350 THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY vill 



heart among the Israelites ; crimes against men 

 may be expiated, but blasphemy against the gods 

 is an unpardonable sin. Men forgive all injuries 

 but those which touch their self-esteem ; and they 

 make their gods after their own likeness, in their 

 own image make they them. 



It is in the category of monolatry that I conceive 

 the theology of the old Israelites must be ranged. 

 They were polytheists, in so far as they admitted 

 the existence of other Elohim of divine rank beside 

 Jahveh ; they differed from ordinary polytheists, 

 in so far as they believed that Jahveh was the 

 supreme god and the one proper object of their 

 own national worship. But it will doubtless be 

 objected that I have been building up a fictitious 

 Israelitic theology on the foundation of the 

 recorded habits and customs of the people, when 

 they had lapsed from the ordinances of their great 

 lawgiver and prophet Moses, and that my conclu- 

 sions may be good for the perverts to Canaanitish 

 theology, but not for the true observers of the 

 Sinaitic legislation. The answer to the objection 

 is that so far as I can form a judgment of that 

 which is well ascertained in the history of Israel 

 there is very little ground for believing that we 

 know much, either about the theological and 

 social value of the influence of Moses, or about 

 what happened during the wanderings in the 

 Desert 



