fix the ritual which alone He will accept and allow of. If the will of
God is not thus expressed, a ritual must still be drawn up. In a
matter that excites the mind, as religion does, and where a large
field is open for hallucination and eccentricity, it will not do to
have individuals parading methods of worship of their own invention.
Here the Greek maxim comes in, [Greek: tima tho daimonion katha tha
patria], "honour the Deity after the fashion of thy country."
Religious authorities must be set up, in the same way that the civil
power is set up. These authorities will determine, not the object, but
the outward manner of worship. Every great nation, or important member
of the human family, would come probably to have its own
characteristic rite; and within each rite there would be local
varieties.

_Readings_.--St. Thos., _Contra Gentiles_, iii., 119; 2a 2a, q. 81,
art. 4, in corp.; _ib_., q. 81, art. 7 _ib_., q. 84, art. 2: _ib_., q.
85, art. 1, in corp., ad 1, 3; _ib_., q. 91.


SECTION II.--_Of Superstitious Practices_.


1. Superstition is the abuse of religion. It is superstition, either
to worship false gods, or to worship the true God with unauthorized
rites, or to have dealings with wicked spirits, whether those spirits
have once animated human bodies or not. Of the first head, the only
avowed instance within our civilization is the Positivist worship of
the _Great Being_, that is, of the collective Worthies of Humanity, if
indeed it amounts to worship. The second head might have been
meditated by Archbishop Cranmer with advantage, when he was drawing up