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MEDIATOR, MEDIATION
idea emerges in the lowest es of civilization under the form of the medicine man, the rain- maker, the sorcerer, whose function, however, is rather to coerce than to conciliate inimical powers. While the purification of religion eliminates degraded, distorted, and superstitious forms of mediation, it does not destroy the essential idea, which is found more clearly and forcibly expressed in Christianity than in any other type of religion. So prominent and characteristic is the idea that we might define Christianity in the abstract as Theism plus Mediation—understanding the latter term to include all that is taught concerning the person and mission of Christ, for it is this idea that most distinguishes the religion of the NT from pure Theism. But Butler pointed out that the specially Christian idea of ‘the appointment of a Mediator, and the redemption of the world by him, was analogous to many things in the con- rt ag and course of nature’ (Analogy, pt. ii. ch. v.).
i. MEDIATION IN PAGANISM. —Space will not permit of more than the briefest notice of this ranch of the subject ; and yet it is impossible to do justice to the great biblical doctrine of media- tion without giving at least some attention to its position in the light of comparative religion.
1. Savage notions of mediation.—It has been pointed out that as in course of time the indi- vidual faculties in men were seen to be differenti- ated, some were held to be specially gifted with occult powers. These men came to be regarded with awe ; they were not as other men. To them it was given to penetrate the unseen world, read the secrets of futurity, influence the supernatural
owers with which primitive man in a dim way elt himself to be surrounded. In so low a race as the Australian aborigines, the medicine men are credited with the power of controlling all occult influences. This mysterious power is claimed among the Andaman Okopaids and the Peaimen of Guiana. In Melanesia it is known as mana, and is said to be es by cannibalism. This mana is conveyed by the medicine man to the charms he uses. A similar power was recognized among the N. American Tevianal In the lowest condition, while the medicine man uses charms and spells, he does not invoke spirits. A higher stage is attained when he calls in the aid of ghosts, the totem animal belonging to an inter- mediate condition. In some savage communities demoniacal possession is supposed to confer priestly or mediatorial powers. Thus we learn from Tylor (Prim. Cult. ii. p. 121) that among the Pata- gonians persons afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance were selected as magicians, and that among the Liberian tribes the Shamans brought up children liable to convulsions for the profession of magic (see King, The Supernatural, bk. ii. ch. iv.). he medium of modern spiritualism may be compared with the medicine man who has dealings with ghosts, the special gift with which the medium is credited leading him to be consulted by others as though he were a kind of mediator between ordinary mortals and the spirit world.
2. Civilized pagan notions of mediation, — All religions that contain a priesthood with functions not shared by the main body of the community predicate some form of mediation in connexion with that office. The priest sacrifices to, or inter- cedes with, the god to whom he is attached, on behalf of the people. But the two greatest faiths of the East have peculiar relations to this subject. The distinction between the priesthood and the laity is more pronounced and rigorous in Hinduism than it is in any other religion the world has ever known. This is owing to the institution of caste. Of the four great classes re-
MEDIATOR, MEDIATION
cognized in the Hindu system, Brahmans, soldiers, agriculturists, and servants, the first consists of priests, and an important part of the Veda, the Brahmanahs, is devoted to the ritual they are required to follow. Inasmuch as the observance of this ritual is regarded with favour by the gods, all classes of society benefit by the Divine com- placency thus secured ; but the hopeless inferiority of the other castes destroys one important element in the mediatorial idea, the community of nature between the priest and the people which is essential to the NT idea of mediation set out in the Epistle to the Hebrews. On the other hand, the Brahmanahs contain the idea of gods sacri- ficing, and so bring in the notion of mediation from another point of view. Thus in the Taéndya- brahmanahs it is stated that ‘the Lord of creatures (prajd-pati) offered himself a sacrifice for the gods.’ The same idea emerges in the sacrifice of ‘the primeval male.’ Thus it is stated in the sdta-
patha-brahmanah, ‘He who, knowing this, sacri-
fices with the Purusha-Medha, the sacrifice of the rimeval male, becomes everything.’ Monier- Williams regarded this as a witness to ‘ the original institution of sacrifice,’ and ‘typical of the one
eat voluntary sacrifice,’ ete. (Hinduism, p. 36). On the other hand, it must be observed that the oldest Hindu sacrifices are not piacular, but simply consist of food offered to the gods. The idea of expiation came later, and with it the notion of mediation. But about the time of the rise of Buddhism, i.e. c. 500 B.c., the development of Hindu philosophy removed all belief in vicarious sacrifice and mediation from the mind of the speculative Brahman by developing a system of Pantheism. If man is one with God, there can be no room for mediation between man and God. And yet, again, the evolution of gods as forms or manifestations of Brahm introduces another form of mediation, the merits of an inferior god availing with one above him, that god’s merits with one still higher, and so on in the ascending scale up to the highest.