time they came to regard all these
attributes of his--all his sides and lights under which they viewed
him--as being distinct and different, and instead of all being the
qualities of one God as being each the quality or attribute of
separate gods.

"So there came to be a god of life and a god of death, one who sends
fertility and one who causes famine. All sorts of inanimate objects
were defined as possessing some fancied attribute either for good or
evil, and the one Almighty God became hidden and lost in the crowd of
minor deities. In some nations the fancies of man went one way, in
another another. The lower the intelligence of the people the lower
their gods. In some countries serpents are sacred, doubtless because
originally they were considered to typify at once the subtleness and
the destructive power of a god. In others trees are worshiped. There
are peoples who make the sun their god. Others the moon. Our
forefathers in Egypt being a wiser people than the savages around
them, worshiped the attributes of gods under many different names.
First, eight great deities were chosen to typify the chief
characteristics of the Mighty One. Chnoumis, or Neuf, typified the
idea of the spirit of God--that spirit which pervades all creation.
Ameura, the intellect of God. Osiris, the goodness of God. Ptah
typified at once the working power and the truthfulness of God. Khem
represents the productive power--the god who presides over the
multiplication of all species: man, beast, fish, and vegetable--and so
with the rest of the great gods and of the minor divinities, which are
reckoned by the score.

"In time certain animals, birds, and other creatures whose qualities
are considered to resemble one or other of the deities are in the
first place regarded as typical of them, then are held as sacred to
them, then in some sort of way become mixed up with the gods and to be
held almost as the gods themselves. This is, I think, the history of
the religions of all countries. The highest intelligences, the men of
education and learning, never quite lose sight of the original truths,
and recognize that the gods represent only the various attributes of
the one Almighty God. The rest of the population lose sight of the
truth, and really worship as gods these various creations, that are
really but types and shadows.

"It is perhaps necessary that it should be so. It is easier for the
grosser and more ignorant classes to worship things th