Good and Bad primary segmentation of the theistic conception was into kindly and unkindly deities. The germs of this we have seen in the most savage states (see above, p. 143). It is a mistake to call these " good " and " bad " deities, as is often done, unless we confine those words to their most material sense, and exclude from them every thing of a moral character. The distinction is simply that they are gen erally favorable to the wishes of the individual or his tribe, or the reverse. The loftiest and most beneficent deity of the Algonkin Pantheon, he whom they looked upon as their father and guardian, was familiarly called " the Liar" and "the Cheat;" not that they were deficient in moral sense, but that he was represented in their myths as overcoming his foes rather by deceit and wiles than by force.
Few divinities, however, were wholly kindly or hostile. Usually they were capricious, resented neglect, and required to be cajoled. This is the obvious character of most of the Homeric gods, and hence the origin of the elaborate rituals supposed to coerce them. Gradually, as the influence of one and another became more popular or more apparent, there grew up a fixity of character and an antagonism of action not known in younger faiths. We may suppose that it required a nation remarkable for deep sympathies and strong emotions, and with a checkered career, to develop this antag onism into the sharp contrast presented by the divinities in the Zend Avesta. Here the kindly gods headed by Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) find their plans for man's welfare ceaselessly checked and spoiled by the hostile legions under the control of Ahriman (Anya-Mainyus). Through the Manichean doctrines of the early Christian Church—doctrines which were partially borrowed from Persia, partially independently developed—this dualistic conception of divinity has left its trace on many of the creeds of later Christianity. Nor has it lacked the approval of deep thinkers. John Stuart Mill, looking at religions from the outside, has maintained that it is the only doctrine which reconciles the presence of pain and suf fering with the existence of a wholly beneficent deity.
Differences of Religions in fetich and the guardian spirit belong to the individual. They are his personal tutelaries and pro tect him against his neighbor. So the family gods, the ',arcs and Penates, were supposed to confine their wardship to the household. The gods of one nation were not those of another; indeed, they were supposed to be antag onistic, and when the opposing cohorts met in conflict on the earth, the native gods joined battle in the upper air. All primitive religions are thus
local and personal or national. It was quite a step in advance when the Latins thought that in the Greek Herakles and Hephmstos they recognized their own Hercules and Vulcan, although in fact there were scarcely any points of contact.
National and World intercourse multiplied such pretended identifications; it was policy in conquerors to respect the relig ion of the conquered, as when Darius sent a hundred talents to buy the Egyptians another bull in place of their taurine god Apis which had died. Foreign divinities were imported, as was frequent in the later cen turies of Rome. Priests, anxious to magnify the powers of the divinity they reverenced, claimed its identity with those worshipped in other nations; and philosophers, looking beneath the symbol to the general truth which it expressed, proclaimed that the power of the gods was coextensive with nature and man. These various opinions, joining ground each iu its own sphere, tended to destroy the isolation of tribal and national religions and to pave the way for the universal or world religions—those which were aimed by their founders to spread over the earth and include all men.
Such a limitless claim involved several postulates which have pro foundly modified the human race, and paved the way for the most sudden and vital changes in the history of mankind. It is evident that if any religion has a right to be the sole and universal one, it must have the monopoly of religious truth, and that compared with it all others are false, and therefore dangerous. Hence intolerance has been the trait of all world religions. In national religions it has found little place. Their votaries would say to the citizens of another nation, as did the Indian to the missionary, " Your religion is best for you; mine is best for me." Not so with those who claim the only truth. It becomes their duty by every means in their power to extinguish all other creeds and rituals.
From this it follows that a world religion must necessarily be prose Iv/thing. The duty of its believers is unfulfilled if they neglect to extend its sway by such means as they have at command. Whether by the sword or by persuasion, they must proclaim the truth which has made them free.