112 MAN. 
W. St. Clair Tisdall, concludes an exhaustive study 
of “Christianity and Other Faiths’ with the statement: 
“It follows that Monotheism historically preceded Poly- 
theism, and that the latter is a corruption of the former. 
It is impossible to explain the facts away. Taken to- 
gether they show that, as the Bible asserts, man at the 
very beginning of history knew the One True God. This 
implies a Revelation of some sort and traces of that Re- 
velation are still found in many ancient faiths.” 
We conclude that the history of religion does not only 
fail to support the evolutionistic postulate of a slow up- 
ward development of religions from crude original be- 
liefs, but quite the reverse. It is true that the popular 
handbooks of comparative religion quite generally teach 
a development of religious belief through animism, 
fetishism, and polytheism to monotheism. But the con- 
sonant testimony of specialists in the field of historical 
study and of those who have had first-hand acquaintance 
with the aborigines of heathen lands, is a strong dissent 
from this position. Here again we find confident as- 
sertion of an evolutionistic process mainly among those 
who lack the qualifications of original research. Even 
as it is not the specialist in biology that still maintains 
the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, but the non- 
professional and the amateur, even so the specialist ac- 
quainted with the original sources, and the explorer, pos- 
sessing first hand knowledge, asserts a decline, through 
history, from purer to less spiritual faiths, while the bias 
of the evolutionist, who has no first hand knowledge of 
the sources constrains him to begin his scheme of religion 
with animism and fetish-worship. The theory which 
holds him in thrall demands such a construction. But 
the theory is contradicted by the facts, which point un- 
mistakably to a degeneration of the race, to a Fall of 
Man. 
a 
