f all man-made faiths. The universal tendency to
deterioration is well summed up as follows by Professor Naville:

"Traces are found almost everywhere in the midst of idolatrous
superstitions, of a religion comparatively pure and often stamped with a
lofty morality. Paganism is not a simple fact; it offers to view in the
same bed two currents (like the Arve and the Arveiron)--the one pure,
the other impure. What is the relation between these two currents? ...
Did humanity begin with a coarse fetishism, and thence rise by slow
degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of a comparatively pure
monotheism first show themselves in the recent periods of idolatry?
Contemporary science inclines more and more to answer in the negative.
It is in the most ancient historical ground that the laborious
investigators of the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion.
Cut to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few
years afterward. In place of the tree cut down you will find
coppice-wood; the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided
among a multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the
opinion which tends to prevail among our savants on the subject of the
historical development of religions. The idea of one God is at the
roots--it is primitive; polytheism is derivative."[165]

We have thus far drawn our proofs of man's polytheistic tendencies from
the history of the non-Christian religions. In proof of the same general
tendency we now turn to the history of the Israelites, the chosen people
of God. We may properly appeal to the Bible as history, especially when
showing idolatrous tendencies even under the full blaze of the truth. In
spite of the supernatural revelation which they claimed to
possess--notwithstanding all their instructions, warnings, promises,
deliverances, divinely aided conquests--they relapsed into idolatry
again and again. Ere they had reached the land of promise they had begun
to make images of the gods of Egypt. They made constant compromises and
alliances with the Canaanites, and not even severe judgments could
withhold them from this downward drift. Their wisest king was
demoralized by heathen marriages, and his successors openly patronized
the heathen shrines. The abominations of Baal worship and the nameless
vices of Sodom were practised under the very shadow of the Temple.[166]
Judgments followed upon this miserable degeneracy. Prophets were sent
w