Part 2

But no doctrine of the post-corporeal existence of the soul has ever had the field entirely to itself. We know that in antiquity even the Stoic conception of the soul’s limited survival, to say nothing of Platonic beliefs in actual immortality, met with much opposition and denial among the intellectual classes. The Epicureans, with their thorough-going atomistic materialism, would not allow that the soul had any existence apart from the body; on the contrary, they held that the soul came into being at the moment of conception, grew with the body, and, at the body’s death, was once more dissolved into the atoms from which it first was formed. Epicurean polemics were directed against both popular superstitions and Platonic metaphysics; the attacks had the advantage of offering rational, and for the day scientific, explanations of natural phenomena, which fed human curiosity as to the causes of things, and which, if accepted, might logically lead to that freedom from the soul’s perturbation which was the aim of the teaching. Moreover, the noble resignation, the high moral and humane zeal, which characterized the Epicurean School at its best, as well as its easy decline into hedonistic appeals, made it popular, especially in the last two centuries before our era. But the very fire and passion of Lucretius, its most gifted Latin exponent, give us the impression that after all most men were not moved to find the peace which the poet promised them, if they would but accept the doctrine of the soul’s dissolution at the moment of death.

The Sceptics also, who claimed not an inconsiderable number of intellectuals, doubted the possibility of a future life, or found themselves unable to decide the matter at all. Like Tennyson’s Sage they would declare:

“Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one: Thou canst not prove that thou art immortal, no, Nor yet that thou art mortal.”

Indeed it is true that of all the philosophic sects at the beginning of our era, only those which were imbued with Platonic and Orphic-Pythagorean ideas, had confidence in the soul’s immortality. The Stoic position we have already discussed. Some scholars, following Rohde,[16] claim that there was little belief in any kind of a future life among the educated classes at the time we are considering; this I hold to be an error, although it is certain that the Epicureans and Sceptics had a large following. In any case we need to remind ourselves that the intellectuals are always a small minority, whose views may not represent in any way popular beliefs.

We are, however, not without evidence that there were doubters among the common people. Flippant epigrams and epitaphs show that men could at least assume a cynicism toward life and a light-heartedness toward death which equal Lucian’s. More than once we can read funerary inscriptions to this effect: “I was nothing, I am nothing. Do thou who art still alive, eat, drink, be merry, come.”[17] Or sentiments like this: “Once I had no existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not concern me.”[18] Again we find the denial: “In Hades there is no boat, no Charon, no Aeacus who holds the keys, no Cerberus. All of us, whom death has taken away are rotten bones and ashes; nothing more.”[19] The sentiments are perhaps as old as thinking man. They have at times touches of humor which call forth a smile, as in the anxious inquiries of Callimachus’ epigram: “Charidas, what is below?” “Deep darkness.” “But what of the paths upward?” “All a lie.” “And Pluto?” “Mere talk.” “Then we’re lost.”[20]

Such expressions, of course, must not be given too much weight in our reckoning. The longing for annihilation, which appeals at times to most weary mortals, also led to dedications “to eternal rest” or “to eternal sleep.”[21] But after all the number of such epitaphs is comparatively small. In the nature of the case many funerary inscriptions give no testimony for or against a belief in immortality; but large numbers show confidence, or a hope, in a future life.

II

The time has now come for us to return from our rather long historical survey to Virgil’s Apocalypse, and to listen to the words with which Anchises’ shade taught his eager son:

“Know first that heaven and earth and ocean’s plain, The moon’s bright orb, and stars of Titan birth Are nourished by one Life; one primal Mind, Immingled with the vast and general frame, Fills every part and stirs the mighty whole. Thence man and beast, thence creatures of the air, And all the swarming monsters that be found Beneath the level of the marbled sea; A fiery virtue, a celestial power, Their native seeds retain; but bodies vile, With limbs of clay and members born to die, Encumber and o’ercloud; whence also spring Terrors and passions, suffering and joy; For from deep darkness and captivity All gaze but blindly on the radiant world. Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewell May sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freed From all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law, The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in. For this, the chastisement of evils past Is suffered here, and full requital paid. Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds; For some their sin’s contagion must be purged In vast ablution of deep-rolling seas, Or burned away in fire. Each man receives His ghostly portion in the world of dark; But thence to realms Elysian we go free, Where for a few these seats of bliss abide, Till time’s long lapse a perfect orb fulfills, And takes all taint away, restoring so The pure, ethereal soul’s first virgin fire. At last, when the millennial aeon strikes, God calls them forth to yon Lethaean stream, In numerous host, that thence, oblivious all, They may behold once more the vaulted sky, And willingly to shapes of flesh return.”[22]

These words express the commingled beliefs of Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonist, and Stoic. How extensively such beliefs were held by Virgil’s contemporaries we cannot say with accuracy, but certain it is that this book and this passage would never have made the religious appeal which they made in antiquity, if they had not corresponded to widespread convictions.

But Virgil’s sixth book contains much more than the eschatological views of philosophic schools; it reflects to an extraordinary degree popular ideas and practices. I have already referred to the fact that it represents a mystic initiation of Virgil’s hero as preparation for his holy task. Now we know that at all times the convictions of the majority of men are founded not on the arguments which thinkers can supply, but on hopes, intuitions, and emotional experiences. Such were the grounds on which the Orphic built his hope of the purified soul’s ultimate happiness. More popular than Orphism were the Greek mysteries, of which the most important were those celebrated annually at Eleusis in Attica. There the story of the rape of Proserpina, of Demeter’s search for her daughter, and of the daughter’s recovery, formed the center of a mystic ceremonial. Originally these mysteries were no doubt agricultural rites intended to call to life the dead grain in the spring. But before the seventh century, B.C., the festival had been transformed; the miracle of the reviving vegetation, of the grain which dies and lives again, here, as so many times elsewhere, had become the symbol and assurance of human immortality.[23]

Before admission to the annual celebration the would-be initiate was duly purified. During the celebration the initiated, by their own acts, recalled Demeter’s hunt for her daughter, roaming the shore with lighted torches; like the goddess, they fasted and then broke their fast by drinking a holy potion of meal and water; in the great hall of initiation they witnessed a mystic drama, perhaps saw holy objects exhibited and explained. In any case they underwent an emotional experience which so confirmed their intuitional belief in immortality, that they were confident of peace and happiness in this life and of blessedness in the life to come, where they would join in the sacred dance, while the uninitiated would be wretched. Many are the expressions of this ecclesiastical confidence. The Homeric hymn of Demeter promised: “Blessed is he among mortal men who has seen these rites.”[24] Pindar, early in the fifth century, wrote: “Happy he who has seen these things and then goes beneath the earth, for he knows the end of life and its Zeus-given beginning.”[25] Sophocles said: “Thrice blessed are they who have seen these rites, and then go to the house of Hades, for they alone have life there, but all others have only woe.”[26] At the close of the fifth century Aristophanes made his chorus of mystae sing: “For we alone have a sun and a holy light, we who have been initiated, and who live honorably toward friends and strangers, reverencing the gods.”[27] In the third century of the Christian era, an official of the mysteries set up an inscription which declares: “Verily glorious is that mystery vouchsafed by the blessed gods, for death is no ill for mortals, but rather a good.”[28]

It is difficult for us now to appreciate the widespread influence of these Eleusinian mysteries. They had many branches; at Eleusis they continued to be celebrated until 396 A.D., when Alaric the Goth destroyed Demeter’s ancient shrine. Other Greek mysteries also flourished in the Mediterranean world: those of Samothrace; the mysteries of Bacchus, whose excesses brought down the displeasure of the Roman Senate in 186 B.C.; and in later times the mysteries of Hecate or Diana. All had this in common, that they gave the initiate assurance of a happy immortality.

Under the Roman Empire the longing for religious satisfaction through mystic rites and revelations found new and exotic sources of gratification. Slaves, traders, and finally soldiers from Hellenized Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, carried their gods throughout the Mediterranean world, and even beyond, to the Atlantic Ocean, to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, to the Rhine and Danube, and to the borders of the African desert. The invasion of the West by these oriental gods began in 204 B.C., when, in answer to the Roman Senate’s invitation, the Asiatic Great Mother of the Gods took up her residence in Rome. Many other divinities came during the succeeding centuries; but three remained most prominent: the Great Mother of the Gods, whom I have just mentioned, with her attendant Attis; Egyptian Isis and her associate divinities, who were worshipped in Rome as early as Cicero’s day; and the Persian Mithras, whose cult became influential in the West toward the close of the first century of our era.[29] These religions added to their exotic charm that spell which great age casts over men’s imaginations. Osiris, the husband of Isis, had been lord of the dead in Egypt for more than two thousand years; Attis and the Great Mother belonged to an immemorial antiquity; while Mithras had his origin in the remoter East, at a period to which neither Greek nor Roman knowledge ran. Moreover, Attis and Osiris, like Dionysus and Persephone among the Greeks, or the Semitic Adonis and Tammuz, were gods who died and lived again, and who therefore became warrants of man’s immortality. Mithras belonged to another class of divinities. He was held to be the benefactor and constant supporter of mankind. According to the sacred legend, he had himself wrestled with the powers of darkness and had established civilization on earth, before he ascended to heaven, whence he was believed to aid his faithful followers in their constant struggle against the servants of Ahriman, the lord of wickedness.

The devotees of these gods formed sacred communities, admission to which was obtained by secret initiation; the rituals were mysteries in which the devotee had pictured to him, or himself acted out, the sacred drama, whereby he received assurance of divine protection here and of a happy immortality hereafter. The initiate, moreover, was believed to experience a new birth and to enter into union with his god, so that he became Osiris-Serapis, or Attis, or Mithras, even as the Dionysiac devotee became a Bacchus.

To the question how the comforting assurance of present safety and of future immortality was given the initiate, we can return no more satisfactory answer than we can make in the case of the Greek mysteries; yet we may get some hint from the words which the Latin writer, Apuleius, puts into the mouth of his hero, Lucius, who was initiated into the rites of Isis. This is all that he might tell: “I approached the bounds of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpina. I was carried through all the elements and returned again to the upper air. At dead of night I saw the sun glowing with a brilliant light. The gods of heaven and of hell I approached in very person and worshipped face to face.”[30] Obscure as these words are, much is plain. In some way the devotee was made to believe that he, like Virgil’s hero, had passed through the world of the dead and had been born again into a new life; he had touched the elements--earth, air, water, and fire, the very foundations of the visible cosmos; he had seen the sun which ever shines on the consecrated; and he had been granted the beatific vision. Therefore he knew that his salvation was secure forever.

Furthermore in these mystery religions preparation for the emotional experiences of initiation was made by means of lustral baths, fasting, abstinence, and penance; once consecrated, the devotee supported his religious life by following a prescribed regimen and by participating in frequent holy offices; degrees of initiation and grades of office marked his advance in faithful proficiency; while magic words and formulae, committed to memory, assured him a safe passage from this world to the next.

The oriental mysteries enjoyed a widespread popularity, except in Greece, under the Roman Empire down to the latter half of the third century. Then they began to lose their hold in the Roman provinces before the growing power of Christianity; yet in the city of Rome they stubbornly held their ground until the end of the fourth century. The first St. Peter’s was built hard beside a shrine of the Great Mother of the Gods; there for three-quarters of a century the old and the new mysteries strove in conscious rivalry, until at last Cybele was forced to yield to Christ.

The last centuries before the birth of Jesus and the opening centuries of our era were marked by an increasing religious longing and unrest, first among the Greeks and then among the Romans. There was a weariness and a dissatisfaction with the inherited forms of religious expression; and many felt a sense of separation from God, of a gulf between the human and the divine, which they hoped might be bridged by a direct revelation, by a vision, which would grant immediate knowledge of God. These eager desires led in part to an increase in superstition and credulity, over which we need not now pause; in part to the resort to the oriental mysteries of which I have just spoken; and in part to a revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of mystic Platonism among the intellectuals, who no longer felt that the reason and the will gave them the assurance which they required.

The later mystic philosophies laid much stress on an ascetic discipline in this life, to secure the soul’s purification, and all taught that the great end of man was to attain to the knowledge of God, wherein lay man’s supreme happiness. Such knowledge, it was thought, could come only through a revelation. Here these philosophies agreed with the teaching of the oriental mysteries, and indeed with popular belief as well. On the question of the immortality of the soul, however, the later mystics brought forward no new arguments. Plotinus, the greatest of the Neoplatonists, virtually repeats the proofs adduced by the founder of the Academy.[31] Undoubtedly during the opening centuries of the Christian era there was a growing belief in the soul’s immortality, or at least an increasing hope of a future life, but such hopes and beliefs, outside Christianity, were not based on new arguments. Plato had once for all in antiquity, supplied the philosophic grounds for confidence. Only in modern times have new arguments of any weight been adduced.

* * * * *

Let us now pause to summarize the results of the considerations which have thus far occupied us. We may fairly say that, in spite of popular doubt, intellectual scepticism, and philosophic denial, beliefs in some kind of existence beyond the grave were widespread in the Greco-Roman world at the beginning of our era. For many, probably for most, belief did not advance beyond inherited intuitions, fears, or hopes, which were fostered by tendance of the dead, prescribed by immemorial custom. Many, both the simple and the learned, found their assurance in diverse forms of Greek mysteries; others, again, strengthened to endure the buffetings of this life by the resolute doctrines of Stoicism, were satisfied with the extended, though limited, future existence vouchsafed the virtuous; while the later Platonists, returning to the mystic Orphic-Pythagorean elements which had influenced the founder of their school, offered their disciples arguments in favor of a genuine immortality. Under the Empire the supports of faith became more numerous and appealing. At the lowest end of the scale were charlatans, as there had been since Plato’s day,[32] who imposed on the fears and hopes of their victims for their own mercenary ends. Higher were those inspiring Eastern mysteries which were carried to the remotest provinces, binding their devotees by initiation, ritual service, and a prescribed regimen, more constantly to a religious life than Greek mysteries had ever done; and the great end of all was the assurance that the souls of the faithful should not die, but should mount to the upper heavens to be at one with God.

The last vital philosophy of antiquity was Neoplatonism, on which we have just touched; the chief aim of the Neoplatonist also was to secure union with the Divine, and his greatest article of faith was the soul’s immortality. If this theosophic philosophy seem to any of poor account, I would remind him that by Origen and Augustine Neoplatonism was brought into Christian thought, where it has been operative ever since.

III

In view of the facts with which we have been occupied we shall not make the error of thinking that Christianity brought the hope of immortality among men, for, as we have seen, hope--nay, sure confidence, in the soul’s survival was widespread throughout the ancient world when Jesus began his ministry. What can we say of early Christian teaching, and how was it related to its pagan environment?

Christianity grew out of Judaism. Now it is a striking fact that the Jews were later than most of the peoples about them in conceiving of individual immortality.[33] Clinging to monotheism and absorbed in the life of their nation, they had cut themselves off from some of the ideas developed by their neighbors. To follow out the intricate and uncertain history of eschatological ideas among the Jews would be too difficult here. We may simply say that when Jesus began his ministry a considerable part of the Jews had abandoned the expectation of a material kingdom of God and looked forward to a spiritual kingdom on a transformed earth or in heaven. In this kingdom those would share, who through God’s grace and their own righteousness had won a place therein; but the wicked were either to be punished forever or to be utterly destroyed. To these ideas Jesus’ teaching was closely related, although he gave a nobler meaning to Jewish doctrine, and he did not limit the hope of a future existence so narrowly as some would do. Moreover, he adopted from the law the teaching which made salvation and future happiness depend on a love for God and for one’s fellow-men, which would result in an unselfish life of righteousness. Salvation, he taught, was a present experience, open to every man who conformed to the requirement.

After the crucifixion of Jesus, the Apostles and their successors naturally made his person, death, and resurrection the great means through which his followers secured salvation. Paul, moreover, taught that through faith--using the word in a somewhat unusual sense--the believer secured the actual presence of Christ within him, entered into a mystic union with the divine Saviour, by which the man was freed from sin and reborn into a new spiritual life; this new life was confirmed by the indwelling Holy Spirit which completed the man’s moral regeneration. In the Fourth Gospel we find a similar doctrine of a mystic union with Christ, secured by belief in Him as the incarnate Word--a belief which brought about a spiritual rebirth and therewith gave a present warrant of eternal life.[34]

It is unnecessary for our present purpose to examine the beliefs of the earliest Christians as to the resurrection or the second coming of Christ, which they expected to take place within their own time--these beliefs and many others the Apostolic Church derived naturally from their Jewish tradition and from the teachings of Jesus. I shall ask you rather to focus your thought on the fundamental ideas of this early Christianity: that is to say, on the revelation of God, the punishment of sin by suffering or annihilation, the mystic union with the Divine, and a happy immortality as a reward for faith and righteousness. Were these ideas foreign to the peoples of the Mediterranean area? No, our survey has reminded us that on the contrary they were familiar over wide stretches of the Greco-Roman world.

Do not misunderstand me here. Of course I am not making the elementary blunder of saying that because certain beliefs of the Christians and the Pagans were similar, they therefore were identical, or that they were derived from one another, or that the many factors of which they were composed were the same. No one with any knowledge of the history of religious thought could maintain that. But the point which I do wish to emphasize is this, viz.: that the eschatological ideas widely current in the Mediterranean world were such that Christianity found a favorable environment when it began its proselyting work. This seems to me one of the most significant facts in the relation of early Christianity to paganism. The Christian teachings as to the means by which the assurance of a happy immortality was to be secured could hardly seem very strange at first hearing to any one who was familiar with mystery religions or with much of the religious philosophy current in the pagan world during the early Christian centuries. Closer examination would reveal fundamental differences between Christian belief and the pagan hope. But it is not insignificant that Christianity spread most rapidly at first in Syria and Asia Minor, countries long familiar with those mystic religions, which had promised what the nobler faith supplied.

IV

Although we now have examined the conditions which, to my mind, are the most significant in the relation of pagan ideas of immortality to those of early Christianity, there yet remain matters which, if less important, are still of more than merely curious interest. We shall now look at some of these questions.