Of permanent living human gods, inspired by the constant {231}indwelling of a deity, Mr. Frazer also gives several apt examples. In the Marquesas Islands there was a class of men who were deified in their lifetime. They were supposed to wield supernatural control over the elements. They could give or withhold rain and good harvests. Human sacrifices were offered them to appease their wrath. “A missionary has described one of these human gods from personal observation. The god was a very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure.” (A temple in its _temenos_.) “In the house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the trees around it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclosure, except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offerings were sent to him from every side.” Indeed, throughout the South Sea Islands, each island had usually a man who embodied its deity. Such men were called gods, and were regarded as of divine substance. The man-god was sometimes a king; oftener he was a priest or a subordinate chief. The gods of Samoa were sometimes permanently incarnate in men, who gave oracles, received offerings (occasionally of human flesh), healed the sick, answered prayer, and generally performed all divine functions. Of the Fijians it is said: “There appears to be no certain line of demarcation between departed spirits and gods, nor between gods and living men, for many of the priests and old chiefs are considered as sacred persons, and not a few of them will also claim to themselves the right of divinity. ‘I am a god,’ Tuikilakila would say; and he believed it too.” There is said to be a sect in Orissa who worship the Queen of England as their chief divinity; {232}and another sect in the Punjab worshipped during his lifetime the great General Nicholson.