Chapter IV (2)

_Thales_, one of the most ancient of the Greek philosophers, taught the existence of a plurality of gods, as is evident from that saying of his, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, "The world has life, and is full of gods."[185] At the same time he asserts his belief in one supreme, uncreated Deity; "God is the oldest of all things, because he is unmade, or ungenerated."[186] All the other gods must therefore have been "generated deities," since there is but one unmade God, one only that had "no beginning."[187]

[Footnote 184: See John x. 35.]

[Footnote 185: "Lives," bk. i.; see also Aristotle's "De Anima," bk. i. ch. viii. panta Thiôn plêrê.]

[Footnote 186: "Lives," bk. i.]

[Footnote 187: "Lives," bk. i.]

_Xenophanes_ was also an assertor of many gods, and one God; but his one God is unquestionably supreme. "There is one God, the greatest amongst gods and men;" or, "God is one, the greatest amongst gods and men."[188]

_Empedocles_ also believed in one Supreme God, who "is wholly and perfectly mind, ineffable, holy, with rapid and swift-glancing thought pervading the whole world," and from whom all things else are derived,--"all things that are upon the earth, and in the air and water, may be truly called the works of God, who ruleth over the world, out of whom, according to Empedocles, proceed all things, plants, men, beasts, and _gods_."[189] The minor deities are therefore _made_ by God. It will not be denied that _Socrates_ was a devout and earnest Theist. He taught that "there is a Being whose eye pierces throughout all nature, and whose ear is open to every sound; extending through all time, extended to all places; and whose bounty and care can know no other bounds than those fixed by his own creation."[190] And yet he also recognized the existence of a plurality of gods, and in his last moments expressed his belief that "it is lawful and right to pray to the gods that his departure hence may be happy."[191] We see, however, in his words addressed to Euthydemus, a marked distinction between these subordinate deities and "Him who raised this whole universe, and still upholds the mighty frame, who perfected every part of it in beauty and in goodness, suffering none of these parts to decay through age, but renewing them daily with unfading vigor;... even he, _the Supreme God_, still holds himself invisible, and it is only in his works that we are capable of admiring him."[192]

[Footnote 188: Clem. Alex., "Stromat." bk. v.]

[Footnote 189: Aristotle, "De Mundo," ch. vi.]

[Footnote 190: Xenophon's "Memorabilia," i. 4.]

[Footnote 191: "Phædo," § 152.]

[Footnote 192: "Memorabilia," iv. 3.]

It were needless to attempt the proof that _Plato_ believed in one Supreme God, and _only_ one. This one Being is, with him, "the first God;" "the greatest of the gods;" "the God over all;" "the sole Principle of the universe." He is "the Immutable;" "the All-perfect;" "the eternal Being." He is "the Architect of the world; "the Maker of the universe; the Father of gods and men; the sovereign Mind which orders all things, and passes through all things; the sole Monarch and Ruler of the world.[193]

And yet remarkable as these expressions are, sounding, as they do, so like the language of inspiration,[194] there can be no doubt that Plato was also a sincere believer in a plurality of gods, of which, indeed, any one may assure himself by reading the _tenth_ book of "the Laws."

[Footnote 193: See chap. xi.]

[Footnote 194: Some writers have supposed that Plato must have had access through some medium to "the Oracles of God." See Butler, vol. ii. p. 41.]

And, now that we have in Plato the culmination of Grecian speculative thought, we may learn from him the mature and final judgment of the ancients in regard to the gods of pagan mythology. We open the _Timæus_, and here we find his views most definitely expressed. After giving an account of the "generation" of the sun, and moon, and planets, which are by him designated as "visible gods," he then proceeds "to speak concerning the other divinities:" "We must on this subject assent to those who in former times have spoken thereon; who were, as they said, the offspring of the gods, and who doubtless were well acquainted with their own ancestors..... Let then the genealogy of the gods be, and be acknowledged to be, that which they deliver. Of Earth and Heaven the children were Oceanus and Tethys; and of these the children were Phorcys, and Kronos, and Rhea, and all that followed these; and from these were born Zeus and Hera, and those who are regarded as brothers and sisters of these, and others their offspring.

"When, then, _all the gods were brought into existence_, both those which move around in manifest courses [the stars and planets], and those which appear when it pleases them [the mythological deities], the Creator of the Universe thus addressed them: 'Gods, and sons of gods, of whom I am the father and the author, produced by me, ye are indestructible because I will.... Now inasmuch as you have been _generated_, you are hence _not_ immortal, nor wholly indissoluble; yet you shall never be dissolved nor become subject to the fatality of death, because _so I have willed_.... Learn, therefore, my commands. Three races of mortals yet remain to be created. Unless these be created, the universe will be imperfect, for it will not contain within it every kind of animal.... In order that these mortal creatures may be, and that this world may be really a cosmos, do you apply yourselves to the creation of animals, imitating the exercises of my power in _creating_ you.'"[195]

[Footnote 195: "Timæus," ch. xv.]

Here, then, we see that Plato carefully distinguishes between the sole Eternal Author of the universe, on one hand, and the "souls," vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the heavenly orbs, and diffuses through all nature, on the other. These subordinate powers or agents are all created, "_generated_ deities," who owe their continued existence to the _will_ of God; and though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, and a subsequent direction and government of created things, they are still only the _servants_ and the _deputies_ of the Supreme Creator, and Director, and Ruler of all things. These subordinate agents and ministers employed in the creation and providential government of the world appear, in the estimation of Plato, to have been needed--

1. _To satisfy the demands of the popular faith_, which presented its facts to be explained no less than those of external nature. Plato had evidently a great veneration for antiquity, a peculiar regard for "tradition venerable through ancient report," and "doctrines hoary with years."[196] He aspired after supernatural light and guidance; he longed for some intercourse with, some communication from, the Deity. And whilst he found many things in the ancient legends which revolted his moral sense, and which his reason rejected, yet the sentiment and the lesson which pervades the whole of Grecian mythology, viz., that the gods are in ceaseless intercourse with the human race, and if men will do right the gods will protect and help them, was one which commended itself to his heart.

[Footnote 196: Ibid., ch. v.]

2. These intermediate agents seem to have been demanded to _satisfy the disposition and tendency which has revealed itself in all systems, of interposing some scale of ascent between the material creation and the infinite Creator_.

The mechanical theory of the universe has interposed its long series of secondary causes--the qualities, properties, laws, forces of nature; the vital theory which attaches a separate "soul" to the various parts of nature as the cause and intelligent director of its movements. Of these "souls" or gods, there were different orders and degrees--deified men or heroes, aërial, terrestrial, and celestial divinities, ascending from nature up to God. And this tendency to supply some scale of ascent towards the Deity, or at least to people the vast territory which seems to swell between the world and God, finds some countenance in "the angels and archangels," "the thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers" of the Christian scriptures.[197]

3. These inferior ministers also seemed to Plato to _increase the stately grandeur and imperial majesty of the Divine government._ They swell the retinue of the Deity in his grand "circuit through the highest arch of heaven."[198] They wait to execute the Divine commands. They are the agents of Divine providence, "the messengers of God" to men.

[Footnote 197: "The gods of the Platonic system answer, in office and conception, to the angels of Christian Theology."--Butler, vol. i. p. 225.]

[Footnote 198: "Phædrus," § 56,7.]

4. And, finally, the host of inferior deities interposed between the material sensible world and God seemed to Plato as _needful in order to explain the apparent defects and disorders of sublunary affairs_. Plato was jealous of the Divine honor. "All good must be ascribed to God, and nothing but good. We must find evil, disorder, suffering, in some other cause."[199] He therefore commits to the junior deities the task of creating animals, and of forming "the mortal part of man," because the mortal part is "possessed of certain dire and necessary passions."[200]

[Footnote 199: "Republic," bk. ii. p.18.]

[Footnote 200: "Timæus," xliv.]

Aristotle seems to have regarded the popular polytheism of Greece as a perverted relic of a deeper and purer "Theology" which he conceives to have been, in all probability, perfected in the distant past, and then comparatively lost. He says--"The tradition has come down from very ancient times, being left in a mythical garb to succeeding generations, that these (the heavenly bodies) are gods, and that the Divinity _encompasses the whole of nature_. There have been made, however, to these certain fabulous additions for the purpose of winning the belief of the multitude, and thus securing their obedience to the laws, and their co-operation towards advancing the general welfare of the state. These additions have been to the effect that these gods were of the same form as men, and even that some of them were in appearance similar to certain others amongst the rest of the animal creation. The wise course, however, would be for the philosopher to disengage from these traditions the false element, and to embrace that which is true; and the truth lies in that portion of this ancient doctrine which regards the first and deepest ground of all existence to be the _Divine_, and this he may regard as a divine utterance. In all probability, every art, and science, and philosophy has been over and over again discovered to the farthest extent possible, and then again lost; and we may conceive these opinions to have been preserved to us as a sort of fragment of these lost philosophers. We see, then, to some extent the relation of the popular belief to these ancient opinions."[201] This conception of a deep Divine ground of all existence (for the immateriality and unity of which he elsewhere earnestly contends)[202] is thus regarded by Aristotle as underlying the popular polytheism of Greece.

[Footnote 201: "Metaph.," xi. 8.]

[Footnote 202: Bk. xi. ch. ii. § 4.]

The views of the educated and philosophic mind of Greece in regard to the mythological deities may, in conclusion, be thus briefly stated--

I. _They are all created beings_--"GENERATED DEITIES," _who are dependent on, and subject to, the will of one supreme God_.

II. _They are the_ AGENTS _employed by God in the creation of, at least some parts of, the universe, and in the movement and direction of the entire cosmos; and they are also the_ MINISTERS _and_ MESSENGERS _of that universal providence which he exercises over the human race_.

These subordinate deities are, 1. the greater parts of the visible mundane system animated by intelligent souls, and called "_sensible gods_"--the sun, the moon, the stars, and even the earth itself, and known by the names Helios, Selena, Kronos, Hermes, etc.

2. Some are _invisible powers_, having peculiar offices and functions and presiding over special places provinces and departments of the universe;--one ruling in the heavens (Zeus), another in the air (Juno), another in the sea (Neptune), another in the subterranean regions (Pluto); one god presiding over learning and wisdom (Minerva), another over poetry, music, and religion (Apollo), another over justice and political order (Themis), another over war (Mars), another over corn (Ceres), and another the vine (Bacchus).

3. Others, again, are _ethereal_ and _aërial_ beings, who have the guardianship of individual persons and things, and are called _demons, genii_, and _lares_; superior indeed to men, but inferior to the gods above named.

"Wherefore, since there were no other gods among the Pagans besides those above enumerated, unless their images, statues, and symbols should be accounted such (because they were also sometimes abusively called 'gods'), which could not be supposed by them to have been unmade or without beginning, they being the workmanship of their own hands, we conclude, universally, that all that multiplicity of Pagan gods which make so great a show and noise was really either nothing but several names and notions of one supreme Deity, according to his different manifestations, gifts, and effects upon the world personated, or else many inferior understanding beings, generated or created by one supreme: so that one unmade, self-existent Deity, and no more, was acknowledged by the more intelligent Pagans, and, consequently, the Pagan Polytheism (or idolatry) consisted not in worshipping a multiplicity of unmade minds, deities, and creators, self-existent from eternity, and independent upon one Supreme, but in mingling and blending some way or other, unduly, creature-worship with the worship of the Creator."[203]

[Footnote 203: Cudworth, "Intellectual System," vol. i. p. 311.]

That the heathen regard the one Supreme Being as the first and chief object of worship is evident from the apologies which they offered for worshipping, besides Him, many inferior divinities.

1. They claimed to worship them _only_ as inferior beings, and that therefore they were not guilty of giving them that honor which belonged to the Supreme. They claimed to worship the supreme God incomparably above all. 2. That this honor which is bestowed upon the inferior divinities does ultimately redound to the supreme God, and aggrandize his state and majesty, they being all his ministers and attendants. 3. That as demons are mediators between the celestial gods and men, so those celestial gods are also mediators between men and the supreme God, and, as it were, convenient steps by which we ought with reverence to approach him. 4. That demons or angels being appointed to preside over kingdoms, cities, and persons, and being many ways benefactors to us, thanks ought to be returned to them by sacrifice. 5. Lastly, that it can not be thought that the Supreme Being will envy those inferior beings that worship or honor which is bestowed upon them; nor suspect that any of these inferior deities will factiously go about to set up themselves against the Supreme God.

The Pagans, furthermore, apologized for worshipping God in images, statues, and symbols, on the ground that these were only schetically worshipped by them, the honor passing from them to the prototype. And since we live in bodies, and can scarcely, conceive of any thing without having some image or phantasm, we may therefore be indulged in this infirmity of human nature (at least in the vulgar) to worship God under a corporeal image, as a means of preventing men from falling into Atheism.

To the Christian conscience the above reasons assigned furnish no real justification of Polytheism and Idolatry; but they are certainly a tacit confession of their belief in the one Supreme God, and their conviction that, notwithstanding their idolatry, He only ought to be worshipped. The heathen polytheists are therefore justly condemned in Scripture, and pronounced to be "_inexcusable_." They had the knowledge of the true God--" they _knew God_" and yet "they glorified him not as God." "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of corruptible man." And, finally, they ended in "worshipping and serving the creature _more_ than the Creator."[204]

[Footnote 204: Romans i. 21, 25.]

It can not, then, with justice be denied that the Athenians had some knowledge of the true God, and some just and worthy conceptions of his character. It is equally certain that a powerful and influential religious sentiment pervaded the Athenian mind. Their extreme "carefulness in religion" must be conceded by us, and, in some sense, commended by us, as it was by Paul in his address on Mars' Hill. At the same time it must also be admitted and deplored that the purer theology of primitive times was corrupted by offensive legends, and encrusted by polluting myths, though not utterly defaced.[205] The Homeric gods were for the most part idealized, human personalities, with all the passions and weaknesses of humanity. They had their favorites and their enemies; sometimes they fought in one camp, sometimes in another. They were susceptible of hatred, jealousy, sensual passion. It would be strange indeed if their worshippers were not like unto them. The conduct of the Homeric heroes was, however, better than their creed. And there is this strange incongruity and inconsistency in the conduct of the Homeric gods,--they punish mortals for crimes of which they themselves are guilty, and reward virtues in men which they do not themselves always practise. "They punish with especial severity social and political crimes, such as perjury (Iliad, iii. 279), oppression of the poor (Od. xvii. 475), and unjust judgment in courts of justice (Iliad, xvi. 386)." Jupiter is the god of justice, and of the domestic hearth; he is the protector of the exile, the avenger of the poor, and the vigilant guardian of hospitality. "And with all the imperfections of society, government, and religion, the poem presents a remarkable picture of primitive simplicity, chastity, justice, and practical piety, under the three-fold influence of moral feeling, mutual respect, and fear of the divine displeasure; such, at least, are the motives to which Telemachus makes his appeal when he endeavors to rouse the assembled people of Ithaca to the performance of their duty (Od. ii. 64)."[206]

[Footnote 205: "There was always a double current of religious ideas in Greece; one spiritualist, the other tainted with impure legends."--Pressensé.]

[Footnote 206: Tyler, "Theology of Greek Poets," pp. 167, 168; Pressensé, "Religion before Christ," p. 77.]

The influence of the religious dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles on the Athenian mind must not be overlooked. No writer of pagan antiquity made the voice of conscience speak with the same power and authority that Æschylus did. "Crime," he says, "never dies without posterity." "Blood that has been shed congeals on the ground, crying out for an avenger." The old poet made himself the echo of what he called "the lyreless hymn of the Furies," who, with him, represented severe Justice striking the guilty when his hour comes, and giving warning beforehand by the terrors which haunt him. His dramas are characterized by deep religious feeling. Reverence for the gods, the recognition of an inflexible moral order, resignation to the decisions of Heaven, an abiding presentiment of a future state of reward and punishment, are strikingly predominant.

Whilst Æschylus reveals to us the sombre, terror-stricken side of conscience, Sophocles shows us the divine and luminous side. No one has ever spoken with nobler eloquence than he of moral obligation--of this immortal, inflexible law, in which dwells a God that never grows old--

"Oh be the lot forever mine
Unsullied to maintain,
In act and word, with awe divine,
What potent laws ordain.

"Laws spring from purer realms above:
Their father is the Olympian Jove.
Ne'er shall oblivion veil their front sublime,
Th' indwelling god is great, nor fears the wastes of time."[207]

The religious inspiration that animates Sophocles breaks out with incomparable beauty in the last words of oedipus, when the old banished king sees through the darkness of death a mysterious light dawn, which illumines his blind eyes, and which brings to him the assurance of a blessed immortality.[208]

[Footnote 207: "oedipus Tyran.," pp. 863-872.]

[Footnote 208: Pressensé, "Religion before Christ," pp. 85-87.]

Such a theology could not have been utterly powerless. The influence of truth, in every measure and degree, must be salutary, and especially of truth in relation to God, to duty, and to immortality. The religion of the Athenians must have had some wholesome and conserving influence of the social and political life of Athens.[209] Those who resign the government of this lower world almost exclusively to Satan, may see, in the religion of the Greeks, a simple creation of Satanic powers. But he who believes that the entire progress of humanity has been under the control and direction of a benignant Providence, must suppose that, in the purposes of God, even Ethnicism has fulfilled some end, or it would not have been permitted to live. God has "_never left himself without a witness_" in any nation under heaven. And some preparatory office has been fulfilled by Heathenism which, at least, repealed the _want_, and prepared the mind for, the advent of Christianity.

[Footnote 209: The practice, so common with some theological writers, of drawing dark pictures of heathenism, in which not one luminous spot is visible, in order to exalt the revelations given to the Jews, is exceedingly unfortunate, and highly reprehensible. It is unfortunate, because the skeptical scholar knows that there were some elements of truth and excellence, and even of grandeur, in the religion and civilization of the republics of Greece and Rome; and it is reprehensible, because it is a one-sided and unjust procedure, in so far as it withholds part of the truth. This species of argument is a two-edged sword which cuts both ways. The prevalence of murder, and slavery, and treachery, and polygamy, in Greece and Rome, is no more a proof that "the religions of the pagan nations were destructive of morality" (Watson, vol. i. p. 59), than the polygamy of the Hebrews, the falsehoods and impositions of Mediaeval Christianity, the persecutions and martyrdoms of Catholic Christianity, the oppressions and wrongs of Christian England, and the slavery of Protestant America, are proofs that the Christian religion is "destructive of morality." What a fearful picture of the history of Christian nations might be drawn to-day, if all the lines of light, and goodness, and charity were left out, and the crimes, and wrongs, and cruelties of the Christian nations were alone exhibited!

How much more convincing a proof of the truth of Christianity to find in the religions of the ancient world a latent sympathy with, and an unconscious preparation for, the religion of Christ. "The history of religions of human origin is the most striking evidence of the agreement of revealed religion with the soul of man--for each of these forms of worship is the expression of the wants of conscience, its eternal thirst for pardon and restoration--rather let us say, its thirst for God."--Pressensé, p. 6.]

The religion of the Athenians was unable to deliver them from the guilt of sin, redeem them from its power, and make them pure and holy. It gave the Athenian no victory over himself, and, practically, brought him no nearer to the living God. But it awakened and educated the conscience, it developed more fully the sense of sin and guilt, and it made man conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt; and "the day that humanity awakens to the want of something more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the need of being saved and restored from the consequences of sin" by a higher power. Æsthetic taste had found its fullest gratification in Athens; poetry, sculpture, architecture, had been carried to the highest perfection; a noble civilization had been reached; but "the need of something deeper and truer was written on the very stones." The highest consummation of Paganism was an altar to "the unknown God," the knowledge of whom it needed, as the source of purity and peace.

The strength and the weakness of Grecian mythology consisted in the contradictory character of its divinities. It was a strange blending of the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine. Zeus, the eternal Father,--the immortal King, whose will is sovereign, and whose power is invincible,--the All-seeing Jove, has some of the weaknesses and passions of humanity. God and man are thus, in some mysterious way, united. And here that deepest longing of the human heart is met--the unconquerable desire to bring God nearer to the human apprehension, and closer to the human heart. Hence the hold which Polytheism had upon the Grecian mind. But in this human aspect was also found its weakness, for when philosophic thought is brought into contact with, and permitted critically to test mythology, it dethrones the false gods. The age of spontaneous religious sentiment must necessarily be succeeded by the age of reflective thought. Popular theological faiths must be placed in the hot crucible of dialectic analysis, that the false and the frivolous may be separated from the pure and the true. The reason of man demands to be satisfied, as well as the heart. Faith in God must have a logical basis, it must be grounded on demonstration and proof. Or, at any rate, the question must be answered, _whether God is cognizable by human reason_? If this can be achieved, then a deeper foundation is laid in the mind of humanity, upon which Christianity can rear its higher and nobler truths.