Suds is a brief outline of the possibility: knowability and fact of revelation,— the all hnpottant elements of revealed religion of the Old Testament and the New.
Bibliography.-A- Ottiger,
IL Natural Religion.— Under this •heading will be treated religion as it is found in the history of peoples who 'have not accepted the Bible, the inspired Word of God to the human race. These various forms of religions belief are all degenerations from primitive revelation. In some is found the pantheistic tendency of identifying subject and object; most are theistic in separating the worshipper from the object worshipped. These theistic cults are at times monotheistic, though generally polytheistic. Monotheism is the worship of one Supreme Power. Polytheism is the worship of many gods. In polytheistic religions, the Supreme Power is found to have degenerated into an obscure form, which faintly preserves the unity and supremacy of the All Father of monothe ism. Sometimes the relic of the Supreme Power of primitive revelation may be marked in what Max Muller calls hestotheism, the sin gling out of a particular god for a seemingly monotheistic reverence. By such henotheistic praises, Sumerian hymns extol Marduk and Sin with the attributes usually assigned to vari ous other deities. A second obscure form of the Supreme Power is the chief of the gods, the Prytonis or president of the assembly of immortals, as Zeus in Homeric theogony; or, again, the dimmed Power called Fate, which in Greek classic tragedy controls both gods and men. Finally the Supreme Power, in the Upan ishads of India, has been vaporized into an all-pervading, pantheistic Spirit Modern pan theism has evolved this all-pervading Spirit into a completely evaporated, ethereal and gen erally impersonal Being,— the Absolute, which is all that is, and apart from which is naught that is.
Rationalistic historians of religion assume that all these various forms of monotheism, henotheism, polytheism, pantheism, are an evo lution of the consciousness or emotion of man that has been due to sociological or ether en vironment. They deny that the Personal Deity has revealed Himself to man; scout the very idea that all forms of pawn cults are mere degenerations from primitive revelation; and try to explain as purely natural the worship of a Supreme Power which must be admitted to be universal, be it never so obscured and vapor ized.
1. Theories of the Origin of Religion.- The chief theories, whereby rationalists strive to explain the empirical fact of an universal cult of a Supreme Power, are animism, totem ism and magic. These theories all start from a false assumption. It is assumed that the present state of civilization and religion has resulted from evolution. Primitive man was a brutish cave dweller; and from a neolithie state he has been evolved into that of culture. The religion of cultured man is in like manner an evolution from primitive forms. Hence the lower its civilization the nearer is a race to primitive religion. One must study religion as it is in savage peoples in order to come near to the primitive religion of mankind. All this is groundless assumption and progressive asser tion. Fiction is proposed as fact; emphasis takes the place of logical reasoning.
The Biblical narrative of the creation of man with at least a normal intellectual equipment, and of the descent of the human race from the created pair, is the only authoritative witness we have about primitive man, and stands the test of all argument based upon whatsoever facts the spade has upturned and literature has preserved. There is absolutely no proof that a prehistoric, neolithic man ever existed. The Neanderthal man and other abnormalities of such sort have turned out to be nothing. more than mere degenerations. Profane history takes us back about 7,000 years, and no farther. Bible history takes us back farther, even to the beginning of the race, but not in the form of chronology. Early traditions, as handed down by Genesis, are not chronological history; but only a popular narrative of the story of man and of God's revelation of Him self to matt. How long intervened between the creation of man and the beginning of pro fane history we have no idea. Thousands of years may be allowed for the evolution of the linguistic, sociological and ethnological differ ences that separated the races at the time pro fane history begins. The process of this evo lution is enwrapped in mystery. We can only argue from the facts to hand.