The splendid mythology of the Greeks, as well as the degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian speculations remained.

Hence, before Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.

This would be more plausible if we did not find Supreme Beings where there is no departmental polytheism to develop them out of.

It has the power of redeeming the slaves of a degraded polytheism from their low groveling conception of God to conceptions which are higher; it has set an example of sobriety to the world and has shielded its followers from the drink plague which destroys the strength of nations.

They have also an inchoate polytheism, 'Above Persons, Ground Persons, and Under Water Persons.'

Egypt was the land of a religion which had won a high conception of the Divine unity; a religion which was scientific in its forms of thought, and earnestly moral in its spirit; but which failed to keep distinct in mind the order of nature from the Being on whom it reposes, and thus sank into the dreamy pantheism of its cultured classes, and the poetic polytheisms of its people.

Major Ellis's opinion coincides with that of Waitz in his 'Introduction to Anthropology' (an opinion to which Waitz does not seem bigoted)namely, that 'the original form of all religion is a raw, unsystematic polytheism,' nature being peopled by inimical powers or spirits, and everyone worshipping what he thinks most dangerous or most serviceable.

In examining the religious systems of Arabia in the age preceding the advent of the Prophet, it would seem that the most prominent of them were the old doctrines of the Magians and Sabaeans, blended with a gross idolatry and a senseless polytheism.

This is partly simultaneous polytheism (a plurality of gods under a chief god), partly successive polytheism (an actual plurality of divinities, changing dynasties of several chief gods), and develops from star worship or Sabeism up to the religion of the Greeks.

This is partly simultaneous polytheism (a plurality of gods under a chief god), partly successive polytheism (an actual plurality of divinities, changing dynasties of several chief gods), and develops from star worship or Sabeism up to the religion of the Greeks.

Major Ellis's opinion coincides with that of Waitz in his 'Introduction to Anthropology' (an opinion to which Waitz does not seem bigoted)namely, that 'the original form of all religion is a raw, unsystematic polytheism,' nature being peopled by inimical powers or spirits, and everyone worshipping what he thinks most dangerous or most serviceable.

But however lofty were the esoteric doctrines which the more learned of the initiated believed, they were carefully concealed from the people, who were deemed too ignorant to understand them; and hence the immense difference between the priests and people, and the universal prevalence of degrading superstitions and the vile polytheism which everywhere existed,even the worship of the powers of Nature in those animals which were held sacred.

I therefore suggest that in an advanced polytheism, such as that of Polynesia, the evil sacrificial rites unpractised by low savages come to be attached to the worship even of the Supreme Being.

The vulgar Grecian polytheism was all material.

Granting our hypothesis of an early Supreme Being among savages, obscured later by ancestor-worship and ghost-gods, but not often absolutely lost to religious tradition, the barbaric and the civilised polytheisms easily take their position in line, and are easily intelligible.

This proved too abstract for the people; and the Brahmans, in the true spirit of modern Jesuitism, wishing to accommodate their religion to the people,who were in bondage to their tyranny, and who have ever been inclined to sensuous worship,multiplied their sacrifices and sacerdotal rites, and even permitted a complicated polytheism.