troopers of the tribe of Dan then kidnapped this valuable young
Levite, and seized a few idols which Micah had permitted himself to make.
And all this, according to our clerical authority, is evidence for
ancestor-worship![13]

All this appears to be derived from some incoherent speculations of Stade.
For example, that learned German cites the story of Micah as a proof that
the different tribes or clans had different religions. This _must_ be so,
because the Danites asked the young Levite whether it was not better to be
priest to a clan than to an individual? It is as if a patron offered a
rich living to somebody's private chaplain, saying that the new position
was more creditable and lucrative. This would hardly prove a difference of
religion between the individual and the parish.[14]

Mr. Oxford next avers that 'the earliest form of the Israelite religion
was Fetishism or Totemism.' This is another example of Stade's logic.
Finding, as he believes, names suggestive of Totemism in Simeon, Levi,
Rachel, and so on, Stade leaps to the conclusion that Totemism in Israel
was prior to anything resembling monotheism. For monotheism, he argues,
could not give the germs of the clan or tribal organisation, while Totemism
could do so. Certainly it could, but as, in many regions (America,
Australia), we find Totemism and the belief in a benevolent Supreme Being
co-existing among savages, when first observed by Europeans, we cannot
possibly say dogmatically whether a rough monotheism or whether Totemism
came first in order of evolution. This holds as good of Israel (if once
totemistic) as it does of Pawnees or Kurnai. Stade has overlooked these
well-known facts, and his opinion filters into a cheap hand-book, and is
set in examinations![15]

We also learn from Mr. Oxford's popular manual of German Biblical
conjecture that 'Jehovah was not represented as a loving Father, but as a
Being easily roused to wrath,' a thing most incident to loving fathers.

Again, Mr. Oxford avers that 'the old Israelites knew no distinction
between physical and moral evil.... The conception of Jehovah's holiness
had nothing moral in it' (p. 90). This rather contradicts Wellhausen: 'In
all ancient primitive peoples ... religion furnishes a motive for law and
morals; in the case of none did it become so with such purity and power as
in that of the Israelites.'[16]

We began by examining Mr. Huxley's endeavours to find traces of
ancestor-worship (in his