not, therefore, say exactly what he meant, or at least did not
mean precisely what he said. We have to bear in mind, however,
that as man had not at that time been created, if there were no
female element present, this excess of politeness on the part of
the "Lord" was wholly lost. Surely, in a matter involving such
an enormous stretch of power as the creation of man independently
of the female energy, we would scarcely expect to find the high
and mighty male potentate which was subsequently worshipped as
the Lord of the Israelites laying aside his usual "I the Lord,"
simply out of deference to the animals.
In Christian countries, during the past eighteen hundred years,
the greatest care has been exercised to conceal the fact that
sun-worship underlies all forms of religion, and under Protestant
Christianity no pains has been spared in eliminating the female
element from the god-idea; hence the ignorance which prevails at
the present time in relation to the fact that the Creator once
comprehended the forces of Nature, which by an older race were
worshipped as female.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DUAL GOD OF THE ANCIENTS A TRINITY ALSO.
Although the God of the most ancient people was a dual Unity, in
later ages it came to be worshipped as a Trinity. When mankind
began to speculate on the origin of the life principle, they came
to worship their Deity in its three capacities as Creator,
Preserver, and Destroyer or Regenerator, each of which was female
and male. We have observed that, according to Higgins, when this
Trinity was spoken of collectively, it was called after the
feminine plural.
By the various writers who have dealt with this subject during
the last century, much surprise has been manifested over the fact
that for untold ages the people of the earth have worshipped a
Trinity. Forster, in his Sketches of Hindoo Mythology, says:
"One circumstance which forcibly struck my attention was the
Hindoo belief of a Trinity."
Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, observes that the idea of
three persons in the Deity was diffused amongst all the nations
of the earth, in regions as distant as Japan and Peru, that it
was memorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Egypt
and India, "flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy
mountains of Thibet, and the vast deserts of Siberia." The idea
of a Trinity is supposed to have been first elaborated on the
