Section of Buddhist Cave-temple at Karli. 



MOHAMMEDANISM-HINDUISM-BUDDHISM, 



for 



e 



ELIGION, in Christian countries, is gener- 

 Xv ally understood as the feeling of reverence 

 towards the Creator and Ruler of the world, to- 

 gether with all those acts of worship and service 

 to which that feeling leads. The root of this 

 sentiment lies in the very constitution of man and 

 in the circumstances in which he is placed, and 

 manifests itself abundantly even where the one 

 supreme God of the Christian is unknown. Man 

 is naturally religious, and if he is ignorant of 

 the true God, he must make to himself false ones. 

 He is surrounded by dangers and difficulties ; he 

 sees the mighty powers of nature at work all 

 around, pregnant to him with hope and fear, and 

 yet inscrutable in their working, and beyond his 

 control. Hence arises the feeling of dependence 

 upon something more powerful than himself the 

 very germ of religion. These operations of nature, 

 again, he has only one way of conceiving and 

 accounting for. The idea of physical causes is 

 one of late growth ; to the primitive man there 

 is only one kind of agency he can understand 

 that of a will or mind like his own. Hence all 

 things that he sees moving and acting become 

 to him animated, conscious beings, with thoughts 

 and passions similar to those of men ; and what 

 more natural than that he should seek, by offer- 

 ings and entreaties, to secure their favour or pro- 

 pitiate their malignity or anger ? There is, no 

 doubt, a vast distance between the reverence with 

 which the Christian looks up to Him that fills the 

 universe, and that of the poor negro doctor who 

 was observed by Dr Livingstone to speak in a 

 whisper when he approached his basket of medi- 

 cines or charms, lest he should offend the power 

 which he conceived to lie concealed therein. But 

 in both cases it is the same feeling that is at the 

 bottom ; they are both manifesting religion.* 



According to this view, religion includes all 

 forms of belief in the unseen and spiritual powers, 



* The word religion is of Latin origin, and according to its 

 etymology would mean ' binding,' ' obligation,' or rather ' restraint' 

 It was applied by the Romans to all actions in which men are 

 guided, not by motives deducible from the ordinary course of 

 nature, but by regard to some unseen power or mysterious influ- 

 ence ; as when Li vy says of a spot in the Forum : vbi dcsfrui rtligio 

 ttt, ' where spitting is a matter of religion ; ' that is, where there 

 is a religious scruple restraining people from spitting. 



79 



or gods, together with the practices arising out 

 of those beliefs. The forms that religious belief 

 has assumed are endless, but they may be all 

 classed under two heads : Monotheism, or the 

 belief in one God ; and Polytheism, or the belief 

 in many gods. In most, if not in all polytheistic 

 systems of religion, there is one of the gods su- 

 perior to the rest in power and dignity, with more 

 or less of acknowledged supremacy over them; 

 still, within a certain sphere, they all have inde- 

 pendent power, are all capable of doing man 

 good or ill according as they are disposed towards 

 him, without regard, or even in opposition, to the 

 will of the supreme deity ; they are therefore all 

 objects of hope and fear, and have to be indi- 

 vidually worshipped and propitiated. Monotheism 

 does not exclude the notion of various ranks of 

 spiritual beings, good and evil, vastly superior to 

 man in power, and capable of working him weal 

 or woe ; but they are conceived as mere agents 

 or messengers (angels) of the Supreme Ruler, and 

 ministers of his love or of his anger. 



The doctrine that there is but one God has the 

 testimony of a Divine revelation to its truth. It 

 is common to Judaism and Christianity, both of 

 which are founded on this revelation. The only 

 other religion in which this great truth has been 

 reached is Mohammedanism, which arose among 

 a people nearly akin to the Jews, and in which 

 the influence of the Jewish sacred writings is 

 clearly manifest. The religions founded on the 

 Bible Judaism, namely, and the various forms of 

 Christianity having been described in the two pre- 

 ceding numbers, it remains to give some account 

 of Mohammedanism, and then of some of the 

 more important polytheistic or pagan religions. 

 Polytheism, in its lowest degradations, takes the 

 form of belief in a multiplicity of unseen influences, 

 hardly conceived as personal and conscious gods, 

 but operating in the incomprehensible way ex- 

 pressed by the words magic, charm, witchcraft, 

 &c. It is this form of religious belief that is 

 understood by the term superstition; and as 

 superstition is not confined to pagan nations, but 

 prevails even under the purest forms of Christian- 

 ity, wherever there is ignorance and degradation, 

 it will be conAtenient to consider this part of the 



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