Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/88

Rh monies, a pilgrimage, or a vow. Thus the Romans invoked the Gods of their enemy to come out of the beleaguered city, and join with them, the conquerors of the world. The Gods were to be had at a bargain. Jacob drives a trade with Elohim; the God receives a human service as adequate return for his own divine service. The promise of each is only “for value received.”

In this stage of religious development each Deity does not answer to the Idea of God, as mentioned above; it is not the Being of infinite power, wisdom, and love. Neither the Zeus of the Iliad, nor the Elohim of Genesis, nor the Jupiter of the Pharsalia, nor even the Jehovah of the Jewish Prophets, is always this. A transient and complex conception takes the place of the eternal Idea of God. Hence his limitations; those of a man. Jehovah is narrow; Zeus is licentious; Hermes will lie and steal; Juno is a shrew.

The Gods of polytheistic nations are in part deified men. The actions of many men, of different ages and countries, are united into one man's achievement, and we have a Hercules, or an Apollo, a thrice-great Hermes, a Jupiter, or an Odin. The inventors of useful arts, as agriculture, navigation; of the plough, the loom, laws, fire, and letters, subsequently became Gods. Great men, wise men, good men, were honoured while living; they are deified when they decease. As they judged or governed the living once, so now the dead. Their actions are idealized; the good lives after them; their faults are buried. Statues, altars, temples are erected to them. He who was first honoured as a man is now worshipped as a God. To these personal deities are added the attributes of the old Fetiches, and still more the powers of Nature. The attributes of the moon, the sun, the lightning, the ocean, or the stars are