[102]. T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 28.
[103]. History of Israel, vol. i. pp. 41, 47.
[104]. Gifford Lectures, Natural Religion, p. 563.
[105]. It is significant that in the beginning of the Bible Nature-worship seems stamped as accursed in its symbol, the serpent, and that the whole Bible from beginning to end is a Divine protest against that worship in all its forms. Mankind in all ages is tempted to become as the gods, and in a low condition he has almost everywhere succumbed to the temptation. He feasts his gods, compels them to serve him, is really higher than they, and thus he degrades himself or falls from the ideal of one made in the image and after the likeness of God.
[106]. Ewald, History of Israel, vol. i. pp. 320-322.
[107]. Some ascribe it to the Deuteronomist, ch. vi. 4.
[108]. Professor Müller finds the first traces of a Maker or Creator in the Vedic deity Tvashtar, the carpenter—the clever workman, even smith, forging bolts for Indra therein, Rig-Ved. iii. 55. 19. “Tvashtar, the enlivener, endowed with many forms, has nourished the creatures and produced them in many ways; all these worlds are his.” Of another god, latterly called Pragâpati, he quotes Rig-Ved. x. 81. 2, as one who, “creating the earth, disclosed the sky by his power.” Very significantly, however, he reminds us that the same poet loses the idea, and speaks of the secret of creation as undiscoverable.—Müller’s Natural Religion, p. 245. Also Introd. to Upanishads, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. xxiv.
[109]. Fairbairn, Religion in History and in the Life of To-day, pp. 39-51.
[110]. It was only by their very highest and greatest souls that the Godhead was conceived in anything of its spiritual glory. To Abraham God was the Creator, distinct from and greater than the earth and heavens which He had made; to Moses He was a righteous Lawgiver, training upon eagle-wings a peculiar people; to David He was a tender and wise Shepherd of a foolish and helpless flock; to Isaiah and the later prophets a Father dealing with rebellious people, whom He pities, knowing whereof they were made. These conceptions, however, cannot be said to have been those of the mass of the people.
[111]. Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religion, Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 187.