rpents, or doing other
things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme
Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no
variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning." This gradual
ennobling of the conception of Divinity reveals the extent to which man
is ennobling his own nature.

Up to within a very few years God had a rival in the Devil, but now the
Devil lives only as a pleasantry. Until the time of Moses, the God of
Sinai was only the God of the Hebrew people, and this accounts for His
violence, wrath, jealousy, and all of those qualities which went to make
up a barbaric chief, including the tendency of His sons and servants to
make love to the daughters of earth.

It is probable that the idea of God--in opposition to a god, one of many
gods--was a thought that grew up very gradually in the mind of Moses.
The ideal grew, and Moses grew with the ideal.

Then from God being a Spirit, to being Spirit, is a natural, easy and
beautiful evolution.

The thought of angels, devils, heavenly messengers, like Gabriel and the
Holy Ghost, constantly surrounding the Throne, is a suggestion that
comes from the court of the absolute monarch. The Trinity is the
oligarchy refined, and the one son who gives himself as a sacrifice for
all the people who have offended the monarch is the retreating vision of
that night of ignorance when all nations sought to appease the wrath of
their god by the death of human beings.

God to us is Spirit, realized everywhere in unfolding Nature. We are a
part of Nature--we, too, are Spirit. When Moses commands his people that
they must return the stray animal of their enemy to its rightful owner,
we behold a great man struggling to benefit humanity by making them
recognize the laws of Spirit. We are all one family--we can not afford
to wrong or harm even an enemy.

Instead of thousands of warring, jarring families or tribes, we have now
a few strong federations of States, or countries, which, if they would
make war on one another, would today quickly face a larger foe. Already
the idea of one government for all the world is taking form--there must
be one Supreme Arbiter, and all this monstrous expense of money and
flesh and blood and throbbing hearts for purposes of war, must go, just
as we have sent to limbo the jangling, jarring, jealous gods. Also, the
better sentiment of the world will send the czars, emperors, kings,
grand dukes, and the greedy g