It is very interesting to study the development of the idea of providence. It means foresight and the care which renders foresight praiseworthy. The more the gods were given character and identified with the life of the community, the more they were thought of as guardians anxious for the good of their people. As superhuman, they were gifted with knowledge of events to come and with plans for the welfare and happiness of their worshipers. The social relations of the gods inevitably brought them into transforming touch with the ethical progress of humanity. They became ideals reflecting back the highest of which man could conceive. In Christianity, we have a most striking instance of this ethical transformation of the one deity who is the superhuman agent _par excellence_. He is the father, kindly and loving, merciful and bountiful, who looks after the welfare of his children and plans their individual lives and the course of civilization. The evolution of God on its ethical side has reached its high point. From the philosophical side, this evolution was practically a foregone conclusion. Just because God was conceived socially, he could not escape this goal. Hosea and Jesus took the direction which ethical idealists could not help but take. Let us examine the consequences of this assumption of an omnipotent, omniscient and ethically perfect agent who acts in nature and in human history. Simply by deducing the implications of the concept, we find that it involves a plan for the world. Such a plan is called by theology God's providence. For one who accepts the assumption, the only sane attitude to take is that {116} of submission to the course of events as manifestations of God's will and wisdom. The heart of religion thus becomes a joyous acceptance of life's portion through a willed union with the purposes of this perfect being. The most religious souls in history have drawn this conclusion and acted it out in their lives. In this way, they taste of an exaltation similar to that which the patriot experiences when he identifies himself, without reservation, with the hopes and plans of his country at some time of crisis. They have, moreover, this advantage that disappointment is impossible, since they can never know the actual plans of God nor the time when they are to be fulfilled. If they anticipate and set their heart on some event which kindles their enthusiasm and it does not come to pass, they can assuage their disappointment with the remembrance that God's ways are past finding out and that he has an eternity in which to work. From the very nature of the hypothesis, the course of history can never disprove this outlook which is the logical end-term of the god-idea. This impossibility of test makes it, however, unscientific. Nothing can be deduced from it. As an hypothesis, it must always remain unfruitful. When we come to treat of the problem of good and evil, we shall see other difficulties which it must face.