SOUNDINGS 



ance. The man up above must keep his skirts clean, 

 and to admit of this the man down below must be 

 the scapegoat. 



How long has the belief in the reality of these two 

 manlike beings, the one all good, the other all evil, 

 ruled in the minds and hearts of men! The old He- 

 brew prophets were drunk with the idea of a man- 

 like Jehovah. A terrible man they made of him — a 

 cruel, despotic ruler, wreaking his vengeance on his 

 enemies, exacting an eye for an eye and a tooth for 

 a tooth, a lover of righteousness, but a vengeful, 

 jealous, angry God. And the man down below was 

 his fit counterpart, blocking and marring or defeat- 

 ing the plans of the man up above. These concep- 

 tions go with the infancy of the human reason. 



So many phases of our religious belief are the re- 

 sult of imperfect knowledge and false conceptions 

 of the world in which we live! They come down to 

 us from an earlier time, when the earth was regarded 

 as the center of the universe, all other bodies re- 

 volving around it. Man lifted his eyes and his hands 

 to heaven in an appeal to the heavenly powers. 



It seems as if the religious sense of the mass of 

 mankind was, by the operation of some psychologi- 

 cal law, forced to externize and visualize, yes, and 

 humanize, the object upon which its interest cen- 

 ters. Orthodox religion, while proclaiming that God 

 is a spirit, that He is everywhere, that He fills all 

 nature, that not a sparrow falls to the ground with- 



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