those theories made stone, those gods with three heads and seven hands,
who sit on lotus leaves and flourish lingams and what not, in the
temples of India. Let us leave, therefore, these morbid elaborations of
the human intelligence to drift to limbo, and come rather to the natural
heresies that spring from fundamental weaknesses of the human character,
and which are common to all religions. Against these it is necessary to
keep constant watch. They return very insidiously.



3. GOD IS NOT MAGIC


One of the most universal of these natural misconceptions of God is to
consider him as something magic serving the ends of men.

It is not easy for us to grasp at first the full meaning of giving our
souls to God. The missionary and teacher of any creed is all too apt to
hawk God for what he will fetch; he is greedy for the poor triumph of
acquiescence; and so it comes about that many people who have been led
to believe themselves religious, are in reality still keeping back their
own souls and trying to use God for their own purposes. God is nothing
more for them as yet than a magnificent Fetish. They did not really want
him, but they have heard that he is potent stuff; their unripe souls
think to make use of him. They call upon his name, they do certain
things that are supposed to be peculiarly influential with him, such
as saying prayers and repeating gross praises of him, or reading in
a blind, industrious way that strange miscellany of Jewish and early
Christian literature, the Bible, and suchlike mental mortification,
or making the Sabbath dull and uncomfortable. In return for these