s might
be expected; and that there is not a greater difference between the
tenets and worship of the Hindoos and the Greeks than exists between the
churches of Home and Geneva.

Concerning the universality of certain religious beliefs and opinions,
Faber, commenting upon the above statement of Wilford, observes that,
immense as is this territorial range, it is by far too limited to
include the entire phenomenon, that the observation

"applies with equal propriety to the entire habitable globe; for the
arbitrary rites and opinions of every pagan nation bear so close a
resemblance to each other, that such a coincidence can only have been
produced by their having had a common origin. Barbarism itself has not
been able to efface the strong primeval impression. Vestiges of the
ancient general system may be traced in the recently discovered islands
in the Pacific Ocean; and, when the American world was first opened to
the hardy adventurers of Europe, its inhabitants from north to south
venerated, with kindred ceremonies and kindred notions, the gods of
Egypt and Hindostan, of Greece and Italy, of Phoenicia and Britain."(1)

1) Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. i.

"Though each religion has its own peculiar growth, the seed from which
they spring is everywhere the same."(2)

2) Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 48.

The question as to whether the identity of conception and the similarity
in detail observed in religious rites, ceremonies, and symbols in the
various countries of the globe are due to the universal law of unity
which governs human development, or whether, through the dispersion
of one original people, the early conceptions of a Deity were spread
broadcast over the entire earth, is perhaps not settled; yet, from
the facts which have been brought forward during the last century, the
latter theory seems altogether probable, such divergence in religious
ideas as is observed among the various peoples of the earth being
attributable to variations in temperament caused by changed conditions
of life. In other words, the divergence in the course of religious
development has doubtless been due to environment.

In an attempt to understand the history of the growth of the god-idea,
the fact should be borne in mind that, from the earliest conception of
a creative force in the animal and vegetable world to the latest
development in theological speculation, there has never been what might
consis