Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

THE TEMPORAL AND THE ETERNAL 1
was understood on this continent by scores of
aboriginal tribes. The theory of our red brothers
was in general this :
America was once Inhabited by
a race of perfect men, utterly different
from those
now living. They were godlike and divine; they
were the gods.
At length however they began to
break their perfect brotherly love with quarrels,
and this evil fact itself reacted upon them and
changed them.
Some were changed to birds, some to
animals, some to trees, some to mountains. If we
start with any given creature we can follow back to
its human-divine origin. Each is the result of a
fall. The myth-makers can tell the story in every
case, and the name of the stories is legion. How
such a system throws light upon man's ethical nature
1 It does not explain the bird or beast, but it
throws light upon man. It is useless for man to
deny moral responsibility. He knows that he can
fall from grace. And mythology, like a vast luminous
projection of his soul upon the sky, shows
these spiritual facts within the soul.
Only one of the myriads of creation-myths bears
directly on our investigations. This is the Babylonian,
which was discovered in 1875 by George
Smith on a series of clay tablets which are now preserved
in the British museum. It is a highly polytheistic
story, as befitted a nation which recognized