GOBONATED, in heraldry, an epithet applied to a border, pale, bend, or other charge divided into equal parts forming squares, gobbets, or checkers. Called also gobone, or gobony.
GOD, the Supreme Being. The form god is used for any superior or imagin ary being, constituting an object of wor ship; or for (1) an emperor, king, or any other person, yielding great and despotic power; (2) any person or thing greatly idolized.
Ethnic Religions.—Whether any sav age tribes exist with no belief in any being higher than man is doubtful. Lub bock thus arranges the first great stages in religious thought: Atheism, under standing by this term, not a denial of the existence of a Deity, but an absence of any definite ideas on the subject. Fetichism, the stage in which man sup poses he can force the Deity to comply with his desires. Nature-worship, or totemism, in which natural objects, trees, lakes, stones, animals, etc., are wor shiped. Shamanism, in which the superior deities are far more powerful than man, and of a different nature. Their place of abode also is far away, and accessible only to Shamans. Idola try or anthropomorphism in which the gods take still more completely the nature of men, being, however, more powerful. They are still amenable to persuasion; they are a part of nature, and not creatures. They are represented by images or idols. In the next stage the Deity is regarded as the author, not merely a part of nature. He becomes for the first time a really supernatural being. The last stage is that in which morality is associated with religion.
Judaism.—Two leading names for the Supreme Being continually occur in the Hebrew Bible; the one generic, the other specific. The generic term is El, or
Eloah, both singular, and ELOHIM (q. v.) plural, the specific one is Yehovah, in general written JEHOVAH (q. v.). It is of the first that God is the appropriate rendering. El, Eloah, and Elohim signify Deity in general. Elohim is much more common than the singular forms. Among the epithets or titles used of God in the Old Testament are Most High (Gen. xiv: 18, etc.), Mighty (Neh. ix: 32), Holy (Josh. xxiv: 19), Merciful (Dent. iv: 31), God of Heaven (Ezra i: 2), God of Israel, etc. (Exod. xxiv: 10). Anthropomorphic language occurs chiefly, though not exclusively, in the poetic parts of the Old Testament (II Chron. XXx: 12, Psa. xx: 3, Deut. viii: 3, Psa. xxix: 4, Isa. xl: 12, 1, lx: 13, Exod. xxxii: 23), but monotheism is enjoined in the first commandment, and idolatry forbidden in the second, while in Isaiah and elsewhere there are most scathing denunciations of the manu facture and worship of images (Isa. xl: 12-26, xlii: 17, xliv: 9-20, etc.). In the New Testament, St. John gives the ever memorable definition of the Divine nature. "God is love" (I John iv: 16). The Latin Church, the Greek Church, and the several Protestant denomina tions all essentially agree in their tenets regarding God. See the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, the first 3f the Thirty-nine Articles, the Jatechism of the Council of Trent, the Confession of Faith (ch. ii.), and the Shorter Catechism, question 4. See THEOLOGY; TRINITY.