espicable gain to an
Arab."--Palgrave's _Central and Eastern Africa_, p. 161.]

[Footnote 121: Dodds: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 118.]

[Footnote 122: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, November, 1887.]

[Footnote 123: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, February, 1888, p.
66.]

[Footnote 124: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]

LECTURE VII.

THE TRACES OF A PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM

There are two conflicting theories now in vogue in regard to the origin
of religion. The first is that of Christian theists as taught in the Old
and New Testament Scriptures, viz., that the human race in its first
ancestry, and again in the few survivors of the Deluge, possessed the
knowledge of the true God. It is not necessary to suppose that they had
a full and mature conception of Him, or that that conception excluded
the idea of other gods. No one would maintain that Adam or Noah
comprehended the nature of the Infinite as it has been revealed in the
history of God's dealings with men in later times. But from their simple
worship of one God their descendants came gradually to worship various
visible objects with which they associated their blessings--the sun as
the source of warmth and vitality, the rain as imparting a quickening
power to the earth, the spirits of ancestors to whom they looked with a
special awe, and finally a great variety of created things instead of
the invisible Creator. The other theory is that man, as we now behold
him, has been developed from lower forms of animal life, rising first to
the state of a mere human animal, but gradually acquiring intellect,
conscience, and finally a soul;--that ethics and religion have been
developed from instinct by social contact, especially by ties of family
and the tribal relation; that altruism which began with the instinctive
care of parents for their offspring, rose to the higher domain of
religion and began to recognize the claims of deity; that God, if there
be a God, never revealed himself to man by any preternatural means, but
that great souls, like Moses, Isaiah, and Plato, by their higher and
clearer insight, have gained loftier views of deity than others, and as
prophets and teachers have made known their inspirations to their
fellow-men. Gradually they have formed rituals and elaborated
philosophies, adding such supernatural elements as the ignorant fancy of
the masses was supposed to demand.

According to this theory, religions, like