232 
In heaven who is great? Thou alone are great ! 
On earth who is great? Thou alone are great ! 
When thy voice resounds in heaven, the gods fall prustrate ! 
When thy voice resounds on earth, the genii kiss the dust !” * 
It should not escape observation, how few are the remains 
we have of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian thought in 
remote times, compared with the literature of ancient India ; 
and how remarkable it is that, even from those fragments, we 
should have the evidence we have on these points. 
Lastly, even amongst untutored, so-called savages, whose 
fetich-worship is supposed to point to the germs of primitive 
religion, there are existing traces of an original belief in one 
Supreme God; a belief that we have no evidence whatever for 
attributing to the influence of the modern thought of more 
civilised nations. I have only space to quote a single example. 
he Yoruba tribe of West Africa, notwithstanding their fetich- 
worship, own a supreme god, whom they name Olorun, as to 
whom, for instance, they have a proverb, as ancient, no doubt, 
to them as their hills: “ Leave the battle to God (Olorun), 
and rest your head upon your hand.” + 
On another subject, on which very much has been written, 
it seems necessary to add a word here, though anything lke 
a full discussion would be impossible. I mean the ancestral 
worship which prevails, and has prevailed, so widely. It is 
popularly regarded as one of the steps in the evolution of 
religion, an advancing phase, in short, of ghost-worship. I 
regard it as one of the steps which mark its degradation. 
These, briefly, are my reasons. In almost every instance, if, 
indeed, there be an exception, in which we find ancestral 
worship, we can look back and discern a primitive belief in 
the immortality of the soul. It is so with the Hindus. We 
cannot go further back in documentary evidence than the 
Vedas, and there we find such passages as this, quoted by 
Max Miiller:—‘“ We drank Soma, we became immortal, we 
went to the light, we found the gods.”+ It is the same with 
the Assyrians ; as, for instance, in a prayer for the king :— 
** After the life of these days, 
In the feasts of the silver mountain, the heavenly courts, 
The abode of blessedness : 
And in the light 
Of the happy fields 
* Records of the Past, vol. iii. pp. 136, 137. 
+ Bishop Crowther’s Yoruba Vocab., Introd., p. 36. 
t Rig-Veda, viii. 48, 12. 
