4.  “When thou makest an offering unto thy God, guard thou against the things which are an abomination unto him.  Behold thou his plans with thine eye, and devote thyself to the adoration of his name.  He giveth souls unto millions of forms, and him that magnifieth him doth he magnify.”

  5.  “If thy mother raise her hands to God he will hear her prayers [and
  rebuke thee].”

  7.  “Give thyself to God, and keep thou thyself daily for God.”

Now, although the above passages prove the exalted idea which the Egyptians held of the supreme Being, they do not supply us with any of the titles and epithets which they applied to him; for these we must have recourse to the fine hymns and religious meditations which form so important a part of the “Book of the Dead.”  But before we quote from them, mention must be made of the neteru, i.e., the beings or existences which in some way partake of the nature or character of God, and are usually called “gods.”  The early nations that came in contact with the Egyptians usually misunderstood the nature of these beings, and several modern Western writers have done the same.  When we examine these “gods” closely, they are found to be nothing more nor less than forms, or manifestations, or phases, or attributes, of one god, that god being R[=a] the Sun-god, who, it must be remembered, was the type and symbol of God.  Nevertheless, the worship of the neteru by the Egyptians has been made the base of the charge of “gross idolatry” which has been brought against them, and they have been represented by some as being on the low intellectual level of savage tribes.  It is certain that from the earliest times one of the greatest tendencies of the Egyptian religion was towards monotheism, and this tendency may be observed in all important texts down to the latest period; it is also certain that a kind of polytheism existed in Egypt side by side with monotheism from very early times.  Whether monotheism or polytheism be the older, it is useless in our present state of knowledge to attempt to enquire.  According to Tiele, the religion of Egypt was at the beginning polytheistic, but developed in two opposite directions:  in the one direction gods were multiplied by the addition of local gods, and in the other the Egyptians drew nearer and nearer to monotheism. [Footnote:  Geschiedenis van den Godedienst in de Oudheid, Amsterdam, 1893, p. 25.  A number of valuable remarks on this subject are given by Lieblein in Egyptian Religion, p. 10.] Dr. Wiedemann takes the view that three main elements may be recognized in the Egyptian religion:  (1) A solar monotheism, that is to say one god, the creator of the universe, who manifests his power especially in the sun and its operations; (2) A cult of the regenerating power of nature, which expresses itself in the adoration of ithyphallic gods, of fertile goddesses, and of a series of animals and of various deities of vegetation; (3) A perception