t; or that we are
sinners--we all know that; but send one to tell us about
salvation."[151] Even Buddhism has not remained true to the atheism of
its founder. A Thibetan Lama said to Abbe Huc: "You must not confound
religious truths with the superstitions of the vulgar. The Tartars
prostrate themselves before whatever they see, but there is one only
Sovereign of the universe, the creator of all things, alike without
beginning and without end."

But what is the testimony of the great dead religions of the past with
respect to a primitive monotheism? It is admitted that the later
developments of the old Egyptian faith were polytheistic. But it has
generally been conceded that as we approach the earliest notices of that
faith, monotheistic features more and more prevail. This position is
contested by Miss Amelia B. Edwards and others, who lean toward the
development theory. Miss Edwards declares that the earliest faith of
Egypt was mere totemism, while on the other hand Ebrard, gathering up
the results of the researches of Lepsius, Ebers, Brugsch, and Emanuel de
Rouge, deduces what seem to be clear evidences of an early Egyptian
monotheism. He quotes Manetho, who declares that "for the first nine
thousand years the god Ptah ruled alone; there was no other." According
to inscriptions quoted by De Rouge, the Egyptians in the primitive
period worshipped "the one being who truly lives, who has made all
things, and who alone has not been made." This one God was known in
different parts of Egypt under different names, which only in later
times came to stand for distinct beings. A text which belongs to a
period fifteen hundred years before Moses says:

"He has made all that is; thou alone art, the millions owe their being
to thee; he is the Lord of all that which is, and of that which is not."
A papyrus now in Paris, dating 2300 B.C., contains quotations from two
much older records, one a writing of the time of King Suffern, about
3500 B.C., which says: "The operation of God is a thing which cannot be
understood." The other, from a writing of Ptah Hotep, about 3000 B.C.,
reads: "This is the command of the God of creation, the peaceable may
come and issue orders.... The eating of bread is in conformity with the
ordinance of God; can one forget that his blessing rests thereupon?...
If thou art a prudent man teach thy son the love of God."[152]

Professor Ernest Naville, in speaking of this same subject in a course
of popular lec