worldly affairs, maintain purity of morals, and to wrap themselves entirely in God were the motives which prompted the struggles of the early Christian Fathers and the many devotees who have since followed in their footsteps.

These motives we have enumerated are, of course, the most superficial ones. The real and ultimate motives or causes are to be found in the temperaments of the peoples, the nature of the psychic soils or nervous systems whence spring these beliefs and practices. That is, if we wish to understand why some peoples give themselves up to excessive sexual indulgence and entertain beliefs which justify them, while others entertain beliefs which justify their excessive restraint of natural impulses, we must look for the causes not in the beliefs, but in the antecedent and more fundamental factors, such as climate, soil, food-products, the nature and spirit of the age, the influence of heredity, suggestion, imitation, etc., all of which combined, shape the minds and determine the beliefs and conduct of men to an extent which is incalculable. In other words, we must go to geography, psychology, and their kindred sciences for our answers, and not to the various theologies.

HATE AND ANGER.

The opposite of love is hate, and like the opposite sides of a shield they are always together. The good lover is also a good hater, and vice versa. He who loves God, virtue, honor, truth, beauty, etc., must hate the devil, baseness, falsehood, ugliness, etc.

"In the love of Christ and his maid-mother," confessed Queen Isabella, "I have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms. In Spain alone, it is estimated that down to the year 1809 about 350,000 were either burnt or imprisoned and persecuted in the name of religion. And in all times intense lovers of God have cried out: "Shall I not hate them, O Lord, that hate Thee, and rise up against them that rise up against Thee? Yea I hate them right sore, as if they were mine enemies."'1

It was the furious hatred for the Prince of the power of air that blinded the God-loving and otherwise level-headed Puritans, and made the witchcraft madness possible among them.

1 St. Luke, 14: 26, 27.

Believing, as they did, that Satan with his confederates, the witches, were about to make an onslaught upon the New World, they determined to fight him and them to the bitter end and exterminate them from the land. Writes one of their contemporaries, "the Devil is now making one Attempt more upon us, an Attempt more difficult, more surprising, more snarled with unintelligible circumstances, than any that we have hitherto encountered; an Attempt so critical that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days, with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet."1

Jonathan Edwards in "The End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Righteous; or the Torments of the Wicked in Hell no Occasion of Grief to the Saints in Heaven," says, "When they have this sight it will excite them to joyful praises." The damned and their miseries, their sufferings and the wrath of God poured out upon them will be an occasion of joy to them." Andrew Wellwood says, picturing the future, "I am overjoyed in hearing the everlasting howlings of the haters of the Almighty. What a pleasant melody are they in mine ears! O, Eternal hallelujahs to Jehova and the Lamb! O, sweet! sweet! My heart is satisfied. We committed our cause to Thee that judgeth righteously, and behold Thou hast fully pleaded our Cause, and shall make the smoke of their torment forever and ever to ascend in our sight.

2

Even the great Preacher Himself, He who preached to the world the Gospel of Love, declared, "If any one come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple; and whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple."

These injunctions were too literally obeyed by very many ascetics and fanatics of succeeding generations. St. Jerome, exulting in his own atrophied and diseased feelings, tells Heliodorous, whom he exhorts to leave his family and become a hermit, "Though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your mother, with dishevelled hair and tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass on over your father's body. Fly with tear

1 Quoted in R. H. Allen, The New England Tragedies in Prose, p. 97. 2 Colin Scott: Old Age and Death: Am. Jour. Psych. Vol. 8, p. 111. See also Davenport: Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, passim.

less eyes to the banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty is the only piety. . Your widowed sister may throw her gentle arms around you. . Your father may implore you to wait but a short time to bury those near to you, who will soon be no more; your weeping mother may recall your childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and to her wrinkled brow. Those around you may tell you that all the household rests upon you. Such chains as these, the love of God and the fear of hell can easily break. You say that Scripture orders you to obey your parents, but he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul, etc." The Lives of the Saints are full of accounts of the cruelties of their subjects to their parents and nearest kin. Indeed, it seems that the Christianity of the Middle Ages was a religion of hate and cruelty and not of love and kindness as its Founder and His disciples intended it to be. "To outrage the affections of the nearest and dearest relations," writes Mr. Lecky, "was usually regarded not only as innocent, but proposed as the highest virtue. 'A young man,' it was acutely said, who has learnt to despise a mother's grief, will easily bear any other labor that is imposed upon him.'"'1

Indeed, to tell the story of religious hate, the rôle it has played in the history of mankind, would require the recounting of all the religious wars, massacres, holocausts, inquisitions, and persecutions, the perusal of which sickens the soul, and makes passionate men cry out against religion itself. The Old Testament fairly teems with accounts of fierce wars and massacres and inhuman deeds which were due to the intense hate of Israel for all unbelievers and enemies of their Jehovah. The pagan Roman hated and persecuted the early Christian, later the Catholics and Protestants hated and persecuted each other, both hated the Jew, Mohammedan, heathen and atheist, and all have heartily despised each other. We cannot, of course, enter into details, or treat the subject even in its barest outlines. To do so would require a volume in itself. Suffice it to say that while love is the keynote of almost all religious teachings, both oral and written, hate has played the leading rôle in religious history, and made it one long religious tragedy.

Mention should here be made of a peculiar religion which seems to have been born entirely of hate and cruelty. It is

1 History of European Morals, Vol. 2, p. 142.

called Thugism, and was discovered in India by the English in the early part of the nineteenth century. The beginnings of this sect reach back to legendary times. According to an ancient Hindu myth a demon once roamed over the earth and devoured human beings as fast as they were created. Of such gigantic size was he that he could wade across the ocean, and in the most unfathomable parts the water would not reach his waist. There was no earthly power that could restrain him, and for a long time he kept the world unpeopled. Finally Kalee or Devi, the goddess of destruction, came to the rescue. She attacked the demon, and cut him down; but from every drop of his blood another demon arose; and though the goddess continued to cut down these rising demons with wonderful alacrity and skill, fresh broods of demons sprang from their blood, as from that of their progenitors; and the diabolical race consequently multiplied with fearful rapidity. The never ending labor of cutting down demons, whose number was only increased by this operation of pruning, at length fatigued and disheartened the goddess; she found it necessary to make a change in her tactics; and here the tale which is thus far received by all Hindoos becomes subject to variations. According to Thug mythology, the goddess, when she became embarrassed by the constant reinforcements of the demon army, which accrued from her labors, relinquished all personal efforts for their suppression, and formed two men from the perspiration brushed from her arms. To each of these men she gave a handkerchief with which they were commanded to put all demons to death, without shedding a drop of blood. Her commands were faithfully executed; and the demons were all strangled without delay. The champions, having vanquished all the demons, offered to return the handkerchiefs, but their patroness, in the spirit of a grateful goddess, desired that they would retain them, not merely as memorials of their heroism, but as implements of a lucrative trade in which their descendants were to labor and thrive. They were not only permitted but commanded to strangle men as they had strangled demons.1

This explanation of the origin and work of their diabolical order is, on the face of it, one which was manufactured post rem to justify some long series of murders and robberies and

1 "Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs." Anonymous, London, 1837.

later served, as shall be seen, as an incentive to commit many more such crimes.

There is no doubt, however, that the Thugs, when discovered by the English in the early part of the nineteenth century regarded themselves as devotees engaged in the service of their deity. They committed their murders according to rigidly prescribed forms; only after the performance of special religious rites, and always scrupulously divided the spoils with their goddess. The instruments of murder and burial were held by them in the highest veneration. An oath taken by the pick-axe was as binding to them as the Koran is to the Mohammedan, or the Bible to the Christian. That they did not consider themselves murderers, but merely agents working out the will of their goddess, is evident from the replies which one of the Thugs gave to his questioner. Q. "How many people have you in the course of your life killed with your own hands, at a rough guess?" A. "I have killed none.'' Q. "Have you not been just describing to me a number of murders?" A. "Yes; but do you suppose I could have committed them? Is any man killed from man's killing? Is it not the hand of God that kills him, and are we not mere instruments in the hand of God?" And another on being asked whether he never felt compunction in murdering innocent people, answered with a smile, "Does any man feel compunction in following his trade? And are not all our trades assigned us by Providence?" The Thug believed he was called' to be a slayer of men, and piously obeyed the 'call.' "He educated his children to pursue the same career, instilling into their minds, at the earliest age, that Thuggee is the noblest profession a man can follow, and that the dark goddess they worship will always provide rich travellers for her zealous devotees.'' 1

These beliefs remind us immediately of the total depravity and fatalistic predestination doctrines of Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, in which there is, perhaps, more hate than love. Again, Luther's fated will' doctrine is similar. "The human will," says Luther," is like a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills. Nor can it choose the rider it would prefer, or betake itself to him, but it is the riders who contend for its possession." It is need

1 Mackay: Popular Delusions, Vol. 1, p. 382.