d reluctant
conclusion, we must confess that the one-sided progress, with whose
all-sufficiency we are so thoroughly satisfied, is making straight for
the extermination, not only of religion, but of morality in any received
sense of the term.

But when Mr. Lang, who has no hypothesis of his own as to the origin of
belief in God, brings the animistic theory to an _a posteriori_ test, he
finds it encumbered with still greater difficulties; for nothing is as,
_a priori_, it ought to be.

While Mr. Tylor asserts "that no savage tribe of monotheists has ever
been known," but that all ascribe the attributes of deity to other
beings than the Almighty Creator, it appears in fact that many of the
rudest savages "are as monotheistic as some Christians. They have a
Supreme Being, and the 'distinctive attributes of deity' are not by them
assigned to other beings further than as Christianity assigns them to
angels, saints, the devil," &c. Catholics at least will readily
understand how hastily and unjustly the charge of polytheism is made by
the protestantized mind against any religion which believes in a
Heavenly Court as well as in a Heavenly Monarch. "Of the existence of a
belief in a Supreme Being" amongst the lowest savages, "there is as good
evidence as we possess for any fact in the ethnographic region. It is
certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers and
missionaries, have again and again recognized our God in theirs."

If, therefore, belief in God grew out of belief in ghosts, it must have
been in some stage of culture lower than any of which we have experience
so far; and at some period which belongs to the region of hypothesis and
conjecture. There are no known tribes where ghosts are worshipped and
God is not known, or where the supposed process of development can be
watched in action. Nor is it only that links are missing, but one of the
very terms to be connected, namely, a godless race, is conjectural.
Still more unfortunate is it for the animists that evidence points to
the fact that advance in civilization often means the decay of
monotheism, and that the ruder races are the purer in their religious
and ethical conceptions. Once more, all facts are against the theory
that tribes transfer their earthly polity to the heavenly city; for
monotheism is found where monarchy is unknown. "God cannot be a
reflection from human kings where there are no kings; nor a president
elected out of a polytheis