CHAPTER I. THE UNITY OF GOD. "Thou believest that there is one God," James, ii, 19. "That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element; To which the whole creation moves. -Tennyson. THE germ of the oak as it pushes its way up through the clod does not closely resemble the gigantic tree which in later years it will become, and yet a naturalist who has watched the growth of oaks finds in the germ the promise and potency of the full grown tree. Something like this is true of the idea of God. The human mind in its childhood could not grasp the sublime thought that in all this complex world there is but one God, and yet in his childish and crude way primitive man unconsciously gave expression to the great principle of the divine unity. Not that primitive man was monotheistic, for that can no longer be maintained, nor can we longer think with Renan that the Semitic people even had a genius for monotheism. The study of comparative religion has rendered both these views untenable. But primitive men, both Semites and others, were henotheists-they believed in one god only for their tribe. That god was its spiritual chief, its father, its cherisher, its defender. While the god was mainly thought to be interested in the tribe as a whole, each individual as an atom of the tribal unity shared in the god's interest and life. This tribe was the individual's little world. Within it life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were assured him; outside of it he had no rights and, if he found life at all, it was the agonizing existence of a slave. Within the little world of primitive man, then, one god ruled; under him all tribesmen were brothers, for in some rude sense one god was their father. Monotheism has but enlarged this conception and applied it to the world. We now see that one God is the father of all men, and that all men are brethren. The primitive tribe is expanded and has become coextensive with the human race; its home is no longer some oasis in the Arabian desert, some mountain fastness in India, some marsh in Babylonia, or some island in the sea, but the whole round world with all its variety of sea and land, frigid poles and luxuriant tropics, bleak mountain. and fertile dale, all illuminated with sun, moon and myriads of stars. Its deity is no longer thought to be limited in power and activity to some insignificant corner of a small land, but is seen to rule the universe as far as the most powerful telescope can carry human vision or imagination wing the thought of man. The ancient unity of the tribe has become the unity of the universe. The history of this expansion is the history of human progress and civilization. It has come through conquest, syncretism, polytheism; through sacrifice, devotion, deep thought, errors and revelation. Israel, at first a group of henotheistic tribes, was given before all others the practical conception of the unity of God and of the world, and began the work of teaching the great truth to others. The conceptions of Israel were completed by Jesus Christ, whose |