and to be ‘rounded with a sleep’ was the final consummation devoutly to be desired.
Monotheism developed itself later, partly from the feeling of the unity of nature forcing itself on the more philosophical minds; partly from that feeling of reverence and awe in presence of the Unknown which swallowed up other conceptions; and partly, in the earlier stages, from the feeling which exalted the local god of the tribe or nation, first into a supremacy over other gods, and finally into sole supremacy, degrading all other gods into the category of dumb idols made by human hands. In the Old Testament we can trace the development of this latter idea in its successive stages. Until the later days of the Jewish monarchy it is evident that the Jews never doubted the existence of other gods; and their allegiance oscillated between Jehovah and the heathen deities symbolised by the golden calf, worshipped in high places, and contending for the mastership in the rival sacrifices of Elijah and the priests of Baal. But the prophetic element gradually introduced higher ideas, and in the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah the worship of Jehovah as the sole God became the religion of the State; and old legends and documents were re-edited in this sense in the sacred book, which was discovered and published for the first time in the reign of the latter king. The subsequent misfortunes of the nation, their captivity and contact with other religions in Babylonia, strengthened this monotheism into an ardent, passionate national faith, as it has continued to be with this remarkable people up to the present day. Christianity and Mahometanism, children of Judaism, have spread this form of faith over a great part of the civilised world; and of the three theories of polytheism, pantheism, and monotheism, it may be said that only the two latter survive.
Polytheism was bound to perish first, for slow as the advance of science was, the uniformity of most of the phenomena, which had been attributed to so many separate gods, could not fail to make an impression; and as ideas of morality came slowly and tardily to be evolved as an element of religion, the cruel rites and scandalous fables which so generally accompanied polytheistic religions became shocking to an awakening conscience.