edge, not belief. Hence, no one religion can have a monopoly of the truth. The similarity of the fundamental ideas of all great religious teachings points probably to a common source from which they all drew; but the fact that these great men, more or less divinely inspired, accepted or taught them; the length of time they have existed, together with the countless millions that have believed, is itself a strong argument in favor of their being more or less inspired.*

Our belief in a God naturally arises from the conviction common to us all that some power caused us to be, as it is evident that we and our fathers did not

* Three hundred years ago Edward Herbert, an Oxford scholar, devoted himself to the study of comparative religion and examined the recorded facts among the Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Arabs, Phrygians, Persians and Assyrians. He found the following to be the bases of religion in relation to the powers above man:

1. That there is one Supreme God.

2. That he ought to be worshipped.

3. That virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine worship.

4. That divine goodness doth dispense rewards and punishments both in this life and after it. Comparative Religion, p. 31, Carpenter. Theologies may be numerous, but there can be only one religion. For all peoples worship their ideal, one supreme power, maker of all, who is a beneficient God, punishes evil and rewards virtue, here and in a life hereafter. The Vedic seers said: "Men call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agui. Sages name him variously, I who is but one." On this common ground should we all meet and discard unnecessary creeds and dogmas.

create ourselves, that it must have been some source higher than us. Effect and cause is, as Kant maintains, a primary intellectual principle. "Man became aware of the existence of higher powers than his own, and according to his belief respecting the nature of the powers above him, so was his religion."

The mind of primitive man, Sir John Lubbock says, lives in a perpetual come and go of pure feebleness, incapable like a little child, of fixing itself upon anything. And it was not until later when he became more intelligent and could conceive of a spirit or god outside of the tree which he formerly worshipped that he became superstitious, for it took a certain amount of thought to conceive the superstitious idea. Later on he became permeated with it, and even to-day in some countries, so surcharged is the atmosphere with spirits, that the Arab, when he throws a stone, breathes a prayer that he may not hit one.

Everything to his mind that occurred was a miracle (the word was so convenient, it saved him. from any dreaded intellectual effort) and he was constantly being surprised, so limited was his intelligence. "Fear of evil and belief that it can

* Christian Theism, pp. 217, 218.

The child and the savage are alike attracted by bright, gaudy and glittering things, also by action, as a mode of expression of thought, hence song and dance attract both.

be cured by divine intervention, was the origin of prayer." * The thunder, the lightning, the earthquake, and the hurricane spreading their devastations, and other great manifestations of nature, in man's early stages, impressed him as the doings of angry gods, having a distant abode in the clouds above,† the idea of distance by its very vastness enhancing his powers. It also stirred his imagination and his fears, and solitude filled his mind with superstitious awe. The invisible bred fear in them and their selfishness distrust. Savages, Sir John Lubbock says, always regard spirits as evil. Living on this plane the conception of good spirits were much less clearly defined because harder to conceive of than bad ones, who naturally also must greatly predominate in numbers; they must develop considerably before they could to any extent attribute good qualities even to their deities, being so deficient of these qualities themselves. Burton states that when he talked to the eastern negroes about God, they eagerly inquired as to his whereabouts, so that they might kill him for the trouble he had caused them.

* Non-Religion of the Future, p. 90.

† Plagues, sickness, and misfortunes were often sent by him or evil disposed spirits, so they thought. It was the easiest solution of the problem they could arrive at.

Buckle's History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1, pp. 88-90. Also Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 29, Keary.

CHAPTER III

PRIMITIVE man worshipped what he feared most, with just enough intelligence to realize his weakness as against those powers of nature. At first he worshipped the objects themselves. His entire thought was centered in the actual,* for his mind is incapable of conceiving of them as symbols, as he does later on, when he acquires more intelligence. Objects exciting fear or displeasure are first selected, for your savage is ruled by his passions and emo

tions.

It was natural for the primitive, where forces had no manifest unity, were apparently not related, or even appeared to him as opposites (to be even warring with each other at times), to supply a different god, as the moving power of each. It needed centuries of advancement and thinking before he could connect them, to reason out that often what seemed opposing forces in nature were not so, and to realize that there was only one creative power for all,† nor did it require much imagination in the

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, pp. 24, 26, 35, Keary. † Religion in the Making, p. 61, Smith.

primitive to conceive of these gods as conflicting and warring against each other, as when water quenched fire, etc.

Each God with him represented some phase of life as war, peace, agriculture, etc. Nor can he, at this stage, conceive of any moral relations. Herbert Spencer says moral laws are subsequent to the beginning of worship. The idea of one abstract god, separate from phenomena, was to come later. The next stage was nature worship, where he did not confine his attention to certain specified objects only, as for instance the cave or tree he sought shelter in at night. The branches of this tree later on, as he grew more intelligent, he tore down and made a rude shelter of, etc. In many cases, early man looked upon the tree as his parent and thought he returned to it at death. Hence, Dante pictured the leafless tree in hell, peopled with the souls of suicides.*

Man as an ape had lived in the branches of the tree, as primitive he had lived under it, and sought its branches for safety at night. As a tribe he had foregathered under it. No wonder, therefore, that many natives claimed descent from it.†

He worshipped all surrounding objects, that especially attracted his attention. The third was the anthropomorphic or ethical stage, when he gave to his gods human qualities. It was at this stage that

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, pp. 66, 67, Keary. † Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 63, Keary.