The same course must be adopted still. We find men
everywhere holding some truth; we add further truth; until, as a
chemist would say, we saturate the solution, which upon
evaporation produces a crystallized life of entirely new colour and
quality and form. Thus Professor Nilsson writes: "Every religious
_change_ in a people is, in fact, only an intermixture of religions;
because the new religion, whether received by means of convincing
arguments, or enforced by the eloquence of fire and sword, cannot
_at once_ tear up all the wide-spreading roots by which its
forerunner has grown in the heart of the people; this must be the
work of many years, perhaps of many generations." [108] We
cannot better close this lengthy introduction than by reminding
Christians of the saying of their Great and Good Teacher, "I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfil."

II. THE MOON MOSTLY A MALE DEITY.

We have already in part pointed out that the moon has been
considered as of the masculine gender; and have therefore but to
travel a little farther afield to show that in the Aryan of India, in
Egyptian, Arabian, Slavonian, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, Teutonic,
Swedish, Anglo-Saxon, and South American, the moon is a male
god. To do this, in addition to former quotations, it will be sufficient
to adduce a few authorities. "Moon," says Max Mueller, "is a very old
word. It was _mona_ in Anglo-Saxon, and was used there, not as a
feminine, but as a masculine for the moon was originally a
masculine, and the sun a feminine, in all Teutonic languages; and it
is only through the influence of classical models that in English
moon has been changed into a feminine, and sun into a masculine. It
was a most unlucky assertion which Mr. Harris made in his
_Hermes_, that all nations ascribe to the sun a masculine, and to the
moon a feminine gender." [109] Grimm says, "Down to recent
times, our people were fond of calling the sun and moon _frau
sonne_ and _herr mond_." [110] Sir Gardner Wilkinson writes:
"Another reason that the moon in the Egyptian mythology could not
be related to Bubastis is, that it was a male and not a female deity,
personified in the god Thoth. This was also the case in some
religions of the West. The Romans recognised the god Lunus; and
the Germans, like the Arabs, to this day, consider the moon
masculine, and not feminine, as were the Selene and Luna of the
Greeks and Latins." [111] Again, "The Egyptians represented their
moon as