Thus, in ultimate analysis, we see that all the sacred objects of the world are either dead men themselves, as corpse, mummy, ghost, or god; or else the tomb where such men are buried; or else the temple, shrine, or hut which covers the tomb; or else the tombstone, altar, image, or statue, standing over it and representing the ghost; or else the stake, idol, or household god which is fashioned as their deputy; or else the tree which grows above the barrow; or else the well, or tank, or spring, natural or artificial, by whose side the dead man has been laid to rest. In one form or another, from beginning to end, we find only, in Mr. William Simpson’s graphic phrase, “the Worship of Death,” as the basis and root of all human religion.
|WE { 154}have now completed our preliminary survey of the nature and origin of Gods in general. We have seen how men first came to believe in the objective existence of these powerful and invisible beings, how they learnt to invest them with majestic attributes, and how they grew to worship them under the various forms of mummies or boulders, stone or wooden idols, trees or stumps, wells, rivers, and fountains. In short, we have briefly arrived at the origin of Polytheism. We have now to go on to our second question--How from the belief in many gods did men progress to the belief in one single God, the creator and upholder of all things? Our task is now to reconstruct the origin of Monotheism.
But Monotheism bases itself entirely upon the great God of the Hebrews. To him, therefore, we must next address ourselves. Is he too resoluble, as I hinted before, into a Sacred Stone, the monument and representative of some prehistoric chieftain? Can we trace the origin of the Deity of Christendom till we find him at last in a forgotten Semitic ghost of the earliest period?
The chief Hebrew god Jahweh, when we first catch a passing glimpse of his primitive worship by his own people, was but one among a number of competing deities, mostly, it would appear, embodied by their votaries in the visible form of stone or wooden pillars, and adored by a small group of loosely-connected tribes among the mountain region in the southwest of Syria. The confederacy among { 155}whom he dwelt knew themselves as the Sons of Israel; they regarded Jahweh as their principal god, much as the Greeks did Zeus, or the early Teutons their national hero Woden. But a universal tradition among them bore witness to the fact that they had once lived in a subject condition in Egypt, the house of bondage, and that their god Jahweh had been instrumental in leading them thence into the rugged land they inhabited throughout the whole historical period, between the valley of Jordan and the Mediterranean coast. So consistent and so definite was this traditional belief that we can hardly regard it otherwise than as enclosing a kernel of truth; and not only do Kuenen and other Semitic scholars of the present day admit it as genuine, but the Egyptologists also seem generally to allow its substantial accuracy and full accord with hieroglyphic literature. This sojourn in Egypt cannot have failed to influence to some extent the Semitic strangers: therefore I shall begin my quest of the Hebrew god among the Egyptian monuments. Admitting that he was essentially in all respects a deity of the true Semitic pattern, I think it will do us good to learn a little beforehand about the people among whom his votaries dwelt so long, especially as the history of the Egyptian cults affords us perhaps the best historical example of the growth and development of a great national religion.