Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the FutureHamilton, Cicely
Science
Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future
Hamilton, Cicely
Apocalyptic fiction; End of the world -- Fiction; Regression (Civilization) -- Fiction; Science fiction
Most of all he was stirred in his interest and pity by the life
religious of the world around him; watching it adapt itself, steadily
and naturally, to the needs of a race in its childhood. As a new
generation grew up to its heritage of ignorance, the foundations of
faith were shifted; as tribal life crystallized, gods multiplied
inevitably and the Heaven ruled by a Supreme Being gave place to a crude
Valhalla of minor deities. Man, who makes God in his own image, can only
make that image in the likeness of his own highest type; which, in a
world divided, insecure and predatory, is the type of the successful
warrior; the Saviour, in a world divided and predatory, takes the form
of a tribal deity who secures to his people the enjoyment of their
fields by strengthening their hands against the assaults and the malice
of their enemies. As always with those who live in constant fear and in
hate of one another, the Lord was a Man of War; and when Theodore’s
first grandson was received into the tribe, the deity to whom vows were
made in the name of the child was already a local Jehovah. Faith saw him
as a tribal Lord of Hosts, the celestial captain of his worshippers; if
his worshippers walked humbly and paid due honour to his name he would
stand before them in the day of battle and protect them with his shield
invisible—would draw the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, show himself
mightier than the priests of Baal and overthrow the altars of the
Philistines.
A god whose attributes are those of a warrior, of necessity is not
omnipotent; since he fights, his authority is partial—assailed and
disputed by those against whom he draws the sword. A race in its
childhood evolved the deity it needed, a champion and upholder of his
own people; to the tribal warrior the god to whom an enemy prayed for
success was a rival of his own protector.... So the mind primitive
argued, more or less directly and consciously, making God in its image,
for its own needs and purposes; and even in Theodore’s lifetime the
deities worshipped by men from a distance were not those of his own
country. The jurisdiction of the gods was limited and the stranger, of
necessity, paid homage to an alien spirit who took pleasure in an
unfamiliar ritual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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