Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

universe, sustained, as he affirms, by a power called Nature diffused throughout the whole, speaks of the earth in the following terms. This our globe of earth is situate in the centre of nine other orbs or spheres, all mutually connected together by the exterior sphere, which is itself the God; and that all these together compose the temple of God.*

Pliny, the great Roman naturalist, affirms, in accordance with Cicero, that the world is spherical: such form being the most perfect, and best adapted for strength and stability. This body, he affirms, must be regarded as a person divine, eternal, boundless, neither created nor yet destined ever to perish. It is holy, eternal, immense; all in all things; even itself all bounded, but yet as it were infinite; most certain of all things, yet as it were uncertain; comprising all things within and without. It is the work of the nature of things, and the very nature of things. Such were the opinions of the classical ages of Greece and Rome.

Similar opinions were entertained in the earlier ages of the mythological history of Egypt. The sages of the temples in the several provinces of that country, although they often differed greatly in the objects of their worship, agreed generally in this, that the elder god Horus was a personal representation of the intellectual world, and that he was born of Isis and Osiris, the Gaia and Ouranus of the Greeks, while yet they were in the womb of Rhea, a personification, as it should seem, of chaotic matter.z Other Egyptian theologues taught that the world issued in the form of an egg from the mouth of the god Cneph, a personification of the great Creator. In accordance with this doctrine, these sages, together with those of Assyria and Persia, paid to the egg a degree of reverence amounting to religious worship, because it aptly represented the earth, the visible form of the true God.

* Cic. Somn. Scip.

y Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. ii. c. 4. z Plutarch de Isid. et Osir. p. 373, A.

The Brahmens of India teach a doctrine in effect the same. It is declared in the books of Menu,a which are a summary of the precepts of the Sastra, that the Great Supreme, having determined to produce many and various beings from his divine substance, first by a thought created the waters, and then placed in them a seed, which became an egg, in which he himself was born in the form of Brahmà, the great forefather of all spirits. This Brahmà is figured with four faces, the emblems of the four elements, which it was long supposed were the component parts of all material substances. This personage was, as these emblems shew, the created world; and this Brahmà was in after times distinguished into the celebrated Hindù Triad, composed of Brahmà the creative power, Vishnu the preserving power, and Sivà the destroying power in the natural world. A plain proof that the religion of the Sastra was founded, like that of other heathen nations, on the doctrine that the world was God.

The principle of the religion of the Druids, or rather, of the Celtic nations, was the same, as plainly appears from their mythology, exhibited in the poems of the Welch bards living in the first centuries of the christian era. Their mystic poetry celebrates Dylan ail Mor, that is, Dylan the son of the sea, a personification of the earth rising, as in the scriptural history, out of the waters of the creation. This personage is also called Aedd Mawr, or Aedd the Great. He is the same as Hù Gadarn, the supreme agent in the operations of nature, that is, the Deity himself. It were foreign to the present purport to trace the resemblance farther. Suffice it to say, that the personage bearing these names and several others of the like import, was the primary object of religious worship with the Druids and their disciples; and further, that their religion was evidently founded

a Menu, c. i. v. 8.

b Davies, Celt. Thes. p. 163, &c.

on the doctrine that the world was the great God. The general prevalence of this principle, the real foundation of all the errors of heathenism, demanded the attention of the ancient Christian Fathers, and they assailed it with zeal, and at length with effect. The following argument of Athenagoras, a christian philosopher of the second century of the christian era, may serve to shew that the doctrine that the world is God was maintained with confidence by all the heathen nations with whom the christian advocates had occasion to contend; that it was the fundamental error of their religion, and that error being destroyed the whole heathen fabric fell to the ground.

"As we hold," says the christian advocate, "the potter in greater estimation than his work, so we do not prefer the goblet, even though it be of gold, to the goldsmith that made it. If there be excellence in the ingenuity of the form we praise the artificer. He it is that enjoys whatever commendations may belong to the vessel. It is the same with regard to matter and the Deity. Matter does not obtain the praise and honour due on account of the organization of the things created, but God the Creator. If we regard material objects of beautiful form as gods, we shall seem to be unobservant of the real God, and put things perishable and corruptible on an equality with the Being which is eternal. The world is indeed highly beautiful and highly wonderful, for its magnitude, for the arrangement of its parts within the regions of the ecliptic and of the north, as also for its spherical shape; yet not this, but the Creator of it, is the proper object of worship." By arguments such as these the Christian Fathers of the first centuries assailed the doctrines of idolatry. By subverting this principle, that the world is god, they undermined the whole fabric of heathenism. The whole fell to the ground, shattered into

Athenag. Legat. pro Christ. p. 14.

fragments, and the faith of the gospel was established in its stead.

The created world being regarded as God by the heathen world, any structure bearing that form might justly be regarded as a symbol of the Deity, indicative of his person and his presence. This import of the symbol appears to have caused the conviction and assurance that all sacred structures ought of necessity to be constructed of such form. It appears that this opinion prevailed with the faithful worshippers of the true God, as also with the idolaters separating or dissenting from the true worship. The actual importance of form may be inferred from the directions given by the Deity for the construction of the tabernacle of the Israelites in the wilderness, and for the form of the magnificent temple built by king Solomon. These instructions shew that the use of proper symbols receives the divine approbation.

The miraculous manifestations of the divine presence both in the tabernacle and the temple confirm the promise of the Redeemer that the divine presence ever attends an assemblage of worshippers, devout and sincere, during the time of religious worship. The heathen sects not only adopted the doctrine of occasional presence, but believed that the gods made temples and sacred structures their places of constant abode. This presence of the gods was supposed to be greatly favourable and powerfully conducive, if not even indispensably necessary, to the prosperity of the city and nation, and, as such, was ever desired, and when given was a cause of joy and even proud exultations. This is sufficiently evident from the tumult at Ephesus, occasioned by the indignant suspicions at the supposed invasion of the power and influence of the goddess Diana, whose image was said to have descended from heaven.d The poet Horace

d Acts xix.

X

addresses the goddess Venus in terms significant of the benefits ensuing from her presence:

O Goddess, ever in blest Cyprus dwelling,

And Memphis, wanting of Sithonian snow.e

cherubim of the temple.

Even the God of Israel was said to dwell between the Influenced by opinions such as these, the idolaters were careful to render their temples acceptable, as they supposed, to the gods, by the resemblance they might bear to the form of the earth, their true abode, presuming that such forms must be most pleasing to the gods, being in accordance with their habits and their feelings. The temple being constructed in resemblance of the form of the earth, the abode of the supreme god, implied a pretension and claim, justifiable even in a god of a lower grade, to equal reverence and worship. All these reasons did certainly urge the nations to construct their temples in the form bearing, as was supposed, a near resemblance to the earth, the terrestrial world.

These arguments will perhaps be confirmed by the following authorities, which declare that temples were, not less than the heavens, the abodes of gods.

Chremes, in the Eunuch of Terence, designates Jupiter as the god

That by his thunder heaven's highest temples shakes.f

The following passage from Varro shews that the abodes of gods were called temples, whether in heaven above the earth, or upon the earth, or the regions supposed to exist beneath the earth:

"A temple obtains the name by three means; by nature, by the use of auguries, and by similitude even beneath the earth." It is called a temple in heaven as in the Hecuba:

e Hor. Carm. lib. iii. Od. 26.

Eunuch. Act. iii. Sc. 5, v. 42.

Varro de Ling. Lat. lib. vi.

« ElőzőTovább »