Evolution of Theology. 245 



ethical significance, which gave to it its wonderful power 

 of deeply and permanently moulding the future of religious 

 speculation, and transforming previous ideas. But this 

 result was reached only after centuries of discipline and 

 teaching. The Yahweh of early Hebraism was admittedly 

 the god of the Hebrews only. That other tribes and nations 

 had also their tribal and national gods was not then ques- 

 tioned. Yahweh was simply greater than surrounding gods. 

 His worship was deeply tinged with the hideous sacrifices 

 of Baal and Moloch worship, and the continual lapsing of 

 the people into a worship of other gods proves that the 

 lofty monotheistic ideas of a subsequent time were not an 

 inspiration from the people at large. They were the out- 

 come of the prophetic teaching, holding forth, with unswerv- 

 ing zeal, in spite of gross idolatries and of national defeat 

 and captivity, the ideal of a Deity of Righteousness and 

 Mercy. The rise of what may be called Judicial and Moral 

 Theology is thereby mainly due to Hebrew prophecy. 



With the arrival at a true monotheism we reach the close 

 of Objective Anthropomorphism, — i. e., gods conceived in 

 merely objective and physical aspects; and attain to a true 

 Subjective Anthropomorphism, i. e., Deity conceived under 

 judicial and moral attributes. It was immensely to the 

 advantage of religious speculation that the Hebrew idea, 

 when it went forth to take possession of the civilized world, 

 to the discomfiture of incongruous and decaying polytheisms, 

 should be thus centred upon this conception of Moral Ex- 

 cellence as its controlling thought. Indeed, without it, it 

 would have gone nowhere and come to naught. Had Hebrew 

 theism, simply by insisting upon the worship of the ancient 

 Yahweh as a Nature-God, attempted to force its ideal upon 

 other nations, it would properly have been met with the 

 answer that the Greek Zeus and Roman Jupiter fully satis- 

 fied the ideal. As a result of the essential difference 

 between the two, while the entire pantheon of Greek and 

 Roman divinities passed into oblivion under the criticism 

 and ridicule of the schools of philosophy, and left in 

 their place nothing but avowed atheism and barren skep- 

 ticism, which, in time, led to an utter debasement of public 

 and private morals, the conception developed by the 

 Hebrew, resting substantially upon the ideals of justice 

 and right conduct, contained within itself a principle of 

 vitality which could and did expand with the advance in 



