Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/359

Rh omnipresent deity, there is a gradual fading of his alleged human attributes: dissolution begins to affect the supreme personality in respect of ascribed form and nature.

Already, as we have seen, this process has in the more advanced societies, and especially among their higher members, gone to the extent of merging all minor supernatural powers in one supernatural power; and already this one supernatural power has, by what Mr. Fiske aptly calls deanthropomorphization, lost the grosser attributes of humanity. If things hereafter are to follow the same general course as heretofore, we must infer that this dropping of human attributes will continue. Let us ask what positive changes are hence to be expected.

Two factors must unite in producing them. There is the development of those higher sentiments which no longer tolerate the ascription of inferior sentiments to a divinity; and there is the intellectual development which causes dissatisfaction with the crude interpretations previously accepted. Of course, in pointing out the effects of these factors, I must name some which are familiar; but it is needful to glance at these along with others.

The cruelty of a Feejeean god, who, represented as devouring the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during the process, is small compared with the cruelty of a god who condemns men to tortures which are eternal; and the ascription of this cruelty, though habitual in ecclesiastical formulas, occasionally occurring in sermons, and still sometimes pictorially illustrated, is becoming so intolerable to the better-natured that, while some theologians distinctly deny it, others quietly drop it out of their teachings. Clearly, this change can not cease until the beliefs in hell and damnation disappear. Disappearance of them will be aided by an increasing repugnance to injustice. The visiting on Adam's descendants, through hundreds of generations, dreadful penalties for a small transgression which they did not commit; the damning of all men who do not avail themselves of an alleged mode of obtaining forgiveness, which most men have never heard of; and the effecting a reconciliation by sacrifice of one who was perfectly innocent—are modes of action which, ascribed to a human ruler, would call forth expressions of abhorrence; and the ascription of them to the Ultimate Cause of things, even now felt to be full of difficulties, must become impossible. So, too, must die out the belief that a Power present in innumerable worlds throughout infinite space, and who during millions of years of the earth's earlier existence needed no honoring by its inhabitants, should be seized with a craving for praise, and, having created mankind, should be angry with them if they do not perpetually tell him how great he is. Men will by-and-by refuse to imply a trait of character which is the reverse of worshipful.