p. 7 | MONOTHEISM INDIGENOUS by Albert H. Darrow

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 27, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 13.

MONOTHEISM INDIGENOUS.

By Albert H. Darrow

SKEPTICAL philosophers, the world over, have diligently taught that the human race, in its progress upward from savagery to civilization, has passed thru successive stages of fetishism, idolatry, and polytheism, to belief in one God, supreme and almighty.

When it is shown that the very earliest traces of religious faith abound in evidences of monotheistic ideas, these claims are seen to be baseless.

Professor Draper quotes the following statements from the Rig Veda:

"There is in truth but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the universe, whose work is the universe," "the God above all gods, who created the earth, the heavens, the waters."—"History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," p. 43.

"The religion of the Vedas knows no idols," says Prof. Max Müller. "The worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a degradation of the more primitive worship."

Says the Duke of Argyll:

"We have found in the most ancient records of the Aryan language proof that the indications of religious thought are higher, simpler, and purer as we go back in time, until at last, in the very oldest compositions of human speech which have come down to us, we find the Divine Being spoken of in the sublime language which forms the opening of the Lord's Prayer."

The American Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, p. 463, says:

"In the early days, the Egyptians worshiped one only God, the Maker of all things, without beginning and without end. To the last the priests preserved this doctrine and taught it privately to a select few."

Of "the religion of the barbarian Europeans," Professor Draper says that it "was in many respects like that of the American Indians. They recognized a Great Spirit—omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent."

Mr. Ridpath does not believe in this original monotheism. To him the evidence is not conclusive. He says: "Undoubtedly, there are traces of a monotheistic faith in the ritual and other religious books of the Egyptian priesthood; but such traces are dim, not definite. Without doubt the Egyptian recognized a Creator, and was wont to worship Him as the highest God. A Memphian obelisk now in the British Museum declares: Ptah to have been 'the only unbegotten begetter in the heavens and on the earth.' Here there seems to be a close approximation

to monotheistic description."—"History of the World," Vol. 6, pp. 530, 531.

Again he says:

"The study of the mythology of the Aryan nations has led investigators not a few to the belief that the first concepts of the peoples of these races were also monotheistic. Max Müller, perhaps more than any other, has urged this view upon the attention of English-speaking people. His study of the Vedas and general investigation of the laws and phenomena of linguistic change has led him to conclude that the primitive inhabitants of India, as well as those of Persia and Greece and Rome, believed originally in a single Father of heaven, beneath whom all the other powers of nature were set in subordination."—Id., Vol. 5, pp. 307, 308.

Altho this writer, as usual, has recourse to evolution to explain the original monotheism of Peru, he nevertheless admits that in the Peruvian system—which he declares to have been the least decadent aboriginal religious system in America—

"There was one Supreme Spirit, called Pachacamac. He was the Creator and Governor, not only of the whole world, but of the heavens. He was invisible, spiritual, supreme. Of Him there might be no image, and to Him—of old time—no temple might be properly erected. Only the sun on high was a fit representative of the great God of the race. The religion of the Incas, thus sublime in its primary concepts, became at length sun-worship."—Vol. 8, p. 564.

All of the writers whom we have quoted seem to agree on these two points: That all nations and tribes of antiquity which have preserved any records — written, monumental, or traditional — of their early history, were believers in one Supreme God; and that later they still preserved traces of their original monotheistic conceptions, altho adding to their pantheon lesser deities until they eventually became polytheists.

Many other writers of eminence, whom we can not here quote for want of space, confirm these opinions. They all testify to the decadence of religious faith and degradation of original purity, in the mental concepts as well as the moral practice of religionists in ancient and modern times; and we have but to open our eyes to observe this decadence and degradation going on around us.

Since the North American Indians, the Peruvians, the Aztecs, the ancient peoples of northern Europe, Greece, Rome, Persia, India, and Egypt were believers in one God, we have but to accept the evidence of our senses and the testimony of the most competent writers as to the facts of religious decadence, and then prolong the vision backward, and we shall thus see the gradual substitution of polytheism, idolatry, and fetishism, for that original monotheism which Jehovah, in the beginning, established and made indigenous to the soil of this whole earth. And in so doing, we shall effectually banish from our minds the evolutionary hypothesis, with all of its baneful shadows.

ALBERT H. DARROW.