The form in which religion generally presents itself in early history is what we commonly call Polytheism, though it is quite possible--a matter about which I am not careful curiously to dogmatise--that there may have been in some places an original Dualism, like the ancient Persian, or even a Monotheism, out of which the Polytheism was developed. For there cannot be the slightest doubt that, whatever may have been the starting-point, there lay in the popular theology a tendency to multiply and to reproduce itself in kindred but not always easily recognisable forms, like the children of a family or the cousinship of a clan. But, taking Polytheism as the type under which history presents the objects of religious faith in the earliest times, we have to remark that under this common name, as in the case of Christianity, the greatest contrasts, both in speculative idea and in social efficiency, stare us everywhere in the face. In the eye of the Christian or the monotheistic devotee the worships of Aphrodite and of Pallas Athene are equally idolatrous; but, allowing that these anthropomorphic forms of divine forces and functions of the universe are equally destitute of a foundation in fact or reason, the reverence paid to them by a devout people might be as different as passion is from thought, and sense from spirit. As the ideal of wisdom in counsel and in action, the Athenian Pallas no doubt exercised as beneficent a sway over her Hellenic worshippers as the ideal of Christian womanhood, in the person of the Virgin Mary, does at the present day over millions of Christian worshippers. It is only when the cosmic function impersonated in the polytheistic god, being of an inferior order, leaps from its proper position of subordination and usurps the controlling and regulating action belonging to the superior function, that polytheistic idolatry becomes immoral; though, of course, the very facility of this usurpation, and the stamp of a pseudo divinity that may thereby be given to beastly vice, is a sufficient reason for the denunciations of the heathen idolatries so frequent in the Old Testament, which ultimately ripened into the spiritual apostleship and monotheistic aggression of St. Paul. One other striking feature of all polytheistic religions may not be omitted. They are naturally complete--more catholic, more sympathetic with universal nature and universal life than monotheistic religions; if they make a philosophical mistake in worshipping many gods, they do not make a moral mistake in excluding any of his attributes. With the polytheistic worshipper everything is sacred: the sun and the sea and the sky, dark earth and awful night, excite in him an emotion of reverence. If the Greek polytheist was devout at all, he was devout everywhere; whereas, under monotheistic influences, there is a danger that devout feelings may respond exclusively to the stern decrees of an absolute lawgiver and the awful threatenings of a violated law.