The Origin of Religion

The Origin of Religion

There is an all-wise God. He is the eternal, self-existent, vitalizing force of the universe; a Personality Who has created and intelligently directs all things. He did not come from anywhere; He has always existed. He is life inherent--the first cause. After bringing order out of chaos and preparing the earth for man, God created man, "male and female created He them".

After man’s creation, God revealed to him true religion. He gave man information concerning the character of God and what He wanted man to do; God gave moral laws to govern man’s action toward his fellows and positive laws to cause him to retain his faith in God. These laws were so universally planted in the hearts of all people that it has been impossible for the ravages of time and sin to obliterate them. Revealed to the first people who ever lived on earth, they yet live in the heart of man. Later when man was exceedingly corrupt, God spoke to Moses and other prophets revealing additional truth. God dealt with man not as man should have been but as man was, hence these laws had severe penalties attached to them. When it had been thoroughly demonstrated that man could not think his way out of his own troubles nor keep even those laws which a benevolent Heavenly Father had given, God sent His Son into the world to abrogate the old laws and their penalties and to place man under a system of mercy and grace the New Testament law. This is the origin of true religion. The Devolution of Religion.

How could mankind forget a pure religion after it had been revealed?

"This is what I now try to explain. That degeneration I would account for by the attractions which animism, when once developed, possessed for the naughty natural man, ’the Old Adam’. A moral Creator in need of no gifts, and opposed to lust and mischief, will not help a man with love-spells, or with malevolent ’sending’ of disease by witchcraft; will not favor one man above his neighbor, or one tribe above its rivals, as a reward for sacrifice which he does not accept, or as constrained by charms which do not touch his omnipotence. Ghosts, and ghost-gods, on the other hand, in need of food and blood, afraid of spells and binding charms, are corrupt, but, to man, a useful constituency. Man being what he is, man was certain to ’go a whoring’ after practically useful ghosts, ghost-gods, and fetishes which he could keep in his wallet or ’medicine bag’. For these he was sure, in the long run, first to neglect his idea of his Creator; next, perhaps, to reckon Him as only one, if the highest, of the venal rabble of spirits or deities, and to sacrifice to Him as to them. And this is exactly what happened! If we are not to call it ’degeneration’, what are we to call it? It may be an old theory but facts ’winna ding’, and are on the side of an old theory. Meanwhile, on the material plane, culture kept advancing, the crafts and the arts arose; departments arose, each needing a god....But at this stage of culture, the luck of the state, and the interests of a rich and powerful clergy, were involved in the maintenance of the old, animistic, relatively non-moral system, as in Cuzco, Greece and Rome. That popular and political regard for the luck of state, that priestly self-interest (quite natural), could only be swept away by the moral monotheism of Christianity or Islamism. Nothing else could do it. In the case of Christianity the central and most potent of many combined influences, apart from the life and death of our Lord, was the moral monotheism of the Hebrew religion of Jehovah." (Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion, pp. 237-258)

"Every step taken in religion by man since Adam, if it was not in the right line of monotheism, must have been away from the truth of revealed religion; the only evolution, the evolution of error. Man’s imagination, when once it abandons the one guide, becomes the prey of all sorts of perversions, of the monstrous customs of heathendom, which it is useless to trace, as they lead only away from the truth. and are as irrational and as little to be heeded as the ravings of a mind distraught." (Frank Byron Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religion, pp. 4-5.) This devolution continued for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. Some people, however, did not descend into ignorance and superstition. They retained a knowledge of the original revelation to man. Noah called upon God when the hearts of others imagined only evil and Abraham worshipped one God when others in the Ur of Chaldees called upon their idols. The more enlightened, civilized and intelligent men were, the closer they remained to the original idea of religion. The more ignorant and immoral they became, the more they corrupted this religion with superstition and fancy. It is not to be supposed that all heathen peoples reached the same depths of depravity nor that all people even in one such nation descended to the same depth. Neither should it be thought that each nation started from the same place in thought nor the same time in history. Some peoples learned only of the original patriarchal religion and their present heathen condition is a corruption of that system. Others learned not only of this system but the additional truth taught by Moses. In their present heathen systems are traces of these early revelations. Others in their heathen systems show that they have borrowed ideas also from the religion of Christ and have corrupted them. Thus at different times and places men have left the truth and started down the path to heathenism. The speed with which they travelled and the depth to which they went depended on their ignorance, immorality and hardness of heart. The Bible Account of Devolution.

"God made man upright but they have sought out many inventions" (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

"Because that, when they knew not God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man and birds, and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves; who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever" (Romans 1:21-25).

According to Paul, the Divine alone is real, all else is error. A society or a nation is progressive in so far as it hears the Divine Voice--all else is degeneration.

"Nowadays we are all devotees of the theory of development: it is no longer a theory, it has become the basis and guiding principle of our thought and mind: we must see development everywhere. But it is necessary to be very sure first of all that we have got hold of the right law of development in history; and we are sometimes too hasty. We can easily arrange religions in a series from the lowest to the highest, and we are wont to assume that this series represents the historical development of religion from the most primitive to the most advanced. The fetish, the totem and the sacred animals, and so on up step by step to Jehovah and the Ark of the Covenant. Is that the true line?

"You observe that the assumptions here are very serious. Is the modern savage really primitive? Paul would have said that he represents the last stage of degeneration, that he is the end and not the beginning, that he has lost almost everything that is really primitive, that he has fallen so completely from the ancient harmony with the order of nature and sympathy with the Divine as to be on the verge of death, and an outrage on the world and on human nature. (p. 16.)

"Who is right, Paul or the moderns? For my own part, I confess that my experience and reading show nothing to confirm the modern assumptions in religious history, and a great deal to confirm Paul. (Italics mine. G.W.D.) Whatever evidence exists, with the rarest exceptions, the history of religion among men is a history of degeneration; and the development of a few Western nations in invention...should not blind us to the fact that among the vast majority of nations the history of manners and civilization is a story of degeneration....Is it not the fact of human history that man, standing alone, degenerates; and that he progresses only where there is in him so much sympathy with and devotion to the Divine Life as to keep the social body pure and sweet and healthy? (p. 17.)

"Beginning the study of Greek Religion as a follower of Robertson Smith and M’Lennan, and accepting the Totemist theory as the key of truth, I was forced by the evidence to the view that degeneration is the outstanding fact of religious history, and that the modern theory often takes the last products of degeneracy as the facts of primitive religion." (p. 29.) (William Ramsey, Cities of St. Paul.) Evolutionistic Theories of the Origin of Religion.

"From the older evolutionist times there are many theories about the origin of sacrifice. There is that of Tylor and Wilkens, who derive it from the present made to the chief, the ghosts, or the spirits; there is also that of Hubert and Mauss, going back to that of Tylor; further there is that of Robertson Smith, deriving sacrifice from the totemic communion. W. Wundt makes it proceed from magical action and A. Loisy from a combination of magic presents to ghosts. (pp. 11:12.)

"Now if the most favorable view of all these theories is taken, they afford only possibilities...but none of them any scientific certitude whatever. The reason for this lies in the fact that none of them has seriously asked the question regarding the ethnological age of the tribes and peoples from which they take their proofs.

"But if this important question is raised, the following facts result from it with full certitude; the peoples ethnologically oldest knew neither feeding of ghosts, nor giving of presents to spirits, nor totemic communion, nor totemism in general, not magic rites of a kind from which sacrifices could be derived...(p. 12.)

"Now the religion of the oldest culture, of which we have a tolerably good knowledge, emphasizes in a quite special degree the creative power of the Supreme Being, and His complete right of ownership over the whole world...the belief of these oldest religions is that the Supreme Being has given these things to man for man’s use; not to be wasted, but to be treated with respect." (p. 13) (W. Schmidt, High God’s in North America.)

Primitive man, therefore, recognized that all things come from God, that without God’s help he could not secure even food and drink, hence within his heart there was a natural desire to offer sacrifices to God.

Lewis Browne, once a rabbi, in a book, This Believing World, says that man’s religion is a product of an evolutionary process; that it is man’s attempt to lift himself by his bootstraps out of savagery. (p. 22.) He lists the origin of religions after this fashion: Animism, Shamanism, Fetishism, Tabooism and Sacerdotalism. Unfortunately for all who hold this idea, it does not agree with the facts. Experience and history both teach that man, if left to his own devices and resources will go backward spiritually rather than forward; that the only true incentive to moral and spiritual progress is not a pushing power from within but a pulling power from without. My friend, James D. Bales, has well said, "The only thing in which man is self-sufficient is in sinning".

Socrates gave his philosophy, and its essence is that we should seek Self-knowledge. But self-knowledge only reveals to the candid and thoughtful person the depravity of man and his need of a Saviour. Kant’s philosophy called for man to be guided by Reason. But pure reason exists only with perfect personality and man has never demonstrated his imperfection. Reason may lead one man to do one thing and another to take an entirely different course. Man’s failures and troubles demonstrate that he does not possess and hence cannot be guided by pure reason. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the German philosophers, glorify Will under such terms as the "will to power", "the will to live", etc. This is a philosophy of force which has resulted in the heartless military machine of central Europe. The philosophies of man have proved themselves futile and inadequate. Indeed, someone has said, philosophy is a blind man in a dark cellar trying to catch a black cat which isn’t there. La Rochefoucauld said, "Philosophers can easily triumph over the evils that have already passed and the future evils but present evils triumph over the philosophers."

Christ gave His philosophy to the world. This philosophy of Christ calls for Love of God which, if practiced, would banish worldliness, idolatry, blasphemy, profanity, covetousness and such like; it calls for Love of One Another which, if practiced, would eradicate jealousy, divisions, factions, murder, fornication, adultery, theft, enmities, war and such like. This philosophy of Christ is also spiritual. It teaches that the death of Christ is our atonement and makes possible our reconciliation. It presents simple commandments and items of devotion which are applicable to and understood by all classes of mankind. The Voice of History.

History teaches us that the earliest forms of heathen religions were purer than the later forms. No nation or tribe has been found which did not believe in a Supreme Being of some kind and practice religion in some form. In every heathen system, especially the oldest ones, may be found traces of a once pure monotheism.

Professor Fairburn of Oxford said, "The younger the polytheism, the fewer its gods." (Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, p. 22.)

Dr. James Orr, Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology, United Free Church College, Glasgow, having quoted the above, adds,

"Man’s earliest ideas of God were not, as is commonly assumed, his poorest.--No savage tribes are found who do not seem to have higher ideas of God along with their superstitions. Man does not creep up from fetishism, through polytheism, to monotheism, but polytheism represents rather the refraction of an original undifferentiated sense or consciousness, or perception of the divine.--In theism we find a monotheistic background." (The Problem of the Old Testament, p. 496.) Dr. E. W. Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Yale University, says,

"That all religions may trace back to one primordial religion is not wholly a narrow ’orthodox’ view. In this form, however, it is still held by both the Hindu and the Christian of every conservative type. For example, about two thousand years ago, Manu, the Hindu law-giver, declared, what is still believed by orthodox Brahmans, that one true religion was revealed to man in the beginning and that all later types of religion have been vain divergencies from this divine model." (The History of Religions, p. 12.) Dr. William Matthew Petrie, LL.D., Ph.D., etc., Professor of Egyptology, University College, London, says,

"Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship we should find the worship of many gods preceding the worship of one god, polytheism would precede monotheism in each tribe and race. What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable in history. Wherever we can trace polytheism to its earliest stages we find that it results from combinations of monotheism." (The Religion of Ancient Egypt, pp. 3-4.)

Dr. Hopkins quotes from R. H. Nassau,

"All religions had but one source and that a pure one. From it have grown perversions varying in their proportions of truth and error." (Fetishism in West Africa, p. 23.)

Dr. William A. P. Martin of Peking University discusses the evolutionary theory of the origin of religion and adds this significant comment:

"This theory has the merit of verisimilitude. It indicates what might be the process if man were left free to make his own religion; but it has the misfortune to be at variance with the facts. A wide survey of the history of civilized nations (and the history of others is beyond reach) shows that the actual process undergone is precisely opposite to that which this theory supposes; in a word, that man was not left to construct his own creed, but that his blundering logic has always been active in its attempts to corrupt and obscure a divine original." (The Chinese, pp. 163-164.) Professor Max Muller, famous Oxford Professor, said,

"Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases." (Chips from a German Workshop, Vol. 1, p. 23.)

EGYPT. Dr. Budge, keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiques in the British Museum, says that as late as the Fourth Dynasty only about two hundred gods were worshipped in Egypt. In the Nineteenth Dynasty Thebes alone had about twelve hundred gods and there were hundreds of local gods in other religious centers. Dr. Budge said,

"The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last state of the Egyptian religion, that which was known to the Greek or Latin writers, heathen and Christian, was by far the grossest and most corrupt." (Quoted by Renouf in Hibbard Lectures, p. 91.)

INDIA. The Rig-Veda contains the most ancient hymns of India. It shows that the early inhabitants of India believed in one God. A translation of the 129th hymn of the tenth book reads thus:

"In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught
Then there was neither atmosphere nor sky above,
There was neither death nor immortality,
There was neither day nor night, nor light, nor darkness,
Only the EXISTENT ONE breathed calmly self-contained,
Naught else but He was there, naught else above, beyond."

BABYLON.

"There are many, nay numberless gods; but they are only revelation forms of the One Great Divine Might." (Dr. Winkler as quoted by On, Problems of the Old Testament, p. 409.)

GREECE.

"The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the Universal God." (Dr. Martin, quoted by Dr. Ellinwood, Oriental Religions and Christianity, p. 228.) CHINA. Professor Legge of Oxford says,

"Five thousand years ago the Chinese were monotheists--not henotheists but monotheists." (The Religions of China, p. 16.) AUSTRALIA. Andrew Lange, speaking of the early aborigines of Australia, said,

"They believe in a Supreme Being whose abode is in the heavens, and who observes and rewards conduct." (The Making of Religion, p. 189.)

NORTH AMERICA.

"The oldest tribes of North America: North-Central Californians, Algonquins, Selish...Now it is precisely among these three oldest primitive peoples of North America that we find a clear and firmly established belief in a High God. a belief which, especially in the oldest of them, the North-Central Californians and the Algonquins, is of quite a particular character by virtue of the high importance attributed to the idea of creation. (p. 19.)

"The Supreme Being of the old Maidu religion bears the names Wonomi (’immortal, no death’), Kodo-yapeu (’World-Creator’), Kodo-yanpe (’World-namer’), Kodo-yeponi (World-chief’). He and only he is creator of the whole world. He is the creator of men, whom he forms from the clay: a pair of beings, man and wife, whom he animates. He is more powerful than any other being. It is true that he yields to Coyote his adversary; but it is not because the adversary is stronger, but because, as be expressly says, men have followed him and not the Creator. The Creator is exceedingly bountiful and intended to make human life easy and agreeable and death an unknown thing. He is the author warden and judge of human morality. (p. 33.)

"There is also the belief that after a long time this world will fall down, all the dead will return to life, and then the World-Creator will also return and renew all things. (p. 34.) in each of these religions there exists a true High God: nay, I do not hesitate to employ a more decided phrase and say: these people worship One God." (p. 129) (W. Schmidt, High Gods in North America).

"By this method we have established the weighty fact that the very first men who migrated into this continent, the first true discoverers of America, when they passed on from north-east Asia to north-west America over what is now Bering Strait, then a continuous land route, bore with them in their hearts the belief of one great God, creator of heaven and earth and man..." (W. Schmidt, High Gods in North America, p. 133).

Peoples of every land originally believed in One God.

"Look in what continent we please, we shall find the myth of a Creation or a primeval construction, of a Deluge, or a destruction and of an expected restoration." (Daniel C. Brinton, Professor of American Archaeology and Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, in Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 122)

Conclusion. From these facts we must conclude that the Supreme Being, God, revealed His will to man when man was first created and the religions of earth are but corruptions of this original revelation.