Once given the notion of superhuman agents of a social character, the after-development of religion is inevitable. Man adopts toward them the attitude that he takes toward his own rulers. To pray to the gods is as natural as to pray to those who have power and who, we hope, may be moved by our prayers. Psychologically, there is no difference in the attitude involved. Providence is merely the action of an agent who is more than human. For primitive man it did not imply an intervention with nature, for the very good reason that the gods were active in nature. Nature was the sphere of the activities of the gods in the same way that it was, in a minor degree, the sphere of the activity of men. We must rid ourselves of the modern conception, nourished by science, of nature as a realm of causal relations. For ages, man had no such conception; all activities were thought of as acts. Nature, man and the gods acted together in a sort of social whole. Law, as we understand the term in science, would have had no { 115} meaning to primitive man just as it has little meaning for many at the present day.
It is very interesting to study the development of the idea of providence. It means foresight and the care which renders foresight praiseworthy. The more the gods were given character and identified with the life of the community, the more they were thought of as guardians anxious for the good of their people. As superhuman, they were gifted with knowledge of events to come and with plans for the welfare and happiness of their worshipers. The social relations of the gods inevitably brought them into transforming touch with the ethical progress of humanity. They became ideals reflecting back the highest of which man could conceive.
In Christianity, we have a most striking instance of this ethical transformation of the one deity who is the superhuman agent _par excellence_. He is the father, kindly and loving, merciful and bountiful, who looks after the welfare of his children and plans their individual lives and the course of civilization. The evolution of God on its ethical side has reached its high point. From the philosophical side, this evolution was practically a foregone conclusion. Just because God was conceived socially, he could not escape this goal. Hosea and Jesus took the direction which ethical idealists could not help but take.