Let us trace this religion of Salvation from its beginnings. So
many things that man does not himself contrive or desire are
always happening: death, plagues, tempests, blights, floods,
sunrise and sunset, growths and harvests and decay, and Kant's
two wonders of the starry heavens above us and the moral law
within us, that we conclude that somebody must be doing it all,
or that somebody is doing the good and somebody else doing the
evil, or that armies of invisible persons, benefit-cut and
malevolent, are doing it; hence you postulate gods and devils,
angels and demons. You propitiate these powers with presents,
called sacrifices, and flatteries, called praises. Then the
Kantian moral law within you makes you conceive your god as a
judge; and straightway you try to corrupt him, also with presents
and flatteries. This seems shocking to us; but our objection to
it is quite a recent development: no longer ago than Shakespear's
time it was thought quite natural that litigants should give
presents to human judges; and the buying off of divine wrath by
actual money payments to priests, or, in the reformed churches
which discountenance this, by subscriptions to charities and
church building and the like, is still in full swing. Its
practical disadvantage is that though it makes matters very easy
for the rich, it cuts off the poor from all hope of divine favor.
And this quickens the moral criticism of the poor to such an
extent, that they soon find the moral law within them revolting
against the idea of buying off the deity with gold and gifts,
though they are still quite ready to buy him off with the paper
money of praise and professions of repentance. Accordingly, you
will find that though a religion may last unchanged for many
centuries in primitive communities where the conditions of life