We began by examining Mr. Huxley's endeavours to find traces of ancestor-worship (in his opinion the origin of Jehovah-worship) among the Israelites. We next criticised Mr. Spencer's efforts in the same quest, and the more dogmatic assertions of Mr. Oxford and Stade. We now return to Mr. Huxley's account of the evolution from ghost-cult to the cult of Jehovah.
From the history of the Witch of Endor, which Mr. Huxley sees no reason to regard as other than a sincere statement of what really occurred, he gathers that the Witch cried out, 'I see Elohim.' These Elohim proved to be the phantasm of the dead Samuel. Moved by this hallucination the Witch uttered a veridical premonition, totally adverse to her own interests, and uncommonly dangerous to her life. This is, psychically, interesting. The point, however, is that Elohim is a term equivalent to Red Indian Wakan, Fijian Kahu, Maori or Melanesian Mana, meaning the 'supernatural,' the vaguely powerful—in fact X. This particular example of Elohim was a phantasm of the dead, but Elohim is also used of the highest Divine Being, therefore the highest Divine Being is of the same genus as a ghost—so Mr. Huxley reasons. 'The difference which was supposed to exist between the different Elohim was one of degree, not of kind.'[17]
'If Jehovah was thus supposed to differ only in degree from the undoubtedly zoomorphic or anthropomorphic "gods of the nations," why is it to be assumed that he also was not thought to have a human shape?' He was thought to have a human shape, at one time, by some theorists: no doubt exists on that head. That, however, is not where we demur. We demur when, because an hallucination of the Witch of Endor (probably still incompletely developed) is called by her Elohim, therefore the highest Elohim is said by Mr. Huxley to differ from a ghost only in degree, not in kind. Elohim, or El, the creative, differs from a ghost in kind, because he, in Hebrew belief, never was a ghost, he is immortal and without beginning.
Mr. Huxley now enforces his theory by a parallel between the religion of Tonga and the religion of Israel under the Judges. He quotes Mariner,[18] whose statement avers that there is a supreme Tongan being: 'of his origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal. His name is Tá-li-y-Tooboo = "Wait-there-Tooboo."' 'He is a great chief from the top of the sky down to the bottom of the earth.' He, and other 'original gods' of his making, are carefully and absolutely discriminated from the atua, which are 'the human soul after its separation from the body.' All Tongan gods are atua (Elohim), but all atua are not 'original gods,' unserved by priests, and unpropitiated by food or libation, like the highest God, Tá-li-y-Tooboo, the Eternal of Tonga. 'He occasionally inspires the How' (elective King), but often a How is not inspired at all by Tá-li-y-Tooboo, any more than Saul, at last, was inspired by Jehovah.
Surely there is a difference in kind between an eternal, immortal God, and a ghost, though both are atua, or both are Elohim—the unknown X.
Many people call a ghost 'supernatural;' they also call God 'supernatural,' but the difference between a phantasm of a dead man and the Deity they would admit, I conceive, to be a difference of kind. We have shown, or tried to show, that the conceptions of 'ghost' and 'Supreme Being' are different, not only in kind, but in origin. The ghost comes from, and depends on, the animistic theory; the Supreme Being, as originally thought of, does not. All Gods are Elohim, kalou, wakan; all Elohim, kalou, wakan are not Gods.
A ghost-god should receive food or libation. Mr. Huxley says that Tá-li-y-Tooboo did so. 'If the god, like Tá-li-y-Tooboo, had no priest, then the chief place was left vacant, and was supposed to be occupied by the god himself. When the first cup of Kava was filled, the mataboole who acted as master of the ceremonies said, "Give it to your god," and it was offered, though only as a matter of form.'[19]
This is incorrect. In the case of Tá-li-y-Tooboo 'there is no cup filled for the god.'[20] 'Before any cup is filled the man by the side of the bowl says: "The Kava is in the cup"' (which it is not), 'and the mataboole answers, "Give it to your god;"' but the Kava is not in the cup, and the Tongan Eternal receives no oblation.
The sacrifice, says Mr. Huxley, meant 'that the god was either a deified ghost, or, at any rate, a being of like nature to these.'[21] But as Tá-li-y-Tooboo had no sacrifice, contrary to Mr. Huxley's averment, he was not 'a deified ghost, or a being of like nature to these.' To the lower, non-ghostly Tongan gods the animistic habit of sacrifice had been extended, but not yet to the Supreme Being.
Ah, if Mr. Gladstone, or the Duke of Argyll, or some bishop had made a misstatement of this kind, how Mr. Huxley would have crushed him! But it is a mere error of careless reading, such as we all make daily.