The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident

98:2.1A lightly re­garded and su­per­fi­cial re­li­gion can­not en­dure, es­pe­cially when it has no priest­hood to fos­ter its forms and to fill the hearts of the devo­tees with fear and awe. The Olympian re­li­gion did not prom­ise sal­va­tion, nor did it quench the spir­i­tual thirst of its be­liev­ers; there­fore was it doomed to per­ish. Within a mil­len­nium of its in­cep­tion it had nearly van­ished, and the Greeks were with­out a na­tional re­li­gion, the gods of Olym­pus hav­ing lost their hold upon the bet­ter minds.

98:2.2This was the sit­u­a­tion when, dur­ing the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ, the Ori­ent and the Lev­ant ex­pe­ri­enced a re­vival of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness and a new awak­en­ing to the rec­og­ni­tion of mono­the­ism. But the West did not share in this new de­vel­op­ment; nei­ther Eu­rope nor north­ern Africa ex­ten­sively par­tic­i­pated in this re­li­gious re­nais­sance. The Greeks, how­ever, did en­gage in a mag­nif­i­cent in­tel­lec­tual ad­vance­ment. They had be­gun to mas­ter fear and no longer sought re­li­gion as an an­ti­dote there­for, but they did not per­ceive that true re­li­gion is the cure for soul hunger, spir­i­tual dis­quiet, and moral de­spair. They sought for the so­lace of the soul in deep think­ing—phi­los­o­phy and meta­physics. They turned from the con­tem­pla­tion of self-preser­va­tion—sal­va­tion—to self-re­al­iza­tion and self-un­der­stand­ing.

98:2.3By rig­or­ous thought the Greeks at­tempted to at­tain that con­scious­ness of se­cu­rity which would serve as a sub­sti­tute for the be­lief in sur­vival, but they ut­terly failed. Only the more in­tel­li­gent among the higher classes of the Hel­lenic peo­ples could grasp this new teach­ing; the rank and file of the progeny of the slaves of for­mer gen­er­a­tions had no ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of this new sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

98:2.4The philoso­phers dis­dained all forms of wor­ship, not­with­stand­ing that they prac­ti­cally all held loosely to the back­ground of a be­lief in the Salem doc­trine of “the In­tel­li­gence of the uni­verse,” “the idea of God,” and “the Great Source.” In so far as the Greek philoso­phers gave rec­og­ni­tion to the di­vine and the super­fi­nite, they were frankly mono­the­is­tic; they gave scant rec­og­ni­tion to the whole galaxy of Olympian gods and god­desses.

98:2.5The Greek po­ets of the fifth and sixth cen­turies, no­tably Pin­dar, at­tempted the ref­or­ma­tion of Greek re­li­gion. They el­e­vated its ide­als, but they were more artists than re­li­gion­ists. They failed to de­velop a tech­nique for fos­ter­ing and con­serv­ing su­preme val­ues.

98:2.6Xeno­phanes taught one God, but his de­ity con­cept was too pan­the­is­tic to be a per­sonal Fa­ther to mor­tal man. Anaxago­ras was a mech­a­nist ex­cept that he did rec­og­nize a First Cause, an Ini­tial Mind. Socrates and his suc­ces­sors, Plato and Aris­to­tle, taught that virtue is knowl­edge; good­ness, health of the soul; that it is bet­ter to suf­fer in­jus­tice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to re­turn evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their car­di­nal virtues were: wis­dom, cour­age, tem­per­ance, and jus­tice.

98:2.7The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy among the Hel­lenic and He­brew peo­ples af­fords a con­trastive il­lus­tra­tion of the func­tion of the church as an in­sti­tu­tion in the shap­ing of cul­tural prog­ress. In Pales­tine, hu­man thought was so priest-con­trolled and scrip­ture-di­rected that phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics were en­tirely sub­merged in re­li­gion and moral­ity. In Greece, the al­most com­plete ab­sence of priests and “sa­cred scrip­tures” left the hu­man mind free and un­fet­tered, re­sult­ing in a startling de­vel­op­ment in depth of thought. But re­li­gion as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence failed to keep pace with the in­tel­lec­tual prob­ings into the na­ture and re­al­ity of the cos­mos.

98:2.8In Greece, be­liev­ing was sub­or­di­nated to think­ing; in Pales­tine, think­ing was held sub­ject to be­liev­ing. Much of the strength of Chris­tian­ity is due to its hav­ing bor­rowed heav­ily from both He­brew moral­ity and Greek thought.

98:2.9In Pales­tine, re­li­gious dogma be­came so crys­tal­lized as to jeop­ar­dize fur­ther growth; in Greece, hu­man thought be­came so ab­stract that the con­cept of God re­solved it­self into a misty va­por of pan­the­is­tic spec­u­la­tion not at all un­like the im­per­sonal In­fin­ity of the Brah­man philoso­phers.

98:2.10But the av­er­age men of these times could not grasp, nor were they much in­ter­ested in, the Greek phi­los­o­phy of self-re­al­iza­tion and an ab­stract De­ity; they rather craved promises of sal­va­tion, cou­pled with a per­sonal God who could hear their prayers. They ex­iled the philoso­phers, per­se­cuted the rem­nants of the Salem cult, both doc­trines hav­ing be­come much blended, and made ready for that ter­ri­ble or­gias­tic plunge into the fol­lies of the mys­tery cults which were then over­spread­ing the Med­i­ter­ra­nean lands. The Eleusinian mys­ter­ies grew up within the Olympian pan­theon, a Greek ver­sion of the wor­ship of fer­til­ity; Diony­sus na­ture wor­ship flour­ished; the best of the cults was the Or­phic broth­er­hood, whose moral preach­ments and promises of sal­va­tion made a great ap­peal to many.

98:2.11All Greece be­came in­volved in these new meth­ods of at­tain­ing sal­va­tion, these emo­tional and fiery cer­e­mo­ni­als. No na­tion ever at­tained such heights of artis­tic phi­los­o­phy in so short a time; none ever cre­ated such an ad­vanced sys­tem of ethics prac­ti­cally with­out De­ity and en­tirely de­void of the prom­ise of hu­man sal­va­tion; no na­tion ever plunged so quickly, deeply, and vi­o­lently into such depths of in­tel­lec­tual stag­na­tion, moral de­prav­ity, and spir­i­tual pov­erty as these same Greek peo­ples when they flung them­selves into the mad whirl of the mys­tery cults.

98:2.12Re­li­gions have long en­dured with­out phil­o­soph­i­cal sup­port, but few philoso­phies, as such, have long per­sisted with­out some iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with re­li­gion. Phi­los­o­phy is to re­li­gion as con­cep­tion is to ac­tion. But the ideal hu­man es­tate is that in which phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion, and sci­ence are welded into a mean­ing­ful unity by the con­joined ac­tion of wis­dom, faith, and ex­pe­ri­ence.