" Two facts," says Gould, " arrest our attention . . . the prevalence of monotheism, and the tendency of civ- ilization towards it. Monotheism is at present the creed of a large section of the human race. The Chris- tian, the Jew, and the Mohammedan hold the unity of the great cause with varying distinctness, accord- ing to then- powers of abstraction" {Oiigin of Religious Belief i, 238). But in regard to the Trinity they se- riously differ, the Mohammedan and the Jew reject- ing with vehemence the least approach to a trinita- rian conception of the Deity. " The monotheism of the Mohammedan," says J. F. Clarke, "is that which makes of God pure will ; that is, which exaggerates personality (since personalit}' is in will), making the divine One an infinite Free Will or an infinite I. But will divorced from reason and love is wilfulness, or a purely arbitrarj' will. The monotheism of the Jews differed from this in that it combined with the idea of will the idea of justice. God not onlj- does what
he chooses, but he chooses to do onlj' what is right. Righteousness is an attribute of God, with which the Jewish books are saturated. Both of these sj-stems leave God outside of the world ; above all as its Crea- tor and Ruler, above all as its Judge ; but not through all and in all. The idea of an infinite love must be added and made supreme, in order to give us a Being who is not onty above all, but also through all and in all. This is the Christian monotheism. . . . Moham- med teaches a God above us; Moses teaches a God above us, and j'et with us ; Jesus teaches God above us, God with us, and God in us" (Ten Great ReUg'ions, p. 481-83). See Jalu-b. deutsch. Theol. (1860), iv, 669 ; Brit. Quar. Rev. (April, 1873), art. ii ; Lond. Quar. Rev. vol. cxxvii. See also Unity of God.
Gould holds to a gradual development of monothe- ism. Reco'i;nising a Jewish, Mohammedan, and Chris- tian monotheism, he traces lirst the development of the Jewish, which, under Moses, received "its final and complete form as a system, and embraced four leading doctrines: (1) the absolute being of God; (2) the absolute unity of his being ; (8) the difference in kind of matter from God ; (4) the subjection of mat- ter to God" (i, 262 ; comp. Mosaism). The Moham- medan's monotheism he recognises as "the oftspring of Jewish monotheism." Yet has the pure deism proved inferior to the Jewish, for ."as a working s^'s- tem it annihilates morality. Before the almighty power of God the creature is nothing. Man, ox, ass, are on a level ; and if the notion be humbling to him, he may recover a little self-respect when he remem- bers that the archangels are in no better plight. Be- tween man and God is a profound and wide abyss, and no bridge spans it. Too far above man to sj'mpathize in any way with him, God can yet crush him with his jealousy. If man attempt to attribute to himself any- thing that is of God, and appear to encroach on his all- engrossing majest}' by ever so little, the wrath of God is kindled and man is levelled with the dust" (i, 265). " It is," sa)'s Palgrave, " his singular satisfaction to let created beings continually feel that they are nothing else than his slaves, tools, and contemptible tools also, that thus they may the better acknowledge his supe- riority, and know his power to be above their power, his cunning above their cunning, his will above their will, his pride above their pride ; or, rather, that there is no power, cunning, will, or pride save his own. But he himself, in his inaccessible height, neither loving aught save his own and self-measured decree, without son, companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for himself than for his creatures, and his own barrenness and lone egoism in himself is the cause and rule of his indifferent and unregarding despotism around" (^Ara- bia, i, 366). See Polytheism.
Christian monotheism Gould excludes from com- parison with the Jewish and Mohammedan, because " its doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation re- move it from the class to which Mosaism and Islam- ism . . . belong" (i, 277). See, however, God ; Trin- ity. See besides Gould, Clarke, Max Muller, and Renan ; Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctrines, i, 330 ; Christ- lieb. Modern Doubt and Christian Belief (N. Y. 1875, 8vo), lect. iii and iv; Lewes, Hist. Pliilos. vol. ii (see Index) ; Liddon, Divinity of Christ, p. 67, 76, 95, 270, 307 ; and the literature appended to the article The- ism. (J. H.W.)
Monothelism (from /lovoc, single, and ciXtjf^ia, will), the doctrine of a Christian sect, maintains that Christ, though possessed of two natures, was yet sub- ject only to one will ; the human will being merged in the divine, or absorbed bj- it. The doctrine was given shape in an attempt on the part of the emperor Heraclius to unite the different factions of the Catho- lic Church, and to bring back to the fold the Eutych- ians and the Monnphysites. There was near the be- ginning of the 7th century' much controversy in the Eastern Church respecting the two wills in Christ,