written). And with the adoption of a monotheistic creed some name, now belonging to an idol, might be used as synonymous with Njambi. Now something of this kind may have happened with the Hebrews. There can be little doubt that the Elohim were originally gods accepted by the Hebrews as part of a polytheistic system. Deep in the minds of Hebrew thinkers lay the more abstract notion of a single God, more powerful and more mysterious than the Elohim. They called him Jahveh, or whatever else may have been the name expressed by . But as the monotheistic view triumphed over the polytheistic, the Elohim were adopted into the framework of the new religion, and in a manner subordinated to Jahveh by a process of fusion. The name of Jahveh, which must once have been in common use, was now treated as too holy to be ever uttered by mortal lips. The ancient God who had stood at the head of the system of his party, was in a certain sense withdrawn from active life, but retained as the nominal occupant of supreme authority. Whether this account is probable or not, must be left to better judges to decide, but it tends at least to bring the history of the Jewish faith into harmony with that of other religions.
Moreover, it is interesting to observe that a process extremely similar to that here imagined as occurring in the development of Judaism, was actually passed through by its younger rival. Christianity, arising in the midst of a people who had arrived at highly abstract views of deity, proceeded at once to do what so many other creeds have done, to embody the conception of divine power in a concrete object. This concrete object was in the Christian theology a man. And as generally happens in these cases, the more abstract idea was overshadowed and to some extent driven from the field by the more concrete. Christ occupies a larger place both in authorized Christian worship and in the popular Christian imagination than does his Father. The creed no doubt treats them both with equal reverence, as persons in a single God; but to understand what is truly felt and believed by the people, we must look not to the letter of their creeds, but to their actual, and above all their unconscious practice. Doing this we find first an entire absence of any special festival in honor of the Father.[1] Look at the large*
- ↑ The remark is not mine, but is made by Didron, a devout Roman
