thesis of an
independent origin; but the simplicity of their earliest beliefs
exhibits an unmistakable resemblance, suggestive of a common source.

"China, India, Egypt, and Greece all agree in the monotheistic type of
their early religion. The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the
popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the Universal God. The odes
compiled by Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the
Supreme Euler. The Vedas speak of 'one unknown true Being, all-present,
all-powerful; the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the universe.'
And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there were still vestiges
of a monotheistic worship. 'The other Egyptians,' he says, 'all made
offerings at the tombs of the sacred beasts; but the inhabitants of the
Thebaid stood alone in making no such offerings, not regarding as a god
anything that can die, and acknowledging no god but one, whom they call
Kneph, who had no birth, and can have no death. Abraham, in his
wanderings, found the God of his fathers known and honored in Salem, in
Gerar, and in Memphis; while at a later day Jethro, in Midian, and
Balaam, in Mesopotamia, were witnesses that the knowledge of Jehovah was
not yet extinct in those countries.'"[130]

Professor Max Mueller speaks in a similar strain of the lapse of mankind
from earlier and simpler types of faith to low and manifold
superstitions: "Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first
beginning," says the distinguished Oxford professor, "we find it free
from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The
founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge,
were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for
truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and
unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom
realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form,
offered often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to
be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more
particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the
foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original
foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the
plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart and matured in his
communings with his God."[131]

But in pursuing our subject we should clearly determine the real
question b