Jahveh so stamped into their hearts that the persecutions of centuries, the loss of land and laws and language, frequent and forced migrations, life for generations amid peoples of alien race and religion, have all been unable to quench their faith in Him. But now let us look at the spiritual issues of the struggle. These prophets spoke in the name of Jahveh, declared He was one God, the only God. Other deities were false, idols, without actual or substantive being. But this monotheism was only one element of their gospel. Jahveh was King-therefore had the right to command and be obeyed. He was righteous-therefore His word was the word of righteousness, His law the standard of right and truth. He was the Creator, therefore the Father, of man, and loved the creature He had formed as a father loves his child, more than a mother loves her infant. And from these principles many great results followed. The king was bound to obey Jahveh, order his state and administer his supreme laws according to His will. That will was man's law. Obedience to it was righteousness and peace. And so morality was joined to religion, was rooted in the nature of God. Knowledge of God and the love it was certain to awaken became the mainspring of action, made obedience easy and holiness possible. And were man afflicted with the strong weakness of an unstable will, did he sin, then there was mercy with God, forgiveness that He might be feared. And how varied the expression these thoughts receive! They are uttered in curses, such curses as only Semitic lips can frame, against idolatrous kings and apostate peoples; in pictures, that seem to laugh in terrible irony, of idol gods placed alongside the only eternal Jahveh; in entreaties of weeping tenderness to the people that had been loved and had wandered to return; in proclamations of an eternal law the neglect of man can never annul, or his disobedience degrade; in descriptions, lurid as if dashed off with a brush dipt in the hues of earthquake and eclipse, sweet and beautiful as if steeped in the silent loveliness of an oriental night, or bright and luscious, full of the music of birds and the sound of many waters like an Eastern Garden of the Lord. And then, when these men turned from their mission to man to their own relation to God, how their voices seemed to change. Now we hear the muffled yet hopeful weeping of a penitential psalm, imploring the mercy of God, forgiveness of sin, a right spirit and a clean heart; again, a sweet lyrical song of trust alike in living and dying in the Lord the Shepherd. That old Hebrew literature in all its forms, in Psalms and Proverbs, in prophetic visions and lyrico-epical poems, in history and parable, tells the same tale, the sweet and winsome gospel of the God who reigns and loves, who must often punish, but who always delights to save. Here, then, was the gift of the Semitic race in its noblest branch to the world-faith in the living, righteous God. That faith was embodied in a sacred literature, the grandest, in its essential elements the nearest universal, mankind has ever known, and in a people exalted by enthusiasm for the divine unity into its missionaries, with their field widened into the world by their idea, in spite of all their egoism and intolerance. Their Gospel did not simply affirm there is no God but Jahveh-that had been a mere abstract and impotent proposition-affirmed also, His right is to rule, man's duty is to obey. Religion is not simply worship, is obedience, righteousness, peace. A gift so splendid might well hold in it the regeneration of the world, giving to it not only the idea of the Divine Unity, but religion changed into a mighty and commanding reality, which penetrated and inspired the whole man, dignified him with the consciousness of a divine descent, gladdened him with the hope of a happy, because a holy, immortality, quickened him with the sense of omnipotence moving everywhere to the help of man in the soft guise of infinite gentleness. He who knows what these things mean will best understand that ancient saying, "Salvation is of the Jews." 2. The Indo-European mode of conceiving and expressing deity is in almost every respect a contrast to the Semitic. The general terms were primarily expressive of physical qualities; the proper names of physical objects or pheno mena. There is no term as common to the Indo-Europeans as El is to the Semites. The one most extensively used is the Sanskrit deva, Zend daeva, Greek Oeós (?) Latin deus, Old Irish dia, Cyme dew, Lith. dewas.* This term, derived from the root div, to shine, is expressive of the physical quality brightness, characterizes God as the bright or shining one. Another very common term, the Persian Bhaga, old Slavonic Bogu, means the distributor, the giver of bread, and had possibly been applied first to light or the sun as dividing time and dispensing food, and had then been extended to the being resident in or acting through these objects. The Teutonic term cuot, guot, Gott, God, is still of too uncertain derivation to allow any inference to be based upon it, but the most probable etymologies seem to indicate that the Germanic peoples deviated from the common Indo-European idea of God, and hit upon one that may help to explain some of the finest elements in their faith and character. As were the general terms, so were the proper names, primarily denotive of physical objects or forces. The deified Heaven, usually married to the deified Earth, is the *See pp. 25, 26, and note, + Fick, "Indo-Ger. Wörterb.," 133. Curtius, "Griech. Etymol.," 279. Grimm," Deutsche Mythol.," 12 ff. The most probable etymologies are either the root ghu, ghavati, whence Sansk. hu, havate, zend, zu, zavaiti, to call, to invoke, or hu, Sansk. huta, to sacrifice. God is thus either He upon whom one calls, or He to whom one sacrifices. Cf. Fick, "Indo-Ger. Wörterb.," 71, 746. Pictet, "Les Origines Indo-Europ.," ii. -658-661. foundation of the Indo-European mythologies, the sources of their multitudinous gods. Dyaus and Prithivi are in the Rig-Veda "the beneficent Father," and " Mighty Mother," the prolific parents of all creatures.* The Greeks knew the bright sky, Zeus, father of gods and men; and if philology forbids us to see in Hera, Era, Hertha, Earth, † it cannot refuse us Demeter, mother earth, "the broadbosomed," "the mother of all things,"" the spouse of the starry Ouranos." The ancient Germans knew Tuisco, the father of Mannus, sprung from the earth; Tiu, the god of the bright sky, and Hertha, or Ertha, Terra Mater; ‡ and no thought was more familiar to the Latin poets, as none was more rooted in their mythology, than that Lucretius thus utters- 66 Denique cœlesti sumus omnes semine oriundi: Feta parit nitidas fruges, arbustaque læta All the Indo-European religions bear the stamp of this primitive naturalism, even where they deviate, as in the old Iranian faith, most widely from the family type. Almost all the deities of the Rig-Veda bear natural names, exercise functions expressive of their physical Rig-Veda, i. 159, 1, 2. Muir, "Sansk. Texts," v. 21–34. + Curtius, "Griechis. Etymol.," 116. But see Welcker, "Griechis. Götterl.," i. 363. Tacitus, "Germania," c. 40. § "De Rerum Natura," ii. 991-995. |