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Besides the ordinary death and rebirth of the vegetation year god, the general conclusion to which these considerations point has many parallels elsewhere. Our own religious ideas are subject to the same tendencies as those of other civilizations. Men and women, when converted to a new religion or instructed in some new and unaccustomed knowledge, are extremely unwilling, and sometimes absolutely unable, to give up their old magical or religious practices and habits of thought. When African negroes are converted to Christianity and forbidden to practise their tribal magic, they are apt to steal away into the depths of the forest and do secretly what they have always considered necessary to ensure a good harvest. Not to do so would be too great a risk. When Goths were "converted by battalions" the change must have been more in names than in substance. When Greeks of the Mediterranean were forbidden to say prayers to a figure of Helios, the Sun, it was not difficult to call him the prophet Elias and go on with the same prayers and hopes. Not difficult to continue your prayers to the age-old Mother Goddess of all Mediterranean peoples, while calling her Mary, the Mother of Christ. Eusebius studied the subject, somewhat superficially, in his Praeparatio Evangelica, in which he argued that much old pagan belief was to be explained as an imperfect preparation for the full light of the Gospel. And it is certainly striking how the Anatolian peoples, among whom the seed of the early Church was chiefly sown, could never, in spite of Jewish monotheism, give up the beloved Mother Goddess for whom mankind craves, or the divine "Faithful Son" who will by his own sacrifice save his people. Where scientific knowledge fails man cannot but be guided by his felt needs and longings and aspirations.