The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought by Alexander F. Chamberlain (read full novel txt) đ
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Father-God.
Shakespeare has aptly said, in the words which Theseus addresses to the fair Hermia:â
âTo you your father should be as a god; One that composed your beauties, yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax, By him imprinted, and within his power To leave the figure or disfigure it,â
and widespread indeed, in the childhood of the race, has been the belief in the Fatherhood of God. Concerning the first parents of human kind the ancient Hebrew Scripture declares: âAnd God created man in His own image,â and long centuries afterwards, in his memorable oration to the wise men of Athens upon Marsâ Hill, the Apostle Paul quoted with approval the words of the Greek poet, Cleanthes, who had said: âFor we are all His offspring.â Epictetus, appealing to a master on behalf of his slaves, asked: âWilt thou not remember over whom thou rulest, that they are thy relations, thy brethren by nature, the offspring of Zeus?â
(388.210).
At the battle of Kadshu, Rameses II., of Egypt, abandoned by his soldiers, as a last appeal, exclaimed: âI will call upon thee, O my father Amon!â (388. 209).
Many prophets and preachers have there been who taught to men the doctrine of âGod, the Father,â but last and best of all was the âSon of Man,â the Christ, who taught his disciples the world-heard prayer: âOur Father, who art in Heaven,â who proclaimed that âin my Fatherâs house are many mansions,â and whose words in the agony of Gethsemane were: âAbba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt.â
Between the Buddhist Kalmucks, with whom the newly married couple reverently utter these words: âI incline myself this first time to my Lord God, who is my father and my motherâ (518. I. 423), and the deistic philosophers of to-day there is a vast gulf, as there is also between the idea of Deity among the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala, where the words for God alom and achalom signify respectively âbegetter of children,â and âbegetter of sons,â and the modern Christian concept of God, the Father, with His only begotten Son, the Saviour of the world.
The society of the gods of human creation has everywhere been modelled upon that of man. He was right who said Olympus was a Greek city and Zeus a Greek father. According to DâAlviella: âThe highest point of development that polytheism could reach is found in the conception of a monarchy or divine family, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even the whole universe. The divine monarch or father, however, might still be no more than the first among his peers. For the supreme god to become the Only God, he must rise above all beings, superhuman as well as human, not only in his power, but in his very natureâ (388. 211).
Though the mythology of our Teutonic forefathers knew of the âAll-Father,ââthe holy Odin,âit is from those children-loving people, the Hebrews, that our Christian conception of âGod the Father,â with some modifications, is derived. As Professor Robertson Smith has pointed out, among the Semites we find the idea of the tribal god as father strongly developed: âBut in heathen religions the fatherhood of the gods is a physical fatherhood. Among the Greeks, for example, the idea that the gods fashioned men out of clay, as potters fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception is that the races of men have gods for their ancestors, or are the children of the earth, the common mother of gods and men, so that men are really of the same stock or kin of the gods. That the same conception was familiar to the older Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes idolaters as saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth. In the ancient poem, Num. xxi. 29, the Moabites are called the sons and daughters of Chemosh, and, at a much more recent date, the prophet Malachi calls a heathen woman, âthe daughter of a strange godââ (535.
41-43).
Professor Smith cites also the evidence furnished by genealogies and personal names: âThe father of Solomonâs ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, was called Abibaal, âmy father is Baalâ; Ben-Hadad, of Damascus, is âthe son of the god Hadadâ; in AramĂŠan we find names like BarlĂąhĂą, âson of God,â BarbaâshmĂźn, âson of the Lord of Heaven,â Barate, âson of Ate,â etc.â We have also that passage in Genesis which tells how the âsons of God saw the daughters of men that were fair; and they took them wives of all which they choseâ (vi. 2), while an echo of the same thought dwells with the Polynesians, who term illegitimate children tamarika na te Atua, âchildren of the godsâ (458. 121). DâAlviella further remarks: âPresently these family relations of the gods were extended till they embraced the whole creation, and especially mankind. The confusion between the terms for creating and begetting, which still maintained itself in half-developed languages, must have led to a spontaneous fusion of the ideas of creator and father.â But there is another aspect of this question. Of the Amazulu Callaway writes: âSpeaking generally, the head of each house is worshipped by the children of that house; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children; they remember his kindness to them whilst he was living; they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it, and say, âHe will treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others beside us; he will regard us only.ââ Of these people it is true, as they themselves say: âOur father is a great treasure to us, even when he is deadâ (417.144).
Here we pass over to ancestor worship, seen at its height in China, whose great sage, Confucius, taught: âThe great object of marriage is to beget children, and especially sons, who may perform the required sacrifices at the tombs of their parentsâ (434. 126).
In this connection, the following passage from Max MĂŒller is of interest: âHow religious ideas could spring from the perception of something infinite or immortal in our parents, grandparents, and ancestors, we can see even at the present day. Among the Zulus, for instance, Unkulunkulu or Ukulukulu, which means the great-great-grandfather, has become the name of God. It is true that each family has its own Unkulunkulu, and that his name varies accordingly. But there is also an Unkulunkulu of all men (_unkulunladu wabantu bonke_), and he comes very near to being a father of all men. Here also we can watch a very natural process of reasoning. A son would look upon his father as his progenitor; he would remember his fatherâs father, possibly his fatherâs grandfather. But beyond that his own experience could hardly go, and therefore the father of his own great-grandfather, of whom he might have heard, but whom he had never seen, would naturally assume the character of a distant unknown being; and, if the human mind ascended still further, it would almost by necessity be driven to a father of all fathers, that is to a creator of mankind, if not of the worldâ (510. 156).
Again we reach the âFatherâ of Popeâs âUniversal Prayerââ
âFather of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,â
having started from the same thought as the Hebrews in the infancy of their race. An Eastern legend of the child Abraham has crystallized the idea. It is said that one morning, while with his mother in the cave in which they were hiding from Nimrod, he asked his mother, âWho is my God?â and she replied, âIt is I.â âAnd who is thy God?â he inquired farther. âThy fatherâ (547.69). Hence also we derive the declaration of Du Vair, âNous devons tenir nos pĂšres comme des dieux en terre,â and the statement of another French writer, of whom Westermarck says: âBodin wrote, in the later part of the sixteenth century, that, though the monarch commands his subjects, the master his disciples, the captain his soldiers, there is none to whom nature has given any command except the father, âwho is the true image of the great sovereign God, universal father of all thingsââ (166. 238).
Father-Sky.
âSweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky,â
sang the poet Herbert, unconsciously renewing an ancient myth. As many cosmologies tell, Day and Dawn were born of the embraces of Earth and Sky. Ushas, Eos, Aurora, is the daughter of heaven, and one story of the birth is contained in the Maori myth of Papa and Rangi. Ushas, Max Muller tells us, âhas two parents, heaven and earth, whose lap she fills with lightâ (510. 431). From Rangi, âFather-Sky,â and Papa, âMother-Earth,â say the Maoris of New Zealand, sprang all living things; and, in like manner, the Chinese consider the Sky or Heaven,âYang, the masculine, procreative, active element,âto be the âfather of all things,â while the Earth,âYu, the feminine, conceiving, passive element,âis the âmother
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