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Her forehead also showed several threatening lines, but in a moment she overcame her anger and glided towards Ram-Runjit-Das, sparkling with engaging smiles. But here she met with still less luck; offended at once in his monotheism and his chastity, the "God's warrior" pushed the vestal so unceremoniously that she nearly upset the elaborate pot-decoration of the altar.
While many features remained, as is shown by the occurrence of the primitive conception of Sheol in comparatively late productions, in one important particular, more especially, did the spread of an advanced ethical monotheism lead to a complete departure from the Babylonian conceptions.
Its rigid monotheism was intensified and embittered by the universal prevalence of idolatry; and there is a certain hardness in its tone in reference to the gods of the nations round about, which has little room for pity, and finds expression in such names as those of our text 'vanities, 'lies, 'nothingness, and the like.
The most extreme example of this was in Persia, where the austere monotheism of Mohammed was transmuted into the elaborate mystical cult known as Shiism, which presently cut the Persians off from full communion with the orthodox Moslem world.
Thus while the stern monotheism of later Israel absolutely prohibited the representation in art of any living thing, and especially of man, Greek artists entirely devoted themselves to such representation. The great result of the working of the spirit of humanism in Greek art was the representation of the Gods in human form.
But the monotheism, which was here laid at the very foundation of Israel's national life, parted it by a deep gulf from all the world, and determined its history. The prohibition has little force for us; but the positive command which underlies it is of eternal force. We should rather think of it as a revelation and an invitation than as a mere command.
They are unintelligible if we take the new-fashioned explanation that the monotheism of Israel was the product of natural evolution, or was anything but a treasure put by God into their hands, which they did not appreciate, and would willingly have thrown away. The foul Canaanitish worship was the kind of thing in which, if left to themselves, they would have wallowed.
The history of religion has for its starting-point the relative monotheism of humanity in its original unity, and for its goal the absolute monotheism of Christianity. With the separation into nations polytheism arises. The Greek mysteries form the transition from mythology to revelation.
Polytheism was incompatible with the idea of God as a judge supreme and righteous, but yet merciful. Thus monotheism was indissolubly connected with Muhammed's first religious impulses, though the dogma had not assumed the polemical form in which it afterwards confronted the old Arabian and Christian beliefs.
During this era of decomposition there will commence the reconstruction of human opinion on new and more solid foundations; and the transition from Monotheism to Positive Science will be the greatest achievement of the race, greater far than the advancement from Fetishism to Polytheism, or even from Polytheism to Monotheism itself.
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