Excerpt: ...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. Let us examine the consequences of this assumption of an omnipotent, omniscient and ethically perfect agent who acts in nature and in human history. Simply by deducing the implications of the concept, we find that it involves a plan for the world. Such a plan is called by theology God's providence. For one who accepts the assumption, the only sane attitude to take is that 116 of submission to the course of events as manifestations of God's will and wisdom. The heart of religion thus becomes a joyous acceptance of life's...