CHAPTER LI. Gods As Guardians of Morality (_continued_)

GODS AS GUARDIANS OF MORALITY (continued)

FROM the gods of savage races we shall now pass to consider the attitudes of more civilised gods towards matters of worldly morality.

The deities of ancient Mexico were generally clothed with terror, and delighted in vengeance and human sacrifices. But there was also the god Quetzalcoatl, generous of gifts, mild and gentle, and so averse from such sacrifices that he shut his ears with both hands when they were mentioned. The god Tezcatlipoca, again, was looked upon as the austere guardian of law and morals; but, as Sir E. B. Tylor observes, the remarkable Aztec formulas collected by Sahagun, in which this deity is so prominent a figure, show traces of Christian admixture in their material, as well as of Christian influence in their style. It seems that the Mexicans had reached no fixed or systematic conclusions as to the relation of the moral to the religious life. They held that departed souls attained different degrees of felicity or of wretchedness according to their different modes of death. Warriors who died on the battle-field or in the hands of the enemy's priests, and merchants who died on their journey, went to the house of the sun; those who were killed by lightning, who were drowned, {698} or who died from some incurable disease went to a terrestrial paradise; and those who died of old age or any ordinary disease went to a land of darkness and desolation, where they after a time sunk in a sleep which knew no waking.

Among the ancient Peruvians morality obtained a religious sanction through the divinity ascribed to their rulers. "They considered every mere order of the king to be a divine decree," says Garcilasso de la Vega; "how much more would they venerate the special laws instituted for the common good. They said that the sun had ordered these laws to be made, and had revealed them to his child the Ynca; and hence a man who broke them was held to be guilty of sacrilege." According to the beliefs of the higher classes the Incas were after death transported to the mansion of the Sun, their father, where they still lived together as his family. The nobles would either follow them there or would live beneath the earth under the sceptre of Supay, the god of the dead. There was no idea of positive suffering inflicted on the wicked under his direction, but the subterranean abode was gloomy and dismal. Exceptional considerations of birth, rank, or valour in war determined the passage of chosen souls to heaven, where their lot would be far happier than that of the souls who remained in the regions below. The common people, on the other hand, thought of the future life as a continuation, pure and simple, of the present existence.

The great gods of ancient Egypt were mostly conceived as friendly beings. Amon Râ, "the king of the gods," was, in his character of the sun god, the creator, preserver, and supporter of all living things. He it is who makes pasture for the herds and fruit trees for men, on his account the Nile comes and mankind lives. He is verily {699} of kindly heart: "when men call to him he delivers the fearful from the insolent." He is "the vizier of the poor, who takes no bribes," and who does not corrupt witnesses; and to him officials pray for promotion. Thoth, the moon god, was also the god of all wisdom and learning, who gave men "speech and writing," who discovered the written characters, and by his arithmetic enabled gods and men to keep account of their possessions. Osiris ruled over the whole of Egypt as king, and instructed its inhabitants in all that was good--in agriculture as well as in the true religion--and gave them laws. After a long and blessed reign, however, he fell a prey to the machinations of his brother Set, and, having been slain, was constrained to descend into the Underworld, where he evermore lived and reigned as judge and king of the dead. But the wicked god Set was also an object of worship; for he was strong and mighty, a terror to gods and men, and kings were anxious to secure his favour. We have noticed above that certain Egyptian gods were believed to be guardians of truth; and closely connected with this function was their love of justice. Thoth, who was called to witness by him who wished to give assurance of his honesty and good faith, was styled "the judge in heaven"; while his wife Ma[=a], or Maat, was the goddess of both truth and justice, and her priests were the supreme judges. But it seems that the Egyptian gods after all chiefly took notice of such acts as concerned their own wellbeing. {700} This is true even of Osiris, "the great god, the lord of justice," in whose presence the judgment of the dead was given which decided upon their admission into his kingdom. In thousands upon thousands of funerary inscriptions we read words like these:--"May a royal offering be given to Osiris, that he may grant all manner of good things, food and drink to the soul of the deceased." And whilst the living paid him his dues in sacrifices repeated from year to year at regular intervals, the dead were not allowed to receive directly the sepulchral meals or offerings of kindred on feast-days, but all that was addressed to them must first pass through the hands of the god. In the "Negative Confession," which the worshippers of Osiris taught to their dead, great importance was attached to religious offences, such as to snare the birds of the gods, to catch the fish in their lakes, to injure the herds in the temple domains, to diminish the food in the temples, to revile the god. At the same time the list of offences which excluded the dead from Osiris' kingdom contained very many of a social character--murder, oppression, stealing, robbing minors, fraud, lying, slander, reviling, adultery. But the meaning of this seems to have been not so much that the god was animated by a righteous desire to punish the wicked and reward the good, as, rather, that he did not like to have any rascals among his vassals. As to the fate of the non-justified dead very little is said, and the punishment devised for them seems to have been a comparatively modern invention. Nay, the virtuous dead themselves depended for their welfare {701} upon their knowledge of magic words and formulas, upon amulets laid in their tombs, and upon the offerings made to them by their kindred. Ignorant souls, or those ill prepared for the struggle, were overcome by hunger and thirst, were attacked by demons and poisonous animals in traversing the regions of the Underworld, and, when in Osiris' kingdom, had to work and till the land and earn their own living if the offerings ceased. The Book of the Dead is itself essentially a collection of spells intended to secure to the dead victory over evil demons and protection from the gods; and the "Negative Confession" is a later addition, which shows that originally the conduct of earthly life was not considered at all. So also in the book of Am Dûat the whole doctrine of a future life is based upon a belief in the power of magic, with the single exception that nobody can look forward to possessing fields in Dûat who in life has been an enemy of the god Râ.

The religion of the Chaldeans was a religion of dread. Everywhere they felt themselves surrounded by hostile demons; feared above all were the seven evil spirits, who were everywhere and yet invisible, who slipped through bolts and doorposts and sockets, and who had power even to bewitch the gods. In their incessant warfare against these fiends men were assisted by the more propitious among the deities: by Marduk, the "merciful" god, the god of the youthful sun of spring and early morning; {702} by Ea, the "good" god, the god of the waters of the deep and the source of wisdom; by Gibil-Nusku, the lord of fire, who put to flight the demons of night when the fire was kindled on the household hearth, and who in the flame carried to the other gods the sacrifices offered them; as also by the tutelary deities of each individual, household, and city. The gods were on the whole favourably disposed towards man. But they helped only those who piously observed the prescribed rites, who recited the conventional prayers and offered them sacrifices; on such persons they bestowed a happy old age and a numerous posterity. On the other hand, he who did not fear his god would be cut down like a reed; and by neglecting the slightest ceremonial detail the king excited the anger of the deities against himself and his subjects. During the whole of their lives the Chaldeans were haunted by the dread of offending their gods, and they continually implored pardon for their sins. But the sinner became conscious of his guilt only as a conclusion drawn from the fact that he was suffering from some misfortune, which he interpreted as a punishment sent by an offended god. It mattered little what had called forth the wrath of the god or whether the deity was acting in accordance with just ideas; and in none of the penitential psalms known to us is there any indication that the notion of sin comprised offences against fellow men. It is true that in the incantation series 'Shurpu' not only offences against gods and ceremonial transgressions, but a large number of wrongs of a social character, are included in the list of possible causes of the suffering which the incantation is intended to remove. On behalf of the afflicted individual the exorciser asks:--"Has he sinned against a god, Is his {703} guilt against a goddess, Is it a wrongful deed against his master, Hatred towards his elder brother, Has he despised father or mother, Insulted his elder sister, Has he given too little, Has he withheld too much, For 'no' said 'yes,' For 'yes' said 'no'? . . . Has he fixed a false boundary, Not fixed a just boundary, Has he removed a boundary, a limit, or a territory, Has he possessed himself of his neighbour's house, Has he approached his neighbour's wife, Has he shed the blood of his neighbour, Robbed his neighbour's dress?" and so forth. But I fail to see any legitimate ground for the conclusion which Schrader and Zimmern have drawn from these passages, to wit, that the gods were believed to be angry with persons guilty of any of the offences enumerated. It seems to me quite obvious that the evils which were hypothetically associated with injuries inflicted upon fellow men were ascribed, not to the avenging activity of a god, but to the curses of the injured party. The gods are expressly invoked to relieve the unhappy individual from the curses under which he is suffering, whether he has been cursed by his father, mother, elder brother, elder sister, friend, master, king, or god, or has approached an accursed person, or slept in such a person's bed, or sat on his chair, or eaten from his dish or drunk from his cup. In these incantations there is no plea for forgiveness; the possible causes for the suffering are enumerated simply because the mention of the real cause is supposed to go a long way towards expelling the evil. Some of the gods, however, are invoked as judges. This is frequently the case with Shamash, the sun god, "the supreme judge of heaven and earth," who, seated on a throne in the chamber of judgment, receives the supplications of men. Of the moon god Sin it is said in a hymn {704} dedicated to him that his "word produces truth and justice, so that men speak the truth." And the lord of fire is addressed as a judge, who burns the evildoers and annihilates the bad, and is exhorted by the conjurer to help him to his right; but this probably means little more than the invocation, "Eat my enemies, destroy those who have done harm to me." Of a moral retribution after death there is no trace in the Chaldean religion. Those who have obtained the goodwill of the gods receive their reward in this world, by a life of happiness and of good health, but the moment that death ensues the control of the gods comes to an end. All mankind, kings and subjects, virtuous and wicked, go to Aralû, the gloomy subterranean realm presided over by Allatu and her consort Nergal, where the dead are doomed to everlasting sojourn or imprisonment in a state of joyless inactivity. A kind of judgment is spoken of, but nothing indicates that it is based on moral considerations. According to the Gilgamesh epic, however, the fortunes awaiting those who die are not all alike. Those who fall in battle seem to enjoy special privileges, provided that they are properly buried and there is someone to make them comfortable in their last hour and to look after them when dead. But he whose corpse remains in the field has no rest in the earth, and he whose spirit is not cared for by any one is consumed by gnawing hunger.

In a still higher degree than the Chaldean religion Zoroastrianism represents an incessant struggle against evil spirits. Here everything in heaven and on earth is engaged in the conflict; it is a war between two mighty sovereigns, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, and their respective forces. Whatever works for the good of man comes from {705} and strives for Ahura Mazda, whatever works for the harm of man comes from and strives for Angra Mainyu. There can be no doubt that the powers of goodness will absolutely triumph in the end; but though Angra Mainyu and his band have been defeated, the battle is still raging. Ahura Mazda, being the originator of everything good in the world, is also the founder of the order of the universe, "the creator of the righteous order." In the Vendîdâd he is asked about the rules of life, and he is pleased to answer; M. Darmesteter observes that the Avesta and the Pentateuch are the only two religious books known in which legislation descends from the heavens to the earth in a series of conversations between the lawgiver and his god. The sacred law of Zoroastrianism enjoins charity and industry, it condemns the murder of a believer, abortion, theft, non-payment of debts, and, with special emphasis, falsehood and breach of faith, and unnatural intercourse. But the "good thoughts, words, and deeds" most urgently insisted upon are orthodoxy, prayer, and sacrifice; whilst the greatest sins are apostasy, transgressions of the rules of ceremonial cleanliness, and offences against sacred beings. It is less criminal to kill a man than to serve bad food to a shepherd's dog; for the manslayer gets off with ninety stripes, whereas the bad master will receive two hundred. And the killing of a water dog is punished with ten thousand stripes. Offenders will be liable to penalties not only here below, but in the next world as well, where Ahura Mazda, "the discerning arbiter," establishes "evil for the evil, and happy blessings for the good." The views accepted in regard to the future life, {706} whilst incomplete in the Gathas, are expanded in the Younger Avesta, and fully given in the Pahlavi books. The man who has lived for Ahura Mazda will have a seat near him in heaven, and there he remains undecaying and immortal, unalarmed and undistressed, full of glory and delight; whereas the wicked soul will be tormented in the darkness of hell, "the dwelling of the demons." The good deeds of the virtuous and the bad deeds of the wicked, in the form of maidens, come to meet them on their roads to paradise or hell. But the fate of the dead is not merely influenced by their conduct towards their fellow men while alive. It is said that "he who wishes to seize the heavenly reward, will seize it by giving gifts to him who holds up the Law." And the soul of him who recites the prayer Ahuna Vairya in the manner prescribed crosses over the bridge which separates this world from the next, and reaches the highest paradise.

In Vedic religion we likewise meet with a conflict between gods and demons, but the struggle is too unequal to result in anything like the Zoroastrian dualism. Various misfortunes are attributed to the ill-will of evil spirits, but their power is comparatively slight, and the greater demons, like V[r.]tra, are represented as defeated or destroyed by the gods. On the other hand there is among the great gods themselves one who has a distinctly malevolent character, namely Rudra, a god of storm, "terrible like a wild beast"; but though the hymns {707} addressed to him chiefly express fear of his dreadful shafts and deprecations of his wrath, he is also sometimes supplicated to confer blessings upon man and beast. With this exception the great gods are all beneficent beings, though of course liable to punish those who offend them. Varuna has established heaven and earth, has made the celestial bodies to shine and the rivers to flow. He rules over nature by laws which are fixed and immutable, and which must be followed by the gods themselves. He sees and knows everything, because he is the infinite light and the sun is his eye; and in connection with Mithra he is said to dispel and punish falsehood. Varuna has even been represented as "the supreme moral ruler," but it seems to me that scholars have generally credited him with a somewhat more comprehensive sense of justice than the hymns imply. Every hymn to Varuna contains a prayer for forgiveness, but there is no indication that the sins which excite his wrath include ordinary moral wrongdoing. That sin and moral guilt are not identical conceptions in the Rig-Veda is fairly obvious from the fact that forgiveness of sin is also sought from Indra, whose favour is only won by those who contribute to his wellbeing or who destroy persons neglectful of his worship. The Vedic religion is pre-emiently ritualistic. The pious man par préférence is he who makes the soma flow in abundance and whose hands are always full of butter, the reprobate man is he who is penurious towards the gods; and just like the other gods, {708} Varuna visits with disease those who neglect him, and is appeased by sacrifices and prayers. After death the souls of those who have practised rigorous penance, of those who have risked their lives in battle, and above all of those who have bestowed liberal sacrificial gifts, go with the smoke arising from the funeral pile to the heavenly world, where the Fathers dwell with Yama--the first man who died--and Varuna, the two kings who reign in bliss. There they enjoy an endless felicity among the gods, clothed in glorious bodies and drinking the celestial soma, which renders them immortal. Yet there are different degrees of happiness in this heavenly mansion. The performance of rites in honour of the manes causes the souls to ascend from a lower to a higher state; indeed, if no such offerings are made they do not go to heaven at all. Another source of happiness for the dead is their own pious conduct during their lifetime; for in the abode of bliss they are united with what they have sacrificed and given, especially reaping the reward of their gifts to priests. Unworthy souls, on the other hand, are kept out of this abode by Yama's dogs, which guard the road to his kingdom. As to the destiny in store for those who are not admitted to heaven, the hymns have little to tell. Zimmer and others erroneously argue that a race who believe in future rewards for the good must logically believe in future punishments for the wicked. So far as I can see, all the traces of such a belief which are to be found in the Vedic literature are requests made to gods, {709} or simply curses, to the effect that evil-doers may be thrown into deep and dismal pits under the earth. They do not imply that gods of their own accord punish wicked people after death.

In post-Vedic times ritualism grew more important still. Sometimes the gods are represented as beings indifferent to every moral distinction, and the most indelicate stories are unscrupulously related of them. In the Taittirîya Samhitâ of the Yajur Veda we are told that if anybody wishes to injure another, he need only say to Sûrya, one of the most important among the solar deities, "Smite such a one, and I will give you an offering," and Sûrya, to get the offering, will smite him. Çiva, who is connected with the Vedic god Rudra, is in the Mahabharata clothed in terrible "forms," being armed with the trident and wearing a necklace of skulls; he exacts a bloody cultus, and is the chief of the mischievous spirits and vampires that frequent places of execution and burial grounds. Vishnu, the other great god of Hinduism, though less fierce than Çiva, is nevertheless, on one side of his character, an inexorable god; and Krishna, as accepted by Vishnuism, is a crafty hero of a singularly doubtful moral character. In Brahmanism religion is largely replaced by magic, the rites themselves are raised to the rank of divinities, the priests become the gods of gods. And the point of view from which these man-gods look upon human conduct is expressed in the Satapatha Brâhmana, where it is said that fees paid to priests are like sacrifices offered to other gods--those who gratify them are placed in a state of bliss. Ritual observances are essential for a man's wellbeing both in this life and in the life to come, where paradise, hell, or transmigration {710} awaits the dead. In the Brâhmanas immortality, or at least longevity, is promised to those who rightly understand and practise the rites of sacrifice, whilst those who are deficient in this respect depart before their natural term of life to the next world, where they are weighed in a balance and receive good or evil according to their deeds. To repeat sacred texts a certain number of times is also laid down as a condition of salvation, and the doctrine is gradually developed that a single invocation of the divine name cancels a whole life of iniquity and crime. Hence the importance attached--as early as the Bhagavad Gîtâ--to the last thought before death, and the idea of attaining complete possession of this thought by an act of suicide. According to the Purânas it is sufficient even in the case of the vilest criminal, when at the point of death, to pronounce by chance some syllables of the names Vishnu or Çiva in order to obtain salvation; and in the preface to the Prem Sâgar, which displays the religion of the Hindus at the present day, it is said that those who even ignorantly sing the praises of the greatness of Krishn Chand are rewarded with final beatitude, just as a person would acquire eternal life by partaking of the drink of immortality though he did not know what he was drinking. On the other hand, "according to the Hindu Scriptures, whatever a man's life may have been, if he do not die near some holy stream, if his body is not burned on its banks, or at any rate near some water as a representative of the stream; or where this is impracticable, if some portion of his body be not thrown into it--his spirit must wander in misery, unable to obtain the bliss for which he has done and suffered so much in life." At the same time we also find a great variety of social duties {711} inculcated in the sacred books of India--humanity even to enemies and slaves, filial piety, charity, hospitality, veracity; and in the Sûtras the doctrine appears that in order to obtain the chief fruit of sacrifice it is necessary to practise the moral virtues in addition to the rite. But this doctrine is singularly free from any reference to the justice of gods. In the Upanishads and Buddhistic books it is distinctly formulated in the idea of karma, according to which each act of the soul, good or bad, inevitably and naturally works out its full effect to the sweet or bitter end without the intervention of any deity to apportion the reward or punishment.

Buddha did not base his system on any belief in gods, hence there is no place in it for a ritual nor for sin in the sense of offending a supernatural being. He that is pure in heart is the true priest, not he that knows the Vedas; the Vedas are nothing, the priests are of no account, save as they be morally of repute. If the genuine Buddhist can be said to worship any higher power, it is the moral order which never fails to assert itself in the law of cause and effect. But Buddha's followers were less metaphysical, and "the clouds returned after the rain." The old gods of Brahmanism came back, Buddha himself was deified as an omniscient and everlasting god, and Buddhism incorporated most of the local deities and demons of those nations it sought to convert. From being originally a metaphysical and ethical doctrine, it was thus transformed into a religion full of ritualism, and, it should be added, profusely mixed with magic. In Lamaism, especially, {712} ritual is elevated to the front rank of importance; we find there pompous services closely resembling those of the Church of Rome, litanies and chants, offerings and sacrifice. And the muttering of certain mystic formulas and short prayers is alleged to be far more efficacious than mere moral virtue as a means of gaining the glorious heaven of eternal bliss, the paradise of the fabulous Buddha of boundless light. So also in China the teachers of Buddhism "were by no means rigorous in enforcing the obligations of men to morality. To expiate sins, offerings to the idols and to the priests were sufficient. A temple built in honour of F[)o], and richly endowed, would suffice to blot out every stain of guilt, and serve as a portal to the blessed mansions of Buddha."

In the national religion of China the heaven god, Shang-te, is the supreme being, the creator and sovereign ruler of the universe, whose power knows no bounds, and whose sight equally comprehends the past, the present, and the future, penetrating even to the remotest recesses of the heart. He is the author and upholder not only of the physical but of the moral order of the world, watching over the conduct of men, rewarding the good, and punishing the wicked. Sometimes he appears to array himself in terrors, as in the case of public calamities and the irregularity of the seasons; but these are only salutary warnings intended to call men to repentance. The cult which is offered Shang-te is frigid and ceremonial. The rules of ceremony have their origin in heaven, and the movement of them {713} reaches to earth; their abandonment leads to "the ruin of states, the destruction of families, and the perishing of individuals." The Chinese are inclined to place ritualism on an equality with social morality. Confucius himself humbly submitted to the rules of ceremony, although he denounced hypocrisy. But to him morality was infinitely more important than religion. He altogether avoided the personal term God, and made only use of the abstract term Heaven. He admitted that spiritual beings exist, and even sacrificed to them, but when questioned about matters relating to religion he was systematically silent. Religious duties occupy a very insignificant place in his system. "To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom." Prayer is unnecessary because Heaven does not actively interfere with the soul of man; it has endowed him at his birth with goodness, which, if he will, may become his nature, and the reward or punishment is only the natural or providential result of his conduct. Of punishments in a future life Confucius says nothing, though he maintains that there are rewards and dignity for the good after death. The belief of the Chinese in post mortem punishments comes from Buddhism.

The gods of ancient Greece were on the whole beneficent beings, who conferred blessings upon those who secured their goodwill. Zeus protects the life of the family, city, and nation; he is a god of victory and victorious peace, who gathers the hosts against Troy, and saves Greece from Persia; he brings the ships to land; he is "the warder off of evil." But neither he nor the other gods bestow their {714} favours for nothing; Xenophon says that they assist with good advice those who worship them regularly, but take revenge on those who neglect them. They punish severely even offences committed against them accidentally, and not infrequently they display actual malevolence towards men by seducing them into sin or inflicting harm upon them out of sheer envy. In other respects, also, they are by no means models of morality; but this does not prevent them from acting as administrators of justice any more than, among men, a judge is supposed to lose all regard for justice because he himself transgresses the rules of morality in some particular of private life. "For great crimes," says Herodotus, "great punishments at the hands of the gods are in store." Dike, or Justice, the terrible virgin "who breathes against her enemies a destructive wrath," is represented sometimes as the daughter, sometimes as the companion of the all-seeing Zeus; and, as Welcker observes, Zeus was not only a god among other gods, but also the deity solely and abstractedly. We have noticed above that from ancient times the murder of a kinsman was an offence against Zeus and under the ban of the Erinyes, and that later on all bloodshed, if the victim had any rights at all within the city, became a sin which needed purification. Zeus protected guests and suppliants, he punished children who reproached their aged parents, he was a guardian of the family property, he protected boundaries, he was no friend of falsehood, he punished perjury. According to earlier beliefs retribution was exclusively restricted {715} to this earthly existence, and if the guilty person himself escaped the punishment for his deed it fell on some of his descendants. The transference of Menelaus to the Elysian plain, spoken of in the Odyssey, was not a reward for his virtue--indeed, he was not particularly conspicuous for any of the Homeric virtues--but a privilege resulting from his being married to Zeus' daughter Helena; and if the perjurer was tortured in Hades the simple reason was that he had called down upon himself such torture in his oath. In later times we meet with the doctrine of retribution after death, not only in the speculations of isolated philosophers, but as a popular belief; but this belief seems to have been quite unconnected with any notion of Olympian justice. The souls in the world beyond the grave are sentenced by special judges; Aeschylus expressly says that it is another Zeus that administers justice there. For him Hades with the powers by which it is governed exists only as a place where the guilty are punished, whereas for the virtuous he has no word of true hope; and other writers also have much more to tell about future punishments than about future rewards. Particularly prominent among the offences which are punished in Hades are, besides perjury, injuries to parents and guests, that is, offences which in this world are visited with the most powerful curses. According to Aeschylus, the retribution which the Erinyes--personifications of curses--have begun on earth is completed in the nether world, and according to Pythagoras unpurified souls are kept chained there by the Erinyes without any hope of escape. We are, moreover, told that painters used to represent "allegorical figures of curses in connection with their {716} images of wicked dead. From all these facts I conclude that the notion of punishments in Hades did not arise from a belief in the justice of gods, but from the idea that the efficacy of a curse may extend beyond the grave--an idea which we have already met with both in Vedic texts and among certain savages, and of which the supposed punishment of perjury in Hades is only a particular instance. As for the gods it should be added that the vulgar opinion of their character was not shared by all. Euripides affirms that the legends about them which tend to confuse human ideas as to right and wrong are not literally true. "I think," he says, "that none of the gods is bad"; "if the gods do aught that is base, they are not gods." Plato opposes the popular views that the deity induces men to commit crimes, that he is capable of feeling envy, and that evil-doers may avert divine punishments by sacrifices offered to the gods as bribes. God is good, he is never the author of evil to any one, and if the wicked are miserable the reason is that they require to be punished and are benefited by receiving punishment from God. Plutarch likewise asserts in the strongest terms that God is perfectly good and least of all wanting in justice and love, "the most beautiful of virtues and the best befitting the Godhead."

The gods of the Romans were on the whole unsympathetic and lifeless beings, some of them even actually pernicious, as the god of Fever, who had a temple on the Palatine hill, and the god of Ill-Fortune, who had an altar on the Esquiline hill. The relations between the gods {717} and their worshippers were cold, ceremonial, legal. The chief thing was not to break "the peace of the gods," or, when it was broken, to restore it. They were rendered propitious by "sanctity" and "piety." But sanctity was defined as "the knowledge of how we ought to worship them," and piety was only "justice towards the gods," the return for benefits received; Cicero asks, "What piety is due to a being from whom you receive nothing?" The divine law, fas, was distinguished from the human law, jus. To the former belonged not only the religious rites but the duties to the dead, as also the duties to certain living individuals. Offences against parents were avenged by the divi parentum; the duty of hospitality was enforced by the dii hospitales and Jupiter; boundaries were protected by Jupiter Terminalis and Terminus; and Jupiter, Dius Fidius, and Fides, were the guardians of sworn faith.

The god of Israel was a powerful protector of his chosen people, but he was a severe master who inspired more fear than love. In the pre-prophetic period at least, he was no model of goodness. He had unaccountable moods, his wrath often resembled "rather the insensate violence of angered nature, than the reasonable indignation of a moralised personality"--as appears, for instance, from the suggestion of David that Saul's undeserved enmity might be due to the incitement of God. At the same time his severity was also a guardian of human relationships. It turned against children who were disrespectful to their parents, against murderers, adulterers, thieves, false witnesses--indeed, the whole criminal law was a revelation of the Lord. He was moreover a protector of {718} the poor and needy, and a preserver of strangers. But offences against God were, in the Ten Commandments, mentioned before offences against man; religious rites were put on the same level with the rules of social morality; neglect of circumcision, or disregard of the precepts of ceremonial cleanliness, or sabbath-breaking, was punished with the same severity as the greatest crimes. "To the ordinary man," says Wellhausen, "it was not moral but liturgical acts that seemed to be truly religious." A different opinion, however, was expressed by the Prophets. They opposed the vice of the heart to the outward service of the ritual. God was said by them to desire not sacrifice but mercy, and to hate the hypocritical service of Israel with its feast-days and solemn assemblies; and the true fast was declared to consist in moral welldoing. To them righteousness was the fundamental virtue of Yahveh, and if he punished Israel his anger was no longer a merely fitful outburst, unrelated to Israel's own wrongdoing, but an essential element of his righteousness. However, as M. Halévy observes, the truly national conceptions of the Hebrews were not those which the Prophets maintained, but those which they opposed. The importance of ritual was more than ever emphasised in the post-prophetic priestly code.

The opposition against ritualism which was started by the Prophets reached its height in Christ. Men are defiled not by external uncleanness, but by evil thoughts and evil deeds. "It is lawful to do well on the sabbath days." Those whose righteousness does not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The first and great commandment is that which {719} enjoins love to God, but the second, according to which a man shall love his neighbour as himself, "is like unto it." At the same time there are in the New Testament passages in which God's judgment of men seems to be represented as determined by theological dogma. The only sin which can never be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come, is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost; and the belief in Jesus is laid down as indispensable for salvation. According to St. Paul, a man is justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the law. This doctrine, which makes man's salvation dependent upon his acceptance of the Messiahship of Jesus, has had a lasting influence upon Christian theology, and has, together with certain other dogmas, led to that singular discrepancy between the notions of divine and human justice which has up to the present day characterised the chief branches of the Christian Church.

Some of the early Fathers maintained that the interference and suffering of Christ, in itself, unconditionally saved all souls and emptied hell for ever; but this theory never became popular. According to St. Augustine and, subsequently, Calvinian theology, the benefits of the atonement are limited to those whom God, of his sovereign pleasure, has from eternity arbitrarily elected, the effect of faith and conversion being not to save the soul, but simply to convince the soul that it is saved. A third theory--that of Pelagius, Armenius, and Luther--attributes to the sufferings of Christ a conditional efficacy, depending upon personal faith in his vicarious atonement, whereas those who for some reason or other do not possess such faith are excluded from salvation. A fourth doctrine, which early began to be constructed by the Fathers and was adopted by the Roman Catholic and the consistent portion of the Episcopalian Church, declares that by Christ's vicarious {720} suffering power is given to the Church, a priestly hierarchy, to save those who confess her authority and observe her rites, whilst all others are lost. Certain sectarians, like the Unitarians, or those "liberal Christians" who do not feel themselves tied by the dogmas of any special creed, are the only ones among whom we meet with the opinion that a free soul, who by the immutable laws which the Creator has established may choose between good and evil, is saved or lost just so far and so long as it partakes of either the former or the latter.

According to the leading doctrines of Christianity, then, the fates of men beyond the grave are determined by quite other circumstances than what the moral consciousness by itself recognises as virtue or vice. They are all doomed to death and hell in consequence of Adam's sin, and their salvation, if not absolutely predestined, can only be effected by sincere faith in the atonement of Christ or by valid reception of sacramental grace at the hands of a priest. Persons who on intellectual or moral grounds are unable to accept the dogma of atonement or to acknowledge the authority of an exacting hierarchy, are subject to the most awful penalties for a sin committed by their earliest ancestor, and so are the countless millions of heathen who never even had an opportunity to embrace the Christian religion. Luther was considered to have shown an exceptional boldness when he expressed the hope that "our dear God would be merciful to Cicero, and to others like him." In the Westminster Confession of Faith the Divines declared the opinion that men not professing Christianity may be saved to be "very pernicious, and to be detested"; and in their Larger Catechism they expressly said that "they who, having never heard the gospel, know not Jesus Christ, and believe not in him, cannot be saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, or the laws of that religion which they profess." This doctrine has had many {721} adherents up to the present time, although a more liberal view in favour of virtuous heathen has obviously been gaining ground. Even in the case of Christians errors in belief on such subjects as church government, the Trinity, transubstantiation, original sin, and predestination, have been declared to expose the guilty to eternal damnation. In the seventeenth century it was a common theme of certain Roman Catholic writers that "Protestancy unrepented destroys salvation," while the Protestants on their part taxed Du Moulin with culpable laxity for admitting that some Roman Catholics might escape the torments of hell. Nathanael Emmons, the sage of Franklin, tells us that "it is absolutely necessary to approve of the doctrine of reprobation in order to be saved."

Besides the heathen there is another large class of people whom Christian theology has condemned to hell for no fault of theirs, namely, infants who have died unbaptised. From a very early age the water of baptism was believed by the Christians to possess a magic power to wipe away sin, and since the days of St. Augustine it was deemed so indispensable for salvation that any child dying without "the bath of regeneration" was regarded as lost for ever. St. Augustine admitted that the punishment of such children was of the mildest sort, but other writers were more severe; St. Fulgentius condemned to "everlasting punishment in eternal fire" even infants who died in their mother's womb. However, {722} the notion that unbaptised children will be tormented, gradually gave way to a more humane opinion. In the middle of the twelfth century Peter Lombard determined that the proper punishment of original sin, when no actual sin is added to it, is "the punishment of loss," that is, loss of heaven and the sight of God, but not "the punishment of sense," that is, positive torment. This doctrine was confirmed by Innocentius III. and shared by the large majority of the schoolmen, who assumed the existence of a place called limbus, or infernus puerorum, where unbaptised infants will dwell without being subject to torture. But the older view was again set up by the Protestants, who generally maintained that the due punishment of original sin is, in strictness, damnation in hell, although many of them were inclined to think that if a child dies by misfortune before it is baptised the parents' sincere intention of baptising it, together with their prayers, will be accepted with God for the deed. In the Confession of Augsburg the Anabaptistic doctrine is emphatically condemned; and although Zwingli rejected the dogma that infants dying without baptism are lost, and Calvin, in harmony with his theory of election, refused to tie the salvation of infants to an outward rite, the necessity of baptism as the ordinary channel of receiving grace appears to have been a general belief in the Reformed churches throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The damnation of infants was in fact an acknowledged doctrine of Calvinism, though an exception was made for the children of pious parents. But in the latter part of the eighteenth century Toplady, who was a vehement Calvinist, avowed {723} his belief in the universal salvation of all departed infants, whether baptised or unbaptised. And a hundred years later Dr. Hodge thought he was justified in stating that the common opinion of evangelical Protestants was that "all who die in infancy are saved." The accuracy of this statement, however, seems somewhat doubtful. In 1883 Mr. Prentiss wrote of the doctrine of infant salvation independently of baptism:--"My own impression is that, had it been taught as unequivocally in the Presbyterian Church even a third of a century ago, by a theologian less eminent than Dr. Hodge for orthodoxy, piety, and weight of character, it would have called forth an immediate protest from some of the more conservative, old-fashioned Calvinists."

In order fully to realise the true import of the dogma of damnation it is necessary to consider the punishment in store for the condemned. The immense bulk of the Christians have always regarded hell and its agonies as material facts. Origen, who was a Platonist and an heretic on many points, was severely censured for saying that the fire of hell was inward and of the conscience rather than outward and of the body; and in the later Middle Ages Scotus Erigena showed unusual audacity in questioning the locality of hell and the material tortures of the condemned. The punishment is burning--a penalty which even in the most barbaric codes is reserved for the very gravest crimes; and some great divines, like Jeremy Taylor and Jonathan Edwards, have been anxious to point out that the fire of hell is infinitely more painful than any fire on earth, being "fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements." This awful punishment also exceeds in dreadfulness anything which even the most vivid imagination can conceive, because it will last not for a passing moment, {724} nor for a year or a hundred, thousand, million, or milliard years, but for ever and ever. In case any doubt should arise as regards the physical capacity of the damned to withstand the heat, we are assured by some modern theologians that their bodies will be annealed like glass or asbestos-like or of the nature of salamanders. This, then, is the future state of the large majority of men, quite independently of any fault of their own, or of the degree of their "guilt." It would seem that even the felicity of the few who are saved must be seriously impaired by their contemplation of this endless and undescribable misery, but we are told that the case is just the reverse. They become as merciless as their god. Thomas Aquinas says that a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted to them that they "may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly." And the Puritans, especially, have revelled in the idea that "the sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for ever," as a sense of the opposite misery always increases the relish of any pleasure.

In the present times there is a distinct tendency among Christian theologians to humanise somewhat the doctrines of the future life. But if Christianity is to be judged from the dogmas which almost from its beginning until quite recent times have been recognised by the immense majority of its adherents, it must be admitted that its {725} conception of a heavenly Father and Judge has been utterly inconsistent with all ordinary notions of goodness and justice. Calvin himself avowed that the decree according to which the fall of Adam involved, without remedy, in eternal death so many nations together with their infant children, was a "horrible" one. "But," he adds, "no one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it because it was appointed by his own decree."

Like Christianity, Muhammedanism adorns its godhead with the highest moral attributes and at the same time ascribes to him decrees and actions which flatly contradict even the most elementary notions of human justice. The god of Islam is addressed as the compassionate and merciful; but his love is restricted to "those who fear," and his mercy can only be gained by that submissiveness or self-surrender which is indicated by the very name of Islam. He demands a righteous life, he punishes the wrongdoer and rewards the charitable. Through his Prophet he has revealed to mankind both the rules of morality and the elements of a social system containing minute regulations for a man's conduct in various circumstances of life, with due rewards or penalties according to his fulfilment of these regulations. The whole constitution of the State has on it a divine stamp; as an Arab proverb says, "country and religion are twins." But foremost among duties is to believe in God and his Prophet. "God," it is said, "does not pardon polytheism and infidelity, but He can, if He willeth, pardon other crimes." And the "pillars of religion" are the five duties of reciting the Kalimah or creed, of performing the five stated daily prayers, of fasting--especially in the month of Rama[d.]ân,--of giving the legal alms, and of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. These duties are based on clear {726} sentences of the Koran, but the traditions have raised the most trivial ceremonial observances into duties of the greatest importance. It is true that hypocrisy and formalism without devotion were strongly condemned by Muhammed. "Righteousness," he said, "is not that ye turn your faces towards the East or the West, but righteousness is, one who believes in God, and the last day, and the angels, and the Book, and the prophets, and who gives wealth for His love to kindred, and orphans, and the poor, and the son of the road, and beggars, and those in captivity; and who is steadfast in prayer, and gives alms; and those who are sure of their covenant when they make a covenant; and the patient in poverty, and distress, and in time of violence; these are they who are true, and these are those who fear." Yet in Muhammedanism, as in other ritualistic religions, the chief importance is practically attached to the punctual performance of outward ceremonies, and the virtue of prayer is made dependent upon an ablution. In the future life the felicity or suffering of each person will be proportionate to his merits or demerits, but the admittance into paradise depends in the first place on faith. "Those who believe, and act righteously, and are steadfast in prayer, and give alms, theirs is their hire with their Lord." Those who have acknowledged the faith of Islam and yet acted wickedly will be punished in hell for a certain period, but will finally enter paradise. As regards the future state of certain infidels the Koran contains contradictory statements. In one place it is said, "Verily, whether it be of those who believe, or those who are Jews or Christians or Sabaeans, whosoever believe in God and {727} the last day and act aright, they have their reward at their Lord's hand, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve." But this passage is considered to have been abrogated by another where it is stated that whoso desires any other religion than Islam shall in the next world be among the lost. The punishments inflicted upon unbelievers are no less horrible than the torments of the Christian hell. Yet in one point the Muhammedan doctrine of the future life is more merciful than the dogmas of Christianity. The children of believers will all go to paradise, and the children of unbelievers are generally supposed to escape hell. Some think they will be in A[(]ráf, a place situated between heaven and hell; whilst others maintain that they will be servants to the true believers in paradise.

The formalism of Muhammedan orthodoxy has from time to time called forth protests from minds with deeper aspirations. The earlier Muhammedan mystics sought to impart life to the rigid ritual; and in the nineteenth century Bábíism revolted against orthodox Islam, opposing bigotry and enjoining friendly intercourse with persons of all religions. At present there are some liberal Muhammedans who set aside the scholastic tradition, maintain the right of private interpretation of the Koran, and warmly uphold the adaptability of Islam to the most advanced ideas of civilisation. To them Muhammed's mission was chiefly that of a moral reformer. "In Islam," says Syed Ameer Ali, "the service of man and the good of humanity constitute pre-eminently the service and worship of God."

In the next chapter I shall try to explain the chief facts now set forth relating to gods as guardians of **worldly morality.