Says he, "I have been counselled to recognize that the idea of evolution at present ruling the scientific world must also rule in the investigation of religion. I am not unacquainted with the literature of the subject, I have described animistic heathenism as concretely as I could; I confined myself strictly to that. I began with the facts of experience; then I drew inferences from them. If these do not agree with the dominant hypothesis of evolution, that is due to the brutal facts, and not to the prepossessions of the observer. "I do not deny that something can be said for the idea of evolution in the religions of mankind, but the study of Animism, with which I have long been familiar as an eyewitness, did not lead me to that idea. Rather the conviction which I arrived at is, that animistic heathenism is not a transition stage to a higher religion. There are no facts to prove that animistic heathenism somewhere and somehow evolved upwards towards a purer knowledge of God. I have worked as a missionary for many years in contact with thousands of the adherents of animistic heathenism and I have been convinced that the force of that heathenism is hostile to God." In the same work Dr. Warneck says that among the Battaks of Sumatra there are "remains of a pure idea of God." but there is also a host of spirits, born of fear, which thrust themselves between God and man. "The idea of God which is found in the religions of the Indian Archipelago, and probably also of Africa, cannot have been distilled from the motley jumble of gods and of nature, for it exists in direct opposition to the latter. The idea of God is preserved, but His worship is lost." In reviewing this book the late Dr. Schmauk said in 1910: "A dispassionate study of heathen religions confirms the view of Paul that heathenism is a fall from a better knowledge of God. The idols come between God and man." W. St. Clair Tisdale, concludes an exhaustive study of _"Christianity and Other Faiths"_ with the statement: "It follows that Monotheism historically preceded Polytheism, and that the latter is a corruption of the former. It is impossible to explain the facts away. Taken together they show that, as the Bible asserts, man at the very beginning of history knew the One True God. This implies a Revelation of some sort and traces of that Revelation are still found in many ancient faiths."