The dogma of the unity of God may in some respects be regarded as the simplest and most natural type of theism; it is popularly supposed to be the most widely accepted element of religion, and to predominate in the ecclesiastical systems of civilized countries. In reality, that is not the case, because this alleged "monotheism" usually turns out on closer inquiry to be one of the other forms of theism we have examined, a number of subordinate deities being generally introduced besides the supreme one. Most of the religions which took a purely monotheistic stand-point have become more or less polytheistic in the course of time. Modern statistics assure us that of the one billion five hundred million men who people the earth the great majority are monotheists; of these, _nominally_, about six hundred millions are Brahma-Buddhists, five hundred millions are called Christians, two hundred millions are heathens (of various types), one hundred and eighty millions are Mohammedans, ten millions are Jews, and ten millions have no religion at all. However, the vast majority of these nominal monotheists have very confused ideas about the deity, or believe in a number of gods and goddesses besides the chief god--angels, devils, etc. The different forms which monotheism has assumed in the course of its polyphyletic development may be distributed in two groups--those of _naturalistic_ and _anthropistic_ monotheism. Naturalistic monotheism finds the embodiment of the deity in some lofty and dominating natural phenomenon. The sun, the deity of light and warmth, on whose influence all organic life insensibly and directly depends, was taken to be such a phenomenon many thousand years ago. Sun-worship (solarism, or heliotheism) seems to the modern scientist to be the best of all forms of theism, and the one which may be most easily reconciled with modern monism. For modern astrophysics and geogeny have taught us that the earth is a fragment detached from the sun, and that it will eventually return to the bosom of its parent. Modern physiology teaches us that the first source of organic life on the earth is the formation of protoplasm, and that this synthesis of simple inorganic substances, water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, only takes place under the influence of sunlight. On the primary evolution of the plasmodomous plants followed, secondarily, that of the plasmophagous animals, which directly or indirectly depend on them for nourishment; and the origin of the human race itself is only a later stage in the development of the animal kingdom. Indeed, the whole of our bodily and mental life depends, in the last resort, like all other organic life, on the light and heat rays of the sun. Hence in the light of pure reason, sun-worship, as a form of naturalistic monotheism, seems to have a much better foundation than the anthropistic worship of Christians and of other monotheists who conceive their god in human form. As a matter of