RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Comparative Religion
The extent to which use of religious legend runs is governed largely by the need created by dogmatic assertion, by the necessities of the system developed.' Operating in another region, each religion sees in its own scriptures the very word, of God, and from this word the dogmatician draws his proof texts for his closely cut definitions, while the mystic seeks from the same source justification for his wildest imaginings and even for his antinomian practise. Common psychological action is observable in the religions which perceive in the physical something by nature so opposed to good that conquest over the body, even to its destruction, becomes a religious necessity. And this conquest is sought by the same two methods; either by an asceticism which starves and so vanquishes the material, or gives it free rein and destroys it by extreme license. The development in so many regions, in India, China, Arabia, Greece, Rome, Peru, and Mexico, with features which repeat or caricature Christian monasticism, is one of the facts of history.
Socially, it is rarely that religion becomes the controUing factor in advanced stages of civilization. Mohammedanism was unique in that it welded together the Arab tribes into a whole in which intense tribalism was merged into fanatical religious fervor. Society and religion interact. Religion responds to the change made 2. Social, by the transformation of pastoral into agricultural and commercial life, and modifies its idea of God and of the service due him. Yet there is always a conservative element opposed to these transformations in life of which the Rechabites (q.v.) in Israel are fairly representative. The factors which are influential in the development of society and of cultui-e are, however, in early stages the care of rehgion. The first tribunals are the sanctuaries, where the god pronounces judgment. Physical ills are first treated by the priests learned both in simples and in the magic spells which condition their correct use. Astronomy develops in the priestly schools; mythology gives way to philosophy in priestly speculation; music is often the development of the service at the shrine; architecture and art make their noblest flights in the erection and adornment of the sanctuary. Yet these arts and sciences emancipate themselves from the thraldom of the priesthood, become independent and even opposing forces, and the interaction of these forces, no longer one but many, contribute to the diversity and so to the development of society.
It is the natural result of the early dominance of religion in the life of man that rehgion sought to control ethics. Yet the moral sense and the religious have interacted throughout history. Ethics Itself has a history, a development. No absolute standard of ethics is yet attained, nor is it likely that the highest standard of conduct 3- Ethical, now ideally possible will not have to give way to one still higher. That is the law of history. It is asserted, and with reason, that religion has offended against the ethics of a later age, sometimes of its own age. Samuel hewed Agag in pieces " before the Lord "; Serve-
tus was burned as a heretic; the Quakers were persecuted for righteousness' sake in godly Massachusetts; and it was the moral sense which did away with _ that religious but immoral institution, the Inquisition. Religion, in primitive stages the arbiter of conduct, in the organized religions has had to submit to the dicta of moral consciousness. The relations of the family and the intercourse of man in society have had much to do with the advancement of morals; but religion gives its sanction to the development and elevates the standard by introducing consideration of the divine. And it is memorable that in most regions the most powerful incentive to right living has come through the religious teaching upon eschatology. The concept that happiness in the future life is contingent upon right conduct in this life constitutes an appeal to that powerful and ever-present motive, desire for one's welfare. A powerful adjunct to the forces developing morality are the codes put forth from the heart of the sanctuary.
When the organized religions came into existence the sense of the holiness of God and of the sinfulness of man produced the idea of a chasm between deity and humanity. The bridge of that chasm was the cultic institution of the sacrifice, the mediator between god and man being the sacrificer.
So sacrifice, which in the earlier stages
4. Cultic. of religion had been the sign of the community of god and man, became an at-one-ment, the means of reintroducing a harmony which had been lost. But the right method of offering this appeasing gift had come to be almost as important as the gift itself, so that a ritual developed which fell into the hands of a class claiming the knowledge and therefore the right exclusively to perform the sacred office. Hence the universal factors in religion in the cultic sphere are the sacrifice and the priest. Worship may be multiform and diverse, but these factors remain, though disguised more or less skilfully. Originally as accompaniments of the sacrifice, later in part divorced from them, prayer and praise became so universal that the Psalms of the Hebrew temple have their analogues in all the worship of man.
0. Modifications Due to Ethnic or Local Diiferenoes: Why different religions exist can no more be answered than why races are brown, yellow, white, or black. Each people has its favorite notions, in religion as elsewhere. Hence each developed religion has something of its own upon which it places emphasis. Egypt was dominated by the idea of the effect of conduct here upon the life beyond; China taught the apotheosis of the family and emphasized the fifth commandment; India laid special stress upon the immanence of God in his world; Persia was concerned with the absolute holiness of God; Mohammedanism is absorbed with the oneness of deity; Greece laid stress on the divine in the human; Rome emphasized the supremacy of law and the fixity of ritual. That these separate specialties were the expression of national pecuharities is as far as one may go, the wherefore is inexplicable.
d. Parallel Lines of Development: The organized religions often follow parallel lines of de-
Comparative Religrlon Comte