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PRESSENSE'S RELIGIONS BEFORE CHRIST.

The Religions before Christ. Being an Introduction to the History of the First Three Centuries of the Church. By EDMUND DE PRESSENSE, Pastor of the Evangelical Church, and Doctor of Divinity of the University of Breslau. Translated by L. CORKRAN. With a Preface by the Author. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 38, Genge Street. 1862.

SUCH is the title of a book very gracefully written, and by no means unworthily translated. It is an easy flowing summary of the principal tenets of the Oriental, Greek, Roman, and Judaic schools of religion and philosophy. Many of its episodes are finished with a power and eloquence that is for the time quite enchanting: pity it is that a calm judgment upon the whole work should lead us to question many of its statements, and to distrust in many cases the deductions to which they have given birth. Dr. De Pressensé is a man of considerable mental power and native quickness of parts, but he often writes without due care, and buries minuteness of detail in broad views of his subject which sometimes contain but a germ of truth mingled with a large proportion of highly coloured representations. The book has a noble object in view, viz., to trace the successive preparings which the soils of men's hearts were to undergo ere the seed of the Church was to be sown therein,―to follow out as far as may be, the course which God took to prepare the earth for the coming of the "Just One,❞—to point out how truly exhaustive was all that went before the Incarnation of the Son of GOD, and how nations, the best and the most enlightened, were to be taught that true wisdom could only be found as the revealed gift of GOD, and that the questions which the unaided understanding puts to itself concerning the highest things were thrown back upon itself when not illumined by a "power from on high." To confine such a subject in the narrow space which is afforded to it in the volume before us, implies of necessity a great condensation of matter, and so forces the author to write in a manner ex cathedrá, and moreover the subjects brought together are branches of widely different fields of research, so that it would be next to impossible for any one man to treat them all as they should be treated, the salient points of each system being brought out by a few firm and manly touches, and yet with an accurate adherence to the truth of the whole. It is impossible to speak too highly of the reverential tone of M. de Pressensé, it pervades every page of his book, it stands out in bold relief beside the cheerless scepticism which has come over much of our theoVOL. XXIV.-MAY, 1862.

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logical literature as a mildew, a blight. Yet De Pressensé is not fierce in his denunciations of Paganism; he quotes somewhere in his book the celebrated saying of S. Clement of Alexandria on the Pagan philosophy being a sort of pædagogue to the Christian faith. The following passage from his Preface will explain his views upon

this matter.

"I have raised no altar to human pride, for I believe no fact comes out more clearly from the study of the different civilizations than man's utter powerlessness to save himself. While on the other hand I know nothing more calculated to rejoice the Christian heart than the firm persuasion that GOD has from the beginning included the whole race of Adam in His beneficent designs, and that, as S. Paul says, 'He hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.' These ideas were dear to the Church of the first centuries, and were formalized in the boldest manner by Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria."-P. 2.

Again in the introduction, after showing that Christianity brought to the wearied world the solution that the Zoroasters and Platos had sought after and caught but glimpses of-profoundly human, because it was divine-how it bears the impress of the past he adds,

"Omnia subito is not its device, but rather that of the Gnostic heresy. Better to say with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, that the night of Paganism had its stars to light it, and that they called to the morning star which stood over Bethlehem.”—P. 6.

"We have to show in the developement of the religions of antiquity the successive phases of preparation for Christianity; then to seek under the different symbols which enveloped without ever concealing it, the first principle of Paganism, the old dualism, that eternal temptation of the human mind even in the Church. In fine, we shall have to characterize Judaism, the appointed precursor of Christianity, but which failed in its divine mission from the moment it endeavoured to survive it, or to perpetuate itself under its shadow."-P. 7.

Heresy is well described in this Introduction as a hypocritical reaction of Paganism against Christianity; the heresiarchs themselves being, as S. Hippolytus says, like old clothes menders. But it is with the various forms of Paganism and with Judaism that this work is alone concerned, tracing out in them all, the one burning idea of mediation and redemption which is stamped on every form of worship, upon every altar, upon all sacrifices, a notion that at first expanded itself into Pantheism, which Pantheism gave birth to a moral element, which when it was fully developed, cut off the parent's life, rending the edifice at its summit. Yet it did not die at once.

"Ancient Paganism took many centuries to die out completely. All its gods were for a moment collected in the Roman Pantheon, only

that they might perish together amid the maledictions and mockery of humanity tired and disgusted with its idols, while sending up to heaven from amid its impure wrecks a confused but passionate prayer of sorrow towards the unknown GoD.”—P. 17.

Dr. de Pressensé first works out the preparation for Christianity which is to be found in "Oriental Paganism," including under this term the religions of Western Asia; Arabian, and Babylonian worship; the rites practised in Phoenicia, Syria and Tyre, the Egyptian religion, the Persian religion, the Indian religion, passing on to the "Pelasgic Mythology." When we state that all these systems are discussed in about seventy pages, the reader will at once perceive that these matters are touched upon in a popular and superficial manner, rather than handled with anything like minuteness of detail or of comparison. The introductory notice to this section enlarges upon man's alliance with the natural instead of with the moral powers, upon the sensual life quenching that of the spirit, upon the two powers of nature.

"Here a prodigal laughing mother, pouring out her treasures into the lap of all, making the radiant sun to shine, sending the flowers of spring, the fruits of summer and autumn, communicating her fertility to all that move on the earth, and being herself the source of felicity and enjoyment. Then again she appears as a malevolent and cruel power, blasting everything,-the power of death and destruction, seen in the blackness of night, and the killing frost of winter."—P. 9.

The survey begins from the country extending from Babylon to Arabia and Syria, a "country of the sun and hurricane, where flourish the vine and the fig-tree, the cedar and sycamore;" a land visited at times by the simoon of the desert, by the plague and leprosy; where the young Scythian drinks the blood of his first enemy, and where Papaios, the god of heaven, and Sabin, the god of earth, receive alternately the highest worship, and where the great forces of nature were represented by the goddess of love and the god of war. And then it passes on to the Arabians with that Baal, the god of heaven, who on the high places was worshipped by the Midianites and Amalekites, who extended to the stars the worship of the hosts of heaven. "The star-lit sky shines down upon the desert with incomparable splendour, a vivifying freshness breathes over the burning sands, as soon as the stars kindle up the azure heaven." The stars were to the Arab the guide of his wanderings, the arbiters of his fate, the beneficent deity of his race. The Babylonian worship is dismissed with a mere mention, and the primitive dualism which reached its most finished form in Phoenicia and Syria is treated with rather more fulness. It was a great change from the Babylonians and Arabs to descend to the Phoenicians, it is a coming down from heaven to earth, as it

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were. It was nature which they worshipped, as manifested in opposing forces upon earth. Baal or Dagon was their chief divinity, represented in two forms, as the productive Adonis, and as the destructive Moloch. The Baal Adonis stands for the burning spring, the Baal Moloch personifies the devouring fire of the De Pressensé says sun. "that the two fundamental divinities of all the Asiatic religions are likewise at the basis of Phoenician worship." (P. 25.) He identifies the Thammuz which is wept for by the women in Ezekiel viii. 14 as Adonis, which is what Gesenius1 had done long ago. The mysteries of Adonis are especially of interest from the light which they throw upon the old Osirian worship of the Egyptians.

Lucian, in his account of the gods of Syria, mentions particularly that the people of Byblus, at the foot of Lebanon, really thought that these mysteries were instituted for Osiris, who was actually buried there, and not in Egypt. A recent writer, Brugsch, has most clearly identified Adonis with Osiris, and has traced up the myth of Adonis to Asia. Now the great correspondence that there is between the Egypt of the Pharaohs and Phoenicia has not been well brought out by De Pressensé; a correspondence seen, not alone in this myth, but also in that of the Cabeirian brothers, the images of which received veneration alike from the polished priest of Memphis, and the rude pilot of Phoenicia. Perhaps more than all, is the ditheistic foundation of all the mythology which so completely unites Egypt with Phoenicia; and it has been well said that "the Baal of the old Phoenician found the highest symbol of his vitalising power in the great monarch of the heavenly bodies, and corresponding with this fact, the sun god born of chaos and elemental fire, was the most glorious deity of the old Egyptian.'

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To obtain anything like a clear insight into the interior life of the religions of nations whose grandeur and civilization has so long passed away, the relative bearings of one myth upon another can hardly be over estimated. It is by following carefully the inflexions of a thought manifesting itself successively in symbolical representatives, differently modified by different people, that we can ever hope to dive into that natural mind where the thought The mind of a nation must be brought out if any sprung up. vitality is to be given to the sculptured history of the past, and the obscure and often fanciful traditions by which later writers have sought to open up what was in their day,-albeit they lived centuries before ourselves,-a problem of no very easy solution, prove the difficulty of the task which they had undertaken.

We are now led to notice the religion of Egypt, which has a basis common to the systems before mentioned, but altered in detail by strict nationality. De Pressensé gives a poetical and graphic

1 Monum. Phoen. II. p. 450.

account of this wonderful people the Egyptians; the substance of which is gleaned from Bunsen and Dunker. We select a few sentences from it.

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Egypt is the land of routine, of unvarying monotonous life. Nature itself wears in Egypt this aspect. The Egyptians are essentially a building and conservative race; duration, not extension, is their instinct. They love immobility as others do movement. The mummy stretched for thousands of years in its solemn attitude is the Egyptian ideal. Hence there is something sad and mournful which is the indelible character of the nation. Egypt loves the past; her national monument is the pyramid-that is to say, a gigantic tomb: in this funereal labour whole generations were swallowed up."-P. 29.

It was eminently a regal and a sacerdotal country. The King was himself the personification of nationality-he was the type of the entire people; being in fact to his subjects very much what Plato's ideal mind should be to his republic. There native worship flourished with its dualistic tendencies; the ruins of Memphis tell the tale of the battle of the serpent with the sun. Their architecture corresponded with their worship.

"Egyptian art," writes De Pressensé, "reproduced the national character with singular fidelity. It was not fertility it wanted, for its works are innumerable. Pyramids and obelisks cover the soil. The Labyrinth and its long lines of palaces; the palace of Thebes; the immense palace of Sesostris; the equally magnificent temples; the vast tombs hollowed out of the rock;-the air of majesty and grandeur about these combinations fill us with awe and prove that the artistic faculty of the race was highly developed. But architecture completely crushed sculpture and painting; for these arts, in order to flourish, require a certain development of human individuality, whereas Egyptian art was essentially sacerdotal. Wanting liberty, spontaneous inspiration, sacred fire, it was the docile servant-rather we should say the slave of tradition. Their temples and their palaces do not form one harmonious whole, like the Greek temples, but are a series of porticoes with innumerable columns which might be indefinitely prolonged. Sculpture is tied down to consecrated types, the forms of which may be described as rather geometrical than organic. The human face is without beauty or individuality, but stamped with the same solemn immobility that characterizes the nation itself."-P. 34.

We wish as far as possible to lay before our readers a fair specimen or two of the elegant language in which this book is written, hence our numerous quotations; but directly we leave the surface of things all is more or less superficial and vague. Let us analyse a few lines. "In Lower Egypt the god of the Sun was called Pra or Phra; at Memphis Ptah."-P. 30. The deities of other parts of Egypt are then mentioned. Not a word is said of this Ptah being the Vulcan of the Romans and the Hephaestus of the Greeks,

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