Pagan and Christian Creeds: XVI. The Exodus Of Christianity

XVI.

THE EXODUS OF CHRISTIANITY

We have dealt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now come to the Exodus. For that Christianity can continue to hold the field of Religion in the Western World is neither probable nor desirable. It is true, as I have remarked already, that there is a certain trouble about defining what we mean by "Christianity" similar to that about the word "Civilization." If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those which commend themselves to the most modern and humane and rational human mind and choose to call that resulting (but rather small) body of belief and practice 'Christianity' we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to hope (as we do hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and certainly not logical. It enables Christianity to pose as an angel of light while at the same time keeping discreetly out of sight all its own abominations and deeds of darkness. The Church--which began its career by destroying, distorting and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang; whose bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each other in their theological rancour "of wild beasts," which encouraged the wicked folly of the Crusades--especially the Children's Crusades--and the shameful murders of the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which

certainty at all that he ever existed; and as to the teaching credited to him, it is certain that that comes down from a period long anterior to 'Christianity' and is part of what may justly be called a very ancient World-religion. So, as in the case of 'Civilization,' we are compelled to see that it is useless to apply the word to some ideal state of affairs or doctrine (an ideal by no means the same in all people's minds, or in all localities and times), but that the only reasonable thing to do is to apply it in each case to a historical period. In the case of Christianity the historical period has lasted nearly 2,000 years, and, as I say, we can hardly expect or wish that it should last much longer.

The very thorough and careful investigation of religious origins which has been made during late years by a great number of students and observers undoubtedly tends to show that there has been something like a great World-religion coming down the centuries from the remotest times and gradually expanding and branching as it has come--that

Jane Harrison makes considerable efforts to show that Religion is primarily a reflection of the social Conscience (see Themis, pp. 482-92)--that is, that the sense in Man of a "Power that makes for righteousness" outside (and also inside) him is derived from his feeling of continuity with the Tribe and his instinctive obedience to its behests, confirmed by ages of collective habit and experience. He cannot in fact sever the navel-string which connects him with his tribal Mother, even though he desires to do so. And no doubt this view of the origin of Religion is perfectly correct. But it must be pointed out that it does not by any means exclude the view that religion derives also from an Animism by which man recognizes in general Nature his foster-mother and feels himself in closest touch with her. Which may have come first, the Social affiliation or the Nature affiliation, I leave to the professors to determine. The term Animism may, as far as I can see, be quite well applied to the social

Wakonda among the Sioux Indians. . . . The Omahas regarded all animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common life, which was continuous and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in themselves. This mysterious power in all things they called Wakonda, and through it all things were related to man, and to each other. In the idea of the continuity of life, a relation was maintained between the seen and the unseen, the dead and the living, and also between the fragment of anything and its entirety." Thus our general position is confirmed, that Religion in its origin has been inspired by a deep instinctive conviction or actual sense of continuity with a being or beings in the world around, while it has derived its form and ritual by slow degrees from a vast number of taboos, generated in the first instance chiefly by superstitious fears, but gradually with the growth of reason and observation becoming simplified and rationalized into forms of use. On the one side there has been the positive impulse--of mere animal Desire and the animal urge of self-expression; on the other there has been the negative force of Fear based

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Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient ritual which has survived from the far Past and is still celebrated, but with little intelligence or understanding, in the Catholic Church of to-day, might be adopted in such a Church as I have spoken of, interpreted, and made eloquent of meaning to modern humanity. When I was in Ceylon nearly 30 years ago I was fortunate enough to witness a night-festival in a Hindu Temple--the great festival of Taipusam, which takes place every year in January. Of course, it was full moon, and great was the blowing up of trumpets in the huge courtyard of the Temple. The moon shone down above from among the fronds of tall coco-palms, on a dense crowd of native worshipers--men and a few women--the men for the most part clad in little

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We are familiar with this parting or rending of the veil. We hear of it in the Jewish Temple, and in the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries. It had a mystically religious, and also obviously sexual, signification. It occurs here and there in the Roman Catholic ritual. In Spain, some ancient Catholic ceremonials are kept up with a brilliance and splendor hardly found elsewhere in Europe. In the Cathedral, at Seville the service of the Passion, carried out on Good Friday with great solemnity and accompanied with fine music, culminates on the Saturday morning--i.e. in the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection--in a spectacle similar to that described in Ceylon. A rich velvet-black curtain hangs before the High Altar. At the appropriate moment and as the very emotional strains of voices and instruments reach their climax in the "Gloria in Excelsis," the curtain with a sudden burst of sound (thunder and the ringing of all the bells) is rent asunder, and the crucified Jesus is seen hanging there revealed in a halo of glory.

There is also held at Seville Cathedral and before the High Altar every year, the very curious Dance of the Seises (sixes), performed now by 16 instead of (as of old) by 12 boys, quaintly dressed. It seems to be a survival of some very ancient ritual, probably astronomical, in which the two sets of six represent the signs of the Zodiac, and is celebrated during the festivals of Corpus Christi, the Immaculate Conception, and the Carnival.

Numerous instances might of course be adduced of how a Church aspiring to be a real Church of Humanity might adopt and re-create the rituals of the past in the light of

students with the ideas and mental attitudes of the cosmic state. Non-differentiation (Advaita 1) is the root attitude of the mind inculcated.

We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation in the Past--non-differentiation from other members of the Tribe, from the Animals, from Nature and the Spirit or Spirits of nature; why should there not arise a similar sense of non-differentiation in the Future--similar but more extended more intelligent? Certainly this will arrive, in its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing of all Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter of their gradual extinction and assimilation into the general body of rational thought and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still linger, but they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will shake itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the animals (as in the old rituals) 2 will be restored; the sense

1 there will be no form of Nature, or of human life or of the lesser creatures, which will be barred from the approach of Man or from the intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and as in certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a citizen is sometimes received into the community of his own city, so the emancipated human being on the completion of his long long pilgrimage on Earth will be presented with the Freedom of the Universe.

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Footnotes

264:1 Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in making it all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The seed of Life was not in it.

266:1 For a more detailed account of this Temple-festival, see Adam's Peak to Elephanta by E. Carpenter, ch. vii.

269:1 The word means "not-two-ness." Here we see a great subtlety of definition. It is not to be "one" with others that is urged, but to be "not two."

269:2 The record of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly callous and inhuman in this matter of the animals.

270:1 See The Art of Creation, by E. Carpenter.