A FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 49 



Moloch as such creeds may be generically called is in 

 essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare 

 not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master 

 deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals 

 is not yet acknowledged, Power may be freely wor- 

 shipped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its 

 wanton infliction of pain. 



But gradually, as morality grows bolder, the claim of 

 the ideal world begins to be felt ; and worship, if it is 

 not to cease, must be given to gods of another kind than 

 those created by the savage. Some, though they feel 

 the demands of the ideal, will still consciously reject 

 them, still urging that naked Power is worthy of worship. 

 Such is the attitude inculcated in God's answer to Job 

 out of the whirlwind : the divine power and knowledge 

 are paraded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint. 

 Such also is the attitude of those who, in our own day, 

 base their morality upon the struggle for survival, main- 

 taining that the survivors are necessarily the fittest. 

 But others, not content with an answer so repugnant to 

 the moral sense, will adopt the position which we have 

 become accustomed to regard as specially religious, 

 maintaining that, in some hidden manner, the world of 

 fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals. Thus 

 Man creates God, all-powerful and all-good, the mystic 

 unity of what is and what should be. 



But the world of fact, after all, is not good ; and, in 

 submitting our judgment to it, there is an element of 

 slavishness from which our thoughts must be purged. 

 For in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of Man, 

 by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny of 

 non-human Power. When we have realised that Power 

 is largely bad, that man, with his knowledge of good and 

 evil, is but a helpless atom in a world which has no such 







