Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-12-21

mated the temple was the creation of many
| ina ginations and made up of all sorts of
| impulses ideas. Here there was a god in
which sort of ideas predominated, and
| there another
1t is necessary to lay some stress upon this
confusion and variety of origin in gods, be-
cause there is a very abundant literature now
in existence upon religious origins in which
| a number of writer's insist, some on this lead
ing idea and some on that-we have noted
several in our chapter on early Thought
as though it were the only idea. Prof Max
Mueller in his time, for example, harped
perpetually on the idea of stories and
sun worship, He would have had us think
that early man never had lusts or fears, crav
ings for power, nightmares or fantasies, but
that he meditated pepetually on the benefit
cent source of light and life in the sky.
| Now dawn and sunset very moving
facts in the daily life, but they are only two
among many. Early men, three Or four
hundred generations ago, had brains very
like our own. The fancies of our childhood
and youth are perhaps the best clew we have
to the ground stuff Of early religion, and
any one who can recall those early mental
experiences will understand very easily the
vagueness, the monstrosity and the incoher-
ent variety of the first gods
Gods of All Kinds
| There were sun gods, no doubt early in
| the history of temples, but there were also
hippopotamus gods and hawk gods; there
were gods of terror and gods of an adorable
quaintness, there were gods who were moth
ing but Jumps Of 1neteoric stone that had
| fallen amazingly out of the sky, and gods
who were mGre natural stones that had
CHANGED to have queer and impressive
shape
Some gods, like Marduk of Babylon and
the Baal (-the lord) of the Phoenicians
Canaanites, and the like were quite proba-
| bly, at bottom just legendary wonder beings,
such as little boys will invent for themselves
| today.
The settled people, it is said as soon
| as they thought of god, invented a wife for
him; most of Egyptian and Babylonian
gods were married. But the gods of the no.
madic Semtes had not this marrying dis
position. Children were less eagerly sought
by the inhabitants of the food grudging
steppes.
Even more natural than to provide a wife
for god is to give him house to live in
to which offerings can be brought. OF this
house the knowing man. the magician,
would naturally become the custodian. A
certain seclusion, certain aloofness, would
add greatly to the prestige of the god. The
steps by which the early temple and the ear
ly priesthood developed so soon as an agri-
| cultural population settled and increased are
all quite natural and understandable, UP to
the stage of the long temple with the image.
shrine and altar at one end and the long
nave in which the worshippers stood.
l. And this temple, because it had records
and secrets, because it was center of DOW
er, advice, and instruction, because it sought
and attracted imaginative and clever people
for it's service, naturally became a kind of
brain in the growing community. The atti-
tude of the common people who titled the
fields and herded the beasts toward the tenn
pie would remain simple and credulous
There, rarely seen and so maginatively en-
, HANGED lived the god whose approval gave
prosperity, whose anger meant misfortune;
he could be propitiated by little presents and
the help of his servants could be obtained
He was wonderful, and of such power and
knowledge that it did not do to be disrespect-
full to him even in ones thoughts. Within
the priesthood, however, a certain amount of
thinking went on at a rather higher level
than that.
Copyright, 1929