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There
are some ideas with which the minds of mankind are so universally imbued
throughout every portion of the globe, that we are almost forced to the
conclusion, that they are either innate or were made known to the minds
of men whilst they were yet one family, or that they are truths, the
proofs of which are so self-evident as to be demonstrable by the weakest
intellect, as well as by those minds through whose gloom the light of
revelation has never penetrated.
The
most important of these ideas is the existence of a Creator; the next in
importance is—the immortality of the soul; and as the idea of the
latter, cannot I think, be well separated, from that of the former, it
will be necessary for its elucidation to examine the nature of the
belief of different nations in relation to a supreme first Cause.
It
may be said that if the idea of a Creator, or of the soul’s
immortality is proved by nature, why is it that the most absurd
superstitions reign dominant over the minds of the unenlightened? But an
observer of human nature, must acknowledge that the chief misfortunes
which the mass of mankind labour under, are generally derived from a
sluggishness of thought, that render the many more prone to take things
as they find them, rather than to make the effort to examine into their
nature and causes. And as it is the nature of mankind to be progressive,
whether it be in good or in evil, it happens that if their minds have at
first taken a wrong tendency, in a few generations the light of truth if
even not annihilated, is scarcely seen to glimmer through the veil of
extravagances thrown around it, though it is ready to reclaim its
ascendancy at the first favourable moment. If on the other hand, this
torpor has been thrown off by some violent effort, they generally rush
into the wildest extremes, hastily adopting some visionary theory, and
then contort facts to bear them out in their new hypothesis; whereas,
were they guided by the pure light of reason, ever ready to give facts a
calm consideration, they would find no hidden mysteries to contend with,
but would generally arrive at correct deductions.
But
it seems that the most dreaded antagonist that true religion has had to
contend with, has been what may be termed “an enlightened
philosophy;” for whenever and wherever man has attempted to deify his
reasoning faculties, considering his unassisted understanding capable of
comprehending the whole scale and purposes of nature and of being, he
has generally built up such a structure of ridiculous inconsistencies,
as would make the most ignorant blush to own. Let us instance the religion of the
enlightened Trojans, Greeks and Romans, acknowledging an immortal deity
of mortal birth, neither omnipotent, omnipresent, nor omniscient, with
two associates, (Pluto and Neptune,) to make up for his want of
attributes, and a number of secondary gods—beings living in the
grossest immorality; whilst their exclusive ideas concerning the
soul’s immortality, precluding all but the noble and celebrated from
receiving rewards and punishments in a future state, place the religion
of these enlightened nations (if we exclude the Egyptians,) on a level
with those debased tribes that occupy the largest part of Africa yet
discovered.
The
religion of the negro race consisting of fetish worship, as of “a
divinity dwelling in some inanimate body, endowed with intelligence and
with, the knowledge of the secret thoughts and actions of his
worshippers, with power to do them good or harm,” is as certainly just
as worthy an object of worship as the fate-controlled Jupiter, whose
power chiefly consisted in discharging thunderbolts forged to his hand,
whilst their cruelty exercised at the funerals of their kings and
princes, in burying alive a number of their wives and slaves, to furnish
the deceased potentates with a suitable retinue to attend them in the
other world, was at least, granting them that immortality which was
denied to them by the more enlightened and philosophic Greeks. If we now
view that part of Asia, where the Grand Lama is worshipped “as a god
dwelling amongst men,” we find a belief of his eternal existence,
connected with the doctrine of the transmigration or immortality of the
soul; as his followers suppose that he merely leaves the body where he
took up his temporary abode, and enters another in a supernatural way,
changing his form and not his existence. Somewhat resembling in this
particular was the Egyptian worship, whose religion is so blended with
the idea of the soul’s immortality, that the one cannot exist without
the other. We will instance the god Apis, whose soul, the Egyptians
supposed had been transferred to an ox, under which form they worshipped
him; and their goddess Io or Isis, whose soul after occupying the body
of a white heifer, afterwards remained its natural body.
If
we extend our researches, we find that some of the ancient nations had
ideas of an Eternal Unity, and as a matter of course juster ideas of the
human soul. We will first turn to that people where the light of truth
shone with the feeblest lustre. The religious belief of the Brahmins
consisted in the idea of “the existence of one in all things, and all
things existing in one; God in the universe and the universe in God, and
nature as the revelation of divine intelligence; divine rest as the
perfection of happiness, consisting in the immersion and absorption in
the godhead, attained immediately after death by the deserving;”
whereas the souls of those who do not obtain this state of rest,
transmigrate into different bodies for a farther purgation; the whole
period allotted for this, being 4,230,000 years.
The
worship of the Persians was of a purer nature, not having entirely lost
sight of the great first Cause, but colouring the ideas of a Creator, in
the superstitions engendered by a long state of ignorance. “The
votaries of Ormuzd, the pure and eternal light and origin of all
perfection, would at death pass over the bridge Shinevad into the
dwellings of the happy; whilst the slaves of Ahriman (or of evil
passions,) would fall into hell, that the spirit of evil would be
finally annihilated, the resurrection of the dead to follow, and the
earth be renovated and prepared for the abode of the virtuous.” But
the religion of the Chinese, in the abstract, approaches nearer to that
of the Bible, than any other we have noticed. “The Supreme Deity, the
essence of all things, is eternal, invisible, incomprehensible,
almighty, merciful, just and beneficent.” But in endeavouring to
elucidate these grand ideas, they opened a wide door for superstition to
enter in. According to their ideas, he originated from himself; he
cannot be represented by any image, neither can he be worshipped,
because he is elevated above all worship; but his attributes may be
represented by images and worshipped.” Their ideas of the immortality
of the soul are also more refined than those noticed—“he who has
done good in this life, will be rewarded after death; and he who has
done evil, punished. They there are two distinct places for these two
sorts of souls, and to each soul a station is assigned according to its
deserts.”
Whilst
the learned of the different epochs preceding this, have gone through
the greatest labour in collecting information concerning the manners and
religious customs of the ancient nations, causing their readers to have
a more elevated opinion of
their state than they would have arrived at by a casual glance; how
plainly have they shown the power that preconceived prejudices exist in
warping the judgment of those otherwise of liberal and expansive minds.
The
religion of the Hebrews, a recorded emanation of the Supreme Creator,
the basis of the Jewish faith, and from which the Mahometan and the
Christian have derived their hopes of salvation, has been less
understood, less commented upon than the superstitious worship of the
most insignificant people; and whilst all have a ready access to the
records of the tenets of their faith, and whilst all can make themselves
acquainted with the sublime attributes of the God of Israel, they have
sat in judgment upon the Supreme, by declaring the statutes He enacted
for the government of Israel as debasing in their tendency, by blindly
casting away the evidence of the Bible to the contrary, and allowing
their imaginations to supply their want of knowledge from the pages of
prejudice. It is sufficient to call up a smile of pity in the face of
the gravest, to find that whilst the belief of the soul’s immortality
was accorded to the most ignorant nation of antiquity, it was denied to
the Jews;*—a nation devoid of all superstition, and in frequent
converse with the supreme Creator. One of the arguments used in support
of this supposition, was that the Bible does not in any part treat of
it.
*
It is really laughable to call to mind instances of the ignorance of
those called well-informed, concerning the Jews and their belief. I
recollect not later than the year 1840, reading in a New York paper
words to the following effect:—“We attended the funeral, yesterday, of the late Rev. I. B. Seixas,
and were much pleased and edified with a discourse delivered by the Rev.
I. Leeser, Minister of a Jewish Congregation at Philadelphia, in which
he painted the Jews’ belief of the immortality of the soul; an idea,
which will be quite new to some of our readers, as it has been supposed
that the Jews did not believe in a future state.”
In
this view of the case they seem to have lost sight of the plan and
intention of the Bible; the object of which was to give a correct
history of the creation, and of man from the creation until the close of
the prophetic missions, as well as the laws by which man should be
religiously and civilly governed; and as each was enjoined to make
himself familiar with the whole, it was necessary that its style should
be extremely laconic. Those things which men at the time of Moses had a
knowledge of, it passes over with a mere allusion. For instance, we find in the first chapter of Genesis, that God, by
the power of his will, created the heavens and the earth; but Moses
makes use of no arguments to prove that God had the power to do so, or
to show from whence he derived that power; for the people already knew
that He was omnipotent and eternal. Knowing this, it would have been a
matter of supererogation to have told them that the breath of life that
God breathed into man, through which man became a living soul, was
co-eternal with God himself. With their sublime ideas of the Most High,
it would have been an anomaly for them to suppose that, that which once
appertained to the Creator, could cease to exist.
If
we proceed a little farther in the Bible, we find “that Enoch was
translated to heaven, without seeing death; not that the knowledge of
his being taken to heaven excited any surprise; but merely commented
upon, because he was translated bodily. Was Enoch, then, the only
favored one? were there no others whom God thought worthy of
immortality, save Enoch and Elijah? had the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, the friends and favourite servants of the Deity, no knowledge
of the important truths which ignorant and base idolaters were in
possession of? Knew the heathens more than Moses,—he who conversed
with God face to face,—he who was deemed worthy of being the leader
and conductor of one nation from the midst of another? Knew these
sensual tribes more than the holy prophets that succeeded Moses? No!
they all knew that, if at death the sun should no longer be their light
by day, and if the moon should give no light unto them by night, God
would be their everlasting light, and their God their glory; and if
their body should return to the earth, as it was, “their spirit would
return to the God that gave it.”
Even
if the Bible or the works of the Jewish sages did not treat of the
immortality of the soul, ample evidence have we that the ancient Jews
believed it, from the fact that the Persians in their creed have
adopted, with a little alteration, the ideas which we hold of the
resurrection of the dead, no doubt derived from the Jews during or
before the reign of queen Esther; and as late researches have shown that
a body of Jews have dwelt in China since before the destruction of the
temple, we have every probability for asserting that Foe and Confucius
were well acquainted with the Hebrews and their Scriptures, and derived
from them their ideas of God and the soul’s immortality, from their
near resemblance to our creed when divested of the garb of superstition.
In regard to the assertion that the modern Jews owe their ideas of
immortality to the Christians, it must be remembered that it has always
been man’s nature to scorn the oppressor, and to refuse to adopt any
ideas forced upon his belief; and when we call up before our
imaginations the terrible and countless tortures inflicted upon our
helpless race, is it to be supposed that we would have been more ready
to adopt this idea than any other tenet of the Christian’s faith? On
the contrary, we are and always have been too well satisfied with our
belief, either to add to it, or to take aught from it,—too well
acquainted with our holy book not to acknowledge that it is a sufficient
guide in this world, and a sure guide to the next; and all we ask of
others is, that they will not judge us ex parte; satisfied that, if our
claims are weighed carefully, and the evidence fairly sifted, we shall
hold that distinguished place in the consideration of mankind in which
our God has placed us.
S. Solis.
(To
be Continued.) |
