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The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often supposed, its monotheism, Hebrew religion in its golden age was monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jahveh became more strictly 'the only God, the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a quasi-polytheism. The distinctive feature in Jewish faith is its historical and teleological character.
Men forgive all injuries but those which touch their self-esteem; and they make their gods after their own likeness, in their own image make they them. It is in the category of monolatry that I conceive the theology of the old Israelites must be ranged.
As time went on and the people were sifted by the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations, the higher moral feeling of the best men attached itself more and more definitely to the national god. Thus was established a monolatry which was practically monotheism, though a theory of absolute monotheism was never formulated by the pre-Christian Jews.
In ancestral sciotheism, and in this monolatry, the ethical code, often of a very high order, comes into closer relation with the theological creed. Morality is taken under the patronage of the god or gods, who reward all morally good conduct and punish all morally evil conduct in this world or the next.
+709+. Among natural objects the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, and particularly the sun and moon, have very generally attracted men's attention and become objects of worship. The deification of the sun may be traced through all stadia of development, from the crudest objectivism to a highly developed monolatry or a virtual monotheism.
The Romans form no exception to this general rule, for though, while they did not create great anthropomorphic deities, there was yet no native Roman movement toward monolatry, the place of such deities in worship was taken by a multitude of minor divine patrons who presided over all the details of private and public life and satisfied the demand for divine guidance.
This is 'monolatry, and 'the ethical code, often of a very high order, comes into closer relation with the theological creed, why, we are not informed. Nor do we learn out of what polytheistic deities Jehovah was selected, nor for what reason.
But, since there never has been a time when the character of Christ and the ethics which he taught have been held in higher honour than the present, there is every reason to expect that the next 'Age of Faith, when it comes, will be of a more genuinely Christian type than the last. In contrast with 'henotheism' or 'monolatry, such as the worship of the early Hebrews.
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