246 Evolution of Theology. 



moral sentiment among all by whom the idea was accepted. 

 The Hebrew Yahweh — divested however, almost wholly, 

 at least among the more intelligent, of purely objective 

 personality, and conceived under his moral attributes — is 

 to-day the God of Christendom. 



There have been, however, two easily recognized stages 

 of development, and this accounts for the use of the terms 

 judicial and moral theism, or theology. By judicial theol- 

 ogy I mean that system in which Deity is viewed mainly in 

 the aspect of a Judge and Avenger. This was the older and 

 severer phase of Hebraism. The sin is against Yahweh, 

 and not primarily against the neighbor, and it is for the 

 former that atonement is offered. Deifications of physical 

 forces cease with the growth of moral ideas. But these, as 

 the history of morals clearly proves, are not in the first in- 

 stance properly ethical ideas. The stress is upon the duties 

 owed to Deity. It is the infraction of these which provokes 

 to anger and demands propitiation. Adam is punished 

 solely for disobedience to a command of the Lord, not for 

 sin against another. This is characteristic of the Hebrew 

 theological idea down to the preaching of the prophets, who, 

 as has been remarked, contributed mostly to the truly 

 ethical element, and insisted upon justice to the fellow-man, 

 personal righteousness, and the subordination to these of 

 ceremonial and sacrifice, or the abolition of the latter alto- 

 gether. Christianity for the first two centuries was an 

 amplification of the prophetical ideas in the direction of a 

 pure morality. The doctrine of the sin against God, and 

 the consequent necessity of an atonement to an offended 

 Deity, was revived with the later schools of philosophical 

 theology, and remains embodied in the creeds of modern 

 times, — with this essential difference, however, that the 

 ethical school of theology is fast gaining recognition, as is 

 evidenced by the growth of the new views which seek to 

 place religious obligation upon the basis of conduct rather 

 than upon the lines of systematic theology. An advance 

 is perceptibly being made towards a truly ethical monothe- 

 ism. 



This necessarily brief outline brings us to the close of 

 the history of theism so far as this has developed into estab- 

 lished systems of belief. These ideas of Deity as a Right- 

 eous Judge and Moral Governor control the beliefs of the 

 present, and the various existing creeds are expansions of 



