It is not contended that no revivals or reforms are possible in heathenism.  There have been many of these, but with all allowance for spasmodic efforts, the general drift has been always downward.[164] There is a natural disposition among men to multiply objects of worship.  Herbert Spencer’s principle, that development proceeds from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is certainly true of the religions of the world; but his other principle, that development proceeds from the incoherent to the coherent, does not apply.  Incoherency and moral chaos mark the trend of all man-made faiths.  The universal tendency to deterioration is well summed up as follows by Professor Naville: 

“Traces are found almost everywhere in the midst of idolatrous superstitions, of a religion comparatively pure and often stamped with a lofty morality.  Paganism is not a simple fact; it offers to view in the same bed two currents (like the Arve and the Arveiron)—­the one pure, the other impure.  What is the relation between these two currents? ...  Did humanity begin with a coarse fetishism, and thence rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions?  Do the traces of a comparatively pure monotheism first show themselves in the recent periods of idolatry?  Contemporary science inclines more and more to answer in the negative.  It is in the most ancient historical ground that the laborious investigators of the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion.  Cut to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few years afterward.  In place of the tree cut down you will find coppice-wood; the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided among a multitude of shoots.  This comparison expresses well enough the opinion which tends to prevail among our savants on the subject of the historical development of religions.  The idea of one God is at the roots—­it is primitive; polytheism is derivative."[165]

We have thus far drawn our proofs of man’s polytheistic tendencies from the history of the non-Christian religions.  In proof of the same general tendency we now turn to the history of the Israelites, the chosen people of God.  We may properly appeal to the Bible as history, especially when showing idolatrous tendencies even under the full blaze of the truth.  In spite of the supernatural revelation which they claimed to possess—­notwithstanding all their instructions, warnings, promises, deliverances, divinely aided conquests—­they relapsed into idolatry again and again.  Ere they had reached the land of promise they had begun to make images of the gods of Egypt.  They made constant compromises and alliances with the Canaanites, and not even severe judgments could withhold them from this downward drift.  Their wisest king was demoralized by heathen marriages, and his successors openly patronized the heathen shrines.  The abominations of Baal worship and the nameless vices of Sodom were practised under the very shadow of the Temple.[166] Judgments followed upon this miserable degeneracy.  Prophets were sent with repeated warnings, and many were slain for their faithful messages.  Tribe after tribe was borne into captivity, the Temple was destroyed, and at last the nation was virtually broken up and scattered abroad.