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Hymn to Ushas (Rv. VII. 77)
1. She shines upon us, like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by men, she made the light by striking down darkness.
2. She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows, (the mornings) the leader of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold.
3. She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the gods, who leads the white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was seen revealed by her rays, with brilliant treasures, following every one.
4. Thou who art a blessing where thou art near, drive far away the unfriendly; make the pasture wide, give us safety! Scatter the enemy, bring riches! Raise up wealth to the worshipper, thou mighty Dawn.
5. Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us food, who givest us wealth in cows, horses, and chariots.
6. Thou, daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn, whom the Vasishthas magnify with songs, give us riches high and wide: all ye gods, protect us always with your blessings.
I must confine myself to shorter extracts, in order to be able to show to you that all the principal elements of real religion are present in the Veda. I remind you again that the Veda contains a great deal of what is childish and foolish, though very little of what is bad and objectionable. Some of its poets ascribe to the gods sentiments and passions unworthy of the deity, such as anger, revenge, delight in material sacrifices; they likewise represent human nature on a low level of selfishness and worldliness. Many hymns are utterly unmeaning and insipid, and we must search patiently before we meet, here and there, with sentiments that come from the depth of the soul, and with prayers in which we could join ourselves. Yet there are such passages, and they are the really important passages, as marking the highest points to which the religious life of the ancient poets of India had reached; and it is to these that I shall now call your attention.
First of all, the religion of the Veda knows of no idols. The worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the more primitive worship of ideal gods.
The gods of the Veda are conceived as immortal: passages in which the birth of certain gods is mentioned have a physical meaning: they refer to the birth of the day, the rising of the sun, the return of the year.
The gods are supposed to dwell in heaven, though several of them, as, for instance, Agni, the god of fire, are represented as living among men, or as approaching the sacrifice, and listening to the praises of their worshippers.
Heaven and earth are believed to have been made or to have been established by certain gods. Elaborate theories of creation, which abound in the later works, the Brâhmanas, are not to be found in the hymns. What we find are such passages as:
'Agni held the earth, he stablished the heaven by truthful words' (Rv. I. 67, 3).
'Varuna stemmed asunder the wide firmaments; he lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth' (Rv. VII. 86, 1).
More frequently, however, the poets confess their ignorance of the beginning of all things, and one of them exclaims:
'Who has seen the first-born? Where was the life, the blood, the soul of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? (Rv. I. 164, 4).25
Or again, Rv. X. 81, 4: 'What was the forest, what was the tree out of which they shaped heaven and earth? Wise men, ask this indeed in your mind, on what he stood when he held the worlds?'
I now come to a more important subject. We find in the Veda, what few would have expected to find there, the two ideas, so contradictory to the human understanding, and yet so easily reconciled in every human heart: God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, he punishes sin and rewards virtue, and yet the same God is willing to forgive; just, yet merciful; a judge, and yet a father. Consider, for instance, the following lines, Rv. I. 41, 4: 'His path is easy and without thorns, who does what is right.'
And again, Rv. I. 41, 9: 'Let man fear Him who holds the four (dice), before he throws them down (i. e. God who holds the destinies of men in his hand); let no man delight in evil words!'
And then consider the following hymns, and imagine the feelings which alone could have prompted them:
Hymn to Varuna (Rv. VII. 89)
1. Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
2. If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
3. Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
4. Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
5. Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!
And again, Rv. VII. 86:
1. Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth.
2. Do I say this to my own self? How can I get unto Varuna? Will he accept my offering without displeasure? When shall I, with a quiet mind, see him propitiated?
3. I ask, O Varuna, wishing to know this my sin. I go to ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same: Varuna it is who is angry with thee.
4. Was it an old sin, O Varuna, that thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with praise, freed from sin.
5. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from those which we committed with our own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O king, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen; release him like a calf from the rope.
6. It was not our own doing, O Varuna, it was necessity (or temptation), an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young; even sleep brings unrighteousness.
7. Let me without sin give satisfaction to the angry god, like a slave to the bounteous lord. The lord god enlightened the foolish; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper to wealth.
8. O lord Varuna, may this song go well to thy heart! May we prosper in keeping and acquiring! Protect us, O gods, always with your blessings!
The consciousness of sin is a prominent feature in the religion of the Veda, so is likewise the belief that the gods are able to take away from man the heavy burden of his sins. And when we read such passages as 'Varuna is merciful even to him who has committed sin' (Rv. VII. 87, 7), we should surely not allow the strange name of Varuna to jar on our ears, but should remember that it is but one of the many names which men invented in their helplessness to express their ideas of the Deity, however partial and imperfect.
The next hymn, which is taken from the Atharva-veda (IV. 16), will show how near the language of the ancient poets of India may approach to the language of the Bible:26
1. The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near. If a man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it all.
2. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper, king Varuna knows it, he is there as the third.
3. This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and the ocean) are Varuna's loins; he is also contained in this small drop of water.
4. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of Varuna, the king. His spies proceed from heaven towards this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this earth.
5. King Varuna sees all this, what is between heaven and earth, and what is beyond. He has counted the twinklings of the eyes of men. As a player throws the dice, he settles all things.
6. May all thy fatal nooses, which stand spread out seven by seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they pass by him who tells the truth.
Another idea which we find in the Veda is that of faith: not only in the sense of trust in the gods, in their power, their protection, their kindness, but in that of belief in their existence. The Latin word credo, I believe, is the same as the Sanskrit sraddhâ, and this sraddhâ occurs in the Veda:
Rv. I. 102, 2. 'Sun and moon go on in regular succession, that we may see, Indra, and believe.'
Rv. I. 104, 6. 'Destroy not our future offspring, O Indra, for we have believed in thy great power.'
Rv. I. 55, 5. 'When Indra hurls again and again his thunderbolt, then they believe in the brilliant god.'27
A similar sentiment, namely, that men only believe in the gods when they see their signs and wonders in the sky, is expressed by another poet (Rv. VIII. 21, 14):
'Thou, Indra, never findest a rich man to be thy friend; wine-swillers despise thee. But when thou thunderest, when thou gatherest (the clouds), then thou art called, like a father.'
And with this belief in god, there is also coupled that doubt, that true scepticism, if we may so call it, which is meant to give to faith its real strength. We find passages even in these early hymns where the poet asks himself, whether there is really such a god as Indra,—a question immediately succeeded by an answer, as if given to the poet by Indra himself. Thus we read Rv. VIII. 89, 3:
'If you wish for strength, offer to Indra a hymn of praise: a true hymn, if Indra truly exist; for some one says, Indra does not exist! Who has seen him? Whom shall we praise?'
Then Indra answers through the poet:
'Here I am, O worshipper, behold me here! in might I surpass all things.'
Similar visions occur elsewhere, where the poet, after inviting a god to a sacrifice, or imploring his pardon for his offences, suddenly exclaims that he has seen the god, and that he feels that his prayer is granted. For instance:
Hymn to Varuna (Rv. I. 25)
1. However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are, O god, Varuna,
2. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the furious; nor to the wrath of the spiteful!
3. To propitiate thee, O Varuna, we unbend thy mind with songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.
4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only on gaining wealth; as birds to their nests.
5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is victory to the warriors; when shall we bring Varuna, the wide-seeing, to be propitiated?
[6. This they (Mitra and Varuna) take in common; gracious, they never fail the faithful giver.]
7. He who knows the place of the birds that fly through the sky, who on the waters knows the ships;—
8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve months with the offspring of each, and knows the month that is engendered afterwards;—
9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the bright, the mighty; and knows those who reside on high;—
10. He, the upholder of order, Varuna, sits down among his people; he, the wise, sits there to govern.
11. From thence perceiving all wondrous things, he sees what has been and what will be done.
12. May he, the wise Âditya, make our paths straight all our days; may he prolong our lives!
13. Varuna, wearing golden mail, has put on his shining cloak; the spies sat down around him.
14. The god whom the scoffers do not provoke, nor the tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mischief;—
15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory, who gives it even to our own selves;—
16. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move onwards, as kine move to their pastures.
17. Let us speak together again, because my honey has been brought: that thou mayst eat what thou likest, like a friend.
18. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did I see the chariot above the earth? He must have accepted my prayers.
19. O hear this my calling, Varuna, be gracious now; longing for help, I have called upon thee.
20. Thou, O wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and earth: listen on thy way.
21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the middle, and remove the lowest!
In conclusion, let me tell you that there is in the Veda no trace of metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine quâ non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, religion surely is like an arch resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss. We cannot wonder at the great difficulties felt and expressed by bishop Warburton and other eminent divines, with regard to the supposed total absence of the doctrine of immortality or personal immortality in the Old Testament; and it is equally startling that the Sadducees who sat in the same council with the high-priest, openly denied the resurrection.28 However, though not expressly asserted anywhere, a belief in personal immortality is taken for granted in several passages of the Old Testament, and we can hardly think of Abraham or Moses as without a belief in life and immortality. But while this difficulty, so keenly felt with regard to the Jewish religion, ought to make us careful in the judgments which we form of other religions, and teach us the wisdom of charitable interpretation, it is all the more important to mark that in the Veda passages occur where immortality of the soul, personal immortality and personal responsibility after death, are clearly proclaimed. Thus we read:
'He who gives alms goes to the highest place in heaven; he goes to the gods' (Rv. I. 125, 56).
Another poet, after rebuking those who are rich and do not communicate, says:
'The kind mortal is greater than the great in heaven!'
Even the idea, so frequent in the later literature of the Brahmans, that immortality is secured by a son, seems implied, unless our translation deceives us, in one passage of the Veda (VII. 56, 24): 'Asmé (íti) virah marutah sushmî astu gánânâm yáh ásurah vi dhartâ, apáh yéna su-kshitáye tárema, ádha svám ókah abhí vah syáma.' 'O Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living ruler of men: through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the happy abode; then may we come to your own house!'
One poet prays that he may see again his father and mother after death (Rv. I. 24, 1); and the fathers (Pitris) are invoked almost like gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are believed to enjoy, in company with the gods, a life of never ending felicity (Rv. X. 15, 16).
We find this prayer addressed to Soma (Rv. IX. 113, 7):
'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O Soma!'
'Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal!
'Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!'
'Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal!
'Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal!'29
Whether the old Rishis believed likewise in a place of punishment for the wicked, is more doubtful, though vague allusions to it occur in the Rig-veda, and more distinct descriptions are found in the Atharva-veda. In one verse it is said that the dead is rewarded for his good deeds, that he leaves or casts off all evil, and glorified takes his body (Rv. X. 14, 8).30 The dogs of Yama, the king of the departed, present some terrible aspects, and Yama is asked to protect the departed from them (Rv. X. 14, 11). Again, a pit (karta) is mentioned into which the lawless are said to be hurled down (Rv. IX. 73, 8), and into which Indra casts those who offer no sacrifices (Rv. I. 121, 13). One poet prays that the Âdityas may preserve him from the destroying wolf, and from falling into the pit (Rv. II. 29, 6). In one passage we read that 'those who break the commandments of Varuna and who speak lies are born for that deep place' (Rv. IV. 5, 5).31
Surely the discovery of a religion like this, as unexpected as the discovery of the jaw-bone of Abbeville, deserves to arrest our thoughts for a moment, even in the haste and hurry of this busy life. No doubt for the daily wants of life, the old division of religions into true and false is quite sufficient; as for practical purposes we distinguish only between our own mother-tongue on the one side, and all other foreign languages on the other. But, from a higher point of view, it would not be right to ignore the new evidence that has come to light; and as the study of geology has given us a truer insight into the stratification of the earth, it is but natural to expect that a thoughtful study of the original works of three of the most important religions of the world, Brahmanism, Magism, and Buddhism, will modify our views as to the growth or history of religion, as to the hidden layers of religious thought beneath the soil on which we stand. Such inquires should be undertaken without prejudice and without fear: the evidence is placed before us; our duty is to sift it critically, to weigh it honestly, and to wait for the results.
Three of these results, to which, I believe, a comparative study of religions is sure to lead, I may state before I conclude this Lecture:
1. We shall learn that religions in their most ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times.
2. We shall learn that there is hardly one religion which does not contain some truth, some important truth; truth sufficient to enable those who seek the Lord and feel after Him, to find Him in their hour of need.
3. We shall learn to appreciate better than ever what we have in our own religion. No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other religions of the world, can know what Christianity really is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.'
II.
CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS.32
In so comprehensive a work as Mr. Hardwick's 'Christ and other Masters,' the number of facts stated, of topics discussed, of questions raised, is so considerable that in reviewing it we can select only one or two points for special consideration. Mr. Hardwick intends to give in his work, of which the third volume has just been published, a complete panorama of ancient religion. After having discussed in the first volume what he calls the religious tendencies of our age, he enters upon an examination of the difficult problem of the unity of the human race, and proceeds to draw, in a separate chapter, the characteristic features of religion under the Old Testament. Having thus cleared his way, and established some of the principles according to which the religions of the world should be judged, Mr. Hardwick devotes the whole of the second volume to the religions of India. We find there, first of all, a short but very clear account of the religion of the Veda, as far as it is known at present. We then come to a more matter-of-fact representation of Brahmanism, or the religion of the Hindus, as represented in the so-called Laws of Manu, and in the ancient portions of the two epic poems, the Râmâyana and Mahâbhârata. The next chapter is devoted to the various systems of Indian philosophy, which all partake more or less of a religious character, and form a natural transition to the first subjective system of faith in India, the religion of Buddha. Mr. Hardwick afterwards discusses, in two separate chapters, the apparent and the real correspondences between Hinduism and revealed religion, and throws out some hints how we may best account for the partial glimpses of truth which exist in the Vedas, the canonical books of Buddhism, and the later Purânas. All these questions are handled with such ability, and discussed with so much elegance and eloquence, that the reader becomes hardly aware of the great difficulties of the subject, and carries away, if not quite a complete and correct, at least a very lucid, picture of the religious life of ancient India. The third volume, which was published in the beginning of this year, is again extremely interesting, and full of the most varied descriptions. The religions of China are given first, beginning with an account of the national traditions, as collected and fixed by Confucius. Then follows the religious system of Lao-tse, or the Tao-ism of China, and lastly Buddhism again, only under that modified form which it assumed when introduced from India into China. After this sketch of the religious life of China, the most ancient centre of Eastern civilisation, Mr. Hardwick suddenly transports us to the New World, and introduces us to the worship of the wild tribes of America, and to the ruins of the ancient temples in which the civilised races of that continent, especially the Mexicans, once bowed themselves down before their god or gods. Lastly, we have to embark on the South Sea, and to visit the various islands which form a chain between the west coast of America and the east coast of Africa, stretching over half of the globe, and inhabited by the descendants of the once united race of the Malayo-Polynesians.
The account which Mr. Hardwick can afford to give of the various systems of religion in so short a compass as he has fixed for himself, must necessarily be very general; and his remarks on the merits and defects peculiar to each, which were more ample in the second volume, have dwindled down to much smaller dimensions in the third. He declares distinctly that he does not write for missionaries. 'It is not my leading object,' he says, 'to conciliate the more thoughtful minds of heathendom in favour of the Christian faith. However laudable that task may be, however fitly it may occupy the highest and the keenest intellect of persons who desire to further the advance of truth and holiness among our heathen fellow-subjects, there are difficulties nearer home which may in fairness be regarded as possessing prior claims on the attention of a Christian Advocate.'
We confess that we regret that Mr. Hardwick should have taken this line. If, in writing his criticism on the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, he had placed himself face to face with a poor helpless creature, such as the missionaries have to deal with—a man brought up in the faith of his fathers, accustomed to call his god or gods by names sacred to him from his first childhood—a man who had derived much real help and consolation from his belief in these gods—who had abstained from committing crime, because he was afraid of the anger of a Divine Being—who had performed severe penance, because he hoped to appease the anger of the gods—who had given, not only the tenth part of all he valued most, but the half, nay, the whole of his property, as a free offering to his priests, that they might pray for him or absolve him from his sin—if, in discussing any of the ancient or modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do, and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel, that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are born and brought up to believe in, as we are born and brought up to believe in Christianity. It is the only spiritual food which God in his wisdom has placed within their reach. But if we once begin to think of modern heathenism, and how certain tenets of Lao-tse resemble the doctrines of Comte or Spinoza, our equanimity, our historical justice, our Christian charity, are gone. We become advocates wrangling for victory—we are no longer tranquil observers, compassionate friends and teachers. Mr. Hardwick sometimes addresses himself to men like Lao-tse or Buddha, who are now dead and gone more than two thousand years, in a tone of offended orthodoxy, which may or may not be right in modern controversy, but which entirely disregards the fact that it has pleased God to let these men and millions of human beings be born on earth without a chance of ever hearing of the existence of the Gospel. We cannot penetrate into the secrets of the Divine wisdom, but we are bound to believe that God has His purpose in all things, and that He will know how to judge those to whom so little has been given. Christianity does not require of us that we should criticise, with our own small wisdom, that Divine policy which has governed the whole world from the very beginning. We pity a man who is born blind—we are not angry with him; and Mr. Hardwick, in his arguments against the tenets of Buddha or Lao-tse, seems to us to treat these men too much in the spirit of a policeman who tells a poor blind beggar that he is only shamming blindness. However, if, as a Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick found it impossible to entertain, or at least express, any sympathy with the Pagan world, even the cold judgment of the historian would have been better than the excited pleading of a partisan. Surely it is not necessary, in order to prove that our religion is the only true religion, that we should insist on the utter falseness of all other forms of belief. We need not be frightened if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations. St. Augustine was not frightened by this discovery, and every thoughtful Christian will feel cheered by the words of that pious philosopher, when he boldly declares, that there is no religion which, among its many errors, does not contain some real and divine truth. It shows a want of faith in God, and in His inscrutable wisdom in the government of the world, if we think we ought to condemn all ancient forms of faith, except the religion of the Jews. A true spirit of Christianity will rather lead us to shut our eyes against many things which are revolting to us in the religion of the Chinese, or the wild Americans, or the civilised Hindus, and to try to discover, as well as we can, how even in these degraded forms of worship a spark of light lies hidden somewhere—a spark which may lighten and warm the heart of the Gentiles, 'who by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, and honour, and immortality.' There is an undercurrent of thought in Mr. Hardwick's book which breaks out again and again, and which has certainly prevented him from discovering many a deep lesson which may be learnt in the study of ancient religions. He uses harsh language, because he is thinking, not of the helpless Chinese, or the dreaming Hindu whose tenets he controverts, but of modern philosophers; and he is evidently glad of every opportunity where he can show to the latter that their systems are mere rechauffés of ancient heathenism. Thus he says, in his introduction to the third volume:
'I may also be allowed to add, that, in the present chapters, the more thoughtful reader will not fail to recognise the proper tendency of certain current speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science, and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us. Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf, those theories are little more than a return to long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes; or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array of civilising agencies, which, after trial in other countries, have been all found wanting. The governing class of China, for example, have long been familiar with the metaphysics of Spinoza. They have also carried out the social principles of M. Comte upon the largest possible scale. For ages they have been what people of the present day are wishing to become in Europe, with this difference only, that the heathen legislator who had lost all faith in God attempted to redress the wrongs and elevate the moral status of his subjects by the study of political science, or devising some new scheme of general sociology; while the positive philosopher of the present day, who has relapsed into the same positions, is in every case rejecting a religious system which has proved itself the mightiest of all civilisers, and the constant champion of the rights and dignity of men. He offers in the stead of Christianity a specious phase of paganism, by which the nineteenth century after Christ may be assimilated to the golden age of Mencius and Confucius; or, in other words, may consummate its religious freedom, and attain the highest pinnacle of human progress, by reverting to a state of childhood and of moral imbecility.'
Few serious-minded persons will like the temper of this paragraph. The history of ancient religion is too important, too sacred a subject to be used as a masked battery against modern infidelity. Nor should a Christian Advocate ever condescend to defend his cause by arguments such as a pleader who is somewhat sceptical as to the merits of his case, may be allowed to use, but which produce on the mind of the Judge the very opposite effect of that which they are intended to produce. If we want to understand the religions of antiquity, we must try, as well as we can, to enter into the religious, moral, and political atmosphere of the ancient world. We must do what the historian does. We must become ancients ourselves, otherwise we shall never understand the motives and meaning of their faith. Take one instance. There are some nations who have always regarded death with the utmost horror. Their whole religion may be said to be a fight against death, and the chief object of their prayers seems to be a long life on earth. The Persian clings to life with intense tenacity, and the same feeling exists among the Jews. Other nations, on the contrary, regard death in a different light. Death is to them a passage from one life to another. No misgiving has ever entered their minds as to a possible extinction of existence, and at the first call of the priest—nay, sometimes from a mere selfish yearning after a better life—they are ready to put an end to their existence on earth. Feelings of this kind can hardly be called convictions arrived at by the individual. They are national peculiarities, and they exercise an irresistible sway over all who belong to the same nation. The loyal devotion which the Slavonic nations feel for their sovereign will make the most brutalized Russian peasant step into the place where his comrade has just been struck down, without a thought of his wife, or his mother, or his children, whom he is never to see again. He does not do this because, by his own reflection, he has arrived at the conclusion that he is bound to sacrifice himself for his emperor or for his country—he does it because he knows that every one would do the same; and the only feeling of satisfaction in which he would allow himself to indulge is, that he was doing his duty. If, then, we wish to understand the religions of the ancient nations of the world, we must take into account their national character. Nations who value life so little as the Hindus, and some of the American and Malay nations, could not feel the same horror of human sacrifices, for instance, which would be felt by a Jew; and the voluntary death of the widow would inspire her nearest relations with no other feeling but that of compassion and regret at seeing a young bride follow her husband into a distant land. She herself would feel that, in following her husband into death, she was only doing what every other widow would do—she was only doing her duty. In India, where men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of Jaggernâth, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in—where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his judge—where the philosopher who thinks he has learnt all which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore of existence—in such a country, however much we may condemn these practices, we must be on our guard and not judge the strange religions of such strange creatures according to our own more sober code of morality. Let a man once be impressed with a belief that this life is but a prison, and that he has but to break through its walls in order to breathe the fresh and pure air of a higher life—let him once consider it cowardice to shrink from this act, and a proof of courage and of a firm faith in God to rush back to that eternal source from whence he came—and let these views be countenanced by a whole nation, sanctioned by priests, and hallowed by poets, and however we may blame and loathe the custom of human sacrifices and religious suicides, we shall be bound to confess that to such a man, and to a whole nation of such men, the most cruel rites will have a very different meaning from what they would have to us. They are not mere cruelty and brutality. They contain a religious element, and presuppose a belief in immortality, and an indifference with regard to worldly pleasures, which, if directed in a different channel, might produce martyrs and heroes. Here, at least, there is no danger of modern heresy aping ancient paganism; and we feel at liberty to express our sympathy and compassion, even with the most degraded of our brethren. The Fijians, for instance, commit almost every species of atrocity; but we can still discover, as Wilkes remarked in his 'Exploring Expedition,' that the source of many of their abhorrent practices is a belief in a future state, guided by no just notions of religious or moral obligations. They immolate themselves; they think it right to destroy their best friends, to free them from the miseries of this life; they actually consider it a duty, and perhaps a painful duty, that the son should strangle his parents, if requested to do so. Some of the Fijians, when interrupted by Europeans in the act of strangling their mother, simply replied that she was their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren, relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave of her. A rope, made of twisted tapa, was then passed twice around her neck by her sons, who took hold of it and strangled her—after which she was put into her grave, with the usual ceremonies. They returned to feast and mourn, after which she was entirely forgotten, as though she had not existed. No doubt these are revolting rites; but the phase of human thought which they disclose is far from being simply revolting. There is in these immolations, even in their most degraded form, a grain of that superhuman faith which we admire in the temptation of Abraham; and we feel that the time will come, nay, that it is coming, when the voice of the Angel of the Lord will reach those distant islands, and give a higher and better purpose to the wild ravings of their religion.
