Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/264

240 eyes see better than one. Hence all the poets of antiquity are continually calling councils of the gods. How can you suppose that one god is enough to see to all the details of life on Saturn and all the business of the star Capella? What! You imagine that everything on our globe, except in the houses of the King of Prussia and the Pope Ganganelli, is regulated by councils, and there is no council in heaven! There is no better way of deciding things than by a majority of votes. The deity always acts in the wisest way. The Theist seems to me, in comparison with a Pagan, to be like a Prussian soldier entering the territory of Venice; he is charmed with the excellence of the government. "The king of this country," he says, "must work from morning to night. I greatly pity him." "There is no king," people reply; "we are governed by a council."

Here are the true principles of our ancient religion.

The great being known as Jehovah or Yaa among the Phœnicians, the Jove of other Asiatic nations, the Jupiter of the Romans, the Zeus of the Greeks, is the sovereign of gods and men.

The master of the whole of nature, to whom nothing in the whole range of being approaches.

The animating spirit of the universe.