. 6.]

[Footnote 13: _Short Introduction to History of Ancient Israel_, pp.
83, 84.]

[Footnote 14: Stade i 403.]

[Footnote 15: Stade, i. 406.]

[Footnote 16: Wellhausen, _History of Israel_, p. 437. Mr. Oxford's book
is only noticed here because it is meant for a popular manual. As Mr.
Henry Foker says, 'it seems a pity that the clergy should interfere in
these matters.']

[Footnote 17: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 299.]

[Footnote 18: II. 127.]

[Footnote 19: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 331.]

[Footnote 20: Mariner, ii. 205.]

[Footnote 21: Op. cit. p. 335.]

[Footnote 22: Of course, it in understood that Israel (in the dark
backward and abysm of time) may also have been totemistic, like the
Australians, as texts pointed out by Mr. Robertson Smith seem to hint.
There was also worship of teraphim, respect paid to stones and trees, and
so forth.]

[Footnote 23: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 349.]

[Footnote 24: P. 351.]

[Footnote 25: _History of Israel_, p. 443 note.]

[Footnote 26: _Religion of Semites_.]

[Footnote 27: _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, i. 180.]

[Footnote 28: _Histoire du Peuple d'Israel_, citing Schrader, p. 23.]

[Footnote 29: Op. cit. p. 85]

[Footnote 30: See Professor Robertson's _Early Religion of Israel_ for a
list of these conjectures, and, generally, for criticisms of the
occasional vagaries of critics.]

XVII

CONCLUSION

We may now glance backward at the path which we have tried to cut through
the jungles of early religions. It is not a highway, but the track
of a solitary explorer; and this essay pretends to be no more than a
sketch--not an exhaustive survey of creeds. Its limitations are obvious,
but may here be stated. The higher and even the lower polytheisms are only
alluded to in passing, our object being to keep well in view the
conception of a Supreme, or practically Supreme, Being, from the lowest
stages of human culture up to Christianity. In polytheism that conception
is necessarily obscured, showing itself dimly either in the _Prytanis_,
or President of the Immortals, such as Zeus; or in Fate, behind and above
the Immortals; or in Mr. Max Mueller's _Henotheism_, where the god
addressed--Indra, or Soma, or Agni--is, for the moment, envisaged as
supreme, and is adored in something like a monotheistic spirit; or,
finally, in the etherealised deity of advanced philosophic speculation.

It has not been necessary, for our purpose,