Only the spiritual man can know and worship God in spirit
and in truth ; the sensual and sinful man draws God down into
his own confined sphere, partly from want of power to rise to
Him, partly on account of his propensity to sin. He cannot
bear the contrast which exists between his belief and his life.
He must, therefore, suppress the outward knowledge of the
true God, and stifle: the inward voice which bears testimony to
Him. He must create to himself higher beings who are
subject toi the same sins and weaknesses with himself, that
he may excuse his own badness and silence his conscience by
their example. We see this in rationalism, which atftributes



116 FIRST PERIOD.
its own moral laxity to God. Thus when the descendants
of Noah had spread themselves farther over the earth, the
revelations of God to the fathers were soon forgotten or dis-
figured. The rapidity with which such decay takes place
may be seen by a glance at the present religious condition,
Half a century has sufficed for rationalism to make almost
completely a tabula rasa. Men were not able to give up God
entirely. Although alienated from God, they yet felt the
necessity of belief in a being exalted above their own weakness.
