From the science of Anthropology, when rightly viewed as a
whole, has come the greatest aid to those who work to advance
religion rather than to promote any particular system of
theology; for Anthropology and its subsidiary sciences show more
and more that man, since coming upon the earth, has risen, from
the period when he had little, if any, idea of a great power
above him, through successive stages of fetichism, shamanism,
and idolatry, toward better forms of belief, making him more and
more accessible to nobler forms of religion. The same sciences
show, too, within the historic period, the same tendency, and
especially within the events covered by our sacred books, a
progress from fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in
the early Jewish worship as shown in the Old Testament
Scriptures, through polytheism, when Jehovah was but "a god
above all gods," through the period when he was "a jealous
God," capricious and cruel, until he is revealed in such
inspired utterances as those of the nobler Psalms, the great
passages in Isaiah, the sublime preaching of Micah, and, above
all, through the ideal given to the world by Jesus of Nazareth.
Pages:
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590