3. In modern use, the word heathen (probably a cor- ruption of idviKoq, etJmicus, of which it is a translation; or derived from heaili, that is, people who live in the wilderness, as j^or/an from par/us, a village) is applied to all nations that are strangers to revealed religion, that is to say, to all except Christians, Jews, and Mo- hammedans. It is nearly synonymous with Gentiles (q. V.) and Parians (q. v.). At the time of the Crusades the Moslems were also called heathen ; but as they re- ceive the doctrine of the one God from tlic O. T., they are not properl}- so callecL On the relation of the hea- then to Judaism, see above, and also the article Gen- tiles. See also the same article (vol. iii, p. 789) for their relation to Christianity at its origin. We add the following statements :
" The old Oriental forms of heathenism, the religion of the Chinese (Confucius, about 550 B.C.), the Brah- minism, and the later Buddhism of the Hindoos (per- haps 1000 B.C.), the religion of the Persians (Zoroaster, 700 B.C.), and the Egyptians (' the religion of enig- ma'), have only a remote and indirect concern with the introduction of Christianity. But they form to some extent the historical basis of the Western religions ; and the Persian dualism, especially, was not without influ- ence on the earlier sects (the Gnostic and the Manichae- an) of the Christian Church. The flower of paganism appears in the two great nations of classic antiquity, Greece and Eome. With the language, morality, liter- ature, and religion of these nations the apostles came directly into contact, and through the whole first age the Church moves on the basis of these nationalities. These, together with the Jews, were the chosen nations of the ancient world, and shared the earth among them. The Jews were chosen for things eternal, to keep the sanctuarj' of the true religion. The Greeks prepared the elements of natural culture, of science and art, for the use of the Church. The Eomans developed the idea of law, and organized the ci\ilizcd world in a universal empire, ready to ser\-e the spiritual universalitj' of the Gospel. Both Greeks and Eomans were unconscious servants of Jesus Christ, ' the unknown God.' These three nations, by nature at bitter enmity among them- selves, jouicd hands in the superscription on the cross, where the holy name and the royal title of the Eedeem- cr stood ^mtten, by the command of the heathen Pilate, ' in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin' " (Schaff, Jlisfory of tie Christian ChvrcJi, i, 44).
4. As to the rcUfjion of heathenism, it is " a wild growth on the soil of fallen human nature, a darkening of the original consciousness of God, a deification of the rational and irrational creature, and a corresponding corruption of the moral sense, giving the sanction of re- ligion to natural and unnatural vices. Even the relig- ion of Greece, which, as an artistic product of the imag- ination, has been justly styled the religion of beauty, is deformed by this moral distortion. It utterly lacks the true conception of sin, and consequently the true con- ception of holiness. It regards sin not as a jierverse- ness of will and an offence against the gods, but as a folly of the understanding, and an offence against men, often even proceeding from the gods themselves; for ' infatuation is a daughter of Jove.' Then these gods themselves arc mere men, in whom Homer and the pop- ular faith saw and worshipped the weaknesses and vices of the Grecian character, as well as its virtues, in im- mensely magnified forms. They have bodies and senses, like mortals, only in colossal proportions. They eat and drink, though only nectar and ambrosia. They are lim«
HEATHEN
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HEATHEN
ited, like men, to time and space. Though sometimes honored with the attributes of omnipotence and omni- science, yet they are subject to an iron fate, fall under delusion, and reproach each other with folly. Their heavenly liappiness is distiu-bed by all the troubles of eartlily lii'e. Jupiter threatens liis fellows with blows and death, and makes Olympus tremble when lie shakes his dark loclis in anger. The gentle Venus bleeds from a spear-wound on her finger. INIars is felled with a stone by Ditmicdes. Neptune and Apollo have to serve for liiro, and are cheated. The gods are involved by their marriages in perpetual jealousies and quarrels. Though called holy and just, tliey are full of envy and wrath, liatred and lust, and provoke each other to lying and cruelty, perjury and adultery. Notwithstanding this essential apostasy from truth and holiness, heathen- ism was religion, a groping after 'tlie miknown God.' By its superstition it betrayed the need of faith. Its polytheism rested on a dim monotheistic background ; it subjected all the gods to Jupiter, and Jupiter himself to a mysterious fate. It had at bottom tlie feeling of dependence on higher powers, and reverence for divine things. It preserved the memory of a golden age and of a fall. It had the voice of conscience and a sense, obscure though it was, of guilt. It felt the need of rec- onciliation with deity, and sought that reconciliation by prayer, jwnance, and sacrifice. JNIany of its religious traditions and usages were faint echoes of the primal re- ligion ; and its mythological dreams of the mingling of the gods with men, of demigods, of Prometheus deliv- ered by Hercules from his helpless sufferings, were un- conscious prophecies and fleshy anticipations of Chris- tian truths. Tins alone explains the great readiness with which heathens embraced the Gospel, to the shame of the Jews. These elements of truth, morality, and piety in heathenism may be ascribed to three sources. In the first place, man, even in his fallen state, retains some traces of the divine image, a consciousness of God, however weak, conscience, and a deep longing for union with the Godhead, for truth and for righteousness. In this view we may, with TertuUian, caU the beautiful and true sentences of the classics, of a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, of Pindar, Sophocles, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, ' the testimonies of a soul constitutionally Chris- tian,' of a nature predestined to Christianity. Second- ly, some account must be made of traditions and recol- lections, however faint, coming down from the general primal revelations to Adam and Noah. But the third and most imjjortant source of the heathen anticipations of truth is the all-ruling providence of God, who has never left himself without a witness. Particularly must we consider the influence of the divine Logos before his incarnation, the tutor of mankind, the original light of reason, shining in the darkness and lighting every man, the soever scattering in the soil of heathendom the seeds of truth, beauty, and virtue" (Schaff, II isloi-i/ of the Chris- Han Church, §"12).