§ 5. The Gods of the Artists.

The artists, following the poets, developed still further the divinely human character of the gods. The architects of the temples gave, in their pure and harmonious forms, the conception of religious beauty and majesty. Standing in some open elevated position, their snowy surface bathed in sunshine, they stood in serene strength, the types of a bright and joyful religion. A superstitious worship seeks caves and darkness; the noble majesty of the Greek temples said plainly that they belonged to a religion of light and peace.

The sculptor worked originally in company with the architect. The statues were meant to adorn the temples, the temples were made as frames and pedestals for the statues. The marble forms stood and walked on the pediments and gave life to the frieze. They animated the exterior, or sat, calm and strong, in the central shrine.

The poets, in giving a moral and human character to the gods, never quite forgot their origin as powers of nature. Jupiter Olympus is still the god of the sky, the thunderer. Neptune is the ruler of the ocean, the earth-shaker. Phoebus-Apollo is the sun-god. Artemis is the moonlight, pure, chaste, and cold. But the sculptors finally leave behind these reminiscences, and in their hands the deities become purely moral beings. On the brow of Jupiter sits a majestic calm; he is no angry wielder of the thunderbolt, but the gracious and powerful ruler of the three worlds. This conception grew up gradually, until it was fully realized by Phidias in his statues at Olympia and Elis. Tranquil power and victorious repose appear even in the standing Jupiters, in which last the god appears as more youthful and active.

The conception of Jupiter by Phidias was a great advance on that of Homer. He, to be sure, professed to take his idea from the famous passage of the Iliad where Jove shakes his ambrosial curls and bends his awful brows; and, nodding, shakes heaven and earth. That might be his text, but the sermon which he preached was far higher than it. This was the great statue of Jupiter, his masterpiece, made of ivory and gold for the temple at Olympia, where the games were celebrated by the united Hellenic race. These famous games, which occurred every fifth year, lasting five days, calling together all Greece, were to this race what the Passover was to the Jewish nation, sacred, venerable, blending divine worship and human joy. These games were a chronology, a constitution, and a church to the Pan-Hellenic race. All epochs were reckoned from them; as events occurring in such or such an Olympiad. The first Olympiad was seven hundred and seventy-six years before Christ; and a large part of our present knowledge of ancient chronology depends on these festivals. They bound Greece together as by a constitution; no persons unless of genuine Hellenic blood being allowed to contend at them, and a truce being proclaimed for all Greece while they lasted.

Here at Olympia, while the games continued, all Greece came together; the poets and historians declaimed their compositions to the grand audience; opinions were interchanged, knowledge communicated, and the national life received both stimulus and unity.

And here, over all, presided the great Jupiter of Phidias, within a Doric temple, sixty-eight feet high, ninety-five wide, and two hundred and thirty long, covered with sculptures of Pentelic marble. The god was seated on his throne, made of gold, ebony, and ivory, studded with precious stones. He was so colossal that, though seated, his head nearly reached the roof, and it seemed as if he would bear it away if he rose. There sat the monarch, his head, neck, breast, and arms in massive proportions; the lower part of the body veiled in a flowing mantle; bearing in his right hand a statue of Victory, in his left a sceptre with his eagle on the top; the Hours, the Seasons, and the Graces around him; his feet on the mysterious Sphinx; and on his face that marvellous expression of blended majesty and sweetness, which we know not only by the accounts of eyewitnesses, but by the numerous imitations and copies in marble which have come down to us. One cannot fail to see, even in these copies, a wonderful expression of power, wisdom, and goodness. The head, with leonine locks of hair and thickly rolling beard, expresses power, the broad brow and fixed gaze of the eyes, wisdom; while the sweet smile of the lips indicates goodness. The throne was of cedar, ornamented with gold, ivory, ebony, and precious stones. The sceptre was composed of every kind of metal. The statue was forty feet high, on a pedestal of twelve feet. To die without having seen this statue was regarded by the Greeks as almost as great a calamity as not to have been initiated into the mysteries.²⁴⁰

In like manner the poetic conception of Apollo was inferior to that of the sculptor. In the mind of the latter Phoebus is not merely an archer, not merely a prophet and a singer, but the entire manifestation of genius. He is inspiration; he radiates poetry, music, eloquence from his sublime figure. The Phidian Jupiter is lost to us, except in copies, but in the Belvedere Apollo we see how the sculptor could interpret the highest thought of the Hellenic mind. He who visits this statue by night in the Vatican Palace at Rome, seeing it by torchlight, has, perhaps, the most wonderful impression left on his imagination which art can give. After passing through the long galleries of the Vatican, where, as the torches advance, armies of statues emerge from the darkness before you, gaze on you with marble countenance, and sink back into the darkness behind, you reach at last the small circular hall which contains the Apollo. The effect of torchlight is to make the statue seem more alive. One limb, one feature, one expression after another, is brought out as the torches move; and the wonderful form becomes at last instinct with life. Milman has described the statue in a few glowing but unexaggerated lines:—

In such a statue we see the human creative genius idealized. It is a magnificent representation of the mind of Greece, that fountain of original thought from which came the Songs of Homer and the Dialogues of Plato, that unfailing source of history, tragedy, lyric poetry, scientific investigation. In the Belvedere Apollo we see expressed at once the genius of Homer, Aristotle, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Pindar, Thales, and Plato.

With Apollo is associated his sister Artemis, or Diana, another exquisite conception of Greek thought. Not the cold and cruel Diana of the poets; not she who, in her prudish anger, turned Actæon into a stag, who slew Orion, who slew the children of Niobe, and demanded the death of Iphigenia. Very different is the beautiful Diana of the sculptors, the Artemis, or untouched one, chaste as moonlight, a wild girl, pure, free, noble; the ideal of youthful womanhood, who can share with man manly exercises and open-air sports, and add to manly strength a womanly grace. So she seems in the statue; in swift motion, the air lifting her tunic from her noble limbs, while she draws a shaft from the quiver to kill a hind. No Greek could look at such a statue, and not learn to reverence the purity and nobleness of womanhood.

Pallas-Athênê was the goddess of all the liberal arts and sciences. In battle she proves too strong for Arês or Mars, as scientific war is always too strong for that wild, furious war which Mars represented. She was the civilizer of mankind. Her name Pallas means "virgin," and her name Athênê was supposed to be the same as the Egyptian Neith, reversed; though modern scholars deny this etymology.

The Parthenon, standing on the summit of Athens, built of white marble, was surrounded by columns 34 feet high. It was 230 feet long, 102 feet wide, and 68 high, and was perhaps the most perfect building ever raised by man. Every part of its exterior was adorned with Phidian sculpture; and within stood the statue of Athênê herself, in ivory and gold, by the same master hand. Another colossal statue of the great goddess stood on the summit of the Acropolis, and her polished brazen helmet and shield, flashing in the sun, could be seen far out at sea by vessels approaching Athens.

The Greek sculptors, in creating these wonderful ideals, were always feeling after God; but for God incarnate, God in man. They sought for and represented each divine element in human nature. They were prophets of the future development of humanity. They showed how man is a partaker of the divine nature. If they humanized Deity, they divinized humanity.

§ 6. The Gods of the Philosophers.

The problem which the Greek philosophers set themselves to solve was the origin of things. As we have found a double element of race and religion running through the history of Greece, so we find a similar dualism in its philosophy. An element of realism and another of idealism are in opposition until the time of Plato, and are first reconciled by that great master of thought. Realism appears in the Ionic nature-philosophy; idealism in Orphism, the schools of Pythagoras, and the Eleatic school of Southern Italy.

Both these classes of thinkers sought for some central unity beneath the outward phenomena. Thales the Milesian (B.C. 600) said it was water. His disciple, Anaximander, called it a chaotic matter, containing in itself a motive-power which would take the universe through successive creations and destructions. His successor, Anaximenes, concluded the infinite substance to be air. Heraclitus of Ephesus (B.C. 500) declared it to be fire; by which he meant, not physical fire, but the principle of antagonism. So, by water, Thales must have intended the fluid element in things. For that Thales was not a mere materialist appears from the sayings which have been reported as coming from him, such as this: "Of all things, the oldest is God; the most beautiful is the world; the swiftest is thought; the wisest is time." Or that other, that, "Death does not differ at all from life." Thales also taught that a Divine power was in all things. The successor of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras (B.C. 494), first distinguished God from the world, mind from matter, leaving to each an independent existence.

While the Greek colonies in Asia Minor developed thus the Asiatic form of philosophy, the colonies in Magna Græcia unfolded the Italian or ideal side. Of these, Pythagoras was the earliest and most conspicuous. Born at Samos (B.C. 584), he was a contemporary of Thales of Miletus. He taught that God was one; yet not outside of the world, but in it, wholly in every part, overseeing the beginnings of all things and their combinations.²⁴²

The head of the Italian school, known as Eleatics, was Xenophanes (born B.C. 600), who, says Zeller,²⁴³ both a philosopher and a poet, taught first of all a perfect monotheism. He declared God to be the one and all, eternal, almighty, and perfect being, being all sight, feeling, and perception. He is both infinite and finite. If he were only finite, he could not be; if he were only infinite, he could not exist. He lives in eternity, and exists in time.²⁴⁴

Parmenides, scholar and successor of Xenophanes at Elea, taught that God, as pure thought, pervaded all nature. Empedocles (about B.C. 460)²⁴⁵ followed Xenophanes, though introducing a certain dualism into his physics. In theology he was a pure monotheist, declaring God to be the Absolute Being, sufficient for himself, and related to the world as unity to variety, or love to discord. We can only recognize God by the divine element in ourselves. The bad is what is separate from God, and out of harmony with him.

After this came a sceptical movement, in which Gorgias, a disciple of Empedocles (B.C. 404) and Protagoras the Abderite, taught the doctrine of nescience. The latter said: "Whether there are gods or not we cannot say, and life is too short to find out."²⁴⁶ Prodicus explained religion as founded in utility, Critias derived it from statecraft. They argued that if religion was founded in human nature, all men would worship the same gods. This view became popular in Greece at the time of the Peloponnesian War. Euripides, as we have seen, was a sceptic. Those who denied the popular gods were persecuted by the Athenians, but the sceptical spirit was not checked by this course.²⁴⁷ Anaxagoras escaped with his life only through the powerful protection of Pericles. Protagoras was sentenced to death, and his writings were burned. Diogenes was denounced as an atheist, and a reward of a talent was offered to any one who should kill him. For an unbelieving age is apt to be a persecuting one. When the kernel of religion is gone, more stress is laid on keeping the shell untouched.

It was in the midst of these dilapidated opinions that Socrates came, that wonderful phenomenon in human history. A marvellous vision, glorifying humanity! He may be considered as having created the science of ethics. He first taught the doctrine of divine providence, declaring that we can only know God in his works. He placed religion on the basis of humanity, proclaiming the well-being of man to be the end of the universe. He preferred the study of final causes to that of efficient causes. He did not deny the inferior deities, but regarded them only as we regard angels and archangels, saints and prophets; as finite beings, above man, but infinitely below the Supreme Being. Reverence for such beings is quite consistent with the purest monotheism.

In Plato, says Rixner²⁴⁸ the two polar tendencies of Greek philosophy were harmonized, and realism and idealism brought into accord. The school of realism recognized time, variety, motion, multiplicity, and nature; but lost substance, unity, eternity, and spirit. The other, the ideal Eleatic school, recognized unity, but lost variety, saw eternity, but ignored time, accepted being, but omitted life and movement.

The three views may be thus compared:—

The philosophy of Plato was the scientific completion of that of Socrates. Socrates took his intellectual departure from man, and inferred nature and God. Plato assumed God, and inferred nature and man. He made goodness and nature godlike, by making God the substance in each. His was a divine philosophy, since he referred all facts theoretically and practically to God as the ground of their being.

The style of Plato singularly combined analysis and synthesis, exact definition with poetic life. His magnificent intellect aimed at uniting precision in details with universal comprehension.²⁴⁹

Plato, as regards his method of thought, was a strict and determined transcendentalist. He declared philosophy to be the science of unconditioned being, and asserted that this was known to the soul by its intuitive reason, which is the organ of all philosophic insight. The reason perceives substance, the understanding only phenomena. Being το όν, which is the reality in all actuality, is in the ideas or thoughts of God; and nothing exists or appears outwardly, except by the force of this indwelling idea. The WORD is the true expression of the nature of every object; for each has its divine and natural name, beside its accidental human appellation. Philosophy is the recollection of what the soul has seen of things and their names.

The life and essence of all things is from God. Plato's idea of God is of the purest and highest kind. God is one, he is Spirit, he is the supreme and only real being, he is the creator of all things, his providence is over all events. He avoids pantheism on one side, by making God a distinct personal intelligent will; and polytheism on the other, by making him absolute, and therefore one. Plato's theology is pure theism.²⁵⁰

Ackermann, in "The Christian Element in Plato,"²⁵¹ says: The Platonic theology is strikingly near that of Christianity in regard to God's being, existence, name, and attributes. As regards the existence of God, he argues from the movements of nature for the necessity of an original principle of motion.²⁵² But the real Platonic faith in God, like that of the Bible, rests on immediate knowledge. He gives no definition of the essence of God, but says,²⁵³ "To find the Maker and Father of this All is hard, and having found him it is impossible to utter him." But the idea of Goodness is the best expression, as is also that of Being, though neither is adequate. The visible Sun is the image and child of the Good Being. Just so the Scripture calls God the Father of light. Yet the idea of God was the object and aim of his whole philosophy; therefore he calls God the Beginning and the End;²⁵⁴ and "the Measure of all things, much more than man, as some people have said" (referring to Protagoras, who taught that "man was the measure of all things"). So even Aristotle declared that "since God is the ground of all being, the first philosophy is theology"; and Eusebius mentions that Plato thought that no one could understand human things who did not first look at divine things; and tells a story of an Indian who met Socrates in Athens and asked him how he must begin to philosophize. He replied that he must reflect on human life; whereupon the Indian laughed and said that as long as one did not understand divine things he could know nothing about human things.

There is no doubt that Plato was a monotheist, and believed in one God, and when he spoke of gods in the plural, was only using the common form of speech. That many educated heathen were monotheists has been sufficiently proved; and even Augustine admits that the mere use of the word "gods" proved nothing against it, since the Hebrew Bible said, "the God of gods has spoken."

Aristotle (B.C. 384), the first philologian and naturalist of antiquity, scholar of Plato, called "the Scribe of Nature," and "a reversed Plato," differing diametrically from his master in his methods, arrived at nearly the same theological result. He taught that there were first truths, known by their own evidence. He comprised all notions of existence in that of the κόσμος, in which were the two spheres of the earthly and heavenly. The earthly sphere contained the changeable in the transient; the heavenly sphere contained the changeable in the permanent. Above both spheres is God, who is unchangeable, permanent, and unalterable. Aristotle, however, omits God as Providence, and conceives him less personally than is done by Plato.

In the Stoical system, theism becomes pantheism.²⁵⁵ There is one Being, who is the substance of all things, from whom the universe flows forth, and into whom it returns in regular cycles.

Zeller²⁵⁶ sums up his statements on this point thus: "From all that has been said it appears that the Stoics did not think of God and the world as different beings. Their system was therefore strictly pantheistic. The sum of all real existence is originally contained in God, who is at once universal matter and the creative force which fashions matter into the particular materials of which things are made. We can, therefore, think of nothing which is not either God or a manifestation of God. In point of being, God and the world are the same, the two conceptions being declared by the Stoics to be absolutely identical."

The Stoic philosophy was materialism as regards the nature of things, and necessity as regards the nature of the human will. The Stoics denied the everlasting existence of souls as individuals, believing that at the end of a certain cycle they would be resolved into the Divine Being. Nevertheless, till that period arrives, they conceived the soul as existing in a future state higher and better than this. Seneca calls the day of death the birthday into this better world. In that world there would be a judgment on the conduct and character of each one; there friends would recognize each other, and renew their friendship and society.

While the Epicureans considered religion in all its usual forms to be a curse to mankind, while they believed it impious to accept the popular opinions concerning the gods, while they denied any Divine Providence or care for man, while they rejected prayer, prophecy, divination, and regarded fear as the foundation of religion, they yet believed, as their master Epicurus had believed, in the existence of the immortal gods. These beings he regarded as possessing all human attributes, except those of weakness and pain. They are immortal and perfectly happy; exempt from disease and change, living in celestial dwellings, clothed with bodies of a higher kind than ours, they converse together in a sweet society of peace and content.

Such were the principal theological views of the Greek philosophers. With the exception of the last, and that of the Sceptics, they were either monotheistic or consistent with monotheism. They were, on the whole, far higher than the legends of the poets or the visions of the artists. They were, as the Christian Fathers were fond of saying, a preparation for Christianity. No doubt one cause of the success of this monotheistic religion among the Greek-speaking nations was that Greek philosophy had undermined faith in Greek polytheism.

This we shall consider in another section.

§ 7. The Worship of Greece.

The public worship of Greece, as of other ancient nations, consisted of sacrifices, prayers, and public festivals. The sacrifices were for victories over their enemies, for plentiful harvests, to avert the anger of some offended deity, for success in any enterprise, and those specially commanded by the oracles.

In the earliest times fruits and plants were all that were offered. Afterward the sacrifices were libations, incense, and victims. The libation consisted of a cup brimming with wine, which was emptied upon the altars. The incense, at first, was merely fragrant leaves or wood, burnt upon the altar; afterward myrrh and frankincense were used. The victims were sheep, oxen, or other animals. To Hecate they offered a dog, to Venus a dove, to Mars some wild animal, to Ceres the sow, because it rooted up the corn. But it was forbidden to sacrifice the ploughing ox. The sacrifices of men, which were common among barbarous nations, were very rare in Greece.

On great occasions large sacrifices were offered of numerous victims,—as the hecatomb, which means a hundred oxen. It is a curious fact that they had a vessel of holy water at the entrance of the temples, consecrated by putting into it a burning torch from the altar, with which or with a branch of laurel the worshippers were sprinkled on entering. The worshippers were also expected to wash their bodies, or at least their hands and feet, before going into the temple; a custom common also among the Jews and other nations. So Ezekiel says: "I will sprinkle you with clean water and you shall be clean." And the Apostle Paul says, in allusion to this custom: "Let us draw near, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."

All these customs had a natural origin. The natural offering to the gods is that which we like best ourselves. The Greeks, eminently a social people, in the enjoyment of their feasts, wished to give a part of everything to the gods. Loving wine, perfumes, and animal food, they offered these. As it was proper to wash before feasting with each other, it seemed only proper to do the same before offering the feast to the gods.

The essential part of the sacrifice was catching and pouring out the blood of the victim; for, in the view of the ancients, blood was the seat of life. Part of the victim was burned, and this was the portion supposed to be consumed by the god. Another part was eaten by the worshippers, who thus sat at table with the deity as his friends and companions. The joyful character of Greek worship also appeared in the use of garlands of flowers, religious dances and songs.

All the festivals of the Greeks were religious. Some were of the seasons, as one in February to Zeus, the giver of good weather; and another in November to Zeus, the god of storms. There were festivals in honor of the plough, of the threshing-floor; festivals commemorating the victories at Marathon, Salamis, etc.; of the restoration of democracy by Thrasybulus; feasts of the clothing of the images, on which occasion it was not lawful to work; feasts in commemoration of those who perished in the flood of Deucalion; feasts of nurses, feasts of youth, of women, of trades. Then there were the great national festivals, celebrated every four years at Olympia and Delphi, and every three and five years at Nemea and the isthmus of Corinth. The Panathenæic festival at Athens was held every five years in honor of Athênê, with magnificent processions, cavalcades of horsemen, gymnastic games, military dances, recitations of the Homeric poems, and competition in music. On the frieze of the Parthenon was represented by the scholars of Phidias the procession of the Peplos. This was a new dress made for the statue of Athênê by young girls of Athens, between the ages of seven and eleven years. These girls, selected at a special ceremony, lived a year on the Acropolis, engaged in their sacred work, and fed on a special diet. Captives were liberated on this occasion, that all might share in the festival.

Such festivals constituted the acme of Greek life. They were celebrated in the open air with pomp and splendor, and visitors came from far to assist on these occasions. Prizes were given for foot and chariot races; for boxing, leaping, music, and even for kissing. The temples, therefore, were not intended for worship, but chiefly to contain the image of the god. The cella, or adytum, was small and often dark; but along the magnificent portico or peristyle, which surrounded the four sides of the Doric temples, the splendid processions could circulate in full view of the multitude.²⁵⁷ The temple was therefore essentially an out-door building, with its beauty, like that of a flower, exposed to light and air. It was covered everywhere, but not crowded, with sculpture, which was an essential part of the building. The pediments, the pedestals on the roofs, the metopes between the triglyphs, are as unmeaning without the sculpture as a picture-frame without its picture. So says Mr. Fergusson;²⁵⁸ and adds that, without question, color was also everywhere used as an integral part of the structure.

Priesthood was sometimes hereditary, but was not confined to a class. Kings, generals, and the heads of a family acted as priests and offered sacrifices. It was a temporary office, and Plato recommends that there should be an annual rotation, no man acting as priest for more than one year. Such a state of opinion excludes the danger of priestcraft, and is opposed to all hierarchal pretensions. The same, however, cannot be said of the diviners and soothsayers, who were so much consulted, and whose opinions determined so often the course of public affairs. They were often in the pay of ambitious men. Alcibiades had augurs and oracles devoted to his interests, who could induce the Athenians to agree to such a course as he desired. For the Greeks were extremely anxious to penetrate the future, and the power and influence of their oracles is, says Döllinger, a phenomenon unique in history.

Among these oracles, Delphi, as is well known, took the highest rank. It was considered the centre of the earth, and was revered by the Pan-Hellenic race. It was a supreme religious court, whose decisions were believed to be infallible. The despotism of the Pythian decisions was, however, tempered by their ambiguity. Their predictions, if they failed, seldom destroyed the faith of the believers; for always some explanation could be devised to save the credit of the oracle. Thus, the Pythian promised the Athenians that they would take all the Syracusans prisoners. They did not take them; but as a muster-roll of the Syracusan army fell into their hands, this was considered to fulfil the promise.²⁵⁹ Aristides, the rhetorician, was told that the "white maidens" would take care of him; and receiving a letter which was of advantage, he was fully convinced that this was the "white maiden." But neither imposition nor delusion will satisfactorily explain the phenomena connected with oracles. The foundation of them seems to have been a state allied to the modern manifestations of magnetic sleep and clairvoyance.

"As the whole life of the Greeks," says Döllinger, "was penetrated by religion," they instinctively and naturally prayed on all occasions. They prayed at sunrise and sunset, at meal-times, for outward blessings of all kinds, and also for virtue and wisdom. They prayed standing, with a loud voice, and hands lifted to the heavens. They threw kisses to the gods with their hands.

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

§ 8. The Mysteries. Orphism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And another says, still more plainly:—

§ 9. Relation of Greek Religion to Christianity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the early Christian Fathers called on the heathen poets and philosophers to bear witness to the truth. Clement of Alexandria²⁶⁶ after quoting this passage of Plato, "around the king of all are all things, and he is the cause of all good things," says that others, through God's inspiration, have declared the only true God to be God. He quotes Antisthenes to this effect: "God is not like to any; wherefore no one can know him from an image." He quotes Cleanthes the Stoic:—

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

Clement quotes Aratus the poet:—

"Thus also," says Clement, "the Ascræan Hesiod dimly speaks of God:—

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

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

"He then proceeds:—

Professor Cocker, in his work on "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," has devoted much thought to show that philosophy was a preparation for Christianity, and that Greek civilization was an essential condition to the progress of the Gospel. He points out how Greek intelligence and culture, literature and art, trade and colonization, the universal spread of the Greek language, and especially the results of Greek philosophy, were "schoolmasters to bring men to Christ." He quotes a striking passage from Pressensé to this effect. Philosophy in Greece, says Pressensé, had its place in the divine plan. It dethroned the false gods. It purified the idea of divinity.

Cocker sums up this work of preparation done by Greek philosophy, as seen,—

"1. In the release of the popular mind from polytheistic notions, and the purifying and spiritualizing of the theistic idea.

"2. In the development of the theistic argument in a logical form.

"3. In the awakening and enthronement of conscience as a law of duty, and in the elevation and purification of the moral idea.

"4. In the fact that, by an experiment conducted on the largest scale, it demonstrated the insufficiency of reason to elaborate a perfect ideal of moral excellence, and develop the moral forces necessary to secure its realization.

"5. It awakened and deepened the consciousness of guilt and the desire for redemption."²⁶⁷

The large culture of Greece was evidently adapted to Christianity. The Jewish mind recognized no such need as that of universal culture, and this tendency of Christianity could only have found room and opportunity among those who had received the influence of Hellenic culture.

The points of contact between Christianity and Greek civilization are therefore these:—

1. The character of God, considered in both as an immanent, ever-working presence, and not merely as a creating and governing will outside the universe.

2. The character of man, as capable of education and development, who is not merely to obey as a servant, but to co-operate as a friend, with the divine will, and grow up in all things.

3. The idea of duty, as a reasonable service, and not a yoke.

4. God's revelations, as coming, not only in nature, but also in inspired men, and in the intuitions of the soul; a conception which resulted in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

The good of polytheism was that it saw something divine in nature. By dividing God into numberless deities, it was able to conceive of some divine power in all earthly objects. Hence Wordsworth, complaining that we can see little of this divinity now in nature, cries out:—