“Every local governor on the way would naturally enough take the hint, and strive not to let the ‘enemies of God’ (for this is the sole title given by Wahabees to all except themselves) go by without spoiling them more or less....

“So that, all counted up, the legal and necessary dues levied on every Persian Shiyaee while traversing Central Arabia, and under Wahabee guidance and protection, amounted, I found, to about one hundred and fifty gold tomans, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling, English, no light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an Arab.”—­Palgrave’s Central and Eastern Africa, p. 161.]

[Footnote 121:  Dodds:  Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, p. 118.]

[Footnote 122:  Church Missionary Intelligencer, November, 1887.]

[Footnote 123:  Church Missionary Intelligencer, February, 1888, p. 66.]

[Footnote 124:  Church Missionary Intelligencer, April, 1888.]

LECTURE VII.

THE TRACES OF A PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM

There are two conflicting theories now in vogue in regard to the origin of religion.  The first is that of Christian theists as taught in the Old and New Testament Scriptures, viz., that the human race in its first ancestry, and again in the few survivors of the Deluge, possessed the knowledge of the true God.  It is not necessary to suppose that they had a full and mature conception of Him, or that that conception excluded the idea of other gods.  No one would maintain that Adam or Noah comprehended the nature of the Infinite as it has been revealed in the history of God’s dealings with men in later times.  But from their simple worship of one God their descendants came gradually to worship various visible objects with which they associated their blessings—­the sun as the source of warmth and vitality, the rain as imparting a quickening power to the earth, the spirits of ancestors to whom they looked with a special awe, and finally a great variety of created things instead of the invisible Creator.  The other theory is that man, as we now behold him, has been developed from lower forms of animal life, rising first to the state of a mere human animal, but gradually acquiring intellect, conscience, and finally a soul;—­that ethics and religion have been developed from instinct by social contact, especially by ties of family and the tribal relation; that altruism which began with the instinctive care of parents for their offspring, rose to the higher domain of religion and began to recognize the claims of deity; that God, if there be a God, never revealed himself to man by any preternatural means, but that great souls, like Moses, Isaiah, and Plato, by their higher and clearer insight, have gained loftier views of deity than others, and as prophets and teachers have made known their inspirations to their fellow-men.  Gradually they have formed rituals and elaborated philosophies, adding such supernatural elements as the ignorant fancy of the masses was supposed to demand.