Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/220

208 the zoötheistic and physitheistic stages into monotheism, and spasmodically succeeded; but the body of the people never reached the stage of monotheism until after the Babylonian captivity. Most writers have explained this on the theory that the terrible chastisement of that captivity finally brought them to submission; but it is more probable that their forced relations with their more cultured conquerors gave them new ideas never before entertained, which infused modifications into their religion. The resulting combination produced those characteristics of that religion which have been regarded as the most admirable.

The general account of the Israelite lapses is not unlike that given in modern times by missionaries, who also have been impetuous in attempting the instantaneous transport of Indians through stages that are marked by ages. Tribes of Indians have been converted, and they were reported and recorded as being in that permanent condition. A few years later, from some dissatisfaction, they returned to their shaman and their dreams, which return was then reported as a lapse. It was not, in fact, a lapse, but the claim that they had been converted was premature. There is, however, this distinction between the Israelites and the Indians: that the former were allowed to return to Palestine and carry out their old ideas with improvements; while the Indians, remaining under the same foreign influences and continually growing weaker, were forced to abandon all their faith and to accept that of their conquerors without composition.

The stories of the conversion of Indians by thousands would seem false to one who did not know that they were ready to believe any new thing because they before had no fixed belief. The record of the Israelites is not so clear, because old; but they surely adopted the Satanic doctrine and the "Mosaic cosmology," and continued adopting foreign beliefs until a late date in their history.

The most judicious remarks ever made by missionaries were those of the Rev. Messrs. D. Lee and J. H. Frost, who, after ten years in Oregon of what has been considered successful work, announced their abandonment of their former tenet that if the heathen were converted to Christianity civilization followed of course. They confessed that civilization must begin before Christianity could even be understood. Acute travelers throughout the world have perceived the same fact; and it is not a too violent simile to say that Christianity, belonging to the plane of civilization and to that only, sits on a savage or barbarian as a bishop's mitre would on a naked Hottentot.

The Israelites were not suddenly lifted from their barbarian condition. It was not possible. As regards the culture strata we may take a lesson from geology. Coal is not found in the