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Major Ellis's theory is a natural result of his belief in a tangle of polytheism as 'the original state of religion. If so, there was not much room for the natural development of Nyankupon, in whom 'the missionaries find a parallel to the Jahveh of the Jews. On our theory Nyankupon takes his place in the regular process of the corruption of theism by animism.
We have to relate the idea of God, as it appeared in polytheism, with the idea as it appeared in other stages of belief.
The faith of humanity, however, could not come from thence, because these ancient forms of worships had great difficulty in detaching themselves from Polytheism, and could not attain to a very clear symbol. Brahminism has only survived to the present day by virtue of the astonishing faculty of conservation which India seems to possess. Buddhism failed in all its approaches toward the West.
As Hermann Usener has strikingly called it, it is 'the god of a moment." But though Professor Höffding adopts this definition of a fetich, it is obvious that the course of his argument requires us to understand it as subject to a certain limitation. His argument in effect is that fetichism is not polytheism, but something different, something out of which polytheism was evolved.
Their words may have sounded monistic when they said "there is no God but God"; but the original polytheism of mankind has only imperfectly and vaguely sublimated itself into monotheism, and monotheism itself, so far as it was religious and not a scheme of class-room instruction for the metaphysicians, has always viewed God as but one helper, primus inter pares, in the midst of all the shapers of the great world's fate.
The Brahmo Somaj and various other Somajes furnish, as we have seen, asylum and rest for many men of culture who have abandoned polytheism and all that pertains to it. The Arya Somaj appeals to, and gathers in, men from all ranges.
The latter was closely bound up with polytheism and hero-worship. The Christian Apostles and Saints, who took the place of the pagan Deities, were men who had lived on the earth and whose deeds belonged not to mythology but to history, although at the time the line between history and mythology was not clearly drawn, and history was largely diluted with myth.
"But, at least," urge the Christians, "we owe the sublime idea of the UNITY OF GOD to revelation, and this is grander than the Polytheism of the Pagan world."
Papalism in the State in the ascendancy, absolute Monarchism in the State, Secularism in the State, Polytheism in the State these are four despotisms, and must be flung with detestation out of all Christian lands. The State that is not on the side of Christ, and Christ alone, is in antagonism to all the moral forces of the universe. Its throne is against the throne of the Highest.
Hence naturally arose polytheism and idolatry. And who can say how many millions of years human reason would have been bewildered in these errors, even though in all places and times there were individual men who recognized them as errors, had it not pleased God to afford it a better direction by means of a new Impulse?
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