Chapter IV

THE RELIGION OF THE ATHENIANS: ITS MYTHOLOGICAL AND SYMBOLICAL ASPECTS.

"That there is one Supreme Deity, both philosophers and poets, and even the vulgar worshippers of the gods themselves frequently acknowledge; which because the assertors of gods well understood, they affirm these gods of theirs to preside over the several parts of the world, yet so that there is only one chief governor. Whence it follows, that all their other gods can be no other than ministers and officers which one greatest God, who is omnipotent, hath variously appointed, and constituted so as to serve his command." --LACTANTIUS.

The conclusion reached in the previous chapter that the Athenians were believers in and worshippers of the One Supreme God, has been challenged with some considerable show of reason and force, on the ground that they were Polytheists and Idolaters.

An objection which presents itself so immediately on the very face of the sacred narrative, and which is sustained by the unanimous voice of history, is entitled to the fullest consideration. And as the interests of truth are infinitely more precious than the maintenance of any theory, however plausible, we are constrained to accord to this objection the fullest weight, and give to it the most impartial consideration. We can not do otherwise than at once admit that the Athenians were Polytheists--they worshipped "many gods" besides "the unknown God." It is equally true that they were Idolaters--they worshipped images or statues of the gods, which images were also, by an easy metonymy, called "gods."

But surely no one supposes that this is all that can be said upon the subject, and that, after such admissions, the discussion must be closed. On the contrary, we have, as yet, scarce caught a glimpse of the real character and genius of Grecian polytheistic worship, and we have not made the first approach towards a philosophy of Grecian mythology.

If, then, poetic and allegorical representations of divine things are to be permitted in the ideal republic, then the founders of the state are to prescribe "the moulds in which the poets are to cast their fictions."

"Now what are these moulds to be in the case of Theology? They may be described as follows: It is right always to represent God as he really is, whether the poet describe him in an epic, or a lyric, or a dramatic poem. Now God is, beyond all else, good in reality, and therefore so to be represented. But nothing that is good is hurtful. That which is good hurts not; does no evil; is the cause of no evil. That which is good is beneficial; is the cause of good. And, therefore, that which is good is not the cause of all which is and happens, but only of that which is as it should be.... The good things we must ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and not in him, the causes of evil things."

We must, then, express our disapprobation of Homer, or any other poet, who is guilty of such a foolish blunder as to tell us (Iliad, xxiv. 660) that:

and that he for whom the Thunderer mingles both--

But as for the man to whom he gives the bitter cup unmixed--

Inasmuch as God is perfect to the utmost in beauty and goodness, he abides ever the same, and without any variation in his form. Then let no poet tell us that (Odyss. xvii. 582)

And let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, or introduce in tragedies, or any other poems, Hera transformed into the guise of a princess collecting

It is an obvious truth, attested by the voice of universal consciousness as revealed in history, that the human mind can never rest satisfied within the sphere of sensible phenomena. Man is impelled by an inward necessity to pass, in thought, beyond the boundary-line of sense, and inquire after causes and entities which his reason assures him must lie beneath all sensible appearances. He must and will interpret nature according to the forms of his own personality, or according to the fundamental ideas of his own reason. In the childlike subjectivity of the undisciplined mind he will either transfer to nature the phenomena of his own personality, regarding the world as a living organism which has within it an informing soul, and thus attain a pantheistic conception of the universe; or else he will fix upon some extraordinary and inexplicable phenomenon of nature, and, investing it with supernatural significance, will rise from thence to a religious and theocratic conception of nature as a whole. An intelligence--a mind within nature, and inseparable from nature, or else above nature and governing nature, is, for man, an inevitable thought.

It is equally obvious that humanity can never relegate itself from a supernatural origin, neither can it ever absolve itself from a permanent correlation with the Divine. Man feels within him an instinctive nobility. He did not arise out of the bosom of nature; in some mysterious way he has descended from an eternal mind, he is "the offspring of God." And furthermore, a theocratic conception of nature, associated with a pre-eminent regard for certain apparently supernatural experiences in the history of humanity, becomes the foundation of governments, of civil authority, and of laws. Society can not be founded without the aid of the Deity, and a commonwealth can only be organized by Divine interposition. "A Ceres must appear and sow the fields with corn." And a Numa or a Lycurgus must be heralded by the oracle as

He must be a "descendant of Zeus," appointed by the gods to rule, and one who will "prove himself a god." These divinely-appointed rulers were regarded as the ministers of God, the visible representatives of the unseen Power which really governs all. The divine government must also have its invisible agents--its Nemesis, and Themis, and Diké, the ministers of law, of justice, and of retribution; and its Jupiter, and Juno, and Neptune, and Pluto, ruling, with delegated powers, in the heavens, the air, the sea, and the nethermost regions. So that, in fact, there exists no nation, no commonwealth, no history without a Theophany, and along with it certain sacred legends detailing the origin of the people, the government, the country itself, and the world at large. This is especially true of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Their primitive history is eminently mythological.

Grecian polytheism can not be otherwise regarded than as a poetico-historical religion of myth and symbol which is under-laid by a natural Theism; a parasitical growth which winds itself around the original stem of instinctive faith in a supernatural Power and Presence which pervades the universe. The myths are oral traditions, floating down from that dim; twilight of poetic history, which separates real history, with its fixed chronology, from the unmeasured and unrecorded eternity--faint echoes from that mystic border-land which divides the natural from the supernatural, and in which they seem to have been marvellously commingled. They are the lingering memories of those manifestations of God to men, in which he or his celestial ministers came into visible intercourse with our race; the reality of which is attested by sacred history. In all these myths there is a theogonic and cosmogonic element. They tell of the generation of the celestial and aërial divinities--the subordinate agents and ministers of the Divine government. They attempt an explanation of the genesis of the visible universe, the origin of humanity, and the development of human society. In the presence of history, the substance of these myths is preserved by symbols, that is, by means of natural or artificial, real or striking objects, which, by some analogy or arbitrary association, shall suggest the idea to the mind. These symbols were designed to represent the invisible attributes and operations of the Deity; the powers that vitalize nature, that control the elements, that preside over cities, that protect the nations: indeed, all the agencies of the physical and moral government of God. Beneath all the pagan legends of gods, and underlying all the elaborate mechanism of pagan worship, there are unquestionably philosophical ideas, and theological conceptions, and religious sentiments, which give as meaning, and even a mournful grandeur to the whole.

It is at once conceded by us, that the "sensus numinis," the natural intuition of a Supreme Mind, whose power and presence are revealed in nature, can not maintain itself, as an influential, and vivifying, and regulative belief amongst men, without the continual supernatural interposition of God; that is, without a succession of Divine revelations. And further, we grant that, instead of this symbolic mode of worship deepening and vitalizing the sense of God as a living power and presence, there is great danger that the symbol shall at length unconsciously take the place of God, and be worshipped instead of Him. From the purest form of symbolism which prevailed in the earliest ages, there may be an inevitable descent to the rudest form of false worship, with its accompanying darkness, and abominations, and crimes; but, at the same time, let us do justice to the religions of the ancient world--the childhood stammerings of religious life--which were something more than the inventions of designing men, or the mere creations of human fancy; they were, in the words of Paul, "a seeking after God, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, who is not far from any one of us." It can not be denied that the more thoughtful and intelligent Greeks regarded the visible objects of their devotion as mere symbols of the perfections and operations of the unseen God, and of the invisible powers and subordinate agencies which are employed by him in his providential and moral government of the world. And whatever there was of misapprehension and of "ignorance" in the popular mind, we have the assurance of Paul that it was "overlooked" by God.

The views here presented will, we venture to believe, be found most in harmony with a true philosophy of the human mind; with the religious phenomena of the world; and, as we shall subsequently see, with the writings of those poets and philosophers who may be fairly regarded as representing the sentiments and opinions of the ancient world. At the same time, we have no desire to conceal the fact that this whole question as to the origin, and character, and philosophy of the mythology and symbolism of the religions of the ancient world has been a subject of earnest controversy from Patristic times down to the present hour, and that even to-day there exists a wide diversity of opinion among philosophers, as well as theologians.

There are two fundamental propositions laid down by Cudworth which constitute the basis of this hypothesis.

1. No well-authenticated instance can be furnished from among the Greek Polytheists of one who taught the existence of a multiplicity of independenty uncreated, self-existent deities; they almost universally believed in the existence of ONE SUPREME, UNCREATED, ETERNAL GOD, "The Maker of all things"--"the Father of gods and men," --"the sole Monarch and Ruler of the world."

2. The Greek Polytheists taught a plurality of "GENERATED DEITIES," who owe their existence to the power and will of the Supreme God, who are by Him invested with delegated powers, and who, as the agents of his universal providence, preside over different departments of the created universe.

The evidence presented by Cudworth in support of his theses is so varied and so voluminous, that it defies all attempts at condensation. His volumes exhibit an extent of reading, of patient research, and of varied learning, which is truly amazing. The discussion of these propositions involves, in fact, nothing less than a complete and exhaustive survey of the entire field of ancient literature, a careful study of the Greek and Latin poets, of the Oriental, Greek, and Alexandrian philosophers, and a review of the statements and criticisms of Rabbinical and Patristic writers in regard to the religions of the pagan world. An adequate conception of the varied and weighty evidence which is collected by our author from these fields, in support of his views, could only be conveyed by transcribing to our pages the larger portion of his memorable fourth chapter. But inasmuch as Grecian polytheism is, in fact, the culmination of all the mythological systems of the ancient world, the fully-developed flower and ripened fruit of the cosmical and theological conceptions of the childhood-condition of humanity, we propose to epitomize the results of his inquiry as to the theological, opinions of the Greeks, supplying additional confirmation of his views from other sources.

and further, Hesiod:

The careful reader of Cudworth will also learn another truth of the utmost importance in this connection, viz., that the theogony of the Greek poets was, in fact, a cosmogony, the generation of the gods being, in reality, the generation of the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the various powers and phenomena of nature. This is dimly shadowed forth in the very names which are given to some of these divinities. Thus Helios is the sun, Selena is the moon, Zeus the sky--the deep blue heaven, Eos the dawn, and Ersē the dew. It is rendered still more evident by the opening lines of Hesiod's "Theogonia," in which he invokes the muses:

Now it is unquestionable that, with the tragedians, Zeus is the Supreme God. Æschylus is pre-eminently the theological poet of Greece. The great problems which lie at the foundation of religious faith and practice are the main staple of nearly all his tragedies. Homer, Hesiod, the sacred poets, had looked at these questions in their purely poetic aspects. The subsequent philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, developed them more fully by their didactic method. Æschylus stands on the dividing-line between them, no less poetic than the former, scarcely less philosophical than the latter, but more intensely practical, personal, and theological than either. The character of the Supreme Divinity, as represented in his tragedies, approaches more nearly to the Christian idea of God. He is the Universal Father--Father of gods and men; the Universal Cause (παναίτιος, Agamem. 1485); the All-seer and All-doer (παντόπτης, πανεργέτης, ibid, and Sup. 139); the All-wise and All-controlling (παγκρατής, Sup. 813); the Just and the Executor of justice (δικηφόρος, Agamem. 525); true and incapable of falsehood (Prom. 1031);

Εἶς ταῖς ἀληθείαισιν, εἰς ἐστίν θεὸς,

Ὂς οὐρανόν τ᾽ έτευξε καὶ γαῖαν µακρὰν,

This "one only God" is Zeus, who is the God of justice, and reigns supreme:

This description of the unsleeping, undecaying power and dominion of Zeus is worthy of some Hebrew prophet--

"Spurning the power of age, enthroned in might,

Thou dwell'st mid heaven's broad light;

This was in ages past thy firm decree,

Is now, and shall forever be:

That none of mortal race on earth shall know

A life of joy serene, a course unmarked by woe."

In moments of deepest sorrow, of immediate urgency and need, of greatest stress and danger, they had recourse to Zeus.

"Courage, courage, my child!

There is still in heaven the great Zeus;

He watches over all things, and he rules.

Commit thy exceeding bitter griefs to him,

And be not angry against thine enemies,

He was supplicated, as the God who reigns on high, in the prayer of the Athenian--

The high and brilliant sky has, in many languages and many religions, been regarded as the dwelling-place of God. Indeed, to all of us in Christian times "God is above;" he is "the God of heaven;" "his throne is in the heavens;" "he reigns on high." Now, without doing any violence to thought, the name of the abode might be transferred to him who dwells in heaven. So that in our own language "heaven" may still be used as a synonym for "God." The prodigal son is still represented as saying, I have sinned against "heaven." And a Christian poet has taught us to sing--

Notwithstanding, then, that the instinctive, native faith of humanity in the existence of one supreme God was overlaid and almost buried beneath the rank and luxuriant vegetation of Grecian mythology, we can still catch glimpses here and there of the solid trunk of native faith, around which this parasitic growth of fancy is entwined. Above all the phantasmata of gods and goddesses who descended to the plains of Troy, and mingled in the din and strife of battle, we can recognize an overshadowing, all-embracing Power and Providence that dwells on high, which never descends into the battle-field, and is never seen by mortal eyes--the Universal King and Father,--the "God of gods."

From the poets we now pass to the philosophers. The former we have regarded as reflecting the traditional beliefs of the unreasoning multitude. The philosophers unquestionably represent the reflective spirit, the speculative thought, of the educated classes of Greek society. Turning to the writings of the philosophers, we may therefore reasonably expect that, instead of the dim, undefined, and nebulous form in which the religious sentiment revealed itself amongst the unreflecting portions of the Greek populations, we shall find their theological ideas distinctly and articulately expressed, and that we shall consequently be able to determine their religious opinions with considerable accuracy.

In subsequent chapters on "the Philosophers of Athens," we shall enter more fully into the discussion of this question. Meantime we assume that, with few exceptions, the Greek philosophers were "genuine Theists."

The point, however, with which we are now concerned is, that whilst they believed in one supreme, uncreated, eternal God, they at the same time recognized the existence of a plurality of generated deities who owe their existence to the power and will of the Supreme God, and who, as the agents and ministers of His universal providence, preside over different departments of the created universe. They are at once Monotheists and Polytheists--believers in "one God" and "many gods." This is a peculiarity, an anomaly which challenges our attention, and demands an explanation, if we would vindicate for these philosophers a rational Theism.

And, now that we have in Plato the culmination of Grecian speculative thought, we may learn from him the mature and final judgment of the ancients in regard to the gods of pagan mythology. We open the Timæus, and here we find his views most definitely expressed. After giving an account of the "generation" of the sun, and moon, and planets, which are by him designated as "visible gods," he then proceeds "to speak concerning the other divinities:" "We must on this subject assent to those who in former times have spoken thereon; who were, as they said, the offspring of the gods, and who doubtless were well acquainted with their own ancestors..... Let then the genealogy of the gods be, and be acknowledged to be, that which they deliver. Of Earth and Heaven the children were Oceanus and Tethys; and of these the children were Phorcys, and Kronos, and Rhea, and all that followed these; and from these were born Zeus and Hera, and those who are regarded as brothers and sisters of these, and others their offspring. "When, then, all the gods were brought into existence, both those which move around in manifest courses [the stars and planets], and those which appear when it pleases them [the mythological deities], the Creator of the Universe thus addressed them:

Here, then, we see that Plato carefully distinguishes between the sole Eternal Author of the universe, on one hand, and the "souls," vital and intelligent, which he attaches to the heavenly orbs, and diffuses through all nature, on the other. These subordinate powers or agents are all created, "generated deities," who owe their continued existence to the will of God; and though intrusted with a sort of deputed creation, and a subsequent direction and government of created things, they are still only the servants and the deputies of the Supreme Creator, and Director, and Ruler of all things. These subordinate agents and ministers employed in the creation and providential government of the world appear, in the estimation of Plato, to have been needed--

2. These intermediate agents seem to have been demanded to satisfy the disposition and tendency which has revealed itself in all systems, of interposing some scale of ascent between the material creation and the infinite Creator.

The views of the educated and philosophic mind of Greece in regard to the mythological deities may, in conclusion, be thus briefly stated--

I. They are all created beings--"GENERATED DEITIES," who are dependent on, and subject to, the will of one supreme God.

II. They are the AGENTS employed by God in the creation of, at least some parts of, the universe, and in the movement and direction of the entire cosmos; and they are also the MINISTERS and MESSENGERS of that universal providence which he exercises over the human race.

These subordinate deities are, 1. the greater parts of the visible mundane system animated by intelligent souls, and called "sensible gods"--the sun, the moon, the stars, and even the earth itself, and known by the names Helios, Selena, Kronos, Hermes, etc.

2. Some are invisible powers, having peculiar offices and functions and presiding over special places provinces and departments of the universe;--one ruling in the heavens (Zeus), another in the air (Juno), another in the sea (Neptune), another in the subterranean regions (Pluto); one god presiding over learning and wisdom (Minerva), another over poetry, music, and religion (Apollo), another over justice and political order (Themis), another over war (Mars), another over corn (Ceres), and another the vine (Bacchus).

3. Others, again, are ethereal and aërial beings, who have the guardianship of individual persons and things, and are called demons, genii, and lares; superior indeed to men, but inferior to the gods above named.

That the heathen regard the one Supreme Being as the first and chief object of worship is evident from the apologies which they offered for worshipping, besides Him, many inferior divinities.

1. They claimed to worship them only as inferior beings, and that therefore they were not guilty of giving them that honor which belonged to the Supreme. They claimed to worship the supreme God incomparably above all. 2. That this honor which is bestowed upon the inferior divinities does ultimately redound to the supreme God, and aggrandize his state and majesty, they being all his ministers and attendants. 3. That as demons are mediators between the celestial gods and men, so those celestial gods are also mediators between men and the supreme God, and, as it were, convenient steps by which we ought with reverence to approach him. 4. That demons or angels being appointed to preside over kingdoms, cities, and persons, and being many ways benefactors to us, thanks ought to be returned to them by sacrifice. 5. Lastly, that it can not be thought that the Supreme Being will envy those inferior beings that worship or honor which is bestowed upon them; nor suspect that any of these inferior deities will factiously go about to set up themselves against the Supreme God.

The Pagans, furthermore, apologized for worshipping God in images, statues, and symbols, on the ground that these were only schetically worshipped by them, the honor passing from them to the prototype. And since we live in bodies, and can scarcely, conceive of any thing without having some image or phantasm, we may therefore be indulged in this infirmity of human nature (at least in the vulgar) to worship God under a corporeal image, as a means of preventing men from falling into Atheism.

The influence of the religious dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles on the Athenian mind must not be overlooked. No writer of pagan antiquity made the voice of conscience speak with the same power and authority that Æschylus did. "Crime," he says, "never dies without posterity." "Blood that has been shed congeals on the ground, crying out for an avenger." The old poet made himself the echo of what he called "the lyreless hymn of the Furies," who, with him, represented severe Justice striking the guilty when his hour comes, and giving warning beforehand by the terrors which haunt him. His dramas are characterized by deep religious feeling. Reverence for the gods, the recognition of an inflexible moral order, resignation to the decisions of Heaven, an abiding presentiment of a future state of reward and punishment, are strikingly predominant.

Whilst Æschylus reveals to us the sombre, terror-stricken side of conscience, Sophocles shows us the divine and luminous side. No one has ever spoken with nobler eloquence than he of moral obligation--of this immortal, inflexible law, in which dwells a God that never grows old--

"Oh be the lot forever mine

Unsullied to maintain,

In act and word, with awe divine,

What potent laws ordain.

"Laws spring from purer realms above:

Their father is the Olympian Jove.

Ne'er shall oblivion veil their front sublime,

The religion of the Athenians was unable to deliver them from the guilt of sin, redeem them from its power, and make them pure and holy. It gave the Athenian no victory over himself, and, practically, brought him no nearer to the living God. But it awakened and educated the conscience, it developed more fully the sense of sin and guilt, and it made man conscious of his inability to save himself from sin and guilt; and "the day that humanity awakens to the want of something more than mere embellishment and culture, that day it feels the need of being saved and restored from the consequences of sin" by a higher power. Æsthetic taste had found its fullest gratification in Athens; poetry, sculpture, architecture, had been carried to the highest perfection; a noble civilization had been reached; but "the need of something deeper and truer was written on the very stones." The highest consummation of Paganism was an altar to "the unknown God," the knowledge of whom it needed, as the source of purity and peace.

The strength and the weakness of Grecian mythology consisted in the contradictory character of its divinities. It was a strange blending of the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine. Zeus, the eternal Father,--the immortal King, whose will is sovereign, and whose power is invincible,--the All-seeing Jove, has some of the weaknesses and passions of humanity. God and man are thus, in some mysterious way, united. And here that deepest longing of the human heart is met--the unconquerable desire to bring God nearer to the human apprehension, and closer to the human heart. Hence the hold which Polytheism had upon the Grecian mind. But in this human aspect was also found its weakness, for when philosophic thought is brought into contact with, and permitted critically to test mythology, it dethrones the false gods. The age of spontaneous religious sentiment must necessarily be succeeded by the age of reflective thought. Popular theological faiths must be placed in the hot crucible of dialectic analysis, that the false and the frivolous may be separated from the pure and the true. The reason of man demands to be satisfied, as well as the heart. Faith in God must have a logical basis, it must be grounded on demonstration and proof. Or, at any rate, the question must be answered, whether God is cognizable by human reason? If this can be achieved, then a deeper foundation is laid in the mind of humanity, upon which Christianity can rear its higher and nobler truths.