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Updated: May 6, 2025
Seventy years ago, among the twenty-five thousand Sioux Indians in the United States, there was not a single church, not even one professing Christian. They were all polytheistic pagans. There were signs of pagan worship about every teepee. It might be the medicine sack tied behind the conical wigwam, or a yard of broadcloth, floating from the top of a flagpole as a sacrifice to some deity.
The different polytheistic cults of the world differed considerably in intellectual and moral value. These differences pertain to the diversity of characteristics among the nations of the world and are to be studied in connection with the histories of the various peoples.
The animistic superstitions wildly based on the belief in the soul have not soiled him, and the social conditions of aristocracy, agriculture, architecture, have not made him one in a polytheistic crowd of rapacious gods, nor fettered him as a Baal to his estate, nor localised him in a temple built with hands.
In Hinduism, whether pantheistic or polytheistic, there is even less disposition to personify evil in one figure, and most Indian religious systems are disposed to think of the imperfections of the world as suffering rather than as sin.
It is not necessary, however, that the individuality and specialization of function of the supreme beings recognized by any religious system should be so conspicuous as they are in this case, or in the Greek or Roman Pantheon, to mark it as in its essence polytheistic or of polytheistic tendency.
From such unpromising beginnings, through the successive stages of polytheistic idolatries, religion was gradually led up, in the advance of the general life of the people and through the inspirations of a series of great men, to the recognition of One Eternal and infinite Being; the Lord of nature and of man, the Father of all mankind, Holy, Just and Gracious; whose truest worship is the aspirations of his children after goodness.
These men were not Arians, for they recoiled in genuine horror from the polytheistic tendencies of Arianism; but they had no logical defence against Arianism, and were willing to see if some modification of it would not give them a foothold of some kind. To men who dreaded the return of Sabellian confusion, Arianism was at least an error in the right direction.
As they did not change the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs; slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property; whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots; nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the actors.
They worshipped the powers of Nature, especially fire, the source of light and heat, which they so much needed in their dreary land. Authorities differ as to their primeval religion, some supposing that it was monotheistic, and others polytheistic, and others again pantheistic.
It was held sacred by them as the abode of some good spirit, and received a certain homage, such as these superstitious, polytheistic people were accustomed to render their gods. As seen from the deck of the steamer. The pleasant surprise it gives the visitor. Impressions regarding new places. The beauties of the city. The limestone caves. Père Louis Hennepin. The population of St. Paul.
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