NECESSITY OF THE IDEA OF A CRUEL DEITY. 431 



Must it not happen, that if his nature requires great re 

 straint, the supposed consequences of transgression, to be 

 a check upon him, must be proportionately terrible ; and 

 1 or these to be proportionately terrible, must not his god 

 be conceived as proportionately cruel and revengeful ? Is it 

 not well that the treacherous, thievish, lying Hindoo should 

 believe in a hell where the wicked are boiled in cauldrons, roll 

 ed down mountains bristling with knives, and sawn asunder 

 between flaming iron posts ? And that there may be pro 

 vided such a hell, is it not needful that he should believe in a 

 divinity delighting in human immolations and the self-tor 

 ture of fakirs ? Does it not seem clear that during the 

 earlier ages in Christendom, when men s feelings were so 

 hard that a holy |Uther could describe one of the delights 

 of heaven to be the contemplation of the torments of the 

 damned does it not seem clear that while the general na 

 ture was so unsympathetic, there needed, to keep men in 

 order, all the prospective tortures described by Dante, and 

 a deity implacable enough to iiiilict them ? 



And if, as we thus see, it is well for the savage man to 

 believe in a savage god, then we may also see the great 

 usefulness of this anthropomorphic tendency; or, as before 

 said, necessity. We have in it another illustration of that 

 essential beneficence of things visible everywhere through 

 out nature. From this inability under which we labour to 

 conceive of a deity save as some idealization of ourselves, 

 it inevitably results that in each age, among each people, 

 and to a great extent in each individual, there must arise 

 just that conception of deity best adapted to the needs of 

 the case. If, being violent and bloodthirsty, the nature be 

 one calling for stringent control, it evolves the idea of a 

 ruler still more violent and bloodthirsty, and fitted to afford 

 this control. When, by ages of social discipline, the natu.ro 

 has been partially humanized, and the degree of restraint re 

 quired has become less, the diabolical characteristics before 

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