sensations, a few more his perceptions, and so on; but he is
conscious of _objects_ at first, he deals with _subjects_ afterwards.
Soon the sun, moon, and stars, as bright lights attract his eyes, as we
have all seen an infant of a few days fix its gaze upon a candle or
lamp. These heavenly orbs are found to be in motion, to be far
away, to be the glory of day and night: what wonder if _ideas_ of
these _images_ are formed in the religious mind, if the worshipper
imagines the sun and moon to be reflections of the God of light, and
pays homage to the creature which renders the Creator visible? Thus
in the childhood of man religion grows, and with the multiplication
of intellect and sensation, endless diversity of language, conception
and faith is the result. Another result, of course, is the endless
diversity of deities. Every race, every nation, every tribe, every
household, every heart, has had its own God. And yet, with all this
multiplicity in religious literature and dogma, subject and object, a
unity co-exists which the student of the science notes with profound
interest. All nations of men are of one blood; and all forms of God
embody the one Eternal Spirit. To this unity mythology tends. As
one writer says: "We must ever bear in mind that the course of
mythology is from many gods toward one, that it is a synthesis, not
an analysis, and that in this process the tendency is to blend in one
the traits and stories of originally separate divinities."
[107] The ancient Hebrew worshipped God as "the Eternal, our
righteousness"; the Greek worshipped Him as wisdom and beauty;
the Roman as power and government; the Persian as light and
goodness; and so forth. Few hymns have surpassed the beauty of
Pope's _Universal Prayer_. It is the _Te Deum laudamus_ of that
catholic Church which embraces God-loved humanity.

"Father of all! in every age,
In every clime, adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!"

The Christian, believing his to be the "One Religion," as a recent
Bampton Lecturer termed it, too often forgets that his system is a
recomposition of rays of a religious light which was decomposed in
the prismatic minds of earlier men. And further, with a change of
metaphor, if Christianity has flourished and fructified through
eighteen centuries, it must not be denied that it is a graft upon an old
stock which through fifteen previous centuries had borne abundant
fruit.