The God-Idea of the Ancients | Page 5

that, through this immense range the same religious notions reappear in
various places under various modifications, as might be expected; and that there is not a
greater difference between the tenets and worship of the Hindoos and the Greeks than
exists between the churches of Home and Geneva.
Concerning the universality of certain religious beliefs and opinions, Faber, commenting
upon the above statement of Wilford, observes that, immense as is this territorial range, it
is by far too limited to include the entire phenomenon, that the observation
"applies with equal propriety to the entire habitable globe; for the arbitrary rites and
opinions of every pagan nation bear so close a resemblance to each other, that such a
coincidence can only have been produced by their having had a common origin.
Barbarism itself has not been able to efface the strong primeval impression. Vestiges of
the ancient general system may be traced in the recently discovered islands in the Pacific
Ocean; and, when the American world was first opened to the hardy adventurers of
Europe, its inhabitants from north to south venerated, with kindred ceremonies and
kindred notions, the gods of Egypt and Hindostan, of Greece and Italy, of Phoenicia and
Britain."[1]
[1] Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. i.
"Though each religion has its own peculiar growth, the seed from which they spring is
everywhere the same."[2]

[2] Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 48.
The question as to whether the identity of conception and the similarity in detail observed
in religious rites, ceremonies, and symbols in the various countries of the globe are due to
the universal law of unity which governs human development, or whether, through the
dispersion of one original people, the early conceptions of a Deity were spread broadcast
over the entire earth, is perhaps not settled; yet, from the facts which have been brought
forward during the last century, the latter theory seems altogether probable, such
divergence in religious ideas as is observed among the various peoples of the earth being
attributable to variations in temperament caused by changed conditions of life. In other
words, the divergence in the course of religious development has doubtless been due to
environment.
In an attempt to understand the history of the growth of the god-idea, the fact should be
borne in mind that, from the earliest conception of a creative force in the animal and
vegetable world to the latest development in theological speculation, there has never been
what might consistently be termed a new religion. On the contrary, religion like
everything else is subject to the law of growth; therefore the faiths of to-day are the
legitimate result, or outcome, of the primary idea of a Deity developed in accordance
with the laws governing the peculiar instincts which have been in the ascendancy during
the life of mankind on the earth.
The erroneous impression which under a belief in the unknown has come to prevail,
namely, that the moral law is the result of religion; or, in other words, that the human
conscience is in some manner dependent on supernaturalism for its origin and
maintenance, is, with a better and clearer understanding of the past history of the
development of the human race, being gradually dispelled. On one point we may
reasonably rest assured that the knowledge of right and wrong and our sense of justice
and right-living have been developed quite independently of all religious beliefs. The
moral law embodied in the golden rule is not an outgrowth of mysticism, or of man's
notions of the unknowable; but, on the contrary, is the result of experience, and was
formulated in response to a recognized law of human necessity,--a law which involves
the fundamental principle of progress. The history of human development shows
conclusively that mankind GREW into the recognition of the moral law, that through
sympathy, or a desire for the welfare of others,--a character which had its root in maternal
affection,--conscience and the moral sense were evolved.
While the moral law and the conscience may not be accounted as in any sense the result
of man's ideas concerning the unknowable, neither can the errors and weaknesses
developed in human nature be regarded as the result of religion. Although the sexual
excesses which during three or four thousand years were practiced as sacred rites, and
treated as part and parcel of religion in various parts of the world, have had the effect to
stimulate and strengthen the animal nature in man, yet these rites may not be accounted
as the primary cause of the supremacy of the lower nature over the higher faculties. On
the contrary, the impulse which has been termed religion, with all the vagaries which its
history presents, is to be regarded more as an effect than as a cause. The stage of