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1879.] OAO [({rote. 



This last change runs parallel with our progress in science and philosophy. 

 We have gradually come to the knowledge that the laws which govern 

 Nature are related and correlated and it is now no longer necessary to have 

 a separate God for each phenomenon. But our Gods were those of the 

 Aryan nations, Greek and Roman, Indian and Scandinavian, and these 

 nations were behind the Semitic in the expression of monotheism. In fact 

 we came by our present and popular monotheism suddenly through 

 Judaism in its form of Christianity ; while the monotheism of the Hebrews 

 was not fully expressed until the eighth century before Christ. Moses, as 

 has been abundantly shown, was not a monotheist. In the ten command- 

 ments, which in their ideas are certainly his, we find the expression, "Ye 

 shall have no other Gods before me (Yahveh)." This carries the force of 

 an acknowledgment that after Yahveh, and as of inferior rank and power, 

 other Gods might be worshiped. The monotheism of the Israelites is more 

 especially a development en the side of morality. Yahveh is the High 

 and Holy One ; a broken and contrite heart He will not despise ! By 

 giving Yahveh the character of supremacy the first steps towards a pure 

 monotheism were slowly established ; and the straight line of the best con- 

 duct being recognized, it was easier to reach monotheism by this route 

 than by an intellectual acquaintance with the forces of Nature, upon which 

 the Indo-European mind, before its contact with Judaism, principally con- 

 centrated its powers. But in the mythology of Aryan nations a progress 

 towards monotheism can he shown ; only the Aryan idea is more abstract 

 and intellectual, the Semitic concrete and moral. As soon, therefore, as 

 Judaism was offered as the true religion for Aryan nations, it was only ac- 

 cepted in its dilution of Trinitarianism. It is now the province of science 

 to demonstrate from the intellectual side the truth of the monotheistic 

 philosophy. But, undoubtedly, the prime error of the orthodox Biblical 

 expounders, as also the error of the Bible writers themselves, is the 

 measuring of past epochs by present conditions. 



"In the Biblical story of creation we have to do with a myth, which had 

 undergone many changes before Genesis was written. Since that time and 

 when the latter could no longer change, many differing conceptions of the 

 origin of things have found their orthodoxy in a play upon the meaning of 

 the words and a distortion of their original intent. A lax wording, a 

 shorter and more general statement, a monotheistic conception, gives an 

 elasticity to the story of Genesis and a certain adaptiveness to later dis- 

 coveries; but in its treatment of the heavens and the heavenly bodies, in 

 the little bit of the earth on which its miracles are performed, it is still 

 akin to the notions of the Homeric ages with regard to the Universe." 



