Ancient Faiths And Modern. Thomas Inman
to say to Saul (1 Sam. xv. 3), "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass!" After such a destruction of the Midianites as is narrated in Numb, xxxi., the fearful slaughter, effected by Crusaders, of Jews, Turks, and heretics is scarcely worth mentioning.
There was a teacher who remarked, "he who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone" at the culprit; and surely, when our Bible, which is treasured by so many as the only rule of faith amongst us, details such horrible religious slaughters as are to be found in its pages, and abounds with persecuting precepts, we had better not talk too much about Mexican sacrifice. Was there any Aztec minister so brutal in his religious fury as Samuel was (1 Sam. xv. 33), who hewed Agag into pieces? The Mexican was merciful to his victim; the Hebrew was like a modern Chinese executioner, who kills the criminal by degrees. His cruelty has been emulated in Christian France, and under the reign of two of her kings, we have seen a Ravaillac and Damiens tortured slowly to death, by means too horrible to dwell upon.
The writers upon Mexico tell us of a lovely youth, who was educated for a whole year to become a victim, and how, at the end of that time, he was feted, adorned, and even worshipped; how four of the most charming maidens of Mexico were selected as his wives, and how he remained in the enjoyment of the highest honour until the time of his sacrifice arrived, and we feel due horror at the recital. Yet, what is it compared with the accounts we read of miserable men and women racked, in hideous dungeons, by the most horrible tortures which an enlightened Christian ingenuity could devise, and who then, with limbs whose loosened fibres could scarcely sustain their bruised and mangled bodies, were led, or driven at the sword's point, to a stake fixed in the ground, there to be tied and burned, whilst devout Christian multitudes stood around, rejoicing, like demons, over the hellish scene.
No one can gloat over the imaginary torments of Hell without being a persecuting devil at heart.
Surely the Christians have too much sin amongst themselves to cast a stone at the inhabitants of Mexico.
We find a strong offset to the horror of Aztec cruelty in the very Bible, which we regard as the mainstay of our religious world. What, for example, is the essential difference between a Mexican monarch sacrificing one or ten thousand men taken in battle, and Moses commanding the extermination of the inhabitants of Canaan, and only saving, out of Midian, thirty-two thousand virgins, that they might minister to the lust of his Hebrew followers? What, again, are we to say of David's God, who would not turn away his anger from Judah until seven sons of the preceding king had been offered up as victims? And lastly—thought still more awful! what must we say of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, that Jehovah Himself sacrificed His own Son by a cruel death; and not only so, but that He had intercourse with an earthly woman, and had thus a son by her, for the sole purpose of bringing about his murder? Can we object to religious cannibalism in the Aztec, when Jesus of Nazareth is said to have urged his followers to eat his body and to drink his blood; and when hundreds of priests have shed the blood of millions of men, who, disbelieving the power of any man to convert bread and wine into flesh and blood, have refused to profane their lips by a cannibal feast?
Having now examined the nature of the Aztec faith, let us, for a while, linger upon the fruits which it produced. Who can read the mournful story of the fall of Mexico without contrasting, in his own mind, the respective characters of the conquerors and the conquered? In every so-called Christian virtue Montezuma proved himself to be superior to the lying, unscrupulous, rapacious and covetous Cortez. Even the greatest fire-eater who ever lived cannot fail to see that the Spaniard would not have been victorious over the Mexican, if the latter had been equally well equipped with arms, armour, and horses, as the former was. We can only tell vaguely what was the condition of Anahuac prior to the invasion of Cortez; but, from the testimony given by Prescott, we believe that there were annual wars between adjoining tribes, who met solely to obtain from their enemies victims for sacrifice, the battles always ending with the day, and never being resumed for conquest, or for the plunder of maidens to be an indulgence of a victor's lust. What the condition of the same country under Christian rule has been, and still is, every reader of modern and contemporary history knows; and he sees, with regret, that Jehovah Sabaoth, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit, with an army of saints, angels, virgins, and martyrs, as well as ancient gods of the Eastern Hemisphere are, if they are to be judged by the acts of their worshippers, as cruel, revengeful, and malignant, as were the deities of the Mexican kingdom.
The followers of the cross will appear to be quite as despicable when we contrast them with the Peruvians, as they were when compared with the inhabitants of Anahuac.
There is something very fascinating in the history of Peru, as recorded by the Spanish authors, and rendered into the English language by Prescott. There is no account of ancient or modern people extant which has interested me so much as those of the realm of Manco Capac. To hear of a nation, separated by an ocean, we may, indeed, say two, and a vast continent, from the civilized portions of Asia, Europe, and Africa, located in a mountainous tract, where soil and water were scanty, and locomotion was rendered difficult from the configuration of the land; whose country was surrounded by strong natural enemies of all kinds; whose people were unable to use such agents as steel and gunpowder, and who were yet enabled to construct vast cities and temples, to quarry, remove, and use in buildings, fragments of rock thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick, and to transport these to distances varying from 12 to 45 miles, to form good roads along the mountain tops, for an extent of nearly two thousand miles, necessitating the filling up chasms of enormous depth, and the making of suspension bridges over rivers whose stream was too furious to bridge in the ordinary European fashion, is perfectly astonishing.
The far-sighted Incas, to make these roads still more useful, accompanied them by the erection of large residences, like modern European bungalows in India, fit for the reception of a monarch with his army, and by vast magazines of provisions, sufficient to supply the wants of a warlike expedition, or of a population starving from an accidental failure of crops. The Peruvians, moreover, surrounded their chief towns with strong walls, in comparison with which the Cyclopean constructions of the old world seem small, stunted, and almost contemptible. It appears, in addition, that they knew how to form long tunnels, either for the passage of troops, for the benefit of travellers, or for the conveyance of water. All these, I say, are enough to fire the imagination of the dullest reader of history, and to shake the belief that civilization cannot be developed in the midst of what we have been accustomed to call savage life, and can only be brought to a moderate perfection by the influence of the Hebrew and Christian writings.
Our wonder is not, however, bounded by the physical results produced by the industrious population of Peru, it is still farther exercised by the descriptions which are given of their wonderful domestic and foreign policy. It would be difficult to conceive, and still more difficult to carry into execution for many generations, a plan of government so eminently fitted to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number, as that which the Incas elaborated. The rulers were specially educated to fulfil their duties in every respect, and were not permitted, as modern princes are, to enter into the ranks of chivalry until they had undergone a public examination, which was conducted by the oldest and the most illustrious chiefs. The trial included tests of every warlike and manly quality. It lasted thirty days, during which time every competitor fared alike, living on the bare ground, and wearing a mean attire. Those who passed the ordeal honourably were admitted formally into the knightly order, the ceremony including an investiture of the youth with sandals put on by the most venerable noble, equivalent to the donning of the toga virilis in Ancient Rome, and having the ear pierced with a golden bodkin by the reigning monarch. To take off the shoe was a ceremony exacted from all those who came into the Inca's presence, to have it put on by a grandee was great honour.
That the rulers might understand the condition of the kingdom, they systematically travelled, much in the same way as James V. of Scotland, and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, are said to have done. The Incas, in addition to their other plans for good government, inaugurated a postal system: divided their peoples into tens, fifties, hundreds, five hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, much in the same way as the Saxon King Alfred is said to have done, whose plan is, in many respects, conserved to the present day; and the head man of each division