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SI OUERSP2 CURS PENINSULAMA = VIAM.AMONA CIRCO ACUMSPICE ៥) : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ៩ . • inntihinta il nihihihiiinitil Minninnniina '' * យយយយយយយយោ៨ តាយ 5Illulumnuilt . . . . . . - - -- - - - - 9042 AN ESSAY URBARE GIBRARY EV ON - ON 7 Y ogas PANT HEISM. BY TAY REV. JOHN HUNT, CURATE OF S. IVES, HUNTS. The reason wliy we have made this discourse is that all men suppose that what is called Wisdom has reference to first causes and principles.- ARISTOTLE. He became man that we might be made God,S, ATHANASIUS. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 1866. [The Right of Translation is Reserved.] 3. IVÈS, HUNTS : PRINTED BY W. LANG CROWN STREET. CONTENTS. INTRODUOTION. CHAPTER I. BRAHMANISM AND BUDHISM. PAGE. BRAHMANİSM : Indian Origin of Pantheism Hindu Literature - Hindus, Polytheists or Monotheists ? Worship of Nature - - .. Brahm, or HE THAT IS . Being and Non-Being - - The All-pervading Soul . God Nameless, yet having All Names - Matter is Ignorance and Illusion - The Word of Brahm - - Brahma - - - The Trimurti - - - Three eras of Hindu Worship - Brahma Creates - - Vishnu Creates, Preserves, and Destroys Vishnu is All Things - - - Siva is All Things - - Materialism - - - - - - - - - - 19 CONTENTS. PAGE. · Idealism - - Krishna and Arjuna - Mystical Union with Brahm BUDHISM : Sakya Muni. Nirvana and Sansara Being is Eternal Budhism, not Atheism Immaterial Matter - . Budha is All - - CHAPTER II. PERSIAN, EGYPTIAN, AND GREEK RELIGIONS. THE PERSIAN RELIGION : Zeruane Akerne Ormuzd, or the Personal Deity Domain of Ormuzd - Kingdom of Ahriman - - Mithras The Sun is Mithras - - Honover Fire Worship - THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION : Egyptian Darkness - Ammon, the Concealed God Hermes Trismegistus God and the World Osiris and Isis The Veil of Isis - Harpocrates - Hermes - - Father Nilus - Worship of Animals God in Nature THE GREEK RELIGION : Greek Mythology - Worship of Nature - Zeus is all Things - - - - - Apollo is all Things . CONTENTS. PAGL. Pan is all Things - - Jupiter is all Things - CHAPTER III. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE IONICS : Thales of Miletus Anaximander and Anaximenes THE ITALICS : Pythagoras THE ELEATICS : Xenophanes - Parmenides Zeno and Melissus HERACLITUS: Heraclitus and the Fire Worshippers :- EMPEDOCLES - - - ANAXAGORAS - SOCRATES AND THE SCEPTICS PLATO: Is Plato's God a Person ? .. Ideas and Phenomena ARISTOTLE - - - - - THE STOICS : Sense and Reason World Order God, the Only Real Being - - - CHAPTER IV. PHILOSOPHY OF THE JEWS. God and Nature - - - - Judaism and Greek Philosophy - - Greek Philosophy. and the Apocrypha - - Philo Judaeus - - I AM or Being - - - - God has no true Name The Divinity of Man - The Divine Logos - TIOS - - OONTENTS. PAGE. 86 - - - - . . 89 90 - 98 - 99 - - 100 God fills all Space - - Creation, Ideal and Visible THE CABBALA : Ensoph. - - - The Sephiroths . . . Matter, not a Real Existence CHAPTER V. NEO-PLATONISM. PLOTINUS : God, the Teacher of Man - og Revelation made to Reason Plotinus' Theology, Eclectic - The Trinity of Plotinus - Matter, a Phantom - The Burden of the Flesh- PORPHYRY IAMBLICHUS - - - - PROCLUS : The Trinity of Proclus Pyramid of Being - - The One and the Many - - CHAPTER VI. THE CHURCH. Christianity and Philosophy - Irenæus and the Patripassian Heresy Origen - - - - Clemens of Alexandria Arius, No Pantheist Athanasius - Bishop Synesius , Synesius' Hymns . S. Dionysius - - - The Trinities of Dionysius - God, not to be Named - God, to be called by all Names God, Unsearchable - - 101 103 104 - - - - - - 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 CONTENTS. PAGE. 121 122 - - 123 - - 124 125 126 127 .- 130 131 132 133 - - - 134 135 CHAPTER VII. HERESY. THE GNOSTICS : The Special Heresy of the Gnostics The First Gnostics The Unknown Father The Bythos - - . - The Pleroma The Æons Nature Pantheism MANICHÆISM : JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA The Division of Nature God, Unknowable God, the Absolute Nothing Creation Is the Phenomenal Eternal ? Man's Place in Nature Philosophy and Church Theology The Trinity - The Fall of Man The Incarnation - - Erigena’s Disciples - Amalric De Bena - - The Abbot Joachim - - Albigenses Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit CHAPTER VIII. SCHOLASTICISM. Roscellin and Anselm - - William of Champeaux Peter Abelard - - Albertus Magnus Thomas Aquinas Duns Scotus Bishop Hampden on the Schoolmen - - - 136 137 138 139 - - - - 140 - - - 141 --- 142 143 - 144 - - - : 146 147 148 - 149 150 151 152 CONTENTS. : PAGR. 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 CHAPTER IX. . THE ITALIAN REVIVAL. Averroeism - - - - Giordano Bruno - The Existence of God, a Primal Truth The Interior Artist - Mind Omnipresent Matter and Form - - The Primitive Matter - Bruno and Aristotle Cisalpini Vanini The Inquisition - The Stake - - - - CHAPTER X. MYSTICAL DIVINITY AND PHILOSOPHY. Man Transubstantiated into God - - - The Beghards - - - - - . Eckart . . . Self Annihilation - The Super-Essential Essence God Alone can say, I AM - Ruysbroek Tauler Eckart and Tauler The Divine Dark Heinrich Suso - The Theologia Germanica - Luther and the Mystics - Jacob Böhme - - Eternal Nature - The First Principle The Trinity The Fountain Spirits - - - The Angels : The Fall of Lucifer God's Anger and Jealousy 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 CONTENTS, - PAGE. a. 188 189 - 190 192 . 193 194 195 196 197 198 - - - Christ and Lucifer - The Creation of Eve - - o Angelus Silesius - - - - FRENCH MYSTICS : Fenelon and Mad ame Guyon ENGLISH MYSTICS : William Law The Sea of Glass All Things of God - - - : The Christ Within - Nature Without God Inspiration Perpetual and Universal CHAPTER XI. SUFEYISM. Sufeyism and Parseeism Sufi Absorption - Gazzali Sufi Poetry . - Salaman and Absal - - The Temptation - The Celestial Beauty - . - The Meaning - - - The Soul's Victory - - - - CHAPTER XII. IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY, Des Cartes’ Method - - - Cartesian Theology - God, Immanent in Creation SPINOZA .. Spinoza’s Doctrine, Cartesian Theory of Knowing - - Modes of Perception - Intuition - - Nature Infinite - The Intermediaries . Spinoza and Plato - 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 - - - 210 211 212 - 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 à xii CONTENTS. PAGE. 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 - - - val Bodies The Eternal and the Temporal - Creation - Is Creation Eternal ? - Free Necessity Final Causes God, Incorporeal - - Duration, not to be ascribed to God The Divine Understanding, and the Human Personality Man has no Free Will - Good and Evil - ļ - - Might is Right - - - The Life of Reason - - The Soul Immortal Liſe Eternal - - Revelation Jesus Christ is the Truth The Fall - Redemption - - MALEBRANCHE Seeing all things in God - - S. Augustine and Malebranche. No Secondary Causes - Sin - LEIBNITZ The Monads - Demonstration of the Ontological Argument Sufficient Reason Pre-Established Harmony - - - All for the Best - - - Faith and Reason - - - - Christianity, Rational - CHAPTER XIII. TRANSCENDENTALISM. Kant's Critique - - - - Frcпты The I and the Non-I 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 - - 242 243 244 245 - - - - 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 women - - - 255 257 CONTENTS. diii PAGE. - - . - 258 259 260 261 262 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 . .. r . The Infinite I - - God more than a Person Immortality Creation, Eternal - God is the Word or Reason SCHELLING The doctrine of Identity - : Nature and Spirit - Philosophy of Nature - Schelling and Spinoza The Absolute - The Potencies in Nature Time and Space - Intellectual Intuition Schelling and Böhme - Personality of God Christianity, not a Nature Religion Finite and Infinite reconciled in Christ HEGEL The Absolute Idea - - - Logic or Logos - Being, the same as Nothing - Becoming and There-Being Philosophy of Nature and Spirit Hegel parts with Schelling The Idea in History and Religion Hegelian Christianity- Hegel meant to be Orthodox The Hegelian Trinity Immortality m ortality - - The One - - - CHAPTER XIV. POETRY. . Goethe's Faust - - - - The All-Embracer - - - Creation - - - - World Soul - - - - 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 - - - 284. 285 286 287 288 - - - 290 291 292 293 - - - xiy CONTENTS. PAGI, 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 Schiller Novalis Men shall be gods Wieland Ruckert Lamartine - God in Nature Ce Grand Tout The God of Plato, Christs God Shelley - Shelley's Spirit of Nature, Personal Pope's Essay on Man Thomson and Cowper - Wordsworth - Wesley Bryant Emerson CHAPTER XV. WHAT IS PANTHEISM ? Schleiermacher - - - - The Trinity not Tri-personal Individual Immortality Schleiermacher's Disciples - Frederick Robertson Theodore Parker - - - The Religious Element - - Parker on Pantheism - God Immanent in, yet Transcending the World The Religious Aspect of Nature - - Emerson - - Oversoul - - - - - M. Renan - - - - Renan on Pantheism - The Abbé Maret on Pantheism - . Pantheism or Catholicism, no Alternative M. Cousin, a Pantheist Cousin's Disciples, Pantheists - 312 213 314 315 316 . - - 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 - - 325 326 327 328 329 CONTENTS. XV The Sain t-Simonians, Pantheists Amand Saintes' Alternative M. Saisset on Pantheism Pantheism, an Enquiry concerning Being . . A Doctrine of Being, the Foundation of all Theology Pantheism, a Question concerning Creation Impossibility of conceiving Creation Why did God Create ? - - - Creation from Nothing, impossible . Sir William Hamilton's Pantheism Milton on Creation God, Personal or Impersonal ? Athanasius and Arius . God, not Uni-Personal Athanasius on the Divinity of Man The Atonement - - Propitiation Providence, General or Special ? PAGP. 330 331 332 233 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 - 351 - ... 352 Prayer . . . . - . . - - 353 354 355 356 357 no -- Miracles - - - - God is both Personal and Impersonal - God and Evil - - - Predestination - Spinoza and Toplady Immortality - - - The Divine Immanency Soul in Nature - - The Ancients on Development De Maillet J. B. Robinet Nature, Progressive Nature is One Lamarck - . Geoffroy S. Hilaire S. Hilaire and Cuvier Cuvier and Goethe Vestiges of a Natural History of Creation God working in Nature 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 ... - . - . xvi CONTENTS. - Mr. Charles Darwin - Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley Professor Owen on Homologies Correlation of Physical Forces Cognition of the Infinite What is Revelation ? . - - Pantheism, the Theology of Reason Plato’s Pantheism reconciled with his Teleology Plato reproached with Anthropomorphism The real Error of the Pantheists - - Christ, the Visible Image of the Invisible CONCLUSION S. Paul and the Pantheistic Poet Reason and Revelation - Wisdom justified of her Children - PAGE. 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 - 380 331 382 - ERRATA. Page 105, line 30 for S. John's read S. John. .: 112, .. 25 for Bishop of Pentapolis read Bishop of the Ptolem- ais in Pentapolis. . . 129, .. 23 after 1583 supply it is found in the Calendar of Catholic worthies. . . 145, . . 20 for began read begun. . . 155, .. 33 for Neopolitan read Ncapolitan. 157, . . 10 for productions read production. 162, .. 13 for Bengarl read Berigard. - 262, .. 15 for pliantom road phantasm. 296, .. 45 for it read thcre; and supply this line, Their song in sweet fragrance. .. 309, .. 31 put the * after Flame' line 17 . . 311, .. 3 for thought read thoughts. INTRODUCTION. TT sometimes greatly helps to the understanding of a book when the author can give his readers an account of how the subject first engaged his own mind, and what were the different stages through which it passed before its final expression in writing. I do not know if a writer can always give such an ac- count even when he is willing. I do not know that I can give an account of the origin of the present essay. So many causes have arisen during the last few years, calling for a more com- plete enquiry into this subject than has been made by any English author, that the marvel is it has not been taken up by some who have the learning, leisure, and ability necessary to do it justice. Germany and France have their Essays on Pan- theism from all sides, and by the representatives of all schools. England has nothing but meagre accounts in Encyclopedias or Histories of Philosophy, the reading of which, speaking generally, would make no man wiser than he was before. Pantheism is something so frightful and so frightfully vague that running a lance against it is a dash of rhetoric, which hurts no one and offends no one; not that it is a man in an iron inask, but that it is an iron mask and nobody knows who the man is who owns it. Towards the end of the year 1859, after had been four years in orders, and working in a parish far away from books and civilization, I was deeply affected with a sense of my ignorance of theology. I found many difficulties which I could not answer, and which I yet believed could be answered. I removed to a curacy in London and formed a plan of reading all the books which had been written against Christianity and mastering all the systems which are said to be in opposition to it. I had no conception of the magnitude of what I undertook ; but, being within reach of the British Museum, I began to work, and con- xviii INTRODUCTION. tinued till I had collected materials for a complete history of the various forms which unbelief in Christianity and Natural Theology had assumed. I intended so putting them together that I might have a comprehensive view of the whole, and see at a glance what was their 'real value. The publication of the • Essays and Reviews,' and the controversies which followed them gave a new and absorbing interest to my studies. I had already seen that such a book must come soon. It was the expression of the phase through which theology was then passing. It only startled those who did not know the signs of the times. The book itself and the answers to it all deepened my conviction that the whole science of theology needed to be reviewed, and, in many cases, new ground to be occupied. I intended to treat of Pantheism, Atheism, Deism-French, English, and German ; the antagonism of Christianity with Heathenism in the times of Porphyry and Celsus, French Socialism, German Rationalism in all its forms; and, finally, of the present state of theology and the prospects of the Church of the Future. In the spring of 1863, I showed the plan to a friend, who said it would take me twenty more years to complete such a work. He advised me to finish one part first, and then go on to the rest. I have followed his advice, and the volume which is now published is the result. If this Essay has any success, it will be followed next by an Essay on Deism-a subject on which we have no work in English, such as it deserves. The question of Pantheism and its relation to the received doctrines of Christianity was first raised in my mind by a pas- sage in Dr. Caird's sermons. This passage I have quoted at page 212. The preacher showed the difference between the Divine mechanism and the human. Man constitutes a machine and leaves it to God's laws, but God can only leave a machine to His own laws; in other words, He cannot leave it. There is no second God to take care of it. Not from a single atom of matter can He who made it for a moment withdraw his superin- tendence and support. Each successive moment all over the INTRODUCTION. xix . world the act of creation must be repeated. This idea, as I have elsewhere shown, is purely Cartesian. Leibnitz set his face against it as the very essence of the errors of Spinoza. But, here I found it in the sermons of a popular preacher, whose orthodoxy as a minister of the Calvinistic Church of Scotland had never been questioned. I was anxious to know what was Spinoza's doctrine, and wherein he really differed from such theologians as Dr. Caird. I read first the article on Spinoza in Bayle’s Dictionary. It gave me no satisfaction, for I had a strong suspicion that Bayle was trying to refute what he did not understand. I then read the account of Spinoza in Mr. Lewes’s History of Philosophy; but here, too, from the writer's Want of sympathy with such thinkers as Spinoza, he seemed unable to grasp the real significance of Spinoza's theology. I went through other Histories of Philosophy in search of Spinoza's doctrines. At last I read Spinoza himself, and found what I had often found before that every second-hand account of any author is to be received with suspicion. From Spinoza I proceeded to Malebranche, and here I perceived how easily Spinoza's doctrines might be held along with the faith of the Catholic Church.' Malebranche, like his master, Des Cartes, claimed to be a disciple of S. Augustine and S. Anselm. The exercise of reason in theology had the same results with the priest of the Oratory as with the Jew of Amsterdam. After reading Malebranche, I met the works of Theodore Parker, which, with all their errors, must do good to every earnest man who reads them. Here the Cartesian idea of the Divine Immanency was applied with a boldness which was startling and astonishing: yet, with such a power of eloquence and such an exercise of manly reason as to carry the conviction that there must be some truth in it somehow or somewhere. I had heard that the German Transcendentalists were all Pantheists. It was necessary to the completion of my enquiry to study them. nan XX INTRODUCTION. U This, in itself, was no ordinary undertaking. I was warned of the danger of the study. I was told that the power of the Transcendentalists was so seductive, that over the study of them might be written what Dante inscribed over the gate of Hell, 'No one who enters here will ever return. It is true that no one who enters here will take the same view of Christianity which he had before. He will believe it more, or less. It is the furnace of mind where men's thoughts are tried. It is good for a man to go there, but be must go in earnest. There is wisdom there for the wise, but only confusion for him who“ reads to scorn. After studying the German philosophies, it was evident that the whole field of theological thinking had to be gone over. I began with the theology of the Hindus. On Hinduism I was necessarily limited to translations and second-hand accounts. I followed Creuzer with such assistance as I could get from English writers. I do not suppose that Creuzer has any founda- tion for some of his conjectures. Even the divisions which I have adopted are adopted only for the sake of convenience. The great point at which I aimed was to set forth the underlying Monotheism, and this I think is evident, whatever may be our mistakes concerning Hinduism. On this subject the tracts of Romahun Roy were of great service. He has shown that the foundation of the Indian religion, like that of all other religions is a belief in one Supreme God. Mr. Maurice, in the preface to his Boyle Lectures, partly objects to Romahun Roy's conclusion because of the character of the Monotheism at which he arrives. “It was,' says Mr. Maurice,' a Monotheism, which made it im- possible to distinguish the object worshipped from the mind of the worshipper, and, therefore, which implicitly contained, and out of which was inevitably developed the later Polytheism.' But the character of Monotheism, of all Monotheism, is just what We have to determine. The same objection might have been INTRODUCTION. xxi made to S. Paul when he argued against the Polytheism of the Greeks appealing to their Monotheism, which was not only im- plied, but plainly expressed. We might suppose an objector saying to S. Paul, 'You appeal to the Monotheism of Aratus, quote the whole passage, the Deity of Aratus was that Zeus who is all things. The theology of the Hindus was essen- tially that of the Greeks. They both had different stages and various forms corresponding to the different character of the people and their progress in refinement and civilization. On Budhism, the authorities are more uncertain than on Brahmanism. The evidence is great, and yet surely it is incredible, that the Budhists are Atheists. A religion without a Deity to be worshipped must be impossible. In the present state of our knowledge of Budhism I think it reasonable that it should be interpreted by Brahmanism, in which it had its origin. What are the real doctrines of the Budhists is one of the most pressing questions that have to be answered con- cerning the theologies of the Eastern world. It was not till I had nearly finished this Essay, that I dis- covered how the subject was connected with Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, Professor Mansel's celebrated Bampton Lectures, and the controversies to which they gave rise. After what I had written on this subject was printed, I had doubts if I had really understood the question when I agreed with Mr. Calderwood in opposition to the interpretation of Mr. Mansel. If, in what Sir William Hamilton says of creation, he is simply showing the impotence of thought, then he must mean that reason has no right to be heard in theology, that we have no right to exercise our faculties as to the mode of creation ; it is really inconceivable by us. And this accords with the general principles of his system. Mr. Mansel, in a note appended to the second of his Bampton Lectures, seems to admit that Sir William Hamilton, in bis doctrine of creation and causation, has spoken inconsistently with his own philosophy, and, as it appears CY xxii INTRODUCTION. to me, virtually to allow that there was a real ground for Mr. Calderwood's criticism. I could have wished that I had been able to enter more at length into the theologies of the Fathers and the Schoolmen. I was not aware that the former at. all approached my subject till I had read Dorner on the Person of Christ, and it was then too late to go into the reading necessary for so extensive an inquiry I satisfied myself with what I had time to read of Origen and Synesius, S. Augustine and S. Athanasius, taking Dorner's authority for the theology of the others. As to the Schoolmen, the chapter on them in this volume was merely an outline written years ago which I intended to fill up when I had an opportunity, but that opportunity has not come. What, how- ever, is here written is sufficient for my argument. Those who dispute the interpretation of the Schoolnien which I have given, must dispute not with me but with Dean Milman and Bishop Hampden. A work of this kind ought to have been written by one who had a good knowledge of Plato, with the Greek and Alexandrian philosophies as his capital to begin with. Instead of this I have been writing backwards, and not till I had made considerable progress did I know that Plato had anything to do with the subject. When I discovered this I was perplexed with the ex- tent and indefiniteness of Plato's writings, and the conflicting views of his interpreters. I found it necessary to fall back on an authority. Such an authority I found in the Editor* of Archer Butler's Lectures on Philosophy, whose clear and definite notes on the Greek philosophies are of greatly more value than the diffuse and rather wordy lectures to which they are appended. Certain views may be disputed whether or not they are Plato's, but this does not affect my argument. It is enough for me that they have been ascribed to Plato. The plan of this Essay the reader can see for himself. It is simply an enquiry. It is written to answer the question which is the heading of the last chapter. In going over so vast a * William Hepworth Thompson, Regius Professor of Greek in the Univer- sity of Cambridge, now Master of Trinity. INTRODUCTION. xxiii ' T field it is possible that I may have misunderstood some of the authors and some of the systems. I have tried in every case to put the best, that is, the most orthodox construction upon them. I have tried to put myself in the position of each writer, to give his views as I apprehended he would give them himself, to say what I have supposed he meant when he is obscure or seems to contradict himself. It is much to be regret- ted that I have not been able to give the references for the verifying of the quotations. This was entirely impossible, as only a very small number of the books which were read or consulted ever belonged to me. The majority of them were read in the British Museum, where the extracts were generally made. I shall be giad if no serious mistakes are found in the translations from foreign languages, which were often made in haste. Sometimes the original was copied out so hurriedly that it was read afterwards with difficulty. I believe, that I am rarely wrong in the sense, however free the translations may be found. I am well aware of the danger to which every man exposes himself when he writes and enquires freely on any great subject of theology. There is still intolerance in science, but that is nothing to the intolerance that proverbially clings to theology. Many will be offended that I have given a fair hearing to theologians and philosophers who have long by universal consent been placed without the pale of the Church, Some will be dissatisfied with the conclusions to which I have come. I have been guided by no motive but a desire to make a full and free examination ; to receive what seemed to be true, or as con- taining truth, and to regret what seemed false. I have made it altogether a question of reason. A believer in the impotence of thought has no business anywhere but in the infallible church. There let him rest. We have another vocation. We acknow- ledge no blind submission to authority. To the earnest man there is no reward but the truth itself. The external reward in theology is not to the truth seekor or the truth finder, hut to those who tread its beaten track, and who pledge themselves even to the phraseology of a party. Truly does Richard Baxter dea xxiv INTRODUCTION. scribe the condition of the earnest inquirer in theology, where he says:-“ And when I have found the truth, I have found but an exposed naked orphan that hath cost me much to take in and clothe and keep; which, though of noble birth-yea, a Divine offspring, and amiable in mine eyes, and worthy, I confess, of better entertainment, yet from men that know not its descent, hath drawn upon me their envy and furious opposition, and so the increase of knowledge hath been the increase of sorrow. My heart, indeed, is ravished with the beauty of naked truth, and I am ready to cry out, “I have found it !' but when I have found it, I know not what to do with it. If I confine it to my own breast, and keep it secret to myself, it is as a consuming fire shut up in my heart and bones. I am as the lepers without Samaria, or as those that were forbidden to tell any man of the works of Christ. I am weary of forbearing; I cannot stay. If I reveal it to the world, I can expect but an unwelcome enter- tainment and an ungrateful return, for they have taken up their standing in religious knowledge already, as if they were at Hercules' pillars, and had no further to go nor any more to learn. The most precious truth not apprehended doth seem to be error and fantastic novelty. Every one that readeth what I write will not be at the pains of those tedious studies to find out the truth, as I have been, but think it should meet their eyes at the very reading, so that if I did see more than others, to reveal it to the lazy prejudiced world, would but make my friends turn enemies, or look upon me with a strange and jealous eye.” Yet I know that there are thousands of earnest men in the Church of England at the present hour who know the necessities of the age, and the need for deep and searching enquiry into all great subjects, men who know that if Christianity is to be allowed to make its own way in the world, it must not be afraid of the light, it must use no cowardly devices, it must be set forth as what it is and what it professes to be, and not converted into something which it is not and which it does not profess to be, I have written in the interests of truth, and with a sincere intention, and I am not afraid to submit what I have written to the judgment of wise men. CHAPTER I. Slo BRAHMANISM AND BUDHISM. F the word Pantheism we have no accurate definition. The most opposite beliefs are sometimes called by this name; and systems which, in the judgment of some, are notoriously Pantheistic are defended by others as compatible with the received doctrines of Christianity. The popular definition does not go beyond the etymology of the word, * God is All, or the All is God. But this defines nothing until we know either what God is, or what the All is. If the uni- verse is material, taking matter in its ordinary sense, then according to this definition God is matter, or, what is the same thing, there is no God. If, on the other hand, the uni- verse is spiritual, then God is a spirit and matter is only an illusion—there is no material universe --what we call matter is only an appearance the image or shadow of the Infinite Being. Hence two classes of Pantheists wholly distinct from each other, the material and the spiritual: the one is without a real God, the other is without a real world. To call the first by any name which at all implies that they are Theists is a contradiction in terms. The second is the class which are chiefly intended when we speak of Pantheists. Since we neither know what is matter nor what is spirit, it being impossible to demonstrate the existence of the one apart from the other, the indefinite meaning of Pantheism necessarily remains. Between these two kinds of Pantheism, that which denies a real God and that which denies a real universe, are a multitude of intermediary views approaching more or less to either of these. It is conceivable that mind may be eternally associated with matter, and thus the relation between God and the universe may correspond to that of the human soul with the human body. It is again conceivable that * Nãv All, Osòs God. INDIAN ORIGIN OF PANTHEISM. matter may be the mere external manifestation of mind, having reality only from its connection with mind, or there may be an essence of which mind and matter are both but manifesta- tions. In this essence they may find their reality, and this reality or essence may be that All which is identical with God. It is evident the question of Pantheism cannot be discussed till we have examined the beliefs that have been called Pantheistic. 1. BRAHMANISM.--Nearly all writers on Pantheism trace its origin to India. The Abbé Maret reaches the climax of his argument against the French Socialists in declaring that their doctrines come from India_5 the mother of supersti- tions.” Pierre Leroux admits the fact of his agreement on many subjects with the Indian sages, and answers with au air of triumph that “all religions, and all philosophies have their root in India, and that had Pantheism not been found in India that would have been a strong argument against its truth, for then humanity would have erred in its beginning." In India the creed of modern intellect is combined with the worship of an infinity of gods. . This is the problem of Brahmanism; this is the puzzle on every Hindu temple. When this problem is solved for Brahmanism there will be light shed on a similar problem that presents itself in nearly all religions. M. Leroux again truly says : “ the religion of India does not concern India alone : it concerns humanity." Though beginning with Brahmanism we do not thereby intend any inference to be drawn of its prior antiquity to some other ancient religions. We take it simply as the best representative of the great Aryan family—the branch which has grown to the most gigantic proportions, and that one in the light of which the others may be understood. * We cannot reach the beginnings of humanity. The first races probably had no literature and no religious books; we must therefore begin with the oldest religious books in our possession, which are those of the Hindus. In saying this we do not raise any question of the relative antiquity of the * It is found only in India; yet recent discoveries seem to show that India is not its birth place. There are tribes in India—scattered remnants of conquered races, dwelling on mountains and in border lands—who have no priests, and give no reverence to Brahmans. These are the Khonds, the Koles, and the Sourahs, supposed to be the aborigines of Hindostan. They differ greatly from the Hindus in their character and mode of life, as well as in their religion. Their principal deities are Bura Pennu, and Tari Pennu. The first is their chief god, and the second a malignant female deity-the author and promoter of all the evil in the world. co. HINDU LITERATURE. Vedas and the Bible. Some of the Brahmanical books were written many centuries before the Christian era, and others perhaps as many centuries after it. And though we speak of them as one set of books, we do not forget that they are many; and though we come to them in search of only one class of doctrines, which indeed are the most prominent and the most characteristic of their general spirit, we do not forget that other doctrines will also be found in them. The Vedas contain traces of many phases of religion and germs of many different philosophies. * To find a complete harmony of sentiments in a mass of literature so varied as the Indian is more than we have any right to expect, yet there is a predominant characteristic reigning generally through it all. In it is reflected the mind * The Vedas as they now stand are four in number: the Rig-Veda, the Sama, the Yagur, and the Atharva Veda. Originally there were only three; the last being of a much more recent date than the others. In the estimation of modern Hindus they are all eternal. The books themselves claim this dura- tion of existence as containing the very words which were spoken by Him who is Eternal. They are distributed among the four classes into which Hindu society is divided: the first to the Brahmans, the second to the Warrior caste, the third to the Merchant caste, and the fourth to the Soudras. This agrees, too, with the estimation in which they are held; for, though all inspired, the first takes the highest place. The Rig-Veda is indeed the most important of the Hindu books. It is a collection of hymns and prayers in verse and prose. It is the nucleus around which all the others have gathered - the authority to which all subsequent teachers appeal. That it is the oldest is not disputed its age being generally fixed at about 3,000 years.--The Yagur Veda, also consisting of hymns and prayers, is divided into two parts: the White Yagur and the Black Yagur. It is more modern than the Rig Veda, but formed in imitation of it. The Sama Veda consists for the most part of extracts from the other two. In early times when the Vedas were only three in number, the second and third were considered as simply the attendants of the first. The knowledge of the Vedas was called the threefold knowledge, or literally the threefold Veda, “which," says Max Müller, “again presupposes one Veda, and that the Rig-Veda." The Atharva is the most modern of these four books. Its use indeed is wholly different, for while the priests performed their regular sacrifices with the other three Vedas, the fourth contained only the formulas of consecration-how to appease our enemies and how to curse them. The four Vedas were reduced to their present form by the sage Vyasa the Indian Ezra, who lived about 400 years before the Christian era. He added expositions of the text which form what is called the Vedanta. These are known as Brahmanas and Upanishads, which profess to explain the origin of the rituals, and to set forth the religious philosophy of the Vedas. There is also a voluminous work called Puranas, which has been ascribed to Vyasa, but has probably had many authors. The Puranas are translated into the vulgar languages of India, and may be read by women and Soudras. Con- cerning the age of these different books there is great uncertainty, and no agreement either among Brahmans or Europeans. The laws of Menu were written, probably, about 600 years before Christ. They present a picture of the Social life of the Indians at a time when they had reached a high degree of civilisation. B 2 HINDUS, POLYTHEISTS OR MONOTHEISTS ? of the people in different states of civilization and different eras of development. In the early books there is manifested a strong love of nature, and a high appreciation of the life that now is; and this spirit appears at intervals, not only in little episodes of family life, but sometimes in the very acts and prescriptions of religious worship. But it is not the spirit that prevails—it is not the character of the old Hindu people. They were not satisfied with this transitory existence: their thoughts were on things unseen; they were seeking a world without change. The character which the Greek historian* gives them is fully confirmed; "they considered this life as the life of an embryo in the womb, but death as the birth to a real and happy life for those who had thought, and had prepared themselves to die.” Weary of the life of nature, because of its brevity and its uncertainty, the Indian dis- regarded it and strove after indifference, both as to its pleasures and its sorrows. It was not his rest. He felt within him a spirit greater than the transient and the finite; he sought the Eternal and the Infinite. We have already raised a question which must be con- sidered at the threshold of Brahmanism, that is, the co-exist- ence of a species of Theism with Polytheism. Are the Hindus, Polytheists or Monotheists? Ask a Brahman of the present day 6 How many gods he worships?” and he will answer • Millions ;” by which he means that their number is not to be numbered; for all the vast accumulations of deities in the mythology, and of idols in the Hindu temples, are but efforts to express the Infinite One. Every Brahman may not be able to give the reason for the multitude of objects he worships, but from our point of view this is the rationale of his worship. When we turn to the old Hindu books the same principle serves to guide us through the labyrinth. In the Rig Veda we have a simple worship of nature: the elements and powers of nature per- sonified are the first gods of the Aryan race.† But of these, chiefly the heavens, hence the worship of fire, of the sun, the moon, and the stars; and yet it is not these objects themselves that are worshipped, but the power which is in them—the manifestations, so to speak, of a mind in them which is some- times identified with them. We have instances of this in the efforts toy Brahman bjects he his worsh noon, and heavens, t, gods of * Megasthenes. + Plato thinks that the sun, moon, and stars were the only objects of worship in Greece in the early ages. Cæsar says that the Germans worshipped the sun; moon, and fire. WORSHIP OF NATURE. c names of deities passing to the objects. Thus Dyaus the old deity of the Rig Veda came to mean the sky, in the same way as the name of Jupiter among the Romans. Fire was called Agni, and the elements Indra, from their being origin- ally the names respectively of the god of fire and the god of the elements. But though the deities in the Hindu Pan- theon are numerous, and though many of them may be explained as mere personifications of the mighty powers in nature, there is yet ever in the Hindu mind a passing beyond the external, and a reaching out after something which is not finite. Their Polytheism is but a phase of their religion, and one more apparent than real. The spiritual effort of the Hindu is not limited to the worship of the powers of nature but strives to embrace nature infinite, and there to adore the One who is present in all nature, and who nourishes nature in Himself. Creuzer divides Hinduism into three eras, which have three different phases corresponding to them. The first is that of simple nature worship, where no distinction-is made between the Creator and creation. The second he calls that of reflection and devotion when this distinction is made, but only in a confused way. The third is that of philosophy, when reason seeks to explain how God and nature are one. Creuzer here applies to Hinduism the general law of the religious sentiment. In youth, whether that of a nation or an individual, religion is a feeling full of poetry. To this suc- ceeds an age of enquiry when reason begins to be exercised; hence arises, as the result, a religious philosophy. By examining in succession these three phases we shall best be able to judge of the general character of the Hindu religion, considered as a consistent whole. The first era is represented by the Vedas, the second by the Vedic Commentaries, and the third by the schools of philosophy. That Hinduism was at first a simple worship of nature is evident from almost every page of the Vedas. Two hymns that have been translated into most European languages will be sufficient for our present object. The first is - The Gaytri, or holiest verse of the Vedas.” It begins, “Let us adore the supremacy of that divine Sun: the God-head who illuminates all, who re-creates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return, whom we invoke to direct our understandings aright. in our progress towards His holy seat. .... What the sun and light are to this visible world, that are the supreme good and truth to the intellectual and invisible universe ; and, as the corporeal BRAHM, OR HE THAT IS, eyes have a distinct perception of objects enlightened by the sun, thus our souls acquire certain knowledge by meditating on the light of truth which emanates from the Being of beings—that is the light by which alone our minds can be directed in the path to blessedness." The other hymn is from the Yagur Veda. The Deity is called by the name That, as we find frequently in this Veda. He is simply Essence, or Being KA “ Fire is That, the sun is That; The air, the moon—so also that pure Brahm. Waters, and the lord of creatures. “ He, prior to whom nothing was born, And who became all beings, Produced the sun, moon, and fire. To what God should we offer oblations, But to Him who made the fluid sky and the solid earth Who fixed the solar orb, and formed the drops of rain. To what God should we offer sacrifice, But to Him whom heaven and earth contemplate mentally. “The wise man views that mysterious Being In whom the universe perpetually exists, Resting upon that sole support, In Him is the world absorbed, From Him it issues. In creatures is He twined, and wove in various forms. Let the wise man, versed in Holy Writ, Promptly celebrate that immortal Being, Who is the mysteriously existing various abode." We have chosen these two hymns, not simply because they set forth the Hindu worship of nature, but, also, at the same time, the peculiar characteristics of that worship. It is not the sun itself that is worshipped, but the sun as the emblem, yea, the abode of that Being towards whom the hearts of the worshippers are filled with reverence. And the same of the moon, the fire, the waters. They are that Being because that Being is in all, and is the being of all. We have here an intimation of the Pantheism, the Polytheism, and the Monotheism of Hinduism ; how they are related to each other, and how the one is to be interpreted by the other. Brahm, the supreme, is impersonal. His name is mystery, or He That Is. Placed at the summit of all thought, and beyond all thought, He is called by the name of all the gods and of all things, that He may be excluded from none. Again He is the One mysterious and nameless, that He may be distinguished from all things. He is pre-eminently One, ever- lasting, without body, parts, or passions. His power, wisdom, and goodness, are infinite. He is the Maker and Preserver BEING AND NON-BEING. rom the Licent, soaringark, and whimpunts alo of all things, both visible and invisible. "May that soul of . mine," says a prayer in the Rig-Veda, “ which mounts aloft in my waking hours as an etherial spark, and which, even in my slumber has a like ascent, soaring to a great distance, as an emanation from the Light of lights, be united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest and supremely intelligent." And the hymn on creation, from the same Veda, thus speaks of that Infinite Spirit : “ Then there was no entity, nor non-entity, Nor world, nor sky, nor ought above it Nothing anywhere. Nor water, deep and dangerous Death was not. Nor then was immortality, Nor distinction of the day or night. But That breathed without afflation- Darkness then was." 5. This universe was enveloped in darkness, And was undistinguishable water. Who knows, and shall declare when and why This creation (ever) took place. The gods are subsequent to the production of the world Who then can know from whence This varied world comes ? He, who in highest heaven is Ruler, does know; But not another can possess that knowledge.” The Yagur Veda speaks of the primordial soul as ineffable. • He is neither great nor small, large nor long. He is with- out color, shadow, smell, or taste; without youth or age, beginning or end, limits or bounds. Before Him there was no one ; after Him comes no one. He is unspeakably pure, living in eternal repose, and in eternal joy, stable amid ali change--in His grandeur free. He sees without eyes, and hears without ears. He sees all, hears all, understands all ; but is seen by no onė, is comprehended by no one.” Brahm is pre-eminently Being; but lest that term should seem to exhaust His infinitude, He is also said to be Non-Being-not, however, in the sense that material forms are non-being, not because He is less than being, but greater than all being. Our thoughts of existence are too mean to be applied to Him. We must declare their insufficiency so as it may be under- stood that when we, the finite, affirm anything of God, it is but our finite effort to express Him, and therefore imperfect, for no number of finites can make up the Infinite ; no accu- mulations of being can express Him who is the source of all being, therefore it is said that Brahm is both Being and Non- Being. This verbal contradiction pervades the whole of of finites caress Him wh both Being a hole of THE ALL PERVADING SOUL. · Hindu Theology. “The Polytheism of the Vedas,” says Creuzer, “is dissolved into Monotheism, * and all the names of the gods may be reduced to three. These are chiefly physical powers: fire, sun, and air; and these again go into the great soul. This great soul is sometimes called the sun, because it animates all which moves and is. It is the physical unity in all. There are many names sometimes for the same god, and of some gods nothing is affirmed, their name and nature is mystery. Such is the terrible Deva and the mysterious Om, which name belongs to all the gods, and is yet so sacred that no Hindu pronounces it. There are besides deities, which are portions of other deities, and sometimes the same god becomes many by the multitude of his incarnations or manifestations." The very vastness of the Hindu Mytho- logy obliges it to be inconsistent. It is an effort to represent a Being who can only be grasped by an infinite thought. Were it consistent its failure would be still more signal, the many being but fractions of the One, and this One an Infinite Spirit. It therefore takes refuge in poetry, and struggles to utter by luxuriant similitudes, what language cannot with accuracy express. † The great soul animates and pervades all things. He speaks in the thunder, flashes in the lightning, roars in the cataract, glances in the sun, smiles in the moon, glitters in the stars, rolls in the ocean, sparkles in the fountain, reposes on the sleeping lake. He is imaged in the mountain. He whispers in the zephyrs, and murmurs among the leaves of the forest trees. He is one, and yet He is manifold. As the One no tongue can truly name Him-no thought worthily conceive Him. As the many He peoples the heavens, the earth, the air, and the waters, so that every region is full of gods, and everything that lives, and moves, and is, becomes * Professor Wilson comes to the same conclusion respecting the theology of the Puranas. In the Introduction to his translation of the Vishnu Purana he says: “ The Pantheism of the Puranas is one of their invariable characteristics, although the particular divinity, who is all things, from whom all things proceed, and to whom all things return, be diversified according to their individual sectarial bias. They seem to have derived the notion from the Vedas; but in them the one universal Being is of a higher order than a personification of attributes or elements, and however imperfectly conceived or unworthily described, is God. In the Puranas the one only Supreme Being is supposed to be manifest in the person of Siva or Vishnú, either in the way of illusion or of spirit, and one or other of these divinities is there- fore, also, the cause of all that is, and is Himself all that exists." † “ That Divine Self is not to be grasped by tradition, nor by understand- ing, nor by all revelation ; by him whom He, Himself, chooses, by him alone is He to be grasped—that Self chooses his body as His own.”—UPANISHAD, QUOTED BY MAX MÜLLER. GOD NAMELESS, YET HAVING ALL NAMES. 9 a god. The fields are sacred, for Brahm is there; the rivers are worshipped, for Brahm lives in them. Brahma-putra, as its name implies, is the river of Father Brahm. The Ganges flowing down from the divine mountains, laden with the richest blessings of the great God of nature, is worshipped as itself divine. The beasts become sacred; and the images of the elephant, the ox, the goat, the hawk, the eagle, and the raven are found side by side with the idol gods of the Pantheon. Brahm is all things, and without Him things in themselves are but illusions : matter has no real existence material forms are the forms of Brahm. The Vedanta, or Vedic Commentaries mark the second era of Hinduism, when the spirit of reflection begins to dis- tinguish between God and nature. They give prominence to the Monotheism of the Vedas, and at times protest against Polytheism and the worship of the natural elements. The vulgar,” says the Vedanta, w look for their gods in the water; men of more extended knowledge, in the celestial bodies; the ignorant, in wood, bricks, and stones; but learned men, in the universal soul.” The soul of the universe now becomes the single object of worship. The Vedas had declared God "in- comprehensible to reason, and inconceivable to imagination, compassed by no description, beyond the limits of the explica- tion of the Vedas ;” and again they had said “ all that exists is indeed God.” On these and similar passages the author of the Vedanta establishes his theology, commenting on the texts, explaining what seemed inconsistent with his interpreta- tion, and reducing the whole, so to speak, to an analogy of faith. “God, he says, “is called by all names to denote the diffusive spirit of the Supreme Being equally over all crea- tures by means of extension, for in this way His omnipresence is established ;” but yet God is a Being more extensive than all the extension of space. He sees everything, though never seen; hears everything, though never directly heard. All material extension is clothed with His existence; for He is not only the efficient, but the material cause of the uni- verse. He proceeds more swiftly than thought. He seems to advance, leaving behind human intellect, which strives to attain a knowledge of Him. He seems to move everywhere, though in reality He has no motion. He is distant from those who do not wish to know Him; but He is near those who earnestly seek Him. To know. God is to feel that we do not know Him, and to suppose that we understand Him is to show our ignorance of Him. We see His works, and tion, and laining whablishes his th similar pas 10 MATTER IS IGNORANCE AND ILLUSION. UU therefore infer His existence; but who can tell how or what He is ? He is something distinct from the universe, yet in some way the being of the universe is involved in His being. It is He that is the Eternal, the unchangeable, the ever-present. He applies vision and hearing to their respective objects. He is the splendor of splendors; the sun shines not with respect to Him, nor the moon, nor fire. As the illusive appearance of water, produced by the reflection of rays in the mirage, so the universe shines in Him—the real and intelligent spirit. The universe had its birth in Him; and as bubbles burst in the water, so shall it find its destruction in Him." *5 As from a blazing fire,” says the Atharva Veda,“ proceed thousands of sparks of the same nature, so from the eternal Supreme Being various souls come forth, and again return to Him. He is immortal without form and figure, omnipresent and all pervading, unborn, without breath, or individual mind.” . Matter is called ignorance, because we know nothing about it; and illusion, because it professes to be something, while it is nothing. Creation is not, when considered as a thing. It is only when regarded as a manifestation of Brahm, its existence is due to emanation ; it is the Eternal Being coming out of Himself. When He thinks, He becomes an object as well as a subject--that which is thought of, as well as that which thinks--as a man beholding himself in a mirror becomes the subject seeing, and the object seen, so is Brahm and creation : He projects His thought, and in it sees Himself as in a glass. That reflection of His being is one to Him; but to human beings the embodiment of His thought presents itself under a thousand modifications : hence we call the universe what it really is, an appearance; and this appearance is the out-shadowing of the Eternal Brahm. Creation is not so much illusive in itself, as it is illusive to us. It has a real side which is divine : it is the thought of the Eternal Spirit-it is His speech-His word going forth. The Rig Veda calls this Vach, or speech, the daughter of the primeval spirit-eternal, and yet transitory. “I uphold," she says, “both the sun and the ocean, the firmament and the fire, both day and night. Me the gods render universally present everywhere : pervader of all beings; even I declare this myself, who am worshipped by gods and men. I make strong whom I choose-originating all beings, I pass like the breeze, I am above the heavens, beyond the earth, and He bend he subies as a m which * Quoted by Romahun Roy. THE WORD OF BRAHM. what is the great One that am I?"* She lives eternally in Brahm, she is the instrument of creation, she presents herself throughout the universe as illusion; so that whatever we see is the voice of the creating God, and this voice is the thought of the eternal Spirit. The appearance of creation is the voice of the Creator, and that again is the volition of the Eternal. Around this doctrine of creation are clustered, not only the most abstruse of Hindu philosophies, but innumerable legends. There is not, however, on this subject, any more than on some others, a perfect agreement. Sometimes creation is the act of Brahm; at other times of the gods. Sometimes Brahm is represented as willing the creation; at other times it flows unconsciously from Him. In setting forth one view as the most prominent, we do not forget that others are also to be found. In the Vedanta we read that a point was reached in endless duration, when creation emanated from Brahm ; in other places we read that Brahm resolved to create : probably the difference is only apparent. We do not expect the most exact language in hymns and legends; yet they all agree generally in this : that the things which Brahm created, He formed out of His own substance; and the reason given is, because there was no other substance from which He could form them. As the spider weaves its web from its own bowels, or as the tortoise protrudes its legs from the shell ; so did Brahm weave or protrude creation. As milk curdles, as water freezes, as vapour condenses; so was the universe formed from the coagulation of the divine substance. These comparisons being derived from objects of sense have an air of materialism, which is not intended by the Brahmans who use them. They express nothing concerning the nature of substance, and must not be taken as exhaustive of the idea of creation. We have already seen that, though Brahm and creation are thus identified, the nature of Brahm is absolutely spiritual. In the hymn quoted above from the Rig Veda the gods are said to be created after the world. This we may regard as the orthodox view; but, as the gods are the powers of Brahm manifested in nature, we can understand how the Brahmans often apparently reverse the order, and make the gods Brahm's agents, creators, and world-makers. The gods and the universe are thus one; and these again are Brahm in His objective being. To this meaning we may reduce the majority of the Brahmanical legends of creation. “ In the * Quoted by Dr. Williams--" Hinduism and Christianity Compared.” 12 BRAHMA. beginning of all things the universe clothed with water rested in the bosom of eternal Brahm, The world-creating power, or person of the Godhead, swam over the waters upon the leaf of a lotus, and saw with the eyes of his four heads nothing but water and darkness. Hence his self contempla- tion, "Whence am I? Who am I?” He continued a hun- dred years of the gods in this self-contemplation without profit, and without enlightening the darkness, which gave him great uneasiness. Then a voice reached His ear, “Direct thy prayer to Baghavat, the Eternal Being.” Brahma (this was the name of the person of the godhead), raised himself, and placed himself on the lotus in a contemplative position, and thought over the Eternal Being. Baghavat appears as a man with a thousand heads ; Brahma prays : This pleases the Eternal-He disperses the darkness, and opens Brahma's understanding. But after the darkness had been dispersed Brahma saw in the exhibition of the Eternal, all infinite forms of the earthly world, as buried in a deep sleep. Thereupon the Eternal commands him again, “ Brahma return to con- templation, and since, through penitence and absolution, thou hast desired the knowledge of my omnipotence, then will I give thee power to bring forth, and to develop the world, out of the life concealed, in my bosom. In another place Brahm is described as surrounding Himself with Maya (illusion); that is, joyful self-forgetfulness. He clothes Him- self with it-it becomes, as it were, His garment. In this Maya, wherewith Brahm has encircled Himself, is desire desire of creating ; but in desire is love, and so far beauty. In relation to itself the Maya has true being; but, in relation to the Being of beings to the self-existent, to Brahm, it is only appearance : deception-illusion. World making is the sport of Brahm ; creation is the play of the godhead, while God Himself is eternally at rest. The world, considered by itself, is a beautiful world, a choice form of art; but, placed over against the Eternal, it is nothing. We have here the first being, who is above all, and before all; and then we have love, which again has its existence in the Maya. Hence God is divided into the loving and the loved. And this separation is the original condition of all things. They are, and they are not. They exist only in and through separation. On the standing ground above separation they are not. Love is the world mother; but what she has brought forth is form only in appearance. Material things are but semblance forms, wizard gardens, which, with the wands of conjuration, THE TRIMURTI. 13 sink back into themselves. The One, that which is Being reinains. The productions of the Maya, which are only appearance, change and vanish. So far as creation is Brahm, it has true being; without Him it is illusion, and non-being. . In this relation of the Supreme God and the gods-of Brahm, and the universe, we have the true explanation of the Indian Trimurti, which plays so distinguished a part in the later stages of Hindu worship. The early gods of the ele- ments disappear before Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; which at once represent Brahm, in His objectivity, as the creating, preserving, and destroying powers of nature. Brahm becomes Bramha; the universal soul becomes a person; the pervading spirit, a creator. This means that the universe emanates from Brahm, and becomes the first of the gods; hence the many passages in the Vedic Commentaries, which identify the uni- verse with the body of Brahma, and the legend which refers the origin of the castes to four emanations of Brahma: the priests from his head, the warriors from his shoulders, the merchants from his belly, and the Soudras from his thighs. From him was born the spirit, the understanding, and all the senses; from him was produced the heaven, the light, the wind and water. His head is fire, his eyes the sun and the moon ; the regions of heaven are his ears, his voice is the open Vedas. The world is his breath, at his feet is the earth; he is the internal spirit of all creatures. * Brahma is the Macrocosm ; man is the Microcosm. The creating power of God is sometimes set forth by Brahma and Vishnu together. Two powers are placed in Brahm; the one centripetal, and the other centrifugal. The first is Vishnu. Whilst the god- head gives itself forth, the emanation seeks to return again to that from which it came. Its desires are towards the centre of being. The other power is Brahma, which is the spring of emanation. God by Brahma goes out of Himself. In creation He places Himself outside of God. There is a tendency in Brahm to turn from Himself to step out of Himself, to deprive Himself; and every such deprivation is already a minus of God. This idea which evidently belongs to the Vishnu period, elevates Vishnu above Brahma; as the work of returning to God is higher than that of departing from Him—the reabsorbing power is deemed nobler than the act of creation. Here too, Brahma is a man, the prototype of men ; but Vishnu is a God. In the older Vedic writings * Quoted by Creuzer. THREE ERAS OF HINDU WORSHIP. we only read of Brahma. Creuzer supposes that each person of the Hindu Trinity marks an era in Hindu worship. The first was that of pure Brahmanism, when men lived in holy innocence, and worshipped none but the creating god. He was an incarnate deity, the teacher of men, the first lawgiver, author of the immortal Vedas. He was worshipped with bloodless offerings—the fruits of the earth, and the milk of cows. But this primitive worship was soon swept from the earth; no traces can now be found of the temples of Brahma. To Brahmanism succeeded the worship of Šiva. This was the reign of terror, when the worshippers performed cruel rites, and sought to appease the destroyer with blood. The era of Vishnu was a reformation of the worship of Siva, which was completed by Budhism. Each person of this Trimurti appears as the Supreme God, yet there are never wanting some traces of their relation to the powers and elements of nature. Their symbols hinted at this. To Brahma the earth was sacred, to Siva the fire, and to Vishnu the water. Of the being and work of each of these three gods, the Hindu writings are full. In the laws of Menu, we read that the invisible God created the five elements. First He created water, and gave it the power of moving. Through this power arose a golden egg which shone like a thousand suns, and in this was born Brahma, the self- existent—the great father of all reasonable beings. At this date we do not read of the Trinity, and Brahma is scarcely distinguished from Brahm. In another part of the “ Laws of Menu” it is Brahm Himself who creates and manifests Himself in creatures. This universe was only darkness incomprehensible, invisible, unknown, and as if plunged in a profound sleep. Then the self-existent God impenetrable yet penetrating all things, reuniting the vital elements, suddenly dissipated the darkness. The spiritual, infinite, incomprehensible, and eternal Being-mysterious principle of all creation, revealed Himself in all His splendor. It is in the Vedanta we must look to find the Trimurti, and there we find innumerable legends of their birth, life, and works. One gives them a mother named Bhagavad, who, ex- pressing her joy at her own creation, dropped from her bosom three eggs, from which the three deities were produced. * Another legend says, “ Brahm existed from all eternity in a acolo Fotunet rating ated the formed in a book is their loved hos * Vans Kennedy says that Creuzer took this from Madame Polier, and that it is not found in the Vedanta. He also disputes the existence of some other legends cited by Creuzer. BRAHMA CREATES. 15 form of infinite dimensions. When it pleased Him to create the world he said : 'Rise up O Brahma." Immediately a spirit of the color of flame issued forth, having four heads and four hands. Brahma- gazing round and seeing nothing but the immense image out of which he had proceeded, travelled a thousand years to understand its dimensions. But after all his toil he found himself as much at a loss as before. Lost in amazement Brahma gave over his journey, he fell prostrate and praised what he saw with his four mouths. The Almighty then in a voice like ten thousand thunders, was pleased to say “Thou hast done well, O Brahma, for thou canst not com- prehend me. Go and create the world."" The legend then describes how Brahma seeing the idea of things floating before his eyes, said, “Let them be,” and all that he saw became real before him. Then Brahma was troubled lest creation should be annihilated, and addressing immortal Brahm, asked, “Who shall preserve these things which I behold.” Then from Brahm's mouth issued a spirit of a blue color, and said aloud, “I will." This was Vishnu, the preserver. Brahma then commanded him to go and make animals and vegetables. When this was done, man was wanted to have dominion over the new made creation. Vishnu made some men, but they were such idiots that Brahma destroyed them. He then created four men from his own breath, but they could do nothing except praise Brahm, and therefore they likewise were destroyed. With this work of destruction Siva appeared. Thus Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, together began to create, to preserve, and to destroy. The following dialogue, also from the Vedanta,* gives nearly the same account of creation, besides touching on some other points of Hindu Divinity. The speakers are Brahma, who is called the wisdom of God, and Narud his son. Narud is reason, or the first of men, who according to one account of creation were created by the Trimurti. “Narud : O Father, thou first of God, thou art said to have created the world, and thy son Narud astonished at what he beholds, is desirous to be instructed how all these things were made.-Brahma : "Be not deceived my son. Do not imagine that I was the creator of this world, independent of the Divine Mover, who is the great original Essence and Creator of all things. Look there- fore upon me only as the instrument of the Great Will and a part of His being, whom He called forth to execute His eternal designs.'--Narud : “What shall we think of God ?" * Quoted by Colonel Dow. 16 VISHNU CREATES, PRESERVES, AND DESTROYS. Brahma : "Being immaterial, He is above conception ; being invisible, He can have no form : but, from what we behold in His works, we may conclude that He is eternal, and omnipo- tent-knowing all things and present everywhere.'-Narud : "How did God create the world ?' — Brahma : Affection dwelt with God from all eternity. It was of three kinds : the creative, the preserving, and the destructive. The first is represented by Brahma; the second, by Vishnu; and the third, by Shiblah (Siva). You, O Narud, are taught to worship all the three in various shapes and likenesses as the creator, preserver, and destroyer.” -- Narud: "What dost thou mean, O Father, by intellect?'-Brahma : 'It is a portion of the great soul of the universe, breathed into all creatures to animate them for a certain time.' - Narud: What becomes of it after death.'-Brahma: 'It animates other bodies, and returns like a drop to that unbounded ocean from which it just arises.'-Narud : What is the nature of that absorbed state, which the souls of good men enjoy after death ?'- Brahma : “It is a participation of the divine nature where all passions are utterly unknown and where consciousness is absorbed in bliss.' – Narud : What is time? -Brahma : "Time existed from all eternity with God.'-Narud: "How long shall the world remain ? -- Brahma : Until the four jugs shall have revolved. Then Rudra (Siva) shall roll a comet under the moon, and shall involve all things in fire and reduce the world to ashes. God shall then exist alone, for matter will be totally annihilated."" In the Puranas, the doctrines of the Vedanta are repeated, but in many different forms. The essential and characteristic doctrines of the Vedas concerning the Divine Being reappear in all prayers, hymns, and legends. The One Supreme is everywhere acknowledged, but chiefly as manifested in one or other of the three persons in the Trimurti. Brahma is all things, comprehending in his own nature the spiritual and the natural. In the Vishnu Purana, Vishnu is all things, all gods, and all persons of the godhead. He is Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. As lord of the elements, He creates, pre- serves, and destroys Himself. His form is infinite. He is the giver of all good, and the fountain of all happiness. He is the sacrifice and the sacrificial fires, the oblations and the mystic Om,* the Vedas and Hari, the object of all worship, *« Om, or Omkara, is well known as a combination of letters invested by Hindu mysticism with peculiar sanctity. In the Vedas it is said to compre- hend all the gods."-PROFESSOR WILSON. VISHNU IS ALL THINGS. 17 the sun, the planets, the whole universe, the formed and the formless, the visible and the invisible. As the widespreading fig-tree is compressed in a small seed, so, at the time of dis- solution, the whole universe will be compressed in Vishnu, as in its germ. As the fig-tree germinates from the seed, and becomes first a shoot, and then rises into loftiness ; so the created world proceeds from Vishnu. As the bark and the leaves of the plantain tree may be seen in its stem; so may all things be seen in Vishnu, the stem of the universe. He is the essence of the gods and of the Vedas-of everything, and of nothing. He is night and day; He is time made up of moments, hours, and years; He is earth, sky, air, water, and fire ; He is mind, intellect, individuality; He is gods and men, beasts, reptiles, trees, shrubs, and grasses; He is all things, great and small, all bodies, composed of atoms, and all souls that animate bodies. Brahma having addressed the deities, proceeded along with them to the northen shores of the sea of milk, and with reverential words, thus prayed to the supreme Hari: “We glorify Him who is all things, the Lord supreme over all, the unperceived, the smallest of the smallest, the largest of the largest of the elements, in whom are all things, from whom are all things, who was before existence, this god who is all beings, who is the end of ultimate objects, who is beyond final spirit, who is one with supreme Soul, who is con- templated as the cause of final liberation by sages anxious to be free. To Him whose faculty to create the universe abides in but a part of but the ten millioneth part of Him ; to Him who is one with the inexhaustible supreme Spirit I bow, and to the glorious nature of the supreme Vishnu, which nor gods, nor sages, nor I, nor Sankara apprehend ; that which the Yogis, after incessant effort, effacing both moral merit and demerit, behold, to be contemplated in the mystical mono- syllable Om—the supreme glory of Vishnu, who is the first of all, of whom only one god the triple energy is the same with Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. “Thou art evening, night, and day; earth, sky, air, water, and fire; mind, intellect, and individuality. Thou art the agent of creation, duration, and dissolution ; the master over the agent, in Thy forins, which are called Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Thou art gods, men, animals, deer, elephants, reptiles, trees, shrubs, creepers, climbers, and grasses : all things, large, middling, and small, immense or minute. Thou art all bodies whatsocver composed of aggre- who i whom are asiest of the ele smallest of the Lord sup SIVA IS ALL THINGS. 115 gated atoms. This, Thy illusion, beguiles all who are ignorant of Thy true nature; the fools who imagine soul to be in that which is not spirit. The notions, "I am,' This is mine, which influence mankind are but the delusion of the mother of the world, originating in Thy active energy."* This universality of existence, which is ascribed to Brahma and Vishnu, is also ascribed to Siva. “The gods," says the Rudra Upanishad, “ proceeded to the celestial abode of Rudra, and enquired "Who art Thou?' He replied, 'I am, the fount and sole essence. I am and shall be, and there is nothing which is distinct from me.' Having thus spoken He disappeared, and then an unseen voice was heard saying, “I am He who causeth transitoriness and yet remaineth for ever. I am Brahm; I am the east and the west, the north and the south; I am space and vacuum ; I am masculine, feminine, and neuter; I am Savitri, the Gayatri, and all sacred verse ; I am the three fires; I am the most ancient, the most excel- lent, the most venerable, and the mightiest; I am the splendor of the four Vedas, and the mystic syllable; I am imperish- able and mysterious, but the revealer of mysteries; I am all that is, and all space is comprehended in my essence.?" In the Devi Upanishad the same attributes are ascribed to the terrible goddess. The third era, according to Creuzer, is that of philoso- phy, when reason seeks to explain how God and nature are one. We have confined ourselves hitherto to the religious books of the Hindus, strictly so called, but there yet remains a large field of Hindu thinking in what is properly their philo- sophy. The history of mind in India corresponds to the same history in Europe. Every system that has appeared in the West has had its counterpart in Hinduism. There we have dogmatism, mysticism, materialism, idealism, and scepticism, in all their manifestations, and in all their stages of develop- ment. M. Martin even finds “ Positivism,"4 in the Rig-Veda. Sir William Jones compared the six leading philosophies of India, with the principal systems of the Greeks. The two of Nyaya have their counterpart in the Peripatetic and Ionian schools. The two of Mimansa correspond to the Platonic, and the two of Sankya to those of the Italics and Stoics. * Wilson's “Vishnu Purana." . + Epicureanism would be a more appropriate name. The passage quoted by M. Martin is this: “Life and death follow each other. Let the invocation which to day we address to the gods be propitious to us. Let us give our- selves up to laughter, and the pleasures of the dance, and prolong our existence.” in all them, mystic counterpa MATERIALISM. 19 We noticed in the beginning that if God and the universe are one, if the universe be material, and that which we call matter has any reality in itself, the conclusion is, that the Deity is matter. There is no escape from this alternative but by declaring our ignorance of what matter is, or our conviction that it is not any true being. And this, in the majority of cases, is the declaration of Hinduism : yet the Indians like ourselves have their systems of materialism. The chief of these is the Sankya of Kapila, who has been reckoned an atheist. This is peculiarly the system of Hindu Rationalism. Setting aside the authority of the Vedas, Kapila substitutes for Vedic sacrifices, knowledge of the imperceptible One. We are to free ourselves from the present servitude and degrada- tion, not by following the prescriptions of holy books, but by being delivered from our individuality, by ceasing to know ourselves as distinct from other things, and other things as distinct from us. Kapila did not mean to be an Atheist, but it has been inferred that he was one, from his making some indefinite principle which he called Prakriti, or nature, the first of things. What he meant by this principle may be open to many answers. It was the undefined eternal existence without parts or forms which produced all which we see and know. There is an intelligence indeed in nature, for nature lives, we see its presence in all thinking and sentient beings; but that intelligence is not the producing cause, it is itself produced. Budha, or intelligence, is not the first, but the second principle in nature ; it depends on the organi- zation of material particles. What is true of this world soul, is also true of the soul of man: it originates with the body, and with the body vanishes. Kapila describes the soul as the result of seventeen anterior principles. He places it in the brain, extending below the skull, like a flame which is elevated above the wick. It is the result of material elements, in the same way as an intoxicating drink is the result of chemical combination of its ingredients. * The other Sankya bears the name of Patanjali, a disciple of Kapila. He agrees with his master in making knowledge, + The Atheism of the Sankya of Kapila, has been disputed. He makes the great One to proceed from nature or matter, but it does not necessarily follow that this matter is visible or divisible. It may, as Professor Wilson conjectures, find its counterpart in the first principle of the Pythagoreans of the Platonists, and of Aristotle ; and this Intellectual One, who proceeds from the first principle, does it not correspond to the “Mind” of Plato, and the "Intellect” of Aristotle? In Hesiod and Aristophanes the immortal gods are said to be produced from chaos : there is first matter as an indefinite first principle, then mind. 20 IDEALISM. the means of deliverance from this present bondage ; carrying this principle to the extreme of mysticism, he inculcates an entire abstraction from all objects of sense, and a pure con- templation of the Deity alone. He exhorts all men to become Yogis, meditators upon God. Patanjali departed entirely from Kapila in his doctrines of matter and spirit. Regarding bodies as the result of soul, he leaned to idealism : admitting that matter exists as a reflection, an illusion, an appearance. The soul, he says, is placed above sensibility ; intelligence, above the soul; being, above intelligence. This is that non- being without attributes, which is most truly Being, one and all things. The Nyaya is divided into two schools: the physical and metaphysical. The author of the first is Kanada. Being a doctrine of atoms, it has been compared with the system of Democritus ; but the agreement is only in appearance. The atoms of Kanada were abstractions-mathematical or meta- physical points that had neither length, breadth, nor thickness. Though a physical system, it ended in idealism. Kanada judged that material substances had no reality but that derived from their qualities; and these, again, were derived from the mind perceiving, and were not to be found in the object perceived. The author of the second Nyaya was Gotama. He does not concern himself much with matter, but discourses chiefly of mind. His great question is, “What is soul ?" He concludes that it is a principle entirely distinct from the body, and does not depend for its existence on any combination of elements. The treatise of Gotama is purely dialectical, and rivals in abstruseness and subtilty anything that is to be found in the Metaphysics of the West. The third system is the Vedanta, which has two schools : the Parva Mimansa, and the Uttara Mimansa. The first, which is attributed to Jamini, is entirely practical, and seems to have no characteristic beyond the commendation of a virtuous life. The second was taught by Vyasa, and is the one chiefly intended when we speak of the Vedanta. This is, properly, the orthodox philosophy—the generally received exposition of Vedic doctrine. Here Brahm is the axis, the centre, the root, the origin of all phenomena. Mind is not here made a product of nature ; but nature is declared to be a product, or rather a mere manifestation, of mind. The true absorption of man is declared to be not into nature, but into the bosom of eternal Brahm. In the Vedanta Sara, or essence of the Vedanta, Brahm is called the universal have life. The le when Wild YA KRISHNA AND ARJUNA. 21 soul of which all human souls are a part. These are likened to a succession of sheaths which envelop each other like the coats of an onion. The human soul frees itself by knowledge from the sheath. But what is this knowledge? To know that the human intellect and all its faculties are ignorance and delusion. This is to take away the sheath, and to find that God is All. Whatever is not Brahm is nothing. So long as man perceives himself to be anything, he is in ignorance. When he discovers that his supposed individuality is no indi- viduality, then he has knowledge. Brahm is the substance, we are his image, and the countenance of Brahm alone remains. Man must strive to rid himself of himself as an object of thought. He must be only a subject, a thought, a joy, an existence; as subject he is Brahm, while the objective world is mere phenomena—the garment or vesture of God. In the Bhagavat Gita we have a beautiful illustration of the idealist philosophy of the Hindus. The Bhagavat Gita is an episode in the great national poem called the Mahabharatta. The subject of this poem is the quarrel of two branches of one great family. The hero, Arjuna, looks on his kinsmen whom he is about to slay, and his courage fails him. Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu appears, and exhorts him not to fear to slay his kinsmen. The arguments addressed to Arjuna, are derived from the illusive nature of all existences except the divine, which being eternal none can injure. Krishna tells Arjuna that kinsmen, friends, men, beasts, and stones, are all one; that which to-day is a man, was formerly a vegetable, · and may be a vegetable again. The principle of everything is eternal and indestructible; what then matters the rest ? All else is illusion. If Arjuna will not meet his friends in. battle, Krishna shows that he is deceived by appearances : he mistakes the shadow for the reality. At last Krishna reveals Himself and tells Arjuna that He appears not only in this form, but in all forms ; for He is in everything and is everything. He is Creator, Preserver, Destroyer. He is matter, mind, and spirit. There is nothing greater than He is, and everything depends on Him, as the pearls depend upon the string which holds them. He is the vapour in the water, and the light in the sun and moon. He is the sound in the air, and the perfume in the earth. He is the brightness in the flame, the life in animals, the fervor in zeal—the eter- nal seed in nature—the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. Among the gods He is Vishnu, and the sun among the stars. Among the sacred books He is the Canticles. Among 22 MYSTICAL UNION WITH BRAHM. rivers He is the Ganges. In the body He is the soul, and ini the soul He is intelligence. Among letters He is Alpha, and in words combined He is the bond of union. He is time eter- nal. He is that preserver whose face is turned to all sides. He is death which swallows up all, and He is the germ of those who do not yet exist. In this manner to show that He is all things, Krishna calls Himself by the chief names of all in things. The mystical knowledge of God whereby we become one with Him, is said to be a later introduction into Brahman- ism; but it is as old as the oldest philosophies, and makes an essential part in them all. The ever repeated doctrine con- tinually meets us, that so far as we exist we are Brahm, and so far as we are not Brahm, our existence is only apparent. to live the illusive life. What then is our duty and destiny ? To be united to Brahm, in other words, to realise that we are one with him. To contemplate merely the world of forms and the apparent existence, is to contemplate nothingness, to gaze upon delusion—to remain in vanity, yea to be vanity itself. We must soar above phenomena-above the brute instincts-above the doubts of reason-above intelligence. We must separate ourselves from all which is subject to change, enter into our own being, unite ourselves to pure being, which is Brahm, the Eternal. He that hath reached this state is free from the bondage of individuality. He no more unites himself to anything. He has no more passions consciousness is absorbed in bliss. He has neither fear, nor joy, nor desire, nor activity, nor will, nor thought. For him is neither day nor night, nor I, nor thou, nor known, nor knowing-all is gone. There remains only the universal soul; separated from the world, delivered from the illusions of Maya; he is one with the Eternal. He has found the object of his search, and is one with the object of his knowledge. He knows himself in the truth of his being. To reach this elevation is the end and object of all religion and all philosophy. To know ourselves in our true being is to know Brahm. To lose ourselves as to our illusory being is to find Brahm. Every man has a foretaste of this union in dreamless sleep, when the life spirit is simple and free; then speech with all its names, the eye with all its forms, the ear with all its tones, the understanding with all its images, returns to Brahm. Then those who at death are not prepared for this union must re- turn to earth, some for one, and others for several times, till those whilding with all its orms, the car with peech with all it's BUDHISM. 23 the soul is sufficiently purified for the final absorption. Yes, the final absorption-for this is the blessed consummation of all things. Their coming forth from the Eternal is accounted for in many ways. The general burden of all is, that by creation came imperfection and evil, * and therefore we long for deliverance from creation, we long for that existence which was before creation was. That in all things which is real, being eternal, will remain united to Him who is eternal ; that which is-illusory will pass : Brahm will change His form, as a man changes his garment. As the tides return to the ocean, as the bubbles burst in the water, as the snow flakes mingle in the stream, so will all things be finally lost in the universe of being. Creator and creation are sleep plus a dream. The dream shall vanish, but the sleep shall remain. Individual life will mingle in that shoreless ocean of Being, that abyssal Infinite which no intellect can comprehend, and even Vedic language fails to describe -- the eternal and unchangeable Brahm. 2. BUDHISM.—The most widely received religion in the world is Budhism. It originated about six centuries before Christ and claims to be a reformation of Brahmanism, a con- tinuation, as we have already hinted, of the reformation of the Siva worship. The Budhists do not receive the Vedas, but follow their own sacred books which they call Banas, and which they say were written before the age of inspiration ceased. That was the time following the advent of their great * Though all things proceed from Brahm, yet the Hindus admit, by a kind of contradiction, that they are not the same as Brahm. The human soul, for instance, is not of the same perfect purity as the supreme Soul; for when God willed to manifest Himself, then His nature was, in a certain degree, changed from its real and original state by the production of three essential qualities, which combining together gave rise to a consciousness of individual existence. It is this consciousness which is combined with the human soul, and which suffers pain and joy in the world, and is subject to reward and punishment in a future state : consequently the supreme Being, after willing the manifestation of this universe, becomes unconscious. The increment of consciousness which accrued to Him from creation forms no part of His essence, and it necessarily follows that whatever the human soul suffers from being united to it cannot affect the supreme Soul. The former is also supposed to be excluded from actual union with the latter, by being enclosed in a subtle vehicle, as air in a vessel, and it is not until the walls of the vehicle are dissolved that the human soul becomes homogeneous with the supreme Soul. -SEE VANS KENNEDY. + Vans Kennedy says that, in Hinduism an evil principle distinct from the Divine essence is utterly unknown. Perfection consists in complete quiescence, and the mere volition of the supreme Being to manifest Himself, being a change from this state was necessarily evil, and consequently com- municated its nature to the effects produced by this volition, and hence it was that evil originated. 24 SAKYA MUNI. teacher, Sakya Muni, the historical Budha. Brahmanism and Budhism part here. The Hindus admit a Budha, who was the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, but they reject the claims of Sakya Muni to be this Budha. There are many Budhas, some of celestial origin who are called by a name which means parentless, others are men who have been eleva- ted to Budha-hood. But the greatest of all is this Sakya Muni, who is regarded as the founder of Budhism. His history is overgrown with legends, yet a few things are re- garded as facts. He was a prince who early saw the vanity of all that belongs to earth, of even what falls to a prince. He turned his thoughts from the visible world to the invisible. This transitory life appeared worthless when compared with the unending life of which his highest thought was only a negation of all that is. He renounced the world and became a Brahman. By a long course of study and severe mortifica- tion in the time of his noviciate, he sought that knowledge, which according to Brahmanical teaching, would free his soul from the finite and the personal. When he had reached the absorbed state he declared that knowledge was not enough, that we must add to it a sense of right, and a love of what is good and true. He saw, too, the inconsistency of Brahmanism in denying that the Soudras could rise to the absorbed state, while it made all human souls portions of the universal soul. Like all great reformers, Sakya Muni pushed the popular doctrines of his times to their legitimate conclusions, and thus swept away inconsistencies that others did not venture even to look in the face. The Divinity of man was a part of Brahmanism, why then should there be Soudras? If man is divine he is capable of divine thoughts, so reasoned Budha, and went forth to break down all distinctions of caste, to hold forth eternal blessedness as offered to all conditions of men, to proclaim a gospel to the poor Soudra as well as to the twice born Brahman. This gospel was a declaration of the wretch- edness of life and a belief in something that was better than life ; at its foundation was the doctrine of transmigration. Our sufferings, which he said sprang from our passions, were declared to be punishments for sins committed in former states of being. We are troubled, restless, tossed about on the sea of life. Our aim then should be to extinguish our passions, to free ourselves from their bondage, to find rest, but where shall we find it? In annihilation, in non-existence, in being free from that existence which is itself a punishment for sin. deat reformes their legitimhers did NIRVANA AND SANSARA. 25 The feeling in which Budhism originates is not peculiar to India. It is found wherever men are found. There is no man who has not at some moment felt it. We hear it in the sad exclamation of Solomon: “ Vanity of vanities; all is vanity ;” in the words of the Greek poet, who said : “the best is not to be born ;” and of a modern poet who, lament- ing the condition of the poor, addressed death as “the poor man's dearest friend.” The soliloquy of Hamlet was the essence of Budhism : “Oh that this too, too solid flesh would molt." Though the feeling of the vanity of life be universal, the Budhist's mode of deliverance is peculiar. The Brahman did call his God Being, and the final absorption was into the eternal and unchangeable Essence; but the Budhist looks and longs for pure nothingness. To other men non-existence is the most terrible of all things the loss of being that from which we naturally shrink, except in moments of the deepest sorrow; but to the Budhist annihilation is the consummation of blessedness. Men die, but that is not their end; so long as sins are unatoned for, they must be re-born into existence. Nirvana is the full deliverance when the soul is destined no longer to be. It is that death which is followed by no birth and after which there is no renewing of the miseries of exist- ence. Nirvana is beyond sensation and the world of change. What is in Sansara, or the transient world, is not in Nirvana; and what is in Nirvana is not in Sansara. In Sansara is com- ing and going, change and motion, fullness and manifoldness, combination and individuality. In Nirvana is rest and still- ness, simplicity and unity. In the one is birth, sickness, age, and death, virtue and vice, merit and demerit; in the other complete deliverance from all conditions of existence. Nir- · vana is the bank of deliverance nodding to him who drinks in the stream of Sansara—the sure haven to which all souls are directing their course who are seeking deliverance from the ocean of sorrows-the free state which furnishes an asylum to those who have broken the chains of existence, and snapped the fetters that bind to the transient life. The soul goes through its transitory existences till the source of re-birth is exhausted till it can no longer be re-born, and therefore no longer die. The I is extinguished as plants no longer watered, .. as trees whose roots have been dug up from the earth, or as the light fades when the oil of the lamp fails. This universe, though called being, is less than non-being ; for the one is nothing while it professes to be a reality, the other is what it professes to be. Being is but the image of exhauish its that binde ken the 26 BEING IS ETERNAL. :: non-being. The one is the shadow, the other the substance. Sansara is transient-it is in truth nothing; and, more than that, it is a nothing of phenomena--a deception. But Nir- vana is the unchangeable, the consistent, the true nothing. Sansara has no being its form is illusion--its reality may be destroyed. Nirvana has indeed no being, but it annihil- ates all deception, and liberates from all evil. But whence is this universe--this existence—which is the cause of all sorrow? We do not know-Budha alone knows—probably it has always been. We only know the round of existence-the circle of phenomena. We plant a seed, from it springs a tree; the tree bears fruit, the fruit bears a seed; from the seed springs again a tree; or a bird lays an egg, from it arises another bird, this bird lays another egg, from it arises again a bird : and so it is with the world, and with all worlds. They have come from earlier worlds, and these from others that were earlier still. Existence unfolds itself, forms appear and disappear, but being remains unchanged. Life succeeds life, but nothing is lost and nothing is gained. Being is a circle that has neither begin- ning nor end. As the moisture is drawn up into the clouds, and poured down upon the earth, to be drawn up again by the sun's rays; so being undergoes its perpetual and manifold evolutions in the midst of which it remains unchanged. One individual falls here, and one there; but others rise to replace these, and thus the procession advances in a circle which never ends. We say “never ends," but if it were asked if these worlds are to roll on for ever, the true Budhist would decline to answer. He does not know if this succession will be eternal, any more than if it has been eternal; but he recognizes a necessity in the world which connects existence with the merit and demerit of animated souls. Every deed, be it good or bad, continues to work through infinite space, and brings with it its inevitable fruit until the effect be removed through perfect freedom from sin. The present destiny of every individual-his happiness or misery, sorrow or joy, birth, death, or condition in life-is but the ripe fruit of all his actions which he has committed in his many previous lives. This same power moves the universe: its destruction and renewal is but the working of the merit and demerit of ani- mated beings. Brahmanism has often an atheistical sound, but Budh- ism more. If we examine only the surface, or if we confine ourselves to the mere positive teaching of Sakya Muni, we might be led to the conclusion that Budhism is a simple BUDHISM NOT ATHEISM. 27 Atheism, and indeed this is the judgment of some learned Europeans who have spent long years in the study of Budh- ism. But looking at it as we do, after analysing Brahmanism and finding there its roots and germs, we have a guide with which our present knowledge of Budhism in itself could not supply us. That Nirvana, * or state of annihilation for which the Budhist longs, is to him annihilation only so far as it is opposed to the present existence. It is non-existence, in the sense that it is the only real existence. The Budhist re- nounces the life of sense, passion, and consciousness, for that of pure bliss, where he becomes a Budha, and lives the life of intelligence. He receives Budha-hood, or, as it is otherwise expressed, he becomes one with Adi-Budha.--that is Intelli- gence freed from all limits—the human intellect in its infinity. All Budhas are in reality but one, and the great object of the Budhist's austerities is to lose himself in this one Budha; the very meaning of the word is intelligence. It is the soul of the universe, the one only substance beside which all else is phenomena. We have here a repetition of thoughts pre- eminently Brahmanical, but under new forms and with new names. † * Budhism, in spite of its apparent hopelessness, is by no means a gospel of despair. Its general teaching is universally practical. Those who have become Budhas and are themselves freed from existence, are labouring to free others, which shows that their Nirvana is not annihilation as we under- stand that word; and though little or no worship is directed to the supremo God, those men who have reached Budha-hood are objects of worship. Of all Heathen religions the moral precepts of Budhism come nearest to Christi- anity. Some of these concerning riches, and the difficulty of the rich entering Nirvana, are almost in the words of Christ. The following precepts have something of Christianity in them: “To honour father and mother is better than to serve the gods of heaven and earth.” “Brahm is with that family in which father and mother will be perfectly honoured by their sons.” “To wait a moment silently with one's self is better than to bring offerings every year for hundreds of months." + There are two kinds of Budhists: those of Ava and Ceylon, and the Budhists of Nepaul. The latter only are considered Theists; their God is Adi Budha. Their worship approaches nearer to Brahmanism. They have also a Trinity of persons in the Divine Nature : Budha, pure light, or intelligence; Dharma, matter; and Sanga, the mediating influence between Budha and Dharma. The Jaines are also reckoned a sect of Brahmanical Budhists. Though most writers on Budhism have peremptorily affirmed that it is a system of Atheism, it is probable that a better acquaintance with Budh- ism will show their mistake. Sakya Muni renounced the externals of Brahm- anism, but he did not renounce its spirit; and it is generally admitted that the later Budhists admitted a supreme Deity. “The educated Lamas say, that Budha is the independent Being, the principle and end of all things. The earth, the stars, the moon--all that exists is a partial and temporary manifestation of Budha. All has been created by Budha in this sense, that all comes from Him, as light from the sun.”-HUC AND GUBET'S" TRAVELS IN TARTARY." 28 IMMATERIAL MATTER. The schools of philosophy so far as doctrines are con- cerned are common to Brahmans and Budhists. They are the heirlooms that ancient India has handed down from generation to generation. Forms of religion, yea, religions themselves may change, yet there are thoughts belonging to nations which reappear in all religions. The Budhists have their materialists, who, like Kapila, ascribe intelligence to matter; who see in the beauty of the world, not the wisdom of God, but the wisdom of the inherent powers of nature which they call God. They have also the representatives of Epicurus, who admit that God is an immaterial Being, and yet deny that He either rules the world or cares for it. Some believe Him to be alone eternal and the sole cause of all things; others add a co-equal and co-eternal principle of matter, and derive all things from the joint co-operation of these two eternal principles; but the current of Budhist philosophy is idealistic. * For subtility of thought and extravagance of speculation the Budhists surpass even the Brahmans. What is a body ? a Budhist will ask; and he will answer by showing that a body is a spirit, or perhaps only an illusion of the mind which thinks, or the senses which perceive. He will argue that, as we can only know that any external object exists by perception, if perception ceases, how know we but the sup- posed existence of the object ceases with it? A body is composed of atoms; when these change the body changes, when the body is reduced to atoms it has ceased to exist. What then is a body? At the foundation of all existence - * Koeppen says, the Budhists have no cosmogony, only a cosmology. They do not relegate the world to a first cause, for outside the Becoming is the Nothing. There is no causal nexus between the actual visible world and the first Actor. Four things, say the Budhists, are immeasurable: the word of Budha, space, the multitude of animate beings, and the number of worlds. Numberless worlds move in eternal space. The world system is divided into three worlds: that of desire, that of form, and the formless; and these peopled with animated beings, whose first creation is not explained. Is the soul something eternal, and does it keep its identity in its wanderings ? Yes -at least this is the doctrine received by the North Budhists. Nirvana is for the disciples of Budha the highest good, the last goal, the eternal safety. How can man reach deliverance is the first question of all Indian philosophy? When man returns to Brahm, answer the orthodox Brahmans ---when the soul, knowing itself, is separated from nature, answer the Sankya philosophers—when man goes to Nirvana, says the Budhist. Koeppen, also maintains that the Budhists are Atheists, and translates to the Trinity of the Bramans, the Christians, or the Philosophers. It is simply Budha and his doctrine with the relation between them. BUDHA IS ALL. 29 there must be a something. When we see a tree, we infer a root; so when we see a body, we infer a substratum. What is it? We do not know, and therefore the Budhist philo- sopher calls it ignorance. This ignorance is that other co-eternal principle of which all things are formed, Dharma or matter. But it. vacillates between something and nothing, with a close approach to the latter, even if it be a something. The Budhist leaves it under the significant appellation of the unknown something. In the universe there is obviously the manifestation of a mind--this mind is Budha. We see an animating power making itself visible, but of its origin we know no more than we know of the other unknown. Hence the conclusion that they are co-existent and co-eternal, for if matter is anything it must have existed always, it being im- possible for the aggregate of being ever to have been less than it is. Budha is then the reality of matter-the substratum of all existence. The materials of this Chapter have been gathered from the translations of parts of the Vedas in the 5 Oriental Translation Society's" Publications, Professor Wilson's translation of the Vishnu Purana, an English version of the Baghavat Gita, a French translation of the “ Laws of Menu," and the English tracts of Romahun Roy, with the works of Maurice, Colebroke, Moore, Coleman, and Sir William Jones. The Author has chiefly followed Creuzer, but he has been largely indebted to Vans Kennedy on Indian Mythology, to Mrs. Spier’s “ Life in Ancient India," and to the admirable work of Dr. Rowland Williams. On the special subject of Budhism the authorities chiefly followed are Spence Hardy's Manual, s. Hilaire's "Budha et le Budhisme," and Koeppen's G Die Religion des Budha." CHAPTER II. PERSIAN, EGYPTIAN, AND GREEK RELIGIONS. TN the light of the Indian religions we may interpret all the 1 religions of antiquity. They differ, and yet they are alike. We cannot determine if the one sprang from the other, or if each is a natural growth of the religiousness of man; but they have all a fundamental likeness. Worship of the powers of nature is the origin of them all, and as the mind expands worship of nature in its infinitude, including con- sciously or unconsciously, the whole conceivable assemblage of being as shadowing forth a Being infinite and inconceivable, whom we can neither know nor name; hence on the one hand a Polytheism, and on the other, alongside of it, a Mono- theism. The Chaldeans and the Syrians worshipped the sun and moon. They had their gods and idols, their images, and amulets; yet the higher minds worshipped the one God. While the philosophers contemplated the Infinite, the multi- tude idolized the finite. After Brahmanism, the chief religions of the ancient world are those of Persia, Egypt, and Greece. 1. THE PERSIAN RELIGION. — Of the antiquity of the religion of the Persians we cannot speak with certainty t The sacred books called the Zend Avesta, are the chief sources of information ; but these are only a fragment of the original scriptures—part of one of the twenty-one divisions into which 1 * Nearly two thousand families of the fire worshippers are still found in Persia where they are called Guebres. In India, whither they were driven by the followers of Mahomet in the seventh century, they are still a numerous sect. In Bombay they have three magnificent temples in which the sacred flame burns day and night. “The Parsees,” says Niebuhr, “ followers of Zerdusht or Zoroaster, adore one God only, eternal and almighty. They pay, however, a certain worship to the sun, the moon, the stars, and fire, as visible images of the invisible Divinity. Their veneration for the element of fire induces them to keep a sacred fire constantly burning, which they feed with odoriferous wood, both in the temples and in the houses of private persons." ZERUANE AKERNE 31 activity without they were divided. The Zend Avesta was written or collected by Zoroaster, the great prophet of Persia, who may have been contemporary with Budha five or six centuries before the Christian era. It is, however, generally admitted that por- tions of the Zend Avesta writings are of much more ancient date than the time of Zoroaster.” The Parsees both from their language and mythology are classed with the Indians as members of the great Aryan family, and as they inhabited the birth place of the human race it is probable that the religion of Persia is the oldest in the world. When we compare it with Brahmanism we find each possessing a sufficiently distinct individuality of its own. The ingenious mythologer will find many points of resemblance, but the general student will be more struck with their differ- ence. Brahmanism is more metaphysical ; Parseeism more ethical. The spirit of the one is contemplation; that of the other, activity. The Indian is passive and speculative; the Persian is not without a speculative tendency, but he is more concerned to oppose the forces of evil which are in the world, and to subdue which he feels to be the vocation of man. Tó the degree that Parseeism is ethically strong, it is removed from what is called Pantheism, but the speculative side claims our attention, both for its own sake, and for its subsequent history and its connection with other systems of religion and philosophy. Much has been written, not only in France and Germany, but in England, on the infinite and impersonal God of the old Persian religion. His name is Zeruane Akerne, time without bounds, or beginningless time. The idea of His existence is simultaneous in the mind with the ideas of infinite time and infinite space. He is the Being that must constitute eternity and infinity. That the Persian had this idea of an inexpressible Being who is above all the gods, as Brahm is above the Trimurti, may be considered as settled. But it appears that the name by which this Being is known to European Mythologers is a mere mistranslation of a sentence in the Zend Avesta. Zeruane Akerne is not a name as recent Persian scholars have shown: it simply means infinite time.* The infinite Being of the Persians was nameless, but some- times called by the names of all the gods. He becomes * The passage is, “Spento-Mainyus (Ormuzd) created, and He created in infinite time (zeruane akerne). 32 ORMUZD, OR THE PERSONAL DEITY. personal. He is Ormuzd, god of light; * Mithras, the recon- ciler between light and darkness; Honover, the Word of Him who is eternal wisdom, and whose speech is an eternal creation. Hesychius calls Mithras the first God among the Persians. In his conference with Themistocles, Artabanus describes Mithras as that god who covers all things. Porphyry, quoting from Eubulus, concerning the origin of the Persian religion, speaks of a cave which Zoroaster consecrated in honour of Mithras, the Maker and Father of all things. It was adorned by flowers, and watered with fountains, and was intended as an image, or symbol, of the world as created by Mithras. The same Porphyry records that Pythagoras exhorted men chiefly to the love of truth, for that alone could make them resemble God. He had learned, he said, from the Magi that God, whom they called Ormuzd, as to his body resembled light, and as to his soul, truth. . Eusebius quotes from an old Persian book as the words of Zoroaster, that 66 God is the first Being incorruptible and eternal, unmade and indivisible, altogether unlike to all His works, the princi- ple and author of all good. Gifts cannot move Him, He is the best of the good, and the wisest of the wise. From Him proceed law and justice.” The Chaldean oracles, ascribed to Zoroaster, call God “the One from whom all beings spring." On this passage Psellus, the scholiast, says, “ All things whether perceived by the mind or by the senses, derive their existence from God alone, and return to Him, so that this oracle cannot be condemned, for it is full of our doctrine.” This original impersonal unity created Ormuzd, who thus becomes the chief of gods. He is the living personal Deity, first begotten of all beings, the resplendent image of Infinitude the being in whose existence is imaged the fulness of eternal time and infinite space. As the manifestation of the imper- sonal, He is infinite-none can measure Him, none can set bounds, to His will or His omnipotence. He is pre-eminently Will, altogether perfect, almighty, infinitely pure and holy. Of all things in heaven, He is supreme; of all things, He is * “The Persians invoked the whole circle of the sky,' as Zeus Patroüs (probably Ormuzd). It has been assumed that the general names which figure at the head of the old theogonies, such as Uranus, were refinements placed by speculation before the gods of popular belief; yet the arrangement is justified by the consideration that nothing but a general idea could have answered the emotions of the first men : nature was deified before man. • These,' says Philo, are the real objects of Greek worship: they call the earth Ceres; the sea, Poseidon; the air, Here; the fire, Hephaistos; the sun, Apollo.'”.-MACKAY'S “PROGRESS OF THE INTELLECT.” DOMAIN OF ORMUZD. 33 he is finition is limiteBut is that is ondor in while yet the the ground and centre. The sun is His symbol, yet the sun is but a spark of the unspeakable splendor in which He dwells. Whatever the original One is, that is Ormuzd-infinite in light, in purity, in wisdom. But as the first begotten of the Eternal, his duration is limited to 12,000 years. As a personal deity, he is finite-he is a king, and has a kingdom which is not uni- versal, for it is opposed by the kingdom of Ahriman. . It has been commonly believed that the Persians wor- shipped two gods. This is the account given by Mahome- tan and Christian writers, but the Persians themselves have always denied it. They are not Dualists, but Monotheists on the one side and Polytheists on the other. Ormuzd alone is worshipped as the supreme God. His kingdom is co-exten- sive with light and goodness. It embraces all pure existences in earth and heaven. Ormuzd's domain has three orders. The first is the Amshaspands, or seven immortal spirits, of which Ormuzd is himself one. He created the other six, and rules over them. The second order is the twenty-eight Izeds, and the third an innumerable number of inferior spirits called the Fereurs. The Izeds are the spiritual guardians of the earth. By them it is blessed and made fruitful. They are also judges of the world and protectors of the pious. Every month and every day of the month is under the guardianship of one of the Amshaspands or Izeds. Even every hour of the day has an Ized for its protector; they are the watchers of the elements. The winds and the waters are subject to them. The Fereurs are without number, because Being is without bounds. They are co-extensive with existence; sparks as it were of the universal Being, who, through them, makes Himself pre- sent always and everywhere. The Fereurs are the ideals prototypes or patterns of things visible. They come from Ormuzd, and take form in the material universe. By them the one and all of nature lives. They perform sacred offices in the great temple of the universe. As high priests they present the prayers and offerings of Ormuzd. They watch over the pious in life, receive their departing spirits at death, and conduct them over the bridge that passes from earth to heaven. The Fereurs constitute the ideal world, so that everything has its Fereur, from Ormuzd down to the meanest existence. The Eternal or Self-existent expresses Himself in the almighty Word, and this expression of universal being is the Fereur of Ormuzd. The law has its Fereur, which is its 34 KINGDOM OF AHRIMAN. spirit. It is that which is thought by the Word as God. In the judgment of Ormuzd, Zoroaster's Fereur is one of the most beautiful ideals, because Zoroaster prepared the law. But there is another kingdom besides that of Ormuzd, king of light. There is the kingdom of Ahriman, Lord of darkness. He is not worshipped as a god, but he is in great power in the world. The effort of the Persian to solve the problem of evil is seen in his idea of the kingdom of darkness. It emerges face to face with the kingdom of light. There is not the hope- lessness of human existence which we find in Budhism ; but there is the declaration that evil is inseparable from finite being. The old question had been asked “What is evil ? " How did He who created light also create darkness? If He were good and rejoiced to make the kingdom of goodness, how has he also made the kingdom of evil ? The answer is :--It did not come from the will of the eternal. The creation of the kingdom of evil and darkness was the inevitable result of the creation of the kingdom of light and goodness. As a shadow accompanies a body, so did the kingdom of Ahriman accom- pany that of Ormuzd. The two kingdoms, though opposed to each other, have yet a similar organization. The one is the counterpart of the other. At the head is Ahriman. Then seven Erz-Dews, and then an innumerable multitude of Dews. These were all created by Ahriman, whose great and only object was opposition to the kingdom of Ormuzd. When light was created, then Ahriman came from the south and mingled with the planets. He penetrated through the fixed stars and created the first Erz-dew, the demon of envy. This Erz-dew declared war against Ormuzd, and then the long strife began. As on earth beast fights with beast, so spirit warred with spirit. Each of the seven Ērz-dews has his special antagonist among the Amshaspands. They come from the north and are chained to the planets; but as powers and dignities in the kingdom of Ahriman they receive the homage of the inferior Dews, and are served by them as the Izeds are served by the Fereurs. The existence of the kingdom of darkness is an accident in creation; a circumstance arising from the Infinite positing Himself in the finite. He permits evil to continue; not because it is too strong for Him, but that out of it He may educe a greater good. The limitation will be finally removed. The discord between light and darkness will cease. The reconciler will appear, and then shall begin an eternal kingdom of light without shadow, and purity without spot. The spirits of Ahriman shall be MITHRAS. 35 annihilated. According to some representations, their chief shall be annihilated with them; but others think he shall continue to reign without a kingdom. Now, the Izeds wait for departing souls and preserve them for the final day. They shall then be brought forth to be purified with fire. They shall pass through mountains of burning lava, and come forth without sin or stain. Ahriman shall be cast into darkness, and the fire of the burn- iny metals shall consume him. All nature shall be renewed. Hades shall flee away. Ahriman is gone. Ormuzd rules. The kingdom of light is one and all. But, who is the reconciler? Mithras, the human god. He is God, and yet he is in the form of man. All the attributes of Ormuzd are gathered up into a human form and make Mithras. He is fire-He is light-He is intelligence the light of Heaven. To the Persian, the end of all religion is to become light. In all nature he strives for the victory of the good over the evil. He craves light for the body and light for the soul-light to guide his household-light to rule the state. As the symbol of all that is good in creation, his cry is, light! light! more light! Mithras is the giver of light. But how is he to be distin- guished from Ormuzd, who rules over the kingdom of light? This is not so easy to answer. It would perplex the mythologer to find the place of Mithras in the Persian Pantheon; yea, to find a place for him at all, without giving him some of the attri- butes of Ormuzd, just as Ormuzd had to get some of the attri- butes of the ineffable One. But the perplexity of the mytho- loger matters nothing. It is enough for the Persian that Mithras is the mediator-the human god or the human side of God. It is enough that He is light; the Creator of light; the grand wrestler for light against darkness, and that he will finally win the victory, for which the disciple of Zoroaster waits and longs. The sun must be His image. He has kindled that globe of fire; it is a reflection of His splendor. He is the heavenly light that came forth from the Eternal, and he is the principle of material light and material fire; therefore the Per- sian says in his offerings to the sacred flame, “ Let us worship Mithras." When the finite world was created, the darkness placed itself in opposition to Mithras, but this opposition is posited only in time. It is the strife of day and night; the light side of the year striving with the dark side; piety struggling with impiety; virtue with vice. The Eternal only willed the light, but the darkness arose, and as the world emanated from Him, He cannot D 2 en be out for the that camello and material Hame, “ h vice.th the dark sid, and nighttion is posi placed itself 36 THE SUN IS MITHRAS. leave it. As Mithras, He mediates and works to hasten the victory. We see the great sun fighting and wrestling; every year, yea, every day he obtains a fresh victory, and purifies himself from the spots of darkness. Is not this Mithras ? What other power is in that sun but the intelligible light which is fighting against darkness ? There the mighty principle of right is struggling for victory; there glow sparks of that eternal splendor which is too strong for darkness, and before which all spots must disappear, and all shadows flee away. The kingdom of darkness shall itself be lightened with heaven's light. The Eternal will receive the world back again into Himself. The impure shall be purified, and the evil made good through the mediation of Mithras the reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Mithras is the good, his name is love. In relation to the Eternal he is the source of grace; in relation to man he is the life-giver and mediator. He brings the word as Brahma brings the Vedas, from the mouth of the Eternal. It is he that speaks in the prophets; he that consecrates in priests; he is the life of the sacrifice and the spirit of the books of the law. In heroes he is that which is heroic ; in kings that which is kingly; in men he is man. * * Creuzer gives a represention of Mithras from old Persian sculpture. It is a young man about to plunge a knife into the equivoctial hull. The young man is the god Mithras. God when condescended to the limits of time and space, becomes incorporated in the world, identifies Himself with its perishable nature. Thus by a sort of self-sacrifice, originating life, year after year, the life of nature falls a victim to the seasons. In India the notion of cosmogony was annually commemorated in the Aswammedha, or horse-sacrifice. The horse being a general offering to the sun-god among the natives of upper Asia, and in this instance emblematic of the universe or of universal life embodied in creation. Its members repre- sented the parts of nature ; its blood, the principle of life, poured out from the beginning. The idca of sacrifice, which in its primal type was the outpouring of the universal into the particular, was the resolution of the partial into the universal. The Sanscrit name for sacrifice means union with heaven. The union might be either the original outpouring of the Divine Spirit into the world, or the return of these emanations to their source. The commemorative sacrifices of the Magi, in which the life alone was considered as the appropri- ate oblation to the source of all existence, were symbolical imitations of the Divine procedure, in which death is ever the antecedent and condition of life, as the seed perishes within the ground, and the gloom of winter precedes the flowers of spring. Each year Mithras kills the bull afresh ; thus restoring nature to her prime, and liberating the imprisoned germs of fertility. But the annual revolution of the seasons is only a type of the great cosmical revolution of time. He is the sun physically; and morally intelligence. He dispels the darkness. This warfare is carried on through the instrumentality of the “ Word,” that ever living emanation of the Deity, by virtue of which the world exists, and of which the revealed formularies incessantly repeated in the liturgies of the Magi, are but the expression. Ormuzd is himself the HONOVER. 37 Creation is sometimes ascribed to Mithras, and sometimes to Ormuzd. God rises and speaks the word “Honover.” Through this word all beings are created. The progress of creation ad- vances as Ormuzd continues to pronounce the word, and the more audibly he speaks the more creation comes into being. From the invisible heaven which he inhabits he created the surround- ing heaven in the space of forty-five days. In the middle of the world, under the dwelling of Ormuzd, the sun is placed. Then the moon arises, and shines with her own light. A region is assigned to her, in which she is to produce verdure, and give warmth, life, and joy. Above this is placed the heaven of the fixed stars, according to the signs of the zodiac. Then the mighty high spirits were created—the Amshaspands and the Izeds. In seventy days the creation of man is completed, and in three hundred and seventy-five days all which is, is created by Ormuzd and Ahriman. Honover, the creative word, “I am,” or “Let it be,” is the bond which makes the all one. It unites earth to heaven—the visible to the invisible--the ideal to the real. A period may be assigned for creation, but in truth creation is eternal. Ormuzd has been always creating. From moment'to moment in eternal ages the word was spoken by the Infinite, by the Amshaspands, by the Izeds, by the Fereurs, by all spirits throughout nature. It is the mystery in and by which the ideal world has its existence. It is the ground of all beings—the centre of all life-the source of all prosperity. Zoroaster's law is the embodiment of the law of Ormuzd; hence the Zend Avesta is itself called the living word. In this mysterious Honover, the originals and patterns of visible things existed eternally. Here we catch a glimpse of the meaning of the symbolic worship of Persia. Regarding all by Oree hundrenty dapere creations of iced the hure, and son living Word. He is called first-born of all things ; express image of the Eternal-very light of very light-the Creator, who by the power of the word which he never ceases to pronounce, makes in 365 days, the heavens and the earth. Mithras is the Ormuzd-descended hero appointed to speak the word in heaven and announce it to men. Between life and death, sunshine and shade, he is the present exemplification of the primal unity, from which all beings arose, and into which, through his mediation, all contraries will be absorbed. His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi-a symbolical atonement-a pledge of moral and physical regeneration. He created the world in the begin- ning, and as at the close of each successive year he sets free the current of life to invigorate a fresh circle of being, so in the end of all things. He will bring the weary sum of all ages as a hecatomb before God; releasing by a final sacrifice the soul of nature from her perishable flame, to commence a brighter and purer existence. · 38 FIRE WORSHIP. visible things as copies of the invisible, the ideal was wor- shipped through the sensible. Prayers were addressed to fire and light, to air and water, because the originals of these were in the word of Ormuzd. But chiefly to fire-temples were erected for its consecration, liturgies framed for its worship; sacred fire was carried before the king; it burned religiously in all houses and on all mountains. Not that adoration was directed to the mere material element, but to that divine and heavenly existence of which fire was the copy, the symbol, the visible representation. What is fire ? Manifested spirit; matter in its passage to the unseen. What is light? Who can describe that splendor which irradiates the world? Is it not the outbeaming of the majesty of Ormuzd, the effulgence of the intellect of the infinite, all-embracing One. This symbolism was seen in all nature, and in all forms of the social and civil life of the Persian. The Iranian monarchy was a copy of the monarchy of the uni- verse. It had its seven orders, corresponding to the seven Amshaspands. It had ranks and gradations, which all blended into one. As with the state, so with the family; it too was fashioned after the pattern of things heavenly. On the same principle all animals were divided between Ormuzd and Ahri- man. They were classed as useful and injurious, clean and unclean. As the kingdoms of light and darkness had their chiefs, so had the animal kingdoms their protectors and leaders. The unicorn represented the pure beasts of Ormuzd, while the symbol representative of the animal kingdom of Ahriman was a monster-in part a man, in part a lion, and in part a scorpion. The watching and far-seeing spirits were symbolized by birds. These belonged to the pure creation, and were enemies to Ahri- man. Ormuzd was represented by the hawk and the eagle, whose heads were supposed to be images of eternal time. The dragon-serpent is Ahriman; his spirits are dews, and their symbols the griffin, inhabiting the clefts of the desolate rocks. In this way of difference and intelligible unity, the Persian placed the being as well as the origin of all things in the im- personal One.* * Bunsen maintains that Bactria, and not Persia, was the original seat of Zoroaster and his doctrine. The Fargard, or first book of the Žend Avesta, gives an account of the emigration of the Aryans to India through Bactria. Now the language of the oldest portion of the Zend Avesta is High Bactrian, and approaches very near to the Vedic language, that is, the old East Iranian which is preserved in the Punjab. Another argument is derived from a com- parison of Zoroastrianism with Brahmanism. The old Vedic worship was a worship of nature, but the Zoroastrian books place a supreme God above EGYPTIAN DARKNESS. 39 2. THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION.--The gods of a nation take their character from the climate of the country, and from the condition and character of the people. So true is this, that where foreign deities are adopted they become as it were naturalized, and however great the affinities between the gods of different nations, every country has its own peculiar deities. We notice first the difference; but when we pass from the mere outward features to the inner reality we find the like- ness becoming closer, until we discover the principle in which they have a common origin. The great systems of religion that prevailed in the East, all have their foundation in the doctrine of emanation. On the one side they are the worship of a Being infinitely great; on the other side, the worship of the attributes of that Being as these are seen or syınbolized in nature. They are different forms of the God-consciousness in man, and often when the form is most different the substance is most alike. The supreme Deity of the Persians dwelt in light; but the supreme God of the Egyptians dwells in thick darkness.* There is a sphinx at the temple gate; it speaks 'a riddle—it proclaims a mystery. Inside the temple are the statues of young men, who intimate, with suppressed speech, that the name of God is secret, pointing with their fing- ers, they admonish us to beware that we profane not the Divine stillness. The incomprehensible Deity must be adored in silence ; we may not speak of Him but in words of the most awful rever- ence. It is permitted us to feel and to know the truth of His presence; but the amulet of Isis, the voice of nature, is alone the true speech of God. f nature. “We may assume," says Bunsen, “that the original Zorathustra founded a new religion before the migration to India as a mere counterpoise to the earliest Bactrian naturalism, and that the Aryans, when they migrated, carried with them the primitive Zoroastrian religion on their great conquering expedition, the last scene of which was the Indian country. The Agni, or fire worship, of which mention is made in the Vedic hymns, must be considered as a remnant of the pre-Zoroastrian doctrine." * According to Herodotus, the shrew mouse was sacred to Buto (Mut), this animal passed for being blind and was therefore dedicated to the mother of the god, because “ darkness is older than light,” as Plutarch says. † Chaeremon (as cited by Porphyry) explained the Egyptian religion as ignoring a supreme cause ; Eusebius followed this interpretation, rejoicing to show the absurdity of Paganism. Depuis extolled it, expecting to prove that the idea of an intelligent spiritual cause is an invention of modern times, and too absurd for the wise men of antiquity. Iamblichus refuted Chaeremon. This interpretation of the Egyptian religion is of the same kind with the interpre- tation which makes Budhism atheistic, and thus charges with Atheism the most religious nations of the world. 40 AMMON, THE CONCEALED GOD. What then is He? None can tell. His symbol is a globe or sphere, for He has neither beginning nor end. His duration is eternal-His Being infinite. He is present in all things—His centre here; His circumference nowhere. We may call Him Ammon, but this only means that He is hidden or veiled.* We can call Him by no true name, for no name can express Him. 66 Call Him then by all names," said Hermes Tresmegistus, for as much as He is one and all things; so that, of necessity, all things must be called by His name, or He by the name of all things." We cannot see Him, but, says Plutarch, “He sees all things; Himself being unseen.” Material things are the forms of which He is the substance; the garment with which He clothes Himself, and by which He is made manifest to men. The workmanship of nature, like the web of Arachne, is wonder- ful; and by it we can see that there is an intelligence at work, veiled indeed, yet visible in its productions. The work manifests the Worker. The writings that bear the name of Hermes Tresmegistus con- tain a full exposition of Egyptian theology.t In them, the iden- * The Greeks, rightly considered Ammon as Zeus and the highest God : according to Manethos' interpretation, which is deserving of attention, His name signifies, " the concealed God” “concealment.” We have also the root AMN “to veil,” “to conceal,” now actually before us in the hieroglyphics. The manner of writing Men, instead of Amen for Ammon is new ; we do not therefore at all events import a modern Philosophical idea into Egyptian Mythology, by con- sidering him as the "hidden or not yet revealed God.” He stands incontest- ably in the Egyptian system at the head of the great cosmogonic development. Bunsen. The gods of the first order possessed one general attribute, that of reveal- ing themselves ; in other words, the creative power or principle. The mytho- logical system obviously proceeded from the concealed god Ammon to the creating god. tour knowledge of Hermes is chiefly through the Neo-Platonists. The books which bear his name are supposed to have been written about the 4th century after Christ, and must only be received as the Neo-Platonic interpretation of Egyptian theology. Their Pantheistic character may be learned from the following quotation from the 8th book :--" There is nothing in the whole world which God is not.” He is being and non-being; he has manifested being, but He has non-being in Himself. He is not manifest, and yet He is the most manifest of all. He is whatever may be contemplated by the mind, or is visible to the eye. He is incorporeal and multi-corporeal. There is nothing of any body which He is not, for He is all things. Therefore has He all names, because He is one Father, and, therefore, has He no name in Him- self, because He is the Father of all things. Who, therefore, can worthily speak of Thee, or to Thee. Whither turning, shall I praise Thee ? Above, below, within, without? Neither mode nor place belong to Thee, nor anything besides. All things are in Thee, all are from Thee? Thou givest all things and Thou reccivest nothing, for Thou hast all things, and there is nothing which Thou hast not. When 0 Father shall I praise Thee ? For what shall HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 41 tity of God and nature is distinctly taught. Among the infant nations of the world, this identity seems to have been always as- sumed, not perhaps that they consciously made God and nature one, but that they had not yet learned to separate between matter and the poter which works in matter. The ancient Egyptians may not have been philosophers, but Hermes Tris- megistus undertook to expound the philosophy which was under- lying their religious belief. How far he reads his philosophy into their religion, or how much of it he found already there, we cannot now enquire. For the identity of all things with God he adduced the favorite argument, that they must have existed as ideas in the divine mind. The reality of things, he says, must be eternal, for that cannot be which has not been before. Created things he calls parts and members of God.'* These words sound like materialism; but Hermes Trismegistus was no materi- alist; God is not matter, but the power which quickens matter. The sensuous world is strictly His creation ; by His will it ex- ists. It is the receptacle of the forms which He endows with life. All creation is from Him and by Him, but it is also in Hin. This idea is repeated in all Eastern religions. It is felt that the highest Being must in some way descend through all spheres and circles, and forms of existence. No order is con- ceivable if God be not conceived as everywhere conditioning the most conditioned. And this presence is not merely passive, but active. Nor is it merely a presence; it is also a connection. The Creator is in some way united to His works. The Hindus used the simple illustration of a spider and its web, or a tortoise I praise Thee ? For those things which Thou hast done, or those which Thou hast manifested, or those which Thou hast concealed ? But why will I praise Thee ? As being of myself, as my own, or as if I were another? For Thou art what I am; Thou art what I do ; Thou art what I say ; Thou ait all which is produced, and which is not produced. Thou art an intelligent mind an efficient Father, a God at work; good, doing all things well. The most attenuated part of matter is air; that of air, soul; that of soul, mind; that of mind, God.' When Patricius edited the works of Hermes Trismegistus in the 16th century, the Catholic authorities obliged him to add Scholia, explain- ing that some things, such as the doctrine of creation and the existence of the gods were not according to the Catholic faith, but the essence of the theology; such as that God is intellect; that He made the world in imitation- of the Word ; that perhaps God has no essence-that He brings forth mind as a father generates a son; that God is masculo-feminine, and that man is made from life and light were to be understood in an orthodox sense--sano modo. * Plutarch, quoting from Hecataeus, says that the Egyptians considered the primitive Dcity and the universe as one and identical ; and Eusebius, citing the Genica or old Hermaic books, asks, "Have you not been informed, by the Genica, that all individual souls are emanations from the one great Soul ? ' 42 GOD AND TIIE WORLD. protruding its limbs The Persian made God the light of crea- tion, and darkness the necessary shadow of the light: so that light and darkness had been one, and would ultimately be one again. Sometimes creation was called God's garment, but Hermes changed the figure, and made God the garment of the world. 66 He embraces it in His bosom ; He covers it with His being; He takes it into Himself as the universe includes in its existene every world of which it is composed.” God is the supreme World. The constutition of nature is not merely the work of God, but God is its compages—the power which by its presence and being constitutes nature. And thus God is every thing, one and vet all things things which are, for He has manifested them; and things which are not, for their ideals and patterns. are in Him. He is incorporeal, but He is also omnicorporeal, for there is nothing in any body which He is not. He is all that is, and therefore He has all names. He is the Father of all things, and therefore He has no name. He did not receive things from without, but sent them forth from His own being. The world is His conception, visible things are His incarnated thoughts. “Is God invisible ? ' says Hermes; "speak worthily of Him, for who is more manifest than He? For this very cause did He make all things, that in all things thou mightest see Him. As the mind is seen in thinking, so is God seen in working. Hermes avoids materialism, but he is not afraid of an apparent contradiction. He feels that the truth concerning God, must be a contradiction to man. In the spirit of Egypt among sphinxes and beings grotesque and indefinite-after showing how God is the Lord and Maker of all things, yea, and is all things, he concludes, that all being parts of God and He the Maker of all, He, as it were, makes Himself. The deities of the Egyptians are arranged into three orders This was the division made by Herodotus. In the first order three are twelve gods ; in the second eight; and according to Bunsen, in the third seven. The only deities that were wor- shipped throughout Egypt, belonged to the third order, these were Osiris and Isis.* Ammon, the concealed God, was doubtless showing sphinxes contradiction He feels in but he is * Isis and Osiris are of the third order ; "they are,' says Herodotus 'the only gods worshipped in the whole of Egypt. Temples and cities of Isis, which boasted of having the tomb of Osiris, and sacred animals dedicated to him, are found from Elephantina, to the mouth of the Nile. Isis, according to Plutarch was called Myrionymous, and 'the prayers of the dead' contain a countless multitude off names, by which Osiris is invoked. Isis and Osiris have, accord- ông to Herodotus, and the genealogies on the monuments, their roots in the first, like the deities of the second order ; but according to the whole testimony OSIRIS AND ISIS. 43 worshipped everywhere, for to Him all worship was ultimately referred. He was the supreme God. As the Persian One became Ormuzd, or Brahm became Brahma so did the concealed God of Egypt become the revealed. But there we:e others beside Ammon who stood for the supreme God, the chief of these was the ram-headed god of the Thebaid, the patron deity of Egypt: Ptah,* the creator of the world, and the Lord of truth, with Neith, the goddess of wisdom, all of the first order, but chiefly Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus, of the third order. Osiris and Isis are the most familiar of the Egyptian gods. They represent singly, or together, the whole of nature, and that Being whose power and presence are everywhere manifest in nature. The Egyptians have many legends of Osiris and Isis, of the time when they once reigned in Egypt, of the murder of Osiris by the treachery of Typhon, and of the sorroies and lamentations of Isis :f how much of history there may be in this we cannot determine. The interpretation most like the trutha of the monuments, they are, in a word, the first and second order itself : so that some peculiar forms of Isis or Osiris, or both of them almost invariably correspond to each development, split up as it were into many different per- sonifications. Isis, Osiris, and Horus combined, can be shown to comprise in themselves the whole system of Egyptian Mythology, with the exception, per- haps, of Ammon and Kneph, the concealed God, and the creative power. In them all the attributes are concentrated. Isis is the sister, wife, daughter, and mother of Osiris ; in her cosmogonic property she is like Neith ; in the Papyrus she is called the Neith of Lower Egypt. Plutarch speaks of an Egyptian tradi- tion, according to which Zeus was originally unable to walk-his legs were grown together; Isis loosed his legs. Isis-Neith is nature, through the medium of which, God became manifest and revealed.-Bunsen. Plutarch tells us, that Osiris was sometimes pictured as an eye; this is a natural conception. In children's books we sometimes see God pictured as an eye ; it was the favorite symbol with the Jewish Cabbalists. * Ptah is the Creator of the world, Neith belongs to Ptah, and is found by his side ; the name is said to signify, “I came from myself.” She is the creative principle, considered as feminine; her titles are, - the great mother," “ the mother of Helios her first-born ;" she is also called the cow which has produced the sun ; as mother of the living she appears nursing two crocodiles. In Ptah and Neith the Deity completes His manifestation as the soul of the world. † The Osiris of history was king of Egypt; he was killed by his brother Ty- phon, who shut him up in a coffer, and threw him into the Nile; Isis went in search of the body of her husband, and found it cast up on the shores of Phoe- nicia. Osiris has some relation to the Greek Adonis, and is perhaps connected with Thammuz, in the Phoenician mythology. “Thammus came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate, In amorous ditties all a summer's day, 44. THE VEIL OF ISIS. is that which regards them as personifications of the operations of nature. Osiris is the deity unveiled, he is sometimes Kneph or Athor, and this Athor is again united to Isis as the hidden principle of the universe, the creative wisdom of the Deity. She had a temple at Sais, on which was written the famous inscription preserved by Plutarch, “I am all that hath been, is, and shall be, and no mortal has uncovered my veil.” But Osiris and Isis could only manifest the highest Being to the extent that nature reveals Him. While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded : the love tale Infected Sion's daughters with like heat; Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah." Milton's Paradise Lost. “ The dying god.” The unseen Mover of the universe, was rashly identified with its obvious fluctuations, and since the lessons of eternal experience in- fluence the fancy long before they reach the understanding, an ordinary Pan- theist, who contemplated“ one" all-pervading Spirit adorable even in the animal world, would not be inconsistent, in the idea that God is liable to death in that as dwelling in all forms, He might in ages past have been more originally manifested in one, though it were a human and perishable one. The specula- lative deity suggested by the drama of nature was worshipped with imitative and sympathetic rites. A period of mourning about the autumnal equinox and of joy at the return of spring was almost universal. Phrygian and Paphlagonian, Bactian and even Athenian were more or less attached to such observances. The Syrian damsels sat weeping for Thammuzor Adonis mysteriously wounded by the tooth of winter, and the priests of Attys-an analogous incarnation of solar power-emasculated themselves and danced in female attire, in devotional mimicry of the temporary enfeeblemeut of their god. Their rites were evi- dently suggested by the arrest of vegetation, when the sun, descending from its altitude, appears deprived of its generative power, and those ceremonies of passionate lamentation, which in the East were commonly offered to the dead, were adopted in the periodical observances of religion. Mourning, mutilation, self-immolation, and even the wide-spread custom of sacrifice, were mainly symbolical, either expressive of devotion to the all-generating and devouring nature, or of sympathy with the being Pantheistically incorporated in its changes. The recurrence of these annual solemnities was more marked among agricultural races, whose ordinary life and customs were immediately dependent on corresponding phenomena. The Greeks pay divine honour to heroes, but in Egypt a deity is said to die. Osiris is a being analogous to the Syrian Adonis, and the is sacred legend” is a narrative form of the popular religion of Egypt, of which the hero is the sun, and the agricultural calendar the moral. The moist valley of the Nile, which contrasted with the surround- ing desert, appeared like life in the midst of death, owed its fertility to the annual inundation, itself in evident dependence on the sun. The Nile was called the antimime of heaven,' and Egypt, environed with arid deserts, like a 'heart within a burning censer' (Creuzer) was the female power dependent on the influence personified in its god.”-Mackay's Progress of the Intellect. HARPOCRATES. 45 richards to the t Typhy 66 Osiris and Isis,” says Dr. Prichard, “are the universal Being the soul of nature corresponding to the Pantheistic or masculo-feminine Jupiter of the Orphic verses. Typhon re- presents physical evil. To him are attributed eclipses, tempests, and irregular seasons. He is the sea which swallows up the good Nile and produces drought and famine. He is the enemy of Osiris, and his wife Nephthys is the enemy of Isis. Neph- thys is represented by the desert; and the inundation of the Nile is the Deity leaving his garland in her bed. Typhon is sacred. Another Deity is Horus, the brother of Osiris; he too is the sun, the world, the all of nature. He is supposed to be identical with Harpocrates, who is sometimes called the son of Isis. Harpocrates was the god of silence the emblem of nature in her silent progress. When the buds opened in spring time, and the tender shoots burst silently from the earth, then was Harpocrates born. Every spring was the festival of his birth. The young god died, but his everlasting mother lived and repro- duced him as the seasons changed.” Apuleius, an Egyptian priest of the third century, represents Isis as thus addressing him after he had been initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, “I am of divine pl the elements ther of all thingyptian mysteries, essing ernor of all the elements--the initial progeny of worlds-chief of divine powers-queen of heaven-the principal of the gods celestial-the light of the godesses-at my will are disposed the planets of the air--the wholesome winds of the seas; and the silences of the unseen world my divinity is adored through all the world, in divers manners, with various rites, and by many names. The Phrygians call me the mother of the gods; · the Athenians call me Minerva; the Cyprians, Venus; the Candians, Diana; the Sicilians, Proserpina ; some call me Ceres, Juno, Bellona, Hecate; the Ethiopians and the Egypt- ians worship me as Queen Isis.”* What was said of Isis was said also of Kneph. The Egypt- author and creator of the world under the name of Kneph. They worshipped him in a statue of human form, with a dark blue complexion, holding in his hand a girdle or sceptre, wear- ing upon his head a royal plume, and thrusting an egg from his mouth. Iamblichus, quoting from the Hermaic books teaches nearly the same concerning Kneph. “This god is placed as the * Fable of the Golden Ass. #6 HERMES. ruler of the celestial gods. He is a self-intelligent mind ab- sorbed in his own contemplations. Before Kneph, is a Being without parts, the first occult power, and by Hermes called Eikton. He is worshipped only in silence. After these, are the powers that preside over the formation of the visible world. The creative mind which forms the universe is called Ammon Ptah, or Osiris, according to the character it may assume.” There was another deity to speak the wisdom of God, this was Hermes, the wisdom of Ammon, the teacher of wisdom among men.* Osiris was the great body of nature, Hermes the incarnation of the divine intellect; he was called by other names, Anubis “ the golden,” that which shines in the sun, the leader of the stars, the dog star. He was also called Thoth the pillar, because a pillar is the bearer of all the Egyptian wisdom which was preserved by the priests—Hermes is speech and wisdom; he is the discoverer of astronomy, the teacher of science, the inventor of arts. Among the gods he is pre-emi- nently the good spirit, the giver of gifts intellectual and spiritual. Osiris and Isis are the good king and queen, Hermes the wise priest. As Sirius in the highest part of the firmament overlooks the other planets, and protects the fiery animals of heaven, so does Hermes protect and care for all creatures ; the whole of nature is revealed before him, his wise mind rules the world. He is physician, lawyer, judge; he teaches immortality, he guides souls in their wanderings, by imparting wisdom he makes men one with himself—the wise priest becomes Hermes. If all nature be as we have seen the exteriority of God, the exhibition to the senses of the invisible Ammon, it must then be all divine, and, if divine, why may it not be worshipped? How indeed can we worship the “veiled God," but through His works which declare His wisdom and His power? So perhaps the Egyptians reasoned, or rather more probably concluded without reasoning, and con- secrated the visible world as an object of worship. The Persian, with his clear and ever radiant sky, saw God in the light. The Arabian, with his thoughts directed to the starry heavens, saw God in the planets; the Egyptian, too, saw God both in the daylight and in the stars, but much more in that 1 * Kneph forms the limbs of Osiris in contradistiuction to Ptah, who, as the strictly Demiurgic principle, forms the visible world. The second order are children of the first : Hermes or Thoth is of this order ; his sign is the ibis, and his name is connected with the Egyptian root for “word ;" he is the scribe of the Gods, and is called “ Lord of the divine words and scribe of truth," "the guardian of the pure souls in the hall of the two truths.” YTYTI FATHER NILUS, 7 abundant fertility which came he knew not whence, with the overflowing of the Nile, without which Egypt would have been a desert. How sacred then, above all things, the river Nile !* How it must have connected itself with the life and thought and religion of every Egyptian! It was the father of the country, on it depended the strength of Pharoah. But the Nile is only an inanimate object-true, all things may have come from sand and water originally created by the Unionown Darkness. From these has sprung the lotus with which the Nile abounds, but the Nile has higher developments of existence than sand or water, higher forms of life than the vegetable lotus. It has beasts innumerable, the true children of father Nilus, cherished in his bosom, and abundantly provided for. They are very terrible, they are stronger than men and ap- parently wiser. They are the genii of that bountiful river, the gods of the stream, why may they not be worshipped if only for their terribleness ? But Egypt. is peculiarly a land of beasts. It is prolific in animal life, the lion comes from the desert, the ibis gathers its food on the river's banks, the crocodile basks among the rushes. The Egyptian sees all forms of brute life everywhere abundant, he sees them guided by a wisdom which is above human wisdom, he sees a regularity in their movements which is equalled only by the regularity in the works of nature. As the fruitful Nile ebbs and flows, as summer, winter, spring, and autumn, come and go, by the same law do the brutes live; they have their part in the same order. In some respects man is superior to these creatures; they build no tents, they plough no fields, neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet in many respects they are superior to man. Without his cares and dis- appointments, they lead a joyful life. The law of nature holds its dominion in them, they are determined by a high wisdom. “The stork in the heavens knows her appointed season.” They live the universal life, and, as the Egyptian would call it the highest life, they are unconsciously one with the being of the universe. How natural for the Egyptian to worship the brute creation: to see in the wisdom which guided them a high reflection of that wisdom which is manifest in all nature. + by the and Howse same look * The Nile, like the Ganges, is a deity-" The father of the father of the gods," the terrestrial and material representation of the Divine purpose.- Bunsen. † The Egyptian priests, says Porphyry, having profited by their diligent study of philsophy, and their intimate acquantance with the nature of the gods, have 48 WORSHIP OF ANIMALS. Animal worship is usually the lowest form of idolatry and the mark of a low degree of civilization, but in Egypt it prevailed among a people famed in antiquity for cultivation and learning, and had its roots in a philosophy of being.* We must distin- guish between the worship of animals, and the worship of them as symbols: the latter was that of the Egyptians, it did not obscure the worship of the gods, but was rather connected with it. Their deities were mostly represented in the forms of beasts, even Hermes had a dog's head because of his connection with the dog star: Kneph † was a good deity, and therefore was represented as a harmless serpent. Osiris had the hawk for his symbol, and his image was usually formed with a hawk's head; this bird was symbolic of the soul, the crocodile was sacred to the highest God; Plutarch assigns as the cause of this, that it is the only animal living in water which has its eyes covered with a transparent membrane falling down over them, by means of which it sees and is not seen, which is a thing that belongs to the supreme God, " to see all things, Himself being unseen," Plutarch says in another place, “ Neither were the Egyptians without a plausible reason for worshipping God symbolically in the crocodile, it being said to be an imitation of of God in this, that it is the only animal without a tongue, for learnt that the divinity permeates not only human beings that man is not the only creature on the earth possessed of soul, but that nearly the same spiritual essence pervades all the tribes of living creatures. On this account in fashioning the images of the gods, they have adopted the forms of all ani- mals, and have sometimes joined the human figure with that of beasts. They adore, under these semblances, the universal power which the gods have secret- ly displayed, in the various forms of living nature. . * The following Pantheistic description of Serapis was given by an oracle of the god :-"My divinity shall be described in the words, I shall now utter. «The canopy of heaven is my head, the sea is my belly, the earth is my feet, my ears are in the ethereal regions, and my eye is the resplendent and far-shining sun.-Macrobius." | Kneph as creator appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In Philae, a work of the Ptolemaic epoch, he is represented making a figure of Osiris with the inscription Num, who forms on a wheel the limbs of Osiris, who is enthroned in the great hall of life. He is likewise called Num-ra, “ who forms the mother, the genetrix of the gods.” In a representation of the time of the Roman Emperors he is called “the sculptor of all men.” In a monu- ment at Esneh, of the same date, he is said to have made mankind on his wheel, and fashioned the gods, and is called the god who has made the sun and moon to revolve under the heavens and above the world and all things on it. According to Plutarch and Diodorus, the name of the Egyptian Zeus sig- nifies “ a spirit,” which can only refer to Kneph, At Esneh he is said to be “the breath of those who are in the firmament." GOD IN NATURE. 49 the Divine Logos or Reason does not stand in need of speech, but going on through a silent path of justice in the world with- out noise, righteously governs and dispenses all human affairs.” Horus Apollo in the hieroglyphics says the Egyptians acknowledged a superior Being who was Governor of the world, that they represented Him symbolically by a serpent, and that they also “ pictured a great house or palace within its circum- ference, because the world is the royal palace of the Deity," and again he says " that the serpent as it were, feeding upon itself, fitly represents that all things produced in the world by Divine Providence are resolved into it again.” “The serpent," says Philo Byblius quoting from Sanchoniathon, “ was deified by the Egyptian Hermes, because it is immortal and is resolved into itself.” Sometimes the symbol of the Deity was a serpent with a hawk's head, and sometimes the hawk alone. In the temple of Sais there was a hieroglyphic which consisted of an old man, a young man, and a hawk, to make up the meaning, says Plutarch, < that both the beginning and the end of human life depends on God.” We need not suppose that the multitudes of Egypt who paid their devotions to the sacred beasts had any conscious conception, that in so doing they were worshipping the One and All of nature. They saw God in nature and therefore they worshipped all the parts of nature as parts of the Divine.* iidese quoting ftoecause it is the Deity was in the God soul, the world, to primal man were one- In shapely stone, in picture, and in song. They worshipped Him who was both one and all ; God-like to them was human kind. God dwelt In the piled mountain rock, the veined plant, And pulsing brute, and where the planets wheel Through the blue skies God-head moved in them. Bunsen's Egypt, * Anchises, in the sixth book of the Æneid, explaining to Æneas the law of the transmigration of souls, says, “ The spirit within nourishes heaven and earth and the watery plains, and the enlightened orb of the moon, and the shining stars ; and diffused through the parts, a mind, actuates the whole fabric, and mingles itself with the large body : hence the races of men and cattle, and the lives of birds and monsters, which the sea produces under its marble plain.” “ This," says Bishop Warburton, “was the doctrine of the old Egyptians, as we learn from Plato, who says, they taught that Jupiter is the spirit which pervades all things.” He adds that “the Greek philosophy corrupted this principle into Spinozism, of which we have an instance in the fourth Georgic -"Some have said that bees have a part of the Divine mind and ethereal draughts, for that God pervades all lands and tracts of the sea and the lofty heavens. Hence flocks, herds, men, all the race of wild beasts, each at birth derive their slender lives.” This might pass for simple Egyptian doctrine, without supposing that it has undergone the corrupting (?) influence of Greek philosophy. 50 GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 3. THE GREEK RELIGION.-" To understand," says Mr. Maurice, “the difference between the Egyptian and Greek faith, it is not necessary to study a great many volumes or to visit different lands, our own British Museum will bring the contrast before us in all its strength. If we pass from the hall of Egyptian Antiquities, into the rooin which contains the Elgin Marbles, we feel at once that we are in another world. The oppression of huge animal forms, the perplexity of grotesque devices has passed away, you are in the midst of human forms, each individually natural and graceful, linked together in harmonious groups, expressing perfect animal beauty yet still more the dominion of human intelligence over the animal.” No truer contrast could have been made between the gods of Egypt and those of Greece. The former are rarely human, the latter rarely anything but human. Yet here the contrast ends. We have passed apparently from the indefinite to the definite, from the infinite to the finite, but it is only ap- parently, it is only as regards the external form of the mytho- logies.* In the inner spirit, we are surrounded by the infinite still, the Greek may be enjoying nature more than the Egyp- tian, but he still stands in awe of it. He may feel the dominion of man over nature, and be conscious that the life of human freedom is higher than that of brute instinct, but he is not without thoughts of the Infinite; he is not without a deep feeling that there is a something, or some Being above, and beyond all his thoughts and all his conceptions—à Being but feebly and imperfectly imaged by these human deities which he creates, and which he worships for their wisdom, their power, and their forms of beauty. The Greek, as well as the Egyp- tian, worshipped nature.† The names of the old deities in the Theogony are a sufficient evidence of this. Kronosi and Chaos, Erebus and Nyx, with Gaea, Ether, and Hermes testify to their own origin and meaning. An element of history * The gods of Greece are so fixed and personified in its poetry as almost entirely to conceal their essential generality of character ; but in proportion as we approach the Asiatic sources of Greek ideas, or in any way extend our view beyond the limits of the Epic circle, the gods, or the human beings repre- senting them, become more complex, multiform, and independent, until at last all the mysteries and contradictions of genealogies sink into the one mystery of Pantheism.-Mackay's Progress. † Bryant says, that the worship on mountains, in caves, in forests, and under green trees, all show that nature is ever the object worshipped. I Pherccydes says, “ Zeus and time are thic same, and the earth always existed." WORSHIP OF NATURE. 51 : doubtless mingles itself with the legends of the gods; mysteri- ous and even foreign deities may have been introduced from other nations, but the evidence is overwhelming that Greek worship was essentially a worship of nature. The heavens, the ocean, the unseen world was each made a kingdom, and had each a divine king, or ruler placed over it. All mountains, rivers, lakes, woods, and forests had their presiding deities. The spirit of poetry could not go further. An abundant harvest was Ceres rejoicing; when the wine-press was trodden, it was Bacchus in the revel; the tempest tossing the ships was Neptune raging in the deep; conscience tormenting the evil doer was the furies seeking revenge ; all virtues and all vices, all endowments, in- tellectual and moral, became gods. War was Mars, and beauty was Venus ; eloquence was Mercury; prudence, Minerva ; and Echo, no more a sound reverberated by the air, but a nymph in tears bemoaning her Narcissus. They were beautiful human gods, but they owed their existence to Greek imagination, giving life and form to the manifested powers of nature. They were all created ; Pindar knew them, and spoke of them when he said-- There is one kind both of gods and men, and we both breathe from the same mother, and spring from the same origi. nal.” Hesiod knew them when he gave their history and origin, and showed how each was produced from each. Nor are we. without traces of a transition period, when the Greek mind was passing from the Egyptian reverence of gro- tesque forms to the worship of humanized deities. The early Greek gods were monsters. The children of Uranos and Galea were Titans and Cyclops, and hundred-headed giants. Even the deities that were afterwards the most famous of the Pan- theon were originally of monstrous forms. Pausanias mentions a statue of Jupiter, which, in addition to its two eyes, had an eye in the forehead. We read also of a four-handed Apollo, and a two-headed Silenus, with a three-handed and three- headed Hermes, reminding us of similar stages in the develop- ment of Hindu mythology. But the Greeks were Monotheists as well as Polytheists. They worshipped one God as well as many. We know this from Greek philosophy, also from S. Paul, who found the Athenians worshipping the unknown God," whom he had come to declare to them. That they were inconsistent some of the philosophers felt and thought, and this inconsistency S. Paul made the ground of his argument, why they should turn from idols to I 2 52 ZEUS IS ALL THINGS, the living God.* That they did worship the one God, who is unlike all the others, is manifest even from their mythology. Homer makes all beings gods, as well as men, come forth from Oceanus, except Him who is pre-eminently God, the Father of gods and men. Hesiod, too, gives to all beings a beginning except Zeus. Sophocles says, “ There is in truth but one God, who made heaven and earth," and Euripides addresses Zeus as the self-existentas He who unfolds all things in His arms, iho is resplendent with light, and yet who, because of our weak vision, is veiled in darkness. Pindar distinguished be- tween the created gods and Him who is the most powerful of all the gods, the Lord of all things, and the Maker of the universe. This one God was like the Brahm of the Indians, the impersonal and the unknown. In the mythology He is represented by the greatest of the deities. Zeus bears some of His highest attri- butes. Zeus corresponds to Brahma and Ormuzd. His name is the name of the highest One: He is nature in its infinitude. This is the character of Zeus in the Orphic verses. In later times He became famous as the King of gods and men, but at first he was a prodigious Being, the One and yet all things, the Father, yea the Mother of the world, for Zeus was neither masculine nor feminine, but both genders in one. The universe is created in Him, and by His presence He con- stitutes the height of the heavens, the breadth of the earth and the deep sea. He is the vast ocean—profound Tartarus the rivers, fountains and all other things the immortal gods and goddesses. Whatsoever shall be, is contained in the womb of Zeus. He is the first and the last, the head and the middle of all things. He is the breath of all things the force of the untameable fire-the bottom of the sea, the sun, the moon, and the stars, the King of the universe; the one power and the one God that rules over all; the great body of Zeus is identical with the great body of nature. The antiquity of the Orphic verses may be disputed, but what they say of Zeus agrees with what we read in other poems. In the famous hymn of Cleanthes we are called “the offspring of Zeus." The universe is there said to emanate from Him, and to obey His sovereign will. He is immanent in creation present at all times---filling all places. Heaven, earth, and ocean present Him to our eyes. * S. Augustine adopted the same argument against the philosophical Pagans. In the “ City of God" he asks" 11 Jupiter be ail, why is Juno added, and the other gods ?” And again he says, “ If Jupiter and Janus are both 'tho universe,' they should not be two gods, but only one." APOLLO IS ALL THINGS. 53 The verses of Aratus from which S. Paul quoted when he ad- dressed the Athenians on the “unknown God," have the same meaning, while they show us how Zeus stood for Him who was omnipotent and omnipresent. “Let us begin with Zeus. That name should never be forgotten, for all is full of Zeus-all ways, public places and all harbours, as well as all seas; He is present always everywhere; all we who breathe do not breathe without Zeus, for we are all His offspring.” Nor was Zeus the only universal Deity. The Alexandrian commentators, with some show of reason, brought forward other deities, to whom were ascribed the high attributes of Him who is infinite. Such were Kronos and Minerva, Necessity and Fortune, and even Venus and her son Eros, * 'according to the saying of Zeno, that “God is called by as many names as there are different powers and virtues.” The chief of these deities was Apollo. Under the image of this youthful god the bearer of light and joy to the creation, the Greeks adored that majesty which, as Euripides said, was veiled in light. As the sun re- joices the earth, giving health to the sick and strength to the weak, so Apollo, the god of medicine, comes forth with his heal- ing beams radiant with light. The earth owes the comeliness of her fields, the music of her groves, and the sparkling of her streams and fountains, to the glorious king of day. Therefore Apollo is the god of beauty, the emblem of wisdom, and the author of harmony. On his temple at Delphi was inscribed the word Em Thou art;" in which Plutarch read the true name of God. We are but the creatures of a day placed between birth and death: as soon may we retain the flowing fountain as our fleeting existence; being does not belong to us-“God alone IS.” “The mysterious physical phenomena," says Mr. Mackay, 66 were throughout ancient mythology made prolific of moral and mental lessons. The story of Dionysus was profoundly significant: he was not only creator of the world, but guardian liberator, and saviour. The toys which occupied him when * In the “ Argonauts” of Orpheus, Eros is represented as producing Chaos; and Kronus also, in an Orphic fragment preserved by Proclus, is represented as coeveal with ancient night. of " This title," Plutarch says, “is not only proper but peculiar to God, because He alone is Being; for mortals have no participation of true being, because that which begins and ends and is continually changing, is never one nor the same, nor in the same state. The Deity, in whose temple this word was inscribed, was called Apollo, which means “not many," because God is one-His nature is simple--His essence uncompounded. 54 PAN IS ALL THINGS. surprised by the Titans the top, the wheel, the distaff, the golden Hesperian apples—were preminently cosmogonic. An emblem of a similar class was the magic mirror or face of nature, in which, according to the Platonic notion, but which probably existed long before Plato, the Creator beholds Him- self imperfectly reflected, and the bowl or womb' of being, in which matter became pregnant with life, or wherein the Pantheistic deity became mingled with the world. Dionysus, god of the many-coloured mantle, is the resulting manifes- tation personified. He is the polyonymous—the all in the many, the varied year, life passing into innumerable forms. But, according to the dogma of antiquity, the thronging forms of life are a series of purifying migrations, through which the divine principle re-ascends to the unity of its source. Inebriated in the bowl of Dionysus, and dazzled in the mirror of existence the souls, these fragments and sp:rks of the universal intelli- gence forgot their nativity, and passed into the terrestrial forms they coveted-Dionysus, the god of this world, the changing side of Deity.” The shepherd god Pari occupied, even in the judgment of Socrates, the place of the supreme God, and this because, as his name implies, he was the all-God, the personification of infinite all-embracing nature. Pan was the nature side of the Greek divinities. He ruled over the woods and dwelt in desolate and solitary places. He was nature as it appeared to herdsmen and shepherds, in its wilder and grander and more savage aspects, but he is not without gleams of gentleness, and by no means destitute of joy. Every school boy knows that he was a merry deity, making music on his pipe of seven reeds, with the glad nymphs dancing to his rustic tunes. His body was rough like the luxuriant earth, but his face beamed with intelligence, which showed the Animon concealed. As the heavens are radiant with light, so smiled the countenance of Pan. He had horns like the sun and moon, and his garment of leopard's skin was a picture of the varied beauties of the world; but he was not all beautiful. As nature veils some of her secrets, so must we veil the deformities of Pan. In the Orphic verses he is called the All of the universe-heaven and sea, the ruler of the earth, and immortal fire; for all these are but the garments of Pan. * The attribute of prophecy deputed to Apollo was not founded solely on his representing the all-seeing, all hearing Zeus, but upon the higher notion of Pantheistic omniscience, which may have been inherited from the forest of JUPITER IS ALL THINGS. - 55 What has been said of the gods of the Greeks may be also said of the deities of Rome. The Romans, too, made God and nature one--finite on the human side, infinite on the divine side. Their mythology, like their literature, was but a feeble echo of the Greek. Their poets and philosophers only repeat what was said before. Their Jupiter is the Greek Zeus; he is primarily the heavens, or that portion of the visible universe which appears to us. This truth is petrified into the Roman language. Bad weather is “bad Jupiter;" to be in the open air is to be under Jupiter;" and to be out in the cold is to be under “ frigid Jupiter.” “Behold,” says Ennius, " the clear sky, which all men invoke as Jupiter.” And Cato says, “ His seat is heaven, earth, and ocean. Wheresoever we move, wheresoever we go, whatever we see, that is Jupiter.” Virgil, in imitation of the Greek poet, says, “Let us begin with Jupiter; all things are full of Jupiter.” In another place he describes “ the prone descending showers, as the omnipotent Father coming down into the bosom of His glad spouse. The powers of nature per- sonified ; that is Greek Polytheism. Nature in its infinitude, embracing the whole conceivable assemblage of being in which mind is pre-eminently manifest; that is Greek Monotheism. Epirus, or transplanted from the shriues of Asia. Poetry and philosophy served only to give different forms of expression to the same immemorial sentiment, which, through the treatment of art receding from it, universally lost in intellectual compass what it gained in distinctness. The comprehensive- ness of the original feeling was preserved only in the most ancient symbols, such as the Scarabaeus pointing to the great Dodonæan parent and artificer, as the all-generating ungenerated cause, and the trifoim or triophthalmic statues of Argolis and Corinth exhibiting his triple dominion over time and space. And if Zeus was Triopian or Triophthalmic, so also was his son or correlative, Apollo Apollo, again, was akin to Nomian Pan the companion of Rhea and foster brother of Zeus. In the praise of Zeus every element and every deity are united. His mythical brethren the autocrats of the sun and shade were felt to be repetitions of himself. It is not without reason that Arcadia and many other places disputed with Crete the honor of his birth for the seemingly new deity was only a reproduction of the Pelasgic or Lycaeau Pan- theism in a new form.--Mackay's Progress. The chief authorities for this chapter are Creuzer and Bunsen. On the Persian religion ; the Latin work of Hyde ; Spiegels' translation of the Zend Avesta, and Framjee's volume, “ The Parsees, &c.” On the Egyptiau religion some things are taken from Dr. Prichard, and several passages on mythology in general, and its interpretation are from Cudworth. CHAPTER III. GREEK PHILOSOPHY. ALL philosophy is a seeking after God—a reiteration of the A cry of the patriarch, “that I knew where I might find Him." And the all but universal answer has been, “ He is not far from any one of us.” This is pre-eminently true of the philosophy of the Greeks in all its stages, and in nearly all its schools. As to the early Greek philosophers, there are two great diffi- culties. First, their own writings are not extant, so that the materials are both scanty and uncertain. Secondly, these ma- terials have been used for the most opposite interpretations. Cicero, the Neo-Platonists, and the Christian Fathers hold the early Greek philosophers to have been pure Theists. They as- sumed rightly, unconscious indeed that it was an assumption; that the fact of these old enquirers after truth, being philosophers, was no argument, for their being irreligious, some of them be- lieved in the gods of the Mythology, and some of them did not; but they were seeking after the One who was yet greater than all the gods. Aristotle, to whom we are chiefly indebted for the materials respecting them, refers their speculations to the old “ Theologies," intimating that these are to guide us in the inter- pretation of their cosmogonjes. And this is in the order of things: religion comes before philosophy, men bow in reverence before the unseen, long before it becomes the subject of reason. The view which makes the early Greek philosophers advocates of positive science, without reference to religion, is an anachronism in the history of philosophy. It places them in another age of the world than that in which they lived, and ignores the natural religiousness of man.* THE IONICS-In the fifth century, before the Christian era, lived Thales of Miletus, a lover of knowledge, and a seeker after of their mating that there their schiet * This is the view taken by Mr. Lewes in his Biographical History of Phi- losophy, but it is contradicted by all we know of the history of mind. Man has religious feelings about nature long before he studies it scientifically, THALES OF MILETUS. 57 wisdom. He visited Egypt, at that time the sacred dwelling of science-sacred indeed, for out of religion Egyptian wisdom had arisen. The priests' lips kept knowledge—knowledge of all kinds. Thales probably learned there of the "unknown Darkness” which produced the water and sand” from which all things were made. He may have compared this with what we read in Homer and Hesiod about the origin of all things from Oceanus and Tethys and hence the thought arose 6 water is the first principle of creation."* Perhaps he made experiments on matter. A rude chemist he must indeed have been, yet it was within his reach to know that material forms are fleeting and unsubstantial. He felt that at the foundation of nature there was a unity in which all things were one, a substance of which all partook-a material capable of being formed into suns and stars, and worlds, trees, animals, and men, an original element in which all the elements had their beginning; and what more likely than water to be this original element? It is the blood of nature, by it all things live, without it all die. He took a material element for the original unity, what he meant more we cannot tell. Did he find that he could go no farther? Did he make no distinction between the material and the spiritual ?- We cannot answer. Aristotle says that Thales believed “all things were full of gods.” Laertius, that he called God 6 the oldest of all things, because He was uncreated," and Cicero, that he held “ water to be the beginning of things, but that God was the mind which created things out of the water." * Water is a Protean quality, and therefore was thought the original Fyle ; mythically Thetis, Nereus, Proteus. Tradition emanates from the centre of the alluvial plains of Babylon and Egypt. The opinion of the Ionian sage is from the Egyptians who recognized a deity in moisture and identified the great and good Osiris with the Nile.—Mackay's Progress of the Intellect. The inherent life with which the Ionics endowed the universal element was but the ensouled world of Pantheism-a re-union of the elements which poctry had parted and personified.-Ibid. The reason why Thales concluded that water was the first of all things is thus given by Plutarch: First, because natural seed, the principle of all things, is moist; whence it is highly probable that moisture is also the principle of all other things. Secondly, because all kinds of plants are nourished by moist- we, without which they wither and decay. And thirdly, because fire, even the sun itself aud the stars, are nourished and supported by vapours proceeding from water, and, consequently, the whole world consists of the same. According to Diogenes Laertius, Musæus was the first who taught that all things were created of one matter, and would be dissolved into the same matter again. “Our ancestors ” says Aristotlo, " and men of great antiquity have left us a tradition, involved in fable, that these first essences are gods, and that the Divinity comprehends the whole of nature." 58 ANAXIMANDER AND ANAXIMENES. “But why, ' asked Thales' disciple Anaximander, “should the preference.be given to water over the other elements? That which you assume to be the ground of all things is finite. By thus placing it above the others, by making it the one thing of the universe, you make it infinite. It then ceases to be water. Why not at once call the one substance the infinite, that which is unlimited, eternal, unconditioned.” A universe of opinion has arisen about the meaning of Anaximander's “infinite." Was it material ? was it incorporeal ?We only know that He believed in an "infinite” in which all beings have their being. * Anaximander's successor, Anaximenes, thought it might be determined what that is which is infinite. It was not water, that was too gross, too material. Was there no existence conceivable in thought, nor perceptible by sense, that appeared infinite--no essence that is in all things--and yet is not any one of them ? There is that which we call breath, life, soul. It pervades all. It permeates all. It penetrates all. Is not that “the infinite ?” We breathe it. We live in it. It is the universal soul. This may have been what Anaximenes meant; we do not know for certainty. But this is the inter- pretation of the “air" by Anaximenes' disciple, Diogenes of Apollonia. He thought the Deity a divine breath, air, or spirit, endowed with the attributes of wisdom and intelligence, and pervading the universe of being. These philosophers begin with enquiries that belong apparently to natural philosophy, but they do not stop there; they cannot—they go beyond the bounds of the finite and the phenomenal. THE ITALICS.-The Ionics began their search for the truth of the universe from external nature. The Italics began with mathematics. The former declared that all was one-one some- thing, one infinite; they could not explain it further. Pythagoras said it is simply one. What he meant is not easy to determine. In Persiat he may have learned of the nameless One, who created Ormuzd and Ahriman. Was not this a Monad creating a Dyad ? * Aristotle and Plutarch suppose Anaximander's “ infinite ; " to have been material—the original or first matter out of which all things were made. Ritter on the other hand says, that Anaximander's " infinite” was not a mere multiplicity of primary material elements but an immortal and imperishable unityan ever producing energy. † It is only conjecture that Pythagoras ever was in Persia. There is no con- temporary evidence that the early Greek philosophers learned anything from the East. PYTHAGORAS. meeting order, inad of Python which the identical w hich Did not One thus become the father of the world, and two its mother? What can be the essence of all things but numbers ? Do not all come from the original Unity? As the number one is the foundation of the manifold operations of arithmetic and geometry, so the divine One—the universal Soul—is the foundation of the world's manifoldness. The universe is a re- flection of the Divine. It is a 5 living arithmetic, a realized geometry.” Because of its beauty, and harmony, and ever- lasting order, it is called the Kosmos. But the Monad of Pythagoras; was it a mind or simply an original something, out of which the all was evolved? If the Monad was not the active principle, it is identical with Chaos, and the Dyad contained in it becomes the active power which causes the harmonious world-development to arise from the Chaos. On this supposition the Pythagorean doctrine of the Deity could have risen no higher than that of an evolution or emanation out of Chaos an original substance from which has proceeded the divine world-soul. But if, as Tenneman thinks, the Pytha- gorean Monad was the active principle, the divine Being, then God is above and before Chaos. He is mind, and the producer, not the product of the material; while matter is only God posited on one side, and subject to Him. That the latter was the true Pythagorean doctrine is probable from its agreement with the fragments of Philolaus, an old philosopher of the school of Pythagoras. The essence of things is regarded as arising out of two grand elements, the limiting or limit, and the un- limited. Philolaus shows how this takes place through the the opposition of the one and the many. The one was unity to many, and the many, as such was the indefinite Dyad, through the limitation given by the unity, and through the participation in the unity. But now that the essences of things consist of these two original elements, consequently the principles, or original elements of numbers, must be also the principles of things themselves. The Pythagoreans found the l'eason of the necessity in this, that only under this con- dition could things be an object of human knowledge ; for neither the one nor the many, in the abstract, can be known by man. The produced alone is cognizable to the human understanding. The union of the limited and the unlimited form a Kosmos. This Kosmos implies a principle of harmony, and this harmony a first cause or author, who is truly and simply God. "Were there not,” says Professor Böckh," above the original one and many, the limit and the unlimited, a 60 THE ELEATICS. highest absolute Unity, in which, as in the original ground of all things, these opposites and their harmonious union consti- tute a Kosmos, then in the system of the most religious Pythagoreans would be no trace of the Godhead, since neither the limited nor the unlimited appears in this system as God. But now that such a trace exists, and that in the Pythagorean system God is recognised and represented under the idea of the highest Absolute outside of and beyond these opposites, expressly as the first or original cause of harmony, we find established through undisputed testimony of many of the ancients.” According to Aristotle, Philolaus acknowledged one Original as the cause of the two principles as the absolute Reality of all, and thus God as the highest Unity yet posited above that other unity as different from it. The Pythagor- eans regarded this first cause as an intellect; this we may consider as certain. But the limit, the unlimited, and the Kosmos were all clearly allied to the first cause. The Kosmos consists of Decades, each of which has ten bodies. These re- volve round a common centre. This centre is the most resplen- dent part of the universe. It is the seat of the Supreme Deity. From it proceeds that light which gives life and gladness to creation. The stars in the resplendent heavens, outside the centre of light, are dwellings of the gods; if not themselves, divinities. Beneath them in rank are demons or good spirits; then men; and lastly, the brute creation. Through all ranks goes the divine essence of the One. All are in some wa y allied to God; all are divine.* THE ELEATICS.—The first genuine metaphysicians among the Greeks were the Eleatics. They first doubted the reality of matter, and felt the difficulty of distinguishing between knowing and being, thought and existence. The Ionics evidently as- sumed the reality of phenomena. The Pythagoreans, the reality of a mind or thought, as the substance of matter. The Eleatics annihilated the Duality, conceiving the identity of thought and existence. The transition from Pythagoras to the Eleatics was easy. The reality of phenomena is in some sense admitted, but we are Soestmen; and neath tellings resplendenes life Supreme resp. goes the divinare divine.* first genuing * The Pythagorcans were of opinion that the infinite existence and the one itself are the essence of those things of which they are prcdicated, and hence they asserted that number is the essence of all things. Aristotle. The one is the formal principle and cause of all things. As in all men is man itself-in all animals, the animal-in all beings, the being.-- Alexander on the Pythagorean Doctrine. TA XENOPHANES. without a certain criterion for a knowledge of its existence. Reason tells us of the One, and this must be absolute and eternal. Xenophanes the founder of Eleaticism, did not deny, scarcely perhaps doubted the reality of matter. He saw the contradiction between the verdict of reason and the teachings of experience. The one resolved all existence into a unity-an essence eternal, impenetrable, and unchangeable--yet the senses proclaimed the existence of the manifold. The reality of both he admitted, though the mode of their reconciliation could neither be understood nor explained. “Casting his eyes upwards at the immensity of heaven,” says Aristotle; “Xenoph añes de- clared that the One is God.” But he asked if the One be God, what mean the gods of Homer and Hesiod? If God is an infinite Being, how base to ascribe to Him the foolish actions of men; how unwise to suppose that He is like themselves, that He has their voice, and shape, and figure. If an ox or a lion were to conceive God, they would conceive Him as like themselves. If they had hands and fingers like ours, they would give Him an image and a shape like their own. But this is only God finitely conceived; God so to speak as created by the mind. He that is God must be a Being not created by us. He is not anything finite. He is the Infinite; not the infinite as. an abstraction, for that, like the finite, may be only a form of our minds; He is an infinite Being, independent of all our thoughts and all our conceptions of finity or infinitude. Unlike to men in outward shape; unlike, too, in mind and thought. He is without parts or organs, but He is all sight, all ear, and all intelligence. He is pre-eminently Being, and the only true Being. Whatever really exists He is in Himself and all that does exist is eternal and immutable. Nothing can come from nothing. Whatever is must have come from Him. The pro- duced is then identical with that which produces. If not, some- thing has arisen which was not in the cause from which it arose. This is absurd, and therefore, said Xenophanes, all that is really being is God. He is One and all things. * Parmenides did not lift his eyes to the immensity of heaven to see the One. He did not believe in the representations * Professor Thompson says that Xenophanes carefully distinguished the Deity from the outward universe on the one hand, and from the Non-Ens on the other. It was Parmenides who first imagined the necessity of identifying plurality with the Non-Ens, in other words, of denying reality to the outward phenom- enal world ; so that there seems no ground for qualifying the theology of Xenophanes with thc epithet “ Pantheistic." 62 PARMENIDES. of the senses. All that is merely appearance, delusion. Be- coming and departing, being and non-being, change of place and vicissitude of circumstance--all which men generally re- gard as realities, are merely names. Whatever is is, there cannot then be anything produced. It cannot be in part and in part produced. If it has once been, or is yet to be, then it is not. An existence only to come, or a becoming which im- plies a previous non-existence takes away all idea of being, so that being must be always or never. There is a reason in man by which he knows that pure Being is that which is free from change of time, or of place. The senst:s reveal the manifold, but that is only deception. Thought acquaints us with pure being, and is itself identical with that being. It is opposed to the manifold, and the changeable which indeed do not exist, and therefore cannot be objects of thought. All things which really exist are one, and this existence is without change. It pervades all space. This one is not the collected manifold as revealed by the senses, but the one substratum which is the foundation and reality of all apparent existence. Parmenides does not call it God. His philosophy is a science of being and knowing. He denies the existence of the many: yet he is compelled to regard it as in some way existing. It exists in the sensuous representation. All men so perceive it to exist. Parmenides must, therefore, make an effort to explain how the world of phemonema has this apparent existence. Being and non-being set themselves as it were over against each other in spite of the philosopher. He denies that the latter is anything, and yet he must treat it as if it were a something. There must be a One prior to the multi- tude of beings. Every thing which is participated subsists in others which participate it. It has then a progression into being from that which cannot be participated. That which is most profoundly united, or simply being is one and many; but in the order of beings this multitude is occult and charac- terized by the nature of the One. Since there is then every- where a monad prior to the multitude we must suspend all beings from the proper Monad. In souls the Monad of souls is established in an order more ancient than the multitude of souls, and about this as a centre all souls converge ; divine souls in the first rank; their attendants next, and after these the co- attendants, as Socrates says in the Phædrus. Therefore the Monad of all beings is prior to all beings, and so Parmenides calls it the One. * * * This truth alone it now remains to tell, ZBNO AND MELISSUS. 63 The work of Zenit. They did this by hat from the very comes The work of Zeno and Melissus was to annihilate completely this lingering duality. They did this by showing that no know- ledge could be derived from the senses; that from the very con- ception of being the manifold could not exist, and, therefore, belief in its existence was contradictory and absurd. “We cannot,” says Melissus, “determine the quantity of anything without taking for granted its existence. But that which is real cannot be finite, it must be infinite, not in space but in time.” .It fills all time, and must always be the same. The multiplicity of changeable things which the senses reveal, can only be deception. The appearance is in us. The reality is nowhere. If the apparent things actually existed, they could not change. A that would remain what it is in the reality of its being whatever be the representation to our senses or whatever the subjective condition and circumstances of the representation. Ženo maintained the non-existence of the phenomenal. His argument was that in dividing matter, we must in thought reach a stage where divisibility ceases to be possible—where the sub- ject of division becomes a mathematical point, which has no real existence, and as all experience is found to be contradictory, no objective reality can be deduced from it. The only way to certainty of knowledge is tº establish the conclusions of the pure reason and to explain phenomena for a mere illusion of the senses. HERACLITUS.-The Eleatics tried to end the Dualism between the permanent and the changing by denying reality to the latter. But the phenomena remain as that which is given in the experi- ence of the senses. There was still the one and the many. The That in this path One Being we shall find, As numcrous tokens manifestly show; And there its character, without decay ; And unbegotten, stable without end- Only begotten, whole, nor once it was, Nor will hercafter be, since now 'tis all ; At once collected, a continued one, From whence its source or growth could you explain ? · Not from non-being which no mind cau see, Nor speech reveal ; since as of being void, Tis not an object of the mental eye, But, as from no one it derived its birth, Say, why in time posterior, it begun, Rather in some prior time to be? Then must it wholly be or wholly not, For never will the power of faith permit That aught should ever into being rise." Parmenides, Translated by Thomas Taylor. 64 HERACLITUS. tal Becoming nuance of any kint forthwith stand all is not unity of reason and the sensuous multiplicity. Heraclitus undertook to reconcile them, and to show how both existed in a perfect monism; the one in the many and the many in the one; so that true being was neither the one nor the many, but the union--the flux and reflux-the Becoming. Hera- clitus's doctrine is generally acknowledged to be obscure. Cud- worth calls him a “ confounded philosopher," and Socrates, with gentle irony, said of his book concerning nature, that what he understood of it was excellent, and he had no doubt that phat he did not understand was equally good. Regarding him as.coming after Parmenides and engaged with the same problems as the Eleatics, we may conceive him as asking the question, 66 What is the universe ?!? Is it being or non-being ? and he answers, “It is neither because it is both.” All is and all is not; while it comes into being it is, yet forthwith it ceases to be. There is no continuance of anything; the only reality is an eternal Becoming Into the same stream we descend, and yet it is not the same stream. We are, and at the same time we are not. We cannot possibly descend twice into the same stream, for it is always scattering and collecting itself again, or rather it at the same time flows to us and flows from us. The reality of being is not an eternal rest, but a ceaseless change. Herci- clitus does not, like the Eleatics, distrust the senses, he holds them for true sources of knowledge, channels whereby ve drink in the universal intelligence, and become partakers of the common reason. We arrive at truth in proportion as we partake of this reason. Whatever is particular as opposed to it is false; - Inhaling through the breath the universal Ether, which is the Divine Reason, we become conscious. In sleep we are unconscious, but on waking we again become intelligent, for in sleep, when the organs of the sense are closed, the mind within is shut out from all sympathy with the surrounding ether, the universal reason; and the only connecting medium is the breath, as it were, a root. By this separation the mind loses the power of recollection. Nevertheless, on awakening, the mind repairs its memory through the senses, as it were through inlets, thus coming into contact with the surrounding ether, it resumes its intelligence. As fuel, when brought near the fire, is altered, and becomes fiery, but on being removed again, becomes extin- guished; so too the portion of the all-embracing, which sojourns in our body, becomes more irrational when separated from it, but, on the restoration of this connection through its many HERACLITUS AND THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS. will be he universe," said I hales took watere as the first prins pores and inlets, it again becomes similar to the whole.99* This doctrine, as here announced, may be contrasted with Eleaticism, which found certitude only in pure reason, while Heraclitus finds the senses to be means of communication between the mind and the universal reason; yet, after the contrast the doctrine of the unity of being is the same. With the one, reality is only in the permanent; with the other, it is in the Becoming. In both cases the One is all. Heraclitus was originally of the Ionic school, but some call him a disciple of Xenophanes. Aristotle says that he took fire as the first prin- ciple in the same way as Thales took water and Anaximenes air. “ The universe,” said Heraclitus, “always was, is, and ever will be a living fire, unchanged, and at the same time endowed with the power of thinking and knowing." † The relation be- tween this fire and the Becoming we do not know, and can only conjecture. Had Heraclitus been in Persia ? | Was he a worshipper of fire ? Had he learned of Ormuzd—the fountain of light the all-embracing element whence all things flow? And did he, like the Persians with an indifferential difference, call it now the symbol of the first principle of creation, and again the principle itself ? By this fire Heraclitus illustrates the eternal transformation and transposition of the Becoming. He makes it the substratum of movement, the origin and energy of existence. In the strife of light and darkness the universe arose. “Strife," he says “is the parent of all things. The one, by separating itself from itself, unites itself again." In another place he says, “ Unite the whole and the not-whole, the coal- escing and the not-coalescing, the harmonious and the discordant, and thus we have the one Becoming from the All, and the all from the One." EMPEDOCLES..To what school Empedocles belonged, is a onions not when in and one * The human soul, says Heraclitus, as it is endowed with reason is an emanation from the universal mind; but it is united to an animal nature in ·common with the inferior orders of creation. Man breathes the universal soul or mind, and readily unites with creature intelligence in a state of watching ; sleep being an immediate and temporary suspension of this communication. # The fire of Heraclitus is endowed with spiritual attributes ; Aristotle calls it' soul ” and “incorporeal.” It is the common ground of the phenomena, both of mind and matter. It is not only the animating, but also the intelligent and regulative principle of the universe : the universal word or reason which it behoves all men to follow. This interpretation seems to materialize mind, but it also spiritualizes matter and makes the moveable one of Heraclitus, the Becoming, as immaterial as the resting One of the Eleatics, which is Being- Professor Thompson's Notes to Archer Butler's Lectures on Philosophy. Professor Thompson is of opinion that Heraclitus never was in Persia. 66 EMPEDOCLES. question left undecided by Aristotle. With the Eleatics, he distrusted the senses. Regarding human and divine reason as one, he found in reason, the source of knowledge. In placing the origin of the universe in material elements, he seems allied to the Ionic school; but he separates from them in assum- ing four original or root elements instead of one.* Of these he makes fire the most important, and thus seems to approach Heraclitus. These elements are each original and eternal. They are mingled again by the working of two powers-strife and friendship. Men call these changes, birth and death, but- in reality there is neither birth nor death. Nothing can be produced which has not always existed, and nothing which has once existed can ever cease to be. This indeed is the funda- mental doctrine of the philosophy of Empedocles. It is truly Eleatic. But to his doctrine of separating and co-mingling elements, he seems to have added the Becoming of Heraclitus, not however purely, for in Empodocles' belief the elements do not change in themselves, but only in their relations. The four elements are eternal, yet not as material elements, but as ideal existences in the Divine mind. The world as revealed to the senses is but a copy. The world intellectual is the type. The latter, being the ideal, is the reality of the former, which is only phenomenal. The root elements exist eternally in the One. The separating and uniting which we see incessantly at work are caused by discord and friendship. As these root-elements are the original thoughts of the Supreme, and as these undergo continual transformations, so the being of the supreme One is interfused throughout the universe. His essence pervades all. All life and intelligence are the manifestations of the Divine Mind. God is not like anything which can be seen or touched, or imaged by human intellect. He is an Infinite Mind. Here Empedocles joined with Xenophanes in opposition to the popular deities of the mythology. He was a great enemy to the gods of Homer. Karsten describes Empedocles' theology as an apoth- eosis of nature aud pre-eminently Pantheistic, that is, in the. sense of merely worshipping external nature. But the verses of Empedocles evidently mean more than this. Polytheism was an apotheosis of Nature; but the Pantheism of Empedocles was the worship of Being. His God is not the phenomenal, but the * Empedocles called the original uncreated universe a sphere or globe. It contained in its bosom the four elements—a syncretism of the primæval chaos. His love and hatred are evidently suggested by the eternal strife, the Heracli- tean father of all things.-Professor Thompson's Notes. ANAXAGORAS. 67 real, and is allied to the One of Parmenides. Only on this ground could he have opposed the worship of the popular deities. But we have seen in another place that this worship of Being had nearly the same origin as the worship of natural powers and objects. The one was the goal of reason, the other was the result of imagination. The one made the theology of the philosopher, the other that of the multitude. Reason protested against Polytheism, which Empedocles could not have done had · his theology been merely a deification of phenomenal nature. Tradition says that Empedocles proclaimed himself divine, and to prove it, leaped into the crater of Mount Etna. The moun- tain disproved his divinity by casting up his sandal. This may be true or it may be only the popular interpretation of his identification of the human and the divine Reason. ANAXAGORAS.—To understand fully the development of the theological sentiment among the Greeks, it is necessary to notice Anaxagoras, the great father of all Anti-Pantheistic theologians. What men are saying to day against Pantheism was said with equal force by Anaxagoras, and the more vulnerable parts of his theology are as ill defended by church doctors as they were by this old Greek. He was no metaphysician, but a man who believed his senses, and had never made sufficient enquiries into the nature of reason to be troubled with the questions that perplexed Zeno or Parmenides. Why should he doubt the reality of the visible world ? Was it not there before his eyes ? and why should he suppose any hidden relationship between mind and matter? Was not mind the active principle, and matter the passive reality. Why should some material element -- be the first being, and not that mind which is the ruling power over matter? God is mind, and matter is something arranged by Him. What theology can be more simple ? No questions of the co-existence of a material finite and an immaterial in- finite stood in the way of Anaxagoras. Speculations on the at- tributes of time and space did not concern him. Why should an infinite Being differ from a finite, except in being greater, and why otherwise should an infinite Mind not be the same as a finite mind? God made the world as a man makes a machine. He gave it laws and left it to the operation of laws, interfering only when it needs repair. In His far off dwelling place be- yond the boundaries of the universe He beheld His workman ship, and was present to it as a man is present to the objects perceived by his sense of sight. Compared with the other philosophers of the Ionic school, İHe gave it it needs report the un F 2 68 SOCRATES AND THE SCEPTICS. Aristotle said “the philosopher of Clazomena was like a sober man.” Socrates, however, did not estimate him so highly. “Having one day,” says that philosopher, “read a book of Anaxagoras, who said the divine mind was the cause of all things, and drew them up in their proper ranks and classes, I was ravished with joy. I perceived there was nothing more cer- tain than this principle that mind was the cause of all things.”* Socrates purchased the books of Anaxagoras, and began to read them with avidity, but he had not proceeded far till he found his hopes disappointed. The author, he said, “ makes no further use of this mind, but assigns as the cause of the order and beauty that prevailed in the world, the air, water, whirl- wind, and other agencies of nature.” Aristotle, too, on further study was less pleased with Anaxa- goras, and corrected his own views by coming nearer Parmenides. In after times the theology of Anaxagoras developed into the schools of Democritus and Epicurus, who dispensed with the hypothesis of a world maker, or rather left Him in His far dis- tant home, reposing in silent dignity, and regarding the world as unworthy of His interference. SOCRATES AND THE SCEPTICS. For the same reason that we notice Anaxagoras, a few words are required for Socrates and the Sceptics. The Eleatics had questioned the objective reality of the phenomenal world on the ground of the uncertainty of sense knowledge ; but if the objects of sense are denied reality, why, said the Sceptics, should it be granted to the subjects of reason. Knowledge is only relative. Our perceptions are differ- ent at different times and in different states. How do we know that truth is not beyond the reach of the human mind? “Man," said Protagoras, “is the measure of all things : what he per- ceives is, but its existence is only subjectivemit exists only for him. The universal application of this principle ended in universal scepticism. In the light of it, knowledge is a dream, religion is superstition, might is right, and laws, but the con- ventional regulations of governments and states. Socrates occupied himself solely with Ethics.f IIe tried to * Anaxagoras says that all things at the beginning arose, and then came the world's Intelligence and shaped and embellished every individual species, wherefore it was called the great Intelligence.--Diogenes Laertius. + Socrates employed himself about Ethics, and entirely neglected the specu. lation respecting the whole of nature, in morals indeed investigating the universals and applying himself to definitions. Plato approving this, his in- vestigation of morals, adopted this much of his doctrine, that these definitions l'espect other things and are not conversant with anything sensible. Aristotle. PLATO. 69 find in reason à certain foundation for morals. The Sceptic Said “What I perceive to be true is true only to me ; my knowledge is not merely subjective, but it is individual, and therefore empirical." "That,” Socrates would have said, “ may be so with you as an individual, but not as a partaker of the universal reason. Human knowledge is not merely relative and empirical, for the measure of all things is not the individual, but the universal man. Morality has a basis in universal reason. It is something eternal, immutable, absolute. Consistently with his purely ethical studies, Socrates sought in God a Being who answered to the moral necessities of the heart. From his youth he felt himself drawn towards the “pure and unchangeable mind.” His God was the “ mind” of Anaxagoras; but Socrates did not introduce Him as simply making the world. He also preserves it, He is the God of provi- dence as well as of creation. He takes care of all. Nothing is unworthy of His regard—nothing too mean for Him to be indifferent to it, He is at once the author and king of the world. . PLATO.—Socrates sought to establish a foundation for moral truth. He found it in absolute reason.* In the same reason Plato found a basis for the truth of our knowledge of the reality of being. It comes not from the senses, but from the intercourse of our reason with the Divine. There can be no science derived from the perceptions of sense. They cannot reach that which is. They never go beyond phenomena. All their intercourse is with the apparent. But the mind has reminis- cences of its former knowledge. Though now imprisoned in the body, it has its home in the bosom of the Eternal. It remembers the truth it once knew when it stood face to face with real existence. Truth belongs to the mind. Thoughts * This connection between Socrates and Plato is only inferential, and may be disputed. His “Knowledge,” according to Professor Thompson, was af knowledge of consequences generalized from experience. On this grounil Grote claims Socrates for a “ Utilitarian." According to Xenophon, Socrates regarded the soul of man as allied to the Divine mind, not by its essence but by its nature elevated by reason above the rank of the mere animal creation. It appears from the Phaedo that Socrates had the Budhist notion of the wretchedness of the present existence. He looks upon the union of a body with the soul as a penalty. By the pre-existence of the soul he seems to mean its identity with the divine Being He calls the soul “ That which is." In the Gorgias again, he says, “I should not wonder if Euripides speaks the the truth when he says 'Who knows whether to live is not death, and to dic, life.'» 70 IS PLATO'S GOD A PERSON? are verities. To limit the reality of existence to the One, Parmenides denied it to the manifold, and Heraclitus denied it to both the One and the many that he might ascribe it to the Becoming. But Plato saw in the One* the thinker, and in the manifold his thoughts. And who shall separate between the mind and its thoughts ? Both are one. Both are realities, and therefore we ascribe real existence both to the one and the manifold. Objects of sense have an existence so far as they participate in the ideal. Thus, man, house, table, exist but only because the ideas, man, house, table, are real existences. Our conceptions become perceptions. The manifold has thns a double existence. One in its ideals, another in phenomena. The latter is the world of sense, what men call the material, and what the vulgar suppose to be reality. But its existence is only borrowed. It is a shadow-a copy of that which is real, the realities are the ideas, the architypes. The manifold then is at once being, and the semblance of being. But these ideas, are they identical with God or distinct from God? Plato answers sometimes that they are identical, and at other times that they are distinct from God. This lies at the root of Plato's theology, and leaves an uncertainty whether God in his system is merely abstract Being or a personal creative Deity. * This is only an interpretation of Plato. He does not call God the One, he calls Him Being. “ Plato's one,” says Professor Thompson," is relation, a thought as against a thing or perception, a genus as opposed to individuals, &c., he rejects the absolute One of Parmenides at least under that name. Mind is with him the giver of the limit not the limit itself ; the efficient rather than the formal cause ; that cause which blends the limit with the unlimited ; in short, a creative energy, if we may not say, conscious Creator.” Warburton ascribes the notion of the derivation of the souls of 'men from the Divine essence, and their final resolution into it to all the philosophers of antiquity, without exception. Archer Butler thinks this opinion unsup- ported in the case of Platonism, as it came from the hands of Plato ; yet he says, 6. Plato may in the last analysis have embraced all things in some mysterious unity ; an idea which in some vague sense it is impossible for human reason to avoid.” According to the Timaeus the universe was generated, it was modelled after an eternal pattern. It is a blessed god, having its soul fixed in the centre, yet existing throughout the whole. The soul was made before the body. Between soul and body there is an intermediate, made up of the indivisible and divisible essence. The three are mingled into one. The eternal universe was a living existence. ; so the deity tried to make the sensible universe, as far as he could, similarly perfect. Time was generated with the universe. Eternity is a unity. The stars are generated gods, living existences endowed with souls. Fire, water, &c., should not be called “this” or “ that,” not being " things.” Before the creation of the universe there were being, place, and generation. The charge of producing mortal natures was committed by the Creator to his offspring the junior gods. IDEAS AND PHENOMENA. 71 In the one case the ideas are the being of God; in the other God is a Being who creates the universe after the pattern of the ideas. But where is the phenomenal world? Do the ideas create the phenomenal or is it eternal ? When God made the world, He made it after the ideal pattern, but on what did he impress the idea ? Here Plato ascribes eternity to that which is non-existent, matter. This shadowy semblance of being existed. It was that in which the idea took shape and form, and yet it is nothing. * It has the capacity to receive any variety of form, yet it is undetermined, shapeless, and invisible. It receives and preserves being, only as it has in itself the ideal form. The visible universe is the result of ideas with this substratum of non-existence. The universal mind is God. He is the highest of our ideas, and the source of all thinking and knowing. He is “the Good.” In this supreme Idea all ideas have their ground and centre. Though itself exalted above division, yet in it the perceiver and the perceived, the subject and the object, the ideal and the real, are all one. In returning to the Socratic faith in the capacity of the mind to know the truth, and applying it to the nature of essence, Plato in reality returned to Eleatic ground, and in following out his method, he arrived at the absolute reality in the same way as Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, had done before him. The God of reason was Being absolute. God must be this, and yet Plato recoiled from the immoveable Deity of the Eleatics. God is this, but He is something else even if it it be something in- consistent with this. He is moveable; He is intelligent; He is mind; the king of the world; the father of the universe; God who according to reason must be entirely unlike man, must yet again have attributes corresponding to those of men. ARISTOTLE.-At the point where Plato took up the ground of Socrates, Aristotle differed from Plato. He said that Plato * Plato, says Archer Butler, calls matter the unlimited ; intelligence, the the limit-one and many—single and multiple-indivisible and divisible unchangeable and changeable absolute and relative—example and copy- the good and the manifestation of the good—the object of science, eternal being and the object of opinions. Professor Thompson adds, “ Bare matter he scarcely distinguished from place." † Plato dedicated his mature powers to the task of reconciling the Ephesian doctrine of a flux, and becoming with the Eleatic principle of Parmenides.--- Professor Thompson's Notes. Plato, like most philosophers after Anaxagoras, made the supreme Being to be Intelligence, but in other respects left His nature undefined or rather indefinite though the variety of definition, a conception floating vaguely bc- tween Theism and Pantheism.-Mackay's Progress. 72 ARISTOTLE. had never proved how ideas have an objective reality, nor had he even rationally explained how objects of sense participate in the ideal. Socrates proclaimed the universal as the essence of the individual and so far he was right. Plato raised the con- ception of a universal to the rank of being, independent of the individual, and there, said Aristotle, Plato was wrong. Aris- totle's method differed so much from Plato's that these two philosophers have come to be regarded as the respective re- presentatives of the two great classes of minds into which all men may be divided. But their conclusions differ less than their methods. Aristotle began with observations on the external world, but he found that in this way he could never get beyond the external. Sense acquaints us only with individual existence. We must get beyond this. We do get beyond this, for we have the knowledge of the universals. We have abstract ideas of things. Whence are these ? From reason. The universal and the individual are then co-existent. We cannot separate a thing from our conception of it. The universal is immanent in the individual. It is as Plato said, the essence of the individual, but it is not itself independent of the individual. It is like form to the material in which form has its existence, yet only by means of the universal can we know the essence of any one particular thing. Though not independent, it is yet that which is actual, while the individual is only the potential. The absolute actuality is mind, and matter is the same essence in its potential being. There are four first causes, or first principles. Matter, form, moving cause, and end. As in a house there is the matter, the conception, the worker, and the actual house. These four determinations of all being resolve themselves into the funda- mental ones of matter and form. The moving cause, form and end, stand together as opposed to matter. The last is that abiding something which lies at the basis of all becoming, and yet in its own being it is different from anything which has be- come. Whatever is, has been before potentially. Individual beings are produced by the coalescing of potential being and pure form. Every “ That” is a meeting of potential and actual being. But there is a guiding power superintending these processes of progression. That power is a prime activity, a pure actuality, a first Mover. That Mover is God. The re- lation of the Divine to that of the world is left by Aristotle undertermined. In some places he seems to meet Plato, but in others he separates God from all being and becoming, con- THE STOICS. 73 externally, Himself unmoved and free from nature. The world has a soul, but it is not God. God is maker of the world soul, which is the movable mover outside of the immoveable Mover. “ Aristotle's leaning was, seemingly, to a personal God, not a being of parts and passions, but a substantial head of all the categories of being. The doctrine of Anaxagoras revived out of a more elaborate and profound analysis of nature. Soon, however, the vision of personality is withdrawn. We have, in fact, reached that culminating point in thought where the real blends with the ideal; moral action and objective thought as well as material body are excluded. The Divine action on the world retains its veil of impenetrable mystery, and to the utmost ingenuity of research presents but a contradiction. God becomes the formal, efficient, final cause. He is the one Form comprising all forms. Acting and working is denied him, only activity of thought is ascribed to Him. The object of the absolute thought is the absolute good. In contemplating it the supreme Finality can but contemplate itself. Its immutable action is as the uniform self-circling revolution of the stellar heavens, and as all thought consists in contact and combination with the things thought, so all material inference being here excluded, the distinction of subject and object vanishes in complete identification, and the Divine thought is the thinking of thought. The energy of mind is life, and God is that energy in its purity and perfection. He is therefore life itself, eternal and perfect. This indeed seems all that is meant by the term God. "Such,' says Aristotle, “is the principle on which nature and the world depend. If it be asked how these transcendent things came to be a part of a professedly empirical philosophy, and whence our knowledge of them, he replies that there is a faculty in the soul bearing the same relation to its proper objects as sensation does to phenomena, a faculty by which we recognize the object with certainty." THE STOICS.-Plato and most of his predecessors endeavored to reduce all being to unity by denying reality to matter. As he admitted only reason for a channel of knowledge, he was consistent in regarding matter as non-being. But Aristotle, believing his senses as well as his reason, left the dualism mind and matter unreconciled. With Plato God was One and all things. With Aristotle God was One, and the universe a distinct existence. But as nothing can be which has not been 74 SENSE AND REASON. before. As there can be no addition to the totality of existence, Aristotle made two eternals, the one Form, the other Matter. God and the material from which the universe was made. The Stoics were not satisfied with the duality. They felt with Plato, that all must be one; that an infinite cannot leave a finite standing over against it. They were willing to trust the testimony of sense, and to admit that logically mind and matter God and the world are separate and distinct, yet the Stoics contended that actually they must be one. To show how God and the universe were distinct, and yet one was the problem of Zeno and his disciples. They did this by a philosophy of common sense, in which they acknowledged the truth both of our conceptions and our perceptions. The sensuous impression of an external object they looked upon as a revelation to the mind of the object itself. Sense furnished the materials of knowledge. Reason compared them and formed ideas. But if in this way all ideas came from the senses, how can we have an idea of pure spirit? The Stoics were consistent, they denied that we have such an idea, and with that they denied the existence of anything incorporeal. That every existence must have a body was the doctrine which moulded the whole of the theology of the Stoics. They did not define what a body was, that was impossible, bodies, beings of all kinds from the spiritual to the grossly material. But the very indefiniteness in which they left the idea of the corporeal, showed that they were far removed from the school of Epicurus. Their great enquiry was concerning the world—whence it is. Evidently it is not eternal as Aristotle supposed, since it is something pro- duced. What we know of the world producer must be learned from the world itself. Being is evidently divisible into the active and the passive. A producing and a produced are the two obvious principles in the actual world. There must then be a similar two-foldness in the Original of the world, an active principle and a passive-the one a living power, the other a passive potentiality—the one that from which everything is, the other that through which everything is. The passive is the original matter-a lifeless and inert substance. The active is the efficient cause or producing power. But this cause must be corporeal, and yet how can we conceive of it under any known form of body. The Stoics tried to separate the living power which creates the universe from every idea of gross matter, and at the same time they felt that to have a definite conception of that power we must clothe it with some material WORLD ORDER. 75 ! form. The active principle was therefore conceived as having for its substratum the nature of external fire, but to protect this representation from the misconception of crdinary minds, they also called it spirit. The first expression of the working of the active principle is in forming the primary elements from the original matter; the second, in forming bodies. The active principle thus working externally in unorganized nature Chrysippus calls the binding power, and supposes the air to be its substratum or substance. This power acting in its higher operations producing the life of nature, and animating all forms of organism from the humblest plant to the highest spirit-life he calls the ether, but though the one active principle has many powers and functions, it is still but one, as the human mind with all its faculties is an undivided unity. This active principle is again considered as the original source of all right and morality—the principle of law-giving-the world order. The moral order is therefore of the essence of God, or in other words, this moral order is our divinest conception of the nature of God, for in this God ap- pears as the unchangeable and the eternal, the absolute Being whose existence implies the highest rectitude, wisdom, and per- fection. Tiedemann says of the Stoics—“ Among all the phi- losophers of antiquity, none defended the existence of God with so warm a zeal or so many and so powerful arguments.” The chief of these was the undeniable existence of right in the world. This shows a relationship between man and God, and the exist- ence of a Deity as a moral Being, as the principle of moral law- giving and world order, that is, of right and morality. In the last analysis there is in reality but one Being existing. We may call Him God, or we may call Him the universe. The one is God active, the other is God passive. The one is the life, the other is the body which is animated by the life. The one is the creative energy, the other is the ground or sub- stratum in which this energy is at work, and to which it is united. God is the soul of the great animal world. He is the universal Reason which rules over all, and permeates all. He is that gracious providence which cares for the individual as well as for the all. He is infinitely wise. His nature is the basis of law, forbidding evil and commanding good. By the very order of creation He punishes them that do evil, and rewards them that do well, being in Himself perfectly just and righteous. He is not a spirit, for that is nothing; as we have no idea corresponding to such an existence, but He is the 76 GOD THE ONLY REAL BEING. subtlest element of matter. He is in the world as those wonder- working powers and ever-creating energies which we see in all nature, but whose essence baffles our reason to penetrate. He is the most mysterious of all things we know, and more mysterious than all mysteries. He is the divine Ether. He is the breath that passes through all nature; He is the fire that kindles the universe. From Him issues forth that stream of divine life in which nature lives, and which flowing forth into all her channels makes her rejoice to live. Seneca, the Roman representative of the philosophers of the porch, calls God the Maker of the universe, the Judge and Preserver of the world the Being upon whom all things depend—the spirit of the world; and then he adds, “Every name belongs to Him-all things spring from Him. We live by His breath ; He is all, in all His parts; He sustains Himself by His own might. His divine breath is diffused through all things small and great. His power end his presence extend to all. He is the God of heaven and of all the gods. The divine powers which we worship singly are all subject to Him.” That the ground of all things is one reality, and that that reality is God, is the burden of nearly all the speculations of the Greeks, and the end of all their enquiries. They deny reality to created things lest two realities existing together might imply two everlasting beings, which is contradictory to the utterances of reason concerning being. The individual things proceed from God, and so far as they are real they are of God, but in their individuality they are distinct from God, what that reality of things is, each school has tried to express, but all the expressions involve a contradiction as they express something definite, while God is beyond definition--the undefin- ed and the infinite. The Materials of this Chapter are gathered from Schweglers's History of Philosophy, Mr. Lewes' Biographical History, Mr. Maurice's volumes on Greek Philosophy in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, Archer Butler's Lectures on Philosophy, Mackay's Progress of the Intellect among the Greeks ; the His- tories of Brucker, Ritter, and Tennemann ; with the Translations of Plato in Bohn's Library, and Thomas Taylor's Translations of Aristotle. CHAPTER IV. PHILOSOPHY OF THE JEWS. 1 THE Hebrew Scriptures begin with the creation of the world. I The creating God or gods is called Elohim, “ a name," says Gesenius, "retained from Polytheism and which means the higher powers or intelligences."* That the sacred writer should use a word borrowed from Polytheism will not surprise those who understand the nature of language, but that the writer himself had passed from Polytheism to the belief of the One God is evident from the whole of the record of creation, and confirmed by the succeeding history. To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the name of God was El Shaddai. To Moses God revealed Himself by the new name Jehovah or I AM. The God of Moses was pure Being. It was the name Jehovah which kept the Jews from idolatry. In proportion as they ceased to think of their Deliver- er as the unspeakable Being they were in danger of worship- ping the gods of the nations. “This.new name,” as Dean Stanley says, though itself penetrating into the most abstract metaphysi- cal idea of God, yet in its effect was the very opposite of a mere abstraction.” The old Jews did not speculate about the Essence of God, though they had reached the highest conception of that Essence. Guarded by the declaration once for all that the nature of God was mysterious and His name ineffable, they were free to make Him a person—to ascribe to Him attributes and to repre- sent Him as made in the image of man. He has hands and feet. He rules as a king, dwelling with Israel in Canaan, protecting them with His mighty arm, and watching over them with ever open eyes, which are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. All the mighty objects of nature are summoned to ex- press God. The great mountains are the mountains of God; the * Hebrew grammarians find a similar plurality in the Godhead indicated by the title Jehovah Sabaoth, Lord of hosts. Jehovah is not here in the construct state, so that the proper translation should be without the “of.” The words are in apposition, and the meaning is, that in Jehovah, all hosts are comprized. He is all in all. By the Rabbinical writers, God is called Makom, place, because He is the place of everything. d 78 GOD AND NATURE. tall trees are the trees of God; and the mighty rivers the rivers of God. He is the Rock of safety, whose way is perfect. He maketh Lebanon and Sirion to skip like a young unicorn. It is His voice that roars in the raging of the waters; His majesty that speaks in the thunder; and when the storm and tempest break down the mighty cedars, it is the voice of the Lord, yea, it is the Lord who breaketh the cedars of Libanus. This psalm* expresses the full extent to which the old Hebrews went in the identification of God and nature. They never surpassed this even in poetry; and never forgot that the Lord sitteth above the water floods, and that the Lord is king for ever. The personify- ing tendency natural to a race of men who had to fight for their own national existence, as well as for the doctrine of the divine Unity, interfered with all speculation concerning the divine Es- sence. It exposed them however to the idolatry against which their national existence was meant to be a continual witness. The search for symbols led them to liken God to things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth. The world, according to Josephus, is “the purple temple of God," and to imitate this temple, the Jews built the tabernacle, and after wards the great temple of God at Jerusalem. The symbols permitted them by Moses and David and Solomon became objects of wor- ship. The images borrowed from nature to express God pre- pared them for the worship of Baal and Ashteroth, the sun, moon, and stars, the gods of the Sidonians, of Chaldea, and the nations round about them. We may perhaps fairly date the origin of Jewish philosophy from the time of the Captivity. The metaphysical idea in- volved in the name of Jehovah becomes prominent and acts its part as the personifying idea had done before it. The sin of the Jews is no longer idolatry. They are henceforth without Teraphim. The unity of God was not unknown either to the Chaldeans or the Persians. Abraham only conserved a doctrine well-known to his ancestors of Chaldea, but in his day almost hidden by the prevailing idolatry. When the Jews went into Babylon and Persia, did they hear again from the sages the philosophical notion of God, or did the idea implied in the name I AM come naturally to its proper development? The answer is immaterial. The Jewish Rabbis who prosecuted the metaphysical idea of God, maintained that their speculations were familiar to learned Jews, and that though the Scriptures * Psalm xxix. Hosea iii, 4. JUDAISM AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 79 own pole their diseint between speak of God as a person, which was a necessity of the popular mind, yet we are to distinguish between the popular aspect of Jewish theology and that theology itself. The latter was the Esoteric teaching, the former simply Eccoteric. To the Rabbis was confided the hidden philosophy which the multitude could not receive. How far Rabbinical philosophy agreed with the Scriptures or differed from them must be left for the present an open question. The Hellenist Jews may have borrowed from the Greeks and Orientals, or the Greeks and Orientals may have borrowed from the Jews. Or, again, it may have been that the philosophies of each were natural developments. Some thoughts belong universally to the soil of the human intellect, and have an independent growth among nations that have no intercourse with each other. But even when a doctrine is borrowed, there must be previously a disposition to receive, for a borrower will only borrow what is congenial to his own mind. Religious teach- ers, as Schleiermacher says, do not choose their disciples, their disciples choose them. The many points of agreement between Judaism and the philosophies of the Greeks and Orientals, leave it open for us to say either that the Heathen got their visdom from the Jews or that the roots and germs of Christian doctrines are revealed to the universal reason. The speculative Jews have maintained that the philosophy of Judaism as they understand it was the source and beginning of all philosophies. Plato is with them but an Attic Moses, and Pythagoras a Greek philosopher who borrowed the mysteries of Monads and Tetrads from the chosen people. We have supposed that from the time of the Captivity, the Jews had a philosophy of religion; but of this philosophy the traces are few, and the authorites uncertain, until near the be- ginning of the christian era. Eusebius has preserved some fragments of Aristobulus supposed to be the Alexandrian Jew mentioned in the Maccabees as King Ptolemy's instructor. In hod of age and Onst their Himself, as the first God, the ineffable and invisible, and God as manifested in the phenomenal world. And in the letter as- cribed to Aristeas, librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, we see regards the other as but a different form of itself. Aristeas informs Ptolemy that the same God who gave him his kingdom gave the Jews their laws. “They worship Him," says Aristeas, “who created all, provides for all, and is prayed to by all, and especially by us, only under another name.” And Eleazar, the 80 GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND THE APOCRYPHA. high priest of Jerusalem, when asked by Aristeas if it was not unworthy of God to give laws concerning meats, such as those given to the Jews, answered that they were indeed insignificant; and though they served to keep the Jews as a distinct people, yet they had beyond this a deep allegorical meaning. "The great doctrine of Moses," said Eleazar, “is, that the power of this one God is through all things ; " words in which the students of Alexandrian philosophy have seen an intimation of that Spirit which is through all and in all. It has been thought, too, that in the Greek version of the Scriptures made at Alex- andria, there are evident marks of the influence of Greek thought on the minds of the translators, who seem often to have chosen such words as left the ground clear for a Platonic interpretation, and sometimes, even to suggest it. Some of the most remark- able of these are the translation of the name of God. “I am that I AM,” which the Seventy render “I am He that IS;' and the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis, where the Hebrew words which simply mean that the earth was confusion, are translated “The earth was invisible and unformed," pointing it has been supposed, to the ideal or typical creation of Plato, which preceeded the material. “ The Lord of hosts? is usually translated “the Lord of the powers,” or, “ the Lord of the powers of heaven," the Greek name for the inferior gods. The Books of the Apocrypha, which were mostly written by Hellenist Jews, have also been pressed into this service, but the evidence they furnish is uncertain. Solomon is made to speak of himself as good coming undefiled* into a body; which seems to be allied to the Platonic idea of the body being the cause of sin. He is also made to speak of the incorruptible Spiritt of God be- ing in all things. But the verses supposed to be most conclusive are those which speak of wisdom as the creative power of God; “A pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. She is the brightness of the everlasting light—the unspotted mirror of the power of God the image of his goodness; and being but one she can do all things, and remaining in herself she createth all things new and in all ages; entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and prophets. She pre- served the first formed father of the world, who was created, alone, and brought him out of his fall.” 11 * Wisdom of Solomon-viii, 20. if Wisdom of Solomon-xi, 1. Wisdom of Solomon-yii, 25, 6 7, and x, 1. PHILO JUDAEUS. 81 Again, the son of Sirach makes wisdom thus praise herself :- I came out of the mouth of the most High, And covered the earth as a cloud. I dwelt in high places, And my throne is in a cloudy pillar. I alone com passed the circuit of heaven, And walked in the bottom of the deep. In the waves of the sea, and in all the earth, And in every people and nation, I got a possession. With all these I sought rest : And in whose inheritance shall I abide ? So the Creator of all things gave me a commandment, And He that made me, caused my tabernacle to rest, And said, Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, And thine inheritance in Israel. He created me from the beginning before the world, And I shall never fail. In the holy tabernacle I served before him : And so was I established in Sion. Likewise in the beloved city he gave me rest, And in Jerusaleni was my power. And I took root in an honorable people, Even in the portion of the Lord's inheritance.* I am the mother of fair love, And fear, and knowledge, and holy hope, I therefore being eternal, am given to all my children, Which are named of Him. That these verses speak of wisdom as the creative power of God in much the same way as visdom is spoken of in heathen philosophies, is not to be denied. It is also true that they were composed in Greek, and in a heathen city; but their like- ness to the words of wisdom in the book of Proverbs, forbids us to say that they were borrowed from heathen philosophy. The writer may indeed have felt the harmony between the thoughts of the Alexandrians and those of the Jews, and may have de- lighted to show the Heathen that his nation was already in possession of a philosophy not inferior to theirs. But if the influence of Greek philosophy is only imperfectly discerned in the Apocrypha, or the fragmentary writings of the Hellenist Jews, all doubt is removed by the works of Philo Judaeus—the proper representative of Alexandrian Judaism. We have not indeed any treatise of Philo's on a subject purely speculative, and consequently, no complete or carefully defined system of speculation; but the ideas scattered through his prac- * Ecclesiasticus xxiv, 3—18. 82 “I AM" OR BEING. tical and expository writings, and his unceasing efforts to bring the teaching of the Old Testament into harmony with these ideas wherever it seemed to differ from them, sufficiently evi- dence his obligations to the Greek philosophers. But how could the Old Testament be made to teach Greek Philosophy ? The history of a practical nation like the Jews might be supposed beforehand to have but little relation to the thoughts of philosophers, who spent their lives in the study of causes and essences Often indeed the connection between thought and action, philosophy and daily life, is closer than we imagine, and the Old Testament writers may have had metaphysi- cal thoughts, though they wrote no books on metaphysics. It is, however, impossible in reading Philo, notwithstanding the advantage he had in usiug the Greek version of the Seventy, not to feel that his interpretations are more frequently read into the Scriptures than found there. But this need not concern us here; we come to Philo's writings neither to refute his doctrines nor to approve them, but only to trace the character of that philosophy which manifested itself among the Jews of Alex- andria. The Greek translation of "I AM" as "He that IS” at once allied the Jewish theology to that of Plato; for, “ the Being” was pre-eminently the name of Plato's supreme Deity. From this Philo could at once speak of the God of the Jews as the Eleatics and Platonists had done of the Being without attributes, of whom nothing could be truly affirmed; of whom no likeness could be made, for He is unlike anything in heaven or earth; He is infinite, immutable, and incomprchensible; but these predicates do not say what He is; only what he is not. Quali- ties belong to finite beings, not to God. He is wiser than wis- dom; fairer than beauty; stronger than strength. By reason we know that He is; but we have no faculty whereby to know what He is. We aid our feebler thoughts by metaphors and illustrations from things material. We call Him the primitive light, from which all light emanates; the life, from which all life proceeds; the infinite Intelligence; but of Him, as He is in Ilim- self, we only know that He is one, simple, and incapable of des- truction. He has no name. To Moses He revealeil Himself as “I AM THAT I AM,” which, says Philo, is equivalent to saying “It is my nature to be; not to be described ; but in order that the human race may not be wholly destitute of any appel- ation which they may give to the most excellent of beings, I allow you to use the word Lord as a name.” “So indescribable is the os and Platonistice speak of the goopreme Deity. Fine mesimplet Him, som Thich mitive y LAT I Amame. GOD HAS NO TRUE NAME. 83 to connection, cotation wis before the God wh00the seing canis sufficient for is the all. Indeed," says: Being: D living God," he says again, “ that even those powers which minister to Him do not announce to us His proper name.” “ After the wrestling with the Angel, Jacob said to the invisible Master, • Tell me Thy name;' but He answered, 'Why askest thou my name?' “And so He does not tell him His peculiar and proper name, for," says He, “it is sufficient for thee to be taught by ordinary explanations; but as for names which are the symbols of created things, do not seek to find them among immortal natures.” “ A name can only designate something that is known; it brings it into connection with something else. Now, absolute Being cannot come into relation with something else. It fills itself; it is sufficient for itself. As before the existence of the world, so after it, Being is the all. Therefore, God who is ab- solute Being, can have no name.” “Indeed,” says Philo, “ the name God does not worthily express the highest Being. It does not declare Him as He is, it only expresses a relation of the highest first Principle to the created. In reference to the universe, God is “the Good," but He is more than that; He is more than God. It is enough for the Divine nature to be and not to be known. He must be unchangeable, because He is per- fectly simple; and the most perfect of all beings can be united with no other.” “God does not mingle with anything else, for what is mingled with Him must be either better than He is, or worse, or equal; but there is nothing better or equal; and nothing worse can be mingled with Him, for then He would be- come worse, or perhaps annihilated, which it is wrong to suppose.” Without attributes, without names, incomprehensible to the intellect of man, God is the One, the Monad, Being; " and yet,” adds Philo, making a still higher effort to express the ineffable, “the Therapeuta reverence God worthily, for they consider Him simpler than unity, and more original than the monad.” He is more than life, for “ He is the source of life itself.” The necessity of again connecting the divine Being with the created world and things conceivable and sensuous, after entire- ly separating between Him and them, involved a contradiction perhaps more than verbal. But each is a truth distinct by itself, and both are to be acknowledged as such, even if we cannot see the possibility of harmonizing them. God, though a simple essence and unlike things which proceed from each other, is yet the Cause of all the created universe. The unchangeable Being thus becomes the Cause, and being the ground essence of all becoming, that is, the phenomenal, must in some way be re- of life recessity of things con end them a truth distine can G 2 THE DIVINITY OF MAN. unbrokod, live. . An impen their plate is the kizet com- lated to it. It may be admitted that the universe did not owe its origin directly to the first Being; for, indeed, the most beautiful of the sensuous world is unworthy of God; to say nothing of the more unworthy part, which to ascribe directly to God would be blasphemy; and yet without Him it could not be;' so that He must be recognized, at least, as the Cause of causes. The unknowable thus becomes known, though known only as the unknowable. Thus to be ignorant of Him is truly to know Him. “Therefore," says Philo, we, disciples and friends of the prophet Moses, do not leave off the inquiry concerning that which really is; holding fast that to know this, is the goal of fortune, is an unbroken, life whilst the law also says, “That those who are near God, live. Then indeed, those who are separated from God are dead in soul. An important doctrine, dear to a wise man; but those who have taken their place with God live an immortal life again.” “The goal of this life is the knowledge and science of God." He is incomprehensible, and yet com- prehensible. Incomprehensible to us men, and yet comprehen- sible to us so far as we are divine, * for there is in us a germ of the Deity, which may be developed to a divine existence; and though God cannot enter into the circle of the human, We may yet be raised to equality with Him, and then we shall both see Him and know Him. This is the goal which we have before us. Now we know God imperfectly through his works. He is a God afar off ; an Essence whose existence is demonstrable by reason; though indeed this knowledge of God is only negative. But we rise to a true knowledge of Him as our being becomes assimi- lated to His being. We have visions of God, a pure and per- fect knowledge, by intuition, phantasy, or whatever other name be given to that revelation by which God is revealed to the soul. “ It is such as was given in part to Moses when transcending the created he received a representation of the uncreated; and through this comprehended both God and His creation.” The supreme Being is not then the immediate maker of the worlds. Beginning with the sensuous, which is the first step of the celestial ladder we ascend to the spiritual; for, the visible evidently reveals the working of the Invisible. But we cannot here infer only one Being; there are, evidently, more than one, at least, two, an original first Cause and an intelligent Being, who is the proximate cause. The latter, Philo says, is subjected * Man was not made of the dust alone, but also of the divine Spirit.-Philo. . Quoted by John of Damascus: THE DIVINE LOGOS. 85 TTT to the first, and is the mediating power between it and the dead unformed matter. This mediating power is the Logos, or Word of God, the world maker. Philo gives the Logos a variety of names: He is the mediator between mortal and immortal races; He is God's name, God's interpreter, God's vicar; to man He is God; but on the divine side, the second God, or the image of God. The spirit world is the divine thought; the sensuous world, the divine speech; and the Logos, the capacity of God to think and speak. As thought, He is the Logos immanent; as speech, the Logos transient.. Philo identifies the Logos with that wisdom which God is said to have created as the first of His works, and established before the Eons, the spouse of God, who is the father and the Mother of the all. Sometimes the Logos is plural, not only the Word, but the words of God; and these are identical with the divine powers or attributes. The two Cherubim in Genesis are the two highest powers of God; His goodness and His might. By the one He has created all, by the other he preserves all. Between these as a uniting bond, is the Logos, which embraces both; for, by the Logos, God rules, and creates, and shews mercy. The Cherubim were the symbols of these powers, and the flaming sword that turned either way was the divine Logos. In the same way the Logos is identified with other attributes, and distributed into different potencies of the divine Being; and as all these potencies are consubstantial, having their substratum in God, the Logos is identical now with the potencies, and now with the first Cause or supreme God; so that Philo ends in ascribing to the first Cause, through the Logos, those qualities, works and attributes, which he had otherwise denied Him; considering them unworthy of the first God. The Deity could not pervade matter, nor come into any relation to it; but through the Logos He is the maker and preserver of the world. By the Logos, God is restored to the world, and the oneness of the created and the uncreated becomes manifest through the mediating power or powers, for those powers are identical with God; they are also the spiritual world-plan, the perfect world after which this sensuous world is formed ; and even it, so far as it is well formed, is itself the Logos or word of God. The spirit worlds are God's first begotten, and the sensuous His younger sons. “Ideas," " demons," "heroes," "angels,” “the higher powers," have the same relation to the lower that God has to the higher. The necessity of personification may cause them to appear as distinct beings; but they have all in their degrees 86 GOD FILLS ALL SPACE. 2 & divine existence. Angels and spirits are the divine thought, and not separate from Him who thinks. He is the God of gods. The Chaldeans said " Either the visible world is itself a god or God contained in Himself is the soul of all things." From this view, says Philo, Moses differs, for he maintains either that the world-soul is the first God, or that the stars and their host cause what happens to man; but that all this universe is held together by invisible powers, which the world maker has extended from the uttermost part of the heavens to the end of the earth.” Philo intended to differ from the Chaldeans by means of the Logos, word, words, or invisible powers distinct from God and yet identi- cal with Him; but he differed only in intention, for Philo's chief God filled all things and went through them all, and left no place void or empty of Himself.* All the inferior Gods, the divine mediating powers, as well as the world, are all parts of the first God. He is the place of all things that which em- braces all things, but is Himself embraced by none. Ho extends Himself to all visible things, and fills the all with Himself. He is original light; matter is the darkness; the circles of being are light circles about the first Being. The Logos is a brilliant far-shining light, most like to God. The individual powers are rays which spread wider and wider the light they receive. The entire creation is an enlightened becoming of matter through the first light. It is the one God who is working always and in all. “The Lord looked down to see the city and the tower," ", after the manner of men,” says Philo,“ Moses speaks ; since who does not know that he who looks down, necessarily leaves one place and takes another. But all is full of God. He em- braces, but is not embraced; and to Him alone it happens to be everywhere, and yet nowhere. Nowhere, because he created space and things corporeal; and it is not becoming to say that the Creator is contained in others, the things created, but every- where, because He leaves no part of the world void; since by His presence He holds together the earth and water, and the wide heaven, and all things.” The Logos made the world. The ideal of creation, according to Plato, existed in the mind of God. Philo said that the Logos created the world after the pattern set forth in the ideal. But we must take care that the necessity of personifying does not mislead us. We have already seen that the ideal was itself the Logos. God's thought was His image, and as the thought was * Tłe soul of the universe, is, according to our definition, God. -- Philo. CREATION IDEAL AND VISIBLE. 87 the likeness of God, so man was the likeness of the Logos. Creation may thus be regarded either as flowing forth from God, or, as being willed by Him. It is in reality an emanation; but as we personify God in the Logos, we must consider it as an act of the will. « Moses," says Philo, “ taught that the material or younger creation was formed on the model of the archetypal or elder creation. As a plan exists in the mind of an architect, so did creation exist ideally in the mind of God. In the be- ginning, that is, out of time, God created the incorporeal heaven and the incorporeal earth, after the model perceptible by the mind. He created also the form of air and of empty space. He called the air darkness, and the space the deep. He then made the incorporcal subst:nces of the elements, and at last the ideal man; after forming the invisible heaven and earth with their inhabitants, the Creator formed the visible. But He could not be entirely responsible for the creation of mixed natures; so he called in others. — Let us make man."" The creation of Adam was the creation of human reason not yet united to a body. Through its union with the sensuous came the fall of man. The fall, in Philo's judgment, was a necessity, the natural result of creation; but it was a step in the divine proceedure. Man shall rise through the Logos, through the working of the divine Reason within him ; for the mind of man is a fragment of the Deity; his immortal nature is no other than the Spirit of God. It shall yet subdue the body, and rise to the purely divine.* * To make out for Philo something like a congruous system, it has been thought desirable to pass by his inconsistencies, and especially his allegorical trifling with the Scriptures. “ It is no easy matter," says Dähne,“ to deter- mine the qualities which Philo gives to matter, since he, like all his philo- sophical predecessors, in order to lead over all imperfection to this which he did not know how to separate in any other way from the most perfect God, placed matter along aside of God as a second principle, which was naturally bound up with Hiin ; but with this the national faith was at war; and as the faith of the people forbade its entrance, it was kept in the back ground ; some- times he seems to forget it, and sometimes lic goes from one school to another. The same with all the Alexandrians, Heathen and Christian, and the same too with the Gnostic Heretics. Philo calls matter the void,' that which is empty ;' and, like Plato's evil world-soul, he makes it the cause of evil. He seems to admit its existence as a something; and though he receives the axiom that nothing from nothing comes, he speaks, at times, of matter as if it had been created, having had no previous existence. And though he has spoken in full, concerning creation and the first existence of the sensuous world, he yet says that 'It is the most absurd of all ideas, to fancy that there ever was a time when the world did not exist, for its nature is without any beginning and with- out any end.'» God eternally creates. There was no time before the world. It is constituted by the movement of the heavens. Eternity has no past or future, it is now. There is no time in God. The days of creation are merely the 88 THE CABBALA. THE CABBALA.-The Cabbala is the secret tradition of the Jews, which explains the hidden meaning of the Scriptures, and contains the true exoteric doctrine of Rabbinical Judaism. The origin of the Cabbala is unknown. The present collection of books which profess to unfold it are supposed to have origin- ated about the first or second century of the Christian era; but concerning the age of the doctrines contained in them we know nothing. The mystical Rabbis ascribe the Cabbala to the Angel Razael, the reputed teacher of Adam, ando say that the Angel gave Adam the Cabbala as his lesson book in paradise. From him it descended to generation after generation. Noah read it in the ark; Abraham treasured it up in his tent; and through Jacob it was bequeathed to the chosen people. It was the charter of the national wisdom; their secret masonic order of succession. God speaks, and it is done. “When God spoke to Moses, all the people saw the voice. The voice of man is audible, but the voice of God is visible in truth. What God speaks is not His word, but His works, which eyes and not ears perceive.” It would be a sign of great simplicity, Philo thinks, for a man to suppose that the world was created in six days; or, indeed, created at all in time ; but naked truth can only be received by very wise men; it must be put in the form of lies before the multitude can profit by it. The creation of Eve is manifestly a fable. God had put Adam, or human reason into an ecstacy (the Greek word), and the spiritual came in contact with the sensuous. In Genesis iii, 15, God says to the serpent, “ It shall bruise thy head ; ” Who ? Evidently the woman, says Philo ; yet the Greek word is He. It cannot refer, grammaticaily, to the woman, who is feminine ; nor to seed, which is neuter; it must then refer to the mind of man that shall bruise the head of the serpent, which is the cause of union between the mind and the sense. Eve bare Cain possession ;-the worst state of the soul is self-love, the love of individuality. Abel, or, vanity, was next conceived, in which the soul found out the vanity of possession. Cain slew Abel in a field, which is the man in whom the two opposite principles contended. From Cain sprung a wicked race ; the evil consequences flowing from Cain's victory, when every desire after God was destroyed. Another interpretation of Cain killing Abei, is, that Cain killed himself, showing that the evil-doer naturally reaps the reward of his evil deeds. Abraham leaving Chaldea was his leaving the sensuous. The Babylonian Talmud complained that the Seventy had trans- lated Gen. i, 27," Male and Female created he him.” Philo vindicated this translation, because the ideal man was masculo-feminine. “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; and in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” The Seventy make the pronoun in the first verse singular ; but in the other two, the pronouns are plural, because, says Philo, the reason- able soul is alone required for the practice of virtue ; but to enjoy the for- bidden fruit, there is need not only of the soul but of the body and of sense. “ Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared :" the body is given to man for sacrifice. It is to be renounced. When the high priest entered the Holy of Holies he became God. Where we read “ There shall be no man in the tabernacle," Philo interprets -When the high priest shall enter into the Holy of Holies, he shall be no more a man, until he comes forth again. EN-SOPH. 89 symbol. By its instruction Moses brought the Jews out of Égypt, and by its cunning wisdom Solomon built the temple without the sound of a hammer. That the collection of books which we possess is the original Cabbala may be true, though its wisdom much resembles that of the schools of Alexandria. The likeness of the Cabbalistic theology in some points to that of Zoroastrianism, has suggested the time of the captivity as the probable date of the origin of its earlier parts; but a like- ness of this kind proves nothing. Its nearest kindred is the writings of Philo, and it is of nearly the same intrinsic worth. The whole conceivable universe of being, spiritual and materi- al, is one. It proceeded from one, and the process of this pro- cession is the subject of the metaphysics of the Cabbala. It shows how all spirits and spirit worlds are on the one side blend- ed with God, and how on the other they flow out into the visible world, and are connected with it. The first of beings, the chief Being, is En-soph; eternal and necessary, the everlasting or the oldest of existences. He is the absolute Unity, the Essence of essences, pre-eminently Being. But that He may not be con- sidered as any one of the things that are, He is also called Non-being. He is separated from all that is, because He is the substance of all that is, the principle of all things, both as potential and as actual. Before creation, He is God concealed, dwelling in the thick darkness; but by creation, He is God revealed, with His light filling space infinite. Unrevealed He is the unopened fountain of spirit, life, and light; with His self- manifestation, these flow forth to all beings. He opened His eye, according to the Cabbalistic hieroglyphic, and light, spirit, and life streamed forth to all worlds. This self-manifesting of God concealed, was creation or emanation. The power of the Infinite flowed forth in its three- fold form. The first act of unfolding, that which preceeded creation, was called the word or speech of God. It is not dis- tinct from God and the world. Priority or antecedence merely expresses the order of sequence. The Cabbalists, like Philo, know nothing of time, but as existing for the human mind. God and His manifestations are eternal. This Word was the first ray, the original, in which the principles of conception and pro- duction were united; the father and mother principle of the actual universe; the alpha and omega, the universe of forms; the first-born of God, and the creator of all things ; at once the image of the ineffable God, and the form or pattern of the visible worlds, through which it proceeds as a divine ray in all 90 THE SEPHIROTHS. the divine at they are His vesy these He flamace of thee from the ken up or 1> degrees of light, life, and spirit. At the head of this grada- tion is the celestial man, Adam Kadmon, the old or first Adam, who is united to the Infinite in and through the first ray, and is identical with that ray or word of God. He is the Macrocosm or great world, the archetype of the Microcosm or little world. In the celestial Adam ve eternally exist. He is that wisdom, of whom it is said, that of old His delights were with the sons of men. From En-soph emanate ten Sephiroths, or luminous circles. These represent the divine attributes. They manifest His wis- dom, perfection and power. They are His vesture: “He clothes Himself with light as with a garment." By these He reveals Himself. They are also called the instruments which the su- preme Architect employs in the operations of His ceaseless activity. They are not however instruments like the tools of an artizan, which may be taken up or laid down at pleasure. They are as the flame from the burning coal. They come from the essence of the Infinite. They are united to Him. As the flame discovers force which before lay concealed in the coal, so do these resplendent circles of light reveal the glory and the majesty of God. They are from Him, and of Him, as heat from the fire, and as rays from the sun; but they are not dis- tinct from His Being. He suffers neither trouble nor sorrow when He gives them existence. They are no deprivation of His being; but as one flame kindles another without loss or violence, so the infinite Light sends forth His emanating Sephiroths. When the primordial ray, the first-born of God, willed to create the universe, He found two great difficulties.—First, all space was full of this brilliant and subtle light, which poured forth from the divine Essence. The creative Word must therefore form a void in which to place the universe. For this end He pressed the light which surrounded Him, and this compressed light withdrew to the sides and left a vacuum in the centre. The second difficulty arose from the nature of the light. It was too abundant, and too subtle for the creation to be formed of it. The creative Word therefore made ten circles, each of which became less luminous in proportion as it was removed from Himself. In this way, from En-soph to the meanest ex- istence, we have a connected universe of being. The infinite light or emanation of the darkness is the All God. In His infinitude are placed all ranks and orders of existence. Around Him, in what we are compelled by the imperfection of thought and speech to call His immediate presence, are the pure spirits MATTER NOT A REAL EXISTENCE. 91 of the highest sphere. Then spiritual substances less perfect. After these are angels or spirits clothed with bodies of light, which serve both as a covering and as chariots to convey then whither they will. Then follow spirits imprisoned in matter, subject to the perpetual changes of birth and death. Last of all gross matter itself, that of which human bodies and the world are composed, the corruption of the pure divine substance deprived of the perfections of spirit, and light, and life,—divinity obscured. The Cabbalists believe in creation, but only in the sense of emanation. They do not find in Scripture that God made the world out of nothing. “From nothing, nothing comes” is with them an established doctrine. No one thing, they say, can be drawn from nothing. Non-existence cannot become ex- istence. Either all things are eternal, which, they say is atheism, or they have emanated from the divine Essence. If it is object- ed how matter could emanate from God, they answer, that matter is not an actual existence, and in its logical annihilation they are not less successful than other philosophers. The efficient Cause being spirit, must, they say, produce what is like itself. Its effect must be a spiritual substance. True, indeed, there exists something gross, palpable, and material, but its ex- istence is only negative-a privation of existence. As darkness is a privation of life, as evil is a privation of good, so is matter a privation of spirit. As well say that God made dark- ness, sin, and death, as say that He made the substances which we call sensible and material. The sum is-all is a manifestation of God. The divine Word is manifesting itself always, and in all places. Angels and men, beasts of the field and fowls of the air, animated insects, grains of sand on the sea-shore, atoms in the sunshine-all, so far as they do exist, have their existence in that which is Divine. Authorities :-Mangey's Edition of the Works of Philo; the Translation of Philo in Bohn's Library ; Dähne's Geschichtliche Darstellung der Jüdisch- Alexandrischen Religions-Philosophie ; Cabbala Denudata. CH A PTE Ꭱ V. NEO-PLATONISM. TT is only Ammonius the porter,--said some Alexandrians to I each other. “He professes to teach the philosophy of Plato ;” and they laughed contemptuously, thinking how much better it would suit him to be making his day's wages at the harbour instead of troubling his mind about essences and first principles, entelechies, potentialities, and actualities. But the Alexandrians were earnest truth seekers, and when Ammonius Saccas intimated that he was to lecture on philosophy, an audience was soon collected. Among this audience was a young man with a look of unusual earnestness. He had listened to many philosophers. He had questioned many sages. His search for truth had been deep and earnest, long and ardent; now he is about to abandon it as hopeless. The abyss of scepticism lies before him. He knows no alternative but to go onward to it; and yet his spirit pleads that there must be such a thing as truth within the reach of man. The universe cannot be a lie. On the verge of despair he listens to Ammonius, and ere many words had been spoken, he exclaims.“ This is the man I am seeking.” That pale, eager youth was the great Plotinus, the mystical spirit of Alexandria, who, with Plato in his hand, was destined to influence the religious philosophy of all succeed- ing ages. With the devotion of a true philosopher, Plotinus sat for eleven years at the feet of the Alexandrian porter. He then visited the East, that he might learn the philosophies of India and Persia. Rich in Asiatic speculation, he returned to Rome, and opened a school of philosophy. Charmed by his eloquence, multitudes of all ranks gathered around him. Men of science, physicians, senators, lawyers, Roman ladies, enrolled themselves as his disciples; nobles dying, left their children to the charge of the philosopher; bequeathing to him their property, to be expended for their children's benefit. Galienus wished to re-build Campania, and place him over it, that he might form a new society on the principles of Plato's republic. Strange and GOD THE TEACHER OF MAN. 93 phic prayout Plotiole objess with truth Chy? on, thes in the philosprayer to God.us regarded philos improve his intology t wonderful was the power over men possessed by this mystical phil- osopher. He discoursed of the invisible; and even the Romans listened. As he himself had been in earnest, so were men in earnest with him. What had he to tell them? What was the secret of his power ? There was a new element in Plotinus which was not found in the old Greek philosophers. He was religious, he wished to be saved. Indeed, this word was used by the Neo-Platonists in the same sense as it was used by the church; only, the way of salvation for them was through philosophy. They sought to know God, and what revelation of truth God made to the human mind. Aristotle could pass with indifference from theology to mathematics, his sole object being to improve his intellectual powers; but Plotinus regarded philosophical speculation as a true prayer to God. He had, as he explains it, embraced the philosophical life, and it was the life of an angel in a human body. The object of knowledge was the object of love; perfect knowledge was perfect happiness, for, necessarily, from the right use of reason would follow the practice of virtue. Neo-Platonism has been called Eclectic, and this rightly. It not only borrowed from other systems, but with some of them it sought to be identified; and on many points the identity is not to be disputed. That the senses alone could not be trusted had been abundantly proved, and individual reason only led to scepticism. The one remaining hope was in the universal reason. But between reason individual and reason universal, there is a great breach : the former has but a partial participation in the latter, and is therefore defective. Common sense is the judgment of an aggregate of individuals, and is to be trusted to the extent that, that aggregate partakes of the universal reason. Beyond this no school of Greek philosophy had as yet advanced. A further step had been indicated by Parmenides and Plato, and is now consistently and logically made by Plotinus. That step was to identify the individual reason with the universal; but this could only be done by the individual losing itself in the universal. There is truth for man just in proportion as he is himself true. Let man rise to God, and God will reveal Himself to him. Let man be still before the awful majesty, and à voice will speak. In this divine teaching, inspiration or breath of God passing over us, is the only ground of truth. And the reason is, that our home from which we have strayed is in the bosom of the Infinite. He is near us at all times, but we do not feel His presence because we love self. Let tmas to identifiently and Poliated by Parade nos yet advan Beyond 94 REVELATION MADE TO REASON. us put aside what holds us back from Him; all that weighs us down and prevents us ascending to the heights of divine contemplation. Let us come alone, and in solitude seek com- munion with the Spirit of the universe, and then shall we know Him who is the true and the Good. When we become what we were before our departure from Him, then shall we be able truly to contemplate Him, for in our reason He will then contemplate Himself. In this ecstacy, this enthusiasm, this intoxication of the soul, the object contemplated becomes one with the subject contemplating. The individual soul no longer lives. It is exalted above life. It thinks not, for it is above thought. It thus becomes one with that which it con- templates; which then is neither life nor thought, for it is above both. It is not correct to say that Plotinus abandoned reason for faith; he holds fast to reason, but it is human reason, at one with the Divine. To the mind thus true, thus united to universal reason, truth carries with it its own evidence. Our knowledge begins with the sensuous world. The mani- fold is, at first, alone accessible to us. We cannot see that which is eternal till purified by long labours, prayers, and this particular illuminating grace of God. At first our weakness is complete; We must penetrate the nature of the world to learn to despise it, or, if it embraces any spark of true good, to seize it and use it to exalt our souls and lead them back to God. As Plato in. structed by Heraclitus not to name a river, not even to point to it with his finger, yet fixed his eyes on the fleeting waters before contemplating the eternal Essence, so Plotinus stops for a mo- ment among the phenomenal; seeing in sensation, not the foundation, but the occasion of science. The order of being is not disturbed by the changes in the sensuous world. That order must be the proper object of knowledge, and not those many individuals which are ever changing. There can only be a science of the universal, for that alone is permanent. We quit the phenomenal world for another; the eternal, immutable, and intelligible. There spirits alone penetrate, and there thought di- rectly seizes essences. True knowledge is that which teaches us the nature of things, penetrates directly the nature of objects, and is not limited merely to the perception of images of them. This much had been established by Plato, and some think by Aristotle too; but Plotinus was carried beyond through this rational knowledge to a revelation or vision of the Infinite, granted to the soul that had been purified by mental and spirit- ual exercises. : PLOTINUS THEOLOGY ECLECTIC. 95 _ The theology of Plotinus was a combination of the theologies of Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Parmenides and his followers had carried Dialectics to their last consequence, and the result was that God was the immoveable One. Socrates rebelled against the Eleatic deity, and, taking up the “mind” of Anaxagoras, which created the world, he ascribed to it also the preservation and moral government of the universe. Plato was partly faithful to his master Socrates. He too contended for the moveability of God, though had he followed out consistently the Dialectical method which he received from the Eleatics, he would have come to the same conclusion as they did; but he recoiled from the theology of Eleaticism, and made God a Cre- ator. Aristotle combatted the God of Plato as being too much related to the sensuous world, and substituted a mover, who was moveable; and above him in another sphere, an immove- able Mover, who alone is God. Plotinus did not regard these theologies as contradictory. Each contained a truth of its own. He could not reconcile them by reason, but he could receive them and see their harmony by an intuition which was above reason. He admitted Plato's method, and Plato's God. He admitted, too, Aristotle's doctrine of the first principle, which must be immoveable, and his interpretation of the Dialectical method, that it could stop only at simple Unity; yet, he said, God must be a cause, hence a threefold God-a God in three hypostases, the Unity of Parmenides, the immoveable Mover of Aristotle, and the Demiurgus of Plato. The Demiurgus, world maker, or world-soul, is the third hypostasis of the Trinity of Plotinus. It produces things move- able, and is itself moveable; but it is nevertheless universal, excluding from its bosom all particularity, and all phenomena; it is unlike our souls which are but “souls in part.” The Demiur- gus is God, but not the whole of God; it is entirely disengaged from matter, being the immediate product and the most perfect image of "mind.” It does not desire that which is beneath it, but is intimately united to God, and derives from Him all its reality, and brings back to Him all its activity and all its power; or rather it is one with Him, though existing as a dis- tinct hypostasis; it is the all of life in whose essence all things live. Plants and animals,-yea, minerals, stones, and pebbles, are all animated by it; for it is the only true element in nature. But, whatever its manifestations, it is still one and the same. We may see it manifested as the divine Socrates; or as a simple brute, leading the mere insect life; as one of the deities of the 96 THE TRINITY OF PLOTINUS. mythology, as a blade of grass or as a grain of dust. It is at once everywhere, and yet nowhere; for, as spirit, it has not any where. It proceeds from “mind” as the ray from the radi- ating centre, the heat from fire, or the discursive from the pure reason. This "mind” from which it proceeds, is the second hypostasis ; Plato identified the two. Mind was the Demiur- gus, or world-maker, and not different from the archetypal world. Plotinus made the distinction that he might separate God more from the world, and at the same time unite Him more closely to it. Mind is the divine Logos, God knowable and conceivable by man; but God is above human knowledge and finite conception; therefore, said Plotinus, repeating Plato, “O man, that mind which you suppose, is not the first God; He is another, more ancient and divine." This is the first hypostasis, the simple primordial Unity; the Being without acts and attributes, immutable, ineffable, without any relation to generation or change. We call Him Being, but we cannot stop at this; He is more than Being; He is above all that which our minds or senses reveal to us of being. In this sense He is above Being; He is Non-Being. The laws of reason cannot be applied to Him. We cannot declare the mode of His exist- ence. He is the super-essential Unity; the only original and positive Reality; the source whence all reality emanates. What more can we say? In this Unity, by means of the Logos or mind, and the Demiurgus, all things exist. It is the universal bond, which folds in its bosom the germs of all existence. It is the enchained Saturn of mythology; the father of gods and men; superior to mind and being, thought and will; the absolute; the unconditioned; the unknown. The three persons of this Trinity are co-eternal and consubstantial; the second proceeding from the first, and the third from the first and second. Duality originates with mind, for mind only exists because it thinks existence; and existence being thought, causes mind to stand over against it as existing and thinking. Between the supreme God or first person of the Trinity, and the Demiurgus, there is the same connection as between him who sows and him who cultivates. The super-essential One being the seed of all souls, casts the germs into all things, which participate of Him. The Demiurgus cultivates, distributes, and transports into each the seeds which come from the supreme God. He creates and com- prehends all true existences, so that all being is but the varieties of mind; and this being is the universal Soul, or third person in the Trinity. Thus all things exist in a triune God. The MATTER A PHANTOM. 97 supreme One is everywhere, by means of mind and soul, mind is in God, and in virtue of its relation to the things that pro- ceed from it, it is everywhere. Soul is in mind, and in God, and by its relation to the material, it too is everywhere. The material is in the soul, and, consequently, in God. All things which possess being, or do not possess being, proceed from God, are of God, and in God. The material world presented the same difficulty to Plotinus that it had done to other philosophers. It flowed necessarily from God, and being necessary, it could have had no beginning, and can have no end. Yet it was created by the Demiurgus, that is, it existed in the Demiurgus; for creation was out of time, it was in eternity, and, consequently eternal.* Before the creation, according to Plato, there existed God the Creator, the idea of creation, and the matter from which to create. These three are eternal and co-existent. But the ex- istence of matter is a non-existence; for, being a thing of change, it is next to nothing, if it is anything; but more prob- ably it is nothing. The real existences then are God and His thoughts, the Creator and the ideas of things. And as these thoughts existed always in the mind of the Deity, creation is eternal; for the things which we see, are but images of those which are not seen. If Plato left any doubt about the nothing- ness of matter, Plotinus expelled it. Like a true chemist, he reduces matter to a viewless state. He deprives it of the quali- ties with which our minds endow it, which we commonly suppose to be its properties, and when deprived of these it evanishes. It is found to be nothing, having neither soul, intelligence, nor life. It is unformed, changeable, indeterminate, and without power. It is therefore non-being. Not in the sense in which motion is non-being, but truly non-being. It is the image and phantom of extension. To the senses, it seems to include in itself, contraries—the large and the small, the least and the greatest, deficiency and excess; but this is all illusion, for it lacks all being, and is only a becoming. Often when it appears great, it is small. As a phantom, it is, and then it is not. It “The Alexandrians did not make the phenomenal world eternal. Eternity meant with them the plenitude of being. Now the world is divisible and move- able ; it is therefore not perfect, and, consequently, not eternal. It has a cause, and that causc is God." This is M. Simon's judgment; bnt all Pla- tonists, including Plato, contradict themselves when they speak about crcation. Even S. Augustine, in his “ City of God," makes crcation eternal ; he likens it to an impress on the sand. The impress and the hand that made it are both cternal, The impress is the cternal effect of an eternal Cause, II 98 THE BURDEN OF THE FLESH. becomes nothing, not by change of place, but because it lacks reality. The images in matter are above matter. It is the mirror or image in which objects present divine appearances, according to the position in which they are placed : a mirror which seems full, and appears to be all things, though in reality it possesses nothing, and has no reality except as non-being. God and His thoughts are the only true existences. Material things are, only in so far as they exist relatively to true beings. Subtract the true existences, and they are not. God and His thoughts or emanations, in their totality, embrace all existences throughout the universe. God is so far separated from His emanations, that we must not confound Him with any one of them; but they are all in and by Him. There are grades of being from that which is everywhere and yet nowhere, to that which must be somewhere ; from God who is pure spirit, to that which has a finite material form, and occupies a definite space. Plotinus found the germs, at least, of all his doctrines, in Plato.. The supreme Good he identified with the absolute Unity; and though in some places Plato calls God a soul, and ascribes to Him the creation of the world, yet in the Timaeus he evidently regards mind as the Demiurgus; and this Demiurgus produces the soul of the world. Plotinus thus sums up Plato's doctrine : “All is outside of the King of all; He is the cause of all beauty. That which is of the second order, is outside of the second principle; and that which is of the third order, is outside of the third principle. Plato has also said that the cause of all had a Father, and that the cause or Demiurgus produced the soul in the vase in which he makes the mingling of the like and the unlike. The cause is mind, and its Father the Good, that which is above mind and essence. Thus Plato knew that the Good engendered Mind, and that Mind engendered Soul." Matter being the non-existent or the deprivation of existence, by coming into relation with it, the human soul was so far alienated from God; therefore Plotinus despised the material, Our bodies are that from which we should strive to be freed, for they keep us from a complete union with the Divine. We ought then to mortify the flesh, and live an ascetic life, that we may be delivered from the participation of the body. Plo- tinus practised what he taught; his mind fixed on the invisible, and foretasting the joys of the divine union, he lived indifferent to sensuous pleasures; wishing to attenuate his body into spirit. Regarding it as a calamity that he had ever been born into this world, he refused to teil his friends his birthday, lest they ESITYO PORPHYRY. BERARTTEL ** 99 God. ligion. Phi.called the lowed should celebrate an event so sad. When asked for his portrait, he said it was surely enough for us to bear the image with which nature had veiled us, without committing the folly of leaving to posterity a copy of that image ; and when dying, he took leave of his friends with joy, saying, That he was about to lead back the divine within him to that God who is all in all. PORPHYRY.—To follow the other Neo-Platonists is but to follow the copyists of Plotinus. His most árdent and most dis- tinguished disciple was the celebrated Porphyry. When Porphyry differs from his master, the difference is only in details. His supreme God is the same super-essential Unity in three hypos- tases which, if differently named, are yet the counterpart of the Plotinian Trinity. We have the same expressions of the Unity being everywhere, and yet nowhere; all being, and yet no being; called by no names, and yet the eternal source of all beings that have names; outside of whom there is neither thought nor idea, nor existence; before whom, the totality of the world is as nothing, but because He is pure Unity, and superior to all things called by pre-eminence, God. With Porphyry Neo- Platonism made a closer alliance with religion. Philosophy, which had formerly banished the popular deities, now re-called them to its aid. The ancient religion, about to expire, once more glowed with life. At the root of Polytheism there had been a Mono- theism, but their harmonious co-existence had hitherto been ap- parently impossible. Now they shake hands; the philosopher sees his philosophy in the popular worship; and the devout worship- pər sees his religion sanctioned by the speculations of philosophy. Plato had conjectured that there was a chain of being from the throne of God to the meanest existence. To make up the links of this chain was the favorite work of the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, both Heathen and Christian. Porphyry undertook it, and for this purpose he required all the gods, heroes, and demons of antiquity, with all the essences, substances, emana- tions that had been cogitated by all the schools of all the philcs- ophers. He erected a pyramid of being. First: God, or the One in three hypostases. Next the soul of the world. Here Porphyry differed from Plotinus, who made the world-soul the same as the third person of the Trinity. Porphyry admitted it to be a being the first of creatures but begotten the great intermedial between God and man.' It consists of the world, the fixed stars, the planets, the intelligible gods, all of which are children and servants of the Supreme. Under these were demons, and genii, principalities and powers, archangels, angels, I 2 100 IAMBLICIU personifications of the forces of nature, and other heavenly messengers; all helping in some way to bridge the distance by constituting grades of being from the Trinity to man. IAMBLICHUS.-While Porphyry was expounding Plotinianism at Rome, Iamblichus and Hierocles were continuing the succession at Alexandria, but not without some change. The theory of the Triad, as we have seen, was born at Alexandria, through the necessity of reconciling the absolute, immoveable God of Dialectics with the necessarily moveable Demiurgus. Plotinus and Porphyry could not give movement to the absolute God, nor immoveability to the creative god; nor could they admit many gods, so they believed in a God, who, without coming out from Himself, trans- forms Himself eternally into an inferior order, and thus renders Himself by a kind of self diminution, capable of producing the manifold. To preserve the immoveability of the first God, and the moveability of the third or manifold, they introduce an interme- diary. The doctrine of a Trinity served to preserve the unity, while the hypostases remained distinct. Iamblichus thought to remove the contradiction, by multiplying the intermediaries. In the first rank he put absolute Unity, which enveloped in its bosom the first monads. These are the universal monads which do not suffer any division or diminution of their unity and sim- plicity. The first God is simple, indivisible, immutable. He possesses all the attributes which accord with the plenitude of perfection; the second god possesses the power which engenders the inferior gods ; the plenitude of power; the source of the divine life; the principle of all efficacy; the first cause of all good. The third god is the producer of the world. He gives the generative virtue which produces the emanations and makes of them the first vital forces, from which the other forces are ability of the the of a Trinitis tinct. Iam intermediaries in its embraced in this Triad of gods. Porphyry had began to make philosophy religious, but it was reserved for lam- blichus, his disciple, to bring the work to completion. If the gods of the poets and the people are true gods, it must be proper, thought Iamblichus, that temples be dedicated to them, their oracles consulted and sacrifices daily offered. What higher calling then could there be for a philosopher, than to concern himself with that which concerned the reality of the world, may we not influence it, work upon it, wonders of magic. The soul of the philosopher drinking deep PROCLUS. 101 ious order as the mothis difference into the mysteries of spirit, has intercourse with the spirit world. He becomes the high priest of the universe, the prophet filled with Deity-no longer a man, but a god having intercourse with, yea, commanding the upper world. His nature is the organ of the inspiring deities. To this sublime vocation Iam- blichus was called. He tells us, how communications can be received from the various orders of the spiritual hierarchy. He knows them all, as familiarly as the modern spiritualist knows “ the spheres” of the spirits, with only this difference, that the modern spiritualist evokes the spirits and they come to him; but the philosopher more properly elevates himself to the spirits. The descent of Divinity is only apparent, and is in reality the ascent of humanity. The philosopher by his knowledge of rites, symbols, and potent spells, and by the mysterious virtues of plants and minerals, reaches that sublime elevation, which, ac- cording to Plotinus, was reached by prayer and purification, a clean heart and an intellect well exercised by Dialectics. PROCLUS.--In the early part of the fifth century, late one evening a young man, not yet twenty years of age, arrived at Athens.* He had come from Alexandria to complete his studies under the care of some celebrated philosophers. Before enter- ing the town, he sat down to rest by the temple of Socrates, and refreshed himself with water from a fountain which was also consecrated to the Athenian sage. He resumed his journey; and when he reached Athens, the porter addressing him, said * The conversion of Constantine checked the progress of philosophy. It was restored under Julian, who adhered to the theological school of lamblichus. Julian was a lover of divination, always eager to read the will of the gods in the entrails of the victims. He worshipped the sun as we may suppose the devout Neo-Platonists were used to do, but it was the intelligible sun-God veiled in light-the source of essence, perfection, and harmony. “When I was a boy,'' he says, "I used to lift up my eyes to the ethereal splendor, and my mind, struck with astonishment, seemed to be carried beyond itself. I not only de- sired to behold it with fixed eyes, but even by night when I went outside under a pure sky, forgetting everything besides, I gazed, so absorbed in the beauties of the starry heavens that if anything was said to me I did not hear, nor did I know what I was doing.” The sun which so entranced him in his youth he afterwards worshipped as God-the parent, as some philosophers had said, of all animate things. Libanius says, “He received the rising sun with blood, and again attended him with blood at his setting. And because he could not go abroad so often as he wished, he made a temple of his palace and placed altars in his garden which was purer than most chapels." "By frequent devotious he engaged the gods to be his auxiliaries in war, worshipping Mer- cury, Ceres, Mars, Calliope, Apollo, whom he worshipped in his temple on the hill and in the city." After Julian, philosophy revived at Athens, where it fourished till 520, A.D., when the schools were shut by the decree of Justinian. The last of the Néo-Platonists was John of Damascus. 102 THE TRINITY OF PROCLUS. “I was going to shut the gate if you had not come.” The words of the porter were in after-times interpreted as a prophecy, that if Proclus had not come to Athens, philosophy would then have ceased. He prolonged its existence for another generation. Arrived at Athens he found Syrianus, who was then the master of the school. Syrianus took him to Plutarch, who had been his predecessor, but who had now retired from teaching, having recommended his disciples to Syrianus. Plutarch, struck with the genius and the ardor of young Proclus, wished to be his teacher, and at once they began their studies. Plutarch had written many commentaries on Plato, and to excite the ambition of Proclus he engaged him to correct them, saying, "posterity shall know these commentaries under your name." Syrianus made him read Aristotle that he might be familiar with the in- ferior departments of science; he then opened to him the holy of holies—the divine Plato. When he had mastered Plato, he was initiated into the mysteries of magic and divination. In time he became famous for his universal learning and his sweet persuasive eloquence, which was made yet more attractive by his solemn and earnest manner, added to great personal beauty. Proclus combined all former philosophies, religions, and the- ologies, into one eclectic amalgamation; and brought them to the illustration of Plato, as interpreted by Plotinus, and religion- ized by Porphyry and Iamblichus. In his hands the harp of every school is vocal with the divine philosophy of Plotinus. We still hear discourses of the One and the many; the sterility of the One without the many; and the lifelessness of the many without the One. We still hear how the all is both One and many; and how existence springs from the multiplication of unity. The universe, says Proclus, is constituted by har- mony, and what is harmony but variety in unity. In the mind of the great Architect, ideas exist as one and many. He Him- self is the One--the highest Unity which embraces the three divine unities, essence, identity, variety. This is the first Triad, which Proclus repeats in all forms, and with which repeated he fills all conceivable voids and vacuums in the universe of being. From this first Trinity proceed all others; as simple being is three in one, so are all other beings; each having two extremes and an intermediary. If we realize the Triad; essence, identity, Variety, the result is being, life, mind. Every unity, which is also a trinity, proceeds from the Trinity; and each is of the multiplicity which belongs to the supreme One, the prime Unity, who is Non-Being, because He is above Being. But the necessities ized by stration of electica THE PYRAMID OF BEING. 103 and limitations of our reason require us to speak of Him as Being. He is therefore called Being absolute, of whose divine substance all things are full. Could we conceive a pyramid of beings, of which, each is a trinity in unity, we might have a conception of the favorite ærial image of the brain of Proclus. But as the pyramid of our imagination is finite, we must not think that it truly represents all being, for that is infinite. One moment we may say Non-Being is at the head of it, for the primal One is above being, and nothing is at the base of it, for beneath it is that which is below all being; but the next mo- ment we must declare that being has no bounds, nor boundary walls, that there is no “beyond” outside the all of the universe; and therefore it is that God who is beyond being, whom we cannot by reason understand, can yet be known as infinite Being. We must then think of a pyramid from the summit of which supreme perfection descends to the lowest degree of being ; constituting, preserving, adorning all things, and uniting them to itself. First, we may think of it as descending to beings truly exist- ing, then to divine genii, then to divinities which preside over the human race, then to human spirits, at last to animals, plants, and the lowest forms of matter that which borders on nothing. In such an image we may have an idea of the eternal procession from Him who is super-essential, and therefore most truly essence, to that which is non-essential and no kind of essence. In the primordial One all things have their existence and unity. They derive their multiplicity by a progression which originates in the separating of the One in the same way that rays diverge and proceed from a centre. So that though in nature there be many forms, and in the universe there be many gods, and in waste places many genii, and in heaven many spirits, and in hades many heroes, there is but one essence to all. It is every- where the same. That essence is in us; God is all; and we and all existence are but the expressions of the One ineffable and supreme. Proclus was a genuine Platonist. He began and ended with God. He saw all things in God, and God in all things. The world is before us a thing of change, its phenomena are ephem- eral. We are spectators of the drama. Is our being only phenomenal ? Are we but a part of the world, or is there in us anything of the One, the Eternal ? Our feet are in the mire and our heads among the clouds. Our first thoughts reveal to us our greatness and our nothingness; our exile and our native land; God who is our all; and the world through which we In such thing is supes non-essentie 104 THE ONE AND THE MANY. must pass and rise to God. This triad is the foundation of philosophy, the indisputable data from which we must begin. That the most perfect exists, Proclus did not stop to enquire. Our reason proves, clearly and distinctly, that it does. As little does he ask if the world exists, it is before us; we can see it and feel it. Man by his passions and the wants of his body, is drawn to the earth; by philosophy, inspiration and divination, he is elevated to God. The contradiction involved in the identity of the One and the many was not less for Proclus than it had been for his predecess- ors. The One is perfect, the many are imperfect. The One is eternal, the many are temporal. The One existed alone, it is necessary to His perfection that He be alone, and thus truly the All before the imperfect was made; but it is also necessary to His perfection that He be not alone; He must have thought, and thought must have an object; God must be the absolute Unity, and yet God creating; the One of Parmenides, the “immoveable Mover” of Aristotle and yet the mind or Demiurgus of Plato; the one is God in Himself, the last sanctuary of the Divinity, the other is the God of creation and providence, the Lord and ruler of the world. Hence a Trinity which did not differ from that of Plotinus. The super-essential One, mind or the most perfect form of being and soul, which is necessary to the existence of mind, and preserves its immoveability while it unites it to the world. “From the hands of Proclus," says M. Simon, “ we re- ceive the god of experience, and the god of speculation separately studied by the ancient schools, reunited by the Alexandrians in a Unity as absolute as the God of the Eleatics, and mind as free, as full of life and fecundity as the Demiurgus of Plato.” * This Chapter is founded on the work of M. Jules Simon Histoire de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie; with the help of Plotinus' Enneads, Porphyry's life of Plotinus, Proclus on the theology of Plato, his Commentary on the Timacus, his Orphic Verses, and the Histories mentioned at the end of the Chapter on Greek Philosophy CHAPTÉR VI.' . THE CHURCH. The reader who remembers the first paragraph of this book, will not be startled to find the Church in this connection. We do not here enter into controversy, we only give the record of beliefs. The Neo-Platonist school began with Philo the Jew, and ended with Proclus. This is one account. Another is, that it began in a very different quarter, and is not ended yet. In reality, there were three kinds of Neo-Platonism; one allied itself with the old Gentile religion, another with Judaism, and a third with the new religion of the Crucified. It had formerly been disputed whether Plato or Moses was the founder of Greek philosophy, and now it is disputed if the Neo-Platonic philo- sophy was borrowed from Christianity, or if the philosophical Alexandrian fathers borrowed their philosophy from the Pagan Neo-Platonists. The New Testament authors in whose writings we find definite manifestations of acquaintance with Greek philosophy, are S. John and S. Paul; indeed John's gospel is so marked by Greek doctrine and philosophical speech, as to have led to the supposi- tion that it could not have been written by the fisherman of Galilee. This hypothesis loses its ground when we remember that John lived to a great age, and that the latter years of his life were spent in Asia Minor, where he must have come in con- tact with every form of philosophy then known in the Greek world. It may be true that he did not find the Logos in Plato, but we know from Philo Judaeus, and some of his con- temporaries, that the Logos in a sense nearly allied to that of S. John's was in common use among the Alexandrian Jews. The Logos was in the beginning. It was at once with God, and it was God. John's Logos had the same relation to God as in Plato's theology “Mind” had to “Being," only S. John's went beyond the philosopher. He said that the Logos was incar- nate in Jesus of Nazareth, thus elevating Jesus to equality with God. S. Paul's writings have more of a Hebrew than a Greek cha- racter. His illustrations, his logic, his rhetoric, are all Jewish. But S. Paul, confessedly, was familiar with Greek literature. 106 CHRISTIANITY AND PIIILOSOPHY. That he had many thoughts in common with Philo is evident from such passages as that in the Epistle to the Colossians, where he speaks of the Son as “the image of the invisible God," and that in the Hebrews, where it is said that the Father made the worlds by the Son, who is “ the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person," and that S. Paul did not regard heathen philosophy as purely darkness is manifest from his address to the Athenians, where he quotes and endorses the favorite doctrine of the Greeks, that we are the offspring of God. The relation of Christianity to heathen philosophy is more distinctly traceable in the writings of the Christian fathers, and especially those who were educated where philosophy flourished. The oldest and perhaps most remarkable of these writings, is the Apology of Justin Martyr, where Christ is called “the only begotten of God, the very Logos or universal Reason of which all men are partakers," and on this ground the author maintains that all those were Christians who lived by reason, even though they were esteemed Atheists. It is well known that Justin took for models the Apologies of Quadratus and Aristides, as men- tioned by Dionysius, of Corinth, in his letter to the Athenians. Quadratus was bishop of Athens and successor of S. Paul's philosophical convert Dionysius, the Areopagite. In his Apology which he presented to Hadrian, he calls Christianity a philoso- phy, thus clinging to the cloak of the philosopher, even when a Christian Bishop. * Tatian, who was Justin's disciple, participates in his master's spirit. Before creation, he says, that in a certain sense the Father was alone, but since He liad all power, and was Himself the essential Essence of the visible and invisible, He was not alone, but there was with Him the universe, existing by the power of reason. God Himself, and the Logos which was in Him, was the All. Irenæus says God is wholly reason, and the Son is this rea- son, mind, or Logos. When we receive Christ we bear God in us, and ere we can see God, we must be “ within God.” In say- ing that God is the entire Logos, or the Logos is entire God. Irenæus wished to protest against the higher speculations of * Dorner says that Justin Martyr was the first of the fathers who used the term Logos in the sense of its being the divine Reason. Hitherto it was simply the creative Word. The seed of reason is in all men ; but the all of reason was in Jesus. The soul of man has a natural and essential relation to the Logos. But Jesus is the Logos, the primal reason itself; so that Christianity is a divine philosophy. IRENÆUS AND THE PATRIPASSIAN HERESY. 107 philosophy. His complaint against the Gnostics was, that in seeking after the Bythos they float into the Infinite, which is above God. Now, in the Logos ve have God. The Gnostics said that the One could not be known. Irenæus said God is perfectly known in the Logos. Irenæus had perhaps as little of the spirit of the Greek philosophers as any of the Christian Fathers; but when he sets forth the unity of the Church with itself and with God, he seems to have something of the mystical feelings which possessed the graver spirits of Neo-platonism. Christ, he says, is in the Church as God-man. The Church is one with Him, as He is one with the Father. Christ is the animating and vivifying principle of the Church; it is His flesh. Again, it is a unity of flesh and spirit, in which the Bishop who is the impersonation of the united will of the congre- gation, is the animating spirit. In both, Christ lives, and they bear a God-man character; they are bearers of Christ and bearers of God' This relation is further illustrated by that of a Bishop to his presbyters, "They are fitted to him as strings to the lyre.' The natural development of the doctrine of Irenæus was the Patripassian heresy; for if the Logos is entire God, either there is no God the Father, or if there is, He suffers; and thus God becomes a being subject to suffering and death, conse- quently to changeman identification of God with the world, more fearful than had been made by any philosophical speculation on the divine Essence. Tertullian refuted the Patripassians, and explained with the help of philosophy, how God was the Logos and yet was not the Logos. God, he says, as the object of His own thought is pre-eminently the Son of God as soon as He attains positive reality in the actual world. He has first a mere ideal existence in the essence of God. He is God's thought—the idea of the world or the sum of the thoughts of the world. In this world-idea is involved, that when it arrives at actuality it will still have the God who was incorporated with its idea, that is, the Word. Thus the manifestation of God Himself is interwoven with the idea of the world, and all the divine thoughts become realities; so that the world is a pro- gressive actualization of the thought to which God gives object- ive existence over against Himself. Through the incarnation of Christ, is completed the full realization of the world-ideal. The Logos is thus God immoveable and infinite; and yet it is God associated with the world, God moveable and finite. Tertullian had recourse to Aristotle and Plato to refute the 108 ORIGEN. Patripassians, and Hippolytus had the same assistance for the same work. The fundamental idea of his theology ;' says Dorner, 'is chargeable with approximating in another way to Pantheism, through raising à too hasty opposition to Patri- passianism. Hippolytus showed how God was once alone and nothing with Him, and how He willed to create the world. This was done by thinking, willing, and uttering the idea of the world. But this solitary existence was not real, for He never was without the Word and Wisdom. All was in Him, and He was Himself the All.' The Father,' says Hippolytus, 'is over all; the Son is through all; and the Holy Ghost is in all.' For the best reprsentatives of Christian Neo-platonism, we must turn to the Alexandrian Fathers. Among these the chief is Origen. He as never regarded by the Church as entirely orthodox, but he was in his day the great teacher of Christianity at Alexandria. The Trinity, with Origen, is an eternal process in God. In his time, first arose the question of the eternal son-ship of Christ, and no marvel, for, it is a doctrine, purely Alexandrian. Tertullian made the generation of the Son, a divine act, thereby introducing multiplicity into God. Origen made it an act, eternally completed, and yet, eternally continued. The Son, was not generated once for all, but is continually generated by God in the eternal To-Day.' The Father is the Monad, absolutely indivisible, and infinitely exalted above all that is divided, or multiplied. He is not truth nor wisdom, nor spirit nor reason, but infinitely higher than all these. He is not being nor substance, but far exalted above all being, and all substance. He is the utterly ineffable and incomprehensible One, the Absolute. All truth, goodness and power, are derived from Him, but attributes do not adequately describe Him. We cannot attribute to Him will or wisdom without also ascribing to Him imperfection. The super-essential Monad is above all qualities. The Son is Being, Energy, Soul. Origen wishes to make the Son equal to the Father; but his philosophy compels him to make Him inferior to the Tather as touching His God- head. The Son is related to the manifold world. He cannot be directly grounded in God the Father, because of the Father's unity and unchangeableness. As Aristotle would say, the Father is immoveable, and the Son moveable; only the Son is not outside of God, but in God; and in God that He may be the medium by which the world outside of God, may be brought into the Divine, for we cannot conceive the world ex- isting independently of unity. Necessarily connected with the CLEMENS, OF ALEXANDRIA. 109 ossess Philo Judaeuinning," inthe Word wahrist is also tof His Thus, thesJo ginningnify, it was in eternal generation of the Son, is the eternal generation of the world; for the Son is its ideal, its eternal unity. He is the world-principle, that which connects together the universe of individuals in all their divergencies from each other. He is the permeating substance of the world, its heart and reason, present in every man, and in the whole world. The Son is the truth, the life, the resurrection of all creatures; the one which is at the basis of the manifold, having objectively different modes of existence for different beings, without therefore ceasing to be one Logos. The human race consists of those souls that through sin have fallen from the union with the Son. He could not for- get them, and to restore them, He became incarnate. His soul and ours thus pre-existed together; and as the Logos came upon the man Jesus and united Him to itself, so shall the Logos possess our souls and restore them to itself and GodOrigen rivalled Philo Judaeus in his subtle interpretations of the sacred writings. “The beginning,” in S. John's Gospel, he takes for “the supreme Being.” Thus, the Word was in the beginning will signify, it was in God the Father. « Christ is also the be- ginning, being the wisdom of God and the beginning of His ways." In the first verse of Genesis, the beginning is the Lord Jesus Christ. “In the beginning, that is, in the Word or Reason, God made the heaven and the earth. God is in all respects one, and undivided; but Christ the Logos is many pro- ceeding from the Father as well as from mind." Clemens, of Alexandria, was not less a philosopher than Origen; nor less imbued with the theology that was taught in the heathen schools. The Father, who is the first Cause of all things, Clemens described as ineffable, not to be denoted by any word or sound, but who is only to be thought, and with silent reverence to be adored. But though God cannot be known or manifested in Himself, it is otherwise with the Son. The Father is being, the Son is “the Idea of ideas in the ideal world, the timeless and unbegun Beginning.” Clemens openly defended the truth of Greek philosophy. “I give," he says, “ the name philosophy to that which is really excellent in all the doctrines of the Greek philosophers, and above all to that of Socrates, such as Plato describes him to have been. The opinion of Plato upon ideas, is the true Christian and orthodox philosophy. These intellectual lights among the Greeks have been communicated by God Himself.” Not only had the Christian fathers the Logos in common with the philosophers, but the metaphysical questions concerning the 110 ARIUS, NO PANTHEIST. Trinity, which for centuries disturbed the Church, were kin- dred to the Alexandrian questions on the divine Essence. Plo- · tinus believed one God in three hypostases; but, as he made hypostasis equivalent to nature; he made three gods or three natures in one God. This equivalency of hypostasis to nature, developed in the fifth century into the heresy of Nestorius, who maintained that since there are two natures in Christ there must be two hypostases; which again called forth the opposite heresy of the Monophysites, that the two natures became one by a hypostatical union. The indefinite word, hypostasis, had previ- ously sheltered the heresy of Sabellius, who took it only in the sense of an energy or emanation; so that the three hypostases, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were only three powers or modes of the one God. The word, hypostasis, was finally, abandoned by the Latin Church ; because, says Gregory of Nazianzen, the Litins could not distinguish hypostasis from essence. The Western mind craved a definite dogma; but had no love for the speculative process concerned in the formation of dogmas. For hypostasis the Latins substituted person; making three persons in one God. This was clear and definite, though involv- ing an irremediable contradiction, for a person is an individual distinct from other individuals. A new heresy lurked under the new word; for if the unity of God is to be preserved, the Son and the Spirit must be inferior to the Father. But the heresy of Arius was not entirely excluded from the theology of Origen. It was one side of it, but this stood corrected by the other side. Arius, though an Alexandrian, had but little of the philosophy of his age and country, he was an anti-speculative common-sense theologian, without the remotest element of Pan- theism; the truest disciple of Anaxagoras that had yet appeared in the Church; one whom Aristotle would have pronounced- “a sober, man.” He distinguished broadly and at once between the essence of God and that of creation. He cut down at one stroke all the Alexandrian theories of eternal creation and eternal generation. If, he said, the son is generated, generation is an act; and that implies time, a beginning of existence. If the Son is produced from God, he must be a portion of God; but this cannot be; the Son, therefore, like all created beings, is produced from nothing, and therefore has an essence different from God's. The Alexandrian philosophy was powerful for the refutation of Arius. Alexander* replied that the Logos or wisdom of God a word; then individiction, for and delicion; * Bishop of Alexandria, the opponent of Arius. 111 must be eternal as God Himself; otherwise there must have been a period when God was without reason or wisdom. But it is impossible that He who is reason itself should not know the Father whose reason He is. The Son is indeed generated, said Alexander, but it is impossible to place any interval between Him and the Father; but the generation of the Son surpassed the understanding of the Evangelists, and, perhaps, surpasses that of angels. The Arians said “ There was, when the Son was not;" but this, said Alexander, involves the exist- ence of time. Now time is created by Him, and comes into exist- ence along with the world, so that the time, which is said suphave existed, on the world,cated by Ilim, dar, involves this when thannself, but in the under a deterof the full come in the do supposes the effect to exist before the cause : and how then could He be the first-born of every creature. The Father therefore must always have been Father, and the Son through whom He is Father must have existed always. “ Alexander's aim," says Dorner, “was to establish the closest possible connection between the hypostasis of the Son and His eternal divine Essence. In carrying out this design he decidedly posits a duality in God, and if we may judge from the images employed by him, he conceives the Logos of the Father to be objectified in the Son. His images in themselves would warrant us in concluding that he conceived the Father to have reason and power, not in Himself, but in the Son; and that consequently the Son was the Father Himself under a determinate form or a determination or attribute constituting part of the full conception of the Father. The council of Alexandria, concurring in the doctrine of Alexander, adopted the Neo-Platonic idea of time to reconcile the Sonship of Christ with His eternity." Athanasius was not less an Alexandrian than Alexander. He refuted Arianism with the same arguments. He distinguish- ed clearly between the Deity and the world; but he did not leave God in His transcendent existence as some of the Heathens had done; he made God also immanent in the world. The Logos dwelt in a body, but the Deity was not shut up in that body. He was at the same time in other places, and as He moved the body with which He was united, so did He move the universe. God in the Logos is in the entire creation, for He is in all its powers, extending His providence to all, giving life to all, and embracing the universe without being embraced by it. He is in all, as well as beyond all; in heaven, in hades, in hu- manity, and on earth we may see the Deity of the Logos unfolded before us, and at the same time embracing us. On this imman- 112 BISHOP SYNESIUS. universelbius, of Caesahat of Athan anmost essenced and God what of Af Alexa is only peak of. d. It be primis being uld notas ne ency of the Logos, Athanasius grounded his argument for the divinity of Jesus Christ. If the Logos is in the whole world, yea, in each individual, why could He not also dwell in a man whom He moved, through whom He manifested Himself, even as He manifests Himself in the world. As He is in the sun and moon, so also is He in humanity, which is part of the universe. Eusebius, of Cæsarea, whose orthodoxy is somewhere between that of Arius, and that of Athanasius is not free from the philo- sophy of Alexandria. In His inmost essence, says Eusebius, God is one. It is only with an eye to the world and God's rela- tion to it that we can speak of the Trinity. The unity expresses that which is inmost in God. It contains in it no plurality. This one Being is the absolute, the primal Substance. This Monad or Father cannot communicate His being. He cannot enter into any relation with the world. He could not be a Creator. To mediate between Him and the world there was need of the Logos. The Son is grounded in God, and is a copy of God. He connects the world with God, and makes it worthy of Him. He is the bond that passes through the universe the world soul. The Son was always with the Father, generated out of time, existing before the Æons, yet his existence was effected by an act of God. But more singular than the Neo-Platonism, even of Origen, was that of Synesius, Bishop of Pentapolis. Synesius, however, scarcely professed to be a Christian in any other sense, but as Christianity seemed to him a form of philosophy, nearly related to what he had learned in the schools. When the bishopric was offered to him," he declared candidly," says Neander, “that his philosophical conviction did not, on many points, agree with the doctrines of the church, and among these differences, he reckoned many things which were classed along with the Origenistic here- sies; as for example, the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, his different views of the resurrection, on which point he proba- bly departed far more widely, than Origen from the view taken by the Church, inasmuch as he interpreted it, as being but the symbol of a higher idea. A few quotations from the Hymns of Synesius will show the character of his theology, and its likeness to that of the schools. Rejoicing in immortal glory, God sits above the lofty heights of heaven ; Holy Unity of unities; And first Monad of monads. SYNESIUS' HYMNS. 113 A fragment of the divine Parent Descended into matter ; A small portion indeed, But it is everywhere the One in all All diffused through all. It turns the vast circumference of the heavens, Preserving the universe, Distributed in diverse forms it is present ; A part of it is the course of the stars, A part in the Angelic choir ; A part, with an heavy bond, found an earthly form, And disjoined from the Parent, drank dark oblivion. God, beholding human things, Is nevertheless present in them ; Yet a light, a light there is, even in closed eyes, There is present, even to those who have fallen hither A certain power calling them back to heaven- When having emerged from the billows of life, They joyfully enter on the holy path Which leads to the palace of the Parent. * But Thou art the root of things present, past, and futuro, Thou art Father and Mother ; Thou art masculine; Thou art feminine : Hail ! root of the world ; Hail! centre of things, Unity of divine numbers. * * * Father of all fathers, Father of Thyself ; Fore-father, without father, Son of Thyself; Unity before Unity; Seed of beings; Centre of all. Presubstantial, unsubstantial Mind, Surpassing minds; Changing into different parts, Parent Mind of minds; Producer of gods. Maker of spirits, Nourisher of souls, Fountain of fountains, Beginning of beginnings, Root of roots, Number of numbers, Intelligence and intelligent ; Both intelligible and before intelligible, One and all things, But the One of all things : Root and highest branch. * Thou art what produces, Thou art what is produced ; Thou art what enlightens, 114 S. DIONYSIUS. Thou art what is enlightened ; Thou art what appears, Thou art what is hidden, By Thy own brightness. One and all things, One in thyself, And through all things. Produced after an ineffable manner That Thou mightest produce a son (Who is) illustrious Wisdom, (And) Maker of all things. Thou at the Governor of the unseen world ; Thou art the Nature of natures ; Thou nourishest nature. -- The origin of the mortal, The image of the immortal; So that the lowest part in the world Might obtain the other life. admirers, anderstreet mystiegenuine, but The most remarkable resemblance in any Christian writ- ings, to the doctrines of the Platonists of Alexandria, is found in the once famous works of S. Dionysius. This Saint was the Areopagite who adhered to S. Paul after his discourse at Athens. It was not known for three or four centuries after the death of Dionysius that his works were extant, or even that he had ever written any works. They appeared suddenly in the con- troversy between the Church and the Monophysite heretics, and were quoted in favor of the heretical side. They have never been universally received as genuine, but their sublime specula- tions and their sweet mystical piety have always procured them admirers, and even advocates of their genuineness. The favorite doctrine of three orders in the Church; bishops, priests, and deacons, as the copy and symbol of the three orders in the celestial hierarchy, has always made them dear to church- men. The Abbé Darboy, in a recent Introduction to the works of S. Dionysius, has shown that their author was indeed the Areopagite converted by S. Paul; that he lived in the days when S. John was well known as a theologian, apostle, and evangelist in exile at Patmos; when Timothy and Titus were Bishops of Ephesus and Crete, and when Peter was Pope at Rome. Furthermore that this Dionysius was certainly present at the funeral obsequies of the Virgin Mary, that he was made Bishop of Athens; but having left his Greek Diocese as a missionary to France, he became the veritable S. Denys, who founded the Church of the Gauls. “He did not borrow from Plotinus,” says the Abbé Darboy, “but Plotinus borrowed THE TRINITIES OF DIONYSIUS. 115 from him." Guizot, who is less interested in the advocacy of the “ three orders,” and not concerned for the admission that the Christian fathers drank of the streams of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, takes a different view from that of the Abbé Darboy ; - Neo-Platonism," he says " when forsaken and abandoned by princes, decried and persecuted, had no other alternative than to lose itself in the bosom of the enemy." Brucker's opinion is nearly the same. “The works of S. Dionysius introduced Alex- andrian Platonism into the West, and laid the foundation of that mystical system of theology, which afterwards so greatly prevailed.” He then describes it as “ a philosophical enthusiasm, born in the East, nourished by Plato, educated in Alexandria, matured in Asia, and introduced under the pretence and authority of an Apostolic man into the Western Church." Before the Reformation the genuineness of these writings was an open question in the Catholic Church, and to some extent it is so still. At the Council of Trent they were appealed to as genuine. From that time many Catholic theologians have con- sidered their doctrines in harmony with the teaching of the Church. We have already seen how Plato's Alexandrian disciples con- ceived a universe of being, in which were all grades of existence from the primal One to that which was nothing. We have seen how Porphyry and Proclus filled up the immediate spaces be- tween that which was above and that which was below being, with hypostases of the Trinity, gods, genii, demons, heroes, men, animals, vegetables and unformed matter; all of which had, in God whatever of true existence they possessed. S. Dionysius, as a Christian, had to expel all the gods and demons from this Pagan totality of being; and, as a good churchman, to fill their places with more orthodox existences. Instead of a chain, be- ginning at God, or a pyramid of which the top was primal Unity, S. Dionysius conceived a central and special dwelling of the Eternal, around which were arranged, in consecutive circles, all the orders of being from the highest to the meanest. First, there were Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. Behind them Dominions, Virtues, Powers. Then Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Of the heavenly hierarchy, the ecclesiastical was a copy; bishops, priests, deacons. The “ threes” of Pagan Proclus, were beautiful triads, with the Christian Dionysius. Were not all things trinities in unity? The supreme One was a Trinity. Each grade was a trinity. The ecclesiastical hierarchy a trinity. how pe primal Om being, in who's Alexandra I 2 116 GOD NOT TO BE NAMED. Outside of the heavenly that is, immediately behind the angels, is the order of beings gifted with intellect such as men; then those which have feeling but not reason; and lastly, creatures that simply exist. Light and wisdom, grace and knowledge, emanate from the Supreme, and spread through all ranks of being. Divinity permeates all. The supreme One has called them in their several degrees and according to their several capacities to be sharers of His existence. His essence is the being of all beings, so far as they exist. Even things inanimate partake of Divinity. Those that merely live partake of this naturally vital energy, which is superior to all life, be- cause it embraces all life. Reasonable and intelligent beings partake of the wisdom wł ich surpasses all wisdom; and which is essentially and eternally perfect. Higher beings are united to God by the transcendent contemplation of that divine Pat- tern, and in reaching the source of light they obtain super- abundant treasures of grace, and in a manner express the majesty of the infinite Nature. All these orders gaze admir- ingly upwards. Each is drawn to the Supreme, and each draws towards itself the rank next below it; and thus a continual pro- gress of lower being towards that which is higher, and a continual descent of the Divine, elevating all ranks and helping them in their progress towards God. The Divinity surpasses all know- ledge. He is above all thought and all substance. As the sensible cannot understand the intelligible; as the multiple cannot understand the simple and immaterial, as the corporeal cannot understand the incorporeal, so the finite cannot under- stand the Infinite. He remains superior to all being.--a Unity which escapes all conception and all expression. He is an exist- ence unlike all other existences; the Author of all things, and yet not any one thing; for He surpasses all that is. We ought therefore to think and speak of God only as the Holy Scriptures have spoken, and they have declared Him unsearchable. Theo- logians call Him infinite and incomprehensible, and yet they vainly try to sound the abyss, as if they could fathom the mysterious and infinite depths of Deity. We cannot understand Him, yet He gives us a participation of his being. He draws from His exhaustless treasures and over all things He diffuses the riches of His divine splendors. S. Dionysius anticipates an objection, that if God thus exceeds words, thoughts, knowledge, and being, if He eternally em- braces and penetrates all things, if He is absolutely incom- prehensible, how can we speak of the Divine Names ? He GOD TO BE CALLED BY ALL NAMES. AMES. 117 thout desce the prlinciple an have not ios As in answers, first, that in order to extol the greatness of God and to show that He is not to be identified with any particular being He must be called by no name. And then, secondly, we must call Him by all names. I AM, Life and Truth, God of gods, Lord of lords, Wisdom, Being, Eternal, Ancient of Days. Hé dwells in the heart, in the body, in the soul; He is in heaven and upon earth, and yet he never moves. He is in the world, around it and beyond it. He is above the heaven and all being, yet He is in the sun, the moon, the stars, the water, the wind and the fire. He is the dew and the vapours. He is all that is and yet nothing of it all. In the infinite riches and sim- plicity of his nature, He has eternally seen and embraced all things; so that whatever reality is in anything may be affirmed of Him As, by lines drawn from the centre of a circle to the circumference, so are even the meanest existences united to God. “The blessed Hierotheos," says S. Dionysius, "has taught that the Divinity of Jesus Christ is the cause and complement of all things. It keeps all in harmony without being either all or a part; and yet it is all and every part, because it comprehends all, and from all eternity has possessed all, and all parts. Aug- just Substance! it penetrates all substances, without defiling its purity, and without descending from its sublime elevation. It determines and classifies the principles of things, and yet remains pre-eminently beyond all principle and all classification. Its plenitude appears in that which creatures have not; and its superabundance shines in that which they have.” “As in universal nature,” says the Areopagite,“ the different principles of each particular nature are united in a perfect and harmonious unity-as in the simplicity of the soul the multiplied faculties which serve the wants of each part of the body are united, so we may regard all things, all substances, even the most opposite in themselves as united in the indivisible Unity." From it they all proceed. The Eternal has produced this participation of being. It has an existence which is comprised in Him, but He is not comprised in it. It partakes of Him, but He does not partake of it; for He precedes all being and all duration. From His life flows all life. Whatever now exists has existed in its faithful simplicity in Him. The Areopagite anticipated an objection from the existence of evil. He obviated it, as all his predecessors and successors who felt the same difficulty have done, by denying its existence. Not that he said there was no evil in the world, but that it was not a real being, and, consequently, could not emanate from being. It is only an accident of good, having an existence nowhere. , but thece. Not that same dificus all his 118 GOD UNSEARCHABLE. On the impossibility of knowing the Infinite, S. Dionysius and Plotinus entirely agree. All things speak of God, but nothing speaks the fulness of His perfections. We know both by our knowledge and by our ignorance. God is accessible to reason through all His works; and we discern Him by imagin- ation, by feeling, and by thought; yet He is incomprehensible and ineffable, to be named by no name. He is nothing of that which is, and nothing of that which enables us to comprehend Him. He is in all things and yet, essentially, He is not one of them. All things reveal Him, but none sufficiently declare Him. We may call Him by the names of all realities, for they have some analogy with Him who produced them; but the perfect knowledge of God emerges from a sublime ignorance of Him which we reach by an incomprehensible union with Him. Then we feel how unsearchable He is; then the soul forgets itself and is plunged into the eternal ocean of Deity; then does it receive light among the billows of the Divine glory, and is radiated among the shining abysses of unfathomable wisdom. * The authorities for this chapter are Dorner on the Person of Christ, Neander's Church History, the works of Origen and Synesius, S. Dionysius on the Divine Names and the Heavenly Hierarchies, with the Introduction of the Abbé Darboy, and Bunsen's Hippolytus. The reader who is interested in the relations of philosophy to Christianity in the fifth Century will not omit to read Mr. Kingsley's charming Romance Hypatia. * It is not necessary to our argument to follow the history of the Dionysian writings. At the Council of Constantinople, in the year 533, where they were first cited, the Orthodox at once refused their authority. In the seventh cen- tury, a Presbyter, named Theodorus, composed a work in defence of their genuineness ; but long before this their influence was widely spread, or to speak more correctly, the influence in which they originated. Neander says, “In the last times of the fifth century, a cloister at Edessa, in Mesopotamia, had for its head, an abbot by the name of Bar Sudaili. who had busied him- self in various ways with that mystic theology which always formed one of the ground-tendencies of the Oriental Monachism, and from which had pro- ceeded the writings fabricated in the name of Dionysius thə Areopagite ; as in fact he appeals to the writings of a certain Hierotheos, whom the Pseudo- Dionysius calls his teacher. He stood at first on intimate terms with the most eminent Monophysite teachers, and was very highly esteemed by them. But, as his mystic theology came into conflict with the church doctrine, he crew upon himself the most violent attacks. Espousing the peculiar views of Mon- ophysitism, and more particularly as they were apprehended by the party of Xenayas, he maintained that as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are one divine essence, and as the humanity formed one nature with the godhead in Christ, and his body became of like essence to the divinity; (was deified) so through Him all fallen beings should also be exalted to unity with God, in this way would become one with God ; so that God, as Paul expresses it, should be all in all. If it is true, as it is related, that on the walls of his cell were found CHAPTER VII. HERESY, DY heresy we are to understand the doctrines of sects outside D of the Church; or doctrines that the Church has openly condemned. Catholic theologians say that Pantheism is the written the words, 'All creatures are of the same essence with God;' Tre must suppose that he extended this assertion so as to include not only all ra- tional beings, but all creatures of every kind, and that his theory was-as all existence proceeded by an original emanation from God, so by redemption all existence, once more refined and enobled, would return back to Him. But the question then arises, whether he understood this, after the Pantheistic manner, as a return to the divine essence with the loss of all self-subsistent, individual existence; (as it has often been observed, that mysticism runs into Pantheism; or whether he supposed that, with the coming into existence of finite beings sin also necessarily made its appearance, but that by the redemption this contra- riety was removed, and now at length the individual existence of the creature should continue to subsist, as such in union with God. Our information is too scanty to enable us to decide this question.” In another place speaking of the development of doctrine in the Greek Church Neander says, “The monk Maximus, distinguished by his acute and profound intellect, appeared in the seventh century, as the representative of this dialectic contemplative disposition. It appears from his works, that the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, and of the pseudo-Dionysius, had exercised great influence on his theological views. We may trace the main lineaments of a connected system in his writings. Chris- tianity, as seen in the doctrine of the Trinity, seemed to him to form the right medium between the too contracted view of the idea of God in Judaism, and the too diffuse notion exhibited in the nature-deifying system of Heathenism. He considered the highest aim of the whole creation to be the inward union into which God enters with it through Christ; whilst, without injury to His unchangeableness He brings humanity into personal union with Himself in order to dcify man ; whence God becomes man without change of essence ; and human nature is taken into union with Him without losing aught of its peculiar character. To be able to keep a firm hold of these opinions, it was of importance to him to possess distinct notions on the union of the two natures, still retaining their particular properties unaltered. The object of redemption is not only to purify human nature from sin, but to exalt it to a higher state than that which it originally enjoyed to an unchangeable and divine life. Thus the history of creation becomes divided into two great parts; the one exhibiting the preparati in for the assumption of human nature by God; the other, the progressively developed deification of man's nature, commencing with that act, and carried on in those who are fitted for it by a right will, till the end is attained in their perfect salvation. Hence he often speaks of a continued humanizing of the Logos in believers, in so far as the human life is taken into communion with Christ, and is imbued with his own divine principle of life; and he regards the soul of him who is the source of so divine a life 'a bearer of God." 120 THE GNOSTICS. nevitable goal of Protestantism, and therefore they find it among all sects, ancient and modern. But as Catholic theolo- gians are not agreed what Pantheism is, some finding it in books, where others cannot find it, we must, for the present, leave it an open question to what extent and in what way it is the goal either of Protestantism or of Catholicism. But if the influence of the Greek philosophers and the Orient- al religions was so marked among the Greek fathers, and since even the writings of S. Dionysius have found so many admirers in the Catholic church, it will not surprise us that the same or similar doctrines are found in the writings of heretical teachers. As in the first centuries of the Christian era, Judaism, Neo- platonism, and Christianity were all struggling for pre-eminence and mutually influencing each other, it was only to be expected that the doctrines common to them all, would be found under manifold forms. To so great an extent was this the case, that some who wished to be considered Christians, were refused that name, and regarded even by the Platonic fathers as corrupt. ers of the Christian faith. The heresies of the early church, especially those with which we are concerned here, arose from the predominance of Greek or Oriental speculation over the purely Christian element. Christi- anity, as taught by Christ and His disciples, was not so much a philosophy as a religion. It led the soul to God by intuition and inspiration, without professing to satisfy the understanding on questions relating to the essence of God, or His relation to the universe. But did it forbid these enquiries? Did it say that they were not proper for man? On this question the fathers were divided; some saying, that we have nothing to do with philosophy, and that the Christian's only business is to learn the doctrines of the Church, others who before their conversion, had been philosophers of the schools, embraced Christianity because it helped them to understand the questions which they had long been studying; and why should they give up the study had long it helped Elbers of these who be business is too do now? THE GNOSTICS.From the speculative side of the Church, sprang the philosophical heretics. The oldest of these were the Gnostics, who are divided into many sects; for Gnostic, which means one that knows, seems to have been applied to all the heretics whose speculations on nature and being did not agree with the speculations approved of by the Church. Perhaps the most marked distinction between the Gnostics and the Alexan- drian fathers, is, that the former have more of the Oriental THE SPECIAL HERESY OF TIIE GNOSTICS. 121 spirit, the latter more of the Greek. The Gnostics had more theosophy; the Alexandrians more philosophy. Plotinus, who had imported into his system more of Orientalism than any Greek before him, wrote against the Gnostics, charging them with perverting the old philosophy of the Greeks. The general character of Gnosticism does not differ widely from that of contemporaneous philosophies in the Eastern world. It is occupied with the same questions and comes to nearly the same conclusions. The special heresy of the Gnostics, as pro- fessed Christians, was the denial of the humanity of Christ; and this arose from the belief which, as philosophers, they enter- tained, that matter was connected with evil, and that the body was the dwelling place of sin; and if sin was thus inseparably connected with the material body, they concluded that Christ's humanity must have been illusive-He was man in appearance only. Some of them placed so wide an interval between the in- visible and the visible, as to separate between the God of heaven and the God of nature. This indeed had been done by some of the old philosophers, for they would not admit the creating God to be the same with Him who was the immoveable essence. The Demiurgus was the “mind” of God with Plato, and the second hypostasis of the Trinity with Plotinus; but some of the Gnostics went so far as to make the Demiurgus the enemy of God, like the Ahriman of the Parsees, creating a kingdom opposed to God's; yet this dualism again in some way resolved itself into monism ; the existence of the opposing god and his world of nature being only a necessary result of the emanations of the supreme God. Matter, in his Critical History of Gnosticism, arranges the Gnostic sects into șix classes. The first, comprised of the small primitive schools, which having at their head Cerinthus, and Simon, allied to Christianity doctrines borrowed from Juda- ism, Greek Polytheism, and the East. The second, consisting of the schools of Syria, joined to Christianity some of the funda- mental ideas of the East. The third class, which embraced, the great schools of Egypt, was hostile to Judaism in some of its divisions, but blended in its teaching the doctrines of Asia, Egypt, and Greece. The fourth, that of the small schools of Egypt, did not much differ from the great schools. The fifth class was that of the Marcionites, which carried its hostility to Judaism very far, but added to Christianity some ideas from the East. Another class was composed of those who professed. the principles of the Clementines, which allied Judaism. and Orientalism to Christian doctrines. 122 THE FIRST GNOSTICS, AIT and becamas a native Philo.O Of Simon, the Magician, we know but little beyond the men- tion of him in the Acts of the Apostles. He was called the “great power of God;" a designation which is supposed to mean that he was an incarnation of God, or one of the divine powers which surrounded the Eternal, and were, in reality, the divine attributes. When he saw the works of the Apostles, he joined himself with them as a disciple of Christianity. For anything we know to the contrary, he may have been a Christian to the end of his life. Tradition makes him an imposter and the head of a Gnostic sect. He supposed that the Holy Ghost could be bought with money; but his answer to Peter, says Matter, established his good faith and his deference for the Apostles“ Pray God for me that none of these evils of which you have spoken happen to me." Cerinthus, as we learn from Theodoret, was a native of Judea. He lived sometime in Egypt, and became familiar with the allegorical system of Philo. He wished to preserve it in Christi- anity, but was strenuously opposed by the disciples of S. John. He believed the interval between the supreme Being and the material world to be so great, that he was unwilling to attribute cre- ation to the supreme God. The Creator of the world was an inferior power, separated from the first principle by a long series of Æons, or inferior powers, who did not know God, or who, at least, as Irenæus expressed it, had less knowledge of Him than the Logos had. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary, in virtue of His great wisdom and goodness, was united to Christ at his baptism in the Jordan, and the object of this union was the manifestation of the supreme God to men. Saturninus, who represents the first Syrian School, was more related to the disciples of Zoroaster than any of the other Gnostics; that is to say, he was clearer in his enunciation of the doctrine of the two principles. He identified the “I am" of the Jews with the supreme Being of the Zendavesta; call- ing Him not only Father, as Christians had been taught to do, but the “ Unknown Father.” He calls Him also the source of all that is pure; for the powers of being " become weak in proportion as they are distant from the first or primitive source. On the last stage of the pure world are seven angels, which represent what is least perfect in the intelligible world; and these seven angels are the creators of the world which is material and visible. This differs, apparently, from the doctrine of Zoroaster. But it is, probably, only another mode of expressing the same thing, creation frequently being but another word for emanation. The angels made the creature, man; but the breath of the su- represent what tage of the pure "om the first or prio THE UNKNOWN FATHER. 123 preme power animated him and elevated him to his position as man. He must be freed from the bondage of matter, and for this work Christ came into the world. He was the first of the heavenly powers. ; and on earth was without form, without natural birth, and without any material body. Bardesanes, was the founder of the second school of Syria. He also admitted the two principles; the one the “ Unknown Father," or the supreme and eternal God, who lives in the bosom of the light, blessed in the perfect purity of his being; the other eternal matter, or that inertness, dark and uninformed, which the East reckoned the source of all evil, the mother and the seat of Satan. The eternal God, happy in the pleni- tude of His life and His perfections, having resolved to spread abroad this life and happiness beyond Himself, multiplied Him- self or manifested Himself as many beings, partaking his nature and bearing His name; for the Æons were called El, or God. The first being, whom the Unknown Father produced, was His syzygy, or companion, whom He placed in the celestial para- dise; and who there became, through Him, the mother of THE Son of the living God, Christ. This is an allegory which means that the Eternal conceived, in the silence of His decrees, the thought of revealing Himself by another Being, who was His image or Son. After Christ, comes His sister or spouse, the Holy Spirit, whom the Church itself calls the love of the Son for the Father. Bardesanes admitted seven of these syzygies, or seven emanations of mystical couples. With the help of the four Æons, types of the elements, the Son and the Spirit made the heaven and the earth and all that is visible. The soul of man, in the last analysis, was itself an emanation of the supreme Being; one of the Æons. It was the breath of God, the spirit of the Spirit that formed the world. The third class of Gnostics, that of Egypt or Alexandria, is perhaps the most important of all, and the most marked by Alexandrian doctrine. Basilides the head of this school, like all other Gnostics, placed at the head of all, the unrevealed or ineffable God. From Him proceeded emanations, which in their turn were themselves God, for they were in reality but the divine names and attributes hypostasised. With Basilides, the manifoldness of God appears first as an Ogdoad, consisting of seven divine powers, and the primal One. This is the first Octave, the root of all existence. From them are evolved other existences; each rank being a copy of the preceeding one and inferior to it. Every rank or series is composed of heir turn were then tributes hypostasis an Ogdoad, cons the first 124 THE BYTHOS. seren intelligences, and the total of these three hundred and sixty-five make the intelligible or celestial world. The soul of man is a ray of the celestial light which has been in a perpetual migration since the beginning of the world. Its end is to be separated from the material, that it may return to the source whence it came; and not only is this the destiny of the soul of man, but of all life that is now imprisoned in matter. Christ came to accomplish this deliverance, and for this end he was united to Jesus of Nazareth. The most significant, according to Baur, and that which represents the first chief form of the Gnosis, is undoubtedly the Valentinian, partly as it is set forth by Valentinus himself, and partly as it is more fully expounded with different modifications by his zealous disciples. Like the system of Basilides, that of Valentinus has a double series of manifestations or of beings, which are all united to a single first Cause. Of these, some are the immediate manifestations of the plenitude of the divine life; others are emanations of a secondary kind. The head of both series, who is the immediate head of the first only, is a perfect Being the Bythos or abyss, which no intellect can fathom. No eye can behold the invisible and unspeakable glory in which He dwells, we cannot comprehend the duration of His existence. He has always been and He will always be. The manifestation of His perfections gave existence to the intelligible world. To this act we cannot apply the word cre- ation, for it was not a production of that which did not exist. The supreme Being put outside of Himself that which was con- cealed ; that which was concentrated in the Pleroma; and the intelligences to which He gave existence, bore the name of manifestations, powers, or Æons. The Cabbalists gave to all superior intelligences, and especially to the Sephiroth, the names El, Jehovah, Elohim, and Adonai. They wished by this to express that all that which emanates from God, still is God. The Gnostics had the same thought, and gave to the intelligences the name Æon, which means a world; an age; an eternity. The most characteristic attribute for God was eternity; and therefore these emanations of God were called Æons. The Valentinians say, according to Irenæus, that there is in the invisible and unspeakable heights, an Æon of all perfection, who has been before all things. They call Him also Bythos. The Bythos having passed infinite ages in rest and silence, resolved to manifest Himself; and for this He made use of thought, which alone belonged to Him; which is not a manifest- THE PLEROMA. 125 ation of His being, but which is the source of all perfection- the mother which receives the germs of His creation. The first manifestation which the thought of the Supreme Being produced was mind. In the allegorical language of the Valentinians, thought was impregnated by the Bythos, and thus was produced mind the only begotten Son of the Supreme. Bythos is thus masculine ; at other times masculo-feminine, as when re- garded as in a state of unity with thought. Bythos and thought have their counterpart in the Ammon and Neith of the Egypt- ians. Mind is the first manifestation of the powers of God-the first of the Æons, the beginning of all things. By it Divinity is revealed; for without the act which give it existence, all things would remain buried in the Bythos. The Æons are but the more complete revelation of God. They are the forms of the great Being, the names of Him, whose perfections no name can express--the names of the nameless One. Of these Æons, some are masculine, and some are feminine. The feminine is the analogue of the masculine; so that the Ogdoad becomes a Tetrad, and can be reduced to these :-Bythos, Mind, Word, Man. In the Bythos, all things are one. As it unfolds itself there result antitheses, which are formed through all degrees of existence. But these are antitheses of like kinds; syzygies, or unions; copies of Bythos and thought. The one is the complement of the other. The first of the tio is the male, the active or forming principle ; the second, the feminine, or pas- sive principle. From their nnion result other Æons, which are the images of these. The union of all Æons forms the Pleroma * or fulness of the divine nature, the plenitude of the * The Tetrad, consists of the Bythos (abyss, Nous (mind) Logos (speech,) anthropos (man.) In the Bythos, all is one, its manifestations constitute the degrees of existence ; the four which make the Tetrad, with their syzygies, make the Ogdoad. The syzygy of Bythos is Ennoia (thought,) sometimes call Sigé (silence,) and Arreton (the unspeakable,) the syzygy of Nous is Aletheia (truth.)" These four, make the first Tetrad of the Ogdoad, the syzygy of Logos is Zoé (life,) and that of Anthropos, Ekklesia, (the Church.) These form the second Tetrad. From Bythos proceeds Horos (limitation) the Æon sent to teach the last of the Æons, (Sophia,) that she could not be united to the Bythos. The desire to know the Bythos, and to return to it, which had seized Sophia, possessed all the Æons, which troubled the harmony of the Pleroma. To finish the work begun by Horos, the Nous engendered Christos, and His companion Pneuma (spirit.) From Logos and Zoé emanate a decade of Æons ; Bythios (of the nature of Bythos,) Ageratos (the ageless,) Autophyes, (self-produced) Akinetos (the immoveable,) and Monogenes (the only begotten,) with their syzygies, Mixis ( alliance,) Henosis (wion,) Hedone (pleasure,) Synkrasis (moderation,) Makaria (blessedness.) From 126 THE ÆONS. attributes and perfections of Him, whom no man can know, save the only begotten Son. · All the manifestations of God were pure, and reflected the rays of His divine attributes. But the Æons were not equal in perfection. The more their rank separated them from God, the less they knew Him and the nearer they were to imperfection ; yea, they reached imperfection, and of necessity there was de- generacy, or as it is otherwise called, a fall. The Æons that were distant from God, were animated by a vehement desire to know Him; but this was impossible. Eternal silence, which means an impossibility in the nature of things, prevented their attaining this knowledge. The harmony of the Pleroma was troubled; there was need of a restoration, of a deliverance from the fall. This deliverance was wrought by Christ. This Pleroma, this fall and deliverance, only concerned the the celestial or intelligible world; but the inferior or terrestial world is a copy of the celestial; and though outside of the Pleroma what took place in the celestial had its counterpart in the terrestial. Jesus did for the inferior world what Christ did for the Pleroma, as the only begotten. He was the first- born of creation, and spread throughout all existence placed outside of the Pleroma the germs of the divine life, which He embraced in His own person. There was a manifest contradiction in speaking of a Pleroma or fulness, which contained the all of being, and then assum- ing the existence of matter outside of the Pleroma. But the Valentinians had a ready answer. Though the Father of all things, they said, contain all, and nothing is beyond the Pleroma, yet * inside of” and “outside of ” are only words adapted to our knowledge or our ignorance, having no reference to space or distance. And when they spoke of matter beyond the Ple- roma, they explained matter as the philosophers had done before them; as not a real existence, but the necessary bounds between being and non-being, a negative something between that which is and that which is not. The existence of a pnrely divine, and a divine mingled with matter, required Valentinus to acknowledge, in the creative wisdom of God, a two-fold being, a higher and a Anthropos and Ekklesia emanate a duodecade; Parakletos (comforter,) and Pistis į faith,) Putrikos (paternal,) and Elpis (hope,) Metrikos (the metrical,) and Agape (love,) Aeinous (eternal mind,) and Synesis (intelligeuce, Ekklesiasticos (belonging to the church,) and Makariotes ( the blissful) Theletos ( will), and Sophia (wisdom,) last of all, the Æon Jesus, who united in him- self, all the good of all the Æons. NATURE PANTHEISM. 127 lower wisdom. The latter is the soul of the world, the immature Æon in its progress to perfection. Froni the mingling of this Æon with matter, spring all living existences, in gradations with- out number; higher in proportion as they are free from matter, and lower the more they are in contact with it. The doctrines of Basilides and Valentinus, under different modifications, were held by all the sects of Egyptian Gnostics, both of the great and the small schools. Neander says “ There were some among this kind of Gnostics who carried their lan- theism through with more consistency. They held that the same soul is diffused through all living and inanimate nature: and that, consequently, all, wherever it is dispersed and confiner by the bonds of matter within the liinits of individual exist- ence, should at length be absorbed by the world-soul or wisdom, the original source whence it flowed. Such Gnostics, said, 'when we take things for food we absorb the soul, scattered and dis- persed in them, into our own being, and with ourselves carry them upward to the original fountain. Thus, eating and drink- ing were for them a kind of worship.” In an apocryphal gospel of this sect * the world-soul or supreme Being says to the iuiti :- ted, “ Thou art I and I am thou; where thou art I am, and I am diffused through all. Where thou pleasest thou canst gather me, but in gathering me thou gatherest thyself.” Dorner says, “ Epiphanius relates of the Gnostics of Egypt, what proves that they were in part given to a Nature-Pantheism. They called the quickening powers of nature, Christ. Those who believed that they had measured the entire circle of nature-liſe, and had collected and offered all power, said 'I am Christ.?” * The gospel of Tre- The sect, the Ophites. † The Marcionites who in Matter's classfication are the fifth group of Gnostics belonged to Asia Minor and Italy. There in nothing in their doc- trines to require any particular notice here. The Clementines represented rather the opinions of an individual than a sect. Their fundamental definition of God is that He is a pure Being, rest, and out of Him, is only nothing. As Being He is the all. The world including man stands over against Being as the vacuum which is to be filled by Him who IS. God is good and especially righteous. This imposes the nescessity of thinking God as personal. God viewed in Himself is eternally united with wisdom as His spirit and His effulgent body. But His manifestation is a movement of God Himself flowing forth in the double act of expansion and contraction of Himself of which the heart of man is the type, the wisdom, the spirit or word of God is the eternally oustretched hand which completes the manifestation and forms the world. The world of revelation is God unfolding Himself. There are six acts of self- expansion which comprehend the six world epochs which, in the seventh, find their point of rest in God. God is the eternal Sabbath and the moveless Centre. But though the world is a communication of His essence, a 128 MANICHÆISM. MANICHÆISM.---After Gnosticism, the other great philosophi- cal heresy was the Church of the Manichees. Manes, the founder of this sect, before he embraced Christianity, had lived long among the Persian Magi, and had acquired a great repu- tation for all kinds of learning. " The idea,” Matter says, which governs all his system, is Pantheism; which, more or less, pervades all the schools of the Gnosis; which he however derived from other quarters ; doubtless, from its original source in the regions of India and China, which he had visited, in order to satisfy his ardor for theological speculation.” AC- cording to Manes, the cause of all that which exists is in God; but in the last analysis, God is all. All souls are equal. God is in all. This divine life is not limited to man and animals, it is the same in plants. But the Pantheism of Manes was modified by the dualism of Zoroaster. The kingdoms of light and darkness, spirit and matter, had long contended. Each had its Æons or demons, under the leadership of their chief, as in the kingdoms of Ormuzd and Ahriman. At one time, the kingdom of darkness seemed likely to overcome; but the chief of the kingdom of light, seeing the danger, created a power which he placed in the front of the heavens, to protect the Æons, and to destroy the kingdom of darkness or evil. This power was the mother of life-the soul of the world—the divine principle, which indirectly enters into relation with the material world, to correct its evil nature. As a direct emanation of the Supreme, it is too pure to come into contact with matter. It remains on the bounds of the superior region. But the mother of life bore a Son, who is her image; this Son is the first or celestial man. He fights with the powers of darkness, but he is in danger of being conquered and of falling into the empire of darķness; but the ruler of the light kingdom, sends the living spirit to deliver him. He is delivered ; but part of his armour or light which, in the Eastern allegory, is called his son, has been devoured by the princes of the kingdom of darkness. The succession, then, of the first beings of the empire of light, is this ; --The good God, the mother of life, the first man the son of man or Jesus Christ and the living spirit. The Mother of life, who is the general principle of divine life, and the first man are too elevated to be allied with the empire of destroy tof life-thes into relatient emanatipe o* It rem momentum of the Monad God in His inner Being remains unchanged. He is personal but He is also Being. Christ, the eternal prophet of truth, is mani- fested in Adam, Enoch, and Jesus. JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA. 129 darkness. The Son of man is the germ of the divine life which according to the language of the Gnosis enters the empire, and ends by tempering it or purifying it from its savage nature. The deliverance of the celestial ray which is in the empire of matter and its return into the bosom of perfection constitute the end and destiny of all visible existence. This end once reached, the world will cease to be. The visible Adam was created in the image of the first man. His soul was light and his body matter and thus he belonged to both kingdoms. Had he obeyed the commandment not to eat of the forbidden fruit, he would have been freed ultimately from the kingdom of darkness, but an angel of light tempted him to disobey. The demons produced Eve whose personal charms seduced him from the spiritual and plunged him into the sensual. What happened at the creation of the world is repeated by thegene- ration of every human being. The blind forces of matter and darkness are confounded, and enchain the soul which seeks deli- verance. Man is enchained of fate by this act which has given him existence, and which always gives him up weaker to the powers of sense and the charms of the terrestrial world. JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA.--It is not with the full permission of the Catholic Church, that we place among heretics the name of John Scotus Erigena. Until the year 1583, both the French and English martyrologers celebrated him as a holy martyr, and since the republication of his works in Germany, many Catholic theologians of that country claim him as a sound Catholic. He certainly lived and died in the communion of the Church of Rome-was perhaps on Abbot and therefore probably a priest, though evidence is wanting to establish the certainty of this. He first appears in history in a controversy on predestination. Godescalcus a Saxon monk, had incurred the displeasure of the Archbishop of Rheims, by teaching that God's predestination was two-fold; one of the good to eternal blessedness and the other of the reprobate to eternal condemnation. Erigena espoused the side of the Archbishop, maintaining that God out of His everlasting love had predestined all men to eternal life. The controversy became so important that an appeal was made to Rome. Nicholas I. approved of the doctrine of Godescalcus and tried to check the "poisonous” dogmas of Erigena; “never- theless” adds his German Catholic biographer with a feeling of triumph, “Erigena himself was not condemned.” At therequest of Charles the Bald, Erigena translated into Latin, the works of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. This again exposed him to the bot and communis, a somedy cathod 130 THE DIVISION OF NATURE. Papal displeasure; Nicholas blamed him for translating, with- out the approbation of the Court of Rome, a book so liable to be mis-interpreted. His work on the Eucharist, in reply to Radbertus was condemned and burnt by the Council of Versailles in the eleventh century, but his Catholic advocates in Germany say this book was not written by Erigena, but by Ratramnus. His great work on the Division of Nature” seems to have passed without censure till the thirteenth century when Honorius III. finding it had leavened the sect of the Albigenses who boasted of their argeement with so great a man as Erigena, ordered all his works to be collected and burnt. In the seven- teenth century they were republished at Oxford, and immediately after catalogued at Rome in the index of books forbidden. To what extent Erigena is a heretic the infallible Church has not decided. He believed his speculative theology to be in per- fect harmony with the theology of the Church. This has been maintained by some modern Catholic theologians, but denied by others. It is convenient here to place him among heretics, and yet it is improper to separate him from the author of the Dionysian writings. * Erigena's great work, we have said, is “on the Division of Nature." By “Nature” he understands not only all being, but all non-being; things which are, and things which are not. These two are necessary to constitute absolate Existence, for being is not the all so long as non-being stands opposed to it, this however is but the ground of a further division into four kinds. * Of the history of this remarkable man, very little is known. To his name, John Scotus, was added Erigena or the Irish-born. Tradition brings him from the Irish monastaries, where it is said philosophy and the Greek lan- guage flourished long after they had fallen into neglect in other parts of Europe ; but Scotland and Wales dispute with lreland the honor of being the country of his birth. He found a liberal patron in Charles the Bald, who made him Director of the University of Paris. His rare acquaintance with the Greek language ; his familiarity with the doctrines of Plato, and his Alexandrian dis- ciples, seem to have constituted his chief claim to regal patronage and to Papal censure. According to one account he died in France. According to ano- ther, he found a second royal protector in Alfred the Great, who made him teacher of Mathematics and Dialectics at Oxford, and then Abbot of Malmes- bury. He suffered death at the hands of his scholars. A wonderful light shone over the place where his body lay, till it was buried near the altar in the great church of Malmesbury. He was henceforth enrolled in the list of saints and martyrs. Like nearly all great metaphysicians, he was little of stature, and endowed with great subtlety of intellect. Dr. Christlieb enters at some length into the question of Erigena's return to England giving the evidence on both sides, and he concludes that the probability is in favor of the belief that Erigena did come to England. The authorities are Simeon of Durham ; Wil- lium of Malmesbury, and Matthew of Westminster. The objection is, that these authors confounded Erigena with some other Scotus. GOD UNKNOWABLE. 131 1. Nature which creates and is not created. 2. Nature which creates and is created. 3. Nature which is created and does not create. 4. Nature which is not created and does not create. These four divisions are purely speculative, starting with the idea of existence in which being and non-being, subject and object, God and the world are all one. The Dualism is only ap- parent, the Monism is real. On the human side, that is, in our subjective contemplation "Nature" is two-fold and manifold. On the divine side, all is one. The four divisions are justly resolved into two. The first is manifestly, God in the Word, as the Original of all things. The second is things in their ideals, which in Plato's sense are the realities. The third is what some would call the reality in the ideals but, in Platonic language, the phenomenal world. The fourth is God in Himself as the source of all things, and as the goal to which all things return. Reduced to two, these four divisions are God from whom all emanates and the things emanating from Him; but as the latter have no reality ex- cept so far as they derive it from Him from whom they emanate, we come back to the Pantheistic formula-God is one and all things. Erigena dwells much on the incomprehensibility of God. He is so overwhelmed with the thought of the divine infinitude, that he i does not imagine God to be known by any created beings. Even to expect to know God as He is, is as unwise as the demand of Philip “Shew us the Father.” And Christ's answer to Philip, is the only answer that will ever be given to our expectations of seeing God. We shall behold Him in His the- ophanies; in the manifestations of Himself in creation, but above all, shall we know Him in His Son. We know that God is, and that He is the highest reality; the essence of all which is, but what that essence is, we know not. It remains above all human thoughts and all human conceptions of being. God alone creates, and is alone un-created, He is created by no other, because He creates Himself. But if thus above us, how can we think of Him? How can we speak of Him? If we cannot know Him, is theology possible? This is a question with which we are still familiar. The different answers to it, and the conclusions from these answers are interesting, when we compare them with the answers and conclusions that were made in the days of Alfred the Great. Erigena did not despair of theology, though he declares God to be the absolutely unknowable and unknown. We · can think and speak of Him in two ways, negatively and posi- that he Byen Philipe only an W what that end all human come is created by how can w R 2 132 GOD THE ABSOLUTE NOTHING. tively. We first deny that God is anything; any of those things which can be spoken of, or understood. Then we predicate of Him all things, but affirming that He is not any one of them, and yet that all are by and through Him. We can say of God that He is being, but that is not properly being to which non-being stands opposed. He is therefore above being. We can say, He is God. If we take the Greek word for God, as derived from the Greek verb to see, then darkness is opposed to vision, and God being more than light, is above God; if from the verb to run then not running is opposed to running, and He is, in this sense too, more than God. It is written “ His word runneth very swiftly," which means that He runs through all things which are, in order that they may be. In the same way He is more eternal than eternity, wiser than wisdom, better than goodness, and truer than truth. These attributes are transferred from the creature to the Creator, from the finite to the Infinite. They exist in Him, but in a manner so transcendent that wespeak most reverently of Him when we deny Him all attributes, lest we should associate with them anything that is human or finite. Only by predicating all things of God, and at the same time denying Him the possibility of these predicates being applied to Him, can we speak truly of God. There is more truth in the negation than the affirma- tion. We know Him best, by feeling our ignorance of Him. This is true divine knowledge to know that we do not know Him. The highest name by which He can be called is to call Him by no name, and our highest conception of Him is not as in reality a being, but as the Absolute Nothing who is above all being. But Erigena cannot stop here. The dread of limitation accompanying the knowledge of the divine Being, is thus the ground of the denial of that knowledge. But another question immediately arises. Does God know Himself? If He does is not that a limitation, as well as human knowledge of Him? If He knows Himself, He must become an object of His own knowledge, and as such He is no longer the Infinite and the Inconceivable. Erigena comes boldly to the legitimate conclusion of his rigid Dialectic. God does not know Himself. He knows that He is, but He does not know what He is. If He knows not Himself, how are we to know Him ? Wherefore need we ask His name since it is so wonderful ? God cannot be known as anything determined, and yet this divine ignorance is in truth the most inexpressible wisdom. And so it is with God's unconsciousness of Himself. We CREATION. 133 say He does not know Himself because if He did He would be limited. This attribute like the others must be both affirmed and denied of Him; so as to express that His knowledge of Himself is like Himself, above all that is being or essence, trans- cendently divine. Erigena divided nature, or the all of being and non-being, into four divisions. These, as we have seen, were reducible to two, and these again to one, in the identity of God and creation. But this identity may be understood in two ways, either that the essence of God goes out entirely into the being of the universe, or that though all things partake of His being, and are manifestations of it, yet, He Himself transcends all. It is in the latter sense, that we are here to understand the identity of God and the universe. He creates all things, and His essence is in all things. It is manifested in every creature, and yet God remains One in Himself. He never gives up the simplicity of His being. God moves and extends Himseif, and therefore the universe, as a visible phenomenon, appears. All is His extension, because all arises from this, that God extends Himself; but in this extension He does not give up His being. He still exists, separate from all, just as our spirits exist separate from our thoughts as expressed in words or in writing. His presence in all things does not hinder that He remains one in Himself. The universe has no exist- ence independent of God's existence; it is therefore. God, but not the whole of God. He is more than the universe, yet the divine nature is truly and properly in all things. Nothing really is, in which the divine nature is not. God and the creature then do not differ in their essential nature; they are both divine. The creature subsists in God; and God after a wonderful manner is created in the creature. Erigena uses the word creation, and his Catholic advocates plead this as a proof of his orthodoxy; but we must not be mis- led by words. Creation, with Erigena, is emanation. His arguments lose their meaning the moment we forget this. Emanation is the chain which unites the created to the un- created; the invisible bond which makes Creator and creature one. As the second of the four divisions, we had “That which creates and is created.” This represents the ideals which constitute the realities of all created things, which the Greeks called prototypes, species or eternal forms according to which, and in which, the visible universe was created. These ideals are God's thoughts. His conceptions of things before the visible bond wur. divisions, we line ideals all created forms accord. 'hese i 134 IS THE PHENOMENAL ETERNAL? beginning of time. They are identical with His spirit and will. God cannot exist without creating, for creation is His necessary work. The divine attributes of being, wisdom, good- ness and truth require that God create—and these are them- selves one with the ideal principles of creation. These ideals thus become the bridge between the Infinite and the finite. As God's attributes they participate in God, and at the same time they are the realities of the phenomenal universe. To under- stand this we must dismiss our ordinary conception of a thought, as something in the mind distinct from the outward reality. All God's thoughts, it is maintained, have a real objective existence in the Logos, which, as Scripture teaches, existed in the beginning or first principle, the primordial cause of the heaven and earth. He formed in His Word, which is His only begotten Son, all the things which He wished to create, before they came to phenomenal existence. The Word thus is the unity of the ideals; the original form of all things, which in an eternal and unchangeable manner are represented in Him, and subsist by Him. Whilst the ideals were regarded as the divine attributes, or God's necessary thoughts, Erigena found it easy to identify these with God through the Word. But how is he to bridge the sepa- ration between the ideal and phenomenal universe— between the second and third divisions of nature-“That which creates and is created;" and " That which is created and does not create ?" The ideas are co-eternal with God. This is settled ; but could they be objective realities until they passed into the pherio- menal state? In other words—can there be a cause until it makes good its existence by an effect? Is the phenomenal uni. verse co-eternal with the ideal; or did it take its origin in time ? If the latter, then creation was not eternal, unless there can be a cause without an effect. But creation is eternal-the ideal universe is eternal, the phenomenal being necessary to its com- pletion, it too must be eternal. Logically, the effect follows the cause; the creature must come after the creation; so that here we are compelled to distinguish between the eternity of God who has His beginning in Himself, and the eternity of things created, which have their beginning in Him. Yet, when He was, they were; the primordial causes are co-eternal with Him, because they always subsisted in Him. What then is matter, time, and space? As realities they disappear. Time is but the continuance and motion of things mutable. The cog- nition of it, precedes everything known or belonging to time. MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 135 orm as theristotle regarded mand can be ut so far as his. Matting: Erigenaich brought as mere połown only bis Space is a limitation of sensible and intelligible objects. It is not perceivable by sense. It can only be thought in the reason.: Time and space are merely subjective existences. Nearly the same is said of matter. It comes to appearance within the bounds of time and space, flowing out from the primordial causes. So far as it has form, it is corporeal, but so far as it is formless it is incorporeal, and can be known only by reason. Aristotle regarded matter as mere potentiality; and form as the actuality which brought the indefinite material to be a something. Erigena's doctrine does not much differ from this. Matter is to hiin only the participation of form and shape. Whatever wants these is nothing actual. But form and shape are in themselves incorporeal, and can only be known by the reason. It follows then that things formed as well as things formless are originally and essentially incorporeal. The latter, through the want of form, the former, not in them. selves, but through the form. But that which is in itself incor- poreal becomes corporeal by its participation with another incorporeal; and thus bodies are produced by the coming toge- ther of two incorporeals. · If so, they can be again resolved into their original states and cease to be bodies. What then is matter? Nothing—or something next to nothing; the muta- bility of things mutable; the “ without form and void ;” the nonentity of a body which remains when deprived of all its qualities—the mere reflection, echo and shadow of true being. Man visible has his place at the head of the 6. nature which is created and does not create.” As the essence of God is the one substance of all beings, as the Logos is the unity of all the primordial causes, so is man the mediating point of the oppo- sites and differences of the phenomenal world. His being con- tains all created natures in itself; since in the spirit and reason of man God has created the invisible and intelligible world ; and in his body, the visible and sensible. Man is contained in the hidden original cause of nature according to which he was created, and in him is contained the whole creation, so that he has been called, not improperly, “the work-shop of all other creatures." He understands as an angel ; reasons as a man; feels as an animal; lives as a plant; consists of body and soul; and is akin to every creature. He was created in God's image, that in Him every creature, both intelligible and sensible, might form an undivided unity. Need we marvel then, that if in his suffering, creatures suffer, and that all creation is groaning and travailing together with him, and with him waiting for de- liverance? matter of things body perfection at the bes the elementing the o ne all creation, that it might 136 PHILOSOPHY AND CHURCH THEOLOGY. The fourth division of nature is, “That which does not create and is not created." This, as we have already seen, is God in Himself. The difference is that in the first, God is the Creator the Word—the Being from whom creation emanates. In this He is the Being to whom creation returns. This is God in our highest conception of Him; God without attributes; God in His super-essential essence, neither creative nor created; God as the original Monad, which not being any one thing, is yet more than all things, and of whom we speak most reve- rently and most truly, when we call Him the absolute Non-being. We have reserved hitherto the application of Erigena's philo- sophy to the interpretation of Scripture and church dogmas. This arrangement is of our own making. It has no place in the “ Division of Nature.” There—Scripture, church doctrine and philosophy are brought together to explain each other—the perfect harmony of all these being previously assumed. Erigena was a Christian and a Catholic. Let us see how he understood Christianity.* The Catholic faith is, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. This is a true doctrine. We may object to the contradictory and hard dogmatic form which it takes in the Latin phrases of the creed of S. Athanasius; but in substance it is true. There are not three persons in the Godhead; but substitute the Greek word, which we translate person, explain that the Latin word means no more than is intended by the Greek word, and then the creed of S. Athanasius may be Latinontradictory and his is a true deship one God in * The prevailing bent of the theological spirit of that age was to cling, as we have remarked before, to the authorities of the church tradition : but he was founding a system of truth, which should repose entirely on rational insight, approve itself as true by an inner necessity of reason. Yet even according to his apprehension, the rational and the church-traditional theology, faith and knowledge by reason, philosophy and religion did not stand in con- tradiction, but in perfect harmony with each other. For, said he, a man can elevate himself to the knowledge of God, which is the end of true philosophy, only by following the mode and manner in which God, who in His essence is incomprehensible and unknowable, letting Himself down to the condition and wants of humanity which is to be educated, has revealed Himself ;-God in His forms of revelation, in His theophanies. After this manner God presents Him- self in the historical development of religion, through the authority of the church ; but true philosophy, which rises above the theophanies to the Abso- lute itself, which soars beyond all conceptual apprehension, gives insight into the laws according to which God must be known and worshipped. True philosophy and true religion are therefore one. Philosophy veiled in the form of tradition, is religion ; religion unveiled from the form of tradition by rational knowledge is philosophy. Philosophy is the theoretic side of religion, religion the practical side of philosophy.--Neander. THE TRINITY. 137 allowed to pass. The Trinity is not so much a God in three persons, as God in three operations. God is one, and yet one in three self-subsisting hypostases or existences. He is one cause subsisting by itself, and yet in three self-subsisting causes. The Father is the cause of the Son, not as to nature, for both are of one essence; but according to the relation of him who begets, to him who is begotten, or of the cause that precedes, to that which follows. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, not from but through the Son, for one cause eannot have two causes. Light proceeds from fire by the medium of a ray, but not from both, for the fire is the original cause both of the light and the ray. The ray produces the light, but not as if it were in itself a self-subsisting cause ; for it can never be thought of, as separated from the fire from which the ray pro- ceeds and which is incessantly present in the ray, and suffers the light to go forth from itself. So also the Father is the pro- ducing cause of the Son. And He is the essence of all causes which are created in Him by the Father; and the Father Him- self is the cause of the Spirit proceeding from Him, but through the Son. The Spirit again is the cause of all division, multi- plication and distribution of all the things, which are made in the Son by the Father, in the general and special workings both in the kingdoms of nature and of grace. Thus the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father by the medium of the Son; and, again, the Son is begotten of the Father through the grace of the Holy Spirit. These forms and modes of representing the Trinity were common among the Greek fathers. How far they are orthodox is not our present business. With Erigena the “three” that form the Trinity never appear as persons, but only as powers, names, relations or operations of God. The Father is essence; the Son is wisdom; the Spirit is life. The Father is being; the Son is might; the Spirit is energy. The Father is mind; the Son self-knowledge; the Spirit self-love. As Abraham was not a father in himself, but in relation to Isaac, .nor Isaac a son but in relation to Abraham, so God is not a father in Himself, nor Christ a son in himself; but the one a father and the other a son in relation to each other, the sub- stance of both being the same. Though the operations are different, it is one God who works through all. The Father creates. Through the Son all is created. By the Spirit, as the differential principle, the creation is wrought out into the manifold. The Father wills; the Son creates; the Holy Spirit brings the work to completion. But for the Father to will is 138 THE FALL OF MAN. to do, so that the working of the Son and the Spirit is but the willing of the Father. The Father is the principle of the sub- stance of things the Son, of their ideal causes--the Spirit, of their actual manifestation in time and space. The operations of the triune three are different, and yet the Worker is One. This great doctrine of the Church points to moments in the becoming of nature. It is a theophany of the truth, nothing more. God is neither a Trinily nor a Unity. He is something more than either three in one or one in three. The creation of man too, like the being of God, is altogether transcendental. Man existed in the divine mind from all eternity. Of old “the delights of wisdom were with the sons of men.” The ideal Adam was completely happy in paradise ; he liad a spiritual body like that of the angels. S. Paul dis- courses of glorified bodies and shows by his language that body and spirit are essentially of one substance. This primordial Adam was taught to love the spiritual and the invisible; but he desired the visible and the sensual, and as a punishment he was clothed with this present body of death. Then being subject to passions and the viler affections he was driven from paradise that is, he was sent forth from the spiritual to the material world; he was no more like the angels. Eve was created. Mar- riage was instituted, and man was doomed to perpetuate his race in the same way as the beasts of the field. This may seem to contradict the narrative in Genesis; but in reality it does not, for the ideal Eve previously existed in the ideal Adam, and represented that principle of sense which seduced him from the spiritual life. In this expulsion from Eden, and this separation of the sexes, the phenomenal world, to speak humanly, has its origin. Man passes froin the ideal and spiritual to the pheno- menal and material, andas in him are contained all forms and ranks of creatures, these take their beginning as he begins his material existence. In this fall we learn what sin is. It is no real being, but only a privation of good-an accident of being. It was nothing which happened to man in time, but an original infirmity of his nature. The seed of sin or the possibility of willing evil was always in man. It was suffered by God to be in him. Indeed, the fall was predestined, that out of this seem- ing evil might be brought a greater good. It is impossible that God could be disappointed, or that any event should arise which He had not pre-ordained. The fall of the ideal Adam, and the creation of this phenomenal world, are but steps in the divine proceduremparts of an eternal working which, in the end, shall uld be dice brought was predestiwas suffered THE INCARNATION. 189 spiritizutelligible low the whole erilis Godber contribute to the greater glory of God, and the higher blessed- ness of all the universe. And the incarnation of Christ, that too is out of time. It must be, for the thought of it is co-existent with the though of infirmity in man. As he was predestined to pass the material stage, so was he predestined to return to the spiritual or rather to pass on to it, for the fall and the incarnation are together processes in the history of the creature's progress towards the Creator. The subject of the Incarnation is the eternal Logos ; the first principle, in and by whom all things were made. In the Logos, man had his being. He fell by the love of the sensual. He participated in the material. It was necessary that the Logos in order to restore man, should descend in like manner and participate of the material, therefore He took upon Him humanity in its fallen state; a body of sense with soul and spirit, and thereby He united in Himself the whole sensible and intelligible creation. In taking man's nature He took all the natures below man's for it includes them all, and thus He is the Redeemer of the whole creation. The Logos or eternal cause of all, descended as in His Godhead into the effects of which He is the cause, that is into the sensuous world that He might save according to His humanity the effects of the causes, which he already had eternally in Himself. The Incarnation was no matter of choice. It was necessary for the cause of all things, thus to make good the effects by descending into them. This was done by the Logos, who in this incarnation became man, and thereby manifested the eternal self-subsisting unity of the spiritual and the phenomenal; the infinite and the finite—the eternal immanency of God in the universe. As man is the content of all effects produced by the ideal cause, so the Logos is the unity or content of the causes themselves. In Scripture the incarnation is necessarily represented as taking place in time, but like the creation, and fall of man, it is in reality eternal. The final and complete restitution of man, is the inevitable re- sult of the incarnation of the Logos. The universe has proceeded from God. It is but the extension of His being; the manifestation of Himself; therefore must it return again to Him, not in part, but as a whole. The predestination of anything to destruction is but a figure of speech. All men shall be saved. Their re- turn to God is necessary, yea it is not a thing of time, not an event of which we can speak, as past or future. It is some- thing actual. In the contemplation of God it is eternally realized, but to man the Logos became incarnate in Jesus of was nes, thus, te bytheted the to the in 140 ERIGENA'S DISCIPLES, Nazareth, who by His death, resurrection and ascension com- pleted the salvation of men, and angels. ERIGENA'S DISCIPLES.--Erigena left no school, and if he had any immediate followers, nothing is known of them. “The century,” says Neander, “in which he lived was not prepared for his system ; but the speculative spirit which passed over from the twelvth to the thirteenth century prepared the way for its acquiring an influence which it was unable to do on its first appearance." We are without data for any sufficient history of the heresies of the thirteenth century; but we have intimations authorities of the church. The chief of these heresies were various forms of what we call Pantheism. In the year 1204, the University of Paris condemned the doctrines of Amalric de Bena, * Professor of Theology in the University. As we have none of Amalric's writings, we only know his doctrines from passages preserved by other authors. These agree so entirely with Erigena's doctrines, as to leave no doubt as to the source from which they come. That God alone truly exists, all else being merely phenomena,--that God and the creature are one and the same, and that all things will finally return to God, are the chief points in the heresy with which he is charged. Then we have in detail the Platonic doctrine of ideas and primordial causes—the forms and patterns which, like the second divi- sion of nature, create and are themselves created. They exist in God, and what God is they are. As Abraham is not of one nature and Isaac of another, but both one and the same, so all things are one--all are divine, God being the essence of all creatures. We have the repetition of Erigena's doctrine con- cerning the fall of man, and the result of that fall in the produc- tion of the sensuous body, and the origin of the two sexes. Amalric was removed from his professorship. He appealed to Innocent III., but the sentence of the University was confirmed. Thus condemned by the Roman See, he acknowledged his errors, signed a recantation, and soon after died. * Amalric of Bena, was so called from his birth-place in the diocese of Chartres. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, he taught at Paris. After gaining a high reputation by his lectures on dialectics, he passed over to theology, and now created a great sensation by many of the opinions he ad- vanced ; among which may be mentioned in particular, the following: “As no man can be saved without believing in the sufferings and resurrection of Christ, so neither can he be saved without believing that he himself is a mem- ber of Christ.”-Neander. AMALRIC DE BENA. 141 But Amalric's doctrines had taken deeper root than either the Pope or the University of Paris was aware of. His disciple, David of Dinanto, was not less formidable than Amalric ħad been. To refute David of Dinanto was the work of the theo- logians of this century, and to extirpate his followers the special vocation of the church. David wrote a book “ On Divisions," which, from the portions of it preserved by Albert the Great, seems to have been an imitation of Erigena“ on the Division of Nature.” He is said to have gone beyond his master, in having defined God as “the material principle of all things, which was a substitution for Amalric's more idealistic phrase, “the formal principle.” But the difference appears to be in words more than in meaning. What is “ formal” in the Platonic philo- sophy is essential, and perhaps "material” is but another name for the same thing. Matter, as such, had no more existence for him than it had for Erigena or Amalric. Whatever he meant, we may safely conclude he did not think that God is material. This distinction between the theology of Amalric and David of Dinanto was first made by Thomas Aquinas, who describes the latter as having taught that God was the first matter; that is, that God is the one snbstance, essence or matter which consti- tutes the universe. He divides the “ all” into “three indi- visibles;" the substratum of the corporeal world ; then, that out of which spirit proceeds; and lastly, that of the ideas or eternal substances. The first is called matter, the second spirit, and the third God. But the three are one ; they are only different designations of the divine Essence according as we consider it in its relation to the corporeal, the spiritual, and the ideal worlds. God alone is true being, the only substance, of which all other beings are but the accidents. So widely did this speculative theology spread itself both among the clergy and the lay people, that the University of Paris pro- hibited the reading of all metaphysical books. Aristotle, and books ascribed to Aristotle, which had hitherto been read in the University were publicly condemned. The body of Amalric was ordered to be dug up and burned, or at least cast out of consecrated ground. The work of David of Dinanto was pro- scribed, with the commentaries of the Arabian Averroes, and the writings of some other Pantheistic heretic, who is called “the Spanish Maurice;” nor was the opposition of the church confined to proscriptions of books, and anathemas against their authors. The stake was kindled, and all metaphysical priests and laymen who would not recant their faith in the doctrines of 142 THE ABBOT JOACHIM. Aristotle and Amalric were consumed. “But you cannot burn me," cried Bernard, a brave priest of the Pantheistic sect; " you Cannot burn me, for I am God.” This, however, did not over- awe his enemies. They kindled the faggots which they had gathered round him, and soon the phenomenal Bernard disappeared. * A leaven of the heresy of Erigena and Amalric is supposed to have made considerable progress among the order of S. Francis. Abbot Joachim, of S. Floris, a fervent advocate of the speculative and mystical doctrines condemned by the Univer- sity of Paris, was in great reverence among the Franciscans. Joachim had written a commentary on the Apocalypse. He was a prophet, and an interpreter of prophecy. Among other predictions, he foretold the great success of the order of S. Francis; and among his interpretations of prophecy, he supposed that he had discovered the law of God's progressive revelation of Himself in the world. There was first the age of the Father. With the incarnation, was that of the Son; and now the age of the Holy Ghost was about to begin. This age was to be marked by such an increase of light and grace, as to supersede the necessity of a church and priesthood such as then existed. All men were to be equal, free from the cares of the * Pantheism, with all the practical consequences that flow from it, was more boldly and abruptly expressed than perhaps the original founders of this school had intended. That distinction of the three ages which had attached itself to the doctrine of the Trinity, and which we noticed in the doctrines of the Abbot Joachim, was employed by this sect also, after their own peculiar manner. As the predominant revelation of God the Father, in the Old Testament, was followed by the revelation of the Son, by which the forms of worship under the legal dispensation were done away ; so now the age of the Holy Ghost was at hand,--the incarnation of the Holy Ghost in entire humanity, the being of God under the form of the Holy Ghost after an equal measure in all the faith- ful; that is, the dependence of the religious consciousness upon any one indi- vidual as a person in whom God is incarnate would cease, and the conscious- ness of all alike, that God exists in them, has in them assumerl human nature, would come in place of it. The sacraments, under which the Son of God had been worshipped, would then be done away ; religion would be made wholly independent of ceremonies ; of everything positive. The members of this sect are the ones in whom the incarnation of the Holy Ghost has begun, the fore- runners of the above-described period of the Holy Spirit. Several other opi- nions are charged upon members of this sect, which certainly accord with their general mode of thinking; as, for example, that God had spoken in Ovid as well as in Augustine ; that the only heaven and the only hell are in the pre- sent life ; that those who possess the true knowledge no longer need faith or hope ; they have attained already to the true resurrection, the true paradise, the real heaven ; that he who lives in mortal sin has hell in himself. These people opposed the worship of saints as a species of idolatry. They called the ruling church Babylon; the pope, antichrist. ----Neander. ALBIGENSES. 143 world, and filled with the Spirit of God. This millennium of blessedness was called “the eternal gospel," and the order of S. Francis were to be the chief heralds of its approach.* Nearly allied to these zealous Franciscans were the Albi- genses who, as we have already mentioned, claimed discipleship from Erigena, and appealed to his works in vindication of their doctrines. Of the tenets of the Albigenses we know nothing, except from their enemies. They are represented as Mani- chæans and Arians. Many wild doctrines are charged upon them, but with what amount of accuracy we cannot determine. An affinity of doctrine has also been shown between the “ Divi- sion of Nature," and the book on the Nine Rocks" which, it is said, was the secret oracle of the “ Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit." There are, however, extravagances in this book, which are not to be found in the works of Eri- gena. The existence of the universe is denied because of its identity with God. It is an emanation from Him, and to Him it shall return. The soul of man is declared to be uncreated and a part of the divine Being. To abstract ourselves from the finite, is the way to realize our union with the Infinite- to feel that we are God. What the Scripture says of Christ is true of every godly man-he is the son of God, and God. * As the strict Franciscans entertained a special reverence for the Abbot Joachim, who had foretold their order and the regeneration of the church, of which they were to be the instrument, and occupied themselves a good deal with the explanation of his writings, the interpretation and application of the current ideas in the same, so a great deal was said among them about a new everlasting gospel. The idea of sich a gospel belonged really among the cha- racteristic and peculiar notions of Joachim; and we have seen, how by this expression, borrowed from the 14th chapter of the Apocalypse, he had inder- stood, following the view of Origen, a new spiritual apprehension of Chris- tianity, as opposed to the sensuous Catholic point of view, and answering to the age of the Holy Spirit. A great sensation was now created by a com- mentary on the eternal gospel, which, after the middle of the thirteenth cen- tury, the Franciscan Gerhard, who, by his zeal for Joachim's doctrines, involved himself in many persecutions, and iucurred an eighteen years' impri- sonment, published under the title of "Introductorius in Evangelium aeter- num.” Many vague notions were entertained about the eternal gospel of the Franciscans, arising from superficial views, or a superficial understanding of Joachim's writings, and the offspring of mere rumour or the heresy-hunting spirit. Men spoke of the eternal gospel as of a book composed under this title and circulated among the Franciscans. Occasionally, also, this eternal gospel was confounded perhaps with the above-mentioned Introductorius. In reality, there was no book existing under this title of the Eternal Gospel ; but all that is said about it relates simply to the writings of Joachim. The opponents of the Franciscan order objected to the preachers of the eternal gospel, that, according to their opinion, Christianity was but a transient thing, and a new, . more perfect religion, the absolute form, destined to endure for ever, would succeed it.-Neander. 144 BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE FREE SPIRIT. Under the shelter of these doctrines, if history speaks what is true, " the Brothers and Sisters" justified practices which are not considered commendable by Catholic Christendom. If, they said, the soul is one with God, then those acts which appear sinful cease to be so, they are essentially acts of God. If God wills that we sin, why should we will not to sin ? And if we have sinned a thousand times, why should we repent? The sins we commit are parts of the divine plan, which brings good out of evil and makes use of partial ill for the universal well-being of the world. There is often but a narrow line between truth and error, between a man's own doctrines, and the sense in which others understand them and yet that line is itself a world. S. Jude condemned those who by apparently legitimate reasoning, turned the grace of God into lasciviousness and so doubtless, if these things are true, would John Scotus Erigena have rebuked and condemned the “ Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit.” nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Anan * This account of the Gnostics and the Manichees, is chiefly from Matter's! Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme and Baur's Die Christliche Gnosis. The Authorities for the rest of the chapter are Erigena, de Divisione Naturae ; Dr. Christlieb's Leben und Lehre des Johannes Scotus Erigena; and Hahn's Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter. The Gnostics and their Remains, by C. W. King, is an interesting work on Gnostic Art. CHAPTER VIII. SCHOLASTICISM. THE church doctors of the middle ages were called Scholastics, 1 either because they were the learned men of these ages, or because of their connection with the schools that were established by Charlemagne. Philosophy found a home in Paris after its course was run at Athens and Alexandria. Erigena may be considered either as the forerunner of Scholasticism, or as the first of the Scholastics. M. Rousselot speaks of him as wandering on the mountains of Scotland, or by the banks of the sea which washes the Hebrides, embracing in himself all that the solitary Iona had been able to preserve of philosophical antiquity from the ignorance of barbarians; and, at the same time, con- cealing in his bosom the fruitful germ of the future.* The discussions of the Scholastics were but a continuation of the discussions of the philosophers. Two centuries had elapsed after the death of Erigena, before the great controversies of the middle ages; but there is evidence that in these two centuries the cultivation of philosophy was not neglected. M. Cousin has shewn by a passage in the glosses of Raban Maur, who wrote in the ninth century, that the difference between Nomi- nalist and Realist had already began. Idealism, as, the doctrine of Plato, had always been more or less the philosophy of the church. The wisest, and as we now reckon the most orthodox of the fathers, S. Augustine was an Idealist, believing that ideas are realities-the original types of things and existing before the things themselves. Realism was but another name for Idealism, and as such had been inherited from Plato. The first intimation of the rise of Nominalism in the church, is found in this passage of Raban Maur. Boethius, in his Introduction to Porphyry's Isagoge, had said " The intention of Porphyry in * M. Rousselot has no facts to support him in making Scotland the nativo country of Erigena ; but he has many probabilities. It seems natural to belicve that so great a metaphysician belonged to the race which is pre-eminently metaphysical. 146 . ROSCELLIN AND ANSELM. as the Danut how a trip that this work, is to facilitate the understanding of the categories by treating of five things or names-genus, species, difference, property, accident.” Porphyry was raising no ontological question, nor expressing any doubt about the nature of the cate- gories, whether they were names or things; but his commen- tators supposed he was raising such a question, and tried to answer it. Raban Maur said they were only names, and that Boethius had shewn this in his first commentary on the catagories. But Nominalism does not appear to have been much in favor till the eleventh century, when Roscellin carried the Nominalist principle so far as to come in collision apparently with the doctrine of the church. Parts, qualities, relations, universals, are they realities or names ? Names, said Roscellin. But the Trinity is a universal. It is then merely a name, and the three persons in the Trinity can only be three parts of one, said Roscellin, and as parts, do not exist, such ideas as “a whole," or "a part," not having any real existence. There is only one person or there are three; if one, only one God--if three, three Gods; or if the three be only one reality, then the Father and the Holy Ghost must have become incarnate as well as the Son. Abelard's argument against Roscellin, that when Christ ate « part” of a fish, He could only have eaten a name, must have been meant for a jest. It was just the existence of abstrac- tions that Roscellin denied- not the existence of an individual thing as a whole, or part of anything as a part. The doctrine of Nominalism was but a renewal of the one substance of the Ionics, confining reality to things perceived by the senses. We do not know to what extent it was carried by Roscellin; but we do know that its spirit is alien to Christian theology. Roscellin was condemned by the council of Soissons, 1093, and was driven from France. He came to England, then under the sway of the Normans. About the time of his arrival, his great opponent, S. Anselm, arrived too-Roscellin comes as a fugitive, quitting his native land to save his life-Anselm to have placed on his head the mitre of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Roscell.in is the more complete philosopher. Anselm has the better philosophy. Roscellin teaches Nominalism at Cambridge. * Anselm replies from Canterbury. Anselm had the better philo- sophy, and he was by nature a better philosopher; but the bent * This is only a conjecture of M. Rousselot's. There is no clear evidenco that Roscellin ever taught at Cambridge. 2 . 1 WILLIAM OF CIAMPEAUX.. . 147 of his mind was checked by the necessity of his being an orthodox bishop. He was a profound metaphysician, essaying boldly the most exalted questions, but he recoiled before the conclusions to which philosophy led him. He made reason the servant of faith, but:.when reason asked concerning the ground of faith, Anselm checked the enquiry. Belief should accord with reason, and reason with belief. Only on this assumption is philosophy possible in the church. But Anselm's philosophy was only Erigena’s restrained by the dogmas of the church, whenever these dogmas seemed opposed to it. In his “Dialogue on Truth, says M. Rousselot,” he plunges into the metaphysical abyss; into what is true in itself, leading back all to unity. This unity is for him reality. The true is that which is, and all that which is, is good. Then the good and the true are identical, and form only one and the same thing, whence it follows, that in the ontological point of view, evil is not, it is only a negation. It exists only in the acts of men, and in consequence of human liberty. The true, or that which is truth, is being; then beings or individuals are parts of being, as particular truths are parts of truth.” . The ontological argument for the being of God, which is ascribed to Anselm, can only be understood by its connection with his philosophy. “It is impossible," he says, “ to think that God does not exist, for God is when defined, such a Being that we cannot conceive one superior. Now, I can conceive a Being whose existence it is impossible to disbelieve; and this being is evidently superior to one whose non-existence. I am capable of imagining. Therefore, if we admit the possibility of supposing that God does not exist, there must be a being supe- rior to God, that is to say, a being superior to one than whom we cannot conceive a greater, which is absurd." There cannot be a question about the conclusiveness of this argument. It is an absolute demonstration of the being of God. But what God? The God of ontology; the One of Parmenides- infinite Being. Plato, as we have seen, saved his theology from this purely dialectical God, by adding the “mind" and the “Demiurgus.?' Anselm, by adhering to the faith of the Catholic church. Roscellin's disciple, William of Champeaux, united with Anselm in opposing the Nominalism of Roscellin, yet he barely escaped the fate of his master. He was not indeed condemned by the church, but if judged as some judge him, he might have been. Bayle describes the Realism of William of Champeaux as tonceive is in pone who admi rior tonnot conceive the conclus the being of Parme 148 PETER ABELARD. Abel, but in of Chring bevis philosoly