THE PRIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD. 255 



worship of Thor. In either case, the Great Spirit is 

 not the god of the ether, merely, as some closet 

 mythologists suppose, because of a fanciful deification 

 of the elements, but because to a rude people the 

 changes of the weather are the principal natural facts 

 which concern and impress them, and which, being 

 apparently capricious and irregular, they refer to the 

 most direct kind of divine action. Hence it may be 

 affirmed that among all primitive peoples the chief 

 god is more or less a weather-god. In the Old Tes- 

 tament, Baal, the Phoenician sun-god, was eminently 

 a deity of this kind, as was also the Great Amen-Ra, 

 ' ' prince of the dew," and " lord of beams/'' among the 

 Egyptians ; * and even the Elohim of the Hebrews 

 does not disdain to be the Being whose voice is the 

 thunder, who holds the lightning in his hands, who 

 makes the clouds his chariot, and whom the winds 

 and the waves obey. So in the old sacred book of 

 the Quiches of Central America, one of the most re- 

 markable monuments of ancient American religion, 

 the Creator is the Heart of Heaven, the lightning- 

 flash, the thunderbolt, and his name is Hurakan, the 

 storm-god a name introduced into our own language 

 in the word " hurricane." 



But like many other ancient nations, the Americans 

 were not content with the simplicity of pure mono- 

 theism; they added many subordinate gods. First 

 among these stands a deification of the sun, arising 



* See the remarkable Hymn in his honour recently published 

 in Bagster's " Eecords of the Past," vol. ii. 



