The discussion of this attribute has been reserved for the latter part of this course, as it forms a natural prelude to the consideration of certain leading problems of difficulty in the philosophy of religion. But the attribute itself belongs to the earliest conception of Godhead.
At the stage where religion in our sense begins, man's earliest religious theory involves a belief in supernatural agents more powerful than himself, mysterious, capricious, and therefore formidable. The gods or the spirits are imagined as powerful before they are recognized as beneficent or just. But it was only after an indefinite period of development in our religious history that the consciousness of the divine power could rise to the height of the idea of omnipotence; and many obstructing causes can be given or surmised.
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