The Greek View of Life | Page 8

oxen
destined for sacrifice, to where, on turning the corner that leads to the
eastern front, we find ourselves in the presence of the Olympian gods
themselves, enthroned to receive the offering of a people's life. And if
to this marble representation we add the colour it lacks, the gold and
silver of the vessels, the purple and saffron robes; if we set the music
playing and bid the oxen low; if we gird our living picture with the
blaze of an August noon and crown it with the Acropolis of Athens, we
may form a conception, better perhaps than could otherwise be
obtained, of what religion really meant to the citizen of a state whose
activities were thus habitually symbolised in the cult of its patron deity.
Religion to him, clearly, could hardly be a thing apart, dwelling in the
internal region of the soul and leaving outside, untouched by the light
of the ideal, the whole business and complexity of the material side of
life; to him it was the vividly present and active soul of his corporate
existence, representing in the symbolic forms of ritual the actual facts
of his experience. What he re-enacted periodically, in ordered
ceremony, was but the drama of his daily life; so that, as we said before,
the state in one of its aspects was a church, and every layman from one
point of view a priest.
The question, "What did a belief in the gods really mean to the Greek"
has now received at least some sort of answer. It meant, to recur to our
old phrase, that he was made at home in the world. In place of the
unintelligible powers of nature, he was surrounded by a company of
beings like himself; and these beings who controlled the physical world
were also the creators of human society. From them were descended
the Heroes who founded families and states; and under their guidance
and protection cities prospered and throve. Their histories were
recounted in innumerable myths, and these again were embodied in

ritual. The whole life of man, in its relations both to nature and to
society, was conceived as derived from and dependent upon his gods;
and this dependence was expressed and brought vividly home to him in
a series of religious festivals. Belief in the gods was not to him so much
an intellectual conviction, as a spiritual atmosphere in which he moved;
and to think it away would be to think away the whole structure of
Greek civilisation.
Section 6. The Greek Conception of the Relation of Man to the Gods.
Admitting, however, that all this is true, admitting the place of religion
in Greek life, do we not end, after all, in a greater puzzle than we began
with? For this, it may be said, whatever it may be, is not what we mean
by religion. This, after all, is merely a beautiful way of expressing facts;
a translation, not an interpretation, of life. What we mean by religion is
something very different to that, something which concerns the relation
of the soul to God; the sense of sin, for example, and of repentance and
grace. The religion of the Greeks, we may admit, did something for
them which our religion does not do for us. It gave intelligible and
beautiful form to those phenomena of nature which we can only
describe as manifestations of energy; it expressed in a ritual of
exquisite art those corporate relations which we can only enunciate in
abstract terms; but did it perform what after all, it may be said, is the
true function of religion? did it touch the conscience as well as the
imagination and intellect?
To this question we may answer at once, broadly speaking, No! It was,
we might say, a distinguishing characteristic of the Greek religion that
it did not concern itself with the conscience at all; the conscience, in
fact, did not yet exist, to enact that drama of the soul with God which is
the main interest of the Christian, or at least of the Protestant faith. To
bring this point home to us let us open the "Pilgrim's Progress", and
present to ourselves, in its most vivid colours, the position of the
English Puritan:
"Now, I saw, upon a time, when he was walking in the fields, that he
was (as he was wont) reading in his book, and greatly distressed in his
mind; and, as he read, he burst out, as he had done before, crying,

'What shall I do to be saved?' I looked then, and saw a man named
Evangelist coming to him, and asked, 'Wherefore dost thou cry?'
"He answered, 'Sir, I perceive by the book in my hand, that I am
condemned to die, and after that to come