human
sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west, and sit down in the
kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and
Jesus,--while men who called daily on the only living God, who paid
their tribute and bowed at the name of Christ, shall be cast out because
they did no more."[274]

Christianity, with Parker, is not the absolute religion, because a
better may be developed. The great difference between it and other
religions is: _first_, in the point whence it sets out, other religions
starting from something external and limited, but Christianity from the
spirit of God in the soul of man speaking through reason, conscience,
and the religious sentiment; _second_, it is not a system but a method
of religion and life; and, _third_, its eminently practical nature. The
Deity adored by many people is a pure fabrication, for superstition
projects its own divinity, which of course will be after its own impure
mould. Men call the phantom God, Moloch, or Jehovah, and then attempt to
please the capricious being whom they have conjured up. The true idea of
God is his infinite presence in each point of space; this immanence in
matter is the basis of his influence; this imposition of a law is the
measure of God's relation to matter; and the action of the law is
therefore mechanical, not voluntary or self-conscious.

The Bible, according to the same method of argumentation, is as much a
human book as the _Principia_ of Newton. Some things in it are true, but
no reasonable man can accept others. It is full of contradictions;
"there are poems which men take as histories; prophecies which have not
been and never will be fulfilled; stories of miracles that never
happened; stories which make God a man of war, cruel, rapacious,
revengeful, hateful, and not to be trusted. We find amatory songs,
selfish proverbs, skeptical discourses, and the most awful imprecations
human fancy ever clothed in speech." The minds of the writers of the Old
Testament were not decided in favor of the exclusive existence of
Jehovah, and all the early books betray more of a polytheistic belief
than we find in the prophets. The legendary and mythical writings of the
Hebrews prove unmistakably that man was first created in the lowest
savage life; that his religion was the rudest worship of nature; and
that his morality was that of the cannibal. All the civilized races have
risen through various forms of developing faith before reaching
refinement