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purely anthropomorphic conception of him; the lower human 
attributes being dropped and the higher ones transfigured. 
Similarly, if we contrast the Hebrew God described in primi- 
tive traditions, manlike in appearance, appetites, and emotions, 
with the Hebrew God as characterised by the prophets, then 
is Shown a widening range of power along with a nature . 
increasingly remote from that of man. And, on passing to 
the conceptions of him which are now entertained, we are 
made aware of a extreme transfiguration. By a convenient 
obliviousness, a Deity who in early times is represented as 
hardening men’s hearts so that they may commit punishable 
acts, and as employing a lying spirit to deceive them, comes 
to be mostly thought of as an embodiment of virtues tran- 
scending the highest we can imagine. 
“Thus, recognising the fact that in the primitive human 
mind there exists neither religious idea nor religious senti- 
ment, we find that in the course of social evolution, and the 
evolution of intelligence accompanying it, there are generated 
both the ideas and sentiments which we distinguish as reli- 
gious; and that, through a process of causation clearly 
traceable, they traverse those stages which have brought 
them, among civilised races, to their present forms.” 
The quotation is long ; but it seems necessary, to emphasise 
the contrast that I venture to place against it. . 
Before, however, proceeding to my particular point, I 
would at once remark that Plato lived but a comparatively 
short time after a most remarkable wave of religious light had 
flashed across Asia and a great part of Europe, leaving in its 
trail such reformers as Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster, Con- 
fucius, Heraclitos of Hphesus, Pythagoras, and others, most 
of whom proclaimed, more or less distinctly, that they were 
only bringing back the purer faith of primitive men. They 
were trying to rekindle gleams of that ‘Golden Age” which 
ancient nations have uniformly placed in the past. To this 
renaissance Plato may have been more indebted than to the 
progress of what Mr. Spencer may understand by ‘ Greek 
civilisation.” The progress of civilisation has been nowhere 
uniform. ‘The Zeus of the Iliad may represent the religious 
degradation of the time, compared with the religious teaching 
of Plato; but was not that Zeus the descendant of Dyu, the 
“bright heavens,” a conception, apparently, of what must 
have been a more enlightened age than, perhaps, even that of 
Plato? And, with regard to the conception of the Hebrew 
and Christian God, it is an entire perversion of the truth to' 
say that “we are aware of an extreme transfiguration,” 
