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abyss. Other priests had their own tales to tell, but all came 
to a similar origin of Godhead, conceived in the matrix of a 
mysterious confusion. They were generated spontaneously, 
or gradually developed from monads into animated creatures, 
and thence by slow processes into gods. Some were born of 
woman, and in due time deified. We cannot find a vestige of 
these fables in the authentic teachings of the Bible, whose 
authors never vacillate in ascribing peerless and incommuni- 
cable perfection to one God alone ; while the heathen mytho- 
logies, in some passages grand, if not sublime, and boastfully 
elaborated, allot to their chief gods respectively, no more than 
small shares in the government of the world, some for good 
and some for evil. 
The religions and customs of the great nations of antiquity 
before Moses were necessarily correspondent to their notions 
of these local and insufficient gods, but to concentrate all re- 
verence and love on One was a sentiment unknown to them ; 
so that allegiance was divided and wasted between gods many 
and lords many, and no man had a god whom he could love 
with all his heart. The enthusiasm of the polytheist who 
patronized many gods could not be transferred into the bosom 
of a man who adored one God, and protested against the very 
thought of having more than one. The divinities of Egypt and 
the East beyond the Flood were not only many, but their pre- 
sence was more or less limited to the regions where they were 
worshipped. Their character was not entirely divine, for it 
was shared with men, and even their names were assumed by 
men. Between them and the pure Spirit known to Abraham 
and his children, infinitely above all human taint and imper- 
fection, there could be no comparison. The features of the 
several religions were utterly unlike ; their spirit and their 
language were foreign from the high conceptions of Divinity 
entertained by worshippers of the True God, and all their 
ideas were mutually incompatible. Compare, for example, 
the Hymn of Amen-Ra with the Prayer of Solomon at the 
dedication of the temple. Take the descent of Ifehtar, and as 
many hymns, prayers, and incantations of Egypt and Assyria 
as you like, with charms of Chaldean magic, and lay them side 
by side with the book of Psalms. Consider how far the 
writings of the polytheists could be made use of to enrich the 
productions of servants of the One True God. 
Yet much more difficult would it be to fix upon any one 
essential truth in the heathen writings, which could liavb been 
found there antecedently to its production in the Old Testa- 
ment, or, perhaps, its reproduction by Moses, having been 
