A Comparative View of Religions | Page 2

practical, empirical point of view peculiar to him,
recognizes the spiritual only in man and chiefly in the state. His
religion, therefore, is confined exclusively to the faithful keeping of the
laws of the state (the Celestial Kingdom), in which he sees the
reflection of heaven, to the recognition of the Emperor as the son and
representative of heaven, and to the worship of the forefathers,
especially of the great men and departed emperors, to whose memory
the Chinese temples, or pagodas, are dedicated. The origin of this
religion dates, according to the tradition, from Fo-hi (2950 B.C.), the
founder of the Chinese state. In the fifth century before Christ,
Kong-tse, or Kong-fu-tse (Confucius), appeared as a reformer of the
religion of his countrymen, and gathered the ancient records and
traditions of his people into a sacred literature, which is known by the
name of the "King" (the books), "Yo-King" (the book of nature),
"Chu-King" (the book of history), "Chi-King" (the book of songs). The
contents of the "King" became later with the Chinese sages Meng-tse
(360 B.C.) and Tschu-tsche (1200 A.D.) an object of philosophical
speculation. The doctrine of Lao-tse, the younger contemporary of
Kong-tse, which lays down as the basis of the world, that is of the
unreal or non-existent, a supreme principle, Tao, or Being, corresponds
with the Brahma doctrine of the Indians, among whom he lived for a
long time; but this doctrine never became popular in China.

3. THE EGYPTIANS.
The worship of nature, which is seen in its beginnings among the
Chinese, exhibits itself among the Egyptians in a more developed form
as theogony. Here also the reflecting mind rose to the recognition of
two fundamental principles, the producing and the passive power of
nature, Kneph and Neith, from which sprang successively the
remaining powers of nature, time, air, earth, light and darkness,
personified by the fantasy of the people into as many divinities. The
Egyptian mythology also (none has as yet been discovered among the
Chinese) exhibits a like character. Fruitfulness and drought, the results
of the Nile's overflowing and receding, are imaged in the myth of
Osiris, Isis, and Typhon. The visible form under which the divine was
worshiped in Egypt was the sacred animal, the bull Apis, dedicated to
Osiris, the cow, dedicated to Isis, as symbols of agriculture; the bird
Ibis, the crocodile, the dog Anubis, and other animals, whose physical
characteristics impressed the as yet childish man, who saw in them the
symbol, either of the beneficent power of nature which moved him to
thankfulness, or of a destructive power which he dreaded and whose
anger he sought to avert. The religion of Egypt was not of a purely
spiritual character. To the man whose eye is not yet open to the
manifestation of the spiritual around him and in him, the divine is not
spirit, but as yet only nature. The animal, although in the form of the
sphinx approaching the human, holds in Egyptian art a place above the
human as symbol of the divine.
CHAPTER II.
THE ARIAN NATIONS.
1. THE EAST ARIANS. THE INDIANS.
In the development of religion among the Indians, the following
periods may be distinguished:--
a. The original Veda-religion.
b. The priestly religion of the Brahmins.

c. The philosophical speculation.
d. Buddhism.
e. The modified Brahminism after Buddha, in connection with the
worship of Vishnu and Siva.
a. The original Veda-religion.
The original religion of Arya originated in Bactria. From thence, before
the time of Zoroaster, it was brought over, with the great migration of
the people, to the land of the seven rivers, which they conquered, and
which stretched from the Indus to the Hesidrus. It consisted, according
to the oldest literature of the Veda, in a polytheistical worship of the
divine, either as the beneficent or the baneful power of nature. The
clear, blue sky, the light of the sun, the rosy dawn, the storm that
spends itself in fruitful rain, the winds and gales which drive away the
clouds, the rivers whose fruitful slime overspreads the fields,--these
moved the inhabitants of India to the worship of the divine as the
beneficent power of nature which blesses man. On the other hand, he
changed under the impression of the harmful phenomena of nature, the
dark and close-packed clouds which hold back the rain and intercept
the sunshine, the parching heat of summer, which dries up the rivers
and hinders growth and fruitfulness, and these also he erected into
objects of awe and religious adoration. From this view of nature sprang
the Indian mythology. The oldest divinity (Deva) of the Indians is
Varuna, the all-embracing heaven, who marks out their courses for the
heavenly luminaries, who rules the day and the night, who is lord of
life and death, whose protection is invoked,