eep its name on the list.

Christ himself is coming more and more to be regarded as a fanciful
figure; not God, not even a man, but a construction of early Christian
imagination. "Why," asked a Unitarian of a Positivist, "why is not
Christ in your Positivist calendar?" "Because," was the reply, "the
calendar is for men, not for gods."

THE GREAT GHOSTS *

* March, 1889.

Long before there were any kings there were chiefs, Even in the
early Feudal days the king was only the chief of the barons, and many
centuries elapsed before the supremacy of the monarch was unquestioned
and he became really the _sovereign_. It was a process of natural
selection. A mob of chiefs could not rule a mob of people. There was a
fierce struggle, with plenty of fighting and intrigue, and the fittest
survived. Gradually, as the nation became unified, the government
was centralised, and out of the chaos of competing nobles emerged the
relatively cosmic authority of the Crown.

Similarly in the world of religion. All gods were originally ghosts. But
as polytheism declined a supreme god emerged from the crowd of deities,
as the king emerged from the crowd of nobles, and ruled from a definite
centre. It was Zeus in Greece, Jupiter in Rome, Brahma in India, Thor
in Scandinavia, and Yahveh in Israel. "I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous
God," was an exclamation that sprang from Yahveh's lips (through his
priests) when his godship was still in the thick of the competitive
struggle.

The ghosts become gods, and the gods become supreme deities, looked
after the interests of their worshippers; gave them long life, good
harvests, and prosperity in warfare, if they were true to them, and
plagued them like the very devil if they slighted them or nodded to
their rivals. According to the Old Testament, when everything went well
with the Jews their God was pleased, and when things went wrong with
them he was angry. This state of mind survives into our advanced
civilisation, where people still talk of "judgments," still pray for
good things, and still implore their God for victory when they have a
scrimmage with their neighbors.

But this infantile conception is dying out of educated minds. Prayer is
seen to be futile. The laws of nature do not vary. Providence is on the
side of the big battalions. God helps those who help themselves--and no
one else.

Long ago, in ancient Greece and Rome, the acutest thinkers had come to
the same conclusion