[57-3] It will not seem contradictory to hear
of them in a purely polytheistic worship; we shall be far from
regarding them as familiar to the popular mind, and we shall never be
led so far astray as to adduce them in evidence of a monotheism in
either technical sense of that word. In point of fact they were not
applied to any particular god even in the most enlightened nations, but
were terms of laudation and magniloquence used by the priests and
devotees of every several god to do him honor. They prove something in
regard to a consciousness of divinity hedging us about, but nothing at
all in favor of a recognition of one God; they exemplify how profound is
the conviction of a highest and first principle, but they do not offer
the least reason to surmise that this was a living reality in doctrine
or practice.
The confusion of these distinct ideas has led to much misconception of
the native creeds. But another and more fatal error was that which
distorted them into a dualistic form, ranging on one hand the good
spirit with his legions of angels, on the other the evil one with his
swarms of fiends, representing the world as the scene of their unending
conflict, man as the unlucky football who gets all the blows.
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