POLYTHEISM
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POLYTHEISM
trine of the universe prevailed ; or in Iranism, where the reforms attributed to Zoroaster show a progress from the earlier Vedic religion, or from something like it. So much the more wonderful is it that the one small people of the Jews clung, amid innumerable temptations to idolatry and defections from their an- cestral faith, to an exalted monotheistic idea of the Godhead, which has been the origin of all the mono- theism now existing in the world, (b) Philosophers are divided on the point of the priority of the two re- ligious systems, the belief in one or many gods. Al- though some deists of a former age regarded monothe- ism as the earlier of the two, the only consistent ground for those who deny supernatural revelation is that of Mr. Hume. This is, in brief, that the natural progress of human thought is from the less perfect through ab- straction to the more perfect; that polytheism was universally diffused, and that monotheism, if earlier, could not have been lost. It is needless to say that a great part of the thinking of the present age runs in the same channel. Man was a savage before he be- came possessed of arts or settled any of the problems of the universe, just as species are evolved out of earlier less finished forms. The many gods were lost out of popular worship, according to Mr. Hume, by adulation, or the zealous attempt of some worshippers to exalt their god above the rest, which is an unfortunate way of accounting for a result that has never been reached, unless it can be shown that an elimination took place in the Jewish system. Opposite to this is ScheUing's view in his lectures on mythology, written after he had left his first philosophical position : this was, in brief, that monotheism was prior in the order of time, but without any dogmatic definition or distinct view of the divine attributes. At the same time man was awake to all impressions from the material world, in which the great objects seemed to him full of power and life. Here were the beginnings of a worship of nature, which at length drew a part of men away from the worship of the God above nature. This defection made those who resisted it aware, as they were not before, of the vastness. the absoluteness of the one God. Thus the human mind, in the case of those who adhered to the primeval worship, was enlarged in its religious concep- tions : it may even be regarded as a part of the scheme of Providence that the apostasy of some helped the infantile race to take grander views of the Supreme Being, (c) The account given in the Scriptures is that God revealed himself to mankind at the creation, but, as man fell away from God, he did not like to re- tain him in his knowledge, and that the teachings of the world itself concerning him were rejected (Pom. i, 19-20). He therefore devised a religion and an idol- atry of his own, which were consistent with foul wick- edness. As the world became darker in its apprehen- sions of God, God began a new revelation of himself to Abraham, when primeval monotheism was in danger of utterly fading out of human belief. If now we may suppose that polytheism arose when men were but children in art, and had no science, those who went farthest from the central points of the primeval world would easily fall into barbarism, and their religions might show the influences of their new and less favor- able situations, (d) Have any traces remained in the world of this primeval monotheism? A number of Christian writers have given an affirmative answer, but they put their reasons for their opinions on diverse grounds. First, we may notice such writers as Cud- worth, who in an uncritical way collect together the expressions of writers of every age, and give as much weight to later philosophers as to earlier authors. There is no doubt that philosophers like Plato reached a first principle of the world, or that, before him, Anax- agoras conceived of mind putting already existent mat- ter into appropriate forms. But their voice is not that of popular religion. jXext. to these we may rank those writers who have noticed a subordination among the