they survived
among all branches of the migrating race. The same distinguished scholar
traces the early existence of monotheism in a series of brief and rapid
references to nearly all the scattered Aryans not only, but also to the
Turanians on the North and East, to the Tungusic, Mongolic, Tartaric,
and Finnic tribes. "Everywhere," he says, "we find a worship of nature,
and the spirits of the departed, but behind it all there rises a belief
in some higher power called by different names, who is Maker and
Protector of the world, and who always resides in heaven."[134] He also
speaks of an ancient African faith which, together with its worship of
reptiles and of ancestors, showed a vague hope of a future life, "and a
not altogether faded reminiscence of a supreme God," which certainly
implies a previous knowledge.[135]

The same prevalence of one supreme worship rising above all idolatry he
traces among the various tribes of the Pacific Islands. His
generalizations are only second to those of Ebrard. Although he rejects
the theory of a supernatural revelation, yet stronger language could
hardly be used than that which he employs in proof of a universal
monotheistic faith.[136] "Nowhere," he says, "do we find stronger
arguments against idolatry, nowhere has the unity of God been upheld
more strenuously against the errors of polytheism, than by some of the
ancient sages of India. Even in the oldest of the sacred books, the Rig
Veda, composed three or four thousand years ago, where we find hymns
addressed to the different deities of the sky, the air, the earth, the
rivers, the protest of the human heart against many gods breaks forth
from time to time with no uncertain sound." Professor Mueller's whole
position is pretty clearly stated in his first lecture on "The Science
of Religion," in which he protests against the idea that God once gave
to man "a _preternatural_ revelation" concerning Himself; and yet he
gives in this same lecture this striking testimony to the doctrine of an
early and prevailing monotheistic faith:

"Is it not something worth knowing," he says, "worth knowing even to us
after the lapse of four or five thousand years, that before the
separation of the Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Greek,
or Latin, before the gods of the Veda had been worshipped, and before
there was a sanctuary of Zeus among the sacred oaks of Dodona, one
Supreme deity had been found, had been named, had been invoked by