of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realized;

very like Jove, but unmarried. He was both beneficent and jealous, and had
to be propitiated by regular attendance at church; but further than that
he was not exacting; and therefore they ventured to take his name in vain
when they were angry, and also to call upon him for help, with many
apologies, when there was nobody else to whom they could apply; although,
so long as the current of their lives ran smoothly on, they seldom
troubled their heads about him at all.

There were deeper natures than those, however, who were not content with
this small advance, and these last had by degrees, as suited their
convenience but without perceiving it, gradually discovered in him every
attribute, good, bad, or indifferent, which they found in themselves, thus
ascribing to him a nature of a highly complex and most extraordinarily
inconsistent kind, less that of a God than of a demon. To them he was
still a great shape like a man, but a shape to be loved as well as feared;
a God of peace who patronized war; a gentle lamb who looked on at carnage
complacently; a just God who condemned the innocent to suffer; an
omnipotent God who was powerless to make his law supreme; and they
reserved to themselves the right of constantly adding to or slightly
altering this picture; but having completed it so far, they were
thoroughly well satisfied with it, and, incongruous as it was, they
managed to make it the most popular of all the presentments, partly
because, being so flexible, it could be adjusted to every state of mind;
but also because there was money in it. Numbers of people lived by it, and
made name and fame besides; and these kept it going by damaging anybody
who ventured to question its beauty. For there is no faith that a man
upholds so forcibly as the one by which he earns his livelihood, whether