GOD AND THE WOBLD. 287 



most widely accepted element of religion, and to 

 predominate in the ecclesiastical systems of civilised 

 countries. In reality that is not the case, because 

 this alleged " monotheism " usually turns out on 

 closer inquiry to be one of the other forms of theism 

 we have examined, a number of subordinate deities 

 being generally introduced besides the supreme one. 

 Most of the religions which took a purely monotheistic 

 standpoint have become more or less polytheistic in 

 the course of time. Modern statistics assure us that 

 of the 1,500,000,000 men who people the earth the 

 great majority are monotheists ; of these, nominally, 

 about 600,000,000 are Brahma-Buddhists, 500,000,000 

 are called Christians, 200,000,000 are heathens (of 

 various types), 180,000,000 are Mohammedans, 

 10,000,000 are Jews, and 10,000,000 have no religion 

 at all. However, the vast majority of these nominal 

 monotheists have very confused ideas about the deity, 

 or believe in a number of gods and goddesses besides 

 the chief god — angels, devils, etc. 



The different forms which monotheism has assumed 

 in the course of its polyphyletic development may be 

 distributed in two groups — those of naturalistic and 

 anthropistic monotheism. Naturalistic monotheism 

 finds the embodiment of the deity in some lofty and 

 dominating natural phenomena. The sun, the deity 

 of light and warmth, on whose influence all organic 

 life insensibly and directly depends, was taken to be 

 such a phenomenon many thousand years ago. 

 Sun-worship (solarism, or heliotheism) seems to the 

 modern scientist to be the best of all forms of 

 theism, and the one which may be most easily 

 reconciled with modern monism. For modern astro- 

 physics and geogeny have taught us that the earth is 



