despotism of the Roman theocracy which crushed the human intellect and paralyzed freedom of action.

But what was the result of the Reformation? The establishment of a royal alongside of a biblical theocracy. The Crown became the supreme head to order what religion is to consist of, how worship is to be conducted, and what articles of faith are to be believed. Or else religion is anchored to a sacred volume, and "a mere literal adherence to the text of the Bible has constituted as complete a spiritual slavery as any which had been imposed by the dictation of a domineering priesthood, and an infallible Church; they did but transfer the claim of oracular authority from the priest to the text, or rather to the preacher's interpretation of it. Such was the first principle and foundation of the system which may be best designated by the name of Puritanism, which has exerted as pernicious an influence over modern Christianity, on the one side, as Romanism on the other."1

In China we have an instance of a vast nation in which no counter currents of religious despotism and religious freedom Occur: the result is absolute indifference. For

thousands of years the Chinese have been stationary; they all think alike, behave alike, believe alike, disbelieve alike. Habit has materialized them, and brought them to per

manent rest.

In Europe

we have an instance of a perpetual clashing

of these antagonistic forces, resulting in an earnest and enthusiastic passion for truth, which those petrified by an absolute theocracy, or those weakened by the wash of fluctuating opinion, can never realize.

In conclusion: It seems certain that for man's spiritual 1 Baden Powell: Christianity without Judaism, p. 81; London, 1858.

well-being these forces need co-ordination. Under an infallible guide, regulating every moral and theological item of his spiritual being, his mental faculties are given him that they may be atrophied, like the eyes of the oyster, which, being useless in the sludge of its bed, are reabsorbed. Under a perpetual modification of religious belief, his convictions become weak and watery, without force, and destitute of purpose. In the barren wilderness of Sinai there are here and there green and pleasant oases. How come they there? By basaltic dykes arresting the rapid drainage which leaves the major part of that land bald and waste. So, in the region of religion, revelations and theocratic systems have been the dykes saving it from barrenness, and encouraging mental and sentimental fertility.

CHAPTER VII

THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM

Difficulty of realizing the state of mind of a savage-The first stage in primæval religion one of autotheism; then a perception and veneration of resistances-Classification of resisting forces-Nature worshipBrute worship-Personification of phenomena-The Greek the typical polytheist-The names of the sun become distinct solar deitiesMoral deities-Astrolatry-Theogonies.

IT

T is no easy matter for a man of ordinary education to form a notion of the mental fallowness of a rustic of his own day; it is far more difficult for him to divest his mind of all its acquisitions through study and observation, and reduce his ideas to the level of those of the progenitor of his race, whom we will call Areios.

This, however, must be our task if we are to arrive at a true conception of the dawn and development of religious ideas. With our clear sense of the oneness of God, of His moral perfections, and of His relation to nature, we can with difficulty picture to ourselves the rude theological attempts of our early forefathers. The path leading to theism is to our eyes a way of light, and we forget that it is like the path traced by the sun upon the waters, over restless waves and unfathomed deeps. Man had to fray his road through a wilderness of fable before he could

reach the truth, and traverse a multitude of intermediary deities before he could conceive a King of gods which, though it is an idea divided from pure monotheism by a gulf, is yet within view of it.

Let us attempt to cast ourselves back in imagination to pre-historic ages, and observe the acts and measure the thoughts of Areios, new upon the earth. All his faculties are in abeyance, and he knows not what capacities and powers are his. The world outside is nothing to him yet; he first explores his own being. He has a vigorous intelligence, without being aware of it, for he has not used it. Slowly he acquires facts, assimilates them, and draws conclusions from them. In his attempts to advance he stumbles and falls. Yet every fault gives him an impetus forward. The pain produced by error is the whip that urges him into civilization. Before man can learn to do things right, he must do things wrong. Before he can discover the right path in science, religion, and political economy, he has to flounder through a bog of blunders.

The girl strums discords before she strikes harmonies; the boys scratches pothooks before he draws straight lines. The early religious beliefs of the human family are its discords and pothooks, the stages of error by which it has travelled before correct ideas can be attained.

At first, then, man is conscious of no existence save his own; he is like the brute, self-centred and self-sufficient; he is his own God. He is Autotheist.

But presently he feels resistances. Effects surround him of which he is not the cause. The outlines of the exterior world loom out of the fog and assume precision. He acknowledges that there are other objects, that there exist other forces, beside himself. The convulsions of nature,

the storm, the thunder, the exploding volcano, the raging sea, fill him with a sense of there being a power superior to his own, before which he must bow. His religious thought, vague and undetermined, is roused by the opposition of nature to his will.

His next stage is the classification of the physical forces. His intellectual ideas are like metal in fusion: the material world is the mould into which they flow and from which they receive their shape. Nature is mighty, beautiful, wise. He bows to it in its various manifestations, and adores the sun, the sky, the dawn, the tempest, without for a moment forgetting their physical character. It is not inert nature that he worships, but one animated, and invested by him with his own sentiments; for he has not yet learned to distinguish himself from other creatures, as the sole rational being. Therefore he attributes to all objects a life and a reason analogous to his own. Children in play act in the same manner; addressing their dolls and pets as though they were endowed with understanding.

Caspar Hauser, that mysterious boy brought up in isolation and ignorance, was a striking example of the degree of intelligence which primitive peoples must have possessed. He exhibited almost throughout his whole life an incredible difficulty in distinguishing those things which were animate from those which were inanimate. Every movement he supposed to be spontaneous. If he touched his little wooden horses and they moved, he attributed the motion to their shrinking from his touch. If any one struck a stock or stone, he exhibited distress, thinking that these objects must be sensible to pain. Mademoiselle Leblanc, the savage woman, of whom Louis Racine has given such a valuable biography, exhibited a precisely similar want of capacity.