all the possible names of the Divinity together, that he is able to name God." In this sketch, we have laid open the chief sources of heathen mythology, and especially of the gods of the natural world. There is, nevertheless, one other source not wholly to be passed over, viz. the deification of distinguished men and benefactors of the human race. From this especially does the author of the Book of Wisdom derive the origin of idolatry, Chap. 14: 17, 18, 19. "Whomsoever the people could not honour in presence, because of their distant abode, they caused the countenance of him to be delineated for them in distant lands, and made a goodly image of the king to be honoured, so that they might designedly flatter the absent as though present. Thus also the ambition of the artist excited the ignorant to still greater idolatry. For he, desiring to gratify the prince, exerted all his skill in order to produce a picture of the highest beauty." This view had already been presented by some of the Greeks, among whom the most conspicuous were Ephorus, the scholar of Isocrates, whose principles we find in the Bibliotheca of Diodorus of Sicily, and Euhemerus, in his celebrated work 'Iɛqa' Avayqaqń. Also, for the most part, the defenders of the christian faith followed this view of mythology; and hence likewise Clemens Alexandrinus, in a striking manner, called the temples of the gods, the tombs of the gods; just as the mausolea are the tombs of mortals.13 This derivation of the gods is not to be entirely rejected, as was done by the New-Platonists and the Eclectics, who contend violently against Euhemerus.14 For the mythology of the ancients, like Corinthian brass, is compounded of many ingredients; and deified men are certainly found among the gods of the heathen; but still this shallower view has too often predominated in treating of mythology, because it is the easiest. of comprehension. We will now consider the origin of the statues and paintings of the gods. An ancient fabulous tradition places it in the age of Serug,15 who is said to have made images of his ancestors out of reverence, and his posterity paid divine honours to them. This tradition has been repeated by many western historians, (for example, Cedrenus,) and also by some eastern ones, as 13 Compare Eusebii Praep. Evang. II. 6. 14 See Plut. de Iside and Osiride c. 24. 15 See Suidas under Egoz. Mirchond. The author of the Book of Wisdom 16 also derives the rise of images from the representations of men, Chap. 14: 15. But although perhaps such may have been the fact in some individual cases, yet it cannot be denied that a far greater and deeper feeling lay at the foundation of this whole custom. What this feeling was, is finely described by the heathen rhetorician Dio Chrysostom.17 "Let no one say, on account of the imperfection of all our representations of God, that it were better to have even none, and rather barely to look up to heaven. The wise may indeed adore the gods as being far from us; but there exists in all men AN EAGER LONGING TO ADORE AND WORSHIP THE GODS AS NIGH. For as children, torn from father and mother, feel a powerful and affectionate longing, often stretch out their hands after their absent parents, and often dream of them; so the man, who heartily loves the gods for their benevolence towards us and their relationship with us, desires to be continually near them and to have intercourse with them; so that many barbarians, ignorant of the arts, have called the very mountains and trees gods, that they might recognize them as nearer to themselves." This longing here described, had already been fulfilled for inquiring souls when Dio wrote these words. The Son of God had already appeared in the world; the reflected splendour of the Father and of his glory, had already been seen of mortals; and the flaming image of his majesty still impresses itself in the sanctified soul of every one who now hears of him. Less in accordance with the feeling of the lower classes of men, but still very sensibly, Porphyry says of the invention and import of images :18 "God should be represented in the world of sense, by that which is in the greatest accordance with his spiritual nature." And in a fragment of a lost work,19 he employs this comparison: "The image is related to the god, as the the written book to the thoughts inscribed in it. The fool may regard the book merely as bark and parchment; but the wise man undestands the sense." Athanasius,20 who adduces the same comparison used by the heathen, goes on to add: "But yet they 16 Just so several of the apologists; for example, Lactant. Inst. div. II. 2. 17 Dio Chrysost. Orationes ed. Reiske Or. XII. p. 405. 18 Euseb. Praep. III. 7. 20 Athan. Opp. T. I. p. 23. 19 Ibid. should not value the signature of the great king higher than the king himself." When we consider the character of human nature, we see that it is very dangerous to suffer man to seek from without, what he should seek only in the interior of his own breast; and that, through the representations of the gods formed by art, he does but too easily come to suffer his mind to stop at the exterior, without duly attending to the revelation of Deity in a sanctified human soul. Moreover, Christians in later times justified their images of the Divine Being, on the ground that, among an ignorant common people who cannot read, the image stands in the place of the Holy Scriptures; and that otherwise, if we would prevent all abuse, we must build no churches, lest the multitude should come to the conclusion, that God may dwell shut up within walls.21 PART II. ESTIMATION OF THE HEATHEN RELIGION BY THE HEATHEN THEMSELVES. Before we take a view of the heathen religion from the highest point of observation, that of the Gospel, let us hear how it may have been judged of by its adherents themselves; that we may thence perceive how so many became conscious to themselves, that their wants could not be satisfied by it. Of these, the more superficial then passed upon all religion the same sentence as upon their own; while, on the contrary, those who thought more deeply, sought for themselves some compensation in a higher knowledge of their own creating. It might now be in the highest degree instructive, if we knew more accurately the religious wants of the common heathen; but of the internal religious life of the heathen, as it had shaped itself among the multitude, we know little or nothing. We are therefore not in a situation to point out, how far a longing for something better was manifested among the uncultivated ranks. The common people, so called, have customarily a more lively susceptibility for true religious feeling; because they have not philosophized away their feeling of religious want; because no delusive and dazzling 21 See Gregory the Great, in his Epistle to Serenus, and Walafried Strabo. wisdom has afforded to the longing of the God-related soul, an apparent relief, when once it has awaked out of its slumber of sin.22 On this very ground, we must believe that there was many an individual even among the heathen, who mourned in silence that his desire after heavenly consolation was not satisfied, and that he had no higher spiritual ideal at which he might aim, amid the troubles of the world, as the most appropriate object of life. Tertullian gives us a small specimen of the shaping and direction of pious feeling in the common people among the ancients, when he relates, that "in the deepest emotions of their minds they never direct their exclamations to their false gods; but employ the words: By GoD! As truly as GOD lives! GOD help me! Moreover, they do not thereby have their view directed to the capitol, but to heaven." Here, also, belongs the interesting remark of Aulus Gellius ;23 that the ancient Romans were not accustomed, during an earthquake, to pray to some one of the gods individually, but only to God in the general, as to the Unknown.24 The notices concerning the sentiments of the common people are thus few, for this reason, because that portion of them who became writers, reckoned themselves among the higher and cultivated class, and regarded the mental and moral development of the lower class as wholly different from and inferior to their own. But whenever the more cultivated did still in some degree regard and express the sentiments of the uncultivated, there are exhibited to us many very pointed declarations concerning the gods, the defects of heathenism, and the true character of piety,-namely, in the Greek comic writers, of whom, alas, we have only broken fragments.25 On the other hand, how different do we find the state of things at the beginning of the Reformation, the historians of which give us 22 The fine passage in Lactantius: "Nam vulgus interdum plus sapit, quia tantum quantum opus est sapit." Lact. Inst. III. 5. 23 Noctes Atticae, I. 28. 24 Lactantius, who dwells upon this more extensively, remarks, that it was in misfortune or danger, that they made use particularly of the appellation Deus; "postquam metus deseruit, and pericula recesserunt, tum vero alacres ad deorum templa concurrunt, his libant." De Inst. div. II. 1. 25 See the important fragments of Philemon, Menander, Diphilus, in Clem. Alex. Strom. V. and in his book de Monarchia Dei. innumerable and extremely affecting traits out of the spiritual life of the common people, who were longing for that religious. revolution; because these writers recognized, even in the lowest of the people, the one and the same Spirit of God which had awaked themselves to a holy life.26 If now, among the more cultivated Greeks and Romans, a lively feeling of the heart contributed less to make them see the vanity of their idol worship, (since they themselves sought to substitute in its place only abstract systems,) yet, on the other hand, their knowledge was so much the more clear, and they easily perceived theoretically the corruptness of such a system of religion. Among the most ancient of these witnesses for the truth, Xenophanes, the author of the Eleatic sect, deserves to be mentioned. This sagacious man closed his work on Nature. with these striking words: "No man has discovered any certainty, nor will discover it, concerning the gods and what I say of the universe. For, if he uttered what is even most perfect, still he does not know it, but conjecture hangs over all.”—All true, if only the guide of syllogistic reasoning is to lead men up to the highest Being. In this view, Xenophanes justly deserves the praise which Timon the misanthrope gave him, who called him the thinker without conceitedness; only that in the above assertion, the acute philosopher was merely a destroyer, who could give man nothing in place of what he took away. Xenophanes differed nevertheless from the other philosophers in this, that he frankly declared whatever was his conviction concerning the gods; and although he might come out in the strongest contradiction to the popular opinions, still he really made it his object, to enlighten and cultivate the people. He taught thus :27 "One God only is supreme among men and gods; neither in external shape nor in spirit to be compared with man."-" But mortals think that the gods are begotten, are like themselves in mind, in voice, and body."-" But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to delineate with their hands, or to perform the business of man, then horses would represent the divinities like horses, the cattle like cattle, and lend them such bodies as themselves possess.' 1128 26 See the excellent remarks on the Reformation in George Müller's Reliquien, Leipzig 1806. B. III. 27 See Sextus Empir. adv. Mathem. VII. 49. 28 Clem. Alex. Strom. V. 14. Euseb. Praep. XIII. 13. |