(d) The well-nigh universal tradition of a golden age of virtue and happiness may be most easily explained upon the Scripture view of an actual creation of the race in holiness and its subsequent apostasy.
For references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 115; Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:205—“In Hesiod we have the legend of a golden age under the lordship of Chronos, when man was free from cares and toils, in untroubled youth and cheerfulness, with a superabundance of the gifts which the earth furnished of itself; the race was indeed not immortal, but it experienced death even as a soft sleep.” We may add that capacity for religious truth depends upon moral conditions. Very early races therefore have a purer faith than the later ones. Increasing depravity makes it harder for the later generations to exercise faith. The wisdom-literature may have been very early instead of very late, just as monotheistic ideas are clearer the further we go back. Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 171—“Precisely because such tribes [Australian and African savages] have been deficient in average moral quality, have they failed to march upward on the road of civilization with the rest of mankind, and have fallen into these bog holes of savage degradation.” On petrified civilizations, see Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 433-439—“The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law?” On retrogressive development in nature, see Weismann, Heredity, 2:1-30. But see also Mary E. Case, “Did the Romans Degenerate?” in Internat. Journ. Ethics. Jan. 1893:165-182, in which it is maintained that the Romans made constant advances rather. Henry Sumner Maine calls the Bible [pg 531]the most important single document in the history of sociology, because it exhibits authentically the early development of society from the family, through the tribe, into the nation,—a progress learned only by glimpses, intervals, and survivals of old usages in the literature of other nations.
2nd. That the religious history of mankind warrants us in inferring a necessary and universal law of progress, in accordance with which man passes from fetichism to polytheism and monotheism,—this first theological stage, of which fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism are parts, being succeeded by the metaphysical stage, and that in turn by the positive.
This theory is propounded by Comte, in his Positive Philosophy, English transl., 25, 26, 515-636—“Each branch of our knowledge passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.... The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding; and the third is its fixed and definite state. The second is merely a state of transition. In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes, the origin and purpose, of all effects—in short, absolute knowledge—supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings. In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities, that is, personified abstractions, inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena. What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a mere reference of each to its proper entity. In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws—that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance.... The theological system arrived at its highest perfection when it substituted the providential action of a single Being for the varied operations of numerous divinities. In the last stage of the metaphysical system, men substituted one great entity, Nature, as the cause of all phenomena, instead of the multitude of entities at first supposed. In the same way the ultimate perfection of the positive system would be to represent all phenomena as particular aspects of a single general fact—such as Gravitation, for instance.”
This assumed law of progress, however, is contradicted by the following facts:
(a) Not only did the monotheism of the Hebrews precede the great polytheistic systems of antiquity, but even these heathen religions are purer from polytheistic elements, the further back we trace them; so that the facts point to an original monotheistic basis for them all.
The gradual deterioration of all religions, apart from special revelation and influence from God, is proof that the purely evolutionary theory is defective. The most natural supposition is that of a primitive revelation, which little by little receded from human memory. In Japan, Shinto was originally the worship of Heaven. The worship of the dead, the deification of the Mikado, etc., were a corruption and aftergrowth. The Mikado's ancestors, instead of coming from heaven, came from Korea. Shinto was originally a form of monotheism. Not one of the first emperors was deified after death. Apotheosis of the Mikados dated from the corruption of Shinto through the importation of Buddhism. Andrew Lang, in his Making of Religion, advocates primitive monotheism. T. G. Pinches, of the British Museum, 1894, declares that, as in the earliest Egyptian, so in the early Babylonian records, there is evidence of a primitive monotheism. Nevins, Demon-Possession, 170-173, quotes W. A. P. Martin, President of the Peking University, as follows: “China, India, Egypt and Greece all agree in the monotheistic type of their early religion. The Orphic Hymns, long before the advent of the popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the universal God. The odes compiled by Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the Supreme Ruler. The Vedas speak of ‘one unknown true Being, all-present, all-powerful, the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the Universe.’ And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there were still vestiges of a monotheistic worship.”
On the evidences of an original monotheism, see Max Müller, Chips, 1:337; Rawlinson, in Present Day Tracts, 2: no. 11; Legge, Religions of China, 8, 11; Diestel, in Jahrbuch [pg 532]für deutsche Theologie, 1860, and vol. 5:669; Philip Smith, Anc. Hist. of East, 65, 195; Warren, on the Earliest Creed of Mankind, in the Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1884.
(b) “There is no proof that the Indo-Germanic or Semitic stocks ever practiced fetich worship, or were ever enslaved by the lowest types of mythological religion, or ascended from them to somewhat higher” (Fisher).
See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 545; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 36-115. Herbert Spencer once held that fetichism was primordial. But he afterwards changed his mind, and said that the facts proved to be exactly the opposite when he had become better acquainted with the ideas of savages; see his Principles of Sociology, 1:343. Mr. Spencer finally traced the beginnings of religion to the worship of ancestors. But in China no ancestor has ever become a god; see Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 304-313. And unless man had an inborn sense of divinity, he could deify neither ancestors nor ghosts. Professor Hilprecht of Philadelphia says: “As the attempt has recently been made to trace the pure monotheism of Israel to Babylonian sources, I am bound to declare this an absolute impossibility, on the basis of my fourteen years' researches in Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions. The faith of Israel's chosen people is: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.’ And this faith could never have proceeded from the Babylonian mountain of gods, that charnel-house full of corruption and dead men's bones.”