It is manifest that we cannot prove Jehovah to be a ghost by the parallel
of a Tongan god, who, by ritual and by definition, was _not_ a ghost. The
proof therefore rests on the anthropomorphised pre-prophetic accounts, and
on the ritual, of Jehovah. But man naturally 'anthropises' his deities: he
does not thereby demonstrate that they were once ghosts.

As regards the sacrifices to Jehovah, the sweet savour which he was
supposed to enjoy (contrary to the opinion of the Prophets), these
sacrifices afford the best presumption that Jehovah was a ghost-god, or a
god constructed on ghostly lines.

But we have shown that among the lowest races neither are ghosts
worshipped by sacrifice, nor does the Supreme Being, Darumulun or Puluga,
receive food offerings. We have also instanced many Supreme Beings
of more advanced races, Ahone, and Dendid, and Nyankupon, who do not sniff
the savour of any offerings. If then (as in the case of Taa-roa), a
Supreme Being _does_ receive sacrifice, we may argue that a piece of
animistic ritual, not connected with the Supreme Being in Australia or
Andaman, not connected with his creed in Virginia or Africa (where
ghost-gods do receive sacrifice), may in other regions be transferred from
ghost-gods to the Supreme Being, who never was a ghost. There seems to
be nothing incredible or illogical in the theory of such transference.

On a God who never was a ghost men may come to confer sacrifices (which
are not made to Baiame and the rest) because, being in the habit of thus
propitiating one set of bodiless powers, men may not think it civil or
safe to leave another set of powers out. By his very nature, man must
clothe all gods with some human passions and attributes, unless, like a
large number of savages, he leaves his high God severely alone, and is the
slave of fetishes and spectres. But that practice makes against the
ghost-theory.

In the attempt to account thus, namely by transference, for the sacrifices
to Jehovah, we are met by a difficulty of our own making. If the
Israelites did not sacrifice to ancestors (as we have shown that there is
very scant reason for supposing that they did), how could they transfer to
Jehovah the rite which, by our hypothesis, they are not proved to have
offered to ancestors?

This is certainly a hard problem, harder (or perhaps easier) because we
know so very little of the early history of the Hebrews. According to
their own traditions, Israel had been in