CHAPTER II.
OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
If there be this general coincidence between the systems of
Babylon and Rome, the question arises, Does the coincidence stop
here? To this the answer is, Far otherwise. We have only to bring
the ancient Babylonian Mysteries to bear on the whole system of
Rome, and then it will be seen how immensely the one has borrowed
from the other. These Mysteries were long shrouded in darkness,
but now the thick darkness begins to pass away. All who have paid
the least attention to the literature of Greece, Egypt, Phenicia,
or Rome are aware of the place which the "Mysteries"
occupied in these countries, and that, whatever
circumstantial diversities there might be, in all essential
respects these "Mysteries" in the different
countries were the same. Now, as the language of Jeremiah,
already quoted, would indicate that Babylon was the primal source
from which all these systems of idolatry flowed, so the deduction
of the most learned historians, on mere historical grounds, have
led to the same conclusion. * From Zonaras *
we find that the concurrent testimony of the ancient authors he
had consulted was to this effect; for, speaking of arithmetic and
astronomy, he says: "It is said that these came from the
Chaldees to the Egyptians, and thence to the Greeks." If
the Egyptians and Greeks derived their arithmetic and astronomy
from Chaldea, seeing these in Chaldea were sacred sciences, and
monopolised by the priests, that is sufficient evidence that they
must have derived their religion from the same quarter. Both
Bunsen and Layard in their researches have come to substantially
the same result. The statement of Bunsen is to the effect that
the religious system of Egypt was derived from Asia, and "the
primitive empire in Babel." * Layard,
again, though taking a somewhat more favourable view of the
system of the Chaldean MAGI, than, I am persuaded, the facts of
history warrant, nevertheless thus speaks of that system:--"Of
the great antiquity of this primitive worship there is abundant
evidence, and that it originated among the inhabitants of the
Assyrian plains, we have the united testimony of sacred and
profane history. It obtained the epithet of perfect, and was
believed to be the most ancient of religious systems, having
preceded that of the Egyptians (Egyptiis vero antiquiores esse
MAGOS Aristoteles auctor est in primo de Philosophia
libro.--Theopompi Frag.)." * "The
identity," he adds, "of many of the Assyrian
doctrines with those of Egypt is alluded to by Porphyry and
Clemens;" and, in connection with the same subject, he
quotes the following from Birch on Babylonian cylinders and
monuments:--"The zodiacal signs....show unequivocally
that the Greeks derived their notions and arrangements of the
zodiac {and consequently their Mythology, that was intertwined
with it} from the Chaldees. The identity of Nimrod with the
constellation Orion is not to be rejected." *
Ouvaroff, also, in his learned work on the Eleusinian mysteries,
has come to the same conclusion. After referring to the fact that
the Egyptian priests claimed the honour of having transmitted to
the Greeks the first elements of Polytheism, he thus concludes:--"These
positive facts would sufficiently prove, even without the
conformity of ideas, that the Mysteries transplanted into Greece,
and there united with a certain number of local notions, never
lost the character of their origin derived from the cradle of the
moral and religious ideas of the universe. All these separate
facts--all these scattered testimonies, recur to that fruitful
principle which places in the East the centre of science and
civilisation." * If thus we have
evidence that Egypt and Greece derived their religion from
Babylon, we have equal evidence that the religious system of the
Phenicians came from the same source. Macrobius shows that the
distinguishing feature of the Phenician idolatry must have been
imported from Assyria, which, in classic writers, included
Babylonia. "The worship of the Architic Venus,"
says he, "formerly flourished as much among the
Assyrians as it does now among the Phenicians."
*
Now to establish the identity between the systems of ancient
Babylon and Papal Rome, we have just to inquire in how far does
the system of the Papacy agree with the system established in
these Babylonian Mysteries. In prosecuting such an inquiry there
are considerable difficulties to be overcome; for, as in geology,
it is impossible at all points to reach the deep, underlying
strata of the earth's surface, so it is not to be expected that
in any one country we should find a complete and connected
account of the system established in that country. But yet, even
as the geologist, by examining the contents of a fissure here, an
upheaval there, and what "crops out" of itself
on the surface elsewhere, is enabled to determine, with wonderful
certainty, the order and general contents of the different strata
over all the earth, so is it with the subject of the Chaldean
Mysteries. What is wanted in one country is supplemented in
another; and what actually "crops out" in
different directions, to a large extent necessarily determines
the character of much that does not directly appear on the
surface. Taking, then, the admitted unity and Babylonian
character of the ancient Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Phenicia,
and Rome, as the clue to guide us in our researches, let us go on
from step to step in our comparison of the doctrine and practice
of the two Babylons--the Babylon of the Old Testament and the
Babylon of the New.
And here I have to notice, first, the identity of the objects
of worship in Babylon and Rome. The ancient Babylonians, just as
the modern Romans, recognised in words the unity of the Godhead;
and, while worshipping innumerable minor deities, as possessed of
certain influence on human affairs, they distinctly acknowledged
that there was ONE infinite and Almighty Creator, supreme over
all. * Most other nations did the same.
"In the early ages of mankind," says Wilkinson in
his "Ancient Egyptians," "the existence of a
sole and omnipotent Deity, who created all things, seems to have
been the universal belief; and tradition taught men the same
notions on this subject, which, in later times, have been adopted
by all civilised nations." *
"The Gothic religion," says Mallet,
"taught the being of a supreme God, Master of the Universe,
to whom all things were submissive and obedient."--(Tacit.
de Morib. Germ.) The ancient Icelandic mythology calls him "the
Author of every thing that existeth, the eternal, the living, and
awful Being; the searcher into concealed things, the Being that
never changeth." It attributeth to this deity
"an infinite power, a boundless knowledge, and incorruptible
justice." * We have evidence of the
same having been the faith of ancient Hindostan. Though modern
Hinduism recognises millions of gods, yet the Indian sacred books
show that originally it had been far otherwise. Major Moor,
speaking of Brahm, the supreme God of the Hindoos, says: "Of
Him whose Glory is so great, there is no image" (Veda).
He "illumines all, delights all, whence all proceeded;
that by which they live when born, and that to which all must
return" (Veda). * In the
"Institutes of Menu," he is characterised as "He
whom the mind alone can perceive; whose essence eludes the
external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from
eternity... the soul of all beings, whom no being can be
comprehend." * In these passages,
there is a trace of the existence of Pantheism; but the very
language employed bears testimony to the existence among the
Hindoos at one period of a far purer faith.
Nay, not merely had the ancient Hindoos exalted ideas of the
natural perfections of God, but there is evidence that they were
well aware of the gracious character of God, as revealed in His
dealings with a lost and guilty world. This is manifest from the
very name Brahm, appropriated by them to the one infinite and
eternal God. There has been a great deal of unsatisfactory
speculation in regard to the meaning of this name, but when the
different statements in regard to Brahm are carefully considered,
it becomes evident that the name Brahm is just the Hebrew Rahm,
with the digamma prefixed, which is very frequent in Sanscrit
words derived from Hebrew or Chaldee. Rahm in Hebrew signifies "The
merciful or compassionate one." * But
Rahm also signifies the WOMB * or the bowels; *
as the seat of compassion. Now we find such language
applied to Brahm, the one supreme God, as cannot be accounted
for, except on the supposition that Brahm had the very same
meaning as the Hebrew Rahm. Thus, we find the God Crishna, in one
of the Hindoo sacred books, when asserting his high dignity as a
divinity and his identity with the Supreme, using the following
words: "The great Brahm is my WOMB, and in it I place my
foetus, and from it is the procreation of all nature. The great
Brahm is the WOMB of all the various forms which are conceived in
every natural womb." * How could such
language ever have been applied to "The supreme Brahm,
the most holy, the most high God, the Divine being, before all
other gods; without birth, the mighty Lord, God of gods, the
universal Lord," * but from the
connection between Rahm "the womb" and Rahm "the
merciful one"? Here, then, we find that Brahm is just
the same as "Er-Rahman," "The all-merciful
one,"--a title applied by the Turks to the Most High,
and that the Hindoos, notwithstanding their deep religious
degradation now, had once known that "the most holy,
most high God," is also "The God of
Mercy," in other words, that he is "a just God
and a Saviour." * And proceeding on
this interpretation of the name Brahm, we see how exactly their
religious knowledge as to the creation had coincided with the
account of the origin of all things, as given in Genesis. It is
well known that the Brahmins, to exalt themselves as a priestly,
half-divine caste, to whom all others ought to bow down, have for
many ages taught that, while the other castes came from the arms,
and body and feet of Brahma--the visible representative and
manifestation of the invisible Brahm, and identified with
him--they alone came from the mouth of the creative God. Now we
find statements in their sacred books which prove that once a
very different doctrine must have been taught. Thus, in one of
the Vedas, speaking of Brahma, it is expressly stated that "ALL
beings" "are created from his MOUTH." *
In the passage in question an attempt is made to mystify the
matter; but, taken in connection with the meaning of the name Brahm, as already given, who can doubt what was the real meaning
of the statement, opposed though it be to the lofty and exclusive
pretensions of the Brahmins? It evidently meant that He who, ever
since the fall, has been revealed to man as the
"Merciful * and Gracious
One" (Exod. xxxiv. 6), was known at the same time as
the Almighty One, who in the beginning "spake and it was
done," "commanded and all things stood fast,"
who made all things by the "Word of His power."
After what has now been said any one who consults the "Asiatic
Researches," vol. vii. p. 293, may see that it is in a
great measure from a wicked perversion of this Divine title of
the One Living and True God, a title that ought to have been so
dear to sinful men, that all those moral abominations have come
that make the symbols of the pagan temples of India so offensive
to the eye of purity. *
So utterly idolatrous was the Babylonian recognition of the
Divine unity, that Jehovah, the Living God, severely condemned
His own people for giving any countenance to it: "They
that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens,
after the rites of the ONLY ONE, *
eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall
be consumed together" (Isaiah lxvi. 17). In the unity
of that one Only God of the Babylonians, there were three
persons, and to symbolise that doctrine of the Trinity, they
employed, as the discoveries of Layard prove, the equilateral
triangle, just as it is well known the Romish Church does at this
day. * In both cases such a comparison is most
degrading to the King Eternal, and is fitted utterly to pervert
the minds of those who contemplate it, as if there was or could
be any similitude between such a figure and Him who hath said, "To
whom will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye compare unto
Him?"
The Papacy has in some of its churches, as, for instance, in
the monastery of the so-called Trinitarians of Madrid, an image
of the Triune God, with three heads on one body. * The
Babylonians had something of the same. Mr. Layard, in his last
work, has given a specimen of such a triune divinity, worshipped
in ancient Assyria * . The accompanying cut of
such another divinity, worshipped among the Pagans of Siberia, is
taken from a medal in the Imperial Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and
given in Parson's "Japhet." *
The three heads are different arranged in Layard's specimen, but
both alike are evidently intended to symbolise the same great
truth, although all such representation of the Trinity
necessarily and utterly debase the conceptions of those, among
whom such images prevail, in regard to the sublime mystery of our
faith. In India, the supreme divinity, in like manner, in one of
the most ancient cave-temples, is represented with three heads on
one body, under the name of "Eko Deva Trimurtti,"
"One God, three forms." * In
Japan, the Buddhists worship their great divinity, Buddha, with
three heads, in the very same form, under the name of "San
Pao Fuh." * All these have existed
from ancient times. While overlaid with idolatry, the recognition
of a Trinity was universal in all the ancient nations of the
world, proving how deep-rooted in the human race was the primeval
doctrine on this subject, which comes out so distinctly in
Genesis. * When we look at the symbols in the
triune figure of Layard, already referred to, and minutely
examine them, they are very instructive. Layard regards the
circle in that figure as signifying "Time without
bounds." But the hieroglyphic meaning of the circle is
evidently different. A circle in Chaldea was zero; *
and zero also signified "the seed." Therefore,
according to the genius of the mystic system of Chaldea, which
was to a large extent founded on double meanings, that which, to
the eyes of men in general, was only zero, "a
circle," was understood by the initiated to signify
zero, "the seed." Now, viewed in this light,
the triune emblem of the supreme Assyrian divinity shows clearly
what had been the original patriarchal faith. First, there is the
head of the old man; next, there is the zero, or circle, for "the
seed;" and lastly, the wings and tail of the bird or
dove; * showing, though blasphemously, the unity
of Father, Seed, or Son, and Holy Ghost. While this had been the
original way in which Pagan idolatry had represented the Triune
God, and though this kind of representation had survived to
Sennacherib's time, yet there is evidence that, at a very early
period, an important change had taken place in the Babylonian
notions in regard to the divinity; and that the three persons had
come to be, the Eternal Father, the Spirit of God incarnate in a
human mother, and a Divine Son, the fruit of that incarnation.
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