834 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



anthropomorphization, 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 attri 

 butes 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 tole 

 rate the ascription of inferior sentiments to a divinity ; and 

 there is the intellectual development which causes dissatis 

 faction 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 

 them along with others. 



658. The cruelty of a Fijian god who, represented as 

 devouring the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict 

 torture during the process, is small compar3d 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 some 

 times 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 cannot cease until the beliefs in hell and dam 

 nation 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 havo 

 never heard of ; and the effecting a reconciliation by sacri 

 ficing a son who was perfectly innocent, to satisfy the assumed 

 necessity for a propitiatory victim; are modes of action 



* To meet a possible criticism, it may be well to remark that, whatever 

 force they have against deists (and they have very little), Butler s argumentu 

 concerning these and allied beliefs do not tell at all against n gnostics. 



