power is located in some tree or rock or river; sometimes it is an
animal; sometimes it is supposed to exist in invisible spirits or
demons; sometimes the sky or the ocean represents it, or one of the
elements, like fire, is conceived to be its manifestation; sometimes the
greater planets are the objects of reverence; sometimes imaginary
deities are conceived and images of wood or stone are carved by which
their attributes are symbolized.

These religious conceptions of the primitive races seem to us, now, as
we look back upon them from the larger light of the present day, to be
grotesque and unworthy; we wonder that men could ever have entertained
such notions of deity, and we are sometimes inclined, because of these
crudities, to dismiss the whole subject of religion as but a farrago of
superstitions. But these imperfect conceptions do not discredit
religion; they are rather witnesses to its reality. You might as well
say that the speculations and experiments of the old alchemists prove
that there is no truth in chemistry; or that the guesses of the
astrologers throw doubt on the science of astronomy. The alchemists and
the astrologers were searching blindly for truth which they did not
find, but the truth was there; the fetish worshipers and the magicians
and the idolaters were also, as Paul said, seeking after the unknown
God. But they were not mistaken in the principal object of their search;
what they sought was there, and the pathetic story of the long quest for
God is a proof of the truth of Paul's saying, that God has made men and
placed them in the world "that they should seek God, if haply they might
feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us."
It was not a delusion, it was a tremendous reality that they were
dealing with. The fact that they but dimly conceived it does not lessen
the greatness of the reality.