cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence
is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals,
except as the individual serves or opposes Israel.

In these two chapters Mr. Williams shows that the early conception
of God was a very low one, and that it underwent considerable change.
In fact, he says, with great candour and courage, that the early
Bible conception of God is one which we cannot now accept.

With this I entirely agree. We cannot accept as the God of Creation
this savage idol of an obscure tribe, and we have renounced Him, and
are ashamed of Him, not because of any later divine revelation, but
because mankind have become too enlightened, too humane, and too
honourable to tolerate Jehovah.

And yet the Christian religion adopted Jehovah, and called upon its
followers to worship and believe Him, on pain of torture, or death,
or excommunication in this world, and of hell-fire in the world to
come. It is astounding.

But lest the evidence offered by Mr. Williams should not be considered
sufficient, I shall quote from another very useful book, _The Evolution
of the Idea of God_, by the late Grant Allen. In this book Mr. Allen
clearly traces the origins of the various ideas of God, and we hear
of Jehovah again, as a kind of tribal stone idol, carried about in
a box or ark. I will quote as fully as space permits:

But Jahweh was an object of portable size, for, omitting for
the present the descriptions in the Pentateuch--which seem
likely to be of later date, and not too trustworthy, through