Chapter III

THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS.

"All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion (δεισιδαιµονεστέρους). For as I passed through your city, and beheld the objects of your worship, I found amongst them an altar with this inscription--'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.' Whom therefore ye worship...."--ST. PAUL.

Standing in the market-place, and looking up to the Areopagus, Paul would see the temple of Mars, from whom the hill derived its name. And turning toward the Acropolis, he would behold, closing the long perspective, a series of little sanctuaries on the very ledges of the rocks, shrines of Bacchus and Æsculapius, Venus, Earth, and Ceres, ending with the lovely form of the Temple of Unwinged Victory, which glittered in front of the Propylæa.

If the apostle entered the "fivefold gates," and ascended the flight of stone steps to the platform of the Acropolis, he would find the whole area one grand composition of architecture and statuary dedicated to the worship of the gods. Here stood the Parthenon, the Virgin House, the glorious temple which was erected during the proudest days of Athenian glory, an entire offering to Minerva, the tutelary divinity of Athens. Within was the colossal statue of the goddess wrought in ivory and gold. Outside the temple there stood another statue of Minerva, cast from the brazen spoils of Marathon; and near by yet another brazen Pallas, which was called by pre-eminence "the Beautiful."

Indeed, to whatever part of Athens the apostle wandered, he would meet the evidences of their "carefulness in religion," for every public place and every public building was a sanctuary of some god. The Metroum, or record-house, was a temple to the mother of the gods. The council-house held statues of Apollo and Jupiter, with an altar to Vesta. The theatre at the base of the Acropolis was consecrated to Bacchus. The Pnyx was dedicated to Jupiter on high. And as if, in this direction, the Attic imagination knew no bounds, abstractions were deified; altars were erected to Fame, to Energy, to Modesty, and even to Pity, and these abstractions were honored and worshipped as gods.

No wonder, then, that as Paul wandered amid these scenes "his spirit was stirred in him." He burned with holy zeal to maintain the honor of the true and only God, whom now he saw dishonored on every side. He was filled with compassion for those Athenians who, notwithstanding their intellectual greatness, had changed the glory of God into an image made in the likeness of corruptible man, and who really worshipped the creature more than the Creator. The images intended to symbolize the invisible perfections of God were usurping the place of God, and receiving the worship due alone to him. We may presume the apostle was not insensible to the beauties of Grecian art. The sublime architecture of the Propylæa and the Parthenon, the magnificent sculpture of Phidias and Praxiteles, could not fail to excite his wonder. But he remembered that those superb temples and this glorious statuary were the creation of the pagan spirit, and devoted to polytheistic worship. The glory of the supreme God was obscured by all this symbolism. The creatures formed by God, the symbols of his power and presence in nature, the ministers of his providence and moral government, were receiving the honor due to him. Over all this scene of material beauty and æsthetic perfection there rose in dark and hideous proportions the errors and delusions and sins against the living God which Polytheism nurtured, and unable any longer to restrain himself, he commenced to "reason" with the crowds of Athenians who stood beneath the shadows of the plane-trees, or lounged beneath the porticoes that surrounded the Agora. Among these groups of idlers were mingled the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus, who "encountered" Paul. The nature of these "disputations" may be easily conjectured, The opinions of these philosophers are even now familiarly known: they are, in one form or another, current in the literature of modern times. Materialism and Pantheism still "encounter" Christianity. The apostle asserted the personal being and spirituality of one supreme and only God, who has in divers ways revealed himself to man, and therefore may be "known." He proclaimed that Jesus is the fullest and most perfect revelation of God--the only "manifestation of God in the flesh." He pointed to his "resurrection" as the proof of his superhuman character and mission to the world. Some of his hearers were disposed to treat him with contempt; they represented him as an ignorant "babbler," who had picked up a few scraps of learning, and who now sought to palm them off as a "new" philosophy. But most of them regarded him with that peculiar Attic curiosity which was always anxious to be hearing some "new thing." So they led him away from the tumult of the market-place to the top of Mars' Hill, where, in its serene atmosphere, they might hear him more carefully, and said, "May we hear what this new doctrine is whereof thou speakest?"

Surrounded by these men of thoughtful, philosophic mind--men who had deeply pondered the great problem of existence, who had earnestly inquired after the "first principles of things;" men who had reasoned high of creation, fate, and providence; of right and wrong; of conscience, law, and retribution; and had formed strong and decided opinions on all these questions--he delivered his discourse on the being, the providence, the spirituality, and the moral government of God.

The assertion that the Athenians were "a religious people" will, to many of our readers, appear a strange and startling utterance, which has in it more of novelty than truth. Nay, some will be shocked to hear the Apostle Paul described as complimenting these Athenians--these pagan worshippers--on their "carefulness in religion." We have been so long accustomed to use the word "heathen" as an opprobrious epithet--expressing, indeed, the utmost extremes of ignorance, and barbarism, and cruelty, that it has become difficult for us to believe that in a heathen there can be any good. From our childhood we have read in our English Bibles, Ye men of Athens, I perceive in all things ye are too superstitious

and we can scarcely tolerate another version, even if it can be shown that it approaches nearer to the actual language employed by Paul. We must, therefore, ask the patience and candor of the reader, while we endeavor to show, on the authority of Paul's words, that the Athenians were a "religious people," and that all our notions to the contrary are founded on prejudice and misapprehension.

The unwillingness of many to recognize a religious element in the Athenian mind is further accounted for by their misconception of the meaning of the word "religion." We are all too much accustomed to regard religion as a mere system of dogmatic teaching. We use the terms "Christian religion," "Jewish religion," "Mohammedan religion," as comprehending simply the characteristic doctrines by which each is distinguished; whereas religion is a mode of thought, and feeling, and action, determined by the consciousness of our relation to and our dependence upon God. It does not appropriate to itself any specific department of our mental powers and susceptibilities, but it conditions the entire functions and circle of our spiritual life. It is not simply a mode of conceiving God in thought, nor simply a mode of venerating God in the affections, nor yet simply a mode of worshipping God in outward and formal acts, but it comprehends the whole. Religion (religere, respect, awe, reverence) regulates our thoughts, feelings, and acts towards God. "It is a reference and a relationship of our finite consciousness to the Creator and Sustainer and Governor of the universe." It is such a consciousness of the Divine as shall awaken in the heart of man the sentiments of reverence, fear, and gratitude towards God; such a sense of dependence as shall prompt man to pray, and lead him to perform external acts of worship.

Religion does not, therefore, consist exclusively in knowledge, however correct; and yet it must be preceded and accompanied by some intuitive cognition of a Supreme Being, and some conception of him as a free moral personality. But the religious sentiments, which belong rather to the heart than to the understanding of man--the consciousness of dependence, the sense of obligation, the feeling of reverence, the instinct to pray, the appetency to worship--these may all exist and be largely developed in a human mind even when, as in the case of the Athenians, there is a very imperfect knowledge of the real character of God.

Regarding this, then, as the generic conception of religion, namely, that it is a mode of thought and feeling and action determined by our consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being, we claim that the apostle was perfectly right in complimenting the Athenians on their "more than ordinary religiousness," for,

1. They had, in some degree at least, that faith in the being and providence of God which precedes and accompanies all religion.

They had erected an altar to the unseen, the unsearchable, the incomprehensible, the unknown God. And this "unknown God" whom the Athenians "worshipped" was the true God, the God whom Paul worshipped, and whom he desired more fully to reveal to them; "Him declare I unto you." The Athenians had, therefore, some knowledge of the true God, some dim recognition, at least, of his being, and some conception, however imperfect, of his character. The Deity to whom the Athenians reared this altar is called "the unknown God," because he is unseen by all human eyes and incomprehensible to human thought. There is a sense in which to Paul, as well as to the Athenians--to the Christian as well as to the pagan--to the philosopher as well as to the peasant--God is "the unknown," and in which he must forever remain the incomprehensible. This has been confessed by all thoughtful minds in every age. It was confessed by Plato. To his mind God is "the ineffable," the unspeakable. Zophar, the friend of Job, asks, "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?" This knowledge is "high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Does not Wesley teach us to sing,

When, therefore, the apostle affirms that while the Athenians worshipped the God whom he proclaimed they "knew him not," we can not understand him as saying they were destitute of all faith in the being of God, and of all ideas of his real character. Because for him to have asserted they had no knowledge of God would not only have been contrary to all the facts of the case, but also an utter contradiction of all his settled convictions and his recorded opinions. There is not in modern times a more earnest asserter of the doctrine that the human mind has an intuitive cognition of God, and that the external world reveals God to man. There is a passage in his letter to the Romans which is justly entitled to stand at the head of all discourses on "natural theology," Rom. i. 19-21. Speaking of the heathen world, who had not been favored, as the Jews, with a verbal revelation, he says, "That which may be known of God is manifest in them," that is, in the constitution and laws of their spiritual nature, "for God hath showed it unto them" in the voice of reason and of conscience, so that in the instincts of our hearts, in the elements of our moral nature, in the ideas and laws of our reason, we are taught the being of a God. These are the subjective teachings of the human soul.

The brief and elliptical report of Paul's address on Mars' Hill must therefore, in all fairness, be interpreted in the light of his more carefully elaborated statements in the Epistle to the Romans. And when Paul intimates that the Athenians "knew not God," we can not understand him as saying they had no knowledge, but that their knowledge was imperfect. They did not know God as Creator, Father, and Ruler; above all, they did not know him as a pardoning God and a sanctifying Spirit. They had not that knowledge of God which purifies the heart, and changes the character, and gives its possessor eternal life.

The apostle clearly and unequivocally recognizes this truth, that the idea of God is connatural to the human mind; that in fact there is not to be found a race of men upon the face of the globe utterly destitute of some idea of a Supreme Being. Wherever human reason has had its normal and healthful development, it has spontaneously and necessarily led the human mind to the recognition of a God. The Athenians were no exception to this general law. They believed in the existence of one supreme and eternal Mind, invisible, incomprehensible, infeffable--"the unknown God."

2. The Athenians had also that consciousness of dependence upon God which is the foundation of all the primary religious emotions.

A little reflection will convince us that this is the necessary order in which human consciousness is developed.

There are at least two fundamental and radical tendencies in human personality, namely, to know and to act. If we would conceive of them as they exist in the innermost sphere of selfhood, we must distinguish the first as self-consciousness, and the second as self-determination. These are unquestionably the two factors of human personality.

If we consider the first of these factors more closely, we shall discover that self-consciousness exists under limitations and conditions. Man can not become clearly conscious of self without distinguishing himself from the outer world of sensation, nor without distinguishing self and the world from another being upon whom they depend as the ultimate substance and cause. Mere cœnœesthesis is not consciousness. Common feeling is unquestionably found among the lowest forms of animal life, the protozoa; but it can never rise to a clear consciousness of personality until it can distinguish itself from sensation, and acquire a presentiment of a divine power, on which self and the outer world depend. The Ego does not exist for itself, can not perceive itself, but by distinguishing itself from the ceaseless flow and change of sensation, and by this act of distinguishing, the Ego takes place in consciousness. And the Ego can not perceive itself, nor cognize sensation as a state or affection of the Ego except by the intervention of the reason, which supplies the two great fundamental laws of causality and substance. The facts of consciousness thus comprehend three elements--self, nature, and God. The determinate being, the Ego, is never an absolutely independent being, but is always in some way or other codetermined by another; it can not, therefore, be an absolutely original and independent, but must in some way or another be a derived and conditioned existence.

Self-determination, equally with self-consciousness, exists in us under manifold limitations. Self-determination is limited by physical, corporeal, and mental conditions, so that there is "an impassable boundary line drawn around the area of volitional freedom." But the most fundamental and original limitation is that of duty. The self-determining power of man is not only circumscribed by necessary conditions, but also by the moral law in the consciousness of man. Self-determination alone does not suffice for the full conception of responsible freedom; it only becomes, will, properly by its being an intelligent and conscious determination; that is, the rational subject is able previously to recognize "the right," and present before his mind that which he ought to do, that which he is morally bound to realize and actualize by his own self-determination and choice. Accordingly we find in our inmost being a sense of obligation to obey the moral law as revealed in the conscience. As we can not become conscious of self without also becoming conscious of God, so we can not become properly conscious of self-determination until we have recognized in the conscience a law for the movements of the will.

Now this moral law, as revealed in the conscience, is not a mere autonomy--a simple subjective law having no relation to a personal lawgiver out of and above man. Every admonition of conscience directly excites the consciousness of a God to whom man is accountable. The universal consciousness of our race, as revealed in history, has always associated the phenomena of conscience with the idea of a personal Power above man, to whom he is subject and upon whom he depends. In every age, the voice of conscience has been regarded as the voice of God, so that when it has filled man with guilty apprehensions, he has had recourse to sacrifices, and penances, and prayers to expatiate his wrath.

3. The Athenians developed in a high degree those religious emotions which always accompany the consciousness of dependence on a Supreme Being.

The first emotional element of all religion is fear. This is unquestionably true, whether religion be considered from a Christian or a heathen stand-point. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Associated with, perhaps preceding, all definite ideas of God, there exists in the human mind certain feelings of awe, and reverence, and fear which arise spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an overshadowing Presence which "compasseth man behind and before, and lays its hand upon him."

This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and presence pervading and informing all nature is beautifully described by Wordsworth in his history of the development of the Scottish herdsman's mind:

So the foundations of his mind were laid

In such communion, not from terror free.

While yet a child, and long before his time,

Had he perceived the presence and the power

Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed

So vividly great objects, that they lay

Upon his mind like substances, whose presence

Perplexed the bodily sense.

... In the after-day

Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,

And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags,

He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments,

Or from the power of a peculiar eye,

Or by creative feeling overborne,

Or by predominance of thought oppressed,

Even in their fixed and steady lineaments

He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind....

Such was the Boy,--but for the growing Youth,

What soul was his, when, from the naked top

Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun

Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked:

Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth

And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay

Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched.

And in their silent faces could he read

Unutterable love. Sound needed none,

Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank

The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form

All melted into him; they swallowed up

His animal being; in them did he live,

And by them did he live; they were his life,

In such access of mind, in such high hour

4. The Athenians had that deep consciousness of sin and guilt, and of consequent liability to punishment, which confesses the need of expiation by piacular sacrifices.

Every man feels himself to be an accountable being, and he is conscious that in wrong-doing he is deserving of blame and of punishment. Deep within the soul of the transgressor is the consciousness that he is a guilty man, and he is haunted with the perpetual apprehension of a retribution which, like the spectre of evil omen, crosses his every path, and meets him at every turn.

In Grecian mythology there was a very distinct recognition of the power of conscience, and a reference of its authority to the Divinity, together with the idea of retribution. Nemesis was regarded as the impersonation of the upbraidings of conscience, of the natural dread of punishment that springs up in the human heart after the commission of sin. And as the feeling of remorse may be considered as the consequence of the displeasure and vengeance of an offended God, Nemesis came to be regarded as the goddess of retribution, relentlessly pursuing the guilty until she has driven them into irretrievable woe and ruin. The Erinyes or Eumenides are the deities whose business it is to punish, in hades, the crimes committed upon earth. When an aggravated crime has excited their displeasure they manifest their greatest power in the disquietude of conscience.

We do not deem it needful to discuss at length the question which has been so earnestly debated among theologians, as to whether the idea of expiation be a primitive and necessary idea of the human mind, or whether the practice of piacular sacrifices came into the post-diluvian world with Noah, as a positive institution of a primitive religion then first directly instituted by God. On either hypothesis the practice of expiatory rites derives its authority from God; in the latter case, by an outward and verbal revelation, in the former by an inward and intuitive revelation.

The origin of expiatory sacrifices can not, we think, be explained except on the principle of a primitive revelation and a positive appointment of God. They can not be understood except as a divinely-appointed symbolism, in which there is exhibited a confession of personal guilt and desert of punishment; an intimation and a hope that God will be propitious and merciful; and a typical promise and prophecy of a future Redeemer from sin, who shall "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." This sacred rite was instituted in connection with the protevangelium given to our first parents; it was diffused among the nations by tradition, and has been kept alive as a general, and, indeed, almost universal observance, by that deep sense of sin, and consciousness of guilt, and personal urgency of the need of a reconciliation, which are so clearly displayed in Grecian mythology.

The legitimate inference we find ourselves entitled to draw from the words of Paul, when fairly interpreted in the light of the past religious history of the world, is, that the Athenians were a religious people; that is, they were, however unknowing, believers in and worshippers of the One Supreme God.