Theological Essays and Other Papers, vol 1 | Page 4

found in the Heathen religion of Greece and Rome? This is an
important question; it being my object to show that no religion but the
Christian, and precisely through some one or two of its differential

elements, could have been an organ of political movement.
Most divines who anywhere glance at this question, are here found in,
what seems to me, the deepest of errors. Great theologians are they, and
eminent philosophers, who have presumed that (as a matter of course)
all religions, however false, are introductory to some scheme of
morality, however imperfect. They grant you that the morality is
oftentimes unsound; but still, they think that some morality there must
have been, or else for what purpose was the religion? This I pronounce
error.
All the moral theories of antiquity were utterly disjoined from religion.
But this fallacy of a dogmatic or doctrinal part in Paganism is born out
of Anachronism. It is the anachronism of unconsciously reflecting back
upon the ancient religions of darkness, and as if essential to all
religions, features that never were suspected as possible, until they had
been revealed in Christianity.[Footnote: Once for all, to save the
trouble of continual repetitions, understand Judaism to be
commemorated jointly with Christianity; the dark root together with the
golden fruitage; whenever the nature of the case does not presume a
contradistinction of the one to the other.] Religion, in the eye of a
Pagan, had no more relation to morals, than it had to ship-building or
trigonometry. But, then, why was religion honored amongst Pagans?
How did it ever arise? What was its object? Object! it had no object; if
by this you mean ulterior object. Pagan religion arose in no motive, but
in an impulse. Pagan religion aimed at no distant prize ahead: it fled
from a danger immediately behind. The gods of the Pagans were
wicked natures; but they were natures to be feared, and to be
propitiated; for they were fierce, and they were moody, and (as
regarded man who had no wings) they were powerful. Once accredited
as facts, the Pagan gods could not be regarded as other than terrific
facts; and thus it was, that in terror, blind terror, as against power in the
hands of divine wickedness, arose the ancient religions of Paganism.
Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus
was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most
lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of
sycophants.
Had the religions of Paganism arisen teleologically; that is, with a view
to certain purposes, to certain final causes ahead; had they grown out of

_forward_-looking views, contemplating, for instance, the furthering of
civilization, or contemplating some interests in a world beyond the
present, there would probably have arisen, concurrently, a section in all
such religions, dedicated to positive instruction. There would have been
a doctrinal part. There might have been interwoven with the ritual or
worship, a system of economics, or a code of civil prudence, or a code
of health, or a theory of morals, or even a secret revelation of
mysterious relations between man and the Deity: all which existed in
Judaism. But, as the case stood, this was impossible. The gods were
mere odious facts, like scorpions or rattlesnakes, having no moral
aspects whatever; public nuisances; and bearing no relation to man but
that of capricious tyrants. First arising upon a basis of terror, these gods
never subsequently enlarged that basis; nor sought to enlarge it. All
antiquity contains no hint of a possibility that love could arise, as by
any ray mingling with the sentiments in a human creature towards a
Divine one; not even sycophants ever pretended to love the gods.
Under this original peculiarity of Paganism, there arose two
consequences, which I will mark by the Greek letters α and β. The
latter I will notice in its order, first calling the reader's attention to the
consequence marked α, which is this:--In the full and profoundest
sense of the word believe, the pagans could not be said to believe in any
gods: but, in the ordinary sense, they did, and do, and must believe, in
all gods. As this proposition will startle some readers, and is yet closely
involved in the main truth which I am now pressing, viz. the meaning
and effect of a simple cultus, as distinguished from a high doctrinal
religion, let us seek an illustration from our Indian empire. The
Christian missionaries from home, when first opening their views to
Hindoos, describe themselves as laboring to prove that Christianity is a
true religion, and as either asserting, or leaving it to be inferred, that, on
that assumption, the Hindoo religion is a false one. But the poor
Hindoo never dreamed of doubting that the Christian