in the kingdom of its Divine prototypes, would have been a brilliant step of progress in harmony both with reason and the heart. Such was probably the fact. Observe the following citation from Plutarch :-"There is no occasion against nature to send the bodies of good men to heaven; but we are to conclude that virtuous souls, by nature and the Divine justice, rise from men to heroes, from heroes to genii; and if, as in the Mysteries, they are purified, shaking off the remains of mortality and the power of the passions, they then attain the highest happiness, and ascend from genii to gods, not by the vote of the people, but by the just and established order of nature."'67 The reference in the last clause is to the decrees of the Senate whereby apotheosis was conferred on various persons, placing them among the gods. This ceremony has often been made to appear unnecessarily ridiculous, through a perversion of its actual meaning. When the ancients applied the term "god" to a human soul departed from the body, it was not used as the moderns prevailingly employ that word. It expressed a great deal less with them than with us. It merely meant to affirm similarity of essence, qualities, and residence, but by no means equal dignity and power of attributes between the one and the others. It meant that the soul had gone to the heavenly habitation of the gods and was thenceforth a participant in the heavenly life.68 Heraclitus was accustomed to say, "Men are mortal gods; gods are immortal men." Macrobius says, "The soul is not only immortal, but a god."69 And Cicero declares, "The soul of man is a Divine thing,-as Euripides dares to say, a god."70 Milton uses language precisely parallel, speaking of those who are “unmindful of the crown true Virtue gives her servants, after their mortal change, among the enthroned gods on sainted seats." Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch in the second century, says that "to become a god means to ascend into heaven."" The Roman Catholic ceremony of beatification and canonization of saints, offering them incense and prayers thereafter, means exactly what was meant by the ancient apotheosis, namely, that while the multitudes of the dead abide below, in the intermediate state, these favored souls have been advanced into heaven. The papal functionaries borrowed this rite, with most of its details, from their immediate pagan predecessors, who themselves probably adopted it from the East, whence the Mysteries came. It is well known that the Brahmans and Buddhists believed, centuries before the Christian era, in the contrasted fate of good men after death to enjoy the successive heavens above the clouds, and of bad men to suffer the successive hells beneath the earth. A knowledge of this attractive Oriental Lives, Romulus, sect. xxviii. See a valuable discussion of the ancient use of the terms theos and deus in note D vol. iii. of Norton's Genuineness of the Gospels. Somn. Scip., lib. ii. cap. 12. 70 Tusc. Quæst., lib. i. cap. 26. 71 We omit several other authorities, as the reader would probably deem any further evidence superfluous. doctrine may have united with the advance of their own speculations to win the partial acceptance obtained among the Greeks and Romans for the faith which broke the universal doom to Hades and opened heaven to their hopeful aspirations. In a tragedy of Euripides the following passage occurs, addressed to the bereaved Admetus:-" Let not the tomb of thy wife be looked on as the mound of the ordinary dead. Some wayfarer, as he treads the sloping road, shall say, 'This woman once died for her husband; but now she is a saint in heaven.' "'72 When the meaning of the cheerful promises given to the initiates of a more favored fate in the future life than awaited others-namely, as we think, that their spirits on leaving the body should scale Olympus instead of plunging to Tartarus-had been concealed within the Mysteries for a long time, it at length broke into public view in the national apotheosis of ancient heroes, kings, and renowned worthies, the instances of which became so numerous that Cicero cries, Is not nearly all heaven peopled with the human race?"73 Over the heads of the devout heathen, as they gazed up through the clear night-air, twinkled the beams of innumerable stars, each chosen to designate the cerulean seat where some soul was rejoicing with the gods in heaven over the glorious issue of the toils and sufferings in which he once painfully trod this earthly scene. Herodian, a Greek historian of some of the Roman emperors, has left a detailed account of the rite of apotheosis." An image of the person to be deified was made in wax, looking all sick and pale, laid in state on a lofty bed of ivory covered with cloth of gold, surrounded on one side by choirs of noble lords, on the other side by their ladies stripped of their jewels and clad in mourning, visited often for several days by a physician, who still reports his patient worse, and finally announces his decease. Then the Senators and haughtiest patricians bear the couch through the via sacra to the Forum. Bands of noble boys and of proud women ranged opposite each other chant hymns and lauds over the dead in solemn melody. The bier is next borne to the Campus Martius, where it is placed upon a high wooden altar, a large, thin structure with a tower like a lighthouse. Heaps of fragrant gums, herbs, fruits, and spices are poured out and piled upon it. Then the Roman knights, mounted on horseback, prance before it in beautiful bravery, wheeling to and fro in the dizzy measures of the Pyrrhic dance. Also, in a stately manner, purple-clothed charioteers, wearing masks which picture forth the features of the most famous worthies of other days to the reverential recognition of the silent hosts assembled, ride around the form of their descendant. Suddenly a torch is set to the pile, and it is wrapped in flames. From the turret, amidst the aromatic fumes, an eagle is let loose. Phoenix-like symbol of the departed soul, he soars into the sky, and the seven-hilled city throbs with pride, reverberating the shouts of Alcestis, 11. 1015-1025, ed. Glasg. 73 Tusc. Quæst., lib. i. cap. 12. 74 Lib. iv. her people. Thus into the residence of the gods-"Sic itur ad astra”was borne the divinely-favored mortal; "And thus we see how man's prophetic creeds Made gods of men when godlike were their deeds." For it was only in times of degradation and by a violent perversion that the honor was allowed to the unworthy; and even in such cases it was usually nullified as soon as the people recovered their senses and their freedom. There is extant among the works of Seneca a little treatise called Apocolocuntosis,-that is, pumpkinification, or the metamorphosis into a gourd,—a sharp satire levelled against the apotheosis of the Emperor Claudius. The deification of mortals among the ancients has long been laughed at. When the great Macedonian monarch applied for a decree for his apotheosis while he was yet alive, the Lacedemonian Senate, with bitter sarcasm, voted, "If Alexander desires to be a god, let him be a god." The doctrine is often referred to among us in terms of mockery. But this is principally because it is not understood. It simply signifies the ascent of the soul after death into the Olympian halls instead of descending into the Acheronian gulfs. And whether we consider the symbolic justice and beauty of the conception as a poetic image applied to the deathless heroes of humanity ensphered above us forever in historic fame and natural worship, or regard its comparative probability as the literal location of the residence of departed spirits, it must recommend itself to us as a decided improvement on the ideas previously prevalent, and as a sort of anticipation, in part, of that bright faith in a heavenly home for faithful souls, afterwards established in the world by Him of whom it was written, "No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, who is now in heaven." Indeed, so forcible and close is the correspondence between the course of the aspirant in his initiation-dramatically dying, descending into Hades, rising again to life, and ascending into heavenwith the apostolic presentation of the redemptive career of Christ, our great Forerunner, that some writers-Nork, for instance-have suggested that the latter was but the exoteric publication to all the world of what in the former was esoterically taught to the initiates alone. There was a striking naturalness, a profound propriety, in the obscurities of secrecy and awe with which the ancient Mysteries shrouded from a rash curiosity their instructions concerning the future life and only unfolded them by careful degrees to the prepared candidate. It is so with the reality itself in the nature of things. It is the great mystery of mysteries, darkly hinted in types, faintly gleaming in analogies, softly whispered in hopes, passionately asked in desires, patiently confirmed in arguments, suddenly blazed and thundered in revelation. Man from the very beginning of his race on earth has been thickly encompassed by mysteries,-hung around by the muffling curtains of ignorance and superstition. Through one after another of these he has forced his way and gazed on their successive secrets laid bare. Once the Ocean was an alluring and terrible mystery, weltering before him with its endless length and ceaseless wash of waves, into which the weary sun, in the west, plunged at evening, and out of which, in the east, it bounded refreshed in the morning. But the daring prows of his ships, guided by the magnet and steered by pioneering thought and skill, passed its islands and touched its ultimate shores. Once the Polar Circle was a frightful and frozen mystery, enthroned on mountains of eternal ice and wearing upon its snowy brow the flaming crown of the aurora borealis. But his hardy navigators, inspired by enterprise and philanthropy, armed with science, and supplied by art, have driven the awful phantom back, league by league, until but a small expanse of its desolate wonders remains untracked by his exploring steps. Once the crowded Sky was a boundless and baffling mystery, a maze of bewildered motions, a field where ghastly comets played their antics and shook down terrors on the nations. But the theories of his reason, based on the gigantic grasp of his calculus and aided by the instruments of his cunning invention, have solved perplexity after perplexity, blended discords into harmony, and shown to his delighted vision the calm and glorious perfection of the stellar system. So, too, in the moral world he has lifted the covering shrouds from many a dark problem, and extended the empire of light and love far out over the ancient realm of darkness and terror. But the secret of Death, the mystery of the Future,-they remain yet, as of old, unfathomed and inscrutable to the natural gaze of his anxious inquiries. Still, as of old, he kneels before that unlifted veil and beseeches the oracles for a response to faith. The ancient Mysteries but copied in their principal ceremony the mysterious ordination and followed the overawing spirit of Nature herself. The religious reserve and awe about the entrance into the adytum of their traditions were like those about the entrance into the invisible scenes beyond the veils of time and mortality. Their initiation was but a miniature and feeble symbol of the great initiation through which, and that upon impartial terms, every mortal, from King Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pass to immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks admission to partake in the secrets and benefits forever shrouded from the profane vision of sinful flesh, the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death, the speechless and solemn steward of the celestial Mysteries. He comes, pushes the curtain aside, leads the awe-struck initiate in, takes the blinding bandage of the body from his soul; and straightway the trembling neophyte receives light in the midst of that innumerable Fraternity of Immortals over whom the Supreme Author of the Universe presides. CHAPTER II. METEMPSYCHOSIS; OR, TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. No other doctrine has exerted so extensive, controlling, and permanent an influence upon mankind as that of the metempsychosis, the notion that when the soul leaves the body it is born anew in another body, its rank, character, circumstances, and experience in each successive existence depending on its qualities, deeds, and attainments in its preceding lives. Such a theory, well matured, bore unresisted sway through the great Eastern world, long before Moses slept in his little ark of bulrushes on the shore of the Egyptian river; Alexander the Great gazed with amazement on the self-immolation by fire to which it inspired the Gymnosophists; Cæsar found its tenets propagated among the Gauls beyond the Rubicon; and at this hour it reigns despotic, as the learned and travelled Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford tells us, "without any sign of decrepitude or decay, over the Burman, Chinese, Tartar, Tibetan, and Indian nations, including at least six hundred and fifty millions of mankind." There is abundant evidence to prove that this scheme of thought prevailed at a very early period among the Egyptians, all classes and sects of the Hindus, the Persian disciples of the Magi, and the Druids, and, in a later age, among the Greeks and Romans as represented by Musæus, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Macrobius, Ovid, and many others. It was generally adopted by the Jews from the time of the Babylonian captivity. Traces of it have been discovered among the ancient Scythians, the African tribes, some of the Pacific Islanders, and various aboriginal nations both of North and of South America. Charlevoix says some tribes of Canadian Indians believed in a transmigration of souls; but, with a curious mixture of fancy and reflection, they limited it to the souls of little children, who, being balked of this life in its beginning, they thought would try it again. Their bodies, accordingly, were buried at the sides of roads, that their spirits might pass into pregnant women travelling by. A belief in the metempsychosis limited in the same way to the souls of children also prevailed among the Mexicans.2 The Maricopas, by the Gila, believe when they die they shall transmigrate into birds, beasts, and reptiles, and shall return to the banks of the Colorado, whence they were driven by the Yumas. They will live there in caves and woods, as wolves, rats, and snakes; so will their enemies the Yumas; and they will 1 Wilson, Two Lectures on the Religious Opinions of the Hindus, p. 64. |