208 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



" Out of these conceptions grew up, as in other cases, the 

 propitiation or worship of various supernatural beings a 

 polytheism. Abraham was a demigod to whom prayers 

 were addressed. f They sacrificed unto devils, not to God ; 

 to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly 

 up, whom your fathers feared not.' That the belief in other 

 gods than Jahveh long survived is shown by Solomon's 

 sacrifices to them, as well as by the denunciations of the 

 prophets. Moreover, even after Jahveh had become the 

 acknowledged great-god, the general conception was essen- 

 tially polytheistic." 



Of course, Mr. Spencer, no less than the most 

 Orthodox Jew or Christian, is at liberty to believe 

 that the Hebrew monotheism rose out of a previous 

 polytheistic belief, though there is little evidence to 

 be adduced from the Old Testament, the worship 

 of other gods being generally, if not always, repre- 

 sented as the worship of strange gods, the gods of 

 the heathen nations round about. If the golden 

 calf was a return to Apis worship, the idolatry 

 against which the prophets protest is mainly an 

 imported idolatry, or at least is so represented. 

 Still we readily concede to Mr. Spencer that the 

 readiness with which the Jews assimilated foreign 

 idolatry may be urged in proof that there was a 

 survival of the polytheistic tendency, if not of the 

 old polytheistic worship. If, as Mr. Spencer sug- 

 gests, the belief in good and evil angels is enough 

 to make a religion " essentially polytheistic," then 

 cadit quaestio, not only so far as the Hebrews are 

 concerned, but so far as concerns Christianity too. 



