to create moral laws for
his fellow man. The moralisation of the gods will then follow as a
matter of course. And thereafter we can plainly observe the operation of
the moral sense on the belief in god, and upon the recognition of crude
power. Man really modifies his gods in terms of the ideal human being.
Paul's picture of a god who uses man as the potter uses his clay could
never flourish in a society which believed in the "rights of man." And
so soon as that conception developes so soon does man begin to revise
his conception of god. So with almost every great change in the form of
government or in the notions of right and wrong. In a slave state, God
favours slavery. When slavery gives place to another form of labour the
gods are equally vigorous in its condemnation. The history of the belief
in witch burning, heresy hunting, eternal damnation, etc., all
illustrate the same point--religious teachings are all modified and
moralised in accordance with the changing moral conceptions of mankind.
It is not the gods who moralise man, it is man who moralises the gods.

The gods have their beginnings as mere powers. They are feared because
they are, not for the moral value of what they are. Social development
does all the rest. But with that development the feeling of
helplessness, of weakness, decays and there arises the demand that if
god is to be worshipped he must prove worthy of it. The conviction
arises very gradually, but it is there, and it becomes a powerful
solvent of religious ideas. Merely to govern is not enough, God must
govern well, and in terms of what we have come to understand by the word
"Justice." And to the minds of millions of moderns, when tried by that
test the idea of god breaks down. That there is a god who rules the
universe is one question; that he rules it well and in accord with what
is understood when we talk of morality, is quite another. The two
questions are quite distinct since the first might be true and the
second false. We have already seen how slender are the grounds for
believing in the first; we have now to show that the reasons for
believing in the second are quite as unsatisfactory.

Theism has been defined as consisting in the belief in a God who is
wise, powerful, and loving, and who has selected man as the object of
his preferential care, and to this may be added the statement that most
modern theists would extend that care to the whole of sentient life.
"God's care" must be "o