d cannot
therefore be counted among those which have made a partition of the
religious world. For this reason, perhaps, it has retained to this day
its ancient denomination, derived from the tribe or country of its
origin; whereas the others are named from a Faith or a Founder. The
word Nazarene, denoting the birthplace of Christianity, which is said
to be still used in that region, was, as we know, very speedily
superseded by its wider title, as the Creed broke out of local limits
and was proclaimed universal.

There has evidently been a fore-time, though it is prehistorical,
when, so far as we know, mankind was universally polytheistic; when
innumerable rites and worships prevailed without restraint, springing
up and contending with each other like the trees in a primeval forest,
reflecting a primitive and precarious condition of human society. I
take polytheism to have been, in this earliest stage, the wild growth
of superstitious imagination, varied indefinitely by the pressure of
circumstance, by accident, by popular caprice, or by the good or evil
fortunes of the community. In this stage it can now be seen among
barbarous tribes--as, for instance, in Central Africa. And some traces
of it still survive, under different pretexts and disguises, in the
lowest strata of civilised nations, where it may be said to represent
the natural reluctance of the vagrant human fancy to be satisfied with
higher forms and purer conceptions that are always imperfectly
assimilated by the multitude.

Among primitive societies the spheres of human and divine affairs
were intermixed and identical; they could not be disentangled. But
with the growth of political institutions came gradual separation, or
at any rate the subordination of religion to the practical necessities
of orderly government and public morals. That polytheism can exist and
flourish in the midst of a highly intellectual and civilised society,
we know from the history of Greece and Rome. But in ancient Greece its
direct influence upon political affairs seems to have been slight;
though it touched at some points upon morality. The function of the
State, according to Greek ideas, was to legislate for all the
departments of human life and to uphold the moral standard. The law
prohibited sacrilege and profanity; it punished open impiety that
might bring down divine wrath upon the people at large. The
philosophers taught rational ethics; they regarded the popular
superstiti