JJECESSITY OF THE IDEA OF A CErEL 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 

 for these to be proportionately teriible, 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 father 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 Daute, and 

 a deity implacable enough to inflict 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 aflbrd 

 this control. When, by ages of social discipline, the nature 

 has been partially humanized, and the degree of restraint re- 

 quired has become less, the diabolical cnaract eristics before 



