mr. Spencer has evolved his theory ; but it is a view much too recent ; a theory without adequate support. We must go back one or two thousand years before Herodotus and before Moses. Says Colonel Rawlinson :* " All the kings whose monuments are found in ancient Chaldea used the same language, professed the same religion, and followed the same traditions ; temples built in the earliest times receive the veneration of successive generations, and were repaired and adorned by a long series of monarchs, even down to the time of the Semite Nabonidus," five hundred years before Diodorus.

1. Now every reader knows that a historic statement may be true, yet very false inferences may be drawn from it. This, I venture to suggest, is the case with Mr. Spencer. He is too precipitate with his inferences and assumptions. He is also historically wrong in saying that belief in ghosts and the worship of them were before belief in God — One Supreme Creator of all beside — and the worship of Him. For the remains of temples in Babylonia are earlier by one to two thousand

Ad Herodotus," vol. i., p. 352.

years than the remains of tombs ; while in Assyria there are no remains of any tombs of an early date — at least, so far as yet known. Hence tombs could not have been the models of early temples in Babylonia and Assyria. Not one has yet been found to answer this claim.

Confessedly the temple Babil was the most ancient of any erected on the Euphrates ; yet it was erected by the first great Babylonian hero during his lifetime. The remains of that temple were reconstructed by Nebuchadnezzar into another on the same spot to that monarch' s god. Cyrus the Great may have seen this temple, and have worshipped in it ; its architecture may have suggested that of his own tomb at PasargadaB ; but no man of repute, out of Persia, where they had no temples till about five centuries before our era, will pretend that that tomb, or any like it, was earlier than the first known temple. Just as well might coming generations affirm that Napoleon I. was a distinguished bishop, because at Paris, his capital or see city, his tomb is the chief attraction in a large church, having a gorgeous altar in it. Ebrard ascribes to Nimrod the character of a true worshipper of Jahveh, and the building of a temple to Him. Also G. Smith's Chaldean Account.

2. Perhaps this same illustration may suggest the true answer to the complex state of religious ideas and of worship which we find among early Semitic and Hamitic peoples. Study of the heavenly bodies, especially the sun and rnoon, lord of day and queen of night, led them to think of them as gods, or as representing the Good Being. So Egyptians came to regard the Nile, to whose overflowing waters, indeed, they owed the produce of the soil. From the source of earthly good in sun or stream, parent or hero, it became easy and natural to proceed further, lower or higher, and to regard

12 GOT) IN CREATION.

eacli such benefactor as god for them. It were easy so to infer, and it is easy so to assume. But, as Mr. Kenrick says, " there is nothing in history or in the monuments which indicates that the gods of Egypt were really deified men." For back of them there were ideas and usages which cannot be so explained. There are qualities and properties originally ascribed to II or Ilou and to Ka which cannot be so accounted for ; much less the El or Elohim of Israel and the Jah or Jehovah of the Hebrew Covenant. The embalming of the bodies of Egyptian dead, placing them at table on festal occasions, and the affectionate regard which they ever cherished for their deceased kindred, is conclusive evidence that they had no terrors about their ghosts troubling them again. And even their kings were to undergo the judgment of Amenti after death ; which shows that they were not then deified. It is certain that Egyptians did not evolve their divinities from heroes, nor their worship from ghostly fears.

3. It will hardly be pretended that the fire- worshipping Asiatics and those who burnt the bodies of their dead derived their ideas and practices from the same origin, and developed them in the same way, as the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Peruvians ! Surely a fire-altar in the open air, with or without a ministering priest, among a people who had no burial rites, no urns, no sepulchres, is not likely to have been evolved from a grave mound ! At any rate, the minds of many educated men can see no logical connection in the evolution of ghost-worship and of fire-worship ; between the rites of Greeks and Hindus ; they are not to be accounted for upon the same hypothesis. What ancient graves remain, what old temple memorials exist to perpetuate the religiousness of self-immolating devotees of India ?

GOT) IN CREATION. 13

And the same may be said of the Parsees. Indeed, there are myriads of facts to be accounted for, and groups of peoples to be named, whose religious ideas and practices are independent of any connection with grave, ghost, or hero, yet whose religiousness is as manifest as that of any Christian nation. Mr. Spencer is, therefore, too narrow in his history and too sweeping in his inferences to stand against these peoples, whose religious feeling or sentiment, if not God-given, must be explained in some other way than by mummy-case, burial mound, departed friend, or national benefactor.

4. The old Druids of Gaul and Briton, who made temples of forests and shrines of caverns ; who taught that there was an eternal life for man, seem not to be in the line of Mr. Spencer's evolutionary theory ; for long ages before they were visited by Julius Caesar, before their first known hero had appeared, when they cremated their dead, together with all they had loved in life, Gauls and Britons had used their groves for temples, and worshipped the Divine Being in deep recesses of the earth. It was a worship before the building of a grave mound, and in God-made temples. Clearly, their reverence for the mysterious Being whom they feared and adored was not derived from their worship of ancestors, to whom they did not pray. It is " not historic'' to mix up the Norsemen of later times with ancient Gauls and their cousins of ancient Britain. Caesar's Commentaries are the highest authority we have, or can have, for the religious rites and teachings of the Druids ; yet I fail to find Mr. Spencer once referring to him in " Ecclesiastical Institutions." *

Moreover, the Persians and others, numbering many

* See " De Bello Gallico," 1. 5, cap. 12 and 13 ; 1. 6, cap. 13-19.

millions of Asiatics of the great Aryan family, had a priesthood without a temple, altars without a victim for centuries, and heroes without a grave mound. They had the simplest form of burial and commemorative rites. The believers in Ormazd believed not in ghosts — at least, in no Spencerian sense. Indeed, the ancient and pure Zoroastrians and the primitive Hindus, with many millions of Buddhists, have yet to be accounted for by Mr. Spencer.

5. Nor does his attempted explanation explain the iconoclasts of history, from the golden calves which Moses broke to the Egyptian idols which Cambyses broke, and the intolerant monotheism of Mahomet and his followers. Herodotus tells us how the son of the Great Cyrus treated Egyptian mummies : how he entered royal sepulchres, tore off the wrappings of the embalmed, and offered nameless indignities to the dead. Not content with this, he demolished the statues and images of the gods, and defied their power to injure him. According to Plutarch, he slew the living Apis outright, and gave his flesh to the dogs. He also burned several idolatrous temples. Other Persian kings pursued a similar course of religious persecution, and while conquering the country, they punished polytheists for their idolatry. The great Darius, illustrious for his organizing ability, is said to have summoned the Oallatian Indians before him, and inquired of them for what consideration they would agree to burn the bodies of their parents—which they were accustomed to eat ; but with a loud outcry they begged him not to shock their ears with such horrid proposals. They could eat the dead corpses, but could not consent to burn them,* like

* See Kenrick's " Egypt," vol. ii., pp. 394, 395.

Britons and Gauls, Persians and Hindus. Late accounts show that the Indians of Sitka burn the bodies of their dead — New York Times, September 20th, 1886. From such illustrations of national customs we see that the groups of facts which Mr. Spencer gives us may be paralleled with other groups of equally striking facts, which necessitate different conclusions and inferences ; all showing the very general prevalence of belief in a Supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe ; and that belief in Him and the practice of His worship cannot be evolved from hero or from ancestor worship, nor from any burial rites or propitiation of ghosts. Thus teaches universal mankind in the earliest ages.

6. Mr. Spencer errs in attempting to parallel the covenant religion of the Hebrews with that of other nations. There was, there is, no parallel between them, unless we admit a divine origination common to all. If we allow that the Egyptian Ra also symbolizes the Hebrew Jah, and the Babylonian and Assyrian II or Ilou symbolizes the Hebrew El or Elohim, then we may admit a parallel and agreement to that extent ; but even so, there is no further resemblance. The Hebrew covenant-Jehovah, as revealed to prophets and understood by Christians, has no parallel, none like Him, among any pagan nation. He is the ever-living God of an eternal covenant, Supreme over all, and worshipped by all in heaven above and on the earth. He covenants, stipulates, enters into an agreement with His people ; is jealous of His honor and His throne, and will not tolerate another in His place ; He expels all usurpers and intruders. While He blesses the loyal and faithful nation with the good things of earth, with abundant harvests, springing wells, fruitful vineyards and olivetrees, He also declares that His anger shall destroy the rebellious and apostate (Deut. 6). Assuredly we find nothing of this in Sabaeism, in naturalism, or in hero and ancestor worship after deification ; but we do find an approach to it in the blessing of Anu upon those saved from the Deluge, as recorded in Chaldean bricks.

7. But what is more and worse for the evolution theory of religion, is that the Hebrew religion was said in advance to have its period of termination predetermined. It was to prepare for another, which should supersede it. Abraham, Moses, warning prophets, John Baptist himself —all were to be merged in Jesus Christ. They only prepared the way for Him. Now, in Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Mexico, the old world and the new — nowhere do we find any parallel to this — prophets and priests of a religion who declared that they only prepared the way for another ! Then in a higher and better sense than any Greek thought of his Zeus, the Hebrew covenant-God became our Father in Jesus Christ. How immensely elevated, too, was and is that Fatherhood above pagan ideas of the Deity ; above Ea, Bel, or Zeus ; above the thoughts of Hindus, Zulus, Samoan or Peruvian ! Our explanation is simple and rational. We assume that Heaven inspired the writer of the first Accadian Liturgy to form prayers to One Supreme Being, prayers for the Seventh-day Sabbath, and to appoint special sacrifices for that day. We may identify the gazelle and the deer of Chaldean bricks with " the roebuck and the hart" of Deuteronomy 12 : 22.

Certainly the prophet Isaiah, in 28 : 23-29, teaches that God doth instruct man how to cultivate the ground, and how to gather the harvest, and how to prepare it for food. Nor need we restrict such tuition to Israelites. Indeed, the early Christian Fathers acknowledged the pagan oracles to have been inspired.* And instead of wondering at such acknowledgment, we may rather wonder that all similar evidences of Divine instruction are not also acknowledged ; that God inspired ancient Accadians as well as Moses. Thus Genesis (6 : 3), " My Spirit shall not always strive with man," teaches that God's Spirit had theretofore been striving with Him. In Genesis 9 : 9-17, the renewed covenant was between Elohim and saved mankind. JSTot until those saved from the Deluge had corrupted their way upon earth was Abraham chosen to be the head of a new nation which should preserve the Divine knowledge in the world.

8. Here belongs one of the memorable episodes of history (Gen. 14), which relates the expedition of the most famous warrior after Nimrod — viz. : Chedorlaomer, or the " Ravager of the West." His name is found among the brick inscriptions and in Egypt, regarded as historical by such scholars as Ewald and Sir H. Rawlinson. But a peace-loving shepherd, rescuing his relative and serving his friends, put an end to his career. Three other kings from the southern Euphrates, led by Chedorlaomer, had subdued five kings of Palestine, and made them pay tribute. In the thirteenth year afterward they rebelled, and declined to make the payment. Whereupon Chedorlaomer and his allies marched against them, routed the two rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah, seized all their goods and provisions, and captured Lot and his goods, and departed. Abraham w r as then sojourning at Mamre, was told of the capture of his nephew, and at once armed his trusty servants, three hundred and eighteen in number, and pursued the

* Thus Euseb., " Praep. Ev., ,s books v. and vi. ; Clem. Alex., "Strom.," v. ; Theodoret, " Therap. Sam.," x. ; Augustine, " De Divin. Daemon," op. vi., p. 370, etc.

18 GOD IF CREATION.

marauders. He soon came up with them, attacked them at midnight, utterly routed them, recovered the stolen goods and persons, also Lot with his goods. It was a speedy and decisive victory. Chedorlaomer was not heard of again. This very opportune and friendly achievement elicited gratitude from all concerned ; and among those thus benefited was Melchisedec, the priest-king of Salem, later on called Jebus and Jerusalem, who reappears in sacred history. He seems to officiate at the public thanksgiving held by the tribes who were delivered from this foreign domination.

Such are the facts of this much-mystified incident. At this thanksgiving of the tribes, Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils to Melchisedec, and received his priestly blessing. It was an acknowledgment of each other's position and of each other's God ; for the priest-king and the patriarch-warrior worshipped the same Supreme Being. They both alike stand for the true and the spiritual amid so much that was false and corrupting in that age. It was prior to the birth of Isaac, and the completion of the Divine covenant through him. Wherefore, then, was the King of Salem a worshipper of the Most High God, while the neighboring kings in Canaan were corrupt and degenerate ? The question suggests the answer : Because the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim had degenerated from the original and pure worship of God in that land. They were evolutioning backward, from the true to the false ; while Melchisedec remained faithful to the truth which he had received.* Genesis

* See Oehler's " Old Testament Theology," pp. 59-63 ; Sir J. W. Dawson's " Fossil Man," a The Unity of Nature," ch. 12, and " Primeval Man, " by the Duke of Argyll, and J. H. A. Ebrard's " Apologetics," vol. ii., ed. 1887.

GOT) IN CREATION. 19

presents questions for solution which the advocates of evolution in religion cannot answer.

9. A similar illustration we have in the tribe of the father-in-law of Moses. It is demonstrable from the narrative in Exodus, ch. 18, that he was the chief and priest of the Midianites, descended from Abraham, who for four hundred years had preserved the true knowledge and worship of God. The forty years' sojourn with this family gave Moses ample opportunity for learning the real character of the religion of Zipporah's father. Moreover, on bringing his daughter to Moses in the wilderness near the mount of God, he took a burnt-offering and sacrifices for God, and Aaron, with the elders of Israel, joined with him in the worship. Moses himself accepted the excellent advice and suggestions which he offered (verses 12-24). Here was a right beginning of the true without the false, yet very soon after this we find the false mingled with it, and largely prevailing ; for the Midianites became degenerate in worship and theology and corrupters of Israel. Like the tribe of whom Melchisedec was the priest-king, these descendants of Abraham lapsed into wrong ways, and evolutioned into a debasing polytheism.

The instances of Cain and Abel, Seth and Enoch, JSToah and Nimrod, Abraham and Melchisedec, Jethro and Moses, show, despite any aggregation of other facts or fancies^ that the religions feeling in man was a Divine gift, and that Divine worship was the outcome of Divine instruction to mankind. Very early men were taught how to honor their Creator, as well as how to care for their physical necessities. At first there was personal instruction to all, then the tuition of chosen patriarchs, then the dispensation of Moses and the prophets, then the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The evolu-

20 OOD IN CREATION.

tion of religion was from tlie simple to the complex : first Divine tuition, leading to public assemblies for worship and sacrifice to Jehovah in temple, in tabernacle, at holy places ; the word and vision to patriarchs and prophets ; the precepts and laws of Sinai ; detailed observances of ritual ; the speaking oracle ; prophetic messages, now to honored individuals, now to anointed kings, now to distant nations, until we have the full manifestation of God's Fatherhood in His Son Jesus Christ. But whether in the simple or the complex, all nations in early times felt after and found Him whom they adored as God. Everywhere is a whisper, an echo, or a trumpet note of Elohim Jehovah' — thus saith the Lord. Paganized Christianity or baptized paganism cannot affect the evidences of revealed religion. It is only the God-inspired part of any modes of worship that is of God. That men have deified heroes or worshipped ghosts does not disprove, much less explain, why others of larger intelligence have accepted a Revelation claiming to have been given of God their Creator. Yet simple as is this matter, Mr. Spencer infers that, because there is and has been much of what may be called spurious in religion — much nature-worship, therefore all religion is equally human. He also ignores the difference between the Old Covenant with the Hebrews and the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

10. Nor can I see why what he calls the religious idea or sentiment can be more or less true, because of its prevalence or its non- universality ! When, indeed, was the highest truth or any ethical principle accepted by the vast majority of mankind ? Surely not in the days of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of Elijah, of our Lord, nor of reformers in later times. Yet, explain it as we may, most men and women possess a tendency to or aptness for religion. By far the major portion of families and of nations have the religious feeling. Whether innate, imparted, or acquired, it grows and matures in most men with their religious culture. The feeling is widely felt, and it unfolds itself like a cultivated flow f er, emitting perfume all around. But because there is no perfume here or there only proves that there are no fragrant flowers there ; not that flowers never existed. So the universality or non-universality of religion, or of the religious feeling, does not prove that it must he universal in order to be true. It is true absolutely, whether perceived or suppressed, and is a Divine gift to man. Any exceptions in prehistoric or later times, among antediluvians, Canaanites, among the Wedda, the Dor, the Bongo, a Greek, a Roman, or a Saxon sceptic, among deaf and dumb, the ignorant or the educated, does not and cannot account for the admitted fact that almost all mankind are, and have been, monotheists or polytheists. Whether a birth endowment or an acquisition, the vast majority of the human race possess and manifest the religious feeling.

It was this which induced Nimrod and his associates and dependents to erect the Temple Babil as unlike a grave mound as possible. It was this which prompted Nebuchadnezzar to repair, or reconstruct and beautify, that temple, consecrating it to the god he worshipped. The ruins of that temple still remain, and challenge exploration ; but where and what was the tomb of Nimrod ? Let Mr. Spencer explain the erection of the Temple Babil, before the death and deification of Nimrod, upon the principle of evolution ! So of the tomb of Shalmaneser I., of Tig-lath-pileser I., of Nebuchadnezzar himself, whose temple yet remains, but not his tomb. Nay, is there anywhere to be found an old ziggurat tomb like the old ziggurat temples, and equally ancient ? What great hero was there before Nimrod, who had been worshipped and a temple built to his honor, whom Nimrod and his admirers could copy when they erected Babil ? Clearly there is nothing in Revelation which makes such large demands on faith and credulity as that grave mounds and grave temples were the originals which subsequently developed into temples of worship to the One Supreme God ! Tenfold easier were it to believe that God inspired the writer of the first Accadian Liturgy, and taught early Egyptian priests the Oneness and Eternity of His Being, and then inspired Moses to write out Divine precepts and laws for the covenanted people of Israel, in order to perpetuate His worship and make known His will to mankind. Such is Revelation. Even the Church may have erred in dogmatic limitations.

11. Again, the Church's belief in God, and deQnition of His attributes, and possible misrepresentation of His character, does not change the Divine Being. Indeed, our worship of Him, or of what we worship as God, may vary according to our culture, our climate, our national or ethnic requirements, provided only that we cherish and truly express the religious feeling. Nor does our belief or disbelief in a future life and in the immortality of the soul change in the least degree the stupendous fact of endless being for man. This, though almost a truism in theology, seems to be ignored in " Ecclesiastical Institutions/'

Because some men are born deaf and dumb, or some are ignorant of the very thought of God, or some caricature His worship, or some deny His existence, or some think that life here and now is the only life for them, this is no reason why all men should be deaf and dumb, or ignorant and unbelieving. Hence section 583 makes no more against the reasons for belief in God, supreme over all, than it makes against the use of sugar, because manv tribes of men have not learned to extract it from their sugar-yielding plants ; or against salt, because American Indians did not know its use, when lirst visited by Europeans. Whether in some sense " religious ideas" are not of supernatural origin cannot disprove revealed religion, nor show that Hebrew prophets are of the same class as Fakirs or Druids. The Aztecs of the new world, like Semites of the old, worshipped a Supreme God. Indeed, there is that in man which leads up to God, in the contemplation of His works. Thus the Apostle (Rom. 1 : 20, 21) teaches that even the everlasting power and deity of the Creator may be known from His works ; that knowing Him, men should also worship and glorify Him as God. Beyond that we may not go — God as our Creator, God our Saviour, God our Father. Even the oldest Babylonian records tell us of a creative Deity, whose Providence governed creation, and who set lesser gods, or laws, in the sky for the preservation of the revolving orbs around us.* Now, to evoke that guidance and preservation and to insure the favor of that Providence is the object of Divine worship, the very purpose of the religious feeling. And we find it among the earliest historic peoples, even in the so-called legendary ages. It is before the beginning of our author's " Ecclesiastical Institutions."

12. Mr. Spencer does not buttress his theory by citing, as in section 584, " groups of facts and inferences from the aborigines of Victoria !" Were they about the aborigines of the valley of the Nile or the Euphrates,

* See " Eecords of the Past/' vol. ix., pp. 117, 118.

they might be of service ; unfortunately for him, however, the ancient inhabitants of those shores testify against him, and the medicine men and funeral rites of Victoria are far too recent to be helpful. They can throw no light on our Lord's words, when He says : All that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth ; thy brother shall rise again.* It is a direct and personal affirmation which no ghost fear or ghost worship could have evolved. The dead in their graves were to hear the voice of Jesus ; but not in order to quiet them, but to make them come forth ! which is in the teeth of all ghost propitiation. Compare section 590 : " You come to me for the purpose of killing me. It is clear that you were a bad fellow when you were a man ; you are still a bad fellow under ground I" This is quoted from Bishop Collaway's account of the Zulus, from an interlocution of one living with the spirit of his dead brother. But how, in the name of Anu, can it explain the early worship of that Babylonian Deity? What book of modern travels can shed new light on the raising of Lazarus? Clearly, we must discriminate between inference and history ; between what may have originated we know not how nor where and the indisputable teachings of the Bible. A God-given Revelation cannot be overturned by any rites of the Malagasy, or the last words of Socrates with his disciples, or the burial scene of a Roman, or the self-immolation of a Hindoo, the incantations of an African or of an American Indian. While all these differ in thought and expression, they arise from a common subjective feeling, which is voiced in various objective religious rites and symbols.