e history of Israel and
of the Christian Church to see all these tendencies continually at work,
and only held in check by innumerable interventions of Divine
Providence, and of that Spirit which is always striving with man.

Scant, however, as may be the amount of direct worship accorded to the
Supreme God, compared with that received by subordinate spiritual
powers, yet it is _sui generis_, and of an infinitely higher order. The
familiar distinction of _latria_ and _dulia_ seems to obtain everywhere;
as also that between _Elohim_ and _Javeh_, that is, between supernal
beings in general, and the Supreme Being who is also supernal. Yet so
excessive in quantity is the secondary cultus compared with the primary,
that an outsider may well be pardoned for thinking that there is nothing
beyond what meets the eye on every side. As has been said, the Supreme
Being alone is usually considered above the weakness of caring for
sacrifice, or for external worship in "temples made with hands." His
name is commonly tabooed, only to be whispered in those mysteries of
initiation which are met with so universally. Outside these mysteries He
may only be spoken of in parables and myths, grotesque, irreverent,
designed to conceal rather than to reveal. But rarely is there an image
or an altar to this unknown God.

It is easy for those who recognize no other religion among savages
behind the popular observances and cults which are so much to the front,
to believe that early religion is non-ethical. For indeed, for the most
part, all this secondary cultus is directed to the mitigation of the
moral code and the substitution of exterior for interior sacrifice. It
is the result of an endeavour to compound with conscience; and to hide
away sins from the all-seeing eye. Again it is chiefly in the secrecy of
the mysteries that the higher ethical doctrine is propounded--a doctrine
usually covering all the substantials of the decalogue; and in some
cases, approaching the Christian summary of the same under the one
heading of love and unselfishness. As for the corrupt lives of savages,
if it proves their religion to be non-ethical, what should we have to
think of Christianity? We cry out in horror against cannibalism as the
_ne plus ultra_ of wickedness., but except so far as it involves murder,
it is hard to find in it more than a violation of our own convention,
while a mystical mind might find more to say for it than for cremation.
Certainly it i