christianity and islam by c.h. becker, ph.d. professor of oriental history in the colonial institute of hamburg translated by rev. h.j. chaytor, m.a. headmaster of plymouth college 1909 table of contents the subject from different points of view: limits of treatment the nature of the subject: the historical points of connection between christianity and islam a. christianity and the rise of islam: 1. muhammed and his contemporaries 2. the influence of christianity upon the development of muhammed 3. muhammed's knowledge of christianity 4. the position of christians under muhammedanism b. the similarity of christian and muhammedan metaphysics during the middle ages: 1. the means and direction by which christian influence affected islam 2. the penetration of daily life by the spirit of religion; asceticism, contradictions and influences affecting the development of a clerical class and the theory of marriage 3. the theory of life in general with reference to the doctrine of immortality 4. the attitude of religion towards the state, economic life, society, etc. 5. the permanent importance to islam of these influences: the doctrine of duties 6. ritual 7. mysticism and the worship of saints 8. dogma and the development of scholasticism c. the influence of islam upon christianity: the manner in which this influence operated, and the explanation of the superiority of islam the influence of muhammedan philosophy the new world of european christendom and the modern east conclusion. the historical growth of religion bibliography christianity and islam a comparison of christianity with muhammedanism or with any other religion must be preceded by a statement of the objects with which such comparison is undertaken, for the possibilities which lie in this direction are numerous. the missionary, for instance, may consider that a knowledge of the similarities of these religions would increase the efficacy of his proselytising work: his purpose would thus be wholly practical. the ecclesiastically minded christian, already convinced of the superiority of his own religion, will be chiefly anxious to secure scientific proof of the fact: the study of comparative religion from this point of view was once a popular branch of apologetics and is by no means out of favour at the present day. again, the inquirer whose historical perspective is undisturbed by ecclesiastical considerations, will approach the subject with somewhat different interests. he will expect the comparison to provide him with a clear view of the influence which christianity has exerted upon other religions or has itself received from them: or he may hope by comparing the general development of special religious systems to gain a clearer insight into the growth of christianity. hence the object of such comparisons is to trace the course of analogous developments and the interaction of influence and so to increase the knowledge of religion in general or of our own religion in particular. a world-religion, such as christianity, is a highly complex structure and the evolution of such a system of belief is best understood by examining a religion to which we have not been bound by a thousand ties from the earliest days of our lives. if we take an alien religion as our subject of investigation, we shall not shrink from the consequences of the historical method: whereas, when we criticise christianity, we are often unable to see the falsity of the pre-suppositions which we necessarily bring to the task of inquiry: our minds follow the doctrines of christianity, even as our bodies perform their functions--in complete unconsciousness. at the same time we possess a very considerable knowledge of the development of christianity, and this we owe largely to the help of analogy. especially instructive is the comparison between christianity and buddhism. no less interesting are the discoveries to be attained by an inquiry into the development of muhammedanism: here we can see the growth of tradition proceeding in the full light of historical criticism. we see the plain man, muhammed, expressly declaring in the qoran that he cannot perform miracles, yet gradually becoming a miracle worker and indeed the greatest of his class: he professes to be nothing more than a mortal man: he becomes the chief mediator between man and god. the scanty memorials of the man become voluminous biographies of the saint and increase from generation to generation. yet more remarkable is the fact that his utterances, his _logia_, if we may use the term, some few of which are certainly genuine, increase from year to year and form a large collection which is critically sifted and expounded. the aspirations of mankind attribute to him such words of the new testament and of greek philosophers as were especially popular or seemed worthy of muhammed; the teaching also of the new ecclesiastical schools was invariably expressed in the form of proverbial utterances attributed to muhammed, and these are now without exception regarded as authentic by the modern moslem. in this way opinions often contradictory are covered by muhummed's authority. the traditions concerning jesus offer an analogy. our gospels, for instance, relate the beautiful story of the plucking of the ears of corn on the sabbath, with its famous moral application, "the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." a christian papyrus has been discovered which represents jesus as explaining the sanctity of the sabbath from the judaeo-christian point of view. "if ye keep not the sabbath holy, ye shall not see the father," is the statement in an uncanonical gospel. in early christian literature, contradictory sayings of jesus are also to be found. doubtless here, as in muhammedan tradition, the problem originally was, what is to be my action in this or that question of practical life: answer is given in accordance with the religious attitude of the inquirer and jesus and muhammed are made to lend their authority to the teaching. traditional literary form is then regarded as historical by later believers. examples of this kind might be multiplied, but enough has been said to show that much and, to some extent, new light may be thrown upon the development of christian tradition, by an examination of muhammedanism which rose from similar soil but a few centuries later, while its traditional developments have been much more completely preserved. such analogies as these can be found, however, in any of the world-religions, and we propose to devote our attention more particularly to the influences which christianity and islam exerted directly upon one another. while muhammedanism has borrowed from its hereditary foe, it has also repaid part of the debt. by the very fact of its historical position islam was at first indebted to christianity; but in the department of christian philosophy, it has also exerted its own influence. this influence cannot be compared with that of greek or jewish thought upon christian speculation: christian philosophy, as a metaphysical theory of existence, was however strongly influenced by arabian thought before the outset of the reformation. on the other hand the influence of christianity upon islam--and also upon muhammed, though he owed more to jewish thought--was so extensive that the coincidence of ideas upon the most important metaphysical questions is positively amazing. there is a widespread belief even at the present day that islam was a complete novelty and that the religion and culture of the muhammedan world were wholly alien to western medievalism. such views are entirely false; during the middle ages muhammedanism and western culture were inspired by the same spirit. the fact has been obscured by the contrast between the two religions whose differences have been constantly exaggerated and by dissimilarities of language and nationality. to retrace in full detail the close connection which unites christianity and islam would be the work of years. within the scope of the present volume, all that can be done is to explain the points of contact between christian and muhammedan theories of life and religion. such is the object of the following pages. we shall first treat of muhammed personally, because his rise as a religious force will explain the possibility of later developments. this statement also explains the sense in which we shall use the term christianity. muhammedanism has no connection with post-reformation christianity and meets it only in the mission field. practical questions there arise which lie beyond the limits of our subject, as we have already indicated. our interests are concerned with the mediaeval church, when christianity first imposed its ideas upon muhammedanism at the time of its rise in the east, and afterwards received a material extension of its own horizon through the rapid progress of its protégé. our task is to analyse and explain these special relations between the two systems of thought. the religion now known as islam is as near to the preaching of muhammed or as remote from it, as modern catholicism or protestant christianity is at variance or in harmony with the teaching of jesus. the simple beliefs of the prophet and his contemporaries are separated by a long course of development from the complicated religious system in its unity and diversity which islam now presents to us. the course of this development was greatly influenced by christianity, but christian ideas had been operative upon muhammed's eager intellectual life at an even earlier date. we must attempt to realise the working of his mind, if we are to gain a comprehension of the original position of islam with regard to christianity. the task is not so difficult in muhammed's case as in that of others who have founded religious systems: we have records of his philosophical views, important even though fragmentary, while vivid descriptions of his experiences have been transmitted to us in his own words, which have escaped the modifying influence of tradition at second hand. muhammed had an indefinite idea of the word of god as known to him from other religions. he was unable to realise this idea effectively except as an immediate revelation; hence throughout the qoran he represents god as speaking in the first person and himself appears as the interlocutor. even direct commands to the congregation are introduced by the stereotyped "speak"; it was of primary importance that the qoran should be regarded as god's word and not as man's. this fact largely contributed to secure an uncontaminated transmission of the text, which seems also to have been left by muhammed himself in definite form. its intentional obscurity of expression does not facilitate the task of the inquirer, but it provides, none the less, considerable information concerning the religious progress of its author. here we are upon firmer ground than when we attempt to describe muhammed's outward life, the first half of which is wrapped in obscurity no less profound than that which veils the youth of the founder of christianity. muhammed's contemporaries lived amid religious indifference. the majority of the arabs were heathen and their religious aspirations were satisfied by local cults of the old semitic character. they may have preserved the religious institutions of the great south arabian civilisation, which was then in a state of decadence; the beginnings of islam may also have been influenced by the ideas of this civilisation, which research is only now revealing to us: but these points must remain undecided for the time being. south arabian civilisation was certainly not confined to the south, nor could an organised township such as mecca remain outside its sphere of influence: but the scanty information which has reached us concerning the religious life of the arabs anterior to islam might also be explained by supposing them to have followed a similar course of development. in any case, it is advisable to reserve judgment until documentary proof can replace ingenious conjecture. the difficulty of the problem is increased by the fact that jewish and especially christian ideas penetrated from the south and that their influence cannot be estimated. the important point for us to consider is the existence of christianity in southern arabia before the muhammedan period. nor was the south its only starting-point: christian doctrine came to arabia from the north, from syria and babylonia, and numerous conversions, for the most part of whole tribes, were made. on the frontiers also arabian merchants came into continual contact with christianity and foreign merchants of the christian faith could be found throughout arabia. but for the arabian migration and the simultaneous foundation of a new arabian religion, there is no doubt that the whole peninsula would have been speedily converted to christianity. the chief rival of christianity was judaism, which was represented in northern as in southern arabia by strong colonies of jews, who made proselytes, although their strict ritualism was uncongenial to the arab temperament which preferred conversion to christianity (naturally only as a matter of form). in addition to jewish, christian, and old semitic influences, zoroastrian ideas and customs were also known in arabia, as is likely enough in view of the proximity of the persian empire. these various elements aroused in muhammed's mind a vague idea of religion. his experience was that of the eighteenth-century theologians who suddenly observed that christianity was but one of many very similar and intelligible religions, and thus inevitably conceived the idea of a pure and natural religious system fundamental to all others. judaism and christianity were the only religions which forced themselves upon muhammed's consciousness and with the general characteristics of which he was acquainted. he never read any part of the old or new testament: his references to christianity show that his knowledge of the bible was derived from hearsay and that his informants were not representative of the great religious sects: muhammed's account of jesus and his work, as given in the qoran, is based upon the apocryphal accretions which grew round the christian doctrine. when muhammed proceeded to compare the great religions of the old and new testaments with the superficial pietism of his own compatriots, he was especially impressed with the seriousness of the hebrews and christians which contrasted strongly with the indifference of the heathen arabs. the arab was familiar with the conception of an almighty god, and this idea had not been obscured by the worship of trees, stones, fire and the heavenly bodies: but his reverence for this god was somewhat impersonal and he felt no instinct to approach him, unless he had some hopes or fears to satisfy. the idea of a reckoning between man and god was alien to the arab mind. christian and jewish influence became operative upon muhammed with reference to this special point. the idea of the day of judgment, when an account of earthly deeds and misdeeds will be required, when the joys of paradise will be opened to the good and the bad will be cast into the fiery abyss, such was the great idea, which suddenly filled muhammed's mind and dispelled the indifference begotten of routine and stirred his mental powers. polytheism was incompatible with the idea of god as a judge supreme and righteous, but yet merciful. thus monotheism was indissolubly connected with muhammed's first religious impulses, though the dogma had not assumed the polemical form in which it afterwards confronted the old arabian and christian beliefs. but a mind stirred by religious emotion only rose to the height of prophetic power after a long course of development which human knowledge can but dimly surmise. christianity and judaism had their sacred books which the founders of these religions had produced. in them were the words of god, transmitted through moses to the jews and through jesus to the christians. jesus and moses had been god's ambassadors to their peoples. who then could bring to the arabs the glad tidings which should guide them to the happy fields of paradise? among primitive peoples god is regarded as very near to man. the arabs had, their fortune-tellers and augurs who cast lots before god and explained his will in mysterious rhythmical utterances. muhammed was at first more intimately connected with this class of arab fortune-tellers than is usually supposed. the best proof of the fact is the vehemence with which he repudiates all comparison between these fortune-tellers and himself, even as early christian apologetics and polemics attacked the rival cults of the later classical world, which possessed forms of ritual akin to those observed by christianity. the existence of a fortune-telling class among the arabs shows that muhammed may well have been endowed with psychological tendencies which only awaited the vivifying influence of judaism and christianity to emerge as the prophetic impulse forcing him to stand forth in public and to stir the people from their indifference: "be ye converted, for the day of judgment is at hand: god has declared it unto me, as he declared it unto moses and jesus. i am the apostle of god to you, arabs. salvation is yours only if ye submit to the will of god preached by me." this act of submission muhammed calls islam. thus at the hour of islam's birth, before its founder had proclaimed his ideas, the influence of christianity is indisputable. it was this influence which made of the arab seer and inspired prophet, the apostle of god. muhammed regarded judaism and christianity as religious movements purely national in character. god in his mercy had announced his will to different nations through his prophets. as god's word had been interpreted for the jews and for the christians, so there was to be a special interpretation for the benefit of the arabs. these interpretations were naturally identical in manner and differed only as regards place and time. muhammed had heard of the jewish messiah and of the christian paraclete, whom, however, he failed to identify with the holy ghost and he applied to himself the allusions to one who should come after moses and jesus. thus in the qoran 61.6 we read, "jesus, the son of mary, said: children of israel, i am god's apostle to you. i confirm in your hands the thora (the law) and i announce the coming of another apostle after me whose name is ahmed." ahmed is the equivalent of muhammed. the verse has been variously interpreted and even rejected as an interpolation: but its authenticity is attested by its perfect correspondence with what we know of muhammed's pretensions. to trace in detail the development of his attitude towards christianity is a more difficult task than to discover the growth of his views upon judaism; probably he pursued a similar course in either case. at first he assumed the identity of the two religions with one another and with his own doctrine; afterwards he regarded them as advancing by gradations. adam, abraham, moses, jesus, and muhammed, these in his opinion were the chief stages in the divine scheme of salvation. each was respectively confirmed or abolished by the revelation which followed it, nor is this theory of muhammed's shaken by the fact that each revelation was given to a different nation. he regards all preceding prophets in the light of his own personality. they were all sent to people who refused them a hearing at the moment. punishment follows and the prophet finds a body of believers elsewhere. these temporary punishments are confused with the final judgment; in fact muhammed's system was not clearly thought out. the several prophets were but men, whose earthly careers were necessarily crowned with triumph: hence the crucifixion of jesus is a malicious invention of the jews, who in reality crucified some other sufferer, while jesus entered the divine glory. thus muhammed has no idea of the importance of the crucifixion to the christian church, as is shown by his treatment of it as a jewish falsehood. in fact, he develops the habit of characterising as false any statement in contradiction with his ideas, and this tendency is especially obvious in his dealings with judaism, of which he gained a more intimate knowledge. at first he would refer sceptics to christian and jewish doctrine for confirmation of his own teaching. the fact that with no knowledge of the old or new testament, he had proclaimed doctrines materially similar and the fact that these scriptures referred to himself, were proofs of his inspired power, let doubters say what they would. a closer acquaintance with these scriptures showed him that the divergencies which he stigmatised as falsifications denoted in reality vast doctrinal differences. in order to understand muhammed's attitude towards christianity, we will examine in greater detail his view of this religion, the portions of it which he accepted or which he rejected as unauthentic. in the first place he must have regarded the trinity as repugnant to reason: he considered the christian trinity as consisting of god the father, mary the mother of god, and jesus the son of god. in the qoran, god says, "hast thou, jesus, said to men, regard me and my mother as gods by the side of god?" jesus replies, "i will say nothing but the truth. i have but preached, pray to god, who is my lord and your lord" (5.116, f). hence it has been inferred that muhammed's knowledge of christianity was derived from some particular christian sect, such as the tritheists or the arab female sect of the collyridians who worshipped the virgin mary with exaggerated reverence and assigned divine honours to her. it is also possible that we have here a development of some gnostic conception which regarded the holy ghost as of feminine gender, as semites would do;[a] instances of this change are to be found in the well-known hymn of the soul in the acts of thomas, in the gospel to the egyptians and elsewhere. i am inclined, however, to think it more probable that muhammed had heard of mariolatry and of the "mother of god," a title which then was a highly popular catchword, and that the apotheosis of jesus was known to him and also the doctrine of the trinity by name. further than this his knowledge did not extend; although he knows the holy ghost and identifies him with jesus, none the less his primitive reasoning, under the influence of many old beliefs, explained the mysterious triad of the trinity as husband, wife, and son. this fact is enough to prove that his theory of christianity was formed by combining isolated scraps of information and that he cannot have had any direct instruction from a christian knowing the outlines of his faith. [footnote a: the word for "spirit" is of the feminine gender in the semitic languages.] muhammed must also have denied the divinity of christ: this is an obvious result of the course of mental development which we have described and of his characteristically semitic theory of the nature of god. to him, god is one, never begetting and never begotten. denying the divinity of jesus, muhammed naturally denies the redemption through the cross and also the fact of the crucifixion. yet, strangely enough he accepted the miraculous birth; nor did he hesitate to provide this purely human jesus with all miraculous attributes; these were a proof of his divine commission, and marvellous details of this nature aroused the interest of his hearers. mary the sister of ahron--an obvious confusion with the old testament miriam--had been devoted to the service of god by her mother's vow, and lives in the temple under the guardianship of zacharias, to whom a later heir is born in answer to his prayers, namely john, the forerunner of the holy ghost. the birth is announced to mary and she brings forth jesus under a palm-tree, near which is a running spring and by the dates of which she is fed. on her return home she is received with reproaches by her family but merely points in reply to the new-born babe, who suddenly speaks from his cradle, asserting that he is the prophet of god. afterwards jesus performs all kinds of miracles, forms birds out of clay and makes them fly, heals the blind and lepers, raises the dead, etc., and even brings down from heaven a table ready spread. the jews will not believe him, but the youth follow him. he is not killed, but translated to god. christians are not agreed upon the manner of his death and the jews have invented the story of the crucifixion. muhammed's knowledge of christianity thus consists of certain isolated details, partly apocryphal, partly canonical, together with a hazy idea of the fundamental dogmas. thus the influence of christianity upon him was entirely indirect. the muhammedan movement at its outset was influenced not by the real christianity of the time but by a christianity which muhammed criticised in certain details and forced into harmony with his preconceived ideas. his imagination was profoundly impressed by the existence of christianity as a revealed religion with a founder of its own. certain features of christianity and of judaism, prayer, purification, solemn festivals, scriptures, prophets and so forth were regarded by him as essential to any religious community, because they happened to belong both to judaism and to christianity. he therefore adopted or wished to adopt these institutions. during the period of his life at medina, muhammed abandoned his original idea of preaching the doctrines which moses and jesus had proclaimed. this new development was the outcome of a struggle with judaism following upon an unsuccessful attempt at compromise. in point of fact judaism and christianity were as widely different from one another as they were from his own teaching and he was more than ever inclined to regard as his special forerunner, abraham, who had preceded both moses and jesus, and was revered by both religions as the man of god. he then brought abraham into connection with the ancient meccan ka'ba worship: the ka'ba or die was a sacred stone edifice, in one corner of which the "black stone" had been built in: this stone was an object of reverence to the ancient arabs, as it still is to the muhammedans. thus islam gradually assumed the form of an arab religion, developing universalist tendencies in the ultimate course of events. muhammed, therefore, as he was the last in the ranks of the prophets, must also be the greatest. he epitomised all prophecy and islam superseded every revealed religion of earlier date. muhammed's original view that earlier religions had been founded by god's will and through divine revelation, led both him and his successors to make an important concession: adherents of other religions were not compelled to adopt islam. they were allowed to observe their own faith unhindered, if they surrendered without fighting, and were even protected against their enemies, in return for which they had to pay tribute to their muslim masters; this was levied as a kind of poll-tax. thus we read in the qoran (ix. 29) that "those who possess scriptures," i.e. the jews and christians, who did not accept islam were to be attacked until they paid the _gizja_ or tribute. thus the object of a religious war upon the christians is not expressed by the cry "death or islam"; such attacks were intended merely to extort an acknowledgment of muhammedan supremacy, not to abolish freedom of religious observance. it would be incorrect for the most part to regard the warrior bands which started from arabia as inspired by religious enthusiasm or to attribute to them the fanaticism which was first aroused by the crusades and in an even greater degree by the later turkish wars. the muhammedan fanatics of the wars of conquest, whose reputation was famous among later generations, felt but a very scanty interest in religion and occasionally displayed an ignorance of its fundamental tenets which we can hardly exaggerate. the fact is fully consistent with the impulses to which the arab migrations were due. these impulses were economic and the new religion was nothing more than a party cry of unifying power, though there is no reason to suppose that it was not a real moral force in the life of muhammed and his immediate contemporaries. anti-christian fanaticism there was therefore none. even in early years muhammedans never refused to worship in the same buildings as christians. the various insulting regulations which tradition represents christians as forced to endure were directed not so much against the adherents of another faith as against the barely tolerated inhabitants of a subjugated state. it is true that the distinction is often difficult to observe, as religion and nationality were one and the same thing to muhammedans. in any case religious animosity was a very subordinate phenomenon. it was a gradual development and seems to me to have made a spasmodic beginning in the first century under the influence of ideas adopted from christianity. it may seem paradoxical to assert that it was christian influence which first stirred islam to religious animosity and armed it with the sword against christianity, but the hypothesis becomes highly probable when we have realised the indifferentism of the muhammedan conquerors. we shall constantly see hereafter how much they owed in every department of intellectual life to the teaching of the races which they subjugated. their attitude towards other beliefs was never so intolerant as was that of christendom at that period. christianity may well have been the teaching influence in this department of life as in others. moreover at all times and especially in the first century the position of christians has been very tolerable, even though the muslims regarded them as an inferior class, christians were able to rise to the highest offices of state, even to the post of vizier, without any compulsion to renounce their faith. even during the period of the crusades when the religious opposition was greatly intensified, again through christian policy, christian officials cannot have been uncommon: otherwise muslim theorists would never have uttered their constant invectives against the employment of christians in administrative duties. naturally zealots appeared at all times on the muhammedan as well as on the christian side and occasionally isolated acts of oppression took place: these were, however, exceptional. so late as the eleventh century, church funeral processions were able to pass through the streets of bagdad with all the emblems of christianity and disturbances were recorded by the chroniclers as exceptional. in egypt, christian festivals were also regarded to some extent as holidays by the muhammedan population. we have but to imagine these conditions reversed in a christian kingdom of the early middle ages and the probability of my theory will become obvious. the christians of the east, who had broken for the most part with the orthodox church, also regarded islam as a lesser evil than the byzantine established church. moreover islam, as being both a political and ecclesiastical organisation, regarded the christian church as a state within a state and permitted it to preserve its own juridical and at first its own governmental rights. application was made to the bishops when anything was required from the community and the churches were used as taxation offices. this was all in the interests of the clergy who thus found their traditional claims realised. these relations were naturally modified in the course of centuries; the crusades, the turkish wars and the great expansion of europe widened the breach between christianity and islam, while as the east was gradually brought under ecclesiastical influence, the contrast grew deeper: the theory, however, that the muhammedan conquerors and their successors were inspired by a fanatical hatred of christianity is a fiction invented by christians. we have now to examine this early development of islam in somewhat greater detail: indeed, to secure a more general appreciation of this point is the object of the present work. the relationship of the qoran to christianity has been already noted: it was a book which preached rather than taught and enounced isolated laws but no connected system. islam was a clear and simple war-cry betokening merely a recognition of arab supremacy, of the unity of god and of muhammed's prophetic mission. but in a few centuries islam became a complex religious structure, a confusion of greek philosophy and roman law, accurately regulating every department of human life from the deepest problems of morality to the daily use of the toothpick, and the fashions of dress and hair. this change from the simplicity of the founder's religious teaching to a system of practical morality often wholly divergent from primitive doctrine, is a transformation which all the great religions of the world have undergone. religious founders have succeeded in rousing the sense of true religion in the human heart. religious systems result from the interaction of this impulse with pre-existing capacities for civilisation. the highest attainments of human life are dependent upon circumstances of time and place, and environment often exerts a more powerful influence than creative power. the teaching of jesus was almost overpowered by the graeco-oriental culture of later hellenism. dissensions persist even now because millions of people are unable to distinguish pure religion from the forms of expression belonging to an extinct civilisation. islam went through a similar course of development and assumed the spiritual panoply which was ready to hand. here, as elsewhere, this defence was a necessity during the period of struggle, but became a crushing burden during the peace which followed victory, for the reason that it was regarded as inseparable from the wearer of it. from this point of view the analogy with christianity will appear extremely striking, but it is something more than an analogy: the oriental hellenism of antiquity was to christianity that which the christian oriental hellenism of a few centuries later was to islam. we must now attempt to realise the nature of this event so important in the history of the world. a nomadic people, recently united, not devoid of culture, but with a very limited range of ideas, suddenly gains supremacy over a wide and populous district with an ancient civilisation. these nomads are as yet hardly conscious of their political unity and the individualism of the several tribes composing it is still a disruptive force: yet they can secure domination over countries such as egypt and babylonia, with complex constitutional systems, where climatic conditions, the nature of the soil and centuries of work have combined to develop an intricate administrative system, which newcomers could not be expected to understand, much less to recreate or to remodel. yet the theory has long been held that the arabs entirely reorganised the constitutions of these countries. excessive importance has been attached to the statements of arab authors, who naturally regarded islam as the beginning of all things. in every detail of practical life they regarded the prophet and his contemporaries as their ruling ideal, and therefore naturally assumed that the constitutional practices of the prophet were his own invention. the organisation of the conquering race with its tribal subordination was certainly purely arab in origin. in fact the conquerors seemed so unable to adapt themselves to the conditions with which they met, that foreigners who joined their ranks were admitted to the muhammedan confederacy only as clients of the various arab tribes. this was, however, a mere question of outward form: the internal organisation continued unchanged, as it was bound to continue unless chaos were to be the consequence. in fact, pre-existing administrative regulations were so far retained that the old customs duties on the former frontiers were levied as before, though they represented an institution wholly alien to the spirit of the muhammedan empire. those muhammedan authors, who describe the administrative organisation, recognise only the taxes which islam regarded as lawful and characterise others as malpractices which had crept in at a later date. it is remarkable that these so-called subsequent malpractices correspond with byzantine and persian usage before the conquest: but tradition will not admit the fact that these remained unchanged. the same fact is obvious when we consider the progress of civilisation in general. in every case the arabs merely develop the social and economic achievements of the conquered races to further issues. such progress could indeed only be modified by a general upheaval of existing conditions and no such movement ever took place. the germanic tribes destroyed the civilisations with which they met; they adopted many of the institutions of christian antiquity, but found them an impediment to the development of their own genius. the arabs simply continued to develop the civilisation of post-classical antiquity, with which they had come in contact. this procedure may seem entirely natural in the department of economic life, but by no means inevitable where intellectual progress is concerned. yet a similar course was followed in either case, as may be proved by dispassionate examination. islam was a rising force, a faith rather of experience than of theory or dogma, when it raised its claims against christianity, which represented all pre-existing intellectual culture. a settlement of these claims was necessary and the military triumphs are but the prelude to a great accommodation of intellectual interests. in this christianity played the chief part, though judaism is also represented: i am inclined, however, to think that jewish ideas as they are expressed in the qoran were often transmitted through the medium of christianity. there is no doubt that in medina muhammed was under direct jewish influence of extraordinary power. even at that time jewish ideas may have been in circulation, not only in the qoran but also in oral tradition, which afterwards became stereotyped: at the same time muhammed's utterances against the jews eventually became so strong during the medina period, for political reasons, that i can hardly imagine the traditions in their final form to have been adopted directly from the jews. the case of jewish converts is a different matter. but in christianity also much jewish wisdom was to be found at that time and it is well known that even the eastern churches regarded numerous precepts of the old testament, including those that dealt with ritual, as binding upon them. in any case the spirit of judaism is present, either directly or working through christianity, as an influence wherever islam accommodated itself to the new intellectual and spiritual life which it had encountered. it was a compromise which affected the most trivial details of life, and in these matters religious scrupulosity was carried to a ridiculous point: here we may see the outcome of that judaism which, as has been said, was then a definite element in eastern christianity. together with jewish, greek and classical ideas were also naturally operative, while persian and other ancient oriental conceptions were transmitted to islam by christianity: these instances i have collectively termed christian because christianity then represented the whole of later classical intellectualism, which influenced islam for the most part through christianity. it seems that the communication of these ideas to muhammedanism was impeded by the necessity of translating them not only into a kindred language, but into one of wholly different linguistic structure. for muhammedanism the difficulty was lessened by the fact that it had learned christianity in syria and persia through the semitic dialect known as aramaic, by which greek and persian culture had been transmitted to the arabs before the rise of islam. in this case, as in many others, the history of language runs on parallel lines with the history of civilisation. the necessities of increasing civilisation had introduced many aramaic words to the arabic vocabulary before muhammed's day: these importations increased considerably when the arabs entered a wider and more complex civilisation and were especially considerable where intellectual culture was concerned. even greek terms made their way into arabic through aramaic. this natural dependency of arabic upon aramaic, which in turn was connected with greek as the rival christian vernacular in these regions, is alone sufficient evidence that christianity exerted a direct influence upon muhammedanism. moreover, as we have seen, the qoran itself regarded christians as being in possession of divine wisdom, and some reference both to christianity and to judaism was necessary to explain the many unintelligible passages of the qoran. allusions were made to texts and statements in the thora and the gospels, and god was represented as constantly appealing to earlier revelations of himself. thus it was only natural that interpreters should study these scriptures and ask counsel of their possessors. of primary importance was the fact that both christians and jews, and the former in particular, accepted muhammedanism by thousands, and formed a new intellectual class of ability infinitely superior to that of the original muslims and able to attract the best elements of the arab nationality to their teaching. it was as impossible for these apostate christians to abandon their old habits of thought as it was hopeless to expect any sudden change in the economic conditions under which they lived. christian theories of god and the world naturally assumed a muhammedan colouring and thus the great process of accommodating christianity to muhammedanism was achieved. the christian contribution to this end was made partly directly and partly by teaching, and in the intellectual as well as in the economic sphere the ultimate ideal was inevitably dictated by the superior culture of christianity. the muhammedans were thus obliged to accept christian hypotheses on theological points and the fundaments of christian and muhammedan culture thus become identical. i use the term hypotheses, for the reason that the final determination of the points at issue was by no means identical, wherever the qoran definitely contradicted christian views of morality or social laws. but in these cases also, christian ideas were able to impose themselves upon tradition and to issue in practice, even when opposed by the actual text of the qoran. they did not always pass unquestioned and even on trivial points were obliged to encounter some resistance. the theory of the sunday was accepted, but that day was not chosen and friday was preferred: meetings for worship were held in imitation of christian practice, but attempts to sanctify the day and to proclaim it a day of rest were forbidden: except for the performance of divine service, friday was an ordinary week-day. when, however, the qoran was in any sort of harmony with christianity, the christian ideas of the age were textually accepted in any further development of the question. the fact is obvious, not only as regards details, but also in the general theory of man's position upon earth. * * * * * muhammed, the preacher of repentance, had become a temporal prince in medina; his civil and political administration was ecclesiastical in character, an inevitable result of his position as the apostle of god, whose congregation was at the same time a state. this theory of the state led later theorists unconsciously to follow the lead of christianity, which regarded the church as supreme in every department of life, and so induced muhammedanism to adopt views of life and social order which are now styled mediaeval. the theological development of this system is to be attributed chiefly to groups of pious thinkers in medina: they were excluded from political life when the capital was transferred from medina to damascus and were left in peace to elaborate their theory of the muhammedan divine polity. the influence of these groups was paramount: but of almost equal importance was the influence of the proselytes in the conquered lands who were christians for the most part and for that reason far above their arab contemporaries in respect of intellectual training and culture. we find that the details of jurisprudence, dogma, and mysticism can only be explained by reference to christian stimulus, nor is it any exaggeration to ascribe the further development of muhammed's views to the influence of thinkers who regarded the religious polity of islam as the realisation of an ideal which christianity had hitherto vainly striven to attain. this ideal was the supremacy of religion over life and all its activities, over the state and the individual alike. but it was a religion primarily concerned with the next world, where alone real worth was to be found. earthly life was a pilgrimage to be performed and earthly intentions had no place with heavenly. the joy of life which the ancient world had known, art, music and culture, all were rejected or valued only as aids to religion. human action was judged with reference only to its appraisement in the life to come. that ascetic spirit was paramount, which had enchained the christian world, that renunciation of secular affairs which explains the peculiar methods by which mediaeval views of life found expression. asceticism did not disturb the course of life as a whole. it might condemn but it could not suppress the natural impulse of man to propagate his race: it might hamper economic forces, but it could not destroy them. it eventually led to a compromise in every department of life, but for centuries it retained its domination over men's minds and to some material extent over their actions. such was the environment in which islam was planted: its deepest roots had been fertilised with christian theory, and in spite of muhammed's call to repentance, its most characteristic manifestations were somewhat worldly and non-ascetic. "islam knows not monasticism" says the tradition which this tendency produced. the most important compromise of all, that with life, which christianity only secured by gradual steps, had been already attained for islam by muhammed himself and was included in the course of his development. as islam now entered the christian world, it was forced to pass through this process of development once more. at the outset it was permeated with the idea of christian asceticism, to which an inevitable opposition arose, and found expression in such statements as that already quoted. but muhammed's preaching had obviously striven to honour the future life by painting the actual world in the gloomiest colours, and the material optimism of the secular-minded was unable to check the advance of christian asceticism among the classes which felt a real interest in religion. hence that surprising similarity of views upon the problem of existence, which we have now to outline. in details of outward form great divergency is apparent. christianity possessed a clergy while islam did not: yet the force of christian influence produced a priestly class in islam. it was a class acting not as mediator between god and man through sacraments and mysteries, but as moral leaders and legal experts; as such it was no less important than the scribes under judaism. unanimity among these scholars could produce decisions no less binding than those of the christian clergy assembled in church councils. they are representatives of the congregation which "has no unanimity, for such would be an error." islam naturally preferred to adopt unanimous conclusions in silence rather than to vote in assemblies. as a matter of fact a body of orthodox opinion was developed by this means with no less success than in christendom. any agreement which the quiet work of the scholars had secured upon any question was ratified by god and was thus irrevocably and eternally binding. for instance, the proclamation to the faithful of new ideas upon the exposition of the qoran or of tradition was absolutely forbidden; the scholars, in other words the clergy, had convinced themselves, by the fact of their unanimity upon the point, that the customary and traditional mode of exposition was the one pleasing to god. ideas of this kind naturally remind us of roman catholic practice. the influence of eastern christianity upon islam is undoubtedly visible here. this influence could not in the face of muhammedan tradition and custom, create an organised clergy, but it produced a clerical class to guard religious thought, and as religion spread, to supervise thought of every kind. christianity again condemned marriage, though it eventually agreed to a compromise sanctifying this tie; islam, on the contrary, found in the qoran the text "ye that are unmarried shall marry" (24, 32). in the face of so clear a statement, the condemnation of marriage, which in any case was contrary to the whole spirit of the qoran, could not be maintained. thus the muhammedan tradition contains numerous sayings in support of marriage. "a childless house contains no blessing": "the breath of a son is as the breath of paradise"; "when a man looks upon his wife (in love) and she upon him, god looks down in mercy upon them both." "two prayers of a married man are more precious in the sight of god than seventy of a bachelor." with many similar variations upon the theme, muhammed is said to have urged marriage upon his followers. on the other hand an almost equally numerous body of warnings against marriage exists, also issued by muhammed. i know no instance of direct prohibition, but serious admonitions are found which usually take the form of denunciation of the female sex and were early interpreted as warnings by tradition. "fear the world and women": "thy worst enemies are the wife at thy side and thy concubine": "the least in paradise are the women": "women are the faggots of hell"; "pious women are rare as ravens with white or red legs and white beaks"; "but for women men might enter paradise." here we come upon a strain of thought especially christian. muhammed regarded the satisfaction of the sexual instincts as natural and right and made no attempt to put restraint upon it: christian asceticism regarded this impulse as the greatest danger which could threaten the spiritual life of its adherents, and the sentences above quoted may be regarded as the expression of this view. naturally the social position of the woman suffered in consequence and is so much worse in the traditional muhammedanism as compared with the qoran that the change can only be ascribed to the influence of the civilisation which the muhammedans encountered. the idea of woman as a creature of no account is certainly rooted in the ancient east, but it reached islam in christian dress and with the authority of christian hostility to marriage. with this hostility to marriage are probably connected the regulations concerning the covering of the body: in the ancient church only the face, the hands and the feet were to be exposed to view, the object being to prevent the suggestion of sinful thoughts: it is also likely that objections to the ancient habit of leaving the body uncovered found expression in this ordinance. similar objections may be found in muhammedan tradition; we may regard these as further developments of commands given in the qoran, but it is also likely that muhammed's apocryphal statements upon the point were dictated by christian religious theory. they often appear in connection with warnings against frequenting the public baths, which fact is strong evidence of their christian origin. "a bad house is the bath: much turmoil is therein and men show their nakedness." "fear that house that is called the bathhouse and if any enter therein, let him veil himself." "he who believes in god and the last judgment, let him enter the bath only in bathing dress." "nakedness is forbidden to us." there is a story of the prophet, to the effect that he was at work unclothed when a voice from heaven ordered him to cover his nakedness! * * * * * we thus see, that an astonishing similarity is apparent in the treatment even of questions where divergency is fundamental. divergency, it is true, existed, but pales before the general affinity of the two theories of life. our judgment upon christian medievalism in this respect can be applied directly and literally to muhammedanism. either religion regards man as no more than a sojourner in this world. it is not worth while to arrange for a permanent habitation, and luxurious living is but pride. hence the simplicity of private dwellings in mediaeval times both in the east and west. architectural expense is confined to churches and mosques, which were intended for the service of god. these christian ideas are reflected in the inexhaustible storehouse of muhammedan theory, the great collections of tradition, as follows. "the worst use which a believer can make of his money is to build." "every building, except a mosque, will stand to the discredit of its architect on the day of resurrection." these polemics which islam inherited from christianity are directed not only against building in general, but also against the erection and decoration of lofty edifices: "should a man build a house nine ells high, a voice will call to him from heaven, whither wilt thou rise, most profane of the profane?" "no prophet enters a house adorned with fair decoration." with these prohibitions should be connected the somewhat unintelligible fact that the most pious caliphs sat upon thrones (_mimbar_, "president's chair") of clay. the simplest and most transitory material thus serves to form the symbol of temporal power. a house is adorned not by outward show, but by the fact that prayer is offered and the qoran recited within its walls. these theories were out of harmony with the worldly tendencies of the conquerors, who built themselves castles, such as qusair amra: they belong to the spirit of christianity rather than to islam. upon similar principles we may explain the demand for the utmost simplicity and reserve in regard to the other enjoyments of life. to eat whenever one may wish is excess and two meals a day are more than enough. the portion set apart for one may also suffice for two. ideas of this kind are of constant recurrence in the muhammedan traditions: indispensable needs alone are to be satisfied, as indeed thomas aquinas teaches. similar observations apply to dress: "he who walks in costly garments to be seen of men is not seen of the lord." gold and silver ornaments, and garments of purple and silk are forbidden by both religions. princes live as simply as beggars and possess only one garment, so that they are unable to appear in public when it is being washed: they live upon a handful of dates and are careful to save paper and artificial light. such incidents are common in the oldest records of the first caliphs. these princes did not, of course, live in such beggary, and the fact is correspondingly important that after the lapse of one or two generations the muhammedan historians should describe their heroes as possessing only the typical garment of the christian saint. this one fact speaks volumes. every action was performed in god or with reference to god--an oft-repeated idea in either religion. there is a continual hatred of the world and a continual fear that it may imperil a man's soul. hence the sense of vast responsibility felt by the officials, a sense which finds expression even in the ordinary official correspondence of the authorities which papyri have preserved for us. the phraseology is often stereotyped, but as such, expresses a special theory of life. this responsibility is represented as weighing with especial severity upon a pious caliph. upon election to the throne he accepts office with great reluctance protesting his unworthiness with tears. the west can relate similar stories of gregory the great and of justinian. exhortations are frequent ever to remember the fact of death and to repent and bewail past sins. when a mention of the last judgment occurs in the reading of passages from the bible or qoran, the auditors burst into tears. upon one occasion a man was praying upon the roof of his house and wept so bitterly over his sins, that the tears ran down the waterspout and flooded the rooms below. this hyperbolical statement in a typical life of a saint shows the high value attributed to tears in the east. it is, however, equally a christian characteristic. the gracious gift of tears was regarded by mediaeval christianity as the sign of a deeply religious nature. gregory vii is said to have wept daily at the sacrifice of the mass and similar accounts are given to the credit of other famous christians. while a man should weep for his own sins, he is not to bewail any misfortune or misery which may befall him. in the latter case it is his duty to collect his strength, to resign himself and to praise god even amid his sufferings. should he lose a dear relative by death, he is not to break out with cries and lamentations like the heathen. lamentation for the dead is most strictly forbidden in islam. "we are god's people and to god we return" says the pious muslim on receiving the unexpected news of a death. resignation and patience in these matters is certainly made the subject of eloquent exhortation in the qoran, but the special developments of tradition betray christian influence. generally speaking, the whole ethical system of the two religions is based upon the contrast between god and the world, though muhammedan philosophy will recognize no principle beside that of god. as a typical example we may take a sentence from the spanish bishop isidor who died in 636: "good are the intentions directed towards god and bad are those directed to earthly gain or transitory fame." any muhammedan theologian would have subscribed to this statement. on the one hand stress is laid upon motive as giving its value to action. the first sentence in the most famous collection of traditions runs, "deeds shall be judged by their intentions." on the other hand is the contrast between god and the world, or as islam puts it, between the present and the future life. the christian gains eternal life by following christ. imitation of the master in all things even to the stigmata, is the characteristic feature of mediaeval christianity. nor is the whole of the so-called sunna obedience anything more than the imitation of muhammed which seeks to repeat the smallest details of his life. the infinite importance attached by islam to the sunna seems to me to have originated in christian influence. the development of it betrays original features, but the fundamental principle is christian, as all the leading ideas of islam are christian, in the sense of the term as paraphrased above. imitation of christ in the first instance, attempts to repeat his poverty and renunciation of personal property: this is the great christian ideal. muhammed was neither poor nor without possessions: at the end of his life he had become a prince and had directly stated that property was a gift from god. in spite of that his successors praise poverty and their praises were the best of evidence that they were influenced not by the prophet himself but by christianity. while the traditions are full of the praises of poverty and the dangers of wealth, assertions in praise of wealth also occur, for the reason that the pure muhammedan ideas opposed to christianity retained a certain influence. j. goldziher has published an interesting study showing how many words borrowed from this source occur in the written muhammedan traditions: an almost complete version of the lord's prayer is quoted. even the idea of love towards enemies, which would have been unintelligible to muhammed, made its way into the traditions: "the most virtuous of acts is to seek out him who rejects thee, to give to him that despises thee and to pardon him that oppresses thee." the gospel precept to do unto others as we would they should do unto us (matt. vii. 12, luke vi. 31) is to be found in the arab traditions, and many similar points of contact may be noticed. a man's "neighbour" has ever been, despite the teaching of jesus, to the christian and to the muhammedan, his co-religionist. the whole department of muhammedan ethics has thus been subjected to strong christian influence. naturally this ecclesiasticism which dominated the whole of life, was bound to assert itself in state organisation. an abhorrence of the state, so far as it was independent of religion, a feeling unknown in the ancient world, pervades both christianity and muhammedanism, christianity first struggled to secure recognition in the state and afterwards fought with the state for predominance. islam and the state were at first identical: in its spiritual leaders it was soon separated from the state. its idea of a divine polity was elaborated to the smallest details, but remained a theory which never became practice. yet this ideal retained such strength that every muhammedan usurper was careful to secure his investiture by the caliph, the nominal leader of this ecclesiastical state, even if force were necessary to attain his object. for instance, saladin was absolutely independent of the nominal caliph in bagdad, but could not feel that his position was secure until he had obtained his sultan's patent from the caliph. only then did his supremacy rest upon a religious basis and he was not regarded by popular opinion as a legitimate monarch until this ceremony had been performed. this theory corresponds with constitutional ideals essentially christian. "the tyranny," wrote innocent iv to the emperor frederick ii, "which was once generally exercised throughout the world, was resigned into the hands of the church by constantine, who then received as an honourable gift from the proper source that which he had formerly held and exercised unrighteously." the long struggle between church and state in this matter is well known. in this struggle the rising power of islam had adopted a similar attitude. the great abhorrence of a secular "monarchy" in opposition to a religious caliphate, as expressed both by the dicta of tradition and by the abbassid historians, was inspired, in my opinion, by christian dislike of a divorce between church and state. the phenomenon might be explained without reference to external influence, but if the whole process be considered in connection, christian influence seems more than probable. a similar attitude was also assumed by either religion towards the facts of economic life. in either case the religious point of view is characteristic. the reaction against the tendency to condemn secular life is certainly stronger in islam, but is also apparent in christianity. thomas aquinas directly stigmatises trade as a disgraceful means of gain, because the exchange of wares does not necessitate labour or the satisfaction of necessary wants: muhammedan tradition says, "the pious merchant is a pioneer on the road of god." "the first to enter paradise is the honourable merchant." here the solution given to the problem differs in either case, but in christian practice, opposition was also obvious. common to both religions is the condemnation of the exaction of interest and monetary speculation, which the middle ages regarded as usury. islam, as usual, gives this christian idea the form of a saying enounced by muhammed: "he who speculates in grain for forty days, grinds and bakes it and gives it to the poor, makes an offering unacceptable to god." "he who raises prices to muslims (by speculation) will be cast head downwards by god into the hottest fire of hell." many similar traditions fulminate against usury in the widest sense of the word. these prohibitions were circumvented in practice by deed of gift and exchange, but none the less the free development of commercial enterprise was hampered by these fetters which modern civilisation first broke. enterprise was thus confined to agriculture under these circumstances both for christianity and islam, and economic life in either case became "mediaeval" in outward appearance. methods of making profit without a proportional expenditure of labour were the particular objects of this aversion. manual labour was highly esteemed both in the east and west. a man's first duty was to support himself by the work of his own hands, a duty proclaimed, as we know, from the apostolic age onwards. so far as islam is concerned, this view may be illustrated by the following utterances: "the best of deeds is the gain of that which is lawful": "the best gain is made by sale within lawful limits and by manual labour." "the most precious gain is that made by manual labour; that which a man thus earns and gives to himself, his people, his sons and his servants, is as meritorious as alms." thus practical work is made incumbent upon the believer, and the extent to which manufacture flourished in east and west during the middle ages is well known. a similar affinity is apparent as regards ideas upon social position and occupation. before god man is but a slave: even the mighty caliphs themselves, even those who were stigmatised by posterity as secular monarchs, included in their official titles the designation, "slave of god." this theory was carried out into the smallest details of life, even into those which modern observers would consider as unconcerned with religion. thus at meals the muslim was not allowed to recline at table, an ancient custom which the upper classes had followed for centuries: he must sit, "as a slave," according to the letter of the law. all are alike slaves, for the reason that they are believers: hence the humiliation of those whom chance has exalted is thought desirable. this idealism is undoubtedly more deeply rooted in the popular consciousness of the east than of the west. in the east great social distinctions occur; but while religion recognises them, it forbids insistence upon them. as especially distinctive of social work in either religion we might be inclined to regard the unparalleled extent of organizations for the care of the poor, for widows and orphans, for the old, infirm and sick, the public hospitals and almshouses and religious foundations in the widest sense of the term; but the object of these activities was not primarily social nor were they undertaken to make life easier for the poor: religious selfishness was the leading motive, the desire to purify self by good works and to secure the right to pre-eminence in heaven. "for the salvation of my soul and for everlasting reward" is the formula of many a christian foundation deed. very similar expressions of hope for eternal reward occur in muhammedan deeds of gift. a foundation inscription on a mosque, published by e. littmann, is stated in terms the purport of which is unmistakable. "this has been built by n or m: may a house be built for him in paradise (in return)." here again, the idea of the house in paradise is borrowed from christian ideas. we have already observed that in islam the smallest trivialities of daily life become matters of religious import. the fact is especially apparent in a wide department of personal conduct. islam certainly went to further extremes than christianity in this matter, but these customs are clearly only further developments of christian regulations. the call to simplicity of food and dress has already been mentioned. but even the simplest food was never to be taken before thanks had been given to god: grace was never to be omitted either before or after meals. divine ordinances also regulated the manner of eating. the prophet said, "with one finger the devils eat, with two the titans of antiquity and with three fingers the prophets." the application of the saying is obvious. similar sayings prescribe the mode of handling dishes and behaviour at a common meal, if the blessing of god is to be secured. there seems to be a christian touch in one of these rules which runs, in the words of the prophet: "he who picks up the crumbs fallen from the table and eats them, will be forgiven by god." "he who licks the empty dishes and his fingers will be filled by god here and in the world to come." "when a man licks the dish from which he has eaten, the dish will plead for him before god." i regard these words as practical applications of the text, "gather up the pieces that remain, that nothing be lost" (matt. xiv. 10: john vi. 12). even to-day south italians kiss bread that has fallen to the ground, in order to make apology to the gift of god. volumes might be filled with rules of polite manners in this style: hardly any detail is to be found in the whole business of daily life, even including occupations regarded as unclean, which was not invested with some religious significance. these rules are almost entirely dictated by the spirit of early christianity and it is possible to reconstruct the details of life in those dark ages from these literary records which are now the only source of evidence upon such points. however, we must here content ourselves with establishing the fact that islam adopted christian practice in this as in other departments of life. the state, society, the individual, economics and morality were thus collectively under christian influence during the early period of muhammedanism. conditions very similar in general, affected those conceptions which we explain upon scientific grounds but which were invariably regarded by ancient and mediaeval thought as supernatural, conceptions deduced from the phenomena of illness and dreams. islam was no less opposed than christianity to the practice of magic in any form, but only so far as these practices seemed to preserve remnants of heathen beliefs. such beliefs were, however, continued in both religions in modified form. there is no doubt that ideas of high antiquity, doubtless of babylonian origin, can be traced as contributing to the formation of these beliefs, while scientific medicine is connected with the earlier discoveries of greece. common to both religions was the belief in the reality of dreams, especially when these seemed to harmonise with religious ideas: dreams were regarded as revelations from god or from his apostles or from the pious dead. the fact that man could dream and that he could appear to other men in dreams after his death was regarded as a sign of divine favour and the biographies of the saints often contain chapters devoted to this faculty. these are natural ideas which lie in the national consciousness of any people, but owe their development in the case of islam to christian influence. the same may be said of the belief that the prayers of particular saints were of special efficacy, and of attempts by prayer, forms of worship and the like to procure rain, avert plague and so forth: such ideas are common throughout the middle ages. thus in every department we meet with that particular type of christian theory which existed in the east during the seventh and eighth centuries. this mediaeval theory of life was subjected, as is well known, to many compromises in the west, and was materially modified by teutonic influence and the revival of classicism. it might therefore be supposed that in islam christian theory underwent similar modification or disappeared entirely. but the fact is not so. at the outset, we stated, as will be remembered, that muhammedan scholars were accustomed to propound their dicta as utterances given by muhammed himself, and in this form christian ideas also came into circulation among muhammedans. when attempts were made to systematise these sayings, all were treated as alike authentic, and, as traditional, exerted their share of influence upon the formation of canon law. thus questions of temporary importance to mediaeval christianity became permanent elements in muhammedan theology. one highly instructive instance may be given. during the century which preceded the byzantine iconoclastic controversy, the whole of nearer asia was disturbed by the question whether the erection and veneration of images was permissible. that constantinople attempted to prohibit such veneration is well known: but after a long struggle the church gained its wishes. islam was confronted with the problem and decided for prohibition, doubtless under jewish influence. sayings of muhammed forbid the erection of images. this prohibition became part of canon law and therefore binding for all time: it remains obligatory at the present day, though in practice it is often transgressed. thus the process of development which was continued in christendom, came to a standstill in islam, and many similar cases might be quoted. here begins the development of muhammedan jurisprudence or, more exactly, of the doctrine of duty, which includes every kind of human activity, duties to god and man, religion, civil law, the penal code, social morality and economics. this extraordinary system of moral obligations, as developed in islam, though its origin is obscure, is doubtless rooted in the ecclesiastical law of christendom which was then first evolved. i have no doubt that the development of muhammedan tradition, which precedes the code proper, was dependent upon the growth of canon law in the old church, and that this again, or at least the purely legal part of it, is closely connected with the pre-justinian legislation. roman law does not seem to me to have influenced islam immediately in the form of justinian's _corpus juris_, but indirectly from such ecclesiastical sources as the romano-syrian code. this view, however, i would distinctly state, is merely my conjecture. for our present purpose it is more important to establish the fact that the doctrine of duty canonised the manifold expressions of the theory that life is a religion, with which we have met throughout the traditional literature: all human acts are thus legally considered as obligatory or forbidden when corresponding with religious commands or prohibitions, as congenial or obnoxious to the law or as matters legally indifferent and therefore permissible. the arrangement of the work of daily life in correspondence with these religious points of view is the most important outcome of the muhammedan doctrine of duties. the religious utterances which also cover the whole business of life were first made duties by this doctrine: in practice their fulfilment is impossible, but the theory of their obligatory nature is a fundamental element in muhammedanism. where the doctrine of duties deals with legal rights, its application was in practice confined to marriage and the affairs of family life: the theoretical demands of its penal clauses, for instance, raise impossible difficulties. at the same time, it has been of great importance to the whole spiritual life of islam down to the present day, because it reflects muhammedan ideals of life and of man's place in the world. even to-day it remains the daily bread of the soul that desires instruction, to quote the words of the greatest father of the muhammedan church. it will thus be immediately obvious to what a vast extent christian theory of the seventh and eighth centuries still remains operative upon muhammedan thought throughout the world. considerable parts of the doctrine of duties are concerned with the forms of muhammedan worship. it is becoming ever clearer that only slight tendencies to a form of worship were apparent under muhammed. the mosque, the building erected for the special purpose of divine service, was unknown during the prophet's lifetime; nor was there any definite church organisation, of which the most important parts are the common ritual and the preaching. tendencies existed but no system, was to be found: there was no clerical class to take an interest in the development of an order of divine service. the caliphs prayed before the faithful in the capital, as did the governors in the provinces. the military commanders also led a simple service in their own stations. it was contact with foreign influence which first provided the impulse to a systematic form of worship. both christians and jews possessed such forms. their example was followed and a ritual was evolved, at first of the very simplest kind. no detailed organisation, however, was attempted, until christian influence led to the formation of the class which naturally took an interest in the matter, the professional theologians. these soon replaced the military service leaders. this change denoted the final stage in the development of ritual. the object of the theologians was to subject the various occupations of life to ritual as well as to religion. the mediatorial or sacramental theories of the priestly office were unknown to islam, but ritual customs of similar character were gradually evolved, and are especially pronounced in the ceremonies of marriage and burial. more important, however, was the development of the official service, the arrangement of the day and the hour of obligatory attendance and the introduction of preaching: under muhammed and his early followers, and until late in the omajjad period, preaching was confined to addresses, given as occasion demanded, but by degrees it became part of the regular ritual. with it was afterwards connected the intercession for the caliphs, which became a highly significant part of the service, as symbolising their sovereignty. it seems to me very probable that this practice was an adoption, at any rate in theory, of the christian custom of praying for the emperor. the pulpit was then introduced under christian influence, which thus completely transformed the chair (_mimbar_) of the ancient arab judges and rulers and made it a piece of church furniture; the christian _cancelli_ or choir screens were adopted and the mosque was thus developed. before the age of mosques, a lance had been planted in the ground and prayer offered behind it: so in the mosque a prayer niche was made, a survival of the pre-existing custom. there are many obscure points in the development of the worship, but one fact may be asserted with confidence: the developments of ritual were derived from pre-existing practices, which were for the most part christian. but the religious energy of islam was not exclusively devoted to the development and practice of the doctrine of duties; at the same time this ethical department, in spite of its dependency upon christian and jewish ideas, remains its most original achievement: we have pursued the subject at some length, because its importance is often overlooked in the course of attempts to estimate the connection between christianity and islam. on the other hand, affinities in the regions of mysticism and dogma have long been matter of common knowledge and a brief sketch of them will therefore suffice. if not essential to our purpose within the limits of this book, they are none the less necessary to complete our treatment of the subject. by mysticism we understand the expression of religious emotion, as contrasted with efforts to attain righteousness by full obedience to the ethical doctrine of duties, and also in contrast to the hair-splitting of dogmatic speculation: mysticism strove to reach immediate emotional unity with the godhead. no trace of any such tendency was to be found in the qoran: it entered islam as a complete novelty, and the affinities which enabled it to gain a footing have been difficult to trace. muhammedan mysticism is certainly not exclusively christian: its origins, like those of christian mysticism, are to be found in the pantheistic writings of the neoplatonist school of dionysius the areopagite: but islam apparently derived its mysticism from christian sources. in it originated the idea, with all its capacity for development, of the mystical love of god: to this was added the theory and practice of asceticism which was especially developed by christianity, and, in later times, the influence of indian philosophy, which is unmistakable. such are the fundamental elements of this tendency. when the idea of the nirwana, the arab _fan[=a]_, is attained, muhammedanism proper comes to an end. but orthodoxy controls the divergent elements: it opposes any open avowal of the logical conclusion, which would identify "god" and the "ego," but in practice this group of ideas, pantheistic in all but name, has been received and given a place side by side with the strict monotheism of the qoran and with the dogmatic theology. any form of mysticism which is pushed to its logical consequences must overthrow positive religion. by incorporating this dangerous tendency within itself, islam has averted the peril which it threatens. creed is no longer endangered, and this purpose being secured, thought is free. union with god is gained by ecstasy and leads to enthusiasm. these terms will therefore show us in what quarter we must seek the strongest impulses to mysticism. the concepts, if not the actual terms, are to be found in islam: they were undoubtedly transmitted by christianity and undergo the wide extension which results in the dervish and fakir developments. _dervish_ and _fakir_ are the persian and arabic words for "beggar": the word _sufi_, a man in a woollen shirt, is also used in the same sense. the terms show that asceticism is a fundamental element in mysticism; asceticism was itself an importation to islam. dervishes are divided into different classes or orders, according to the methods by which they severally prefer to attain ecstasy: dancing and recitation are practised by the dancing and howling dervishes and other methods are in vogue. it is an institution very different from monasticism but the result of a course of development undoubtedly similar to that which produced the monk: dervishism and monasticism are independent developments of the same original idea. among these muhammedan companies attempts to reach the point of ecstasy have developed to a rigid discipline of the soul; the believer must subject himself to his master, resigning all power of will, and so gradually reaches higher stages of knowledge until he is eventually led to the consciousness of his absolute identity with god. it seems to me beyond question that this method is reflected in the _exercitiis spiritualibus_ of ignatius loyola, the chief instrument by which the jesuits secured dominion over souls. any one who has realised the enormous influence which arab thought exerted upon spanish christianity so late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, will not regard the conjecture as unfounded. when a man's profession or position prevented him from practising these mystical exercises, he satisfied his religious needs by venerating persons who were nearer to the deity and whose intercession was effectual even after their death and sometimes not until they were dead: hence arose the veneration of saints, a practice as alien as pantheistic dogma to primitive islam. the adoption of christian saint worship was not possible until the person of muhammed himself had been exalted above the ordinary level of humanity. early muhammedans observed that the founder of christianity was regarded by popular opinion as a miracle worker of unrivalled power: it was impossible for the founder of islam to remain inferior in this respect. thus the early biographies of the prophet, which appeared in the first century of muhammedanism, recount the typical miracles of the gospels, the feeding of multitudes, healing the sick, raising the dead and so forth. two methods of adoption may be distinguished. special features are directly borrowed, or the line of advance is followed which had introduced the worship of saints and relics to christianity a short time before. the religious emotions natural to any people produced a series of ideas which pass from one religion to another. outward form and purport may be changed, but the essential points remain unaltered and are the living expression of that relation to god in which a people conceives itself to stand. higher forms of religion--a fact as sad as it is true--require a certain degree not only of moral but of intellectual capacity. thus we have traversed practically the whole circle of religious life and have everywhere found islam following in the path of christian thought. one department remains to be examined, which might be expected to offer but scanty opportunity for borrowings of this kind; this is dogma. here, if anywhere, the contrast between the two religions should be obvious. the initial divergencies were so pronounced, that any adoption of christian ideas would seem impossible. yet in those centuries, christianity was chiefly agitated by dogmatic questions, which occupied men's minds as greatly as social problems at the present day. here we can observe most distinctly, how the problems at least were taken over by islam. muhammedan dogmatic theology is concerned only with three main questions, the problem of free-will, the being and attributes of god, and the eternal uncreated nature of god's word. the mere mention of these problems will recall the great dogmatic struggles of early christianity. at no time have the problems of free-will and the nature of god, been subjects of fiercer dispute than during the christological and subsequent discussions. upholders of freedom or of determinism could alike find much to support their theories in the qoran: muhammed was no dogmatist and for him the ideas of man's responsibility and of god's almighty and universal power were not mutually exclusive. the statement of the problem was adopted from christianity as also was the dialectical subtlety by which a solution was reached, and which, while admitting the almighty power of god, left man responsible for his deeds by regarding him as free to accept or refuse the admonitions of god. thus the thinkers and their demands for justice and righteous dealing were reconciled to the blind fatalism of the masses, which again was not a native muhammedan product, but is the outcome of the religious spirit of the east. the problem of reconciling the attributes of god with the dogma of his unity was solved with no less subtlety. the mere idea that a multiplicity of attributes was incompatible with absolute unity was only possible in a school which had spent centuries in the desperate attempt to reconcile the inference of a divine trinity with the conception of absolute divine unity. finally, the third question, "was the qoran, the word of god, created or not?" is an obvious counterpart of the logos problem, of the struggle to secure recognition of the logos as eternal and uncreated together with god. islam solved the question by distinguishing the eternal and uncreated qoran from the revealed and created. the eternal nature of the qoran was a dogma entirely alien to the strict monotheism of islam: but this fact was never realised, any more than the fact that the acceptance of the dogma was a triumph for graeco-christian dialectic. there can be no more striking proof of the strength of christian influence: it was able to undermine the fundamental dogma of islam, and the muhammedans never realised the fact. in our review of these dogmatic questions, we have met with a novel tendency, that to metaphysical speculation and dialectic. it was from christendom, not directly from the greek world, that this spirit reached islam: the first attitude of muhammedanism towards it was that which christianity adopted towards all non-religious systems of thought. islam took it up as a useful weapon for the struggle against heresy. but it soon became a favourite and trusted implement and eventually its influence upon muhammedan philosophy became paramount. here we meet with a further christian influence, which, when once accepted, very largely contributed to secure a similar development of mediaeval christian and muhammedan thought. this was scholasticism, which was the natural and inevitable consequence of the study of greek dialectic and philosophy. it is not necessary to sketch the growth of scholasticism, with its barrenness of results in spite of its keen intellectual power, upon ground already fertilised by ecclesiastical pioneers. it will suffice to state the fact that these developments of the greek spirit were predominant here as in the west: in either case important philosophies rise upon this basis, for the most part professedly ecclesiastical, even when they occasionally struck at the roots of the religious system to which they belonged. in this department, islam repaid part of its debt to christianity, for the arabs became the intellectual leaders of the middle ages. thus we come to the concluding section of this treatise; before we enter upon it, two preliminary questions remain for consideration. if islam was ready to learn from christianity in every department of religious life, what was the cause of the sudden superiority of muhammedanism to the rising force of christianity a few centuries later? and secondly, in view of the traditional antagonism between the christian and muhammedan worlds, how was christianity able to adopt so large and essential a portion of muhammedan thought? the answer in the second case will be clear to any one who has followed our argument with attention. the intellectual and religious outlook was so similar in both religions and the problem requiring solution so far identical that nothing existed to impede the adoption of ideas originally christian which had been developed in the east. the fact that the west could accept philosophical and theological ideas from islam and that an actual interchange of thought could proceed in this direction, is the best of proofs for the soundness of our argument that the roots of muhammedanism are to be sought in christianity. islam was able to borrow from christianity for the reason that muhammed's ideas were derived from that source: similarly christianity was able to turn arab thought to its own purposes because that thought was founded upon christian principles. the sources of both religions lie in the east and in oriental thought. no less is true of judaism, a scholastic system which was excellently adapted by its international character, to become a medium of communication between christianity and muhammedanism during those centuries. in this connection special mention must be made of the spanish jews; to their work, not only as transmitting but also as originating ideas a bare reference must here suffice. but of greater importance was the direct exchange of thought, which proceeded through literary channels, by means of translations, especially by word of mouth among the christians and muhammedans who were living together in southern italy, sicily, and spain, and by commercial intercourse. the other question concerns the fundamental problem of european medievalism. we see that the problems with which the middle ages in europe were confronted and also that european ethics and metaphysics were identical with the muhammedan system: we are moreover assured that the acceptance of christian ideas by islam can only have taken place in the east: and the conclusion is obvious that mediaeval christianity was also primarily rooted in the east. the transmission of this religious philosophy to the non-oriental peoples of the west at first produced a cessation of progress but opened a new intellectual world when these peoples awoke to life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. but throughout the intermediate period between the seventh and thirteenth centuries the east was gaining political strength and was naturally superior to the west where political organisation and culture had been shattered by the germanic invasions; in the east again there was an organic unity of national strength and intellectual ideals, as the course of development had not been interrupted. though special dogmatic points had been changed, the general religious theory remained unaltered throughout the nearer east. thus the rising power of islam, which had high faculties of self-accommodation to environment, was able to enter upon the heritage of the mixed graeco-oriental civilisation existing in the east; in consequence it gained an immediate advantage over the west, where eastern ideas were acclimatised with difficulty. the preponderance of muhammedan influence was increased by the fact that islam became the point of amalgamation for ancient eastern cultures, in particular for those of greece and persia: in previous centuries preparation had been made for this process by the steady transformation of hellenism to orientalism. persia, however, had been the main source of eastern civilisation, at any rate since the sassanid period: the debt of byzantine culture to persia is well known. unfortunately no thorough investigation has been made of these various and important changes, but it is clear that persian civilisation sent its influence far westward, at first directly and later through the medium of muhammedanism. the same facts hold good with regard to the diffusion of intellectual culture from persia. how far persian ideas may have influenced the development of muhammedan and even of christian eschatology, we need not here discuss: but the influence of the great graeco-christian schools of persia was enormous: they made the arabs acquainted with the most important works in greek and persian literature. to this fact was due the wide influence of islam upon christian civilisation, which is evidenced even to-day by the numerous words of arab origin to be found in modern european languages; it is in fact an influence the strength of which can hardly be exaggerated. not only the commercial products of the east, but important economic methods, the ideals of our so-called european chivalry and of its love poetry, the foundations of our natural sciences, even theological and philosophical ideas of high value were then sent to us from the east. the consequences of the crusades are the best proof of the enormous superiority of the muhammedan world, a fact which is daily becoming more obvious. here we are concerned only with the influence exerted by muhammedan philosophy. it would be more correct to speak of post-classical than of muhammedan philosophy. but as above, the influence of christianity upon islam was considered, so now the reverse process must be outlined. in either case it was the heir to the late classical age, to the mixed graeco-oriental culture, which influenced islam at first in christian guise. islam is often able to supplement its borrowings from christianity at the original sources, and when they have thus been deepened and purified, these adaptations are returned to christianity in muhammedan form. christian scholasticism was first based upon fragments of aristotle and chiefly inspired by neo-platonism: through the arabs it became acquainted with almost the whole of aristotle and also with the special methods by which the arabs approach the problem of this philosophy. to give any detailed account of this influence would be to write a history of mediaeval philosophy in its relation to ecclesiastical doctrine, a task which i feel to be beyond my powers. i shall therefore confine myself to an abstract of the material points selected from the considerable detail which specialists upon the subject have collected: i consider that arab influence during the first period is best explained by the new wealth of greek thought which the arabs appropriated and transmitted to europe. these new discoveries were the attainments of greece in the natural sciences and in logic: they extended the scope of dialectic and stimulated the rise of metaphysical theory: the latter, in combination with ecclesiastical dogma and greek science, became such a system of thought as that expounded in the summa of thomas aquinas. philosophy remained the handmaid of religion and arab influence first served only to complete the ecclesiastical philosophy of life. eventually, however, the methods of interpretation and criticism, peculiar to the arabs when dealing with aristotle became of no less importance than the subject matter of their inquiries. this form of criticism was developed from the emphasis which islam had long laid upon the value of wisdom, or recognition of the claims of reason. muhammedan tradition is full of the praises of wisdom, which it also originally regarded as the basis of religion. reason, however, gradually became an independent power: orthodoxy did not reject reason when it coincided with tradition, but under the influence of aristotelianism, especially as developed by averroës, reason became a power opposed to faith. the essential point of the doctrine was that truth was twofold, according to faith and according to reason. any one who was subtle enough to recognise both kinds of truth could preserve his orthodoxy: but the theory contained one great danger, which was immediately obvious to the christian church. the consequent struggle is marked by the constant connection of arab ideas with the characteristic expressions of christian feeling; these again are connected with the outset of a new period, when the pioneers of the renaissance liberate the west from the chains of greek ecclesiastical classicism, from oriental metaphysical religion and slowly pave the way for the introduction of germanic ideals directly derived from true classicism. not until that period does the west burst the bonds in which orientalism had confined it. christianity and islam then stand upon an equal footing in respect both of intellectual progress and material wealth. but as the west emerges from the shadow-land of the middle ages the more definite becomes its superiority over the east. western nations become convinced that the fetters which bind them were forged in the east, and when they have shaken off their chains, they discover their own physical and intellectual power. they go forth and create a new world, in which orientalism finds but scanty room. the east, however, cannot break away from the theories of life and mind which grew in it and around it. even at the present day the oriental is swathed in mediaevalism. a journalist, for instance, however european his mode of life, will write leaders supported by arguments drawn from tradition and will reason after the manner of the old scholasticism. but a change may well take place. islam may gradually acquire the spirit as well as the form of modern europe. centuries were needed before mediaeval christianity learned the need for submission to the new spirit. within christendom itself, it was non-christian ideas which created the new movement, but these were completely amalgamated with pre-existing christianity. thus, too, a renaissance is possible in the east, not merely by the importation and imitation of european progress, but primarily by intellectual advancement at home even within the sphere of religion. our task is drawing to its close. we have passed in review the interaction of christianity and islam, so far as the two religions are concerned. it has also been necessary to refer to the history of the two civilisations, for the reason that the two religions penetrate national life, a feature characteristic both of their nature and of the course of development which they respectively followed. this method of inquiry has enabled us to gain an idea of the rise and progress of muhammedanism as such. an attempt to explain the points of contact and resemblance between the two religions naturally tends to obscure the differences between them. had we devoted our attention to islam alone, without special reference to christianity, these differences, especially in the region of dogmatic theology, would have been more obvious. they are, however, generally well known. the points of connection are much more usually disregarded: yet they alone can explain the interchange of thought between the two mediaeval civilisations. the surprising fact is the amount of general similarity in religious theory between religions so fundamentally divergent upon points of dogma. nor is the similarity confined to religious theory: when we realise that material civilisation, especially when european medievalism was at its height, was practically identical in the christian west and the muhammedan east, we are justified in any reference to the unity of eastern and western civilisation. my statements may tend to represent islam as a religion of no special originality; at the same time, christianity was but one of other influences operative upon it; early arabic, zoroastrian, and jewish beliefs in particular have left traces on its development. may not as much be said of christianity? inquirers have seriously attempted to distinguish greek and jewish influences as the component elements of christianity: in any case, the extent of the elements original to the final orthodox system remains a matter of dispute. as we learn to appreciate historical connection and to probe beneath the surface of religions in course of development, we discover points of relationship and interdependency of which the simple believer never even dreams. the object of all this investigation is, in my opinion, one only: to discover how the religious experience of the founder of a faith accommodates itself to pre-existing civilisation, in the effort to make its influence operative. the eventual triumph of the new religion is in every case and at every time nothing more than a compromise: nor can more be expected, inasmuch as the religious instinct, though one of the most important influences in man, is not the sole determining influence upon his nature. recognition of this fact can only be obtained at the price of a breach with ecclesiastical mode of thought. premonitions of some such breach are apparent in modern muhammedanism: for ourselves, they are accomplished facts. if i correctly interpret the signs of the times, a retrograde movement in religious development has now begun. the religion inspiring a single personality, has secured domination over the whole of life: family, society, and state have bowed beneath its power. then the reaction begins: slowly religion loses its comprehensive force and as its history is learned, even at the price of sorrow, it slowly recedes within the true limits of its operation, the individual, the personality, in which it is naturally rooted. conclusion and bibliography the purpose of the present work has been to show not so much the identity of christian and muhammedan theories of life during the middle ages, as the parallel course of development common to both, and to demonstrate the fact that ideas could be transferred from one system to the other. detail has been sacrificed to this general purpose. the brief outline of muhammedan dogmatics and mysticism was necessary to complete the general survey of the question. any one of these subjects, and the same is true as regards a detailed life of muhammed, would require at least another volume of equal size for satisfactory treatment. the oriental scholar will easily see where i base my statements upon my own researches and where i have followed goldziher and snouck. my chief source of information, apart from the six great books of tradition, has been the invaluable compilation of soj[=u]t[=i], the great kanz el-'umm[=a]l (hyderabad, 1314). to those who do not read arabic may be recommended the french translation of the boch[=a]r[=i], of which two volumes are now published: _el-bokâhri, les traditions islamiques traduites ... par_ o. houdas and w. marçais. paris, 1906. of general works dealing with the questions i have touched, the following, to which i owe a considerable debt, may be recommended:- j. goldziher. muhammedanische studien, halle, 1889 and following year. die religion des islams (kult. d. gegenw., i, iii. 1). c. snouck hurgronje. de islam (de gids, 1886, us. 5 f.). mekka. the hague, 1888. une nouvelle biographie de mohammed (rev. hist. relig., 1894). leone caetani di teano. annali dell' islam. milan, 1905 and following years. f. buhl. muhammed's liv. copenhagen, 1903. h. grimme. muhammed. munich, 1904. j. wellhausen. das arabische reich und sein sturz. berlin, 1902. th. nöldeke. geschichte des qoräns. gottingen, 1860. (new edition by f. schwally in the press.) c.h. becker. die kanzel im kultus des alten islam. giessen, 1906. papyri. schott-reinhardt, i. heidelberg, 1906. th. w. juynboll. handleidung tot de kennis van de mohammedaansche wet. leyden, 1903. t.j. de boer. geschichte der philosophie in islam. stuttgart, 1901 (also an english edition). d.b. macdonald. development of muslim theology, jurisprudence and constitutional theory. new york, 1903. a. merx. idee und grundlinien einer allgemeinen geschichte der mystik. heidelberg, 1893. a. müller. der islam im morgenund abendland (oncken's collection). w. riedel. die kirchenrechtsquellen des patriarchats alexandrien. leipsic, 1900. g. bruns and e. sachau. syrisch-römisches rechtsbuch. leipsic, 1880. e. sachau. syrische rechtsbücher, i. berlin, 1907. e. zachariae v. lingenthal. geschichte des griechisch-römischen rechts. 3rd ed., berlin, 1892. h. v. eicken. geschichte und system der mittelalterlichen weltanschauung. stuttgart, 1886. w. windelband. lehrbuck der geschichte der philosophie. 4th ed., tübingen, 1907. c. baeumker und g. v. hertling. beiträge zur geschichte der philosophie des mittelalters (collected papers). g. gothein. ignatius von loyola und die gegenreformation. halle, 1895. in conclusion, i may mention two works, which deal with the subject of this volume, but from a different standpoint:- h.p. smith. the bible and islam (the ely lectures for 1897). w.a. shedd. islam and the oriental churches (philadelphia, 1904). the christian mythology. by brigham leatherbee "knowledge is power, but ignorance is the mother of devotion." new york: the truth seeker company, 62 vesey street. contents. i. the virgin birth. ii. pagan miracles. iii. spurious relics. iv. trial and execution myths. v. distorted prophecies. vi. the resurrection. vii. miracles. viii. atonement and salvation by faith. ix. the trinity--mariolatry. x. saints--good and evil spirits. xi. religious holidays and rites. xii. the eucharist. xiii. spread of christianity. the christian mythology. that christianity, as to-day presented by the orthodox, is far different from the christianity promulgated by the early fathers, few are so blinded as to doubt. christianity, like all other religions, came not into the world full-grown, but from the simple conceptions of its early followers became gradually elaborated by the introduction of pagan forms and customs until it supplanted its early rivals and gave its adherents a compact and solid theology not very different from that of its predecessors. however, before considering the genealogy of christianity, or its heirlooms from paganism, let us turn our attention to what were presumably the beginnings of the religious views of mankind. probably the true source of that human characteristic which is defined as the religious instinct and which is supposed to be an elevating and moral agent, is to be found in the superstition which originated in fear of the unknown. the first ages of human life were so devoted to the animal needs that little attention was given to anything else, but later the craving for protection and help from some power greater than himself led primitive man to look about him for something to sustain and aid him in his struggle for existence. surrounded by natural phenomena of which he could give no explanation satisfactory to his experience, he came to the conclusion that he was in an environment permeated with bodiless intelligences who governed these matters by supernatural power. awed to fear by the inexplicable workings of nature, he sought to propitiate the spiritual agencies by bribes, and he did all things for them which he thought would be agreeable to them to keep them in good-natured interest or indifference toward him. and, naturally, he considered that what would be pleasing to himself would be pleasing to them. therefore, his offerings and his conduct towards these spirits were such as he would have desired shown toward himself. death and its imitation, sleep, being the greatest mysteries confronting him, he naturally began to consider the spirits of the dead, with whom he seemed to have intercourse in his dreams, as being influential factors in his career; and thus originated ancestor-worship with its highly-developed rites and sacrifices, which in a modified form still exists in the roman church in the practice of reading masses for the souls of the dead. at the same time, noticing the great benefits derived from the warmth of the sun, to whose rays he owed his subsistence and whose glorious and awful presence was constantly before him, man began to feel grateful to that mighty power which was the source of all his welfare, and, appreciating that all terrestrial life depended upon it, he came to recognize it as the great creative power. from such superstitious fear and weakness of primitive man arose all those religious feelings which the pious call instinctive and which have, through progress, evolution, and elaboration, controlled certain races, and from whose union have arisen all the religious systems that have ever flourished. owing to the varied influences of climate, environment, and racial character, the various forms of worship predominating in different geographical situations have naturally assumed different characteristics, but, when stripped of their surrounding, and often enveloping rites, ceremonies, and superficialities they may all be traced to the above-mentioned fundamental sources. it is my intention to show, as briefly as possible, that in the christianity of to-day we have nothing new nor of vital difference from what has always been taught and believed in the many epochs of the past. in common with all religious systems, christianity has a hero--the personified sun-god of all time--who is of obscure origin, who passes through various episodes common to all, who is finally executed, and who rises once more to renewed power. in our perusal of the subject, we shall first consider the life of jesus as taught by the christian church; secondly, the dogmas affecting the source of his power and the results of his influence; and, thirdly, the rites and ceremonies with which his worship is performed. i--the virgin birth. some two thousand years ago there is said to have appeared in the notoriously rebellious province of galilee, the headquarters of hebrew radicalism, a wandering teacher called jesus, who passed from village to village expounding certain ethical and socialistic ideas, which were condemned by the roman government and which resulted in this man's arrest and subsequent execution. after his death, his various pupils continued to preach his theories, and, separating, spread these ideas over various parts of the then civilized world. these pupils, naturally, having a firm belief in their former leader, and desiring to strengthen in every possible manner their faith as well as to increase the number of their proselytes, and, also, being themselves more or less affected by the ancient messianic idea, did not deny jesus more than mortal powers, and allowed certain pagan theories of deity to creep into their faith. later, when the vicious and crafty constantine found it advisable for political reasons to adopt christianity as the state religion, the great mass of roman worshipers merely transferred the attributes of their ancient deities to the objects venerated by the new sect. there was nothing new in bestowing a divine origin on jesus. all the lesser gods of antiquity were the sons of zeus, and, in later times, monarchs were accorded the same origin. it was a common myth of all ancient peoples that numerous beings derived their birth from other than natural causes. virgins gave birth to sons without aid of men. zeus produced offspring without female assistance. almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the old heathen mythology were reputed to have been the sons of some of the gods. the doctrine of the virgin birth is perhaps one of the oldest of religious ideas; it is so universal that its origin is impossible to trace. therefore, no wonder is excited when we find that most of the religious leaders have been of celestial origin. krishna, the indian savior, was born of a chaste virgin called devaki, who, on account of her purity, was selected to become the mother of god. gautama buddha was born of the virgin maya and "mercifully left paradise and came down to earth because he was filled with compassion for the sins and miseries of mankind. he sought to lead them into better paths, and took their sufferings upon himself that he might expiate their crimes and mitigate the punishment they must otherwise inevitably undergo." the great father of gods and men sent a messenger from heaven to the mexican virgin, sochiquetzal, to inform her that it was the will of the gods that she should immaculately conceive a son. as a result she bore quetzalcoatl, the mexican savior, who "set his face against all forms of violence and bloodshed, and encouraged the arts of peace." the mexican god huitzilopochtli was likewise immaculately conceived by a woman who, while walking in a temple, beheld a ball of feathers descending in the air. she grasped this and placed it in her bosom. it gradually disappeared and her pregnancy resulted. the mexican montezumas were later supposed to have been immaculately conceived by a drop of dew falling on the exposed breast of the mother as she lay asleep. the siamese have a virgin-born god and savior whom they call codom; the chinese have several virgin-born gods, one being the result of his mother's having become impregnated by merely treading on the toe-print of god; while the egyptians bowed in worship before the shrine of horus, son of the virgin isis. setting aside the mythological interpretation of the miraculous conception of jesus and the theory that his history is entirely fictitious, and viewing his birth from a natural human standpoint, even admitting that he may have been a "divinely inspired man," a little better than any other human being, there seems to be only one explanation for his peculiar conception as recorded in luke i. some critics of the rational school have not failed to notice a solution of the problem in the appearance of the angel gabriel and his private interview with mary (luke i, 28-38). say they very pertinently, why may not some libidinous young man, having become enamoured of the youthful wife of the aged joseph, and, knowing the prophecy of the messiah, have visited the object of his desire in angelic guise and, having won her confidence in this rôle, gained those favors that produced the miraculous birth? and such an explanation is not improbable when we consider that it is an historical fact that young and confiding women often resorted to the pagan temples at the instigation of the unscrupulous, where they enjoyed the embraces of ardent but previously unsuccessful lovers, under the impression that they were being favored by deities. so those christians whose reasoning powers will not allow them to believe in the absurdity of an unnatural conception, and whose superstitious adoration will not permit of their believing mary guilty of an intentional faux pas, try in this manner to reconcile the two, and declare joseph the guilty man. according to the gospels, joseph, the husband, knowing mary to be with child, married her (matt. i, 18); but that is no reason for believing that he regarded the holy ghost's responsibility for his wife's condition with faith. he told of a dream in which he had been informed that such was the case (matt. i, 20-23). he may have believed the dream, and he may not. the most sensible view is that he, "being a just man," took this method of preserving her reputation, and that he himself was the actual parent. having betrayed the girl, he honestly married her, but, to defend her and himself from the accusation of a serious misdemeanor among the jews (deut. xxii), he invented the dream story to account for her unfortunate condition. girls have ever told improbable stories to explain like misfortunes. danæ concocted the shower of gold yarn; leda preferred to accuse herself of bestiality with a swan to acknowledging a lover, and europa blamed a bull. modern damsels have invented more modern but just as innocent agents. it would seem from the subsequent actions and words of mary that she must have forgotten that her son was miraculously conceived of god, for we find her reproaching him for remaining in the temple of jerusalem to argue with the rabbis with, "son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and i have sought thee sorrowing" (luke ii, 48). again, when simeon and anna proclaimed the messiahship of jesus (luke ii, 25-32; 36-38), we are told that "joseph and his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him" (luke ii, 33). this would hardly have been the case had they already known him as "the son of the highest, who shall reign over the house of jacob forever" (luke i, 32-33). neither would mary, had she realized that she was the mother of god, have considered it necessary to resort to the temple (luke ii, 22-24) to be purified from the stains of her childbirth. women, having borne natural children, were considered to have become defiled in the act of parturition, through the contact of the perpetually active agency of original sin, whereof they must be purified. the mere fact of her submitting to such a churching is evidence that mary did not know that she had done anything remarkable in bearing jesus, and was ignorant of an unusual conception. their neighbors, despite the dream, always recognized jesus as joseph's son (matt. xii, 55; luke iv, 22; john ii, 45; vi, 42; nicodemus i, 2). the orthodox explain this on the supposition that joseph and mary kept all these things in their hearts, and did not tell the actual facts of the case, which seems unlikely. joseph would want to explain the early birth of jesus, and mary would be desirous of saving her reputation, and both would naturally boast of the honor conferred by the holy ghost, had they known of it, for in such case joseph's relation to his god was the same as that of the peasant to his seigneur in the days of the jus primæ noctis. the liaison was an honor, and would have been related to save jesus from the disagreeable allusions made by his neighbors regarding his birth (john viii, 41). conforming to the narrations of the miraculous conception in luke, mary, and the protevangelion, is an old miracle play called "joseph's jealousy," in which we find a very natural picture of the good old husband discovering a condition in his wife for which he is not responsible and accusing her in plain old english of adorning his brow with antlers. the following is the dialogue as given in hone's "ancient mysteries described": jos. say me, mary, this childys fadyr who is? i pry the telle me, and that anon? mry. the fadyr of hevyn, & se, it is, other fadyr hath he non. to which joseph very naturally replies in a burst of anger: jos. goddys childe! thou lyist, in fay! god dede nevyr rape so with may. but yit i say, mary whoos childe is this? mry. goddys and your, i sey, i wys. then in wrath at her obstinacy he breaks forth: jos. ya, ya! all olde men, to me take tent, & weddyth no wyff, in no kynnys wyse. alas! alas! my name is shent; all men may me now dyspyse, & seyn olde cokwold. mary tries to explain and says that her child is from god alone and that she was so informed by an angel. the suspicious joseph will not be deceived, and gives way to some words that have since been accepted as a true explanation of the miraculous conception: jos. an a'gel! alas, alas! fy for schame! ye syn now, in that ye to say; to puttyn an a'ngel in so gret blame. alas, alas! let be do way; it was s'n boy began this game, that closhyd was clene and gay, & ye geve hym now an a'ngel name. the old prophecy in isaiah (vii, 14) that a virgin shall bear a son loses its utility when we recognize that this was the sign given ahaz that god would preserve his kingdom, although he was then threatened by a coalition of the kings of ephraim and syria. if the prophecy referred to the christ, how could it have any influence on ahaz? how could he be calmed and made to preserve his courage in the face of danger by a sign which would not be given until centuries after he slept with his fathers? but such was not the case. isaiah made his sign appear as he had promised (vii, 16), "before the child shall know to refuse evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings" (the rulers of israel and syria). now, this prophecy was fulfilled, either by the trickery of the prophet or the compliance of a virgin, for we find in the next chapter (isaiah viii, 3), "and i went unto the prophetess; and she conceived and bare a son." and that is the whole story. to apply it to the mythical birth of jesus is puerile. no one can doubt that so good a jew as josephus believed in the prospect of a messiah, yet so little did isaiah's prophecy impress him that he did not even mention the virgin episode. probably, on the whole, he thought it a rather contemptible bit of trickery and rather detrimental to the memory of isaiah. james orr, in his treatise written expressly to prove the historical fact of the virgin birth, denies that the prophecy of isaiah could be applied to jesus. here we have an orthodox writer who firmly believes in the miraculous conception, shattering the great cornerstone of the church's foundation for this belief. he says that the word "almah" was not hebrew for virgin at all, but meant only a marriageable young woman. he says it can have no connection with jesus, and thus he agrees with thomas paine, but for opposite reasons. while orr evidently considers that all pagan tales of divine paternity are legends, he affirms that the case of jesus is genuine. just why god became deus genetrix only once, he does not explain. if god approved of this method of creation, he would surely have performed it more than once. that he should have chosen a woman at all seems strange, when he could have produced jesus without female assistance. why should he have given his son, coexistent with the father, and, as such, undoubtedly of a fully developed intelligence, all the discomfort and danger of infantile life? if jesus were but another phase of the godhead, one of the divine eternal trinity, it was degrading and ridiculous to have inflicted him with the processes of foetal life, with all the embryonic phases of development from ovule, through vertebrate and lower form to human guise; to have given him the dangers of human gestation and parturition, the inconvenience of childhood, with teething and other infantile discomforts, and the slow years of growth. why did he inflict all these things on a part, a third, of himself, in many years of preparation for but a few years of preaching, when he could have produced the christ in a wonderful manner, full grown in all the beauty and dignity and strength of perfect and sublime manhood? probably some will answer that then jesus would have been regarded as an impostor. but no more doubt could be cast on such an appearance than has been thrown on the doubtful story of the purity of mary. orr, in his haste to prove his belief, gives a very good argument against it (page 82) in the words, "the idea of a virgin birth ... was one entirely foreign to jewish habits of thought, which honored marriage, and set no premium on virginity." therefore, it could not have been of jewish origin. the jews never accepted it, and it grew up only under the influence of gentile converts. it was an idea of classic paganism, an adoption of universal phallism, this conception of a divine impregnation. the doctrine that by conjunction with a woman, god begat the christ is merely another phase of the phallic idea of the procreative principles of the deity--it is another form of the deus genetrix, the generative principle of male procreation. ii.--pagan parallels. the orthodox church denies that the christ had any brothers and declares that jesus was the only child of mary, in spite of gospel testimony to the contrary. matthew i, 25, referring to joseph, says, "and he knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born son," which implies that after his birth marital relations began between joseph and mary, from which other children were born, for how, otherwise, could jesus have been the "first-born"? that jesus had both brothers and sisters is declared in matthew xii, 46; xiii, 55, 56; mark iii, 31; vi, 3; luke viii, 19-20; john ii, 12; vii, 3, 5, 10, and acts i, 14, while paul in galatians i, 19, expressly names "james, the lord's brother." as the veneration for mary increased under the influence of the pagan conceptions of an immaculate mother-queen of heaven, these simple and natural consequences of her marriage could not be tolerated, even allowing for the exceptional conception of jesus, and the orthodox began to assert that mary was not only an uncontaminated virgin at the birth of jesus, but that by miracle she did not lose her virginity by that event. they attempted to explain the above references, first, by asserting that these children were of joseph by a previous marriage, and later, when they felt it necessary to endow the consort of their pure mother with perfect celibacy, they named them as cousins only. jerome was so strong a champion for joseph's virginity that he considered epiphanius guilty of impious invention for supporting the earlier belief regarding jesus' brethren. the buddhists were far wiser than the christians and eluded all such difficulties by causing maya to die seven days after the birth of sakyamuni, and by asserting such to have been the case with all the mothers of the buddhas. at the time of jesus' birth a brilliant star is believed to have heralded the event, and has passed into tradition as "the star of bethlehem." there is nothing novel in this idea, as all ancient peoples were very superstitious about the celestial bodies, firmly believing in astronomical influences on human affairs, and it seems to have been a common idea that the births of great men were announced by the presence of peculiar stars. in china, a new star appeared at the birth of yu, founder of the first dynasty, as was also the case when the sage laoutze was born, while in mexico the "morning star" was the symbol of the national savior quetzalcoatl. the primitive christians, however, did not have to look so far for such an idea, but easily found a parallel in the unusual star reported by the friends of terah to have appeared on the night of abraham's birth, which they said shone so brightly in the east. not only was the birth of the messiah announced by the brilliant star, but it was also celebrated by the singing of the heavenly host. similar phenomena occurred at the birth of krishna, when "the clouds emitted low pleasing sounds and poured down a rain of flowers." on the eve of the birth of confucius "celestial music sounded in the ears of his mother"; at buddha's a "marvelous light illumined the earth"; and at the birth of osiris a voice was heard proclaiming that the ruler of the earth was born. the savior having been born, he must necessarily be recognized, so the myth of the wise men and their gifts follows--in a fashion very similar to that told of the other saviors. the marvelous infant buddha was visited at the time of his birth by wise men who immediately recognized in him all the characteristics of divinity. at the time of confucius' birth "five celestial sages entered the house whilst vocal and instrumental music filled the air." mithras, the persian savior, was visited by wise men called magi at the time of his birth, and was presented by them with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh; and the same story is told by plato in relation to the birth of socrates. while it is claimed for all the world's saviors that they were borne by virgins and begotten by god, genealogies of royal descent are traced for them through the husbands of their mothers in a most illogical manner. as may be seen in the new testament, the pedigree of jesus is most elaborately set forth in both matthew and luke, who claim that through joseph (whose parentage is denied) the christ was a direct descendant of king david, though, strange to relate, the connecting generations are different in one inspired gospel from what they are in the other. krishna, in the male line, was of royal descent, being of the house of yadava, the oldest and noblest of india; and buddha was descended from maha sammata, the first monarch of the world. therefore, it is not surprising to find a royal pedigree for the god christ, especially when the religious position occupied by the king in rude societies is considered. the kaffres acknowledge no other gods than their monarch, and to him they address those prayers which other nations are wont to prefer to the supreme deity. every schoolboy knows of the apotheosis of the roman emperors, and the monarchs of mexico and peru were regarded as divinities. every king of egypt was added to the list of gods and declared to be the son of ra, and even, in some cases, was made the third person of a trinity. each denied that he owed his birth to the father from whom he inherited the crown, and claimed to have been miraculously begotten. special temples were erected for the worship of the kings, which was conducted by special priests. the parthian rulers of the arsacid house, likewise, claimed divinity and styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon. the fable of the slaughter of the innocents, which was merely a new form of the ancient myth of the dangerous child whose life is a constant menace to some tyrant, was copied from several ancient religions, and the flight of the holy family into egypt has its counterpart in other tales. king kansa sought the life of krishna and sent messengers to kill all infants in the neighboring places, but a heavenly voice warned his foster-father to fly with him across the river jumna, which was immediately done. salivahana, a virgin-born savior anciently worshiped in southern india, had a similar experience; and fable tells that at abraham's birth nimrod sought his life, fearing a prophecy that a child was born who should overthrow his power, and, as a result, he murdered 70,000 newly-born male children. at the time of moses' birth, pharaoh is said to have dreamed that a new-born child would cause egypt's ruin, and he ordered that all the new-born sons of israel should be cast into the nile. similar stories, familiar to all readers of the classics, are told of perseus, herakles, paris, jason, bacchus, romulus and remus. all these tales of the birth and early life of jesus are similar to those of the other and more ancient saviors, and so is the story of the temptation and the forty days' fast. moses fasted "forty days and forty nights" on the mount where he received the law (ex. xxiv, 18; xxxiv, 28; deut. ix, 9, 11). elijah fasted "forty days and forty, nights" on mt. horeb (i kings xix, 8). joachim, in shame at being childless, retired to the wilderness for a fast of "forty days and forty nights" (protevangelion i, 6, 7). buddha fasted and held his breath until he became extremely weak, when mara, prince of evil, appeared and tempted him to break his fast by offering to make him emperor of the world. quetzalcoatl was also tempted by the devil during a forty days' fast; and the temptation of zoroaster forms the subject of many legends. all these myths readily implanted themselves in the christian mythology, but the execution of its hero gave a great opportunity for mythical expansion and elaboration. it is taught that jesus was crucified; whether he was or not nobody knows, although there are more pieces of the "true cross" extant than could ever have flourished as trees on mount calvary. if such a person as jesus of nazareth ever lived and was ever executed by the romans, it is very probable that he was hanged, and the gallows may, very likely, have been of a form similar to that of a rude cross. the term crucifixion does not necessarily imply that one must be nailed outspread upon a symmetrical cross. it was the ancient custom to use trees as gibbets for execution, or a rude cruciform gallows, often called a "tree" (deut. xxi, 22, 23; nicodemus ix, 10). to be hung on such a cross was anciently called hanging on a tree, and to be hung on a tree was crucifixion. this rough method of execution was later modified by the christians to the present theory of the crucifixion, as they very naturally desired to appropriate the cross for their own especial emblem, owing to the fact that its great antiquity as a universal religious symbol would aid in the propagation of their faith, and since its earliest inception, christianity has been ever prone to aid its proselyting by the adoption of pagan dogmas, symbols and practices from the so-called heathen theologies. of all religious symbols, the cross is the most ancient and sacred. it has from the earliest antiquity been the mystic emblem for reverence and awe, and appears to have been in the aboriginal possession of every ancient people. populations of essentially different culture, tastes, and pursuits have vied with one another in their superstitious adoration of it. greek crosses of equal arms adorned the tomb of midas of phrygia; and long before the time of the eutruscans, the inhabitants of northern italy erected crosses over the graves of their dead. the cross was common to mexico; white marble crosses were found on the island of saint ulloa by its discoverers; and it was greatly revered in paraguay and peru. while the origin of the cross, shrouded as it is in the mists of the remotest antiquity, has been the subject of much speculation which has resulted in numerous theories, it is, undoubtedly, a conventionalized result of primitive phallic ideas. sexual motives underlie and permeate all known religious systems. the idea of a creative god naturally gave rise to characteristic symbolical expression of the male and female principles, which were gradually modified and reduced to the tau (a gothic t), representing the male principle, and the ring, representing the female principle. as a complete expression of the creative power, these two symbols were often placed in conjunction; and the most ancient form of the conjunction was, probably, that of the crux ansata, known to the egyptians as "the emblem of life," which was very simply formed by placing the ring above the t. this emblem is sometimes called the "cross with the handle," because in ancient sculpture it is often represented as being carried by the ring. (see doane, "bible myths"; inman, "ancient faiths," etc.). this handled cross was also sacred to the babylonians and occurs repeatedly on their cylinders, bricks and gems. in ancient scandinavian mythology the great warrior god thor was always closely associated with a cruciform hammer, this being the instrument with which he killed the great mitgard serpent, with which he destroyed the giants, and performed other acts of heroism. cruciform hammers, with a hole at the intersection of the arms for the insertion of the haft, have been discovered in denmark, and were used in consecrating victims at thor's altars. the cross, or hammer, of thor is still used in iceland as a magical sign in connection with wind and rain, just as the corresponding sign of the cross is now used among the german peasantry to dispel a thunderstorm; both being expressions of the same idea that the cross is sacred to the god of thunder. as christians blessed the full goblet with the sign of the cross, so the ancient vikings made the sign of the hammer over theirs; and the signs were identical. the practice of making the sign of the cross before eating, which has, in protestant sects, degenerated to the saying of grace, which again has assumed the form of a prayer of thanks to god for bestowing the sustenance, was originally merely a method of prevention against demonical possession. it was thought that demons abounded everywhere and that one was very likely to imbibe one of these spirits unless he took the precaution of making the sign of the cross, which they could not endure and from which they fled. this belief in the efficacy of a talisman, universal among all peoples from the most barbarous to so-called civilized communities, was not only countenanced but encouraged by christianity, and even today we find orthodox christians who--although they cannot be called educated in the highest sense, yet are not to be classed as illiterate--who are still practicing it. every good catholic wears a scapular, and many a one carries a little image of some saint to ward off disaster. the sign of the cross is still used in time of danger and is considered a weapon of miraculous power. sword hilts are still constructed in the form of the cross to give fortune in battle, and the masts of ships with yards were once considered the symbol of the cross. the burial of the dead about churches is another modern form of the ancient superstition that within the shadow of the cross demons dare not disturb the body, which was necessary for resurrection and immortality. this idea is a descendant of the ancient savage notion that bodies in the vicinity of the idol were protected. even in our modern protestant cemeteries we constantly find crosses erected over the graves in the same superstitious manner, although in most cases it has become merely a surviving custom, the origin of which the performers do not know. iii.--spurious relics. accompanying the worship of the cross, we find among orthodox christians the adoration of the three nails of the passion which are nothing more than a union of the two egyptian forms of architecture--the obelisk, expressing the male idea, and the inverted pyramid, expressing the female. two of these nails are supposed to have been found in the time of constantine, who adorned his helmet and horse's bridle with them. rome, milan and treves each boast of possessing one of them, while still another may be seen at the church of the holy cross of jerusalem, where it is annually exposed to the veneration of the people. in 1353 pope innocent vi. appointed a festival for these holy nails. despite these facts, a legend arose in the latter part of the sixteenth century that these three nails were fashioned into an iron ring three-eighths of an inch broad and three-tenths thick and presented by the empress helena to constantine to protect him in battle, and that this ring was later used to support the golden plates of the celebrated iron crown of lombardy. in reference to the practice of relic worship in the christian church, it is interesting to note that numerous objects of worship seem endowed with remarkable powers of multiplication. the church of coulombs, diocese of chârtres; the cathedral of pry, the collegiate church of antwerp, the abbey of our savior at charroux, and the church of st. john lateran at rome, all boast themselves the sole possessors of the only authentic "holy prepuce," which was circumcised from jesus on the eighth day after his birth (luke ii, 21), and preserved by the midwife in oil of spikenard, which was later poured upon his head and feet by mary magdalene (infancy ii, 1-4). likewise, there are numerous "holy shrouds." that at besancon, which was brought from palestine by crusaders about the beginning of the twelfth century, won fame by delivering the city from a destructive plague in 1544, while that at turin had a festival instituted for it by pope julius ii. in 1506. other authentic shrouds may be found at the church of st. cornelius at compeigne, in rome, milan, lisbon, and aix la chapelle. another much multiplied relic is the virgin's ring, supposed to have been the marriage ring used at the nuptials of joseph and mary. this sacred souvenir was discovered in 996 by a jeweler of jerusalem and was readily recognized by its remarkable powers of healing and self-multiplication. many european churches claim to possess this ring and profess to expose it to the devout for veneration, but, undoubtedly, the most celebrated is that held by the cathedral of perouse. relic worship and belief in the miraculous powers residing in the bones of departed saints, which continues, despite the more general education of the laity, is by no means of christian origin. in ancient greece the bones of heroes were superstitiously regarded and those of hector of troy were sacredly preserved at thebes; the tools used in the construction of the trojan horse were kept at metapontum; the sceptre of pelops was held at chæroneia; the spear of achilles at phaselis; and the sword of memnon at nicomedia. miraculous statues of minerva that brandished spears, abounded, and paintings that could blush and images that could sweat also existed. in india there are numerous teeth of buddha which his worshipers believe capable of performing miracles; and his coat, which as prince siddhatto he laid aside on entering the priesthood, has been miraculously preserved, and is still shown. jerome, in defending the worship of relics which had been attacked by vigilantus of barcelona, did not deny that it was adopted from paganism, but commended it and explained that as this reverence had been previously "only given to idols, and was then to be detested, was now given to martyrs, and therefore to be received." iv.--trial and execution myths. that jesus should have been executed, either as an historical fact or as a mythological theory, is not remarkable; and even when considered in the light of his being one of the godhead, there is nothing new in the relation of his death. the idea of a dying god is very old. the grave of zeus was shown at crete, and the body of dionyseus was buried at delphi. osiris and buddha both died, and numerous deities were crucified. krishna, the indian god, suffered such execution, as did also the mexican savior quetzalcoatl. representations of krishna abound wherein he is depicted as nailed to a cross and having a round hole in his side. prometheus was nailed by hands and feet to mount caucasus, with arms extended in the form of a cross. so immeasurably voluminous have been the writings of the orthodox upon the trial, execution, and resurrection of jesus that it seems advisable to consider these matters, from a rational point of view, upon the hypothesis that such a man really lived and suffered experiences similar to those narrated in the gospels. with that premise the following views are offered: the attitude of jesus before pilate shows him to have been a willing martyr, yea, desirous of martyrdom. in all probability his fanatical mind believed that when the supreme moment should come, when his execution should take place, and when his death seemed instantly imminent, some great natural phenomenon would occur to save him. he undoubtedly believed that he would not die, but that god would miraculously interpose to rescue him and that at that time he would not only be saved, but that the kingdom of heaven would be established under his control. that this was his belief seems to be shown by his cry of disappointment when he realized that nothing supernatural was to prevent his death. when that moment of realization came, his surprise was evident and, unlike many of his courageous followers who died in calmness and bravery, he cried aloud in mental and physical anguish, "my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" (matt. xxvii, 46; mark xv, 34.) his indifferent bearing before pilate showed this faith in his redemption, for when the roman procurator courteously asked him if he were the king of the jews, he replied ambiguously, as had always been his practice, "thou sayest it" (matt. xxvii, 11; mark xv, 2; luke xxiii, 3; john xviii, 37; nicodemus iii, 10). but such ambiguity, which had served very well among the lower classes who had flocked to hear and question him, was of no avail before the matter-of-fact roman, who, as an imperial officer, desired straightforward answers, and was little impressed by jesus' silence, except that he was rightfully astonished that when given the chance the prisoner should not have availed himself of it to explain his position. therefore, seeing jesus had no will to answer his questions except in an exasperating manner, after he had shown a willingness to save him, pilate delivered jesus over to the jews according to the custom of the romans in regard to the theological disputes of a subject people--but not until he had requested them to spare the preacher. had jesus given the roman a frank explanation of his position as an itinerant preacher, pilate would probably have saved him, but the chimerical idea of the interposition of god by a miracle, which would glorify him above all else that could occur, led jesus to make a willing sacrifice of himself and throw away the opportunity offered him by pilate. there is nothing noble nor grand in this impudent conduct toward the roman officer, but there is a good deal of justice and consideration in the conduct of pilate. there is nothing noble in jesus' willingness to die nor in his courting death at this trial, for it was entirely unnecessary and was desired on his part only because he expected a miraculous salvation. according to his belief, he was to be the gainer, and he staked his life for a heavenly glory and lost, although he was probably keen enough to see that in any case his death would increase his fame, for the execution of a fanatic always lends a little glory to a cause, no matter how base, as witness the desire of anarchists for martyrdom and the attitude with which they view those who die for their horrible ideas. the only question with the roman was as to whether jesus had proclaimed himself the king of the jews, and as he declined to answer this question, pilate could do nothing to save him. the blind hatred of orthodox christianity toward pilate is absurd. aside from the argument above, there is another reason why his memory should be leniently treated. according to the christian dogma, jesus was the son of god, and it was only by his sacrifice, by his actual death, that he could save man. by dying he took the sins of mankind upon himself, and thus became the savior. as the eternal son, knowing all things, as a part of the godhead, he knew his death must occur--that was his mission on earth. therefore, as instruments in the accomplishment of this grand plan, by which mankind was saved, and jesus became the savior, caiaphas and pontius pilate should be regarded as divine agents worthy of glory and praise. any other conclusion is entirely illogical. but then, who will look for logic in the dogmas of christianity? when one makes a logical investigation of this faith, he abandons its unreasonable teachings, which cannot be accepted by a logical mind. the person who allows his reason to govern his belief cannot in any way accept the teachings of the absurd and ridiculous christian cult. while suffering his execution, jesus, according to the gospel writers, lost both his moral and physical courage, and cried aloud in agony, "eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" in view of this fact, it seems impossible for reasonable creatures to accept the christian dogmas of the atonement and the trinity, for, if jesus were one of the godhead and had left his heavenly abode to descend to earth for the especial purpose of saving mankind by shedding his blood for them, he must necessarily have been aware of what was in store for him and have known all the details attendant upon his execution. looking at this fable rationally, jesus was inferior in courage to many of his followers. when we recall the innumerable martyrs who went to meet death with smiling lips, in perfect confidence, the wailing savior, with his doubting cry to god, presents anything but an impressive figure. surely, to burn at the stake, to lie under the axe, to endure the awful tortures of the inquisition, were fully as agonizing as a crucifixion; and yet men--and delicate women--who have never pretended to divinity, have borne these things silently. to be sure, the whole story of the christ is largely legendary and very uncertain, but, according to the gospels of matthew and mark, jesus was weak in his convictions, afraid to die for his own teachings, and on the whole, his conduct at the supreme moment reminds one of the weak french peasants of revolutionary times rather than the brave nobility. his peasant blood rose to the surface and in his fear he cried, "why hast thou forsaken me?" although but a few moments before he had assured one of the malefactors who suffered beside him that on this day he should be in paradise (luke xxiii, 43). everything considered, it is not strange that the jews would not accept jesus as the awaited messiah who should free them from the yoke of rome. they desired a strong and powerful leader, not a socialistic wandering teacher, and the prophecies promised a ruler surpassing the wisdom and power of the gorgeous solomon. there is not one prophetic passage in the old testament that can properly be applied to jesus, although many have been distorted for such purpose. the jews looked upon him as an impostor and a revolutionist who not only pretended to be what he was not, but who disregarded their ancient laws and preached a doctrine contrary to that held by their rabbis. it was not until long after his death that he was regarded as a prophet, and it was not until every proof of his very existence had vanished that divine honors were paid him. to the jews he was a vagrant revolutionist worthy of death, and the jews knew him personally; to a large majority of twentieth century christians, he is a god, and they know absolutely nothing about him, save a collection of puerile myths which tax their credulity as children, but which as adults they accept. however, regarding the execution of jesus, there is always the legitimate doubt that it ever occurred. aside from the fact that the usual mode of death for criminals was by hanging, there is much internal evidence in the gospels themselves which points to the conclusion that the whole story of the execution and resurrection is mythical and was composed from various hebrew and pagan legends. the dying cry was copied verbatim from psalms xxii, 1, wherein david "complaineth in great discouragement" over his diseased condition. v.--distorted "prophecies." the jews, desirous that the spectacle of the execution should not pollute the sanctity of their sabbath, requested that the death of the victim might be hastened (john xix, 31). therefore, according to custom, the roman soldiers broke the legs of the thieves, but, finding jesus already dead, they did not break his legs (john xix, 33). in this the writer of john sees the fulfillment of a prophecy (john xix, 36). in exodus xii, 46, occur the words "neither shall ye break a bone thereof," which were nothing more than a command of "the ordinance of the passover" (ex. xii, 43), and applied to the sacrificial animals to be eaten then. but the gospel writers, delving for prophecies, saw with their queerly distorted eyes a prophecy in this and numbers ix, 12, regardless of the fact that for centuries, in celebrating the passover, the jews had conformed to this practice of not breaking the bones of the animals eaten. but the biographers saw jesus as the paschal lamb, and associated him with the meat of the passover. the tendency to regard his body as the solid of the eucharist has likewise aided in this construction of the passages in exodus and numbers into a prophecy. in david's apostrophe to the righteous he says that though their afflictions are many, "the lord delivereth him out of them all" and preserves him. "he keepeth all his bones; not one of them is broken" (psalm xxxiv, 19-20). this has no reference to the christ, but the distorted vision of the apostolic writer saw in it such an intent. he says (john xix, 36), "for these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, a bone of him shall not be broken." in order, however, to be sure that jesus was actually dead and, in case he was not, to hasten that event, one of the soldiers pierced his heart with a lance. here john sees another prophecy fulfilled (john xix, 37), "they shall look on him whom they pierced." this refers to zechariah xii, 10, where we find the words, "and i will pour upon the house of david, and upon the inhabitants of jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced." this was the language of a prophet in a diatribe against the enemies of juda. how could the writer of john have seen a prophecy in this, when the context reads "in that day i will seek to destroy all the nations that come against jerusalem" (zech. xii, 9), and when at the time of the crucifixion, jerusalem was in the hands of the romans? likewise, the writers of matthew and john saw in the drawing of lots by the soldiers at the foot of the cross for the garments of jesus--the usual custom regarding the minor possessions of executed criminals, which were always considered the spoil of the military guard--"the fulfillment of a prophecy" (matt. xxvii, 35 john xix, 23, 24) found in psalms xxii, 18, "they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture," which really was a metaphorical expression of david concerning the treatment accorded him by his enemies. in the preceding verse 16, in the same relation and rhetorical figure, he says "they pierced my hands and my feet." on the whole, psalm xxii was a particularly happy composition for the christian adepts at misconstruction. neither mark nor luke refers to the fulfillment of a prophecy regarding the vestments, but content themselves with narrating the event (mark xv, 24; luke xxiii, 34). it was customary to give the condemned a drink of wine and myrrh to stupefy him and thus decrease the sufferings of execution. when this was offered to jesus he refused it (mark xv, 23), probably because he wished to be perfectly conscious at the time when god should miraculously reprieve him. matthew, xxvii, 34, intentionally falsifies the episode and calls the drink vinegar and gall, so bound is he to see a messianic prophecy in psalms xix, 21, "they gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink," which words were really applied by david to his own personal enemies. vi.--the resurrection. regarding the resurrection, it is interesting to note that, whereas most crucified men lived a number of hours and even a day in this torture, the wounds in the hands not being mortal and the position only affecting the circulation, causing death by exhaustion or starvation, jesus lived only three hours. therefore, it may have been that he was not actually dead, but merely in a state of coma, or perhaps a cataleptic condition. the custom he had of using his subjective mind in telepathic cures, as told in the gospels, seems to point to this conclusion, that, being strongly subjective, his condition here was cataleptic. many cases are known of men having been restored after crucifixion, and, as the embalming given jesus in the jewish custom consisted in nothing more than a wrapping in a shroud with myrrh and aloes, there is nothing to oppose this hypothesis. after resting for a while in the tomb, he may have revived and gone out and been seen by others, after which he wandered away again to die in solitude from exhaustion and lack of food. it is more probable, however, that this legend was copied from those of other religious heroes, who likewise rose from the dead, as there seems to be much variance between the different versions of the visit of mary magdalene to the sepulchre and her meeting with christ. matthew says (xxviii, 1) that mary magdalene and the other mary visited the sepulchre (3), where they saw a male angel descend from heaven during an earthquake and roll back the stone from the door and sit upon it (7). and he told them to "go quickly, and tell his disciples" that he had risen, which they did. but as they were going (9) "jesus met them ... and they came ... and worshiped him." mark tells a similar story with some variations as to the angel, but he relates that jesus appeared first to mary magdalene "early the first day of the week" (xvi, 9), and not on her visit with mary, the mother of james, and salome at the tomb. according to luke, the women went to the tomb, where they were informed by (xxiv, 4) "two men in shining garments" that jesus had risen, and they left and told the apostles. no mention is made here of the encounter of mary magdalene. john, however, gives a more elaborate version. he narrates (xx) that mary, going early and alone to the tomb, which she found entirely empty, ran and informed peter, who verified her story and departed. after she was left alone she looked into the sepulchre again, where she beheld two angels, and on turning away saw jesus standing by her. setting aside the idea of a mythical plagiarism in these tales, and also the cataleptic theory already mentioned, and considering them from yet another point of view, we can still find a rational explanation. the meeting of jesus with mary may have been the hallucination of a hysterical woman. according to mark xvi, 9, and luke viii, 2, jesus had cast seven devils out of her, which is surely sufficient proof that she was of neurotic temperament and had been subject to delusions and hysteria. undoubtedly after the shock of witnessing the crucifixion and death of her master, for three gospels agree in stating that she was present (matt. xxvii, 56; mark xv, 40; john xix, 25), this fond woman's mind, which seemed more normal in his presence, again gave way and she returned to her hysterical condition. on visiting the tomb, she found it empty because "his disciples came by night and stole him away," that they might declare he had risen from the dead, "as is commonly reported among the jews until this day" (matt. xxviii, 11-15). as she was leaving, she heard his voice (a common delusion of hysterical subjects) and saw his form (another hallucination), but when she went to touch him, she could not do so. the relation has all the marks of simple neurosis, and yet many modern christians base their whole faith upon the words of paul in 1 corinthians xv, 14, "if christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." as noted in various parts of this work, unless christians believe in the possibility of miracles, the power of a personal devil, and the physical resurrection of the body, there is no foundation for their faith, and it is a mockery. not satisfied with having executed their god according to the most approved methods of antiquity, christians felt the necessity of the presence of some remarkable natural phenomena at the time of his death, for among all ancient peoples it was customary to attribute some remarkable natural convulsions to the death of a great man. when prometheus was crucified on mount caucasus "the earth quaked, thunder roared, lightning flashed, wild winds rent the air and boisterous billows rose." on the death of romulus, there was "darkness over the face of the earth for six hours," and when quetzalcoatl died the sun became black! even in historical times, we find narrations of similar phenomena accompanying the deaths of royalty; and we read in many authenticated histories of the frightful thunderstorms that were coincident with the deaths of isabella of castile, charles the fifth, napoleon the great, and oliver cromwell. therefore, it is not surprising to find mention of such occurrences at the time of the execution of the christian god, although we are not prepared for such astonishing and unprecedented phenomena as related by the ever exaggerating author of the "gospel according to st. matthew," who states very seriously that "the vail of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." but the execution, while it completes the mortal life of the incarnate christian deity, by no means finishes the legend. like the gods of antiquity, the christ must also descend into hell and perform wonders similar to those of the ancient heroes. all the saviors of mankind had done so--zoroaster, the persian; osiris, the egyptian; baldur, the scandinavian; quetzalcoatl, the mexican; and krishna, the hindu; while ishtar voluntarily descended into the assyrian inferno. having descended into hell, resurrection was necessary, for it was unreasonable that the savior of mankind, the son of the supreme god, should remain perpetually in the place of punishment; and, as his life on earth was over, he could no longer abide there, and so the only plausible sequence was an ascension to heaven. krishna, the crucified hindu savior, rose from the dead and ascended bodily into the celestial regions, as did rama, another avatar of vishnu. buddha also ascended bodily into heaven when his mission on earth was fulfilled, and marks on the rocks of a high mountain are shown as the last impressions of his footsteps on earth. zoroaster and æsculapius also had similar experiences, as did elijah and adonis. osiris rose from the dead and bore the title of "the resurrected one," his ascension being celebrated in egypt at the vernal equinox, as is the christ's and as was adonis'. other saviors who rose from the dead were dionysius, herakles, memnon, baldur and quetzalcoatl. modern catholics are still taught the fables of the bodily ascension of jesus, mary the virgin, and mary the magdalene and many other holy persons, as actual miraculous truths, not to be questioned nor denied. very good, but how can educated catholics of today reconcile such truths with their actual scientific knowledge? they know that the earth is spherical, that the stars and planets are members of solar systems, that outside the terrestrial atmosphere is nothing but vast space. there is no such place as a heaven anywhere in these celestial regions, and the zenith of any geographical situation changes every moment. clouds are mere masses of vapor, not furniture for the repose of the glorified dead. then whither did these adored beings ascend? certainly, god in his love for them never flung them far into space to whirl about for eternity. these catholics also know the law of gravitation, which would not allow of such a method of transportation. but why ask these questions? no religious person is capable of thinking sensibly on the teachings of his faith, no matter how ridiculous. he accepts, as an adult, what he questions as a child. while the idea of bodily ascension of the christ was probably copied into his biography from that of enoch (gen. v, 24) and elijah (2 kings ii, 11), such stories form a large part of the annals of classical mythology, almost every hero of antiquity having been translated to the heavens when his earthly life was spent. the custom of converting the tombs of prominent christians into shrines likewise aided this belief, as, it being impossible to discover the burial places of the most conspicuous, the idea arose that they had been physically removed to heaven. the principal weakness of all the great theological systems now in practice is that they are terrestrial in their conception of god and man. their foundations were laid at a period when mankind knew little, and cared less, about the planets; at a period when it was presumed that the sun, moon, and stars were either beneficent deities or natural objects placed in the firmament to light the world and please the eye of man by their beauty. therefore god, as recognized in these systems, takes heed of naught else than this particular world. he totally ignores the other innumerable spheres of matter floating in space, many of which may support life. all his interests center on this infinitesimal portion of his creation. it is with the doings of the inhabitants of this planet that he is engaged. for this earth alone he creates man, animals and vegetables; to this alone, he sends his only son, or savior; and it is here, in the purified state, that the souls of men shall eternally dwell after the great judgment. since science has proved that our solar system is but one of the many, and that in this system the earth is not the largest nor most important body, should not such absurd theological ideas be abandoned and a grander and vaster conception of the deity be inaugurated? should not organized theology turn to nobler thoughts and say with paul, "when i was a child ... i thought as a child; but when i became a man, i put away childish things" (1 cor. xiii, 11)? all such doctrines as predestination, which are based upon the sin of adam, are now anachronistic. the acceptance of the theory of evolution, which entirely destroys the reality of the mythical adam, sweeps away his biography and leaves no foundation for such dogmas. if the christian church desires to remain, she must cast aside these worthless doctrines, founded upon false hypotheses, when the minds of men were in darkness regarding the origin of species, and when they saw in these the only solution of their problem. having accomplished his ascension and entered on his eternal kingdom, one of the christ's attributes is that of judging the dead. this idea undoubtedly came from the alexandrian school of theology, where so many of the christian theories were promulgated, for one of the best-known attributes of osiris was that of the judge, and he was generally represented as seated on his throne of judgment, bearing a staff (the crozier of the modern bishop) and holding the crux ansata. buddha is also supposed to be the judge of the dead. in connection with the idea of the christ as the divine judge of men, certain sects of christians have advocated that of his return to earth at some future period, which will terminate all terrestrial life as it is known to-day, basing this belief upon jesus' own proclamation of his second advent, although in his prophecy he declared the coming of the kingdom of heaven to be soon after his death. he even told his disciples that they could not visit all the cities of israel before he should come again (matt. x, 23); that their own generation should see these things (matt. xxiv, 34; mark xiii, 30); that some of those then listening to him should live to see his kingdom (matt. xvi, 28; xxiii, 36; xxiv, 34; mark viii, 38; luke ix, 1-27; xxi, 32). such were his words, and it seems strange that people, believing these words, can still regard him as a very part of god. such improbabilities did jesus gradually grow to preach, and so wild did he become in his exhortations that even his disciples at times appear to have believed him mad (mark iii, 21), an opinion in which his enemies agreed (mark iii, 22; john vii, 5-20; viii, 48-52; x, 20). they certainly had good cause for their suspicion. was not his conduct in cursing the fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season an act of lunacy (matt. xxi, 19-20; mark xi, 13-14), and likewise his arrogant assertion of the power of faith (matt. xvii, 20; xxi, 21; mark xi, 23; luke xvii, 6)? it is, however, quite probable that this idea of a second advent was copied from the persian theology, it being one of the tenets of the zoroastrian religion that in the end ormuzd, god of light, should conquer ahriman, god of darkness, and that he should then summon the good from their graves, remove all evil from the face of nature, and permanently establish the kingdom of righteousness and virtue upon the earth. but such ideas are not unique to christians and persians. the hindus believe that vishnu will have another avatar; the siamese live in constant expectation of the second coming of codom; the buddhists are looking forward to the return of buddha; the jews are awaiting the messiah; and the disciples of quetzalcoatl expected that deity's second advent--and most unfortunately thought their dream realized on the arrival of the spaniards, who took advantage of their consequent submissiveness to exterminate them. vii.--miracles. it is customary among orthodox christians to assert that the godhead of their christ was fully proven by the many miracles attributed to him in the new testament. but one must not forget that the performance of miracles is one of the most common attributes of founders of new sects, and one which all religious charlatans claim. krishna lulled tempests, cured lepers, and restored the dead; buddha, zoroaster (who walked on water on his way to mount iran to receive the law), horus, æsculapius, and innumerable others did likewise. mohammed, not content with miracles of the omnipotent physician type, juggled the moon through his sleeve. even to-day faith in miracles is not dead, and miracle-working attributes have been claimed for mrs. eddy, founder of christian science, dowie, founder of zion city, and sandford, leader of the holy ghost and us. there can be no doubt in the mind of a student of comparative theology that moncure d. conway was correct when he stated in his essay on christianity that "among all the miracles of the new testament not one is original. bacchus changed water into wine.... moses and elias also fasted forty days.... pythagoras had power to still waves and tempests at sea. elijah made the widow's meal and oil increase; elisha fed a hundred men with twenty loaves.... as for opening blind eyes, healing diseases, walking on water, casting out demons, raising the dead, resurrection, ascension, all these have been common myths--logic currency of every race." "one of the best attested miracles of all profane history is that which tacitus reports of vespasian, who cured a blind man in alexandria by means of his spittle, and a lame man by the mere touch of his foot, in obedience to a vision of the god serapis," says hume in his "essay on miracles," and we might here mention the numerous attested cures resulting from the laying on of royal hands by divinely appointed sovereigns. the rulers of france, aragon, and england touched for scrofula, this practice being continued by the latter from the period of its origin with edward the confessor until the accession of william the third, whose good sense put an end to it. james the second, the last practitioner of this art, had so great a belief in his curative powers that he set aside certain days on which he touched the afflicted from his throne at whitehall, while the sufferers came in throngs to kneel at his feet. the princes of the house of austria likewise held divine power and were supposed to be capable of casting out devils and curing stammering by the touch of their aristocratic fingers. numerous cases are narrated in which jesus, by simply touching the person of the afflicted, effected instantaneous cures. such were those of the leper (matt. viii, 2-3; mark i, 40-42; luke v, 12-13); the curing of peter's mother-in-law of a fever (matt. viii, 14-15; mark i, 30-31; luke iv, 38-39), although in the luke version he "rebuked" the fever; and the opening of the eyes of two blind men (matt. ix, 27-30). another method seems to have been by allowing the ill to touch him or his garments (matt. ix, 20-22; xiv, 36; mark iii, 10; v, 25-34; luke vi, 19; viii, 43-48). at other times he simply told the patient, or the agent of the patient, that faith had effected the cure, as with the centurion's servant (matt. viii, 5-13; luke vii, 2-10) and the daughter of the canaanite (matt. xv, 22-28; mark vii, 25-30); or told the stricken to hold forth a withered arm or pick up his bed and walk, by which command the cure was completed (matt. ix, 2-7; xii, 10-13; mark ii, 3-12; luke v, 18-25). among all primitive peoples, the principal cause of disease was supposed to lie in the displeasure of some deity toward the afflicted person, who was punished by this deity for some offense or neglect (psalms xxxviii, 3). one of the favorite methods of the gods in afflicting was sending evil and tormenting spirits into the body of the victim. after more was learned of disease, this theory gradually diminished in strength as regarded some troubles, but for centuries it was the universal theory that mental derangements and nervous afflictions were solely due to demoniacal possession, and all priests and medicine-men resorted to various exorcisms, from the primitive banging of gongs and tooting of trumpets to scare away the spirit, to the prayers and sprinkling of holy water of the mediæval church to rid the patient of the unwelcome inhabitant of his body. that jesus believed in this demoniacal possession is undoubted, and he effected his cures by ordering or calling out the devil from the body of the possessed. for example, there is a story of jesus driving devils into an innocent herd of swine (matt. viii, 28-33; mark v, 2-14; luke viii, 26-34). we also find him casting out and rebuking devils in various instances (matt. ix, 32-34; xii, 22-24; xvii, 14-18; mark i, 23-24, 34; iii, 11; luke iv, 33-36, 41; ix, 37-42). in all probability, these medical miracles of jesus were copied from older legends by his biographers. but, even if they actually occurred, they were not miracles at all, for a miracle must be, in the very meaning of the word, performed by the suspension of a natural law, and from all gospel accounts the mental therapeutics of the christ were performed, if at all, in perfect accordance with well-established psychological laws. they had been performed years before his birth, and they have continued to be performed years after his death, even to the present time. through the force of faith, the patients were placed in passivity (hypnosis) and treated by suggestions being impressed upon their subjective minds, when present; at a distance, they were cured by the telepathic suggestions conveyed from the healer to their subjective mentalities. there is no miracle here; it is merely a demonstration of telepathic and hypnotic phenomena, governed by psychic laws, and does not place the christ on a higher intellectual plane than modern hypnotists and mental healers, who consciously and knowingly work within the dispensation of these laws. they are anything but proofs of the godhead of jesus. it would seem that the pharisees had some such idea in mind when they demanded an astronomical miracle and requested "a sign from heaven." but, unable to comply, he evaded this performance by calling them hypocrites and "an evil and adulterous generation," and saying, "there shall no sign be given unto this generation" (matt. xii, 38-39; xvi, 1-4; mark viii, 11-13; luke xi, 16, 29; john ii, 18, 24; vi, 30). one of the commonest miracles ascribed to religious leaders of all sects and times, and one which never fails to convince witnesses and hearers of the authenticity of such a leader's claims, is that of restoring the dead to life. such miracles have been so well attested that there seems little reason to suppose them entirely fictitious. everyone has heard of cases of catalepsy, and medical history teems with cases of "suspended animation"; in fact, the only actual proof of death is the entire decomposition of the vital organs; therefore, the cruelty and crime of embalming corpses before such a condition is apparent. some undertakers actually insist upon embalming before such conditions, because the dead can then be made to "present a better appearance"! there are numerous well-proven cases of people lying for days in cataleptic conditions, even with slight signs of decomposition due to restricted circulation, and then returning to renewed lives and perfectly healthy states. all eastern travelers are familiar with the practices of hindu fakirs who allow themselves to be buried alive for weeks, and are "resurrected" without having suffered. therefore, it does not seem improbable that some such acts on the parts of various religious leaders may have occurred which have excited wonder with the ignorant, and interest among the educated. the early christians proclaimed many such wonderful works, albeit when challenged by a wealthy pagan to produce even one such case, in payment for which he would become a convert, a failure was the result. orthodox christians proclaim that jesus raised from death jairus' daughter, in entire forgetfulness of the actual words accredited to their leader, which were, "the maid is not dead, but sleepeth" (matt. ix, 24; mark v, 39; luke viii, 52), showing his opinion that she was in a cataleptic condition. while neither of the first three gospels says aught of the raising of lazarus, we find it in john, who seems to have substituted it for the story of jairus' daughter, which does not appear in his gospel. according to this hyperbolical and probably demented authority, jesus raised lazarus to life after he had been dead four days (john xi, 17), although jesus maintained that lazarus was not dead (john xi, 11). he declared that "this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of god, that the son of god might be glorified there-by" (john xi, 4), or, in other words, jesus believed that the unfortunate lazarus was obliged to undergo this frightful experience that his seeming resurrection might cause gaping among the vulgar, and add to the prestige of the miracle worker. for this reason, he purposely postponed going to the dying man, whom he might have saved, that he might later have the glory of bringing him to life! excellent ethics! finally, however, when he did depart, he said positively, "our friend lazarus sleepeth; but i go, that i may awake him out of sleep" (john xi, 11). having arrived at the sepulchre, he approached it, groaning and weeping, in a most theatrical manner, such as would appeal to a highly strung audience, and cried in a loud voice, "lazarus, come forth!" whereupon the dead man arose and came out (john xi, 33, 35, 43). now, this may have been catalepsy, and it may have been the strong voice and will of the christ which caused the awakening, but, in all probability, if the affair ever occurred, it was a preconceived dramatic incident. all the actors were partisans of the professed messiah, and the whole story reads like a play, and undoubtedly the words "come forth" were the cue for the waiting man to appear. it is by such contemptible methods that religions are established. if the tale were due to the imagination of the author of john, it is most discreditable to him, and places his hero in a very bad light. if it actually occurred, it shows jesus as a vain-glorious boaster, anxious to show his power to the vulgar, and desirous of gaining a following by charlatanry, either by raising a hypnotized man or by creating a cheap melodrama. it had been prophesied (2 esdras xiii, 50) that the messiah should be a miracle worker, which probably caused jesus to affect this rôle when he accepted the part of the messiah, and to condescend to soil his mission by charlatanism, even to the raising of the dead in imitation of the former prophets, elijah and elisha (i kings xvii, 16-24; ii kings iv, 18-37). it is rather amusing to hear theodore christlieb, that well-named, sturdy old german supporter of orthodoxy, boldly assert in irrevocable simplicity and straightforwardness, in his "modern doubt and christian belief": "however much in other respects our opponents may differ, they all agree in the denial of miracles, and unitedly storm this bulwark of the christian faith; and in its defense we have to combat them all at once. but whence this unanimity? because with the truth of miracles the entire citadel of christianity stands or falls. [the italics are his own.] for its beginning is a miracle, its author is a miracle, its progress depends upon miracles, and they will hereafter be its consummation. if the principle of miracles be set aside, then all the heights of christianity will be leveled with one stroke, and naught will remain but a heap of ruins. if we banish the supernatural from the bible, there is nothing left us but the covers" (pages 285-6). viii.--atonement and salvation by faith. the dogma of the atonement which very naturally resulted from the theological interpretation of the crucifixion, was readily accepted by the christian church. the idea of averting disasters by sacrifice and thus causing one devoted victim to bear the load of the sins of others, in payment of which his death was acceptable, is one of the greatest antiquity, and we find sacrifices of various kinds offered to propitiate the deities, from the simple offerings of primitive man to the more elaborate sacrifices of a more complicated society. finally came the idea of human sacrifice and then the culminating theory of the sacrifice of a divine being whose suffering should atone for all the sins of mankind. the belief of redemption from sin by the sufferings of a divine incarnation was general and popular centuries before the time of jesus. in the temple of the moon the albanians of the eastern caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves. when one exhibited more than usual symptoms of inspiration, the high priest maintained him in the utmost luxury for a year, after which he was anointed and led forth to be sacrificed. after his death, the people stood upon the body as a purificationary ceremony, it being believed that the dead man was possessed of a divine spirit. the ancient greeks were also familiar with the use of the human scapegoat, and it was customary at marsailles, one of the busiest and most brilliant of the greek colonies, to sacrifice an inspired man when the city was ravaged by the plague. all are familiar with the old jewish practice of using the scapegoat as the vehicle for the expiation of sins, and the whole theory of the atonement is little more than a modernized expression of the old idea that the sins of the community may be delegated to one agent to be sacrificed for the purification of the rest. the prophecy, as it is called by john, made by caiaphas, the high priest, "it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not" (john xi, 50; xviii, 14), which has been seized upon by the christians as a reference to the vicarious atonement, is nothing more than the opinion of an ardent orthodox jew that if jesus were permitted to live and preach he would destroy the ancient faith and his converts would abandon the old religion. the words "it is expedient for us" qualify the whole statement. they signified that the priesthood would be without a following were he allowed to continue. the idea of a vicarious atonement for all the people would have been of no expediency whatever to caiaphas and his class. they felt that if orthodoxy fell by jesus' preaching, the romans could easily crush them, for it was only by their union and the support of their ancient rites that they could form any front to the imperial government; it was by these alone that they had any political significance. once dismembered, the jews would be scattered to the corners of the earth (john xi, 52). this was the meaning of caiaphas' words, and he was correct, for such was the actual case. when orthodoxy was undermined, the jewish nation was ruined. the doctrine that god was angry with humanity because of its ancestors' transgressions, and would forgive its sins only on its acceptance of belief in the godhead of jesus, is so entirely at variance with the jewish teachings, which held that god freely forgave penitents on the confession of their sins (ex. xxxiv, 6-7; neh. ix, 17; ps. ciii, 3; cxxx, 4; is. xxxiii, 24; dan. ix, 9) that it was never accepted by them. some old christian writers believed that it was to the devil that the christ was sacrificed. their belief in the justice of the supreme would not allow them to think that he demanded the sacrifice of an innocent for the sins of the guilty. proclus of constantinople, in the age of austin, wrote that "the devil held us in a state of servitude, boasting that he had bought us. it was necessary, therefore, that all being condemned, either they should be dragged to death, or a sufficient price be paid; and because no angel had the wherewithal to pay it, it remained that god should die for us." while such an idea is certainly of a higher moral nature than that which states that god sacrificed his own innocent son for man, it has the unfortunate result of attributing to the devil greater power than to god; for if the devil could demand and receive a part of the god-head as ransom, then god himself was weaker than the arch fiend. hislop, in his "two babylons," commenting upon the chaldean doctrine that it was "by the works and merits of men themselves that they must be justified and accepted of god," utterly condemns it, and glories in the dogma of the atonement with great and illogical pleasure. having reviewed the egyptian belief that anubis weighed the merits and defects of departed souls, so that osiris, in accordance with the result, might judge and sentence them; and the parsee belief that the angel of justice sat on the bridge of chinevad, which connected heaven and earth, weighing souls to decide whether or not they should enter paradise, he condemns such theories as "utterly demoralizing," and asserts that no believer can ever have "any solid feeling of comfort, or assurance as to his prospects in the eternal world," which very fact would seem conducive to clean lives and good deeds. then he continues in ecstasy to exalt the immoral christian doctrine of "justification by faith alone," which he declares alone "can produce a life of loving, filial, hearty obedience to the law and commands of god," and by which man may reach salvation "absolutely irrespective of human merits, simply and solely through the righteousness of christ." this is one of the most absurd and immoral doctrines of all the absurd and immoral doctrines of christianity, and one which leads to all varieties of crime and misery. a man who believes that simple faith alone is a perfect and acceptable passport to eternal bliss will take no pains to lead either a decent or useful life. he is at liberty to commit all the crimes known to his nature; he may murder, steal, rape, and lie with impunity, for his faith in christ will save him from his well-deserved punishment; while a man of high ethical standards and immaculate moral principles, who spends his whole life in self-sacrifice for the progress of humanity is doomed to damnation, unless he believe! what a horrible doctrine! what a blasphemous conception of the justice of god! every student of comparative theology knows that such views of atonement were centuries old at the date of the supposed birth of the christ, and that all sorts of sacrifices were made at the altars of different gods with the same idea of atonement; but, aside from this, is there not something cowardly and mean in trying to shirk the responsibilities of one's actions upon either an animal, a man, or a god? is it not contemptible to suppose that the death and suffering of another will allow one to go unpunished, or that such suffering is a license for humanity to sin? all that is ridiculous, blasphemous, and illogical appears in this stupid dogma. ix.--the trinity--mariolatry. the dogma of the trinity, which was introduced, strongly advocated, and finally successfully lobbied through the famous council of nicaæ in 315, by that astute theological politician athanasius, bishop of alexandria, split the christian church in twain and threw europe into turmoil and bloodshed. athanasius was the leader of the alexandrian school of christian theology which drew its inspirations and ideas largely--one might almost say, exclusively--from ancient egyptian sources. the egyptians were an essentially religious people whose deistic ideas were surrounded by ceremony, priestcraft, and mysticism, all of which made such a deep impression upon the pliant minds of the alexandrian christians that they molded their new faith in the form of their old. the egyptians highly revered the number three, which they generally represented under the form of a triangle. to the egyptians nothing could be perfect or complete unless it was of three component parts. therefore, their gods were generally grouped in sets of three, many cities having their own especial trinities. horus was divided into three persons, and osiris, isis and horus were worshiped under the sign of the triangle. but egypt was not alone in her trinitarian ideas. the theory of sex worship had a strong hold on all the peoples of antiquity, and it is not surprising to find similar religious expressions in india. one of the most prominent features of indian theology is the doctrine of the divine triad governing all things. this triad is called the tri-murti and consists of brahma, the creator, vishnu, the preserver, and siva, the destroyer. it is an inseparable unity though three in form. the inhabitants of china and japan, most of whom are buddhists, worship god in the form of a trinity. the persians have a similar triad composed of ormuzd, the creator, mithras, the son, and ahriman, the destroyer. the ancient scandinavians likewise worshiped a triple deity who was yet one god, and consisted of odin, thor, and frey. one of the many weak points in the doctrine of the trinity, and one that must be noticeable even to christians, is that, according to the new testament, the apostles themselves never seem to have recognized the divinity of jesus, but always treated him as a human jew like themselves. this attitude of the early christian disciples is noted by priestley, who remarks in his "corruptions of christianity" (page 136): "it can never be thought that peter and the others would have made so free with our lord, as they sometimes did, if they had considered him as their maker, and the being who supported the whole universe; and therefore must have been present in every part of creation, giving his attention to everything, and exerting his power upon everything, at the same time that he was familiarly conversing with them. moreover, the history of the temptation must be altogether improbable in such a supposition. for what could be the offer of the kingdoms of this world to him who made the world, and was already in possession of it?" numerous texts which tend to affirm the humanity of jesus have been stumbling blocks in the paths of the trinitarians, and they have taken great pains to explain away these embarrassing texts, even at the cost of much ingenuity and absurdity. paul, the real founder of the faith, in his first epistle to timothy, says: "for there is one god, and one mediator between god and men, the man christ jesus" (1 tim. ii, 5); and again in his first epistle to john he remarks: "no man hath seen god" (1 john iv, 12). such phrases as "why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is god" (matt. xix, 17), and "but now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which i have heard of god" (john viii, 40), do not appear to be fitting remarks for the second person of the trinity. again, the words, "my father is greater than i" (john xiv, 28), were likewise difficult of explanation by those who held that every member of the trinity is coequal, but austin got around this by declaring that "christ having emptied himself of his former glory, and being in form of a servant, was then less, not only than his father, but even than himself"! the same writer asserts that the words, "that the son knew not the time of the day of judgment, but only the father" (mark xiii, 32), means that while jesus did know something of the trinity, he would not make it known to others--thus making a downright liar of his god. the whole of trinitarianism is epitomized in the phrase of peter lombard, who, having made the impossible arithmetical assertion that no one person of the trinity is less than the other two, says: "he that can receive this, let him receive it; but he that cannot, let him, however, believe it; and let him pray that what he believes he may understand." jesus having been ordained one of the godhead, the only begotten son of the most high god, the worship of his mother naturally followed; for who could reasonably refuse to bend the knee to the one virgin of all humanity, considered worthy of the honor of bearing the incarnate deity? it was all the easier for the christian church to adopt this practice, that it had been one of the principal features of the ancient theologies. all nations have worshiped a pure, chaste queen of heaven, a personification of that beautiful celestial body that smiles so benignly down on earth every month. in every land the moon was worshiped as a mother goddess, pure, beautiful, and loving; for there is not the slightest doubt that the virgin queen of heaven, so commonly worshiped by all nations, was merely a personification of the moon. isis, mother of the egyptian savior horus, was worshiped as a virgin and was styled "our lady," "queen of heaven," "mother of god," "intercessor," and "immaculate virgin." she was commonly represented with the divine infant seated on her lap, or standing on a crescent moon, and having a glory of twelve stars about her head. with the adoption of the worship of isis to christianity, the crescent moon became a sacred symbol of mary, who was often portrayed standing upon one. it was held peculiarly sacred by the greek church and a large crescent moon of gold adorned the dome of st. sophia at constantinople. when the city fell in 1453 before the turkish arms, the sultan adopted the crescent as a symbol of his victorious power and as a humiliation to his christian enemies, and thus again the religious significance of the crescent changed, and as an emblem of a mohammedan power soon came to be regarded by the forgetful christians with horror and a deadly hatred. the ancient chaldees believed in a celestial virgin-mother to whom the erring sinner might appeal, and shin-moo, the mother goddess, occupies a conspicuous place in chinese worship. the babylonians and assyrians worshiped a goddess called mylitta, whose son tammuz is said to have arisen from the dead. in india they have worshiped for ages devaki, the mother of krishna, and maya, the mother of buddha, both of whom are represented with the infant saviors in their arms. their statues, similar to the christian madonnas, are found in hindu temples, and their portraits are always accompanied by halos. sochiquetzal, mother of quetzalcoatl, was worshiped in mexico as the mother of their crucified savior. as queen of heaven and the chaste and immaculate protectress of women, the greek hera and her roman prototype, juno, were worshiped by the ancient classical world, while the virtuous diana of ephesus held a similar place in phoenician mythology. all the ancient beliefs in the virgin queen of heaven and her miraculous child probably had more or less effect on the growth of virgin worship in the christian church; but it was undoubtedly egyptian influence which was most powerful in the adoption of it, just as it was in regard to the trinitarian dogma. the worship of isis and horus was introduced into rome during the early days of the empire and was readily accepted. and with its introduction came those basalt images of the goddess and her child which have since been adopted by the christians as ancient representations of mary and jesus, albeit they are as black as ethiopians. many centuries before, the worship of the greek goddess hera had been instituted at rome under the name of juno, and she was especially regarded as the chaste and immaculate protectress of women. and it was the combination of the worship offered to these two deities that the christian church condensed into the worship of the mother of jesus, to which it added the attributes of diana, making mary the patroness of chastity as well as fruitfulness! in dante's day it was customary to invoke the virgin mary at childbirth just as juno lucina was invoked by the pagan ancestors of the italians. the worship of the virgin as theotokos, the mother of god, was promulgated at the general council of ephesus, which was called by the emperor theodosius ii in 431, and, after that date, and up to the present time, we find this lowly jewish peasant girl delineated in all the insignia of royalty and portrayed in the most beautiful and patrician type of classical beauty. with the adoration of mary rose the legend that she, too, had ascended bodily into heaven and was there crowned by her son and bidden to sit eternally upon his right hand that she might plead with him to mitigate the punishments of sinners, thus allowing that the judgment of this second member of the holy trinity might be fallible, or at least open to influence. having raised the virgin to this immense height, the natural sequence was to go a step farther and grant to her also immaculate origin. this idea was first noticed in the eleventh century and steadily grew until in 1494 sextus the fourth officially recognized it and gave it the solemn sanction of the church, and in july, 1615, paul the fifth instituted the office commemorating her immaculate conception. virgin worship has continued to grow and flourish, and even so late as 1854, pius the ninth issued a bull officially declaring mary the "mediatrix" between christ and the faithful. mary is not, however, the only intercessor that stands between man and his god. there is an immense horde of saints who also occupy positions of honor about the heavenly throne. these immortal semi-human beings are created by a decree of the roman pontiff and their canonization has often been due to whimsical reasoning. that all the apostles, martyrs, and early christian fathers should have been raised to this holy peerage is not so remarkable; but that such honor should have been conferred on the wicked, unscrupulous, and vicious constantine, and his almost unknown mother helena; on the powerful and warlike charlemagne; and on the ambitious and ungrateful thomas à becket, seems strange to say the least. x.--the saints--good and evil spirits. that this army of saints was originally created to replace the body of heroes and demi-gods of antiquity cannot be doubted. the compliance with which the church converted pagan deities into christian heroes is perfectly well known, and it is shown in many ways. ancient statues were declared to represent newly canonized saints to whom pagan attributes were unhesitatingly given--often most ridiculously. at the temple of sebona, in nubia, the christians replaced the figure of the old god of the temple, which appeared in a fresco, by that of st. peter, thus depicting king rameses the second as presenting his offering to the christian saint! the statue of jupiter in st. peter's at rome has been declared that of the erstwhile fisherman, and its original thunderbolts have been replaced by the keys, which the christian mythologists have filched from the god janus to bestow on their revered patron in accordance with the promise of matthew xvi, 19. rome is full of proofs of this conversion of heathen to christian deities. the temple formerly sacred to the bona dea was dedicated to the virgin mary; the church of saint apollinaris stands on the spot formerly dedicated to apollo; and the temple of mars was given to st. martina. the very names of some of the saints have an old familiar sound--as st. baccho, st. quirinus, st. romula, st. redempta, st. concordia, st. nympha, and st. mercurius. the christian symbolism of its heroes has also a decidedly pagan flavor. the ancient winged lion of the egyptian mythology is made to portray st. mark; the sacred bull denotes st. luke; while st. john is generously supplied with both the eagle of jove and the hawk's head of horus. the idea of intercession, which is the principal attribute of all the saints, is also a very ancient religious theory and probably came with the other dogmas already mentioned from alexandria, as we find that the egyptians believed that some of their gods--and particularly the four gods of the dead--acted as mediators with the stern judge osiris and attempted to turn aside his wrath and the punishment of sins. much akin to the saints, though differing from them in form and in never having been mortal, are the angels. these beings combine the wings of the roman victories with the sweet voices of the teutonic elves and the classical sirens, and are in many ways similar to the famous northern valkyries who wore shirts of swan plumage and hovered over scandinavian battlefields to receive the souls of falling heroes. the hindu apsaras and moslem houris belong to the same family. a few years ago a bitter controversy arose in new york episcopal circles as to the sex of these unearthly creatures, some strenuously advocating their masculinity, while others gallantly asserted that they were essentially feminine, but the earlier idea was that they were entirely sexless, combining the characteristic virtues of both sexes. apart from both saints and angels stands another figure in the christian mythology--one, however, that has no actual counterpart in the ancient faiths. this is satan. the classical religious systems had no such conception, their king of the dead being a gloomy and austere deity without any of the malicious or mischievous propensities of the more modern devil, and having no designs upon the welfare of mankind. the medieval conception of the devil was a grotesque compound of elements derived from all the pagan mythologies which christianity superseded. from the sylvan deity pan he gets his goat-like body, his horns and cloven hoofs; his lameness was due to his fall from heaven, in imitation of the fall of the roman vulcan; and his red beard was taken from the lightning god thor, as was also his power over the thunderbolts; while his pitchfork is the converted trident of neptune. that much of the absurd fabric of christianity is built upon a belief in satan cannot be denied, for the whole theology is based upon the necessity of a savior whose death atones for the sins of mankind, which were consequent upon man's fall from grace through the machinations of the devil. had man never fallen, there were no need of a savior. had man never been tempted, he would never have fallen, and in no words was the necessity of a belief in the devil more plainly set forth than by that most orthodox writer, des mousseaux, in his "moeurs et pratiques des demons," published in 1852. he says: "the devil is the chief pillar of faith. he is one of the grand personages whose life is closely allied to that of the church, and without his speech, which issued out so triumphantly from the mouth of the serpent, the fall of man could never have taken place. thus, if it were not for him, the savior, the crucified, the redeemer, would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries and the cross an insult to good sense!" in his preface to "les hauts phenomènes de la magie," des mousseaux repeats this theory: "if magic and spiritualism were both but chimeras, we would have to bid an eternal farewell to all the rebellious angels now troubling the world; for thus we would have no more demons down here.... and if we lost our demons, we would lose our savior likewise; for, from whom did that savior save us? and then there would be no more redeemer; for, from whom or what could that redeemer redeem us? hence, there would be no more christianity." he evidently regards satan as "the prince of this world" (john xii, 31; xvi, 11); "the god of this world" (cor. iv, 4); and "the prince of the power of the air" (eph. ii, 2). the universally accepted belief of christendom in the almost absolute power of the devil was the cause of the most awful persecution of innocence that the world has ever seen. while the tortures of the heretics by the inquisition had some cause of a political as well as ecclesiastical nature, the houndings of those accused of witchcraft and sorcery had no foundation save in superstition and gross ignorance. during the christian era millions of persons have been destroyed for this crime in conformity to the command, "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (ex. xxii, 18). the roman church recognized and punished the crime; luther approved of the burning of witches; the scotch reformers did likewise, and the puritans of new england delighted in the persecution. while all religiously orthodox people accept the narrative of scriptural miracles with unquestioning faith and never cast a doubt on the greatest improbabilities so long as they are told of biblical heroes, these very people assign all the seeming supernatural affairs of post-scriptural times to the devil. psychical phenomena which, if performed two thousand years ago by jesus (such as the resurrection of lazarus and the materialization to the magdalene), they accept without hesitation, they brand as trickery or a delusion or satan, when placed before them by a professed spiritualist. witches and wizards were condemned to horrible deaths by the medieval church for performing the very identical acts for which the same church canonized departed saints and instituted offices for their adoration and worship; and modern christians smile and sneer derisively at fortune tellers, but condemn in holy horror as heretics those who refuse to believe in the foreseeing powers of the ancient hebrew prophets. this christian devil-worship, for it can be called little else, crept into judaism during the babylonian captivity, and was originally a recognition of the dual powers of good and evil, seemingly coequal. by placing satan in opposition to god, in giving him eternal life, and endowing him with miraculous powers, and even allowing him to upset and vanquish the plans of god, christians have made satan equal, if not superior, to the deity. a puritan bigot hanging witches in new england was admitting in the plainest manner his faith in satan's power, though it never occurred to him for an instant that these curious happenings might be attributed to god. the power of god to perform miracles was then, as now, a matter of the past. with the protestant reformation came the idea that no longer did god interfere for the benefit of man. in the seventeenth century god had ceased to work by other than natural agencies. his miraculous powers, if not lost, were at least suspended. but not so satan--that archfiend was as powerful as ever, if not more so. he could inflict magical tortures on god's divinely elect and make them writhe in agony. pious cotton mather had ceased to believe in divine miracles, but he had no doubt of devilish ones, and it appears to all students of that dark and shameful period of our history that the belief was rampant among the majority that god was vanquished and satan ruled. never was belief in the dual principles of good and evil more surely set forth in ancient persia than it was in new england by such harsh, cruel, and bigoted priests as mather and parrish. today, while all churchmen have grown more liberal, we still find both in pulpit and pew innumerable believers in the power of satan to tempt and force erring humanity into wrong and sinful paths in miraculous salvation from which by god they have no faith. today, instead of earthly and present salvation by the deity from the clutches of satan, the belief seems prevalent that a post-mortem salvation is more efficacious, and that all that is required for eternal bliss is belief in the vicarious atonement of the christ. to hear our orthodox friends declaim on the powers of satan almost makes one ready to believe that god is dead and satan rules supreme. such is the blasphemy of demonic faith. while satan, as the arch-enemy, is somewhat similar to the persian ahriman, he is not alone in his wickedness. when christianity came into power and supplanted paganism as the roman state religion, it immediately debased all of the pagan gods, whom it did not appropriate to itself as saints, to devils and assigned them subordinate positions in hell, under command of the great satan. and thus, all the beautiful water sprites, sylvan nymphs, spirits of the air, and other lesser deities, became the associates of wickedness, and, as such, continued, until a very recent date, to hold sway over the superstitious imaginations of the majority of europeans. the mediæval church likewise invented the famous succubæ and incubi, the former demons impersonating the beautiful nymphs of the old mythology and attacking the virtue of youths with their seductive arts, while the latter, in imitation of the ancient satyrs, sought the virginity of unsuspecting maidens; all of which may readily be learned of in accounts of the many trials held by "the holy inquisition," in which such were condemned as had held intercourse with these demons. in many cases, women swearing to have had intercourse with incubi were merely suffering from erotic and nymphomaniac hallucinations, while others may have found it a convenient excuse for explaining illicit impregnations. men, falling under the charms of women, found it a convenient method for disposing of their loves, after the infatuation had passed, by declaring them succubæ; and monks, who had contracted venereal diseases, laid their sufferings to these same fair demons. in the case of the monks, however, the succubæ were often of purely hallucinary origin, due to excessive asceticism together with the suppression of natural desires and a too faithful conformity to the ordinance of celibacy. nymphomania is also prevalent in convents, owing to the unnatural sexual lives led by the nuns, who either remain truly chaste or abandon themselves to all sorts of debauchery and perverted lubricities. in former times these rages of demented women were supposed to have been caused by possession of demons, which tormented them at the orders of magicians, and advantage was often taken by the unscrupulous to accuse their enemies of the crime of sorcery, and thus cause their execution. one of the most famous of these horrible affairs was that of loudin in poitiers, where the nuns of the ursuline convent, becoming hysterical and demented, swore themselves afflicted by urbain grandier, a priest of the local church, and despite the attempts of the rational bailiff and sensible civil lieutenants, some enemies of the curé among the exorcists managed to secure the arrest, torture, and final burning of the unfortunate man in 1632. later, it was discovered that, being personally attractive, handsome and gallant, grandier, who never denied his numerous amours, had incurred the enmity of the loudin nuns by entirely ignoring their advances; and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! these libidinous women, constantly brooding over disappointment to their fond hopes, gave such a character of demonic possession to their neurosis that advantage could be taken of it by rival priests to rid themselves of an envied enemy. the writhings, gesticulations, convulsions, etc., of these unfortunate women, combined with the indecency of their actions on the approach of the exorcists (caused merely by the approach of a male), were believed by the vulgar to be demonstrations of demonic possession. other nuns, seeing the attention and notoriety thus gained by these sisters, although themselves free from dementia, could not resist the temptation to simulate its forms and thus acquire renown for themselves. thus arose those horrible demonical scenes which occupied the attention of all europe during the seventeenth century and seemed to point to the possession of all convents by devils. and not convents alone, for other hysterical women, without the walls, possessed of the same rage for notoriety, took up the character of demonic possessed and spread the vulgar superstition until it seems that every woman in europe who was so unfortunate as to be in any way afflicted with tendencies to hysteria, neurosis, idiocy, or dementia of any character whatever, came to be regarded as in the power of a demon, which in turn was the slave of some magician. and thus, through the influence of an ignorant and unscrupulous priesthood, a powerful engine was placed at its disposal for the removal of enemies. executions for sorcery continued until their very number and barbarity palled, and the wearied people were ready for their abolition, when the reformation opened and with the accession of power, protestantism, in this matter, at least, swayed the masses to reason once more. dr. figuier, in his "histoire du merveilleux," explains these demonical possessions as entirely due to hypnotism, and, ignoring the nymphomaniac theory, asserts that the exorcists themselves hypnotized the nuns for their own glory and for purposes of vengeance. one page 234 of volume i he says: "l'appareil deployé par les exorcistes, leurs adjurations, leurs gestes imposants et forcenés, tenaient lieu des manipulations que nos magnetiseurs emploient pour endormir leurs sujets. operant sur des jeunes filles nerveuses, malades, melancoliques, les exorcistes produisaient chez elles une partie des phenomènes auxquels donné lieu le somnambulisme artificiel." the universal belief in evil spirits became a powerful engine for the advancement of the church. by its use all those who were inimical to the church could be put out of the way as comrades of devils, and, furthermore, the theory was advanced that only by the exorcisms of the church could man be protected from malevolent powers. holy water, signs of the cross, repetitions of the name of mary had full power to annul all the machinations of the demons, but only in the hands of the true believers was this efficacious. to preserve one from the dangers of demonic spite, absolute orthodoxy was essential, and thus a great premium was imposed upon strict adherence to the church. thus was gross superstition a most powerful factor in the growth and spread of christianity. according to lecky: "there was scarcely a village or a church that had not, at some time, been the scene of supernatural interposition. the powers of light and the powers of darkness were regarded as visibly struggling for the mastery. saintly miracles, supernatural cures, startling judgments, visions, prophecies, and prodigies of every order, attested the activity of the one, while witchcraft and magic, with all their attendant horrors, were the visible manifestations of the other.... tens of thousands of victims perished by the most agonizing and protracted torments, without exciting the slightest compassion.... nations that were separated by position, by interests, and by character, on this question were united." and the germ of all this evil lay in the very foundation of christianity--the faith held in supernatural agencies. the belief in the supernatural agency in the temptation of eve, the temptations of jesus, the possibility of the miraculous conception, and the miracles of christ, were but stepping-stones to faith in innumerable invisible but potent powers. one who can conscientiously believe in the supernatural as found between the covers of the bible can, by but a slight stretch of the imagination, believe any preposterous tale that is woven about a supernatural agency. if one can believe a woman can conceive without contact with semen, one can believe some old woman can dry up his cow. if one can believe that jesus actually raised lazarus from the dead, one can believe that a man can kill him by sticking pins in a wax effigy. if one can believe that elijah ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot, one can believe that goody jones rode a broomstick through the air. if one can believe that the christ was actually tempted by the devil, one can believe in succubæ and incubi. it is all a matter of logical reasoning. as soon as a christian's intellectual powers develop to a point where he can find no place for the miraculous in the world about him, he begins to doubt that which was in the world before him; but, regarding theological tales, he either places them in another category or ignores them, unless faced with them, when he crawls and calls them "sacred mysteries." that an old woman can sour his milk or kill his child by the evil eye he does not believe, for reason has taught him otherwise. and for the same reason he would not believe his daughter if she told him she was pregnant with a miraculous child. he did not believe josephine woodbury when she made a similar statement in boston a few years ago. but he does believe it of mary, because it is a "holy mystery," and is in another category. he has inherited his faith from a long line of orthodox ancestors, and he has never stopped to consider it by the light of pure reason. it is fortunate for the dogma of the virgin birth that it took root when people believed such things, otherwise mary would have been adorned with the scarlet letter. feasts, fasts and elaborate ceremonials were important features of the most ancient worships, and it is not, therefore, strange to find somewhat modified adaptations of them in the christian church. for, wherever christianity wandered and found firmly implanted religious theories and customs, it immediately gave them new significations and accepted them, until finally the greater part of paganism was gathered from all parts of the civilized world and amalgamated into one strong theological organization. finding in almost every nation a festival at the winter solstice, in commemoration of the accouchement of the celestial, virgin queen of heaven, and the birth of the sun-god, the christian fathers decided to adopt the 25th of december as the natal day of their christ. mithras, osiris, horus, bacchus, adonis and buddha were all said to have been born on this day, and it is the date of one of the greatest religious festivals of india, during which the people decorate their houses with garlands and make presents to relatives and friends; a custom adopted by the christians in much the same manner as was that of the ancient german yule-log, burned in honor of the sun-god. xi.--religious holidays and rites. the winter solstice was also the time of the great scandinavian festival in honor of frey, son of odin and frigga, who was supposed to have been born at this time. the jews, likewise, have a feast beginning on the 25th of december, which lasts eight days, and is in memory of the victory of the maccabees over the greeks. it is called the feast of hanuca. a great annual festival, called the "feast of lamps," was held by the egyptians in the early part of the year in honor of the goddess neith, during which lamps of oil were burned all night before the houses. this festival was renamed candlemas or the "purification of the virgin," and was adopted by the christian church. the ancient pagan inhabitants of europe annually celebrated a spring festival which began with a week's indulgence in all kinds of sports and was called the carne-vale, or taking farewell of meat, because a fast of forty days immediately followed. in germany this was held in honor of the saxon goddess hertha, or ostara, or eostre--as you may prefer to call her--whose name was adopted as easter by the christians as the name to be applied to the end of their lenten period. among the syrians it was the custom to celebrate an elaborate festival at the time of the spring equinox in honor of the glorious adonis, beloved of the great goddess astarte. this worship was later introduced into greece, whence it traveled to rome with the majority of grecian mythological theories. it was later introduced into egypt, where it was annually celebrated at alexandria, the cradle of christianity, until the latter part of the fourth century, when a christian significance was given it. the myth of adonis is too well known to need repetition here, and its parallel to that of the christ is readily seen. the ceremonies now held in rome at easter are but slightly different from those held there at the same time of year centuries ago. this similarity was explained away by the assertion of the christian fathers "that a long time before there were christians in existence, the devil had taken pleasure to have their future mysteries and ceremonies copied by his worshipers"--a very simple and satisfactory explanation! that easter is in reality an astronomical festival in honor of the sun-god seems conclusive from the fact that it occurs on no settled date, but takes place on the first sunday after the first full moon after the passing of the vernal equinox, which, for convenience, is fixed at march 21. among the many christian fasts of pagan origin none is more familiar to all than the weekly friday abstinence from meat. under the old mythology, friday, the dies veneris, was sacred to venus, and on that day the devout worshipers of this charming goddess ate nothing but fish, as all the "finny tribe" were sacred to her, and considered proper diet for those that worshiped at her shrine. when the bishop of rome assumed the power and dignity of head of the western church, he also assumed all the prerogatives of the ancient pontifex maximus (who was supposed to be the direct physical communication between the people and the deities), and many of the attributes of the emperors. he adopted the gorgeous vestments of the ancient high priest and even stretched forth a foot to be kissed, as heliogabalus had done. he considered himself capable of raising such as he saw fit to semi-divine honors by canonization, just as the emperors had raised altars to their favorites, and he claimed precedence over every monarch of the earth, just as they also had done. but the roman pontiff is not unique in his position of viceroy of the deity. the grand lama of thibet is considered as the representative of buddha and has the power of dispensing divine blessings on whomsoever he will. taoism also has a pope who resides on the lung-hû mountain, in the department of kwang-hsi, who bears the surname chang and is called "heavenly master." the best known rites of the christian church are probably those of baptism, confession and communion, with which are associated the ideas of purification, prayer and transubstantiation. the rite of baptism, like all ideas which refer to the purification of sin by water, is a most ancient one. rivers, as sources of purification, were at an early date invested with a sacred character, and every great river was supposed to be permeated with a divine essence and its waters were believed to cleanse from all mortal guilt and contamination. the ganges and the jordan are well known examples of this faith, and vases of ganges water are to be found in almost every dwelling in india for religious purposes. in mongolia and thibet children are named by the priests, who immerse them in holy water while reading a prescribed prayer, after which the name is bestowed. baptism preceded initiation into the mysteries of both the egyptian isis and the persian mithras, and was held to be the means of regeneration and of remission of sins. tertullian, noticing the great similarity between the christian and pagan baptisms, naïvely remarked that the devil "baptizes some, of course, such as believe in him and are faithful to him; he promises expiation of sins from the bath, and, if my memory of mithras serves me still, in this rite he signs his soldiers on their foreheads." much akin to baptism is the general use by the christian church of so-called holy water, which is ascribed to pope alexander the first, who ruled during the first century. this pontiff probably did little more than officially to condone, by his papal sanction, the very general use of lustral water, which the romans had inherited from their pagan ancestors; for lustral water was always kept in vases at the entrance of the roman temples, that those passing in and out might sprinkle themselves with it; and the priests used a sprinkling brush called the aspersorium with which they threw the purifying water over their congregations, in the same manner as modern priests use the hyssop. the druids gave, or sprinkled upon, the worshipers water in which mistletoe had been immersed or steeped. similar to the idea of purification by baptism is that of purification by confession and prayer. the idea involved in confession is that the declaration of the crime relieves the conscience of its criminality. in iceland and among the scandinavian and teutonic peoples in general, murder ceased to be a crime when the slayer had declared himself guilty. among the jews confession was practiced, the purpose of its institution being that the priest might judge of the sacrifice required for the expiation of the sin committed, and, also, that every crime might be rehearsed over the scapegoat. the peruvians confessed their sins to their priests with the exception of the incas, who confessed to the sun. at the famous samothracian mysteries a priest was especially charged with hearing the confessions of great criminals and with granting them absolution. among protestant christians confession is often made directly to the supreme deity in the form of prayer, which, like most other religious practices, is an eminently pagan custom. the assyrians, babylonians, greeks, romans, persians, and most other ancient peoples offered sacrifices on the altars of their gods to propitiate them, and accompanied these offerings with prayers. today, instead of presenting wines and viands to his god, the devout christian offers verbal expressions of a contrite spirit or, more often, asks a favor. he demands, begs, or advises through this method, according to his own nature and disposition. the expression used in modern orthodox protestant prayers, "through our lord, jesus christ," is merely the concrete expression of the idea of mediation. the great supreme god was looked upon by most nations of antiquity as being too great, too sublime, too holy, to be addressed directly; and, in this lofty conception of the deity, they prayed for favors to mediators whom they created to request boons from the real ruler of heaven and earth. among the hindus, supplications were addressed to the various apotheosized incarnations of vishnu, rather than to the great brahma; the greeks made supplication to numerous lesser gods, rather than to zeus; persians addressed mithras instead of ormuzd; and the modern romanist kneels to saints and martyrs, or jesus or his mother, at whose shrines they place offerings which are bribes for favors; but almost never do they immediately supplicate the supreme god. in this they are certainly less blasphemous than their protestant fellows, who do not hesitate to talk familiarly to god of the most trivial affairs. belief in the efficacy of prayer is an absurdity which owes its origin to a hereditary trait of humanity, descended through a long line of superstitious ancestors. primitive man prayed to his dead fathers for their good will, believing them more powerful in their post mortem state than during life. the ancients offered prayers at the shrines of their various gods and, among all nations, from time immemorial, deities have been supplicated to bestow gifts and avert misfortunes. the overcharged mind of the superstitious has ever found relief in expressing its troubles to the imaginary beings on whom it has bestowed superhuman attributes. all over the world, in all languages, have arisen various petitions to the deities, and still do they continue to arise. savages pray to their idols, moslems crouch facing mecca to pray to allah, hindus pray to the avatars of vishnu, and all christendom besieges the throne of god in constant supplication. can any rational mind believe that these numerous, varied and even antagonistic petitions will be answered? some are praying for rain, some for a cessation of it, some for health, some for happiness, some for material blessings, and some for spiritual welfare. vain repetitions! the material universe is governed by immutable laws which all the breath in creation wasted in prayer cannot in any way affect; while such spiritual benefits as morality, character and virtue "are equally dependent on the invariable laws of cause and effect." prayers for forgiveness of sins are perhaps the most common, as well as the most absurd, that are daily offered. sin is the breaking of a material or moral law, and no law can be broken without the transgressor's incurring the penalty. is it not absurd of the church to preach the immutable justice of god, and at the same time declare that sinners may escape punishment by prayer? communion, or union with the deity, is an idea of great antiquity and has been common to all religions; although the methods practiced are numerous and varied. the more common mode, however, is by the consumption of consecrated foods and drinks, with the idea that these have acquired (by the act of consecration) a divine character of which the communicant becomes a partaker through their reception. the dogma of the eucharist was instituted many centuries before the christian era and was believed in by the ancient egyptians (from whom the christians probably received it through the alexandrian school), who, at the time of the celebration of the resurrection of osiris, ate a sacred wafer, which, after consecration by a priest, was declared the flesh of the god. in ancient greece, bread was worshiped as ceres and wine as bacchus; and, when the devout ate the bread and drank the wine, they claimed they were eating the flesh and drinking the blood of their deities. the ancient mexicans used bread of corn meal mixed with blood, which, after, having been consecrated by the priests, was given to the people to eat as the flesh of quetzalcoatl, much to the surprise and horror of the first spanish missionaries, who ascribed it to mockery of their holy eucharist due to satan. xii--the eucharist. the primal origin of the eucharist probably occurred far back in the period of universal anthropophagy. most savage and semi-savage peoples have practiced cannibalism because they believed that by eating the flesh of the dead they gained the qualities of the deceased. just as some africans eat tiger to become brave, savages ate their courageous foes to attain their virtues. following this same idea further, the belief was established that by consuming the flesh of a god, supernatural powers might be acquired. thus the early christian missionaries to the new world found such customs in peru and mexico. father acosta described one of these festivals which occurred annually each may in mexico, wherein the statue of a god was made of dough, and "killed" by an arrow in the hand of a priest. the god was then broken in pieces which by means of "certain ceremonies ... were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idoll." these pieces the priest gave "to the people in manner of a communion who received it with such feare, and reverence, as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eate the flesh and bones of god." likewise came the idea that sacrifices to the gods in some way attained godlike characteristics, and so the guatemalan priests ate the bodies of the sacrificed. the words of the modern roman priest, "hoc est corpus meum," which are supposed, by some magical influence, to cause the actual transubstantiation in the celebration of the eucharist, remind one forcibly of the dotting of the memorial chinese tablet by a mandarin, by which official act the spirit of the departed, to whom it is dedicated, is presumed to take up residence in the new abode. as a logical deduction from a given hypothesis, any roman priest is greater than the virgin. she conceived god but once, while the priest may through his mass create the body of the christ whenever he so desires. every time a priest performs this function he is the father of god. however, in spite of the absurdity of the practice, to deprive the communion of the real presence is to make it a senseless and useless ceremony. while the communicants believe in the efficacy of the wafer as the actual body, there is reason for absorbing it, as they thus unite themselves with the actual spirit of the christ. but the moment this dogma is rejected, the rite becomes futile, and nothing is more ridiculous than its perpetuation in the protestant churches. the quibble that it is performed in memory of jesus is a fallacy. in unitarian churches it is an arrant absurdity (one that is retained in many cases simply because the old historical churches of that denomination have inherited fine old communion plate which is proudly displayed), and one can only respect and admire ralph waldo emerson's stand in the matter, when he preferred to relinquish his remunerative and honorable pastorate in the second church of boston (the only pulpit he ever filled) rather than celebrate this anachronistic and indefensible rite. jerome carried his reverence for the eucharistic bread [1] so far that he considered that the table on which it was consecrated, together with the cloth in which it was wrapped, and the other utensils connected with its service, were to be worshiped with equal respect as that given the body and blood of the savior. this theory led to the consecration of altars, which by a decree of the council of epaone, in 517, in imitation of the jewish and pagan sacrificial altars, were ordered to be of stone, which material had been originally chosen as the most suitable material for the execution of the sacrifices, whose blood should flow over it, without danger of absorption. another of the ancient pagan ideas which took a strong hold upon christianity and rose to an abnormal power during the middle ages was that of monasticism with its accompanying asceticism. there is scarcely a religion of ancient and modern times that does not recognize asceticism as an element of its system. buddha taught his disciples a religion of abstinence, and, among the buddhists, there are ordained and tonsured priests, living in monasteries under vows of celibacy, while there are similar asylums for women. brahmanism also has its orders of ascetics and hinduism has its fakirs. fasting and self-denial were observances required by the greeks of those who desired initiation into the mysteries; the jews observed many fasts; and the egyptian priests passed their novitiate in the deserts engaged in prayer and living in caves. like many other christian customs, the monastic habit probably came from egypt, and it was considered by gibbon to have had a potent influence on the fall of the western empire, in that it removed from active and useful life so many able-bodied men and women. xiii.--spread of christianity. having now shown that there is nothing new in christianity; nothing in which it differs essentially from the older faiths; having shown that it brought no new ideas in its dogmas, practices, or morality, but a few words are necessary to explain its marvelous growth and rapid acceptance. christianity grew so rapidly, and was adopted so readily in many parts of the world simply because it was so cosmopolitan and elastic. it went forth to proselyte in a very conciliatory manner, embracing and absorbing every deeply rooted theological idea and custom which obstructed its path, and, in every way, exerting itself to propitiate its converts. and it was not until it became strong and powerful and was well supported by fanatical adherents that it dared to assume the rôle of conqueror. then, when the period of its strength was full, its tone changed and, strong in self-confidence, christianity became militant and strode forth in armor to vanquish with the sword and fill the world with blood. one of the reasons for the rapid acceptance of christianity among the romans and its remarkable growth in their dependencies was that for centuries the people had ceased to take their religion seriously. the vulgar masses, undoubtedly then as now, and at all times, unthinkingly swallowed all that was taught them of their deities, but the writings of cultivated men show clearly that for centuries the worship and reverence of their ancestral gods had but slight influence upon their ethical ideas. lucretius (95-52 b. c.), the exponent of the epicurean doctrines, regarded the gods as the creations of human fear. ennius (239-169 b. c.) translated and expounded the writings of euhemerus (316 b. c.), wherein it was claimed that all the ancient myths were historical events, that the gods were originally kings who were accorded post mortem worship by their grateful subjects. the stoics regarded the gods as personifications of the different attributes of nature. cicero adopted the platonic conception of the deity as mind freed from all taint of matter, while ovid made the gods ridiculous in his mocking "metamorphoses," and, in his lascivious descriptions of their amours, degraded them forever as ethical models. horace likewise mocked them. the glorious military conquests of the roman arms in asia and africa brought the soldiers into contact with alien religions, and the germs instilled in the minds of the armies spread among all the peoples of rome's domains, upon their return. likewise the ever-increasing influx of foreigners, bringing with them their native gods and theological systems, had more or less influence, while the apotheoses of the emperors gave a powerful impetus to the degradation of the ancient faith. the vulgar clung to their ancient shrines and the cultured sneered at them for so doing. they bent the knee in public and they laughed mockingly in private. in such a state was the religion of rome when the first christians began to proselyte; and on such fertile ground, amid the ruins of an ancient faith, the seed readily took root and rapidly spread out. any other faith, supported by sturdy, conscientious and indomitable missionaries, would have done the same. the old faith was dead and the time was ripe for something new and vigorous. as the civilized world was then under one powerful government, which allowed no political discord within its borders and which granted absolute religious freedom, the christian missionaries could travel in safety from one province to another and, without fear of molestation, could propagate their doctrines among the people through the media of the greek and latin tongues, which were universal throughout the empire. early christianity was merely a sect of judaism, and as the jews were scattered all through the roman provinces, every jewish settlement having its synagogue which the christian missionaries visited in order to preach their message, "the new religion, which was undertaken in the name of the god of abraham, and moses, found a sphere already prepared for itself." the new sect was naturally welcomed by the roman jews, as it was a purely national religion, founded upon the teachings of a jewish peasant for the jewish people. there is nothing in the gospels which portrays jesus as anything other than a prophet to his own nation. while his moral doctrines, like all ethical principles, are applicable to all races, he was ignorant of all peoples save his own, and it was to them alone that he preached, proclaiming his messiahship for them only. he was content to remain within the boundaries of his own country and expressed no wish nor desire to visit other lands. had it remained as jesus desired, christianity would never have been separated from judaism. it was owing to the direct disobedience of peter and paul in this particular, that christianity spread among the gentiles (acts xiv, 46). in sending forth his apostles to preach his mission, jesus commanded, "go not into the way of the gentiles, and into any city of the samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of israel" (matt. x, 5-6). when appealed to by the canaanite woman, he said, "i am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of israel" (matt. xv, 24). it was to the jews that he spoke when he said, "ye are the salt of the earth" (matt. v. 13). "ye are the light of the world" (matt. v, 14). it was in reference to the twelve tribes of israel that he so numbered his apostles (matt. xix, 28). and it was of his compatriots that he thought when prophesying his resurrection, "ye shall not have gone over the cities of israel, till the son of man be come" (matt. x, 23). there is no thought of a universal mission in all this. his mission and sacrifice were for his own nation, and, as paul writes to titus, he "gave himself that he might purify unto himself a peculiar people" (tit. ii, 14). thinking probably of the political strife which his messiahship would cause, jesus said, "i came not to bring peace, but a sword" (matt. x, 34), in which remark he was a truer prophet than the heavenly host that sang at his birth "on earth peace, good will toward men" (luke ii, 14). "the church of rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that ever existed among mankind," says lecky in his "rationalism in europe" (vol. ii, p. 40). the holy office in spain burned over 31,000 persons and condemned to punishment hardly less severe 290,000. during the reign of charles the fifth 50,000 heretics were executed in the netherlands and on february 16, 1508, the holy office condemned all the inhabitants, numbering 3,000,000 of people, to death as heretics, and philip the second confirmed the decree and ordered its instant execution. the whole history of christianity, in all its forms, reeks with blood and smells to heaven with carrion. in the first centuries christians persecuted pagans or, divided among themselves, persecuted each other as heretics. later arose the feuds of orthodox and arian, then came a united christendom against islam, followed by protestant wars. in these catholics murdered, pillaged, and devastated protestants and burned and tortured them as heretics by ecclesiastical tribunals; protestants persecuted and executed catholics and, divided among themselves, persecuted one another. in the sixteenth century anglican episcopalians persecuted catholics and nonconformists. in the seventeenth century puritans persecuted catholics, episcopalians, and quakers, and so on. the whole history of this religion is a long narration of blasphemous and degrading theories propagated by violence, hypocrisy and crime. christian charity is a delusion which is found only among the persecuted, who, the instant the scale turns, become the ruling faction, forget its meaning, and hasten to avenge their sufferings in persecutions. no other religion has so bloody a history as christianity. the old heathen religions went calmly on their way, indifferent to one another and showing the most perfect toleration. rival gods of rival nations were worshiped in temples side by side, without conflict or ill feeling. buddhists and brahmins mildly flourish in proximity. but christians who believe that the christ was sacrificed for love of humanity, that their gospel is one of love, peace, and good will, vie with one another to outstrip the ferocity of wild beasts. while many students believe that jesus was a purely mythical being, without actual existence save in the brains of religious christians, i see no reason to doubt that a certain jewish rabbi may have come out of the rebellious province of galilee about the time of herod. such messiahs had come before him and such have succeeded him. some of the messiahs subsequent to jesus were: one who appeared in persia in 1138, another in arabia in 1167, and one in moravia at the close of the twelfth century. eldavid proclaimed himself messiah in persia in 1199, sabathai tzevi assumed the title of "king of kings" in 1666 and was executed at constantinople by the sultan. so late as 1829 there appeared in india the eight-year-old son of a peasant who was a wonderful serpent charmer and was called marayum powar. it was an ancient belief that the ability to handle serpents unharmed was a proof that one had become perfectly holy--absorbed in god! therefore, numerous people came to believe powar a god and in ten months ten thousand followers were about him, baptizing and performing miraculous cures--and his cult seemed well on the road to establishment when, over-confident of his power, he was bitten by a serpent and died. his followers, after vainly awaiting his resurrection, dispersed. that jesus' whole career is lost in encircling myth is no proof that the original figure never existed. there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the central portion of europe was once ruled by a king named karl, and we do not doubt this simply because a great cloud of myths has been gathered about the name of st. charlemagne, any more than we feel bound to believe that because he once lived he must now necessarily exist, sleeping in a mountain, until it shall be necessary for him to spring forth and save the german fatherland. one set of students assert that the christ was merely the personification of vegetable life, claiming that his death and resurrection typify the death and revivification of vegetation. others hold that he is the modern phase of the eternal sun-god. to sustain this hypothesis the following allegorical interpretation of his supposed career is offered as an explanation. he was born on the early dawn of the twenty-fifth day of december, the day on which commences the sun's apparent revolution around the earth; his birth was announced by the brilliant morning star; his virgin mother was the pure and beautiful dawn; his temptation was his struggle with the adverse clouds which he dispersed; his trial, execution, and death were emblematic of the solar decline and crucifixion at the beginning of winter; his descent into hell was typical of the three days of the winter solstice; and his resurrection and ascension refer to the return of the sun after its seeming extinction. i have now shown that among the great majority of the nations of antiquity, no matter as to how they may have differed in the details, all held one general idea of faith in a savior-mediator between man and the supreme deity. some such medium seemed necessary to them, for they had not reached that intellectual plane on which one feels able to hold direct communication with the creator. modern christianity, in all its forms, still panders to this ancient superstition that man must needs have an agent between himself and his god. he must have an intercessor between his weakness and god's power--and vengeance. but when the human mind is freed from superstition and men learn that right living and a clean ethical code is all that is required, then they will cease to bow, either physically or mentally, to any humanly invented mediator, and their enlarged ideas of the justice of the supreme deity will prohibit any belief in impossible demi-gods. however, for the majority, that happy time of emancipation is still in the distant future, and, until its dawn lightens the general intelligence, men will continue to adore and supplicate the mediator whom inheritance and environment have taught them to revere, as krishna, buddha, mithras, or the christ, as the case may be. bibliography. apocryphal new testament, being all the gospels, epistles and other pieces now extant, attributed in the first four centuries to jesus christ, his apostles, and their companions, and not included in the new testament by its compilers. london. printed for william hone, 1821. baring-gould, s.--curious myths of the middle ages. london. 1877. legends of the patriarchs and prophets, and other old testament characters. new york. 1872. the origin and development of religious beliefs. new york. 1870. 2 vols. blavatsky, h. p.--isis unveiled: a master-key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and mythology. new york. 1891. 2 vols. bourke, john g.--scatalogic rites of all nations. washington. 1891. bunsen, christian charles josias.--christianity and mankind; their beginnings and prospects. london. 1854. 7 vols. god in history; or, the progress of man's faith in the moral order of the world. london. 1868. 3 vols. castan, l'abee em.--les origines du christianisme d'apres la tradition catholique. paris. 1869. 2 vols. les origines du christianisme d'apres la critique rationaliste contemporaine. paris. 1868. chantepepie de la saussaye, p. d.--the religion of the teutons. boston. 1902. cheetham, s.--the mysteries--pagan and christian. london. 1897. christlieb, theodore.--modern doubt and christian belief. new york. 1874. clodd, edward.--myths and dreams. london. 1885. colenso, john william.--lectures on the pentateuch and moabite stone. london. 1873. conway, moncure daniel.--idols and ideals, with an essay on christianity. new york. 1877. doane, t. w.--bible myths and their parallels in other religions. new york. dorman, rushton m.--the origin of primitive superstitions, etc. philadelphia. 1881. draper, john william.--history of the conflict between religion and science. new york. 1881. history of the intellectual development of europe. new york. 1878. 2 vols. farrar, j. a.--paganism and christianity. london. 1891. primitive manners and customs. new york. 1879. figuier, louis.--histoire du merveilleux dans les temps modernes. paris. 1880. 4 vols. fiske, john.--myths and myth-makers. boston. 1901. frazer, j. c.--the golden bough. london. 1890. 2 vols. frothingham, octavius brooks.--the cradle of the christ. new york. 1877. gibbon, edward.--the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire. philadelphia. 1876. 6 vols. de gubernatis, angelo.--zoological mythology; or, the legends of animals. london. 1872. 2 vols. hardwick, charles.--christ and other masters. london. 1874. hargraves, jennings.--the rosicrucians. their rites and mysteries. london. 1870. 2 vols. harnack, adolph.--the expansion of christianity in the first three centuries. translated by james moffatt. new york. 1904. 2 vols. herodotus.--translation of g. c. macauley. london. 1890. 2 vols. hislop, alexander.--the two babylons; or, the papal worship, etc. edinburgh. 1862. hone, william.--ancient mysteries described, etc. london. 1823. hudson, thompson jay.--the law of psychic phenomena. chicago. 1896. inman, thomas.--ancient faiths and modern. london. 1876. ancient pagan and modern christian symbolism. london. 1869. jameson, mrs.--legends of the madonna. london. 1852. jevons, frank byron.--an introduction to the history of religion. london. 1896. lang, andrew.--custom and myth. london. 1884. myth, ritual, and religion. london. 1887. 2 vols. lecky, william edward hartpole.--history of european morals from augustus to charlemagne. london. 1877. 2 vols. history of the rise and influence of the spirit of rationalism in europe. new york. 1866. 2 vols. kundy, j. p.--monumental christianity. london. 1889. macdonald, james.--religion and myth. london. 1893. middleton, conyers.--a letter from rome. london. 1847. des mousseaux.--les haunts phenomenes de la magie moeurs et pratiques des demons. 1852. muller, max.--chips from a german workshop. london. 1867. 2 vols. orr, james.--the virgin birth of christ. new york. 1907. picart, bernard.--the ceremonies and religious customs of the various nations of the known world, etc. london. 1733. 7 vols. priestley, joseph.--an history of the corruptions of christianity. birmingham. 1793. 2 vols. renan, ernest.--the life of jesus. translated by c. e. wilboir. new york. 1865. sharpe, samuel.--egyptian mythology and egyptian christianity. london. 1863. smith, w. robertson.--lectures on the religion of the semites. edinburgh. 1889. strauss, david friedrich.--the life of jesus. translated by george eliot. london. 1892. tuttle, hudson.--the career of the christ-idea in history. boston. the career of the god-idea in history. boston. note [1] the use of unleavened bread by the greek church caused great disputes between it and the latin in the eleventh century, but the latter finally accepted it on the argument that as the christ instituted the supper during the passover, he must have used it, as there was no leaven procurable at that time. transcriber's note: the footnotes marked with lower-case letters were originally sidenotes which referred to sentences within the paragraph. i placed them at the end of chapters to avoid confusion with the footnotes marked with numbers, which were footnotes in the original and are at the end of the text. two old faiths essays on the religions of the hindus and the mohammedans by j. murray mitchell, m.a., ll.d. and sir william muir, ll.d., d.c.l. new york chautauqua press c.l.s.c. department, 150 fifth avenue 1891 the required books of the c.l.s.c. are recommended by a council of six. it must, however, be understood that recommendation does not involve an approval by the council, or by any member of it, of every principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. * * * * * these essays have been selected from the admirable series of _present day tracts_, published by the religious tract society, london, and are reprinted with permission. contents. the hindu religion. page outline of the essay 7 introduction 9 the vedas 12 philosophy, and ritualism 31 reconstruction--modern hinduism 43 contrast with christianity 58 hinduism in contact with christianity 68 the rise and decline of islam. outline of the essay 83 introduction 85 the rapid spread of islam 87 why the spread of islam was stayed 125 low position of islam in the scale of civilization 129 the hindu religion. outline of the essay. the place of hinduism--which is professed by about a hundred and ninety millions in india--among the religions of the world, and its great antiquity, are pointed out. the comparative simplicity of the system contained in the vedas, the oldest sacred books of the hindus, its almost entire freedom from the use of images, its gradual deterioration in the later hymns, its gradual multiplication of gods, the advance of sacerdotalism, and the increasing complexity of its religious rites are set forth. the philosophical speculation that was carried on, the different philosophical schools, the buddhist reaction, its conflict with brahmanism, its final defeat, and its influence on the victorious system are discussed. the religious reconstruction represented by the puranas, their theological character, the modern ritual, the introduction and rise of caste, and the treatment of women are then considered. a contrast is drawn between the leading characteristics of hinduism and those of christianity, and the effect of christian ideas on modern hinduism is exhibited. the history of the brahmo somaj under keshub chunder sen is given at some length. the hindu religion. introduction. [sidenote: hinduism deserving of study. its antiquity.] the system of religious belief which is generally called hinduism is, on many accounts, eminently deserving of study. if we desire to trace the history of the ancient religions of the widely extended aryan or indo-european race, to which we ourselves belong, we shall find in the earlier writings of the hindus an exhibition of it decidedly more archaic even than that which is presented in the homeric poems. then, the growth--the historical development--of hinduism is not less worthy of attention than its earlier phases. it has endured for upward of three thousand years, no doubt undergoing very important changes, yet in many things retaining its original spirit. the progress of the system has not been lawless; and it is exceedingly instructive to note the development, and, if possible, explain it. we are, then, to endeavor to study hinduism chronologically. unless he does so almost every man who tries to comprehend it is, at first, overwhelmed with a feeling of utter confusion and bewilderment. hinduism spreads out before him as a vast river, or even what seems at first "a dark illimitable ocean, without bound, without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, and time, and place are lost." [sidenote: the discussion chronological.] but matters begin to clear up when he begins at the beginning, and notes how one thing succeeded another. it may not be possible as yet to trace all the windings of the stream or to show at what precise points in its long course it was joined by such and such a tributary; yet much is known regarding the mighty river which every intelligent man will find it profitable to note and understand. [sidenote: the christian's duty in relation to the subject.] the christian ought not to rest satisfied with the vague general idea that hinduism is a form of heathenism with which he has nothing to do, save to help in destroying it. let him try to realize the ideas of the hindu regarding god, and the soul, and sin, and salvation, and heaven, and hell, and the many sore trials of this mortal life. he will then certainly have a much more vivid perception of the divine origin and transcendent importance of his own religion. farther, he will then extend a helping hand to his eastern brother with far more of sensibility and tenderness; and in proportion to the measure of his loving sympathy will doubtless be the measure of his success. a yearning heart will accomplish more than the most cogent argument. [sidenote: the purpose of the tract.] in this tract we confine ourselves to the laying down of great leading facts and principles; but these will be dwelt upon at sufficient length to give the reader, we trust, an accurate conception of the general character and history of hinduism. we shall also briefly contrast the system with christianity. the history of hinduism may be divided into three great periods, each embracing, in round numbers, about a thousand years. i. the vedas. [sidenote: the most ancient writings of india.] regarding the earliest form of hinduism we must draw our conceptions from the veda, or, to speak more accurately, the four vedas. the most important of these is the rig veda; and internal evidence proves it to be the most ancient. it contains above a thousand hymns; the earliest of which may date from about the year 1500 b.c. the hindus, or, as they call themselves, the aryas, had by that time entered india, and were dwelling in the north-western portion, the panjab. the hymns, we may say, are racy of the soil. there is no reference to the life led by the people before they crossed the himalaya mountains or entered by some of the passes of afghanistan. it would be very interesting if we could discover the pre-vedic form of the religion. inferentially this may, to some extent, be done by comparing the teachings of the vedas with those contained in the books of other branches of the great aryan family--such as the greeks, the romans, and, above all, the iranians (ancient persians). the ancient hindus were a highly gifted, energetic race; civilized to a considerable extent; not nomadic; chiefly shepherds and herdsmen, but also acquainted with agriculture. commerce was not unknown; the river indus formed a highway to the indian ocean, and at least the phenicians availed themselves of it from perhaps the seventeenth century b.c., or even earlier. [sidenote: the hymns are strongly religious. they are a selection. pre-eminently sacerdotal. present the religious thought of the ancient hindus.] as soon as we begin to study the hymns of the veda we are struck by their strongly religious character. tacitly assuming that the book contains the whole of the early literature of india, many writers have expressed themselves in strong terms regarding the primitive hindus as religious above all other races. but as we read on we become convinced that these poems are a selection, rather than a collection, of the literature; and the conviction grows that the selection has been made by priestly hands for priestly purposes. an acute critic has affirmed that the vedic poems are "pre-eminently sacerdotal, and in no sense popular."[1] we can thus explain a pervading characteristic of the book which has taken most readers by surprise. there is a want of simplicity in the veda. it is often most elaborate, artificial, overrefined--one might even say, affected. how could these be the thoughts, or those the expressions, of the imperfectly civilized shepherds of the panjab? but if it be only a hymn-book, with its materials arranged for liturgical purposes, the difficulty vanishes.[2] we shall accordingly take it for granted that the veda presents only the religious thought of the ancient hindus--and not the whole of the religious thought, but only that of a very influential portion of the race. with all the qualifications now stated, the veda must retain a position of high importance for all who study indian thought and life. the religious stamp which the compilers of the veda impressed so widely and so deeply has not been obliterated in the course of thirty centuries. [sidenote: their religion is nature-worship.] the prevailing aspect of the religion presented in the vedic hymns may be broadly designated as nature-worship. [sidenote: physical phenomena in india. their effect on the religion.] all physical phenomena in india are invested with a grandeur which they do not possess in northern or even southern europe. sunlight, moonlight, starlight, the clouds purpled with the beam of morning or flaming in the west like fiery chariots of heaven; to behold these things in their full magnificence one ought to see them in the east. even so the sterner phenomena of nature--whirlwind and tempest, lightning and thunder, flood and storm-wave, plague, pestilence, and famine; all of these oftentimes assume in the east a character of awful majesty before which man cowers in helplessness and despair. the conceptions and feelings hence arising have from the beginning powerfully affected the religion of the hindus. every-where we can trace the impress of the grander manifestations of nature--the impress of their beneficence, their beauty, their might, their mystery, or their terribleness. [sidenote: the deities are "the bright ones," according to the language of the sacred books of india.] the sanskrit word for god is _deva_, which means _bright, shining_. of physical phenomena it was especially those connected with light that enkindled feelings of reverence. the black thunder-cloud that enshrouded nature, in which the demon had bound the life-giving waters, passed away; for the glittering thunder-bolt was launched, and the streams rushed down, exulting in their freedom; and then the heaven shone out again, pure and peaceful as before. but such a wonder as the dawn--with far-streaming radiance, returning from the land of mystery, fresh in eternal youth, and scattering the terrors of the night before her--who could sufficiently admire? and let it be remembered that in the hindu mind the interval between admiration and adoration is exceedingly small. yet, while it is the dawn which has evoked the truest poetry, she has not retained the highest place in worship. [sidenote: fire much worshiped.] no divinity has fuller worship paid him than agni, the fire (_ignis_). more hymns are dedicated to him than to any other being. astonishment at the properties of fire; a sense of his condescension in that he, a mighty god, resides in their dwellings; his importance as the messenger between heaven and earth, bearing the offerings aloft; his kindness at night in repelling the darkness and the demons which it hides--all these things raised agni to an exalted place. he is fed with pure clarified butter, and so rises heavenward in his brightness. the physical conception of fire, however, adheres to him, and he never quite ceases to be the earthly flame; yet mystical conceptions thickly gather round this root-idea; he is fire pervading all nature; and he often becomes supreme, a god of gods. [sidenote: soma highly exalted. soma becomes a very mighty god.] all this seems natural enough; but one is hardly prepared for the high exaltation to which soma is raised. soma is properly the juice of a milky plant (_asclepias acida_, or _sarcostemma viminale_), which, when fermented, is intoxicating. the simple-minded aryas were both astonished and delighted at its effects; they liked it themselves; and they knew nothing more precious to present to their gods. accordingly, all of these rejoice in it. indra in particular quaffs it "like a thirsty stag;" and under its exhilarating effects he strides victoriously to battle. soma itself becomes a god, and a very mighty one; he is even the creator and father of the gods;[3] the king of gods and men;[4] all creatures are in his hand. it is surely extraordinary that the aryas could apply such hyperbolical laudations to the liquor which they had made to trickle into the vat, and which they knew to be the juice of a plant they had cut down on the mountains and pounded in a mortar; and that intoxication should be confounded with inspiration. yet of such aberrations we know the human mind is perfectly capable. [sidenote: connection with persian, greek, and roman systems. varuna, the god of heaven. the sublimity of the vedic description of him.] we have first referred to agni and soma, as being the only divinities of highest rank which still retain their physical character. the worship paid to them was of great antiquity; for it is also prescribed in the persian avesta, and must have been common to the indo-iranian branch of the aryan race before the hindus entered india. but we can inferentially go still further back and speak of a deity common to the greeks, romans, persians, and hindus. this deity is varuna, the most remarkable personality in the veda. the name, which is etymologically connected with [greek: ouranos], signifies "the encompasser," and is applied to heaven--especially the all-encompassing, extreme vault of heaven--not the nearer sky, which is the region of cloud and storm. it is in describing varuna that the veda rises to the greatest sublimity which it ever reaches. a mysterious presence, a mysterious power, a mysterious knowledge amounting almost to omniscience, are ascribed to varuna. the winkings of men's eyes are numbered by him. he upholds order, both physical and moral, throughout the universe. [sidenote: contrast with the laudations of agni and soma. the loftier conceptions of divinity the earlier.] the winds are his breath, the sun his eye, the sky his garment. he rewards the good and punishes the wicked. yet to the truly penitent he is merciful. it is absolutely confounding to pass from a hymn that celebrates the serene majesty and awful purity of varuna to one filled with measureless laudations of soma or agni. could conceptions of divinity so incongruous co-exist? that they could not spring up in the same mind, or even in the same age, is abundantly manifest. and, as we have mentioned, the loftier conceptions of divinity are unquestionably the earlier. it is vain to speak, as certain writers do, of religion gradually refining itself, as a muddy stream can run itself pure; hinduism resembles the ganges, which, when it breaks forth from its mountain cradle at hardwar, is comparatively pellucid, but, as it rolls on, becomes more and more muddy, discolored, and unclean.[5] [sidenote: indra. his achievements.] various scholars affirm that varuna, in more ancient pre-vedic times, held a position still higher than the very high one which he still retains. this is probable; indeed, it is certain that, before later divinities had intruded, he held a place of unrivaled majesty. but, in the vedas, indra is a more conspicuous figure. he corresponds to the jupiter pluvius of the romans. in north-western india, after the burning heat, the annual return of the rains was hailed with unspeakable joy; it was like life succeeding death. the clouds that floated up from the ocean were at first thin and light; ah! a hostile demon was in them, carrying off the healing waters and not permitting them to fall; but the thunder-bolt of indra flashed; the demon was driven away howling, and the emancipated streams refreshed the thirsty earth. varuna was not indeed dethroned, but he was obscured, by the achievements of the warlike indra; and the supersensuous, moral conceptions that were connected with the former gradually faded from the minds of the people, and varuna erelong became quite a subordinate figure in the pantheon. [sidenote: number and relations of deities uncertain.] the deities are generally said in the veda to be "thrice eleven" in number. we also hear of three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine. there is no _system_, no fixed order in the hierarchy; a deity who in one hymn is quite subordinate becomes in another supreme; almost every god becomes supreme in turn; in one hymn he is the son of some deity and in another that deity's father, and so (if logic ruled) his own grandfather. every poet exalts his favorite god, till the mind becomes utterly bewildered in tracing the relationships. we have already spoken of agni, varuna, and indra, as well as soma. next to these in importance may come the deities of light, namely, the sun, the dawn, and the two asvina or beams that accompany the dawn. the winds come next. the earth is a goddess. the waters are goddesses. it is remarkable that the stars are very little mentioned; and the moon holds no distinguished place. [sidenote: hardly any fetichism in the rig veda.] in the religion of the rig veda we hardly see fetichism--if by fetichism we mean the worship of small physical objects, such as stones, shells, plants, etc., which are believed to be charged (so to speak) with divinity, though this appears in the fourth veda--the atharva. but even in the rig veda almost any object that is grand, beneficent, or terrible may be adored; and implements associated with worship are themselves worshiped. thus, the war-chariot, the plow, the furrow, etc., are prayed to. [sidenote: early tendency toward pantheism.] a pantheistic conception of nature was also present in the indian mind from very early times, although its development was later. even in the earliest hymns any portion of nature with which man is brought into close relation may be adored.[6] [sidenote: reverence of the dead.] we must on no account overlook the reverence paid to the dead. the _pitris_ (_patres_) or fathers are frequently referred to in the veda. they are clearly distinguished from the _devas_ or gods. in later writings they are also distinguished from men, as having been created separately from them; but this idea does not appear in the veda. yama, the first mortal, traveled the road by which none returns, and now drinks the soma in the innermost of heaven, surrounded by the other fathers. these come also, along with the gods, to the banquets prepared for them on earth, and, sitting on the sacred grass, rejoice in the exhilarating draught. [sidenote: the subjects of the hymns of the rig veda.] the hymns of the rig veda celebrate the power, exploits, or generosity of the deity invoked, and sometimes his personal beauty. the praises lavished on the god not only secured his favor but increased his power to help the worshiper. [sidenote: the holiest prayer.] there is one prayer (so called) which is esteemed pre-eminently holy; generally called--from the meter in which it is composed--the gayatri.[7] it may be rendered thus: "let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine son (or vivifier); may he enlighten our understandings!" it has always been frequently repeated in important rites. [sidenote: atharva veda. inferior morally and spiritually to the rig veda. explanation of deterioration.] so far we have referred almost exclusively to the rig veda. the next in importance is the atharva, sometimes termed the brahma veda; which we may render the veda of incantations. it contains six hundred and seventy hymns. of these a few are equal to those in the rig veda; but, as a whole, the atharva is far inferior to the other in a moral and spiritual point of view. it abounds in imprecations, charms for the destruction of enemies, and so forth. talismans, plants, or gems are invoked, as possessed of irresistible might to kill or heal. the deities are often different from those of the rig veda. the atharva manifests a great dread of malignant beings, whose wrath it deprecates. we have thus simple demon-worship. how is this great falling-off to be explained? in one of two ways. either a considerable time intervened between the composition of the two books, during which the original faith had rapidly degenerated, probably through contact with aboriginal races who worshiped dark and sanguinary deities; or else there had existed from the beginning two forms of the religion--the higher of which is embodied in the hymns of the rig veda, and the lower in the atharva. we believe the latter explanation to be correct, although doubtless the superstitions of the aborigines must all along have exerted an influence on the faith of the invaders. [sidenote: the offerings.] the offerings presented to the gods consisted chiefly of clarified butter, curdled milk, rice-cakes, and fermented soma juice, which was generally mixed with water or milk. all was thrown into the fire, which bore them or their essences to the gods. the soma was also sprinkled on the sacred grass, which was strewn on the floor, and on which the gods and fathers were invited to come and seat themselves that they might enjoy the cheering beverage. the remainder was drunk by the officiating priests. the offerings were understood to nourish and gratify the gods as corporeal beings. [sidenote: animal victims.] animal victims are also offered up. we hear of sheep, goats, bulls, cows, and buffaloes being sacrificed, and sometimes in large numbers. but the great offering was the asvamedha, or sacrifice of the horse. the body of the horse was hacked to pieces; the fragments were dressed--part was boiled, part roasted; some of the flesh was then eaten by the persons present, and the rest was offered to the gods. tremendous was the potency--at least as stated in later times--of a hundred such sacrifices; it rendered the offerer equal or superior to the gods; even the mighty indra trembled for his sovereignty and strove to hinder the consummation of the awful rite. [sidenote: human sacrifice.] human sacrifice was not unknown, though there are very few allusions to it in the earlier hymns. [sidenote: sacrifice deemed of very high importance.] even from the first, however, the rite of sacrifice occupies a very high place, and allusions to it are exceedingly frequent. the observances connected with it are said to be the "first religious rites." sacrifice was early believed to be expiatory; it removed sin. it was substitutionary; the victim stood in place of the offerer. all order in the universe depends upon it; it is "the nave of the world-wheel." sometimes vishnu is said to be the sacrifice; sometimes even the supreme being himself is so. elaborated ideas and a complex ritual, which we could have expected to grow up only in the course of ages, appear from very early times. we seem compelled to draw the inference that sacrifice formed an essential and very important part of the pre-vedic faith.[8] in the veda worship is a kind of barter. in exchange for praises and offerings the deity is asked to bestow favors. temporal blessings are implored, such as food, wealth, life, children, cows, horses, success in battle, the destruction of enemies, and so forth. not much is said regarding sin and the need of forgiveness. a distinguished scholar[9] has said that "the religious notion of sin is wanting altogether;" but this affirmation is decidedly too sweeping. [sidenote: no image-worship. no public worship.] the worship exemplified in the veda is not image-worship. images of the fire, or the winds, or the waters could hardly be required, and while the original nature-worship lasted, idols must have been nearly unknown. yet the description of various deities is so precise and full that it seems to be probably drawn from visible representations of them. worship was personal and domestic, not in any way public. indeed, two men praying at the same time had to pray quite apart, so that neither might disturb the other. each dealt with heaven, so to speak, solely on his own behalf. [sidenote: no temples.] we hear of no places set apart as temples in vedic times. [sidenote: the treatises on ritual.] a veda consists of two parts called _mantra_ or _sanhita_, and _brahmana_. the first is composed of hymns. the second is a statement of ritual, and is generally in prose. the existing brahmanas are several centuries later than the great body of the hymns, and were probably composed when the hindus had crossed the indus, and were advancing along the gangetic valley. the oldest may be about the date of 800 or 700 b.c. [sidenote: growth of priestly power. schools for the study of sacred books, rites, and traditions.] the brahmanas are very poor, both in thought and expression. they have hardly their match in any literature for "pedantry and downright absurdity."[10] poetical feeling and even religious feeling seem gone; all is dead and dry as dust. by this time the sanskrit language had ceased to be generally understood. the original texts could hardly receive accessions; the most learned man could do little more than interpret, or perhaps misinterpret, them. the worshiper looked on; he worshiped now by proxy. thus the priest had risen greatly in importance. he alone knew the sacred verses and the sacred rites. an error in the pronunciation of the mystic text might bring destruction on the worshiper; what could he do but lean upon the priest? the latter could say the prayers if he could not pray. all this worked powerfully for the elevation of the brahmans, the "men of prayer;" they steadily grew into a class, a caste; and into this no one could enter who was not of priestly descent. schools were now found necessary for the study of the sacred books, rites, and traditions. the importance which these attach to theology--doctrine--is very small; the externals of religion are all in all. the rites, in fact, now threw the very gods into the shade; every thing depended on their due performance. and thus the hindu ritual gradually grew up into a stupendous system, the most elaborate, complex, and burdensome which the earth has seen. [sidenote: moral character of the veda.] it is time, however, to give a brief estimate of the moral character of the veda. the first thing that strikes us is its inconsistency. some hymns--especially those addressed to varuna--rise as high as gentile conceptions regarding deity ever rose; others--even in the rig veda--sink miserably low; and in the atharva we find, "even in the lowest depth, a lower still." [sidenote: indra supersedes varuna.] the character of indra--who has displaced or overshadowed varuna[11]--has no high attributes. he is "voracious;" his "inebriety is most intense;" he "dances with delight in battle." his worshipers supply him abundantly with the drink he loves; and he supports them against their foes, ninety and more of whose cities he has destroyed. we do not know that these foes, the dasyus, were morally worse than the intrusive aryas, but the feelings of the latter toward the former were of unexampled ferocity. here is one passage out of multitudes similar: "hurl thy hottest thunder-bolt upon them! uproot them! cleave them asunder! o, indra, overpower, subdue, slay the demon! pluck him up! cut him through the middle! crush his head!" [sidenote: deterioration begins early.] indra, if provided with soma, is always indulgent to his votaries; he supports them _per fas et nefas_. varuna, on the other hand, is grave, just, and to wicked men severe.[12] the supersession of varuna by indra, then, is easily understood. we see the principle on which it rests stated in the old testament. "ye cannot serve the lord," said joshua to the elders of israel; "for he is a holy god." even so jeremiah points sorrowfully to the fact that the pagan nations clung to their false gods, while israel was faithless to the true. as st. paul expresses it, "they did not like to retain god in their knowledge." unless this principle is fully taken into account we cannot understand the historical development of hinduism. [sidenote: varuna the only divinity possessed of pure and elevated attributes.] the veda frequently ascribes to the gods, to use the language of max mã¼ller, "sentiments and passions unworthy of deity." in truth, except in the case of varuna, there is not one divinity that is possessed of pure and elevated attributes. ii. philosophy, and ritualism. [sidenote: speculation begins. rise of asceticism. upanishads. they are pantheistic.] during the vedic period--certainly toward its conclusion--a tendency to speculation had begun to appear. probably it had all along existed in the hindu mind, but had remained latent during the stirring period when the people were engaged in incessant wars. climate, also, must have affected the temperament of the race; and, as the hindus steadily pressed down the valley of the ganges into warmer regions, their love of repose and contemplative quietism would continually deepen. and when the brahmans became a fully developed hierarchy, lavishly endowed, with no employment except the performance of religious ceremonies, their minds could avoid stagnation only by having recourse to speculative thought. again, asceticism has a deep root in human nature; earnest souls, conscious of their own weakness, will fly from the temptations of the world. various causes thus led numbers of men to seek a life of seclusion; they dwelt chiefly in forests, and there they revolved the everlasting problems of existence, creation, the soul, and god. the lively greeks, for whom, with all their high intellectual endowments, a happy sensuous existence was nearly all in all, were amazed at the numbers in northern india who appeared weary of the world and indifferent to life itself. by and for these recluses were gradually composed the aranyakas, or forest treatises; and out of these grew a series of more regular works, called upanishads.[13] at least two hundred and fifty of these are known to exist. they have been called "guesses at truth;" they are more so than formal solutions of great questions. many of them are unintelligible rhapsodies; others rise almost to sublimity. they frequently contradict each other; the same writer sometimes contradicts himself. one prevailing characteristic is all-important; their doctrine is pantheism. the pantheism is sometimes not so much a coldly reasoned system as an aspiration, a yearning, a deep-felt need of something better than the mob of gods who came in the train of indra, and the darker deities who were still crowding in. even in spite of the counteracting power of the gospel mysticism has run easily into pantheism in europe, and orthodox christians sometimes slide unconsciously into it, or at least into its language.[14] but, as has been already noted, a strain of pantheism existed in the hindu mind from early times. accordingly, these hermit sages, these mystic dreamers, soon came to identify the human soul with god. and the chief end of man was to seek that the stream derived from god should return to its source, and, ceasing to wander through the wilderness of this world, should find repose in the bosom of the illimitable deep, the one, the all. the brahmans attached the upanishads to the veda proper, and they soon came to be regarded as its most sacred part. in this way the influence these treatises have exercised has been immense; more than any other portion of the earlier hindu writings they have molded the thoughts of succeeding generations. philosophy had thus begun. [sidenote: six philosophic schools.] the speculations of which we see the commencement and progress in the upanishads were finally developed and classified in a series of writings called the six sastras or _darsanas_. these constitute the regular official philosophy of india. they are without much difficulty reducible to three leading schools of thought--the nyaya, the sankhya, and the vedanta. roundly, and speaking generally, we may characterize these systems as theistic, atheistic, and pantheistic respectively. [sidenote: the nyaya.] it is doubtful, however, whether the earlier form of the nyaya was theistic or not. the later form is so, but it says nothing of the moral attributes of god, nor of his government. the chief end of man, according to the nyaya, is deliverance from pain; and this is to be attained by cessation from all action, whether good or bad. [sidenote: the sankhya.] the sankhya declares matter to be self-existent and eternal. soul is distinct from matter, and also eternal. when it attains true knowledge it is liberated from matter and from pain. the sankhya holds the existence of god to be without proof. [sidenote: the vedanta.] but the leading philosophy of india is unquestionably the vedanta. the name means "the end or scope of the veda;" and if the upanishads were the veda, instead of treatises tacked on to it, the name would be correct; for the vedanta, like the upanishads, inculcates pantheism. the form which this philosophy ultimately assumed is well represented in the treatise called the vedanta sara, or essence of the vedanta. a few extracts will suffice to exhibit its character. "the unity of the soul and god--this is the scope of all vedanta treatises." we have frequent references made to the "great saying," _tat twam_--that is, that art thou, or thou art god; and _aham brahma_, that is, i am god. again it is said, "the whole universe is god." god is "existence (or more exactly an existent thing[15]), knowledge, and joy." knowledge, not a knower; joy, not one who rejoices. [sidenote: it teaches absolute idealism.] every thing else has only a seeming existence, which is in consequence of ignorance (or illusion). ignorance makes the soul think itself different from god; and it also "projects" the appearance of an external world. "he who knows god becomes god." "when he, the first and last, is discerned, one's own acts are annihilated." meditation, without distinction of subject and object, is the highest form of thought. it is a high attainment to say, "i am god;" but the consummation is when thought exists without an object. there are four states of the soul--waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and the "fourth state," or pure intelligence. the working-man is in dense ignorance; in sleep he is freed from part of this ignorance; in dreamless sleep he is freed from still more; but the consummation is when he attains something beyond this, which it seems cannot be explained, and is therefore called the fourth state. [sidenote: doctrine of "the self." inconsistent statements.] the name, which in later writings is most frequently given to the "one without a second,"[16] is atman, which properly means self. much is said of the way in which the self in each man is to recover, or discover, its unity with the supreme or real self. for as the one sun shining in the heavens is reflected, often in distorted images, in multitudes of vessels filled with water, so the one self is present in all human minds.[17] there is not--perhaps there could not be--consistency in the statements of the relation of the seeming to the real. in most of the older books a practical or conventional existence is admitted of the self in each man, but not a real existence. but when the conception is fully formulated the finite world is not admitted to exist save as a mere illusion. all phenomena are a play--a play without plot or purpose, which the absolute plays with itself.[18] this is surely transcendent transcendentalism. one regrets that speculation did not take one step more, and declare that the illusion was itself illusory. then we should have gone round the circle, and returned to _sensus communis_. we must be pardoned if we seem to speak disrespectfully of such fantastic speculations; we desire rather to speak regretfully of the many generations of men which successively occupied themselves with such unprofitable dreams; for this kind of thought is traceable even from vedic days. it is more fully developed in the upanishads. in them occurs the classical sentence so frequently quoted in later literature, which declares that the absolute being is the "one [thing] without a second."[19] [sidenote: the gita.] the book which perhaps above all others has molded the mind of india in more recent days is the bhagavad gita, or song of the holy one. it is written in stately and harmonious verse, and has achieved the same task for indian philosophy as lucretius did for ancient epicureanism.[20] it is eclectic, and succeeds, in a sort of way, in forcing the leading systems of indian thought into seeming harmony. [sidenote: intellectual pride.] some have thought they could discern in these daring speculations indications of souls groping after god, and saddened because of the difficulty of finding him. were it so, all our sympathies would at once be called forth. but no; we see in these writings far more of intellectual pride than of spiritual sadness. those ancient dreamers never learned their own ignorance. they scarcely recognized the limitations of the human mind. and when reason could take them no farther they supplemented it by dreams and ecstasy until, in the yoga philosophy, they rushed into systematized mysticisms and magic far more extravagant than the wildest _theurgy_ of the degraded neoplatonism of the roman empire. a learned writer thus expresses himself: "the only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the doctrine of divine providence is the yoga. it thus seems that the consistent followers of these systems can have, in their perfected state, no religion, no action, and no moral character."[21] [sidenote: indian philosophy a sad failure.] and now to take a brief review of the whole subject. the hindu sages were men of acute and patient thought; but their attempt to solve the problem of the divine and human natures, of human destiny and duty, has ended in total failure. each system baseless, and all mutually conflicting; systems cold and cheerless, that frown on love and virtuous exertion, and speak of annihilation or its equivalent, absorption, as our highest hope: such is the poor result of infinite speculation. "the world by wisdom knew not god." o, that india would learn the much-needed lesson of humility which the experience of ages ought to teach her! [sidenote: sacerdotalism. the tyranny of sacerdotalism.] while speculation was thus busy sacerdotalism was also continually extending its influence. the brahman, the man of prayer, had made himself indispensable in all sacred rites. he alone--as we have seen--knew the holy text; he alone could rightly pronounce the words of awful mystery and power on which depended all weal or woe. on all religions occasions the priest must be called in, and, on all occasions, implicitly obeyed. for a considerable time the princes straggled against the encroachments of the priests; but in the end they were completely vanquished. never was sacerdotal tyranny more absolute; the proudest pope in mediã¦val times never lorded it over western christendom with such unrelenting rigor as the brahmans exercised over both princes and people. the feeling of the priests is expressed in a well-known stanza: "all the world is subject to the gods; the gods are subject to the holy texts; the holy texts are subject to the brahman; therefore the brahman is my god." yes, the sacred man could breathe the spell which made earth and hell and heaven itself to tremble. he therefore logically called himself an earthly god. indeed, the brahman is always logical. he draws conclusions from premises with iron rigor of reasoning; and with side-issues he has nothing to do. he stands upon his rights. woe to the being--god or man--who comes in conflict with him! [sidenote: ritual becomes extravagant.] the priests naturally multiplied religious ceremonies, and made ritual the soul of worship. sacrifice especially assumed still more and more exaggerated forms--becoming more protracted, more expensive, more bloody. a hecatomb of victims was but a small offering. more and more awful powers were ascribed to the rite. [sidenote: reaction.] but the tension was too great, and the bow snapped. buddhism arose. we may call this remarkable system the product of the age--an inevitable rebellion against intolerable sacerdotalism; and yet we must not overlook the importance of the very distinct and lofty personality of buddha (sakya muni) as a power molding it into shape. [sidenote: buddhism. moral elements of this system. conflict with brahmanism. victory of brahmanism.] wherever it extended it effected a vast revolution in indian thought. thus in regard to the institution of caste, buddha did not attack it; he did not, it would appear, even formally renounce it; as a mere social institution he seems to have acknowledged it; but then he held that all the _religious_ were freed from its restrictions. "my law," said he, "is a law of mercy for all;" and forthwith he proceeded to admit men of every caste into the closest fellowship with himself and his followers. then, he preached--he, though not a brahman--in the vernacular languages--an immense innovation, which made his teachings popular. he put in the forefront of his system certain great fundamental principles of morality. he made religion consist in duty, not rites. he reduced duty mainly to mercy or kindness toward all living beings--a marvelous generalization. this set aside all slaughter of animals. the mind of the princes and people was weary of priestcraft and ritualism; and the teaching of the great reformer was most timely. accordingly his doctrine spread with great rapidity, and for a long time it seemed likely to prevail over brahmanism. but various causes gradually combined against it. partly, it was overwhelmed by its own luxuriance of growth; partly, brahmanism, which had all along maintained an intellectual superiority, adopted, either from conviction or policy, most of the principles of buddhism, and skillfully supplied some of its main deficiencies. thus the brahmans retained their position; and, at least nominally, their religion won the day. iii. reconstruction--modern hinduism. [sidenote: revival, in an altered form, of hinduism. only the position of the brahman and the restrictions of caste retained.] but the hinduism that grew up, as buddhism faded from indian soil, was widely different from the system with which early buddhism had contended. hinduism, as it has been developed during the last thousand or twelve hundred years, resembles a stupendous far-extended building, or series of buildings, which is still receiving additions, while portions have crumbled and are crumbling into ruin. every conceivable style of architecture, from that of the stately palace to the meanest hut, is comprehended in it. on a portion of the structure here or there the eye may rest with pleasure; but as a whole it is an unsightly, almost monstrous, pile. or, dismissing figures, we must describe it as the most extraordinary creation which the world has seen. a jumble of all things; polytheistic pantheism; much of buddhism; something apparently of christianity, but terribly disfigured; a science wholly outrageous; shreds of history twisted into wild mythology; the bold poetry of the older books understood as literal prose; any local deity, any demon of the aborigines, however hideous, identified with some accredited hindu divinity; any custom, however repugnant to common sense or common decency, accepted and explained--in a word, later hinduism has been omnivorous; it has partially absorbed and assimilated every system of belief, every form of worship, with which it has come in contact. only to one or two things has it remained inflexibly true. it has steadily upheld the proudest pretensions of the brahman; and it has never relaxed the sternest restrictions of caste. we cannot wonder at the severe judgment pronounced on hinduism by nearly every western author. according to macaulay, "all is hideous and grotesque and ignoble;" and the calmer de tocqueville maintains that "hinduism is perhaps the only system of belief that is worse than having no religion at all."[22] when a modern hindu is asked what are the sacred books of his religion he generally answers: "the vedas, the sastras (that is, philosophical systems), and the puranas." some authorities add the tantras. the modern form of hinduism is exhibited chiefly in the eighteen puranas, and an equal number of upapuranas (minor puranas).[23] [sidenote: the puranas.] when we compare the religion embodied in the puranas with that of vedic times we are startled at the magnitude of the change. the pantheon is largely new; old deities have been superseded; other deities have taken their place. there has been both accretion from without and evolution from within. the thirty-three gods of the vedas have been fantastically raised to three hundred and thirty millions. siva, durga, rama, krishna, kali--unknown in ancient days--are now mighty divinities; indra is almost entirely overlooked, and varuna has been degraded from his lofty throne and turned into a regent of the waters. [sidenote: new deities, rites, and customs.] the worship of the linga (phallus) has been introduced. so has the great dogma of transmigration, which has stamped a deeper impress on later hindu mind than almost any other doctrine. caste is fully established, though in vedic days scarcely, if at all, recognized. the dreadful practice of widow-burning has been brought in, and this by a most daring perversion of the vedic texts. woman, in fact, has fallen far below the position assigned her in early days. [sidenote: the trimurtti, a triad of gods.] one of the notable things in connection with the reconstruction of hinduism is the position it gives to the trimurtti, or triad of gods--brahma, vishnu, and siva. something like an anticipation of this has been presented in the later vedic times: fire, air, and the sun (agni, vayu, and surya) being regarded by the commentator[24] as summing up the divine energies. but in the vedas the deities often go in pairs; and little stress should be laid on the idea of a vedic triad. that idea, however, came prominently forward in later days. the worship both of vishnu and siva may have existed, from ancient times, as popular rites not acknowledged by the brahmans; but both of these deities were now fully recognized. the god brahma was an invention of the brahmans; he was no real divinity of the people, and had hardly ever been actually worshiped. it is visual to designate brahma, vishnu, and siva as creator, preserver, and destroyer respectively; but the generalization is by no means well maintained in the hindu books. [sidenote: the avatara.] the puranas are in general violently sectarian; some being vishnuite, others sivite. it is in connection with vishnu, especially, that the idea of incarnation becomes prominent. the hindu term is _avatara_, literally, _descent_; the deity is represented as descending from heaven to earth, for vindication of the truth and righteousness, or, to use the words ascribed to krishna, for the preservation of the good, and the destruction of the wicked, for the establishment of religion, i am born from age to age. [sidenote: the "descents" of vishnu.] the "descents" of vishnu are usually reckoned ten. of these by far the most celebrated are those of rama and krishna. the great importance attached to these two deities has been traced to the influence of buddhism. that system had exerted immense power in consequence of the gentle and attractive character ascribed to buddha. the older gods were dim, distant, and often stern; some near, intelligible, and loving divinity was longed for. buddha was a brother-man, and yet a quasi-deity; and hearts longing for sympathy and succor were strongly attracted by such a personality. [sidenote: the god rama.] the character of rama--or ramachandra--is possessed of some high qualities. the great poem in which it is described at fullest length--the ramayana of valmiki--seems to have been an alteration, made in the interests of hinduism, of early buddhist legends; and the buddhist quality of gentleness has not disappeared in the history.[25] rama, however, is far from a perfect character. his wife sita is possessed of much womanly grace and every wifely virtue; and the sorrowful story of the warrior-god and his faithful spouse has appealed to deep sympathies in the human breast. the worship of rama has seldom, if ever, degenerated into lasciviousness. in spite, however, of the charm thrown around the life of rama and sita by the genius of valmiki and tulsida,[26] it is krishna, not rama, that has attained the greatest popularity among the "descents" of vishnu. [sidenote: krishna. his early life a travesty of the life of christ, according to the gospel of the infancy.] very different morally from that of rama is the character of krishna. while rama is but a partial manifestation of divinity krishna is a full manifestation; yet what a manifestation! he is represented as full of naughty tricks in his youth, although exercising the highest powers of deity; and, when he grows up, his conduct is grossly immoral and disgusting. it is most startling to think that this being is by grave writers--like the authors of the bhagavad gita and the bhagavata purana--made the highest of the gods, or, indeed, the only real god. stranger still, if possible, is the probability that the early life of krishna--in part, at least--is a dreadful travesty of the early life of christ, as given in the apocryphal gospels, especially the gospel of the infancy. the falling off in the apocryphal gospels, when compared with the canonical, is truly sad; but the falling off even from the apocryphal ones, in the hindu books, is altogether sickening.[27] a very striking characteristic of modern hinduism is what is termed _bhakti_, or devotion. there are three great ways of attaining to salvation: _karma marga_, or the way of ceremonial works; _jnana marga_, or the way of knowledge, and _bhakti marga_, or the way of devotion. [sidenote: doctrine of _bhakti_ introduced. influence of the system. mixed with buddhist elements. exaltation of the _guru_.] the notion of trust in the gods was familiar to the mind of india from vedic days, but the deity was indistinct and unsympathetic, and there could hardly be love and attachment to him. but there now arose the doctrine of _bhakti_ (devotion), which resolved religion into emotion. it came into the hindu system rather abruptly; and many learned men have traced its origin to the influence of christianity. this is quite possible; but perhaps the fact is hardly proved. contact with christianity, however, probably accelerated a process which had previously begun. at all events, the system of _bhakti_ has had, and still has, great sway in india, particularly in bengal, among the followers of chaitanya, and the large body of people in western india who style themselves _vaishnavas_ or _bhaktas_ (devotees). the popular poetry of maharashtra, as exemplified in such poets as tukarama, is an impassioned inculcation of devotion to vithoba of pandharpur, who is a manifestation of krishna. into the _bhakti_ system of western india buddhist elements have entered; and the school of devotees is often denominated bauddha-vaishnava. along with extravagant idolatry it inculcates generally, at least in the maratha country, a pure morality; and the latter it apparently owes to buddhism. yet there are many sad lapses from purity. almost of necessity the worship of krishna led to corruption. the hymns became erotic; and movements hopeful at their commencement--like that of chaitanya of bengal, in the sixteenth century--soon grievously fell off in character. the attempt to make religion consist of emotion without thought, of _bhakti_ without _jnana_, had disastrous issues. coincident with the development of _bhakti_ was the exaltation of the _guru_, or religious teacher, which soon amounted to deification--a change traceable from about the twelfth century a.d. [sidenote: explanations of krishna's evil deeds.] when pressed on the subject of krishna's evil deeds many are anxious to explain them as allegorical representations of the union between the divinity and true worshipers; but some interpret them in the most literal way possible. this is done especially by the followers of vallabha acharya.[28] these men attained a most unenviable notoriety about twenty years ago, when a case was tried in the supreme court of bombay, which revealed the practice of the most shameful licentiousness by the religious teachers and their female followers, and this as a part of worship! the disgust excited was so great and general that it was believed the influence of the sect was at an end; but this hope unhappily has not been realized. [sidenote: reforms attempted. kabir. nanak. failure of all reforms.] reformers have arisen from time to time in india; men who saw the deplorable corruption of religion, and strove to restore it to what they considered purity. next to buddha we may mention kabir, to whom are ascribed many verses still popular. probably the doctrine of the unity of god, as maintained by the mohammedans, had impressed him. he opposed idolatry, caste, and brahmanical assumption. yet his monotheism was a kind of pantheism. his date may be the beginning of the fifteenth century. nanak followed and founded the religion of the sikhs. his sacred book, the _granth_, is mainly pantheistic; it dwells earnestly on devotion, especially devotion to the _guru_. the sikhs now seem slowly relapsing into idolatry. in truth, the history of all attempts at reformation in india has been most discouraging. sect after sect has successively risen to some elevation above the prevalent idolatry; and then gradually, as by some irresistible gravitation, it has sunk back into the _mare magnum_ of hinduism. if we regard experience, purification from within is hopeless; the struggle for it is only a repetition of the toil of sisyphus, and always with the same sad issue. deliverance must come from without--from the gospel of jesus christ. [sidenote: influence of the tantras. worship of the sakti.] we mentioned the tantras as exerting great influence in later days.[29] in these the worship of siva, and, still more, that of his wife, is predominant. the deity is now supposed to possess a double nature--one quiescent, one active; the latter being regarded as the _sakti_ or energy of the god, otherwise called his wife. the origin of the system is not fully explained; nor is the date of its rise ascertained. the worship assumes wild, extravagant forms, generally obscene, sometimes bloody. it is divided into two schools--that of the right hand and that of the left. the former runs into mysticism and magic in complicated observances, and the latter into the most appalling licentiousness. the worship of the sakti, or female principle, has become a most elaborate system. the beings adored are "the most outrageous divinities which man has ever conceived."[30] sorcery began early in india; but it is in connection with this system that it attains to full development. human sacrifices are a normal part of the worship when fully performed. we cannot go farther into detail. it is profoundly saddening to think that such abominations are committed; it is still more saddening to think that they are performed as a part of divine worship. conscience, however, is so far alive that these detestable rites are practiced only in secret, and few, if any, are willing to confess that they have been initiated as worshipers. [sidenote: modern ritual.] we have not yet said much about the ritual of modern days. it is exceedingly complicated. in the case of the god siva the rites are as follows, when performed by a priest in the temple: [sidenote: worship of siva.] the brahman first bathes, then enters the temple and bows to the god. he anoints the image with clarified butter or boiled oil; pours pure water over it; and then wipes it dry. he grinds some white powder, mixing it with water; dips the ends of his three forefingers in it and draws them across the image. he sits down; meditates; places rice and _durwa_ grass on the image--places a flower on his own head, and then on the top of the image; then another flower on the image, and another, and another--accompanying each act with the recitation of sacred spells; places white powder, flowers, bilva-leaves, incense, meat-offerings, rice, plantains, and a lamp before the image; repeats the name of siva, with praises, then prostrates himself before the image. in the evening he returns, washes his feet, prostrates himself before the door, opens the door, places a lamp within, offers milk, sweet-meats, and fruits to the image, prostrates himself before it, locks the door, and departs. very similar is the worship paid to vishnu: [sidenote: worship of vishnu.] the priest bathes, and then awakes the sleeping god by blowing a shell and ringing a bell. more abundant offerings are made than to siva. about noon, fruits, roots, soaked peas, sweet-meats, etc., are presented. then, later, boiled rice, fried herbs, and spices; but no flesh, fish, nor fowl. after dinner, betel-nut. the god is then left to sleep, and the temple is shut up for some hours. toward evening curds, butter, sweet-meats, fruits, are presented. at sunset a lamp is brought, and fresh offerings made. lights are waved before the image; a small bell is rung; water is presented for washing the mouth, face, and feet, with a towel to dry them. in a few minutes the offerings and the lamp are removed; and the god is left to sleep in the dark. the prescribed worship is not always fully performed. still, sixteen things are essential, of which the following are the most important: "preparing a seat for the god; invoking his presence; bathing the image; clothing it; putting the string round it; offering perfumes; flowers; incense; lamps; offerings of fruits and prepared eatables; betel-nut; prayers; circumambulation. an ordinary worshiper presents some of the offerings, mutters a short prayer or two, when circumambulating the image, the rest being done by the priest."[31] we give one additional specimen of the ritual: "as an atonement for unwarily eating or drinking what is forbidden eight hundred repetitions of the gayatri prayer should be preceded by three suppressions of the breath, water being touched during the recital of the following text: 'the bull roars; he has four horns, three feet, two heads, seven hands, and is bound by a three-fold cord; he is the mighty, resplendent being, and pervades mortal men.'"[32] the bull is understood to be justice personified. all brahmanical ceremonies exhibit, we may say, ritualism and symbolism run mad. [sidenote: caste.] the most prominent and characteristic institution of hinduism is caste. the power of caste is as irrational as it is unbounded; and it works almost unmixed evil. the touch--even the shadow--of a low caste man pollutes. the scriptural precept, "honor all men," appears to a true hindu infinitely absurd. he honors and worships a cow; but he shrinks with horror from the touch of a mhar or mang. even brahmans, if they come from different provinces, will not eat together. thus hinduism separates man from man; it goes on dividing and still dividing; and new fences to guard imaginary purity are continually added. [sidenote: treatment of women. widows.] the whole treatment of women has gradually become most tyrannical and unjust. in very ancient days they were held in considerable respect; but, for ages past, the idea of woman has been steadily sinking lower and lower, and her rights have been more and more assailed. the burning of widows has been prohibited by enactment; but the awful rite would in many places be restored were it not for the strong hand of the british government. the practice of marrying women in childhood is still generally--all but universally--prevalent; and when, owing to the zeal of reformers, a case of widow-marriage occurs, its rarity makes it be hailed as a signal triumph. multitudes of the so-called widows were never really wives, their husbands (so-called) having died in childhood. widows are subjected to treatment which they deem worse than death; and yet their number, it is calculated, amounts to about twenty-one millions! more cruel and demoralizing customs than exist in india in regard to women can hardly be found among the lowest barbarians. we are glad to escape from dwelling on points so exceedingly painful. iv. contrast with christianity. the immense difference between the hindu and christian religions has doubtless already frequently suggested itself to the reader. it will not be necessary, therefore, to dwell on this topic at very great length. the contrast forces itself upon us at every point. [sidenote: the aryas and israelites--their probable future, about 1500 b.c. contrast of their after-history.] when, about fifteen centuries b.c., the aryas were victoriously occupying the panjab, and the israelites were escaping from the "iron furnace" of egypt, if one had been asked which of the two races would probably rise to the highest conception of the divine, and contribute most largely to the well-being of mankind, the answer, quite possibly, might have been, the aryas. egypt, with its brutish idolatries, had corrupted the faith of the israelites, and slavery had crushed all manliness out of them. yet how wonderful has been their after-history! among ancient religions that of the old testament stands absolutely unique, and in the fullness of time it blossomed into christianity. how is the marvel to be explained? we cannot account for it except by ascribing it to a divine election of the israelites and a providential training intended to fit them to become the teachers of the world. "salvation is of the jews." the contrast between the teachings of the bible and those of the hindu books is simply infinite. [sidenote: hindu theology compared with christian.] the conception of a purely immaterial being, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, which is that of the bible regarding god, is entirely foreign to the hindu books. their doctrine is various, but, in every case, erroneous. it is absolute pantheism, or polytheism, or an inconsistent blending of polytheism and pantheism, or atheism. equally striking is the contrast between christianity and hinduism as to the attributes of god. according to the former, he is omnipresent; omnipotent; possessed of every excellence--holiness, justice, goodness, truth. according to the chief hindu philosophy, the supreme is devoid of attributes--devoid of consciousness. according to the popular conception, when the supreme becomes conscious he is developed into three gods, who possess respectively the qualities of truth, passion, and darkness. [sidenote: conception of god.] "god is a spirit." "god is light." "god is love." these sublime declarations have no counterparts in hindustan. he is "the father of spirits," according to the bible. according to hinduism, the individual spirit is a portion of the divine. even the common people firmly believe this. every thing is referred by hinduism to god as its immediate cause. a christian is continually shocked by the hindus ascribing all sin to god as its source. [sidenote: the object of worship.] the adoration of god as a being possessed of every glorious excellence is earnestly commanded in the bible. "thou shalt worship the lord thy god; and him only shalt thou serve." in india the supreme is never worshiped; but any one of the multitudinous gods may be so; and, in fact, every thing can be worshiped _except_ god. a maxim in the mouth of every hindu is the following: "where there is faith, there is god." believe the stone a god and it is so. [sidenote: the sense of sin.] every sin being traced to god as its ultimate source, the sense of personal guilt is very slight among hindus. where it exists it is generally connected with ceremonial defilement or the breach of some one of the innumerable and meaningless rites of the religion. how unlike in all this is the gospel! the bible dwells with all possible earnestness on the evil of sin, not of ceremonial but moral defilement--the transgression of the divine law, the eternal law of right. [sidenote: atonement.] how important a place in the christian system is held by atonement, the great atonement made by christ, it is unnecessary to say. nor need we enlarge on the extraordinary power it exercises over the human heart, at once filling it with contrition, hatred of sin, and overflowing joy. we turn to hinduism. alas! we find that the earnest questionings and higher views of the ancient thinkers have in a great degree been ignored in later times. sacrifice in its original form has passed away. atonement is often spoken of; but it is only some paltry device or other, such as eating the five products of the cow, going on pilgrimage to some sacred shrine, paying money to the priests, or, it may be, some form of bodily penance. such expedients leave no impression on the heart as to the true nature and essential evil of sin. [sidenote: salvation. sanctification.] salvation, in the christian system, denotes deliverance, not only from the punishment of sin, but from its power, implying a renovation of the moral nature. the entire man is to be rectified in heart, speech, and behavior. the perfection of the individual, and, through that, the perfection of society, are the objects aimed at; and the consummation desired is the doing of the will of god on earth as it is done in heaven. now, of all this, surely a magnificent ideal, we find in hinduism no trace whatever. [sidenote: views of life. the great tenet of hinduism.] christianity is emphatically a religion of hope; hinduism may be designated a religion of despair. the trials of life are many and great. christianity bids us regard them as discipline from a father's hand, and tells us that affliction rightly borne yields "the peaceable fruits of righteousness." to death the christian looks forward without fear; to him it is a quiet sleep, and the resurrection draws nigh. then comes the beatific vision of god. glorified in soul and body, the companion of angels and saints, strong in immortal youth, he will serve without let or hinderance the god and saviour whom he loves. to the hindu the trials of life are penal, not remedial. at death his soul passes into another body. rightly, every human soul animates in succession eighty-four lacs (8,400,000) of bodies--the body of a human being, or a beast, or a bird, or a fish, or a plant, or a stone, according to desert. this weary, all but endless, round of births fills the mind of a hindu with the greatest horror. at last the soul is lost in god as a drop mingles with the ocean. individual existence and consciousness then cease. the thought is profoundly sorrowful that this is the cheerless faith of countless multitudes. no wonder, though, the great tenet of hinduism is this--_existence is misery._ [sidenote: the future of the race. the struggle between good and evil.] so much for the future of the individual. regarding the future of the race hinduism speaks in equally cheerless terms. its golden age lies in the immeasurably distant past; and the further we recede from it the deeper must we plunge into sin and wretchedness. true, ages and ages hence the "age of truth" returns, but it returns only to pass away again and torment us with the memory of lost purity and joy. the experience of the universe is thus an eternal renovation of hope and disappointment. in the struggle between good and evil there is no final triumph for the good. we tread a fated, eternal round from which there is no escape; and alike the hero fights and the martyr dies in vain. it is remarkable that acute intellectual men, as many of the hindu poets were, should never have grappled with the problem of the divine government of the world. [sidenote: the future of the aryan race.] equally notable is the unconcern of the veda as to the welfare and the future of even the aryan race. but how sublime is the promise given to abraham that in him and his seed all nations of the earth should be blessed! renan has pointed with admiration to the confidence entertained at all times by the jew in a brilliant and happy future for mankind. the ancient hindu cared not about the future of his neighbors, and doubtless even the expression "human race" would have been unintelligible to him. nor is there any pathos in the veda. there is no deep sense of the sorrows of life. max mã¼ller has affixed the epithet "transcendent" to the hindu mind. its bent was much more toward the metaphysical, the mystical, the incomprehensible than toward the moral and the practical. hence endless subtleties, more meaningless and unprofitable than ever occupied the mind of talmudist or schoolman of the middle ages. [sidenote: the words of st. paul illustrated by hinduism.] but finally, on this part of the subject, the development of indian religion supplies a striking comment on the words of st. paul: "the invisible things of god are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made. but when they knew god they glorified him not as god, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened." [sidenote: moral power.] hinduism is deplorably deficient in power to raise and purify the human soul, from having no high example of moral excellence. its renowned sages were noted for irritability and selfishness--great men at cursing; and the gods for the most part were worse. need we say how gloriously rich the gospel is in having in the character of christ the realized ideal of every possible excellence? [sidenote: ethical effect of hinduism. the people better than their religion.] _summa religionis est imitari quem colis_: "it is the sum of religion to imitate the being worshiped;"[33] or, as the hindus express it: "as is the deity such is the devotee." worship the god revealed in the bible, and you become god-like. the soul strives, with divine aid, to "purify itself even as god is pure." but apply the principle to hinduism. alas! the pantheon is almost a pandemonium. krishna, who in these days is the chief deity to at least a hundred millions of people, does not possess one elevated attribute. if, in the circumstances, society does not become a moral pesthouse it is only because the people continue better than their religion. the human heart, though fallen, is not fiendish. it has still its purer instincts; and, when the legends about abominable gods and goddesses are falling like mildew, these are still to some extent kept alive by the sweet influences of earth and sky and by the charities of family life. when the heart of woman is about to be swept into the abyss her infant's smile restores her to her better self. thus family life does not go to ruin; and so long as that anchor holds society will not drift on the rocks that stand so perilously near. still, the state of things is deplorably distressing. [sidenote: the doctrine of incarnation.] the doctrine of the incarnation is of fundamental importance in christianity. it seems almost profanation to compare it with the hindu teaching regarding the avataras, or descents of vishnu. it is difficult to extract any meaning out of the three first manifestations, when the god became in succession a fish, a boar, and a tortoise. of the great "descents" in rama and krishna we have already spoken. the ninth avatara was that of buddha, in which the deity descended for the purpose of deceiving men, making them deny the gods, and leading them to destruction. so blasphemous an idea may seem hardly possible, even for the bewildered mind of india; but this is doubtless the brahmanical explanation of the rise and progress of buddhism. it was fatal error, but inculcated by a divine being. even the sickening tales of krishna and his amours are less shocking than this. when we turn from such representations of divinity to "the word made flesh" we seem to have escaped from the pestilential air of a charnel-house to the sweet, pure breath of heaven. v. hinduism in contact with christianity. [sidenote: attempted reforms.] we have used the word _reformer_ in this tract. we formerly noted that, in india, there have arisen from time to time men who saw and sorrowed over the erroneous doctrines and degrading rites of the popular system. in quite recent times they have had successors. some account of their work may form a fitting conclusion to our discussion. [sidenote: advance of christianity in india.] with the large influx into india of christian ideas it was to be expected that some impression would be made on hinduism. we do not refer to conversion--the full acceptance of the christian faith. christianity has advanced and is advancing in india more rapidly than is generally supposed; but far beyond the circle of those who "come out and are separate" its mighty power is telling on hinduism. the great fundamental truths of the gospel, when once uttered and understood, can hardly be forgotten. disliked and denied they may be; but forgotten? no. thus they gradually win their way, and multitudes who have no thought of becoming christians are ready to admit that they are beautiful and true; for belief and practice are often widely separated in hindu minds. [sidenote: the brahma samaj.] but it was to be expected that the new ideas pouring into india--and among these we include not only distinctively christian ideas, but western thought generally--would manifest their presence and activity in concrete forms, in attempted reconstructions of religion. the most remarkable example of such a reconstruction is exhibited in the brahmo somaj (more correctly brahma samaj)--which may be rendered the "church of god." [sidenote: rammohun roy. effect of christianity upon him.] it is traceable to the efforts of a truly distinguished man, rammohun roy. he was a person of studious habits, intelligent, acute, and deeply in earnest on the subject of religion. he studied not only hinduism in its various forms, but buddhism, mohammedanism, and christianity. he was naturally an eclectic, gathering truth from all quarters where he thought he could find it. a specially deep impression was made on his mind by christianity; and in 1820 he published a book with the remarkable title, _the precepts of jesus the guide to peace and happiness_. very frequently he gave expression to the sentiment that the teachings of christ were the truest and deepest that he knew. still, he did not believe in christ's divinity. [sidenote: debendernath tagore. keshub chunder sen. formation of a new samaj.] in january, 1830, a place of worship was opened by rammohun roy and his friends. it was intended for the worship of one god, without idolatrous rites of any kind. this was undoubtedly a very important event, and great was the interest aroused in connection with it. rammohun roy, however, visited britain in 1831, and died at bristol in 1833; and the cause for which he had so earnestly labored in india languished for a time. but in the year 1841 debendernath tagore, a man of character and wealth, joined the brahmo somaj, and gave a kind of constitution to it. it was fully organized by 1844. no definite declaration, however, had been made as to the authority of the vedas; but, after a lengthened period of inquiry and discussion, a majority of the somaj rejected the doctrine of their infallibility by 1850. "the rock of intuition" now began to be spoken of; man's reason was his sufficient guide. still, great respect was cherished for the ancient belief and customs of the land. but in 1858 a new champion appeared on the scene, in the well-known keshub chunder sen. ardent, impetuous, ambitions--full of ideas derived from christian sources[34]--he could not brook the slow movements of the somaj in the path of reform. important changes, both religious and social, were pressed by him; and the more conservative debendernath somewhat reluctantly consented to their introduction. matters were, however, brought to a crisis by the marriage of two persons of different castes in 1864. in february, 1865, the progressive party formally severed their connection with the original somaj; and in august, 1869, they opened a new place of worship of their own. since this time the original or adi somaj has been little heard of, and its movement--if it has moved at all--has been retrogressive. the new somaj--the brahmo somaj of india, as it called itself--under the guidance of mr. sen became very active. a missionary institute was set up, and preachers were sent over a great part of india. much was accomplished on behalf of women; and in 1872 a marriage act for members of the somaj was passed by the indian legislature, which legalized union between people of different castes, and fixed on fourteen as the lowest age for the marriage of females. these were important reforms. mr. sen's influence was naturally and necessarily great; but in opposing the venerable leader of the original somaj he had set an example which others were quite willing to copy. [sidenote: discontent growing.] several of his followers began to demand more radical reforms than he was willing to grant. the autocracy exercised by mr. sen was strongly objected to, and a constitution of the somaj was demanded. mr. sen openly maintained that heaven from time to time raises up men endowed with special powers, and commissioned to introduce new forms or "dispensations" of religion; and his conduct fully proved that he regarded himself as far above his followers. complaints became louder; and although the eloquence and genius of keshub were able to keep the rebellious elements from exploding it was evident, as early as 1873, that a crisis was approaching. this came in 1878, when mr. sen's daughter was married to the maharaja of kuch behar. the bride was not fourteen, and the bridegroom was sixteen. now, mr. sen had been earnest and successful in getting the brahmo marriage act passed, which ruled that the lowest marriageable age for a woman was fourteen, and for a man eighteen. here was gross inconsistency. what could explain it? "ambition," exclaimed great numbers; "the wish to exalt himself and his daughter by alliance with a prince." but mr. sen declared that he had consented to the marriage in consequence of an express intimation that such was the will of heaven. mr. sen denied miracles, but believed in inspiration; and of his own inspiration he seems to have entertained no doubt. we thus obtain a glimpse into the peculiar working of his mind. every full conviction, every strong wish of his own he ascribed to divine suggestion. this put him in a position of extreme peril. it was clear that an enthusiastic, imaginative, self-reliant nature like his might thus be borne on to any extent of fanaticism. [sidenote: revolt; a third samaj. "new dispensation."] a great revolt from mr. sen's authority now took place, and the sadharan samaj was organized in may, 1878. an appeal had been made to the members generally, and no fewer than twenty-one provincial samajes, with more than four hundred members, male and female, joined the new society. this number amounted to about two thirds of the whole body. keshub and his friends denounced the rebels in very bitter language; and yet, in one point of view, their secession was a relief. men of abilities equal, and education superior, to his own had hitherto acted as a drag on his movements; he was now delivered from their interference and could deal with the admiring and submissive remnant as he pleased. ideas that had been working in his mind now attained rapid development. within two years the flag of the "new dispensation" was raised; and of that dispensation mr. sen was the undoubted head. very daring was the language mr. sen used in a public lecture regarding this new creation. he claimed equality for it with the jewish and christian dispensations, and for himself "singular" authority and a divine commission. [sidenote: its creed.] in the creed of the new dispensation the name of christ does not occur. the articles were as follows: _a._ one god, one scripture, one church. _b._ eternal progress of the soul. _c._ communion of prophets and saints. _d._ fatherhood and motherhood of god. _e._ brotherhood of man and sisterhood of woman. _f._ harmony of knowledge and holiness, love and work, yoga and asceticism in their highest development. _g._ loyalty to sovereign. [sidenote: omission of christ's name.] the omission of christ's name is the more remarkable because mr. sen spoke much of him in his public lectures. he had said in may, 1879, "none but jesus, none but jesus, none but jesus ever deserved this precious diadem, india; and jesus shall have it." but he clearly indicated that the christ he sought was an indian christ; one who was "a hindu in faith," and who would help the hindus to "realize their national idea of a yogi" (ascetic). [sidenote: "motherhood of god."] let it be noted that, from the beginning of his career, mr. sen had spoken earnestly of the fatherhood of god and the brotherhood of man--though, these great conceptions are not of hindu origin. it is difficult to see why, in later days, he insisted so much on the "motherhood of god." perhaps it was a repetition--he probably would have called it an exaltation--of the old hindu idea, prevalent especially among the worshipers of siva, that there is a female counterpart--a sakti--of every divinity. or, possibly, it may have been to conciliate the worshipers of durga and kali, those great goddesses of bengal. [sidenote: public proclamation said to be from god.] a public proclamation was soon issued, purporting to be from god himself, as india's mother. the whole thing was very startling; many, even of keshub's friends, declared it blasphemous. next, in the "flag ceremony," the flag or banner of the new dispensation received a homage scarcely distinguishable from worship. then--as if in strict imitation of the ancient adoration of agni, or fire--a pile of wood was lighted, clarified butter poured on it, and prayers addressed to it, ending thus--"o, brilliant fire! in thee we behold our resplendent lord." this was, at least, symbolism run wild; and every one, except those who were prepared to follow their leader to all lengths, saw that in a land like india, wedded to idolatry, it was fearfully perilous. [sidenote: "apostolic durbar."] in march, 1881, mr. sen and his friends introduced celebrations which, to christian minds, seemed a distressing caricature of the christian sacraments. other institutions followed; an apostolic durbar (court of apostles), for instance, was established. there was no end to mr. sen's inventiveness. in a public lecture delivered in january, 1883, on "asia's message to europe," he elaborately expounded the idea that all the great religions are of asiatic origin, and that all of them are true, and that the one thing required to constitute the faith of the future--the religion of humanity--is the blending of all these varied oriental systems into one. [sidenote: inconsistencies between mr. sen's public and private utterances. mr. sen's policy of reserve.] it was not easy to reconcile mr. sen's public utterances with his private ones--though far be it from us to tax him with insincerity. thus, in an interview extending over two hours, which the writer and two missionary friends had with him a week or so before the lecture now referred to, he said he accepted as true and vital all the leading doctrines of the christian faith, with the exception of the resurrection of christ. but another fundamental difference remained--he avowedly dissented from the orthodox creed in rejecting the miraculous element in scripture. at an interview i had with him some time before he earnestly disclaimed all intention to put christ on a level with buddha or mohammed. "i am educating my friends," he said, "to understand and approve of christianity; i have not yet said my last word about christ." it is a solemn question, had he said it when his career was ended? if so, it was far from a satisfactory word. his policy of reserve and adaptation had probably kept him from uttering all that was in his heart; but it was a sorely mistaken policy. had he temporized less he would have accomplished more. since the death of mr. sen there has been a violent dispute between his family and the "apostolic durbar," on one side, and one of his ablest followers, on the other; and the new dispensation will probably split in two, if it does not perish altogether. [sidenote: the sadharan samaj.] in the meantime, the sadharan samaj, which broke off from keshub's party in 1878, has been going on with no small vigor. vagaries, either in doctrine or rites, have been carefully shunned; its partisans profess a pure theistic creed and labor diligently in the cause of social reform. their position is nearly that of unitarian christianity, and we fear they are not at present approximating to the full belief of the church catholic. [sidenote: movements in western india. tenets of the prarthana sabha.] very similar in character to the brahmo somaj is the prarthana somaj in western india. as far back as 1850, or a little earlier, there was formed a society called the prarthana sabha (prayer-meeting). its leading tenets were as follows: 1. i believe in one god. 2. i renounce idol-worship. 3. i will do my best to lead a moral life. 4. if i commit any sin through the weakness of my moral nature i will repent of it and ask the pardon of god. the society, after some time, began to languish; but in 1867 it was revived under the name of prarthana somaj. its chief branches are in bombay, poona, ahmedabad, and surat. [sidenote: arya samaj.] an interesting movement called the arya samaj was commenced a few years ago by a pandit--dayanand sarasvati. he received the vedas as fully inspired, but maintained that they taught monotheism--agni, indra, and all the rest being merely different names of god. it was a desperate effort to save the reputation of the ancient books; but, as all sanskrit scholars saw at a glance, the whole idea was a delusion. the pandit is now dead; and the arya samaj may not long survive him. at the time we write we hear of an attempt to defend idolatry and caste made by men of considerable education. [sidenote: theosophists.] the so-called "theosophists" have, for several years, been active in india. of existing religions, buddhism is their natural ally. they are atheists. a combination which they formed with the arya samaj speedily came to an end. lastly, the followers of mr. bradlaugh are diligent in supplying their books to indian students. poor india! no wonder if her mind is bewildered as she listens to such a babel of voices. the state of things in india now strikingly resembles that which existed in the roman empire at the rise of christianity; when east and west were brought into the closest contact, and a great conflict of systems of thought took place in consequence. but even as one hostile form of gnostic belief rose after another, and rose only to fall--and as the greatest and best-disciplined foe of early christianity--the later platonism--gave way before the steady, irresistible march of gospel truth, so--we have every reason to hope--it will be yet again. the christian feels his heart swell in his breast as he thinks what, in all human probability, india will be a century, or even half a century, hence. o what a new life to that fairest of eastern lands when she casts herself in sorrow and supplication at the feet of the living god, and then rises to proclaim to a listening world "her deep repentance and her new-found joy!" may god hasten the advent of that happy day! the rise and decline of islam. outline of the essay. the progress of islam was slow until mohammed cast aside the precepts of toleration and adopted an aggressive, militant policy. then it became rapid. the motives which animated the armies of islam were mixed--material and spiritual. without the truths contained in the system success would have been impossible, but neither without the sword would the religion have been planted in arabia, nor beyond. the alternatives offered to conquered peoples were islam, the sword, or tribute. the drawbacks and attractions of the system are examined. the former were not such as to deter men of the world from embracing the faith. the sexual indulgences sanctioned by it are such as to make islam "the easy way." the spread of islam was stayed whenever military success was checked. the faith was meant for arabia and not for the world, hence it is constitutionally incapable of change or development. the degradation of woman hinders the growth of freedom and civilization under it. christianity is contrasted in the means used for its propagation, the methods it employed in grappling with and overcoming the evils that it found existing in the world, in the relations it established between the sexes, in its teaching with regard to the respective duties of the civil and spiritual powers, and, above all, in its redeeming character, and then the conclusion come to that christianity is divine in its origin. the rise and decline of islam. * * * * * introduction. [sidenote: islam pre-eminent in its rapid spread.] among the religions of the earth islam must take the precedence in the rapidity and force with which it spread. within a very short time from its planting in arabia the new faith had subdued great and populous provinces. in half a dozen years, counting from the death of the founder, the religion prevailed throughout arabia, syria, persia, and egypt, and before the close of the century it ruled supreme over the greater part of the vast populations from gibraltar to the oxus, from the black sea to the river indus. [sidenote: propagation far quicker than of christianity.] in comparison with this grand outburst the first efforts of christianity were, to the outward eye, faint and feeble, and its extension so gradual that what the mohammedan religion achieved in ten or twenty years it took the faith of jesus long centuries to accomplish. [sidenote: object of the tract.] the object of these few pages is, _first_, to inquire briefly into the causes which led to the marvelous rapidity of the first movement of islam: _secondly_, to consider the reasons which eventually stayed its advance; and, _lastly_, to ascertain why mohammedan countries have kept so far in the rear of other lands in respect of intellectual and social progress. in short, the question is how it was that, pallas-like, the faith sprang ready-armed from the ground, conquering and to conquer, and why, the weapons dropping from its grasp, islam began to lose its pristine vigor, and finally relapsed into inactivity. i. the rapid spread of islam. [sidenote: two periods in the mission of mohammed.] the personal ministry of mohammed divides itself into two distinct periods: first, his life at mecca as a preacher and a prophet; second, his life at medina as a prophet and a king. [sidenote: i. ministry at mecca, a.d. 609-622. success at mecca limited.] it is only in the first of these periods that islam at all runs parallel with christianity. the great body of his fellow-citizens rejected the ministry of mohammed and bitterly opposed his claims. his efforts at mecca were, therefore, confined to teaching and preaching and to the publishing of the earlier "suras," or chapters of his "revelation." after some thirteen years spent thus his converts, to the number of about a hundred and fifty men and women, were forced by the persecution of the coreish (the ruling tribe at mecca, from which mohammed was descended) to quit their native city and emigrate to medina.[35] a hundred more had previously fled from mecca for the same cause, and found refuge at the court of the negus, or king of abyssinia; and there was already a small company of followers among the citizens of medina. at the utmost, therefore, the number of disciples gained over by the simple resort to teaching and preaching did not, during the first twelve years of mohammed's ministry, exceed a few hundreds. it is true that the soil of mecca was stubborn and (unlike that of judea) wholly unprepared. the cause also, at times, became the object of sustained and violent opposition. even so much of success was consequently, under the peculiar circumstances, remarkable. but it was by no means singular. the progress fell far short of that made by christianity during the corresponding period of its existence,[36] and indeed by many reformers who have been the preachers of a new faith. it gave no promise whatever of the marvelous spectacle that was about to follow. [sidenote: ii. change of policy at medina, a.d. 622-632. arabia converted from medina at the point of the sword.] having escaped from mecca and found a new and congenial home in medina, mohammed was not long in changing his front. at mecca, surrounded by enemies, he taught toleration. he was simply the preacher commissioned to deliver a message, and bidden to leave the responsibility with his master and his hearers. he might argue with the disputants, but it must be "in a way most mild and gracious;" for "in religion" (such was his teaching before he reached medina) "there should be neither violence nor constraint."[37] at medina the precepts of toleration were quickly cast aside and his whole policy reversed. no sooner did mohammed begin to be recognized and obeyed as the chief of medina than he proceeded to attack the jewish tribes settled in the neighborhood because they refused to acknowledge his claims and believe in him as a prophet foretold in their scriptures; two of these tribes were exiled, and the third exterminated in cold blood. in the second year after the hegira[a], or flight from mecca (the period from which the mohammedan era dates), he began to plunder the caravans of the coreish, which passed near to medina on their mercantile journeys between arabia and syria. so popular did the cause of the now militant and marauding prophet speedily become among the citizens of medina and the tribes around that, after many battles fought with varying success, he was able, in the eighth year of the hegira[b] to re-enter his native city at the head of ten thousand armed followers. thenceforward success was assured. none dared to oppose his pretensions. and before his death, in the eleventh year of the hegira[c], all arabia, from bab-el-mandeb and oman to the confines of the syrian desert, was forced to submit to the supreme authority of the now kingly prophet and to recognize the faith and obligations of islam.[38] [sidenote: religion of mohammed described.] this _islam_, so called from its demanding the entire "surrender" of the believer to the will and service of god, is based on the recognition of mohammed as a prophet foretold in the jewish and christian scriptures--the last and greatest of the prophets. on him descended the koran from time to time, an immediate revelation from the almighty. idolatry and polytheism are with iconoclastic zeal denounced as sins of the deepest dye; while the unity of the deity is proclaimed as the grand and cardinal doctrine of the faith. divine providence pervades the minutest concerns of life, and predestination is taught in its most naked form. yet prayer is enjoined as both meritorious and effective; and at five stated times every day must it be specially performed. the duties generally of the moral law are enforced, though an evil laxity is given in the matter of polygamy and divorce. tithes are demanded as alms for the poor. a fast during the month of ramzan must be kept throughout the whole of every day; and the yearly pilgrimage to mecca--an ancient institution, the rites of which were now divested of their heathenish accompaniments--maintained. the existence of angels and devils is taught, and heaven and hell are depicted in material colors--the one of sensuous pleasure, the other of bodily torment. finally, the resurrection, judgment, and retribution of good and evil are set forth in great detail. such was the creed--"_there is no god but the_ lord, _and_ mohammed _is his prophet_"--to which arabia now became obedient. [sidenote: arabia apostatizes; but is speedily reconquered and reclaimed, a.d. 633.] but immediately on the death of mohammed the entire peninsula relapsed into apostasy. medina and mecca remained faithful; but every-where else the land seethed with rebellion. some tribes joined the "false prophets," of whom four had arisen in different parts of arabia; some relapsed into their ancient heathenism; while others proposed a compromise--they would observe the stated times of prayer, but would be excused the tithe. every-where was rampant anarchy. the apostate tribes attacked medina, but were repulsed by the brave old caliph abu bekr, who refused to abate one jot or tittle, as the successor of mohammed, of the obligations of islam. eleven columns were sent forth under as many leaders, trained in the warlike school of mohammed. these fought their way, step by step, successfully; and thus, mainly through the wisdom and firmness of abu bekr and the valor and genius of khalid, "the sword of god," the arab tribes, one by one, were overcome and forced back into their allegiance and the profession of islam. the reconquest of arabia and re-imposition of mohammedanism as the national faith, which it took a whole year to accomplish, is thus described by an arabian author, who wrote at the close of the second century of the mohammedan era: after his decease there remained not one of the followers of the prophet that did not apostatize, saving only a small company of his "companions" and kinsfolk, who hoped thus to secure the government to themselves. hereupon abu bekr displayed marvelous skill, energy, and address, so that the power passed into his hands.... and thus he persevered until the apostate tribes were all brought back to their allegiance, some by kindly treatment, persuasion, and craft; some through terror and fear of the sword; and others by the prospect of power and wealth as well as by the lusts and pleasures of this life. and so it came to pass that all the bedouin tribes were in the end converted outwardly, but not from inward conviction.[39] [sidenote: the arabs thus reclaimed were, at the first, sullen.] the temper of the tribes thus reclaimed by force of arms was at the first strained and sullen. but the scene soon changed. suddenly the whole peninsula was shaken, and the people, seized with a burning zeal, issued forth to plant the new faith in other lands. it happened on this wise: [sidenote: roused by war-cry, they issue from the peninsula, a.d. 634, _et. seq._ the opposing forces. arab enthusiasm.] the columns sent from medina to reduce the rebellious tribes to the north-west on the gulf of ayla, and to the north-east on the persian gulf, came at once into collision with the christian bedouins of syria on the one hand and with those of mesopotamia on the other. these again were immediately supported by the neighboring forces of the roman and persian empires, whose vassals respectively they were. and so, before many months, abu bekr found his generals opposed by great and imposing armies on either side. he was, in fact, waging mortal combat at one and the same moment with the kaiser and the chosroes, the byzantine emperor and the great king of persia. the risk was imminent, and an appeal went forth for help to meet the danger. the battle-cry resounded from one end of arabia to the other, and electrified the land. levy after levy, _en masse_, started up at the call from every quarter of the peninsula, and the bedouin tribes, as bees from their hive, streamed forth in swarms, animated by the prospect of conquest, plunder, and captive damsels, or, if slain in battle, by the still more coveted prize of the "martyr" in the material paradise of mohammed. with a military ardor and new-born zeal in which carnal and spiritual aspirations were strangely blended, the arabs rushed forth to the field, like the war-horse of job, "that smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting." sullen constraint was in a moment transformed into an absolute devotion and fiery resolve to spread the faith. the arab warrior became the missionary of islam. [sidenote: arabs, a military body, subsidized and mobilized by omar.] it was now the care of omar, the second caliph or ruler of the new-born empire, to establish a system whereby the spirit militant, called into existence with such force and fervor, might be rendered permanent. the entire arabian people was subsidized. the surplus revenues which in rapidly increasing volume began to flow from the conquered lands into the moslem treasuries were to the last farthing distributed among the soldiers of arabian descent. the whole nation was enrolled, and the name of every warrior entered upon the roster of islam. forbidden to settle anywhere, and relieved from all other work, the arab hordes became, in fact, a standing army threatening the world. great bodies of armed men were kept thus ever mobilized, separate and in readiness for new enterprise. [sidenote: mission of islam described by fairbairn.] the change which came over the policy of the founder of the faith at medina, and paved the way for this marvelous system of world-wide rapine and conversion to islam, is thus described by a thoughtful and sagacious writer: medina was fatal to the higher capabilities of islam. mohammed became then a king; his religion was incorporated in a state that had to struggle for its life in the fashion familiar to the rough-handed sons of the desert. the prophet was turned into the legislator and commander; his revelations were now laws, and now military orders and manifestoes. the mission of islam became one that only the sword could accomplish, robbery of the infidel became meritorious, and conquest the supreme duty it owed to the world.... the religion which lived an unprospering and precarious life, so long as it depended on the prophetic word alone, became an aggressive and victorious power so soon as it was embodied in a state.[40] [sidenote: and by von kremer.] another learned and impartial authority tells us: the mussulman power under the first four caliphs was nothing but a grand religio-political association of arab tribes for universal plunder and conquest under the holy banner of islam, and the watch-word, "there is no god but the lord, and mohammed is his apostle." on pretext of spreading the only true religion the arabs swallowed up fair provinces lying all around, and, driving a profitable business, enriched themselves simultaneously in a worldly sense.[41] [sidenote: religious merit of "fighting in the ways of the lord."] the motives which nerved the armies of islam were a strange combination of the lower instincts of nature with the higher aspirations of the spirit. to engage in the holy war was the rarest and most blessed of all religious virtues, and conferred on the combatant a special merit; and side by side with it lay the bright prospect of spoil and female slaves, conquest and glory. "mount thy horse," said osama ibn zeid to abu bekr as he accompanied the syrian army a little way on its march, out of medina. "nay," replied the caliph, "i will not ride, but i will walk and soil my feet a little space in the ways of the lord. verily, every footstep in the ways of the lord is equal in merit to manifold good works, and wipeth away a multitude of sins."[42] and of the "martyrs," those who fell in these crusading campaigns, mohammed thus described the blessed state: think not, in any wise, of those killed in the ways of the lord, as if they were dead. yea, they are alive, and are nourished with their lord, exulting in that which god hath given them of his favor, and rejoicing in behalf of those who have not yet joined them, but are following after. no terror afflicteth them, neither are they grieved.--sura iii. [sidenote: material fruits of moslem crusade.] the material fruits of their victories raised the arabs at once from being the needy inhabitants of a stony, sterile soil, where, with difficulty, they eked out a hardy subsistence, to be the masters of rich and luxuriant lands flowing with milk and honey. after one of his great victories on the plains of chaldea, khalid called together his troops, flushed with conquest, and lost in wonder at the exuberance around them, and thus addressed them: "ye see the riches of the land. its paths drop fatness and plenty, so that the fruits of the earth are scattered abroad even as stones are in arabia. if but as a provision for this present life, it were worth our while to fight for these fair fields and banish care and penury forever from us." such were the aspirations dear to the heart of every arab warrior. again, after the battle of jalola, a few years later, the treasure and spoil of the persian monarch, captured by the victors, was valued at thirty million of dirhems (about a million sterling). the royal fifth (the crown share of the booty) was sent as usual to medina under charge of ziad, who, in the presence of the caliph omar, harangued the citizens in a glowing description of what had been won in persia, fertile lands, rich cities, and endless spoil, besides captive maids and princesses. [sidenote: rich booty taken in the capital of persia, a.d. 637.] in relating the capture of medain (the ancient ctesiphon) tradition revels in the untold wealth which fell into the hands of sad, the conqueror, and his followers. besides millions of treasure, there was endless store of gold and silver vessels, rich vestments, and rare and precious things. the arabs gazed bewildered at the tiara, brocaded vestments, jeweled armor, and splendid surroundings of the throne. they tell of a camel of silver, life-size, with a rider of gold, and of a golden horse with emeralds for teeth, the neck set with rubies, the trappings of gold. and we may read in gibbon of the marvelous banqueting carpet, representing a garden, the ground of wrought gold, the walks of silver, the meadows of emeralds, rivulets of pearls, and flowers and fruits of diamonds, rubies, and rare gems. the precious metals lost their conventional value, gold was parted with for its weight in silver; and so on.[43] [sidenote: success in battle ascribed to divine aid.] it is the virtue of islam that it recognizes a special providence, seeing the hand of god, as in every thing, so pre-eminently also in victory. when sad, therefore, had established himself in the palace of the chosroes he was not forgetful to render thanks in a service of praise. one of the princely mansions was turned for the moment into a temple, and there, followed by his troops, he ascribed the victory to the lord of hosts. the lesson accompanying the prayers was taken from a sura (or chapter of the koran) which speaks of pharaoh and his riders being overwhelmed in the red sea, and contains this passage, held to be peculiarly appropriate to the occasion: "how many gardens and fountains did they leave behind, and fields of corn, and fair dwelling-places, and pleasant things which they enjoyed! even thus have we made another people to inherit the same."[44] [sidenote: "martyrdom" in the field coveted by moslem crusaders. the moslem crown of martyrdom.] such as fell in the conflict were called martyrs; a halo of glory surrounded them, and special joys awaited them even on the battlefield. and so it came to pass that the warriors of islam had an unearthly longing for the crown of martyrdom. the caliph omar was inconsolable at the loss of his brother, zeid, who fell in the fatal "garden of death," at the battle of yemama: "thou art returned home," he said to his son, abdallah, "safe and sound, and zeid is dead. wherefore wast not thou slain before him? i wish not to see thy face." "father," answered abdallah, "he asked for the crown of martyrdom, and the lord granted it. i strove after the same, but it was not given unto me."[45] it was the proud boast of the saracens in their summons to the craven greeks and persians that "they loved death more than their foes loved life." familiar with the pictures drawn in the koran of the beautiful "houries" of paradise,[46] the saracens believed that immediate fruition on the field of battle was the martyr's special prize. we are told of a moslem soldier, four-score years of age, who, seeing a comrade fall by his side, cried out, "o paradise! how close art thou beneath the arrow's point and the falchion's flash! o hashim! even now i see heaven opened, and black-eyed maidens all bridally attired, clasping thee in their fond embrace." and shouting thus the aged warrior, fired again with the ardor of youth, rushed upon the enemy and met the envied fate. for those who survived there was the less ethereal but closer prospect of persian, greek, or coptic women, both maids and matrons, who, on "being taken captive by their right hand," were forthwith, according to the koran, without stint of number, at the conqueror's will and pleasure. these, immediately they were made prisoners, might (according to the example of mohammed himself at kheibar) be carried off without further ceremony to the victor's tent; and in this respect the saracens certainly were nothing loath to execute upon the heathen the judgment written in their law. so strangely was religious fanaticism fed and fostered in the moslem camp by incentives irresistible to the arab--fight and foray, the spoil of war and captive charms. [sidenote: martial passages from koran recited on field of battle.] the courage of the troops was stimulated by the divine promises of victory, which were read (and on like occasions still are read) at the head of each column drawn up for battle. thus, on the field of cadesiya[d], which decided the fate of persia, the sura _jehad_, with the stirring tale of the thousand angels that fought on the prophet's side at bedr was recited, and such texts as these: _stir up the faithful unto battle. if there be twenty steadfast among you they shall put two hundred to flight of the unbelievers, and a hundred shall put to flight a thousand. victory is from the lord. he is mighty and wise. i the lord will cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. strike off their heads and their fingers' ends. beware lest ye turn your back in battle. verily, he that turneth his back shall draw down upon himself the wrath of god. his abode shall be hell fire; an evil journey thither._ and we are told that on the recital of these verses "the heart of the people was refreshed and their eyes lightened, and they felt the tranquillity that ensueth thereupon." three days they fought, and on the morning of the fourth, returning with unabated vigor to the charge, they scattered to the winds the vast host of persia.[47] [sidenote: defeat of byzantine army on the yermuk, a.d. 634.] nor was it otherwise in the great battle of the yermuk, which laid syria at the feet of the arabs. the virgin vigor of the saracens was fired by a wild fanatical zeal "to fight in the ways of the lord," obtaining thus heavenly merit and a worldly prize--the spoil of syria and its fair maidens ravished from their homes; or should they fall by the sword, the black-eyed houries waiting for them on the field of battle. "of warriors nerved by this strange combination of earth and heaven, of the flesh and of the spirit, of the incentives at once of faith and rapine, of fanatical devotion to the prophet and deathless passion for the sex, ten might chase a hundred half-hearted romans. the forty thousand moslems were stronger far than the two hundred and forty thousand of the enemy." the combat lasted for weeks; but at the last the byzantine force was utterly routed, and thousands hurled in wild confusion over the beetling cliffs of the yermuk into the yawning chasm of wacusa.[48] [sidenote: islam planted by aid of material force.] such, then, was the nature of the moslem propaganda, such the agency by which the faith was spread, and such the motives at once material and spiritual by which its martial missionaries were inspired. no wonder that the effete empires of rome and persia recoiled and quivered at the shock, and that province after province quickly fell under the sway of islam. it is far from my intention to imply that the truths set forth by the new faith had nothing to do with its success. on the contrary, it may well be admitted that but for those truths success might have been impossible. the grand enunciation of the divine unity, and the duty of an absolute submission to the same; the recognition of a special providence reaching to the minutest details of life; the inculcation of prayer and other religious duties; the establishment of a code in which the leading principles of morality are enforced, and the acknowledgment of previous revelations in the jewish and christian scriptures, told not only on the idolaters of arabia and the fire-worshipers of persia, but on jews and samaritans and the followers of a debased and priest-ridden christianity. all this is true; but it is still not the less true that without the sword islam would never have been planted even in arabia, much less ever have spread to the countries beyond. the weapons of its warfare were "carnal," material, and earthly; and by them it conquered. [sidenote: alternatives offered to the conquered nations: islam, the sword, or tribute.] the pressure brought to bear on the inhabitants of the countries overrun by saracen arms was of the most stringent character. they were offered the triple alternative--islam, the sword, or tribute. the first brought immediate relief. acceptance of the faith not only stayed the enemy's hand, and conferred immunity from the perils of war, but associated the convert with his conquerors in the common brotherhood and in all the privileges of islam. [sidenote: acceptance of islam, immediate relief from the sword.] reading the story of the spread of islam, we are constantly told of this and that enemy, that "being beaten, he _believed_ and embraced the faith." take as an example of an every-day occurrence the story of hormuzan. a persian prince of high rank long maintained a border warfare against the moslems. at last he was taken prisoner and sent in chains to medina. as he was conducted into the great mosque, omar exclaimed, "blessed be the lord, that hath humbled this man and the like of him!" he bade them disrobe the prisoner and clothe him in sackcloth. then, whip in hand, he upbraided him for his oft-repeated attacks and treachery. hormuzan made as if fain to reply; then gasping, like one faint from thirst, he begged for water to drink. "give it him," said the caliph, "and let him drink in peace." "nay," cried the wretched captive, trembling, "i fear to drink, lest some one slay me unawares." "thy life is safe," said omar, "until thou hast drunk the water up." the words were no sooner said than hormuzan emptied the vessel on the ground. "i wanted not the water," he said, "but quarter, and thou hast given it me." "liar!" cried omar, angrily, "thy life is forfeit." "but not," interposed the by-standers, "until he drink the water up." "strange," said omar, "the fellow hath deceived me; and yet i cannot spare the life of one who hath slain so many noble moslems. i swear that thou shalt not gain by thy deceit unless thou wilt forthwith embrace islam." upon that, "_believing_, he made profession of the true faith upon the spot;" and thenceforth, residing at medina, he received a pension of the highest grade.[49] [sidenote: tribute and humiliation. disabilities imposed on jews and christians.] on the other hand, for those who held to their ancestral faith there was no escape from the second or the third alternative. if they would avoid the sword, or, having wielded it, were beaten, they must become tributary. moreover, the payment of tribute is not the only condition enjoined by the koran. "fight against them (the jews and christians) until they pay tribute with the hand, _and are humbled_."[50] the command fell on willing ears. an ample interpretation was given to it. and so it came to pass that, though jews and christians were, on the payment of tribute, tolerated in the profession of their ancestral faith, they were yet subjected (and still are subjected) to severe humiliation. the nature and extent of the degradation to which they were brought down, and the strength of the inducement to purchase exemption and the equality of civil rights, by surrendering their religion, may be learned from the provisions which were embodied in the code named _the ordinance of omar_, which has been more or less enforced from the earliest times. besides the tribute and various other imposts levied from the "people of the book,"[51] and the duty of receiving moslem travelers quartered upon them, the dress of both sexes must be distinguished by broad stripes of yellow. they are forbidden to appear on horseback, and if mounted on a mule or ass their stirrups must be of wood, and their saddles known by knobs of the same material. their graves must not rise above the level of the soil, and the devil's mark is placed upon the lintel of their doors. their children must be taught by moslem masters, and the race, however able or well qualified, proscribed from any office of high emolument or trust. besides the churches spared at the time of conquest no new buildings can be erected for the purposes of worship; nor can free entrance into their holy places at pleasure be refused to the moslem. no cross must remain in view outside, nor any church-bells be rung. they must refrain from processions in the street at easter, and other solemnities; and from any thing, in short, whether by outward symbol, word, or deed, which could be construed into rivalry, or competition with the ruling faith. such was the so-called _code of omar_. enforced with less or greater stringency, according to the intolerance and caprice of the day, by different dynasties, it was, and (however much relaxed in certain countries) it still remains, the law of islam. one must admire the rare tenacity of the christian faith, which, with but scanty light and hope, held its ground through weary ages of insult and depression, and still survives to see the dawning of a brighter day.[52] [sidenote: continuing inducements in times of peace.] such, then, was the hostile attitude of islam militant in its early days; such the pressure brought to bear on conquered lands for its acceptance; and such the disabilities imposed upon recusant jews and christians. on the one hand, rapine, plunder, slavery, tribute, civil disability; on the other, security, peace, and honor. we need not be surprised that, under such constraint, conquered peoples succumbed before islam. nor were the temporal inducements to conversion confined to the period during which the saracens were engaged in spreading islam by force of arms. let us come down a couple of centuries from the time of mohammed, and take the reign of the tolerant and liberal-minded sovereign, al mamun. [sidenote: evidence of al kindy in second century of hegira, a.d. 830. speech of al mamun.] among the philosophers of all creeds whom that great caliph gathered around him at bagdad was a noble arab of the nestorian faith, descended from the kingly tribe of the beni kinda, and hence called _al kindy_. a friend of this eastern christian, himself a member of the royal family, invited al kindy to embrace islam in an epistle enlarging on the distinguished rank which, in virtue of his descent, he would (if a true believer) occupy at court, and the other privileges, spiritual and material, social and conjugal, which he would enjoy. in reply the christian wrote an apology of singular eloquence and power, throwing a flood of light on the worldly inducements which, even at that comparatively late period, abounded in a moslem state to promote conversion to islam. thus al mamun himself, in a speech delivered before his council, characterizes certain of his courtiers accused as secret adherents of the zoroastrian faith: "though professing islam, they are free from the same. this they do to be seen of me, while their convictions, i am well aware, are just the opposite of that which they profess. they belong to a class which embrace islam, not from any love of this our faith, but thinking thereby to gain access to our court, and share in the honor, wealth, and power of the realm. they have no inward persuasion of that which they outwardly profess."[53] [sidenote: converts from sordid motives.] again, speaking of the various classes brought over to islam by sordid and unworthy motives, al kindy says: moreover, there are the idolatrous races--magians and jews--low people aspiring by the profession of islam to raise themselves to riches and power and to form alliances with the families of the learned and honorable. there are, besides, hypocritical men of the world, who in this way obtain indulgences in the matter of marriage and concubinage which are forbidden to them by the christian faith. then we have the dissolute class given over wholly to the lusts of the flesh. and lastly there are those who by this means obtain a more secure and easy livelihood.[54] [sidenote: al kindy contrasts the christian confessor with the moslem "martyr." the christian confessor and the moslem martyr.] before leaving this part of our subject it may be opportune to quote a few more passages from al kindy, in which he contrasts the inducements that, under the military and political predominance of islam, promoted its rapid spread, and the opposite conditions under which christianity made progress, slow, indeed, comparatively, but sure and steady. first, he compares the christian confessor with the moslem "martyr:" i marvel much, he says, that ye call those _martyrs_ that fall in war. thou hast read, no doubt, in history of the followers of christ put to death in the persecutions of the kings of persia and elsewhere. say, now, which are the more worthy to be called martyrs, these, or thy fellows that fall fighting for the world and the power thereof? how diverse were the barbarities and kinds of death inflicted on the christian confessors! the more they were slain the more rapidly spread the faith; in place of one sprang up a hundred. on a certain occasion, when a great multitude had been put to death, one at court said to the king, "the number of them increaseth instead of, as thou thinkest, diminishing." "how can that be?" exclaimed the king. "but yesterday," replied the courtier, "thou didst put such and such a one to death, and lo, there were converted double that number; and the people say that a man appeared to the confessors from heaven strengthening them in their last moments." whereupon the king himself was converted. in those days men thought not their lives dear unto them. some were transfixed while yet alive; others had their limbs cut off one after another; some were cast to the wild beasts and others burned in the fire. such continued long to be the fate of the christian confessors. no parallel is found thereto in any other religion; and all was endured with constancy and even with joy. one smiled in the midst of his great suffering. "was it cold water," they asked, "that was brought unto thee?" "no," answered the sufferer, "it was one like a youth that stood by me and anointed my wounds; and that made me smile, for the pain forthwith departed." now tell me seriously, my friend, which of the two hath the best claim to be called a _martyr_, "slain in the ways of the lord:" he who surrendereth his life rather than renounce his faith; who, when it is said, fall down and worship the sun and moon, or the idols of silver and gold, work of men's hands, instead of the true god, refuseth, choosing rather to give up life, abandon wealth, and forego even wife and family; or he that goeth forth, ravaging and laying waste, plundering and spoiling, slaying the men, carrying away their children into captivity, and ravishing their wives and maidens in his unlawful embrace, and then shall call it "jehad in the ways of the lord!" ... and not content therewith, instead of humbling thyself before the lord, and seeking pardon for the crime, thou sayest of such a one slain in the war that "he hath earned paradise," and thou namest him "a martyr in the ways of the lord!"[55] and again, contrasting the spread of islam, "its rattling quiver and its glittering sword," with the silent progress of christianity, our apologist, after dwelling on the teaching and the miracles of the apostles, writes: they published their message by means of these miracles; and thus great and powerful kings and philosophers and learned men and judges of the earth hearkened unto them, without lash or rod, with neither sword nor spear, nor the advantages of birth or "helpers;"[56] with no wisdom of this world, or eloquence or power of language, or subtlety of reason; with no worldly inducement, nor yet again with any relaxation of the moral law, but simply at the voice of truth enforced by miracles beyond the power of man to show. and so there came over to them the kings and great ones of the earth. and the philosophers abandoned their systems, with all their wisdom and learning, and betook them to a saintly life, giving up the delights of this world together with their old-established usages, and became followers of a company of poor men, fishers and publicans, who had neither name nor rank nor any claim other than that they were obedient to the command of the messiah--he that gave them power to do such wonderful works.[57] [sidenote: the apostles compared with the chiefs of islam.] and yet once more, comparing the apostles with the military chiefs of islam, al kindy proceeds: after the descent of the holy ghost and the gift of tongues the apostles separated each to the country to which he was called. they wrote out in every tongue the holy gospel, and the story and teaching of christ, at the dictation of the holy ghost. so the nations drew near unto them, believing their testimony; and, giving up the world and their false beliefs, they embraced the christian faith as soon as ever the dawn of truth and the light of the good tidings broke in upon them. distinguishing the true from the false, and error from the right direction, they embraced the gospel and held it fast without doubt or wavering, when they saw the wonderful works and signs of the apostles, and their lives and conversation set after the holy and beautiful example of our saviour, the traces whereof remain even unto the present day.... how different this from the life of thy master (mohammed) and his companions, who ceased not to go forth in battle and rapine, to smite with the sword, to seize the little ones, and ravish the wives and maidens, plundering and laying waste, and carrying the people into captivity. and thus they continue unto this present day, inciting men to these evil deeds, even as it is told of omar the caliph. "if one among you," said he, "hath a heathen neighbor and is in need, let him seize and sell him." and many such things they say and teach. look now at the lives of simon and paul, who went about healing the sick and raising the dead, by the name of christ our lord; and mark the contrast.[58] [sidenote: such are the conclusions of a native of chaldea.] such are the reflections of one who lived at a mohammedan court, and who, moreover, flourishing as he did a thousand years ago, was sufficiently near the early spread of islam to be able to contrast what he saw and heard and read of the causes of its success with those of the gospel, and had the courage to confess the same. [sidenote: hinderances or inducements inherent in the faith itself.] apart, now, from the outward and extraneous aids given to islam by the sword and by the civil arm i will inquire for a moment what natural effect the teaching of islam itself had in attracting or repelling mankind. i do not now speak of any power contained in the truths it inculcated to convert to islam by the rousing and quickening of spiritual impulses; for that lies beyond my present purpose, which is to inquire whether there is not in material causes and secular motives enough in themselves to account for success. i speak rather of the effect of the indulgences granted by islam, on the one hand, as calculated to attract; and of the restraints imposed and sacrifices required, on the other, as calculated to repel. how far, in fact, did there exist inducements or hinderances to its adoption inherent in the religion itself? [sidenote: requirements of islam: prayer. prohibition of wine, games of chance, and usury. fast of ramzan.] what may be regarded as the most constant and irksome of the obligations of islam is the duty of prayer, which must be observed at stated intervals, five times every day, with the contingent ceremony of lustration. the rite consists of certain forms and passages to be repeated with prescribed series of prostrations and genuflexions. these must be repeated at the right times--but anywhere, in the house or by the wayside, as well as in the mosque; and the ordinance is obligatory in whatever state of mind the worshiper may be, or however occupied. as the appointed hour comes round the moslem is bound to turn aside to pray--so much so that in central asia we read of the police driving the backward worshiper by the lash to discharge the duty. thus, with the mass of mussulmans, the obligation becomes a mere formal ceremony, and one sees it performed anywhere and every-where by the whole people, like any social custom, as a matter of course. no doubt there are exceptions; but with the multitude it does not involve the irksomeness of a spiritual service, and so it sits lightly on high and low. the friday prayers should as a rule be attended in the mosque; but neither need there be much devotion there; and, once performed, the rest of the day is free for pleasure or for business.[59] the prohibition of wine is a restriction which was severely felt in the early days of the faith; but it was not long before the universal sentiment (though eluded in some quarters) supported it. the embargo upon games of chance was certainly unpopular; and the prohibition of the receipt of interest was also an important limitation, tending as it did to shackle the freedom of mercantile speculation; but they have been partially evaded on various pretexts. the fast throughout the month of ramzan was a severer test; but even this lasts only during the day; and at night, from sunset till dawn, all restrictions are withdrawn, not only in respect of food, but of all otherwise lawful gratifications.[60] [sidenote: little that is unpopular in these ordinances.] there is nothing, therefore, in the requirements and ordinances of islam, excepting the fast, that is very irksome to humanity, or which, as involving any material sacrifice, or the renunciation of the pleasures or indulgences of life, should lead a man of the world to hesitate in embracing the new faith. [sidenote: indulgences allowed in the matter of wives and concubines.] on the other hand, the license allowed by the koran between the sexes--at least in favor of the male sex--is so wide that for such as have the means and the desire to take advantage of it there need be no limit whatever to sexual indulgence. it is true that adultery is punishable by death and fornication with stripes. but then the koran gives the believer permission to have four wives at a time. and he may exchange them--that is, he may divorce them at pleasure, taking others in their stead.[61] and, as if this were not license enough, the divine law permits the believer to consort with all female slaves whom he may be the master of--such, namely, as have been taken in war, or have been acquired by gift or purchase. these he may receive into his harem instead of wives, or in addition to them; and without any limit of number or restraint whatever he is at liberty to cohabit with them. [sidenote: polygamy, concubinage, and divorce. practice at the rise of islam.] a few instances taken at random will enable the reader to judge how the indulgences thus allowed by the religion were taken advantage of in the early days of islam. in the great plague which devastated syria seven years after the prophet's death khalid, the sword of god, lost _forty_ sons. abdal rahman, one of the "companions" of mohammed, had issue by sixteen wives, not counting slave-girls.[62] moghira ibn shoba, another "companion," and governor of kufa and bussorah, had in his harem eighty consorts, free and servile. coming closer to the prophet's household, we find that mohammed himself at one period had in his harem no fewer than nine wives and two slave-girls. of his grandson hasan we read that his vagrant passion gained for him the unenviable sobriquet of _the divorcer_; for it was only by continually divorcing his consorts that he could harmonize his craving for fresh nuptials with the requirements of the divine law, which limited the number of his free wives to four. we are told that, as a matter of simple caprice, he exercised the power of divorce seventy (according to other traditions ninety) times. when the leading men complained to aly of the licentious practice of his son his only reply was that the remedy lay in their own hands, of refusing hasan their daughters altogether.[63] such are the material inducements, the "works of the flesh," which islam makes lawful to its votaries, and which promoted thus its early spread. [sidenote: practice in modern times. the malays of penang. lane's testimony concerning egypt. the princess of bhopal's account of mecca.] descending now to modern times, we still find that this sexual license is taken advantage of more or less in different countries and conditions of society. the following examples are simply meant as showing to what excess it is possible for the believer to carry these indulgences, _under the sanction of his religion_. of the malays in penang it was written not very long ago: "young men of thirty to thirty-five years of age may be met with who have had from fifteen to twenty wives, and children by several of them. these women have been divorced, married others, and had children by them." regarding egypt, lane tells us: "i have heard of men who have been in the habit of marrying a new wife almost every month."[64] burkhardt speaks of an arab forty-five years old who had had fifty wives, "so that he must have divorced two wives and married two fresh ones on the average every year." and not to go further than the sacred city of mecca, the late reigning princess of bhopal, in central india, herself an orthodox follower of the prophet, after making the pilgrimage of the holy places, writes thus: women frequently contract as many as ten marriages, and those who have only been married twice are few in number. if a woman sees her husband growing old, or if she happen to admire any one else, she goes to the shereef (the spiritual and civil head of the holy city), and after having settled the matter with him she puts away her husband and takes to herself another, who is, perhaps, good-looking and rich. in this way a marriage seldom lasts more than a year or two. and of slave-girls the same high and impartial authority, still writing of the holy city and of her fellow-moslems, tells us: some of the women (african and georgian girls) are taken in marriage; and after that, on being sold again, they receive from their masters a divorce, and are sold in their houses--that is to say, they are sent to the purchaser from their master's house on receipt of payment, and are not exposed for sale in the slave-market. they are only _married_ when purchased for the first time.... when the poorer people buy (female) slaves they keep them for themselves, and change them every year as one would replace old things by new; but the women who have children are not sold.[65] [sidenote: islam sanctions a license between the sexes which christianity forbids. the laws of christianity deter men from carnal indulgences. islam the "easy way."] what i desire to make clear is the fact that such things may be practiced _with the sanction_ of the scripture which the moslem holds to be divine, and that these same indulgences have from the first existed as inducements which helped materially to forward the spread of the faith. i am very far, indeed, from implying that excessive indulgence in polygamy is the universal state of moslem society. happily this is not the case. there are not only individuals, but tribes and districts, which, either from custom or preference, voluntarily restrict the license given them in the koran; while the natural influence of the family, even in moslem countries, has an antiseptic tendency that often itself tends greatly to neutralize the evil.[66] nor am i seeking to institute any contrast between the morals at large of moslem countries and the rest of the world. if christian nations are (as with shame it must be confessed) in some strata of society immoral, it is in the teeth of their divine law. and the restrictions of that law are calculated, and in the early days of christianity did tend, in point of fact, _to deter men_ devoted to the indulgences of the flesh from embracing the faith.[67] the religion of mohammed, on the other hand, gives direct sanction to the sexual indulgences we have been speaking of. thus it panders to the lower instincts of humanity and makes its spread the easier. in direct opposition to the precepts of christianity it "makes provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." hence islam has been well called by its own votaries the _easy way_. once more, to quote al kindy: thou invitest me (says our apologist to his friend) into the "easy way of faith and practice." alas, alas! for our saviour in the gospel telleth us, "when ye have done all that ye are commanded, say, we are unprofitable servants; we have but done that which was commanded us." where then is our merit? the same lord jesus saith, "how strait is the road which leadeth unto life, and how few they be that walk therein! how wide the gate that leadeth to destruction, and how many there be that go in thereat!" different this, my friend, from the comforts of thy wide and easy gate, and the facilities for enjoying, as thou wouldst have me, the pleasures offered by thy faith in wives and damsels![68] footnotes: [a] a.d. 623. [b] a.d. 630. [c] a.d. 632. [d] a.d. 635. ii. why the spread of islam was stayed. [sidenote: islam stationary in area, and in civilization retrograde.] having thus traced the rapid early spread of islam to its proper source, i proceed to the remaining topics, namely, the causes which have checked its further extension, and those likewise which have depressed the followers of this religion in the scale of civilization. i shall take the former first--just remarking here, in respect of the latter, that the depression of islam is itself one of the causes which retard the expansion of the faith. [sidenote: the arabs ceased, in second century, to be a crusading force.] as the first spread of islam was due to the sword, so when the sword was sheathed islam ceased to spread. the apostles and missionaries of islam were, as we have seen, the martial tribes of arabia--that is to say, the grand military force organized by omar, and by him launched upon the surrounding nations. gorged with the plunder of the world, these began, after a time, to settle on their lees and to mingle with the ordinary population. so soon as this came to pass they lost the fiery zeal which at the first had made them irresistible. by the second and third centuries the arabs had disappeared as the standing army of the caliphate, or, in other words, as a body set apart for the dissemination of the faith. the crusading spirit, indeed, ever and anon burst forth--and it still bursts forth, as opportunity offers--simply for the reason that this spirit pervades the koran, and is ingrained in the creed. but with the special agency created and maintained during the first ages for the spread of islam the incentive of crusade ceased as a distinctive missionary spring of action, and degenerated into the common lust of conquest which we meet with in the world at large. [sidenote: with cessation of conquest, islam ceased to spread.] the extension of islam, depending upon military success, stopped wherever that was checked. the religion advanced or retired, speaking broadly, as the armed predominance made head or retroceded. thus the tide of moslem victory, rushing along the coast of africa, extinguished the seats of european civilization on the mediterranean, overwhelmed spain, and was rapidly advancing north, when the onward wave was stemmed at tours; and as with the arms, the faith also of islam was driven back into spain and bounded by the pyrenees. so, likewise, the hold which the religion seized both of spain and sicily came to an end with mussulman defeat. it is true that when once long and firmly rooted, as in india and china, islam may survive the loss of military power, and even flourish. but it is equally true that in no single country has islam been planted, nor has it anywhere materially spread, saving under the banner of the crescent or the political ascendency of some neighboring state. accordingly, we find that, excepting some barbarous zones in africa which have been raised thereby a step above the groveling level of fetichism, the faith has in modern times made no advance worth mentioning.[69] from the jewish and christian religions there has (again speaking broadly) been no secession whatever to islam since the wave of saracen victory was stayed, excepting by the force of arms. even in the palmy days of the abbasside caliphs, our apologist could challenge his adversary to produce a single conversion otherwise than by reason of some powerful material inducement. here is his testimony: [sidenote: al kindy's challenge to produce a christian convert to islam apart from material inducements.] now tell me, hast thou ever seen, my friend, (the lord be gracious unto thee!) or ever heard of a single person of sound mind--any one of learning and experience, and acquainted with the scriptures, renouncing christianity otherwise than for some worldly object to be reached only through thy religion, or for some gratification withheld by the faith of jesus? thou wilt find none. for, excepting the tempted ones, all continue steadfast in their faith, secure under our most gracious sovereign, in the profession of their own religion.[70] iii. low position of islam in the scale of civilization. [sidenote: social and intellectual depression.] i pass on to consider why mohammedan nations occupy so low a position, halting as almost every-where they do, in the march of social and intellectual development. [sidenote: islam intended for the arabs. wants the faculty of adaptation.] the reason is not far to find. islam was meant for arabia, not for the world; for the arabs of the seventh century, not for the arabs of all time; and being such, and nothing more, its claim of divine origin renders change or development impossible. it has within itself neither the germ of natural growth nor the lively spring of adaptation. mohammed declared himself a prophet to the arabs;[71] and however much in his later days he may have contemplated the reformation of other religions beyond the peninsula, or the further spread of his own (which is doubtful), still the rites and ceremonies, the customs and the laws enjoined upon his people, were suitable (if suitable at all) for the arabs of that day, and in many respects for them alone. again, the code containing these injunctions, social and ceremonial, as well as doctrinal and didactic, is embodied with every particularity of detail, as part of the divine law, in the koran; and so defying, as sacrilege, all human touch, it stands unalterable forever. from the stiff and rigid shroud in which it is thus swathed the religion of mohammed cannot emerge. it has no plastic power beyond that exercised in its earliest days. hardened now and inelastic, it can neither adapt itself nor yet shape its votaries, nor even suffer them to shape themselves to the varying circumstances, the wants and developments, of mankind. [sidenote: local ceremonies: pilgrimage. fast of ramzan.] we may judge of the local and inflexible character of the faith from one or two of its ceremonies. to perform the pilgrimage to mecca and mount arafat, with the slaying of victims at mina, and the worship of the kaaba, is an ordinance obligatory (with the condition only that they have the means) on all believers, who are bound to make the journey even from the furthest ends of the earth--an ordinance intelligible enough in a local worship, but unmeaning and impracticable when required of a world-wide religion. the same may be said of the fast of ramzan. it is prescribed in the koran to be observed by all with undeviating strictness during the whole day, from earliest dawn till sunset throughout the month, with specified exemptions for the sick and penalties for every occasion on which it is broken. the command, imposed thus with an iron rule on male and female, young and old, operates with excessive inequality in different seasons, lands, and climates. however suitable to countries near the equator, where the variations of day and night are immaterial, the fast becomes intolerable to those who are far removed either toward the north or the south; and still closer to the poles, where night merges into day and day into night, impracticable. again, with the lunar year (itself an institution divinely imposed), the month of ramzan travels in the third of a century from month to month over the whole cycle of a year. the fast was established at a time when ramzan fell in winter, and the change of season was probably not foreseen by the prophet. but the result is one which, under some conditions of time and place, involves the greatest hardship. for when the fast comes round to summer the trial in a sultry climate, like that of the burning indian plains, of passing the whole day without a morsel of bread or a drop of water becomes to many the occasion of intense suffering. such is the effect of the arabian legislator's attempt at circumstantial legislation in matters of religious ceremonial. [sidenote: political and social depression owing to relations between the sexes.] nearly the same is the case with all the religions obligations of islam, prayer, lustration, etc. but although the minuteness of detail with which these are enjoined tends toward that jejune and formal worship which we witness every-where in moslem lands, still there is nothing in these observances themselves which (religion apart) should lower the social condition of mohammedan populations and prevent their emerging from that normal state of semi-barbarism and uncivilized depression in which we find all moslem peoples. for the cause of this we must look elsewhere; and it may be recognized, without doubt, in the relations established by the koran between the sexes. polygamy, divorce, servile concubinage, and the veil are at the root of moslem decadence. [sidenote: depression of the female sex. divorce.] in respect of married life the condition allotted by the koran to woman is that of an inferior dependent creature, destined only for the service of her master, liable to be cast adrift without the assignment of a single reason or the notice of a single hour. while the husband possesses the power of a divorce--absolute, immediate, unquestioned--no privilege of a corresponding nature has been reserved for the wife. she hangs on, however unwilling, neglected, or superseded, the perpetual slave of her lord, if such be his will. when actually divorced she can, indeed, claim her dower--her _hire_, as it is called in the too plain language of the koran; but the knowledge that the wife can make this claim is at the best a miserable security against capricious taste; and in the case of bondmaids even that imperfect check is wanting. the power of divorce is not the only power that may be exercised by the tyrannical husband. authority to _confine_ and to _beat_ his wives is distinctly vested in his discretion.[72] "thus restrained, secluded, degraded, the mere minister of enjoyment, liable at the caprice or passion of the moment to be turned adrift, it would be hard to say that the position of a wife was improved by the code of mohammed."[73] even if the privilege of divorce and marital tyranny be not exercised, the knowledge of its existence as a potential right must tend to abate the self-respect, and in like degree to weaken the influence of the sex, impairing thus the ameliorating and civilizing power which she was meant to exercise upon mankind. and the evil has been stereotyped by the koran for all time. [sidenote: principal fairbairn on home-life under islam.] i must quote one more passage from principal fairbairn on the lowering influence of moslem domestic life: the god of mohammed ... "spares the sins the arab loves. a religion that does not purify the home cannot regenerate the race; one that depraves the home is certain to deprave humanity. motherhood is to be sacred if manhood is to be honorable. spoil the wife of sanctity and for the man the sanctities of life have perished. and so it has been with islam. it has reformed and lifted savage tribes; it has depraved and barbarized civilized nations. at the root of its fairest culture a worm has ever lived that has caused its blossoms soon to wither and die. were mohammed the hope of man, then his state were hopeless; before him could only be retrogression, tyranny, and despair."[74] [sidenote: demoralizing influence of servile concubinage.] still worse is the influence of servile concubinage. the following is the evidence of a shrewd and able observer in the east: all zenana life must be bad for men at all stages of their existence.... in youth it must be ruin to be petted and spoiled by a company of submissive slave-girls. in manhood it is no less an evil that when a man enters into private life his affections should be put up to auction among foolish, fond competitors full of mutual jealousies and slanders. we are not left entirely to conjecture as to the effect of female influence on home-life when it is exerted under these unenlightened and demoralizing conditions. that is plainly an element _lying at the root of all the most important features that differentiate progress from stagnation_.[75] [sidenote: deteriorating influence of relations established between the sexes.] such are the institutions which gnaw at the root of islam and prevent the growth of freedom and civilization. "by these the unity of the household is fatally broken and the purity and virtue of the family tie weakened; the vigor of the dominant classes is sapped; the body politic becomes weak and languid, excepting for intrigues, and the throne itself liable to fall a prey to a doubtful or contested succession"[76]--contested by the progeny of the various rivals crowded into the royal harem. from the palace downward polygamy and servile concubinage lower the moral tone, loosen the ties of domestic life, and hopelessly depress the people. [sidenote: the veil.] nor is the veil, albeit under the circumstances a necessary precaution, less detrimental, though in a different way, to the interests of moslem society. this strange custom owes its origin to the prophet's jealous temperament. it is forbidden in the koran for women to appear unveiled before any member of the other sex with the exception of certain near relatives of specified propinquity.[77] and this law, coupled with other restrictions of the kind, has led to the imposition of the _boorka_ or _purdah_ (the dress which conceals the person and the veil) and to the greater or less seclusion of the harem and zenana. [sidenote: society vitiated by the withdrawal of the female sex. mohammedan society, thus truncated, incapable of progress. the defects of mohammedan society.] this ordinance and the practices flowing from it must survive, more or less, so long as the koran remains the rule of faith. it may appear at first sight a mere negative evil, a social custom comparatively harmless; but in truth it has a more debilitating effect upon the moslem race perhaps than any thing else, for by it _woman is totally withdrawn from her proper place in the social circle_. she may, indeed, in the comparatively laxer license of some lands be seen flitting along the streets or driving in her carriage; but even so it is like one belonging to another world, veiled, shrouded, and cut off from intercourse with those around her. free only in the retirement of her own secluded apartments, she is altogether shut out from her legitimate sphere in the duties and enjoyments of life. but the blight on the sex itself from this unnatural regulation, sad as it is, must be regarded as a minor evil. the mischief extends beyond her. the tone and framework of society as it came from the maker's hands are altered, damaged, and deteriorated. from the veil there flows this double injury. the bright, refining, softening influence of woman is withdrawn from the outer world, and social life, wanting the gracious influences of the female sex, becomes, as we see throughout moslem lands, forced, hard, unnatural, and morose. moreover, the mohammedan nations, for all purposes of common elevation and for all efforts of philanthropy and liberty, are (as they live in public and beyond the inner recesses of their homes) but a truncated and imperfect exhibition of humanity. they are wanting in one of its constituent parts, the better half, the humanizing and the softening element. and it would be against the nature of things to suppose that the body, thus shorn and mutilated, can possess in itself the virtue and power of progress, reform, and elevation. the link connecting the family with social and public life is detached, and so neither is _en rapport_, as it should be, with the other. reforms fail to find entrance into the family or to penetrate the domestic soil where alone they could take root, grow into the national mind, live, and be perpetuated. under such conditions the seeds of civilization refuse to germinate. no real growth is possible in free and useful institutions, nor any permanent and healthy force in those great movements which elsewhere tend to uplift the masses and elevate mankind. there may, it is true, be some advance, from time to time, in science and in material prosperity; but the social groundwork for the same is wanting, and the people surely relapse into the semi-barbarism forced upon them by an ordinance which is opposed to the best instincts of humanity. sustained progress becomes impossible. such is the outcome of an attempt to improve upon nature and banish woman, the help-meet of man, from the position assigned by god to her in the world. [sidenote: yet the veil necessary under existing circumstances.] at the same time i am not prepared to say that in view of the laxity of the conjugal relations inherent in the institutions of islam some such social check as that of the veil (apart from the power to confine and castigate) is not needed for the repression of license and the maintenance of outward decency. there is too much reason to apprehend that free social intercourse might otherwise be dangerous to morality under the code of mohammed, and with the example before men and women of the early worthies of islam. so long as the sentiments and habits of the moslem world remain as they are some remedial or preventive measure of the kind seems indispensable. but the peculiarity of the mussulman polity, as we have seen, is such that the sexual laws and institutions which call for restrictions of the kind as founded on the koran are incapable of change; they must co-exist with the faith itself, and last while it lasts. so long, then, as this polity prevails the depression of woman, as well as her exclusion from the social circle, must injure the health and vitality of the body politic, impair its purity and grace, paralyze vigor, retard progress in the direction of freedom, philanthropy, and moral elevation, and generally perpetuate the normal state of mohammedan peoples, as one of semi-barbarism. to recapitulate, we have seen: [sidenote: recapitulation.] _first._ that islam was propagated mainly by the sword. with the tide of conquest the religion went forward; where conquest was arrested made no advance beyond; and at the withdrawal of the moslem arms the faith also commonly retired. _second._ the inducements, whether material or spiritual, to embrace islam have proved insufficient of themselves (speaking broadly) to spread the faith, in the absence of the sword, and without the influence of the political or secular arm. _third._ the ordinances of islam, those especially having respect to the female sex, have induced an inherent weakness, which depresses the social system and retards its progress. [sidenote: contrast with christianity.] if the reader should have followed me in the argument by which these conclusions have been reached the contrast with the christian faith has no doubt been suggesting itself at each successive step. [sidenote: christianity not propagated by force.] christianity, as al kindy has so forcibly put it, gained a firm footing in the world without the sword, and without any aid whatever from the secular arm. so far from having the countenance of the state it triumphed in spite of opposition, persecution, and discouragement. "my kingdom," said jesus, "is not of this world. if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that i should not be delivered to the jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence.... for this end came i into the world, that i should bear witness to the truth. every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice."[78] [sidenote: nor by worldly inducements.] the religion itself, in its early days, offered no worldly attractions or indulgences. it was not, like islam, an "easy way." whether in withdrawal from social observances deeply tainted with idolatry, the refusal to participate in sacrificial ceremonies insisted on by the rulers, or in the renunciation of indulgences inconsistent with a saintly life, the christian profession required self-denial at every step. [sidenote: adaptive principles and plastic faculty of christianity.] but otherwise the teaching of christianity nowhere interfered with the civil institutions of the countries into which it penetrated or with any social customs or practices that were not in themselves immoral or idolatrous. it did not, indeed, neglect to guide the christian life. but it did so by the enunciation of principles and rules of wide and far-reaching application. these, no less than the injunctions of the koran, served amply for the exigencies of the day. but they have done a vast deal more. they have proved themselves capable of adaptation to the most advanced stages of social development and intellectual elevation. and, what is infinitely more, it may be claimed for the lessons embodied in the gospel that they have been themselves promotive, if indeed they have not been the immediate cause, of all the most important reforms and philanthropies that now prevail in christendom. the principles thus laid down contained germs endowed with the power of life and growth which, expanding and flourishing, slowly it may be, but surely, have at the last borne the fruits we see. [sidenote: examples: slavery. relations between the sexes.] take, for example, the institution of slavery. it prevailed in the roman empire at the introduction of christianity, as it did in arabia at the rise of islam. in the moslem code, as we have seen, the practice has been perpetuated. slavery must be held permissible so long as the koran is taken to be the rule of faith. the divine sanction thus impressed upon the institution, and the closeness with which by law and custom it intermingles with social and domestic life, make it impossible for any mohammedan people to impugn slavery as contrary to sound morality or for any body of loyal believers to advocate its abolition upon the ground of principle. there are, moreover, so many privileges and gratifications accruing to the higher classes from its maintenance that (excepting under the strong pressure of european diplomacy) no sincere and hearty effort can be expected from the moslem race in the suppression of the inhuman traffic, the horrors of which, as pursued by moslem slave-traders, their prophet would have been the first to denounce. look now at the wisdom with which the gospel treats the institution. it is nowhere in so many words proscribed, for that would, under the circumstances, have led to the abnegation of relative duties and the disruption of society. it is accepted as a prevailing institution recognized by the civil powers. however desirable freedom might be, slavery was not inconsistent with the christian profession: "art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather."[e] the duty of obedience to his master is enjoined upon the slave, and the duty of mildness and urbanity toward his slave is enjoined upon the master. but with all this was laid the seed which grew into emancipation. "_our father_," gave the key-note of freedom. "ye are _all_ the children of god by faith in christ jesus." "there is neither bond nor free, ... for ye are all one in christ jesus."[f] "he that is called in the lord, being a servant, is the lord's freeman."[g] the converted slave is to be received "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved."[h] the seed has borne its proper harvest. late in time, no doubt, but by a sure and certain development, the grand truth of the equality of the human race, and the right of every man and woman to freedom of thought and (within reasonable limit of law) to freedom of action, has triumphed; and it has triumphed through the spirit and the precepts inculcated by the gospel eighteen hundred years ago. nor is it otherwise with the relations established between the sexes. polygamy, divorce, and concubinage with bondmaid's have been perpetuated, as we have seen, by islam for all time; and the ordinances connected therewith have given rise, in the laborious task of defining the conditions and limits of what is lawful, to a mass of prurient casuistry defiling the books of mohammedan law. contrast with this our saviour's words, "_he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.... what therefore god hath joined together let not man put asunder_."[i] from which simple utterance have resulted monogamy and (in the absence of adultery) the indissolubility of the marriage bond. while in respect of conjugal duties we have such large, but sufficiently intelligible, commands as "to render due benevolence,"[j] whereby, while the obligations of the marriage state are maintained, christianity is saved from the impurities which, in expounding the ordinances of mohammed, surround the sexual ethics of islam, and cast so foul a stain upon its literature. [sidenote: elevation of woman.] take, again, the place of woman in the world. we need no injunction of the veil or the harem. as the temples of the holy ghost, the body is to be kept undefiled, and every one is "to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor."[k] men are to treat "the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity."[l] women are to "adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety."[m] these, and such like maxims embrace the whole moral fitness of the several relations and duties which they define. they are adapted for all ages of time and for all conditions of men. they are capable of being taken by every individual for personal guidance, according to his own sense of propriety, and they can be accommodated by society at large with a due reference to the habits and customs of the day. the attempt of mohammed to lay down, with circumstantial minuteness, the position of the female sex, the veiling of her person, and her withdrawal from the gaze of man, has resulted in seclusion and degradation; while the spirit of the gospel, and injunctions like that of "giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel,"[n] have borne the fruit of woman's elevation, and have raised her to the position of influence, honor, and equality which (notwithstanding the marital superiority of the husband in the ideal of a christian family) she now occupies in the social scale. [sidenote: relations with the state. christianity leaves humanity free to expand.] in the type of mussulman government which (though not laid down in the koran) is founded upon the spirit of the faith and the precedent of the prophet the civil is indissolubly blended with the spiritual authority, to the detriment of religious liberty and political progress. the _ameer_, or commander of the faithful, should, as in the early times, so also in all ages, be the _imam_, or religious chief; and as such he should preside at the weekly cathedral service. it is not a case of the church being subject to the state, or the state being subject to the church. here (as we used to see in the papal domains) the church is the state, and the state the church. they both are one. and in this we have another cause of the backwardness and depression of mohammedan society. since the abolition of the temporal power in italy we have nowhere in christian lands any such theocratic union of cã¦sar and the church, so that secular and religious advance is left more or less unhampered; whereas in islam the hierarchico-political constitution has hopelessly welded the secular arm with the spiritual in one common scepter, to the furthering of despotism, and elimination of the popular voice from its proper place in the concerns of state. [sidenote: the koran checks progress.] and so, throughout the whole range of political, religious, social, and domestic relations, the attempt made by the founder of islam to provide for all contingencies, and to fix every thing aforehand by rigid rule and scale, has availed to cramp and benumb the free activities of life and to paralyze the natural efforts of society at healthy growth, expansion, and reform. as an author already quoted has so well put it, "_the koran has frozen mohammedan thought; to obey it is to abandon progress_."[79] [sidenote: is islam suitable for any nation?] writers have indeed been found who, dwelling upon the benefits conferred by islam on idolatrous and savage nations, have gone so far as to hold that the religion of mohammed may in consequence be suited to certain portions of mankind--as if the faith of jesus might peaceably divide with it the world. but surely to acquiesce in a system which reduces the people to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of philanthropy. with the believer, who holds the gospel to be "good tidings of great joy, _which shall be to all people_,"[o] such a notion is on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether unintelligible. as i have said elsewhere: the eclipse in the east, which still sheds its blight on the ancient seats of jerome and chrysostom, and shrouds in darkness the once bright and famous sees of cyprian and augustine, has been disastrous every-where to liberty and progress, equally as it has been to christianity. and it is only as that eclipse shall pass away and the sun of righteousness again shine forth that we can look to the nations now dominated by islam sharing with us those secondary but precious fruits of divine teaching. then with the higher and enduring blessings which our faith bestows, but not till then, we may hope that there will follow likewise in their wake freedom and progress, and all that tends to elevate the human race.[80] [sidenote: no sacrifice for sin or redemptive grace.] although with the view of placing the argument on independent ground i have refrained from touching the peculiar doctrines of christianity, and the inestimable benefits which flow to mankind therefrom, i may be excused, before i conclude, if i add a word regarding them. the followers of mohammed have no knowledge of god as a _father_; still less have they knowledge of him as "_our_ father"--the god and father of the lord jesus christ. they acknowledge, indeed, that jesus was a true prophet sent of god; but they deny his crucifixion and death, and they know nothing of the power of his resurrection. to those who have found redemption and peace in these the grand and distinctive truths of the christian faith, it may be allowed to mourn over the lands in which the light of the gospel has been quenched, and these blessings blotted out, by the material forces of islam; where, together with civilization and liberty, christianity has given place to gross darkness, and it is as if now "there were no more sacrifice for sins." we may, and we do, look forward with earnest expectation to the day when knowledge of salvation shall be given to these nations "by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our god, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."[p] [sidenote: contrast between divine and human work.] but even apart from these, the special blessings of christianity, i ask, which now of the two faiths bears, in its birth and growth, the mark of a divine hand and which the human stamp? which looks likest the handiwork of the god of nature, who "hath laid the measures of the earth," and "hath stretched the line upon it,"[q] but not the less with an ever-varying adaptation to time and place? and which the artificial imitation? [sidenote: islam.] "as a reformer, mohammed did indeed advance his people to a certain point, but as a prophet he left them fixed immovably at that point for all time to come. as there can be no return, so neither can there be any progress. the tree is of artificial planting. instead of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to the various requirements of time, and clime, and circumstance, expanding with the genial sunshine and the rain from heaven, it remains the same forced and stunted thing as when first planted twelve centuries ago."[81] [sidenote: christianity compared by christ to the works of nature.] such is islam. now what is christianity? listen to the prophetic words of the founder himself, who compares it to the works of nature: "_so is the kingdom of god, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;_ "_and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how._ "_for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself: first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear._"[r] and again: "_whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of god, or with what comparison shall we compare it?_ "_it is like a grain of mustard-seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all seeds that be in the earth;_ "_but when it is sown, it groweth up and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches, so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it._"[s] [sidenote: islam the work of man; christianity the work of god.] which is _nature_, and which is _art_, let the reader judge. which bears the impress of man's hand, and which that of him who "is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working?" in fine, of the arabian it may be said: "_hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed._" but of christ: "_his name shall endure forever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed._ "_he shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth._ "_blessed be the lord god, the god of israel, who only doeth wondrous things. and blessed be his glorious name forever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. amen, and amen._"[t] footnotes: [e] 1 cor. vii, 21. [f] gal. iii, 26, 28. [g] 1 cor. vii, 22. [h] philemon 16. [i] matt. xix, 4. [j] 1 cor. vii, 3. [k] 1 thess. iv, 4. [l] 1 tim. v, 2. [m] 1 tim. ii, 9. [n] 1 pet. iii, 7. [o] luke ii, 10. [p] luke i, 77-79. [q] job xxxviii, 5. [r] mark iv, 26-28. [s] mark iv, 30-32. [t] psa. lxxii, 17, 8, 18, 19. the end. footnotes: [1] barth. [2] bergaigne, in his able treatise, _la religion vã©dique_, insists earnestly on what he calls the "liturgical contamination of the myths." see vol. iii, p. 320. [3] r.v., ix, 42, 4. [4] r.v., ix, 97, 24. [5] the religion of the indo-european race, while still united, "recognized a supreme god; an organizing god; almighty, omniscient, moral.... this conception was a heritage of the past.... the supreme god was originally the god of heaven." so darmesteter, _contemporary review_, october, 1879. roth had previously written with much learning and acuteness to the same effect. [6] muir's _sanskrit texts_, v, 412. [7] r.v., iii, 62, 10. [8] the rites, says haug, "must have existed from times immemorial."--_aitareya brã¢hmana_, pp. 7, 9. [9] weber, _history of indian literature_, p. 38. [10] max mã¼ller, _ancient sanskrit literature_, p. 389. [11] "the haughty indra takes precedence of all gods." r.v., 1, 55. [12] "these two personages [indra and varuna] sum up the two conceptions of divinity, between which the religious consciousness of the vedic aryans seems to oscillate."--bergaigne, _la religion vã©dique_, vol. iii, p. 149. [13] the meaning of the term is not quite certain. _sessions_, or _instructions_, may perhaps be the rendering. so monier williams. [14] for example, wordsworth: "thou, thou alone art everlasting, and the blessed spirits which thou includest, as the sea her waves." --_excursion_, book iv. [15] or, the thing that really is--the [greek: ontã´s on]. [16] _ekamadvitiyam._ [17] this illustration is in the mouth of every hindu disputant at the present day. [18] barth, p. 75. [19] _ekamadvitiyam._ [20] volui tibi suaviloquenti carmine pierio rationem exponere nostram et quasi musã¦o dulci contingere melle. [21] dr. j. muir, in _north british review_, no. xlix, p. 224. [22] _miscellaneous writings_ (macmillan, 1861), vol. i, p. 77. [23] but the truth is that every man is accounted a good hindu who keeps the rules of caste and pays due respect to the brahmans. what he believes, or disbelieves, is of little or no consequence. [24] yaska, probably in the fifth century b.c. [25] weber thinks that christian elements may have been introduced, in course of time, into the representation. [26] his ramayana was written in hindi verse in the sixteenth century. [27] when jhansi was captured in the times of the great mutiny english officers were disgusted to see the walls of the queen's palace covered with what they described as "grossly obscene" pictures. there is little or no doubt that these were simply representations of the acts of krishna. therefore to the hindu queen they were religious pictures. when questioned about such things the brahmans reply that deeds which would be wicked in men were quite right in krishna, who, being god, could do whatever he pleased. [28] born probably in 1649. [29] raja narayan basu (bose), in enumerating the sacred books of hinduism, excluded the philosophical systems and included the tantras. he was and, we believe, is a leading man in the adi brahma somaj. [30] barth, as above, p. 202. [31] so writes vans kennedy, a good authority. the rites, however, vary with varying places. [32] _asiatic researches_, v, p. 356. [33] cicero. [34] we learned from his own lips that among the books which most deeply impressed him were the bible and the writings of dr. chalmers. [35] see _life of mohammed_, p. 138. smith & elder. [36] _life of mohammed_, p. 172, where the results are compared. [37] _life of mohammed_, p. 341; sura ii, 257; xxix, 46. [38] the only exceptions were the jews of kheibar and the christians of najran, who were permitted to continue in the profession of their faith. they were, however, forced by omar to quit the peninsula, which thenceforward remained exclusively mohammedan. "islam" is a synonym for the mussulman faith. its original meaning is "surrender" of one's self to god. [39] _apology of al kindy, the christian_, p. 18. smith & elder, 1882. this remarkable apologist will be noticed further below. [40] principal fairbairn: "the primitive polity of islam," _contemporary review_, december, 1882, pp. 866, 867. [41] herr von kremer, _culturgeschichte des orients_, unter den chalifen, vol. i, p. 383. [42] _annals of the early caliphate_, p. 9. smith & elder, 1883. [43] gibbon's _decline and fall_, chapter li, and _annals of the early caliphate_, p. 184. [44] _ibid._; and sura xliv, v. 25. _we_--that is, the lord. [45] _annals of the early caliphate_, p. 46. [46] see, for example, sura lxxviii: "verily for the pious there is a blissful abode: gardens and vineyards; and damsels with swelling bosoms, of a fitting age; and a full cup. lovely large-eyed girls, like pearls hidden in their shells, a reward for that which the faithful shall have wrought. verily we have created them of a rare creation, virgins, young and fascinating.... modest damsels averting their eyes, whom no man shall have known before, nor any jinn," etc. the reader will not fail to be struck by the materialistic character of mohammed's paradise. [47] see sura _jehad_; also _annals of the early caliphate_, p. 167, _et. seq._ [48] _annals of the early caliphate_, p. 105, _et. seq._ [49] see _annals_, etc., p. 253. [50] sura ix, v. 30. [51] so jews and christians as possessing the bible are named in the koran. [52] see _annals_, etc., p. 213. [53] _the apology of al kindy_, written at the court of al mamun a.h. 215 (a.d. 830), with an essay on its age and authorship, p. 12. smith & elder, 1882. [54] _ibid._, p. 34. [55] _apology_, p. 47, _et. seq._ [56] alluding to the "_ansar_," or mortal "helpers" of mohammed at medina. throughout, the apologist, it will be observed, is drawing a contrast with the means used for the spread of islam. [57] _apology_, p. 16. [58] _apology_, p. 57. [59] i am not here comparing the value of these observances with those of other religions. i am inquiring only how far the obligations of islam may be held to involve hardship or sacrifice such as might have retarded the progress of islam by rendering it on its first introduction unpopular. [60] see sura ii, v. 88. [61] sura iv, 18. "exchange" is the word used in the koran. [62] each of his widows had 100,000 golden pieces left her. _life of mohammed_, p. 171. [63] "these divorced wives were irrespective of his concubines or slave-girls, upon the number and variety of whom there was no limit or check whatever."--_annals_, p. 418. [64] lane adds: "there are many men in this country who, in the course of ten years, have married as many as twenty, thirty, or more wives; and women not far advanced in age have been wives to a dozen or more husbands successively." note that all this is entirely within the religious sanction. [65] _pilgrimage to mecca_, by her highness the reigning begum of bhopal, translated by mrs. w. osborne (1870), pp. 82, 88. slave-girls cannot be _married_ until freed by their masters. what her highness tells of women _divorcing_ their husbands is of course entirely _ultra vires_, and shows how the laxity of conjugal relations allowed to the male sex has extended itself to the female also, and that in a city where, if anywhere, we should have expected to find the law observed. [66] in india, for example, there are mohammedan races among whom monogamy, as a rule, prevails by custom, and individuals exercising their right of polygamy are looked upon with disfavor. on the other hand, we meet occasionally with men who aver that rather against their will (as they will sometimes rather amusingly say) they have been forced by custom or family influence to add by polygamy to their domestic burdens. in mohammedan countries, however, when we hear of a man confining himself to _one wife_, it does not necessarily follow that he has no slaves to consort with in his harem. i may remark that slave-girls have by mohammedan laws no conjugal rights whatever, but are like playthings, at the absolute discretion of their master. [67] the case of the corinthian offender is much in point, as showing how the strict discipline of the church must have availed to make christianity unpopular with the mere worldling. [68] [sidenote: laxity among nominal christians.] _apology_, p. 51. i repeat, that in the remarks i have made under this head, no comparison is sought to be drawn betwixt the morality of nominally christian and moslem peoples. on this subject i may be allowed to quote from what i have said elsewhere: "the moslem advocate will urge ... the social evil as the necessary result of inexorable monogamy. the koran not only denounces any illicit laxity between the sexes in the severest terms, but exposes the transgressor to condign punishment. for this reason, and because the conditions of what is licit are so accommodating and wide, a certain negative virtue (it can hardly be called continence or chastity) pervades mohammedan society, in contrast with which the gross and systematic immorality in certain parts of every european community may be regarded by the christian with shame and confusion. in a purely mohammedan land, however low may be the general level of moral feeling, the still lower depths of fallen humanity are unknown. the 'social evil' and intemperance, prevalent in christian lands, are the strongest weapons in the armory of islam. we point, and justly, to the higher morality and civilization of those who do observe the precepts of the gospel, to the stricter unity and virtue which cement the family, and to the elevation of the sex; but in vain, while the example of our great cities, and too often of our representatives abroad, belies the argument. and yet the argument is sound. for, in proportion as christianity exercises her legitimate influence, vice and intemperance will wane and vanish, and the higher morality pervade the whole body; whereas in islam the deteriorating influences of polygamy, divorce, and concubinage have been stereotyped for all time."--_the koran: its composition and teaching, and the testimony it bears to the holy scriptures_, p. 60. [69] [sidenote: alleged progress of islam in africa.] much loose assertion has been made regarding the progress of islam in africa; but i have found no proof of it apart from armed, political, or trading influence, dogged too often by the slave-trade; to a great extent a social rather than a religious movement, and raising the fetich tribes (haply without intemperance) into a somewhat higher stage of semi-barbarism. i have met nothing which would touch the argument in the text. the following is the testimony of dr. koelle, the best possible witness on the subject: "it is true the mohammedan nations in the interior of africa, namely, the bornuese, mandengas, pulas, etc., invited by the weak and defenseless condition of the surrounding negro tribes, still occasionally make conquests, and after subduing a tribe of pagans, by almost exterminating its male population and committing the most horrible atrocities, impose upon those that remain the creed of islam; but keeping in view the whole of the mohammedan world this fitful activity reminds one only of these green branches sometimes seen on trees, already, and for long, decayed at the core from age."--_food for reflection_, p. 37. [70] _apology_, p. 34. [71] _annals_, pp. 61, 224. [72] sura iv, v. 33. [73] _life of mohammed_, p. 348. [74] _the city of god_, p, 91. hodder & stoughton, 1883. [75] _the turks in india_, by h.g. keene, c.s.i. allen & co., 1879. [76] _annals_, etc., p. 457. [77] see sura xxxiv, v. 32. the excepted relations are: "husbands, fathers, husbands' fathers, sons, husbands' sons, brothers, brothers' sons, sisters' sons, the captives which their right hands possess, such men as attend them and have no need of women, or children below the age of puberty." [78] john xviii, 36, 37. [79] dr. fairbairn, _contemporary review_, p. 865. [80] _the early caliphate and rise of islam_, being the rede lecture for 1881, delivered before the university of cambridge, p. 28. [81] _the koran_, etc., p. 65. transcriber's note: the following section was originally at the beginning of the text. the chautauqua literary and scientific circle. studies for 1891-92. leading facts of american history. montgomery, $1 00 social institutions of the united states. bryce, 1 00 initial studies in american letters. beers, 1 00 story of the constitution of the united states. thorpe, 60 classic german course in english. wilkinson, 1 00 two old faiths. mitchell and muir, 40 team dr. scudder's tales for little readers, about the heathen. 1849 the following work, so far as the hindoos are concerned, is principally a compilation from the writings of duff, dubois, and others. should the eyes of any christian father or mother rest upon it, i would ask them if they have not a son or a daughter to dedicate to the _missionary_ work. the duty of devoting themselves to this work of christ, or at least, of consecrating to it their money, their efforts, and their prayers, is the great duty to be perseveringly and prayerfully impressed on the minds of our children. a generation thus trained would, with aid from on high, soon effect the moral revolution of the world. blessed will be that father, blessed will be that mother, who shall take any part in such a training. and i would add, too, blessed will be that pastor, and blessed will be that sabbath-school teacher, who shall come up to their help. contents. chapter i. general remarks chapter ii. the color and ornaments of the hindoos chapter iii. dress, houses, eating, and salutation of the hindoos chapter iv. marriage among the hindoos chapter v. death and funerals among the hindoos chapter vi. the gods of the hindoos chapter vii. the three hundred and thirty millions of the gods of the hindoos--the creation of the universe--the transmigration of souls--the different hells chapter viii. hindoo castes chapter ix. hindoo temples--cars--procession of idols chapter x. festivals of the hindoos chapter xi. the worship of the serpent chapter xii. the river ganges chapter xiii. the goddess durga chapter xiv. the goddess karle chapter xv. self-tortures of the hindoos chapter xvi. the suttee, or burning of widows chapter xvii. the revengeful nature of the hindoo religion chapter xviii. the deception of the hindoos chapter xix. superstition of the hindoos chapter xx. burmah, china, etc., etc. chapter xxi. the duty of praying and contributing for the spread of the gospel chapter xxii. personal labors among the heathen chapter xxiii. success of the gospel in india and ceylon dr. scudder's tales for little readers, about the heathen. chapter i. general remarks my dear children--when i was a little boy, my dear mother taught me, with the exception of the last line, the following prayer: "now i lay me down to sleep, i pray the lord my soul to keep; if i should die before i wake, i pray the lord my soul to take; and this i ask for jesus' sake." though i am now more than fifty years old, i often like to say this prayer before i go to sleep. have you ever learned it, my dear children? if you have not, i hope that you will learn it _now_; and i hope, too, that when you say your other prayers at night, you will also say this. i think that you would be glad to see how this prayer looks in the tamul language--the language in which i am now preaching the gospel, and in which i hope that some of you will hereafter tell the heathen of the saviour. the following is a translation of it: [illustration: the lord's prayer in tamul] i wish that all the little heathen children knew this prayer; but their fathers and mothers do not teach it to them. their fathers and mothers teach them to pray to gods of gold, or brass, or stone. they take them, while they are very young, to their temples, and teach them to put up their hands before an idol, and say, "swammie." swammie means lord. as idolatry is the root of all sin, these children, as you may suppose, in early life become very wicked. they disobey their parents, speak bad words, call ill names, swear, steal, and tell lies. they also throw themselves on the ground in anger, and in their rage they tear their hair, or throw dirt over their heads, and do many other wicked things. let me give you an instance, to show you how they will speak bad words. a few months ago, a little girl about twelve years of age was brought to me, with two tumors in her back. to cut them out, i had to make an incision about eight inches in length; and as one of these tumors had extended under the shoulder-blade she suffered much before the operation was finished. while i was operating she cried out, "i will pull out my eyes." "i will pull out my tongue." "kurn kertta tayvun." the translation of this is, "the blind-eyed god." by this expression, she meant to say, "what kind of a god are you, not to look upon me, and help me in my distress?" if this little girl had had a christian father to teach her to love the saviour, she would not have used such bad language. but this father was even more wicked than his daughter, inasmuch as those who grow old in sin, are worse than those who have not sinned so long. i never saw a more hard-hearted parent. that he was so, will appear from his conduct after the operation was finished. he left his daughter, and went off to his home, about forty miles distant. before going, he said to his wife, or to one who came with her, "if the child gets well, bring her home; if she dies, take her away and bury her." i hope, my dear children, that when you think of the wicked little girl just mentioned, you will be warned never to speak bad words. god will be very angry with you, if you do. did you never read what is said in 2 kings, 2d chapter and 23d verse, about the little children who mocked the prophet elijah, and spoke bad words to him. o, how sorry must they have felt for their conduct, when they saw the paws of those great bears lifted up to tear them in pieces, and which did tear them in pieces. besides all this, little children who speak bad words can never go to heaven. god will cast them into the great fire. have you ever spoken bad words? if so, god is angry with you, and he will not forgive you unless you are sorry that you have done so, and seek his forgiveness through the blood of his dear son. chapter ii. the color and ornaments of the hindoos. my dear children--if you will take a piece of mahogany in your hands, and view its different shades, you will have a pretty good representation of the color of a large class of this heathen people--i say, of a large class, for there is a great variety of colors. some appear to be almost of a bronze color. some are quite black. it is difficult to account for the different colors which we often see in the same family. for instance, one child will be of the reddish hue to which i just referred; another will be quite dark. when i was in ceylon, two sisters of this description joined my church. one was called sevappe, or the red one; the other was called karappe, or the black one. this people very much resemble the english and americans in their features. many of them are very beautiful. this remark will apply particularly to children, and more especially to the children of brahmins and others, who are delicately brought up. but however beautiful any of this people may be, they try to make themselves appear more so, by the ornaments which they wear. these ornaments are of very different kinds, and are made of gold, silver, brass, precious stones, or glass. all are fond of ear-rings. sometimes four or five are worn in each ear, consisting of solid gold, the lower one being the largest, and the upper one the smallest. some men wear a gold ornament attached to the middle of the ear, in which a precious stone is inserted. sometimes they wear very large circular ear-rings, made of the wire of copper, around which gold is twisted so as to cover every part of it. these are frequently ornamented with precious stones. the females, in addition to ear-rings, have an ornament which passes through the rim of the ear, near the head, half of it being seen above the rim, and half of it below it. an ornamental chain is sometimes attached to this, which goes some distance back, when it is lost in the hair. they sometimes also wear a jewel in the middle of the rim of the ear, and another on that little forward point which strikes your finger when you attempt to put it into the ear. nose jewels also are worn. sometimes three are worn at the same time. holes are made through each side of the lower part of the nose, and through the cartilage, or that substance which divides the nostrils, through which they are suspended. the higher and wealthier females wear a profusion of ornaments of gold and pearls around the neck. a very pretty ornament, about three inches in diameter, having the appearance of gold, is also frequently worn by them on that part of the head where the females in america put up their hair in a knot. in addition to this, the little girls sometimes wear one or two similar but smaller ornaments below this, as well as an ornament at the end of the long braid of hair which hangs down over the middle of their backs. occasionally the whole, or the greater part of this braid is covered with an ornament of the same materials with those just described. they also wear an ornament extending from the crown of the head to the forehead, just in that spot where the little girls to whom i am writing part their hair. attached to this, i have seen a circular piece of gold filled with rubies. rings are worn on the toes as well as on the fingers, and bracelets of gold or silver on the wrists. anklets similar to bracelets, and tinkling ornaments are worn on the ankles. the poor, who cannot afford to wear gold or silver bracelets, have them made of glass stained with different colors. i have seen nearly a dozen on each wrist. the little boys wear gold or silver bracelets; also gold or silver anklets. i just alluded to finger-rings. i have seen a dozen on the same hand. in this part of the country, the little opening which is made in the ears of the children is gradually distended until it becomes very large. at first, the opening is only large enough to admit a wire. after this has been worn for a short time, a knife is introduced into the ear in the direction of the opening, and an incision made large enough to admit a little cotton. this is succeeded by a roll of oiled cloth, and by a peculiar shrub, the english name of which, if it has any, i do not know. when the hole becomes sufficiently large, a heavy ring of lead, about an inch in diameter, is introduced. this soon increases the size of the opening to such an extent, that a second, and afterwards a third, a fourth, and a fifth ring are added. by these weights, the lower parts of the ear are drawn down sometimes very nearly, or quite to the shoulders. not unfrequently the little girls, when they run, are obliged to catch hold of these rings to prevent the injury which they would receive by their striking against their necks. i need hardly say, that in due time, these rings are removed, and ornamented rings are substituted. a different plan is pursued with the mohammedan little girls. they have their ears bored from the top to the bottom of the ear. the openings which are at first made are small, and are never enlarged. a ring is inserted in each of these openings. i have seen a little girl to-day in whose ears i counted twenty-four rings. flowers in great profusion are sometimes used to add to the adornment of the jewels. i cannot conclude my account of the jewels of the little girls, without giving you a description of the appearance of a little patient of mine who came here a few days ago, loaded with trinkets. i will give it in the words of my daughter, which she wrote in part while the girl was here. "on the 17th, a little dancing-girl came to see us. she was adorned with many jewels, some of which were very beautiful. the jewel in the top of the ear was a circle, nearly the size of a dollar. it was set with rubies. nine pearls were suspended from it. in the middle of the ear was a jewel of a diamond shape, set with rubies and pearls. the lowest jewel in the ear was shaped like a bell. it was set with rubies, and from it hung a row of pearls. close by the ear, suspended from the hair, was a jewel which reached below her ear. it consisted of six bells of gold, one above the other. around each was a small row of pearls, which reached nearly to the bell below, thus forming a jewel resembling very many drops of pearls. it is the most beautiful jewel that i ever saw. in the right side of her nose was a white stone, set with gold, in the shape of a star. from it hung a large pearl. there was a hole bored in the partition between the nostrils. this hole had a jewel in it, about an inch in length, in the middle of which was a white stone with a ruby on each side. it also had a ruby on the top. from the white stone hung another, of a similar color, attached to it by a piece of gold. in the left side of the nose was a jewel about an inch in diameter. it was somewhat in the shape of a half-moon, and was set with rubies, pearls, emeralds, etc. etc. this jewel hung below her mouth. on the back of her head was a large, round gold piece, three inches in diameter. another piece about two inches in diameter, hung below this. her hair was braided in one braid, and hung down her back. at the bottom of this were three large tassels of silk, mounted with gold. her eyebrows and eyelashes were painted with black. her neck was covered with jewels of such beauty, and of such a variety, that it is impossible for me to describe them. around her ankles were large rings which looked like braided silver. to these were attached very many little bells, which rung as she walked. i believe all dancing-girls wear these rings. we felt very sad when we thought that she was dedicated to a life of infamy and shame." there is an ornament worn by the followers of the god siva, on their arms, or necks, or in their hair. it is called the _lingum_. the nature of this is so utterly abominable, that i cannot tell you a word about it. married women wear an ornament peculiar to themselves. it is called the tahly. it is a piece of gold, on which is engraven the image of some one of their gods. this is fastened around the neck by a short yellow string, containing one hundred and eight threads of great fineness. various ceremonies are performed before it is applied, and the gods, of whom i will tell you something by and by, with their wives, are called upon to give their blessing. when these ceremonies are finished, the tahly is brought on a waiter, ornamented with sweet-smelling flowers, and is tied by the bridegroom to the neck of the bride. this ornament is never taken off, unless her husband dies. in such a case she is deprived of it, to wear it no more for ever--deprived of it, after various ceremonies, by her nearest female relative, who cuts the thread by which it is suspended, and removes it. after this a barber is called, who shaves her head, and she becomes, in the eyes of the people, a _despised_ widow--no more to wear any ornament about her neck but a plain one--no more to stain her face with yellow water, nor to wear on her forehead those marks which are considered by the natives as among their chief ornaments. i have now told you something about the jewels of this people. i hope that you will never be disposed to imitate them, and load your bodies with such useless things. they are not only useless, but tend to encourage pride and vanity. all that you need is, the "pearl of great price," even jesus. adorn yourself with this pearl, and you will be beautiful indeed--beautiful even in the sight of your heavenly father. have you this pearl of great price, my dear children? tell me, have you this pearl of great price? if you have not, what have you? i just now alluded to those marks which the natives consider among their chief ornaments. these are different among different sects. the followers of siva rub ashes on their foreheads. these ashes are generally prepared by burning what in the tamul language is called [tamul:] _chaarne._ they also apply these ashes in streaks, generally three together, on their breasts, and on their arms. some besmear their whole bodies with them. the followers of vrishnoo wear a very different ornament from that just described. it consists of a perpendicular line drawn on the forehead, generally of a red or yellow color, and a white line on each side of it, which unite at the bottom with the middle line, and form a trident. another ornament consists of a small circle, which is called pottu. this is stamped in the middle of the forehead. sometimes it is red, sometimes yellow or black. large numbers of women, in this part of the country, wash their faces with a yellow water, made so by dissolving in it a paste made of a yellow root and common shell-lime. the brahmins frequently instead of rubbing ashes, draw a horizontal line over the middle of their foreheads, to show that they have bathed and are pure. sometimes the people ornament themselves with a paste of sandal-wood. they rub themselves from head to foot with it. this has a very odoriferous smell. when the people are loaded with jewels, and covered with the marks which i have just described they think themselves to be highly ornamented but after all, "they are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." the "pearl of great price," to which i before alluded, the only pearl which is of any value in the sight of him who looketh at the heart, and not at the outward appearance, they possess not. millions in this eastern world have never even heard of it. o how incessantly ought you to pray that they may come into possession of it. how gladly should you give your money to send it to them. i wish, in this place, to ask you one question. who of you expect, by and by, to become missionaries to this land, to tell this people of the pearl of great price? chapter iii. dress, houses, eating, and salutation of the hindoos. my dear children--the dress of the hindoos is very simple. a single piece of cloth uncut, about three yards in length and one in width, wrapped round the loins, with a shawl thrown over the shoulders, constitutes the usual apparel of the people of respectability. these garments are often fringed with red silk or gold. the native ladies frequently almost encase themselves in cloth or silk. under such circumstances, their cloths are perhaps twenty yards in length. most of the native gentlemen now wear turbans, an ornament which they have borrowed from the mohammedans this consists of a long piece of very fine stuff, sometimes twenty yards in length and one in breadth. with this they encircle the head in many folds. those who are employed by european or mohammedan princes, wear a long robe of muslin, or very fine cloth. this also, is in imitation of the mohammedans, and was formerly unknown in the country. the houses of the hindoos are generally very plainly built. in the country, they are commonly made of earth, and thatched with straw. in the cities, they are covered with tiles. the kitchen is situated in the most retired part of the house. in the houses of the brahmins, the kitchen-door is always barred, to prevent strangers from looking upon their earthen vessels; for if they should happen to see them, their look would pollute them to such a degree that they must be broken to pieces. the hearth is generally placed on the south-west side, which is said to be the side of the _god of fire_, because they say that this god actually dwells there. the domestic customs of this people are very different from ours. the men and women do not eat together. the husband first eats, then the wife. the wife waits upon the husband after she has cooked the rice, she brings a brass plate, if they are possessors of one; or if not, a piece of a plantain-leaf, and puts it down on the mat before him. she then bails out the rice, places it upon the leaf, and afterwards pours the currie over it. this being done, the husband proceeds to mix up the currie and the rice with his hands, and puts it into his mouth. he never uses a knife and fork, as is customary with us. the currie of which i have spoken is a sauce of a yellow color, owing to the _munchel_, a yellow root which they put in it. this and onions, kottamaly-seeds mustard, serakum, pepper, etc., constitute the ingredients of the currie. some add to these ghea, or melted butter, and cocoa-nut milk. by the cocoa-nut milk, i do not mean the water of the cocoa-nut. this--except in the very young cocoa-nut, when it is a most delicious beverage--is never used. the milk is squeezed from the _meat_ of the cocoa-nut, after it has been reduced to a pulp by means of an indented circular iron which they use for this purpose. after the husband has eaten, the wife brings water for him to wash his hands. this being done, she supplies him with vettalay, paakku, shell-lime, and tobacco, which he puts into his mouth as his dessert. the vettalay is a very spicy leaf. why they use paakku, i do not know. it is a nut, which they cut into small pieces, but it has not much taste. sometimes the wife brings her husband a segar. this people, i am sorry to say, are great smokers and chewers, practices of which i hope that you, my dear children, will never be guilty. in ceylon, it is customary for females to smoke. frequently, after the husband has smoked for a while, he hands the segar to his wife. she then puts it into her mouth, and smokes. several years ago, one of the schoolmasters in that island became a christian. after he had partaken of the lord's supper, his wife considered him so defiled, that she would not put his segar into her mouth for a month afterwards. she, however, has since become a christian. i spoke just now of the plantain-leaf. this leaf is sometimes six feet long, and in some places a foot and a half wide. it is an unbroken leaf, with a large stem running through the middle of it. it is one of the handsomest of leaves. pieces enough can be torn from a single leaf, to take the place of a dozen plates. when quite young, it is an excellent application to surfaces which have been blistered. when this people eat, they do not use tables and chairs. they sit down on mats, and double their legs under them, after the manner of our friends the tailors in america, when they sew. this is the way in which the natives as a general thing, sit in our churches. it is not common to have benches or pews for them. carpenters and other tradesmen also sit down either on a board, or on the ground, or on their legs, when they work. it would divert you much to see their manoeuvring. if a carpenter, for instance, wants to make a little peg, he will take a small piece of board, and place it in an erect position between his feet, the soles of which are turned inward so as to press upon the board. he then takes his chisel in one hand, and his mallet in the other, and cuts off a small piece. afterwards he holds the piece in one hand, and while he shapes it with his chisel with the other, he steadies it by pressing it against his great toe. [illustration] the blacksmiths, with the exception of those who use the sledge-hammer, sit as do the carpenters while they hammer the iron. i wish you could see them at work with their simple apparatus. they have small anvils, which they place in a hole made in a log of wood which is buried in the ground. they do not use such bellows as you see in america. theirs consist of two leather bags, about a foot wide and a foot and a half long, each having a nozzle at one end. the other end is left open to admit the air. when they wish to blow the fire, they extend these bags to let in the air. they then close them by means of the thumb on one side, and the fingers on the other, and press them down towards the nozzle of the bellows, which forces the air through them into the fire. i should have said before, that the nozzle of the bellows passes through a small semicircular mound of dried mud. i mentioned that the natives do not use tables and chairs in their houses. neither do they, as a general thing, use bedsteads. they have no beds. they sleep on mats, which are spread down on the floor. sometimes they use a cotton bolster for their heads. more generally their pillows are hard boards, which they put under the mat. in addition to cooking, the females have to prepare the rice for this purpose, by taking it out of the husk. this they do by beating it in a mortar about two feet high. the pestle with which they pound it, is about five feet long, made of wood, with an iron rim around the lower part of it. three women can work at these mortars at the same time. of course they have to be very skilful in the use of the pestle, so as not to interfere with each others' operations. sometimes, while thus engaged, the children, who are generally at play near their mothers, put their hands on the edge of the mortars. in such cases, when the pestle happens to strike the edge, their fingers are taken off in a moment. the hindoos have many modes of salutation. in some places they raise their right hand to the heart. in others, they simply stretch it out towards the person who is passing, if they know him, for they never salute persons with whom they are not acquainted. in many places there is no show of salutation. when they meet their acquaintances they content themselves by saying a friendly word or two in passing, and then pursue their way. they have borrowed the word _salam_ from the mohammedans. they salute both mohammedans and europeans with this word, at the same time raising their hand to the forehead. when they address persons of high rank, they give them their _salam_ thrice, touching the ground as often with both hands, and then lifting them up to their foreheads. the other castes salute the brahmins by joining the hands and elevating them to the forehead, or sometimes over the head. it is accompanied with _andamayya_, which means, hail, respected lord. the brahmins stretch out their hands and say, _aaseervaathum_--benediction. another very respectful kind of salutation consists in lowering both hands to the feet of the person to be honored, or even in falling-down and embracing them. of all the forms of salutation, the most respectful is the _shaashtaangkum_, or prostration, in which the feet, the knees, the stomach, the head, and the arms, all touch the ground. in doing this, they throw themselves at their whole length on the ground, and stretch out both arms above their heads. this is practised before priests, and in the presence of an assembly, when they appear before it to beg pardon for a crime. relations, who have long been separated, testify their joy when they meet by chucking each other under the chin, and shedding tears of joy. i am not aware that grown persons ever kiss each other. sometimes mothers, or other individuals, will put their noses to the cheeks of little children, and draw the air through them, just as we do when we smell any thing which is agreeable. at other times they will apply the thumb and first finger to the cheek of the child, and then apply them to their own noses, and, as it were, smell them. the women, as a mark of respect, turn their backs, or at least their faces aside, when they are in the presence of those whom they highly esteem. they are never permitted to sit in the presence of men. a married woman cannot do this, even in the presence of her husband. if a person meets another of high rank, he must leave the path, if on foot, or alight, if on horseback, and remain standing until he has passed. he must at the same time take off his slippers. he also must take off his slippers when he enters a house. should he fail to do this, it would be considered a great impropriety. in addressing a person of note, they mast keep at a certain distance from him, and cover their mouths with their hands while they are speaking, lest their breath, or a particle of moisture, should escape to trouble him. when the hindoos visit a person of distinction for the first time, civility requires them to take some present as a mark of respect, or to show that they come with a friendly intention; especially if they wish to ask some favor in return. when they have not the means of making large presents, they carry with them sugar, plantains, milk, and other things of this kind. in case of mourning, visits must always be made, though at a distance of a hundred miles. letters of condolence would by no means be received as a substitute. chapter iv. marriage among the hindoos. my dear children--marriage, to the hindoos is the greatest event of their lives. in the celebration of it, many ceremonies are performed of these i will mention some of the most important. if the father of the young girl is a brahmin, and if he is rich and liberal, he will frequently bear all the expenses of the marriage of his daughter. to give a daughter in marriage and to sell her, are about the same thing. almost every parent makes his daughter an article of traffic, refusing to give her up until the sum of money for which he consented to let her go, is paid. men of distinction generally lay out this money for jewels, which they present to their daughters on their wedding-day. you will infer from what i have just said, that the parties to be married have nothing to do in the choice of each other. there are properly but four months in the year in which marriages can take place, namely march, april, may, and june. this probably arises from the circumstance that these are the hottest seasons of the year--the seasons when the people have more leisure to attend to them. from the harvest, also, which has just been gathered in, they are provided with means to perform the various ceremonies. the marriage ceremony lasts five days. the bride and bridegroom are first placed under a puntel, a kind of bower, covered with leaves, in front of the house. this is superbly adorned. the married women then come forward, and perform the ceremony called _arati_, which is as follows. upon a plate of copper, they place a lamp made of a paste from rice flour. it is supplied with oil, and lighted. they then take hold of the plate with both hands, and raise it as high as the heads of the couple to be married, and describe a number of circles with the plate and lamp. this is to prevent the evil of any jealous looks, which certain persons might make. the hindoos believe that great evils arise from wicked looks. they consider that even the gods themselves are not out of the reach of malicious eyes; and therefore after they have been carried through the streets, the ceremony of arati is always performed, to efface the evil which they may have suffered from these looks. it ought to have been mentioned, that before any thing is done, they place an image of pullian under the puntel. this god is much honored because he is much feared. and although the great ugliness of his appearance has hitherto kept him without a wife, they never fail to pay him the greatest attention, lest he should in some way or other injure them. after arati and many other ceremonies are performed, the kankanan, which is merely a bit of saffron, is tied to the right wrist of the young man, and to the left wrist of the girl. this is done with great solemnity. another remarkable ceremony succeeds this. the young man being seated with his face towards the east, his future father-in-law supposes that he beholds in him the great vrishnoo. with this impression, he offers him a sacrifice, and then, making him put both of his feet in a new dish filled with cow-dung, he first washes them with water, then with milk, and again with water, accompanying the whole with suitable muntrums or prayers. after many other ceremonies, he takes the hand of his daughter and puts it into that of his son-in-law. he then pours water over them in honor of vrishnoo. this is the most solemn of all the ceremonies, being the token of his resigning his daughter to the authority of the young man. she must be accompanied with three gifts, namely, one or more cows, some property in land, and a _salagrama_, which consists of some little amulet stones in high esteem among the brahmins. this ceremony being finished, the tahly is brought to be fastened to the neck of the bride. this, as i before said, is presented on a salver, decked and garnished with sweet-smelling flowers. incense is offered to it, and it is presented to the assistants each of whom touches it and invokes blessings upon it. the bride then turning towards the east, the bridegroom takes the tahly, repeats a muntrum or prayer aloud, and ties it around her neck. fire is then brought in, upon which the bridegroom offers up the sacrifice of _homam_, which consists of throwing boiled rice with melted butter upon the fire. he then takes his bride by the hand, and they walk three times around it, while the incense is blazing. there is another ceremony, which, perhaps, ought to be mentioned, as it is considered by some to be one of much importance. two baskets of bamboo are placed close together, one for the bride, the other for the bridegroom. they step into them, and two other baskets being brought, filled with ground rice, the husband takes up one with both hands and pours the contents over the head of the bride. she does the same to him. in the marriage of great princes pearls are sometimes used instead of rice. on the evening of the third day, when the constellations appear, the astrologer points out to the married pair a very small star, close to the middle or in the tail of _ursa major_, which he directs them to worship, and which he says is the wife of vasestha. while the assembled guests, are dining, the bridegroom and the bride also partake, and eat together from the same plate. this is a token of the closest union. this is the only instance in which they ever eat together. after all the ceremonies are finished, a procession is made through the streets of the village it commonly takes place in the night, by torchlight, accompanied with fire-works. the newly married pair are seated in one palanquin with their faces towards each other, both richly dressed. the bride, in particular, is generally covered with jewels and precious stones. the procession moves slowly; and their friends and relations come out of their houses, as they pass; the women hailing the married couple with the ceremony of _arati_, and the men with presents of silver, fruits, sugar, and betel. i once witnessed one of these marriage processions in the streets of madras at night, but can give you but little idea of its magnificence. the lamps used on the occasion could not be numbered. the shrubbery, which was drawn on carts or other vehicles, appeared exceedingly beautiful, in consequence of the light reflected from the lamps. intermingled with this shrubbery, were to be seen little girls elegantly dressed, and adorned with flowers on their heads. many elephants, with their trappings of gold and silver and red, formed a part of the procession. fire-works were also added to make the scene more brilliant. chapter v. death and funerals of the hindoos. my dear children--the death of a hindoo is followed by many ridiculous ceremonies. i will give you a description of a few, connected with the death of one who has moved in one of the higher ranks--of a brahmin. [illustration] when it is evident that a brahmin has but a little time to live, a space is prepared with earth, well spread with cow-dung, over which a cloth, that has never been worn, is spread. the dying man is placed upon this at full length. another cloth is wrapped around his loins. this being done, the ceremony of expiating his sins is performed as follows. the chief of the funeral brings on one plate some small pieces of silver or copper coin, and on another the punchakaryam, etc. a little of this punchakaryam is then put into his mouth, and, by virtue of this nauseous draught, the body is perfectly purified. besides this, there is a general cleansing, which is accomplished by making the dying man recite within himself, if he cannot speak, the proper muntrums, by which he is delivered from all his sins. after this, a cow is introduced with her calf. her horns are decorated with rings of gold or brass, and her neck with garlands of flowers. a pure cloth is laid over her body. thus decked, she is led up to the sick man, who takes hold of her tail. prayers are now offered up that the cow may conduct him, by a blessed path, to the next world. he then makes a gift of a cow to a brahmin. this gift is considered indispensable to enable the soul to go over the river of fire, which it is said all must pass after death. those who have made this gift, are met by one of these favored creatures the moment they arrive at the bank of the stream, and by her help, they are enabled to pass without injury from the flames. as soon as the breath has left his body, all who are present must weep for a reasonable time, and join in lamentations together. after various ceremonies, the body is washed, and a barber is called to shave his head. he is then clad with his finest clothes and adorned with jewels. he is rubbed with sandal-wood where the body is uncovered, and the accustomed mark is put upon his forehead. thus dressed he is placed on a kind of state bed, where he remains until he is carried to the pile. after every preparation is made to bear away the corpse, the person who is to conduct the funeral, with the assistance of some relative or friend, strips it of its clothing and jewels, and covers it with a handkerchief provided for the occasion. the corpse is then placed on a litter. those who die in a state of marriage, have their faces left uncovered. the litter, adorned with flowers and foliage, and sometimes decked with valuable stuffs, is borne by four brahmins. the procession is arranged as follows. the chief of the funeral marches foremost, carrying fire in a vessel. the body follows, attended by the relations and friends, without their turbans, and with nothing on their heads but a bit of cloth, in token of mourning. the women never attend the funeral, but remain in the house, where they set up a hideous cry when the corpse is taken out. while advancing on the road, the custom is to stop three times on the way, and, at each pause, to put into the mouth of the dead a morsel of unboiled rice, moistened. the object of stopping is considered to be very important. it is not without reason; for they say that persons supposed to be dead have been alive, or even when lifeless have been restored; and sometimes, also, it has happened that the gods of the infernal regions have mistaken their aim, and seized one person instead of another. in any view, it is right to afford the opportunity for correcting these mistakes, so as not to expose to the flames a person who is still alive. hence the propriety of these pauses, each of which continues half of the quarter of an hour. having arrived at the place for burning the dead, they dig a trench about six or seven feet in length. this is consecrated by the muntrums. it is slightly sprinkled with water to lay the dust, and a few pieces of money in gold are scattered upon it. here the pile is erected of dried wood, on which the body is laid out at full length. over the body a quantity of twigs are laid, which are sprinkled with punchakaryam the chief of the funeral then takes on his shoulders a pitcher of water, and goes around the pile three times, letting the water run through a hole made in it. after this he breaks the pitcher in pieces near the head of the corpse. at last the torch is brought for setting fire to the pile, and is handed to the chief of the funeral. before he receives it, however, he is obliged to make some grimaces to prove his sorrow. he rolls about on the ground, beats his breast, and makes the air resound with his cries. the assistants also cry, or appear to cry. fire being applied to the four corners of the pile, the crowd retire, except the four brahmins who carried the body; they remain until the whole is consumed. the funerals of the sudras differ in some particulars from those of the brahmins. deafening sounds of drums, trumpets, and other instruments of music, not in use among the brahmins, accompany their funerals. to increase the noise, they sometimes shoot off an instrument which somewhat resembles a small cannon. i do not now think of any other particular worthy of mention. by the ceremonies which are performed at their funerals, this wretched people expect to secure the pardon of all the sins of those who have died. alas, what a delusion! o, that christians had sent the gospel to this dark land in the days when they sent it to our heathen fathers. then might the hindoos now be seeking the expiation of their sins, through the blood of the ever-blessed redeemer. of this redeemer, however, they know nothing. they enter eternity, not that their souls may be consumed as their bodies have been, but to endure the flames of divine wrath for ever and ever. alas, alas, that it should be so! o, that the generation of christians now living would lay these things to heart, and do what they can, through grace, to rescue those who are yet within the reach of hope from so tremendous a doom. what, my dear children, will you do for this purpose? chapter vi. the gods of the hindoos. my dear children--the word heathen is applied to those who worship idols, or who do not know any thing about the true god. this is the case with this people. they say that there is one supreme being, whom they call brahm; but he is very different from jehovah, and is never worshipped. generally, he is fast asleep. in the place of brahm, they worship many gods--gods of all colors: some black, some white, some blue, some red--gods of all shapes and sizes: some in the shape of beasts, some in the shape of men; some partly in the shape of beasts, and partly in the shape of men, having four, or ten, or a hundred, or a thousand eyes, heads, and hands. they ride through the air on elephants, buffaloes, lions, sheep, deer, goats, peacocks, vultures, geese, serpents, and rats. they hold in their hands all kinds of weapons, offensive and defensive, thunderbolts javelins, spears, clubs, bows, arrows, shields, flags, and shells. they are of all employments. there are gods of the heavens above and of the earth below, gods of wisdom and of folly, gods of war and of peace, gods of good and of evil, gods of pleasure, gods of cruelty and wrath, whose thirst must be satiated with torrents of blood. these gods fight and quarrel with one another. they lie, steal, commit adultery, murder, and other crimes. they pour out their curses when they cannot succeed in their wicked plots, and invent all kinds of lying tales to hide their wickedness. there are three principal gods, who compose what is called the hindoo triad. their names are brumha, vrishnoo, and siva. they were somehow drawn from brahm's essence, on one occasion when he was awake. brumha, they say, is the creator of the world, vrishnoo the preserver, and siva the destroyer. brumha has no temple erected for his worship, on account of a great falsehood which he told. i will tell you what it was. once, as it is said, there was a dispute between him and vrishnoo, as to who is the greatest. while thus disputing, siva appeared between the two as a fire-post and told them that he who would find the bottom or the top of the post first, would show that he is the greatest. vrishnoo immediately changed himself into a hog, and began to root up the earth with the hope of finding the bottom of the post. brumha changed himself into a swan, flew up towards the top of the post, and cried out, i have found it, when he had not. this, you know, my dear children, was a falsehood. for this falsehood, it is said, no temple is erected for his worship. vrishnoo was a thief and a liar. he was once dwelling in the house of a dairyman, and he used constantly to be stealing butter and curdled milk from the dairyman's wife. she did not know, for a long time, what became of her butter and curdled milk; but at last she found out that vrishnoo was the thief. to punish him for his theft, she tied him to a rice mortar. siva's conduct was very bad. i will tell you but one thing about him. on one occasion he was playing at cards with his wife parvathe. vrishnoo was appointed to determine who was the best player. after playing for a little season parvathe won the game. siva then beckoned to vrishnoo to declare that he, instead of parvathe, had won it. this he did. in consequence of this falsehood, he was cursed by parvathe, and changed into a snake. and now, my dear children, why do i tell you about these gods? i tell you for the purpose of making you thankful that you were born in a christian land, where you have the bible to teach you better things. had you not the bible, you would worship just such wretched beings as these poor hindoos worship. perhaps you know that our saxon fathers, before they had the bible, were as great idolaters as are this people. they worshipped thor and woden and other similar idols, and they were even in the habit of offering up human sacrifices surely, if there is any thing which should make you give your hearts to your saviour and love him above all things, it is god's gift of the bible to you. chapter vii. the three hundred and thirty millions of the gods of the hindoos--the creation of the universe--the transmigration of souls--the different hells. my dear children--i told you that in one of those seasons when brahm was awake, brumha, vrishnoo, and siva were somehow drawn from brahm's essence. the three hundred and thirty millions of the gods of the hindoos were also drawn from this essence; as were all the atoms which compose the earth, the sun, moon, and stars. at first, these atoms were all in disorder. for the purpose of reducing them to order, brahm created what is called the great mundane egg. into this egg he himself entered, under the form, of brumha, taking with him all these atoms. after remaining in this egg four thousand three hundred millions of years, to arrange these atoms, he burst its shell and came out, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. with him, he brought out all those harmonized atoms, which, when separated, produced this beautiful universe that we see above and around us. the universe, as it came from the mundane egg, is generally divided into fourteen worlds: seven inferior or lower worlds, and seven superior or upper worlds. the seven lower worlds are filled with all kinds of wicked and loathsome creatures. our earth, which is the first of the upper worlds, it is said, is flat. the following figure will give you some idea of it. [illustration: concentric circles with labels on each from outermost to innermost: sea of sweet water. sea of milk. sea of sour curds. sea of clarified butter. sea of spirituous liquors. sea of sugar cane juice. sea of salt water. earth.] that part of the earth which is inhabited consists of seven circular islands, or continents each of which is surrounded by a different ocean. the island in the centre, where we dwell, is surrounded by a sea of salt water, the second island is surrounded by a sea of sugar-cane juice, the third island is surrounded by a sea of spirituous liquors, the fourth is surrounded by a sea of clarified butter, the fifth is surrounded by a sea of sour curds, the sixth is surrounded by a sea of milk, the seventh is surrounded by a sea of sweet water. in all the worlds above ours are mansions where the gods reside. in the third is the heaven of indra. this is the heaven to which it is said the widow goes, after she has burned herself to death on the funeral pile of her husband its palaces are of the purest gold. and such are the quantities of diamonds, and jasper, and sapphire, and emerald, and all manner of precious stones there, that it shines with a brightness superior to that of twelve thousand suns. its streets are of the clearest crystal, fringed with gold. in the seventh, or the highest of the upper worlds, is the heaven where brumha chiefly resides. this far exceeds all the other heavens in point of beauty. in the inferior worlds it is stated that there are one hundred thousand hells. these are provided for such as have been great criminals. the hindoos say, that those who have not been very wicked, can make an atonement for their sins in this world. should they neglect to do this, they must suffer for it in another birth. they believe in what is called the transmigration of souls, or the passing of the soul, after death, into another body. the soul must suffer in the next birth, if not purified in this. hence it is asserted, that if a man is a stealer of gold from a brahmin, he is doomed to have whitlows on his nails; if a drinker of spirits, black teeth; if a false detractor, fetid breath; if a stealer of grain, the defect of some limb; if a stealer of clothes, leprosy; if a horse-stealer, lameness; if a stealer of a lamp, total blindness. if he steals grain in the husk, he will be born a rat; if yellow mixed metal, a gander; if money, a great stinging gnat; if fruit, an ape; if the property of a priest, a crocodile. those persons whose sins are too great to be forgiven in this world, must be sent to one of the hells to winch i have alluded. weeping, wailing, shrieking, they are dragged to the palace of _yama_, the king of those doleful regions. on arriving there, they behold him clothed with terror, two hundred and forty miles in height, his eyes as large as a lake of water, his voice as loud as thunder, the hairs of his body as long as palm-trees, a flame of fire proceeding from his mouth, the noise of his breath like the roaring of a tempest, and in his right hand a terrific iron club. sentence is passed, and the wretched beings are doomed to receive punishment according to the nature of their crimes. some are made to tread on burning sands, or sharp-edged stones. others are rolled among thorns and spikes and putrefying flesh. others are dragged along the roughest places by cords passed through the tender parts of the body. some are attacked by jackals, tigers, and elephants. others are pierced with arrows, beaten with clubs, pricked with needles, seared with hot irons, and tormented by flies and wasps. some are plunged into pans of liquid fire or boiling oil. others are dashed from lofty trees, many hundred miles high. the torment of these hells does not continue for ever. after criminals have been punished for a longer or shorter time, their souls return to the earth again in the bodies of men. here they may perform such good acts as may raise them to one of the heavens of the gods; or commit crimes, which may be the means of their being sent again to the abodes of misery. things will go on in this way until the universe comes to an end, when every thing is to disappear, and to be swallowed up in brahm. the hindoos say, that it is now more than one hundred and fifty billions of years since the world was created. after it has continued about one hundred and fifty billions of years more, it is to come to an end. then brumha is to die, and to be swallowed up with the universe in the sole existing brahm. by what you have heard, you will learn that the hindoos expect, by their sufferings, to make an atonement for their sins. but there is no atonement for sin, except through the blood of jesus christ. we must come as lost sinners to our heavenly father, confess our transgressions to him, and plead for his forgiveness, only through the sufferings and death which christ endured. my dear children, have you done this? if not, do it speedily, or the regions of the lost must soon be your everlasting abode. chapter viii. hindoo castes. my dear children--the people of india are divided into castes, as they are called. their sacred books declare, that after brumha had peopled the heavens above and the worlds below, he created the human race, consisting of four classes or castes. from his mouth proceeded the brahmin caste. those of this class are the highest and noblest beings on earth, and hold the office of priests. at the same time there flowed from his mouth the _vedas_, or sacred books, of which the brahmins are the sole teachers to their fellow-men, they were to give such parts of these books as they thought best. from brumha's arm proceeded the military caste. the business of this class is to defend their country when attacked by enemies. from his breast proceeded the third caste, consisting of farmers and merchants. from his feet, the member of inferiority, proceeded the sudras, or servile caste. carpenters, braziers, weavers, dyers, and the manual cultivators of the soil, are included in this class. caste is not a civil, but a sacred institution. you must get some one older than yourself to explain what this means. caste is a difference of _kind_. hence, a man of one caste can never be changed into a man of another caste, any more than a lion can be changed into a mole, or a mole into a lion. each caste has its laws, the breaking of which is attended with great disgrace, and even degradation below all the other castes. for instance, if a brahmin should, by eating any forbidden thing, break his caste, he would sink below all the other castes. he would become an outcast, or pariah. for beneath the fourth, or lowest caste, there is a class of people belonging to no caste--a class of outcasts, held in the utmost abhorrence. by the system of castes, the hindoos have been divided into so many selfish sections, each scowling on all the rest with feelings of hatred and contempt. the spirit which upholds it, is similar to that spirit which says, "stand by thyself, for i am holier than thou," and, of course, is nothing but pride. this is one of the greatest obstacles to the spread of christianity in this dark land, and for the exhibition of which we were lately obliged to cut off many of the members of our churches. the brahmins, in consequence of their being of the highest caste, and of their having been taught from their infancy to regard all other classes of men with the utmost contempt, are very proud. they make great efforts to keep themselves pure, in their sense of the word, both without and within. they are exceedingly afraid of being defiled by persons of other castes. they have the utmost dread even of being touched by a pariah. for them to eat with any of these pariahs, or to go into their houses, or to drink water which they have drawn, or from vessels which they have handled, is attended with the loss of their caste. a brahmin who should enter their houses, or permit them to enter his, would be cut off from his caste, and could not be restored without many troublesome ceremonies and great expense. the pariahs are considered to be so low, that if a brahmin were to touch them, even with the end of a long pole, he would be looked upon as polluted in some districts they are obliged to make a long circuit, when they perceive brahmins in the way, that their breath may not infect them, or their shadow fall upon them as they pass. in some places their very approach is sufficient to pollute a whole neighborhood. the brahmins carry their ideas of purity very far. should a sudra happen to look upon the vessels in which they cook their food, they would be considered as defiled. they can never touch any kind of leather or skin, except the skin of the tiger and antelope. the most disagreeable of all american fashions, in their eyes, is that of boots and gloves. they rarely eat their food from plates; and when they do so, it is only at home. they use the leaf of the plantain or other trees as a substitute. to offer them any thing to eat on a metal or earthen plate which others have used, would be considered a great affront. for the same reason, they will neither use a spoon nor a fork when they eat; and they are astonished that any one, after having applied them to their mouths, and infected them with saliva, should repeat the act a second time. they have a great abhorrence of the toothpick, if used a second time. when they eat any thing dry, they throw it into their mouths, so that the fingers may not approach the lips. they do not drink as we do, by applying the cup to the lips. this would be considered a gross impropriety. they pour the water into their months. the reason why they do these things is, because they consider the saliva to be the most filthy secretion that comes from the body. it is on this account that no one is ever permitted to spit within doors. the use of animal food they consider to be defiling. not only will they not eat animal food, but they will eat nothing that has the principle of life in it. on this account, they cannot eat eggs of any kind. i was once breaking an egg in my medicine-room at panditeripo, while a brahmin was present. he told me that, under such circumstances, he could not remain with me any longer. in his view, i was committing a great sin. to kill an ox or a cow, is considered by them as a crime which can never be atoned for, and to eat their flesh is a defilement which can never be washed away. to kill a cow is, by _hindoo_ law, punishable with death. the touch of most animals, particularly that of the dog, defiles a brahmin. should a dog touch them, they would be obliged instantly to plunge into water, and wash their clothes, in order to get rid of such a stain. notwithstanding this, the dog is one of the gods worshipped by the hindoos. the hindoos consider themselves to be unclean if they have assisted at a funeral. when the ceremony is over, they immediately plunge into water for the sake of purification. even the news of the death of a relative, a hundred miles off, has the same effect. the person who hears such news is considered unclean until he has bathed. in unison with this feeling, a person is no sooner dead, than he is hastened away to be buried or burned; for, until this is done, those in the house can neither eat nor drink, nor go on with their occupations. a brahmin who is particular in his delicacy, must be careful what he treads upon. he is obliged to wash his body or bathe, if he happens to tread on a bone, or a broken pot, a bit of rag, or a leaf from which one has been eating. he must also be careful where he sits down. some devotees always carry their seats with them, that is, a tiger or antelope's skin, which are always held pure. some are contented with a mat. they may sit down on the ground without defilement, provided it has been newly rubbed over with cow-dung. this last specific is used daily to purify their houses from the defilement occasioned by comers, and goers. when thus applied, diluted with water, it has unquestionably one good effect. it completely destroys the fleas and other insects, with which they are very much annoyed. there is one thing more which i wish to mention. it is, that all the high castes consider the use of intoxicating drinks to be defiling. i hope that you, my dear children, will always have the same opinion, and never touch them any sooner than you would touch arsenic or other poisons. a person may be restored to his caste, provided he has not committed an unpardonable offence. this is done as follows. after he has gained the consent of his relations to be restored he prostrates himself very humbly before them, they being assembled for that purpose, and submits to the blows or other punishment which they may think proper to inflict, or pays the fine which they may have laid upon him. then, after shedding tears of sorrow, and making promises that, by his future conduct, he will wipe away the stain of his expulsion from caste, he makes the shaashtaangkum before the assembly. this being done, he is declared fit to be restored to his tribe. when a man has been expelled from his caste for some great offence, those who restore him sometimes slightly burn his tongue with a piece of gold made hot. they likewise apply to different parts of the body redhot iron stamps, which leave marks that remain for ever. sometimes they compel the offender to walk on burning embers; and to complete the purification, he must drink the punchakaryam, which literally means the _five things_; these all come from the cow, and must be mixed together. the first three of these i will mention, namely, the milk, butter, and curds. the other two, for the sake of delicacy, i must not mention. after the ceremony of punchakaryam is finished the person who has been expelled from his caste must give a grand feast. this finishes all he has to do, and he is then restored to favor. there are certain offences which, when committed cut off all hope that the offender will ever be restored to his caste. for instance, should he eat the flesh of the cow, no presents which he might make, nor any fines which lie might be disposed to pay, no, not even the punchakaryam itself, would be of any avail for his restoration or purification. i will make a remark here, which i might have made before. it is, that in christian countries, there is a spirit of pride which much resembles the spirit of caste. many are to be found who are very proud that they have descended from rich and honorable _ancestors_, and who look down, almost with disdain, upon those in other situations. i need hardly tell you that this is a very wicked spirit, and entirely opposed to the spirit of the gospel. no matter what may be our high thoughts of ourselves, we appear but very low in the sight of him who created us. we are all sinners, and, as such, are offensive in his sight. if we would go to heaven, the first thing which we have to do, is to humble ourselves for the pride of our hearts, and become as little children before him. we must have that spirit of which the apostle speaks, when he says, "let each esteem others better than themselves." with a humble spirit we may approach a holy god, with the assurance that he will, for christ's sake, forgive all our sins. chapter ix. hindoo temples--cars--procession of idols. my dear children--i will proceed to give you a description of the hindoo temples. these are very numerous. one is to be found in almost every village. they are to be found, also, in out-of-the-way places, distant from villages, in woods, on the banks and in the middle of rivers; but, above all, on mountains and steep rocks. this latter practice, of building temples on mountains, is very ancient. the israelites were accustomed to choose a mountain when they offered up their sacrifices to the lord. solomon, before the building of the temple, chose mount gibeon on which to offer his burnt-offerings; and when the ten tribes separated themselves, in the reign of jeroboam, they built their altars on the mountain of samaria. this practice may have come from the circumstance, that noah offered to god a great sacrifice of thanks on one of the highest mountains of armenia. probably mount ararat continued long to be remembered, by him and his descendants, as the scene of their deliverance. besides the temples of the idols, there are various objects of worship, made of earth and stone. some of the idols are carved. some consist merely of the rough stone. these are to be seen on the high-roads, at the entrance into villages, and, above all, under lofty trees. some of these are covered; but generally they are exposed in the open air. you will read in genesis, 28th chap, and 18th verse, that jacob, after his dream, rose up early in the morning and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. whether it has happened from this circumstance or not, that the heathen universally pour oil over their idols, i cannot tell. all i know is, that they do it. no idol can become an object of worship until a brahmin has said his muntrums, or prayers, for the purpose of bringing down the god to live, as it is said be does, in the image, and until he has drenched it with oil and liquid butter. the idols, in the great temples, are clothed with rich garments, and adorned with jewels, which are enriched with precious stones of immense value. sacrifices are constantly made to these idols, consisting of boiled rice, flowers, fruits, etc., but, above all, of lamps, of which many thousands are sometimes seen burning. they feed them with butter, in preference to oil. the priests of the temples offer up sacrifices twice every day, morning and evening. they begin the ceremony by washing their idol. the water which is used is brought from a river or tank. every morning a procession, with music, passes before our door, with this water. every priest who offers up sacrifices, must have several lighted lamps with a bell, which he holds in his left hand. with his right hand he makes an offering to the idol, adorns it with flowers, and rubs its forehead and various parts of its body with sandal-wood and holy ashes. while all this is going on, he is alone in the temple, the door of which is closed. the unholy multitude remain without, silently waiting till he has done. what he does, they cannot know, only hearing the sound of the bell. when he has done, he comes out and distributes among the people a part of the things which have been offered to the idol. these are considered as holy. if they consist of rice and fruit, they are immediately eaten; if of flowers, the men put them in their turbans, and the girls entwine them in their hair. next to the priests, the most important persons about the temples are the dancing girls. these are persons of the vilest character. they perform their religious duties in the temple twice a day. they also assist at the public ceremonies, and dance. at the same time they sing the most abominable and filthy songs. of these wicked creatures, however, i must not tell you any thing further. the next order of persons employed in the temples, are players on musical instruments. every temple of note has a band of these musicians who, as well as the dancers, are obliged to attend the temple twice a day. they are also obliged to assist at all the public festivals. their band generally consists of wind, instruments, resembling clarionets and hautboys, to which they add cymbals and drums. they have a bass, produced by blowing into a kind of tube, widened below, and which gives an uninterrupted sound. part of the musicians sing hymns in honor of their gods. the expenses of the temples are borne by the voluntary offerings of the people, consisting of money, jewels, cattle, provisions, and other articles. in order to induce them to make such offerings, the brahmins use all kinds of deception. sometimes they will put their idols in irons, chaining their hands and feet. they exhibit them in this sad condition, declaring that they have been brought into it by creditors from whom their gods had to borrow money, in times of trouble, to supply their wants. they declare that their creditors refuse to set the gods at liberty, until the money with the interest is paid. the people, seeing the deplorable condition into which they have been brought, come forward and pay off the debt; when the chains are taken off, and the god is set at liberty. another way in which the brahmins sometimes deceive the people, is as follows. they say that the god is afflicted with some dreadful disease, brought on by the distress which he has had, because the people do not worship him as much as they should. in such cases, the idol is sometimes placed at the door of the temple where they rub his forehead and temples with various kinds of medicine. they also set before him all sorts of medicines, pretending in this way to do all they can to cure him. but as all their efforts prove to be vain, and the disease becomes worse, the brahmins send out persons to tell the sad news. the people, believing the report, hasten to bring in their gifts and offerings. the god, on beholding such proofs of their attachment to him, feels himself cured of his disease, and immediately returns to his throne within the temple. the brahmins use another kind of deception, in order to procure offerings for the temples. they declare that their gods are angry with certain individuals who have offended them, and that they have sent some evil spirit or devil to take possession of their bodies and torment them. accordingly, persons appear wandering about in different parts of the country, showing, by their dreadful convulsions, their writhings and twistings, every symptom of being possessed with the devil. the people who see them are filled with dismay, fall down before them, and offer gifts and sacrifices, for fear of being injured by them. whatever they ask is granted. the people give them to eat and drink abundantly; and when they leave a place, accompany them with instruments of music, till they arrive at some other place, where the same deception is practised. there are various other ways in which the brahmins deceive the people; but i have told you enough. at every large temple, there is at least yearly one grand procession. the idol is brought out from its inclosure, and placed in a great car or chariot, prepared for this express purpose. this stands upon four wheels of great strength, not made like ours, of spokes with a rim, but of three or four pieces of thick, solid timber, rounded and fitted to each other. the car is sometimes forty or fifty feet high, having upon it carved images of a most abominable nature. i must not tell you any thing about them. the car, when finished, presents somewhat the shape of a pyramid. [illustration] on the day of the procession, it is adorned with painted cloth, garlands of flowers, green shrubbery, and precious stuffs. the idol is placed in the centre, loaded with jewels, etc., to attract the attention of the people. having fastened ropes to this enormous car, eight or nine hundred or a thousand people catch hold of the ropes and slowly drag it along, accompanied with the awful roaring of their voices. at certain periods they stop; when the immense crowds, collected from all parts of the country, set up one universal shout, or rather yell. this, with the sound of their instruments and numerous drums, produces much uproar and confusion. sometimes the weighty car comes to a stand, from the dampness of the ground or from the narrowness of the streets, when the tumult and noise are redoubled. [illustration] perhaps you know that on some occasions, when the cars are drawn, people throw themselves under the wheels, and are crushed to death. this occurs at the drawing of the car of juggernaut, as you may learn if you will read my sermon to children, on the condition of the heathen. here is a picture of juggernaut, and on the last page you may see a picture of his car, and two men crushed to death under the wheels. not long since, five persons were thus crushed to death. many dreadful accidents also take place at the drawing of these cars. a few years ago several persons in this city had their limbs amputated, in consequence of injuries received. [illustration] when i was in america, i showed to many of the dear children an idol called pulliar, which was _formerly_ worshipped by raamu, one of our native helpers, when he was a heathen. i gave a particular description, of the i manner in which he daily worshiped it, in the sermon above mentioned here is a picture, which will give you some idea of this god. you will see that it is partly in the shape of a man, and partly in the shape of a beast. you, my dear children, would put no confidence in such vain idols; but this people do, as you may know from what i am now going to tell you. some months ago, a woman was brought to me with a cancer in her breast. it had made sad ravages. on the morning after her arrival i took it out. before she was brought to me, her brother went to the temple of the goddess meenaache, to ascertain what was her will respecting his bringing her to me, or taking her to a native doctor. in order to ascertain it, he had recourse to the following expedient. he prepared several bundles of red and white flowers--the red to represent the red or tamil man, the white to represent the white man. these flowers were carefully inclosed in leaves, so as to prevent their color being seen, and then laid down on the ground, at the entrance of the temple. after this, he called a little child to him, and then proceeded to entreat meenaache that, if it were her will that he should bring the sick woman to me, she would direct the child to take up one of the parcels containing the white flowers. it so happened that the child took up one of these parcels. of course, he brought her to me. had it taken up a parcel containing the red flowers, she would have been taken to a native doctor. may we not hope that, not meenaache, but jehovah directed him to bring her to me, that she might hear of a very different being from her goddess, even of jesus. of him she has fully heard. chapter x. festivals of the hindoos. my dear children--the hindoos have many festivals. these are all occasions of joy and gladness. on such days, the people quit their usual employments. friends and relations unite in family parties, and give entertainments according to their means. innocent pastimes and amusements of various kinds are resorted too to add to their happiness. there are eighteen principal festivals yearly, and no month passes without one or more of them. one of the most solemn of these ceremonies is held in the month of september, and appears to be principally in honor of parvathe, the wife of siva. at this time every laborer and every artisan offers sacrifices and prayers to his tools. the laborer brings his plough, hoe, and other farming utensils. he piles them together, and offers a sacrifice to them, consisting of flowers, fruit, rice, and other articles. after this, he prostrates himself before them at full length, and then returns them to their places. the mason offers the same adoration and sacrifice to his trowel, rule, and other instruments the carpenter adores his hatchet, adze, and plane. the barber collects his razors together and worships them with similar rites. the writing-master sacrifices to the iron pen or style, with which he writes upon the palm-leaf the tailor to his needles, the weaver to his loom, the butcher to his cleaver. the women, on this day, collect into a heap their baskets, rice-mill, rice-pounder, and other household utensils, and, after having offered sacrifices to them, fall down in adoration before them. every person, in short, in this solemnity sanctifies and adores the instrument or tool by which he gains a living. the tools are considered as so many gods, to whom they present their prayers that they will continue to furnish them still with the means of getting a livelihood. this least is concluded by making an idol to represent parvathe. it is made of the paste of grain, and being placed under a sort of canopy, is carried through the streets with great pomp, and receives the worship of the people. another festival of great celebrity is observed in october. at this time, each person, for himself, makes offerings of boiled rice and other food, to such of their relations as have died, that they may have a good meal on that day. they afterwards offer sacrifices of burning lamps, of fruit, and of flowers, and also new articles of dress, that their ancestors may be freshly clothed. at this festival, soldiers offer sacrifices to their weapons, in order to obtain success in war. on such occasions, a ram is offered in sacrifice to their armor. in november, a festival is observed, which is called the feast of lamps. at this season, the hindoos light lamps, and place them around the doors of their houses. this festival was established to commemorate the deliverance of the earth from a giant, who had been a great scourge to the people. he was slain by vrishnoo, after a dreadful battle. in many places, on this day, a sacrifice is offered to the _dunghill_ which is afterwards to enrich the ground. in the villages, each one has his own heap, to which he makes his offering of burning lamps, fruit, flowers, etc. the most celebrated of all the festivals, is that which is held in the end of december. it is called the feast of pongul, and is a season of rejoicing for two reasons: the first is, because the month of december, every day of which is unlucky, is about to end; and the other is, because it is to be followed by a month, every day of which is fortunate. for the purpose of preventing the evil effects of this month, the women every morning scour a place about two feet square before the door of the house, upon which they draw white lines, with flour. upon these they place several little balls of cow-dung, sticking in each a flower. each day these little balls, with their flowers, are preserved, and on the last day of the month, they are thrown into tanks or waste-places. the first day of this festival is called the pongul of rejoicing. near relatives are invited to a feast, which passes off with mirth and gladness. the second day is called the pongul of the sun, and is set apart to worship that luminary. married women, after bathing themselves, proceed to boil rice with milk, in the open air. when the milk begins to simmer, they make a loud cry, "pongul, o pongul." the vessel is then taken from the fire, and set before an idol. part of this rice is offered to the image, and, after standing there for some time, it is given to the cows. the remainder is given to the people. this is the great day for visiting among friends. the salutation begins by the question, "has the milk boiled?" to which the answer is, "it has boiled." from this, the festival takes the name of pongul, which signifies to boil. the third day is called the _pongul of cows._ in a great vessel, filled with water, they put saffron and other things. these being well mixed, they go around the cows and oxen belonging to the house several times, sprinkling them with water. after this, the men prostrate themselves before them four times. the cows are then dressed, their horns being painted with various colors. garlands of flowers are also put round their necks, and over their backs. to these are added strings of cocoa-nuts and other kinds of fruit, which, however, are soon shaken off, when they are in motion, and are picked up by children and others, who greedily eat what they gather, as something sacred. after being driven through the streets, they are suffered, during the day, to feed wherever they please, without a keeper. i have, however, told you enough. are you ready to exclaim, is it possible that a people can be guilty of such utter folly? but you, my dear children, would be guilty of just such folly, if you had not the bible. should not the gratitude, then, which you owe to your heavenly father, for your distinguished mercies, constrain you to do all that you can to send this blessed book to this dark land? chapter xi. the worship of the serpent. my dear children--if you have never heard much about the hindoos, you will be astonished to learn how numerous are the objects of their worship. they worship many living creatures, such as the ape, the tiger, the elephant the horse, the ox, the stag, the sheep, the hog, the dog, the cat, the rat, the peacock, the eagle, the cock, the hawk, the serpent, the chameleon, the lizard, the tortoise, fishes, and even insects. of these, some receive much more worship than others, such as the cow, the ox, and the serpent cobra capella. i will speak at present only of the worship of the serpent. of all the dangerous creatures found in india, there are none that occasion so many deaths as serpents. the people are very much exposed to their bite, especially at night, when they are walking. they tread upon them, and, as they generally do not wear shoes, the snakes turn their heads, and strike their fangs into those parts of the feet which are nearest to the place where the pressure is made upon their bodies. sometimes the bite is followed with instant death. the cobra capella is one of the most common snakes, and one of the most poisonous. it is said, that it has a thousand heads, one of which holds up the earth. it has a peculiar mark on its back, just behind the head. this mark very much resembles a pair of spectacles, without the handles. if you should go near it, it would raise the fore part of its body about six inches, widen out its neck, so as to be about double its common width, and prepare to strike you. the reason why the hindoos offer sacrifices and adoration to it above all the other serpents is, because it is so frequently met with, and is so much dreaded. in order to induce the people to worship this dangerous enemy, the hindoos have filled their books with tales concerning it. figures of it are often to be seen in the temples, and on other buildings. they seek out their holes, which are generally to be found in the hillocks of earth which are thrown up by the white ants; and when they find one, they go from time to time and offer milk, plantains, and other good things to it. [illustration] the hindoos, as i before observed, have eighteen annual festivals. one of these festivals is held for the purpose of worshipping this serpent. temples in many places are erected to it, of which there is one of great celebrity in mysore. when the festival occurs at this temple, great crowds of people come together to offer sacrifices to this creeping god. many serpents besides the cobra capella live within it, in holes made especially for them. all of these are kept and well fed by the brahmins with milk, butter, and plantains. by such means they become very numerous, and may be seen swarming from every crevice in the temple. to injure or to kill one would be considered a great crime. many of the natives call the cobra capella nulla paampu, that is, good snake. they are afraid to call it a bad snake, lest it should injure them. the following is the prayer which is offered before the image of this snake. o, divine cobra, preserve and sustain us. o, sheoh, partake of these offerings, and be gracious unto us. can you think of any thing, my dear children more dishonoring to a holy god, than such worship? and what have you ever done to prevent it? have you, every morning and evening, prayed that the gospel might be sent to this people? did you ever give any money to send it to them? did you ever think whether it may not be your duty, by and by, to come to them, to tell them of this gospel? chapter xii. the river ganges. my dear children--if you will look at the map of asia, and find the country of hindostan, you will see running through it a very celebrated river--the river ganges. it is called the ganges, after the goddess gunga. the hindoos say that the goddess gungu--who was produced from the sweat of vrishnoo's foot, which brumha caught and preserved in his alms-dish--came down from heaven, and divided herself into one hundred streams, which are the mouths of the river ganges. all classes and castes worship her. the sight, the name, or the touch of the river ganges is said to take away all sin. to die on the edge of the river, or to die partly buried in the stream, drinking its waters, while their bodies are besmeared with mud, is supposed to render them very holy. on this account, when it is expected that a person will die, he is hurried down to the river, whether willing or unwilling. sometimes the wood which the people bring to burn their bodies after death, is piled up before their eyes. o, how inhuman is this. after it is supposed that they are dead, and they are placed on the pile of wood, if they should revive and attempt to rise, it is thought that they are possessed with the devil, and they are beaten down with a hatchet or bamboo. were you standing on the banks of the ganges you might, perhaps, in one place see two or three young men carrying a sick female to the river. if you should ask what they are going to do with her, perhaps they would reply, we are going to give her up to gunga, to purify her soul, that she may go to heaven; for she is our mother. in another place you might see a father and mother sprinkling a beloved child with muddy water, endeavoring to soothe his dying agonies by saying, "it is blessed to die by gunga, my son; to die by gunga is blessed, my son." in another place you might see a man descending from a boat with empty water-pans tied around his neck, which pans, when filled, will drag down the poor creature to the bottom, to be seen no more. here is murder in the name of religion. he is a devotee, and has purchased heaven, as he supposes, by this his last good deed. in another place you might see a person seated in the water, accompanied by a priest, who pours down the throat of the dying man mud and water, and cries out, "o mother gunga, receive his soul." the dying man may be roused to sensibility by the violence. he may entreat his priest to desist; but his entreaties are drowned. he persists in pouring the mud and water down his throat, until he is gradually stifled, suffocated--suffocated in the name of humanity--suffocated in the name of religion. it happens, sometimes, in cases of sudden and violent attacks of disease, that they cannot be conveyed to the river before death. under such circumstances, a bone is preserved, and at a convenient season is taken down and thrown into the river. this, it is believed, contributes essentially to the salvation of the deceased. sometimes strangers are left on the banks to die, without the ceremony of drinking ganges water. of these, some have been seen creeping along with the flesh half eaten off their bones by the birds; others with their limbs torn by dogs and jackals, and others partly covered with insects. after a person is taken down to the river, if he should recover, it is looked upon by his friends as a great misfortune. he becomes an outcast. even his own children will not eat with him, nor offer him the least attention. if they should happen to touch him, they must wash their bodies, to cleanse them from the pollution which has been contracted. about fifty miles north of calcutta, are two villages inhabited entirely by these poor creatures, who have become outcasts in consequence of their recovery after having been taken down to the ganges. at the mouth of the river hoogly, which is one of the branches of the ganges, is the island sauger, which i saw as we approached calcutta after having been at sea for one hundred and twenty-eight days. now, my dear children, if you come out to india as missionaries, you will have to sail nearly one hundred and thirty days before you can reach it. sauger island is the island where, formerly, hundreds of mothers were in the habit of throwing their children to the crocodiles, and where these mothers were wont to weep and cry if the crocodiles did not devour their children before their eyes. think what a dreadful religion that must be, which makes mothers so hard-hearted. did you ever take any corn or indian meal and throw it to the chickens? and what did these chickens do? did they not come around you and eat it? well, just in this way the crocodiles would come near those mothers, and devour their children. here is a picture of a mother throwing her child to a crocodile. [illustration] i am glad to tell you, that the british have put a stop to the sacrifice of children at that place; but mothers continue to destroy their children elsewhere, and will continue to destroy them until christians send the gospel to them. it is not improbable that vast numbers of children are annually destroyed in the ganges. mothers sacrifice them, in consequence of vows which they have made. when the time to sacrifice them has come, they take them down to the river, and encourage them to go out so far that they are taken away by the stream, or they push them off with their own hands. i just remarked, that mothers will continue to destroy their children until the gospel is sent to them. that the gospel does prevent such things, the following circumstance will show. several years ago, a missionary lady went from new england to india. as she was walking out one morning, on the banks of the ganges, she saw a heathen mother weeping. she went up to her, sat down by her side, put her hand into hers, and asked what was the matter with her. "i have just been making a basket of flags," said she, "and putting my infant in it--pushing it off into the river, and drowning it. and my gods are very much pleased with me, because i have done it." after this missionary lady had heard all she had to say, she told her that her gods were no gods; that the only true god delights not in such sacrifices, but turns in horror from them; and that, if she would be happy here and hereafter, she must forsake her sins, and pray to jesus christ, who died to save sinners like herself. this conversation was the means of the conversion of that mother, and she never again destroyed any of her infants. such is the power of the blessed gospel. and what the gospel has done once, it can do again. if christians will send it to them, with the blessing of god, the time will soon come when heathen mothers will no more destroy their children. and have you nothing to do in this great work, my dear children? when you grow up, cannot you go and tell them of the saviour? here is a very pretty hymn about a heathen mother throwing her child to a crocodile. see that heathen mother stand where the sacred currents flow, with her own maternal hand, 'mid the waves her infant throw. hark, i hear the piteous scream- frightful monsters seize their prey, or the dark and bloody stream bears the struggling child away. fainter now, and fainter still, breaks the cry upon the ear; but the mother's heart is steel, she unmoved that cry can hear. send, o send the bible there, let its precepts reach the heart; she may then her children spare, act the mother's tender part. i have heard of a little boy who learned this hymn. he was deeply affected by it, and wanted very much to give something to send the gospel to india. but he had no money. he was, however, willing to labor in order to earn some. hearing that a gentleman wanted the chips removed from the ground near his woodpile, he hired himself to him, removed the chips, got his money, and, with glistening eyes, went and delivered it up, to be sent to the heathen, repeating, as he went, send, o send the bible there, let its precepts reach the heart; she may then her children spare, act the mother's tender part. about one hundred miles above the mouth of the hoogly is the city of calcutta, and about five hundred miles above that city is the city of benares. in these cities, as well as in other places, we see how much the heathen will contribute to support their wretched religion. a rich native in calcutta has been known to spend more than one hundred thousand dollars on a single festival--the festival of the goddess karle--and more than thirty thousand dollars every year afterwards during his life, for the same purpose. not long since, a rich native gave at one time to his idols more than one million two hundred thousand dollars. and what have christians ever done to honor their saviour, which will bear a comparison with what the heathen do for their idols? alas, alas, few christian men or christian women, in all the church, are willing to give even one-tenth of their annual income to the lord. most of those who are rich, hoard up their money, instead of spending it for the purpose of saving souls. and there are many persons who have never given a farthing to send the gospel to the heathen. o, what will such say, when they must meet the heathen at the bar of god? chapter xiii. the goddess durga. my dear children--from what i said, in my last chapter, about the goddess gunga, you see that the hindoos worship goddesses as well as gods. there is another goddess much worshipped the wife of the god siva. she has appeared in a thousand forms, with a thousand different names. of all these thousand forms, durga and karle are the most regarded by the people. i will speak of durga first. of all the festivals in eastern india, hers is the most celebrated. she has ten hands, in which she holds an iron club, a trident, a battle-axe, spears, thunderbolts, etc. thus armed, she is ever ready to fight with her enemies. were you to be present in the city of calcutta in the month of september, you might everywhere see the people busy in preparing for the yearly festival of this goddess. images representing her you would find in great numbers for sale, as bread or meat is sold. in the houses of the rich, images are to be found made of gold, silver, brass, copper, crystal, stone, or mixed metal, which are daily worshipped. these are called permanent images. besides these, multitudes of what are called temporary images are made--made merely for the occasion and then destroyed. they may be made of hay, sticks, clay, wood, or other such things. their size varies from a few inches to twenty feet in height. if any persons are too poor to buy one of these images, they can make them for themselves. when the festival is near at hand, people are seen in every direction taking the images to their houses. after they are thus supplied, the festival commences. it lasts fifteen days. the greater part of this time is spent in preparing for the three great days of worship. early on the morning of the first of the three great days, the brahmins proceed to consecrate the images, or to give them, as they suppose, life and understanding. until they are consecrated, they are not thought to be of any value. they are looked upon as senseless. a wealthy family can always receive the services of one or more brahmins, and a few of the poor may unite and secure the services of one of them. at length the solemn hour arrives. the brahmin, with the leaves of a sacred tree, comes near the image. with the two forefingers of his right hand he touches the breast, the two cheeks, the eyes, and the forehead of the image, at each touch saying the prayer, "let the spirit of durga descend and take possession of this image." by such ceremonies, and by repeating various _muntrums_, it is supposed that the brahmins have the power to bring down the goddess to take possession of the image. having been thus consecrated, it is believed to be a proper object of worship. having eyes, it can now behold every act of worship which is made; having ears, it can be delighted with music and with songs; having a nose, it can smell the sweet perfumes which are offered; having a mouth, it can be delighted with the rich food which is prepared for it. after the image is consecrated, the worship begins. the devotee comes near the image, and falls down before it. he then twists himself into a great variety of shapes. sometimes he sits on the floor, sometimes he stands, sometimes he looks in one direction, sometimes in another. then he sprinkles the idol with holy water, rinses its mouth, washes its feet, wipes it with a dry cloth, throws flowers over it, puts jewels on it, offers perfumes to it, and finishes by performing shaashtaangkum. the worship of the idol is succeeded by a season of carousing, joy, and festivity. on this occasion, large offerings are made to the idols. a rich native has been known to offer eighty thousand pounds of sweetmeats, eighty thousand pounds of sugar, a thousand suits of cloth garments, a thousand suits of silk, a thousand offerings of rice, plantains, and other fruits. bloody sacrifices are offered up on such occasions. the king of nudiya, some time ago, offered a large number of sheep, goats, and buffaloes on the first day of the feast, and vowed to double the offering every day; so that the whole number sacrificed amounted to more than sixty-five thousand. you may remember that king solomon offered up on one occasion twenty-two thousand oxen, and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. if all the animals slain throughout hindostan, at the festival of the goddess durga, were collected together, they would amount to a much larger number than solomon offered. after the worship and offerings have been continued for three days, the festival closes. as the morning of the first day was devoted to the consecration of the images, the morning of the fourth is spent in unconsecrating them. this work is done by the brahmins. they profess, by various ceremonies, to send back the goddess to her heaven, concluding with a farewell address, in which they tell her that they expect her to accept of all their services, and return and pay them a visit again in the coming year. then all unite in bidding her a sorrowful adieu, and many seem affected even to the shedding of tears. soon afterwards the images are carried forth into the streets, placed on stages or platforms, and raised on men's shoulders. as the procession moves onward through the streets, accompanied with music and songs, amid clouds of dust, you might see them waving long hairy brushes to wipe off the dust, and to keep off the flies and mosquitoes, which might trouble the senseless images. but where are these processions going? to the banks of the ganges. and for what purpose? for the purpose of casting the images into the river. when all the ceremonies connected with the occasion are finished, those who carry the images suddenly fall upon them, break them to pieces, and then throw them with violence into the river. after this the people return to their homes. i have now given you a specimen of the image-worship of the hindoos; and how different is it from the worship which the bible enjoins. "god is a spirit; and they who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth." the very reverse of this, as you have seen, marks the worship of the heathen. they are not satisfied, unless they can have some object before them, to which they can make their offerings and their prayers. thus daily are they engaged in a service which, above all others, is the most offensive and provoking to a holy god--a service which has caused him to declare, that idolaters shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. this, too, is the service in which every person, who has never given himself to the saviour, is engaged; and, of course, in which you are engaged if you have not given your hearts to him. those who think more of their money than they think of christ, just as certainly worship the image which is stamped on a dollar or a cent, as the heathen worship their idols. those who love their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters more than christ, make these their idols. and are you, my dear children, yet out of christ? if so, you have your idols. and what are these idols? are they the world and its vanities? then god is as angry with you as he is with the heathen, and unless you give up these idols, you too must be lost. in a tract of mine, published by the american tract society, entitled, "knocking at the door"--a tract which i _most earnestly_ entreat you to get and read--you will find an account of the death of a young lady, who had chosen the world and its vanities as her idols. i was her physician. after having attended her for about a month, i perceived, one morning, that her disease must soon prove fatal. i told her that she could not live. she then exclaimed, "doctor, can i not live a month?" i informed her that she could not. again she exclaimed, "can i not live two weeks?" she was told that she could not live two weeks. and such a scene of horror followed as i never before witnessed, and may god be pleased to grant that i may never witness such another. until laid upon a dying bed, i fear that she had neglected to think about her soul's concerns. now she requested to be taken from it, and placed upon her knees, that she might call upon god to have mercy upon her. as her case excited much attention, some of the youth came to see her. these she warned, in the most solemn manner, not to put off repentance, as she had done, to a dying hour. looking up at me, on one occasion, she exclaimed, "doctor, cannot you save me?" alas, what could i do for the poor sufferer. witness, now, how anxious she was to obtain the favor of that god whom she had hitherto neglected. yes, so anxious that she requested her friends not to allow her to sleep, that she might spend every remaining breath in calling upon god to have mercy upon her. one very affecting circumstance occurred. she requested her trunk either to be brought to her bedside, or to be opened. from this a ring, which was set with red garnets, was taken out by herself, or by another, and handed to her. she then called a young friend to her bedside, put the ring upon her finger, and said to her, "don't you put off repentance, as i have done, until a dying hour." that ring is now in my possession. in less than forty-eight hours after i told her that she could not live, she passed into eternity. would that i could show you that mournful countenance, which continued long after the last spark of life had become extinct; yes, even up to the moment when the lid of her coffin for ever hid it from our view. never, never shall i forget it. it was a sad monument of the wreck within. now, my dear children, you would not like to die as, i fear, this young lady died. well, then, if you would die differently, you must live differently. you must live for christ, if you would die in christ. and are you christ's, or are you yet gay and thoughtless--as gay and as thoughtless as this young lady was, until laid upon her dying bed? if you are so, and if you continue to remain in this sad condition, your season of sorrow too will certainly come, and it will come when you expect it not. as the little insect which flies round and round your candle is dazzled with its brightness, and feels nothing but pleasure, until it unconsciously strikes the blaze with its little wings, and is swallowed up in the flame; so you are dazzled with the pleasures of the world, thinking nothing of the flames which may swallow you up in a moment, and put a stop to all your joys for ever. o, that the death-bed scene of miss matthews might have a happy effect upon you. o, that the solemn warning which she gave to her young friend, not to put off repentance as she had done, until a dying hour, might continue to sound in your ears, until you would no longer delay repentance. my dear children, this young lady, though dead, yet speaketh. she speaks to you. she calls upon you from her tomb--from the eternal world, to delay repentance no longer. will you, then, be so mad as to turn a deaf ear to this call? will you ever take another sip from the cup of unhallowed pleasure? will you ever direct your little feet to the ballroom, or other places of sinful amusement? will you hereafter prefer your worldly joys to christ? o, you must not, you must not. it will not do for you to be lost. who, o who can lie down in everlasting burnings? who can dwell for ever with devouring flames? chapter xiv. the goddess karle. my dear children--in the preceding chapter i spoke of karle. she, as i there mentioned, is the wife of siva, and, like her husband, has the power of destruction. from the images made of her, it would appear that she is a female, of a black or dark blue color. she has four arms. in one hand she holds a sword, and in another a human head. her hair is dishevelled, reaching down to her feet. her countenance is most ferocious. her tongue comes out of her mouth, and hangs over her chin. she has three eyes, red and fiery. her lips and eyebrows are streaked with blood. she has two dead bodies for ear-rings, and wears a girdle around her loins--a girdle made of bloody hands, which she cut off from the bodies of her enemies. she has a necklace of skulls, which she took from the bodies of the giants and others killed by her. [illustration] of all the hindoo divinities, this goddess is the most cruel and revengeful. such is her thirst for blood, that being unable at one time to procure any giants for her prey, in order to quench her thirst, she cut her own throat, that the blood issuing thence might spout into her mouth. different acts of worship are performed to appease her. if, for example, a devotee should burn his body, by applying a burning lamp to it, it would be very pleasing to her. if he should draw some of his blood and give it to her, or if he should cut off a piece of his flesh and offer it as a burnt-offering, she would be still move pleased. if he should present _whole_ burnt-offerings upon the altar, saying, "hrang, brang, karle, karle! o, horrid-toothed goddess, eat, eat; destroy all the malignant: cut with this axe; bind, bind; seize, seize; drink this blood; spheng, spheng; secure, secure; salutation to karle," she would be much delighted. it is said that she will be pleased for three months, if the people offer her the blood of a crocodile--for a thousand years, if they offer her the blood of one man, and a hundred thousand years, if they offer her the blood of three. this goddess is the patroness of thieves. to her they pay their devotions, to obtain help to carry on their wicked delights. gangs meet together, and, after having offered bloody sacrifices, and worshipped their weapons, and having drunk some intoxicating liquor, and rubbed their bodies with oil, they go forth to rob. they have a prayer, which they offer when they worship their weapons. it is as follows: "o, instrument formed by the goddess, karle commands thee to cut a passage into the house, to cut through stones, bones, bricks, wood, the earth, and mountains, and cause the dust thereof to be carried away by the wind." scattered throughout india, there is a lawless set of men whose profession it is to get their food by murder. they are called phansiagars, or thugs. they owe their origin and laws to karle. they say that she told them to become murderers and plunderers. they are called phansiagars, from the name of the instrument which they use when they murder people. phansiagar means a strangler, and they use a phansi, or noose, which they throw over the necks of those whom they intend to plunder, and strangle them. these phansiagars are composed of all castes, hindoos, mahommedans, pariahs, and chandellars. this arises from the circumstance that they never destroy the children of those whom they rob and murder. these children they take care of, and bring up to their own horrible mode of life. they always murder those whom they rob, acting upon the maxim that "dead men tell no tales." a gang of these robbers varies from a dozen to sixty or seventy persons. these divide into small parties. those whom they murder are travellers, whom they happen to meet on the road. sometimes two or three of a gang will take up their station in a choultry, or place where the traveller stops, and while he sleeps, they rouse him from his sleep, and cast the noose over his head and kill him. it takes two persons to kill a man. one casts the noose over his head, and immediately tightens it with all his strength; the other strikes him on the joint of his knees as he rises, which causes him to fall forwards. after he has fallen, they kick him on the temples till he dies, which is usually in a minute. they never commit a murder until they have taken every precaution not to be found out. they will follow a traveller for weeks, if necessary, before they destroy him. after they have murdered him, they gash the body all over and bury it. they gash it, that it may not swell, and cause cracks to take place in the ground, which might cause the jackals to dig down to the body, and thus expose their guilt. if a dog accompanies the person, they always kill it, lest the faithful creature should lead to the discovery of his master. they think it to be a very good act to give a part of the plunder, which they get when they murder a person, to their goddess. if they fail to put him to death according to their rules, they suppose that they have made her angry, and they make offerings to her, that she may be appeased. thus, you see that their religion teaches them to commit the blackest of crimes. the reason why this people gash and bury the bodies of those whom they murder, is as follows. they say that the goddess used to save them the trouble of burying the corpses of their victims by eating them, thus screening the murderers from all chance of being found out. once, after the murder of a traveller, the body was, as usual, left unburied. one of the phansiagars employed, unguardedly looking behind him, saw the goddess in the act of feasting upon it. this made her so angry, that she vowed never again to devour a body slaughtered by them; they having, by this one act of curiosity, forfeited her favor. however, as an equivalent for withdrawing her patronage, she plucked one of the fangs from her jaw, and gave it to them, saying that they might use it as a pickaxe, which would never wear out. she then opened her side and pulled out one of her ribs, which she gave them for a knife, whose edge nothing could blunt. having done this, she stooped down and tore off the hem of her garment, which she gave to them for a noose, declaring that it would never fail to strangle any person about whose throat it might be cast. she moreover commanded them to gash and bury the bodies of those whom they destroyed. the phansiagars bring up their children to their own profession. to learn this, the boy is placed under the care of a tutor. sometimes his father is his teacher. by him he is taught that it is just as proper to murder a man, as it is to kill a snake which lies in his path and would bite him as he passes. he is not permitted at first to see the murders, but merely a dead body; his mind being gradually prepared for the sight. after this, the dreadful secret of his trade is, by degrees, told him. when he expresses a wish to be engaged in this horrid business, they tell him all about it. in the meantime he is allowed a small part of the plunder, in order that his desire to commit these murders may be increased; since it is only by murder that the plunder is obtained. he is from time to time allowed to assist in some things, while the murder is taking place, or allowed to be present to see how the business is managed. it is not, however, until he becomes a man, that he is permitted to apply the noose. to attain this privilege, he usually devotes eight or ten years. before he can commit a murder, his tutor must present him with a noose. this sets him loose upon the world, as a licensed murderer. when the tutor is about to give him the noose, he takes him apart, and solemnly enjoins it upon him to use it with skill, as it is to be the means of his earning his food, and as his safety will depend upon the skill with which it is used. after he receives it, he tries his skill in strangling a person the first opportunity that offers. by the course of education which the phansiagars undergo, they become so fond of their dreadful occupation, that nothing can induce them to quit it. some who have been employed in the east india company's service, have always returned to their business when an opportunity offered of a successful enterprise. when the phansiagars become old, they do not quit the service, but act as watchers, and decoy the traveller, by some false tale of distress, into some distant place, where he is murdered. women are sometimes admitted to the society of these plunderers, and, on some occasions, are allowed to apply the noose. they select a handsome girl, and place her in a convenient spot, where, by her beauty, or by a false story of distress, she may decoy some unsuspecting traveller, and be the means of his destruction. should he be on horseback, she will induce him to take her up behind him; after which, when an opportunity offers, she throws the noose over his head, leaps from the horse, drags him to the ground, and strangles him. i will mention an instance. it happened that a horseman of coorg, in the madras presidency, was passing by a spot where one of these interesting-looking girls was stationed. she told him a piteous story of having been robbed and badly treated, and begged him to assist her. feeling sorry for her, he offered to take her behind him, on his horse, and thus assist her a few miles on her journey. she expressed much gratitude for his kindness, and mounted. soon afterwards she suddenly passed a noose over his head, and, drawing it with all her might, endeavored to pull him from his saddle. at this moment, a number of phansiagars started from the neighboring thicket and surrounded him. the murderess then slipped from the horse; but the coorg striking his heels into the horse's sides, it threw out its hind legs with great violence, and struck to the ground the girl, who immediately let go the cord. he then drew his sword, and, cutting his way through the robbers, effected his escape. he wounded two of them severely. these men were shortly afterwards taken, and, through their means, twelve others fell into the hands of the judicial officers of the king of coorg, including the girl who attempted the murder. they were all put to death. and is it possible that such persons can go to heaven? how could such ever relish its pure joys? what would they do, could they be admitted there? my dear children, it is a charity which has no foundation, to suppose that the heathen can go to heaven. i have preached the gospel to tens of thousands of them, but i never saw one who had the least atom of a qualification for that holy place. "they have all gone out of the way." every crime which the apostle paul speaks of in the latter part of the first chapter of his epistle to the romans, they commit, and crimes of so dreadful a nature that i cannot mention them--crimes which, should they be written in the bible, would cause the bible to be a sealed book for ever. chapter xv. self-tortures of the hindoos. my dear children--as the heathen have no bible to direct them, they have devised various means by which they expect to obtain the favor of their gods, and get to heaven. i will mention some of these. some burn a lamp in a temple. they think that this is a very meritorious act. some roll on the ground after the god, as he is carried in a great car or chariot around the temple. it is customary for the people to build very high cars or chariots, and cover them with very beautiful cloths. they also tie the cocoa-nut blossom and plantain-tree within them, and attach great ropes to them. when they are ready to drag these cars, or chariots, they bring their gods of gold or of brass from the temples, and place them on them. then one, two, three, six, nine hundred, and even a thousand persons, when the cars are very large, catch hold of these ropes and drag them around the temple. while they are doing this, many of the heathen, to fulfil vows which they made when in sickness, and at other times of distress, throw themselves on the ground, and roll over from side to side, and frequently much injure themselves. some swing on great hooks, which are passed through the tender parts of their backs. sometimes they swing for half an hour; sometimes an hour. the longer they can bear the torture of the swinging, the more acceptable they suppose it will be to their goddess. it occasionally happens, that the flesh in which the hooks are fastened gives way, in which case the poor creature is dashed to the ground. when this occurs, the people hold him in the greatest abhorrence. they judge him to be a great criminal, and suppose that he has met a violent death in consequence of sins which he committed in a former birth. not long since, i attended one of these hook-swingings, not far from the city of madura. it took place on the morning of june 8th, 1848, just twenty-nine years after i first left america for india. it should have taken place on the preceding afternoon; but one of the axle-trees of the car, which was to support the machine on which the man was to be elevated in the air, was broken. nothing, of course, could be done until it was repaired. the carpenters and others worked with great diligence until about eleven o'clock at night, when every thing was prepared for the swinging. i expected immediately after this to witness the ceremony. it however did not take place until the morning. while waiting for the man who was to be swung to make his appearance, i took a pencil and made a drawing of the machine to which he was to be fastened. the picture on the first page of the book will give you some idea of it. yon have, perhaps, often seen a well-sweep. the long beam in the picture is swung in the same manner as is the well-sweep, with a single exception. in addition to its usual motion, it is made to turn horizontally. the cuts which you may have seen, in two or three of my little books, differ much from the above; of course different machines are used at different times. there are stationary swingings, as well as swingings of the kind to which i just alluded. between six and seven o'clock in the morning, the man who was to be swung made his appearance for a few moments, and then disappeared. the hooks by which he was to be swung, as well as the iron rods with which a number of devotees were immediately to pierce their sides, were carried through the streets, and held up that they might be seen by the people. soon afterwards the man again appeared with the hooks in his back, and went up to the end of the beam to which he was to be fastened. this, of course, was lowered. notwithstanding the dense multitudes of people, i made my way to the same spot, determined to be satisfied whether or not there was any deception in the application of the hooks. there was no deception. they passed through the skin, on the sides of the backbone. to these hooks were attached yellow ropes, by which he was fastened to the beam, as you will perceive in the picture. this being done, the men, five or six in number, who had hold of the ropes fastened to the end of the beam which you see resting on the ground, and which was then, of course, high in the air, drew him up until the beam lay horizontally. then, after making him perform one circular motion around the car, they elevated him, as you see in the picture. when thus elevated, it was thought that he was forty feet from the ground. all being ready, the people seized the ropes which you see in front of the car, and began to draw it. mr. chandler and myself accompanied it through the streets, until it came to the place from which it set out. the distance of ground passed over was at least half a mile, and the time in which the journey was accomplished exceeded an hour. of course he was swinging more than an hour. as the car passed through the streets, the people threw plantains from the tops of the houses to the crowds below. the man who was swung was adorned with flowers and other ornaments. he had a tinselled turban on his head. his body was rubbed over with a yellow paste, made, most probably, from the sandal-wood. around his ankles were rings, hung with little bells, which he made to tinkle, as he was swinging, by striking his legs together. he wore a dark or black pair of pantaloons, which came a little below the knees, and which had a border of gold around them. he held a handkerchief in one hand, and a knife somewhat resembling a dagger, in the other. these he kept in constant motion, by moving his arms. on one occasion, a bunch of plantains was tied to one of the long ropes which you see hanging down by the side of the swinger. these he drew up, and afterwards scattered over the people on a house opposite to him. [illustration.] after following the car for a quarter of a mile or more, we went before it, and there witnessed another appalling sight. there were five or six men, who had the rods of iron which i just mentioned passed through the skin of their sides. they were dancing along, and, as they danced, they made these rods go backward and forward through the skin. after the car had reached the place from which it set out, the end of the beam from which the man was swinging was then lowered and he was untied. again i looked very carefully at the hooks in the back. the people say that no blood is shed by their introduction, and consider this to be a miracle. the falsity of this assertion was shown by the blood which i saw on the side of one of the wounds. i have been long in this country, and consequently have become so familiarized with heathenism, that my feelings, though deeply wounded at this sight, were not so keenly affected as were those of my new associate, mr. chandler. he has been on heathen ground but a short time. when they tied the man to the beam, he was unnerved and wellnigh overcome; and he told me, that during all the time he was following the car, he felt like shedding tears. while following the car, the young men of america came into my mind. they refuse to come, said i, to help these miserable creatures. o, they will not come--they will not come. i thought, that if many of the dear children of that land--children to whom i lately preached, as well as others, could witness this poor creature swinging from the end of a long beam, far above the tops of the trees, and that, too, by hooks passing through the tender parts of his back, they would say, we will, by and by, become missionaries, and, by the help of god, proclaim to the heathen that there is a saviour. on the evening of the day on which the swinging takes place, another act of great cruelty is practised. devotees throw themselves from, the top of a high wall, or a scaffold of twenty or thirty feet in height, upon a bed of iron spikes, or on bags of straw with knives in them. many are often mangled and torn. others are quickly killed. at night, many of the devotees sit down in the open air, and pierce the skin of their foreheads, by inserting a small rod of iron. to this is suspended a lamp, which is kept burning till daylight. sometimes bundles of thorns are collected before the temple, among which the devotees roll themselves without any covering. these thorns are then set on fire, when they briskly dance over the flames. other devotees swing before a slow fire; some stand between two fires, as you see in this picture. [illustration:] some have their breasts, arms, and other parts stuck entirely full of pins, about the thickness of small nails, or packing needles. another very cruel torture is practised. some of the devotees make a vow. with one hand they cover their under lip with wet earth or mud. on this, with the other hand, they place some small grains, usually of mustard-seed they then stretch themselves flat on their backs, exposed to the dews of night, and the blazing and scorching sun by day. their vow is, that from this position they will not stir, that they will not move nor turn, nor eat nor drink, till the seeds planted on their lips begin to sprout. this usually takes place on the third or fourth day. after this they arise, and then think that they are very holy. there is a class of devotees in this country called yogis, whose object it is to root out every human feeling. some live in holes and caves. some drag around a heavy chain attached to them. some make the circuit of an empire, creeping on their hands and knees. some roll their bodies from the shores of the indus to the ganges. the rev. mr. heyer, in one of his letters from india, says, that an indian devotee has spent more than nine years on a journey from benares to cape comorin, that is, from the 27th to the 7th degree of north latitude. the whole journey is made by rolling on the bare ground, from side to side. when he comes to a river, of course he cannot roll over it. he therefore fords it, or passes over it in a boat, and then rolls on the banks of the river just as far as the river is wide. by doing this, he supposes that his determination to roll all the way is fully carried out. [illustration] some devotees hold up one or both arms, until the muscles become rigid, and their limbs become shrivelled into stumps. in the above cut, you have a representation of a man with one of these shrivelled arms. see how long his finger-nails have grown. one has run through his hand and back through his arm. some stretch themselves on beds of iron spikes. some wear great square irons on their necks. i have seen not only a man, but a woman, with these great square irons around their necks, each nearly two feet in length and two feet in breadth. these they put on for the purpose of fulfilling some vow which they have made. for instance, if a mother has a very sick little boy, she will say, "now, swammie, if you will cure my little boy, i will have a square iron put on my neck, and wear it all my life." after this vow is made, if the little boy gets well, the mother thinks that her swammie has cured him, and to fulfil her engagement she will have one of these irons put on her neck. [illustration:] [illustration:] other devotees throw themselves from the tops of precipices, and are dashed to pieces; some bury themselves alive in holes, which their own relatives have dug; some bind themselves with ropes or chains to trees, until they die; some keep gazing so long and so constantly at the heavens, that the muscles of their neck become contracted, and no aliment but liquids can pass into the stomach. but i will not continue this subject. you perceive, my dear children, what a wretched religion that must be which encourages its followers to perform such acts. and how vain are all these acts--how utterly destitute are they of any merit. those who practise them are not made better by them, and they are just as far from the kingdom of heaven after having performed them, as they were before. the christian religion encourages no such things. it tells us to perform no pilgrimages to holy places, to inflict no self-tortures. but it has its requirements, and these are very simple, and may easily be performed by all who are willing to do their duty. these requirements are, repentance, forsaking sin, faith in christ, and a supreme devotedness to his service. have you, my dear children, attended to these requirements? if not, you are in a much worse condition than these poor heathen of whom you have been reading. they are not as guilty before god as you are. they know not their master's will. still, they must perish, unless the gospel is sent to them. but though they perish, their punishment will be lighter than the punishment of those who refuse to love and obey the saviour. that servant who knows his lord's will, and prepares not himself, neither does according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. but he that knows not, and does commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. should it be your sad lot to perish at last, it would be far better for you to go down to hell enveloped in all the darkness of a heathen land, than to go down to hell from a land of such gospel light and privileges as you enjoy. chapter xvi. the suttee, or burning of widows. my dear children--from what i have already told you, you know that the hindoos are a cruel people. but i have not told you of the extent to which they carry their cruelty. perhaps it is shown to the highest degree in their practice of the suttee, or burning of widows. the british have abolished this rite throughout their dominions in india. they have also made great exertions to have it abolished in the territories of the native princes, but i am sorry to say, that in some of these territories it is still practised. within the last three years, twenty-three of the princes just alluded to, have issued orders for its abolishment throughout their dominions. these orders have probably been issued solely in consequence of their fear of the british power, for it is a practice which is riveted in the affections of the people. this power they know that it will be dangerous to resist. in my "sermon to children, on the condition of the heathen," i mentioned, that the sacred books of the heathen encourage the suttee. i also mentioned several instances, in which widows had been burned to death with the corpses of their husbands. even though you may have seen that book, it will be well for me to give you two or three other cases, to impress your minds more fully with the horrors of the hindoo religion. the first took place in a village of tanjore. a merchant having died, his wife, who was about thirty years old, determined to burn herself with his corpse. the news of what she was going to do, quickly spread in every direction, and large numbers of people collected to witness the burning. after she was adorned with jewels and dressed in her best clothing, and after her body was tinged with the yellow infusion of sandal-wood and saffron, bearers arrived to take away the corpse with the wretched woman. the body of the man was placed on a car, ornamented with costly stuffs, flowers, etc. there he was seated like a living man, elegantly decorated with all his jewels, and clothed in rich attire. the corpse being carried first, the wife followed in a rich palanquin. as she went along, the surrounding multitudes of people stretched out their hands towards her to show how much they admired her conduct. the women in particular went up to her to wish her joy, apparently desiring to receive her blessing, or at least, that she would pronounce over them some pleasing word. she tried to satisfy them all, saying to one, that she would long continue to enjoy her worldly happiness, and to another, that she would be the mother of many beautiful children. another was informed, that she would soon arrive at great honor in the world. these, and similar expressions, she made to all who came near her, and they departed with the full belief that they would enjoy all the blessings of which she had spoken. she also distributed among them some betel-leaves, which they gladly received as relics, or something of blessed influence. during the whole procession, which was very long, her countenance was serene and even cheerful, until they came to the pile upon which she was to die. then she suddenly became pensive. she no longer attended to what was passing around her. her looks were wildly fixed upon the pile. her face grew pale. she trembled with fear, and seemed ready to faint away. the brahmins, who took the lead in this ceremony, with her relations, seeing her sad condition, ran to her, and endeavored to restore her spirits, but she seemed not to know what they said, and answered not a word. they made her quit the palanquin, and her nearest relatives took her to a pond of water which was near the pile, where they washed her. they then attended her to the pile, on which the corpse of her husband had already been laid. it was surrounded with brahmins, each with a lighted torch in one hand, and a bowl of melted butter in the other, all ready, as soon as the poor victim was placed on the pile, to envelope her in fire. the relatives armed with muskets, sabres, and other weapons, stood closely around in a double line, for the purpose, it was said, of making her afraid, if she might wish to draw back, or of frightening any body who might pity her, and endeavor to rescue her. at length the time for firing the pile being proclaimed, the young widow was stripped of her jewels, and led on towards the pile. she was then commanded to walk three times around it, two of her nearest relations supporting her by the arms. the first round she accomplished with tottering steps; but in the second, her strength forsook her, and she fainted away in the arms of those who were holding her. they were obliged to drag her between them for the third round. then senseless, she was thrown upon the corpse of her husband. at that instant, the multitude made the air to ring with their shouts of gladness, while the brahmins poured the butter on the dry wood, and applied the torches. instantly the whole pile was in a blaze. as soon as the flames began to rage, the poor woman, now in the midst of them, was called upon by name, from all sides; but as insensible as the corpse on which she lay, she made no answer. she entered eternity, suffocated at once, most probably, by the flames. the second case of suttee which i shall mention took place at the death of the rajah, or king of tanjore. he left behind him four wives. the brahmins having determined that two of these four should be burned with the corpse of their husband, and having selected the two whom they thought best to sacrifice, they told them of what awaited them. they received the information with apparent joy. a refusal would have been attended with their utter disgrace. one day only was necessary to get ready for the funeral ceremonies. they were conducted as follows: in a field somewhat distant from the palace, the people made a hollow, not very deep, but about twelve or fifteen feet square. within it they made a pyramid of the sweet-smelling sandal-wood. on the middle of the pyramid, a scaffold was built in such a manner that the posts could easily be taken away, by which means the scaffold would fall at once. on the four corners of the platform, large jars were placed, filled with melted butter, to besmear the pyramid, that it might be the more easily set on fire. the following was the order of the procession. it was headed by a great number of soldiers under arms. they were followed by a multitude of musicians, chiefly trumpeters, who made the air reã«cho with their melancholy sounds. next came the body of the king upon a splendid palanquin, richly adorned. this was surrounded by the nearest relations and by the priest of the king. they were all on foot, and without their turbans in token of mourning. a large party of brahmins formed around them as an immediate escort. the two wives who were to be burned with the corpse came next, each borne on a palanquin. during the journey they appeared calm and cheerful. the troops kept off the immense crowds who were assembled from every direction. the two queens, loaded with jewels, were attended by their favorite women, with whom they occasionally conversed, and by their relations of both sexes. to many of these they had made presents before leaving the palace. they were also accompanied by thousands of brahmins, collected from different quarters. these were followed by an innumerable multitude of persons of both sexes. when they arrived at the ground where they were to be burned, the two victims were made to descend from their palanquins, for the purpose of performing the preparatory ceremonies. they went through the whole without showing any fear until towards the close, when their countenances began to change, and their three circuits around the pile were not performed without considerable effort to maintain calmness. in the meantime, the body of the king had been placed on the scaffold over the platform. the two queens were also laid down beside the corpse, one on the right hand, and the other on the left, and they joined hands by stretching them over the body. the astrologer having then declared that the happy moment was come for firing the pile, the brahmins repeated several prayers in a loud voice, and sprinkled the pile with holy water. when these ceremonies were finished, a signal was given, and the pillars which supported the pyramid and the scaffold were suddenly taken away. immediately the women were covered with the falling mass of timber, which tumbled over them with a crash. at the same instant the pile was fired in all its parts. on one side, the nearest relative of the king applied his torch, and on the other side, the priest; while the brahmins, in every quarter, were pouring jars of melted butter on the flames, creating so intense a heat as must instantly have consumed the victims. then the multitude shouted for joy, and the relations approaching the pile also set up a loud cry, calling them by their names. they supposed that they heard a voice in answer pronouncing _enna?_ that is, _what_? but the fall of the platform, and the immediate bursting out of the flames, must have stifled them at once. such was the miserable cud of these poor unhappy queens--unhappy victims of the most cruel religion that ever disgraced the earth. not unfrequently the sons take a prominent part in destroying their mothers. this will appear from the following case. a brahmin died, and was brought to the place of burning. his wife was fastened to the pile, and the fire was kindled, but the night was dark and rainy. when the fire began to scorch the poor woman, she contrived to disentangle herself from the dead body, and creeping from under the pile, hid herself among some brushwood. in a little time it was discovered that there was but one body on the pile. the relations immediately took the alarm, and searched for the poor creature. the son soon dragged her forth, and insisted that she should throw herself on the pile again, or drown or hang herself. she pleaded for her life at the hands of her own son, and declared that she could not embrace so horrid a death; but she pleaded in vain. he urged, that he should lose his caste if she were spared, and added, that either he or she must die. unable to persuade her to hang or drown herself, the son and the others present tied her hands and feet, and threw her on the funeral pile, where she quickly perished. [illustration: burning of widows] i observed that the rite of suttee is riveted in the affections of this people. the following communications from two of the native princes who lately consented to put a stop to this rite, will show you that this is the case. the rajah of oorcha declares, that "no subject of his state shall in future be permitted to become a suttee, though according to the shasters, it is no doubt very meritorious for a widow to die of grief for the death of her husband." the rajah of sumpthem says, "the practice of suttee is so very old, and has been countenanced and encouraged by the wise men of so many generations that i have never thought myself justified in interposing to prevent it; but my anxiety to meet the wishes of the governor-general in this and in all things, is so great, that i have waived all other considerations, and forbidden suttee." if the british were to lose their power in india, the suttee would immediately be rã«established. power has put it down, but power alone will never root it out of the affections of the people. nothing but the gospel can do this. o that christians would think of this, and hasten, yea, with great haste, to send this blessed gospel to them. chapter xvii. the revengeful nature of the hindoo religion. my dear children--the sacred books of the hindoos encourage revenge. in the vedas, which are the most sacred books, are laid down forms of religious service, or acts of worship, which are designed to injure or destroy their enemies. when a person wishes to have his enemy destroyed, he goes to a brahmin or priest, and secures his supposed aid. the brahmin, before he proceeds to his work, clothes himself with a black garment. he also makes four images of the foe, and clothes these with black garments. he then kindles a sacrificial fire, and after the performance of various ceremonies, he takes pieces of some animal which has been consecrated for the purpose, and throws them into this fire. on every occasion when he makes this burnt-offering, he touches the mouth of the image of this enemy, uttering one or other of the forms of prayer which are written in the sacred books. of these, the following are a few: "o agni," god of fire, "thou who art the mouth of all gods, do thou destroy the wisdom of my enemy." "o agni, fill with distraction the mind of this my enemy." "o agni, destroy the senses of this my enemy." "o agni, make dumb the mouth of this my enemy." "o agni, fasten with a peg the tongue of this my enemy." "o agni, reduce to ashes this my enemy." how different, my dear children, is the religion of jesus from the religion of which i have been giving you a description. no precepts teach us that we may injure or destroy our enemies. on the contrary, they teach us to love them, and do them good. let me repeat to you some of the words which our saviour spoke on this point. "ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy; but i say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." one of the young hindoos in dr. duff's school in calcutta, when reading the above and similar passages, was so struck with the difference between these precepts and the precepts of his shasters, that he could not but exclaim "o, how beautiful, how divine. surely this is the truth--this is the truth--this is the truth." the consequence was, that he never could rest until he had thrown aside his sacred books and his idols, and embraced that saviour whose precepts appeared to him to be so beautiful. and was this heathen so struck with the beauty of the precepts of the bible--so struck, that he had no peace until he gave himself to his saviour? and have you ever, my dear children, been struck with the precepts of your saviour--so struck with them, that you could never rest until you had given up your hearts to him? if not, how great is the contrast between you and that young hindoo. he gave his heart to the saviour. you withhold yours. he, through grace, will dwell for ever with christ in heaven. you, if you continue in your present awful condition, must be banished from his presence, and cast into hell, where you shall be tormented day and night for ever, with the devil and his angels. flee, my dear children, flee to the saviour now, if you have never yet done so. flee to him, and then you also shall dwell for ever with him. chapter xviii. the deception of the hindoos. my dear children--from what i have previously stated, you are aware that the hindoos are a very deceitful people. let me give you another instance of their deception. a late head catechist of one of my missionary brethren was, before his conversion, the priest of a temple. a man from whom about one thousand rupees' worth of jewels and similar things had been stolen, came to this priest, and promised to reward him well, if he would detect the thief, and secure to him the restoration of his property. the priest promised to comply with his wishes; and in order to effect his purpose, he had drums beaten through the village, and proclaimed, that at a certain time he would hold a meeting and detect the thief. at the appointed time, a large concourse of people assembled, the priest appearing in the midst of them with a cocoa-nut bound around with saffron-cords. he then told them, that if, after putting down the cocoa-nut, it should move of its own accord towards him, they might know that he would be able certainly to detect the thief; and added, that after it had thus moved, it would pursue the offender, and follow him until it would break his head. he then performed certain ceremonies calculated to awaken superstitious feelings in the minds of the people, and laid the cocoa-nut down at a little distance from him. to the great amazement of all present, it began to move towards the priest, and continued to move until it reached his feet. this being done, he told the people, that they might conclude from what they had seen, that the cocoa-nut would follow the thief until it would break his head. he consented, however, to give him a little grace--to spare his life until the next day; adding his advice, that the thief, whoever he might be, had better come to him privately, and tell him where the property was. in the dead of the night, a tap was heard at the door of the priest; the thief presented himself, and delivered up the property. the priest received a present from the owner of the property, and rewarded the thief for his promptness. after this man was converted, he was asked how he contrived to make the cocoa-nut move towards him. "why, sir," he answered, "if you will carefully divide a cocoa-nut, scoop out the kernel from one-half of it, enclose a strong, lively rat, put the parts of the cocoa-nut together, and bind the whole with saffron-cords, to prevent the crack being seen, and then place it on a declivity previously prepared, it is clear, that if you place yourself at the foot of this declivity the rat will twirl the cocoa-nut, and cause it to descend until it reaches your feet." chapter xix. superstition of the hindoos. my dear children--in my sermon to children, before alluded to, i mentioned a few particulars to prove that the people of india are very superstitious. let me mention a few more. it is said that no act, however good it may be, if performed on sunday, will succeed. some will not eat at all on sunday, until they have seen a certain bird--the bird on which the god vrishnoo rides. if a man rubs oil on his head on monday, and bathes, he will commit a sin equal to the sin of destroying a temple of siva. if he has his hair out on tuesday, he will become poor. even to worship the gods on wednesday, is bad. if a person takes medicine on thursday, his sickness will be increased. should he lend any thing on friday, he will lose his property. if he should buy a new cloth on saturday, take it home, and keep it there, death may be the consequence. should he die on this day, some other member of the family will die on the following week. if the foundation of a house is laid in june, the destruction of that house will follow. should a family enter a new house in march, some member of the family will die. if a marriage is celebrated in september, the husband and wife will fight with each other. should a thunderbolt fall on a house, or a vulture alight on it, some evil will befall the people living in it. if a crow should strike any person on the head with its wings, some of his relations will die. should a cat or a snake cross his path, it would be an indication of evil. in the latter case, one of his relations will die. if, when returning home, a person should meet him bearing a light, a quarrel will be the result. after a person has left his house, should he meet a single brahmin, or a woman who has had her head shaved, or a dumb or a blind man, or a washerman or a barber, the object for which he left would not succeed. or, when going out, should he hit his head against the top of the door-frame, or should any one ask him where he was going, or should he happen to sneeze, he would consider these things as hinderances to his going, and reã«nter the house. should a son or a daughter be born on the new moon in april, they will become thieves. if a person is born under the planet saturn, he will be slandered, his riches will be dissipated, and his wife, son, and friends will be destroyed. he will also be at variance with others, and endure many sufferings. should he be born under the planet mars, he will be full of anxious thoughts, be imprisoned, and oppressed with fear from robbers, fire, etc. he also will lose his lands, trees, and good name. if a person dreams that a monkey has bitten him, he will die in six months; or if he dreams that bedbugs, in large numbers, are creeping over his body to bite him, he will die in eight days. should he dream that a dog has bitten him, he will die in three years; or should he dream that a dead person has appeared to him and spoken to him, he will die immediately. if a man has a little head, he will become rich. if he has a large head, he will be poor. if his forehead is wide, he will live a hundred years. if he has a small neck, he will be a murderer. if the second toe is long, he will be a bad man. if a woman has curly hair, she will not prosper. if her nose is long, she will have a good disposition. if her ear is wide, she will tell falsehoods. if she has a mole on her nose, she will be subject to anger; if on her lips, she will be learned; if on the eyebrows she will be cunning. i could continue to fill a number of pages with things of the same description, but it will be unnecessary. i will merely mention one instance more. on a certain night in the month of november, the people will not look at the moon. the reason assigned for this, is as follows. once, when the elephant-faced god pulliar was dancing before the gods, the moon happening to see him, laughed at him, and told him that he had a large stomach, an ear like a winnowing-fan, etc. this so enraged him, that he cursed her. this curse was inflicted on the night above mentioned. how does the wretchedness of a people, both in reference to the things of this world and of the world to come, show itself where the bible is unknown. if this blessed book was not an inspired book--if it did no more than remove the temporal miseries of men, how invaluable would it be! of how much more value then, is it, in reference to the removal of their spiritual miseries? o, why is it that christians have not long since sent this bible to them? why is it that they do not send it to them _now_? this is a mystery, which we must leave to be unravelled at the judgment-seat of the last day. my dear children, you are to stand before that judgment-seat. shall any of these heathen among whom i dwell, rise up at that awful season--stretch out their hands towards you, and say, there stand the children who might have sent us the bible, but they did not send it; and now we must be lost--_lost for ever!_ chapter xx. burmah, china, etc., etc. my dear children--if you will look on your map of asia, you will see, adjoining hindostan, at the east, a country called burmah. this is another land of idols. here the "baptist general convention for foreign missions" have one of the most interesting and flourishing missions in the world. the people of burmah are, if possible, still further removed from divine knowledge than the people of india. they are in reality atheists, or, in other words, people who do not believe in a creator or preserver of the world. but still they worship gods, who, they say, have become so by acts of religious merit. he whom they now worship is called gaudama, or boodh. he is reputed to be the son of the king of benares, and, if their history be correct, was born six hundred years before christ. the boodhists are all idolaters. they have many temples erected to the honor of boodh and his image. before this image they present flowers, incense, rice, betel-nuts etc. like all other idolatrous nations, the burmese are very wicked. they do not respect their females as they should do. they treat them as an inferior order of beings. they often sell them. a very singular custom prevails in that country. it consists in paying a kind of homage to a white elephant. this elephant is sumptuously dressed and fed. it is provided with officers, like a second sovereign, and is made to receive presents from foreign ambassadors. it is next in rank to the king, and _superior_ to the queen. burmah is the country in which drs. judson and price, and messrs. hough and wade suffered so much, during the war with england several years ago. messrs. hough and wade were the first to suffer. as the ships which were to make the attack upon rangoon approached the city, they were seized and cast into prison. their legs were bound together with ropes, and eight or ten burmans, armed with spears and battle-axes, were placed over them, as a guard. they were afterwards put in irons. the next morning, as the fleet approached still nearer the city, orders were sent to the guard, through the grates of their prison, that the instant the shipping should fire upon the town, they were to kill them, together with the other prisoners confined with them. the guard, on receiving these orders, began to sharpen the instruments with which they intended to kill them, and moved them about their heads to show with how much skill and pleasure they would attend to their orders. upon the floor where they intended to butcher them, a large quantity of sand was spread to receive the blood. the gloom and silence of death reigned among the prisoners; the vast ocean of eternity seemed but a step before them. at length the fleet arrived, and the firing commenced the first ball which was thrown into the town passed, with a tremendous noise, directly over their heads. this so frightened the guard, that they seemed unable to execute their murderous orders. they shrunk away into one corner of the prison, where they remained quiet, until a broadside from one of the ships made the prison shake and tremble to its very foundation. this so alarmed them, that they burst open the doors of the prison and fled. the missionaries, with the other prisoners, were then left alone. their danger, however, was not at an end; but as god had protected them thus far, he continued to protect them until they were set at liberty, and allowed to preach the gospel again to those perishing heathen. drs. judson and price were also imprisoned, and suffered much; but they, too, were preserved and delivered. the accounts of their sufferings are so long, that i cannot now relate them all to you. you will find them in the life of mrs. judson. after the war was over, the missionaries were permitted to go everywhere to proclaim the name of the saviour; and their efforts have been very much blessed, especially among the karens. it will be impossible for me to give you an account of their many labors, and of the many tokens which they have received of god's favor towards multitudes who have become followers of the redeemer. suffice it to say, that more than six thousand have been received into the christian church. one of the native teachers not long since baptized, on one occasion, three hundred and seventy-two persons. adjoining burmah, is china, a country containing more than three hundred millions of people, about twenty times as many as there are in the united states of america. it is a country filled with idols. many of the people earn their living by making and selling these idols. there are many shops where they are sold, or repaired when they become broken or defaced. the females in that country are in a very degraded state. they are the slaves of their husbands, and live and die in the greatest ignorance. any attempt to raise themselves to the level of females in christian lands, is considered as very wicked. the little female child is tortured from her birth. you have, perhaps, heard that the women of china have small feet. these are made small by a very cruel practice--by putting bandages of cloth so tightly around them, that they cannot grow. many women have feet not larger than those of an american infant of one year old. mr. doty, missionary to china, says, that he was acquainted with a little girl whose mother had bound up her feet so tightly, that she cried two or three hours every day, on account of the great pain which she suffered. with such little feet, you may well suppose that it would be very difficult for the women to walk. it is so. they limp and hobble along, just as if their feet had been cut off, and they had to walk on stumps. the chinese do not count their daughters among their children. mr. doty says, he one day asked his chinese teacher how many children he had. he replied, that he had several. "how many of these," he then inquired, "are daughters?" "we do not count our daughters among our children," he answered. "i have three daughters, but we chinese count our sons only as children." when this missionary was in a chinese village where he had never been before, a man called to see him, bringing with him two pretty little girls, neatly dressed, about six and seven years old. he said that they were his daughters and that he wished to sell them. mr. doty refused to buy them, as it was wicked to buy and sell children; but he told him, that if he would commit them to him, he would take them home with him, and educate them, and that they might return home after they had grown. to this proposal he would not consent but said, that if he would buy them, they should be his for ever. he could have bought them both for about twenty-six dollars. the chinese have many schools, but none for their daughters, as they do not teach them, to read. when they are about thirteen years old, they shut them up in what are called "women's apartments," where they remain until the time of their marriage. then the parents sell them to those who wish to have wives for their sons. in this way, they are frequently married to persons whom they never before saw. many parents in china destroy their little girls soon after they are born, or while they are very small. this they frequently do by throwing them into rivers, or into the sea, after they have wrapped them up in coarse mats. there is a little chinese girl, named ellen, now living in newark, new jersey, whose father was about to kill her when she was three weeks old. an english lady heard of his intentions, and sent a person with ten dollars to see if she could not be bought. he was offered the ten dollars, but refused to take them. she sent ten dollars more. he consented to take the twenty dollars. this little girl was brought by this english lady to america, when she was about six years old. the friends who have her under their care, are educating her with the hope that she may go back to china, to tell its females of the saviour. did you ever, my dear girls, think why it is that your parents love you, and educate you--why it is that they try to make you happy, instead of cramping your feet, shutting you up, and, perhaps, at last selling you? it is because they have the bible. then, how anxious should you be to save what money you can, to buy bibles to send to those poor heathen. as i am now speaking of the destruction of infants, i would observe, that this crime is common in other heathen countries. it was quite common, until lately, in the island of tahiti, and other places in the south pacific ocean. when the missionaries of the london missionary society went there, many years ago, they found the females in a very degraded situation. mr. nott, one of these missionaries, declared that three out of four of the children were murdered as soon as they were born. he met a woman soon after this dreadful crime had been abolished to whom he said, "how many children have you?" "this one in my arms," was her answer. "and how many did you kill?" she replied, "eight." another woman, who was asked the same question, said that she had destroyed _seventeen_. infanticide, or, in other words, the destruction of infants, says the rev. mr. williams, was carried to an almost incredible extent in tahiti, and some other islands. he writes, "during the visit of the deputation, g. bennet, esq., was our guest for three or four days; and on one occasion, while conversing on this subject, he expressed a wish to obtain accurate knowledge of the extent to which this cruel practice had prevailed. three women were sitting in the room at the time, making european garments, under mrs. williams direction; and, after replying to mr. bennet's inquiries, i said, 'i have no doubt but that each of these women has destroyed some of her children.' mr. bennet exclaimed, 'impossible; such motherly, respectable women could never have been guilty of so great an atrocity.' 'well,' i added, 'we will ask them.' addressing the first, i said to her, 'friend, how many children have you destroyed?' she was startled at my question, and at first charged me with unkindness, in harrowing up her feelings, by bringing the destruction of her babes to her remembrance; but upon learning the object of my inquiry, she replied, with a faltering voice, 'i have destroyed _nine_.' the second, with eyes suffused with tears, said, 'i have destroyed _seven_;' and the third informed us that she had destroyed _five_. had the missionaries gone there but a few years before, with the blessing of god, they would have prevented all this. these mothers were all christians at the time this conversation was held." "on another occasion," says mr. williams, "i was called to visit the wife of a chief in dying circumstances. she had professed christianity for many years, had learned to read when about sixty, and was a very active teacher in our adult school. in the prospect of death, she sent a pressing request that i would visit her immediately; and on my entering her apartment she exclaimed, 'o, servant of god, come and tell me what i must do.' perceiving that she suffered great mental distress, i inquired the cause of it, when she replied, 'i am about to die.' 'well,' i rejoined, 'if it be so, what creates this agony of mind?' 'o, my sins, my sins,' she cried; 'i am about to die.' i then inquired what the particular sins were which so greatly distressed her, when she exclaimed, 'o, my children, my murdered children! i am about to die, and shall meet them all at the judgment-seat of christ.' upon this i inquired how many children she had destroyed, and to my astonishment she replied, 'i have destroyed _sixteen_, and now i am about to die.'" after this mr. williams tried to comfort her, by telling her that she had done this when a heathen, and during the times of ignorance, which god winked at. but she received no consolation from this thought, and exclaimed again, "o, my children, my children." he then directed her to the "faithful saying, which is worthy of all acceptation, that jesus christ came into the world to save sinners." this gave her a little comfort; and after visiting her frequently, and directing her to that blood which cleanseth from all sin, he succeeded, with the blessing of god, in bringing peace to her mind. she died soon after, rejoicing in the hope that her sins, though many, would be forgiven her. well may you exclaim, my dear children, "holy bible, book divine, precious treasure, thou art mine." infanticide still prevails in india, but as i have given a particular description of this crime in my sermon to children, on the condition of the heathen, i will here say nothing farther on the subject. chapter xxi. the duty of praying and contributing for the spread of the gospel. my dear children--there is another story connected with india, which i might have mentioned in my last chapter while writing about the destruction of infants. i will relate it now, in order that you may be constrained to pray more frequently for the heathen. some time ago, the wife of a native prince had a little daughter. the father ordered it to be put to death, immediately after it was born. had it been a son, an heir to the throne, he would have taken great care of it. a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth little daughter was born. all these were also put to death by the command of the father. when a sixth little daughter was born, the mother's heart yearned over it. "i cannot part with it," said she; "i will have it taken away and hid, so that the king may know nothing about it." this was done, but the poor mother never dared to send for her little girl. she never saw her again, but died sometime after. many of the little girls in india are very pretty. they have dark eyes, and sweet, expressive countenances. this little child grew to be a very beautiful girl; and when she was eleven years old, some of her relations ventured to bring her to her father. they thought that he would be struck with the sight of his sweet child, and that he would love her for the sake of her mother who had died. the little girl fell at his feet and clasped his knees, and looked up in his face and said, "my father." and what do you think that father did? do you think that he took her up in his arms, and kissed her? no. he seized her by the hair of her head, drew his sword from his belt, and with a single blow took off her head. now, my dear children, do you not think that you ought to pray for the poor heathen--to pray that god will send the gospel to them? i want to tell you of a little boy who heard me preach some time ago about the heathen. one night he said his prayers, and went to bed. after he got into bed, he said to the nurse, "i have forgotten to pray for the heathen, and i must get out of bed and pray for them." the nurse then told him that it would not be necessary for him to get up, as he could pray for them while in bed. "no," said he, "i must get out of bed and pray for them." and the dear little boy would not rest until he got out of bed and prayed for them. now i want all of you, my dear children, every morning and evening, to kneel down and pray for the heathen, as this little boy did. and i want you to do something more. i want you always to be punctual in attending _the usual monthly concerts of prayer,_ provided there are no juvenile monthly concerts to which you can go. i have long wished to see juvenile monthly concerts of prayer established. they would be very interesting if i am to judge from the account of one which i some time ago received from a friend of mine, the rev. mr. v----. i will give you some extracts from his letter. he writes, "according to promise, i send you an account of the first children's monthly concert, so far as i can learn, held on long island. as notice was not given either in the church or sabbath-school, the attendance was smaller than it otherwise would have been. still, about sixty interesting children attended. after a few remarks concerning the object of the meeting by the superintendent of the sabbath-school they sung with melting eyes the hymn that describes the wretched heathen mother casting her lovely babe into the jaws of the monster of the granges. prayer then was made, of about two or three minutes in length. then i gave some of the most affecting accounts of the cruelties and ignorance of the heathen, as related by the devoted williams, that martyr missionary. their silent attention and subdued countenances told that their hearts were with the wretched idolaters. after having thus spent about ten minutes, the children sung in a sweet manner, a hymn--a prayer for those laboring amid the heathen: "when worn by toil, their spirits fail, bid them the glorious future hail; bid them the crown of life survey, and onward urge their conquering way." "after which, two resolutions were passed, unanimously, by the children. first, that they will each one attend the monthly concert of prayer regularly, when able, and bring with them all their companions whom they can persuade to come. "secondly, that they, with the children of the various schools of w----, will constitute ---a life member of the w---bible society. some of the smaller children had brought their little bibles to give them to ----, that he might carry them to the poor children of the heathen. but when informed that the heathen could not understand english, they determined to raise money, and send it out to purchase bibles for the children. this interesting meeting was closed by prayer, the doxology, and benediction." but not only can you pray for the heathen, you can give _something_ to send the gospel to them. do you say that you have no money to give? but cannot you earn some? many young persons have done so. one of whom i have read, says, "besides supporting a school in ceylon, we are going to support five chinese boys. i earn six cents a week for not using tea, one for not using sugar, and three for not using coffee." another says, "i, with three others, have been making matches to the amount of ten dollars, and should have made more, but the people are pretty well supplied. i am going to dig my father's garden, and my mother is going to give me a quarter of a dollar for digging it, which i shall give to the missionaries. i am going to do all i can, and to earn all i can, and save all that i have, to support the missionaries." another says, "i am going to leave off buying candy." what is that? can little girls and boys do without sugar-candy? i am afraid that many of you, my dear children, would find it difficult to go without it. but let me quote all that this child wrote. "i am going to leave off buying candy and such little notions, unless it is necessary, and save every cent that i can get and give it to the missionaries." now, my dear children, i do think that if you would save some of those cents which you spend in buying candy, fire-crackers, and similar things, and buy bibles and tracts for the poor heathen, you would do much more good with them. i want to tell you about a little boy who belonged to one of my schools in ceylon, who has, as i hope, gone to heaven through the means of a tract which cost only two or three cents, and which was the cause of his coming under my care. after he had attended preaching for some time, he begged me to admit him to the church. as he was quite young, not eleven years old, i was afraid to receive him. this feeling, perhaps, was wrong. he never joined the church on earth. he has, however, i hope, gone to join the church in heaven. when he was about eleven years of age, he was attacked with the cholera and died. in this country, when children are very ill, the father or mother will catch up a cocoa-nut or a few plantains, and run off to the temple, and say, "now, swammie, if you will cure my little boy or little girl, i will give you this cocoa-nut, or these plantains." the mother of this boy saw that he was very ill, and she told him that she wished to go to make offerings to one of her idols, in order that he might get well. but he requested her not to do so. "i do not worship idols," said he; "i worship christ, my saviour. if he is pleased to spare me a little longer in the world, it will be well; if not, i shall go to him." the last words he uttered were, "i am going to christ the lord." now when you think about this little boy, i want you to ask yourselves, whether it is not better to give two or three cents to try and save the soul of some poor little heathen boy or girl, than to spend them in buying candy, and other useless things. but i must tell you about a little girl whom i saw some time ago, who refused to buy candy while there are so many heathen without the bible. her father is a sea-captain. being absent from home, he sent her five dollars to buy candy, or any thing else which she wished. as this little girl had heard about the heathen, she determined to throw all her money into the missionary-box, instead of spending it for her own pleasure. the mother, on learning her intentions, asked her if she would not like to spend a part of it for candy, and similar things. she replied, that she would not, and in due time she put her five dollars into the missionary-box. not long after this, she was attacked with a severe toothache. the mother proposed that the defective tooth should be extracted. the little creature, for she was only about eight years old, dreaded the operation, and seemed at first to be backward about having it performed. to encourage her to submit to it, her mother offered her twenty-five cents. this little girl did not then begin to reason, now, if i can only get those twenty-five cents, i can buy a doll, or i can buy some sugar-candy; but she reasoned thus, now, if i can get those twenty-five cents, i can go and put them into the missionary-box. so she said to her mother, i will go and have the tooth taken out. the tooth, however, ceased to ache, but still she wished to have it extracted. her mother then interfered, and told her that, as it had ceased to ache, it might be well for her not to have it drawn until it ached again. the little girl, however, persisted, saying, that if it were not taken out, she could not get the twenty-five cents to devote to the missionary cause. she therefore went to the dentist's, submitted to the operation, received her twenty-five cents, and went and threw them into the lord's treasury. was not that a noble little girl? doubtless you will all say she was. i must tell you about a noble little boy also. some time ago, i was preaching to the children of canandaigua, in the western part of new york. after i had preached there, i went on to rochester. returning from that place, i met with a lady in the cars, who told me as follows: "after you had preached in canandaigua," said she, "a young lady there, who had lost her mother, and who had six or seven or eight of her brothers and sisters under her care, formed them into a missionary society." oh, i wish that all the dear children in america were formed into missionary societies. after she had done this, she asked her little brother how he was going to get money to put into the missionary-box. "by catching mice," said he. his sister gave him two or three cents for every mouse he caught. thus it appears, that this dear little boy was going to throw all his earnings into the lord's treasury. but let me tell you a little more about the children to whom i before alluded. another says, "in some of the day-schools of this city, the girls have formed sewing societies, and make pin-cushions, needle-books, emery-bags, and the like, and send the money that is raised from the sale of them to the missionaries, to be used for the heathen. there are seven sabbath-schools in this town, and in each of them there is a missionary association; so that in all about five hundred dollars are sent from the sabbath-schools every year." now, my dear girls, i want you to think of what has now been said about the formation of sewing societies; and i want you to ask your mothers whether they will not allow you to form such societies, to meet once a week, or once in two weeks, or once a month to sew, to get some money to send the gospel to the heathen. many societies of this kind have been formed. after i had preached to the children in one of the churches in third-street, new york, the little girls who attend that church formed such a society. the account which i received of it is as follows. "you may remember, that in your address to our sabbath-school, you related instances of little girls knitting, sewing, etc., to earn something for the missionary-box the examples which you related were not lost to the girls of the sabbath-school. immediately they began to talk about forming themselves into a sewing society, and making small articles, and giving the proceeds to the missionary society. they did not stop here, but went right to work, and soon formed their society, which they styled the juvenile sewing society. they are in a very prosperous and flourishing condition at present. i know not the amount of funds they possess--they pay a cent a week into their treasury--but they have a large assortment of articles already made. i understand, also, they meet once a week to sew." after i had preached at a place called little falls, new york, the girls formed a sewing society there. the following account of this society i received from one of its little members. "when you were here last fall, and told us how much good little girls had done in having sewing societies, we thought we would see if _we_ could not do some good in the world, as well as they; and, since october, we have met weekly, and by holding a fair, we have succeeded in raising sixty-two dollars. we hope it will be the means of saving some poor heathen children." now, as i said before, i want you, my dear girls, to ask your mothers if you may not form such societies also. will you think of it? i hope you will. another of the children to whom i have twice referred, says, "i can try and save their souls, if i am not there. i can work for them, and send some money to you to buy them bibles, and i can pray for them; and if i should save some souls, o how would they thank me. but if i did not send my money, nor care any thing about them, and i should not go to heaven, and they should not, how would they rise up in judgment against me, and say, if we had had the privileges that you had, we should not be here. o, how thankful we ought to be, that we were not born in heathen lands. o, if the poor heathen could only have such privileges as we have, how thankful would they be; and if we were born in heathen lands, i have no doubt that they would come and tell us about a saviour." i have received many letters from children, breathing the same spirit which is manifested in the notes i have copied. one writes, "last winter i brought in the wood for mother, and she gave me fifty cents. i now am very glad that i have not spent it, as i can give it to you to buy tracts for the little heathen children of india." a second writes, "the enclosed fifty cents my grandmother gave me when i was a very little boy, for sitting still one hour. will you please to use it to furnish the bible and missionary to the heathen." a third writes, "i have always spent my money for candy and other trifles, but since i have heard about the darkness and misery of the heathen, i intend to save it all, and put it into the missionary-box." a fourth writes, "the enclosed i earned by knitting. i intended to save it, till i had sufficient to carry me a short journey to see some of my friends; but when i heard you tell about the little heathen girls, i thought i would give it to you, for the poor heathen children." a fifth writes, "i have enclosed twelve and a half cents, which my father gave me to go and see general tom thumb. when i heard you lecture last evening, i came home and concluded to give it to you, and let you buy bibles for the poor heathen." a sixth writes, "i remember, before my mother died, she used to tell me a great deal about the children of india, and now she is in heaven. i think she would like to have me give my heart to the saviour, and go and teach those poor children. i give you some money that was given to me to see an exhibition, which i saved to give for such things, rather than go." a seventh writes, "you told us that two cents were the means of converting a young man. i would give two cents every week, if it would convert souls to christ." an eighth writes, "my mother told me, some time ago, that every day i recited my lessons without missing a word, she would give me a penny; and not being desirous to spend it, i do wish you would take it--fifty cents--to the heathen. it may buy some tracts at the bazaar or market." a ninth writes, "we feel sorry for those poor heathen children. we will try to earn some money to buy bibles for the heathen. father has promised us some land to work next summer, and we think we can raise something and sell it to get the money." a tenth writes, "since you were here last spring, i have saved what i could--one dollar--for the heathen children, and should be glad if i could do more." an eleventh writes, "the money which you will find enclosed, i earned by working for my mother on saturday, which i intended to keep to buy a microscope; but when i heard you preach on sabbath, i concluded to give it to buy bibles for the poor heathen children." a twelfth writes, "the enclosed, five dollars, was a birthday present from my father, but i want to give it to dr. scudder, for the poor little boys in ceylon." a thirteenth writes, "please accept my mite, by the hand of my brother. i have been keeping it for the purpose of buying a geography; but when i heard you preach yesterday, i thought i had better send it to you, for the poor heathen." a fourteenth writes, "i would like much to become a missionary, as i am named after one; i hope i shall be one. i have been saving a dollar to buy myself some books, but concluded to give it to buy some books for the heathen." the last two children, whose letters you have been reading, gave to the missionary cause the money which they had been earning to buy books. when you have been earning money for the express purpose of giving it to the missionary cause, then you should devote it all to that cause; but i would advise you not to do as did the two children last mentioned. had my opinion been asked, relative to the disposal of their money, i would have recommended them to give _one-tenth,_ or perhaps a little more, of the sums they had been earning, to their saviour, and to keep the rest to buy their books. the giving of not less than one-tenth of all you earn, for charitable purposes, is the principle which i wish to have impressed fully on your minds, and i hope you will grow up under the influence of this principle, and _never, never_ depart from it. but while i thus speak, you must not suppose that i wish you to confine yourselves to the giving of one-tenth, when you can give more; i hope you will not give merely this, but one-half, or more, if you can afford it. indeed, if you do not go as missionaries to the heathen, i want you to make it your great object _to make money for christ, and to spend it for christ_. o, if the generation which is grown, were as anxious to make money for christ, and to spend it for christ, as they are to make it for themselves, and to spend it for themselves, or to hoard it up--it may be for the everlasting destruction of the souls of their heirs--there would be no complaints that money could not be had to send the gospel to the destitute, both at home and abroad. in my twelfth chapter, i spoke of the liberal donations which the heathen of india make for the support of their religion. in the city of calcutta alone, it is supposed that two millions of dollars are spent every year on the festival of a single goddess--a festival which lasts only a few days. a single native has been known to give, as i before said, more than one hundred thousand dollars at one time to this festival, and afterwards thirty thousand dollars yearly. how vast, then, must be the sums which are spent upon all the different festivals of their gods. would that we could see such liberality among christians. would that we could see the generality of them willing to give even one-tenth of their annual income to the lord. alas, what would the heathen say, if they were to learn how much greater are the sums of money which they give to their idols, than christians give to honor their saviour? would they not exclaim, it is because christianity is false, and heathenism is true, that christians give so little for christ, while we give so much for our gods? my dear children, i hope that you will never allow the heathen to say that the christian religion is false, because you do not give your money for the spread of the gospel. will you not resolve now, that you will, so long as god prospers you in worldly goods, give _at least_ one-tenth of all you earn to the lord? do, my dear children, do make the resolution now. chapter xxii. personal labors among the heathen. my dear children--you have, perhaps, often seen campbell's missionary map of the world. if not, i want you very carefully to look at it. i want you to look at the red spots on it, and think how many millions of people embrace the religion both of the greek and roman catholic churches--a religion which is nothing more nor less than paganism, with a few christian doctrines added to it. after this, i want you to look at the green spots, and think of the hundred and twenty millions of mohammedans, who spurn the name of jesus as a saviour, and who have set up mahomet as their prophet. i want you also to look at all the dark spots, where, with comparatively a few exceptions, the people are in pagan darkness, without any knowledge of god and the only saviour of sinners jesus christ. and in view of all this darkness--in view of the need of more than half a million of ministers of the gospel to preach the news of salvation to them, i want you, my dear boys, to ask yourselves whether it may not be your duty, after you grow up, to become ministers, and go and preach the gospel to them. you know that you are bound to do all the good to others which you can; and even if you do not love the saviour, you are not released from your obligations to do good. i would by no means have you become ministers without giving your hearts to christ; but this you are as much bound to do, as you are bound to do all the good you can to others. if you are not christians, i want you, through grace, to become such, and i want many of you to become ministers and missionaries. two of my sons are now missionaries in india, and four others, i hope, are preparing to come. and why should not you also come here, or go to other heathen lands? if you can be excused from coming or going, why may not all who are now little boys also be excused? in such a case, there will be no missionaries at all. and you know that this would be very wrong. but i do not merely want many of you, my dear boys, to become missionaries, i want many of you, my dear girls, to become missionaries also. many little girls and boys have expressed a desire to become missionaries. several little boys who wrote to mr. hutchings, one of my missionary brethren, and several little boys and girls who have written to me, have said that they would like to be missionaries. one writes, "i should like to go and be a missionary, and instruct the poor heathen children to love god." a second says, "i have been selling matches that i made. i got five dollars--just as many dollars as i am years old. i think i shall become a missionary, and come and help you. i hope i shall see you again when i come to ceylon. tell the heathen children they must love god, and be good children. they must not give the children to the crocodiles, nor throw them into the water; and they must not worship wooden and brass gods. they must worship the true god, and keep his commandments." a third says, "i like to send money to help the poor heathen to learn to read the bible, and other good books. i think it will be pleasant to sail across the ocean, and teach them to turn from their idols. i would teach them not to lay themselves down before the car of juggernaut, and be crushed to death; and i would teach them not to burn themselves to death on the funeral pile." a fourth says, "i mean to save something to send to you, to help support one school. should my life be spared, and the way be opened at some future day, i think i should be willing to leave my native home, to go to some distant land to tell the heathen of a saviour, whom i hope i have found." a fifth says, "if you are ever in want of money, just please to send on to me, and i will endeavor to raise all that you want. if i live to be a man, i hope be a missionary to ceylon or china." one little boy wrote to me as follows: "i have for a long time been saving three shillings, for the purpose of buying a little racoon, which i intended to do on monday. on sunday i heard you preach, and thought i would give it to you to save some poor heathen soul; and i hope you will pray for me, that i may become a minister, and go to india, and preach to the heathen." another writes, "this is to certify that i, charles d.h. frederick, pledge myself, if god spares my life, when i get to be a man, and he pardons me through christ jesus, i will go and preach to the heathen." a little girl wrote me as follows: "according to my present feelings, i should like to engage in so glorious a cause," as the missionary cause, "and i hope, when i arrive at an age to be of use to god, and the poor heathen, to embrace so glorious a cause." another little girl writes, "i felt very bad when i heard you tell about the poor heathen who worship the idols. i could not keep from weeping, when you told us about the man who came so far to get a teacher to come and tell the gospel to his friends, and was disappointed. i felt very bad sunday evening; and on monday evening i felt that the lord had given me a new heart. i felt happy, and sang some beautiful verses that i learned in one of mother's little books. i have read the day-springs, and thought a great deal about the heathen for two years. "i used to think a great deal about having nice clothes, before i thought so much about the heathen. my mother told me some time ago, that she thought she would get me a white dress when i was ten years old. i am now ten years old, and this evening mother gave me two dollars to get the dress, or dispose of it in any way i thought best; and i wish you would take it to have the poor heathen taught about the saviour. if i live, and it is the lord's will, i hope i shall come and help you teach the poor heathen about the saviour." there is a little boy in the city of new york, who formerly used to tell his mother, that he meant to be a cab-driver, and all she could say to him was of no avail in making him think differently. this little boy came with his mother to hear me preach about the heathen. after he had left the church, as he was going home, he burst into tears, and exclaimed, "mother, i mean to be a missionary to the heathen;" and so far as i know, he has never talked about being any thing else since. and i hope that many of you will never talk about being any thing else than missionaries to the heathen. i am acquainted with a little girl in ohio, who has resolved to become a missionary. she is a niece of mr. campbell, late missionary to africa. she was not quite four years old when i saw her. when she was eighteen months of age, she saw the picture of a heathen mother throwing her child into the mouth of a crocodile she was deeply impressed with the sight. when she was two and a half years old, she resolved to be a missionary, and follow her uncle to africa. from this resolution she has never drawn hack. when i was at her father's house, she was asked if she would not go to india. she replied, that she would not go to india, but to africa. she was asked why she wished to go to africa. "to teach the heathen," was her answer. "why should you teach the heathen?" "because they worship idols." her mother told me, that ever since she began to get money, she has contributed to the missionary cause; and this money has generally, if not always, been earned by some act of self-denial on her part. i hope that many of you will feel just as this little girl felt, and do just as she did. when i was in america, i used continually, when preaching, to ask the dear children whether they would not become missionaries. i used also to beg them to write down what i had asked them. many complied with my request. while i was at the avon springs, one of the daughters of a physician there, not only wrote it down, but gave me what she had written. the following is a copy of what she wrote, _august 18, 1844._ _dr. scudder requested me to come to india to help him when i am grown._ s. p. s. _avon springs_ could i raise my voice loud enough to reach america, i would beg of _you_ to write down the following sentence: dr. scudder asks me, to-day, whether i will not hereafter become a missionary to the heathen. perhaps you will write it down _immediately_. now, my dear boys, if you will come out to india, or go to burmah or china, to tell the heathen of the saviour, you may, with the blessing of god, do as much good as swartz and carey, and others have done. and if you, my dear girls, will do the same, you also may do much good. this will appear from what i am going to tell you about a little girl in ceylon. this little girl belonged to the boarding-school at oodooville. she early gave her heart to the saviour, and joined the church when she was thirteen years old. i should like to know if there are any of you who have not followed her example. if so, this is not right. my dear children, it is not right. shall this little girl, in a heathen land, a land filled with idols, give her heart to christ; and you, in a christian land, a land of sabbaths, and sabbath-schools, and bibles, not give your hearts to him? this is not right. you know that it is not right. but let me go on with my account of the little girl. after she had joined the church, she wanted to go and see her mother, who was a heathen, for the purpose of conversing with her about her soul's concerns. now, in this country, when children who have been absent from their parents for any length of time go home, the mother spreads a mat down on the floor, and tells them to sit down upon it, adding that she will go and cook rice for them. they have no seats to sit on, as you have in america. well, this little girl went home. when her mother saw her, she was very glad; and after she had spread a mat for her, and told her to sit down, she said that she would go and cook rice for her. the little girl told her that she was not hungry, and did not wish to eat, but wanted to talk with her. "you cannot talk with me," said her mother, "until i have cooked rice for you." "mother," said the little girl, "you worship idols, and i am afraid that you will lose your soul, and i want to talk with you about jesus christ." the mother became quite angry with her, and rebuked her. but still the little girl continued to talk with her about her soul. the mother then became so angry, that she told her to be silent, or she would punish her. the little girl replied, "mother, though you do whip me, i must talk to you about jesus christ," and she burst into tears. the mother's heart was broken. she sat down on the mat, and her little daughter talked with her, and prayed with her. after this the little girl was so troubled, fearing that her mother's soul might be lost, that she was heard praying for her during all parts of the night. and god heard her prayers. her mother forsook her idols, and became a christian, and her conversion was followed by the conversion of one or two others. now, my dear little girls, if you will give your hearts to the saviour, and in due time come here, or go to other heathen lands, and tell the people of a saviour, you may, with the help of the holy spirit, be as useful as this little girl was. female missionaries have done much good among the heathen. i mentioned an instance on page 88, to prove this. let me mention another instance more. in the year 1838, an english lady, miss aldersey, went to the east, at her own expense to promote female education among the chinese. at that time, she could not go to china, as that country was not open to missionaries she therefore went to java, where there was a colony of chinese. here she hired a house, and collected about twenty-five girls, whom she clothed, and boarded, and taught. the lord blessed her labors, and several of these girls were hopefully converted. when their parents saw that they would no longer worship idols, they became much opposed to the school, and some of them took their daughters from it. in the year 1842, god opened the door for the entrance of the gospel into china. this missionary then broke up her school in java, went to that country, and resided in the city of ningpo. of the girls who had become christians while under her care, two were much persecuted by their parents. they were whipped and beaten, with the hope that they would again return to their idols; but all the efforts which were made to induce them to forsake the saviour were in vain. they declared that they would sooner die than forsake him. when their parents saw that stripes and blows were of no avail, they determined to marry them to men who were much devoted to their idols. this stratagem, they thought, might succeed in destroying all their interest in their new religion. here, however, they were again foiled. the girls became alarmed, and fled from their parents. an english gentleman, but who was not a professor of religion, felt deeply interested for them, and assisted them to get on board a ship going to batavia. here they were pursued but escaped from the pursuers by going on board of a ship which sailed for singapore. from singapore they sailed for china, where they were permitted to join the old friend who had been the means of their conversion. this lady collected a school at ningpo of more than thirty girls. thus you see how much good female missionaries have done by going to heathen lands. and are none of you willing to follow their example? are none of you willing to say, here am i, lord, send me? chapter xxiii. success of the gospel in india and ceylon. my dear children--i have told you that india is a very dark land, but there are a few bright spots in it. through the blessing of god upon the prayers of his people in christian lands, and upon the prayers and labors of his missionary servants, many of the heathen of india and ceylon have forsaken their idols, and are now enlisted under the banner of jehovah jesus. in the travancore and tinnivelly districts to say nothing of the success of the gospel in other places, thousands and tens of thousands of the people have embraced christianity. in hundreds of villages where but a few years ago the name of jesus had never been heard, it is now known and adored. you have often heard of ceylon. if you will look at the map of hindostan, you will find it close to that country. here christianity has begun to prevail. this island is two hundred miles long, and in some places quite wide. a large part of it is covered with what is called jungle. jungle and wilderness mean the same thing. in this jungle there are many wild beasts, such as elephants, bears, wild hogs, and buffaloes. in it also, there are men, women, and children, running wild, just like the wild beasts. this people are called verders, or wild people. they wear scarcely any clothing. they have no houses. when it rains, they creep into holes, or go under overhanging rocks. their beds consist of a few leaves. sunk almost to the level of the brute, they live and die like their shaggy companions of the forest. even upon these the gospel has tried its power. more than fifty families have settled down, forming two pleasant, and now christian villages. they have schoolmasters and christian teachers. i must give you a description of two revivals of religion which occurred while i was in the island of ceylon, in the year 1833. before those revivals took place, there was no particular manifestation of much seriousness at any of our stations. it was in the month of october of that year, that we began to feel that we must labor more, and pray more for the conversion of perishing souls. a protracted meeting was spoken of, and it was determined that one should be held at our seminary in batticotta--a seminary which was established for the purpose of raising up a native ministry. on the morning of the day in which the meeting was commenced, mr. spaulding and myself went to that station to assist mr. poor, the principal of the seminary, in laboring with the students. in these labors we spent five days. it was good to be there. no sooner had we begun our exercises, than a blessing from on high was experienced. the windows of heaven were opened, and the holy ghost descended. this was evident from the spirit of prayer which was poured out upon the pious students of the seminary. they were heard "a great while before day" pleading, in their social circles, that god would have mercy upon their impenitent companions, and bring them into the kingdom of his grace. we trust, also, that a spirit of prayer was given to those of us who took a prominent part in the meeting. at the termination of our exercises, with the exception of a few lads belonging to a tamul class, who had lately been admitted to the seminary, there was not, so far as i know, an individual connected with it, who was not humbled at the foot of the cross, either to lie there until healed of his wounds, or to show, if he perished, that he must perish under circumstances of a very aggravated nature. after we had finished our meeting at batticotta we went to the female seminary at oodooville, to hold similar meetings. before we reached that station, the church-members there, after having heard what god was doing at batticotta, became very much aroused to pray for the influences of the holy spirit to descend upon the impenitent in their seminary also. soon after we reached the station, we held a meeting with the girls. some of them were then deeply concerned for the salvation of their souls; but it was not until wednesday afternoon, that we knew how powerfully the spirit of god had been at work. the meeting which we held with the seminarists at that time was one of the most solemn meetings which i ever attended. one of them, a girl of high caste, and of a very good family, said to her companions in that meeting, "my sisters, i have been a proud one among you. i hope that if you ever see me proud again, you will tell me of it. i used to tell the missionaries, that i had given myself to the saviour, but i had not done it." another of the girls burst into tears, and cried out aloud. as she could not restrain her feelings, and did not wish to disturb the assembly, she arose and left it. she retired to one of the prayer-rooms adjoining the seminary, there to weep alone. she, however, was not left alone. mr. poor, one of my missionary associates, followed her, and endeavored to administer the consolations of the gospel to her; but she refused to be comforted. all her distress seemed to arise from a single source. "i told you a falsehood," said she, "last monday, in saying that i had dedicated myself to the saviour, when i had not." perhaps she thought at that time, that she had thus dedicated herself to the saviour, but afterwards found that she had deceived herself. in this wretched state of mind, she continued until half-past ten o'clock that night, when she came into mr. spaulding's house, where i then was, and wished to know what she must do to be saved. she was told, as she had often been told before, that she must dedicate herself entirely to her saviour. she went away, and returned the same night at about half-past eleven o'clock, saying, that she had found him. "friends, is not my case amazing? what a saviour i have found." my dear young friends, are there any of you who have never given your hearts to christ? if so, let me entreat you to follow the example of that dear little girl of whom i have now been speaking. she found it to be necessary to give her heart to the saviour, and i hope that she did give it to him. o that you too might give up your hearts to him. alas, if you do not, you must soon go down to eternal burnings where you will be constrained to cry out, lost, lost, lost for ever! be careful, my dear children, o be careful that this young girl does not rise up against you in the last day, and condemn you. she must do so--she will do so, if you do not, like her, choose christ as your portion. but i am digressing, and must go back to the point i left. the next day, one of our missionary sisters, who had lately reached ceylon from america, came to oodooville, to witness the nature of the work which she heard was in progress at that place. as she was entering mr. spaulding's house, she was met by one of the most consistent church-members of the seminary, who declared that she had lost her hope of being a christian. perhaps this church-member was disposed to write bitter things against herself because she did not feel all that warmth in religion which marked the conduct of those who, at that time, were indulging the hope that they had passed from death to life. after the sister to whom i alluded had been in the house a little while, she requested mrs. spaulding to allow her to have an interview with such of the girls as were entertaining a hope of their interest in the saviour. these were twenty-two in number. this interview was granted. as she knew nothing about the tamul language, i acted as her interpreter. through me, she requested the girls to give a statement of their feelings. one of them arose, and said, "i feel as happy as an angel. i feel joys that i can express to no one but my saviour; and i am just as certain that my sins are forgiven, as if i had sent up a karduthaase," that is, a letter to heaven, "and received an answer to it." another of the girls said, that the missionaries had often talked with her about her dedicating herself to the saviour, but that she did not then know what it meant. "i now know," added she, "what it means, for god has taught it to me." another of the girls said, "though they put me in the fire, i will never forsake the saviour." now, my dear children, i must bid you farewell probably i shall never see you, unless you come to this heathen land, until i meet you at the judgment-seat of christ. if you do not become missionaries, most of you will probably die, and be buried where you now are. probably i shall die in this heathen land. but we shall not always sleep in our graves. after a little season, the archangel's trumpet will sound, and you in america, and i in india, shall hear his voice proclaiming, "awake, ye dead, and come to judgment." and we shall all at once rise from our graves, and stand before our judge. and where shall i then see you? shall i see any of you on the left hand of christ, and hear him say, "depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels?" o, if i should hear that dreadful sentence pronounced against you, how would my heart die within me. how could i bear to hear it. oh, i could not--i could not bear to hear it. my dear children, if you are yet out of christ, i entreat you, _at this very moment_, to lay down this book, and throw yourselves at the feet of your saviour. tell him, that you are lost sinners, deserving to be cast into everlasting burnings. tell him, that though you have been wicked children, you will leave off your wickedness, and be his for ever. plead with him, with as much earnestness as a _drowning_ man would plead with you to save him, to give you the influences of his holy spirit, to create within you a clean heart, and renew within you a right spirit, without which you are eternally undone; and continue to plead, until he pardons you, and receives you as his children. by all the sufferings of the son of god, by all the joys of heaven, by all the torments of hell, by the solemnities of your dying bed, by the value of your immortal souls _which, if once lost, must be lost for ever_, i beseech you thus _immediately_ to throw yourselves at his feet, and plead with him to make you his. neglect this duty--neglect giving yourselves to christ, even for one minute, and it may be, that you will be lost, yea, lost for ever. the unknown life of jesus christ the original text of nicolas notovitch's 1887 discovery by nicolas notovitch translated by j. h. connelly and l. landsberg printed in the united states of america new york: r.f. fenno. 1890. table of contents _preface_ vi _a journey in thibet_ 1 _ladak_ 33 _a festival in a gonpa_ 45 _the life of saint issa_ 61 _resumé_ 89 _explanatory notes_ 117 preface after the turkish war (1877-1878) i made a series of travels in the orient. from the little remarkable balkan peninsula, i went across the caucasus to central asia and persia, and finally, in 1887, visited india, an admirable country which had attracted me from my earliest childhood. my purpose in this journey was to study and know, at home, the peoples who inhabit india and their customs, the grand and mysterious archæology, and the colossal and majestic nature of their country. wandering about without fixed plans, from one place to another, i came to mountainous afghanistan, whence i regained india by way of the picturesque passes of bolan and guernaï. then, going up the indus to raval pindi, i ran over the pendjab--the land of the five rivers; visited the golden temple of amritsa--the tomb of the king of pendjab, randjid singh, near lahore; and turned toward kachmyr, "the valley of eternal bliss." thence i directed my peregrinations as my curiosity impelled me, until i arrived in ladak, whence i intended returning to russia by way of karakoroum and chinese turkestan. one day, while visiting a buddhist convent on my route, i learned from a chief lama, that there existed in the archives of lhassa, very ancient memoirs relating to the life of jesus christ and the occidental nations, and that certain great monasteries possessed old copies and translations of those chronicles. as it was little probable that i should make another journey into this country, i resolved to put off my return to europe until a later date, and, cost what it might, either find those copies in the great convents or go to lhassa--a journey which is far from being so dangerous and difficult as is generally supposed, involving only such perils as i was already accustomed to, and which would not make me hesitate at attempting it. during my sojourn at leh, capital of ladak, i visited the great convent himis, situated near the city, the chief lama of which informed me that their monastic library contained copies of the manuscripts in question. in order that i might not awaken the suspicions of the authorities concerning the object of my visit to the cloister, and to evade obstacles which might be opposed to me as a russian, prosecuting further my journey in thibet, i gave out upon my return to leh that i would depart for india, and so left the capital of ladak. an unfortunate fall, causing the breaking of a leg, furnished me with an absolutely unexpected pretext for returning to the monastery, where i received surgical attention. i took advantage of my short sojourn among the lamas to obtain the consent of their chief that they should bring to me, from their library, the manuscripts relating to jesus christ, and, assisted by my interpreter, who translated for me the thibetan language, transferred carefully to my notebook what the lama read to me. not doubting at all the authenticity of this chronicle, edited with great exactitude by the brahminic, and more especially the buddhistic historians of india and nepaul, i desired, upon my return to europe, to publish a translation of it. to this end, i addressed myself to several universally known ecclesiastics, asking them to revise my notes and tell me what they thought of them. mgr. platon, the celebrated metropolitan of kiew, thought that my discovery was of great importance. nevertheless, he sought to dissuade me from publishing the memoirs, believing that their publication could only hurt me. "why?" this the venerable prelate refused to tell me more explicitly. nevertheless, since our conversation took place in russia, where the censor would have put his veto upon such a work, i made up my mind to wait. a year later, i found myself in rome. i showed my manuscript to a cardinal very near to the holy father, who answered me literally in these words:--"what good will it do to print this? nobody will attach to it any great importance and you will create a number of enemies. but, you are still very young! if it is a question of money which concerns you, i can ask for you a reward for your notes, a sum which will repay your expenditures and recompense you for your loss of time." of course, i refused. in paris i spoke of my project to cardinal rotelli, whose acquaintance i had made in constantinople. he, too, was opposed to having my work printed, under the pretext that it would be premature. "the church," he added, "suffers already too much from the new current of atheistic ideas, and you will but give a new food to the calumniators and detractors of the evangelical doctrine. i tell you this in the interest of all the christian churches." then i went to see m. jules simon. he found my matter very interesting and advised me to ask the opinion of m. renan, as to the best way of publishing these memoirs. the next day i was seated in the cabinet of the great philosopher. at the close of our conversation, m. renan proposed that i should confide to him the memoirs in question, so that he might make to the academy a report upon the discovery. this proposition, as may be easily understood, was very alluring and flattering to my _amour propre_. i, however, took away with me the manuscript, under the pretext of further revising it. i foresaw that if i accepted the proposed combination, i would only have the honor of having found the chronicles, while the illustrious author of the "life of jesus" would have the glory of the publication and the commenting upon it. i thought myself sufficiently prepared to publish the translation of the chronicles, accompanying them with my notes, and, therefore, did not accept the very gracious offer he made to me. but, that i might not wound the susceptibility of the great master, for whom i felt a profound respect, i made up my mind to delay publication until after his death, a fatality which could not be far off, if i might judge from the apparent general weakness of m. renan. a short time after m. renan's death, i wrote to m. jules simon again for his advice. he answered me, that it was my affair to judge of the opportunity for making the memoirs public. i therefore put my notes in order and now publish them, reserving the right to substantiate the authenticity of these chronicles. in my commentaries i proffer the arguments which must convince us of the sincerity and good faith of the buddhist compilers. i wish to add that before criticising my communication, the societies of _savans_ can, without much expense, equip a scientific expedition having for its mission the study of those manuscripts in the place where i discovered them, and so may easily verify their historic value. --_nicolas notovitch_ the unknown life of jesus christ _a journey in thibet_ during my sojourn in india, i often had occasion to converse with the buddhists, and the accounts they gave me of thibet excited my curiosity to such an extent that i resolved to make a journey into that still almost unknown country. for this purpose i set out upon a route crossing kachmyr (cashmere), which i had long intended to visit. on the 14th of october, 1887, i entered a railway car crowded with soldiers, and went from lahore to raval-pinidi, where i arrived the next day, near noon. after resting a little and inspecting the city, to which the permanent garrison gives the aspect of a military camp, i provided myself with the necessaries for a journey, where horses take the place of the railway cars. assisted by my servant, a colored man of pondichery, i packed all my baggage, hired a tonga (a two-wheeled vehicle which is drawn by two horses), stowed myself upon its back seat, and set out upon the picturesque road leading to kachmyr, an excellent highway, upon which we travelled rapidly. we had to use no little skill in making our way through the ranks of a military caravan--its baggage carried upon camels--which was part of a detachment returning from a country camp to the city. soon we arrived at the end of the valley of pendjab, and climbing up a way with infinite windings, entered the passes of the himalayas. the ascent became more and more steep. behind us spread, like a beautiful panorama, the region we had just traversed, which seemed to sink farther and farther away from us. as the sun's last glances rested upon the tops of the mountains, our tonga came gaily out from the zigzags which the eye could still trace far down the forest-clad slope, and halted at the little city of muré; where the families of the english functionaries came to seek shade and refreshment. ordinarily, one can go in a tonga from muré to srinagar; but at the approach of the winter season, when all europeans desert kachmyr, the tonga service is suspended. i undertook my journey precisely at the time when the summer life begins to wane, and the englishmen whom i met upon the road, returning to india, were much astonished to see me, and made vain efforts to divine the purpose of my travel to kachmyr. abandoning the tonga, i hired saddle horses--not without considerable difficulty--and evening had arrived when we started to descend from muré, which is at an altitude of 5,000 feet. this stage of our journey had nothing playful in it. the road was torn in deep ruts by the late rains, darkness came upon us and our horses rather guessed than saw their way. when night had completely set in, a tempestuous rain surprised us in the open country, and, owing to the thick foliage of the centenarian oaks which stood on the sides of our road, we were plunged in profound darkness. that we might not lose each other, we had to continue exchanging calls from time to time. in this impenetrable obscurity we divined huge masses of rock almost above our heads, and were conscious of, on our left, a roaring torrent, the water of which formed a cascade we could not see. during two hours we waded in the mud and the icy rain had chilled my very marrow, when we perceived in the distance a little fire, the sight of which revived our energies. but how deceitful are lights in the mountains! you believe you see the fire burning quite near to you and at once it disappears, to reappear again, to the right, to the left, above, below you, as if it took pleasure in playing tricks upon the harassed traveller. all the time the road makes a thousand turns, and winds here and there, and the fire--which is immovable--seems to be in continual motion, the obscurity preventing you realizing that you yourself modify your direction every instant. i had quite given up all hope of approaching this much-wished-for fire, when it appeared again, and this time so near that our horses stopped before it. i have here to express my sincere thanks to the englishmen for the foresight of which they gave proof in building by the roadsides the little bengalows--one-story houses for the shelter of travellers. it is true, one must not demand comfort in this kind of hotel; but this is a matter in which the traveller, broken down by fatigue, is not exacting, and he is at the summit of happiness when he finds at his disposal a clean and dry room. the hindus, no doubt, did not expect to see a traveller arrive at so late an hour of the night and in this season, for they had taken away the keys of the bengalow, so we had to force an entrance. i threw myself upon a bed prepared for me, composed of a pillow and blanket saturated with water, and almost at once fell asleep. at daybreak, after taking tea and some conserves, we took up our march again, now bathed in the burning rays of the sun. from time to time, we passed villages; the first in a superb narrow pass, then along the road meandering in the bosom of the mountain. we descended eventually to the river djeloum (jhelum), the waters of which flow gracefully, amid the rocks by which its course is obstructed, between rocky walls whose tops in many places seem almost to reach the azure skies of the himalayas, a heaven which here shows itself remarkably pure and serene. toward noon we arrived at the hamlet called tongue--situated on the bank of the river--which presents an unique array of huts that give the effect of boxes, the openings of which form a façade. here are sold comestibles and all kinds of merchandise. the place swarms with hindus, who bear on their foreheads the variously colored marks of their respective castes. here, too, you see the beautiful people of kachmyr, dressed in their long white shirts and snowy turbans. i hired here, at a good price, a hindu cabriolet, from a kachmyrian. this vehicle is so constructed that in order to keep one's seat in it, one must cross his legs in the turkish fashion. the seat is so small that it will hold, at most, only two persons. the absence of any support for the back makes this mode of transportation very dangerous; nevertheless, i accepted this kind of circular table mounted on two wheels and drawn by a horse, as i was anxious to reach, as soon as possible, the end of my journey. hardly, however, had i gone five hundred yards on it, when i seriously regretted the horse i had forsaken, so much fatigue had i to endure keeping my legs crossed and maintaining my equilibrium. unfortunately, it was already too late. evening was falling when i approached the village of hori. exhausted by fatigue; racked by the incessant jolting; my legs feeling as if invaded by millions of ants, i had been completely incapable of enjoying the picturesque landscape spread before us as we journeyed along the djeloum, the banks of which are bordered on one side by steep rocks and on the other by the heavily wooded slopes of the mountains. in hori i encountered a caravan of pilgrims returning from mecca. thinking i was a physician and learning my haste to reach ladak, they invited me to join them, which i promised i would at srinagar. i spent an ill night, sitting up in my bed, with a lighted torch in my hand, without closing my eyes, in constant fear of the stings and bites of the scorpions and centipedes which swarm in the bengalows. i was sometimes ashamed of the fear with which those vermin inspired me; nevertheless, i could not fall asleep among them. where, truly, in man, is the line that separates courage from cowardice? i will not boast of my bravery, but i am not a coward, yet the insurmountable fear with which those malevolent little creatures thrilled me, drove sleep from my eyelids, in spite of my extreme fatigue. our horses carried us into a flat valley, encircled by high mountains. bathed as i was in the rays of the sun, it did not take me long to fall asleep in the saddle. a sudden sense of freshness penetrated and awoke me. i saw that we had already begun climbing a mountain path, in the midst of a dense forest, rifts in which occasionally opened to our admiring gaze ravishing vistas, impetuous torrents; distant mountains; cloudless heavens; a landscape, far below, of wondrous beauty. all about us were the songs of numberless brilliantly plumaged birds. we came out of the forest toward noon, descended to a little hamlet on the bank of the river, and after refreshing ourselves with a light, cold collation, continued our journey. before starting, i went to a bazaar and tried to buy there a glass of warm milk from a hindu, who was sitting crouched before a large cauldron full of boiling milk. how great was my surprise when he proposed to me that i should take away the whole cauldron, with its contents, assuring me that i had polluted the milk it contained! "i only want a glass of milk and not a kettle of it," i said to him. "according to our laws," the merchant answered me, "if any one not belonging to our caste has fixed his eyes for a long time upon one of our cooking utensils, we have to wash that article thoroughly, and throw away the food it contains. you have polluted my milk and no one will drink any more of it, for not only were you not contented with fixing your eyes upon it, but you have even pointed to it with your finger." i had indeed a long time examined his merchandise, to make sure that it was really milk, and had pointed with my finger, to the merchant, from which side i wished the milk poured out. full of respect for the laws and customs of foreign peoples, i paid, without dispute, a rupee, the price of all the milk, which was poured in the street, though i had taken only one glass of it. this was a lesson which taught me, from now on, not to fix my eyes upon the food of the hindus. there is no religious belief more muddled by the numbers of ceremonious laws and commentaries prescribing its observances than the brahminic. while each of the other principal religions has but one inspired book, one bible, one gospel, or one koran--books from which the hebrew, the christian and the musselman draw their creeds--the brahminical hindus possess such a great number of tomes and commentaries in folio that the wisest brahmin has hardly had the time to peruse one-tenth of them. leaving aside the four books of the vedas; the puranas--which are written in sanscrit and composed of eighteen volumes--containing 400,000 strophes treating of law, rights, theogony, medicine, the creation and destruction of the world, etc.; the vast shastras, which deal with mathematics, grammar, etc.; the upa-vedas, upanishads, upo-puranas--which are explanatory of the puranas;--and a number of other commentaries in several volumes; there still remain twelve vast books, containing the laws of manu, the grandchild of brahma--books dealing not only with civil and criminal law, but also the canonical rules--rules which impose upon the faithful such a considerable number of ceremonies that one is surprised into admiration of the illimitable patience the hindus show in observance of the precepts inculcated by saint manu. manu was incontestably a great legislator and a great thinker, but he has written so much that it has happened to him frequently to contradict himself in the course of a single page. the brahmins do not take the trouble to notice that, and the poor hindus, whose labor supports the brahminic caste, obey servilely their clergy, whose prescriptions enjoin upon them never to touch a man who does not belong to their caste, and also absolutely prohibit a stranger from fixing his attention upon anything belonging to a hindu. keeping himself to the strict letter of this law, the hindu imagines that his food is polluted when it receives a little protracted notice from the stranger. and yet, brahminism has been, even at the beginning of its second birth, a purely monotheistic religion, recognizing only one infinite and indivisible god. as it came to pass in all times and in religions, the clergy took advantage of the privileged situation which places them above the ignorant multitude, and early manufactured various exterior forms of cult and certain laws, thinking they could better, in this way, influence and control the masses. things changed soon, so far that the principle of monotheism, of which the vedas have given such a clear conception, became confounded with, or, as it were, supplanted by an absurd and limitless series of gods and goddesses, half-gods, genii and devils, which were represented by idols, of infinite variety but all equally horrible looking. the people, once glorious as their religion was once great and pure, now slip by degrees into complete idiocy. hardly does their day suffice for the accomplishment of all the prescriptions of their canons. it must be said positively that the hindus only exist to support their principal caste, the brahmins, who have taken into their hands the temporal power which once was possessed by independent sovereigns of the people. while governing india, the englishman does not interfere with this phase of the public life, and so the brahmins profit by maintaining the people's hope of a better future. the sun passed behind the summit of a mountain, and the darkness of night in one moment overspread the magnificent landscape we were traversing. soon the narrow valley of the djeloum fell asleep. our road winding along ledges of steep rocks, was instantly hidden from our sight; mountains and trees were confounded together in one dark mass, and the stars glittered in the celestial vault. we had to dismount and feel our way along the mountain side, for fear of becoming the prey of the abyss which yawned at our feet. at a late hour of the night we traversed a bridge and ascended a steep elevation leading to the bengalow ouri, which at this height seems to enjoy complete isolation. the next day we traversed a charming region, always going along the river--at a turn of which we saw the ruins of a sikh fortress, that seemed to remember sadly its glorious past. in a little valley, nestled amid the mountains, we found a bengalow which seemed to welcome us. in its proximity were encamped a cavalry regiment of the maharajah of kachmyr. when the officers learned that i was a russian, they invited me to share their repast. there i had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of col. brown, who was the first to compile a dictionary of the afghan-pouchton language. as i was anxious to reach, as soon as possible, the city of srinagar, i, with little delay, continued my journey through the picturesque region lying at the foot of the mountains, after having, for a long time, followed the course of the river. here, before our eyes, weary of the monotonous desolation of the preceding landscapes, was unfolded a charming view of a well-peopled valley, with many two-story houses surrounded by gardens and cultivated fields. a little farther on begins the celebrated valley of kachmyr, situated behind a range of high rocks which i crossed toward evening. what a superb panorama revealed itself before my eyes, when i found myself at the last rock which separates the valley of kachmyr from the mountainous country i had traversed. a ravishing tableau truly enchanted my sight. this valley, the limits of which are lost in the horizon, and is throughout well populated, is enshrined amid the high himalayan mountains. at the rising and the setting of the sun, the zone of eternal snows seems a silver ring, which like a girdle surrounds this rich and delightful plateau, furrowed by numerous rivers and traversed by excellent roads, gardens, hills, a lake, the islands in which are occupied by constructions of pretentious style, all these cause the traveller to feel as if he had entered another world. it seems to him as though he had to go but a little farther on and there must find the paradise of which his governess had told him so often in his childhood. the veil of night slowly covered the valley, merging mountains, gardens and lake in one dark amplitude, pierced here and there by distant fires, resembling stars. i descended into the valley, directing myself toward the djeloum, which has broken its way through a narrow gorge in the mountains, to unite itself with the waters of the river ind. according to the legend, the valley was once an inland sea; a passage opened through the rocks environing it, and drained the waters away, leaving nothing more of its former character than the lake, the djeloum and minor water-courses. the banks of the river are now lined with boat-houses, long and narrow, which the proprietors, with their families, inhabit the whole year. from here srinagar can be reached in one day's travel on horseback; but with a boat the journey requires a day and a half. i chose the latter mode of conveyance, and having selected a boat and bargained with its proprietor for its hire, took my seat in the bow, upon a carpet, sheltered by a sort of penthouse roof. the boat left the shore at midnight, bearing us rapidly toward srinagar. at the stern of the bark, a hindu prepared my tea. i went to sleep, happy in knowing my voyage was to be accomplished. the hot caress of the sun's rays penetrating my little roof awakened me, and what i experienced delighted me beyond all expression. entirely green banks; the distant outlines of mountain tops covered with snow; pretty villages which from time to time showed themselves at the mountain's foot; the crystalline sheet of water; pure and peculiarly agreeable air, which i breathed with exhilaration; the musical carols of an infinity of birds; a sky of extraordinary purity; behind me the plash of water stirred by the round-ended paddle which was wielded with ease by a superb woman (with marvellous eyes and a complexion browned by the sun), who wore an air of stately indifference: all these things together seemed to plunge me into an ecstasy, and i forgot entirely the reason for my presence on the river. in that moment i had not even a desire to reach the end of my voyage--and yet, how many privations remained for me to undergo, and dangers to encounter! i felt myself here so well content! the boat glided rapidly and the landscape continued to unfold new beauties before my eyes, losing itself in ever new combinations with the horizon, which merged into the mountains we were passing, to become one with them. then a new panorama would display itself, seeming to expand and flow out from the sides of the mountains, becoming more and more grand.... the day was almost spent and i was not yet weary of contemplating this magnificent nature, the view of which reawakened the souvenirs of childhood and youth. how beautiful were those days forever gone! the more nearly one approaches srinagar, the more numerous become the villages embowered in the verdure. at the approach of our boat, some of their inhabitants came running to see us; the men in their turbans, the women in their small bonnets, both alike dressed in white gowns reaching to the ground, the children in a state of nudity which reminded one of the costumes of our first parents. when entering the city one sees a range of barks and floating houses in which entire families reside. the tops of the far-off, snow-covered mountains were caressed by the last rays of the setting sun, when we glided between the wooden houses of srinagar, which closely line both banks of the river. life seems to cease here at sunset; the thousands of many colored open boats (dunga) and palanquin-covered barks (bangla) were fastened along the beach; men and women gathered near the river, in the primitive costumes of adam and eve, going through their evening ablutions without feeling any embarrassment or prudery before each other, since they performed a religious rite, the importance of which is greater for them than all human prejudices. on the 20^th of october i awoke in a neat room, from which i had a gay view upon the river that was now inundated with the rays of the sun of kachmyr. as it is not my purpose to describe here my experiences in detail, i refrain from enumerating the lovely valleys, the paradise of lakes, the enchanting islands, those historic places, mysterious pagodas, and coquettish villages which seem lost in vast gardens; on all sides of which rise the majestic tops of the giants of the himalaya, shrouded as far as the eye can see in eternal snow. i shall only note the preparations i made in view of my journey toward thibet. i spent six days at srinagar, making long excursions into the enchanting surroundings of the city, examining the numerous ruins which testify to the ancient prosperity of this region, and studying the strange customs of the country. * * * * * kachmyr, as well as the other provinces attached to it, baltistan, ladak, etc., are vassals of england. they formerly formed part of the possessions of randjid sing, the lion of the pendjab. at his death, the english troops occupied lahore, the capital of the pendjab, separated kachmyr from the rest of the empire and ceded it, under color of hereditary right, and for the sum of 160,000,000 francs, to goulab-sing, one of the familiars of the late sovereign, conferring on him besides the title of maharadja. at the epoch of my journey, the actual maharadja was pertab-sing, the grandchild of goulab, whose residence is jamoo, on the southern slope of the himalaya. the celebrated "happy valley" of kachmyr (eighty-five miles long by twenty-five miles wide) enjoyed glory and prosperity only under the grand mogul, whose court loved to taste here the sweetness of country life, in the still existent pavilions on the little island of the lake. most of the maharadjas of hindustan used formerly to spend here the summer months, and to take part in the magnificent festivals given by the grand mogul; but times have greatly changed since, and the happy valley is today no more than a beggar retreat. aquatic plants and scum have covered the clear waters of the lake; the wild juniper has smothered all the vegetation of the islands; the palaces and pavilions retain only the souvenir of their past grandeur; earth and grass cover the buildings which are now falling in ruins. the surrounding mountains and their eternally white tops seem to be absorbed in a sullen sadness, and to nourish the hope of a better time for the disclosure of their immortal beauties. the once spiritual, beautiful and cleanly inhabitants have grown animalistic and stupid; they have become dirty and lazy; and the whip now governs them, instead of the sword. the people of kachmyr have so often been subject to invasions and pillages and have had so many masters, that they have now become indifferent to every thing. they pass their time near the banks of the rivers, gossiping about their neighbors; or are engaged in the painstaking work of making their celebrated shawls; or in the execution of filagree gold or silver work. the kachmyr women are of a melancholy temperament, and an inconceivable sadness is spread upon their features. everywhere reigns misery and uncleanness. the beautiful men and superb women of kachmyr are dirty and in rags. the costume of the two sexes consists, winter and summer alike, of a long shirt, or gown, made of thick material and with puffed sleeves. they wear this shirt until it is completely worn out, and never is it washed, so that the white turban of the men looks like dazzling snow near their dirty shirts, which are covered all over with spittle and grease stains. the traveller feels himself permeated with sadness at seeing the contrast between the rich and opulent nature surrounding them, and this people dressed in rags. the capital of the country, srinagar (city of the sun), or, to call it by the name which is given to it here after the country, kachmyr, is situated on the shore of the djeloum, along which it stretches out toward the south to a distance of five kilometres and is not more than two kilometres in breadth. its two-story houses, inhabited by a population of 100,000 inhabitants, are built of wood and border both river banks. everybody lives on the river, the shores of which are united by ten bridges. terraces lead from the houses to the djeloum, where all day long people perform their ceremonial ablutions, bathe and wash their culinary utensils, which consist of a few copper pots. part of the inhabitants practice the musselman religion; two-thirds are brahminic; and there are but few buddhists to be found among them. it was time to make other preparations for travel before plunging into the unknown. having purchased different kinds of conserves, wine and other things indispensable on a journey through a country so little peopled as is thibet, i packed all my baggage in boxes; hired six carriers and an interpreter, bought a horse for my own use, and fixed my departure for the 27^th of october. to cheer up my journey, i took from a good frenchman, m. peicheau, the wine cultivator of the maharadja, a big dog, pamir, who had already traversed the road with my friends, bonvallot, capus and pepin, the well-known explorers. as i wished to shorten my journey by two days, i ordered my carriers to leave at dawn from the other side of the lake, which i crossed in a boat, and joined them and my horse at the foot of the mountain chain which separates the valley of srinagar from the sind gorge. i shall never forget the tortures which we had to undergo in climbing almost on all fours to a mountain top, three thousand feet high. the carriers were out of breath; every moment i feared to see one tumble down the declivity with his burden, and i felt pained at seeing my poor dog, pamir, panting and with his tongue hanging out, make two or three steps and fall to the ground exhausted. forgetting my own fatigue, i caressed and encouraged the poor animal, who, as if understanding me, got up to make another two or three steps and fall anew to the ground. the night had come when we reached the crest; we threw ourselves greedily upon the snow to quench our thirst; and after a short rest, started to descend through a very thick pine forest, hastening to gain the village of haïena, at the foot of the defile, fearing the attacks of beasts of prey in the darkness. a level and good road leads from srinagar to haïena, going straight northward over ganderbal, where i repaired by a more direct route across a pass three thousand feet high, which shortened for me both time and distance. my first step in the unknown was marked by an incident which made all of us pass an ugly quarter of an hour. the defile of the sind, sixty miles long, is especially noteworthy for the inhospitable hosts it contains. among others it abounds in panthers, tigers, leopards, black bears, wolves and jackals. as though by a special misfortune, the snow had covered with its white carpet the heights of the chain, compelling those formidable, carnivorous beasts to descend a little lower for shelter in their dens. we descended in silence, amid the darkness, a narrow path that wound through the centennary firs and birches, and the calm of the night was only broken by the crackling sound of our steps. suddenly, quite near to us, a terrible howling awoke the echoes of the woods. our small troop stopped. "a panther!" exclaimed, in a low and frightened voice, my servant. the small caravan of a dozen men stood motionless, as though riveted to the spot. then it occurred to me that at the moment of starting on our ascent, when already feeling fatigued, i had entrusted my revolver to one of the carriers, and my winchester rifle to another. now i felt bitter regret for having parted with my arms, and asked in a low voice where the man was to whom i had given the rifle. the howls became more and more violent, and filled the echoes of the woods, when suddenly a dull sound was heard, like the fall of some body. a minute later we heard the noise of a struggle and a cry of agony which mingled with the fierce roars of the starved animal. "saaïb, take the gun," i heard some one near by. i seized feverishly the rifle, but, vain trouble, one could not see two steps before oneself. a new cry, followed by a smothered howling, indicated to me vaguely the place of the struggle, toward which i crawled, divided between the ardent desire to "kill a panther" and a horrible fear of being eaten alive. no one dared to move; only after five minutes it occurred to one of the carriers to light a match. i then remembered the fear which feline animals exhibit at the presence of fire, and ordered my men to gather two or three handfuls of brush, which i set on fire. we then saw, about ten steps from us, one of our carriers stretched out on the ground, with his limbs frightfully lacerated by the claws of a huge panther. the beast still lay upon him defiantly, holding a piece of flesh in its mouth. at its side, gaped a box of wine broken open by its fall when the carrier was torn down. hardly did i make a movement to bring the rifle to my shoulder, when the panther raised itself, and turned toward us while dropping part of its horrible meal. one moment, it appeared about to spring upon me, then it suddenly wheeled, and rending the air with a howl, enough to freeze one's blood, jumped into the midst of the thicket and disappeared. my coolies, whom an odious fear had all the time kept prostrated on the ground, recovered little by little from their fright. keeping in readiness a few packages of dry grass and matches, we hastened to reach the village haïena, leaving behind the remains of the unfortunate hindu, whose fate we feared sharing. an hour later we had left the forest and entered the plain. i ordered my tent erected under a very leafy plane tree, and had a great fire made before it, with a pile of wood, which was the only protection we could employ against the ferocious beasts whose howls continued to reach us from all directions. in the forest my dog had pressed himself against me, with his tail between his legs; but once under the tent, he suddenly recovered his watchfulness, and barked incessantly the whole night, being very careful, however, not to step outside. i spent a terrible night, rifle in hand, listening to the concert of those diabolical howlings, the echoes of which seemed to shake the defile. some panthers approached our bivouac to answer the barking of pamir, but dared not attack us. i had left srinagar at the head of eleven carriers, four of whom had to carry so many boxes of wine, four others bore my travelling effects; one my weapons, another various utensils, and finally a last, who went errands or on reconnaissance. his name was "chicari," which means "he who accompanies the hunter and gathers the prey." i discharged him in the morning on account of his cowardice and his profound ignorance of the country, and only retained four carriers. it was but slowly that i advanced toward the village of gounde. how beautiful is nature in the sind pass, and how much is it beloved by the hunters! besides the great fallow deer, you meet there the hind, the stag, the mountain sheep and an immense variety of birds, among which i want to mention above all the golden pheasant, and others of red or snow-white plumage, very large partridges and immense eagles. the villages situated along the sind do not shine by their dimensions. they contain, for the greatest part, not more than ten to twenty huts of an extremely miserable appearance. their inhabitants are clad in rags. their cattle belongs to a very small race. i crossed the river at sambal, and stopped near the village gounde, where i procured relay horses. in some villages they refused to hire horses to me; i then threatened them with my whip, which at once inspired respect and obedience; my money accomplished the same end; it inspired a servile obedience--not willingness--to obey my least orders. stick and gold are the true sovereigns in the orient; without them the very grand mogul would not have had any preponderance. night began to descend, and i was in a hurry to cross the defile which separates the villages gogangan and sonamarg. the road is in very bad condition, and the mountains are infested by beasts of prey which in the night descend into the very villages to seek their prey. the country is delightful and very fertile; nevertheless, but few colonists venture to settle here, on account of the neighborhood of the panthers, which come to the dooryards to seize domestic animals. at the very exit of the defile, near the village of tchokodar, or thajwas, the half obscurity prevailing only permitted me to distinguish two dark masses crossing the road. they were two big bears followed by a young one. i was alone with my servant (the caravan having loitered behind), so i did not like to attack them with only one rifle; but the long excursions which i had made on the mountain had strongly developed in me the sense of the hunter. to jump from my horse, shoot, and, without even verifying the result, change quickly the cartridge, was the affair of a second. one bear was about to jump on me, a second shot made it run away and disappear. holding in my hand my loaded gun, i approached with circumspection, the one at which i had aimed, and found it laying on its flank, dead, with the little cub beside it. another shot killed the little one, after which i went to work to take off the two superb jet-black skins. this incident made us lose two hours, and night had completely set in when i erected my tent near tchokodar, which i left at sunrise to gain baltal, by following the course of the sind river. at this place the ravishing landscape of the "golden prairie" terminates abruptly with a village of the same name (sona, gold, and marg, prairie). the abrupt acclivity of zodgi-la, which we next surmounted, attains an elevation of 11,500 feet, on the other side of which the whole country assumes a severe and inhospitable character. my hunting adventures closed before reaching baltal. from there i met on the road only wild goats. in order to hunt, i would have had to leave the grand route and to penetrate into the heart of the mountains full of mysteries. i had neither the inclination nor the time to do so, and, therefore, continued quietly my journey toward ladak. * * * * * how violent the contrast i felt when passing from the laughing nature and beautiful population of kachmyr to the arid and forbidding rocks and the beardless and ugly inhabitants of ladak! the country into which i penetrated is situated at an altitude of 11,000 to 12,000 feet. only at karghil the level descends to 8,000 feet. the acclivity of zodgi-la is very rough; one must climb up an almost perpendicular rocky wall. in certain places the road winds along upon rock ledges of only a metre in width, below which the sight drops into unfathomable abysses. may the lord preserve the traveller from a fall! at one place, the way is upon long beams introduced into holes made in the rock, like a bridge, and covered up with earth. brr!--at the thought that a little stone might get loose and roll down the slope of the mountain, or that a too strong oscillation of the beams could precipitate the whole structure into the abyss, and with it him who had ventured upon the perilous path, one feels like fainting more than once during this hazardous passage. after crossing the glaciers we stopped in a valley and prepared to spend the night near a hut, a dismal place surrounded by eternal ice and snow. from baltal the distances are determined by means of daks, _i.e._, postal stations for mail service. they are low huts, about seven kilometres distant from each other. a man is permanently established in each of these huts. the postal service between kachmyr and thibet is yet carried on in a very primitive form. the letters are enclosed in a leather bag, which is handed to the care of a carrier. the latter runs rapidly over the seven kilometres assigned to him, carrying on his back a basket which holds several of these bags, which he delivers to another carrier, who, in his turn, accomplishes his task in an identical manner. neither rain nor snow can arrest these carriers. in this way the mail service is carried on between kachmyr and thibet, and _vice versa_ once a week. for each course the letter carrier is paid six annas (twenty cents); the same wages as is paid to the carriers of merchandise. this sum i also paid to every one of my servants for carrying a ten times heavier load. it makes one's heart ache to see the pale and tired-looking figures of these carriers; but what is to be done? it is the custom of the country. the tea is brought from china by a similar system of transportation, which is rapid and inexpensive. in the village of montaiyan, i found again the yarkandien caravan of pilgrims, whom i had promised to accompany on their journey. they recognized me from a distance, and asked me to examine one of their men, who had fallen sick. i found him writhing in the agonies of an intense fever. shaking my hands as a sign of despair, i pointed to the heavens and gave them to understand that human will and science were now useless, and that god alone could save him. these people journeyed by small stages only; i, therefore, left them and arrived in the evening at drass, situated at the bottom of a valley near a river of the same name. near drass, a little fort of ancient construction, but freshly painted, stands aloof, under the guard of three sikhs of the maharadja's army. at drass, my domicile was the post-house, which is a station--and the only one--of an unique telegraph line from srinagar to the interior of the himalayas. from that time on, i no more had my tent put up each evening, but stopped in the caravansarais; places which, though made repulsive by their dirt, are kept warm by the enormous piles of wood burned in their fireplaces. from drass to karghil the landscape is unpleasing and monotonous, if one excepts the marvellous effects of the rising and setting sun and the beautiful moonlight. apart from these the road is wearisome and abounding with dangers. karghil is the principal place of the district, where the governor of the country resides. its site is quite picturesque. two water courses, the souron and the wakkha, roll their noisy and turbulent waters among rocks and sunken snags of uprooted trees, escaping from their respective defiles in the rocks, to join in forming here the river souron, upon the banks of which stands karghil. a little fort, garrisoned by two or three sikhs, shows its outlines at the junction of the streams. provided with a horse, i continued my journey at break of day, entering now the province of ladak, or little thibet. i traversed a ricketty bridge, composed--like all the bridges of kachmyr--of two long beams, the ends of which were supported upon the banks and the floor made of a layer of fagots and sticks, which imparted to the traveller, at least the illusion of a suspension bridge. soon afterward i climbed slowly up on a little plateau, which crosses the way at a distance of two kilometres, to descend into the narrow valley of wakkha. here there are several villages, among which, on the left shore, is the very picturesque one called paskium. here my feet trod buddhist ground. the inhabitants are of a very simple and mild disposition, seemingly ignorant of "quarreling." women are very rare among them. those of them whom i encountered were distinguished from the women i had hitherto seen in india or kachmyr, by the air of gaiety and prosperity apparent in their countenances. how could it be otherwise, since each woman in this country has, on an average, three to five husbands, and possesses them in the most legitimate way in the world. polyandry flourishes here. however large a family may be, there is but one woman in it. if the family does not contain already more than two husbands, a bachelor may share its advantages, for a consideration. the days sacred to each one of those husbands are determined in advance, and all acquit themselves of their respective duties and respect each others' rights. the men generally seem feeble, with bent backs, and do not live to old age. during my travels in ladak, i only encountered one man so old that his hair was white. from karghil to the centre of ladak, the road had a more cheerful aspect than that i had traversed before reaching karghil, its prospect being brightened by a number of little hamlets, but trees and verdure were, unfortunately, rare. twenty miles from karghil, at the end of the defile formed by the rapid current of the wakkha, is a little village called chargol, in the centre of which stand three chapels, decorated with lively colors (_t'horthenes_, to give them the name they bear in thibet). below, near the river, are masses of rocks, in the form of long and large walls, upon which are thrown, in apparent disorder, flat stones of different colors and sizes. upon these stones are engraved all sorts of prayers, in ourd, sanscrit and thibetan, and one can even find among them inscriptions in arabic characters. without the knowledge of my carriers, i succeeded in taking away a few of these stones, which are now in the palace of the trocadero. along the way, from chargol, one finds frequently oblong mounds, artificial constructions. after sunrise, with fresh horses, i resumed my journey and stopped near the _gonpa_ (monastery) of moulbek, which seems glued on the flank of an isolated rock. below is the hamlet of wakkha, and not far from there is to be seen another rock, of very strange form, which seems to have been placed where it stands by human hands. in one side of it is cut a buddha several metres in height. upon it are several cylinders, the turning of which serves for prayers. they are a sort of wooden barrel, draped with yellow or white fabrics, and are attached to vertically planted stakes. it requires only the least wind to make them turn. the person who puts up one of these cylinders no longer feels it obligatory upon him to say his prayers, for all that devout believers can ask of god is written upon the cylinders. seen from a distance this white painted monastery, standing sharply out from the gray background of the rocks, with all these whirling, petticoated wheels, produce a strange effect in this dead country. i left my horses in the hamlet of wakkha, and, followed by my servant, walked toward the convent, which is reached by a narrow stairway cut in the rock. at the top, i was received by a very fat lama, with a scanty, straggling beard under his chin--a common characteristic of the thibetan people--who was very ugly, but very cordial. his costume consisted of a yellow robe and a sort of big nightcap, with projecting flaps above the ears, of the same color. he held in his hand a copper prayer-machine which, from time to time, he shook with his left hand, without at all permitting that exercise to interfere with his conversation. it was his eternal prayer, which he thus communicated to the wind, so that by this element it should be borne to heaven. we traversed a suite of low chambers, upon the walls of which were images of buddha, of all sizes and made of all kinds of materials, all alike covered by a thick layer of dust. finally we reached an open terrace, from which the eyes, taking in the surrounding region, rested upon an inhospitable country, strewn with grayish rocks and traversed by only a single road, which on both sides lost itself in the horizon. when we were seated, they brought us beer, made with hops, called here _tchang_ and brewed in the cloister. it has a tendency to rapidly produce _embonpoint_ upon the monks, which is regarded as a sign of the particular favor of heaven. they spoke here the thibetan language. the origin of this language is full of obscurity. one thing is certain, that a king of thibet, a contemporary of mohammed, undertook the creation of an universal language for all the disciples of buddha. to this end he had simplified the sanscrit grammar, composed an alphabet containing an infinite number of signs, and thus laid the foundations of a language the pronunciation of which is one of the easiest and the writing the most complicated. indeed, in order to represent a sound one must employ not less than eight characters. all the modern literature of thibet is written in this language. the pure thibetan is only spoken in ladak and oriental thibet. in all other parts of the country are employed dialects formed by the mixture of this mother language with different idioms taken from the neighboring peoples of the various regions round about. in the ordinary life of the thibetan, there exists always two languages, one of which is absolutely incomprehensible to the women, while the other is spoken by the entire nation; but only in the convents can be found the thibetan language in all its purity and integrity. the lamas much prefer the visits of europeans to those of musselmen, and when i asked the one who received me why this was so, he answered me: "musselmen have no point of contact at all with our religion. only comparatively recently, in their victorious campaign, they have converted, by force, part of the buddhists to islam. it requires of us great efforts to bring back those musselmen, descendants of buddhists, into the path of the true god. as regards the europeans, it is quite a different affair. not only do they profess the essential principles of monotheism, but they are, in a sense, adorers of buddha, with almost the same rites as the lamas who inhabit thibet. the only fault of the christians is that after having adopted the great doctrines of buddha, they have completely separated themselves from him, and have created for themselves a different dalai-lama. our dalai-lama is the only one who has received the divine gift of seeing, face to face, the majesty of buddha, and is empowered to serve as an intermediary between earth and heaven." "which dalai-lama of the christians do you refer to?" i asked him; "we have one, the son of god, to whom we address directly our fervent prayers, and to him alone we recur to intercede with our one and indivisible god." "it is not him of whom it is a question, sahib," he replied. "we, too, respect him, whom we reverence as son of the one and indivisible god, but we do not see in him the only son, but the excellent being who was chosen among all. buddha, indeed, has incarnated himself, with his divine nature, in the person of the sacred issa, who, without employing fire or iron, has gone forth to propagate our true and great religion among all the world. him whom i meant was your terrestrial dalai-lama; he to whom you have given the title of 'father of the church.' that is a great sin. may he be brought back, with the flock, who are now in a bad road," piously added the lama, giving another twirl to his prayer-machine. i understood now that he alluded to the pope. "you have told me that a son of buddha, issa, the elect among all, had spread your religion on the earth. who is he?" i asked. at this question the lama's eyes opened wide; he looked at me with astonishment and pronounced some words i could not catch, murmuring in an unintelligible way. "issa," he finally replied, "is a great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two buddhas. he is greater than any one of all the dalai-lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality of our lord. it is he who has instructed you; he who brought back into the bosom of god the frivolous and wicked souls; he who made you worthy of the beneficence of the creator, who has ordained that each being should know good and evil. his name and his acts have been chronicled in our sacred writings, and when reading how his great life passed away in the midst of an erring people, we weep for the horrible sin of the heathen who murdered him, after subjecting him to torture." i was struck by this recital of the lama. the prophet issa--his tortures and death--our christian dalai-lama--the buddhist recognizing christianity--all these made me think more and more of jesus christ. i asked my interpreter not to lose a single word of what the lama told me. "where can those writings be found, and who compiled them?" i asked the monk. "the principal scrolls--which were written in india and nepaul, at different epochs, as the events happened--are in lhassa; several thousands in number. in some great convents are to be found copies, which the lamas, during their sojourn in lhassa, have made, at various times, and have then given to their cloisters as souvenirs of the period they spent with the dalai-lama." "but you, yourselves; do you not possess copies of the scrolls bearing upon the prophet issa?" "we have not. our convent is insignificant, and since its foundation our successive lamas have had only a few hundred manuscripts in their library. the great cloisters have several thousands of them; but they are sacred things which will not, anywhere, be shown to you." we spoke together a few minutes longer, after which i went home, all the while thinking of the lama's statements. issa, a prophet of the buddhists! but, how could this be? of jewish origin, he lived in palestine and in egypt; and the gospels do not contain one word, not even the least allusion, to the part which buddhism should have played in the education of jesus. i made up my mind to visit all the convents of thibet, in the hope of gathering fuller information upon the prophet issa, and perhaps copies of the chronicles bearing upon this subject. * * * * * we traversed the namykala pass, at 30,000 feet of altitude, whence we descended into the valley of the river salinoumah. turning southward, we gained karbou, leaving behind us, on the opposite bank, numerous villages, among other, chagdoom, which is at the top of a rock, an extremely imposing sight. its houses are white and have a sort of festive look, with their two and three stories. this, by the way, is a common peculiarity of all the villages of ladak. the eye of the european, travelling in kachmyr, would soon lose sight of all architecture to which he had been accustomed. in ladak, on the contrary, he would be agreeably surprised at seeing the little two and three-story houses, reminders to him of those in european provinces. near the city of karbou, upon two perpendicular rocks, one sees the ruins of a little town or village. a tempest and an earthquake are said to have shaken down its walls, the solidity of which seems to have been exceptional. the next day i traversed the fotu-la pass, at an altitude of 13,500 feet. at its summit stands a little _t'horthene_ (chapel). thence, following the dry bed of a stream, i descended to the hamlet of lamayure, the sudden appearance of which is a surprise to the traveller. a convent, which seems grafted on the side of the rock, or held there in some miraculous way, dominates the village. stairs are unknown in this cloister. in order to pass from one story of it to another, ropes are used. communication with the world outside is through a labyrinth of passages in the rock. under the windows of the convent--which make one think of birds' nests on the face of a cliff---is a little inn, the rooms of which are little inviting. hardly had i stretched myself on the carpet in one of them, when the monks, dressed in their yellow robes, filled the apartment, bothered me with questions as to whence i came, the purpose of my coming, where i was going, and so on, finally inviting me to come and see them. in spite of my fatigue i accepted their invitation and set out with them, to climb up the excavated passages in the rock, which were encumbered with an infinity of prayer cylinders and wheels, which i could not but touch and set turning as i brushed past them. they are placed there that they may be so turned, saving to the passers-by the time they might otherwise lose in saying their prayers--as if their affairs were so absorbing, and their time so precious, that they could not find leisure to pray. many pious buddhists use for this purpose an apparatus arranged to be turned by the current of a stream. i have seen a long row of cylinders, provided with their prayer formulas, placed along a river bank, in such a way that the water kept them constantly in motion, this ingenious device freeing the proprietors from any further obligation to say prayers themselves. i sat down on a bench in the hall, where semi-obscurity reigned. the walls were garnished with little statues of buddha, books and prayer-wheels. the loquacious lamas began explaining to me the significance of each object. "and those books?" i asked them; "they, no doubt, have reference to religion." "yes, sir. these are a few religious volumes which deal with the primary and principal rites of the life common to all. we possess several parts of the words of buddha consecrated to the great and indivisible divine being, and to all that issue from his hands." "is there not, among those books, some account of the prophet issa?" "no, sir," answered the monk. "we only possess a few principal treatises relating to the observance of the religious rites. as for the biographies of our saints, they are collected in lhassa. there are even great cloisters which have not had the time to procure them. before coming to this gonpa, i was for several years in a great convent on the other side of ladak, and have seen there thousands of books, and scrolls copied out of various books by the lamas of the monastery." by some further interrogation i learned that the convent in question was near leh, but my persistent inquiries had the effect of exciting the suspicions of the lamas. they showed me the way out with evident pleasure, and regaining my room, i fell asleep--after a light lunch--leaving orders with my hindu to inform himself in a skillful way, from some of the younger lamas of the convent, about the monastery in which their chief had lived before coming to lamayure. in the morning, when we set forth on our journey, the hindu told me that he could get nothing from the lamas, who were very reticent. i will not stop to describe the life of the monks in those convents, for it is the same in all the cloisters of ladak. i have seen the celebrated monastery of leh--of which i shall have to speak later on--and learned there the strange existences the monks and religious people lead, which is everywhere the same. in lamayure commences a declivity which, through a steep, narrow and sombre gorge, extends toward india. without having the least idea of the dangers which the descent presented, i sent my carriers in advance and started on a route, rather pleasant at the outset, which passes between the brown clay hills, but soon it produced upon me the most depressing effect, as though i was traversing a gloomy subterranean passage. then the road came out on the flank of the mountain, above a terrible abyss. if a rider had met me, we could not possibly have passed each other, the way was so narrow. all description would fail to convey a sense of the grandeur and wild beauty of this cañon, the summit of the walls of which seemed to reach the sky. at some points it became so narrow that from my saddle i could, with my cane, touch the opposite rock. at other places, death might be fancied looking up expectantly, from the abyss, at the traveller. it was too late to dismount. in entering alone this gorge, i had not the faintest idea that i would have occasion to regret my foolish imprudence. i had not realized its character. it was simply an enormous crevasse, rent by some titanic throe of nature, some tremendous earthquake, which had split the granite mountain. in its bottom i could just distinguish a hardly perceptible white thread, an impetuous torrent, the dull roar of which filled the defile with mysterious and impressive sounds. far overhead extended, narrow and sinuously, a blue ribbon, the only glimpse of the celestial world that the frowning granite walls permitted to be seen. it was a thrilling pleasure, this majestic view of nature. at the same time, its rugged severity, the vastness of its proportions, the deathly silence only invaded by the ominous murmur from the depths beneath, all together filled me with an unconquerable depression. i had about eight miles in which to experience these sensations, at once sweet and painful. then, turning to the right, our little caravan reached a small valley, almost surrounded by precipitous granite rocks, which mirrored themselves in the indus. on the bank of the river stands the little fortress khalsi, a celebrated fortification dating from the epoch of the musselman invasion, by which runs the wild road from kachmyr to thibet. we crossed the indus on an almost suspended bridge which led directly to the door of the fortress, thus impossible of evasion. rapidly we traversed the valley, then the village of khalsi, for i was anxious to spend the night in the hamlet of snowely, which is placed upon terraces descending to the indus. the two following days i travelled tranquilly and without any difficulties to overcome, along the shore of the indus, in a picturesque country--which brought me to leh, the capital of ladak. while traversing the little valley of saspoula, at a distance of several kilometres from the village of the same name, i found "_t'horthenes_" and two cloisters, above one of which floated the french flag. later on, i learned that a french engineer had presented the flag to the monks, who displayed it simply as a decoration of their building. i passed the night at saspoula and certainly did not forget to visit the cloisters, seeing there for the tenth time the omnipresent dust-covered images of buddha; the flags and banners heaped in a corner; ugly masks on the floor; books and papyrus rolls heaped together without order or care, and the inevitable abundance of prayer-wheels. the lamas demonstrated a particular pleasure in exhibiting these things, doing it with the air of shopmen displaying their goods, with very little care for the degree of interest the traveller may take in them. "we must show everything, in the hope that the sight alone of these sacred objects will force the traveller to believe in the divine grandeur of the human soul." respecting the prophet issa, they gave me the same account i already had, and i learned, what i had known before, that the books which could instruct me about him were at lhassa, and that only the great monasteries possessed some copies. i did not think any more of passing kara-koroum, but only of finding the history of the prophet issa, which would, perhaps, bring to light the entire life of the best of men, and complete the rather vague information which the gospels afford us about him. not far from leh, and at the entrance of the valley of the same name, our road passed near an isolated rock, on the top of which were constructed a fort--with two towers and without garrison--and a little convent named pitak. a mountain, 10,500 feet high, protects the entrance to thibet. there the road makes a sudden turn toward the north, in the direction of leh, six miles from pitak and a thousand feet higher. immense granite mountains tower above leh, to a height of 18,000 or 19,000 feet, their crests covered with eternal snow. the city itself, surrounded by a girdle of stunted aspen trees, rises upon successive terraces, which are dominated by an old fort and the palaces of the ancient sovereigns of ladak. toward evening i made my entrance into leh, and stopped at a bengalow constructed especially for europeans, whom the road from india brings here in the hunting season. ladak ladak formerly was part of great thibet. the powerful invading forces from the north which traversed the country to conquer kachmyr, and the wars of which ladak was the theatre, not only reduced it to misery, but eventually subtracted it from the political domination of lhassa, and made it the prey of one conqueror after another. the musselmen, who seized kachmyr and ladak at a remote epoch, converted by force the poor inhabitants of old thibet to the faith of islam. the political existence of ladak ended with the annexation of this country to kachmyr by the sëiks, which, however, permitted the ladakians to return to their ancient beliefs. two-thirds of the inhabitants took advantage of this opportunity to rebuild their gonpas and take up their past life anew. only the baltistans remained musselman schüttes--a sect to which the conquerors of the country had belonged. they, however, have only conserved a vague shadow of islamism, the character of which manifests itself in their ceremonials and in the polygamy which they practice. some lamas affirmed to me that they did not despair of one day bringing them back to the faith of their ancestors. from the religious point of view ladak is a dependency of lhassa, the capital of thibet and the place of residence of the dalai-lama. in lhassa are located the principal khoutoukhtes, or supreme lamas, and the chogzots, or administrators. politically, it is under the authority of the maharadja of kachmyr, who is represented there by a governor. the inhabitants of ladak belong to the chinese-touranian race, and are divided into ladakians and tchampas. the former lead a sedentary existence, building villages of two-story houses along the narrow valleys, are cleanly in their habits, and cultivators of the soil. they are excessively ugly; thin, with stooping figures and small heads set deep between their shoulders; their cheek bones salient, foreheads narrow, eyes black and brilliant, as are those of all the mongol race; noses flat, mouths large and thin-lipped; and from their small chins, very thinly garnished by a few hairs, deep wrinkles extend upward furrowing their hollow cheeks. to all this, add a close-shaven head with only a little bristling fringe of hair, and you will have the general type, not alone of ladak, but of entire thibet. the women are also of small stature, and have exceedingly prominent cheek bones, but seem to be of much more robust constitution. a healthy red tinges their cheeks and sympathetic smiles linger upon their lips. they have good dispositions, joyous inclinations, and are fond of laughing. the severity of the climate and rudeness of the country, do not permit to the ladakians much latitude in quality and colors of costume. they wear gowns of simple gray linen and coarse dull-hued clothing of their own manufacture. the pantaloons of the men only descend to their knees. people in good circumstances wear, in addition to the ordinary dress, the "choga," a sort of overcoat which is draped on the back when not wrapped around the figure. in winter they wear fur caps, with big ear flaps, and in summer cover their heads with a sort of cloth hood, the top of which dangles on one side, like a phrygian cap. their shoes are made of felt and covered with leather. a whole arsenal of little things hangs down from their belts, among which you will find a needle case, a knife, a pen and inkstand, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, and a diminutive specimen of the omnipresent prayer-cylinder. the thibetan men are generally so lazy, that if a braid of hair happens to become loose, it is not tressed up again for three months, and when once a shirt is put on the body, it is not again taken off until it falls to pieces. their overcoats are always unclean, and, on the back, one may contemplate a long oily stripe imprinted by the braid of hair, which is carefully greased every day. they wash themselves once a year, but even then do not do so voluntarily, but because compelled by law. they emit such a terrible stench that one avoids, as much as possible, being near them. the thibetan women, on the contrary, are very fond of cleanliness and order. they wash themselves daily and as often as may be needful. short and clean chemises hide their dazzling white necks. the thibetan woman throws on her round shoulders a red jacket, the flaps of which are covered by tight pantaloons of green or red cloth, made in such a manner as to puff up and so protect the legs against the cold. she wears embroidered red half boots, trimmed and lined with fur. a large cloth petticoat with numerous folds completes her home toilet. her hair is arranged in thin braids, to which, by means of pins, a large piece of floating cloth is attached,--which reminds one of the headdress so common in italy. underneath this sort of veil are suspended a variety of various colored pebbles, coins and pieces of metal. the ears are covered by flaps made of cloth or fur. a furred sheepskin covers the back, poor women contenting themselves with a simple plain skin of the animal, while wealthy ladies wear veritable cloaks, lined with red cloth and adorned with gold fringes. the ladak woman, whether walking in the streets or visiting her neighbors, always carries upon her back a conical basket, the smaller end of which is toward the ground. they fill it with the dung of horses or cows, which constitute the combustible of the country. every woman has money of her own, and spends it for jewelry. generally she purchases, at a small expense, large pieces of turquoise, which are added to the _bizarre_ ornaments of her headdress. i have seen pieces so worn which weighed nearly five pounds. the ladak woman occupies a social position for which she is envied by all women of the orient. she is free and respected. with the exception of some rural work, she passes the greatest part of her time in visiting. it must, however, be added that women's gossip is here a perfectly unknown thing. the settled population of ladak is engaged in agriculture, but they own so little land (the share of each may amount to about eight acres) that the revenue drawn from it is insufficient to provide them with the barest necessities and does not permit them to pay taxes. manual occupations are generally despised. artisans and musicians form the lowest class of society. the name by which they are designated is bem, and people are very careful not to contract any alliance with them. the hours of leisure left by rural work are spent in hunting the wild sheep of thibet, the skins of which are highly valued in india. the poorest, _i.e._, those who have not the means to purchase arms for hunting, hire themselves as coolies. this is also an occupation of women, who are very capable of enduring arduous toil. they are healthier than their husbands, whose laziness goes so far that, careless of cold or heat, they are capable of spending a whole night in the open air on a bed of stones rather than take the trouble to go to bed. polyandry (which i shall treat later more fully) causes the formation of very large families, who, in common, cultivate their jointly possessed lands, with the assistance of yaks, zos and zomos (oxen and cows). a member of a family cannot detach himself from it, and when he dies, his share reverts to the survivors in common. they sow but little wheat and the grain is very small, owing to the severity of the climate. they also harvest barley, which they pulverize before selling. when work in the field is ended, all male inhabitants go to gather on the mountain a wild herb called "enoriota," and large thorn bushes or "dama," which are used as fuel, since combustibles are scarce in ladak. you see there neither trees nor gardens, and only exceptionally thin clumps of willows and poplars grow on the shores of the rivers. near the villages are also found some aspen trees; but, on account of the unfertility of the ground, arboriculture is unknown and gardening is little successful. the absence of wood is especially noticeable in the buildings, which are made of sun-dried bricks, or, more frequently, of stones of medium size which are agglomerated with a kind of mortar composed of clay and chopped straw. the houses of the settled inhabitants are two stories high, their fronts whitewashed, and their window-sashes painted with lively colors. the flat roof forms a terrace which is decorated with wild flowers, and here, during good weather, the inhabitants spend much of their time contemplating nature, or turning their prayer-wheels. every dwelling-house is composed of many rooms; among them always one of superior size, the walls of which are decorated with superb fur-skins, and which is reserved for visitors. in the other rooms are beds and other furniture. rich people possess, moreover, a special room filled with all kinds of idols, and set apart as a place of worship. life here is very regular. they eat anything attainable, without much choice; the principal nourishment of the ladak people, however, being exceedingly simple. their breakfast consists of a piece of rye bread. at dinner, they serve on the table a bowl with meal into which lukewarm water is stirred with little rods until the mixture assumes the consistency of thick paste. from this, small portions are scooped out and eaten with milk. in the evening, bread and tea are served. meat is a superfluous luxury. only the hunters introduce some variety in their alimentation, by eating the meat of wild sheep, eagles or pheasants, which are very common in this country. during the day, on every excuse and opportunity, they drink "tchang," a kind of pale, unfermented beer. if it happens that a ladakian, mounted on a pony (such privileged people are very rare), goes to seek work in the surrounding country, he provides himself with a small stock of meal; when dinner time comes, he descends to a river or spring, mixes with water, in a wooden cup that he always has with him, some of the meal, swallows the simple refreshment and washes it down with water. the tchampas, or nomads, who constitute the other part of ladak's population, are rougher, and much poorer than the settled population. they are, for the most part, hunters, who completely neglect agriculture. although they profess the buddhistic religion, they never frequent the cloisters unless in want of meal, which they obtain in exchange for their venison. they mostly camp in tents on the summits of the mountains, where the cold is very great. while the properly called ladakians are peaceable, very desirous of learning, of an incarnated laziness, and are never known to tell untruth; the tchampas, on the contrary, are very irascible, extremely lively, great liars and profess a great disdain for the convents. among them lives the small population of khombas, wanderers from the vicinity of lhassa, who lead the miserable existence of a troupe of begging gipsies on the highways. incapable of any work whatever, speaking a language not spoken in the country where they beg for their subsistence, they are the objects of general contempt, and are only tolerated out of pity for their deplorable condition, when hunger drives their mendicant bands to seek alms in the villages. * * * * * polyandry, which is universally prevalent here, of course interested my curiosity. this institution is, by the way, not the outcome of buddha's doctrines. polyandry existed long before the advent of buddha. it assumed considerable proportions in india, where it constituted one of the most effective means for checking the growth of a population which tends to constant increase, an economic danger which is even yet combatted by the abominable custom of killing newborn female children, which causes terrible ravages in the child-life of india. the efforts made by the english in their enactments against the suppression of the future mothers have proved futile and fruitless. manu himself established polyandry as a law, and buddhist preachers, who had renounced brahminism and preached the use of opium, imported this custom into ceylon, thibet, corea, and the country of the moguls. for a long time suppressed in china, polyandry, which flourishes in thibet and ceylon, is also met with among the kalmonks, between todas in southern india, and nairs on the coast of malabar. traces of this strange constitution of the family are also to be found with the tasmanians and the irquois indians in north america. polyandry, by the way, has even flourished in europe, if we may believe cæsar, who, in his _de bello gallico_, book v., page 17, writes: "_uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus et parentes cum liberis._" in view of all this it is impossible to hold any religion responsible for the existence of the institution of polyandry. in thibet it can be explained by motives of an economical nature; the small quantity of arable land falling to the share of each inhabitant. in order to support the 1,500,000 inhabitants distributed in thibet, upon a surface of 1,200,000 square kilometres, the buddhists were forced to adopt polyandry. moreover, each family is bound to enter one of its members in a religious order. the firstborn is consecrated to a gonpa, which is inevitably found upon an elevation, at the entrance of every village. as soon as the child attains the age of eighteen years, he is entrusted to the caravans which pass lhassa, where he remains from eight to fifteen years as a novice, in one of the gonpas which are near the city. there he learns to read and write, is taught the religious rites and studies the sacred parchments written in the pali language--which formerly used to be the language of the country of maguada, where, according to tradition, buddha was born. the oldest brother remaining in a family chooses a wife, who becomes common to his brothers. the choice of the bride and the nuptial ceremonies are most rudimentary. when a wife and her husband have decided upon the marriage of a son, the brother who possesses the right of choice, pays a visit to a neighboring family in which there is a marriageable daughter. the first and second visits are spent in more or less indifferent conversations, blended with frequent libations of tchang, and on the third visit only does the young man declare his intention to take a wife. upon this the girl is formally introduced to him. she is generally not unknown to the wooer, as, in ladak, women never veil their faces. a girl cannot be married without her consent. when the young man is accepted, he takes his bride to his house, and she becomes his wife and also the wife of all his brothers. a family which has an only son sends him to a woman who has no more than two or three husbands, and he offers himself to her as a fourth husband. such an offer is seldom declined, and the young man settles in the new family. the newly married remain with the parents of the husbands, until the young wife bears her first child. the day after that event, the grandparents of the infant make over the bulk of their fortune to the new family, and, abandoning the old home to them, seek other shelter. sometimes marriages are contracted between youth who have not reached a marriageable age, but in such event, the married couple are made to live apart, until they have attained and even passed the age required. an unmarried girl who becomes _enceinte_, far from being exposed to the scorn of every one, is shown the highest respect; for she is demonstrated fruitful, and men eagerly seek her in marriage. a wife has the unquestioned right of having an unlimited number of husbands and lovers. if she likes a young man, she takes him home, announces that he has been chosen by her as a "jingtuh" (a lover), and endows him with all the personal rights of a husband, which situation is accepted by her temporarily supplanted husbands with a certain philosophic pleasure, which is the more pronounced if their wife has proved sterile during the three first years of her marriage. they certainly have here not even a vague idea of jealousy. the thibetan's blood is too cold to know love, which, for him, would be almost an anachronism; if indeed he were not conscious that the sentiment of the entire community would be against him, as a flagrant violator of popular usage and established rights, in restraining the freedom of the women. the selfish enjoyment of love would be, in their eyes, an unjustifiable luxury. in case of a husband's absence, his place may be offered to a bachelor or a widower. the latter are here in the minority, since the wife generally survives her feeble husbands. sometimes a buddhist traveller, whom his affairs bring to the village, is chosen for this office. a husband who travels, or seeks for work in the neighboring country, at every stop takes advantage of his co-religionists' hospitality, who offer him their own wives. the husbands of a sterile woman exert themselves to find opportunities for hospitality, which may happily eventuate in a change in her condition, that they may be made happy fathers. the wife enjoys the general esteem, is ever of a cheerful disposition, takes part in everything that is going on, goes and comes without any restriction, anywhere and everywhere she pleases, with the exception of the principal prayer-room of the monastery, entrance into which is formally prohibited to her. children know only their mother, and do not feel the least affection for their fathers, for the simple reason that they have so many. without approving polyandry, i could not well blame thibet for this institution, since without it, the population would prodigiously increase. famine and misery would fall upon the whole nation, with all the sinister _sequellæ_ of murder and theft, crimes so far absolutely unknown in the whole country. _a festival in a gonpa_ leh, the capital of ladak, is a little town of 5,000 inhabitants, who live in white, two-story houses, upon two or three streets, principally. in its centre is the square of the bazaar, where the merchants of india, china, turkestan, kachmyr and thibet, come to exchange their products for the thibetan gold. here the natives provide themselves with cloths for themselves and their monks, and various objects of real necessity. an old uninhabited palace rises upon a hill which dominates the town. fronting the central square is a vast building, two stories in height, the residence of the governor of ladak, the vizier souradjbal--a very amiable and universally popular pendjaban, who has received in london the degree of doctor of philosophy. to entertain me, during my sojourn in leh, the governor arranged, on the bazaar square, a game of polo--the national sport of the thibetans, which the english have adopted and introduced into europe. in the evening, after the game, the people executed dances and played games before the governor's residence. large bonfires illuminated the scene, lighting up the throng of inhabitants, who formed a great circle about the performers. the latter, in considerable numbers, disguised as animals, devils and sorcerers, jumped and contorted themselves in rhythmic dances timed to the measure of the monotonous and unpleasing music made by two long trumpets and a drum. the infernal racket and shouting of the crowd wearied me. the performance ended with some graceful dances by thibetan women, who spun upon their heels, swaying to and fro, and, in passing before the spectators in the windows of the residence, greeted us by the clashing together of the copper and ivory bracelets on their crossed wrists. the next day, at an early hour, i repaired to the great himis convent, which, a little distance from leh, is elevated upon the top of a great rock, on a picturesque site, commanding the valley of the indies. it is one of the principal monasteries of the country, and is maintained by the gifts of the people and the subsidies it receives from lhassa. on the road leading to it, beyond the bridge crossing the indus, and in the vicinity of the villages lining the way, one finds heaps of stones bearing engraved inscriptions, such as have already been described, and _t'horthenes_. at these places, our guides were very careful to turn to the right. i wished to turn my horse to the left, but the ladakians made him go back and led him by his halter to the right, explaining to me that such was their established usage. i found it impossible to learn the origin or reason of this custom. above the gonpa rises a battlemented tower, visible from a great distance. we climbed, on foot, to the level on which the edifice stands and found ourselves confronted by a large door, painted in brilliant colors, the portal of a vast two-story building enclosing a court paved with little pebbles. to the right, in one of the angles of the court, is another huge painted door, adorned with big copper rings. it is the entrance to the principal temple, which is decorated with paintings of the principal gods, and contains a great statue of buddha and a multitude of sacred statuettes. to the left, upon a verandah, was placed an immense prayer-cylinder. all the lamas of the convent, with their chief, stood about it, when we entered the court. below the verandah were musicians, holding long trumpets and drums. at the right of the court were a number of doors, leading to the rooms of the lamas; all decorated with sacred paintings and provided with little prayer-barrels fancifully surmounted by black and white tridents, from the points of which floated ribbons bearing inscriptions--doubtless prayers. in the centre of the court were raised two tall masts, from the tops of which dangled tails of yaks, and long paper streamers floated, covered with religious inscriptions. all along the walls were numerous prayer-barrels, adorned with ribbons. a profound silence reigned among the many spectators present. all awaited anxiously the commencement of a religious "mystery," which was about to be presented. we took up a position near the verandah. almost immediately, the musicians drew from their long trumpets soft and monotonous tones, marking the time by measured beats upon an odd-looking drum, broad and shallow, upreared upon a stick planted in the ground. at the first sounds of the strange music, in which joined the voices of the lamas in a melancholy chant, the doors along the wall opened simultaneously, giving entrance to about twenty masked persons, disguised as animals, birds, devils and imaginary monsters. on their breasts they bore representations of fantastic dragons, demons and skulls, embroidered with chinese silk of various colors. from the conical hats they wore, depended to their breasts long multicolored ribbons, covered with inscriptions. their masks were white death's-heads. slowly they marched about the masts, stretching out their arms from time to time and flourishing with their left hands spoon-shaped objects, the bowl portions of which were said to be fragments of human crania, with ribbons attached, having affixed to their ends human hair, which, i was assured, had been taken from scalped enemies. their promenade, in gradually narrowing circles about the masts, soon became merely a confused jostling of each other; when the rolling of the drum grew more accentuated, the performers for an instant stopped, then started again, swinging above their heads yellow sticks, ribbon-decked, which with their right hands they brandished in menacing attitudes. after making a salute to the chief lama, they approached the door leading to the temple, which at this instant opened, and from it another band came forth, whose heads were covered by copper masks. their dresses were of rich materials, embroidered in various bright colors. in one hand each of them carried a small tambourine and with the other he agitated a little bell. from the rim of each tambourine depended a metallic ball, so placed that the least movement of the hand brought it in contact with the resonant tympanum, which caused a strange, continuous undercurrent of pulsating sound. there new performers circled several times about the court, marking the time of their dancing steps by measured thumpings of the tambourines. at the completion of each turn, they made a deafening noise with their instruments. finally, they ran to the temple door and ranged themselves upon the steps before it. for a moment, there was silence. then we saw emerge from the temple a third band of performers. their enormous masks represented different deities, and each bore upon its forehead "the third eye." at their head marched thlogan-poudma-jungnas (literally "he who was born in the lotus flower"). another richly dressed mask marched beside him, carrying a yellow parasol covered with symbolic designs. his suite was composed of gods, in magnificent costumes; dorje-trolong and sangspa-kourpo (_i.e._, brahma himself), and others. these masks, as a lama sitting near me explained to us, represented six classes of beings subject to the metamorphoses; the gods, the demigods, men, animals, spirits and demons. on each side of these personages, who advanced gravely, marched other masks, costumed in silks of brilliant hues and wearing on their heads golden crowns, fashioned with six lotus-like flowers on each, surmounted by a tall dart in the centre. each of these masks carried a drum. these disguises made three turns about the masts, to the sound of a noisy and incoherent music, and then seated themselves on the ground, around thlogan-pondma-jungnas, a god with three eyes, who gravely introduced two fingers into his mouth and emitted a shrill whistle. at this signal, young men dressed in warrior costumes--with ribbon-decked bells dangling about their legs--came with measured steps from the temple. their heads were covered by enormous green masks, from which floated triangular red flags, and they, too, carried tambourines. making a diabolical din, they whirled and danced about the gods seated on the ground. two big fellows accompanying them, who were dressed in tight clown costumes, executed all kinds of grotesque contortions and acrobatic feats, by which they won plaudits and shouts of laughter from the spectators. another group of disguises--of which the principal features were red mitres and yellow pantaloons--came out of the temple, with bells and tambourines in their hands, and seated themselves opposite the gods, as representatives of the highest powers next to divinity. lastly there entered upon the scene a lot of red and brown masks, with a "third eye" painted on their breasts. with those who had preceded them, they formed two long lines of dancers, who to the thrumming of their many tambourines, the measured music of the trumpets and drums, and the jingling of a myriad of bells, performed a dance, approaching and receding from each other, whirling in circles, forming by twos in a column and breaking from that formation to make new combinations, pausing occasionally to make reverent obeisance before the gods. after a time this spectacular excitement--the noisy monotony of which began to weary me--calmed down a little; gods, demigods, kings, men and spirits got up, and followed by all the other maskers, directed themselves toward the temple door, whence issued at once, meeting them, a lot of men admirably disguised as skeletons. all those sorties were calculated and prearranged, and every one of them had its particular significance. the _cortège_ of dancers gave way to the skeletons, who advanced with measured steps, in silence, to the masts, where they stopped and made a concerted clicking with pieces of wood hanging at their sides, simulating perfectly the rattling of dry bones and gnashing of teeth. twice they went in a circle around the masts, marching in time to low taps on the drums, and then joined in a lugubrious religious chant. having once more made the concerted rattling of their artificial bones and jaws, they executed some contortions painful to witness and together stopped. then they seized upon an image of the enemy of man--made of some sort of brittle paste--which had been placed at the foot of one of the masts. this they broke in pieces and scattered, and the oldest men among the spectators, rising from their places, picked up the fragments which they handed to the skeletons--an action supposed to signify that they would soon be ready to join the bony crew in the cemetery. * * * * * the chief lama, approaching me, tendered an invitation to accompany him to the principal terrace and partake of the festal "tchang"; which i accepted with pleasure, for my head was dizzy from the long spectacle. we crossed the court and climbed a staircase--obstructed with prayer-wheels, as usual--passed two rooms where there were many images of gods, and came out upon the terrace, where i seated myself upon a bench opposite the venerable lama, whose eyes sparkled with spirit. three lamas brought pitchers of tchang, which they poured into small copper cups, that were offered first to the chief lama, then to me and my servants. "did you enjoy our little festival?" the lama asked me. "i found it very enjoyable and am still impressed by the spectacle i have witnessed. but, to tell the truth, i never suspected for a moment that buddhism, in these religious ceremonies, could display such a visible, not to say noisy, exterior form." "there is no religion, the ceremonies of which are not surrounded with more theatrical forms," the lama answered. "this is a ritualistic phase which does not by any means violate the fundamental principles of buddhism. it is a practical means for maintaining in the ignorant mass obedience to and love for the one creator, just as a child is beguiled by toys to do the will of its parents. the ignorant mass is the child of the father." "but what is the meaning," i said to him, "of all those masks, costumes, bells, dances, and, generally, of this entire performance, which seems to be executed after a prescribed programme?" "we have many similar festivals in the year," answered the lama, "and we arrange particular ones to represent 'mysteries,' susceptible of pantomimic presentation, in which each actor is allowed considerable latitude of action, in the movements and jests he likes, conforming, nevertheless, to the circumstances and to the leading idea. our mysteries are simply pantomimes calculated to show the veneration offered to the gods, which veneration sustains and cheers the soul of man, who is prone to anxious contemplation of inevitable death and the life to come. the actors receive the dresses from the cloister and they play according to general indications, which leave them much liberty of individual action. the general effect produced is, no doubt, very beautiful, but it is a matter for the spectators themselves to divine the signification of one or another action. you, too, have recourse sometimes to similar devices, which, however, do not in the least violate the principle of monotheism." "pardon me," i remarked, "but this multitude of idols with which your gonpas abound, is a flagrant violation of that principle." "as i have told you," replied the lama to my interruption, "man will always be in childhood. he sees and feels the grandeur of nature and understands everything presented to his senses, but he neither sees nor divines the great soul which created and animates all things. man has always sought for tangible things. it was not possible for him to believe long in that which escaped his material senses. he has racked his brain for any means for contemplating the creator; has endeavored to enter into direct relations with him who has done him so much good, and also, as he erroneously believes, so much evil. for this reason he began to adore every phase of nature from which he received benefits. we see a striking example of this in the ancient egyptians, who adored animals, trees, stones, the winds and the rain. other peoples, who were more sunk in ignorance, seeing that the results of the wind were not always beneficent, and that the rain did not inevitably bring good harvests, and that the animals were not willingly subservient to man, began to seek for direct intermediaries between themselves and the great mysterious and unfathomable power of the creator. therefore they made for themselves idols, which they regarded as indifferent to things concerning them, but to whose interposition in their behalf, they might always recur. from remotest antiquity to our own days, man was ever inclined only to tangible realities. "while seeking a route to lead their feet to the creator, the assyrians turned their eyes toward the stars, which they contemplated without the power of attaining them. the guebers have conserved the same belief to our days. in their nullity and spiritual blindness, men are incapable of conceiving the invisible spiritual bond which unites them to the great divinity, and this explains why they have always sought for palpable things, which were in the domain of the senses, and by doing which they minimized the divine principle. nevertheless, they have dared to attribute to their visible and man-made images a divine and eternal existence. we can see the same fact in brahminism, where man, given to his inclination for exterior forms, has created, little by little, and not all at once, an army of gods and demigods. the israelites may be said to have demonstrated, in the most flagrant way, the love of man for everything which is concrete. in spite of a series of striking miracles accomplished by the great creator, who is the same for all the peoples, the jewish people could not help making a god of metal in the very minute when their prophet mossa spoke to them of the creator! buddhism has passed through the same modifications. our great reformer, sakya-muni, inspired by the supreme judge, understood truly the one and indivisible brahma, and forbade his disciples attempting to manufacture images in imaginary semblance of him. he had openly broken from the polytheistic brahmins, and appreciated the purity, oneness and immortality of brahma. the success he achieved by his teachings in making disciples among the people, brought upon him persecution by the brahmins, who, in the creation of new gods, had found a source of personal revenue, and who, contrary to the law of god, treated the people in a despotic manner. our first sacred teachers, to whom we give the name of buddhas--which means, learned men or saints--because the great creator has incarnated in them, settled in different countries of the globe. as their teachings attacked especially the tyranny of the brahmins and the misuse they made of the idea of god--of which they indeed made a veritable business--almost all the buddhistic converts, they who followed the doctrines of those great teachers, were among the common people of china and india. among those teachers, particular reverence is felt for the buddha, sakya-muni, known in china also under the name of fô, who lived three thousand years ago, and whose teachings brought all china back into the path of the true god; and the buddha, gautama, who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, and converted almost half the hindus to the knowledge of the impersonal, indivisible and only god, besides whom there is none. "buddhism is divided into many sects which, by the way, differ only in certain religious ceremonies, the basis of the doctrine being everywhere the same. the thibetan buddhists, who are called 'lamaists,' separated themselves from the fô-ists fifteen hundred years ago. until that time we had formed part of the worshippers of the buddha, fô-sakya-muni, who was the first to collect all the laws compiled by the various buddhas preceding him, when the great schism took place in the bosom of brahmanism. later on, a khoutoukhte-mongol translated into chinese the books of the great buddha, for which the emperor of china rewarded him by bestowing upon him the title of 'go-chi--'preceptor of the king!' after his death, this title was given to the dalai-lama of thibet. since that epoch, all the titularies of this position have borne the title of go-chi. our religion is called the lamaic one--from the word 'lama,' superior. it admits of two classes of monks, the red and the yellow. the former may marry, and they recognize the authority of the bantsine, who resides in techow loumba, and is chief of the civil administration in thibet. we, the yellow lamas, have taken the vow of celibacy, and our direct chief is the dalai-lama. this is the difference which separates the two religious orders, the respective rituals of which are identical." "do all perform mysteries similar to that which i have just witnessed?" "yes; with a few exceptions. formerly these festivals were celebrated with very solemn pomp, but since the conquest of ladak our convents have been, more than once, pillaged and our wealth taken away. now we content ourselves with simple garments and bronze utensils, while in thibet you see but golden robes and gold utensils." "in a visit which i recently made to a gonpa, one of the lamas told me of a prophet, or, as you call him, a buddha, by the name of issa. could you not tell me anything about him?" i asked my interlocutor, seizing this favorable moment to start the subject which interested me so greatly. "the name issa is very much respected among the buddhists," he replied, "but he is only known by the chief lamas, who have read the scrolls relating to his life. there have existed an infinite number of buddhas like issa, and the 84,000 scrolls existing are filled brim full of details concerning each one of them. but very few persons have read the one-hundredth part of those memoirs. in conformity with established custom, every disciple or lama who visits lhassa makes a gift of one or several copies, from the scrolls there, to the convent to which he belongs. our gonpa, among others, possesses already a great number, which i read in my leisure hours. among them are the memoirs of the life and acts of the buddha issa, who preached the same doctrine in india and among the sons of israel, and who was put to death by the pagans, whose descendants, later on, adopted the beliefs he spread,--and those beliefs are yours. "the great buddha, the soul of the universe, is the incarnation of brahma. he, almost always, remains immobile, containing in himself all things, being in himself the origin of all and his breath vivifying the world. he has left man to the control of his own forces, but, at certain epochs, lays aside his inaction and puts on a human form that he may, as their teacher and guide, rescue his creatures from impending destruction. in the course of his terrestrial existence in the similitude of man, buddha creates a new world in the hearts of erring men; then he leaves the earth, to become once more an invisible being and resume his condition of perfect bliss. three thousand years ago, buddha incarnated in the celebrated prince sakya-muni, reaffirming and propagating the doctrines taught by him in his twenty preceding incarnations. twenty-five hundred years ago, the great soul of the world incarnated anew in gautama, laying the foundation of a new world in burmah, siam and different islands. soon afterward, buddhism began to penetrate china, through the persevering efforts of the sages, who devoted themselves to the propagation of the sacred doctrine, and under ming-ti, of the honi dynasty, nearly 2,050 years ago, the teachings of sakya-muni were adopted by the people of that country. simultaneously with the appearance of buddhism in china, the same doctrines began to spread among the israelites. it is about 2,000 years ago that the perfect being, awaking once more for a short time from his inaction, incarnated in the newborn child of a poor family. it was his will that this little child should enlighten the unhappy upon the life of the world to come and bring erring men back into the path of truth; showing to them, by his own example, the way they could best return to the primitive morality and purity of our race. when this sacred child attained a certain age, he was brought to india, where, until he attained to manhood, he studied the laws of the great buddha, who dwells eternally in heaven." "in what language are written the principal scrolls bearing upon the life of issa?" i asked, rising from my seat, for i saw that my interesting interlocutor evidenced fatigue, and had just given a twirl to his prayer-wheel, as if to hint the closing of the conversation. "the original scrolls brought from india to nepaul, and from nepaul to thibet, relating to the life of issa, are written in the pali language and are actually in lhassa; but a copy in our language--i mean the thibetan--is in this convent." "how is issa looked upon in thibet? has he the repute of a saint?" "the people are not even aware that he ever existed. only the principal lamas, who know of him through having studied the scrolls in which his life is related, are familiar with his name; but, as his doctrine does not constitute a canonical part of buddhism, and the worshippers of issa do not recognize the authority of the dalai-lama, the prophet issa--with many others like him--is not recognized in thibet as one of the principal saints." "would you commit a sin in reciting your copy of the life of issa to a stranger?" i asked him. "that which belongs to god," he answered me, "belongs also to man. our duty requires us to cheerfully devote ourselves to the propagation of his doctrine. only, i do not, at present, know where that manuscript is. if you ever visit our gonpa again, i shall take pleasure in showing it to you." at this moment two monks entered, and uttered to the chief lama a few words unintelligible to me. "i am called to the sacrifices. will you kindly excuse me?" said he to me, and with a salute, turned to the door and disappeared. i could do no better than withdraw and lie down in the chamber which was assigned to me and where i spent the night. * * * * * in the evening of the next day i was again in leh--thinking of how to get back to the convent. two days later i sent, by a messenger, to the chief lama, as presents, a watch, an alarm clock, and a thermometer. at the same time i sent the message that before leaving ladak i would probably return to the convent, in the hope that he would permit me to see the manuscript which had been the subject of our conversation. it was now my purpose to gain kachmyr and return from there, some time later, to himis. but fate made a different decision for me. in passing a mountain, on a height of which is perched the gonpa of piatak, my horse made a false step, throwing me to the ground so violently that my right leg was broken below the knee. it was impossible to continue my journey, i was not inclined to return to leh; and seeking the hospitality of the gonpa of piatak was not, from the appearance of the cloister, an enticing prospect. my best recourse would be to return to himis, then only about half a day's journey distant, and i ordered my servants to transport me there. they bandaged my broken leg--an operation which caused me great pain--and lifted me into the saddle. one carrier walked by my side, supporting the weight of the injured member, while another led my horse. at a late hour of the evening we reached the door of the convent of himis. when informed of my accident, the kind monks came out to receive me and, with a wealth of extraordinary precautions of tenderness, i was carried inside, and, in one of their best rooms, installed upon an improvised bed, consisting of a mountain of soft fabrics, with the naturally-to-be-expected prayer-cylinder beside me. all this was done for me under the personal supervision of their chief lama, who, with affectionate sympathy, pressed the hand i gave him in expression of my thanks for his kindness. in the morning, i myself bound around the injured limb little oblong pieces of wood, held by cords, to serve as splints. then i remained perfectly quiescent and nature was not slow in her reparative work. within two days my condition was so far improved that i could, had it been necessary, have left the gonpa and directed myself slowly toward india in search of a surgeon to complete my cure. while a boy kept in motion the prayer-barrel near my bed, the venerable lama who ruled the convent entertained me with many interesting stories. frequently he took from their box the alarm clock and the watch, that i might illustrate to him the process of winding them and explain to him their uses. at length, yielding to my ardent insistence, he brought me two big books, the large leaves of which were of paper yellow with age, and from them read to me the biography of issa, which i carefully transcribed in my travelling notebook according to the translation made by the interpreter. this curious document is compiled under the form of isolated verses, which, as placed, very often had no apparent connection with, or relation to each other. on the third day, my condition was so far improved as to permit the prosecution of my journey. having bound up my leg as well as possible, i returned, across kachmyr, to india; a slow journey, of twenty days, filled with intolerable pain. thanks, however, to a litter, which a french gentleman, m. peicheau, had kindly sent to me (my gratitude for which i take this occasion to express), and to an ukase of the grand vizier of the maharajah of kachmyr, ordering the local authorities to provide me with carriers, i reached srinagar, and left almost immediately, being anxious to gain india before the first snows fell. in muré i encountered another frenchman, count andré de saint phall, who was making a journey of recreation across hindostan. during the whole course, which we made together, to bombay, the young count demonstrated a touching solicitude for me, and sympathy for the excruciating pain i suffered from my broken leg and the fever induced by its torture. i cherish for him sincere gratitude, and shall never forget the friendly care which i received upon my arrival in bombay from the marquis de morés, the vicomte de breteul, m. monod, of the comptoir d'escompte, m. moët, acting consul, and all the members of the very sympathetic french colony there. during a long time i revolved in my mind the purpose of publishing the memoirs of the life of jesus christ found by me in himis, of which i have spoken, but other interests absorbed my attention and delayed it. only now, after having passed long nights of wakefulness in the coordination of my notes and grouping the verses conformably to the march of the recital, imparting to the work, as a whole, a character of unity, i resolve to let this curious chronicle see the light. _the life of saint issa_ "best of the sons of men." i. 1. the earth trembled and the heavens wept, because of the great crime committed in the land of israel. 2. for there was tortured and murdered the great and just issa, in whom was manifest the soul of the universe; 3. which had incarnated in a simple mortal, to benefit men and destroy the evil spirit in them; 4. to lead back to peace, love and happiness, man, degraded by his sins, and recall him to the one and indivisible creator whose mercy is infinite. 5. the merchants coming from israel have given the following account of what has occurred: ii. 1. the people of israel--who inhabit a fertile country producing two harvests a year and affording pasture for large herds of cattle--by their sins brought down upon themselves the anger of the lord; 2. who inflicted upon them terrible chastisements, taking from them their land, their cattle and their wealth. they were carried away into slavery by the rich and mighty pharaohs who then ruled the land of egypt. 3. the israelites were, by the pharaohs, treated worse than beasts, condemned to hard labor and put in irons; their bodies were covered with wounds and sores; they were not permitted to live under a roof, and were starved to death; 4. that they might be maintained in a state of continual terror and deprived of all human resemblance; 5. and in this great calamity, the israelites, remembering their celestial protector, implored his forgiveness and mercy. 6. at that period reigned in egypt an illustrious pharaoh, who was renowned for his many victories, immense riches, and the gigantic palaces he had erected by the labor of his slaves. 7. this pharaoh had two sons, the younger of whom, named mossa, had acquired much knowledge from the sages of israel. 8. and mossa was beloved by all in egypt for his kindness of heart and the pity he showed to all sufferers. 9. when mossa saw that the israelites, in spite of their many sufferings, had not forsaken their god, and refused to worship the gods of egypt, created by the hands of man. 10. he also put his faith in their invisible god, who did not suffer them to betray him, despite their ever growing weakness. 11. and the teachers among israel animated mossa in his zeal, and prayed of him that he would intercede with his father, pharaoh, in favor of their co-religionists. 12. prince mossa went before his father, begging him to lighten the burden of the unhappy people; pharaoh, however, became incensed with rage, and ordered that they should be tormented more than before. 13. and it came to pass that egypt was visited by a great calamity. the plague decimated young and old, the healthy and the sick; and pharaoh beheld in this the resentment of his own gods against him. 14. but prince mossa said to his father that it was the god of his slaves who thus interposed on behalf of his wretched people, and avenged them upon the egyptians. 15. thereupon, pharaoh commanded mossa, his son, to gather all the israelite slaves, and lead them away, and found, at a great distance from the capital, another city where he should rule over them. 16. then mossa made known to the hebrew slaves that he had obtained their freedom in the name of his and their god, the god of israel; and with them he left the city and departed from the land of egypt. 17. he led them back to the land which, because of their many sins, had been taken from them. there he gave them laws and admonished them to pray always to god, the indivisible creator, whose kindness is infinite. 18. after prince mossa's death, the israelites observed rigorously his laws; and god rewarded them for the ills to which they had been subjected in egypt. 19. their kingdom became one of the most powerful on earth; their kings made themselves renowned for their treasures, and peace reigned in israel. iii. 1. the glory of israel's wealth spread over the whole earth, and the surrounding nations became envious. 2. but the most high himself led the victorious arms of the hebrews, and the pagans did not dare to attack them. 3. unfortunately, man is prone to err, and the fidelity of the israelites to their god was not of long duration. 4. little by little they forgot the favors he had bestowed upon them; rarely invoked his name, and sought rather protection by the magicians and sorcerers. 5. the kings and the chiefs among the people substituted their own laws for those given by mossa; the temple of god and the observances of their ancient faith were neglected; the people addicted themselves to sensual gratifications and lost their original purity. 6. many centuries had elapsed since their exodus from egypt, when god bethought himself of again inflicting chastisement upon them. 7. strangers invaded israel, devastated the land, destroyed the villages, and carried their inhabitants away into captivity. 8. at last came the pagans from over the sea, from the land of romeles. these made themselves masters of the hebrews, and placed over them their army chiefs, who governed in the name of cæsar. 9. they defiled the temples, forced the inhabitants to cease the worship of the indivisible god, and compelled them to sacrifice to the heathen gods. 10. they made common soldiers of those who had been men of rank; the women became their prey, and the common people, reduced to slavery, were carried away by thousands over the sea. 11. the children were slain, and soon, in the whole land, there was naught heard but weeping and lamentation. 12. in this extreme distress, the israelites once more remembered their great god, implored his mercy and prayed for his forgiveness. our father, in his inexhaustible clemency, heard their prayer. iv. 1. at that time the moment had come for the compassionate judge to reincarnate in a human form; 2. and the eternal spirit, resting in a state of complete inaction and supreme bliss, awakened and separated from the eternal being, for an undetermined period, 3. so that, in human form, he might teach man to identify himself with the divinity and attain to eternal felicity; 4. and to show, by his example, how man can attain moral purity and free his soul from the domination of the physical senses, so that it may achieve the perfection necessary for it to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is immutable and where bliss eternal reigns. 5. soon after, a marvellous child was born in the land of israel. god himself spoke, through the mouth of this child, of the miseries of the body and the grandeur of the soul. 6. the parents of the infant were poor people, who belonged to a family noted for great piety; who forgot the greatness of their ancestors in celebrating the name of the creator and giving thanks to him for the trials which he had sent upon them. 7. to reward them for adhering to the path of truth, god blessed the firstborn of this family; chose him for his elect, and sent him to sustain the fallen and comfort the afflicted. 8. the divine child, to whom the name issa was given, commenced in his tender years to talk of the only and indivisible god, exhorting the strayed souls to repent and purify themselves from the sins of which they had become guilty. 9. people came from all parts to hear him, and marvelled at the discourses which came from his infantile mouth; and all israel agreed that the spirit of the eternal dwelt in this child. 10. when issa was thirteen years old, the age at which an israelite is expected to marry, 11. the modest house of his industrious parents became a meeting place of the rich and illustrious, who were anxious to have as a son-in-law the young issa, who was already celebrated for the edifying discourses he made in the name of the all-powerful. 12. then issa secretly absented himself from his father's house; left jerusalem, and, in a train of merchants, journeyed toward the sindh, 13. with the object of perfecting himself in the knowledge of the word of god and the study of the laws of the great buddhas. v. 1. in his fourteenth year, young issa, the blessed one, came this side of the sindh and settled among the aryas, in the country beloved by god. 2. fame spread the name of the marvellous youth along the northern sindh, and when he came through the country of the five streams and radjipoutan, the devotees of the god djaïne asked him to stay among them. 3. but he left the deluded worshippers of djaïne and went to djagguernat, in the country of orsis, where repose the mortal remains of vyassa-krishna, and where the white priests of brahma welcomed him joyfully. 4. they taught him to read and to understand the vedas, to cure physical ills by means of prayers, to teach and to expound the sacred scriptures, to drive out evil desires from man and make him again in the likeness of god. 5. he spent six years in djagguernat, in radjagriha, in benares, and in other holy cities. the common people loved issa, for he lived in peace with the vaisyas and the sudras, to whom he taught the holy scriptures. 6. but the brahmins and the kshatnyas told him that they were forbidden by the great para-brahma to come near to those who were created from his belly and his feet;[1] 7. that the vaisyas might only hear the recital of the vedas, and this only on the festal days, and 8. that the sudras were not only forbidden to attend the reading of the vedas, but even to look on them; for they were condemned to perpetual servitude, as slaves of the brahmins, the kshatriyas and even the vaisyas. 9. "death alone can enfranchise them from their servitude," has said para-brahma. "leave them, therefore, and come to adore with us the gods, whom you will make angry if you disobey them." 10. but issa, disregarding their words, remained with the sudras, preaching against the brahmins and the kshatriyas. 11. he declaimed strongly against man's arrogating to himself the authority to deprive his fellow-beings of their human and spiritual rights. "verily," he said, "god has made no difference between his children, who are all alike dear to him." 12. issa denied the divine inspiration of the vedas and the puranas, for, as he taught his followers,--"one law has been given to man to guide him in his actions: 13. "fear the lord, thy god; bend thy knees only before him and bring to him only the offerings which come from thy earnings." 14. issa denied the trimurti and the incarnation of para-brahma in vishnu, siva, and other gods; "for," said he: 15. "the eternal judge, the eternal spirit, constitutes the only and indivisible soul of the universe, and it is this soul alone which creates, contains and vivifies all. 16. "he alone has willed and created. he alone has existed from eternity, and his existence will be without end; there is no one like unto him either in the heavens or on the earth. 17. "the great creator has divided his power with no other being; far less with inanimate objects, as you have been taught to believe, for he alone is omnipotent and all-sufficient. 18. "he willed, and the world was. by one divine thought, he reunited the waters and separated them from the dry land of the globe. he is the cause of the mysterious life of man, into whom he has breathed part of his divine being. 19. "and he has put under subjection to man, the lands, the waters, the beasts and everything which he created, and which he himself preserves in immutable order, allotting to each its proper duration. 20. "the anger of god will soon break forth upon man; for he has forgotten his creator; he has filled his temples with abominations; and he adores a multitude of creatures which god has subordinated to him; 21. "and to gain favor with images of stone and metal, he sacrifices human beings in whom dwells part of the spirit of the most high; 22. "and he humiliates those who work in the sweat of their brows, to gain favor in the eyes of the idler who sitteth at a sumptuous table. 23. "those who deprive their brothers of divine happiness will themselves be deprived of it; and the brahmins and the kshatriyas shall become the sudras of the sudras, with whom the eternal will stay forever. 24. "in the day of judgment the sudras and the vaisyas will be forgiven for that they knew not the light, while god will let loose his wrath upon those who arrogated his authority." 25. the vaisyas and the sudras were filled with great admiration, and asked issa how they should pray, in order not to lose their hold upon eternal life. 26. "pray not to idols, for they cannot hear you; hearken not to the vedas where the truth is altered; be humble and humiliate not your fellow man. 27. "help the poor, support the weak, do evil to none; covet not that which ye have not and which belongs to others." vi. 1. the white priests and the warriors,[2] who had learned of issa's discourse to the sudras, resolved upon his death, and sent their servants to find the young teacher and slay him. 2. but issa, warned by the sudras of his danger, left by night djagguernat, gained the mountain, and settled in the country of the gautamides, where the great buddha sakya-muni came to the world, among a people who worshipped the only and sublime brahma. 3. when the just issa had acquired the pali language, he applied himself to the study of the sacred scrolls of the sutras. 4. after six years of study, issa, whom the buddha had elected to spread his holy word, could perfectly expound the sacred scrolls. 5. he then left nepaul and the himalaya mountains, descended into the valley of radjipoutan and directed his steps toward the west, everywhere preaching to the people the supreme perfection attainable by man; 6. and the good he must do to his fellow men, which is the sure means of speedy union with the eternal spirit. "he who has recovered his primitive purity," said issa, "shall die with his transgressions forgiven and have the right to contemplate the majesty of god." 7. when the divine issa traversed the territories of the pagans, he taught that the adoration of visible gods was contrary to natural law. 8. "for to man," said he, "it has not been given to see the image of god, and it behooves him not to make for himself a multitude of divinities in the imagined likeness of the eternal. 9. "moreover, it is against human conscience to have less regard for the greatness of divine purity, than for animals or works of stone or metal made by the hands of man. 10. "the eternal lawgiver is one; there are no other gods than he; he has parted the world with none, nor had he any counsellor. 11. "even as a father shows kindness toward his children, so will god judge men after death, in conformity with his merciful laws. he will never humiliate his child by casting his soul for chastisement into the body of a beast. 12. "the heavenly laws," said the creator, through the mouth of issa, "are opposed to the immolation of human sacrifices to a statue or an animal; for i, the god, have sacrificed to man all the animals and all that the world contains. 13. "everything has been sacrificed to man, who is directly and intimately united to me, his father; therefore, shall the man be severely judged and punished, by my law, who causes the sacrifice of my children. 14. "man is naught before the eternal judge; as the animal is before man. 15. "therefore, i say unto you, leave your idols and perform not ceremonies which separate you from your father and bind you to the priests, from whom heaven has turned away. 16. "for it is they who have led you away from the true god, and by superstitions and cruelty perverted the spirit and made you blind to the knowledge of the truth." vii. 1. the words of issa spread among the pagans, through whose country he passed, and the inhabitants abandoned their idols. 2. seeing which, the priests demanded of him who thus glorified the name of the true god, that he should, in the presence of the people, prove the charges he made against them, and demonstrate the vanity of their idols. 3. and issa answered them: "if your idols, or the animals you worship, really possess the supernatural powers you claim, let them strike me with a thunderbolt before you!" 4. "why dost not thou perform a miracle," replied the priests, "and let thy god confound ours, if he is greater than they?" 5. but issa said: "the miracles of our god have been wrought from the first day when the universe was created; and are performed every day and every moment; whoso sees them not is deprived of one of the most beautiful gifts of life. 6. "and it is not on inanimate objects of stone, metal or wood that he will let his anger fall, but on the men who worship them, and who, therefore, for their salvation, must destroy the idols they have made. 7. "even as a stone and a grain of sand, which are naught before man, await patiently their use by him. 8. "in like manner, man, who is naught before god, must await in resignation his pleasure for a manifestation of his favor. 9. "but woe to you! ye adversaries of men, if it is not the favor you await, but rather the wrath of the most high; woe to you, if you demand that he attest his power by a miracle! 10. "for it is not the idols which he will destroy in his wrath, but those by whom they were created; their hearts will be the prey of an eternal fire and their flesh shall be given to the beasts of prey. 11. "god will drive away the contaminated animals from his flocks; but will take to himself those who strayed because they knew not the heavenly part within them." 12. when the pagans saw that the power of their priests was naught, they put faith in the words of issa. fearing the anger of the true god, they broke their idols to pieces and caused their priests to flee from among them. 13. issa furthermore taught the pagans that they should not endeavor to see the eternal spirit with their eyes; but to perceive him with their hearts, and make themselves worthy of his favors by the purity of their souls. 14. "not only," he said to them, "must ye refrain from offering human sacrifices, but ye may not lay on the altar any creature to which life has been given, for all things created are for man. 15. "withhold not from your neighbor his just due, for this would be like stealing from him what he had earned in the sweat of his brow. 16. "deceive none, that ye may not yourselves be deceived; seek to justify yourselves before the last judgment, for then it will be too late. 17. "be not given to debauchery, for it is a violation of the law of god. 18. "that you may attain to supreme bliss ye must not only purify yourselves, but must also guide others into the path that will enable them to regain their primitive innocence." viii. 1. the countries round about were filled with the renown of issa's preachings, and when he came unto persia, the priests grew afraid and forbade the people hearing him; 2. nevertheless, the villages received him with joy, and the people hearkened intently to his words, which, being seen by the priests, caused them to order that he should be arrested and brought before their high priest, who asked him: 3. "of what new god dost thou speak? knowest thou not, unfortunate man that thou art! that saint zoroaster is the only just one, to whom alone was vouchsafed the honor of receiving revelations from the most high; 4. "by whose command the angels compiled his word in laws for the governance of his people, which were given to zoroaster in paradise? 5. "who, then, art thou, who darest to utter blasphemies against our god and sow doubt in the hearts of believers?" 6. and issa said to them: "i preach no new god, but our celestial father, who has existed before the beginning and will exist until after the end. 7. "of him i have spoken to the people, who--even as innocent children--are incapable of comprehending god by their own intelligence, or fathoming the sublimity of the divine spirit; 8. "but, as the newborn child in the night recognizes the mother's breast, so your people, held in the darkness of error by your pernicious doctrines and religious ceremonies, have recognized instinctively their father, in the father whose prophet i am. 9. "the eternal being says to your people, by my mouth, 'ye shall not adore the sun, for it is but a part of the universe which i have created for man; 10. "it rises to warm you during your work; it sets to accord to you the rest that i have ordained. 11. "to me only ye owe all that ye possess, all that surrounds you and that is above and below you.'" 12. "but," said the priests, "how could the people live according to your rules if they had no teachers?" 13. whereupon issa answered: "so long as they had no priests, they were governed by the natural law and conserved the simplicity of their souls; 14. "their souls were in god and to commune with the father they had not to have recourse to the intermediation of idols, or animals, or fire, as taught by you. 15. "ye pretend that man must adore the sun, and the genii of good and evil. but i say unto you that your doctrine is pernicious. the sun does not act spontaneously, but by the will of the invisible creator, who has given to it being." 16. "who, then, has caused that this star lights the day, warms man at his work and vivifies the seeds sown in the ground?" 17. "the eternal spirit is the soul of everything animate, and you commit a great sin in dividing him into the spirit of evil and the spirit of good, for there is no god other than the god of good. 18. "and he, like to the father of a family, does only good to his children, to whom he forgives their transgressions if they repent of them. 19. "and the spirit of evil dwells upon earth, in the hearts of those who turn the children of god away from the right path. 20. "therefore, i say unto you; fear the day of judgment, for god will inflict a terrible chastisement upon all those who have led his children astray and beguiled them with superstitions and errors; 21. "upon those who have blinded them who saw; who have brought contagion to the well; who have taught the worship of those things which god made to be subject to man, or to aid him in his works. 22. "your doctrine is the fruit of your error in seeking to bring near to you the god of truth, by creating for yourselves false gods." 23. when the magi heard these words, they feared to themselves do him harm, but at night, when the whole city slept, they brought him outside the walls and left him on the highway, in the hope that he would not fail to become the prey of wild beasts. 24. but, protected by the lord our god, saint issa continued on his way, without accident. ix. 1. issa--whom the creator had selected to recall to the worship of the true god, men sunk in sin--was twenty-nine years old when he arrived in the land of israel. 2. since the departure therefrom of issa, the pagans had caused the israelites to endure more atrocious sufferings than before, and they were filled with despair. 3. many among them had begun to neglect the laws of their god and those of mossa, in the hope of winning the favor of their brutal conquerors. 4. but issa, notwithstanding their unhappy condition, exhorted his countrymen not to despair, because the day of their redemption from the yoke of sin was near, and he himself, by his example, confirmed their faith in the god of their fathers. 5. "children, yield not yourselves to despair," said the celestial father to them, through the mouth of issa, "for i have heard your lamentations, and your cries have reached my ears. 6. "weep not, oh, my beloved sons! for your griefs have touched the heart of your father and he has forgiven you, as he forgave your ancestors. 7. "forsake not your families to plunge into debauchery; stain not the nobility of your souls; adore not idols which cannot but remain deaf to your supplications. 8. "fill my temple with your hope and your patience, and do not adjure the religion of your forefathers, for i have guided them and bestowed upon them of my beneficence. 9. "lift up those who are fallen; feed the hungry and help the sick, that ye may be altogether pure and just in the day of the last judgment which i prepare for you." 10. the israelites came in multitudes to listen to issa's words; and they asked him where they should thank their heavenly father, since their enemies had demolished their temples and robbed them of their sacred vessels. 11. issa told them that god cared not for temples erected by human hands, but that human hearts were the true temples of god. 12. "enter into your temple, into your heart; illuminate it with good thoughts, with patience and the unshakeable faith which you owe to your father. 13. "and your sacred vessels! they are your hands and your eyes. look to do that which is agreeable to god, for in doing good to your fellow men, you perform a ceremony that embellishes the temple wherein abideth him who has created you. 14. "for god has created you in his own image, innocent, with pure souls, and hearts filled with kindness and not made for the planning of evil, but to be the sanctuaries of love and justice. 15. "therefore, i say unto you, soil not your hearts with evil, for in them the eternal being abides. 16. "when ye do works of devotion and love, let them be with full hearts, and see that the motives of your actions be not hopes of gain or self-interest; 17. "for actions, so impelled, will not bring you nearer to salvation, but lead to a state of moral degradation wherein theft, lying and murder pass for generous deeds." x. 1. issa went from one city to another, strengthening by the word of god the courage of the israelites, who were near to succumbing under their weight of woe, and thousands of the people followed him to hear his teachings. 2. but the chiefs of the cities were afraid of him and they informed the principal governor, residing in jerusalem, that a man called issa had arrived in the country, who by his sermons had arrayed the people against the authorities, and that multitudes, listening assiduously to him, neglected their labor; and, they added, he said that in a short time they would be free of their invader rulers. 3. then pilate, the governor of jerusalem, gave orders that they should lay hold of the preacher issa and bring him before the judges. in order, however, not to excite the anger of the populace, pilate directed that he should be judged by the priests and scribes, the hebrew elders, in their temple. 4. meanwhile, issa, continuing his preaching, arrived at jerusalem, and the people, who already knew his fame, having learned of his coming, went out to meet him. 5. they greeted him respectfully and opened to him the doors of their temple, to hear from his mouth what he had said in other cities of israel. 6. and issa said to them: "the human race perishes, because of the lack of faith; for the darkness and the tempest have caused the flock to go astray and they have lost their shepherds. 7. "but the tempests do not rage forever and the darkness will not hide the light eternally; soon the sky will become serene, the celestial light will again overspread the earth, and the strayed flock will reunite around their shepherd. 8. "wander not in the darkness, seeking the way, lest ye fall into the ditch; but gather together, sustain one another, put your faith in your god and wait for the first glimmer of light to reappear. 9. "he who sustains his neighbor, sustains himself; and he who protects his family, protects all his people and his country. 10. "for, be assured that the day is near when you will be delivered from the darkness; you will be reunited into one family and your enemy will tremble with fear, he who is ignorant of the favor of the great god." 11. the priests and the elders who heard him, filled with admiration for his language, asked him if it was true that he had sought to raise the people against the authorities of the country, as had been reported to the governor pilate. 12. "can one raise against estrayed men, to whom darkness has hidden their road and their door?" answered issa. "i have but forewarned the unhappy, as i do here in this temple, that they should no longer advance on the dark road, for an abyss opens before their feet. 13. "the power of this earth is not of long duration and is subject to numberless changes. it would be of no avail for a man to rise in revolution against it, for one phase of it always succeeds another, and it is thus that it will go on until the extinction of human life. 14. "but do you not see that the powerful, and the rich, sow among the children of israel a spirit of rebellion against the eternal power of heaven?" 15. then the elders asked him: "who art thou, and from what country hast thou come to us? we have not formerly heard thee spoken of and do not even know thy name!" 16. "i am an israelite," answered issa; "and on the day of my birth have seen the walls of jerusalem, and have heard the sobs of my brothers reduced to slavery, and the lamentations of my sisters carried away by the pagans; 17. "and my soul was afflicted when i saw that my brethren had forgotten the true god. when a child i left my father's house to go and settle among other people. 18. "but, having heard it said that my brethren suffered even greater miseries now, i have come back to the land of my fathers, to recall my brethren to the faith of their ancestors, which teaches us patience upon earth in order to attain the perfect and supreme bliss above." 19. then the wise old men put to him again this question: "we are told that thou disownest the laws of mossa, and that thou teachest the people to forsake the temple of god?" 20. whereupon issa: "one does not demolish that which has been given by our heavenly father, and which has been destroyed by sinners. i have but enjoined the people to purify the heart of all stains, for it is the veritable temple of god. 21. "as regards the laws of mossa, i have endeavored to reestablish them in the hearts of men; and i say unto you that ye ignore their true meaning, for it is not vengeance but pardon which they teach. their sense has been perverted." xi. 1. when the priests and the elders heard issa, they decided among themselves not to give judgment against him, for he had done no harm to any one, and, presenting themselves before pilate--who was made governor of jerusalem by the pagan king of the country of romeles--they spake to him thus: 2. "we have seen the man whom thou chargest with inciting our people to revolt; we have heard his discourses and know that he is our countryman; 3. "but the chiefs of the cities have made to you false reports, for he is a just man, who teaches the people the word of god. after interrogating him, we have allowed him to go in peace." 4. the governor thereupon became very angry, and sent his disguised spies to keep watch upon issa and report to the authorities the least word he addressed to the people. 5. in the meantime, the holy issa continued to visit the neighboring cities and preach the true way of the lord, enjoining the hebrews' patience and promising them speedy deliverance. 6. and all the time great numbers of the people followed him wherever he went, and many did not leave him at all, but attached themselves to him and served him. 7. and issa said: "put not your faith in miracles performed by the hands of men, for he who rules nature is alone capable of doing supernatural things, while man is impotent to arrest the wrath of the winds or cause the rain to fall. 8. "one miracle, however, is within the power of man to accomplish. it is, when his heart is filled with sincere faith, he resolves to root out from his mind all evil promptings and desires, and when, in order to attain this end, he ceases to walk the path of iniquity. 9. "all the things done without god are only gross errors, illusions and seductions, serving but to show how much the heart of the doer is full of presumption, falsehood and impurity. 10. "put not your faith in oracles. god alone knows the future. he who has recourse to the diviners soils the temple of his heart and shows his lack of faith in his creator. 11. "belief in the diviners and their miracles destroys the innate simplicity of man and his childlike purity. an infernal power takes hold of him who so errs, and forces him to commit various sins and give himself to the worship of idols. 12. "but the lord our god, to whom none can be equalled, is one omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent; he alone possesses all wisdom and all light. 13. "to him ye must address yourselves, to be comforted in your afflictions, aided in your works, healed in your sickness and whoso asks of him, shall not ask in vain. 14. "the secrets of nature are in the hands of god, for the whole world, before it was made manifest, existed in the bosom of the divine thought, and has become material and visible by the will of the most high. 15. "when ye pray to him, become again like little children, for ye know neither the past, nor the present, nor the future, and god is the lord of time." xii. 1. "just man," said to him the disguised spies of the governor of jerusalem, "tell us if we must continue to do the will of cæsar, or expect our near deliverance?" 2. and issa, who recognized the questioners as the apostate spies sent to follow him, replied to them: "i have not told you that you would be delivered from cæsar; it is the soul sunk in error which will gain its deliverance. 3. "there cannot be a family without a head, and there cannot be order in a people without a cæsar, whom ye should implicitly obey, as he will be held to answer for his acts before the supreme tribunal." 4. "does cæsar possess a divine right?" the spies asked him again; "and is he the best of mortals?" 5. "there is no one 'the best' among human beings; but there are many bad, who--even as the sick need physicians--require the care of those chosen for that mission, in which must be used the means given by the sacred law of our heavenly father; 6. "mercy and justice are the high prerogatives of cæsar, and his name will be illustrious if he exercises them. 7. "but he who acts otherwise, who transcends the limits of power he has over those under his rule, and even goes so far as to put their lives in danger, offends the great judge and derogates from his own dignity in the eyes of men." 8. upon this, an old woman who had approached the group, to better hear issa, was pushed aside by one of the disguised men, who placed himself before her. 9. then said issa: "it is not good for a son to push away his mother, that he may occupy the place which belongs to her. whoso doth not respect his mother--the most sacred being after his god--is unworthy of the name of son. 10. "hearken to what i say to you: respect woman; for in her we see the mother of the universe, and all the truth of divine creation is to come through her. 11. "she is the fount of everything good and beautiful, as she is also the germ of life and death. upon her man depends in all his existence, for she is his moral and natural support in his labors. 12. "in pain and suffering she brings you forth; in the sweat of her brow she watches over your growth, and until her death you cause her greatest anxieties. bless her and adore her, for she is your only friend and support on earth. 13. "respect her; defend her. in so doing you will gain for yourself her love; you will find favor before god, and for her sake many sins will be remitted to you. 14. "love your wives and respect them, for they will be the mothers of tomorrow and later the grandmothers of a whole nation. 15. "be submissive to the wife; her love ennobles man, softens his hardened heart, tames the wild beast in him and changes it to a lamb. 16. "wife and mother are the priceless treasures which god has given to you. they are the most beautiful ornaments of the universe, and from them will be born all who will inhabit the world. 17. "even as the lord of hosts separated the light from the darkness, and the dry land from the waters, so does woman possess the divine gift of calling forth out of man's evil nature all the good that is in him. 18. "therefore i say unto you, after god, to woman must belong your best thoughts, for she is the divine temple where you will most easily obtain perfect happiness. 19. "draw from this temple your moral force. there you will forget your sorrows and your failures, and recover the love necessary to aid your fellow men. 20. "suffer her not to be humiliated, for by humiliating her you humiliate yourselves, and lose the sentiment of love, without which nothing can exist here on earth. 21. "protect your wife, that she may protect you--you and all your household. all that you do for your mothers, your wives, for a widow, or for any other woman in distress, you will do for your god." xiii. 1. thus saint issa taught the people of israel for three years, in every city and every village, on the highways and in the fields, and all he said came to pass. 2. all this time the disguised spies of the governor pilate observed him closely, but heard nothing to sustain the accusations formerly made against issa by the chiefs of the cities. 3. but saint issa's growing popularity did not allow pilate to rest. he feared that issa would be instrumental in bringing about a revolution culminating in his elevation to the sovereignty, and, therefore, ordered the spies to make charges against him. 4. then soldiers were sent to arrest him, and they cast him into a subterranean dungeon, where he was subjected to all kinds of tortures, to compel him to accuse himself, so that he might be put to death. 5. the saint, thinking only of the perfect bliss of his brethren, endured all those torments with resignation to the will of the creator. 6. the servants of pilate continued to torture him, and he was reduced to a state of extreme weakness; but god was with him and did not permit him to die at their hands. 7. when the principal priests and wise elders learned of the sufferings which their saint endured, they went to pilate, begging him to liberate issa, so that he might attend the great festival which was near at hand. 8. but this the governor refused. then they asked him that issa should be brought before the elders' council, so that he might be condemned, or acquitted, before the festival, and to this pilate agreed. 9. on the following day the governor assembled the principal chiefs, priests, elders and judges, for the purpose of judging issa. 10. the saint was brought from his prison. they made him sit before the governor, between two robbers, who were to be judged at the same time with issa, so as to show the people he was not the only one to be condemned. 11. and pilate, addressing himself to issa, said, "is it true, oh! man; that thou incitest the populace against the authorities, with the purpose of thyself becoming king of israel?" 12. issa replied, "one does not become king by one's own purpose thereto. they have told you an untruth when you were informed that i was inciting the people to revolution. i have only preached of the king of heaven, and it was him whom i told the people to worship. 13. "for the sons of israel have lost their original innocence and unless they return to worship the true god they will be sacrificed and their temple will fall in ruins. 14. "the worldly power upholds order in the land; i told them not to forget this. i said to them, 'live in conformity with your situation and refrain from disturbing public order;' and, at the same time, i exhorted them to remember that disorder reigned in their own hearts and spirits. 15. "therefore, the king of heaven has punished them, and has destroyed their nationality and taken from them their national kings, 'but,' i added, 'if you will be resigned to your fate, as a reward the kingdom of heaven will be yours.'" 16. at this moment the witnesses were introduced; one of whom deposed thus: "thou hast said to the people that in comparison with the power of the king who would soon liberate the israelites from the yoke of the heathen, the worldly authorities amounted to nothing." 17. "blessings upon thee!" said issa. "for thou hast spoken the truth! the king of heaven is greater and more powerful than the laws of man and his kingdom surpasses the kingdoms of this earth. 18. "and the time is not far off, when israel, obedient to the will of god, will throw off its yoke of sin; for it has been written that a forerunner would appear to announce the deliverance of the people, and that he would reunite them in one family." 19. thereupon the governor said to the judges: "have you heard this? the israelite issa acknowledges the crime of which he is accused. judge him, then, according to your laws and pass upon him condemnation to death." 20. "we cannot condemn him," replied the priests and the ancients. "as thou hast heard, he spoke of the king of heaven, and he has preached nothing which constitutes insubordination against the law." 21. thereupon the governor called a witness who had been bribed by his master, pilate, to betray issa, and this man said to issa: "is it not true that thou hast represented thyself as a king of israel, when thou didst say that he who reigns in heaven sent thee to prepare his people?" 22. but issa blessed the man and answered: "thou wilt find mercy, for what thou hast said did not come out from thine own heart." then, turning to the governor he said: "why dost thou lower thy dignity and teach thy inferiors to tell falsehood, when, without doing so, it is in thy power to condemn an innocent man?" 23. when pilate heard his words, he became greatly enraged and ordered that issa be condemned to death, and that the two robbers should be declared guiltless. 24. the judges, after consulting among themselves, said to pilate: "we cannot consent to take this great sin upon us,--to condemn an innocent man and liberate malefactors. it would be against our laws. 25. "act thyself, then, as thou seest fit." thereupon the priests and elders walked out, and washed their hands in a sacred vessel, and said: "we are innocent of the blood of this righteous man." xiv. 1. by order of the governor, the soldiers seized issa and the two robbers, and led them to the place of execution, where they were nailed upon the crosses erected for them. 2. all day long the bodies of issa and the two robbers hung upon the crosses, bleeding, guarded by the soldiers. the people stood all around and the relatives of the executed prayed and wept. 3. when the sun went down, issa's tortures ended. he lost consciousness and his soul disengaged itself from the body, to reunite with god. 4. thus ended the terrestrial existence of the reflection of the eternal spirit under the form of a man who had saved hardened sinners and comforted the afflicted. 5. meanwhile, pilate was afraid for what he had done, and ordered the body of the saint to be given to his relatives, who put it in a tomb near to the place of execution. great numbers of persons came to visit the tomb, and the air was filled with their wailings and lamentations. 6. three days later, the governor sent his soldiers to remove issa's body and bury it in some other place, for he feared a rebellion among the people. 7. the next day, when the people came to the tomb, they found it open and empty, the body of issa being gone. thereupon, the rumor spread that the supreme judge had sent his angels from heaven, to remove the mortal remains of the saint in whom part of the divine spirit had lived on earth. 8. when pilate learned of this rumor, he grew angry and prohibited, under penalty of death, the naming of issa, or praying for him to the lord. 9. but the people, nevertheless, continued to weep over issa's death and to glorify their master; wherefore, many were carried into captivity, subjected to torture and put to death. 10. and the disciples of saint issa departed from the land of israel and went in all directions, to the heathen, preaching that they should abandon their gross errors, think of the salvation of their souls and earn the perfect bliss which awaits human beings in the immaterial world, full of glory, where the great creator abides in all his immaculate and perfect majesty. 11. the heathen, their kings, and their warriors, listened to the preachers, abandoned their erroneous beliefs and forsook their priests and their idols, to celebrate the praises of the most wise creator of the universe, the king of kings, whose heart is filled with infinite mercy. _resumé_ in reading the account of the life of issa (jesus christ), one is struck, on the one hand by the resemblance of certain principal passages to accounts in the old and new testaments; and, on the other, by the not less remarkable contradictions which occasionally occur between the buddhistic version and hebraic and christian records. to explain this, it is necessary to remember the epochs when the facts were consigned to writing. we have been taught, from our childhood, that the pentateuch was written by moses himself, but the careful researches of modern scholars have demonstrated conclusively, that at the time of moses, and even much later, there existed in the country bathed by the mediterranean, no other writing than the hieroglyphics in egypt and the cuniform inscriptions, found nowadays in the excavations of babylon. we know, however, that the alphabet and parchment were known in china and india long before moses. let me cite a few proofs of this statement. we learn from the sacred books of "the religion of the wise" that the alphabet was invented in china in 2800 by fou-si, who was the first emperor of china to embrace this religion, the ritual and exterior forms of which he himself arranged. yao, the fourth of the chinese emperors, who is said to have belonged to this faith, published moral and civil laws, and, in 2228, compiled a penal code. the fifth emperor, soune, proclaimed in the year of his accession to the throne that "the religion of the wise" should thenceforth be the recognized religion of the state, and, in 2282, compiled new penal laws. his laws, modified by the emperor vou-vange,--founder of the dynasty of the tcheou in 1122,--are those in existence today, and known under the name of "changements." we also know that the doctrine of the buddha fô, whose true name was sakya-muni was written upon parchment. fôism began to spread in china about 260 years before jesus christ. in 206, an emperor of the tsine dynasty, who was anxious to learn buddhism, sent to india for a buddhist by the name of silifan, and the emperor ming-ti, of the hagne dynasty, sent, a year before christ's birth, to india for the sacred books written by the buddha sakya-muni--the founder of the buddhistic doctrine, who lived about 1200 before christ. the doctrine of the buddha gauthama or gothama, who lived 600 years before jesus christ, was written in the pali language upon parchment. at that epoch there existed already in india about 84,000 buddhistic manuscripts, the compilation of which required a considerable number of years. at the time when the chinese and the hindus possessed already a very rich written literature, the less fortunate or more ignorant peoples who had no alphabet, transmitted their histories from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation. owing to the unreliability of human memory, historical facts, embellished by oriental imagination, soon degenerated into fabulous legends, which, in the course of time, were collected, and by the unknown compilers entitled "the five books of moses." as these legends ascribe to the hebrew legislator extraordinary divine powers which enabled him to perform miracles in the presence of pharaoh, the claim that he was an israelite may as well have been legendary rather than historical. the hindu chroniclers, on the contrary, owing to their knowledge of an alphabet, were enabled to commit carefully to writing, not mere legends, but the recitals of recently occurred facts within their own knowledge, or the accounts brought to them by merchants who came from foreign countries. it must be remembered, in this connection, that--in antiquity as in our own days--the whole public life of the orient was concentrated in the bazaars. there the news of foreign events was brought by the merchant-caravans and sought by the dervishes, who found, in their recitals in the temples and public places, a means of subsistence. when the merchants returned home from a journey, they generally related fully during the first days after their arrival, all they had seen or heard abroad. such have been the customs of the orient, from time immemorial, and are today. the commerce of india with egypt and, later, with europe, was carried on by way of jerusalem, where, as far back as the time of king solomon, the hindu caravans brought precious metals and other materials for the construction of the temple. from europe, merchandise was brought to jerusalem by sea, and there unloaded in a port, which is now occupied by the city of jaffa. the chronicles in question were compiled before, during and after the time of jesus christ. during his sojourn in india, in the quality of a simple student come to learn the brahminical and buddhistic laws, no special attention whatever was paid to his life. when, however, a little later, the first accounts of the events in israel reached india, the chroniclers, after committing to writing that which they were told about the prophet, issa,--_viz._, that he had for his following a whole people, weary of the yoke of their masters, and that he was crucified by order of pilate, remembered that this same issa had only recently sojourned in their midst, and that, an israelite by birth, he had come to study among them, after which he had returned to his country. they conceived a lively interest for the man who had grown so rapidly under their eyes, and began to investigate his birth, his past and all the details concerning his existence. the two manuscripts, from which the lama of the convent himis read to me all that had a bearing upon jesus, are compilations from divers copies written in the thibetan language, translations of scrolls belonging to the library of lhassa and brought, about two hundred years after christ, from india, nepaul and maghada, to a convent on mount marbour, near the city of lhassa, now the residence of the dalai-lama. these scrolls were written in pali, which certain lamas study even now, so as to be able to translate it into the thibetan. the chroniclers were buddhists belonging to the sect of the buddha gothama. the details concerning jesus, given in the chronicles, are disconnected and mingled with accounts of other contemporaneous events to which they bear no relation. the manuscripts relate to us, first of all,--according to the accounts given by merchants arriving from judea in the same year when the death of jesus occurred--that a just man by the name of issa, an israelite, in spite of his being acquitted twice by the judges as being a man of god, was nevertheless put to death by the order of the pagan governor, pilate, who feared that he might take advantage of his great popularity to reestablish the kingdom of israel and expel from the country its conquerors. then follow rather incoherent communications regarding the preachings of jesus among the guebers and other heathens. they seem to have been written during the first years following the death of jesus, in whose career a lively and growing interest is shown. one of these accounts, communicated by a merchant, refers to the origin of jesus and his family; another tells of the expulsion of his partisans and the persecutions they had to suffer. only at the end of the second volume is found the first categorical affirmation of the chronicler. he says there that issa was a man blessed by god and the best of all; that it was he in whom the great brahma had elected to incarnate when, at a period fixed by destiny, his spirit was required to, for a time, separate from the supreme being. after telling that issa descended from poor israelite parents, the chronicler makes a little digression, for the purpose of explaining, according to ancient accounts, who were those sons of israel. i have arranged all the fragments concerning the life of issa in chronological order and have taken pains to impress upon them the character of unity, in which they were absolutely lacking. i leave it to the _savans_, the philosophers and the theologians to search into the causes for the contradictions which may be found between the "life of issa" which i lay before the public and the accounts of the gospels. but i trust that everybody will agree with me in assuming that the version which i present to the public, one compiled three or four years after the death of jesus, from the accounts of eyewitnesses and contemporaries, has much more probability of being in conformity with truth than the accounts of the gospels, the composition of which was effected at different epochs and at periods much posterior to the occurrence of the events. before speaking of the life of jesus, i must say a few words on the history of moses, who, according to the so-far most accredited legend, was an israelite. in this respect the legend is contradicted by the buddhists. we learn from the outset that moses was an egyptian prince, the son of a pharaoh, and that he only was taught by learned israelites. i believe that if this important point is carefully examined, it must be admitted that the buddhist author may be right. it is not my intent to argue against the biblical legend concerning the origin of moses, but i think everyone reading it must share my conviction that moses could not have been a simple israelite. his education was rather that of a king's son, and it is difficult to believe that a child introduced by chance into the palace should have been made an equal with the son of the sovereign. the rigor with which the egyptians treated their slaves by no means attests the mildness of their character. a foundling certainly would not have been made the companion of the sons of a pharaoh, but would be placed among his servants. add to this the caste spirit so strictly observed in ancient egypt, a most salient point, which is certainly calculated to raise doubts as to the truth of the scriptural story. and it is difficult to suppose that moses had not received a complete education. how otherwise could his great legislative work, his broad views, his high administrative qualities be satisfactorily explained? and now comes another question: why should he, a prince, have attached himself to the israelites? the answer seems to me very simple. it is known that in ancient, as well as in modern times, discussions were often raised as to which of two brothers should succeed to the father's throne. why not admit this hypothesis, _viz._, that mossa, or moses, having an elder brother whose existence forbade him to think of occupying the throne of egypt, contemplated founding a distinct kingdom. it might very well be that, in view of this end, he tried to attach himself to the israelites, whose firmness of faith as well as physical strength he had occasion to admire. we know, indeed, that the israelites of egypt had no resemblance whatever to their descendants as regards physical constitution. the granite blocks which were handled by them in building the palaces and pyramids are still in place to testify to this fact. in the same way i explain to myself the history of the miracles which he is said to have performed before pharaoh. although there are no definite arguments for denying the miracles which moses might have performed in the name of god before pharaoh, i think it is not difficult to realize that the buddhistic statement sounds more probable than the scriptural gloss. the pestilence, the smallpox or the cholera must, indeed, have caused enormous ravages among the dense population of egypt, at an epoch when there existed yet but very rudimentary ideas about hygiene and where, consequently, such diseases must have rapidly assumed frightful virulence. in view of pharaoh's fright at the disasters which befell egypt, moses' keen wit might well have suggested to him to explain the strange and terrifying occurrences, to his father, by the intervention of the god of israel in behalf of his chosen people. moses was here afforded an excellent opportunity to deliver the israelites from their slavery and have them pass under his own domination. in obedience to pharaoh's will--according to the buddhistic version--moses led the israelites outside the walls of the city; but, instead of building a new city within reach of the capital, as he was ordered, he left with them the egyptian territory. pharaoh's indignation on learning of this infringement of his commands by moses, can easily be imagined. and so he gave the order to his soldiers to pursue the fugitives. the geographical disposition of the region suggests at once that moses during his flight must have moved by the side of the mountains and entered arabia by the way over the isthmus which is now cut by the suez canal. pharaoh, on the contrary, pursued, with his troops, a straight line to the red sea; then, in order to overtake the israelites, who had already gained the opposite shore, he sought to take advantage of the ebb of the sea in the gulf, which is formed by the coast and the isthmus, and caused his soldiers to wade through the ford. but the length of the passage proved much greater than he had expected; so that the flood tide set in when the egyptian host was halfway across, and, of the army thus overwhelmed by the returning waves, none escaped death. this fact, so simple in itself, has in the course of the centuries been transformed by the israelites into a religious legend, they seeing in it a divine intervention in their behalf and a punishment which their god inflicted on their persecutors. there is, moreover, reason to believe that moses himself saw the occurrence in this light. this, however, is a thesis which i shall try to develop in a forthcoming work. the buddhistic chronicle then describes the grandeur and the downfall of the kingdom of israel, and its conquest by the foreign nations who reduced the inhabitants to slavery. the calamities which befell the israelites, and the afflictions that thenceforth embittered their days were, according to the chronicler, more than sufficient reasons that god, pitying his people and desirous of coming to their aid, should descend on earth in the person of a prophet, in order to lead them back to the path of righteousness. thus the state of things in that epoch justified the belief that the coming of jesus was signalized, imminent, necessary. this explains why the buddhistic traditions could maintain that the eternal spirit separated from the eternal being and incarnated in the child of a pious and once illustrious family. doubtless the buddhists, in common with the evangelists, meant to convey by this that the child belonged to the royal house of david; but the text in the gospels, according to which "the child was born from the holy spirit," admits of two interpretations, while according to buddha's doctrine, which is more in conformity with the laws of nature, the spirit has but incarnated in a child already born, whom god blessed and chose for the accomplishment of his mission on earth. the birth of jesus is followed by a long gap in the traditions of the evangelists, who either from ignorance or neglect, fail to tell us anything definite about his childhood, youth or education. they commence the history of jesus with his first sermon, _i.e._, at the epoch, when thirty years of age, he returns to his country. all the evangelists tell us concerning the infancy of jesus is marked by the lack of precision: "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of god was upon him," says one of the sacred authors (luke 2, 40), and another: "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto israel." (luke 1, 80.) as the evangelists compiled their writings a long time after the death of jesus, it is presumable that they committed to writing only those accounts of the principal events in the life of jesus which happened to come to their knowledge. the buddhists, on the contrary, who compiled their chronicles soon after the passion occurred, and were able to collect the surest information about everything that interested them, give us a complete and very detailed description of the life of jesus. in those unhappy times, when the struggle for existence seems to have destroyed all thought of god, the people of israel suffered the double oppression of the ambitious herod and the despotic and avaricious romans. then, as now, the hebrews put all their hopes in providence, whom they expected, would send them an inspired man, who should deliver them from all their physical and moral afflictions. the time passed, however, and no one took the initiative in a revolt against the tyranny of the rulers. in that era of hope and despair, the people of israel completely forgot that there lived among them a poor israelite who was a direct descendant from their king david. this poor man married a young girl who gave birth to a miraculous child. the hebrews, true to their traditions of devotion and respect for the race of their kings, upon learning of this event went in great numbers to congratulate the happy father and see the child. it is evident that herod was informed of this occurrence. he feared that this infant, once grown to manhood, might avail himself of his prospective popularity to reconquer the throne of his ancestors. he sent out his men to seize the child, which the israelites endeavored to hide from the wrath of the king, who then ordered the abominable massacre of the children, hoping that jesus would perish in this vast human hecatomb. but joseph's family had warning of the impending danger, and took refuge in egypt. a short time afterward, they returned to their native country. the child had grown during those journeyings, in which his life was more than once exposed to danger. formerly, as now, the oriental israelites commenced the instruction of their children at the age of five or six years. compelled to constantly hide him from the murderous king herod, the parents of jesus could not allow their son to go out, and he, no doubt, spent all his time in studying the sacred scriptures, so that his knowledge was sufficiently beyond what would naturally have been expected of a boy of his age to greatly astonish the elders of israel. he had in his thirteenth year attained an age when, according to jewish law, the boy becomes an adult, has the right to marry, and incurs obligations for the discharge of the religious duties of a man. there exists still, in our times, among the israelites, an ancient religious custom that fixes the majority of a youth at the accomplished thirteenth year. from this epoch the youth becomes a member of the congregation and enjoys all the rights of an adult. hence, his marriage at this age is regarded as having legal force, and is even required in the tropical countries. in europe, however, owing to the influence of local laws and to nature, which does not contribute here so powerfully as in warm climates to the physical development, this custom is no more in force and has lost all its former importance. the royal lineage of jesus, his rare intelligence and his learning, caused him to be looked upon as an excellent match, and the wealthiest and most respected hebrews would fain have had him for a son-in-law, just as even nowadays the israelites are very desirous of the honor of marrying their daughters to the sons of rabbis or scholars. but the meditative youth, whose mind was far above anything corporeal, and possessed by the thirst for knowledge, stealthily left his home and joined the caravans going to india. it stands to reason that jesus christ should have thought, primarily, of going to india, first, because at that epoch egypt formed part of the roman possessions; secondly, and principally, because a very active commercial exchange with india had made common report in judea of the majestic character and unsurpassed richness of the arts and sciences in this marvellous country, to which even now the aspirations of all civilized peoples are directed. here the evangelists once more lose the thread of the terrestrial life of jesus. luke says he "was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto israel" (luke 1, 80), which clearly demonstrates that nobody knew where the holy youth was until his sudden reappearance sixteen years later. arrived in india, this land of marvels, jesus began to frequent the temples of the djainites. there exists until today, on the peninsula of hindustan, a sectarian cult under the name of djainism. it forms a kind of connecting link between buddhism and brahminism, and preaches the destruction of all other beliefs, which, it declares, are corroded by falsehood. it dates from the seventh century before jesus christ and its name is derived from the word "djain" (conqueror), which was assumed by its founders as expressive of its destined triumph over its rivals. in sympathetic admiration for the spirit of the young man, the djainites asked him to stay with them; but jesus left them to settle in djagguernat, where he devoted himself to the study of treatises on religion, philosophy, etc. djagguernat is one of the chief sacred cities of brahmins, and, at the time of christ, was of great religious importance. according to tradition, the ashes of the illustrious brahmin, krishna, who lived in 1580 b.c., are preserved there, in the hollow of a tree, near a magnificent temple, to which thousands make pilgrimage every year. krishna collected and put in order the vedas, which he divided into four books--richt, jagour, saman and artafan;--in commemoration of which great work he received the name of vyasa (he who collected and divided the vedas), and he also compiled the vedanta and eighteen puranas, which contain 400,000 stanzas. in djagguernat is also found a very precious library of sanscrit books and religious manuscripts. jesus spent there six years in studying the language of the country and the sanscrit, which enabled him to absorb the religious doctrines, philosophy, medicine and mathematics. he found much to blame in brahminical laws and usages, and publicly joined issue with the brahmins, who in vain endeavored to convince him of the sacred character of their established customs. jesus, among other things, deemed it extremely unjust that the laborer should be oppressed and despised, and that he should not only be robbed of hope of future happiness, but also be denied the right to hear the religious services. he, therefore, began preaching to the sudras, the lowest caste of slaves, telling them that, according to their own laws, god is the father of all men; that all which exists, exists only through him; that, before him, all men are equal, and that the brahmins had obscured the great principle of monotheism by misinterpreting brahma's own words, and laying excessive stress upon observance of the exterior ceremonials of the cult. here are the words in which, according to the doctrine of the brahmins, god himself speaks to the angels: "i have been from eternity, and shall continue to be eternally. i am the first cause of everything that exists in the east and in the west, in the north and in the south, above and below, in heaven and in hell. i am older than all things. i am the spirit and the creation of the universe and also its creator. i am all-powerful; i am the god of the gods, the king of the kings; i am para-brahma, the great soul of the universe." after the world appeared by the will of para-brahma, god created human beings, whom he divided into four classes, according to their colors: white (brahmins), red (kshatriyas), yellow (vaisyas), and black (sudras). brahma drew the first from his own mouth, and gave them for their _appanage_ the government of the world, the care of teaching men the laws, of curing and judging them. therefore do the brahmins occupy only the offices of priests and preachers, are expounders of the vedas, and must practice celibacy. the second caste of kshatriyas issued from the hand of brahma. he made of them warriors, entrusting them with the care of defending society. all the kings, princes, captains, governors and military men belong to this caste, which lives on the best terms with the brahmins, since they cannot subsist without each other, and the peace of the country depends on the alliance of the lights and the sword, of brahma's temple and the royal throne. the vaisyas, who constitute the third caste, issued from brahma's belly. they are destined to cultivate the ground, raise cattle, carry on commerce and practice all kinds of trades in order to feed the brahmins and the kshatriyas. only on holidays are they authorized to enter the temple and listen to the recital of the vedas; at all other times they must attend to their business. the lowest caste, that of the black ones, or sudras, issued from the feet of brahma to be the humble servants and slaves of the three preceding castes. they are interdicted from attending the reading of the vedas at any time; their touch contaminates a brahmin, kshatriya, or even a vaisya who comes in contact with them. they are wretched creatures, deprived of all human rights; they cannot even look at the members of the other castes, nor defend themselves, nor, when sick, receive the attendance of a physician. death alone can deliver the sudra from a life of servitude; and even then, freedom can only be attained under the condition that, during his whole life, he shall have served diligently and without complaint some member of the privileged classes. then only it is promised that the soul of the sudra shall, after death, be raised to a superior caste. if a sudra has been lacking in obedience to a member of the privileged classes, or has in any way brought their disfavor upon himself, he sinks to the rank of a pariah, who is banished from all cities and villages and is the object of general contempt, as an abject being who can only perform the lowest kind of work. the same punishment may also fall upon members of another caste; these, however, may, through repentance, fasting and other trials, rehabilitate themselves in their former caste; while the unfortunate sudra, once expelled from his, has lost it forever. from what has been said above, it is easy to explain why the vaisyas and sudras were animated with adoration for jesus, who, in spite of the threats of the brahmins and kshatriyas, never forsook those poor people. in his sermons jesus not only censured the system by which man was robbed of his right to be considered as a human being, while an ape or a piece of marble or metal was paid divine worship, but he attacked the very life of brahminism, its system of gods, its doctrine and its "trimurti" (trinity), the angular stone of this religion. para-brahma is represented with three faces on a single head. this is the "trimurti" (trinity), composed of brahma (creator), vishnu (conservator), and siva (destroyer). here is the origin of the trimurti:-in the beginning, para-brahma created the waters and threw into them the seed of procreation, which transformed itself into a brilliant egg, wherein brahma's image was reflected. millions of years had passed when brahma split the egg in two halves, of which the upper one became the heaven, the lower one, the earth. then brahma descended to the earth under the shape of a child, established himself upon a lotus flower, absorbed himself in his own contemplation and put to himself the question: "who will attend to the conservation of what i have created?" "i," came the answer from his mouth under the appearance of a flame. and brahma gave to this word the name, "vishnu," that is to say, "he who preserves." then brahma divided his being into two halves, the one male, the other female, the active and the passive principles, the union of which produced siva, "the destroyer." these are the attributes of the trimurti; brahma, creative principle; vishnu, preservative wisdom; siva, destructive wrath of justice. brahma is the substance from which everything was made; vishnu, space wherein everything lives; and siva, time that annihilates all things. brahma is the face which vivifies all; vishnu, the water which sustains the forces of the creatures; siva, the fire which breaks the bond that unites all objects. brahma is the past; vishnu, the present; siva, the future. each part of the trimurti possesses, moreover, a wife. the wife of brahma is sarasvati, goddess of wisdom; that of vishnu, lakshmi, goddess of virtue, and siva's spouse is kali, goddess of death, the universal destroyer. of this last union were born, ganesa, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and indra, the god of the firmament, both chiefs of inferior divinities, the number of which, if all the objects of adoration of the hindus be included, amounts to three hundred millions. vishnu has descended eight times upon the earth, incarnating in a fish in order to save the vedas from the deluge, in a tortoise, a dwarf, a wild boar, a lion, in rama, a king's son, in krishna and in buddha. he will come a ninth time under the form of a rider mounted on a white horse in order to destroy death and sin. jesus denied the existence of all these hierarchic absurdities of gods, which darken the great principle of monotheism. when the brahmins saw that jesus, who, instead of becoming one of their party, as they had hoped, turned out to be their adversary, and that the people began to embrace his doctrine, they resolved to kill him; but his servants, who were greatly attached to him, forewarned him of the threatening danger, and he took refuge in the mountains of nepaul. at this epoch, buddhism had taken deep root in this country. it was a kind of schism, remarkable by its moral principles and ideas on the nature of the divinity--ideas which brought men closer to nature and to one another. sakya-muni, the founder of this sect, was born fifteen hundred years before jesus christ, at kapila, the capital of his father's kingdom, near nepaul, in the himalayas. he belonged to the race of the gotamides, and to the ancient family of the sakyas. from his infancy he evinced a lively interest in religion, and, contrary to his father's wishes, leaving his palace with all its luxury, began at once to preach against the brahmins, for the purification of their doctrines. he died at kouçinagara, surrounded by many faithful disciples. his body was burned, and his ashes, divided into several parts, were distributed between the cities, which, on account of his new doctrine, had renounced brahminism. according to the buddhistic doctrine, the creator reposes normally in a state of perfect inaction, which is disturbed by nothing and which he only leaves at certain destiny-determined epochs, in order to create terrestrial buddhas. to this end the spirit disengages itself from the sovereign creator, incarnates in a buddha and stays for some time on the earth, where he creates bodhisattvas (masters),[3] whose mission it is to preach the divine word and to found new churches of believers to whom they will give laws, and for whom they will institute a new religious order according to the traditions of buddhism. a terrestrial buddha is, in a certain way, a reflection of the sovereign creative buddha, with whom he unites after the termination of his terrestrial existence. in like manner do the bodhisattvas, as a reward for their labors and the privations they undergo, receive eternal bliss and enjoy a rest which nothing can disturb. jesus sojourned six years among the buddhists, where he found the principle of monotheism still pure. arrived at the age of twenty-six years, he remembered his fatherland, which was then oppressed by a foreign yoke. on his way homeward, he preached against idol worship, human sacrifice, and other errors of faith, admonishing the people to recognize and adore god, the father of all beings, to whom all are alike dear, the master as well as the slave; for they all are his children, to whom he has given this beautiful universe for a common heritage. the sermons of jesus often made a profound impression upon the peoples among whom he came, and he was exposed to all sorts of dangers provoked by the clergy, but was saved by the very idolators who, only the preceding day, had offered their children as sacrifices to their idols. while passing through persia, jesus almost caused a revolution among the adorers of zoroaster's doctrine. nevertheless, the priests refrained from killing him, out of fear of the people's vengeance. they resorted to artifice, and led him out of town at night, with the hope that he might be devoured by wild beasts. jesus escaped this peril and arrived safe and sound in the country of israel. it must be remarked here that the orientals, amidst their sometimes so picturesque misery, and in the ocean of depravation in which they slumber, always have, under the influence of their priests and teachers, a pronounced inclination for learning and understand easily good common sense explications. it happened to me more than once that, by using simple words of truth, i appealed to the conscience of a thief or some otherwise intractable person. these people, moved by a sentiment of innate honesty,--which the clergy for personal reasons of their own, tried by all means to stifle--soon became again very honest and had only contempt for those who had abused their confidence. by the virtue of a mere word of truth, the whole of india, with its 300,000,000 of idols, could be made a vast christian country; but ... this beautiful project would, no doubt, be antagonized by certain christians who, similar to those priests of whom i have spoken before, speculate upon the ignorance of the people to make themselves rich. according to st. luke, jesus was about thirty years of age when he began preaching to the israelites. according to the buddhistic chroniclers, jesus's teachings in judea began in his twenty-ninth year. all his sermons which are not mentioned by the evangelists, but have been preserved by the buddhists, are remarkable for their character of divine grandeur. the fame of the new prophet spread rapidly in the country, and jerusalem awaited with impatience his arrival. when he came near the holy city, its inhabitants went out to meet him, and led him in triumph to the temple; all of which is in agreement with christian tradition. the chiefs and elders who heard him were filled with admiration for his sermons, and were happy to see the beneficent impression which his words exercised upon the populace. all these remarkable sermons of jesus are full of sublime sentiments. pilate, the governor of the country, however, did not look upon the matter in the same light. eager agents notified him that jesus announced the near coming of a new kingdom, the reestablishment of the throne of israel, and that he suffered himself to be called the son of god, sent to bring back courage in israel, for he, the king of judea, would soon ascend the throne of his ancestors. i do not purpose attributing to jesus the _rôle_ of a revolutionary, but it seems to me very probable that jesus wrought up the people with a view to reestablish the throne to which he had a just claim. divinely inspired, and, at the same time, convinced of the legitimacy of his pretentions, jesus preached the spiritual union of the people in order that a political union might result. pilate, who felt alarmed over these rumors, called together the priests and the elders of the people and ordered them to interdict jesus from preaching in public, and even to condemn him in the temple under the charge of apostasy. this was the best means for pilate to rid himself of a dangerous man, whose royal origin he knew and whose popularity was constantly increasing. it must be said in this connection that the israelites, far from persecuting jesus, recognized in him the descendant of the illustrious dynasty of david, and made him the object of their secret hopes, a fact which is evident from the very gospels which tell that jesus preached freely in the temple, in the presence of the elders, who could have interdicted him not only the entrance to the temple, but also his preachings. upon the order of pilate the sanhedrim met and cited jesus to appear before its tribunal. as the result of the inquiry, the members of the sanhedrim informed pilate that his suspicions were without any foundation whatever; that jesus preached a religious, and not a political, propaganda; that he was expounding the divine word, and that he claimed to have come not to overthrow, but to reestablish the laws of moses. the buddhistic record does but confirm this sympathy, which unquestionably existed between the young preacher, jesus, and the elders of the people of israel; hence their answer: "we do not judge a just one." pilate felt not at all assured, and continued seeking an occasion to hale jesus before a new tribunal, as regular as the former. to this end he caused him to be followed by spies, and finally ordered his arrest. if we may believe the evangelists, it was the pharisees who sought the life of jesus, while the buddhistic record most positively declares that pilate alone can be held responsible for his execution. this version is evidently much more probable than the account of the evangelists. the conquerors of judea could not long tolerate the presence of a man who announced to the people a speedy deliverance from their yoke. the popularity of jesus having commenced to disturb pilate's mind, it is to be supposed that he sent after the young preacher spies, with the order to take note of all his words and acts. moreover, the servants of the roman governor, as true "agents provocateurs," endeavored by means of artful questions put to jesus, to draw from him some imprudent words under color of which pilate might proceed against him. if the preachings of jesus had been offensive to the hebrew priests and scribes, all they needed to do was simply to command the people not to hear and follow him, and to forbid him entrance into the temple. but the evangelists tell us that jesus enjoyed great popularity among the israelites and full liberty in the temples, where pharisees and scribes discussed with him. in order to find a valid excuse for condemning him, pilate had him tortured so as to extort from him a confession of high treason. but, contrary to the rule that the innocent, overcome by their pain, will confess anything to escape the unendurable agonies inflicted upon them, jesus made no admission of guilt. pilate, seeing that the usual tortures were powerless to accomplish the desired result, commanded the executioners to proceed to the last extreme of their diabolic cruelties, meaning to compass the death of jesus by the complete exhaustion of his forces. jesus, however, fortifying his endurance by the power of his will and zeal for his righteous cause--which was also that of his people and of god--was unconquerable by all the refinements of cruelty inflicted upon him by his executioners. the infliction of "the question" upon jesus evoked much feeling among the elders, and they resolved to interfere in his behalf; formally demanding of pilate that he should be liberated before the passover. when their request was denied by pilate they resolved to petition that jesus should be brought to trial before the sanhedrim, by whom they did not doubt his acquittal--which was ardently desired by the people--would be ordained. in the eyes of the priests, jesus was a saint, belonging to the family of david; and his unjust detention, or--what was still more to be dreaded--his condemnation, would have saddened the celebration of the great national festival of the israelites. they therefore prayed pilate that the trial of jesus should take place before the passover, and to this he acceded. but he ordered that two thieves should be tried at the same time with jesus, thinking to, in this way, minimize in the eyes of the people, the importance of the fact that the life of an innocent man was being put in jeopardy before the tribunal; and, by not allowing jesus to be condemned alone, blind the populace to the unjust prearrangement of his condemnation. the accusation against jesus was founded upon the depositions of the bribed witnesses. during the trial, pilate availed himself of perversions of jesus' words concerning the heavenly kingdom, to sustain the charges made against him. he counted, it seems, upon the effect produced by the answers of jesus, as well as upon his own authority, to influence the members of the tribunal against examining too minutely the details of the case, and to procure from them the sentence of death for which he intimated his desire. upon hearing the perfectly natural answer of the judges, that the meaning of the words of jesus was diametrically opposed to the accusation, and that there was nothing in them to warrant his condemnation, pilate employed his final resource for prejudicing the trial, viz., the deposition of a purchased traitorous informer. this miserable wretch--who was, no doubt, judas--accused jesus formally, of having incited the people to rebellion. then followed a scene of unsurpassed sublimity. when judas gave his testimony, jesus, turning toward him, and giving him his blessing, says: "thou wilt find mercy, for what thou has said did not come out from thine own heart!" then, addressing himself to the governor: "why dost thou lower thy dignity, and teach thy inferiors to tell falsehood, when without doing so it is in thy power to condemn an innocent man?" words touching as sublime! jesus christ here manifests all the grandeur of his soul by pardoning his betrayer, and he reproaches pilate with having resorted to such means, unworthy of his dignity, to attain his end. this keen reproach enraged the governor, and caused him to completely forget his position, and the prudent policy with which he had meant to evade personal responsibility for the crime he contemplated. he now imperiously demanded the conviction of jesus, and, as though he intended to make a display of his power, to overawe the judges, ordered the acquittal of the two thieves. the judges, seeing the injustice of pilate's demand, that they should acquit the malefactors and condemn the innocent jesus, refused to commit this double crime against their consciences and their laws. but as they could not cope with one who possessed the authority of final judgment, and saw that he was firmly decided to rid himself, by whatever means, of a man who had fallen under the suspicions of the roman authorities, they left him to himself pronounce the verdict for which he was so anxious. in order, however, that the people might not suspect them of sharing the responsibility for such unjust judgment, which would not readily have been forgiven, they, in leaving the court, performed the ceremony of washing their hands, symbolizing the affirmation that they were clean of the blood of the innocent jesus, the beloved of the people. about ten years ago, i read in a german journal, the _fremdenblatt_, an article on judas, wherein the author endeavored to demonstrate that the informer had been the best friend of jesus. according to him, it was out of love for his master that judas betrayed him, for he put blind faith in the words of the saviour, who said that his kingdom would arrive after his execution. but after seeing him on the cross, and having waited in vain for the resurrection of jesus, which he expected to immediately take place, judas, not able to bear the pain by which his heart was torn, committed suicide by hanging himself. it would be profitless to dwell upon this ingenious product of a fertile imagination. to take up again the accounts of the gospels and the buddhistic chronicle, it is very possible that the bribed informer was really judas, although the buddhistic version is silent on this point. as to the pangs of conscience which are said to have impelled the informer to suicide, i must say that i give no credence to them. a man capable of committing so vile and cowardly an action as that of making an infamously false accusation against his friend, and this, not out of a spirit of jealousy, or for revenge, but to gain a handful of shekels! such a man is, from the psychic point of view, of very little worth. he ignores honesty and conscience, and pangs of remorse are unknown to him. it is presumable that the governor treated him as is sometimes done in our days, when it is deemed desirable to effectually conceal state secrets known to men of his kind and presumably unsafe in their keeping. judas probably was simply hanged, by pilate's order, to prevent the possibility of his some day revealing that the plot of which jesus was a victim had been inspired by the authorities. on the day of the execution, a numerous detachment of roman soldiers was placed around the cross to guard against any attempt by the populace for the delivery of him who was the object of their veneration. in this occurrence pilate gave proof of his extraordinary firmness and resolution. but though, owing to the precautions taken by the governor, the anticipated revolt did not occur, he could not prevent the people, after the execution, mourning the ruin of their hopes, which were destroyed, together with the last scion of the race of david. all the people went to worship at jesus' grave. although we have no precise information concerning the occurrences of the first few days following the passion, we could, by some probable conjectures, reconstruct the scenes which must have taken place. it stands to reason that the roman cæsar's clever lieutenant, when he saw that christ's grave became the centre of universal lamentations and the subject of national grief, and feared that the memory of the righteous victim might excite the discontent of the people and raise the whole country against the foreigners' rule, should have employed any effective means for the removal of this rallying-point, the mortal remains of jesus. pilate began by having the body buried. for three days the soldiers who were stationed on guard at the grave, were exposed to all kinds of insults and injuries on the part of the people who, defying the danger, came in multitudes to mourn the great martyr. then pilate ordered his soldiers to remove the body at night, and to bury it clandestinely in some other place, leaving the first grave open and the guard withdrawn from it, so that the people could see that jesus had disappeared. but pilate missed his end; for when, on the following morning, the hebrews did not find the corpse of their master in the sepulchre, the superstitious and miracle-accepting among them thought that he had been resurrected. how did this legend take root? we cannot say. possibly it existed for a long time in a latent state and, at the beginning, spread only among the common people; perhaps the ecclesiastic authorities of the hebrews looked with indulgence upon this innocent belief, which gave to the oppressed a shadow of revenge on their oppressors. however it be, the day when the legend of the resurrection finally became known to all, there was no one to be found strong enough to demonstrate the impossibility of such an occurrence. concerning this resurrection, it must be remarked that, according to the buddhists, the soul of the just issa was united with the eternal being, while the evangelists insist upon the ascension of the body. it seems to me, however, that the evangelists and the apostles have done very well to give the description of the resurrection which they have agreed upon, for if they had not done so, _i.e._, if the miracle had been given a less material character, their preaching would not have had, in the eyes of the nations to whom it was presented, that divine authority, that avowedly supernatural character, which has clothed christianity, until our time, as the only religion capable of elevating the human race to a state of sublime enthusiasm, suppressing its savage instincts, and bringing it nearer to the grand and simple nature which god has bestowed, they say, upon that feeble dwarf called man. _explanatory notes_ _chapter iii._ _§§ 3, 4, 5, 7_ the histories of all peoples show that when a nation has reached the apogee of its military glory and its wealth, it begins at once to sink more or less rapidly on the declivity of moral degeneration and decay. the israelites having, among the first, experienced this law of the evolution of nations, the neighboring peoples profited by the decadence of the then effeminate and debauched descendants of jacob, to despoil them. _§ 8_ the country of romeles, _i.e._, the fatherland of romulus; in our days, rome. _§§ 11, 12_ it must be admitted that the israelites, in spite of their incontestable wit and intelligence, seem to have only had regard for the present. like all other oriental peoples, they only in their misfortunes remembered the faults of their past, which they each time had to expiate by centuries of slavery. _chapter iv_ _§ 6_ as it is easy to divine, this verse refers to joseph, who was a lineal descendant from king david. side by side with this somewhat vague indication may be placed the following passages from the gospels: --"the angel of the lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, joseph, thou son of david, fear not to take unto thee mary thy wife" ... (matt. i, 20.) --"and the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, hosanna to the son of david" (matt. xxi, 9.) --"to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was joseph, of the house of david;" ... (luke i, 27.) --"and the lord god shall give unto him the throne of his father david;" ... (luke i, 32.) --"and jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of joseph, which was the son of heli ... which was the son of nathan, which was the son of david" (luke iii, 23-31.) _§ 7_ both the old and the new testaments teach that god promised david the rehabilitation of his throne and the elevation to it of one of his descendants. _§§ 8, 9_ --"and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of god was upon him." --"and it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions." --"and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers." --"and he said unto them, how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that i must be about my father's business?" --"and jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with god and man" (luke ii, 40, 46, 47, 49, 52.) _chapter v_ _§ 1_ "sind," a sanscrit word, which has been modified by the persians into ind. "arya," the name given in antiquity to the inhabitants of india; signified first "man who cultivates the ground" or "cultivator." anciently it had a purely ethnographical signification; this appellation assumed later on a religious sense, notably that of "man who believes." _§ 2_ luke says (i, 80): "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto israel." the evangelists say that jesus was in the desert, the buddhists explain this version of the gospels by indicating where jesus was during his absence from judea. according to them he crossed the sind, a name which, properly spoken, signifies "the river" (indus). in connection with this word it is not amiss to note that many sanscrit words in passing into the persian language underwent the same transformation by changing the "s" into "h"; per example: _sapta_ (in sanscrit), signifying seven--_hafta_ (in persian); _sam_ (sanscrit), signifying equal--_ham_ (persian); _mas_ (sanscrit), meaning mouth--_mah_ (persian); _sur_ (sanscrit), meaning sun--_hur_ (persian); _das_ (sanscrit), meaning ten--_dah_ (persian); _loco citato_--and those who believed in the god djain. there exists, even yet, on the peninsula of hindustan, a cult under the name of djainism, which forms, as it were, a link of union between buddhism and brahminism, and its devotees teach the destruction of all other beliefs, which they declare contaminated with falsehood. it dates as far back as the seventh century, b.c. its name is derived from djain (conqueror), which it assumed as the symbol of its triumph over its rivals. _§ 4_ each of the eighteen puranas is divided into five parts, which, besides the canonical laws, the rites and the commentaries upon the creation, destruction and resurrection of the universe, deal with theogony, medicine, and even the trades and professions. _chapter vi_ _§ 12_ owing to the intervention of the british, the human sacrifices, which were principally offered to kali, the goddess of death, have now entirely ceased. the goddess kali is represented erect, with one foot upon the dead body of a man, whose head she holds in one of her innumerable hands, while with the other hand she brandishes a bloody dagger. her eyes and mouth, which are wide open, express passion and cruelty. _chapter viii_ _§§ 3, 4_ zoroaster lived 550 years before jesus. he founded the doctrine of the struggle between light and darkness, a doctrine which is fully expounded in the zend-avesta (word of god), which is written in the zend language, and, according to tradition, was given to him by an angel from paradise. according to zoroaster we must worship mithra (the sun), from whom descend ormuzd, the god of good, and ahriman, the god of evil. the world will end when ormuzd has triumphed over his rival, ahriman, who will then return to his original source, mithra. _chapter x_ _§ 16_ according to the evangelists, jesus was born in bethlehem, which the buddhistic version confirms, for only from bethlehem, situated at a distance of about seven kilometres from jerusalem, could the walls of this latter city be seen. _chapter xi_ _§ 15_ the doctrine of the redemptor is, almost in its entirety, contained in the gospels. as to the transformation of men into children, it is especially known from the conversation that took place between jesus and nicodemus. _chapter xii_ _§ 1_ --"tell us therefore, what thinkest thou? is it lawful to give tribute unto cæsar, or not?" (matt. xxii, 17.) _§ 3_ --"then saith he unto them, render therefore unto cæsar the things which are cæsar's; and unto god the things that are god's." (matt. xxii, 21; _et al._) _chapter xiv_ _§ 3_ according to the buddhistic belief, the terrestrial buddhas after death, lose consciousness of their independent existence and unite with the eternal spirit. _§§ 10, 11_ here, no doubt, reference is made to the activity of the apostles among the neighboring peoples; an activity which could not have passed unnoticed at that epoch, because of the great results which followed the preaching of the new religious doctrine of love among nations whose religions were based upon the cruelty of their gods. * * * * * without permitting myself indulgence in great dissertations, or too minute analysis upon each verse, i have thought it useful to accompany my work with these few little explanatory notes, leaving it to the reader to take like trouble with the rest. --_finis_ [1] the vaisyas and sudras castes. [2] brahmins and kshatriyas. [3] _sanscrit_:--"he whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bhodi)," those who need but one more incarnation to become perfect buddhas, _i.e._, to be entitled to nirvâna. marius the epicurean, volume two walter horatio pater london: 1910. (the library edition.) notes by the e-text editor: notes: the 1910 library edition employs footnotes, a style inconvenient in an electronic edition. i have therefore placed an asterisk immediately after each of pater's footnotes and a + sign after my own notes, and have listed each chapter's notes at that chapter's end. pagination and paragraphing: to avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, i have transferred original pagination to brackets. a bracketed numeral such as [22] indicates that the material immediately following the number marks the beginning of the relevant page. i have preserved paragraph structure except for first-line indentation. hyphenation: i have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-text does not require line-end or page-end hyphenation. greek typeface: for this full-text edition, i have transliterated pater's greek quotations. if there is a need for the original greek, it can be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a victorianist archive that contains the complete works of walter pater and many other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions. marius the epicurean, volume two walter pater cheimerinos oneiros, hote mêkistai hai vyktes.+ +"a winter's dream, when nights are longest." lucian, the dream, vol. 3. contents part the third 15. stoicism at court: 3-13 16. second thoughts: 14-28 17. beata urbs: 29-40 18. "the ceremony of the dart": 41-56 19. the will as vision: 57-72 part the fourth 20. two curious houses--1. guests: 75-91 21. two curious houses--2. the church in cecilia's house: 92-108 22. "the minor peace of the church": 109-127 23. divine service: 128-140 24. a conversation not imaginary: 141-171 25. sunt lacrimae rerum: 172-185 26. the martyrs: 186-196 27. the triumph of marcus aurelius: 197-207 28. anima naturaliter christiana: 208-224 part the third chapter xv: stoicism at court [3] the very finest flower of the same company--aurelius with the gilded fasces borne before him, a crowd of exquisites, the empress faustina herself, and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day, who maintained, people said, their private "sophists" to whisper philosophy into their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet--was assembled again a few months later, in a different place and for a very different purpose. the temple of peace, a "modernising" foundation of hadrian, enlarged by a library and lecture-rooms, had grown into an institution like something between a college and a literary club; and here cornelius fronto was to pronounce a discourse on the nature of morals. there were some, indeed, who had desired the emperor aurelius himself to declare his whole mind on this matter. rhetoric was become almost a function of the state: philosophy was upon the throne; and had from time to time, by [4] request, delivered an official utterance with well-nigh divine authority. and it was as the delegate of this authority, under the full sanction of the philosophic emperor--emperor and pontiff, that the aged fronto purposed to-day to expound some parts of the stoic doctrine, with the view of recommending morals to that refined but perhaps prejudiced company, as being, in effect, one mode of comeliness in things--as it were music, or a kind of artistic order, in life. and he did this earnestly, with an outlay of all his science of mind, and that eloquence of which he was known to be a master. for stoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt thing. received at court, it had largely decorated itself: it was grown persuasive and insinuating, and sought not only to convince men's intelligence but to allure their souls. associated with the beautiful old age of the great rhetorician, and his winning voice, it was almost epicurean. and the old man was at his best on the occasion; the last on which he ever appeared in this way. to-day was his own birthday. early in the morning the imperial letter of congratulation had reached him; and all the pleasant animation it had caused was in his face, when assisted by his daughter gratia he took his place on the ivory chair, as president of the athenaeum of rome, wearing with a wonderful grace the philosophic pall,--in reality neither more nor less than the loose woollen cloak of the common soldier, but fastened [5] on his right shoulder with a magnificent clasp, the emperor's birthday gift. it was an age, as abundant evidence shows, whose delight in rhetoric was but one result of a general susceptibility--an age not merely taking pleasure in words, but experiencing a great moral power in them. fronto's quaintly fashionable audience would have wept, and also assisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, as sometimes happened, the recommendation of an object of charity. as it was, arranging themselves at their ease among the images and flowers, these amateurs of exquisite language, with their tablets open for careful record of felicitous word or phrase, were ready to give themselves wholly to the intellectual treat prepared for them, applauding, blowing loud kisses through the air sometimes, at the speaker's triumphant exit from one of his long, skilfully modulated sentences; while the younger of them meant to imitate everything about him, down to the inflections of his voice and the very folds of his mantle. certainly there was rhetoric enough:--a wealth of imagery; illustrations from painting, music, mythology, the experiences of love; a management, by which subtle, unexpected meaning was brought out of familiar terms, like flies from morsels of amber, to use fronto's own figure. but with all its richness, the higher claim of his style was rightly understood to lie in gravity and self-command, and an especial care for the [6] purities of a vocabulary which rejected every expression unsanctioned by the authority of approved ancient models. and it happened with marius, as it will sometimes happen, that this general discourse to a general audience had the effect of an utterance adroitly designed for him. his conscience still vibrating painfully under the shock of that scene in the amphitheatre, and full of the ethical charm of cornelius, he was questioning himself with much impatience as to the possibility of an adjustment between his own elaborately thought-out intellectual scheme and the "old morality." in that intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far been allowed no place, as seeming to demand from him the admission of certain first principles such as might misdirect or retard him in his efforts towards a complete, many-sided existence; or distort the revelations of the experience of life; or curtail his natural liberty of heart and mind. but now (his imagination being occupied for the moment with the noble and resolute air, the gallantry, so to call it, which composed the outward mien and presentment of his strange friend's inflexible ethics) he felt already some nascent suspicion of his philosophic programme, in regard, precisely, to the question of good taste. there was the taint of a graceless "antinomianism" perceptible in it, a dissidence, a revolt against accustomed modes, the actual impression of which on other [7] men might rebound upon himself in some loss of that personal pride to which it was part of his theory of life to allow so much. and it was exactly a moral situation such as this that fronto appeared to be contemplating. he seemed to have before his mind the case of one--cyrenaic or epicurean, as the courtier tends to be, by habit and instinct, if not on principle--who yet experiences, actually, a strong tendency to moral assents, and a desire, with as little logical inconsistency as may be, to find a place for duty and righteousness in his house of thought. and the stoic professor found the key to this problem in the purely aesthetic beauty of the old morality, as an element in things, fascinating to the imagination, to good taste in its most highly developed form, through association--a system or order, as a matter of fact, in possession, not only of the larger world, but of the rare minority of élite intelligences; from which, therefore, least of all would the sort of epicurean he had in view endure to become, so to speak, an outlaw. he supposed his hearer to be, with all sincerity, in search after some principle of conduct (and it was here that he seemed to marius to be speaking straight to him) which might give unity of motive to an actual rectitude, a cleanness and probity of life, determined partly by natural affection, partly by enlightened self-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the mere fear of penalties; no element of which, [8] however, was distinctively moral in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, no common ground with a really moral being like cornelius, or even like the philosophic emperor. performing the same offices; actually satisfying, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering to all their dues--one thus circumstanced would be wanting, nevertheless, in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents around him. how tenderly--more tenderly than many stricter souls--he might yield himself to kindly instinct! what fineness of charity in passing judgment on others! what an exquisite conscience of other men's susceptibilities! he knows for how much the manner, because the heart itself, counts, in doing a kindness. he goes beyond most people in his care for all weakly creatures; judging, instinctively, that to be but sentient is to possess rights. he conceives a hundred duties, though he may not call them by that name, of the existence of which purely duteous souls may have no suspicion. he has a kind of pride in doing more than they, in a way of his own. sometimes, he may think that those men of line and rule do not really understand their own business. how narrow, inflexible, unintelligent! what poor guardians (he may reason) of the inward spirit of righteousness, are some supposed careful walkers according to its letter and form. and yet all the while he admits, as such, no moral world at all: no [9] theoretic equivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of life. but, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by natural affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a remnant of right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains from doing, not so much through his own free election, as from a deference, an "assent," entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom--to the actual habit or fashion of others, from whom he could not endure to break away, any more than he would care to be out of agreement with them on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. yes! there were the evils, the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a failure in good taste. an assent, such as this, to the preferences of others, might seem to be the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it could determine the least considerable element in a moral life. yet here, according to cornelius fronto, was in truth the revealing example, albeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the general principle required. there was one great idea associated with which that determination to conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest, the fullest, the weightiest principle of moral action; a principle under which one might subsume men's most strenuous efforts after righteousness. and he proceeded to expound the idea of humanity--of a universal commonwealth of mind, which [10] becomes explicit, and as if incarnate, in a select communion of just men made perfect. ho kosmos hôsanei polis estin+--the world is as it were a commonwealth, a city: and there are observances, customs, usages, actually current in it, things our friends and companions will expect of us, as the condition of our living there with them at all, as really their peers or fellow-citizens. those observances were, indeed, the creation of a visible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose actual manners, whose preferences from of old, become now a weighty tradition as to the way in which things should or should not be done, are like a music, to which the intercourse of life proceeds--such a music as no one who had once caught its harmonies would willingly jar. in this way, the becoming, as in greek--to prepon: or ta êthê+ mores, manners, as both greeks and romans said, would indeed be a comprehensive term for duty. righteousness would be, in the words of "caesar" himself, of the philosophic aurelius, but a "following of the reasonable will of the oldest, the most venerable, of cities, of polities--of the royal, the law-giving element, therein--forasmuch as we are citizens also in that supreme city on high, of which all other cities beside are but as single habitations." but as the old man spoke with animation of this supreme city, this invisible society, whose conscience was become explicit in its inner circle of inspired souls, of whose [11] common spirit, the trusted leaders of human conscience had been but the mouthpiece, of whose successive personal preferences in the conduct of life, the "old morality" was the sum,--marius felt that his own thoughts were passing beyond the actual intention of the speaker; not in the direction of any clearer theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth, but rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place, the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and tell, according to his own old, natural habit of mind. it would be the fabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond the great city around him, even if conceived in all the machinery of its visible and invisible influences at their grandest--as augustus or trajan might have conceived of them--however well the visible rome might pass for a figure of that new, unseen, rome on high. at moments, marius even asked himself with surprise, whether it might be some vast secret society the speaker had in view:--that august community, to be an outlaw from which, to be foreign to the manners of which, was a loss so much greater than to be excluded, into the ends of the earth, from the sovereign roman commonwealth. humanity, a universal order, the great polity, its aristocracy of elect spirits, the mastery of their example over their successors--these were the ideas, stimulating enough in their way, [12] by association with which the stoic professor had attempted to elevate, to unite under a single principle, men's moral efforts, himself lifted up with so genuine an enthusiasm. but where might marius search for all this, as more than an intellectual abstraction? where were those elect souls in whom the claim of humanity became so amiable, winning, persuasive--whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful in the actual order he saw--whose faces averted from him, would be more than he could bear? where was that comely order, to which as a great fact of experience he must give its due; to which, as to all other beautiful "phenomena" in life, he must, for his own peace, adjust himself? rome did well to be serious. the discourse ended somewhat abruptly, as the noise of a great crowd in motion was heard below the walls; whereupon, the audience, following the humour of the younger element in it, poured into the colonnade, from the steps of which the famous procession, or transvectio, of the military knights was to be seen passing over the forum, from their trysting-place at the temple of mars, to the temple of the dioscuri. the ceremony took place this year, not on the day accustomed--anniversary of the victory of lake regillus, with its pair of celestial assistants--and amid the heat and roses of a roman july, but, by [13] anticipation, some months earlier, the almond-trees along the way being still in leafless flower. through that light trellis-work, marius watched the riders, arrayed in all their gleaming ornaments, and wearing wreaths of olive around their helmets, the faces below which, what with battle and the plague, were almost all youthful. it was a flowery scene enough, but had to-day its fulness of war-like meaning; the return of the army to the north, where the enemy was again upon the move, being now imminent. cornelius had ridden along in his place, and, on the dismissal of the company, passed below the steps where marius stood, with that new song he had heard once before floating from his lips. notes 10. +transliteration: ho kosmos hôsanei polis estin. translation: "the world is like a city." 10. +transliteration: to prepon ... ta êthê. translation: "that which is seemly ... mores." chapter xvi: second thoughts [14] and marius, for his part, was grave enough. the discourse of cornelius fronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual, horizon, had set him on a review--on a review of the isolating narrowness, in particular, of his own theoretic scheme. long after the very latest roses were faded, when "the town" had departed to country villas, or the baths, or the war, he remained behind in rome; anxious to try the lastingness of his own epicurean rose-garden; setting to work over again, and deliberately passing from point to point of his old argument with himself, down to its practical conclusions. that age and our own have much in common--many difficulties and hopes. let the reader pardon me if here and there i seem to be passing from marius to his modern representatives--from rome, to paris or london. what really were its claims as a theory of practice, of the sympathies that determine [15] practice? it had been a theory, avowedly, of loss and gain (so to call it) of an economy. if, therefore, it missed something in the commerce of life, which some other theory of practice was able to include, if it made a needless sacrifice, then it must be, in a manner, inconsistent with itself, and lack theoretic completeness. did it make such a sacrifice? what did it lose, or cause one to lose? and we may note, as marius could hardly have done, that cyrenaicism is ever the characteristic philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its survey--sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. it is one of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because limited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in this case, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man's life there) which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to express. in the school of cyrene, in that comparatively fresh greek world, we see this philosophy where it is least blasé, as we say; in its most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form, youthfully bright in the youth of european thought. but it grows young again for a while in almost every youthful soul. it is spoken of sometimes as the appropriate utterance of jaded men; but in them it can hardly be sincere, or, by the nature of the case, an enthusiasm. "walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes," is, indeed, most often, [16] according to the supposition of the book from which i quote it, the counsel of the young, who feel that the sunshine is pleasant along their veins, and wintry weather, though in a general sense foreseen, a long way off. the youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism, the self-abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste, which occurs, quite naturally, at the outset of every really vigorous intellectual career, finds its special opportunity in a theory such as that so carefully put together by marius, just because it seems to call on one to make the sacrifice, accompanied by a vivid sensation of power and will, of what others value--sacrifice of some conviction, or doctrine, or supposed first principle--for the sake of that clear-eyed intellectual consistency, which is like spotless bodily cleanliness, or scrupulous personal honour, and has itself for the mind of the youthful student, when he first comes to appreciate it, the fascination of an ideal. the cyrenaic doctrine, then, realised as a motive of strenuousness or enthusiasm, is not so properly the utterance of the "jaded epicurean," as of the strong young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling, fascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of a daring theory, while, in the first genial heat of existence, the beauty of the physical world strikes potently upon his wide-open, unwearied senses. he discovers a great new poem every spring, with a hundred delightful things he too has felt, but [16] which have never been expressed, or at least never so truly, before. the workshops of the artists, who can select and set before us what is really most distinguished in visible life, are open to him. he thinks that the old platonic, or the new baconian philosophy, has been better explained than by the authors themselves, or with some striking original development, this very month. in the quiet heat of early summer, on the dusty gold morning, the music comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of voices from some neighbouring church, among the flowering trees, valued now, perhaps, only for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers, or the mere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and righteousness. in his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feels himself to be something of a priest, and that devotion of his days to the contemplation of what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious service. afar off, how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await him! at that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no very choice or exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasm something like this. life in modern london even, in the heavy glow of summer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to build its "palace of art" of; and the very sense and enjoyment of an experience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow of summer itself, by the [18] thought of its brevity, giving him something of a gambler's zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act or diligently appreciative thought, of the highly coloured moments which are to pass away so quickly. at bottom, perhaps, in his elaborately developed self-consciousness, his sensibilities, his almost fierce grasp upon the things he values at all, he has, beyond all others, an inward need of something permanent in its character, to hold by: of which circumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with the brilliant claudio in measure for measure, it is, in truth, but darkness he is, "encountering, like a bride." but the inevitable falling of the curtain is probably distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is not often that he really shudders at the thought of the grave--the weight above, the narrow world and its company, within. when the thought of it does occur to him, he may say to himself:--well! and the rude monk, for instance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim world beyond it, really acquiesces in that "fifth act," amid all the consoling ministries around him, as little as i should at this moment; though i may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play, however well acted, i may already have had quite enough of it, and find a true well-being in eternal sleep. and precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with the function of youth in general, cyrenaicism will always be more or [19] less the special philosophy, or "prophecy," of the young, when the ideal of a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the receptive, if not of the reflective, powers--precisely in this circumstance, if we rightly consider it, lies the duly prescribed corrective of that philosophy. for it is by its exclusiveness, and by negation rather than positively, that such theories fail to satisfy us permanently; and what they really need for their correction, is the complementary influence of some greater system, in which they may find their due place. that sturm und drang of the spirit, as it has been called, that ardent and special apprehension of half-truths, in the enthusiastic, and as it were "prophetic" advocacy of which, devotion to truth, in the case of the young--apprehending but one point at a time in the great circumference--most usually embodies itself, is levelled down, safely enough, afterwards, as in history so in the individual, by the weakness and mere weariness, as well as by the maturer wisdom, of our nature. and though truth indeed, resides, as has been said, "in the whole"--in harmonisings and adjustments like this--yet those special apprehensions may still owe their full value, in this sense of "the whole," to that earlier, one-sided but ardent pre-occupation with them. cynicism and cyrenaicism:--they are the earlier greek forms of roman stoicism and epicureanism, and in that world of old greek [20] thought, we may notice with some surprise that, in a little while, the nobler form of cyrenaicism--cyrenaicism cured of its faults--met the nobler form of cynicism half-way. starting from opposed points, they merged, each in its most refined form, in a single ideal of temperance or moderation. something of the same kind may be noticed regarding some later phases of cyrenaic theory. if it starts with considerations opposed to the religious temper, which the religious temper holds it a duty to repress, it is like it, nevertheless, and very unlike any lower development of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its serious application to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection. the saint, and the cyrenaic lover of beauty, it may be thought, would at least understand each other better than either would understand the mere man of the world. carry their respective positions a point further, shift the terms a little, and they might actually touch. perhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise to their best, as understood by their worthiest representatives, to identification with each other. for the variety of men's possible reflections on their experience, as of that experience itself, is not really so great as it seems; and as the highest and most disinterested ethical formulae, filtering down into men's everyday existence, reach the same poor level of vulgar egotism, so, we may fairly suppose that all the highest spirits, from [21] whatever contrasted points they have started, would yet be found to entertain, in the moral consciousness realised by themselves, much the same kind of mental company; to hold, far more than might be thought probable, at first sight, the same personal types of character, and even the same artistic and literary types, in esteem or aversion; to convey, all of them alike, the same savour of unworldliness. and cyrenaicism or epicureanism too, new or old, may be noticed, in proportion to the completeness of its development, to approach, as to the nobler form of cynicism, so also to the more nobly developed phases of the old, or traditional morality. in the gravity of its conception of life, in its pursuit after nothing less than a perfection, in its apprehension of the value of time--the passion and the seriousness which are like a consecration--la passion et le sérieux qui consacrent--it may be conceived, as regards its main drift, to be not so much opposed to the old morality, as an exaggeration of one special motive in it. some cramping, narrowing, costly preference of one part of his own nature, and of the nature of things, to another, marius seemed to have detected in himself, meantime,--in himself, as also in those old masters of the cyrenaic philosophy. if they did realise the monochronos hêdonê+ as it was called--the pleasure of the "ideal now"--if certain moments of their lives were high-pitched, passionately coloured, intent with sensation, [22] and a kind of knowledge which, in its vivid clearness, was like sensation--if, now and then, they apprehended the world in its fulness, and had a vision, almost "beatific," of ideal personalities in life and art, yet these moments were a very costly matter: they paid a great price for them, in the sacrifice of a thousand possible sympathies, of things only to be enjoyed through sympathy, from which they detached themselves, in intellectual pride, in loyalty to a mere theory that would take nothing for granted, and assent to no approximate or hypothetical truths. in their unfriendly, repellent attitude towards the greek religion, and the old greek morality, surely, they had been but faulty economists. the greek religion was then alive: then, still more than in its later day of dissolution, the higher view of it was possible, even for the philosopher. its story made little or no demand for a reasoned or formal acceptance. a religion, which had grown through and through man's life, with so much natural strength; had meant so much for so many generations; which expressed so much of their hopes, in forms so familiar and so winning; linked by associations so manifold to man as he had been and was--a religion like this, one would think, might have had its uses, even for a philosophic sceptic. yet those beautiful gods, with the whole round of their poetic worship, the school of cyrene definitely renounced. [23] the old greek morality, again, with all its imperfections, was certainly a comely thing.--yes! a harmony, a music, in men's ways, one might well hesitate to jar. the merely aesthetic sense might have had a legitimate satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choice manners, in those attractive conventions, enveloping, so gracefully, the whole of life, insuring some sweetness, some security at least against offence, in the intercourse of the world. beyond an obvious utility, it could claim, indeed but custom--use-and-wont, as we say--for its sanction. but then, one of the advantages of that liberty of spirit among the cyrenaics (in which, through theory, they had become dead to theory, so that all theory, as such, was really indifferent to them, and indeed nothing valuable but in its tangible ministration to life) was precisely this, that it gave them free play in using as their ministers or servants, things which, to the uninitiated, must be masters or nothing. yet, how little the followers of aristippus made of that whole comely system of manners or morals, then actually in possession of life, is shown by the bold practical consequence, which one of them maintained (with a hard, self-opinionated adherence to his peculiar theory of values) in the not very amiable paradox that friendship and patriotism were things one could do without; while another--death's-advocate, as he was called--helped so many to self-destruction, by his [24] pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life, that his lecture-room was closed. that this was in the range of their consequences--that this was a possible, if remote, deduction from the premisses of the discreet aristippus--was surely an inconsistency in a thinker who professed above all things an economy of the moments of life. and yet those old cyrenaics felt their way, as if in the dark, we may be sure, like other men in the ordinary transactions of life, beyond the narrow limits they drew of clear and absolutely legitimate knowledge, admitting what was not of immediate sensation, and drawing upon that "fantastic" future which might never come. a little more of such "walking by faith," a little more of such not unreasonable "assent," and they might have profited by a hundred services to their culture, from greek religion and greek morality, as they actually were. the spectacle of their fierce, exclusive, tenacious hold on their own narrow apprehension, makes one think of a picture with no relief, no soft shadows nor breadth of space, or of a drama without proportionate repose. yet it was of perfection that marius (to return to him again from his masters, his intellectual heirs) had been really thinking all the time: a narrow perfection it might be objected, the perfection of but one part of his nature--his capacities of feeling, of exquisite physical impressions, of an imaginative sympathy--but still, a true perfection of those capacities, wrought out [25] to their utmost degree, admirable enough in its way. he too is an economist: he hopes, by that "insight" of which the old cyrenaics made so much, by skilful apprehension of the conditions of spiritual success as they really are, the special circumstances of the occasion with which he has to deal, the special felicities of his own nature, to make the most, in no mean or vulgar sense, of the few years of life; few, indeed, for the attainment of anything like general perfection! with the brevity of that sum of years his mind is exceptionally impressed; and this purpose makes him no frivolous dilettante, but graver than other men: his scheme is not that of a trifler, but rather of one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a very real one, to those old words--let us work while it is day! he has a strong apprehension, also, of the beauty of the visible things around him; their fading, momentary, graces and attractions. his natural susceptibility in this direction, enlarged by experience, seems to demand of him an almost exclusive pre-occupation with the aspects of things; with their aesthetic character, as it is called--their revelations to the eye and the imagination: not so much because those aspects of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment, as because to be occupied, in this way, with the aesthetic or imaginative side of things, is to be in real contact with those elements of his own nature, and of theirs, which, for him at [26] least, are matter of the most real kind of apprehension. as other men are concentrated upon truths of number, for instance, or on business, or it may be on the pleasures of appetite, so he is wholly bent on living in that full stream of refined sensation. and in the prosecution of this love of beauty, he claims an entire personal liberty, liberty of heart and mind, liberty, above all, from what may seem conventional answers to first questions. but, without him there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea, widely extended in time and place, in a kind of impregnable possession of human life--a system, which, like some other great products of the conjoint efforts of human mind through many generations, is rich in the world's experience; so that, in attaching oneself to it, one lets in a great tide of that experience, and makes, as it were with a single step, a great experience of one's own, and with great consequent increase to one's sense of colour, variety, and relief, in the spectacle of men and things. the mere sense that one belongs to a system--an imperial system or organisation--has, in itself, the expanding power of a great experience; as some have felt who have been admitted from narrower sects into the communion of the catholic church; or as the old roman citizen felt. it is, we might fancy, what the coming into possession of a very widely spoken language might be, with a great literature, which is also [27] the speech of the people we have to live among. a wonderful order, actually in possession of human life!--grown inextricably through and through it; penetrating into its laws, its very language, its mere habits of decorum, in a thousand half-conscious ways; yet still felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal; and, as such, awakening hope, and an aim, identical with the one only consistent aspiration of mankind! in the apprehension of that, just then, marius seemed to have joined company once more with his own old self; to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come to rome, with absolute sincerity, on the search for perfection. it defined not so much a change of practice, as of sympathy--a new departure, an expansion, of sympathy. it involved, certainly, some curtailment of his liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, the enactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have elected so, and not otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here to give one, so to term it, an "indulgence." but then, under the supposition of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem worth plucking again. the authority they exercised was like that of classic taste--an influence so subtle, yet so real, as defining the loyalty of the scholar; or of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which every observance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical, yet is found, [28] the more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonable significance and a natural history. and marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent cyrenaic, mistaken in his estimate of values, of loss and gain, and untrue to the well-considered economy of life which he had brought with him to rome--that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground--if he did not make that concession, if he did but remain just there. notes 21. +transliteration: monochronos hêdonê. pater's definition "the pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now." the definition is fitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, "single or unitary time." chapter xvii: beata urbs "many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see." [29] the enemy on the danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the mighty invading hosts of the fifth century. illusively repressed just now, those confused movements along the northern boundary of the empire were destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, which, powerless to destroy the christian church, was yet to suppress for a time the achieved culture of the pagan world. the kingdom of christ was to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty of the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistaken tradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem at times, for eventual reconciliation thereto. meantime italy had armed itself once more, in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the alps. whatever misgiving the roman people may [30] have felt as to the leadership of the younger was unexpectedly set at rest; though with some temporary regret for the loss of what had been, after all, a popular figure on the world's stage. travelling fraternally in the same litter with aurelius, lucius verus was struck with sudden and mysterious disease, and died as he hastened back to rome. his death awoke a swarm of sinister rumours, to settle on lucilla, jealous, it was said, of fabia her sister, perhaps of faustina--on faustina herself, who had accompanied the imperial progress, and was anxious now to hide a crime of her own--even on the elder brother, who, beforehand with the treasonable designs of his colleague, should have helped him at supper to a favourite morsel, cut with a knife poisoned ingeniously on one side only. aurelius, certainly, with sincere distress, his long irritations, so dutifully concealed or repressed, turning now into a single feeling of regret for the human creature, carried the remains back to rome, and demanded of the senate a public funeral, with a decree for the apotheôsis, or canonisation, of the dead. for three days the body lay in state in the forum, enclosed in an open coffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of ivory and gold, in the centre of a sort of temporary chapel, representing the temple of his patroness venus genetrix. armed soldiers kept watch around it, while choirs of select voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns or monologues from the great tragedians. [31] at the head of the couch were displayed the various personal decorations which had belonged to verus in life. like all the rest of rome, marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcely disguised under the hood of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried, at night-fall, along one of the streets below the palace, to some amorous appointment. unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces, he was taken by surprise, and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on, by the piteous change there; even the skill of galen having been not wholly successful in the process of embalming. it was as if a brother of his own were lying low before him, with that meek and helpless expression it would have been a sacrilege to treat rudely. meantime, in the centre of the campus martius, within the grove of poplars which enclosed the space where the body of augustus had been burnt, the great funeral pyre, stuffed with shavings of various aromatic woods, was built up in many stages, separated from each other by a light entablature of woodwork, and adorned abundantly with carved and tapestried images. upon this pyramidal or flame-shaped structure lay the corpse, hidden now under a mountain of flowers and incense brought by the women, who from the first had had their fondness for the wanton graces of the deceased. the dead body was surmounted by a waxen effigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. [32] at last the centurions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand, to ignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wild excitement, flung themselves around it, casting into the flames the decorations they had received for acts of valour under the dead emperor's command. it had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at the last moment, through the somewhat tawdry artifice, by which an eagle--not a very noble or youthful specimen of its kind--was caused to take flight amid the real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishing remains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient etiquette, subsequently making official declaration before the senate, that the imperial "genius" had been seen in this way, escaping from the fire. and marius was present when the fathers, duly certified of the fact, by "acclamation," muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low, rhythmical chant, decreed caelum--the privilege of divine rank to the departed. the actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowed lucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine; and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in the central mass of the sepulchre of hadrian, still in all the splendour of its statued colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty; after the due accomplishment of which aurelius was at [33] liberty to retire for a time into the privacy o his beloved apartments of the palatine. and hither, not long afterwards, marius was summoned a second time, to receive from the imperial hands the great pile of manuscripts it would be his business to revise and arrange. one year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as he climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the sunless sky, like living creatures in pain. he had to traverse a long subterranean gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperial apartments, and in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as smooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its floor after the return of the emperor from the shows. it was here, on such an occasion, that the emperor caligula, at the age of twenty-nine, had come by his end, the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few moments longer to watch the movements of a party of noble youths at their exercise in the courtyard below. as marius waited, a second time, in that little red room in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious to look once more upon its painted walls--the very place whither the assassins were said to have turned for refuge after the murder--he could all but see the figure, which in its surrounding light and darkness seemed to him the most melancholy in the entire history of rome. he called to mind the greatness of that popularity and early [34] promise--the stupefying height of irresponsible power, from which, after all, only men's viler side had been clearly visible--the overthrow of reason--the seemingly irredeemable memory; and still, above all, the beautiful head in which the noble lines of the race of augustus were united to, he knew not what expression of sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which one must pass onward to the antonines. popular hatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be found; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the capitol, may have seemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of roman art. had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, reflected from his mirror, suggested his insane attempt upon the liberties, the dignity of men?--"o humanity!" he seems to ask, "what hast thou done to me that i should so despise thee?"--and might not this be indeed the true meaning of kingship, if the world would have one man to reign over it? the like of this: or, some incredible, surely never to be realised, height of disinterestedness, in a king who should be the servant of all, quite at the other extreme of the practical dilemma involved in such a position. not till some while after his death had the body been decently interred by the piety of the sisters he had driven into exile. fraternity [35] of feeling had been no invariable feature in the incidents of roman story. one long vicus sceleratus, from its first dim foundation in fraternal quarrel on the morrow of a common deliverance so touching--had not almost every step in it some gloomy memory of unnatural violence? romans did well to fancy the traitress tarpeia still "green in earth," crowned, enthroned, at the roots of the capitoline rock. if in truth the religion of rome was everywhere in it, like that perfume of the funeral incense still upon the air, so also was the memory of crime prompted by a hypocritical cruelty, down to the erring, or not erring, vesta calmly buried alive there, only eighty years ago, under domitian. it was with a sense of relief that marius found himself in the presence of aurelius, whose gesture of friendly intelligence, as he entered, raised a smile at the gloomy train of his own thoughts just then, although since his first visit to the palace a great change had passed over it. the clear daylight found its way now into empty rooms. to raise funds for the war, aurelius, his luxurious brother being no more, had determined to sell by auction the accumulated treasures of the imperial household. the works of art, the dainty furniture, had been removed, and were now "on view" in the forum, to be the delight or dismay, for many weeks to come, of the [36] large public of those who were curious in these things. in such wise had aurelius come to the condition of philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy, hardly persuaded to wear warm clothing, or to sleep in more luxurious manner than on the bare floor. but, in his empty house, the man of mind, who had always made so much of the pleasures of philosophic contemplation, felt freer in thought than ever. he had been reading, with less self-reproach than usual, in the republic of plato, those passages which describe the life of the philosopher-kings--like that of hired servants in their own house--who, possessed of the "gold undefiled" of intellectual vision, forgo so cheerfully all other riches. it was one of his happy days: one of those rare days, when, almost with none of the effort, otherwise so constant with him, his thoughts came rich and full, and converged in a mental view, as exhilarating to him as the prospect of some wide expanse of landscape to another man's bodily eye. he seemed to lie readier than was his wont to the imaginative influence of the philosophic reason--to its suggestions of a possible open country, commencing just where all actual experience leaves off, but which experience, one's own and not another's, may one day occupy. in fact, he was seeking strength for himself, in his own way, before he started for that ambiguous earthly warfare [37] which was to occupy the remainder of his life. "ever remember this," he writes, "that a happy life depends, not on many things--en oligistois keitai."+ and to-day, committing himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silence of the great empty apartments, he might be said to have escaped, according to plato's promise to those who live closely with philosophy, from the evils of the world. in his "conversations with himself" marcus aurelius speaks often of that city on high, of which all other cities are but single habitations. from him in fact cornelius fronto, in his late discourse, had borrowed the expression; and he certainly meant by it more than the whole commonwealth of rome, in any idealisation of it, however sublime. incorporate somehow with the actual city whose goodly stones were lying beneath his gaze, it was also implicate in that reasonable constitution of nature, by devout contemplation of which it is possible for man to associate himself to the consciousness of god. in that new rome he had taken up his rest for awhile on this day, deliberately feeding his thoughts on the better air of it, as another might have gone for mental renewal to a favourite villa. "men seek retirement in country-houses," he writes, "on the sea-coast, on the mountains; and you have yourself as much fondness for such places as another. but there is little proof of culture therein; since the privilege is yours of [38] retiring into yourself whensoever you please,--into that little farm of one's own mind, where a silence so profound may be enjoyed." that it could make these retreats, was a plain consequence of the kingly prerogative of the mind, its dominion over circumstance, its inherent liberty.--"it is in thy power to think as thou wilt: the essence of things is in thy thoughts about them: all is opinion, conception: no man can be hindered by another: what is outside thy circle of thought is nothing at all to it; hold to this, and you are safe: one thing is needful--to live close to the divine genius within thee, and minister thereto worthily." and the first point in this true ministry, this culture, was to maintain one's soul in a condition of indifference and calm. how continually had public claims, the claims of other persons, with their rough angularities of character, broken in upon him, the shepherd of the flock. but after all he had at least this privilege he could not part with, of thinking as he would; and it was well, now and then, by a conscious effort of will, to indulge it for a while, under systematic direction. the duty of thus making discreet, systematic use of the power of imaginative vision for purposes of spiritual culture, "since the soul takes colour from its fantasies," is a point he has frequently insisted on. the influence of these seasonable meditations--a symbol, or sacrament, because an intensified [39] condition, of the soul's own ordinary and natural life--would remain upon it, perhaps for many days. there were experiences he could not forget, intuitions beyond price, he had come by in this way, which were almost like the breaking of a physical light upon his mind; as the great augustus was said to have seen a mysterious physical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the capitol, where the altar of the sibyl now stood. with a prayer, therefore, for inward quiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some select passages of plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in all its forms, with itself--"could there be cosmos, that wonderful, reasonable order, in him, and nothing but disorder in the world without?" it was from this question he had passed on to the vision of a reasonable, a divine, order, not in nature, but in the condition of human affairs--that unseen celestial city, uranopolis, callipolis, urbs beata--in which, a consciousness of the divine will being everywhere realised, there would be, among other felicitous differences from this lower visible world, no more quite hopeless death, of men, or children, or of their affections. he had tried to-day, as never before, to make the most of this vision of a new rome, to realise it as distinctly as he could,--and, as it were, find his way along its streets, ere he went down into a world so irksomely different, to make his practical effort towards it, with a soul full of [40] compassion for men as they were. however distinct the mental image might have been to him, with the descent of but one flight of steps into the market-place below, it must have retreated again, as if at touch of some malign magic wand, beyond the utmost verge of the horizon. but it had been actually, in his clearest vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable entry, a tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted by strange faces, whose novel expression he, the great physiognomist, could by no means read. plato, indeed, had been able to articulate, to see, at least in thought, his ideal city. but just because aurelius had passed beyond plato, in the scope of the gracious charities he pre-supposed there, he had been unable really to track his way about it. ah! after all, according to plato himself, all vision was but reminiscence, and this, his heart's desire, no place his soul could ever have visited in any region of the old world's achievements. he had but divined, by a kind of generosity of spirit, the void place, which another experience than his must fill. yet marius noted the wonderful expression of peace, of quiet pleasure, on the countenance of aurelius, as he received from him the rolls of fine clear manuscript, fancying the thoughts of the emperor occupied at the moment with the famous prospect towards the alban hills, from those lofty windows. notes 37. +transliteration: en oligistois keitai. definition "it lies in the fewest [things]." chapter xviii: "the ceremony of the dart" [41] the ideas of stoicism, so precious to marcus aurelius, ideas of large generalisation, have sometimes induced, in those over whose intellects they have had real power, a coldness of heart. it was the distinction of aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness, one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also with the popular religion and its many gods. those vasty conceptions of the later greek philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of austerely opinionative "natural theology," and how often has that led to religious dryness--a hard contempt of everything in religion, which touches the senses, or charms the fancy, or really concerns the affections. aurelius had made his own the secret of passing, naturally, and with no violence to his thought, to and fro, between the richly coloured and romantic religion of those old gods who had still been human beings, and a very abstract speculation upon the impassive, [42] universal soul--that circle whose centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere--of which a series of purely logical necessities had evolved the formula. as in many another instance, those traditional pieties of the place and the hour had been derived by him from his mother:--para tês mêtros to theosebes.+ purified, as all such religion of concrete time and place needs to be, by frequent confronting with the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate religious sense in the possession of which aurelius differed from the people around him, it was the ground of many a sociability with their simpler souls, and for himself, certainly, a consolation, whenever the wings of his own soul flagged in the trying atmosphere of purely intellectual vision. a host of companions, guides, helpers, about him from of old time, "the very court and company of heaven," objects for him of personal reverence and affection--the supposed presence of the ancient popular gods determined the character of much of his daily life, and might prove the last stay of human nature at its weakest. "in every time and place," he had said, "it rests with thyself to use the event of the hour religiously: at all seasons worship the gods." and when he said "worship the gods!" he did it, as strenuously as everything else. yet here again, how often must he have experienced disillusion, or even some revolt of [43] feeling, at that contact with coarser natures to which his religious conclusions exposed him. at the beginning of the year one hundred and seventy-three public anxiety was as great as ever; and as before it brought people's superstition into unreserved play. for seven days the images of the old gods, and some of the graver new ones, lay solemnly exposed in the open air, arrayed in all their ornaments, each in his separate resting-place, amid lights and burning incense, while the crowd, following the imperial example, daily visited them, with offerings of flowers to this or that particular divinity, according to the devotion of each. but supplementing these older official observances, the very wildest gods had their share of worship,--strange creatures with strange secrets startled abroad into open daylight. the delirious sort of religion of which marius was a spectator in the streets of rome, during the seven days of the lectisternium, reminded him now and again of an observation of apuleius: it was "as if the presence of the gods did not do men good, but disordered or weakened them." some jaded women of fashion, especially, found in certain oriental devotions, at once relief for their religiously tearful souls and an opportunity for personal display; preferring this or that "mystery," chiefly because the attire required in it was suitable to their peculiar manner of beauty. and one morning marius [44] encountered an extraordinary crimson object, borne in a litter through an excited crowd--the famous courtesan benedicta, still fresh from the bath of blood, to which she had submitted herself, sitting below the scaffold where the victims provided for that purpose were slaughtered by the priests. even on the last day of the solemnity, when the emperor himself performed one of the oldest ceremonies of the roman religion, this fantastic piety had asserted itself. there were victims enough certainly, brought from the choice pastures of the sabine mountains, and conducted around the city they were to die for, in almost continuous procession, covered with flowers and well-nigh worried to death before the time by the crowds of people superstitiously pressing to touch them. but certain old-fashioned romans, in these exceptional circumstances, demanded something more than this, in the way of a human sacrifice after the ancient pattern; as when, not so long since, some greeks or gauls had been buried alive in the forum. at least, human blood should be shed; and it was through a wild multitude of fanatics, cutting their flesh with knives and whips and licking up ardently the crimson stream, that the emperor repaired to the temple of bellona, and in solemn symbolic act cast the bloodstained spear, or "dart," carefully preserved there, towards the enemy's country-[45] towards that unknown world of german homes, still warm, as some believed under the faint northern twilight, with those innocent affections of which romans had lost the sense. and this at least was clear, amid all doubts of abstract right or wrong on either side, that the ruin of those homes was involved in what aurelius was then preparing for, with,--yes! the gods be thanked for that achievement of an invigorating philosophy!--almost with a light heart. for, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, for which marcus aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously, came to test the power of a long-studied theory of practice; and it was the development of this theory--a theôria, literally--a view, an intuition, of the most important facts, and still more important possibilities, concerning man in the world, that marius now discovered, almost as if by accident, below the dry surface of the manuscripts entrusted to him. the great purple rolls contained, first of all, statistics, a general historical account of the writer's own time, and an exact diary; all alike, though in three different degrees of nearness to the writer's own personal experience, laborious, formal, self-suppressing. this was for the instruction of the public; and part of it has, perhaps, found its way into the augustan histories. but it was for the especial guidance of his son commodus that he had permitted himself to break out, here [46] and there, into reflections upon what was passing, into conversations with the reader. and then, as though he were put off his guard in this way, there had escaped into the heavy matter-of-fact, of which the main portion was composed, morsels of his conversation with himself. it was the romance of a soul (to be traced only in hints, wayside notes, quotations from older masters), as it were in lifelong, and often baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden fleece, or hesperidean fruit-trees, or some mysterious light of doctrine, ever retreating before him. a man, he had seemed to marius from the first, of two lives, as we say. of what nature, he had sometimes wondered, on the day, for instance, when he had interrupted the emperor's musings in the empty palace, might be that placid inward guest or inhabitant, who from amid the pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs looked out, as if surprised, at the things and faces around. here, then, under the tame surface of what was meant for a life of business, marius discovered, welcoming a brother, the spontaneous self-revelation of a soul as delicate as his own,--a soul for which conversation with itself was a necessity of existence. marius, indeed, had always suspected that the sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his. but here, certainly, was another, in this respect like himself; and again he seemed to detect the advent of some [47] new or changed spirit into the world, mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external and objective habit of life, which had been sufficient for the old classic soul. his purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated by this example of a book of self-portraiture. it was in fact the position of the modern essayist,--creature of efforts rather than of achievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at least conscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record, acknowledge. what seemed to underlie that position was the desire to make the most of every experience that might come, outwardly or from within: to perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind of instinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer's own theory--that theory of the "perpetual flux" of all things--to marius himself, so plausible from of old. there was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the making of such conversation with one's self at all. the logos, the reasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods--koinos autô pros tous theous+--cum diis communis. that might seem but the truism of a certain school of philosophy; but in aurelius was clearly an original and lively apprehension. there could be no inward conversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at [48] one's disposition of one's self. cornelius fronto too could enounce that theory of the reasonable community between men and god, in many different ways. but then, he was a cheerful man, and aurelius a singularly sad one; and what to fronto was but a doctrine, or a motive of mere rhetoric, was to the other a consolation. he walks and talks, for a spiritual refreshment lacking which he would faint by the way, with what to the learned professor is but matter of philosophic eloquence. in performing his public religious functions marcus aurelius had ever seemed like one who took part in some great process, a great thing really done, with more than the actually visible assistants about him. here, in these manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or language, in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of an actual conversation, in quotations from other older masters of the inward life, taking new significance from the chances of such intercourse, was the record of his communion with that eternal reason, which was also his own proper self, with the divine companion, whose tabernacle was in the intelligence of men--the journal of his daily commerce with that. chance: or providence! chance: or wisdom, one with nature and man, reaching from end to end, through all time and all existence, orderly disposing all things, according to [49] fixed periods, as he describes it, in terms very like certain well-known words of the book of wisdom:--those are the "fenced opposites" of the speculative dilemma, the tragic embarras, of which aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the summary of man's situation in the world. if there be, however, a provident soul like this "behind the veil," truly, even to him, even in the most intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with any quite irresistible assertion of its presence. yet one's choice in that speculative dilemma, as he has found it, is on the whole a matter of will.--"'tis in thy power," here too, again, "to think as thou wilt." for his part he has asserted his will, and has the courage of his opinion. "to the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn with thy whole heart: eat and drink ever of the best before thee." "wisdom," says that other disciple of the sapiential philosophy, "hath mingled her wine, she hath also prepared herself a table." tou aristou apolaue:+ "partake ever of her best!" and what marius, peeping now very closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing actually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer's bearing as in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so jealous of any palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one's faith, never allowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest. only, he [50] would do his part, at least, in maintaining the constant fitness, the sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. seeming to vary with the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account of experience, to a sheer fantasy, only "believed because it was impossible," that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men's common pleasures and their common ambition, above all their commonest vices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. it bred in him a kind of magnificence of character, in the old greek sense of the term; a temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of his convictions, or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, or talk about other people, or speculation as to what was passing in their so visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however clever or graceful. a soul thus disposed had "already entered into the better life":--was indeed in some sort "a priest, a minister of the gods." hence his constant "recollection"; a close watching of his soul, of a kind almost unique in the ancient world.--before all things examine into thyself: strive to be at home with thyself!--marius, a sympathetic witness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of monasticism itself in the prophetic future. with this mystic companion he had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence. here was already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was about to [51] play so large a part in the forming of human mind, under the sanction of the christian church. yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a service on which one must needs move about, solemn, serious, depressed, with the hushed footsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying. such was the impression which occurred to marius again and again as he read, with a growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author. by certain quite traceable links of association he was reminded, in spite of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor's ideas, how he had sat, essentially unconcerned, at the public shows. for, actually, his contemplations had made him of a sad heart, inducing in him that melancholy--tristitia--which even the monastic moralists have held to be of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of desidia or inactivity. resignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient bearing of the burden of a sad heart:--yes! this belonged doubtless to the situation of an honest thinker upon the world. only, in this case there seemed to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is. and there could be no true théodicé in that; no real accommodation of the world as it is, to the divine pattern of the logos, the eternal reason, over against it. it amounted to a tolerance of evil. the soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little understand, yet prospereth on the journey: [52] if thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of evil with thee therein. if thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with thee--nothing to be afraid of: whatever is, is right; as from the hand of one dispensing to every man according to his desert: if reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require? dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits? that which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole. the profit of the whole,--that was sufficient!+ --links, in a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to see evil anywhere, might lack, after all, the secret of genuine cheerfulness. it left in truth a weight upon the spirits; and with that weight unlifted, there could be no real justification of the ways of heaven to man. "let thine air be cheerful," he had said; and, with an effort, did himself at times attain to that serenity of aspect, which surely ought to accompany, as their outward flower and favour, hopeful assumptions like those. still, what in aurelius was but a passing expression, was with cornelius (marius could but note the contrast) nature, and a veritable physiognomy. with cornelius, in fact, it was nothing less than the joy which dante apprehended in the blessed spirits of the perfect, the outward semblance of which, like a reflex of physical light upon human faces from "the land which is very far off," we may trace from giotto onward to its consummation in the work of raphael--the serenity, the [53] durable cheerfulness, of those who have been indeed delivered from death, and of which the utmost degree of that famed "blitheness "of the greeks had been but a transitory gleam, as in careless and wholly superficial youth. and yet, in cornelius, it was certainly united with the bold recognition of evil as a fact in the world; real as an aching in the head or heart, which one instinctively desires to have cured; an enemy with whom no terms could be made, visible, hatefully visible, in a thousand forms--the apparent waste of men's gifts in an early, or even in a late grave; the death, as such, of men, and even of animals; the disease and pain of the body. and there was another point of dissidence between aurelius and his reader.--the philosophic emperor was a despiser of the body. since it is "the peculiar privilege of reason to move within herself, and to be proof against corporeal impressions, suffering neither sensation nor passion to break in upon her," it follows that the true interest of the spirit must ever be to treat the body--well! as a corpse attached thereto, rather than as a living companion--nay, actually to promote its dissolution. in counterpoise to the inhumanity of this, presenting itself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature, the very person of cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of that reverent delight marius had always had in the visible body of man. such delight indeed had been but [54] a natural consequence of the sensuous or materialistic character of the philosophy of his choice. now to cornelius the body of man was unmistakeably, as a later seer terms it, the one true temple in the world; or rather itself the proper object of worship, of a sacred service, in which the very finest gold might have its seemliness and due symbolic use:--ah! and of what awe-stricken pity also, in its dejection, in the perishing gray bones of a poor man's grave! some flaw of vision, thought marius, must be involved in the philosopher's contempt for it--some diseased point of thought, or moral dulness, leading logically to what seemed to him the strangest of all the emperor's inhumanities, the temper of the suicide; for which there was just then, indeed, a sort of mania in the world. "'tis part of the business of life," he read, "to lose it handsomely." on due occasion, "one might give life the slip." the moral or mental powers might fail one; and then it were a fair question, precisely, whether the time for taking leave was not come:--"thou canst leave this prison when thou wilt. go forth boldly!" just there, in the bare capacity to entertain such question at all, there was what marius, with a soul which must always leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical sunshine, touching him as it touched the flies in the air, could not away with. there, surely, was a sign of some crookedness in the natural power of apprehension. it was the [55] attitude, the melancholy intellectual attitude, of one who might be greatly mistaken in things--who might make the greatest of mistakes. a heart that could forget itself in the misfortune, or even in the weakness of others:--of this marius had certainly found the trace, as a confidant of the emperor's conversations with himself, in spite of those jarring inhumanities, of that pretension to a stoical indifference, and the many difficulties of his manner of writing. he found it again not long afterwards, in still stronger evidence, in this way. as he read one morning early, there slipped from the rolls of manuscript a sealed letter with the emperor's superscription, which might well be of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once in person; aurelius being then absent from rome in one of his favourite retreats, at praeneste, taking a few days of quiet with his young children, before his departure for the war. a whole day passed as marius crossed the campagna on horseback, pleased by the random autumn lights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture, the shepherds in their picturesque dress, the golden elms, tower and villa; and it was after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little hill-town to the imperial residence. he was struck by an odd mixture of stillness and excitement about the place. lights burned at the windows. it seemed that numerous visitors were within, for the courtyard was crowded with litters and horses [56] in waiting. for the moment, indeed, all larger cares, even the cares of war, of late so heavy a pressure, had been forgotten in what was passing with the little annius verus; who for his part had forgotten his toys, lying all day across the knees of his mother, as a mere child's ear-ache grew rapidly to alarming sickness with great and manifest agony, only suspended a little, from time to time, when from very weariness he passed into a few moments of unconsciousness. the country surgeon called in, had removed the imposthume with the knife. there had been a great effort to bear this operation, for the terrified child, hardly persuaded to submit himself, when his pain was at its worst, and even more for the parents. at length, amid a company of pupils pressing in with him, as the custom was, to watch the proceedings in the sick-room, the eminent galen had arrived, only to pronounce the thing done visibly useless, the patient falling now into longer intervals of delirium. and thus, thrust on one side by the crowd of departing visitors, marius was forced into the privacy of a grief, the desolate face of which went deep into his memory, as he saw the emperor carry the child away--quite conscious at last, but with a touching expression upon it of weakness and defeat--pressed close to his bosom, as if he yearned just then for one thing only, to be united, to be absolutely one with it, in its obscure distress. notes 42. +transliteration: para tês mêtros to theosebes. translation: "rites deriving from [his] mother." 47. +transliteration: koinos autô pros tous theous. translation: "common to him together with the gods." 49. +transliteration: tou aristou apolaue. translation: "[always] take the best." 52. +not indented in the original. chapter xix: the will as vision paratum cor meum deus! paratum cor meum! [57] the emperor demanded a senatorial decree for the erection of images in memory of the dead prince; that a golden one should be carried, together with the other images, in the great procession of the circus, and the addition of the child's name to the hymn of the salian priests: and so, stifling private grief, without further delay set forth for the war. true kingship, as plato, the old master of aurelius, had understood it, was essentially of the nature of a service. if so be, you can discover a mode of life more desirable than the being a king, for those who shall be kings; then, the true ideal of the state will become a possibility; but not otherwise. and if the life of beatific vision be indeed possible, if philosophy really "concludes in an ecstasy," affording full fruition to the entire nature of man; then, for certain elect souls at least, a mode of life will have been [58] discovered more desirable than to be a king. by love or fear you might induce such persons to forgo their privilege; to take upon them the distasteful task of governing other men, or even of leading them to victory in battle. but, by the very conditions of its tenure, their dominion would be wholly a ministry to others: they would have taken upon them-"the form of a servant": they would be reigning for the well-being of others rather than their own. the true king, the righteous king, would be saint lewis, exiling himself from the better land and its perfected company--so real a thing to him, definite and real as the pictured scenes of his psalter--to take part in or to arbitrate men's quarrels, about the transitory appearances of things. in a lower degree (lower, in proportion as the highest platonic dream is lower than any christian vision) the true king would be marcus aurelius, drawn from the meditation of books, to be the ruler of the roman people in peace, and still more, in war. to aurelius, certainly, the philosophic mood, the visions, however dim, which this mood brought with it, were sufficiently pleasant to him, together with the endearments of his home, to make public rule nothing less than a sacrifice of himself according to plato's requirement, now consummated in his setting forth for the campaign on the danube. that it was such a sacrifice was to marius visible fact, as he saw him [59] ceremoniously lifted into the saddle amid all the pageantry of an imperial departure, yet with the air less of a sanguine and self-reliant leader than of one in some way or other already defeated. through the fortune of the subsequent years, passing and repassing so inexplicably from side to side, the rumour of which reached him amid his own quiet studies, marius seemed always to see that central figure, with its habitually dejected hue grown now to an expression of positive suffering, all the stranger from its contrast with the magnificent armour worn by the emperor on this occasion, as it had been worn by his predecessor hadrian. totus et argento contextus et auro: clothed in its gold and silver, dainty as that old divinely constructed armour of which homer tells, but without its miraculous lightsomeness--he looked out baffled, labouring, moribund; a mere comfortless shadow taking part in some shadowy reproduction of the labours of hercules, through those northern, mist-laden confines of the civilised world. it was as if the familiar soul which had been so friendly disposed towards him were actually departed to hades; and when he read the conversations afterwards, though his judgment of them underwent no material change, it was nevertheless with the allowance we make for the dead. the memory of that suffering image, while it certainly strengthened his adhesion [60] to what he could accept at all in the philosophy of aurelius, added a strange pathos to what must seem the writer's mistakes. what, after all, had been the meaning of that incident, observed as so fortunate an omen long since, when the prince, then a little child much younger than was usual, had stood in ceremony among the priests of mars and flung his crown of flowers with the rest at the sacred image reclining on the pulvinar? the other crowns lodged themselves here or there; when, lo! the crown thrown by aurelius, the youngest of them all, alighted upon the very brows of the god, as if placed there by a careful hand! he was still young, also, when on the day of his adoption by antoninus pius he saw himself in a dream, with as it were shoulders of ivory, like the images of the gods, and found them more capable than shoulders of flesh. yet he was now well-nigh fifty years of age, setting out with two-thirds of life behind him, upon a labour which would fill the remainder of it with anxious cares--a labour for which he had perhaps no capacity, and certainly no taste. that ancient suit of armour was almost the only object aurelius now possessed from all those much cherished articles of vertu collected by the caesars, making the imperial residence like a magnificent museum. not men alone were needed for the war, so that it became necessary, to the great disgust alike of timid persons and of [61] the lovers of sport, to arm the gladiators, but money also was lacking. accordingly, at the sole motion of aurelius himself, unwilling that the public burden should be further increased, especially on the part of the poor, the whole of the imperial ornaments and furniture, a sumptuous collection of gems formed by hadrian, with many works of the most famous painters and sculptors, even the precious ornaments of the emperor's chapel or lararium, and the wardrobe of the empress faustina, who seems to have borne the loss without a murmur, were exposed for public auction. "these treasures," said aurelius, "like all else that i possess, belong by right to the senate and people." was it not a characteristic of the true kings in plato that they had in their houses nothing they could call their own? connoisseurs had a keen delight in the mere reading of the praetor's list of the property for sale. for two months the learned in these matters were daily occupied in the appraising of the embroidered hangings, the choice articles of personal use selected for preservation by each succeeding age, the great outlandish pearls from hadrian's favourite cabinet, the marvellous plate lying safe behind the pretty iron wicker-work of the shops in the goldsmiths' quarter. meantime ordinary persons might have an interest in the inspection of objects which had been as daily companions to people so far above and remote from them--things so fine also [62] in workmanship and material as to seem, with their antique and delicate air, a worthy survival of the grand bygone eras, like select thoughts or utterances embodying the very spirit of the vanished past. the town became more pensive than ever over old fashions. the welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great war being now over, all rome seemed to settle down into a singular quiet, likely to last long, as though bent only on watching from afar the languid, somewhat uneventful course of the contest itself. marius took advantage of it as an opportunity for still closer study than of old, only now and then going out to one of his favourite spots on the sabine or alban hills for a quiet even greater than that of rome in the country air. on one of these occasions, as if by favour of an invisible power withdrawing some unknown cause of dejection from around him, he enjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-possession--the possession of his own best and happiest self. after some gloomy thoughts over-night, he awoke under the full tide of the rising sun, himself full, in his entire refreshment, of that almost religious appreciation of sleep, the graciousness of its influence on men's spirits, which had made the old greeks conceive of it as a god. it was like one of those old joyful wakings of childhood, now becoming rarer and rarer with him, and looked back upon with much regret as a measure of advancing age. in fact, [63] the last bequest of this serene sleep had been a dream, in which, as once before, he overheard those he loved best pronouncing his name very pleasantly, as they passed through the rich light and shadow of a summer morning, along the pavement of a city--ah! fairer far than rome! in a moment, as he arose, a certain oppression of late setting very heavily upon him was lifted away, as though by some physical motion in the air. that flawless serenity, better than the most pleasurable excitement, yet so easily ruffled by chance collision even with the things and persons he had come to value as the greatest treasure in life, was to be wholly his to-day, he thought, as he rode towards tibur, under the early sunshine; the marble of its villas glistening all the way before him on the hillside. and why could he not hold such serenity of spirit ever at command? he asked, expert as he was at last become in the art of setting the house of his thoughts in order. "'tis in thy power to think as thou wilt:" he repeated to himself: it was the most serviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by those imperial conversations.--"'tis in thy power to think as thou wilt." and were the cheerful, sociable, restorative beliefs, of which he had there read so much, that bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of an eternal friend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical and material order, but only just behind it, [64] ready perhaps even now to break through:--were they, after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on some deliberate act of volition on his part? were they doctrines one might take for granted, generously take for granted, and led on by them, at first as but well-defined objects of hope, come at last into the region of a corresponding certitude of the intellect? "it is the truth i seek," he had read, "the truth, by which no one," gray and depressing though it might seem, "was ever really injured." and yet, on the other hand, the imperial wayfarer, he had been able to go along with so far on his intellectual pilgrimage, let fall many things concerning the practicability of a methodical and self-forced assent to certain principles or presuppositions "one could not do without." were there, as the expression "one could not do without" seemed to hint, beliefs, without which life itself must be almost impossible, principles which had their sufficient ground of evidence in that very fact? experience certainly taught that, as regarding the sensible world he could attend or not, almost at will, to this or that colour, this or that train of sounds, in the whole tumultuous concourse of colour and sound, so it was also, for the well-trained intelligence, in regard to that hum of voices which besiege the inward no less than the outward ear. might it be not otherwise with those various and competing hypotheses, the permissible hypotheses, which, [65] in that open field for hypothesis--one's own actual ignorance of the origin and tendency of our being--present themselves so importunately, some of them with so emphatic a reiteration, through all the mental changes of successive ages? might the will itself be an organ of knowledge, of vision? on this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading hand from afar reached him; only the peculiarly tranquil influence of its first hour increased steadily upon him, in a manner with which, as he conceived, the aspects of the place he was then visiting had something to do. the air there, air supposed to possess the singular property of restoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. an even veil of lawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky; and under its broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time came out upon the yellow old temples, the elegant pillared circle of the shrine of the patronal sibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient fundamental rock. some half-conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to have determined their grouping; in part resisting, partly going along with the natural wildness and harshness of the place, its floods and precipices. an air of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetation around--a world of evergreen trees--the olives especially, older than how many generations of men's lives! fretted and twisted by the combining forces of [66] life and death, into every conceivable caprice of form. in the windless weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to count, even in this time-worn place, as an image of unalterable rest. yet the clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was silently quickening everything in the late february afternoon, and the unseen violet refined itself through the air. it was as if the spirit of life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate revelation of itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work. through some accident to the trappings of his horse at the inn where he rested, marius had an unexpected delay. he sat down in an olive-garden, and, all around him and within still turning to reverie, the course of his own life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into some other world, disparted from this spectacular point where he was now placed to survey it, like that distant road below, along which he had travelled this morning across the campagna. through a dreamy land he could see himself moving, as if in another life, and like another person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, passing from point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from various dangers. that prospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of lively gratitude: it was as if he must look round for some one [67] else to share his joy with: for some one to whom he might tell the thing, for his own relief. companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in this way or that, or at least pleasant to him, had been, through one or another long span of it, the chief delight of the journey. and was it only the resultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused through his memory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had not been--besides flavian, besides cornelius even, and amid the solitude he had which in spite of ardent friendship perhaps loved best of all things--some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side throughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of his peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful recognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was there at all? must not the whole world around have faded away for him altogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it? in his deepest apparent solitude there had been rich entertainment. it was as if there were not one only, but two wayfarers, side by side, visible there across the plain, as he indulged his fancy. a bird came and sang among the wattled hedge-roses: an animal feeding crept nearer: the child who kept it was gazing quietly: and the scene and the hours still conspiring, he passed from that mere fantasy of a self not himself, beside him in his coming and [68] going, to those divinations of a living and companionable spirit at work in all things, of which he had become aware from time to time in his old philosophic readings--in plato and others, last but not least, in aurelius. through one reflection upon another, he passed from such instinctive divinations, to the thoughts which give them logical consistency, formulating at last, as the necessary exponent of our own and the world's life, that reasonable ideal to which the old testament gives the name of creator, which for the philosophers of greece is the eternal reason, and in the new testament the father of men--even as one builds up from act and word and expression of the friend actually visible at one's side, an ideal of the spirit within him. in this peculiar and privileged hour, his bodily frame, as he could recognise, although just then, in the whole sum of its capacities, so entirely possessed by him--nay! actually his very self--was yet determined by a far-reaching system of material forces external to it, a thousand combining currents from earth and sky. its seemingly active powers of apprehension were, in fact, but susceptibilities to influence. the perfection of its capacity might be said to depend on its passive surrender, as of a leaf on the wind, to the motions of the great stream of physical energy without it. and might not the intellectual frame also, still [69] more intimately himself as in truth it was, after the analogy of the bodily life, be a moment only, an impulse or series of impulses, a single process, in an intellectual or spiritual system external to it, diffused through all time and place--that great stream of spiritual energy, of which his own imperfect thoughts, yesterday or to-day, would be but the remote, and therefore imperfect pulsations? it was the hypothesis (boldest, though in reality the most conceivable of all hypotheses) which had dawned on the contemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old greek thought, alike:--the "world of ideas," existent only because, and in so far as, they are known, as plato conceived; the "creative, incorruptible, informing mind," supposed by aristotle, so sober-minded, yet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all. might not this entire material world, the very scene around him, the immemorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the falling water, be themselves but reflections in, or a creation of, that one indefectible mind, wherein he too became conscious, for an hour, a day, for so many years? upon what other hypothesis could he so well understand the persistency of all these things for his own intermittent consciousness of them, for the intermittent consciousness of so many generations, fleeting away one after another? it was easier to conceive of the material fabric of things as [70] but an element in a world of thought--as a thought in a mind, than of mind as an element, or accident, or passing condition in a world of matter, because mind was really nearer to himself: it was an explanation of what was less known by what was known better. the purely material world, that close, impassable prison-wall, seemed just then the unreal thing, to be actually dissolving away all around him: and he felt a quiet hope, a quiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning of this doctrine upon him as a really credible opinion. it was like the break of day over some vast prospect with the "new city," as it were some celestial new rome, in the midst of it. that divine companion figured no longer as but an occasional wayfarer beside him; but rather as the unfailing "assistant," without whose inspiration and concurrence he could not breathe or see, instrumenting his bodily senses, rounding, supporting his imperfect thoughts. how often had the thought of their brevity spoiled for him the most natural pleasures of life, confusing even his present sense of them by the suggestion of disease, of death, of a coming end, in everything! how had he longed, sometimes, that there were indeed one to whose boundless power of memory he could commit his own most fortunate moments, his admiration, his love, ay! the very sorrows of which he could not bear quite to lose the sense:--one strong to retain them even though [71] he forgot, in whose more vigorous consciousness they might subsist for ever, beyond that mere quickening of capacity which was all that remained of them in himself! "oh! that they might live before thee"--to-day at least, in the peculiar clearness of one privileged hour, he seemed to have apprehended that in which the experiences he valued most might find, one by one, an abiding-place. and again, the resultant sense of companionship, of a person beside him, evoked the faculty of conscience--of conscience, as of old and when he had been at his best, in the form, not of fear, nor of self-reproach even, but of a certain lively gratitude. himself--his sensations and ideas--never fell again precisely into focus as on that day, yet he was the richer by its experience. but for once only to have come under the power of that peculiar mood, to have felt the train of reflections which belong to it really forcible and conclusive, to have been led by them to a conclusion, to have apprehended the great ideal, so palpably that it defined personal gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid the shadows of the world, left this one particular hour a marked point in life never to be forgotten. it gave him a definitely ascertained measure of his moral or intellectual need, of the demand his soul must make upon the powers, whatsoever they might be, which [72] had brought him, as he was, into the world at all. and again, would he be faithful to himself, to his own habits of mind, his leading suppositions, if he did but remain just there? must not all that remained of life be but a search for the equivalent of that ideal, among so-called actual things--a gathering together of every trace or token of it, which his actual experience might present? part the fourth chapter xx: two curious houses i. guests "your old men shall dream dreams."+ [75] a nature like that of marius, composed, in about equal parts, of instincts almost physical, and of slowly accumulated intellectual judgments, was perhaps even less susceptible than other men's characters of essential change. and yet the experience of that fortunate hour, seeming to gather into one central act of vision all the deeper impressions his mind had ever received, did not leave him quite as he had been. for his mental view, at least, it changed measurably the world about him, of which he was still indeed a curious spectator, but which looked further off, was weaker in its hold, and, in a sense, less real to him than ever. it was as if he viewed it through a diminishing glass. and the permanency of this change he could note, some years later, when it [76] happened that he was a guest at a feast, in which the various exciting elements of roman life, its physical and intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity and far-fetched elegances, its strange, mystic essays after the unseen, were elaborately combined. the great apuleius, the literary ideal of his boyhood, had arrived in rome,--was now visiting tusculum, at the house of their common friend, a certain aristocratic poet who loved every sort of superiorities; and marius was favoured with an invitation to a supper given in his honour. it was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to his own early boyish hero-worship, yet with some sense of superiority in himself, seeing his old curiosity grown now almost to indifference when on the point of satisfaction at last, and upon a juster estimate of its object, that he mounted to the little town on the hillside, the foot-ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gathered round a single great house under shadow of the "haunted" ruins of cicero's villa on the wooded heights. he found a touch of weirdness in the circumstance that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meet the writer who was come to seem almost like one of the personages in his own fiction. as he turned now and then to gaze at the evening scene through the tall narrow openings of the street, up which the cattle were going home slowly from the [77] pastures below, the alban mountains, stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses, seemed close at hand--a screen of vaporous dun purple against the setting sun--with those waves of surpassing softness in the boundary lines which indicate volcanic formation. the coolness of the little brown market-place, for profit of which even the working-people, in long file through the olive-gardens, were leaving the plain for the night, was grateful, after the heats of rome. those wild country figures, clad in every kind of fantastic patchwork, stained by wind and weather fortunately enough for the eye, under that significant light inclined him to poetry. and it was a very delicate poetry of its kind that seemed to enfold him, as passing into the poet's house he paused for a moment to glance back towards the heights above; whereupon, the numerous cascades of the precipitous garden of the villa, framed in the doorway of the hall, fell into a harmless picture, in its place among the pictures within, and scarcely more real than they--a landscape-piece, in which the power of water (plunging into what unseen depths!) done to the life, was pleasant, and without its natural terrors. at the further end of this bland apartment, fragrant with the rare woods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of aromatic oil from the ready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses of the guests, as with odours from the [78] altars of the gods, the supper-table was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the agreeable petit-maître, who entertained. he was already most carefully dressed, but, like martial's stella, perhaps consciously, meant to change his attire once and again during the banquet; in the last instance, for an ancient vesture (object of much rivalry among the young men of fashion, at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) a toga, of altogether lost hue and texture. he wore it with a grace which became the leader of a thrilling movement then on foot for the restoration of that disused garment, in which, laying aside the customary evening dress, all the visitors were requested to appear, setting off the delicate sinuosities and well-disposed "golden ways" of its folds, with harmoniously tinted flowers. the opulent sunset, blending pleasantly with artificial light, fell across the quiet ancestral effigies of old consular dignitaries, along the wide floor strewn with sawdust of sandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of cool coronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard of old citron. the crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues of the early autumn fruit--mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that had long been hanging under careful protection upon the vines, were almost as much a feast for the eye, as the dusky fires of the rare twelve-petalled roses. a favourite animal, white as snow, brought by one of the visitors, purred its way [79] gracefully among the wine-cups, coaxed onward from place to place by those at table, as they reclined easily on their cushions of german eider-down, spread over the long-legged, carved couches. a highly refined modification of the acroama--a musical performance during supper for the diversion of the guests--was presently heard hovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that the company could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it had been designed by their entertainer. they inclined on the whole to think it some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wild neighbourhood, turning, as it did now and then, to a solitary reed-note, like a bird's, while it wandered into the distance. it wandered quite away at last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight came on, and made way for another sort of entertainment. an odd, rapid, phantasmal glitter, advancing from the garden by torchlight, defined itself, as it came nearer, into a dance of young men in armour. arrived at length in a portico, open to the supper-chamber, they contrived that their mechanical march-movement should fall out into a kind of highly expressive dramatic action; and with the utmost possible emphasis of dumb motion, their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air, they danced the death of paris. the young commodus, already an adept in these matters, who had condescended to [80] welcome the eminent apuleius at the banquet, had mysteriously dropped from his place to take his share in the performance; and at its conclusion reappeared, still wearing the dainty accoutrements of paris, including a breastplate, composed entirely of overlapping tigers' claws, skilfully gilt. the youthful prince had lately assumed the dress of manhood, on the return of the emperor for a brief visit from the north; putting up his hair, in imitation of nero, in a golden box dedicated to capitoline jupiter. his likeness to aurelius, his father, was become, in consequence, more striking than ever; and he had one source of genuine interest in the great literary guest of the occasion, in that the latter was the fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition of wild beasts and gladiatorial shows in the province of carthage, where he resided. still, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes of the emperor's son, it was felt that with a guest like apuleius whom they had come prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, the conversation should be learned and superior, and the host at last deftly led his company round to literature, by the way of bindings. elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine library of ancient greek books passed from hand to hand about the table. it was a sign for the visitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiosities from their bags, as their contribution to the banquet; and one of them, a [81] famous reader, choosing his lucky moment, delivered in tenor voice the piece which follows, with a preliminary query as to whether it could indeed be the composition of lucian of samosata,+ understood to be the great mocker of that day:-"what sound was that, socrates?" asked chaerephon. "it came from the beach under the cliff yonder, and seemed a long way off.--and how melodious it was! was it a bird, i wonder. i thought all sea-birds were songless." "aye! a sea-bird," answered socrates, "a bird called the halcyon, and has a note full of plaining and tears. there is an old story people tell of it. it was a mortal woman once, daughter of aeolus, god of the winds. ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her in her early maidenhood. the son was not less fair than the father; and when it came to pass that he died, the crying of the girl as she lamented his sweet usage, was, just that! and some while after, as heaven willed, she was changed into a bird. floating now on bird's wings over the sea she seeks her lost ceyx there; since she was not able to find him after long wandering over the land." "that then is the halcyon--the kingfisher," said chaerephon. "i never heard a bird like it before. it has truly a plaintive note. what kind of a bird is it, socrates?" "not a large bird, though she has received [82] large honour from the gods on account of her singular conjugal affection. for whensoever she makes her nest, a law of nature brings round what is called halcyon's weather,--days distinguishable among all others for their serenity, though they come sometimes amid the storms of winter--days like to-day! see how transparent is the sky above us, and how motionless the sea!--like a smooth mirror." true! a halcyon day, indeed! and yesterday was the same. but tell me, socrates, what is one to think of those stories which have been told from the beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals into birds? to me nothing seems more incredible." "dear chaerephon," said socrates, "methinks we are but half-blind judges of the impossible and the possible. we try the question by the standard of our human faculty, which avails neither for true knowledge, nor for faith, nor vision. therefore many things seem to us impossible which are really easy, many things unattainable which are within our reach; partly through inexperience, partly through the childishness of our minds. for in truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like a little child, so brief and babyish are the years of our life in comparison of eternity. then, how can we, who comprehend not the faculties of gods and of the heavenly host, tell whether aught of that kind be possible or no?--what a tempest you saw [83] three days ago! one trembles but to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps, the violence of the wind! you might have thought the whole world was going to ruin. and then, after a little, came this wonderful serenity of weather, which has continued till to-day. which do you think the greater and more difficult thing to do: to exchange the disorder of that irresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this, and becalm the whole world again, or to refashion the form of a woman into that of a bird? we can teach even little children to do something of that sort,--to take wax or clay, and mould out of the same material many kinds of form, one after another, without difficulty. and it may be that to the deity, whose power is too vast for comparison with ours, all processes of that kind are manageable and easy. how much wider is the whole circle of heaven than thyself?--wider than thou canst express. "among ourselves also, how vast the difference we may observe in men's degrees of power! to you and me, and many another like us, many things are impossible which are quite easy to others. for those who are unmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who have not yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women of birds. from the dumb and lifeless egg nature moulds her swarms of winged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret [84] art in the wide air around us. she takes from the honeycomb a little memberless live thing; she brings it wings and feet, brightens and beautifies it with quaint variety of colour:--and lo! the bee in her wisdom, making honey worthy of the gods. "it follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little account, able wholly to discern no great matter, sometimes not even a little one, for the most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves, may hardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortal gods concerning kingfisher, or nightingale. yet the glory of thy mythus, as my fathers bequeathed it to me, o tearful songstress! that will i too hand on to my children, and tell it often to my wives, xanthippe and myrto:--the story of thy pious love to ceyx, and of thy melodious hymns; and, above all, of the honour thou hast with the gods!" the reader's well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, almost uncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of letters then present. the impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before the recital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no means designed, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the beauty of his teeth. one of the company, expert in his humours, made ready to transcribe what he would say, the sort of [85] things of which a collection was then forming, the "florida" or flowers, so to call them, he was apt to let fall by the way--no impromptu ventures at random; but rather elaborate, carved ivories of speech, drawn, at length, out of the rich treasure-house of a memory stored with such, and as with a fine savour of old musk about them. certainly in this case, as marius thought, it was worth while to hear a charming writer speak. discussing, quite in our modern way, the peculiarities of those suburban views, especially the sea-views, of which he was a professed lover, he was also every inch a priest of aesculapius, patronal god of carthage. there was a piquancy in his rococo, very african, and as it were perfumed personality, though he was now well-nigh sixty years old, a mixture there of that sort of platonic spiritualism which can speak of the soul of man as but a sojourner m the prison of the body--a blending of that with such a relish for merely bodily graces as availed to set the fashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent, and the like, nay! with something also which reminded marius of the vein of coarseness he had found in the "golden book." all this made the total impression he conveyed a very uncommon one. marius did not wonder, as he watched him speaking, that people freely attributed to him many of the marvellous adventures he had recounted in that famous romance, [86] over and above the wildest version of his own actual story--his extraordinary marriage, his religious initiations, his acts of mad generosity, his trial as a sorcerer. but a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for the company to separate. he was entertaining his immediate neighbours at the table with a trick from the streets; tossing his olives in rapid succession into the air, and catching them, as they fell, between his lips. his dexterity in this performance made the mirth around him noisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor: the learned party broke up; and marius withdrew, glad to escape into the open air. the courtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair, were lurking for the guests, with groups of curious idlers. a great conflagration was visible in the distance. was it in rome; or in one of the villages of the country? pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it, marius was for the first time able to converse intimately with apuleius; and in this moment of confidence the "illuminist," himself with locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full of affectations, almost like one of those light women there, dropped a veil as it were, and appeared, though still permitting the play of a certain element of theatrical interest in his bizarre tenets, to be ready to explain and defend his position reasonably. for a moment his fantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal [87] vision seemed to fall into some intelligible congruity with each other. in truth, it was the platonic idealism, as he conceived it, which for him literally animated, and gave him so lively an interest in, this world of the purely outward aspects of men and things.--did material things, such things as they had had around them all that evening, really need apology for being there, to interest one, at all? were not all visible objects--the whole material world indeed, according to the consistent testimony of philosophy in many forms--"full of souls"? embarrassed perhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent souls? certainly, the contemplative philosophy of plato, with its figurative imagery and apologue, its manifold aesthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, its music for the outward ear, had been, like plato's old master himself, a two-sided or two-coloured thing. apuleius was a platonist: only, for him, the ideas of plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, but in very truth informing souls, in every type and variety of sensible things. those noises in the house all supper-time, sounding through the tables and along the walls:--were they only startings in the old rafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; or rather importunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of the persons, nay! of the very things around, essaying to break through their frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding essentials beyond them, [88] which might have their say, their judgment to give, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life's table would be over? and was not this the true significance of the platonic doctrine?--a hierarchy of divine beings, associating themselves with particular things and places, for the purpose of mediating between god and man--man, who does but need due attention on his part to become aware of his celestial company, filling the air about him, thick as motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic intelligence he casts through it. "two kinds there are, of animated beings," he exclaimed: "gods, entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode, since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision--those mysterious stars!--in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: and men, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain; taken altogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but, severally, quitting the scene in irresistible succession. "what then? has nature connected itself together by no bond, allowed itself to be thus crippled, and split into the divine and human elements? and you will say to me: if so it be, that man is thus entirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication is denied [89] him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as a shepherd his sheep--to whom shall i address my prayers? whom, shall i invoke as the helper of the unfortunate, the protector of the good? "well! there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, through whom our aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and theirs to us. passing between the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry from one to the other prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being a kind of interpreters. this interval of the air is full of them! through them, all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected. for, specially appointed members of this order have their special provinces, with a ministry according to the disposition of each. they go to and fro without fixed habitation: or dwell in men's houses"-just then a companion's hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder of the speaker carried him away, and the discourse broke off suddenly. its singular intimations, however, were sufficient to throw back on this strange evening, in all its detail--the dance, the readings, the distant fire--a kind of allegoric expression: gave it the character of one of those famous platonic figures or apologues which had then been in fact under discussion. when marius recalled its circumstances he seemed to hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading, from amidst a [90] scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldly mystical a view of man and his position in the world. for a moment, but only for a moment, as he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old, to be growing "close against the sky." yes! the reception of theory, of hypothesis, of beliefs, did depend a great deal on temperament. they were, so to speak, mere equivalents of temperament. a celestial ladder, a ladder from heaven to earth: that was the assumption which the experience of apuleius had suggested to him: it was what, in different forms, certain persons in every age had instinctively supposed: they would be glad to find their supposition accredited by the authority of a grave philosophy. marius, however, yearning not less than they, in that hard world of rome, and below its unpeopled sky, for the trace of some celestial wing across it, must still object that they assumed the thing with too much facility, too much of self-complacency. and his second thought was, that to indulge but for an hour fantasies, fantastic visions of that sort, only left the actual world more lonely than ever. for him certainly, and for his solace, the little godship for whom the rude countryman, an unconscious platonist, trimmed his twinkling lamp, would never slip from the bark of these immemorial olive-trees.--no! not even in the wildest moonlight. for himself, it was clear, he must still hold by what his eyes really saw. only, he had to concede also, that [91] the very boldness of such theory bore witness, at least, to a variety of human disposition and a consequent variety of mental view, which might--who can tell?--be correspondent to, be defined by and define, varieties of facts, of truths, just "behind the veil," regarding the world all alike had actually before them as their original premiss or starting-point; a world, wider, perhaps, in its possibilities than all possible fancies concerning it. notes 75. joel 2.28. 81. +halcyone. chapter xxi: two curious houses ii. the church in cecilia's house "your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." [92] cornelius had certain friends in or near rome, whose household, to marius, as he pondered now and again what might be the determining influences of that peculiar character, presented itself as possibly its main secret--the hidden source from which the beauty and strength of a nature, so persistently fresh in the midst of a somewhat jaded world, might be derived. but marius had never yet seen these friends; and it was almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at last lifted, and, with strange contrast to his visit to the poet's villa at tusculum, he entered another curious house. "the house in which she lives," says that mystical german writer quoted once before, "is for the orderly soul, which does not live on [93] blindly before her, but is ever, out of her passing experiences, building and adorning the parts of a many-roomed abode for herself, only an expansion of the body; as the body, according to the philosophy of swedenborg,+ is but a process, an expansion, of the soul. for such an orderly soul, as life proceeds, all sorts of delicate affinities establish themselves, between herself and the doors and passage-ways, the lights and shadows, of her outward dwelling-place, until she may seem incorporate with it--until at last, in the entire expressiveness of what is outward, there is for her, to speak properly, between outward and inward, no longer any distinction at all; and the light which creeps at a particular hour on a particular picture or space upon the wall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window, become to her, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of apprehension and door-ways to things beyond--the germ or rudiment of certain new faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends a matter lying beyond her actually attained capacities of spirit and sense." so it must needs be in a world which is itself, we may think, together with that bodily "tent" or "tabernacle," only one of many vestures for the clothing of the pilgrim soul, to be left by her, surely, as if on the wayside, worn-out one by one, as it was from her, indeed, they borrowed what momentary value or significance they had. [94] the two friends were returning to rome from a visit to a country-house, where again a mixed company of guests had been assembled; marius, for his part, a little weary of gossip, and those sparks of ill-tempered rivalry, which would seem sometimes to be the only sort of fire the intercourse of people in general society can strike out of them. a mere reaction upon this, as they started in the clear morning, made their companionship, at least for one of them, hardly less tranquillising than the solitude he so much valued. something in the south-west wind, combining with their own intention, favoured increasingly, as the hours wore on, a serenity like that marius had felt once before in journeying over the great plain towards tibur--a serenity that was to-day brotherly amity also, and seemed to draw into its own charmed circle whatever was then present to eye or ear, while they talked or were silent together, and all petty irritations, and the like, shrank out of existence, or kept certainly beyond its limits. the natural fatigue of the long journey overcame them quite suddenly at last, when they were still about two miles distant from rome. the seemingly endless line of tombs and cypresses had been visible for hours against the sky towards the west; and it was just where a cross-road from the latin way fell into the appian, that cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall--the outer wall of some villa courtyard, it might be supposed-[95] as if at liberty to enter, and rest there awhile. he held the door open for his companion to enter also, if he would; with an expression, as he lifted the latch, which seemed to ask marius, apparently shrinking from a possible intrusion: "would you like to see it?" was he willing to look upon that, the seeing of which might define--yes! define the critical turning-point in his days? the little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, in fact, into the court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt natural hollows, which give its character to the country in this place; the house itself, with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness of which surprised marius as he entered, being thus wholly concealed from passengers along the road. all around, in those well-ordered precincts, were the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste--a taste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older art, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour and form, so delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer intelligence in these matters than lay within the resources of the ancient world. it was the old way of true renaissance--being indeed the way of nature with her roses, the divine way with the body of man, perhaps with his soul--conceiving the new organism by no sudden and [96] abrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon elements, all of which had in truth already lived and died many times. the fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the precious corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave thought, of an intellectual purpose, in itself, aesthetically, very seductive. lastly, herb and tree had taken possession, spreading their seed-bells and light branches, just astir in the trembling air, above the ancient garden-wall, against the wide realms of sunset. and from the first they could hear singing, the singing of children mainly, it would seem, and of a new kind; so novel indeed in its effect, as to bring suddenly to the recollection of marius, flavian's early essays towards a new world of poetic sound. it was the expression not altogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of happiness--the blithe self-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon whom some all-subduing experience had wrought heroically, and who still remembered, on this bland afternoon, the hour of a great deliverance. his old native susceptibility to the spirit, the special sympathies, of places,--above all, to any hieratic or religious significance they might have,--was at its liveliest, as marius, still encompassed by that peculiar singing, and still amid the evidences of a grave discretion all around him, passed into the house. that intelligent seriousness [97] about life, the absence of which had ever seemed to remove those who lacked it into some strange species wholly alien from himself, accumulating all the lessons of his experience since those first days at white-nights, was as it were translated here, as if in designed congruity with his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision, into an actual picture. if the true value of souls is in proportion to what they can admire, marius was just then an acceptable soul. as he passed through the various chambers, great and small, one dominant thought increased upon him, the thought of chaste women and their children--of all the various affections of family life under its most natural conditions, yet developed, as if in devout imitation of some sublime new type of it, into large controlling passions. there reigned throughout, an order and purity, an orderly disposition, as if by way of making ready for some gracious spousals. the place itself was like a bride adorned for her husband; and its singular cheerfulness, the abundant light everywhere, the sense of peaceful industry, of which he received a deep impression though without precisely reckoning wherein it resided, as he moved on rapidly, were in forcible contrast just at first to the place to which he was next conducted by cornelius still with a sort of eager, hurried, half-troubled reluctance, and as if he forbore the explanation which might well be looked for by his companion. [98] an old flower-garden in the rear of the house, set here and there with a venerable olive-tree--a picture in pensive shade and fiery blossom, as transparent, under that afternoon light, as the old miniature-painters' work on the walls of the chambers within--was bounded towards the west by a low, grass-grown hill. a narrow opening cut in its steep side, like a solid blackness there, admitted marius and his gleaming leader into a hollow cavern or crypt, neither more nor less in fact than the family burial-place of the cecilii, to whom this residence belonged, brought thus, after an arrangement then becoming not unusual, into immediate connexion with the abode of the living, in bold assertion of that instinct of family life, which the sanction of the holy family was, hereafter, more and more to reinforce. here, in truth, was the centre of the peculiar religious expressiveness, of the sanctity, of the entire scene. that "any person may, at his own election, constitute the place which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of his dead into it":--had been a maxim of old roman law, which it was reserved for the early christian societies, like that established here by the piety of a wealthy roman matron, to realise in all its consequences. yet this was certainly unlike any cemetery marius had ever before seen; most obviously in this, that these people had returned to the older fashion of disposing of [99] their dead by burial instead of burning. originally a family sepulchre, it was growing to a vast necropolis, a whole township of the deceased, by means of some free expansion of the family interest beyond its amplest natural limits. that air of venerable beauty which characterised the house and its precincts above, was maintained also here. it was certainly with a great outlay of labour that these long, apparently endless, yet elaborately designed galleries, were increasing so rapidly, with their layers of beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side the path-way, in the porous tufa, through which all the moisture filters downwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. all alike were carefully closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command; some with simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by fair inscriptions: marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan tombs--the inscription sometimes a palimpsest, the new epitaph being woven into the faded letters of an earlier one. as in an ordinary roman cemetery, an abundance of utensils for the worship or commemoration of the departed was disposed around--incense, lights, flowers, their flame or their freshness being relieved to the utmost by contrast with the coal-like blackness of the soil itself, a volcanic sandstone, cinder of burnt-out fires. would they ever kindle again?--possess, transform, the place?--turning to an [100] ashen pallor where, at regular intervals, an air-hole or luminare let in a hard beam of clear but sunless light, with the heavy sleepers, row upon row within, leaving a passage so narrow that only one visitor at a time could move along, cheek to cheek with them, the high walls seemed to shut one in into the great company of the dead. only the long straight pathway lay before him; opening, however, here and there, into a small chamber, around a broad, table-like coffin or "altar-tomb," adorned even more profusely than the rest as if for some anniversary observance. clearly, these people, concurring in this with the special sympathies of marius himself, had adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling of hope they entertained concerning the body; a feeling which, in no irreverent curiosity, he would fain have penetrated. the complete and irreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire, so crushing to the spirits, as he for one had found it, had long since induced in him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last sleep, as having something about it more home-like and hopeful, at least in outward seeming. but whence the strange confidence that these "handfuls of white dust" would hereafter recompose themselves once more into exulting human creatures? by what heavenly alchemy, what reviving dew from above, such as was certainly never again to reach the dead violets?-[101] januarius, agapetus, felicitas; martyrs! refresh, i pray you, the soul of cecil, of cornelius! said an inscription, one of many, scratched, like a passing sigh, when it was still fresh in the mortar that had closed up the prison-door. all critical estimate of this bold hope, as sincere apparently as it was audacious in its claim, being set aside, here at least, carried further than ever before, was that pious, systematic commemoration of the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal to forget or finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with marius as the central exponent or symbol of all natural duty. the stern soul of the excellent jonathan edwards, applying the faulty theology of john calvin, afforded him, we know, the vision of infants not a span long, on the floor of hell. every visitor to the catacombs must have observed, in a very different theological connexion, the numerous children's graves there--beds of infants, but a span long indeed, lowly "prisoners of hope," on these sacred floors. it was with great curiosity, certainly, that marius considered them, decked in some instances with the favourite toys of their tiny occupants--toy-soldiers, little chariot-wheels, the entire paraphernalia of a baby-house; and when he saw afterwards the living children, who sang and were busy above--sang their psalm laudate pueri dominum!--their very faces caught for him a sort of quaint unreality from the memory [102] of those others, the children of the catacombs, but a little way below them. here and there, mingling with the record of merely natural decease, and sometimes even at these children's graves, were the signs of violent death or "martyrdom,"--proofs that some "had loved not their lives unto the death"--in the little red phial of blood, the palm-branch, the red flowers for their heavenly "birthday." about one sepulchre in particular, distinguished in this way, and devoutly arrayed for what, by a bold paradox, was thus treated as, natalitia--a birthday, the peculiar arrangements of the whole place visibly centered. and it was with a singular novelty of feeling, like the dawning of a fresh order of experiences upon him, that, standing beside those mournful relics, snatched in haste from the common place of execution not many years before, marius became, as by some gleam of foresight, aware of the whole force of evidence for a certain strange, new hope, defining in its turn some new and weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths so tragic for the "christian superstition." something of them he had heard indeed already. they had seemed to him but one savagery the more, savagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world. and yet these poignant memorials seemed also to draw him onwards to-day, as if towards an image of some still more pathetic suffering, [103] in the remote background. yes! the interest, the expression, of the entire neighbourhood was instinct with it, as with the savour of some priceless incense. penetrating the whole atmosphere, touching everything around with its peculiar sentiment, it seemed to make all this visible mortality, death's very self--ah! lovelier than any fable of old mythology had ever thought to render it, in the utmost limits of fantasy; and this, in simple candour of feeling about a supposed fact. peace! pax tecum!--the word, the thought--was put forth everywhere, with images of hope, snatched sometimes from that jaded pagan world which had really afforded men so little of it from first to last; the various consoling images it had thrown off, of succour, of regeneration, of escape from the grave--hercules wrestling with death for possession of alcestis, orpheus taming the wild beasts, the shepherd with his sheep, the shepherd carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders. yet these imageries after all, it must be confessed, formed but a slight contribution to the dominant effect of tranquil hope there--a kind of heroic cheerfulness and grateful expansion of heart, as with the sense, again, of some real deliverance, which seemed to deepen the longer one lingered through these strange and awful passages. a figure, partly pagan in character, yet most frequently repeated of all these visible parables--the figure of one just [104] escaped from the sea, still clinging as for life to the shore in surprised joy, together with the inscription beneath it, seemed best to express the prevailing sentiment of the place. and it was just as he had puzzled out this inscription- i went down to the bottom of the mountains. the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption! --that with no feeling of suddenness or change marius found himself emerging again, like a later mystic traveller through similar dark places "quieted by hope," into the daylight. they were still within the precincts of the house, still in possession of that wonderful singing, although almost in the open country, with a great view of the campagna before them, and the hills beyond. the orchard or meadow, through which their path lay, was already gray with twilight, though the western sky, where the greater stars were visible, was still afloat in crimson splendour. the colour of all earthly things seemed repressed by the contrast, yet with a sense of great richness lingering in their shadows. at that moment the voice of the singers, a "voice of joy and health," concentrated itself with solemn antistrophic movement, into an evening, or "candle" hymn. "hail! heavenly light, from his pure glory poured, who is the almighty father, heavenly, blest:- worthiest art thou, at all times to be sung with undefiled tongue."-[105] it was like the evening itself made audible, its hopes and fears, with the stars shining in the midst of it. half above, half below the level white mist, dividing the light from the darkness, came now the mistress of this place, the wealthy roman matron, left early a widow a few years before, by cecilius "confessor and saint." with a certain antique severity in the gathering of the long mantle, and with coif or veil folded decorously below the chin, "gray within gray," to the mind of marius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences of the serious and virile character of the best female statuary of greece. quite foreign, however, to any greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care, with which she carried a little child at rest in her arms. another, a year or two older, walked beside, the fingers of one hand within her girdle. she paused for a moment with a greeting for cornelius. that visionary scene was the close, the fitting close, of the afternoon's strange experiences. a few minutes later, passing forward on his way along the public road, he could have fancied it a dream. the house of cecilia grouped itself beside that other curious house he had lately visited at tusculum. and what a contrast was presented by the former, in its suggestions of hopeful industry, of immaculate cleanness, of responsive affection!--all alike determined by that transporting discovery of some fact, or series [106] of facts, in which the old puzzle of life had found its solution. in truth, one of his most characteristic and constant traits had ever been a certain longing for escape--for some sudden, relieving interchange, across the very spaces of life, it might be, along which he had lingered most pleasantly--for a lifting, from time to time, of the actual horizon. it was like the necessity under which the painter finds himself, to set a window or open doorway in the background of his picture; or like a sick man's longing for northern coolness, and the whispering willow-trees, amid the breathless evergreen forests of the south. to some such effect had this visit occurred to him, and through so slight an accident. rome and roman life, just then, were come to seem like some stifling forest of bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the generations of living trees, yet with roots in a deep, down-trodden soil of poignant human susceptibilities. in the midst of its suffocation, that old longing for escape had been satisfied by this vision of the church in cecilia's house, as never before. it was still, indeed, according to the unchangeable law of his temperament, to the eye, to the visual faculty of mind, that those experiences appealed--the peaceful light and shade, the boys whose very faces seemed to sing, the virginal beauty of the mother and her children. but, in his case, what was thus visible constituted a moral [107] or spiritual influence, of a somewhat exigent and controlling character, added anew to life, a new element therein, with which, consistently with his own chosen maxim, he must make terms. the thirst for every kind of experience, encouraged by a philosophy which taught that nothing was intrinsically great or small, good or evil, had ever been at strife in him with a hieratic refinement, in which the boy-priest survived, prompting always the selection of what was perfect of its kind, with subsequent loyal adherence of his soul thereto. this had carried him along in a continuous communion with ideals, certainly realised in part, either in the conditions of his own being, or in the actual company about him, above all, in cornelius. surely, in this strange new society he had touched upon for the first time to-day--in this strange family, like "a garden enclosed"--was the fulfilment of all the preferences, the judgments, of that half-understood friend, which of late years had been his protection so often amid the perplexities of life. here, it might be, was, if not the cure, yet the solace or anodyne of his great sorrows--of that constitutional sorrowfulness, not peculiar to himself perhaps, but which had made his life certainly like one long "disease of the spirit." merciful intention made itself known remedially here, in the mere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching [108] flesh. on the other hand, he was aware that new responsibilities also might be awakened--new and untried responsibilities--a demand for something from him in return. might this new vision, like the malignant beauty of pagan medusa, be exclusive of any admiring gaze upon anything but itself? at least he suspected that, after the beholding of it, he could never again be altogether as he had been before. notes 93. +emanuel swedenborg, swedish mystic writer, 1688-1772. return. chapter xxii: "the minor peace of the church" [109] faithful to the spirit of his early epicurean philosophy and the impulse to surrender himself, in perfectly liberal inquiry about it, to anything that, as a matter of fact, attracted or impressed him strongly, marius informed himself with much pains concerning the church in cecilia's house; inclining at first to explain the peculiarities of that place by the establishment there of the schola or common hall of one of those burial-guilds, which then covered so much of the unofficial, and, as it might be called, subterranean enterprise of roman society. and what he found, thus looking, literally, for the dead among the living, was the vision of a natural, a scrupulously natural, love, transforming, by some new gift of insight into the truth of human relationships, and under the urgency of some new motive by him so far unfathomable, all the conditions of life. he saw, in all its primitive freshness and amid the lively facts of its actual coming into the world, as a reality of [110] experience, that regenerate type of humanity, which, centuries later, giotto and his successors, down to the best and purest days of the young raphael, working under conditions very friendly to the imagination, were to conceive as an artistic ideal. he felt there, felt amid the stirring of some wonderful new hope within himself, the genius, the unique power of christianity; in exercise then, as it has been exercised ever since, in spite of many hindrances, and under the most inopportune circumstances. chastity,--as he seemed to understand--the chastity of men and women, amid all the conditions, and with the results, proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing in the world and the truest conservation of that creative energy by which men and women were first brought into it. the nature of the family, for which the better genius of old rome itself had sincerely cared, of the family and its appropriate affections--all that love of one's kindred by which obviously one does triumph in some degree over death--had never been so felt before. here, surely! in its genial warmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was opposed to it, to its own immaculate naturalness, in the hedge set around the sacred thing on every side, this development of the family did but carry forward, and give effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, friendly to man. as if by way of a due recognition of some immeasurable divine condescension manifest in a [111] certain historic fact, its influence was felt more especially at those points which demanded some sacrifice of one's self, for the weak, for the aged, for little children, and even for the dead. and then, for its constant outward token, its significant manner or index, it issued in a certain debonair grace, and a certain mystic attractiveness, a courtesy, which made marius doubt whether that famed greek "blitheness," or gaiety, or grace, in the handling of life, had been, after all, an unrivalled success. contrasting with the incurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher roman life, of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil, the new creation he now looked on--as it were a picture beyond the craft of any master of old pagan beauty--had indeed all the appropriate freshness of a "bride adorned for her husband." things new and old seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house, the brain full of science, the heart rich with various sentiment, possessing withal this surprising healthfulness, this reality of heart. "you would hardly believe," writes pliny,--to his own wife!--"what a longing for you possesses me. habit--that we have not been used to be apart--adds herein to the primary force of affection. it is this keeps me awake at night fancying i see you beside me. that is why my feet take me unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when i was wont to [112] visit you there. that is why i turn from the door of the empty chamber, sad and ill-at-ease, like an excluded lover."-there, is a real idyll from that family life, the protection of which had been the motive of so large a part of the religion of the romans, still surviving among them; as it survived also in aurelius, his disposition and aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the attained sweetness of his interior life. what marius had been permitted to see was a realisation of such life higher still: and with--yes! with a more effective sanction and motive than it had ever possessed before, in that fact, or series of facts, to be ascertained by those who would. the central glory of the reign of the antonines was that society had attained in it, though very imperfectly, and for the most part by cumbrous effort of law, many of those ends to which christianity went straight, with the sufficiency, the success, of a direct and appropriate instinct. pagan rome, too, had its touching charity-sermons on occasions of great public distress; its charity-children in long file, in memory of the elder empress faustina; its prototype, under patronage of aesculapius, of the modern hospital for the sick on the island of saint bartholomew. but what pagan charity was doing tardily, and as if with the painful calculation of old age, the church was doing, almost without thinking about it, with all the liberal [113] enterprise of youth, because it was her very being thus to do. "you fail to realise your own good intentions," she seems to say, to pagan virtue, pagan kindness. she identified herself with those intentions and advanced them with an unparalleled freedom and largeness. the gentle seneca would have reverent burial provided even for the dead body of a criminal. yet when a certain woman collected for interment the insulted remains of nero, the pagan world surmised that she must be a christian: only a christian would have been likely to conceive so chivalrous a devotion towards mere wretchedness. "we refuse to be witnesses even of a homicide commanded by the law," boasts the dainty conscience of a christian apologist, "we take no part in your cruel sports nor in the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and we hold that to witness a murder is the same thing as to commit one." and there was another duty almost forgotten, the sense of which rousseau brought back to the degenerate society of a later age. in an impassioned discourse the sophist favorinus counsels mothers to suckle their own infants; and there are roman epitaphs erected to mothers, which gratefully record this proof of natural affection as a thing then unusual. in this matter too, what a sanction, what a provocative to natural duty, lay in that image discovered to augustus by the tiburtine sibyl, amid the aurora of a new age, the image of the divine mother and the [114] child, just then rising upon the world like the dawn! christian belief, again, had presented itself as a great inspirer of chastity. chastity, in turn, realised in the whole scope of its conditions, fortified that rehabilitation of peaceful labour, after the mind, the pattern, of the workman of galilee, which was another of the natural instincts of the catholic church, as being indeed the long-desired initiator of a religion of cheerfulness, as a true lover of the industry--so to term it--the labour, the creation, of god. and this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman, of the family, of industry, of man's work in life, so close to the truth of nature, was also, in that charmed hour of the minor "peace of the church," realised as an influence tending to beauty, to the adornment of life and the world. the sword in the world, the right eye plucked out, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach which those images express, and of which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one side only of the nature of the divine missionary of the new testament. opposed to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is the function of the good shepherd, serene, blithe and debonair, beyond the gentlest shepherd of greek mythology; of a king under whom the beatific vision is realised of a reign of peace--peace of heart--among men. such aspect of the divine character of christ, rightly understood, [115] is indeed the final consummation of that bold and brilliant hopefulness in man's nature, which had sustained him so far through his immense labours, his immense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of life, is but a minor achievement. sometimes one, sometimes the other, of those two contrasted aspects of its founder, have, in different ages and under the urgency of different human needs, been at work also in the christian church. certainly, in that brief "peace of the church" under the antonines, the spirit of a pastoral security and happiness seems to have been largely expanded. there, in the early church of rome, was to be seen, and on sufficiently reasonable grounds, that satisfaction and serenity on a dispassionate survey of the facts of life, which all hearts had desired, though for the most part in vain, contrasting itself for marius, in particular, very forcibly, with the imperial philosopher's so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy. it was christianity in its humanity, or even its humanism, in its generous hopes for man, its common sense and alacrity of cheerful service, its sympathy with all creatures, its appreciation of beauty and daylight. "the angel of righteousness," says the shepherd of hermas, the most characteristic religious book of that age, its pilgrim's progress--"the angel of righteousness is modest and delicate and meek and quiet. take from thyself grief, for (as hamlet will one day discover) 'tis the sister [116] of doubt and ill-temper. grief is more evil than any other spirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the servants of god, and beyond all spirits destroyeth man. for, as when good news is come to one in grief, straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer attendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard, so do ye, also! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding of these good things. put on therefore gladness that hath always favour before god, and is acceptable unto him, and delight thyself in it; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and thinketh good thoughts, despising grief."--such were the commonplaces of this new people, among whom so much of what marius had valued most in the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion. some transforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts, to deepen expression--a spirit which, in its dealing with the elements of ancient life, was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion, juxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a grave yet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outward world was understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty of a certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within, among the prerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom. the reader may think perhaps, that marius, who, epicurean as he was, had his visionary [117] aptitudes, by an inversion of one of plato's peculiarities with which he was of course familiar, must have descended, by foresight, upon a later age than his own, and anticipated christian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence of saint francis of assisi. but if he dreamed on one of those nights of the beautiful house of cecilia, its lights and flowers, of cecilia herself moving among the lilies, with an enhanced grace as happens sometimes in healthy dreams, it was indeed hardly an anticipation. he had lighted, by one of the peculiar intellectual good-fortunes of his life, upon a period when, even more than in the days of austere ascêsis which had preceded and were to follow it, the church was true for a moment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element of profound serenity in the soul of her founder, which reflected the eternal goodwill of god to man, "in whom," according to the oldest version of the angelic message, "he is well-pleased." for what christianity did many centuries afterwards in the way of informing an art, a poetry, of graver and higher beauty, we may think, than that of greek art and poetry at their best, was in truth conformable to the original tendency of its genius. the genuine capacity of the catholic church in this direction, discoverable from the first in the new testament, was also really at work, in that earlier "peace," under [118] the antonines--the minor "peace of the church," as we might call it, in distinction from the final "peace of the church," commonly so called, under constantine. saint francis, with his following in the sphere of poetry and of the arts--the voice of dante, the hand of giotto--giving visible feature and colour, and a palpable place among men, to the regenerate race, did but re-establish a continuity, only suspended in part by those troublous intervening centuries--the "dark ages," properly thus named--with the gracious spirit of the primitive church, as manifested in that first early springtide of her success. the greater "peace" of constantine, on the other hand, in many ways, does but establish the exclusiveness, the puritanism, the ascetic gloom which, in the period between aurelius and the first christian emperor, characterised a church under misunderstanding or oppression, driven back, in a world of tasteless controversy, inwards upon herself. already, in the reign of antoninus pius, the time was gone by when men became christians under some sudden and overpowering impression, and with all the disturbing results of such a crisis. at this period the larger number, perhaps, had been born christians, had been ever with peaceful hearts in their "father's house." that earlier belief in the speedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world, with the consequences it so naturally involved in the temper [119] of men's minds, was dying out. every day the contrast between the church and the world was becoming less pronounced. and now also, as the church rested awhile from opposition, that rapid self-development outward from within, proper to times of peace, was in progress. antoninus pius, it might seem, more truly even than marcus aurelius himself, was of that group of pagan saints for whom dante, like augustine, has provided in his scheme of the house with many mansions. a sincere old roman piety had urged his fortunately constituted nature to no mistakes, no offences against humanity. and of his entire freedom from guile one reward had been this singular happiness, that under his rule there was no shedding of christian blood. to him belonged that half-humorous placidity of soul, of a kind illustrated later very effectively by montaigne, which, starting with an instinct of mere fairness towards human nature and the world, seems at last actually to qualify its possessor to be almost the friend of the people of christ. amiable, in its own nature, and full of a reasonable gaiety, christianity has often had its advantage of characters such as that. the geniality of antoninus pius, like the geniality of the earth itself, had permitted the church, as being in truth no alien from that old mother earth, to expand and thrive for a season as by natural process. and that charmed period under the antonines, extending to the later years of the [120] reign of aurelius (beautiful, brief, chapter of ecclesiastical history!), contains, as one of its motives of interest, the earliest development of christian ritual under the presidence of the church of rome. again as in one of those mystical, quaint visions of the shepherd of hermas, "the aged woman was become by degrees more and more youthful. and in the third vision she was quite young, and radiant with beauty: only her hair was that of an aged woman. and at the last she was joyous, and seated upon a throne--seated upon a throne, because her position is a strong one." the subterranean worship of the church belonged properly to those years of her early history in which it was illegal for her to worship at all. but, hiding herself for awhile as conflict grew violent, she resumed, when there was felt to be no more than ordinary risk, her natural freedom. and the kind of outward prosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first "peace," her modes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, was re-inforced by the decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history. in the history of the church, as throughout the moral history of mankind, there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possible to maintain--two conceptions, under one or the other of which we may represent to ourselves men's efforts towards a better life--corresponding to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as [121] discernible in the picture afforded by the new testament itself of the character of christ. the ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially a sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it; while the ideal of culture represents it as a harmonious development of all the parts of human nature, in just proportion to each other. it was to the latter order of ideas that the church, and especially the church of rome in the age of the antonines, freely lent herself. in that earlier "peace" she had set up for herself the ideal of spiritual development, under the guidance of an instinct by which, in those serene moments, she was absolutely true to the peaceful soul of her founder. "goodwill to men," she said, "in whom god himself is well-pleased!" for a little while, at least, there was no forced opposition between the soul and the body, the world and the spirit, and the grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently with the people of christ. tact, good sense, ever the note of a true orthodoxy, the merciful compromises of the church, indicative of her imperial vocation in regard to all the varieties of human kind, with a universality of which the old roman pastorship she was superseding is but a prototype, was already become conspicuous, in spite of a discredited, irritating, vindictive society, all around her. against that divine urbanity and moderation [122] the old error of montanus we read of dimly, was a fanatical revolt--sour, falsely anti-mundane, ever with an air of ascetic affectation, and a bigoted distaste in particular for all the peculiar graces of womanhood. by it the desire to please was understood to come of the author of evil. in this interval of quietness, it was perhaps inevitable, by the law of reaction, that some such extravagances of the religious temper should arise. but again the church of rome, now becoming every day more and more completely the capital of the christian world, checked the nascent montanism, or puritanism of the moment, vindicating for all christian people a cheerful liberty of heart, against many a narrow group of sectaries, all alike, in their different ways, accusers of the genial creation of god. with her full, fresh faith in the evangele--in a veritable regeneration of the earth and the body, in the dignity of man's entire personal being--for a season, at least, at that critical period in the development of christianity, she was for reason, for common sense, for fairness to human nature, and generally for what may be called the naturalness of christianity.--as also for its comely order: she would be "brought to her king in raiment of needlework." it was by the bishops of rome, diligently transforming themselves, in the true catholic sense, into universal pastors, that the path of what we must call humanism was thus defined. [123] and then, in this hour of expansion, as if now at last the catholic church might venture to show her outward lineaments as they really were, worship--"the beauty of holiness," nay! the elegance of sanctity--was developed, with a bold and confident gladness, the like of which has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age. the tables in fact were turned: the prize of a cheerful temper on a candid survey of life was no longer with the pagan world. the aesthetic charm of the catholic church, her evocative power over all that is eloquent and expressive in the better mind of man, her outward comeliness, her dignifying convictions about human nature:--all this, as abundantly realised centuries later by dante and giotto, by the great medieval church-builders, by the great ritualists like saint gregory, and the masters of sacred music in the middle age--we may see already, in dim anticipation, in those charmed moments towards the end of the second century. dissipated or turned aside, partly through the fatal mistake of marcus aurelius himself, for a brief space of time we may discern that influence clearly predominant there. what might seem harsh as dogma was already justifying itself as worship; according to the sound rule: lex orandi, lex credendi--our creeds are but the brief abstract of our prayer and song. the wonderful liturgical spirit of the church, her wholly unparalleled genius for worship, [124] being thus awake, she was rapidly re-organising both pagan and jewish elements of ritual, for the expanding therein of her own new heart of devotion. like the institutions of monasticism, like the gothic style of architecture, the ritual system of the church, as we see it in historic retrospect, ranks as one of the great, conjoint, and (so to term them) necessary, products of human mind. destined for ages to come, to direct with so deep a fascination men's religious instincts, it was then already recognisable as a new and precious fact in the sum of things. what has been on the whole the method of the church, as "a power of sweetness and patience," in dealing with matters like pagan art, pagan literature was even then manifest; and has the character of the moderation, the divine moderation of christ himself. it was only among the ignorant, indeed, only in the "villages," that christianity, even in conscious triumph over paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. in the final "peace" of the church under constantine, while there was plenty of destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution was accomplished in the larger towns, in a manner more orderly and discreet--in the roman manner. the faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old pagan temples than on their conversion to a new and higher use; and, with much beautiful furniture ready to hand, they became christian sanctuaries. [125] already, in accordance with such maturer wisdom, the church of the "minor peace" had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan custom; as being indeed a living creature, taking up, transforming, accommodating still more closely to the human heart what of right belonged to it. in this way an obscure synagogue was expanded into the catholic church. gathering, from a richer and more varied field of sound than had remained for him, those old roman harmonies, some notes of which gregory the great, centuries later, and after generations of interrupted development, formed into the gregorian music, she was already, as we have heard, the house of song--of a wonderful new music and poesy. as if in anticipation of the sixteenth century, the church was becoming "humanistic," in an earlier, and unimpeachable renaissance. singing there had been in abundance from the first; though often it dared only be "of the heart." and it burst forth, when it might, into the beginnings of a true ecclesiastical music; the jewish psalter, inherited from the synagogue, turning now, gradually, from greek into latin--broken latin, into italian, as the ritual use of the rich, fresh, expressive vernacular superseded the earlier authorised language of the church. through certain surviving remnants of greek in the later latin liturgies, we may still discern a highly interesting intermediate phase of ritual development, when the greek [126] and the latin were in combination; the poor, surely!--the poor and the children of that liberal roman church--responding already in their own "vulgar tongue," to an office said in the original, liturgical greek. that hymn sung in the early morning, of which pliny had heard, was kindling into the service of the mass. the mass, indeed, would appear to have been said continuously from the apostolic age. its details, as one by one they become visible in later history, have already the character of what is ancient and venerable. "we are very old, and ye are young!" they seem to protest, to those who fail to understand them. ritual, in fact, like all other elements of religion, must grow and cannot be made--grow by the same law of development which prevails everywhere else, in the moral as in the physical world. as regards this special phase of the religious life, however, such development seems to have been unusually rapid in the subterranean age which preceded constantine; and in the very first days of the final triumph of the church the mass emerges to general view already substantially complete. "wisdom" was dealing, as with the dust of creeds and philosophies, so also with the dust of outworn religious usage, like the very spirit of life itself, organising soul and body out of the lime and clay of the earth. in a generous eclecticism, within the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential power within her, [127] she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so in ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources--gnostic, jewish, pagan--to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the world has seen. it was thus the liturgy of the church came to be--full of consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day, under the sanction of so many ages of human experience, to take exclusive possession of the religious consciousness. tantum ergo sacramentum veneremur cernui: et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui. chapter xxiii: divine service. "wisdom hath builded herself a house: she hath mingled her wine: she hath also prepared for herself a table." [128] the more highly favoured ages of imaginative art present instances of the summing up of an entire world of complex associations under some single form, like the zeus of olympia, or the series of frescoes which commemorate the acts of saint francis, at assisi, or like the play of hamlet or faust. it was not in an image, or series of images, yet still in a sort of dramatic action, and with the unity of a single appeal to eye and ear, that marius about this time found all his new impressions set forth, regarding what he had already recognised, intellectually, as for him at least the most beautiful thing in the world. to understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader must remember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense of vacuity in life. the fairest products of [129] the earth seemed to be dropping to pieces, as if in men's very hands, around him. how real was their sorrow, and his! "his observation of life" had come to be like the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, day after day; till, as if taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eye also, the very senses, were grown faint and sick. and now it happened as with the actual morning on which he found himself a spectator of this new thing. the long winter had been a season of unvarying sullenness. at last, on this day he awoke with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest twilight: in a little while the heavy rain had filtered the air: the clear light was abroad; and, as though the spring had set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things, the whole scene around him lay like some untarnished picture beneath a sky of delicate blue. under the spell of his late depression, marius had suddenly determined to leave rome for a while. but desiring first to advertise cornelius of his movements, and failing to find him in his lodgings, he had ventured, still early in the day, to seek him in the cecilian villa. passing through its silent and empty court-yard he loitered for a moment, to admire. under the clear but immature light of winter morning after a storm, all the details of form and colour in the old marbles were distinctly visible, and with a kind of severity or sadness--so it struck him--amid their beauty: [130] in them, and in all other details of the scene--the cypresses, the bunches of pale daffodils in the grass, the curves of the purple hills of tusculum, with the drifts of virgin snow still lying in their hollows. the little open door, through which he passed from the court-yard, admitted him into what was plainly the vast lararium, or domestic sanctuary, of the cecilian family, transformed in many particulars, but still richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture in metal-work and costly stone. the peculiar half-light of dawn seemed to be lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls; and here, though at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of people was assembled. in that brief period of peace, during which the church emerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life, the rigour of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed. and so it came to pass that, on this morning marius saw for the first time the wonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidential power over himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe. there were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age, of personal type. the roman ingenuus, with the white toga and gold ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole company was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. coming [131] thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, marius felt for a moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. yet that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of which discontent had passed away. corresponding to the variety of human type there present, was the various expression of every form of human sorrow assuaged. what desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women of humble condition? those young men, bent down so discreetly on the details of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainly been no parallel in the older world. was some credible message from beyond "the flaming rampart of the world"--a message of hope, regarding the place of men's souls and their interest in the sum of things--already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices, now and here? at least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at work in them, which seemed to make everything else marius had ever known look comparatively vulgar and mean. there were the children, above all--troops of children--reminding him of those pathetic children's graves, like cradles or garden[132] beds, he had noticed in his first visit to these places; and they more than satisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering in what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the daylight, if awakened from sleep. children of the catacombs, some but "a span long," with features not so much beautiful as heroic (that world of new, refining sentiment having set its seal even on childhood), they retained certainly no stain or trace of anything subterranean this morning, in the alacrity of their worship--as ready as if they had been at play--stretching forth their hands, crying, chanting in a resonant voice, and with boldly upturned faces, christe eleison! for the silence--silence, amid those lights of early morning to which marius had always been constitutionally impressible, as having in them a certain reproachful austerity--was broken suddenly by resounding cries of kyrie eleison! christe eleison! repeated alternately, again and again, until the bishop, rising from his chair, made sign that this prayer should cease. but the voices burst out once more presently, in richer and more varied melody, though still of an antiphonal character; the men, the women and children, the deacons, the people, answering one another, somewhat after the manner of a greek chorus. but again with what a novelty of poetic accent; what a genuine expansion of heart; what profound intimations for the [133] intellect, as the meaning of the words grew upon him! cum grandi affectu et compunctione dicatur--says an ancient eucharistic order; and certainly, the mystic tone of this praying and singing was one with the expression of deliverance, of grateful assurance and sincerity, upon the faces of those assembled. as if some searching correction, a regeneration of the body by the spirit, had begun, and was already gone a great way, the countenances of men, women, and children alike had a brightness on them which he could fancy reflected upon himself--an amenity, a mystic amiability and unction, which found its way most readily of all to the hearts of children themselves. the religious poetry of those hebrew psalms--benedixisti domine terram tuam: dixit dominus domino meo, sede a dextris meis--was certainly in marvellous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own character. those august hymns, he thought, must thereafter ever remain by him as among the well-tested powers in things to soothe and fortify the soul. one could never grow tired of them! in the old pagan worship there had been little to call the understanding into play. here, on the other hand, the utterance, the eloquence, the music of worship conveyed, as marius readily understood, a fact or series of facts, for intellectual reception. that became evident, more especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, which, like the singing, in broken [134] vernacular latin, occurred at certain intervals, amid the silence of the assembly. there were readings, again with bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on a difficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy, haunting men's minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than had ever belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention, into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at length complete. and last of all came a narrative which, with a thousand tender memories, every one appeared to know by heart, displaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournful figure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently turned--a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincture in his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in the experiences of the past. it was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebrated to-day. astiterunt reges terrae: so the gradual, the "song of degrees," proceeded, the young men on the steps of the altar responding in deep, clear, antiphon or chorus- astiterunt reges terrae- adversus sanctum puerum tuum, jesum: nunc, domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum- et signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri jesu. and the proper action of the rite itself, like a [135] half-opened book to be read by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions, and carried them forward into the present, as having reference to a power still efficacious, still after some mystic sense even now in action among the people there assembled. the entire office, indeed, with its interchange of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was itself like a single piece of highly composite, dramatic music; a "song of degrees," rising steadily to a climax. notwithstanding the absence of any central image visible to the eye, the entire ceremonial process, like the place in which it was enacted, was weighty with symbolic significance, seemed to express a single leading motive. the mystery, if such in fact it was, centered indeed in the actions of one visible person, distinguished among the assistants, who stood ranged in semicircle around him, by the extreme fineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the golden ornaments upon his head. nor had marius ever seen the pontifical character, as he conceived it--sicut unguentum in capite, descendens in oram vestimenti--so fully realised, as in the expression, the manner and voice, of this novel pontiff, as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by the young men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved his hands--hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious power--at the lavabo, or at the various benedictions, or [136] to bless certain objects on the table before him, chanting in cadence of a grave sweetness the leading parts of the rite. what profound unction and mysticity! the solemn character of the singing was at its height when he opened his lips. like some new sort of rhapsôdos, it was for the moment as if he alone possessed the words of the office, and they flowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him. the table or altar at which he presided, below a canopy on delicate spiral columns, was in fact the tomb of a youthful "witness," of the family of the cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, and whose relics were still in this place. it was for his sake the bishop put his lips so often to the surface before him; the regretful memory of that death entwining itself, though not without certain notes of triumph, as a matter of special inward significance, throughout a service, which was, before all else, from first to last, a commemoration of the dead. a sacrifice also,--a sacrifice, it might seem, like the most primitive, the most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices, of the simplest fruits of the earth. and in connexion with this circumstance again, as in the actual stones of the building so in the rite itself, what marius observed was not so much new matter as a new spirit, moulding, informing, with a new intention, many observances not [137] witnessed for the first time to-day. men and women came to the altar successively, in perfect order, and deposited below the lattice-work of pierced white marble, their baskets of wheat and grapes, incense, oil for the sanctuary lamps; bread and wine especially--pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the tusculan vineyards. there was here a veritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassive attitude towards them. certain portions of that bread and wine were taken into the bishop's hands; and thereafter, with an increasing mysticity and effusion the rite proceeded. still in a strain of inspired supplication, the antiphonal singing developed, from this point, into a kind of dialogue between the chief minister and the whole assisting company- sursum corda! habemus ad dominum. gratias agamus domino deo nostro!-it might have been thought the business, the duty or service of young men more particularly, as they stood there in long ranks, and in severe and simple vesture of the purest white--a service in which they would seem to be flying [138] for refuge, as with their precious, their treacherous and critical youth in their hands, to one--yes! one like themselves, who yet claimed their worship, a worship, above all, in the way of aurelius, in the way of imitation. adoramus te christe, quia per crucem tuam redemisti mundum!--they cry together. so deep is the emotion that at moments it seems to marius as if some there present apprehend that prayer prevails, that the very object of this pathetic crying himself draws near. from the first there had been the sense, an increasing assurance, of one coming:--actually with them now, according to the oft-repeated affirmation or petition, dominus vobiscum! some at least were quite sure of it; and the confidence of this remnant fired the hearts, and gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, of all the rest about them. prompted especially by the suggestions of that mysterious old jewish psalmody, so new to him--lesson and hymn--and catching therewith a portion of the enthusiasm of those beside him, marius could discern dimly, behind the solemn recitation which now followed, at once a narrative and a prayer, the most touching image truly that had ever come within the scope of his mental or physical gaze. it was the image of a young man giving up voluntarily, one by one, for the greatest of ends, the greatest gifts; actually parting with himself, above all, with the serenity, the divine serenity, of his [139] own soul; yet from the midst of his desolation crying out upon the greatness of his success, as if foreseeing this very worship.* as centre of the supposed facts which for these people were become so constraining a motive of hopefulness, of activity, that image seemed to display itself with an overwhelming claim on human gratitude. what saint lewis of france discerned, and found so irresistibly touching, across the dimness of many centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him by one he had never seen, was to them almost as a thing of yesterday; and their hearts were whole with it. it had the force, among their interests, of an almost recent event in the career of one whom their fathers' fathers might have known. from memories so sublime, yet so close at hand, had the narrative descended in which these acts of worship centered; though again the names of some more recently dead were mingled in it. and it seemed as if the very dead were aware; to be stirring beneath the slabs of the sepulchres which lay so near, that they might associate themselves to this enthusiasm--to this exalted worship of jesus. one by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from the chief minister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken into his hands--perducat vos ad vitam aeternam! he prays, half-silently, as they depart again, after [140] discreet embraces. the eucharist of those early days was, even more entirely than at any later or happier time, an act of thanksgiving; and while the remnants of the feast are borne away for the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn: a hymn like the spontaneous product of two opposed militant companies, contending accordantly together, heightening, accumulating, their witness, provoking one another's worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry. ite! missa est!--cried the young deacons: and marius departed from that strange scene along with the rest. what was it?--was it this made the way of cornelius so pleasant through the world? as for marius himself,--the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied as never before. he felt, as he left that place, that he must hereafter experience often a longing memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over again. and it seemed moreover to define what he must require of the powers, whatsoever they might be, that had brought him into the world at all, to make him not unhappy in it. notes 139. *psalm xxii.22-31. chapter xxiv: a conversation not imaginary [141] in cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says pliny--studia hilaritate proveniunt. it was still the habit of marius, encouraged by his experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best of stimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit when he might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night. "the morning for creation," he would say; "the afternoon for the perfecting labour of the file; the evening for reception--the reception of matter from without one, of other men's words and thoughts--matter for our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain, brooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers." to leave home early in the day was therefore a rare thing for him. he was induced so to do on the occasion of a visit to rome of the famous writer lucian, whom he had been bidden to meet. the breakfast over, he walked away with the learned guest, having offered to be his guide [142] to the lecture-room of a well-known greek rhetorician and expositor of the stoic philosophy, a teacher then much in fashion among the studious youth of rome. on reaching the place, however, they found the doors closed, with a slip of writing attached, which proclaimed "a holiday"; and the morning being a fine one, they walked further, along the appian way. mortality, with which the queen