giant becomes feeble as a child, and is blinded by his foes.
But it is the sun in its conflict with the demons of the storm, the sun as a warrior and a hero, that chiefly attracts the religious reverence of the heroic age. In nature there is no more striking exhibition of power than is revealed in the phenomena of the thunder-storm. Even to us it has not lost its sublimity, and a sense of awe overcomes us whenever the mighty spectacle is enacted in the heavens. Primitive man had a far deeper interest in the issue of the tempest than we are now capable of appreciating. To him the clouds appeared to be ferocious monsters, and when they crowded about the central luminary, he feared that they might quench its light in everlasting darkness. The very existence of the universe seemed to be threatened. The sun-god, the true friend of man, however arises to wage war against the demons: a terrific uproar follows and the contending forces meet. Do you hear Thor's far-sounding hammer, Jove's bolt falling in the thunder clap: do you see Indra's lightning-spear flashing across the sky, and piercing the sides of the storm dragon? The light triumphs; the tempest rolls away, but presently returns to be again defeated. In this way arose the transparent stories of Jupiter's conflict with Typhon, his precipitate flight, and his final victory; the story of Indra's warfare against the writhing serpent, Vritra, and numerous others that might be mentioned. It is the sun-god who flashes the lightning and hurls the thunder. To him men owe the maintenance of the order of existence. He is the mightiest of the gods. Fighting their battles on high, he is invoked by the warriors to aid them in their earthly-conflicts; he takes precedence of all the other deities; he the strongest god is raised to the throne of the celestial state.
Now if we study the history of these deities, their intercourse among themselves and with men, we find them to be no more than colossal images of ourselves cast on the mists of the unknown. It is our face and form that Jupiter wears; the echo of our wishes comes back to us in his oracles. "If horses and cows could draw their gods," an ancient philosopher has pointedly said, "as horses and cows would they draw them." The gods share our passions, the good and the evil, distinguished only in this, that what we feebly attempt, they can execute on a scale of gigantic magnitude. They love and bless and shower a thousand gifts upon their worshippers; but they can hate also; are vain, vindictive, cruel.
The gods demand tribute. Like the kings of earth, they received the best share of the spoils of war and of the chase; and gold and silver also was deposited in their sanctuaries. Perfumed incense and dainty cakes were placed upon their altars. The gods are hungry, they must be fed. The gods are thirsty, and certain strong narcotic beverages were brewed especially for their benefit. For this among the Hindoos the juice of the soma plant was mixed with pure milk.
The gods demand blood. The wide prevalence of human sacrifice is the saddest fact that stains the annals of religious history. Among the Fijians the new boat of the chieftain was not permitted to venture upon the waves until it had been washed with human blood, in order to secure it against shipwreck. Among the Khonds of India, we learn that the body of a human victim was literally torn in pieces and his blood mixed with the new turned clod, in order to insure a plentiful harvest. It is estimated that at least twenty-five hundred human beings were annually sacrificed in the temples of Mexico. Human sacrifice was known among the Greeks, and its practice among the Hebrews is recorded in the Hebrew Bible.
When the manners of men ameliorated, and gentler customs began to supplant the barbarous usages of an earlier day, the tyranny of the gods was still feared, but various modes of substitution were adopted to appease their jealousy of human happiness. In India we are told, that the god of light being displeased with the constant effusion of blood, commanded a buffalo to appear from out the jungle, and a voice was heard saying, sacrifice the buffalo and liberate the man.
Another mode of substitution was to give a part for the whole. Some one member of the body was mutilated or curtailed in order to indicate that the person's life was in reality forfeit to the god. Among certain of the aboriginal tribes of America, the youth, on reaching the years of maturity, was forced to place his hand upon a buffalo's skull, and one or more joints of the finger were then cut off and dedicated to the great spirit. There were other modes of mutilation of which I dare not speak, but I will briefly add that the so-called rite of the covenant, which is practised among the Jews even at the present day, rose in exactly the same manner. Of course the original signification of the custom has been forgotten and a purely symbolical mean-ing has been attached to it. Nevertheless, its continuance is a disgrace to religion. The grounds of sanity on which it is urged, are not in themselves tenable, and if they were, religion would have no concern with them. It is but a fresh instance of the stubborn vitality which seems to inhere in the hoary superstitions of the past.
Occasionally, when a whole people was threatened with destruction, some prominent and beloved individual was selected for sacrifice, in order that by his death he might save the rest. The same feature was also introduced into the legends of the gods. Philo tells us that the great God El whom the Hebrews and Phoenicians worshiped, once descended to earth, and became a king. This El was the supreme deity. He had an only son whom he loved. One day when great dangers threatened his people, the god determined to sacrifice his only begotten ( – Greek – ) son and to redeem his people: and year by year thereafter a solemn festival was celebrated in Phoenicia in honor of that great sacrifice.
The religion of force has left its dark traces in the history of mankind. Even the higher religions accepted, while they spiritualized, its degrading conceptions into their systems. Slowly only and with the general spread of intelligence and morality, can we hope that its last vestiges will be purged from the minds of men.
Vastness is an element of the sublime. In the religious conceptions of the Hindoos we find it illustrated. It entered alike into the system of the Brahmin and of the Buddhist, and determined their tone and quality. A certain fondness for the gigantic, is peculiar to Hindoo character. Witness the almost boundless periods of their ancient chronology; the colossal forms with which the remains of their monuments and architecture abound. A great Aryan nation having advanced from the waters of the Indus to the shores of the sacred Ganges and having subdued the natives by the force of superior numbers or bravery, had learned to forget the active pursuits of war, and yielded to the lassitude engendered by the climate of their new settlements. Around them they beheld a rich and luxuriant vegetation; birds of rare and many colored plumage, stately trees rising from interminable jungles. Ravishing perfumes lulled their senses as they reposed in the shade of these fairy-like forests. It was a land suited to dreamy contemplation. Here the philosophic priests might dwell upon the vastness of the Universal, and the imagination bewildered by the ever shifting phenomena of the scene might well seek some principle of unity which could connect and explain the whole. Brahma was the name they gave to the pervading Spirit of All things. From Brahma the entire order of existence has emanated; the elements of material things, plants, birds, beasts and men. The lower castes came forth first and are nearest the brutes; the castes of free-born workmen, and of warriors next, the priests and saints last, in whom the world's soul found its loftiest expression.
To Brahma all things must return. Passing through an endless series of transformations, and paying in the long and painful interval the penalty of every crime it has committed, the migrating spirit of man is led back at last to its primal source, and is resolved in the Brahma whence it arose. The connection between individual and universal life was thus kept constantly in view. The soul in the course of its wanderings might pass through every conceivable mode of existence; might assume the shape of creeping plants and worms, and wild animals; might rise to the possession of miraculous powers in the heavens of the Rishis, while its final destiny was to be reunited with the One and All.
The Buddhist Nirvana resembles the Brahma in being accounted the ultimate principle of the world. When in the sixth century B. C. the royal Hermit of the Cakyas revolted against the cruel despotism of the priesthood, the legend relates that the sight of suffering in the forms of sickness, old age and death, roused him from a life of indolent pleasure, and impelled him to seek a remedy for the ills of human life. His counsels were sweet and kindly; he taught self-control and wise moderation in the indulgence of the passions, and brotherly help and sympathy to lessen the evils which foresight
