284 THE KIDDLE OF THE UNIVEKSE. 



gods in living organisms of every species — trees, 

 animals, and men. This kind of polytheism is found 

 in innumerable forms even in the lowest tribes. It 

 reaches its highest stage in Hellenic polytheism, in 

 the myths of ancient Greece which still furnish the 

 finest images to the modern poet and artist. At a 

 much lower stage we have Catholic polytheism, in 

 which innumerable " saints " (many of them of very 

 equivocal repute) are venerated as subordinate 

 divinities, and prayed to exert their mediation with 

 the supreme divinity. 



The dogma of the " Trinity," which still comprises 

 three of the chief articles of faith in the creed of 

 Christian peoples, culminates in the notion that the 

 one God of Christianity is really made up of three 

 different persons : (1) God the Father, the omnipotent 

 creator of heaven and earth (this untenable myth was 

 refuted long ago by scientific cosmogony, astronomy, 

 and geology) ; (2) Jesus Christ ; and (8) the Holy 

 Ghost, a mystical being, over whose incomprehensible 

 relation to the Father and the Son millions of Chris- 

 tian theologians have racked their brains in vain for 

 the last 1,900 years. The Gospels, which are the 

 only clear sources of this triplotheism, are very obscure 

 as to the relation of these three persons to each other, 

 and do not give a satisfactory answer to the question 

 of their unity. On the other hand, it must be care- 

 fully noted what confusion this obscure and mystic 

 dogma of the Trinity must necessarily cause in the 

 minds of our children even in the earlier years of 

 instruction. One morning they learn (in their religious 

 instruction) that three times one are one, and the very 

 next hour they are told in their arithmetic class that 

 three times one are three. I remember well the 



