SPENCER'S ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 213 



\Vc should like to believe that it is more trust- 

 worthy than the account of the Hebrew religion. 

 And yet when Mr. Spencer has to depend on 

 secondhand reports brought back by men who did 

 not specially collect materials for the use to which 

 Mr. Spencer puts them, we can hardly hope for 

 accuracy. And as for the use to which Mr. 

 Spencer puts his materials, though it would be 

 hard to press against him the maxim, Falsus iti 

 uuo falsus in omnibus, yet it is, perhaps, as well 

 that the account of the Jews comes so early in 

 the volume, so that readers may test at the outset 

 the critical value of the whole. 



Mr. Spencer assumes, not altogether without 

 evidence, that in a polytheistic people there is 

 generally " a gravitation towards monotheism ; " 

 and that mental progress helped on the tendency 

 among the Jews. But he doubts whether mono- 

 theism ever becomes complete or maintains its 

 purity. By monotheism he understands only the 

 view held "by Unitarians of the advanced type, 

 and by those who are called theists," trinitarian 

 monotheism being, we are informed, "partially 

 polytheistic." An ecclesiastical hierarchy arises 

 as soon as there appears "a decided distinction 

 between the affairs of this world and those of a 

 supposed other world." Thenceforward the eccle 

 siastical and political organizations grow up side 

 by side, first in a state of fusion, then differential 



